Well, that sucked.

We had a bereavement today. Bacardi, one of our basement cats (literally, they're both black and they both stay in the basement) passed away after a brief illness. He didn't suffer, and from his body posture, I'm guessing he simply fell over on his way to the litter box. But it became my job to play kitty coroner and take him off to the vet for cremation. It's a creepy basement anyway, but... There's something horrid about picking up the body of someone you'd just been petting and making nice with the night before.

We cleaned out some of the basement this evening, and spent some time with Ebony (who, oddly enough, doesn't seem the least little bit upset at suddenly having a massive basement, two food dishes and three bags of treats all to his onesies -- I'm becoming slightly suspicious of him, to be honest).

Then I finished off my wine. It was a big glass. And had some of Paula Deen's Oooey Gooey Butter Cake (horrible politics from that one, but I love what she can do to a stick of butter). Mom made it for me while I was at work, along with spaghetti and meat sauce, which is my favorite. I'd like to think it was a 'thank you for dealing with something I haven't got the spoons to handle', but I'm pretty sure it was just because I had to pay for the cremation.

I told them to keep his ashes and sprinkle them on the pet cemetery -- he was feral; I'm pretty sure the last thing he'd want is to be brought back here.

So, these are my feelz today:

I am done with this day, possibly even this week. I'm going upstairs to cuddle with my Yoda, maybe watch some Star Wars (alien war zones; fabulous places to be in times of stress) and fall asleep early.

2013, I will be glad to be quit of you!

On the one hand, you could say my family has had wretched luck this year. On the other, you could say, we've had terrific luck.

I mean, if his kidneys hadn't started failing, my father would be dead of a massive heart attack by now. If the angle of hit had been any degree different, my brother would be dead in a hit and run accident instead of recovering from surgery for a broken pelvis. If it had been a tumor instead of a stroke, my mother's cat would have no chance for recovery, instead of the 75% he's got (and she really, really, really needs her little furry friend right now).

I'm not sure what that adds up to, other than I'm really tired of this year and for what feels like the first time ever, I'm looking forward to next year. Hopefully it will be way, way better -- or at the very least, much more calm. We wouldn't have needed our fabulous luck if we hadn't had so much bollywoggle going on. So no bollywoggle for a little while, just enough time for me to get bored again...yeah. That's what I want for Christmas.

Do you think Santa can slide some peace and quiet under there?

I'm making progress on the one and only knitted Giftmas gift I am working on -- an eternity scarf for Mater Gloriosa made out of Lotus Yarns Mink. Mink. 

 

All your arguments are invalid at the word 'mink'. It's soft and squishy and I'm enjoying greatly working on this. Of course, I still have the green mink for myself that I'm going to be working with to look forward to in 2014.

Not sure what I'll make myself, but after this year, I should be knitting for myself in all mink. 

Although I think my first order of business is going to be scheduling a nice vacation for myself and a friend someplace warm. I'm thinking Vegas. Not the 'flashy-lighty, ringing-slot machine, screaming old ladies' Vegas, but the real Las Vegas. The daylight Vegas. They have museums and places of interest and national parks. And the sun shines there, and it's warm. 

I'm thinking I may have to find a week or two in February because if I wait too much longer, I may go spare and beat someone up with a stick. And no one wants that.

In other news, next year is going to be my "Year of The Novel". I have a list of 134 books that were considered by someone  to be great novels from the 20th century (before you ask, yes, I took all Ayn Rand's stuff off there -- the cat had a stroke, I don't want to have one, too). I'm not sure how to liquidate that down further, other than maybe choosing one novel by each author (some of them have as many as four books listed). I was actually even going to remove V. S. Naipaul from the list on the basis of I have no idea who he is, but then a quick Google search told me he and I share a birthday. So he must be awesome. I will have to read both of his books on the list.

And since I doubt my knit coven is going to buy the leftovers of another yarn shop next year, I'll maybe actually make progress on the destashing front. I hope so, my yarn stash is getting out of hand!

Let's hope next year goes half as well as I'd like it to -- peace and quiet and reading and knitting. I could use a little boring.

Broke my cable.

The past week has sucked beyond all reason.

Hormones. Just...hormones. They suck.

I participated in a large scavenger hunt, and feel full of fail because of that little boondoggle. I suppose I'm not full of fail, but still. 

The yarn on my shawl is apparently super heavy, because I popped the end of my cable out of the cap that screws on to the needle tip the other day. Sigh.

