I've got yer error RIGHT HERE, pal!

Some days are just harder than others. And today, is a hard day. Yesterday was also hard. And after eleven hours worth of wrangling…useless. I had to throw it all away and start over.

It isn't that what I'm doing is all that hard, really. Or at least, it shouldn't be. I'm having to use the 'openquery' routine in SQL Server to hit up an Oracle box.

But I can't see the box I'm hitting. So I'm querying blind. I can't just go look at the tables, because I don't have direct access. It's complicated – I can query them through a link server, but I can't…look at it.

This is not usually that big a deal. Honest. The actual query is a tad longer than this, but roughly something like this:

INSERT INTO MYTABLE
(ID, AMT_PAID, AMT_CRD, INV_NUM, BLAHBLAHBLAH)
(SELECT * FROM OPENQUERY (ORACLEBOX, 'SELECT ID, AMT_PAID, AMT_CRD, INV_NUM, BLAHBLAHBLAH FROM T_THISORTHAT WHERE INV_DATE > ' '01-APR-2006' ') C)

See? How hard can that be? Run!

Error: Server 1627, user not recognized.

Damn it. {Exit application, come back in} Run! (Why this works is beyond me, but it does.)

Error: Line 402, error near ')'

Damn. It. Uuuuuuuuuh, OK, extra comma. Take out comma. Run!

Error: Line 402, error near ')' Is not! RUN!

Error: Line 402, error near ')' Is not! RUN!

Error: Line 402, error near ')' Is NOT, you lying sack of - !! RUN!

Error: Line 402, error near ')'

See, now, if it didn't work the first twelve times, generally speaking, this is a subtle hint that it will not work the next twelve times, either. Undaunted, I keep hitting F5 like maybe this time, it will just sort of ignore the error and run my query.

Eventually, it dawns on me that this isn't going to happen. Combing through all lines, I find the error is not on line 402, it is on line 8. @*^&@.

Fix the error on the line 8. Run.

Error: Line 402, error near ')'

Oh, right. The comma I took out earlier. That actually belonged there. Heh heh. I knew that. Put comma back in. Run!!

Error. Line or field data would be truncated. Operation terminated.

@(*^&@O&^*@&^@*^&@(?*^?&!?^*&@?^*(&@#$^*(&!&*(^!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just truncate the freakin' data, I don't care!!!!!!!!!!!

**sigh**

ALTER TABLE MYTABLE {add ludicrous amounts of character space to all fields, don't give a crap about it really I'm going to delete the table right after I finish this FREAKING project} {freakin' truncating the space of the stupid PO numbers who the HECK built this piece of crap Oracle box in the first place WHY can't we just have a standardized grumble grouse kvetch}

RUN!

Error: MSDORA error 29672b2968ui20672q: Field or table does not exist.

What field? Which one didn't you find? **sigh** {Query Oracle table with dummy where parameters to get field names [because I can't just look and see them], fix the typo and move on}

RUN! Run like the WIND! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!!!!!!

{…processing…}
Go make delicious Lean Pocket for breakfast.
{…processing…}
Eat Lean Pocket. Try to act cheerful and not grimace, even though it tastes like turkey-scented cardboard.
{…processing…}
Work Sudoku Pacific in newspaper, at which I suck
{…processing…}
Answer some emails.
{…processing…}
Stomp a few other fires burning elsewhere in Corporate America
{…processing…}
Do some laundry
{…processing…}
Organize the closet
{…processing…}
Knit a few rows of the scarf I meant to make myself months ago
{…processing…}
Call for refill of drugs (mmm…drugs…), read Wall Street Journal
{…processing…}…????

At this point, 9:45 p.m., after fourteen hours of inattention to detail, I realize that I am:

a) using the wrong instance of Oracle
b) returning all 35,000,000 rows instead of just a subset of them due to having forgotten the second half of the 'where' statement, and
c) not cut out for this job and should return to being a stay at home mom, where the most challenging thing presented is how to draw a castle with rainbow starfish ponies on it

This morning I came back at it and actually, it's going better. I dropped and rewrote my tables, redid my openquery (with full where statements this time, TYVM) and now I've got all my data. Yup. I've got all 250,000 lines of information. Sitting there. In my tables.

It's just that…uh…well. I can't really remember, ahem, what I was planning to do with this information, once I got it.

I'm serious.

I can't remember where I was going with it. I was doing something with the credits and the debits and was going to compare them with…some…other thing…to do a kind of rebill thing…but I can't remember where.

There are eight distinct sales programs residing on three different SQL servers, with about two dozen linked Oracle servers housing various data regarding some, all, or none of them. What I need is…somewhere out there.

At least, I'm pretty sure it is. But my notes about what I'm doing look like they were written by a drunk monkey (well, I am taking hyoscyamine) and I think I may have mixed two different phone calls on the same sheet of paper and besides – I don't see what a Fidelity IRA has to do with anything.

****sigh****

It's going to be a loooooooooong day.

YAY! I get to see a surgeon!

…wait…yay, I get to see the guy who cuts large holes in people for living?

So...wrong...{shudder}

The scan last week showed that my gallbladder is broke. So I get to see a surgeon on Thursday to find out if I get to go straight in for surgery, need to take some antibiotics at home first or, worst possible case in the universe, I have to go into the hospital and languish around on IV antibiotics for a few days before they can do surgery. That would suck mightily, because there is no WiFi in the hospital. Geesh. How medieval can you get?!

In other news, the phrase, "…they'll assess whether you're healthy enough for surgery at this point…" is one of the weirdest ones I think I've ever heard. Let's see. I'm sick because my gallbladder is pumping toxins randomly into my system, irritating my pancreas and causing infection. But maybe I'm too sick to have it taken out? Sooooooo…let's go over options, here. If I'm too sick to have the gallbladder out, how, pray tell, do we get the dumb thing to quit pumping toxins long enough for me to get healthy enough for you to take it out?

Do I want to know the answer to that? Probably not. But inquiring minds still want to know.

I'll tell you what I'm looking forward to. I'm looking forward to the first time I can take a breath without it hurting. Right now, when I breathe in it feels like something sharp is jammed up between my right lung and my shoulder blade. It's one of those things that just wears you down. In the morning, it's merely annoying. By bedtime, you're trying to think of ways you could skip a few breaths, you know, get a little break from this @*((^& thing.

I haven't done this much 'calm, gentle, shallow breath' meditating in nearly two decades.

Also, I wouldn't mind not being tired All The Freaking Time. I wake up tired. I go to bed tired. By 3:00 in the afternoon I start feeling weepy, I'm so tired.

And that's another thing. The moodiness. Wanting to cry for no damned reason, or snapping at my family, or telling my daughter to Shut!Up!Already!, or snarking all over random medical personnel because they asked me the same question for the fourth time or told me that if I start feeling uncomfortable I should trot on back in ('start' feeling uncomfortable?! I've been uncomfortable for four months, you silly twit! SNARK! SNARK SNARK! SNARK!!!!!!)…I could do without that, too.

But I'm very hopeful that the end really is in sight, now. I've got the all important referral to the surgeon. I've got the pictorial proof needed by the insurance company that yes, Virginia, my gallbladder has left the building. I've got the lab work to prove that it is doing me real and immediate harm.

I'm not just whining. I'm really sick. *cough cough* Yes, very sick. Probably the only cure would be a huge infusion of California Brittle.

YES YES, I KNOW!!! Sick gallbladders do not need huge infusions of chocolate toffee.

Or pizza.

Or ice cream.

Or pie.

...stupid freakin' gallbladder…

Ooooooh, warm and fuzzy

So I recently had occasion to set a foot into Michaels. I usually avoid this at all costs. Michaels is one of those places that has miles and miles of stuff I don’t need, seldom has what I do need, nobody to help me find anything and a ten hour wait to be checked out at the end of the ordeal.

If you’re getting the feeling I don’t like Michaels much…you’re right. I tend to rush in for emergency balls of baby yarn once in a great while and that’s about it. Somehow, even when I just walk straight to the ball of yarn I want and straight back to the cash register, they manage to annoy me.

Anyway, I had an emergency need for a bent tapestry needle and was 99% sure they would have it (sigh – they didn’t), so in I went.

There was a big sign on the knitting needle rack: ATTENTION KNITTERS: DUE TO REQUESTS, WE HAVE ORDERED LARGER SIZE NEEDLES. WE ASK THAT YOU NOW GO AHEAD AND BUY THEM. WE CANNOT CATER TO REQUESTS AND THEN HAVE PRODUCT THAT IS NOT PURCHASED WHEN IT WAS SPECIALLY REQUESTED.

Ahem. See, this is one of the reasons my Michaels sets my teeth on edge. This is like the time the cashier mis-keyed the UPC code and tried to charge me $8.99 for $2.49 skeins of yarn and then got all hostile with me when I pointed out the mistake and opined that, “It would really help if you’d make sure you chose yarn with scanable barcodes.”

That’s one idea. Or…you could try not sucking. That would also really help. (No, I didn’t actually say it to her, but I thought it real hard…)

I’d be willing to put money down right now that says every single knitter who asked, “Do you have size {10, 12, 14, ginormous} needles?” had either walked next door to WalMart to get them, ordered them online somewhere, or otherwise gotten her need filled weeks before you decided to graciously cater to our whim and stock those large size needles. Knitters do not wait when they have a project in mind. When I say I need #12 needles, I need them today. I will not be able to sleep at night until I have them. I will drive 45 miles to that Darn Yarn in Ripon to get them (cool yarn store, by the way – I finally got out there yesterday) (and then was so tired I wanted to just lie down and take a nap, which is the symptom that is driving me most crazy; I’ve got no staying power!).

And I’m also wondering, since when is confrontation with your customers a good idea? (Shoplifters aside.) See, let’s say I owned a store and, after fielding several requests for same had ordered a few #14 needles and then they didn’t move. I might draw attention to them with a sign. “Wow! Look! We now carry sizes 0 through 14! Woo hoo!” Might even put arrows and smiley faces and otherwise make sure it was a hard sign to miss.

But “We stocked it, now buy it, you jackass!”? Umm, probably not.

Fortunately for me, I have since discovered that yes, Virginia, we have a yarn store in Tracy. Right downtown, conveniently located near not one but two coffee shops. And since I have learned my lesson and now stock my baby yarn months in advance (purely for convenience and to avoid Michaels, not because I have any “stash” issues…) via online sales at Joanne or Smiley’s yarns – I can avoid Michaels and WalMart altogether.

