Thanks, Anne, Alison, Charlotte, Dawn, Kim, Kay, Ginger, and Yarnguy for your kind words, and your commiseration on my future-MIL issues. I hesitated to talk about them here because I didn't want Ryan to feel bad reading this but I think he'll understand I need to vent. And the more people who say nice things, the better I feel. I'm sure someday this will work out, and in the meantime, distance is a beautiful thing, as many of you have pointed out. And if she shows up to our wedding in black mourning clothes, it'll only reflect sadly on her.

I'm nearing the finish line with the bridesmaid tops! A few more inches and I'll be at the armhole of the last one. The first three were all the same size and v-neck, this one is a size smaller and a square neck. Wow, that square neck is so much easier to knit! No decreases to worry about every other row - just knit 17 stitches, throw 36 on a holder, knit another 17 all the way up to the shoulder. The back went very quickly once I got to the neck shaping.

It'll be such a joy to have finished all those tops in time. It turns out I will have enough yarn left over to make myself something, but I think I'll put that on the back burner for now. I am seeing purple varigated silk in my sleep at the moment. Plus I want to make something for Lisa's baby! I'm thinking of the baby blanket in last Spring/Summer's issue of Family Circle Easy Knitting. It's an ocean scene with fish and a whale, and red and white stripes in the sky. I really like intarsia, though I know others who hate it. I enjoy seeing the pictures develop as I knit, and I think it's particularly cute for baby things.

The only thing that's irking me about this pattern is that I looked up the selected yarn online, and the colors that are specified do not all look like the colors in the photo of the blanket. So far I haven't found anyplace that carries the yarn locally, so I have had to look at them online. If anyone has the magazine, take a look and let me know if you think these colors are "off." Maybe it's the monitor I am using here at work? The colors that look really off are the yellow (maize - 3546), green (pale slate - 3774), and color charts are here or here

I really enjoyed "The Producers" last night. Very funny, ridiculous, and over-the-top. Ryan enjoyed it, too, but his mother very clearly did not. Oh well. She's leaving for home this morning, with no resolution. Actually, there's far more animosity and bitterness than before. Screw political correctness, here's the salient points of the story.

Before this weekend, we got along fine, though I have sensed for a long time that she isn't ecstatic about Ryan and I. That died when she asked on Sunday afternoon whether we had a prenuptial agreement, and then proceeded to tell us that we need one. (Obviously to protect Ryan, not me.) Any chance I had of warming up to her died at that moment. There are so many levels of wrong with that conversation, I can't even begin to describe them all (and wouldn't need to, to a sane person.)

I feel really sorry for Ryan in all this. Sure, it's hard on me to know my future mother-in-law thinks her son is making a mistake by marrying me. But in the end, she's nothing to me other than his mother. I love my crazy mother and don't need another. It'd be great to have a good relationship with my husband's mother, but if I don't, she lives far away and it doesn't make much difference on a daily basis.

For him, though, this is his mother, and she's forcing him away by criticizing his choice to marry me. By being irrational, she's also putting him in the middle and making him choose whether to be loyal to her or to me. That's not fair. Even if I were a hateful bitch, she should respect that he loves me and not tell him that he is making the biggest mistake of his life by marrying me.

It's all very sad. None of us needs this additional stress 32 days before our wedding. I honestly never imagined it would come to this sort of nastiness.

I'm a little woozy at the moment after donating a pint of blood after lunch. Last time I did that (10 years ago) was a disaster, but today it went fine. I'd just prefer to be home on the sofa.

Unfortunately, I have to go out to the theater tonight. Ryan's mother is in town and we have tickets to see "The Producers" on Broadway. I'm looking forward to the show, but wish it weren't tonight!

The reason Ryan's mother is here is for his graduation, which was yesterday. Yes, my dear fiance has earned his Masters of Fine Arts! I'm so proud of him. I couldn't go to graduation, because it was in the middle of the day yesterday and I couldn't take a vacation day. But since he wasn't planning on going until his Mom said she wanted to go, he was OK with me not being there.

This visit from the future mother-in-law has not been all that pleasant. It appears that she is having the typical cliche issues about "losing" her "little boy." I will be politically correct and not go into details (she never reads this anyway, but just to be safe) but it is obvious that she is not in support of our marriage, and she has said a few things (some to both of us, some just to him) that have hurt me very deeply. It's pretty sad. But, she's wrong, and we're going to have a happy marriage and a wonderful life, whether she believes so or not.