OK, so it's been a while

I got back from that conference and the end of the semester came up and hit me in the face in a manner very much like a brick wall.  I made it through by dint of triaging (read: giving up everything except work).  And then, the day after I taught my last class (mind you, I was still "triaging"), this wonderful thing happened:

That's Pippin (Peregrine, but, you know).  She was four and a half months old in those photos.  Now she's closer to six months, and it's as if she's always been here.  That's not to say that Tilly isn't still a ghostly presence, always missed, but we are so glad to have dog energy back in this house.  And good dog energy, to boot!

 She has met Disco.

And gone for many many hikes.

And she's a big fan of keeping my feet warm while I'm working.

So, in the midst of many other things that have kept me busy, this has been a very good thing.  Hooray for Pippin!

Day 120: Toes!

So, I don't know if I've mentioned, but our cat Bastet is polydactyl (she's lucky she didn't end up with a name like Polly or Digit)(although I'll be honest and mention that one of her nicknames is "Toes"). 

We often joke that she has to work pretty hard to keep track of all of those toes.  Evidence of this assertion includes the following:

(The evidence consists both of the overlapping and central toe placement, and also the prevalence of napping behavior.)

Meanwhile, Rick just treated me to an afternoon pick-me-up as I struggle through an endless pile of some delightful essays.

Happy Friday, all!

Day 100: Cats!

They keep me company as I grade.  (It takes me about 20 minutes a paper for these first papers, and there are 40 of them.  I'm trying to take it in smaller pieces, both so that I don't get too stiff and uncomfortable - and, honestly, my fingers stop being able to type comments after a while - and so I don't get impatient and nasty in my comments.)

They think they're helping...

Day 82: How does she know?

Our springs around here are usually rather grey and chilly (we don't talk about May Gray and June Gloom for nothing!), and with each passing month, things heat up until we get to October, which is usually our hottest month (and the month which - until climate change - had our highest fire danger)(note: that aside is not meant to suggest that our fire danger has eased up - on the contrary, first season now runs year-round).  While this year has been cooler than usual (for which I am grateful), it's hasn't exactly been chilly.

But, as she does every year around this time, Disco has started to grow in her winter coat.  It's got to be the light, right?  Because it's certainly not the temperature!  All I can say is thank goodness she's a thoroughbred, which means even her thickest winter coat really isn't.  (This pleases me, since I don't absolutely have to clip her, both because her coat isn't heavy and because she isn't in really heavy work.  I love her winter coat - it's like a lovely cozy reddish brown velvet.)

Are your various animals growing their winter coats yet? Or is this just some weird Disco thing?

Day 63: A perfect quote

A friend of mine, upon hearing of Tilly's loss, just sent me a fantastic quote from Edna St. Vincent Millay.  I thought I'd share:

The presence of that absence is everywhere.

Isn't that the perfect way to put it?

Day 51: The second arrow

I've been thinking a lot lately about the Buddhist teaching of the second arrow.  The basic idea is that a pain happens (the first arrow), and then we pile other things onto the pain - stories, regrets, fears - and that is the second arrow.

We had a little less than five days between Tilly's diagnosis and her death.  Her diagnosis came as a total shock.  She was only eleven.  In June, she was hiking all over the eastern Sierra with us.  A little more than three weeks before her death, she had bloodwork done (pursuant to starting a medication for itchy skin), with no hint that cancer was raging through her system.  But the day we got the diagnosis, xrays showed her lungs filled with tumors (and since dogs rarely get primary lung cancer, that suggested that there must have been other tumors elsewhere, probably abdominal). 

She'd spent the night with the vet, waiting for the results and getting stabilized.  Then we brought her home with Tramadol, drugs to help with congestion, and painkilling injections for when things started to really go downhill.  I also cancelled my then-upcoming five-day silent retreat at Spirit Rock.  (It was on compassion; and I was very clear that the most compassionate thing I knew to do for myself, my dog, and my family was to be here at home.)  And, while my formal sitting practice frankly went to hell, I lived those five days as a practice of mindfulness.  (And please note that word "practice".  It means that there were a lot of nonmindful bits in there!)

The definitions of mindfulness that I cite in my classes generally involve at least these elements: moment-to-moment awareness of what is happening (this can be physical, environmental, emotional, psychological, etc), on purpose, without judgement (and, I would add, with compassion).

And that's what I tried to do.

And it was really interesting.

During those five days, there were a lot of first-arrow pains.  There was the night that she went to scratch the rug next to my side of the bed as she always did before going to sleep, and she had to stop and lie down to pant because it was hard to catch her breath.  And the day she couldn't get up into the car by herself anymore.  All the markers of decline, all the signs that she was uncomfortable.  It's hard to watch anyone we love suffering, and that causes suffering.  Those things were really happening, right there in the moment, and the emotions that came with observing them were painful ones.

