Life's a Stitch

Of course it’s about the boy. On his last day of school he stopped by my office announcing that it was time for his yearly summer rebellion. He grabbed a sticky note from my desk and suggested we make a web diagram of his past rebellious behaviour and brainstorm a few more. I told him I thought he needed a larger piece of paper. Here’s what we came up with:

Rebellion is in the centre, everything else stemmed from this topic. The upper left represents piercings, other than ears – a nipple and underneath his tongue. That was a double rebellion when he was 15. The right was about hair colour times six. Various shades of black, pink and red.

The bottom represents rebellion-to-be. Wait a minute, I ask, you forgot your drunken romp through the woods that ended up with 44 stitches to the leg. “Sheer stupidity,”says he. Who’d have thought a diagrammatic discussion around rebellion could feel so good to a mom?

Back to the future. What’s left? Tattoos, of course, and he can’t decide between Margaret Wise Brown’s Runaway Bunny or f-holes on his back, as in the holes you find on a stringed instrument, only smaller than in the picture.

He’s really an OK kid. Typically rebellious, but alas, he has a social conscience. I have nothing to complain about.

So far it’s a regular summer weekend here in BC. Woke up to hear Gracee yelp one sharp bark. She was telling a big ol’ bear that this was her property, not his. Just like the storm watcher type I was in my Omaha days, I ran for my camera to no avail. The bear wasn’t sticking around for a photo shoot.

Next sound was the search and rescue helicopter putt-puttering along side the mountain behind our house. No kidding, there doesn’t seem to be a weekend that goes by without hearing that sound, mostly at daybreak when searches for lost hikers resume from the night before.  Many of these situations in our area have tragic endings but were entirely avoidable: kids cliff jumping into calm looking mountain pools with life defying whirlpools waiting just underneath the surface, unprepared hikers, out of bound skiers, tourists precariously perched for the perfect picture and kyakers racing with the river that’s temptingly running a bit on the wild side. There is no logical explanation; maybe there are mountain Sirens, cousins to the ones that live in the sea.

Another  BC weekend item – barbequed salmon. Chuck tried a new recipe, slow cooking the fish on the warming rack of the grill, alder chips smouldering below:

And of course, it wouldn’t be the weekend without lazy morning knitting, bird songs in my right ear and CBC’s North by Northwest in my left:

What’s missing from this picture? Look carefully, this is our driveway in the middle of the night:

What’s missing? Here’s the story:

Last night, back pain, tossing and turning watching the clock: midnight, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00. You know how that goes? 3:20 – I hear an engine idling in the driveway. Must be the paper delivery. Wait a minute, the paper guy zooms in, tosses the paper and zooms out. Sounds like a big vehicle in the driveway. I get out of bed and look out the window and what do I see? Our new-to-us since last Thursday little red pickup truck being driven out of the driveway and up the hill.

Called the police, and as we wait for their arrival it hits me. Where is our car that was parked behind the truck? Two cars are missing in that picture above.

Long story short: The car was hiding across the street in the bushes minus its radio. After a visit from the sniff dog and the fingerprint team, we are told that the truck was recovered parked nicely just up the hill, across from another broken into car, but no luck in finding the creeps that did it. They must have spotted me, watching from the window, and fled.

Scary, eh? And da noive of ’em, thinking every car in every driveway is fair game. Eff that.

This is story about my middle child. Once upon a time, as a little one at McDonald’s, she had a thought. If I can breath through my mouth and breath through my nose, and suck though my mouth, I can probably suck through my nose. Can you picture the next step? Yes she shoved the straw up her nose and gave it a good fizzing. That’s my girl, destined from a young age to be a scientist, now having graduated with her degree in astronomy and physics. Where’d she get those brains? Don’t look at me, I’m the social worker.

And when he was little, Bryant put an aspirin up his nose. When asked why, he replied, “I thought it was a nose pill.” Where did he come up with that one? I’ll bet there were big sisters involved.

I am convinced, though, that although knitters don’t readily admit it, they are good at math. Here I am about 15% through my Print O’the Wave edging:

The older I get the more practice I get moving on after accepting those “oh well” moments. Not a bad thing. We had twofer tickets to see the Producers tonight. I really thought I needed some therapeutic belly laughs, but some poor soul has needs greater than chuckles. There’s a “distraught woman” perched on the side of the bridge into town and traffic is backed up for hours. The theatre people graciously agreed to exchange the tickets for another performance, but of course, not at the discounted rate. Oh well.

I’ve had more than my fair share of stage entertainment recently. We went to that Pink Martini concert I talked about a while back. Their performance was breathtaking. Even the weird songs I alluded to, were better up close and personal, with a live explanation into their meaning.

On Saturday I had the privilege to see Judy Collins in a small setting concert. I saw her way back when, when she was 40. She is now 70 and as amazing as ever. How did Judy Collins get to be 70? The same way I got to  be 50+, I guess. She does 70 well. The audience was remarkable – not a person under 40 and white is definitely the new blond. Just look at Judy. What an admirable woman, having survived her only child’s suicide, and her own bulimia, staying positive and helping others.

I won’t talk much about the Vancouver Jazz Festival concert we attended on Sunday night, I won’t even mention the trio’s name in case their performance was a fluke. You know how they say, that after 12 minutes in a lecture, most people are drifting off thinking about sex? In this case I don’t think anyone was thinking about sex. They were most likely thinking about sleep. I, who some say have more energy than most, was thinking about knitting. Go figure.

Gracee’s been thinking about sleep today. She, and of course we, had an exhausting night of sleeplessness, having been visited by six spraying skunks right outside our window. I wondered if the mommy skunk was bringing her kits, one by one, under our window, and teaching them how to whiff out dog and spray. Guess they were here first. Oh well.

