bad metaphor

So I’ve been telling myself over and over, hey make hotel reservations for your family NOW before every single hotel room in Lawrence is taken. I’ve been putting it off, because of schoolwork and out of reluctance to deal with the family shuffling that will have to take place. My parents are not merely divorced, they are viciously so; meaning that having them up at the same time and doing things is out of the question. Especially since my dad remarried and his new wife is much younger. Not so fun for my mom, who’s slightly mentally unstable at the best of times.

The plan is this: my dad will come up the day before graduation, hang out with me, and then leave after the graduation ceremony. My mom will come up the day of graduation, hang around after the graduation ceremony, and then leave the next day. Flawless juggling of parental units, right?

Quite a smart plan, except for one fatal flaw: I am a lazy dumbass. I have waited until the next to the last damn minute to book hotel rooms, and subsequently there are NO rooms available the night before graduation, excepting at one place, and that place requires you to book a room for two nights (because it is a busy weekend). Argh. So now the plan is, since I have to book the room for my dad for two nights anyways, to have my mom and co. stay in the same room.

Does that make any sense at all? My cunning scheme looks more and more doomed to fail, as I plan out the itineraries for the different sets of parents in my head. What am I going to do with both sets of parents once they are both in town? Split myself in two? Should I even tell Mom that she’s staying in the same room as hated Dad? Another thing to worry about is that the hotel room is a bit expensive, well, more expensive than my stingy dad is accustomed to paying, so now I’m a bit freaked out that he’ll be upset that I got him such an expensive hotel room and will resent paying for it, and in order to avoid that I’ll have to pay, and holy god does money seem to melt in my hands these days.

One who didn’t know me or my family well would probably pose the question: “but karenology, aren’t your parents not adults, and thus able to handle unpleasant encounters with maturity?” The answer, my friends, is maybe yes, if I’m extremely lucky that day. If an encounter does occur and things go smoothly, I will purchase a scratch ticket immediately. Such luck cannot be counted on for another century at least.

As I write this out, I’m becoming more and more accepting of the possibility that I am overreacting and that everything will be fine, and the rum-laced hot cocoa the boy has given me helps immensely. Still, though I’m giddy as a dropout at the prospect of no more school, I dread the day of graduation. Henceforth it will be known as *G-Day. I only wish there were certain days or weeks one could just skip over seamlessly, maybe even somehow retaining memories of what happened during the skipped days, but without having to mess with actually experiencing them.

* Not to be confused with G-Spots or Zero-G or other cool things.

What I have been knitting lately:

• I’ve started Tubey, frogged it, and started it again. I’m on the first sleeve now, and will take pictures of it once the arms are both finished. Take that, schoolwork!

What I plan on knitting:

• Sonnet, for my mother, in Knit Picks Shine Watermelon. It will be her birthday next week, and by then it will be far too late to have ordered yarn, started the pattern, and finish in time, but I’ll certainly have it by graduation. If those pesky finals don’t get in the way.
• A Faroese Peaks Shawl for a friend who’s getting married in June, in Knit Picks Gossamer, probably Carribean color. I chose this project because it looks lovely and it says it’s a great simple project for beginners. Seeing as I have never knit anything longer than a scarf yet, this is probably a good thing!
• Irish Hiking Scarf and Nik’s Knit’s Irish Hiking Hat, adapted to go with the scarf, for the boy. I’ve bought 13 skeins of lovely Pure Peruvian Alpaca from Elann for this.
• Oh, and that drop stitch scarf I’d started awhile ago. I feel a bit silly knitting scarves and sweaters in summertime, but the bipolar Kansas weather will probably render these useful before winter anyways.

I’d post a picture of my stash, but it’s rather embarrassing as of now. Not just in terms of quantity, but quality – I’d acquired a lot of acrylic, blah type yarn for various projects that never took off, and then magically overnight became a yarn snob. Oops. In large part this is due to the availability of places like Elann and Knit Picks which enable one to become a bit of a Yarny McSnootyPants without breaking the bank (too much). Don’t worry, I’m not a waster – I do plan on using the old blah acrylic stuff for practicing techniques, and maybe make a large blanket or tons of cat toys, as the current ones keep joining all those missing socks and hair ties in the Void o’ Mystery.

If anyone wants anything small items, like coasters or something, let me know. I have to have something to keep me from schoolwork.

* You know, upon closer inspection, I now realize that I am insane (well, more insane than usual). It will take 4 hanks of that Gossamer (lace-weight) yarn to make that Faroese shawl, with 440 yards per hank. That’s 1760 yards, which I had expected to knit in a month alongside other projects! Ahahaha, no. Rather, I think I’ll be making The Frozen Lake shawl with Knit Picks Shimmer turquoise splendor, which requires just one 440 yard skein. Plus, I like the Shimmer colors better. Phew, I’m really glad I didn’t hit that “submit” button before I lost my mind. Seriously.

