I feel that I need to confess something.
This morning when I woke up, I washed my hair the way I do every morning, and then I got out my hair dryer, and I dried my hair, because that's what I do.
Then I turned off the hair dryer and pressed the button that retracts the cord. This is a new feature that my old hair dryer didn't have. But my old hair dryer exploded, so I bought this one, partially due to the ease of cord-management.
But when I pressed the cord button, I was holding the cord to my hair straightener, not the cord for the hair dryer, so the hair dryer cord whipped me in the face, and the big square plug section of the plug hit me in my eye, which was open.
Also, it knocked out my contact lens.
This is why I can't have nice things.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
The Anatomy of a Headache
I always know I'm about to get a sinus headache because I get a toothache.
Really.
After several trips to the dentist, it was explained to me in a not-so-patient tone that the roots of teeth come up surprisingly close to sinuses, and sinus swelling can put pressure on teeth, causing a toothache without a cavity.
My headaches start between my first and second molars. First it feels like I have something caught between them. Nothing is there. Slowly it starts to feel like I'd better have these teeth pulled or something, before they cause an infection that will kill the nerves of my face, but the dentist says that's not going to happen, so I cope.
If I take two Sudafed (the little red tablets) and two ibuprofen RIGHT THEN, as soon as I feel the problem starting, usually I can stop the headache in its tracks. I usually switch from my contacts to my glasses then as well, because the added pressure of two flimsy little contact lenses is enough to worsen sinus pressure for me, and that's not what I want.
At Loose Ends (that's knit night) yesterday, I got those symptoms. BUT I DID NOT HAVE IBUPROFEN.
As a result, I got a sinus headache. And when I didn't leave instantly for a cold, quiet, dark place, the headache quickly became a migraine.
Believe me when I tell you, if you think you've had a migraine, you're probably wrong. If you think "migraine" means "really bad headache" or "a headache I can live with but I'd rather not have to" or "a headache I have to lie down to get rid of" you're wrong. A migraine makes you think dying isn't so bad. A migraine makes you feel like dying is VERY GOOD. My mother has gotten migraines for most of my life, and people are constantly saying that they get them too, but the way they laugh and shrug and wonder why Mom can't just "pull herself together" the way THEY do means they have no idea what they're talking about. And, as a result, I lose my temper with them.
People who really have migraines talk about them differently. They go very serious and I swear, some of them look like old soldiers talking about war. Because finding medicine that can actually help you get rid of a migraine IS war, I watched my mother go through it all, back when you used to have to take your medicine by injection. Mom would have Dad give them to her because she couldn't manage it herself. He used to have to take her to the emergency room.
A migraine makes you feel like this.
Sometimes, a migraine feels WORSE than that. And usually, the angle of entry on that railroad spike is different. Imagine the spike entering from the temple, then it's about right.
Migraines come with other fun things, like a heightened sense of smell. Wondering what newspaper ink really smells like? Walk past the local newspaper with a migraine! You'll also find yourself refusing to buy ballpoint pens because "the ink smells horrible," hating your family for cooking meals, thinking that the flowers outside are punishing you, hating the scent of balloons and inflatable pool toys, and so forth. Not appealing enough? How about sensitivity to light? Suddenly, velvet is in vogue again, and you have double-thick velvet curtains! Sensitivity to sound? Of course! You'll be screaming at relatives to stop "typing so loud" and yelling at your brother, "NORMAL PEOPLE DON'T LAUGH THAT LOUD," and generally making your bedroom a sound-free zone.
How about visual hallucinations? Those are fun, too. No, really. Those are fun. If you can get past the brain-crushing pain. Colors are very pretty and shiny.
You don't HAVE to get all of those extra symptoms with a migraine, but I do. Just like I get all the deadly, deadly side effects that come on the warning labels of prescription medications (metalfishdeath). Luckily, I don't get them as often as my mother does. I just get them when I make the stupid mistake of eating processed meats.
That means no hot dogs. Usually, anything sold in the hot dog section of a grocery store gives me a migraine. I am okay if I have kosher deli meats, because they're safe. But only if they're Kosher. I'm a big fan of Hebrew National hot dogs. The reason is nitrites. Sodium nitrite is used to preserve meat and keep it looking fresh. It does not preserve me.
But I know to avoid those things! So life is more or less okay.
Except for yesterday, when I made myself a frozen pizza. It was a new kind of pizza, with a super-thin crust and roasted red peppers and mushrooms and onion. And pepperoni. I have never had a problem with pepperoni before. Yesterday was an exception.
I left poor Rachael almost the second she arrived at knit night, raced down to CVS and bought ibuprofen. When I arrived at home, I threw up and went to bed. It was a great Tuesday.
You know how people say their leg or arm still hurts, after it's been amputated? That is how my head feels today. I don't HAVE a headache, but I feel the place where my headache used to be. It is unpleasant. And it stole my night from me, which should have been filled with knitting and maybe some Glee.**
No fair.***
*Image from the Center for the History of Medicine at Harvard University at Countway Library.
**Yes, I'm watching Glee. I hate myself a little.
***Was this entire blog post one long build-up to a complaint? Why yes, it was. I'll try to make the next one a bit less whiny.
Really.
After several trips to the dentist, it was explained to me in a not-so-patient tone that the roots of teeth come up surprisingly close to sinuses, and sinus swelling can put pressure on teeth, causing a toothache without a cavity.
My headaches start between my first and second molars. First it feels like I have something caught between them. Nothing is there. Slowly it starts to feel like I'd better have these teeth pulled or something, before they cause an infection that will kill the nerves of my face, but the dentist says that's not going to happen, so I cope.
If I take two Sudafed (the little red tablets) and two ibuprofen RIGHT THEN, as soon as I feel the problem starting, usually I can stop the headache in its tracks. I usually switch from my contacts to my glasses then as well, because the added pressure of two flimsy little contact lenses is enough to worsen sinus pressure for me, and that's not what I want.
At Loose Ends (that's knit night) yesterday, I got those symptoms. BUT I DID NOT HAVE IBUPROFEN.
As a result, I got a sinus headache. And when I didn't leave instantly for a cold, quiet, dark place, the headache quickly became a migraine.
Believe me when I tell you, if you think you've had a migraine, you're probably wrong. If you think "migraine" means "really bad headache" or "a headache I can live with but I'd rather not have to" or "a headache I have to lie down to get rid of" you're wrong. A migraine makes you think dying isn't so bad. A migraine makes you feel like dying is VERY GOOD. My mother has gotten migraines for most of my life, and people are constantly saying that they get them too, but the way they laugh and shrug and wonder why Mom can't just "pull herself together" the way THEY do means they have no idea what they're talking about. And, as a result, I lose my temper with them.
