I've moved this blog over HERE

http://chloeknits.wordpress.com

Lock, stock and barrel.
Wordpress lets me see my photos, just like blogger used to. Blogger has gone all wonky on me, I opened chloeknitsii and had the very same problems.

So please, join me over at http://chloeknits.wordpress.com

I'm moderating comments now

Too many viagra invites and then the altogether inappropriate comments from complete and total strangers hawking..well enhancers, for want of a better word. I get tired of wading thru the filth, so I'm just moderating all comments. Nothing personal.

So in an attempt to at least get outside..not that it will help

I'm off to Miner's for some gardening "stuff". I have a little weeding to do. (Little as in about 15 minutes worth. I need some gloves. There's some wood around back that needs to be tossed. I need a Hudson sprayer. And for my prize (getting out of the house), I'm renting Brothers and Sisters, which I never saw, since it comes on too late.

I have some bulbs which need to be moved and some seeds I need to sow (always). I have some cinderblocks up against the back fence that I'm thinking of putting tomatoes in. Passive heat, since it is cool up here on the hill and there really isn't that long of a growing season. I think planting inside the cinderblocks will give me a couple of degrees and the fence will give the a place to grow. I'm thinking of little Romas, cherrys and ladybug tomatoes. Maybe some heirlooms in different colors and some onions. And maybe bok choy. And fennel up in the corner by the electric meter. It sounds like a LOT but it isn't.


All I need to do is get through this one day.

Just until midnight.

I thought maybe I had missed this altogether

I have a hard time with depression but for the last several years, I've managed to dodge the bullet. Not this week.
I tried eating right, regular bedtimes, positive thinking....exercise...everything that usually takes the dreaded black edge off.

Mind you, I've done okay for several years. When the black dog comes trotting to my door, I don;t mark it on my calendar, so I think it's been a couple of years. Maybe even three. (If you don't count when my inmates wanted to kill me. That wasn;t depression, that was reality.)

So I tried what usually works; got my nails done. Got my toes done. Had my hair cut.
Cried there and back.

I might be reading the paper too much.I KNOW I'm reading the paper too much.

All there is is gloom and doom and layoffs and furloughs. (I got my furlough letter. I get to choose two days a month for my unpaid days off. Not the best but I still have my job.) My job is offering golden handshakes to get people to retire early--and I'm thinking GREAT! Retire and let me inch closer to the top. I'm planning another five years. After that, I don't know.

Real Estate--which is what we are mainly invested in--is flatlined right now. At the least, all the units are occupied. I'd like to see the house we live in right now and move up to the hotel EVEN WITHOUT HEAT. But that doesn't look like it is going to happen. Maybe in two years.

Then there is the total slowdown in building. Usually at this time of year, we are booked way into November. Not this year. We have a few jobs, so we are busy, just not crazy busy.

And then the jail is laying off and even though Lisi can't see it, I can see that she is on the short list. They are giving her too much overtime for them to be fully staffed but she isn;t permanent yet. So I worry about that, too.

So I'm one depressed, unhappy, up-all-night, can't-sleep-but-boy-can-I-cry mess.

I think I'll go pull some weeds and cry.

Since I'm going to cry, I might as well be busy.

Visiting with Keri and family

I'll post more photos later; I want to get the journaling done before I forget this whole trip!
Ben stayed at Judy's and cooked and watched Mom, so Judy could have some time off. It is obvious to us (8 years of tending to her counts for something) that Judy is either going to have to PAY someone to come in so she can go out (Eli and Seth are not reliable enough to hold down jobs, much less show up to watch Mom. It's not for nothing that we call them "those people"). Mom is as helpless as an infant and the inute she is left alone, she will try to climb up on a chair on a table. That is just the way she is wired. Stubborn as a hog on ice AND she needs to be the center of attention.

