So, the Flower Baskets are blocking. I don’t think the colors are quite what they should be here, but the yarn’s wet. I am just loving the shading, though. I’m so glad I thought to use different colors! (And, due credit: Mom helped inspire the idea as I was looking at color swatches.) And I’m still surprised at how fast this shawl came together. I started it on Saturday night of Independence Day weekend–just two weeks ago. Wow!

And yes, I will try ironing it. I’m curious, and if it worked for Stephanie . . . I might need a drink first. But then again, speaking of drinking….

My parents got some frightening news from two of their oldest friends yesterday–scary, but with as good an ending as one could hope. After an evening out with their son, daughter-in-law, daughter, and son-in-law, they were dropped off at their house by the limo driver they’d hired (so no one would have to worry about having too many drinks–or so they thought). The driver then headed out with the four “kids” to drive them home. Now, their son is a really great, successful guy, but their son-in-law apparently has an inferiority complex of some kind, and gets violent when he’s drunk–which he apparently was. As I heard it, they were riding along, and suddenly, out of the blue, the son-in-law punches their son in the side of his face, breaking his jaw and knocking him to the floor, and then got on top of him, pummeling him, and then started to choke him. By now, the daughter-in-law is trying to get him off her husband, and the limo driver–thankfully a big fellow–had stopped the car. He came around back, pulled her up, pulled the son-in-law off, and basically saved their son’s life. They were told by the doctor at the hospital that he’d been within 30-60 seconds of dying, and he’s told his parents that he literally felt the life going out of his arms and legs and had been sure that he was going to die.

Luckily, there’s no physical damage that won’t heal–broken jaw, blurred vision, and horrible bruises around his neck–but the rift to the family? They’re supposed to be celebrating one of the parent’s 70th birthday in a month or so, but now the daughter and son-in-law have been disinvited, because their son and his wife refuse to be in the same room with him–possibly forever. Their daughter is sticking up for her husband, saying that he was driven to it by her brother’s needling . . . which, knowing him, I find hard to believe. And I can’t imagine that anything he could possibly have said would have warranted such an attack by his brother-in-law. Not that the brother-in-law doesn’t have a history of this kind of thing–he beat up his own brother the day before that brother’s wedding. (As in, the groom had a black eye in the wedding photos.) His mother and sisters don’t even speak to him . . .gee, I wonder why!

I feel so terrible for this family. Thankful that their son is still alive, but I can’t begin to imagine the repercussions to this. And this story was followed by Kerstin‘s news. I don’t know which is worse–losing a son to a car, but having the rest of the family for love and support, or having the son’s life saved, but the family’s internal structure completely wiped out. Either way, I’m praying for all of them.

On a lighter note, some more Harry stuff: Check out the Guardian‘s “Written as” links–telling the [purely fictional, they made them up, this doesn't mean a thing about what's actually in Book 6] death of Dumbledore as written by any number of authors. It’s silly and funny. I particularly liked Enid Blyton, Bertie & Jeeves, the Sun, and Sappho (not to mention Scooby Doo).

My car passed 25,000 miles today. It’s only taken me 3.5 years to get there. My father and sister tend to tease Mom and me about the mileage on our cars. They rack them up, while we stay closer to home. You’re not going to hear me complaining about a 4 mile commute to work–I love my commute and an quite happy to low mileage, thank you very much. It makes these “big” numbers all that more special.

Tags: Finished Knitting, Friends, General, Reading // 3 Comments »