mamacate

Cleaning out the Closets

Thanksgiving was great, complete with a visit from Sara and family, as well as both sets of grandparents.  I managed to burn the rice dish as I blogged about it on Wednesday, plus, note to self, people don't eat beet-apple salad when their plates are full to overflowing with things slathered in fat.  So Wednesday was pretty much a waste of time.  At least I got a blog post in, right?  I'll post the recipe for the chestnut thingy soon, I just can't cope with even thinking about complicated holiday food preparation right now.  But it's coming, promise.

But that's not what I want to talk about today, doc.  I want to talk about my closets.  I spent yesterday, late into the night, doing a deep stash cleaning and purging.  There are a variety of things motivating this, not the least of which being the fact that the closet is getting a little, um, full.

So down I dived, and I'm not just talking about the top layers.  I pulled out the ancient stuff in the rubbermaid containers at the bottom.  The stuff in the old gray bags from Webs (I can now date my stash by what color the bag is; they changed a few years ago).  The UFOs, and oh but there are UFOs.

The following main themes emerged from this in-depth research:

• I have a lot of yarn.
• Also spinning fiber.
• Brown Sheep?  Yes, plenty.
• Brown Sheep labels used to be printed in red and had a silhouette of the state of Nebraska on them.
• My knitting habits have not improved; I have a lot of unfinished projects.
• No, I didn't count them.
• I don't want to know.
• But despite frogging a few particularly unfortunate examples (I had another, non-matching sock for that Yeti until last night), there are, let's say, a GOODLY number in a rubbermaid bin.
• By GOODLY I mean that they have their own rubbermaid bin.
• Hoarding disorder?  Shut up.  It's not full.
• Those two balls of DB Cashmerino bulky that I got to make a charity hat were kind of redundant.
• Even I have trumped my "boyfriend sweater" of 1988-89 to find half a glove in lovely alpaca complete with receipt dated 1987.  I need to do some thinking on that one, since it's clear that I will run out of the main color if I try to make, you know, a pair.

But all self-mockery aside, I went to bed last night strangely unsettled by the whole thing.  Partly it was the realization that, while I may not have reached SABLE (NB: many female relatives lived well into their nineties and my great-aunt is the oldest living Maryknoll nun at almost 105, so I have to plan for the long haul), I have a LOT of wool and all this gallivanting around fiber festivals and fondling of fleeces is pretty much patently ridiculous. 

Partly it was the stark reminder that some of my wool-hoarding behavior is about a wish for the time to do this work, and that until I change the time equation, I will wind up with nothing but piles of unfinished and unstarted projects.  This is not news, but seeing my scattered life laid out before me in wooly metaphor was a bit much.

Partly it was a journey into my creative history of the last couple of decades.  I even came across the baby booties I made for Henry & Eleanor and apparently forgot about, because there they were, one pair unseamed, deep in the stash (there's a whole other post about knitting while pregnant after infertility and miscarriages, but let's spread out the heavy weather, shall we?).

I came away from this exercise with the desire to GET REAL.  I don't know if anything is going to change, if I have any chance of resisting temptation when, as Risa puts it, the next fancy yarn shakes its ball band at me.  But it reminded me of the ways I've given up on balance these last few years; that I haven't meditated since the kids were born, that I've gone back to drinking coffee (and how), don't get enough exercise, knit and blog instead of sleeping, eat too much chocolate, and generally spread myself too thin.  Knitting and spinning have meditative, nurturing qualities for me, to be sure, but there is a real monkey-mind aspect to this stashing and ADD knitting and casting on indiscriminately when I'm feeling out of sorts. 

If you hadn't guessed, I've been reading about buddhism and sheep farming, and through Mary Rose O'Reilly I'm remembering a bit of what I'm missing.

So it's the whole spiritual and physical health thing that's motivating this stash sorting, cleaning, and organizing.  That, and the fact that I bought a loom.  (Like how I just snuck that in there?  Yup.)  I didn't mean to, but someone who lives mere blocks from my house was selling her entire weaving workshop, everything I need, at a very reasonable price, and I couldn't pass it up.

