Life as a Spectator Sport

The Lorna's Laces Rainbow made lovely baby socks, but I've got enough of the stuff to outfit a small town. So I've been fooling around with other uses for it, and decided it will become some mitred squares.

Mitred squares are a lot of fun. You cast on an odd number of stitches, knit to one stitch less than halfway across, slip a stitch, k2 tog, and PSSO, making a 2-stitch decrease. Knit the next row plain, and repeat. Each decrease row pulls the middle of the stitching more and more into a vee shape, and then more and row into a square, until you are down to one stitch, and you've made a square with rows of stitches that bend around the corner where you started.



I cast on 81 stitches for this, and it made an approximately 5" square, nice and drapey and soft. I haven't decided what I'll do with these when I'm finished. Mitred squares are usually made in a continuous row or block, by picking up the stitches from one edge of a previous square. So I need to decide fairly soon whether they will be a blanket, or the border of a scarf or sweater or what. Right now I'm just admiring the first one.

The rainbow colors pooled so prettily at first, but then degenerated into the same mish-mash of colors that I didn't like in the socks I was making at first. Somehow, though, the colors seem to stand out better in the garter stitch than they did in a stockinette stitch sock. The individual rows are better defined and don't seem quite so muddled up together as they did with the sock. So I'm going to just keep making them until I decide what they will become.

To Michigan and back

Not sure what to post about the trip to Michigan. In one respect, it worked out well for me, but as a vacation it lacked a lot.

Clarence ended up in the hospital again, and will almost certainly have to be hospitalized again here before long. He has a deep closed ulcer on one foot, which is bad bad news for a diabetic. It produced a blister the size of a hen's egg, which is why we found ourselves in the emergency room in Lansing at 10pm last Thursday night. The hospital admitted him, started him on IV antibiotics, removed most of the blister and then--apparently without asking him about it--scheduled him for transfer to a local acute care facility for long term wound care and antibiotics.

We learned about this when I tried to track down the staff doctor who had seen him. When I told Clarence what was going on, he flatly refused to cooperate and demanded to be discharged immediately. I can't say that I blame him, but the problem is still there, I can't get an appointment with his regular doctor at all right now, and can't get an appointment with a podiatrist for at least a week. I suspect that before then, we'll be back in the emergency room.

Clarence just isn't taking in the gravity of the problem. He can barely stand up on two feet, but we do manage to deal with public bathrooms one way or another. He can't do it at all as an amputee. So he would have to go into a nursing home. In some ways, that would make life easier for me, but his pension covers most of our living expenses right now. A nursing home would take the pension and leave me dependent solely on my income. I could handle that, but life would certainly be more financially stressful than it is now.

In addition to running back and forth between the con and the hospital, I had to deal with a screwed up hotel reservation. Because I didn't get to the hotel until after 3am, their system kicked my reservation out, according to them (this despite the fact that I called them to say we'd be coming in very late). The desk clerk finally managed to reinstate the reservation, but it was somehow changed to only one day instead of four. So that evening when I returned, my key didn't work. Fifteen minutes of arguing with a different desk clerk finally got me a room again, and I thought everything was set. Nope. Next day it happened again. And again. I would have fired off indignant emails to the Choice Hotels customer service people except that when Clarence was finally out of the hospital, he got up early without waking me, tried to walk to the bathroom by himself, and landed on his rear on the floor. I called the desk to see if there was a maintenance or security person on the premises, and she sent a huge guy with trees for arms, who picked Clarence up and deposited him on the bed like he weighed 25 pounds instead of 250. I couldn't very well complain about the reservation screw-ups after that.

So we're finally back home. My house is an unbelievable mess because I just hauled everything in from the car and left it in the middle of the living room. Everything I own needs to be washed, and tomorrow we have to go back out for an overnight trip to southwest Virginia. Shelley wants to borrow money, Mike wants me to work on his computer, and one of my computer customers is leaving increasingly urgent messages on my voice mail.

I really need a vacation, sans Clarence, and it isn't gonna happen any time soon.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Not sure how I feel about this

I was sitting here reading my email and otherwise minding my own business, when I heard the name of Jonathan Bowling, the local young man who was killed in Iraq. I swiveled my chair around instantly and found that CNN was airing a program about the marine unit to which he had belonged. I knew him, and knew his father and grandmother much better. It was really hard to watch the rest of the program, to see the actual footage filmed during the mission, to hear that a rocket-propelled grenade had landed directly on him, to hear that he was still breathing when the unit arrived back at their base, but died during helicopter transport to a better medical facility. I'm not sure I wanted to know all the details. I didn't want to see the interview with Darrell Bowling, my former co-worker, Jonathan's dad. I really didn't want to see again all those images from the days and weeks after his death: the headline in our little weekly newspaper, the sign in front of the county high school and the one in front of the church near where Jonathan and Darrell lived, the huge crowd at his funeral.