People who really have migraines talk about them differently. They go very serious and I swear, some of them look like old soldiers talking about war. Because finding medicine that can actually help you get rid of a migraine IS war, I watched my mother go through it all, back when you used to have to take your medicine by injection. Mom would have Dad give them to her because she couldn't manage it herself. He used to have to take her to the emergency room.
A migraine makes you feel like this.
Phineas Gage engraving, 2010, Warren Anatomical Museum,
Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine*
Sometimes, a migraine feels WORSE than that. And usually, the angle of entry on that railroad spike is different. Imagine the spike entering from the temple, then it's about right.
Migraines come with other fun things, like a heightened sense of smell. Wondering what newspaper ink really smells like? Walk past the local newspaper with a migraine! You'll also find yourself refusing to buy ballpoint pens because "the ink smells horrible," hating your family for cooking meals, thinking that the flowers outside are punishing you, hating the scent of balloons and inflatable pool toys, and so forth. Not appealing enough? How about sensitivity to light? Suddenly, velvet is in vogue again, and you have double-thick velvet curtains! Sensitivity to sound? Of course! You'll be screaming at relatives to stop "typing so loud" and yelling at your brother, "NORMAL PEOPLE DON'T LAUGH THAT LOUD," and generally making your bedroom a sound-free zone.
How about visual hallucinations? Those are fun, too. No, really. Those are fun. If you can get past the brain-crushing pain. Colors are very pretty and shiny.
You don't HAVE to get all of those extra symptoms with a migraine, but I do. Just like I get all the deadly, deadly side effects that come on the warning labels of prescription medications (metalfishdeath). Luckily, I don't get them as often as my mother does. I just get them when I make the stupid mistake of eating processed meats.
That means no hot dogs. Usually, anything sold in the hot dog section of a grocery store gives me a migraine. I am okay if I have kosher deli meats, because they're safe. But only if they're Kosher. I'm a big fan of Hebrew National hot dogs. The reason is nitrites. Sodium nitrite is used to preserve meat and keep it looking fresh. It does not preserve me.
But I know to avoid those things! So life is more or less okay.
Except for yesterday, when I made myself a frozen pizza. It was a new kind of pizza, with a super-thin crust and roasted red peppers and mushrooms and onion. And pepperoni. I have never had a problem with pepperoni before. Yesterday was an exception.
I left poor Rachael almost the second she arrived at knit night, raced down to CVS and bought ibuprofen. When I arrived at home, I threw up and went to bed. It was a great Tuesday.
You know how people say their leg or arm still hurts, after it's been amputated? That is how my head feels today. I don't HAVE a headache, but I feel the place where my headache used to be. It is unpleasant. And it stole my night from me, which should have been filled with knitting and maybe some Glee.**
No fair.***
*Image from the Center for the History of Medicine at Harvard University at Countway Library.
**Yes, I'm watching Glee. I hate myself a little.
***Was this entire blog post one long build-up to a complaint? Why yes, it was. I'll try to make the next one a bit less whiny.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Physics Is Not the Answer
What is wrong with this state?
The weather here is insane. I know I should be used to it by now, and I also know that I shouldn't be blaming Indiana for having crazy weather when I don't really know about the weather in other states, but STILL. I don't see how the weather in New Jersey or Texas or Colorado could be as bizarre as the weather here.
Last week, I was wearing a winter coat everywhere. Sunday, it was over 80 degrees (we're talking Fahrenheit, if you were wondering) outside, and easily 90 in my bedroom. I thought I could combat the rising temperatures by taking a fan and putting it in my window, so the cooler air from the outside would come inside and make my life happier.
But it didn't work.
I spent Sunday night sweating in bed. On bed, really, because I threw off all the covers hoping that maybe, just maybe, I could lower my body temperature that way. Nope. When I get home and look at my sheets, they will look like the Shroud of Turin, only Laura-shaped. That is gross beyond belief. C.S.I. gross.
When I was a little girl, we didn't have air conditioning. Luckily, I didn't know the difference. Dad bought us fans. Three of them. Four, really. I got a small pink fan, Paul got a tan colored one. They didn't rotate. If there was any such thing as rotation back then, I didn't know about it. I used to sit with my face inches from the fan and wait to cool down. It never worked.
We had a large industrial-strength metal fan that sat in the living room. It didn't rotate either. This led to me convince my brother that sitting behind the fan meant he'd get the cooler air faster than me, because the air had to go past him to get through the fan to get to me. That was a lie, and this is another reason why I am on the Bad Sibling List.
On one very exciting day, Dad brought home another fan. This one was tall and it MOVED on its own. So Paul and I started sitting next to each other, and that was when he stopped believing my lies.
Well. He stopped believing the lie about the fan...he still believed other ones.
When we reached junior high, Dad decided that, while we were too immature to use a real paint brush, we were allowed to have box fans, which he shoved into windows. Wow. It was the best invention ever. Cool (humid) air came inside the house, and although I still felt like I was about to die, at least the situation had slightly improved.
We went on that way for several years. By then, my cousin was in college, and one of his roommates had a window air conditioner. Then the roommate replaced his window air conditioner and gave it to my cousin, who then passed it on to us.
It was huge. I think it was the first window air conditioner ever to be invented. It spat out dank air, but the air was cool, and it made the living room habitable--no more sticking to the couch! We peeled the sheets off of the furniture, we didn't need them anymore. Sure, the air conditioner sort of made the living room smell like a swamp, but a cool swamp was way better than basting in the rotisserie that was our home.
Paul and Mom looked at me. I looked at them.
Moments later, we'd disassembled our mattresses and pulled them into the living room. We carefully arranged them in a manner reminiscent of a malaria ward or one of those hospitals in Panama they built for all the workers keeling over with yellow fever, but what did we care? We were no longer sweating out half our body weight at night. That was enough. I nicknamed the air conditioner "Swamp Cooler" after the air conditioner in Laurie Notaro's books, and we were happy.
But all good things must end.
One summer, the Swamp Cooler spat out humid, legionnaire's disease-ridden air...and nothing else. There was no more cool air. The air conditioner had died.
Dad was happy to just sweat. He'd been sleeping in his bedroom without the air conditioner for years, he said. We could live without air conditioning.
He was wrong.
Before, the heat had been a fact of life. I would leap into the bathtub or go into the basement to cool off. But now I knew what life could be. It could be a happy place where driving to the mall meant shopping, not just sitting in the food court until it was time for the movie because it was too hot to stay home. Standing in the front yard waiting for a storm to come and rain so maybe, just maybe, the temperature would drop a few degrees had lost its appeal.
