Almost finished with the 45 charted rows of the Kilimanjaro Kat shawl border. There's still a fifteen row edging to do, ending with the ominous instruction to whipstitch the live stitches to a purl row. It looks a wee bit like the picot edge on a sock, and I catch myself wondering: couldn't you just knit 2 together, instead of having to whipstitch? And then go and bind everything off nicely?

But then again, it probably tells you to whipstitch for a reason. Probably k2tog and bindoff would make the edge too tight, or something. If I were more motivated and energetic I'd try it on a swatch, but I'm not, so there.

I think I have a touch of a stomach thing that's been going around. Normally I avoid these, I think because of my high yogurt consumption during the school year (it's the easiest low-fat thing to throw in the lunch kit at 6:45 am). I'd kind of slacked off, partly because I was really sick of yogurt, and also partly because I can now go home for lunch. But, once again, I've got yogurt and applesauce and granola in my lunch kit, here with me in my office - because, if I'm eating yogurt and granola, it makes more sense for me to bring it to my office than to drive home at noon to eat it.

Also, since it's well after 11:10 am in Great Britain and I've not heard anything, I guess I can relax and assume my parents' plane landed safely. Yeah, I know, I have excessive fear of flying. It's funny - I don't ever think about planes crashing or even about flying as a way to travel, until someone I care about is on a plane, and then I worry - and try to telekinetically guide the plane safely to its destination - until I know they're there.

A couple nights ago, talking to them before they left (it's some kind of international geological meeting for my dad, and my mom went along to sightsee) she commented that there was a lot within walking distance of their hotel. And immediately I said: "You're not going out in the city by yourself, are you?"

and then I thought, where the heck did that come from? That sounded just like what my mom says to me when I'm traveling.

Ah well. I come from a family of people who tend to be a bit introverted and emotionally reserved with each other, yet are also worriers. So my saying the above is essentially the same thing as saying "I love you and don't want anything bad to happen to you while you're gone."

For the record, no, she's not going out alone, the other U.S. guys my dad knows who are going all are accompanied by wives (I guess there aren't any WOMEN geologists at this meeting?) and the wives are going to go out together, in a little pack.

That makes me feel a bit better. Strangely, I worry more for the people I love than I worry for myself. I think that fits in with what I said once before - when I die, whenever it's my time, it's over, and I get to see what's on "the other side." But the thought of losing someone I'm so close to scares the hell out of me, and brings up all kinds of insecurities about my becoming the Weird Old Bird Woman in later life, the person who talks to herself because she has no one to talk to, who screeches at kids for walking on her lawn, etc., etc. Because fundamentally, one of my greatest fears is that all the people I love will be gone, and I will have no one left that listens to me when I talk. (And that fear trumps even confined spaces, even wasps, even flying, for goodness sake).