Monthly Archives: October 2007

yeah…why not

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“Things I Hate” is back again, earlier than expected. Today I am going to step off the Noble Eightfold Path and romp in the brambles and stinkweed of the not-so-noble big asshole path.

  • Casey Affleck’s voice. I’m listening to an interview with him right now. I want to put him in a room with John Mayer and they can discuss life without testicles.
  • News burnout. Every morning the Iraqis blow themselves up, Musharraf straightens a crease from his jacket and we say ‘oh, how civillized’, Putin sinks deeper and deeper into fantastical spy novel behavior and bumps off his detractors with defenestration and polonium 210, the Palestinians struggle against the entire planet to get their country back and they will never succeed because you cannot win against the entire planet. It wears me out. It is exhausting to listen to the news, to hear about what is happening and and know there is nothing that can be done. The Israelis will continue to poke the Palestinians for their own amusement, Putin will even crazier ways to kill people and say “what? me? no way! I am crazy for awesomeness!”, Musharraf will play ‘democratic election’ out of one side of his mouth and ‘military coup’ out the other and Iraq will continue to explode 40 people at a time.
    And all the while, the soil of Darfur will continue to absorb blood in the same disinterested way it always has. That doesn’t even hit the morning news that often, it doesn’t really affect our economy so there’s not much interest.
  • The idea that ‘fair’ and ‘justice’ are pretty much just made up concepts and their definitions can change from nation to nation, person to person, minute to minute. There is no math in ‘fair’ and you cannot calculate ‘justice’. They are not universal. I hate that.
  • Social Anxiety.
  • Forgetting my carrots at home and not being able to have them for lunch.
  • Having to work on the days that are the most perfect days for the dog park
  • that I don’t live in the bizarro universe of high powered CEOs. If I make a huge mistake at work that will cost the company millions of dollars I will get fired and would probably never work again. In bizarro big money universe a CEO can grossly miscalculate the subprime mortgage market, screw his company and retire and live on lollipop island. An Island funded by a gigantic multimillion dollar golden parachute.
    and while I am on the subject, let me never ever hear that a large corporation (Wal-mart) can’t pay their employees more or provide benefits or humane working environments because spending that money would make them less competitive. I don’t want to hear that so long as the people on the top are making such obscene salaries. you live in an 8 million room super moon house? you can’t afford to have your products produced by people making a living wage? hmmmmmm you can have polo shirts constructed by uneducated vietnamese orphans for about $1.50 a unit and you can sell them for $37 each? but you can’t pay the kids more because….why? you need more space toilets in your house? Man, entire fucking nations need to unionize because so long as there is a glut of poverty stricken, uneducated people willing to work for 12 cents a day and a sheet of scratch and sniff stickers, companies are going to continue these practices (and say “oh look at how good we are! we brought 12 cents and some stickers to this previously impoverished neighborhood! it doesn’t matter that if one gets sick or injured they are just fired and replaced! Americans need their $37 shirts!”).
  • Ghengis is dead

Three Years!

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When David and I first got together there were betting pools on how long it would last. It’s not that they questioned him, they knew he was a good guy. Really, they had no faith in me. I don’t blame them (not a lot anyway), the summer before I met David was…busy. I wasn’t interested in committing to anyone for any reason. After just ending a 10 1/2 year marriage/15 year relationship, I was pretty certain that it would be best for me to not get attached.
But who am I to be certain about these things?
David’s awesome! He’s kind and smart and sweet and he can lift me up so I can touch the ceiling (but not often!). Of course I spent the first year wondering what the hell he saw in me, a spastic weeble with poor housekeeping skills and a seemingly bottomless capacity to make poor decisions.
I’ve learned to accept and not question. I’ve learned that he stays with me because he wants to stay. It doesn’t matter what I know or understand.

the desperate joy

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The dog park was packed and has been for a couple weeks now. The evenings are getting shorter and shorter and the temps are dropping. We are reminded that even the paradise of the dog park is subject to the harsh ministrations of winter.
The dogs can sense it as well.
Time is running short. Soon the park will be frozen, snow packed down to slick ice, suitable for only the most tenacious of dogs and their psychotic owners.
The dogs gathered in packs and ran. The packs are constant, mercurial, almost ephemeral. No single group maintains cohesion for more than a few minutes. One pack, a number of terriers ganging up on a surprisingly sprightly Irish Wolfhound, lasts only until it collides with the barking mass of border collies and cattledogs all trying to herd one another. The packs mingle briefly and break apart and the border collies are herding the wolfhound, the terriers and cattledogs spin out of control. Dogs run the fringes looking for like minded buddies. Boxers lover to chase and wrestle one another, they prefer to be equally matched. The retrievers desperately look for something to chase and the whippets are happy to oblige.
Asses and faces are sniffed, demeanors calculated. Chester knows the dogs that he wants to chase him. Black and white spaniels seems to be the best. Perhaps he knows they are fast enough and interested enough to chase him without ever becoming aggressive. He loves to be chased, but not hunted. If he can’t find a suitable partner he’ll go find Maddie. Oblivious to the chaos around her, Maddie is often found snuffling, marking and drooling. Over and over, she snuffles, marks, drools. She knows the other dogs are there. She does not care. From a distance, Chester will spy her and freight train his dense little body into her. Bugging her until she is well and truly irritated, he takes off with her in pursuit. They are well matched, chasing, wrestling, knocking each other around. Chester knows that Maddie will never actually harm him and off they go.
Other dogs see the chase and again, packs are dispersed and reformed with little thought. The occasional fight breaks out, the dogs are separated and moved to different areas and the bassets continue their constant play by play commentary to anyone who will listen.
The sun sets early. At 7pm dusk is on us, Maddie’s failing eyesight is even more apparent as she loses the ability to distinguish shapes and she relies on her nose and ears to find me. At 7pm, the dusk reminds us that we are on borrowed time, that the 8pm treks to the dogpark in June are gone. We hold on as long as we can, letting the dogs chase each other one more time.
We can all feel it coming to an end, like fighting a strong wind we puts our backs up against it and for a minute we can pretend it’s summer for a few minutes.

my head asplode!

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I’m still working on my shawl/wrap pattern. I’d say I’m 85% figured out at this point. It’s a little tedious. Get idea, crochet swatch, see what doesn’t what’s in your head, figure out why, get idea to fix that, crochet swatch, see what doesn’t match what’s in your head, figure out way.
Rather, rinse, repeat.
You get started on something and you think it’s going to be so easy, “oh, yeah, I just have to do this!” then you realize you hadn’t thought about the relationship of one kind of stitch to another. Then you realize that direction is way more important that you would have expected. Oh, and drape! You get going along and it feels more like a heavy scarf than a light wrap. Frog, pick a new hook, take notes. Start over. Pick a new yarn, frog, start over.
Julie has volunteered to be a tester. This means that I need to write directions in a straightforward and coherent manner. It also means that the directions can’t just be a series of notes that only make sense to me. The awesome thing about having a tester work your pattern is that you get real feedback about the instructions. The thing that sucks is that I can’t just throw out some unknown technique that I made up on the fly to make smooth edges or to hide an inherent flaw in the design. I have to actually come up with answers for the bumpy edges (mmmmbeaded eadging) and I have to fix that flaw.
This whole process has made me really appreciate designers even more. This is why I have to pay for the good designs! You get so used to finding free designs online that you are prone to act the brat when you see something you like and discover you have to pay for it. A lot of work goes into designing a pattern!
All of this work on this pattern has meant that my other projects are taking a back seat. It also means I’ve not updated ravelry lately or taken photos. Oh well. It will get there!