The One Where I Keep My Mouth Shut

At Morrisons:

Me: Can you please tell me where I can find the ice?

Store Clerk: Frozen ice?

Me (pauses for one beat, waits for it to sink in, when it doesn't): Yes.

You are so proud of me.

That took an immense amount of control for me not to fall out laughing, right there, in the store, with everyone watching.

To the poor boy who helped me, it's okay, sweetie, I've had that day.

Calamity Mane

After an anxious, lengthy wait, my Ravelry invitation arrived on the 17th of October. I was - in California-ese - stoked!

Precisely 30 days after my invite showed up in my inbox (and four usernames later), I logged in for the first time. I'll be honest with you, it was exhilarating.

The number of people involved with this site is staggering; the variation of projects, the ease of usability... all marvelous.

And then I found it: the bitching.

I'd added someone - someone whose blog and design sense I admire - as a friend and happened to look over at the groups to which she belonged, looking to see if there was a group that I might also want to join.

One group's logo intrigued me - a Harry Potter graphic with "WTF?" poorly superimposed over it - so I clicked.

Wrong thing to do. The first thing I noticed was a forum discussion titled, "HOLLER IF YOU'D RATHER BE READING DICKENS." Ignoring the ridiculous and aimless use of capitals, I clicked the link. Again, wrong thing to do. It was a group of grownups having a three-page discussion about how reading the classics and reading Harry Potter was mutually exclusive. Most of the people involved in the discussion admitted to reading very little, if any, of the series. Argh!

I'm a big believer that an uninformed opinion is one not worth expressing.

Not only was this group disgusted by the overall fact that adults were reading books that were intended for children, but the pervasive feeling seemed to be that we - adult Harry Potter readers and fanatics, a group to which I vociferously and proudly claim membership - don't know good literature when we read it.

I chose to look somewhere else on the site. Idiotically, I looked at the forums. The first discussion I found was a group of women bitching about how they weren't interested in knitting Clapotis. Now it was my turn to say WTF?! Is this how we're going to spend our time - talking about the fact that someone else's design and effort isn't valuable because we don't favor knitting it? Seriously?

I hope that no person in the "Dickens" discussion group has watched Finding Nemo, Ratatouille or The Incredibles as an adult and enjoyed it - with or without their niece, nephew, little brother/sister, six-year-old, godchild, whomever. There had better not be one single song not aimed at their current demographic that they enjoy. Fine, yes, perhaps the writing of the HP books was not on the same level as Fitzgerald, but that doesn't automatically mean that the storyline wasn't compelling or intriguing - at least to some. By the way, some of us don't like Fitzgerald or Thackery or Dickens (I winced through every last page of This Side of Paradise and found the use of the voice of the author in Vanity Fair an intrusive and unnecessary device. I thought the character of Oliver was one of a whining, twee, weak little boy and didn't enjoy the read nearly as much as that of A Tale of Two Cities). I do hope that this group will remember that Shakespeare was family entertainment when his plays were written, not some badge of highbrow honor.

Per their discussion, I guess that Roald Dahl and Chris Van Allsburgh didn't/don't know what they're doing and that the parents who read those books to their children and enjoyed them are mentally inferior to this group of, apparently, exclusively Oxford-educated knitters.

I can't wait to see the follow-up to the "I hate Clapotis" discussion where each participant suggests a new pattern that is more challenging than Clapotis and that teaches a skill that this new pattern epitomizes and can demonstrate. I can't wait! One woman actually commented that she couldn't see herself doing all that knitting to purposely drop stitches. Really? Well, you better vet that Vogue knitting book carefully then, sweetheart, because I think they slipped some drop-stitch patterns in there. The dirty bastards.

Honestly, if you don't want to knit Clapotis, don't, but don't disparage the people who do like the pattern and do want to knit it.

For the ladies of the HP discussion, come back to me when you've read the books - ALL of them, cover to cover - and then you can comment. And the ladies of the Clapotis discussion, I'll talk to you when you've designed and published a well-loved pattern on Knitty.

I know, I know... free speech and all that rot. You know what I say? Screw you and the natural-fiber-only, it's-fulled-not-felted, I-only-use-bamboo-needles horse you rode in on.

We're supposed to be a community.

