Thumbs Up

Remember when I used to knit stuff, and then blog about it?  Yeah, that was cool, back then.  Thought I'd try a little of that today, just to see if I could remember how.  Turns out I do.  Here is a little mitten I busted out, whilst schizophrenically (that's a word - my husband the English teacher said so) dodging back and forth between the Knot Garden, the Frog Prince, an Elizabeth Zimmerman percentage experiment, and some socks.  

I call them Queen Of Hearts, because they make me think of playing cards.  Not to wreck my perfect average, they, too, are unfinished.

Notably lacking in the thumb department.  I should probably figure out how to make that next.  Calls for a wee chart, which will hopefully be the last thing I do before packing up the laptop for tomorrow's big pilgrimage. 

The only thing wrong with traveling is the traveling.  It will take all of tomorrow for me to fly between the west coast and the east coast.  Fortunately there will be a couple of times where I get off the plane and stretch my legs (run?) between terminals, so hopefully the atrophy won't completely set in.

Besides chart-drawing (doesn't everybody have to finish designing a mitten so they can get on a plane?), my other last-minute preparations include the following:

    1.    Where are the directions to the bed-and-and-breakfast that my publicist sent to me (subject heading: "Put this somewhere Safe because I will Loose it)?

    2.    What knitting am I taking, anyway?  There's a strong chance that I could finish the mitten on that long a flight, and then what?  Aside from the obvious 2nd mitten.  I'm thinking EZ % sweater, but it is kinda big and sweater-y.  I'll take the socks, hoping that steel DPNs don't anger the TSA Gods, but I find I can only work on socks for so long before they start to bore me.  Then of course there is the writing I'm supposed to do, but I never can tell if inspiration and/or lap space may be at too high a premium...

3.    Did I charge my mobile?  Thinking of small and irritating personal electronics, where in the !#$^%^* is the camera? 

The Camera.

I think I left it on my desk at the office when I last reported there (way back before the Pig-Headed Flu) and oh-my-gosh-do-I-really-have-to-drive 40 MILES to and fro to retrieve the F)@!@W Camera?

Yes.  Yes I do.  It's Leaf-Peeping time, and I have to blog, and there is no way I'm not taking a picture of my first-ever Rhinebeck and Book Signing.  Camera Fetch unavoidable.

.25 miles from home I nearly engage the ABS in my car when I remember trying the camera in the new laptop bag to see it it was going to fit...

At least I didn't get all the way to my office before I remembered.  Lucky Break Caught.  Brain cramp clearly emerging from the Ass-Chasery of my day.  I telecommuted today, which meant conference call-staff meeting, working online on a pre-colubian artifact of a laptop which processed so slowly that I was actually doing laps around my living room between databases, several breaks to feed/comfort/sedate my convalescent child, back to the demon databases, dash off to the post office-bank-pharmacy and back in time to receive the second non-convalescing child home from school, respond to all the AM e-mails from the hospital, button up as much pending *#)$&@^ as possible before being absent from the day job for 4 days, and make dinner for the smallies.  Phillip at grad school tonight so single-parenting it for the evening.  No sweat.  Just another day in paradise.

I think I could invade a small nation with fewer mental gymnastics than my days here in paradise, never mind pack for a trip  Experienced road-warriors I have asked tell me that it gets easier with practice.  Let's Hope.  See you on the other side (of the continent).

Not The Swine Flu

More like the Pig-Headed Flu.  
 

Phillip got it first, then Lindsay, then Campbell, and sometime between buying another box of tissues and making a big pot of chicken soup, I got it, too.  Like I even stood a chance.  My children attend one school, my husband teaches at another, and I work at a hospital.  There is NO way I'm not meeting some germs now and again.  And meet them I have: The throat, the aches, the general malaise.  General health and sanitation at our house this week are at about the level of Calcutta.

The good news is that on this, day 4, of the viral assault on Huff house, some of the victims are showing signs of life.  Phillip seems well enough to sit up and take beer, and Campbell is more bored than weak.  We ladies are still on our faces, but seeing the gents regaining strength is encouraging. 

Yesterday I was too tired to knit, which you know must be some kinda record.  Phillip suggested it might be one of the seven signs. 

Lacking the chops for even stockinette in the round (I tried, really), I dragged the laptop up to the bed and drew the chart for a mitten.  OCD is a really useful neurosis, in that its carriers tend to be very productive when properly harnessed.  But when you have OCD and lack the physical strength to either Obsess or Compulse, the Disorder part can really kick your butt.  Laying still and telling yourself to rest helps like handing an an anvil to a swimmer.  No, I need something to turn off the brain and its ceaseless cries of "HEY!  Why Dontcha_________?" in order to induce the required stillness. 

Phillip, who has no such problems, watches me putter from the bed, where I am too bored to lay, to the laundry room, where I am totally unable to do anything more than rub my eyes and make guttural noises, to the knitting basket, where I paw helplessly at the UFO's, and back to the bed, where I collapse in a heap again, only to start the process over again a few minutes later.  "It will all still be there when you get better,"  he says.  "Just relax so you can be well enough to fidget properly later."  He is right, and do try, but when I close my eyes, charts dance behind my lids.  When I fold my hands, my fingers itch to feel yarn.  

Still, things could be worse - I am so happy to have actually gotten the crud NOW, and not a week from now.  There are few things nastier than getting on a plane with a cold, so I'm super-glad to be doing this now, and not at my book signing at Rhinebeck.