Most of all, tonight I didn't want to be reminded that our government has caused the deaths of over 3,000 young men and women like Jonathan and the three others in his unit who died that night. I didn't want to think about the lies and the incompetence and the stupidity and the sheer wickedness of the people who brought this about.

I vaguely recall hearing at the beginning of the program that CNN and Anderson Cooper wanted to tell the stories of some of the victims of Iraq. I wasn't really paying attention after that until I heard Jonathan's name. Many others probably shrugged the program off as well. I pray that enough people's hearts were touched to force an end to this evil.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Where did we go wrong?

Sorry, this is going to be a political rant. I can't be quiet today.

Today, I learned that our new embassy in Iraq is going to be roughly the size of the Vatican and cost 592 million dollars.

Today I learned that we're sending 80 million dollars a WEEK to Pakistan with nothing concrete to show for it.

Today I learned that the pretender in the White House--he didn't earn the title "President," either by vote or by performance--has named himself the virtual dictator of the country in case of a national emergency, i.e. "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function." One presumes this could include a major hurricane, earthquake or widespread wildfire incident. The term "constitutional government" is sprinkled liberally throughout the document, but the bottom line is item 6:

The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government.

What does that mean? The President already "leads" the activities of the Federal government. The only reason to include this terminology is to over-ride the authority of Congress.

In two four-year terms of office, we have gone from a country that didn't believe in pre-emptive war to a country that has killed hundreds of thousands of another country's civilians and destroyed its infrastructure. We've gone from a constitutional republic to a dictatorship. The fact that the dictatorship hasn't yet been declared is meaningless. The mechanism for it is in place, and no one is paying attention.

This isn't America any more.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

It was bound to happen

Thursday morning at 4am, the fire alarm went off in our hotel in Maryland. We couldn't get a handicapped room there, but since the hotel had inside corridors and elevators, I said, okay, fine, we'll take a regular room. I've had a niggling worry in the back of my mind that we might find outselves on an upper level one day with no way to get Clarence down the stairs. I guess we were lucky that we were only on the second floor and that it turned out to be not a fire but some jerk who decided to light up a cigarette in the hall outside his room, and triggered the nearest smoke detector. At 4am.

We were lucky also that I'm fairly good about noting where I put things every night. I'm not a terribly organized person, but some items are overwhelmingly essential to me: computer, car keys, wallet, etc. The computer is always on the room desk, and the other things are always on top of the computer. When the alarm went off (and I stopped beating on the alarm clock to make the terrible noise stop), it took, according to Clarence, about three minutes flat to have us both dressed, the computer in its case and the other essentials in my pocket, and the two of us headed for an exit. I wasn't counting, but he's always had a pretty good time sense, so I believe him. That would have been about three minutes too long if there had actually been a fire on our floor, but in that case, I would probably have left everything behind but the car keys.

Our final stroke of luck was that three huge chartered coaches full of high school students, parents, teachers and chaperones had pulled up earlier in the evening, and the hotel was full. I still don't know whether I could have gotten Clarence down those two flights of stairs on my own, because about six people virtually carried him down.

You know who got blamed initially for the fire alarm, of course, but it turned out to be someone completely unassociated with that group.

The bottom line is that we won't stay above ground level again, regardless of where the handicapped rooms are. Oddly, we've frequently found them to be on upper levels. One has to wonder what logic was employed in that decision. We've learned our lesson, at any rate.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Covered in coffee

I just looked down at my yellow shirt and found it covered with speckles of brown coffee skins, deposited there by the wind as I tossed the freshly roasted coffee back and forth between a couple of colanders. Guess I'd better go shake myself off in the wind before I deposit it all over the carpet.

This has been one of those days when you do so much that you can't remember everything. Packed up a pile of things to take to the post office this afternoon, washed and hung out four loads of laundry, roasted half a pound of coffee, finished moving one set of shelving into the kitchen and another one out of it. Discovered that mice had contaminated two bags of flour and one bag of sugar that had been back in the corner of one set of shelving. I'm not too unhappy about the flour because it was some old white flour left over from before I acquired the grain mill. But the sugar attracted ants, so now I not only have a sugary floury mess to clean up, but a new trail of ants to get rid of.

I've been so coffee-deprived that I made a pot from the freshly roasted stuff instead of letting it sit overnight so the gases trapped in it from roasting could dissipate. Fast-food and hotel coffee tastes so awful to me now that I can't drink it any more. Even coffee-shop coffee isn't as good as what I roast myself. So I'm a coffee snob.