So, you know, I had to figure out what yarns were suitable for weaving.  I'll be winding my first warp tonight, with STASH yarn.  Two steps forward, one step back, right?

In Which Randomness Reigns

In Which There is Knitting:

The Brioche Helmet Hat has kicked my butt, but in a rather surprising way.  Brioche stitch? Check.  Short rows in biroche stitch? No problemo.  Freakin' gauge?  Um, yeah, not so much.  Perhaps not so surprising after all.  I have always been a loose knitter, and I think I have gotten even looser (no, not like that, well, much).  I can't imagine why I ever bought any needle in a size greater than 5mm.  I could knit with nautical rope and it still would be too loose on a 6mm needle.  So, I now have a hat perfectly sized for a Yeti.  If you know any Yeti, let me know, because I have a lovely hat and one sideways sock that I'd love to give them.  Okay, a one-footed Yeti would be preferable.  One who doesn't mind pink and purple in his fashion choices.  Any takers?

Speaking of fashion choices, my doomed hat was doomed anyway, because Eleanor took particular exception to the short-row ear-flap-like things at the bottom of the hat.  I tried to explain their functional value, but should have known that such a rationale would fall flat with the person who thinks wearing pink sandals two sizes too small and a shirt with nothing but tights ("because I really, really like these tights!") is just the right sort of outfit for November.

So, I'm back to the classic EZ design of a simple watchcap in brioche stitch, this time with 4.5mm needles.  And hopefully the three-year-old fashion police will assent.  Film at 11.

In Which Bad TV is Analyzed Way Beyond All Reason:

So, The Amazing Race: Family Edition.  If you're not watching it, you might want to skip this, because it is, I acknowledge, inane.  I do bring the cultural politics of religion in American life into it, but in a completely inane kind of way.  'Kay?  We all set?  Good.

Okay, what is the deal with the Weavers?  Right along, since pretty early on, they've been complaining about how everyone hates them.  And this animosity, at least to hear them tell it, seems to be related to their, um, faith, if you can call praying to sweet baby Jesus that they win a million dollars "faith."  Like, I, personally, would roll my eyes at them and give them the cold shoulder, because, you know, being the whole lefty pagan-UU lesbian-mom, civil libertarian, bleeding-heart-liberal and all, it just kind of saves everyone a certain amount of time and effort for me to not socialize with bible-thumping Southern evangelicals whose politics I can very easily infer.  But you know, despite the throng of lefty infertile lesbian fiber artists who flock here every day, I recognize that I am not exactly in the mainstream of reality televsion, or, well, really the mainsteram of pretty much anything.  You hear the Pat Robertson crap about how Christians are discriminated against in this country (um, okaaaaay), and I get the impression that this is what the Weavers are trying to pin their lack of popularity on.

So yeah, when Pat Robertson says it, no problem: BULLSHIT.  But could it be that the rest of these frosted-blond, all-American reality TV show contestants are also looking at the Weavers and saying, "thanks a lot for getting your fucking president elected, if you want to to call it that, and have fun with the Supreme Court, dude." And I will pause now to point out that there are many Christians in my life whom I love and respect.  Just not so much with the evangelical neo-fascist ones.  And I do feel sorry for the Weavers and I wish them well, even if I don't much like the president I figure must be theirs.

So that's option 1: TAR casting seems to have created an unusual subgroup of people who are generally unimpressed with the whole born-again thing in our culture and they're taking it out on the Weavers.  'Kay.  I suppose it's about as likely (perhaps more so, since I do think we're in the majority) as nearly everyone on Survivor this season thinking that Jesus cares whether they win a reward challenge.  (Poor Rafe, man, I'm telling you.)

Option 2, which I've been kind of thinking might be more likely, is that something happened that hasn't been shown that gave this wide range of people reason to dislike the Weavers so intensely.  But what?  Does anybody know?  I tried to read TWoP, but I simply can't page through 79 pages of discussion on this.  I mean, they're kind of obnoxious, a little weird, but they seem pretty normal to me.  Maybe it's 1.  I can't decide whether it makes me happy that I'm not the only one angry at evangelicals just on principle, or whether it gets too close to making people think Pat Robertson is right.

