Nice Pair

What sadistic jerk ever decided that in knitting, we have to do so many things twice?  Two feet = two socks.  Two hands = two mittens.  Two arms = two sleeves.  I swear, someday I'm going to knit an evening gown, just so I can get away with only making one shoulder.  It's a personal problem: I have the attention span of a soap bubble.  Doing something once is such a huge achievement for me that nothing short of a mandatory waiting period restores my attraction to the project.  Only after a suitable rest can I come back and finish the second sock/pant leg/earflap.  I think that attempting a pair of knitted gloves with ten whole fingers might actually kill me.

Knowing about this weakness of mine, I have learned to fake myself out.  Usually when I make a sweater, I knit a sleeve first, then the body, before starting all over on another sleeve.  The Red Faery, for some reason, did not inspire that sort of forethought.  Here I am at the bitter end, with two days left until we leave for my mom's birthday, and neither sleeve is finished.  What made me put down one halfway through and start another completely escapes me, if I even noticed it in the first place.  Attention span.  Sleeve Gremlins.  Saw something shiny. 

I'm trying to take it easy on myself.  Everybody else I know who attended Sock Summit is still in a puddle on the floor, contemplating recovery.  I would be too, but my kids have this hangup about wanting food and shelter, so I showed up for work instead.  Still, I wouldn't mind some toothpicks to prop my eyelids open with.  Sock needles are too long - I already tried.  The @#$%^ing sleeves aren't going to knit themselves in time for my mom's birthday, even though I asked them politely to. Crying and swearing also had no effect.  The sleeves just lay there, unfinished; Mocking me with their lack of caps or underarm shaping. 

And it's not that Mom wouldn't understand getting a box of disjointed sweater parts for her birthday.  I'm pretty sure she pioneered the practice of giving unfinished gifts when her five children were young.  But I only have two children (three, if you count Phillip), and it feels like wimping out for me to admit defeat before the 11th hour. 

So I need to just grow a pair.  Of Sleeves.