Good mornthing!

[blissmorgan]

It's been quite a while since I've a had a long weekend to myself. For once, though, I did not spend the entirety of it sitting and dithering about what to do until I had run out of time to really do anything at all.

It seemed like it might go that way, at first. Friday morning, my day off, I woke up so exhausted from the sickness I had been fighting off that I gave myself and the Spawn another hour to sleep. Then, though, the lads were really excellent about getting up and moving, doing everything asked of them to get on the road without argument. I was impressed, y'all.

The drive went well in spite of me feeling a little spacey-headed, and in spite of the rain; it was light enough to merely make everything shimmering grey, rather than to truly occlude my vision or make the roadways a danger. It meant that when we had to stop at the rest stop for someone to use the restroom, it was no big commotion going from car to building and back.

It was on one such stop that I was glancing at the time and checking google maps, doing the travel time math (very different from time travel math) of how much longer it would take us to get there, how that time would change if we had to make another stop, what our arrival window was, and my expected travel time to return home. If I dropped them and got right back on the road, I reasoned, I would get home well before the outgoing end of week rushhour traffic from Boston snarled up the southbound roadways.

During this mathing, I was struck by the realization that for once I was driving to Western Mass midday instead of the evening, and that I had nothing specific to rush home for...and that the Webs end of year sale was going on. Normally when I drive the lads to their dad's, I can't visit Webs at all, because I can't leave until after school lets out and by the time we arrive the place has closed. I resolved to go.

First, though, was the dropping of the boys with their dad, getting them settle in, and catching up a little bit. A we-were-married-but-that-didn't-work-so-now-we-are-learning-to-be-decent-to-one-another-again relationship is not one that we necessarily get a lot of preparation for in books and media; there isn't a lot of socialization in general for a separation/divorce relationship unless it is bitter and acrimonious. This is not to say that I have never entertained bitterness nor acrimony, mind you, but that we decided that something approaching a friendship would make co-parenting easiest for us both and be healthiest for the children. It is possible for a relationship to change in a disappointing way and still come out something that is not painful or repulsive.

One of the things I particularly like about the way our relationship has evolved - and, in its own new way, healed - is that I have what is often the pleasure of developing at very least an acquaintanceship with the folks he dates that is also not automatically suspicious or bitter or angry. Not the least of which this is the case with his most recent partner, with whom I have had a slowly evolving friendship over the course of their dating, breaking up, and getting back together. Because I was not pressed for time to return, I was able not only to accept her offer of a homemade ginger tisane to help with my cold (delicious (and which he handed me in a travel mug, LOL)), but I was able to sit at the kitchen table and talk with her for a while while we sipped our tea and the dudes big and small scattered to other rooms for their own pursuits. Our friendship is still relatively new, but delights me. We have different knowledge sets and specializations, and we both have weirdy brains that are wired weirdly differently from one another's, so we can press each other for new knowledge for better understanding of things in a way that forces us each thereby to deepen our own understanding through teaching that knowledge. I think there were a few instances of this, but most notably we talked about what is an idiom and what is a euphemism, and what are the characteristics of a phrase that slots it into each category.

Finally I headed out and northward into Northampton, to hit the sale at Webs. Those of you who know Webs are probably already wriggling and going "ooooh, lucky!" For those of you who don't... Webs is a yarn/fiber arts store. They have a regular retail storefront chock full of yarns and fibers, and they sell spinning wheels and crochet hooks and knitting needles. They have two or three classrooms off one side of the place for various classes, including weaving. They also have, at the back of the store, a warehouse that is as wide as the regular store area and easily 2-3 times as deep, and you can go in there to find bulk yarns. Out front you can certainly get multiple skeins of many of the yarns, but you want to go into the warehouse if you want to get 10-12 skeins of the same yarn in the same colorway all sealed up in a bag. That's also where they have the "scratch and dent" section (partially used cones of weaving yarn or big hanks of yarn/thread that have come off their cones) and Grampa's Garage, which is other sale/clearance yarns. For the purpose of the sale, a lot of the sale/clearance yarns get brought in big boxes out into one of the classrooms, set on tables to make them easy to go through. I found a beautiful red/dark grey yarn in one of the $7.50/skein boxen, took a picture and posted it to the Ploos, and then promptly forgot about it. It's a pity; it really would have made a lovely skull shawl. I can't find it on their site to link to, either. I know where the box is in the store, or where it was on Friday, but I won't be going back there before the sale is done.

