Knit Sisters

Sometimes you have to take what you can get in this life. If you are an American, like me, you will probably take it in large, even bulk, quantities (Oh, CostCo! Mon amour! How great is mine love for thee, with thy ample 50 lb. bags of sugar, thy voluptuous barrels of velvety ketchup, thy shapely buckets of golden canola oil…more, more! I’m still not satisfied!) and hoard it in your basement or garage.

Apparently, even my dog has absorbed this received idea of American existence. Here’s the story.

Alex’s birthday started with his traditional greeting from Shelley,

Gettin’ up, birthday boy?

and progressed inexorably, in the way a birthday should, toward dinner at our favorite restaurant, Chez Henri. Eating at Chez Henri is a genuinely special occasion for us because we only venture through its inviting portals when we have been gifted with large sums of birthday cash.

To do so more frequently would surely lead to bankruptcy and ruin. But what a way to be ruined!

The food is excellent and so is the service.

Shelley meanwhile had been left in charge of home and yard security. Since we moved to the new house, Shelley’s affection for the new backyard has been plainly evident, not least because we have an apple tree that has been dropping its fruits all summer.

Windfall! I may never have mentioned this, but my dog loves fruits and vegetables, and much though I have attempted to toss out these apples (some of which aren’t in the best of condition by the time they hit the ground) in a timely fashion, she has nonetheless eaten several.

By “several” I mean about forty or fifty. Over the course of the summer, of course.

The tossing of the apples is a Sisyphean task. Toss out ten or twelve in dubious shape, find fifteen more on the ground when you come home. Roll that boulder up, watch it roll back down.

Watch your dog gnawing on a windfall apple. Again. Go slowly mad.

That said, she paces herself. I’ve never seen her eat more than half an apple at once. Lately however, having observed my futile yet dutiful attempts to dispose of the apples, she has taken to digging holes for the half-eaten ones and burying them in the yard.

Even a dog begins to see the inherent problems with this method pretty quickly.

Hey, I may have a shallow brain pan, but dirty, rotted apples are a no-go.

So we arrive home from Alex’s birthday dinner to find the living room in some disarray. Most notably, the corner piece of the sectional, which normally looks like this:

Looks instead like this:

Yes, that is what you see, tucked quite deeply into the very corner of the sofa cushions:

A windfall apple. I ask you now to contemplate the effort required to BURY an apple in a sofa when you don’t have an opposable thumb.

Hoarding behavior. Now where did she learn that?

In knitting news, the reconceived sleeve for Minnie is very nearly done:

Here’s how it looks fairly close.

Now attached to the sweater.

I am pleased with this progress. When I finish this sleeve, I shall face the grim business of frogging the other one.

Stay tuned…

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 1:51 pm and is filed under Heavy sweaters, Minnie. 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.