Anyway, after spending Christmas brunch with the bunch, we packed up and left before Judy had a break nervousdown. I did give her a very nice (HUGE) basket with wine and nuts and candies from Avila's Acres, which is my gift of choice. Ben rescued brunch (he can do wonders in the kitchen) and I set the island out, just like I was catering a buffet. (Judy had lots of good stuff in her big ass walk in pantry.) Probably more stuff than she even knew she had. I will give her props--she just moved and there are 400 boxes in the garage, so the house was not ready for company and since I haven't been to visit in ten years, I am not only company, I'm a stranger.

So it is Christmas Day and we are in a hotel in Salt Lake City. Nothing is on television. It is snowing like crazy and we've been driving for days, so we don't want to drive to Trolley Square
although we did go downtown to see the lights at Temple Square. Downtown Salt Lake is always pretty but even it looks like every other city in the world now. I guess malls do that. On the one hand, it's nice to know what Denny's is serving; on the other hand, it would be nice to take a chance on some regional cooking. Needless to say, Denny's was what was open. I can go for the rest of my life without eating there ever again.


We drove up to Layton the next day to meet up with Keri and her family. Staying in hotels is getting old, mainly because there is NOTHING TO DO. I can knit or read or watch tv. There is even less for Mike to do. No wonder the hotels have pools and fitness centers, because otherwise, we would go crazy. This hotel has a 24 hour mini-mart in the lobby---junk food and fruits, too, so there is a choice, which was nice.
This is one of the first trips we've taken where I've been really careful about what we eat---no junk on the road. I packed fruit and yogurt and juices and funny thing, we feel better.

More about my road trip to Utah

It was snowy-ola on Christmas morning. We drove up to Salt Lake IN a blizzard to Judy's new house (they've been in for a week, so no photos of the 400 hundpacked boxes). She is living in a nature preserve, so the back yards all back out onto a large meadow where there are ducks, geese, deer and I'm not sure what all living, since it was all buried in about six feet of snow. If I lived there, I'd be on the deck or the patio all the time.
However,they don't plow the streets, so I was more than a little worried about sliding off and ending upside down in a ditch (didn't happen). Could have. Once we got there, though, there had been a huge power outage and there was no electricity, so Judy was beside herself.



We managed to get a fire started and Mom wrapped up so she wasn't cold.
Josh and his girls came over (along with his wife...I didn't get a picture of her but she is blond, tall, young and skinny. I sure she is perfectly nice. Josh couldn;t get over how much I look like his mother (we aren;t a really close family. I think I saw Josh 10 years ago on my last trip to Utah. If my mother wasn't living here, I would have no reason to be sitting in this house.)

Seth was there.
He certainly has no sense of humor. None.
Must take after his father's side of the family.
He is crazy, too. Like Ben, only worse. Ben got help and graduated from high school. Seth managed to impregnate half dozen girls when he was good looking, young and unemployed. Now he is just unemployed.

Joe was at work.
Eli continues his boycott of all things Gene. I guess that is working for him.



Ben got a cook book, fixed brunch and decided to stay at Judy's for a few days to vist with Mom. Judy and Mom and I have a rocky relationship at best, so a few hours with me is MORE than enough for the three of us.

He cooked the entire time he was there and Judy just raved about his skills in the kitchen. I'm no cook but Judy cannot throw down at all. Her boys did not starve but that is about it.

Ben, however, can cook.

And by the by...I bet you didn't know that Ireland has the highest rate of schiophrenia IN THE WORLD.

I'm not any better off over at CholeknitsII so I'm still here

I may try wordpress when this totally breaks down. I can't post photos and see them to move them around; all I can see is code. But over at 2, I get the same thing, so I guess it is a new thing in bloggerland.

At any rate, here I am again and here I'm staying. I did change my header. Notice?

I'm trying to do more knitting this year. My one and only goal. Well, that and pay off my credit cards (8 out of ten this week) and what a story THAT was.

