My mom once had a year that was just horrible. She was in a car wreck that totaled her car. She took a terrible fall, broke her pelvis, and had to use a cane for a couple of months. Okay, she took the fall while roller skating: she was that type of mom! 🙂 While still using the cane she was struck by a rattlesnake that was napping under her car when she put her key into the car door to open it. The only good luck in this was that she had the cane to beat off the snake after it bit her. “Some years you should just stay in bed,” we teased her. What can I say… we kids were brats!
My goodness, but 2020 is really turning out to be one of those years! We all know about the pandemic, the lockdowns, the resulting economic downturn, and the protests against police brutality and racial inequality that are churning through our cities here in the US. Then there’s the murder hornets, and the methamphetamine-crazed alligators (AKA Meth-Gators) in the American south. How crazy is this? I mean, I kind of expect earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters (seriously, at this point I am kind of nervous about the volcano in Yellowstone National Park…), but how much more crazy can there be in one year? I mean it: what would be the most outrageous thing that you could ever imagine on the 2020 Bingo card?
That’s right. There was a news alert that Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease, V2, AKA Bunny Ebola, was spreading through rabbit populations in Colorado on my phone this week. It’s highly contagious and fatal to rabbits; the alert had a lot of warnings for rabbit owners and people who might come in contact with rabbits… The bunnies above are the ones that live on my block and hang out daily in my yard…
2020, KNOCK IT OFF!!!!
Some years should just be spent in bed…
Knitting
It was hot this week, so I really stayed indoors and got some knitting done.
I had about 50 grams of yarn from the stash to make these gloves, and this finished one with all of the scraps of yarn attached weighs 23 grams, and there is still 27 grams on the ball. It’s going to be close! My Ravelry notes are here.
The Breathe and Hope shawl is designed with textured sections, each different, between the corrugated stripes sections. I’m getting better knitting the textured stitch sections; they feature knit-below stitches which are new to me so I need to pay attention to what I’m doing. Now that I’ve mastered the new hand motion I’m getting much faster and hope to get the shawl finished this coming week. My Ravelry notes are here.
Garden
It has been really hot this week with no rain. I mean, crispy leaf hot! The plants are all feeling pretty surly and there isn’t much blooming going on, and even less growing. Poor plants. The only thing that is even halfway interesting going on in the garden is the appearance of a potato plant.
I didn’t want a potato plant. What I wanted was a new rose bush!! I tried to get a new Charles Darwin rose plant from cuttings in potatoes using this technique that I found online. Right. I now have two potato plants and not a rose in sight. Sigh. Still, they might be interesting in the fall… I think that these are Yukon Gold potatoes, which I like. The way the world is going I might be happy for these potatoes…
Books
I am reading the most wonderful, thought-provoking book this week!
I hardly know how to describe this book. It’s clever and tech-oriented in a way that people much younger than I am relate to better, but I think I’m keeping up okay. Here’s the plot: there is a battle for the future of our species being waged between two envoys sent to Earth to save us; our team of heroes are working through social media, online cryptomining, and virtual reality with one of the envoys, the robot we met in the first book known as Carl, in an effort to secure the future that Carl is constructing for us. The alternative envoy has launched his own effort to mold the future of humankind while destroying the good guys. What’s in the balance? Free will. Carl would preserve it for humankind, and the other guy… not so much. There is lots of action, and twisty turns, as we are told this story through the voices of the different participants of “Team Carl”. This book is very imaginative while also being timely; as the online war swirls around me over Covid-related issues (open the schools, wear a mask, testing, etc.) in my own community, I can completely imagine the path of humanity being determined through constructed alternative realities and directed messaging; in other words, you can transform behaviors through culture shifts instead of policy. What a thought provoking book!
Oh yeah, there is also a potato plant in the book. How weird is that?!
Have a great week, everyone!!
Read a little, knit a little, and garden like your heart can’t live without it.
Footnotes:
My city went under a mandatory mask mandate this week. Finally! Yay! Am I now safe to move around in the larger community? Nope. Not so much. The culture hasn’t yet shifted… See why that book is timely? Several states near my own are experiencing huge upticks in cases, and as our hospitals continue to fill (with patients from these other states) I’m thinking that the shift will eventually come. In the meantime I’m happily home knitting with Hannah.
Yarn, Books & Roses 
From what I read, there are mad people everywhere who have turned mask-wearing into a political stunt; and Karens all over the place throwing tantrums when asked to put one on.
Stay safe at home, Marilyn: it’s a shit-fight outside.
The mask wearing is now a huge culture war: if you wear a mask you are a fearful sheep. People who don’t wear masks are brave Patriots. I commented on the governor’s Facebook a request for a mask mandate as I’m tired of being bullied by people who refuse to wear masks or keep their distance. Whew!! You wouldn’t believe the bullying comments, but there were hundreds of people who agreed, too. It’s a mess!
Well .. we both know who’s responsible, with his hateful, divisive tweets and interviews. Not to mention his Admin.s. I’m enjoying just reading Twitter – I don’t post at all – because it makes me realize how much he is loathed. Hang in there, Marilyn .. Not much longer to go.
