I did it.

For me, really, the best cure for being overwhelmed is to just go and tackle SOMETHING. It doesn't even necessarily have to be the most urgent thing.

I tossed the few student papers (this was an optional rewrite and as of the end of class five people had taken me up on it....that's not to say I won't have a few later papers sitting in my mailbox (but whatever)) in my office and went home. Made a quick lunch and set to work cleaning house.

It had gotten BAD. It took me a full four hours (normally it takes two). I also cleaned most of my office here at home (it's a room almost no one ever sees but me) and did find the rest of the tax forms to verify that yes, I messed up, and it's to the tune of what the IRS said. (On one hand, yes, it's irritating to have to send in more money...but what was really nagging at me was "what if they're wrong? Do I have the energy to fight them on this?" So in a way, knowing that I just have to shut up and pay is kind of a relief.)

I also did stuff like launder the throw rugs. (I had to do the one from my bedroom twice - it had been quite a while - it was alarming how grubby the wash water got. Even though I try to remember to take my shoes off upon entering the house...)

So I got all of that done. (I do still need to change the bed linens. It's a bit sooner than I normally do, but I washed up the new mattress pad I bought last week and wanted to put it on).

I also got in 50 minutes of piano practice, which is about all I ever do in a typical working day. And I wrote my Sunday School lesson.

(And this is how I can tell - for the Helpful People who suggested I maybe need an antidepressant - that I actually DON'T: when I buckled down to work I COULD work. I could get stuff done. And my mood improved as I got stuff done. If there ever comes a time when all I can do is sit, or when working on stuff doesn't make me happier, that's when I will know.)

At any rate: the house is done. (Though it's distressingly little time before it gets messed up again. Even for someone who lives alone and, as I said, tries to remember to do things like take the shoes off at the door.)

So tomorrow: I'm going to grade those papers. But that's it, I think - I had forgotten next week is Mid Semester Assessment Testing Week, which means no Wednesday morning classes (so I can write my exam for next week then) and also no Thursday afternoon lab. So I think I can take a little breath.

I've also decided that when I haul the cardboard boxes over to the recycling bins, I'm going to stop at the new cupcake/frozen-yogurt place that opened in town and buy myself a cupcake. (I thought of doing it this afternoon but you never know with bakery type places, when they run out of stuff. If I head over there around 9 or 10 tomorrow morning, I should have the best choice of cupcakes.)

I also am going to run out and drop the ratzen-fratzen check to the ratzen-fratzen IRS in the mail. (And yes, send it return-receipt-requested or whatever the Paranoid Parrot way of doing it so you KNOW they've received it is). At least then it will be done and I will not have to think about it again.

Okay, okay, okay.

I get it....the Lesson For This Month is

"You can get all kinds of junk thrown at you and still keep soldiering on."

I think what I'm going to do is go clean my messy, messy house this afternoon (it's really bad; if the health department checked personal kitchens - and I would not be surprised if that's been floated as an idea somewhere - mine would probably fail).

And then I'm going to come in tomorrow and grade the papers I need to grade. That's the only truly urgent thing I have to do. There's always other work ("Work expands to fill the time allotted" is only partially true; it's more like "Work will take over your entire life if you let it") but I can probably tackle that early next week.

And I'm going to skip the Tastefully Simple party I was invited to on Saturday afternoon. I know, I Need To Get Out And Socialize More and I know, I told the person, "I'll try to be there," but I just can't deal with the thought of it now.

And I also have to keep reminding myself that it's really only 10% or so of the population that are the really awful, make-me-despair-for-the-human-race people so I don't get bitter towards the remaining 90%.

But it would really be nice to get some kind of good news today for a change.

ETA:

"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." (Supposedly written by A.A. Milne in Winnie-the-Pooh, though I don't remember it)

"I know God won't give me more than I can handle; I just wish He didn't trust me so much!" (attributed to Mother Teresa, but then again, somehow that does not sound like her to me.)

I give up

I just found out more details on the thing I posted about yesterday.

Suffice it to say, it just further undermines my opinion of the human race, or at least certain members of it.

I'm just completely overwhelmed right now. It seems like the minute I finish my work stuff and think, "Oh good, I can relax now" something ELSE comes up and I can't relax.

And I was also thinking about how "thank goodness, with this month's paycheck I can start to replenish my depleted savings account" but here comes a nastygram from the IRS - I effed up on my 2009 taxes (and sadly, now that I check, they are right) and owe them a chunk of change.

Also, I was nearly in a car accident coming to campus. (I had wiped that out of my mind momentarily). I was going through the never-finished-intersection construction (It's supposed to be a light, but it's a four-way stop right now). I waited for my turn. Started to pull through and turn. A panel truck came through - either he didn't see me, or figured he could get through before me. I had to slam on the brakes and it scared me. I think I'm going to go back to driving the long 'way round, which irritates me, but at least it's not likely to be fatal. (I think the truck driver just didn't see me - it's still dark out - THANKS SO MUCH DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME - when I go to work now.)

I GIVE UP. I just want to cry. Nothing is going right right now in my life.

Historical knitting photos

I gave an exam yesterday morning and knitted (on the current Toasty Twisty scarf) while invigilating. That always makes me happy, for a couple of reasons: first, I get some knitting time in,* and second, I think of the old photos I've seen (I think I first saw them in "Folk Socks") of a woman, somewhere in the British Isles, walking and knitting on stockings - I can't remember know if she was following her sheep, or walking down to the pier to meet her man as he came back from fishing, or what. But it made me happy...and it makes me happy now to tuck the ball of yarn up under my arm (just as she has) and roam around the classroom and knit while checking for "eyes on your own papers" (I've never caught anyone cheating...and I've never seen evidence lately on test papers of it happening ... so maybe my fairly active mode of invigilating serves to discourage it.)

I can knit while not looking at what I'm knitting, so I can watch the class.

And this is one of the relatively few eccentricities I have where I don't really feel upset by the thought of people talking about me doing it or even laughing at me for doing it behind my back.

(*Actually, I am much happier when I can kind of start the day with knitting. I wish I could make time for it as a reality every morning. I don't dare knit while working out because I'm afraid of getting tangled in the mechanism of the Nordic-trak. And I'm not sure giving up the 20 minutes of early-morning piano practice is a good idea. And I'm unwilling to push my wake-up time back to 4 am most days just to fit it in... I suppose I could bring knitting for the usual half-hour to two hours of office hours I have before my first class)

I tried to find a photograph of the woman in question online...I can't quite turn one up. But here's one of the actress Mary Pickford knitting for the Red Cross. I've also seen other photos of women knitting - in all the "big wars" since the Civil War. (Even know, people knit helmet liners for the troops...I guess even Afghanistan can get cold in the winter).

And Sojourner Truth knitted. (Actually that person's flickr stream has many nice historical knitting and crochet pictures on it.

And I don't really care if it's a historical figure (like Sojourner Truth), or a sweet, idealized painting of a young girl knitting (the well known Bougereau painting), or an anonymous peasant woman photographed as she knits and walks - these old photos make me happy because of the feeling of having a tie to the past. Of not being stuck in this time and place with nothing to refer back to or learn from.

And it makes me happy to see the women who walked and knit: it seems to me that here are clever people, taking bits of time that might otherwise be wasted, and using them for something productive. (I've also seen paintings of women walking and spinning on a drop spindle, which I'm guessing takes more coordination. I can't spin - my few experiments with drop spindles have been failures to date - but I keep thinking that someday, someday, I will get a chance to go somewhere like the John Campbell Folk School and take classes in it...and in stuff like weaving and even learning to play the dulcimer. There's so much stuff I want to DO, and my schedule tends to prohibit me from getting to most of it)

That said: yes, I realize that the woman walking and knitting as she walked may well have not been happy about it. I'm sure I wouldn't be as eager about knitting stockings if it was how I had to try to earn my bread - or if it was the only thing between my family and frostbite in the winter. It's very different when you knit for recreation and amusement. ("Work consists of what a body is obliged to do. Play consists of what a body is not obliged to do.")

But still...it makes me smile to think how similar my posture is to that unnamed woman in the old photograph, standing there with the yarn tucked up in my armpit and my elbows sort of relaxed, walking as I knit. (It does tend to encourage a very upright posture, I've found - I don't generally slouch normally, but you especially cannot when you're knitting and walking.)

Under my desk...

...that's where I'm going to be hiding.

Apparently someone, somewhere, out there, on a blog has accused Ravelry of hosting "right wing hate speech" (No link to the blog in question - though I've seen it - I'll explain why). Also that it permits "stalking."

There is no way this can go a good direction. If there really is a genuine hate group on Ravelry (and I've not seen it, of course...I've dealt with a few prickly individuals but no one HATEFUL), then that's a huge problem (and hopefully the Ravelry PTB will deal with it).

But, if this is someone out to slander Ravelry, to make it look bad, then that's ugly and wrong too. Defining what is and is not "hateful" speech can be tricky sometimes, and there is speech that a person may dislike greatly but that would not be considered "hate" speech, because it didn't issue specific threats or call for specific violence. (That said: there are TOS on Ravelry that are not the same thing as the First Amendment; there are probably things permissible by government that would not be permissible on the site. It's a slippery issue, like the whole Banned Books Week thing - I admit I don't particularly like that name, because there's a difference between the government preventing us from buying a certain book and a school district deciding that a particular book is, perhaps, too 'adult' for their elementary library....but both get lumped as "banning." And there's a shade of difference there; if the child's parents wanted them to read the book, they could still go out and buy it somewhere....)

