Cats I Know
first in an occasional series

Meet my cat, Cat. To be precise, his given name is Snuggles, but seeing that he only responds to "Cat," that's what we call him. I wish that I had been clever enough to call him after the Red Dwarf character, but Cat doesn't have that much style anyway.

He's 16, diabetic, arthritic, and an occasional bath-mat-widdler. I'm not really sure why he does that, change of scenery perhaps. He can be found sleeping, as cats are wont, at all hours. He's become even lazier than the rest of cat-kind in his later years, when even swatting at his catnip-filled mousey has become a burden.

Lately, we've been calling him "Dog" because he comes to the door whenever we come home or sits near you and waits intently for you to finish your task. He also used to come when called. Unfortunately, this dog-like nature does not extend to anything so gratifying as fetching the paper, or even basic companionship.

Despite his reputation as "the worst pet ever," I do in fact love Cat very much. He becomes quite enthusiastic when you announce your intention to pet him by lowering yourself to the floor in the later hours of the evening. Sometimes, he gets so excited that he licks you once (only once!) or bites you a little bit on the hand. Occasionally, he remembers that I'll lift him onto the couch if he comes near it, and there he can get long-term petting.

If Cat is not lounging in front of the door (with his back to it, of course), he can be found in his bed next to the bedroom door or on his purple blanket in front of the TV.

Use Me

Got a call at 6:12 this morning: "Can you come in?" Of course, I say. I get there to find that not only was the offending teacher not supposed to leave for another hour, but that he wasn't leaving at all. "I was going to tell you," he mumbled through some rather disturbing lipstick-as-vampire-blood.

But not to worry, I can go home and come back later for half a day. With middle-schoolers. Ack.

Ken's hat is done

Here it is: Reynold's Lopi #s 0422 and 0054, size 10 needles, on 90 stitches. I think it came out pretty nice. Lopi feels pretty scratchy in a ball, but it's nice once you wash it (gently!) Both of these colors have black fibers in them, which ties the whole thing together nicely. Altogether a very manly hat. I'm quite pleased.

Well, It's finally finished!
I'm done with my mom's scarf and hat. It's always the blocking that takes the longest, especially since I wet-block everything. I also made a fabric bag to keep them in, but the pictures of that are a little screwy.

We went up to the Bittens' apartment last night. They usually don't have time to visit, so that was nice. They invitied lots of people over and we all had a nice time.

I spent a lot of time working on my paper yesterday, and I'm about to get back at it today. I spent a lot of time running down something that didn't exist. Yay.

On the project journal, Aimee's shrug is creeping ever closer to completion. The 2nd sleeve is looking much better than the first, but I'm just going to block the recalcitrance out of it. I ordered a bunch of yarn for Christmas presents. A hat for the wench, two pairs of fingerless gloves for my brother and dad, and alpaca socks for my mom. Along with two pairs of needles it was really reasonable. I'm not sure what I'll get started on first. Probably the gloves, since I'm going to make two pairs, that way I won't get sick of them as much.

It's Jamin's birthday, we're making a cake and bringing it to him at work tonight. B's making the cake and I'm making his mom's frosting. That should be nice. He wants to go out instead of family dinner on Thursday, he should get to decide.

Ok, off to work until I can't stand it, then I'll take a walk...

I worked for the first time in two weeks today!

I wish it was that exciting. I use my time for studying; mostly the kids get to work pretty quickly. The blocks are really long, so there's a lot of uninterrupted time for me, but it seems that the kids get antsy. Today I read about the elegiac poets and the birth of Hercules from Ovid's Metamorphoses.

I spent this weekend at my Dad's, my brother Jon was there too. His lab just got published for their Cranberry work and he got the photo credit. We went to see MirrorMask, the new Neil Gaiman movie. I'm not ready to call it a classic, but it's better than any other movie I've seen lately. It was visually interesting and fun to watch.

