Actually, not so much learned late as relearned. Ah well...
Story to follow when all the parties involved are dead.
In case you haven't guessed, it's been a rough couple of weeks in my world.
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Su and I rode south with our friends C and E. We visited the Newport Aquarium in Newport, KY, making a few stops along the way to enjoy snacks and gorgeous weather.
Saving the rest of the pics for Su's upcoming newspaper article.
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Hanna Montana Jammies made bu Su, with help from Ms. Patty and Mom. 
One Purple (really, it is purple) slipper, pre-felting. Water boiling as we speak. Felting to follow. Within moments, really. 
One green slipper, pre-felting. It's mate will be completed by bedtime. 
Grey slippers, already felted. 
The slipper pattern is all Knitty, "fuzzy feet." The yarn is lamb's pride and they are knitted on size 9 dpn's. the pattern recommended a 16-inch circ, which I purchased for the project and found to be useless.
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I snapped this pic several days ago whilst my Friday Music Class listened to Benjamin Britten. No devil's workshop here, that's for sure.
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There were truffles and cupcakes too, the cupcakes made by Su. Yay!!
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We are finally feeling a bit more settled in our new home, though I have to admit the sewing/craft room isn't totally unpacked and has some pictures in there in boxes that will eventually need to be hung. I am not even close to ready to think about picture placement. It could be months before I am.
Susie and I are madly working on the next issue of HomeSchool Monthly, due to be published this Friday. There were lots of great submissions this month, so Su is struggling with making them all fit or making cuts. That's the hardest part of being the editor. Luckily, Su is pretty tough and can handle it.
Tomorrow is Fat Tuesday, so we'll be having breakfast at Chez Collins. I may make pancakes for supper tomorrow night once we are all home from our various activities. Seems a little greedy to do both though, especially since there will be no Lenten deprivation in our house. I have never believed in giving things up for the few weeks of Lent. If I need to give something up, it needs to be done for good. Otherwise, I enjoy my vices with impunity, which seems completely fair, seeing as how I have no vices that hurt anyone but me.
So, I guess that's all there is to say on this very lovely Monday morning. Feliz Mardi Gras!
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I am absolutely sure that some people should never be parents. My own do not fall into that category, though, at times when, for reasons of emotion, I cannot keep things in perspective, I might say they do. I am thinking of people whose very souls are rotten. My parents had robust spirits. They were, if nothing else, filled with life. In fact, come to think of it, that may be their very best quality -- robustness of spirit.
Have you ever met someone with a truly rotten soul? I have. For the most part, I find these people more sad than frightening and feel more pity for them than horror or anger. Nonetheless, they repel. They are the people you find worse than scary. They seem to carry darkness with them everywhere, but not in the same was as someone who greaves a loss. Their darkness is held in an otherwise empty vessel.
My parents were not dark, not at all. So I guess, on many levels, I am glad to have had them. So that’s also why I cannot imagine having different parents. The ones I had sufficed.
In my work with children, I have encountered soulless parents. Some of them were probably dark from the very beginning. Others grew dark through pain and abuse and loss. Still others actually chose darkness. These are the folks whose own realities are too painful for normal mortals to survive. They have to disconnect or die. They are not sufficient unto themselves, much less their kids.
There are times when I am quite sure Su would be better off with other parents. At those times I am sure I have screwed up so royally that there will be no redemption for me or for her. Those are the moments when I quite seriously wonder how much Su will spend on therapy to deal with trauma caused by bad parenting. Luckily, those moments are balanced by an equal number of times when I have been sure I have done the right things or said the right things in my mom role. I can’t really imagine Su with other parents either. Paul and I will suffice.
Do we all wonder these things? Do we all believe ourselves to be substandard parents? Are we all sure our own parents were, in some ways, substandard too? Or am I alone in this place of constant questioning and doubt?
Wasn’t this a pleasant blog for a grey winter morning?
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I was wrong.
“How can everybody go to heaven,” he asked. “What do you have to do to get there?”
“You don’t have to do anything,” I replied. “
“But the Bible says some people won’t get to heaven. Do you use the Bible in your church?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then, what is your main book?” he asked.
“We don’t have a main book. All books are equal,” I told him. (Leaving out my thought that Michael Chrichton and Elmore Leonard are NOT equal to E. Annie Proulx or Thomas Hardy, figuring that would muddy the waters too.)
“What do you read on Sunday mornings?“ he asked before another thought entered his head. “Do you meet on Sundays?”
“Yes, we do and we read all kinds of things.”
“The Bible?”
