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I love Maeve’s new Peachy-keen sweater. And her sleeve lengthening tutorial below it is fabulous. Do you think she’ll lengthen my bolero for me if I ask nicely?

Hokay. I did something dumb last night. Not Very Dumb, only slightly silly, but now I’m regretting it. There are nights, very few and far between, when I like to go home and look at personals on either Planet Out or Craigslist. (Free is good.) I can admit that here, since we’re all internet junkies, right? And I’ve made excellent real life friends from both places (and met at least one crazy, but hell, that can happen any-damn-where). But I still feel dumb about it, and I’ll tell ya why in a sec.

I went to see Big Fish last night. I remember someone (maybe Em?) said they had been and had cried for the last 30 minutes of it. I thought to myself, Eh, I don’t cry at movies anymore. Or books, really. I must getting old and hard.

Oh, lord. I sobbed. Really. Those great big gulping sobs that are hard to breathe around. Granted, I’d only had three hours sleep, but that wasn’t it. It was just good. Really good. Some part of the movie (the big-ness of the peripheral stories?) kept reminding me of The Princess Bride, with a little less levity and little more Tim Burton-ness. Gawd, I love him. I ran out of kleenex from my pocket and had to use the sock I was knitting. Don’t tell Christy. Sniff.

But the movie, while it was the PERFECT see-alone movie, left me feeling so lonely. I NEVER feel lonely. (Exaggerator that I am, never usually means once every four or five months. Pretty standard marker.) I went to Christy’s house, but we watched Sex and the City, and her boyfriend came over. Both good things, but both exacerbated said situation.

So, driving home, I decided to go to the local gay bar and have a drink. Maybe dance. Sounds good, right? Then I pictured what always happens when I go in alone – I sit at the bar with my 7&seven, smile at everyone, they smile back and I leave, a little embarrassed. Women aren’t easy to talk to. Men? I’ll talk to any man, in any bar, anytime. Women are harder. So I drove home, made myself a 7&San Pellegrino Aranciata (the Trader-Joe’s-shopping version of the drink) and read online ads for fun. Sometimes I like to respond to them. Sometimes I make friends. But last night I posted my own on CL. (Search for yarn, it’s the only one.)

The reason I feel Quite Silly is that now that I’m awake and rested this morning, I’m got a full inbox of sensitive sweet responses and I’m NOT LONELY in the slightest. Have no reason to believe I’ll feel that way again anytime soon. I like being single and I don’t want to change that status right now. Can I call them in four or five months, when the mood strikes again? No? I just feel a little guilty sometimes, as if I should be making the effort to find the One, but the last year and a half of single-dom (never before had) has been bliss.

So now I feel like an ass. One girl I might go on a date with, just ‘cause her note was perfect. If she wants to. That one doesn’t feel weird. But the others, like the one who wrote, “I am currently reading Cash-flow Quadrant by Robert Kawasaki and Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill,” but sounded so good-hearted, what do I do? Definitely NOT go on a date, and I have to write back, but what do I say?

It’s my own stoopid pickle. This is why you don’t post after a tall glass of fancy. And I was so much more excited this morning to read my comments from you all! Those are the ones that matter to me. Erg.

I need to go yarn-shopping now, to make myself feel better. My friend Kira and I are meeting for lunch in the City and I’m going to ImagiKnit for the first time. That might do the trick, no?

Isn’t that amazing? Riona, in my comments, said that Our Lady of Venice, my new yarn lady shown there on the left, is named Beatrice! She met her a couple of weeks ago while she was there (hold on. Must shake off my jealousy. Okay. One more sec. All right, back to the blog). I swear, it’s the perfect name (and a variant of alison’s new pal’s name, which just makes it all that much better). I knew you could get a LOT out of this blogging thing, but the very name of the yarn lady in the most beautiful city in the world? In less than a day? Yowzer.

Killed ants yesterday. I actually became Very Lazy right after I wrote the post about having a busy day planned. Isn’t that the way? The second you admit you’ve got a ton of crap to do is the second you realize you’ll die if you don’t take a nap on the couch. And I don’t even nap. So I went in the kitchen and just peeked at the sugar bowl. Just took a quick look, to see if I could just chuck a few dry goods and get rid of their food source, sending them on their way kindly and gently.

THIS is what I saw. Don’t click if you’re squeamish. Theresa in SC, don’t. You can’t handle it.

So I cleaned. Damn it. They’re still around today, but in fewer numbers and I’m hoping for the best.

And I wrote, too! I haven’t been talking about it, don’t want to jinx myself, but I think I’m back in the saddle. I took a break over the holidays that I felt terribly guilty about, but did it anyway. I lost all motivation and lost some belief in the book, too.

But I know by now that confidence in your own writing is completely situational and subjective. If I wake up and my hair looks great and my cheeks are naturally pink and the sun is shining and Digit is purring and my coffee turns out perfectly, then the novel is a sterling example of the creative originality of the Great First Novel. If I stub my toe on the way to the bathroom and ants are marching and I can’t find the phone and I’m sneezing from allergies, then the novel is a blithering, self-indulgent collection of silly, trite, overused words, strung together like a candy necklace from the dime-store. Cheap, ready to break, and attractive only to six-legged pests and already grubby hands.

