Much Less Whining

For those that read the previous entry, please know that I’m doing somewhat better. I’m far from cheerful, which is where I’ve happily spent most of the last 10 years, and only occasionally approach optimistic. But I’m trying to get better and I’m not whining any more.

I’ve done a lot of knitting in the last few days and a lot of watching television and reading email. This helps, I think. The weather is getting less awful here in Central Texas, and that likely helps a bit, too.

Some very good news that has lifted my spirits: three of the hard to place adult cats at the shelter were adopted last week! Two of them on Thursday, including the kitty who’d been up for adoption the longest, the tuxedo-clad Suki. When I first met Suki, she was fairly scary. She was hissing and spitting and growling for no particular reason, while demanding attention at the same time. Leaving her cage to have her picture taken was not an option – she got downright hysterical when I tried it. By the last time I saw her, she was happy to see me (I swear she recognized me as a friend), happily left her cage to be held and petted and loved on, and even went back into her cage without a struggle. She’d come a really long way, and I credit her and the volunteers at the shelter. They did an amazing job! Less than a week after that, she left the shelter with (I’m told) an older couple who was made aware of all her problems and who already adored her. Leaving the same day was Carmen, a very, very sweet tortoiseshell girl. Leaving earlier in the week was Misty, who looked pretty much like Carmen, and who also was a lap-sitter like Carmen. I’m so happy for all three girls!

One of my favorite seasons of the year is New TV Show Season. Which, of course, this is right now. I have a new tool in my enjoyment of the season, a DVR. We’ve had a DVR here in the house for a couple of years or so, but it belongs to DH and lives with his HD TV in the living room. It’s relatively complicated to program and to watch anything on it, you have to, you know, actually be in the living room. On the upside, it plays and burns DVDs, so it’s nice to have.

However, my DVR comes from the cable company. It’s much, much cheaper, at about $7 a month. It’s easier to program and if I need to watch DVDs, I have a PS2 for that. And it can record two shows at the same time, a feature that really matters to me. (DH’s doesn’t do that.) I’m happy that it’s not an actual TiVO, which evidently fills itself up with shows you didn’t actually ask it to record. I’m pretty happy with it.

DH did the installation for me, with a great deal of help from Simba. Pictures follow. See how very helpful he is?









































One of the benefits of aging is being able to watch a new TV shows’s pilot and get a clue whether you’d like the show. With my new gadget, I’ve actually recorded some shows to give them a shot that I might not have otherwise watched. One is Jericho, about which I am reserving judgment. I also tried The Class, but it quickly got removed from my recording schedule. I was predictably pleased with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. What’s not to like? I like Bradley Whitford, Matthew Perry, and it’s an Aaron Sorkin show.

One that I didn’t expect to like was Men in Trees. I like Anne Heche well enough, from when she was Marley/Victoria on Another World. But I figured this was just another show in the Northern Exposure category: states that are not Los Angeles are weird. (I notice we’ve cycled on back to Alaska. I think they’ve missed a bunch of states.) DH and I were really, really big Northern Exposure fans, but no other show in that genre has come anywhere close to measuring up. This one, while clearly not NE, has its good points. And someone with a sense of humor is working in the writing office. The guy that played Jerry on ER is playing a guy named Ben. Ben and Jerry. Yep, I get it. I noticed some totem poles in “downtown” that looked like they wandered over from the Northern Exposure set – although this show is filmed near Vancouver, not in Roslyn, Washington. (And ya gotta love a town named after a beloved Sesame Street character.) In fact, it looks a bit like Wrangell, Alaska, but we suspect the outsides are filmed in the Squamish, British Columbia, area. (We love Vancouver and Squamish.) The scenery is very pretty and does, as I said, resemble southeastern Alaska. The story is a bit odd, but then that’s part of the genre. I find it interesting that, according to Hollywood, no one ever goes to Alaska on purpose. And no sane person stays there. I liked Alaska and would not mind at all moving to the Juneau area. Or maybe Anchorage – but I haven’t been to Anchorage, so I’m not as sure about that. But this is definitely in the general Northern Exposure mold. Overly rich man who can occasionally throw money around? Check. Bar where everybody spends time? Check. Bartender with an odd romantic relationship? Check. Gorgeous native of the opposite sex from the main character to provide romantic interest, but with whom main character has a strange relationship? Check. Pilot. Check. Main character with broken relationship back in New York for which he/she occasionally pines? Check. Strange radio program? Check. I’m still looking for Chris-in-the-Morning – I don’t think this radio guy is him. And I can’t tell if the prostitute next door is supposed to be the all-knowing Marilyn Whirlwind. The dialogue is not terribly stupid (occasionally it may even be a bit too good), the acting is quite good, and the scenery distracts me from any plot holes. I can live with this.