Or if it's someone who feels they've been wronged in some way - and are lashing out - and are trying to use the blog platform to get sympathy/make Ravelry look like the devil - well, that's problematic too. (I hate to say it, and I hate to jump to conclusions, but I'd not be surprised if this were what was actually the case. Just based on way too many of the human interactions I've had in the past 6 months.*)

(What bothers me is how VAGUE the accusation is - no group is named, no specific instance of stalking is outlined. I can understand someone who feels threatened not wanting to name names, perhaps, but the lack of detail - especially considering the blog in question is pretty much anonymous/pseudonymous - does not lend credence to the accusations for me).

It's stuff like this kind of thing that I fear will someday make me yank out all the plugs on my electronic devices and take a baseball bat to the computer. While a lot of the wonderfulness of the human race can come out over the internet, so does a lot of the messed-up-ness. And my tolerance for the messed-up-ness is getting lower by the day.

(*Just too add: I think this is another big reason why I've felt so 'broken' lately - several people I've dealt with IRL have turned out to be, I don't know how to say it nicely, but shown the sort of memememememe and "If I don't get my way, I'm going to pout and be nasty about it" behavior that makes me absolutely nuts. There are very few things that will make me walk away from a friendship but someone who ALWAYS has to have their way ALL THE TIME and acts childish when they don't get it...that's one that will.)

Wishing for rain

I really do think the drought we've had (and the extended hot temperatures: it's supposed to be like 95 again today) is affecting my moods badly.

I drove in this morning and looked at the dustpit that used to be the lawn of my building and just felt sad. (And the fact that some people still insist on trying to MOW their dust pits, and kick all that dust up into the air, which makes me hack and wheeze, doesn't help).

The thing that really gets to me? The climatologists are saying, "Expect this to continue until mid-2012." We're in a strong La Nina event* and that leads to warmer, dryer conditions in this part of the world.

(*Odd fact: La Nina used to be called El Viejo. Apparently the chain of thought went like this: El Nino, the originally-discovered "abnormality"** in the Pacific (warmer than normal water) was so-named by fishermen who found it showed up around Christmas - so they named it El Nino, for the Christ child. And then, later, when the other pattern (cooler temperatures in the Pacific) was discovered, they figured, "This is opposite of El Nino, so we need to give it the opposite name. Some chose "El Viejo" (the old man) but I guess "La Nina" (the girl-child) won out over time. (I vaguely remember my dad referring to an "El Viejo" pattern...or it being referred to on the news - when I was a kid).

**I'm not sure why they still think of these things as "abnormalities" - it seems they occur on a pretty regular basis.

So anyway: we have La Nina to blame for this horrible, horrible weather pattern.

Eventually North Texas and Oklahoma are going to be all burnt up, so I guess the wildfires will stop eventually. (That's the other awful thing: huge wildfires in fields, some of them - perhaps even MOST, at this point - being deliberately set. And that's another one of those "I don't UNDERSTAND people" moments. I know that wanting to set fires is a sort of compulsion and could be helped, perhaps, with medical care...but it's just so extra awful right now for the firefighters to have to deal with fires people have set. And the ranchers, who might lose what little hay they had...)

I think my forsythia has died; at least, it looks all wilted. At this point I don't know if it's worth trying to water it to see if it will come back or not. I'm also starting to worry about my big old pecan and my elm tree.

Schroedinger's Nyan cat

Heh. I love the internet. (This makes me feel a little less grumpy)

An irritable mood...

I haz it.

Two things:

first, a colleague totally got me going this morning, he told me, "Oh, hey, didn't you hear that we need to put our vitas and papers and stuff in binders now for the faculty development plan? They want them all pretty and stuff." And I kind of went bonkers for a few moments, like, what ELSE are they going to make us waste our time on.

Turns out he was joking, and I totally fell for it.

(The REALLY sad thing? That's it's become plausible that I would, that that would sound like a plausible directive now.)

Second, we received a rah-rah e-mail the other day containing a statement along the lines of "Ask yourself: what am I going to do BETTER this week than last week?"

And that just makes me despair. Because to me, it implies one of two things:

a. I am not currently doing my best (and therefore, am a slacker and should not have the privilege of having a job) or

b. My best isn't good enough and I have to try even harder.

(And I have real issues with that: wondering if my best is good enough. I know, intellectually, that makes no sense, but I am not a creature of pure logic.)

(I've talked before about my frustration with the DO MORE BETTER FASTER NOW tone that exists in this country: if you're eating five servings of vegetables a day, why not eat eight? Or if you're doing an hour of exercise, why not ninety minutes? Or if you're working a 60 hour week, why not an 80 hour one...And I just want to put my head down on the desk and SOB, because I feel like I'm at the absolute limit of what I CAN do without totally losing my stuff, and yet no one EVER says "attagirl" or "it's good enough," it's always MORE MORE MORE WE WANT MORE)

Each day right now feels like it's a week long. Yesterday I had two meetings - one very sad and dire and that makes me worry I'll have even less free time in the future, and a second that was not nearly so dire but as it was at the end of an already too-long day, it just felt like too much.


I also made a stupid mistake in Biostats this morning and while I corrected it, i still feel bad, because I'm afraid it confused some people. I think I'm getting to the point of needing bifocals; it's getting harder to read the Excel printouts where I work the examples out that I'm going to put on the board. (Or I need better lighting in that classroom; it can be kind of dim up near the board).

I'm not getting much time in to knit these days and I think it shows.

Another Toasty Twisty

I've been making some progress on the second Toasty Twisty scarf. (This one is going to be a Christmas present, so while I have a deadline, it's not a close deadline).



I'm using Lion Brand's new "Amazing" yarn for this, the colorway is called "Glacier Bay." I think this yarn is designed to be a less-expensive competitor to things like Noro Kureyon.

It's a lot less scratchy than Kureyon is, but it's still not super-soft. (It may be that "nifty color changes" and "soft yarn" represent a tradeoff: you can have one or the other, not both). It's got some acrylic content and some wool, which is how I suppose they keep the price down somewhat. (And it keeps it more easy-care.)

I like what the yarn does colorwise but given the texture of the knit-up yarn, I'm not sure I'd want an entire sweater of it. (Also, I "run hot," so any high-synthetic-percentage yarn means I get too warm....wool is warm but at least it "breathes.")

I will say, though, that I really like the Toasty Twisty Scarf (link to the pattern author's blogpost giving the pattern). It's easily memorized, it works up faster than a lot of fancier-stitch scarves. And it's reversible - you do the twisted-stitch minicable on the middle two rows of the pattern, so the scarf looks good from the obverse or reverse side.

Trying too hard

File this under "brains are funny."

Yesterday morning, while working out, I thought, "I need to get another big tub of plain yogurt soon; maybe today." (Plain yogurt, served up in a little glass jar, is my standard source of protein and calcium at lunchtime). As I have four rather than three days this week I need to be on campus over the lunchtime span, I knew my supply wouldn't quite hold out.

Then, later, when I went to make toast and found that the rackin-fratzen bread had gone MOLDY (several days before I would expect it should), I said to myself, "I need to get another loaf of Health Nut when I'm at the store."

So I remembered it as: I need to get two things at the store. (That's how I make my shopping lists most of the time. If it's really crucial, like I'm going to be doing a whack of baking for an event and I need stuff I don't ordinarily buy, I'll write out what I need to prevent last minute trips back. But usually, I just say "I know I need to pick up X number of things for sure" and that usually serves as sort of a mental string-around-the-finger.)

But then, my schedule got changed, as I was having to run out in the general direction of the grocery midday for more full-spectrum fluorescent bulbs (for a student's project) and I thought, oh, I can go to the grocery while I'm out there, run the stuff home, then come back here with the bulbs.

But I couldn't remember the two things I had to buy. I could remember the bread - probably because I was so irritated that I had to fix cereal instead of the toast I wanted, because of the mold - but I couldn't think of the yogurt.

I kept thinking "It's something from the refrigerated case" but I knew I had enough milk and eggs, and I had just recently bought a new orange juice.

So I figured: I'll go get the tubes, and if I can't remember the second thing, I'll just not bother with the grocery-store trip.

Then, while driving there - my mind on something else (I think I was playing "Guess the composer" with an unfamiliar piece that was playing on Sirius Pops), it jumped into my mind: Yogurt. I needed more plain yogurt.

So I was able to pick those items up in the same trip.

I find that happens to me a lot: if I try to think of something, I don't always remember it, but if I let my brain relax and think of other things, sometimes it comes to me. I find for me it's worst with the names of authors or actors - sometimes I'm reduced to kind of flailing and going, "You know, he was the guy in the thing. The guy in the thing!" but then 40 minutes later I'll be doing something else and all of a sudden I'll go, "Oh, darn...Edmund Gwenn. That's who I was trying to think of."

("Sylvia Scarlett" was on TCM yesterday morning just before I had to go to work. Darnit, why don't they show movies like that when I have time to WATCH them? Or maybe movies look more appealing when you know you have something else you have to do...)

I find that "trying too hard" also affects me in other ways. I actually think I teach better if I don't hyper-prep for the class....I do have to do SOME prep, but it's like there's a bell-shaped curve, where some intermediate value of preparation is better than NO review, but also better than scripting everything out so much that there's no room for "looseness."

And I really notice it with the piano stuff...if I get too uptight about "That passage I always screw up is coming up" I begin screwing up even before the passage...If I think too hard about what I'm doing, if I think too hard "gotta get this RIGHT," I wind up messing up. (I wonder if that was part of my dismal performance at the one-and-only recital I did... that I psyched myself out).

