The perfect storm

Sometimes in life, events conspire in such a way that the combination of their effects vastly outweighs the individual events themselves. You don't really see it happening until you're left in the aftermath, dazed and wondering wtf just hit you. You stagger around blinking stupidly in the sunlight after the departing clouds, and the most coherent thought you can form is "Wha....?"

Such was my life for the past 18 months or so. Things that would have been smallish, inconveniences... a few largish tragedies, culminating in the death of my beloved husband, and shortly thereafter, the deaths of two young friends of my stepdaughters. Life, my friends, sucked ass. And then my friends and family started pouring in. And cards, and phone calls. Neighbors dropped by with dishes of food. Friends dropped in with hugs and sandwiches and reminiscences. Loved ones tidied the kitchen and did the laundry. A box appeared, with goodies for me and my boys. A week later, another. And another. (And I'm ashamed to say it took me almost 6 weeks to notice the pattern.) Someone Evil (in a good way) masterminded the delivery of boxes of love to me and to my boys. I think the postman was starting to wonder, and I was starting to wonder how it was possible that anything else wonderful would fit in my house. Maple candies, cookies, fiber, Halloween goodies, fabric, funny little voodoo dolls, cow-tipping equipment, liquor, sweet books about kissy raccoons, stickers, cowboy gear, all the turquoise stuff you could imagine. Things that were sweet on their own, but combining had a warming, hugging effect for me and the boys that each couldn't have achieved on its own. And then the perfect storm.



This, my darling friends, is a blanket, made of squares solicited by yet another Evil Mastermind (Lynn in Tucson), and presented to me for my birthday. Beautiful warm stitches in fabulous patterns, sweet on their own, combined into a huge expression of love and support that no words can convey. There are squares from Oregon, California, Maryland. Wisconsin, Tucson, Finland. Hawaii. Maine. Alabama. Philly. Sewn together by Lynn and my other three local knitter friends, Andrea, Lisa and Stefanie. (Kept secret from me for two whole months!)
People, the tide has turned. I have felt the weight lift, the clouds roll back, the sun shine. My dear friends sent away the perfect storm of shit, with not one, but two perfect storms of love. It sounds incredibly cheesy, especially coming from my sardonic self, but I am so blessed, there just isn't any other way to say it.

Splendor in the Grass

Okay, it's about time I introduce you to the new ladies in my life.

Meet Sage.



Meet Isolde. (Isolde is too much woman for me so I'm sharing her with Lynn in Tucson, who sent me with money to Taos and said DON'T BRING ME A FLEECE. So I only brought her half. So there.)



Sage is a moorit CVM from Windy Hill Farm (no site). When they shear, they shear down the middle, then down the sides, so her fleece was shorn in half. In the top picture, one half is tips up, one half (the taupe) is cut ends up. I was just going to take pics and blog, but she was so pretty lying there, I had to play with her some. Currently, she's soaking in a hot bath. She was a dirty girl (she was wearing a coat, but still) so she's changed a bit after her wash down. The brown is still deep and chocolatey, but her tips have washed out almost white, and her undersides are a beautiful silvery taupe, with some cinnamon bits. All in all, she's one sexy sheep.

Isolde is a silver Corriedale from Gleason's Fine Woolies. (No, I do not have another silver corriedale fleece at home. I do not know what you are talking about.) She has amazing crimp, and while she wasn't skirted as well as Sage, she's reasonably clean too. I expect she'll lighten a bit when we wash her. Lynn couldn't resist and took a bit of her home last week from knit night (why yes, I do bring 12 pounds of greasy wool out to the bookshop, why do you ask?) and washed, carded and spun her up. From Lynn's description, I'm going to get lots of pleasure from Isolde too.

Taos was wonderful - my stepdaughter met us there and took the boys so I could spend the whole day with Angie. We visited every booth, ogled the sexy cowboy spinning yarn with his boots off, ate cinnamon pecans and smoothies and kibbees and green chile and had more lemon drop martinis than this woman will admit to. (Angie stuck with the margaritas.) I got to meet Wilson, who seemed nice, although a little dazed by all the wool fumes in the air, and Bug got to see a shearing demonstration, and pet angora rabbits and pick out his very own yarn for a hat. (Pic of that later, I'm due back to rinse Sage in a bit.)

