Obsession

I thought I'd write this post about my flight from SF to Chicago and the layover in Las Vegas, about the guy who sat next to me on the plane and paused for a really long time every time he got to a soft core porn ad in his Maxim magazine and actually sniffed the cologne samples, about accidentally smuggling liquid on board (I ordered soup and ran onto my plane without making the connection that soup=liquid), about not being afraid to knit in public but being too much of a wuss to photograph said knitting in public (I thought a slot machine sock pic would have been awesome), but instead I'll just flash a couple pictures from the Las Vegas airport and then I'm going to move onto obsession which has been on my mind a lot the past day.

Vegas Pic 1. What the hell is this, and why is it there?

Vegas Pic 2. Star Wars Slot Machine!!!

Vegas Pic 3. Sock near payphone (the most secluded spot I could find for knit phototaking in public). This may be ripped out soon. Sigh.

Now onto Chicagoland. After spending a day here with my family, two things have become apparent.

1. They know that I take pictures of myself with socks and fake legs and that these pictures are online. I don't know the extent to which they know about the blog or any other online knitting activity I partake in, so I chose to just nod and admit that yes, I do that. Strangely, the conversation moved on after my admission and there was no more on the subject.

2. Obsession runs deep in this family, and it's certainly not just me and knitting. Let's take a look at my brother for example. This is what he has above the fireplace:

He spends more time racing and doing racing related activies than I do on knitting. He spends far more money on it than I do (or possibly could) on knitting. He owns and subscribes to more car racing magazines than I do knitting magazines. He owns more racing clothing than I own knitwear even if you include all my works in progress and all the aborted attempts I've ever started. And he reads racing / car forums more than I read knitting forums (at least since I quit doing it a month ago). He is CRAZY. And while I may take pictures of myself with fake body parts and knitted goods, he keeps FRAMED PICTURES OF HIS CAR ABOVE THE MANTLEPLACE. So yeah, whenever he brings up my knitting, I divert to his racing obsession.

My mom is obsessed with the house my parents bought when they retired to a cheap foreign country in the tropics where you can afford a custom built 3 story house with all hardwood / granite flooring and TWO KITCHENS for the price of a 1 bedroom condo in the SF bay area. She spent no less than 1 hour going over every single picture she has of every angle of every room. She showed me pictures of the matching dog houses (matching each other AND the house with clay like roof tiles and all) they bought and this ridiculous waterfall thingamabobber in the front lawn:

Yes, not only does a sheet of water flow over the edge from the top, but the elephant trunks spurt out water as well. This thing is about 6 feet tall. At the bottom she has lotuses in the pool (more now than when the picture was taken). And do you see the spotlights they had to run electricity for to shine on the waterfall at night??? The whole thing is so awesome yet so clearly the product of someone who is a wee bit obsessed with the house. The rest of us refer to the house as The Palace in mockery of her obsession. Oh yes, and I've just been reminded that those dog houses I was talking about earlier (which unfortunately are not photographed) have ceiling fans to keep the dogs cool and are lighted. The latest "home improvement" she wants to make is getting a water filter for the elephant pool, so she can keep fish in it.

Compared to the other nuts in this family, my dad seems the least obsessed of all. His only vices are online chess and movies. He rents and watches a good 6 movies per week on average, and most of his other spare time (remember, they're retired) is spent playing online chess. In fact, he kept me up until 11pm last night playing chess (the computer is in the room I get to sleep in), and then he went off to watch a movie. His obsession appears the most harmless (though doesn't knitting seem harmless as well?), but I think he spends more time on his obsessions than the rest of us combined. And that's A LOT.

What I find interesting is how we view each other's obsessions. Whenever my brother brings any of our obsessions up, we can immediately divert to racing and he sees the parallel. My dad is a pretty easy-going guy and is so busy playing online chess that he doesn't seem to notice that we're obsessed with other things. But my mom, ah my mom. Sometimes it seems like she thinks her obsession is better than our obsessions because home is more important than cars and knits. (An understandable point of view, but I'm not sure I believe that elephant spurting waterfall counts into the "home" territory as much as the "absurd decadence" category.) But at the same time she loves it when her kids do well at something so seemingly random as racing a car or knitting. We're going on a family outing to watch my brother race on Monday, and I'll be bringing some knitting along. Boy do I wish I had an inflatable leg for traveling. Or maybe just a mini one that just goes to the knee...

Anyway, I am a firm believer that Stephanie is completely right when she says "Obsession is normal" (as my autographed book says but that I don't have a picture of, but you can see Aija's picture here), but I can't tell if my perspective is warped by coming from such a whacko family. What's all y'all's experiences?

Oh right, and that McQueen sweater. I took tons of pictures, but I don't have the brain power to write up a good post about it yet.