the Village Knittiot

So tomorrow morning begins week two of the paper route. Don’t even ask me how tired I am, because I don’t want to talk about it. Also, it has been bloody cold here. The balmy 45-degrees and clear skies that marked our first day on the route have been replaced by cold, snow, more cold, and even more snow. It was something below zero this morning and my hands were numb before we even left the depot. And as for snow, all I can say at this point is thank god for my knee-high Doc Martin’s. Really, though, the route is a snap and after four days on our own, we have it mostly down. Even yesterday in the midst of a blizzard, we got everything delivered in two hours. And yes, I did say blizzard. Though that may be a slight exaggeration, but not by much.

As a little perk for being such great newspaper delivery persons, we are treated to a free newspaper everyday. Lucky us.

I wasn’t sure how I would like this being that I am a member of the non-newspaper-reading, non-tv-news-watching crowd. It isn’t that I am uninformed. I just don’t think looking at newspapers is the best way to get a feel for the true state of the world or even just your neighborhood. I know a lot of people who read the newspaper everyday from cover to cover and don’t seem to have a clue about what is going on in the world, let alone their neighborhood. Mostly these people are just freaked out about crime. Not specific crimes, but crime in the most vague possible sense.

Me, I get my information from other sources. Sources that I (mostly) trust. Sources that are often online. Sources that are not all about sensationalistic garbage and viewer/reader retention (or at least if they are, proclaim it loudly). Sources that don’t dismiss conspiracy theory out of hand. Sources that are not involved in the plot to keep us all freaked out, timid, frightened consumers desperately needing to be told what to want and what to think. I will spare you my lecture on the news media as the gatekeepers of information. I will also refrain from extensive discourse on the inaccuracies of reporting, the inability of journalists to interpret events in any other way than through their own “eyes” (i.e. worldviews, experiences, culture, biases, etc.), and worse, the catering of “news” media to their advertisers, their rich bosses, and the politicians who’s pockets they are comfortably nestled in. Not that I have strong opinions about this stuff or anything. I’m just suspicious. Also, am I the only one who feels that inviting a newspaper into your home is a little bit like inviting sex-offenders and serial killers in? I mean, is it necessary to have a picture of a creepy man on my kitchen table who killed some guy just so he could take his wallet? Is it necessary for me to know all the brutal and gory details of a sexual assault? It seems to me that these crimes are personal (committed against an actual person) and therefore deserve some privacy and respect. So for me, the answer is no. It is one thing if the intent is to be informative, but too often it feels like they are just cashing in on someone else’s misery.

And yet here I am, trotting home every morning (just as everyone else is getting up, I might remind you) with the newspaper. Oh the Irony. This past week I have learned all kinds of important things. Like, apparently Ice Cube’s acting career is moving into family oriented comedy. The only comic worth reading (still) is Boondocks - though a Republican administration has been good fodder for Doonesbury. And, Cancer is the new number one killer.

Be afraid, be very afraid of cancer, because everyone gets it and probably everyone will die of it. You might even have cancer RIGHT NOW! Of course, if you actually bothered to read the whole article (which, being the hypochondriac I am, I did -they sucked me right in with their fearmongering) you will learn that cancer only took the number one slot because heart disease has done a nose dive thanks to fewer smokers than ever before. Also, it mentions that just because cancer took the #1 slot by default, there is still good news - it too is on the decline by about 1% every year since 1999. It also pointed out how many people actually die of cancer every year — something like 500,000 people. The smallness of the number shocked me considering the threat that I (and apparently many others) feel constantly under. I mean seriously, how many of us live in this country? Like 295 Million? If only 1.8 million of us are getting diagnosed with cancer and 64% of us are surviving it, things are looking pretty good.

The American Cancer Society has a great download that is filled with information and statistics on cancer. I must have spent about an hour just calculating the actual risk that cancer represents and marveling at the fact that I have spent any time at all worrying about it. Granted, losing my good friend to cancer of everywhere a year and a half ago turned the volume up on the worry speakers, but surprisingly, reading through this article made me feel so much better. I would like to point out that 500,000 deaths doesn’t seem like a small number when you have just lost your best friend, or your partner, or you child. But, as one of my favorite nurse practitioners pointed out to me once - most people don’t have cancer. I marveled that she could keep such excellent perspective in the wake of losing her third friend that year to one form or another of the disease.

