Calling 1-800-GYPSIES; a story in pictures

At long last, here is what I believe was the source of my terrible nightmare from the other day:


This is my first-born child.

This is Crown Mountain Farms Sock Hop yarn in the Hang On Sloopy colorway. I bought it for myself last August with a bit of birthday dosh. It is the most expensive yarn I own.

This is what my first-born child did to the most expensive yarn I own.

These are the DVDs which contain the five episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I watched while untangling the most expensive yarn I own.

Once I was finished, (Damn is orange yarn hard to photograph!)

I bathed my child, and combed his hair, and fluffed it back up so it was nice and curly again. I dressed him in a nice clean outfit.

And I called the gypsies.

This is how much the gypsies offered me for my clean, well-dressed, cute-to-the-casual-observer child.

This struck me as a bit low, considering that at 11 cents a year, that's an abysmally low return on investment.

I thanked them for their time but decided I would keep the child, though I was still mystified as to what would prompt them to make such a low offer.

After they left, I noticed my one and only skein of (accursed) Socks That Rock:

Mystery solved.

Terrible Nightmare

I took a little nap earlier this afternoon, and despite being interrupted numerous times, I managed to have a really terrible, wretched dream.

I dreamed Caz and I had chanced upon this weird frozen custard shop in Milwaukee we've been to before, but have since been unable to locate (we haven't tried super-hard, mind you). The kids were with us, and so we took them in to buy some frozen custard.

Things were weird, blah blah, but the terrible part was just after I'd finished paying. I realized I'd left my purse sitting on the counter in front of the cashier. I had just stepped away, but the guy behind us had stepped forward anyway.

I said, "Excuse me," a couple times, and he didn't budge. I moved closer to realize that he was going through my purse!

So I shouted "Hey!" and "Get the hell out of there!" and all the usual things you shout when you catch some jerkwad rifling through your purse. He kind of shrugged and stepped away, and I went to check the contents of my purse were all still intact when I noticed he had a ball of purple yarn in his hand.

My wicked purple WICKED!! Somehow I'd stuffed all that knitting into a purse and this asshole was stealing it!

I shouted "Hey!" again and things on the order of "Give that back!" He smirked at me and held it out of my reach.

I took a US7 Denise Interchangeable tip and started jabbing at his chest and face with it. He laughed at me. I got even angrier and switched to a metal US1, again jabbing him in the chest and face, this time intending to do actual harm.

He continued to laugh at me, and started to threaten that if I really hurt him, he could have me arrested for assault. I shouted "Then give me my knitting back, dammit!" He just laughed at me some more and I struggled to figure out what to do next to get this jerk to give me my beautiful, wonderful (giant) sweater back.

And then, mercifully, I woke up.

I know at least some of what provoked the dream, though, which I'll report on later. Hope everyone has much better dreams than me tonight.