Mom, who had always been plagued with migraines, now had to lie in the path of several fans, her brain poaching like an egg inside her skull. I took to driving the lawn mower extra fast, so I could have a cool breeze while I mowed.
And then it happened.
I didn't believe it at first, but soon the house was in the midst of construction. First, there was new wiring. The Swamp Cooler, infamous for blowing fuses, had done so because the house had old wiring. New wiring would mean we could run the washer and dryer with the air conditioning and still open the garage door if we wanted to.
Then a man came with booklets, and Mom studied them carefully. Then he came back. With our new air conditioner. It was the best part of the summer, maybe even the best part of my life.
But I can't justify turning on the air conditioner when it's a nice, breezy 60 degrees outside. Or even if it's 70! Think of all the electricity it uses--we can still just open a window then.
So Sunday night I roasted, feeling that the hand of death was surely upon me. I hated my life, I hated my stupid fan and the pathetic way it was churning out room-temperature air all over the room. I decided that there must have been some kind of issue with air pressure. The wind, I thought, is hitting the garage door, after all. My room is on the other side of the house. In fact, my window is EXACTLY opposite. That means, I thought, that there is a vacuum or something that's making the hot, gross air in my room stay in my room and never move. Physics, I thought. That is why I am suffering.
Monday evening.
The air outside was lovely and cool. I was still in a roasting hot bedroom. What was I to do? I pried my window open again and waited for cold air. This time, I thought, air would come in. Air COULD come in, because the wind direction had changed!
But there was no cool air.
Why, I thought, does Paul's bedroom get cool air from outside while my bedroom got nothing? Clearly, something was wrong. I was being punished for lying about that stupid fan.
I grabbed my little fan and shoved it into the window again. But the air was still the same as it had been the night before. I was going to die. I would have to sleep in the basement. But there was a weird smell in the basement, and we hadn't figured out what was making it yet. I wasn't going to sleep next to a dead mouse or a spider colony. No way.
I sat up and yanked the fan back out of the window. And I saw myself. In the window. Except the window was open.
The window was open, but not the storm window. I had been lying in bed, miserable, wondering for DAYS why I was so overheated. And all because I opened every storm window in the house except mine.
This is why I need a special sticker for my car or something. Really.
The weather here is insane. I know I should be used to it by now, and I also know that I shouldn't be blaming Indiana for having crazy weather when I don't really know about the weather in other states, but STILL. I don't see how the weather in New Jersey or Texas or Colorado could be as bizarre as the weather here.
Last week, I was wearing a winter coat everywhere. Sunday, it was over 80 degrees (we're talking Fahrenheit, if you were wondering) outside, and easily 90 in my bedroom. I thought I could combat the rising temperatures by taking a fan and putting it in my window, so the cooler air from the outside would come inside and make my life happier.
But it didn't work.
I spent Sunday night sweating in bed. On bed, really, because I threw off all the covers hoping that maybe, just maybe, I could lower my body temperature that way. Nope. When I get home and look at my sheets, they will look like the Shroud of Turin, only Laura-shaped. That is gross beyond belief. C.S.I. gross.
When I was a little girl, we didn't have air conditioning. Luckily, I didn't know the difference. Dad bought us fans. Three of them. Four, really. I got a small pink fan, Paul got a tan colored one. They didn't rotate. If there was any such thing as rotation back then, I didn't know about it. I used to sit with my face inches from the fan and wait to cool down. It never worked.
We had a large industrial-strength metal fan that sat in the living room. It didn't rotate either. This led to me convince my brother that sitting behind the fan meant he'd get the cooler air faster than me, because the air had to go past him to get through the fan to get to me. That was a lie, and this is another reason why I am on the Bad Sibling List.
On one very exciting day, Dad brought home another fan. This one was tall and it MOVED on its own. So Paul and I started sitting next to each other, and that was when he stopped believing my lies.
Well. He stopped believing the lie about the fan...he still believed other ones.
When we reached junior high, Dad decided that, while we were too immature to use a real paint brush, we were allowed to have box fans, which he shoved into windows. Wow. It was the best invention ever. Cool (humid) air came inside the house, and although I still felt like I was about to die, at least the situation had slightly improved.
We went on that way for several years. By then, my cousin was in college, and one of his roommates had a window air conditioner. Then the roommate replaced his window air conditioner and gave it to my cousin, who then passed it on to us.
It was huge. I think it was the first window air conditioner ever to be invented. It spat out dank air, but the air was cool, and it made the living room habitable--no more sticking to the couch! We peeled the sheets off of the furniture, we didn't need them anymore. Sure, the air conditioner sort of made the living room smell like a swamp, but a cool swamp was way better than basting in the rotisserie that was our home.
Paul and Mom looked at me. I looked at them.
Moments later, we'd disassembled our mattresses and pulled them into the living room. We carefully arranged them in a manner reminiscent of a malaria ward or one of those hospitals in Panama they built for all the workers keeling over with yellow fever, but what did we care? We were no longer sweating out half our body weight at night. That was enough. I nicknamed the air conditioner "Swamp Cooler" after the air conditioner in Laurie Notaro's books, and we were happy.
But all good things must end.
One summer, the Swamp Cooler spat out humid, legionnaire's disease-ridden air...and nothing else. There was no more cool air. The air conditioner had died.
Dad was happy to just sweat. He'd been sleeping in his bedroom without the air conditioner for years, he said. We could live without air conditioning.
He was wrong.
Before, the heat had been a fact of life. I would leap into the bathtub or go into the basement to cool off. But now I knew what life could be. It could be a happy place where driving to the mall meant shopping, not just sitting in the food court until it was time for the movie because it was too hot to stay home. Standing in the front yard waiting for a storm to come and rain so maybe, just maybe, the temperature would drop a few degrees had lost its appeal.
Mom, who had always been plagued with migraines, now had to lie in the path of several fans, her brain poaching like an egg inside her skull. I took to driving the lawn mower extra fast, so I could have a cool breeze while I mowed.
And then it happened.
I didn't believe it at first, but soon the house was in the midst of construction. First, there was new wiring. The Swamp Cooler, infamous for blowing fuses, had done so because the house had old wiring. New wiring would mean we could run the washer and dryer with the air conditioning and still open the garage door if we wanted to.
Then a man came with booklets, and Mom studied them carefully. Then he came back. With our new air conditioner. It was the best part of the summer, maybe even the best part of my life.
