Rachael

Welp, Friday, actually. But it’s my Monday, and I’m at work this fine day. As I drove in this morning, the sky was a deep dark blue/purple, a smudged bruise. It’s what I imagine the sky looks like before snow. Except, of course, this is the Bay Area, and all we’ve had recently is some damned good rain. That heavy, wool-coat soaking kind of rain that’s fun to run through, not so fun to hail a cab in. *

Driving to work this morning, however, I wondered AGAIN why people feel it’s okay to come up on your a$$ at ninety,** slam on the brakes (because you’re only doing seventy-five) and swerve around you, almost clipping your bumper and causing the next lane to slam on their collective brakes. My time, the way I figure it, is just not as precious to me as theirs is to them. I hang back, willing to get there when I get there, and I don’t understand their mentality. I don’t understand how angry they get at the space I’m leaving between me and and the car in front of me. It’s like a personal affront. So they near-miss me, go around, wedge themselves in the gap I’ve left, and then do it all over to the new car in front of them, their new problem on the road.

I like to drive. I like to zen the traffic. I wish THAT were part of the driver’s training these days: How to relax when cut-off. How to keep your middle finger on the steering wheel at all times. How to leave the house a little early to account for traffic. How to sing really super loudly and groove your head and make everyone think you’re on meds (but really good ones).

Knitting content: Working on BonneMarie’s ribby cardie in Jo Sharp Silkroad (a tweedy red), and it’s working up fast, just the way I like. Pics over the weekend (not sure if I mean my weekend or yours, but I like the vagueness). Also working Christmas gifts, but hey, who isn’t?

Happy Friday(ish)!

* I just like the way Em does this and I’m copying.
** I have no idea why it was okay for me to write fuc(wad yesterday and today I’m having issues with ass — mood-bleeps, I suppose.

All together now: good, healing, strengthening and peaceful thoughts to our Greta…… Today’s her surgery day, and I woke thinking of her. That’s one passionate, wildly interesting woman who NEEDS to be able to see her glorious world.

And speaking of health, damn, I hope my mother has giardia. There. That’s a sentence I never thought I’d write. But she’s been so sick for the past few months, losing so much weight and feeling crummy, every day. She ran all the tests to make sure the colon cancer hadn’t come back, and did more tests, and then some more. The worst part is that she lives in a small-town rural area with very few doctors that accept her medical plan (the only plan that works for them, and the PPO cost at open-enrollment was just prohibitive). So she has to go to a fuckwad of a doctor, who, the last time she saw her, never entered the room fully, standing in the doorway WITH HER ARMS CROSSED. Mom had armed herself with a list of questions and self-diagnoses and Dad, and the doctor (if she deserves to be called that) got away in under four minutes, answering and prescribing nothing, saying “This isn’t my field, I just can’t help you.” But this is her primary doctor, and she needs her approval for all the referrals, and there’s no one else accepting new patients in the area.

Bitter? Why would you say that?

But good news: Mom kicked and screamed (in her very polite quiet New Zealand way) until she obtained the referral to the gastro-guy, who said (after a four-week wait to get an appointment),

GG – You been camping?
Mom – Yes.
GG – The mountains? Yosemite?
Mom – Yes.
GG – When?
Mom – Late August.
GG – And you’ve been sick since *flip of the chart* late August?
Mom – Oh!

She first got started feeling this way the DAY she got back from Strawberry Music Festival. Here’s a snap of her, waving the three girls in their three cars on their way…. (way zoomed in, she was a speck on the original)

It’s treatable with a five day (nasty) antibiotic treatment, so DAMN, I hope she has giardia.

I just think that’s funny.

Hey, Beth’s back on the road! And she’s cold! I think she’s in Iowa. The goal is for her to get to Atlanta by Saturday, when Christy’s flying out to meet her and they’ll tramp about for six days and then fly back together for Christmas, leaving her home/truck in the long-term parking lot. They’re both so cool.

