Okay, so it is a glove. It fits my hand perfectly, so I’m sure it will fit my mother (for whom, if you remember, I am making a these for Christmas):

The stitch marker in the middle is where I’m considering a bit of embellishment. Originally I wanted to work an intarsia snowflake there, but when choosing between working in the round and working instarsia, dpn’s won out. So now I’m thinking about doing a little duplicate stitch (also called Swiss darning) to get the same effect.

Whatever I decide, I first need to finish paw number two, which should be easier now that there’s a bit of a chill in the air. There’s something a bit odd about knitting hats and mittens and gloves in summer.

I’m a Cub fan (they are the best team in baseball, but I was born a Die-Hard). And I used to say that the only thing worse than a Sox fan is someone who won’t commit to either team. But to tell the truth I am pretty hard pressed to find a Sox fan that I like. I’m not saying that Cub fans aren’t guilty of their share of pokes and jabs at the South Siders, but overall the Cubbies and their fans are classy. I’ve been thinking about this since Ozzie Guillen’s rant in May, when he whined about how the Cubs are beloved regardless of their record (among other things). But the other day, I overheard someone at the kids’ school gush over a little girl in a Sox jersey, telling her how pretty she looked all dolled up in black. The troublesome part is the girl was standing in a sea of Cubs shirts, and the girl standing next to her clearly did not understand why she wasn’t pretty too. It’s one thing to have team pride and loyalty. It’s quite another to put down a child. I used to think that kids naturally wanted to compete with each other, but it’s sickening that it’s the parents who teach them to say “my team is better than yours.”

Jake was in preschool when he had his first encounter with a Sox fan. “Mama, are the Cubs my team?” Yes, baby, they are.  “But K- says the Sox are better. He won’t play with me because the Cubs are my team.”

What’s a mother to do?

Well, I’m teaching The Boy to be a good sport. I tell him that when he’s confronted by one of these self-righteous little buggers (as he was today) to just shrug it off and say, “I guess we don’t agree.” I don’t know if that’s the right tactic to take in the baseball world of little boys, but he sure makes me proud that it’s not my boy out there putting other kids down.

Anna is learning to read in Kindergarten. This week, one of the ways in which the students are encouraged to read is through the use of environmental words. The child can “read” a word simply because of his familiarity of it within his environment. For example, most early readers are able to read McDonald’s just because they’ve seen it so often.

So today Anna comes from with a little booklet of environmental words that she’s supposed to read to me. She says her teacher told her to sound out the words if she didn’t know them. Turns out she was only familar with one word: Cheerios. Everything else — Hamburger Helper, Velveeta, Lucky Charms — were things she’d never seen before because I’ve never had them in the house. I’m certain she will be able to read without the ego boost of easy environmental words, but there’s a bigger question here. Are my children being deprived of American food icons? Is it a bad thing that they don’t know about Hamburger Helper? And are there really that many people who use Velveeta that it can be considered an environmental word?

Just a thought.

An old friend and fellow writer stopped by the other night, and she told me about an acquaintance of hers that was living the writer’s dream: he’d rented a cabin in which to do nothing but sleep and write. Apparently a lot of writers are going all Walden Pond and holing up in a cabin somewhere to pound out The Great American Novel. I understand the premise. No distractions. Inspiration from nature. Finding yourself. But I don’t understand how a backwoods locale is more conducive to writing fiction, unless you’re writing about a backwoods locale. It reminds me of that movie with Chevy Chase, Funny Farm. Ironic enough, my friend said the owner of the cabin listed off a bunch of writers who rented from her for the same reason. We’d never heard of any of them.

For me, I like to write somewhere familiar, but private. When I lived with my parents, I wrote in my room. On the floor, on my bed, at my desk, in a pink Queen Ann chair. In my first house with Diver Dan in Kansas, I wrote in the dining room or on the back deck. Now I’ve claimed the sitting room off our bedroom as my space, and I write at a desk facing the windows (I promise, no stories about squirrels!).

My refusal to go Walden like these writers is because (gasp) I don’t take my inspiration from nature. Sure, spring makes me slow down and traispe through the mud, but I’m most likely headed to a baseball field to sit on the bleachers and daydream about baseball stories (but I do that any time I see a baseball field). And winter’s just cold.

So where does my inspiration come from? Random things. A name overheard at the airport. The smell of new books. Pictures. A good workout. Stuff I wrote years ago. And none of it is tied to the season or the sight of squirrels frollicking out my window.

And speaking of stuff I wrote years ago, it seems that I’ve been inspired in spurts. 1987 was a prolific year, as were 1995 and 2000. The years inbetween? Well, that’s when I worked on the ideas that I had in my banner years, and, as I told that college professor when he asked why I didn’t have more to show him after the summer break, I was living life. And now that I think about it, that’s really where my inspiration comes and why I could never isolate myself from the world:

Living my life inspires me to write.

With both of my kids in school full time, I’ve been asked frequently, “What will you do with yourself?” And I answer, “I’m writing my novel.” And nine times out of ten, the response is a snicker. “No, really, I’m writing a book.” Sometimes I get more laughter, sometimes a blank stare.

Am I really such a smart-ass that nobody can take me seriously?

On the other hand, that last person, number 10 who doesn’t laugh, surprises me just as much as I seem to surprise numbers one through nine (and note that we aren’t talking Diver Dan, who supports me in all things, or my mother, who believes I possess near superhuman talents).

The next question usually is, “So what’s it about?” And then it’s my turn to stare blankly, because nine times out of ten my interrogator expects a genre response or plot summary and becomes confused when I start throwing around words like literary and insist it’s not the plot that drives the novel but the characters. To be quite honest, I don’t like getting into the details of the story, the plot, the theme, or the cultural significance with anybody, be they writer, reader or nosey neighbor. I’m half paranoid that they will steal my idea (cue theme song:

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) and half frightened that they will figure out my idea is no good (would sombody please club that damn Internal Editor?).

Then there’s this: the fear of failure. I have written since before I could write, I have declared writer to be my one true passion (no worries, Diver Dan, we’re just talking careers), I am a writer. But I am not — yet — an author, a polished, published, praised writer. So now that I have made my intentions known, what happens if The Great American Novel never makes it out of my head?

Of course, my supporters say I will not fail (Yoda, is that you?). But I am reminded of my Grecian Urn Therory, which, accodring to this Wiki entry, is not so far off from what “literary critics” now interpret: there’s value to remaining in an eternal present, in which you neither reach your goals nor fail them.

Hmmm…