Wednesday morning random

* My niece has "commissioned" me to knit a small star medallion. Apparently she is making a toy cat (? I don't know if sewing or if she actually did learn to knit, like she expressed a wish to at last Thanksgiving - she is about 5 1/2 but very active and I honestly was of the opinion then that "she might get frustrated with it at this point, wait a little" and also I don't think either my brother or sister in law knows how to knit...)

(I suppose it's possible it's from a kit, or it's not a soft toy at all but rather something out of wood or whatever).

She wants the star to go around the cat's neck on a collar. At first she said "baseball sized" but then my brother stepped in and was like "this toy cat is about 6" long" so I'm thinking an inch or two, tops, in the size. I did ask for them to e-mail me a photo with a ruler next to it for scale.

I found a few patterns on Ravelry that might work, mostly Christmas ornaments. I still have some v. fineweight acrylic yarn in yellow so that should worl.

But I'm going to wait until I get the photo to be sure. (If worse comes to worst, I could get some fine crochet cotton in a yellow and use that, or use embroidery floss, though I think the yellow yarn I have is as fine as the six strands of floss together)

* Confession: they don't call me often (they have called more, though, in the past six months than the whole rest of the time I've been here). The last time was that my niece had learned the "stop, drop, and roll" song and for some reason she wanted to sing it to me? (children are funny).

But because of their infrequent phonings, I admit, my stomach drops just a bit when I see either my brother or my sister-in-law's name come up on my phone, because it was in January 2016 that my brother called to ask, "Have you heard from either mom or dad today? We've been trying to call them and can't reach them" and that was when my father wound up in the ER....so I always worry that a call from them won't be some light, silly thing involving my niece but something really big and bad.

* I worry too much, I know. Another thing that is making me twitch today are the ads for some movie coming out about a Purge which is apparently this dystopian fantasy where there's a 12-hour period where all laws are in abeyance, and you can even murder someone without reprisal and....yeah, given the headspace our country seems to be in right now that feels like something we don't need in our collective consciousness.

(And it also makes me wonder: would I survive something like that? I have absolutely zero desire to harm anyone, or to take anyone's stuff, or anything like that. I'd likely spend the 12 hours hiding somewhere hoping that the "murders" taking place are only people going after enemies (I don't have anyone I think of as an enemy) and not that there's some lunatic who wants to just randomly kill as many people as possible....that would be the one way I'd be likely to not-survive a situation like that.)

I guess this is a movie franchise? In the universe where this takes place, do they have "safe zones" for people who want nothing to do with the bad activity to go to? Like, they designate "all houses of worship are sanctuaries; if you are inside the walls of a church, temple, meetinghouse, or mosque, you will be safe" and have something like armed guards to enforce that?

I dunno. I've said before how much I dislike dystopias and I want my fantasy realms to be either prettier or more orderly and lawful than actual reality is.

* This morning on the way in to the office I saw a truck hauling a couple of those little fireworks stands to put them in place. And so it begins. I know I'm a spoilsport and a party-pooper on this but I really dislike the little "homebrew" fireworks individual people get. I love the big pretty displays (and I wish there were one near enough for me to see from my house; I dislike driving in traffic on a big "party" weekend to see fireworks and now I realize how spoiled we were when I was growing up and they used to shoot off fireworks between a couple of large embankments that were set up to carry train tracks and which were visible from my bedroom window....)

I don't like the noise, and I worry about the fire risk. And if it weren't death-hot this week I'd be trying to get up on my roof to scrape all the pecan catkins off. (I still might, might go out v. early some morning and do it. Not tomorrow; it's supposed to already be in the low 80s first thing in the morning but maybe Saturday).

And this is one of those cases where I wish I had someone in my life I felt comfortable enough calling to come over and at least spot me on the ladder. I'll take my cell phone with me so if something happens and I get stuck on the roof I can call someone, but I don't know anyone to whom I could say, "Hey, would you be willing to come out at 7 am and just stand and watch me scrape leaves off my roof so we can be sure I don't fall?"

I mean, the back porch roof, where they're worst, will be OK, because it's fairly low (at the lowest point it's probably 8' off the ground and it's also a flat roof) but I'm not sure what to do about the front of the house. I don't have any tools that will work for reaching up and scraping other than the lowest bit of catkins, and I don't have enough water pressure in the hose to blast them off....I suppose you could hire someone to do it but I have no idea whom to call. A roofer? A gutter guy? A general handyman? And what would it cost, even if I could find someone willing to come out? I don't even know of any general handymen in my area.

I don't know any of these things because my dad tended to take care of this kind of stuff himself when I was a kid, and we also didn't have any tall enough trees close to the house that stuff falling on the roof was a problem....

* Last night at bell choir the director pronounced us "ready for prime time" so we are slated to do the Prelude on July 8. I am slightly nervous but also kind of excited. One thing I've learned is that if you make a mistake it's really not noticeable, not in the way striking a wrong key on the piano is, and as long as you don't ring BEFORE the piece starts or AFTER it finishes, you are probably OK. (The big issue is getting off-count; we count bars of the piece and beats within bars, and each person has two bells, so, two notes....)