And then there were the second-arrow pains.  Lying on the front lawn trying to get work done, with Tilly curled up in the sun next to me.  A good moment.  And the second arrow hits - I won't be able to do this any more.  I will miss her terribly.  I can't imagine my life without her.  And then the realization - but she is here.  I am doing this with her now.  If I am present for this moment now, she is not gone.  All the pain was coming from my mind being somewhere other than in the moment that was actually happening.  (Except, notice, that those thoughts were actually happening and causing actual pain - something to bring non-judgemental, compassionate awareness to.) 

Such an interesting thing to notice.  Because here's the thing: preowning all the pain of not having her around didn't in any way lessen what I'm feeling right now.  What it did do, though, was move me away from whatever peace there might be in the moments I had with her then.  Isn't that interesting? 

Noticing the second arrow is useful.  But the definition of mindfulness suggests that we observe that second arrow without judgement (I'm such an idiot!  Why am I doing that?!) or pushing away (I shouldn't feel that, I don't want to feel that!), and with compassion (this is a painful moment).  Doing that made it easier to work with it, without pushing it away or blaming myself for "doing this to myself" - it's normal to think and feel all those things.

But, in that last week, the great gift of noticing was that it made it a bit easier to allow the second arrow to fall a bit more lightly and sting a little less, while being present for the whole experience.  It also meant that I was able to take on board the gift of those good moments - like lying in the sun with my girl - just a little bit more. 

On her last morning, as we waited for the vet to come to the house, all four of us stopped everything we were doing and came together in the living room.  I sat on the floor next to Tilly while she napped in her favorite place on the cool tiles.  Rick and the girls sat in their usual chairs, and we all read or sat quietly, or whatever seemed best.  It was exactly the kind of quiet family moment that we all love.  And for whole minutes at a time, I was able to let the second arrow go and just be in the present moment, which was a really good moment.

Since then, I keep noticing the first and second arrows.  Coming home late at night and grabbing my stuff so I can hurry to the door to stop Tilly from barking and waking up the neighbors - and then realizing that I don't have to?  First arrow.  Putting on my walking shoes and waiting for a nose to get in the way while trying to "help"?  First arrow.  Imagining that I will never again find a dog like Tilly?  Second arrow.  Wanting MY dog back, right now, thankyouverymuch?  Second arrow.  Wanting reality to be something other than what it is?  (Which, by the way, it turns out I want quite often - who knew?)  Second arrow.

It's not that I'm not feeling how much all of this hurts.  It's that watching it all rise and fall and rise and fall gives me a lot of hope that there will be fewer hurting moments in the future, and more equanimity about feeling how much it hurts now.  It's a really interesting experience.  My very own godawful mindfulness retreat. 

Day 37: Where there is wool...

there will be a cat.

(Note, each of those squares is surrounded by t-pins.  She is working very hard to be sitting in juuuust the right way!)

Day 32: My wookie

Best Tilly story ever.

We were hiking together when some teenagers on dirt bikes came careening around the corner in front of us.  The girl at the head of the pack said, "A wookie!", and then, reflectively, over her shoulder as she flew by, "A short wookie..."

That's what she was. A short wookie, funny way of talking and all.  I called her Ursula, my little bear.

Rest in peace, girlie, and thank you for everything.

Day 31: Gifts

Once upon a time, there was a young woman.  This young woman had a boyfriend (whom she eventually married) who loved to hike.  He had grown up hiking, and had a real love of climbing to the tops of things.  And he wanted to share the tops of things with her.

Now, this young woman was in reasonable-ish shape.  But not climbing-to-the-tops-of-things shape.  And her boyfriend (later her husband) wasn't particularly good at calibrating those climbs to what she could actually do; he was calibrating them to his desire to share the outdoors and beauty with her.  So he took them on hikes that were really hard for her (but not for him).  And she spent those hikes struggling, and watching him not struggle, and feeling like she was holding him back, and feeling like a failure, and hating herself for that, and hating him for putting her in that position, and just generally being miserable and unhappy and angry and resentful (not to mention red-faced and panting).

And then one day, they got a puppy.  And, since she was about to spend a month in the Trinity Alps doing dissertation research, she took the puppy with her.  This puppy was a long-legged, happy, playful sort of puppy, with breeds like german shepherd and collie all mixed into her heritage, and she had energy to spare.  At home, she got three walks a day (to set her up for success, you see - a tired puppy is a less-destructive puppy), with lots of romping and playing.

The Trinity Alps are the mountains around the Trinity river, which has cut a gorge right down through the rock.  The tribe that the young woman was working with* have a language whose directionals intimately reflect this landscape: everything is described as being either upriver or downriver of other things; and also as being uphill or downhill of those things.

