It's November 26th, and if you look at the little weather banner to the right of my website, you'll notice that it is 50 degrees. Frankly, I think this sucks.

I must be a giant freak because I hate summer. I don't like when it's hot outside, and Ohio tends to get so humid that it's possible to get out of the shower and have your hair stay wet all day long. As much as I hate getting up early to brush the snow off my car, and as much as I hate the way people drive every year when they forget that yes, snow is wet and slippery, I do like snow itself.

I especially like snow AFTER Thankgsiving and BEFORE Easter, so as long as the bulk of it falls in between those dates I'm pretty satisfied that we've had a proper Ohio winter. One of the reasons I enjoy snow is that I can wear boots everywhere, meaning I no longer have to worry about matching up my socks. Also, I tend to go to a lot of holiday parties where I stuff myself on cheese logs and cold cut sandwiches. I know I post a lot about food and eating, but what else do we do day in and day out that's as enjoyable? Then I can cover up my gut with a giant snowflake sweater and hide my bad hair with some sort of hat, and even if I look like a hobo it's OK because everyone else looks like a hobo, too!

So here it is, November 26th, and it's going to be in the 60s pretty much all week. Again. And sunny. It just doesn't feel like winter when you're still slathering zinc oxide all over before going outside. Furthermore, since I'm going to Florida over the actual Christmas holiday (which beats the hell out of spending it in the Cleveland Clinic again) I'm going to get enough of crappy, smog-filled 50 degree days down there.

Come on, snow! What's the holdup?

I LOVE Thankgiving. It's my favorite holiday for a variety of reasons, most of which involve the deliberate lowering of my social standards. I can wander around in sweatpants with grease and gravy smeared all over my chin and no one can rightfully mock me because they're all doing it too. I love laying on my back on the floor, watching TV, eating yams with my fingers. I love falling asleep in the bathtub later in the night, slightly drunk on cheap wine and that chemical in turkey that makes me extra lazy. I realize this isn't the most attractive of mental images, but let's be honest: you'll be doing it too, you big, fat, lard-caked hypocrite. Is "lard-caked" supposed to be hyphenated? It damn well better be!

Today I attempt to eat myself into a new and bigger set of breasts. I like to think that being flat chested is an OK thing, kind of like those new flat screen high definition TVs all the men are drooling over. Still, it would be nice to have something to rest my plate on while I'm shoveling stuffing into my face, and that's my goal this weekend: to prepare for next Thanksgiving, or at least to graduate out of training bras. Yeah!

Anyway, I figure it wouldn't be a Thanksgiving post without a trite list of things for which I am thankful, so here ya go:

1. I am thankful for Skipper's kidney, which allows me to consume mass amounts of
yummy foods and liquids without having to dialysize them all off the next day.
Huzzah!
2. I'm thankful for softpaws, which allow me to snuggle Jerome and Louise without
them being able to claw my face into tatters.
3. I am thankful for Clorox wipes, which keep me healthy and make me the mockery of
my co-workers, who call me an 80 year old woman.
4. I am thankful for Michael's, which sells 100% Merino wool worsted for $3 a skein.
Hells yeah!
5. ...for the Avon Lake liquor store, which is within walking distance and where I
always come away with booze AND a smile, and a new recipe for bloody marys,
and I never get carded.
6. ...for direct deposit and online banking...
7. ...for my dishwasher!
8. ...for sunblock, which is finally starting to reduce the freckle problem.
9. ...for Walgreens pharmacy, where they always have Rapamune and Cellcept in stock.
10. ...for the guy who hoses the bird poop off the bridge I walk under on my way to
work every morning. He always tips his hat, shakes my hand and says "we're
gonna make it nice and clean for you, miss!" That guy is awesome.

What are you doing on the internet? ("teh internet"???) Go eat some turkey!

I started my first project on double-sided needles the other night, and I was hooked after about the third row. There's just something about wrestling with four or five sharp bamboo sticks, trying to purl and avoid sticking yourself in the eye that lends knitting an air of danger that it otherwise lacks, unless you count the danger of knitting in public, where people will come up to you, exclaim "you're doing it wrong!" and rip your work out of your hands.

Knitting in public has opened up a whole new world to me, a world that is sort of how I imagine the tension between two opposing yet equally sound philosophies. See, there are two kinds of knitting: Continental, which is left handed and often called "picking," and English, which is right handed and called "throwing." Basically you hold the yarn in a different hand for each. Continental, if you can get the hang of controlling your left hand very precisely, can be faster. English lends itself to slowness in some cases but is good if you want to be able to jump up in the middle of what you're doing and get some tea, or in my case, catch the percolator which you have forgotten on the stove and is boiling over, spreading coffee all over your off-white tiled floor and down the front of your stove.
I was knitting at lunch the other day, and one of the women in my department came over and started yelling "faster! Do it faster! You should do it left-handed!" That kind of pissed me off. Number one, do we knit because it's fast? No! We knit because it's relaxing, and because when you spend a lot of time on something you're more apt to be proud of it, regardless of whether it's tacky and lumpy or not.