I also notice with learning things on the piano, there seems to be a tipping point...a point where I stop seeing the piece as a bunch of notes that need to be played and to see it more as, I don't know, "phrases" or something. It's about around the time that I start getting the piece memorized. (Yes, I learn most of the stuff I play by heart - at least temporarily. I'm not sure I could go back and reconstruct pieces I played six months ago straight from memory). That's the point where I can actually begin PLAYING the piece...it's also the point where I stop thinking so hard about it.

However, I still sometimes hang myself up by over thinking, especially sometimes at lesson. (It's frustrating to have played something through ten times JUST FINE at home only to start messing up when I'm playing it for my teacher.)

I needed that

I think perhaps the greater intellectual stress of this fall (prepping a new class, working on research, essentially prepping Biostats new as well) require me to take more "serious" downtime (as opposed to at-home downtime, where I am tempted to do things like haul work home with me).

I went out to Denison yesterday afternoon. I debated doing it - between writing an exam, doing my piano practice, and baking a couple poundcakes (more on that later), it was about 2 pm before I was done with duties for the day.

But I went anyway. I'm glad I did. I went to a few of the downtown Denison shops I was thinking of visiting about a month ago when I took the trip to Sherman, but wound up too tired after the first antique store. (I think I'm losing some of my shopping stamina, which is sad...it used to be I could spend an entire day scouring antique shops for cool stuff, but now, one or two, and I'm ready to go home).

The first place I went had some "midcentury" furniture (I think Mad Men is definitely having an effect on what is fashionable in vintage stuff). One thing I note is that the chairs...the chairs seem SO LOW. (I'm contemplating someday replacing my big overstuffed chair...the mock-jacquard upholstery did NOT wear well, and it would probably cost more than it's worth to reupholster it. I'm thinking of getting a slipcover as a stopgap, but it's an odd size so I might have to special-order it or make it myself). I'm not unusually tall for a woman but I have sort of long legs and have ongoing hip and knee issues...so having to get down so low to sit, and then having to cantilever back up to stand is not that appealing.

(Also: I would never buy an upholstered piece of furniture used these days. I did buy a couple of vintage chairs a few years ago...and wound up with a flea infestation for a few months. I guess I'm lucky it wasn't bedbugs...I was able to get rid of the fleas, eventually, by using diatomaceous-earth powder)

But anyway: they also had some art-glass pieces. (Denison is kind of known for its art galleries and for all the artists who sell stuff there). One thing they had were fused glass necklaces. I wound up going back to buy one after looking at it, deciding "$35 is kind of a lot" and walking out and going to a few stores.

But it was the kind of piece I will wind up wearing all the time, because it goes well with so many of my clothes, and because it is Relevant To My Interests.

See, it has a tree (actually, a tree and what I kind of imagine are prairie grasses) painted on it:



I love jewelry like this. For one thing, it's pretty close to unique; you won't see many other people with a similar thing. And it was made by a local artist, which makes it more special to me. And it's not so flashy and sparkly that I feel odd wearing it with "everyday" clothes.

I also hit the "big" antique mall, wound up buying a couple of books ("Onions in the Stew" by Betty McDonald - another one of those "family living in fairly rustic conditions" books like "We Took to the Woods" where I can vicariously enjoy that sort of life while nicely tucked up in bed some winter night with the furnace humming and indoor plumbing a few steps down the hall. There was also yet another international cookbook - this one an old Sunset edition).

There was also a small uber-fancy boutique set up right next to the antique mall, run by the niece of one of the owners. They carried designer clothes. (I wasn't in the mood to look at clothes, and besides, being "designer," the chance of there being something in my size and that would suit me was small) but also fancy hand lotions and lip balm and little tins of tea...so I bought a tube of coconut-honey hand creme (I get very dry skin this time of year) and a couple little tins of fancy tea.

I also stuck my head in an "antiques and books" place. (The nice used-book store that used to be there either is no more, or has moved somewhere not obvious to me. This place was different, it had clearly different stock than what I remembered the other place having). I did find a nice old reading copy of Eliot's "Romola" (probably over 100 years old, though it had no printing date...not in fantastic shape but a nice old book and it will be a good copy to read from) and a book on the history of the Impressionist era.

After that, I decided to run to a few of the chain stores - my plan was to run to the bookstore (I was looking for the Folger edition of Richard III - which it turned out they did not have) and the craft shops.

I decided to run into Tuesday Morning. I rarely go over there, despite the fact that they have some interesting stuff and sometimes quite good deals. Part of it was simple pique: I had heard people tell of finding good yarn on a good price there, but whenever I went in there was either no yarn or it was yarn that didn't appeal to me. So I figured our "local" branch just didn't get the good stuff. But this time I went in because I needed a new mattress pad (The old one I have is QUITE old, and the elastic on it has perished) and I figured they'd have a decent one for a good price. (They did). So I decided to check for yarn.

And I guess it was my day to be lucky. I wound up with five skeins of Auraucania Ranco - a sockweight yarn - for $6 a skein (they are 100 g skeins - I see them for sale online for $18, and by comparison, a 50 g skein of Paton's sockyarn is $6 at the Hobby Lobby).



So, I got the one intact green skein (There was another one that had been partly unwound - a nightmare to try to ball up, I'm sure). And the last pink one. And three skeins of blue, with the vague plan to make a shawl with it someday.

And a couple skeins of what turns out to (apparently) be a Tuesday Morning house-brand bulky yarn, for a hat pattern I bought earlier this week.

The pink skein will probably become the cabled socks in the new Jane Brocket knitting book I was talking about, and the green yarn may become the Nemesis pattern from Knitty.

So, I don't know. I had mainly gone into Tuesday Morning in the past when I needed something that would work as a gift in a "blind" gift exchange (where you didn't know who was getting what you gave, so you have to choose something like a nice set of hostess towels or a teapot and fancy tea or something and hope the person likes it) but maybe I'll have to check back more regularly to see if they have nice yarn ever again...

Oh, the poundcake. I had a bunch of the custardy dressing left from the fruit salad and got to thinking that it would be good on pound cake - so I made one. Well, not a true poundcake, because it had only 1/4 pound of butter and maybe 1/3 pound of eggs in it (4 eggs, 2 cups sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 3 cups flour, plus a cup of buttermilk and a tiny bit of baking soda, vanilla extract, and almond extract). I wound up with two because the recipe called for a 9" tube pan but I wanted to do it in loaf pans instead - I got two average-bread-loaf sized cakes out of the recipe. So one of the loaves is frozen, and the other one I'll pick at over the next week or so. (I think probably, if you're going to eat sweets, something like a good honest homemade poundcake where you know what everything in it is, is probably better for you - despite the butter and sugar in it - than some kind of "diet" treat from the store that's full of synthetic chemicals and artificial sweeteners or fake fat. And there was a certain satisfaction in making the cake and seeing it turn out - especially the very last moment, after cooling it for fifteen minutes and experimentally tipping over the loaf pans, hoping the cake would come out and not crack...and both came out just perfectly.)

With grown-up experience

Sometimes I wonder if some of the things adults deem "too scary" or "too sad" or whatever for children is a result of the differences in life experience - in that, the scary-sad-whatever thing doesn't bother the child nearly to the extent that it affects the adult.

I think of this because I remember the first time I read The Hobbit - I was in third grade or so - and my father asked me if I didn't find the book "scary." That baffled me - it wasn't scary, it was exciting.

When I re-read it a few years ago as a full-fledged adult (I read it a few times as a teen), I realized what he meant - the scenes, especially with Bilbo lost in the caves, from an adult perspective, ARE scary. (Since I discovered that I was somewhat claustrophobic, reading anything that is set in a cave or some other kind of dark, confined area where there's not a clear exit is kind of unsettling).

I thought of this fact that morning watching the finale of (you guessed it) the season opener of My Little Ponies. (And after here, there be spoilers, so if you are watching and haven't seen the episode, be forewarned)

I don't know if this heralds a return to the "Magical Girl" (a la Sailor Moon) type of storyline - which was supposedly one of the original directions of the show but then it got shifted to a more slice-of-life type episodic series (where the episodes could be viewed in any order and still make sense). Unlike many adult Pony fans, who seem to be polarized on the issue, I don't really care - I enjoyed the slice-of-life episodes but would still enjoy more of an Epic Journey/Magical Girl type of thing.

Anyway, to sum up: Discord (a sort of dragon-thingie, voiced by John DeLancie, very much in "Q" mode) is unleashed from his prison (he was turned to stone). One of his first things is to separate the six main ponies from each other. (Apparently these "Mane 6" have become the guardians of peace and harmony in the land, by virtue of some mysterious "elements" that each one exemplifies. Or that exist as jewelry. It's not entirely clear)

Each of the ponies is linked to some kind of positive character trait: Rarity is generous, Applejack is honest, Fluttershy is kind, Pinkie Pie is cheerful, Rainbow Dash is loyal, and Twilight Sparkle is smart (and magical). So Discord's MO is to take those traits from them - Rarity becomes grabby and greedy (and rude: normally she is probably the most mannerly Pony), Applejack starts to lie, and so forth.

Last week's episode ended with all the ponies except Twilight being under the spell (you would tell this because they turned a paler shade than they normally were - in this episode, when things got worse, they actually turned grey).

