Detroit, There and Back Again

On Saturday, my friends Rachael and Ashley and I went to the Detroit Public Library (main branch) to see one of our writing and knitting favorites, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (a.k.a. the Yarn Harlot).

Stephanie is always hilarious. Rachael and I had gone to see her on two previous occasions (Chicago and Carmel, IN), so we knew it would be worth the trek. Ashley hadn't ever been before but was eager to join in. Jennifer had even planned to go, but her loyalty to the MSO's dress rehearsal for their Mostly Mozart concert won over. She has great self control.

We determined that we needed to leave from North Manchester at 7:00 a.m. to get to the library in time for good seats. I packed up some Sun Chips and gulped two Starbucks espresso and cream things, and we were off.

I am a country girl. I live in the middle of nowhere. And though I have driven my car around in the Griffith area and all the traffic that entails, I had never gone on an expressway or interstate of any kind. I am a county road kind of girl. I am used to dodging falling bales of hay, not maniac drivers.

In addition, when I Googled the library's location, I discovered it was in the middle of Detroit, surrounded by all the metropolitan chaos I associated with an urban area.

All this goes by way of saying: I panicked.

On Friday, I frantically messaged Rachael on Facebook, begging her help in driving. She agreed to give me a hand, but I still stared up at the ceiling for the majority of the evening. I imagined us getting lost and ending up in Canada. I imagined my car unexpectedly exploding in a parking garage due to an unforeseen mechanical issue. I pictured an insane driver running us off the road, or our not getting home until Sunday morning, exhausted, because we'd had travel issues I didn't even know existed.

I obsessed.

Finally, I slept for two hours in one block. Then I got up, dressed, and drove to Rachael's house.

We left.

Now, I had imagined handing over the wheel to Rachael the instant we hit traffic. The second I began to, in short, freak out.

But that didn't happen. In fact, there was almost no traffic at all.

Before I knew it, we were at the scary part of the map, the spot that made me sure I would get us all killed. And then it was over.

I am proud of myself.

I didn't hand over the wheel because it was a nice, relaxing drive, though. I kept driving because Rachael knew how to use the temperamental lender GPS unit. She also can read a map.

I can do neither of those things. Or, well, I can. But sometimes I end up in other states than the one I expect to be in. And that isn't a good thing.

After the talk, we decided to go to City Knits, which is a Detroit-area yarn store we'd read about online. They also happened to be at the library, giving us a sneak-peek at their wares. We liked what we saw. It was two miles away. We decided to drive it.

As we went along, the largish old buildings melted away into what I would consider to be, well...an unsavory area. I sensed it before I saw it. This feeling hit me, saying, "The yarn store will not be here" and I started thinking we should turn around. Finally, the GPS woke up, recognized it's signal form whatever forsaken satellite it talks to, and it ordered us to turn around.

City Knits was located in the Fisher Building, a location that either advertised tons of plays or presented them. I think it was the latter. It was a neat old building with mosaics, intricate ceilings, and little shops all inside. Including the Girl Scouts. Yes, they had a store.

The yarn store was packed, as you might imagine. They were handing out coupons, and knitters can't turn down a yarn sale, especially when they get to enjoy it at a new store with as-yet-unseen yarns.

I think, though, that their buyer might well have been allergic to wool. I saw cotton, alpaca, hemp, linen, etc. But I didn't really see any wool. As far as sock yarn went? Not so good. It was actually kind of depressing. I'd hoped to leave with a hank of sock yarn at the very least, but nothing City Knits had was different enough to my LYS(s) to inspire me to wait in the line to buy any. And frankly, if I'm going to buy sock yarn just to be buying some, I'd rather support local industry through my compulsion. Really. Where was the wool?

By then, starving, we got back into the car and waited for Mr. GPS. It was really trying. Unfortunately, it wasn't succeeding. We grabbed the worst McDonald's of my life, and it still wasn't working. We pulled into a CVS pharmacy. Not working. Finally, I ran in and grabbed a map. I corralled an employee and begged them for help. "Where are we?" I asked. "Can you show me on the map?"

