How I learned to knit

A friend gave me a bag of yarn she thought I'd like. She's weeding out her stash. This is one of those balls. White background with random bursts of rainbow and white metallic eyelash.

The little ball had 97 yards on it, if I read the weird and possibly foreign label correctly. After looking in vain for a pattern that would match, I decided to knit it up in simple garter stitch and see how far it went. It'll make a decorative scarf.

Knitting this fine yarn on thin needles in garter stitch gave me a flashback to learning how to knit. You see, both my mom and her mom were awesome crocheters, doing everything from lace doilies to afghans. I so wanted to learn, but I just couldn't get the hang of it. Finally I gave up.

I think I was eight when Mom's church group had a project of knitting bandages for a leper colony. If I'm right about my age that would have been sometime around 1961. The bandages had to be knitted from a certain kind of fine cotton yarn on very thin needles. I was fascinated by this process. I asked Mom to teach me that, and she did, but she was rather annoyed. "I hate knitting," she said. "I can teach you to cast on, knit, purl, and bind off, but that's it."

I loved it and knitted half her bandages. Afterwards, I knitted everyone I knew garter stitch scarves out of that good old acrylic Red Heart yarn that was nearly bulletproof. It was the only yarn I knew of at that time. Eventually, when I found some simple patterns, I branched out. When the craft became more popular and I found others who knitted and an amazing variety of yarns, I learned more stitches and more creative projects. Now I can knit lace - haven't yet attempted a doily, but I've found some patterns - and cables, and have knitted sweaters, hats, mittens, leg warmers, socks, toys.

It's the perfect craft for someone like me. I master a new craft and promptly am bored with it. There is no way anyone could learn every single knitting stitch, every technique. There's always something new to try. And it all started with bandages for a leper colony.

So where's my Manic Pixie Dream Man?

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl. It’s a common Hollywood trope, though I’ve got to admit I’ve never met one of these women in real life. A man is trudging along in his boring/routine/depressed/dead end life, and Poof! There she is, dropping accidentally into his lap, and for no apparent reason deciding he’s the man she wants. Promptly she sets about dragging him into fun, shaking up his routine, pulling him up from depression, and showing him a brand new way to live. This trope wasn’t given a name until recently, but it’s been around a long time. Example: Bringing Up Baby, 1938, starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. It’s one of my favorite rom-coms. (Baby isn’t a human, it’s a leopard.)

Others include Elizabethtown, I love you, Alice B. Toklas, The Garden State, Butterflies are Free, Almost Famous, and many, many more. The main characteristics include joie de vivre, flakieness, a bit elfin, quirky to a fault. Sadly, this is all there is to these characters. They have no goals, no depth, nothing else to them. They're bubbly, cute, and impulsive. Nothing else.

So where’s the male equivalent? It is actually out there. Sadly, they aren’t as wonderful as the dream girls. The qualities just don’t seem to transfer well, because the Manic Pixie Dream Man is basically Peter Pan. He never grows up. As shallow a character as the Girl, he has no goals and no depth. He’s childish instead of childlike, charming but shallow, and for absolutely no apparent reason is devoted to this woman who frequently doesn’t want him. She may even be committed to someone else. Looks good in a rom-com, but in real life it’s a disaster. In real life, women want more. Shallow wears thin fast. We want men, not perpetual boys. Someone to be a true partner, not one more child to take care of.

But hey, right when your life is boring and routine and seems like a dead end, when you’re depressed and feel hopeless, wouldn’t it be great to have a Sean Spencer (Psych), a Lloyd Dobler (Say Anything) or a Benny (Benny and Joon) come and fill your life up with quirkiness and drag you out to make you have fun, even if it’s just for a while?

Anything's a cat toy

The other day I came home & sat down at the computer in my study to write. Suddenly realizing I still had my bra on, I took it off and dropped it on the floor to take with me when I left. A bit later I come out of the writing zone and hear something odd. When I looked down, I beheld my cat Renee slaying my bra!

Lying on her side and with her front paws wrapped around it, she was biting the daylights out of one cup while eviscerating the other with her back feet. My phone was nowhere near, so I couldn't take a picture. I just watched her for a bit laughing then took it away from her and put it up.

Life would be so dull without cats.

This is Renee, slaying a catnip toy in the same manner.
Post-catnip:

Not a great Christmas.

This is the first Christmas without Mom. It's also the first Christmas I didn't even want to bother with even a tiny tree. I know next Christmas will be better, but right now I just want to get through it.