I had car drama. I always seem to be having car drama, don't I?

I've also had too much drama today and am ready for it to be tomorrow already, please. Or maybe I just need to snarf the chocolate that's sitting on my desk.

Oh, well. Tomorrow I get to try to catch up on my NaNo word count, which is going to be not fun because I'm already 2,000 words behind (and will be almost 4,000 short if I don't get on the ball tomorrow). And then...gah.

I'm half tempted to crack into this well before the 50,000 word mark:

But no. I need a motivation to keep writing.

I don't even know if I like prosecco. Maybe I should have chosen a more reliable reward?

Why all the new swanky acrylics?

Never say the big acrylic companies are feeling the pinch, because they've got a massive presence in the market (and I know knitters who only ever knit with acrylic -- although you might see this more in crocheters, because what better to make a granny square with than acrylic?) but I'm seeing a lot of, well, nicer acrylics lately.

The Red Heart boutique lines I noted a couple of weeks ago, regular Red Heart is getting softer, Bernat and Caron...all of them are starting to mill up softer and softer acrylics that wear well and don't pill as much. Knit Picks has a fabulous acrylic in its line-up, a new yarn that's very durable and soft in the hand. We won't even talk about the fabulous that is the Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn! brand.

I'm not complaining, mind, I'm just noticing the trend. I've been knitting for, golly, over 5 years now and I've never seen such a bounty of acrylic. Take these, for instance:

Lion Brand Vanna's Choice Tweeds in Midnight

and Patchwork Gray

I gotta say, this stuff is softer than expected. I've got wool tweeds and I won't make anything for myself out of them due to the scratch quotient, but this stuff...yeah. I want to make myself a striped scarf using both skeins. Both colors appealed to me deeply, but I didn't have enough left on my birthday giftcard to get enough for a long scarf in each, so I thought Stripes! and went with the feeling.

These new acrylics are soft, durable and offer nice economy. Plus, if you use it for a sweater, you don't have to worry about stretch. Well, excess stretch, knit a rib and it will stretch, it just won't start to droop from the weight of the yarn. You know what I meant.

I'm pretty happy about the new direction acrylic seems to be going -- I love my luxury yarns, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I'm stymied about dealing with them because I am not a fanatical handwasher of garments. I've been contemplating knitting sweaters, and I will admit that part of my hesitation about casting on was that the yarn I initially bought was wool. As in handwash only wool. Now that I've got a bunch of acrylics lined up for the purpose, part of my hesitation is gone.

Only part. I'm not fool enough to pretend the concepts of gauge and final fit aren't keeping me up at night.

And I'd like to ask every reader (not that there are tons of you, but I figure I can start small and hope it snowballs) to do me a massive favor. When you meet someone new, take a moment and check your assumptions about them. See them, accept them and then chuck them out the window. Take the time to look at the people you meet with Baby Eyes -- eyes that haven't seen a lot of the world and take the new as it comes. Respect them enough to allow them to be unique and different and not as they appear at first glance, and appreciate them for it.

If we'd stop expecting people to act a certain way/be a certain way/think a certain thing based on first appearances, I think humans as a whole would be a lot happier.

*heavy sigh*

It's been a long summer, and it's only just started!

 A dry gulch, leading to creepy woods. Total metaphor for my life right now.

I've been doing some work on long range goal setting. Kinda sucks because, you see, I hate the idea of long range goals. The word "goal" -- it's almost the archaic spelling for "jail", you know. Flip the vowels around to "gaol" and Bob's your uncle. I can't seem to separate the two in my mind, probably because of the mental gymnastics that allow you to read those stupid emails where they mix up the letters in a word to prove you aren't really reading words using letters, but more the shape of the thing.

Anyway, I dislike setting goals. There's a part of me thinks I'm just a terrible, terrible slacker, but then there's another part of me that knows I can be a very focused person. If I set a long range goal that I'm determined to meet -- for good or ill -- I get like a horse in blinders. If you don't look up while you're traveling, you miss some interesting possibilities.


If you really want to be honest, I think the major problem I have with long range goal planning is that, prior to the past three or four years, all the goals I've ever set were other people's goals for me. I never chose them. They were homework being set for me by someone else who thought I should or needed to want those things. Because I'm a pretty laid back person and didn't want to upset the people who chose them for me, I'd agree to them, set those goals and then never work toward them because I didn't really want to accomplish them in the first place. Then I'd feel worse about myself for lack of focus, not to mention the whacking great lies I was telling in the first place.... Lots of negative juju around goals for me.

