I really love how this turned out. I enjoyed working on it. I’m enjoying staring at this photo of it. I just have to wash it today to see if it is as great as it looks. I did make one mistake, but you can’t see it in this picture and I recovered from it okay, so I’m not going to point it out.
I’m also going to make another one of these as my next afghan, because I can’t bring any more yarn into this house until I have used up the yarn that’s here. It’s just become unwieldy.
Plus, I want to make something beautiful for my friends who’ve had an unimaginably rough year. Not that an afghan makes up for losing a child, but this is what I have to offer.
My other brother is getting married. He bought an engagement ring and gave it to his fiancee.
The Butcher would really like to marry his girl. He is slowly saving up for a ring. He asked my parents for help. No help came. My dad sat here and gave a recitation of all the good jewelry floating around my mom’s family and all the reasons the Butcher could not have a piece to use. I told the Butcher to bring it up to my mom, alone, again, and see if that pries something loose.
Then yesterday, I went into the other room and I brought out the ring I have from my great-grandma and I told the Butcher that he would need to take it to a jeweler and see what it is–maybe an aquamarine, maybe a light sapphire, maybe a costume piece of paste–but if it is something, then he’d just be saving up to have it reset, and it’s a nice size and has sentimental value.
I’m just so pissed. I can’t even deal with it. The world is so hard. Life sucks and is short and it hurts. Why can’t we watch out for each other? Why can’t we be kind when we can? Why can’t the boy get the girl with a ring his family helped him come up with? Why can’t we warn each other when there’s danger? Why can’t we just try, a little bit, to not be assholes?
Tiny Cat Pants 
As an old married lady (18 years), I would tell your brother: use his savings for a house or other things they need together, if the lady is ok with that. I never got, wanted, or missed an engagement ring (we were desperately poor at the time). Still don’t. I would have been pissed if he wasted 1000s of dollars he didn’t have on a shiny rock when we could barely make rent. But again, maybe she requires that, in which case, definitely check out estate sales and resale places, not jewelers, who will mostly rip you off. Resale on diamonds and other gemstones is a lot lower than you think too; they’re generally not good investments. But a pretty heirloom ring of some kind with an inscription might be a lot more meaningful anyway.
(And yes, it’s still crappy for your family to be that way. Poor guy.)
Can we set up some sort of a “Strangers on a Train” scenario the next time they’re in town, ma’am? Where I come up to your dad in a public place, while all of y’all are there, say “You’re going to be very surprised on Judgment Day, you cruel, awful old man,” haul off and slap him across the face, and walk off? (You don’t have to slap or cuss or kill anyone for mte in exchange, I promise.)
I cannot fathom what prompts such smug, random, repeated cruelty. Not to anyone, ever, but especially not to one’s family, ever.
Well, I can, because I’ve been subjected to it. Yet I can’t comprehend a mindset in which I – or you, or any other person – could actually practice such sadism.
Is the shock on people’s faces the reward? Is there joy in seeing people cry? Is there happiness in putting them in danger? Is the enjoyment even greater if the people you harm are ones you helped create? I don’t understand: why would you knowingly be a terrible person?
I am so sorry that y’all – especially you, but all y’all – are still being subjected to this. I so wish I had some useful solution. I can only offer empathy and love, and hope that somehow, some way, common sense and decency and sanity will win, soon, and stop y’all’s pain. You hang the moon, lady, and you deserve only respect and kindness and love, every day of your dear life.