Forward

Life is being lived around here these days. News and blogs bring lots of other horrible shit happening all around us, and I think there's no escaping it. When I rule the world, babies will be born healthy and on time, people will settle their differences by talking about it, or maybe with a good healthy arm-wrestling session followed by beers at the local pub, and no one will avoid going to the doctor because it will cost too much. In the meantime, though, all I can do is try to counteract the shit by being the best person I know how to, for my sons, for myself, and for all of you who have been so wonderful, supportive, and caring. I'd been wallowing in a lovely bout of self pity for a while, and then the IBOL guy linked to this site, and I started to realize that people came out of the woodworks to shower me and my little guys with love, help, prayers and hugs, and I was finally able to see that, while I miss Rick and my life will always have that scar on it, I am well and truly blessed by beautiful friends and family, both in person and on-web. It was humbling to sit back and think about the grace that appeared in my life when I needed it most. So anyway, thanks.

(Also, thanks for the birthday wishes for my little man. He's so big, I can hardly stand it.)

In other news, I can has a job! I interviewed for this position back in July and thought for sure they'd filled it already, but Tuesday I got a call from the HR Guy asking for my references. I sent them off, and last thing Friday afternoon, the hiring manager called and offered me the job. It's local, it pays the bills, it gets me out of the house and allows me to talk to new people, and I'm thrilled. I don't start for a few weeks, which gives me some time to get my house in order and get a few new work outfits and a haircut and such. To say I am relieved is the understatement of the century.

In addition, I am going to Taos! I'd planned to go months ago, when Rick was still in decent health, but thought that plan was gone because of all that happened. Since I still have a bit saved, and I know that I won't be homeless anytime in the immediate future, I decided I'd take my boys, meet my stepdaughter there, and we'd have a little vacation. Squish, Angie? Get ready, I can't wait!

In knitting knews, there has been some. B-side grows slowly, mostly because 280+ stitches per row + sport weight yarn + slow knitter = glacial growth. It is growing, though, and I love the fabric it's making. I'm ready to start the increases and hope to be ready to divide for fronts and back by the time I leave for Taos later in the week. This is relatively close to the color of the actual yarn, or as close as I could get it with my limited color-balancing abilities.



Now, if you'll excuse me, it's shaping up to be a beautiful day (the Sonoran desert has the inverse of everyone else's weather - we're just coming into the "outside" season, opening our houses to soft breezes and tweeting birds after the crushing heat of the summer) and I think I'll take my boys to the zoo. And maybe, if they're really lucky, to the carwash where the bunny lives.

Mommy math

+ 4 years =




Happy birthday, Bubba.

Yeah, well.

This blogging thing is kinda hard work sometimes. I used to think in status updates and blog posts, and now I mostly don't think in any technological form at all. I still waste time on the web, and have been enjoying my first audio book (after all, why not? I loved being read to as a kid), but mostly my life is pretty devoid of its public presence. I think it's natural. I know that friends and family don't want to dwell on Rick's absence, and talking about him is much of what I want to do, so instead I talk TO him, and spare them (and you). I never realized just how much of my social outlet he was - work was much of the rest of it, and now that they're both gone, I don't really talk to people much. I always knew I was a hermit at heart. ;-)
The thing I figured out recently, why I can’t wrap my head around the fact that Rick is gone for good, is that it was so ordinary. I felt like the earth should have shaken, or tornados and hurricanes should have raged, or something. I think we go through lives with this "it won't happen to me or my family" attitude, but OF COURSE it will. It makes me wonder if, in places that are not the US, where we’ve insulated ourselves from death, if death really is ordinary. I mean, it’s part of life, we all have to do it, but it was such a spectacularly awful thing that it really feels to me like there can’t be nice days without Rick, and the whole world should have stopped and mourned with me. The fact that everything just went on, except for our little lives, is so strange and unreal, you know? I wonder if everyone feels a loved one’s death like this, or if in places where people aren't so insulated, where they are more attuned to the whole life cycle of things, they say, “Well, that’s that. I’ll miss him, but I have to weed the garden.”

Anyway. Enough now. I have come to the conclusion that I couldn't bear to work on any of the knitting from "before", so I started some new things. (Oooh, lookit me, I'll use any excuse for startitis.) For a few weeks, I couldn't even knit at all, but my hands needed to do something, so I appliqued. You know, because nothing goes with a long, 100+ for-days-heat-spell like appliqued snowmen. This is as far as I got, because the siren song of new knitting called, and I answered.



Here is the knitting. This is a seriously long term project, since it is done on smallish needles with sport weight yarn and is knit back and forth in one piece. Lawdy I have got to get skinnier if I want more handknit sweaters. Anyway, it's B-Side, by Laura Chau, in the Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool that Joan sent me.


