Sigh. The love affair is over and it’s all my fault. Let me announce to friend and foe alike: I AM AN ASS. That’s about as plain as I can state it.

So I was down at my sister’s helping out – she has a big project to finish up which is kind of impossible with an eleven month old who can now climb the stairs. On Monday, when all three kids were home, she got some kind of stomach virus. It lasted a day – literally – but she felt like crap and I tried to help as best I could. I feel like I didn’t do enough though. The big(ger) kids went to school Tuesday and Wednesday and I was on baby patrol. Tuesday night I started to feel like I was getting a cold – scratchy throat, start of a runny nose – Wednesday I felt kind of crappy all day and I went home Wednesday night. I started to feel nauseated five minutes before we left for the train station – but then it went away on the train so I thought I was okay. G and I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and bought all kinds of stuff completely inappropriate for a stomach virus. Get home, find out Max threw up as soon as my sister got the kids in the door – his first time since a big kid. Completely freaked himself out. I’m still feeling okay stomach wise so I don’t eat any dinner but proceed to finish the box of Junior Caramels I left on my nightstand before I left.

Do I need to go on? Really?

At about 3AM we’re talking PuKeFeSt 2006. There is nothing, I repeat NOTHING, I hate more than throwing up. Control issues? Check. Throwing up equals complete loss of control? Check. Junior Caramels? Yeah. It will be a long, long, LONG time before I eat any more of those.

I’m not puking anymore, but I’m having really awful stomach pains that I can’t seem to make go away. G stayed home with me this morning, but he’s about to leave for the office, so I’m on my own. I hate being sick. If you sent an email and I didn’t get back to you, I’m so sorry. I’ve been computer-less for the week and now I don’t even feel like looking at the computer let alone reading anything on it. I hope you’re all feeling excellent. My advice for the day – if there’s any chance you might be sick – stay far away from your favorite candy. Learn from my mistakes.
Thanks.
L, C

Click to read the creed.

Yesterday I had an ultra fabulous lunch with the ultra fabulous Yankee Half of Mason Dixon Knitting. Kay has often introduced me to the finer corners of NYC — cool places where suave European men make me blush as they sip Espressos at the coffee bar with their little pinkies sticking out — so I thought I’d return the favor by taking her to a chic hip downtown Japanese Noodle place that G-Love recommended. Say what you will about my husband – he gives good restaurant. After our bellies were satisfied and full of homemade Soba noodles and green tea ice cream, Kay took out the book I had been begging to see for weeks.

First off, I should say that I LOVE Kay and Ann and have been lucky enough to photograph them for an author picture that didn’t make it into the book (damn those cute ass woodcuts!) and half of their children (Kay has me booked through the last grandchild’s wedding!) All that relationship stuff aside – their book ROCKS!

The book is part memoir, part pattern guide, part humor – 100% INSPIRATION. Whether they’re talking about dishclothes, felted boxes, or log cabin blankets, the main idea of everything is to be FREE within the confines of a pattern. There’s a great passage where Kay talks about making a mitred square blanket and how she gave herself rules to follow when choosing colors for the squares. Once she made these rules for herself, she was free to choose what she wanted, but not TOO free to be stymied by the choices. Know what I mean? Lolly made a comment on my blog the other day about this same thing (at least I read it that way.) I had said all of my Project Spectrum projects would revolve around my spinning, and she said, and I quote, “That kind of focus is going to open up so much creativity….” That’s exactly how I feel about Ann and Kay’s book. They give you boundaries in which to go crazy! For starters, as soon as I see one of those log cabin blankets my mind goes nuts with the possibilities – but it’s true – if you give yourself some rules (only choose purple colors or no center square block), whatever they may be, you can actually open your mind up to even more possibilities than you thought you had – but you still don’t overwhelm the project. How many of us have opened up a Barbara Walker book or Harmony Guide or whatever and been excited for like five minutes and then sigh because there’s too much to choose from? Well Kay and Ann’s book is a great place to start – whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned pro – just enough guidance and a whole lot of vision.