Some of us enjoy a little historical fiction and some of us choose Political treatise as our book of choice, some of us like a little bit of Judith Krantz. Some of us will only knit with natural fibers and some of us don't mind a bit of acrylic. Some of us are Zimmerman-esque in our love of the garter stitch and some of us need to use mathematical formulas in our patterns to make knitting the project worthwhile.

But none of us, none of us, is any better than any other person. It's all valuable in the scheme of things. Perhaps we could direct all this time and energy into something useful, like being advocates for knowledge and growth.

I have to go now. I've already finished the Harry Potter books, but I need to go borrow back the Clapotis I knitted for my SIL, take pictures of it and post them on Ravelry.

Bite me.

Counting Sheep

Spring – now that it’s nearing summer – has sprung here in the Northwest of England. Yesterday was a glorious day and today, today, the weather was even better. Warm, sunny, gentle enough breeze… a perfect day for boating on the canal.

My BIL had some jobs to do on his boat, so my SIL, my dog and I went to the Lancaster Canal to join him, watch the light lollop across the water, have bacon butties and cups of coffee in the bright, afternoon sun while ducklings trailed their mothers and the good-weather worshipers walked the tow path.

Sandwiches made and the cabin sweltering from the heat of the day and the gas grill, we decided to go out onto the canal to get a bit of the deeply-craved breeze flowing through the boat.

We found a sweet little spot with some shade and a spectacular view. With sheep bleating in the field below us and room on the tow path for us to put out chairs and have a quiet sit on the bank, we moored.

I put Milo on the tow path for a little run and then – stupidly as it turned out – went back into the cabin to help with the chairs.

Big mistake. HUGE mistake.

In the seconds that it took me to walk into the cabin, take the chairs off my BIL and walk back out into the sun, Milo was gone.

I called. I called again. I looked up the tow path. I looked down the tow path. There was no sign of him, so I called again, again.

I looked back up the tow path and the woman in the boat in front of us pointed to the field below me. I smiled in thanks, but was inwardly thinking, “Right, you nutter.” She was far from being a nutter. When I turned my attentions to the field, there he was, my small dog, running flat out, chasing an enormous flock of sheep.

An enormous flock of sheep.

He was chasing them and barking like a fool. He wasn’t barking at them from the edge of the flock – oh, no – he was in the middle of them, running in all directions, trying to chase each and every sheep, all at once.

Shoeless, I hopped off the boat, shouting for my SIL to come help. She flew out of the cabin, over the edge of the boat and onto to the tow path, lighting out ahead of me while I tried – in vain – to recall my swiftly-moving, completely engrossed, flock-chasing dog. My BIL quickly followed my SIL, running past her, over a bridge and into the farmer’s field to catch him.

Now that Milo had chased all of the sheep into a neighboring field and had sniffed the various and new interesting things he’d found, he (suddenly) was able to hear me calling his name and came running back up the hill to the tow path – as though nothing had ever happened – with my BIL following closely behind. He handed Milo over the fence to me and climbed over after him, catching his pants in a very delicate place on the barbed-wire fence in the process. I tried to help, but in the end simply told my SIL, “You’re going to have to put your hand there.”

That was hours ago and I can laugh about it now.

Milo? Poor chap, he's exhausted.

He’s having a nap.

Thank You

This is a belated and much-too-quick "Thank You" to everyone who made my 40th birthday such a wonderful day and the party a rousing success!

I felt loved and honored to have you all there.

"My friends are my estate."
- Emily Dickinson

The One Where I Have Ear Surgery

Four years ago, I had surgery to remove a cyst (that I'd had since birth) from my left ear.

I had it again last week.

The first time I had some goober of a plastic surgeon who looked like John Travolta, if he'd eaten John Travolta, was overly jovial and smiled his greasy little smile - a lot - and I distrusted him instantly. He had two practices - one for insurance patients in downtown San Jose and one for private patients in Palo Alto.

If only I'd known...

Apparently the "insurance" patients didn't get the same level of care as the private patients. Oh, god, at least I hope that's true. Oh, dear... Those people payed a lot of money for him to screw up their surgeries.

My surgery was a disaster. I was told, "Once it's gone, it's gone." He didn't mention that after the surgery it wasn't gone.

