Again with the Personal Space Issues, or, Cue that Police Song, or, It Must Be My Animal Magnetism

Setting: Panera Bread
Action: We wait in line to order our food.
Conflict: Lady stands so close behind me that I can smell her nasty cigarette breath (while staring straight ahead), and when she lifts her arm to touch her face, I can see her movement from its reflection in my glasses. There is a spacious lobby behind her. She is wearing a bulky yellow sweatshirt.

Setting: Bus stop on campus
Action: We are waiting for the bus; I am standing toward the edge of the sidewalk, knitting.
Conflict: Two skanks (well, okay, I'm assuming they're skanks, based on everything about them) flank me as if I were some kind of pole or tree, headed toward the bus stop sign, which is at least 10 feet behind me, carrying on a conversation about when the bus is supposed to come. When they started walking directly toward me and talking, I thought briefly that they were actually addressing me, but I've always had problems with delusions of grandeur.

And, for clarification, let me say that by "flanked me," I mean that they were close enough that had they each lifted their arms straight out to the side, they could have grasped each other's elbows and clotheslined me. My bemused wtf expression was lost on them.

Perhaps I'm becoming more sensitive to it, but it's hard to think of the last time I was in public and didn't feel like someone was cursing me for being in their way (which is the same thing as having had the nerve to get in line before they did) or completely ignoring my existence. I'm not saying that I want people to strike up conversations with me (please no) or that I want men to open the door for me (don't get me started on that), but acknowledging that others exist and have a right to about 3 feet of empty space around them seems like a basic adhesive of society.

I've bitched extensively in the past about the key of the interactions between strangers here. If you happen to catch someone's eye, then the protocol is to either glare or consider you with disdain before looking away. You, says everyone, are not fucking worthy.

Next time: I've finally figured out why the cell phones are so freaking obnoxious. (Hint: I don't exist!)

May 6: Fiesta Party

Much of my junior year of high school was spent in one of my friend's cars. She insisted on driving, and the rest of us either didn't even want to drive or didn't care, so we were always, always in her car. She had an amazing singing voice, and sang often in the car -- maybe that's why she wanted to drive -- and looking back, I'm wondering why this constant singing didn't bother me. It didn't in the least bit. Once, she sang along with Jewel, and totally blew her out of the water. No offense, Jewel, but in comparison you sounded like a donkey. An old, angry donkey with a cold.

Anyhow, I'm actually talking about her car, a periwinkle Dodge Neon. She smoked in it (which was not so good for the voice) and had a Bath & Body Works "Country Apple" air freshener hanging from the rearview. And one time, I was chewing a piece of Bubble Gum-flavored Hubba Bubba, or Bubble Yum, or Bubblicious, and the taste/smell combination remains unparalleled in this world. It will never be recreated. Old smoke + B&BW Country Apple air freshener + traditional Bubble Gum. You can't even imagine.

Anyhow, my real point is that I've discovered another excellent, though entirely food-based combination: Plain bagel + Plain cream cheese (stay with me here) + Wheat Thins, sundried tomato basil flavor.

Seriously people, it is better than cheeseburgers and fries. Although I'm approaching my fifth anniversary as a vegetarian, so perhaps you want to road-test that for yourselves.

I had just sneezed, so my guard was down.

Recently overheard...

1) "Caitlynne told Kellie that she could totally tell that I was genuine and stuff and that Jennah was a bitch."

2) "It's water with, like, vitamins." (I'll let you guess what question that was the answer to.)

I'm not sure how Caitlynne (spelling approximated) got the power to decide who was "genuine," or why in God's name being described as "genuine" by someone like Caitlynne could ever be considered a good thing, rather than the sort of thing that would induce you to vomit. Big shudder.

Themes!

Jenn makes a good point today about pushing yourself. I was thinking about this yesterday as I jogged - something I hadn't done for two seasons - and remembered all those soccer practices that required pushing myself beyond the point where every cell in my body would have voted for dropping dead. Muscles cringing, wrung out, lungs burning, indignant. But that's when it's the most important to keep going, because that's the point you have to get past in order to be better tomorrow. Or whenever you can walk normally again.

