Naked Bacon

Right now I am watching TV in my hotel room in Connecticut. I woke up at 3:30am to catch a 6:30am flight up here, and got to work by 8:00am. Yeesh. Thankfully, my boss let me leave a little early, so I could explore the area. I found two yarn shops, each within a 10 minute drive from the office! They were both great, and I bought yarn without really thinking about how I would fit it all in my (already full) bag for the flight home.

I don't know why I ever thought I wouldn't like it here, but I think I might love Connecticut. There is no traffic. None. At least not around this part (near Bradley airport). The people are nice, it's clean, and the suburbs are not packed to capacity with apartments and townhouses. The office and lab here are awesome- the facility is top notch. I saw the plans for the new lab that will be built by next year, and it is going to be HUGE. And awesome.

Work lately is busy, but not busy enough to drive a girl crazy. I've started training a new winder (which is why I'm up here in CT), and my boss tells me he's hoping to move me up the ranks to a supervisor when I move here next year.

So that's work. In my not-work life, things are going well, too. I am all moved into my new apartment, thanks to some very wonderful friends. I had a lot of great help! We did it all in just 2 hours. All my boxes are unpacked, but I've been lazy about getting things organized. I have some super cool stuff, which I will post pictures of later, but never did get around to painting any pegboard pink. So far, living alone is pretty great for all the obvious reasons surrounding doing whatever the hell I want.

Scott and I met at our old bank last week to wrap up our finances, and it was definitely one of those moments that I will always look back on and think, "This is why I should be glad he asked for a divorce." He was demanding and impatient in his usual way. The whole time we sat there, I kept thinking about how I'd never have to listen to his "I'm irritated and I'm going to make sure everyone knows it" grumblings again. No more growling at the general public, or at me while I'm talking, driving, standing in the wrong spot ("hovering"), moving too much, not moving fast enough, or any of the other zillion things I didn't do right.

Perhaps I will create a list of things I love about my new start sometime soon. For now, I need to get to sleep so I can get to work in the morning. Hooray for overtime! Which I will need to pay for the yarn I just bought!


Top to bottom and left to right they are:
Ellen Cooper's Yarn Sonnets Zohar's Socks, color: Fern Gully; Liberty Fibers Fingering Weight Merino, color: Suede; Lobster Pot Yarns (omg cashmere!), color: Hydrangea; Malabrigo Rasta, color: Azules; Koigu KPPPM, color: P441; Kauni Effectgarn 8/2, color: EA; and Lang Jawoll Magic, color: 84.0065.

Pthbt

It turns out that going to the grocery store on Valentine's Day while in the midst of a painful separation is not a good idea. It is filled with amorous people buying flowers, chocolates, and ingredients for romantic meals. You might wind up going back to your Jeep and sobbing quietly into your bag of pickles, malted milk balls, and pads; and wondering where it all went wrong.

But then, if you are lucky, you might return home to find that your awesome sister has sent you (and only you- not "Mr. & Mrs.") a Valentine's Day card, signed by each of your 4 favorite nieces and nephews, and it will make your entire day, week, and probably month.

Valentine's Day still sucks though.

A New Phase

I still have 3 weeks before moving. I want to keep moving and getting things done, but there's not a whole lot I can do right now being that far out. I've decided that I'm going to buy some furniture- a couch and bed- instead of trying to move a futon and a big chair I don't really want. It's not so much the "moving it in" part, but what to do with it once I don't need it. Craigslist and Freecycle are okay, but I'm not super keen on the idea of parading strangers through my apartment when it will be easy to see that I live alone. So for the sake of convenience, I'll just get new stuff. That way someone else has to deal with moving it in.

So anyway, with more time to sit and do nothing, I started to realize that all my packing and planning was a terrific way to keep my brain from actually dealing with the situation. Now it's starting to seep in, and I think I'm trying to come up with things (like buying new furniture) to push it back out. I spend a silly amount of time at Lowes thinking up ridiculous ways to decorate, and then I go home and try to think of ways to do it cheaper. I figure it's fine as long as my coping mechanisms aren't self-destructive. I can deal with it all when my mind decides it's ready.

I think I'll go to the mall today. Maybe I can find some bookends. Retail therapy is only destructive if you spend beyond your means, right? Otherwise it's okay, right? At least for a little while?

Well Okay Then

The past month (or two or three) have been a little nutty. Actually a lot nutty. It turns out that Scott wants a divorce, and as he can afford the mortgage, I will be moving out. I don't really want to get into the hows and whys of it all on the internets, but the very, very general summery of it is as follows:

Things were very, very tense between us for several months. A few weeks ago, I asked if it was over. He said yes. It's not what I wanted, but one person does not a marriage make. There was a week or so of debilitating depression before I picked myself up by the bootstraps and decided my only choice was to move on.