The book is an explosion of color as well. Everything is beautifully photographed (by Steve Gross and Sue Daley) and yet everything is still accessible. You can see these knits in your bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens. It’s an incredibly comfortable book.

Of course, what makes it so comfortable are Kay and Ann. They infuse the pages with their humor and their humility. They make you feel like YOU CAN DO IT! They’ve done it and sure they’ve mucked things up here and there along the way but they came out STRONGER and their knits came out BETTER FOR THE MUCK UP! Literally, though, the best part of the book for me is that there’s something on every page – some morsel – you have to read closely. Have you ever read any Maira Kalman books? I love her. When you read her books you need to read every word on the page because god forbid you should miss even one thing. Mason-Dixon Knitting : The Curious Knitters’ Guide: Stories, Patterns, Advice, Opinions, Questions, Answers, Jokes, and Pictures is just like that. You don’t want to miss even one thing.

it’s not just for Wednesday’s anymore.

Can I tell you? I’m bored. Not bored in the sense of there’s nothing to do – oh my god there is TONS to do – but bored in that restless, I don’t want to do anything I have to do but there are no deadlines MAKING me do stuff kind of way. Yesterday I felt like I just wandered around the house, aimlessly, looking at the crap piled in every corner – the dirt so caked it doesn’t even blow around anymore when you move things out of place. God my house is dirty. I did vacuum though – but only the small area around where I spin because it turns out that while I don’t care about the piles of dust and hair that have been collecting in the corner of my bathroom behind the door for MONTHS on end, I do care about the pieces of fiber that cling to the carpet. Weird huh? G’s pretty funny because the other day I was in my bathroom taking a crap – because really that’s the only time I see the hair and dust collected in the corner behind the door – and I noticed that the pile was considerably smaller since the last time I crapped in there. (I like to think of it like a science experiment, honestly. The hair and dirt and dust – not the crap.) Georgie had cleaned up! He had been using my bathroom because the shower in his bathroom (yes, we have three bathrooms and two showers for two people. Deal with it.) was broken or something and he couldn’t stand the pile anymore! I think that is SO funny!

G is very good with household chores. He washes ALL the dishes, which is something I particularly loathe. And he does all the laundry, except I fold it, which honestly I don’t think is a fair trade, but he does hang up all my delicate clothes and makes sure not to dry them too long. He’s kind of obsessive (if you ask me) about taking out the garbage. All other household cleaning is left to me. Hence the pile of dust and dirt and hair in the bathroom. Oh and I wash all the sheets and make the bed and stuff. Usually he doesn’t comment about the caked on toothpaste stains around the sink in the bathroom or the fiber sticking to the carpet in all areas of the house or the piles of crap and yarn and work stuff under foot everywhere – but this little corner drove him crazy! I’m still laughing.

Did you see the poem I posted? I’m not feeling particularly bad about the infertility today – not sure why since I’ve been crying off and on about for months. I’m FINALLY, and when I say finally, I mean finally after a year or so of absolutely TORTURING myself, coming to terms with my grief about the whole thing. I finally realized that I’m ALLOWED to be sad about all of this, no matter how or why or where I am in the process. I walk around feeling like I’m going to burst into tears sometimes and I wasn’t letting myself understand why. I’d sit there and take stock – I’m not depressed. I wake up each day looking forward to friends and family and the things I need and want to do but yet I was overwhelmed by this physical need to cry – but no tears were coming. In the summer it completely freaked me out and sent me into a tailspin of anxiety and panic. This time, I understand. Jen was so good to me, in the car one day, I was telling her about it and she looked at me with this oh my god how silly can you be look and said, Cara. You’re grieving. It was like she gave me permission or something and I was good to go. I still feel like crying off and on but I’m not panicking about it – just living it.

