Knitters-Knitters

Thank-You Notes

Yesterday afternoon when I was in the Schechter parking lot waiting for Olive, my window rolled down due to the unseasonably warm weather, a woman approached my car and introduced herself.  I'd seen her around but didn't know her name, and it turns out she is a special ed teacher who subs at Keshet.  Given that Spectaculans spread super-germs with a speed and effectiveness that rivals chemical warfare, I imagine she's at Keshet more days than not. 

She told me that she lives very close to me and that if I liked, she'd be happy to spend some time with Olive during the upcoming Spring Break.  She knows how long these breaks are for little Spectaculans (naturally, she didn't use the word Spectaculan) and their parents and she'd be happy to help out.

At one time my first instinct in such a situation would be to feebly protest, then she'd say it was no trouble, I'd say, "Oh, I couldn't impose," and we'd do a few rounds of that before I'd take down her contact information with a mixture of gratitude and embarrassment.  Then I'd never call her.

Those days are gone, and that page of instructional behavior has been ripped from my personal copy of the social contract.  You'd thing that page would be a hard one to remove, being so woven into the fabric of what it means to be a well-mannered American mom, but when you have a special needs child you learn, sooner or later, that this page is perforated. I whipped out my appointment calender and took her phone number like it was a See's Candies Key Lime truffle, thanking her profusely. 

She said, Don't thank me. It would be for me -- I miss Olive over breaks!

Do I believe her?  Yes, because I want to.  Because there's absolutely no reason for her to have approached me and made such an offer.  Because working with Spectaculans does not pay enough to do it for reasons other than personal satisfaction.  Given the difficulty of the work, I'm not sure there's any amount of money that would make it appealing from a financial perspective.   And as we all know the pay scale for a special ed teacher makes no pretense of even trying to approach the level of fair, let alone, enticing.  Short of offering bone marrow and organs of which one has duplicates, there's no way to thank people who work in special education sufficiently.

Non-Californians may wonder about my See's candy reference.  See's candies are on my mind and in my mouth, because my dear friend and reader Dixie sent me a box of See's cream-centered chocolates, along with a smaller box of Easter themed, egg-shaped truffles.

The reason I'm only showing a picture of one of these truffles is because I had already eaten the other seven before I emerged from my white chocolate trance enough to realize that I had not yet taken a picture and if I didn't whip out the camera fast, all I'd have to show you would be a mountain of brown fluted paper cups.  Usually when I get a gift in the mail I take my time, photographing first the box, then the opening process, etc.  This time I took one look at the return address, tore the the box open with my nails and teeth, and scarfed down at least two truffles before ever leaving the front porch.

But here's some more pastel prettiness for you to admire. 

The blanket for the baby-on-the-way of one of the aides from Olive's former classroom is done, and is now safely in her hands.  The stockinette and garter stitch backing took a lot longer to knit than I had expected and made the project an unwieldy one, but I'm very pleased with the results.

The front side is a hodge-podge of intarsia and slip-stitch using boy-appropriate colors.  Personally I never had a problem putting my boys in pink and lavender, but one never knows another parents' comfort level when it comes to gender-influenced color choices.

This was my first time working with Swan Island merino.  I found it unforgiving and surprisingly prone to splitting, but the finished result feels so soft and smooth that it's hard to imagine even the world's most wool-allergic child being bothered by it.

As I've griped ad nauseum, the parking lot of Olive's school is small and difficult to navigate, and it seems all who enter are immediately reduced to their most Hobbesian selves.  Paradoxically, arriving very early makes the whole picking up process easier because I can find a space to wait that is legitimately mine, where no one is forced to work around the giant and unsightly obstacle that is my Wolski-mobile.  Thus, pick-up time is a great opportunity for focused and uninterrupted knitting.  Some people have a knitting project for their car that's mindless and easy to jump into, but in my situation, the parking lot is the place to work on things that involve charts, row counting and multiple yarn balls going at once.

I hope the mom-to-be likes the blanket as much as I liked Dixie's chocolates and recognizes it for what it is: a feeble thank-you for the sort of kindness that is, hopefully, self-rewarding.

More blankie photos and details here:

The Timeline of an Unfamous Person

Amelia of Duyvken wrote in her comment on Friday's entry: Well, I am glad that you went to USC because I am assuming that facilitated the meeting with LB?

No, Amelia; that would be too easy.  I'm sure you never intended this, but you've given me an excuse to write an exhaustive time-line chronicling the story of LB and me.

1965 Jen is born.  She's the 4th in a family of 4 children.  Though her siblings are 8, 11, and 14 years older than she, they all have the same parents.

~ C   H  I  L  D  H  O  O  D ~

1983 Jen goes to Cornell.

1985 Jen meets who will eventually become her ex husband. He is a year ahead of her in school, and is graduated later that following spring.

