That’s not a typo. The 0 key on my keyboard is (currently) working. I refer to this being the 22nd anniversary of my sister’s death. Hey, year 22, on the 22nd of the month. How about that.
Every year on this day, I look around at my life, my stuff, the things I like, the things I think about things, the current state of the world, and I wonder, “What would Cindy have thought about this?” The last few years, this question has become harder and harder to answer, and not just because the world has increasingly gone off the rails. It’s because she’s not here to remind me who she is.
Today I met a man I haven’t seen for ten years. All the time I had thought I was remembering him well – how he looked and how he spoke and the sort of things he said. The first five minutes of the real man shattered the image completely. Not that he had changed. On the contrary. I kept on thinking, ‘Yes, of course, of course, I’d forgotten he thought that – or disliked this, or knew so and so – or jerked his head back that way’. I had known all these things once and I recognized them the moment I met them again. But they had all faded out of my mental picture of him, and when they were all replaced by his actual presence the total effect was quite astonishingly different from the image I had carried about with me for those ten years. How can I hope that this is not happening to my memory of H.? That this is not happening already?Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes – like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night – little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape will be quite hidden in the end. Ten minutes – ten seconds – of the real H. would correct all this. And yet, even if those ten seconds were allowed me, one second later the little flakes would begin to fall again. The tough, sharp, cleansing tang of her otherness is gone.
He wrote that almost immediately after the death of his wife. He himself died a few years later. What might he have said after living through 22 years of this?
This book, by the way, is the one you want to have close at hand for when someone close to you dies. I have to get rid of a lot of my books. This is one I’ll be replacing.
Social media with a pandemic on top means we don’t see each other in person so much anymore. So this phenomenon, of forgetting each other, is really ramped up.
Ravelry is a beautiful thing. Among its many virtues is the fact that you can make project pages for all the things you knit or crochet (or weave or spin!), with as much or as little detail as you want. This is mind-bogglingly useful, not only for those times when you want to remember what you did, but also for picking the virtual brains of others who are better at this stuff than you are. Which, in turn, can help you up your own skills.
The downfall, of course, is that you have to actually input the information in order for it to be there later. I really did think I had more pictures of the following tale somewhere, but that was like 2 computers ago, so. I’m sorry. Here is a picture of my cat, who is not at all sorry.
Lying on my precious Noro blankie like she owns the damn place.
Sometime in 2009 or 2010, when the crochet bug had really bit me hard, and the Doris Chan bug had decided to hop on as well, I made myself a Haru. It wasn’t my first Doris Chan garment – I know this because I actually DO have a project page for that one, and on it I mention wanting to make a Haru. I was also discovering the wonder that is Noro yarn.
If you’re unfamiliar, Noro is kind of iconic in the yarn world. One, it’s got just the one name, only four letters: Bono. Cher. Nike. Noro. Two, because you either love it or you hate it. There is no middle ground. Either you are with the revolution, or you go up against the wall. (“The revolution” in this case being in favor of enchanting and improbable and even jarring color progressions, the aesthetic of wabi-sabi, and natural fibers, many of them rather scratchy; and “the wall” being the staid, unadventurous land of smoother, softer, more well-behaved yarns that are perfectly nice and all, they’re just… not that exciting. Just so we’re clear, nobody gets shot here.)
Normal yarn. (Photo by Steve Johnson on Pexels.com)
Noro! In one of its tamer colorways.
This is not to say that one can’t sort of straddle that fence as one gains experience with different kinds of yarn. Most yarns, like people, have their features and bugs and things for which they’re particularly well- or ill-suited. But Noro is one of those that even the most diplomatic of experts will have some natural affection or dislike for, whether they’ll admit it or not. I bet even Clara Parkes, deep in her heart of hearts, has an opinion on Noro.