Now, directions and I don't mix. The last time someone told me how to gets somewhere when I hadn't yet started driving, I ended up in, well, the wrong place. This is because I don't really know what street names are until I've driven past the signs, I can't go around a block without getting dizzy (and therefore lost), and I really, really don't know which ways north and south actually are.

So, say you tell me, "Go north on Lexington Avenue."

I will hear, "Something-something-something L-something Street." This is of no practical use. None.

Especially if, moments later, it becomes this: "Go something on that street named for that one battle, you know, the one from the Revolutionary War." And, moments later, "Go something on that street named after that city we kept peace in back in the 90's in Yugoslavia."

This is, of course, not what that person told me. And I end up in Ohio. And, right now, I don't really know anyone who lives in Ohio. This would lead to the correct assumption that I didn't actually aim to go to Ohio, no matter how nice that state may or may not be.

Rachael, growing more and more frustrated with the GPS, waited in the car, planning ways to destroy it.

Ashley waited in the backseat, holding her new yarn, perhaps even visualizing herself safe, far, far away from the now-crazy people who invited her on this doomed voyage to Detroit. Didn't she know better, going to Detroit with The Crazies? Or was she crazy for just going to Detroit in the first place?

This, of course, is totally conjecture. Ashley was pretty invisible to me at that time, since I was talking with the CVS guy and staring at a map, then driving a car, and she was in the backseat being quiet. She could have been thinking about marmalade, for all I know. But I think she must have been concentrating on the yarn. I would have been, had I not been thinking about getting us all home, eventually.

Just as the CVS man told me how to get onto I96, the GPS sprang to life, telling me also how to get to I96. Since both told us the same thing, we followed the directions, weaving through construction on exit ramps until, finally, we were on our way.

Before we'd gotten out of the car to walk to the library, I'd informed the others that I would let them drive home. So why was I still driving?

Can you imagine me giving driving directions? Jennifer can, and it isn't pretty. I couldn't force my fellow country-girl, Ashley, to drive when she was in the same position I was (having never driven in the "big city" and close to panic-attack-levels of adrenaline). And I really couldn't force Rachael to drive and give herself directions at the same time. Not when I also expected her to keep both hands on the wheel and deliver us to North Manchester as alive as we were when we left. No, I was cursed.

It's a good thing, I thought to myself as I changed lanes; that Detroit has no industry and therefore no population.

After thinking this, I realized how depressing that statement actually is.

Because, indeed, there was no traffic. None going into the city, none leaving the city, not even any in the city. Even road construction didn't inspire traffic congestion. Driving by my grandfather's house is worse. Fort Wayne is worse. Carmel is worse. It was amazing. I blamed Detroit's dwindling industry, but it could well have been the rain that kept people indoors on a Saturday. It seemed only our fellow knitters were on the roads. I don't know what caused it, but I was happy.

And, despite the shocking lack of cheese fries, our drive to and fro was uneventful.

Oh, and the whole being in Detroit thing reminded me of these...so take a look.



And this second one they won't let me embed...

Coming next: Stephanie, the library, and the market!

A Sneak Peek...

Today, I drove more hours than I work in a day (I figured it out to be over 9 including the trip to North Manchester). Guided by my stalwart navigator, Rachael, I braved roads I'd avoided for years based on their reputation, I drove in Detroit's urban labyrinth. Meanwhile our friend and my former soccer teammate (from the days of yore), Ashley, clung tightly to her knitting and the seat beside her, waiting for us to reach our destination....

Where were we going?

Here's a look...



That's Rachael and Ashley in the background, me in the foreground, and a certain special someone sitting at the table. Who is it?

Hmm...I wonder...

Look! Look at this!

Oh, you have to go here and see this fish. Claire showed this to me, and it is fantastically huge. Beyond huge.

Plus, it's one of those deep sea fish with all the freaky deep sea attributes. This one has freaky plumes.

It's supposed to be (according to folklore) a devil-fish, the harbinger of earthquakes. And it's popping up all around Japan in fishing nets...

Cue evil sounding music! The Devil Fish is here!

In other news, Laura is filled with crippling despair because she can never go to the KenapocoMocha anymore, due to having a 8-5 job. In Wabash, no less. I could hop in my car and drive an hour there and back, returning unable to eat my lunch. Or, I could tear out of work and arrive there an hour and a half after they had already closed at 4 p.m.