And yes, I do need to get out more, thanks.

In Which I Tell You a Few Other Random Things:

• The beaded bracelet is beaded, though I haven't yet sewed the links on.  It's a kit from Earthfaire.  Once I got going on it it did go really quickly.  And I likey.  A good, quick Yule gift.
• Ellen at Earthfaire gives good customer service.  I asked her a pretty darned stupid question, which involved a certain amount of blindness on my part, and she was quite patient.  Thanks, Ellen.
• I'm doing the "pre-cooking" for Thanksgiving today.  My mom went through an ovo-lacto vegetarian phase before becoming a vegan, and man-oh-man I had the best ovo-lacto vegetarian entree for Thanksgiving.  Chestnut roast in puff pastry with black cherry-port cream gravy.  I know.  I adapted it from the Christmas section of the book Vegetarian Entertaining with Friends.  The meat-eaters used to wind up eating more of the chestnut roast than turkey.
• With the advent of my mom's veganism, I've had to reitre the chestnut roast (though it does sometimes turn up on winter solstice), and I've been casting about for a vegan option with similar mojo.  This year, I remembered a wild rice casserole I used to make that was pretty damn good.  I'm making that today, and then I'll scoop it into acorn squash halves and bake it tomorrow, to be served with the cashew gravy on the side.  I don't think it can beat ANYTHING that's encased in puff pastry (let's be real here), but I'm optimistic.  I'll let you know.
• I'm also doing some pre-work on some other things, including marinating some sliced beets for a beet-apple salad.  I just finished boiling them, and there it is, a big pot full of red.  Apparently beet is not at all colorfast, but can I just tell you how hard it is to keep from sticking a big handful of wool in there?  Food, mamacate, food.

Well, I think that's quite enough from me today.  Back to the galley.

So Grateful

I had a very happy birthday, and thanks for the birthay wishes.  Rhys took me out for a lovely hot tub-massage-dinner date (I know, huh?  We get to go out about 4 times a year, but when we do, we make it count).  I slept in on Saturday, and then on Sunday, Rhys, Henry, and Eleanor all packed themselves into a giant box and jumped out of it.  Best. Present. Ever.  There was a bit of a too-much-cake-not-enough-sleep meltdown last night, but otherwise, it was lovely.

A sneaky friend sent me a huge surprise, and dear Lisa, who has finally caved started her own blog, sent a pair of beautiful pillowcases she made herself with quilt fabric.  In a yarn theme, of course.  Gorgeous.  Dear friend Sara even sang me a virtual birthday song.  Love it.  Thank you, friends.  Some days I walk around town in my goofy handknits and I feel like I'm part of some mysterious club, some secret society of bluestockings (woolstockings?) that most people don't even know exists.  They just think I wear goofy clothes.  But I'm grateful.  And I don't think I'm going to tell them all about it...not yet.

So now I'm an older older lesbian, 36 and squarely in the over-35 box on the surveys and well, not exactly old but not really a kid either.  That's okay.  Still a lot to learn.

I joined Carole and Margene's Knit Unto Others KAL.  I've already made a hat and a vest.  Probably another hat before I'm done.  I put some sparkly yarn in the vest--I hope it makes a kid far away feel special.

My kids will be getting Brioche Helmet Hats from the Fall 05 IK.  That is, if I manage to keep from messing them up.

Oh yeah, and hey, everyone's doing it.  Frappr me, will ya?  I love this thing.  And not just bloggers--all you people who I see around town and work and stuff who say "but all those knitbloggers will wonder who I am!"  C'mon, they don't even give you a place to put a URL.

If it works, you'll show up here:

Hey, I had to manage a visual somehow.

I'll soon be turning my grateful energies to preparing enormous quantitites of food and stuffing human beings who are all stuffed into the Very Small House.  Oh yes, and two dogs (3 including ours).  Sara and family are bringing Barney.  Pray for good weather so they can play outside.

