Candy in a Bucket

This is a sad story, so brace yourselves:

I am sitting at work, writing a blog. Well, okay, that isn't the sad part.

Once upon a time, Laura woke up all by herself at nine in the morning, without the traditional shock from sleep wrought by the alarm clock or parent nearest to her. She crawled out of bed, knowing that she would be Doing Something during her day. She would be shopping. Ready for fun, she dressed, cleaned her teeth, ate something, and made the traditional vain attempt at creating an attractive exterior for others to see (basically, poking at skin with varied cosmetic products to simulate the flush of life which some organisms lack and must artificially produce). She then recieved a phone call from her friend, Becky.

Becky exclaimed. "Come walk to Studio Jewelry with me so I can pick up my rings!"

Becky has joined the Dark Side--my single friends who have suddenly sold out to become coupled off in a semi-permanent way or married. Once we frolicked free from future plans, now Becky has a house, a fancy dress, and a tafeta-swaddled sausage of a bridesmaid named Laura. But being supportive of her friend's drastic lifestyle change, Laura got in her glass-filled car (long story) and drove to North Manchester. No Becky.

Becky, bless her, had gone about other business.

Alas! Laura sat and waited for her friend, assuming that an interview or meeting was taking place. Laura would not be a bother.

All the while, Laura continued to wait for the call from Jennifer or Shannon proclaiming the beginning of the shopping excursion planned for the day. Not expecting her friends to wake up before noon, Laura did not call anyone. Now she feels like an idiot and sits at her desk chair, waiting. Hours pass, perhaps days will soon turn to weeks. But Laura has a pathetic and miserable existence empty except for the brief glimpses of friendship at which she grasps. And rather than giving up hope and going back to sit in a cold, dark (light bulbs burned out) bedroom, she waits.

And as if to make the misery complete, Laura cannot even post this new blog, since for some reason, the Mac at her place of employment does not work and play well with others and therefore refuses to publish posts in anything other than gibberish.

So Laura waits with only a bucket of anonymous candy to console her...

A Day Without a Project

I finished a pair of socks last night, and though that may seem a cause for celebration in the world of project-knitters, for a process knitter miles and miles away from the nearest LYS, life has just become very bleak.

The problem is as follows: I am a poor college student and the only transportation I currently have is a van with no brakes. Yes, that's right, the universe has tried and failed to kill Laura yet again. I am beginning to become bored with the many chaos-inspired attempts at my life. I am no longer suprised at the near fatalities. So I won't bother with the brake story. It's boring to me.

But that means that I can't get to the Shuttle Shop (my Warsaw haven) unless I hitch hike or discover previously hidden car-repair talent. I am stuck.

Without a project.

What is a girl to do?

Many friends of mine could argue that it is finals week, and that might be a good time to put the knitting away and study for a while. I disagree. I took such agonizingly boring classes this semester that I could care less what happens grade-wise. Really. I don't even plan on checking the grades. I just have lost all drive to achieve. That may be an improvement over the misery I put myself through over the past years of my life, but I don't see it as a cause for celebration or for grief. Just the usual apathy.

I have a bundle of double-pointed kneedles in my hand, more in my room, and only tiny scraps of yarn to knit into...nothing.

And seeing the holidays come closer and closer, I no longer have an excuse to blow all my money on yarn. I need to be a good girl and spend my money on Christmas presents and car repair. That way Laura won't kiss glass at sixty miles an hour when her brakes fail, or when the bald tires skid over ice, or when whatever it is that sends billowing, acrid smoke out of the van's engine poisons her and leaves her stranded in the snow, her frozen, cyanotic corpse still open-mouthed, since her sinuses forced her to become a Mouth Breather.

Yarn is just too expensive for a college student to buy in large amounts. I can't just build up a massive stash and pull down a fun color or texture when I'm bored. I'm stuck. Mom doesn't complain, but I think she has a bad feeling that I will begin to delve into her cashmere supply and knit a pair (I used the same kind of yarn for a gray pair of socks for myself). I mean, what is she going to do with so much red? There isn't enough for a sweater, or for a matching scarf and gloves. But there is just enough for me to knit her socks. And there is nothing in the world like cashmere socks. I promise.

Life is bitter and lonely. I have no wool to comfort me, no crisp pattern freshly printed off the internet or carefully written down in line by line instructions. No opportunity to create another sock pattern (I make my own now) or use one of Nancy Bush's beautiful vintage sock patterns.

