A Soccer Mom Walks Into a Bar

Last night, for the first time in several months, I was able to go out to the Monday night knitting group at a bar a few towns over.  I used to attend regularly, and then Willem’s class schedule got in the way, so we comforted ourselves with a smaller gathering at my house to watch cheesy television and bang small pointy sticks together with string.  But the school year is over, and despite my tendency toward low-grade social anxiety and plain old inertia, I do enjoy getting out and being part of the group.

So I packed up and headed out, with a quick stopover at Emily’s softball field to deliver winter coats and gloves to the kids, because there’s no reason to assume that, by May 19, the weather would actually be warm enough for outdoor activities.  I arrived at the bar right around 7:00, and was the first of the group there.

It turns out that only myself and Gretchen actually showed up last night.  I’m fairly certain this was not evidence of a conspiracy.  And it’s just as well, because our normal table, the only one with decent lighting, was coopted by a man and his MacBook, and no amount of subtle glaring and telepathic messaging convinced him to get up and leave.

Instead, I took a seat on one of the couches surrounding a coffee table at the front of the bar.  The couches are low, with the kind of long, overstuffed seats that make you lean way back and consider napping; not what I would choose when I expect people to want to sit up and reach their drinks on the table, but this is not the only example of how things would be different if I ran the world.  I’m coping.

I sat down alone, got myself a glass of Riesling (and felt appropriately smug and grown-up to have been able to order a wine by name and not promptly spit it back out).  When I returned to my couch, a young man - perhaps 25? - had taken a seat at the couch opposite me.  We exchanged the eye contact and nod, like you do, and I started knitting.  Gretchen appeared shortly afterward, and we chatted.

It took me a while to realize that the guy on the other couch was paying a lot more attention to me than to his magazine.  No-pages-turned sort of attention.  And then he started making small talk, about the music and the weather and the strange little bar dog - a springer spaniel, small but not puppyish, who seemed to feel right at home - who wandered over and curled up next to me on the couch, because we all know how much I love dogs.  Later, he started talking about the beer he was drinking, and how good it was, and it was clear that an offer to buy me a drink was imminent.

Let me be perfectly clear: I am not a person that gets hit on in bars.  I don’t even go to bars very often, but when I do, I bring myself.  My almost-31-year-old, 20-pounds-overweight, mother-of-two, married-and-boring, pleasant-but-not-beautiful self.  I’m not unhappy with the way I look, and I don’t dress provocatively or in a way intended to draw attention.  I’m just me, and that’s fine.  And me is not a ruthless sexual weapon.

Beyond appearances, my whole life centers around work - which I very rarely discuss in public - and family.  I dropped Willem’s name in conversation frequently, not as a warning to the guy on the couch, just because he features so prominently in my life that if I tried not to include him, I wouldn’t have much else to say.  I talked about the kids.  And just in case I wasn’t sending off sufficient Married-Boring-Mom vibes on my own, Gretchen was going out of her way to use phrases like “your husband” in conversation, as well. 

So it was all very strange.  Not uncomfortable, never inappropriate or offensive, just strange.  I think I rolled with it pretty well, and I was prepared to decline a drink from a stranger because somehow that sends off a certain implication that idle chatter does not.  It never became an issue, because once it was clear the rest of the group was not meeting that night, we left to go to Gretchen’s and watch cheesy television and bang small pointy sticks together with string. 

But it was odd, and if there had been a way for me to ask, “What are you doing?” without sounding freaked-out or offended, I would have.  Because I was neither freaked out nor offended, but I was curious and a little baffled.  I’m so out of practice that I didn’t even realize it was happening, at first.  My harmless-flirting muscles have atrophied through disuse. 

This is OK with me. 

 

Cross-posted at New England Mamas.

 

“…and Now I am Giving it Back.”

