A Christmas Stocking For Clueless Newbies

(This is a picture of one of the very first stockings I ever made, nearly 30 years ago. I free styled it, and, as a result, it’s not quite as nice as the stocking you’ll get from the pattern below. Many of the same techniques are used, though, so it will give you some idea of your final result.)

It’s your first Christmas as a knitter, or possibly your second, and you haven’t knit as much as you want to, and you’d like to make a stocking. It doesn’t have to be complex; you’d just like to know how to make one. Without too much damned complexity, please. OK, here’s your pattern!

Supplies:

1 pr knitting needles, your choice of size, usually 7’s or 8’s
1 crochet hook, slightly smaller in diameter than the knitting needles
1 plastic kids’ yarn needle (available in packs of 2 at Wal-Mart for 49 cents)
1 8 oz. Skein worsted weight yarn – main color
At least 4 oz worsted weight yarn – contrast color
2 yarn markers (or safety pins or loops of yarn in different color)

(Notes: There will be sewing. Trust the pattern. The toe, heel, and cuff will be in the contrasting color.)

Leg: In MAIN color, cast on 48 sts, leaving about 2 feet in a long tail; knit in stockinette for 10 inches.

Heel space: cast off 12 stitches, knit to end. Cast off 12 stitches, purl to end, cast ON 12 stitches. Knit the 36 stitches; cast ON 12 more for a total of 48 stitches. Your work should now look like a raggedy dishcloth.

Foot: knit 5 inches in stockinette; on right side, switch to contrasting color, insert marker after 12th stitch and after 36th stitch.

Toe: (in contrasting color) Depending on your comfort level, you can decrease where you choose. If you’re not very good yet, randomizing the decreases may be your best bet so nothing looks bunchy. If you are OK at decreasing, decrease before and after each marker. On each knit row, decrease 4 stitches (before and after each marker). Purl back even. Continue decreasing until you have 20 stitches left total.

Closing the toe: Leading with the BACK end of the crochet hook, feed the hook back through all the stitches, pulling out your knitting needle as you go. Tight up the yarn on the first stitch, which has the yarn dangling through it, and pull a loop of yarn through all stitches. Brutally tighten this loop until you can’t even get a finger through the hole, and make a tight slipstitch in the yarn with the crochet hook. Cut yarn at 12 inches out from slipstitch and pull through and tighten. Using this tail, sew the toe area together on the backside.

Heel: (2 pieces made the same) Cast on 12 stitches in contrasting color, knit in stockinette for 14-15 rows (whatever looks pretty square to you). Cast off all stitches. Do another one. In the area where you cast off and then on again, you will sew in each patch along two adjacent sides, leaving two sides free (to be sewn later). You can match stitch for stitch along corresponding cast on or cast off sides, but you’ll need to do a little adjusting along the vertical side of the heel patch. That’s OK, it’ll be fine.

You will now have a long, kind of ruffled piece of work with a toe drawn closed and bunched, and sticky-out bits at the heel areas on each side. That’s right.

Cuff: In contrasting yarn, pick up 48 (or so) stitches at the very beginning cast on edge, on the right side. If you want your cuff to flap down, you can pick up 4-8 more stitches, or add them in along the way. If you want your cuff to stand up, use 48 stitches or fewer (no less than 44 stitches for now). Knit in GARTER stitch for 20 rows (10 ridges). Cast off all stitches. Leave a 1-1/2 foot tail.

Hanging Loop: With that 2-foot tail from the LEG, make a slipknot as close to the body of the knitting as possible. This is very important because this piece of yarn has the responsibility for holding up the weight of the stocking and all its contents. Now, chain stitch about 25 stitches and then make ONE single crochet stitch back through two stitches next to the beginning of the chain – it should be very firm, and BELOW the cuff, INSIDE the stocking. (This prevents the top of the cuff from getting all stretched out and icky and puts the stress on the part of the stocking most able to handle the load.) Pull yarn through loop to fasten off, weave in end (do not cut, if you do, your stitch will come loose at some point and the stocking will fall down).

Last step – sewing the stocking: You are sewing along the backside of the stocking from the cuff to the toe. For cuff flapped down, sew the cuff on the OUTSIDE (which, when flapped down, will not show); for cuff up, sew on the inside of the stocking.

Using the cuff tail, sew the cuff seam. Sew ONE stitch into the main body for strength, knot off yarn, turn stocking, such as it is, inside out to sew on the INSIDE of the stocking. If you know how to crochet, feel free to crochet the seams, except for the heel.

Using about 3 feet of MAIN color, sew down to the heel patch, knot yarn and cut. Using CONTRASTING color,

!!! WARNING !!! Tricky part with short explanation!

Heels may look square, but they’re not, they’re actually a little rounded around the back. If you just sew straight along the outer edges of the heel, it will be much more square than you want it to be, and you’ll be disappointed with the resulting heel. Therefore…

Knot the tail of the sewing yarn to the previous section to prevent gaps. Sew straight along the edge for HALF the first side of the heel patch. Sew in an arc across the heel patch, right through the knitting, to the halfway point on the second side of the heel patch, then sew straight down to the color change. Knot and cut contrasting yarn.

Using about 2 feet of main color, sew foot closed and secure yarn with toe seam. While the stocking is inside out, give it a couple of yanks along the seam to make sure that there are no gaps or places you might want to tighten up.

Turn stocking right side out – you’re done!

