perspective

Wherein your pal jean exhibits her utter lack of pride, overuse of the italics and learns a lesson about 20/20 vision…

That’s what it’s really all about, you know?

Yesterday, I read a post on this lovely blog about a New York Times article on how fuller eyebrows are back in style these days. Oh how I wish I could relate. As I wrote in the comments to Lene I have freakishly sparse eyebrows. This particular trait is only rendered more freakish when you consider the fact that…well, how do I put this? I have a hairy forehead. (God help me, I have no pride.) No one else seems to be able to see this until I point it out, so just take my word on this.

The NY Times story included some bit about the trend to sport what can only be described as eyebrow toupees (yes, you read that correctly) to wait out the grow-back period from the sparse eyebrow look to the trendier full eyebrow look.

That’s so awesome! I thought, I SO need eyebrow toupees. Not to wait out the growing period, but to make up for my lack of eyebrows. Especially since my only other option is makeup (which I don’t wear) which has the disastrous result of making me look like a drag-queen. Not a good look for me.

Lene asked me to support her fondness for “embracing the silly” by posting some photos. Oh what the hell? I present you with the photo of the one time I tried to enhance my god-given eyebrows with makeup. I will also include a shot of me without eye makeup to show you the difference:

drag queen jean

no-brow jean

You don’t see it? The raging drag-queen?

Okay. So neither do I.

These photos are about 5 years old and I have such a strong memory of getting the photo of me with “the eyebrows” from the drugstore after I’d turned in my film. I remember dropping the whole envelope of prints and screaming in horror at my freakishness. Not that I’m vain or anything. But well, you just don’t expect to get back a roll of film that you developed where you think you look normal, but you really see a drag-queen version of yourself.

However there is a lesson here that I am trying to share with you. It’s all about PERSPECTIVE. ‘Kay? here is what I thought I looked like:

drag queen jean

no-brow jean

See what I mean? PERSPECTIVE.

bipolar

Wow. My mood just sky-rocketed up to the stratosphere!

Lemme back it up a bit:

This morning, I was involved in a little car accident. Nothing serious. No one got hurt. Just one of those freak accidents that caused a few scratches to my car and a little dent. Just small enough that the at-fault might scoff the legitimacy of the damage (what I was sweating over). But enough damage to cause me irritation over chasing insurance companies, estimates, paperwork and possibly having to pay for the repairs on damage that was not my fault. Damn freak accidents! Makes me not want to leave my house.

Anyways, so here I was sitting at my desk all gloom and doom. Sighing over all the extra phone calls I would have to make, over my digital camera that sucks so hard and won’t be able to take a decent photograph of the damage, over how horribly unfair my measly little life is. And then my boss tells me that she wants to do my mid-year performance review this morning. Do I have some time for it right now?

I bought myself a little bit of time by going to the restroom and quietly freaking out and trying to convince myself to build up a calm stonewall demeanor. Who cares, right? Who wants this shitty job anyways, right?

I leave the restroom an oasis of calm and head to my boss’s office. We sit for the review behind closed doors.

And you know what? Turns out that she thinks I rock. Well, not in so many words. But she said that overall I “perform effectively” (Don’t you just love the corporate mumbo-jumbo? What a load of crock body of lexicon!) and that there were a few areas where I surprised her and “exceeded expectations.”

Shazam.

And here I was quaking in my Steve Madden sandals worried about how I was going to hold it together if she nailed me for something wrong. All for naught.

I admit that I am not The Model Employee ™. I have really high standards and strong work ethic. Normally. And in a normal work situation, I find ways to fill my down time with productive tasks for my office. Lately? Not so much. I still get my work done. But I am efficient and complete my tasks quickly left with the task of a whole day to fill with busy work so that I appear productive.

I think that the thing that gets to me is how much bullshit these reviews are. It’s a terribly flawed system. On a certain level, I appreciate the touchy-feely desire that a huge corporation adopts to give employees the feeling like the company has a human side. We do care. We want to help you improve. On a different level, I feel like these things are just another heap of paperwork that goes in “your file” in the event that they want to build a case to boot you out. I’m being a touch cynical here. I haven’t really thought about how else these reviews benefit employees so I don’t have any suggestions for solutions or change. But the thing that really chaps my hide is how relative performance reviews can be. In my year and a half with this company I’ve had three performance reviews that look like a cosine curve:

I’ve been putting decreasing amounts of effort and high standards into my work and this is how they perceive me. My first review was with my former manager’s manager who had to give the review since my manager had quit after I was only there for a month. It was a fair review in my opinion. My second review was with a wacko boss who seemed to find every little thing wrong with me. It ended up turning into something bigger and I found out through the course of it that her initial review had been far worse and they had to talk her down into something a little more constructive and a lot less damning. My last review (the one that just took place) is with a manager who is fair. I like her and I respect her. But I can’t help but wonder if some of what she thinks is so amazing about me is in comparison to the last girl who held this post who (from what I hear) fell quite short in performance. Or in corporate-speak: Does not perform effectively and needs improvement.

