Formerprincess asked if I had a plan for improving the early service music, or if I intended to just see what happened.

My plan is not complete, because I am still gathering information, but here it is so far:

1. I have a growing list of talented people who are willing to provide special music for that service, and a short list of people willing to help me keep the calendar for it. I figure I can schedule special music for most Sundays.

2. I am supporting the fledgling choir in any way they want me to. So far, that includes singing with them, helping them get music legally (which turns out to be a specialized skill), and being the one bold enough to point out when we need to work on a section.

3. I am supporting the longterm goal of having a paid songleader for that service by working along with other ministries to increase attendance enough that they can afford one, and by helping to find such a person.

That seems like a good starting point. One of the things people have asked for is a "consistent" musical experience for that service. I'm not quite sure what they mean by that, but if I can arrange that they will have special music every week and a songleader, that may do it. I'll be attending that service for a while to see what I can see.

Their pianist is very competent, and she found us a nice little three part SA  Rutter piece to work on for Easter. Three more people asked to join the group as I was leaving the sanctuary, and our choir director agreed to get a dozen copies of the music for us. We are working on an easier piece for February 3rd, as well, a country song requested by the Christian Education Minister. I'm hoping that, once the group has had the experience of working together on a piece until everyone is actually singing the right notes and paying attention to dynamics and vowel tuning and blending and whatnot, they will find it satisfying enough that they will prefer it, and want to do it on a regular basis.

Yesterday, the early service had the little choir singing a hymn in two-part harmony, and a few 1970s praise choruses led by the pastor. He told the congregation that they weren't singing loudly enough, and they sang their choruses a couple of times, sitting down, with piano accompaniment.

Had I been a visitor, I would have thought that there wasn't nearly enough music for me, and gone elsewhere next time.

The pastor has expressed the view that the early service needs a dynamic songleader who can whip up some enthusiasm, but this group is sitting down, not clapping, singing "Awesome God" a couple of times in unison. It seems to me that there is a limit to the amount of enthusiasm this experience can engender, especially at 8:45 in the morning.

I also have a plan for the children's music, but that is really in the information-gathering stage. I got some rhythm instruments to the woman who leads their Sunday School gathering music, and that's all I've done for them so far. I think it could be a positive step, though.

The jacket isn't going as well. I sewed all the parts together, and the lack of set-in sleeves made that pretty easy until I got to the collar. The notches didn't match. Now, is that because I cut them inaccurately, because the pieces were drafted badly, or because I sewed it on upside down?

I can't decide. I am letting it sit while I think about that.

The boys have the day off, and I have not yet had a phone call saying that their frozen corpses were found in the canyon, so I guess that their camping trip is going well.

I am hoping that they will stay out long enough for me to get my work done without the extra energy required to ignore them. Then I have a business meeting this evening. So the jacket will have time to sit in the corner and think about its behavior, and perhaps when I go back to it, I will be able to tell what I've done wrong.

I'm in a huge big hurry today, and cannot take time to write. Let me just mention that I cut out the jacket from this pattern yesterday, between the meeting and the bi-state Scrabulous game. I might sew it up today.

Oh, and Ozarque has a particularly interesting post over at her place.

I may come back this afternoon, but I have to see my boys off on their insane camping trip, and I cannot sing for the early service in my jammies, either, even though they are nice peach silk ones.

Bai!

*******

I came back. I am doing the jacket here in a nice gray twill from the clearance table at Hancock's, in the spirit of a wearable (I hope) muslin. I have all the major seams done, and nothing horrible has happened yet, so I am being cautiously optimistic. If it goes together well, I will make it again in the lovely mushroom wool gabardine that  was the big splurge for SWAP Part III. (See its unexciting picture at left.) I started the SWAP last summer before the time crunch at my house...

(Quick update: my eldest left her husband, came home to live, and moved away again; my older boy started college and quit it again to be a rock star; and I started a business. These things took up a lot of time. You might not have noticed.)

Anyway, this was a picture from last August or so, of the spruce wool that became a lovely jacket and a skirt which is still waiting to be hemmed, the gray wool that became Ivy and the nice rayon print that became an unsuccessful skirt which is waiting to be redeemed. So that is the sum total of progress on the SWAP Part III, but it is back in the land of the WIP rather than the UFO, so that's good.