1987 Jen graduates and moves to Long Beach, CA to be with future ex:  an aerospace engineer who works on the MD-11.  Jen learns that the MD-11 and the M-16 are very different things.

1987 Jen takes ill.

Explosively, painfully ill.

Late 1987: Jen is diagnosed with Crohn's and spends the next 6 months on 60 mg of prednisone daily.  The less said the better.  Jen feverishly completes grad school applications while sick, a superstitious insurance policy against being ill in the fall of 1988.

Spring, 1988 Jen has a bowel resection.  It's considered elective at the time, though surgical findings include an enormous abscess that had at most ten days left in it before it could be expected to rupture.  Phew.

Late Spring, 1988: Back in Long Beach, detoxing from Prednisone.  Jen and the future ex are in a stalemate that will continue until 1991, through their collective post grad education at Brown, USC and Berkeley: they fight about why they are not married.  He feels they should not marry because they fight too much.  She feels if they were married, they'd have nothing to fight about. 

Future historians have approached this stalemate as a potential PhD thesis and then abandoned it, all arriving at the unanswerable question of why prestigious universities were willing to not only admit but give funding to two such elementally stupid people.

Fall 1988: Jen leaves for Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island.  There she begins a platonic, yet fraught with romantic tension "friendship," with Joe Sullivan, a fellow fiction writer in the grad program.  At first meeting she renames him Lawn Boy, or LB, given his resemblance to the boy who used to cut her parents' (and your parents') lawn when she was growing up. 

The name sticks.  The Artist Formerly Known as Joe likes it.  If there's any injury to his pride at a nickname that implies harmlessness, it is replaced by joy at the very act of being named.

But LB commits several unpardonable mistakes: he is too nice, too polite, and has a bad haircut.  He writes Jen letters and mails them, even though they live less than a mile apart.  He leaves letters at Jen's place of work, embarrassing her.  Finally, she confronts him (over the phone) and asks what he wants.  He says, "I would like to try a relationship with you." 

Jen has more words at her disposal now, but at that moment, the only one she can come up with is weenie.  It sounded weenie.  Back in Long Beach she is hip deep in marriage roulette, and here in Providence, someone is inviting her to a penny ante poker game. 

She makes LB an applesauce raisin loaf and thrusts it in his hands when he makes a move to hug her good-bye, before Thanksgiving break.  For the rest of the semester, she and LB do not speak.

January, 1989: Jen has a horrific meeting with Robert Coover where she learns that her primary role in the Brown MFA program is to fund the TA-ships and scholarships of the students Coover does like.  Shattered, she walks the mile back to her apartment.  As she passes the intersection of Waterman and Thayer, she sees LB heading into a bank with another girl.  He looks animated and solicitous, as does the girl.  Any lingering doubt about leaving Providence that Jen may have had is gone in a poof of gold medal flour.

About a week later, Jen transfers to USC.  She moves in with her future ex husband and his poor sod of a roommate who did nothing to deserve being thrust into the middle of a fight to the death between two rabid weasels.  One evening, the three of them watch an episode of Cheers where Carla poses the question: Hey Frasier, can I ask you something? When you and Lilith wake up in the morning which one of you is the first to to scream "What have I done?"

The roommate looks at Jen and future ex slyly to see if they're finding this sitcom moment eerily familiar, but they are too deep in their battle of wills to notice.

Fall, 1990: Future ex is admitted to the Haas School of Business at Berkeley.  Jen stays at USC.  For you Aussies, this move puts them about seven hours apart by car.  Neither of them is willing to put their education on hold to follow the other.  A marriage proposal would make such a sacrifice well worth it to Jen, but no proposal is forthcoming.  Briefly, Jen breaks up with the future ex.

During this time she writes a letter to LB.  She's not sure he ever wants to hear from her again and she dislikes the ambiguity a lack of response would give, so she includes a self-addressed stamped envelope for him to return.  Sending this envelope would mean, "Letter received -- no further contact desired."

LB writes back and uses his own envelope.  It turns out that he got the graduate student spot on the literary journal -- the one freed up by Jen's departure -- and he's now dating Maxine, the editor that Jen stood up.  LB and Maxine will go through three years of on-again off-again torture, but that's their story to tell. 

As Jen and LB continue to exchange letters and frustrating phone calls, Maxine comes up with a special nickname for Jen: That Slut from L.A.  Yes, she renamed Jen, and it's a name that acknowledges how dangerous she is: how could Jen not love it?

June, 1991: Jen and the future ex marry.  Every atom in the universe tries to let them know this is a bad idea, including but not limited to Jen's colon.  They rent an adorable house in the Miracle Mile district.  By now Jen has her MFA, and future ex has his MBA and a job. 