Not that any of this really matters in the long haul. It’s still a shitty job and I don’t see a future for myself here, right? Right. But it’s good for me to keep in mind how much of a mind-fuck these things can get to be. It’s all about perspective. I can’t let them get to me.

Today’s post written while listening to Dengue Fever. Today’s guests on Morning Becomes Eclectic.

social graces

So I need some advice: How does one get out of accepting an invitation without insulting the invitor?

M and I both do not enjoy social activities where we are called upon to make small talk. That covers everything from “social” work functions to parties to…well most anything that involves talking to people other than each other. It’s a weakness. We are both decent conversationalists and when we are enjoying ourselves we could even be considered fun. This causes problems because on those rare moments someone catches us being fun they think: Hey these two sure are fun. We should invite them to more social events.

Inevitably these people will say something that makes both me and m shudder in our party shoes, something that makes us break out in sweats, bring our respective hearts to a screeching stop, something that causes us to pause mid-cocktail sip or hors d’oeuvre bite with that deer-in-headlight glaze in our eyes. These people will say: We should get together again sometime. What are you guys doing next Saturday?

Oh how m and I dread that question.

How do you sidestep it gracefully? How do you agree that the person is extending an honestly kind invitation that you have no desire to accept? How do you do it without hurting their feelings? Because probably these invitations come from people that you see all the time at the office or with mutual friends.

Usually what happens next is I respond brightly, something along the lines of: Oh yeah, absolutely! Saturday? Um, can I let you know? And then hope that by the end of the evening, the asker will have forgotten or won’t have our phone number and that we were able to escape another dreaded social obligation. But this kind of clumsy dance just doesn’t work out. In the last week I got two such invitations that I just did not know how to respond to.

A little background: M and I aren’t total morons. We enjoy conversations with other people and we like to have fun as much as the next person. Sometimes we meet people who we click with right away. People who are interested in the same things we are, who can enjoy themselves without social hangups (er,…kind of like the one we have that I am writing to you about), people who we feel comfortable with. Those are the people we enjoy spending time with. Unfortunately, most of these kinds of people in our lives live far, far away and the other kind? The kind that we don’t click with? Where we have to work to make conversation with them and make our time spent with them somehow not feel like some kind of cruel archaic form of mental punishment? Yeah, those are the types that keep inviting us out.

Last week, I happened to be on the phone with the fiancee of someone we work with. As we were wrapping up our inconsequential chat, she said: Oh we should get together sometime. That time we ran into each other and hung out for a few minutes was so much fun, I’d like to do that again. I’ll let you and Roger* work out the details, okay? And of course like a dumbass, I agreed cheerfully. What Roger’s fiancee heard from the tone of my voice was probably that I couldn’t wait till we got to hang out again. Which sadly, couldn’t be further from the truth.

But now I’m stuck cause we work with Roger and talk to him every day. And I get the feeling that he wants to be better friends with me and m. Like plan vacations together and raise our children together and stuff. And m and I don’t even like running into them in our neighborhood for fear of the dreaded small talk. Basically I am sweating till the day comes (and oh, it will come) when Roger catches up with me at work one day and says: What are you doing next Saturday?

Help me. I need a strategy in place to deal with this assault.

*Names have been changed to protect the boring innocent.

the Boston Plan - Revisited

Those of you paying attention might remember that the Boston Plan or at least the Kennys’ part of the Boston Plan was supposed to kick off sometime soon. We are nearing September 1st when m and I get our retention bonuses for staying on after our company got bought out and we were supposed to give our notice to our landlords and pretty much say take a hike to our bosses and hightail it outta here.

Well…

M has been running the numbers again. And this time, his numbers say that if we wait till spring, we might be in a better shape financially for this move. Spring means that many more months of a reliable paycheck. It means that we can get our annual bonuses (which means that the Boston Plan isn’t going to kick in until after March. Oy.). It means that we aren’t moving in a month.