First I try to pay off all the cards onlline...nope. Evidently, online is only if you DON'T want to pay the account off. I have to call a super duper top secret number, where i get one of the rude minions, who wants to know my name, first and last. I tell him and he procedes to call me by my first name. HOLD IT RIGHT HERE. "I'd prefer it if you would call me MRS I'm Paying off my Card, if you don't mind." He promptly transfers me to a woman. She has no problem calling me MIPOMC and waiving the phone fee to do so.

And why could I not pay it online? It is set up to NOT allow you to pay it off online. This is a money making business, you understand.

And all this time, I thought Visa was my friend.

I have a little balance on Amazon and an every present balance on my gas card and then I'm free. Good feeling. Of course, this didn't magically HAPPEN. I've been working on this for an entire year. That would be an entire year of going to the lilbrary. Skipping Starbucks. Skipping the mall. Cooking and cleaning for my own self. (Ok. That was plain punishment for everyone concerned.)

My next budget cutting plan? My own yardwork. I know. I hate it. But since I am obviously the only one i can count on to do it and it is a nice way to unwind at the end of a very long, felon intense day, it will be good for me.

Plus you can take the girl off the farm but you can never take the farm out of the girl. I'd like to get my garden into sale-able shape. The bones are there and we're going to e here for three more years before the economy perks back up.

So expect so interesting only to me garden shots as I make something wonderful out of my little corner of the world here. It is the perfect spot and I have a koi pond filled with great water for irrigation. I just need to get on the garden train every day and go for it. Simple design. Beautiful produce and above all, the illusion that it take only minutes to achieve.

I can do that.
I've been doing that my whole life.

I ran out of space...so you can find me at part II

http://chloeknitsii.blogspot.com/

This took me totally by surprise (December 23)

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I lived here for ten years. This kind of weather should have come as no big surprise to be...but it did. This is the night we drove into Payson..December 23, right around 4 pm. I'm a couple of blocks from the little house I used to live in and in a little bit, we're going over to Pat's house to visit for a while and then crash out at the hotel. All of this traveling has just knocked me out.

This is what it looked like when we parked the CAR outside the hotel. You can barely see the hotel!






December 24
We are going to Homestead to go diving at the Crater. When I was at BYU, my sorority used to come here for the weekend. There was llittle of nothing to do--cross country ski, snowshoe, go horseback riding. There was a big hot springs pool and the food was great, but there were no televisons, no radios, no telephones. These are stock photos from the Homestead website. It was SO COLD that it looked like we were walking into the gates of Hell. The water is 96 degrees and the outside air was around 15 degrees. If you ever are in the Provo area, I highly reccomend going up Provo Canyon and spending some time at Homestead. It is wonderful; close to Heber, which has lots of neat shops and activities and you can take the highway around the mountain and circle back towards Salt Lake and drop down into Park City and Emmigration Canyon on your way into town.











After we got home from diving, Pat came and got be so we could juke around. Payson is a lot bigger than it used to be--it even has a Walmart! There's a Subway and a McDonald's but that's about it for fast food. we stopped at a drive up liquor store and got cokes, drove around and gossiped. Drove out to Wilsonville, past Big I's place and Up Yours, over to Angee's...who RAISES ELK! Like a whole herd of them! Is that crazy or what? And Angee looks like Miss America (even after three boys). She lives in one of those big family-cenric houses where there is only one tv, where she can keep an eye on it. The boys are polite and like to hunt. They have snake skins and other critters they've hunted down in their bedrooms (which were tidy and clean). Angee is exactly the way she was when she was 10 and just as sweet. Love her and her mom to bits. I've know them...since 1975 and probably talk to them once a week and email almost every day...usually over nothing; just to keep in touch.

On the road to Utah December 23

It is o'dark thirty because we get up before the sun comes up. We don't even need an alarm clock. So here we are, about an hour outside of Vegas, thinking about breakfast.