So this young woman found a trail where she could take her dog hiking.  A trail which ran upriver downhill from her car, and then downriver uphill back to her car.  It was steep.  And really hard.  And the first time she went on that trail, she spent a lot of the downriver uphill leg hating herself for being slow, and out of breath, and...  Her brain travelled that familiar path (also uphill, as it turns out), to the usual refrain: holding someone back.  Except, it was just her and her puppy.  And as she slowed down on a switchback to regain her breath, she could see that her puppy wasn't impatient or resentful.  Her puppy LOVED it!  Just as much as she LOVED going fast!  Or stopping entirely!  There were smells to smell, and running back and forth to be accomplished, and dirt to scratch at, and squirrels to consider. 

And panting?  Far from being embarrassed about needing to pant as she climbed uphill, this puppy panted all the time.  Happily, unconcernedly - the puppy breathed the way she needed to breathe to be comfortable and to do what she wanted to do.  And so the young woman, unobserved by other people and in the company of a dog who couldn't care less, learned to breathe hard without being embarrassed about it. 

There wasn't a happily-ever-after ending.  Life is a lot more complicated than that.  The young woman and her soon-to-be-husband still went on hikes where she often felt incompetent and miserable.  But she also hiked alone with her dog, and, on those hikes, she learned to love the quiet of the hills, and the growing strength of her body.  She learned to pace herself, because she knew she wasn't holding anyone back.  That dog offered her the gift of companionship without expectations of anything except time together.  She taught the young woman that stopping to smell a plant, or look at the ground squirrels, or to pant a little bit isn't such a bad thing. 

In fact, it just might be the whole point.


*As always, my most profound thanks to all of the Native California tribal communities who have given me the gift of their time, and who have allowed me to learn from and work with them over the years.  The tribe in this case is the Hupa (the language is also Hupa).

Day 30: Still here

We seem to have found a combination of meds, rest, and food that is letting Tilly be comfortable.  She has enough energy to come into whatever room we're in, to wag when she sees us, and even to bark when people come up the driveway.  Yesterday, I took my work outside onto the front lawn with me, and she came and settled down in the grass - a favorite pastime.  It's simultaneously awful to know that this isn't something that's going to get better, and really wonderful to have some extra time with her.

Day 28: Confirmed

By way of update, Tilly has cancer in her lungs.  So we're now in the mode of keeping her comfortable until the time comes to help her along.  We don't have a good sense of how fast this is going to go, but judging by the rapidity of the onset of symptoms, and by the fact that she's already working harder to breathe than she usually would, I don't think we have much time.  So, painkillers, lots of careful cuddling, diced up chicken (and even some lamb!), and time together.

(Me and my girlie, from a couple of Christmases ago)

Day 27: Derailed

So many things I thought I'd write about this week; also so many things I need to do.  But I spent yesterday at, first, the equine hospital with Disco (non-emergency, not the best news but not catastrophic), and then the afternoon taking Tilly to the vet.  Tilly hasn't been at all well the last few weeks, and she's been on a downhill slide in the not doing well.  When we came home from our weekend away, our greeting (usually an exuberant ten-minute (plus) round of barking and licking and running in circles) was a short bark, a little tail-wagging, and then she went to lie down again.  Hence the rush appointment to the vet.  They kept her overnight, and then let me take her home today.  At this point, I'm waiting on a call from the vet herself; her techs have said that she wants to let me know what's going on herself, which I read as very bad news.  Tilly is on pain meds, which are making her more comfortable (but really not actually comfortable).  Rick and I are thinking we'll cancel our trip this weekend, and I'll probably cancel the silent retreat I was going on next week, but we'll see.  Waiting is hard, and I find myself not concentrating all that well.  Hence the rather dump-like post.  Man, this sucks. 

Day 16: Synchronicity

It was warm today.  I really shouldn't gripe about muggy weather - I know that our humidity issues aren't the same as those in other parts of the country (to be fair, neither do those other parts get humidity in the single digits, so I figure I get to complain a little bit when ours goes over 50%, right?), but the air just feels warm and heavy, in a kind of annoying way. 

At the barn this morning (where it was abundantly clear that there was no way to get there early enough that I could beat the heat), I figured it was a good day to give Disco a bath.  Not only did she really need it, but she's also been off lately, so it was going to be a handwalking day - a good time for a horse to dry after a bath (read: before rolling around in her stall to really grind the dirt in her wet coat).  You know it's hot when, instead of fussing about the hose, she stands quietly and looks almost happy (except for the face-spraying part - she's not so sure about that).

