Your Honesty Shine Shine Shine

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Recently, we in Central Jersey had a notable earthquake. I say notable because to the best of my knowledge, I had never noticed an earthquake in my entire life. To be completely honest, I thought my washing machine, which I’d just started, was destroying itself in some particularly ostentatious manner and wanted me to know all about it, by which I mean the whole house shook and violent noise crowded out reason. My cats went flying. I have a blind cat. She seldom flies. I called my neighbor Andie. We met and she accompanied me to find out what evil possessed my washing machine. In the basement, we found a washing machine with a very innocent look on its face agitating in a very normal manner. My mind went blank, but Andie was already on Facebook, and people were talking. I still thought explosion. I live in New Jersey. Things explode all the time. Anyhoo, she called me a bit later and told me it was an earthquake, and we should expect aftershocks. It was at this moment I realized my irrational fear of earthquakes might actually be rational, and I did not see that coming.

My relationship with numbers is fraught. You think 12 and know what 12 means. I think 12 and wonder if 11 and 13 seem a little like they’re wearing yellow with brown shoes. Don’t do that! In fact, don’t wear colors you’ve ever seen in a diaper. If you’ve never changed a diaper, you might be surprised about the range in that color palette, and oh boy! Don’t stand next to me in the paint store.

Back to confusing numbers: this month marks 20 years since Paulie Gonzalez demanded I start blogging and created this website. I can’t believe Poor Impulse Control is almost old enough to drink, but I’m sure it’s been sneaking out with its friends to get fake IDs. I mean, who wouldn’t? If I were 20, I’d be giving it the old college try. And speaking of college, I retired from the unnamed university almost 2 years ago. I continue to run out of day before I run out of things I plan to do, but I 100% can’t figure that out. How the fuck can there be that much to do every day? Are days too short somehow?

Thing is: I wake up every day now happy. I don’t have to deal with a malignant narcissist trying to change what words mean, and I’ve let all that go. I wake up each day knowing I can study for classes I enjoy, hang out with my cats and plan fantastic dinners with Pete. My dean informed that if I’m not careful, I might accidentally get a college degree, but first I have to pass 3 semesters of Latin. So this summer, I’m going to try taking 2 summer classes in Latin and 1 in the fall. That’s a lot of numbers. I have no idea what they mean.

Yesterday, I started planting my garden. It’s early. In this zone, we’re not supposed to plant before Mothers Day, but my instinct for some years now has been to plant a month earlier. About 3 weeks ago, I felt restless and bought seeds at the local co-op, like a stupid amount of seeds, like $90 worth. It was ridiculous, but y’know. You might need a metric boatload of seeds. Yesterday, I planted beets. Today, I planted mesclun, spinach and other stuff. Tomorrow, I might go completely mad and plant potatoes.

Oh yes. Potatoes. In containers! See if I do not! Spring is here, and another year of my nonsense begins.

Sweet Summer Evenings Sapphire Skies

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Hey there, Poor Impulsives. About a million things happened in the course of the pandemic. Remember when it was so dangerous we stopped opening our mail? Yeah, that was a blast. Until that point, the Cat Blanket Project, started by the Lovely Georg, served the purpose of providing The Owl House, a small cat rescue, with cat blankets. Georg asked me to make blankets. I was a terrible knitter. Cats don’t care! I asked you, Poor Impulsives, for your spare yarn, and you gave it to me. People sent yarn from all over the place. I knitted it into peculiar swatches and sent it to the Owl House. I wrote you annual reports of how I used what you sent me. Sometimes there were special projects like baby blankets for hospitals or scarves for endangered youths. This went on for eeeeeons. Many cats got many blankets, babies got blankets, youths got scarves. Then came COVID. We all adapted in our own quirky ways.

A dining room table is full of yarns, craft supplies, knitting needles and bags of other treasures. You would be right to feel petrified.

In the meantime, other things changed. Stitchers around me died. I collected their stashes and tools. This was a big change. Stitchers have longterm plans and death is extremely inconvenient! Another big change: I learned how to crochet and developed my own blanket pattern. A blanket, I decided, didn’t have to be rectangular. It could be reasonably round. Ish. I’m not saying I’m brilliant at this crochet thing. Another thing that changed: since I couldn’t mail a couple dozen cat blankets, I started delivering them to shelters near me.

A mediocre crocheter is combining several different yarns to make round cat blankets. Her eye glasses suggest she may not see very well.

I mean, who the hell knew what was going to happen, but cats were still in shelters. People adopted cats and emptied shelters, but when they went back to work, some assholes returned them. Fuck those jerks. One day, I was standing in a local shelter with a bag of blankets when someone brought in a cat in a carrier and just left it there, and I was breathless, thinking about how freaked out that cat must be.

A crocheted round blanket. It's sort of round. A variety of yarns make it look cushiony. Basically, we should all be confused.

Along the way, I stopped providing annual reports because I couldn’t keep count anymore and wasn’t exactly sure what year it was. Writing checks was hell. When I produced enough blankets that the craft room was uncomfortably full, I bagged up blankets and drove to a shelter. A year ago, my oldest friend Trout died, and her yarn arrived at my house in waves as her partner sorted through her possessions. My dear friend Lala took a lot of yarn for other projects, and we gave away a lot to local stitchers, and there was still so much yarn because stitchers have plans, and death is inconvenient.

