The Movements

     I grew up hearing the stories of the field workers in The Great Depression who would pick or shell peas in their sleep, and during one class in school a teacher drove home the point by showing us a documentary of The Depression that had that footage.

     As a knitter I've often wondered if the same thing occasionally applies to me. For the last week I've been marathon knitting with certain ferocity. Self imposed timelines and a husband out of town helped me slip through a lace stole with abandon. Knitting 16 hours a day for days at a time and then falling into bed in exhausting. Do I stitch in my sleep? Do my fingers move like the cat's paws when she dreams?

     Barring the creep-fest of filming my sleep and watching it back, I guess I'll never know, but it will be nice when the knitting dreams cease.

Popcorn, Marathons, and Eyeballs

The late night craving hit strongly and with immediacy during my tv rerun marathon. Popcorn was a must, and fast. I went through the motions of setting up the air popper, measuring the kernels, and melting the butter, but the real action came when I went to turn off the machine.

I leaned in just as the scorching hot kernel came flying out of the hood and straight towards my eyeball. As I was flinching away and my eyelids were closing, I saw the cooling airborne kernel explode and turn inside out. As it did it started to fall, and I eased out of my flinch.

Sighing with relief at escaping a potential ER visit I finished preparing my snack and went back to my marathon the awe of exploding popcorn still fresh in my mind.

Dreams

Recently life has been full of upheaval with the holidays, the death of a Grandparent, infertility treatments and the list goes on as they inevitably do. All of this has created wildly outlandish dreams which have gathered from the far corners of my subconscious and brought about the funniest scenarios.

This morning I woke from a dream where the last bit of it played out entirely in greenish hues. When I woke I felt alarmingly warm between my legs and immediately feared I'd wet the bed. Why else would it be unusually warm in that area? It didn't feel damp and nothing was clicking in my fog covered mind. I reached down to see what was going on and found my cat nestled into the warmth of the covers. She was blissfully warm and not about to move. I could almost hear her smugly say, "I am your little goblin. You expect this of me."

The Watering Can

One of the many histories drummed into us as children is that society was once based around hunting and gathering. Men hunted, women gathered and both were emotionally and physically built to suit. Now we are nicely domesticated, we've had a feminist revolution where men have been brought down from manly hunters to kumbaya singing metro-sexuals, the hunt and gather has been moved into supermarkets, and yet, I keep to the old role of gatherer.

The only part of gathering in a highly populated area that I don't like is dealing with the crowds. Yesterday morning was the worst! Slowly, so slowly I gathered and as soon as I could get out of the commissary I bolted. The slow movement down the isles not only gave me a bad mood but the need for two Advil. After it kicked in and I calmed down my husband turned to me as asked, "Well? How about going to get a Christmas tree?"

After going to the tree farm, picking and cutting down our Frasier Fur, and getting it into the stand I turned to the decorations while Les went to find a watering can. Halfway through the decorating Les came in and said he couldn't find the watering can. I'd forgotten that I'd gotten rid of it at one point or another and so my quick thinking husband came up with a brilliant plan. He poured us a glass of the last of the ice wine and turned the rinsed bottle into a watering can.

Do you know how little liquid can be held in a bottle of ice wine? I laughed again and again as he poured bottle after bottle of water into the tree stand through the spiny branches of the tree. It is just one more way that Les has brought joy to the holidays.

Full Grown Kitten

After my younger sister moved in she acquired a young male cat. His name is Jules (a 4th name, my preferred name for him being his 3rd name, Jacks) and he is roughly a bit over a year old. His age aside, this baby is a full grown kitten.

One morning after lying in bed trying to put the sounds of the three stampeding cats out of my mind the dog jumped squarely onto the middle of our bed. My husband and I gave up trying to sleep at that point and while we were scratching behind the dog's ears the cat herd stampeded back into our room. Jacks, uncoordinated and wild eyed flailed as he ran in.

The dog turned, looked over the edge of the bed, smiled (yes, smiled) and suddenly leaped with great enthusiasm into the middle of stampede. Cats flew in every direction and Jacks, legs akimbo, landed wildly on the bed. There was a grin on his face and a look in his eyes that made me think he had been in league with the dog the whole time.

Desire

All this time of silence, of settling into routine with a husband redeployed from Iraq, and tonight one thought came shining through my thoughts. I desire a deep sense of community which has eluded me for ages. That brassy robust thought shown clear as day in the dark quiet of the bedroom, and teased me out of bed; calling me to the computer. To the soundtrack of warbling cat snores I realized this: I am forever a small town girl.

I am the one who thrives on goes to the grocery store for a moment and it taking an hour due to running into five acquaintances. I wants to know the latest on what's happening with so-and-so, and I am most definitely the girl who finds comfort in the small world that all this creates. I thrive by it because I am good at it. I am good with roots and yet I still feel like this season's new spiders; that I am lost in the wind trying to find a sturdy place to make my own.

So I am back to blogging. Hopefully, for more than just a few odd posts. How do you get to a point where you fit in and find a comfortable place amongst your peers? I don't know, but hang on because I'm hell bent on renewing my mission figure it out.

Cat Fight

I recently discovered that a poop based dreadlock had formed on my long hair cat Una's rear end fluff. I found my shears, grabbed the cat and manipulated her into a position where I could cut out the matting. Una took offense and before long we were in an all out brawl. Tuffs of cat hair flew as I tried to hold onto her wriggling body enduring slap after slap from her indignant paws. All the hissing, biting, shouting and tail grabbing caused such a ruccus that when we finally broke apart (I had the fecal dread in hand) the other two pets were sitting side by side staring. The dog looked alarmed and the other cat was just plain smug.

I thought I had won the fight until I started to get ready for bed. Walking into the bathroom I became overwhelmed by the smell of cat urine. Una had exacted her revenge all over my laundry. She may have just won this round, but I'll win the war. I have the power to bathe her after all!