serendipity

breathe

And just like that, it's all okay. The passport issues are over, the identity issues are done; Friday I go to the State Department and everything will be in order.

We fly to Iraq on 10 January for a week, then to Afghanistan.

Yes, yes, and yes.

This blog is closed for the year. Everything from here forward will be at the Away blog.

eyes skyward

If the stress of getting ready for a short- notice extended tour out of country doesn't kill me, my inability to get absolutely anything even resembling assisstance out of my mother certainly will.

My passport has gone missing, the damn thing, as well as a bunch of other vital records. It seems pretty obvious that they are all hiding out somewhere together, my passport and birth certificate, all those things, the slips of paper that define, classify and free us. I can get a passport in a hurry- hooray for being a government servant! I just need to prove who I am. I can get my birth certificate in a hurry- hooray for being born in a major metropolitan area! But my adoption paperwork- the proof that my step- father adopted me, the only proof I have that I have half a right to my current last name- that's a bit of a bitch.

See, I don't even know when I was adopted. I have the impression that it was between the ages of 11 and 13-ish. I also have the impression that it happened at the town hall of the small town we lived in, although I couldn't prove that either, and it may just have well occurred in the city just up the road.

I wrote my mother two nights ago, asking for help- did she have the documents, or at least the date, please? Because I really needed them? Nothing. I asked my sisters to ping her, to see if she'd read her email. Nothing. I don't have time to wait and see if she feels familial this month or not- especially when I can only guess the answer will be not, regardless of upcoming adventures. (Side note: if she even knows; I didn't tell her. I thought of including them on the email, but for some reason, it seemed so very weird to announce something so important to parents with whom I have zero relationship. Hey, complete strangers! I'm going to Afghanistan!) Anyway, if the birth of my nephew can't warm her, I doubt my email did any good.

I've learned that no matter what happens, be it surgeries or serious illness in my family, my mother's heart attack or a war, I can absolutely expect nothing out of that corner; I guess I thought if I approached this request politely, I'd receive the same back, but when did that work before? And if I sound bitter, it's because I am; I can't see a request like this as unreasonable, as difficult or as too much. I don't ask for anything at all, ever- is a date that hard?

So I'm taking time off work (although angling to charge at least a whit of the time, because really, it's work- related) to drive to CT to try and convince clerks to help me find a document that may or may not be within a two year guesstimate span. I don't even know if they'll be open, although really, if the Federal government is working, small government is working, right? I think right.

Agh. What a massive, enormous, huge pain in the ass. I really just wish my stupid passport would show it's face- that's my face, damnit. I don't even mind that wretched London drugstore photo anymore, I swear. Come back to me, and I'll never mention it again. I promise.

on adventures

I'll be putting this blog on hiatus pretty soon.

I feel as though I'll be putting my life on hiatus pretty soon, actually.

It's been a hell of a week.

On Sunday, Bess died. I am so grateful to her medical caretakers, to my family and to Whomever that we were given warning, that I had the luxury of time. I am so grateful that I got the chance to say goodbye to her, this wonderful amazing crazystong ballsy woman who has inspired so much of what I've done and who I am. I will miss her.

On Wednesday, my company told me I will be spending the next year in Afghanistan. It's not as involuntary as that sentence makes it sound- this was an opportunity, and it was one I was open to. It's just such an incredibly short- notice thing: we plan to have the team in place by mid- February, as it stands right now.

I've closed the business for the year, obviously; I can't ask Sam to run that while I'm gone. He'll have so much on his hands as it is; these situations are always so much worse for the people left behind. I have the luxury of knowing where I am and what is happening; he is left with the wondering, and the waiting. If you're a member of the Sock or Fiber clubs, I sent you an email about how we'll be handling that- if you haven't gotten it, please comment and I'll get that sorted.

The team will be made up of myself and some friends, and that's something else I am grateful for. Imagining taking on this change and the inherent transitions alone gives me the shivers.

It's a positive mission- positive in that I will have the opportunity to do good things, help people, to be part of a solution, and that's a goodness.

It is all so massively overwhelming, though; it's moving so fast, it's so much change and there is so very much to do and so little time to do it all in.

I have wanted to travel, to go places- strange places, unconventional places- my entire life. I've never dreamed of a holiday in the Bahamas; my dreams have always taken place in Cambodia, or Africa, in Antarctica or Mauritius. I'm told there are places in Afghanistan that look like the surface of the moon, and that excites me. Part of me feels as though this trip was always inevitable, and that this is right, and good.

Part of me is also terrified; afraid of the usual things, like injury and death, nervous to be leaving my family, friends and country behind- so far behind, thousands of miles behind. Afraid of the time, too; a year is a long time. Most of all, though, I'm afraid of how this will change me.

I've taken some leaps in my life- huge, crazy leaps. Most of those leaps were taken when I was younger, crazier, dumber, and when I had much less, if anything, to lose. I took those leaps and at the time it was exhilarating! It was an adventure. And in those times I only ever thought of how the situation would change---  I don't think I knew then how much those leaps would change me. They did- they changed me more than I could ever have expected. I am not the girl I was before I made those choices, and I can never go back to being her.

