Magic Plastic Bag Storage (In Which Laura Is Obsessively Organized)

I spent several hours this morning crawling around on the ground rolling grocery bags up into a center-pull tube so that they would take up less space. This is productivity, folks.

See, yesterday it rained all day, and when it rains, we give out plastic grocery bags for people to either put their books inside or stick over their baskets or library bags to keep the books from getting wet and moldy. We had classes visit, so I had to send home at least twenty bags with kids, and they were all crumpled up in our box we keep in the cabinet beneath the desk. Some bags were inside others. Some were full of onion skin. Some were tiny and useless. Some were much too big to use for just one book. It took forever to sort through them, the kids got impatient, some started pushing others, and a riot almost happened in our doorway--until the teacher told them that the time they were spending being rowdy might make them late for art, and they all calmed down and behaved like angels. They did NOT want to be late for art.*

After they left, I started searching the internet for a viable solution to make the mess of our cabinet less...messy. The tutorial I found is super-easy and it is genuinely fantastic to grab a bag without tons more falling on the ground behind the circulation desk or having to untangle them from the mess. Small things make me so very happy.

It is so wonderful, I am leaving the tutorial here. You can ignore it. Or you can do the same thing I did and get endless joy out of taking back all the mess of that one cabinet or drawer at your house (or workplace) that drives you a little more crazy every time you look at it.

For the record, when I came across bags larger than the standard grocery bag size, I folded them into triangles to keep separate. Now I know if I want a big bag, I grab a triangle, and if I want a normal bag, I pull one out of the roll. The triangles are the same as those paper footballs kids flicked across the classroom when I was in elementary school. You can make them by laying out the grocery bag flat, folding it in half and then, starting from the bottom end, fold one end toward the other, then back again and repeating this until you get close to the handle. Tuck the handle into the side of the now-triangle-shaped bag, and you're done. (If that explanation sucks as much as I think it does, Google "paper football" because there is bound to be a picture-based tut
orial for you to follow.)

* So called "specials" classes like music and art are important to kids. They love them. They learn TONS from art and music (and library time with a qualified school media specialist). Its time administrations stop taking away funding and instead make the arts a priority in ALL schools. If your school district isn't doing this, start writing letters to the editor of your local newspapers, talk to your school board, get in touch with other parents, and make a change happen. 

Day 16: I Have a Type A Personality and a Death Wish

Okay. Here's the thing.

I worked out first thing in the morning. Usually I do it in the evening. That is ROUTINE. But today was morning. And that was strange.

And I was sitting around after dinner, when I usually do 30 Day Shred, and I said to myself, "I should be working out right now. I should be working out RIGHT NOW."

And then I ignored it and watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics* and it made me cry in the first five seconds when the kids sang Gran's favorite hymn. My mother also burst into tears. And then Kenneth Branagh did a piece from The Tempest, and it was awesome and I want to have a clip of it to play over and over and over again, because that is my favorite part of The Tempest and Kenneth Branagh is made of awesome.

So. Back to my Type A personality...

I was thinking that tomorrow, I would not be working out. I WOULD NOT BE WORKING OUT. Maybe that decision would be disappointing to you, the blog. Maybe you would think, "Laura is not fully committed to this. Maybe Laura doesn't really want to get fit!"

And I did just get that new blu-ray player for my birthday. And that can play DVDs. And when I went out, I stopped at T.J. Maxx and found workout clothes ON THE CHEAP that were super cute.

And one thing led to another, and I ended up doing that Yoga Meltdown DVD I picked up last weekend. Yeah. I worked out twice in one day.

My impression? It is FUN and challenging. But challenging is okay because I really love yoga. But by the end, I wondered, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME??" Because I just became the person who feels like a slacker when they think of not exercising.

I hope this proves to you that I really want to not be taking a day off. But I have to. Because I deserve to have some fun, too. And I hear there will be pasta.

* Dear Olympic committee, I hope I am allowed to reference the Olympics by name when referring to an Olympic event. Please direct all lawsuits to this waste basket. Thanks. Love, Laura

What is wrong with me anyway?

I noticed it last week.

In my family, passed down from my Polish-American grandfather, come the gnarly fingers. It has cursed my mother as well as my grandpa, and it appears prior to arthritis that is, from their reports, quite painful. I have always hoped that the gnarly finger gene passed me by. I have slender fingers. They are rather nice, if unmanicured, and I would like them to stay that way.

I am slightly obsessive, and I think--know--my friends will tell you (or my family at least) that I am actually more than slightly obsessive. Okay, I am very obsessive. An obsessive knitter who keeps all her stitch markers in the same place, must use the same size, shape, and color stitch markers for the same project, and if there aren't enough little purple holders, I will forgo them entirely and just keep track in my head. No matter if that means I have to rip rows back more than the average knitter with their mis-matched markers. I also need to put groceries on the belt neatly, arranged by what is cold and what is room temperature, then by size and shape. That is so that I know that the right things go in the right bags, and I can keep track of them. This is why I do self-check out. I get stared at less.

This freakish turn of my personality became evident yet again when, while knitting, I looked down and noticed a little swelling above the distal joint of my middle finger (no, it did not come from obscene hand gestures). I lean my right needle against this portion of my finger as I knit. And, because I am a tight knitter, with, what Elizabeth Zimmerman would say, a lot of tension, I have created my own deformity. I am a freak, with gnarly finger(s) in the making.

My solution, because knitting is so imperative and the way I knit cannot be changed (I have tried) has been to apply a band-aid over the offending part of my finger, with the hope that I will protect my bone from damage. I did this when writing caused a similar bump years ago, and the bump went away.

Or did it?

I began to wonder days ago, if this is the same bump. This was confirmed through this week, as I noticed how often that part of the finger is used through my day. I use it to balance my fork. I use it to hold my pencil or pen. I use it far too often. That assertion was again confirmed with my discovery of a corresponding callus above the bump (lump? Can finger deformities kill a person?).

And then I discovered the true cause of my problems.

The circular knitting needle.

I have begun, with the need to knit La Digitessa, Spina Di Pesce, and the Firestarter, to use metal knitting needles for the first time in my life. Metal doesn't give, at all. Not even a little bit.

We all know from my constant complaints (at least on this side of the blog) that I bend double pointed needles when I knit with them. I snap size ones after a few months of constant use. My size twos develop a curve. I looked at my size sevens the other day and saw that they too have a curve. I never use them. How is that possible?

Wood can curve. Stainless steel? Not so much.

I determined this morning that only by setting aside my circular ways and getting off the Addi for good can I cure my freakish problem, which is bound to repel men and cause me to die old and alone, covered in wool fragments and cat hair.

So, I tried to knit on La Digitessa with wooden double points.

And it doesn't work.

There is a reason it was written for circular needles. That is what works. Mom let me know that her size one or two wooden Addis had the cable snap off where the metal clamped it to the wood. The metal creates a narrower portion of the needle, and on a tiny wimpy sized needle, it can cause problems for knitters who are abusive. If my mother is an abusive and tight knitter, tight enough to damage needles, than I am a violent, brutal, cruel knitter. I would break those needles faster than my Brittany size ones and I snapped two of those in 24 hours.

So this blog entry is my way of kissing my pretty hands goodbye. I am giving them up for something I love more than them. I give them up for knitting.