One of us. . .wow!

What a historic evening. I just watched Barack Obama walk onto the stage of the Democratic Convention. One of us, ready to lead our country.
One of us. . .By that, I'm not talking color of his skin, because I don't care what color his skin is. I don't care what his middle name is. I care that he can do the job of turning our country around and helping us get started back in the right direction.
One of us. . .OK, one of us who's much more intelligent and has much more money than me, but one of us. Someone who could have sat beside me in high school or college. Someone who could have been at the same parties or events or concerts as me. Someone who probably grew up with some of the same cultural influences that I had: disco (the horror!), bell-bottoms, faint memories of the Bicentennial, remembering where we were when John Lennon was shot and when the Challenger blew up and when the Towers fell. One of us.
I am so very excited, and eager to work to help him be elected. I am excited at the thought of the difference one of us can make. The difference that many of us can make together can change the world. There's a tiny bit of sadness that I won't get to vote for a woman for president yet, but I can get past it. I can vote for one of us.
One of us. . . . .Obama for President!

Whine by number

Yeah, so since nobody is really reading this, I'm just going to let loose and instead of painting by number, I'm going to do a little whine by number. It doesn't have to make sense. It's my blog.
Here we go:
1. My dog is sick. Poor Kirby; we took her to the vet earlier in the summer when she began favoring one hind leg and then the other. They did x-rays, found nothing and said to give her some time to heal. So we did. We didn't let her out in the yard to run for three or four weeks. She's finally been acting like she wants to do her regular stuff--chase rabbits, run from one side of the fence to the other and bark when people, and especially dogs, walk by. She meets me as usual with her bone, ready to play, after Jon leaves for school. But she's still losing weight and she runs with her hind legs doing the bunny hop. When I took her back to the vet today, she recommended seeing an orthopedic specialist at the University vet school. I love my dog. I want her to get better so she can run and chase rabbits. But I can't afford to spend a lot of $$ on her now, which brings me to my second whine.
2. I'm sick of looking for a new job. If I had a job, I wouldn't be worried about spending a bunch of money on Kirby at the vet.
I am good at what I do. In this market, I would be a bargain for an employer. I bring lots of good experience and great skills to the table. And I'm a fun person to work with. Just ask my former editor/publications person and my graphics/web person. But I'm tired of looking for work. If only I could hire someone to do it for me. I have, however, set a new world record. I've been rejected for two jobs (which, by the way, I could have done with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back) with one letter. I guess I should be grateful that they bothered to send me a formal rejection. That brings me to my next whine.
3. I am still furious at my former boss. I think he made a stupid, short-sighted, self-serving decision in eliminating my position. Sure, he said he would do my job, but he didn't. Sure, some pieces of my job got picked up by other people. But in a business where communication is the mainstay of the business, eliminating the director of communication seems to be at cross-purposes to the goals of the organization. I'm still trying to forgive, but I just can't forget. I hope he's happy in his new, guaranteed-for-life regardless-of-performance-or-skills job. Not.
4. My house is a mess. I don't care. I should care.
5. Wow, I ran out of steam quickly. Guess I'll go fold some clothes. I don't feel better. :-(

Lazy days of summer

Ahh. . . I've enjoyed a couple of lazy days of summer this weekend. Yesterday felt like mid-summer--hot and sweaty. Today was more of an Indian summer day, cool and sunny.

Yesterday was the big subdivision yard sale. Jonathan set up a Kool-Aid stand and earned enough money to buy a toy he'd found on eBay. I sat outside and tried to teach myself how to make felted spa soap. I've got it down, but need to work harder to get the wool yarn I wrapped over the roving to felt. (Easy to make: wrap woolen roving--that's fiber that's been washed and combed and is ready to spin--around a bar of soap. Wet it slightly with hot water and the roving felts--shrinks to fit-- to the soap. I've added a step of wrapping colorful wool yarn around it and that's what I'm having difficulty with. I've not agitated the yarn's fibers enough to get them to adhere to the wool. When you're finished, you've got a bar of soap with the washcloth already attached.). Once I figure out how to post pictures (lazy. . . haven't tried it yet), I will show you. The 4-H group will be at the Farmer's Market in September, and I think the soap might sell well.