Oddly enough, being married has not decreased their fighting one bit.  During games of Pictionary, idle discussions about celebrities, and musings over why certain cities observe Trick-or-Treating on days other than Halloween, they prove that there is no topic that can't become a source of contention.  They bet on fights in which neither of them has a dog.  Speaking of which...

August, 1991: Jen and future ex get a dog: Ruthie, the noble miniature dachshund.

November, 1991: Jen and the future ex drive to a pet supply store to buy a dog carrier, so that Ruthie can accompany them on the plane when they go to Milwaukee for Thanksgiving.  Since there is no place to park in front of the store, Jen runs in and makes the purchase while future ex drives slowly around the block. 

As Jen waits for his car to return, she has a thought: do I leave now, or do I wait until my parents are too old to help me get out of this?  This thought seems to come from nowhere, and for a moment, Jen is paralyzed and does not notice her future ex, parked right in front of her, angrily honking the horn.

Thanksgiving, 1991: Jen and the future ex go to Milwaukee, to spend the holiday with Jen's family.

Back in the dark ages, frequent flier miles were fairly new and came with all sorts of strings attached.  One big string was "black-out dates."  Namely, the miles could not be used on any day when you could possibly need them, like the days surrounding all major holidays.  For that reason, it was decided Jen would stay in Milwaukee until the following Tuesday, so that her return ticket could be paid for with miles.  Since the future ex had to work, he had no choice but to return on Sunday.

The Monday after Thanksgiving, 1991: Jen is at her parents' house, and she hears the mail come through the slot in the front door.  At one time there was a little metal box that would catch the mail, but it fell off years ago and now the mail just lands on the floor.

OFD, Jen's dad, has a quirk about the mail.  He likes for someone else to pick it up from the floor, and then organize all the envelopes in one pile, face down, on the red table in the entryway.  Periodicals go on top.  Mail not addressed to him should be removed from the stack before he goes through it.  All this is because he enjoys the elaborate ritual of going through the mail, carefully feeling the front of each envelope to see if there's a plastic window (boring: probably a bill).  No window means it could be a check from an attorney: at that time he did a lot of expert witness work.

When Jen picks up the mail from the floor and begins the sorting process, she see her name on an envelope in familiar handwriting.  It's from San Francisco.  She and LB have not been in contact for close to two years at this point, and he does not know where she lives.  Thus, he wrote her at her parents' house.  Amazing, that this letter arrives at a time when she is at her parents' house but her husband is not.  Also amazing: she is the only one present when the mail falls to the floor that day.

Letters are like nicknames.  It doesn't matter what the letter says: the important thing is that it was written and mailed at all.  The letter could contain statements like, "I'm over you," or, "I never think about you," or, "I don't even know who you are anymore," or, "I'm guessing you're married by now and could care less about hearing from me," and it would be the same as if the writer had written, "I'm still in love with you," over and over again.  We don't go through the trouble of writing letters to people who aren't on our minds, and we don't bother renaming people who we don't see as lasting characters in our personal story.

This letter was so full of bluster and huffiness that Jen tells her husband about it on the phone, and offers to read it to him.  She doesn't like keeping secrets, and the level of animosity the letter expresses will put the future ex at ease (he's heard enough about that guy from Brown to be wary).  Right?

But Jen's husband is no idiot.  He says, "I don't need to hear the letter.  The important thing is, he's back in our lives again."

* * *

There's a line at the end of When Harry Met Sally where Harry says, "...when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." 

Emerson said roughly the same thing about a hundred years earlier: "Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen."

Thanksgiving, 1992:  Jen's divorced, LB and Jen are engaged and he comes to Milwaukee with her, to celebrate the holiday with her family.

They return to San Francisco on the same plane.

In Which Malin Unleashes My Inner Dachshund

Saturday did not start out well.

It began like every morning, with that shaky feeling I've described ad nauseum in previous entries. That painful moment of stepping back into my life was immediately followed by a shower, and then a drive to Andersonville to see Dr. Teeny-Tiny about a fractured tooth that was fixed weeks ago but which had, distressingly, begun hurting again. I do not have good teeth genes: when I hit forty they began a very quiet yet reliable exodus, enamel first.

I have had five root canals, but this tooth decided it would really like to leave my mouth entirely. In an effort to avoid this, Dr. Teeny Tiny covered it in amalgam and applied all of her eighty-nine pounds of force to stabbing the inside of it repeatedly with a teeny-tiny red hot poker. If the amalgam holds the enamel together for two weeks, Dr. T-T will deem it safe to crown. Otherwise, it will come out and be replaced by not-a-tooth. And if this continues, I will be like my OFD, who by the time he was 65 had so few real teeth that he gave them names. I remember when it was just Manuel and José. Then, just José. He hung on for many years, but I'll never forget that wistful phone call from my mom: José is gone.