See how much knitting I did? I'm going to fiddle with a couple of ideas I've been thinking about (this is a pattern I've been using for the last 25 years). I want to see if I can add a sideways ribbing, instead of picking up stitches later. So here is where I'm going to make my new little changes. I have about six hours of dry road to fiddle with,

6:30
Is this gorgeous or WHAT? This is the Virgin River Gorge, outside of St. George, Utah. It used to be the bottom of the ocean, so what you are seeing are layers of sedimentary rock, which used to be sand and silt. This is the same part of the world where you can find dinosaur tracks






The ground around here and down south into Arizona (Bryce Canyon, Zion and Grand Canyon) is the most beautiful colors of red and pink and peach. Couple that with the forest greens and weathered greys of the sun-bleached wood...it is really beautiful.

7:15
Outside Cedar City...
Uncle Howie lives here.
Look! some snow!
I heard on the news that there is a big storm headed towards Seattle. I'm hoping that we get a little snow on this trip. But right now, just a little up on the landscape is more than enough for me. We brought chains and I had the car prepped for super cold temps, but I don't even own a warm winter coat. I forgot my Dux boots, but I figure that they have stores even in Utah.

7:45
Parowan, Utah
My friend Karen lives here

8:30
Manderfield
My old room mate from college, Carolina, lives here. She has eight kids. I think her husband is some kind of a farmer.

9:30
Meadow,Ut
Yet another friend from college, Fawn Hunter, lives here.

10:30
Scipio
The roads are dry but we saw deer! (You take the road thru Scipio thru Orderville to Kanab and Tuba City. I taught there for one summer when I was in college and really wanted to teach at the reservation school. For one, it would have canceled out my student loans (I also thought about teaching in Appalachia). But my mother did not send me to BYU to go teach a bunch of poor children. (And what have I been doing my entire career?) Anyway, I liked my time at the Navaho Nation, even though it was a boarding school and there was an immense amount of grinding poverty, drug and alcohol abuse and very young mothers. Knowing what I know now, I'd be a better teacher NOW. Then? I had a sack on my head. I was a do-gooder. Sincere, but without a clue.

11:30 am
Nephi, Utah
It is just now starting to actually snow. Big fluffy soft dry powdery flakes and just at the end of town. I used to work in Payson (about 45 minutes from here). Before I-15 was put in, Nephi had the only stoplight between Orem and, well, Nephi. I was driving to work one day in a terrible snow storm and I missed my exit and didn;t notice it until I stopped at the light in Nephi. I had to find a payphone (long before cellphones) and call in to let Pat know I was going to be late.

Orange trees..really (PM December 22)

Here it is...noon and there are some of the many miles of orange groves. It is high enough here on the slopes of the foothills so that the oranges don't freeze. In a few miles, it will be too cold and nippy for them. There are mandarin oranges here and avocados, too. Miles of them. A little higher are apples (they need colder weather). Lower down, where I live, are peaches and plums, apricots...stuff like that there.



1:00
It's snowy and stormy and COLD. Look at the sky! It snowed in Vegas yesterday. Marji emailed me and said that it's been windy and cold in Sedona and there is supposed to be a huge storm on the way to Utah from Seattle. I have a sweatshirt and my RiteAide tennis shoes with me. I have my Dux boots..at home. We did bring chains.



1:30
Look at THIS! It's the wind factory in Tehachapi and there is snow and fog and terrible weather everywhere. What was I thinking? Whose idea WAS this? I hate the snow! I HATE the cold! I like my own bed.


1:40
And then like magic, the skies are clear right around the bend on the way down to Mojave.

3:00
This is what the Mojave desert looks like in the winter. Not what you expected, is it?


4:00
Stateline
About an hour outside of Vegas.

5:00
Las Vegas
It looks pretty spectacular at night...just like CSI. This is what it looks like in real life. We stayed at South Pointe Casino for $29. (I looked it up on the web and then called the hotel direct. Got a better price that way. Who knew?)
Of course, wireless internet was $13. Nothing was on tv. You could rent movies for $15. Or you could go gamble. The buffet was $15 (and it was REALLY good and really fresh. Probably the best I've ever had in Vegas. Ever.) Which is what we did and then we went to bed.It was one long day. And tomorrow is going to be longer.