What are they trying to do to me?

Don't they love me?

Don't they want me to go there and spend ridiculous amounts of money on food and drink? Because I do, every time. I stock up, you see, for the times I can't make it. Today's food sounds amazing. But I will never get to eat it. Because the time and space between us is to great.

Sigh.

More pre-processed food, more fried disasters, more tasteless mounds of protein and starch, now served without tomatoes because it would be too expensive to serve joy with your meal. And if I find a place with soup, it's cold. Or gelatinous. Like a glob if soup instead of a bowl. That's just wrong. Meanwhile, a salad made in China with dressing that doesn't cover all the lettuce (because that's all that's in there), served with more fried food. And with sugar water that's clinically proven to dissolve your bones.

I suppose it's too much to ask that they'd be open until 6, right?

Finally, the census people stopped by and dropped us off some loot. Census backpacks, census pins, chip-clips (chips not included), and census travel coffee mugs. Before you ask why a person would want any of these things, let me tell you. I took a coffee mug thing.

Why? Because the center unscrews, so you can take the paper out that says, "Census!" on it. Meaning I can make my own filler, and it stops being a census coffee mug. Thank you, taxpayer dollars.

In Which Jen the Cardigan Is Too Long, Just Right, and One Button Short

I fell in love with the Jen Cardigan (Kim Hargreaves) when I saw it in Precious (a Rowan pattern collection--not the movie).

This was after I bought the yarn for another sweater in that collection, but that is beside the point.

Now, I must confess a little something that plagues me. I have a pouch. Like a marsupial. Except the pouch does not so much open as sit there and make me look fat. However it is located above the waistband of every pair of pants I own, because I am, quite freakishly, skinny beneath this point. I call it Chronic Muffin-Top, and I hate it. I go to great lengths to conceal it. It is annoyingly difficult to lose (see previous post regarding fainting).

So, when I saw the Jen Cardigan, I decided I would not make it as cropped as it appeared in the sample, as the crop would cause the bottom of the sweater to be right above my, well, fat.

Fat must be hidden.

I bought extra yarn with the intention of making the sweater longer. I did my math. I cast on.

Here is where I went wrong.

Now, when you knit, everyone always tells you to check gauge, which is the number of stitches the designer of your pattern got per inch and per row. Then you change needle sizes in order to make sure you get the same gauge as the designer, so that your sweater will not be a large tent for refugees or a tiny doll sweater to cover Barbie's nudity issues. That girl should really join a commune. I mean, clearly she has identity issues. If she met a charismatic personality, she would totally join that person's (usually male, but you never know), cult and drink his Kool-Aid-Mind-Poison.

I got gauge. The pattern asked for a 2.5 (or 3) needle for the ribbing and a size 5 needle for the stockinette. I could manage gauge with a 4 and a 6, since I knit so tightly you'd think I was under all kinds of insane stress. I'm not. Anymore.

I mean, except for the fainting, the Biscuit costume, and what you're about to read.

Here was where I screwed up. The pattern clearly told me that the sweater would grow, since the yarn tended to relax by a certain number of stitches to the inch and rows to the inch.

I did not do this: I did not bind off my gauge swatch, steam it, and measure it. Nope. Totally skipped it.

Why? Because I hate that. I want to just start the sweater already. So I did.

I knit and knit and knit, endless-endless ribbing. Knit 1, Purl 1, K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1K1P1, until I thought my brain would explode.

And I measured, measured, measured. Finally I got to the place where I thought I could switch over, and did. I knit, shaped, reached the neck, put stitches on holders, bound off.

From armhole to the bottom of my sweater, the sweater measured, as it ought, 15 inches. This was good.

I knit the rest of the sweater, the two front panels, and put the whole thing on my ironing board, steamed, and watched with wonder as the whole thing grew to people-sized.

Then, I got busy with the knitting Olympics. I knit that other sweater down there, back in February, the one that turned out perfect. Remember? See--Laura is a good knitter!

I got sick. I felt like death. I had nothing to knit, so I started seaming my sweater, finished, then put it on.

