Friday, August 25, 2006

A New Place to Stash Stuff

I inherited my grandmother's desk. When I was a child this desk was always in the corner of the den in her tiny house. She kept dice for Yatzee in the drawer with the pens and pencils and assorted mailing return labels. The desk has three drawers and in them she kept letters. When she died she had 92 years worth of old letters. I'd love to say that I've kept every letter that has ever been sent to me, but I haven't. I have kept a great many of them tho. So, now the desk is crammed in a corner of my living room. The largest (bottom) drawer houses school supplies, the middle one has a paper trimmer in it. The cubbies have knick knacks, but they will soon be replaced with things like envelopes, tape, things the younger children like to get into but are not supposed to. They are not allowed to dig through this desk. It is for writing (which means homework can be done here), it is not for stashing (except for the drawers and they are mine all mine and I may fill them up with yarn, except the school supply drawer. The school supply drawer is what keeps me sane).

The girlchild is in half day kindergarten this year which means 3 hours by myself. I thought to myself when she climbed on that big bus the other morning (I swear she looked even smaller than she is when she climbed aboard the bus with a huge smile on her face) that I could get some knitting done and lots of stuff done that I can't do with her "helping" me. And I have. Sort of. Today is her 4th day in school and I know that I'll get into the "groove" again. It's been years (8) since I've had 3 hours on a daily basis to myself. I've had 13 years of children in school, but precious few without them underfoot constantly. For the past 3 days I've walked the dog for an hour, knitted for about an hour and did housework for about an hour. This morning I went grocery shopping and I have laundry going. I have gazed upon my knitting this morning. Especially the two baby hats (knit at the same time on one long needle), I need to get them finished and to the hospital. The doily thing is actually a washcloth, I am thinking about making a few and giving them to a sister in law for Christmas since she said she loves hand knit washcloths. But the pressure, I promised myself last year I wouldn't knit up a bunch of Christmas gifts because you know how it is. You tell yourself you'll knit all of these gifts in August, or September, after all you have months before the holidays. And then you find yourself a week before Christmas crying over your needles and nothing is shipped, heck nothing is even wrapped. But still......

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