V. little knitting.

Not too much knitting going on around here. I'm trying to do the second picot cast on for my socks. And for some strange reason I have decided that the stripes must match the first sock. I never do this so I have no idea why I am doing it now. Must be some evil tendency that comes along with a picot cast on.

Also I need to knit the heel on DH's socks. I just need a few minutes to sit down and get going but I can't find those minutes! Most of my knitting time is in the car and I don't like to start a heel or pick up gusset stitches in the car.

So, how am I wasting my time instead of spending it on knitting? Well, my mom asked me and DH to reinsulate her attic. No biggie, right? Several years ago my brothers had told Mom that they had emptied out her attic. LIARS. It took us THREE days to empty out her attic and go through the stuff and cart it to the curb for pick up. One of my brothers works seven days a week at two fulltime jobs so he got a free pass. The other, whom I usually refer to as My Brother the Pillock, when asked to help told my mother "I have a house of my own to work on." Mom was good, she said, "Like Kigwit and her DH don't? And they have a baby too!" The Pillock is not known for helping although he did spend ten minutes replacing their yard light for them (after he had shorted out the other one).

Back to the attic: Four days to empty the darn thing and clear out a portion of the old insulation and build a proper, insulated storage area. Four more days to pull out the old, dirty, torn and flattened duct work and reconfigure and correctly install the new ductwork. One horrible, long, back-breaking day to blow in the new insulation. This morning we went over and swept the storage area clean, carried up the Christmas decorations and, after I went to work, DH went up there and cleaned out and flushed the condensation tray from their A/C unit. He was worried that it might get jammed from all the new insulation settling. I'm exhausted and my wrist, hand, back- in short, I ache all over. But it is finished. I know Mom only asked that we reinsulate the attic but to do it properly we had to do all of it. We couldn't just blow in new insulation over 30+ years of stuff up there, right? And because The Pillock  had been tossing stuff up there willy-nilly and had crushed, flattened and torn much of the duct work. This makes me really irritated because my parents had added two window units to their house thinking they just had a really bad A/C. My parents are on a fixed income and their electricity bills are absolutely horrible. I've always thought they were way too high and now with the price increases they are unbelievable.

I am really glad to be done with this. More glad than that. I am so glad to be done I feel like having a Mass said.