I did have to laugh a couple of weeks ago. I was watching an old CSI: Miami and DH was complaining, loudly, about Horatio Caine. “I just don’t like him. He’s arrogant.” Uh, yeah. I laughted because he’s said the exact same thing about Gil Grissom on the original CSI. The only reason he’s never complained about Gary Sinise’s character on CSI: NY is because I rarely watch that! He doesn’t watch the CSIs. He’s squeamish. I am actually somewhat squeamish, myself, but I know those aren’t real bodies and besides, I’m usually watching my knitting. I listen to more TV than I actually watch! (Confession time: I’m not a big fan of Horatio Caine, either, and it doesn’t bother me that the show is on Monday night when I rarely see it. I think Gil Grissom is hot, though, and I’ve got that show on my “record every new episode list”. Mostly I’m home on Thursday nights, thought right now I’ve got play rehearsal.)

Oh, that reminds me. I’m in a play at church: Spoon River Anthology. I’ve mostly got the Actress Four part, though our director has divided the women’s parts into three parts. I’m also going to be doing some of the singing. It’s really kind of cool – I’m not a big fan of poetry, but I’ve always liked Spoon River Anthology. My mom loved it. And now that I’m old enough to understand it, I like it even better. I’m very pleased that I have what I consider to be the three best epitaphs in the play: Lucinda Matlock (my mother’s favorite), Anne Rutledge, and Hannah Armstrong. Interestingly, all three women were based on real people. The hard part is going to be memorizing the lines. My remembery don’t work so well any more!

In Which Our Heroine Whines Repeatedly

I guess I’m just another spoiled brat. Or maybe it’s that my summer depression is just hitting this afternoon, hard, and all at once.

I was just driving home from DS’s disaster – uh, I mean apartment – and it hit me. I’m not having any fun. I’m not enjoying having an empty nest cause I’m still parenting, only long (ok, short) distance. And with fewer results.

I’m not enjoying my women’s chorus. All the music is too hard for my skills. It’s not in English. Oh, it *says* it’s English, but it’s like Olde English or Middle English or something that is more German than English. And it’s too hard and too fast. It’s not pretty. There’s little nice harmony or melody. It’s not fun to sing and the rehearsals are not fun. We used to do at least *some* fun music. Where’s the fun music?

I’m not enjoying choir. The main reason I joined, because a friend of mine was in the choir and said I should, well, she’s not there any more and shows no signs of coming back. The music we’re doing for our Christmas choir concert is too hard and it’s not in English. (Do you sense a trend? I sense a trend.) It’s too fast for me and it’s not pretty. There’s no real melody and no real harmony. We’re doing some god-awful thing to do at another church that, at this point, I’d rather slit my throat than work on, plus this no-fun-all-the-time music. Why am I putting myself through this? Most of my friends aren’t in choir any more and we’re not doing anything that’s any fun. We used to do *some* fun music. Where’s the fun music? I love my choir director, but at this point, I’d prefer jumping off the nearest high bridge than go to choir practice. Which is, of course, tonight.

