I think the laptop did completely and thoroughly die. This time, the hard drive should be fine, it’s just everything else that does not want to work.
I accept this (mostly). It’s almost 5 years old and in that time it has accumulated more abuse than a …oh I don’t know…Thai hooker? feedlot cow? unpopular opinion? So I’m not surprised it died, just really really pissed and mostly I am pissed because i have emotional issues and poor anger management skills…or something.
Anyway, pie.
also, i am trying to decide if it is awesome or retarded that i made a yarn color based on emperor penguins watching the aurora australis while protecting their eggs. awesomely retarded? retardedly awesome?
also, I am leaving for Missouri on Wednesday. This fills me with insanely unhealthy amounts of anxiety, but i will have my dogs with me so i guess it will be okay.
I wonder is you can make a legitimate sandwich with 2 slices of banana cream pie and a slice of blueberry pie?

One of the features in the Ravelry forum area is that anyone can make a group about anything and anyone can join any group they want. Of course this sometimes leads to “BUT SHE MADE A GROUP ABOUT HOW STUPID I AM!!!” or some such nonsense, but that’s not the point. The point is that after much time threatening to shove people and their mothers into my pants when among the general population it was suggested that perhaps I should make my own group and shove people into my pants from there.
And so I did. And the group is “Bubbo’s Pants”. Everyone in the group is in my pants. There are few rules to the group. We don’t have topical or thematic constraints. You can discuss anything and not have to tie it back to a central theme (though tying things back into my pants is pretty awesome).
I have been very lucky with the members of the group. We keep the anger and the infighting to a minimum. There is snark, but not malevolent snark. It is a group of smart, kind, fun and witty people who come together to talk, to play and to be supportive. They are even amenable to my occasional push to try to be nice to people (something I’ve had to work on lately).
My trip to Chicago was intended to let me have some time away from my troubles and to give me the opportunity to meet some of my pantsters for real. As excited as I was to meet them, they had secret plans for when they met me!
When they first heard of my troubles they got together and formed a secret group. They were concerned about my well being and they wanted to help. So they secretly and not-so-secretly gathered information on stuff that I liked. They even managed to contact David to get some suggestions. And soon little gifts started showing up. Pink sparkly things, chocolate, yarn, hippos, glitter and letters, some of the kindest letters I’d ever read started to show up. On more than one occasion I was brought to tears by the concern and kindness of these people I had never met.
And I go to Chicago and I stay with Lisa and her family. She is one of my pantsters, another example of sweet charity and support. She just invited me into her home with her children and husband and accepted me as friend with no questions asked.
Saturday morning in Chicago I woke up to an ansty dog in the kitchen. Poor Crede the giant St Bernard had been sick in the night and made a semi-solid advertisement to that fact on the floor. Still not feeling well, he very much wanted to go out. So, I saddled up and took the monster out and he finished up the rest of the mess in the yard. I found some beer cans from the night before and marked the spots since they would have to be cleaned up before the kids hit the yard, but were well beyond the power of a plastic bag and prayer.
Back inside I assessed the situation and managed to find paper towels and cleaning supplies and set to work. The family was still sleeping and I could have left it there for one of them to clean, but that’s so wrong. No one wants to wake up to that kind of mess, not on a morning when things are going to be very busy anyway. Cleaned and anti-bacterialed to death, I washed myself and started some coffee so that it would be ready when they awoke.
After much prep, shuffling, moving, reshuffling and packing, Lisa, Fiona and I were headed to Schaumburg for Stitches! We made quick stops for coffee and at O’Hare to pick up another pantster. We met our fourth pantster at the hotel and headed up to the room to celebrate the sheer pantsness of it all and to dump our luggage. Then I was ambushed as i came out of the bathroom.
I was told to sit in a chair facing them. Though I was hoping for a pants related lapdance, I got something much better. Beyond the gifts I had received already, there had been more gift collecting! More pink sparkly things, barrettes, a tiara that perfectly matched the purple in my hair (by all magic coincidence!), origami, light up flip flops and more notes of love and encouragement.
There is a tradition in crafting groups regarding members that need support. The members of the group each craft a square, in this case they knit or crochet the squares, the squares are sent to a central member and that member stitches them together to form an afghan. The Pratchghan is one very famous afghan made by Ravelry members and presented to Terry Pratchett. As you can see by looking at it, with every square made by a different person, it ends up forming a beautiful and unique end product.
My pansters did this for me. They made squares, each one different, and they made them into a Pantsghan for me. To say I wept when I was presented with this gift would be an understatement. In some ways it is very hard to describe what it means to me. This isn’t just a single blanket. This blanket is made up of squares and those squares were crafted by so many different people. Each one of those people sat down and chose to make something specifically for ME so that I might feel comforted. Each person, wanting very much for me to feel better, poured their concern into a project that would become part of a greater whole.
This blanket is not the sum of its parts. This blanket is so very much more than that. Trouble shared is trouble divided, love shared is love multiplied.
I have since been invited to the secret group and I got to read through the process of organizing this feat.
It is a truly humbling experience to read such messages. I want to argue with them, tell them that I do not deserve such attentions, that they each have more important issues that need their help. But who am I to argue with them? I do not pick fools for friends. These women are each smart and independent. I trust them with so much, to argue them down from this would be to say that I do not trust their judgments r their choices, that I somehow know better than they do what is important.
It is overwhelming and humbling and gratifying to know that people I’d not ever met had put forth so much effort for me. ‘Thank you’ seems inadequate for the situation, but it is all I have.
My pantsghan is not folded up and hidden away. It is not being preserved. It is being put to work providing comfort for me (and the dogs!). It lives on the bed for the moment, the perfect size to cover me and a dog. When I am not in bed the dogs fluff it into a cozy and nap in the middle. Much love went into making this blanket and much more love is being derived from it.
To all my Pantsters, I say thank you. Thank you for not letting me get lost, thank you for giving to me and thank you for being the best damned group of people anyone could hope to find in their pants.