Afterwards, we walked around rather slowly.  She's off.  And I'm off.  And I don't know if I've mentioned, but poor Tilly has been limping lately, too.  All of us in our left lower/hind limbs.  It occurred to me today that we'd make a funny sort of conga line all walking along together - step, hitch, step, hitch!  (Or, with them, stepstepstep hitch! stepstepstep hitch!  but you get the idea.) 

We're all going to get better, I'm sure, but in the meantime, it's nice to know that the hitch in my gitalong and I are in good company.

Knit happens

In fact, I actually have a completed project to show off today! Of course, I also appear to have fallen down, and am swatching for yet another new project, but I figure as long as I maintain some kind of balance between the casting on and the casting off, I'm doing pretty well.

First, the finished project. I cast off for the happy spring green socks on Friday night, and I'm pleased as can be with the results.
I'm trying to decide whether I should be a good mom and hand these over to Older Daughter, who I think would like them very much (and whom they would fit), or keep them for myself. I'll dither for a few days, I think.
They are very happy, aren't they? These are the third installment of the Vintage Purls summer sock club. I really love her sock yarn, it's a great base, and the colors are rich and lovely. I'll definitely be casting on for the second installment sooner rather than later; I just need to decide whether to knit those as two color socks (with the colors switched for each sock), which is really fun, or to alternate the colors on each row, which makes for an amazingly deep and saturated color over the whole pair. I think I'll dither pleasurably over that for a little while longer.
Those little cables just charm me to pieces.

I almost wound up and cast on for a pair of socks for Rick; it's definitely his turn (and then Younger Daughter's), and I have a lovely skein of dark blue Bugga sitting in my yarn bowl, waiting. But, as I mentioned, I've fallen down the rabbit hole again and am planning to knit another of Anne's henleys. She just released the pattern, and in looking at the pictures of her sweater, I was reminded of how very much I love the colorway that she knit it up in. So I decided that I needed one of my own, as a summery sweater, you know. She very kindly said that she wouldn't mind at all if I had a matching sweater, so off I went to the Knitting Notions website to order the yarn, whereupon I noticed that Catherine has the same colorway in a gorgeous merino/bamboo blend. And that in turn reminded me that I've been thinking that a bamboo blend would make a wonderful summer sweater, given the weather around here.

I wrote to Anne, asking for advice, and she immediately dove into her stash and swatched the merino/bamboo to see how it would turn out. She wrote a really interesting post about the process here, in case you want to check it out (it's down towards the bottom). The result was lovely, so I ordered the yarn. It came yesterday, and this morning I sat down and swatched it up.
The top one is drying now, but the color of the bottom one is pretty true.
I think it's going to work beautifully. I'm planning to knit this one size smaller than my last version, for something that I hope will be lighter and airier and more summery; a sweater I can wear over a light t-shirt with shorts or jeans. I'm guessing I'll be casting on tonight.

Meanwhile, yesterday was a pretty busy day. Older Daughter once again had a very early soccer game. We were sitting on the sidelines by 7:30 in the morning, clutching our cups of coffee and trying to pry our eyes open. We then raced home to let her shower and change, and then took her to school for Stakeholder's Day, at which, she thought, she'd have to both play violin and staff a booth dressed as a medieval doctor (part of a project she just completed). It turns out that things weren't nearly so well organized as we'd thought, and that she was therefore the only member of her class team to come for the booth (and therefore the booth wasn't happening), and she was also the only member of orchestra to come to play (there were a few choir folks who were there). I pushed as much as I thought fair (given that I wouldn't have played by myself under those circumstances) to get her to play her violin, but she really was having none of that, so she ended up doing none of the things she'd thought she needed to. I hope they plan better next year.

Then she headed off for a sleepover with a friend, while I took Tilly to the vet. The poor pup had gotten grabbed by something on our walk on Friday. We noticed that she had a huge red splotch on her tummy on Friday night when she rolled over and we found a tick in her tummy there (a tick which, judging from its size, she'd picked up last weekend when she wasn't bitten by a rattlesnake). But she's been bitten by ticks before and never ended up with a huge red spot like that. And we remembered that she'd acted really oddly at one point on our walk running around trying to rub her tummy and paws in the mud -- at the time, we thought it was either red ants or burrs, and picked all the burrs we could see out of her, after which she seemed to feel better. But now we're wondering if it was something else, because when we got up on Saturday morning, the red had more than doubled in size. (Fair warning, incoming bruise picture.) So I took her to the vet, who said it looked like she'd been grabbed by something that gave her a really good pinch. She's on antibiotics just in case it was a bite, and she's in no distress (even on Friday night I could palpate the spot with no trouble), so we're pretty sure she's going to be fine. But poor baby, look at her tummy!
All of that was cherry red on Saturday morning, hence our concern.