They return "home" (Ponyville). Twilight is STILL trying to get the malenchanted ponies to work together, without much success. She first gets several stubborn ideas of how they could defeat Discord. Nothing works, because they currently hate each other.

Finally, Twilight gives up. She just admits that nothing she's tried will work. And at that point she turns grey, it starts to rain, she slowly walks back to her home to pack and leave - to run away to the sort of college-for-magical-ponies she used to attend. (And I admit, at that point a small mote of dust must have flown into my eye).

While packing, she comes to a realization of what needs to be done (mainly because her mentor is sending back to her all the letters she wrote - where she spoke of what she and her friends had done, the things they had succeeded at over the past year).

So she goes and finds her friends, and works a "memory spell" (And I admit, a bit of frustration there: "Wait, it was that easy all along?") which largely consists of her touching her horn to their forehead and making them remember the past good times, and remember who they were.

(And I have to say, I think this was the moral I got from the show, even if it wasn't the intended one: "Friends are the people who help you remember who you are, even when you have forgotten." And at that point a considerably larger piece of dust got in my eye).

And of course, once everyone remembers who she is, what her real strengths are, and they're once again friends, they can defeat Discord. And everything is back as it should be.

And I have to admit, that's one thing I like about many cartoons. The fact that at the end of the episode/series, order is restored. Things are back as they should be. I have a very deep need for stories like that - I need to be reminded that Things Will Be Made Right In The End.

Because it looks like so much in this world goes wrong.

I think the episode affected me more strongly than it might your average, still happy-go-lucky 7 year old girl (All bets are off on the ones already sufficiently battered by life not to be happy-go-lucky any more). I've had experiences of losing friends - losing them forever, apparently (Not, as far as I could tell, because of anything that I did...usually a "growing apart" sort of situation. Or something like that they married and had kids and we couldn't relate to one another as easily any more. Or, the first and still painful situation: a friend who was invited to join the "popular kids' table" in school and asked me not to hang around her at school any more, in case of damaging her newfound popularity. (And I will go to my deathbed marveling that I just accepted that. That I didn't have the guts to tell her off, or something.)

And I've probably known more defeat than the average pre-teen girl.

(And I have to admit, the whole concept of "friends are the people who remind you of who you are, even when you've forgotten" kind of killed me, because I don't really have a close friend right here in town right now like that. Not someone I feel like I could expect to always be there for me. (I do have friends, but some of them live distant from me, and some of them are busy enough that I'd feel uncomfortable calling on them for just anything) I realize this is partly my own doing: I tend to follow Ben Franklin's old "Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none." Though I think old Ben was maybe a bit wrong; I think people do need more than one close friend.)

But anyway...I found myself thinking partway through the episode, "Wow, this is really kind of dark for little kids to watch" but maybe not, maybe it's just being filtered through my adult experience. (I suspect the same thing is true of those who would seriously bowdlerize fairy stories; a lot of the stories I remember reading as a kid - yes, from Grimm's or from the Red Fairy Book - that didn't really affect me and certainly didn't scare or (seem to) warp me - are ones that people have deemed to scary or sad or violent for kids today).

I wonder if maybe little kids are more resilient than we give them credit for, and maybe even more resilient than us poor, old, worn-out adults, who have seen too much of the cruelty the world can wreak.

Evening at home

I think part of the problems I've had over the past weeks are due to the fact that I've been pushing myself hard for a while at work - doing a new prep is no joke (I had forgotten how starting absolutely from scratch differed from the sort of tinkering and updating that I normally do). And I'm fretting over the ultimate outcome of the summer research - I have everything kind of half-analyzed, but am finding it hard to find a sufficiently large chunk of time to re-organize everything (find where I put all the articles I'm using as background) and complete the job.

I did start putting together the presentation I will be giving over it in November, though, so that makes me feel some better.

(Actually, that may be part of my problem: the paranoia about deadlines getting too close. I'm probably 3 weeks ahead in PI at this point and could take a bit of time off from the heavy-duty prepping).

So I've felt kind of like this all week:


see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Socially Awkward Penguin lolz!

I could tell I was in a grumpy mood because (a) things that normally made me chuckle made me cynically roll my eyes and feel vaguely annoyed and (b) stuff like all the e-mails I get from various charities ("You can help pets in crisis NOW!") and from the different groups wanting time, rather than money ("March against Domestic Violence!") started to get to me. While many of the things are worthy causes, it's just...Like I said several weeks ago, sometimes you have to put on your own (figurative) oxygen mask first.

I took (most of) yesterday evening off. (I still had to do laundry, and I still wound up spending about 1/2 hour making a custard-based dressing for a fruit salad for a lunch today (Why, fillyjonk, why? Why are you such an overachiever? People would have still eaten the fruit and been happy without a fussy cooked-custard dressing to go on it.)

But then I got to sit down and knit for a while.

I have an exam to grade this afternoon, and an exam to write for another class for next week - but I think I'm going to force myself to carve out some time this weekend (all day Saturday, if I can manage it) to relax. Because I feel like I need it. Badly.

Edited to add: I think another thing is, I've been really suffering from a deficit of frivolity recently. Either in the sense of doing some of the silly things I do or enjoying some of the silly things I enjoy. It's not good for me to be too serious all the time...if I start taking things too seriously, little things start annoying me and I lose the ability to laugh at how fundamentally absurd life is. And I begin feeling like my purpose on this earth is just to be a swot who does stuff for other (unappreciative) people....so I need to do something frivolous and fun this weekend, I think.)

Make do, mend

I recently bought a copy of the newest issue of the Debbie Bliss knitting magazine. It had a couple of projects in it I might want to make someday. (With knitting magazines and such, I find you have to get them when you see them...because if you decide in the future you want that issue, you sometimes wind up in a fruitless search on eBay or somewhere).

It also had a couple of interesting articles in it. The one that grabbed my attention the most was the one titled Make Do and Mend, which was a very short discussion of the challenges of clothing oneself in WWII era Britain.

(I have to confess: I'm utterly fascinated by the whole WWII-in-Britain history. It wasn't all that long ago, and yet...it's a time so different from our own. And I wonder how we present-day folk would bear up under the stresses. The risk of being bombed while you tried to sleep in bed, or tried to cook dinner, or tried to go to work, would be by far the worst...but the rationing made things even more difficult. Right now I'm reading Vere Hodgson's diaries from that era ("Few Eggs and No Oranges"). I've also read some of the Mass Observation writings, and I have a copy of Nella Last's war diary to read sometime. I think M.F.K. Fisher's "How to Cook the Wolf" first got me interested in it - even though I had the standard boilerplate history-of-WWII that most American kids of my era got in school, I had no idea at all how awful and stressful things were in Britain during that time - and how people really, honestly believed that they might be invaded by the Nazis. (The now-famous "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters, which were never ACTUALLY used during WWII, were printed up as preparation for that possibility...which I admit, made me look at the whole trope with a more jaundiced eye and a bit of a shudder once I knew its history.)

The article talks about the kind of austerity measures individual families had to take, problems like, "How do you get material to make underwear for growing children if there is no material to be had in the shops?" (In some cases, if a parachute could be salvaged, that was used...and I've read of brides getting married in dresses made of parachute silk.)

The author describes Mrs. Sew-and-Sew, the mascot of the "Make do and mend" campaign. (Another writer - I think it was Raynes Minnis, in a book I read, described her as "insipid"). And the article author notes:

"Mrs Sew-and-Sew was the campaign poster girl who encouraged women to go through their wardrobes and make the most of what they found there. For working-class women who had never had many new clothes, Mrs Sew-and-Sew's well-meant advice was patronizing in the extreme. It had long been a point of pride for those women to come up with the most ingenious ways of turning old into new...But for middle-class and even upper-class ladies, Make Do and Mend was a whole new adventure, and one not especially relished." (emphasis mine).

"Patronizing in the extreme." Heh. I will note that I nodded in recognition - that's exactly how I've felt about some of the "new frugality" advice I've seen, the stuff like, "Carry your lunch from home every day and save money!"

As we used to say when I was a schoolgirl: "No duh."

I think it is partly the breathless tone of some of that "advice" that annoyed me, along with the fact that so much of it seemed to me to be, well, plain flat common sense. (Then again: common sense is less common than one might think.)

I also noted the bit about working-class women being experts at "making over" clothes: my mother talks about how when she was a girl, her mother was so good at re-doing clothes (for example, when my mom's older brother was demobbed from the Navy - this would have been at the end of WWII - she used his old uniform to make jumper dresses for my mother). In fact, my mom remembers that on occasion, people would stop them on the street and ask her mother where she bought the clothes!

The amusing thing about the article, is that the author perhaps falls a bit into the Mrs Sew-and-Sew trap: she suggests that in the light of new environmental concerns, we all do things like "keep a cotton t-shirt another season, applique a pretty patch over a stain, and turn up the sleeves to hide a frayed hem."

(I laugh, because I have a few t-shirts that are closing in on being 20 years old. Yes, I still wear them. A few are worn enough that I wear them as pajama tops rather than wearing them out of the house. And I've tried to do things to fix frayed hems on my slacks, though that's mainly because I'd rather do the repair than go out shopping for a new pair.)

But it amuses me that these things - which I've been doing much of my life, and which my mother has done (she darned socks even when it was hard to find darning cotton* and she "turned" the collars on my dad's shirts when they got worn) are promoted as these new smart ideas. (My mom grew up, I guess you'd call it working-class. But my family was pretty firmly middle-class...my parents were just frugal.)

