(A) Good Friday

Interlacements RickRack II - nothing to do with anything, just pretty.

What a couple of weeks, huh? Yeah, so my boss got laid off, and my boss' boss became my boss. Thing is, my boss wasn't supposed to find out about being laid off until the end of this month, so now we're all thinking that there'll be more layoffs, but my boss' boss, now my boss, wouldn't confirm anything. And then my boss' boss, now my boss, got laid off on Tuesday. With me so far? Two bosses and their boss gone, still a possibility that more of us will be let go, but the likelihood is decreased because losing those three big salaries may have saved the lower people. For now.

In the middle of all of this, Accountant Boy's boss was laid off, and A.B. took over his job responsibilities, but not his salary and not his title.

Oh, and my mom's house is now haunted, apparently by my dad. Lights turn on and off in the bedroom where he died, the TV remote control disappears and is then found in the back of the pencil drawer and, most tellingly, the adding machine turns itself on and starts feeding paper through its printer. We think he's either angry that we didn't have a big party at the forty-day anniversary of his death, or confused and believing that he needs to finish some tax returns.

Am I getting any knitting done during this stressful time? Well, no. Although it would probably soothe me to do it, I can't pull my knitting out of the bag, because it drives Winston mad with longing. I don't know what this is going to mean for the future of Fluffy Angora Menace and my ability to wear it around him. All I know is that I can't work on it in the evenings. I'm trying to figure out how to slip out of the house for three hours and get it done.

Jodi asked about the Arosa pullover in the comments of this post. Man, that seems like such a long time ago. I 'temporarily' abandoned Arosa soon after that, intending to get back to it after I cooled off and stopped hating it. I haven't picked it up since then, but I have had some thoughts about how to finish it and actually like it.

Jodi, the thing about the front panel being kind of weird just worked itself out. It looks completely weird when you're working on it, but just follow the directions. It looks like the sweater's got kind of a wrap/crossover thing going, but that's a trick of the pattern photo. The second, weirdly shaped piece gets stitched right to the edge of the main piece. It makes sense when the pieces are laid next to each other. It also makes sense when you see how the fabric drapes if you're using the Arosa yarn. If you had two layers of fabric across the front, it'd look sloppy.

What am I going to do to mine to make it work? I'm going to take it apart and reknit the neck edges so that it's less droopy, maybe fewer stitches and a slightly smaller needle. And then, much as it pains me to do so, I'm going to knit the sleeves as they're supposed to be knit. The solid sleeve just wasn't working.

I'll get right on that, just as soon as I get my Last Winter...uh...First Day of Spring...umm...Easter sweater done.

Enabler

Me: "I still can't believe that Donatella is moving to Palos Verdes."

Daisy: "I know. It's weird."

Me: "It's been a weird summer. My shredder exploded in my face, and then my toenail fell off, and then my dog got the dog cancer, and now Donatella's leaving us. Everything's strange. I am displeased."

Daisy: "I think if you purchased that bag of yarn from the bargain bin, you'd feel better."

Me: "You think?"

Daisy: "Put it up to your face."

Me: "You know how well that works as a deterrent." I put the yarn up to my face for the color test. It brushed against the underside of my chin. "Oh, God. It's merino and silk."

Daisy: "Don't you feel better already?"



Me: "I don't know. I still feel unsettled and discontented. What do you think about this little bag of Berroco Zen? I could make a tank top out of the six balls in here."

Daisy: "I think you've had a hard summer, and you deserve a treat."



Me: "How hard do you think my summer has been? 'Cause there are eight skeins of Tartelette in this bag at $28. Ooh, look! The silvery band is actually iridescent lavender and blue!"

Daisy: "I have no idea why you're even asking me. You know my answer is going to be 'yes'."

Do I still knit? Not as often or as prolifically as I'd want. You know what I do more frequently and with more success? Buy beautiful yarn.

In other news, The Engineer is in China for two weeks. Lucy is currently in full remission and is looking fit and trim. My nemesis, the haunted soda machine, has returned. All I wanted was a damn Coke, you bastard! Why? WHY???



Son of a BITCH!

From the Beginning

I was standing in the kitchen, close to the stove. The kitchen was small, so I was actually close to everything, but closest to the stove. The woman and her boy were in the doorway. They had boxes in their hands.

