Knitters-Knitters

Ten Things That Are Deeply Wrong with Me

The meme was pilfered from Badger. 

While there are certainly ten things deeply wrong with me, there is only one thing so terrible, so heinous that it will surely alienate all of you in one fell swoop.  It's so awful that to list nine things after it would be a waste of my time and yours, since you will either read no further than the one or will read the rest only to forget them in the wash of horror that is Deeply Wrong Thing #1:

1.  You know how when you're picking up your child at school and there's always That Mom who's in the wrong lane?  It's a different lane every time but it's always wrong, and it's almost as if she's oblivious to the subtle nuances in traffic patterns that should tell her when to double park, when not to, when it's okay to pull into the fire lane and when one really shouldn't.  Worse, she's driving a ginormous 8-passenger van that she obviously chose simply to block your view.  In fact, you're so sure that her choice of vehicle and her parking lot ineptitude are about you that you have honked, glared, and yelled at her in more than one language? 

I am that mom.

Again with the Driving

Soccer camp is this week, which means two fifteen minutes drives, twice a day.  The drive back is more nerve-wracking, because there's the issue of making it  home in time to meet Olive's bus.  Namely, it Can't Be Done.  Sabina is more than capable of meeting the bus, preparing Olive's snack and getting her all set up with Pot, but I feel pretty strongly that shvitzing in the car and silently praying to make all the lights is instrumental to Olive's uneventful arrival.  On Tuesday and Thursdays there is also speech therapy sessions with MRMaria, which meet within striking distance of soccer camp but nowhere near the soccer camp time slot.  Then on Wednesday, there's a youth group meeting for Sabina: again near soccer camp, but beginning and ending several hours before soccer camp starts.  I know, it could be a lot worse.  Olive's camp experience involves no driving for me whatsoever, and I've managed to spend the first 11 years of my parenting experience avoiding these day-chopping to-and-fros that women before me have endured for tens of years. 

There's nothing in the sphere of mothering duties that makes me feel like I'm coming up short as much as the driving.  The other moms make it look so easy,  pulling into the correct firelane and weaving through the phalanx of orange traffic cones.  I see them in their high pony-tails and yoga pants, looking as if the timing of their drives is something they barely have to think about. 

I feel a sense of camaraderie when I first pull into the appropriate parking lot, and as if we should all be leaping from our minivans and high-fiving each other or even embracing.  We all made it!  We're relatively on time!  Let the record show that we have accomplished one more measurable and heinous task in the name of our children's happiness and well-roundedness!  It's the same feeling I'd get after a session of breastfeeding when I really hadn't felt like sitting still but the baby wanted it: the satisfaction of snapping the nursing flap closed afterwards, that sense of a successful, small sacrifice.

But when I get out of the car, none of the other moms (or occasionally, dads) look as if they've paid any emotional toll.  I try to tell myself that other things bother them, other things register as winceable duties.  Maybe they're taxed by the diapers, the sleeplessness, the juice that must go into the orange sippy cup and not the blue sippy cup, the crayon marks, the biting and the MINE! MINE! MINE! stage.  Maybe they're Not Baby People, and the driving is a drop in the bucket compared to the spitting up and ill-timed bouts of stranger anxiety.  Maybe they'd rather drive thirty miles over potholes with frequent stops for freight train crossings than deal with a child who needs help wiping but feels most emphatically that he does not.

When my children learn to drive?  LB is handling all the behind-the-wheel practice sessions.

Paint it Black, then White, then Black...

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.

-Steven Wright

It's as if now that I know my commuting days are coming to an end, I have to get all my traffic complaints out while they're still valid.  And I know--you're thinking that given the size of the category Driving and How I Hate It, I'm in absolutely no danger of moving to the North Shore and never having fully conveyed the intensity of my dislike for my time spent on the Edens expressway.  But bear with me for at least one more metaphor on this experience of driving: it's been on my mind for weeks.

When I was about 12, my parents had a big party and let me stay up and be among the guests.  I think it was a party for the Spanish department teaching assistants.  And since I was a precocious little mite, smart enough to be inconspicuous and go unnoticed until long after the sangria was gone, I got to hear things.  One of the things I heard was a discussion among a group of TA's--they were at most 7 years older than me, but seemed ancient--about what they would be willing to do for a million dollars.  Many of the suggestions were dangerous or illegal.  Would you jump out of an airplane? Yes, with proper equipment.  Would you commit a murder?  Of course not.  No, I don't think so.  But one guest came up with a hypothetical so interesting that it stayed with me ever since. 