Then there’s my newsletter. It’s no fun, either. There are any number of people that need to have their heads knocked together. (Go ahead, pick a number. I can easily find that many names.) I don’t enjoy working with people who refuse to cooperate or even follow simple rules that are set for *everybody*. Everybody except them, apparently. They’re all special cases. And we won’t even discuss the word “deadline”. These folks walk right on past them. I read, a while back, about the origin of the word deadline and with some of these people, I’d like to try the original meaning. (Look it up.) There is no cooperation. Well, that’s not true. Some people are simply lovely and appreciative. They turn their stuff in on time, if not before, they follow the very simple guidelines I’ve set, and they give me no trouble. But it’s the others I’m going to be hearing from when they discover I’ve not treated them as special cases to whom the rules don’t apply. I’m not enjoying this any more. Why am I doing it? Goddess knows it’s not the money. The money is, literally, laughable.

So when did I decide that everything in life has to be fun? Sounds like a spoiled brat to me. But is it really asking so much to get some enjoyment out of the things I committed myself to because they’re fun? Like the chorus and the choir?

At this point I want to quit everything that I’m clearly not enjoying and am finding too hard, like choir and the chorus and the newsletter. I should just stay home, mostly, and do the things that I am capable of and find fun, like knitting and taking pictures of the cats at the shelter. The cats appreciate it. My son doesn’t, or at least doesn’t seem to. I took him some things I’d ordered for him, including the ever-necessary pizza cutter, and didn’t get so much as a thank you. The chorus didn’t notice I wasn’t there for a month. Choir won’t miss me – we actually seem to have enough altos at the moment, which is a rarity. I should stay home and knit and watch TV. That’s fun.

Thoughts of Death on September 11

I’ve been watching President Bush lay wreaths all over the place today and this is what came to my mind, so I decided to share it:

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

(I’ve decided that Bush is perhaps as good a Mourner in Chief as Reagan and Clinton were. While I am not as big a fan of either Reagan or Bush as I am Clinton, they were actually pretty good when national tragedies hit. It’s in the aftermath I don’t trust Bush and didn’t trust Reagan.)

I looked the poem up on the web and found it has an interesting history. It was written in 1932 by Mary Frye. A friend of hers was lamenting that she could not be at her mother’s bedside while she died, nor go to her grave. The friend, Margaret Schwarzkopf, was Jewish and her mother lived in Germany. She said she was denied the right to 'stand by her mother's grave and shed a tear'. The words to this poem just came to Ms. Frye and she wrote them on a brown paper sack, or so the story goes. Later, friends of the Schwarzkopf family had the poem printed on postcards (not an uncommon way of publishing such things in earlier years), so the poem, which was untitled, got into common usage.

There are many versions of the poem, some with additional words, but the version I’ve quoted above is the one that appeared on the postcards. It is also the words to a song my church choir has sung and is the version I prefer.

I thought of this when I considered the propensity of humans to want to be at the site of a grave or where a death occurred on the anniversary of the death, especially at the exact time of death. I think it’s quite human and normal. Do spirits hang around after death, around the spot of their death, around favorite places, or around loved ones? I don’t know for sure. Being a believer in reincarnation, I suspect that, especially in the first few years after a death, a soul will “visit” their loved ones. It is not necessary to be at a graveside or a place of death or near the anniversary of the death to feel their presence. Really, if you want to, just open your mind and heart and think of them. Invite them in. I know I strongly felt my dad’s presence on Father’s Day this year, during the service at my church. The minister said something, I don’t remember what, and I briefly felt his presence. My dad has been dead more than 20 years and certainly had never set foot in the building my church is housed in. But I welcomed his loving presence at that time; I rarely feel his presence like that, though I’ve never doubted his affection.

So what is it that draws us to gravesides and places where death occurs? I believe that souls and their experiences have energy and that the energy can imprint itself on physical places. I believe that when people see ghosts, mostly what they’re seeing is the energy left by a particular event. And at a place where many people died at basically the same time, there’s a lot of energy left by that. That’s part of what makes certain places sacred. (Other kinds of energy work can do the same thing.) So the field in Pennsylvania, the south side of the Pentagon, and Ground Zero in New York all became sacred ground. And, as Abraham Lincoln implied in the Gettysburg Address, our continued belief in those hallowed places adds to the sacred feeling.