But I can't justify turning on the air conditioner when it's a nice, breezy 60 degrees outside. Or even if it's 70! Think of all the electricity it uses--we can still just open a window then.
So Sunday night I roasted, feeling that the hand of death was surely upon me. I hated my life, I hated my stupid fan and the pathetic way it was churning out room-temperature air all over the room. I decided that there must have been some kind of issue with air pressure. The wind, I thought, is hitting the garage door, after all. My room is on the other side of the house. In fact, my window is EXACTLY opposite. That means, I thought, that there is a vacuum or something that's making the hot, gross air in my room stay in my room and never move. Physics, I thought. That is why I am suffering.
Monday evening.
The air outside was lovely and cool. I was still in a roasting hot bedroom. What was I to do? I pried my window open again and waited for cold air. This time, I thought, air would come in. Air COULD come in, because the wind direction had changed!
But there was no cool air.
Why, I thought, does Paul's bedroom get cool air from outside while my bedroom got nothing? Clearly, something was wrong. I was being punished for lying about that stupid fan.
I grabbed my little fan and shoved it into the window again. But the air was still the same as it had been the night before. I was going to die. I would have to sleep in the basement. But there was a weird smell in the basement, and we hadn't figured out what was making it yet. I wasn't going to sleep next to a dead mouse or a spider colony. No way.
I sat up and yanked the fan back out of the window. And I saw myself. In the window. Except the window was open.
The window was open, but not the storm window. I had been lying in bed, miserable, wondering for DAYS why I was so overheated. And all because I opened every storm window in the house except mine.
This is why I need a special sticker for my car or something. Really.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Found: A Study in Relief
I called home. I really couldn't help it.
"Mom," I pleaded. "Could you go check the pockets of my corduroy pants? I think my key is in one of them."
Because she loves me, Mom checked.
There it was. My key. Nestled in a pocket safe and sound. No horrible, gruesome death for me. Tonight I will go home and fashion some kind of key-bracelet or key-necklace that I will put on and never remove, just in case.
"Mom," I pleaded. "Could you go check the pockets of my corduroy pants? I think my key is in one of them."
Because she loves me, Mom checked.
There it was. My key. Nestled in a pocket safe and sound. No horrible, gruesome death for me. Tonight I will go home and fashion some kind of key-bracelet or key-necklace that I will put on and never remove, just in case.
Missing: A Neurosis
I am missing a key.
I can feel the space it once occupied. It's like a hollow place, a sinking pit. Deep inside, I know it's not where I think it is. It's missing.
I do this thing with important things. Keys, iPod, phone, inhaler, book--all go into my purse and stay there. During the day, I remove them as needed and replace them when I finish with them. But that doesn't stop me from pausing, a sense of dread washing over me, to rush back to my purse or coat pocket so I know I still have keys to my car and my cell phone isn't in the hands of terrorists or tourists who make long international phone calls.
It's not that I don't think these things are where they belong--far from it. They have never been missing before. I go hunting for them compulsively, and when I find them, I feel a sense of peace and joy, a contentment that comes only from knowing that I haven't locked anything in my car or dropped whatever it is in a public restroom. I do it for the rush I get when I discover the objects aren't missing.
I think it's evidence of mental illness.
In the seventh grade, we got lockers for the first time.
In the beginning, I got a lock with a key, because I couldn't figure out the combination lock Mom gave me to practice with. But then I lost the key, so I used the bolt cutter-thing from the front office, and I had to get a new lock.
I repeated this process a lot. I went through seven locks in the first semester of junior high. I killed two more in my second semester. Keys, I explained to my mother, are hard. They can't just live in your pockets, because then you wake up and put on CLEAN pants, and the keys stay in your dirty ones in the laundry basket, where they are of no help to you.
Mom bought me a purse, but I refused to carry it, mostly because it kept me from carrying around the giant Complete Sherlock Holmes book I was reading when I was bored in class. It was over a thousand pages of Holmesian Goodness.
I had a lot of friends in junior high.
To make matters worse, I couldn't use the bolt cutters. They were heavy, with long handles that made aiming them difficult. If I positioned them around the lock and tried to reach back and take the handles, the blades (are they called blades?) would slip and mean I'd only managed to scratch the locker's paint. I used to have to beg an office helper to come with me, or else wait for someone to walk down the hallway to help me.
Mostly I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
That was how my System was devised. First, you make certain you have lots of sets of keys, then you put them in various places. Then you panic, check that they are still where you put them, and after that, you can relax and go to class or work or home to sleep.
I'm telling you--mental illness. I scare myself on purpose. I like to scare myself. Are your keys still there, Laura? (I think to myself in the third person, like my brain is the narrator). Then I check. Good, I think. Keys are good.
This morning I did that when I got to work. Car keys? Check--just finished driving. Key to the building....what?
MY KEY IS GONE.
Naturally, I am panicking. At some point between yesterday and today, my key VANISHED.
Now, I know where it is. It has to be in my pants pocket. Really. There is no other place.
BUT WHAT IF IT ISN'T.
In the car, maybe? Did it fall into the seat? What could I have done to it at the pizza place / Walmart / home that made it leave me?
YES, BUT WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Certainly they are in my pants pocket. My pants from yesterday. And they are in my room. In the laundry. So they can be washed. But there are keys there. Unless they fell out, and then they're somewhere else. Like at the pizza place, where I ate dinner, in that booth by the window, across from the woman who left her teeth at home when she went out for pizza. She spent the whole meal using her gums to tear off pizza chunks, then her whole face seemed to collapse as she tried to chew without teeth. It was...alarming. And maybe it was why I didn't hear it when my keys fell out of my pocket. If they fell out. Because maybe they didn't.
Of course they didn't.
Since when does stuff just fall out of my pockets? The only pants with that problem are these pants, which I am wearing today, which means I most definitely did not wear them yesterday. And still, even with these, I only lose lip balm--never keys. Keys are heavy and not round, so they stay where you put them, generally.
Unless they fall out.
But they didn't.
You know, if people use those keys to break into my house and murder me and use my skin as material to make a dress like that one man I heard about on TV did, it will be because I could not find my keys*. He will be waltzing around in his Skin Suit and hating his mother, who made him crazy, and I will be skinless, dead on the floor. It will be on Dateline, and it will all be because I could not find my keys.
Or I could just get robbed. Because there is so much robbery here in the country, where no one lives.
Maybe they will steal my car, and they will use it as the getaway vehicle and there will be a nation-wide manhunt because of the Skin Suit thing, and that car isn't even paid off yet.
But I will be dead, so I guess I won't really be in a position to care.