Have you seen these photos yet? I stumbled upon the link several months ago, saved it as a bookmark, and promptly forgot about it. But in a brief but intense organizational frenzy, I sorted through old bookmarks and was once again mesmerized by this display. Usually, sorting through bookmarks is a matter of click, oh right, yeah, delete/save, done. In this case, I lost a half an hour, just looking and thinking.

Before you click, be warned: it’s not a pleasant, happy set of photographs. It’s not cute cats with oddly-spelled captions, or strangely compelling Photoshopped monsters eating the world.

This is death, not at its very worst, but not sanitized and tucked away, either. Be sure to read the captions to the right, and notice the dates, too. There is a knowledge in these people’s eyes that is compelling and intense, but also a little scary. Sometimes, I think, ignorance is better.

I don’t find the photographs sad. Loss and grief, missed opportunities, regrets: those are sad. Death, by itself, is just another part of the bigger picture. I think that, as a society, we avoid death as much as we can, and when we can’t, we find ways to build in enough ceremony and artifice to make it palatable; to make it controllable.

I’ve read others’ reactions to these photos, and the reactions are at least as fascinating as the original display, if not more so. People are disgusted, enamored, outraged, unsettled, impressed, appalled… it’s a big map, and the responses are all over it.

How about yours?

Life Shouldn’t Be Printed on Dollar Bills

I have mixed feelings about certain of Clifford Odets‘ actions and writings, but I always liked that quote.  Life shouldn’t be printed on dollar bills.  I particularly appreciate the “shouldn’t” part, because it allows for the fact that, sometimes, it is.  I rediscovered it the other day, and it reminded me of a rant of mine.

I view frugality as another lifestyle choice; a hobby, of sorts.

And like any other hobby, you get people on all ends of the spectrum - those who choose not to do it at all, those who do when it’s convenient, those who do it but inconsistently or not well, those who turn it into a full-time obsession… just like with knitting, athletics, stamp-collecting, skydiving, there are people who have a slight bent toward frugality and there are others who are outright contortionists.

A sort-of-friend of mine is, to my eye, obsessed.  She will go to three different grocery stores to maximize coupon savings and sales, even when I have to wonder about the cost of gas to get there.  Considers buying new to be a failure.  Creates a budget down to the penny, and sticks to it.  It’s beyond full-time to her, it’s something she structures her entire life around.  I’m happy for her that it seems to give her such pleasure when she finds a really good deal, but there are times when her drive to save money starts to look more like mania.

Meanwhile, she looks at me with this quizzical attitude, like, “What do you mean, you just bought all of your groceries in one trip?  Without even reading the circular first?!?”  She is so intensely involved in her hobby that she has lost perspective, and has begun to believe that there is an objectively correct way for all people to do things.  That, of course, her way is the right way to live, that anyone who doesn’t share her attitudes about money is doing it wrong.  To me, that takes it too far, and is just one small reason why she is a sort-of-friend and not a real friend.

For me, I enjoy finding new ways to save money and live “green,” like making cloth napkins and using an outdoor clothesline.  The effort it takes to get there is much smaller than the happiness I feel when it works.  I used to clip coupons, and would again if we still got the newspaper delivered.  We’re financially stable now, but we weren’t for many years and I’ve held onto a lot of those habits.  But I don’t define myself as “frugal” (or cheap!) as an ongoing lifestyle, because it’s not where I choose to focus my efforts.

I Can See Clearly Now

For the past few weeks, a brand-new, unopened set of windshield wipers, front and rear, sat in the breezeway.

I intended to ask Willem to throw them on the minivan, and never quite got around to it.

This morning, the kids and I were ready to run some errands, and it was raining.  And I remembered that the wipers on the car were approximately as effective as old tissues in their long-term water-decreasing efforts.  So I sighed.  Looked at the replacements waiting in the breezeway.  Sighed again.

And I opened the packages and installed the damn things myself.

