Monday, Monday...

Can't trust that day, say the philosophers, The Mamas and the Papas, or whoever wrote that song.  It's such an abrupt thing, Monday is.  I mean, here you are enjoying the weekend and BAM! Monday happens and you're back in the saddle, off to work, being all hygienic, and dressed appropriately.  It's just too sudden, especially when it's the beginning of February and it's still dark when your alarm(s) go off and nearly dark when you leave work, plus there's a whole lot of winter left to endure.  BUT there will be a paycheck, and a larger one at that, waiting for me when I unlock the door to the treasure trove that is the dive shop so I can't be too sorry that it's Monday, now, can I?

I want to go someplace.  Do you have a someplace for me to go to?  It needs to be close by and not cost an arm and a leg.  Or I want DD to come home so I can hug her and squeeze her and call her... oh wait, that's her cat, her girl cat, so I need to figure out something else to call her, but I still want her here and I don't want to share her with anybody.  Okay, maybe Durwood, and I suppose I can share her with Daddy & Mama & LC because that's really why she wants to come, to meet LC and store up a bunch of auntie snuggles before she goes back to Kentucky and her LC-less days.  Also her Mom-less days.  (waaaahhhhh)  When the kids were small and life was so hectic and demanding I never thought I'd get to a place where I could say that I miss being so busy and necessary but here I am missing the he!! out of it.  Not that I'm not thrilled and proud of how grown up they are but they're so independent and self-reliant... gah, my/our fault, I/we raised them that way.  Sometimes it sucks to be so successful at something so important.  (don't mind me, I'll be over here in the corner plucking out my own liver)

Wow, I need to lighten up and cheer up.  Good thing it looks like it's going to be a sunny day, even though that means cold I need the sun.  N. E. E. D. it.  It's 7:40 AM and the sun's almost up high enough to clear the park trees and houses along Fisk St... come on, sun!  You can do it.

I got a few more rounds onto the first men's chemo hat.  If I can make 3 of them a month, that'd be a good number for 2014 charity knitting, wouldn't it?  Of course I'd need to whip out 3 for January to have a year's worth but I can pound out a few extra this month and next to catch up.  It's a simple pattern, one round of double crochets and then one round of single crochets, repeat until you have a hat.  Easy peasy.  This first one will be all black but the pattern's written for the round of scs to be a contrast color so that's what the next one will be.  Maybe I'll alternate, make one solid and one two-color, that'd break up the monotony, and I have plenty of solid color soft yarn in the stash.  Yay for stash yarn!

February 3--Jean-Leon Gerome, Cafe House, Cairo (Casting Bullets).  Something was sizzling when Celine stepped into the cafe.  It was such a change from the bright sunlight of the street to the dimness in the cafe her eyes took extra time to adjust.  A hand came out of the murk to guide her into a chair.  "Sit here, miss, it is the best place."  By the time she was seated she could see the owner of the voice and, she assumed, the hand.  He could have come from Central Casting, he was everyone's vision of an Egyptian cafe owner--bald but with an aggressive moustache, plump, and smiling.  His white apron was spotless and the rag he swiped across her table was clean too.  "You want tea?" he asked.  "Coffee," she said.  "Egyptian coffee?"  He sounded almost shocked but went behind the counter for it when she nodded.  She heard the sizzle again and turned to see a pair of men pouring molten metal into a mold.  She wondered what they were making.

Bullets, that's what they're making.  I wonder if Celine is as intrepid as Amelia Peabody was.  I'm sad that Elizabeth Peters has died so there'll be no more Peabody books... but I can reread them all, can't I?  I think I might just do that, that'd cheer me up no end.  I'll check for audiobooks today while I'm at work (I already own them all in the old-school, paper format); I hope they got a decent reader.  Audiobooks let me "read" and knit or sew at the same time.  Multitasking at its best.  Now it's time to multitask myself into the day--even if it is the dreaded Monday.  Seeyabye.
--Barbara