Trekking On

So here it is, the prize at hand, the lovely gift for s/he who comes up with the best reason for it. I've received several almost-convincing stories already, cleverly written and somewhat intriguing. Remember, the deadline for the contest is Thursday at midnight. The winner/winning story will be announced on Friday.

Here's another view (since Blogger is letting me) to assure you that it is, indeed, Trekking that you're vying for.

There is knitting progress happening. Unfortunately, the project in progress is of "giftish" nature, remaining reclusive for the time being. Slight progress is being made on a small number of other projects, but not enough to be of any visual interest or astonishment in blogland. So you'll have to content yourself with the picture of the Trekking for now.

What I really want to do, more than anything else, is start a new pair of socks.

"But, Brooke!" you say, imploringly. "A NEW sock?"

"Yes," I nod, my eyes focused on a small floor speck.

"Really?" you inquire again, "even with all the socks you already have started?"

"It's not that many!" I retort, guilty as charged.

"Brooke..." you give me That Look.

"Okay, so it's enough... but I have all this great sock yarn that's just begging to be..."

"Seriously! Get a grip! Crazy drunky monkey!" You hop up and down a bit as you say this, a slightly drunky-monkey look in your eye as well.

"But look!" I pull out my basket o' sock yarn, and begin showing you the pretty colors.

"Hmm..." you ponder, seeing rainbows of possibilities dance before your eyes. "Got a good pattern?"

"HA! See? I can't help it!"

Hmm, okay, when I start talking to myself on my blog, perhaps it's time to put the pointy sticks away for a few minutes or so.

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In non-knitting news, I've always considered myself somewhat handy. Not rip-out-the-old-sink-put-in-a-new-one-in-and-redo-the-bathroom-in-a-day-as-a-surprise kind of handy, but you know, if there's a little fix to be made, I can probably do it.

So I have this little problem, see? One of my three darling kitties decided a while back that just inside my front door would be the perfect spot for a litter box. The only problem with that is... there's no litter box there. Did that stop the little sweetheart? No, not at all. The other problem is that the door swings inward, so if the little precious decides to leave her gifts while I'm out, I can't help but spread them over the carpet when I open the door to come in.

About a month ago, I cut out the square of carpet just in front of the door. I had big plans to put down some tile or some vinyl something so that it wouldn't look bad but would at least get rid of the nasty carpet and be easy to clean if the little shnookums couldn't control herself. Then life happened and I got lazy and didn't do anything, and soon... the carpet pad was in bad shape.

So this weekend I cut out the square of carpet pad, tossed it in the dumpster, and trundled off to Lowe's to fix this deal once and for all. You know how Home Depot has the great slogan "You can do it, We can help."? Yeah, well, Lowe's has the following slogan: "You can do it, we can... wait, what? No, I don't think you can do it. Really. You can't do it. Go home."

After 20 minutes of trying to explain what I wanted to do, and a further 15 minutes of being shown stuff and then being told, no, you can't use that, I bought two rubber mats to put in the square, a can of cat-be-gone, and went home. I probably don't have to tell you that neither the rubber mats nor the spray were effective.

Any ideas?