Which is good. Because don’t even get me started on trying to get a stupid set of #8 needles at WalMart…

But I want an Oompa Loompa NOW!

Well, I’m back from the scan. What a non-stop rollercoaster ride of excitement that was! Basically, it goes like this:

Sign away all human rights and privileges
Get an IV (ouch)
Be injected with a toxic yellow colored liquid
Lie down on the machine
…Forever
Nope, not done yet
Juuuuuuuust keep lying there
Don’t move the torso!
Not done yet.
Keep not moving
A little longer…

This goes on for an hour. Then, the cheerful radiologist will inject you with fat. Yes, that’s right! The stuff my doctor has warned me repeatedly to avoid at all costs. Right into the vein! {schloooooop!} This makes your gallbladder constrict so they can monitor how well it does(n’t) send its payload of bile down the tracks.

Now, before my very good friend Bill injects the fat, he tells me I can expect any combination of the following:

Cramping feeling
Pain
Nausea
Nothing

What I got within about eight seconds of the vile vial being emptied into that IV was a feeling first like someone with a rather large boot on was stepping on my stomach. It got hard to breathe. It got harder to breathe. It got rather alarmingly hard to breathe.

Then suddenly, just when I was about to start babbling incoherently (“Is it supposed to be {gasp} hard to breathe {gasp}? ‘Cause it’s really {gasp!} hard {gasp!} to breathe {gasp gasp!}!”) I could breathe again – and, I had Pain. Holy smokes. It felt like tiny little hot needles were being jabbed into my gallbladder. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow…fortunately, just as my very good friend Bill had promised, it faded to nothing within five minutes and left me craving pizza.

Don’t ask me why. For the last half hour of the test, while the machine monitored how much radioactive bile (which I think would be a great name for a rock band – ladies and gentlemen please give a warm Cleveland welcome to RADIOACTIVE BILE! {the crowd goes wild}) my gallbladder was(n’t) passing along to my small intestine, all I could think of was pizza. With mushrooms. Piping hot pizza, gooey with mozzarella, a bunch of fresh fungus steaming away on top of it.

Anyhoo, I had to lie still for over an hour and a half.

No knitting.
No reading.
Not even a @*^&@ TV (not that this would have made me happy, since I don’t like soaps, daytime “newscasts”, or reruns of sitcoms from the 60s, 70s, 80s…)

It was torture I tell you, torture!!!

Astonishingly, though, I made it through. I meditated (mostly about pizza and why it is such an inherent good and why I believe, as an inherent good, it could not possibly hurt me to get just a wee little tiny 26” personal sized pizza from Big Luigi’s Pizza Joint), practiced ‘just letting things be’, and suddenly it was time for him to peel all the tape off my arm, yank out the IV and send me staggering away. (The IV was no big deal. The tape, however…memo to me: next time, shave your arms before going to the hospital.)

And then, as per usual, when I asked with a positively embarrassingly bad attempt at casualness, “Soooooo…did it look like the old gallbladder was doing anything? There? To you?” I got the usual and customary reply: “Heh heh, I just take the pictures, I don’t do the diagnosis. Your doctor will have results by Monday.”

I resisted the urge to fling Bill onto the ground and jump on his spleen until he told me everything he knew. Or made up something. I didn’t care which. I wanted an Oompa-Loompa now, not freakin’ Monday or on the 4th of Octember. Now, now, NOW!!

After having laid still for an hour and a half, meditating (mmmm…gooey warm goodness…) and otherwise becoming as one with my inner peace, I was halfway desperate for some instant gratification. Could I walk across the hall and sign up for surgery now? Should I start collective surgical resumes? Is the end in sight, or not? Is it the gallbladder, or not? Just tell me!

It is amazing how being sick can shake cowardice off me. In real life, all you’d have to do to make me decide that whatever ailed me probably wasn’t that big a deal would be to say, “OK, so, we’ll just start an IV…hey…where’d she go?!”

But not only was I completely OK with the IV, but I’m anxious to go back to the hospital again and get another IV and let them cut a hole in me and yank out my gallbladder.

So now I’m back to waiting. However, on the positive side…I feel remarkably good. And I have the Whole Entire Day Off Work today. Sure, I could log in anyway and get back working on a few things I’d like to finish up…

…but then again…

See, there’s this yarn store, in Ripon…?

Around and around and around we go

Well. Here we are. Tomorrow, I’m getting a gallbladder scan.

I’ll try to contain my excitement.

I’m taking the entire day off tomorrow. If I feel up to it (and they haven’t shot me up with morphine) (or maybe even if they have, ha ha!) I’m hoping to hit up a new yarn store I discovered in the neighboring burg of Ripon. They carry Dale of Norway yarn/patterns. While I’m not worthy of either one, I’d like to go and gaze with respectful deification at them.

But it all depends. Yesterday I thought I’d like to take my $300 in gift cards to Sears and get myself some decent clothes. And I went to Sears. And I walked into Sears. And I grabbed a bunch of crap off the racks more or less at random and got out of there as quick as I could. I felt OK before we left the house, but by the time we had gotten to Sears I just wanted to go back home and go to bed.

I don’t expect that tomorrow will be any different. While I’m sitting here at home I can say, “…and then I’ll go to the yarn store! And the coffee shop! And I’ll dine at Max’s! And then the library! And then…!”

But the truth is, I probably won’t have a damned thing left before I even start the test.

Being sick sucks. It’s like, all this time off from work – and no gumption to do anything interesting with it!

I have reserved the right to flat out not come back to work at all until the dust has settled. I say ‘reserved the right to’, but I think what I mean is, ‘offered to save my coworkers the aggravation by’. Have you ever driven past a construction site and seen three guys digging like crazy while a fourth guy stands on his shovel and looks impressively stupid, like he just can’t figure out what to do with the thing?

I’d be that fourth guy right about now. Basic things are a bit beyond me. And I have to admit to a certain lack of enthusiasm for anything that doesn’t involve not doing anything. If whatever it is involves not doing anything whatsoever, I’m all for it.

Otherwise, eh. Not so much.

I have, however, been knitting socks. This is the Year of the Socks, thanks to my having suffered a bout of momentary insanity and gotten myself the sampler packs of KnitPicks sock yarn. I have two huge boxes of sock yarn in my closet. Everybody gets socks for Christmas this year.

I apologize in advance to my family and friends. Some of the colorways are…hmm. Rather…surprising. Also, personal opinion, I dislike the cotton/wool/nylon blend socks. They feel weird. Lumpy. Bumpy. Kind of unforgiving.

A hand knit sock should be all about warm fuzzy comfort. I feel like the cotton blend is kind of harsh; not exactly scratchy, but…dry. Like when I wear them, they make my feet feel unloved.

So I’m sticking with the wool for socks. It just feels more loving to me.

This is about the only thing I’m interested in doing right now. Knitting socks from the most basic pattern imaginable. Socks like these:




These socks? Simplest. Pattern. Ever. This is a pattern that is so easy to keep in mind it’s ridiculous. You don’t have to remember anything but a formula: the heel flap is half the originally cast on stitches knit back and forth to that same number minus two, that kind of thing. I don’t have to go running back to a pattern asking, “Now, do I do K2tog, or SSK, or P2tog or…?”

It appeals to my need to not be thinking about anything in particular right now. Around and around and around we go.

Hey. That’s kind of like my medical treatment these last four months! Get sick, go to doctor, be sent for test, go back to doctor, go home, get sick, go to doctor, be sent for test…

Around and around and around we go…

Earning my wand

I have long said that in my next incarnation I want to be a fairy godmother. I just think that would be the coolest gig. Being somewhat childish, I insist on believing that there really are benevolent spirits out there who do things like make your laptop case fall apart so that you are forced to stop and deal with it instead of running in front of the speeding SUV because you're trying to catch the bus.

Yesterday, I suspect I may have been interviewed for the job.

The grooviest thing that happened was the very first one. The ACE train pulled into Pleasanton, and those of us on that next-to-last car were faced with a fairly large jump from the train to the platform. It's the usual. So I hopped down, and bent over to pull the handle of my rolling laptop case up.

Before I knew why, I was jumping up, putting my arms out and under the chest of a woman who was falling face-first toward the pavement, flipping her back upright and holding her steady while she found her feet again. Jackie Chan had nothing on me yesterday morning – it was slick. We don't know why she fell, maybe her heel caught on the metal step or maybe she just misjudged the distance, but if I hadn't caught her it would have been a very painful face-plant on the concrete.

I was being moved by some other force, because I literally had no idea why I was moving the way I was. My body reacted like it knew, but my brain was jogging along behind going, "What? Wait! What are doing? Why are you grabbing that person? RIGHT ACROSS HER BOOBS?!?! Ooooooh…I seeeeeeeee…wow. Kewl."

But it didn't stop there. All day, I was given the opportunity to be a decent person.

I got to help a lady figure out the BART system – she was on the phone with a friend saying she had to get off and switch trains across the platform to get to San Leandro. That would have taken her the wrong way. So I turned and said, "Actually – San Leandro is on this line. Two stops up from here."

Really? Yes. I was sure? Yup. It's the stop after the one you're proposing to make your transfer, and I hear them announce twice daily. Saaaaaaaaaaaan Leandro, San Leandro station. If you look at the map over there…you can see. Bayfair, San Leandro. {smile, nod pleasantly, go back to knitting}

She was on her way to a job interview. Being late would have been…not so good. She was very grateful. And welcome to the help. I could have used it m'self a few times.

Helped a lady pick up her dropped and scattered newspaper, chased down a guy and returned his dropped BART ticket, and got into the office feeling like I'd done my work for the day.

But no!

In the evening, as we were pulling into the station in Dublin I glanced back and saw an elderly couple surrounded by bags at the rear of the train. I looked at them, and a little voice said to me, "They are so not going to get off this train before they shut the doors and pull out again."

(The train pulls into the yard, turns around, and comes back – they don't always do anything to make sure there isn't anybody on the train. I have, in fact, taken this ride myself twice – once when I dropped a knitting needles and was determined to find it, and another time when I was so engrossed in my book that I failed to notice we had arrived.) (FREAKED me out the first time!)

