I sent a hat to a Goddess.

I knitted it with an incantation to protect her and guide her, to keep her warm and to keep her safe. I knitted it in hopes she would love the colors, and snuggle into its soft wool, and stash certain objects in it when not in use.

And I sent it off through the local post office who believed me to be a terrorist because I was trying to quit smoking that day and was acting weird--but that's a different story.

Before I let it go, I made sure the hat worked. Well--I couldn't very well send off a hat that wasn't JUST PERFECT, could I? Of course not.
Go see Spinning Girl in the hat. Are we like sisters separated at birth, or what?

I've not been around much, and that's because I've been knitting.
I've also not got much to say right now.
So: here are some mundane things about me.

• I started smoking again. I'm sorry. I feel very guilty about this. The upside is: I've been smoking five smokes a day versus twenty. This is a mild improvement. I'm truly ready to be done with it.
• When I was thirteen, I slipped off of a bench in a Toronto McDonald's. The homeless dude who was slurping his coffee two seats away burst out laughing at me. There is some kind of strange shame and humility in being laughed at by homeless people. However, I'm glad I was able to brighten his day.
• Speaking of which, the other day I was walking around a town square and passed a homeless guy. I asked him if he smoked cigarettes; I wanted to give him something but I never carry change. He said, "Nah. I got cigarettes. But if you've got any reefer, that would be great." I didn't have any reefer--yet another disappointment to the marginalized populations of our great country.
• Ronan of VnV Nation has emailed me twice. I'm in touch with a celebrity.
• When I was seven, I attended a summer day-care program with a bunch of other misbegotten children. One of these kids was susceptible to rashes and a general malignant attitude. I told her she had no soul. Was that funny or just wierd?
• Michael says he's been to parties in his youth where people snorted cocaine. He didn't, mind you. I just think it's strange--I've never even seen cocaine.
• I have, however, seen a fair share of marijuana in my life. To the administrators of Creighton University: you should really make the roof of the library less accessible.
• Georgia is in a drought. The most humid damp state in the fifty states is experiencing a drought. And they say global warming isn't REALLY a threat.
• Don't say the word 'terrorism' in the post office. More to come on that.

Okay. Back to knitting. Love to my fans!

A cute bronchitis, that is. It's snuggly and fuzzy and leaves little mucus trails all over my lungs.

This is why one should never ever smoke. A head cold can become a....KILLER.

The doctor actually told me (that is, this is what I heard between wheezes) that people have died...DIED...from bronchitis. Okay, great. Tell a freakin' hypochondriac that she's gonna die from the wheezing.

For my trouble, I got a breathing treatment, a shot in the ass, and four prescriptions. I'm on so many steroids I can bench press a Braves baseball player right now. I've got some codeine, some big ole' horse pill antibiotics, and an inhaler. Used in conjunction with a toilet paper roll, I'm reminded of college--exhaling pot smoke through dryer sheets stuffed in a cardboard roll. Not only does it mask the smell of pot, but it freshens your room as well.

Anyway. I have an official reason to be out of commission. Plus, I'm knitting.

In list format:

-Knit, knit, ripped, and knit
-finished a surprise for Spinning Girl
-coughed
-sneezed
-slept
-blew nose
-wished a hundred thousand times that head colds become something of the past
-knit
-dreaded Monday (today)
-dreaded work (today)
-got antsy about the wedding
-got antsier about preparing for a bridal shower (people buy stuff? for me? just because I'm getting hitched? it seems pompous and nice all at once)
-brushed my teeth a gazillion times to get that TASTE of PHLEGM out of my mouth. This tactic failed
-discovered LibriVox
-listened to The Wind in the Willows on LibriVox
-watched Michael putter with his new vehicle.

-Ordered a Confederate Flag for him to wave from Rex, our new monstrosity

-I'm totally kidding about the Confederate Flag. Oh, it's funny. We live by one of those historic battlefields of the Civil War. These are a dime a dozen in the South, which is hilarious, because up North, they've all been paved over for highways and Perkins' restaurants. Anyway, it's a hoot to drive by the Kennesaw Battlefield during one of the Civil War ReEnactments and scream out the window, "WE WON. GET OVER IT!" I swear, someone tried to throw a duplicated saber at us. Someone else yelled, "CONFOUND YOU, UNIONISTS!"

-God. The South. Could someone please get me a job up North where people are normal and the weather has four seasons?

There are people out there who are frighteningly convincing when it comes to the denial of certain historical events.

Many people reject the idea of the Holocaust, saying it was all a big ploy. I'm sure Mel Gibson is behind this, though I don't have any proof. In this day and age, however, we don't need 'proof'. We just need to believe it so, and there you have it. Therefore, Mel Gibson is behind everything insidious and evil. Including the failure of box office sales for M. Night Shyamalan's movies.

In any case, most of us sneer at idiots who shun the empirical and historical evidence regarding the Holocaust. We also steer clear of people who say things like, "Yeah, but what about all the GOOD things Hitler did?" and "The KKK was just brotherhood of sorts--kinda like the Moose Lodges". These people are scary. Please don't confuse the Fritz household with these people.

What I am about to suggest is solely due to Michael's influence. Don't stone me.

Michael has led me to understand that we never walked on the moon.
It's a lie.
A farce.
A cleverly crafted hoax that has gone too far.

Look: when we were 'told' that someone had walked around on the moon, we were engaged in the space race. We needed something to put the Russians in their places. We had to show that America was tops. But think about the short snippets of video feed we've seen of the moon footage. Doesn't it look rather--claymation like? Mind you, this is the time when those freaky Christmas shows were coming out by the dozen, with stiff reindeer and freaky little elves, all jerking around in clay. Be honest--it resembles the videos of the moonwalk.