(*I remember once we were all out at the mall, she was trying to find darning cotton - black darning cotton, so she could fix some of my dad's socks - and no where had it. Not even Woolworth's, which normally seemed to have such things. My dad quipped: "Twenty years ago, when you got a hole in socks, you said, "Darn these socks" and put them in the mending basket. Now, I guess, when you get a hole in socks, you say "Damn these socks!" and throw them away.")

Thank goodness, though, that we don't all have to wear "utility" undergarments like the people in WWII Britain. And thank goodness that I have enough funds that if a bedsheet wears out, I can decide not to cut it down the middle and resew the hem-edges together, like people used to do. (I know how; I just think I'd prefer not to. I've never had to do it, though...never had a sheet wear out yet.)

Pass the benadryl

I may need to resort to something stronger to fight allergies. (If I do take Benadryl...well, it will have to be at night, and it will have to be the children's sized dose, because it really affects me strongly. Just like caffeine does. And any decongestant...and lots of other things. I rely mostly on non-medicine-based home remedies for stuff because I seem to have such a twitchy liver.)

Last night was not a good night. I got to thinking about, "Okay, you say you can't ask people for help, when have you asked people recently" and then thought of the broom on my roof. Yeah, the broom that I lost up there last summer. A couple months back I asked a couple people for help in getting it down. In both cases I got a "Yeah, sure, I'll call you and come out and help you" and got the same response when I asked the person again.

And they never came.

So, whatever. I decided the broom will stay up there until it falls down, I figure out who I can HIRE to get it down (some workmen won't go up on roofs - liability issues), or until I can borrow a taller ladder than I own (and get it to my house somehow, my car being too short for most ladders) and get it down myself.

Actually, on a few occasions when I've asked for house-assistance in re: something I shouldn't have to hire someone for, I've gotten similar responses: "Yeah, sure, I'll call you" and then nothing.

So I give up.

Intellectually, I tell myself that people are busy and they forget. But emotionally - and this was what killed me so last night, lying in bed, trying to sleep - it bugs me that I apparently am not important enough to merit 25 minutes of someone's time some afternoon. And I'm not good enough at being pushy or being whiny (well, whiny at specific people) to annoy them into helping me - and I don't want to do that, anyway.

So the lesson I get: either hire someone or do it yourself, 'cos you're in this all alone, kid.

Not a very happy lesson, that.

(And seriously: WHY AGREE TO DO SOMETHING YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO DO? I mean, is it really that hard to say, "Gee, I'm awfully busy right now" or "I hurt my back a few weeks ago and really shouldn't be doing that" or "Afternoons are a really bad time for me." As hard as it is for me to say "no" to people asking me to do stuff, if I have a legitimate reason - even if I'm just super busy - I can say "no." And I'd rather say "no" than say "yes" and have to call the person up and explain that I can't do it after all.

But this is one of the things that makes me crazy about people. Or maybe people that surround me, I don't know - I've had so many cases of people agreeing to do stuff and then just never doing it. Or people setting meetings with me and never showing up when I made an effort to be there.

I know people don't realize that that behavior is gradually "breaking" me for wanting to work with people, but it is. I have a really hard time trusting that anyone will do anything they agree to, which is why I tend to worry so much.)

So I don't know. But not getting help when help is offered is just something else that makes me not want to bother asking.

***

Last night, I picked up the front of the Ropes and Picots cardigan and started working on it. And I looked over at the sleeve of Potter and thought, "You know, you really should finish that sweater before continuing on this one." And then I thought: "You're certainly not very regimented about how you do your projects; you start stuff willy-nilly and sometimes take years to finish something someone else might knock out in a couple weeks."

And then I realized: forget about being 'regimented' about the timeline of my knitting (and quilting, and embroidery, and crochet) projects: I'm so regimented in the rest of my life that this is one area where I can actually relax and not worry about being "responsible" all the time.

In a lot of ways, I measure out my life with Alfred Prufrock's coffee spoons: most days, it's get up between 4:30 and 5 am, put in an hour's time on the cross-country ski exerciser. Wash, dress, make my lunch (for some reason, I find few quotidian things as depressing as packing a lunch every day), eat breakfast, practice piano for 20 minutes if I have time.

Go over to work, check my e-mail, prep for morning classes. Teach, prep the stuff I need to have ready for the next day. Go home, sometimes stopping at the grocery or pharmacy on the way. Do the rest of piano practice. Fix dinner. Do any slop-over work I couldn't get done during the day. Maybe do a load of laundry. Go to bed and read for a while, but go to bed early enough that that 4:30 wake-up won't be so painful.


And sometimes: go to meetings, even though there's just about any other place that I'd rather be. Make and go to dentist appointments. (That's how I knew I was a really-real grown up: when I started making my own dentist appointments). Doing volunteer work. And on, and on.

And it does get to be a lot, sometimes. It does get to the point where I'm overwhelmed.

And so I need something where I can be a little undisciplined and do what I want and not worry about what others think (That's also why I will never enter a quilt in a contest, or enter my knitting at the fair. I think having it judged - even in the friendly "here's how to improve" sense would destroy the enjoyment for me. I'm good enough at seeing the flaws in my work that I don't want someone else pointing them out to me.)

But I admit, there are times when I just want to kick over the traces. Skip a meeting I said I'd go to and be totally unapologetic and not try to come up with a good explanation why. Or sleep in for a week and not drag my tail out of bed when any reasonable person is still asleep in order to exercise. Or go and stay in a nice, fancy hotel somewhere and order room-service for dinner every night and not worry about how much money I was burning through. (Though I've never done any of those things, and probably never would, sometimes I really want to).

This and that

I'm in my office, procrastinating/picking away at work. (There are things I could work on but nothing urgent).

I tried to get duckweed for a "new lab tryout" today. Couldn't find it where my colleague said he had seen some. Scrambled down over a bunch of steep banks, in the not-so-good part of town, listening nervously to the barking dogs ("Do they sound like they're getting closer, or are they tied up in a yard?") and also expecting someone to confront me because I had no idea if I was on private or city property.

I finally gave up. I do have another lab set up that we can do tomorrow. And now my bad hip (the one I had bursitis in this spring) is hurting again. Ugh.

****

So, in my procrastination, I searched around, based on what I was talking about the other night. Scholastic Books still has book clubs. No idea if they still have the little long rectangular newsprint order forms like they had when I was a kid in the 1970s, but it makes me happy to know they still exist.

Being able to order books at school was a big deal. For one thing, it was books. I always loved getting and having books of my own. (Even though we went to the library weekly). And then there was the aspect of getting something in the "mail" - something I still love to this very day. (Part of the reason I buy so much stuff - a lot of it which I don't really "need*", and I admit that - through mail order is that it's such a cheering thing to come home at the end of the day and find something I ordered waiting for me on the doorstep)

(*for example, I am quite sure I've reached SABLE** but I still keep wanting to order more yarn)

(**Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy, for those unfamiliar with knitter's acronyms)

***
And they still do book fairs.

And RIF still exists.

Good to know.

***

Right now I'm feeling a little sad and Eleanor Rigby. I get this way sometimes. On the one hand: I'm really not that good at the interpersonal-relationship thing. And it's hard for me to reach out - I partly joke (but partly state in bitter earnestness) that I experienced sufficient rejection from my peers between the ages of 6 and 12 to want to avoid ever experiencing it again. And early patterns are hard to break - I know intellectually "There is no good reason for one of your peers to rudely rebuff you, and even if they do, that tells you more about them than it does about you" but emotionally it's surprisingly difficult to break through that.

And you hear horror stories...a friendly acquaintance was broken up with in a very cowardly and lily-livered way (At least he didn't drain a shared bank account or anything dastardly...just packed his stuff and slunk off, leaving a note for her). And even otherwise-happy couples get into arguments, and you're there witnessing it, and if you're like me, you just want to go home and lock the door and never admit another human being again.

And yet, on the other hand...there are times when it would be nice to have someone else to lean on a little bit. It gets to be an awful lot to always be strong, always be capable, always be tough. I saw that last week when the plumbing went wrong - Oh, I managed, but not without completely melting down for about five minutes on the phone with my parents when they called Wednesday night (and at that point I was still facing two nights and at least one day without water, at the best, and I didn't even know how easily it could be restored.)

I don't know. After the fact several people I know said to me, "Oh, you should have called me; I would have let you come over and shower or come over for dinner." But it's so hard for me to call people, because of the combination of having been raised to be fiercely independent, and those ghostly memories of being laughed at on the playground when I tried to make friends with someone who was out of my coolness league. And I'm bad at judging "are they saying yes to me because it's really no trouble and they're happy to help, or are they saying yes because they feel some obligation to."

(There's a great internet post on Metafilter, of all places, about Ask vs. Guess culture (scroll down to 'tangerine's' post.). The upshot is, some of us have the mental programming (whether nature, nurture, or some combo platter of both, I don't know) that tells us, "Don't ask for something unless you are pretty sure the answer will be 'yes,' you don't want to put people out" and there are other people who are programmed to just ask at will, and who are ready to hear a "no." The problem comes in that Guess people, when asked stuff by Ask people, get annoyed and feel put-upon ("How on earth does she think it's OK to ask me that?"). And Guess people are afraid of asking for something that looks like too much. I can't really address the problems that the Ask person faces because I'm so firmly in the Guess camp (I recognized myself right away in her description) that it's actually kind of difficult to visualize a different way of being.

