Finally

I got a little sleep. I was feeling a bit crazed and desperate last night while I was trying to sleep. Poor Fee, though - she was outside all night. It was positively balmy at 7pm...but this morning the temperature was 33. She is a Maine Coon, which is supposed to mean she's a mighty north-woods-forest-cat, so I don't feel too terribly guilty. She wasn't halfway to being a popsicle or anything. But I heard a desperate, high-pitched chirping at 5:30, and when I let her in she made a blue streak for the cat box.

Poor Fee.

I got mucho Olympic knitting done last night (but no picture, sadly, I didn't realize my own limits and when I finished knitting it was time to stop EVERYTHING for the night). I'm done with the foot, and I have begun to puzzle out the mystery of yet another short-row heel. I'm not sure about this wrapped-stitches thing. Doing the wraps really tight seems to prevent holes, but it just doesn't seem like the nicest and neatest method of doing a heel. I've done the backwards yarnover method as well, and that just seems to have more substance, although I always get confused with how to knit/purl them out.

A friend from when I was a kid, a little boy whose parents were friends with mine and who was always around, had a benign tumor removed from his spine when he was 10 or so. He grew up, got married, had a couple kids and then it came back and was causing him pain. Long story short, he died - apparently from a reaction to the pain medication. I remember running around with him and his brother and my sister, two crazy girls and two crazy blondheaded boys. I remember his dad taking us to the factory where he worked and giving us some plastic pellets, and how I learned to tell if something was plastic by the smell. I remember the day it snowed in Rocky Mountain National Park in August, and how the sky looked like a painting. I probably had a crush on his older brother, who was a couple years younger than me. I remember a family's log cabin somewhere near the park and a comfy dinner in that house followed by a harrowing ride home over hairpin turns and steep dropoffs. I remember his mom's sunglasses and his dad's smile and white t-shirts. I remember Dad and his dad drinking Coors together and laughing. We were always laughing.

Rest well, friend. I'm sorry you had to go.