I think my mildly traumatic adolescence has led to my brain developing a few crossed wires. When life is good, I find things to complain about. I develop anxieties. I pretty much suck at being happy. It's like I'm just waiting for a shoe to drop somewhere. But when something epically shitty happens, I'm right at home. I feel normal. Suddenly I'm making plans and doing things and being a generally normal, productive adult. So the past couple weeks have been surprisingly not that bad.

I got an apartment. Things are being done to move our separation along smoothly. It seems like the pieces are coming together nicely to form my own little life sans Scott. I'm doing a fantastic job of grasping tightly to any good that has come of the situation- I can decorate any way I want. I can watch crappy movies without hearing snide comments. When I buy ice cream it won't disappear in two days before I've had a chance to eat any. It's truly the little things that count, folks.

And to be honest, I'm pretty stoked about living by myself. I went straight from living at home to living with Scott, so it's new territory for me. It's a little scary, but I'm sure it will be good for me.

So anyway, that's what I've been up to the past several weeks. My moving date is March 6th, so until then I'll mostly be packing and getting ready. Hopefully I will get settled quickly, so I can take a zillion pictures of the awesomeness I have planned for my new place (two words: pink pegboard).

Wish me luck!

Lazy Winter

I'm home sick with a sore throat, which I think makes eating ice cream for breakfast acceptable. I spent the whole weekend on the couch, but got some knitting done. I finished my gloves! They are toasty warm- it's like my hands don't even know they are outside. I had planned on doing all the fingers in a stranded checker board (like the thumb gussets), but there was too much bulk and it took forever. So I just striped them and called it a day. Now I'm really excited to start some thrummed mittens! Omg warm!


Like many people, I hated winter and cold weather until I thought of it like a season-long puzzle: how do you fix being cold? Cold outside = warm woolly gloves and hats and scarves. Cold inside = warm sweaters and rice warmers and hot water bottles. It could also be related to the milder Maryland winters, but I think mostly it was just that, until recently, I was never dressed warmly enough. I never wore a hat, rarely owned a warm coat or gloves, and walked through snow in Chuck Talyors. Ok so maybe many of those issues were also affected by knitting. But in any case, once I figured out how to leave the house and still be comfortable, winter wasn't so bad. Now I'm thinking about this further, and it's like you just have to get back to the mindset of a child. Kids freaking love snow. Snow to them means snowmen, sledding, and no school. Little kids are typically bundled up by their parents. They don't worry about hat-head or looking silly in snow pants. They also don't have to worry about driving in the snow either. So: bundle your ass up (regardless of smooshed hair), drive something with 4WD, and go build a snowman. And quit bitching. After all, you can always put more on, but you can only take so much off (which is why winter is better than summer)(so nyah!).

I've made some progress on my afghan. It is pretty hideous, in a seventies sort of way, but I love it nonetheless. It's about 18" long now, and I might have enough yarn to finish it. After the first few stripes, it seemed like one skein would only get me 2 stripes, but it turned out that I can get at least 3, maybe 4. I have 3 skeins of every color except the dark green of which I have 6 (since it comes up twice in the color sequence). Each stripe is about 1". So 3 stripes per skein x 3 skeins x 8 colors (counting dark green twice) = 72 stripes/inches. It is roughly 73" wide, so that would be perfect. I really don't mind working with Red Heart. I guess I'm a terrible yarn snob, but it seems cozy enough to me. I'm sort of excited about crocheting more Red Heart blankets. I could make little ones for the pets! Omg I am one step closer to becoming my Aunt Ev.

My Aunt Ev taught me to knit. She was tough but not brash, and made awesome Stollen at Christmas. She and my uncle would spend their summers in Minnesota, and after his death she still made the drive up there every year. I hope that when I'm seventy I still have it in me to pack up a summer's worth of crap and a dog, and drive a Suburban 600 miles by myself while fighting two (!) cancers. While she knew how to knit, Aunt Ev was mainly a crocheter. She made a blanket for every wedding and every baby. She was also crafty in other ways (toll painting like my mom, cross stitch, etc.), and (also like my mom) had a craft room that looked like it could land her on an episode of Hoarders. A room that smelled just like walking into a Michaels, and was packed with enough boxes and bags to be a fire hazard. I love those rooms. Sure, they might signify a mild craft-shopping obsession, but they also contain so much promise... It's sort of amazing to walk in as a kid and imagine all the amazing things you could do. Yarn! Paint! Stick wreathes! Oh, the endless possibilities! Anyways, she was a great lady, and I hope one day to also create a zillion afghans that my family will remember fondly even if they are oh-so-very [insert decade here].