I’m a little disappointed, but I think it’s a sound plan. It also gives me more time to work on some graphic design related things that I have been putting off (and putting off and putting off). Mostly I just need to kick my butt back into gear - I have been so unmotivated lately, it’s driving me crazy! But not that crazy. Cause then I would have to do something about it, and clearly that is not the case.

apropos

Well now. I just got this update from This American Life:

This American Life Update
August 24, 2006
The “Steady Paycheck” Edition
_________________________________________________

THIS WEEKEND, 8/25-27:
Americans In Paris. Many Americans have dreamy and romantic ideas about Paris, notions which probably trace back to the 1920s, to the vision of Paris created by the expatriate Americans there. But what’s it actually like in Paris if you’re an American, without rose-colored glasses?

You know I’ll be tuned in!

sewing->knitting->blogging->Paris->teaching

So I have been reading a lot of blogs lately. It all sort of just fell into my lap, really. I was the victim here. It all started when I was researching dressmaker dummies on google. One of the hits was for a girl in England who happened to include the words “dressmaker dummy” on her blog on a day when she had draped a near-completed hand-knit sweater on her dressmaker dummy. I was intrigued. I read her blog from the first post in her archives to the current ones one at a time. When I was done, I looked around a bit and found another one. This was the prolific blogger. Korean-American girl who knit the most beautiful creations and wrote really well. That one took a little longer, but soon I was through those archives and up to date waiting for my next installment. I even got a feedreader so I could one-click-read through them at the drop of a hat. Er. So to speak. And then I found another one and another one. I am hooked. It almost feels like reading someone’s diary (with their permission) or getting a letter from a friend. And at the expense of sounding a little loony, yes, I consider these gals my friends. They don’t know me (yet) but I feel like I know them and root for them in their particular endeavors.

So after clicking through different people’s blogs I found a handful of ones from American ex-pats living in Paris(!). Oh the fun of reading through those all-familiar first few months of acclimation. The nostalgia of reading about the great food, the charming frenchy idiosyncracies, the daily life in a beautiful city (the first city I ever fell in love with), I can’t get enough. Here’s an example from someone’s blog that tickled me (I hope she doesn’t mind that I borrowed from it):

Learning French

The following is a story from earlier this autumn…

P was working on her piano.

I was trying to help.

She was getting frustrated.

“Tu m’énerve!*” she said.

C was horrified.

“You can’t say that to her! P! That’s like saying that to MOM!!!”

P looked worried.

I asked what it meant, exactly.

(I seemed to sort of remember something about the… and the context…and it sort of sounds like…

OK, yeah, I wasn’t sure.)

C tried to explain. Repeatedly. However, she sensed that I wasn’t quite getting the gist of what she was trying to tell me.

She walked out of the room, and P looked at me sideways, a look of fear in her eyes.

I was handed a large, heavy English-French dictionary. This one is about 7 times bigger than any we have, and is considered the “Petit Larousse.”

It was open to the page.

I looked at the definition. Then, I looked at P.

She looked scared.

“C’est d’accord, P. Quelquefois, tu m’énerve aussi.”**

*Tu m’énerve. You irritate me. (drive me nuts, bother)
**C’est d’accord…” That’s OK, P. Sometimes, you irritate me, too.

Have I mentioned how particularly cute french kids are?

I confess, since reading these americans-in-Paris blogs I have been scheming of ways to get back there. m is a writer so his job is pretty portable. We wouldn’t have to move there on a permanent basis or anything. I would be perfectly content with spending my summers in a sublet loft in Paris. But in order to have my summers free, I would need a portable sort of job too. Okay, so m is a yet-to-be-discovered writer, but this is my fantasy so deal. In my fantasy I would either be a very well paid freelancer who could telecommute from Paris in the summers. Or, OR, OR!! I could be a teacher! YES a TEACHER! Teachers have summers off, right? They earn a reasonable income and have free summers to spend as they please. In Paris living it up, or teaching summer schools to pay off the never ending debt supplement their incomes. We’re going to have kids one day soon and teachers have good working hours so that they can raise their children without relying on day-care. Summers in Paris would only enrich our childrens’ lives. They would become bilingual naturally growing up in Boston and Paris. Yes. This is definitely the way to go. Now let’s try and figure out how to get my credentials to become a teacher. Don’t I just have to take a few classes and pass a few tests? I am sadly lacking in this information even though I have a lot of friends who are teachers (who are probably smacking their foreheads while reading this at how simplified I present the life of a teacher). Two of them got their masters degree along with their teaching credentials but I don’t need to commit to an advanced degree, just enough papers and coursework to get me a job…

Now what age level and/or subjects should I teach?

my poor kidney

What does it mean about the state of my health if I have not gone to use the bathroom since 7:15 this morning?