Christmas is early for us: Lisi is working and we'll be on the road

Perfect: We are all together, snug and safe
Except: Lisi, who is working at the jail Someone has to keep the streets safe. Might as well be her at double time and a half. She volunteered.

We'll have another Christmas with judy and Mom in Utah, so this one is pretty much Lisi-centric.

So here is Lisi's new sewing basket (courtesy of Marji); zip pockets for notions and a sushi pincushion. There is also a needle keeper, a thread braid (I'll post a photo because I can't explain it), good scissors and a bunch of other little things she'll need for mending. Lisi is no seamstress. I lined the inside of the basket so it would look nice but I have no real expectation of her ever ACTUALLY using it. She did teach one of her inmates how to sew on a button and told me that it made her feel really competent, so I'm not a total failure in teaching her those useful skills needed in life (besides balancing her checkbook, doing laundry and saving 10% of her paycheck).

SHU-by Dooby Do

The SHU is sorta like solitary confinement. It's not for the worst of the worst (as in never get OUT of prison);it's for inmates who just don;t play well with others.

SHU inmates spend 23 hours a day in their cells, usually alone because they can't play nice with a cellie. I have about 50 of them on my caseload and about 10 of them actually are active and doing any work.

The other 40? They write every day and want books or batteries or pencils or televisions but can't manage to get work finished and sent in. Part of it is because they are only using their enrollment to get whatever they think I'm handing out. Part of it is because they are just "stuck on stupid" and afraid that maybe they are stupid and I'll find out.

Funny how that works--a guy doesn;t mind if I think he's a stone killer or a pedophile or uses his own bodily fluids to write on his cell walls but he very much minds that I find out that he can't read. For some reason, if their math skills are bad, that's okay. Reading is a point of pride.

I have one SHU-by who generate more paperwork than all of the rest of my students put together. He reminds me of a toddler who wants some candy and is throwing a bigger and bigger tantrum in his attempt to get that candy. This SHU-by wants a television. He claims that he has to have one to do his school work. (He doesn't.)He writes almost every day--begging. pleading, threatening, cajoling. Trying to be lawyer-like. It doesn;t make any difference because I DON'T HAVE ANY TELEVISIONS.

He 602'd me (inmate complaint) because he has to have a television to do his work. (No, he doesn't.) Then he 602'd me because he can't do his work without a television.
Another 602-he's requested a television from me and I refuse to answer, so there is nothing he can do except write a 602. (Evidently, NO doesn't count as an answer.)

I get dozens of notes every day. Usually, some guy wants to get tested ("I done been here for eight years and I need a TABBY test." No, you don't. You took that test when you entered prison. I don't have time to retest you just because you feel like it.)Occasionally, he wants something else...a computer, a book, a cellphone, some paper, envelopes, a television. I don't have any of that stuff. But I guess it
doesn't hurt to ask.

I might have a TV keistered and want to sit down.

I love to read

I snagged this from Marji’s blog. It’s is originally from UK’s The Big Read where they assume most people will have only read about 6 of the 100 books listed. Ha.

I say the folks at The Big Read need to have their heads examined since they have The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and ALL the Harry Potter books listed as one title apiece. I say The Big Read needs to look up the meaning of the word "book" in the dictionary.

Instructions:

1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.

2. Underline those you intend to read.

3. Italicize the books you LOVE.

Put this list on your blog so that we can track down those people who have only read six and force books upon them.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2. Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkein (Didn’t like it)

3. Jane Eyre -Charlotte Bronte (the world would be a better place if the Brontes had not been given access to pen and paper)

4. Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling (Couldn’t get into them at first. Like them better now. The movies helped)

5. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee (I can hear this outloud in my head when I read it)

6. The Bible

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (see #3 above)

8. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell

9. His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman (Marji has it on her to-read list, so I thought I’d give it a shot)

10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (He was paid by the word and it shows. At least he avoids the inmate "very, very, very, very" when counting out words.)

11. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott (loved Alcott when I was little. Not so much now.