As for the music... You may recall (if you always read my blog and have total recall) that I am the leader of the new music ministry team at my church. In the course of a couple of meetings, I have learned the goals for this team, and one of them is to improve the music at the early service.

The congregation wants the music improved, and that is the upper layer of the thing. I went to the early service this morning, sang, talked with people, and between the two services I put my team together. The upper layer of the team's mission was received joyfully.

The second layer is an intention on the part of the pastor and several committees to increase the attendance at the early service, and no one will object to that, so I didn't bring it up.

But there are further layers, and that was interesting. Since I do not attend that service, I was somewhat in the position of the visiting consultant. It became clear pretty quickly that in this case the CEO was not confiding much in the rank and file, where the further layers of intention are concerned.

A little surprising, but okay. I can work with that.

As an outsider, I also got to see all the interesting undertones of relationships. Who doesn't want to work with whom. "He gives it away, but then he takes it back." "You'll have to rein her in." Who intends to do God's work. Who is just doing his job. "Oh -- he's going to be involved?" Whose feelings have been hurt. Who is worried about her status.

I went around strongly projecting  the following message: "I am harmless and useful." Whatever the power structure is here, I attempted to convey, I will not disturb it.

At the meetings, I noticed who makes speeches, who talks a lot, who likes to argue, who thinks meetings are fun. I don't want them on my team. I tried to discern, as much as a newcomer can, what the sides were, and to make sure to invite people from each camp. No one refused to play on my team.

My own hidden agenda is not very sinister: I want to improve the quality of the music. I have some allies in this. No one will mind if we do that, as long as we don't step on anyone's toes while we do it.

I believe that we can do that, just for the general betterment of the world.

But never mind the secret part. The overt part of the plan seems pretty simple at this point. There are two clear mandates from the congregation so far, and both seem to me to be completely realistic. People want a richer music program for the early service, and more musical options for the kids. I have plans for how to achieve both these things.

I'm writing all this so that I can come back next year and see that I thought I could facilitate these goals easily without getting ensnared in the human dramas which are doubtless lurking around where I can't see them, causing any trouble, or making any enemies. At that point, I can either see that I was right and be happy at how well it worked out, or laugh at my past self for thinking such a foolish thing.

Knitsteel suggested that the "Don't Break the Chain" widget could be stressful.

Nope. You know I'm very goal-oriented. Keeping track of how I'm doing on my goals is not only not stressful, it's downright natural. But it happens that I was just thinking about that widget in a desultory way as I did mindless stuff at the store yesterday. That one is for the goal of daily exercise, a goal which I had last year, too, but didn't meet. I figured the calendar would be encouraging for me.

But I have heard that working out seven days a week is no better than six, so I don't mind if there ends up being one day a week when I don't get to work out. And so far there has been, in both weeks that I've had that up. I have days that are just too busy, or I have guests or something. So I was thinking of the fact that, if I always end up with a day off each week, the little encouraging thing will never say more than, "I've been getting things done for six days straight!"

And I was thinking that going from six to one every week is not a big deal, but if you had "I've been getting things done for 457 days straight!" and had to go back to one, it could be traumatic.

And that made me think about the difference between things I do every day, and things I do most days.  For me, there seems to be a big difference.

I brush my teeth every day, I read before I sleep every night, I cook meals for my family every day (don't laugh -- there are people who don't).

But the things that I usually do, even when they are things that I think I should do every day... Well, I know I don't do them every day, but I don't actually know how often I let them slide. I know that I intend to get dressed like a grown up every day (that was a goal from last year, and I do fairly well on that, I think...), and do laundry, and do the homework from my Tuesday class, and make my three business calls, and eat plenty of vegetables, and make some progress on my fiber projects and do housework and follow a proper skin care regimen and --

But you know, I don't always do all those things. And that is where the difference lies, for me, between things I do every day and things I usually do. Every day, there is an element of decision involved in the things I usually do. I feel that I have the option. I think about whether to have oatmeal for breakfast or, hmmm, maybe French toast would be better. And, when I felt as though exercise was something I did most days and I had a sort of "at least three days a week" in my mind about it, three days was about it.