For a million dollars, would you paint the same small bedroom once a day every day----one day painting it white, the next day painting it black, then the next day white again, and so on--for an entire year?

People had a lot of questions about the specifics: did you have to do a good job?  On the white painting days, would you be expected to completely cover the black with no bleed-through?  Were you expected to tape the windows, tarp the floors and paint the ceiling?    Did you have to wash out your own brushes every night or would you get freshies each morning?  Who supplied the paint?  And just how big was this bedroom, anyways?

Soon this hypothetical situation took over the conversation, and it turned into a discussion of just what would make you willing to do the painting thing?  Would you do it to save a life?  Your own life?  The life of a child you don't yet have?  Would you do it to save a stranger?  At 12, I saw absolutely nothing I could ever want badly enough to make that year-long painting project even halfway palatable.  And the idea of doing such a thing for a hypothetical child somewhere years in my future?  Well, let's hope she requires something easier of me, like a kidney.

At least once a week during Olive and my trips to school and back (and school and back), I think of this painting scenario and find myself gripped by the similarities.  The days when the traffic's moving at a swift clip are the paint-it-black days.  Easy, one-coat coverage.  Done before I've got a chance to resent the process.  And during the months of road construction, when the drive takes so long that I could swear we're actually moving backwards, I feel like I'm painting the room white.  Coat after coat, and still the old black shows through.  I'm never done. 

Now that we're planning to move closer to this school, and whatever school Olive may go to next year, I ask myself, what made me willing to do this 40-65 minute drive, 4 times per day for close to a year?  There was the thought that LB's job would have moved us out of Illinois before the year was up, but it was, of course, never certain. And there have been many rewards, but none were guaranteed in advance like with the hypothetical painting thing. 

It's interesting that instead of being my personal litmus test of dedication, the painting project has now entered the realm of fantasy.   Imagine if I could agree to that year long painting stint, and at the end of it Olive could communicate?  It wouldn't even have to speech--it could be signing, it could be a mixture of signing and gesturing, it could be African click language.  I'm not picky.

I'm 30 years older now, and if possible, I enjoy interior painting even less than I did back when I was 12.  But if that mythical paint supplier approached me about painting in trade for language acquisition, I'd even volunteer to spring for the brushes.

Ignition

I'm pretty sure Wyclef Jean hasn't been standing around, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he anticipates the Knitters-Knitters seal of approval.  Nevertheless, Olive and I are enamored of  Sweetest Girl and want to share it with you.  It's a sad song, even a desperate song, but its poignancy is heightened when you're hearing it in your car, driving single file at 8 miles per hour on a four lane highway that has three of its lanes closed for construction.  And ideally, you've been on this road for fifty minutes, in a deep trance from staring at the truck in front of you that describes its contents as, perplexingly, both flammable and inflammable. 

Oh, and it should be raining.

Normally the combination of sad weather, sad traffic, sad song and sad grammar might push me right into the danger zone on the sadness meter, but I can risk this wallow today because I know there is now an end in sight to the deep and personal cosmic injustice that is my commute!

This is not the original video for the song, of course, but it's the only one I was able to embed. 

Best Foot Forward

For the past week and a half, I've been working on a pair of socks for a formal event.  Not, of course, to be worn to said formal event, but to be given as a gift in recognition of the occasion.  This has proved harder than I expected. 

Take 1: The Anniversary Sock from Favorite Socks, in Koigu multi.  As you can see I got pretty far on this one, actually turning the heel before admitting to myself that the variegated yarn made the sock look too irreverent for the occasion.

Take 2: Elegant Ribbed Stockings from Favorite Socks.  I loved the color on this one, but the heathery nature of the Jamieson & Smith Shetland blurs the stitch definition to an unsatisfactory degree.  Also, the yarn is really to fragile for a sock in the guage I was using, and would have probably worn through at the heel with the first wearing.  Luckily, I didn't get all that far.

Take 3: Waving Lace sock, from Favorite Socks, in Dale of Norway Heilo.  The Koigu multi from Take 1 said, And you thought I was too casual?

Take 4, and I'm hoping my final take on the subject, is the Evening Stocking for a Young Lady from Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks.  The yarn is Jitterbug sock yarn in an ever so slightly variegated melange of taupes.

I love the calf shaping in this sock...

