I've decided to own up to the fact that I may be a little stressed this week. I'm packing 5 people for a very complicated trip involving planes, boats, cars and bicycles, I have a huge work thing due on Friday, organizing Joe is like going to a submarine race (they tell you that it's all happening, but you really can't see anything moving), I'm trying to get the house clean enough that a friend can stay here without having stories to tell our other friends (you know, stories that start with phrases like "and when I opened the fridge...") I've got several clients to wrap up with, and to top it all off, I can't find the pattern (read: lame little notes scratched on a variety of receipts, pieces of graph paper and the back of a paper bag) for the stupid baby sweater.
The Top 10 ways you can tell that I have a little stress.
10. I have started another poncho.
This one is knit from the Fleece Artist mohair boucle that I got for my birthday. Yeah...the stuff that I was turning into a shawl. I care nothing for shawls now, I care only for pointy magical ponchos. This affinity for ponchos is purely unnatural, and the only reason that I am not checking myself into the Queen Street Mental Health Centre for having three ponchos on the needles (and yarn purchased for a fourth) in the last week is that I have somehow managed to convince myself that it's ok as long as only two of them are for me. Pity me, for I am headed down a dangerous fringed path.
9. I am so worried about not having Megan's poncho done on time that last night I stayed up until 2:45 working on it, as I have estimated the number of hours that I have left to knit it in Megan's absence, compared it with the number of hours that it should take to finish, and decided that these two numbers are not compatible without substituting coffee for a fair bit of sleep.
This yarn defies being accurately photographed. It is impossibly red.
8. While abusing the glorious brown elixir of life known as coffee is not new to the Harlot, she has (since her children left) discovered that if you have no children...you really don't need to cook meals or go to the grocery store as long as you have *enough* coffee. We will not discuss the side effects of this, but say only that I have discovered that if you drink *enough* coffee, you can feel the hair on your legs grow.
7. When I discovered that I had lost the pattern for the baby sweater...I cried.
6. I believe, even given the points discussed in item #9 above that it is reasonable that I should have cast on the Fleece Artist poncho, since I am still trying to get to Fleece Artist on the Maritime vacation (even though it is located a three hour drive from where I will be in Nova Scotia, and I will have no car) purely because knitting it helps me keep my "eyes on the prize". I freely accept that this is obsessive and weird.
5. Here in Ontario, if you don't make a reservation for a campsite at a provincial park you can't get one. When I called the campsites in P.E.I. yesterday, every very, very nice person that I spoke to told me that they don't take reservations. They acknowledge that they may be full, and that there may be no sites, but assure me that they will work it out when we arrive. No worries.
This worries me.
4. After a careful assessment of minimum needs for the trip I have determined that each person absolutely needs to take more than I can possibly fit in our bike saddlebags. As an indicator of my stress, it would seem that the only response to this problem I can muster is to cast on a poncho.
3. I had to put the Dublin Bay Socks in a drawer because I couldn't stand the way they were looking at me.
2. Instead of dealing with the problems outlined above, I am instead using this time that the children are away to compile a detailed list of things that are definitely their fault. For example, now that they have been gone for two days, I have written on the list that it is definitely not Joe who sometimes doesn't flush the toilet. Even though this is not solving any of my issues, I feel productive and useful. Since this activity is unproductive and useless, yet taking time that could be spent knitting a poncho it must be a procrastination stress response.
1. Even though I am obviously losing my mind, and am dangerously hopped up on caffeine and ponchos, even though I have a work deadline that would kill a lesser woman, a twitch over my left eye, and I couldn't find the camp stove while trying to pack 76 pounds of crap in a bag that holds 23 pounds, and even though I have a bizarre obsession with not buying groceries even though we have none, just because I don't want anything to go bad while we are away...even though I really, really need to get it together over here,
I am going to Lettuce Knit for a Stitch and Bitch tonight. Fear me.
Posted by Stephanie at August 4, 2004 1:57 PM