Go Here. Buy Yarn.

This, my children, is what we call Ms. Knitingale being an enabler. Let's all say it together now....

But seriously, you must go here. It's The Knitting Zone and I just bought the rest of the Boku for this astounding piece of knitter's crack (and no, I don't mean for knitters who wear low rise jeans and keep dropping their knitting):

15 squares into it and not only am I not tired of it, I've been wondering if the 63 squares called for in the pattern will really make it big enough for my taste.....? Seriously--I'm starting to wonder what Plymouth coated the pattern paper with. But I digress.

So I went to the Knitting Zone and ordered the rest of the yarn for the Boku because of the superhighway to hell that I'm building (I've actually got it 8 lanes wide in both directions these days) with all those good intentions (like buying it a little at a time, maybe, hmm?) and because really, it was absolutely the cheapest way to do it. For one thing, they ship orders over $50 for free and for another, it's out of state and I didn't have to pay Washington State sales tax, which is somewhere between "Are you freaking HIGH?" and "Can I just give you my firstborn child instead?" Frankly, I think the governer needs to send me some accounting about how he's spending all this money I keep giving him in return for the pleasure of spending money. More on that later.

I ordered the yarn on Tuesday. As far as I can tell, what happened next is that a magical moonbeam transported the information to a little leprechaun stationed down the street from my house who promptly ran up the road and stuffed the yarn in my mailbox, because the stuff arrived YESTERDAY. Two days. I can't get stuff from INSIDE the state that quickly. It probably would have made it in one day if the leprechaun hadn't had to stop for a stepstool to reach into the mailbox. These people totally rock. The yarn was well-packaged, all in stock, and did I mention it was here in two days? That's faster than I could probably convince my lazy ass to drive to any LYS more than 5 miles from my house. LOVE the Knitting Zone. And I was so impressed I wrote them a note and told them I would tell you all about how awesome they are, so here I am and they are, indeed, pretty darned awesome.

But since I was talking about the governer, allow me to share just a teensy weensy bit of my frustration with you. See, Washington is either the most taxed state in the union, or close to it. No state income tax (probably because there isn't enough left to tax once we pay all the other taxes) but sales tax is nearly 10% in some areas. There's tax on cigarettes, alcohol, rental cars--probably one on using more than two squares of toilet paper if you care to look into the matter...which I really, really don't.

Thing is, I can think of some WAY better ideas for taxes. I mean, if we have to have them and if nothing is going to get taken care of until we do (because in spite of all these taxes, the roads are still in such crappy shape that you could go play pool on main street and use the potholes for pockets), why not at least have sensible taxes? For instance I think we could make a fortune on irritation tax:

Irritation tax should be applied to everyone who feels obligated to trot out such gems as "hot enough for you?", "yep, it's Wednesday--all day." , and "nucular" instead of "nuclear."

It could be applied to anyone who comes up behind you humming "The Pina Colada Song", "I Write the Songs" or anything else that is guaranteed to stick in your head until you want to bash your head against the wall on the theory that the ringing in your ears might drown out the damned song.

There could be a huge surcharge for those people who drive up to a four-way stop at the same time you do and, when you gesture to them to go, simply smile at you and gesture back that no, you should go. It's cute on that cartoon with the chipmunks--when driving, it's just that much longer that we both have to sit there in traffic and read other people's bumper stickers for entertainment. After all, aren't you just dying to learn what the guy in the green chevy would rather be doing?

There could definitely be a tax for people who are worried that they might forget what their favorite perfume smells like so they somehow manage to marinate every pore in their body in it on the apparent theory that if they do forget, people a mile and a half away will be able to accurately describe it to them.

There should be a tax for that guy who comes to the bank during the busiest hours with six bags of quarters and realizes only when it's his turn that he forgot to take out the Canadian ones.

Likewise the woman in the express lane at the supermarket with more coupons than merchandise and no understanding of the the term "expiration date" as it applies to said coupons.

Every clothing store that has those little partial doors on the dressing rooms--you know, the ones that essentially cover you from nipples to knees if you happen to be exactly 5'6" and otherwise really don't cover you much at all--should have to pay at least 25 cents per unnecessarily displayed inch of flesh.

People with cell phone ring tones that are ear-splittingly loud, poorly done versions of pop songs but who still can't seem to notice that yes, it's their phone ringing until about the 3rd solid minute--these people should definitely be taxed, preferably enough that they can no longer pay their cell phone bill and must rely on a land line telephone in the privacy of their own homes.

See? Only a few ideas and already we could have enough money for the State of Washington to fix its roads and care for its kids and probably give 50 bucks and a pet goldfish to every man, woman and child. Why don't they ever ask me? Oh yeah...that's right. That would make me a politician and I've already refused the necessary surgery to remove my integrity. Gussie and Gracie say they're just as glad about that--as you can see, they were a little worried:

Ed doesn't really give a rat's tushie...although he could probably work up a little enthusiasm if someone could share with him the location of the rest of the rat.....