Things You Don't Appreciate Until They're Gone

You know.... how, back in the day... before kids, when I busted my butt at Jazzercize because I thought I was "fat" at 130 lbs. Give me a break...... I would KILL to be 130 again.... and it would be skinny. I wasted all that time, not appreciating what I long for now.....

I still have "test pants" from way back when.... you know, pants that are a million years old in your closet - just to prove that you actually did wear them at one time. My teeny, tiny, skinny teenage daughter can't even fit into my "test pants." Those are the 118 lb pants. Talk about never-never land!!!

And this - the Super Yarn Mart. Are these still even around? Ask anyone my age who grew up around here and they will tell you childhood horror stories of the Super Yarn Mart. The HUGE (I'm sure it was the size of a football field - at least that's the way I remember it) yarn store every kid of the 60's and 70's remembers being drug through... for hours at a time. The HUGE, boring, bright pink Super Yarn Mart.

Ok - I may exaggerate, but only a little. Such vivid memories. Mom would announce where we were headed and in unison we'd all whine, loudly "Nooooo, not the Super Yarn Mart!! Please.... we don't want to go!!!!" It was pure kid torture. Wandering around acres and acres of endless aisles of boring yarn. It was kid hell. And, of course, all this with our "hands in our pockets." Mom was big on keeping our hands in our pockets.

It really was the MOST dreaded place, I don't think we hated going anywhere as much as we hated going to the stupid, big, pink Super Yarn Mart. At least when we had to go to the market we could entertain ourselves by going down to the end of the meat counter and grossing out at the beef tongue. "Ewwwww, told you no one wants it, it's still there..." you could even do that with your hands in your pockets.

Now, I know I'm only exaggerating a little, because YEARS later, we were all sitting around one night, with my sister and her husband, and my sister or I brought up the kid hell of the Super Yarn Mart, and BOTH my husband and hers (both of whom grew up within driving distance of the dreaded Super Yarn Mart) both loudly moaned, "Ohhhh, the Super Yarn Mart - my mom used to drag us there.... I HATED that place!"

You know where I'm going with this..... the Super Yarn Mart is no more... at least in our neck of the woods. And I'd KILL to go back to the Super Yarn Mart. It would be heaven.... acres of yarn (I'm still sticking to my story that the place was HUGE).... Come on - "factory direct to me!!" - what's not to LOVE? Discount yarn to touch and buy. (Well, you could touch it if you were a paying adult customer, not a kid who had to keep her hands in her pockets). You didn't even have to wait for it to come in the mail! I'm digging back in the memory files right now, in what's left of what used to be a rather competant mind, trying to picture the yarn, what did they have???, - but of course, I could have cared less back then.... so I don't really remember.

Oh well, like weighing 130 lbs, they're both just fuzzy memories now.

OK - on another note...., for all of you who doubted that I could be random..... you were right.... I caved.

Yes.... that's graph paper. The solid boxes are note the placement of the "random" solid squares I've already knit into my LadyE scarf.... and I've mapped out the placement of the rest.... I couldn't take the stress.

I'm much happier now, though..... and I am still picking the colors at random... that I can handle.