Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Bitch 'n stitch

Being about halfway through the dreaded knitting project (a simple scarf), I feel I should just motor on regardless of the loops and holes and weird variations in thickness I can't explain. So I brought my work to my mom to ask for some advice yesterday and she showed me what I was doing wrong with the purl stitch. She watched me try another row and I was complaining how difficult it was and she thought this was funny because for her knitting (and all other sartorial exercises) is just something she used to do while watching TV before Julia Roberts made it cool. Actually, when she saw me struggling to figure out why I couldn't pull the wool below the needle but had to pull it over the top when I started a new row, she was belly laughing. When I reached the peak of frustration before handing it back to her to sort out, exclaiming "Son of a bitch," that was it. She was just about falling over with tears of jocundity streaming down her face. (You'd have to see my mother laughing to understand just how intense it is. Is she sobbing? No wait, she's laughing. Ha ha. Ha.) At least she told me it made her day to have such a good guffaw. I guess that's a sort of consolation to my lack of knitting skillz. To top it off, I went to a friend's in Vancouver for dinner tonight and she had her knitting project strewn casually on the couch ("Oh, yeah, I just started last week. Isn't it fun?") as a side project to organic gardening and practicing law. Why are the little things in my life so HUGE? I can't even get through a scarf. It takes intense concentration. PLUS, it's not fun. Not really at all. Sitting in bed working through five rows of rib stitch, counting in twos to make sure I don't screw up the order makes me feel like I'm working in a sweat shop. And it's itchy and makes me too hot. That's why I took a knitting hiatus over the summer. But I'm back at it, and I'm going to finish the damn thing by Christmas if it kills me.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Mid-life

I may not be middle-aged, but I think I have reached mid-life.

There are lots of ways to think about dividing life into segments, but lately the way I've been thinking about life is in three parts: school, work and retirement. The first part is easy. Everybody has to go through school, and it's basically the same thing for everyone. We're all equal while we're in school, because the losers and the winners all have to spend the same 10 months going through the same courses to go on to the next Grade. And then, after university, or college, or whatever other plan to stall "real life" has run its course, bam, the second part hits: work.

Unlike school, in which life is neatly segmented into numbered years (Grades 1-12, years 1-4) and expectations around finances (student loan, anyone?) or housing (it's perfectly acceptable to live with mom and dad) are at their lowest, there suddenly comes the moment when school is over, even if you don't want it to be.

If anyone asks you what you're up to when you're enrolled in a course or five, you just nonchalantly answer, "Oh, I'm going to (insert name of university here), getting my (insert name of post-graduate degree here)," and everyone thinks your life is fabulous.

I miss the fabulous. The second part of my life, "work," is a lot more challenging to figure out. Years of work are not neatly numbered. I didn't graduate from Grade 1 of journalism this June, though I had just finished my first full year of full-time work. No one gave me a certificate or anything. My employers do not give me two months off every summer, and I have to pay back the money I borrowed for the first segment of my life.

It's all open-ended. And it freaks me out. I'm 28 and it's September and I'm not in school and I wish I were. I wish I could say I was in grad school. This second part of my life, in which I am expected to just work all the time, has been avoided for as long as possible (I took a year off to go to J-school), but now seems, unfortunately, the reason for my existence. And here's the really scary thing: the third part,"retirement," doesn't happen for a hell of a long time from now, and it's probably going to be a lot shorter than the "work" part. This middle-life stage has got me stumped.

How can I be expected to pursue all that life has to offer and follow my goals and dreams if I have to worry about working all the time? And where are the teachers? How do I know when I'm passing or failing? When's recess?

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Keeping momentum going

The half marathon has been postponed since I hadn't been running before this week in about a month. I don't know how my upward trajectory can suddenly fizzle and fall back to the easy routine of not running at all, especially when I was doing so well, but there it is. Probably a lot to do with leaving my job and moving back to the Lower Mainland. However, all is not lost.

I've been running each day this week, and I'm going to sign up for shorter distance race (8km or 10km?) sometime before Christmas. That will at least motivate my feet to keep going even when the weather is bad. And I don't doubt the weather will be bad again soon since I've recently returned from Merritt to the Lower Mainland. Now that I've got this time to look for other opportunities, I might as well run. A lot.

I'm also taking up knitting again with a vengeance (the scarf must be done by Christmas!) and plannig to learn to cook some real food. One day I'll be a gourmet. One day I will serve a great meal for friends, but for now, I'm just going to get the basics down. Last night I made a really nice sockeye salmon fillet, marinated and baked, with rice and broccoli. Tasty, healthy and oh, so like a real grownup.