Cr-r-r-r-r-u-u-u-u-unch!

Yep, I'm still feeling it a little. That crunch. That pressure. That OMG-what-am-I-forgetting-to-do panic. It's better than it was -- the transition and damage control resulting from the departure of a former disgruntled employee is about 80% complete -- but then the holidays hit.

I still have shopping and wrapping to do. I still have baking and cooking, and cleaning, and where the hell are all my gift boxes? My new computer still needs some set-up work, and for some reason my camera software and my computer aren't on speaking terms. I have to fight to get any pictures at all to load, and I just don't have the strength for that right now.

There has been some knitting. I'm maybe three rounds away from finishing the fair isle banded bottom of Catherine Parr. I finished a sock gusset -- the same sock I'd managed to knit half a gusset on during the worst of the work crunch a few weeks ago. I don't think I'll ever be able to look at that sock without remember this time in my life. Wish I could show you a picture of it. Someday!

I was going to take off work the entire week next week -- my big plan was to lay on my couch for as many consecutive days as possible with the clicker in one hand and a jug of wine in the other -- but it looks like I have to work at least a little.

But there will be knitting. Oh, yes, there will be knitting. And someday soon, maybe even pictures of knitting.

The Breaking Point

This is what my breaking point looks like. Take a good look. It's rare that an averted breakdown takes such tangible form.

The story starts, as most of my stories from the last three weeks start, with me chained to my computer in the midst of yet another 14-hour workday. (To be fair, some of my workdays recently were only 12 hours. But some were 16. So we'll call the average at 14 and leave it at that.) (And that's 7 days a week, too.)

Now, some of this extra work has been due to staffing changes at my editing job, and some has been due to one-off issues like the arrival of three new computers which needed set-up, and some has been self-imposed -- I am still trying to maintain an active freelancing business, after all. So we can't really blame any one factor for all the extra work, though the editing job has been more demanding than anything else just now. (But in a good way.)

As much as I love what I do, it was starting to feel a bit like a deathmarch, a long, hard walk that would leave many casualties along the roadside. My knitting was one of those casualties.

Funny thing about knitting. It's a stress reliever. A coping mechanism. What happens when you take away coping mechanisms during a demanding time?

Yep. The pressure starts to build.

So Tricia at Nana's Knitting shop emails me Friday morning and mentions a new shipment of Shaeffer Anne. From that moment on, I can't think about anything except:
1) Knitting, and
2) All the things I had to do that day which would prevent me from knitting.

These emails were exchanged around 45 minutes from lunchtime. As those 45 minutes ticked by, I became more and more impatient to do something at least related to knitting. And, did I mention, a new shipment of Anne?

So naturally, I went to the shop.

Where a funny thing happened.

People were knitting at the back table as they often do. I was watching them, picking out my yarn -- at this point, by the way, I've abandoned my skinny-4-stash plan because the damn doctor changed my damn meds and I gained 8 pounds the first week alone and I am super-pissed, but that's another story -- and the sight of all that knitting was almost mesmerizing.

I wanted to buy ever skein of Anne. (Nothing unusual about that.) I wanted to buy pairs of every color of the new shipment of Dale Baby Ull, one of my favorite yarns of all time.

But mostly, I wanted to sit and knit a while.

I think Tricia could sense how close I was to cracking. She let me rattle on about a problem at work for a while, and then mentioned a few or ten times how she was just sure my knitting bag was in the car. It was not. It was gathering dust back at the house.

But with every word she spoke, and with every stitch taken by those beautifully calm and smiling knitters at the table, the need to knit built in me.

Until finally, I literally threw up my arms -- I just barely managed to avoid shouting, "Fuck it all!" -- and announced I was buying sock needles to go with my sock yarn so that I could join them all for an hour of bliss.

The release, the rush, it's hard to explain. It felt like chains fell off my body in that moment. My hands were shaking. No exaggeration. I literally felt like I had called a halt, right then and there, and was giving myself permission to return to a more sane life.

So you see that little baby sock cuff at the top of the post? It's not just any ordinary sock cuff. It's a blow for freedom and sanity and a balanced life.

These might just turn out to be my favorite socks of all time.

Not Dead. Not Kidnapped. Just Crazy Busy.

I'm still here, y'all.

A few days before Thanksgiving, we had a staffing change at my workplace. This led to me temporarily taking over someone else's workload while we figured a few things out. And ... to be delicate ... there were some problems in that workload. 'Nuff said.

I've been putting in monster hours trying to get pieces of that workload either finished or set up to hand off to others. Other things are going on, too. Hello, holidays? The staffing change became official about 40 hours before my entire family arrived at my house for Thanksgiving dinner. And then we began the inescapable round of shopping and other related activities with my mother, who gets a little wacky this time of year. Dad is threatening to start grinding up valium and hiding it in the orange juice. Sounds like a fine idea to me.

Guess we know where I get it from, eh?

I have knit exactly half of one sock gusset in the last two weeks. This is not improving my stress level.

So today, this morning, to celebrate the fact that I can see a vague flicker of light at the end of the maddening tunnel, I decided to try to read a few blogs. Get caught up with what's going on in knitlandia. And I found this entirely too appropriate quiz on Rabbitch's blog.


Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

You are Gaius Caesar Germanicus - better known as Caligula!

Third Emperor of Rome and ruler of one of the most powerful empires of all time, your common name means "little boots". Although you only reigned for four years, brief even by Roman standards, you still managed to garner a reputation as a cruel, extravagant and downright insane despot. Your father died in suspicious circumstances, you were not the intended heir, and one of your first acts as Emperor was to force the suicide of your father-in-law. Your sister Drusilla died that same year; faced with allegations that your relationship with her had been incestuous, you responded, bafflingly, by declaring her a god.

You revived a number of unpopular traditions, including auctions of properties left over from public shows. When a senator fell asleep at one such auction, you took each of his nods as bids, selling him 13 gladiators for a vast sum. You attempted to have your horse, Incitatus, made into a consul and hence one of the most powerful figures in Rome. It was granted a marble stable with jewels and a staff of servants. At one point you forced your comrade Macro to kill himself - in much the same vein as your father-in-law - accusing him of being his wife's pimp. You, of course, were having an affair with said wife at the time.

Things went from bad to worse. When supplies of condemned men ran short in the circus, you had innocent spectators dragged into the arena with the lions to fill their place. You claimed mastery of the sea by walking across a three-mile bridge of boats in the Bay of Naples; kissed the necks of your lovers, whispering sweet nothings like "This lovely neck will be chopped as soon as I say so,"; dallied with your sister's lover and made her pull her unborn child out of her womb prematurely. Towards the end of your reign, you had a golden statue of yourself made and dressed each day in the same clothes you yourself wore. When you eventually died, the terrified people of Rome refused to believe that such a cruel reign could ever end, and believed you to be alive for years afterwards.