Thoughts, Loosely Related

I can't sleep, so I'm going to blog. This makes sense, right? As if staring at a glowing computer screen would improve my circadian rhythms... because my sleep schedule has been screwed pretty much since I got back to Chicago. Either I toss and turn and kick the covers until 2... or I toss and turn and kick the covers until 1, and am then awakened at 3 or 4 in the morning by such things as:
1) a violent allergy attack
2) a prank caller
3) a locked out roommate.

Then I sleep in so late that this morning, when I awoke at 9:55, it was a minor victory. I thought about staying in bed and then going to the 5:00 mass, but then I came to my senses. My senses sounded something like this: "Alice, your internet is down. Even assuming you could sleep until noon, what would you *do* for four and a half hours?"

(Obviously, the internet, (by which I mean, the neighbor's internet) is hale and hearty again.)

I am trying to tell myself that I cannot sleep tonight because of the cats running up and down the corridor. Also the roommate walking up and down the corridor and then slamming her door. I might need to invest in ear plugs, but then I worry about not getting up in the morning. Investing in ear plugs is better than confronting the roommate (it's not that she's fierce, it's that she's so damned apologetic I feel guilty for complaining. Who wants to take a field trip to my psyche?).

And, you know, it's really not fair to blame the cats, who have been nothing but gray bundles of love. Well, gray bundles of love towards my down comforter of pillowy delight, at least.


(Saturday Morning. Looks just like Friday Morning.)

Well, that and taking advantage of their superior height when sitting on my desk chair to swat at my arse whilst I did yoga this afternoon.

Am I the only one who worries about the environmental/social justice impact of throwing out worn, tattered underwear? Worn, tattered, cotton underwear with the elastic coming out that one has had since maybe seventh grade? Is it a sign of some sort of insane frugality/concern with global warming/America's impact on world hunger/the fact that I may have somehow absorbed the spirit of my deceased, Depression-and-WWII-surviving, Rural Eastern Pennsylvania Grandmother, but in a 21st-century, dharma brat/neo-hippie sort of way (stop for breath and to remember where this sentence was orginally going) that I have thought about coming up with some way of re-using the underwear? And not just as cleaning rags? (After all, that's what I do with my holey socks).

Saturday was a little dull around here, but it's my own fault, really. I hadn't yet e-mailed or called many people in Hyde Park. And I had an invitation, too, but as soon as the words "birthday party" passed the lips of Everyone's Favorite Metrosexual Marxist (hereafter referred to as E.F.M.M), I immediately thought of 1) the possible effect of alcohol on my then very hungry body; 2) the cost of public transportation in this city; 3) my extreme shyness at parties; and 4) the fact that I would be abandoning the scarf I am knitting to a night all by its lonesome. So, like an idiot, I did not say, "oh, what time?" but instead, said, "oh, I don't think I'd be much fun." Then I took myself out to dinner, went home, called Carolyn (definitely the highlight), sorted books, and watched a movie with the scarf. I wanted to watch "The Last King of Scotland," but couldn't get around the parental controls on the Playstation that is passing for a DVD player in this apartment. So I watched "The Neverending Story." Go ahead, laugh at me. The scarf, the cats, and I all agreed that it was far less confusing than when I last saw it (I was five), but a bit predictable.

SIDE NOTE: Cats who have never seen knitting before are like... well, the only metaphor I can come up with is, you know how the Dodos didn't know they were supposed to be afraid of humans, and let themselves be bludgeoned to death? Yeah. They don't care, because they don't realize that they're supposed to care. (Cats who have never seen Yoga before act like embarrassed teenagers, but they seem to be acclimating themselves. See above in re: arse-swatting.)

BACK TO THE POINT: The evening at home was all the more sad because when I was in SF, I bought the world's most fantabulous pubbing/party earrings, and I am itching for a chance to wear them.


E.F.M.M is right. I am anti-fun. (I don't share The Four-Eyed' Gremlin's distaste for proper names; I just have a lot of friends named Dan.)

So, this scarf. I am knitting this scarf for a boyfriend. Er, an ex-boyfriend. As a birthday/Christmas present. For Christmas, 2006. I mean, I was behind when I started because I bought the yarn over Thanksgiving break and his birthday is in October, but it made sense at the time. He is a Harry Potter fan, and would surely appreciate a Hogwart's Scarf in the appropriate colors (Maroon and Gold, of course). (And his ex had given him a quilted blanket and there was just no standing for that, now, was there?) There is nothing wrong with the pattern: it is mind-numbingly simple color-striping. It is, however, knit on round needles so as to be doubly thick, and it is really, really long. It has 19 stripes. I am in the middle of stripe 11. I have been knitting since November (given, I wrote a BA in the meantime.)

To add insult to injury, I have only read one Harry Potter book, and I really, really want this scarf myself. The yarn is amazing (8% angora...all I want to do is run my hands across the finished part of the scarf), the saturation of the colors is delicious, and... I'm the one moving to Toronto! But I will stay strong. First, out of honor. Second, because since November he has given me both the world's second most fantabulous pair of earrings (see picture)

*and* a deluxe edition of The Lord of the Rings that I shall not link to on Amazon because I don't want to know how much he spent on it. So I'm knitting as fast as I can, to finish the scarf, to finish the hat that I bought in SF, to move on to the next project which just might be...another scarf.

On another note: what do you get as a birthday present for the kippah-wearing New Yorker who has everything? It has to be soon, since it's looking likely that he'll be in a small Middle-Eastern country that I with my hippie, feel-good, DCS education cannot find on a map for the birthday itself. (I don't feel bad about my lack of geographic prowess, despite the fact that I went to the CA State Geography Bee in 8th grade: I study Wales.) If anyone says "A Hogwarts Scarf," I'll strangle them with circular needles. Electronically. I am that fierce.

By the way, I received the following e-mail from E.F.M.M: "I didn't wind up going to the party. I felt a bit run down, so I had an antisocial
evening."

He is NO LONGER allowed to call me "anti-fun" or make cracks like, "Alice, you meet fun in a vacuum and you both cease to exist." I still have to invite him over for dinner, though. He's the only person I know in Hyde Park tall enough to change the light bulb in the Living Room.