Porque mi casa?

I heard a rapid succession of knocks at precisely 10:30 on this Saturday morning. Assuming it was just the punks on the other side of our bedroom wall nailing yet more things to their soon-to-be tattoo parlor, I ignored it. After all, they had been sanding, banging, clanging and presumably hurling things at our paper-thin shared wall until quite late last night. Maybe they had slept there and decided on an encore immediately upon waking.

But then I heard it again.

I slipped out of bed and tiptoed stealthily to the door for a peep out of the eyehole. I spied a blond woman in a burgundy suit. Perhaps it was my landlord, coming to evict us for leaving my ugly flip flops--a vestige of my frenzied Wednesday of mopping and scouring surfaces--on the porch one day too long. Giving up, the lady stuck something in the door and left. I waited until I could no longer see her, counted to five and unlocked the door to see what present she left us.

It was a two-page color pamphlet entirely in Spanish, entitled, "Le gustaria saber la verdad?" Based on my vast internal Spanish dictionary I would guess "gustaria" has something to do with liking (like "me gusta horchata"), "saber" means saber, and "verdad" means green. The liking of the green saber? Huh?

As I pondered this, a corpulent, mustascioed man in a three-piece suit moved in sight of my porch and spotted me. He motioned to his lady friend to come quickly, but I quickly closed and locked the door before they could speak to me. I scurried back to the bedroom to show my spoils to the boyf and attempt to translate the brochure.

"Hay alguna esperanza para los muertos?" could only mean, "Do you hope the dead eat hay?"

"Como encrontrar la felicidad?" must be a query about how I plan to encounter happy times.

"Jesucristo dijo en oracion a Dios: 'Tu palabra es la verdad'" I roughly translated to mean, "Jesus Christ said in an speech to God: 'You probably are the green.'"

In the midst of the fun translating game, I happened to catch sight of myself in the mirror. My hair had used last night's hairspray and my pillow to concoct a rooster-like pompadour. My eyes were rimmed in black due to my failure to wash my face off last night because I fell asleep immediately after guzzling a glass of red wine. My pink-and-white striped nightshirt was festooned with kitties, Eiffel towers and the phrase, "Oh, mon amour!"

I may not know what the brochure meant, but I can translate with confidence exactly what the look in that hombre's eye was saying when he glimpsed me: "Guapa mamacita!"

Some stories about knitting

This headless form is me, and the coverlet in which I'm ensconced has been my labor of love for the past month and change. It consumes all my non-work waking hours. Even when I'm not working on it, it glares at me from my purse and chides me for not being more industrious. As a result, I've had to renew my copy of The Feminine Mystique from the library no less than three times. I just don't have time to read anymore. When I'm on the train, I'm knitting and listening to a podcast. When I'm home, I'm watching yet another episode of Iron Chef America to occupy my brain whilst my fingers knit and purl themselves into a near-arthritic condition.

Here are some facts about my blanket:

• Its girth has increased so much that I can no longer schlep it around in my quite roomy purse. I had to buy a new tote bag bearing the visages of Portland's many bridges because my Nina Totin' Bag is, unfortunately somewhere back in my room in Minnesota.
• It's length has grown correspondingly with the decrease in temperature, so I can snuggle in it while I knit it and be quite cozy.
• Knitting=friends. People on the train and bus are always EVER so curious about what I'm making. Their first guess is usually a sweater, which I find kind of silly. Even obese giants would swim in the amount of fabric I've created. They are also often quite keen to tell me about how their mothers used to knit, they themselves never learned and now my generation is "bringing it back." Yes. That and sexy. It's what we're here for.
  
• My plan for the blanket was to have a big chunk of maroon, a band of teal and then an equally big chunk of maroon. I belatedly realized that I am a skein short of maroon, and I am in just a tizzy about what to do about it. I've done exhaustive Internet research and it appears there isn't a yarn shop within a hundred miles that sells the brand and color I need. Oh, for my Yarn Lady of old.

Well, the ol' woolly wench is staring at me again, urging me to finish the row I started so the above picture could be taken. I bid you adieu.

I Just Can't Help Believing

I got myself into trouble during my job interview, when I insisted to my soon-to-be boss that I'm most definitely a morning person. While it is the absolute truth that I'm an early to bed, early to rise kind of gal, that statement meant I was precluded from yawning or being bleary-eyed when I first arrived at the office. It also meant I would have to dispel of my ample morning rage before I reached the front doors every morning.

This morning, for example, I was livid at the following:

-The weird, powdery smell that emanates from my porch
-All the puddles I had to step around
-The tennis shoes in my backpack strategically poking me in my aching lumbar
-People on the train who use the adjacent seat to store their belongings
-The woman who swiped the seat I'd been eying for a good two stops
-The man whose earbuds were blaring thumping rap beats
-The clipboarder who approached me and asked me to sign his stinking petition. Some places should be sacred, people!

I exited the train only to be slapped in the nose with the dank smell of rained-on urine and began to mentally curse my maker. Then I saw this...



... and the King gave me a little religion.