Things That Kept Me Up Last Night
1. The Sixth Grade Social
In just a little over a week my Eldest will be graduating from 6th grade and heading off to Junior High. He is ready. Beyond ready. Next year he will have a locker and there will be clubs to join and new kids to meet and "decent computers in the lab" and he can not wait. The school district sponsored a gathering of incoming 7th graders last night, and we were running a bit late. As we speed walked through the rain (oh yes, it's raining again) towards the school gym he was careful to walk about 5' in front of me and talked to me without turning his head while using as few syllables as possible. I presume that he did this so that if another 12 year old saw us coming toward the building they wouldn't necessarily think that he and I were, you know, TOGETHER. Just as we got to the door he collapsed his umbrella and handed it to me. "Here," he said, "I don't want to carry this."
This might have been because he didn't want to lug a wet umbrella around with him, but the fact that the umbrella in question has a ducky head handle probably factored in.
He ditched me as soon as his ticket was paid for, and as I walked off to the parent's meeting in the gym (where we heard about all the many, many ways the teachers and administration try to ease the transition for our kids and I was once again favorably impressed by the ease and authority with which the principal conducts an assembly of several hundred parents in varying states of panic about the upcoming changes in their kids' lives) I peeked into the darkened gym, where green and red lights were flashing and a crush of kids was milling about in time to some very loud music.
It's a brave new world.
2) I wanted to get the socks done for my friend's little girl.
By 9P I had just the cast sock to finish, so I knit and knit and watched t.v. and went into a stockinette-induced trance and knit and knit and when I looked up it was midnight and the thing was 10" long. I decided to wait until this morning before creating the toe, so that I could try the thing on over the Young'un's shod foot, which is sort of cast-like in its blockiness.
It was a good thing I did. My friend Kathleen had tried to convince me that the best thing to do was knit what amounted to a small hat -- just something to cover the open toe of the cast -- leaving the heel free for traction. But dadgumit, I had this tube sock thing in mind and that was what I was going to knit (I am stubborn like this. Ask Lucia to tell you the story about how she tried to teach me to knit socks toe up, or at least use a tubular cast-on for 1x1 ribbing. Test of a friendship, right there.).
Anyway, I tried to get the thing on the boy's foot this morning, and it just wasn't working. Too tight over the heel, too fussy, too short in the back (no heel, duh). So I ripped back several inches and did what Kathleen recommended in the first place.
pattern: generic hat shape/generic sock
yarn: Marks & Kattens ClownI'd like to say that I'll do a better job of taking good advice the next time it's offered, but would also like to remind you that I am 43 and old habits die hard.
3) You are not going to believe this one.
So there I was knitting away on the cast sock, when I noticed that Hamster had come out for her evening constitutional. She looked sort of bored, so I got her out of the cage and put her into her plastic ball for a change of scenery. She rolled around the family room for a while, but then got herself stuck in a corner. After several minutes of the ball hitting the wall every 10 seconds (thunk! ..... thunk! .... thunk!) B announced that the Hamster wanted out of her ball and handed her to me. I wasn't ready to put her back yet, though, so I put her in my lap while I knit. She investigated the sock, sniffed the needle, groomed her whiskers, then ran up to my shoulder, where she perched and surveyed the room. After a few minutes I realized that I couldn't feel her up there any more.
I looked in the chair. No hamster.
Behind the back cushion. No hamster.
Under the chair. No hamster.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
B and I leapt into action, closing doors and looking under the furniture. It was a good five minutes before I thought to check under the seat cushion of the chair I had been sitting in.
There she was. Wedged in between the tight chair back and the seat, with her feet splayed out to the side:
She looked like a very, very small bearskin rug.
I screamed and fished her out. She didn't move for a few seconds and I stared at her, horrified, wondering how on earth I was going to tell the children that I suffocated their new hamster by sitting on her. Thankfully she revived shortly thereafter, but the end result was that I was up until 1:30A because every time she disappeared into her hamster house (you better believe that after she perked up I put her back in her cage lickety-split) I had to tap on the walls of the aquarium and shout until she came out to see what all the ruckus was about. We want no more hamster funerals around here for a while.
and, last but not least ....
4) Did I mention that it's raining again?
Has been for the last two days.
How do you like my fancy dancy Basement Drainage System?