No big deal, perhaps, except I’d never done it before.  Somehow I had this unarticulated belief that it was hard, which is frankly stupid because I can knit, make pasta from scratch, program in HTML and program the DVR.  But I’d never attempted it before, sheeplike and passive.

It took longer than it should have, but not long enough to be embarrassing.  And now I’m unreasonably proud of myself for starting the day with a simple bit of productivity.

Happy Mushrooms

In an effort to focus on that which lightens my mood, not to mention that which I have some semblance of control over, I thought I’d share a recipe. Just one, to start, though I have a few more on-deck that may eventually make an appearance.

These suckers are absolutely delightful. Even if you don’t particularly like mushrooms, they’re worth a try… the texture is entirely different than any other fungi I’ve prepared.

HAPPY MUSHROOMS
10-16 ounces fresh mushrooms of your choice, cut into slightly-larger-than-bite-sized pieces (we’ve used steak-cut, button mushrooms, crimini, baby portabello, regular old salad ’shrooms - everything works - and for once, size really doesn’t matter, as long as they’re fairly uniform)
2-3 TBSP olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 TBSP lemon juice
1 c. wine or beer (literally can be anything, we’ve used white wine, red, stout beer, Pete’s Wicked Strawberry Blonde, pilsner, ale…)
Seasonings/herbs of choices (garlic salt, thyme, rosemary, basil, minced onion - just one or two, to taste)

In a large frying pan or skillet, heat the oil over med-high heat. When it is thin and hot, place the mushrooms in an even layer in the pan (don’t worry if they seem crowded in there, they will shrink). Then, and this is the hard part, DON’T TOUCH THEM. Leave them completely alone in the hot oil for about 5 minutes, until you can start seeing them turn a bit brown and soft about halfway up the sides. You can safely grab the edge of one and peek - the underside should turn a dark mahogany color.

Once they’re nicely browned on the bottom, toss once with salt and pepper so that the uncooked sides are now on the bottom, and then DON’T TOUCH THEM AGAIN for another 5 minutes or so. You can add more oil when tossing if needed, but you don’t want much - it should all soak up.

When all the oil is gone (or it’s obvious that no more will soak in), then squirt them with lemon juice, pour in alcohol, and season liberally depending on your taste. Stir them around a little, then let cook until all the liquid is gone.

Serve with steak, chicken, Cheerios… OK, maybe not Cheerios. But they’re really good. They’re going to be strong-flavored, so I serve them on the side and let people serve themselves, and often will have gravy available separately as well.

Let me know if you try them, I’d love to hear of other alcohol/herb combinations that work well. My favorite so far is red wine and rosemary. Willem likes beer and garlic.

Work-Related Injury

It’s not about me.

My work-whine from yesterday, about feeling misunderstood and disrespected and degraded: it’s not about me. I’m disappointed that the group mentality is one of defensiveness and quick assumptions, of each-man-for-himself and watch-your-back. But not shocked.

I’ve been at the job for two years, and I can say with perfect honesty that I love my work. I really do. I love the interactions I’ve had, even with the people who have made me angry or sad or frustrated, because it feels important. It feels useful. I wouldn’t consider myself to be “saving lives,” but I am touching them. That feels good. It helps to balance out the basic unhappiness I have at not being more available to my family.

But while I love my work, I hate my job. Seriously hate it. The politics are slimy and corrupt, with miscommunication and vague unfulfilled promises as the rule rather than the exception. What management we have is not to be trusted to look out for our best interests, because our direct manager is also the COO of the company; our best interests are not always in line with the financial bottom line.

I’ve known that for a while, but it took until yesterday to realize that there’s something else going on, something that predated me and therefore is somewhat beyond my ability to comprehend. About three years ago, there was a major change in the scheduling policy for the department. It wasn’t handled well, and even those who got what they wanted remained unhappy, so you can imagine the morale of those who ended up on the losing end of the negotiations.