This past weekend I headed off to Chicago for the Stitches Midwest yarn and fiber orgy and to meet up with Ravsters, especially my pantsters.
Highlights from the drive down:

• Got all retarded on the directions to Stevens Point and missed out on Lunch with Squiddy and the Squidlets. Let’s be clear here when I say ‘retarded’, I mean that if there were special ed courses about reading directions carefully BEFORE GETTING ON THE ROAD and not just assuming you know what you’re doing, I would fail those classes.
• tried to save a stray dog. Best I could do was feed him, he wouldn’t let me touch him
• Um, when did the Illinois tolls change from amusing ($.40) to uninvited rectal spelunking?
• ha ha ha oh Chicago traffic! How predictable you are

I finally made it to Lisa’s about 2 hours later than I expected. Her duplex neighbor was outside and when I inquired about finding Lisa she walked me to a different building with a different address despite my protestations. I had to call Lisa and tell her I’d been shoved into the wrong building by some pushy ditz with emotional problems.
Issues worked out, I met up with Lisa and made it to her place. I met 1. the cutest baby girl ever 2. the most fascinating 3 year old i’ve ever talked to 3. the nicest husband dude 4. biggest dog!
Dinner, play with kids, go to sleep, pass out.
The next (Friday) morning I got a whole new respect for parenting. This is not to say I had not previously respected the art of parenting, but, you know, you kind of forget. I hauled everyone out to Wishbone, the awesomest restaurant on the planet. You don’t just skitter on over for a bite to eat when there are 2 little kids involved. There’s a lot of organizing and planning and discussing empty cicada shells and taxis and running in the rain. I carried Fiona, the 14 month old, because I felt it was my duty since I had insisted we go (also, I love love love carrying the babies. seriously, my ovaries were popping left and right this weekend). I immediately started forming a very strong muscle in my forearm near my elbow.
The thing about kids is that they are awesomely unpredictable. Who knows if they are going to find the food awesome or as appealing as tax forms. Also, they have their own ideas about what is interesting. Sitting quietly is rarely on that list (and for good reason!). So, kids move and wiggle and don’t want mac and cheese but do want bacon and they don’t want you to feed them they want to feed themselves (specifically, they want to feed crayons to themselves, also, part of ‘feeding themselves’ includes feeding the floor). Because this is such an uncommon occurrence in my life I just reveled in it.
We cabbed it back and decided to take naps and boom, out for 3 hours! Kids are exhausting! Unlike dogs, they only take one nap a day as opposed to the day BEING a nap with the occasional moments of being alert.
The neighbors came over, John made ribs on the grill, and then I locked everyone out of the house.
Yeah, I locked everyone out of the house, but in my defense, I did not know that the lock was engaged! The day was saved by a lanky 14 year old! Hooray! Then it was back to ribs and pasta salad and wine and trying to get the kids to eat something they like and making sure they didn’t eat crazy stuff like rocks. Then we all got plopsios (popsicles for the uninformed!). At some point in the evening the low doses of meds finally got to me and things got to be too much. John and Lisa were very gracious about this and were not offended that I chose to eat dinner away from the back yard party.
Then more playing with the kids and threats regarding the kidnapping of me and keeping me in the basement so that I might always be available to entertain the kids. Very ‘Silence of the Lambs’. I was tempted to let it happen since it’s been a while since I got the hose
It makes the children laugh ’til ten or else it gets the hose again!
ah, but then it was bed time.
Next up: I am humbled to the core and I buy lots of stuff!

