Come in, she said

Things were a little surreal in our quiet little corner of Boston yesterday - I wrote this last night.  There was a silent protest/vigil planned for this evening at the big rotary a few blocks from us, mostly aimed at the folks in Rozzie/West Roxbury.  We planned on walking over after work. 

About midday, our local FB group started buzzing... some fucknut on Twitter had posted the flyer from the vigil with a call to arms that "tonight was the night" to move into the residential neighborhoods and "take what was theirs".  Consensus seems to be Twitter was flooded with this crap all weekend, it's most likely just MAGA assholes trying to stir up tension and amp up police (and make it look like it was coming from Antifa and Black Lives Matter, which I have no words for), but still. We briefly discussed whether we still wanted to go (hell yes) and headed over as planned.

It was exactly what I expected... mostly white allies, trying to show support, few if any people with any claim to the kind of personal anger or desperation that might lead to the tension that sparks a riot, holding an almost stereotypical peaceful vigil with a lot of black lives matter signs, everyone wearing masks and politely putting space between every little knot of people, mostly honks of support from the backed up traffic (including several people who did multiple laps of the area).  In other words, NOT the kind of gathering that would normally pique any cop interest, except maybe a traffic detail. (I know, any crowd can lose it, don't me, but I've been to a lot of these kinds of protests.)

And yet.  The businesses we could see? All boarded up. (FB would later show me business all over Rozzie Square and WR also getting boarded up.) And the police presence was insane - there's a precinct house literally right on the rotary (it was also lightly barricaded, with a line of cops in front of it), but this was way more than that.  There were cops everywhere. I might have written it off as tensions are high, they're on high alert, but then, as we were standing there, a BPD truck carrying a portable panopticon tower pulled into the parking lot across the street. A few minutes later, three MBTA buses full of cops pulled up over there as well. 

And here's the thing that felt really obvious about where the cops were - they looked like they were ENTIRELY there to protect the church behind us, the parish school where they were parked and the precinct house.  They were not positioned so that they could do anything to protect the crowd, they were doing little to manage the traffic or the people trying to cross the streets.  They were standing in clusters at each of the church doors, in the school parking lot (which is high above where the crowd was), making sure no one entered the parking area.

In the end, nothing much happened. We stood there for an hour or so, people drove by and honked, we read signs and tried to figure out how to smile at strangers while wearing a mask.  Eventually the folks organizing the vigil came around and thanked us for coming out and shooed us gently towards home (cognizant, I'm sure that one of the turning points for violence is when the cops try to make people leave before they are ready to disperse). We walked home and chatted with our neighbors. We tucked our cars that usually park on the street into the driveway for the night, just in case.

Now it's after 11, and everything is quiet.  It seems that that whatever 'threat' there may have been out there probably wasn't ever real, and was just assholes trying to stir shit up and make people nervous.  Scared and nervous people, even well intentioned ones, do a lot of damn stupid things, after all. And at the end of it, I am rather at a loss for words. I want to find something profound to say but it's still a jumble in my head, so I'm settling for writing what I have, so I'll remember the details once I've has some time to think.

Right now the main thing I want to remember is how unsettling it felt, to worry that my quiet little neighborhood was going to see the same kind of damage that other cities are seeing, to worry that something we going to go badly at our little vigil. To be there, scanning the crowd, watching for anyone who looked like they wanted to cause trouble.  To feel the looming presence of the cops and be afraid of what might happen if someone DID decide to start problems. 

I just re-read my last entry on here, which is almost two years old, and I am astonished.

I need another madcap, let's do something crazy stupid at the last minute adventure in my life.

I keep thinking to post here, and then I look over how much has changed in the time since I last wrote here regularly (and how much has NOT - I am looking at you, job), and I kind of freeze up. I think I just need to get over myself, stop worrying about playing catch up and just start writing again.

We're a week out from Christmas, and I feel like I have most of my crap kind of, somewhat, sort of under control. This is amazing - I never have my shit together for Christmas. It might be because for the first time in many years I am not managing multiple crises on the personal and/or work fronts in the weeks leading up to the holiday. Or maybe I'm just trying to keep busy so that I don't have time to think to much. These days, that does not lead to good places in my head.

I wrapped all the gifts I had in the house already over the weekend - I have about 4 more inbound and a couple of handknits to wrap. H and I are dialing back cookie production this year to three recipes we've made before, and two varieties of dressed up nuts. The only kink in those works is that our schedule for the tail end of the week has need up pretty chunked up, making it tough to find good cookie making blocks of time. But, I am sure we will figure it out - we always do!