Plus, I suspect that when a survivor goes to the field in Pennsylvania and wants to be there on September 11 at the time the plane crashed, it feels as if they’re somehow closer to their loved one at their death, even if it is five years removed. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it feels true in human nature. (Which, to some extent, *makes* it true.)

But, as the poem I started out with suggests, we can be in contact with the spirits of our loved ones in many different times and places as well. For example, it does not dishonor my parents that I do not visit their graves or place flowers there. I either honor them in my heart or I don’t. OTOH, if it helps someone to visit a graveside or a place of death, there’s surely nothing wrong with that!

Anyway. I didn’t particularly want to do the standard “today is September 11, so let’s talk about that day and where we are now, etc., etc.” There’s enough of that around. (I’m already pretty damned sick of hearing how wonderful Bush is being and how close to tears he and Laura clearly are, etc. Even if I did sort of add to it.) This is what I thought of.

Back to knitting.

Comment to Anonymous Stephanie

I think it must be some sort of blogosphere rule that people who leave anonymous comments on blogs are the ones afraid to stand up for whatever it is they’re saying. I would have been more than happy to discuss this with you in private email, but I presume you hoped I would just be frustrated by your not leaving an email address. Sorry! So, Stephanie, whoever you are:

I was not mocking Steve Irwin. I do not discount his work as a wildlife advocate or someone who entertained people or as the person who kept what is evidently a well-run and respected zoo. Bully for him.

But I do say that if you insist on teasing and/or provoking dangerous, untamed (or even tamed) big wildlife, you’re asking for trouble. Trust me, I’m (finally) not the only person saying that he was lucky to make it this far and that the real amazing part is that a crocodile didn’t get him. This shows a great deal of disrespect for the animal involved – which is a predator, after all, that kills in order to survive. It’s not going to wait while you stand there and let it know you think you’re in charge. It doesn’t care that you think you’re in charge. It will kill you anyway.

As for the bit with the baby – please. Bad enough you keep offering yourself to a croc as a meal, but to dangle a baby in the same general vicinity as a chicken (I presume it was chicken) – well, Child Protective Services really needed to have a serious talk with the parents. Just as when Michael Jackson dangled his poor child over a balcony, with a less than secure hold on him, these are not safe ways to treat a baby.

But to say the baby was in no danger? Have you even *seen* the film clip? He nearly drops the baby – which is bad enough – and the croc has him backing up as it goes after the dangling chicken. (Backing up is not a sign that you have complete control of an animal.) Going after the baby was surely next on the croc’s list of meals to have. It would have been safer if he’d not dangled food in the croc’s direction and kept *both* hands on his helpless infant!

The point is, you can’t count on wild animals to do what you want them to do. Your comment, btw, is a wonderful, perfect example of the sort of hubris of which I was speaking. You have completely made my point! Congratulations and thanks!

Our Wildlife Weekend

It was a weekend of wildlife, evidently.

On Saturday, I got up early and went down to the shelter where I volunteer, in order to take the training for fostering. Unfortunately, the woman who does the fostering training was off helping handle a pet hoarder and the training wasn’t available. However, I took the application form and filled it out and I’ll take it in tomorrow. Maybe there’ll be a special training for those interested in fostering – at least four people showed up for the fostering training! DS’s ex-bedroom isn’t really quite ready for babies, plus there’s some equipment I need to buy. But I sure hope to be fostering babies soon!

Oh, and there’s good news at the shelter. During the last week, about six of our older, more difficult to place cats got forever homes! That’s really a lot, during kitten season, and I’m so proud of them! It does mean I’ll definitely need to go in on Friday and take more pictures, since so many of the pictures up now are of cats that were adopted.

