Google Giggles

Just messing around yesterday, I typed some generic beginnings of questions into Google to see what the auto suggestions would be.  Here is my favorite one.

I’m pretty sure your eye is twitching because you’re dumb enough to Google symptoms, and you’ve read all the horrifc things that are possibly wrong with you.

Asparagus makes urine smell because there’s something funny going on in your digestive tract. It’s supposed to turn your urine greenish, not make it smell.  There’s something wrong with you.  I’m thinking brain tumor.  Sorry.  But don’t google that.  You’ll cry.

Love feels like a battlefield because you’re with the wrong guys.  The right one makes love feel like a warm house in the deep of winter, a fluffy puppy so happy to see you that he’s wagging hard enough to shake his entire body, a hot mess of eye poppingly good sex that could furrow even a botoxed brow, and the best book you’ve ever read, all rolled into one.  And it cures eye twitching.

What does your vag smell like?  If it’s pretty floral scents, I’m pretty sure it’s because you’ve gotten yourself some good soap.  However, I’m assuming you wouldn’t google that if it wasn’t a problem.  Perhaps you ate some asparagus and didn’t use enough toilet paper to clean up?  But I predict that’s the least of your problems.  Namely, I hope you find a vegetarian boyfriend who loves asparagus.  Good luck to you.

Dogs eat poop.  It’s a fact of life.  There is no why.

Not all poop floats.  But perhaps it’s fluffier than the stuff that sinks.  Just a guess.  Some things are better left un-googled.

If you can answer the question of hair turning gray and then can find a cure, I’d be your betch for life.  Seriously, I’ll handknit all your socks, draw your baths with floating rose petals on the the water and candles.  I’ll make you from-scratch dinners for life. 

I had to Google the zebra stripe thing myself, and found the answer duh worthy: for camouflage.  Google doesn’t know everything, apparently.

Ice floats so that the liquid passing through your lips has just left the ice and is cold.  It’s so cocktails are tastier.  Go have one.  It’ll help.

Snape kills Dumbledore?  Fuck you, Google, for spoiling that for me.  Asshole.

Metamorphosis

Life nearly changed drastically for me a couple weekends ago.  My husband, whom I love and loves me with every fiber of our collective being, nearly left me for a couple days.  We were fighting, saying things that hadn’t been said before and were hurtful and only partially true and he threw up his hands and yelled, “I give up!” and he walked out the door. 

The problem that sparked the fight isn’t important.  It’s the underlying tension that had been building for months until the fight that’s important.  He left for a couple hours and came back to pack a bag and shower, and then leave.  While he was sitting there in his underwear, I begged him to listen to me.  He did.  We talked.  I realized some truths.

Truth 1: I’ve been miserable for a long time, with my career, with my health, with my weight. 

Truth 2: Misery loves company, and mine was trying to suck Mike down into my quagmire of loathing.  I hate me and I was trying to get him to hate me too.  It nearly worked.  I would come home in a horrible mood from work, from traffic, from worry, and I would yell at the kids for getting in my way when all they wanted was to play with me.  I would yell at him for avoiding me by escaping to the man-cave (basement) to watch TV or to the tub or to bed early.  But who wants to be around a grinch?  He was merely fleeing Medusa hell bent on making him miserable too.

Truth 3: I have some serious life restructuring to do.

The thing is, I have tried in the past to ‘fix’ myself.  I went to therapy and it helped me deal with my issues of doing anything/everything to gain acceptance from people.  I need to remember the lessons taught there.  But there’s a lot I want to change.  I’m not going to dwell a whole bunch on the reasons for the desire to make changes.  I can get trapped in the hamster wheel of why things are the way they are.  If you’ve read here (or my other previous blogs) for any time at all, you’ll know that I’m not happy with several things.

1. My career.  Unfortunately I’m kinda stuck there.  I can’t quit, can’t find something else in my area (already tried), am financially unable to take any kind of pay cut, and don’t have time/resources to return to school.  This is on the back burner.  Things won’t always be like this, and for the sake of my family, I need to stick this out for now.  It could be lots worse.

2. My health/weight.  These things go hand in hand.  I am almost exactly 100 pounds overweight.  This results in triple chins, fatigue, self-loathing, ill-fitting clothes, emotional eating (and that hamster wheel is more like barbed wire) and an inability to keep up with my kids.  It sours my mood, strains my relationships, and I don’t want to be this person anymore.

3. My general attitude.  It’s poor.  I am cynical and while I like helping people, I suspect the worst of people.  I need a new outlook.

So!  While Rome wasn’t built in a day, it was eventually built, and I can make some changes a day at a time to restructure my life and get the most out of it.  My husband has been supportive, and we’ve teamed up on things to help get our marriage back in the swing of things (it didn’t swing that far out, but it’s never been bad enough that either of us wanted to stay somewhere else for a few days.  That’s scary).  It’s amazing how the little things make a difference.  If I’m doing a chore around the house, he helps keep the kids busy and out of my hair.  If he’s tired then I make dinner.  I have decided to start with the things that I can immediately control, namely my fitness level and caloric intake.

Over the last couple of weeks I have begun to do some research into food and ways to eat healthier, and in that vein I’ve discovered a desire to eat more locally, sustainably, organically.  Given that we’ve got some financial troubles, I don’t know that we’ll be able to jump in all at once, but a little at a time, a step at a time, is a place to start.  I’ve been listening on audiobook to Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle book and it’s official: I’m a hippy granola convert.  I’ve discussed with Mike starting up a good sized garden in our backyard with strawberries, tomatoes, squash and cucumbers, broccoli, even asparagus and blackberries and more.  I’ve borrowed more books from the library on cheese making, and on canning.  My father grew up on a farm and knows how to make anything from scratch and how to can, so I can remember homemade strawberry jam in our pantry (and in fact, this spring, he canned some on a visit to our house and I have a couple more jars of yummy red goo for toast and sandwiches) and him making pickles when I was a kid.  I love pickles.  Since his canning experiment this spring, I have some jars and a big canning pot to boil the jars for a proper seal.  I can envision rows upon rows of jars of tomato sauce, whole tomatoes for stew, potatoes, beans, and all kinds of stuff.  I’ve borrowed books about gardening, composting, soil composition, and I’ve studied seed websites for the idea of germinating my own seedlings in the late winter.  I like the idea of heirloom seeds to preserve crops that are dying out due to genetic tampering and pesticides and saving seeds for exchange with other gardeners scratches an anti-establishment itch I’ve always had.  I’ve considered buying a share of a CSA (community supported agriculture) crop from local farmers, but around St. Louis, they sell out fast.  I don’t believe any spots are open for the 2010 year.  I even found a lamb farm and considered broaching the subject of a CSA for undyed yarn.  There are a few on the web, but they’re not local, so there are shipping dollars involved there.  However, I’m not opposed to looking into it more, since the farmers are not giant factories but small, family farmers and it helps them to keep going, farming, running their businesses.

Also along the health lines, I’ve decided to apply for a reality show on NBC called Losing It with Jillian Michaels of The Biggest Loser fame.  I doubt I’ll get picked, but they have to pick someone, right?  I might as well try for it.  Basically, the premise is that she comes to your house and helps you and your family figure out a way to prioritize things, make healthy decisions, lose weight (if that is your goal) and reorganize things for a happier life.  I am a prime candidate for that.  My sister is going to help me with my application video and then I’m all set.  You never know, right?

But I’m not waiting for a show to make improvements.  Last spring, I started running.  I stopped because my bum foot was bothering me.  I was going to rest for a week, and that morphed into the entire summer and into the fall.  That stopped today.  At lunch, I ran half of the time and walked half the time for a mile and a half on the treadmill at work.  Oh, I didn’t mention that my work has a work out facility?  State of the art?  Free weights AND weight machines?  A racquetball court that can be retrofitted with a net for wallyball?  An aerobics room complete with mirrored wall and a TV to play DVDs?  Showers?  That I haven’t been taking advantage of every week for the last 8 years I’ve worked here? 

Whoops.

See, this is another reason I’m not keen to leave my job.  Now that Mike is helping with the kids’ transportation after school and daycare, I may actually have time to use these facilities after work.  Or if I can get him to take the kids to school and daycare in the morning, I could do my workout first thing.  For now, I’m running at lunch on a treadmill.  When the weather warms back up and I’ve had some time to get used to running without horking a lung through my nose then I plan to run outside.  I’ve even got dizzy daydreams of running in a race.  Maybe. 

But in the last couple of weeks, just the act of looking into making changes has given me some hope.  Just the idea that a little at a time can be enough if I can keep it up.  I ran today.  For half an hour.  And I walked some of it.  I sweated.  I put on a sports bra (hate that uni-boob thing, but love that I don’t get smacked in the face) and running shoes and moved my fat around in ungainly and unsightly ways.  Hopefully, if I do that enough, there will be less fat to move around.  Maybe one day I can run without my belly flopping along with my boobs.  Maybe I can even put the treadmill on incline.  Maybe I could get a bike and go bike riding with the kids and Mike next summer.  Get one of those trailer things. 

The thing is, I have plans.  I haven’t had plans for a long time beyond what Mike set up for us to do with his family.  I want to be better, instead of wallowing around in my own misery, bringing everyone around me down.  Maybe, with some happiness and stability at home, and progress towards my weight goals, my career won’t seem so insurmountable.  Maybe I’ll have the energy to stay up late when the kids are in bed and do some writing.  I’m letting my dreams wake up again.  Someday is not so abstract to me anymore.  Someday has become Any Day Now.  I’ve begun.

Adventures in Boxing and Dyeing

Thank you very much for the nice anniversary wishes.  The actual anniversary celebrating, however, was decidedly NOT nice.  Not because Mike fell down on the husband job, or because we have babysitting trouble (like we do every year, but I’m not going to go there now or ever, at least not here), but because my son decided it would be a good time to pretend to be Rocky Balboa and lay Apollo Creed, a.k.a. the little girl sitting next to him in art class, out.  Well, not really out.  He didn’t knock her cold, but he did punch her in the face.  I got a very serious phone call from the principal around lunchtime on Friday and it put me in a strange place for the rest of the afternoon.  I swung between frustrated, appalled, horrified, unable to focus, and frankly inept for the rest of the day.  I probably owe my employer money back for my lack of progress that afternoon.

It’s been sorted out.  The little girl teased him about his art page looking bad, and they jawed at each other a bit.  My son got his feelings hurt and was so mad he didn’t know how to handle the eruption of emotions, so he took a swing.  I’m not condoning in any way what he did, but he’s not the swinging away type, typically.  So the little girl provoked him, and while I’m definitely not saying Son shouldn’t be punished, I’m hopeful that the little girl he struck will get a lesson from the teachers about insulting her peers.  I have done all I can to make sure that Son knows if he gets that mad in the future, he’s to tell a teacher or trusted adult instead of taking matters literally into his own hands.  I have also had him write lines (my brilliant way of having him practice his handwriting as well as dealing him punishment) about not hitting; he’s been confined to his room for the last few days; he wasn’t allowed to play in two basketball games; and Friday night’s sleepover was canceled, which is what canceled our anniversary plans.  Being a responsible parent sucks.  But he will also write the girl a letter of apology and his confinement to his room may continue for the rest of the week.  We haven’t decided just yet. 

Have I mentioned a child confined to their room can bring the apocalypse of misery onto a household?  No?  Between the, “I’m thirsty,” or “I have to potty,” stalling tactics, little kids know right where to strike to the heart of the punisher, specifically with this ditty, “Mama, I can’t go to bed without my hug and kiss.”  So I let him out to come downstairs from his room and give him a minute of hugs and kisses.  While I was hugging him, he whispered, “Mama, I’m gonna miss this tonight.”  See, normally, after I get the baby to sleep, I let Son stay up half an hour or so later, so we spend that time in my bed reading a book or snuggling, or I knit while he talks to me.  It’s one of my favorite times of the day.  Lately, we’ve included Daughter in the mix, though she’s still a little firecracker and the supposedly quiet minutes before bedtime often devolve into a trampoline expedition on my bed.  But we’ll get her trained yet.

It’s in the quiet moments though that I take in their smell, their freshly bathed bodies and their pajama clad edibility.  They are great to tickle right now, and while I try to keep from riling them up, a little tickling is good for the soul.  Some hearty giggles do a body good.  But in the wake of the grounding, Son has been instructed that he must put himself to sleep.  He is not to con me into letting him into my bed, and thus, I’m missing the favorite part of my day too.  Am thinking of lifting the moratorium though after tonight, though Mike disagrees with me.

In the meantime, I dyed my first skein of yarn on Saturday.  It did not go as planned, namely because I was over-dying atop an already dyed (yellow) skein and the red I was going for didn’t materialize. It turned out terracotta with little bits of yellow peeking through.  It’s lovely even if it isn’t what I was hoping for.  I will, however, continue to expand my dyeing attempts to hand painting (using squirt bottles to put the dye right where I want it as opposed to submerging the whole skein) or selectively dipping.  But in an effort to document my first attempt (no pictures – sorry, husband took the camera with him and I didn’t think my only option, the camera phone, would work to convey the colors properly) I will spell it out here.

I have Wilton’s icing dyes already from previous cake making adventures, and so I got out the red and mixed it with nearly boiling water on the stove (about a cup and a half).  It wasn’t dark red enough, so I put in a smidge of black and got a nice black cherry color.  Perfect.  I soaked my yarn in cold water and dish soap in the sink and then rinsed it.  I added the dye to the crock pot, added enough water to cover the yarn (though yarn was not yet immersed) and waited for water to cool enough to add yarn.  At room temperature water, I added about a cup of white vinegar (acid for the yarn to soak up the dye) and the yarn and submerged it as best it could.  Turning the crock pot on high, I let it go until the water cleared.  It was about an hour and I went back to find clear water and burnt orange yarn.  Not what I was going for.  So I got some more red, the last of it, and a bit of burgundy and repeated the process.  After another couple hours, I had an orange brick color, much like a sunset.  It was nice.  I rinsed the yarn, rewound it around my fireplace screen, and left it to dry.  The next day, I took the skein off the screen and twisted it into a hank, replacing the original label on it so I’d have the care instructions and put it away.  Now, I have a hankering to try again.  I need some more undyed yarn and some more red dye.  Then I’m all set.

