Spending the weekend visiting family out of town reinforces for me how far gone I am with this needle addiction thing ... oh yeah, I mean knitting.
So while for the rest of the clan, the weekend revolves around time together, food, a rousing game of Scattergories and visiting a Monet exhibit at the Cleveland Art Museum, here's how my weekend goes:
1) A few days beforehand I check in with my brother and discover my niece, whom I adore, is home from college and will be coming too. My response: Ohmigosh, that changes all my knitting plans! See, I figured I would finish my stepmom's felted bag and knit and felt coin purses for another niece and my youngest kid while we're there. Now, Alana moves to the top of my list (she wasn't even on my knitting radar!) This entails mentally repacking one of my knitting bags and rushing off to JoAnn fabrics for another feltable skein of denim blue.
2) Speaking of packing: I have a HUGE knitting emergency when I throw my happy feet socks into the washer and dryer with a pair of jeans and a shirt for the trip. Yet when I empty the dryer: jeans, shirt, one sock. I look again, sticking my head inside. I shake out and refold the jeans and shirt. I check the sock to see if it's eaten its sister. I look in the washer. I unfold, shake, inspect and refold the other three articles of clothing, I stick my head back in the dryer. The scene lasts much longer, with much stupider repetition, than it should. Finally I run my hand along the inside upper lip of the dryer -- there's where she was hiding. Bad sock!
3) I always drive because I'm a control freak and I'm certain Lou will kill us and everyone on the road in the state of Ohio if I let him behind the wheel. I pick him up downtown:
LOU: You know, if I drove, you could knit
ME:(Torn -- save the world from certain destruction/knit; save the world from certain destruction/knit) Umm ...
Long internal struggle lasts all the way to Cleveland. It is a calculated, low blow, but it is the beginning of the weekend and so I am strong enough to resist. ME: Maybe you can drive when we leave the restaurant
4) We are about to leave the restaurant. As I climb into the driver's seat:
LOU: Did you see what's across the street?
ME (jumping out of the car to look): Oh my God
There she stands, darkened, obviously closed yet inviting: The Knitting Room.
LOU: (Living up to label of self-proclaimed staunch advocate of a woman's right to knit: You could drive by and see when it's open.
It's only 5 or 10 miles from the hotel. All roads in Cleveland lead past here. Or at least I know I will find a way to make them to. As I drive up, I see the sign on the door CASCADE 220 For our birthday we have decided to extend our sale.
I need Cascade 220. I've never had any. I've wanted some for a few months at least. Wait, I've only been knitting a few months. Well anyway I want some Cascade 220. My husband agrees I need to come back or we will live the rest of our lives in regret.
5) Obviously this is going to take the rest of the late night to write in detail. So I will defer, and say only that by the end of the weekend, my sister-in-law, brothers, nieces, kid and parents were looking away and fiddling impatiently every time I opened my mouth. My brother Hal did understand though -- as we walked through the Monet exhibit, it had just occurred to me that my life would be a fulfilling and profoundly satisfying existence if only I quit my job and knit up a few Monets, and Hal walks up to me and says, So, do you think you could make a yarn rendition of some of these paintings?

beginnings

one more night of a six-day week, and then my payback: a 3-day weekend, hip hip!

of course we are going to cleveland because where else would you go for a 3-day weekend?
there's a monet exhibit. there's rock'n'roll. there's a great lake. dad and may will be in for a few weeks. probably for some event in may's family.

and we will visit, and i will smile and not answer any personal questions truthfully. the truth, for the moment, being too painful, messy and impolite to discuss. i have been fairly successful at avoiding any real conversations this last month and a half since my life fell apart, sticking to the superficial. it is easier for me that way, spending my time knitting or with casual acquaintances who would neither know nor care deeply if i fell off the deep end -- oops, there she goes. next!

who knows how long i will live on the surface, skating, dodging monsters.