Now, I was in yoga pants at the time, and I was wearing a gross t-shirt from ages past (Luer's Tree Farm--it's seen a lot of years--but it's my uncle's farm, so I love to wear it), but no matter how you slice it, that sweater looked more like a cape than a cardigan.

A cape?

Then, through my Nyquil-addled brain, it hit me. When I was mathing my sweater, I hadn't factored in the stretch with regard to ROW GAUGE. Because when my sweater became people-sized, it became pencil-thin-giant-sized (because if you are a giant and still my width, you are pencil thin).

And when I examined the pattern, it said this, "Tension note: The Bamboo Soft yarn relaxes after steaming. This opens the knitting and changes the tension by approximately one stitch in the width but does not affect the rows (23 sts and 30 rows). Therefore your knitting, before steaming, should have a tension of 24 sts and 30 rows to 10 cm. Allowances have been made within the pattern for this change (see size diagram for after relaxing measurements)." Which is like a total lie, at least in regards to the row gauge thing, because it was LOOOOOONG.

"Crap," I said out loud. Then I took more Nyquil (to take the edge off) and sat back in my pillow-nest with my Kleenexes and my Sweet Tea.

How to solve?

Instantly, I thought of the method I undertook back in college when I had decided, randomly, to add color to the end of a scarf (ribbed). Now, it totally failed then because I didn't understand that ribbing is a one-way street, but I only had to cast off, so I could pull off the miracle I had with my mother's fancy cabled-on-both-sides vest. I'd taken off her ribbing completely, then let her knit it down and cast off (using a much, much smaller needle).

When I felt better and didn't have Stupid Nyquil-Haze Syndrome, I snipped a single stitch, then untangled it from a row. I already had my needle in place as a safety line. Then I cast off.



Of course, it took ages.

A whole evening. And when I finished, another age to weave in all the ends in the pretty way that Rachael taught me.

Last night I picked up an abundance of stitches, knitted back and forth, and now I have ribbing at the neckline.


It's done now. Finished.

Oh.

Except for that button thing.


Sigh.

You see, when I knitted my sweater, I noted that the pattern told me a range of numbers for buttons. Of course, my making the sweater longer made this even more trying. I decided that the only way I could manage to pull this cardigan thing off was if I had 16 buttons.

This meant an hour scouring the button website used by my LYS, where I found the eleven buttons I had on hand--too few, I thought. I found them, Natalie ordered them, then she e-mailed me and told me that mine were backordered.

But my "tailoring" job caused me to not need 16 buttons. I needed the 11 I had plus one additional button. Only one. And I had Natalie order buttons, causing her to have to order a ton, since you have to order a full thing of buttons not one at a time. Poor Natalie.

Poor me--because now I'm waiting and waiting for one backordered button, which seems a little more annoying than waiting for five. Five, you know you need to wait. One, you think, "I'm cursed!"

Regardless of button status, I am wearing my Jen Cardigan now. I just left one off the very end, because I figured no one would notice it there. And then I put it on and wore it to work, taking poorly-white-balanced pictures of it without realizing, as I had set my white balance for Tungsten and not for our crappy, florescent lighting.


The book I'm looking at? No, David by David Shannon.

I figured it was time to have a library photo shoot.


First Light by Rebecca Stead, winner of the Newbery Award for When You Reach Me. I loved that book.

Swoon

Hey, guess what?

I woke up this morning, walked into the bathroom, and began to wash my face. This is the usual routine.

What wasn't usual was my fainting.

Fortunately, I know what it feels like to faint, and the feelings that lead up to my fainting (I'll explain in a moment), so I managed to get down onto the ground before I actually blacked out, and I only lost about 30 seconds, maybe less.

The reason?

Who knows.

What am I going to do about it?

Nothing.

Well, unless it happens again. Because I bet I know the reason why, even though I have no evidence to prove myself right or wrong. This theory is also the one that keeps me from losing the annoying ring-around-the-Laura.

I was sick all last week, as many of you know, and during my time of sickness, I felt so gross that I just stopped eating food. No food. Mom forced me to drink various liquids, and I took hand fulls of colorful OTC cold remedies, and I slept.