Bliss

What is Bliss?  Is it knowing you’ve finally met The One, the person who completes you, as Jerry Maguire so eloquently said in the movie of the same title?  Is it rarely disagreeing and finishing each other’s sentences?  Is it finding that one person on whom you know you can land when things get scary or uncertain?  Is it knowing you’ve married your best friend, the one who makes you laugh and smile and love life?

I don’t think so.

Bliss is waking up next to the person who kicked you all night, forced you to scrunch your legs up into the fetal position just so you can fit on the damned bed and you realize that despite the bruises, you still love him and would choose no one else with whom to share your bed.

Bliss is knowing he saw you move your bowels while you pushed your son or daughter out of your hey-nanu-nanu and he can still look in your eyes, call you beautiful, and appreciate the miracle of life that emerged from your ravaged body.

Bliss is when you can scream at each other, get red faced, slamming the door as you leave the house because you need a chance to cool down, and you know when you come back, he’ll be there just as apologetic as you.  And you never once doubted the stability of your relationship, no matter how mad you got.

Bliss is when he eats so much garlic that his morning breath is garlicky, and even though you can’t stand garlic, you’ll kiss him good bye before you leave for work anyway.

Bliss is when he doesn’t like to read, but he’ll say something about a blog post of yours, just to prove to you he does pay attention sometimes.

Marriage is hard.  I’ve learned from my own marriage that it takes work and committment, biting my tongue when I’m about to say something mean-spirited because of something stupid like when I’m aggravated that he forgot to replace the roll of toilet paper and I’ve gotten stuck in a compromising position.  Just because I’m comfortable enough with him to say whatever flies out of my mouth doesn’t mean I should, which takes putting his feelings before my own.  It also means forgiving him for not biting his tongue when he probably should have just because I have six books and three knitting projects scattered over the house and haven’t gone through the mail in three days.  Okay, a week.

When I think of my future, he’s in it.  I don’t even notice that anymore.  It just is.  I do think of him as completing me.  He’s The One.  I finish his sentences, which really gets on his nerves sometimes.  He makes me laugh, and I’m not embarrassed when I snort in front of him.  He is my best friend, the one to hold me when the world gets scary.  I’m the one he calls when one of his bosses treats him like crap and he needsd a reality check before saying something that could get him in trouble.  I’m the one he calls when he’s worried about his new position coming through before the bills are due.  He looks to me for reassurances when he’s wading through uncertain waters, be it for helping him through a surgery or helping him train to pass the police fitness test to be considered for a new job, and maybe something more lucrative so we’re no longer scraping by so thinly.

We are each other’s bridge over the river rapids, and each passing day is a nail driven into that bridge, strengthening it, each month and year another plank, another section across the mighty river of life over which we pass.  Some days, there are storms the likes of which few have seen, when we are scared ourselves, but we always end up finding each other to cling to, hanging on as a team instead of trying to power through the wind and rain alone.  Some days, the view from the bridge is spectacular, splashed with reds and oranges of the glorious sunset and we can see down the bridge as far as our eyes will let us.  The way is clear, and though we know we’ll stumble and fall a few hundred planks away, there’s no doubt the other will be there to help the fallen one regain balance and march on.

Somehow, against all the odds, across three states and through the crackle of a tenuous phone line connection, we found each other (a story I may tell later this week).  I believe I was meant for him, and he for me.  I believe that with every fiber in my body I am exactly where I’m supposed to be: in his arms, smelling his garlicky morning breath and kicking his legs back, fighting for just a little more room on my side of the bed. 

Happy Anniversary, Love.  What an eight years it’s been!

Recruiting the Masses, One Tweet at a Time

Do you talk about knitting and stuff?

I admitted on Twitter the other day that I have a knitting blog.  My name over there is @ShutterBitch and if you’re inclined to follow, I’m pretty uncensored.  I say whatever comes to mind, so that’s my only warning.  Anyway, someone was looking for links to St. Louis blogs and when I sent mine, she admitted that she’d learned to knit just the previous weekend.  I offered her a couple websites, told her to get on Ravelry for some inspiration, and offered to answer any questions.  Then I realized I’m kinda sporadic a poster over here.  I suppose I should rectify that, prove that I do care about this place, and make it my own. So I took pictures of the stash enhancement.

 

 

 

Yarntini Semi Solid Sock, Concord Colorway

  

Colourmart.com Laceweight 20/80 Angora/Merino, 2300 delicious, delicious yards.

 

Cascade Heritage Solids, Navy.

  

Cherry Tree Hill, Foxy Lady Colorway

  

There have been small FOs (Finished Objects for the non-knitters)

 

Baby Leaf Hat

 

And some nearly finished items.

 

The Pinwheel Blanket:

Sock 1 of Dad’s Whitbys

And Baby Blanket Square Hell

Five down, 20 more to go.

But that laceweight up there is calling my name.  It’s 2300 yards, plenty for two projects, but I’m having a hard time deciding on which to do first.  The two candidates are the Meandering Vines Shawl or the Fountain Pen Shawl.  What do you think?  I sort of like the heavier Meandering Vines shawl because I’m not really one to wear traditional triangular shawls.  That one is more scarf-like and also doesn’t appear to be as challenging.  Given that I’ve not knit with lace before, I’m a little skeered by the Fountain Pen Shawl.  However, that’s the one I have needles for, and the Meandering Vines Shawl calls for holding the yarn double.  If I do that then I won’t have enough for the Fountain Pen Shawl and I really want two projects out of the cone.

See the gripping life I lead?  I’m also considering which socks to cast on once the second Whitby is done for my Dad.  My husband needs new wool socks for his work, and what better way to support him (and get him to support my knitting hobby) than to knit him some heavy duty wool socks to keep him warm for when he’s working in a freezer all day?  But boring navy stockinette doesn’t do much for my inner challenge fiend.  So there’s competition for the sock knitting part of my brain.

Wow, it appears that I do have something to say. And that yes, sometimes I do talk about the knitting.

My New Daughter-In-Law & The Fork In the Road

So long time no posty.  Sorry about that.  Things are shakin’ at the ol’ Conniption Household.  Things I can’t talk about.  Oooh, I know.  I hate it when bloggers allude to things they ‘can’t’ talk about, but in this case, I simply can’t.  Not so publicly anyway.

We took a couple trips.  And then my computer decided that it wouldn’t recognize my camera as a device so the posts I had planned after those trips have been postponed.  I have some knitting to show off, but again, that takes camera talking to computer properly.  I’ll hopefully have that worked out shortly.  You’ll also have to forgive me because the Mucous Plague has visited its pestilence upon our house and Son is the only one apparently unscathed.  I’m hopped up on cold medicine.

A few weeks ago, we were sitting down to dinner and I asked Son how his day at Kindergarten had gone.  He said, “Fine. I’m going to marry Billie*.”  Billie is a little girl down the street who is in his class.  I gathered my wits before I brayed laughter in his face and doomed him to a lifetime of peering at girls from behind a locker door and being too afraid to talk to anyone about his crushes, resulting in unnatural tendencies that will result in restraining orders and possibly a spot in US Weekly as the stalker-of-the-month to some celebrity.

Ahem.

Trying to keep the mirth from my voice, I asked him, “Does Billie know this?  Have you discussed it with her to be sure she wants to marry you, too?”  He said, “I chase her every day at school, and she runs from me.  When I stop chasing her, she chases me back.”

Ah, true love.  So uncomplicated in the mind of a five year old.

I asked him last night what he would do if he ever caught her, or let her catch him.  His response was that he wouldn’t kiss her, that’s for sure.  If she wanted to kiss him on the cheek, well, then, he might let her, but he wasn’t doing the planting of the kiss.  I found myself torn because while I think it’s perfectly normal what he and Billie are doing, exploring social tendencies and how to handle their feelings, I also don’t want him to see the inside of the principal’s office, or worse, face suspension or expulsion over a kiss as the media has reported with the advent of Zero Tolerance at schools.  Common sense is not the order of the day, and while I think my kids’ school is more common sensical than some, I don’t want to take the chance. I told him to save the kissing for when he’s older, that he can hold her hand, or give her a quick hug (but not hang on her) but that kissing is for when he’s a teenager. 

Then, this morning, he asked me to fix his hair into ‘fun hair’ for school.  Next, he’ll be checking his labels and making sure none of his clothes come from Wal-Mart.  Does it really start this early?  Really?  I’m not equipped for this.  And relying on my husband to do the guidance bit for Son and his pre-pubescent angst seems like the answer since Mike is a good man, but I feel out of control here, like a delicate flower in a freezer full of sausage. 

Also, it seems like poor timing on my part since we’re embarking on the Candy/Holiday Food season but I’m tired.  Physically, emotionally, and in general my apathy is overwhelming.  All I feel like doing is eating, sleeping, and I’m doing the minimum required to get by.  This has been the norm for a long time, and it’s becoming a problem.  It’s weighing down my attitude, and I can’t remember the last time I smiled a genuine smile.  I am tired of being in a bad mood.  I’m tired of not feeling 100% capable of keeping up with life.  I’m sick of wishing for change instead of making the changes necessary. I am beginning to struggle with depression in a way that I haven’t in a long time, and at the time, I hoped I’d never face such a black abyss again.  I wanted to write about this in a more meaningful way, something with pretty words strung together in awesome ways but I’m not capable of that today what with the cold medicine coursing through my veins.  But I’m afraid if I don’t say it, it won’t be as real and the more tenuous it remains, the less I’ll feel confident in sticking to it.  So I’m saying it now.  There will be changes around here.  They’ve already begun.  My diet and exercise routine is being mapped out as we speak.  I’ve joined Spark People, though I’m a little leery of keeping a tool like that at my fingers because sometimes the actual changes required are lost in the use of tools.  All talk, no walk, if you know what I mean.  I’m also going to apply to be on Losing It with Jillian Michaels.  I don’t know if we’ll be picked to have a camera crew and Jillian descend on our house, and the odds aren’t in our favor, but to have a life coach come to us to analyze and help us reprioritize seems like, I don’t know, a step in the right direction, and we couldn’t afford one on our own.  And if Jillian were really going to visit, I’d have a hard time refraining from humping her leg.  I would at the very least, wish to give her a hug, if only to feel the solidity of her muscles.  Her awesomeness scares me and cowers me as well as inspires me.

So!  That’s what’s up with me.  There will hopefully be some changes coming up.  Unfortunately, I’m in the throes of one of those colds that saps your energy, and while I’m ready to get going on this fork in my life road now that I’ve chosen which fork to take, I know that any effort I expend on the exercise front will only prolong the weakness and sickness that I’ve been plagued with for the last few days.  It is one of those massive mucous parties in my chest that could easily become bronchitis.  However, in an effort to prove that I’m not just making excuses, I’m making small changes already.  I spent some time over the weekend cooking for the week ahead so that I can keep to a healthy diet and get into a new routine to jumpstart what I plan to be a whole turnaround.  I need this.  Or I’m staring into a life where I’ve alienated every person who has ever cared about me and I lose my family.  I’m not willing to go there.  I’ve got some work to do.  I need to get on it before I’m too far gone to care about losing it.  Something’s gotta give, and it’s not gonna be me.  Wish me luck.

*name changed for the sake of the children. Please, won’t you think of the children?

Packing the Knitting

We’ve been traveling here lately.  Last weekend we went to Indiana (Jones, as Son would say) for camping, Halloween themed stuff at the campground, and theme-park visiting at Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana.  I love this weekend, one we do every year, and while the mud made it a little harder than usual ~ can you say Baby + Mud Puddle = Instant Face Plant ~ it was still a blast and a half.  I do have pictures, but the camera died before I could get them uploaded. 

We’re also gallivanting off again this weekend for a trip we’ve had planned for coming on a year now.  We’re going to Galena, Illinois, an extremely senic and historic town rich in atmosphere and things to do.  Here are some pictures I took last year.

 

It’s like a Hollywood movie set.  In fact, I believe it was the downtown used in Field of Dreams when Kevin Costner’s character found James Earl Jones’ character. 

 

Even the streetlights are awesome.

 

Last year, we were only there for a day, the point of the trip not being Galena but a nearby town.  After seeing what a treasure it is there, we decided to visit again for longer.  So we found a house to rent that is cheaper than a hotel in the area, which will also save us money in that we can make our own food instead of relying on restaurants the entire weekend.  And off we’ll go.

I’m learning that the packing for these trips is challenging.  Preparation to bring a whole family, plus make sure the pets are covered in our absence, is like trying to build the world’s biggest Dominoes maze.  All the pieces have to be just so, done in the right order and executed carefully, or that first push off to make the whole thing fall into place will fail.  I don’t like starting trips off on the fail side of things.  Taints the whole weekend.

However, packing for the kids, while a pain, is doable.  What’s impossible is packing the knitting.  I need car projects because it’ll be 6+ hours in transit.  Socks or scarves are usually good for that, but I have one pair of socks on the needles right now, and while they do have a deadline, I have a greater deadline on 2 baby blankets.  One is nearly done, just needs the miles of i-cord border done.  I got about 1/3 of the way done on it driving home from Indiana yesterday before my brain quivered and threatened to leak out of my nose.  So I switched to the other blanket, the one I just started that I have to complete 36 squares by Thanksgiving.  Luckily it’s done in squares and so is also really portable, except that every row is different, and the pattern isn’t a repeating thing I could memorize.  Unless I memorize 50 different lines.  So that one is kind of a pain but it won’t knit itself.

The trouble is, I want to pack everything I’m working on.  I have a scarf for myself that’s been hibernating for half a year, a pair of socks I want to do for a friend down in the dumps, a pair of socks for my husband, one for each of my kids, and then a sweater I have had the yarn saved for going on a year now, plus the two baby blankets and endless possibilities for scarves and socks in my fairly small stash.  How in the hades does one choose which knitting to pack and which to leave at home?  Because I don’t want to be stuck with something I don’t feel like working on, nor do I want to run out.  But then, there’s a yarn shop on that gorgeous historic street, and I wasn’t a knitter last year when we were there.  But I plan to put a dent in my yarn budget while there this time.  So there are endless possibilities.  It boggles. 

