Archives for October 2005

I am learning so much. My head is going to fall right off in about six minutes. It will simply get too full of knowledge and fall off and roll around and laugh and say, "You know too much! That was it! I’m done with you! I’m moving on and going to get on the shoulders of someone who doesn’t think, like you used not to."

My old job was 911/police dispatch for a small local agency. My new job is fire and medical dispatch for an enormous geographic area, and there are about one million more things to learn than I ever thought there would be. I keep learning that we control and manage the resources for areas that I never would have thought about, both geographically and politically.  It’s great, but totally overwhelming sometimes. I have to call the state leaders when? And send fire trucks to other states how? We do THAT? You’re kidding. I used to read blogs. That’s what I USED to do.

Luckily, I’m going through training with a nice boy, who knows as much as I do about dispatching. I would be totally freaked out if all this learning was directed right at me, by my lonesome. I don’t think that would be fun.

The guy is sweet. He is. But he doesn’t ask many personal questions. Yesterday, I realized that while I knew his girlfriend’s name and job and where she bought coffee and where they ate every Thursday night, I thought it prudent to ask (after eight nine-hour days), "Do you know I date women? And that my fiance is a girl?"

He said, "Really? I knew this girl at my last job who was having triplets with her female partner." And that was ’nuff said on the topic of me. I told you, he’s sweet. Rather cotton-ball-like, and I can’t explain that. He just is. Smart, yes. Just doesn’t ask too many questions. I can respect that.

Maybe next week I’ll prove to you that I still knit, although in reality I’ve knit maybe twelve rounds of a sock at work, and perhaps twenty rows of a lace handspun scarf at home this week. That’s it. Someday I will knit again….

Happy weekend!

This is why I leave writing about the music up to my girl.

https://rachaelherron.com/this_is_why_i_l/

I saw Yarn!’s Janis knitting the neatest socks ever the other day. She was knitting self-striping socks from an unraveling piece of beautifully dyed machine knitting. There. Think about that for a minute. Dude.

Here you go. Isn’t that the best idea ever? Check out those gorgeous pieces in the gallery! Look at those kits! Dye your own socks! Nancy Roberts is a geeneeyus.

From her site:

So
what is this inveterate hand knitter doing using a knitting machine? A
knitting machine is yet another tool she can use to personalize yarn
creation. With a knitting machine, she can quickly machine knit
stockinette fabric for multicolor dyeing. Dyeing in the fabric, unlike
dyeing a skein, allows her to produce a yarn with longer repeats of
color, which means in turn that a single color can circle the
circumference of a sweater many times before merging into a new color
or shade.

There is nothing funnier, when attending a slumber party, than dressing up the attendants in the chihuahua’s cowboy hat.

See, Miss Idaho got a new hat:

But it looks good on Jodi, too:

Kris looks surprised:

But she shouldn’t be surprised, because it really IS flattering on everyone:

Supa-R-LuvVa knows it.

So does Lala:

Even I know it, too:

But even though everyone can get behind (or under) it,

Even Blaze knows that it’s really Miss Idaho’s hat:

Now just shamelessly dog-blogging:

    Where’s that barkeep?

    Hope my horse is still okay outside.

    The wind can sound lonely on the range.

    Barkeep! Make it a double!

    Four more pictures and I’m free. I need a raise.

I was in the store yesterday, a little veggie market not far from my house. It gets pretty crowded after work, and I felt scowly and headachey as I stood in line.

The sound-system was playing "Under the Boardwalk." A deep baritone joined in for a few lines. I didn’t turn around.

"Come on! Sing with me!"

A short man in a purple suit was holding a huge bunch of greens to his chest, three customers back.

"Let’s make the cashiers happy! Let’s make them give the food away!" A checker grinned and shook her head.

"Look at these! Have you ever seen such pretty greens?" He shook them with a vegetable rattle. A woman asked him how he was going to cook them.

He spoke to the store at large. "I cook, sure. I cook all the time. I’m a great cook. But no, these aren’t for me. They’re for the rabbits." He heaved a dramatic sigh. "Those rabbits eat better than I ever do. Avocados. Raisins. Peanut butter, but only the fancy fresh kind. These greens. They eat more than me, too." He had such a big smile that just looking at him made me feel less scowly.

"Are they angora?" I asked. I had to know. I had visions of him spinning the fluff while they ate avocado on his lap.

He beamed at me. "No, lop-eared. Big lops. Great big lops. I get home from work, and sometimes I’ll sit on the couch. Maybe I’ll fall asleep. The white one, she’ll hop up and pull on my pants until I wake up. She wants her food."

"But Harriet," he paused for effect, looking at his audience — we were all rapt by now, "Harriet, she dances. Right in time to the music. She gives a little hop, like this. And then another to the left, see? Hop, hop, hop. Dancing! She dances for me when I’m tired. Who could be sad when Harriet dances like that?"

As I picked up my bags to leave, I told him it was the best thing I’d heard all day. He said that God would bless me. I walked out, thinking maybe he had.

*Lala’s Harriet dances too, with a waggy spinning tail. Must be in the name.

I would really like a night’s good sleep. Really. What with police action and new-job dreams and the migraine I woke up with yesterday, I’m having a rough time. The other night, I had this terrible dream in which it was my first day of work, and someone was supposed to drive me there. She wouldn’t tell me where she was going to meet me, though, and ignored my questions. Finally, I shouted, "WHERE AM I GOING TO MEET YOU?" at the top of my lungs and woke up both myself and Lala. You might know from her blog that Lala can sleep through things like alarm clocks and ringing telephones and nuclear detonations, so I was quite proud of my lung capacity.

I’m pre-blogging this, since I have a minute while Lala showers, and then we’re going out to dinner, and then I’m going home to bed, where, by the time you read this, I hope I will have managed a very nice, sound, long sleep. I haven’t knit a stitch in days. I want sleeeeeeppppp……. Wish me luck.