"Hold on. What are you doing here?" I asked.

"These are our things," she replied. "We have to put them away." The boy continued into the front room, ignoring me.

The woman was wearing a shirtwaist dress, faded but clean. Her ash blonde hair was pulled into a loose knot at the nape of her neck, and stray tendrils floated around her face. She was pretty, but haggard, a Dorothea Lange photograph brought to life, standing in my kitchen.

"This is my house. We bought this house. We're the ones moving in." Our house isn't very big. I remember thinking that I had to stop her boy from putting anything down because we needed the space left clear to unload the moving van.

"Hmm." She straightened her back and walked into the other room. As I watched them work, the woman and the boy, I started to see that there was something wrong about them. Sure, any time someone is moving into your house without your permission, while you're standing in front of them, telling them to stop, that's wrong. That's not what I mean.

Their clothes were wrong, the shirtwaist and the boy's dungarees. They weren't playing dress-up in vintage store finds; they lived in those clothes. The way they spoke to each other, the way they moved, all wrong. We've become such a fast culture. We walk quickly, we speak quickly. We rush. These two were measured, deliberate. These two were slower. Not simpler, not less intelligent, just in less of a hurry.

The lighting in our house was horrible in those days. When we moved in, only half of the light fixtures worked, and they weren't more than 40 watts each. Every room was dark, barely lit by dim bulbs behind dirty glass shades. Everything was yellow. Not her, though. She and the boy were pale, as though they'd been desaturated, lit by a different source. I stared at her, fascinated by this.

She wasn't paying as much attention to me. She was scrutinizing the wallpaper, displeased by the strawberry vine pattern winding its way around the window.

"Look, I don't mean to be harsh, but this is my house. We were the high bidders. I'm sorry nobody told you, but really. You can't stay."

She turned toward me, box of cast-iron skillets still in her hand. Her eyes were hard. Her voice was mild and patient, but firm. "Nevertheless, we are here."

It was at that point, finally, that I realized that she was a ghost. It was also at that point, also finally, that I woke up. I sat up in bed and looked out the window.

The boy was standing on my porch roof, staring off into the distance. He turned as though he'd heard me awaken. We stared at each other for a minute, the pale young man bathed in moonlight and I. Then he turned away again, seemingly lost in his thoughts as he gazed down the road. If this was a second dream, I do not remember awakening from it.

My house was built in 1953. We bought it in 1999. My house is haunted.

awaken burnout bluebonnet

Gratitude for today: I'm grateful that I'm healthy.

When someone coughs near me at work, I can say, "Hey! What the f*$k? Go HOME!", and that's the end of it. I don't have to worry that I'm going to die by catching whatever they're spewing out into the air. Well, unless it's that avian flu or the Hanta virus. I remember reading something about the Hanta virus liquifying your organs or drowning you by filling your lungs with green ooze, something horrid like that, and whether it's true or not, I'm scared shitless of the Hanta virus. But by and large, not worried about anything common.

My beautiful, young cousin is going through chemotherapy, and her little boy has a cold. Last night, she couldn't resist hugging him, even though she was supposed to stay clear of him until he was well. Now she has a cough and she's having trouble breathing. She tries to comfort her seven-year-old son because he's just told her that he's scared that she'll die, and that's what happens.

You know a few posts ago when I said that I'm usually laughing about what I'm typing, and you'd know it if I wasn't laughing anymore? Here's an example. Not laughing.

I know that the thing to do is love someone and support them, but keep living your own life. That's what my cousin wants. That's what DaddyBanana wants. Well, really what DaddyBanana wants is for all of our family to live in a gigantic house, 'Dallas'-style, but without all of the drinking and whoring and clubbing each other over the head with expensive Chinese urns. O.K., maybe the drinking wouldn't bug him. Anyway, I know I should be able to empathize, but keep on going with my seemingly charmed life. I'm usually pretty good at it, but not at the moment.