The things I do every day are automatic. It doesn't worry me if I don't do them one day, or make me feel discouraged, but really I just do them. So the "Don't Break the Chain" widget is helping me to make working out something I do every day, not something I usually do.

Yesterday included two meetings. I spent much of the day reading 16th century journals and fooling around with numbers, so I expected the meetings to be welcome breaks. And indeed they were.

The first one was lunch with Janalisa. Among the useful business things, she also told me that I was not unreasonable to be a little bit stressed.

You might have noticed, if you read this xanga regularly, that I have been a little stressed lately. Now I feel justified.

The second was a music meeting. That was quite a surprise. I thought there would be a few of us with notebooks and pencils, debating the style of music suitable for the early service demographic and making a short list of possible soloists for the offertory. In fact, there were six of us, and we gathered around the keyboard and sang. Then we ate cake.

What a lovely surprise!

Just imagine, if some of the times when you go in to a meeting, instead of flip charts and discussions of whether the analytics are accurate and if so what does this mean for your conversion rate, you got to gather around and sing. Wouldn't you feel much less stressed?

I do.

We sang "Whispering Hope," a song which my mother has talked about but which I'd never heard before, and "It is Well With My Soul." We sang "Jesus is Coming Soon." I love to sing that song. It is so much fun. I learned it in a Baptist church, where they believe this sort of thing and preach about it. You will never hear that sort of thing in a mainline Protestant church, so we were just singing it for fun, but I was thrilled. I was also very pleased, now that I am heading up the music ministry team, to find that there was a grass-roots movement toward producing a little choir for the early service.

Having heard in a meeting just a day or two ago that the early service didn't respond well to "old-timey" music, I was surprised that the group was stuck so firmly in the 1890s. I mentioned this. They stared at me. They assured me that they, all of whom actually attend the early service, loved old-timey hymns. They rolled their eyes about how right now they have contemporary music all the time. They represented about 9% of the congregation at that service, so it may be that they are a revolutionary group trying to force the congregation to sing "Church in the Wildwood" when they would really prefer to be singing stuff from Jars of Clay, but if so, they hid it well. No one spoke up for Beethoven, but otherwise it appeared that they were pretty openminded. And, if indeed they are a subversive group, it was clever of them to disguise the fact with cake.

On the ride back to town, the driver confided that she was sometimes frustrated by the casualness of the music at our church. "There is no standard of excellence," she said. And indeed I have noticed that there seems to be a feeling that actually knowing the music is optional, and rehearsing a thing long enough to do it well is somehow being a spoilsport.

One of the other singers, she said, has specifically rejected the suggestion of polishing pieces up before presenting them on the grounds that she doesn't like things to sound planned.

There might have been a bit of a silence there while I tried to assimilate the idea of actually wanting your public performance of music to sound unplanned.

The driver could tell that I was a kindred spirit. She had heard me say, "How about if we divide this up into parts?" and "Let's just sing through that second line again -- I know I'm not singing what's written there."

We plan to subvert the early service.

"That reminds me of me." That was #2 son, after reading an article in the current issue of Scientific American Mind. The article was reporting on the studies that found that teaching students to feel that their success was based on effort was more encouraging than letting them think it was a matter of intelligence or talent. Students who think they are successful because they are smart, says researcher Carol Dweck, are more likely to give up and to feel helpless when they find something difficult. They are also more likely to do easy things to avoid difficulty.

I had heard of the research before, and hadn't thought that it applied to my kids. Of course I think they are smart and talented. Beautiful, too. We all think that about our kids. But my kids have been brought up to value hard work, and they are all hardworking people. Local employers have hired one after another of my kids till their businesses were full of them, happy to have employees with the work ethic so elusive in the modern slacker generation.

After #2 son said that, though, it seemed possible. They work very hard -- at things they are good at. This has allowed them to achieve excellence in some areas, but it may also explain why I currently have two college dropouts in the family. #2 son was referring specifically to the part about kids who find school very easy, and then have trouble when they reach high school and are expected to study. And we often hear about kids who are stars in high school and then are upset upon finding themselves no longer in the top when they get to college.