Also, Noro is expensive. Expensive enough that I will still and forever brag about the time I scored a BLANKET’s worth of Noro Silver Thaw at roughly 85% off. (Said blanket pictured above, under cat.) It’s certainly expensive enough that keeping a failed project stuffed in a drawer, hidden away from the world, feels like a bit of an injustice.
But that’s what I did, for several years, because I just couldn’t face it. It’s hard to admit that all the work you’ve put into something just… doesn’t work. You keep coming up with ways to get around the obvious issues: It’s too small, but maybe I’ll lose weight! It’s scratchy, but maybe I can put conditioner in the rinse water, like those smart people on Ravelry say! Okay, it’s still scratchy, but maybe I can wear it over a long sleeve shirt! Hmm, okay, it still makes me really itchy for some reason. I’ll have to think about that some more. In the meantime, wow, this edging looks pretty wonky. I’ll just rip it out and redo it at a tighter gauge…
It was at this point that I learned that one must be careful when frogging Noro. The exact circumstances escape my memory, but I somehow managed to break the yarn in the body of the sweater. And that’s when it went into a drawer for what turned out to be an extended time-out.
Which isn’t SO bad. On the one hand, yarn isn’t exactly a perishable good. It’s not going to go bad like that queso you forgot about in the back of the fridge. On the other, it doesn’t last forever either: wool, when buried, decomposes like you might expect a natural fiber to, but even synthetics decompose eventually. There’s a reason why archaeologists don’t come across a whole lot of textiles in their work, and why it’s kind of a big deal when they do. Not that I expect to be in need of a sweater 10,000 years from now.
And not that I’m afraid of my Haru crumbling to ashes in a dresser while I procrastinate, either. But over the last 8 years, while it’s been sitting there, things have been happening. I’ve learned how to knit, and discovered that I quite like it. I’ve discovered that I personally prefer knit garments to crocheted ones in many cases, and I’ve gotten excited about learning to knit sweaters that fit my body and style, such as it is. I’ve also come down with some annoying health issues and left the work force, which has made being able to afford sweater quantities of yarn much more challenging. And I’ve gotten good enough at this yarn-wrangling thing that I can look back at some of my oldest FOs, some made with very nice yarn indeed, and think, “Ugh, I could do so much better now.”
My first Doris Chan garment. Nothing wrong with the jacket itself, but boy, this doesn’t do Mom’s (or my) body type any favors. Maybe it too should go up on the frogging block?
So, that’s what I’m doing with the yarn formerly known as my Haru. Only took me 8 years to bite the bullet, but hey, it’s hard to take that step of completely unraveling something you’ve made. A lot of it has to do with taking all those ends you wove in so carefully that you’d never be able to find them again, much less undo them – and having to find them, and undo them. It feels like ultimate defeat. Or it did, until I saw a post on Ravelry from a lady who was so unhappy with the sweater she’d knit – out of madelinetosh yarn – that she threw the whole thing away. Girl, you just don’t DO that.
So yeah, compared to that poor knitter (she still haunts me, like something out of Dante), frogging my Haru actually feels kind of hopeful. It’s one thing to acknowledge a failure and shove the thing away “until I feel like dealing with it”. It’s quite a different thing to, even years later, finally open that drawer and say, “Okay, let’s see what we can do with you.” It feels, oddly, like progress.
And here’s what it looks like right now. I’m making a slightly lacy shawl, which won’t be worn right up against my skin unless I put it there – and if/when it itches, I can easily flick it away without actually having to disrobe. Win/win? I guess I’ll find out.
Look at those colors. That texture. That sheen from the silk. That bit of halo from the mohair. Does this belong in a drawer forever? The answer is no, it does not.
I finally cleared out most of the dye stuff from my freezer and set up jars on the deck. One, because it was seriously crowded in there and deer season will be here eventually, and two, because if August in Mississippi isn’t the perfect time for solar dyeing, then nowhen is.