In the years that followed, I twice had to have someone slice open my ear as an emergency measure to relieve the pressure on the nerves in my face. One of those times I got Demerol and lost an entire day, one of those times I did not. At least once, the husband threatened to open my ear using some rubbing alcohol and a packet of razor blades. He wasn't kidding. On that occasion, I stayed up all night with a hot compress on my ear until the pus, fluid and other unidentifiable humors forced their way out through my skin and I was saved from a third impromptu surgery.

Whenever I caught cold or flu, I was terrified that I would be subjected to the pain and aggravation of that ear. I ended up with a two-year supply of Augmentin that went with me everywhere (passport, check; toothbrush, check; Augmentin, check) and with which I became so skilled in dosing myself, that I was no longer required to check in with my doc when I felt that my ear was flaring up and suspected I needed it. Sad.

This surgery is supposed to remedy all of that.

This time, my surgery was done on the NHS, where I was instructed to call the morning of my surgery to ensure that there was a bed for me (seriously) and where I was placed in a ward where the average age of my fellow patients was, roughly, Methuselah.

At the moment my ear looks like they Frankenstein'd me with parts from Alfred E. Neuman and it's as though I am hearing through an ear that's on top of my ear. My throat feels like I was intubated with with a 2-x-4 that had extra-large splinters and a grove of nails that had been cultivated for their particular brand of rusty dullness. For some bizarre reason, I'm terribly congested.

And yet, strangely, I have higher hopes for this surgery than I did for the one I had in the U.S.

I'm recovering, though I'm grumpy due to a lack of sleep (the congestion combined with sleeping on my right side are keeping me awake) and I'm looking forward to being able to tilt my head back without it feeling so heavy that it may fall off.

I'll keep you posted.

Good wishes and gifts of Häagen-Dazs vanilla bean ice cream are always welcome!

It's Half-Term and I Hate Everyone

Okay, maybe not everyone, but everyone who should be wearing a school uniform and sitting in Geography classes, but is, instead, roaming the streets like the feral animals they've become in a mere two days.

You see, it's half-term this week and that means that the nation's juvenile riff-raff is out of school, running wild and existing in places where they shouldn't exist.

There are lots of programs on television at the moment about the sorry state of the educational system here. Why can't Gavin read? Because he's never in f@#$ing school, that's why! Apparently, it's too much for British schoolchildren to attend school for more than eight weeks at a time, so they are given half-term breaks three times a year, along with the usual holiday breaks for Christmas, Easter and Summer. Good grief.

Perhaps if the children here went to school for more than two months at a time, they'd get out of school before the last week in July. At any rate, they'd be in school this week, instead of in my way, which is where they are now.

Today was Stitch 'n Bitch and our meeting place wasn't its normal haven, but the temporary evening haunt of a group of hormonally-challenged, teenaged, gum-snapping, trendy shitbags.

Yeah, I said it. Gum-snapping, trendy shitbags.

It had been a long day as a friend and I had already gone to (and left) Oswaldtwistle, where we attended our monthly beginner's patchwork class. Two competing high-maintenance pains-in-my-ass, one certifiable loon and an hour's drive later, all I wanted was a croissant and a hot chocolate and to put the finishing touches on a scarf that I have been knitting for what seems like two years.

It wasn't to be. My fate was to wait in a line - pardon me, a queue - behind a, frankly, indistinct gaggle of pubescent girls wearing too much make-up and wardrobed in a decidedly finite array of styles. They looked like quasi-animated Bratz dolls, except with skin the color of burnt sienna and the texture of chalk, thanks to too much fake tan and heavy-handed makeup applications. One of them looked like a Seville orange with Chrissie Hynde's hair tacked on; her smoky eyes - meant to evoke sultry adulthood - made her look like she'd tripped and fallen into coal dust. They were clumped together in a cloud of combating perfumes and lip gloss shades and clad in ridiculously similar (if not exactly the same) outfits. All while eying up immature, boy-band wannabes - complete with highlights that would make a circa 1982 George Michael proud - who were sitting in the back of the cafe, quacking their inane opinions at max volume.

I will be soooo happy when half-term is over.

But I'll only be happy for two months: the Christmas holidays are just around the corner.

Huzzah.

DSW

In preparation for Milo's arrival, we had to "puppy-proof" the house.

It was an undertaking of larger-than-expected proportions. We never realized how dangerous our house was, since we're both adults, (generally) have complete control of our motor skills and (again, generally) know better than to chew on electrical cords.