I knew about that in a tangential way, but I’m just now understanding that this event was something bigger and more insidious than a simple schedule change. It was, to be completely objective and accurate, a trauma.

I can’t explain why, any more than I can explain the Schrödinger’s cat paradox. But I see the results: the tendency to get anxious at the mere mention of certain topics. The automatic creation of assumptions and beliefs based on past interactions rather than on present circumstances. The reflexive fight-or-flight reaction to a perceived threat even in the absence of an actual threat. Know what we call symptoms like that, in the mental health field? We call that PTSD, particularly when the symptoms stretch more than a reasonable period of time after the triggering event. Three years after a scheduling change at work is too long to still be anxious and miserable like this.

I don’t have work-related PTSD, myself, but I’m the new guy, the one who came along after all that drama. Not having fully understood the trauma, I underestimated its impact for a long time. But once the idea occurred to me, I pulled out the DSM-IV to review the diagnostic criteria. It’s not in the traditionally expected causes of PTSD (war, abuse, rape, disaster) but it does fit.

So now my task is to take a step back and stop personalizing the situation. I didn’t cause the trauma, and I didn’t experience it alongside the others, and I can’t make it better. I need to view the managerial staff as potentially abusive, in a relationship which has already proven to be unfair and insensitive. I’m trying to think of it this way: if this was a relationship with a man, and he was consistently showing unconcern for my feelings, disdain for simple requests, discourteous ignoring of regular communication, then it would be a bad relationship. Whether I stay or go is my choice, but pretending like it’s a good relationship, pretending like I can make it better all by myself, is just a waste of energy. I can either live with it or leave, and I cannot let my guard down. If I know all this, and yet let it hurt me, it’s my own fault for staying.

And I have to stay, for one more year. We need income and health insurance and stability. So I need to shift my attention back to the stuff that matters, the interactions with clients and their caregivers, and learn to minimize my engagement in the politics and such.

Shutting up during staff meetings would help.

So would Ativan.

Not a Good Day

When I go into a staff meeting, one at which it was previously and repeatedly announced that we would be discussing schedule changes, I should be able to request a change - just request, not necessarily get or even decide upon that change - without being made to feel like a selfish asshole, an upstart, a problem.  I shouldn’t be told that if the team were to even consider making a schedule change, it would be unprincipled and unethical.

Just sayin’.

And I’m about to send in the forms that allow me the privilege of beginning to repay my student loans.  My absolutely enormous, more-than-the-mortgage pile of student loans.  Loans which I expected to have accrued in the process of getting a doctorate, which would then allow me to have a job with sufficient income to repay them.  Instead I have a low-paying job and student loan payments stretching as far as the eye can see.  Sucks.

In the same process, I sent my college a brief email: “Please allow this email to serve as my official confirmation of disenrollment beginning summer 2008.”  I did not include a paragraph about how hurt I am that I was misled about my chances of getting an internship placement after taking a year off.  I did not include mention that the only follow-up communication I have ever received, from these people who were so caring and supportive to my face right up until the day I finished classes - in good standing, with accolades and teaching experience and supervisory work, too, I might add - was in the form of periodic reminders of registration fees and deadlines.

I’m out of migraine meds, and don’t have the energy to call and ask for more or to drive to the store and get them.  Maybe tomorrow.

I’m still not pregnant, and each month gets a touch more frustrating, a touch sadder.

I don’t want a do-over of the day.  I just want to crawl in bed and hide from the rest of it.  I won’t, because I have children who need to see Mama smile and a friend who may come over for mindless television and knitting purposes.  But ugh.

The Invitation

The thick envelope sits on my coffee table, a quiet but insistent reminder of a task undone.  It wouldn’t even be an arduous chore: a simple check next to the “With Regrets” line, bundle it all into the return envelop, and walk it across the street to the mailbox.  And yet it remains neglected, nagging at the back of my consciousness.