On to yarn: I've started Ken's hat. It's in green and whitish Lopi; fair-isle. Mom's scarf and hat are finished, but I'm too lazy to take a picture. I've also started Aimee's shrug in purple Cascade 220. I'm going to work a sparkly thread along the lozenge lace pattern on the back. She's going to be so cute! Speaking of which:

Aimee just got featured in an art show about Chinese girls and their American fathers. The show was in Beijing and apparantly she was a hit. She's really the prettiest person I know, and I'm not just saying it. When we were on our walk tonight, Jamie said thoughtfully: "She really is a lot cooler than us, she just doesn't know it yet" He's definately right, poor girl's been subsumed into a family of dorks.

Update: This once was the passenger seat of my beloved Tohru...

What's this, you ask? Not Felipe, our palm. No, not the pile of junk formerly known as my filing system. It's the passenger seat of my beloved Tohru, also known as Car-24, sitting in my living room. Normally, this would upset me, but not today because Jamie got me heated seats for Christmas!

I know, you're thinking "Christmas? It's October, idjit," but Jamie figured I would be upset if he had sat on this idea and not installed them before it got cold. He knows me so well. I'm really excited, considering the lack of heated seats to be the one major flaw in my car's design.

However, this could yet end in disaster. The upholstery still has to come off, then the pads go in, then everything goes back on and nobody's the wiser. I've been slightly disturbed by all the cutting, and the flying pieces of metal, but I'm sure Jamie knows what's up. I'll just have to take Bjorn to see my brother this weekend.

Jamie and I went to Maine this weekend. The weather was awful! It rained the entire time. It was nice to see his parents, though. We got in around 9:30 on Friday with a ton of laundry. We stayed up too late talking and standing near the wood stove.

Saturday morning began with "breakfast interrogation." Jamie's dad, in trying to be helpful, goes a little nutty when offering food: "Do you want an omelette? Scrambled eggs? French toast? Toast? Bacon? Sausage? Scrapple? Juice? Coffee?" This continues, despite your refusals, until you actually eat something on the list.

He did give us a bunch of apples, though. I think I took too many! I also have quite a few carrots, not sure what I'm going to do with those either. Jamie's mom sent us away with some nice queen-sized sheets for the new bed.

We also went to see the swinging bridge in South Bristol. It didn't swing. Nobody was out in their boats. It was just generally unpleasant weather. Not really cold, but raining and miserable enough to make you feel like you were freezing. We didn't see any seals, either.

After that we went down to Pemaquid Point. (also see this site) The waves are fierce every day, but they were really churning with the storm. Jamie's told me horrible stories about tourists getting dragged to their deaths on the rocks and the behavior of some of the people there was really upsetting me. People had their kids down close to the waves, some even got wet! The water was just falling down onto the point from this huge standing wave, after a few close crashes I decided that I was a little too close and left for my own comfort.

Today I sent out some feelers about Latin tutoring. I've gotten positive responses from two Latin teachers, so we'll see if it turns up any clients.

On a side note, I finished my mom's hat and am about 12" from completing the scarf. I want to make sure I do that this week so that I can block it next week. I demonstrated cabling to Jamie's mom and she said something like "Oh, I can do that." People make things out to be too hard! When both are done I'll put up a picture.

A lament for my sore shoulder. While on the phone with my mom, I asked her, innocently enough, what she wanted for her birthday. She said she thought I was making her a hat and scarf; I was figuring more on Christmas. Not wanting to invite any observations such as "you've already made a hat for your father," I sallied forth to the yarn store for a little agonizing.

I settled on some Malabrigo kettle-dyed pure merino from Uruguay, 3 100-gram skeins of "Pagoda." It's a lovely yarn with rustic apperance from its 1-ply construction. The color variations are subtle and pleasant, without a stripey appearance. The hand is extremely soft and plush, with a springy resiliency. Something about it tells me that it's just itching to felt, so I'll have to thoroughly explain it's care (I'm remembering what used to be my favorite sweater, felted to a miniature size by careless washing). It comes in hanks, which need to be wound into balls. Without a ball-winder I was forced to improvise a nøstepinne from a paper towel tube, which is really not the tool for the job. A computer chair isn't really the greatest swift, either, but it's better than a chair that doesn't spin.

