Knit Sisters

Slouching towards Boston

Post by Ellen
Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

The night before I flew home from Denver, the clouds looked truly ominous:

Uh, Captain, that don’t look like flyin’ weather to me.

But the next day was clear and beautiful. After the flight took off, the folksy Chuck-Yeagerish captain got on the intercom and said, “Way-ell folks, looks like we’re anticipatin’ a smooth ride ahead all the way through to Pittsburgh. (I had a connection in Pittsburgh.) So I’m gonna turn off the seat belt sign now, and feel free to get up and move about the cabin!”

Famous last words.

The turbulence was so bad that the flight attendant informed me that we weren’t allowed to have hot beverages.

I said, “Well, then, have you got any Valium?”

Worse yet, there was a guy two rows behind me who was keeping up an exhaustive running commentary on everything going on inside the airplane. Not much actually goes on inside an airplane, as it turns out.

Commentator: Why, lookee there! Those little screens are coming down for the movie.

Other passengers: (Complete silence.)

Commentator: Guess we’re going to have the movie now.

Other passengers: (More silence.)

Commentator: Whoo-hoo. Goin’ over some bumps there! Heh, heh.

Other passengers: (Tense silence.)

Commentator: Just like ridin’ a roller coaster! Except up in the sky!

Other passengers: (Increasingly tense silence, much like the quiet that precedes a violent outburst.)

As Our Mutual Friend nattered on, it became abundantly clear why we are not allowed to take handguns on airplanes. It has absolutely nothing to do with hijacking.

I kept knitting:

The implications of flying with Icarus are not all that comforting.

Close-up he looks like this:

No feathers yet…

The Commentator kept commenting. I put my earphones in and turned my iPod up. Kept knitting. Tried to think about cheery things like how much I like knitting with Alchemy Haiku and how cool Icarus is going to look once he gets some feathers.

Eventually, though, we started our descent and I was forced to relinquish use of my ~~annoying-fellow-passenger blocker~~ iPod. About that time, the pilot came on again:

“Way-ell, folks, we’re goin’ through some little rainstorms here in Ohio and it looks like the ride is goin’ to kind of deteriorate from here.”

Deterioriate? It was actually going to get worse?

At this point, a small child two rows in front of me started screaming, “I want down! I want my Daddy!”

I could not have put it better myself. What an articulate and sensible child!

Two rows behind me, The Commentator kept commenting.

I thought, “There are people in the third ring of hell who would refuse to trade places with us right now.”

The gratitude I felt when those wheels hit the runway is almost beyond description. The Commentator must have felt the very same way because he announced in a loud voice, “Well, well, well, here we are! Back on good ole terra cotta!”

Way-ell, folks, that’s right. Good ole “terra cotta.” But at a moment like this, why sweat the details?

I’m really glad I made it back, too, because when I finally arrived in Boston, Lorinda had sent me contest booty:

Gorgeous! Thank you, Lorinda! It’s good to be a winner.

More happy surprises were in store. When I left, our sunporch looked approximately like this:

Behold and quake in fear! I am the Sunporch of the Damned!

Without so much as a gentle prod, in my absence Alex had transformed the Sunporch of the Damned into this:

Architectural Digest hasn’t called yet, but personally I’m impressed by the sheer magnitude of the effort.

Bravo, Alex!

It’s good to be back home. Terra cotta never looked better.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 at 11:15 am and is filed under Icarian games, Lace it up, Wool gathering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Slouching towards Boston”

Ida Says:
August 29th, 2006 at 11:25 am
I love (and covet) your sun-porch! Good work, indeed, Alex. Denver’s weather…friends of ours who live there once told about the time it was 85 degrees one day and snowed 8 inches the next day. And, finally…your flight commentator. It’s amazing how truly annoying and insensitive some folks can be! Glad you’re back safely.
lorinda Says:
August 29th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
The funny thing about those Sartrian (is that a word?) moments of “No Exit” is that there’s always fodder for hilarity–after the fact. Glad you’re home. Send Alex over to my place, and I’ll go away for two weeks hoping it will look like paradise when I return, as did your screen porch. Kudos Alex!!! Glad you like the yarn.
Laura Says:
August 29th, 2006 at 8:18 pm
i swear, ellen, you make this stuff up, don’t you? “terra cotta”?! sheesh!
Becki Says:
August 30th, 2006 at 6:34 pm
I laughed out loud for so long at the Terra Cotta incident! Because you see, I am a Latin teacher. And “terra firma” happens to be one of the phrases my Latin 1 classes are studying this very week. So my immediate response was “Even my first-years, after two weeks of school, would’ve got that right!”

So of course I had to tell them the “Terra Cotta” story today when we were reviewing Terra Firma in class. They laughed almost as loud as I had done. Thanks so much for sharing - it made a fun Latin Moment in class today!
Alex Says:
August 30th, 2006 at 7:57 pm
Thanks for the enthusiasm about the sun porch. I had promised Ellen I would get to it before summer ended and just barely squeezed it in. Hopefully we will convert it into a little reading room, with some bookshelves along the long wall. We’ll see!
Diane Says:
August 30th, 2006 at 8:55 pm
So, are you going to do the sun room in shades of terra cotta?
Knit Sisters » Blog Archive » The truck we had to push Says:
October 5th, 2006 at 9:11 am
[...] Further home improvements have occurred Chez Mad Dog! Many of you will recall the magical transformation of the porch formerly known as The Sunporch of the Damned that Alex effected, as if by feat of ledgerdemain (where, after all, did all that crap go?), while I was on the road. Now he has outdone himself by installing sunporch bookshelves: Still life with James Joyce and dog butt. [...]

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Slouching towards Boston

7 Responses to “Slouching towards Boston”

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