Still, I felt a kind of shame. Was my "throwing" technique really slow and outmoded? Was I knitting like a young child? I forced myself to learn the left-handed technique, and I realized I hated it.

I was finishing Debbie's chunky ribbed pocket scarf on huge needles, and trying to squeeze the needle, hold the yarn and switch my finger back and forth to knit and purl was making my hand cramp. I am prone to hand cramps due to the prednisone I take in order to keep my brother's kidney ("Skippy II") functioning in my abdomen. I decided that yes, while I could see in theory that it would be faster, technically it wasn't for me. It was slower for me because I had to stop and rub Icy-Hot into my fingers, and then I had to wait till it dried so Debbie's scarf wouldn't smell like Pepto Bismal. I'm not sure WHY Icy-Hot smells like Pepto Bismal, but there you have it.

My knitting philosophy became "I knit for comfort, not for speed."

Well. As with all philosophies, things change. For while I was working on my new project, wool socks on double-pointed needles knit in the round, I realized it was actually EASIER for me to knit Continental style. My needles weren't as slick and they were a better size for my small hands, so my fingers didn't want to cramp, and because double-pointed needles tend to crowd a small place, the expansive hand movements I love in the English style are unnecessary and can cause yarn tangles and even injury. I can't imagine using English style on this project. I realized that I DIDN'T hate Continental style, it was just that for some things, it wasn't appropriate.

Now my knitting philosophy is much like my philosophy towards life, in that you do what you have to do, and that can change depending on the situation.

I'm glad I took the time out to learn both, even if I'm salty that someone chose to belittle my personal preference. I suppose I should get used to it, seeing as how people like to belittle each other on a daily basis, but still!

If you're a knitter, don't criticize your fellow English knitters, for they may have good reasons for what they do. And sometimes it's BETTER. So take THAT, Continental snobs. If you're an English knitter, try Continental for a few rounds on each project you try. There may be a good fit in there somewhere.

And that's my nerdy story. I'll post pictures of the Socks of Enlightenment when I can find the camera.

From a conversation:

Me: Sometimes I think growing up takes some of the wonderment out of life.
Lovell: Sometimes I think LIFE takes the wonderment out of life.


In Lovell's case, he injects some of that wonderment back in with booze. Here's to beer!

I went to the dentist today. You know it's going to be scary when they ask you if you have insurance after looking at your x-rays. Actually, the visit itself wasn't too bad, although I'm sure I'll feel differently after that root canal, especially when the Doctor told me that there'd be "symptoms" afterwards and then snickered a bit. I asked "do you prescribe anything?" and he laughed again. Anyway, the bottom line of the story is that I'll get some dental work shortly and then possibly begin a career selling prescription painkillers on the internet. Look for me in the news sometime around December 2nd! Ha ha! No, no, no. Actually he assured me it woudln't be any worse than my kidney transplant, which really wasn't all THAT bad, considering I used screaming at the nurses as a form of lamaze. I hope his hygienists aren't overly sensitive.

I've started a few new craft projects. I'm sewing Pat's Browns pajama pants into his ripped up jeans to make a pair of tailgating pants, and I have a picture somewhere of me with my entire body in one of his pants legs. I'm also knitting a red and beige striped pocket-scarf for one of my co-wokers, using a pair of aluminum size 13 needles that are slightly bent because I accidentally sat on them last night while watching Star Trek. I'm sure the scarf will turn out fine, if just slightly nerdy looking. Then I begin a scary project...my first pair of wool socks. I've never made socks, and more importantly I've never even used double sided needles, so I hope I don't screw them up too badly, especially as they are not even for myself. I finished the Browns mittens and now I have a lot of fuzzy orange and brown yarn left over which will probably also become comfy winter socks. It's a good thing I know a lot of Cleveland sports fans.

Also, tomorrow is Donor Sabbath, and I'm supposed to say something at church. I'm not sure what I want to do, since my original idea was turned down. I wanted to stuff Skipper's shirt with paper-mache organs such as lungs, his remaining kidney, his heart, etc. Then, while he raised his arms in a gesture both generous and triumphant, I would play "Ride of the Valkyries" while reaching in the back of his shirt and yanking out the fake organs, one by one, and tossing them to people in the congregation. I was told this would be tasteless, although to my credit, it certainly would not be boring. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Probably something tasteful and boring. Pffft.

Happy Veterans Day!

Today was a very long day.

I'm not really a girly girl when it comes to getting ready for work. I kind of roll out of bed and throw on some clothes that I have laying out, and even if the clothes are NICE, my hair is usually pretty blah and I rarely bother with makeup because I know I'll just end up with it smeared all over by 4:45 anyway. Maybe if I have ten extra minutes in the morning I'll throw some hot rollers in my hair or something. It's kind of a stark contrast between some of the other ladies in my department, who do the full routine every morning and come in manicured and hairsprayed. At one point I must have decided that I'd make an "effort" and I started sometimes using red nail polish. This phase lasted all of three days. I threw the bottle in my purse and promptly forgot about it.