Anyway, when I got home from not being trained, DH met my car. Come into the back yard, he said. I have something to show you. There was a bird huddled up against the house. It was alive, but clearly injured. When he got close to it, it couldn’t walk well and also couldn’t fly. DH wanted to know what we should do about it.

Well, I dunno! So I asked my favorite wildlife expert friend, K. And she recommended Austin Wildlife Rescue. Good call! I clinked on their link on what to do with an injured adult bird, and it said to pick the bird up with gloves or a towel and put it in a box, then call them. I had to wait for DH to finish taking a nap, but then he found his gardening gloves and a small box, and we trapped it between us. (We perfected this way of catching wildlife by playing kitten rodeo with the grandbabies – a game at which Tempe in particular is very skilled.) So I called the wildlife rescue people, who were closed for receiving at that point. Oh. Well, they suggested keeping the bird in the box in a warm, dark place and offering it water. So we put a clean, empty cat food can with water into the box and put the box on top of DH’s car. (The garage is dark and anything not air conditioned around here is warm! And the garage is safe from both the neighborhood cats and the cats in the house.) So Sunday morning DH took the bird to the Wildlife Rescue people, who said that her leg and wing could probably be healed and she could be rehabilitated. So he left her there with some money and we both felt all virtuous and stuff.

DH said he thought the bird was a dove. I dinked around on the Net last night, looking at pictures, and I think I’ve identified her. I believe she is what they call a rock dove, which is evidently a polite way of saying pigeon. One place called them “feral” pigeons. I guess that means as opposed to homing pigeons or something. But that’s OK. I rather like pigeons. And I’m glad we could keep her safe from the neighborhood cats (whom I strongly suspect of putting in the need of help, to begin with).

This is the same weekend, a year later, that DS rescued the kittens at his convention in Dallas. Plus, DH thinks we have a salamander in the house. (He distinctly said salamander, not lizard.) However, no one but DH has seen this alleged salamander. Even Simba has not spotted it. DH has tried to catch it to take it back outside, but it keeps disappearing. Me, I’d be happy if it went back out the way it came in. Or disappeared in some other way.

Clearly, we’re good to wildlife around here, with some exceptions. Fleas are an exception. DH is attempting to kill all the fleas in DS’s old bathroom. It’s getting better, but evidently they’re not all gone yet. Cockroaches and ants, too, are not going to be treated gently in this house. They can do whatever they want outside, but coming in the house is a declaration of war and no quarter will be given. I have rules.

I did want to say something about the death of Steve Irwin, which is getting a lot of ink (pixels?) in the blogosphere. Sure, I’m sorry he’s dead. I feel sorry for his wife and children. I’m just surprised it’s taken this long.

One news show showed a clip today of an interview with him given after he nearly fed his infant son to a crocodile. He said something to the effect that he had complete control over the crocodile during that incident. Bullshit! That croc, and the other crocs and such that he worked with, are wild animals, folks. And a human who thinks he has complete control over a wild animal, ever, is asking for trouble. That’s the kind of hubris that got either Siegfried or Roy (I can’t remember which). And wildcats are at least pretty intelligent and are willing to be trained. Crocodiles (and stingrays and sharks) are not that intelligent and don’t train. Just as soon as you think you’ve got them under control – unless you’re using leather straps or chains or something – you’ve set yourself up for something unpleasant. I wish the media was talking about this some. We need to remember that wild animals should be treated with some respect and care. Even domesticated animals can hurt you (as Simba’s performance last week reminds us). One should never take the obedience or behavior of a non-domesticated animal for granted! So, I’m sorry for Mr. Irwin and for his family, but with the way he’s behaved for years, it was predictable that some sort of creature would kill him. It was just a matter of when and how. (Admittedly, this how was particularly unusual and odd, which I guess he’d like. I heard that only three deaths have been caused by stingrays in Australia in the last 100 years. And putting the stinger right through the heart? That’s pretty good aim.)