I learned lots of other things too that I have promptly (merciful gods in heaven) forgotten or am pretending to forget. Like why yesterday’s lead article on the front page was about how a private college in Central New York rejected a man from their teaching program after learning that he favored Corporal Punishment in the classroom and felt that multi-cultural learning had no place in Americun Skools. I couldn’t tell if they were saying it was wrong to have “Rejected him for his personal beliefs” or if they were trying to point out what an absolute imbecile he is. Wasn’t there anything else going on in the world?

One good thing about the paper - crossword puzzles. They aren’t so much fun as they areââ?¬Â¦compelling. Why I feel compelled to plumb the depths of my ignorance, I can’t say. I can only blame the New York Times Crossword and the way it taunts me on a (now) daily basis. On Tuesday I think I answered (probably incorrectly) three clues before I marched off to my computer and began googling the obvious ones (best director and film 1967, Khartoum’s country, etc.). This led me to my Fun Discovery Of The Week. The clue was “Egyptian Fertility God.” I finally found out that the answer was Amon (thanks to godchecker.com), but not before learning that the Egyptian god of lettuce and sex was named Min. Maybe that is what we need here - fewer newspapers and more gods.

This is what time I woke up this morning. On purpose.

Now you may be asking yourself, “Why? Why would she do this?” You may be thinking that there is something wrong with my brain. And you would probably be right, but that has nothing to do with why I woke up at 3:00 this morning. You see, I did this all so some lucky bastards who are still in bed can get the paper safely delivered to their home before six o’clock. Yep, I am the newspaper delivery person in your neighborhood (or at least I could be, depending on where you live). I have been humming that song from Sesame Street all morning (If you click on the link and scroll down the page, Amazon will let you select and listen to 30 seconds of Bob and the Sesame Street gang singing People in Your Neighborhood).

Now if I think about the fact that this is really only 2.5 hours earlier than I usually get up, it doesn’t sound so bad. And truthfully, at this point in the day (6:42 a.m.), I’m doing great! But talk to me again 5 hours from now and we’ll see if my brain doesn’t feel like a big pile of goo sloshing around in my skull. I suspect an early night will be in order.

This morning was a balmy forty-five degrees. We ended up taking our jackets off for more than half the route. It was a lovely little taste of spring — in January! We should be buried in snow and yesterday it rained all day long. Weird. I’m tellin’ you folks, Mother Earth has some serious pangs goin’ on. Tomorrow we are back to normal with highs in the teens. That is going to suck.

But I am making this sound much worse than it is. Actually, I am a morning person. We both are. Mr. Knittiot is up by 4:00 am, and I follow sometime around 5:30 (or whenever he gets around to bringing me my coffee in bed — yes, I am a princess, but what can I do, he insists). And it is something that my sweetie and I can do to help make ends meet in what could become a somewhat trying couple of months. Because on Monday we received the oh so appreciated gift of a pink slip from sweetie’s employer, which is a story for another day.

So, we are fastening our seat belts and preparing for the proverbial bumpy ride. In a stroke of fate, the route opened up the day after he was let go and is right in our neighborhood. We had put ourselves on the waiting list for a route in our neighborhood about a week beforehand, just thinking we’d grab a Sunday route if there was one available. You know, try to make a little extra cash. Get caught up on a few things. The route that opened up is 7 days a week, which, as it turns out, is a great thing!

All in all, things will work out for the best. It was a vile soul-sucking job, and I am so happy to have my smiley (and more relaxed — despite the worries of finding another job) sweetie back!

On the knitting front, I have been working away on a shawl (pictures to follow later when it is light out and I can take decent pictures of my progress). But now I am mostly thinking about all the cold weather gear I can knit up to make the paper route a warmer experience. I may have to be on a bit of a yarn diet for awhile, but I’m sure I’ll manage to find something in my stash to keep me busy.