Bag with both husband’s and my clothes: check
Bag for son: check
Bag for baby: check
Bag for baby stuff, i.e. diapers, wipes, sippy cups: check
Bag for knitting, needles, new projects, patterns, list of things to look for at yarn store, possible patterns  in the future, yarn for them, bigger bag, and maybe a 36 hour day: not so check. 

If you’re a knitter who takes things with you when you travel, how do you choose what to take?

I Shouldn’t Be Posting Today

I’m in a funk.  I don’t know how to get out.  I am still taking my happy pills, but they’re not working or something.  I have no idea.  I’ve been extra dirty stressed lately over things I can’t talk about here.  It’s making me paranoid.  I don’t like the sound of my phone anymore.  I hate getting out of bed in the morning.  I find myself wishing away the day.  It’s ugly.

So, in an effort to give myself new focus, I’m going to write a list.  This list will be things I don’t like about my life that I want to change.

1. Finances.  Don’t know what to do about them.  Have already tried everything.  Short of whoring myself out on the street corner, I don’t see a way out.

2. My job.  It’s less my job and more my chosen field.  Answer is simple.  Change careers.  It’s the doing that’s hard.

3. My body.  I’m fat.  100 pounds overweight.  Son said to me this weekend that he doesn’t want me to have a big belly because he doesn’t want people to think bad things about me.  Nothing like embarrassing your kid with your general presence.

4. My style.  I need a whole new wardrobe.  I don’t like clothes shopping, nor do I have the money for one right now, but none of it is me.  I’m faced with nothing but comfortable baggy clothes that hide my uncomfortable baggy body and I want something cute, sassy, and that screams that I do care how I look.  One step at a time, though.  I need to get a haircut, so that’s on the horizon.

5. My unpublished status.  The answer for that is to put ass in chair and do the writing.  Walk the walk.

Yeah, that’s pretty much all of it.  It’s not asking much is it, just revamp my body and career.  But it’s what I think I need to do to have a happy life.  And Rome wasn’t built in a day.  Nor are books written all at once.  So yeah, there will be a page at a time, a pound lost at a time, and resume writing and submission.  Something has to give, or it’s going to be me that gives.

I Promise, I Really Am a Knitter

So! I swear I still do knit.  I have been a knitting fool!  It’s just that I haven’t had much chance to take pictures of my knitting, but that changed the other night when I found myself bored and waiting for Glee to start.  *cue harmonized a capella singers* Man, if I weren’t already married, I’d be throwing myself at the feet of Mr. Shuster and his pretty crooked smile and curly hair.  Frak me, he’s dreamy. 

As I’ve been watching my shows come back to life with the Fall season kicking in, I’ve made serious progress on my pinwheel blanket for a friend’s baby.  Good thing, because he was born last week.  Knitting like a fiend on this, but it’s slow.  The rows are pushing 500 stitches per, and it takes a good 20 minutes now to finish one.  I have just a little more green to go and then a brown i-cord border, and I can wash it and send it on.  It’s not the prettiest of blankets, but a little baby boy doesn’t need much pretty.  Plus, they didn’t find out the sex, so I needed something neutral.  I love the way the middle turned out.  Looks like a flower.

This photo is better to show the true colors. 

This next FO is a secret.  I call them Pick Me Ups.  That’s all I can say.  I didn’t love the colors when I tried the first pattern I had in mind for this yarn, Malabrigo in the Carabeño colorway.  Hopefully they’ll be winging their way to the recipient this weekend along with some other goodies and I can rest easy knowing they’ll be used and cared for.

 

 These are the first socks I’ve knit for myself.  I love them.  They’re also Malabrigo yarn in the colorway Velvet Grapes.  I don’t like wearing socks much but the Fall weather has necessitated them, and my feet are happy for them.   Handknit socks are far better than commercial packaged socks. 

 

This next FO I’m extremely proud of.  They’re the Viper Pilots I started in June for my sister, and the color is intensely hard to photograph.  It’s Yarntini Semi Solid Sock yarn in the colorway Strawberry Frenzy.  I loved this pattern so much that I bought more yarn to do a pair for myself.  Mine will be in Dream in Color Smooshy in the Midnight Derby colorway.  Yummy.  But I love the swirls along the sides.  I love the cabled design down the front. I love the ribbed heel and toe with the cabled embellishment.  I love these socks.  My sister may not get them.  Just kidding.  Sort of.  I think I’m kidding.

 

 

There has also been stash enhancement.  I have gotten more Yarntini.  Lots more Yarntini. 

Caipirinha

Lemoncello

Summer Sunset

 

I also received my last Sock Club shipment from Yarntini.  It’s the colorway Concord, a deep rich purple with blue and red undertones and it’s gorgeous.  I’m already itching to roll it up and cast it on, which, if you notice the Summer Sunset one, seems to be a common reaction I have to Yarntini yarn. 

Dream in Color Smooshy, Midnight Derby for my own Viper Pilots

I just realized that in this picture, there’s a hair clinging to the yarn, and I keep fighting the urge to reach my hand into it and pluck the hair off. It’s driving me batty.  

I received a package in the mail yesterday from The Loopy Ewe with my latest order, a yarn I thought would work for a scarf for the Red Scarf Fund but it’s not red enough.  The Red Scarf page specifically says no purples and this yarn is way more purple than I expected.  So perhaps I’ll donate it to Norma for prizes, I haven’t yet decided.  I have a cousin who would love it if I were to do it up for her.  Or hell, everything I’ve ever knit has been for someone else.  Maybe I’ll keep it for a change.  Maybe. 

The beauty of the order that came yesterday was that it was my sixth, and frequent shoppers of The Loopy Ewe know what that means.  I’m now officially a Loopy Groupie.  Will Whore for Yarn.  I need to whip up a button for that.  Anyway, the package included an adorable bag, a new sock pattern, some treats that I passed on to my kids, and a free skein of Cherry Tree Hill yarn in Foxy Lady, that has some red in it, among other gorgeous fall type colors that perhaps would look good for the Red Scarf Fun scarf I was going to do.  The wheels, they have been turning.  I didn’t get a chance to get that picture, but I will.  Oh, I will.

The Pinwheel blanket isn’t the only thing on the needles.  I have a pair of socks for my dad coming along nicely.  They’re Whitbys from Knitting on the Road by Nancy Bush.  I love the ease of the pattern, the yarn is springy and soft (Cascade Heritage Solid in Navy) and I think my dad will like them.  I took crappy camera phone pictures and I will burn your retinas with them.  Trust me when I say that they look much better in person than in the pictures.

 

Told you the pictures were bad. 

Anyway, I have two more baby blankets to do in the coming months, and plans for one are in the works, and the other one I have the yarn purchased and have cast on.  And that’s about as far as I’ve gotten on it.  For me right now, it seems to be about socks, socks, socks.  For someone who doesn’t like wearing them that much, I’m interested in knitting way too many pairs.  That’s good for the people I know.  More for them, right?

Next up, finish baby blanket 1, get serious about baby blanket 2, and get yarn for baby blanket 3, knit up that delectable Cherry Tree Hill, consider what I’m going to do with some of this yummy yarn, and wait patiently for a preordered yarn from ThreeIrishGirls that I ordered back in July before Sock Summit that I HAD to have.  As if I don’t have enough to do working full time with two kids.  Luckily, football season is ramping back up, which means Sundays are spent on the couch knitting while husband watches men in tight pants (and truthfully, I’m eyeing them up now and then too) beat the crap out of each other.  Ah, Fall.  I’m so happy you’re here.

My Pale Green Thumb

I’m fighting a battle, one wherein I desire to be taken seriously.  Throughout my life, I’ve discovered that if I’m not learning something, I’m not happy.  When I graduated college, I embarked on a series of adventures trying to keep the student in me happy and full of knowledge.  First, I learned about wedding planning and the suckitude therein.  Then I learned about house building.  That blew harder than the wedding planning, or getting caught in a bear trap in the tundra with no knitting to keep you warm and a strangely-immune-to-the-cold zombie shambling toward you with hunger in his dead and fevered eyes.  Next came procreation and all it entails, from conception to birth, and that naturally flowed into parenthood.  For the first three years of Son’s life, I made it my mission to know everything I could about parenting from trends, advice and which side of the fence I fell on hot button issues like Cry It Out and Formula vs. Breastfeeding, and the unimaginative people behind children’s movies.  When he was four, we got pregnant with his sister, so I reimmersed myself in all things baby.  In the last year and a half, I’ve begun to step outside my little family bubble and remember there are other things than kids kids kids.

So I tried to learn about photography.  I love photography, but find myself so tired at the end of the day and facing so little time with my kids in the evenings before bed that I didn’t feel comfortable using that time to practice taking pictures.  I didn’t want to spend the couple hours a day I get with them watching things happen behind a lens.  That didn’t seem fair to them, and to be truthful, when I did pick up the camera, I didn’t want to be distracted by refereeing kid fights when he’d take her toy from her and she’d screech like a howler monkey on speed and come ram her head into my knees, hobbling me.  I wasn’t going to learn anything that way.  Not to mention that the equipment is mighty pricy. 

Knitting came next.  I’m still in the throes of that. But there’s been something else.  The whole time I’ve been courting knitting, and even before then if truth be told, I’ve been seduced by something else, something completely out of character for me.  Gardening.  I don’t like being outside when it’s hot.  I don’t like getting dirty.  I don’t like bugs.  But gardening keeps beckoning to me with the promise of produce as fresh as can be, bounty large enough to be preserved and saved for year round use, the idea that I can grow the food we eat and therefore can control that which gets put on the plants and in the soil it in which it roots.  The green movement in this country has contributed to my desire to nurture a green thumb to reduce our family’s carbon footprint, as well as save on our grocery bill.  The fact that I like to experiment in the kitchen a bit helps and spurs me on a desire to find new ways to cook veggies, to plant veggies I’ve never tried before and to increase the variety of things we eat in our house.  That I want to have a big garden necessitates a need to learn to can and preserve that which can be saved for the year.  That in itself appeals to me because my dad’s family were farmers and canning was a way of life when he was growing up.  I feel like it brings me closer to my own roots.  When my parents visited in May, my dad bought a bushel of strawberries at our local orchard and made a bunch of jelly out of it.  He bought some of the supplies to do the canning and so I already have a better start than from scratch.  The only thing that scares me is the potential for botulism.  I don’t want to poison my family.

Where does the fight come in?  Well, mainly with my husband.  He likes fresh tomatoes, and he’s all for a small garden with tomatoes, onions, and squash.  But he’s not on board with the big garden with raised beds taking up half our yard, and a compost bin for fertilizer.  He doesn’t get the whole green thing, though he’s the one who got me started a couple years ago when he saw that energy efficient light bulbs could save us on our electric bill.  For him, it’s all about the money.  We drive the more fuel efficient car most of the time because of better gas mileage saving us at the pump; we got a diesel truck because it hauls the camper better but who cares that it’s lower emissions; he wants to plant trees not for the environment, but for their aesthetically pleasing look and their shade which might give our air conditioner some relief in the summer.  A garden to him is simply a means to save money at the grocery store.  So when I mentioned my dream garden to him, all the varieties of veggies, and the work I want to put into it, he poopooed the idea because it would require him to build me some raised beds, fence it in to keep the dog out, and help me with composting and doing some of the work.  He also said he wasn’t interested in many of the vegetables I wanted to plant.  Beets?  I don’t know that I could eat all the beets by myself.  I could try.  I definitely know I couldn’t do the asparagus by myself.  And yes, I want to try asparagus, though I know it takes 7 years to grow and is extremely sensitive. 

But I’m inspired.  I want to make jars of my own spaghetti sauce.  I want to have fresh tomato cucumber salads in the summer.  I want onions that sing in chili mace with my own beans and tomatoes and tomato paste. I want to make strawberry rhubarb pie out of my own strawberries and rhubarb.  I want to grow my own pumpkins for the kids for Halloween.  I want to learn the different things to do in the kitchen with chickpeas.  I want to show my kids how to take care of their environment in a way that is both healthy for the Earth and themselves, how to use what Mother Nature has to offer to live and instill in them a healthy respect for soil that isn’t littered upon or covered over with asphalt.  I want to have a fresh herb garden so I don’t have to pay $5 for a small jar of a spice that is dried out and muted in flavor.  I want to eat as locally as I can, expending my own bodily energy instead of machined energy to harvest my food.  I want to make my own pickles, try different kinds of lettuce, do something besides get in the car and drive to the store, pay too much for food that will go bad before we can eat it, and then throw it away.  But I need to convince my husband.  He’s skeptical, saying this might be like the photography thing in that we’ll invest the money into it and then I’ll find a reason to quit.  I’ll say back that the photography thing isn’t gone, just on hold until a.) I can afford the equipment, and b.) the kids get older and don’t require as much supervision so I can put my face behind the camera and not turn around a second later to find that the baby has upended the cocoa powder on the kitchen floor and is ‘painting’ in it.  True story.  I’ll say that this gives back in a way that photography doesn’t.  This can save us money at the store.  This can make our food taste better (that should appeal to the chef in him).  This is the way

If that doesn’t work, I’ll bribe him with sex.  And hand knit socks.

Anyone have any good gardening tips?  I’m starting from scratch.

She Gets Me

I’ve started and scrapped this post six…teen times in the past and I can’t seem to find a way to articulate it in a way that does it any justice.  So I’m just going to write it and be done with it.  It’s been gnawing on my brain tissue to come out for too long and I’m finally excising the ferret running around doing the chomping.

I don’t make friends very well.  Unlike my sister, who seems to collect awesome people and keep in touch with them forever, I can’t seem to find the awesome ones very often.  In grade school, I was part of a collection of girls who hung out together because we were labeled with the ‘popular’ tag.  Not that I ever thought I was popular or better than anyone else.  But I was part of a gaggle of girls that somehow got others to believe we were the popular ones.  It was a miserable experience.   