I promise someday I'll have photographs again.  For now you'll have to believe me that I am in fact a knitter.

Have a lovely holiday, US friends, and happy, well, Thursday to you smartys who got it out of the way a month ago, or don't do the whole insane thing at all.  Just happy happy, I suppose.  Back to bricoheing.

Magpie at Work

So, hey, I can talk.  I even gave a presentation via conference call on Monday night.  Whoo.  Also Hoo.  Still a little croaky, but entirely audible.  That was an interesting four days.

As life gets crazier, I seem to get more distractable.  I seem to covet even more bright shiny objects, and then I am unable to resist them.

See?  Knitting beads.  (When will I learn that when someone tells you something in knitting is FAST, they lie, lie, lie.  Addictive, yes.  Fast, well, at least not for me.)

Out-of-season socks?  Why of course, who wouldn't be knitting lace socks in November?  But the Koigu...so pretty.

And Kepler (do you have a project you feel like you should be knitting?  what is that about?) has not been ignored entirely.  While not bright, nor shiny, it does have the appeal of handspun, particularly handspun where I know the sheep's name.

Yeah, ignore all the messed up cable crossings; this is what happens when you refer to the cable below instead of the pattern to decide what to do next.  You replicate your mistake, oh, 6 times in a row.  Design element, that's it.

T-minus a week to Thanksgiving here.  Totally unprepared, though I do have big plans to make a chart scheduling oven usage during the day.  I'm not usually anal like that (do you see me knitting along with that screwed up cable up there?), but the last two years we've had some critical path resource issues with the oven.

I'm a little cranky and a little down.  It's November, less than a week until my birthday, and I'm taking the weather personally, AGAIN.  It's dark all day, winter with three-year-old twins is TOUGH, and I'm back to doubting all the semi-decisions I've been making about my career and the fact that it's all STILL up in the air isn't helping.  Mostly I really just want to stay home and knit and spin and play with fiber and learn to weave and dye things and just, you know, make cool stuff but, yeah, also keep it all.  Do you think we could arrange for that?  Because that (and probably a full-spectrum light bulb right in my face every morning and enough b-vitamins) would go a long way to improving my outlook.  I'm just saying.

My Just Desserts

I'm still inaudible.  Croaky McCroakerson at my very best, frankly incapable at making a sound at my worst.

It's not that it hurts too much to speak.  It's simply that I can't speak.  I actually feel pretty good, the fact that I had too much wine at a playdate last night notwithstanding (yes, we have good playdates; I recommend it, in moderation at least.  And what was I to do but drink and whisper and croak and drink some more?).  More than once I have either answered the phone or made a phone call, forgetting the fact that I cannot speak.  I know this may come as a shock, but the inability to make a sound kind of hinders the telephone communication thing.  I'm just saying.

But how odd and how nice to be able to communicate fully with my friends in blogs, on email, and IM.  I feel almost normal.

There are certain interactions that can't be helped.  I simply must have my wonderful coffee from the world's smallest coffee shop (holds one customer at a time) on my way to work.  I sometimes need to make transactions in shops.  I walk through the halls at work and people say hello.  One poor soul even stopped her car and asked me for directions.  I gave them to her, in a whisper, leaning into her open window.

But suddenly everyone has to lean in, and everything's a little bit of a secret just between us.  "Yes, my signature has been rubbed off on my American Express card."  "Blackberry muffin today, please."  "Turn around and take your first left.  You can probably find parking at the meters, and they don't ticket after 6."  These little, normal exchanges take on a different character when whispered breathlessly to total strangers and the most casual of acquaintances.  The best part is the fact that almost everyone who carries on an exchange with me starts whispering themselves.  I whisper that I have laryngitis and then I whisper my desire for a muffin or the fact that the card I have proffered is credit, not debit.  Then they whisper a response.  Then they laugh and say "I don't know why I'm whispering too!"  Then I laugh (okay, smile and sort of breathe jovially), and say "yeah, everybody does that," and then they say something in a normal voice, and then they go back to whispering.  It seems it's almost impossible to talk loudly to someone who's whispering back.