I took photos of a few other yarns I wanted to try, as I walked around the storefront. Once I went into the warehouse, though, that's when things started actually making their way into my basket; I grabbed some ribbon yarn to try and make a novelty skull shawl from, and several incomplete cones of weaving yarn including a really lovely mulberry-colored silk/alpaca blend. I also found in the warehouse a mohair/silk/wool yarn very much like one I'd been looking at out front, but less than half the price. That was justification for buying two skeins instead of one, no?

I feel only a little guilty for buying yarns when I already have so many in storage; I think I might go through and weed out at least 2/3 of what I have on hand. Perhaps put them into Mystery Yarn Grab Bags for my Etsy shop or something. I have so many yarns that were given to me but are not my taste, or that I bought because it was cheap but never found to be right for a project, or that is leftover from rendering a sweater down to the component yarn and having used up a good chunk of it but not all of it. I don't need nearly so much of what I have, honestly.

That will have to go on the List of Tasks. More on that later, if I remember.

I drove home from Webs in the rain, in the oncoming dark, and was lucky that I didn't hit any traffic. I ended up taking a route that did not shoehorn me into any rush hour traffic. My heart went out to folks on the westbound side of the Pike who were stopped up not only by rushhour and rain but also by a tractor trailer truck that definitely rolled a 2 if not a 1, because while the trailer part was totally fine, the front of the rig was a burned out smoking husk.

Saturday I actually got to sleep in, not getting up until half past 7, which is normally when I am due at work. I had vacation time to burn, though, and vacation is a use-it-or-lose-it benefit at my workplace, so Bosslady gave me Christmas Eve off to use up 6 hours, and two days of coming in late to use up the remaining 4. (It was PTO accrued while I was part time, so there was not a lot of it.) I therefore ended up coming in to work shortly before that part of the day which tends to be when things pick up, and while it was steady we never really got busy as such. I had several opportunities to really help folks and make their days much better than they otherwise had been, and I also had time to chat with one of my younger coworkers and get to know her a bit better.

When work was done, I went to Rhode Island.

I have a friend who lives down there, a teacher. We have been friends since elementary school; I want to say since around 4th grade, although I keep struggling to try to remember when it was that we really met. Our friendship was always something special, in middle school and junior high. I would go to her house and we would do things that we agreed aloud were certainly things that girls our age didn't really tend to do, like play with her dollhouse, and play dressup. I'm pretty sure that it was at her house that I first saw the music video for The Proclaimers' "I'm Gonna Be". We would go for walks to the bogs in town, or to the tiny town center to blow our pocket money on candy. It doesn't have, as I am writing it here, any sense of intense connection, but there was something there that was distinct and dear. It made it all the more sad, then, when in Junior high and high school our paths diverged, mine veering toward theater, sport, and a ridiculous number of after school clubs, while hers went heavily into art. Then her father took a new job, and she went away to western Pennsylvania. I remember her coming back to visit once in our junior or senior year, and I was intimidated in a way I couldn't put into words at the time; her style had changed. Her hair was cropped close, and blonde, and her attention was largely taken up by the group of girls who were her friends in the art classes. It made sense to me that except for a brief hello and hug, bright and delighted though they were, that she didn't have time for her old dolls-and-dressup friend.

School ended. Life happened. And I admit, I didn't think about her for a long, long time.

Around two years ago we found each other again on the book of faces. Abruptly we were both reminded that each other existed, and what's more that we existed NEAR each other! Soon I was having Game nights approximately once a month, and she was coming up to play with me and a few other friends who, as I think on it, each and all came from very different parts of my life: the friend I worked with at Barnes and Noble in NY who helped me take care of my first baby a bit when the Spawnfather had to go back to work; the friend that I first met on Livejournal and had a huge network of mutual friends with post-LJ but never actually met until a completely different friend had us both to a party; the two people I met during grad school who became my two best school friends, and with whom I got to travel around Oxford a bit when we went there for summer semester.

