Scratching and finishing.

I am finishing a bunch of things and I feel so good about it! I just did the finishing for a grey hoodie that I knitted for Karin's sister Kelly who did me a big favor, and since I will be seeing her and Karin in the next few days, I thought it would be a good idea to get the sweater done so she can wear it! Woot!

I finished the yarn shop KAL socks and oh man, they were a big pain because they were kilt socks, so not only did they have to be long like knee socks, but they had a lacy cuff to knit to turn down on the top of them. Whew! I just finished knitting the second sock last night and did all the finishing this afternoon!

I have finished the knitting on the kimono sweater for Maddy, and I washed and blocked it, sewed in all the loose ends, and now I just need to do a little bit of knitting to make the ties and a button loop and it will be done!

So I have a feeling of accomplishment like you wouldn't believe, and now I'm thinking about what I will make next!

Maddy was at my house for a couple of hours this evening and we had such a nice time. She wanted her hair brushed when she found my brush laying on the desk, so I brushed her hair while she sat at the desk and watched some Sesame Street videos on Youtube.

Then she started playing with the back-scratcher that was also on the desk, so I used it to scratch her back, and she loved it! Her eyes practically rolled back in her head with joy at having her back scratched, so I played some funny cat videos from Youtube and scratched her back for about 20 minutes, but then I was worried about scratching all the skin off, so I distracted her from the scratching and we went to play with the button box instead.

That was my day, what did you do?

That time I fell down...

At first I couldn't think of a time when I fell down, and was feeling a bit superior, what with my excellent coordination and all, but then the memories started flooding back and there were so many I couldn't decide on just one!

The time I caught the toe of my sandal on the lip of the top step of the four stairs up to my office, tried to catch myself with my arms windmilling and slammed into the glass door, which luckily, didn't break!

That time I was getting on the exersize bike in my bedroom, and threw my leg over it too enthusiastically, lost my balance, and fell backward with the bike on top of me. That was on a bare wood upstairs floor, so it echoed through the house like an elephant had fallen through the roof.

The time I parked on a hill, got out of the car carrying a large Diet Pepsi from McDonalds in my right hand, and the car wasn't all the way in gear so it started rolling forward. My right arm was still through the seatbelt, so it was pulling me with it, through the intersection until it bumped to a stop on the curb at the bottom of the hill. My seven-year-old daughter was watching in horror from the window of the school bus! (When I stood up, I was still clutching my Diet Pepsi.)

There were two times when our sheepdog, Buffy, tripped me while we were walking, because that dog was always trying to kill me!

And then there was the time when I was doing the two mile walk with Kim, who was babbling about Pokemon and driving me crazy, so I looked up at the sky and rolled my eyes, which caused me to not see the broken sidewalk, and when I stepped on it, fell and broke my foot, thereby proving that exersize (or Pokemon) isn't good for you.



That was just hitting the highlights. I'm leaving out the times I have fallen on ice, because anyone can do that, and the time I slipped in a miniature mudslide while walking Buffy, who laughed all the way home as I cursed out loud because I was covered in mud! (She didn't plan that one, but it made her happy anyway. That dog hated me.)

So that is probably enough of my humiliating incidents for now. See you next time, when I will maybe tell you about that time in 1978 when I tripped and fell outside a club when I was wearing my Candies 4-inch platform heels and tore a hole in the knee of my Calvins and looked like I was drunk when I had not even had one drink!

In which I have nothing to hide.

I'm getting tired of the 30 days of shamelessness, and I've been making up some better and more interesting topics that we can use when this series is finished.

In the meantime, hmmm, something dirty that I usually hide? OMG, when do I hide anything? I haven't had a cleaning lady for at least two years now, since the one I had (for about 10 years) decided she had more important things to do than clean houses, so that's how long it's been since my house was actually clean!

Or do you mean something dirty like Bondage Fairy comics? I bought some years ago on a trip to a comic book store in Phoenix with Diana and Sarah, and they were very entertaining and very dirty, but I haven't seen them in years. I think I threw them out so my cleaning lady wouldn't see them.

The next thing is Sweat, which isn't really something I want to talk about because ewwww, I hate sweat! I hate looking at sweaty people, and I get crabby when I am sweating in the summer. I was very surprised to find that we sweat in yoga class! I thought yoga was all serene stretching and, you know, thinking about nothing!

