This morning, at 8:20 am - official knitter time, I'm pretty sure I snapped. It didn't look too bad. I'm a woman of considerable reserve, so even under tremendous pressure I am not the sort of person who cries or screams in an airport if they take leave of every bit of sense they ever had. No, no - I'm pretty sure that this morning's complete breakdown in an airport looked a lot like a woman drinking coffee in the Air Canada Lounge. Only the perceptive would have seen that I was paralyzed for about 10 minutes.
8:20 this morning would have been the time exactly that I looked in my bag and realized that I am headed into about nine hours of travel, and I have left my sock in progress on the coffee table at my house, where I carefully put it right in my path, in a clever little knitting bag so it would be all safe and toasty, just like always. I've left the house times over the years, and I've forgotten my keys, my purse, my jacket, my credit card... hell... one amazing time I even left the house one kid short of a full load, but never, ever, ever have I FORGOTTEN MY SOCK KNITTING. Who am I? How does that happen? I know I'm tired and I know that this month and this week in particular has been taxing, but forgetting your sock in progress is like forgetting to chew food or breathe. I never forget my sock. Never, ever, ever, ever. Never - like the way I never kill people, or never scream in airports, or never cry in public, or never slap anyone - and for the record, I think the way I never do those other things is directly related to how I never forget my sock, and that should scare the snot out of everyone in a 20m radius of me today.
There's some comfort - and let's hope it's enough to keep me out of prison. I may be a woman on the edge, but I am still me - so there happens to be a random bag of cascade 220 scraps I was swatching stitch patterns with stuffed in the bottom of my bag- totally by accident. I'm packing a pair of cranky old knitting needles, one of which has a broken end - I have no idea why they're in my bag, but at least it's something. It's not enough to take me nine hours, but I can knit, rip back and re-knit those scraps all the way to Seattle.
It won't be perfect, but at least it will keep my from biting people. I think.
Seriously. Who forgets their sock?