Oddball Word of the Day

zori (zoree) n., pl. a flat-soled Japanese sandal held on by a thong passing to each side of the foot from between the big and second toes

(from MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)

As Seen On TV

Well, I am officially one of those people who takes drugs advertised on TV now. I’ve watched the ads for years, wondering what the hell it was that purple pill did and why there was a sneezing bee, and what on earth anyone would want with a luminescent Moth of Death (or possibly sleep). Pharmaceutical ads can be confusing when you watch them with the sound off.

So, if you’ve read my prior postings, you might have noticed that I, despite being female, have been having the feminine equivalent of prostate trouble – stress and urge problems, having to get up in the middle of the night several times to wee, even having wee problem dreams. It just got worse. Finally, I decided that it was not going to go away, that I could face a doctor to discuss it, and I did. I’m now on Detrol LA, for overactive bladder.

I couldn’t be happier, and if there’s anyone else out there who’s wondering if they can afford to spend the last 30 years of their lives trying to avoid life in Depends, I urge you to go talk to your doctor about it. It has been and continues to make a huge difference in my quality of life. I can drive further away from home without obsessively scooping out all the likely emergency pee stations along the way, I can shop without worrying, I can bend over and stretch out my back without steeling my courage in advance, and I can cough or sneeze or lurch to my feet unexpectedly without certain consequences. I can even sleep in large enough chunks to count as actual rest, like 3 and 4 hour stretches now, which was unheard of for me for the last couple of years.

That lack of sleep, in addition to the need to stop frequently, was seriously affecting my enjoyment of my life. I was tired all the time. I had such tremendous problems with initiating any task because of my state of perpetual exhaustion that less and less got done, and I could fall asleep sitting at dinner, with the food still steaming on my plate. I missed 90% of West Wing – all seasons – due to zonking out for 20 and 40-minute periods. And the embarrassment and socially isolating behavior that was a consequence was no good for me either.

So, bit by bit, I feel better, I’m getting more done, I feel more rested, and generally happier. And feistier; I missed my feistiness, perhaps most of all.

We women do this, you know, and we teach our daughters to do it too, in so many ways. We teach them to make do and compensate and accept lousy conditions and bad circumstances. We teach them to put up with male chauvinist doctors that think all women are hysterical complainers, instead of teaching them to look the wankers in the eye and fire them for incompetence. We teach them to put up with lousy mates and crappy conditions and shortchanging themselves for the “family” good. We teach them to deal with physical deterioration instead of fighting and investigating to make it better, to be heard, and to be treated properly. We teach them to give up and give in, and we don’t even notice when we’re doing it.

So, not now, not today, and not about this. I have something else to teach my daughter instead. And all my new female doctors are great.

Oddball Word of the Day

gonfalon (GON fah-lahn) n. a banner with streamers, hanging from a crossbar

(from MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)

Hell Has Gotten Colder

I won’t say it’s frozen over yet, but the temperature has dropped. And a good thing, too.

This weekend hubs put up our outdoor Christmas decorations. It’s always been hit or miss as to whether our outdoor decorations go up or not, depending on a) his mood, b) the weather, and c) if they work or not. About 8 years ago, our outdoor lights were spectacular, then they went through a steady slide downward until the last couple of years there just weren’t any.

Sometimes, rarely, I have done a few outdoor lights, as long as I didn’t have to climb anything to put them up. Since I have always been a seriously acrophobic person, there was never any chance that I’d put lights on the eaves or gutters, or a Santa on the roof or over the garage door. I put wreaths on doors, maybe I’ll put a light up in a window on the inside some years, but if I have to climb anything, it ain’t happening.

So anyway, weather maven and general optimist that I am, this past Saturday I checked the local forecast and made cheerful mention, over our early morning coffee, that the weather was going to be in the high 30’s and low 40’s this weekend, so it might be a good time to put up the outdoor lights, and would he please consider it. He snarled back that I could do it if I wanted them up, so I smiled at him and said I’d consider it. I knew this would drive him nuts because the lights and doo-dads are all stored in “his” barn – which is kind of a large storage garage for crap he won’t throw away and stuff that would make our cars kind of crowded if we put it in the “real” garage. He hates it when anyone messes in the stuff in his garage. A few minutes later, I pondered aloud that perhaps the kids could help me. He gave me a nasty look.

After the caffeine had hit his system, I started asking for help in getting the multitude of Christmas errands run – the kids had to be taken out shopping for each of us and each other, then I needed to get stocking stuffers, buy Christmas gifts for the pets (yeah, I do that, sentimental poop that I am), and the total tally for the week looked like it would be six trips, some of which we couldn’t do with each other because that would spoil any secrets, see. He looked even more depressed until I remembered that I have a son who can and will drive! Whee! Spawn could take his siblings out shopping, and go cash a check at the bank, and take them to lunch! We could palm off some Christmas duties on Spawn! That cheered both of us up.

That worked out great – Spawn took Bunny and Doodle shopping, each with a small wad of cash, and they went out for lunch afterwards, too. Meanwhile, Hubs sat around waiting for some workmen to show up to estimate whether or not we could finally get wireless. I trundled off and ran some errands, and the workmen never showed up.

Sunday, lo and behold, Hubs rounded up the kids, medicated the ADHD contingent, and set them all to work hauling spiral trees and inflatable penguins and snowmen into the front yard. They scurried to and fro and plugged things in and now we have a decorated yard. Hurray!

