etc.

Do you count your steps when you walk? I do.

It started last year when we moved into The House With Many Stairs. There are 3 different staircases in our house with a total of 40 stairs, which seems like a whole lot to me, although I don’t have much to compare that with. All 40 of these stairs are cased in tiny little stairwells that make any casual trip up or down them a bit hair-raising, and a trip with a loaded laundry basket particularly treacherous. Add to the 40 stairs and narrow stairwells my long-standing fear of falling down (and up) stairs and it didn’t take me long to make a conscious note of how many stairs were on each staircase so that I could count my way down for those times when I couldn’t always see my way down. And did I mention that I have two dark cats who like to sleep on the darkly-carpeted stairs and that when they aren’t sleeping they like to amuse themselves by weaving their way through my timid stair-climbing feet? It’s a small wonder my limbs are still in tact.

Lately, I’ve become so neurotic about all the stair-counting that I’ve also started counting my steps on flat surfaces. Would you be surprised to learn that it takes an average of 230-280 steps to walk from my office to my car in the parking lot (of which 26 of those steps are stairs)? Or that the closest washroom from my office desk is 11 steps away? Or that 16 paces from the Reference Desk gets me to the nearest dictionary? The most bizarre part of all this is that I feel comforted by all this pace-related knowledge. It makes me feel like I know exactly where I’m going and that I won’t fall over on my way there.

Have you seen the new knitpics? Here’s a pile of knitting magazines that, I guess, makes me a magazine person now; here’s my birthday pressie from my Secret Pal (thanks again Pal!); and here’s my hottie-mchottison sister in the Rowan Cotton Braid poncho. And I finished the front of the organic sweater last night (it snuck up on me! I was knitting away on the stocking stitch, then Bam! Raglan and neck shaping! Then it was done.), and started on a sleeve. Pictures of those to-morrow.