I snuck this photo of Dr. Teeny-Tiny. Is she not adorable? Truthfully, she's a couple of inches taller than I am. But I outweigh her by at least 15 pounds.

After returning home and was nursing my wounds in front of Locked Up Abroad (always good to make your own problems feel small) LB came in with the mail and said, "You have a package from Sweden."

Now, I have occasionally Ambien-shopped, but I knew I hadn't ordered anything from Sweden. The box was that most wonderful of things, a present. LB can attest that I really did get off the couch and jump up and down, then run from room to room with the package. There was chortling. I photographed the box in the many phases of opening it.

Here you can see the customs label, which promises Garn and Sweets. From Malin, a very treasured reader and occasional commenter here on Knitters-Knitters. Garn (Swedish for yarn) and sweets. Does it get better than that?

In fact, yes! This box also contained Moomin Christmas ornaments and a long-coveted Moomin cookie-cutter.

The red and blue yarns on the right are so cool and Swedish that they don't need ball bands. They have my favorite texture of yarn: lightly rough, nothing super-washy about it, and with a definite bite. And look at the variegated yarn with the gorgeous bits of rose and saffron!

I know exactly what the variegated yarn is going to be: something for the new baby of Olive's first teacher, Teacher Emily, that blonde pony-tailed instructor of Spectaculans by which all future teachers shall be judged. She and thus, her baby are among the few people worthy of a garment knit from such special yarn

The Moomin ornaments immediately went up on the small tree we'll probably keep up indefinitely, where they caused my older daughters to die a thousand deaths in the form of cuteness attacks. Then, of course, I dove into the candy. The chocolate coating on these Polly drops are of better quality than what America manufactures consider "quality" chocolate designed to be eaten on its own.

 

As you can see, I am not yet knitting with any of the new yarn. I'm knitting something from the box that my mother-in-law sent. Yarn, especially yarn from exotic locales, must be "dachshunded" for a time before it can be used.

Dachshunding is the process of carrying the box containing the yarn from room to room, having it accompany me during household tasks, and occasionally hiding it. Then I become insecure about the safety of the hiding place or the possibility of me forgetting the hiding place, and I hide it all over again. Sometimes I'll shout, at no one in particular, "Get your stinkin' mitts off my box!"

I keep up this somewhat anti-social behavior until LB reminds me, in a warning tone, "Do you remember why we had to stop giving Ruthie (our former dachshund) Pig's Ear chews?" On the record, we claimed they made her "overly excited." A better description would be that they made her joyful to the point of obsession.

Thank you, Malin, for this wonderful box that arrived on the most appropriate of days!

The World Tastes Good

Yesterday was a banner mail day for me. Not only did I get the belt cover and much-rhapsodized candy from Australia, but I also received a package from Michelle of Girl Gone Granola. This box contained birthday presents, i.e., presents just for being me.

I love presents. I love giving them, and most of all getting them. There, I said it. I like getting presents more than I like giving presents. May I burn in hell for all eternity for saying such a thing, and I'll take my gaffe one step further by saying that the art of accepting gifts is something many of us have never mastered. What is the first thing most people say when they get a gift? "Oh, you shouldn't have!" or perhaps the slightly less offensive, "Thank you, but it wasn't necessary!" And you know what someone who gives a gift never wants to hear?

That they shouldn't have, or that the gift wasn't necessary.

That fact that the friendship did not require a gift to keep the momentum going is understood, and the very act of saying it causes a sensitive giver like yours truly to hear, "Great. I am now indebted to you and I don't like you well enough to be in this position."

Michelle sent me a darling book of knitting patterns for dogs. Poor Clover is trapped in a temperature conflict: her heart ailment nd ensuing medications cause her to overheat easily, but her arthritis and skinniness make her subject to chill.

I think this fetching little number will be perfect for her on winter walks: warm yet lightweight, in silk and wool. The fact that the sweater calls for Noro Silk Garden has absolutely nothing to do with my pattern selection whatsoever. Michelle also sent me coffee (which I am going to try today, after I've had my coffee), and homemade spiced nectarine jam. This will be Mommy Jam: pity the Sullivan child who haphazardly makes him or herself a PB&J with it.

It strikes me that this is the second time in two days I've made a point of saying that I don't share special treats with my children. Is this a "mom of many" thing or just general selfishness on my part? When I'm given a gift of the edible variety, my first thought is,"Where's a safe place to hide this?" and never, "Oh, boy! I can't wait to distribute this among my progeny, thus leaving me with hardly even a taste."