So here is the thing: nothing is stopping you from doing this sort of thing, too. You see. You know. Someone dies and leaves a lot of something, and maybe you can do something with it. Maybe you can move it to where it becomes an art supply, not landfill. Trout loved ink pads and stamps. I walked dozens and dozens of stamps and inks to a nursery school, where they were received with glee.

If you knit or crochet, an animal shelter near you will probably welcome scrap yarn blankets. Call them. Ask. It’s so easy. I’m going to check in on the Owl House to see if they need blankets, because I’m not quite but almost up to my neck in blankets.

On Two Or Three Editions

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Clam shells form a small path to nowhere, because it's only 26 inches long.

Here in the Ides of January, 2024, we of the Fuuuuutuuuuuure have cured cancer, solved the Riddle of the Sphinx and easily feed the world. We walk tall and cast long shadows. Our jet packs propel us hither and yon, and all that road surface has been returned to arable land. Everyone says please, thank you, and Remember GoFundMes for cancer treatment? Home Owners Associations are gracious when disabled people need help and accommodations. Individually, we recognize that other people will be better at some sorts of work than us and we enjoy their successes, as they improve everyone’s lives. Once we cured Alzheimers and other forms of dementia, we no longer feared aging and welcomed its wisdom. We value the lives of children enough to educate and protect them from violence, and their comfort is a comfort to us all. Our economy is organized around research and development of technologies that enhance our quality of life and harmony with Nature. Oceans are free of toxic trash. Ice shelves model stability and, from year to year, weather and Dad jokes remain the same. It was challenging when we decided to care about the future our grandchildren were born into enough to change how we did business, how we conducted ourselves and how we governed ourselves, but it was worth it.

And Dance To A Song

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This is a terrible recipe for Sauerkraut Cake and we should all be ashamed.

With a chance to reflect on weird shit in one’s past, one may conclude ‘That’s who I was, that’s what I did or didn’t do, that’s how it turned out,’ and shrug. Events weren’t going to turn out better or worse, since I was there and made that mess. Or didn’t. Who the hell knows, anymore? One of my older cousins isn’t speaking now to any of my father’s children because 30 years ago I asked what happened to my grandmother’s older brother and my older cousin didn’t want to open that or any other can of worms. It annoys me that the older ones in the family are planning to take all the secrets with them, but short of pumping a tartuffo full of truth serum, what are the options really?

Four years ago, my mother joined The Choir Invisible and somehow still manages to trill a confusing tune. My sister Daria recently found this recipe my mother photocopied in the seventies. In my mother’s papers we found piles of photocopied recipes from the same era – and probably the same Xerox machines – that were the result of many office parties with co-workers from all over the Northern Hemisphere. She may have enjoyed Sauerkraut Cake or simply asked for the recipe to be polite, but I feel sure this recipe originated somewhere in a fervent desire not to starve and its people migrated to the U.S., where heavy cream is available in drugstore refrigerators on every corner. Or near cows. People have cows. Did she make this cake? Did I sample it? All that is lost in the mists of Time. I’m not making that cake – ever.

Yesterday, I bought chickpea flour. This comes with its own conflicts for me. My family called chickpeas ceci beans. I will deny under oath I ever called them chickpeas and you did not hear me say that. Right? Exactly. We’re all ashamed. Eeeeeeeons ago, I watched an Italian cooking show in Spanish from Latin America, and while it’s totally crucial to know that I don’t speak Spanish, I am reasonably conversant in Italian food. That chef made a form of Sicilian pizza with a ceci bean flour layer. I was scandalized! I was intrigued! I forgot about it until yesterday, when I decided the past wasn’t getting any less confusing. Fritters made from ceci bean flour are called panelle. They have few ingredients and are a testament to the ability of Sicilians to survive on very little, but was that a lost part of our food tradition? I have no way of knowing if it was, because it isn’t anymore. Related: in my mother’s recipe box, I discovered most of the Italian recipes my family cherishes came from such authentic sources as Good Housekeeping.

What happened to us? Everyone who would tell us is gone, and the one who could tell won’t talk. We have been making messes now long enough that they’re ours. So I’m going to make panelle. Maybe I’ll be embarrassing forty years from now.

A Break From the War

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Naturally, you’re asking yourself, ‘What’s Tata up to this summer?’ Everyone is! Well, I am up to art and food preservation, as I am every summer, but also home repairs and declaring Gazpacho Season open. Gentlemen, start your preferably organic engines!

My cousin/hairdresser/not actually my cousin asked me last week if I wanted cardboard from a box he was unpacking as I walked into the salon for another fantastic haircut. I said I did, because for the last three years, I’ve been sending art projects through the mail on cardboard just like that. He looked skeptical. Who does that, whatever that is? He might’ve thought I was making yet another of my excellent jokes, but no. Anyway, I left the salon with cardboard. Inspired, I drew and sent out cardboard postcards to about 30 of my closest friends, some of my blood relations, and my actual family. It’s a party!