It's the same way with classes and projects and running. The hardest part at the end is practically the only part that counts.

ITMFA

www.itmfa.com. I'm thinkin bout gettin me a t-shirt.

There's all kinds of fun to be had with a new towel.

Lest this blog become a sad catalog of my daily buffoonery, I will not tell you about how this morning I thought I'd left my water bottle at home and so spent the day reluctantly drinking Hawaiian Punch from the ridiculously huge jug I'd brought in for last week's potluck, only to find at 5:15 my water bottle on the front seat of my car, too scorching hot to drink.

I am happy to report, though, that this evening's trip to the grocery store was incident-free. I did flummox the bagger with my cloth bag, but he caught on quickly enough.

And, finally, a link to an Onion story that is likely to be cherished as a classic. I notice that it's been promoted to the lead story, too.

I don't know, you know, maybe it's me - maybe I have personal space issues, but they might very soon melt down into public grocery-store confrontation.

Yesterday at the grocery store, I went through the self-checkout line, where the standard way of not being an ass is to wait at the mouth of the space for one of the four terminals to open up. This is a convenient system because the first person waiting in line will always be the one to go next, because they just go to the one that opens up. These things can be unpredictable. The woman buying a lone carton of ice cream could spend four minutes rummaging through her car-sized purse for her wallet. The person buying twelve (maybe thirteen) items could have worked in the past as a cashier. You can't tell.

Anyhow, perhaps I was taking this little piece of societal common sense for granted, because yesterday a family of four came and stood RIGHT behind me at the damn self-checkout. I was at one of the two furthest away from the normal waiting area, and they stood at my elbow, talking loudly about cheese or something, while I pulled out every stop short of buying cigarettes to stall and punish them for their checkout line impugnity.

Dag, yo.

D'oh.

It would not be honest of me to say that at the point I came upon this beacon of dietary procrastination at the store today, I did not have a bag of regular M&M's in my basket already. I did. Bird flu can be very tricky and convincing. "Just one human-to-human transmission, I promise," the bag said in my ear. "These M&Ms are regular colors -- you won't be tempted to crunch them by the largish handful."

I am patting myself on the back for having bought only one bag, and for having the balls to check out, go out to my car and drop off the groceries, and then saunter back in and take a picture of a display of outdated candy in front of the deli guys.

In non M&M-related news, today I got my checking accounts shut down because of my own idiocy. For a while there I was worried that they finally realized that a person like me should really not be walking around with access to a checking account, or maybe that I'd bounced $300 worth of checks (even though I couldn't remember writing them, and had actually been rather obsessive of late about making sure the money was where it should be -- I figured I had that disorder where people walk to the fridge and pig out in their sleep, only I was writing out checks and mailing them). Turns out I had merely attempted to log in to my account with the wrong password too many times.

The bank lady was very nice, although in her opinion $70 is not a lot of money to be left over in a checking account, whereas I was impressed with myself for being in double digits until I remembered that I have yet to pay the phone bill. And that I'm not quite sure where that is.

I was sad that the "Puppies! Puppies! Puppies!" checks were out of my price range. But then I thought: Do I want to be a person with puppies on her checks? And then I thought: Hell yes. So now I have something to aspire to.

Lo siento para mi espanol abominable.

You know how, if bird flu learns how to jump from human to human, rather than just from bird to human, the human race is going to be in a world of shit? Well, if my 70-handfuls-a-day addiction to Easter colored M&M's mutates into a 70-handfuls-a-day addiction to regular-colored M&M's, I'm going to have to buy a whole new wardrobe. I ran out of Easter colored M&M's at 4:24 Eastern Standard Time today, so the next 24 hours will be critical.

Proximity, proximity, proximity.