Yep, it’s messy, and can also be stinky at times. Which is why the outdoor aspect is so perfect. Also, as long as you’re using safer mordants like alum, you can literally just chuck all the used plant matter & dyes out into the yard when you’re done with them. (Or compost them, but we’re going for minimum effort here, if you couldn’t tell.)
I’m terrible with organization, though. Perhaps because I know I’ll never reach perfect orderly nirvana, so I don’t try that hard. It’s especially obvious when I do natural dyeing. Enter the miracle of the Tyvek wristband (available on Amazon for rougly $10 per billion), a couple of Sharpies, and some masking tape for labelling jars. Or, since I couldn’t even manage to lay hands on masking tape this time, blue painter’s tape.
Solar dyeing is so easy, y’all. Seriously. Put plant matter and water in a jar. *Cover, leave in the sun for at least 24 hours. Check when you feel like it.** Strain. Toss plant matter into the yard, add yarn (either premordanted or with mordant) to jar, repeat from * to **. Rinse and dry. Put in more yarn if you like the color and it seems like the dye isn’t exhausted.
Like always, I used several different plants, some fresh, some frozen. But this post is really about those sneaky red onion skins. See, I had a smallish bag of them in the freezer, so I set up a jar for them along with everything else. The first yarn came out with plenty of color, but not the shade I was expecting – it was reddish brown, when I thought I’d read/remembered that they give green. But then I remembered some fleece I’d dyed once and gotten orange, so whatever. Threw another skein in, and it came out more brown without the reddish cast. Ho hum. Threw in a third skein for reasons now lost to me, and it came out… pale mauve?? What?
Now, sometimes when you pull yarn out of the jar it looks pretty impressive, but a lot of the color will rinse away. Still, this was interesting. I thought maybe I’d end up with a light pink, which would still be unusual. So I rinsed well, and the mauve did indeed rinse away, leaving… a pretty pale green?! What is this sorcery?
I pulled out the first two samples. Here they are all together:
Weird, right? Clearly I had missed something. The third skein, before rinsing, had looked an awful lot like a much lighter version of the first skein. So, skeins 1 & 2 went back in for a more serious rinsing session or three. And behold, I now have all the greens.
Now, I knew that this can happen, because the red and purple pigments in things like red onion skins and berries and the like don’t really stick to wool very well. They make more of a stain than a true dye, meaning they don’t bond as permanently with the fibers and mumble mumble cyanosomething chemistry. They tend to not be washfast or lightfast, leaving the other more tenacious colors (green, brown, etc.) behind. That’s my understanding anyway.
So, basically, red onion skins fooled me, and I should have seen it coming. But that’s kind of how natural dyeing is, especially when you take the halfassed, haphazard, Swedish Chef approach to it that I do. Which is kind of great, because how many things do you get to do that with and still get something good out of it?
…is what I hear when y’all make gluten jokes. That’s because I have celiac disease, & am not on some trendy, totally misguided diet.
“Celiacs can’t touch this!”
I talk about fibromyalgia a lot. I published abookof my experiences with it & I have an entireblogdevoted to it. I don’t talk about celiac because, I realized a few days ago, it’s the one thing I’m actually kind of sensitive about. And then I realized it’s because it’s the one disease (or rather its only treatment) that the first world makes fun of all the time. Constantly. Without end.
I empathize with why you do. The type of people that go on & on about gluten are exactly the type of people everyone hates. They end to be upper class white people who also rabbit on about eating raw, locally sourced, fair trade, cruelty free everything…
Spring allergies are hitting, and every year they seem to hit harder than the last (at least for me). It actually makes me sad to see winter go now, which just sounds wrong, doesn’t it? Last year, I actually told friends that I was determined to get allergy shots as soon as the current season died down, and that if I started making excuses for not getting them, to smack me.
