Weekend's too short

Or something.

I will probably, later today, manage to get to the point of dividing for the "straps" on the front of Honeycomb, but I don't anticipate getting much further than that. (I'm going to write down each row as I knit it, because you're doing two shapings at once (neck AND armhole) and it's too easy for me to get messed up on something like that, especially with the pick-up-put-down style of knitting I tend to do.

I am considering letting a new project cut in line in the queue. The new KnitScene (which is a nice issue - Fall 10, that is - and has a bunch of stuff I want to knit in it) has a very simple cardigan (called the Whisp cardigan) knit of chunky weight brushed alpaca.

And I got to thinking: I have a bunch of chunky-weight brushed alpaca I originally bought half-thinking of doing a vest out of, then decided I had overbought for a vest. So I went and checked. I have 880 yards of the yarn. The pattern I want to make, in my size, in the shortest length (which is probably the most flattering one on me anyway) takes 849 yards. And it's ALL STOCKINETTE. In CHUNKY WEIGHT YARN. Which means it will be gratifyingly fast after messing with the sport-weight for Honeycomb. (Plus the cable-cross row every seven rows on Honeycomb). And after dealing with fingering weight for Thermal. (Yes, I still plan to finish Thermal, it's just my big push right now is on Honeycomb, and then I really want to start something new).

The alpaca I have is a very light tan color, which will go well with a lot of things I have, and a cardigan is really more useful to me than a vest anyway.

Other than that, I'm tired again.

I think there is something stressful about clearing out lots of stuff. I'm not a "hoarder" by any stretch (I admit I watch those shows some, in horrified fascination - I begin to twitch if there are two or three stains on my kitchen floor or a dirty glass in the sink, I couldn't manage to pile enough stuff in a room you couldn't walk through it. Yes, I understand that it's probably somehow related to OCD or other neurotransmitter issues, but still). But there is something painful about taking all the drafts of a manuscript, looking at them, going, "Two separate journals rejected this. It's six years old. Should I save it to try again or trash it?" and deciding to trash it. All that work.

(In a way, it's not unlike ripping back the entire front - or more - of a sweater. No. It's like ripping back the entire front of a sweater knit Fair Isle style using the traditional British "jumper weight" yarn, meaning there are like 150 or more stitches per row. Only, when I rip back a sweater, it's that there's clearly something wrong with it. Sometimes journal articles get rejected not because they are no good, but because you don't have a sufficiently-known "name" in the field, or the journal has already published "too much" of that kind of research in a year, or one of the reviewers was really having a dyspeptic fit when s/he read it. So sometimes the rejection is a "not clearly my fault" thing and that makes the rejection - and tossing out the manuscript and data - all the more painful. But you can't keep everything.)

It's painful. It was even somewhat painful to toss out a draft and some of the old data from my Master's thesis - a thesis which I successfully defended in December 1994 and which has long since had its publication value wrung from it. And tossing out stuff from the last time I TAed Vegetation Management - 1997 or so. (And the prof who taught that is now retired). I mean, intellectually, I know it's better to get rid of all that stuff. And on some level, it's a bit of a relief to just sever the ties with failed projects. But on the other hand, it's really hard for me not to think of the hours of work that went into what is now going in the dustbin and, and cringe.

I suppose part of it is also just being in around all that dust that accumulates in stacks of paper (and there was also a bit of frass in a few papers - we had a meal-moth problem in the building a year or two ago, thanks to someone bringing in an improperly-fumigated bird skin). So probably part of my distress is allergy overload, coupled with the fact that it's been unbelievably humid here (in church today, I was propping my weight on my arms and singing *very low* during the hymns we are supposed to stand for, because I know from experience that overusing my voice when it's this humid can either make me start coughing, or I can get lightheaded. As I did in class on Friday and wound up having to teach sitting on a high stool instead of wandering around the room as I normally do).

I didn't sleep well last night. I don't know if it was the humidity, or allergies, or the psychic discomfort of throwing away so much stuff that had been important to me at one point. (That actually may be part of it: confronting the fact that so much of my work that I thought was important at one time really is quite meaningless). At one point, I was dreaming that I was somewhere in my late teens again, and my younger brother was MUCH younger (than he is compared to me in real life) and there was another brother midway between him and me. And we hurried to get home because there was a tornado headed our way, our parents were still out doing something, but we just had to get home and into the storm shelter (which was actually like a finished basement; there was a room that was set up like a bedroom for our parents, and another room with three couches in it that we used as a bedroom when storms were bad. And I remember being very distressed that my parents weren't there, not just because I was worried about them but because I hated having to be the one in charge in such a dangerous situation). And I remember debating at one point running up to my "real" bedroom (in the aboveground part of the house) and getting my teddy bear, on the one hand, if I had to be the head of the household, it wouldn't look very reassuring to my brothers, but on the other hand - I really wanted my teddy bear. And at one point, the tornado was coming through, and we were all cowering under the sofas. And then I guess in the dream we all sacked out, each on our sofa, for a while, and I remember in the dream waking up, and going to check on the in-the-storm-shelter bedroom my parents used, and they were not there.

And I just had one of those horrible moments of dismay. I don't know if other people experience those in dreams, but that moment where you realize, "Oh, no. My life has changed utterly and completely now, what am I going to do?" (I will say I have also had that feeling in a dream where I inadvertently killed someone. And in another where I realized I had become pregnant out of wedlock).

And I remember standing there, looking at the empty room, and feeling both horror that something very bad had happened to our parents, and the fearful realization that now I was the parent, that I would have to drop out of school (I was about 17 in this dream) and start working to provide for my brothers. And wondering how on earth someone goes about that.

And I walked upstairs, to see if any of the house was still standing. And it was. And I heard someone in the upstairs bathroom. And I crept up, ready to run if it was an intruder. And it was my mother; they had gotten home late the night before after the storm. And then I heard my dad snoring in their "upstairs" bedroom. And I remember feeling that incredible flood of relief...and then I woke up.

And even though the dream ended well, rather than sadly, I still had to get up and get out of bed and go stare at some anime on Cartoon Network (normally I use the Weather Channel for such things, but in this case I thought it unwise) before going back to bed.

But I hate that. I hate how intense and vivid my bad dreams can be, to the point where I remember the details so well the next day. Sometimes it's almost like they depress me a little bit; I react to them almost like I react to a bad event in my "real" life. (Sometimes I kind of wish it would be possible to turn off dreaming for a night or two, just to get some better rest. Yes, I know, REM sleep is supposedly the sleep that lets our brains repair themselves, but some nights my REM sleep leaves me feeling more tired than when I went to bed.)