Lust is a sin, right? Isn't there something about thou shalt not lust after thy neighbor's wife*? Didn't they, in Seven, kill that stripper in that horrible way because she was the bodily representation of lust?

Or is that neighbor's wife thing "covet"? Thou shan't covet thy neighbor's wife nor thy neighbor's Lamborghini?

Is there a difference between lust and coveting?

What's the substantive difference between the cardinal sins and the ten commandments?

What color should I get?

-------------------------
And the award for best use of depth-of-focus in a dramatization of action figurines learning yoga goes to...

*Really, how hard would it be to say "spouse" and make it a blanket commandment? Or are women such morally loose harlots that thou shalt not even bother commanding them to behave?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

This is totally worth enlarging if you can't read it.

Hoo boy.

Apparently, when you start ftp-ing your blog somewhere else, your blogspot site goes up for grabs. So I've reclaimed my blogspot domain, which made it all new again, and somehow my archives got moved over to doinstuff. I hope. You can't see them yet, but they all still exist in blogger, and I nearly had a myocardial infarction when I thought for a second that they had disappeared. The connection between the ftp destination and the archives, which are still named with the old blogspot name, seems rather tenuous, and I am taking deep breaths.

Ground flowers are followed by the purplies.

God is in his heaven, Chreasters are on their way to church, and the pagarinos are on their way to the park.

tengo nada.

Well, I bought The Yarn Harlot's new book, and accidentally read it all already. If you're a knitter, or want to be, I recommend it.

The New Cadillacs Are In Early This Year

So when did the word "hot" get a second "t"? Suddenly it's everywhere.

So Long, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald

Today I finally got my last Christmas gift from Other -- $7 worth of downloaded music. He kept reminding me to put the Sopranos theme song on my list, and I finally, somewhat grudgingly did. Because I figured that I liked it but didn’t really want it. Music is a luxury, a luxury of the sort that I never buy (as opposed to yarn, beads, fabric, and books) and I figured that there’s got to be something else out there that I’ve been wanting forever (like Tom Petty’s “You Don’t Know How It Feels” and the Eels’ “Novocaine for the Soul,” both of which I’ve wanted to own for literally YEARS). (Oh, and "Baker’s Street.")

But I freaking love the Sopranos theme song. I have never seen an episode of it. I have seen the parody of it that The Simpsons did, and loved the mock-intro of Fat Tony and the henchmen riding around and smoking the cigar to that awesome, awesome Simpsons ripoff of the Sopranos song. It took me a few minutes to realize that I liked it so much because it is essentially the same thing as the opening of Down by Law, only with “Woke Up this Morning” where “Jockey Full of Burbon” went, and Somewhere, NJ where that beatdown Jarmusch city went. I think I’ve said this before, but the opening of Down By Law is the single greatest opening to any movie ever.

Time flies when you have no idea what the hell to do with your life.

Today at the park, Other and I laid down on the ground and closed our eyes and pointed our faces at the sun. We'd been running with the dogs and hiking around, feeling good but tired, and Other remembered this passage from The Savage Girl:

We rode around on wolly mammoths, and we flew over canyons with hang gliders we made from the skins of giant manta rays. Some of us lived in houses that we built way up high in redwood trees, and some of us lived in warm, roomy homes we burrowed into the sides of hills. And when we were happy we danced, and when we were sad we rolled around on the ground, and that was all we needed to be happy again. And then we danced again.

Laying on the ground really does make you feel better - I highly recommend it. Roll around if you're feeling bad, but otherwise, put your fingers in the grass and feel the sun.

yeah buddy/that's his own hair

I've gone several weeks without much caffeine intake, so when I drank a medium-sized Borders chai tonight, I was a little buzzed. I'm still kind of buzzed. When you add that to the return to a base state of happiness caused by several hours of alone-time and reflect-y time, plus success at the Embarrassing Purchases Store*, I become a danger to myself and others. Once, several years ago, I was driving to this awful part-time job I had, listening to a song from the Run Lola Run soundtrack, and the sun was just right and the clouds were just right and as the song crescendoed I was coming to the top of this very high bridge and I kind of caught some wicked air, going about 30 over. I decided then that I should never listen to techno while driving.

