Knitting Week.

I got my Ravelry Invite (have barely poked my nose in so far) and got Crazy Aunt Purl's book. Finally. Both of them, finally. I feel like I've been standing behind the velvet ropes of Ravelry until my platform sandals are cutting into my feet. (Why am I having a club flashback when I was With the Band? I never actually stood in a line anywhere I can recall.) Anyway, I'm in, and I am AuntMaisie on Ravelry. She was adorable. CatherineM was taken, so if you meet CatherineM there, she is an impostor. Unless she's a talented and prolific knitter, and then she's me. Naah, that won't fool anybody.

I may take Laurie's book to Asheville with me, so I can savor it with a cup of coffee while soaking up ambiance and fresh air and funky downtown Ashevilleness in a coffee shop. I will laugh and sob appropriately in public, delicately dabbing at my eyes and holding the book so everyone can see the title, no charge to Laurie. (If I got out more I'd rent myself out for this service.) I'll be visiting bookstores while I'm there, and I will look for her book and Sue's book and Clara's book, and am I missing anybody who has gotten published lately? Let me know, and I will take surreptitious pictures with my camera phone, and try not to think about how all I write are work related emails and memos, and grocery lists. Oh, I do keep a journal, but that's not very creative either. Unless by "creative" we mean "Kinda pathetic, because damn, that woman has no life."

Because, yes, my work life is sucking the life out of me, and I don't want that to become more than a figure of speech again. This is the job I left on a stretcher. It has not gotten easier - I can't go into the details for obvious reasons, but here is a snapshot: The other day in a meeting someone in another department said she'd been sorting out what we had to do on a thing, and had been in communication with the local municipality about this thing, and she'd email me the stuff. So after a few days I didn't get the stuff, so I emailed her and asked her if she'd received it yet. And she sent me an email from the city guy. Again, without getting into particulars, the city guy didn't understand the issue and his answer did not fit the facts. So I replied to our girl who forwarded the email, and explained in two sentences of plain English how that fix wouldn't work in this situation. Thinking perhaps maybe she'd like to understand, and that if I told her this she'd somehow, I don't know, take some sort of initiative to move this along. And she emailed me back the equivalent of hands clapped over her ears, la-la-la - obviously this was a Legal Thing that Required Thinking, and therefore it is not her job, it is my job. She'll help if she can, just let her know. The buck, and every manner of shit from mouse to elephant, lands in our department, and mostly on my desk. I would throw this back to her, but I know that she is right, she can't do it. And the executive team is flying at 30,000 feet over Mental Munchkinland, and doesn't understand why our dept takes so long to get anything done. I am tired, I want to focus my life elsewhere, and I can't wait to get out of this place.

Girlchild needs a new car. She needed it six months ago, but the Brave Little Sentra she inherited from her father has lived a hard life, has been hit twice, has slogged its way around the Southeast, and it deserves a dignified farewell. She deserves something younger and more trustworthy. So please join us in visualizing a new(er) vehicle for her, and a more pleasant job that pays better, so she can make a car payment. Because she works a very hard and very responsible job, a "you can go to jail if you fuck up" kind of job, and yet she isn't paid enough to afford rent AND a car payment, and she'd like to move out of her mother's house and afford a modest used Saturn. Welcome to Florida. Please leave your wallet, we don't make any money here.