Skeeter helps me knit by making sure my pattern doesn’t run away:
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Or something.
I do think it’s sweet that he almost always keeps me company while I knit.
So I wanted to knit a bedspread. I ordered some bedspread cotton from Herrschner’s, not realizing how impossibly tiny the thread is. I was expecting something more on the order of Sugar & Cream, I guess. How wrong I was. Anyway, I think eventually I’ll tackle a bedspread in actual bedspread cotton – but for now I’m working up some counterpanes in worsted weight acrylic. So far, it’s fun.
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I’ve been avoiding my Orangina and my Six Sox socks while I’ve been working on the counterpanes. I have such a short attention span – and the socks especially are just boring knitting in the round, made even MORE annoying since the yarn I’m using is especially prone to laddering, so I have to move stitches around on the needles every single row.
I’ve got more stuff to post about – mainly knitting – but want to wait and put pictures up, too.
Anyway, what I will tell you now is that yesterday I fell down the fucking stairs in Greg’s library. I TOTALLY busted ass. And there was even a witness. I have no idea how it happened – I was being especially careful going down the stairs since I was wearing my flipflops that I suspect are losing tread, so I’m VERY careful going downstairs in them. But, no – I fell. My ENTIRE left ass cheek is bruised. It hurts sooooo bad. And I have to sit on it, or move it, or – jesus, there’s just about nothing I can do to make it stop hurting. (Except maybe lay facedown with an icepack on my asscheek – but where’s the fun in that? I wouldn’t even be able to read or knit – propping my front half up enough for that would make my ass not level enough for the ice to stay on.) And then when I wince, of course people are like, “What’s wrong?” And I get to say, “Um, I fell down some stairs, and now my asscheek hurts.”
I am so pitiful.
Okay, so it’s been about three weeks since I typed up notes on what I wanted to blog about, and I’m finally getting to it. Yeah. Anyway, so I was hanging out with some friends, and the conversation rolled around to “why Kathy is vegan.” What follows are my thoughts, mainly collected after the fact (natch). Please don’t think I’m saying everyone should be vegan – while I would love that (it would certainly make finding vegan stuff easier for me), it’s a very personal choice. But if you’re interested in why someone might choose veganism, well, here’s some of my reasoning.
My immediate response to my friends was that, in my opinion, given my concerns (compassion, etc), veganism was a more defensible position than vegetarianism – and then one of my friends asked why I was concerned with defensibility, whether I expected to have to defend my position. I didn’t realize the irony at the time, but that’s exactly what they were asking me to do: defend why I don’t consume animal products or by-products. (One friend also mentioned he’d considered asking me to speak to his class about veganism, since they were doing rhetoric and somehow that ties in – so, again, I would be in the position of defending my position.) Anyway, so, frankly, YES, I do find myself occasionally having to defend my position as a vegan, and I do think veganism is more defensible than vegetarianism. Here’s why: I’m vegan for ethical concerns – not health, although there are health benefits to an animal-free diet (whether vegetarian or vegan). If I were just vegetarian, I imagine the conversation/confrontation would go something like this:
Friend: So, why are you vegetarian?
Me: It’s a decision based on ethical concerns – I don’t want animals killed or treated cruelly so I can live.
Friend: Well, then why do you drink milk? [Followed by discussion of connection between milk and veal industries.] Or [because some vegetarians do this], why do you wear leather?
Me: ….Uh….
I mean, really, what would I say to that? And that’s pretty much how I came to veganism: I was vegetarian primarily for ethical reasons, and realized that there *are* connections between the milk and veal and beef industries, and that if I’m not going to eat *meat* because of my ethics, then I really ought to stop eating milk, eggs, cheese, butter, and consuming animal products or by-products at all. So, veganism. To me – and again, this is not a judgment on others, merely on myself – claiming ethical concerns and then being just vegetarian seemed hypocritical. (I am NOT calling vegetarians hypocrites – I don’t know their personal reasons for being vegetarian, so I’m not going to judge them. However, if you’re of the “I’m vegetarian because I don’t want animals killed, but I’ll wear leather and/or fur” variety, then, yeah, I’ll call you a hypocrite.)
