the jkc project

Black Eyes and Blue Dresses

Is it safe?  Can I come out now?

I've deliberately shielded myself from all the Rhinebeck love, because I've known for a year-and-a-half that I couldn't go, and yet, the closer and closer it got, the more painful it became to dwell on the fact that I would be missing the riotous orgy of wool, fiber and friends for another year.

So sad.

But, I missed it because one of my best friends got married, and I was a bridesmaid.  It was one of those weddings that the music was great, all our friends were there, and the next thing we knew it was 4 am and we were having dance party USA in Steph's hotel room.

Good times. 

It also marks the last wedding we have for another 6 months (WHOOHOO!!!)

Check these out:

Yes, actual finished objects, and yes, there are two, I just needed the other hand to take the picture, so use your imagination.  (Not a real stretch there, it looks exactly like the first one.)

Having finished an actual project has been made even sweeter by two things:

1)  I use these.  I love these.  They fit, I wear them at my client in PA, I wear them to drive, I wear them to walk the dog.  I'm wearing them right now.

2)  I knit them from my first plied handspun.  They began their life with me as this:

(Grafton Fibers, purchased at SPA) and I spun the wool, plied it, and then knit it.  And finished them, and love them.  It's like the perfect storm of spinning/knitting, at least for someone like me who has big aspirations, and usually falls short.

I finished them while waiting my turn at the hair salon last Saturday morning:

but didn't get a chance to wear them with my dress.  I would have definitely taken a picture of that.  Instead you'll have to settle for a picture of how my hair turned out.  I've never had an up-do done before (only down-curled dos), and I was really tickled with the whole thing.

It's just so fun to be sitting in a salon with a bunch of your girlfriends, getting ready for a big event.

You know what else is fun?  Pink champange.

You know what's not?  Black eyes:

Well, just one.  I had a mole removed yesterday, and now when we're out, people keep shooting Eric dirty looks, and me sympathetic ones. 

It would be funny, if it wasn't so not funny.

Pennsylvania

I'm in Pennsylvania this week. Again.

Pennsylvania is why you didn't hear from me last week. I'm in the mountainous northeast section of the state, and I'm in a bit of a technological black hole. My cell signal is shaky at best, and the only hope for internet access during the work day is a 5 minute shot on the client's computer.

Pennsylvania is also why I missed Debbie's big book signing last Friday night. Right now, I'm a little bitter towards Pennsylvania, and trying to decide if this bitterness is justified.

It's probably not.

It's not the state's fault that I was requested to attend a client meeting 2 hours south of (read: 2 hours further from the way I should have been driving later that night) the client site. In the interest of professionalism, I will only note a few general points of interest about the meeting.

1) I was the only female in attendance.

2) I was also the only person under the age of 45.

3) The two principals of the meeting repeatedly referred to me as "young lady", and once as "the minority".

I will leave you to draw your own conclusions.

I can see how you might think that the meeting was the highlight of the trip, but I assure you, it was only a prelude to the special fun I had on my way back from the meeting..

You see, there's this highway. A two-lane highway through the mountains, a heavy trucking route along the eastern corridor of the state, that happened to be the route I needed to take to and from this client meeting.

Being a highway through the mountains, it's the sort of roadway that doesn't have much of a shoulder - the road ends, there's a narrow shoulder, and then there's a wall of concrete/granite/rock, perhaps a steep incline rooted with tall weeds and brambles.

Being a two-lane, heavy trucking route, there are many large 18-wheelers careening though the narrow passes, without a lot of room to maneuver.

Enter me, my little Rav4 and a pothole.

I heard it happen, though I wasn't sure what I hit until later, it only took a minute for the characteristic FWAP-FWAP-FWAP to start. I pulled over and assessed the situation. My tire was flat. There were huge trucks driving 80 miles an hour about 2 feet from the driver's side of my car. There was a steep incline of the tall weeds and brambles variety on the passenger side of my car. I came close to having a bit of a cry, but fear beat out frustration and I decided that fleeing would be a better course of action than crying.