Later, dropping the temperature in Hell a few degrees lower, hubs even brought in the prelit tree and moved stuff around in the living room and erected it and plugged it in. The prelit tree was an issue for me about three years ago. We’ve always had real trees because I insisted. I like real trees; they smell right, I don’t have to shape the individual limbs, I like the way they relax and spread with decorations on them, and I don’t mind watering them or cleaning up needles. Until one year when one edge of the tree blanket slipped into the water reservoir and wicked all the water out, drenching Christmas presents. Even I wasn’t happy that year, so the next year, much to my partial disgust, we got a prelit tree. I suppose I’d rather have a plastic tree than gifts ruined by water damage, so I’m trying very hard to be OK with it. I’d like more lights, though, but that’s not going to happen unless I do it.

Which brings me to homeostasis. Not the destination you would expect, I imagine, but that’s where I’ve wound up. It’s the “I do more, you do less; you do more, I do less” dynamic of most relationships. It happens. It always happens. It’s a thing that is. It can be bad, it can be good, and the overall goal, as we’ve discussed in my women’s group, is to try to keep it balanced so that the whole burden of maintaining the relationship doesn’t continually fall on either party. For years it fell on me. It was crushing me over the last few years, and I just couldn’t take it any more, which is one reason why our marriage wound up on the rocks a year ago, and I wound up in therapy, squished and worn to an angry shadow.

Sometimes it shows up in little things, like planning for a holiday, decorating, gift buying, meal preparation, etc. And, for years, I did it all because he wouldn’t. Sometimes it felt false and/or I felt resentful or militant and angry about “having” to do it all to keep Christmas nice for the kids; sometimes I didn’t notice it as much because I had become inured to doing everything and was able to pretend it didn’t matter.

Last year, it mattered, and I did only enough to keep my head above the waters of bleak depression, and the kids from having an emotional brownout. It showed in some ways – I had even gotten to the point where I had previously bought gifts for myself and labeled them from hubs so that there’d be something under the tree for me; I took the kids shopping for me; I did everything. I couldn’t do it anymore last year, and consequently, I didn’t get much for Christmas. I got nothing from hubs because I didn’t get anything and label it from him. I didn’t feel like getting him much either, so I got him a couple of token gifts. He was in shock, which showed on his face, but he didn’t say anything. It eventually came up in couples counseling, and got discussed. I don’t know that we’ve resolved it, but some things changed.

And, mostly, what’s changed has been me. I’ve gotten better at asking for help, and if I don’t get any, then I just don’t do the thing. No more compensating. If I truly want to do something, I do it, and if I don’t, I don’t, and I don’t feel any pressure to do things to make my husband look like he cares; he can just do that himself. And maybe, just maybe, that little bit of homeostasis is working positively this year. We have lights, we have a tree, the decorations have been pulled out of storage, and I’m not shopping for myself. That all seems pretty good to me.

Oddball Word of the Day

cafard (kah-FAR) n. a mood of melancholy or deep depression

(from MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)

German Idiom for Friday

wie ein Murmeltier schlafen: to sleep like a log

zB: Nach einem langen Spaziergang am Abend schlafe ich immer wie ein Murmeltier.

auf Englisch: After a long walk in the evening I always sleep like a log.

(from the Guide to German Idioms by JP Lupson)

Five Things That Say Christmas to Me

1. Santa Mugs: You know those ceramic mugs, which, back in the 60’s, were probably manufactured with lead-based stuff and highly toxic if you put anything hot in them? They were bumpily shaped like Santa’s head and garishly painted, so that his eyes were unnaturally blue. After a few hand washings, bits of paint would flake off, and by the second or third Christmas, I was drinking out of a blind, olfactorily-challenged Santa with perhaps only a few teeth left. I still like those mugs anyway, and I think they’re a little more durable and less toxic these days. I remember that when the Santa mugs came out during my childhood, Mom was tolerable towards me, and I might even get hot chocolate or hot apple cider. It was the only drinking vessel I wanted to use – for juice, milk, water, anything. These days, the kids can have hot chocolate or cider whenever they want, as can I, but I still like a good Santa mug for the weeks leading up to Christmas and a little while afterwards, too.

2. Curling ribbon: I first met curling ribbon sometime in the 70’s and loved it right away. Those fancy folded over bow events were beyond me, but even I could put scissors to one side of curling ribbon and arrive at something festive and frothy! Hurrah! A signature gift decorating method is born! I like the way it makes me feel – like a little kid all over again, when I curl ribbon, and nowadays there are so many more colors and reflective surfaces and widths that it’s even more fun than ever.

3. Looking up through the tree at the lights from underneath: I like the tree just fine, but when I was little and before the gifts were put under the tree, which was usually Christmas Eve, I’d squiggle my little self under the tree and look up into the branches at the lights, kind of like looking behind the curtain, y’know? There would be the knobby, rough trunk and some of those big, old, heat-producing lights. One of my favorites was a pink blinker. The glass on it was transparent and it was a dark, fuchsia pink. I could see the element in it, and the blinking was a little erratic, so I would play tiny little head games to see if I could look away from it before it blinded me.

Other lights were nice, too, with their colored frosting that was sometime a little chipped away, and I liked seeing what the decorations looked like in the “other” order, if you know what I mean. I could smell the pine sap (and check the water level), and it was somehow private and quiet. My family used to make fun of me, and I suppose I can’t blame them. They’d come traipsing through the family room, and there would be the tree with my feet and legs sticking out from under it. Must have been a funny sight. I know I’m not the only kid who ever tried it because my kids have done it, too, without me ever having reminisced at them. I just smiled and backed away to let them commune with the tree.