The invitation is for a wedding, to be held in Connecticut.  We can’t attend, because it’s the day we drop Emily off at summer camp.  Even if I didn’t have concerns about how that will impact me, I wouldn’t head out of state immediately after depositing my child with strangers.  The decision had been made for us, months before the invitation appeared in my mailbox.

And yet I have struggled with it.  The groom-to-be is a total stranger to me, someone I have never laid eyes upon in my life.  The bride-to-be was once a friend, with all of the intensity and hilarity that comes with a high school friendship.  A best friend. 

We joked that we shared a brain cell.  We were the ones who would laugh at each other’s stories before they were anywhere near the punchline.  We had identical, if slightly macabre, suggestions for a Social Studies class field trip, several hours apart and with no contact in between (”The cemetary!”).  We weren’t allowed to play charades after the Rocky and Bullwinkle incident, the time when she drew the card and stood thinking about it, and I blurted out the answer from across the room before she’d moved.

She knew, when no one else knew, about my secret trauma.  She knew about my father’s emotional abuse.  She knew about the half-hearted suicide attempts, unfinished only because I couldn’t care enough to really try. 

I left high school a year early, to flee the memories and pressures of home and the surrounding areas, to escape the resentment of another classmate who decided that my refusal, my inability, to talk about my experiences meant that I was lying.  I could not have survived another year of the whispered accusations and offended doubts.  I was terrified that I would end up, once again, walking 15 miles home after a chorus cnocert because my ride for the night had been told, by that other classmate, that former friend, that I was a slut and a liar and he could get whatever he wanted from me.  I was more terrified that next time I wouldn’t be able to get out of the car and walk home.

So I went away to school, and this best friend of mine became close with the other classmates.  They formed a club, with nicknames, and I knew that even if I had stayed behind, I never would have been welcomed.  She never openly accused me, never showed any doubts to me, but she changed.  I moved away, but she pulled farther away from me.  Became one of them. 

I coped, made new friends, went on with my life.  We continued a correspondance, one that grew increasingly sporadic after a year or two.  By the time I had graduated and was figuring out how to live healthier, how to pull away from the self-loathing and misery that I had perfected through my adolescence, we were effectively out of touch.  By the time I had my daughter, became more stable, found contentment, I had only one, outdated email address for her.  We met once, in 1999, to wander the streets of Salem, MA, for the Halloween revelry, but parted ways early and awkwardly and haven’t reconnected since.  I sent her a silly package, of decades-old inside jokes, for her 30th birthday, and after an appropriately tongue-in-cheek thank-you note, the silence settled in again.

Eight years after our last meeting, at my old email address that I only use now for online registrations and mailing lists, I had a note from her.  She wanted my physical address, to send out wedding invitations.  I sent it willingly enough, along with a note: “Why?”  Not out of bitterness or distate, just simple confusion.  Why now, after so many years of silence?  If I passed her on the street, I wouldn’t necessarily recognize her, particularly after several years’ practice as a therapist and assessor have created the necessary skill of deliberate distance; to protect my clients’ privacy I have to wait for them to acknowledge me, and can walk right by without a glimmer of recognition if they choose not to approach me.  So why now?  Why me?

She wrote back that she was organizing her wedding reception, and her fiance has a large family.  To balance, she was inviting anyone who had been significant in her life, even if the relationships weren’t current.  Besides, she wrote, I was once her closest friend.

I don’t know if I would have attended her wedding, in the absence of other commitments.  I don’t know if I want to reignite an old friendship, or even just attend a ceremony for the sake of what was.  My friendship with her was important and special, but it also marked one of the first times I felt let down and abandoned, as though she could have stood up for me but instead chose an easier route.  This has been a bit of a theme for me, this sense that I have to stand up for myself because other people, even those I care deeply about and who care deeply for me, frequently have not stepped up in times of crisis.  I’ve developed a good, solid sense of self-reliance because of it, but there’s also a tang of insecurity, a wish that I could step back and let someone else handle a crisis.  I know I have support and protection if I ask for it, but the damsel-in-distress in the recesses of my brain has always wished for a white knight, an unsought protector.