For the scarf, since I'm feeling too pressed for time to design something myself, I'm using this pattern for an "Irish Hiking Scarf." It's got some pleasant, yet untaxing cables and a garter-stitch border. It lays flat and the pattern is very easy to memorize: perfect for working while reading or watching tv. My guage is working out to be a bit larger than the pattern, but that's not about to stop me.

Now, the hat is another story. I want to make something complementary which means I'll have to get creative. I don't know if I want to work the cables as a band or into the body of the hat. I think it would be nice to have an interplay of ribs and cables to make it extra thick and plush. Definately no pompoms. Ever.

I'll post some pictures upon completion... the deadline is Oct. 19.

These are two scarves I made this summer. I'm going to keep the orange and pink one (Rowan Classic CashSoft DK, 3x3 ribbing) and give the manly one to my grandfather (Brown Sheep's Cotton Fleece, 5X3 ribbing).

What I'm about to say will sound awful and self-centered, but here goes. As if I hadn't had enough anguish over grandparents this year, my grandfather (John Pinter) fell and cracked his hip. He needed surgery but not a replacement. Now he's in a rehab home and is improving. I'm relieved to hear that he's still his same cornball self, lauging at everything and making up the most elaborate, goofy jokes that take what seems like half an hour to tell. He's 89 this year and just the same as ever. That's really a comfort.

Tonight, my mom made me cry over the stupidest thing: she asked what I'll be doing for Thanksgiving. Last year I went a bit nutty and made a big production. Grandma was in the nice rehab home, but she was feeling pretty down. In retrospect, it wasn't as bad as she eventually got, but it was bad enough. I made her relinquish her recipe for out-of-the-bird stuffing and got up too early to overcook the turkey (in my own defense not too much at all). I made multiple pies and dished two kinds of cranberry sauce into the special dish she always uses for it. I stuffed celery and forgot to make mashed potatoes.

She was happier that day than we'd seen her in a long time, she was actually smiling and making conversation. She was sitting in the rocking chair and kept saying that things were really great. She ate a huge plateful of dinner and then had three pieces of pie. At the funeral, my aunt Pat told me how happy that had made her. I was so touched, I just wanted things to be the same for her.

When Mom asked me about this year, I realized that I just didn't want to do anything. After my grandfather died right before my 13th birthday I didn't have a party for years. Since I've always spent the holiday at Grandma's, it's hard to think of another place I'd want to be, yet the idea of trying to have a holiday when all my out-of-town relatives will be elsewhere is equally bleak.

I haven't come to any resolution over this whole thing. I think I'll probably end up agonizing over it only to choose something by default which will be ultimately unsatisfying.

On to the projects! These are things I've been keeping myself sane with rather than taking on the work I'm supposed to be doing...

These are some mittens I finished at the end of August. They're Lamb's Pride worsted on size 8 needles. I think they're going to be too big for Elizabeth, though. These might go to charity and I'll make up a smaller pair.

Been a while since I checked in . Maybe I'll take the luxury of exucses this time. Been subbing a lot. I can teach 5th grade! Or home ec, or Calculus! Things I've never even studied. I'm becoming concerned that I'm an awful sub. I really give some of the kids a hard time. I guess they try to pull things over on me, but I feel bad for making them work so hard.

Speaking of studying, it's on to poetry this week. My efforts at prose have been terrifyingly feeble. I've read Tacitus' Agricola and some of Sallust's De Bellum Catilinae but not much else. I've read some Vergil, but I doubt that will be on my exam. Tomorrow, I'll start with Ovid and watch another tape of my Literature class. I'm catching up! right...