I try to console myself with images of another day, a day with new yarn freshly wound into a ball, but it is of no use. My needles and I are forced to use the remainder of the day as one of rest, wearing perhaps my lounging socks made of hand-dyed silk and cotton or the forest green socks in the shell pattern made to precisely match the turtleneck I bought at Elder Beerman for practically nothing. Perhaps I will bring out my first pair, made from wool spun with aloe so that it conditions my feet as I wear them or the most recent pair, made from the same yarn used to make the Weasley sweaters in the first Harry Potter movie (Rowan Tweed). Maybe I'll put on my favorite blend of colors: Rocktober by Blue Moon Fiber Arts, a wool I knitted into a knit three, purl one ribbing that gives it a stretchy feel.

But in my heart I know it will not be enough. I will have all the socks in my lap, wondering which I should take apart and re-knit so I can have something to do.

Ditch Mitch

I have a problem with Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana.

I know what you're thinking, "Laura, is there actually a polititian out there you don't have a problem with?" And I swear there are. I just haven't met one yet. But honestly, the problem I have with Mitch is personal.

The man tried to kill me.

Now, you might be thinking, "Yeah, way to go, Laura, throwing it all out of proportion again. What did the guy do, give you a splinter? Squeeze your hand to hard? Trip you with a poorly positioned campaign poster?" The answer is no. The actual event was much more direct. More tangible.

When dear old Mitch was running for office, he made the extravegant, gas-guzzling purchase of an RV, which he decorated with his catchphrase, "My Man Mitch," and painted in festive colors. He then toured the state, visiting each and every county. And on the day he drove through Wabash county, roaring down State Road 15 as he poured out Greenhouse gases, I was on my way home from church.

Everyone who knows me, or has read my blog knows the many complaints I have about my car.

We have a love-hate relationship, you see, we love to hate each other. When I do something nice for it, that action is reciprocated with a massive head-gasket blowout. Or worse. But the biggest complaint I have is that of the color.

Fill a glass with some water. Now walk outside. Stand on the asphalt nearest to your home. Now pour the water on the aspalt, taking care not to spill any on your clothing, shoes, or socks. Your skin will dry if moistened. Most medical experts agree that skin is waterproof.

The color that the asphalt has attained following the pouring of the water is the exact color of my car. The color of wet pavement. Now imagine a cloudy, stormy day. Are the colors not very similar, especially to the untrained eye? And can we not agree, that the nearest thing to an untrained eye in rural Indiana is any other driver on the road with you?

So, in short, my car blends in perfectly with the rain, the pavement, and the cloudy sky. This has almost resulted in my death several times. On the day that Your Man (he's not mine) Mitch was driving on State Road 15, it was cloudy. My car blended nicely with the clouds as I drove on State Road 15. Mitch and I were heading toward each other.

Now in a perfect world, Mitch and I would have passed each other. I would have thought, "Hey, would you look at that, they're still giving Republicans licenses to drive. Imagine that!" He would have thought, "What kind of an idiot doesn't buy stock in Big Oil and get themselves a new car with the profits?"

But this is not a perfect world.

So Mitch's driver was taking his half out of the middle of the road. The road I was driving on at that minute.

We grew closer. I began to be concerned. I had, since I do live in Indiana, no where to go. We have no shoulders on our country roads, just massive ditches guaranteed to make your call roll over faster than you can scream, "I never should have bought that SUV!" I decided to share a message with Mitch's driver. I began to wave my hands in a desperate gesture, directing the driver to move over in his lane. I even screamed for him to do so. I was certain he had still not seen the little tin can barrelling down the road toward him. I then honked my horn, continuing the wave and the verbal barrage.

Mitch took this to mean something different.

Perhaps his driver had told him about the crazy girl honking and waving as she screamed. Perhaps he thought, "wow, I couldn't do any better than having a voter as fired up as she is!" I don't know.

What I do know is that just as I began to lower my car into the ditch, slowing to a complete stop half in and half out of the chasm, Mitch Daniels stepped into the cockpit area of RV One. He smiled as my hazard lights, activated as a last effort to save my miserable life, glanced off the polished surface of his head. He waved and gave me a cheery thumbs-up as he whizzed by.

The air currents the RV displaced rocked my little car as I trembled in his wake.

Now let's talk science. The frame of his RV is positioned at least as high as a truck or SUV's, if not higher. I have a compact car that is shorter than anything I have ever parked next to, except for one bicycle at work last summer. The frame of my car would have fit neatly under that of his RV, shearing the top portion of my vehicle off along with my upper torso and head. This is a process I have dubbed "detorsification." Not only would I be killed in that action, I would also meet an unfortunate fate concerning my seat belts.

I have what one safety expert called, "suicide belts." The kind that automatically move across your chest when you sit in the car and close the door. In an accident, the belts in my particular car have been shown to snap like matchsticks or not bother to engage at all, resulting in the driver and passenger kissing glass at sixty miles an hour. Not the ideal Sunday lunch.

