STealing Time

My grading program has taken a craptastacular dump, so my kids are watching a movie so I can enter grades and, weehoo! I've got time to write. (Well, I'm sure I could do something more professional, but I don't wanna...) Anyway, what to write about...

I could write about the fact that, although we have been a dancing/gymnastics/soccer/karate family to date, and that we were hoping the cave troll would be keen in one of those already established areas, the little goombah has been able to hit a wiffle ball in mid-air since last Christmas when he was barely two, and this screams the T-ball/baseball route. I might try to fight this a little harder, but since he's the only one of the four kids who has shown any talent at physical activity whatsoever, I'm thinking we're sort of hosed by extra-curricular eclecticity...we might as well start looking into it now and ride the frantic wave...

I could write about the finished pair of sport-weight baby socks in my bag, soon to be followed by a matching hat...it's funny--I used to adore super thick novelty yarn, but after working on socks and fingering weight sock yarn for the last six months, sport weight baby socks almost feel like cheating. I chuckle evilly as I look at them, and plan to make more for the other six impending babies in my sphere.

I could write about my crazy friend Wendy...Wendy is 5'2--she used to be 5'3" before the back surgery--and lives alone on 10 acres of horseranch with too many two ton animals to count. Recently, Wendy has been doing home repairs, and the process has sucked like a portajohn vacuum--every small job she's planned has turned into a code-violating nightmare of sweaty amoral wage earners flogging her crumbling triple-mortgage with nail-guns and beer cans--the list of ways this process has been mangled is longer than my longest blog. The incompetence is inde-freaking-scribable, and Wendy's hair was starting to fall out. I took a page from the yarn-harlot's book and gave her socks to knit.

Now Wendy claimed to know basic knitting and purling, so I thought this would be okay--and it has been--she's been going around and around in k2-p2 rib very methodically, and I can tell that doing something productive that she can control is doing her some good. The problem isn't Wendy. The problem is me. I've always been a devout believer of the idea that there is no wrong way to knit. If you produce a stitch and a product, it can't be wrong. I believed this right until I saw my friend, my sister, my children's beloved Auntie Wendy, knit.

Wendy knits backwards. No, not continental backwards, not yarn throwing backwards, (although she does throw her yarn)--backwards backwards. Wendy throws her yarn to knit from right to left through the back loop. Yes. You heard me... the rest of the civilized world takes their loops from the left needle to the right needle, and Wendy goes the other way. Through the back loop. She throws her yarn to do it. My eyeballs hurt just thinking about it. And while my first instinct is to sit on her and show her how everybody else knits not because it's better but because it's EASIER--I crochet left handed, and believe me my first sweaters and mittens made my perspective run out my ears until I figured out to just reverse which sleeve/hand whatever I thought I was doing and I'd like to spare her that, at least--but I know that, of all things, that is the one thing I CAN NOT DO.

She's accomplishing something. She's having success. The whole reason I gave her the yarn and the pointy sticks in the first place was so she could have success at something, and it's working. I can not, for the love of wool, tell her that her success is wrong.

Yes. CSI is on tonight--that's our night. She comes over and watches it and we chat and she's going to bring her sock(s). And I'm going to have to watch her knit. And not. say. a. word. The best part of this is that we're going to spend the hour picking apart every nano-second Grissom and Sarah spend together to see if they drop any hints about how long they've been sleeping together. Good. Good...I can do that...I can work on the baby-hat to go with the socks...I can not watch Wendy knit.

My eyeballs hurt already.