One day, we were standing around the building at recess (in grade 6, so we were a bunch of pre-pubescent catty bitches with claws fully extended) in Our Corner, the one where no one else dared to go lest they receive an evil eye from Amelia* who was considered the leader of The Group, which was what we called ourselves.  Original, I know.  Angela* snorted when she looked down at my feet.  “I see your taste in shoes has improved.”  She snickered to the other girls, and Amelia laughed.  The rest of them took their cues from her and laughed, too.  

Puzzled, I said, “What are you talking about, Angela?” 

“Those idiotic shoes with the puffy rainbow hearts on them.  Those are so stupid.” 

I knew which shoes she was talking about,  but they didn’t belong to me.  They belonged to my other friend Betty, who darted a glance at me to see if I’d out her. 

Insecure at being laughed at, I jumped to defend myself.  “Those aren’t my shoes.  Those are Betty’s.”  

Angrily, Betty piped up, “I borrowed them from you one time, because they matched a bow I had in my hair.  But I threw that bow away because it was ugly and gave you your shoes back.”  She glared at me with betrayal, daring me to question her.  Since she was new to school that year, and the novelty of her long blond hair and pretty clothes hadn’t worn off yet, Angela and the other girls jumped to her defense, regardless of her lie. 

The jeering and teasing continued, and I bowed my head, having resigned myself to taking on the shame of a stupid pair of shoes I never even owned.  As soon as school was over and Betty and I were walking home (we only lived a couple blocks away from school and from each other) she apologized for not speaking up in my defense.  “That Angela has a mean streak in her.  I’m sorry I didn’t tell her the truth, but you’ve been at this school for awhile.  They all know you.  They don’t know me well, and the smallest things can send me to the dork side of the fence.  They won’t send you to hang out with the dorks.  You could get away with having stupid shoes.” 

Wordlessly, I nodded.  I knew she was right, and I also knew she was a coward at the same time.  But she was my friend, the best one I’d had and so I took the teasing for her, so she would still be ‘allowed’ to hang out with us.  The next time they criticized my hair or clothes, she told them she liked it.  The next day, two of the other four girls that hung out with us sported the same hair style as I had the day before.  If Pretty Betty thought it was nice, then it must be.  Too bad she couldn’t have defended the shoes.  Betty moved away the next summer, and we all split up to different middle schools.  Happily so, in my case. 

In middle school, I had a few girlfriends that I would hang out with, but the connection was tenuous.  Sure, we were all friends, perfectly pleasant to each other.  I appear to have survived middle school years unscathed by torment that so many others experience.  I had acquaintances.  I had people to talk to.  I had friends with whom I did things like watch movies or stand next to at dances waiting for a boy to have enough guts to ask me to dance (no one ever did) and I even went to a few of the popular crowd’s chaperoned ‘parties’ where the parents relegated us to a basement and we pigged out on chips and soda and listened to loud music that was dictated by a couple guys that played the same songs over and over.  I had crushes, got crushed, had notes to pass and passed to me in the halls, doodled guys’ names on my binder and then scratched them out.  It was typical, and very superficial.  High school was much the same way, but I decided I didn’t much like the parties when alcohol and drugs and sex came into the picture, and the parents disappeared. 

It seemed that even in college, I couldn’t manage to stay away from the one or two toxic people who befriended me only to beat me down for their own enjoyment and self-esteem fulfillment.  I ended my most serious high school relationship when the guy in question moved to his own college and promptly forgot he promised to give a long-distance thing a try; I met the man who would become my husband, and made some friends who forgot me and were forgotten by the next year when I changed residence halls.  Then I moved colleges and went from class to class knowing names and faces, sitting next to the familiar ones in my core classes, and chatting.  I know none of them today. 

The people with whom I interact now are work related, or were friends of my husband’s before I moved to be close to him.  A few of his friends’ wives stand out as confidantes to me, and one particular coworker ‘gets’ me, but I find that my sense of humor is off-putting.  I’m disturbed, and I laugh at disturbing things.  I make rude jokes, or say off color things, cannot stand political correctness stupidity and point out when I think something is dumb.  My husband thinks this is a coping mechanism that I use to keep people at bay because I don’t want to endure The Group kind of thinking again, that I don’t want to open myself up to esteem crushing teasing.  He may be right.  I have a couple friends to whom I relate, but it doesn’t come easy to me.  I have a guard that I keep in place.  I float a few jokes out there and if they don’t get my sense of humor, I dial it back.  I behave myself. 

The result is that a lot of the time, I am snarking in my own head about things, things I wish I could say to a friend out loud and have them snort laughter in understanding.  I have thoughts that I know people would deem inappropriate, so I keep them to myself.  The result of this is that I’m often outwardly a very sanitized version of my true self.  The one place where I’m free to be truly myself is on my blog, and moreso, in 140 character snippets on Twitter.   I often will see a group of women having a great time over drinks somewhere, or two friends shopping together laughing hysterically over something only they know, and I’m jealous.  I feel like the orphan looking into a warm home through a foggy and cold window, standing barefoot out in the snow while a group of girlfriends in pajamas share popcorn and boy stories in front of a warm fireplace.  I don’t know the secret handshakes of sisterhood, or the passwords to even try to break into this place of sacred friendship.  I’ve never been a bridesmaid, though I had 8 myself.  (Yeah, I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.)  I’ve never been the one who gets the phone call from a devastated friend over a breakup.  I have girlfriends, girls with whom I laugh and have a good time, but I can’t geek out over Twilight with any of them, excepting one.  I can’t call and say, “OMG, you HAVE to see this YouTube!” and be understood why the cat jumping clumsily over the gate is so frakking funny.  Or even someone to laugh that I’m using the word ‘frak’ instead of ‘fuck’ and understand where that came from, and my obsession with Battlestar Galactica to the point of knitting BSG themed socks!

I just don’t make friends that easily.  I wish it were different.  It just seems that my friendships tend to cool off or peter out over time.  I hope that isn’t the case with everyone.  So far, it has been.

So imagine my shock when last week, I responded to the tweet of a girl I’ve been following for years, have had a blog author/commenter acquaintance with since my first blog, but whom I’ve never really talked to in depth until I answered this one tweet.  We’ve been emailing constantly back and forth for the last week and a half, texting each other when not near email, and we get each others’ jokes.  She’s as snarky and disturbed as I am and it’s a blast.  We have so much in common, and so many of the same thought processes that it’s sometimes eerie.  Come to find out, I have found my personality clone.  And I may just weep with joy over it.  A new friend.  For me.  Maybe for life.

*names have been changed. I have no idea where most of these people are and they could be perfectly human by now.  I’m assuming maturity may have a hand in some attitudes by now.

The Ass End of Friday

Wow, I’m so glad this week is almost over.  It’s been a rough one.  Three nights in a row, I’ve gotten home well past my normal time of getting home, because I’ve had to deal with camper repairs.  On our float trip a couple weekends ago, we had a failure of the equalizer bars and had to have a piece of metal welded back on.  So last night, I picked up the camper and drove it home.  Now, I’m not that uncomfortable driving the thing.  Wide right turns, that’s the key.  That and not getting irritated with people who don’t know how to drive near a camper.  That’s hard when someone cuts you off and you have to slow down.  A 1-ton truck pulling a 29 foot camper doesn’t stop on a dime.  If you cut me off in traffic and then hit the brakes, don’t be mad at me when you get me shoved up your ass all the way to my sleeper sofa.  It’s not my fault, brake enhancers and all. 

Anyway, I pulled into the alley behind the house where we have gracious friends who let us store the camper on a rock parking pad they have and things were going well.  I thought, huh.  I pulled this thing home in rush hour traffic.  I’m feeling ambitious.  I think I can back this honking camper into its spot.  I’ve seen it done several times.  Mike’s not here to laugh at me and won’t he be surprised when he walks up and I’m unhooking the thing?  Yeah.  I’ll give it a shot.  If I can’t do it, the worst thing is that I can’t do it and Mike has to.

Wrong.

I gave it a shot a couple times, repositioning myself by pulling forward and trying to swing it more sharply into its spot.  I stopped when I heard a screech.  Looking at the side of the truck I hadn’t been looking at, I see that I made the truck get in a fight with an ill-placed tree.  The screech was the bark of the tree taking the paint off the truck.

Um. Shit?

So I pulled forward, assessed the damage and cursed when I saw scratches down the side of the truck bed, about 6 inches long, back near the tail light.  Mike?  Didn’t speak to me much the whole night.  We’ve only had the truck for a couple months, so while I didn’t like that he was giving me the silent treatment, I guess I can understand it.  He’s speaking to me again, but damn.  He’s meticulous about his vehicles and there will be no scratches on his truck.  Nein!

Last night was just last night, thoug, so why am I glad to see the ass end of the whole week?  Mainly Daughter.  We’re weaning her from bottles onto sippy cups.  And we should have done it a long time ago.  I had cut the number of bottles in half over the last few months, but the few that remained, the first morning, naptime, and bedtime bottles were her Achilles heel for comfort.  She would test my patience daily by slapping away a sippy cup, and despite their claim to be spill-proof, they’re not totally leak-proof.  If she fell down and landed on a toy, her sobs were punctuated with requests for her ‘baba.’  She was coming to rely far too heavily on the little plastic drink delivery method, and so we said enough.

The first day was hell.  She sat in front of the fridge at the babysitter’s and slapped the floor.  She slapped my leg.  She shouted, “No!” at me.  She shouted, “STOP!” at me.  She laid down on her back and screamed, red faced, at the ceiling.  She angrily crammed her fists in her mouth and bit, then screamed in pain.  She glared at me as if she would prefer my dying before she’s old enough to remember me so she needn’t be bothered with me at all.  The only thing that works?  Crackers.  So now, instead of letting my daughter take comfort in a bottle, I’m teaching her how to emotionally eat, to associate food with comfort.  WIN!  Welcome to the beginning of the road to obesity, baby girl.  Jebus.

Just when I think that it can’t get any worse, she perfected her fit throwing technique.  Now, instead of flinging herself backwards, slowing her momentum with her elbows so she wouldn’t hit her head (she’s a careful fit thrower) she’s now started a half-twist so she lands on her hands and knees, sobbing at the injustice while hanging her head dejectedly.  Between the screaming, garment rending, accusatory shouts and glares, and complete emotional wretchedness of her behavior, I’m wiped out.  Picking her up results in a limp fish protest of throwing every part of her body as far away from me as she can get, because god forbid my skin touch hers.  A few well placed kicks to my chest and she’s gotten her wish – I no longer try to comfort her when she’s throwing her fit.  I ignore her, stepping over her and leaving the room.

In the meantime, I’ve begun browsing Craigslist for size 2T muzzles or small manacles that will hold her tiny wrists.  But don’t freak out or send me nasty email: I’m looking for fur lined manacles.  Comfort is my top priority here.  And just for the sake of preparing for the future, I’m also seeing what the going rate is on chastity belts.  Just to be sure.  Mama’s sleep is preshus, can’t be up worrying now, can I?

See what I mean?  This week cannot end fast enough.  My mental fortitude is thwacking apart, thread by thread.  The good news? This weekend is remarkably free, so there will be knitting.  Lots and lots of knitting.  And TV watching.  The last disc of Battlestar Galactica Season 3 is in my mailbox as we speak and I’ve requested the entire series collection of Six Feet Under from the library.  Hello, you lovely plasma TV, where’ve you been all my life?

Tears On His Face, On My Face

Two years ago, the tears were on his face, giant tears that were the product of being told he was lacking in some manner, while his cousin who is only six months older and one of his best friends, was not.  I held him on my hip, my heart saddened but understanding the circumstances in a way that he could not.  I tried to tell him it was for safety reasons, that the man who said he wasn’t tall enough to go on the swings ride at the carnival wasn’t trying to be mean, but that he had to be big enough for the safety strap to hold him, and as little as he was, he could slip right out of it.  He didn’t care.  He just rubbed his snot on my shoulder and glared at the man, and at the ride as the swings rose higher and higher and flung round and round, his cousin gleefully enjoying the flinging, oblivious to Son’s jealousy and left-behind status.  It was a bad night.

Still, I tried to turn the bad feelings we all felt over the situation into something positive.  “Eat your food and you’ll be big and strong enough for the swings at the picnic next year!”  It became a mantra.  It seemed at first to be the magic bullet to get him to eat.  Finally!  Forkfuls went into a mouth once closed in tight determination to remain food free.  Before, he wouldn’t try new things, sticking to mostly chicken nuggets and french fries, applesauce, carrots, and macaroni and cheese or spaghetti.  His diet was almost all carbs, and I wondered if he was balanced enough.  I fretted.  I worried.  He went from one season to the next without going up to the next size.  I put jeans away from spring to winter knowing that they’d likely fit in fall the next year.  Frowning, I carefully watched him, not caring as much if he had sugar or junk.  Given the choice between watching him eat crap or not eat at all, I’d reason calories are calories, and if we can get over this hump, then I can worry about realigning his nutrition intake.  If he asked for it, he pretty much got it, because it meant something was going in his belly.  He wasn’t so starved that the doctor was worried, but I obsessively gave him vitamins and found that I couldn’t look at him without gauging his size.  Proportionately, he was fine.  Lean legs and arms, little boy belly, skinny but not emaciated.  Still, I worried.  It’s what mothers do.  But the swings gave him a goal, and so he started to eat.  One bite at a time, he ate.

Time passed.  His palette has expanded.  Last night, he tried toasted ravioli and loved it.  He then tried a tortellini in sun dried tomato alfredo sauce and loved that too, except for the little bits of tomato in it.  But he ate.  He finished the bowl.  It’s become normal to me to see him eat now, so much that in fact somewhere in there, I realized I’d quit scrutinizing him.  I stopped hovering and obsessing about his eating habits.  He was growing by the charts at the doctor’s office, though he’s still in the lowest percentiles. 

That picnic returned over the weekend, and Friday night, he stood in line gleefully with his grandmother to buy his ride pass.  He held out his scrawny wrist for the wristband that would gain him access to unlimited rides until he was barely able to stand, and the first place he wanted to go was the swings.  Last year, he’d been denied access again, with just a half an inch in height to go.  He took it much better but it still hurt.  This year, there was hope in his face as he stood in line.  The kids in front of him rushed to find their seats and he came up to the man running the ride.  The gate swung close to his head.  If he was as tall as or taller than the gate, he was home free.  There were hairs that were thicker than the difference between him and the gate.  He was still too short, but this time, it was close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades… and carnival swings. 