So I’m feeling kind of cheap for choosing that poem since today I don’t really feel like I need your sympathy or anything. When I saw Juno‘s post this morning and thought hmmm, what poem would I choose, I immediately went to the anthology I put together when I taught my undergraduate creative writing class at NYU. It was the first class I ever taught and I was required to teach poetry and fiction. The poets in the program were required to do the same, so it was like equal opportunity screw up the freshman kind of a thing. I’m joking. I don’t know poetry – at all. I’m a fiction person through and through – I don’t read anything else, really. In the end, even though I was scared to death of the poetry, it was my favorite part of the class. Turns out undergrads are a hell of a lot better at writing rip out your heart angst poetry than they are at writing rip out your heart (literally) angst short stories. This morning, flipping through the poetry collection I put together for the class, I was struck by the poem by Ellen Bryant Voight basically because it so mimics my life now, but when I chose it for the class, I was years away from even TRYING to have a baby. Even, honestly, knowing if I wanted a baby at all. This premonition, if that’s what you could call it, was very interesting to me. I’m okay right now. Thought you should know.

I’m adding stuff, because, well, it’s my blog and I’m allowed.

I have two zits on my chin that rival Lincoln and Roosevelt on Rushmore. They’re large and deep and painful. And nothing to squeeze, which I love to do. Ouch. PMS sucks.

Have you been reading Bookslut and all the links they’ve had to the Oprah/Frey debacle? I’ve been known to watch Oprah every now and again (ask Rock Chick) and I’ve also been known to drive many miles out of my way to find the last remaining copy of a book WITHOUT the Oprah seal. I haven’t read Frey’s book (see above about reading fiction – although maybe now I’ll give it a shot), but I did see the show where Oprah ripped him and Nan Talese a new one. While it’s clear this guy made up A LOT of stuff, I see a HUGE distinction between Non-Fiction and Memoir. Non-Fiction is that book about how bees build hives and make honey and by reading it you KNOW you’re reading facts. Facts that you and the author and the publisher have all sort of contracted together in believing its veracity. Memoir, by definition, deals in MEMORY. The way an author REMEMBERS their life. I’ve never taken a psychiatry class (philosophy fucks you up longer and harder, just so you know) but I’ve been in therapy for years and it doesn’t take another Freud to know that memories are EXTREMELY selective and by virtue of the fact that they are remembered, are bound to be WRONG, as in not the exact truth of the moment as it happened. All you have to do is look at all the science on ey-witnesses to know that no one remembers anything right. Add to that the filter of our whole lives in which every action, thought, dream, relationship must be push through like a sausage make in order to get the LINKS that are our MEMORIES, well, then Oprah is off her rocker. You can’t expect the same facts that occur in the beehive book to occur in a book written by an avowed junkie. Please. Memoirists are writing the NARRATIVE of their lives. NARRATIVE=STORY. All story, to be successful, needs a clear-cut conflict, a protagonist and lots of drama on the way to resolving that conflict – for good or ill. I think Oprah’s call for truth is a bit misplaced. To me, it’s all, once again a case of semantics gone wrong.

I tried to spin a bit yesterday but it was a disaster so I stopped before I got really frustrated. Today I will try again. I tried to weave in some ends on short rows because after I laid out the front with the sleeves by the sides I was jazzed and I want it DONE! But there are so many ends right on top of each other and I wove some in, cut them, then realized you could see them from the front so I stopped before I got really frustrated. In the end, the only progress I made was that I’m about to turn a heel on a sock and I folded three loads of laundry.

Now that’s what I call taking back the blog.
L, C

THE WIFE TAKES A CHILD

She has come next door to practice our piano.
Fat worms, her fingers hover over the keys,
dolce, dolce, advance to a black note.
I call out answers: she blinks a trusting eye.
From the window I can see the phlox
bank and flower, the violets’ broad train
at the yard’s edge, and beyond, the bee-boxes,
each one baited for summer with a queen.

Love, how long must we reproduce ourselves
in the neighbors’ children, bees in false hives,
bright inviting blossoms, mine for a season.
Against the C-scale’s awkward lullabye
I carry the offense of my flat belly,
the silent red loss of monthly bleeding.