After climbing the steep incline to safety, a feat that would have been difficult in hiking gear, let alone an Ann Taylor suit and kitten heels, I began making a series of phone calls that ultimately resulted in a very nice and incredibly brave man coming to my tire. I watched from my perch on the steep weedy incline with a mixture of disbelief and terror, feeling fairly sure that at any moment the smiling tow-truck guy would become the crushed and bloody tow-truck guy. Fortunately, amazingly and with about 2 feet of working room, he changed my tire and drove off in one piece.

It was quite a day.

Now I'm back in Pennsylvania, and I probably shouldn't be resentful towards the state in its entirety for what happened last week, nor be bitter towards it because I had to come back this week. But I still am, a least a little bit. Sorry Pennsylvania.

A Little Bit at a Time

First, I'd like to say Thanks.

Thanks for reading, and taking the time to comment.  Thanks for all the insight.  And the encouragement.  I dumped a lot out there, and I don't usually bare my soul on the blog, but I'm glad I did this time.  It was a big tangled mess of emotions and worries and new ideas and I really needed to get it out of my head, and reading all of the thoughtful and insightful comments you all left helped me sort things out.

For now though, there's nothing I can do except think about it.  The class starts in January, and that's that.  And a lot can happen between now and then.  In the meantime I'm taking things as they come.

Which means another baby hat:

for a friend who I really like and admire whose baby shower was yesterday afternoon.  It was in the form of high tea at the Boston Harbor Hotel, which if you know the hotel sounds like it would be horribly formal and stuffy, but was actually surprisingly fun and girly and wonderful. 

(I'm not really sure when this happened, but I think we've been whisked straight from the barrage of weddings to the barrage of babies.  This is okay by me, I'm just sayin.)

I was really happy with how the hat turned out, not least because I'm always the girl who's showing up to a shower with a card and a note saying that the gift is on its way in the mail from the registry, or a gift certificate from some place that's not the registry, or otherwise unprepared and out of control.

This time I went to the store with the registry, bought things on the registry, knit a cute little hat (with a cute little handmade tag no less), wrapped it all up AND bought/wrote the card before I left the house instead of grabbing it on the way to the shower and signing it at a stop light.

It felt good.

The hat was made possible by Disc 1, Season 2 of Grey's Anatomy.

I'm hooked.  Blockbuster didn't have Season 2 in, so I drove across town to Best Buy and bought it.

Anyway.

I'm also feeling good about two finished projects in 2 weeks.  It makes me feel like I'm moving past the big pile of disasters I catalogued a few weeks ago, and taking control of my knitting. 

And it's not just hats.  I would have pictures of Hourglass to show you, which is also finished, but I'm not happy with how the neck turned out - it's wonky and much too wide, so I'm going to rip it and make it right.  I've spent too much time and money on it to let it not be right. 

And knowing that I won't be satisfied until it's right makes me feel good too.

Gut Dumping

This one's been building rapidly, and it's too big to fit in my head anymore.  I have to let it flop out, and take a look at it on paper.  (Or screen rather.)

I think I want to be a doctor.

This is a baffling turn of events.

I'm an accountant, and one of our comforts in the profession is that if we do something wrong, no one dies.  I'm the girl who has to avert her eyes at any potentially bloody scene in a movie.  Even watching a man shaving in a movie makes me cringe, because I envision the razor slipping and slicing open his skin.

Let's talk sophomore year Biology.  It was the only C I got in all four years of high school, and it was the last class I've taken that even resembled the course of study required for medicine.  And when I took the class, I couldn't have been less interested in memorizing all those long scientific names, phylum-plankton-whatsis and all.  You know what I'm talking about.

