Zeus Knits, and Zeus Will Fuck Your Shit Up

Consider the scene yesterday: Matilda has some serious time to kill before her Guitar 4 class at that den of hippy iniquity, the Old Town School of Folk Music, because her Sea Shanties class is not meeting this week. After a fruitless search for staitonery that would allow her to answer her young nerdy nephew's letter, Matilda decides to head for The Grind Cafe, which has free wireless and yummy food.

The Grind also boasts outdoor tables and on a day like yesterday, Matilda was confident that very few people indeed would be availing themselves of them (a) because it was really fucking hot and (b) because the evil sun was not beating down every nanosecond of the day. Chicagoans fear rain, but not Matilda. And given that Matilda was feeling generally grumpy and unhappy with the world, an isolated table outside seemed much preferrable to bumping elbows with everyone inside.

But just in case not everyone is properly reading Matilda's "Leave me the FUCK alone" body language, she deploys some redundant security measures: Sunglasses on, despite overcast day? Check. Headphones plugged into laptop and ears? Check. Intimidating-looking book propped up on bookstand? Check.

So where did Matilda go wrong? What did Matilda do to deserve the possibly demented old man on a bike deciding to interview me about the grind? Knitting. That's where Matilda went wrong. When a certain kind of person see knitting, s/he sees softness. S/he see woolyness. S/he sees the knitter frisking about like a little space lamb. S/he fail to see sharp pointy death in its various dark materials heading straight for his/ehr damnably unobservant eyes.

But Matilda digresses. Matilda was telling you about the gathering fury as she tried to shake the interloper, despite the fact that SHE was physically unable to vacate until her goddamned grilled cheese arrived. So Matilda pretended to focus ever more intently on her knitting in the vain hopes that this guy would get the message. And yet, Matilda's attention was sorely divided between knitting lace and mentally examining all the places in which she could ditch the body if it came to that. And so Matilda fucked up the entire row by forgetting the second bloody-fucking yarnover. AGGGH! Matilda SMASH.

Ultimately, the guy left (probably because Matilda stopped responding at all), and Matilda set to backtracking to salvage the row. But such rage has its climatological consequences, it seems, because the temperature suddenly dropped at least 15 degrees and things started looking distinctly Ark-of-the-Covenant-y overhead. Shit, shit, shit shit. If Matilda were to be interruped in mid--row fix, she felt certain that she'd wind up having to pull out a number of rows. But the desire NOT to have the laptop as well as the cotton-silk yarn smoted was as strong as the desire to never have to undo another fucking row of that lace pattern ever fucking again.

So Matilda knit like the hounds of hell were snapping at her stitchmarkers. She finished the row and shoved the shawl tadpole into the safe confines of her shit hot Lexie Barnes Mimic Bag, shoved everything else into her backpack, and strode purposefully libraryward as the entire employee population of Lincoln Avenue emerged from their places of business to look at something above and behind Matilda.

Matilda still has no clue what that was about, but if she had looked back and turned into a pillar of salt, her last earthly thought would have been "It fucking figures." And, of course, it never did rain. Not a drop.

Matilda's Knitting CAN stop the Weather Machine!