I got up to where you start doing the decreases for the armhole on Kenobi, and decided I was just too tired to concentrate on it at that moment.

Because, I had spent over an hour previously that afternoon/evening replacing my mailbox. My mailbox got vandalized over the summer (someone went down the street pulling flags off of boxes and bending the doors open). I had managed to put it back into a sort-of working order, but the past few days, the door wouldn't stay closed, and I didn't like the thought of a bill (or worse, a letter from someone) merrily blowing out of the box and down the street, never to be seen again.

So I made a trip out to Lowe's and bought a new, "Triple Strength" (we shall see) mailbox. And got the old mailbox off the post only by applying cooking oil (I didn't have any penetrating oil on hand) to the nuts and bolts. And two of the bolts were too scarred up to reuse.

And, as it turns out, even though mailboxes come with pre-drilled holes to accommodate nuts and bolts, they do not actually come with any hardware. So I had to make another trip to Lowe's (the local hardware store, which is closer to me, closes at 3 pm, which is most inconvenient) and spend a while searching for the appropriate size. Then return home and replace the mailbox.

If this one gets vandalized I am going to do one of three things:

1. Even though it's a pain to have to go over there every day, rent a box in the local post office

2. Hire someone to build me a sturdier mailbox, like one of those with a brick post (though those aren't perfect; one of my friends who lives out in the rural area says she thinks the vandals see those as a "challenge." Well, if someone wants to bust up his pickup damaging my mailbox, then he's even stupider than I thought)

3. Hire someone to help me do Lynn's trick of buying two different sized mailboxes, and then setting the smaller one in concrete inside the larger one.

Because I am SICK of this, ya'll. I've replaced a mailbox on average once every two years that I've lived here. That's stupid - it's a waste of my time (And when you get maybe 2 hours "to yourself" in a given day, it leads to a lot of resentment, having to spend one of those hours replacing a dang mailbox), my money, it's a waste of resources (Can they even recycle old dinged up steel mailboxes? It's hardly worth my time to drive it down to the recycler). And, perhaps most importantly, it's a waste of my goodwill. I'm going to be less willing to give a few bucks for programs "to help at-risk youth" if I feel like some of those youth might be spending their weekends playing mailbox baseball.

I realize that people who vandalize aren't thinking - they don't care about the feelings or the effort of the people whose stuff they're vandalizing - but it still strikes me as one of the stupidest crimes out there. I'd like to see large mandatory amounts of hours of community service for anyone caught vandalizing. (And that includes graffiti. I know some people think of graffiti as a form of art - and, murals painted graffiti style on buildings WHEN THE BUILDING OWNERS AGREE is a form of art, but just going and "tagging" something to show you were there is in my mind no different from a dog urinating on a tree. And you know? There should be some things that separate us from the animals. And yeah, we've started having a graffiti problem in my town - apparently some gang that uses "127" as their code is marking their territory - and it's really crapped up a couple of the local parks to the point where people don't want to let their children play there any more, because they think it's not safe. So the stupid gang wins. And several local businesses have had to be re-sided or powerwashed. It's just such a WASTE.)

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On happier news. I'm trying to decide whether to do a "theme" for October. I don't think I'm going to do "Socktober!" again, I'm not disciplined enough to stick to one project type (and I can't even be sure of finishing a single thing in a month).

I might do "Finished Object October!" where I try to finish up some of the things that are currently on the needles, including several projects (Bloom, the Miranda Socks, the Morehouse Farms "Monet" scarf) that I've been working on for a long time but that have kind of been in perma-stall.

Or, maybe I should designate it as "Start-ober!" as in starting new things I want to do. (Or maybe "Start-ober" works better as a pun on "start over" - which means I could work on projects I had begun and had stalled on).

I don't know. I do know I have an awful lot of stuff in progress that I'd like to get finished up so I can start new stuff.

If I did "Start-ober!" with the idea of it being to re-start stalled projects, I have:

Samus (yes, it's still on the needles; I need to finish the bottom band and then pick up allllllll those stitches)

Bloom (which probably would finish up pretty fast, it would just mean taking it out and working on it)

the Miranda socks (almost up to the heel turn on the second sock, I think

the Morehouse Farms scarf

the crochet blanket (Yes, still have that going, too, haven't touched it in months)

the crochet Totoro (I can see why the one blogger said it "died" because she couldn't take all that single crochet. But I don't want my Totoro to die)

the quilt in the frame (Yup, haven't touched that in over a month).

A quilt top ("Straits of Georgia") that I haven't worked on in a while, mainly because I've had no big blocks of free time when I wasn't too exhausted to face the sewing machine

So maybe that's what I should do - have a clear-the-decks month where I bang through all the unfinished projects, and then allow myself the fun and luxury of starting new things when I've finished a few things on the needles. Maybe I should challenge myself to see how many things I can finish - both of the "active" projects and the "stalled" projects - this month.