“Once in a while, but we are as likely to read the Koran or Talmud or some such other religious book and more likely to read poems.”
“But what is your church’s doctrine?”
That one stumped me momentarily. I don’t have the 7 principals memorized and wasn’t carrying them in my bag. “Justice,” I told him after a moment’s thought. “Justice is the basic doctrine that we all agree on. And there isn’t much we agree on. Justice would be the one thing we could all say we strive for.”
“Do you believe in Jesus? I guess you wouldn’t, because you haven’t read the Bible.”
“I have read the Bible. I know the Bible very, very well. Better than most Christians, in my experience. And I do believe in Jesus. There is no doubt in my mind that Jesus was real and that his teachings are important. In fact, I am currently teaching a Sunday School class about the Gospels.”
“Oh,” he said, “then your church is Christian.”
“Some of us are. Others are Jewish or Muslim or atheist or Buddhist or some other thing or nothing at all.”
“How does that work?” he asked.
“Very well,” I told him.
“So you are a Christian?” he asked.
“Not so much“, I answered.
“Will you go to heaven?”
“I’ll wait and see,” I answered having decided not to mention that I have already been dead twice and, if I were going by that experience alone, I would have to say there is no heaven after death.
“What do you mean you’ll wait and see?”
“I mean, I don’t need to know what comes next right now. I can wait and see what happens. Not knowing is totally okay for me.”
“Oh.”
Then another question came to his mind, “How to Unitarian Universalists propogate the faith?”
I refrained from telling him I birthed one and said simply, “We don’t.”
“Don’t you have missionaries?”
“Nope.”
“Are there a lot of Unitarian Universalists?”
“A few thousand in Columbus, lots more around the world.”
“Then, there must be something very appealing in the life and beliefs of your church for there to be so many Unitarian Universalists.”
“There is, I told him,” wondering if that qualified as proselytization.
This was followed by several questions about the history of Uuism and about 1st UU Columbus in particular. I gave him the boiler plate history lesson.
Keep in mind, I only live about 10 minutes from church, so this conversation was only about 10 minutes long. I was exhausted by the time I got off the bus and went in my back door.
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However many boxes you think you’ll need, you are wrong. You will need more. Lots more.
There is a reason moving is put on many lists of “most stressful life events.”
My marriage is a lot stronger than I thought and I thought it was pretty darned strong.
Child labor laws do not apply to household moving with one’s own parents.
It is possible to be extremely grateful to someone and want to kill him at the same time.
The new place is always better. Always. Even if it’s not. But it is, so that’s that.
A person is allowed to blow off all of her extra-necessitous activities in order to make the move go on time and smoothly.
Good movers are hard to find and, when they are found, should be generously tipped.
It is essential that one get rid of all clutter of all kinds while still in the old house.
There is nothing more depressing than realizing you have paid to move crap you haven’t used in ten years and will not use for another ten at least.
If crap gets moved, it will be your spouse’s fault. Always and totally.
It pays in long-term sanity to get unpacked right away.
It also pays to not hang pictures and other art immediately. In a few weeks, you’ll know better where you want them.
If you have a piano, it’s worth the extra money to hire professional piano movers.
The remote controls will NOT all make it to the new home. No matter how hard you try and no matter how sure you are they were all packed, at least one of your family’s remote controls will disappear. It will no doubt go hang out with all the world’s missing socks.
Moving can test your friendships. Hire professional movers.
Moving is stressful, but compared to heart surgery, is a breeze. Keep it in perspective if you can.
Anti-anxiety drugs are wonderful.
However long you think the movers will take, you are wrong. They may take more time. They may take less. You will never make a good estimate. Neither will the moving company rep who comes to make your estimate. Only the guys doing the actual moving will be able to eyeball all your junk and figure out how long it will take to get you moved.
It does not pay to have the movers pack for you. They won’t know what to throw away.
Use FreeCycle or Craig’s List to get rid of junk that wouldn’t be junk to someone else before you pay to move it all.
If, over the years, you have borrowed items from friends, before the move is the right time to return them.
February is a bad time to move. The mere februarishness of it gives you too many reasons to worry.
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Have made significant progress on the Making-it-up-as-I-Knit sweater for Su. Here it is in multiple stages of development. I am now working the shoulders and neckline. Will add sleeves ans it'll be done. 
I have started slippers for Su and Paul in colours of their choice. The pattern is from Knitty Winter 2008 and the yarn is Lamb's Pride.
And, finally, here is the very beginning of another square for The Apalachian Afgan Project. That's the template for the squares next to the yarn.