Unusually for us, we are going to be hosted a small Christmas gathering at our place on the day off, after scheduling imploded for trying to find a way to see everyone on Christmas Day (the joy of mixing families with many different traditions). I think that we're announcing on family gathering day that we intend to either stay home again next year or to go to New Mexico so that we can spend Christmas with W's mom - which we have not done in many years. Or maybe we'll see about going somewhere warm and tropical for the holiday. But I am super looking forward to hosting and cooking a nice meal - there will be few enough of us that I might even break out the fancy china I "inherited" from my mom a year ago. Gotta figure out what I am going to cook, still.

On the knitting front, I may be in a little trouble - I am committed to finishing the repair on W's stocking, and he is waiting for a hat I promised him ages ago (slow going, since I am designing it myself). I promised another friend a hat a year ago, and I'd like to have that for him by New Years, if I can, and yesterday I agreed to make pussy hats for two of my church friends to wear to the march in Washington next month.

Man, the Yarn Harlot managed to perfectly nail why I have been wicked cranky at the weather lately.

She wrote:

 A little while ago, the weather here made that mysterious leap from autumn to early winter, and all of a sudden I can't get warm.  The house can't get warm, it's like the heat won't sink in to it and nothing is cozy. I feel like the light of autumn is golden and warm, and then there's this shift, and the trees are bare, and the light (what little of it there is) seems thin and blue.   This phase passes.  It's a temporary thing, like everyone walking around right now when it's -1 and saying "It's so cold out".  Come January you're dreaming of -1, and by March you think that temp is a sign of spring.  What seems like the cruelty of early winter will give way soon to deep winter, with snow, darkness and storms outside, and candles, sparkles and coziness in the house.  You just have to get over the soul crushing hump of accepting another winter, let your inner thermostat remember how to deal with it.

We keep sinking down to the point where I'm adjusting to it being winter (which I love), but before we can make the last leap of transition to coziness and shelter, mother nature yanks us back to fall with a beautiful 65 degree day. I know that on one hand I should be grateful for the generous beautiful day, but part of me really just wants to get the transition over with, and I won't get caught sweltering or freezing because I did / didn't need a coat yesterday, so why would I today?

Plus, planning a beef stew and then having to eat it on a day better suited to a BBQ just feels WRONG.

I should have known that this month long posting every day thing wasn't going to happen, but I actually made it further than I expected.  Life is a little too crazy right now, and I'm a little too sleep deprived.

Helping a dear friend through a crisis (that so far looks like it will end well, but there's still plenty of room for it to go pear-shaped on her), a couple of overnight baby shifts to help keep Carrie from completely losing her mind, and a test knitting project that is getting very close to the deadline and is not nearly finished enough piled on top of normal life have all combined to turn me into a giant ball of stress.  I hadn't realized how bad it was until I realized yesterday that I was driving around with my jaw clenched so tight that my neck and face were throbbing.  And I was just running errands, not doing anything warranting that level of mental torque, at least not right in that moment.

I'm a worrier by nature, and that's especially true when there's situations where I can't do anything to help.  I gather in all that stress and clutch it to me, as if I hold it tight enough, I'll be able to move the universe with the power of my mind and make things tun out OK.

Since I realized just how stressed I was feeling yesterday, I've been trying to pull myself back from it, mostly by noticing when I'm starting to tense up and taking a minute or two to breathe and let it go.  It's working remarkably well. Tonight I am going to settle into my couch with the test knitting and make some progress - double bonus, since I'll be moving forward on something stressing and knitting is a great relaxation tool - and I'm going to try to get to bed early enough to get some good sleep in.

Any other suggestions, besides a good glass of wine to go with the knitting tonight?

In good things, Hannah's chorus had their first concert Friday night, and it was lovely. Tonight is our third installment of kid's cooking night, and this week looks (so far) like it is going to be much more calm.

This year, Miss Hannah decided to be a lion. After I might have been a little grumpy about her asking for another iteration of princess again this year.

But isn't she an adorable lion?



We went light on pumpkins this year - I was not up for 5 or 10 pumpkin lanterns.

Hannah went for a bat, and picked out a vampire for me and Wiley went off on his geeky way with his own thing. Lots of compliments on them - I can only imagine people haven't seen the template books that make it wicked easy to have fancy carvings.

