Okay, it’s only been one week. In December the average time it took an unemployed person to find a job was 19.7 weeks (thank you, Wall Street Journal / AP story, I hate you, why did I ever look at you); I should not be freaking here – this could take some time. I set up my meditation fountain (Christmas gift from Dear Jay’s Dad & Step-Mom) and lit a scented candle (and no, I am not going to regret spending eighty dollars on Partylite last November. My sister sells it. I am supporting her and her family, not some faceless corporation) and I got my first unemployment compensation check yesterday.

 

I have a résumé, and a cover letter, and references, and I even found an awesome interview suit that was 33% off and doesn’t make my butt look fat. (I know. I thought it was impossible, too.) I have searched on Yahoo Hot Jobs and Monster and Career Builder and my local newspaper and other want ads. I’m one of 522,000 that were laid off in January, so it’s a bit of a comfort to know I’m not alone. It’s just hard not to wish that karma would swiftly mete out justice in the form of a particularly virulent strain of Ebola that would wipe out everyone at That Stupid Company That Laid Me Off (everyone except the other 15% they laid off as well).  I’m just sayin’.

 

At least I’m doing everything right, according to all those how-to-get-a-job books at the library. (Library! Free! Yes!) Every morning, after I take Dear Jay to work, I fire up the old laptop and “go to work” myself. I check the dedicated email account I set up for my job search. I look for new entries on the job listing sites. I customize my cover letter and the plain-text version of my résumé and upload them into prospective employers’ databases. I sit and wait for the phone(s) to ring.

 

But, you know, it’s hard to stay upbeat. I have to keep reminding myself that this is not like the other times in my life when I was unemployed, when the wolf was at the door waiting as I came home from yet another job termination. (He’s a big wolf. I call him Boris.) As much as Oprah’s bourgeois spiritualism makes me grind my teeth, I try to use one of her practices: each day think of five things for which I am thankful. Okay, I call it my “Get a Grip, Things Are Not Going to Hell in a Handbasket Quite Yet” list. It’s corny, but it keeps me from eating my own hair.

 

Money is coming in, from Dear Jay and the government.

We have over six months income saved in case this would happen.

We have not totaled the car.

Our home has not burned down.

We are not in the hospital with Ebola, or any other life-threatening condition.

 

So those are the Big Five. There are more, and in coming days I may post them here. But right now I need to tell you about one more.

 

Those of you who know me well (like know-about-the-time-I-had-to-borrow-a-pair-of-tighty-whities-from-a-former-boyfriend well) know that I am painfully self-conscious in social situations. I always think that everyone else has it all together, and that I’m just a monumental eff-up, and the moment I open my mouth everyone will know. And then I open my mouth and some outrageous flaky statement comes flying out before my self-editor kicks in, and everyone laughs; which makes me think that they are laughing at me, not with me. (Ooh, now I’ve shared my big, scary secret. I have power over you, secret. I pwn you!)

 

But not everyone has it all together, no matter how they seem to. Inside every one of us (okay, not Leona Helmsley, but she’s dead; not Bernard Madoff, but he’s going to prison; or even Donald Trump, but he’s had a bad hair, um, life) – now, where was I? oh, yes – inside every one of us is a soul in constant fear that those around us will realize just how fragile our psyche really is. That we’re a bundle of nervousness and insecurity and that we really don’t know what the eff we’re doing 95% of the time.

 

So when someone I respect, someone who has overcome her own personal upheavals with grace and courage and a sense of humor that makes me spit out my latté, presents me with the Lemonade Stand Award, I tell you, I nearly cried. A kleenix may have been acquired; a sniffle may have been sniffed. I am honored. Really. I am reaching through the internet to give you hugs, Molly Bee. Thank you.

 

 

 

Part of the award is passing it on.  The three I’m passing it to are blog-less, but no less deserving of it.  They are:

 

My Mom, who has dealt with uncertain health in the last four months, yet has kept her sense of humor, even through the fog of painkillers. Neck surgery, NSAID allergies, flu; and all on top of a wonky knee that is scheduled for a replacement next week – surgery that has been postponed twice already. Third time’s the charm, Mom? I’ll be there to drive you and Dad to the hospital (and promise not to drool on your sporty blue Jetta… too much) and take him home after your bionics have been installed. They can rebuild you. They have the technology. They have the erector set.

 

My youngest sister, who has MS. You are blessed with a loving husband and a precocious daughter, and despite fighting a scary-bad disease you still are there for them, and holding down a job, babysitting other’s little ones, selling Partylite, volunteering at church and just being an all-around awesome sister. I wish we could hang together more often.