Bought presents for a few friends, sent out a total of 4 Christmas cards. I did put up Christmas sentiments on Facebook and sent an E-card on email. That's about it. Today I had several invitations out, and had accepted one, but woke up queasy and just nauseated by the thought of food, so I canceled. I think my body was telling me I needed alone time to process.

The Christmas service last night was lovely, and I had planned to go to this morning's. But last night was perfect. That was my Christmas, and it was enough. The church tree and all the hanging greens were decorated with over 1000 peace cranes folded of white paper. A giant paper angel blowing a trumpet in flight hung across the sanctuary, and a multitude of smaller heavenly host hung everywhere overhead. I'm in the choir, and our anthem was "In the Bleak Midwinter" which was lovely. I think we did it well. The rest of the service was mostly carols, which I love to sing.

Back when I was a teenager, I had a book of Christmas carols. I used to sing every single one of them, all the verses, standing in the living room with the tree. My family consisted of myself and my parents. I don't mind taking my Christmas pleasures alone, it comes naturally to me. But this year, knowing that my parents and husband are gone, this year is the first time I've actually felt alone.  It's sad, but it's OK. I know I have lots of friends and many cousins, and one aunt and uncle. And I'll never regret not having children. But this one time, I feel alone. I'm going to embrace the feeling because I know it's teaching me something. Eventually I'll know what.

Looking out my study window at hills dusted with snow and the neighbors across the street, I see some are gone - looks like most are gone. I'm glad for them - if they're the type of people who need to have a crowd around them, I'm glad they do.  As an introvert and an empath, I require solitude to process and detox. Even as I write this I can feel peace descending on me.

I am going to spend this Christmas day writing and then watching movies. And it's enough.

Blessings and happiness to everyone, this day and the new year.

Got home in a bad mood

I know it’s the holidays, that’s got to be it. Just something broke the camel’s back tonight. Tried to make myself do a little outside decorating at least. Tried to drive some nails into the outside walls and couldn’t. Dropped 3 times what I got in, gave up.

When I get home every single day, Kira (a cat) starts screaming at me. So I put out the food. The cats mob me while I’m doing it then don’t eat it. Then Kira starts screaming at me to sit down so she can sit on me, and God forbid I should do anything while she’s doing it, like knit. I keep the litter boxes clean but I got those covered ones to try to keep the stench down since they don’t bury their poop, but at least one of them won’t use them. Every single day there’s poop right in front of it. That’s all I can smell, anywhere in the house, no matter what I do.

The house is filthy and cluttered. The only thing worse than looking at it, than living in it, is trying to fix it. I'd like to decorate for Christmas but I just can't get motivated. It'd all look bad in here anyway. This will be the first Christmas without Mom, and I frankly wish I could just be unconscious until it's over. 

I’m so hungry, but everything smells like cat poop and it hurts so bad to eat I wish I could just poke a tube in my stomach. And then the fucking internet wouldn’t work. I unplugged the modem and it worked again, thank God. 

I hate these kind of moods. But then who doesn't? Bummer because I just got back from a very nice short vacation. Seems like I always have to pay for a good mood with one of these downers.

I've entered a novella in a SF writing contest, and sent a short story and a poem to a magazine. First attempts at traditional publishing I've done in a long time. I need to get the synopsis done for 1 finished book to try it on a traditional. Then there's the sketch I need to do so the new cover artist can get an idea of one of the characters, since he seems to want to use that one for the cover. The vivid description wasn't enough, I guess, but some people are more visual. 

I did eat a piece of peanut-butter toast and a cookie. Guess I'll go see if I can force anything else down.

Thanksgiving, 2016

The turkey breast I bought turned out to be pre-seasoned, so I didn't try the recipe I'd planned. OK by me, I'm a very lazy cook. It even came with a gravy mix. Plopped it in the crock pot with 1/2 cup water and that was that. Dinner will be at 4. I'm also having dressing made like Mom always did, a different cranberry salad than hers - it's labor-intensive and I'll have more time to cook at Christmas. Also scalloped potatoes (from a box) and asparagus. I have a piece of pumpkin pie from Village Inn that I picked up last night when I ate dinner. So I'm set.

This will be my first Thanksgiving alone, since Uchol died last year and Mom died last March. That's the last of my immediate family. Don't feel sorry for me, I don't. I like solitude, the peace and quiet. Much as I remember those huge family Thanksgiving dinners at Grandma and Granddad Smith's with fondness, the crowd got to me and after dinner I'd go find somewhere I could be alone for a while. Or close to it. Sometimes I went out and played with my two (or three if the California Smiths came) younger cousins. The women would all go into the kitchen to clean up and divide the food, the men would park in front of the Game, and the teenagers would go upstairs to shoot pool on Granddad's table. Not really fitting with any of those groups, I'd find somewhere else to be and recharge.