Last winter, Game night fell apart. My old friend was suddenly having to beg off at the last minute, and then my retail friend moved away because her husband got an excellent new job in the South, and there was a snowstorm that forced me to cancel my birthday Game Night, and and and.

It took a while for my old friend to reach out to me again, and to reveal to me the very real reasons why she had been begging off, which had not been the reasons she had given initially, for reasons. I understood. And we talked off and on about wanting to see each other again, but for a while my lack of income made it a problem, and then I was working such odd hours, and neither of us really said Hey How About This Particular Day And Time. We kept in intermittent touch, mostly on Instagram of all things.

Then she messaged me. "Hey, I'm on break from work for Christmas vacation. Knitting meetup?" was the gist of the message, and I said yes without a second thought, without even poking SALM first. That's a habit of mine that has developed weirdly, carrying this sense of having to check in with someone before making plans. It was birthed by making sure my parents always knew where I was when I was not yet an adult, and then the making of plans and keeping my ex apprised of them was...I'll just call it complicated and leave it at that, because I really don't want to get into it right now. As luck would have it, there's nobody around this weekend for me to balance plans and planning with anyway.

She found a tea shop in Providence, and I got money out of the bank before I left work, and I made the drive down into Rhode Island. It's such a funky little state, and I'm still not entirely sure what I think of it. It feels... liminal. Off-kilter. Sometimes as if it lurks around you, or like the planning was done by a creature non-Euclidean. Nonetheless, it's an old New England state, and therefore has certain Old New England Street areas with historical-ish buildings and cute shops.

The Duck and Bunny http://www.theduckandbunny.com/ is the tea shop we went to, and I'm basically in love with it. It's a repurposed old home, with a tiny bar in its own wee room immediately to the left, and the rest of the rooms painted various colors, all with chandeliers. Everywhere in the place are reproductions of famous artworks, but every one has a duck and a bunny painted into it, something I failed to notice until I went into the bathroom and there was a portrait of Henry Tudor with a rabbit around his neck like a stole and a long skinny duck perched atop his hat.

We sat at a high top table in one of the first rooms, which gave us an excellent vantage for people-watching. Splitting an afternoon tea - which our waitperson told us was enough stuff for one person but REALLY neither of us could have finished it on our own - we talked about knitting and crochet, and Webs, and the possibility of visiting another yarn outlet store that is apparently relatively nearby in Rhode Island. (LOL. EVERYTHING is nearby in Rhode Island.) We talked about travels, both past and future, and she invited me to join her on a trip to Scotland. Reader, if I can pull together the money in time I ABSOLUTELY WILL.

The Duck and Bunny has a lovely cocktail made form prosecco, lavender, vanilla, and blueberries. I need to find out what they used for the lavender and vanilla flavors. The blueberries floated up and sank back down in the champagne glass.

"Like a lava lamp!"

"Like an edible lava lamp!"

"Lava lamps can't be edible."

"Yeah they can! But only once."

Having finished tea but certainly feeling far from done, we walked down the street, scoping out the record shop and the erotica shop and the shop that repairs large appliances, its window full of a brightly lit row of washers and dryers, and the shop that apparently repairs phones, its window full of several glass shelves of utterly shattered phone screens on display like antique plates. Then we drove to another section of town, with other shops, and walked, and talked, and browsed; she found a shirt, and I found a candle, and we both found sheet masks that when you put them on make you look like santa or a reindeer or a snowman but I ended up not getting one because I was getting twitchy about how much money I had spent, even though I was under budget. We went into Urban Outfitters and were not entirely nice about some of the things being sold, let alone the prices for everything.

The evening ended more because of cold and tired legs than for us wanting to be done, but it was so good, and we have decided that this needs to be a monthly thing. We have already started talking about other places in Providence we want to go to, including museums.

I need to look at my calendar for January, and figure out when is going to be my next day with her. Old friend. New future.

Now it is Sunday, and later SALM and Middlest will be arriving on the train home from NJ, and a little after that a friend is picking me up for a mystery excursion to which I have been encouraged to bring crochet/crafting. I'm intrigued, and looking forward to it, and trying to not let myself feel trepidatious at going OUT at 8PM when I have to be at work at 8:30 tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, I have this afternoon, and I have a list of tasks. It's not The List Of Tasks, which I have yet to make but is going to be an accounting of all the big household projects I've been failing to get started on. This is a small list of small tasks, because I've done very little housework lately and it shows, and I've continued to not do housework because the task of getting started has felt so daunting. This morning I decided that I can get past this feeling of not being able to do everything, which has prevented me from starting anything, by giving myself permission to just do some things.