I've found through experimentation that I don't mind short range goal setting, though. For instance, I don't mind planning one year out. That's fine, because those goals are less time consuming and I don't have to be so intensely focused. And even if they go badly, hell, it's only a single year. Not five. Or (Lord love a platypus) ten. And it gives me the chance to re-review my choices annually to be sure they're actually things I want to accomplish and not just static I'm getting from outside sources before I spend that decade on them.


So now I have a set of things I want to accomplish in the next year or so and am not calling them goals. They're just 'things I want to do'. Which, yes, are goals, but let me get all semantic up in here, ok? I just have to set a priority list (because some of them are easier and can be accomplished in the shorter term, while some of them are more in the style of ongoing actions I have to work to make habits, like flossing) so that I know when to start working on them. I figure when I've got my priority list sorted out, I'll be done with my useless introspection -- at least about goals -- for the year. I'll have to make another list next summer, but that's something that can be put off for 365, which is the best kind of slacking off there is.

So's you know, I didn't put knitting on my list of stuff I want to accomplish in the next year. I figure I'll do most of that (since it's fun) without the reminder on my weekly to do list. It's the scary stuff that really juices my oranges I'll have to nag myself about.

Courage; it's on the list of traits to develop. Wish me luck!

I just have to hold out for the rest of the week.

Here's a pretty picture to lower my blood pressure.

 

I'm cat sitting right now. This cat sitting gig requires I stay up there overnight. Which would, ordinarily, be fine, except...the house is so quiet. It's in a little pocket 'burb (in a larger area of suburbs) that is cut off from everything by a thick ring of trees and shrubs. This insulation prevents the sound of cars from getting in. And I never see her neighbors.

Well, that's a lie, I will see one or two scattered about the countryside, usually at 6:45 in the morning when I'm on her back patio in my pjs and frizzy, crazy hair feeding her outdoor cat. You can't really chat with people when you look that homeless and are holding a cup of dry cat food in one hand and a dish of the prepared soft food she gives her cats in the other. It's a bit of a p.r. nightmare, even for me.

Plus, interestingly enough for a woman with televisions in every room of her house, she has the most basic cable available. Meaning, she gets the broadcast stations, all the news, religious and public access stations you could possibly want, WGN Chicago, ABC Family and Ion.

This would ordinarily not be a huge problem, except the silence is so oppressive, and I'm watching 13 cats who are jumpy, frisky and very, very needy, and I feel like the last person alive on Earth. I need some t.v. with science or history content, or at least commercials to watch so I don't feel all alone, but the shows on tap are...sub-par. I've tried watching DVDs, but that makes me feel even more lonely (since there are no commercials, or they're movies, I know they're not being broadcast.)

I never thought I'd get to the point where commercials help me maintain my sanity.

I do like the kitties, and her house is really nice (if a bit furry), so it's got some upsides. I can't cook when I'm up there, which is cramping my style, the silence is driving me mad and there's one of her cats that screams like a woman when it's fighting, which can give you a bit of a start at 3 a.m. in a strange house, but I'll cope.

I only have to hold out until Saturday. Then I get to come home to my stuff, my cat and my cable with sixty trillion channels. Gods bless AT&T!

I was going to post a picture of the project I'm working on now...

but it's a gift, and I don't know if the intended recipient reads this blog or not. So....

Look at this massive clover I found!

Seriously, this patch had insanely huge leaves. Just look how it dwarfs my over-grown man-hand thumbs:

I love clover flowers, though, so I think I'll go back by in a week or two, see if the flowers are monstrous, too. Enough to make a body wonder what's under the soil just there. And since I know the neighborhood well, I'm not going to do any test pits. You know. Just in case there is something there that I don't really want to know about.

To give you a taste of the 'hood's flavor, here's a shot of one section of sidewalk:

Actually, that's the sidewalk leading up to the monster clover patch. But doesn't it just scream Ask me no questions, I won't stab you repeatedly and dissolve you in an acid bath to get rid of the evidence before the coppers arrive?

In the knitting news, I've been working on a gift project. It's helped me recover some of my knitting mojo, which had taken a huge hit in the past two weeks. Since I've been working in an office, I've been catching up on my infectious diseases rota -- first it was a sinus thing, then it was my vertigo again, now I seem to have caught my mother's cholera. Look it up if you're curious. I warn you, it may be TMI. It is TMI, no 'may be' about it. Sorry. But, you know, optional. Google at your own risk.