I found this lovely quote from the Talmud today. Believe it or not I had never heard it before. Must have spent too much time in Catholic School. But its simple message quieted my distraught knitting soul:

Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.”

I’m off with for a girl’s weekend to see Judy Collins, so I leave you with another moment of peace. He may not have bought her a doggie bed, but they’ve worked it out:

I'm one of those people who can live a long time just putting up with things, get to the end of my rope and reach the point of ENOUGH, goodbye, I don't need this. Examples in my past include a place of employment and a major relationship. Not a bad thing, it's how every attempt at weight loss has been approached in my life. I remember once, in my thankfully distant past, being told by the receptionist at the clinic where I worked "Girl, you are bustin' out of those jeans."  That's all I needed and 26 pounds later I felt liberated.

Don't worry, I'm not quite at the end of my knitting rope with Print O the Wave. It's brought me awfully close. Close, but not there. Yet. I'm leaving my options open.

I am an experienced lace knitter, having taught a Charlotte's Web class, and completed a long list of brain twisting lace patterns  including Kiri, Rippling Waters, C'est La Vie, amongst others, and the one that illustrates my gluttony for punishment – Charlotte's Web the second. 

The first disaster was self inflicted, having put it away without those rubber thingies (AKA in our house as mommy's little pink/yellow nipples) at the end of the needles, and dropping the whole darn shootin' match when attempting to knit at an airport between flights. We've all been there in one way or another. The second phase included picking up 600+ stitches around the edge, only made worse by my tendency to enlargen patterns. Remember my behemoth Lady Eleanor?

Ok, I'm now onto phase three – the edging. And then there's the blocking. I'm flirting with ENOUGH. How do you think seasilk will smell in a fireplace? It's only a sick fantasy, our fireplaces having been filled in with the fake gas variety. Want to take bets? Will Life's a Stitch endure or will she get to ENOUGH?

Here are some updates:

Six feet later: Erika suggested I give a rating for recent gross posts. This update is rated I for icky. Is that how you spell it? Icky? Ikky? No matter how you spell it it's pretty gross. An update to recent news that four running shoe clad feet have washed up on our British Columbian shores in 11 months. This week there have been two more – six feet in under a year, five of them from the right side of its human body. Actually one was a hoax – an animal paw stuffed into a sock held in place with seaweed. I'm willing to bet there was some teenage brain power behind that one. Still, come on you guys from the random incident camp. It does not seem possible that these are random events. Five real feet and counting…let's talk relentless creepiness.

Displaced Grace: The new love seats have arrived in all their cherry red splendor, only problem is that Gracee has been displaced. She desperately wants to attempt a leap onto the seat, but I have not been encouraging. She looks at me and talks Scottie.

Grace never knew Scottie language until she heard this video and it opened up for her a whole new world of communication. When she wants something she speaks in her best MacKenzian accent rapidly shifting her weight from right paw to left and back again. I suggested to Chuck that we buy her a doggy bed and in his best practical Minnesota farm boy voice, he said "Why? She has carpet to lie on." Can't you hear it? Mind you, this is the same husband, who replied when I suggested our 40 year old bath tub might need replacing, "It still holds water, doesn't it?"

Knitting: How about that? It's a knitting blog lest I forget. Ucckhhh. You know what I mean by that sound?  That's the sound of having picked up 672 stitches from around the edge of Print O the Wave and having a different stitch count with the completion of each round.

This is my electric can opener. I bought it in about 1975 for $3 at the Richman Gordman Half Price Store when I lived in Omaha. I's been on one counter or another for over 30 years. Recently, one of my kid's friends commented "Oh, it's a can opener. All these years I thought you really liked pork and beans and the cans were too big for the cupboard."

Tried and true – my electric orange/lemon squeezer. I used to get made fun of for having so many things that plug into the wall. I bought this one at Walgreens in the late 70's for nine bucks, Still works just fine. I sound like my parents used to. Just wait, if you don't already,you will, too.

They don't make them like they used to. My sewing machine weighs a ton due to its metal parts. There is no way I'm parting with this baby. A sewing machine was the first thing I bought when I finished my master's degree and got my first real job.

Here is something that hasn't lasted, although 17 years in an active household is pretty good for furniture. On Tuesday, it's out the door for these guys as two new red love seats are joining our family.

 It's disintegrating! What do you have that's lasted forever?

File this one in you can teach an old dog new tricks. This is a Flickr badge of our past week, which included both high school and undergrad commencements, although one was conspicuously sans graduate. Click on one of the wee tiny pictures and get an enlargement. Some of what you'll find:

1. Close but no cigar – see the blue gown on the hanger? That's as close as it got to crossing the stage. Yes, the high schooler did graduate, but was stuck on set, acting in a commercial, and didn't make it back on time to formally receive the diploma. The parents were present and crushed, the graduate seems unscathed.

2. Promming bloggers or would that be blogging prommers? Here in North Vancouver, parents attend the prom with their students, then the kids go off for aftergrad parties. That's 5 and a Beagle with me.

3. The head bonk, formally known as the ceremonial tap. This was new to me:
"A hold-over from the knighting ceremony where the monarch taps the
prospective knight on the shoulder and dubs him "Sir," tapping is a
convocation tradition started in Oxford and Cambridge. It is a symbolic
act–a recognition by the learned gentry that the student has passed
certain hurdles and can now be considered a scholar. Only undergraduates get tapped by the Chancellor. Master's and PhDs
were already admitted to the society of scholars when they received
their undergraduate degrees, so they do not kneel.
4. What a graduate's mom carries in her purse: a camera; an umbrella, it's BC after all; forms and passes – regalia, parking, admission; nine Kleenex.

Enough of the chatter, here are the pictures:

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