chrysanthemum

What really burns me up

about my wallet getting stolen today--right off my desk in the middle of the workday while I was at a meeting--is not the $15 inside (lunch money! coffee money! if-I-manage-not-to-spend-it-it-becomes-my-secret-special-savings-just-for-me!) or the credit card I had to cancel or the debit card I had to cancel and the resulting automatic payments we'll have to reorganize, or the fact that I now have to physically go to an actual bank with my checkbook in order to get any cash for the next 7 to 10 days (how freaking old-fashioned can you get?)-- 

Hmm, honestly all those things do annoy me quite deeply....

But really, the thing that's bothering me the most is the fact that I had a yarn-club card for every yarn store in town, all of them punched at least a few times, getting me ever so slightly closer to Free Yarn at some point in the future, and now, all of those cards, all of those punches, all of that mythical Free Yarn is gone, gone, gone.

I know, I know, cheer the hell up....

Edited to add: Just to clarify, it was not a coworker who stole my wallet. Several people on my floor noticed an unfamiliar man around the same time that two wallets were stolen. There's even video of the suspect leaving the building, and apparently he matches the description of someone who's been loitering around an ATM down the street. Jeez.

Spring forward

I know it's heresy, but I don't carry my camera with me all the time. It's just not very practical for me. I had it with me on Thursday, though, when I noticed that this tree, crowded with old wooden chairs for some reason, was about to burst into bloom. See that flower? It's practically spring. Nevermind that today we experienced sun, rain, snow and hail. And that was just in the two hours the kids and I were out late this afternoon. Really, what could be more spring-like?

I'd better start making myself a new pair of woolly slippers....

Can this be happening?

So here it is, the night before school is supposed to start again after, what?, a whole extra week of Christmas vacation due to snow, snow, and more snow. The snow's been gone for days now. The roads are completely clear. Even the sidewalks, once crusted with bumpy grey ice, are naked. I've been going to work, pretty much as usual, throughout the weird weather and the Christmas break--Michael's been home with the kids since the 26th, and they've all been happier than your average clam--but all the same, we've been looking forward to the resumption of a somewhat more normal life.

Anyhow, I took Lyra for a late afternoon trip to the zoo. The hippos were out--out of the water even, though possibly only because their dinner is served on land. Do you think hippos enjoy snow? 

I didn't think too much of it. It wasn't sticking or anything, and it was awfully wet, getting very close to the rain end of the spectrum by the time we got to flamingos. Poor things, flamingos couldn't possibly care for snow.... But, see, no accumulation.

Anyhow, we came home, snuggled in, ate some dinner, played some games (this one is actually pretty fun, though I wouldn't say it seems built to last), and popped the kids into bed, and as I was walking down the back stairs to get to the office, I noticed this outside the window:

 

If I type the word Inconceivable!, do you hear it in Wallace Shawn's voice in your head?

Not what you're thinking

I bought this jar of pickles on Saturday. Five days ago. Half a gallon of pickles. In five days. I had no idea my family loved dill pickles this much. I rarely buy them, but they seemed like something the kids might find amusing in their lunch boxes for a day or two, and sheesh, it's looking like maybe they ate them at every meal. Maybe even instead of every meal. They are strange children with peculiar eating habits...

Batteries not included

First, a short conversation:

    Lyra: How does Santa get back up the chimney?

    Ben: ...

    Me: Magic!

    Ben: Yeah, magic. Like he uses to make the reindeer fly.

    Lyra: He doesn't have a remote control for them?

____________________________________________________

And second, a new hat. An actual finished knitting project! 27 hours from winding to wearing. Wearing it while brushing my teeth and reading in bed last night totally counts, right?

This is Porom from Jared at BrooklynTweed, knit in Classic Elite Fresco, a nice blend of wool, baby alpaca and angora with a pretty halo that's not too fuzzy (the link is to Clara Parkes' review--I love having her thoughts on a yarn before I buy it online). I was worried about the hat's potential mushroom effect, but I actually really like it. It's light and soft and warm. I'm wearing it right now. With my bathrobe.

