Songs & Snowpocalypse

This past week as a little nutty. I had my little medical drama nonsense on Tuesday, and was a sad little mess for the rest of the day. You would think on a day where I was scheduled to have a procedure and knew I would want to go straight on home and climb into bed, I would make sure I had my apartment keys.

But alas.

This was also the same day that I went to the Dunkin Donuts drivethrough for coffee, ordered the coffee, paid for the coffee, and drove away without the coffee. I should have had the wherewithall to check the rest of my essential belongings after that, but it was not to be. So I got home after my procedure, stressed, weepy from the stress, and in a rather large amount of discomfort to discover that I was locked out. This happens frequently enough that I keep a spare set of keys in my glove compartment. Except that we lent those to a friend so he could feed Bosco when we were away for a weekend. Awesome. So I sat in my car in the cold, sniveling and feeling sorry for myself, alternating between a rousing game of solitare and Ravelry, until Boyfriend came home from school. He got me upstairs, ordered me Mexican food, and tucked me in on the couch with the remote and some yarn.

The rest of the week just kind of took its cue from there. I was mostly sad, sick, and weepy. I knit some. I played a bunch of Sims. The highlight of the week I went to my favorite LYS on my lunch hour Wednesday to console myself. I was poking through their giant pile of Mal Worsted and lo, there in the back, was a skein of Mal Twist in Purple Mystery. One of my favorite bases in one of my favorite colors, and I had just finished a long discussion with the proprietess about how irritiated she was Malabrigo and would no longer be carrying their yarns once her current stock sold out. She hadn't had any Twist in a year, and she was shocked to see what I'd found. Since it was probably the only one of its kind, she gave it to me for half off! I promptly went home, wound it up into a center pull, and hurriedly finished a hat I was very disgruntled with so I could cast on a cowl for moi. Said cowl is blocked & just about dry, and I'm ridiculously excited to wear it. SO SOFT. Crazy.

The disgruntling hat started out as a Winter Garden hat. It ended up looking similar, but I got really enraged at the pattern and stopped using it after a few rows. Maybe it's just because I was in a bad mood when I started it, but I caught the gist of the pattern from looking at pictures and finished it my own way. This is not the first time this has happened with a pattern I downloaded off the interwebs, and I'm sure it won't be the last either (though it happens significantly less since I started working these things through myself & designing my own patterns), but I find it particularly irksome when a pattern has been paid for. But this plays into a very long rant about "proprietary" patterns and the internet. One day maybe I'll share the whole thing here, but now is not the time.

Anyway, the cowl was a good project to work on during the so-called "Snowpocalypse". Which wasn't really that terrible. I mean, yeah, it was a whole bunch of snow. But down in Jersey, it could have been a lot worse. It was 8-12", just as predicted. And I suppose it's easier for me to be blase about it because, living in a second story apartment, I didn't really have to shovel any of it. But looking back on snowstorms gone by (think last October, or ANY of the snowstorms from the winter before that) it really wasn't terrible. People are just gunshy because of Sandy, I get that. I really do. And it's true, there's no harm in being prepared. But there's no need to be so dramatic about it. Let us not abuse the term "Snowpocalypse" (or "Snowmageddon", if that's your preferred flavor) is all I'm saying.

Yesterday (Sunday), was nerve wracking in its own right. I bit the bullet and did something I both swore I'd never do again and have been wanting to do for months. I went and auditioned for my old community theatre company's spring show. I haven't participated in a show of theirs since... 2005? My entire family had been involved for years, since the late 90's, in a multitude of capacities, but we all kind of dropped out eventually. For me, the drama and feelings of insufficiency just became too much. I took voice and dance lessons nonstop, worked my butt off to please the directors, bowed and scraped and did my time, and still I was always passed over for parts. It hurt a lot, especially because the only explanation I could come up with was that I was heavier than the girls who did get parts. It wounded me. Add in all of the other interpersonal drama and I'd just had enough. So I left. And then I went to college. And I came back from college. And now it's been years. I've grown, I have a different point of view and a the skill set to deal with these people as an adult, to stick up for myself. I've improved and honed my singing skills significantly since then. And I have significantly more confidence.

(The success at my weight loss plan helps too.)

So I thought about it. A lot. Agonized, really. I didn't tell anyone before I did it, too. It was a hard choice. It's hard to go back to these people after having been away for so long, these people who really hurt me, hurt my self esteem, as a kid, but who were also fundamental in shaping me in a lot of ways and who were responsible for a lot of my best memories from that time period. It was really hard. And I thought I was going to have a 
stroke when I got there. But I did it. I'm pretty proud of muself. And I think I'll do this show. If nothing else, it'll give me something to do other than play the Sims all day long, right?