In just a little over a week my Eldest will be graduating from 6th grade and heading off to Junior High. He is ready. Beyond ready. Next year he will have a locker and there will be clubs to join and new kids to meet and "decent computers in the lab" and he can not wait. The school district sponsored a gathering of incoming 7th graders last night, and we were running a bit late. As we speed walked through the rain (oh yes, it's raining again) towards the school gym he was careful to walk about 5' in front of me and talked to me without turning his head while using as few syllables as possible. I presume that he did this so that if another 12 year old saw us coming toward the building they wouldn't necessarily think that he and I were, you know, TOGETHER. Just as we got to the door he collapsed his umbrella and handed it to me. "Here," he said, "I don't want to carry this."
This might have been because he didn't want to lug a wet umbrella around with him, but the fact that the umbrella in question has a ducky head handle probably factored in.
He ditched me as soon as his ticket was paid for, and as I walked off to the parent's meeting in the gym (where we heard about all the many, many ways the teachers and administration try to ease the transition for our kids and I was once again favorably impressed by the ease and authority with which the principal conducts an assembly of several hundred parents in varying states of panic about the upcoming changes in their kids' lives) I peeked into the darkened gym, where green and red lights were flashing and a crush of kids was milling about in time to some very loud music.
It's a brave new world.
2) I wanted to get the socks done for my friend's little girl.
By 9P I had just the cast sock to finish, so I knit and knit and watched t.v. and went into a stockinette-induced trance and knit and knit and when I looked up it was midnight and the thing was 10" long. I decided to wait until this morning before creating the toe, so that I could try the thing on over the Young'un's shod foot, which is sort of cast-like in its blockiness.
It was a good thing I did. My friend Kathleen had tried to convince me that the best thing to do was knit what amounted to a small hat -- just something to cover the open toe of the cast -- leaving the heel free for traction. But dadgumit, I had this tube sock thing in mind and that was what I was going to knit (I am stubborn like this. Ask Lucia to tell you the story about how she tried to teach me to knit socks toe up, or at least use a tubular cast-on for 1x1 ribbing. Test of a friendship, right there.).
Anyway, I tried to get the thing on the boy's foot this morning, and it just wasn't working. Too tight over the heel, too fussy, too short in the back (no heel, duh). So I ripped back several inches and did what Kathleen recommended in the first place.
pattern: generic hat shape/generic sock
yarn: Marks & Kattens ClownI'd like to say that I'll do a better job of taking good advice the next time it's offered, but would also like to remind you that I am 43 and old habits die hard.
3) You are not going to believe this one.
So there I was knitting away on the cast sock, when I noticed that Hamster had come out for her evening constitutional. She looked sort of bored, so I got her out of the cage and put her into her plastic ball for a change of scenery. She rolled around the family room for a while, but then got herself stuck in a corner. After several minutes of the ball hitting the wall every 10 seconds (thunk! ..... thunk! .... thunk!) B announced that the Hamster wanted out of her ball and handed her to me. I wasn't ready to put her back yet, though, so I put her in my lap while I knit. She investigated the sock, sniffed the needle, groomed her whiskers, then ran up to my shoulder, where she perched and surveyed the room. After a few minutes I realized that I couldn't feel her up there any more.
I looked in the chair. No hamster.
Behind the back cushion. No hamster.
Under the chair. No hamster.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
B and I leapt into action, closing doors and looking under the furniture. It was a good five minutes before I thought to check under the seat cushion of the chair I had been sitting in.
There she was. Wedged in between the tight chair back and the seat, with her feet splayed out to the side:
She looked like a very, very small bearskin rug.
I screamed and fished her out. She didn't move for a few seconds and I stared at her, horrified, wondering how on earth I was going to tell the children that I suffocated their new hamster by sitting on her. Thankfully she revived shortly thereafter, but the end result was that I was up until 1:30A because every time she disappeared into her hamster house (you better believe that after she perked up I put her back in her cage lickety-split) I had to tap on the walls of the aquarium and shout until she came out to see what all the ruckus was about. We want no more hamster funerals around here for a while.
and, last but not least ....
4) Did I mention that it's raining again?
Has been for the last two days.
How do you like my fancy dancy Basement Drainage System?
posted by Ruth at 2:12 PM
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