Olive Knitting

I need to do something clean. Something that doesn’t involve animals’ bodily fluids. The computer is clean. I will just sit here and type a little. No fluids involved, except for the glass of wine I just poured.

You see, I was feeling guilty because I hadn’t done anything yet with all the wool that Giuseppe gave me. Giuseppe drives by 4 times a day and I’m sure he’s checking to see if the wool is still in the carpark where he left it a week ago.

I actually knew this would happen…my not doing anything with the dirty wool for, well, a long time, and then the guilty feelings whenever I see Giuseppe. In order to by-pass the latter of these two inevitables, the first day he dropped it off I tried to move the bag – you know, hide it somewhere so I could just lie when he asked me if I’d cleaned it yet (please don’t question my moral compass in that it points to guilty for inaction but doesn’t for lying). Note the operative word in that sentence is “tried”. Yes, that means I wasn’t able to. The bag is as big as I am and frankly just as weak. As soon as I tried to lift it, my hand broke right through and I got to experience a brand new sensation - shit-caked-wool-on-flesh. Ruffino found the sensation of shit-caked-wool-in-mouth to be most pleasurable and proceeded to shred a good portion of the bag all over the road and land until I was able to tape the bag shut.

So there it sat until this afternoon when I decide, “I ain’t got nothin’ else to do, might as well get rid of the Giuseppe Guilts.” I proceeded to bring approximately half the bag down to the tub (to get some perspective, half the bag FILLED the tub) and then started the water.

You might ask, “Lynn, if you don’t know what you are doing why wouldn’t you just start with a small amount of the wool so you can figure it out?” Yes, that would be a really good idea. In fact, the first day I got the wool I made a little try with the Ruffino scattered wool. And ya know what? It didn’t work. The wool got a little cleaner but it is far from clean.

And still…? yes, I tried a tub-full.

The water became so brown and thick so quickly that I thought I needed to drain it and start a second rinse. This, of course, almost immediately started to clog the drain and I got scared. Forget Giuseppe! – I don’t want to have to call a plumber because I’m so stupid as to stop up the drain with wool. I had images of the whole tub needing to be removed so we could get to the wool-plugged pipes. I decided to just get the stuff out of the tub and outside. I’d deal with it later.

While I was preoccupied with this, Ruffino was exploring the bathroom shelves only to discover a pair of scissors, the plastic handles of which, he decided were better than a chew bone.

It took me four grocery bags to carry out the very heavy, dripping wool (I didn’t want to risk waiting while it drained of all water out, I just wanted it out of my tub!). I then set to cleaning the bathroom. I had to reach my fingers down the drain to get as much wool as possible out of it. Have you ever inserted your fingers in a stopped up drain? You know, when you can’t see what you will find in there? Well, I did that and then washed the entire bathroom with cleanser followed by a bleach wipe down. It now smells like a pool in there…but that’s a hell of a lot better than it smelled before.

As I was cleaning, Ruffino disappeared. I figured he just got bored. No, that wasn’t the case, as I discovered when I went into the kitchen. In an effort to cough up the pieces of plastic scissors handles he had ingested, he barfed all over the floor. Lovely. Now the kitchen smells like a pool, too. I love bleach.

I’m going to go surf the net now…for as long as my computer lets me, that is.

Please don’t anyone point out that there are no pictures of my finished sweater on this post. I KNOW! And I won’t explain to you why this is because I’m beginning to bore even myself with complaints of tech problems – the biggest being my own ignorance.