Rachael

Dear Lala,

As I understand it, you’re meditating right now, right? You’ve up and left for Buddha Camp up north and left me to deal with the crazy people at work. And the citizens who call me while I’m there, too. (I’m pretty sure the people you’re with right now call it something else, not Buddha Camp, maybe something like the Buddhist Autumn Retreat, but I like your way better. It makes me think you’ll chant songs around a campfire and roast soydogs on long sticks, while carefully and humanely shoo-ing mosquitoes away.)

And we can’t talk for eleven days? Dude. I get so used to today’s methods of communication — we must email each other more than twenty times a day. I have JUST learned your phone number, since I never use it, and when I do, I just pull it up on my cell phone. But up there in the thoughtful woods (are there woods there? There should be woods), you’ve got no access to a computer, and your cell will be turned off, and for the first time in five months, I won’t be able to talk to you.

And you won’t know what I’m blogging, either. Hah! I’m going to steal your dogs from your brother (okay, borrow ’em) and dress them up and take pictures of them! Yeah!

Miss Idaho would like you to know that even in California little five-pound dogs need sweaters in the winter.

Okay, I know that one’s store-bought, but I also know that you learned to knit just so you could make her sweaters for the snow. Softie. (But I’m glad you learned to knit. SO glad. I love it that you can intelligently discuss stitch patterns with me. That’s rad.)

I had a fine Thanksgiving, by the way. I woke up and had bacon and eggs. (Makin’ Bacon? Now there’s a cool item. I swear. That bacon is perfect.) Then I came to work and had some ham that a coworker had brought and some mashed potatoes from downstairs, provided by the officers’ association. Then I ate a lot of cake. It would be better if you didn’t ask how much I actually ate. I brought an apple pie, boxed from the supermarket, which is still sitting in the back room. Oh, well.

So in terms of Thanksgivings, this one wasn’t particularly outstanding. But seeing as I don’t like pumpkin pie, dressing, gravy, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, or green bean casserole, Thanksgiving is usually something of a white-plate yawn anyway (white turkey meat, plain mashed potatoes, and bread with butter make up my plate every year). I missed my family something fierce, though. And you.

Oh, if your dogs could talk. Rather glad they can’t. Have a good, wise, and compassionate week, okay? And have a soydog for me.

So. Cari’s outed our little girl gang. I think most of y’all might have picked up on the tightness between us, anyway, but she did a good job of describing what we’re doing. Basically: Em, Alison, Cari, and I are doing round-robin sweaters. By the end we’ll each own a sweater that every other gal worked on. I’m working on Cari’s sleeve right now, and I’ll want to show you it, and we knew we’d have to ‘fess up eventually. Plus, we’ll HAVE to show you the finished product. (My goal is to someday show a picture of all four of us, together, in our GAWK sweaters. It’ll happen.)

And she made well the most important point: It’s not that we love you any less, because that’s not it at all. We just love each other a whole hellofalot.

More knitting content: I finished the Rowan thing-a-ma-bob recently. Boy, you’d think I’d pay better attention. I haven’t shown you it before this because I’ve been too busy to put in a zipper. But I wore it the other day and realized it looks okay without one, too, so here ya go.

Specs:

Pattern: Rowan, Denim People, pattern: Bomber
Yarn: Paton’s Classic Merino, to gauge

Size: Bust 38

All right. It’s Turkey Day tomorrow, and I hope you have wonderful plans with your families, and I hope no one throws the gravy boat at anyone’s head. I’m not able to go home this year because I’m working, so think of your local dispatcher, okay? For god’s sake, if you have a 24-hour Starbucks open on the holiday, call and offer them a coffee run at night. Tell them you know a dispatcher in California, and then tell ME about it.

And lastly, Oakland rocks.

Boy, I’m so lucky. I’m always learning. You know how they say that’s a good thing? Keeps your mind snappin’ and blows away those old mental cobwebs, that’s what they say.

