Duck and Cover

So there I was, minding my own business, winding 655 little skeins of yarn.  I've been doing it all week, and I think I'm getting pretty good at it.  Like ditch-digging, or sod-busting, skein-winding is an activity whose learning curve we may not fully appreciate until it's too late.  And by "too late", I mean that if you find yourself actually doing any of these things, it's clear that you have not planned your life properly.  But I was winding anyway, with the speed and confidence borne of practice.  And that's when I heard it:  POPSMASH!

I looked into the hallway whence came the noise:

What you are looking at (and it took me a full minute to figure it out, myself) is the remains of one of these:

They are builder-grade ($1.95 per 100) ceiling light fixtures.  They are everywhere in my house, and probably in yours, too.  Look up and see if I'm not right. 

And it EXPLODED. 

The bulbs inside are still intact, and happily lighting the hallway.  Just the glass shade simultaneously blew up.  And I'm picking shards of glass out of everything in a 10-foot radius, including the carpet, the coat closet, and if I'm not careful, my hands.

Now I have lived happily beneath my collection of builder-grade ceiling fixtures for upward of six years in this house.  Before that, I had similar ones in two other homes.  And at NO TIME did it ever occur to me that I should worry about them EXPLODING into a rain of glass shards.  I'm really happy to report that no Smallies or pets were harmed, but I can't help but wonder if we're all on borrowed time here.

And the bigger picture also makes me anxious:  I like to think I keep my mind open to the signs the universe is sending me.  I believe that information about what we are supposed to be doing and thinking in this life is all around us, in the form of positive and/or negative input resulting from our actions.  God/Nature/The Universe has subtle ways of letting us know when we are on (or off) the right track in our decisions.  So what, Gentle Readers, am I supposed to make of this weird-ass development?  Really?  Broken GLASS.  Raining down from the sky.  I'd have to be blind (and deaf, and shard-resistant) not to notice it as some kind of signal.  But of what?

A moment of reflection spent in relative safety under the dining room table produced the following possible interpretations:

1.    I'm not supposed to be winding yarn right now.  God wants me to investigate the many possibilities of track lighting, instead.

2.    I should be paying more attention to lights being left on in areas where people are not.  That's just good environmental stewardship, but apparently at my house, it's also self-preservation.

3.    My weird-filled week has reached its inevitable crescendo, and I can relax in the knowledge that things are bound to settle down now (Insert Lightning Strike Here).

Which do you think it is?  Or is there a larger message here that I've completely missed?  

If anybody needs me, I'll be under the dining room table.

Actual Size

I'm home from my wanderings.  My husband emphasized to me that my actual time away was "ELEVEN WHOLE DAYS".  He also has discovered that he is "Only ONE Person!" (not sure what his count was before this).  In my absence, Mount Washmore, the active Laundry-cano in our home, erupted.  I think more than once.  Objects in mirror are closer than they appear:

And no, in case you were going to give my family credit for at least sorting it into these baskets, they didn't.  In fact, it even gets better:  In the laundry room, I have installed one of those plastic grocery bag storage devices you get from Ikea.  I use it to hold orphaned socks until their mates can be located, or I lose the will to search, whichever comes first.  While I was gone, this happened to it:

That's right.  Every single sock that came out of the dryer for eleven days was placed in it.  Which means that my family is unaware that the pairing up of clean socks is a MANUAL PROCESS.  They actually think this device will do it for them.   

I'm calling it Soxidermy.  A realistically preserved, wall-mounted head, made entirely of abandoned hosiery.  Its eyes follow me around the room.  Creepy.

Once I get to the bottom of this, I'll mount an assault on Mount e-mail, the active correspondence-cano.  Then I'll start winding yarn for the KAL.  I don't love this order of operations, but the clean underwear-o-meter went into the red around here sometime last Tuesday, so desperate times call for desperate measures.  We who are about to fluff and fold salute you.
 

Bootstraps

Nothin' ever kept a good woman down for long, and a bad one gets up even faster.

First, let me apologize for my last, possibly whiniest-ever, post.  I appreciate your patience with me while I retreated to a dark corner to lick my wounds.  As a general rule, I don't approve of self-pity, but I guess we all fall prey to it from time to time.  Thanks for not pointing out, Gentle Readers, that ALL of my problems belong to the First World, and are pretty puny compared to what others endure.

Thank you also, to my kind, understanding, and loving Flight Path Mystery Knitalong participants.  Your generosity is making it possible for me to correct my yardage error in the kits without also running out of groceries.  We who are about to snack salute you.

Thanks also to the Universe, for keeping me ever humble, and always introducing lessons to me about the way things are, and the person I am.  I'm rarely happy to receive these lessons when they come, but they are always the ones I remember:

Yesterday I sat down to post my thanks to the KAL knitters for their understanding and kindness.  I was confident in my ability to do this, in spite of having lived in the Seventh Circle of Computer Hell for the last week.  The consequences of having to replace ones Operating System are dire, but I was happily starting to recover from the shock, and put the episode behind me.  And that's when the hard drive crashed.  It literally made the sound you hear when Wile E. Coyote drops off a cliff.  And then the monitor went black and all this code started flying up the screen, just like in The Matrix.  An hour on the phone with Microsoft confirmed my fear:  My hard drive had taken a Dirt Nap. 

Having no computer whatsoever is a lot worse than having lost all your data, so I can now personally attest that everything is relative.  Phillip, it should be noted, is not, um, Hardware-Actuated.  That is to say, he'd rather have a $2000.00 doorstop than take a screwdriver to a sick PC.  And I don't blame him; that sort of adventure is not for the, shall we say, Cerebral Set.  He advised me to leave it alone, permanently, and use his machine until we could save up for a new one for me.

But a friend pointed out to me that hard drives are pretty much the only moving part in a computer, and as such, likely to wear out and need replacement.  The matter-of-fact way she said it made me think "Hey yeah!  It's not like you move to a new house because a lightbulb burns out..."  And with that, the Real Mary, the Take-No-Prisioners, Yes-Of-Course-I'm Gonna-Cut-That-Sweater-With-Scissors Mary jerked out of her self-pity fugue.  I went to the electronics mega-mart.  I spent $70.  And I got out the screwdriver.

It wasn't even hard.  I taught myself how to turn a sock heel, for crying out loud.  Compared to that, Hard Drive Replacement is about as challenging as Donut Eating.  And, as it turns out, even more satisfying.  I'm not ashamed to tell you I feel just a little bit smug about having taken control over the problem.  It made all the other stuff that's been going on seem more manageable, too. 

I am Knitter.  Hear Me Roar.