I've been TALKING about wanting to get chickens for a very long time now. I have never actually managed to do it, because there were just enough complicated bits that I never quite wrapped my head around getting it all done. I mean - just the description of ordering wee baby chicks alone was enough to make my head spin, never mind picked a coop, figuring out how to care for them, worrying about the neighborhood coyotes, not to mention the neighbors.

A few weeks ago, a friend of Wiley's mentioned that they were moving to a bigger coop, and might we want their Eglu? They'd be happy to include the two adult chickens who had been living together in the space as well - a little starter flock!

Today was the chicken pickup day, and Wiley headed out this morning to their place, way up on the end of the North Shore. Dismantled the coop, packed it all up, boxed up the chickens and drove them home.

We just spent about an hour getting them settled in and introducing them to our cats - Cosmo seems intimidated and not quite sure what to think, while Pye seems to think they look pretty tasty. We're pretty sure they won't be able to get into the run, but we'll be keeping an eye on them for the next few days.

Hannah is going to get to name one of them, and I have my heart set on naming the other Camilla. It may be a bit cliché, but Gonzo has always been one of my favorite Muppets, so Camilla it is.

Here they are, all settled into their new home!



On the crafty front, I am almost to the end of my first scarf - I'm hoping to finish it up tonight and take it off the loom. I already know what I want as my second project. I've picked a name for the loom - taking Kati's suggestions as a jumping off point, I looked up "weave" in a bunch of different languages. According to Babelfish, in Italian, it is "tessuto". I don't know if it's quite right, Babelfish being what it is and all, but Tess seems to be a good fit for the loom, and so shall she be christened.

I'm also getting ready to head off to Squam for SAW this week. I'm not sure how, but it went from being very far away to being in less than a week! This is the first year I haven't had to run around buying all kinds of weird supplies - my classes are all either things I've done before (knitting and embroidery) or are providing the supplies (woodworking). I'm appreciating the chance to have a more relaxed run up to the vacation this year, and I think it's making me look forward to it even more.

Never content to stick with one hobby for too long, this yea, I decided that I wanted to learn to weave.

So, for my birthday, I asked for a loom. Sadly, there's not space in my house now for a floor loom, but there is for a little table loom.

On Monday, Wiley gifted me with this:



Last night, gala came over and helped me get her warped for the first time. Hannah picked out some yarns and my first project is going to be a scarf for her.

WAY faster than knitting, I learned how to warp the thing and got about 5 inches of weaving done just last night.

Dear Hannah,

Today is your tenth birthday, and as you pass into double digits, I need to take a minute to capture you in this moment. Although I insist on still calling you Peanut, you are anything but a peanut anymore.

Yesterday was class picture day at your dance studio and you nearly had your picture taken with only one ballet shoe, because somehow you managed to pack only one to bring with you. That so perfectly captures you at this age - together enough to remember to grab your dance gear, but scattered enough to not make sure you have both shoes that I am a little sad your teacher managed to scavenge a shoe for you to wear.



You just came home from your Model UN trip, we spent the three weeks before arguing about whether you could buy heels for your trip. You, of course, insisted that you were old enough, while I refused to believe it. A smart friend suggested that you might be ready for a pair for special occasions and for practicing in at home, and she was totally right. The look on your face when you unwrapped the box tonight was just what I was hoping for, and nothing compared to the look on your dad's face as he watched you put them on.



I love how interested you are in everything around you. You complain that the news is "boring", but read your way right through adult books, even when the topic seems like it should be far over your head. You are sure you know just how to solve all the world's problems, and I need to learn to remember not to ruin your hope with reality, at least not all the time. The reality of the life of a tween girl is enough reality for the both of us anyway.

This has been the longest and the quickest decade of my life, and the only things I would change are the moments I've not managed to be the mom I want to be for you. I had NO IDEA what I was getting into the day you arrived, and most of the time, I'm still never sure I'm making the right calls. But I see you growing into an amazing young woman, and hope its because we're getting it right more often than we don't.

I asked you this evening how it felt to be 10, and you very seriously told me that it did feel different yet, but that was because the fairy of ten would take 24 hours to find you and work her magic before you felt different. You were very confident that she would arrive right on time tomorrow at 9:44. I hope she doesn't disappoint.

This morning, Hannah was all excited about the book she's reading at school. "Mom, you're NEVER going to guess what I'm reading! It's a classic!"

We go back and forth a few times, and she tells me it's by Shakespeare. I guess Romeo and Juliet, to which she says "I wish. But we don't have a version that has been translated into English."

...