Back to knitting

Gah.

The pattern of my life some semesters seems to be: tension builds, I try to hold off the craziness, I try to placate the upset people....and then everything blows up and it's a couple days of drama and frustration. And then things go back to normal.

I once knew a minister who commented that everyone is either "in trouble, just getting out of trouble, or fixing to get into trouble." That seemed an awfully pessimistic assessment to me at the time but I suppose there's some truth in it.

 So I sat down yesterday afternoon and did some more knitting. I finished my mom's socks. I finished the first front leg for the Pinkie Pie. I think what I want to go through my existing projects now and finish stuff up:

1. The Oscilliscope Shawl
2. The Little Ice Age socks. I never posted about these - started them over Spring Break but as they use a lot of cabling and twisted stitches and are super complex, like some complex projects they get pushed aside because I'm TIRED.
3. I also have another pair of twisted-stitch socks that got pushed aside after Christmas.
4. Ropes and Picots
5. The Basketweave Pullover.

I am also working on the Twilightilicious socks (purple and pink striping). They're now my invigilating project because it's too warm to drag the Big Purple Thing to class and work on it.

I think sometimes having too many unfinished projects hanging around kind of saps my energy and strength for some reason.



Another religiously affiliated question that I was asking myself last night: If, as a Christian, you are called to love your neighbors - and as we learned from the Good Samaritan, everyone is our neighbor....how do you love someone who seems to be trying to sabotage you? I'm sure turning the other cheek and letting the sabotage happen is not what is intended. I'm sure we're not supposed to let people hurt us in the name of our loving them.

I didn't get to do the lesson on 'conflict' I was planning for the Youth Group; it's testing time at school and the girls had a big test tomorrow they had to study for. The pastor on the video I use talks a lot about not having it be about you and yielding to the other person...but I don't think that applies when the other person is not willing to yield. Or, in the rare situations when it's someone who is truly abusive - yielding to their wants could be very dangerous. A person - and sadly, this may be more true for women, and my class is young women - has to protect themselves against that.

But what about lesser-scale situations than abuse? Do you give in to someone who is demanding, who is an energy vampire?

I suppose - and this is what hit me at 2 am, after I woke up with a stress-induced migraine and could not get back to sleep - the answer is some form of tough love. Doing whatever your version is of telling the woman at the well, "Yeah, you DON'T have a husband; you've had five. And you're living with a man now who isn't your husband." Though I'm not sure how to apply tough love in the case I'm in without it coming back to bite me.

Whatever. I have May 14 circled on my calendar - it is the day I get to go home for a couple weeks and just flee all this problem for a while.