ELLEN BRYANT VOIGHT

Poetry Reading by Grace’s Poppies, found via Juno

WOW! Thank you SO MUCH for all the good wishes for my birthday! I am completely overwhelmed! I’ve never been very popular in my life – loved yes – but not really popular. And I gotta tell you – it feels good! If I don’t get a chance to send you an email – please know how much I appreciate your thinking of me! THANK YOU!

It was a very nice birthday overall. I kind of like to keep these things low key, you know. The calendar day tends to overhwhelm and hype the actual birthday and there’s nothing that makes me happier than doing what I would normally do on any other day of the year. And yes, that means I didn’t shower. 😉 I’m often jealous of people who have “normal” birthdays. The ones where you go about your day and little things sneak up on you to remind you that it’s your birthday – a phone call here or there. A co-worker coming by your cube with an offer for lunch. Then maybe a nice birthday dinner with the family. That doesn’t ever happen when your birthday is 1/1. First off, no one works. At least no one I know. And TV sucks. I mean, I can only watch the Mummer’s Parade for like five seconds before all my happy childhood memories are wiped out in a flash. It’s bad people. And college football sucks. Anyway – you get what I mean. It’s not a regular day. I want a regular day. Just once. I know it will never happen and if it did I’d probably be like give me my special birthday back but still and all it’s nice to dream. You people out there with March 26 or October 11 or July 17 or August 7 – YOU DON’T KNOW HOW LUCKY YOU ARE!

So the birthday rocked in all aspects. We changed up our plans this year a bit. Usually G takes me out for my birthday dinner a few days before New Year’s Eve and we have lamb chops. This year we decided that G would actually make me my lamb chops on NYE. YUM!

LOOK AT ALL THOSE CHOPS! Everything was perfect. We made our new favorite pear salad and had green beans and french fries as sides and right after dinner the Cherry Pie went into the oven and it was all perfect. Everyone checked in right after midnight. G gave me one of his special gifts (technically the wheel is from him as well, but I handled all of that) that night and the rest waited for morning.

See that teddy bear in the back? Can you make out the bracelet? It says Georgie! Awwww. And look how cute my guy is finding me some cafe press accoutrements! T-shirt, mouse pad, magnet! The sheep is knitting socks! How cute is my Georgie? And last but not least, he gave me that jar in the back with all those pink little pieces of paper in it. 365 days of love. Each piece of paper has a quote or saying having to do with love. Could you just die!?! I’ve decided to put them on the blog each day – you can find it over on the sidebar – The Daily Sap. When I asked G if I could put them up – he was like yeah. Why wouldn’t you? Dude. He’s so with the blog!

There was knitty goodness from friends as well!

Some purple handspun from Claudia which I alternately hang on my wheel or hide depending on whether or not I’m feeling inspired or frustrated. This has no bearing at all on the beyond beautiness that is the yarn. Thank you Claudia! I swear it inspires way more than it frustrates! 😉 Claudia also sent some more caramels which may or may not be the same ones my better pal sent me (Super Sleuth Ann! I smell a mystery!) and some lovely chocolate soap! Some beautiful Schaefer Elaine and a great scarf/stole pattern from Elspeth along with a very odd article about Sprinsteen entitled, “The Lawyer as Poet Advocate: Bruce Springsteen & the American Lawyer,” which was published by the Pennsylvania Bar Institute. I can safely say, Elspeth, that with this article in my Springsteen collection, I have reached fanatic status. My first better pal, Kris sent me some gorgeous red silke- tweed from Norway and a ton and a half of Joggers. Maybe our absolute favorite candy ever. Think of swedish (or norwegian, sorry!) fish on the top and circus peanuts (you know those orange marshmallow things) on the bottom. You don’t think they’ll taste so good when you look at them, but then you put them in your mouth and oh my god! GENIUS! And Lauren of Jaywalking fame sent me a lovely gift bag of Gummy Bears, hand cream, a sheepy tape measure (which came just in time because I left my tape measure at my sister’s AGAIN!) and Foer’s latest book, Extrememly Loud and Incredibly Close.

Those kick-ass girls over at JenLa gave me a superduper present too! Check out #10! WhoohOO. Most Accomplished! Talk about Nerdy Good! Yay baby! I work HARD on this here blog! Thank you Jen and La!