There are few things that make me as happy as organizing something to within an inch of its life. I do so love the idea of creating a bucolic, orderly haven out of what was - quite recently - a chaotic, haphazard mess. So, it was with relish that I moved the oil-fired heater from the floor in the kitchen, instructed the husband to shore up all the small gaps in the garden fences and set to reorganizing our (how very American) walk-in closet.

Now, knowing that puppies like to chew and knowing that the husband would scream blue murder if our new puppy chewed his fantastically expensive shoes, I decided it was time for me to make my move and ask for shelves that I had been wanting for ages.

The problem? The shelves were at Ikea.

It takes a lot - and I mean a lot - to get the husband to go there. We're talking bribes and the promise of sexual favors here. A trip to the Swedish hell that is Ikea has a lot of stipulations attached to it: I have to know exactly what I want and it's better still if I know exactly where that thing is in the self-service aisles. It behooves me to know the color and the dimensions of said thing before we've left the house and I should be willing to push that heavy-goods cart with the one wonky, plastic-clogged wheel without making a fuss or running over the husband's schmancy shoes.

I also have to purchase Swedish fish for the drive home.

With my own money.

Still, he was no match for me.

I convinced him to go and to buy me shelves by pulling out his pair of cafe au lait-colored, butter-soft suede driving shoes from aforementioned expensive shoe shop and asked him to visualize them covered in puppy hair and drool, complete with teeth marks and holes.

I got my shelves.

I chose simple LACK shelves in the birch effect and we put them up the next day.

My closet now looks like this:






The blue thing in the frame is the first thing I ever knitted. And, yes, the thing in the window is a Manolo Blahnik shoe horn. I did tell you that he was schmancy.

Is it sad that I'm equally excited looking at my closet as I am thinking of eating those doghnut cupcakes?

I don't think so.

Not for one minute.

Insert Homer Simpson-esque Drool Here

Those of you who know me know that I love cupcakes.

I mean... I well and truly love cupcakes.

I have the ability to fit an entire cupcake into my mouth - frosting, sprinkles and all. The ensuing frosting headache is absolutely, in no uncertain terms, always worth it.

Now, because it doesn't come up as often, you may not know I am also a big fan of the doughnut. To be specific, I am a big fan of the freshly baked doughnut. Those disgusting Entenmann things masking as doughnuts do not move me. Those "end-of-day, been-sitting-there-since-7 A.M., gettin'-love-from-no one" doughnuts don't have a place in my heart and Dunkin' anything makes me throw up in my mouth a little. But a freshly baked doughnut... oh the pleasure, the joy. You watch as they're taken out of the piping hot oil and laid suggestively on a rack or gently absorbent surface and then rolled indecently in sugar and/or cinnamon right in front of you. Arrrrr-rrrrr.

So, suffice it to say that I was deliriously happy to see this post on a blog that I frequent.

She makes me soooo very happy...

There's Good News and There's Bad News

The bad news: I've already cleaned poop out of the car once today.

The good news: it wasn't my poop.

Honest.

It was Milo's poop. Milo. Our new puppy.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Milo!



In person, he is waaaaaaay cuter than that photo, but he's a wiggle-bottom and it was nearly impossible to get that photo, so you'll just have to suck it up.

Milo is a five-month old Havanese who likes playing with his toys, listening to Mozart and pooping in his crate.

Okay, I don't know for sure that he likes Mozart and we're working on the crate thing.

Welcome to the newest addition to our fur-baby family. So far, his cat-sister hasn't paid him the slightest bit of attention.

Wish us luck!

The Death Report

My mother calls me periodically to let me know who amongst our family and friends has passed (or is in immediate danger of passing) away.

The conversation generally goes something like this:

Mom: Hi. How're you?
Me: I'm good, thanks. You?
Mom (deliberate pause): I'm tired. [Insert current nemesis' name here] is putting me through all kinds of changes.
Me (because I have no response to this): Mmm.

She is not insulted. This is not what my mother called to tell me about. This is incidental, the opening band, the prelim bout.

Mom: You know that little man that used to lived across the street from us?
Me: Uh-uh. I think I'd gone away to school by the time he moved in.
Mom: Oh. Well... you'll never meet him now. They found him dead in his house this morning. (Ding! Ding! KO'd in the first round of the Title fight.)