“C’mon,” the Ride Man said gruffly, waving him in.  Son bounced inside the fence surrounding the swings, his cousin hot on his heels.  They were thrilled, him to have gained some form of acceptance he’d been missing for two years and get the chance to finally ride the swings, and his cousin to finally have a riding buddy, and not to feel guilty because he’s taller through no fault of his own.

They jumped up and strapped themselves in, and the Ride Man checked their safety belts, and then started up the ride.  The smile on Son’s face nearly split his whole head in half.  I’m sure he swallowed at least six bugs that first ride (and by the end of the night, he’d probably ingested enough protein in bug form to make up for having cotton candy for dinner – WIN!) and his smile was seriously so big that I wouldn’t be surprised if he had gotten a sparrow or three in there too. The moment was two years in the making, and I sat and watched with glee on my own face, tears standing in my eyes reflecting back the bright carnival lights.  Two years ago, the tears were on his face.  This time, they were on my face.

Crappy camera phone pictures

he’s too blurry to point out, but trust me, he was on there, lighting the world with his smile.  While I stood by and tried not to bawl like a baby over his success.  I can’t WAIT to see what kind of sap I’m going to be when he does more than manage to grow a couple inches.  They don’t tell you just how much you wear your heart on the outside of your body when you have kids. Oy.

Remembering

Ten on Tuesday

I’m going to start doing the Ten on Tuesday as a way to keep the content on this space rotating.  Things have been crazy making lately and I really want to keep up better.  This week’s is 10 Bad Habits You Can’t Break

1. Soda.  I try to quit and I do well for a good bit of time, and then suddenly, if I don’t have a Coke, it’s as if the world has already ended and I’m left in the post-apocalypse and the only thing that can unwind the clock is a nice cold can of Coke.  It will deliver me back to my rightful place and right the world again.  Coke = magic.

2. I don’t wash the makeup off my face before going to bed.  This is a bad bad habit, and I don’t know why I don’t do it.  I always feel so good and clean when I do manage to take care of it.  But at night, after the kids are in bed, I sit propped in bed watching Battlestar Galactica episodes and knitting, and I cannot tear myself out of my comfort zone for the good of my skin.  Horrible.  Acne-inducing.  Bad bad bad habit.

3. I eat way too fast.  I learned on a work trip recently that I wolf down my food at such a speed that people around me should be worried about me sucking down their toupées and broaches and other unsecured items.  I do this because I barely get through my dinner before my kids are in dire need of something, help in the potty, another fork to replace the one they let the dog lick, or some other such thing.  If I don’t inhale then I won’t get to eat while it’s still hot.  This means that I overeat.  It takes something like 20 minutes for your stomach to signal your brain when you’re full.  Slowing down means that you don’t keep eating beyond your capacity if you allow your stomach the chance to get that signal to the brain.  It explains a lot to me, about my weight, my lethargy in general.  I don’t really eat bad things (except mashed potatoes) in large quantities like chips or ice cream, but just eating too much is likely my culprit weight wise.  And the soda up there in #1.

4. I wait way too long to pay bills.  I hate paying bills.  Especially when I have to juggle what gets paid when.  And I relax a lot more when I know things are paid.  But sometimes, I just don’t feel like it, and it’s a bad thing that I need to quit doing.  Don’t get me wrong.  Our bills get paid, and usually not too late, but sometimes a couple extra days that are totally unneccessary.  I need to stop that.

5. I am a yeller.  When the kids have turned the dial of chaos up to eleven and the phone rings, dinner’s burning on the stove, and the dog’s barking to be let in, well, I tend to lose my shit.  I’m not proud of this trait of mine.  I really wish I could be even tempered all the time, that I didn’t react so loudly at first instead of thinking first, and I’m trying to be better.

6. I am a terrible housekeeper.  I hate to clean.  My husband does a much better job than I and more efficiently most of the time.  He’s a wonder of human kind, able to multitask like no one else I’ve ever met.  But I suck at it.  Sure, I can do dishes and laundry and keep things in general order, but to clean.  Yeah, I’m not doing it very well.  I know how.  I don’t have any motivation.

7. I finish people’s sentences for them.  Sometimes it’s helpful if someone can’t think of the proper word, but I hate it when people try to anticipate my thoughts so I really shouldn’t do it to other people.

8. My husband says I tailgate people.  I admit to doing so some of the time, but it’s a bad habit.  I drive in rush hour traffic twice a day all week and if you don’t stay close to the person in front of you, you’ll end up having fifteen people cut you off.  I’ve grown accustomed to a shorter space cushion (and try to still leave enough room to stop should I need to) and so when it’s Saturday and I’m on the way to the library to return or pick up books, I tend to follow the person in front of me closely when I don’t need to.  Mike says I should just drive in the slow lane so I don’t get cut off at all.  Most people aren’t clamoring to get in the slow lane.

9.  I am very prone to fad thinking.  The newest thing?  I fall hook, line, and sinker.  Not so much with fashion but its really bad with TV.  Though I do draw the line at reality shows.  I watch The Biggest Loser and a couple of series on The Discovery Channel like Deadliest Catch and Swords, but other than that, I don’t understand reality TV.  American Idol is not something I find myself compelled by.  However, the rest of bandwagon TV?   Totally there.  Though usually late because I don’t have HBO or Showtime, which is where all the good shows seem to be.  That’s okay, though, since I have Netflix.  God Bless Netflix.

10. I cannot seem to stick to a diet and exercise plan to save my life, literally.  Though I’m hoping to change that soon.

Do you have any bad habits to share?

A New Beginning

Life marches on and time gets away in ways we swear we won’t allow, and yet, we look behind us and see the calendar laughing away, its guffawing maw made up of ever changing pages turning, months going by whole chunks at a time, suddenly an animated being with a will of its own, one that wants to speed up, move faster and faster until the world around is blurs by as if we’re on a train speeding through a city and only catch glimpses of the scenery as it rushes past, barely leaving an impression.

The school doors opened and we stepped in, unsure and yet not given time to be tentative for the throng of parents and students behind us waiting for their own access.  Though not the school of my youth, the smell was familiar, wafting over my nose in a mixture of large amounts of glue, reams of paper, and the anxiety of children milling in the halls.  The returning ones greeted friends warmly and showed off new duds.  The new kids, Son included, stood silent as sentinels, observing the chaos around us and taking it all in.  This was to be their daytime home for the next nine months and they were riveted.  The swirl of grade school society flitted over the students and I silently hoped that Mean Kid Syndrome would bypass my son’s class.  On the other hand, the little kid who told Son last year in preschool that his breath stank made Son vigilant about brushing his teeth, so maybe a little societal chiding could be a good thing. In small doses.  Please let it be very small doses, I thought.

I shook myself and tried not to think of it, tried not to let my own memories translate to misgivings that could unnerve Son as we made our way through the crowded halls to the Kindergarten meeting area.  I wanted to snap some pictures but it wasn’t possible with everyone so close together, standing in personal space.  Also, I had the wrong lens, not that I was trying to turn Son’s first day of school into a photo shoot.  But it was my zoom 200 mm lens, and close ups were not going to happen.

As we herded into the line up area, I found the line for Son’s teacher’s class and led him to the end of it.  Here, there was a little room so I took a few photos and stood off to the side as the teachers started to speak.  Soon, the kids were standing and filing from the gym, heading to their class.  Not sure if I was supposed to, I followed Son through the halls to his classroom, helped him find his desk, snapped a couple more pictures, and then schlepped from the room, the last parent to leave.  It’s not that I was reluctant or hanging on too tightly to an era of childhood that ended with the final closing of the classroom door, but I wanted to make sure Son was okay.  He seemed to be, though he looked a little shell shocked.  At least in his classroom, there were only 25 students.  There were small groups, and the room wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as the gym had been.

I headed back to my car, knowing I had about an hour and a half to kill before school was dismissed.  It wasn’t until the clunk of the driver’s door as it shut that I let the emotion of the morning wash over me.  My eyes, pricking with inevitable tears while I’d walked from the school, brimmed over and let go.  I sobbed, heaving gasps with red blotches blooming on my face.  Son is a student now.  I’m the parent of a Kindergartner.  For the next 12, and maybe 16 or more years, there will be school and Son’s true childhood of playing all day with no responsibilities but to listen to his imagination and perhaps eat a good lunch.  It was time.  His stimulation demands were more than his small daycare could handle and he was becoming a handful.  He needed structure, discipline, and a purpose beyond serving his own whims and ego.  But there was still a part of me that mourned the loss of the ‘toddler’ identity he’d held for so long.  The fat legs and chipmunk cheeks had been gone for a couple years, though in my heart, their ghost remained.  Dropping him off for his first day of school forced a goodbye to those last remnants of his baby and toddlerhood, even though the physical attributes those labels decry had disappeared in long and lanky legs, a giant vocabulary, and a thinning of the face.  The only baby fat left on him was in my heart.  He became a boy to me that day, and while I embraced the change, I mourned the time gone by so fast. 

Then, the thought occurred to me that I had time to myself.  For five years, I haven’t had much time to myself.  What could I do with it?  I headed to the library to return some books and realized I could sit and read, and so I did.  I enjoyed quite a bit of reading time in that hour and then some, where I didn’t have to stop every couple of sentences to answer a question about Santa Claus, the chemical makeup of Silly Putty, or why some farts smell and some don’t.

For each ending, there is a new beginning.

Charming Wife Status: Preserved

 

Today is Mike’s birthday.  I have covered my bases by sending him an e-card.  Let it be said how much I love him that I gave him a clown card.  I hate clowns.

You know I don’t like clowns. Your birthday just happened to be the nearest occasion to celebrate finding a card with a dead clown on it. Happy Birthday!

P.S. be prepared for that hummer later…

(I also got him a real card with honest mush, and some baseball game tickets, right behind the dugout at the Cards/Astros tonight.  I’m not totally mean.)

Consuming

Brain consuming: current state of the checkbook.  Ugh.

Time consuming:  This weekend, we decided to purge the house of all the dirt, excess, and pet hair.  It was quite the undertaking, starting with our mail.  Oh my word, the mail is out of control.  We broke the shredder with all the purging, and now we have a pile of old bills that have to be burned since we reorganized our file cabinets for the new stuff.  Then, we moved on to other areas of the house, pulling out furniture and finding all kinds of gems fermenting under couches and hiding behind end tables.  We steam cleaned the carpet.  We went through the toys.  That in itself was hilarious because the kids were all, “Oh yeah, I remember that toy!  I haven’t played with it in a year, but I looooove it, don’t take it awaaaaaaaayyyyy!”  It was like Christmas for them, but sadly, we took the toys they hadn’t played with for a good bit and hid them in plastic bags for Goodwill donation.  We weren’t totally heartless and the things they seemed extremely interested in again we kept.  But there were things that needed to be said goodbye to.  We’re down some big stuff, and the space it coughed back up will only be filled in again by Christmas. 

There was also a deck staining project.  Mike built a beautiful deck in May and I wanted to keep it looking like new wood, but between our summer plans and the weather being wetter than normal, we weren’t able to get the stain put on until this weekend.  It turned out to be the perfect weekend to do it.  The sky was dotted with big puffy clouds so the fact that I don’t have a pair of sunglasses, having lost my last pair on a float trip, wasn’t an issue.  The air was dry, humidity nonexistent, which is extremely unusual for this time of year.  I got almost all of it done, with only one corner left to do this week as time permits.  I rolled up my sleeves into my bra straps and with some tunes pumping I got into the project and my thoughts.  Much as I hate painting and anything that resembles it, I found a place of zen and peace out in the sunshine, the clear air with a nice breeze and a dog at my side. 

I still hate painting activities.  But this was less bad than it could have been.

Food consuming: tomorrow is Mike’s birthday and so we were invited to his grandparents’ house yesterday for cake and ice cream.  Mmmm, cake.  Tomorrow, I’m taking him to see a Cardinals game, diamond box seats, the closest we’ve ever gotten to the field.  I think we’ll be 4 rows back, and while it would seem as though I’m spoiling him, I’m the one who is spoiled, having scored the tickets through my work so his birthday present is essentially free but for the parking and the food and beer we’ll have.

Yarn consuming: none.  I hardly knit at all this weekend.  However, I did get some tubs for my yarn so the storage options for me have improved and maybe I can move it all out of the cramped closet organizer and into the tubs. It feels better to have it all in tubs also because they’re air tight and I don’t have to worry about the cat getting into it or moths. 

This week, we’ll be busier than a two dollar whore at penny pitcher night.  Tonight I have to finish the deck (but I might take a night off from that since I’m single-mothering it) and tomorrow is the ball game.  Wednesday I’m single-mothering it again and if I don’t do the deck tonight, I’ll be doing it then.  Thursday, we’re getting ready for a kid-free camping trip and float and then we have family coming into town for the next week or so.  Getting the house ready for that, packing ourselves and the kids for an overnight with grandparents, and then dealing with our every day lives is probably going to leave me ready for a day off on Monday of next week.  Not to mention that there’s been pitifully little knitting content on this site and so I need to get out the camera and take pictures of a finished pair of socks, progress on other socks, progress on blankets, a new cast on, and some ideas I have in the works.  I have pictures to post of Son’s first day of school and a post about that to write.  And more to post to my writing group for feedback on the story I’ve decided has lain dormant long enough.

What has everyone else been up to?  I’m feeling a little out of touch lately.

Mommyblogging Daughter

In my first blogging days, I spent a lot of time ruminating on my newish motherhood.  Son was about a year old when I started the first blog, and my being so enamored with him and writing about him a lot immediately put me in the ‘mommyblog’ category.  I didn’t have a problem with it then, and I still don’t, but I’m so much more than that.  As such, I haven’t written nearly as much about Daughter as I once did about Son, and I realize that it shouldn’t be about how I’m perceived on the web by the content I produce, but that I write to preserve the memories.  I need to do so for my own mind, because it’s not the steel trap I once fancied it to be, and now I’m afraid I’ve forgotten so much before having a chance to record it down.