Unless you're three years old.

This is probably god's way of telling me to figure out a new discipline approach.  Hmm.

Oops, I did it Again

I know, other people have used that title.  And actually, though I'm sure I've been subjected to Britney in elevators and shops, I wouldn't know that song to hear it.  But in a minute you'll understand.

Because I bought another fleece.

Because clearly, I do not have enough wool in my house.

And clearly, I live in a world where wool is scarce, and I have all the time in the world to process it in the slowest way possible, and then spin it, and knit it, and that's the only way I have of keeping warm this winter.

Right?

Okay, now that we're all in agreement that I'm not quite right when it comes to this, let me explain.

It's a colored Romeldale.

Black, with a bit of brown on the tips.

Hoggett.

Coated.

Skirted by a spinner.

Lives at a place the neighbors call "the Sheep Hilton," and

His name is Cedric.

Not a link-follower?  I'll flash you pics from Cedric's personal home page anyway.

I mean, who wouldn't have?

Now I have to explain this to mamarhys.  I will be sure to loudly and clearly place the blame upon Risa, who had to flash her CVM fleece over and over again (okay, once) and then link to the farm.  And people call me an enabler.  Please.  Anyone want to buy some stash?

Pssst...Kim has a few more 2005 fleeces and a whole bunch of reasonably-priced roving.  I'm just saying.

PS: Check out the farm pics page to see a sheep in the house.  Judy?  Look familiar?  We haven't heard from Sweetie Pie in a while, have we?  I assume, as big as she must be now, she's not watching TV in the living room anymore, right?

PPS: Still basically mute.  Have to get other people to make phone calls for me.  Aren't you glad that you, the reading public, receive uninterrupted reports of my maniacal behavior?  Don't answer that!

Uncharacteristically Quiet

Happy Thursday...time for Random Wednesday!

So, for once in my life, I'm not being loud.  It's not because I've suddenly seen the light or anything.  I have laryngitis.  It doesn't matter how hard I try, or how much I want to yell about something.  I simply cannot.  The best I can do is a weak and rather painful croak.  The kids think it's hilarious, and I know mamarhys is secretly smiling to herself.  Well, way to shut me up, huh?  Can't stop me blogging, though.

• Thanksgiving is at my house in two weeks.  Last year I planned like a maniac, but it was all still a big rush.  I should probably be planning this year, but I have a big presentation on Monday, and frankly I can't really talk turkey until I'm past that.  Well, I ordered the turkey.  That's the best I can do.
• HEN is back.  She looks great, though I'm abashed to say that I have not spun on her yet.  Last night I spent a long time talking to a friend who is about to give birth and is in that place where she's taking stock of her life and really needed to have an HDR ("heavy, deep, and real," it's an acronym we made up for her, nuff said) conversation.  I didn't even knit.  The night before I went to bed at 7 because of this virus that has settled in my voicebox.  But anyway, she's back and she's beautiful and based on a few turns she's much quieter and looks like she's ready to rumble.  Soon, my pretty...  She has new leathers, a little grease in the right places, some tightening up, a little correct assembly (yeah, not my specialty), and looking good.  Welcome home, HEN.
• I've been thinking about weaving.  Because in my tiny home, we totally need a loom.  But I really want to try it, and there's a great weaving community around here.  And I've heard you can weave with handspun singles.  And it's fast.  And a whole new way to play with fiber.  Cool.  I have been asked to wait until we do the addition on the house.  So of course I'm now on the job calling architects.  Anyone know a good architect in Western Mass. who won't be insulted when he sees our poky little house?
• I cast on for some F&F socks with some lovely koigu I was gifted with a few months ago.  I love the yarn, but it's pooling.  I thought F&F was supposed to be the anti-pooling yarn.  Sigh.  Oh well, I'll consider it a design feature and move on. Still, working with that silky merino and the colors--oh the colors!  Who cares how they line up!
• I almost forgot to tell you about the visit from the Mafia!  The FemiKnit Mafia came to Noho this past weekend, complete with her mother and son (aka Little Man).  Little Man is scary-smart--the two-year-old is reading numbers and letters, I'm like, "dude!", and he is devastatingly handsome and very, very well-behaved and flexible.  And did I mention two years old?  What's that about?  Mom has an appreciation for beautifully colored yarn, and the Mafia is fun and interesting and just one of those people you feel like you already know.  She's coming back without family units next week and we'll talk more. We also have a firm commitment to mock the designs in the Vogue Knitting I bought on our yarn crawl together.  Because why else would you buy Vogue Knitting?  Oh yeah, there is always the one sane pattern in every issue.  I've yet to make one though.
• Oh, Minh's other TV recommendation is Postcards from Buster.  (His tastes are nothing if not eclectic.)  The kids an I just started watching it, and it's totally awesome, all about life in different communities across North America.  Usually I put the TV on when I really need to do something, like take a shower or cook dinner, but I just want to sit and watch this one.  Oh, and Buster even has a blog.  No RSS feed, though.
• Well, gotta go to work.  I just have to hope nobody wants to talk to me on the phone, because I'm going to sound like an emphysema patient or something.  Email, baby, email.

