I think many people walk through their lives with no idea of how they impact others. Some people have a very good idea of the way the effect others, be they teachers, or actors, musicians, doctors, et cetera. And then there are the rest of us.

I’ve been on facebook and catching up with people I haven’t seen in decade(s). Several folks have made a point of telling me how I impacted them personally, which is wild on a lot of levels.

One of my great blind spots is seeing myself clearly and seeing how others see me: just call me myopic. I have immense difficulty is seeing that other people see value in me: ask Tattooed Dad, he’ll tell you. (I also miss out completely on the people who are “interested” if you know what I mean…Tattooed Dad can speak to that, too.)

It strikes me as a bit surreal to have people telling me that I influenced their taste in music, that I taught them something important about themselves, or that I inspire them (hi Moonspun) in some way or another.

It’s kind of nice.

I have quite a few friends at this point who have assorted varieties of blended families (a term I prefer to “broken families”): shared care, sole care, step children etc.

Without exception, they all struggle with their situation: not having enough time, having only certain times, having just weekends, limited summer, holidays and the endless negotiations with ex-es (no matter how good the situation might be) over every last thing.

So the funny (and I don’t mean ha-ha) thing is that I’m envious. I’m envious of the “single time” they have, the freedom during whatever time period to be whomever they choose, without worrying about the care and feeding of small people. To be able to sleep late, eat cookies for breakfast, and not answer questions about everything all day long.

And yet I can’t imagine not having Bean and Boogah all the time. I resent being away from them, choose time and again to be with them, to put them first, to give them top priority. This is what I chose when I became a parent, as did, I’m sure, all of my friends.

And I can’t imagine how hard it is to close the door of that child’s room, to say “have a good week”, to not kiss them goodnight, not having to argue about brushing teeth, insisting it’s bedtime, reading another story, not having the sticky kisses, or the clothes/shoes/toys strewn about.

I don’t think I’d trade.

Tattooed Dad put up a Facebook page for me, which was lovely, and I do go in and check it once a day (sometimes twice, if I’m waiting for an email from someone).

I want Facebook to have an option that allows you to confirm an acquaintance. I’ve had a host of people who I did indeed go to school with, or knew peripherally, but whom were NOT under any circumstances people I would consider a friend.

Now is it one of those things where twenty odd years later you can put behind all the crappy things people said/did and refer to them as a friend? Do we just grow up past that and relate in some other way?

Or do we friend them and realize we’re still not?

Nothing in common, nothing that you actually want to know (or worse, you hear things that you could have died happy not knowing), and that lingering resentment about when they did awful thing x, even though it was twenty odd years ago.

And if you “un-friend” them…holy drama llama.

So in knitting, sometimes things don’t work the way you want, the way the pattern or directions describe, or simply just look weird.

I’ve never knitted intarsia (aka “knitting in color”) before the project I’m working on. Let me just say that it’s hard: you have to keep track of all of the individual colors you’re working on, twist the strands of yarn together and keep everything from turning into a giant snarl at the end. My pattern only calls for two colors: how bad could it be?

I taught myself to knit using Debbie Stoller’s excellent “Stitch ‘n Bitch”as my guide. The description of how to knit intarsia wasn’t so awful, and I figured I’d do what I usually do: figure it out on the fly, and ask for help if I got really stuck.

Well, I finished the front, back and collar and started the sleeve, which has a skull and crossbones on it. I got through the first couple of rows, and realized that it was pulling. No big deal, I just left a bigger line of yarn from one color to the next, to prevent pulling. I brought the sweater to work today to have my yarn-goddess-mentor take a look, because I wasn’t entirely happy with it.

She takes a look at it and says, “well, the problem is you’re not supposed to carry the color more than 4 stitches” (I’d done 12 or so at a clip, not knowing that lovely bit of info, or more accurately, failing to read the tips on color knitting on the next page, which also discussed Fair Isle and would have been very useful.)

Well, then.