This does not apply to me at all, of course. Look at my experience with hand bells! And then, as I read the article while climbing hills on the treadmill, I thought about that. You do not hear me saying, "I will be able to learn to play bells if I make the effort. I like doing challenging things." I mean, I do like challenging things. But what you hear with the bells is how I am the worst bell player in the world, and I don't like it. I don't give up, because I am The Slave of Duty. But I do seem to have the idea that there is a certain fixed level of talent involved.

I moved on to the article about boredom. It had an interesting review of early 20th century studies of boredom among factory workers. It then moved on to the elements of boredom: lack of stimulation, a need for novelty, and difficulty focussing attention. It discussed "existential ennui," which was kind of fun to read about but clearly would not be enjoyable. Avoid it.

The conclusion was that some people are more easily bored than others. We are not astonished, right? I am one of those people, I thought. In psychometric terms, I am a squiggle or a zigzag. We squiggles (and this is every bit as scientific as astrology, so click on that link and try it out) require a high level of stimulation and variety in our work. I dislike repetitive tasks so much that I find them physically painful. I have, as one discussion of the topic phrased it, the attention span of a gnat.

So I took the little quiz in the magazine.

• It is easy for me to concentrate on my activities.*
• Frequently when I am working, I find myself worrying about other things.
• Time always seems to be passing slowly.
• I am often trapped in situation where I have to do meaningless things.
• I have projects in mind all the time.*
• I find it easy to entertain myself.*
• I get a kick out of most things I do.*
• I am seldom excited about my work.
• Much of the time I just sit around doing nothing.
• I often find myself with time on my hands.
• I often wake up with a new idea.*
• I feel that I am working below my abilities most of the time.
• I have so many interests, I don't have time to do everything.*

If you say "no" to the starred statements and "yes" to the unstarred ones, you are easily bored. I am not, according to the test, easily bored. In fact, thinking of the kind of person who might be classed as easily bored by this test, I want to say, "Well, for heaven's sake, quit whining and do something!"

Which is what moms always say to bored kids. That and, "Well, if you have nothing to do, you could clean your room."

So are we looking, here, at a monumental lack of self-awareness?

I don't know. I do know that I made an excellent soup yesterday. I had had another day full of interruptions, and was feeling as though I hadn't gotten as far in my to-do list as I had hoped, and had my Wednesday marathon ahead of me (including those handbells, where we had yet another new piece of music)... I skipped the 5:00 meeting and made Tortellini Soup instead.

I don't intend to get into the habit of skipping things, really I don't, though I have done it an unaccustomed amount this week.

But the Tortellini Soup was a great idea.

Cook up some Italian sausage. Add onions and garlic. Then stir in a can of diced tomatoes and a cup of tomato sauce. Some red wine if you have any hanging around, which I did not. Your favorite Italian herbs come next -- I use a really good Italian seasoning mix in the wintertime. Slice a carrot and a couple of zucchinis (I had to sequester the zukes and add them just to my bowl later, since my boys assured me that zucchini is gross and inedible). Once the vegetables are cooked the way you like them, add a cup or two of tortellini and cook till they are as cooked as you want them to be.

This will give you the fortitude to continue your day, whether you are doing hard things or boring things.

I didn't get to the gym yesterday before the store, but I did Pilates with a DVD. Or not exactly a DVD, but Netflix Instant Watch. They have removed all limits from it (not that we ever had time to reach the limit when there were limits), so now you can just decide one day that while you do not have time to drive to the gym, you do have time for some Cardioblast Salsa as long as you don't actually have to leave the computer. And you just push the button and there it is. I quite like that.

However, I plan to go to the gym today. And to do some filing, since I am once again working in a puddle of papers. And I have a mailing to do. So I guess I may not be completely glued to the computer all day.

Where the Dark Art is concerned, I have been pretty successful. I'm up in the higher stripe on Marketleap, the store website is on the front page for most of the things we can imagine people searching for us with, the Google Analytics show continuing improvement. Now it's all about conversion rate.