Dude, I’m always sitting next to the star, and I love it that way. Brandy called me tonight (Brandy of the red sweater in post below) and said she was going to sing, spur of the moment, at the Freight and Salvage’s Open Mic Night.

Let me tell you. It’s pouring here tonight. I mean real rain. Not that showery drippy crap, but real live downpours. And I worked ten hours today on my day off, and I had to stand in line after work to return things at places like Radio Shack, so I wasn’t sure I was in the mood.

But I used to sing. I suppose I still do, still can, but I don’t perform anymore. I remember that feeling, that asking someone if they’d like to come hear a performance, saying “it doesn’t matter, it’s a little thing, no big deal if you can’t,” but knowing deep inside, yes, I want to someone to hear me (or now, to read me).

So I put on the Must-Bolero (I’m liking it more and more, I gotta say) and an old Marsan watchcap and my Italian raincoat (I like to call it that, but I didn’t get it in Italy, I wear it TO Italy) and met Brandy at the Freight.

If you’re from the Bay Area, you know this place. An old boxcar of a building (thus the name), it’s historic and dark and sweet, with incredible acoustics. I’ve seen a lotta performances there but have always avoided the Open Mic nights, picturing…. I don’t know what I thought would happen onstage. I think I had my high-school’s Mock Rock in mind when I thought about Open Mic. Kids leaping with screeching untuned guitars, flailing arms to disguise sheer lack of talent. I forgot that:
1) It’s the Bay Area.
2) It’s the Freight.

Oh, yes, there were the people who were stone tone deaf. Couldn’t have got a C out of orange juice. I’m still not totally sure that one guy wasn’t just having us on. He sang the way my sisters and I do after a couple bottles of champagne, and WE’RE KIDDING.

Then there were a bunch of good performers. The ones who are leagues better than I would be if I got back up on stage, with good, clear voices, and gifted with their instruments of choice.

But there were four incredible performers. One man took a guitar and a computer and made magic – a whole orchestra wielded with a foot-activated touch pad. He used a BOW on that guitar at times. It was so mesmerizing I actually had to put down my knitting. Heaven.

And three of the female singers ROCKED – Marie Aquiles, Corrinne May, and Brandy Gadson. They were so flipping good that they were networking afterward. From the stage, the coordinator asked Brandy if she had also driven up from LA (as May had). People were asking for Brandy’s website (which she ain’t got yet, but will). And, might I add, she was the best looking of the bunch, too (she took off the yellow “Iron before washing” sticker on her new pants just before she went up).

I sat and was happy and proud to be in the audience where my friend knocked the crowd outta their chairs. Granted, it was a small crowd by then, having been thinned out by people leaving after they performed…. (I was so irritated by that. I wanted to chase each departing performer out and tell them that Brandy hadn’t sung yet, that they were going to miss the best part.)

Oh! I almost forgot to tell a fine moment – she wrote the song she sang, and used “glass house” in the lyrics. I just about bust at that point.

She was so good. (And if you get a moment, click on Corrinne May above – she’s got a stunning voice, too.)

Now I’m home, and it’s still pouring. Digit is grumpier than hell about it. He knows when it’s like this that in the morning it’ll be muddy, and mud means he gets his paws wiped when he comes back in, which he HATES. The sound of the rain makes up for tomorrow’s trauma, though. At least in my mind, if not his.

Long post. Happy to be back. Hope your night is warm and dry.

I’m back! And sooo happy about it. The time without my computer proved to me one thing: I can live without the internet at home.

But I don’t have to like it.

I will, however, try to put limits on my internet time during my work week. I can easily come home from work at 7pm and lose two hours, just browsing and emailing. When I didn’t have the computer at home, I came home, knitted on the couch, took a bath and slept. I liked those nights. Course, tonight, she’s like a brand-new toy, so I’m giving myself an exception so I can do this:

HI!

All right:

Let me catch you up a bit.

I had breakfast with Anne of Creating Text(iles) the Saturday after Thanksgiving. And she is even more delightful in person than she is online (hard to imagine, I know).