12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (Poor Tess.)

13. Catch 22 -Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of William Shakespeare (I still say this is cheating)

15. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier (Marji’s mother recommended this book when I was about 16. I like most everything du Maurier wrote, especially House on the Strand.)

16. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkein (Didn’t like it)

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (I hate this book.)

19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20. Middlemarch - George Eliot (I never liked the sound of these words)

21. Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell (What was in Rhett’s head?. Stupid Scarlett. Weak Ashley. Poor relation Melanie. That bunch had Brittany Spears/Anna Nicole Smith written all over them.)

22. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens (Dickens-still sucking all the words out of the universe)

24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll ( Disney has a lot to answer for)

30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (Better book than a ride)

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (word, word, word)

33. Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis

34. Emma - Jane Austen

35. Persuasion - Jane Austen

36. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis (Isn't this part of #33?)

37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres

39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne (Walt, Walt, Walt)

41. Animal Farm - George Orwell

42. The DaVinci Code - Dan Brown

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I’d like some of that)

44. A Prayer for Owen Meany -- John Irving (I’m not an Irving fan).

45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (Early Danielle Steele. How did this get on the list?

46. Anne of Green Gables - Lucy Maud Montgomery

47. Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

49. The Lord of the Flies - William Golding (Lord, how I hated that book.

50. Atonement - Ian McEwan (what a perfect title)

51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel (this was one nutty book)

52. Dune - Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm -- Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth (I tried but just could not get into this gigantic fat book)

56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (It is a wonder there are any words LEFT for any of us to use)

58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon

60. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold LOVED IT

65. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66. On the Road - Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding (How did this get on the list?)

69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72. Dracula - Bram Stocker

73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74. Notes From a Small Island - Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses -- James Joyce

76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal - Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession - A.S. Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiquro

85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance - Rohintin Mistry

87. Charlotte's Web - E.B. White

88. The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom

89. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Far Away Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Expury (I think everyone at college read this and thought it was SO DEEP. I thought it was SO STUPID)

93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94. Watership Down - Richard Adams LOVED IT

95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare (again, isn't this part of #14?)

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I am embarrased to say there are some books here I have never heard of. It’s a UK list—but where is Mark Twain? Dick Francis? Jodi Picoult? J.D.Robb? Oxbow Incident? Red Badge of Courage? The Great Gatsby? All of the books Oprah reads?

I don't knit for Christmas

Knitting for me is the Zen of my existence. It is the white noise that enables me to enter into the belly of the beast every morning. I actually had a conversation with my son about this today about my chances of getting murdered at work. Every day I don't increases the chances that I will. That's what I get paid a cartload of money for and have a cartload of insurance.

So last week, when I was THINKING about knitting some little holiday sweater ornaments for people in ple in the office I made one up, just to see how long it would take, since I have the yarn. (It was supposed to be for a little wrap sweater for Lisi, only Full Metal JACKASS found it every place I hid it and now there isn't enough for a sweater.)

It took 2 hours and 32 minutes to make a very cute cute very cute little miniature sweater ornament. Knitting at top speed, which IS NOT ZEN KNITTING. That, my friends, is BUSINESS KNITTING. Times the 13 people I need to gift by Wednesday, because you never know when someone will up and decide not to come in...32 hours of Zen knitting time I will never get back. So forget that silliness.

So I went to Target, got some little felt snowman stockings, stuck some candy bars in them for the gals, little bags of dilled nuts for the guys and there you go. $15 and 15 minutes.

Then there are family gifts. This year we agreed on no gifts because we gave the gifts ahead of time...and darn nice ones they were.

Here is the way I usually do Christmas

1. Get yourself a list. I can't stress the planning enough. There must be a list. The list must be carefully considered. The list must be constructed weeks in advance when there is no pressure or panic. July is the perfect month. Plenty of money in July. Plenty of time in July.The list must not monkeyed with overmuch. My list contained SEVEN people in July. The list was sealed yesterday and contained TWENTY FOUR people.
   