Still, I would rather stay alive and find my keys. I need my keys. They let me into places, like my house, where my books live. And me--I live there too!
WHERE ARE MY KEYS?!
I need to find them.
But I can't go home at noon like some people do, because it takes me 30 minutes to drive home and 30 minutes to drive back, and that adds up to my whole lunch hour. Notice that it would not include time for eating. That defeats the purpose of having a lunch hour in the first place.
Maybe I can call home.
Mom could look in the pockets of my pants, and then she will find my keys!
Unless they aren't there. And what if they aren't? THEN WHAT WILL HAPPEN?
You cannot use bolt cutters to take off the door of your house when you lose your keys! You have to call a guy to come, and he'll make you a new key--BUT THOSE GUYS ARE EXPENSIVE! Also I don't think anyone would be walking down the road to help me work the bolt cutters. People don't just walk down our road, mostly because there is no sidewalk and it would be easy to die when large trucks barrel down the road at a high speed.
This is bad.
I think I was the only one with a key to the house! Maybe Dad has one too, but everyone else doesn't! Or maybe they do, but they always have me unlock the door! I won't be able to unlock the door without a key?
We will have to start living in the garage.
And spiders already live there. We ceded the garage to the spiders when we ran out of Bug Death Spray in the fall. They are as big as my face, and they want me dead, I'm sure. I could see it in their eyes, which are big enough to see from across the room. Shelob lives in my garage.
Please don't make me share a bedroom with Shelob.
If you see a set of keys, they will have a key ring on them from my college, which is what they give you when you graduate even though it is worth a fraction of a percentage of what you spent to attend school there. If you find them, please tell me. Seriously. Call me on the phone. I will come pick them up, and then I will be able to, you know...
Live.
*You probably shouldn't click the link to Wikipedia, but I'm putting it there anyway so you don't think I'm making horrible, disgusting things up, because I'm totally not. I just remember everything and some of the everything involves the life stories of gross and morally reprehensible people whose lives inspire movies like Psycho and books like Silence of the Lambs.
I can feel the space it once occupied. It's like a hollow place, a sinking pit. Deep inside, I know it's not where I think it is. It's missing.
I do this thing with important things. Keys, iPod, phone, inhaler, book--all go into my purse and stay there. During the day, I remove them as needed and replace them when I finish with them. But that doesn't stop me from pausing, a sense of dread washing over me, to rush back to my purse or coat pocket so I know I still have keys to my car and my cell phone isn't in the hands of terrorists or tourists who make long international phone calls.
It's not that I don't think these things are where they belong--far from it. They have never been missing before. I go hunting for them compulsively, and when I find them, I feel a sense of peace and joy, a contentment that comes only from knowing that I haven't locked anything in my car or dropped whatever it is in a public restroom. I do it for the rush I get when I discover the objects aren't missing.
I think it's evidence of mental illness.
In the seventh grade, we got lockers for the first time.
In the beginning, I got a lock with a key, because I couldn't figure out the combination lock Mom gave me to practice with. But then I lost the key, so I used the bolt cutter-thing from the front office, and I had to get a new lock.
I repeated this process a lot. I went through seven locks in the first semester of junior high. I killed two more in my second semester. Keys, I explained to my mother, are hard. They can't just live in your pockets, because then you wake up and put on CLEAN pants, and the keys stay in your dirty ones in the laundry basket, where they are of no help to you.
Mom bought me a purse, but I refused to carry it, mostly because it kept me from carrying around the giant Complete Sherlock Holmes book I was reading when I was bored in class. It was over a thousand pages of Holmesian Goodness.
I had a lot of friends in junior high.
To make matters worse, I couldn't use the bolt cutters. They were heavy, with long handles that made aiming them difficult. If I positioned them around the lock and tried to reach back and take the handles, the blades (are they called blades?) would slip and mean I'd only managed to scratch the locker's paint. I used to have to beg an office helper to come with me, or else wait for someone to walk down the hallway to help me.
Mostly I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
That was how my System was devised. First, you make certain you have lots of sets of keys, then you put them in various places. Then you panic, check that they are still where you put them, and after that, you can relax and go to class or work or home to sleep.
I'm telling you--mental illness. I scare myself on purpose. I like to scare myself. Are your keys still there, Laura? (I think to myself in the third person, like my brain is the narrator). Then I check. Good, I think. Keys are good.
This morning I did that when I got to work. Car keys? Check--just finished driving. Key to the building....what?
MY KEY IS GONE.
Naturally, I am panicking. At some point between yesterday and today, my key VANISHED.
Now, I know where it is. It has to be in my pants pocket. Really. There is no other place.
BUT WHAT IF IT ISN'T.
In the car, maybe? Did it fall into the seat? What could I have done to it at the pizza place / Walmart / home that made it leave me?
YES, BUT WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Certainly they are in my pants pocket. My pants from yesterday. And they are in my room. In the laundry. So they can be washed. But there are keys there. Unless they fell out, and then they're somewhere else. Like at the pizza place, where I ate dinner, in that booth by the window, across from the woman who left her teeth at home when she went out for pizza. She spent the whole meal using her gums to tear off pizza chunks, then her whole face seemed to collapse as she tried to chew without teeth. It was...alarming. And maybe it was why I didn't hear it when my keys fell out of my pocket. If they fell out. Because maybe they didn't.
Of course they didn't.
Since when does stuff just fall out of my pockets? The only pants with that problem are these pants, which I am wearing today, which means I most definitely did not wear them yesterday. And still, even with these, I only lose lip balm--never keys. Keys are heavy and not round, so they stay where you put them, generally.
Unless they fall out.
But they didn't.
You know, if people use those keys to break into my house and murder me and use my skin as material to make a dress like that one man I heard about on TV did, it will be because I could not find my keys*. He will be waltzing around in his Skin Suit and hating his mother, who made him crazy, and I will be skinless, dead on the floor. It will be on Dateline, and it will all be because I could not find my keys.
Or I could just get robbed. Because there is so much robbery here in the country, where no one lives.
Maybe they will steal my car, and they will use it as the getaway vehicle and there will be a nation-wide manhunt because of the Skin Suit thing, and that car isn't even paid off yet.
But I will be dead, so I guess I won't really be in a position to care.
Still, I would rather stay alive and find my keys. I need my keys. They let me into places, like my house, where my books live. And me--I live there too!
WHERE ARE MY KEYS?!
I need to find them.
But I can't go home at noon like some people do, because it takes me 30 minutes to drive home and 30 minutes to drive back, and that adds up to my whole lunch hour. Notice that it would not include time for eating. That defeats the purpose of having a lunch hour in the first place.
