As If Not

I didn't get my cat-sitter's socks finished by bedtime Sunday night, but I was able to give them to him on Tuesday, and he claimed to be happily wearing them on Wednesday (although I do not have visual confirmation), so now I cam get back to my own knitting, from which I've endured a forced abstinence for about two months, what with nieces and nephews and cat-sitters.

Well, "forced" in that I did it to myself and stuck to it and didn't cheat (except to dye and wind yarn for myself that I ended up not using after all. Yet).

Sometimes though, I get it right when I plan things.

I was convinced that if I was completely prepared, it would be perfectly fine to teach a class three days after returning from Australia, and it was, due in part to the inexplicable absence of any symptoms of jet-lag.

I've been going to bed and waking up at my normal everyday times, and feeling my normal everyday OMG-I-don't-know-how-I'll-last-the-afternoon tiredness at work (but you know, if I was beading, I'd be all zoom-zoom), while my kids are feeling the effects of hurtling across a gazillion time zones, but my instructions were finished and checked before leaving, so Tuesday was a breeze.

When I teach locally, I invariably pack a portable beading kit, though I'm not always able to actually get any beading done.

This time, the project was sufficiently straightforward that I was able to be quite productive.

This is part of a sample for the upcoming roster of classes because I wasn't entirely happy with what I'd already made.

When I got home, I completed the last beaded bead for the sample.

I believe I noted that while away, I had absolutely no desire to bead, and didn't even daydream about what I might like to bead the next time I had the opportunity, but what I didn't say out loud was that in the recesses of my brain, I wondered if this beading thing had perhaps run its course, as can happen.

It's not a stretch to say that I might get the slightest bit obsessive on occasion, and that beading has been that way for quite some time now, though perhaps it was even more intense about four years ago but who remembers that long ago and what if I'm no longer interested in beading even as I have another four-month teaching commitment?

Yeah, that's not a problem.

I was looking at some beading instructions which I thought were stupid and annoying and the next thing I knew, I had this leafy thing ready to hang on a chain. I'm still there.

And then work. Work inspires beading designs: I always come home at the end of the day with a page or two of sketches and notes, and this week has been completely normal that way.

Beading still good.

Knitting for me: good.

Weather cold: good for knitting and beading.

No longer on vacation ... yeah that was better.

It's almost as if I was never gone.

On the other hand, we have a mystery at home.

Tuesday my son had a snow day, and my daughter was also home for much of the day. When I arrived home in the evening after teaching, I noticed two pairs of workman-style boots in the kitchen; you know, those honey-coloured suede boots with laces and thick rubber soles. I assumed someone had gone sledding with friends who had dopily left their boots in my kitchen, and went to bed.

Yesterday after work they were still there.

No one had had friends over (so they said).

No one knows whose they are.

Only two people [are supposed to] have keys to my house (besides those of us who live there), and my imagination fails when trying to invent a reason as to why either of them would leave boots in the kitchen ON TUESDAY, or really any other day, and I'm pretty sure one of them couldn't have, as she's visiting her mother in California.

I put them outside my back door because my kitchen is small and they were in the way, and in the process discovered that the kitchen door was unlocked, and no one went outside that way.

What kind of person sneaks into someone's back door and leaves boots in the kitchen?

If they haven't disappeared by next garbage day, the trash collector gets them.

Still, I'd really like to know how and why they got there.