The Big Decrease

So I've finally made it to the decrease section of the Clap. And none too soon. The hours left in the Olympics are ticking away, just like all the failed US attempts at gold. My once fat patty is becoming thin at an alarming rate, and I'm quite sure a "design feature" color change is inevitable.

But I knit on. And as I do so, I think about the things I read online today (all in a day's work, you know?):

-- I think about how I wish we had a peeps diorama contest at the Idaho Statesman here in Boise like they do in the Twin Cities. I’d totally enter, if only to torment the Mister. He’s
peep-o-phobic.

-- This makes me glad I’ve vowed to forgo the whole highlighting/hair coloring thing. Yes, I’m a blonde (okay, so I’m less and less of a blond every year), but I can tell you this, I’m definitely not willing to stay this way through the help of chemicals. I had my hair highlighted once, just before I was married. It was torture (but then, I equate hair salons with dental offices). It was stinky. It took a long time. I could hardly tell the difference.

Maybe I’ll feel different when I go from brownish blond to gray. I hope not.

-- The “A Smart Girl’s Guide to Money”sent to me at work by the American Girl people makes me realize that any girl who reads this will already be better at having a little side business than me. I sell a few knitted things now and then and know I
really, really should do the math to figure out how much profit I make (paying myself nothing per hour, of course). But see, then I’d have to come face-to-face
with how much money I actually spend on yarn when children are starving in Africa and the whole world is sort of a big, bad messed up place, in part due to my
own rampant consumerism.

-- The only thing that can quell that kind of thinking? This line from "Saturday" by Ian McEwan:

"It isn't rationalism that will overcome the religious zealots, but ordinary shopping and all that it entails-jobs for a start, and peace, and some commitment to realizable pleasures, the promise of appetites sated in this world, not the next. Rather shop than pray."