Guess what? My mom is a knitter. Yes, it is true. We are now a knitting family. A week with me and she has mastered the single needle cast-on and the knit stitch (she’s still working on purling), has bought 4 pairs of needles and 11 skeins of yarn, has been to 3 different yarn stores in 5 days (and we still didn’t get to them all), has started two projects (both of which she carried with her on the plane home and which, she reports, have both seen considerable progress), and is already exhibiting signs of developing a healthy fiber addiction. Mission accomplished. Put another notch on my belt. See us? We are knitting. Together! In my den! Me and my mom.

I wasn’t sure that me ma’ would like the whole knitting thing. She’s a bit…well…high strung. Sitting for more than 20 seconds is not really something she is good at. So rather than try to force it, I decided to set aside my knitting expectations for her visit and just go with the flow. Do the things she wanted to do. You know, be a good daughter.

She called me from the airport on Christmas Day to tell me that her flight had been cancelled and the next one wouldn’t be taking off for another three hours. I asked her what she was going to do with all that time (knowing full well that she would be crawling out of her skin at this point) and she calmly replied, “Well, Amy [my cousin] taught me to knit last night at about 10:00. So I’m going to work on that.” She said she wasn’t sure if she was doing it right, but it was fun. You know how when you were a teenager and you would say something that your parents approved of whole heartedly and they would spend a good ten minutes trying to be really casual about their approval and excitement for fear that it would make you do a sudden 180 degree shift in your thinking? This was me on the phone with my mom talking about knitting. And very much like those parents, I don’t think my attempts at nonchalance were very convincing . The thing that was so exciting was how calm she seemed (a calmness that translated itself into her entire visit here — well, mostly. Let’s just say she was more relaxed than I have seen her in a long time.) I promise to never again underestimate the mystical powers of knitting.

My mother, however, is not the first knitter I have enabled. Meet Kari. A couple of months ago Kari made the fatal mistake of telling me (a known knitter) that she had found a basket of knitting stuff just lying around in her attic. “I ought to send you this stuff,” She said. “Someone should get some use out of it.”

Yes, I thought. Yes. Someone should get some use out of them. Maybe someone named Kari? And you know what, I am the worst kind of enabler. I am the kind of enabler that looks for yarn shops in your neighborhood. Tells you about the classes they offer. Suggests that I fly out to see you with ulterior motives of ensnaring you in yarn and its tantalizing yumminess. Kari must have known that it was useless to fight it, because she really did give in pretty easily. She visited the store, fell in love, signed up for a class, made a hat, bought more yarn she doesn’t even know what she is going to do with yet (Kari has a stash already!), has several projects in the works, and in general has so much yarn stuff going on that she sends me updates!! I also might add here that I think Kari is a very good writer and that she really ought to consider starting a blog (you didn’t think I wasn’t going to try to get her sucked into blogging now, did you?).

In WoW news, this was the first week in over a month that I wasn’t being sucked into a virtual world every spare moment of my time. Imagine, knitters, not being able to do any knitting of consequence for an entire week. This is the idea. On the bright side, I got a lot of knitting done. I also had the brilliant idea that having something simple to knit while playing WoW would be good for travelling time between the different cities and continents and for the multiple trips from the graveyard back to my dead body (death, in WoW, is just really dull — I hope that actual death is nothing like it). Num Lock is my friend — press it and I’m running without having to do anything but point myself in the right direction. While I’m running, I’m knitting (and dodging the occassional tree).

In other knitting news, this week I started and finished 2 fluffy scarves in pinks and purples (thanks in part to the little bit of WoW time I did manage to sneak). They are for two adorable little girls who love fluffy, and love pinks and purples. Sadly, they both have the stomach flu and I haven’t been able to get over to their house to give them their prezzies. The picture is a bit dark, but if you look close you will also see a bear that my own yarn enabler made me for Christmas, and the knitting bag my mother gave me (handmade by her aunt).

I also finished my Sweetie’s birthday hat — only a month late.

He loves it and has taken to wearing it around the house because it has been so chilly in here. This is already really long, or I would tell you the ordeal of the furnace. Perhaps another day…

One final note. Here is the really lovely thing about having a mother who knits. She understands two words — stash enhancement Thanks mom! Now, if you’ll excuse me I have about a weeks worth of WoW to go catch up on…