I used to respond by not responding. I would wait, in vaguely uncomfortable silence, for my mother to change the subject. She never did. She would just go on to the next item in the report.

I then tried the obvious: "Mom, I have no idea who you're talking about." I was trying to gently tell her that I wasn't disaffected, I was just confused. I didn't know who she was talking about and so wasn't able to generate the correct emotional response. I wasn't being mean, I was being what I was - unattached to a situation that had no real bearing on me. Sure, it was sad that someone had died home, alone (or by the hand of a cousin I had, heretofore, not known existed), but it was like losing Copernicus or "Touched By An Angel" - it didn't mean anything to me.

This tack didn't work. It was like explaining to a distant relative or stranger/friend of your parents, who hasn't seen you since you were very, very small, that you honestly don't remember them and that - without regression therapy - there is no way you're going to retrieve a memory from when you were two-and-a-half and they gave you an apple and you ended up with Granny Smith all over your face and you were just so cute and you couldn't say "thank you" properly so you said "tank-ooh." And that no matter how many times they say the words, "Remember, remember?" you won't remember.

Being unaffected was not excuse enough.

I wised up and changed tactics. I started giving her the desired - nay, required - and correct acknowledgment: "Oh, Mom. That's terrible. That poor little man."

And then we could move on.

Me: So, what else is new?

Now, you have to understand, the report doesn't actually have to involve death. Terminal and/or chronic illness will do just as nicely - as will pedophilia, drug addiction and general misfortune. And by family and friends, I mean random and sundry - people who may or may not be related to me, that I may or may not have met in my current incarnation or lifetime - from my mother's pastor's sister's friend to a woman who worked three floors down from my mother in the hospital where she worked for 31 years that I never actually met, but who knew me because she saw my Junior Prom picture and commented on how nice my dress was. All said in a breathless, mournful tone meant to elicit the response, " Oh, Mom. That's terrible..." Which, of course, now, it does.

To my mother's credit, there's no actual relish in her voice. I'm not saying it doesn't exist - that there isn't a little "Ha! There's another sucker I outlived" going on inside her head - I'm just saying that if it is going on inside of her head, she has the decency to keep it out of her voice. I'm just sayin'.

Sorry, gotta go. My phone is ringing.

"Oh, hi, Mom. What's up?"

Saying Goodbye

In my head, I keep hearing that song by Art Garfunkel, All I Know. "Endings always come at last..."

I couldn't really empathize with a friend when she posted about the end of the Gilmore Girls. Having had a similar relationship with my own mother - save for the erudite repartee and the fashionable clothing - where I was often more mother than daughter, I never garnered the same affinity for that show. I always knew that there would come a time would I would have to take the parental role, but I expected that it would be later, rather than sooner, so I can't say that I... appreciated the Loreli character.

Tonight, at least, I can sympathize a bit more.

It's nearly 11 P.M. and I will try to get some sleep now. I know that my dreams will be filled with what did and did not happen in the very last volume of a book series that I desperately wanted to read, yet didn't really want to read because there would be no way to undo the end once it was done.

And now I've done it.

I've just finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Ah, how I wish that Hogwarts really existed and that I could have been a student there. I think I would have ruled at Transfiguration and Defense Against the Dark Arts and I'd like to think that I would have been good at Spells and Charms, but I know that I would have sucked ass at Potions and History (I'm terrible at following a recipe and I still don't know when the War of 1812 took place; I always think it's a trick question, like how long did the 100 years' war last?).

I would have wanted to be in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. I would never, ever have been sorted into Slytherin. Ever. I probably would have fallen for Fred or George (boys who look like nerds, but with a wicked sense of humor and a penchant for trouble!! Oh my...). I would have gotten at least one detention for knocking the crap out of Pansy Parkinson and I would have consistently lost my house points for talking back to Snape in class. I'm guessing that my mother would never, ever have let me go into Hogsmeade. Ever.

I know that it's not real. Still, I'd love to know how butterbeer, pumpkin juice and chocolate frogs taste. I'd also love to be able to perform an undetectable extension charm so that space in my kitchen cabinets would never be a problem again. Mmm, just think: a flick of my wand and the laundry would be done.

I loved reading those books. And I learned to appreciate them for so much more than the escape.