Coupla Photos, and Then a Bunch of Stuff About Wool

You know the blogging-life thing has gotten weird when your coworker (that's Minh, of the good TV tips), says to you, as you leave the office, "post halloween pics soon," and tells you that his wife has issues with the difficulty in separating fiber content from other topics.  All I can say is, I feel ya, but everywhere I look there seems to be wool.  Sorry about that.

So, ya want the halloween pictures, ya got the halloween pictures.

Eleanor was a bucket loader.  Actually, the bucket fell off at some point during trick-or-treating, at which point she became a forklift, a transition she handled admirably for a three-and-a-half-year-old.

Henry was a ghost, complete with bang-clank equipment and a ghostly crown created in mixed media (felt and pipe cleaners) by mamarhys.  Mamarhys is entirely responsible for the brilliant, creative costumes.

Mamarhys may be the crafty, fabulous mama, but guess who hit the markdown bin for costumes for the dress-up bin?  Who knew Halloween fell in the beginning of November for the children of the cheap parsimonious thrifty?

Yup, Henry's wearing the princess dress.  Rock on, dude.  Eleanor has on the spider costume, which involves two extra sets of legs connected to gloves, so all the legs move when she moves her hands.  Slays me.  So freakin' cute.

So Minh and family may now stop reading.  The rest is about wool.

Kepler proceeds apace.  I'm starting to enjoy it.  Sorry, no pics yet, not much to see, just a bunch of stockinette.

I've been navajo plying the fiber I got at Foxfire Fiber, and I've learned a few things, the hard way.

1. Softly-spun long-draw singles and navajo plying don't really go together.  Navajo plying needs a pretty firmly spun singles to keep from BREAKING.  You know, over and over again.  Rhys, sitting innocently enough next to me on the couch, finally said "what is WRONG?"  It was one of those moments, when, teeth gritted, you growl, "yes-I-do-this-to-relax-what's-it-to-ya."  Lesson learned.  Okay, maybe lesson learned for the next bobbin, since I seem to have forgotten it halfway through the second one.

2. If you get the tension just right, it's almost effortless.  Until 1. happens again.  You want it to just sort of feed in gently as you pull out the loops.

3. Slow down.  I needed to navajo ply on a slower ratio than I did the singles or what I usually use to ply.  Keep that loop open and don't let it get ahead of you.  As (I think) Alden Amos says, few problems in spinning can be corrected by treadling faster.  Words to live by.  Now to remember those words when I'm actually at the wheel.

That's left to right in the order plied.  Kind of a sad thing to do to such nice fiber, but I decided barber-poling was worse.  Hopefully all will be redeemed in the knitting.  Maybe a hat, with the cashmere/silk as a cabled band?  Hmm.