Sensing a theme here

Once upon a time, about a week a half ago, but it feels like ever some much longer already, my sweet friend H. came up from Portland for a quickie girls' weekend on the town. We didn't get drunk and dance on tabletops even once in the entire 36 hours she was here. We did, however, eat noodles and donuts and pastries, and we went with my knitting pals on a quick tour of downtown Bainbridge. Seattle is an awesome town, and even my little suburb is really fine, totally fine, but Bainbridge has the trifecta: a yarn shop, a fabric shop and an independent bookstore all in the space of a block. I felt it was my civic duty to give each of them some of my dollars.

There a some lovely stripes up there, perfect for one side of an Emmeline that I am determined to make for myself come January. Also a beautiful book that I picked up simply becasue that is one of my favorite paintings ever on the cover, and then the lady at the bookshop said she loved it and practically promised that I would too. And lastly a really gorgeous skein of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted in Devon. Gorgeous and quite hardy: I've already knitted it up into a soft and cuddly cowl that was completely, unacceptably, too ridiculously large and then ripped it out again. It's ready to be knit up again, but yeah, I should probably wait until January on that one too. I guess the book may also wait--why not? What better way will there be to start 2009 than with a lovely threesome in pretty shades of blue?

View from not-so-close-to-the-top

This is the view from my office window. Or rather, the view from my cubicle IF my back weren't toward the window AND there wasn't a weird grey divider between my desk and the narrow slice of window it's next to. I can just squeeze through the gap between the divider and the wall to get to the window and snap a photo on a sunny day. That weird little space--it's about 4 square feet of nothing--was Ben's clubhouse for a couple of days at the end of the summer when summer camp was over and there was no alternative care. He sat in there and drew dogs and owls and elaborate doors with security systems and keypads and personal identification codes and old-fashioned keys cut from office paper. It was kind of crazy, but he was very quiet, and we loved getting to go to lunch together.

Today was sunny and beautiful, and the view of Mt. Baker was pretty spectacular, even though my camera's not really capable of caturing something so far off. Tomorrow it's supposed to rain again, so I thought I'd seize the moment. You can see some of the construction going on downtown--that's just one of the sites we can see from our pod--there are at least three or four more visible from our windows. The low buildings there in the front are the bus station and a little church. I can't imagine that those short, short buildings are going to be there for too much longer, but I'm hoping that whatever replaces them isn't so tall that I can no longer see the leaves changing down at the street level. Also, that lone Japanese maple right in the middle of the frame, I'd be really sad to lose my view of that. It's so odd and incongruous to have one beautiful tree growing in a pot on a rooftop, especially in the middle of such a green city, nestled amidst the mountains and the water and the forest, but it's pretty all the same.  

Things that are boring to watch

• hair growing
• golf
• other people typing
• that airplane/map thingy on the back of the seat in front of you that verifies that your ridiculously not-to-scale plane is indeed moving but you still haven't even made it as far as Boise, Idaho
• eight inches of 2 x 2 ribbing in navy blue yarn

 
Note: this photo is in no way representative of the yarn's actual blue-black color, but what can you do?

Friday morning, 9 a.m.

Today, instead of going out for lunch, I went out for donuts. Plain cake, dipped in a latté. Please no frosting, no sprinkles, no nuts, no coconut. Just the cake. And the coffee. Perfect.

Ahhhhh...

What I did on my summer vacation:

• got an honest-to-god tan, even on my legs
• had an unholy reunion with some Hoosier bug that was so excited to see me again, it tried to eat me alive (No lie: I've inventoried more than 40 itchy bites on my arms, legs, hands and
  feet.)
• finished two novels: Cold Comfort Farm, which I'd been working away on for a week or two already, and Widdershins, which I devoured in just a few days
• knit an entire sweater (pictures to come as soon as I reblock... and relocate the perfect button that I know is in my craft room somewhere)
• hennaed my hair--the grey is gone!
• took only about 20 pictures, mostly of the gangly heron above who let me get amazingly close
• completely ignored my email and Bloglines, except for taking a few turns at my Scrabulous game
• drank tremendous quantities of wine
• ate as much sweet corn and as many truly ripe tomatoes as I could hold
• hardly any laundry, dishes or cooking

It was divine. I feel so fresh and new and glad to be home. There's heaps of stuff on my to-do list, but that feels OK. I'm ready.