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We have a cat. Actually, if I am being completely honest about the relationship, I should say a cat has us. Our cat is King David. He came to us already thus named. He is a hand-me-down cat, whom we adopted when he was about year old. He’d already been fixed and seems not to hold us responsible for that, although I’d have gotten him fixed if he hadn’t been already. This morning, I was talking with King David about the move. He walked in whilst I was using the rest room and announced that he was displeased. After some discussion, I discovered that the source of his annoyance was a filled box. Our house is wall-to-wall boxes now, in preparation for moving. They are stacked pretty much everywhere. King David was, at first, very satisfied with the boxes. Empty, they made more than adequate hiding places and, when stacked properly, created cat fortresses all over the house, fortresses which could be knocked down with the tap of a royal paw. Well, now that the boxes are mostly full, Kind David is irritated with me, his most loyal and obedient subject. Evidently, last night, I filled a box particularly prized by His Imperial Catness. This was a box that sat upon our staircase landing for less than a day. Its location was, for the humans of the house, quite inconvenient, so at first opportunity, I filled it with objects to be moved to the new house and moved it into a stack of boxes ready for the movers. Unbeknownst to me, this box had become one favored by King David. Being raised up from the main floor and at the bottom of the steps from the second, it was situated so that, from its interior, a stealthy feline could watch for marauders approaching from the highlands or from parts below. A vigilant cat such as Kind David could protect his realm, not to mention His Royal Self from any threat, real or imagined. Kind David scolded me, as he pointed out the spot where the empty box had once been. He was beside himself to the extent that only royals can be. Being the only one of King David’s subjects at hand, I knew the task of rectifying the Sovereign’s humor fell to me. Dutifully, I transferred the contents of the box in question to another. King David spent exactly 30 seconds within the box, once it had been returned to its place on the landing. He was content until something went awry in one of the nether regions of the realm. Then, he was off like the dashing Monarch he is, to rule and defend in the utmost corners of Catdom.
You're Nobody 'Til You've Been Ignored By A Cat
Marauders be damned!
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It’s done and I am wearing it, as I type. Have actually started another like it for Su. Here are the final pics:
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The problem isn’t the cold or the snow. It’s the infernal greyness of it all. For weeks - no months - it is dismally overcast. A grey cloud settles over Columbus sometime in mid-November and doesn’t lift til April. This may be an exaggeration, but not much of one. Ask anyone who has lived here for more than 3 years. He or she will tell you Central Ohio in winter is grey.
Sure, every now and then, we get a sunny day, usually after a good, solid snow has fallen. On those days, the sun glares off the snow and folks pull out their winter sun glasses for driving. Those days make us all think winter isn’t so bad after all. But we never get more than two such days in a row and that’s only if we’re really lucky. Eventually, the skies revert to their perpetual winter greyness and we are reminded that, oh yeah, we live in Columbus, the grey place.
Sometimes, we fantasize about excursions to island resorts and tropical cruises. Once in a while, we actually indulge in such escapes. Some of us install full-spectrum light bulbs. Others of us take vitamin D by the bottleful. Some folks, who are inclined toward psychiatric solutions, ask their shrinks for stronger anti-depressants. Many of us drink.
But mostly, we endure. We are mid-westerners after all. We may complain about winter, but we know it to be an immovable force, like taxes and God. You can bitch and moan about it, but, one way or another, you’re gonna have to deal with it. So, pragmatic people that we are, we do just that. We survive.
And I think that might be the lesson grey winters have to teach us. Winter goes on and on, always, it seems, sucking up way more than the three months allotted it by the calendar. Winter here is so long that even the most optimistic Midwesterners start to doubt it will ever end. Some time in January, or if we’re really tough - February, we start to despair. By early March, we despond. Then, just when we are ready to move to Norway, where the government will treat our depression for free, winter ends. By then, it’s Easter and we are so sick of wearing wool that we are sure the risen lord came not to redeem our souls but to tell us it’s time to rotate our closets.
Winter teaches us a great deal about patience and survival and Midwestern endurance. It teaches us that nothing is really forever. If you wait long enough, even winter passes.
So, that’s what I’m doing these days. I’m waiting for winter to pass. Waiting for Jesus to come and tell me I can put my sweaters in a box under the bed. I am plodding through this grey season, knowing that, on the other side, there are two weeks of temperate weather, two glorious weeks of spring, two whole weeks of seasonal clemency coming my way before horrible humid summer begins. That’ll be another blog, I’m sure.
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meslerevans- stephanie mesler-evans