Also, the closest I've ever come to working in patient care is waitressing.  (I know it's not even remotely close, which is the point, but think about this: both lines of work require you to respond to the physical needs of the wide spectrum of humanity, run around on your feet for 12 hour+ shifts and clean up gross messes after people.  I have cleaned up puke, urine AND feces in the course of my various waitressing jobs, let alone the disgusting remnants of a pile of chewed up buffalo wings.  Gross.  But I loved waitressing.  I really did.)

I've watched the first season Grey's Anatomy in its entirety this past weekend, and I'm not going to pretend that a made-up TV twenty-something medical drama that glorifies hospital realities hasn't been a factor is this newfound desire of mine.  In fact, it's been the turning point.  I was surprised that I haven't had to turn my eyes during the brain surgery or blot clots scenes.  In fact, I was fascinated.

(Who is this person??  See thing about watching a man shave above.  I don't know what is happening to me.)

But, I've been kind of thinking about this for awhile.  I've spent a lot of time these past few years trying to figure out who I am.  What do I like to do?  What am I passionate about?  27 might be a little late to start asking these questions, but better late than never.

I decided to study accounting because it was a good steady job, one where I'd be able to make a decent living working regular hours, at almost any company.  I was very young, I was getting married and I wanted to do something sensible, for what seemed like all the right reasons, but was really for all the wrong ones.  And it took me about a year to figure out that getting married was an atrociously stupid decision.

In the wake of my divorce, I also realized that I didn't really like accounting, and I started to explore my options.  I applied for the Peace Corps and almost got shipped to Eastern Europe.  I applied to law school, got accepted to my target school (BC), deferred, and withdrew my acceptance.  I've jumped around from job to job to job, restless and unhappy professionally, and the whole point of me coming to work for my father has been so that I can be in a place where I can utilize my professional accomplishments, but also have the flexibility to explore other areas in my life that I might want to develop.

And I've really thought long and hard about this.  I thought it would be writing, and I've worked on essays and submitted writing samples to all sorts of places, and the only way I'm going to get better is to keep on working at it.  But when I think about my strengths, and the jobs I've enjoyed most I come up with the following:

I like to work with my hands.

I stagnate sitting in front of a computer.

I like to be on my feet, and I like to be busy.

I thrive under pressure and I love to juggle tasks.

I focus and am at my best responding to crises.

I have a technical mind.  Not an artsy one.

For the past couple of years I've been eyeing those people walking to work in their scrubs and wondering what a day at work looks like for them.  On their feet, solving problems under pressure and helping people.  Doing something meaningful.  But it's just been an idea, floating in the back of my mind, that I've never really taken seriously.

I thought my leap from accounting would be to writing and knitting and maybe launching something crafty.  I've looked into teacher education programs and I keep putting off doing anything because we'd like to start a family and we need to save money and how stupid would it be to start a new career and in the midst of it all have a baby, and then not only are we potentiallly saddled with additional school debt, but lose an income, and lose what I would have made while I was in school.

(Check out that run-on sentence.  And I have delusions about becoming a writer.)

When I was 18 I had every opportunity in the world open to me, and I wish that I had taken the time to think about what I really wanted to do, and given myself a chance to figure it out.  That was the time to be fuddling around and exploring and starting anew. 

I've never worked in patient care.  I don't have a single undergraduate prerequisite course under my belt that would prepare me for the MCAT or a Physician Assistant program.  We're talking 2 or 3 years of working and taking classes at night to even get to the point of knowing if this is even possible, or if I'd even like it.  And then potentially 2 or 3 years of school, then a residency.

I'm also painfully aware that I am a jack of all trades and a master of none.  I love learning a little bit about everything, and then moving on to something else.  In a month, I may have completely changed my mind.  What does this say about me?  Have I just not found the right thing, or am I the sort of person who will never find the right thing?

I have a plan.  There's a pre-med Biology course offered by Harvard Extension school that begins in January.  If this hankering is still around by then, I'm going to take the course.  And then we'll see.

I like having a plan.  It makes me feel like I'm handling this somehow.