I am going to drink a lot of water for the rest of the day to make up for that. Sigh. Sometimes it’s such a pain to lead a healthy life.

Go Sox!

We went to the Red Sox game last night. They were in town on one of their rare games on the west coast. We’ve been to Red Sox games v. the A’s, v. the Dodgers and like last night v. the Angels. Sadly last night was not a victory for the good guys (as my husband would call them. He also says things like: There was a victory for the dark side today. Which means that the Yankees won a game somewhere.). But we had fun at the game anyways. The tickets were free (!) and co-worker Leslie and her husband Greg joined us.

We met Greg when we attended their wedding a few years ago, but this is the first time we hung out with him. I didn’t know what to expect being that all the stories I ever heard about him involved fishing and baseball. I am down with the baseball part, but know nothing about fishing and he apparently is a fishing fiend. (I think that he proposed to Leslie on a fishing trip actually which I find both charming and funny.) We had so much fun! Greg is a really funny guy and fun to talk to. He knows gobs and gobs about sports and loves Hawaii. I thought it was funny when David Ortiz came up to bat and Greg commented that this was Maddy’s favorite player. Maddy is 4 months old, by the way.

This is right up there with the time I was talking to a former co-worker who loved baseball and its history and tradition and lore. And when he was in Boston he made sure to take his son to Fenway just in case it ever got torn down (since it’s such an old park and some people think it should be replaced with something newer). I thought that was so sweet and asked him how old his son was. Without missing a beat, my co-worker said: 18 months.

There is a surprising number of Red Sox fans in the southland. I noticed this at every game we’ve attended here. Sometimes I get a little nervous showing my Red Sox pride (as it were), especially if we beat the home team. What if someone gets a little rowdy and wants to beat us up? And m is always defiantly proud when we have to pass legions of home team fans when they win and they jeer as we pass by in our Red Sox shirts. But it’s always a safe bet that nothing will happen when the home team wins. It’s the Red Sox fans that are the assholes. Go to any game and see for yourself. The loudest, brassiest, brattiest fans are the Red Sox fans.

janecita

Today janet celebrates her birthday of an undisclosed number of years! Actually, I’m not sure if janet cares about her age or not, but I thought I’d be respectful just in case…

Janet rocks. She is da bomb. I have known janet now for just over 6 years and each time I stop to think about how long we’ve been friends, I always marvel at how few the years are against how deep the friendship feels.

For those of you who don’t know (or remember) I met janet when I temped at Valley Radiation Oncology Center (or VROC for short) in Tarzana, California. I was working temp jobs waiting till I could apply to grad school back when I thought I was going to be in grad school. For my PhD. Yes, that long ago. I walked into the lobby of VROC and there was this tiny asian lady sitting behind the high receptionist desk. I thought she might be Korean, but wasn’t sure. She was quiet and looked vaguely unhappy (maybe she wasn’t feeling well?) and she answered the phones methodically, one call at a time. I waited not that patiently feeling like she was not providing me the customer service I was entitled to (I felt very entitled back then. A lot of times, I still do.) and when she finally got off the phone, I was able to introduce myself. And I found out that she was my boss.

Janet will argue at this point in the story that she was never my boss. But let the facts speak for themselves:

1. I was told to report to VROC and ask for someone named Janet.
2. She showed me around the office and trained me.
3. She signed my time cards.
4. She told me when I could take my breaks.
5. If I had to call in sick or late, I would call her.

After a few hours of touring the office, meeting the rest of the staff and training me for my position there (during which time Cheryl, a volunteer came in), she said to us: Okay, girls. Let’s break for lunch.

She sounded tired. She grabbed her lunch out of the fridge and led us to the break room and pulled out an apple and a knife. It was when I saw her peel her apple with her knife that I knew. You’re Korean, aren’t you? She looked startled. How did you know that? I pointed to her fruit. Koreans peel their fruit. And for some reason, that cracked her up and she laughed hysterically.

