The Power of Persuasion?

I'm not saying that Vera's struggle to get her washing machine fixed had any power to affect my appliances, but I am letting you know that mine is the second washing machine in our corner of blogland to fail. 

It happened last week when I went downstairs to get a completed load of laundry and hang it out, but instead, I was greeted with a washer full of soapy grey water and no lights on the display. It seems that something involved in the pumping out of the water (pump? transmission? computerized control board?) has failed. John is fairly handy and has often attempted to fix our broken washers and dryers, but this one may be beyond him. I don't know if it's even worth calling a repair person as a service call will be at least 25 or 30% of the cost of a new washer. We'll probably go to Lowe's and get one of the cheapest washers we can find since we entered the age of disposable washing machines at least one washer ago. We were both surprised that this one was seven years old and had lasted two years longer than our last one.

I had to go to the laundromat with the sopping wet, half-washed load of clothes and it is a different kind of place. There is one nearby, and when I went it was clean and not crowded at all. The washers take $4.00 in quarters and I dug plenty of change out of our basket before I went. It's just the people that were different. There was one older man who sat down near me and it didn't even seem like he was doing laundry. Maybe it's just a fun hang-out for him. Every time my washing machine drained, spun, or filled it made some noise and he was compelled to say, "Houston, we have a problem," and chuckle loudly. 

He did ask why I was taking pictures at the laundromat and that seemed like a fair question. I explained the blog to him and he wondered if "those people on the internet" who would be reading would really be interested in my saga of a broken washing machine. I assured him that you would all be enthralled, and after shaking his head, he said to be sure and tell you that I spoke with a handsome older gentleman who made my visit to the laundromat more pleasurable. So now I've done that and can tell him about it if he's there when I go this week.

I will probably go to the laundromat again tomorrow and then make the painful visit to Lowe's and maybe pick out a washing machine. I'm sending good vibes for all of your washing machines and hoping that these things don't fail in threes.

Unraveled Wednesday: 9/27/23

I'm joining Kat and fellow Unravelers today, for the final Unraveled Wednesday of September. In the spirit of Unraveled Wednesday, I did indeed have some lots of unraveling. I made a mistake on my Hitch on the Move, and like with my previous one, I started to tink back. Except I could not find a good place to stop and knit forward (just like before). I told myself I wasn't really sure that I liked these yarns together and I already had a Match & Move that I knit with them. So, I ripped out the whole thing and this is what it looks like now.

These balls of yarn can just sit in timeout until they learn to behave and I figure out what they want to be. 

I knit a few rows on my Hitchhiker, but I just wasn't in a Hitchhiker mood. Then I remembered a Stephen West pattern I bought a week or so ago, grabbed some dk yarn, and cast on. I even had to learn a new-to-me I-cord Tab Cast On, but it wasn't very difficult after watching the youtube video a couple of times. I'd like to present to you my (Not a Hitchhiker) Woolly Waffle Triangle: (ravelry link)

I love waffle stitch and have plenty of dk yarn left over from my Antler cardigan, so I was pleasantly surprised to find this pattern. It's surprisingly staid for one from Stephen West, and I also found several other shawls of his that have really lovely stitch patterns, like Dustland Shawl (another ravelry link). It's been damp, rainy, and with temperatures only reaching 60, I have some incentive to finish this so I can wear it soon!

I've been concentrating on reading Wellness this week. It's a longish book at 624 pages, but I'm almost done. It's so good that I don't want it to end. I just picked up The Bee Sting from the library, so that will be another long one that I hope will be just as good as Wellness. 

What are you making and reading this week?

The Answers!

Yesterday I gave you a bunch of first lines from books and asked for your guesses about what book they were from. Today you get the answers!

1.   "The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation."

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

2.  "124 was spiteful. Full of Baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children."

Beloved by Toni Morrison

3.  "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.

4.  “When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.”

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton 

5.  "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

6.  "This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it."

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

7.  “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

8.   “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” 

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

9.  "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing."

A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean

10. "Where's Papa going with that axe?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast."

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

11. "I'm pretty much f*cked."

The Martian by Andy Weir

12. “You wake up with the answer to the question that everyone asks. The answer is Yes, and the answer is Just Like Here But Worse.

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

13. “I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.”

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

14. “Captain Ahab was neither my first husband, nor my last.”

Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund

15. “I spent much of my childhood listening to the sound of striving”.

Becoming by Michelle Obama

16. "When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake --- not a very big one."

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

How many did you recognize? Several of these were mentioned last Tuesday in our Zoom discussion of The Seven Moons, so I hope there were some that were familiar. Thanks for playing along!

What's your favorite first line?

Hooked By the First Line

Last week I stopped by the library to pick up a couple of books they were holding for me, and while I waited to check out, I eavesdropped on a conversation that the patron ahead of me and the library clerk were having. The patron was excited to get home and read the book she was checking out because it had a great first line: "The story so far: in the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." 

I thought this might be from Douglas Adams, but I wasn't sure which one of his books it was from. It turns out it was The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. 

This got me started thinking about great first lines. Here are some that I liked. I tried to choose from books that I thought might be more easily recognized, and I hope that at least one or two of them are giveaways. Do you recognize any of them? Feel free to leave your guesses and your own favorite first lines in the comments. I'll provide a list of the answers tomorrow. 

1.  "The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation."

2.  "124 was spiteful. Full of Baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children."

3.  "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."

4.  “When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.”

5.  "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

6.  "This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it."

7.  “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”  

8.  “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” 

9.  "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing."

10. "Where's Papa going with that axe?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast."