Recently, NASA discovered that it can't build a satellite to spec. We dump billions of dollars in this space program thing, and they put switches in backwards. Uh huh. Sure, we got to the moon.

Our cell phones drop signals all the time.
We can't figure out the common cold.
Planes still crash.
We really don't KNOW when hurricanes are going to hit us until a day or so before the occurrence.
The weatherpeople always screw us up.
We haven't walked on the moon since the initial 'landing'.

I'm just sayin'--Michael has totally made me see. No one ever walked on the moon. It's a big fat lie.

Sorry, Moulder. We just don't believe.

In other news, I got the head cold from which Michael is suffering. I need a hot toddy.

...but I've gotten to the edge of it and looked down. It made me seasick.

Sometimes, Blogging is a chore. I haven't the energy for it.

I don't have much to report, so I shall make some brief lists and then, be on my way.

IN THE PAST WEEK:
-a wedding band was ordered







-there's been a new low in the financial world of Fritz
-the cat didn't barf at all
-I've knitted something and then took it all out because it sucked
-muscle tension has kept me incapacitated
-Michael got a head cold

MUSINGS:
-Ann Coulter is a big pimple on the decaying flesh that is cultural conservatism
-Our congressmen got a raise of $3,000 dollars, yet the economy is suffering terribly and funding for social programs continues to suffer
-Georgia government continues to attack individuals for standing up for beliefs and ideals, and protecting the 'good ole boy' politics of public offices. I have met two women working in different public sectors that have suffered at the hands of corrupt administrators. Kinda like myself.
-I can pick out a Republican in about thirty seconds, flat.
-I'm proud to be a non-practicing Episcopalian.
-FEMA paid for sex changes; my clients can't get diapers for their children who have cerebral palsy. I'm told that the budget doesn't have room for all the people waiting for services.
-I could get more cynical, but it would take a lot of work. I'm done with the government. Federal, state, local--it's all hogwash.
-Let's all go to Fiji.

Finally:
IF I LIVED ON A DESERTED ISLAND (or Fiji), THESE ARE THE THINGS I WOULD PACK IN MY PINK SUITCASE:
-Nail clippers
-The cat
-Knitting supplies
-SPF 9000 sunscreen
-Coffee and a French Press
-All of my Blogging buddies
-Lingerie (who wouldn't want to run around an island wearing a teddy?)
-a soccer ball named Wilson
-Michael's sweatshirt
-comfy pants
-a magazine subscription to The Sun
-the perfect pillow
and
-duct tape. Lots of it.

I'm watching a Frontline special about a man who is Jewish, and escaped the Holocaust as a child. He is visiting Germany, and he is appalled at the lack of guilt among the younger generations of Germans. He is now an American Jew, but identifies with the ethnicity and culture of Judaism rather than the religiosity of Judaism. He is a non-religious Jew.

The Germans are building a monument to the memory of the six million Jews who were slaughtered in Nazi Germany. The German architects and designers proclaim that visitors should only feel a 'little' guilty about the Holocaust; otherwise, the art shall overcome the pain of the Death Camps. Our American Jew feels differently; he thinks the children and grandchildren of the Nazi Germans should feel great remorse and guilt over the Holocaust. But how can they? There are few Jews left in Germany, and those who remain are quiet as mice, and non-confrontational. I imagine they are still afraid for their lives, or, in the least, their livelihoods.

But I am also wracked by this question. This is a documentary about the Holocaust and its survivors and the lasting sentiment of anti-Semitism in Germany. But this is also a story of responsibility and the duty people have to feel guilty over crimes committed by their ancestors. This is touchy, to say the least.

Do we learn through guilt, or is it even our duty to feel guilty? Is the purpose of a memorial to feel guilt or simply remember the past? For instance: the American Government has not constructed a huge memorial to the hundreds of thousands of Native Americans we've wiped out. Even more telling, we have not constructed a method to enrich and improve on the reservations that are among us, today. Should we feel guilty for what has happened to the Native American? And isn't that, essentially, a much different question than the memorial of the Holocaust in Germany?

After all, my family did not slaughter any Indians. But we did farm the land they once roamed. And perhaps we had, in the past, thought there were no good Indians but dead Indians. I do not feel guilty about this. I am not one of those people.

To add in my two cents, I am of German descent. I do not feel guilty about the Holocaust. Oh, well, sure, in a universal sense, I feel guilty--humans are so horrible when under the guise of strong leadership, blah, blah, blah. But I personally feel absolutely no remorse for being German and having cousins and relatives in Germany who were children of Nazi regiments or whatever. It's not something I can be held responsible for. I don't think. Or, wait. Do I?

And then, I query this man, were he in front of me: how does he explain the persecution of Palestinians? Is that a different question than that of the Holocaust? Isn't it just as fragile and as important? Does he feel guilty for being a Jew?

In the show, we travel to an old library. It is one of the first places where Jews were persecuted in Germany. Their books were burned. Their writings--erased. In this small town in Germany, there stands the library. And as we walk through, we see the floor has been dug out in one portion. This is where a Jew hid during the Holocaust to create and remember works that had been lost. The community came to this room after World War II and made a memorial of the room. The ceiling is of plexiglass, so that we can look down into this memorial. The light is brilliant and false. And inside this white, white room, we see shelves upon shelves--all empty. Empty shelves is just one tiny memorial to the lives lost. It is haunting--and I feel just a little guilty.