So, if you ever want me to total my car, feed me chai and throw in something with a nice beat.

*Do you have this place where you go, miles from your house, where you've never ever run into anyone you know? And where you buy all the stuff that you never want to have in your basket where you might run in to past students again? I don't know why, but I have an immense sense of accomplishment when I walk out of my Embarrassing Purchases store with... you know. Stuff.

The weather is cold. Cars are in the garage.

There's so much to say in the course of a day, but when I sit down in front of the white screen, I got nothing. So, I will leave you all with two sentences to contemplate, one found, one composed:

"In stature, the alpaca is considerably inferior to the llama, but has the same unpleasant habit of spitting."

"So, I see you've shacked up with a weirdo."

An Open Letter to the Lady Standing Half an Inch Behind Me in the Checkout Line

Dear Lady Standing Half an Inch Behind Me in the Checkout Line,

May I offer a helpful suggestion? Perhaps you should take a few seconds to weigh the benefits of standing half an inch away from me and gaining maybe a third of a second of conveyor-loading time against the growing possibility of being "accidentally" stabbed in the eyeball with a knitting needle, which I happen to have in my purse here.

I really don't want to stab you in the eye with a knitting needle, especially not in front of the cute little girl who I assume is your daughter. I really, really don't want to stab you. But I also really, really don't want to feel you occasionally knocking up against my elbow and hovering in and out of my peripheral vision. We all want to get home as soon as possible. I was hoping to get home in a decent mood, even, but I figured that the trip to the grocery store would nix that option. I wasn't banking on a testy conversation with the police and several hours of trying to scrounge up bail money.

Just back up six inches is all I'm sayin.

Peace,
M

Save the Sidewalk Worms!

A storm has been slowly rolling in, and the sky has been darkening accordingly, and just a second ago I looked outside and saw that.

Now for the Yran Pron

Okay, so the following posts contain yarn pron that is more "girl next door" than... whatever the opposite of that is. (Pro?) So here I give you two pieces of yarn pron that are maybe at least a rung above that.

Manos is very difficult to photo. The Nadia (red) is feeling existential. Existential yarn pron, there you go.

The Hardware.

No Stash Flash would be complete without a photo of the sticks that make it all happen. And, peanuts.

Check out that Malabrigo.

I bought about 50% of the yarn you see here with absolutely no idea what I was going to use it for. Hence: stash.

And, sometimes I unknot one of the skeins of Malabrigo and wear it around my neck. It's warm.

Plymouth's Sundae Swirl is slightly less impressive in person than it appears in the Yarndex. Nevertheless, I plan to use it to make animal shapes in my next series of quilts. We'll see how it does.

Houston, We Have Yarn Stores.

I was very proud of myself when I used up the pinkish red and blue skeins of Blizzard from Winter Yarn sale '05 and then resisted the urge to replace them during Winter Yarn sale '06.

Before I Knew of Yarn Stores

I have nothing against acrylic yarns, or cotton. I've made two nice baby blankets (okay, okay, 1 1/2) out of the Bernat Cotton-tots, and a couple (for real) out of just baby-colored acrylics. I could rub Patons Be Mine on my face all day long. But, indeed, once I discovered stores that sell yarn and only yarn, these skeins kind of slid to the bottom of the stash.

Lion Brand this, Red Heart that.

Dregs o' the stash to ya - this is stuff that is mostly left over from finished projects.

As opposed to a regular ton.

Back when I was trying to knit one of my brothers Christmas gifts and couldn't find any Kool Wool in his school colors, I eventually did find some online. And this picture is the result of me ordering a shit-ton of it.

Clockwise from left: sock beginnings of Fortissima Socka; Flamingo; Colinette Chrysalis in "Sunrise" (bought on sale); Manos; Nadia.