So, speaking of nice fiber, I think I mentioned that Deanna and I split a CVM/Romeldale fleece at Rhinebeck and that she gave me my half at the Twist.  I washed some of it and decided to try out my new combs.

And also:

(Yes, Shrek slippers.  Henry adores them.)

Resulting in:

And this:

So soft. So silky.  Ahhhhh.  I just want to stay home and comb and spin.  What's this whole "making a living" thing about, anyway?

Off to bed.  I'll be picking up Miss Henny Penny from her trip to Dave Paul's wheel-spa tomorrow at an intermediate point, kids and friend in tow.  Later gators.

Random Multitasking

So, it's Wednesday, Random Wednesday (think "Bond, James Bond" when you hear that, 'kay?).  And last week, Sultry Painter Woman, the mom half of my favorite mother-daughter blogging team, tagged me for a random meme.  Plus I've been meaning to do that 100 things thing for, like, ever, just so I can have something to put on my "about" page, but 100 things is a LOT.  Kat had the clever idea of doing them in pieces, so it being Wednesday and all, and there being a meme and all, and Kat being clever and all, well, here you go.  One-fifth of the hundred things about me that I might someday get around to telling you.  Apologies if this is impossibly boring or all things you already know.

1. I work at a couple of fancy colleges but I didn't go to either of them.  I went to a slightly weird place, then I went to a state school.  Both were good for me.

2. I dropped out of high school.  I went to an alternative school in NYC where I could take classes at local colleges.

3. I used this credit toward my B.A.  It was free.  They even gave me tokens to get to class.  Rock on.

4. I wanted to be a fiber artist back then.  Some things don't change.  I took Batik and color theory and drawing at Parsons School of Design.

5.  I think my practical nature, getting the prereqs out of the way, was a mistake.  The color theory (taught by a graphic artist) and the drawing (at which I, to put it delicately, sucked eggs) kind of put me off art school.  I should have done more of the fiber arts stuff.  Maybe I would have kept going with it.

6. Then I probably would be broke.

7. I've experienced being broke enough not to romanticize it.

8. I went to Egypt when I was 15.  My boyfriend's mother lived there.  It was not an easy trip in some ways, but it gave me great perspective on how rarified the middle-class American experience is.

9. Some of this class stuff (this all does seem to be about class, doesn't it?) reminds me how conflicted I am about my house.  I feel ashamed of it sometimes because it's a little run-down and quite small.  But a big part of me resists the pressure to create a large and fancy space for my little family.

10.  Okay, let's get a little less heavy, shall we?  I have a cat named Idgie and a dog named Scout.

11.  This is the lowest pet population density in our house in a long time.

12.  My first dog, Sheba, died last fall.  She was the big brown dog, the beasty beast, and the sheba-deba-dee, ba-dee-ba-dee.  I miss her.

13.  Peak pet population density (I originally typed "poopulation," which would have been more accurate), was three cats and two dogs.  I suppose our total mammal count is only down by one.

14.  Rhys' family mostly votes Republican.

15.  In my family, our main argument is whether the Democratic party is being run by the corporate machine, in a conspiracy to render the left completely ineffectual, or whether the party needs to unite to fight the right wing.

16.  My mother is a registered Green.  She voted for Nader in 2000.  She doesn't even apologize for it.  Guess who takes which position on 15.

17.  She likes to point out that, living in NYC, she wasn't in a swing state anyway.

18.  Still.

19. Conversation at Thanksgiving is always interesting.  Luckily, we can unite in our animosity for the Catholic Church (Rhys' family: Episcopalian, my family: formerly Catholic radical whackos).

20. Surprisingly enough, I have a certain fondness for the TV sitcom Dharma & Greg.  Go figure.

Well, that wasn't so hard.  I promise to do more when the mood strikes me or I can't think of a single other thing to say.

I don't do the tagging thing (the madness stops here!), but if you're feeling a little random, consider yourself cordially invited to post 20 random things about yourself.  I know I'll enjoy reading them.