The place I had originally suggested we meet wasn’t open until eight (and I had to be at work by nine), so we went to my real favorite place. I should have suggested it in the first place–I should have known she would get it. The Lake Merritt Bakery is in downtown Oakland, open twenty-four hours, always has one rough looking young fellow seated with an older woman wearing a large Sunday hat (the faces change, but the set-up is always the same no matter the day, grandma and grandson out to lunch/dinner/breakfast), the shakes cause insta-weight-gain, there are about a million booths, and chicken’n’waffles are the order of the day. Well, okay, we both got bacon and eggs. But chicken’n’waffles are available should you get the hankerin’.

And Anne’s a hoot. Intelligent and charming, she was my first face-to-face blog meeting, and the weird part is that it wasn’t weird. It was just getting together with my friend. Yep.

Here we are.

Hooray!

And here are some Must-Bolero shots. Me, mimicking how I looked when I found out what size I had really made:

What was I thinking? I’m a better knitter than this. Sigh. Gulp. From the front:

From the back:

I’ve decided it’s my Lounge Around sweater. Sure, it’s more cropped chic fashion (and I consider myself neither cropped nor chic), but if I wear it to slug around the house, I think I’ll warm up to it. It sure is damn soft, and it has that great sheepy smell (Paton’s Classic Merino), and I’m gonna wear the shit out of it. Yeah. That’s it.

Oh! And I didn’t tell Brandy I was gonna do this, but here’s my pal’s first sweater (from Very Cherry Knitty pattern):

Isn’t she fabulous? She hates it. I think it looks like a million bucks. MY first sweater was in blue acrylic and I forgot to leave room for my head to push through so whenever I pulled it on, I was left with red scrape marks down my cheeks (granted, I was eleven).

(Aside: Do you have any idea how Very Uncool I was, knitting a sweater at eleven?)

Speaking of Knitty, a new issue is live today!

And I’m back! Yeehaw!

Still no little ‘puter – posting quickly from work again. I can see with my own eyes that it’s made it to Oakland FedEx. This is the point at which I “lost” the other computer. Good thoughts, good thoughts…..

‘Til then, go cheer Bethany up!

God, how I miss you all. And how I miss posting and reading blogs and replying to emails and all that good non-essential but wonderful stuff. I’m stealing time at work right now while my trainee is at lunch…..

The Must-Have is now the Must-Bolero. Single-handedly, I WILL bring them back into style. I have no freaking idea what happened (and I don’t want to examine it too closely) but not only is it too short, but it was WAY too small across the front. Way. Lemme say it again. WAY too small.

I’ve said it before – I’m a fix-whatcha-got kind of person. There was no way in hell I was going to rip it out. I loved making it, but not enough to make it again, at least not anytime soon. So I faked it. I added a moss-stitch panel and wide ribbing. I slapped a zipper on (but I pretty much screwed that up, not stretching out the fabric first, turning the front into a butterfly kind of gather – then I stood in my bedroom telling myself over and over “it’ll never be noticed from a trotting horse….” but even I couldn’t live with that – I took out the zipper and reinserted it right).

It’s all right. It’s such a gorgeous pattern, and it looks good on. I think I’m disappointed most of all because I wanted a cozy throw-over-everything kind of sweater. I got a short jacket instead.

I went out for a fabu rainy night on the town last night, dinner at Zuni, 5 dozen oysters and 7 beautiful women: What could be better? You know you’re looking for trouble when the very first round of drinks is over $70. Thank god I took BART to the City, ’cause I wouldn’t have been able to drive after those Sapphire martinis….

AND Kathy got a shot of the bolero. Here you go. Deb was tucking in a stray thread on my shirt. I was looking weird. Can’t explain that.

And here’s one more, and I’m still goofy:

Kisses to all and to all a good week – maybe I’ll be back soon? I have to tell you all about the breakfast I had with marvellous Anne and show more pics of the bolero….. I want my baby back…. please…… Good thoughts sent out to HP and here’s hopin’. Miss you.