Yeah, well, now I’ve changed my mind. Smack away, I guess. I’ve decided to try a few more things before shots; mainly because I just don’t have the wherewithal to commit to a weekly or more visit to a doctor’s office (especially the office of the last ENT I went to, which has to have one of the worst waiting rooms I’ve ever been in). Allergy drops would be a great alternative, sure, but I can’t find anyone here that offers them. And for every tale of miraculous healing from allergy shots, there are also plenty of cases where they were just one big time/money suck with little or no benefit.
So, here’s my current plan of attack:
1. Daily neti pot rinses
First thing in the morning, even before coffee (hey, I said I was serious about this), before the sneezing can really get going. It rinses out whatever dust or pollen I’ve breathed in that have been trapped in my nostrils, before they can cause any more trouble. I use the little salt packets from the drugstore, because they’re idiot-proof and you really don’t want the salt balance to be too far off if you want it to be comfortable. And, after some scare in Louisiana where people died from some infection they got from using tap water in their neti pots (and after relentless insistence from my mother), I only use distilled water for it.
Some people really freak at the thought of running a stream of water through their nose on purpose, but it really doesn’t have to be unpleasant at all! I’ve found ways to make it completely discomfort-free, and quick and easy to boot. Plus, when your nose is all irritated, it can actually feel pretty soothing. If you think a neti pot would help you but just find the whole idea too scary, drop me a comment and I’ll do a separate post about what works for me.
2. Master Tonic
I got some of this fiery vinegar a couple of years ago when my cousins made some and were raving about it, and noticed that my sinuses seem generally less ragey when I take it regularly. So I made some myself a few weeks ago, and now take a spoonful after doing the neti pot… followed with a spoonful of honey to put out the fire, because OY. And since I’ve got a spoon out anyway, might as well take that some of that cod liver oil I keep forgetting about in the fridge. The Master Tonic seems to cut the fishy-oiliness of the, er, fish oil, and no fishy burps later (almost always desirable). So: neti, then fish oil, then Master Tonic, then honey, then a glass of water. All in all, not a bad way to wake up one’s mouth in the morning.
3. Nettle and Quercetin
I read about these when I googled “natural allergy remedies“. For reasons I can’t remember, but were surely very reasonable, I decided to get these two first before trying others like Butterbur. Probably because nettle and quercetin were things I’d actually heard of and I thought there was a chance I could find them locally. (I couldn’t.) I started out taking one capsule of nettle the night I got it, and then increased to 2 caps the next morning. Soon afterwards, my throat started to feel kind of itchy, like I was a bit allergic; not to a panic-inducing degree, but enough that I kept an eye on it. It went away after a few hours and hasn’t returned, but I wonder if it was a sort of innoculation response, like how you can feel a little almost-sick after getting a flu shot.
I’ve only been on these a few days, so we’ll see how it goes. But I’m already thinking how awesome it would be to just go outside and pick some nettle (which is a local weed IIRC), and get a tincture made with it. No shipping!
This one makes me sad. I love dairy. LOVE it. Milk (whole, please), butter, cheese, yogurt, omg yes please all of it. Ice cream was a both a meal course and a food group when I was growing up. I still want it to be, really. But my sinuses don’t like it, and when my sinuses have had enough they start poking around inside my head with a fireplace poker. So I’m going to try to appease the ungrateful little bastards by giving up dairy for Lent/allergy season. And yes, I expect to get double credit, because WAH.
5. Probiotics
This one wasn’t really on my radar, but I was listening to a webinar the other night (part of the Primal90 Sessions, which are in encore mode this week) and since I’m kind of taking a “throw everything at it” approach right now, and since probiotics probably need to be part of my bigger health plan anyway, and since the talk was so good (it’s available at http://primal90sessions.com, but probably not for long – you do need to provide an email address) and since I just ordered some anyway…. well, let’s see what happens, shall we?