Something about that laugh at lunch and the peeled fruit broke down the formality of walls between temp to supervisor. I was more comfortable around her and I loved to make her laugh her crazy laugh. I invited her over to meet my family and they promptly adopted her as a long lost cousin (her last name is the same as my maiden name). If you ask my father, he’ll swear that janet is related to us through our genealogical trees. We are a little more skeptical, but enjoy humoring my dad.

The temp assignment at VROC didn’t last for too long, but we had become friends and cousins and I am blessed to have her in my life. Since I love lists and since it is her day, a few things about janet (there’s so much more) and why she is so cool:

• It’s fun to make janet laugh. Really, you should give it a try. She will enable your need to be goofy or silly. And validate it with hearty chuckling and giggling.



• Janet is loyal. She will do anything for her friends and family.
• Janet doesn’t drink alcohol (she’s allergic, poor thing) and so will always volunteer to be the designated driver.
• Janet is game. She’ll always go along with whatever activity you suggest. I have hijacked her into going to bars (she doesn’t drink), going to clubs (she doesn’t listen to the same music that I do), making dressmaker dummies (on her days off), petsitting when we are out of town (she’s allergic to cats) just to name a few.
• Janet loves nothing more than to veg out in front of the t.v. She will watch all and any crappy show (and a bunch of good ones too) and accompany you to marathon movie sessions.
• Janet loves dessert. She always shows up with artful pastries from fancy-schmancy bakeries that she discovers.
• Janet is a good eater. She is fun to cook for.
• Janet has tiny feet and you can knit socks for her with just 45 grams of sockyarn(!)
• Janet is a romantic. She reads 18th century poetry, revels in costume period piece movies and dreams of being whisked away to a cottage outside of a medieval village where she can churn her own butter and consume herself with thoughts of her manly shepherd coming home for lunch. (Janet is also no fan of the germs and forgets that these idyllic scenes of yesteryears do not include indoor plumbing or anti-bacterial soap. But a girl can dream, can’t she?)
• Janet has great attention to detail and is smart. So even if she doesn’t know how to do something, say like knitting, but you have a crazy deadline to meet that requires backup, she will come to your house for 12 hours and do all the tedious work that you need help with, picking up skills that she did not walk in with as she goes along.
• Janet is the kind of person you would always want on your team.

Janecita, happy birthday! Hope you have lots of tasty treats to toast your special day!

we're going to Hawaii

Yes it’s true. After a long conversation yesterday about how boring our lives are these days, how we are living on a tight budget, how all our travel time is taken up visiting family (enjoyable albeit obligatory), how we haven’t done anything fun in a long ole’ while, we did a little research and found out that we can go to Hawaii!

M and I got some free airline dollars from our last trip returning from the east coast. The airport was mega crowded with flights overbooked left and right. American Airlines offered $300 in free flights to passengers who would take a later flight. M looked into it and figured that since the bump was only for two hours and we would still get home at a reasonable time, why not?

We were going to hoard these tickets for something fun, but then the more we thought about it, the more we realized the restrictions surrounding our free airline dollars. We didn’t want to go somewhere too far, because then we would have to pay for the balance of the flight costs. Hotels are expensive. Going someplace new and exotic and explore-worthy (i.e., Italy, Morocco, Greece, Turkey) should really be given more than a week’s amount of time to do it up. But we didn’t want to burn up too much vacation time. We ruled out places that either of us have already been to (i.e., France, England, Ireland, Korea). We didn’t want to go someplace that we could easily travel to from the east coast since those trips would be imminent from Boston (i.e., Prince Edward Island, Bahamas, most of western Europe). So all of this ruminating left us in a bit of a bind. Vancouver was quite high in the running until we got online and found out (fortuitously) that, flights to Hawaii seem to be fairly reasonable right around now. We were able to purchase tickets to Honolulu with just a few bucks out of our pockets for the airport fees. And the hotels rates aren’t too bad either!

Let’s face it. God wants us to go to Hawaii. And who am I to mess with the wishes of higher deities?

Our lives aren’t so bad, really. I think we’re just in a bit of a rut. We’re going to see the Red Sox play tomorrow night (free tix from a kind co-worker!) and Willie Nelson is coming to the Hollywood Bowl with Ryan Adams and Neko Case next month and we’re going to Hawaii!

asshole

M and I were watching another installation of The Sopranos last night. Season 5, I think. It’s so good. I love this show. I’m worried that they won’t end the series well and that we’ll be disappointed. I hear that season 6 is not that great compared to the previous seasons.

Anyways….

