My attempt to regain control of the weekend was, well... Let's recap.
Friday: Friday night was spectacular. Beyond all expectation. Friday night I sent Lene these two pictures and the following note.
The sock at 8pm
The sock at 10pm
Do not tell me that I cannot warp the time-space continuum. Do. Not.
The children were away. Joe was at work. I was alone. I danced, I knit, I celebrated the joy that only a knitter making good time in the week before Christmas can feel. I had rum. I had eggnog. I watched CSI and "The Best of What Not to Wear". I watered the tree.
I knit until 2am and it was good.
Saturday:
I got up early and drank coffee and did the crossword while knitting. (I also ate Christmas cookies for breakfast. It was not nutritious. I don't care) Not one single soul spoke to me during this time. I knit. I had a bath. I celebrated my aloneness with an uninterrupted phone conversation and a long soaky bath. I spoke to no-one during the bath. This is remarkable. Completely remarkable.
I finished the socks. (Details to follow post-gifting)
Saturday night Joe and I left the house together. Alone together, at the same time.
We went to Chinatown and had noodles. We saw a guy in a cape on Spadina Street (and I think it was his regular clothes. Very festive. ) Then we went to the Horseshoe Tavern for The Skydiggers annual Christmas Concert. (It's that Record Producer thing again. Joe is so cool.) Gord Downie sang a Gordon Lightfoot song with them. The Skydiggers at the Horseshoe singing a Lightfoot song with Gord Downie while it snows. That's such an incredibly Canadian moment that I think you might have to be Canadian to get it.
(Here's something funny. I went to the bathroom after the first set and this chick (I cannot even dignify her with the term "lady") asked me if I was the girl knitting. I thought about that for a minute. "What are the odds that there are two of us" I thought? "Yes" I said, pretty sure that she was going to ask me to make her a scarf or something. "Don't you think that's pretty offensive to the band? Don't you think they would mind?" she asked.
I was stunned. I'm here to tell you that I was knitting in the most Hip and Musical way possible. I was watching the stage, I was dancing a little, I was on my feet clapping and cheering at the end of each song. Offensive? I resisted the urge to tell her that what is actually offensive is a 35 year old woman in a pair of jeans six sizes too small for her drunkenly attempting to hit on a 20 year old hottie while wearing a shade of lipstick that should be banned. Instead of saying that, I just told her that when I was backstage after the show I'd ask the band if they minded.)
We did go backstage after the show and Gord Downie was just leaving. He said goodbye and I said "Bye". I didn't say "Bye Gord", since I thought that would be too familiar. (It's so hard for me to be cool.) He looked at me and said "Have a Merry Christmas" which is so nice because he has no idea who I am. Then I said "You too".
TO GORD DOWNIE.
(and Andy said that the band was honoured that I was knitting at their concert. Honoured.)
Sunday: Again, making excellent time with the knitting.
(This is three finished Sophie bags. This is all of them. There are two knit since the last time you saw me. I am a force in the universe.)
I decide that I am ahead enough to go to a staff party. My sister owns The Old York Bar and Grill (Niagara and Wellington. Good food), I bartend sometimes, and she throws an "it's so bad it's good" Christmas Karaoke party. I truck down there in the -20 weather. (Yes. -20. It's so cold that the minute you go outside you have an involuntary gasp. Then all the hairs in your nose freeze and you wonder why you live here. This wonderment gives way to absolute fundamental shock as you step away from the protection of the house and realize that it's actually -30 with the windchill. It takes a lot of gumption to leave the house when it's like this.) I once again affirmed my position as reigning Queen of Karaoke Avoidance and timed my escape just as several drunken bartenders took to the stage and microphone proving that the problem with drunken Karaoke singing men is the same as with drunken men in general. It's easy to get them up - and really hard to get them back down again.
I came home, I knitted some more,
Joe and I watched Dodgeball and I fell into bed thinking that I was really, really lucky to have so much knitting done, and two parties, and such nice friends and that I couldn't believe that I was having such a good time...even though the whole Christmas knitting thing is looming so big that I can scarcely breathe....and that maybe, just maybe....it wasn't going to be like that this year. Maybe.
Monday: I wake up an notice we have no water pressure upstairs. Odd.
I go downstairs and as soon as I am in the kitchen I can here a funny noise in the basement. Odd. It sounds like water.
It is water. It is a lot of water. It is a basement full of a lot of water. I live in a very old home. This means that we have no drain in the basement, that a couple of the walls in the basement are dirt, and that when a pipe freezes and breaks because it is an unholy and vicious sort of cold outside....the resulting scene in the basement will be some sort of incredible Arctic mud slurry thriving in the basement. (I would like to assure you that wading to the shut-off valve was an experience that cannot be described without suffering a flashback so horrible that I could not endure it. Let us simply say that it will be a long time before my feet are ever warm again.) We can be grateful for waking up in time to catch it before the water rose high enough to flood the furnace and water heater and be additionally grateful that the basement is considerably lower at one end, thus giving us one almost dry corner. We can also be grateful that there is a separate shut off for that pipe, so we don't have to go without water in the rest of the house until we can hunt the elusive urban plumber.
(We can only hope that Mr. Washie will survive. It's too soon to tell.)
I am behind schedule, again.
Gifts for knitters returns tomorrow...when my house is drier.