Ironically, Michelle's parcel also included ... candy. It's on my Up-High, Very Special Mommy Treats Shelf next to what's left of the Violet Crumbles and no, I will certainly not be sharing it with the children.

On Deprivation and Not Being Australian

I know I'm not the only American blogger who's detected a faint whiff of disdain from her Australian counterparts. For years I assumed it was because of the same reason everyone else in the world emits faint whiffs of disdain about Americans: you know, that whole "We're the only country that matters! Yay, us! Let's chew our gum really loudly, travel abroad and expect everyone to speak English!" thing.

A few years ago, I happened on what I thought was the real answer, and indeed, I maintain it is one of the reasons for the Aussie Sniff. A friend of mine traveling abroad discovered that a certain drug is available over the counter in Australia that requires a prescription in the US. I'm not talking about laudanum or phenobarbital or any of the things found in Michael Jackson's tox screen. I mean codeine. Yes, you heard me right, fellow Americans: in Australia, if you have a headache you can actually do something about it.

So that's it! I told myself. Aussies laugh at us because when they visit the US, they go into our pharmacies, point out the Tylenol and say to each other, Can you believe these wowsers actually pay good money for large bottles of buffering agents?

Well, today I learned the real reason the Australians are laughing. They are laughing because they have real candy over there and we don't. And by candy, I don't mean codeine. I mean candy.

I got a package in the mail today from the lovely Miss Amelia of Duyvken, containing a seat belt lock that I'm pretty sure is banned in all fifty states and therefore, actually has a prayer of keeping Olive from leaping out of the car while it's still moving. As a bonus, Amelia included candy.

I saw the Violet Crumbles and got all weepy. I've loved those since I "discovered" them at Olivia Newton-John's store in Los Angeles. For me, they don't say Australia; they say Melrose Avenue. Amelia had also included something that looked like gummy worms.

I knew if I opened one of the Crumbles my children would get interested and I'm quite sure (pretty sure) that Amelia intends for me to enjoy those all by myself during Special Mommy Time, when the kids are in bed and I'm watching The Real Housewives of insert city name here. Also, I'd run the real risk of eating them all in one go. I figured I could be trusted to go slowly with the gummy worms

When I opened the package, I smelled something both delicious and familiar. Something crisp and sweet with a clean finish. Something reminiscent of Mexican Coca Cola or Norwegian Solo. Yes, those gummy worms contain sugar. I date myself here, but I remember when our candy used to have sugar in it. Younger American readers, that was a very long time ago and I'm sorry you missed it.

After mowing through two thirds of the bag of gummies with a speed one usually reserves for hot dog eating competitions, I told LB to hide the rest of the bag from me. Now I want my worms back, and LB's trying to be all virtuous and strict, refusing to tell me where they are.

I'm pretty confident he'll spill the beans soon though, because Amelia also sent me an emergency seat belt cutter. If one were desperate enough, one could slice through several expensive silk neckties at once using a seat belt cutter. Or at least, threaten to do so.

Sinners in the Hands of Angry Gods

I rarely come forth with political opinions or even strong moral opinions on this blog, mainly because when it comes to news of the non-entertainment variety, I have little idea of what's going on around me. And as for morality issues, I tend to find the words, "I would never do such-and-such," to be a virtual guarantee that I will soon find myself in a situation where such-and-such is either the most sensible or most tempting option.

One moral judgment I do allow myself is a strong distaste for those who tamper with the mail.

Do you see my neighbor's mailbox here? You will notice that the little red arm is down. This can and should mean one of two things: either that the mail has been delivered and all outgoing mail has been picked up, or that the mail has not been delivered but that the persons who reside at said address do not have any outgoing mail that day.

Every morning when I take Olive to school, the red arm is up. When we had only lived here a few weeks I assumed our neighbors just sent out quite a bit of outgoing mail. Every day, they seemed to be mailing something. After months went by and I had never seen that little arm in the downward position in the morning, I realized that no one could have that much outgoing mail, every single day.

No question: they are using that little red flag as a way to be notified when the mail has arrived.

If there were any reason it was a hardship for this family to check their mailbox and occasionally have made an unnecessary trip, I'd understand. But I've seen them -- oh, I've seen them. Walking their dogs. Pushing a toddler in a stroller. Gardening. They have no excuse for breaking if not the letter of the law, then certainly the spirit of the law.

I must console myself with the knowledge that it is not my place to judge, and that the gods of mail will deal with them harshly, in their own time. In my experience, the gods that watch over the US Postal System are like the gods and goddesses of Ancient Greece: jealous, whimsical, and requiring frequent appeasement. They hold grudges and are creative in their punishments. Also, I am being neither dramatic nor tongue in cheek when I say that they punish the offspring for the sins of the fathers.