Anybody Know a Good Cat Exorcist? (And Knitting Content)

I know, I know. I’ve been bad. I’ll try to do better.

DS is moved! Sorta. Mostly. There still seems to be an incredible amount of his stuff still here at the house. We told him we’d be happy to store some boxes of things, but these are not in boxes. They’re all over the floor of his bedroom, bathroom, and the living room. He will be nagged to work on this. He whines when I do that, though, as he needs to unpack and set up at the new place.

The grandbabies were absolutely sure that the whole idea of moving was a terrible idea. They had hysterics after being put in the cat carrier – a carrier, I might add, that they’d been *playing* in earlier in the week. They tried to knock it apart or something! When let out at the new place, they immediately went into hiding. Temperance went into the fireplace, which fortunately was completely empty and clean. I joked that she was becoming a fire elemental. She felt pretty safe behind the mesh screen! Ray couldn’t figure out how to get in there (not the sharpest knife in the drawer, our Ray), but spent a lot of time behind the vertical blinds that reach all the way to the floor.

Sunday they were still in hiding. DH had determined that DS’s waterbed mattress needed replacing, so we went and bought one and went to the apartment to set it up. There were no kittens in that apartment. Nope, no cats at all. We were wrong when we thought we heard dinglebells. I had taken their favorite treats with me and left them liberally around the place, but no takers.

By Wednesday, when I went back to the apartment to get DS, they were willing to be seen, as soon as they figured out that I was Grandma. They were all over DS, wanting attention and reassurance, but I did get to touch both of them. So I was encouraged.

This weekend DS was in Dallas for a convention – the same convention that he was at last year when he was accosted by Temperance looking for help, in fact. So DH and I have been on cat sitting duty. Because of their condition, they get canned food once or twice a day and get daily medication. We took care of them on Friday night and last night, and were allowed to give them treats (Temperance will take them out of my hand!), put down the good food, and pet if we moved slowly and carefully. They’re still a bit skittish, but definitely better.

And they like being in the apartment, where the litterbox and food and water bowls are constantly available. And they seem to have figured out how to open cabinets and doors that don’t latch, like the door to the closet. This may become a problem for DS, but it’s one I think I’ll let him handle!

On Wednesday DS and I took our three adult cats to the vet. It was an … interesting … experience. The good news is that all three cats tested negative for FeLV! So our precautions worked. The bad news, other than more fleas, is that our sweet, gentle giant Simba seemed to have picked up a demon somewhere.

Really. This is a cat that never growls or hisses or anything, even when Wilma makes those noises at him. We packed Angel and Wilma into the new cat carrier and didn’t even look for the other one; Simba’s always good and likes riding in the car. Sure enough, he was fine on the way over, and Wilma complained bitterly and Angel also said he was unhappy. When we got into the examination room, though, Simba become demon-possessed. He jumped up on the counter and got under this chart thing they have (the kittens find it a good hiding place, too) and proceeded to begin growling and hissing, before anyone had even touched him. He then didn’t appreciate being weighed and made that clear.

When the vet came in, he and the technician attacked Angel first. (Wilma was being comforted and DS was trying to calm Simba.) Angel was pretty good, though not happy about the blood draw. When that was over, we put the cat carrier on the floor and Angel happily went into it. By this time Simba was sounding really pissed. Wilma was next. She didn’t appreciate it, either, but was pretty good. But she complained the whole time.

I really think part of Simba’s problem was listening to Wilma and Angel complain. We tried to keep Wilma quiet – putting a hand over her eyes cut down a lot of the noise – but making her happy was not possible.

Anyway, Simba was next. They didn’t even suggest taking his temperature – a procedure he considers adding insult to injury – but when the vet was just feeling him as part of the exam, Simba threatened to remove his hand. The serious spitting, hissing, and snapping of teeth began. Then they went for the blood draw. They were doing the draw from the back right leg of all three cats, and Simba was not OK with that. He actually became so threatening that the technician was scared into letting go of his scruff – and that’s very unusual! They barely got any blood from him, but it was enough. Then they let him go and DS and I attempted to calm him down. That was not happening. And let me tell you, when a 14-pound, healthy, big cat says he’s going to hurt you, you believe him!

