PlazaJen: Passion Knit

I'm in a very U2 space what with having listened to the new album & being reminded of old albums in the past 24 hours. I just love 'em & the new album is awesome! Today is beautiful, especially because we don't have any tree branches down in our yard. The heavy wet snow is de-gorgeous, and even better because I didn't have to go to work today! WA-HOO. James set his alarm for 2:25 a.m. so he could call and get OUT of goose hunting today (knitters don't engage in such craziness, but I also know that if the best sales on Noro or Colinette happened at 3 a.m., the entire hobby/sport would change, literally, overnight.) So he gets up, I wake up, we're both looking at the snow & Polly wakes up and freaks out that she's once again starring in the left-behind series of Polly, and might actually miss out on something spectacular, like, free bacon. So with the hunter staying home, he "got" to spoil me. A big omelette with turkey bacon, salsa & sour cream, orange rolls, hot coffee - yum. Then he drove us (4-wheel drive engaged) to meet Shelley for coffee, and James showed off how well four-wheel drive works in snow in the parking lot, plowing through huge snowplow piles of snow and careening about, while the entire time I laughed very loudly and nervously, because similar actions in a Honda Civic would result in certain death. After five minutes we stopped behaving like we were 16 years old & went in to Starbucks, where we sipped on chai tea lattes, and I read James the book "Hello, Sweetie-Pie" starring Lola the chipmunk (we think she's a chipmunk, it's nicer than if she's a rat.) It was the cutest book ever, and one page made us laugh so hard because it was like a page out of my life: Lola's friend Lulu initially teased her for her parents' nicknames for her, but then realized she was just sad that she didn't have one herself. So Lulu got her parents to call her the SAME EXACT NICKNAMES that Lola's parents called her, and there's this great drawing of Lola all pouting and HOPPIN' MAD with books standing up on either side of her so she can be by herself, and she's saying, "But I am the only princess sweetie pie!" And then Shelley got there and we made her read it, too, and when we were done we went to Costco & bought oodles of yummy things and ogled television sets that would make our living room feel very, very small.

One last observation about U2. It's obvious they continue to evolve & grow as people and as a super-band. The music and lyrics have grown, and as I was listening to the second song, "Miracle Drug", for the first time yesterday driving to work, I was having these flashes of times in my life I've listened to U2, and each image is like this texturally rich photo, with sounds & smells: Sunday Bloody Sunday, in the Main dorm, the window's partway open & I can hear the B&G mower and smell the fresh cut grass - and I realize as I look back at that snapshot how much I didn't know or how far I would need to grow to feel how I do today. And when I flash to "Beautiful Day" I see James & I in that awful apartment, waiting to get married and needing more space and thinking that I could never need to love him more than I did then & now discovering that I love him twice as deeply in only half the time I've known him. And the love and the music just feels explosive, like the rings that shoot out from Ground Zero and ripple under the surface of the earth, never stopping, and it feels like I'm going to explode myself, but how would I explain to the officer that I'm speeding and crying and happy, all at once?
I want to knit a hat for The Edge. How cool a thank-you would that be?