Sunday Scribblings #85 “I Carry”

I am an avowed bagaholic and I am not ashamed. I carry bags within bags within bags. You should see my biceps.

For work every day, I carry a leather handbag containing my wallet, a small bag of pharmaceuticals (all legal), 3 pens, a pocket sized Moleskine, my car keys, my for emergencies only cell phone, the odd pack of gum or mints, and the price tag of the bag from TJ Maxx.

I also brown bag my lunch, but in an effort to save a tree, I carry a lunchbag large enough to contain a Lean Cuisine, yogurt, an apple, a banana, and a Power Bar, plus the TJ Maxx price tag.

I also go absolutely everywhere with my latest knitting project because you never know when there may be a few minutes to kill, so that’s a third bag containing my yarn and pointy sticks, plus just about every notion a knitter could need, and of course, the price tag of the bag from Hallmark.

All 3 of these bags go into a humungous tote bag that a friend of mine picked up for me years ago. Plus a book or two. Everything fits quite nicely, although it probably weighs 20 lbs.

I almost forgot — there are the days that I stop at the gym on the way home from work, so that’s yet another bag full of workout clothing and sneakers, plus the TJ Maxx price tag.

It’s difficult if not downright impossible to make a longterm commitment on something that you hope will be an enduring part of your life. I’ve purchased many bags that I thought were exactly what I wanted, but once I got them home and had a chance to see how everything fit, I realized that it wasn’t what I needed at all. So I keep my price tags, even after I have finally made that final, final decision on the exact bag that I need. Because you just never know when what you thought you wanted was not what you needed at all.

Decisions in life and relationships are alot like that, don’t you think? If only we could just save the price tags and exchange them like I am able to do with my bags.

For more essays on “I Carry” at Sunday Scribblings, click here!!

My 2/3 Done Scarf

This is a scarf that I started for myself about 3 months ago and refuses to be completed. I keep putting it down and starting other little knitting projects for other family members. It has been hanging around long enough and needs to be finished, so I am determined that I get it finished before I go back to work on Tuesday. The yarn that I am using is Taos by Crystal Palace in color #10 (SOOOO pretty and soft), and using size 9 needles. It’s about 3 feet long now and I have one more ball to go, so it looks like it will be 54″ or so long when complete. The pattern is a simple k1, *p2, k2* across, k1 turn and then k1, *k2, p2* across, k1. If you like the pattern, click here

I Just Luff Bunnies!!!

moar funny pictures

Friday Fill-Ins #45

1. Plans and schedules are great when they work. Mine usually blow up in my face.

2. I’m happy when things are peaceful and quiet enough to hear the refrigerator hum.

3. The last thing I drank was coffee. Ten minutes ago. Alcoholic? The last time we went out to eat, about a month ago.

4. One of the most valuable things in my life is my family. No question.

5. I like chicken and broccoli on my pizza. Oh, and lots of cheese and french fries!!!

6. Dear November, would it be too much to ask for a little less chilly and a little more sunny?

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to knitting, tomorrow my plans include knitting, and Sunday, I want to um, maybe knit.

Sunday Scribblings #84 Left & Right

Awhile back I had made some vague references to our cat with the promise that someday I would post more about her. This Sunday Scribblings prompt was perfect for this post.

2 left, 2 right, 2 left, 2 right, 2 left, 2 right…….

No, I have not finally dropped my basket. This is how our cat Sadie Mae walks. The term for her gait is pacing. She moves her left front and back feet forward as one, then her right front and back feet forward as one. Thud, thud, thud…… literally, that’s what it sounds like when she walks. It’s not the most graceful way of moving, but it gets her where she wants to go. We call it “kerflunking”.

She has problems figuring out where her food is (she sniffs around for a few seconds before she finally locates where the bowl is — ditto with her water) and if you hold a treat out for her to eat, she usually has to dig her claws into your hand in order to find it.

Also — when she walks, her tail does not move. If you watch a cat, their tail is usually moving all over the place — balancing, sensing, and letting its owner know what it’s mood is. Sadie’s is usually in the shape of a sort of question mark hook that always curls to the right. I think it’s a very apt look for a cat like her.

Have you ever seen a cat lay down? Most cats just kind of stretch and ooze onto the floor. It’s a very graceful movement. Not our Sadie. Sadie doesn’t have a graceful movement. When she decides that she wants to lay down, she falls over on her side, usually with an accompanying “ooof”. We call it flumping.

Watching her run is a treat. It’s the hardest thing to explain. She either walks or runs full tilt. Because she doesn’t have a lot of control over her back legs, she’s not aware of how much strength she actually has, and when she pushes off to run, her back end tends to start coming around. Her back end will swing from left to right to left to right with each push. Very bizarre. Sweet Baboo calls it “jack rabbitting”.

