Why I don't read Dick and Jane

I'll not be hanging out with any small tots and reading about Dick, Jane, and their cute little yappy dog Spot. Not ever again. Why, you ask?

Because my morning read like a Dick and Jane Primer From Hell. Don't believe me? Please, open to page 1...


See Heidi and Thing 4 get ready for school. See Heidi lock door as she walks Thing 4 to meet the bus. (Please note: Thing 2 has ONLY house key and has already left for school.) See Heidi get into car and realize that she has her SPARE keys. NOT the set with her office keys attached. See Heidi heave a sigh. See Heidi walk round to the back of the house and

{insert turning of page here}

further enhance her breaking and entering skills by climbing up on the deck railing and hoisting herself up to the ridiculously small window behind the TV. (Please note: she left spare keys on deck, ‘cause dropping keys inside and not fitting through window would have been bad.) See Heidi think, "Thank goodness I forgot to lock the window after removing the tiny A/C unit!"

See Heidi contort herself in ways that would make an Indian fakir proud as she finally gets through the window AND manages this feat WITHOUT knocking over the TV, which she has already done once in the past week (don’t ask) only to discover…

{yes, I know, the suspense is building faster than in a Dan Brown novel--so turn the page again}

when she goes to the back door to get to the deck/retrieve the spare keys that the boys forgot to lock it after coming in from playing—she could have just walked in through the damn door. To add insult to injury, after looking in all the usual places, see Heidi discover that the keys were in her upscale messenger bag.

See Heidi pretend hard not to notice that the upscale messenger bag was in the car.

See Heidi not curse the heavens, but rather calmly lock the window, the back door and the front door. See Heidi get into her car (with BOTH sets of keys, thank you very much), pull out of the garage without running into the closed garage door (no, she’s NOT sayin’ if she has ever done that before) and then realize that she has left her #%*)&#%*&$% prescription sunglasses in the %$(*%# house on the ONLY sunny day this week.

Close the book. Now, babies.


And even after all that, I still chose to knit.

Stupid, right?

I didn't think so at first. Okay, I made a mistake on each side of the shawl, but I caught both in the automatic stitch count I do, and corrected easily on the needle as I went back down the purl row.

I had indeed cast off the evil spell of Dick and Jane, had I not?

Erm, yeah. Next row was simple. YO, K2, YO, DBL DEC, YO, K2, YO, Sl 1 K2tog psso, YO, K2, Yo...simple. Lovely.

Soooo, I did one side of the shawl. One stitch off on final count--only 140 with 141 being the correct answer. Looked back over the stitches themselves, discovered one missing YO (easy fix on way back--yea!), bipped a stitch marker in to mark the spot, and hit the other side of the center line.

Time for stitch count. 137? Wha? That's less stitches than I started with! Counted again. 140. Hmmmm. 139? 128?!?! Double wha?!?!

See Heidi sigh. See Heidi go back to looking at actual stitches for counting, running through the mantra in her head, "YO, 2, YO, 1, YO, 2, Yo, 1" ad nauseam, until she discovers not one, but two missing YOs. See Heidi think that okay, she can deal with that. See Heidi assure herself that it's all good.

Then see Heidi be stupid. Much stupider than when she didn't check the back door.

See Heidi count stitches one more time.

141.

See Heidi step away from the needles for the night, despite the fact that she really wanted to finish the chart and is only three rows away from doing so.

Some days it just doesn't pay to mess with Dick and Jane.