No, the truth is that we go to class, spread out mats, and then the teacher works us like a rented circus monkey! Today we had to tuck one foot up against the opposite inner thigh and bend over the extended leg, only not really over it, just off to that same side, and stretch the top arm up and outward, over our ear, and look up at the ceiling, and then the teacher got up and went to talk to a student for a couple of minutes and left us all sitting there bent over to the right and stretching our left arm up and over and we were just holding it forever with our rib muscles gasping in shock!

And that is why, when I get home from yoga, I am not only sweaty, but in need of a handful of ibuprofen!

In which I keep doing something that I don't think I'm very good at.

Some people know that I want to write a novel, in fact I am working on three books right now, two fiction and one non-fiction. I thought that I was a good enough writer, but now that I am actually writing, I suddenly see that I am not as good as I thought I was. What?? Oh noes!

The thing is, my whole life I have been told that I am so good at writing, that I have such talent, blah blah blah, and even though I blew it off, I secretly kind of thought it was true.

Here's the thing, though. It's not that I can't write, because that's not the hard part, it's actually sitting in my chair and doing the writing. Not just a scene that I imagined one day, but the whole story! I have the vaguest idea of what I want my story to be about, but I don't actually have a story in my head!

It's hard, and I am hoping that if I just keep writing, the story will come from somewhere. I had a sudden epiphany the other day in which I realized that I have to keep writing to find out what happens!

I have two quotes that I keep in mind to encourage myself:

Inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just show up and get to work. -Chuck Close

and this one:

I hate writing, I love having written. -Dorothy Parker

In which I am not very girly

I can't think of anything especially girly that I do, and I hate that gender-specific stuff anyway, so it took me two days of pondering to come up with...hmm...nothing!

I went grocery shopping on Friday, and when I got home, I carried six plastic grocery bags in two hands up to the front door and kicked it so Rich would let me in. As I staggered to the kitchen I ordered told him to get the case of Diet Pepsi and the giant bottle of laundry detergent out of the car, and when he brought them in and deposited them on the floor of the kitchen, I told him I was going to put that in my journal as the girly thing I hardly ever do, i.e. asking him to carry heavy stuff into the house for me, and he said actually I always make him do it!

I think he's wrong about that, because I know I carry those in myself all the time but sure, whatever you say, honey.

I considered getting a pedicure, so I could write about that, but none of my pedi friends are around, and it's no fun to go by myself. If I go to the one place, I don't like to talk to the idiots that work there, but if I go to the Asian place, they don't speak enough English to talk to me.

As I write this, I am suddenly realizing that there are a few things that I always call on Rich to do, like killing gross bugs and disposing of (their) bodies, and also burying small dead pets. So there. Times when I am girly. You happy now? I have to go smoke a cigar and scratch myself.

In which you learn the name of the film.

When I was talking about which uncool movie I like, I didn't tell the name of it, because I was kind of thinking that one of my kids would name it in the comments. I forgot that none of them actually read my journal, either because they don't have time or they just don't care (sniff!).

Karin suggested that it might be America's Sweethearts, but no, that is an excellent movie that I am proud to love, unlike another John Cus@ck movie, Serendipity, that is so terrible it sucks the cool right out of you through your eyes. I can pretty much watch Mr. Cus@ck in anything, but that one makes my ass ache.

The actual movie that everyone in my family thinks is so terrible is Nashville, which was a huge hit back in the day and it is a classic! A classic!! What is wrong with you people??

In other news, I spent an hour with Maddy this evening, walking around the neighborhood, mostly in my neighbor's backyard. Her yard is all pretty with landscaping and nice outdoor furniture, and she had a couple of jars of bubble stuff on a table for her grandchildren, but they are getting a little old for bubbles, and she was happy to see me blowing bubbles for Maddy to catch.

We stayed outside as long as I could stand it but the humidity was so high that I was miserable, and mosquitoes were eating us both, so I coaxed Maddy back into the house, where she played the piano, plucked at the harp, and typed on the computer in the den.

That's all I've got. Tomorrow I'll get back to the 30 Days of Shamelessness.