Let me get this rant out of the way, then I’ll say happy things
I lost my insurance last month. Today I went to go pick up my prescriptions for the first time sans insurance. Awesome. $670 for one month. ONE MONTH!! $670!!! Fuck me.
I had to fucking order my prescriptions from Canada. Approximately 3 months of prescriptions costs me $450.
It is a disgrace, an utter shameful disgrace for this nation that all it takes is one small stumble in one’s life and they’re done for. I’m goddammed lucky, David and I have a lot of money in savings and we don’t have kids. There’s be no way we could afford this otherwise. I have to go to a different fucking country to get the medication I need? I live in one of the wealthiest nations on the planet! I live in a nation with such a GLUT of resources that more gets thrown out than consumed in any one day and yet for me to survive I have to buy medicine from a different country?
It’s immoral and it is sick and it is an outrage that this happens.
I come from a looooong line of social liberal Norwegians who FIRMLY believed that a society is only as strong as its weakest members. So long as people were poorly educated and had little to no access to healthcare then so would your society be stupid and sick.
As per usual it is so much easier to judge than to listen, so much easier to dismiss rather than learn. I fear that we as a society will never shake that Puritanical ethos that your lot in life is a direct reflection of your righteousness. It allows us to skip any responsibility towards our fellow man. “Why should we help the disadvantaged? It’s their fault. Shouldn’t I get to enjoy the benefits of my righteousness?” And no longer are we a society, we are just a dogpile of opportunists climbing over one another. hey, if I’d wanted to get to the top i wouldn’t have stumbled, would I?
It’s so frustrating to think of how easy it is for one event to completely ruin your life and there is NO SAFETY NET. There is nothing to stop a freefall. I’ve said it for years and I repeat it more often than a broken record, but as a nation we should be ashamed of ourselves. People TALK about wanting to help but when it comes to taxes, to funding that safety net that can make all of society stronger, they balk and start talking about personal responsibility and pulling yourself up by the proverbial bootstraps. Well, you know what? Some people can’t even afford the fucking boots, how are they going to pull themselves up from that?
okay, rant over. I’m angry for my situation but it is ameliorated because I know that we will get by one way or another. I know how lucky I am. I am angrier for those people who do not have access to the resources I have. Those people who were already fighting to make their paychecks last until the next, those people unable to save any extra money because there was no extra money to save. People with kids who cannot afford to work because daycare costs more than their gross pay. People who go without the medication they need because they cannot even afford Canadian prices. I’m already low-dosing myself, hoping to make the pills I have last until the ones from Canada arrive, but I don’t think I can stretch my next 5 doses into 7-10 days. The irony of course is that these meds are keeping out of the hospital, except if I stop taking them it won’t matter, I can’t afford the hospital.
ON TO HAPPY THINGS!!!!
Thursday I leave for Chicago for the Stitches Midwest yarnstravaganza!!! There will be an awesome meeting of the Pants! We even have a hotel room and everything. Hooray for drunken pantsters!!!
Also, I will be meeting people who know me through my advice column on Ravelry. I’m very excited (and nervous and scared) to meet so many new people.
Also a great big Happy Happy HAPPY Birthday to my sister April!! YAY YAY YAY welcome to 35! I’ve been keeping a seat warm for you! April has been such a strong link in my support system these last 6 weeks. I repaid her thoughtfulness and kindness by forgetting her birthday. I admit it, I suck. BUT! I am making it up to her and I want all of you to wish her a happy birthday as well!
ALSO ALSO ALSO! My pantsters (seriously, I’m sorry is you don’t know who the pantsters are, they are the awesomest people ever) worked together and they sent me care packages and love packages and reminders that though I am in a dark place now, they are still there to help me. I have been left in tears, speechless over the kindness of their words and thoughts.
It’s hard for me, I am never good at accepting true kindness. I often feel I am not worthy of the sentiments or energy since there are people who need it more than I do. But I’ve learned to just believe it is there and it is true and it is real. I am lucky to know such people.