...and the many rows of ribbing, which will help it stay up.  It has a double-stranded cast-on which gives the leg opening a bit of extra stretch.

I'm glad I've finally arrived at the appropriate combination of yarn and pattern, but still, I couldn't help wondering: this particular flavor of O.C.D. isn't my usual M.O.   I've never been too concerned about the pencils on my desk being lined up just so, and unlike my pal Lisa, I don't re-hang the toilet paper in other people's bathrooms.  And I don't consider myself a perfectionist when it comes to my knitting, since that would undo, for me, the tension release of the hobby itself.

My particular cassoulet of neuroses tends to the hypochondriacal and paranoid end of the spectrum.  You know, lots of nightmares about Nazis and Kelsey Grammer. And the fear of flour thing.  Normal stuff.

As I mentioned to you Monday, I've gotten up several mornings in a row with a nagging Bad feeling.  And when I woke up on Thursday with the shakes, excessive sweating, and an overwhelming desire to crawl back to my Tempurpedic, things quickly fell into focus.  Despite medication and desperate, occasional attempts to tell myself Driving, S'Okay, my body has finally rejected the Edens Expressway Commute.  And like all rejected organs, it needs to go: fast. 

For reasons that elude me, all the good stuff for little autistic children is in Northbrook.  And soon, we will be, too.

Spring Forward: a Re-enactment

For three days, I've woken up feeling as if I've been roused in the middle of the night and hustled into the back seat of a car to embark on a long car trip. Except that it's the front seat, and I'm the one driving.  As with any other morning, Olive and I set out for the garage, entering though this door.

And as usual, I immediately pressed the button to open this, larger door.

I opened the side door of the van, and went in first to tighten the straps a little on Olive's carseat, now that it's warmer out and she's wearing a lighter coat.  Olive sat on the banquette to the left of the carseat, and watched.

When I was done adjusting the straps, I reached to the left of the carseat and...

...no Olive.

As anyone would, I checked the alley thoroughly.  Again, no Olive.

By this time I was Concerned, and decided to check the garage again, hoping against hope. 

Olive was inside the car, sitting on the other side of the carseat.  Apparently she had squeezed past me while I was busy with the straps.  And of course she was laughing, because seeing one's mother running back and forth across the alley, passing in front of the open door of the garage several times while shrieking one's name is pretty funny stuff.

I am very much awake now.

These Things Happen

Though I find Criminal Intent the most complicated to follow of the Law and Order franchise, it's my favorite if only for the first few minutes of every episode, when Detective Goran stands over the corpse and, in a matter of seconds, determines that the deceased was a left-handed bulimic mother of three who played violin poorly in her spare time and who always ordered her salad dressing on the side. 

So, Detective, what do you see here?  Instead of a corpse we have a GMC Safari, but bent metal tells secrets just as well as flesh and fingernails.  The little scrapes and bruises reveal that the driver isn't quite as good at parking as she is at other things. 

The fact that these minor imperfections have not yet been repaired show that the owner has no ego wrapped up in her car's appearance, and that she's aware of the slight possibility of involuntary contact with the garage, the newel post, or the brick exterior of the neighboring apartment building occurring in the future. 

On further inspection, our detective notices the front seat is as close to the steering wheel as humanly possible, telling him that the driver is short and thus, less able to determine the spot where her car ends and various stationary objects begin. 

While his chosen profession would lead one to assume that our detective might be accusatory and judgmental, he's seen enough in his own life--what with his mother in the mental hospital, his inexorable solitude, and yes, the fact that his show has been canceled--to know when to keep on his eye on the big picture.

Gimme Some Skin?

As many of you know/guessed/foretold, LB did the morning commute for me today.  Oh, there was a lot of crying, and lamentations of who owed whom more in the Grand Scheme of Things, and rending of garments, and utterances of, "Can't be done!" but in the end, LB did agree to take one for Team Olive, so to speak.  This morning upon return he claimed it wasn't that bad, and now that it's almost 3pm and I've done it for myself (though at a much more decent hour) I can attest that he was right.  S'okay.  Not great, but as my mom most faithful reader predicted, not as bad as one imagined.

The main difference is, the right lane is closed in several places--which is really only an issue when you're first getting on the Edens.  There are also many strategically placed YIELD signs, but I'm a big yielder, always have been.  I'm not sure how much further I can yield without simply getting out of the car and leaning against the sign, arms folded, head cocked slightly to the right in a deferential posture. 

Once you've yielded sufficiently and actually gotten on, you see lots of this sign...

