Sleeping, Knitting, Sleeping, Sleeping, and ... Did I Say Sleeping?

Yep. That's been my life for the past few days. I have taken some potty breaks, eaten my obligatory meal a day (no, I'm not dieting; it's just how we eat ... although after seeing what size jeans I had to buy, maybe I should diet), bought more shit I probably don't need from the Harley store (see: size of jeans comment), read ... and that's really about it. We had some issues with the server going down and Hubster was working on the shop, so I really couldn't work on it even if I wanted to (which I didn't). So I've taken a little vacation and am much happier for it. Tomorrow, however ...

Sometimes having a shop is really nice. I get first pick out of anything that comes in. Normally, I put everything up for sale to give you guys first chance, but I just couldn't with the Woolly Boully order. I snatched the color I didn't have, and since this is a new base, well ... I had to complete my collection. This stuff knits like a dream and is gorgeous. I've only got six skeins of it to list, so if you're a fan, then you might want to keep an eye on the shop late tomorrow or Sunday. It'll be there, along with new artists like Misfit Yarns and several others. Hubster has the shop running like a well-oiled machine (until we get a report from an irate customer that something is fucked up), so now it's up to me to finish listing what I've got. Really, there's not that much left. I just have to stay awake long enough to finish it.

As for the rest of my life, I've got movers coming next week to give me an estimate. I'm really hoping we can afford this, because I neither want to nor can help Hubster load/unload a U-Haul. I especially can't help him with that damned TV because it has to go down stairs, and there's a nasty little landing where you have to hang a hairpin turn. Once it's downstairs, it'll be fantastic, but since there's likely to be snow on the ground, it goes in the front door and not around the back of the house through the back door (and there's still a nasty turn to make there). I hate moving. I truly hate it. We haven't packed a single thing, but fortunately, I didn't unpack a lot of the boxes we moved with (mainly because there was no room to put away their contents). We also saved all the boxes from the things we did unpack, so we don't have to buy any more of those. Hubster has to take pictures of the stash so I can get those skeins listed in the shop (I'm selling each one for $10 regardless of what it is) and hopefully sold (less to take with us), and I still have to list the damn car. I had to wait until after the 9th to even think about listing it because we didn't want to sell it and then find out that we weren't moving, and then the weather turned cloudy and/or rainy. Tomorrow is supposed to be sort of sunny, though, so he'll take pictures of it (we can list up to 18), and I'll get the listing taken care of. It would be lovely if that sold immediately, and we're fortunate to live near several very wealthy communities where people haven't been affected by the foreclosures or the economy in general. Buying a car for a Christmas present and forking over $27K in cash won't even make these people bat an eye. We'll see how it goes. A lot of stuff will get packed in our truck (especially things like my collection of Red Wing stoneware and pottery from the 1930's) to ensure they arrive in one piece. I've had too many things broken over the years from movers being asswipes and not paying attention to what they're doing. Those items are irreplaceable; even if I could replace them, I couldn't afford it. I don't know if any of these movers offer total coverage insurance, but we're going for economy here. We're not taking our couch, the Monster, or the recliner (they're full of ciggie burns and Emma tooth holes), so we'll sell them at a giant garage sale I'm planning. Somebody who is into upholstery or slip covers can do something with them. That will help with the moving bill. The only reason I'd take them is if they cost next to nothing to move (hahahaha!). Those fuckers charge you by the Kleenex, just like hospitals.

As for the bike, I'm contacting a carrier service which does nothing but move bikes around the country. I can't ride it down - I don't have the experience to undertake a ride of that length, let alone one that may involve snow and definitely involves a large mountain with very windy roads and no guard rails (not to mention the Grapevine which frequently sees snow in the winter and is not only a pain the ass, but very long). I'll save that little journey for the spring when I've got some miles under my ass. I'm also having it delivered rather than ride it home after my last class. After talking to the good service people at Eagle's Nest, the consensus is that for the maiden voyage, I should take it around the block during the day, not on the freeway at night. My classes start in two weeks, so that means the bike will be here in less than three. Yay!

In the bad news department, I went to turn my Kindle on and got a screenful of zebra lines, even when I turned the thing off. After calling Amazon, they said they'd send one out immediately to replace it. We called on Wednesday; it arrived today. I'm impressed with their service. They even sent me a label to send the broken one back. I assume they'll fix it, recondition it, and resell it as a used unit. Fine by me. My new one is charged, loaded with books and a subscription to the LA Times, and ready to roll. I missed it and am glad to have a new one. I'm so looking forward to sitting on one of my decks with my morning coffee and reading the paper or a book. Life should always be that horrible.

As for Thanksgiving, well ... I guess I'm a Commie. I've never liked the holiday and rarely have had much to be thankful for. Even during the good years, something always came up that soured the whole thing. This year, though, is different. Even though we didn't go to Mom's, I roasted us a chicken, made some parmesan pasta and corn, and thought about all the things which have happened this year. All in all, it's been a pretty good one. The best thing, though, is that we're changing our lives completely, and I think we both really need it. Hubster is really excited about the move and even happier that we'll be near LA, but not living IN it. We're also close to San Diego and all the oceanside communities, as well as the ocean itself. Then we can come home to sanity. I'm giving up a car for a bike. We're leaving everything I've ever known and moving somewhere I swore I'd never move to. And before anybody asks, no ... I'm not telling our daughter where we're going. I don't even know that I'll tell her we're moving. I have half a mind to just snatch the kids and take them with us. That would put her tits in a knot. I haven't spoken to her in a while, but I understand that she spent T-Day with mom and grandma and even cooked dinner. That fries my ass. She does all this shit over many years, and they just act like nothing has happened and welcome her back. Not me ... not this time. I can't. My shields have gone up because I have to protect myself from her. She's hurt me too often in the past, and I won't let her do it to me again. So anyway, yes ... we have a lot to be thankful for this year. That doesn't mean I have to eat turkey. Don't like it, never have, never will, unless it's slathered with mayo in a sandwich. Even so, I still prefer ham.