One of the things I did by way of distracting myself was to crack the covers of my Elizabeth Zimmerman books.  You know, that lady really knew her way around her seamless sweaters.  It occurred to me that I have never used her percentage system to make a sweater, and I happen to have recently begun one that is a perfect candidate.  I'll show it to you, just as soon as my nose stops running.  
 

Boy Next Door

The house I lived in when I was a child (indeed, I lived there from birth until I grew up and left home for good, returning three summers ago to clean it out and close it up when my Mom finally downsized) was situated on a cul-de-sac.  The neighborhood kids called it "the circle", which it was, open only at one end for cars who knew where they were to come home, and cars who didn't to turn around and sort themselves out.

The circle was planted all around with ornamental cherry trees, which bloomed every year on my birthday.  The houses around the circle were classic mid-century tract, all variations on the same split-level theme, built with pride in the 1950s.  My family moved into ours in 1968, two years before my birth, when the service men had long been home, and the babies had long since boomed.  

The other houses on the circle had kids in them, too.  Stuart and Steve were much older, teenagers already, as was their younger sister Jessica.  Their youngest brother, Robbie, though, was our unofficial ringleader.  He had an air of worldliness and devil-may-care.  Something of the rebel was Robbie.  The kind of kid who could teach you to smoke and swear, but never get caught doing either himself.  My best girlfriend Debbie and her little brother moved away sometime around my 7th summer, and they were replaced by three brothers: Ron, Mike and Jeff.  Ron was the oldest, and had a crush on my sister Susie.  Mike slept a lot, as I recall, and Jeff, the youngest, was the apple of his mother's eye and an allaround pain in the ass to the rest of us.  In my house were David, Carolyn, Susie and me, our oldest brother Bill being away at college.  And on the other side of my house lived Todd, Shelly and Mikel.  They had it all, these three:  Their parents looked like Barbie and Ken (their dad actually named Ken, if you can believe it).  Their house had a pool.  Their cars were always a good 2 years newer than anybody elses.  Even their dog, Ralphie, had a cuter name than most.Mikel was the same age as me.  We had lots of other things in common, too:  both the youngest of the family, both non-athletic and kind of awkward.  Both of us liked words, and practical jokes, and any sort of torture we could inflict on older siblings.  When it snowed, Mikel and I were always the first out to the circle for the rare joy of wintertime snow.  When the cherry trees bloomed, we took turns climbing them and shaking the branches to make pink petal snow fall on each other.

The year Mikel and I were nine, we both experienced the implosion of a small universe that is the rule when your parents divorce.  In 1979, the "ME" generation hit its full, self-centered stride, and both our sets of parents split within the same year.  It meant that both our moms went off to work, and Mikel and I both became latchkey kids, at the mercy of our older (extremely resentful) siblings from the end of the schoolday to the exhausted return from work of our single mothers.  I seem to remember more than one time when Mikel and I both rode our bikes around and around the circle, not saying much to each other.  You could hear the yelling from inside one or both of our houses, and you knew that out here was better than in there, and it didn't matter why.  Maybe we would have preferred to be alone.  Maybe it was comforting that we weren't.

Mikel and I went on to middle school, then high school, taking each other's presence for granted in a way that we could not have done with our parents.  Through all my childhood upheaval, boredom, and personal evolution, Mikel was the Boy Next Door.  In high school, we had more in common than ever before, both falling into the same group of friends when we each discovered Drama Club.  I got to be on stage with Mikel a lot, and will consider him forever the most gifted comedian of his age.  His talent was instantly recognisable, his brand of obtuse humor rooted in his deep intelligence and gentle, loving soul.After graduation, I left the circle for New York City to study acting.  Mikel went to Alaska to seek his fortune fishing.  Mikel's Mom sold the house on the circle not long after that, and the Boy Next Door and I drifted off on our separate adventures. 

In a strange coincidence, Mikel attended the same community college as Phillip for a time, while I was away at school.  Phillip remembers with out-loud guffaws the times he found himself onstage with Mikel. 

The Boy Next Door, and all the things we shared, are now inalterable pieces of who I have become.  We got separated by time and distance, and the pursuit of happiness which neither of us had handed to us as kids.  I found a lot of happiness, and I know that a soul as sweet as Mikel must have done the same.

The world lost Mikel about a week ago.  In a bizarre twist, I heard that he had been moved from the hospital to his mom's house, not very far from the city where I live, and all his friends were invited to come to him, and say goodbye.

I couldn't go.  I couldn't bear to admit he wouldn't still be out there, somewhere, riding his bike around in circles, in case I ever needed to do it, too.  To sit by him and hold his hand and tell him what his being there meant to my childhood was more than I could bear.  To say goodbye to a talent like Mikel and thank him for every time he ever made me laugh required more spine than I have.  I know he would forgive me for that selfishness, because that's the kind of person he was.  I also know he would have wanted me to forgive myself, as well.

To say that his going is a cruel loss to his family and everyone who loved him is the most pitiful of understatements.  To say that he changed the lives of every soul he touched is, too.  However true they are, platitudes do not help those of us whom he left behind.  Mikel deserved to turn 40 next year.  To have his own theatre company.  To go on improving the travel experience of all his fellow adventurers.  And we all deserved to watch him do it.  The unfairness of a world without Mikel in it to point out what's funny, is indescribable. 

I wish everyone could have a Boy Next Door.

Mikel Anthony Boire, 1970-2009