Hermiting

I've been looking at other blogs, mostly knitting blogs, envious of other people's projects, or just their attractive and full blog pages, with people who follow them regularly. We all want to be stars. I read recently, on a blog of course, about the size of the internet, the sheer number of pages. Not only is there a page for every person alive, there's something like a thousand pages. Or four thousand pages. For every person. In the meanwhile I dream about having a theme, something to really bring this blog together. I could make a banner to fit the theme, design wallpaper. Themes turn random assortments of essays into books, themes turn diaries into real blogs, the kind with a "readership". But if I had a theme, then I'd have to start another blog where I could put the stuff that didn't fit into this one, and then I'd need another one after that. (And each blog would have it's duplicate on flickr, which would make six blogs total, just for me, which I suppose might be a bit excessive.) So I guess this will do. And you, dear reader, whoever you are, will be all I need.

I've been hermiting this last week. I haven't really seen or spoken to anyone. I graded a few assignments, slowly. I read Twilight, twice, out of what I like to say is simple curiosity about a wildly popular series, but is really an embarrassing desire for some kind of fantasy existence where I'm a high school girl who doesn't think she's pretty but boys line up to ask her out. Where I have a boyfriend who has lived 100 years but never fallen in love, can break trees in half, and would do anything to protect me. "I'm tired of trying to stay away from you," he says. The only thing the book is missing is a horse for her to love, preferably a ornery one that no one else will ride, but through patience, becomes her best friend.

I spun about 400-500 yards of a beautiful spur-of-the-moment-purchase. I've been charting and recharting and trying to test a pattern to knit it up into, but I hate making tests and I hate swatching so I'm not sure I'll ever see this through. All my other projects have been equally non-committal. I have three ongoing ones that I can't manage to care about, even though I know I will deeply love each one when it's done. I complain about my hands being cold all the time but I won't pick up and finish my beautiful mittens. They're so fuzzy! I'd love fuzzy mittens, but they just sit there, not warm and cozy, but unfinished and frustrating.

I started going to the gym again, after a two week haitus. That was my biggest fear, that once I let myself stop, for any reason, I wouldn't ever start again. But I'm back, and it feels good, and I can use the excess body heat I've got afterwards to chip the ice off of my car instead of waiting until later when I'm cold and in a hurry. It was nearly 1/2 inch thick, and it looked like cracked planes of glass when it came off.