While the coffee was steeping and the bacon was frying, I sat over a dollar store notepad with a clicky pen and made a list: every common room in the house plus my bedroom, with a minimum of two tasks that need doing in each to make it better/cleaner. I don't have to do all of them today, but I want to get to at least one task in each room today.

I'm actually already 2/3s done with my kitchen tasks, woo!

I feel like things are sliding around me, unfolding and rearranging; like the Marauder's Map, like Cube, like something that would be under investigation by the SCP Foundation and the Magnus Institute. Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm changing.

I think that's a good thing.

Comments

[wa_bob]

Good Morthing is back! I am happy again!

[blissmorgan]

YES! I had not realized how long I had gone without it; the shift to full time work and balancing my morning start time with getting the Spawn enschoolenated has really done a number on my posting. I've found myself often doing the eternal scroll on Tumblr rather than trying to marshall my thoughts for at least a quick touch-in.

Then again, before the Ploos made their big shutdown announcement I was also starting to nosewrinkle at the quality of my mornthing posts. I think I was stuck in a rut of feeling that I HAD to post one, daily, and so was putting words on the screen just of the sake of having them there rather than because I really had anything of note to say. Here, that is not so much the case.

I am guessing you were being facetious, but I really do hope that you are happy these days.

[shredded_paper]

Rhode Island sounds hella interesting.

Your approach to cleaning sounds pretty doable but I'm still inclined to treat housework as a spectator sport. I have a week off work and a hazy list of stuff to do that I will absolutely leave until the last day off before accomplishing two things then quitting.

Happy New Year, Bliss!

[blissmorgan]

Rhode Island IS hella interesting. My boss maintains that everyone who lives in RI is kind of odd in some way, and I was going to argue with her until I thought about the folks I know who are residents of that fine wee state. I've started thinking about whether it would be a worthy location to which to move once the Spawn level up to adulthood.

My approach to cleaning also, I think, involves having done a whole bunch of fun things such that I feel like I need to do something responsible to therefore have earned that fun. My brain is so weird. I don't know why it does this stuff.

Accomplishing two things is still two things accomplished! WIN!

[johncomic]

"Old friend. New future."

This is a bit longer than usual Mornthing, and that's good. I don't catch every reference dropped in it, and that's also good, because you are you and I am me and I can learn.

I am searching for the words to convey how, even after years, it is precious to me to Know You Moar. I am not finding them yet.

[blissmorgan]

It is much longer, in no small part because I went well over a week without doing a mornthing so lots happened, and also because I had such a marvelous swath of uninterrupted time in which to think about all my doings and write them up.

Our relationship is dear to me, John. I strive to be the good and interesting person that you think I am.

[johncomic]

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

[blissmorgan]

::gasp:: you can do a less-than-three floatyheart here! I was assuming that the pointy bit would be treated like an unclosed code tag.

[johncomic]

TIL!

[hlinspjalda]

Glad to hear Webs still has the warehouse and the bargain bin. Some of my fondest string memories revolve around those.

[blissmorgan]

I have some yarn still from the previous time I got to go there; there was some threadweight weaving stuff in the scratch and dent shelves that had come off the cones into this big mildly tangled skeins. I've gotten two of them untangled and balled, but the third one is difficult. I may actually finally need to get a yarn swift.

[hlinspjalda]

If you're fond of the umbrella type, KnitPicks has a birch one that's pretty decent, currently on sale for $49. But this flat one from Etsy is cheaper ($25.99), better finished, and, while not as granular, is still pretty adaptable for different skein sizes. It turns very smoothly and also breaks down for ease of storage.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/575553072/medium-yarn-swift-winder-adjustable

I have both of these and can recommend both of them.

[blissmorgan]

I definitely prefer the granularity of the umbrella kind, although the price tag is a bit wince-inducing for me. I'm going to poke around the internet and see what else I can find in that vein. Sometimes eBay has surprisingly good results.