Rachael

My lightning-fast flashes of memory loss are getting more frequent, or maybe it’s just that someone is around more often to witness them. And laugh at them. The other morning I was kicking clothes around, looking at my feet, completely unable to find where I’d put my socks, which I had JUST seen. Kick. Kick. Where the fuck? Kick some more. How do you misplace socks you’ve just seen?

Then I noticed I was wearing them, and had forgotten I had already put them on, and apparently hadn’t NOTICED them while looking at my feet kicking through the clothes.

And the other night when I went out, I wanted a change from the silver hoop earrings I always wear, so I went through my jewelry box, picked out a pair I’ve honestly never seen before, and wore them. I have no recollection of buying or receiving them, and if someone held them up and asked “Have you seen these before?” I would truthfully (in my memory, anyway) answer “No.” Which was kind of cool, because although presumably they’re mine, it was just like getting a present. From myself!

(I never lose things, though, except sunglasses (and they totally don’t count) because I’m overly-anal about a place for everything. This is out of necessity, not out of a deep need for order.)

I think Lala is finally beginning to realize that my memory might, just possibly, be worse than hers. Which is a hard thing to imagine. You know, you tell someone that you can’t remember anything, ever, and that’s a hard thing to believe. Plus, she’s always had the worst memory that she’s ever known.
I like that about her.

The other day, we were walking, and she said something like,

“I’ve never seen that XYZ before.”

“Yes, you have.”

“No, I’ve never noticed it.”

“We had this conversation the last time we walked here, and remember you said that XYZ must have caused ABC to feel GHI?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

Of course, because I’m me, I’ve spent the last ten minutes trying to remember what the letters stood for, but I can’t. They’re gone.
But my phone number when I was four was 222-1806. Circumference can be calculated using 2PiR, which I remember is two times 3.14etcetera times the radius, and diameter can be calculated using PiRsquared. Columbus = 1492. Magna Carta = 1215. I think, anyway. I’m not going to check.

I had too much larnin’ as a kid. That’s my new theory. I thought too much and I read too much. I’m out of memory, and I SO can’t afford a new hard drive. Sigh.

But you know what I can afford?
This:

Oh, yes. I got it (borrowing against my tax refund). I’m going to run now. With my tunes. (Actually, with Lala’s tunes since I couldn’t quite make it work yesterday because while I’m good at computers, she’s great at them. Especially those Mac products. Makes the shuffle component more interesting. I actually really have no idea what I’m listening to.)

Guess who I got to meet? I shouldn’t say meet, ’cause I know the girl, and she was my friend way before we met yesterday, but I got to have dinner with Amy last night.

Look how adorable she is:

Amy has been special to me for years now. She was one of the first knit-bloggers I ever connected with, the first one to make me think about making my old blog into more of a knit-blog (and we see how that worked — one knitting comment a month or so, isn’t that right?), the first lesbian I knew who knitted. Honestly, I kinda thought I was the only one before that.

And last night, while in town on business, she drove up from San Jose to hang out with me. Honestly? I could have set up a Knit-Out in her honor, and perhaps I should have, but I was greedy. I wanted her all to myself. We had SO much to talk about.

She reminded me of an email I’d sent her a while back — she had been writing to me about her new girlfriend, Sandra, and how wonderful she was, and how big a love it was turning into. I wrote back something like, "That is SO great! But I’m not gonna do it. No dating for me, nope." I met Lala two weeks later. Yep. She quoted me to myself: "I met a banjo girl…."

And ladies? Her ring is GORGEOUS. I mean, it’s kind of ridiculous how perfectly it suits her, and I can tell Sandra suits her perfectly, too. I’m so happy for her, and I’m so happy that I got to spend the evening with her. We went to La Med on College (and I thought of all the mornings after running I’d spent there with Marama), and then back to my place, where Lala met us. We sat and talked until 12:30 without even realizing the time. Again, the only weirdness is how NOT weird it was. It’s odd that you can sit on a couch and laugh over Remember-Whens when you haven’t ever hugged each before that very night. But I’m here to tell you you can.

For those of you setting up new(ish) blogs and wondering how all these crazy connections happen? They happen like this. You pick the blogs that you love (I’ve noticed rings of friendships often happen with blogs that are about the same age) and you comment. You email. You think about those bloggers, and you keep them in your mind as you go about your day. For example, without looking at my calendar, I know that tomorrow is Maggi’s birthday, and I feel shame that her gift is still in my bag next to me, and not winging its way across the states right now, but I know she’ll love me anyway, even with my post-office phobia. And when I had a question about her gift, dearest Greta and Newly-Post-Office Savvy Ann helped me.

It takes energy and time, and none of us have enough of either, but what you can put out there will come back to you in some form. I promise. Evidenced here: Amy came to visit! Hoooray!