When I was about 8 years old, I went with my dad to mail a letter. After dropping his letter in the box, he realized that the letter had gotten stuck in such a way that when you opened the box, you could see the metal ledge holding the letter right at the center, not letting it drop down into the pile.

Would the post man reach up and find it there, or was that letter destined to be stuck mid-way down forever? When OFD couldn't fit his arm in the slot, he tried using a stick to push the letter down. I'm pretty sure this did not work, and we left with that uneasy feeling of not knowing what would happen to that letter.

The uneasiness -- on my part, at least -- was compounded by the knowledge that we had done something terribly wrong by poking that stick into the mailbox. I was old enough to know what I'd been a party to was actually illegal: we had Tampered.

For the next thirty years, the mail gods punished me. For no reason, things I mailed would arrive late, not at all, or would come back returned to sender with no explanation given. When I lived in California. my mail would frequently come by way of Louisiana because the sender had written the CA in a hurry and it had been mistaken for LA even with the correct zip-code. No, I am not making this up. LB claims this has never happened to him in all the years he lived in CA, but it happened to me three times in the less than ten years I lived there. One of those times was when I ordered worms through the mail for our compost bin. Needless to say, they were all dead on arrival. Do you know what dead worms smell like--dead worms that had breathed their last in Louisiana?

As for the letter carriers in my life, it's as if they all knew what I'd been a party to at the tender age of eight -- a mere child! When we moved to Belgium, WI, Lo mailed us a box of handmade chocolate truffles at Christmastime. It arrived in March. The postman stood on my doorstep and handed me the package, with absolutely no explanation of why the parcel had sat in the Belgium office for three months and a look on his face that made me afraid to ask.

I checked the box carefully. It was postmarked from Menlo Park, CA on December 22nd. There was no sign of it having been rerouted, and both the address and return address were clearly written. Lo sent it Priority Mail. And yet, it was March and all I had to show for it was a box of mildewed chocolate.

For the next several years I began to really apply myself, with regard to appeasing the P.O. gods. I used extra stamps than were required. I tipped my mailman, even though that's verboten. When I hit that mailbox with my car a few months ago I thought I'd blown all my efforts, but apparently, the gods don't care so much about privately owned mailboxes. I don't want to jinx things with overconfidence, but so far, I've been getting my mail.

Really, I should be praying for my neighbors.

Someone Who Writes

Why is it that I always wake up the day after a holiday with a hangover?  It doesn't seem right--if a person can't drink, she should be exempt from morning-after malaise.  I had big plans of taking all the kids to the duck pond at Autism Academy, in keeping with the Rosh Hashana ritual of casting last year's sins upon the waters.  Instead, there was no morning.  All Sullivans slept in (including Olive!) except LB, who had to go back to the hunt as usual.  The stock market makes no allowances for Rosh Hashana, and client is always in season.

Maybe it was all that prior writing about shopping for brisket, but when it came time to make dinner, I felt like chicken.  I made the classic roast chicken recipe I found in the Willams-Sonoma roasting book, except I kept the oven at 475 degrees instead of 500.  I don't know why, but I have never had the nerve to cook a chicken--or anything else--at 500 degrees.

The honey cake turned out delicious, and as the recipe promised, tasted better for having been made the day before.

We put one of the candles in a votive Agatha made at art camp.

Olive loved the honey, but was much less interested in the apple.

Dana's kippah is a little big for him.  As I was putting it on him, I wondered if it was OK for someone uncircumcised to wear a kippah in the first place.  No time to Google, though, and if it was wrong, I'm sure there were many other mistakes in our ritual already.

Like the fact that LB was in his pajamas.

We had a good time, and everyone ate heartily.  Whenever I see my children eat,  I think of this passage from Raymond Carver's "Cathedral."

We dug in.  We ate everything there was to eat on the table.  We ate like there was no tomorrow.  We didn't talk.  We ate.  We scarfed.  We grazed that table.  We were into serious eating.

My children are all serious eaters, much more so than I was as a child.  Even Daisy, always dainty, will eat a chicken leg so completely that you'd think it was picked clean by buzzards.  Other than an extra loaf of honey cake (the addition of raisins and candied pineapple ensured my kids wouldn't eat much of it), there weren't even enough leftovers for one person's lunch the next day.

So today's been a low-energy and low-accomplishment for all of us, which means much crossness and boredom from a little person who loves non-stop activity and has no interest in day's off from school.  Not even playing pot could make her happy.  By 4pm, I was as irritable as she was.

Then I checked the mail.

There was a surprise in there for me, from Barb at purlfriend!  Thank you, Barb!  I love the cover on this edition, so much that I put the book on my kitchen window sill with my Moomin mugs.  I will not be giving a small and nonverbal person the chance to tear the cover off!

