This weekend was the first one in which Youngest, who has lived all their life-so-far in my house, was a guest here — having shifted their primary residence to a site closer to a potential full-time job. I was a bit anxious about it because we didn’t have anything special planned to do and because hanging out with me is rarely particularly interesting. But we managed by going grocery shopping, visiting Goodwill, cooking and baking, and providing an occasion for me to watch them play an incredibly silly game on the GameCube. (In case you’d like to get a glimpse of the silliness, check out this video of the Wario Ware Mega Party Game$! from 2003.)
The change in dynamic is one that I have to keep reminding myself is The Way of the World. It’s supposed to be the case that your children grow up, are not children any more, and move on with their own plans. All of my offspring are at different stages in this process.
The house is also transforming — albeit mildly — in other ways. I ordered a woven jute runner for the dining room, and it finally arrived on Friday morning. Here it is, providing a path for the office chair to move from desk to desk. It also provides a variety of spots on which the dog may lounge (not pictured).
The chair doesn’t exactly roll along the heavily textured weave, but I can raise it slightly and move it to where it needs to be. I do love the look of it, which will be more dramatic when I’m able to move the four-drawer metal filing cabinet and two typewriter tables (topped with typewriters, of course!) out of the dining room. Maybe it will all look better in Next House.
I have gradually begun to make more progress on a couple of my writing projects, not that I’m less likely to be interrupted in the evenings. I’m thinking about setting evening “office hours” for myself so that I can focus on the correspondence I need to keep up for these projects.
The Impossible Read is on hold until I decide how I’d like to proceed with my reactions and annotations. I don’t want to write directly in the books I’m reading, but my method for creating a record of my comments has shown itself to be rather cumbersome. I hope that after I develop a more practical and efficient process I will be able to get back to the reading.
Yet, in the course of the week I have been doing regular freewriting and journaling, coming up with some ideas and concepts to work into the stories that are also hanging out in my head.
Knitwise, I did get in a few more rows on the Habit-Forming Scarf. It is now slightly longer than it is wide. Unfortunately, I neglected to bring it home for the weekend so I can’t measure it and provide any numerical evidence of my progress.
The bigger news on the knitting front is that I’m organizing a get-together for campus knitters and crocheters on the first day of Spring Break. That won’t be until next week, so we’ll see what elements might come together. People bringing projects? Swap yarn? Free patterns? Bring it on, Yarnhawks.
Chocolate Sheep 
♥♥