The Word of the Week

The word of the week is...noise.

This week, there were three girls at the kids' knitting group. But if you hadn't seen them, you would have sworn there were 25. It was just that loud. Just ask the women in the back of the store, who probably couldn't hear themselves think.

I left the house in yet another whirlwind, after having yet another hectic day of work, only intensified by the fact that I only get to work until 3:30 on Mondays. I threw my stuff in my bag—and, as usual, I was plenty early.

Miss S was the first to arrive—with her mom running behind her. Now that I think about it, it all makes sense...they'd just gone out for ice cream. Ah…sugar.

After we'd gotten started, we had a new group addition. Miss AL (not to be mistaken for the infamous Miss A) is 10, and she's been knitting for an age and a half. She knits fast. And though it took her a while to get a word in, she managed to jump right in eventually.

And, finally, after her weekly trip to Starbucks, Miss H arrived.

So, this week, Miss S spent two hours nagging me. "Why haven't you ripped out your secret project yet? It doesn't take that long to rip something out." "Bring it next week!" (Even though I've told her every week for the past month or so that I'm not going to touch it until the shawl is done.) "Tell us what it is!" "Miss H isn't going to be here this summer, so you have to tell us now!" And it just kept going. I could have sworn she was channeling Miss A—except she never once messed up her project and threw it at me, demanding that I fix it.

And if I wouldn't listen, she'd nag her mom. No more ice cream for her.

I swear there were 14 conversations going on at a time for two hours straight. I couldn't keep up with them all—especially since I was simultaneously trying to count Ks and BOs in Miss H's seriously complex pattern. (In the end, I had to draw it out before I could make it work.) And the longer it went on, the louder it got. I finally told Miss H to use her indoor voice, which made her protest by whispering for the next 10 minutes. I also had to announce that there would be no more singing, since it seemed like a contest to see who could sing the loudest. That's when Miss S announced, "It's a free country," after which I was forced to inform her that once she enters the store, she's in *my* country—and my country is not a free country.

On the bright side, I was finally able to figure out the pattern for Miss H's scarf—and I've taught her how to do all but one of the rows in the repeat. And I even had a little time to work on Baby Sweater #3. I finished the body—just the sleeves to go.



When I got home, I was totally exhausted—and I was relieved that I'd prepared a crock-pot dinner that was waiting for me when I got there. Just before we sat down to eat, Paul flipped through the mail and found more good news—his permanent Green Card (which is still not green) arrived today. After almost four years of paperwork and appointments, they're finally going to let him stay in the country. And, to our surprise, they didn’t question our marital status once. We agreed that we'd both gone into our INS appointments expecting them to try to catch us off-guard by randomly zinging questions at us—but it never happened. So apparently we're believable as a married couple.

We celebrated by opening a bottle of wine—which, after my day, was a welcome reward.