Maybe I can call home.
Mom could look in the pockets of my pants, and then she will find my keys!
Unless they aren't there. And what if they aren't? THEN WHAT WILL HAPPEN?
You cannot use bolt cutters to take off the door of your house when you lose your keys! You have to call a guy to come, and he'll make you a new key--BUT THOSE GUYS ARE EXPENSIVE! Also I don't think anyone would be walking down the road to help me work the bolt cutters. People don't just walk down our road, mostly because there is no sidewalk and it would be easy to die when large trucks barrel down the road at a high speed.
This is bad.
I think I was the only one with a key to the house! Maybe Dad has one too, but everyone else doesn't! Or maybe they do, but they always have me unlock the door! I won't be able to unlock the door without a key?
We will have to start living in the garage.
And spiders already live there. We ceded the garage to the spiders when we ran out of Bug Death Spray in the fall. They are as big as my face, and they want me dead, I'm sure. I could see it in their eyes, which are big enough to see from across the room. Shelob lives in my garage.
Please don't make me share a bedroom with Shelob.
If you see a set of keys, they will have a key ring on them from my college, which is what they give you when you graduate even though it is worth a fraction of a percentage of what you spent to attend school there. If you find them, please tell me. Seriously. Call me on the phone. I will come pick them up, and then I will be able to, you know...
Live.
*You probably shouldn't click the link to Wikipedia, but I'm putting it there anyway so you don't think I'm making horrible, disgusting things up, because I'm totally not. I just remember everything and some of the everything involves the life stories of gross and morally reprehensible people whose lives inspire movies like Psycho and books like Silence of the Lambs.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Evenly Spaced
The pattern said I should mark the positions for seven buttonholes. It said I should space them evenly. That was all the pattern said.
I am hugely devoted to Gundrun Johnston. I am addicted to her patterns, partially because her designs are super cute, partially because no one writes a pattern better than she does.
That being said, when Gundrun Johnston wrote the evenly space seven buttonholes line, she triggered something in my brain. I don't think she could have possibly anticipated how one little sentence could make me so crazy. But it did.
Last night, I picked up something like 20,000 stitches around the front and neckband of my sweater. I'm making Shalder, from The Shetland Trader, Book 1 (without the pockets, because I think I would not use them and because I think they would only exist to make me look rounder at the middle than I am, or to make my torso look like a frowny face, depending on the angle).
The pattern said I should have a 32" circular needle, a U.S. size 7. This posed a few problems because I keep buying size 7s, but the second I shell out the money for them, they hit some kind of Hawking black hole in my room or my knitting bag or in that cute little fake luggage box thing I bought at Hobby Lobby that has all the other circular needles inside it. I should have at least three or four size 7s. When I started knitting I found only one, and it was a 16" (okay, maybe it was a 20-something-inch circular) and not a 32", which means the cable was shorter than it needed to be. But I shrugged off the difference, because I've made sweaters on that length before, and it all works out just fine.
I was proud of my picked-up stitches, even if they were crammed on my tiny cable so tightly, I could not move them around at all without dropping a few off the needle. No matter--I had picked up some good lookin' stitches. I was proud! So proud that I walked around the house and showed my family.
"Paul," I said. "Look at these stitches. Just look at them. I picked these up. See that nice, even line? And there are no gaps! These are the best stitches ever!" And Paul stared at them, stared at me, and said something or other about how I'd done a good job.
"Mom," I said. "I have to show you this, because you're a fellow knitter. You know what this means." I displayed my stitches. And then I may have volunteered to pick up stitches for her all the time. I blame wool fumes.
I had all 7 billion stitches picked up! This was great! And then I noticed the "evenly spaced buttonholes" sentence.
Really? Really? Had I actually missed that?
Of course I had.
I grabbed waste yarn. I moved one section of stitches onto the waste yarn, pinned the sweater with blocking pins, and stared. Then I measured. Then I stared.
I begged Twitter for help. Then I tried to do math. Then I begged for more help. And then I searched for help on the internet, because the internet knows everything.
Then I stared.
I did math in inches. Then I did math in centimeters. It didn't help.
I have to get this right, I thought. Because if I don't, people will know.
I envisioned myself standing at some kind of knitting mixer, holding a martini glass with yarn inside just like at a yarn "tasting" I went to when I first started knitting. Then I envisioned Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the Yarn Harlot, coming up to talk to me. Then Imaginary Stephanie went over to Franklin Habit (also imaginary), leaned over, and whispered, "That girl's buttonholes aren't even. One space is giant, and the other spaces are tiny! What is that about?*"
I should probably tell you that, in my head, all the cool people of the Knitting World hang out together all the time, even though some of them live in different states or even different countries (Twitter feeds this illusion). Also, the Cool People of Knitting in my nightmare scenario were in some kind of Knitting Mafia, and I was there as some kind of dumb kid who was about to be embedded in the concrete supports for some kind of bridge.
Believe it or not, I have never watched a crime movie, nor do I know anything about the real mafia at all, or any other sort of organized crime family, except that in part of Italy, the mob stopped collecting garbage for a while, and it was gross.
Imaginary Franklin Habit looked at Imaginary Me in my Imaginary Completed Sweater with its Unevenly Spaced Buttonholes. Then he made a face.
Yes. In my scenario, Imaginary Franklin Habit made a face like the girl Willoughby ended up marrying in Sense and Sensibility, the movie version with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, when they're all in London and Marianne says, "Will you not shake hands with me?" And Willoughby shoots her down. Then he goes over and tells his new girlfriend some excuse, and she looks over at Marianne and makes a FACE. It's a "Look at the trashy country girl" face. Imaginary Franklin Habit was MEAN, which is not actually true at all, because I met him once, and he was REALLY NICE. He was knitting lace--a baby blanket, I think--and he'd designed the pattern. Seriously--he's super nice! No way would Real Franklin Habit make that face. NO WAY.
In my deranged, buttonhole-spacing mind, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and Franklin Habit had become Evil. Which is especially crazy of me, because I'm pretty sure Stephanie has been through all this before with knitting, including the mini-meltdown. In fact, I'm sure she has.
But I had become convinced. The next time I go to one of her readings, I thought, Stephanie will pull out a tape measure, one she carries for this purpose and this purpose alone, and then she will measure my buttonhole spacing. It will be like a Knitting Exam, and I will fail, right there in front of all the knitters and spinners.
I ate another Reese's Mini. Clearly, Reese's Minis are some kind of drug that contributed to my meltdown.
Suddenly, I thought of Elizabeth Zimmerman. What would EZ do?