This morning I was sitting at my desk, contemplating whether eating a breakfast sandwich from the Justice Center or eating a Snickers would make me gain weight faster and picking at my teeth with my pen cap, when I noticed a strange varnishey kind of smell emanating from the nether regions below my desk. I decided it was probably nothing since my office usually smells kind of funky and reached for my purse. You'd think when I unzipped it and smelled the varnish even more that I would have stopped and said "huh. Maybe I'll get a plastic bag and do this over the sink." But no, that would have shown foresight. Piss on that! I reached brazenly into my purse and came up with a hand covered in red nail polish and little broken glass chips.

"Son of a bitch!" I called to the woman at the desk next to me, trying to haul my trash can over with my feet and dumping it over instead. I used my clean hand to find some napkins and proceeded to try to wipe the polish off the things in my purse. I was concerned about my apartment key, which is electronic like a hotel key. I was worried the that polish would somehow prevent it from working correctly, not that it works correctly all the time anyway.

The woman next to me was laughing but offering no help. I just KNOW she was thinking about the time she took a long lunch and I trashed her desk (pictures of that are on the "pictures" page for anyone interested.) Anyway, somewhere in the shuffle I managed to drop a wad of red shiny things right on my rather nice blue shirt and tan slacks.

Soap and water only made it worse. By this point the whole area was starting to smell, and I was getting really dizzy. I ran to the bathroom and tried to fix myself, only to bump into a hoarde of women all offering encouraging comments such as "wow, that'll NEVER come out!" and "I smelled you coming from down the hall!" Keep in mind this was no delicate dab of red...I was covered in red smears from chest to thigh, because I am a klutz, and if I'm going to get red nail polish all over my work clothes, of course I'm going to get it all over the front of my body. Why not, right? I found someone with some nail polish remover so I dumped some of that on the front of me, which did nothing for the appearance but added greatly to the heady smell.

After running around like an ass for a good twenty minutes I remembered I had a sweater in my car. So I grabbed my keys and hiked my varnished rear end out the door, allll the way to the flats in my heels, where I changed into a clean sweater in an open parking lot, in the flats, in broad daylight. I was past the point of caring. On the way back up to the office, I came across a man relieving himself on a bridge support. Not some indigent person, mind you, but a well dressed man with a man-bag, standing there smiling up at the bright sunny day with a dreamy look on his face, a puddle streaming away from him and down into the gutter. I imagine he didn't want to walk the few blocks to Tower City and use a pay toilet, and I can't say I can blame him.

While I left my smelly shirt in my car, I did forget to put my PURSE in my car, so I spent the rest of the day feeling like I was in some sort of Clerks/Shaun of the Dead mash-up movie, with various people walking by and saying "what smells like nail polish?" and being helpful by saying "you've got red on you!" and pointing at my left thigh. Thanks, guys.

So now I have a headache, and I'm still kind of dizzy, and if this is what "huffing" feels like I want no part of it.

I'd blame it on the full moon, but I slopped on myself yesterday, too, and I'm thinking of just giving up and wearing a full body sheet of plastic from now on. A Body Condom for the grace-impaired among us. Or maybe I'll just scotchguard everything I own. That'll be sexy.

I need an aspirin.

I love Halloween and I always have. Assuming that our apartment building was too locked down for trick-or-treaters (and also since we're the very last building in a long line of identical and frightening looking white rectangular buildings), we decided to go to Harrison and Emily's house to pass out candy and frighten little children.

Sure, it was drizzling a little last night. But it was warm. Warm! It's NEVER warm on Halloween in Ohio! And there were no trick or treaters! I mean, what the hell? There were some kids in CARS, if you can imagine, but they never stopped. I felt sorry for the neighbors, who set up a whole display INCLUDING BONFIRE and also got no kids.

When I was a kid, (and I say this with all the wisdom and maturity of someone who is now 24), there was none of this pussy car-riding bullshit on Halloween. If you were old enough to walk and carry candy, you were old enough to haul your ass around a few blocks and beg for handouts from strangers. It was good training for REAL life. It's not like I'm back in Eaton Township, Ohio, either, where there are no sidewalks and the houses are approximately one million miles apart, or at least that's what it feels like when you're hauling around a wet "costume" (bathrobe, bedsheet, dad's shirt, whatever) and a bag of jolly ranchers. Heck, even THEN we'd walk, because we were troopers, and we understood that laziness does not begat candy. Also, our parents worked during the day and needed the silence of a house without sugar crazed kids for a few hours.

Anyway, I don't know if it was because people here are yuppies and they wanted to drive their kids in their fancy SUVs, or what. We did not have ONE trick-or-treater, and I was quite disappointed, especially since I was all decked out in longjohns and scrubs, a clever hybrid of pajama/costume that I technically stole from various places.

We did watch a few episodes of Seinfeld and bitched about how kids today are, which might become a valued holiday tradition. Also, Harrison was high on Sudafed which was kind of funny.

Well, I kind of feel like I'm going to throw up now and my forehead is definitely warm, so I'm going to go to work. Because that's the kind of trooper people from '82 are.