And similarly, I get annoyed by vague statements that I take as "promises" - a couple of my cousins and I went to the same college, but were in different majors (and they were a year ahead of me), so we rarely saw each other. One of them once said to me, when we met on the street, "Oh, let's go get lunch sometime." And he never called to make those plans, and when I brought the issue up he was baffled - "did I really say that?" I think that may also be a part of Guess culture, tending to take people at their word, when in Ask culture, that kind of thing is much more casual. I don't know. (Or maybe he said "Let's do lunch," and it was during that time when that was sort of a slang phrase for "Hey, see you around" but I didn't know it - being the unhip kid I was - and I misinterpreted. But whatever).

***

Maybe I just need to start a new project.

I've been looking at my stockpiled yarn and thinking of all kinds of good new things I want to start...I bought some lovely silk-blend dk weight on my "playdate trip" earlier this summer, for the Hampton Cardigan in New England Knits. And I'm looking at some of my brilliantly-colored sockyarn and thinking that rather than socks, I might get into making more "shawlettes" (small shawls worn mainly as an accessory rather than for warmth).

And also, I keep looking at both Rupert the Fawn and the Teal Deer, and thinking, "I could very easily modify that pattern into a pony."

Yeah...I'm thinking of making my own huggable version of Fluttershy. I can see easily how I could do it....the only tricky things would be getting the wings right (maybe I could look at some dragon patterns and mod the wings, or see if I can find a pattern for a tree-topper angel, and use those) and the hair (the hair will never look like the hair in the cartoon, but then again...the commercially produced "brushable" toys have, IMHO, kind of ugly hair And a lot of them don't really look like the characters in the cartoon that much).

I don't know. I recognize it's totally silly but making toys soothes me in a way...and having the toys sitting in my bedroom also soothes me. (For example: I've tucked my Cheese-Kun up behind my head while I'm reading. He's just the right size for that). Or when I'm feeling especially sad, I tuck Rupert the fawn, or one of the teddy bears I've made over the years, or one of the amigurumi cats up into the crook of my arm. It's not the same as having a pet (and the severity to which my allergies have progressed suggests that a real furry animal is probably not a possibility for me at this point, and things like iguanas aren't exactly cuddly), but it helps a little.

Maybe it's that I need something that I can imagine is happy to see me when I get home. (I have houseplants, but they're annoyingly inscrutable.)

***

I don't know. I hate fall allergies, because they take my already mercuric moods and make them even more changeable, and make the bad moods more severe and harder to snap out of than they otherwise might be. I recognize this fact and can function more or less normally despite it, but I'm not happy about it.

I'm hoping for an early freeze this year but I don't anticipate us getting one.

There's something hopeful...

...about a big chunk of a sweater being done.



I soaked and blocked the back of the Ropes and Picots cardigan last night. As I said, I don't have too many of those blocking squares (certainly not enough to block the whole sweater at once), so I'm going to block it piece-by-piece as I finish the pieces.

You can kind of see lines of more open knitting - those are the purl stitches that border the twisted-stitch "ropes."

Print's NOT dead

This is an interesting argument, and one that I admit, with some embarrassment, I had not considered before:

eBooks are great, if you can afford one.

There are still an awful lot of people who can't, though. However, most people, if they want one, can get a library card. (Provided they live where there are libraries.)

I know there's been talk of subsidizing or giving e-readers to people who can't afford them, but...I don't know, that doesn't sound like a good solution to me. As the writer of the original post (who apparently did grow up poor noted): some of those will be re-sold for the money, however little, they could bring (which might solve the problem of "how will my family eat for a couple days" but it doesn't solve the book problem, and it certainly is a roundabout way of getting grocery money into people's hands. And having heard apocryphal stories of donated winter coats for children being sold by their parents to support whatever habit the parents have...)

And as the writer notes: "When I was a kid with nothing, any nice thing I had the audacity to have would be quickly stolen, either by people just as poor as I was, or by richer kids who wanted me to know that I wasn't allowed to put on airs like that." (I vaguely remember the richer kids doing stuff like that to the poorer kids when I was in school. Though, as I remember, it was more a case of vandalizing or otherwise spoiling the nice thing. Just one of many injustices that seemed to exist in the public-school world in those days. And that's why anyone who makes the assumption that kids are "angels in a state of grace" gets an irritated stare from me...)

(And then what about content? And what about computer access to download that content?) I don't know; I think in the long run working to keep libraries alive, with print books in them, is a better solution. (And yes, I know - that takes money. I know some towns have pretty active "Friends" programs that do a lot of fund-raising and stuff for libraries. And I've donated to libraries - well, mainly in the form of books for their collections, but still.)

I don't want to see print books go away. This is just another reason why. (I wonder if RIF is still active, if the bookmobiles still go out? I know that was a big push in the 1970s, when I was a kid, to get books into the hands of kids who might not otherwise have them. And even for those of us from book-rich households, Scholastic or some other publisher would hold annual book fairs at school...I loved the annual book fair. And we also had the opportunity to order books through, again, I think it was Scholastic - the little narrow newsprint order forms, little fliers describing the books. I know I got some of the Clifford books that way when I was a little kid. Do schools still do that?)

The other thing about print books: you can usually drop a print book and it won't break. It doesn't become "outmoded" in a couple years when a new operating system comes on-line (That's one of my biggest technological frustrations: that you often can't just buy something and use it 'til it wears out; it gets superseded by something else). You can read a print book even if you are without electricity access for a long time. (I know, I know, some e-readers boast 30 hours of battery life....but eventually you have to charge them).

I do think sometimes in a push for a new, shiny, fancy technology people don't think of that kind of thing. It's like the people who say the post office is "outmoded" - they forget that there are still people who don't use computers (I know more than a few) and who prefer to send correspondence via paper and pen.

The sweater grows

I finished the back of the Ropes-and-Picots cardigan yesterday afternoon. I'm contemplating going ahead and blocking it to size right now - that way I can photograph it in an un-curled-up state, and also, since my blocking squares don't cover that much square footage, it will be done by the time I have the fronts, and later, the sleeves, to block.

It has sort of an odd shape - you bind off the shoulders BEFORE the neckline, and do an 1 1/2" "extension" for the back neck beyond the shoulders. This is because the sleeves have a funny little tab (the rope pattern is carried up along it) that extends up to the neckline.

I also cast on for the left front. This sweater requires some kind of provisional cast-on, because you knit the first few rows of a lighter weight yarn (to form the hem turn-up) and then you do a picot row in the sweater yarn, then knit a few more rows, then you unpick the provisional cast-on and knit the hem to the body of the sweater. (I suppose a person could just knit the hem the regular way and then sew it up after the sweater was done, but that would be less flexible and would be a clunkier solution).

I used the "invisible provisional" cast on for the first time ever on the sweater back. The little diagram in the "Glossary" of the issue of Interweave that the pattern was in - so I referred to the most recent SnB book ("Superstar Knitting" or somesuch).

I still had a hard time with it, wound up having to try four or five different times to get it to work.

This time, I got it on the first try. It's still not EASY for me, not in the way that the traditional old long-tail cast on I use for most things is easy for me, but it was easier. And it looked a lot better than the first version did.

That's one of the things I like about knitting. You can learn the basics comparatively quickly, and can make good and beautiful and useful things just using those basics...but there are always new techniques you can learn and "plug in" different places. Or there are new techniques that are necessary for doing something at the "next level."

Actually, one of the things I like about knitting is that it combines the familiar with the novel. Once you've mastered the knit and the purl, the yarn over and the various decreases (at the very least - a left-leaning and a right-leaning, so you can do things like decrease for the shoulders on a raglan sweater and have it look symmetrical), you can make a lot of things. (You can even make lace, if you know yarn overs and decreases...even though a lot of knitters never do get heavily into lace). But there are more things you can learn...cabling techniques, and twisted stitches, and different types of cast-ons and bind-offs, and things like intarsia and entrelac and two-handed, two-color knitting techniques.

And you can learn as much or as little of those as you want. I guess of late I've been somewhat of an "as-needed" learner of techniques. I've never done entrelac, for example, because I've not yet seen a pattern that was sufficiently compelling to me to make it for me to want to learn. (But I have every confidence that I COULD, if I wanted to). I learned to do intarsia and all that involved for a big Mags Kandis shawl that I really loved and wanted. I did learn from that project that I don't LOVE doing intarsia, and for me to do it again, it would have to be an extremely compelling project.

I can't remember when I first knit something with lace - it was probably socks, I'd guess - but I will say I found lace interesting and rewarding to do, and I liked the look of the finished projects - so I still do lace projects when I find one I like. Same with cables. (Cables are one of those things that look far more complicated than they are to do, or at least I think so).

And yet, all of those fancy techniques still use, and still build on, the basics: the knit stitch. The purl stitch. Yarn-overs (especially in lace). Decreases. You're constantly using and refining that knowledge and skill.

(I suppose, in a way, it's like playing an instrument: while I'm wrestling with being able to do baroque "ornaments" on a Bach piece, I still follow the same basic rules of fingering and legato and all that that I learned in the early pieces).

Also, with knitting, you have so many yarns you can choose from. (That's another of my favorite parts). Not only different colors, but different fibers or fiber combinations. And different types of spin - worsted or woollen, thick-and-thin, plied or cabled. And every different yarn behaves a little differently. Often times I choose to make a certain project partly because I want to use a certain yarn for it. (We all have favorites we return to, but there are also so many new and different yarns out there...) There are the big commercial producers that make stuff like Cascade 220, which you can find lots of places...and then small artisan dyers or spinners who may only sell their yarn through their own catalog or website.