I learned this yesterday: BART doors are not like elevator doors. Betcha didn’t know THAT, didja? And if you did, don’t tell me.

Lala’s superpower is to make the train leave just as she reaches the platform. Me, on the other hand, I’ve usually arrived just as the train is pulling in. (But I have no parking karma, so it evens out.) Yesterday, however, I heard the train pulling in as I was going up the escalator. I ran up, up, up, and got to the doors just as they were closing. They have rubbers bumpers on them, just like elevator doors. So I did what I do with elevators: I stuck my hand in between the doors.

Let me say it again: BART doors are not like elevator doors. I was standing there, with my hand caught tightly (and rather painfully) in the door, people inside the car gaping with horror at my little fingers grasping at air. I think we all had a mental image of the train starting to roll. Two people leapt up and tried to pry the doors open. I learned later that the conductor can tell if a door is open and will look out her window and pop the doors, which she did. I fell into the car, trying not to clutch my poor mangled hand (it wasn’t, but it felt like it was), and had to face approximately nine thousand concerned, shocked faces. "Oh, it didn’t hurt! Isn’t that weird? It didn’t shut hard. [Yes, it did.] It was just surprising. No, I’m fine! Yes, I’m glad I didn’t die. Yes, I’m sorry your child is crying. Yes, it IS a tragedy narrowly averted, thanks for reminding me. ‘Preciate that."

I meandered as casually as possible to the back of the car, having these conversations with, like, EVERYONE, and then at the next stop, I (carefully) changed cars. I needed the pitying stares to stop. (My hand is fine, by the way. My pride will take about a week to catch up with the hand.)

I think I blushed all the way to Powell Street. There I met Brian-Mark, where we caught up with each other to the tune of a $110 lunch (!) and a bottle of wine each. Each, mind. O joy merlot divine. In Venice,  I met him on a boat, and in the one minute of conversation we had, I got his room number at the Hotel Rialto. I left him a note later, and the next day I picked him up in the lobby. We wandered the city together for the next two days. Yesterday, I picked him again in a hotel lobby, and we wandered another city, marveling at our luck, and admiring each other, and the way we managed to meet each other in the most romantic city in the world, the lesbian and the queer boy, walking the narrow streets above the canals, arm in arm. Yesterday was a lovely, lovely afternoon. And I was hungover by 6pm.

Monday.

Yep.

That’s how inspired I am to write on Mondays. Yep. That’s what you’re gettin’.

Coffee, get to work. Dammit.

We had a very productive weekend, even though I didn’t run. (It was an eight-mile training run. Come on. I’m still healing from the 26 last week. And still fighting that cold. It was an easy call to stay in bed.)

But we did manage to move Lala into her new place, which is my old place. There. I’ll let you think about that for a second. (At dinner one night, we told Bethany that Lala was moving, and she said, “Where?” I said, triumphantly, “My place! Can you believe that?” She sat there for a while, as did Christy, and then said, “Wow!” It took me a minute to realize I hadn’t differentiated places, and that she wouldn’t automatically know that I meant the place I was vacating. They were troopers, though. “Wow!”)

What I didn’t realize earlier, though, was how WEIRD it would be moving her in to the place I had just left. For her housewarming present, I got her the best present of all: Movers. She thinks I’m the bee’s knees for it. In reality (shhh, don’t tell her), I was just lazy. It’s definitely a girlfriend’s job to help move, and I couldn’t bear to lift another box. (There are only two real unavoidable jobs in Girlfriend Land: Moving, and airport runs. All other jobs are negotiable.)

So the movers arrive (at seven pm, instead of one, ouch) and the same two guys that moved me out, moved her in. They were a little surprised, I think. They remembered my desk. Then her apartment with its red and yellow walls filled up with her things, and suddenly, it wasn’t my place anymore. It was like all those boxes and towels and bedding and musical instruments were so imbued with her her-ness that my me-ness didn’t stick around. I’m glad about that, too. I had wondered if I would feel like she was staying at “my place.” But nope. I took a shower there, and there was this moment of complete brain-disconnect when I was standing there, and I knew the shower, knew how to work the fiddly handles, but I didn’t really recognize it, since it was Lala’s new house.