The reason for all of this strange behavior is that Sadie’s mother contracted distemper when she was pregnant. All of the other kittens in the litter were fine, but Sadie was afflicted with Cerebellar Hypoplasia. Because of her mother’s distemper, Sadie’s cerebellum was damaged (the part of the brain that controls balance and coordination) and since there is no cure for this disorder, Sadie will always have coordination, balance, and spatial problems. It’s fine with her tho — she doesn’t think that there is anything wrong with her!!

When we adopted Sadie, the lady at PetPals told us about her disability. We had just lost another tuxedo and wanted another one. We just fell in love with her on the spot and I think that we’ve taken good care of her. Other than her disorder, her life is otherwise happy. We’re lucky that she has the mild case that she has. Other cats have tremors and even less control than Sadie does. She manages to hunt and catch birds/mice/snakes (UGH!!) just like other cats and also bring home “meals” for us. We’re lucky to live in an area where there are no dogs and few other cats, plus we live at the end of a dead end street so traffic goes very slowly. Yes, it is indeed good to be Sadie. She’s more fun to watch than cable TV plus she’s given us all of these neat words to add to our vocabulary!!!

Behold the GrandDolly’s Roll Brim Hat!!

Either I’m getting better or the patterns are getting easier. (She bows in appreciation of the applause) This adorable little hat took me just about 5 hours to make, including frogging the last 1 1/2″ of the hat twice and changing the top to an i-cord (which was also my first attempt at this technique) instead of a topknot. One more hat to go for Darling Daughter and I can kiss this yarn goodbye!!! Come to think of it, maybe that’s why I was able to finish this hat so quickly!! As lovely as it is, I am getting tired of looking it and can’t wait to move on to something else — perhaps a nice pair of socks for me and I still have a scarf that I started awhile back that I haven’t made a lot of headway on……..

The pattern for the hat came from a pattern generator at a site called The Diet Diary/Knitting Fiend — both names are mentioned in the url — but at any rate, click here to visit this generator and a host of others that she has on her site. Lots of great stuff to read and get lost in. For me and my way of knitting, the instructions through the generator are more clear and easier to follow. I kind of went my own way on the top and I think it came out pretty well.

Sunday Scribblings #80 Money

I am finally at a point now where money is not the most important thing in my life. I am so very, very grateful for this. As we all know, up to a certain age, things are so very, very important to a person. I always envied people that were perfectly happy with what they had, no matter how much or how little, because I always seemed to want more and more. Now that I am in a stable and loving relationship, I do not feel the need for additional things so much anymore.

My sister and I brought each other up in a family situation where we were excluded from the main nucleus, which included our mother, step father and the wonderful half sister. (Sounds all very Cinderella-ish, doesn’t it?) Sister and I lived all of our teenage years on the fringe of that “family”, not having any material extras except what we could provide for ourselves through babysitting jobs. This kind of atmosphere does not encourage healthy emotional growth. Self esteem and self confidence were two things in which we were sadly lacking. I tried to make up for this lacking by buying “things”, hoping to fill that void.

We could have probably done very well, even without the material extras, if we could have been included in the approval and love that they lavished on the step sister. But — being not terribly instinctive people, they thought that if they allowed “their child” to do anything and everything that she wanted to do, and if they bought anything and everything that “their child” wanted, that they were being good parents. “Their child” didn’t have parents, she had 2 walking talking wallets with money falling out of them.

Sister and I both have had failed marriages. We had no role model to look to for guidance. We were so desperate for love and attention, we made very bad choices. Even so, we remained close and buoyed each other up, offering consolation and advice to each other when needed. Since we lived so many states apart, our phone bills were probably pretty high, but we needed each other because that’s all we had ever had. Finally, we both grew emotionally to a point where we knew we had to end our marriages in order to have any kind of peace in our lives. We did all of this ourselves, without help from other quarters. We learned enough together to make excellent choices in men the second time around.

The half sister married and had children. Half sister has no problem asking for money/material things from her parents, so mother of course spends an inordinate amount of money on those grandchildren. Hmmm, I wonder if she knows that she has 3 other grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren?

So — who had it better? The child given money and attention without question, who never had to fight or work for anything? What kind of message was sent to her? That her life will be rainbows and pots of gold? Or the other two sisters, who paid their own ways through life, both monetarily and emotionally, knowing that even though it was the harder path, it was the right way?