(One of the things that I will say makes me sad - so many of us live in towns without a yarn shop. There's stuff available at the big-box stores, and some of it is nice, and all of it serves some purpose (if you're making laprobes for people in a nursing home, where you know they'll be thrown in a washer of hot water and a dryer on high, you will want to use a 100% acrylic, as much as you might not want that for a sweater for yourself). But the big-box stores don't give the full diversity of yarn. I don't think I'd have continued as a knitter if I only had access to the sort of yarn that Wal-Mart or Hobby Lobby carries...but thank goodness, I get catalogs from KnitPicks and Patternworks and I know all kinds of great websites to order from...and when I travel, I look for "real" yarn shops to go to.)

I have gratitude

And water.

But mostly at this point, gratitude.

I'm running a load of towels in the washing machine - the plumber suggested (and I had already been thinking) not to wash whites first because there might still be some sediment in the lines from the old pipe.

It cost exactly what the "boss" (the first plumber who came out and consulted) gave me as the cheapest estimate; he had warned me that any complications requiring extra labor would increase the price and I totally understand that. Today's plumber told me that the pipes up under the house are "good solid" copper pipes and were apparently replaced at some point - not the old original pipe to the house. So doing the tie-in was simple.

I have to admit that this is the kind of thing why I'm leery of the "college for all!" educational plans...by all means if someone doing plumbing wants to take college classes, they should. But there are enough guys (and women) who DON'T want college classes, and would be happier doing something like apprenticing to a plumber and learning the trade. And boy darn, do we need good plumbers...I know I couldn't have taken care of this problem at all.

A nation full of nothing but white-collar workers means a nation where the toilets leak and electrical wires are frayed and streets aren't repaired...

I think I'm gonna go do the necessary grocery shopping this afternoon/evening (run to Sherman...even though I really should be economizing, I want to at least see if the Books a Million has the new Interweave Christmas Gifts, which is supposed to be out). And then tonight I am going to take a shower. And wash my hair. Because I now can.

It's almost done

I finished classes for the day (Friday is my short day) and drove home (grading and the hugacious PI book in tow to work from). I was shaking a bit as I drove, because I kept saying "please please please let there be a plumber's truck at my house. Please."

I could think of all the many things that could have happened to prevent them from being there, or any other problems that came up.

But no - as I turned up my street, there was one large truck and a smaller truck with a trailer. (And a backhoe in my drive).

One of the plumbers greeted me...he was grinning, I guess it was an easier job than he expected (and maybe it's fun to run a backhoe, and it's surely more fun to work with the intake line of water than it is to work with the sewer line).

"We're about fifteen minutes from being done." he said. And then the magic words: "It's already all tied in to the house."

They're going to turn the water back on, he said, to make sure everything's fine, and then he'll push all the soil back into the trench. All I will need to do, once we start getting some rain again, is either reseed that area or wait for the St. Augustine to tiller its way over it.

He showed me how they had done it - a very neat job and if the pipe ever again breaks under my sidewalk, because of the clever way he tunneled it in there, they shouldn't need to take up the sidewalk. (And as for replacing it - well, they just cut out a chunk and will drop it back in, no fuss, no muss, no calling he city to make my sidewalk again).

I am very close to having water again. You may not have a full idea of how grateful I am for this. It's really surprising what an effort it is to deal with not having running water...having water to drink is the least of your worries, because, if, like me, you keep bottles of it on hand for emergency, you're fine there.

I will admit to reacting a bit this way when I stepped into my house and closed the door after finding out I nearly had water again:

My crazy life

So, as I'm entering the scores for the stuff I graded last night into the online grading spreadsheet, and gearing up to give my biostats exam, and making sure I have my cell phone just in case the plumber calls, my office phone rings.

For a moment, I'm hopeful it's the plumber saying, "It's underway, everything should be good."

But it was my secretary. "I have Urgent Care on the line" she said.

Oh man, I thought, which of my students got hurt and they're needing to call me about?

No...it turns out they had a small child who ate "some kind of berry" and the mom is worried and could they bring the plant over and have me identify it?

And then one of my students came in to tell me ANOTHER student was stuck with a broken down car and didn't have my number to call me about making up the exam.

I just stood there for a moment, psuedo-helpless...I was giving an exam in about 15 minutes, I was worried about other stuff...

So I told the secretary to send the people over, if they got there while I was giving the exam she could invigilate for me. I told the student to tell his buddy to find me when he got here (he's taking the exam now, in fact).

The woman came in with the plant. I couldn't identify it...one small heart-shaped leaves, a viny looking stem, and small, paired green berries. It didn't have milky sap (which is a good sign: stuff with milky sap tends to be poisonous). Didn't have a characteristic odor (again, some poisonous stuff does). I searched around but couldn't find it. I told the nurse that all I could tell her was that I doubted it was toxic (it certainly wasn't one of the Big Bad Poisonous Plants like dolls-eyes) but I couldn't be sure. I also told her I didn't know of any poisonous plants for which inducing vomiting was contraindicated - so if they wanted to be safe, maybe they could try that. (I hope that was okay advice).

It's possible it was some kind of Viburnum, now that I think of it. If any of them are toxic, they're not seriously so, so the child should be all right.

And at any rate...it was most likely not a toxic plant, as I said, it didn't look like any of the ones I know, and I know many of the bad ones. And if it is non toxic, and they give the kid a dose of Ipecac....well, maybe he'll associate "Eating random plant in the yard makes bad things happen to me" and won't do it in the future.

But, man. I feel like a baseball player trying to slide into home without being tagged by the ball.

I think of the quotation attributed to Mother Teresa (she may not have said it, though): "I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish He didn't trust me so much."

I'm really hoping

That by the end of today, I will have water again.

I did contemplate the truck stop route...except the nearest one is farther from me than the friend who offered her shower (if I don't get water by tonight, I will be calling her). And I don't know how the campus gyms are set up but that is another option. (I suppose I could ask the campus nurse; she's also involved with intramural sports here).

I also wondered briefly if "broken pipe due to soil shifting in drought" was a covered thing under my policy...but given what my deductible is, what I'd get back (if it costs what the plumber estimated) would be small enough to not make it worth filing...and I never know if that sort of thing contributes to one's rates going up in the next year.

I don't know. I'm really hoping hard that they will get it done today.

I did manage to clean up some better last night. I had the bright idea of going out and getting some baby wipes...I remembered when my dad used to lead weeklong plus raft trips down the Grand Canyon*, baby wipes were one thing they recommended taking - because there are no showers in the Grand Canyon, and even though swimming can get you wet, it doesn't necessarily get you clean. (They also suggested Dr. Bronner's soap - because it's biodegradable and safe to use in a river)

(*A trip that everyone else in my family has gone on, except for me. Yes, I know I was probably missing out on the experience of a lifetime. But I also know I fare badly enough in extreme camping situations that I would have a hard time enjoying myself by the third or fourth day - I don't sleep well outdoors, I don't sleep well if I'm not in a bed (and by 'don't sleep well,' I really mean 'mostly don't sleep at all') and the whole bathroom situation...in the canyon, it was an old artillery canister from the Army-Navy store with a toilet seat on it. I am told they tried to situate it behind a clump of tamarisk if there was any at the campsite...But at any rate: I don't camp. I don't like camping. Having to camp makes me both sad and cranky. Yes, I am full aware of the irony of an ecologist hating to camp, but if we were all simple caricatures we'd all be cartoon characters. Though then again perhaps that would not be so bad.)

So I went and got them. It did help; I washed off with several of those and then stepped into the tub and poured part of a gallon of spring water over myself as a rinse. (A cold, unpleasant rinse: the water was at room temperature, which was about 75 degrees)

I will say, driving home, I had an unpleasant experience. Two young boys, perhaps 8 or 9 years old, playing near one of the houses in my neighborhood. As I approached in my car, they looked at each other in a certain way and I thought, "They're going to try running out into the street to force me to stop my car." Yup, one did - or rather, he STARTED to run into the street, and then ran off cackling when I slammed on the brakes. (I suppose there's some benefit to being a people-watcher and being sensitive to things like looks and body language - being able to detect that these kids were thinking, "Hey, let's scare that woman by pretending to run out in front of her car" allowed me to be more prepared)

They weren't neighborhood kids I knew, or else I would have been knocking on their parents' door to tell them what their sons were up to. That's a dangerous and potentially deadly game - if my brakes had failed, if I hadn't been so fast on the draw, if he had tripped and fallen - his life would have been ruined, his family's life would have been ruined, and so would mine. (Both from the guilt of feeling I had injured a kid, and also how the local news would portray me, I'm sure.)

That kind of thing makes me crazy - unsupervised kids behaving badly. You hear SO MUCH about how dangerous the world is for kids, and some parents won't even let their kids do the usual fun (and comparatively safe) kid-things I did - and yet, there are kids that just run around wild with no supervision and get into all kinds of trouble.

If I had even THOUGHT about running out in front of a car as a kid, I would have been so grounded. For so long.

Soooooo....I don't know. My little store of coping ability for the week is 100% exhausted. It's like a video game where the player's life-force runs down and they get weak until they find the magic coin or whatever it is that restores it.

I AM grateful

for one thing, now I realize.

I had a student call up and apologize for missing class today, but she has the stomach virus that's going around (There is one making the rounds of day car/primary school - so anyone with young children at home has a chance of being exposed).

I realized after she called that there was something worse than coping with having no water. And that would be having a stomach virus and coping with having no water.

I just need to stay healthy at least until tomorrow afternoon, if all goes as it should, and I will be in the clear.