Ugh. I refuse to go to twitter and I’m close to giving up on Facebook. This is so off the rails at this point…
As, but as I know all the people in The Lincoln Project and a lot working for RVAT, I follow them and some others – Sarah Cooper, Rachel Maddow, and the like – and so whenever I open up Twitter all I read is delightfully NEVERTrump stuff. Cheers me up no end ! 😀
In your listing of the shit show 2020 is proving to be you forgot to mention January-the worst Australian bushfires that killed a billion+ animals, February- the worst locust swarms that devastated a number of African and Asian countries and the resulting famines, currently the bubonic plague currently in China and Mongolia being spread by rodents, West Nile disease and Dengue Fever being spread by mosquitoes and Trump has started a Cold War with China.. So I’m eating as much cake as I want, because really who needs to worry about their waistline when it’s Armageddon out there. So enjoy your beautiful kitten, love your garden, enjoy the escapism of a book and the meditative nature of knitting, get food delivered to your home and don’t go out into the jungle.
I did think of the Australian bushfires and the locust swarms, but there is so many bad things that I decided to not try for the definitive list because… it makes you want to cry, doesn’t it! I’m not as worried about the bubonic plague as that is a fairly common occurrence here in Colorado (you’d think that you wouldn’t get blasé about orange plague signs with a skull and crossbones posted in fields near your house…) and every now and then someone gets sick. The really scary event would be if the plague jumps to the pneumonic form that can spread directly from person to person without the insect vector. Please, God, we would like to skip that… I didn’t put in Trump because… more crying. Seriously, I’m waiting for them to announce an impending asteroid strike…
I’m with you, girl. I made a big batch of chocolate chip cookies and I ate a couple of them for breakfast. 🙂 I’m actually losing weight because of my illness, and I should be concentrating on optimal nutrition, but when it is Armageddon I decided to go for the chocolate. There is a kind of freedom in having so many AWFUL things happening at once in that they kind of blend together and you can just focus on the small things in front of you that are in your control.
I absolutely will be staying out of the jungle!!
We don’t even have rabies in the UK, can’t believe you have plague signs! I see Trump finally wore a mask in public so perhaps that will improve things. A bus driver was killed in France over asking people to wear a mask on his bus, and the French aren’t armed like a lot of Americans, so glad to hear you are staying home xx
I’m glad that he wore the mask, but he needs to actively encourage the practice, model it and other sensible precautions at all times, and emphasize how very serious this situation is. The case numbers in the US are now going through the roof and it is getting to be really scary.
Well you’d think he would finally realise his potentially voters may end up dead or in ICU unable to vote for him, and given his narcissism that may end up swinging it. Arizona made the headlines here as the worst place globally for speed of transmission, followed by Florida and a few other states, but I see Arizona bloggers still carrying on having get together and going out and about. I don’t understand why it’s so hard for some people to comprehend.
It’s Arizona that is sending patients up to us; their hospitals are now past capacity. It is mind boggling the hate and social irresponsibility that we are seeing, but I put a lot of this at the door of Fox News and the president. They are literally still telling people that everything is fine, it will go away, this is scare mongering by the Democrats, and that 99% of people will be fine. It’s hard to take this seriously if that’s what you’re being told and you believe them.
Unfortunately, they are being lied to and what’s happening in several of our states is really scary.
This could even cap your mother’s “annus horribilis” – as our queen termed her bad year. Be careful of the thorns on those potatoes – and stay safe from all the mayhem
It is shaping up to be a truly terrible year, isn’t it! I am definitely staying out of the mayhem and enjoying all of the wonderful things I have to do here at home with the kitten.
2020 needs to go sit in a corner until it can behave:(
Your mother was bit by a rattlesnake. That is incredible to me. Have I ever mentioned that snakes are my krytonite? I’d rather hug one of those plate sized spiders from Australia than see a snake at a distance.
Your knits are beautiful! I’m sorry your new roses didn’t work out but you’ve got potatoes and that is really cool:)
*shiver* rattlesnake! I’ll need time to recover from that tale. I bow at the feet of your mother:)
That’s right!! In the corner until it understands what it has done. Bad 2020, bad!! In my family we still make a point of looking under the car while we walk up to it because… rattlesnakes!! The rest of the story is that my mom was a nurse at a hospital and that this happened in the hospital parking lot, so she just went back into the building to the ER. The snake had struck right on her ankle bone so no venom went in.
As a biology teacher I have dealt with my share of snakes and my cats used to catch garter snakes and even got one into the house once. Talk about a snake emergency!! Then there was my garter snake that escaped from my classroom and was sunning himself on a window sill in a math classroom upstairs… Good thing that I’m the one dealing with the snakes and not you! I’m not that big a fan of spiders, however…
Hi Hannah!! Such a cute kitty!
I have to tune out the news most days. I just don’t have the bandwidth. Today I have the pleasure of ripping out my sweater for the 3rd time. Stay well, my friend!
I ripped out my glove three times too, but the final product is looking good. May the same be true for you. 🙂