6. Cleaning
We’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here, aren’t we? Yep, you know I’m getting desperate when I bring up the C word. Sure, I’ve got a purportedly decent air purifier, and I’m getting better about cleaning the filter on it and putting new filters in for the air conditioning, but let’s face it: I have 3 dogs and 2 bunnies and 1 cat and about 400ish square feet up in here. (Okay, the bunnies and 2 of the dogs are downstairs or outside. Usually.) And then there’s the yarn. And the fleeces. And also the yarn. And did I mention I have a cat now?
I also have a pretty good vacuum cleaner. It’s just that it needs floor space in order to roam freely. A Roomba in my home would quickly become frustrated and acquire sentience in order to escape and give birth to SkyNet. It’s not Hoarders bad, but it could certainly go that way if one isn’t careful. Hence my enthusiasm, back in January, for this decluttering project. I did it, and it wasn’t overwhelming, and my kitchen area is SO much better now. I just need to find a way to apply that approach to the rest of the place, and sadly the geniuses who put that program together have neglected to set a month or two aside for the “Yarn Pit” area that every home surely has. Tsk.
For now, my latest accomplishment in this area is to locate the broom and decide on a place to keep it, where it can live forever and ever, instead of resting wherever I used it last like some hobo on a bench. And, more importantly, so I will know exactly where it is when the odd, rare, unnatural urge to sweep strikes, because it does happen. No really, it does.
7. Meds
These are the last resort, instead of the first as they’ve been in the past. Side effects, and the desire to be awake and alert for several hours each day, have led me to this drastic measure. I still have them, and I’ll take them when I have to, but I’m doing all these other things first as preventive measures. The only thing I haven’t found a way around are the anti-itch eye drops. I don’t know exactly which allergen causes it, but whatever it is, it makes me want to pull a Fish Mooney and literally scoop my own eyeball out with a spoon. But then I would take it to a golf course and put it in a ball washer to clean it off, and then rinse my empty eye socket out with a hose before putting my eye back in. I wouldn’t step on it like Fish did, because I’m not crazy.
So, I’m looking forward to seeing how I get through allergy season with these measures in place. The cedar trees have already started up, so it’s already pretty unpleasant, but then I’ve only been doing some of these things for a few days; apparently you’re supposed to start a few weeks ahead of time. Oops. Oh well, I’ve only had to take drugs for it once so far (after grooming the bunnies, which is kind of asking for it even if I’m not allergic to angora). That’s definite progress, I think. And I still have the options of Butterbur, more serious cleaning, and possibly giving up eggs if I think this isn’t enough. Wish me luck, and tell me about your own war on allergies!
There are a lot of reasons why people in the South don’t wear a lot of wool. When it gets down into the 20s, like it will tonight, it might be a good time to take a fresh look at some of those reasons. 😉
A big one is the perception that wool is hard to care for. You can’t just throw it in the washing machine and dryer, right?* For some busy families, that right there is a deal-breaker. For others, it just sounds like another needless hassle. It can’t possibly be worth the trouble… can it?
So I had this little project bag with a half-finished pair of socks in it. The other day I finally decided to open it up and finish them, since I remembered being almost done.
I opened the bag to find I’d only done ONE sock. Ugh. That one was done except for the toe, though, so I finished it and started on the 2nd sock. And then I started thinking, “Hey, there doesn’t seem to be enough yarn left here for a 2nd sock.” But I shrugged it off, because I’m always amazed by how far sock yarn can go. Plus, I was having fun. I’d forgotten how addicting just knitting plain old socks can be. (This is not necessarily counting the part where I unconsciously switched directions and ended up having to tink back several rows of 2×2 ribbing.)
But the small amount of yarn left kept bugging me. I weighed it all together – the 1st sock was 30 g, leaving 20 g for the 2nd, which obviously wouldn’t work. Is that why I’d stopped before finishing the 1st sock, lo those many moons ago? Where was the other 50 g ball, since I definitely remembered buying 2? When had I last worked on this project, anyway? It couldn’t have been a whole YEAR… could it?