(Colors are so far off in this photo as to be almost completely unrelated.)

Finally, this is not a project, but a cool thing. I have a DARTH VADER TIN. Yes, it's true, I am the coolest space nerd out there. There is no one cooler/nerdier than I. My supercool nerdiosity is the greatest.

Back to the business of living

It's slow going, for sure. First, let me thank you again for all the wonderful comments. He was a great man, and he was loved by many.
Several people commented about how everyone should be loved like that, and I think that most people are. You just might not know it. So if you have someone special - a husband, wife, mother, father, aunt, uncle, child, friend, teacher, whatever - I'd like to humbly suggest you create such a list for that person and SHARE IT. I know Rick knew I loved him with my whole heart, but I also know he didn't know half of the whys, and I'll never be able to share it with him. Please, if you are inclined, don't wait any longer.

I also wanted to bring your attention to Iraqi Bundles of Love. Read the site for details, but the gist is that you make a bundle of sewing or knitting supplies, send it to the IBOL Guy whose unit is stationed in northern Iraq, and the local authorities will distribute the supplies to women in the area. Time is short - you have to have these things in the mail by Sept 7, but truly, we all have stashes we can dig into, I'm sure. Mailing instructions are there, and you just leave a comment to get the address emailed to you. I'll be sorting through my quilting stash this afternoon.

Rick

(Thank you for all the comments. I can't bring myself to answer them individually, but I appreciated every single one.)
Three days ago, I wrote my husband's obituary. The day before that, I visited his body at the mortuary and selected a small stone vase in which to keep a portion of his ashes, awaiting the day they will join mine. A week before that, I left him alive at the hospital to pick up Bug from daycare, and returned to find him already gone.
In the nearly nine years we were together, I wondered if we'd make it for the long haul. I considered taking him out of the world myself on more than one occasion. I never thought he'd have to go so soon.
Here are some of the reasons I loved him:
We met on the internet. He told me all the sordid details of his past and never left anything out. His utter honesty, as much as his great personality, made our relationship work.
He would try almost anything once.
He loved me to distraction and routinely tried to find ways to make me happy. They knew him by name at the quilt shop because, despite all the complaining about my quilting and how much my fabric cost, he bought me a big ol' gift certificate for my birthday one year and never let on that he'd done so when I dragged him back there later in the day (the day before my birthday) to buy thread.
He viewed the fact that I cared for him and cooked for him during his illness as a huge gift and bragged about me to anyone who would listen.
He gave everyone a second (and third, and fourth...) chance to do the right thing.
He was a dreamer.
He worked his ass off all the time, mostly because that was how he took care of me and the boys.
He partied hard for most of his life, and at age 35 got straight and sober. He still bought me beer and knew where his friends could get the best weed when they came to visit, should they be inclined.
He travelled back to Montana frequently to help his dad replace his roof, because Dad had started the project when Rick was still living there and he'd told Dad he'd help. Didn't matter that he lived 1500 miles away; he'd said he'd help.
After his mom fell, he went back every year on her birthday because he knew it was important to her.
When we went to Montana, he took us to visit Gramma every night.
Even after almost ten years, he still recognized everyone's trucks and ex-wives in his hometown.
I teased him that there wasn't a car he hadn't driven, a woman he hadn't slept with, and a building he hadn't worked on in all of western Montana. And he agreed.
He gave me two beautiful sons and acted like the sun rose and set in their eyes. (Which it does.)
We could road trip anywhere and talk for hours. Some of the best conversations we ever had were in the middle of nowhere, Utah, coming or going to Montana.
He could fix almost any problem in the world just by holding me. Nothing was real until I'd talked to him about it.
He worked on his relationship with two of his daughters and told them all the time how proud he was of them and what great people they had become. When they came to visit him in the hospital, he told everyone it was the best 4th of July he'd ever had. And he meant it.
His eyes positively sparkled.
He had the best shoulders and biceps of any man on the planet. (He was exceedingly vain about them.)
His skin smelled like sunshine.
Until he got too sick to do so, he spent every Saturday morning with the Bug and let me sleep in. They'd go to the car wash, run errands, bring breakfast or come back and cook, and Bug loved it. He reveled in his daddy.
He won my dad over even though he was The Guy His Daughter Moved In With On Her First Day Of Meeting.
Watching him install and tape drywall was like watching a Master paint. It was seriously sexy.
He was friends with my brother who isn't friends with anyone. When my brother called after he'd gotten the news, he cried.
He was my best friend.

Rick Garrod, 01/10/1962 - 08/07/2009