Channeling Auntie M.

My Father had this aunt. Well, he had a couple. This one was his mother's youngest sister. Auntie M. After a fairly severe heart episode, Auntie M. came to live with us. This was not entirely a bad thing, you understand --she had a sense of humor and so did we (I vividly recall channelling Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz; you know, "Auntie Em! Auntie Em!") -- but, let's just say it was not always stress-free.

One of Auntie M.'s convictions was that our family unit maintained a certain not always acceptable to her level of arrogance. "You McCauleys," she would say, "you think you know everything." She had a point. We had our ways of doing things, and we were convinced they were the best. We would make allowances for the uninitiated, but only so far. This family-wide quirk, not unnaturally, eventually got on her nerves. After one too many times when someone redid or improved on something she had done, she took a deep, theatrically mournful breath, the quintessential heavy sigh, and on the exhalation said,

" Failed again."

I'm not sure how the other family members reacted the first time they heard her, but I know I had to laugh. Honestly, did it really matter which rags were used on the floor or the windows. Or whether you wiped the kitchen table before you swept? (Okay, I totally get the rags thing - old t-shirts for windows, old towels for floors. Trust me. It really is better. Missing a few crumbs because you swept first? Maybe not so much.)

"Failed again." It became something of a mantra. It was certainly quickly picked up by Their Father and I still get to hear it anytime I go off on a rant about doors let slam and tissues not making it to the wastepaper basket. (You don't want to know about the time there were four tubes of toothpaste going simultaneously.) (Well, really. Four? At once? There are only five people in this household. If the toothpaste went on a road trip, how hard would it have been to return it to the medicine cabinet? Four open tubes of toothpaste. At the same time. Sheesh.)

All of which goes to explain what happened here with my excellent intention to NaBloPoMo. "Failed again."

November is also National Knit a Sweater Month. And no, I'm not even tempted. I have three sweaters on my needles as it is. I don't need to cast on another one while I ruthlessly abandon them.


It's just a swatch. (She said with all the conviction of one perilously close to jumping over the edge and sliding, gleefully, down the slippery slope)