Anyway, I didn't go to my second volunteer gig today (the archives) due to my extreme "tired of this shit"ness, and came home to do a quiet afternoon of rest. I sit for an hour, then needed to go to the store for Vitamin Water Zero, lemon flavor (seriously, my aunt said it and I thought she was delusional, but when you have the vertigo, drink one or two of these things -- it really makes the spinning stop) (in a good way). I am at the mall, buying fresh war paint at Sephora when I get a call from my mother that I have to take the Phew to baseball. Fine, says I, I can do that. I'll pick him up after I go to the grocery. I head that way and am making my way through the produce (lettuce and tomato for tacos) when I get another call. Nieceling's car has run out of gas; can I get the gas canister and take her some precious, precious hydrocarbons?

Long story made short: My quiet afternoon was not to be. I didn't get home until after 6. My brother got home and took his son to baseball, I rescued the girl and all was made right with the world. But I still haven't gotten to do as much knitting and sitting on my butt as I'd have liked. And tomorrow is a long shift at the temp office (8 hours; not a killer shift, but still. Long.)

At least there's nothing doing this weekend. Yet. God knows what car troubles we have in store for us. All we can do is pray they are not severe, are cheap to repair and quick to fix.

There's a saying to the effect that there are no athiests in foxholes, and I can only say that can also be applied to owners of old cars as well, particularly owners of old cars who live in large cities with crap bus service.

An attack of fabulous good luck.

I woke up this morning at 4:30am from a sound, deep sleep. I shot bolt upright, terrifyingly alert, because I smelled burning wiring. And it was strong, very, very strong. So I jump out of bed, bolt into the hallway and encounter my brother, also awake and alert because of the smell. No fire alarms were going off (and yes, we've got them on each floor, in the stairwells, because that's how smoke travels -- according to fireman brother) so we just trotted all around the house, trying to frantically sniff out the source before the alarms did go off.

We deduced it was the furnace. We shut it off as fast as fast could be, and then went back upstairs. Since I had to be up at 5:45 anyway, and adrenaline is bad for restful sleep, I just sat there petting Yoda and watching the news until I got dressed and went to work an hour early. Suck. But then I got to leave an hour early. Booyah!

Still. Data entry on four hours of sleep followed by an intense adrenaline surge (which doesn't tend to carry a body through the day as well as a high-fiber cereal) is...difficult. An today was a long day (9 hours; not the longest shift I do in the average week but bad enough), so as I started to crash around 2pm I gave in and had a cup of tea with the caffeine in. That plus the intense shock of this morning has started up the palpitations again, slightly. I'm starting to think it's more likely that the acid reflux I've developed from sitting on my butt all day is causing my esophagus to spasm or something. I have way more acid reflux than fast heart rate anymore. And my intake of Tums seems to be tied to the lack of flumpfhs behind my breastbone.

Sigh. As soon as I start to relax, some other crap goes on. I need to build up my tolerance to stress, you know?

So why do I call it an attack of fabulous good luck? Because the house didn't burn down -- wasn't in any danger of it, actually, the motor burned out, so what we smelled was something that happened inside a metal box and couldn't get to any combustibles -- and by leaving home early this morning, I got to a certain gas station that hadn't had the chance to raise its prices to over $4 a gallon and topped off my tank at $3.85 per (which is still rather usurious, but hey, whatcha gonna do?). So of course I bought a lottery ticket. We'll see how well that pans out. I also stepped on a blob of some gross person's, erm, expectorate. Which, my friend of Italian origins tells me, is very lucky, provided you don't catch their tuberculosis. Well, getting spit on is lucky (proving my father's contention that Italians are sorta weird) -- protects against the Evil Eye. Not that I'm worried about evil eyes right now. Actually, as a Polish-Irish person, I'm not even sure we have evil eye traditions. I think that's a Mediterranean thing, goes with olive skin and a tendency to tan. We didn't get that, either. Alas.

Well, I did, but most of my family burns like Thanksgiving turkey after the fights start. Heh heh heh.

Ahem. So, anyway, that's what I've been up to. More hysteria, finding good gas prices (which sort of makes up for it, really) and playing bad odds.

