I learned to crochet in 1989, when I was a new mom of a breastfed baby and sometimes needed a hobby other than reading to occupy my mind while feeding her. I was young and poor, so the only crochet patterns I could get my hands on were from library books and the old crocheting magazines my mom would find at yard sales for a dime or a quarter each (which was also where I got most of my yarn). It never occurred to me that someday I would own dozens of crochet pattern books, and have access to literally thousands of free crochet patterns on something called the World Wide Web (which was just being invented, and I wouldn’t know about it for several years yet).

It’s ridiculously easy to find free patterns, on such wondrous sites as Ravelry, Lion Brand Yarn, Caron, Coats & Clark, Bernat, and Lily Sugar ‘n Cream. I have quite the collection. Plus I subscribe to Crochet! Magazine and Crochet Today, and regularly pick up copies of Interweave Crochet as well — all of which are neatly saved in magazine holders. It’s an embarrassment of riches, which my children will one day have to sort through (unless I’m lucky enough to eventually have a crocheting grandchild, in which case he or she will inherit whatever Lyse’s willing to part with).

We won’t even get into the size and variety of my yarn stash. I’d say it’s fair to call me a yarnaholic, and leave it at that.

So… the problem I’m having now is that I’m a bit overwhelmed with questions like: What project do I want to start next? What pattern should I use? What color yarn? What kind of yarn?

It’s almost enough to make me finish all the WIPs that sit in my project baskets, taunting me.

Almost.

This is one good example of why I have about 40 gallons of water stored in containers at my house. It’s also why I will never live on, or near, a flood plain under any circumstances. (Not to mention that some of my relatives have suffered serious problems from flooding. Luckily my mom no longer lives in that area.)

The Tualatin flood of 1996 was the closest I ever came to being flooded. Just a couple of years before that flood, I moved into Tualatin. I had to choose between an apartment literally next to the river, or an apartment further from the city center but about 100 feet higher elevation. I chose the latter apartment — and thank heavens, because the riverside place ended up flooding to a depth of over 8 feet! The only personal impact that the ‘96 flood had on me was, since the post office was awash in several feet of floodwaters, I didn’t get mail for a few days. Here’s a link to some more excellent pics of the flood.

Oh, and I couldn’t take my girls for their usual weekly Happy Meal because the McDonald’s parking lot was underwater. Then-7-year-old Angst wouldn’t believe me when I told her, so we actually walked down (with little sister in a stroller) to the flooded area and took pictures. Of course, Angst wanted to wade in the water, and I had to frighten her with tales of horrible diseases that she would catch if she got a single molecule of floodwater on herself. That was possibly the most fun I had that whole week!

Gee, my weekend is starting swimmingly. One of the graveyard ladies called out, and I was on call, so I get to work overtime. I’ve been on the graveyard shift temporarily for a couple of weeks to cover the shift of someone who’s out on medical leave, so at least it’s not screwing up my sleep schedule, but it does shorten my weekend quite a bit. And I really, really needed this weekend.

Of course the first phone call tonight was from Jane Q. Stupid, whose child has been running a fever of 104* for over 24 hours, asking if she should bring her child into the emergency department. As I like having a job, my reply had to be the official statement of, “I can’t answer that since I’m not medically trained.” Given my druthers, I would have replied, “What you should have done is called the clinic when they were open today instead of waiting until midnight on Friday, but since you clearly had better things to do than adequately parent your child, let me page the doctor on call, and she will tell you to get off your ass and drive your kid to the ER already.”

It was also quite exciting to read the THREE emails in my work inbox advising of problem callers who require “special handling” (i.e. connect them straight to the Security office — and yes, you can be banned from calling a hospital if you create a prior pattern of harrassment). One of them is living proof that the Universe occasionally does have a sense of humor, as the guy’s name actually has the initials “B.S.”

To put the sprinkles on the sundae, one of the most-frequently paged departments had nobody listed as being on call, and that got a certain neurosurgeon a bit peeved with me, despite it being the fault of that department’s scheduler and not anyone in my department. To his credit, though, when I did track down the correct person and corrected the on call schedule, that neurosurgeon actually thanked me. In case you’ve never had to deal with a neurosurgeon before, let me assure you that being thanked by one is shockingly rare. Most surgeons really are the temperamental, arrogant bastards that TV dramas portray them as being, and neurosurgeons are usually the worst.