Well, and continual attention to the Dark Art, because you can't let this stuff slip even for a week or two without ill effects.

And I have a bit of an assignment from last night's music meeting, and must track down the assignment from my missed class. Plus I have a show to close and some things to say about fractions.

But mostly I plan to think about explorers.

When I was a child in California, we admired the conquistadors. We admired the old pirate Drake. We learned about them as exciting, bold, daring, swashbuckling guys who did amazing things. In today's schools, the explorers are rapacious ne'er-do-wells despoiling the landscape and oppressing the native peoples.

I can see both points of view equally well. Sometimes this is a handicap, since a balanced treatment is not what the schools are after. But today's guy, Hernando de Soto, was a villain for sure. Historians have no trouble at all believing that this guy was murdered by his own men and left to rot on the banks of the Mississippi because, well, he was exactly the kind of guy who gets murdered and left to rot. I think he would make a good object lesson for bad bosses, though that's not what I plan to do with him.

If you have other views on De Soto, I would of course love to hear them.

I didn't get through my to-do list yesterday, I didn't get to the gym, I didn't go to the first meeting of the Master Chorale.

Basically, the to-do list was too long. No, scratch that. Because things can always be moved on to the next day, can't they? I think it was stress. When I get stressed out, I get inflexible about the to-do list. Like, if I get all those sections cleaned up and sent off to the testers, and all the issues about product adjustments and questions settled, and all the phone calls made, and finally figure out the analytics, all will be well.

But the stress is not actually about the to-do list.

It is more about the exhausted phone call from #1 daughter, who is feeling overwhelmed by being on her own for the first time, and the miserable IMs from #2 daughter, who is trapped in a work setting very like "The Office," and #1 son's decision not to go to school this term, and #2 son's Governor's School application and #1 son's job applications and my husband's toothache and possibly also #1 daughter's dog who spent the entire day bringing me her ball and barking at me to play fetch.

So, while it probably would have been calming for me to go to the gym and to rehearsal, I did not do those things, but rather stayed glued to the computer all day long, while other people's (and dogs') needs ebbed and flowed around me.

#2 son got the job at the ice cream parlor, and is very excited about it.

#1 son, having decided on his way out the door to the college not to go after all, got applications from outdoor gear stores. One of them was five pages of philosophical questions.

Really. "Albert Schwietzer said.... Do you agree or disagree, and why or why not? Use examples from your life." "To change the world, you must live the change you want to see. How does this apply to work in a retail environment?"

I definitely think he should work there.

And I discussed all these questions with him while cleaning up the format of the comprehension questions for the reading passages of the subunits, and stuff like that.

And the scheme for doing the sleeves, which I detailed mercilessly yesterday, isn't actually working. More frogging in my future.

However, today I will be at the store, and then I will be missing class in order to attend a meeting. If I get home in time to get some frogging done, I will probably be just in the mood.

Having gotten up at 4:00 yesterday and being determined not to work, I had all this lovely extra time. And I thought I would go read some knitting blogs, because I haven't had time to to do so lately.

And it turns out that all the knitting blogs I used to read have a) shut down, b) begun being like mine, and hardly knitting blogs any more at all, or c) consist of nothing but pictures of yarn.

Now, I am not one to say "Show us your knitting!" as someone put it back when there were discussions of whether knitting blogs ought to include other topics or just stick to their knitting. I am interested in your lives. Really I am. But I was in the mood to look at people's knitting. I wanted some inspiration. Pictures of cool projects. People's deep thoughts on fiber. The latest gossip, if you will, about stitches.

Where do you find those things these days?

Ladies of leisure who have been visiting the blogs regularly, please tell me your current favorite knitting blogs.

I need inspiration because Erin is kicking up a fuss.

Well, hardly. Erin is just a sweater. I frogged back a little bit and got the armscye shaping under control. But then I realized that the new shaping I have introduced will affect the colorwork. Namely, there is no longer sufficient space for band A, which is what is up next. Also, I have decided that keeping the shoulder area of the sleeves solid could help a little bit at least with the refrigerator effect of Fair Isle. But since I bought the yarn, lo these many months ago, with Fair Isle in mind, I don't have large quantities of any single color left for that purpose.