I've got all kinds of neat things to talk about today. I've had a fantastic week. I met my fitness goals, I met my work goal, I met Ceallach. A.B. and I caught up on some fantastic television while I knit 'Bella'. HBO brought back 'Rome' in all its bloody glory. Buddy got over his most recent bout of stress-induced bulemia, the apparent cause of which is so ridiculous that people think I'm making it up when I tell them. I was not haunted by the Ghost Okies. It was a great week, but I feel shallow talking about any of it this morning. I'll feel better by tonight, and I'll have loads to say, especially about the hauntings. Accountant Boy's having an unexpected reaction to the mere mention of them. Note to self: stop telling A.B. that our house is haunted by Dustbowl-era migrants.

See? Already pulling out of the blue. By the way, "awaken burnout bluebonnet" was the subject line of some spam I received this morning. It struck me funny.

The Wild, Wild Sea

Pretty #2 - More Fiesta Insignia La Boheme. I bought it because the colors looked like San Francisco Bay on a choppy afternoon. They're actually a little lighter in real life, but still lovely. I'm going to make the Portland Pullover from the Fall 2006 Interweave Knits with it. The blue bleeds like crazy, so I'm knitting it on aluminum needles. The only aluminum needles I have in the correct size are these super-long Susan Bates straight needles. It's a good thing this is a fast knit, because those heavy needles are not fun to sling around. The yarn makes a lovely teal stripe around my left index finger. I've put this one aside for the time being, as I've got two sweaters and a scarf ahead of it on the priority list.

The colors of the yarn and the bean pot are accurate, but the counter is way off. Weird.

Gratitude #3 - Can I say Mama Mellace's Cinnamon Roasted Almonds again?

They're that good. No, I don't work for them or have any financial stake in their success. O.K., fine. I'll pick something new.

Gratitude #3(a) - I'm grateful that I have a warm place to call home.

We walked through Union Square on Sunday and got stopped by a guy taking donations for a soup kitchen. Accountant Boy gave him twenty bucks. "He said you looked like a movie star, so I though, 'What the hell? He had a good sales pitch.'" I know what he was really thinking, because I was thinking it, too. We were having a great day, happy in every respect, walking around San Francisco in the cold. We were happy because we knew we'd be able to get back in our car and turn on the heater, and go home and turn on the heater there, and be relaxed and warm. Why not give the guy twenty dollars so someone else can be warm for a couple of hours? We have it too good not to share.

Resolutions?

Fitness -- I've been to the gym four times since Friday. I'm working up to the running goal, hoping to soon reach the point where my toenails don't hurt after the workout. I usually hit that point about three weeks into the program, when I stop running on my toes. The Starbucks weekday ban went wrong today, because I though I had a morning-long meeting that would require a gigantic espresso drink. When I got here, I discovered that the meeting is tomorrow, but I already had the gigantic espresso drink. What was I supposed to do, throw it out?

Knitting -- Still knitting things that never actually made it into the stash, but at least I haven't purchased any new yarn. That's gotta count for something.

Be a Better Programmer -- I'm designing the screens for A.B.'s wine database. In our spare time, the .Net consultant is going to help me with the data binding and process flow. I'd feel guilty about doing this at work, but my manager says that any programming I do is valuable, even if it has nothing at all to do with the mortgage industry. I feel much better about this than I did a couple of weeks ago, much less like vomiting from stress when I think about coming to work tomorrow.

Contact -- I sent a long overdue e-mail to my dearest cousin this morning. Next week's e-mail goal? Our friends from college. They've sent Christmas cards to us for the past four years, and we've been meaning to get back to them for the past three years, eleven months and five days. We pick the card up off the desk in the office and say, "We HAVE to get back to them." The card sits on our desk, not lost in clutter and not covered by anything, no good reason other than procrastination, until the next year's card shows up to replace it. "We REALLY have to get back to them!" They have no way of knowing this. As far as they know, we either hate them or we're dead. I'm going to remedy that situation next week, if not sooner.

Meet knitters -- Tomorrow! (I hope...)

I finished one sleeve of Bella. I'm going to knit both body pieces, then see if I have enough yarn to make the sleeves longer.

Finally for this afternoon, I leave you with this. I have the distinct feeling that I'm being haunted. Yes, by a otherworldly spirit. No, I don't believe in that kind of thing, either, what with my Dana Scully-like belief in the primacy of science. Maybe I'm sleeping strangely because of the cold, or maybe Accountant Boy is gaslighting me. Nevertheless, I...but more on that later.