Be the change.

A few people have contacted me to see if everything is okay with our family, and it made me realize that some of us have been friends for at least 15 years and perhaps it’s not appropriate for me to toss unsettling hints at you.
I apologize for that.
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The truth is this. Jeff’s position at work was eliminated. His last day was yesterday. He has worked there for twenty years and he loves what the company does and he appreciates and respects everyone he worked with while he was there. He left on good terms. There are no hard feelings.
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And, yes. It’s scary. BUT, we know that it could be so much worse.
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Jeff is smart and creative and dependable and he doesn’t punch people and he’s an amazing writer and he gets along well with others and he’s a great public speaker and he doesn’t complain when I say things like, “Let’s go get burritos!” when he’s really not in the mood for burritos.
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He will find another company who needs him, and he will develop the same passion for them that he had for the other company.
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This unexpected hiccup will find me clipping coupons again and using the Crock pot more often and controlling my eagerness to try new skincare products. (Have I told you about my newfound love for Andalou? The Willow Bark Pure Pore Serum is like new boyfriend magic.) All of these shifts are positive.
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2016 has been a rough year for many people (PRINCE died!), and I guess it would be easy for all of us to fall into a deep vat of chattering Woe is Me/I’m So Angry plastic teeth.
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Instead, I’ve decided to be contagiously positive. (I’m fairly good at it, and the world needs it.)
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(During an appointment last week, I rode an elevator with an older woman who complimented my clothes. When I smiled at her, she said, “It’s good that you can laugh at yourself.” I have no idea what she was trying to say, but I loved her for saying it. (I was wearing a black tunic with black leggings and a diffuser necklace, which is sort of my uniform these days.))
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My new freelance project will be starting up this week. School starts the week after that. (My migraine preventative doubles as an anti-anxiety agent!) We will find a new flow.
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Thank you so much for your kindness and your support and your friendship.
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Everything will be fine. For all of us!
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Fritter and waste the hours, Pink Floyd.

I finished one more skein for Tour de Fleece. It’s four ounces of Cormo, and the fiber was full of vegetation and a bit nubby and it felt greasy and I had no idea how it would turn out, but it’s possibly my favorite skein ever.

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In other words: This Cormo taught me all about not judging books by their covers and everything has beauty and diamonds and pearls and when they go low, we go high.

Yes. We have a lot going on behind the scenes in our house (more on that maybe next week?) and our overall balance has been thrown off more than bit. (Once again: Oceans of obscurantism! Don’t you hate it?) Anyway, I spent the past four evenings watching the Democratic National Convention, and I know quite a few of you are supporting Donald Trump, but you know what? I’m not. (You and I can still be friends.) I’m not going to go all Third Party on everyone because I learned a hard lesson when I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. Although I’m behind Bernie Sanders, I’m voting for Hillary Clinton.

Confession: I haven’t been terribly proud to be an American for quite some time, and I know that sounds HORRIBLE, but it’s also very true. (I could probably tell you a lot of horrible things that are true. Please refer to the second sentence of the previous paragraph! Argh! I KNOW!) After seeing what I saw and hearing what I heard at the DNC, I felt fired up. Fired up is good.

My dad gave me a box full of tomatoes and zucchini from his garden. As I type these words to you, I’m eating zucchini fritters and tomatoes and I’m fired up and I’m a little scared and sometimes when I’m feeling overwhelmed/ruffled/charged the best thing to do is hang out in the closet dressed like a disguised 011 from Stranger Things.

And then I smell the jasmine on our back porch.

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And then I refer to 1985.

(I wasn’t kidding about the tomatoes and fritters.)

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What dreams may come before I’m woken by alarms?

The Tour de Fleece is winding down, and it has been a fairly successful one.

Black Rainbow is a 50-50 Black Alpaca/Silk blend chain plied into a light worsted weight.

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Bayberry is a 60-20-20 Merino/Baby Camel/Silk blend that is now a 2-ply chunky skein with cowl potential.
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Jumbleberry is a 50-50 Merino/Tencel blend fractal spun into something that might just be sock weight.
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My next freelance gig starts in a week, which means I have about seven days to finish The Clasp and get started on Heroes of the Frontier. I’ll finish the Cormo wool that’s currently on my wheel. I’ll head to Chicago to smell yarn for a few days. I’ll make sure the girls have everything ready to start school on August 9.

I’ve mentioned several times that I share only 17% of my world with you. I believe the 17/83 formula has worked fairly well for the past 15 years. Oh, but please know that Shit is going DOWN in the 83, and I would totally appreciate it if you would raise your right hand toward St. Louis right now for a supportive high five. (I never say things like “Shit is going DOWN.” We’re still friends, right?)