4. Gingerbread men and houses: You knew we’d get to food eventually, right? Gingerbread men and houses only taste right at Christmas time. I can eat gingersnaps in July and actual gingerbread any time, but the men and houses are just exactly right at Christmas. I found a great gingerbread recipe a few years ago that makes the perfect gingerbread man, at least in accordance with how I always thought they should be. When the kids were littler, I’d make about two dozen naked gingerbread men the week before their vacation from school started. Then I’d make plain white frosting the weekend before and store it, and when they were home all day, I’d cover the table in waxed paper, color up bowls of frosting in many different colors and haul out paintbrushes from kid watercolor sets. I had cinnamon hearts, little silver and gold decorating balls, raisins, gumdrops, all kinds of sprinkles and jimmies, and I’d set them to work.

They’d make one for each grandparent, one for a friend, and so on. They were a riot – sometimes we had space monster gingerbread men, other times Mr. Gingerguy was totally blue and depressed, and sometimes we’d put stuff on him so that he was dressed in drag, or, really, Mrs. Gingerbreadperson. Some were works of surreal art with no faces or features, but they had lots of multi-colored swirls and exclamatory spots and dots. Sometimes the gingerfolk were physically challenged by having lost a limb, but we decorated them anyway. After the frosting dried, we wrapped them in Saran Wrap and tied the top with curling ribbon (of course!) and would drive around to give them to friends and family. We hung some on the tree. It was big fun.

We’ve also done houses, and my daughter and I especially like doing those. If we can’t get the house sides to stand up right, we just put a box inside and continue to glue stuff on with frosting anyway. They can get pretty extravagant and wild. One year, Spawn made a Gingerbread House of Horrors, using little Lego figures with their heads pulled off and left near a tiny Lego battleaxe, and the snow near it was stained with red frosting. There were candy skulls fashioned out of nearly dried frosting, and a reindeer had committed a number of digestive insults in the yard with Tootsie Rolls. It was still festive (and funny as all heck).

5. Oranges: One of my mother’s pithy tales from her own childhood, which was during the Great Depression, was about how they were so dreadfully poor that the only time they ever got navel oranges was at Christmas time. Her mother put out a “goodie box” with nuts, some hard candies, a couple of big red apples, and just enough navel oranges for each of them to have one. Of course, it was “Santa” who brought the goodies, but her Mom put out the box on Christmas Eve. My Mom did, too, and it was the only time of the year we got any navel oranges either.

They always smelled so good – I can remember them shining away in a box full of nuts, a couple of red apples (which, as we lived in Virginia, were never in short supply), and I just loved to smell them so much that I almost hated to eat them. But I did, a few days after Christmas, with the peel spurting orange scent into the cold air, overpowering any other food or other scents; I’d watch the spray in a sunbeam in the kitchen. Every segment was a delight (until the year Mom bought juice oranges instead and the seeds were an icky surprise), and I really, really savored those oranges. We don’t “do” a goodie box, since I’m a big advocate of fresh fruit being available at all times. Navel oranges, the big, fabulously delicious ones are still only available during the cold months, and for me, the smell of oranges in the air still means Christmas, no matter what the month may be.

Oddball Word of the Day

agio (AJ-ee-oh) n. pl. agios. a fee charged by money brokers for exchanging coin for paper currency or one currency for another

(from the MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)

Knitting and Cats… and Sock Tips

I don’t have a cat. I had one when I was a child, and I found that I have no particular liking for cats. The cat I had then was a Persian, and its greatest accomplishment was shedding long, white hairs into my tomato soup. A handful of cat hair in my tomato soup was enough to convince me, for infinity, that I am not a cat person.

Other people’s cats adore me. If an animal, I don’t care what it is, it could be a lemur or a ferret, or a snake (but not anything buglike, such as a friendly tarantula) presents itself to me as benign and in need of scratches in some non-sexual part of its anatomy, I generally will oblige. I don’t mind. It keeps my hands busy. Other people’s cats (OPCs) love me. Perhaps they can smell the non-cat-person-ness of me and are on a feline crusade to convert me. They wind around my legs. They roll in my lap. They sleep on my neck. They follow me into the bathroom and observe my assorted procedures. They can’t get enough of me.

I have made mean jokes about cats over the years, possibly as a method of fitting in with other not-cat people. I don’t actually hate or loathe cats; they’re like squirrels – cute elsewhere but not in my house. My husband and two of my children are allergic to cats, so that has made the decision to live cat-less pretty easy.

It would appear, though, from a generally lackadaisical perusal of blogs and knitting lists, that I am the only person in the known universe who possesses yarn and no cats. I like stories about good knitting experiences, bad knitting experiences, needles people like, yarns to avoid, new techniques, old techniques that someone is really enjoying, good projects, projects from hell, pretty much the full range of crap that can be written about knitting. I am, however, sick to death of cats and knitting.

I try not to bore the snot out of people with stories about my Labrador. He’s cute, we love him, he could get more exercise, and he’s spoiled rotten. So’s my bird, and he talks and editorializes and helps parent my children. But, frankly, endless cat blogs give me a tic in my eye. When the occasional knitting post graces a blog that is 99% cat, it does not make it a knitting blog, it just irks me.

One of the reasons I quit the Knitlist years ago was the ceaseless parade of “my cute cat and some yarn” stories. I could not conceivably care less. I think there should be a completely separate list for cat/yarn posts and anyone who violates it should have to forfeit their favorite pair of needles for a year. And before a cat-adorer thinks it’s a horrible thing to be prejudiced against cats and PETA should storm my house and force cats upon me so that I can see the error of my ways, I should probably admit that part of my aggravation has to do with the kitschiness of cats+yarn. It’s like the “only grannies knit” thing, or all Grandmas smell of oatmeal cookies (or ammonia or lilacs or bad shampoo), or whatever trite imagery you can come up with. There’s just nothing… original about it, and possibly that annoys me more than the cat aspect of it.

