When Knitting is the Only Solution

On Saturday, the Wy-Guy had the opportunity to play a football game at the L.A. Staples Center (home to the Lakers, Clippers, Kings, and Avengers). It was great fun to watch him play on the little arena football field, especially since we got to sit right down front. My son plays Center on the yellow team. He's in, well, the center of the picture taken from my front row view.

When it was over, we had a 2 1/2 hour break before the professional game started. It was some special first Saturday night home game event with "fun activities". Said activities included very, very loud pulsating music, a couple of players and cheerleaders signing autographs, a nearby Indian casino giving away cheap bead necklaces and mobs of people. Whew! It was hard to know where to start!

I stood there waiting for DH, who was hiking to our parked car to store football pads, with a headache developing in proportion to the pounding music, while 5 boys (4 mine, 1 friend) bombarded me with chatter.

"I'm hungry!" "I'm thirsty!" (I don't care.) "Bye Mom, I see a friend." (Stop! Don't move!) "Wow! What's that, I'll be right back!" (Hold it! I'll never find you again! Please wait for your father.) "I'm just going to go in there and watch the basketball game." (You can't just hang out in there... it's a restaurant.)

Finally, I whipped all of their tickets out of my purse, handed them out and said (possibly screamed), "Here! Go! Do whatever you want! Then I won't have to buy your food or listen to you whine. Just don't lose your ticket or you will have to sit out here and wait for us during the game. I'll see you inside in 2 hours. I hope you remember where the car is parked." I totally expected them to take off, but the oddest thing happened... the likes of which I've never seen before. I ended up with 5 completely silent boys stuck to me like glue.

I cast on 64 stitches for a sock.

DH returns, "You're knitting?" to which I respond, "Honey, this is why knitting was invented!" (Yes, it must be that arena football has been around that long!)

After watching the boys inhale 1/2 pound burgers, it was finally time to take our seats for the professional arena football game. Are you feeling my enthusiasm?? Here's the view of the field (and sock progress) from our seats...

I'm told they were playing football down there. One of the really nice (?) features of the Staples Center is that it's constructed so even if you are sitting up high, you are not too far away from the field. They accomplished this by stacking exceedingly steep tiers right on top of each other. We were in the second to last row at about a 95 degree angle from the bottom... with 5 boys... "Mom, look it's plexiglass... I can lean on it (or run down the steep stairs into it) and it won't break!" Yeah, it was that fun. And you know what's really cool when your sitting at the top of an arena full of about 20,000 people? Indoor fireworks! This just didn't seem right. It's enough to think about earthquakes when in such a place... but to worry about a fire too... well, from where I was sitting (above said fireworks) this just seemed unnecessary. (Hey Julie - Ask John... How do they get permits for this stuff??)

Anyway, I knit.

Aside from that, I have been completely loyal to Something Red for an entire week and should have finished pictures soon. Then I can go back to my meandering, multiple wip, getting nothing done self.