So I decided to go ahead and do the sleeves before finishing the body of the sweater. That way, I reasoned, I would be able to use the largest amount of color I have, and then plan the rest of the sleeve from that point. After that, I could plan the rest of the body based on what colors were left.

It sounds a little shaky, doesn't it?

I have a skein and a half of the color in question. Two skeins would have been ideal, but I figure that, if I do both sleeves at the same time on a long circular needle, I will be able to divide the available yarn precisely between the two sleeves, so that they will match.

What's more, I am basing the new shaping on calculations from The Knitter's Handy Book. I've made a couple of sweaters from this book before, with complete success, so it seemed like a good horse to change to in midstream. However, they do their sleeves from the cuff up. My new scheme requires doing them from the shoulder down. So I am following the directions backwards, starting at the bind off row and increasing where it says to decrease and vice versa.

In addition to all this, I did some housework yesterday, and some cooking, and took the newest dog for a walk. She is good at going on walks, very cooperative and all, but she did lose heart after a bit, and we had to stroll slowly back to the house rather sooner than I would have preferred.

I also got mad at all the men in my house.

I only have men in my house at this point. Both my daughters reached their destinations safely. I am once again the only female in the house. All the menfolks goaded me beyond endurance yesterday so that I was completely in the right to be cross and snappish with them. Or, possibly, I was cross and snappish and therefore responded to them with irrational bad temper.

Take your pick.

I have a lot of work to do today, and the Master Chorale starts again tonight. I think the best thing would be for all the males to go away today and leave me alone to get my work done. Then I will go meet the new spring music, and I will perhaps end up in a better mood.

But you notice that today, I have only a picture of yarn.

#2 daughter and I got up at 4:00 this morning so she could get to work on time (in a different state).

She is a music minister, so work on Sunday morning is not shocking or anything, but it does mean an early start.

I hadn't really been grocery shopping, before yesterday morning, since before Christmas. It seems to me that prices have risen alarmingly. Produce now costs more than meat. $5 a pound for grapes, and they come in a two-pound bag, so I'm standing there staring at the grapes, trying to decide whether I can spend 10% of my weekly grocery budget on grapes or not.

No, actually, I can't. We're going to be back to the days when fruit in winter was such a luxury that it made a good Christmas present.

The checkerboard cake is interesting. You use this special pan insert to make concentric circles in your cake. You make two (or it could be three, even, since the pan set has three pans) layers with opposite circles and stack them on top of one another.

Then you go ahead and frost the cake and decorate it and so forth in the usual way, whatever that is for you.

I have no particular talent for cake decoration.

I bought sugar flowers and letters at the grocery store. No candles, because birthday candles come in packages of 24, and #2 daughter is now 25. So 25 seems like the age at which you quit putting on candles. I did think, there in the baking aisle, of getting the single candle that said "Over the Hill/ Too Many to Count," but I decided that #1 daughter wouldn't think that was funny, even if I did.

So there you are with a cake that looks completely ordinary to the unsuspecting observers. Unless they have all actually seen you do this trick, as was the case yesterday., That meant that everyone was in a great hurry to cut the cake to see whether or not the trick worked.

And behold! It did work. It does not look quite like the professionally done picture from yesterday, I realize, but it does have a checkerboard.

We all oohed and aahed.

We helped #1 daughter pack up and peppered her with good bits of advice. We used our knowledge of courtroom dramas and John Grisham novels to guess what the D.A. might have her do in Dallas. Carry paper around, that's what we came up with. File things. #1 daughter modeled outfits for us, and we made suggestions about what the up and coming young attorney's minion ought to wear while carrying papers around in the big city.

We hope it will be exciting.

My show was out in the hills.

Our area doesn't look good in winter, we have to admit. It looks much better with fall color or spring blossoms or even in the heat of summer.

But I did enjoy the drive.  It was quiet and peaceful, qualities that have been in short supply chez fibermom lately. We've been much more toward the loud and exciting side of the spectrum.

