Well, my car has been given a clean bill of health (it WAS the O2 sensor). So today I need to buckle down and finish my part of the final exams, write the final-exam-review topics lists for the students, prepare grading keys, all of that. And go to the 'tag office' to pick up a new sticker for my car license plate.

I do not like going to the tag office. Until just a year or so ago, they allowed someone who worked there to smoke in the back - and this is something smokers probably don't realize but - if someone smokes a lot in a room, a non-smoker can tell. The whole room - carpet, drapes, furniture - was bathed in a miasma of cigarette smoke that made my throat and lungs threaten to clamp down every time I walked in there. And my eyes water. The photograph on my driver's license looks even less attractive than is typical because of the incipient allergy attack.

The great irony of all this? They used to have a sign on the door exhorting people not to bring their pets in with them, because they wanted the public to be "respectful" of the allergies of others.

There's some kind of a metaphor for bureaucracy in there, but I don't have the energy to find it.

I don't think they allow smoking any more - the odor is much fainter now - but I still do not like going.

So. Knitting. Last night I dug out a leftover ball of Kureyon (from an earlier project) and started up a hat. Just a simple ribbed watchcap, from the Vogue Knitting-on-the-Go book. It's mostly done, and when it is, it goes in the Dulaan box. Because, you know, the news: I finally hit the point yesterday where I decided that even if I had no control over what was going on in the Middle East, at least I could do something so some guy over in Mongolia would have a warm head next year.

You do what you can - or what you think you can, I guess. I keep a faint superstitious faith that by doing little kind loving things when I can, it's kind of fighting against that giant grey cloud of hatred and ugliness that's growing out there. I realize that's an idea somewhat copped from Madeline L'Engle, except without the heroic component - I'm not a star throwing away its life to fight the Dark Thing, I'm just some silly overindulged American knitting a hat. But it's something I can do, and sometimes doing something feels better than doing nothing.

So I don't know. I also called someone I go to church with - it was about an unrelated manner - and wound up listening to her for a long time. Her husband passed away about six months ago and she's still dealing with it. She had a "friend" for a while, and I get the feeling this "friend" had just recently asked her to marry/move in with him, and she felt she had to tell him no, and she needed to justify that decision to herself. It was sort of odd, listening to someone talk about a life I have no experience with. So I just sat there, and made little encouraging noises, as I could give no advice beyond, "I've always read and heard it's good to wait a while before making decisions at a time like this." But I guess she needed to talk.

So I don't know. I look at the news and get so discouraged - many times I've said this week, if I were God, I'd manifest Myself in some form both the Israelis and the Hizbollah/Palestinians/Lebanese would recognize, and I'd come down there, and I'd say, "I don't care who started it. I want it to stop right now." (Not unlike my mother, dealing with a fight between my brother and me, on a hot summer day some 25 years ago). But of course I am not God, and God doesn't seem to take advice from me on how to run things all that often.

But at least I can knit hats, I guess. And listen to people. It's not much but it's better than nothing.