I can’t quite explain it. Huh.

I was going to say more, about how well the cats and dogs did last night, and about how I had a lovely little knitting afternoon yesterday, for the first time ever in my new home, watching the Amazing Race, but I just got a call from my gay porn-star boyfriend that I met years ago in Venice on a boat. He’s in town with his new man, and he’s now out of the industry (to many men’s sorrow) and living in Miami Beach, and I have to hear ALL about it.

And this: If you live above the freeway, and you’re tired, and you miss your exit because you’re thinking about ab-so-lootely nothing, you get to see your house go by for the first time. That’s so exciting you almost miss the next exit.

And then, if you’re really super-cool like me, you back into your parking space, thinking you’re all hot because you got it in so tight next to the wooden post and then realize there’s no way in hell you’re ever going to get out the door, but you try anyway and almost break the window with your stomach and have to crawl backwards out the passenger door over the two bags of books and the mop.

Just so you know.

Well. All right. I was a little hasty in yesterday’s post. The wondrous, all-powerful IT people have now restored our access, and I can resume reading about naked ladies knitting.

But.

(See, you knew there would be a but, right?) I noticed that while a great part of me was relieved, there was this  small blue part that thought, "Oh. I thought I was off the hook there. I thought that meant more book-reading time. More time to write."

Let’s examine that.

This blogging thing is one of my main joys in life. Really. I love and adore it. And you. I have no intention of stopping. But MAN, does it take a lot of time and commitment. If you know me, you know I have Catholic issues with guilt. (Never been Catholic, however, nor has anyone in my family. I was crushed when Mom told me I probably couldn’t be a nun because I wasn’t Catholic. Devastated. I’m not kidding.) Big guilty feelings happen when I don’t wash my sheets often enough, so imagine how I feel when I realize I haven’t left a comment on a person’s site in a long time, and I really like that person, and I want her to know I like her.

Then I had a rather revelatory thought. I thought about the people that I read and love who rarely, if ever, comment on my blog. I realized that I don’t mind if they don’t comment on mine. I don’t care if they don’t even read my blog. Ever. I still read them, still adore ’em, and even better, feel no obligation to leave a comment behind me when I close the window.

Do you ever feel that way? I’ve been blogging now for about three years, two of them within the knitting community (even though god knows how I got here, I almost never write about knitting), and I’ve found the people out here to be some of the most brilliant, caring people I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting. I can’t wait to read my favorite sites, and it feels like coming home when I do. But there was a moment that happened, about a year ago, maybe, when I got a wonderful comment from someone who maintained a fantastic site with unbelievably great writing, and while I was thrilled to make her acquaintance, there was a part of me that said, "Shit. That’s another fantabulous person I want to keep up on. Damn it."

Would you all just quit being so freaking awesome? Please?

So I have a rather drastic resolution. I’m going to read Bloglines like it’s goin’ out of style (please, please, please, publish an unabridged RSS feed if at all possible — it ups your chances of being read by more people by about a million percent. Or at least a little more. It might not be quite that high. But it’s higher. Jeesh). I’ll dip in and comment when I feel really moved to do so. I will not feel guilty about this. I will still adore you. I promise. I hope you adore me, too. (Damned codependent crap. Oh, well. Who doesn’t like to be liked?)

My little worrying voice is chipping away in my mind (I know, they have drugs for that, but I’m not ready for ’em just yet), asking, "Is that okay? Will that work for you?"

I say to it (myself, whatever), "Yes! It’s okay! They’re blogs, for the love of cashmere. They’re not your life."

But really, they are a large part of my life. Okay.

Okay?

Okay.

Happy weekend, all. Thanks for reading me. I’m a better person for y’all. I’m so HAPPY to know you. Big, sloppy MWAH.