Overview:
I've been thinking for the past couple of weeks, trying to come up with something to blog about, and it seems like the only safe subject for me is really knitting.
A couple of months ago, I was talking with my sister, and realized that there were a certain number of things I wanted to do before I die. And most of those are knitting.
One of the very few things that is consistently able to make my mind stop racing in circles, trying to run itself to pieces, is knitting.
Does this mean that I'm hanging by a yarn? I mean, I don't do such fine lace knitting that you could really call it thread.
Details:
I work for a car dealership -- one associated with an American car manufacturer. I won't say which brand, but I will tell you that I strongly recommend that you don't buy their cars -- after all, I process a portion (just 25% or so, really) of the recall paperwork on the vehicles. Layoffs have been happening, and we're starting to get the feeling that this particular location may not be open much longer. Par for the course, really, I suppose, with this economy.
My mom is 65 this year. She has arthritis in one knee and has been having a lot of trouble with it this winter. She'd been planning to work until she was 66-and-however-many-months, for Social Security payment reasons. Now she can't decide if she should retire sooner because of her knee, hold on another year-and-a-bit because that's what she's been planning, or shift her mindset to working indefinitely. And the hospital has started laying people off. Not excess management, of course. They got bonuses in December. It's the regular employees who's jobs are in jeopardy. Again, par for the course, although I'd have thought that hospitals would be safe a little longer.
Part of the floor in our only full bath is getting "squishy." In the course of getting estimates for that, we discovered that there's water in the crawlspace -- but not consistently. Currently, the estimates to fix everything range from about $3,000 to over $35,000.
School is currently a lot of deadlines (pressure) interspersed with such incredibly boring curriculum (curricula?) that my brain is in danger of leaking out of my ears. And the application deadline for the program I'm currently pursuing is (a) rapidly approaching (June 1), and (b) about as far as I can lower that bar.
I'm still not in terribly good shape -- my lungs and the neuropathy being the two biggest (physical) problems. I doubt I'm capable of working full-time.
I have actually become accustomed to being suicidally depressed. This is either a good thing (because it's been going on for quite a while and isn't likely to change) or really, really bad. Either way, it's very risky to say, since saying it means that I'll be legally judged to be mentally incompetent as soon as someone decides to start persecuting me for my own good.
I'm not Mooting this year, and I'm not even that upset about it. Even though the person I most don't want to see isn't going anyway. I have become (relatively) resigned to not traveling anymore. (Relatively meaning that I know travel is not possible, but it still makes me cry sometimes.)
On a brighter note, I've learned how to drive (and more difficultly -- turn on) those riding carts at Target, so I can actually get a bit of shopping done again.
Conclusion:
So that's my life in a nutshell. I'm going to go play with two sticks and some string now.