Tomorrow we'll be on the road again, a wide swing up the western side of the state to pick up eight stores, then across to Maryland and DC to do a couple more. By then, there will almost certainly be more to do in the DC, Richmond or Tidewater area. My scanner has decided not to work any more, so I'm not certain how I'm going to handle the documents that must be scanned. Kinko's, I guess. The scanner is being diagnosed long distance by a very helpful customer support person at Ambir, the company that made it. I'm annoyed that it stopped working, but impressed with the level of personal correspondence and helpfulness from the manufacturer.

Off to finish up my paperwork, and maybe to actually knit a row or two on my afghan.

Friday, May 11, 2007

Little Bitty Baby Socks

One finished, one needing only to have the yarn drawn through the last few stitches of the toe and woven in. I would have done this already, except that I can't find the blasted yarn needles. I had bought a set of Clover needles for my mother, couldn't find them when I went down to see her, and gave her my own set instead, thinking the new one would turn up any time. But it hasn't, so I guess I'll be making a trip to Wal-mart today. If I don't send these off pretty soon, Lucinda may never get to wear them. They are really tiny.

Then I'll start another pair with the red and white Opal Mosaik that I made Kay's sock with. It is a slightly thicker yarn, so should make slightly larger socks. And if Kay ever sends back the first sock I made for her, I'll make the second one too.

In the meantime, I labor on, whittling my eleven job orders down to three. Tomorrow I'll tackle some local inspections and get them out of the way, and then Monday we're back on the road, making a swing around the northwest side of the state, up to Maryland and DC, and back down through Richmond or Tidewater, depending on what comes in during the week. This is, in fact, how I had hoped the job would work out, except for having to haul Clarence along with me. I had hoped I'd be on the road pretty much full time, staying a couple of nights here, a couple of nights at Kate's, a couple of nights at my son's home. As it is, I have all the work, but with far higher expenses and aggravation.

I'm rewarding myself with five days in Lansing, Michigan, at the end of the month, visiting yarn stores and friends, and attending Media West, a big convention for media fans that caters to writers and editors. I had enough points to get the hotel room free, so the only cost is gas, food, and whatever yarn I buy.

Back to work . . .

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Learning experience

I learned a lot during this last trip. The first thing is that I can indeed drive to many of the neighborhoods I need to visit in DC. I've driven in DC many times, in fact, but it was usually in the evenings when everyone was home and few parking spaces were to be had. I think I will still probably use public transportation for most of my work, but it was good to know that I don't have to rule out driving. Only one of the stores I worked this week was in an area where parking was simply impossible.

The second thing I learned is that while it's aggravating to have Clarence along with me, it may be worse to come home to find the silverware drawer empty, the knife rack empty (and every one of my carbon steel wooden-handled knives soaking in dish water), every plate, bowl and drinking glass dirty, and food and ants everywhere. It took a couple of hours this morning to clean up the kitchen before I could fix breakfast.

I can't be too critical of Mike. He's a sixteen-year-old boy. I should be grateful that he was willing to stay with Clarence at all, and I am. But I don't want to come home to this again.

The third thing I learned is that McDonald's, of all places, now has wireless internet access, at least in the DC area. I sat in a McDonald's yesterday morning after leaving Kate's and uploaded all my work except for the two inspections I had to do in Norfolk on the way back. You have to pay for it, roughly $1.50 an hour, but if I organize my work carefully, I can have everything finished that doesn't require internet access, and then upload it all pretty fast.

The fourth thing I learned is that while I don't exactly enjoy Clarence's company, we do like the same food, listen to the same music, and have pretty much the same political views. We're both baseball fans and root for the same teams, and both wait impatiently for baseball season and the first afternoon game each day on satellite radio. I found to my surprise that I didn't enjoy being by myself as much as I had expected. So I guess I'm going to figure out how to deal with both Clarence and the DC inspections, especially since the truly incredible traffic prevented me from doing the entire batch of them on this trip. I'll be going back up there for at least two days this week, depending on how much work comes in between now and then.

Speaking of traffic, it appears that I'm going to have roughly a 10am to 3pm window in which to work in northern Virginia and southern Maryland. The traffic precludes getting to anything before and after that time. I finished a store in Chantilly at about 3pm, and got on I-495 to do the next store in Takoma Park, Maryland, roughly twelve miles away. I finally made it there at 6:00. I'd have been there faster if I had stayed on the interstate instead of bailing out and trying the city streets, but not much faster. That's ridiculous. So when I go back, we'll stay as far out of town as possible. If there is work all around DC, I'll set aside one day for everything west of the Wilson Bridge (the Woodrow Wilson bridge over the Potomac) and west of the I-495 split (where I-95 splits off to head north to Baltimore), and another day for everything east of there, changing hotels if necessary to put me in the appropriate half of the area. I don't see any other reasonable way to manage it.