Our holidays were nice and relaxing- I had 10 days off, thanks to a mandatory shut down. We didn't have to go anywhere or do anything (well, poor Scott had to work...). It was awesome. I made beer bread and watched movies most of the time. Scott got me a new laptop- a MacBook Pro! It is teh sexy. I loves it. It's super fast and easy to figure out (for someone whose Mac experience consists of once typing a paper in the Mac lab in high school). I didn't get the MS office suite; instead I downloaded OpenOffice for free. It can read all my Word documents from the old laptop, no problem. I also installed Sophos Anti-Virus for Macs (also free). The only other thing I'd like to do is install Firefox instead of Safari. Safari is not my favorite- it doesn't feel as intuitive, bookmarks aren't as quick to access, and it doesn't remember my Ravelry username.

And last but not least, if you're in the DC area and up early: Scott will be on 105.9 The Edge on Wednesday morning promoting the DC Tattoo Expo! He and his boss will be on The Kirk and Mike Show. The show is on from 6 to 10 am, but I don't know exactly when they'll be on. Go listen! Wednesday!

Whenever I listen to gangsta rap, I mentally replace all the n-words with "knitta." Sometimes this leads to thinking that Snoop Dogg might REALLY be a knitter...

Lodi dodi, we likes to party
We don't cause trouble, we don't bother nobody
We're, just some [knittaz] who're on the mic
And when we rock up on the mic we rock the mic right
For all my Doggs keepin y'all in health
Just to see you smile and enjoy yourself
Cuz it's cool when ya cause a cozy conditionin
Which we create, cuz that's our mission
-Lodi Dodi

It just seems to fit, doesn't it?

Speaking of knitting, I need to get to work on a few things. First on the list will be a cowl, or short scarf of some sort. This morning, while stooping to pick up Spencer's poo, my scarf swung forward and very nearly touched the poo. Being very anti-poo-on-my-clothing, but pro-warm-neck, this seems like a good solution.

The other item bumped up the list is a pair of woolly mittens or gloves. I've been wearing my fingerless mitts over a cheap pair of those stretchy, acrylic gloves. I don't know how I made it through last winter with only those gloves (actually, I think I've always worn those cheap gloves). Now I can feel the massive difference between them and the woolly fingerless mitts- which are warmer even without fingers! Anyway, I bought some wool for them over the summer, but need to get another set of DPNs so I can do both at the same time.

The last thing I moved up the list is a cardigan. I just desperately want a warm sweater. I feel like I'm cold all the time. We are keeping the house at 68°, work claims to be 73° but my machine is right next to a window and also the thermostat is a filthy liar, and the Jeep is a bit drafty. I have a second course of action that involves sewing cotton bags filled with rice. I think I'll make a bunch- two for at home, one for work, and maybe some for gifts? We'll see. My coworker claims that the Asian market sells rice for $10 per 25 lbs, but I remain skeptical. I found 50 lb bags online that go for $60-70, so her guess seems awfully cheap. We are going there tomorrow, so we'll see.

The afghan I started is freaking awesome, and may be hard to put down. I'm only about 6" into it, but it's wide enough to cover our queen size bed. Unfortunately I figured out that the amount of yarn I purchased for this project is laughable. I bought 8 skeins of Red Heart. I think I might need more like 30. Luckily, Red Heart has no dye lot so I can just buy them as I need them, more or less. Unless they discontinue colors. Crap. Do they do that? Maybe I need to go back to Michaels this weekend.

Yesterday and Today in 20 Items

1. Argued with cats about what an acceptable time to wake up is

2. Sat around the house in my jammies most of the day

3. Blogged

4. Took shower

5. Bought a fuckload of super cheap yarn (enough Red Heart for an afghan and Fun Fur for kitty beds)(shh... don't tell Scott)

6. Went to knit night

7. Watched X-files with Husband until I was ready to pass out from sleepiness

8. Argued with the cats again

9. Ate chocolate-covered espresso beans for breakfast

10. Showered again

11. Gave Spencer a bath

12. Went to bank; bought correct ink cartridge and groceries

13. Got home, realized that my "groceries" consisted of: pizza rolls, orange soda, ghee, coconut oil, apple cider, and a loaf of bread

14. Debated how much impact grocery choices should impact self-worth

15. Noted that much-anticipated Netflix arrival (The Cell) was badly damaged and wept over having to wait longer to see crazy Vincent D'Onofrio character again

16. Made popcorn with coconut oil and ghee; discovered surprising level of disappointment with ghee

17. Watched less awesome movie with a still-damp pug clinging to my side for warmth

18. Spent the remainder of the afternoon and much of the evening downloading Snoop Dogg songs and pointlessly browsing internet

19. Wrote this blog in a last-ditch effort to feel like today wasn't a complete wash

20. Realized that I should have included "finished french press cozy" and "did laundry" in this list somewhere between 14 and 18, but was too lazy to renumber the list

How am I this lazy? Sometimes I'm amazed I don't die from spontaneous organ failure as my laziness takes over even my most basic reflexive bodily functions.