In the past couple years (thanks to wimmin’s studies classes, my recent AfAm class, reading, thinking, etc), I’ve come to the belief that part of The Problem (you know – The Problem With Society and The World, like you could ever sum it up, but whatever) is hierarchical thinking. I see a connection between learning to think animals are below you (or exist for your use) and learning to think other people are below you (or exist for your use). Or learning to think of and treat other people as if they were “just animals.” During the conversation, one of my friends suggested that I wasn’t allowing for his ability to compartmentalize – to see that there is a difference between animals and people, or between pet animals (who he admitted are family members, and therefore like people) and food animals (who he doesn’t anthropomorphize). I have a problem with this response because I don’t agree with his implication that compartmentalization is a good tool. A useful tool sometimes, yes, but not necessarily a good tool – my ability to compartmentalize is one thing that helped me survive my adolescence as well as I did. But it’s also something that has contributed to my panic attacks and generalized anxiety, so I’m not comfortable saying compartmentalization is good or healthy. (I have another problem with his response about pet animals vs. food animals because I can’t get over the disjunct between believing animals are separate from humans and then agreeing some animals aren’t separate from humans. I think once you admit that some animals are uncannily human, then you have to be willing to admit the possibility that all animals could have uncanny similarities that we haven’t understood or noticed yet – and that puts me squarely back at veganism, because, well, I’ve never lived with a cow so I’m not ready to say they aren’t sentient, or feeling, or human-ish, or whatever. And I do believe the more salient point is not whether an animal is sentient, but whether an animal feels. If it can feel pain, I don’t want it to feel pain because of me. And if I had my “druthers,” I’d rather it not feel pain at all.)
It also seems to me that hierarchical thinking is a very simplistic way of thinking. Now, I know we can create complex, multi-branched hierarchies – that’s not what I mean when I say hierarchical thinking is simplistic. What I mean is, it doesn’t take a full understanding of the things at hand to rank them hierarchically. It seems to me it is more honest and reveals a fuller understanding to be able to say, “Well, here are these two things, and the first has these advantages over the second, but the second has these advantages over the first,” than to say, “Well, here are these two things, and this one is better than that one. Period.” Or, it’s like being able to understand both sides of an argument – putting aside your personal preference and regardless of which you agree with, trying to actually understand both sides. This is why I can’t be really militant about veganism and try to press it on others – I can understand your position.
And I don’t think hierarchical thinking is very useful or realistic. Things often aren’t exactly good or exactly bad in our world; it’s not black and white, as we learn, but many, many shades of grey with, yes, some things that are strictly black or strictly white. But we lose so much when we try to pare things down and make a simple ranking. (Heinlein had the perfect phrase for what I’m getting at: to grok a thing in its fullness.)
I’m going to stop here for now, and think about the rest of my notes and how best to explain them. So, I’ll finish this up later. This is probably long enough already, too. 
Russian Climbing from SushiSuperstar.com
Holy shit. I’ve seen some fucking jokers *trying* to do this on campus and looking lame as hell. I had no idea it could be so awesome.
I’m rereading Anne of Green Gables at the moment, so of course that means my love for all things Anne/Edwardian/Victorian/vintage is in full swing. I just found ReVamp Vintage – holy shit!
I think my favorite is Constance (1920), but there are so many lovely things.
If you haven’t been reading Justin’s blog, then you’re missing out on the AWESOMENESS:
“On our way to the club, Rhoda spied a most remarkable establishment called Alcatraz ER—a themed restaurant where maximum security prison meets bloody surgery. I know, go ahead and freak out and yell, “What?! Are you crazy?!” because the answer is “yes, of course…I’m in Tokyo.” After being handcuffed and led to our table inside a jail cell, Rhoda and I ordered drinks that were served by nurses in bloody uniforms. The whole place was decked out to match the theme—dark, scary, prison-hospital—but the Japanese servers were still their polite and slightly awkward selves.” (from his 6/22/06 post)
OH! MY! GOD! I have to go to that restaurant before I die, or I cannot die happy. That’s the shit!
Greg’s siblings, Jonathan and Jennifer, gave us bedsheets as wedding presents. Which – as the changer of the sheets – is awesome, because I wanted some new bedsheets (or I wouldn’t have put them on the registry). What’s even more awesome is the sheets we are accustomed to, while perfectly good sheets for sleeping on, are like 4-thread-count polyester blend or some shit – and the new sheets are 300-thread-count cotton sateen.
I never before understood the difference thread count made – although I did understand cotton sheets are more breathable, and I’m all for that.
Holy crap, those new sheets are the bomb. And my mind reels at what 1000-thread-count sheets must be like.
Ironically, the new sheets appear to be the reason I slept a little poorly last night – I think it was more comfort than I was used to, as I kept waking up for no real reason. It’s cool, though, I’m sure I’ll get used to them very soon – as all I want to do now when I’m home is lay on the sheets and pet them. (Skeeter also loves them. He hopped on the bed to investigate after I changed the sheets yesterday – which is usual for him. But then he spent the next hour rubbing against the sheets and purring – which he doesn’t usually do.)