I am going to take a very long very hot shower when I get water back. I keep imagining that I stink. I don't think I do in a noticeable way but I don't feel as cleaned up as I normally do...

If civilization ends...

...I think I would not mind at all being one of the first casualties. Especially if it was a case of something like running water becoming a distant memory. After seeing a couple episodes of that dumb The Colony a few years back, I think that being without basic hygiene would be very difficult.

It's even harder when you work full-time and have to do stuff like figure out a 30 minute slot in the day to go get water. (Though I suppose if civilization crashed, I'd be unemployed, and have copious time to seek water and food and such. Well, I still stand by the fact that I am not sure I'd want to live in the broken remnants of a world like that.)

Oh, I know people adapt. And I know people lived for many, many generations without running water. (Even my mother grew up without it). But: they had proper outhouses. And in the case of my mother's family, the well was easily accessible and was set up in such a way to make getting water easy.

I still find the worst part is dealing with dishes. I admit, I went and got a chicken sandwich "from out" for my dinner last night because I couldn't face trying to cook and then trying to wash the pans and dishes with my little stock of bottled water. (And I had already gone the peanut-butter-sandwich route enough times I was sick of it). And of course that added on the "I know this is going to upset my stomach" (it did, but not badly) and the layer of guilt of "Oh my gosh, I wonder how much fat is in this thing. I really should not be eating it" followed by the helpless feeling of "I don't have enough drinking water to boil pasta AND wash the pan afterward; I'd have to make another trip out to the store for more water."

(I can see now why people who live in "food deserts" and other situations where cooking is difficult have such poor-by-nutritionist-standards diets: you just get so overwhelmed and TIRED and you need something to eat and it's easier just to go to a carry-out place. It's NOT merely a matter of "if they had better willpower or time management, they would eat better." There are so many other factors that come into play.)

Even having to dipper water out of a five-gallon bucket to flush isn't as frustrating as worrying about "what can I fix to eat that will require minimal silverware, plates, and preparation vessels?"

(I think now of an M.F.K. Fisher essay, where she chronicled the attempt of a man to eat VERY cheaply...he boiled up a sort of mush of grain and vegetables (having to go down into the courtyard of where he lived to get the water, having to beg the use of his landlady's stove, and such). And how each day he ate a plate of the cold mushy stuff...and the first day or so, dutifully trotted down to the courtyard to wash his plate and spoon...and then, as time wore on, realized, "I'm the only one eating off this" and began LICKING the plate and spoon clean, like a dog would.

And the point being, there comes a point where, in the exigencies of dealing with problems, we have to guard against becoming too uncivilized. (If I remember correctly, after a day or two of doing that, the young man recoiled in horror at what he was becoming, broke the plate and threw the spoon out the window, borrowed money from a friend, and went out and ate a restaurant meal. I may be conflating two stories, or I may be misremembering parts of one, but the gist of it was that there is a point where we become sort of, I don't know, animalistic? because we reach a point where our ability to cope with difficulties is overcome. Or maybe a better way of stating it: sacrificing any sort of aesthetics in the name of sheer survival)

I did manage to wash my hair last night by dumping water from the gallon jugs I had bought on it. It takes almost a gallon of water just to wet my hair down when it's greasy. If I had to go on without water much longer, I'd be getting my hair bobbed, even if that's a bad look for me. (And again: sacrificing aesthetics for ease of surviving.)

Okie Dig did make it out, I still have an 8:30 Friday arrival time for the plumber. But I'm not sanguine...when Okie Dig marked where the water line was, they seemed to continue the marking UNDER MY DRIVEWAY. There are a series of paint "spots" on the drive. So...it looks like the water line comes up from where the meter is, runs up alongside the drive (towards the house) for a couple feet...and then takes a bend over away from the house? And continues to run up to the garage? What? That can't be right. I don't HAVE water in the garage, I don't have an outdoor tap or anything there. So I don't know if Okie Dig made a mistake or if they were just playing around, or if their paint can leaked and made spots as they walked back to the backyard to find the other lines.

I just looked at the curvy line of yellow dots with dismay. Surely, surely no one would be such an idiot as to put in a curving water line under the driveway of a house? Surely galvanized pipe doesn't bend that way?

So I'm still fearful that the plumber will start digging, find that something is REALLY wrong...and I won't be able to get water back to my house. (What does a person do in that case? Are they just stuck with the albatross of an unlivable house?). Or that he'll have to tear up the entire drive, which will mean another several thousand dollars, I'm sure, and months of inconvenience. (I'll just get a gravel drive put in then. I don't care if my neighbors gripe.)

So I don't know. I have a tentative, "You can come shower at my place" from a woman at church, but she lives way out in the boonies so I think I'd have to be fairly desperate to drive all the way out there just to shower.

the worst part

For me, waiting for something to happen, the worst part is having no control over it happening. There is nothing I can do to speed things up.

Also, this allows the 'what ifs' to creep into my head....

what if something goes wrong and they CAN'T replace the pipe? What if the rest of the house plumbing crumbles when they try messing with it? What if the new line winds up having higher pressure and it blows out one of the pipes in the wall? Will my homeowner's insurance even help with that kind of damage? Or will they help me if my house becomes totally unlivable because for some reason the water line CAN'T be fixed? What if their having to burrow under the corner of the house makes everything unstable and my house falls apart? What if it just so happens there's a gas main no one knew about right under the water pipe, and they can't dig it out or replace it?

I realize that some of those are unreasonable, but...

I think if my 3-5 pm lab gets done any early, I'm running home, getting shampoo and towel and washing my hair in one of the big lab sinks. I don't care how weird it looks. I don't care. I just want to have some kind of feeling of control in this situation, and if the only way I can get any kind of a feeling of control is through having clean hair, then so be it.

gosh darn it.

Okie Dig can't get out until tomorrow. IF they get out - and I'm not even willing to believe they will - the plumber will start work Friday morning. And HOPEFULLY be done Friday afternoon if there are no hangups.

I'm gonna have to find some way to wash my hair. Either go down to church and use the big sinks there, or buy a couple more gallons of water, or haul my shampoo over here and wash in a lab sink.

It doesn't help that I'm achy and hivey and my allergies are bad and I'm having pain as a result of the change in the weather (and other, uh, regularly-scheduled bodily occurrences). I'd LOVE to be able to take a warm shower tonight but I see that is not going to happen. Nor will it happen tomorrow night. Ugh.

***

I could probably deal with this with better grace if I weren't so achy, and if I wasn't having allergy-induced sinus problems making me feel like I hadn't slept last night.

Also, meals are kind of an issue when it's hard to wash plates, silverware, and pots and pans. And for reasons of both economy and health (restaurant food has more salt than I really want to eat), eating dinners out isn't really an option.

I guess I need to go back and re-read a couple of the chapters in M.F.K. Fisher's "How to Cook a Wolf" (which was about coping with WWII era privations.)

Guess I'm coping

(Though if it takes Okie Dig as long as it took for Charles...well, I WILL be showing up on someone's doorstep with my sponge bag, greasy hair, and a grumpy expression. I can cope with most things that involve not having water but dealing with manky hair isn't going to be one of them. Though then again, I could probably spend three bucks on a few gallons of "drinking water" and wash my hair in the sink. I don't know. I hope it doesn't come to that.)

Someone commented in a thread on the professors' discussion group of Ravelry that "technology is great, except when it isn't."

That's true of everything. Living in an older house is great (because the rooms are bigger, there's not a rabbit-warren of "kid's bedrooms," there are actual decent-sized windows instead of "energy efficient" tiny "eyebrow" windows), except when it isn't.

And it seems like I'm running about one thing needing to be replaced a year:

first it was the roof (though, granted, that was more to satisfy the insurance company's demand that they knew how old the roof was).

Then it was major problems with the furnace, which were made worse because the first person I hired was an idiot who thought it was an electrical rather than a mechanical problem.

Then it was the hot water heater.

Then it was the dishwasher.

Then it was the drains not draining.

Then it was the garage door.

And that doesn't even count the occasional "Air conditioner down!" or weird electrical glitch (had to have a couple switches replaced), little stuff like that.

And while I've become better at rolling with the punches and figuring that having to be the one to arrange to have stuff repaired is the price of not living in a concrete hive of apartments with neighbors who like to smoke ganja out on their patio (over your head) or who like to play first-person-shooter video games late into the night, in the room that shares a wall with your bedroom...still, I will say I sigh with dismay when I think about what I might wind up replacing next. (I'm betting on the stove.)

Also: being single and living alone is great for me, except when it isn't. How nice it would be to have a Significant Other with a more flexible work schedule, where he would say, "Don't worry about it; I'll call the plumber and wait for him to arrive." Or to, at least, provide advice in such a situation. Or at least to be a compatriot in the discomfort.

I also discovered what it is that makes my hands swell and hive up - I had one incident of this earlier this summer - it's having to lift heavy items, like a full five gallon bucket of water, that have only a narrow bail to lift them by. (It's also entirely possible I have a nickel allergy now, and there was nickel in the handles of the buckets I bought.) I'm having to wear the ring I always wear on my right ring finger on the pinky finger instead, because I can't get it onto that finger.

I can lift forty pounds in the form of, say, a bag of soil, no problem - because most of the strain of the weight is on my hips, shoulders, and upper arms. But lifting a full bucket, so much of the strain is on my hands that it really hurts them. (I have one full and one still-partially-full bucket. I really hope I don't have to go another round of filling them.)