So I went back and asked if they needed some help. They said no. I stood by the door anyway and sure enough – it started to close. I stuck my bag in it and waved at the driver, pointing into the train. He opened the doors again, I helped them collect their bags, walked them to the elevator and guided them down through the station to where their friends were waiting to pick them up. They were visiting old friends, here from 'back East', had heard that California was a friendly state but wasn't this just to beat all?

But wait! I still was not done! Twenty minutes later, as I sat waiting for the stupid shuttle, a lady asked me if I took the 54. Yes, yes I do. She asked how much it was and if she needed exact change. I told her it was free for ACE riders; the driver doesn't usually even ask for it, but technically all you need to do is show your ticket.

What ticket? The ticket you need to purchase in the morning. They do not sell tickets on the trains or in the afternoons. Yes, it's stupid. No, I don't know why. They just don't.

She had no ticket. This…could be a problem. I glanced down at my ticket, which had two punches left on it. Where was she going, I asked? Same place as me.

Hokay. I told her I knew just what to do. We'd double-punch my ticket, stick together for this trip, and we'd be golden. Which we did, and it was a delight. She's a neat lady; hopefully, we'll be seeing each other fairly regularly on the train. She even paid me for the trip in spite of having been told, "Don't worry about it, no big."

I'm wondering if maybe I was having an interview or something. Sure, you might get two opportunities in one day – but six? C'mon. That seems pretty intense to be random.

Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo, y'all!

On the flip side of the talking thing…

Boo Bug has been talking non-stop for {checks clock} five hours now.

Non. Stop.

Her little voice has been chattering away without so much as a pause for breath. She even talked while she was eating. With her mouth full. Though warned with quotations not to. Chitter chatter chitter chatter…it is like having a very large squirrel darting through the house.

“Do you like my skirt? It’s pink. So is my shirt. And it’s a girl skirt. Not a boy skirt. A girl skirt. Because I’m a dancing girl today. Because it’s a pink skirt. And also I have on tights. Are those earrings? I like earrings. But THEY HURT MY EARS! So I don’t want any. And my brain is going into my heart, and it might break it. And it can be invisible! Mommy! My brain? Can be invisible! And…”

She is talking to her family, her dolls, her bed, a chair (? – don’t ask me, I don’t for the life of me know why), and she is now lying across the rocking horse staring up at the ceiling and discussing something at great length with it.

Personally, I am amazed at how a child can be so adorable and so annoying at the same time. Those rosy little cheeks! Those earnest blue eyes! The bubbling little laugh! The excitement! The intense desire to be a contributing member of the community!

…the constant noise…the incessant “and you know what else?”…the never-ending poking at my arm, “Mommy? Know what? Blah blah blah blah blah! Blah? Blah! Blah? Blah!!”

There are moments when I engage in wild fantasy: I’ll tell them I’m going to go run errands. I’ll leave the car at the mall, walk to the Greyhound ‘station’ (a.k.a., the Foster’s Freeze parking lot), get a ticket to the Amtrak station…I’ll get a ticket to Seattle, but get off in Portland, ha ha! see, because that will throw off any pursuit!, and then I’ll vanish into the mountainous forests of Oregon and live a life of pure self-sufficiency in a tiny one-room cabin ha! Ha ha! HA!

But of course, I’d have to give up the Discovery Channel, the Internet…Starbucks…the endless (and I do mean endless) stream of artwork emblazoned with hearts, stars, smiling dancing figures drowning in seas of flowers, the hugs and the cuddles and the sloppy kisses and the declarations that I am the best mommy ever (said declarations usually made over dessert, going to the playground, and other such events – not so much over the ‘first you have to eat both of those peas’ or ‘no, it’s bed time’ ones).

The constant changes, the growing, the learning, watching the person they will become emerging.

The forty times a day they make me laugh.

Eh.

Guess it’s still worth it. For now.

Besides. What do I always seem to get on the bus? The seatmate from hell, who wants to talk about their sex life, their spouse, their grandchildren, their poodles/cats/rodents all the way to wherever we’re going.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m being told a very involved story about fairies and dragons and an invisible brain. It might be easier to follow if I’m not trying to do anything else…

Waxing poetic

We took Captain Adventure to the doctor today for a follow up visit. The kid has been suffering (and I do mean suffering) from ear infection after ear infection this winter, plus a deep chest cough that is driving us crazy. The cough doesn't seem to bother him much, but his daddy and I are about to climb the walls because it sounds awful.

The doctor was looking in his ears and announced that he had a lot of wax. Now, I don't even attempt to clean out my kids' ears. My mother used to clean out mine on occasion – and on occasion, she would jab me in the eardrum with that Q-tip. I remember that pain…vividly.

I'm not woman enough to handle the Q-tip in the kid's ear thing. I can barely handle the risk-factor involved in trimming their fingernails, there is just no way in hell I can stick a Q-tip into those delicate little seashell ears.

So, after supporting my defensive response that "I don't like to try to clean out his ears – I might hurt him!" with a "oh no, you wouldn't want to do that – you'll just pack the stuff in tighter. I'll write down the name of some good drops you can use…" she gets this plastic thing that looks vaguely like a crochet hook and says, "OK, let me see if I can get some of this out of there…"

Captain Adventure began fussing almost before she even got it into his ear. And as soon as she started fishing, he started yelling and screaming and kicking and trying his darndest to get away from us.

And she gets a little bit of wax out, and goes back in. Dips up another fairly impressive bit of wax, tries to peek in the ear, shakes her head, seizes up the ear hook again and goes back in for a third go.

There is piercing screaming. There is desperate writhing. There is an expression of grim determination on the doctor's kindly face.

And suddenly, she produced from out of my tiny little boy's ear, a blob of earwax weighing approximately 65 pounds and covering the entire landmass of Asia.

OK, so I may be exaggerating just a little bit.

But it was a lot of earwax. I have never in my life seen that big a hunk of earwax. It was nasty.

Then she looked back in his ear, tsk'd, and said that it looked "really inflamed" and prescribed some antibiotics and some drops to put in all Denizen ears to break down the wax.

All the way to daycare, he was sitting in his chair talking to himself. "Ba? Ba! Ba? Ba! Ha ha ha ha! BaaaaaaAA? BA!"

It was as though the sound of his own voice was a new thing, something exciting and different. And I have to wonder: did the removal of the earwax restore his hampered hearing? Is this what my little darling has needed, to get him talking?

Will this be the night that he comes home and say, "I say, mother, could you spot a fellow a cup of juice?"

It just might be.

It. Just. Might. Be.

A patient patient I ain't

You know what? I'm a rotten patient. Not only do I have no patience whatsoever, but I can't seem to learn one of the basic lessons around being sick and/or injured: if it hurts, stop doing it.

I went into the office Wednesday, for the first time in about three weeks. I left the house at 5:45 and got into the office at 8:45 – half an hour longer than usual due to delays on the trains. And coming home was no better. Short BART train, had to wait half an hour, in the rain, for the shuttle, had to walk the entire length of the ACE train car before I found a suitable seat and then scored the blabbermouth seatmate and was too tired and pain-ridden to smile politely and move seats (not that there were any seats to move to, but ordinarily I would have tried…). I left the office at 3:00, and didn't get home until 7:00.

And from about 40 minutes into the morning commute onward, I was experiencing some pretty…intriguing…pain. The kind of pain that, if I didn’t know what it was, would have caused me Great Alarm™. But, since I know what it is, it merely irritated me and made me want to cry. Which irritated me even more, since I would rather take a beating than bawl in public.

When I got home, I hobbled as fast as I could to the medicine box and swallowed a bunch of random pills that looked like they might do me some good took the dose of the Levsinex my doctor prescribed, followed a couple hours later by a dose of the Vicodin he didn't but which I have cunningly hoarded up for just such an emergency from previous surgeries. (Yes, I know, you're not supposed to do that – sue me.)

And, as my vision got blurry and my motivation dropped to an all-time low, I said to myself, slowly and with great determination, "Damn it, this is stupid. I refuse to believe this. And I'm going to the office Friday whether YOU like it or not – I'm too busy for this crap!" I added, giving myself a jab in the general area of the Damned Organ.

It responded, of course, by giving me a shock of pain that felt as though I had stuck a live wire into my abdomen.

Poking the imploded gallbladder? Not the brightest move ever.

So Thursday I took my Levsinex as prescribed: one in the morning, one at night. Because I was informed that this is something I should simply do. This is not a pain pill per se, no. It's one of those acid-reducing thingees that is supposed to work over time.

I'd like to share with you some information from the bottle:

"WARNING!! May cause DIZZINESS. This medicine MAY CAUSE BLURRED VISION. May cause PRONOUNCED DROWSINESS."

Blah blah blah avoid alcohol don't operate machinery yadda yadda don't chew it so forth and so on.

This morning…well, may I direct your attention to the "pronounced drowsiness" part of the disclosure? Not only is it true, it also appears to be cumulative. Having taken three doses on schedule…well.

Our alarm clock goes off twice: once at 4:30 for the person who is going into the office that day, and then again at 5:30 for the person who meant to get up when Person #1 was going downstairs in a show of solidarity, to have coffee together, and then to get busy with the lunch making, kid-wrangling and so forth, but instead fell back asleep and made only the vaguest of grumbling noises when Person #1 announced their intention to go downstairs and make coffee.

I slept through both alarms. And since my husband never hears either alarm but must be forcibly pushed out of bed by yours truly when they go off, so did he.

By the time I realized it was light outside, and got my sorry butt out of bed, into clothes and downstairs, the third and final train had chugged out of the station and there I was. Stranded. Because I can't drive right now – even the brief jog over to the train station is probably pushing it from a safety perspective.

And besides. I am still pronouncedly drowsy. And unmotivated. And it hurts to walk. It also hurts to sit. And to lie down. And I've felt too queasy to eat anything. And I wanted to be in the office today because I had things I wanted to discuss in person with someone and now I have to wait until next week. If I'm still alive. And he hasn't quit the company in disgust because I've stood him up – again.

Then I got mad.

And I snarled, "Stupid damned thing!"

AND I POKED MYSELF IN THE GALLBLADDER AGAIN!!!!!

Memo to me: You are not smart enough to be sick and/or injured.

So stop it, immediately.

So far, silence

Captain Adventure still isn't really talking. Oh sure, he says "mamamamama" and makes other word-like noises, but he isn't really talking.

