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Surprising Ways of Showing Up

Somehow, I got into crocheting a while back. I even got to put my skills to use for my new nephew, since I figured he could use a one-up mushroom beanie. All in all, I'm pretty happy about this turn of events. I get to make people hand-made gifts, and that goes over pretty well. I've also found that it's a half-way decent way to relax and unwind in the evenings. If I've had a rough day at work, I can spend some time thinking about a crochet hook instead. So, yeah, it's been a good thing.

That said, it's showed up in other parts of my life, sometimes in surprising ways. For starters, my brother made fun of me. I forget exactly what he said, but it was something to the effect of me being an old lady. I can't say that I was entirely surprised, since I figured someone was bound to poke fun eventually. It just so happened to be him, in this case. Also, it was all in fun, so we both laughed about it.

The other thing that came up, however, was at work. Some enterprising souls started a blog of sorts, sort of like Humans of New York. If you've never seen it before, it's one guy's attempt to humanize the nameless faces in the New York crowd. I don't know how he does it, but he takes pictures and gets people to tell him their life stories. Some of those stories are really interesting, and it's a reminder that everyone has some quirk, some experience, some story, or some wisdom to share. It's a lot of fun to follow, and people at work decided to try something similar to help us all get to know each other better. And they asked me to be in it.

Well, okay. I don't mind talking, and it's for an interesting enough cause. So, I agreed to do this, and they asked me to mention some interests. I threw out a lot of the usuals: sports, software development, comic books, running. Oh, and something to the effect of,"these days, apparently I crochet." Well, that got the person's attention, and she immediately jumped on that. So, we ended up talking about crocheting. They even took my picture with some of my work spread out over a table. Let me tell you, I never expected that to happen back during that snowy winter in Colorado (when I first learned how to crochet).

The other fun bit has been tied to the on-going octopus joke. For those of you too lazy to click on the link, my friend likes to poke fun of me about a rumor from high school. I apparently learned to say "octopus" before any other word, and she needles me about it. So, I got her kid a book about octopuses (octopi?), and laughed my head off when he liked it. She, however, kept it running by getting me a birthday card with an octopus on it. Well, then. She had a second kid, which presented a great opportunity for a rebuttal:
You can only see 4 of the 8 tentacles, but trust me, they're there
I laughed the whole time I was making it, too. This crocheting thing is apparently quite useful as a means of cracking jokes.

So, teasing or not, I think I'm going to have to keep doing this crocheting thing. Who knows how else it'll show up? However it does, I strongly suspect that it'll be amusing as all heck.

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