Biggers. Betters. Raging against the dying of the light. More vague annoying references that have nothing to do with your day.

Last week the girls did some of this and I learned the difference between cranes and egrets.

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(Cranes have shorter straight necks and egrets tend to hold their necks in an S shape. (I graduated from Physical Therapy on Tuesday, so I’m now more of a crane than an egret. And that’s good, because life is FULL of egrets!)) ‘ ‘ ‘text/javascript’>

Medicate, liberate, fabricate, reinstate, et cetera.

The air is turned down a bit lower than it should be, the bean soup is boiling on the stove, and I’m drinking the hottest of coffee. I vacuumed the floor, I folded some laundry, and I balled up (another) watermelon. I’ve had a migraine on and off for the past several days and I’m trying to not think about the migraine that lasted nearly half of last year’s summer, although something very good came out of that migraine and that something was this pair of shoes:

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(I haven’t worn them since September, and I believe I will change that status before the month is over.)

Noteworthy: This particular migraine is making my fingertips especially sensitive to textures like towels, bed sheets, Henry the dog, and paper. If you were in the same room with me right now, you would probably be thinking, “Hrm. I wish I wasn’t in the same room with her right now.” Permission to leave? Granted! I hold no prisoners here, but I do feel the need to remind you that we’re going to be having bean soup. You might want to stick around.

I saw this in the parking lot at the gas station, and it’s been bothering me for days because I know exactly how someone out there feels right now:
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Sometimes it’s raining and Henry the dog won’t stop barking and I pull up my Photo Booth app to capture my feelings photographically and I don’t really mind the filter that the most recent person was using, yet all of a sudden I look like I’m bleeding out of the corner of my eye, but it doesn’t bother me because I think bloody eyes (and the absence of eyebrows) don’t matter when skin is bright and green. (My hair is so long! It will be cut on Wednesday and then it will look even longer because I know a lady named Erin who is a wizard! Have I told you that it (meaning my hair) actually blows in the wind now? It blows in the wind along with The Answer, my friend! How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died, Bob Dylan?!)

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My FB feed has been filled with racist sentiments from some surprising (but mostly not so surprising) people over the past week and I might could partially blame my migraine on my own inability to understand why people say and do what they say and do. (“Might could” is a phrase I learned while living in Nashville. I hate it, but I mostly love it.) This morning one of my imaginary friends posted something particularly insensitive and disgusting. Their post was followed by a post from a woman in my Tour de Fleece group:

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The yarn is lovely, and the final sentence of her status update was perfect in so many ways.

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“What I mean and what I say is two different things,” the BFG announced rather grandly.

I need to put my arm around a sea lion sometime in the next 10-15 years.

I would like to see Macklemore in concert, but I can’t really explain why. Also, Beyoncé.

I’m reading The BFG because I promised Harper I would before we see the movie next week.

Jeff took Meredith and I to see Love & Friendship yesterday, and Meredith and I fell asleep shortly after the movie began. I have requested the Jane Austen novella from the library to alleviate some of the shittiness I feel about falling asleep. Stay tuned. (There is no reason to stay tuned.)

I opened the refrigerator this morning to find that the lightbulb was out. Sure, I could have used this as an excuse to go straight back to bed, but I didn’t! I persevered, and I will continue to persevere because of my journey. (I haven’t really thought about my journey.) At 9:00 I participated in a conference call that mapped out my freelance schedule from August through mid-September (and potentially beyond). I ate watermelon balls. I am now getting ready to cut felt circles and shop for gooey butter cake and Meredith will be going to a friend’s house and I’m still Tour de Fleece-ing! Here is evidence!

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We dropped Harper off at her camp on Sunday and as of right now, it’s halfway over. Good. One of the things I’ve learned this summer is that I don’t really like it when my kids are at camp. (I’ve also learned that my forever style will probably consist of dresses with compression pants. I look fairly decent, and I can take off running at high speeds if necessary, because my muscles are pre-warmed and my moisture is wicked, where wicked has nothing to do with being odious and everything to do with absorption.)

Meredith: I wish I could go back to camp.
Me: Why?
Meredith: Those were simpler times.

(She also wishes I would set up our kitchen like the camp cafeteria, with ice cream at every meal and more main dish choices.)

I woke up at 3:36 in the morning because Chip the cat had knocked my book off of the nightstand and was running across the bedroom floor with my glasses in his mouth.

Currently:

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