It's driving me crazy.

I don't care how often people say, "Well, he's a boy, they tend to talk later" or "Well, but weren't ALL your kids pretty slow to start, word-wise?"

The kid doesn't talk. And it makes me nervous.

He doesn't say, "My hat!" or "Where's daddy?" or even the perennial almost-two favorite, "No."

He doesn't even say "juice" when he wants some. He'll walk over and stare fixedly at the cupboard where we keep his sippy cups, but he won't point and/or say, "Juice!"

Or "joos" or "jjjjjjjjjj" or "mine!" or "gimmie" or "abba-gus" (which was how Danger Mouse used to ask for apple juice).

Just…a fixed stare, with the occasional glance in my direction to see if I've noticed yet.

But just when I say to myself that the kid is obviously broken in the eardrum department, he'll utter something like, "Dank doo!" when I hand him a plate of bananas, or "shhhhhh!" while holding up his shhhhhhhoes, or grab his bare feet and laugh when I say, "Where are your socks?!"

But if encouraged, he will immediately stop all communication and revert to staring. If you get in his face and said, "Where's your foot? Where's that foot?!", he will neither say 'foot' nor touch his foot. Just…stare. Full of surprise at your audacity. Is it addressing the Royal We? he seems to be wondering.

He also does this while singing. He'll be happily going through the ABC song, but if you join in – he stops. And watches you sing it. Fixedly. With great interest, and focus.

But he won't sing it with you.

Honestly.

Kids just like to drive their mothers crazy. I think it is some kind of massive kid conspiracy. Boo Bug went from not talking much at all, or speaking some language of her own device, to having a serious case of logorrhea overnight. She was three years old, and about five seconds from being sent by her pediatrician for hearing tests.

But it is frustrating to read the gushing reports from The Experts™ about how my 20 month old (week 3) ought to be moving on to simple sentences now. Acquiring ten or more words per day at this point. Turning into quite the chatter box, they inform me eagerly, along with many helpful tips for continuing the flood unhindered.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to get him to say "juice" when he's thirsty, or to call for me by name when he wants to get up from his crib, or to in any way indicate that he understands his voice can make a difference, his words mean something to others, that we want to know what he thinks, feels, wants, dreams…

So that we can then turn around and say, "Gosh, do you ever stop talking? Geeesh! Give it a rest! Holy smokes! Talk talk talk talk TALK!"

Oh come ON now…

For additional humor points, the medication my doctor prescribed to help with the impact of my symptoms on Real Life comes with the warning that I should not take it and drive. Because it causes blurred vision.

“Gee, I’m having trouble driving because of my symptoms…” “Here, take this – it will help your stomach. Of course, you won’t be able to see…”

Effin’. A.

I suspect there is only one hope for me: I should immediately drive myself to the closest McDonalds, clutching a $20 bill and screaming, “Supersize me, baby!!!!”

I suspect that one Big Mac meal, supersized, would put me right into the hospital and get that gallbladder yanked out faster than you can say, 1,140 calories and 60 grams of fat! (Which happens to be how much of same are in a Supersized Big Mac Meal with a diet Coke.)

…and I’m only half kidding…

……maybe not even half, at this point……

………but my hair is Can Be Seen From Space Red now!.........

Feh

Well, I went to the doctor this morning, and learned the following: "…"

Yes, that's right. The result of the ultrasound last week? "…"

They see nothing of any interest. To which my doctor rejoins, "Well, I didn't really expect anything…" (THEN WHY SEND ME FOR THE STUPID THING IN THE FIRST PLACE?!) "…so now we'll do this other test where they inject (!) radioactive (!!) dye (!!!), wait around an hour (feh) and then inject (!!!!) garblegehkthock (!!!!!), which causes the gallbladder to constrict and then they can measure how much it does(n't) function, after which we can go do our surgery."

On the plus side, it should be immediately evident if there is blockage lurking around when they inject the garblegehkthock. Ha ha, yes, if there's blockage, apparently, heh heh, oh, this is just SO funny, I'll double over grabbing my side screaming for someone to come shoot me.

So. I've got that to look forward to. (They're bastards. Every single one of them. Bas. Tards.)

We agreed that on the whole, if we're positive we're going to surgery we'd just as soon skip this charming little step…but we can’t. Why? Because insurance won't let us. Oh no. The insurance company needs to have pictorial proof of my malfunctioning gallbladder before we're allowed to do anything.

On the one hand, I'm down with that. Running around cutting organs out of my body at random isn't what I would consider to be the best of ideas. "Let's see if it's this! No? Let's try that! No? OK…I'm not sure what this dingle-dongy thing is, let's cut it out and see if THAT helps…"

On the other hand…let's review:

I can't sleep at night, and am ergo dragging around all day barely able to keep my eyeballs open. I have back pain you wouldn't believe. I have gone through an entire bottle of 250 Motrin in a little over two weeks, which just can't be helping my stomach issues. Everything I eat, low fat or not, makes me queasy; and occasionally I explode in spite of having carefully scrutinized the labels for things like a 1:1 ratio of calories to calories from fat. I have a constant low grade headache which occasionally (whenever most inconvenient) explodes into blinding migraine-like pain. My entire lower abdomen hurts, especially when I walk, sit, or lie down. I have trouble driving, concentrating, or even talking – I especially like it when my speech goes all slurry and the words coming out my mouth bear almost no resemblance whatsoever to the thoughts in my brain.

Oh yes. That's my favorite. Especially when I'm on the phone with my new boss. Oooh goody. Pass the party hats, it's a real knee-slapper going on in here…

And now we have another week (or so) before I can get in for this test. Then we wait another week after that (or so) until somebody can get off their tuckus and get the results to my doctor, plus another day or two (or so) for good measure until I can get in to see him again, at which point we move on in the whole process toward getting the gallbladder removed.

So I'm looking at another three weeks minimum of this before we can start really making progress toward a solution?

Argh.

On the bright side, if I keep losing weight at my current rate, I should be down to about 105-110 at that point. See? There just ain't no rain don't bring no flowers. Hmm. Wait. How many negatives is that…ain't no, don't bring no, um. Carry the one, multiply by my age, divide by number of children…well, anyway. Silver lining and all that. My new pants are already falling off my hips and I tell myself it's all worth it because of same.

I'm lying, of course, and I know it, and I'm about as depressed as I can remember being since the Great Post Partum Depression Ordeal I Don't Like To Talk About Because It Makes Me Feel Like A Really Really Bad Mother™ of 1998.

There is, of course, only one thing to do. Well, two things.

First! I am getting a box of !!BRIGHT RED!! hair dye at the supermarket today when I go to pick up my prescription for stuff that is (allegedly) going to make my stomach feel better while we wait for the actual cure. Enough of this 'I'm going to just let it grow out and be proudly brownish-gray' bullshit. I'm goin' firecracker, and that's that. I can handle gallbladder disease or seeing all that @(*^&@ gray in the mirror, but not both at the same time.

Second! I am casting on a 5-Hour Baby Sweater (with hat and blankie but no booties because I always found those dumb things to be utterly worthless – lots of points for cute, but they never, ever, EVER fit or stayed on or otherwise got used for anything other than a tabletop display), to be donated to Stitches from the Heart.

I don't care how pissy I am, I find it physically impossible to knit something for a newborn, especially of the preemie size, and not get all snuggly inside. 'Cause life goes on, with me or without me, good times and bad. And it goes on in such adorable forms as this, which make men who otherwise would probably prefer a punch to the kidneys over schmaltz do things like this, and just darn it makes you go awwwwwwwwww.

Random memory du jour

Today, a conversation I had with a coworker brought to mind a phone conversation I once had with a friend's roommate. Said roommate, it must be said right up front, was a major pothead. Oh my, yes. This guy…well. He liked the old weed - a lot.

This friend of mine was at that point in time Transportation Challenged. My ride was not exactly the most reliable in the universe either but it was at least running (and had actual, working seat belts), so I had offered to give her a ride from her place in San Francisco up to the Renaissance Faire in Novato.

I had made the offer, we had made the usual, "OK, I'll call you to confirm/deny" noises and then forgotten all about it until right before I'd need to leave my house in the East Bay to come get her and then toodle on up to Faire.

I called her house, and the roommate answered. All names have been changed to protect the guilty, but as Dawg is my witness, this conversation really happened.

{ring, ring, ring, ring}

"'Lo?"

"Oh, hi, Pete. Is Laura there?"

"Uuuuuuuh…{long pause} No. But Stephen was here…" (Stephen being her boyfriend.)

Another pause. See, I'm waiting for what Stephen having been there had to do with anything. Like, a normal person would say, "Stephen was here and they left together half an hour ago, or Stephen was here and he said they were going somewhere. You know…it isn't just a pure non sequitur. Eventually I realize that this is his Final Say until further prodded, and, undaunted, I carry on…

"Hoooookay. Um. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to give her a ride today or not – do you know if Stephen took her to Faire this morning?"

"Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh…" (I'm already asking myself why I even bothered to ask) "I don't think so. No. 'Cause his bike? It's in the garage."

"Pete. Is Stephen in the garage right now?"

"Uh. {pause}"

The pause lengthens. I can hear him breathing steadily into the phone. He's forgotten he's even talking to someone. I wake him up cautiously.

"Pete?"

"Whaaaaaaa?"

"Is. Stephen. In. The. Garage. Right. Now?"

"Oh. Uh. No. He went out or something."

"So he isn't home?"

"Dude, I already told you."

Resisting the urge to reach through the phone and throttle him, I keep prying information out of what's left of his brain.

"Right, OK. And Laura isn't home either?"

"Uh, no. 'Least, I don't think so. Lemme check."

{thud!} {sounds of him wandering going, "Laaaaaaaura? Dude, you there? Laaaaaaaaurrrrraaaaaaaa!"}

He comes back to the phone eating something, and provides the following information amid loud smacking and chewing noises:

"No, she totally isn't here, dude. But Stephen was here. A while ago. I’m pretty sure."

Oh, Lord. Grant me strength. See, now, I'm feeling really uneasy. I'm not sure what's going on. For all I know, she's sitting in the living room ignoring him, or she and Stephen are actually down in the garage playing video games or something – I have no idea. This guy is a lost cause and I'm afraid if I send him down to the garage to check I'll lose him forever. But all is not lost, I've got a good half hour before I'd actually have to leave my house…I'll leave a message, and if she's home she can call me!

