waiting game

I tried to bow out of the party, which was mostly for the men anyway. Nobody wants two people in the middle of a breakup at their birthday party. It's weird and uncomfortable. I explained this to the host, but with some teasing and painful elbow nudges, I was egged into coming over.

By 7:30pm, I was laughing and trash-talking the dart night guys. Something seared into the side of my face. It was the man's staring eyeballs, from where he sat like a basilisk on the kitchen landing. I stuck out my tongue, and he got up to use the bathroom. At 8:00pm, Leif tromped in and announced, "Time to go home and go to bed. 5 minutes, mom," and tromped out again. Someone looked around. "Where's Mike?" I found him outside in the dark, sitting on a lawn chair. "I can't do this," he said. "Oh, for fuck's sake," I replied. "TWO MINUTES," Leif yelled from the toy bin.

When we got home and the boys were passed out in their beds, the man took me aside and made his announcement. "I think I'm going to move back to Oahu." He cried. I didn't.

This is good. This is the sound of wheels gaining traction after spinning uselessly. This is moving forward with a feeling of relief, and suddenly realizing you are sliding toward a drop off. Oh shit, childcare. Oh shit, no backup for parenting, sick days, holidays, grocery shopping.

I'll figure it out.



Turning comments off again.

Beatnik sweater

It is done! A finished sweater that I am allergic to! And it is very unflattering!

After discovering the rogue ball of tweed in my basket, all it took to finish it was some misdirected anger, three episodes of the Walking Dead, and half a bottle of my kid's allergy medicine.

And I totally had yarn left over.

What was I worried about?

Finished objects mean action shots. Which mean balancing the camera on the weird window/hole between the livingroom and kitchen, focusing it haphazardly because the auto-focus is broken, and running down with 5 seconds to think of something action-y to do.

Which is usually the chicken dance.

Which, I am realizing now, makes me look as if I am holding two giant invisible cocks.

Get your goggles on, folks.

On the pattern for the sweater, there is a cute photo of a woman jumping. I tried jumping, too. 

sweat-hurr

So there it is. Done. 

Note my amazing seaming. I don't understand the flailing about having to seam a sweater; it's still just needles and yarn.

And now I have to focus on other things. Like getting this MAN OUT OF MY HOUSE. I threw him out on Wednesday, and he's back again. I got a drunky email from the next room last night, saying how sorry he is and how pretty I am. 

Maybe I should take up pan-throwing. Or archery.

"It's all just knits and purls!"

LIES. 

I am trying to cast on my first shawl/triangular neck thing ever and this makes no sense WHO DOES THIS.

Crochet chain 4 stitches pick up and knit 2 stitches through bumps on the reverse side knit 7 rows TURN 90 DEGREES CLOCKWISE KNIT 1 STITCH IN EACH RIDGE UNRAVEL YARN PLACE LIVE STITCHES ON NEEDLE WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS.

All this because I have determined after 5 weeks of coughing and two runs of antibiotics and two chest x-rays that I am probably not dying of tuberculosis, but very probably allergic to the tweed sweater I am knitting.

Which I have run out of yarn for at the fucking COLLAR. And I can't afford to order another ball of this death tweed for another month. So I'm trying to use stuff I already have for other stuff. Which may or may not also try to kill me. The likelihood that it WILL kill me increases with these instructions.

RAWR.

Instead of knitting, I will jab the needles into this man who refuses to move out.

grief bacon

It's the same old story. You meet a guy, fall in love, get married, have a baby, go to grad school, find out he's cheating on you, get divorced, move to California, take him back, move to Maui, have another baby, publish some books, catch him at it again, kick him out, replace him with cats.

It happens to everybody.

There really isn't much to say about it. I am turning off comments for now.