And once that was done, Younger Daughter and I took ourselves off to our local Renaissance Faire, where she had shaved ice, and we listened to the Baudy Juggler, and we poked around and had fun, and ended by getting hennaed. She very much wanted a henna butterfly, which I allowed her to get on her upper arm where it won't show under her school uniform. I was wearing sleeves that wouldn't let me get to my upper arm for hennaeing, but Younger Daughter really really wanted me to join in her fun, so I decided in for a penny in for a pound, and went for one around my wrist.
It's the last week of classes, after all, and can't I claim that this somehow relates to our work with Bengali this semester? I do believe that I can (at least, that's what Younger Daughter claimed; clever child). And so I will.

Good news, sad news

I'm almost at the end of my brief two-day sojourn at home. I'd meant to post earlier, but things got in the way (more on that in a minute). I leave for Sock Summit at you've-got-to-be-kidding o'clock tomorrow morning; I'm bringing my computer along on this trip, though, so with luck there will be some posts from the field.

The Golden Gate Fiber Institute was fabulous. I wish I had another word for it, because that seems rather pale compared to how I really feel about it, but there it is. I had so much fun, in such an intense way, that I took not a single picture. Nary a one. So I have very little to show from the actual institute. If there is any picture sharing from those more organized than I, I will be sure to post them, but in the meantime, I have little in the way of visuals.

As I drove home from the airport very late on Sunday, I kept trying to think of how I was going to describe this week, what to say to at least try to convey what it was like. I looked for words. They weren't easy. "Humbled" came to mind. Not in the sense that I thought I had mad skillz and had to find out that I don't (I have learned just enough over the last several years about what there is to learn to know that I have a long way to go)(I like that fact, by the way, it's exciting). That word, though, along with "grateful", does describe how I felt about the tremendous generosity of spirit I felt from all of the teachers and organizers, as well as from the other participants. It seemed to me that every single person there had more experience at their craft, was more engaged with their craft as art, than I am or have had a chance to be, and every one of them was willing to share their experience and love of their chosen craft, unstintingly, and, in turn, to learn whatever they could. So I spent the week surrounded by willing teachers, by astonishingly creative people, by beautiful textiles, and all of that on a cliff overlooking the ocean.

Also, someone else cooked every single meal and did the dishes to boot.

I say that as if it were funny, but it isn't. Not having to think about stuff like that is incredibly freeing. One day, I spun for the three hours of class plus the extra hour before dinner, and then went back after dinner and spun for three more hours. That's just craziness. In the best possible way. And both of my teachers taught in ways that exactly match my learning style. Jeane deCoster was challenging and funny and so willing to be sure that each student got what they needed from the class; I know that I certainly did, in ways that I didn't know I needed. And Judith Mackenzie McCuin is one of those teachers who is completely convinced that a student can learn anything, which is nice to lean on in those moments when the student (that would be me) isn't so sure of that and has her fingers tangled in the flippin' cotton yet again. I think that she's also lived at least six lifetimes so far; she knows so much, and about such interesting subjects, from bison to bagpipes.

I learned so much that my brain hurt, and I dreamed all night every night about everything I'd heard and learned. I challenged myself to try new techniques in spinning (can you say "long draw"?), and I challenged my own image of my body and how it looks and works. It was intense. I also saw Grandmom and Rick's cousin and her new baby, and I saw a knitting friend for a lovely and peaceful hour of knitting on the beach. I'm pretty darned sure I'll be back next year.

I did end up getting a new wheel, one that I hope will be portable enough that I can start finding and attending spinning events closer to home. It's a Lendrum, and I love it.
Thanks to Morgaine's generosity (she of Carolina Homespun, and one of the two organizers, along with Judith) I was able to try several folding wheels before making my choice. I dithered until the last minute, because I had somehow set it in my mind that I wanted a wheel that I could put in an overhead bin on an airplane, but my gut knew which wheel I was getting from the moment I sat down with this one. It works just right for me.

I tried all kinds of new techniques and worked with an insane range of fibers; you can see some of the results here.
I spun worsted, semi-worsted, semi-woolen, and woolen; I may not like spinning all of them, but I now really understand, in theory at least, how and why to do it. I learned to cable, and did so, quite happily, on silk top hand-dyed by Kristine at Curious Creek.
That's the cabled silk on the left, and a silk/alpaca blend spun from the fold on the right (another first).

I also learned to create a nice, worsted-spun, three-ply yarn for socks, and am going to spin up some socks for myself; those plies are silk, silk/cashmere, and wool.
I also bought some spinning fiber.
(Chasing Rainbows Dyeworks, silk/wool blend.)

And won some fiber.
(Capistrano Fiber Arts, baby camel/silk blend.)

And I both bought (right) and won (left) spindles from Spindlewood.
These may come to Sock Summit with me.

That's the good news, and as you can see, there was a lot of it.