Heh ... ZZTop is on TV. I still like them. They're singing "Pearl Necklace". Not my favorite, but it's still a good driving song.

I mentioned about the jeans up above, so I guess I should explain that fiasco. Harley seems to realize that a lot of the broads who ride (or are hog whores) have BIG asses, so they make their clothing up to size 3X. I had to get a leather jacket and chaps (you know, for that memorable time I'll blog about in the future when I dump the bike and turn into a giant road rash), so I started looking for a matched set. I have to pretend I look good. Anyway, I found this very cool fringed jacket, and they had the chaps to match. The even better part is that they had both of them in my size. Then I found a pair of jeans in the sales section, so I grabbed what I thought was my size and one size larger, grabbed Sylvia (my lovely salesgirl), and headed for the dressing room.

You have to understand something about me. When I say I hate clothes, I mean it. I HATE them. I hate everything about the clothes-buying ritual: the selection, the guessing of sizes, the trying-on of said garments, the deep depression which comes from realizing just how horrible you really look and how big said clothing is. Anyway, I tried on the first pair of jeans - the ones in the size I've worn for years. Uh ... nope. Not a chance. I couldn't even bring the two ends of the waist together in order to button them. Shit. I knew it ... I knew they wouldn't fit ... but I had deluded myself into thinking that I was still a cow, not a heifer. Heavy sigh. So I peeled them off (when they were tight on my thighs as I was pulling them up, I realized this wasn't going to happen), and put the next pair on. Whew. I'm still a mini-heifer, so I buttoned them up and looked. Not bad. They held my gut in and made me look semi-presentable. As for the jacket, it fit perfectly, even with the boobage factor. The chaps fit like a dream. They're not the easiest things in the world to put on (it's a rather involved process, but I'm sure I'll get it in no time), and that's where Sylvia came in. She fitted them on me, showed me how to get the length right, where the part that goes around your waist should sit, blah blah blah. Long story short, decked out in my leathers, I felt good. Natural. This is how the big dude meant for it to be - me decked out in glorious black cowhide with fringe. Yep. So I plunked them on the counter and forked over the credit card. Uh ... shit. The bill came to over $700. Oh well. One must pay the price to be safely dressed and stylish at the same time. What it boils down to is that the other jackets were fugly. Give me fringe any day. Combine that with my leather fetish (I love the way biker leathers smell - they're that really heavy cowhide to take the punishment of the road instead of your skin), and you've got the makings of a very expensive little hobby. At least I only buy clothes once a year, and that's under protest. I've got underwear so old that the elastic in the body of them gave out a decade ago, so when I inhale, they shoot straight up my ass.

The really horrible thing which happened this week is that I was knitting and fell asleep. No big deal, right? Not normally. But this time, Hubster didn't rescue my work from my hands (see the next paragraph). Emma jumped up on the chair to lay next to me, and we snoozed together. However, at some point during the night, she woke up and saw what I was holding. She removed it from my hands (she's a sneaky little thief), and when I woke up, she was merrily chomping away on a pile of kinked yarn with little sticks imbedded in it. I looked at it (it was out of focus because I'm getting blind as a bat and had just awakened, but I could make out what it was), snatched it away from her, and saw that she had not only ruined the yarn but broken all three DPN's into matchsticks. Then I freaked out even more because I realized that the fourth one was missing. It was bad enough that she destroyed them - they're the ones I can't get anymore, the ones made by Golding - but if she had eaten that fourth needle, there was a high probability of it piercing her esophagus or some other internal organ and doing a LOT of damage, possibly fatal. So I woke up Hubster, chewed his ass out for not taking my work away from me, and then we embarked on a search for the missing needle. I slid the chair away from the wall and there it was, lying unharmed on the floor. So then I had to tear the house apart looking for another set (I knew I had more than what was out on the table) and finally found a brand-new set tucked away in my knitting bag. WHEW. I've now got about three spares and the good set. I keep thinking that I have more of them, but I don't know how many I've purchased over the past several months. If there are more, they're in my studio, and I'll find them when we get all the boxes and bins out of there as the truck is being loaded. I'm guarding this set like the crown jewels. As for the ruined yarn, I've got more than enough to make the pair of socks, so I just cut away the ruined part and started over. It's a good thing I like doing ribbing because I have 2" of it on these socks and had almost finished it when Emma began eating everything. I hate when shit like that happens.

So that's been my week. Now I'm going to plunk down in the Monster, have Emma jump up there with me, and watch TV while I knit my latest pair of socks out of that glorious Wooly Boully. I'm sure that at some point, I'll fall asleep with my work in my hands. Hubster will gently remove it and put it away, and then I'll wake up in a few hours, pick it up again, and we'll repeat this little ritual throughout the night.

It don't get any better than that, dudes.