So there’s a scene in this episode we watched last night where Anthony Jr. (Tony Soprano’s only son. 16 years old. A total shithead.) comes home waaaaay late from a concert in NYC, spent the night in a hotel with friends with his buddies against his mother’s wishes, smoked weed, got drunk, passed out and woke to find his face super-glued to the hotel carpet, his eyebrows shaved off and a widow’s peak drawn into his forehead with a sharpie. He schleps through the front door and Carmela, his mom is totally freaked out and worried. When she realizes that he wasn’t dead on the roadside somewhere off of the New Jersey turnpike, she gives him hell for lying and doing drugs. He walks away and tells her: Fuck you.

And for some reason. This made me think of something closer to home. When m and I are pissing each other off, I am more often than not heard to say: You’re being an asshole. And this is far more than just name-calling but my way of calling him on something when I think he is acting inappropriately. I want to take a moment here to appreciate how open I can be with him and just tell him something like that (my choice of words notwithstanding). And somehow that made me think of my parents. And how probably, I could never tell either of them: You’re being an asshole. Or even the cleaned up version: You’re being a jerk.

Maybe with my mom I could. But my dad? No way. The conversation would very quickly turn away from whatever we had been discussing into a liturgy of age-ist/racist/prejudiced admonishments of how I talk trashy like those trashy Americans I hang out with. How I have grown to be disrespectful of my parents like the way those trashy Americans can be. etc. etc. We would never be able to discuss if in fact one or both of us were being assholes. And if true, why.

That’s too bad. It seems like a reasonable thing to be allowed to do, and yet it’s totally off limits for me in the relationship I have with my parents. Luckily not so the case with my friends and husband.

Any of you lucky enough to be able to frankly tell people you have relationships with (parents, siblings, friends, spouses, etc.) when they are being out of line?

football buddy

Have I ever mentioned how crappy television reception is at our apartment?
And how we have no cable?
And how much of a sports fanatic my husband is?
And how it’s now officially the pre-season?
And how m thinks that pekoe enjoys watching the game with him?

How can I argue with this thinking when I come home on Friday to this:

mesmerized by this:

southpaw Sunday

Renée Montagne says that today is International Left-Handers Day. I am blessed with many lefties in my life. My husband is a leftie, his mom is a leftie, my nephew Timothy is a leftie, stacey is a leftie…anyone else?

Renée also cited an interesting fact on Friday’s broadcast:

Congratulations to left-handed men! And not just because this Sunday is International Left-Handers Day, but because a new study shows southpaws are richer than righties, 15 percent richer for left-handed men who attended college, and 26 percent richer if they graduated. Researchers at Lafayette College and Johns Hopkins University can’t explain the wage difference, and they don’t know why women lefties don’t have the same advantage.

I consulted with m about this and he thinks they left him out of the survey. Either that or his salary is seriously tweaking with their numbers. Or maybe our company hasn’t heard about this study and needs a head’s up. A raise could be on it’s way…

poor starving artists

We are poor, we are artists, but we are definitely not of the starving kind. Here was Tuesday night dinner chez c+potoin:

seared jumbo scallops in an orange vermouth glaze
side of sweet potatoes and steamed edamame

red wine
(note the jam jar wine glass. M still hasn’t given me the okay to open the wine glasses we got for our wedding. I’m not sure what we are saving them up for, but I don’t mind so much drinking out of jam jars. It reminds me of the juice glasses we used to drink wine out of when we were students in France.)

Tuesday night’s dinner was brought to us courtesy of Chef M.

works in progress

Oh what the hell? It’s not like I have anything else to do at work today.

I got a lot done actually with mum’s cardi. Here’s a photo with my glasses and new work-issued Blackberry for scale:

We’ve started the armholes (again) while watching a movie last night. It was Happy Endings, in case you were wondering and well worth checking out. Lisa Kudrow bowled me over with her talent. I always thought she was funny as Phoebie, but in a serious role? Wow. Anyways, back to the knitting. I should probably check this piece today to make sure that all that wondrous acting didn’t distract me too much from the knitting and there isn’t some honking mistake that I need to rip out (again).

Jenn asked about the pink yarns that I bought to make ponchos for my neices m and a. Here are the two colors:

The one on the left is called Neopolitan and the one on the right is called Raspberry. (Seen on the screen of my PC at work, there seems to be a bit of a yellowish tinge to the colors. But I assure you, they are pretty, not yellow-y.) I think Raspberry will look sweet on a and Neopolitan will be darling on m. I originally wanted to make the Yarn Harlot’s A Very Harlot Poncho, pictured here with a wee baby sized version:

I am particularly fond of the fringe. However, I found this shawl-thing yesterday and am interested in doing up a variation of it as well for the girls:

I could stay with the ruffles or add fringe instead. Or I could find some yarn to make it for me!