Sweetest of all was Barb's sentiment on the back of the envelope:

It made me remember my thesis adviser in college, who once asked our class, "What is a writer?"  We students argued for at least five minutes about how many publications one should have to earn the title, and whether or not publication in small journals should "count."  And if they counted, what should the circulation of said small journal be?  Then there's people who self-publish: can they even call themselves writers at all?

Finally, she interrupted us black turtle-necked, clove cigarette-smoking jackasses and said, "A writer is someone who writes."

Indeed.

I haven't said much about my knitting these days, but I am hard at work. 

For this project, I'm using the Bluebell Sweater from Stephanie Japel's Fitted Knits as a starting off point.  I'm not going to bell the sleeves because personally, wide sleeves always end up dragging in my plate or getting caught on door handles or meeting with hazardous substances while I'm helping Miss Olive in the bathroom.  I'm considering making the whole thing into a dress instead of a sweater. 

Doesn't that sound happy for winter?  A warm, knitted dress in bright yellow?  I happen to know the recipient is fond of bright colors.  And she has the sort of slim physique that can carry a knit dress with no fear of bulge accentuation.

 

I saw a dress in a Debbie Bliss book where the skirt part had a ribbed design that made it look as if it had been pleated.  But I'll have to complete both sleeves first to see if I'll have enough yarn to make it into a dress.

Happy Eurolush Day to You and Yours

I had thought that sending the kids off to school would see an increase in my blogging activity, as well as all other activity.  I was wrong.  After that first day of shopping, brisket preparing, cookie baking and housework, all my efforts to remain in a vertical position have been for naught.  Physically, one nap should clear the fatigue, but psychologically, it hardly makes a dent.  For the past two days I've reclined on my sofa.  About a foot away from me, Clover reclines on her little cushion.  Sometimes she gets up and curls up next to my knees.  Sometimes she perches on the back of the sofa and barks to the full extent of her tiny little vocal chords to make sure no one disturbs me.  Other times she snores so loudly it wakes me up.  But then when I'm awake, the snoring mysteriously stops.  Huh.

My naps have been so luxurious they've left no time for shopping, cooking (unless you count heating frozen fish sticks) or even checking the mail.  Yes, I've been too lazy to check the mail.  Yesterday LB brought it in with him when he returned from work, and there was a special parcel for me!  While I slept, I became a member of the privileged group of people who have received a package from Eurolush.  And that girl knows how to send a present, let me tell you.  Gift tags with my name on them.  Different colors of tissue paper.  Ribbons and mushrooms.  A little sewn-by-Eurolush-herself gift bag.

The wonderful thing about having a blog is that people quickly learn what you like.  Then you find yourself becoming friends with these readers and suddenly, people who have never met you or even heard the discordant vowels of your Great Lakes twang actually care what you like.  Someone in a land far away sees a blue tote bag emblazoned with a Moomin doing a headstand and thinks of you.

It looks like Moominmamma is putting cranberries in a hat, but what's actually happening is something much more profound: a Sartre-esque resetting of the clock of eternity.  As of now, I'll say things like,  Oh, that happened right before Eurolush's present arrived.  Or, Now that, that happened three weeks and two days after Eurolush's present arrived.

Others will hear me: even people who don't know Eurolush and have never read my blog will say, "Happy Eurolush Eve!"  to each other every August 25th.  People will exchange Moomin paraphernalia on August 26th, but of course, those who follow the Roman Orthodox calendar won't celebrate until a week later. 

It will take several years, but eventually, there'll be people who rally against the commercialization of Eurolush Day and the implied elitism of celebrating one blogger over another.  Environmentalists will protest the use of tissue paper to wrap the little Moomins and we'll see televised PSAs with slogans like, "Save a tree this Eurolush season--re-use last year's tissue."  Eventually, a small but obnoxious group of people will insist that the rest of us say, "Happy DIY/photography/ Mommy Blogger day" or worse still, "Season's Greetings." 

Someone's always gotta be a killjoy and ruin the holiday for everyone else.  Some people just can't stand to see other people being happy.  Well, those people will just have to deal with seeing me carrying my Moomin Headstand tote bag, wearing my Moomin refrigerator magnets as earrings and name-dropping "Eurolush" all casual-like, even during those rare moments when I'm not discussing blogging, Moomins, West Highland Terriers, or why German people are so enamored with the mushroom motif in home decor.

I really have no shame.

It's My Birthday

Today is my birthday and I'm 45.  The downside is, tomorrow I will officially be closer to 50 than I am to 40. The upside is, every year my parents give us kids a check for three times the amount of our age.  Instead of being another year older, I like to see it as three more dollars.  I'm pretty sure that $135 will go toward a dinner out with LB (Sabina is giving me the gift of free babysitting), and a copy of Mason-Dixon Knitting: Outside the Lines. 