So, Mitch, honey. I really am sorry. But when you go on television and call for my support, encourage me to be physically fit (are you going to pay for that gym membership, buddy?) and tell me that hocking the toll road for a sweet chunk of change that would theoretically buy a lot of yarn but won't ever be used to fix the pock-marked, cratered road (SR 16) I live on, I have to say, I'll pass. Have fun down in Indy, but don't expect me to invite you back to stay. I have a no-tolerance policy for near fatal accidents/murders, and I don't usually give my support to people who have shown a conscious desire to see me dead.

Best foot forward

Nothing starts a semester off worse than being ill. More and more accumulates daily, forcing the student to overcompensate upon returning to class. It seems as if this fate often befalls me.

This semester, I missed over a week of classes after only being well enough to attend the first week in full. I missed all the logistical information, the last-minute assignments, the field trip information, the projects, the group work. Now I have too much to do and too little time in which to do it. The semester is drawing to a close and I could care less. I have done all the work I care to complete and that is it. I plan on being done. I'm taking Jan term off and not looking back. I don't care anymore.

And I have developed a singular attitude toward all this, one that may become hazardous to my GPA: "You can't make me!" I don't feel like studying, writing, or taking on gigantic projects single-handedly. Usually I force myself into action anyway, since I have nothing better to do. But one change has occurred since the Spring semester ended.

I began knitting, buying seasons of The X-Files and found a boy who didn't scream blue murder and claw at his eyes every time he saw me.

Of all those things, the one with the greatest impact on schoolwork-neglect ratios is the knitting. Certainly the most detrimental thing I ever could have done was pick up a knitting needle. Now instead of studiously examining texts, reading ahead, and making absolutely sure my grammar is perfect, I am turning heels, casting on, and weaving the toe closed. I am learning complicated patterns and shopping for yarn online all while pretending to write a paper.

And it doesn't just strike me at home! No, socks are PORTABLE knitting projects. That means that a person can easily find Miss Laura sitting through convo, a movie, or simply alone in the Lounge or the library while knitting faithfully at a project. Where once my friends saw me recline with a novel, now they find me with a new ball of yarn.

I shop the yarn sales, the discount bins, coming back with multi-colored strands of merino, smokey gray cashmere from Italy that exactly matches the color of my cat's fur, or a soft striping of gray, blue and green with aloe and jojobo oils in the strands, leaving your hands conditioned and soft as you knit, or your feet when you have completed the project.

I find hole-in-the-wall yarn stores born out of abandoned railway depots or in a strip of anonymous storefronts in Highland. I leave cradling bamboo kneedles, intricately carved buttons for the purse I plan to make over the winter.

Sleep becomes a thing of the past as I plan to work "just one more line" or turn the heel before curling into a wilted Laura puddle and sleeping away the cramps in my fingertips.

If the endless trips to yarn stores like Stich by Stitch in Highland, the Cass Street Depot in Fort Wayne, and, most importantly (because it is closest to me) the Shuttle Shop in Warsaw were not enough, I have discovered the glory of the knitting world ONLINE! There are a massive amount of websites dedicated to helping lonely knitters like me socialize, and before I knew it, I had found a soul mate in the person of another blogger: Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the Yarn Harlot, who knits and writes, just like me. Bless you, Stephanie! And will you teach me to spin?

I want a sheep now. A merino sheep. I will care for it, pet it, love it, and shear it, spinning and dying the fleece as I create my own individually crafted sock yarns. Don't tell me how absurd this is. I want one. I already have a sheep dog!

I have reached the point where I have created a photo album of the socks I have made, so thrilled by them that I plan on making them available for the world to see. I may be walking holes in them, but I can honestly know that their woolen souls will live on in blogging infamy for all time. Or at least until blogsource decides that this Idiot Girl is never coming back and wipes me from the internet as a whole. We'll see.

I Suck as a Blogger

Why?

For the same reason I suck as a human being. Too many people wanting too much from me in too short of a space of time. I would love to give you a sound and fascinating description of why I have not given you, oh glorious reader, something to pour over while pretending to work or study. But I don't have one.

In short, I have been writing, working, and home-work-ing myself into a coma, one that may go on for months.

But I get January off. Let freedom ring! No classes to bog me down, no horror of extra homework, and plenty of time to knit a sweater and finish my novel. Glorious.

Now, if only the stupid server would allow me to post blogs for you from everywhere, not just this crappy computer in a crappy campus computer lab, we would be in business.

Sleepless in Roann

I think sleep has gone out of style.

At least, amoung Manchester College professors it has. I belive quite firmly that they all meet in the Winger Conference room at the start of each semester in order to give me as many oral progects as possible, all scheduled within the same week. Tuesday I taught two classes, Thursday I taught one, and Monday I will teach another. All this ought to be accomplished simultaneously with a massive feature article covering the retirement of an English professor, an independent film script I must draft, and the fact that National Novel Writing Month has arrived.