But then, I’m kind of a jerk about some stuff, and I admit it. I will often leave the room rather than let anyone see my eyeballs rolling about stuff because I know it’s rude and it’s my problem, and they’re entitled to their enjoyment of cats+knitting, or “knitty gritty weird crap” knitting (oh, and you just spent HOW many hours knitting something that no one will ever use and which is not only unwashable but generally unpleasant looking and kind of crappily textured?), or letting myself get drawn into an argument on the merits of various yarns and fibers. I’ve got better stuff to do than engage in either being a twit or a target.

So, then, you wisely ask yourself, why the hell are you snarking off about cats?

Er, because I am bummed that one of my former favorite knitting blogs has spent the last month publishing cat pictures, and I feel neglected and cranky. Mope, mope, mope.

So, back in the saddle for me. A new, experienced knitter has joined my Chix group, and she had some great tips on sock making, which I’ll share with you:

1. If you tend toward large ankles, or just don’t like tight ribbing, use one or two sizes larger needles on your ribbing.

2. Make the foot width and length 10% smaller for a better fit (tighter, less likely to flop in the toe or slip around your foot).

3. This necessitates making your gusseting area greater than is usually listed in the pattern. For example, if you would normally pick up 20 stitches on either side and leave 28 across the instep, you might put 2 instep stitches on each side needle (instep now 24) and decrease those, too, in order to get down to the slightly smaller measurement for the foot.

4. I’ve tried these tips on two pairs of socks for myself and an very, very happy with the results.

I’ll have an original pattern later this month, and I promise to try very hard to get off the snark wagon.

Oddball Word of the Day

biggin (BIG-in) n. a silver coffee pot with a separate container for holding the coffee while it is being heated

(from MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)

Holiday Stress

My women’s group is growing, seeing as the holidays are here. It gets this way every year, so far, because so much of the burden, it seems, rests on women’s shoulders for making the holidays a success. Starting with all the cleaning, cooking, inviting, and serving on Thanksgiving, we take on too much, generally speaking.

My husband suffers from SADD in addition to his usual depression, and he hates Christmas. I mean, he really hates Christmas. Not in a funny, Scrooge type way; he hates Christmas the way someone who was ridiculed for his or her gifts as a child hates Christmas, because that’s what happened to him. He was the youngest by several years, and his brother and sister were working part-time during the years he remembers, so they had a little money to spend on their gifts. He was a kid in school, and basically, he had to save his allowance (and I think we all remember that a quarter or even a dollar was a huge amount for a kid in the 60’s) or make stuff in art class in school. Sometimes he could do a craft at home, like wood burning or something like that to make a gift.

I know his Mom and Dad were gracious and loving about whatever he gave them; after all, they grew up in the Depression, and from what my Mom has told me, getting a fresh orange at Christmas was a big deal then. But he was always made to feel, somehow, through the family dynamics and mere circumstances of birth, that his gifts to others were inadequate. Which sucks. I also think that maybe he never really got one thing that he truly wanted for Christmas – he got frugal gifts from his parents and thoughtless ones from his siblings. They still gift that way. Sometimes the gifts are so bad, they’re comical. BUT, the thought was there, at least for some, and that’s what counts to me and my kids.

In addition, we have two birthdays this week. Spawn and Hubs have birthdays, and both of them detest having their birthday gifts or celebrations commingled with Christmas. They feel it’s not their fault for having been born in a big holiday month, so they shouldn’t have to be penalized for it. I have to agree. So, we don’t even put up the tree until the birthdays are past, and woe betide us if we wrap their birthday gifts in Christmas paper!

I kind of like putting off the preparation until the second week of December. The holiday gets so hyped and so pushed and people start talking about it in October and November, and this is a way of putting it in perspective. Sure, I shop ahead, I wrap in advance, but I don’t even think about decorations and lights and get that mad shopping urge until the month is well advanced. It’s nice to make cookies and treats close to the holiday rather than trying to figure out how to keep them fresh until the big day.

I like Christmas. I like stupid Christmas songs with chipmunk voices, I like mopey ones like Elvis’ “Blue Christmas”, and I like instrumentals. I like the scent of pine, wrapping gifts, and having a bowl of fresh nuts for cracking on the coffee table. So, I make up for what my husband doesn’t want to do, and most of the time it doesn’t bother me. What has bothered me in the past was dealing with his depression – how it made my Christmas stinky and made the kids feel guilty for feeling festive and upbeat and anticipatory. I hated that about him and his behavior.

Last year, with the help of my women’s group, I overcame his mopery. I held strong to MY liking for the season and indulged in my favorite things. I turned on the Christmas tunes on the CD player as soon as he left the house, I bopped happily around the house, I bought or made Christmas cookies, I put up the tree where I wanted it to be, and the kids and I had it all decorated in one day. I laughed, I giggled, and I watched stupid Christmas movies on TV over and over with the kids. They laughed at me and my sentimentality, but, you know, they watched, too. I’ll bet they won’t admit that to their friends, though!

Anyway, it worked. Anytime hubs had the glums, I turned up the tunes and wrapped. I invited the kids into the kitchen to stir up frosting to make sloppy gingerbread houses with, and we drank spiced cider and ate up all the good gumdrops. WE had a great time, and a really good Christmas. Mopester sat on the sidelines.