 

And (saving the best for last) my Dear Jay. You have not gotten angry at me or criticized my decisions or second-guessed anything I’ve done since (and as a result of) this lay-off. You have stepped up to the plate at your work with energy and courage. Every day you call me to tell me that you love me, and believe in me, and that we will get through this. You’re the sugar in my lemonade.

 

And that, my friends, gives me the courage and the poise to run through these thunderstorms.

 

Though if you see me with a new, frizzy hairstyle?

 

Just call me Donald Trump.

 

 

10.  Knitters are patient.  An average pair of socks is made up of over 22,000 stitches.  That’s a lot of loops to pull through loops.

 

9.  Knitters think outside the box.  If the item they are knitting needs to be a bit wider or longer in order to fit, a Knitter will stray from the pattern and improvise.

 

8.  Knitters are team players.  If a Knitter can’t knit an entire patchwork charity blanket, other Knitters will each knit a square and sew them together so the recipient will get it right away.

 

7.  Knitters are prepared.  They keep bins of yarn, containers of needles, and books of patterns.  When the call goes out for knitted items, they are ready to go.

 

6.  Knitters are industrious.  They don’t waste time playing video games or viewing sleaze on the web.  When they have spare time, like waiting at the doctor’s office or at the DMV, they knit, and when they are done they have a useful product to show for it.

 

5.  Knitters are helpful.  If a Knitter can’t figure out what an SKP is, a simple online query will result in 100 other Knitters offering to show how it’s done.

 

4.  Knitters are proactive.  A Knitter knows that eventually socks get holes in them.  A Knitter will carry a strand of woolly nylon along when knitting areas that will see wear to prevent that.

 

3.  Knitters are resourceful.  In a pinch, they will use chopsticks for needles, rubber bands for point protectors, and paper clips for stitch markers.  They will knit with anything; cut up T-shirts and plastic grocery bags, even old videotape.

 

2.  Knitters are innovative.  If a pattern for a hat can’t be found, a Knitter will grab a measuring tape and a stitch dictionary and write one.

 

1.  Knitters are thrifty.  Instead of spending ten dollars on a sweater from WalMart that will shrink, fade, and fall apart in one year, they will spend eighty dollars on the supplies and knit one that will last fifty years.  Cost savings: 84%, or $420 (not counting tax).

 

Now, if that isn’t an impressive skill set, I don’t know what is!

 

Hire a Knitter!

 

 

I guess it is inevitable when the building where you work is near wetlands.  Add some balmy autumn days that let your co-workers leave all the doors open, measure out some cooling nighttime temperatures, and mix well.  The results of this recipe?  Not a casserole or a cookie or a canapé.  Nope.

 

It’s

 

a

 

warehouse

 

full

 

of

 

SNAKES.

 

Creepy slithery scary little snakes.  Not just outside, but inside.  Sliding over wooden pallets, secreting themselves under copiers, curling up in the middle of the floor where, if you aren’t looking where you are walking, you could very easily step on one. 

 

There was one less than fifteen feet from my desk.

 

This is not cool, my friends.  The sentence “I do not like snakes” doesn’t even begin to describe the utter terror that makes my heart leap into my throat and my skin crawl and my voice squeak up into the Mariah-Carey-stratosphere when I see a snake.  I do not even want to be in the same zip code as a snake.  I do not like the thought of there being a possibility of me opening a desk drawer or moving my computer keyboard or taking some toner off a shelf and discovering a snake.

 

I’m sure my vacationing boss would hear my screams all the way down in Missouri.

 

Apparently there have been snakes in the warehouse for the past two days.  I did not know that until this afternoon when I saw my first little interloper.  (I know.  I was shocked that I didn’t run shrieking out to my car the moment I found out.)  A wholesaler evicted that one for me.  Yeah, like I was going to pick it up and throw it out the door.  Hah!  Insects, spiders, those I can smack and kill and flick into a wastebasket.  Snakes – no way am I gonna do anything that alerts those little buggers to the fact that I am anywhere in the vicinity.

 

Especially since (if the Warehouse Manager is correct) some of them are baby rattlesnakes.  Baby rattlesnakes that do not have rattles on the end of their tails (who knew?), so they are slithering around looking like harmless cousins of garter snakes, until **CHOMP** they decide to find out if you have a flavor.  And then you can’t call 911 because your hands are going numb, and as you begin to feel lightheaded and the room starts spinning you realize you are wearing dingy old cotton undies and all of the doctors and nurses are going to laugh because whatever antivenin they give you for the snakebite will end up being delivered by a big hypodermic needle in your… end.

