I have put down the laptop - now that school is done - in favour of knitting needles. And cookie sheets. I am blazing my way through all my half-forgotten knitting projects and it feels so good to MAKE something again. Speaking of crafty, do you have any blogs on your roll (so to speak) where every picture of their home and their life is bathed in luminescence and their lives and their shelves seem to be perfection incarnate and their kids are adorable imps and somehow they eke out a living making the most beautiful crafts you've ever seen and I just lose my patience with all the goddamned beauty. I half-heartedly and ashamedly wait for them to crack - but they never do. Like my boss at work - she is the most Perfect Person I have ever met, including the Nice factor - she's genuinely nice. She is organized, always neatly dressed, friendly, excellent worker. She has been pregnant since I met her and was due around Tgiving and secretly, secretly, I was looking forward to her having her baby so I could finally see a crack in her perfection, see the human underneath. But no, the baby came right on time, "labour was a breeze" (that is a direct quote) - has in 4 weeks lost all her baby weight, checks her work e-mail daily, breast feeding is just fine, her Mother-in-Law has offered to take care of him when she comes back to work, hence she will not need to pay those big honking daycare bills we pay, and her kid never makes a peep and sleeps all the time. The three times I've seen her since he was born, she hasn't even looked sleepy. She brightly answers "Great" when you ask how she is and then asks you if you're doing something different with your hair, it looks so nice.I'm not jealous so much as - baffled. How to achieve this perfection, these beautiful flickr-documented lives of tableaus and peace? It isn't in me. I am chaos and dropped hems and tangled yarn and wrinkled laundry forever and ever amen. Must come to terms....also, in working with her, I have come to realize that my way of bonding with others centers around finding the negative - the complaints, the small things, the introspection and examination - and offering it up to share. If we share and compare, that is how I get along with others. These lacquered bright exchanges of cheeriness don't get to the messy heart of it that I need. I'm okay with it, except I need to stop offering it up to all, as it means I may never come across as competent at work, even if I am. I was in a meeting last week for the Citizen's Adv. Committee I belong to and I could hear myself going "oh gee, I've hardly had time to study this and oh gee, I have another stupid question about HUD funding" and was kinda disgusted that I couldn't just go in and do the typical American self-assured act, instead of the I'm Afraid of the Tall Poppy colonial syndrome act.

I am steeping in American History via popular media these past weeks and it's actually helping me figure out this country. We're watching "John Adams" the miniseries which actually makes the War of Independence really really interesting and I'm reading Team of Rivals and The Wordy Shipmates too. I think it helps to be within a stones throw of these historic places - out there on the West Coast, it can feel like the Forefathers were made up names. Speaking of the West Coast, I am extremely jealous of my friend's PNW White Christmas, what I always wanted but never got and certainly will not get here. They are projecting 68 degrees on Christmas day. Sigh.

PS - I just finally watched "Persepolis" and liked it so much more than I did the graphic novel, for some reason. The "Making of" on the DVD is so great too - drawn and inked by hand, people! Also, though I expected - via reviews saying it was all labels and dirty talk- not to like the Sex and the City movie, I actually did. Not very many movies about female friendship that endures. It made me miss all my long time lady friends so much. If you have one near you, count yourself lucky.