Challenges, changes and chaos

Things have been a bit crazy lately on all fronts.

I started working for my employer fifteen years ago today. They just announced they’ll be laying off at least a third of the staff in the next month or two. Naturally this news has thrown the entire staff into a state of upheaval and despair. We’re a non-profit organization, and the funding environment is stagnant, partly as a consequence of two consecutive minority governments. It doesn’t help that our area of interest is not one likely to be shared by the incoming Conservative government.

I’ve convinced myself my dog is dying of cancer, even though our vet appointment isn’t until Monday. He is 13 and a half years old, and was always surprisingly youthful and spritely up until the past year. During this past year, he has gone deaf, gone grey, developed arthritis, grown some kind of tumour on his leg that is so hideous I won’t even post a picture of it, and suddenly perfected the fine art of insomnia. Whereas as recently as a week ago he would sleep peacefully beside my bed all night, now it’s almost like having a colicky baby. Some nights are worse than others. I think he’s either suffering from dementia or cancer, and I’m suffering from sleep deprivation and worry.

I think I’m suddenly and unexpectedly moving in the next few weeks, after seven years in my current apartment. Admittedly, this chaos is of my own making. I was helping a friend apartment-hunt on Saturday and we went to see the apartment next door to me. She chose one of the other places we saw. But I – who wasn’t even apartment hunting – decided I liked that apartment much better than mine and needed to move into it. It’s got a huge west-facing balcony, windows on all four sides, two bedrooms, lots of storage, and it’s clean and freshly painted. And it doesn’t have any of those aggravating baseboard heaters that line almost all of my current walls and limit my furniture-placement options. As an added bonus, the roof doesn’t leak, and as far as I can tell there are no mice, squirrels or amorous racoons living in the walls or ceilings. The rents are approximately equal – I pay $920 (heat included), and the new place is $845 (plus heat). The laundry facilities are better in my current building though…well, actually they’re the same, since the building next door uses this building’s basement laundry room. But I’d have to put my boots on and come over here to do laundry after I move.

I still haven’t got final confirmation from my landlord that I can transfer to that apartment, but it looks likely. So…even though this is good news, it will mean a lot of extra work and expense over the next few weeks. I may have to drop out of the knitting olympics, since they run from February 10th to the 26th.

So that’s what’s going on in my life. In between panic attacks I’m knitting. Maybe I’m projecting my own anxiety onto my knitting, but don’t you think my knitting projects look a little more chaotic than usual? So many works in progress, and nothing finished.

Here’s a sock that I’m knitting on 3.75mm needles, at the suggestion of the knitting store lady, despite the fact that the yarn called for 3.5mm needles. This sock feels like it’s going to be too loose. Maybe I should add a couple of kilometres to my runs so I can build some bigger calf muscles to hold my socks up. Either than or some friend with bigger calves than mine is going to end up with some wild and crazy socks. Or I could be really brave and wash them in hot water and dry them in the dryer…and then if they don’t fit, I can give them to some little girl – for her doll to wear.