Day two of writing more often!

I am reading a book that is so good I can hardly put it down! Diana really likes an author named Jennifer Crusie, and I have read a couple of her books and liked them, but this one is so great I wish everyone would read it so we can talk about how good it is!

The name of the book is Maybe This Time, and it's based on The Turn of the Screw, a gothic Victorian novel by Henry James. (Note to self: Get that book to re-read it!) It's got ghosts and romance and it's written in a sassy style! Read it and then tell me how much you love it!

Why I hate Daylight Savings Time.

Daylight Savings Time is just a huge inconvenience for me! It puts Diana in Arizona just one hour behind us, instead of two, so instead of being able to call her when I get to work at 11, when it is only 9:00 p.m. in Phoenix, now when I get to work at 11, it is 10:00 p.m. in Phoenix, and she is already asleep or very close to it! Which means I hardly get to talk to her at all (well, not daily, anyway, which is the prescribed dosage!) for six months of the year!

Also, Kim is still in Taiwan and she was 13 hours ahead of us, which I had gotten used to, but now she is 14 hours ahead, and when I get to work, instead of just getting back to her room to chat with me on Instant Messenger, she is halfway through her break, and sometime she only has a couple of minutes to talk, because she has to go back to the classroom to get ready for the afternoon classes! Do you see how I am terribly inconvenienced?

So that is my complaint today. I am going to have to try to update more so Diana will know what is going on here, and she will just need to do the same to keep me filled in!

So, here's what I have been doing in the last couple of weeks since the damn time change...

What I am knitting:

When I got home from Scott's I quickly knitted two very cute winter hats for the boys, because while we were there it snowed and Carolyn got out their winter clothes, and the hideous hat Carl was wearing was a crime against nature. I had to make something better!

After the cute hats, I started the new Knitalong with the people at the yarn shop. We got the last clue on Wednesday and I'm almost done with my first pair of socks knitted from the toe up! I'm pretty impressed with the pattern we used, and the yarn, too! I don't know if I will ever bother to make another pair of socks from the toe up, but these look good.

Now I have yarn to make a sweater for myself, and I still have a half-finished dress that I am knitting for Maddy, plus socks! I always have socks to knit!

What I'm reading now:

While we were in Utah, I got a lot of good suggestions for books to read, and I've had a chance to read some of them. I read about a book a day because I have a lot of downtime at work, so I can't remember everything I read, but I can say that I finished Hogfather last night, a book I picked to read because I like some other books by Terry Pratchett, but this one wasn't one that I loved. I picked it because it was Christmas-y, but it was so existential that it took all the fun out of it. Yawn.

When I finished that one, I started a mystery called January Kills Me. It's not Art, but it's entertaining, and I've already downloaded the second book by that author (something about February). What I love most about my Kindle is that there are so many books by independent authors - people who would maybe not get published by the big publishers, but they can get published on Kindle and sell their books affordably, and I get to read them! Some of them are good, some are okay, some aren't very good (some are just werewolf porn), but I love that I can have access to so many books!

Okay, that's all I've got for now. I will fill you in on the Great Lipstick Adventure later. Also, Kim will be home in 3 weeks! Woot!

In which a rabbit has a jacket!

I finished the two Rabbit Surprise Jackets and took them to SLC to give them to the rabbits, and wasn't I surprised when they didn't fit!

It turns out that a jacket meant for a human baby is way too big for a stuffed rabbit! Who knew?

Since it was very important that Soren's rabbit have a jacket, I did not give up! Carolyn ripped the jacket back and rolled the yarn into balls for me, and I started over from scratch, just making it up as I went along.

I have knit many, many sweaters, so I know how to construct one, and in the end, the jacket was perfect.

We didn't take apart the second rabbit jacket. Carolyn thought it was pretty, and she is saving it for a real baby, either one of her own, or to be a gift for someone else. Carl didn't care if his rabbit had a jacket or not.

Whew! I'm tired of making rabbit jackets!

In which there is yarn.

