now fortified with impotent fury!risperdal

Hello, my name is Wench, and I’m a knitting addict.

Hi wench!

You wouldn’t think I’ve only been knitting a few months. Not by the array of pattern books, the project bags, the compulsive way I’ve got projects stashed by every phone so wherever I get pinned down working I can knit a few rows. LPG comes over on the weekends and the two of us fall upon our bags-of-stuff-in-progress like vultures on carrion the second Sean’s down for a nap. But over the MLK weekend, my yarn whorishness reached new dizzying heights of insanity.

LPG and I went to a sale at a yarn store. It’s such a deceptive little sentence, isn’t it? Makes you think of two grannies pottering about in the marked down baskets in a sweet little shop? Oh hell no. Let’s back up a few days. I had scored a code for 10% off at nobleknits.com (survey says: the 25% off sale on artful yarns they had, yay, their service, ass.) and so LPG and i had put in a massive yarn order. And then came the email from her.

25% off at the Studio for their anniversary sale. And so we began to plan. Emails flew back and forth, discussing possible projects. I began to spend hours trolling knitty.com for patterns. I made a goddamn excel spreadsheet to prioritize projects and neatly list out what I needed for them (yarns and their info, needles, gadgets). Disasterously, after I had decided on My First Sweater Project, I found a site showing what patterns were in the Rowan Bigger Picture book, with info on amount of yarn and needles.

Suddenly, totalling up the yarn cost alone from every project I wanted to do out of Bigger Picture exceeded $1000. Hrm. The Lad, good man that he is, told me to not figure on buying the stuff for his sweater or stuff for him, and concentrate on meeeeeeee. Mad love for this man, I tell you. LPG and I hatched a plan, she inventoried her needles, I made shopping cheat sheets. The car was loaded with coffee and I picked her up at 9:45 on a Sunday morning so we could be at the store when it opened at 10.

Yes, you read that right. LPG appeared in public before 10 on a Sunday.

It was 12 degrees that morning. 12! And as we pulled up, we noticed over a dozen cars with women inside, bundled into handknit scarves of major league ugliness +12. LPG wanted a cig, which gave us a perfect excuse to ditch the car and stand directly in front of the door, waiting. In the 12 degree cold. We had made a plan for how to divvy up the attack, and had agreed: Rowan first, then split up. Good thing, too, because the Rowan was the first thing seriously ravaged. Within minutes, the place was madness. Like, you could not turn around madness. I ended up having to throw a skein of yarn over a display to LPG so she could show a staffer what she was looking for, and bonked the staffer in the head by accident (sorry!). Best quote of the day runner up, woman to her boyfriend. “Stand right there.” “Why?” “So I can use your fine ass to block the Noro I want.” Best line of the morning, hands down? The snappish, sorely undercaffeinated queen who said, “I /just/ want some cashmerino. Is that! Too much! To ask?!” One tall, pinch-faced harpy was extremely displeased that I scored all of the blue Rowan big wool, the one cream Rowan big wool, and some biggy print she wanted. And went on at length about it as I pivoted to grab alpaca for a baby blanket. Tough shit, woman, meet my flying elbow of punk-grrl-knitter-+2!

I mean. I’m so sorry, perhaps they can look down in the storage room for more for you?

Within 30 minutes, LPG and I had a full basket and three full bags (yes sir yes sir three bags full) between us. We joined the enormo line and got to wait for a while. A long while. A long while behind Snitty McAllRowanMustBeMinePants, who finally shut the fuck up with her snitting when she asked LPG if she had knit the sweater and hat she was wearing, and LPG affirmed she had, and I allowed as how the Rowan was, by and large, for the sweater I’d be knitting. Thus chastened- for apparently she knits scarves, only scarves, and is scared of anything else (truly, I can understand that feeling)- we apparently shot up into the ‘Not To Be Fucked With League Of Scary Knitters’ in her mind, and she stopped bitching about the Rowan. Behind us was a young, petite, serious looking woman with a deadpan wry streak, buying Stitch-n-Bitch and a bunch of the yarn LPG and I had just finished projects in, and we chatted with her. After we paid and left, I turned to LPG and said, “We should have gotten her contact info. for when we start a knitting group.” “Yeah. I want a cig.” “Fine, let’s stand here, you smoke, and we’ll lurk like the Mean Girls outside the locker room and jump her when she comes out.” “Excellent plan!” And so we did. Trala! We may actually have a knitting group.

Afterwards, we reeled off to Muddy’s for coffee and knitting (what else?) and to pour over our purchases, and plan and plot. The Lad met up with us, after little man was awake, for pizza at Pizza 51, and when we were all sated we went back to the house to wind yarn for approximately 3 billion years, because of course we couldn’t access a yarn-winder in that madness, and LPG had scored 4 hanks of colinette ribbon yarn which is a bitch to wind.

