Betsy Phillips's Blog, page 24

Look at These Goofballs

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It feels more and more like rebellion and resistance to just be happy in the face of all this shittiness.

Row Four

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The copper row is attached! I’m not in love with the green border. I feel like it stands out too much, but I’m also not going to fret over it until the whole thing is done–and by then it will be too late!

It does remind me a little bit of seaweed, though. I’m going to be really curious to see how this fucker blocks up, because everything is a slightly different size. But I also love how it has a “just cuddle with me, you know you want to” vibe.

My next row is a peacock row. I’m super excited about it!

Aging

A thing I resent, beside Daylight Saving Time, which I am resenting the hell out of today, is that you never know what things are costing you until after you’ve paid it.

I took the dog to a dogwashing place on Saturday and the people there were so genuinely nice and lovely and good to the dog in a way that made me really happy. And I’m sure that part of it is that they’re working in a place where they get to hang out with dogs all the time.

I really like my job. I get to work with really smart people who have been working really hard on a thing and I get to see them at the moment their thing becomes real in the world. That’s awesome.

But I made a lot of compromises I didn’t really understand I was making until I’m now in a position to not make those compromises anymore. And now I can’t help but wonder how those compromises have shaped me.

I’m throwing a 50th anniversary party for my parents. So far, I’ve reserved a place and sent out a bunch of save the date cards. And I’ve heard back from some of their friends and it’s been so nice and so lovely. People really love my parents.

I mean, I really love my parents.

And I sincerely feel like it’s a great gift from the universe to hear all the ways people love my parents.

And yet, I still feel all my feelings about them.

I don’t feel like I’m selling myself out enjoying this part. And I don’t have any desire to “Well, let me tell you a thing or two about them” to people who love them.

I’m just trying to sit comfortably with all my feelings, to give them all room to be valid.

Because, to bring this post full circle, the damn thing is that I’m not going to understand what this shit means until I’m at an age and with a perspective where it’s too damn late anyway.

Ha ha ha. Sigh.

Sore

Yesterday my sister-in-law mentioned to me that my nephew had never been down a slide before. Well, oh boy, did that mean we were going down the slide at Hugh-Baby’s 100 times. First, he held onto my hands and I guided him down the slide, picked him up, and flung him back to the top while he squealed something that sounded almost like “again!”

Then he was so brave and went down on his own

And he got a hair cut! At a place where he got to sit in a fire truck while they cut his hair.

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We were having lunch with the Butcher’s best friend’s family and they have a daughter who’s a little younger than my nephew. Like girls tend to do, she’s been a little ahead of where he was at her age, walking, getting a shit ton of teeth, but the developmental difference that must happen here where he’s 19 months and she’s, I think, 15 months is huge. She’s still a baby and he’s clearly a toddler.

They have always been pretty close to the same size, but now he seems like he’s twice her size. And she still does the baby stagger walk, where as he’s got massive walking skills.

The Move

So, we’re moving offices and I am, for the first time in 20 years, going to have a window. Every time I think about it, I get a little choked up. I got to look out my potential window this week and there were daffodils.

I’ve been cleaning out my office, both of old files we don’t need anymore and of my personal stuff, most of which I’m bringing home. I don’t need so many things to look at when I have a window.

Lots of change these days. It’s funny. I don’t feel like I’m having a mid-life crisis, but that my whole life is having a midlife crisis around me.

My grandma turned 98 yesterday. I think she has mixed feelings about it.

And I admit that there are times, myself, when I’m like, so, well, this is it.

I just wish we were kinder to each other, you know?

Row Two

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The thing that makes me happiest about this is that I end up just staring at it, looking at the ways the colors play and how the yarns do their things. There’s no part of looking at this that isn’t satisfying to me. Which makes me feel like I am going to enjoy looking at it for a long time when it’s done.

I was a little worried that the rainbow yarn would look hokey, but it’s pretty badass. Which I’m glad about because I have such a fun time dying and spinning up rainbow gradients.

And the fact that the twist stays in the yarn just kills me. How fucking magic.

Y’all

Some hilarious shit is going down at work. Or, really, went down, but we’re just now finding out about it as we’re cleaning up to move offices.

And I can’t talk about it, obviously, but let’s just put it this way, if you have a folder called something along the lines of “Here are my lies,” you probably shouldn’t have been lying, because you are not good at it.

Just Showing Off a Little More

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Here’s the row with its border. It kind of has a vibe I can’t quite put my finger on in person. It’s like the lumberjack of afghans. There’s something just a little bit unrefined about it, but sturdy.

A book I acquired back in my acquisitions editor days is being inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame this May. I’m so thrilled, I can’t even tell you. And work is sending me to the induction!

It makes me teary eyed to think too much about it.

JFC

As a reward for making it through last weekend, making it through last week, and taking proper care of myself this weekend, I started the afghan for myself made from my own handspun yarn.

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It’s hard for me to find the words for how much I love this. The two yellows make me smile. The blue/green yarn is just exactly my favorite thing where each square looks different but fits together because it’s the same fucking yarn. Just, whew, holy shit. I want to look at this for a million years.

My plan, such as it is, is to do a continuous join around each row with a third yarn. Each row is going to be eight squares across. I’ll have to see how wide eight squares ends up being with that last row on there, but I imagine it’ll be ten deep.

It just blows my mind. That yarn exists because I made it. The brighter yellow exists because I dyed it. And yet, even with as much control as I have over the process, I didn’t know how the fuck it would turn out until I started crocheting.

In related news, I finally gave Julie her afghan and, as much as I’ve enjoyed looking at it draped over my chair, I felt such pleasure at watching her looking at all the different colors and admiring the variegation and, again, just the supreme pleasure in knowing that those things exist because I did it. And she totally got my “take one color from the previous square and move it into the next square” thing!

But the thing I love about it is that it’s like you have all these variables that you control and it seems, logistically, like that should somehow make the whole process less surprising. But instead it feels more like magic.

Because, like, I know my talent level and I know what I know and yet, and yet, there’s this.

Rehab

Y’all, I have just had the nicest weekend. Meeting up with friends, talking with interesting people, getting shit done. Sleeping like it’s all I have to do in the world.