And on roads like this, I can be pretty confident that I will not suddenly encounter a frightening overpass, so my general nervousness about driving on unfamiliar roads was not too bad.

There are people living in absolute shacks out here, but my hostess had a nice new house and the conversations all centered on dogs and horses. They played country music. The song that stands out in my mind had the refrain, "I want to check you for ticks."

We had a good time. I came home to cook some more, not that appealing by that time, but people have to eat. After that, however, we had Family Game Night. We played Catchphrase and Word Thief with the football game in the background, and it was fun.

I told the family about the checking for ticks song. #1 son works with a country music fan, and they listen to it while they fix holes in walls and install insulation and stuff. He had a number of other amusing lyrics to offer from the genre. They seem to have gone into a self-parody mode.

I've seen #2 daughter off now, and #1 daughter is all packed up and we'll say goodbye to her before church. And then we'll shovel out the house. So I guess we got everyone settled, even if plans did gang a bit agley.

When you think about plans ganging agley, of course, you cannot avoid thinking of Eddie Izzard. Here it is, transcribed by someone who didn't know how to spell "agley." It is probably not funny just to read, but if you have seen it, this will remind you of how funny it was, and you will be snickering helplessly to yourself.

And he wrote poetry, he wrote a big *%&^ book of poetry, but one of his most famous lines is “The Best Laid Plans O' Mice and Men Aft Gang Aglay,” meaning “The best laid plans of mice and men often go wrong.” And because it’s poetry, people go, (mimes stroking beard) “Oh, I know what you mean there, Robbie, yes… %*&^! plans ganging aglay by a %@-& truckload…” And being a poet, he must have observed humanity, must have said, “Men. Men make plans. These plans go wrong. Go wrong once, twice… often! Often, a number of plans I’ve seen go wrong… Possible idea for a poem…”

            And then he must have turned his attention to the other animal mentioned in that line of poetry. If you think back to it, “The best laid plans of mice and men…” Exactly which mice plans was he really honing in on here? The best laid ones go aglay, some of the worse laid ones are okay? Some of them get through? He was !#$% off his trolley! “See, mice also make plans, unbeknownst to most people. They plan to get cheese! They run, they scamper… Oh, one’s fallen over! No cheese today… Oh, plan two: they’ve got three, another one’s got a stick, he’s gonna put the stick into the mousetrap… No, he’s broken the stick! What a jessie! Plan three – Oh, they’ve got a flip chart now! Very serious… there’s a lot of mice surrounding the meeting, and they’re having a discussion… Oh, good plan this, probably! Their best laid plan, I believe…

We had things all planned out. #2 daughter came down last night. We were going to meet my parents today for a late lunch, and then I was going to work in the evening. We would celebrate #1 daughter's birthday tomorrow, and help her pack. Monday,#1 son would go back to school and #1 daughter would head off to her new job.

Most of these things have changed slightly. For one thing, #1 daughter's new job called and asked if she could come sooner. They are going to Dallas this week and want to take her along, so they'd like her to travel tomorrow (her birthday) and start on Monday so they'll be able to train her to do what they want her to do in Dallas.

And I am working in the afternoon, not the evening. That wasn't a change, but simply a matter of my having misremembered the time. But it means that I can't join the celebration with my parents, and that I have to make something for lunch. And #1 daughter's change of plans means that I need to make a birthday cake this morning so we can celebrate this evening, instead of doing it all tomorrow. #1 son's plans have also gone a little bit agley.

What's more, my new plan with Erin has also gone agley. I stopped to count stitches on the fronts last night, just in the usual way you do, and found that I had about a dozen more on one side than on the other. I set about fixing it while chatting with my kids, and I think I may have made it worse. There may be serious frogging in my future. Always sad when you're talking about something as complex as Erin.

So this morning I have the grocery and the kitchen calling me, and I have to figure out what to do with #1 son's  situation. I was calm about #1 daughter's leaving on Monday, but I had imagined having Sunday with her. Not a big deal, but I am feeling a bit stressed.

This is the cake I am going to make. It uses a mix. I don't usually believe in making mix cakes, but under the circumstances I think it is forgivable. The sun is coming up, so I had better get to the grocery.