 

Who do you call when there are snakes in your workplace?  Human Resources?  OSHA?  Samuel L. Jackson?  And can you call in sick to work because you’re scared of snakes?  Is snake-o-phobia considered an authentic medical condition, like an emotional disorder, so I could take the day off?  Or maybe it’s a recognized handicap, and I could call in under the Americans with Disabilities Act?

 

Because I seriously do not want to go to work tomorrow.

 

Snakes.  **shiver**

 

Somebody get me a fang-proof bodysuit and a big bottle of wine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BaxterKnits tagged me with this meme! I have never been tagged before. I am a meme virgin. I feel like the nerd at the prom who finally got asked to dance, and not by the geekiest boy in school either, but by a really cool person! (Okay, that sounded a little weird. Sorry!)

 

Here are the rules:

* Answer at least three of the questions. Yes, I know a few look time-consuming and there are several of them. That’s why I only ask for three. See? I’m nice!

* Post them and the rules on your blog, and please link back to me here. Pretty please?

* Comment here** telling me and the rest of our little party where you’re at and link to yourself. That’s all!

* Oh yeah, don’t forget to tag others!

 

What’s the last book you read that you thought was really super, inspiring, you’d recommend it to most anyone?

 

I love alternative history. The works of Harry Turtledove. Orson Scott Card’s Empire. But it all started with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.  Great escapist “What if?” stories that draw you completely into their reality.

 

What food totally grosses you out, you’d never be able to touch it? Ew. Gag. *hurl*

 

Eel. Snake. If it looks like a worm, I ain’t touching it.

 

Did you ever watch a scary movie that frightened you so much you were afraid of the dark afterward? I mean like you’re lying in bed trying to sleep, but you have to pee, but you’re scared to get up. It doesn’t have to be recently; could be when you were a kid. So what movie was it?

 

Not a movie, but a book did that. In short: Never ever try to read The Amityville Horror when you are fourteen and babysitting in a converted cheese factory in the middle of the Wisconsin countryside.

 

Is there a song that makes you dance every time you hear it? Would you tap your feet and sing along to it in public?

 

Right now it is Amii Stewart's disco hit "Knock on Wood", but I have about 165 more songs downloaded to my MP3 player, including “Lady Marmalade” (the “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi” song. I think they use the formal/plural form “vous” because “Veux-tu coucher avec moi” has a crappy meter, plus it sounds like a sneeze – vuh-chew coo-shay?), um, where was I now? Oh, yeah, well, I’ll admit I was singing and dancing (full Travolta moves and all) along to the BeeGee’s “Stayin’ Alive” at work yesterday. Yeah, at work. Don’t worry; my boss wasn’t there, and the rest of them already knew I was weird.

 

Tattoos: yes or no? Do you have any? Tell us! Do you think they’re gross? TELL US!

 

As for body art, I remain a blank canvas. I did get a temporary (airbrushed) skull and crossbones one at a company picnic two years ago. I think that started everyone realizing that I was weird.

 

When’s the last time you laughed so hard your ribs ached and/or you nearly peed yourself? What made you do it?

 

I love cathartic laughter like that. Last weekend I was reading a thread on Ravelry called “harrassturbating”; the story that set me off was posted by Jessi, who said: Then there was the time we were on a trip and stopped at a rest stop. My hubby took the boy to go pee. In the next stall went a very large biker who proceeded to have a very noisy bathroom experience. The boy then exclaims “What was that??!?” The biker says “It was a mouse on a motorcycle; didn’t you see it?” Boy looks around for a minute then says “No, it wasn’t….. it was your butt!”

 

Draw or doodle a picture of your pet(s) and post it if possible. Nothing fancy, don’t be shy!

 

My parents have a wiener dog. That is as close to a pet as I have, unless you count the fuzzy things in the back of our refrigerator. And you don't want to see a picture of that.

 

Go through a stack or box of your old music. Stuff that you may not have heard in years. Pick one and tell us about it. Is it as good (or as bad) as you remembered?

 

See above re: MP3 player. I have downloaded songs from CDs called “Monster 80s”, “Pure Disco”, and “New Millennium Funk Party”. If you let them marinate long enough, even songs like ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” are palatable again.

 

Do you still sleep with a stuffed animal? We won’t laugh!

 

Not enough room in the bed for one. And it would probably hog what covers Dear Jay leaves for me.

 

Well, there you have it. The first official mouseymeme. Now, who to tag? I lurk way too much on other people’s blogs, and really I don’t think that many people read this thing mine. How about YarnThrower, Chris, and AlisonH?