Just as quickly, Imaginary Elizabeth Zimmerman was in my head with Imaginary Franklin and Imaginary Stephanie, and she was raising an eyebrow, and she was taking a deep breath to start a knitting lecture.
Wait. I thought. Elizabeth Zimmerman is no longer with us--so how is she there making fun of my sweater? But then Imaginary Elizabeth Zimmerman became transparent, so I wasn't being lectured to by Imaginary Elizabeth Zimmerman, but by Imaginary Elizabeth Zimmerman's Ghost (you know, like Hamlet's father).
Meanwhile, Twitter was busy telling me that my scenario was covered in crazy sauce, and no way was Elizabeth Zimmerman's Ghost about to drop by my house just to mock me. Also, Twitter said, no way was Stephanie going to measure the spaces between my buttonholes.
Something finally clicked. Of course they were right. In fact, I thought, in Stephanie's books, she talks about how she can never find tape measures! So if she tried to measure my sweater, she wouldn't be able to...theoretically. Also, Franklin is NICE. And so is Stephanie! And even if Elizabeth Zimmerman happened to drop by...it seems like she was nice too! So she wouldn't be mean, would she?
I relaxed enough to place the buttonholes. And yes, my cell phone camera makes funny pink-yellow spots in the middle of pictures. It's very flattering.
Who knows if they are even or not. I certainly don't.
But I'll be measuring the buttonhole spacing before I go to another one of Real Stephanie's readings, just in case.
*It is worth mentioning that Stephanie says the word "about" in a fantastic way, and I love listening to her say it. This was why I majored in English, and why I got an A in History of the English Language when we all listened to different people speaking English, then wrote down what they were saying phonetically. Because I am a Word Nerd.
I am hugely devoted to Gundrun Johnston. I am addicted to her patterns, partially because her designs are super cute, partially because no one writes a pattern better than she does.
That being said, when Gundrun Johnston wrote the evenly space seven buttonholes line, she triggered something in my brain. I don't think she could have possibly anticipated how one little sentence could make me so crazy. But it did.
Last night, I picked up something like 20,000 stitches around the front and neckband of my sweater. I'm making Shalder, from The Shetland Trader, Book 1 (without the pockets, because I think I would not use them and because I think they would only exist to make me look rounder at the middle than I am, or to make my torso look like a frowny face, depending on the angle).
The pattern said I should have a 32" circular needle, a U.S. size 7. This posed a few problems because I keep buying size 7s, but the second I shell out the money for them, they hit some kind of Hawking black hole in my room or my knitting bag or in that cute little fake luggage box thing I bought at Hobby Lobby that has all the other circular needles inside it. I should have at least three or four size 7s. When I started knitting I found only one, and it was a 16" (okay, maybe it was a 20-something-inch circular) and not a 32", which means the cable was shorter than it needed to be. But I shrugged off the difference, because I've made sweaters on that length before, and it all works out just fine.
I was proud of my picked-up stitches, even if they were crammed on my tiny cable so tightly, I could not move them around at all without dropping a few off the needle. No matter--I had picked up some good lookin' stitches. I was proud! So proud that I walked around the house and showed my family.
"Paul," I said. "Look at these stitches. Just look at them. I picked these up. See that nice, even line? And there are no gaps! These are the best stitches ever!" And Paul stared at them, stared at me, and said something or other about how I'd done a good job.
"Mom," I said. "I have to show you this, because you're a fellow knitter. You know what this means." I displayed my stitches. And then I may have volunteered to pick up stitches for her all the time. I blame wool fumes.
I had all 7 billion stitches picked up! This was great! And then I noticed the "evenly spaced buttonholes" sentence.
Really? Really? Had I actually missed that?
Of course I had.
I grabbed waste yarn. I moved one section of stitches onto the waste yarn, pinned the sweater with blocking pins, and stared. Then I measured. Then I stared.
I begged Twitter for help. Then I tried to do math. Then I begged for more help. And then I searched for help on the internet, because the internet knows everything.
Then I stared.
I did math in inches. Then I did math in centimeters. It didn't help.
I have to get this right, I thought. Because if I don't, people will know.
I envisioned myself standing at some kind of knitting mixer, holding a martini glass with yarn inside just like at a yarn "tasting" I went to when I first started knitting. Then I envisioned Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the Yarn Harlot, coming up to talk to me. Then Imaginary Stephanie went over to Franklin Habit (also imaginary), leaned over, and whispered, "That girl's buttonholes aren't even. One space is giant, and the other spaces are tiny! What is that about?*"
I should probably tell you that, in my head, all the cool people of the Knitting World hang out together all the time, even though some of them live in different states or even different countries (Twitter feeds this illusion). Also, the Cool People of Knitting in my nightmare scenario were in some kind of Knitting Mafia, and I was there as some kind of dumb kid who was about to be embedded in the concrete supports for some kind of bridge.
Believe it or not, I have never watched a crime movie, nor do I know anything about the real mafia at all, or any other sort of organized crime family, except that in part of Italy, the mob stopped collecting garbage for a while, and it was gross.
Imaginary Franklin Habit looked at Imaginary Me in my Imaginary Completed Sweater with its Unevenly Spaced Buttonholes. Then he made a face.
Yes. In my scenario, Imaginary Franklin Habit made a face like the girl Willoughby ended up marrying in Sense and Sensibility, the movie version with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, when they're all in London and Marianne says, "Will you not shake hands with me?" And Willoughby shoots her down. Then he goes over and tells his new girlfriend some excuse, and she looks over at Marianne and makes a FACE. It's a "Look at the trashy country girl" face. Imaginary Franklin Habit was MEAN, which is not actually true at all, because I met him once, and he was REALLY NICE. He was knitting lace--a baby blanket, I think--and he'd designed the pattern. Seriously--he's super nice! No way would Real Franklin Habit make that face. NO WAY.
In my deranged, buttonhole-spacing mind, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee and Franklin Habit had become Evil. Which is especially crazy of me, because I'm pretty sure Stephanie has been through all this before with knitting, including the mini-meltdown. In fact, I'm sure she has.
But I had become convinced. The next time I go to one of her readings, I thought, Stephanie will pull out a tape measure, one she carries for this purpose and this purpose alone, and then she will measure my buttonhole spacing. It will be like a Knitting Exam, and I will fail, right there in front of all the knitters and spinners.
I ate another Reese's Mini. Clearly, Reese's Minis are some kind of drug that contributed to my meltdown.
Suddenly, I thought of Elizabeth Zimmerman. What would EZ do?