2. Do not fall prey to $99 items at Blockbuster, even if the guy at the counter says that these are the last two on the planet. No one needs them.
3. At no time may anyone be allowed to make a trip to Rite Aide to get stocking stuffers. We don't need any more stuff. We have enough stuff
   
4. I know what Marji likes. Get that. I know what Pat likes. Get that. Wrap it and be done with it.
5. Ben got a house and new linens (and right now, I'd like some new linens myself.) That is enough.
   
6. Lisi got car insurance for a year, AAA for a year, rabies shots, neutering, dental work AND a microchip for Jack, plus a sewing box with all the fixings. Very cute, if I do say so my own self.
7. Be honest. Take a reality pill. Look at the list. Ask yourself what the odds are that you are suddenly, in a busy season full of many other responsibilities, find anything that Mike needs/wants/doesn't have
8. The mitts and socks you made for your Pierce? THEY ARE FINE. That DAR bracelet? Fine-ola. Pack it already
   
9. Ash and Mike WANT to go shopping. Money is fine. Get over it.
   
10. You don't care what Judy thinks ANYWAY. A bag of fruit is better than fine. She has 400 boxes of stuff and she just moved. She doesn't need anymore stuff. If you are the sort of person who is going to be really, really , really hurt if your presents are not received at the Parrish household with the complete amount of enthusiasm with which they were purchased (none), you should probably forget them. Just go out to the car and rummage in the back and say you can't find them.
    

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Ugly Shoes

I have just spent way too much time trying to jump start the economy over at Zappo's. Where did they find so many ugly shoes?

Maye it's the multi-view thingy, where I can look at the shoe from every possible angle. Not a great idea, obviously, especially when it's already an ugly shoe.

Once upon a time, I had tons of shoes. Capezios. Cute, cute, very cute. In every color. i was the queen of cute shoes.

Now I wear little grandma black runners from Rite Aide. $2.99. When they look ratty I throw them out and buy new ones. Sometimes I'll spring for little flats from Target, if I can bear to brave the crowds at Target.

I think that in the olden days, when there were actual shoe stores, it was just easier. Park the car, look for shoes and only shoes and Bob's your uncle. Not now. Everything's in a huge box store with a Starbuck's. Takes all the fun out of it.

Might as well go to RiteAide.

Because they send all the ugly shoes to Zappos.

You know what I love about knitting?

I could be forgiven for thinking not much these days, but really - this blogging thing can create a sense that I must knit ALL the time if I am to be other than a slacker, and I just haven't wanted to for a while. (I tend to post random photos and online quizzes--have you noticed?)

The thing about blogging my knitting is that I"M SO SLOW.

A narrative arc develops stitch by stitch by stitch - which is what makes knitting so intrinsically tactile and satisfying and wonderful. (There is only so much chatter I can write about a cuff or screwing up a count or fretting about an armsecye).

But as a subject for the Internet, I'm better off with modest progress pictures and a big reveal (See Finally! Knitting!)

Blogging is still ideal for the emotional narrative of what knitting means in a life - for whatever emotional narrative any passion means in a life. And a blog is perfect for the many passions-the color of the kitchen walls, what I'm going to use for counter tops, the hotel, my kayaking (at which I suck, but it's not an Olympic sport for me), a 4-7-12 year backstory and no known ending yet, but it's connected to things, other people, feelings and friendship and love and hope and disappointment and irony that are just too complex and personal for me to keep to myself.

And I'm not even sorry about that.

The blogs I have been reading are perfume blogs and sewing blogs and arts blogs and CANADIAN political blogs and food blogs. I started reading blogs after 9/11 - discovered them when I was looking for better news sources and then had this whole world opened to me.

But I do love knitting. Today it is damp and foggy and I am just back from the coast and I have no headache and I am wearing my own pair of self-made socks and the Dream in Color pullover (Visual Purple) I made last winter (I think that is the maximum acceptable handknit:body style ) and I am warm.

