True Love

Well, it hasn't been as bad as Phoenix here, but it sure hasn't been pleasant--yesterday the heat index was 109. The Ts never did get out to play--at midnight it was every bit as hot and muggy as it had been at 9 p.m. We got some rain today, and it's cooled off some, but the humidity is still way up there, so I'm running the AC in the living room just to dry things out. I'm so ready for autumn. My favorite season.

Monday afternoon I started feeling queasy. Then Monday evening I threw up my dinner. Now, I'm not the throwing-up kind--I haven't thrown up since 1980, when I caught flu the first week I was in Dallas (unfamiliar germs). I stayed home Tuesday, and I've been queasy all week, and eating things like jello, gingersnaps, white chicken and white rice, saltines... Not fun.

School starts Monday, and today was the first day of our 2-day orientation for teaching and graduate assistants, and things just blew up at work--my desk looks like someone emptied a paper shredder over it. People are bringing me syllabi and various forms and I'm trying to alphabetize 2000 writing placement exams (my least favorite task), and taking numerous phone messages. At the same time, our faculty's personal lives are crumbling: one had a family member die a couple of days before another family member underwent their 2nd or 3rd surgery of the summer; one had his rental truck catch fire on his cross-country move; another had an accident and what may turn out to be a serious head injury. You remember Wile E. Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons, putting up that rickety little umbrella as the gigantic boulder came whizzing down on him?

Today at noon I had to go get my hair cut, then went to the store for more bland food, then came back to let the dogs out and get something to eat. I checked the mail while we were out, and there was a box from a yarn store. I thought--??? Have I been ordering yarn in my sleep again??? It took a while to find something I could eat--the fridge is old (it's avocado, if that tells you anything), and doesn't deal well with the kind of weather we've been having, so stuff goes bad quickly--so in the end I only had about 5 minutes or so to open the box--

and discovered that my darling sister had signed me up to a sock yarn club for my birthday!!

It's the Simply Socks club, and the yarn is from Sleeping Dragon Hand Painted Yarns, colorway Ramble. 100% superwash merino, fingering weight, 450 yards. I couldn't get the colors to come out right in these pictures--the blue is way too bright--it's really navy--and the yellow is really gold. But it gives you an idea. Sort of "old school tie" colors, and I can't wait to do a few swatches; I bet it knits up pretty.





Sisters are such great people.