I came home, though, to the sad decision that the time had come, sooner than I would have hoped (but I don't think there was ever going to be a time that wasn't too soon), to put my beloved Kia Ora dog to sleep. We did that yesterday, and I think that right now there isn't a lot I can say about it except that I miss her terribly, and that there is a very large hole in our home that used to be her place.

Belling the cat

When we first got Gwilim, these several years ago now, we had some hope of him as a ratter. Well, actually, Rick had some hopes of him as a gopherer, but that doesn't sound as good. We had a gopher problem of epic proportions. As did our neighbors. One neighbor talked regularly about planting things in his garden, only to come out the next day to find out that they'd been pulled down into gopher tunnels from underneath -- slurp, there go the tomatoes! And other neighbors didn't so much have lawns (or heck, even dirt lots) as shelled wastelands. There was much discussion and conferral regarding the best way to get rid of gophers; it was enough to chill the blood. I hate the idea of traps and poison and flares, and tend to be more of the opinion that if one wants a lawn in a desert, one needs to accept that there is going to be a certain amount of attrition.

For the record, and operating under the theory that every pest has its predator, I suggested a king snake.

My suggestion was roundly ignored.

So, when Gwilim came onto the scene, he was pointed in the direction of the gopher holes, with much encouragement and praise, and the suggestion that he could eat as many rodents as he liked (we were willing to throw in the rats because, well, because they're rats), but he was to leave the birds strictly alone.

Those of you who have ever attempted to teach a cat anything are laughing into your knitting right now. I know. I can hear you. And you're right. He did catch and eat (and share with us, alas) myriad gophers and rats. Neighbors (I am not kidding here) approached us regularly to thank us for our cat. Suddenly everyone's lawns were looking much less pitted, and people were harvesting tomatoes by the bushel. But Gwilim didn't stop there. He tried for birds. He was scolded by us, and pecked at by the big birds he hunted (crows don't take kindly to cats); we rescued many birds, and frustrated many a stalk, but he still managed to take a few every year, and we were cranky about it. But we never quite managed to do more than thwart him most of the time.

Well, the birds took care of that problem. They belled the cat.

Last summer, I noticed a mockingbird doing the oddest, most unmockingbirdlike thing I'd ever seen. He hopped around the yard, from tree to tree, squawking. Again and again, one very loud and abrupt chwaaaaak! I worried that Gwilim had killed his mother and he'd never learned to sing, because I hadn't ever heard a mockingbird sound like that before. Then one day I did hear him sing, which shot that theory all to heck.

I was puzzled for some time, until one day I was in my room and heard a conversation: Chwaaaak! Mrroaw. Chwaaak! Mrroaw. And I looked out my window to see one thoroughly harrassed-looking cat, scuttling through the yard, followed by one very loud (and cheerful-looking) bird. Now I can always find Gwilim in the yard by listening for the bird, whose job it appears to be to follow the cat around, singing out loudly whenever he sees Gwilim, to let all the other birds know where he is. Poor Gwilim looks extremely hunted; he makes sad low mrroawing sounds. My sympathy is low; I have suggested to him that I told him so. I may even have uttered the word "karma". Justice is sweet. (If very loud and obnoxious, in this case.)

I tried and tried over the last couple of days to get a picture of this bird for y'all, but only succeeded in getting this close before he squawked, and flew away in search of the cat:
(Can you see him there, sitting in the tree with the big leaves, just to the right of the palm?)

So instead, I'll share some pictures of the Fraggle socks with you, finished just last night.
These were a very fun knit. I still wonder whether I should have just stuck with the bubble motif and ribbing, but I think I'm glad I gave the whole pattern a shot.
The bubbles go right down onto the heel flap, which I like quite a lot.
The transition from the ribbing to the squiggle lace motif is also very nice.
To recap, these are the Fraggle socks (Ravelry link), pattern by JC Briar, from the latest installment of the Rockin' Sock Club, in the colorway Pepe le Plume, which I adore. I'm quite seriously trying to decide whether to get enough of the heavyweight to knit a sweater. I knitted these socks using size one dpns. I like the little bubble motif quite a lot (and it's easy enough to remember); I might use it on an otherwise pair of plain ribbed socks.

On Wednesday, I'll post (if all goes as planned) for the last time before leaving. I have some blocking shots of Shawl That Jazz to share (I did, in the end, soak it and lay it out to dry, and am very happy that I did), as well as the knitting that I'll be taking along with me (why yes, that is all packed up already; and no, I have not packed my clothes yet, why do you ask?). Plus maybe a few shots of elephants.

You know you love your dog when...

You smell stinky dog breath while you're standing in the kitchen cooking, and instead of thinking "eeewww", you think, "aww, it's Kia" and feel like all is right in your world.

