Striped Toe Socks

J really stepped in it last night. We were talking before bed about love and relationships. (I can't remember why now) He said that in every relationship one person loves the other more. In our case I love him more. Excuse me? Then he realized I had the pissed off voice and began backtracking. "It's not like it's 70/30, more like 49/51". Um, was this supposed to make me feel better? Then, "It's just that you're a more loving person". OK, this is true, I am more loving, compassionate and kind. He is an accurately self described emotional cripple. Shouldn't this make me more lovable, not less?
I understand what he is saying, I am more capable of love, his emotions are all locked up inside his cold dark outer shell. "I'm sure some days I love you more." He says. Yes, today for one, I mumble under my breath, loudly enough for him to hear. "Well, maybe it's time I should love you less," I tell him. I need to take back a few of those points. A love coup, a transfer of power to the next love regime.

But he's right.

I do love him more. I am more passionate, I love more fully, completely. I express everything in the context of how I feel about it. I rarely say I think this or that, it's always I feel. I go with my gut instinct. (After over thinking it in my own head) I love my friends and family with all of myself. Hell, I love Molly with all of myself. I don't half ass it.

I like it that way, I wouldn't trade it or change it. I wouldn't want to be in his head, where logic always rules. Not that logic has no place in the world, it has a big one. In order to strike balance though, it needs to walk hand in hand with emotion, with passion, with love. Love smooths logics sharp edge.

This morning when J left for work he took my face in his hands looked me in the eye, kissed me and I said "I love you". Yep, you love me 49%," I responded, "and I love you 51%".

I think he knows he still in trouble.

You Are An ISFJ The Nurturer

You have a strong need to belong, and you very loyal.
A good listener, you excel at helping others in practical ways.
In your spare time, you enjoy engaging your senses through art, cooking, and music.
You find it easy to be devoted to one person, who you do special things for.

In love, you express your emotions through actions.
Taking care of someone is how you love them. And you do it well!

At work, you do well in a structured environment. You complete tasks well and on time.
You would make a good interior designer, chef, or child psychologist.

How you see yourself: Competent, dependable, and detail oriented

When other people don't get you, they see you as: Boring, dominant, and stuck in a rut


This seems like a pretty accurate evaluation of me, I love these type of things.

Test yourself

I've loved this movie for as long as I can remember. I've seen it on the big screen a few times and it's only more glorious that way. Here are some reasons why I list it as my favorite movie of all time.

1) Grace Kelly, beautiful, amazing actress, that made up accent learned from a voice coach, perfection.

2) Jimmy Stewart, kind, smart, a little awkward, my kind of hero.

3) Directed by the greatest director of all time. Hitchcock never fails to hold my attention and scare the crap out of me.

4) Lisa Freemonts wardrobe.

5) The microcosm of society viewed through a window. It isn't just the possible murderer, it's Miss Lonelyheart, Miss Torso, The Newlyweds. Each adds dimension, each story adds to the other, while hardly interacting, so like real life.

6) Sexy, with unmarried sleepovers and nighties in the 40's, I like the implied naughtiness.

7) Timeless.

Yesterday we went to my friend Alex's graduation party and froze our asses off. Alex is moving out to LA in a month to pursue a career in film production. I've known him for about fifteen years, so I have lots of stories to sell to Inside Edition if he ever gets famous. Hey, the kids have to go to college somehow.

So back to the freezing. It was cold and windy. I have lately grown obsessed with knitting a clapotis and all I could think of yesterday was how warm I would be if only I had one. I've begun the homework part, the yarn choice and trying to figure out how to unravel the stitches in the pattern. At the Clap (hee, hee) group on Rave they describe it as a "mindless project". Um, maybe my mind is slower than theres because it doesn't look mindless.

I skipped Knit Night last night for the second week in a row. I was amazed how much I missed it. I did enjoy time with J though. He has been so stressed lately and I've been, well a little up and down mood wise. It was fun to just relax. We caught up on BSG and My Name is Earl and ate Wonder Bars for dinner.

I'm not a fan of short stories. The first chapter of a book is always the hardest for me and short stories seem like the first chapter over and over. I love Jennifer Weiner though and she published a book of short stories called The Guy Not Taken. I'm almost done with it and I loved them all. Each story left me wanting more. After that The Name of the Rose, and hopefully I will add it my read list not my started but didn't finish list.

There is something about bread, it's simplicity perhaps, it's ability to fill you with warmth and comfort. My feelings about bread may in fact explain the state of my thighs, but no matter.

I have wanted to learn how to make homemade bread for years. Last year a friend gave me a bread maker that she didn't want anymore and it sat in the spare room unused. When I decided not to take any classes this quarter I realized I would need use my brain in other ways. I decided one of the ways I could expend myself at home was bread making. One of the blogs I read recommended the book The Bread Bible. When I picked it up at the library and started looking through it I wasn't sure I could do. A sponge? I have to make a sponge? What the hell is that? It seemed to have so many steps (10!) and things to learn before I even started. So I read the first chapter and learned the basics of flour, how to create the best place for rising and how to shape the loaf. I started with rolls and they turned out OK, yummy, but without the rise I had hoped for. I learned not to fear the yeast or the dough and decided I was ready to make the "real" thing, a loaf, two in fact.
Here is the result.


Pretty good if I do say so myself.

Saturday I went to the Upper Valley Fiber Fest with Emily. We met up with some of our other Sunday knit night friends. Although smaller than the Wool Gathering there were still many temptations. When we have sunlight again I will take pictures of the yarn I bought. I have no idea what I'll do with it, but I can't wait to start knitting with it. The dog herding ducks was hilarious. He reminded me of my parents Border Collie mix who tried to herd the new puppy when he arrived. Experiencing all the glorious fiber was so much better with other knitters. Emily and Chris both have great pictures of the day.

Today was so gloomy I had to fight the the feeling from creeping inside my head. We went out for breakfast and then went to Harbor Freight and Target. Although I had made fun of Harbor Freight I promptly found the chair I had been looking for for the patio. It needs to be stained or painted and put together. I'm trying to talk my Dad into teaching me how to stain, but that just earned me a confused look. He doesn't understand my interest in what he has developed such skill at. I also think he sees it as "man work", which is just plain stupid. We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll get a book and teach myself. Dinner at the folks was total bickering chaos. J got so twitchy we left early. Alex did ease my pain with a delicious margarita.

After I got home I finished the CPH front, woo hoo! I think this project will be on temporary hold so I can play with my new yarn.

The rest of my time has been consumed by Water For Elephants. I was hesitant to read this since I don't like the circus and I don't like elephants very much. I'm glad Emily convinced me. The fact that a Jack Russel Terrier is featured in it just adds to the enjoyment.

All in all a good few days. I needed them.

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Miserables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Emma

Thanks for the list Emily!