 

** p.s. I don’t have comments turned on because the spam filters are non-existent. So email me at the contact addy instead, and I’ll post the links in the future.

 

or, Stupid, Stupid, Stupid (as I bang my head against the wall)

 

Yup, I was one of the multitudes that went to see Stephanie Pearl-McPhee at Borders East in Madison last night. Even though I kept reminding myself that she is as nervous about meeting us as we are about meeting her, I was still jittery about actually encountering someone so famous. (Okay, maybe not Paris Hilton famous, but that’s probably a good thing, for both of them, as I do not have an irrational desire to stuff a doughnut into Stephanie’s face, and I cannot say the same about Ms. Hilton.)

 

And, like the title of Stephanie's new book, I learned some things …whether I wanted to or not.

 

1.)  When you are going to see the Yarn Harlot, make an excuse to get a wristband as early in the day as you can. Tell your boss anything – like you need to pick up a medical prescription that ran out and your next dose must be taken suspiciously exactly at the moment Border’s opens, or you will die a most hideous death that will involve copious oozing of bodily fluids and episodes of high-pitched shrieking. Because if you wait until you arrive – one half-hour before the event starts – you will not only get stuck with a pink wristband (eewww) but you will end up practically last in line. (There were two people behind me, but I think one of them might have been a Border’s employee.)

 

2.)  When you are practically last in line, you will look so tired that any photo taken of you with the marvelous Yarn Harlot will make her look fabulous, and you look like Marcia Brady on a strict diet of Prednisone and Twinkies.  (There will be no posting of the commemorative photograph. Yes, it was that bad.)

 

3.)  Speaking of Twinkies, it is imperative that you eat. Anything. Sneak in some granola, or something, for God’s sakes, because that linty cough drop in the bottom of your purse ain’t gonna cut it. By the time you are through the line and walking out to your car, it will have been 10 hours since your last meal. Faint from hunger is not the safest state to be in when driving the Beltline. (We’ll leave the argument about when it is safe to drive on that highway-to-hell for another day.)

 

4.)  Getting your wristband early (and thus getting your book autographed before most everyone else) means that you won’t be the fortieth person to hand Stephanie a warm beer. I don’t know which hotel she was staying at, or what car service was taking her to the airport, but I can guess what they all received as tips.

 

5.)  Getting to be in line earlier also means that you won’t end up saying something lame when you finally do get to meet Stephanie and hand her that beer, like “Here’s a Fat Squirrel beer. It’s one squirrel that won’t steal your fiber.” (I bet everyone who gave her that said the same thing.) Or, if you do incoherently babble something inane like that, you’ll have the presence of mind to follow it up with a snappy punch line, like “And when you’re done drinking it, you can chuck the bottle at the little bugger,” instead of thinking it up in the car on the way home. Seriously, Stephanie must think us Madisonians are a bunch of beer-swilling wackos who are plotzed out of our gourds all the time. I know she received at least two Fat Squirrels, one Spotted Cow, a Lienie’s Summer Shandy, and a four-pack of Sprecher’s Amber. She’s gonna pass the brewery in Milwaukee on her way to the airport (you know, the one where the interstate curves and goes under that viaduct and the beer fumes waft over the highway and the air in your car is permeated with that malt-y, yeasty scent) and wonder how any of us can finish a sweater without it ending up with three arms, two neck holes, and an intarsia aardvark on the front.

 

6.)  Bring enough knitting. Don’t bring a sock that only needs one more inch knit. You will be seriously tempted to frog the whole thing and start it again, and that isn’t exactly productive. If you have to start a new project, then by all means do so. So what if you already have a dozen on the needles: the smoke ring that just needs the ends woven in; the tank that needs the neckline re-worked; the giant afghan that will drag on the floor… none of them will do.

 

7.)  Resist the temptation to snap more photos of the other attendees than of Stephanie. You will see an astounding array of knitwear parade by as you watch the autograph line; vests and shawls and scarves and sweaters and socks and hats and every amalgamation thereof, and you will want to knit them all. And in order to knit them all, you will have to buy out the stock of every yarn store within a twenty-mile radius. Think of the damage that will do to your wallet. Think of the damage that will do to the storage space in your house. Think of the damage all the other knitters in that twenty-mile radius will do to you when they find out you bogarted all the yarn.

 

So the next time the Yarn Harlot stops by on a book tour, I’ll be ready. I’ll be like the babies last night – they were so well-behaved, like they were totally blissed out on all of the excellent yarn fumes. (Duuuuuude, that is some primo Malabrigo ya got there… man, that fiber is so choice!)