I started my Colbert Square. Since I had such fun knitting the Pratchgan square, I decided to do a square for a red, white and blue afghan a group of Colbert fans on Ravelry are putting together. I'm doing a red one in a pattern called Midwest Moonlight.

Today I was even lazier than yesterday. I took a nap this afternoon and it felt good. Mmmmmm, I love naps. I also finished reading The Lace Reader. I really enjoyed it. It was a fascinating story with a twist at the end.

It'll be time soon to get the middle schooler headed for bed. He came home Thursday, the first day, and said, "This was the best first day of middle school ever!" I am so glad he liked it; I knew he would. The only close-to-negative things he's said about it is that the bus comes waaayyy too early (it does), it was hot riding the bus home and he's bummed about being the only boy on his team who plays flute. His friend Isaac plays flute, too, but he's on a different team. Other than that, it's great.

The new week begins. Tomorrow is the 28th (eeek. . . hard to believe) anniversary of the day I met Jeff. Wow, time flies when you're having fun. I'll spend the day doing laundry and applying for every job that I can find that's remotely something I might be interested in. I will find a job soon. I'm sure there's a reason that it's taking me so long to find one; I just haven't figured out what it is. Door's closed and I'm still looking for the open window.

Entertainment Weekly posted a list of new classics, or what they call the best reads from 1983 to 2008. See the list: Entertainment Weekly’s list of new classics . Let's see, the ones I've read are in bold face, the ones I have in the to-be-read pile(s) are italic and the rest. . . well, maybe later.

1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (199
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986) One of my favorite all-time scary books
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1981)
8. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (1992
1. On Writing, Stephen King (2000) This is such a good book. It is a great reference
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien (1990) Excellent read.
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1983)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (199)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (198
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (198
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World’s Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (199
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (199
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (199
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (199
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators’ Ball, Connie Bruck (198
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

Hmmm. . .Not bad. I've read a third of them. How about you?

The snowball is rolling!

A snowball in August? Well, that seemed fitting, because the Better Homes and Gardens story is rolling along! Laurie emailed the Girlfriends today to tell us that BH&G wants to send a photographer to spend half a day with us for photos to go with the story. That's wild!
So we'll have a Christmas gathering in August, it would seem. I'm anxious to hear details of what kind of photos they want.
It's really ironic, because they seem, according to Laurie, to be focusing on the benevolent portion of our gatherings. Sounds selfish, but that's secondary to the sheer pleasure of getting together each year. We don't have a "project" every year; those come about when one of us feels strongly enough about a cause to bring it to the group. The winter that Lisa was in Iraq at an Air Force hospital, it was easy. I'd already been asking other people, like my co-workers, to help out with sweats to send whenever they could. Asking the Girlfriends was only natural. I knew they'd help out, because that's just the way they are. They're good, generous women. Now, though, the pressure's on! What will we do this year? We'll have to do something! I've no doubt that finding a project will be easy. I've got a few in mind myself. I'm guessing we'll talk about it at our pseudo-holiday gathering for the BH&G photographer, when we pile on the sled to head down the hill for the magazine story!

