The Frog Pond

The forces that drove me to knit in the car in front of the pet store today were many.

I managed to write three of the four synopsis, but it took a lot of yelling, pouting, screaming and weeping on my part. The children were getting used to ducking and the spouse…well, let’s just say that the spouse took this last week off for softball, basketball, WOW and working late a lot. The spouse and I had a big twanging roue and then I had to deal with the big twanging guilt and all in all? I was a lot more surprised than I should have been to see that my toe was not working well at all. Sometime in the last week, my stitches had become misaligned, and the top of the toe had more stitches left than the bottom. I looked at it stupidly, listening to the soft ocean of traffic through the open windows and the Psychedelic Furs singing Pretty in Pink.

My knitting was never this out of whack. Ever.

I barely twitched an eyeball as I frogged the entire toe and realigned everything until it was pretty and even and ready to be worked on. Here it was, a gorgeous March day, and I had left my oldest daughter playing with the short people in the schoolyard across the street–when all I wanted to do was be with them. But I had spent my whole morning trying desperately to finish an assignment that, as far as I know, is going into the ether, never to return or reap any reward at all.

Perhaps my knitting was not all that was out of whack.

I finished my errands and returned home with cat food, lunch, and (holiest of holies) milk, and after unpacking I sat down with Ladybug and hugged the incorrigible Cave Troll after his nap and went outside to knit and watch them play. This time, the toe worked up much better. In fact everything went better, right up until the moment I dropped the wool and as I reached for it, skewered my hand on a dpn. While I was in the house putting a bandage on it, Chicken pushed Ladybug off the swing, and as I ran outside to see what was wrong, I tripped over all of the Cave Troll’s clothes that he had taken off for no reason.

Perhaps my life and my knitting were, occasionally subject to forces beyond our control that put them out of whack.

But, forces or no forces, it was a lovely, blossom scented, sunshine touched, afternoon. I got to hold my children on my lap, and I ended up with two, slightly fraternal, socks.

Maybe I’m just whack, and all else follows as a result.