 

I’ll just buy four beers, and drink three when I get there.

 

At least then, if there is any high-pitched shrieking, I’ll be too plotzed to remember it.

 

(Or, In Which I Use A Lot Of Italics.)

 

I swear I am never following a pattern. Ever. Again.

 

Because whenever I decide to knit something from a pattern, it never-ever-ever turns out like the picture. And the picture is what I want, not a Blob: a misshapen or lumpy or saggy or warped piece of fabric that is the result of my knitting the pattern exactly as the directions say to do.

 

Hems flip up. Garter stitch edging still curls. Collars that are supposed to lie flat stick up, and ones that are supposed to stick up lie flat. Necklines are either too loose or don’t fit over my head. Cowl necks don’t cowl; socks don’t stay up; tank tops just… tank. I don’t think there is one single project I’ve knit while blindly following the directions that ever turned out right. Wait, there is: “Grandma’s Favorite Dishcloth”; because it’s kind of hard to botch up a garter-stitch rectangle. But everything else… I could put all of those fibery fiascos in a room, set up a strobe light, and charge admission – to the Halloween House of Knitting Horrors. No, really. It’s that bad.

 

I should have known that when I saw the cute sample at my local yarn store. I should have known when I noticed the yarn – which I had been coveting for months – was on clearance. I even came back two weeks later to buy the pattern because it was out of stock the first time, yet still I did not remember. Apparently yarn fumes cause a sort of temporary amnesia that makes one forget that no matter how foolproof the pattern, once the fiber hits my needles all resemblance to the desired object flies out the window. Yeah, it must have been amnesia, because I bought the yarn. I bought the pattern. I already had the needles, or I would have bought those, too.

 

And I cast on. Exactly the number of stitches the pattern said to cast on. And I started knitting. Exactly what the pattern told me to knit.

 

Now, don’t get me wrong here. I don’t blame the designer. I’ve knit many a project by many an expert designer, and I know it’s not their fault. It’s just that somewhere between the printed page and the knitted fabric, some rift in the space-time continuum sucks my knitting into a wormhole and what comes out the other end… well, it sucks. And I really don’t know why.

 

(Yes. I swatch. It still doesn’t help.)

 

So, it looks like I’m going to have to modify a pattern. Again.

 

It worked when shallower gussets kept the ankles of my socks from being so baggy.  I added short rows to the back of that collar, and now it stays folded down. And that one row on huge needles between the ribbing and stockinette? It kept that hem from flipping. Even the radical Let’s-convert-the-Pomatomus-into-a-toe-up-sock worked. Somehow, when I diverge from the written instructions and fly off into Knitting-Never-Never-Land what comes off the needles works. Even when I have to rip and re-knit a half-dozen times. Or when I ditch the pattern completely. Yeah, then I end up with a wearable item instead of something that makes people ask “Um, what exactly is that supposed to be?”

 

Because there are only so many times I can be honest with people by answering “A blob,” before they start making odd warding gestures and backing out of the room so as not to be affected by whatever bad mojo I happen to be enveloped in. Knitting just doesn’t need that kind of PR.

 

The latest blob was supposed to be a lacy smoke ring. The yarn: Plymouth Royal Bamboo. It was gonna rock, really, it was. I cast on. I knit. I made yarnovers. I knitted two together through front loops and back. I cast off. I wove in the ends. (Yeah. I know. A fatal mistake, that.) And then I tried it on.

 

What I got was more of a lacy stink bomb. A royal one, at that.

 

The part that was supposed to drape elegantly about my neck was just droopy. The only way I could get it to lie even somewhat decently was to make a cowl-neck out of it. So much for the nice lacy pattern showing – all you could see was the wrong side. The inside. The ugly side. The side that looked about as pretty as a deflated old boob.

 

So, in the best spirit of I-can’t-leave-well-enough-alone (because there was nothing “well enough” about this thing) I tried to save it by crocheting around the neckline. Just a slip-stitch, skipping every third cast-on stitch. To firm up and tighten that floppy top.

 

It was tightened, all right. But the sag was still there. It just moved south.

 

Now I have a lacy ring with a double chin. All the way around.

 

It’s in the time-out corner now. Tomorrow it goes into the frog pond. (Please cover the ears of small children and other sensitive persons when I get to the sections where I wove in the ends.) I think, when it comes out, that it will still have the same lace pattern. But it will have metamorphosed. It will get wider sooner. It will not be worked in the round. It will be a shawlette. It will not look like the picture. A picture can be photoshopped. Knitting can’t.

 

And getting old is bad enough without your knitting echoing your blobby bits.