Daughter is now 19 months old.  She’s talking a smidge.  She says Mama with perfect clarity, sometimes, however, confused with Nana, which is what we call her babysitter.  She says ‘ba’ for bottle, which I’m still wishing I could wean her from more quickly, but she’s having none of it.  She’s down to 3 bottles a day, her morning one, naptime, and nighttime bottles.  When she’s done with her morning bottle, which she drinks cuddled up in her boppy pillow on my bed under a soft blanket, she’ll reach out her arm awkwardly to hand it to me without lifting so much as a hair on her head to look up.  I just hear a muffled but insistent, “Mama” until I take the proffered bottle.

 She snuggles into me when I pick her up, wrapping her legs around my middle as far as she can get them, laying her little head on my shoulder, and each hand patting my arms as I squeeze her for all she’s worth and drink in the smell of her hair.

Her hair hangs into her face, and I refuse to cut it.  I won’t do bangs maintenance very well, and so I’ve decided that if we can get through the first bit of growing out, then she won’t have bangs and I’ll get her hair cut once it’s long enough to be even all over.  It’s not long enough to shape yet, and while I try to pin it back with barrettes or pony tails or pigtails so she can simply see, she will also have none of that.  As soon as we get in the car for the morning ride to the babysitters, whatever pinning back device I’ve used is out and offered to me from her chubby hand in the backseat.

She dances when she eats.  Much of the time, she likes to eat at the dining room table, if she’s not there by herself.  However, her high chair is not good enough.  She has to have a booster seat (though it still makes me a wee bit nervous, so we use a more stable Bumbo chair that holds her steadier than a standard booster seat) and be right up to the table like the rest of us.  Every time she throws a fit until she’s put at our same table, I can’t help but think, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”  The high chair has been relegated once again to basement storage for either listing on Craigslist or handed to my sister when she decides to have a baby.  However, if we’re just having a sandwich or something in front of the TV, she eats better if she can have a plate to flit back to between bouts of playing.  I’ve learned from Son not to fret too much over food.  They eat when they’re hungry, and so what if it’s in a bite here and there over an hour or an entirely clean plate at the table in half an hour?  Eating is eating.  But the dancing.  Every time she has a chip or a Froot Loop or a cracker, she weaves back and forth a la Davey Jones/Axl Rose swaying and shimmying.  But she’s cuter.  Sorry, Axl, but she is.  Whether she’s perched on your hip or standing next to you, anything munchy and yummy sets her body in motion and you can’t help but wiggle along with her.

She also dances to the TV music.  A commercial with a catchy tune, the music channels from the satellite, or the closing credits of a movie, they’ll all catch her fancy and before long, we’re all clapping and egging her on.  Once, she stood on the dining room table at her great-grandmother’s house and did a jig complete with stomping feet and straight-backed poise.  Maybe she’ll grow up to be a clogger girl.  Sometimes the dancing devolves into simply spinning to make herself dizzy.  This would be unremarkable except for her eyes.  She holds them to the corner of her periphery, and it’s so damn cute, like she’s spotting her spins like a dancer or ice skater.  I’ve tried her way, though, and it makes you dizzier.  It’s funnier.  It makes her laugh out loud, and anyone who sees her spinning with her funny, off-kilter eyes can’t help but laugh with her.

She’s the happiest baby I’ve ever encountered.  She rarely cries, unless she’s been hurt.  She’s fearless, which has caused me a few heart palpitations as we’ve learned to climb stairs together, learned to jump/crawl/flop on the furniture.  Lately, her Terrible Twos are showing, but she’s a total girl in that when she flops down to the floor to throw her hissy fit, she does so gingerly enough as to keep from bonking her head on the linoleum.  It doesn’t stop her from throwing the fit, and last weekend, she flopped onto the ground at our campsite only to realize she was lying in dirt and leaves and she instantly became more offended by that than by whatever had sent her into a fit in the first place.

I have been so lucky with the gifts of my children, both of whom are distinctive and sweet, happy and loving, and different from each other in many ways, and yet still my children.  My son is the more headstrong of the two, and my daughter is the happier, more adventurous one.  I can’t wait to see what else lies ahead.  I don’t care what it is, as long as they’re with me, and we can experience it together.  I’m fuller for having them in my life.

Mother of the Year here, for having my son drinking from a coolie cup that says, “I got my crabs from Dirty Dicks,” a restaurant on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  Yeah.  That’s how I roll.

Radio Silence, Terminated

Sorry for the delay in content, folks.  Not like there are hordes coming here to read, but I have just returned from a week long work trip.  I have reconnected with my family, and I am getting back into the swing of things.  School starts soon for Son, who will be in Kindergarten and so life is, needless to say, upheaved right now.  There will be an update soon with knitting content, wherein I showcase a couple first socks, the beginnings of a blanket, the progress on two more blankets, and such.  I have to get the pictures taken to be able to upload them, and we should be ready to roll.

So please, a few more moments while I collect myself and get what I want to say sorted out.  Also, I’m incredibly interested in Sock Summit stuff and have a huge list in my google reader to go through.  I missed everyone, whether I read you, or you read me, or both.  I’m catching back up.  See you soon!

Pinprick of Hope

          Writing about how much I loved the library as a kid got me thinking the other day.  It’s no secret that I’ve been unhappy with my professional life.  I have tiptoed around it because I don’t want to get into trouble for writing about my grievances so publicly, but I can’t really stand it anymore.  Between a bad relationship with a coworker, my beloved boss retiring last year and being replaced by someone else (I believe I called him ‘green’ in a previous post, and that about covers it, but there are so many other things I could say, but can’t here), a down economy and three promising job interviews that have culminated in a ‘thank you for your time,’ I feel hopeless, wilted, and just about out of ideas on how to improve the situation.  Let’s also say that talking about it with people who can help hasn’t resulted in the hoped for help, and again, that’s about all I can say about that. 

          So with advancement opportunities slim, outside opportunities slimmer, and stagnation and irritation growing, it’s no surprise that I’m feeling the flight part of the fight or flight instinct kick in for professional preservation.  I don’t want to use this space to do nothing but complain.  I really can be funny sometimes, and I am lighthearted most of the time.  I just feel so … stuck lately.  Well, not lately, but for the last 12 years.  For the new readers (if there are any), I changed my major in college from English to Accounting and it was the worst thing I’ve ever done.  Part of the reason was that I was afraid of the instability my dream of writing books could prove to be, and also I was afraid of the rejection factor.  I was changing schools to be closer to my boyfriend, who would become my husband and father of my kids, and that move prompted anger in my parents, so changing my major assuaged some fears my father had when I first declared English as my major of choice.  It was done a bit to appease him and grease the wheels for my transfer to a more exclusive, private school that wasn’t as well known as the state school I started at, but was highly regarded in the area to which I’d planned to move, which I’m also still paying off.  There were all kinds of reasons, most of which were the wrong ones. 

          So I finished school with a degree I was okay with but not something to love, and have since entered the professional world feeling like a worker bee funneled into a cubicle job because of the desire for a steady paycheck.  For a mother, this makes life better, not worrying where the next income is coming from so that I can provide for my kids.  But for me, just me, it’s stifling.  I hate it.  I have come to loathe getting out of bed in the morning and becoming one of the thousands clogging the roads to head to a job I only regularly go to out of need rather than a sense of purpose.  I am in the same boat as so many others, and I don’t feel a special entitlement to bitch.  My husband doesn’t like going to his job either.  Well, he likes the work, but not the people for whom he works.  And he endures.  He vents to me, but he moves on. I can’t seem to. 

          I don’t know why I had it in my head that stable = boring, and why I can’t find an alternative career that I can get behind full bore.  Writing that library post the other day was a light bulb.  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Andrea!?  Why hadn’t you thought of this before!? 

          So for the last couple days, I’ve been kicking around the idea of going back to school for a Masters in some kind of Library Science.  The local American Library Association Accredited program isn’t too bad (though this Jayhawk threw up in her mouth a little bit at the prospect of attending a rival Mizzou affiliated school – a little collegiate allegiance reference for you if you didn’t already know) and the class schedule for the fall and spring semesters show quite a few online options. 

          There are obstacles, though.  I want to fully research the job market before committing to ANY continuing education.  I don’t want to be getting into something considered to be a sinking ship.  There’s that fear of instability again, but this time, I can be smarter about it.  The idea of a Library Sciences degree tickles my reading bone and nostalgia aside libraries are important public services that I can totally get behind.  Another obstacle is tuition.  There are quite a few programs out there for financial aid to mothers, to working professionals, and to people in general.  There’s a big push to get people into colleges around the country to try to help the job prospects a person has.  Another obstacle is time.  Many of the classes are offered online, so I could do my work on them after the kids are in bed or on weekends.  But the entire program isn’t online, so I would have to personally attend some classes.  I read somewhere in my research (very preliminary so far) that most people with Masters degrees in Library Science get them later in life as a career change, so perhaps the schedule would reflect that by having evening courses that I could take without interfering with my day job. 

          So much is up in the air, so much is speculation.  I was even afraid to mention it to Mike because I didn’t figure I’d have enough answers for him for the inevitable questions.  There’s so much that could doom the idea to a wistful plan to be tackled sometime in the future, easily brushed aside for the practicalities of a life lived in busy mode.

          But… I am looking.  It might be a plan.  I might mean the pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel for the chokehold my current situation has on me.  For the first time in a long time, I am hopeful again.

Mmmm, Smell that Book Dust

          When I was a kid, I lived in a town in the southwest corner of Kansas called Garden City.  It’s 50 miles to the west of a more famous Kansas town, Dodge City.  Garden City had about 30,000 people in it when I was living there, but despite not being physically small, it only took about 10 minutes to drive from one side of town to another, regardless of beginning and ending points.  There wasn’t much traffic and there were long periods between stoplights, so driving was slower paced and steady as opposed to the hurry up, then stop driving I know from where I live now.  Despite having more people and space than your average small town, it still felt like one.

            So my parents were okay with my sister and I walking or bike riding all over town, as long as we told them where we were, and we had to make sure we were home for dinner, or preferably home when they got home from work.  During school, we would mostly stay home and watch TV (The Brady Bunch, then The Munsters, then sometimes The Flintstones or Bewitched – stuff on TBS, the Super Station! before turning it to MTV’s Top 10 Daily Countdown).

            But during the summer, the town belonged to us.  We’d walk to a nearby convenience store for ‘happy hour’ for 20¢ fountain drinks and a candy bar.  Then we’d walk past our house, past the nearby park with the walking trail we’d probably revisit after supper that night with our mom, and then up one more street to the public library.  It became a daily ritual.  The doors were heavy and wooden with bar handles that echoed through the foyer when you entered.  There were bulletin boards with library events, town news, and patron announcements lining the walls.  There were bathrooms, and between the doors to them, a water fountain with water so cold it felt like it came from a fridge.  Then, to the left and across from the bathrooms, there were double glass doors that led to the large library room.  It always reminded me of a church, the hush of the air muffled by the plush reading chairs.  Everything about this library’s layout was circular – circular building and shelves lining the outer walls perpendicularly, like spokes on a bicycle wheel pointed in toward the center; there was a circular grouping of reading chairs along the inner perimeter of the shelves.  Some of the shelf rows bisected the ‘wheel’ more so to delineate the different sections – children from adult, contemporary from historical and so on.  In the very center was the card catalog, flanked by a couple of carols with computers.  Computerized card catalogs weren’t in place yet, but they were only a couple years away.  Just to the right of the doors, situated like an altar facing out to all the pews, was a circular circulation desk.  Multiple librarians worked the desk at a time, all of them friendly and happy to see us kids come in to read so often.  We’d check out books once or twice a week, but we’d go through them fast.  So we’d browse for the next ones to borrow, we’d make lists, and we’d even read some, reshelve the book, read more the next day, reshelve, read, and I finished a few this way, without ever borrowing them out.  Technically we weren’t supposed to put them back on the shelves ourselves, but we were always careful to put them back properly.  If we just put them on the reshelving cart, they weren’t always reshelved the next day when we wanted to read them again.  Plus, it seemed like making extra work for the librarians.

            When it came time for me to start researching papers for school, I was so comfortable with the library that I didn’t procrastinate in finding my research materials.  Usually, I put off what made me uncomfortable – clothes shopping, dentist appointments (well, that came later when I had some control of my own schedule), but going through card catalogs for book locations was second nature to me.  Sure, we sometimes used the library as a refuge from the high heat of a Kansas summer with its near-movie-theater cold air, but it was a sanctuary to me as well, much like real churches are to some people.

            It should come as no surprise then that in my middle life, when I find myself wholly dissatisfied with my career and its direction that I dream wistfully of becoming a librarian.  Academic or public library would not matter to me.  I love books and everything about them, their smell, the crack of a hardcover spine when first opened, their heft in my hand and their total portability.  The best of it is feeling my son’s body resting against mine as I transport him to another world every night before bed.  Slowly but surely, I’m getting him into books.  Hopefully I can continue that with my daughter.  Seeing my church library of my youth in my mind’s eye, all the worlds between the pages of all those covers makes me all drooly and besotted.  So much imagination!  So many adventures!  I would love to write them myself.  My lifelong dream has always been to be a writer, a published author.  In college, when the realities of living on my own and supporting myself landed in my lap, I changed my major from English to Accounting out of fear of starvation.  I know now stability and a steady paycheck don’t have to be dream killers, though mine have been.  I probably will never write a book.  If I do, it will probably never be published.  If it is, I would be one happy camper.  But I have always loved libraries, their smell, their efficiency, their organization.  And the treasures they hold on their shelves!  My favorite job ever was customer service rep in a book wholesaler education department.  Books.  Maybe I don’t have to write them to be happy.  Maybe loving them and working with them would be enough.  What do you think?