During this time, I lost ten whole pounds. This was, perhaps, the only positive aspect of the illness. It was like a cleanse. Laura's toxic food habits were cured. She could start anew, fresh, with a giant cheese-pasta dish courtesy of Biaggis. Mmm...pasta.

But even the pasta was not enough. My body needed to burn fat cells, and in order for that to happen, I have to pass out repeatedly.

See, your body hits this point in which it says, "GIVE ME SUGAR." When many people hit that point, fat cells are torched for fuel. When I arrive at this phase, I drop faster than I did that day in Rome when those pigeons tried to take Ol' Laura down, right before that monk laughed at me, which may or may not have involved his breaking several major vows involving his order, but whatever. It was ridiculous. The cause was sufficient.

Like pigeons are going to take your head off. Really.

Once I've fainted, I must eat. However, chances are, I will then throw up whatever food you give me, so I do the orange juice/chocolate thing until my vision clears and I can stand up without falling down, then I can eat something more solid.

So I crawled up a little at a time from the bathroom floor. I grabbed hold of the sink and stood up, then I trudged over to my bed again, where I waited for the world to stop spinning before I could make it to the kitchen, sit down, wait, then make a PBJ and pour a glass of milk.

Lets just say I was a little late to work this morning.

But the entire event reminded me of the summer when Dad was doing interim work (pastor lingo for temp gig) in Peru. The church wasn't air conditioned, and it was one of the hottest summers I remember. I dropped in that church so many times, the congregation thought I "had the spirit in me," which was totally not true. What was true? My mom dressed me in layers in midsummer, threw me into a steaming nest of my fellow humanity, and gave me no liquid to drink.

The end of this story takes place in North Manchester, at the now-closed public pool. I didn't feel well at all, and so I decided to not swim, a choice supported by my diving coach, who was sick and tired of trying to convince me to go head-first of the diving board when I just kept pointing at the posters on the wall of young girls such as myself snapping their necks like pretzels on the pool floor. No way was I being a pretzel neck. No way.

My act of self preservation resulted in my being left back a level in swim class. Eventually I did it, when the instructor figured out that teaching me the shallow dive and letting me use it on the board would solve her problems and get me out of her life forever, which was certainly her ultimate goal.

No diving that day, though. I felt sick, so Mom shoved a Mars bar at me (where are they now, Mars? Where are they now?) at me and I crunched almonds. Then I told her I needed to sleep, but she wouldn't listen to me because Paul's class was already well underway. No way would she pull him out of the pool and take him home.

They'd all gotten used to Laura's fainting at that point.

She eventually decided that Laura in an unairconditioned humid place was worse than Laura dizzy/fainting/alone in an outdoor humid place, so she tried to take me to the car, but before she knew it, I went down, but first I went rigid like a board and bit her shoulder so hard, it went purple-green in an instant. I listened to The Lion King Soundtrack in my head and looked for Mufasa in the sky (the twinkly lights obscuring my vision, which I confused for stars) until finally they managed to wake me up, shove me in the car, quickly followed by a dripping-wet Paul, and drive me to the doctor's office.

Apparently, I was unconscious for most of the drive. All I cared about was shutting the two of them up. They kept talking, and I wanted a nap. Dang it.

He told me I had low blood sugar and told me to eat a candy bar.

I never stopped.

Unfortunately, now the candy bars are hanging out with the Biaggis and the Olive Garden and the Chilis and the Culvers, and they need to leave. But they won't. Because I pass out every time they try.

I'd like to know how I, while still eating as much or more than the normal human being, can put on weight, but without adding any physical exertion and without changing my diet, I can pass out as if suffering from starvation.

I am not starving. Really. I was starving in junior high, when I grew so fast I could barely walk, it hurt my legs so bad, and I couldn't eat fast enough. But no.

I have to pass out in my bathroom, curled up on the little area rug, thanking my lucky stars that I remember it having been vacuumed in recent history, all because night lasts too long.

Well. If I remain conscious long enough to drive home, I'll write you a little update on my Jen Cardigan, which will give you a good laugh. It comes complete with pictures of me, my scissors, and the 5" I had to take off of each panel...

Philosophy, Geology, Guilt, and Being Sick

When I get sick, I think a lot.