I appreciated the writing of the series and how the level of it grew, along with the characters, over time. The vocabulary became more varied, the language stronger and more adult, the plots became more intricate and the characters more developed with each novel, in turn doing something so out of character that I could hardly believe that she wrote it in and then swinging back to do something that would bring the true nature of the character back into focus. It's much the same way we are in real life - duress, grief and unhappiness have a way of changing us all. I appreciated the way, around book (year) 4, Ms. Rowling stopped babying us through the key pieces of information (much the way a parent - a good parent - will do for you in real life). I was so relieved when she stopped explaining recurring characters and situations for the uninitiated.

I'm going to miss those characters. I am going to miss the anticipation of a new installment, miss the little thump of excitement in my chest when I open that very first page. The movies don't do that for me. They don't satisfy, can't satisfy, the way that the books do. The books are faithful and true, whole and untainted and they are always new...once. The movies can never do, never be that.

So, I raise a glass and say this: Goodbye and thank you, J.K., for letting me share in your - and Harry, Ron and Hermione's - journey. Thank you for bringing a bit of humor and intelligence to the subject, without miring yourself (or us) in the theological discussion that generally accompanies this type of thing. Thank for you making me wish that it was all real.

Thank you, most of all - and I mean this sincerely - for making me believe in magic.

Cheers!

Open, Open, Open...

It's 11:52 and 32 seconds (33, 34, 35, 36...) and I'm off to the local book sellers to purchase Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Any guesses as to whether I will finish unpacking my suitcase? Whether the hall will get vacuumed? Dishes washed? Cat fed?

I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count.

I asked my trusty Magic 8-Ball and it replied, "Outlook not so good."

And for the PETA-philes, don't worry. The cat will get fed, but only because I've filled her bowl to the very top.

She better pace herself.

Hone Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jig

I am in the Boston Logan airport waiting for a flight into San Francisco, where Molly will pick me up and drive me to SJ.

It's a sweltering 92 degress Farenheit (33 Celsius) in Boston and the haze is so thick that I am stunned and surprised that flights are taking off at all.

Still, despite the 6-hour wait, I'm grinning from ear to ear.

I can hardly believe that I am back on home soil for two whole weeks. Two weeks. I'll get to see dearly-missed friends, my Dad, my stepmother, a cousin I haven't seen since her dad passed away...

I'm going to the Harry Potter movie on opening night and I get to eat buttered movie popcorn, not some bizarre combination of sweet-and-salted-and-stale. I'm dreaming of a hot dog that tastes like a hot dog and not a recently used condom filled with god-knows-what kind of parts-is-parts. Knowing me, I will manage to see more than one movie. Mmm, home...

I cannot wait.

Hey Chel, I think I'm a Housewife

That line from the Michelle Shocked song Anchorage kept going through my head as I went about my daily chores yesterday. It was the only thing that my mind could wrap itself around to explain my feelings about the day.

You see, yesterday was glorious. The weather was absolutely beautiful when I woke up - bright, fine, radiant sunshine, hardly a cloud in the sky. I looked out the back bedroom window and nearly jumped for joy.

My thought: what a prefect day to peg out the laundry.

Argh!!

It is a moment that will live forever in my memory. It's the moment the I went over to the domestic darkside.

A Meme? For Me? Shut Up!

I was tagged by my swap partner for the Hogwarts Sock Kit Swap (hiya, Welsh Dragon!).

I'd complain, but memes don't bother me. Save for that book one (it's 100 items long and I have no patience for what people will and won't read - it all has some value, even if only to let one know what one doesn't value), I think they can be funny and/or interesting - you learn something new about a person, perhaps about yourself. And besides, when bloggers complain about being tagged I cannot help but scoff. Someone finds you entertaining enough to want to know what you think about x and you get to talk about yourself. Face it, you blog, you like to talk about yourself.

The rules of this are that I am to tag seven other people and have them answers these questions on their blog. I can't bring myself to tag other people with the expectation that they will actually do this. Besides, I only know of one other person who hasn't done this. Oh, wait, I'll tag her!

With that said, here are seven random facts about me:
1. I was born left-handed. The woman who ran the daycare/nursery that my sister and I went to was from the South and thought the left hand was the devil's hand, so she wouldn't let me use it. I didn't know this until I was well into my twenties. When I was in my teens, my father made a comment about it, surprised that I was right-handed. At the time, I thought he was a loon. It was more than 10 years later when my mother told me the truth.