Now I still have to upload the stores I inspected yesterday, and then go inspect four or five more today. Knitting? What's that?

Friday, May 04, 2007

No blogging for a while

I have eleven job orders in process, totalling 53 stores, and almost half of those have to be in by next week. I may have bitten off more than I can chew here. When I agreed to take on DC and northern Virginia, I did not anticipate that this would also include the adjacent counties of Maryland. If it weren't for having to either take Clarence along or pay someone to stay with him, I could just about do it, but one option slows me down too much and the other one isn't always available and really eats into my bottom line.

No knitting either, I'm afraid. Whatever is on the needles at the moment is likely to stay there for a while. I did finish a pair of baby socks for Lucinda, and will post a picture of them when I've had a chance to catch my breath with these inspections. I'm told they are adorable, and I think they are pretty cute myself. Finally found a use for the Lorna's Laces Rainbow, now that I have three skeins of the stuff. Only trouble is, I could make about five pairs of baby socks out of each skein. Wonder how it would knit up as a hat . . .

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Welcome to life in the country

Our critter turned out to be not a mouse, not a rat, not a vole and not a shrew on steroids, but a juvenile possum.

I baited a rat trap and went to bed. Fifteen minutes hadn't gone by when I heard it snap. But we hadn't heard the animal at all, and I wondered whether the trap might have tripped on its own. The wooden rat traps have a different cocking mechanism than the mouse traps, and I wasn't entirely certain how well that little tab of plastic was going to hold back the huge spring. And it sounded as though the trap had flown halfway across the bathroom floor, not what you'd expect if something the size of what I saw yesterday was caught in it. I turned over and went back to sleep.

Just before dawn, Clarence woke me up. "I hear it," he whispered, and sure enough there was a scrabbling sort of sound under his dresser. I got up, took out another trap, baited it with the blue stuff in the little bottle (which does indeed work better than peanut butter), and set it on the bathroom floor near the one that had tripped, and which I now saw had caught an ordinary mouse. I went back to bed and waited. After a while I heard the distinct sound of crunching in the bathroom.

"I don't see how it could be a shrew," I whispered to Clarence. "It isn't big enough. But it sure sounds like it's eating that dead mouse." Shrews, the internet assured me, ate small mammals like mice as well as the other kinds of things eaten by rodents. And they had short tails. And at least some of them were gray, like our animal. But they were tiny.

I crept out of bed in the increasing morning light and snuck around the door to the bathroom. Sure enough, there was the very large non-shrewish-appearing critter eating the mouse. It didn't even run away when it saw that I was watching it. I threw Clarence's shoe at it and it ran behind the hot water heater long enough for me to remove the mouse and push the other rat trap into a more tempting position.

Another half hour or so went by, and the other trap went ka-boom! When I went to check, I found I had caught a possum. That was the first time I had seen its face in enough light to realize what it was.

The only trouble with a baby possum is that where you have one, you usually have ten or eleven more, and if one found its way into the house, others are likely to do the same thing. This one was still of a size to be carried around on mama's back with its littermates. So when I went out to do a computer call today, I bought a can of expanding insulation foam, which I will shortly apply to every crack and crevice I can find in the hopes of at least discouraging other visitors.

And now I have to do the paperwork for three days of inspections, make sure my clothes are packed, go to the grocery store so Mike will have lots of goodies to eat in my absence, get out the other computer and set it up so he'll have a computer to use in my absence, and make up his bed. At some point it would be nice to have some sleep too. I haven't knitted anything in days.

Whatever it is, I'm not sharing my house with it!

As I was getting my paperwork ready this morning, I heard a strangled shriek from Clarence that sound like "Rat!" I didn't really think that was what he had said, but indeed it was. When I went to investigate, I found him lying on the bed with his feet well away from the floor.

"There was a rat in here!" he hollered. "It was as big as my hand. It went under my chest."

Since he has a tendency to exaggerate, I figured it was just a fat mouse. But he was right about one thing--it was easily as big as his hand. It ran out from under the bed and across the room, escaping the shoe I flung at it, and I still don't know exactly what it was. It looked more like a big hamster than anything else. Short-tail, silvery-gray coat, obviously not a rat but not a fat mouse either. The only thing I can think of is that it might have been a vole, but they don't normally come inside houses.

At any rate, we stopped on the way home tonight and I bought a couple of rat traps, some rat poison and some attractant for traps. Whatever it was, it's going, one way or another. If something that size can get in, then a genuine rat could too. And now I'm jumping every time I hear some little noise.

All of which means that I need to get two projects done as quickly as possible--replacing the entire floor in Clarence's room, and replacing the kitchen cabinets and floor. I suspect the critters are coming in around the kitchen plumbing, where the floor had a lot of water damage. Both projects are going to be laborious and expensive, just what I needed right now.

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