Yesterday proved to be a very blissful and unproductive day for the boy and I. Among other things that didn’t include much space for doing homework and finishing theses (cough), we went to Olé Tapas last night, purely on impulse. Which makes sense, because tapas bars and other places that cater to appetizer-style cuisine seem kind of geared towards people who buy things on impulse. You can try a lot more that way and not have to commit to a huge meal that you might not like. I ended up getting calamari, which is kind of risky in the Midwest far away from any hint of coastline, and indeed it was mostly breading with maybe a dash of squid here and there. But damned if that’s what I didn’t want exactly, right at that moment, and it was fantastic. Also, the dipping sauces it comes with match the strange interior lighting (a kicky red marinara, and green mayonnaise-y type sauce?), which always appeals to my perverse love of color motifs.

At the table next to us, however, and almost marring a perfect night, were probably the world’s most stereotypical asshole business guys EVER. I seriously thought these guys were parodying business people at first, because I didn’t think any person could really un-selfconsciously waste so much precious oxygen. One of them resembled the BTK killer, and the other I couldn’t see very well; he had brown hair and was younger than the other one, but still definitely had at least twenty years on the pretty waitress whom they kept accosting and harrassing during the entirety of their stay. The brown-headed guy seemed like the alpha-male bully king (AMBK) of the two, but both radiated waves of simpering idiotry like solar flares. Even when the waitress escaped from their clutches and they had no one to harass (unless you count the ruined appetites of other diners), they continued discussing their business deals and something about Word/Excel documents REALLY LOUDLY, so you could tell they were IMPORTANT BUSINESSMEN.

At the arrival of the waitress, AMBK suggested, in a voice that enabled everyone in the dining room, and indeed, in the next restaurant over, to hear him: “I’m a very masculine, manly man, but sometimes I need a little bit of romantic candle lighting. Would you light my candle?” He held up what was probably the same chintzy broken glass candle holder like the one on our own table (my back was facing the two; the boy could see the two men in all their disgustingly toadish glory). After that lovely start of asserting his malehood, he held our waitress hostage. “Don’t let the t-shirt and jeans fool you, I’m filthy rich. I buy millions of pairs of expensive underwear.” Suddenly the tiny, shrivelled legs of the baby fried squid in my hand seemed a little less appetizing.

Every five minutes they called her back to their table to light the damn candle. I guess she forgot to bring a match the second time she passed by their table or something. Some choice quotes from the two: “I’m gonna get you deported, you watch out, if you’re an illegal immigrant, you’re goin’ back to Paraguay!”, “Your tip depends on my candle being lit,” and “You studied abroad in France? Mmm, did you have any French boyfriends?”

We ended up giving her a nice tip for having to deal with those guys, who probably ended up leaving her nothing for her troubles. My summer waitressing at a greasy spoon cafe, in retrospect, was extremely blessed – all I had to deal with were stingy or talkative elderly people, and luckily no horny Lotharios.

What do you do, though, in her position? Do you play along with them, as she did, in the hopes that you’ll get a good tip? Do you tell them to fuck off, and risk losing your job? I’d personally be more inclined towards the latter, but I’m luckily in a position where I don’t need a shitty waitressing gig to maintain financial security (well, uh, yet. knock on wood). In a meta sense, this is an issue that we women constantly have to face: the Cornered Waitress. Should you pretend to be giggly, fluffy-headed and act sexy in order to get ahead? Or do you outright reject all that and struggle, for the rest of your life, against something you know will not change in your lifetime or that of your daughter’s or grandchildren (assuming you have them, of course ?

There’s a girl who writes for our illustrious and high caliber campus newspaper , notorious for writing articles such as this one, in which she makes the claim that women can’t be president because of our wacky girl hormones. A week or two ago, she appeared again in the Kansan, in this article, in which she talks about how her lifelong dream has been to appear in Playboy.

Now, some girls dream of being astronauts and doctors. I wanted to be a famous artist or writer. Little Sara, on the other hand, has shot for the lofty goal of being masturbation material. Sara is a Cornered Waitress who has chosen to play along, wholeheartedly and with zeal. The ones who don’t, unfortunately, don’t get a quarter of the notoriety or attention, or they get lambasted or dismissed as feminazis and shrews.

I don’t mean to say that it’s as black and white of a choice as ‘resist’ or ‘play along’. We all play along, to some extent, in order to exist in this society and not go insane. I play along when I half-heartedly laugh at a sexist joke a friend or professor tells in front of me, for instance, because I don’t have the guts to speak up or stand out. Or when I participate in gossip about another woman, based on insulting things about her appearance. Among a myriad of other things.

Though the food was really good and highly recommended, the incident we witnessed left a bad taste in our mouths. All I can hope for is that maybe after we left, the waitress picked up the cheap candle holder and bashed it over the troglodytes’ heads, all while her boss and the other customers looked the other way. Yeah.

Via Amelia Raitte, who found it via Final Fashion (ha ha silly blog world): a thread on creativity by a guy who makes a living by drawing cartoons on business cards. Apart from making me giggle a little at the idea of being told what to do in order to be creative, it’s a nice assuring read for those of us who want to be artists and eat. Turns out the two are not mutually exclusive; fancy that!