This is because usually my eyes hurt, so I don't read; my head hurts, so I don't watch television; I don't go online because I don't have fast internet--I haven't until just now; and I am stupid, so I don't knit. Usually I sleep, drool a little (Nyquil), and use lots and lots of Kleenex. Sometimes I eat all of a certain type of food. Today, I drank all of our Sweet Tea.

When I think, it is about things I can't do anything about. Like what happened to Henrietta Lacks, whose cancer cells were taken without her informed consent, used in laboratories, bought, sold, and marketed without her family's knowledge, all after her death. Her cells have been alive outside her body for longer than they were alive inside her body. More of her cells exist now than ever existed when she was alive. And all of this happened because when a doctor took a biopsy, it didn't die in the lab. That had never occurred before. Up to that point, no human cell had ever been able to be grown in a laboratory. Due to those cells, we are able to research and treat disease in a way no one was ever able to do before. You can read all about this in an amazing new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. The linkie is to Amazon, but I encourage you to go to your local Indie bookseller or--better yet--your local library.

Reading this book has made me think a lot about science and how quickly it progresses. Watching Fringe does not help this. It is, however, an awesome show. Watch it.

I think, and tons of people agree with me, that scientific discovery moves way faster than it can ever be regulated. It always has. That's why what happened to Henrietta Lacks could and did happen. It's also why Fistula Man (whose name I can never remember) was pursued over land and sea by the doctor who discovered him, for so long that eventually he just gave up and let the doctor study him until his eventual death.

We can't legislate against certain types of research fast enough to make that research stop or prevent it from taking place.

That being said, I have several responses from reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and here they are:

1. When talking about HeLa cells, we aren't talking about Henrietta Lacks. We are talking about the thing that killed her.

2. If we talk about how wrong the doctors were in their behavior toward Mrs. Lacks, it is through the lens of modern science, medicine, and civil rights. What they did was wrong, but we realize that more so today than the doctors then would have been aware of then. That doesn't make it right. It just means we can't judge them as harshly as we want to.

3. If the researchers had just followed our current protocol: naming a sample Sample X and not after the source of said sample, this book never would have been written. To put it another way: we need to support our constitutional right to privacy, which is kind of assumed and so can go away if we don't argue about it loudly.

On to geology. Did you know that our planet shifted when the earthquake in Chile happened? It moved. Also, they just had an earthquake in Kentuky. So when someone tells you everything is connected, don't assume that they're on drugs. It's true.

When I lie in bed staring at the wall or the ceiling, I think a lot about the people who are dealing with me not doing certain things. Like I feel bad that I'm not at work, making dinner, driving friends to various places. I also think about the things I want to be doing that I can't do because I can't walk without using my asthma meds.

And I think about knitting and my friends, because being sick makes me want to do things that make me happy, like knitting and spending time with friends, preferably both at the smae time.

When I think about knitting and friends, I invariably think of my friend Rachael. And then I look at my stash and start to wonder why it is that the two of us are knitting so many of the same things lately. And because I have time, I have compiled another list, since I am sick and have nothing better to do. This list is of the reasons why I think I'm knitting so many of the same things as Rachael of late, assuming, of course, that the knitting of same things is actually my fault. Which, you know, it is.

1. Rachael is an amazing knitter. I bet she didn't just spend hours of her evening taking scissors to the second finished sweater of the year she's mucked up beyond belief (hint: when a pattern tells you bamboo will make the sweater you're knitting grow lots, it means that you ought to swatch/steam that yarn to see just how much, so you don't end up with a cape instead of a cardigan, resulting in you using a pair of scissors to remove over four inches of ribbing it took you days to knit). When Rachael knits something, it is pretty. Also, it is wearable. This might be because she can do math. So when she brings something to show it off at knit night, it makes me want to knit something that pretty, it inspires me to go out and make the Pretty Thing.

2. We love many of the same designers. Okay, almost all of the same designers. Except Rachael can remember their names. I can...sometimes.

3. We are the same age, similar body types, have similar skin tones, live in the same part of the same state, shop in the same stores, and use the same websites and magazines to find patterns. Therefore, we pick a lot of the same things to knit because those things are the prettiest for 20-something girls to wear.