"Hey, Pete? I want to leave a message for Laura, OK?"

"OK. Let me find a pencil or somethin'…" {frantic rustling of stuff}

Now, I happen to know that the stack he's going through is a pile of mail and bills and all kinds of stuff that probably shouldn't be written upon or otherwise messed with lest it become lost forever.

Besides. Anything he does write down, he'll probably turn right around and use for toilet paper or put under his pillow or something equally weird. That was just Pete. So I intervene.

"No, hey, know what? How about we use the machine, OK? We'll hang up, and I'll call right back – just let the answering machine pick it up and I'll leave her a message, OK?" (Not that I don't trust this clown, but…)

"Oh, hey, great idea. Ok. Bye."

{click}

{ring, ring}

"'Lo?"

"Pete. Don't answer the phone. Let it go to the answering machine."

"Oh! Right! Sorry, dude!"

{click} {ring}

"'Lo?"

"Dammit, Pete! Don't answer the @*^&@ phone!! I wanna leave a message ON THE TAPE!!"

"Dude! You don't have to yell! Sorry for living, GEEEEEEZ!"

{click} {ring}

"'Lo?"

I gave up at that point. I drove out to Faire, where it turned out she had indeed arrived (IIRC) the night before via a different set of friends.

And that, my very dear friends, is why I will never smoke pot. I am dumb enough without the help of the mighty weed.

And a weight was lifted…

I finally broke down and called a maid service. Well, actually, I called four maid services. One never showed up to do their estimate or called to tell me why (OK, we're going to call that one 'off the list'), one was silly-expensive (excuse me? $250 a week, are you mad?!), one answered the phone with, "Yeah?" and then proceeded to be unsure about whether or not his wife (the maid service) was still "doing that" (hoooookay, gonna call that one off the list, too), and finally got hold of our local Molly Maids, who were pleasant on the phone, in line with my expectations cost-wise and who (gasp!) showed up right on time to walk through my filthy Den and give me a contract for de-filthing it.

They were to come Monday morning, she said. It would be a good thing if we could declutter before they arrived, she added with gentle reproach (what, so it looks like a Toys-R-Us truck slammed into our house and exploded its innards all over it…). Not that they wouldn't throw the toys into the toybox for us, but…time is money you know...

So I spent the weekend decluttering the Den.

Only decluttering.

I got the massive piles of laundry off my dresser and put away – but I didn't then dust the dresser.

I put away my earrings, the hair pins and ties, the brushes, the 'refill' package of toilet paper and the nine hundred little bottles of assorted facial unguents guaranteed! to make me look less haglike – but I didn't then clean the bathroom.

Picked up the toys and threw them into the toybox – but didn't then vacuum, dust, remove the spiderwebs from the window runners, and sanitize the doorknobs.

Weirdest.
Feeling.
Ever.

And yet, remarkably, I got the entire Den decluttered in only a few hours. It was a lot of clutter. I thought it would take months to get through all that clutter – but focusing purely on the clutter and not the filth around, over and under it, it actually got put away really, really fast. I even got through my handle-it-handle-it drawer, packaged up and filed away last year's paperwork, and made new file folders for the new stuff we've got this year.

I was on fire, baby.

At precisely 8:00 Monday morning, two ladies pulled up in a little pink car, unloaded about six hundred pounds of cleaning implements, and went to work.

Five hours later, the entire Den was clean.

All of it. Every single room. Dusted, vacuumed, scrubbed, from the ceiling fans to the baseboards. Even the window runners. Showers: Sparkling. Cabinets: Glowing. Beds: Neatest they've been in months.

By 6:00 that evening, I had even washed, folded and put away all the laundry that needed doing.

I'm not used to having Nothing Whatsoever To Do on the housework front. Since I usually clean in 'zones' (the front room on Monday, the office and downstairs bathroom on Tuesday, etc.), there is always some room that hasn't been touched in a week (or more).

It was weird to have a little pause in the day and think, I really should go clean the girls' bathroom – oh wait! It's already clean!

At first, it made me feel oddly resentful. Redundant. Guilty. What kind of mother has strangers change the sheets on her kids' beds?! What's next, hiring a chef to come cook all their meals?! (Hmmmm…)

But I've gotten used to it. Don't worry about me, I'm fine.

I feel astonishingly less stressed out. It's as though a huge weight has lifted from me. I can ignore little spots on the hall tile, or fingerprints on the sliding glass door, or the sludge ring left on the tub by four filthy children. It's OK. The maids will be here Monday.

Even given how cheap I am, I have to say it: It's easily worth the money.

Now.

About that backyard…while there may well be a contest for Biggest Weed Ever, I don't think I really want to win it… unless of course, there's a money prize that might cover the cost of a gardener…

Attack of the Icky

So, OK. I haven't posted in a while. I hate 'fessing up to things like this, mostly because I like to remain in denial for as long as possible before hiding under the bed hissing and spitting when the time comes for me to go to the doctor.

Hey – my cat didn't learn that behavior on her own, you know!

Thursday I had another Episode of the Something. After suffering a couple days, I saw my doctor and got a tentative diagnosis of acute cholecystitis, which in English means my gallbladder is on the fritz (wait…is 'fritz' German?).

It's been going on for a while now; I've been calling my symptoms "food poisoning" for about a year, because I've always had something to point to as the cause. "It was that strawberry shortcake I had at Applebee's" or "They must not be refrigerating their mayo at Jack in the Box" or "How come nobody else got sick from drinking this obviously contaminated orange juice?"

So I've got a bunch of tests and stuff to determine just how bad things really are; my doctor feels about 80% sure I'm going to be getting my gallbladder removed in the fairly near future, and about 75% sure we're going to have to do it the old fashioned way (e.g., the eight-days-in-hospital slasher special as opposed to the neat outpatient minimally invasive way) due to all the scar tissue I'm lugging about from All Dem C-Sections.

In the meantime, I feel like crap.

And that's enough about that. But posting is undoubtedly going to become even spottier than housework, because I have barely enough energy to deal with work, and patting my children on their heads in the evening. Everything else has definitely dropped way down the old priority list…

What a pain.

Also, may I just ask: why is it that the first response we have to such things is, "I don't have time to be this sick!" As if the doctor will then say, "Oh well, in that case! We'll just reschedule your gallbladder failure – how does January 2015 work for you?"

(If only…if only…because I don't have time for this right now…or in 2015…or ever, really…)

Single Steps

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." – Ancient Chinese Proverb

By 'ancient', we mean 2,500 years ago. Imagine: all that time ago, people were realizing that things great and small all began the same way, with a single step.

Sometimes, I am in awe of my species. Such a simple practicality. The whole journey is daunting, scary, huge, impossible, ludicrous.

But boil it all down and what do you have? A single step, followed by another, and another, and another – relentlessly you draw nearer and nearer to the daunting, scary, huge, impossible, ludicrous goal.

If we look at our grandiose List of Dreams, there's probably some things on there that are "impossible". Ludicrous! Huge! No. Way!

I suspect for every dream we have, we have at least five reasons why it just can't be done. I don't have the time, or the money, or the influence, or the looks, or the talent, or the guts (or lack of gut, which could help on some of my physical goals).

Eldest taught me a valuable lesson on this. When she was a young toddler, she would occasionally flip out at mealtimes. I'd put the food in front of her, and she'd go completely bananas. She'd throw the food, scream, cry, bang her head on the tray and sob hysterically. When I'd take the food away, she'd cry harder and scream, "Eat! Eat!"

But if I put the food back, she'd flip out again. "No! No!" {CRASH! goes the tray on the floor}

I thought at first it was the specific food she was objecting to…but it wasn't. It was the portion size. She just couldn't handle having all that food on her plate. She knew she couldn't eat it all, but lacked the adult understanding that hey – I don't hafta eat it all just 'cause it's there. (Well…sometimes I think we adults still lack that understanding, but that's another rant for another day.) So in spite of being hungry, she'd just flip out and refuse the whole meal.

Once her pediatrician helped me understand her little toddler psyche and I started making sure she never had more than a few bites at a time on her tray, peace was restored to the dinner table. She might actually eat an entire hamburger – one toddler-fist-sized slice at a time.

I don't think things change all that much as we get older. Give us a task that will take only a few hours, or a couple of days, or maybe a few weeks, and we're totally OK with it.

Give us one that will take months or even years, however, and we've got a problem. Toss in having to change our habits or sacrifice a pleasure or two, and we're on the floor screaming and kicking and banging our head on the Pergo. It's too hard, it's too much, I can't do it, I can't handle it, don't do this to me, you're MEAN!!!!

I'm going to guess that achieving our best dreams fall into that latter category – which is why they remain vague dreams rather than becoming our new, improved, lemon-scented reality.

That's where all this list-making and goal-setting and planner-using comes in.

Take your list and give it a good hard looking over. Pick out a few items for now – just those things that you consider to be the Absolute Most Importantest Stuff On There. Of all these things, which few would make the most positive impact on your life?

Now. Don't think of it as a Huge, Impossible, Scary, Large and No Way thing.

What's the first step you need to take toward achieving that thing? Write it down. Lather, rinse, repeat. What you're doing right now is giving yourself manageable tasks. Don't look at the whole mountain and faint! Look at the next step, and only the next step.

Get a piece of paper. This is going to go into your planner, so use appropriate sized sheets. Head the paper with what the goal is. "Get Master's Degree" or "Buy a House" or "Write the Great American Novel" or "What Have You".

Then we get detailed. What's the first step to making this goal a reality for you? Don't think about the whole goal at this point – what's the first thing you need to do to make this dream come true. Write it down. And the next one, and the next one.

No fair using the 'then a miracle happens' step! Be detailed, be specific, be realistic, and give yourself a deadline for each step – because the next thing we're going to do is make sure we put our Dream Acquisition into our daily tasks.

Monthly, I review all my goal sheets. How am I doing? Am I on track? Do I need to revise the task list based on new information? Do I get to check off any tasks? Why not? Pep talk, go me, I rock!

Once a week, usually on Sunday (because it's generally a fairly quiet day), I sit down and go over my specific goal tasks. This is one of the Covey tools I love best: the weekly compass card. First of all, it fits into a plastic pouch that doubles as a placeholder in my binder – sweet. Impatient people adore things like bookmarks. No searching required, just grab and flip.