I said I thought about cutting the traveling yarn and just knotting it off, as it wouldn’t be a huge problem: the knots would be small.

She smiled at me and pulled the needle out of the sleeve. “It’s best to be ruthless, otherwise you’d see the problem every time you looked at it.”

I ripped all but the last inch of the sleeve: damn it, she’s right.

On the plus side, now that I have earned myself a clue, it will be a fuck of a lot faster to cut the pieces for each section than to fool around with the floating yarn.

For those not yarn obsessed, the title of the post comes from Stoller’s pages on unraveling your work: the pieces that you just can’t live with. Happens to everyone, or so I’m told…

I love crows. I am fascinated by corvids in general, crows in specific. There is a local murder of crows that spends a chunk of the summer harassing the local red tail hawk, calling from the next door neighbor’s pine tree and generally making me happy. The night roost that populates the general area is huge: it’s a regular winter sunset occurrence to see hundreds of them flying over our street.

So there is this guy who has created a crow vending machine…really! The idea is to train crows and to have crows train other crows (and I am simplifying wildly), potentially leading to teaching crows “useful” behaviors.

I’d love to have one in my yard, both for the ability to observe the crows, but more importantly to watch the crows torture the damn squirrels.

So I got up this morning, still sick, and was having my customary hot coffee, dog cuddle and tv time as I was waking up and stumbled across “Goth Cruise” on IFC.

Now, if you’re saying “goths on a cruise ship???” you’d be right…least likely place to find them, but lo and behold! there they were.

It was well shot and a lot of fun to watch. There were celebrity interviews as part of the documentary (hello Voltaire!) and they made a point of discussing the goth subculture as a widely varied demographic: there were professionals, artists, attorneys etc of all ages and body types. The subjects/interviewees ranged from a wonderfully extroverted man referred to as Lobster, a veteran goth (both in the literal sense, as he served in the Gulf war and in the “been a goth for a long time” way), and, for me, most importantly, a goth family (Ian, Bridie and Kyle) from the UK. Bridie is my age, or was, approximately when the film was made. She was ballsy, and had amazing style.

She is my new heroine: one of her last on camera statements was so the effect of that she wanted to be one of those dotty ladies with flowing skirts and beads and pink hair when she was 75.

I’m a lazy goth at the best of times: my wardrobe is simple and “work appropriate” for the most part, but my aesthetic is still definitely there. I’m not a cupcake goth with frothing lace or a fetish goth with latex everything, but I can dress the part when I choose. Now that my work allows me to have hair colors not “normally found in nature” I think I might indulge myself with a lovely streak or two in some unusual color.

The best part is that now TD and I are seriously contemplating going on the 2010 cruise. It’s a big wad of cash for us (donations gratefully accepted!) but we can pay a deposit, a chunk in the spring and the balance a month or so before we leave. The cruise departs on our 10th wedding anniversary, which is the 15th anniversary of our first date…it’s very fitting. It returns in 6 days which would get us home on Oldest’s birthday. I’m hoping we can make it work…

Nobody wants to hear complaining, and I spend entirely too much time focusing/venting on the shitshow that is life here now.

OLPM has been on a tear, and is getting ready to decamp her home in the southern state. She’s constantly “suggesting” stuff, which seems less like suggesting and more like, well, complaining. “you never finish anything”.
Right, because we have so much time and money to finish things. Especially on the money front, it just keeps getting worse and I’ve yet to see the bottom of the proverbial barrel.

I’m sick (and tired). Literally and figuratively. I’m fed up and right now I just don’t give a flying fuck. I can’t imagine being able to be okay, nevermind good.

I don’t see the point of anything anymore, I don’t see why I try, or keep trying or even get out of bed anymore. If it weren’t for Oldest and Bean I’d just give up all together.

Yeah, I know. I sound depressed. I am.

I don’t know what I’m doing, what I’m going to do.

OLPM leaving means that I’m going to be killing myself to balance out TD’s schedule, my schedule and the kids schedule.

We’re in debt up to our collective eyeballs.