And of course, more gratuitous photos of Pekoe:

He is so bold. How does he dare? He thinks he’s allowed to sniff my yarn??

cardi for mum

I started this cardigan for my mother in law about two weeks ago.

I ordered the yarn online and when it arrived, I opened it up happily ready to start my first cardigan. I swatched it up like a good girl since I wasn’t using the same yarn after all as the original pattern. I even blocked it because the guage seemed to be totally off.

This took time, but I am patient.

While we wait for the swatch to soak, let me ’splain a little. I needed to block because the pattern writer got 19 stitches/4" and I got 22. Sometimes I got 23. And once, when I was really trying, I got 20. But strangely we both got 29 rows for 4" as well. Bizarre.

Once the swatch had soaked for enough time, I rinsed out the swatch and got all hellraiser on it:

You like my Ikea bag covering the bulletin board? You gotta stay resourceful when you lack the proper tools.

I know you are on the edge of your seats wondering what’s going to happen with this. But:

* * *

Well some time has passed since I started this post. After the swatch dried, I measured the guage again, but felt pretty lame since the fabric had all stretched out and it looked cheap (sigh). So I gave up and pulled out the calculator to do some math. I had it upon good authority that the chest was 46″ (notes scribbled somewhere, but I didn’t bother to go back and check since I remembered 46″.) I figured out roughly the changes I needed to make and cast on 114 stiches. Then I knit, and knit, and knit, and knit (and sometimes, I threw a purl in there for a little excitement). And after several hours, I got this:

Then I knit ,and knit, and knit. I measured guage like a freaking maniac every few rows or so. And then I knit and knit and knit some more. No purling thrown in anywhere for excitement because I was knitting up the back of the sweater and it is just miles and miles of stockinette. Which was okay after awhile. I got to that zen meditative place that I keep hearing about. When people find out that I knit, I often hear the comment: Oh that must be so relaxing. Or My _____(insert loved one here. such as mother, wife, girlfriend, etc.) knits and she finds it meditative. I usually look at them blankly and think dark thoughts about these calm meditative knitters. Knitting usually brings out even more curse words from me than usual. And I have been compared to sailors and truck drivers in my ability to string along a bunch of swear words. But now that I was knitting (and knitting, and knitting) up miles (and miles, and miles, oh you get the point) of stockinette for a cardigan that was intended for someone with a 46" chest, I too could find my zen here.

Then one afternoon, oh…for shits and giggles, I looked up my notes where I had scribbled down my careful measurements and was… dismayed (this is the clean version of the story) to note that my mother in law has a 48" chest. All that zen meditative knitting must have worked some magic on me because I very calmly (perhaps a little too calmly?) ripped out the 6 or so inches of knitting (and knitting, and knitting) that I had accomplished and re-cast on to the correct 136 stitches for the correct 48" measurement.

Since then I was able to knit up a considerable amount of the back. I made a tiny adjustment and knit up an extra two inches of length because my mother in law (as she puts it) is a big girl and probably she doesn’t want her cardigan to just skim the waist. She probably likes a little extra length for comfort’s sake. So I knit in two extra inches. And just the other night I started the armholes (!). But I had learned from my mistakes so I measured the gauge and counted stitches religiously and really got into that zen thing. And early Sunday evening saw me finishing the back of the cardigan, binding off and cutting the thread (!). It felt good. I carefully folded up the finished piece and put it away in my bag for safe keeping.

Then I set out to do the math for the fronts. You’d think that I’d just do all the calculations at once and save myself the trouble of trying to remember how I arrived at my previous numbers. But I am not that smart. Meditative, yes. Smart, no.

I cast on the appropriate number of stitches for each side. I even decided to knit up both fronts (left side of the cardi front and the right side of the cardi front) at the same time so that I could … I don’t know. It just seemed like a good idea. You know, cause I can?

I was on my way to a restaurant with my friends janet and eric so I could only get the casting on done. Then there was dinner and eating and talking and meeting people, and it just didn’t seem right to whip out the knitting while there was socializing going on so I just sat on my hands and got through the meal (Big lie, I pigged out, drank wine, talked and played with the baby. There was a baby there. I wish I had brought my camera cause he was mighty cute and way more fascinating than all these tales of knitting stupidity woes.).

