Quivering Like Jello Over Here...

Well, we are into the thick of it now, folks.  The moment is upon me.  If it's going to happen, it'll be any minute.  The stress and anxiety are just about killing me and, for the first time in years, I'm wondering if I might need to go back to taking those blood pressure pills.  

As if in sympathy with the dark forces gathering around me, the skies have gone from sunny and bright to grey and foreboding.  A storm trembles just along the edges of my roofline.  I can feel the electrical charges from lightening not yet born.  They are whispering my name, those little bits of snaps and sparks...

The birds stopped singing about an hour ago.  Most of my neighbors seem to have found cause to go out for the evening.  The only people left besides myself are those too infirm to take themselves to safety and that crazy guy from downstairs who likes to stick forks in the toaster just to see what will happen.  As those with the sense to do so fled, they did not speak.  It was a silent exodus but everyone seemed to have reached some tacit form of agreement.  It was time to go even if no one was really sure just why flight was necessary.  

We are nothing if not creatures born of the ages.  Our decedents knew how to scent danger in the air and we still have a lingering touch of that ability even in this most modern of ages.

And here I sit, right smack at ground zero.  It all comes down to the next few steps.  I will either emerge unscathed and victorious or broken and beaten.  The guy downstairs offered to make me some toast because I think he feels sort of sorry for me even as he gleefully anticipates the carnage.  

I took a pass on the burnt bread.  Neither one of us had any peanut butter on hand and it just didn't seem worth it.  I couldn't tell if he was offended or impressed by that...

Thanks to a couple of highly watchable downloads from Itunes, I was able to settle on the couch and knit today.  In fact, I knit quite a bit.  More than I thought, if you want the truth.  And now I am at the point where The Dishcloth That Is So Totally Not A Sweater And Let's Just Keep Saying That Because The Blog Sweater Curse Has Never Been Closer Nor More Menacing needs nothing more than a neck band and some weaving at the underarms.  Seriously.  I am that close.  In fact, I am so close that I have stuffed the thing back into the knitting bag because it has me a little bit terrified.  

Up to this point, very little has gone wrong.  Very, very little.  I'm still not totally convinced that the neck isn't a bit big but I'm leaving things as they are.  Thus far, every time I've panicked over sizing the "dishcloth" has somehow miraculously managed to morph itself back into something resembling the size I was imagining in the first place and I can't help but think it might happen again if I just leave well enough alone.  Besides, I have a long-standing hatred of tight necklines so bigger is better as far as I'm concerned.  I don't care if the thing extends to my shoulders so long as it's not trying to choke me to death.  I'm also not entirely certain that I've got the thing centered just right for the shaping, but I guess that there are worse things than reknitting a neckband.  

Yet I cannot relax.  I cannot let my guard down.  The Blog Sweater Curse is close.  Very close.  I can feel it.  It's like it's breathing right down my neck. (That would be one of the drawbacks to a looser neckband, I suppose...) I must be brave.  This is going to require a great deal of concentration, chocolate and Mountain Dew.  Those, I do believe are the traditional strategies one uses in the face of dark and foreboding curses.  

Meanwhile, just to lighten the mood a bit, I have decided that the Absurdly Gi-normous Kitty has behaved well enough to have earned a blog mention today.  He let his sister and me sleep all night long and even allowed us to remain in bed a bit later than was usual this morning.  Other than his little freak-out involving the vacuum cleaner later in the day, an event so bizarre and scary that it doesn't bear mentioning, he was the model of purrrrr-fect kittyhood.

Here he is doing That Thing Where He Lays Down, Sinks His Claws Into The Recliner And Then "Runs" Around It:

There was a time when that sort of thing might have scared me a little bit.  No more.  I now know the true dread that comes from fighting a very mean Blog Sweater Curse so this stuff doesn't even cause a ripple in my calm any more.

See you on the other side...

SA