...which, does not mean "left-leaning decrease" as previously thought.

Interestingly enough, my main project this weekend involved lots of yielding and merging, too, in the form of cables.  I'm usually more of a colorworker kind of gal, but I'm finding this project enormously satisfying.  Empowering.  Self-actualizing.  Life-affirming. 

Kidding, of course. Next thing you know, I'll insist that I'm, "comfortable in my own skin."  Really, what does this even mean?

If I would, in fact, be more comfortable in someone else's skin (a distinct possibility, given my eczema and dry patches), how would I ever know?

Cast Out of Edens

Wednesday is usually my day to take traffic personally, rue the time I spend in my car, and lament the circumstances in my life that require me to drive.  I see no reason to break routine.  I rarely do.

Apparently though, the City of Chicago has decided it's time for me to mix things up a bit, and that there aren't nearly enough obstacles between Olive and the ability to aquire language.  Now, the highway that connects us to Northbrook, home of that swan-laden haven of Autism Academy, is going to be experiencing Major Work. 

Last night LB told me--very gently--that the City had these arrangements in place long before Olive enrolled at the Academy and that this decision almost certainly had nothing to do with Chicago's Master Plan of making Jen's life harder.  But really--one lane will be shut down from Lawrence to Lake Cook, aka Jen's on-ramp and Jen's off-ramp.  To not take this personally would be...well, out of character for me.

What makes the City's intentions even more blatantly hostile is that to date, they haven't made any suggestions for a work-around--not a hint of redemption in the form of a circuitous detour, or even a rambling justification for how this inconvenience will ultimately be for the good of all Chicago-kind.  In fact, other than a few vague references to potholes and how loooooong this roadwork has been necessary, there's really been very little explanation of why it's happening at all.

Cool Hand Luke has fewer Biblical allusions than this story. We begin with the fact that this highway is named Edens.  The reconstruction has been Foretold.  Ours is not to question why.  Jews will be forced to wander aimlessly for a very long time. 

In fact, this story is not without its references to Cool Hand Luke. It's not lost on me that what Olive suffers from is a failure to communicate.  And like Luke, Olive is always, always smiling.

Shotgun

Even though my children take turns accompanying Olive and me on the oft-bewailed drive, it's still a lonely business playing chauffeur. So this time, I'm taking you along on the trip.  Buckle up and take your Dramanine--it won't be a fast ride, but I've been told I have a tendency to stop short and vary my speed in intermittent, discordant waves.

We'll begin with a little reminder of the purpose of our journey--Autism Academy for one very natty five year old.

Here we are at the corner of Lincoln and Foster.  We've never actually stopped for paletas, but maybe someday.

You've got to admit this is one confusing bit of signage.  In truth, Foster is not closed at Edens--the ramp is open, and then Foster ends.

Skokie.  A lovely shade of aqua, but I think the water tower may the most interesting landmark the town has to offer.

Here you'll feel a burning desire to pull the wheel sharply to the right so that you and I can sail off to Milwaukee, Cita d'amore, and blow this clambake we've been exiled to--Big Shoulders and all.  But for now, we're stuck with Waukegan.

When we pull into the driveway of Autism Academy, we occasionally get a special treat--a glimpse of Olive on the playground.  Here she is with Teacher Emily.

Yup!

The view from the courtyard.

We always come about 15 minutes early for the 2:00pm pick-up, so there's time to visit the waterfowl.  We're especially partial to this little duck.

I don't mind telling you, this alter kocker scares the crap out of me.

It's home again-home again now.  Our exit is East Touhy, which comes immediately after West Touhy.  To date, I have never seen anyone take the West Touhy exit.

The Purple Hotel, so named for obvious reasons.

Our turn-off at Lincoln.  You'd have to be near-unconscious to miss this turn.

Lincoln Avenue has many motels where I wouldn't recommend spending the night.  This is one of them.

Turn left on Foster.  We get an arrow, thank God!

We've all got our tsuris.

Heading into Ravenswood, our little corner of Chi-Town.

At the corner of Western and Foster.  Almost-almost!

Our corner store, our mechayeh, and home of the Peruvian Gentleman, a hilf if there ever was one.  Here's where we can find Olive's favorite brand of salsa, not to mention Pinguinos, Gansitos, Bimbunuelos, and for LB, an opportunity to kibbitz about futbol.  And on Wednesdays, there's homemade empanadas.

Time to unbuckle, everyone!