Trouble Brewing?

I've been so preoccupied with working on the book, scheduling 1,000 Knitters shoots (when they're confirmed, I'll tell all) and doing a bunch of freelance projects that I haven't been able to keep an eye on Dolores as much as I'd like. Need I tell you this is never a good idea?

Gift knitting took over my waking hours in the months leading up to Christmas, so it wasn't until we were sitting around the tree and Abigail ripped open a package printed with cartoon reindeer doing kegstands that I knew about this:



"Well," said Susan, gingerly opening the cover, "at least it's not a seventh copy of Goodnight, Moon."

"It's just a mock up," said Dolores from amid a pile of discarded wrapping, "We're still shopping it around. But I thought I'd give to her now. Somebody needs to take the child's education in hand."

"We're already sort of working on that," said Phil.

"Oh, of course," said Dolores. "A-B-C and what's the capital of Idaho and that sort of thing. But there's so much more to life, and that's where the Little Helper comes in."

"What's this?" said Susan, pulling a smaller booklet from between the pages.

"The supplement to the bartending guide. I've added it on the advice of my agent. You might want to give it a look, yourself. This egg nog is a smidge underpowered."

Susan and Phil agreed to tuck the book away and share it with Abigail when she reaches an appropriate age (some time around 2050, I believe) and that, thank heaven, was the end of it; although Susan later did grudgingly agree that the egg nog recipe was an improvement on Martha Stewart's.

After the holiday rush, we came home and settled down to what passes for normal around here.

I continued working on the handsome socks from The Knitting Man(ual)in between sessions at the drawing board.



I'm really enjoying these. There's just enough to the pattern to keep it from being a dull knit without making it too fussy for public transit or standing in line. I think the end result is fetching. The yarn (a present from Tom, who picked it up on a trip to Michigan at Ewe-nique Knits) is Margo Jones from Schaefer - the first time I've worked with Schaefer yarn. It won't be the last if I have anything to say about it. Good stuff.

Harry and the rest of the sock yarn decided to follow Dolores's writerly example and pick up their pens, and soon I was stepping around fifty-odd little journals or baking cookies for the poetry slams being held in the living room.

However, Dolores apparently has grown bored with the literary life. She's started going out and keeping late hours–late even for her. When she's home, I have to pry her off the computer with a crowbar. Her cell phone rings nonstop, and she rushes into the bathroom to engage in heated but muffled conversations. And she's made a point of grabbing the mail out of the box before I can get to it.

Yesterday Harry looked up from the draft of his latest poem, "If You Are Sad I Will Hug Your Heart," to ask me if I thought Dolores was acting weird.

"It's hard to say, of course. What have you noticed?"

"Well, for starters last week Stan spilled his ink all over her best peignoir and instead of freaking out she just said something about looking at the bigger picture. And then me and the guys were on our way to open mic night at The Alienated Espresso and we ran into Mitchell from The Lucky Horseshoe, and he said she hasn't been there even once since we came home from Maine. They had to lay off two bartenders."

That's all I needed to hear. I'm officially worried.