Today I'm going to hook up the X-box I bought for my birthday a couple weeks ago, and the Skyrim game I bought with it. Wish me luck! I've done some computer games but never an X-box, or a game that's as complicated as that one looks. It also looks like a lot of fun.

So much to be thankful for, I don't know what to write down. My house, my job, my friends, the little view of the hills out my study window. My church and the people in it. My writing. Books and cats. Coffee. Ice cream. Not having to worry about food. Having enough money to be comfortable. My cousins. I'm also thankful for the work Jared Padelecki and Wentworth Miller have done to ease the stigma against mental illness in general and depression in particular. Revealing their own struggles when they're so much in the public eye was very brave. Jared's posts in Facebook in particular have made me realize I'm not the weak-willed emotional basket case loser for having depression that people have made me feel like my entire life. The fact that I'm 63 and still here means I'm strong, I'm a warrior. I no longer have shame about my depression, and that makes me less depressed. I know I can fight it because I have fought it.

So, despite the losses of the last year, I am deeply thankful for my life today.

Physical Beauty

I wish every young person could realize how beautiful they are. Youth and its singular beauty are so fleeting, and we live in a society where people are told from their earliest years to pick apart their looks and everyone else’s, to fuel the multi-billion dollar cosmetic, fashion, and diet industries.

This is not a new phenomenon, though it’s surely gotten much worse. I was an odd-looking child, I guess, because I was bullied about my looks (back then they called it teasing) on nearly a daily basis clear through grade school. I was fat before it was an epidemic, and I was usually the fattest kid in class, unless there was another one. I had extremely curly hair that was difficult to control, and glasses that were so thick (I was farsighted) that my eyes looked abnormally large. I wore said glasses from first grade on.

The names were the least of it. Bug-eyes, Bubble-eyes, Marla Mountain. My classmates rewrote the songs we learned in class to celebrate my ugliness. When I asked for help from any adult, teachers, parents, I was told “Everyone gets teased” and “Don’t let it bother you.” It was my fault they treated me that way because “You let them see it bothers you.” Finally I learned there was no help, and it was evidently my fault because I really was freakish looking.

By Junior High, which back then started with 7^th grade, my one goal in life was to pass for normal. Mom took me to my pediatrician, who put me (a few months short of my 12^th birthday, mind) on amphetamine diet pills. In 1965, drugs like that were considered to be good for you as long as a doctor prescribed them. I also took ballet lessons, which eased my terminal clumsiness and helped with the weight loss, although even at my thinnest I was “the big girl” in that class. There was nothing I could do about the glasses at that time, though my eyesight had gotten better over the years. This is another way farsightedness is different than nearsightedness. If you read a lot – and I was a bookworm from birth – your eyesight actually improves.

When the process was finished, I looked normal. If I hadn’t been so convinced I was an ugly freak, I might have noticed that I had grown into my face and was actually pretty. But I had been conditioned for too many years to believe, soul-deep, that I was ugly. If a boy showed any interest in me, I was convinced he had been put up to it by his friends and was going to pull a humiliating prank on me. By the way, both male and female classmates had done that to me on the phone repeatedly in grade school. It's one reason I don't like phones.

Enter teenage fashion magazines. Entire magazines devoted to telling teenage girls that they’re imperfect and must fix themselves. At that time it was through makeup – tons of it. You think contouring is a recent development? Hah. Sometime go to a library and have a look at Teen or Seventeen from the 1960s if you can find it on microfilm, or maybe they’re online. Every new cosmetic was touted as saving us from our unfashionable pasts. “Finally a real color instead of those awful beige frosted lipsticks we’ve been wearing.” Said beige frosted lipsticks had been touted as “Finally a natural look instead of that awful red lipstick.” From my lofty age of 62 I can tell you this happens every few years. Regularly. Of course I haven’t taken a single peek at a fashion magazine in a couple decades.

And it goes on. Your hair is never right. Too long, too short, too curly, too straight. Your body? Pa-lease. The range of what’s acceptable as beauty is so tiny no one can find it. You can go from too fat to too thin in five pounds.

Now, I can look at old pictures of myself and see that I was pretty. Damn but I wish I had known it at the time. And what bugs me senseless is seeing beautiful young people – now it’s boys as well as girls – convinced that they’re ugly because they don’t look like the photoshopped, posed, made up, and well-lit pictures in magazines. They’re being bullied, not by classmates, but by this entire superstructure of the media and fashion, cosmetic, and diet industries. They haven’t got a chance.  And I haven’t a clue as to what to do about it.