Did you know when you pet an alpaca it makes this sad little meeping sound? Also when it's eating it makes a sad little meeping sound. And when just kind of hanging out. If an alpaca was on one of those children's wheels that points to a critter and makes that noise, the whole room would stop and smile because it's too sad NOT to laugh a little bit.

I felt a bit like an alpaca today. I mean that isn't the point, but it's kind of a fair analogy. I stayed in the room again and lied to my folks, saying of course I was unpacking their minivan as we spoke and would drive it the couple of hours south to them tomorrow, instead of today. That's also going to be my excuse to skip firefighter training tomorrow. It's truck check day and it's been so long since I've participated (gone almost a month for the wedding) that I'm absolutely 110% TERRIFIED to jump back in on a day where they will expect us noobies to do everything by ourselves. I'm going to break a firetruck. Look, you don't think it's likely, but I know me, and I would absolutely break a firetruck.

I keep thinking I need to change something huge. Grab my dog and go on another month long road trip and just say feck it to everything. Start a family. Throw everything in my home away, sweep it, bleach mop it, culture check it, and give away all of my fosters. Finally buy those dairy goats and chickens I keep meaning to but don't have any facilities built for yet. Steal the starving horse down the road, borrow a trailer, and drive it to a bigger city where they don't think hay expense is an excuse for horses you can study bone anatomy on. Finally get that shed installed and get back to breeding mice, instead of watching all my hard-worked-for lines pass on without me there to love on them and give them treats. Get the groundwork laid on that animal shelter I knew would happen one day and maybe actually start getting donations for the NINE FECKING FOSTER KITTENS. Or just quit my job, jump out of the rescue game completely, and make my living spinning yarn and sleeping. They pay you to sleep, right?

Oh, that actually brings me back to alpaca. I don't know if there was a yesterday or not, but I do know since I last wrote here I went to a kid's birthday party that I couldn't actually afford gifts for but did anyways, and spent the rest of the time sleeping and spinning. I don't know if I got a ton of sleep or barely any. I do know I wound the most epic amount of mohair-nylon 2-ply yarn into a ball on a tp tube, cursing the lack of flat table-top surfaces in my little room I've practically moved into. I also know that I have been spinning the softest, most beautiful suri alpaca and tencel blend into a laceweight yarn that I'm pretty sure could be given to some kind of foreign dictator and end a war. It's amazing, addictive, and I can't stop myself from sitting in front of the wheel and peddling away perfectly and evenly while the dense, heavenly fiber drafts out from my fingers.

I'm pretty sure I'm putting too much twist into it to really do its softness justice in the final product, but dammit, I want to make suri lace and a tencel blend is really my only chance. Everything else pulls apart. Super soft, slippery, short staple stuff like that or first cut kid mohair is really better as a thicker yarn, but for goodness sake, I KNOW IT CAN BE DONE.

So that's all I did. Time was kind of a daze. I just…I slept, and I spun. I wish I was sleeping and spinning right now. I can't think about doing anything else. I should probably work on some training, or do my job, or sign up for class next semester, or do something, but all I want to do is be in that room spinning suri lace. I keep picturing the woman's face at our local yarn shop as I hand a finished skein of it to her, hoping she'll think I did a tremendously great job. Then she'll tell me I should quit my job and JUST make yarns for her shop and then I can sleep and spin all day every day. You know, I mean, maybe not in those WORDS exactly…

Spinning is keeping me sane, sleep is nonsensical, and everything else is blurry, boring filler. I wish I could get out and do something.

I won't have much of a choice tomorrow! I'll be skipping that beautiful sleep and hopefully, if I can resist, the spinning, to get that van unpacked and driven back down. I don't want to. I don't want to drive somewhere. I am not sure I'll come back.

Oh wait, I'll have to! My spinning wheel is here.