Slight exaggeration, perhaps. But know what? I just need to finish it. And then start really writing/revising it. You’ve heard that before. I’m 490 pages in and I feel the end coming. No, I mean it this time. I have no idea what’s going to happen, exactly, but I’m confident my characters are going to take me there. They’ve brought me this far. Just have to write. Every day. And I have been.

So has Bethany! Tell me it’s not just me – her posts slay me. Especially this one. If you have any Robert Earl Keen or Steve Earle CDs, put one on before you read her. They’re her soundtrack.

And lastly, gratuitous cute kitty shot. Adah, sleeping:

Yay! I swear to God, I don’t know what my problem was in making a banner. I understand how to do so, I understand quite a bit of Photoshop, I get the pixel widths and what’s necessary to make a banner fit and for the LIFE of me, I’ve never been able to do it. I just get too frustrated and give up. But with Max’s patient help, I did it. And now it’s centered. (That was the hardest bit, actually. But Max kept encouraging me. Seriously, I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep at night if it remained off center.)

Wasn’t I the luckiest girl to catch this shot? It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen: I’d already been to (and held a PACE flag in) a peace march in the Lido (this was just days after Shrub declared the war in March), and that evening, as dusk was damply falling, I leaned over the side of the vaporetto to see THIS. Venetians, out for the purpose of peace. You don’t march in Venice, you row. I couldn’t scramble off the boat fast enough to stand and drink it in. I wore my PACE pin wherever I went.

And for the occasion of my new banner, a new Venice Lady! This is the woman who runs the only yarn shop I’ve ever stumbled into in Italy. She knew a kindred spirit when she saw one, and we spent a happy half-hour talking about yarn. Well, that’s pushing it, perhaps. I spoke my crappy barely intelligible wrong-tensed Italian, and she pretended to know what I meant. In yarn, though, you only really need one word: Seta. Silk. Oh, yes. After that, every time I tramped past her door, I grinned and did a little skip and she waved back wildly. At night, I sat in my rented flat (a lovely two weeks in Venice….) and knitted, watching Italian game shows and drinking hardy local red.

I wish I knew her name. I forgot to ask.

Had a lovely big breakfast with a friend this morning that has prepared me for the rest of my day: Ant killing. I’ve decided not to bomb the place. I hate poison. Makes me feel itchy and mean and like I’m a step away from growing a third ear. I’m just going to throw out all my dry goods (the ants are in everything), clean with 409, and start over. Everything in Tupperware this time. The only thing I’m dreading is that moment that the ants clamber up my arms. You know the moment. Moving the peanut butter jar, only touching it with two fingers, you still manage to get eighty-seven ants up to your elbow. I’ve already got the tricks lined up: cucumber rinds, orange oil, cinnamon…. My house’ll smell like a fancy organic restaurant.

Urgh. And then a nap, and then a ten hour midnight overtime shift tonight.

(And for those keeping track, Mom’s got a thyroid scan this afternoon (she’s taken that radioactive pill and no one can hug her for a day – SO much worse than Raid) and hopefully she’ll be on real meds soon. She’s feeling a wee bit better today, thanks in NO small part to our angel Mariko, who asked another angel doctor friend for advice. Mom’s just reassured to know that YES, she IS in the middle of a medical emergency, no WONDER she feels so horrid. Mariko can never know the depth of our gratitude. She gave us the key phrases, the words to use, the things to ask for, what to insist upon. I tear up a leetle just thinking about it. And the rest of you? Those prayers are good stuff, the real thing. We love and thank you.)

If I get rid of all the ants, can I knit a while? Please? And I will write, too. Okay, I think it’s now officially a Busy Day.

What do you think? Too busy? Nice rainbows? (Those are Italian Pace flags — I was lucky enough to catch a Venetian peace march last March.)

I can’t decide. Too sleepy to do so. You tell me what your opinion is. Pah-leez?

Here’s what I’ve been working on lately. But Bethany, if you click, you’ll immediately lose the entire hard-drive on your computer, with all the stuff you’ve listed on it, all the roadside attractions you must see on your trip. Even if you ain’t using right now. I’ve cursed it. Don’t click. (Those of you who can click, everyone else, that is, I’m doing this in a funky order, you think? Attaching things that aren’t usually attached till later. Just felt like it.)

Beth! Don’t!

No more time now: Off to work for my last day before my weekend. My weekend, however will be taken up by one midnight overtime shift and killing ants. They’ve invaded and they’re working on carrying out my new couch. I can hardly stand to go to work right now…. I’ll have nothing left…..

Oh! The L Word rocks. Season premiere last night, and WOW! Could be because there’s such a dearth of lesbian anything on television, but I was impressed. Rather true to life, with its Dating Flowcharts and scamming on the same people, night after night, and Baby Making (except it’s Hollywood and every lesbian bordered on Too Beautiful. Eh. I suppose I can take it).