This is how gosh-durn lazy I am right now. I’m on the couch, computer on my lap, knitting to my right, phone to my left, and I just took a picture of my knitting with the crap-qual camera-phone, instead of getting up to take a high-resolution photo. But that’s the way it goes on Monday mornings (which are my version of your Sunday mornings. Only I get a Sunday morning with Lala, too, now that I’m not getting up at 6am to go train. I’m spoiled.)

So here’s the pattern I’m working on:

It’s the bottom band of a vee-neck sweater I’m making — the sleeves, already done, have the same motif at the ends. The yarn is a wonderful alpaca from ArtFibers called Jadis. It’s going to be a store model for them, and Kira wrote the pattern using their program, to which I added the colorwork.

It’s fun.

I’m boring. Sleepy. Lazy. Oh, yeah.

Helped sister Christy move this weekend, into an apartment on Ivy Hill in Oakland that I absolutely covet. I mean, if I didn’t have my own sweet little home, I would, for the first time in memory, be jealous. You walk into the foyer, and there are dark carved wooden support beams with iron-work detail. Big, dark slate floors, and inlaid ceilings. Then you walk down the hall (which is the best-smelling hall ever, spice and cocoa and a little Trader Joes-ish), and her door, get this, her door is a dark wood arch with ROPE around the outside, as are all the doors in the castle/ship building.

Inside, she has this amazing green tile in the kitchen that should be hideous, but is gorgeous instead, and a huge living room with windows that overlook all the roofs near the Parkway, and she has a tub with a window over it, and a big ole bedroom with a big ole closet, and let’s not forget the gigantor closet in the living room that has two doors that used to house (and sadly doesn’t anymore) a Murphy bed.

Oh. Oh, oh, oh. She deserves it. I fear, however, that when Bethany comes into town later this week, Christy will no longer be living alone.

All right. Off to give Digit the love he says he’s never received, ever.

https://rachaelherron.com/this_is_how_gos/

Waxing and whining.

(Work safe, and SO funny.)
Link via Scamper.

Y’all have a good weekend, okay? I’ve no plans beyond helping my sister Christy move (and Bethany’s ON the move, coming home the long way!) so I’ll be resting and hanging out and I’m HAPPY about that. No wax for me, thank you. Razors, they’re just fine.

MWAH.

Distract yourself from the unpleasantness below, which is now happily behind us, by going to see Lala’s dogs, who are, as Carrie would say, perfect schmoos. Don’t forget that the wet wee dog is only a little bigger than your HAND.

So I wrote an email  to the carpet guy. It was a good email saying "I know you were sick, I gave you two months to respond by mail, perhaps email is a better method for you. I’d love to hear why I haven’t ever heard from you, by phone or by mail." I attached the old letter as a reminder, in case he had never received it, since I knew his office help was stunningly unhelpful.

I got an email back.

It said I was free to pay for the $750 polygraph to prove that his employee (who wouldn’t lie) was telling the truth about not burglarizing my home.

I sat on the couch for a while and thought about how freaking MAD I was. Then I called him. A woman answered the cell phone, but I bamboozled my way around her, "Who is this?" "Oh, this is Ruth, returning his phone call." "What call?" "His call. This is Ruth." "Ruth?" "Returning his phone call. This is Ruth." But every time I said Ruth, I kind of mumbled it, until she gave up in frustration and handed him the phone.

"Hi, Michael," I said very clearly. "This is Rachael."

You could almost hear the "oh, shit," in his pause.

We proceeded to argue for the next twenty minutes. And I hate arguing. He went on and on about how he believed his employee, and how I was just trying to get a free carpet cleaning, and how every time he had talked to me before this he had told me that — "YOU HAVE NEVER TALKED TO ME IN YOUR WHOLE LIFE BECAUSE YOU HAVE NEVER CALLED ME BACK!"

He insisted we’d had more than a few conversations in the past. He also accused me of being a scam artist, at which point, I do have to admit, I said, "You are an IDIOT." But I don’t think he heard me. Even if he did….

It didn’t end well. He never, ever saw my point that had he just been polite, the first time I called, I would have let it drop, months ago. But somehow, I feel better, just knowing that he’s an asshole. You know? The world is full of them, and I wasn’t being ignored anymore. Oh, he wasn’t ignoring me, boy howdy. I did threaten that I would publish his unlisted phone number on my site and have YOU all call him, but I think that would reach right over into meanness, and I’m trying to stay on this side of nice. Trying.

But. In the post below, I give my review of his service and company. I’ve researched libel and slander, and he can’t sue me for the things I wrote. (Aside – I was interested to read here that I can freely call him an asshole, because name-calling cannot be proved true or false. Heh.)

And I can’t wait to be the first hit when google-searched for info on carpet cleaning in this area. And I’m happy to share my review.