4. If we like the same TV shows and books, doesn't it follow that we would like other similar things? I mean, I was in shock to find that, when I first started talking books with Rachael back in college, she had not only heard of my favorite fantasy novels, she had read them.

5. Maybe this should have been one. We have good taste. Both of us.

All the same, I think we should make some rules about the Geodesic cardigan, just so we don't scare Muggles. Like, maybe we should wear them on even or odd days...or with radically different shirts underneath them. I am open to suggestion. Or--hey--I could dye my hair another color or cut most of it off. Then we would look way more different than we do now when we sit next to each other in a badly-lit coffee shop, knitting in unison.

Or--and here's a better idea--we should make a creepy YouTube video involving us knitting the same sweater side-by-side. Maybe Joel will shoot it for us. He has a camera, right?

And now you see what various drugs and sedatives do to Laura's brain. That is why you should never mix Nyquil with other medicines, like benadryl, which I so totally bought and used despite my mother's forcing me to promise never to take it again because she thinks it might lead to me flinging myself of the roof like that famous guy's daughter in the '60's who took too much LSD.

Our house is one story, I bet I'd live.

One Long Whine, in Blog Form

I feel like death.

Like part of me has already died and the other part of me is dragging the first part around until some kind doctor offers to remove it, Civil War-Style.

Seen the trailers for Disney's new Not-Quite-Alice in Wonderland? I feel like Johnny Depp looks.

Have you ever been about to sneeze but then didn't? And you get that twinge inside your nose, the urge to sneeze? I have that all the time now. And when you have it all the time, it makes your nose run and run and run and run and run and run and run until you can't bend your head over. At all.

Every time I lean over, I sneeze. Every time I sneeze, I sneeze. Do you see where this is going?

I sneezed so hard last night that my left contact was liberated from my eye. I don't wear hard contacts; I wear soft ones. That isn't supposed to happen with soft lenses.

My nose runs so much that I want to just let my nasal passages close off completely just to stop it--but if I did, it wouldn't do me any good, because even when I let my nose close off last night, it still managed to be able to run. Really.

Last night, I was sneezing so much, I was sure using my Neti Pot, the weirdest invention of all time, would help me. It didn't.

I've passed the point where blowing your nose doesn't hurt. Now, it's like sandpaper. And I have Kleenex with lotion.

This morning, I bought Sweet Tea. And it didn't make me feel better.

When I was getting dressed today, I thought, "What clothing should I choose that will be the least annoying during my time of suffering?" The answer, my yoga clothes, was not workplace appropriate.

When I got out of bed, I thought, "Gee, I feel like crap," but I didn't stay home, because I knew staying home would only mean that I was suffering in bed instead of suffering at work. Getting better was not listed as an option on the ScanTron test that is my life.

I took cold medicine this morning, not to treat my current symptoms,but because I knew that if I didn't, I would end my week with a sinus infection.

The only way I can sit that is comfortable involves my squeezing my nostrils completely shut, like a clothespin would.

I have a Kleenex up my shirt sleeve.

When I die, my family can at least take comfort in the fact that I didn't actively try to kill myself, my allergies did it for me.

I am sitting at my desk with Kleenex shoved up my nose. In public. There are security cameras.

I can't decide if I have a fever or if my organs are just dissolving for fun.

There is stuff in the book drop, and no amount of cajoling could convince me to take it out. Or shelve if afterward.

When I swallow, my ears pop.

If I lean down to knit, my nose runs. Therefore, I must knit with my eyes closed (feels better) and my head leaned backwards. With Kleenex rammed up my nose.

I keep thinking that, if I could just sleep for five or six days, I would feel better. I don't know if that's true. But I am buying benadryl before I go home today. I don't care if I wake up curled up on the floor by my door with my pillow clenched in my arms like an infant. If I'm hallucinating it, it has to be important, right?

This is the worst allergy attack of my life. And it would be horrible even if it wasn't actually a cold. Which it might not be. But it is. I am allergic to my cold.

I've lost more liquid through my nose than the human body can be expected to replace, even with a giant Sweet Tea.

Can I go home, now?

Can I take a nap under the desk, instead?

I have a headache. Would it make me a bad employee if I passed out now?

I can't even think up an ending to this blog that's how gross I