Just as quickly, Imaginary Elizabeth Zimmerman was in my head with Imaginary Franklin and Imaginary Stephanie, and she was raising an eyebrow, and she was taking a deep breath to start a knitting lecture.
Wait. I thought. Elizabeth Zimmerman is no longer with us--so how is she there making fun of my sweater? But then Imaginary Elizabeth Zimmerman became transparent, so I wasn't being lectured to by Imaginary Elizabeth Zimmerman, but by Imaginary Elizabeth Zimmerman's Ghost (you know, like Hamlet's father).
Meanwhile, Twitter was busy telling me that my scenario was covered in crazy sauce, and no way was Elizabeth Zimmerman's Ghost about to drop by my house just to mock me. Also, Twitter said, no way was Stephanie going to measure the spaces between my buttonholes.
Something finally clicked. Of course they were right. In fact, I thought, in Stephanie's books, she talks about how she can never find tape measures! So if she tried to measure my sweater, she wouldn't be able to...theoretically. Also, Franklin is NICE. And so is Stephanie! And even if Elizabeth Zimmerman happened to drop by...it seems like she was nice too! So she wouldn't be mean, would she?
I relaxed enough to place the buttonholes. And yes, my cell phone camera makes funny pink-yellow spots in the middle of pictures. It's very flattering.
Who knows if they are even or not. I certainly don't.
But I'll be measuring the buttonhole spacing before I go to another one of Real Stephanie's readings, just in case.
*It is worth mentioning that Stephanie says the word "about" in a fantastic way, and I love listening to her say it. This was why I majored in English, and why I got an A in History of the English Language when we all listened to different people speaking English, then wrote down what they were saying phonetically. Because I am a Word Nerd.
Monday, March 28, 2011
35 Steps to a Lazy Weekend
1. Leave work. Note that train is stopped on tracks. Realize that this is related to train accident you heard about earlier, in which semi filled with five hour energy drink had not fully crossed tracks when struck by train. Recall that semi is now in three pieces, not counting the spilled energy drink. Curse under breath.
2. Sit in traffic jam for thirty minutes, until police (also stuck in traffic jam) manage to navigate through town and to intersection. Wait for police to direct traffic. Cross energy drink-free tracks.
3. Drive home.
4. Arrive home from work. Change from work clothes into jeans and Magic Hoodie.
5. Realize that Reese's Minis are still gone.
6. Drive back to Wabash in order to go to Walmart. Pretend that you are doing this to buy cat food, when really, it is all about the Reese's Minis.
7. Buy Reese's Minis. Normal Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are not an acceptable substitution.
8. Drive back home.
9. Arrive home ten minutes after Fringe has begun. Curse under breath.
10. Begin knitting yoke of sweater. Start lace chart.
11. Discover that lace chart is not worked over only right side rows, but also over wrong side rows. Eat Reese's Minis.
12. Start watching Criminal Minds, because Prentiss is now somewhere in Europe if not somewhere even further away, and everyone thinks she's dead when she really isn't, which is tragic, and way more tragic than it was when J.J. left, because they could call J.J., and they so can't call Prentiss, because they just buried her, even if the coffin is actually empty. Cry a little.
13. Realize that random bouts of tears might be related to lack of sleep over work week. Go to bed early.
14. Wake up. Stare at clock. Shrug.
15. Wake up again. Eat lunch.
16. Start working on yoke of sweater. Proceed through large portion of lace chart.
17. Cook dinner.
18. Eat dinner.
19. Go back to working on sweater.
20. Stare at lace chart. Watch as chart blurs and swirls over page.
21. Develop migraine.
22. Go to bed early.
23. Wake up. Squint at clock.
24. Crawl out of bed. Start working on lace chart.
25. Finish lace chart. Count stitches. Discover that sweater has approximately 20 stitches more than what sweater should have.
26. Eat a few more Reese's Minis.
28. Rip back six rows of sweater. Put stitches back on needles.
29. Rip back four more rows of sweater. Put stitches back on needles.
30. Knit lace chart. This time, actually follow chart.
31. Finish lace chart, discover sweater has 3 stitches less than what sweater should have.
32. Shrug. Pretend sweater is size smaller than sweater is.
33. Work short rows across back.
34. Place sweater on waste yarn. Eat more Reese's Minis. Try on sweater.
35. Rejoice that sweater is both cute and correct size. Go to sleep.
2. Sit in traffic jam for thirty minutes, until police (also stuck in traffic jam) manage to navigate through town and to intersection. Wait for police to direct traffic. Cross energy drink-free tracks.
3. Drive home.
4. Arrive home from work. Change from work clothes into jeans and Magic Hoodie.
5. Realize that Reese's Minis are still gone.
6. Drive back to Wabash in order to go to Walmart. Pretend that you are doing this to buy cat food, when really, it is all about the Reese's Minis.
7. Buy Reese's Minis. Normal Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are not an acceptable substitution.
8. Drive back home.
9. Arrive home ten minutes after Fringe has begun. Curse under breath.
10. Begin knitting yoke of sweater. Start lace chart.
11. Discover that lace chart is not worked over only right side rows, but also over wrong side rows. Eat Reese's Minis.
12. Start watching Criminal Minds, because Prentiss is now somewhere in Europe if not somewhere even further away, and everyone thinks she's dead when she really isn't, which is tragic, and way more tragic than it was when J.J. left, because they could call J.J., and they so can't call Prentiss, because they just buried her, even if the coffin is actually empty. Cry a little.
13. Realize that random bouts of tears might be related to lack of sleep over work week. Go to bed early.
14. Wake up. Stare at clock. Shrug.
15. Wake up again. Eat lunch.
16. Start working on yoke of sweater. Proceed through large portion of lace chart.
17. Cook dinner.
18. Eat dinner.
19. Go back to working on sweater.
20. Stare at lace chart. Watch as chart blurs and swirls over page.
21. Develop migraine.
22. Go to bed early.
23. Wake up. Squint at clock.
24. Crawl out of bed. Start working on lace chart.
25. Finish lace chart. Count stitches. Discover that sweater has approximately 20 stitches more than what sweater should have.
26. Eat a few more Reese's Minis.
28. Rip back six rows of sweater. Put stitches back on needles.
29. Rip back four more rows of sweater. Put stitches back on needles.
30. Knit lace chart. This time, actually follow chart.
31. Finish lace chart, discover sweater has 3 stitches less than what sweater should have.
32. Shrug. Pretend sweater is size smaller than sweater is.
33. Work short rows across back.
34. Place sweater on waste yarn. Eat more Reese's Minis. Try on sweater.
35. Rejoice that sweater is both cute and correct size. Go to sleep.
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