So the yarn arrived from Karin today and I'm working on Peter Rabbit's jacket again. This shade of blue (Dusk in Knitpicks Essentials yarn. I think they are calling that yarn Stroll now.) is the most beautiful shade of blue I have ever seen and I wish I could make a sweater for myself in this color.

And now for the weather: it is freezing here! Even I am cold, probably because I have to wake up and come to work in the middle of the night, but tonight I am wearing a sweater over my shirt, and also socks, and I am still cold. I have a wool shawl in the drawer that I am going to put on, too.

What I'm reading today: I am almost finished with Arabella, by Georgette Heyer, and then I'll start reading book five of Septimus Heap, Syren. After that I am planning to read Blood on the Ice, a book about hockey-playing vampires. I'm so intellectual.

In which rabbits will not go naked!

Rachel and Maddy and I went looking for more yarn for a Rabbit Surprise Sweater, but we couldn't find what we were looking for in either of the stores we stopped in. Rachel suggested we should check her stash, and in it was exactly the yarn I had in mind, but there wasn't enough of it!

I took the one ball that she had, because I knew who would know if that yarn was still available - Karin! It was a Knitpicks yarn, in a color that I thought was called Dusk, and Karin checked the website and said it was backordered until November (!) but that she had some in her stash that she could send me! Woot!

So I started the rabbit jacket again, and knitted on it tonight until I ran out of yarn. I'll start the jacket for Carl's rabbit with another color, because his rabbit doesn't need to meet any literary description, and I'll work on that until I get more yarn from Karin.

Speaking of Karin, we had agreed back at the beginning of the year that we would do a sock exchange, and then I immediately forgot about it. Well, Karin didn't forget, and I got a beautiful pair of socks in the mail last week from her! Maybe I should get started on a pair of socks for her now, since she is sending me emergency rabbit sweater supplies!

Still reading Septimus Heap and today I got a text from someone in the knitting group, asking me the titles so she could get them from the library. I hope she likes them as much as I do. I looked them up on the Amazon website, and it looks like there are two more out, and there might only be one more that will end the series. I finished re-reading the first four, and I'll start book five this week.

I was talking on the phone to Rachel tonight, and I could hear Maddy fussing around in the background, and Rachel said they were baking a pizza in the oven for dinner but it wasn't done yet. Poor Maddy was bored and hungry! I suggested that it was a good time to try a video call, thinking it would be a good distraction for Maddy, and oh my goodnees, Maddy loved it!

She especially liked that she could see herself on the screen too, because you get a little window that shows the view of yourself on the camera, inside the bigger picture of the person you are talking to. She thought it was so delightful to see Rich and I on the screen, but what she liked the most was showing her belly and seeing it on camera! She kept pulling up her shirt to see her belly, and then laughing at it!

Because I know how much you care about rabbits...

So here's the thing, I ran out of the sock yarn I was using for the Rabbit Surprise Sweater with only a few rows to go! I could weep. It was just an odd ball of some brand I had never heard of, so it's not like I can just run to the corner store and get another ball of it, so now I am going to have to go shopping and find some other sock yarn to make the rabbit jacket!

I know what you are thinking, you are thinking that I have lots of yarn in the yarn room and why can't I just match some yarn that I already have, even if it's not a really good match? It's only a jacket for a stuffed rabbit, so how close a match does it need to be? It doesn't have to be perfect!

Well, you would be right in thinking that I have lots of yarn, and also that it doesn't have to be a perfect match. But. Aside from the fact that I want Soren's rabbit's jacket to be wonderful, there is the problem that blue is not one of my favorite colors, so there isn't just tons of blue sock yarn in my stash - there is hardly any, actually. In fact, that ball I was using was the only ball of blue sock yarn I had.

I know, blue is everyone's favorite color, and I don't know why I don't seem to have any, but I just don't. And now that I think about it, my Local Yarn Shop (LYS), doesn't have a whole ton of blue sock yarn, either. Not that I am going to go to my LYS to buy yarn for a rabbit jacket. I love Soren, but I don't want to spend that kind of money on an experimental rabbit jacket. I don't even know if it's going to fit the friggin' rabbit!

So I am going to take a little trip to the fabric store to get some cheap inexpensive sock yarn. I hope they have blue.