Last night I found myself making mental notes about what I would change the next time, which is the unmistakable intellectual stirring of a knitter exiting hibernation. (Except for car knitting and that doesn't really count).

The other thing I have been doing is reading until my eyes fall out. And I can't - nor do I want - to do both at once.I read a lot. I have books all over. Anywhere where I might possible be stuck with --gasp!-nothing to do. Car books. Waiting room books. Bathroom books. Hot tub books. Bedside books. Drop in my handbag books (I have to hide those since we aren't supposed to have them a work. Quelle horrors! Call out the Garda. Put me in chains.)

But the thing I LOVE about knitting - back to my original point - is that it is infinite. Never done if you don't want it to be. You can find a mistake, no matter how infinitesimal and rip it out., Or not.

It is as infinite as self knowledge, as infinite as learning itself. And it waits for you until you are ready to move on.

Knitting almost always leaves room for you to get it right someday . That's what I love

Bad headaches

I have these horrible migraines--I might have mentioned them.

A couple of my friends have them; several of the gals at work have them, too. We talk about them endlessly, only because a migraine pretty much takes over your entire world. You either have a headache, think you are going to get a headache, HAD a headache or are wondering when you are going to get a headache.

And we talk about what we take and what we do to tend to/avoid the pain. We all have a bag of rescue drugs in our handbags (it's all the same stuff) and if one of us gets something new, the rest of us will ask for some the next time we go in because you never know--it MIGHT work. I like those little silver meth suppositories that only work if you take them 20 minutes before you think you might be getting a headache.

SO my friend Marji has them, too. She takes Top (almost everyone I know does. It's supposed to calm something deep inside your brain. The dosage is a little iffy, though, and hard to get right). It makes my hands hurt but better my hands than my head.

She, unlike the rest of the migraineurs I know, never ends up in the ER with her fist in her eye, with her blood pressure at 295/190. She doesn't go to the clinic in San Francisco and get big needles jammed into her skull. She doesn't carry an ER script behind her driver's license for when she is out of town.

She isn't up on the kind of lunchtime chat we are either---did they push the drugs in your line or let them drip in the saline? Did you get Benydryl as an accelerant? Did they give you oxygen? That's supposed to help. With volatile migraines like ours, you need a support group.

So this morning, I get the email from Marji. She has her fist jammed in her eye and is on the way to the ER.

I know exactly how she feels.

Christmas in Yellowstone

Catching some sun today

Today was just a nice sunny day out on the water. I went out with my camera and met my husband down at the Embacadero for lunch. My actual plans were to paddle there and back, but we loaded my rig up and drove home. This is supposed to be fun.

So here are the little deer out in the estuary








Sea otters










Pelicans in flight (I only took about 900 , trying to get these) and the sky changed during the day but not as much as it looks...just depending on how close to the water they were. The really blue one was over by the golf course; the gray ones were over the channel. Of course, I had about 895 shots of birds dropping like rocks.










Sandpiper on the beach, (cool reflection, huh? that took forever, too). I thought I would either get stuck in the mud or flip over. I saw this shot in a calendar so when I saw the sandpipers in the wet sand, I knew I could catch the reflection if I was patient. I just didn't frame it too well. Too much blue.






Pelican with obvious hair issues (I usually see the gray and brown ones.) It's migration time and I've seen white ones AT WORK, so nothing surprises me anymore.




Bird I don't know down from the steps at the park where I walk the dogs






Egrets (doesn't this one look like ROCKY?) There is a huge rookery I can see from the water that looks like something from a horror movie....and it is only when I'm drifting a something like, oh....two feet AN HOUR I can get shots like these because there is nothing else to do. It's Zen Kayak Chloe, not a Paddle Crazy Kayak Chloe. That's why I'm going OUT with the tide.





Another egret on the bow of a bow, moored in the channel. I live out in an agricultural wetlands area. They are always standing around like a bunch of cold little old men.






Sandpiper over by the musuem. Not nearly as interesting as the one in the wet sand.