Mossy Cottage Knits

A Lazy and Mischievous Blogger

Still very much here, Dear Readers, and missing the blog terribly, but life has been uninterestingly one-dimensional lately. Which is really no excuse when you live in the same blogiverse as local blogger Erika who can write an entire entry about an empty pepper container or cleaning windows. Lessee, I've got plenty of pepper and don't plan on cleaning my windows, so what’ve I got?

The Grand Blogging Plan was to whip out the other Recession of Ought Nine Sweater sleeve, knit the collar and post pictures of a finished project. But it’s going wu-hay too slowly. Swimmingly, but slowly. In truth, the devil on my one shoulder tempted me take this picture…

…flip it over, and post it...

but you would’ve seen right through that gambit. Besides, the insufferably self-righteous angel on my other shoulder whacked me on the snout with a rolled-up newspaper and said, “Bad dog!” Soon, though, soon; sleeve is almost done. See the third full black stripe from the armhole? Imagine dpn’s bristling out from there.

Other than that…

Benny discovered a small bee last night and got stung on the tongue for his efforts. He seemed to suffer no lasting ill effects but he certainly did some strange things for a while, like sticking his tongue out—way out, not just the cute hint-of-pink thing—and waggling it in slo-mo. But he’s eating and there’s been no swelling so I’ll just chalk it up to Lesson Learned. The bee was fine—unless it’s the kind that dies after stinging something but that’s between the bee and the Almighty—and was reintroduced to the delights of the great outdoors.

I’ve also returned to the gym and am learning this go-round how important it is to have the right songs on your iPod (or, in my case, your Shuffle).

I’m new—within the last year or so—to this carrying-music-around-with-you fad. Oh, sure, I had a Walkman back in the day, but it never really took off with me. Now I have one of these in the eye-popping green. (The sad truth be told, in green and in titanium gray because, since the gods must needs amuse themselves, I lost the gray one and it remained lost until the day I bought the green one. I had left it outside on a table through a couple of hellacious spring storms. Reminiscent of the old "took a licking but kept on ticking" Timex ads, I turned it on, fearing the worst, but it worked like a champ. In the end, having two Shuffles turns out to be practical because one is always ready to go while the other is charging. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

That being said, I could own 20 Shuffles and would still suck at picking and arranging music. It doesn’t help that I have insanely eclectic tastes—bluegrass, Baroque, country, Irish, Andean, folk, easy listening, movie theme songs, New Age, Broadway, a few classic-rock songs—and I’ve just thrown a selection willy nilly onto the Shuffle. Which works well when you’re just farting around the house, but when you’re trucking rapidly and doggedly away on the treadmill to the motivating and inspiring fast-paced fiddling of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and then a slow and borderline morose Bach organ piece comes on, it can be disconcerting. In a few seconds, you go from feeling vital, healthy and slightly smug to wanting to throw yourself under a bus or, at the very least, shave your head and enter a nunnery. I think some new “gym only” playlists are in order.

Lastly, the dahlia bed is finally weeded and ready, so maybe this Sunday I can get some of my long-suffering tubers out of their plastic bags and into the ground. Last year I used part of the bed for dahlias, part of the bed for vegetables but I’ve learned the heart wants what it wants—this year, the bed will be all dahlias, all the time. Should be gawjus.

There, something out of nothing. Who said it couldn’t be done?

Posted by Ryan at April 16, 2010 12:57 PM