Perhaps my favorite gift of the birthday, though, is my TIARA! Some of you might remember the contest I had asking what I should get for my birthday. I wanted something I didn’t even know I wanted, and Wendy came up with a Tiara! Excellent idea Wendy! (By the way, her birthday was yesterday. If you haven’t already, go on over and wish her a good one!) My good friends Tina and Kaci over at Blue Moon wonderfully fulfilled my wish!

It’s beyond gorgeous! I wore it all weekend! To toast in the new year. While I was spinning. To blow out my birthday candles. At any given moment my tiara was on my pretty little head. Do you see the details?

Litte seashells adorn the edges and then there are bigger ones with diamonds (yes! REAL diamonds! 😉 ) in the center and hot pink zebra striped feathers come out of the top and isn’t it TO DIE FOR? Thank you g
irls! (And do you see what it sits upon? That’s some Tina special hand-dyed roving in Sweet Pea. That stuff goes in the special bag until I can actually make yarn. Maybe next birthday, eh?)

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH! I LOVE ALL OF IT!

So that is about all, I think – not that I’m complaining! What a great birthday! Oh wait. Am I forgetting something? There was something else wasn’t there? Hmmm.

Okay. I opened the box. Sigh. Why would people think Margene would send me ROCKS? I don’t get that at all. Personally, I liked Rock Chick’s guess best, even though I had nightmares about that movie for weeks afterward. (Yeah. Go back and look.) Although wouldn’t it be funny if JenJen’s friends made her a video and it was Brad’s head in the box? Hahahahaha. That’s just mean. I know.

So I opened the box and low and behold:

I love the box Margene! Did you make it yourself? There’s a bit of knitting glued on there with cute little baby knitting needles and it’s just so sweet – I’m going to use it as a notions box I think. And some beautiful antiquey looking stitch markers and some lip balm and cuticle cream and Chanukah gelt and the fun tissues and altoids have already made their way into the abyss that is my handbag, so no pictures of those. THANK YOU MARGENE!

Wait. What weighed so much you ask? Could it have been

SIX FREAKING POUNDS OF GUMMY BEARS?!?!?!?!?!

Margene, my love, ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME? G and I laughed and laughed and laughed! You are too funny! I think I’m going to take your suggestion and get some pretty glass containers and fill them up and put them all over the house so whenever the mood strikes me I’ll have a gb and then wherever I turn I’ll be reminded of you and your wonderful friendship. Thank you so much, M. I loved every minute of the gift! (And I think everyone else did too. Super Sleuth Ann called me at like 7AM Jan 1 to find out what was in the box. DON’T SAY YOU DIDN’T!)

Who won? I’ll tell you who won!

Go on over and congratulate her! YAY EMMY!

It wasn’t all birthday and gifts and stuff this weekend:

That’s right. I started another Jaywalker. STR Petroglyphs. Want to make something of it? I’m on the gusset decreases as we speak. When Jen was over the other day she asked me which pair of socks was my favorite and right now these are. I love the thin stripey goodness. But actually, the real answer is either the pair I’m working on or the pair I’m going to be working on next. You know what I mean? I wound up some STR last night in anticipation of this socks completion. It’s my goal to have an STR Jaywalker on the needles at all times. I’ve got a lot of STR yarn DUH and most of it is in the OLD yardage and I know I can get a pair of jaywalkers out of that. And no, your eyes do not deceive you. There is another sock – a NON-JAYWALKER – that’s Claudia’s picot edge in STR Cotton Candy. I like the edging a lot and will most likely use it for my next jaywalker, ala Anna, but I’m not so sure about the plain stockinette. You can see every single solitary flaw! There’s something to be said for variegation and zigzags.

Oh yeah and there’s some spinning.

Hope you all had a wonderful New Year’s Celebration and thank you all again for making this a GREAT BIRTHDAY! MWAH!!!!

It ain’t no kind of birthday without a Carvel Ice Cream cake! Woo HOO!