if only i could knit and read at the same time

There are people who can knit and read at the same time. I'm not one of them.

I signed up for a book group through my library that starts this Thursday. I've known about it for weeks, but given that I'm almost always scatterbrained, I didn't pick up the book until yesterday. So now I'm faced with reading A Passage to India by E. M. Forster by Thursday. It's 362 pages long, and I have three children ages 5 and under who won't tolerate listening to a book read aloud this long without pictures. I don't know how I'm going to make this happen. I've been reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck since November and I'm only on page 280.

Now I'm an adult, and this is just a reading group. I won't be graded on this. But it's being led by a professor. And I imagine myself and how I felt 15 years ago when I used to sit in my undergrad English classes and hope that the professor wouldn't call on me because I hadn't managed to read the book. I can remember this anxiety so well that this morning I briefly entertained the idea of taking No Doz and staying up all night Wednesday.

I only did this once by the way, taking No Doz that is, and while I managed to read an entire book on Anais Nin in one night, by the next morning I couldn't remember a thing I had read, and I felt like a tape running in fast forward. This was also a time period where I indulged in making mix tape upon mix tape...but that's another post.

So I wish I could read and knit at the same time, because I have this compulsive need to knit something new right now. And I get itchy reading--wishing I could be knitting--and I get itchy knitting--wishing I could be reading.

So I looked up a pattern for a bookmark and found this lovely pattern. I don't have any sock yarn that isn't being used right now, so I cast on in worsted weight cotton and figure I'll make my mother a dishcloth out of it. And since the library gave me a perfectly fine paper bookmark, I figure I've got that base covered for now.

Now I don't know what to do with myself--finish the book or the dishcloth--but I'm planning an all-nighter tomorrow.