hand eye crafts

Lorette, The Knitting Doctor , told me to give my confounded shrug one more go, then ditch it and move on.  That's just what I'm doing, and, so far, so good. Very cold here today, but no ice or snow.  Grave disappointment. Since it was such a freezing, grey day, and since I'm still trying to stay out of harm's way in the house, I've spent all day in my room, knitting, reading, watching movies.  I think the last time the Alphabetical Authors project was brought up, I was on "Q" --- Daniel Quinn's My Ishmael.   "R" was Lisa Rogak's Dogs of Courage.   "S" was Cain , by my beloved Jose Saramago.  It's a slim book, yes, but I read it in one sitting.  Saramago's stories and his words transport me.  This time, it was no different. Right now, I'm reading Boots On the Ground By Dusk , by Mary Tillman.  Her son, Pat, a former NFL player, joined the Army Rangers after 9/11 and was killed by friendly fire.  Only it took t...

My parents' house sold this weekend.  I'm refusing to the play the could-we-have-gotten-more game because I am so drained by everything that has happened in the last year, I've got very little fight left in me. I got money out of a bank account I swore I'd never touch to pay for a hotel room for a couple of days, and am leaving tomorrow.  Hopefully, all the papers will be signed and notarized by Friday morning, because that's when I'm leaving to be back for Briton's birthday. I'll go through the house, and the cabinets, and the drawers, and the closets, and the attic one more time.  Because even though the buyer has given me 10 days after closing to remove any and all things I want, I just don't think I could go up there again.  This has got to be my goodbye trip. If it won't fit in the car, I have to let it go.  I've asked and asked and asked Briton and Hannah what they want from the house, they haven't given many answers, s...

The University of Georgia and Athens, Georgia are virtually the same thing.  UGA sits just about in the dead center of Athens, and Sanford Stadium sits just about in the center of UGA.  When there is a football game here, life is insane.  Today is a game day.  Well, game night --- kick-off is 7:45 PM.  There aren't that many roads into Athens, and as fans come in, they are all clogged to within an inch of their pavement.  The closer it gets to game time, the emptier the "out" streets become and the fuller the "in" streets. Amidst all the Knitters' Hunk and Chick goings-on, I failed to tell you that my son got a significant promotion at his job, and my daughter got re-hired at a restaurant where she worked during high school.  The restaurant has 2 locations: the one she usually works, which is about 3 minutes from our house, and the other, which is downtown. Downtown borders the UGA campus.  It is full of restaurants and bars and funky sho...

(ETA: I have no idea whatsoever why these links are popping up in my text.  I've tried to get rid of them, to no avail.  Pay them no mind.) So, I've been running the Knitters' Hunk contest for five years. My children have expressed little to no interest in it ever, usually only bringing it up in conversation when they couldn't think of anything else to say. It was Briton's idea, heartily seconded by Hannah, to include women in the competition.  And, boy, have their attitudes changed.  Briton checks in every day on the results, and always has possible explanations for who did and who didn't win.  As we rode to Atlanta yesterday, Hannah kept coming up with more contest ideas.  She and Briton were talking about how they hate that the tournament is going to be over soon, and that they don't want to wait another year.  So, don't be shocked if I come here with some, um, original ideas for more tilts. It will take us three days for us to get throug...

Business.  That's how I have to think of this trip to Tennessee.  Get things rolling for the estate sale, and get out of town.  Quickly and efficiently. Except we all know that anything having to do with our parents, our hometown, our family's "stuff" defies being dealt with non-emotionally.  The voice I hear screaming  in my ear's is my mother's.  She was intensely, actually, pathologically, private.  When her health began to decline, I begged her to get someone to come in once a week and run the vacuum, dust a little, wash the dishes.  She flatly, righteously refused because she didn't "want people nosing around where they don't belong --- looking in my drawers and opening my cabinets."  And now, here I am, having an estate sale, where a team  of people is going to be going through almost every corner of the house.  It's like killing her twice.  And I just can't get out from under that. My therapist asked me to try s...