I can't wait for my dryer to ding so I can go to bed. I'm assured the smoking vents thing won't happen again tonight, and it damn well better not. I'm tired.

Queen of the Nerds! And the War of the Coolest Words Ever.

I am soooo excited! My palpitations are starting up again, only this time from joy!

At last, the weekend!

I am enervated. Wiped out, tapped out, done up. Thank Providence that it is Friday and this is the weekend. I was supposed to go out to the movies tonight, but those plans got changed when it was realized there was nothing worth seeing playing at present. Fine, I needed the quiet time because frankly, I had a strange realization this morning.

For the past week and a half, since Fred had his little troubles on the highway, I have been having problems. I'll be sitting in my chair after dinner and my heart will suddenly start racing, pounding and then I have that feeling of the heart skipping a beat -- that weird "kerplop" behind your breastbone. I know my heart isn't skipping beats -- I've had a finger on my pulse when it happens, the rhythm keeps steady.

I've been wondering if it was too much salt, too much caffeine, too much food giving me a very strange type of indigestion. I didn't realize until today, this morning, when it started again at the office...I'm having panic attacks.

I didn't recognize them because they're just small ones, more...mild than the ones I've had in past. Once I realized what it was, it stopped. I'm hoping I don't have another tonight and I'm really glad I have the time to pull myself back together this weekend.

My only plan is to 1. Sleep a lot. 2. Knit a bit. 3. Read some. 4. Eat some chocolate ice cream.

Hopefully, this will speed the cure up a bit. I just need to get calm first so that I can forget what the constant anxious feels like. Maybe then I'll be able to stay calm.

What was it I said about impulse control and toddlers?

Can you read that? Wait, wait...

It wasn't entirely a selfish purchase. Mom wanted a DVD player for the family room tv, so she can watch her Jessica Fletcher DVDs during the day, downstairs. We have three DVD players in this house already, all of them attached to various tvs. I figured, if we bother to get another one for that room, why not just get myself a blu-ray and hook it up to mine, then give Mom the newest DVD player in the house?

So that's what I did. Might as well upgrade, seeing as how I already have a blu-ray disc (and was getting tired of taking it to my brother's house to watch it).

Two birds, one very light-weight plastic stone.

Still and all, the impulse control of a toddler. 

Medicinal chocolate.

Upon a day, people thought -- among other things* -- that chocolate was medicinal. Modern science bears this out in part; there are indeed flavanoids and anti-oxidants and whatnot in chocolate that are excellent for your health in the long term. But chocolate was once considered a nerve tonic.

Medical men have poo-poo'ed this notion (mostly because, I think, for a long time they were exclusively medical men) and even medical women nowadays would rather not be associated with such antiquated ideas.

However...

I can testify that quality, well-made chocolates (particularly those in which dark chocolate, partially sprinkled with sea salt, enrobes a chewy, gooey hand-made caramel) are quite beneficial to the nerves.

I am overwrought. Fred goes tomorrow to hospital and will be worked on by his diligent surgical team of one over the course of the weekend. My mother's cat, the one that went anorexic from her own fit of nerves and nearly starved herself into liver failure, went to the vet again today, this time for grooming to rid herself of the knots that formed when she stopped grooming (even for that short of time -- less than a week -- and suddenly we've got a rasta cat).

In the absence of a proper Victorian sea-side holiday, and since I'm feeling about as strong as a two day old kitten myself right now, I took the afternoon off my volunteer obligations and am cuddling up with some chocolate and a glass of milk and a good book. Then maybe I'll watch one of my favorite movies (a little Thor, anyone? Nothing like Tom Hiddleston to pull you out of a funk) and have the excellent spaghetti and meatballs my mother has been making all afternoon.

Yes, if you want to do them right, it takes all afternoon. She's been known to resist making them if she can't get a good start on them by three in the afternoon -- dinner wouldn't be ready until after 9, she says, and she doesn't eat that late.

And maybe some knitting, too. I have a new yarn in the mails, winging its way to me (and can't wait to show it to you!) but I also have my KAL squares to be working on and a shawl and the scarf for Nieceling that I'm procrastinating on (and have to stop procrastinating on, as she leaves in less than three months).

But I will not think of that right now. I will merely finish downloading the new trance cds I borrowed from the library (I like to listen to trance while I work: it's got a steady, slightly faster-than-resting-heart-rate beat which keeps me awake and alert, the music is repetitive and the lyrics simple so it doesn't distract intellectually from the data I am entering) and put them on my iPod. Then I will get about my afternoon of rest in a serious way.