I know: it can be worse, it can always be worse. I know I’m luckier than some, and far better off than others. At the moment I can’t find it in me to be happy or grateful.

Dispatching from this side of hysteria,
PM

I wrote about bra shopping last July.

I just went again this past weekend and have determined without a doubt that bra shopping for the buxom is actually used as a torture for the damned.

Seriously.

I went to a “intimate apparel” store, figuring that being size challenged it would be a better option and their website suggested that they did, in deed, have sizes for someone built like me (that would be a 36 G cup at a minimum).

Here’s the thing: bras should fit in a particular way, and mine don’t. I figured it was an improper size thing. I have one, and only one that fits the way it “should”. The rest vary in fit, from the acceptable to the “I can’t wear this in public’. So I take the advice of the folks at Bravissimo (why are they only in London???) and go and try on a whole bunch of bras.

I arrive at said store and the clerk, who unfortunately reminds me of a family friend, offers to measure me, and I politely refuse. I’ve done it myself, and frankly it has everything to do with tailoring (not unlike all women’s clothes) and very little to do with the labelled size. She follows me around, calling me “dear” and picking out bras for me in the desired size range. So I take 6 bras and try them all on, it the first changing room (which the lady points out has “plenty of room”, um…what?) and am not happy with any of them. The horrible lighting didn’t help the situation: you’d think that a store that specializes in selling lingerie would choose better lighting for their dressing rooms, wouldn’t you?

So I leave them on the counter and pick up the next cup size up for two styles (including, horror of horrors, and H cup). One fits acceptably, and I figure I can get Tattooed Dad to help me fuss with it. The clerk, meanwhile, has come to the door for the third time, and offers to “fit me” because, clearly, “I’m not doing very well by myself”. Um, what? Truthfully, I’d rather die than stand shirtless in front of this skinny vaguely terrifying woman and let her pull and prod me into a bra.

The upshot was that I bought a $70 bra that I was okay with. I got home and TD looked at me in it and said “it’s crooked”: I go to adjust it and he says “no, the BRA is crooked”. He was right, one cup was significantly off center. So I’ll be returning it.

All was not lost, though: I did find another bra at another store that I was pretty happy with.

It’s an H cup.

I’m doomed.

Queen with a small “q”. (After all Jill Thompson’s Scary Godmother is the real Queen of Halloween, and I certainly don’t want to offend her.)

We’re getting ready, ostensibly, for our Halloween party the weekend after Halloween (it falls on a Saturday, so we can’t muck about with the trick or treaters).

But I can’t find my Halloween spirit (I usually keep it in a jar on my desk)…

I’m not sure what I want to be this year.

I’m not sure I have the where-with-all to actually get my act together and organize a party.

Our Lady of Perpetual Motion will be gone for the party, back to Florida to “visit” with himself. She’ll be gone for three plus weeks, causing mayhem with our work schedules, and missing thanksgiving (again): did I mention I work FOOD RETAIL???

I love Halloween, and I’m horrified (ha!) that I just don’t have it this year…

I have done a marathon viewing of True Blood…and now I’m all caught up and for the love of god, they’d damn well better be filming season 3.

I got to attend (sarcasm) a meeting about my future with my company: the good news is I have options, the bad news is that many of the options aren’t good. At least I’ll still have a job, but man, the severance and unemployment option sounds really good too.

Thanks to Liz (you can find her virtual shop at madeinlowell in Etsy), I bought felting needles and in merely a half hour turned out a perfectly round felt bead from one variety of the many dyed pieces of wool roving the girls and I made this past weekend.

I’m better than halfway done with my skully sweater back: seven more inches…story of my life.

OLPM’s “other” is headed back out on Sunday: the irony is that I’m actually getting along better with him than anyone else in the house, except the children, who think of him as a playmate. He’s the reck of a smart man, and it makes me sad.

this weekend brings apple picking, painting the craft-room (which is currently our bedroom) and, hopefully some serious fiber whoredom (maybe a trip to the local store.