Just enough time passed for me to forget about bulk-mailing insulation before my cousin/hairdresser/not actually my cousin tested me this image, asking if I’d sent this. I had! He liked the purple smiles and the green squiggle, which was the only common element I employed in this batch of cardboard postcards. I told him a feature of this artform was that it was recyclable when he was done marveling that I had mailed him special cardboard. That part is fun for me! Do not keep my dumb stuff!

You can do dumb stuff like this yourself to keep in touch with your many friends, blood relatives and actual family. All you need is postage, pens/crayons and stuff you’d ordinarily recycle. You would be surprised by how many people send you presents and thank you letters – I know I am!

A Moment Frozen Forever There

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This is a happy story. That’s how I start telling people about what I’m doing. I say, “This is a happy story. My oldest friend died and -”

Eyes glaze over. People want to protect themselves from other people’s sorrows, and who can blame them? I can’t. We all carry about as much as we can handle. But not everything is what we expect, and some things can still be pretty goddamn funny. You may or may not remember that when I started the cat blanket project with the lovely Georg, I was a reasonably terrible knitter, but who cared? Cats don’t! The two points were to comfort shelter cats and keep yarn out of landfill. After I made dozens of knitted blankets, I learned to crochet and we were off to the races. Crocheting the same amount of space-filling fabric is much faster and I suck at it so much less. Plus, it’s a lot like performance art: no one knows what you meant to do. Maybe you meant to do that!

Here, we see two of Trout’s sweater project panels. I pulled these panels out of the bags, separated the yarn balls and cut off the strands of mohair, to which I am allergic. Probably. The jewel tones were so beautiful it was almost worth hives and possible gasping explanations to EMTs, but honestly, there are only so many times you can say, “I knew I was allergic, and I was stupid enough to go ahead anyway” before you say to yourself, “Hey, so: give that shit away.” On Friday, a friend of the family stopped by, left the engine running and took away three large bags of mohair yarn.

I knitted these panels off their needles, then crocheted borders to extend these panels into cat blanket sizes. It’s important to remember one thing:

I continue to suck as a knitter. Trout was a fine, right-handed knitter with a tight gauge, and I simply am not. I’m left-handed and haven’t knitted much in years. However, cats do not care. Thanks to Trout, cats will have two more cozy blankets. Hooray!

If you stitch, there’s a shelter near you that needs blankets. You can help even if you suck at it!

Just Like China Cups

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In ancient Poor Impulse Control history, I published an annual report in January-February-ish. The reason for this was that when your knitting and crocheting friends and relatives joined the Choir Invisible, you may have mailed me their yarn, unfinished projects and stuff I might not be able to identify. I get a lot of that. Anyhoo, I finish some projects and take others apart. I give their tools away. Of the yarn, I make blankets for animal shelters. Above, please see an image of a blanket in the process of becoming a warm, soft thing.

In 2019, when the pandemic made everyone go their own special kinds of crazy, I was sitting on a pile of scarves and hats I couldn’t mail to anyone, baby blankets hospitals would no longer accept and cat blankets. Time sort of became a blur and my usual methods of keeping track of what I sent where went straight to hell. Looking back on it, I sent dozens and dozens of hats and scarves to organizations that gave them to at risk people. I sent out cat blankets, which I remember packaging up and daring postal workers to challenge me about bales of blankets. What I can say for sure is that if you sent me yarn, I made it into something that helped someone, and thank you for trusting me.

At the beginning of 2023, my oldest friend Trout was in the hospital – had been mostly in the hospital since the previous May – where she turned wool I couldn’t crochet with into 10 blankets for the shelter in our hometown. I’d just taken maybe 25-30 to an animal shelter in the town next to mine. After Trout died, I delivered 42 blankets to the shelter in our hometown. Trout had volunteered there years before, when her health still permitted that kind of activity. The shelter workers were overjoyed to receive our handiwork. Yesterday, Lala and I delivered 24 blankets to that same shelter. That makes the running total for this year between 91-96.

Trout left behind the largest stash of yarn I’ve seen yet. I’ll make a special list of the art supplies I’ve dropped off hither and yon, and if I’m feeling especially saucy, I’ll take a picture of the only reasonably disastrous craft room with just a small percentage of her fabric and yarn piled everywhere. Twice, Pete has opened that door and muttered, “Jesus Christ.” No, Jesus has nothing to do with it.

If you sent me craft supplies, thank you. If you need to talk to me about craft supplies, let’s talk in comments.

You Can Swim the Sea

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A sign says NO PARKING ANY TIME. Whimsical paint stripers have laid down NO PARKING yellow paint in front of the sign.

It’s funny what you can see when you’re not really looking. Pete was driving through our tiny town and noticed the paint stripers had striped paint where no cars were supposed to park. But no cars were supposed to park on that side of the street, which you surmise from the sign saying NO PARKING, so do not park there. But also do not park there because because the corner is nearby and you will obstruct visibility for other drivers, who also should not park there. For all of these reasons, do not park there. I don’t know how Pete failed to drive off the road, laughing.