Dear kids who went into my mom’s yard and smashed her bird feeders and bird houses,
Fuck you.
Seriously, fuck you. What the hell is wrong with you? How can you, at that age, have so much unchecked anger and lack of sense that you can do something like that? And apparently you went around town smashing mailboxes and other things. fucking miscreants.
So, the theory is that you are student at the school where my mom is a teacher. Are you doing this for revenge? Do you think that you were treated unfairly and now, in the cover of dark you step forward using baseball bats to smash small items. You are too cowardly to do anything else but sneak around at night smashing things.
Were you trying to hurt my mother? Well, was the collateral damage worth it? All those birds losing their homes and food dispensers. More importantly, you didn’t know that those weren’t my mother’s bird houses and feeders. They were her father’s. He put those up so he could watch the birds. He put a lot of work into finding the right foods and houses to attract certain birds. He had a field guide to birds and he would watch and identify them. Some of those bird houses were gifts to him, his friends understood what it meant.
You think you are so important, that you are the centers of some angry universe, that you alone are the arbiters of your own twisted revenge. You are not. You are children unable to see beyond the invisible borders of your tiny shit town. You are pitiful and wasted.
Monthly Archives: April 2007
a number of open letters
I’m in the mood for open letters again!
Dear Julie,
Remember talking about opening a crochet only store? Yeah, I want to be your partner. We’ll shove a couple of racks of knit patterns over in the corner and not take time to organize them or keep them neat. We’ll carry all the cool crochet tools of the trade. We’ll offer up help to any crocheter who needs it and stare blankly at knitters with questions. Hell, we’ll even tell knitters that what they are doing is so much easier in crochet and leave it at that. Seems fair.
Dear Needlework Unlimited,
I’m done, you suck. Yesterday, as I was looking through your crochet books an employee approached me asking if I needed any help. I thanked her and told her I was just looking at the books. The following conversation ensued:
“but you’re looking at the crochet books.”
“I know”
“The knitting books are over here”
“I know, I crochet.”
BUT YOU’RE LOOKING AT THE CROCHET BOOKS!!! How lovely! With my public school education I would not have known that the book in my hand had the word “crochet” in it. Thank you for warning me! What would I have done if I had wasted all of 3.7 minutes of my life on your paltry crochet book and pattern selection???? You know, there should not be a rivalry between knitters and crocheters, but bullshit like this makes it happen.
Dear publishers of crochet books,
there is a portion of the population that is interested in more than “easy crochet” “quick and easy crochet” “simple crochet” “super easy 30 minute crochet projects” and “teach yourself to crochet!”
Also, we are interested in something other than “advanced crochet patterns for people who like to wear ugly things” and “wacky crochet things you would never make for their eternal pointlessness”. I’m just saying is all.
Dear lady at 3 Kittens yarn shop,
I will admit that I was at the end of my short rope after having spent so much time in the snide pits of Needlework Unlimited, but, dammit, what the hell was up with your comments? I asked you to recommend a yarn to complement the yarn I had for a project, I explained what I was making with it and what I needed. You said, “you know, you use less yarn when you knit than when you crochet.” Yeah, I know that. I also know that crochet goes faster. I also know that it’s 1000 times cheaper and less time consuming to just buy a fucking sweater from the store and be done with it, but that’s not really the point. Again, you are exacerbating a rivalry where there should be none.
Dear April,
I need you to help me with a couple projects. When you are not busy, can you call me?
Dear Readers,
Thank you for your patience as I rant. I will soon get photos of my marvelous hoodie posted. I am currently making the funnest chenille jacket on the planet and then I have 2 more sweaters I am going to start and finish as well as a crochet project bag, amigurumi dolls, a bunny costume for a baby, and a hoodie for my sister. ahoy!
lucky
super happy lucky!
It’s occured to me that I am incredibly lucky that Anna does not have the ability or know-how to get the phone messages that I leave for her off of the phone and onto the internet. She’d have some great blackmail material there, including the little somg I made up last night about pooping.
So, Anna, cheers to your lack of techie geek ability.
I’m also very lucky to have not only reached my goal multiple times over in my fundraising efforts for the Humane Society’s Walk for Animals but to have gotten over $1200 with almost no prodding at all. If you would like to donate just follow the link. It’s safe and easy and germ free.
I even got a donation from somebody I don’t know. Thank you, Jim! I don’t know who you are, but you have my deepest thanks!
Next year I am going to try to wrangle my fellow dog park buddies into making a little fundraising team. Might be fun, who knows.
I am unlucky in that I have to be at the vet’s on the other side of town at 8am on Saturday because Chester has a persistent cough and is not feeling well. Poor little guy, i just know he’s going to vomit all over the place. damn.
It’s beautiful and lovely and fun and I’m pop-topping
An open letter
Dear Mr Matheson,
I’m sure you don’t remember me, I was in your algebra class back in the late 80’s. I would describe myself as that weird, shy, socially awkward kid but that would describe most of us. Algebra always confused me, i was terrible at it. I went to you one day after class because I was not understanding something you had taught that day. It was early on in the school year and the concepts were fairly new. You told me that if I had been paying attention I would have understood what you were talking about.
Thing is, I was paying attention. You made it my fault, it couldn’t possibly be that you were too old and set in your ways to actually know that some people would be confused by your cryptic descriptions. You were too grumpy to see that sometimes these things aren’t obvious to kids. You were way too much of a fuck to help someone who came to you and asked for help even though it was your job. You get paid to teach, you do not get paid to funnel the contents of your brain onto a chalkboard and the fact that you don’t know the difference between the two means you are not teaching.
You made me cry in frustration that day and I gave up. I believed you. I believed it was my fault for not understanding. You looked at me like I was a fuck up who didn’t care and instead of me realizing how wrong your logic was, fuck ups don’t stay after class and ask for help, I believed you.
And I failed algebra. I ended up taking “everyday math” since I would never be smart enough to learn algebra.
Then this weekend I was crocheting a sweater but I had to make it bigger than the pattern called for. I sat down with the calculator and I determined certain values and made the appropriate multiplications and divisions where necessary. I was able to plug those values into other equations and get stitch counts and row numbers. The thing is, it worked perfectly. Last night, when I pieced the sweater together, every fucking part of it lined up perfectly. All of the seams just laid there begging to be sewn together. When I tried it on, it totally fit. I increased the width of the sweater, shortened the body, did my decreases and raglan caps and armholes based on the figures I had calculated. And it worked.
And technically, it was the algebra. I figured it out. It wasn’t that I was a fuck up or that I wasn’t paying attention, it was that you were too damned lazy to take the time to teach me and now, 19 years later, i taught myself. I think you owe me part of your salary.
But you probably already spent it on cheap Farah slacks and cotton poly blend short sleeve shirts.
asshole.
God bless domestic bliss
I’ve spent the weekend doing laundry and it’s pretty damned sad when you get a little giddy at the prospect of every damned thing you own being clean (including your fat pants AND that pile of blankets you never wash because there’ no real need for them right away).