I can paint and eat with my left hand as well as I do with my right hand, but to this day my hand "stutters" when I write.

2. I always put my left shoe on first. Always. If I put my right shoe on first, I don't feel comfortable and I have to take my shoes off and put them on again, left one first. This does not translate to anything else - pant legs, earrings, nothing - just my shoes.

3. I am famously, tremendously clumsy.

4. I am über arachnophobic. ALL spiders give me the heebie-jeebies: those creepy, fire engine-red, almost invisible ones to slow-moving, banana bunch-sleeping tarantulas - they all have the same effect. Someone once asked me what it was about spiders that I didn't like and I replied, "Because they've got eight spindly legs and they always look like they're up to something." And they do, too. They're always skulking about, hiding in corners, lurking in wood piles. I don't like it.

5. I don't drink soft drinks. It wasn't a conscious decision. I just woke up one morning and realized that I didn't like them. In the past 17 years I have probably had five or six soft drinks - and then, only because there was no other drink choice. I make an exception for Coke that is mixed with Lamb's Navy dark rum. I will drink a natural soda (basically juice with some carbonation), but I won't drink a regular, commercial soft drink if I have my druthers.

6. I have rented art.

7. When I sneeze I make a sound like a cartoon mouse. It sounds like I'm taking the piss, when that's really the way I sneeze. It, quite literally, stops people in their tracks. They will invariably smile and then say, "Well, bless you!" in an equally high-pitched, cartoon voice because they think I've done it for laughs. I haven't. Honest.

Bonus fact:
I have steered a crew (as in rowing) boat, a canal boat and an oil tanker. Seriously.

Swap-Bot Ate My Life

Phew.

It's Saturday night and I am sitting down and I feel super guilty about it. I feel like I should be down on my hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor or outside in the dark turning over the soil in the beds in my back garden.

Downstairs, there are craft supplies all over my kitchen and front lounge. I am stumbling over boxes and packs of tissue and those bubble-wrap padded envelopes. My DVR only has 70% capacity left because I've set up program after program to record, but don't get the chance to watch them.

Upstairs, there are two piles of washing waiting for me: one that is desperate to be sorted and laundered and one that wants folding so badly it doesn't want to know what to do with itself. My toothpaste is still not in the medicine cabinet. My hair straignteners have been on the bathroom sink for three weeks. I cannot seem to fill the loo roll holder, so I keep taking them one-by-one from the 12-roll package.

Was that an over-share? Probably, but it illustrates the point. I have not been doing the things I need to do around the house. I don't answer e-mails in any sort of timely manner, I read but take days to respond to PMs and I rarely ever hear the text sound on my phone, so I answer all texts about 12 hours too late.

Why, you ask?

It's effin' Swap-bot, I tell you.

Swap-bot is both my Paradiso and my Inferno. In three weeks I've made 17 Artist Trading Cards, one scarf from Filatura di Crosa's Batuffolo Print and three handmade bookmarks (for which I developed a new design); learned to hand sew so that I could make hearts out of hand-dyed velvet, stuffing and lavender; put together three swap packages of mixed teas and a Tough Times package for a pen pal. I am currently, concurrently, working on four Thank You cards, two postcards covered in adjectives and one easy Wishlist swap.

Like I said, phew.

My neglected house and chores shame me. Now, people who know me know - given the opportunity - that I am, like, Monica Geller neat. I can't start to clean anything before I'm meant to be doing something else because. If I start, it won't be just a quick wipe and a sweep away, I'll end up using a toothbrush to get into the cracks and crevices and I will wear out a roll of those striped towels while using as much EcoSquirt as is environmentally-safe to use (which, considering it's an eco product, is a lot). So you can only imagine how the mess is wearing on me.

But, have no fear, it is slowly getting better. I am actually nearly a week ahead on swaps, I (decadently) vacuumed the floors and the kitchen (at least the floor is clean) and scoured the downstairs loo to within an inch of its life. Thanks to my SIL, my mock orange and aquilegia are in the ground, not in plastic garden centre pots, and there is lobelia instead of bare compost in one of my planters.

I'm getting there.

If I owe you e-mail, I swear I will answer. If I owe you a phone call, it'll probably be later this weekend or over the holiday. If it was a text, I promise you I'll check my phone (as soon as I charge it) and send you a reply (that will more than likely be a two-word reply or the word "okay" before I just end up calling you because it's easier for me than trying to work my cell phone while brain-numb).