Birthdays mean PRESENTS and I have already received many.  My mother-in-law wrote me a few weeks ago asking what yarn on Jimmy Beans appealed to me, and I picked out this Misti Alpaca worsted.

You'd think knowing it was coming would dull the thrill, but for me, it's the exact opposite.  I was so excited waiting for this yarn, knowing what it was, and dreaming of what I would make with it. I'm leaning heavily toward making a dress for Sabina, the "Wightwizzle" dress from Louisa Harding's Little Cake.

What I was not expecting was a whole 'nother box from the in-laws, this one containing surprise yarn.  I had no idea Plymouth even made a merino, and these colors are very Olive.  In fact, so Olive that Olive immediately grabbed one of the olive-colored skeins.  I got it back though--no easy feat.

This is another yarn I'd never seen before, a super-squishy alpaca blend: Tweedy Alpaca from Tahki Yarns.  I lack the camera skills to photograph it well, but it's a dark charcoal with slubs of white, taupe and chocolate.  It wants to be something from Stephanie Japel's Fitted Knits, and it might, it just might want to be something for me.

Look at Little My!  She likes her coffee just as much as I do.

My besty Miss Susan knows all my favorite treats.  The Violet Pastilles have the advantage of being a treat no one else in the world likes.  In fact, someone I know once referred to them as "the Kathy Griffin of candy."  More for me!

Birthdays also mean PHONE CALLS.  In my family, the phone call is very important and it's unsettling when you call and the birthday boy or girl is not home. We usually leave voice mail messages requesting credit for having made the call.  More than once, I've hung up realizing that I asked for credit but forgot to say "Happy Birthday."

This morning someone called me at 8:45 am.  A little back story: if no one is due anywhere in the morning, I do not get up early.  Olive usually wakes at 8 am (yes, I consider 8 am early), and I bring her into Daisy's room--our one early riser.  If I speak at all, it's to say something like "Mmmph," which Daisy knows means, "Good tidings, my second-born child.  Would you be so good as to mind your little sister while I go back to sleep?" 

When the phone rang this morning, I answered it--only because my caller ID just said "Incoming call," and a delivery guy was supposed to call today to tell me what time he'd be arriving with our new sofa bed.  I did not expect to have to say anything more than "uh-huh" to a 4-hour delivery window.

The caller said, "Happy birthday!"

I said, "Mrrmph?"  I was too tired to recognize the voice of the caller, or the fact that I had, indeed, been born.

She said, "You were sleeping.  Go back to sleep."

I hung up, figuring I'd star sixty-nine her when I woke up for real.  Of course, when I got up an hour and a half later, I forgot about the phone call entirely until LB called, thus removing the star sixty-nine option.  I checked my phone history, but this birthday call had, for some reason, not registered. 

Did it happen?  If it really did happen and you are the mystery woman who called me, thank you.  And, I'm sorry!

My birthday also means it's time to announce the Malabrigo contest winner, Laura of Urban Mayberry.  Congratulations, Laura, and thank you to everyone for participating!

This Morning, a Re-enactment

Doorbell rings at 8:17am. Gloom and misfortune!  Olive's bus must be here early, and I now must Scramble and rush a little person who does not like to be rushed. 

Huh, no bus, but look at the beautiful flower that bloomed overnight.  I am immediately distracted.

Leah's garden is cyclical, and every time something dies a new type of flower comes up.

Aha!  A box.  That must have been what the doorbell ringing was about.  It's Olive's melatonin from Drugstore dot com; the box is the right size.  Except the melatonin got here yesterday.  The package is very light.  Maybe I Ambien-ordered yarn recently--it's been known to happen.

The return address is unfamiliar.  But the packing slip, oh, the packing slip! 

My morning brain works slowly, but now I'm noticing the package was addressed to Jen Sullivan, Knitters-Knitters.  I've never had mail arrive that way, and seeing as how BlogHer has ignored my offers to review products, I know it's not from them.

There's a card.  I'm blushing.  It's too kind for me to share.  Oh all right, since you insist:

The gift:

A gentle Moomin waters her garden.  Is there a clue in those yellow roses?  In the Moomin's activity?  Never mind--I like not knowing.  What I know is, someone enjoys reading Knitters-Knitters.  That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

It is now displayed among my prize possessions: next to the menorah Olive painted herself.  I suspect I'll turn all-dachshund about this mug, moving it from one location to another and snarling at all who approach.

The last mystery gift I received was a frozen turkey: this is lots better.  Thank you, Anonymous, for the beautiful Moomin and for making me re-think the whole concept of anonymous gift!