This is not her fault, of course.  She was an adolescent, herself, and peer pressure is heady, heavy stuff.  It was just the start of a trend in my own life, one that I continue to struggle to cast in a more positive, look-how-strong-I-can-be light.

I want to be able to be there for her wedding, but I also want to avoid so much about that time in my life.  I don’t want to share a table with other classmates who may have been invited.  I don’t want to be reminded of how brittle and breakable I was. 

And I won’t.  I can’t go, and I have no guilt about this.  Just ruminations and memories, whether I want them or not.

Sports Personalities

Springtime in New England… the grass begins to take on a faintly greenish hue, the weather only dips below freezing a few nights a week, the birds’ feet have thawed out enough to allow them to bombard the birdfeeders with a desperation that is simultaneously sad and hilarious. 

It’s also the time of year when outdoor sports become a possibility.  It’s not a comfortable, fun excuse to run around in the warm sunshine just yet - that’s June - but it does provide the option of sending your children outside in light clothes without risking a visit from Social Services. 

When my daughter was four years old, she fell out of her twin-sized, regulation-height bed onto her carpeted floor and broke her collarbone.  Snapped the sucker right in two.  That put a damper on her ability to participate in any activity that might include physical contact for several months, and it put a damper on my willingness to let her risk that sort of activity for several more.  Then we got caught up in the frenzy which is packing and moving across the state, and thus she was five before we ever considered signing her up for an organized, team sport.

She had already taken beginner swimming lessons, and would continue to do so, but we wanted her to be a member of a team.  There were so many things she could learn: camaraderie, cooperation, patience, shared objectives, small-fish-big-pond…  And, with a little luck, a smidgen of grace and physical self-confidence, both of which her mother lacks in significant quantities. 

So we talked it over, her father and I, and very quickly landed on soccer.  Minimal equipment to start, straightforward rules, the cuteness of a cluster of toddlers bonking off each other on a pretty, green field.  She got all dressed in her t-shirt and shorts, shin guards and sneakers, and off we went.

It was a smashing failure.  Emily, for all of her intensity and forcefulness of personality, is not a physically aggressive kid.  In many ways, this is a good thing: we’ve worked hard to create a violence-free household and we don’t want her to push and shove her way to the front of every line.  But in soccer ways, she’s too passive; she falls back away from the ball, doesn’t run toward her own goal, flinches whenever another player gets too close.  She never scored one goal, the whole summer season, and when asked what her favorite thing was, she replied, “Sitting on the sidelines drinking juice.” 

The next summer, then, we cast about for a different team sport.  Emily loves, loves the idea of being on a team, and had experienced the same sort of dementia that I’m having now, when I want to have another baby and have forgotten the frustrating and disappointing aspects of the whole process: “Soccer was great!  I loved it!  It was so much fun!  I was really good at it!”  Self-esteem is not a problem for this child.

After some discussion, we collectively agreed that perhaps she would have more fun in a different sport, and our next attempt has been softball.  She’s now in her second season there, and it’s going ever so much better.  Softball allows her the physical space she needs to be able to concentrate and not feel intimidated, but still has the team spirit and practice times to help her focus and build some skills that I can’t teach her.  I’m not in love with the league, what with the surprise last-minute fees and righteousness of some of the other team parents, but it’s working for us.  For now.

We went through a similar trial-and-error process when we wanted to give Emily an outlet from some of her creative energy, of which she has plenty.  Dance lessons were not a success, because, well, she is her father’s daughter.   (Have you seen that man dance?)  But art lessons have gone over very well, and provide for a good wintertime activity.

And now our son is almost four and is entering into the sports mindset, himself.  We’re starting with soccer, again, because he insists that he wants nothing but.  He’s a far less aggressive child, personality-wise, than my daughter, so it will be very interesting to see whether he is physically more self-confident.  I’ll be sure to stock some extra juice for the sidelines, just in case.