Then the evening was over and I was home again. Exclaiming at how sunburned m was (funny, he just looked a little dirty and sandy when I left him. Did I mention that I went to the beach on Sunday morning?) and setting out to slather as much aloe vera on his shoulders as I could.

We settled into bed (as best as possible considering the slimey aloe vera) for a few minutes with a book and knitting before going to sleep. I pulled out the finished back of the cardigan and showed it to my husband. He silently, reverently and whole-heartedly high-fived me on my accomplishment. Then. And then. Oh, just because, you know? I pulled out my trusty measuring tape and checked out the length of the body and the armholes and compared it to the schematic.

Hm…the pattern writer thinks that the body before the armholes should be 15″ long and the armholes should be 11.5″ long from the start of the armholes to the shoulder seam. I measured and checked again. So… in counting…15 comes after 13, right?

Gah.

Somehow, the body of the cardigan AND the armholes both measured in at 13″. I have no idea how this happened. What about the additional two inches I incorporated?? I would like to blame knitting sprites or something, but really I think I need to lay blame where blame is due. Meditative knitting is bullshit. You can’t relax. You need to be uptight and anxious and neurotic. You need to count stitches like a madwoman and measure gauge every five minutes. You need to tattoo the schematic to your arm for easy and frequent reference.

So. And so. I ripped out 13" of knitting yesterday during my lunch break. Meditatively. I wound up all that yarn again and made it into a pretty centre-pull ball. I put my simultaneous front knitting aside and picked up the needles for the back (once more). And I knit, and knit, and knit some more.

Photos of my progress are pretty moot at this point since I seem to go forwards and back so often. Maybe when I get to the fronts for real, I’ll photograph it. You know, for posterity or something.

more quizzes

Okay, so I am a little bored at work today, can you tell? Here’s a list of questions that James Lipton asks his guest at the end of each Inside the Actor’s Studio. According to one source, it was lifted from Bernard Pivot’s Bouillon de Culture.

Well…since I’ve got nothing better to do:

01. What is your favorite word?
I don’t have one. But I do enjoy the way the word smile looks like it’s smiling. There are a few that do that, but this is the one I can think of and notice the most.

02. What is your least favorite word?
Nope. Don’t have one of these either.

03. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
Pretty things (creatively), connecting with someone, coming to an understanding (for spiritually and emotionally)

04. What turns you off?
Rudeness, ignorance/hatred, unpleasant smells.

05. What is your favorite curse word?
Fuck

06. What sound or noise do you love?
Good music? People laughing and singing? Babies babbling? Water trickling?

07. What sound or noise do you hate?
Tires screeching (I always wait for the crash at the end of the screech), teeth squeaking.

08. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Something risky.

09. What profession would you not like to do?
Politics, social work, law.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
It’s good to see you. Good job on a life well lived.

how nerdy am I?

After I discovered that I am 43% gay, I figured, hey why not? Let’s find out how nerdy I am. I took the test and scored in at 47%. In many ways, I was a little surprised. First of all, the test seems to be geared towards those of the physics/math ilk. I find that rather limiting. While not particularly knowledgeable in physics nor math (despite my 47% score - that was one of the ways of my surprise), I have in-depth knowledge about a bunch of other things. Embarrassingly more than the average bird. I think that makes me a nerd. Ask me a question about linguistics, about sewing or knitting, about graphic design. My husband, also lacking in physics and math skills is what I call a sports nerd. Ask him who had the highest batting average in Major League Baseball, the oldest quarterback to win a championship, which team has the most national championship titles and he will regale you with stat after stat, tale after tale, minutae after minutae…

Now just because we don’t own a graphing calculator between the two of us (I tried to get my parents to buy me one when I was in high school, but could only get away with a scientific calculator from Texas Instruments which we use to this day) and because we can’t rattle off the periodic table of elements, does that mean we don’t qualify as nerds?

I mean, doesn’t that fact that I am even writing a post on this subject qualify me in there somewhere (test score not-withstanding)??

random

And I do mean RANDOM. Don’t you just love the internet and what it can offer? Today I read:

• about a convincing voting scam involving absentee ballots
• that I am 43% gay (a hot liberal lesbian was the description) after taking a quiz. (I know. I should be embarassed that I am one of those people who takes those kinds of quizzes.)
• this

Anyone else find it a little odd to be selling images of hot priests to raise money?

Stacey and Janet? This one’s for your Thornbirds moment.