We ended up letting Angel ride loose in the car on the way home. Wilma was held in DS’s lap. Simba was in the cat carrier, still threatening to hurt everyone in the general vicinity. It was very, very odd. He was still doing it when we got to the house and I took him inside. DH called right as we got in the house, so I held the phone close to the cat carrier – and he could hear the fireworks. He just didn’t believe it was Simba. Simba just doesn’t do that! Ten minutes after I let him out of the carrier I walked past him in the living room and he growled at me! By that evening when DH got home, he was all smiles and hi, Uncle DH! But it took me a couple of days to get over being afraid of him.

In the meantime, on the knitting front, I’m still doing dishcloths. DS used one of the cloths I made him (he’s actually washing dishes! and clothes! I’m so proud!), which is a bright red, and said it ran a lot. I’m gathering that at least some of the Sugar ‘N Cream yarn (henceforth known as S&C) runs. Which is a problem. I’ll have to begin washing them myself and see if I can make them a bit better.

I’ve joined several Yahoo Groups that do dishcloths. One of them does two Knit-Alongs a month. I’ve not done Knit-Alongs (known as KALs) before, though they’re all the rage in the knitting blogosphere. They just weren’t doing anything I was interested in, plus I’m such a slow knitter! I doubt I could keep up. But I’m moving along with the dishcloths.

The way it works is that a few rows of the pattern is emailed every day, till the pattern is finished. You don’t know what the pattern makes until you’ve finished it. They do two of these every month; the first one makes a picture of something and the second features texture or technique. Today being the third, I took out some yellow yarn (one of the recommended colors) and did the first 21 rows. I have no idea what the picture is yet!

Some of the time I wasn’t blogging in the past couple of weeks, I was fairly obsessively searching the net for dishcloth patterns. (Cause a few just wasn’t good enough.) I found some neat patterns, too, including a place that has patterns for every state in the US, some Canadian provinces, and other geographic things, plus all 26 letters and most of the numbers. This in addition to other interesting objects and animals. And it’s not charted! I’m not good with charts – my eyesight doesn’t work well with them. These are already written on, which is a big help to me.

I ended up taking the patterns and putting them into a Word file. I’ve standardized the type, made sure there is a picture (when one is available), and standardized the look. And I’m adding the KAL pattern there, too. So far I’ve printed about 85 pages of patterns and will be buying dividers today to put them into a notebook. That way, whenever I think of something that would make a good dishcloth for someone, it’ll be easy to find.

As an example, I’m making a handtowel for DS’s bathroom. His decorating scheme is – blue. That’s it. If he can, he wants everything in blue. His shower curtain is various shades of blue. So I’ve got some Tahki Cotton Classic in a dusty navy blue. Not crazy about the yarn – it’s awfully splitty. But it’s the right color and will be a good weight. I’ve combined two of the patterns I found – a cat shape and a paw print. I’m nearly finished with the knitting, then I need to do the finishing and get it washed and blocked. Then I’ll take a picture. I think it’s pretty cool!

Also, there’s a couple of couples in my church planning weddings in November – I’m figuring matching washcloths and towels, with maybe their initials, would be a nice wedding present. I’ve also got started a cloth that’s boxes within boxes. I think making several squares of that, in maybe solid and variegated colors, could be sewn together to make a towel or a bathmat. (DS needs a bathmat, so the one I’ve got started is an experiment in that direction.)

I spent a bit of time last week really being depressed about the whole empty nest bit. It started when I thought, My baby is done raised and doesn’t need me any more. Now, I know better. I talked to him more on Sunday than I had probably in the two weeks before that! But I still felt old and useless. When depression hits, there’s no arguing someone out of it. So I did what I normally do. I talked to my counselor/friend, took my antidepressants, and wanted it out. It’s definitely better now.