You would think, after all of this, after having so many projects lined up in front of me like planes lining up to land at O’Hare, I would not be thinking of buy more yarn. Far from it. I am already planning the assault for next year’s sale. God help me. Because now I know the layout of the store better. Rowan. Alpaca. Fuck the cashmerino. Back up front for the noro and jo sharp. Patterns. Needles. Run like hell to Muddy’s and cackle. And knit.

I can stop any time I want! No really.

(for those of you who care, behind the ‘read more’ cut is the current project list, such as it is)

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Dear A.D.

You don’t know me, because after you exited your car, you called your parents (smart), and then your friends (not so smart) and your girlfriend (really not smart), and didn’t bother to come talk to the people you hit. I know in an accident, it’s not wise to get chatty with the other drivers, but you know, it’s sporting to ascertain that the people you just hit are okay.

You didn’t bother to slow down, either. You were too busy jabbering on your cellphone or fiddling with your stereo on your tricked out little honda to notice the line of stopped traffic at the light. And it’s not like we were close to the light, either, traffic was well and truly backed up. You don’t know the guy you hit directly, the guy in the pickup truck, because you didn’t bother. If you had pulled yourself out of your self-absorbed little world for 2 minutes, you would have learned that you damn to near destroyed his daddy’s pickup truck. The kid’s dad died when the kid was 4, of cancer, and as he lay dying in a hospital bed asked his parents- the kid’s grandparents- to store the truck for the kid, so when the kid was 16 he would have his daddy’s pickup. You would have learned that kid, now 18, had spent every summer since he was 14 down in Georgia, with his cousins who restore old cars, restoring his Dad’s pickup with his own two hands. You’d know that he was on his way home from getting a job at Waterway, and that he had literally just finished the work on the truck, painting it over Thanksgiving.

I know all of this because after I called the police, and my husband, and the daycare center, I actually talked with the other people you hit. When the parents of the kid behind me arrived, the first thing they did was hug their son/stepson tight, and then came and asked me if I was okay, and then they looked at the truck. At this point, you were still jabbering into your cellphone.

Perhaps you will be bothered to remember that you hurt other people, soon enough. Because your rates are going to jump sky high. And because even though we live in a no-fault state when it comes to personal injury issues and insurance, there’s a payout cap, after which the insurance company goes after you for recovery of expenses. And believe me, I will be exhausting that cap, because thanks to you I can’t turn my head to the right more than 45 degrees right now, and I can’t sit in a kitchen or desk chair for more than 20 minutes at a clip without pain, and I can’t pick up my child to cuddle and soothe him when he falls, because I can’t lift anything heavier than 15 pounds for at least the next 2 weeks. You want to know frustration? It’s trying to explain to a hurt and scared 21 month old why Mommy can’t pick him up, when it’s clearly the only thing he wants.

Maybe when my insurance company, and the insurance company of the kid behind me, inform your parents precisely how much they’re having to pay out, even before any subrogration for personal injury, before any lawsuits, maybe then you’ll be bothered to think about someone other than yourself.

So, I was going to do a chipper happy I’m such a yarn whore I’m so obsessed LPG and I went to a yarn sale at 10 am last Sunday- 10 am I tell you! Both of us up and sentient and dressed and in public at 10 am!- and here are all my upcoming projects SQUEEEE! kinda entry.

And then Sean got conjunctivitis- and badly- in both eyes on Monday, and thanks to timing we had to go to urgentcare not the doc, and I didn’t have my card on me, and ugh the drama.

And then the dishwasher died messily on Wednesday night, such that I came home from picking up Sean to a kitchen flooded with searing hot water and smelling like burned rubber. As an extra kick in the pants, the dishwasher’s little soap dispenser had not opened, so not only was the kitchen flooded, the dishes in the washer were not actually clean, goddamnit. I got to bail out the bottom of the dishwasher with a soup ladel and stockpot for 45 minutes. Jerry, meanwhile, detoured to best buy and bought a new dishwasher, being delivered soon.

And then, on my way to pick up Sean at daycare yesterday evening, some shit for brains 16 year old in a souped up little Honda was paying no attention to the fact that traffic was stopped at a light, and plowed into the 1979 Ford Pickup behind me, which then plowed into me, and I plowed into the car ahead.

I am seeing my doctor this afternoon. Me. So. Hurty. I am okay, but I am obviously dealing with an upper back/neck/shoulder/head injury. Tonight is the Williams College Trivia contest, and unless my doc gives me some grade A fine drugs, I doubt I’ll be really playing. If, however, I am on fine fine meds, I apologize in advance to whomever speaks to me on the phone. Really. I’m sorry.