I will add that you know your husband loves you when, after your iPod inexplicably bricks itself, he kindly lets you download your latest audiobook onto his, and then take it on indefinite leave until you figure out what to do with your own.

In knitting news, I got distracted by a shiny object before actually casting on for the pink socks. I haven't gotten far enough on it, though, to make photos worth showing, or to make a report very interesting, so I'll hold off on that.

I haven't knit as much this week as I have been lately, as my real job suddenly loomed up out of nowhere and slammed me in the face; can you believe these people actually expect me to work for my paycheck? Sheesh. So I've made it through my first week of classes as of today (meetings, however, are not yet over for the week), and I was reminded, as I always am, of why I love this part of the job so much. I'm teaching English Grammar and Syntax this semester (two sections), which I promise you is infinitely more fun than it sounds. And I'm teaching one of my very favorite classes in all the world: Gender and Language. I'm so happy with the group I've got this semester -- they're already talking, which is a huge boon, and makes that class great fun. The one bummer is that I have only two men in the class; of the four originally enrolled, one walked out halfway through the first class (maybe right about when I pointed out that "masculine" is a gender?), and the other didn't show up today. In fact, I only had one man in class today, but he was a very good sport about his singularity, so I have high hopes.

The other reason that I haven't been knitting as much is that my back is acting up, which doesn't show up in back pain, but in radiating pain down my leg. I don't know why it's doing that; the last time it did, I lived with it for almost two years before finally breaking down and having surgery to fix the ruptured disc that was causing the trouble. I am hoping that this is not an indication of problems of that magnitude, and have decided that for the moment avoiding all MRIs is the way to maintain that hope. Massage, walking, and rest seem indicated. We'll see where I go from there.

Tomorrow, amidst all the other meetings I have to go to, my on-campus knitting group is getting together again for the first time this semester, so with luck I'll have something fibrous to show for myself when I post again, which I'll try to do tomorrow. We have a quiet weekend planned, with a night of camping and a birthday party to attend. Maybe we'll squeeze some beach time in there, too. What's everyone else doing for Labor Day weekend?

P.S. I loved all the responses to my realization that I'm not knitting that particular pair of socks because I'm hating the two size zero circs. Each and every one was a beautiful example of mileage varying by knitter. I love a sport where it turns out that we're all here to have fun.

Older news

There's not much knitting to show at this point, although I am, in fact, getting knitting done. But as I'm working on the Brambler scarf and the mitts for Older Daughter, any pictures that I might take would look about the same as the pictures I've already shown you, so there doesn't seem to be much point.

I really appreciated everyone's thoughts on cooking, and mileage varying between people. I have some more to say on that, but I'll try to space those posts out. Meanwhile, in the spirit of taking each day as it comes, we ordered pizza on Wednesday night, as we had dog training to get to right in the middle of our usual dinner time and it was Rick's birthday and we wanted to have time to sit down to dinner together (see? each instance is new and different). We did follow it up with homemade blueberry/lime pound cake, though. And last night, we had grilled polenta and veggies with tomato sauce. The kids asked if we could have it more often. I love it when that happens.

Something else happened a few weeks ago that I've been avoiding talking about. I think I'm in a certain amount of denial, although it's hard to stay in that state really. Just before Rick's parents arrived on the weekend that we went camping (around May 28th), Atticus didn't come home one night. He has persisted in not coming home. Given certain evidence found near a neighbor's house, we're pretty sure that we know what happened to him, and as much as I'd like to believe that he's taking a (very, and increasingly) extended adventure tomcatting around the neighborhood, I know he's not.

And it makes me sad.

He was my loving baby boy with the soft black fur, and the softer white tummy. The one who liked to sleep with his nose just touching my cheek. The one who was all about the little love nips on my nose in the morning so I'd pet him. He purred really, really well, and was a huge fan of the belly rub. I miss him. I still wake up at night, expecting to find him sleeping on my elbow.

Gwilim is missing him, too. He's taken to following me around the house. He has even (and you can have no idea how weird this is) jumped into my lap and settled down for whole minutes at a time. For the first several days, he'd walk around the house meowing. No-one answered, and it broke my heart every time. He is now sleeping near my stomach instead of between my feet. I think he's lonely. I know it makes me a little lonely to see him sleeping all by himself on the bed in the day, instead of curled up with the Atty-Cat.

Rick and I are doing some major regrouping, in terms of how to keep our cats safe while still letting them out. I know that the letting out thing is, for a lot of people, a big no-no, but it's how we work with our pets. We both grew up with happy indoor/outdoor pets, and all of our pets have had the same privilege. Also, living as we do in an area with far more rats and gophers than we'd like (and given how we feel about poison), our cats are working cats. Gwilim, at this point, is the talk of the neighborhood, having moved on to other yards after clearing ours of gophers (our neighbors have been known to stop us on the street to thank us for his diligence in clearing their lawns; I am not joking here). So, we've instituted an "all animals in at night with the pet door closed" rule, and we are fixing the fence in our upper yard to limit incursions from other, larger, non-cat-like animals. We're hoping that this safe space will keep this kind of thing from happening again.