I can’t make him better. I can’t. No matter how much I wish he could enjoy the holiday, he doesn’t. I can’t change what happened in the past, I can’t change his biochemistry; I can’t change his stinginess or his selfish actions. But I can change how I respond, if I respond.

So, it’s off to women’s group again today for me. I can use what I learned last year, and I can learn some new things today. I’m looking forward to it, and, for once in a long, long, time, I’m looking forward to Christmas with joy and happiness instead of dread and the subconscious urge to “fix” things for anyone. It’s me and my tinsel and glittery crap, and whoever wants to can come along for the ride, or they can get out of my happy way. Whee!

Oddball Word of the Day

threnody (THREN - eh-dee) n. a lament; funeral song; dirge. Also THREnode.

(from the MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)

Spawn’s Small Town

I figured you all had had enough of my funky viewpoint about small town living for the time being, so I asked Spawn what his favorite and least favorite things about living in a small town are. He’s lived here for 10 of his 19 years, and I figured his perspective would be different from mine.

Spawn is glad that no one has offered to sell him drugs or mugged him. (It’s nice to see a baseline of sorts, I think.) He says he likes that he can walk around pretty much anywhere in town and feel safe, that there are no really bad sections or scary sections of town. (He’s right, there really aren’t any unsafe spots in a town this small and as well-policed as it is – by cops AND aggressive little old nosy ladies.) And, he thinks the traffic is definitely bearable and that our downtown, old-fashioned shopping district is kind of cool. (I agree, lots of small town merchants with one-off shops in 1920’s buildings and lots of eager clerks.)

The things he wishes were different include more and a wider variety of jobs for teens. The ones available now are either fast food or retail clerking, and virtually none of them offer the option of full-time employment for the kids who are taking a break from school or who are not heading off to college right away. For teens, there’s really no where to hang out that isn’t religious-themed, no juice bars, no discos, no kid-friendly bookstores or coffee shops, no computer stores or internet cafes. Consequently, since there are only so many times a teenager can go bowling, and he’s not a sneaky drinker, there’s not much for him to do other than his college class work (which he could be more attentive to, ahem), play computer games, and work in fast food.

Spawn also thinks the people in our town are weird. He admits that it may just be our small town where the long-term residents and descendants of early residents are so darned mean and unfriendly, but it’s definitely something he’s noticed and had to deal with as a kid in the schools. A few years ago, when I kind of named this phenomenon the “I’m From Mxxx, and You’re Not, So Buzz Off”, the kids all got a look of wonderment on their faces. One by one, they all agreed that their friends were all from somewhere else originally and THEY thought the townies were clinkers, too. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, but it certainly seemed to make the kids feel better somehow.

And, then there is the small town focus on sports. High school sports are particularly important, and if you want to see a big crowd turn out for a school board meeting, just mention something about some sport being in danger of being cut for the year, and the town crowd pours through the meeting hall doors like they were offering free pizza and beer.

Spawn is a nerd, like my whole family. We all wear glasses and have since our elementary school years. People with glasses don’t like sports involving projectile objects, such a footballs, basketballs, or baseballs, unless their parents are wealthy enough to supply them with an endless amount of chic, upscale eyewear. We are not such a family, so we all have to be careful of our glasses, which means we’re kind of congenitally sports-averse.

Spawn could stand being hammered with a few hostile dodge balls, and has, but it was the overwhelming, crushing dominance of sports and jocks in high school that really turned him against the high school. It wasn’t just the kids who were obsessed, it was also the teachers, many of whom are coaches, the administrators, the endless pep rallies; and the nasty corrupt version of social power that accompanies a sports-dominated high school really curdled his gizzard.

There was, during the long, long tenure of a particularly beloved football coach, an entire clandestine “track” for jocks, which guaranteed them passing to good grades, nice transcripts, and disciplinary free rides for those times when the testosterone got out of hand. Consequently, if Spawn signed up for something, like German, and walked in and found the class full of jocks, he knew he’d just wasted 7.5 hours of his time each and every week (on the block schedule). That just broke my heart. Not one of those students learned enough German in two years to introduce themselves or say where they’re from. It was pathetic. Other “jock-friendly” classes were heavy on worksheets, instructors who had given up standards for tenure, and do-nothing “B” grades. Really, it was an academic nightmare and a total disappointment for Spawn.

There have been repercussions for Spawn. Being bright, he essentially wasted at least 2.5 of his 4 years in high school, since so many of the courses that were supposed to be “good” had a plethora of jocks in them and had been dumbed down. As a result, his study and work habits for college stink. They just stink. He’s been kicked in the pants a few times this year, with his grades not being the A’s he was used to in high school for slap-dash, haphazard work. That’s been good for him. He’s actually enjoying the stricter, higher standards and feels like he’s finally getting the education he wasted so many years hoping for.

He made friends among the other nerds and outcasts and met a wider variety of people than he would have had he been a jock. I wonder if that isn’t the same in all schools – anyone who isn’t a super-peppy cheerleader or jock learns what the real world is like early on – that you make friends with the people who make you laugh and you avoid those who are too stupid to breathe or too quick with their fists and their abuses of power.

So, there we go. View of a small town from a post-high school teenaged boy. At least as much of it as he would tell his mom.

Oddball Word of the Day

whiffler (HWIF-lur) n. 1) a person who frequently shifts his opinions, interests, etc.; a person who vacillates or is evasive in an argument; 2) an attendant, usually carrying a staff or sword, formerly employed to clear the way for a procession

(from the guide to MMMW, edited by Laurence Urdang)

Potpourri

But first, a moment of Snark: (Must be nice to be a newbie gay knitter with all the financial freedom, schedule flexibility, and uniqueness that implicitly conveys. Meanwhile, those of us who’ve been outfitting families for years with our knitting continue to labor in obscurity. Snark, snark, snark.)

