21 inches is a lot of ribbing.
This isn't a bad thing. I've been in need of a bit of comfort knitting lately, and working 2 x 2 ribbing in this delightfully soft alpaca-silk (Debbie Bliss alpaca silk dk) has been very comforting. But I'm coming up on 20 inches now, and the next part of this sweater calls for 60 inches of...lace. I'm not quite sure how I managed to ignore that part when I cast on for this in a fit of disgust over the lace sweater I was struggling with at the time; I seem to have untapped reserves of denial.
I think I'm going to need some new comfort knitting to get me through it. Not to mention the rest of the day.
Today is the first day of school here. I find it odd that school starts in mid-August. When I was a kid, it started in mid-September, and my kids are growing up in the same city as I did. In fact, my younger son actually started school in mid-July this year. He's just had a week off and returns today. My older son is starting...I'm having trouble with this...middle school today. He seems okay with it. It's his mother who's quietly falling apart.
I hated junior high (which is what they had instead of middle school when I was a kid). Absolutely hated it. Everything about it. It's a horrible time of life in the first place. There isn't enough money in the world to convince me to be 13 again. And I went to a particularly snobby, rich school, where I had neither the family, nor the money, nor the clothes to fit in. At all. I was too tall and too skinny and too shy. And a "brain". (Which, paradoxically, was my saving grace. I didn't care at all that smart wasn't cool. I knew damned well that smart was going to end up being more important than cute or cool in the long run. I was right, by the way. But it still sucked not to be cute or cool.)
So putting my little boy on the bus (at 6:55 in the morning!), which he's never ridden before, with a bunch of 7th and 8th graders, and watching it pull away to take him to the Bad Place awoke more than a few of my old demons. What if the other kids are mean to him? What if they laugh at him? What if he can't find the bathroom? What if the teacher yells at him? What if he gets hurt in gym class?
Realistically, I know that this child is smart and capable and outgoing, and even the nastiest comments roll right off his back without dimming his megawatt smile. Since kindergarten, he has always been at the center of any pack of kids; I used to find him after school by looking for the biggest clump of kids. He was always in the middle of it. He'll be fine. I know this. I'm just having trouble believing it.