I must pen a 10,000 word novel in the short span of this month alone.

At least I have a plan for the book. The rest of those projects are being thrown together with a manic flair I only achieve when I am moments from having a panic attack. And this week, I have had several. Nothing seems to be moving as smoothly as I like it to. This leads to the traditional problem I am plagued with: perfection.

Who told me I needed to be perfect? I wish I could find out so that I could make them pay. Only at the height of stress do I feel the need hovering at the edge of consciousness. Usually, the feeling is more subtle. An extra five minutes before the mirror, an hour more of research, a chance to clean the kitchen, the living room, to wash the car, to do laundry, anything to make life easier for those around me at the expense of myself. But anxiety from other activities makes this troubling. Instead of feeling remorse that I cannot be more of a help, I feel guilt at being a burden.

I grew up thinking that as a child, one is worthless. You have to earn your place in the world by working hard at everything you do and impressing people by appearing to be more mature than you are. As a result, I was more an adult at the age of ten than most of my peers are today. I prefered studying and reading to sleepovers or parties, I never went out for any reason unless my parents escorted me. This trend continued until the age of eighteen, when I started going places out of the need to make my mother feel as if I was normal, though I feel quite strongly I am not.

I have never met an agorophobic, but I identify with them. I feel myself to be a functional agorophobic, horrified to leave my home and family but forcing myself to comply with societal constraints that depress and aggravate me. Then I feel guilty for not feeling desire to go out. Medicine made me want activity, but the attempt I made to live without the medicine has placed me in the same category as previously. I never want to be exposed. I don't feel safe. I shut myself in empty rooms on campus and focus on silence. I feel utterly apart from the boistrous classmates surrounding me. In times like these, I feel that I am a wonderful student who is also a below-average human being.

Eight cats, a flattened fox, and the back half of a snake

I think that just about sums up the last week.

Nothing just happens at my house. If there is an occurance of some kind, it is nearly always followed by multiple other calamities of varied size and shape.

I suppose in order to explain all of this, I must first relate the fact that my family has a new puppy. She is a Shetland Sheepdog, lovely, and a darling little baby of a pup. She was added to our menagerie, which up to now only included an incredibly spoiled cat, Myst. Myst believes that Darcy, our puppy, is a retarded kitten with bad personal hygeine and no sense of personal space. Often Myst will smack Darcy with her paws, hissing. Unfortunately, this has only taught Darcy to walk up to Myst, stand up on three legs, and bat at her kitty friend, since Myst never uses her claws and Darcy has come to believe the situation to be a giant game.

The two generally get along, despite the fact that there is some concern over whose food is better, resulting in the two eating each other's food, sometimes waiting in line for the other to finish before setting in on the more favorable of the two dishes.

I had just finished the daily session of teaching dear little Darcy to have an "indoor" bark (or sneeze bark, as I call it), when she began to demonstrate her newfound skill, pacing worriedly about the door to the garage. This continued for some time, until Dad ventured outdoors to find out what the problem was.

Deep in the dark space under his car, two little eyes stared back at him. And then there was a meow.

We had a little kitten visitor.

There was adoration from my family, we love animals. But when we all came out to see the sweet little baby, there were three kittens instead of one.

"Oh, no!" Mom cried. "What if they've been dumped?" her eyes filled with tears.

"No!" I interjected. "I'm sure I saw the mother. Yep, there she is! She's teaching her babies to hunt!" because of course our garage would be the best place to do so, seeing how it is currently home to several mice and a particuarly angry chipmunk, all the while acting as a weekend getaway for some kind of finch. In addition, the garage is the store-all for the garbage on its way to the curb, meaning that dozens of half-eaten meals make their way daily into the Mecca for wild things, our garage.

But I was wrong.

The "Momma Cat" I saw was just another kitten.

Now our count is up to four.

The next day, I thought the kittens had gone. I walked into the garage, looked around, and noticed some kittens asleep on a carpet remnant. Three were there. The fourth was atop a box.

Then I saw number five, hiding in the woodpile. Number six was under my car.

And they all looked so tiny, so lonely. There was only one thing I could do.

I fed them. One, Two, Three, Four, and Five scurried out of their hiding places to munch on kibble. Soon joined by Six, Seven, and Eight.

Eight kittens were living in my garage.

And they didn't want to go anywhere.

We gave them a trip to the humane society the next business day, meaning we had eight kittens for a whole weekend.

I may have said goodbye, but one thing is certain. The memory of those little babies, so cruelly abandoned by the world, remains in the cardboard boxes we store in the garage. We can all walk into the family catch-all, take a deep breath, and realize that our urine-soaked posessions will always remind us.

At least until Dad forks over the money for the garbage guy to come pick them all up.