But more importantly, it helps me focus. The question asked is, "What is the most important thing I can do in this role this week?"

I write the goal name, and I answer the question: what is the one thing I can do this week to move this goal along?

Every morning, the first thing I do…well, first, I make my coffee, because I cannot function without my coffee in the morning. It is a physical impossibility. People have died because I tried to get on with my life without my coffee.

Well. Not physically (yet) (reminder: past performance is no guarantee of future returns). Only in my mind, because I was pissy enough to wish them dead when they annoyed me pre-coffee. People who are perky at me before I have had my coffee die a thousand horrible deaths in my mind.

It is not a pretty thing.

So first, I make coffee. Tea will do in a pinch. But some form of hot caffeine must happen first.

THEN, I sit down with my planner and block out my day. I write my meetings and other 'non-negotiable' time commitments in first. Then, I pencil in my tasks, right into the calendar side of the equation. "Write stored procedure X" might go in from 6:30 to 7:30. "Answer this email question" from 7:30 to 8:30. Got a meeting from 8:30 to 10:00 (ugh).

Every single day when I start the process, this weekly compass card is right there in front of me – of course it is, it's my bookmark! "Hey!" it says. "Remember this? Don't forget about this – these are your Big Deals! You don't want to let all the sock-folding prevent you from getting these things!!"

So as I'm blocking out my time, I glance over that weekly 'big deals' list and today, I put in "Go to bank, close old checking account" from 10:00 to 11:00. That's part of Goal #2: Financial Independence / Retire Early (or FIRE).

That mountain is particularly daunting. When you think of it as a single thing, "Save $1.5M in twenty-five years", it's totally Impossible! Might as well just give up right now, save time, avoid the rush.

But breaking it down into individual steps…first, focus on putting together a good budget, free up some of our income by eliminating poor spending choices. Then, we're going to pay off this highest-interest debt. Then, this one. Then, this other one. Then we're going to develop our savings. We're going to bump up our 401k contributions, work toward earning Best Possible incomes, keep the momentum going – one small task at a time.

The journey may be over a million bucks high and two decades long and be Impossible!, but each individual step is…just a step. A simple little step, one after another.

We can so totally have, do and be the things we want.

One…step…at…a…time…

Sparrow v. Sliding Glass Door

First, he merely bumped off my sliding glass door. Not hard, mind you –just sort of hopped off the ground, bumped into the door, shook his little head, chirped, "Ow, dude!" and flew onto the lawn.

He pecked feverishly for a moment with the other little birds, hopping ever-closer to the house.

Then he hopped off the ground and bumped into the door again.

"Ow!!" he chirped, and flittered over to the patio table where he perched and ruffled himself up a few times, hopping up and down with increasing fury. He talked to himself, going from intermittent chirps to a constant barrage that sounded suspiciously like a battle cry…

…and then…

He erupted off the table like a dogfighter, zoomed the few feet across the patio, and !!SLAMMED!! into that sliding glass door. Made a tremendous cracking noise as he hit, and then fell to the cement patio thoroughly stunned. I swear I could actually see little cartoon stars circling around the feathery head.

He then had to endure me laughing my butt off as I made sure he was still alive. I held him for a moment, checking the little wings and legs for damage while he regained what little sense he had. I made a cradle of my hands and he sat nestled in it for a long moment, not seeming particularly upset at being handled – probably still a bit out of it from having attacked the double-paned slider with his hollow little noggin. He chirped quietly a couple times: "Ow… Ow... Ow... Ow…"

And then he jumped from the cradle of my hands to the top of my fingers, glared at me, shook his head in disgust, and flew unsteadily to the fence, where he has been sitting for the last several minutes telling his buddies about the Evil Door and the mean lady who laughed at him for face-planting into it…

In the spirit of Ivan Borisov…

Here it is. My Olympic sweater, finished last night…rather late:



On the plus sides: it fits, it is extremely warm, and the “rumply” thing where I think I stranded too tightly actually did smooth out under the influence of a nice warm steam iron.

On the downside…the sleeves are just a hint too short, and overall it fits a little on the snug side (although I suspect a quick soak and being stretched to dry will probably fix both of those).

Who, you may be asking, is Ivan Borisov? He was the sole downhill competitor from Kyrgyzstan (a country apparently about the size of South Dakota), and he missed a gate on his downhill run.

He turned around, struggled his way back up to the gate, went through it and continued his run. He finished 41st out of, uh, forty-one competitors.

The persistence of the underdog, personified. Fix your mistake, and carry on. Don’t give up, don’t wuss out, don’t give up on yourself just because you blew it this one time.

My hero.

Bode Miller? Keep him. My heart belongs to Ivan.

DOH! Of the Day

Every so often, I'll get a phone call from my husband that sounds like this: "{indistinct mumbling, car noise, books on tape rumblings, maybe a car horn}"

It will go on, and on, and on. I can shout into the phone all I want, he isn't going to hear me.

This would be on account of because he's sat down in the car, leaned on a button or two, and the phone has said (on account of because it is a Highly Intelligent Phone that tries to guess what you meant by all that button pushing), "Ah ha! This man wants to call his wife!"

And it will cheerfully dial for him, and once it has a connection with the house, it will not let go.

I have hung up on these calls, only to pick up the phone moments later to find it's still there.

{Twilight Zone Music Here}

But, I digress.

The DOH! Of the Day goes to Johnny Ray Miller and Robert A. Patterson of Enid, Oklahoma, in honor of their astonishingly bad combination of timing and number dialed.

And, when I become an evil overlord…no autodial on my cell phone. Check.

Catharsis!

It is the weirdest thing. I often find that within moments of writing about a problem…it either vanishes or the solution pops right up in front of me.

About ten minutes after I sat here pounding my head on the table and sobbing and whining writing about my complete and utter inability to get on with my professional life…something just quietly went, {Click!}

And I've had an amazing morning / early afternoon. I've just realized it is 1:00 (13:00 to you, Mr. Timesheet!), and I'm hungry, and I've gotten to the point of only having one (1) more thing on my list of stuff I really want to get done today.

Hmm.

Curse these floppy upper arms of mine! Man, it just irritates the hell out of me, the utter lack of muscle tone I've got in my upper arms…

{whisper} Now, let's see if anything happens…

Disquiet of the Brain

I have this feeling today. I feel as though…if I were a decent and honest person…I would call in…hmm.

Not exactly sick, although I did have a bout of the Something last night (long story short – the Something is a Mystery Ailment that has been impacting my digestive life in a very unpleasant and recurrent way since the start of the year) so my entire stomach area feels like someone spent the night hitting me with the business end of a pole.

But unfortunately, it doesn't hurt enough that I can't work. Or even enough to be why I'm suffering my real problem. Which would be…an utter inability to get my arms around the concept of getting something done today.

I'm having one of those days where I have read the same email at least five times, and still – it might as well be written in Finnish. I can understand all the words. And I have a ghostly feeling that I know what it is they're saying to me, and what I am supposed to be doing in regards to said email.

But then I go to, you know, do it…and it's gone.

Back to the email. Read the email. Oh yes, I was going to {alt-Tab to other application} stare at application screen…what the heck was I going to do? {alt-Tab back to email}…got it!…{alt-Tab!}…duuuuh… {alt-Tab!}…got it!…{alt-Tab!}… duuuUUUUUuuuuh…{alt-Tab!}…

I'm trying. I really am. All blog-posting-in-the-middle-of-what-is-supposed-to-be-a-working-morning evidence to the contrary, I really truly am trying my best to get my head out of whatever null-zone it has found and back into the job for which I am being paid.

But I still think, if I were an honest person, I would email my coworkers and boss and say something like, "I'm, uh, not feeling quite up to par today {fake cough here}. I'm going to go ahead and take a sick day and hope to be back online tomorrow."

Because I'm starting to fear that if I do manage to get something done on any of the three tasks I wanted to get handled today…it will be wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. A waste of my time and their money.

And yet, undaunted…I'm going back to that infernal email again. Maybe this time, I'll be able to hold onto the questions therein long enough to write a stupid query to answer them…

Wanna take a trip with me?

At the moment, my planner is just a glorified fridge calendar. You know, a list of things to do, a space for each day with things like "Eldest, dentist appointment, 2:40" scribbled in it.

There's nothing wrong with that. It's a darned sight better than having to pay $120 for the dentist appointment you forgot to show up for, I'll tell you that for nothin'.

But an effective planner can do so much more. And I intend to leverage mine for all it's worth.

I'll start with what, exactly, I've got for a planner. Physically, I mean.

I've got a binder. Just a plain old three-ring binder, with one cool feature: it stands up. Cost me $10 for this binder, yessir. I don't wanna confess how much I spent on "specialty" planner holders (leather bound, seven-ten-fifteen rings, had handles, didn't have handles, spaces for the PDA, all that) before I discovered that overall – a plain old three ring binder worked best for me. I like being able to buy cheap old college-ruled paper and put it right into my binder without any fussing.

I buy my fillers in what Franklin Covey refers to as 'Monarch' size and the rest of the world calls "Oh, you mean just regular 8-1/2 x 11?", because I write BIG.

Now, I'm going to put this right up front: all of this stuff, other than a calendar of some kind, is totally optional. There is no reason on earth why you can't draft hand-made daily planning sheets using plain old binder paper instead of shelling out $30 for a year's worth of pre-printed daily planning sheets.

That said, when it comes to the specialty papers inside it, I like the Franklin Covey system. I like the layout, I find it very easy to use, and I find many of their 'patented' tools extremely useful. Also, I like the colors of the Monticello pages. Yes. I am that shallow. I like the blue, and it is worth some extra bucks to me to have the blue.

I bought the monthly tabbed sheets that are two pages per month (see comment about writing BIG, above – I can't stand the dinky little spaces provided by a single page per month calendar), the Daily Planning Pages, and the Weekly Compass cards. I already had from Days of Yore tabs for Values / Missions, Goals, Finances, Key Information, a pouch the weekly compass cards go in that doubles as a page finder, and a bunch of generic numbered tasks.

And, I bought a big old package of binder paper, to be used for everything from taking notes in meetings to doodling memos to myself on the train.

So. I've got all this stuff.

…now what?

