A Celebration of the Ordinary -- Long Form

Clean underwear is underrated. And I don't mean just any clean underwear. Today I refilled the top drawer in the dresser with my favorites, an abundance of freshly laundered underpants, which gives me a peaceful, easy feeling. Am I alone in enoying that moment, I wonder?

These last three-ish weeks when I was so busy at work that time for laundry was nonexistent, I got into the dregs of the underwear drawer. Maybe I'm the weirdo here, but my underwear drawer is layered. The top layer contains all my favorites, the no-fail always-comfortable variety. The middle holds the B-strings comprised of older former favorites. And the dregs contain either the embarassingly ratty or else pairs that over and over again leave me asking myself "What was I thinking when I bought those!?" Today I climbed out of the dregs I've been living in and I'm ready for next week. In any case, let the state of my underwear drawer today be a metaphor of my feeling of general well-being. And you thought this was a knitting blog.


I'm mostly out of the insanity at work -- I hope. This week will be busy again, but I think I will be able to get home before 8 p.m. each night and maybe even enjoy a few meals in the kitchen with Mr. Julie. And best yet, I may not have to continue working into the night even after I get home. Poor Groucho the Wonderpooch has been feeling so neglected that on Thursday night he pushed his way onto my lap around 10:30 and forced me to take a break. Here you see him on my lap, bathed in the glow of the monitor, and checking things over.

We had such a fine fall day today that Mr. Julie and I headed to the backyard to dig out the shin-deep leaves. We have 14 trees and 3 hedge rows that create quite a mess. We're thinking of having a passel of kids just so we have help for fall cleanup. I've heard that's a great reason to have kids.

I was on leaf-bagging duty while Mr. Julie pushed all the leaves into sizey piles for me to pick up (see "picking up nails" reference). In order to flatten the bottoms of the paper leaf refuse bags we used, I had to insert my head and entire upper body into the bag a la Charlie Brown. While I was inside of one leaf bag, Mr. Julie decided to make it difficult for me to extricate myself, causing no little amount of frustration and panic for yours truly.

For a moment out there today, I imagined myself in a romantic comedy (presuming anyone would want to watch me and Mr. Julie, two fine, but pasty Midwesterners fall in love) with some happy love ditty by Harry Connick, Jr., fading in to create a mushy-mushy music video scene. In it I would not bumble around in the paper leaf bag but would exit it laughing prettily and twinkly-eyed, I'd throw leaves at Mr. Julie, he'd throw some back, I'd throw some more, somehow we'd find ourselves lying in a large pile of leaves on the ground, the tension would grow, the tension would grow to be too much, I'd swoon in his arms while he kissed me with heavy-lidded passion. And that, my friends, is where the scene would end because, I ask: What girl wants to get itchy, scratchy leaves in her hair, her mouth, under her shirt, and worse, down her pants? The End.

Actually, we had a delightful day, we did throw some leaves at each other, and we took lots of deep breaths of that gorgeous fall-scented air. And we shook our fists at the heavens for sending breezes that blew more leaves from the trees onto the lawn we'd just cleared.

And because this is a knitting blog, after all, I've got this to report: I knit 4 rows last night.