Days Long Gone By

There was a time when I was really on top of things... a time when I was highly efficient, organized (in a rather chaotic sort of way), took pride in my work and was quickly working my way up the corporate (well, small business) ladder. As I transitioned from work to stay-at-home mom, I maintained a majority of my on-top-of-it skills, and while I've never been organized in the traditional sense, there was a sense of order and management at home... I knew what was when and who needed to be where, I knew what day of the week it was and usually the actual date.

But at some point, life (read 5 kids) took over and the pretense of order and focus was abandoned for the pursuit of sanity. I let go of my often unreasonably high expectations, stopped beating myself up over the seemingly simple things I could no longer maintain control over and gave up... er, I mean relaxed. This has been good... sure sometimes it would be nice to know exactly what day it is, where my car keys are, what time basketball practice is and which day I drive the carpool (I'm sure the team mom would appreciate this as well so I didn't need to call her each week), or where I placed that important piece of mail. But for the most part I'm finding ignorant bliss a nice place to be.

However, sometimes, just sometimes, I would hope a bit of common sense or neuron zaps would take place that would alert me to certain things of consequence. I mean, I can deal with the fact that I forget to make dinner and run out of toilet paper and milk way too frequently, but when it comes to things of real importance couldn't I be more alert? For example, the assumption that the jumbo ball of cheap wool/acrylic something yarn in my stash would be an easy substitute for a few rows of white in place of the Knit Picks Swish Superwash (which does not come in white) that I'm using for Drive-Thru may have been a hasty, not carefully considered assumption. But I'm a quick one, it only took me 2 stitches with the mega yarn to figure this out...

But what to do? It was late, no yarn stores were open, I had no other white yarn (except for my Midwest Moonlight Rowan Cashsoft - like that was gonna happen), and all I could think was "Drive-Thru" it... just keep going. Maybe it would turn out okay. Maybe I would do just one row of white instead of the thicker section I had planned. Maybe nobody will notice.

The good news is that the pattern is very straight forward and easy to follow with lots of tips to get you through. It's a fun, easy knit and I like my colors (very OSU) but I am wishing I had followed Wendy's advice to consider cotton if you live in a warmer climate because I think he'd wear this a lot more if it was knit in cotton and not wool. But I should have it done for him to wear when he sings with the little kid's choir in church on Sunday so that will be special (for me at least). Cotton... cotton... So Cal (just a little note to self).

So what do you think? Should I frog back and get ride of the huge white stitches or continue on? Does it look really bad... I mean aside from the unfinished flashdance look?

I truly do have bigger worries. What do you do when you get an important piece of mail containing specific return instructions with a deadline? And what if you temporarily lose that piece of mail for several weeks? And what if when you find it, you still fail to put your response in the mail each day because, well, because you're a total flake? What if it's too late to mail now? And, what if you don't want to lie, but your only other option is to call these highly-unlikely-to-show-compassion people and explain that you are just a blissfully ignorant mother of 5 who chose not to make their needs a priority? I'm thinking that conversation might not go well... I'm thinking I'd rather not have it... I'm thinking I may need to work on the focus thing just a bit more. In the meanwhile, our mail often does get lost. Maybe I never even got it... does lying to yourself actually count as lying? Or just a lapse in sanity? Cause that second one I can deal with. Hmmm...