I'm going to skip all the motivational pep-talking about values and goals and blah blah blah, and cut right to the chase: there are two kinds of to-do lists. There's the kind that is purely a list of crap you've got to get done, in no particular order. The laundry list, the eternal 'honey do' list. The glorified fridge calendar. It helps keep you on track for those things that are right in front of you, right now.

Fine. But there's another level you can achieve with these things.

It starts by knowing what you really want to achieve on a grander scale. It's really about knowing yourself, what you personally want to have, to do, and be.

It's answering the question: What is 'all this' really about? Once you've got the answer to that, you can start planning your time and tasks with one eye on the here and now, and one on the bigger picture.

It's so easy to get so caught up in the process of life that you forget there is a bigger picture. I know I get very caught up in the process – I've got to make dinner and do the laundry and get the report out and gosh golly I forgot all about those pants I was having altered and then I get a phone call and I've got to remember to pencil my mom in for a visit, which means I have to vacuum up the filth between the door and anywhere she's likely to walk in the house…

Another term would be 'tunnel visioned' – so intense on what is right immediately in front of me that I forget I'm trying to get somewhere.

This, right now, is where we stop. Step away from the processes for a minute. Raise up our eyes and look around at the horizon.

What do you want?

Are there things you want to have? A better (or just different) job, a house of your very own, financial security, a new pair of tennis shoes, an actual lawn instead of a rather seedy weed patch?

Maybe some things you'd like to do? Get that college degree, take a cruise, see Greece, climb a mountain, learn to speak Sanskrit?

Or maybe you've got some areas in the 'be' department, maybe you'd like to have more passion, or compassion, be more generous (or less generous – as a person who sometimes has trouble with the tiny little word 'no', sometimes I wish I could be just a little less giving sometimes).

Don't worry about what's on your list. It isn't graded by anybody else. It doesn't have to please anybody but you – not even your spouse. This is an utterly self-absorbed activity that is all about your personal happiness and success. It doesn't have to be noble and self-sacrificing, nor does it have to be all about greed and avarice. The things don't have to be easy or hard. You don't have to be attempting to build a trampoline you can use to bounce up to the moon; or even the second story, for that matter. But neither do you have to ask yourself, "Is this safe? Is this sensible? Is this something I feel I can actually do?" and limit yourself only to things you think come back 'yes'.

This isn't the time to worry about the how part – that comes later. Right now, we're dreaming up a better life for ourselves, a more purpose-driven life, a life we'll be proud to have led, one that we can look back over and say, "Might not have been perfect, but damn – it sure was good!"

Take your time. I'm probably going to take the whole weekend to tweak around on this stuff. Maybe longer. I'm looking both for things that are near term (like maybe getting a new bleepin' cooktop, since mine has been busted for, oh, what? three YEARS now?!) and far term (maybe…a master's degree? Or even [dare I ponder it] getting one of those million-buck hovels closer to Where The Work Is?), and Supremely Long Term (…I'd love to retire before I'm 92…)

So – think about it. If there were no limits, if you weren't afraid, if you had all the resources in the world and there was nothing to stop you – what would you do? What would you buy for yourself? What would you do with yourself? What kind of person would you want to be?

Go write it down. Have fun. We'll come back and talk about it some more in a few days…

This just in: 30% pure EeeeeeeeeeeeeeeVILLE!

You Are 30% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well. In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

How Evil Are You?

I beat my friend by 2%.

BWA-HAHAHAHA- er, I mean, how awful. Gee golly, I surely do hope I didn’t hurt her feelings at all…

Division of Labor

You guys got me thinking; especially the part of ‘you guys’ who have flooded my inbox these last few days (what do you have against just leaving comments directly on the blog, BTW?). This is dangerous. It means that I get all philosophical.

You brought this on yourselves.

Specifically, I was taken with how many people felt that regardless of what the task was, the husband and I should be splitting the chores right down the middle. See, I think that's mental. Utterly mad. Highly inefficient, fraught (fraught, I tell you!) with the peril of having things taking endless hours to do poorly.

There is one basic assumption I think needs to be addressed right up front: that he’s sitting on the sofa drinking beer and playing backgammon with his buddies or something, while I slave away like an indentured servant.

{!BUZZ!} Oh sorry, No! But thank you for playing!! In point of fact, even while I was staying at home the division of labor didn’t change. My husband having done the stay at home dad gig for a while, he never considered my staying home to equate to a ‘woo hoo, now I get a free ride when it comes to household chores!’

While I’m ironing, he’s hedging. While I’m organizing closets, he’s rebuilding the infernal fence. While I’m folding the laundry, he’s putting knobs back on cabinets, recaulking the bathrooms, acid-washing the driveway.

It’s a Divide and Conquer method; the only chores we share right down the middle are the things we both hate and/or suck at doing equally. For those, we have the advanced technical method of ensuring equal misery called, ‘I did it last time!’ This simple phrase ends all argument when it comes to things like poopy diapers, sweeping the kitchen floor, dealing with crying children in the wee hours of the night, and so on.

But I'm digressing.

I was actually pondering division of labor, and the application of same to the plain vanilla world of the Household.

Division of labor has been around for as long as civilization. Adam Smith pointed out its benefits in his Great Work™, The Wealth of Nations back in 1776.

“The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour,” quoth he. “And the greatest part of the skill, dexterity, and judgement with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.”

He describes at some length his observations of a pin factory, where one guy pulls the wire thin, another cuts it, a third sharpens it and so forth. At the end of the day, ten guys working in specialized concert, produce 48,000 pins per day; those same ten guys could not have made 20 pins apiece in the same time period if they had made each pin from start to end by themselves.

Judging from the emails I’ve been getting lately…I suspect a few folks were out sick the day we discussed this in Econ 1A. Either that, or you’ve all married lazy jerks who need horse-whipping. If your partner is one of those types who considers his/her list to consist of “earn a paycheck” and “surf the Internet”…well…may I suggest one of these? Or perhaps this might suit the bill. (In any case, it might get their attention…)

But I digress (again). I’m sorry. I’ve just always loved bullwhips…yeeeeeeeeeeHAW!! {!CRACK!}

Efficient division of labor is a major force underpinning the generation of wealth. It works for nations, for business large and small…and households, too. When each of us works to our best blend of interest and strength, we prosper. When even one of us decides to slack off, we falter.

To attempt to split all chores, regardless of what they are, is to remove the layers of efficiency we currently enjoy. Removing efficiency is removing wealth – here defined not just as money, but also time and overall life satisfaction.

It seems a piss-poor exchange to me, ‘utter equality’ for ‘quality of life’. I’d rather do all the ironing, every last hankie of it, every week, than have to trim the hedges even once a month. He’d rather be up on that unspeakable ladder cleaning out the gutters every single day than do the ironing even every other week. Seems like a pretty easy call to make: you handle that stuff, I’ll handle this. We’re both happy, and it all gets done.

The work, I’ve noticed, doesn’t really care who does it, as long as it gets done.

Maybe I’m just missing something. I’m sensing a lot of seething resentment in the emails I’ve been getting, like a lot of people feel they’re somehow getting the short end of the stick. I don’t know what the cure would be for that; I don’t have that feeling around here. The way things have fallen out for us, each of us thinks the other one has the “harder” set of tasks.

It’s either that we’re Mutant Alien People™ (which would explain a lot about our kids, actually), or we’ve hit on something that is sorely needed Out There.

Communicate your needs and wants. Discuss them. Come to an understanding. Share the overall burden equally, but also with an eye to your individual preferences and skills. We’ve had our ‘I can’t handle all this, I need you to handle {tasks}’ discussions, and it’s gone both ways. My husband has had times when he asked me to pick up a few of “his” tasks, and I’ve had times when I’ve asked him to pick up some of “mine”.

It’s not a fight. It shouldn’t become a fight. It’s about pulling together. Be thou a shield unto my back, and I shall be one unto thine…

Lift up your eyeballs from the stupid list, and look at each other. You may be a team, but you’re also individuals. You have individual hopes, dreams, skills, preferences, and interests. Play to those strengths. Leverage them. If you can maximize the household efficiency, you both win. Smash the efficiency to bits in the name of ‘perfect equality’, and you both lose.

I think sometimes we get so caught up with trying to force life to be fair that we forget it’s short. Very short. Way too short to be busting our spleens over who takes out the garbage and whether or not that makes his list 0.08% shorter than mine.

And entirely too short to waste it trying to make hedging my job. Because I can spend two hours trying to make two tiny little hedges look vaguely round and end up with a pair of hacked-up hedges, a rash all up and down my forearms from the hedge-juice, and a husband who is lying on the driveway rolling in helpless laughter, tears streaming down his face.

Oh well. At least I’d get my laughs in when he went off to work wearing a shirt with multiple creases ironed into it…until I found the scorch marks on my blouses, anyway…

What a pair to draw to…

This morning as I was rousting the Denizens from their warm beds and forcing them to endure the indignities of getting dressed, I realized that I had forgotten to grab a pair of socks for Captain Adventure.

Dang. Have to go all the way back upstairs now…But wait! I have a seven year old! Surely I can ask my seven year old to grab a pair of socks out of his drawer, right? I mean! They’re all rolled up in pairs! Shoot, my four year old could probably handle this!

“Eldest! Can you do me a favor? Could you go upstairs and get a pair of socks out of Captain Adventure’s drawer?”

“OK!” she says, enthusiastically.

{THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA!} go her little feet up the stairs. The drawers are opened and shut with great enthusiasm.

There is a long, long pause. A long pause. A ‘what, did you have to drive to WalMart for those things?’ pause.

After which the little feet make the reverse trek down the stairs and she comes skidding into the laundry/changing room clutching two socks.

One sized for a newborn, the other one of her own. She flung them at me and turned to run off.

“Hang on,” I commanded, holding up the mismatched pair. “Do these make a pair?”

She regarded them studiously, then opined that nooooooo – no, they did not.

“Can you get me a pair?” I asked, when it became obvious that she wasn’t going to make that particular connection.

“Oh. OK!”

{THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA!} {vigorous drawer opening and shutting} {THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA!} {skiiiiiiiiiiiiid}

And she handed me, with a huge flourish a (one, uno, singular) sock of the extraordinarily frilly and bow-ridden variety. In size LARGE. Both of his little feet could have gone into that one sock. His very squirmy feet, because by this time he’s lost all patience for hanging out on the changing pad waiting to get his shoes put on.