Because the Night…

The ritual was almost a secret, though we didn’t start out trying to keep it one.  It’s just that we’d found something, moments we knew we’d cherish long before nostalgia and passing time could paint them with fondness.  The days simmered our blood and we hid in the confines of the manufactured air.  The only outdoor ventures we made in sunlight were to the car and a quick cranking up of the vents.  At temperatures crawling well into the triple digits, even the dry heat of Kansas is difficult to swallow.  Job schedules had to be adhered to, but outdoor activities not involving cool water caused scrunched noses and small head shakes of disinclination.  Sitting on the couch in the air conditioning, standing in front of the fridge pondering its contents, or lounging in the recliner with a good book were the only appealing options for entertainment.  My butt was nowhere near the size it would become with age and a lifestyle changing injury to my foot, but I wouldn’t have believed at the time that I wasn’t fat.  So fridge gazing was out because pondering food for the sake of viewing is nowhere near as appealing as pondering food for the sake of the tasting, which contributed to a big butt.  Sometimes, I’d brave the heat for a little bit to step onto the back steps and play with the dog.  I always sort of envied the dog, a black lab named Sebastian, because he would often lie in the grass within the spray radius of a running sprinkler and laying around cooling off in the heat seemed very appealing to me.  However, Sebastian was not allowed in the house because of the danger he posed to the carpet, so I would imagine he envied me my chance to lounge in the air conditioning.

Days went by like this, lazy days that blurred together in their inactivity.  Oh, the carefree summers spent by youth.  We didn’t know how good we had it.

But it was the nights to which we looked forward.  The burning sun would creep below the trees, casting rippling shadows ever further down the block, little stabs of fading light twinkling on the pavement.  In those moments, I could almost believe the sun was benign, slowly slipping out of sight in an effort to keep us in view as long as possible before succumbing to the roll of the earth.  The evenings, when the heat would die just a bit, I felt the sun whispering a mournful goodbye, full of promise for a renewal in the morning.  The sun just wanted to be friends, but didn’t know when to back off.  Those hot August days were the sun’s attempt to join in the fun, but it was just trying too dang hard, standing too close, talking too loud.  We would sit down as a family and have dinner, some nights it was steak and baked potatoes, some nights it was hamburgers and fries.  Salads were a big part of our summer meals as were fresh strawberries and sweet corn on the cob.  For me, the meat of the entree was often a garnish to the zing in my mouth of a crunchy carrot or buttery burst of corn bitten from the cob.  We would languish at the table, talking about our days, grumbling about doing the dishes, discussing upcoming plans.  My sister and I often joked about things my parents weren’t in on, bad daytime TV or something funny our neighborhood friend Felicia had done or said. 

After dinner and cleanup, sometimes we’d split up, running our errands or visiting our friends.  Not every night, but most nights, we’d end up back home around ten, the sun long gone and finally the Kansas wind that was so rude and cloying in the day would calm to a breeze at night that would lift the hair from our necks and cool our damp skin.  It was then that the ritual would begin.

We’d steal into our rooms and grab our shoes, lacing up and meeting back in the living room.  We’d utter a quick goodbye to Dad in the recliner watching some show on Hitler and my mom, sister and I would hit the pavement.  There would be a flashlight in one of our hands, a cursory attempt at safety, but in a sleepy Kansas town, once the sun goes down, so do the residents, and there was very little traffic, foot or otherwise for us to worry about needing to see with a flashlight.  It was pretty easy to believe we were the only people in town awake at that hour, let alone out and about.  A third of a mile from our house was a park, lush green grass with playground equipment, wide spans of open space for pickup football games, and the reason we were there, a wide and meandering trail around the park’s perimeter dotted with benches and smelling of cedar wood chips used to line the ground near the playground equipment.  Three laps around the trail made up a mile and sometimes we’d walk the three laps, sometimes four so that the 1/3 mile trip to the park, the extra lap, and the 1/3 mile trip home equalled another total mile.  But we were never that concerned about the length of time we walked.  It was always decided with a cursory, “Another lap or home?”  What held us captive, had us looking forward to the sinking sun every evening was the company.  We’d laugh, talk, dream, discuss, giggle, imagine, and create stories on those walks, the future brighter in those months than at any other time in our lives.  The three of us were never as close as we were on those late night walks, where the cricket sounds were audible and even the slightly slower pace of an already slow farm town was a nice chance to breathe in, breathe out. 

All too soon, the walks ended, residency changing from home to college dorm, the pace of life picking back up again.  But I will never forget the sounds of our feet beating the street to the park, the smell of the neighbor’s magnolia trees, how we rarely had to worry about looking both ways for cars as we crossed the streets on the way to the park, and the comfortable width of the walking path once we got there where the three of us had no trouble walking side by side.  I don’t even so much remember what we talked about.  I just remember the steady buzz of the streetlights as we rounded those familiar curvy turns, passing by the convenience store we’d frequented as kids for our candy fixes that was across the street from the park, feeling the tick of my muscles as they flexed and contracted trying to keep up with my slightly-longer-legged sister.  Mostly I feel the timelessness of moments well spent with those in my life who mean the most to me.

I miss our nighttime walks.

My Knitting Motto

Knit what’s fun.

This was what I told myself as I started project after project, and they were all fun, to start with.  But that wanes as the project slogs on, the blankets become never ending, the scarves knit in the round for double thickness are how long???  And the thought of trying my first sweater is both exciting, daunting, and, well… long.  The things I’ve set aside for projects that I’ve given myself with closer deadlines happen to be the long projects.  I have a scarf and two blankets in hibernation, and an irresistible urge to cast on sock after sock after sock.

What’s wrong with me?

Am I really that easily seduced by the quick finish?  Those ballband dishcloths look enticing to me, and we really could use some.  The cotton for them would be cheap.  I could use another couple of face cloths too, as Mike has used a few of them to clean the bathtub and I really don’t want Comet residue exfoliating my cheeks. 

So what did I do over the weekend?  I finished a pair of socks while watching my husband play mud volleyball and my son go nuts in the gloopy sloppy mud, and … you guessed it… cast on another pair of socks.  These would be the first ones for myself.  It all started last week, when I ordered a yarn I’ve heard good things about, Malabrigo.  I got the shipment in and it was such pretty yarn in such vibrant colors (the colorway is Caribeño) of purple, blue, and green that I spent a good amount of time on Saturday thinking about it as I finished a small pair of socks for Son.  Since I had empty needles, I though what the hell, and rolled up the Malabrigo on Sunday morning.

That’s where things started going south.  The skein was a bit tangled when I unwound it.  No problem, I’m a genius at untangling yarn.  I have more patience for that than I would ever have thought possible, but somehow, unknotting something is soothing to me.  But this skein was really whacked, and it took me a total of an hour and a half to roll it up in a ball.  Finally!  I was ready to start.  I read over the pattern I chose and saw that it fits a size 7.5 foot.  Oh.  Okay, this one means a little math.  I have fat feet that swell up on me.  I wear a size 9 shoe.  I had to modify the numbers if I ever had any hope of wearing these socks.  I’m getting more and more practice with this, and given that I’m an accountant, I can usually muddle through without much trouble, as long as I can figure out the pattern repeat just from reading.  I even swatched for this yarn to get my gauge on size 3 mm needles.  I was just about dead on the gauge recommended.  Only half a stitch more per inch. Should be fine, since I have bigger feet, right?

I used my cell phone calculator function, figured up some numbers, thought, that was easy, and cast on what I needed to cast on.  Short row toe, mm hmm, wrap and turn, okay, knit, purl, knit, going back through the wraps now, voila.  Toe done.  Wow.  This yarn is really pooling.  But the pattern should break that up.  That’s what all the people before me have said, so it’ll be fine.  I started the pattern instep and thought wow, this sock is big.  I tried it on, and if I kept going, then I likely could have gotten both feet in one sock, even my mammoth feet.  I realized that half a stitch bigger in the gauge was to blame.  For every inch, I was getting an extra stitch, which meant that the sock would actually be an inch bigger than I wanted when all was said and done.  No problem.  I frogged and switched to size 2.25 mm needles.  Tried again, but overcompensated for size and knit the exact number of stitches specified in the pattern.  I didn’t get too far before the insanity of that thought occurred to me.  What the hell, Andrea?  Your foot will never be 7.5 inches around and you’re using smaller needles than the pattern calls for, dumbass.  I frogged again.  This time, did the number of stitches I’d previously calculated on the smaller needles thinking that would work.  It was the equivalent of two extra pattern repeats per row.  Last night, after getting farther on the sock than I’d gotten before, I realized it was still huge but moving in the right direction.  With the give of the yarn, I would do well to cut back to only one extra pattern repeat and allow for the ease of the yarn. 

So I found myself frogging again last night, at about 10 pm and hoping I could get cast back on and going again this morning.  I was too tired to do more than rewind the ball and hope the next time would be the last time I cast on.  The yarn is showing signs of wear and I think if I have to frog again, I’ll be cutting off some length and trashing it.  That’s travesty in my book, and so, I double checked my math, cast on this morning, and am hopeful that this time will be the final time I do the beginning of this pair of socks.

 Tell me, are socks really this hard for everybody at the beginning of their knitting lives?  I haven’t even been knitting a year, so I’m wondering if this is simply a learning curve, if I’m destined to cast on five or more times for each pair of socks I start (remember the herringbone socks that took me eight tries before I finally got it?).  And really?  This is fun?

 This is fun.  This is fun.  This is fun.  Maybe I should go back to the boring garter stitch blanket, or the crocheted block blanket, or the ripple blanket that are all languishing in my drawers and shelves of my closet.  At least then I wouldn’t feel guilty for hibernating projects intended for other people.  But I’m realizing I hate crochet and two of those three are crochet.  They’ll take some enduring and a good pep talk before I can get  back to them.

 But my sock knitting clearly needs the practice.  Yeah.  That’s why I’ve cast on sock after sock after sock.  I’m not distracted by the shiny, pretty yarn I find on the web.  I’m bettering my sock knitting skillz.

 Ooh!  Pretty yarn!  I wonder what sock pattern I could do with that…

Rest Area Rampage

I’m posting an old post from an old blog that I found kind of funny.  Of course, not at the time, but after it happened.  I thought I’d share.  I may periodically post some of those for background or the ones I really liked at the time.  Just to keep things moving along.

To the people from Ohio who stopped at that rest stop on I-64 on Sunday in West Virginia:

I am a dog owner, so I understand that dogs can sometimes make a mad dash for unknown real estate, leash-free. I do understand this. So I didn’t get too pissed off when your 40 pound dog dashed into the back of our Suburban. I didn’t even mind so much that he was standing on the backs of my legs as I was kneeling over into the cargo area with my hand in the cooler getting another soda for my husband. I have a couple scratches, but hey, it happens.

What I did mind was that your Hell Hound pissed all over the inside of our vehicle. I minded that I got dog pee on my legs, and on my soda nestled snugly in its drink holder just under where your dog decided to relieve himself. I minded that some of your dog’s urine SPLASHED INTO MY PURSE, on my wallet and my cell phone. I will forever be thinking of my peed on cell phone as I hold it close to my face to use it. I minded that some of it soaked into our carpet and the remainder of our drive home from vacation, some 14 hours, was spent wondering if that smell I couldn’t get rid of was the smell of dog piss.

Okay, I will even go so far as to overlook all that, since your teenaged son was clearly embarrassed by the dog’s foray into our car, across my legs and leaving his bathroom trail over the console, into the passenger seat and out the front passenger door. It was an accident, and the dog being in foreign territory may have scared him a bit so he peed some. Okay. Sure. I’ll even go so far as to overlook that.

But what I will NOT overlook is the fact that you, the mother and father of the embarrassed son and owners of the dog, LAUGHED at our plight, and offered no apology or helping hand in the cleanup (thank GOD Mike’s aunt had Clorox Wipes with her, or I’d have just cried). YOUR DOG PISSED IN MY PURSE, YOU JACKASSES! I was too seething mad to think straight enough to march my pissed-on self up to you and demand an apology. I was too irate to think I should be asking you for $50 to replace my pissed on purse. Instead, I cleaned up your dog’s pee; I used the rest area bathroom to clean the pee off my legs and out of my flip flops; and I haughtily got back into my peed on seat and seethed for the rest of the day. If I were thinking, I would have shouted across the lawn for everyone to hear what happened, and WHY WERE YOU LAUGHING? I would have demanded an apology and money to replace my purse and for the shampooing we now have to do to get the smell out. If I were thinking, I would have taken a picture of you to post here along with the story. Instead, I will have to settle for merely complaining about you on my website and laughing now at YOUR expense. I hope you run across this someday.

Sock = 8, Me = Smackdown

So the socks I started eight times.  I finished them.  Booyah!  Take that, socks!

Proof that there are really two:

Specs:
Yarntini semi-solid sock yarn in the colorway Cabana Boy.  It’s 75% Merino, 25% Nylon in a light fingering weight 3 ply.
I love this yarn.  It’s soft, doesn’t split easily, and is vibrant and exciting to watch the subtle variations of color emerge, especially on this herringbone pattern.  The pattern is from the Winter 2008 Interweave Knits magazine and is available for free here but you have to sign up for the newsletter, which is also free.

I added an extra pattern repeat because both my mom (the recipient of these) and I have big feet, and if I couldn’t get them over my feet, there would be no way she’d get them over hers, since hers are a smidge bigger.  Adding the pattern repeat also meant changing the heel and toe a bit, and I’m not sure I got the toes quite right, but they look the same for both socks, so if they’re wrong, at least they match.

This pattern got to be fun after I got used to it, but it’s fiddly.  It’s great for car rides, but not so much for watching TV at the same time or anything that will break your attention to it.  A mere dropped YO can be disastrous, so I would suggest a lifeline on these, at least until the pattern becomes second nature.

I’m glad to have these off the needles, but after I bound off, I was feeling a little empty.  I have four blankets, two pair of socks, and a scarf going, but I still felt naked, like there wasn’t enough.  So I started Nancy Bush’s Whitby socks from Knitting on the Road and I’m using Dream in Color Smooshy in the colorway Pansy Golightly, a blend of light purples, blues, greens, and grays.  It’s lovely so far.  I really like this pattern, as it’s written in a very straightforward manner and is clear on the directions.  I have also finished one sock for Son and am halfway up the foot on the second one.  I am stalled on the Viper Pilots because I keep finding reasons to start over.  That one is up to three restarts, but now that I’m using sharper Addi Lace needles, I’m hoping there will be no more dropped stitches and I’ll be better able to do the cables with the sharper tips.   I’m no further than I was three weeks ago.  