Anyway, I’ve got a mishmash of stuff on my mind, so I guess I’ll haul off and share.

Far Flung Families: I was doing some online ordering this weekend for the far flung members of my family – my sister, my Mom, my sister-in-law and her fiancé, my brother-in-law, and thinking about the evolution of gift giving over the years. When I was in my twenties, I generally gave things I could afford – either I handmade things or I bought small stuff that didn’t strain the budget and which I hoped the recipient would enjoy. I’m pretty sure that most of the purchased stuff has gone on to either greener pastures or dumps, which is the way of many things. In my thirties, with the kids being small and money being even tighter, I got kind of stingy. I, again, gave what I could afford, but sometimes there wasn’t as much thought in it as I’d have liked – an FTD potted poinsettia or something like that. I didn’t have much brain power left at the end of a day with small children.

Now I’m in my forties, the kids are older (but still needy, of course), and I send consumables. I’m the youngest in my family, my husband is the youngest in his, and all our relatives have all the clothes, appliances, and general doo-dads they want or need. They can buy things for themselves, and giving really big-ticket items to adults isn’t the way I was brought up. I was taught that you gave people something they could really use, and in my forties, and other people’s fifties, seventies, and eighties, that’s food.

I’m the only housewife in my family, everyone else is working (and I would be, too, if the market were worth spitting on out here in the boonies), and the one thing they always fuss about is not having time to cook good meals or grocery shop. Sometimes, when it’s just one of them in a household, they don’t cook at all – they live on prepared food from elsewhere. So, I send wine baskets, or bakery baskets, or ham and cheese baskets, all prettied up by someone else who can get it there faster and more professionally decorated than I.

For our parents, I make sure to adhere to their dietary restrictions, if any, and send something they might not make or select for themselves. They’re all on fixed incomes, so specialty teas and cookies and precious chocolates aren’t in their budgets. So, they get those kinds of treats.

On good days, I feel like I’m taking them out for dinner or drinks by remote. That seems OK. On other days, I wonder what the hell I’m doing and why.

Pumpkin Pie: And speaking of what the hell I’m doing, I wanted to send my sister a pumpkin pie as a surprise for Christmas. Pumpkin pie has always been her secret passion, and hence, kind of a family joke. She used to sneak downstairs and eat up all the pumpkin pie after holiday meals, and, sometimes, before!

I knew I wouldn’t be able to make and appropriately send one on my own, so I looked online. $44.94 for a damned pie, plus shipping. I don’t think so. Plus, my sister has been “Secret Squirrel” for a long time – she never gives any of us her address, as if we were going to show up unannounced, dressed in horse-manure-scented overalls, toothless, and illiterate, and embarrass her beyond all salvation. It’s really annoying, particularly if I’m trying to contact her due to family illness, or, as in this case, pie-sending. She has a PO box, in one of those stores where you can buy a mail drop box, and even if I were to send her a scandalously expensive pie, it could well be green and fuzzy by the time she wandered over to the PO box to get it. So, as my husband put it, “Secret Squirrel screws herself again.” Oy! So, she gets a whine and cheese box, plus I’ll put together some other stuff that’s nifty and send it. Hey, she’s my SISTER!

Cold Weather: Damn, it’s cold here today. When I got up at my usual time of 4:30 am (HEY! It’s quiet; I get to drink my first cup of coffee alone and with the dog lying on my feet.), the thermometer said it was 8 degrees out. Brrrrrr! Glad I’m inside with the warm dog, oven, bread machine, and my blankies – at least until it gets above 10 degrees.

I made my kids promise to wear knitted hats, mittens, scarves, and tried to urge them into wooly socks and sweaters under their coats. Like maybe their schools aren’t heated and there’s no heat on the bus. Urk. I even inspected their winter wear before they left. My daughter loves her knitwear accessories. She wore (oooh, it’s today’s Nanook Fashion Report) a double knitted (small gauge, can you believe it) hat, felted mittens, and a nice, bright, real wool scarf along with her parka. She looked so happy that she found her ultra-cold gear. Doodle picked out a black hat with blue waves, a double-knit scarf in very masculine blues, and some mittens his aunt sent – leather with a full-sheep fleece lining. He opted for a sweatshirt over a t-shirt and did go for the wooly socks.

Both of them gave me the same look that the younger brother in “A Christmas Story” gives the mom… the “I can’t put my arms down!” look. Just before they smiled at me and toddled warmly off.

No great hopes for Spawn to dress warmly. He’s too busy being studly, and apparently studly older teen guys like frostbitten ears and fingers.

Alzheimer’s: Week before last I mentioned that my Dad has hit a new phase of Alzheimer’s. It’s starting to rob him of recent important memories, and he forgot, for two nights running, that his wife had died 5 years ago. He called me, late at night, very upset, wanting to know where she was and was she OK. Both times I had to relive her passing in order to explain to him that she had died. That was hard on me; I can only imagine how hard it must have been for him to have to deal with news that came as a surprise to him.

I went in the next day, just after lunch and sat down for a talk with him. As an aside, one thing I’ve found out in my odyssey as caretaker for an elderly person is that doctors do not routinely tell their patients that they have Alzheimer’s. I don’t know why; I would speculate that it’s because they don’t want to frighten them, or possibly cause them to make unwise and possibly terminal decisions while they still have a few good years left. But, really, I don’t know why. I do know that the statistics that I’ve read indicate that if you’ve made it into your 80’s the chances are 80% that you have some degree of Alzheimer’s. But the doctors don’t tell the old people that.