At least I only have to work 6.5 or 7 hours (depending on how many of the early day shift people show up in the morning). My plans at that point will be to drive the younger demonspawn to her first day at her first “real” (requiring a W-4 Form) job at the Bipartisan Cafe (I promised I’d drive her in before I found out I’d be working tonight), and then go home to hopefully achieve something in the vicinity of 8 hours’ sleep. However, for that to be a realistic goal, I’ll probably have to lock the cats out of my room!

I may spend all the overtime money on yarn, since good yarn is not cheap — and since Jo-Ann was evil and sent me a 2-day-only coupon good for 80% off one item. The coupon is valid on the weekend I get my next paycheck. Those bitches.

But yarn is a pretty decent reward for nights like tonight.

Yesterday when I got home from work, I decided to do some crocheting and put on a movie from Netflix. I never got around to the crocheting, partly because a fair bit of my attention in watching Dirty War was occupied by the intermittent subtitles (the bad guys are speaking Arabic) and the variety of accents (the movie was made, and set, in contemporary London). But mainly I didn’t pick up the crochet hook because the movie quite enjoyable sucked me in — mostly on an intellectual level, as there were only a few really compelling characters. However, the characters weren’t the point; the story was, and it was good. It was very post-9/11, but not too politically correct. If you’re the least bit interested in TEOTWAWKI movies, you have definitely got to see this one!

So this morning when I got home from work, I decided to do some crocheting and put on a movie from Netflix. I actually did get some crocheting done, but only because it was a familiar pattern that I didn’t need to devote but a small fraction of my attention to — because Right At Your Door quite thoroughly sucked me in! This movie, however, held me transfixed through emotion and gritty realism, and a more intimate story (just a very few characters, instead of the whole city). Let me put it this way: I had a smoke break during yesterday’s movie, but there was no way in Hades that I was pausing today’s movie! It was just that compelling. Right At Your Door is another TEOTWAWKI movie, with a similar premise to Dirty War, but otherwise they are vastly different. I highly recommend both.

Now to go hunt down a few more TEOTWAWKI flicks that I haven’t seen yet…

Because everyone needs to do a silly meme now & again…

And now for something completely TMI…

Saw this quiz on Breda’s blog, and of course had to take it:

Damn, I always get penalized for being Pagan, polyamorous, tattooed, and crafty (sewing & crocheting is apparently “hippie”). Time to buy more guns!

No, I wasn’t in a coma for the last year. That would have been way too restful.

I’ll just sum up the last 12 months by saying it’s been fraking exhausting, with no end in sight. (Not a complaint, mind you — I absolutely LOVE most parts of my life, and I fully expect it to just keep on getting better! But it is tiring.)

Okay, alright, to hit just the highlights –

And now for something completely TMI…

I promise a post about the wedding, with pictures and all that good stuff — when I get a chance to breathe. I’m home sick today, so you just get this meme:

Newsweek’s Top 100 Books of All Time (Orly?)

Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you tried to read & couldn’t finish, and underline those you’d recommend (plus comment freely in parentheses).

And now for something completely TMI…

You know that saying about “I laughed so hard I cried”? Yeah?

I really, truly did — reading this.

I’m never going to forget this phrase: “there’s a little F-16 in my pants.”

Wendi Aarons is my new hero. I would read her blog at work for the stress relief, but I’m pretty sure my manager would call in Animal Control to deal with the hyena in my cubicle.

(I know it’s been 4 days since my wedding and I haven’t blogged it. I will, I promise. Just waiting for My Number One Internet Fanboy and Official Wedding Photographer to get me some piccies. Also my stress levels need to be brought down by at least a few nights on the luscious 500-thread count sheets that Geoffrey’s awesome aunt got us, which are finally going on the bed tonight.)

The local newspaper up in the Washington state town where my sister and her family live did an article on my niece and the fund-raiser set up by the school that her sister Haley attends. A blood-cancer charity has also set up a web page about Katie, and they are having a Poker Tournament fund-raiser for her.