Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Can I sail through the changing ocean tides; can I handle the seasons of my life?

Do I remember how to do this? Write, that is. I never write anything any more, except some scribbled post-it notes to myself at work, or maybe some observations when I'm interviewing a job candidate. I even put my grocery list on my iphone. The new and improved internet has become a Reader's Digest version of life. It started when Facebook became the trend. Then came Twitter, and suddenly your thoughts had to be condensed to 140 characters to fit. There's a whole generation of people who have forgotten (or never learned) how to spell and punctuate properly from years of texting. I'm one of the few people in my neighborhood who still has a daily subscription to the newspaper, even though I skim it most days except Sunday. I still go to the library and check out books. Oh, I tried downloading a book and reading it on my phone, and I can see how that's handy if you travel a lot and don't want to lug multiple books along, but it made my eyes hurt after a while. Maybe if I got a Kindle it wouldn't happen, but I don't buy books that often, though they are often my gifts of choice, ranking right up there with yarn.

OK, Must.Stop.Now. Starting to sound like an old person, and I'm still too young to be an old person, right? Right??? Even though the end of June is looking me in the face again.

Life has had its ups and downs since I last wrote. Last fall was my 20th wedding anniversary, which we celebrated with a child-free trip to Disneyworld while my parents stayed with the kids. The boys are finishing up school soon--Beaker finishing third grade, and Pigpen (must find a new name for him--suggestions, audience?) will be finishing kindergarten. I'm working every day now while they're in school, about 32 hours per week. We're taking a break from tae kwon do to play baseball (well, T-ball for the little guy.) It's been interesting, I've met some nice people, and I can say with certainty that at least one little league team (including coaches and parents) is now thoroughly versed in Asperger's syndrome, but this will likely be our only year of doing this. For the first time ever, I'll be putting the boys in day care for the summer instead of working odd hours and trying to fill in gaps with a teenage babysitter. The public school has a program, and it sounds fun, so I hope they won't hate it too much. Beaker is having a cow, because we've never done it this way before! (typical Aspie reaction)

I've been knitting pretty regularly, thanks to a cool bunch of local knitters I found via Ravelry about a year ago, and am almost finished with a real pair of socks, in the Tonks colorway of Opal Harry Potter yarn. I'm still the slowest knitter of anyone I know, so my stash just keeps multiplying. I don't have the gift of being able to knit and do much else, unless it's the simplest of patterns, so I spend a lot of time ripping back, or movie-watching without knitting. I tried listening to books on CD while knitting, but they make me fall asleep, no matter how interesting the material. Plus I'm impatient; I read super-fast, so the idea of listening to someone else read out loud for 9 hours when I could read the book myself in half that just makes me want to scream.

C u l8r. ;-)