An interesting email

Today I received an email message from one of my closest friends, Laurie. You know the kind of friend: the one with whom, although you might not have seen her for months, you feel so comfortable that when you get together it's as if no time has passed. Laurie was my roommate in college, in the slum apartment where after one huge rainstorm, water ran through the light fixtures, and later, in an apartment in the "big city" with another friend. Many years have passed since then, but I still treasure her friendship.
I digress. . .
The email. . . here's the backstory. For many years, seven college friends have gathered each Christmas season in a Girlfriends' party. We move from house to house, trading hostess duties. Sometimes, though not often, we meet in a restaurant. We give gifts. In the early years, we drew names. One year, we brought a gift that might be suitable for any one of us and "drew straws" to see what we'd take home that year. The past few years, though, we've done things a little bit differently. We've given a small gift to each one of the Girlfriends. We don't spend much money; the limit is $5 per person. But we spend that money on one of our favorite luxuries that we'd like to share with our friends. Last year, I knitted a scarf for each of my Girlfriends. Through the years, I remember receiving homemade hot cocoa mix in a gigantic snowflake mug from Sally, a pair of her favorite brand of tweezers from Liz (yes, I still use them), her favorite cocoa almonds from Laurie, a handmade Christmas card holder from Jodi (she's an amazing quilter--actually, she's amazing at everything) and a customized calendar from Heather. Looking through the pages of the calendar was like looking at a time capsule of the past years of Girlfriends' gatherings. The scrapbook that we began a few years ago also chronicles the changing hairstyles and the gatherings through the years. The gifts and the scrapbook are wonderful--and worthwhile.
Some years, though, we do more. A few years ago, my friend Lisa, an Air Force nurse, was stationed in Iraq. When I asked her what I could send to her to make her time there better, she told me she didn't want anything for herself, but could use sweatshirts and pants for her "guys" who came in to the hospital with injuries that destroyed what they were wearing. That year, we gathered new shirts and pants and mailed them to Lisa, along with notes from each of the Girlfriends. Other years, the group has adopted a family and done various other (in Laurie's words) benevolent projects. It doesn't happen every year, but it happens when any one of us knows of someone in need and brings it to the group.
Although I shared college experiences with these amazing women, I didn't join the group at its beginning. I've sort of orbited around the core group as distance and circumstance changed. The past few years, though, it's become an important part of my holiday season. A couple of years ago, 18 inches of snow grounded Julie and me (we live in the same area) and we missed the party. Several days later--after the roads were cleared and the postal service was delivering mail again--I received a box in the mail. It was filled with all the Girlfriends' gifts. It was like a second Christmas morning for me.
The gatherings are some of my life's milestones. The group is a constant along the journey. We've gone through many things with each other: first jobs, marriages, births, promotions, job losses, the time when one of the group had to take the car keys from her aging and no-longer-able-to-drive parents, two fathers' deaths and a miscarriage.
So there's the backstory.
Back to that email from Laurie: she had posted about the group and our gatherings on a women's site. Earlier this month, she had received a note from a freelance writer working on a story for Better Homes and Gardens December issue. She's since talked to the writer about the gatherings and shared some of our pictures with her. Another of the group will also share her thoughts with the reporter. This year's Christmas gift for the group could be being featured in a national magazine. That would be spectacular, but the most important gift will still be the time we'll share together, come a Saturday morning early in the Christmas season.

Finish a project? Ha! Not me!

So I was cruising around Ravelry tonight, when I was overtaken by the urge to update my projects. For you non-knitters, think MySpace for fiber artists. Yes, I have more in progress than I have finished lately, and I have the urge to start some more. Could be caused by the yummy skein of Dream in Color Smooshy that followed me home from True Blue Fiber Friends today. It's a gorgeous skein of Gothic Rose. I think it wants to be mittens. I've never made mittens before, so this will be adventure. When I learn how to post pictures here, I'll show you. Small steps, small steps. . .

I frogged (rip it, rip it, rip it) the scarf I'd started with the vibrant mohair/nylon yarn in purple, cinnamon and black (Jamaican Spice). It just wasn't showing off the yarn well. So I switched to larger needles and I'll try it again.

I worked some on version 2.0 of the Mystic Meadows shawl that I started over last week.
Also had lunch with a friend. It's good to have friends--especially friends like Lou.

And friends? Well, that brings me back to Ravelry.

Life before Ravelry? Was there life before Ravelry? It's certainly been a lifesaver for me. It's given me a "place" to go everyday, since I don't have a job to go to right now. (I will, and soon. . . I hope!) It's given me new friends, and not just online friends, but real ones right here in the area. It's helped me realize just how much I have to learn about knitting: a lot! It's a wonderful world where you can talk to anyone about most anything. Like here, only way, way better!

Can I blog?

We'll see. I do enjoy reading others' blogs, even when they're about the minutiae of the author's life. So, what might you see here? Well, you might see something about my family or friends, you might read about my current knitting projects, you might read about what I'm reading or listening to, you might see a rant about politics or current events, or you might find a link to some of the music my husband has composed.
These days, unfortunately, you might also read my whining about my job (actually, lack of a job) woes. I'll try to keep that to a minimum, though.
Except for that lack-of-a-job thing, life is good. I feel blessed to have been able to spend the summer with our son. He's a very cool kid, and spending time with him is great fun.
I am enjoying watching Jeff as he becomes more proficient at playing guitar, which he just started last year. It's such fun to hear his compositions in progress, and I am really proud when he plays one of his songs. He may be a rock-and-roll star yet!