So, there I was with my 82 year old Dad. I knew he had been frightened by forgetting Ellen’s death – not only because it was such a shock to him that she had passed away, but also, the very fact that he had forgotten it frightened him. He’s always been a fellow who deals with straightforward information pretty well. He still knows me without hesitation, he can do basic math calculations, and he likes the news and is aware of the president on his good days and stuff like that. His personality is still there, is what I suppose I’m trying to get at. So, I told him he had Alzheimer’s.

I made it as clinical and as gentle and as objective as I could. I compared it to plaque in blood vessels, explained that he was on meds to slow it down and do as much as possible to prevent it from progressing. I lied a little, telling him he was in the fairly early stages and that the plaque was building up, tiny bit by tiny bit over neural net areas and that, in the case of Ellen’s death, he’d had kind of a plaque-out. I talked about his other health conditions. He asked me questions, including when he was diagnosed. He asked me that question 4 times.

When we reached the end of the information phase, I asked him how he felt about my telling him. He said he was relieved; not that he had it, but that the reason for his forgetfulness had a name and that he wasn’t going nuts. He said he had heard of Alzheimer’s, and it was something he felt he could learn to understand or at least accept. He really did seem calmer and less stressed, and we ended our visit on good terms, and with him ready for his afternoon nap.

I haven’t heard from him since about Ellen’s passing. He was here for Thanksgiving, and the signs of Alzheimer’s progression were clear and obvious – repetitive sentences, loss of train of thought in mid-sentence, not really following the conversation, particularly if more than one other person was involved, etc.

But he ate well, he knew us and showed us his love, and he liked being here. And that’s what counts.

Oddball Word of the Day

epistolize (ee-PIHS-tuh-lize) v. to write a letter to (someone)

(from the MMMW edited by Laurence Urdang)

Five Things to Do on a Snow Day

I’ve been taking a little vacation from my blog lately because of Thanksgiving and the aftereffects –some good and some thought provoking. Maybe I’ll talk about them later, if the spirit moves me.

Meanwhile, we’ve had sleet and lots of snow, which is still coming down, so for the first time in a very long time, all three kids have a snow day from school. Hurray! So, for a snowy Friday…

1. Sleep late. Is there anything more cozy than lying in bed, all warm from a full night’s sleep, wearing your pjs, covers pulled up to your chin, and looking out the window to see a winter wonderland, then knowing on top of that that you can lie there, dreaming and dozing until you are completely done sleeping? Oh, baby, what a feeling of relaxation the mere thought induces in me.

2. Make cookies with the kids. I’ve stopped making cookies very often over the last few years. It seemed like a lot of work for something that wasn’t good for any of us anyway, we don’t exchange cookies at Christmas, and there has been no help and little enthusiasm for helping from the kids, who eat the cookies in the first place. I tried getting them to make their favorite cookies themselves, with some help from me, and they weren’t enthused. I think the smell of cookies, gingersnaps, gingerbread men, sugar cookies, chocolate chippers, something, might be just the thing today with the snow still showering down from the sky on us and the roads all slippery and scary.

3. Make beef stew or chili for dinner in the crock-pot. Oh, warm and beefy dinners on a cold, snowy day. What a great way to fill their bellies (along with some cookies) and make them all feel warm, nurtured, loved and replete. Whenever it gets cold out, I make chili. Unfortunately, I am the only person in my house that likes chili. The rest of the family doesn’t eat it, not just my chili; they don’t eat any chili anywhere, so I try not to take it personally. But, they will eat beef stew, and I have everything we need right now, having gone grocery shopping two days ago. I can get it all in the crock pot and forget about it until dinner. I like that part, too.

4. Romp in the snow. It’s time to put on the duck boots and warm woolies I’ve spent all year knitting, get the dog all worked up, and go romp in the snow. Boy, if there’s a dog that has more fun in snow than a housebound Labrador, I don’t know what it is. My lab loves to jump and run and fall down and dash in circles and kick up snow and chase snowballs, and laugh until he can’t stand up any more. And, let me tell you, a pair of handmade wool socks inside my boots and some felted mittens, and I can endure the cold right along with him.

5. Knitting. Well, of course. It has to be! Snow falling, warm house, tummies full of beef stew and cookies, a cup of after dinner coffee, and knitting as the day winds down. I knit in the mornings, too, a little, before I get the kids up and send them off to school. I suppose it’s a small stress intervention thing. But at the end of the day, when the kids are lollygagging around, hubs has returned from a day at work or doing yard work around here, and I’ve done the chores, it’s just the right thing to keep my hands busy while the rest of me unwinds. I’m doing socks right now, for myself, for a change. Nice and wooly, in “simple stripes” from Knitpicks, which was on sale (aargh) so I have plenty.

Enjoy your day, too, whether it’s snowy or not, and if you can figure out what happened to my mailbox (from the picture), let me know!

Oddball Word of the Day

tumbrel: n. a cart in which condemned prersons were carried to the guillotine during the French Revolution

(from MMMW edited by Laurence Urdang)

German Idiom for Friday

Geld wie Heu haben: to have pots of money

zB: Ich kann es mir nicht leisten, zweimal im Jahr ins Ausland zu fahren. Geld wie Heu habe ich nicht.

auf Englisch: I can't afford to go abroad twice in a year. I haven't got pots of money.

(from the Guide to German Idioms by JP Lupson)