For my first 2 pairs of “real” socks (knit, not crocheted, and with sock yarn instead of worsted, and no of course crocheted socks are real socks too, I’ve just decided that I prefer mine knit, YMMV) I had used some yarn I’d bought previously which hadn’t worked AT ALL for the intended project, and which had ugly pooling to boot. Think mottled tan and blue leopard print. But I’d made good use of it by squeezing not one, but TWO pairs of wearable learning-experience socks out of it. Had I done the same here? That didn’t seem likely, especially since the one finished sock had a nice longish leg and nice tight gauge, unlike the blue leopard socks which were more like ankle socks with a loose gauge to use up less yarn. Gah, what the hell HAD I been thinking, anyway?
Tentatively, I dipped a toe into the stash. I have a big bin just for wool and wool blends that are sock or lace weight, or other weights that have less than one full ball left. Organization!
It wasn’t in there.
Oh well, I thought, it’ll turn up. Probably long after finishing the 2nd sock with some leftovers I’d found, a dark gray and a light gray that might just work… but without the red, I knew it really wouldn’t. But it wouldn’t be that big a deal, right, because the missing red stripes would be on the foot, where my shoes would cover them up anyway. Never mind that the leg part of my socks never gets much exposure anyway, since I tend to wear them with jeans. Let’s face it, my socks are for ME, not for looking fly for other people.
By the time I got to the heel flap, I couldn’t stand it any more. I dove into the stash, determined to find that 2nd ball of yarn in whatever form it might have taken – whether it be a pristine, center-pull ball straight from the store, an unholy mess of yarn barf, a neatly rolled regular ball, a partially worked experiment or swatch and OMG I THINK I KNOW WHERE IT IS BECAUSE I REMEMBER SWATCHING FOR IT FOR THAT SCARF OMG WHY DO I ONLY REMEMBER THIS NOW THAT I’VE GIVEN UP AND AM WRITING ABOUT IT!!! OF COURSE IT’S IN THE SWATCH BIN, THE ONLY ONE I DIDN’T CHECK OMG I FAIL SO HARD.
Ahem.
I didn’t find it. As noted above, I checked every single bin, basket, bag, and drawer (even some that had no business having yarn in them at all – see, I am capable of SOME discipline in that regard). I didn’t find it anywhere.
Are you ready for a tour of the inside of the barn? Don’t be scared. I’m right here with you. We’ll take breaks. And it won’t take long. I mean, it’s not that big a barn.
Don’t be such a wuss. I’ll push you if I have to.
First, the entrance. We’ll go in here rather than messing with either of the garage doors. This way we only have to spend a second on the first floor, where it’s really, reeeeeeally scary.
In fact, this very spot is where I used a shovel to kill an enormous spider. Okay, her egg sac was enormous. And this is where I found out what happens when you smash a spider with a ready-to-pop egg sac. (Hint: not what I was expecting, i.e., smushed spider. Thank God I had used a shovel instead of my foot.)
And upward!
Cripes, we’re not even inside yet and I’m getting the willies. Onward!
To think, I used to like this color.
Okay, this isn’t so bad. I mean it’s rough, it needs work, and that little turn in the stairwell has potential for creepiness because you can’t see around the corner, but really, this isn’t scary. I mean I’m not into horror movies or anything, but – Yawn. And I don’t know what the maroon walls are trying to say, exactly, other than, “Ohai ur in a college town,” which… well, let’s just say there’s a lot of maroon in this town and leave it at that.
So, back to trudging up the stairs…
…..
.
.
Wait. What in the HELL is that on the ceiling?
.
.
. . . . .
.
… IN THE HELL…???
.
No! Don’t run. You only give him more power when you do so. He wants you to lose it. He wants you to freak out so badly that you fall back down the stairs, breaking your neck or at least spraining something pretty badly. Okay, maybe just a broken fingernail.
What is it? I think it’s a failed apparition of Edvard Munch, is what I think. Everybody else says water damage, but then they can’t explain why water would do this particularly creepy thing, now can they? Anyway, I named him Crazy Eddie.
