Skip to main content

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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Excursion: Getting Home

So, in the ongoing saga that I have been writing about the last few weeks, a perfect storm of random occurrences led me to taking a trip to the office. Once there, I went about my day, but leaving led me to wander through a mine field of geese and goose droppings . Incidentally, I also happened to mention this to my coworkers, and one of them introduced me to the nickname that Canadian geese sometimes go by: the " cobra chicken ." All in all, that one day led to much hilarity. Still, at this point in our tale, I wasn't home yet. The Mild Wife was out and about that day, so we had agreed to carpool. I was going to hop on the bus, and she would pick me up from a BART station. We've actually done this a bunch, and it had become my go-to means of transportation before the pandemic started. It saved me from having to deal with rush hour traffic, so I was actually a big fan of this process. I expected far less traffic on this day, but even so, it was a sound plan so that...
Post a Comment
Read more

Timer

There are a bunch of everyday tasks around the Mild Home that require waiting some amount of time. Say I put want to put something in the oven, I need to make sure that I take it out after a set amount of time. I mean, bad things happen if you leave food in the oven for a long time. If you're lucky, it's just inedible; if you're unlucky, then the smoke alarm is involved. Quite a few of them involve food (steep the tea for X minutes, uncover the pot after Y minutes, etc.), so that should come as no surprise. However, I recently had to use baking soda and vinegar to help unclog a sink. As I discovered, you don't just dump those things down the sink. You wait 5-10 minutes after mixing those ingredients in the sink, to let them do their thing. Otherwise, it just fizzes for a bit, and nothing really happens. In either case, I needed to wait for a set amount of time. Now, when it comes to setting a timer, I have a few options. There are timers on the stove and on my cell phon...
Post a Comment
Read more

Waiting for the Suck

I've mentioned it before, but I like to watch some Netflix while I do the dishes . I don't remember when I started the practice, but it's become a routine at this point. It gives me something to focus on while I do chores, and it makes the whole experience more enjoyable. All in all, it seems like a good idea to me. Now, I know that my screen time is limited. I'm certainly not going to wash dishes for two hours, so I can't watch an entire movie in one go. Heck, half the time, I can't even watch half of a movie in a single session. Ultimately, that drives my viewing preferences, so that I tend to favor episodic shows. Basically, that's how I watch some show or another: one dishwashing session at a time. Recently, that's been the Star Trek: Enterprise show. I never watched it when it first came out on television, so this is my chance to see the whole series. As with many series, there are some good episodes and some not-so-good episodes. Still, it's a...
Post a Comment
Read more