I'm back.

The visit was good; I'm surprised at how much sounder I sleep when I'm at my parents' house. I don't know if it's a result of being on vacation (i.e., no worries about people calling me up and needing stuff), or if it's because their house is on a quieter street than mine is (and the bedroom I use is on the second floor; my bedroom here is on the first), or if it's the fact that I can totally relax because there are "other" people in the house who will look out for me if something goes wrong (like, if a window goes crash-tinkle in the middle of the night - I won't have to be the one to decide whether to call 911 first or get the hell out of the house first).

I did as much of the rewrite of the paper as I could; there's one fact I need to look up in a book I have here. I also pieced another quilt top, this one was a "fast" top in a pattern I'd been wanting to try called Hole in the Wall.

I also finished the Tap socks, and got a couple more inches done on the Bookworm vest. I think the biggest triumph knitting wise though was that I FINALLY got the leg, heel turn, and gussets done on the second Canal du Midi sock. I think I'm within 3" of being done with twisted-stitch patterning. These are the socks I've been working on (though mostly off) for going on two years.

Coming home, I also managed to fit into my suitcase the Paddington Bear Christmas quilt I pieced over Christmas break and that the quilting group at my mom's church quilted. I'll have a picture of the various things once my camera recharges.

I also finished the Crombie mystery and "The Great Divorce" (interesting allegory; I will want to read it again sometime). I also bought and read "Truth and Beauty," Ann Patchett's book about her friendship with Lucy Grealy. (Lucy Grealy wrote "Autobiography of a Face," which is a pretty wrenching book about her childhood bout with jaw cancer and all of the failed reconstructive surgeries afterwards. I read it a couple years ago, shortly after Grealy died [apparently of a heroin overdose, unfortunately] because several of the obituaries mentioned what a stirring book it was). "Truth and Beauty" is an interesting book - like all first-person narratives in the modern idiom, I found it a very fast read and hard to put down. It's funny, but two things struck me from the book - first, I have NEVER had a female friendship that intense. I cannot imagine a friend of mine (even one small enough to pull it off without knocking us both over) running up to me, leaping into my arms, and locking her legs around my waist. And I have never used the "pet name" sort of thing that went on between Patchett and Grealy - I always called my friends by their given names, or by the nicknames everyone used for them. It's a level of intimacy I frankly think I'd find kind of overpowering. The second thing was - I found I could relate to Lucy in one way - she had a constant need to be reassured by her friends. She'd call people up in the middle of the night and ask them if they thought she was talented, or if they thought she'd always be alone, or (Lucy's apparent favorite) if she'd ever have sex again. (Ironically, she seemed to have far more of THAT than any of the friends she was begging reassurance from). I'm not quite like that, but I totally understand the craving for reassurance and validation - if I were a more needy/less stoic person than I am, and if I weren't abundantly aware of how unprofessional it would look, I'd probably be going around to my colleagues going "I'm a good enough teacher, aren't I?" or "Am I ever going to get an article published again?" But I don't do that, because I know it's not done. But that doesn't stop me from thinking, gee, it would be nice to be that uninhibited, even if it would piss off your friends periodically. (And I do have to admit - it would. I would probably have a hard time maintaining a friendship with someone who was constantly asking me things like Lucy asked Ann and her other friends). I don't know - I guess what I mean is I understand that need for reassurance and wish I felt like I could ask for it sometimes.

(The one time I tried - in high school - I remember asking a friend, who in retrospect was probably more sensitive and messed-up about her appearence than I was about mine, if I was 'pretty.' "Well," she responded, "You have the kind of face people don't forget." Which at the time I took as evidence that I was pretty hideous, but now I think she was just kind of deep in her own misery about how she looked [aren't we all, as teenagers?] and couldn't really say "yes" or "no")