Manatee Socks

A week ago, at our weekly SnB, I was the lucky recipient of a pair of hand-knit socks from Germany! A friend received them in a swap and they just weren't for her so she asked if anyone in our SnB group would like them. Having 1) big feet and 2) a loud mouth, paid off. My big feet ensured they fit and my loud mouth screaming "I want em! I do! I do! Me! Me! Me!" drowned out anyone else who may have also expressed interest and had the proper sized foot. Although, to be honest, I am not exactly sure that anyone else was clamoring for the socks. See, the funny thing about these socks is that they are, well, um, kind of ugly. Actually, there is no kind of about it. They are ugly. But I think that is one reason I like them. I like things that are ugly, that are so ugly that they cross the ugly line and are back into cute. Like the manatee.

I love manatees. I think that they are perhaps one of the ugliest looking creatures out there. In fact, they are so damn ugly they are cute. I just want to chew on 'em. As a kid I remember a pod of manatees swimming into the marina where we kept our boat and playing with hoses while we were trying to hose down the boat. It was so cute to see these big ugly things all playful and silly. And these socks tap into that same kind of emotion. Hence, they shall now be known to one and to all as, "The Manatee Socks" (and also because the so-ugly-they're-cute-German-hand-knitted-socks is way too long to say). Did you get a good look at those babies? They have some stripes and some mitered squares and some white stringy fur stuff. Perfect!

Falling into a similar category, were the jellybeans we had that night. A fellow SnBer had just returned from Texas with some Texas jellybeans. And, because everything is bigger in Texas (insert your own penis joke here - I'm sure it is less crude and more funny than mine, which after having recently watched The Aristocrats is filled with rusty trombones, strawberry shortcakes, feltching (oh the google hits I am going to get now ... Hi Mom!) and other assorted acts some of which though often performed by Catholic priests are illegal and likely to cause offense, or at least vomiting which would be par for the course should I be a comedian performing the aristocrat joke, but not, because I would rather buy jewelry instead of a new keyboard for you, and isn't it unfortunate that the picture next to this is of the pink, somewhat flesh colored jellybean, and how in the hell did this parenthetical turn into a run-on sentence with it's own parenthetical of unnecessary length and cause me to loose my train of thought?), so are the jellybeans. (You might want to go ahead and re-read that last sentence sans parenthetical to regroup.)

So, jellybeans. Larger than large. So large that if you popped one in your mouth whole, you might chip a tooth. In fact, the jellybeans are so large ... how large are they ... they are so large that a lone black one, when left sitting alone and by itself next to some yarn, looked like, and this is a quote, not just my potty mouth "a turd!" I am sure it saddens you that I did not get a picture of the black jellybean sitting alone in its turdishness, but once it was spotted it was quickly scooped up and returned to its bag for future eating. See, the black jellybean, it was so ugly it was cute, cute enough to be consumed at a later date (but by someone other than me because, yuck! I so do not like the black jellybean, nor do I like licorice, jagermeister, anise, or fennel, no matter how ugly it/they is/are. Eee-eww!)