This feels like one of those decisions, those mindset altering decisions, and it's scary because this time, I can see it coming. I don't think I've been so nervous about anything since I became pregnant with Kiddo.

I don't know what else to say about that. It's huge. My team lead and I, we go back years together, and when we talk about this we don't talk about our feelings, yet. We joke and make arrangements and we are very, very busy, and I feel as though on some level we are busy being busy for each other. I'm not ready to talk about how scared I am with him, because I'm afraid it will make it bigger instead of diminishing it. We make arrangements and plans and we talk about how our spouses and children are coping, and how we hope they will support each other. We joke about how we'll be in great shape coming home, because there's little to do out there but work and work out. We discuss boots.

My best friend, he leaves with us, too, although when we stop off in Iraq for two weeks he'll be staying there. I wish he were staying here, in Maryland, to look after my family the way I know he would, but there's comfort in knowing we'll be in the same sort of world for this year. He and I aren't talking about it yet, either, but at least we can do it with a wink; we avoid it deliberately, explicitly, for now.

While I am out there I will be running a separate blog, here. I'll be posting images and updates as much as I can- something to keep some sort of contact with the people I love, a wider and more continuous stream of communication than I might be capable of if I stuck to email and phone alone. Anyone and everyone is welcome to read.

(crossposted to my livejournal, in slightly edited form)

kaddish

Bess passed this morning, at 8 am.

I'll miss her.

There will be a week of silence while we mourn.

shop update

Some new items in the shop- a few new spindle models from the amazingly gifted Reimer, a sock yarn (with cashmere and angora in it!) that I'm trying out, and some new fibers!

I'm off night shifts, they tell me, this time for good. I'm a little sad about that, actually. It was pretty slow at times, and I got a lot of knitting done; I have about 4 hats made out of my handspun in my gift closet right now, as well as half a wrap on my needles, plus two Hanukkah gifts. My favorite hat was spun out of some superfine merino from the Zen String Fiber Club; I think the colorway was called "Tomorrow". It is unspeakably soft and fuzzy.

Love it, love it, love it, and I think it's going to end up with me instead of in the gift closet.

I've been spinning up some odds and ends in my stash lately; this is what's going on the bobbin next.

I'm not sure of it- it has the potential to be really pretty, or oh, oh- no- she- didn't- bad. It reminds me of an old colorway of mine, though- Sea Stars- and I'm hopeful.

Agh, and I have to cut it short- we're off to see Sweeney Todd- another are in which my hopes are high. Be well.

things that make me happy: another list

• More pictures from when I was a kid, with another appearance from Boo.

Her boyfriend asks, "Were you singing a power ballad?" Well, obviously.

• Driving in and out of work, I listen to back episodes of This American Life. Today, I listened to the Heretics episode. (If you follow the link, you can listen to online for free.) It was gorgeous, and amazing.
• Tons and tons of fiber on the drying rack, plus pounds of yarn inbound and due any day now.
• Lace knitting. It's slow, but so rewarding.
• David Sedaris.
• My co- worker's desire to make his own genealogical tree of all the characters in Genesis.
• Sweater weather.
• My poor, but dogged efforts to learn to knit continental style.

incidentally

I am so in love with these stamps. I bought a book, but I don't want to use them! Now if they'd only do some lace... and some cabling...

waiting for the holidays to pass

To my great frustration, nearly everything on my needles right now is a gift item; worse, it's all gift items for people who potentially read this blog. This is killing me, I tell you.

I can say that I am knitting with this:

Handpaintedyarn.com's Capresse, in laceweight. I'm also doing a lot of work in Noro's Silk Garden in about 3 colorways, which may be a hint to some of you. There are a rough ton of hats, too- easy gifts, quick gifts.

The sweater I was working on- my first foray into designing, meant to go nowhere but to me, an exercise in numbers- that is in complete hibernation. She languishes away in my living room chair, staring balefully, waiting for me to come back to her. I feel badly about it, but damnit, I am still frantically trying to get holiday knitting done in time. Why does this keep happening? One of these years, I will learn: either start earlier, or knit less.

That sweater, though- here's where it's at, at least, as incomplete as it is.

Knit out of handpaintedyarn.com 's merino single yarn, colorway Amatista. The design is nothing new at all, but it's all self- generated; widenecked, holey raglan sleeves, fit through the waist. I think the singles yarn is slanting, but I'm not 100% sure yet, so it can't be horrific, and besides, what are experiments for?

I've also begun carefully dyeing a series of fibers and yarns based on my grandmother, Bess. This is a cautious and painful set of pieces, utterly personal in a way I know most people wouldn't understand. Because she was a singular person who seemed built completely out of contradiction, everything comes in pairs, sometimes complimentary, sometimes not. An example is this pair of BFL rovings, meant to be plied in on each other and eventually knit into a cabled scarf.

At first, it seems odd to be processing my grief this way. It is so easy to blow of fiber arts as fluff, if that's not too punny. But I process my entire life through these things, really; my colorways are all points of reference, moments in my life, things I saw or felt or dreamed about.  I can point at colorways and tell you what I was feeling, thinking about, or dreaming when I made them. It only makes sense, to eulogize Bess in this way, between my camera and my colors.