---

Cross-posted at New England Mamas.

Posture

I received a voice mail yesterday that my latest socks safely reached their recipient, in time for cramming and finals and graduation, oh my.  They were mailed out with several chocolate bars, because contrary to rumor, it wasn’t really that long ago that I was in college, myself.

Photography by Jacob… not bad for a 3-year-old

I wanted a design that was comparatively versatile - not to the point of a Thneed, I only wanted them to be socks - but which could be sort of ’80s-slouchy or preppy-folded over or just standing up straight.  Hence the name.  I started with a stitch pattern from Knitting Vintage Socks, and then adapted for a more traditional turned heel and stockinette sole.  So…

Posture
Materials
Plymouth Happy Feet, gray-rose colorway, 2 skeins
Circular needle, US size 3, 32″ or so for Magic Loop method, change size as needed for gauge… though this pattern is very forgiving that way.
Darning needle

Gauge
8 sts per inch in stockinette, knitted in the round

Stitch Pattern
Rounds 1-3: (p3, k3) around
Round 4: (p3, yo, k3tog, yo) around

Directions
Leg
Loosely CO 60 sts, arrange 30 sts each on front and back needles.
Work in Stitch Pattern, above, for approximately 6″ (17 repeats).

Heel Flap
Rearrange stitches: Move last 3 (knit) stitches from front needle to back: 27 stitches on front (top of foot), 33 on back (sole). Work back and forth on back needle only.
Set-up row (RS): (k1, k2tog, k1) across to last two sts, k2tog. (24 sts remain)

Honeycomb Slip Stitch

Row 1: *(sl 1, k1), repeat from * across.

Rows 2 and 4: sl1, p across.

Row 3: sl1, *(sl 1, k1), repeat from * to last st, k1.

Repeat Rows 1-4 for ~2″ (four repeats).

Turn Heel
RS: k13, ssk, k1, turn.
WS: sl1, p3, p2tog, p1, turn.
Row 1: sl1, k to 1 before gap, ssk, k1, turn.
Row 2: sl1, p to 1 before gap, p2tog, p1, turn.
Repeat Rows 1 and 2 until all stitches used; 14 sts remain.

Gusset
On back needle, k across. PU 12 sts along side of heel flap.
On front needle, resume Stitch Pattern.
On back needle, or - my preferred method - Slide front needle stitches onto cable but don’t slide the heel flap stitches onto left-hand needle yet (two bare needles, with two separate sections of stitches on the circular cable). PU 12 sts along side of heel flap, then continue knitting across heel flap and other picked-up stitches. Rearrange if necessary, to keep 27 stitches on front needle and 38 stitches on back needle.

Round 1: Front needle - continue Stitch Pattern as established, Back needle - k across.
Round 2: Front needle - Stitch Pattern, Back needle - k1, ssk, k to 3 from end, k2tog, k1.
Repeat Rounds 1 and 2 until 24 stitches remain on back needle.

Repeat Round 1 only (no more decreases) until sock measures ~5 1/2″ from heel turn (30 total repeats of Stitch Pattern from cast-on, about 1 1/2 - 2″ short of total desired foot length).

Toe Set-up
K around once.

Next round: Front needle - k1, ssk, k10, k2tog, k9, k2tog, k1 (24 sts remain on front needle); back needle - k across.

K two rounds even.

Toe decrease
Round 1: Front needle - k1, ssk, k to 3 from end, k2tog, k1. Back needle - k1, ssk, k to 3 from end, k2tog, k1 (4 sts decreased).
Round 2: K around.

Repeat Rounds 1 and 2 until 24 stitches remain, then repeat Round 1 only until 12 stitches remain.

Cut yarn and Kitchener stitch remaining live stitches. Slouch or stand up straight as desired.