I took it and looked at it for a moment. Then I asked, slowly and with great emphasis, “Eldest. How many feet does Captain Adventure have?”

“Oh {giggle}. Sorry.”

“And Eldest?”

“What?”

“Is this one of his socks?” If the size didn’t give away the answer, the enormous pink bow waving listlessly from the cuff did.

“Oh. {more giggling} No.”

“Honey, please don’t be silly right now. I need a pair of his socks. Just get me one of the pairs of socks in his drawer.”

She began trying to tell me there were no socks in his drawer. None. She had had to take a dogsled to Canada to find the one sock she had just brought down. Nine hundred miles, uphill in the snow, barefoot, both ways!

Eventually, I let out an, “Oh for heaven’s sake, Eldest!”

At which point, she collapsed into tears and lamentations. No socks. Never seen socks. There were no socks. It was an evil plot, asking her to look for the socks that didn’t exist…

And my feet went stomping up the stairs, and I slammed the drawer open, and while I will admit there were only two pairs of suitable socks in there – THERE WERE TWO PAIRS! Not one! TWO! Right there! Right there in the very front of the drawer!

If they had been a snake…I’d’ve been posting about the long wait times at the local ER this morning.

Of course…there is still the question of where the mates to the three socks she brought downstairs have gotten to…

I feel so much better now

So. Somebody at Google made an itty-bitty, teeny-weeny, what’s it between friends kind of boo-boo, and posted the wrong damned spreadsheet on the corporate internet site.

Hey, it could happen to anybody. So many spreadsheets, so much pressure to get things posted, STAT! Shoot, I’ve sent out the wrong file a few times in my day, too.

‘Course, my blunders along those lines never, say, caused a company with 304,000,000 shares outstanding to lose $6.65 per share in market capitalization in a single week.

That’s $2,021,600,000. TWO BILLION BUCKS {and some spare change} in market cap. Zap! Gone (for the moment – tomorrow, someone will whisper ‘Google is hot’ in a bathroom somewhere and the stock will undoubtedly soar like the phoenix on newly-feathered wings…)!

That is not gonna look good on the old resume. No sir, it is not.

And suddenly, I feel so much better about sending out a report a couple weeks ago that was missing a handful of items because I pulled from the wrong table.

Monogamy is so overrated

The Yarn Harlot was talking about project monogamy (and her utter lack thereof) on her blog and I was feeling very at sea because I’m a one-project kind of person.

Yessir, that’s right. I cast on, I knit through, and only when I’ve finished what I’m working on do I move on to the next project. Can't relate to the whole ‘multiple projects’ issues, not a bit.

Oh, really? Let’s take a quick look through the house, shall we?

First of all, we have the Olympic sweater. (There is progress on that, by the way – I’ve gotten to the bottom cuff detail on one sleeve.) (But I didn’t take a picture of it yet, because there have been enough pictures of that project.)

Then we have the ‘portable’ project, which is a pair of socks. See, I was going to do the alpaca scarf and beret next, but then I realized that I actually had the socks actually on the needle, so I faithfully set aside the alpaca (on different needles) to resume them.

Then I found this little gem lurking in my actual knitting basket. This would be my ‘One True’ project that I was working on before I took up the Olympic sweater – this is the front of a very nice mohair-blend sweater. Isn’t it a cute little cable? Yes, I thought so too. Right up until the moment I abandoned it.




I found an alpaca sweater being knit in the round that, after a bit of consideration (and the discovery that the pattern had long ago gotten separated from the work in progress), I tore out to recover the yarn.

And, there is also the May Queen pattern I wrote about a while ago. I had actually cast on the hem of that little dress before I realized I had a ‘broken’ pattern.

That’s six projects in progress, for a ‘one project at a time’ person.

But honestly – I am a wild-eyed polygamist in my heart of hearts. Because every single time I go into my craft closet for any reason, I pause for a moment to admire the yarns that are “next”. The soft angora blend, to be made into a wee little hat for a newborn head. The beautiful claret alpaca for the beret and scarf to drape artfully over my black wool coat. The endless (and I do mean endless) balls of sock yarn. Check out these puppies:



Yes. I have more of this kind of ludicrously variegated, “you're not really going to wear those in public are you?” sock yarn.

And in my mind, I’m already knitting it up.

Ah, fickle is my knitter's heart...

Voyage of (Re)Discovery

I used to be pretty damned good at this whole ‘working mom’ thing. I was good at managing my time, keeping things together, blah blah blah…

Oh yes. I used to be really good at this stuff.

Today…eh…not so much. Meals have been downright weird, my kindergartener has brought cereal bars for lunch more times than I like to admit, bills are languishing unpaid a little longer than is strictly kosher, and I’m finding myself easily confused between tasks. Ack, which do I do first? The vacuuming! No, the bathroom! Wait, I haven’t started dinner! OK, I’ll vacuum with my left foot while I stir the rice with my right hand, pay this bill with my left and…Aw, heckwithit. Let’s just order pizza and watch a pay-per-view…

See, I don’t know about anybody else, but when I have Way Too Much To Do©, I get very, very tired. Very, very, very, very tired. Confronted with a huge amount of stuff I need to get done, all of it ‘important’ or ‘urgent’, I have a tendency to kind of freeze up. I can’t deal with it, I can’t cope with it, so I…ignore it.

What elephant? I don’t see no stinkin’ elephant…

Of course, while denial can be lovely for a while, it doesn’t tend to end well. These last few weeks, I think I’ve actually spent more money than I’ve earned on convenience foods; the house has gotten steadily seedier (it wasn’t all that hot to begin with); and I’ve dropped an awful lot of social and work-related balls.

So I blew the dust of my trusty Franklin-Covey planner this weekend and started trying to get it back together. The writing stops abruptly on February 6, 2003 – a couple weeks after I came home from work ‘for good’ (ha!).

I sat down and read through my old notes. Man. I was one organized cookie, back in the day. Monthly goals, high level weekly goals, daily prioritized task lists, coded by project or life area.

No wonder I have memories of being able to lay hands on an envelope, stamp and return label without a forty-minute search in a hard-hat through the craft closet.

So I began thinking about what I need to do to get back on track, and I have to admit: simple organization is what I need more than anything else. Over the last couple years, I’ve really been letting things slide – especially things like drawers and closets. They’re stuffed with miscellaneous stuff, because I kept saying I’d deal with it, you know, later.

But when you’re working full time and you’ve got precisely two hours per day at home that aren’t taken up by sleeping – spending a precious half an hour in the garage digging through empty diaper boxes and cans of green beans searching for the box of laundry soap you know is out there somewhere really doesn’t work so well. I’m sure my coworkers won’t mind if I give my shower a miss today…again…

Given the time crunch, I’m planning to go about battening down the hatches of the Den of Chaos the same way I’d go about eating an elephant: one bite at a time.

One drawer, one shelf, one ten to fifteen minute organizing job at a time, I’m going to get this place cleaned up. I started yesterday with a small but psychologically significant area: the kitchen junk drawer.

From that one area, a 18” long by 20” wide by 4” deep drawer, I threw away almost an entire plastic grocery bag full of stuff. Stuff like, a broken sugar dish from the dollar store. A stack of ancient rubber bands. A deck of torn-up playing cards (I suspect I grabbed them away from a toddler and stuffed them in there to keep them out of reach). Lots and lots and lots of ancient candy, probably likewise confiscated from a Denizen.

The drawer is now organized, and less than half full. You can see at a glance every single thing in it. It is clean. The things it holds make sense.

It’s a small bite – but it’s a start.

Just a few dozen more, and I’ll be really cookin’ with gas…

The things we don't know...

My husband did not know that the Den of Chaos has financial ‘closes’.

**sigh**

Now how, I ask you, how, can this man have not known that when I lock myself in the office for two days on or about day 10 of April, July, October and January, that I am doing a quarter close for our books?

Seriously. A fairly rigorous, in-depth fiscal checkup EVERY quarter, for TEN YEARS…and he has no idea that I do this.

Apparently the fact that I tend to repeatedly come out of the office clutching graphs and spreadsheets and spewing out things like “how in the world did we spend $5,872 on ‘dining’ this quarter? This $58.07 from Home Depot, was that for the back yard, or was that the drywall in Captain Adventure’s room? And somebody had damned straight better explain this $2,721 for pay-per-view movies…the $8,827 for yarn I understand, perfectly natural that, but pay-per-view movies?!” never clued him in.

Oh no. It wasn’t until, while talking about other things, I mentioned in passing that I probably would be reevaluating my working situation during the Q2 close rather than Q1 due to several weeks of data being ragged that he looked at me with an expression both amused and surprised and said, “Wait – you do a ‘quarter close’ for us?!”

I think it really does prove one thing: any time I start talking about finances, he really does only hear, Blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah Ginger.

Oh well. I understand. I do the same thing when he starts talking about dts packages [here ends my knowledge of actual terminology] with the thing on the other thing and I think there’s a server involved…or something…and anyway the code did this other thing? Which was cool? But then this other thing happened which was not cool and blah blah blah something something something and then, uh, he fixed it. Somehow.

With, uh…code.

Before I start preaching about frivolous spending…

I just frivolously spent $13 on Tulip Sock fixin's.

As to why…well…see, this is hard. It really does go against my usual rules on flippant purchases. It was over $5, and it was not something that could be eaten, so it should have gone through a slightly more rigorous decision process and been tossed out on the basis that I already have enough sock yarn to keep my needles busy for about sixteen years. And, furthermore, I have enough other yarn to be making sweaters and baby blankets and whatnot for a further eighteen years. I am rapidly approaching SABLE (stash acquisition beyond life expectancy) in the yarn department.

The only defense I have, the only reason I can give for my buying the yarn and pattern for these rather garish examples of the knitting trade is…they made me laugh.

Hard.

I mean it. I saw those socks in an email from KnitPicks last night and I laughed so hard I shot zinfandel right out my nose. I was so cheered and amused by these socks that it didn't even bother me that I was wiping zinfandel off my laptop screen.

They embody the whimsy of Spring, to me. They say, "Yes, that's right! We're garish, and PROUD OF IT! We're bright and we're bold and we're cheerful and if you don't like it, we really don't care! Because we're socks! Really, really, REALLY Spring-y socks!"

So I bought the yarn, and I fully intend to make – and wear! – them.

In public.

Because they made me laugh.

Really, really hard.