Okay, lady, I love you, buh-bye.

I gotta go log into Swap-bot.

Tumbling Dice

I was all set to post tonight, but I am going to go to bed instead.

This morning, at around 5 A.M., the mistress wanted to be let out and I got up to open the back door for her. I put my foot on the first step and it slipped out from under me. I never got the chance to put my other foot down.

I hit the top step with the better part of my coccyx and then slid - step by stair - to the bottom of the staircase, landing with a goodly thump on the hardwood floor at the bottom, in our front hall.

It seemed like a very long way down and I seemed to slide for a very long time. All I could think to say on my bumpy declension was, "Shit, shit, shit..."

I was able to stand and miraculously, not a thing was broken or sprained. I don't remember hitting my head or my scraping my hands, but now my neck hurts and I have the nagging sensation that usually accompanies carpet burns on both arms and the sides of both hands. My left thumb hurts. My back is stiff and it feels like I have a burn there, too. I cannot get the muscles in my right calf to loosen.

Still, if this is all I have to contend with after that fall, I consider myself lucky indeed.

I knew I wasn't going to die. Nothing flashed before my eyes - no tender moments, no past regrets, nothing - as I travelled. I was very much relieved until I realized that there could be more than one reason for that: either I wasn't going to die so there was no reason to do the highlight reel or I've been wasting my time.

I e-mailed the husband to let him know what happened and he told me to have the great British elixir - a cuppa - with sugar in it to help with the shock. What?! So, there is some basis of truth to Madame Pomfrey recommending chocolate to hurt or seriously scared persons. I sent a second e-mail to ask him that and if sugar would really help. He said, "Yes sugar in tea helps with shock. Put your Hogwarts uniform on then you'll feel better when you have your tea!"

Funny guy.

So, I'm off to bed with a glass of water and the miracle drug that is naproxen sodium.

The cat is outside for the night.

Ex-Pativersary

It's official. I've lived in England for one year.

Did I say the thing about how time flies?

Alone Again, Naturally

I've been on my own for a full week now. The husband has gone back to sea and it's just me and one wayward cat for the next four months. It's amazing how the time flies.

It's weird, too, because it seems as though the days have just passed and that I haven't done a thing this past week, but that couldn't be less true.

I've made 4 "Pink, pink and more pink" ATCs, 4 "Black & White" ATCs and learned to sew (sort of). I went to a meeting of the Altered Arts club (of which I was the only attending member that day), saw Spiderman, went shopping in Cheshire and Fleetwood, bought new bedding plants, two jasmine plants and a lavatera. I've been to Stitch 'n Bitch, a giant hobby store and the Wray Scarecrow Festival in (unsurprisingly) the small village of Wray.

This time last week, I was having a day of domestic responsibility. I spent almost the entire day going through the finances and bills, making sure that we're on track, adding all of the correct notations to my organizer, making the phone calls that needed to be made.

Honestly, I'd complain save for the fact that, thanks to British Telecom and the invention of the wireless network, I did all of this sitting outside at my table, which looks like this:

on a deliriously glorious day in my back garden, which looks like this:

Ah, and it's only Spring.

It's also hard to believe that in 8 short days, I will have lived in England for a year. 365 days. A whole year.

My, but how the time does fly.

Hubris

I'll admit - before I even begin this post properly - that this post is pure, out-and-out boasting.

The woman who initiated the SnB group that I belong to is (fortunately for her, unfortunately for us*) selling her knitting shop. In an effort to make the transition easier for the new owner, she is very kindly selling the odd balls (called oddments here) off cheap.

When I say cheap, I mean cheap. Last Sunday we went by the shop to look through the yarn and I purchased two balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Astrakhan for 50 pence each. Uh-huh, you heard me, 1-2-3-4-5-ifty pence. That's approximately 25 cents, for my U.S. friends that I am clearly taunting.

I bought it in this color:

Mmmm, chocolate...

I also bought a skein of Jaeger Alpaca 4-ply and a skein of Debbie Bliss cotton cashmere for the same price. I figure that I can either make fingerless gloves or add the last two to something else. They were just too good to resist.

Okay, I'll stop bragging now.

Back to regular scheduled programming...