Pigs and Pepper

I haven't posted in a while, and I know a few people do read this blog to keep up a vague sort of knowledge of how I'm doing. Well, this post is mostly about other people and how they've related to me these past few weeks.

I know that everyone who reads this is already aware of Emily's alien spine baby and that it's technical name is Schwannoma. Well, whatever. I have been internally at my most wretchedly worried for her ever since my mom said that the removal surgery will either crack her sternum in the front or her ribs in the back. The scar will be enormous. She's already planning a tattoo to help cover it. Last I heard, it was something about the tree of life. It'll be a year or more before she can really get that done, though.
We had the beef&beer for her today, and I was completely floored when the final count was out: $2435 total. Almost twenty-five hundred dollars raised by the most generous, giving, caring people I think I've ever met. We couldn't have picked better people to help support Emily. The raffling of various donated items was ridiculously popular, and as Amy said, "people came out of the woodwork to donate things to raffle." I was amazed.

While at the bar, my dad and Jim taught me how to play pool. I am abominably bad at it. By the end of three games I had finally gotten good enough to hit the cue in the center of the ball. I managed, more by luck than design, to knock a few in when I played teams with Colleen against Patrick and his cousin Ben. We won the first game but Ben, who used to work at a pool hall, started trying on the second game and beat us soundly. It was a fun diversion.
Patrick might be getting a new job working overnight at Target doing stock, which is good for him. Friendly's is apparently grating on his last nerves and the merits of having a job versus the trials of being unemployed are starting to look pretty meagre for Friendly's. I remind him constantly that he can't quit until he has a replacement job. I will soon be applying for overnight shifts at Target, since the starting wages are $9 an hour. It's a big jump over the measely $2.13 I'm making as a waitress. I barely make minimum wage some nights, which is rough on a girl's bank account. However, when all of the money I have lent out is returned (which will be within the next pay period) I'll have just over $900 in my savings, and maybe a little under $200 in my checking. I think I'm doing quite well for myself that way, I must admit. My spendthrifting has become habit more than neccessity now, so I know it's been a while.

My knitting continues steadily I've made a washcloth to give to Em to sell in her Etsy store, which belongs with a hand towel I am making in a similar color. That's when I'm not mentally acute enough to work on the Irish Diamond Shawl, which is lace and which is coming along slowly after the first complete frogging. It is beautiful baby alpaca in every shade of green-brown-lilac-gray-black that you can imagine. I simply adore it, and will post pictures as soon as my camera decides that it's done being a spoiled brat. I really do hate when that happens....

Other than that, life continues on as it always has, a mixture of friends, work, family, Patrick, and sleep. I can't ask for much more than that.

Well. Okay, I can, but I'm trying not to be greedy.

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

~Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)