We'll be the ones with socks

The beautiful weather continued on Monday and Tuesday. I wore shorts to work and went out for walks at lunchtime, taking my knitting with me on Tuesday and sitting on a bench to knit a few rows after I went by the nursery and looked at all the lovely bedding plants.

Tuesday night, it rained, and the rain continued all day Wednesday, and still continues today. It was a brief respite of lovely spring weather, and now we're back to wet, dreary cold. But it does give me hope that spring will come, soon.

I had made a plan to go to the yarn store yesterday. There's a new one fairly close to where I work; well, not fairly close, not even really close at all, but maybe halfway between the office and home. Their hours are inconvenient (they close at 5:00 every day except Thursday, when they're open 'til 7:00, and they're closed completely on Sunday), so although I had known about the shop for several months, I'd never made the effort to get there. But I'd been wanting to, and the weather had been so nice the first part of the week that I thought I'd make the trip, and pick up lunch at Meiner's, where we used to eat so often when I worked with Misty and Matt.

So even though it was raining and I didn't really want to go out, I did. It was a nice shop, and they had a good selection of sock yarn, so I bought a few balls. Because my newest obsession is knitting socks.

I'm trying as best I can to enjoy the simple things in my life, to find happiness where I can (echoing what I just told Cello as he left for an early lunch to watch basketball with some friends), and what could be simpler, more homey and calming, yet completely useless, than handknitting socks? As one of Bob's friends pointed out, you can get six pairs of socks for about $5.00 at WalMart, and they come already clean and folded in a clear plastic bag. But if our infrastructure totally collapses and civilization as we know it ends, and we end up living in caves out of our Rubbermaid boxes, my family will be the ones with socks.

And I did get lunch at Meiner's--a cheese sandwich with lettuce and tomatoes--and had a moment of melancholy remembering happy lunches with my friends from a couple of years ago, all moved away now. But Misty has a cool new job at a huge New York ad agency, and I'm happy for her, and we still do talk. It's just that lunch is a little difficult . . .

Bob made me a grilled cheese sandwich last night for dinner, along with cream of mushroom soup, to which he had added sliced fresh mushrooms. Wonderful soup! I only ate half of it, so I boiled some noodles and added them to the remaining soup along with a little sour cream, and brought that--faux stroganoff--to work for lunch today. Comforting food for difficult times.

I feel strange writing about it being "difficult times," because of course while it sometimes is difficult, no one is currently bombing my city or country. I go along in my little life going to work, knitting my socks, eating soup and sandwiches, going to bed warm and safe, thinking about what I want to plant in the garden in a few weeks, and watching the war on television. Except that I'm not, because I can't bear it. And I try not talk about feeling sad or depressed, because really, what do I have to be depressed about? Like writing about Diehard--I loved him, so I had to mention his death because it affected me. But he wasn't my dog, and so his story wasn't my story to tell.