I'm seeing socks everywhere....

Ta da! I finished my first pair of socks last night. Of course, now it is getting too warm to consider wearing wool socks, but I can't get grumpy about good weather.

The sock obsession is growing. Today I got a routine email from The Motley Fool (a business/stock-watching website with a sense of humor. Not that I actually follow any of their advice or have any spare money to invest, but getting the occasional e-mail from them makes me feel like I'm not totally out of touch with the real, money-focused world) the subject line of which read: "Simplify Your Stocks". What did I see when I read it? Why "Simplify your SOCKS" of course.

I received my knitpicks order last week and now have three different colors of sock yarn to choose for my next pair:

Flower power, Pansy and New England

I am going to have to set the sock obsession aside next weekend because it looks like I really will have two-days/three-evenings to myself. Brian has promised to take the kids away for the long weekend even though he wasn't organized enough to make a camping reservation at a State Park. He's going to fall back on taking them up to his parents' cabin in Au Gres. I try hard to like the cabin, but it is coated with tchotkes (model light houses, sailboats, etc. which I always encourage the kids to "accidentally" break) and is dusty as hell so I always have an allergy attack when I go there. I have contemplated thoroughly cleaning the place, but it would take all weekend and since I usually go up there to get away from cleaning my own sty-of-a-house, it doesn't really motivate me. I'd rather just not go.

So the kids and Brian will be up there and I intend to invoke the long lost discipline that got me to read books like this in grad school, and use that strength of will to work on my neglected novel. I won't dither away the time knitting or cooking or otherwise avoiding working on the novel. The book needs a thorough revision and a defined structure and finally I have a clue how to impose such order on the verbal chaos I have created. I finished The Stone Diaries last night (loved it) and it occurred to me that the project of that book (a woman's life from birth to death) is just about as sprawling as mine and the author manages not to get bogged down in minutiae. So I'll be spending the weekend with my buddy Valeska Gert, eating a lot of take-out, getting a flat butt from sitting at the computer, and (hopefully) missing my kids so much that I'm ecstatic when they come home.