11. "I'm pretty much f*cked."

12. “You wake up with the answer to the question that everyone asks. The answer is Yes, and the answer is Just Like Here But Worse."

13. “I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.”

14. “Captain Ahab was neither my first husband, nor my last.”

15. “I spent much of my childhood listening to the sound of striving”.

16. "When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake --- not a very big one."

Museum of Me: September 2023

Hello and welcome to the slightly-delayed September opening of the Museum of Me. It's actually the third Friday of the month and the new installment has been delayed for a week because I completely forgot about it. But the doors are open now and the September installment considers the important question: What did your day look like when you got home from school?

From the picture above you might guess that my after-school activities first included a snack, and you would be right. My mother might have made brownies from the Duncan Hines mix that she always used and my sister and I would each have one. Oftentimes, my mother would join us except she cut her brownie into four tiny pieces and ate them each slowly. We used to tease her and ask if she was hoping that some of the calories would leak out that way, but I guess it's just how she liked eating her brownies. But this is where I also learned that life might be unfair. My sister, who was tall and thin throughout our childhood, would eat four or five brownies, but my mother would say, "I think you've had enough, Bonny" after I had just one. (I was not tall and thin.) If we were having Oreos for an after-school snack, I would eat two while my sister would have a whole row of Oreos, sometimes followed by a big bowl of ice cream. The snack was the highlight of my day when I got home from school, up until my mother went back to work.

I don't remember when this happened but she worked part-time at this tiny little post office near our home. Mom was at work when my sister and I got home, so sometimes I ate two brownies, but then the real work started. I was expected to make dinner! That often meant I had to simply put a casserole in the oven that my mother had prepared ahead of time, but sometimes it meant that I had to actually slave away and make dinner. All I can recall is making meatloaf (but surely we didn't have meatloaf every night), with my hands in the bowl kneading together meat, eggs, breadcrumbs, and ketchup. I probably asked myself why I was working my fingers to the bone while my sister ate whatever she wanted and watched Scooby Doo and After School Specials, but this seemed to be expected since I was the oldest. I'll have to ask my sister about this the next time we chat, but her remembrances may differ slightly from mine. :-) 

So what I remember about my day when I got home from school was brownies, making meatloaf, and life isn't fair. Those aren't bad memories. 

So how about you? I'd love to hear about your after-school activities, and if they included snacks and life lessons. We'll be back on the second Friday of October (or when I remember) with a brand-new installation. Thank you for visiting The Museum of Me!

A Gathering of Poetry: September 2023

It's the third Thursday of the month so I'd like to welcome you to A Gathering of Poetry.

I love fried clams but don't have them very often. Quite coincidentally, I ate a plate full of fried fried clams and came upon this new-to-me Mary Oliver poem on the same day. After reading it, I'm not sure I'll be able to enjoy fried clams without guilt, but I do like the poem  (almost as much as I like fried clams). 

Clam
by Mary Oliver

Each one is a small life, but sometimes long, if its
place in the universe is not found out. Like us, they
have a heart and a stomach; they know hunger, and
probably a little satisfaction too. Do not mock them
for their gentleness, they have a muscle that loves
being alive. They pull away from the light. They pull
down. They hold themselves together. They refuse to
open.

But sometimes they lose their place and are tumbled
shoreward in a storm. Then they pant, they fill
with sand, they have no choice but must open the
smallest crack. Then the fire of the world touches
them. Perhaps, on such days, they too begin the
terrible effort of thinking, of wondering who, and
what, and why. If they can bury themselves again in
the sand they will. If not, they are sure to perish,
though not quickly. They also have resources beyond
the flesh; they also try very hard not to die.

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Oliver, Mary, “Clam”, What Do We Know: Poems and Prose Poems. Da Capo Press, 2002.

You can read more about the poet here. 

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Thanks for reading and joining us for our monthly Gathering of Poetry. Be sure to visit Kym and Kat so you can gather more poetry and you can add your link below if you would like to share one of your favorite poems. The more the merrier!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Unraveled Wednesday: 9/20/23

I'm joining Kat and fellow Unravelers today with my second Hitch on the Move. I felt compelled to work on it this week and was able to knit more than last week since my vertigo is slowly waning.

I'm knitting it with a slightly larger needle than last time and I do have plenty of yarn (I think), so I hope I can make this one a lot larger than the first. 

As for reading, I finished two books last week. Pearl is a brief, sad story about grief and great loss. Siân Hughes tells a tale that begins in childhood, progresses through troubled adolescence, and continues to troubled motherhood. This novel felt more like a series of connected vignettes, and I had trouble with the cheerful voice of narrator Laura Brydon recounting all the pain. For me, this served as a reminder that just because a book has been nominated for the Booker Prize doesn't mean that it will be an enriching or enlightening read. Two and a half stars rounded up.

I also read a pre-publication copy of After Annie. I read several of Anna Quindlen's books ten years ago or so, including Miller's Valley, One True Thing, and Every Last One. They were enjoyable, but Still Life With Bread Crumbs aggravated me so much that I quit reading her novels. I'm happy to say that After Annie was a wonderful read for me, free of any aggravation. I read it in two sittings which rarely happens anymore.

Quindlen tells the compelling story of Annie, her husband, four young children, and her best friend, and what happens to them after Annie literally drops dead on the kitchen floor. They all grieve in their own ways, some of them cope in better ways than others, and some of them grow in good ways. It's heartwarming and honest, but not maudlin. The author has written one of the best stories about death, loss, grief, change, and hope that I've read recently. This book will be published on March 12, 2024.

What are you making and reading this week?