After re-reading this post, it almost seems like I am trying to manipulate you into feeling sorry for the two sisters. This is very much not the case. The two sisters are happier now than they have been in years, and have left as much of that other life behind as is possible. If you must feel distressed, direct it toward the step sister — she hasn’t grown up at all, thanks to her parent’s “money”.

Behold the GrandDolly’s Socks!!!

These turned out so darn cute!! I didn’t try real hard to get the yarn pattern to match, but it did pretty well by itself. When I had finished one, I tried it on her to make sure the size was okay, which it was. We take care of GrandDolly a couple times a week while her mom and dad work, so Sweet Baboo thought it would be a good idea if we took her itty bitty socks and put them in a Fisher Price mailbox thing that she likes to play with. She’ll probably fling them over her shoulder, but what the heck, she’s only 14 months old. I’ll try to have my camera ready when she opens that little door.

Anyway — it seems that this yarn is the only yarn I am ever going to knit with again. I started with one ball of yarn Darling Daughter’s socks. Then she requested that I make a pair for GrandDolly. I agreed but then had to go back to get another ball because I knew that I wouldn’t have enough. Then Darling Daughter thought it would be so great if I could make a roll brim hat for her. And since I was doing that anyway, could I also make one for GrandDolly so that Mommy and Baby will match? And being the ever doting Grammie, off to the yarn shop I go for more of this yarn………………………….

Sunday Scribblings #80 - First Job, Worst Job, Dream Job

I don’t think there’s a rule that a person can’t write the Sunday Scribblings out of order. This one, which I did not respond to when it was first posted, piqued my interest.

I’ve had 6 jobs in my life, 2 of which I decided were not for me before the first week was out. In case you ever wondered, it gets easier to quit a second or third job if you can just get yourself through the first one. These are words that my sister and I live by.

FIRST JOB

My very first job was in 1972, working in a mail and printing room for a snowmobile distributor. I was fresh out of high school (actually, I started before I graduated) and as empty of self esteem and self confidence as it is for a 17 year old to be and still be able to function. I was hired as “temporary”, and as I looked back on it years later, that translated to “not being to enroll you in the insurance plan, but maybe next year we will be able to.” After finally getting my health insurance coverage (but only after invoking my father in law’s name, a sergeant in the State Police) I was eventually moved out of that position and into one in the shipping department. The powers that be then decided that my position was more in line with accounting than with shipping, so I was moved on over to that department, where my job came to an end just before my daughter was born in July of 1979. Not a pleasant ending, I was more or less blackmailed by them that if I didn’t report them to the authorities because they were firing a pregnant woman who had worked there 7 years, they would pay for my health insurance through the birth of Darling Daughter. This probably also would qualify as a worst job, but I really had one that was worse.

WORST JOB

After moving to CT, I started working for a textile company. The owner, at that time, was one mean SOB that really got off on playing head games. Lots of back handed compliments, changing the line in the sand constantly, you get the idea. I was still running on empty for self esteem and self confidence, so I put up with all of the crap. (Also, another fact that figures very strongly into my story, my then husband was what I like to call a job jumper. A grass is always greener type, he had no problem going to work happy one morning and then coming home that night and telling me he had quit. Having to be the responsible one, I stayed where I was because we needed health insurance and somebody had to be somewhat stable in that relationship.) And I was pretty good at stuff my feelings back then and I was forever telling myself that it wasn’t all that bad. Believe it or not, I spent the next 22 years of my life there!! The mean SOB softened a bit after a few years, then became a half way decent person the last few years. He sold the company just a couple years before I left and that’s when the ship pulled out of port. I really don’t want to turn this post into a pity party so the details will remain undisclosed. It’s enough to say that it got really ugly with the new owner.

DREAM JOB(S)

After leaving “Worst Job”, I had to get some perspective, so I decided that to keep my brain from turning to mush, I would clean out my closets and sell a few things on ebay. I have to say that I had a great experience with only a couple of people that screwed me over (I was selling alot of quilting and cross stitching related items so I think that those kinds of people are just a bit kinder and gentler.) My dream job would be to be able to make a nice living selling on ebay, but I also think that if I were to do that, it wouldn’t be as much fun.

So it’s funny how things work out. I have been in my current position (with just a few minor adjustments, mostly on my part) for just about 5 years now, and it wouldn’t be far from the truth to say that I am working my dream job. I just didn’t recognize it for what it was. At first, I was sure that it would end up with the 2 that I had quit previously after deciding that I was not comfortable in either of them. But I hung in there and there were major changes made for the first couple of years that turned the practice around 180° and made it the fabulous place that it is to work in today. It’s a job that I will be more than happy to continue with until it’s time for Sweet Baboo and I to start thinking about retirement.

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