The reason I have so much on the needles right now?  Startitis.  I am a process knitter as opposed to a progress knitter.  I enjoy the process more than the finished object, and while it’s gratifying to get something finished and off the needles, by the time I get to the end of one, I’m already daydreaming about what to cast on next.  I feel a bit neglectful of some of the items on the needles though, and I want to start a sweater this fall so I would like to get some of the other stuff completed before I tackle my first sweater. 

As for non-knitting content, please say a prayer for my friend Kari-Mel, who undergoes surgery tomorrow for lung cancer.  I would imagine such an undertaking would scare the bejesus out of any of us, and I can only imagine what she’s going through.  If I could be in her neck of the woods to sit and wait for news or hold her hand, I would.  She recently has had a bad run of luck, not only with her health but also with a break-in, so things need to turn around for her.  I really hope you can take a minute to send up a good thought or a prayer if you’re of the praying persuasion.  Things in life get shoved into perspective when you think of it in terms of life or death, which this most certainly is for her.  Kari-Mel, I hope those socks go with you to the hospital and keep your feet toasty warm!

Baggage

I’m not doing so well of late.  I put on a brave face for my kids and my husband, and I’m not a danger or anything, but I’m super stressed.  Mostly money woes, because while the cost of living has increased dramatically and the price of everything from our power bill to our daycare expenses has increased, my salary has been frozen due to the hard times and my husband’s sales salary is dependent upon, well… sales.  People are being frugal of late, and I can totally understand why because we’re doing it too, but it hurts the pay we bring home, and while I get it, I wish I could change it.  Unfortunately, I may have to make a phone call to my dad, who has always had my back whether I needed advice, a little stern direction, or money.  He lives too far away to get a hug over the phone but I try to anyway.  I hate the guilty feeling I have calling him for help, though.  Seems when it’s advice I have no problem asking, but if it’s money, I hesitate.  He is usually happy to help.  My mom isn’t always.  For her, money is a sink or swim issue, to a point.  I don’t want to give the impression she’s a greedy Scrooge, because she’s very generous.  She just gets more irritated over it more than my dad.

But there have been other things on my mind, too.  I accidentally backed my father-in-law’s minivan into a retaining wall, and while the bumper did that cool pop-back-out trick like it was supposed to, there are some nasty scratches in the paint and I’m very mad at myself that despite the extra care I was taking with another person’s vehicle, I still managed to fuck up.  If you knew my father-in-law, you’d also know that he’s the most picky, particular person on the planet about the care of his belongings.  He’s never got a hair out of place; he never wears a shirt that has a stain on it; he has a place for every single tool in his house and fie on you if you put it back somewhere he can’t find it; he’s a list keeper and crosses things off the list with regularity; he cuts his grass with a riding mower, then gets close to the trees with a push mower, then gets the edges with an edger, then whacks the tight corners with a weed whacker, and finally finishes up by blowing the grass bits off his driveway with a leaf blower – he owns a small fortune in lawn implements.  But you get the idea.  For a man who has a standing appointment for a hair cut once a month, pays hundreds of dollars a hear to have someone detail his vehicle and has been known to take it to a repair shop to have a loose screw in the dashboard tightened, it was hard to imagine him not blowing off the handle about the paint scratches. Not to mention that when I did it, he was out of town and I had to wait until he came back to tell him so as not to ruin his trip with him stewing about how bad it was. 

So from Sunday to yesterday evening, I couldn’t sleep well, and not just for the fact that my bed was missing my husband, who was traveling with my father-in-law.  I was honestly terrified he would scream at me about respecting other peoples’ property and that whatever the cost was I had to pay it (I would have anyway).  Turns out, though, he was totally cool with it.  He said as long as no one got hurt then there was no harm no foul.  He was even going to have another scratch that was already on it from the previous owner buffed out (see about the particularness of his stuff?) and he’d have that worked on, too.  He offered to have it traded for having Mike mow his lawn, and since Mike mows a steep hill for him every week anyway, it’s not much of a trade since there’s a high likelihood it would have happened that way anyway.  He gave me a hug, told me to forgive myself because he wasn’t even mad, and I shouldn’t be so upset because he wasn’t.

Cool or not as he was, I stressed hard over it.  I had bad dreams about it.  It haunted me.

Another thing on my mind is a potential work opportunity.  I can’t say much, but things at my current workplace are less than savory and it’s causing more stress.  I get up in the morning hating that I have to go to work when I used to love it and look forward to it.  But since my awesome boss retired last year and his replacement is… um… green (and that’s the most I’ll say about it) and then there’s The Crazy who is going to get her own voodoo doll knit for me to pummel when I need to, things have rapidly deteriorated.  I don’t want to go from one bad situation to another, so I’m trying to be very careful about the opportunities I’ll consider, but it’s hard to be choosy in this economy. 

I often wish for a fairy godmother to come and grant my wishes.  And as greedy as it sounds, it always comes back to money.  I just want to pay my bills and buy birthday gifts, and take trips to see family, maybe eat out occasionally and have no trouble with my conscience when I buy yarn without having to think too much about the balance in the accounts.  I don’t need a flashy car, big house, exclusive wardrobe or private school for the kids.  I would even like to have enough that one of us didn’t have to work.  Daycare for us now is nearly $1000 a month.  That hurts.  This month is particularly brutal because we have to pay the sales tax on the truck, and I just don’t know where it’s going to come from.  It’s enough to make me cry, stay up worrying at night, juggling bills and looking at the ever growing grocery list thinking how long do we have before I can’t put it off any longer?  I fucking hate this.  Couple that with my worries about work and the salary freeze and there’s no relief in sight.  And the thing is, I’m one of the better off ones in this economy, so I’m very grateful for what I’m able to do, but it still comes with so much baggage.  So much baggage.  And I’m barely coping.

Anyway, even knitting hasn’t kept me from over thinking things and fretting.  It just give me more time for my wheels to spin.  I did finish my mom’s herringbone socks (pictures to come) and I love them, now that I don’t have to fiddle with that pattern anymore.  I started a small pair for Son over the weekend and I’m already working up the leg on the first one.  But it’s still not enough to relax me.  It’s still not enough to keep the demons away.  Even my to do list of knitting is weighing me down, and it’s supposed to be fun.  It’s supposed to be an outlet, and I’m letting it feel like a chore. 

I don’t know what I need.  Besides a boost at the bank.  I just know I can’t sustain this.  So I’m really hoping this other opportunity works out and I can eliminate some of my woes.  Because carrying them around is really weighing me down.

Happy Birthday, America!

I’m off like a prom dress for my yearly dose of explosives and watching mud volleyball.  Have a good holiday!

Weekenderies

My weekend was somewhat uneventful with just one exception.  Saturday, what turned out to be the hottest day of a two-week long heat wave humidity fest in the Midwest, we had an outdoor birthday/reunion.  Mike’s grandfather’s sister (whom they call Aunt Sis) turned 86 and wanted to celebrate it on the lot of the river clubhouse the family used to have that was washed out by the huge flood in 1993 that spanned whole states.  It was a beautiful location, very well shaded and on the banks of the river, it was actually a couple degrees cooler than it would have been at a park.  

Mike was driving to the location with directions but as we neared the smaller, more secluded roads, he began to remember and reminisce about childhood memories involving the clubhouse he and his family so enjoyed.  Along the way, we saw signs pointing people to the back roads leading to a wedding.  Little did we know, it was located on the lot right next to the one where we were having Aunt Sis’s birthday gathering.  We pulled up to a small grouping of white chairs and a plant draped wedding arbor.  I wondered, as I climbed out of the truck, if the sound of the generator someone in Mike’s family had brought to provide electricity to a camper for the air conditioning should someone get heat sick would bother the wedding.  I assumed we’d be asked to turn it off, but it turned out that the wedding wasn’t in the afternoon.  People didn’t arrive to add to the decorations until near 3 pm, right when Mike and I were leaving.  I did have the presence of mind to get a couple snapshots of a typical Southern Missouri outdoor wedding setup, complete with Port-A-Potty.

Big ass truck, check.
Hot weather, check.
Chairs, check.
Port-a Potty, check.

 

But the kids had a good time, despite the heat. 

There was some knitting done in the car to and from, and I made good progress on my mom’s socks in the last week. 

 

I’m nearly to the heel on the second sock and the evolution of a knitting pattern has nearly run full circle with me.  First, the enchantment with the new project, quickly followed by frustration at the complexity of the pattern (given that I’ve only been knitting for a few months) and then determination that this pattern would not beat me, and next came boredom with the project as I mastered the pattern and moved into round after round of the same thing.  Then, wanting to set it down but not doing so because I’ve been working on them far too long and need to finish.  Shortly after that, I became reenchanted with the subtle variegation of the yarn, the way the herringbone pattern showcases those subtleties, and it’s no longer just miles after miles of yarn overs and psso stitches. 

 

Given that I’m reaching the end of this project, I thought it would be prudent to begin the next pair of socks, these for my dad. 

This project I know is going to be tough.  I hate the yarn.  It’s splitty, not at all soft, and the stitches cling in a manner that makes even decreases and increases a pain in the butt.  I did a short row toe and while it looks okay, I managed to muck it up a bit because the wraps were so hard to negotiate through the sticky yarn.  I’m using US 0 needles so I’m considering upping the size so that maybe the fabric being produced won’t be so stiff since the yarn is stiff itself.  I plan to stop at my LYS to pick up some sharper pointed needles for another project so maybe I’ll use them for these to see if it helps the splittiness of the yarn.  But I’m not relishing doing over those wraps, which means I might be switching to a different toe construction.  We’ll just have to see. I frogged once because the wraps looked like crap and the yarn didn’t hold up well to frogging at all.  I may take this ball of yarn and give it to the dog or cat to play with, it’s that awful.  The crappy thing?  I have two more skeins of this in my stash.  Ugh.  I’ll keep going with it, just to see if it improves since all I have are the toes and maybe it gets softer after washing.  Regardless, it may be that I start prowling for something else before getting too far into these. 

The cutest thing that happened this weekend was that Son asked me for a pair of socks for him.  Green.  Then an orange pair.  He likes orange.  I told him I’d do some for him when I get some of the socks I’m working on right now done.  Since they’re such smaller socks, and I’m having the dilemma with the yarn for my dad’s socks, maybe I’ll knock Son’s out first while I’m contemplating Dad’s sock yarn.  We’ll see.

What did you do this weekend?

Bumpasses!

Yesterday afternoon, I received a call from my husband that made me go limp and fearful to go home.  See, he hurt his ankle a few days ago and has been nursing it back to health over the last few days.  Our grass was getting out of hand, so I suggested his 9 year old nephew, who likes to cut grass, come over and cut ours for the week so that Mike doesn’t have to put the pressure on his ankle for as long as he’d need to be on his feet to cut our yard.  It’s not a huge yard, but it’s not tiny either.  So when my SIL and nephew came over to do the chore, they put our dog, Calypso, of whom I’ve promised an updated picture for the blog, in our bedroom.  This is often where we squirrel her away when we have people over.  She’s a big schweetie, but she’s also a big lug with a puppy’s enthusiasm and she’s a bit of a handful.  After yesterday, though, I may rename her Marley, after the worst dog ever.

So Mike is telling me over the phone that when he got home the grass was nearly done and things were fine until he went upstairs to free the Bumpass hound (a nickname from A Christmas Story that we often call her because of the chaos she leaves in her wake) when he saw it.

“Honey, don’t be too mad.”
“Uh oh.  What’d she do?  Pee on the bed?  Chew on a shoe?”
“She, um… well… she got into your yarn.”

My body went limp.  My yarn stash is virtually unprotected, a situation which will be remedied this weekend when I shuffle some clothes and free up a storage tub for it.  The yarn is in plastic bags under my bed, and in my closet on shelves of our closet organizer, sorted either by project or by color.  My most expensive yarns are in a shoebox on one of the higher shelves so I was confident they were okay, but I was worried first about a sweater’s worth of yarn I had stashed under the bed. 

“Who can we give her away to?” I asked Mike, only half joking.  I asked him to describe the yarns in the massive tangle, and he said it looked like three or four balls worth, and he told me the colors.  Okay, so it wasn’t the sweater yarn under the bed.  It came from a precariously perched, i.e. a big bag stuffed into a too small spot for it, bit of yarn for a baby blanket.  Mike said the yarn itself didn’t look damaged, but it was awfully tangled.  He’d put it on the bed and shut the door to keep the cat from going at it, too.

“I can deal with tangled.  I can get out most tangles.  I just want to know if the strands have come unplied.”  He said it didn’t appear so.  So at the end of the day, I was conflicted with a desire to get home as fast as the speed limit would allow and to prolong having to face the mess as long as possible.  Upon entering the room, I came upon this scene (and if you’re a knitter with an affinity for yarn, you might want to look away).

That’s three skeins of knitpicks palette yarn for a baby blanket and a skein of yarn that I can’t remember its origins for a blanket I’m making Son.  While the monetary value of the yarn isn’t all that much (probably about $12 worth of yarn there) it’s still yarn, and I can’t help but hurt.  All yarn is my friend.

The accused:

Don’t be bamboozled by her cute face and happy disposition.  She’s a destructive force with a long list of victims, including the frame of our bed, a pair of shoes or three, a grill cover, a hose attachment, an electrical cord, the corner of our couch, the insulation on piping to our air conditioner, books, two kids pools, two wiring harnesses on our old camper that plugged into the car for the running lights to work, and now my yarn.  We’re thinking of breeding her so that she can start to pay us back for some of the destruction she caused.  Don’t let her fool you.  Behind that innocent looking face and playfulness lurks a tornado, a Tazmanian Devil intent on making the most of time spent unsupervised. 

 
Watch your stuff.  Yarn carnage is the least of my talents.

It took me two hours to untangle the mess, and for those of you nearly crying over the state of the yarn, you can relax.  I saved all but maybe two yards of it.  Even the brown yarn, which had its guts spilled all over like some disemeboweled blanket.  It’s now resting comfortably in a ball after its procedure to untangle it,  and the attacker has been relegated to her place in the backyard at least until the end of the weekend, not coincidental at all in relation to my putting my yarn in tubs.