And, of course, we're in that state of asking when it's time to get a kitten, someone for Gwilim to be with, or whether he's going to be OK, and we can give ourselves a little more time to grieve. The shelters are full of kittens right now, and we know that we'll be adopting one who needs rescuing, but it's hard to make that decision right now.

Thanks for listening.

Going visiting

Well, I must say that "more of the same" does not make for good blog fodder. I'm over halfway through with the Hip in Hemp skirt now, and still going strong although the rows are now getting longer (we've all heard this song before, eh?). I'm getting a little less than one repeat an hour at this point, and have 16 repeats left to go. The length and width are still looking right, so I'm feeling on target. But the pictures look the same, so it's not like I have anything to show you, alas.

Look! Our jacaranda tree is in bloom, finally.
They're all over the neighborhood now -- I'll have to see if I can get a picture. From the hill where we were hiking the other day, we could look out over parts of Vista and see clumps of purple everywhere. I love how truly exuberant jacarandas are. You can't see it in this picture, but they don't leaf and flower at the same time. They carry their leaves all year round, right up until they're about ready to bloom, and then they dump all the extra baggage so they can put everything into flowering. I like the attitude.

Aside from that, I've been slowly plugging away at my paper for this conference in early July. I really need to have made some serious progress on it before going to a workshop in Berkeley in a few weeks (make that ten days, eek!), so that I'm not fretting too much. I want it nailed and put to bed before I get on the plane for the conference (no, I haven't said where I'm going yet; it's an exciting happy thing, so I'm saving it for its very own post at some point soon) so that I don't have to think about it until just before I need to present, when I can have a small panic attack and practice it again four or five times in a deserted hallway (yes, I've done this before, why do you ask?)(I'm just proud that I've gotten the panic attacks to within an hour of my presentation, instead of days and days in advance; it ruins far less time this way). I have a huge stack of articles to read, but I also have something resembling an outline, so that's good.

And, I have a lovely visit to look forward to tonight! Rachael is in Torrance for a conference, and I'm driving up there tonight so that we can go to dinner. Really, it's so that we can get our raven stoles (formally known as Simurgh) together for a playdate. When we both started knitting the pattern with Anne, we emailed back and forth about how fun it would be to see them side-by-side, and promised that if either of us could ever make it to the other coast, we'd see what we could do. Well, she's here, so with luck we'll get a couple of good pictures of the stoles together (and maybe us, too?). That should be some excellent blog fodder!

All right. Articles call, and I must get a few read before I take Tilly to get her stitches out. One thing after another...

What day is it again?

Sunday? You have got to be kidding me. Where did the last three days go?!

Let's see. In the last three days I have:

Graded three sets of final papers for three classes.
Calculated grades for all three classes.
Put those grades up on my class web sites.
Dealt with hysterical inquiries from students who should have known what was coming, but were nevertheless shocked and horrified to discover that one does not receive a good grade when one does not do the work assigned in class.

Picked up one puppy from the vet, where she'd gone to be spayed.
Brought home with her two medications to be given to her twice a day.
She's recovering nicely, by the way, and was overjoyed to be brought home. I think she was worried I might forget about her, in spite of the fact that I have yet to do so.

Went to one graduation.
With two friends.
At 8:30 in the morning.
Saw hundreds of students graduate.
Saw the president of the university smile for a picture with each student. Ouch.
Drank one margarita afterwards (a traditional reward for sitting through a hot graduation in black regalia).

Packed one husband off to Colorado.
For four days.
To give one conference paper.
He also brought one mountain bike along.
And promised to leave one note on his windshield for each ride he goes on, and to call me at the beginning and end of each ride.

Got one daughter to one swim meet (non-competitive).
Drove a solid forty miles round trip to get there (unexpectedly; it wasn't where I thought it was going to be. Oops).
Where she swam in five events.
I took her out afterwards for one piece of quiche at her favorite little French bakery.

Rescued one blue jay chick from one cat.
Called the Humane society who said that they know a woman who rescues corbae and takes care of them until they're ready to be released again.
Drove another 20 miles round trip to deliver the chick to the Humane society for pickup.

During all of this, knitted between four and six inches on my skirt (depending on whether we're looking at the shorter or longer bit of the points). Pictures tomorrow, I promise. Right now, it's way too hot to spend any time in the sun. Summer has arrived, a month early.

So that's where the last three days have gone... I'm off to knit quietly in a cool corner somewhere.