*Mainly, that chocolate was the poop of the gods. Sort of like those plastic reindeer toys you get in your stocking at Christmas that are supposed to be hilarious.

Were I the said gods, I might be offended at the comparison.

Solenoids.

Solenoids.

Apparently, they are the hemorrhoids on the backside of my car's transmission. Once Fred's nurse* replaces one or the other (whichever one is malfunctioning), he's going to be back up and on all four wheels again.

I hope and pray they are right! Even if the expensive solenoid ($250) is the one that's malfunctioning instead of the cheaper one ($70), that's way, way, way the heck better than a new transmission ($4000). Way. I can actually pay to have that replaced. Unlike the whole transmission.

My brother wanted to know why I'm so paranoid about my transmission going out. I replied, Because I haven't got the money to repair it. And he conceded that that is when they do, indeed, go out.

Because, seriously, have you ever heard anyone say, Oh, it's just the transmission, a minor fix and I'll be back on the road! or Good thing I had that spare five large lying around; getting my transmission repaired was a pain, but I could deal in cash! ?

No, I haven't, either.

*Our tame auto mechanic, Fred's nurse practitioner, is actually a nurse. He used to do auto repair on his days off, but found it far more profitable than nursing -- and his patients less a pain in the patuckus. Can't say as I blame him, I know Fred is very stoic when he gets injured, can't say the same for myself.

Horrific dreams, and I think I broke my car.

A calming picture, because one is oh, so needed right now!

This whole day has just been off and terrible, and it started with a particularly horrific nightmare I had last night. I dreamed my niece was missing -- I'd started walking her to school through the big, scary woods behind her house (which isn't really her house, and a forest which did have, in my defense, well-lit paths and other people on them at the time) and let her go the rest of the way on her own. She never got to school.

There was great consternation all around, and we were all afraid she was dead. I was sure, though, that she was alive and in the forest, so I girded my loins and went in (by the way, my brother had a much nicer home in my dream -- the main room was huge, with massive picture windows looking out over the wooded hills behind the house; if I hadn't been so verklempt, I'd have set a spell and just watched the wind in the trees). I found a massive fortress or castle, all in ruins, and I saw her walking across the battlements, looking down at me. At the time, I was merely concerned with getting up there to her, helping her escape whatever had captured and put her there, but now...I have an impression that she was annoyed with me.

Of course, at that point I awoke. In my dreams, my niece has always symbolized my writing. I get the feeling that my writing self is resentful of the time I'm spending working in Desklandia, because for the past two weeks (as I've adjusted to a full schedule again) I've not done anything. I've barely even blogged, and that does count toward my daily writing totals (hey, every little bit counts when you're trying to maintain a writing habit.)

And there was a little part of me worrying that the fact that the niece went missing meant my writerliness has gone missing, too. I'm always afraid that one day I'll find out I'm not really a writer after all, I'm just a poser, avoiding the real thing I am, which is most likely demented cat lady (or dog lady, really) or perhaps a postal worker -- and we all know the job prospects for postal workers right now.

So I'm blogging. Toes in first, then we'll ease the rest of the leg over the side, yes?

In other news, I think I've broken my car. Seriously broken it, this time. I was on the highway and it suddenly slipped into second. I made it to a non-highway road and it just as suddenly went back into regular drive gear. Criminy. It was shifting hard into and out of second as I accelerated all the way home, too.

I still think, no matter what the brother says, that my transmission is going. Shot to hell from that badly done transmission fluid change (don't ever, ever, ever get your transmission fluid changed at the places that specialize in oil changes -- they don't put the right stuff in). But brother thought my fluid might just have been low, so I added some in. Now I think I might have added too much.

Sigh.

At least I have some nice, new sparkly yarn in the mail (as of tomorrow). I bought it as a special treat, for having got the temp work, and I couldn't, in all good conscience, tell the dyer who specially hand-dyed it for me, to keep it because I'm having car trouble. It's not her fault, and she started working on it before I sent the payment because I was so certain I'd be ok for a while.

In any case, $29 is a drop in the bucket compared to what new transmissions cost. So I might as well fiddle as this Rome burns, at least when it comes to my yarn.

Perhaps I'll feel better tomorrow, if I don't have another creepy dream where Nieceling runs away to castles in dark forests to spite me.