And he won’t be here much longer, so let’s throw him a bone, so to speak. I mean look at him, he’s obviously trying here. Here, you can use one of my broken fingernails. I can’t grow them for shit lately. Just leave it on the steps. If he doesn’t want it, maybe the baby spiders can use it for something.
Just a few progress (such as it is) pics from the iPhone. The really gnarly “before” shots of the interior will be revealed, I promise. When I’m less headachey.
Renovation fatigue has reached stage… well, I don’t know, because I keep forgetting to google it. But it’s reached a new and more serious stage, one where I really just want to be somewhere else.
If I’d known it was going to take this long, it’d be a bit easier to handle, I think. At least I could have put (or lobbied to put, since I lack the fundage) some of my stuff in storage. By which I mean better-than-a-barn storage. Heh, that wouldn’t be a bad name for a storage company. Especially in these parts.
Yeah, so, my parents are going to move me into the barn.
Let me ‘splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
There is a barn here, used as a “shop” (by people who collected and sold “antiques”) for years. Meaning, it was like a garage, but more so, and more country-style. So there was (is) an unholy amount of junk in it, plus evidence of past infestations of ladybugs and dirt daubers. I have not taken pictures of those, because I’m still in denial about them. My point is, the barn has a finished upstairs apartment.
Picturesque, no?
When I first heard this, I immediately started to get ideas, I admit it. I mean I love my parents, and what’s more (and this is not something many of my generation will admit to), I kind of like them much of the time. But come on, they’re my parents. Every once in a while they do drive me stark raving batshit crazy, and I no longer have an apartment to scuttle back to when that eventually does happen. I’m just saying, a little plot of grass between their camp and mine can do wonders for family harmony. So even though there is room for me (if not my stuff) in the house, part of me started quietly thinking of the barn as mine, right from the get-go.
Is it just me, or does it look kind of creepy from this angle?
My parents are not stupid, and they rushed to tell me, and remind me, many times, that the barn needed a lot of work, and I shouldn’t expect to be moving in there anytime soon. Nor should I expect anything fancy. Fine with me, I said, and I meant it. I am pretty much at their mercy, and we all know it. Whatever circumstances may have landed me in this situation, I know that I am extremely lucky in this respect.
How about now?
But lest I get verklempt, my point: I wasn’t expecting work on the barn to start so soon, or to progress so quickly. It hasn’t helped that my parents (whom I have taken to calling “the grownups”) have developed a sudden inability to give ETAs for anything at all in actual, standardized units of time. It’s disturbingly akin to the vagueness people use when talking to very small children. Will such-and-such happen in three weeks? Tomorrow? “After awhile” (“aft’awhile” in Mississippian) is now the default response.
In terms of the barn, I have now decided through a rigorous process of scientific trial and error that “aft’awhile” means roughly the day after tomorrow. Unless it means NOWRIGHTNOW.
The side door gives little hint at the horrors that lurk inside…
Suddenly work has begun on the barn, and decisions have to be made, and people want to know what I want all of a sudden. The same people who told me months ago that I would have a linoleum floor, and I was gonna like it. Same with a window unit (at the wrong end of the room) for heat & AC. And various other things, some of which have been turned on their heads, others of which are being renegotiated, and still others of which are probably lurking unseen in the near future, waiting to jump out and yell, “BOO!” Which I’m oddly okay with, because it means at least they’re leaving me alone for the moment.
Up next: A tour of the inside, and/or progress pics, depending on what all I get to. And then, really, seriously, pinky swear, I am going to blog something about crochet. I would post a pic of the iPhone cozy I’ve been working on, but it’s so full of fail that I just can’t bring myself to inflict it on you. I am on Ravelry, though, if your interests swing to fibery things.
“Celiacs can’t touch this!” 
coffee, dog, crochet 