And Monday's Adventures...

This morning, I once again made a trip out to Ann Arbor, a daily commute I'm finding wouldn't be that bad if M-14 wasn't going to be under construction for the next 500 years, and for someone who lives in the Plymouth/Canton/Livonia/Dearborn/Dearborn Hts/Inkster general area. I don't.

The purpose of today's journey to one of my favorite small US cities was to complete a work sample for an assistant editor position I applied for at the University of Michigan. I'm confident I did a pretty good job...the sample consisted of editing a short book review and an excerpt from a legal document, determining which words from a list of commonly misspelled words were incorrect and providing their correct spelling (I swear I gave the same worksheet out for homework when I was student teaching 10th graders), and writing a letter based on a scenario. Even though the whole English teacher thing didn't quite work out, it was definitely not due to my inability to write/proofread (just my desire to work in a place where I'm not sworn at every day by teenagers who cannot properly conjugate the verb "to be"), so I'm hoping they call me back for a real interview.

Since I wanted to make my trip out to Ann Arbor as productive as possible (gas is expensive!), I decided to make a little stop at Knit-A-Round Yarn Shop...let me remind you, dear blog enthusiast, that I am on a yarn diet until future employment provides funding for yarn. So I was not to buy any yarn. If you've ever been to Knit-A-Round, you know how hard this can be, especially when they have such great sales (and not a basket of sale yarn spun from fiberglass in hideous colors like vomit that no one in their right mind would ever want to pay money for, let alone knit). But I walked out of there only spending $10. Two skeins of Plymouth Encore in Michigan colors to make a scarf (either for me to go with my skating team's warmup, or for Michael once hockey season comes...). That's it.

Now, there was a small reason (beyond not having a source of income) that allowed me to behave myself in the store. I figured that a nice box from Knit Picks would be awaiting me when I got home. (The $25 my mom sent me last week to buy some groceries? Yeah, I spent it on yarn.) I just knew it would be waiting patiently on my front porch for me to come home and rescue it from today's sweltering heat, after all, I had ordered it a week ago, and the online tracking confirmed that it was in a sorting location somewhere in Michigan. So inspired by the Vogue sweater I would be able to spend the rest of the day blissfully knitting in the air conditioning while watching lousy talk shows, I left without purchasing more yarn.

After leaving Knit-A-Round, I meandered over to Jimmy John's for a sandwich...just another example of how well my boyfriend knows me--I had spoken to him on the phone prior to heading to the yarn store. I told him that I was going to get lunch at Jimmy John's on Plymouth Rd, rather than one near campus, since it would be easier to find parking. He immediately replied, "you're stopping over there at that yarn store, aren't you?" (Moi? Alterior motives? No...) Anyway, while Jimmy John's, I discovered the most wonderful diet! Any nutritionist will tell you to eat smaller meals. They will tell you to eat more slowly. I've tried eating while reading, and that doesn't really help since I can manage both at the same time...it only takes one hand to eat, one to hold a book (unless it's a nice, heavy hard covered book with pages that stay put, in which case both hands can be used to eat). Knitting and crocheting? They require at least one hand, if not both. So the next time you find yourself eating (preferably alone or with people who understand that you are not, in fact, insane), try this: eat a bite. Sip your drink. Knit/crochet an appropriate amount of your project. Depending on its size, this can be a row, half a row, a pattern repeat...whatever can be knit in less than a minute (you don't want to spend all day eating, do you)? It really worked. After about twenty minutes, I had eaten half of my sandwich (the rest of which was wrapped up to be taken home for dinner) and finished the One Skein Scarf from Debbie Stoller's Happy Hooker, which is my first crochet project. All while earning very approving looks from the old ladies sitting at the next table over, as well as a sympathetic glance when they saw me trying to cut my project from the remaining yarn with my car key.

Anyway, back to the yarn waiting for me on the front porch. I got home about half an hour later. Much to my dismay, there were no packages on the front porch or shoved between the screen door and the front door. However, there was also no mail in the mailbox. I breathed a sigh of relief. The mail must not have come yet--perhaps the mailperson was taking his/her time due to the heat. So I went inside the house, where I was greeted by the smell of something cooking (a smell I'm so obviously not used to). A cookbook open to a recipe for some delicious vegetable lasagna was sitting on the counter, and there was chicken defrosting on the counter and a pan of sauteed vegetables cooling on the stove. Ah-ha! My roommate Nicole must have come home during her lunch break, started cooking dinner, got the mail, and was kind enough to put the box of yarn in my bedroom! I ran to my bedroom as fast as my Steve Maddens could take me (almost tripping over the couch in the process). No box of freshly delivered yarn, even after digging to see if it had been somehow buried under some of my clutter. A careful inspection of my desk revealed that it was not there, either. I was so devastated that I started straightening up my bedroom (I needed something to do, seeing that my plans for the rest of the afternoon were now ruined).

About twenty minutes later (just as I was about to get out the vacuum), I heard a truck park outside. I sprinted to the door to discover (yay!) that it was the mail truck! Since my house is the last one on this part of his route, I was about to run outside and ask if he had a package for my address that I could take off of his hands before he carried it all the way down the other side of the street...but I figured that would be just a tad psychotic. So I waited patiently, watching out the kitchen window until he deposited today's bills and other unimportant junk into the mailbox and eagerly tiptoed outside. No package. And that was way too much yarn to fit in the mailbox. Maybe he was going to come back with my package? After all, why would he want to carry it all this way? Wouldn't it be easier to do the rounds with the mail, and then go get the box from the truck and bring it over to my porch? That had to be it. So I waited. And watched. As he walked to his truck, hopped in, and drove off. DROVE OFF. I was so mad that I ate the other half of my cookie from Jimmy John's that I was going to save for dinner.

If I go to the post office and explain to them that there is a dire emergency causing me to need the package that they have for me right away, would they dig it out of tomorrow's outgoing mail?