Choices.

Every once in a while the universe seeks to sort me out and make me humble. It’s that balance thing again.

Yesterday I ran an entire day of errands, did my real job and finished up the day by picking up the Hank-man for a sleep-over. (My sister has gone skiing in Whistler for a few days. While she sits in hot-tubs, glides elegantly down the slopes and drinks hot toddies, I am explaining to Hank why I have “funny shampoo”, how come my apple juice is wrong, why I don’t know the whole “Dora song” and how I really do think that despite these complex and serious problems, he can stay here for one night anyway. Mr. Washie and I are trying not to be bitter.) Things were going pretty darned well.

Last night I finished the MSF mittens and blocked them and gloried in my accomplishment. I got a good nights sleep and I got up this morning and somehow managed to get four children going and get them out the door to four different schools. It was “pyjama day” at Hank’s kindergarten, and therefore I did not have to convince him to get dressed, a big bonus, since my morning had already been thrown into confusion by the presence of someone to short to get themselves a bowl of freakin’ Cheerios while I drink coffee and stare into space. I am not a morning person.

Somehow, despite not getting any coffee this morning, Hank and I were able to get out the door and off to his school on time, leaving Joe to wrangle the other three off to their schools. I arrived back at the house, eager for coffee, a chat with Joe, and to take pictures of the MSF mittens that I’m so proud of. I stagger up to the door, reach for the doorknob and…It’s locked.

It is twenty degrees below zero. I have no keys and my husband has gone to work. (An aside here? This is a man that never goes to work at 9:00. Never. Ever. I can only conclude that the many years prior to this morning where he could not possibly be convinced to leave before 10, no matter how crazy he was making me, was all a ruse designed to lull me in to a state where I wouldn’t take my keys with me this morning.) I’m locked out. Without coffee, without my bank card, without anything. I stomp around for a while, bug my neighbour to let me use her phone to try and track down Joe….then give up, head for Megan’s school, have the office pull her out of class (mother of the year award again) get her keys and come back home. (I believe that due to the lack of coffee, the early hour and the temperature, I deserve to be forgiven for anything I may have said about Joe during this period of time.)

Once in the house, I made coffee, drank a few cups in rapid succession and fetched the MSF mittens to show you. I’m so happy with how they came out.

I took this picture of the beautiful matching fronts….

2Msf

Then flipped them over and took this picture of the beautiful matching backs.

Damn

See it? It hit me like a tonne of bricks. (I would rather not discuss how it is that I could have blocked these without seeing it, but instead remind you that I am mostly blind in one eye and not very smart).

After sitting in stunned silence for the required amount of time, I have, after careful consideration accepted these three choices. You may choose.

1. Unravel the thumb on one of the mittens, graft the thumbhole closed in some sort of insane fair-isle grafting feat that will certainly involve hard liquor and curse words, then snip the threads where the thumb *should* be, unravel that part of the row, pick up the stitches and re-knit the thumb in it’s new and exciting location.

2. Knit a third mitten…one for the left hand.

or

3. Go into the backyard and begin heaping up snow until I have a pile at least 4 feet tall. Compact this snow into a firm heap and begin the tedious process of digging out a wee channel that will lead to a small interior room in the snow mountain. Then I will retrieve the mittens from the living room and take them out to the snow house, where I will remain until spring, lighting a small fire to warm myself while I drink myself stupid on screech, eat chocolate and use my very sharpest black handled scissors to snip the mittens into a thousand tiny little pieces that I will feed to the fire while aggressively and incoherently cursing my stupidity , sucking on icicles and trying to think of a reason to go on.