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I spent a lot of years living by a power plant when I was in college, not to mention growing up in the shadow of a chemical plant that emitted toxins that caused annual evacuations of our neighborhood. If it was around June 20th, we knew to start packin'. It's entirely possible that Clara Jane might sprout that third arm, and I'm prepared to provide for her specialized clothing needs when that happens.

Actually, what really happened was, when I knit the second sleeve I screwed up the stripe pattern badly enough to require sleeve #3.

Fast forward 15 months. The sweater has spent this time in a clear plastic tub in my craft closet, mocking me. When I finished knitting and realized I would be required to seam this beast together, I became frightened, locked it in a box, and willed it to seam itself via the magic of time and Rubbermaid.

It didn't happen, so on Friday, I put on my protective headgear, removed the tub o' sweater, and spent a whopping 15 minutes seaming the right side, feeling mightily stupid for being afraid of that. Easy peasy.

Hmmm. I could have sworn I had two sleeves and a spare.

And then I remembered. About six weeks ago I was cleaning our junk room, home to many unfinished craft endeavors, and I came upon the mutant freak-stripe sleeve. "I won't be needing this! This is the bad sleeve! Off you go!" And into the trash it went.

Turns out, that was the good sleeve. Maybe. If it was the bad sleeve, that means I threw out the other good sleeve long ago.

Either way, Clara Jane's three-sleeved sweater is now a half-sweater, half-sweater-vest hybrid.

To distract attention away from my own stupidity, I'm going to tell you about something dumb B. did tonight. Sort of.

Many weeks ago, I bought a 3-tier hanging basket, because we're tired of having rotting piles of produce taking up valuable counter space. Being the engineer that he is, B. has been hard at work, drawing up diagrams and doing calculus and shit to find the best way to suspend this do-hickey from our kitchen ceiling. The final plan: drill holes in the ceiling, go to the attic, and somehow attach the the basket to the rafters of the house. Or something. I'm not an engineer, so I don't fully understand.

All I know is I spent a portion of my evening on the balls of my feet in the kitchen, bouncing up and down, pleasuing the two holes in my kitchen ceiling with a dismantled wire coat hanger while B. walked around the attic in search of my probing love hanger.

He never did find it.

I'm going to remember this next time he ridicules the previous owners of the house for doing this to our living room ceiling:

Okay, I was going to show you a photo I just took of our living room ceiling, which is dotted with rows and rows of neat little holes, ending in a plant hook that's been painted 26 times. We've always made fun of the previous owners for being too stupid to use, say, a stud finder, opting instead to use the trial-and-error method.

Who's laughing now, Punk?

I was also going to show you a photo of our household's reigning Queen of Stupid, Murphy, who doesn't know how to sleep on a pillow. Unfortunately, everyone who lives in this house has become too stupid to operate the camera.