In which it is fall.

It's Fall and today was a beautiful day. There was some rain in the morning, and then it was sunny, and Rachel and Ash came over to work on the door they are decorating for the movie trailer they are planning to shoot in Kim's room next week.

Have I mentioned that before? They are planning to make a series of short films, based on a book that Rachel is writing, and they have made a donation page for it that you can friend on facebook, called The Locksmith Project. They are going to shoot the trailer to put on the donation page, and since Kim is gone for a while, they have moved everything out of her room and they're making it look like a room in an abandoned house so they can shoot the film in there. Ooh! I should take a couple of pictures of the room in progress.

So while they worked on staining the door in the backyard, Maddy and I took a walk through the crunchy leaves and around the block, and eventually Rich and the dog came out to meet us and walk back to the house with us.

They finished with the door just in time for us to go to yoga, and ow, I am so sore from that workout we did tonight! We did a lot of back-bending things, but I think the one that I'm still feeling is one of the standing poses. I took some Advil and a hot shower like I always do after class, and my back is feeling better now.

I'm about halfway through knitting Soren's Rabbit Surprise Sweater, and it looks like it's the right size. I bought some buttons for it today, gold ones, because the Peter Rabbit story mentions the jacket having gold buttons. I bought enough buttons for Carl's rabbit's jacket to have gold buttons, too. It's a good thing these Surprise Sweaters are so much fun to make, since I need to make two.

While I knit, I'm reading the Septimus Heap series that starts with Magyk. I'm re-reading the first four, and I just found that there are three or four more in the series, so I'm excited to read those, too! They're like the Harry Potter books, they're a series for kids that grownups like, too. They're by Angie Heap if you want to look them up.

This is nice - I'm in bed and Rich is sleeping. The dog is sleeping at the foot of the bed, and it's so peaceful. I'm going to knit and read for a while and enjoy my night off.

Men get old and pearls turn yellow.

I've gotten out of the habit of writing, but I'm going to try to get back to it. I like being able to look back later and see what I was doing months or years ago.

The title of this post is what Scott said when I told him how depressing the Three Dog Night concert was. The band members were old, the audience was old, and when the three senior citizens came out on the stage to introduce the band, one of the old dears said, "Let's show them how Freeport can rock and roll!" and I turned to Rich and told him that it was all so sad I could weep. I was staring into the face of my own mortality! I've heard from a few people that they thought it was a great concert, and someone said that she was reliving her youth, but I just thought it was sad.

In other, more cheerful news, I am knitting a blue jacket for Soren's rabbit, Peter. Carolyn said that Soren wants a jacket for Peter since they read the story of Peter Rabbit - you know, the one where Peter loses his jacket and his shoes when he is chased out of Mr. MacGregor's garden. I have been looking for a pattern for a rabbit jacket for a couple of days, and then I thought of the shape of the rabbit (which Carolyn carefully measured for me) and I decided to try making a Baby Surprise Sweater out of sock yarn. The sock yarn and smaller needles should make it just about the right size for Soren's rabbit. If it works out, I'll make one for Carl's rabbit, too, but in a different color.

Maddy is growing and can say a couple of words now. She can say quite a few words, really, but she usually doesn't bother. She said "No!" loudly and clearly to our dog the other day when he was bothering her, and she says "Out!" while banging on the inside of the front door. She wants to go out and pick up fallen leaves and carry them around in her hand like a bouquet. Now that the leaves are drying up, she likes to shuffle across my yard and listen to the leaves crunch under her feet. Rachel is planning to rake up a big pile for Maddy to play in this weekend.

Kim is doing fine and will be home in a little more than two months! I miss her!

Scratching and finishing.

I am finishing a bunch of things and I feel so good about it! I just did the finishing for a grey hoodie that I knitted for Karin's sister Kelly who did me a big favor, and since I will be seeing her and Karin in the next few days, I thought it would be a good idea to get the sweater done so she can wear it! Woot!

I finished the yarn shop KAL socks and oh man, they were a big pain because they were kilt socks, so not only did they have to be long like knee socks, but they had a lacy cuff to knit to turn down on the top of them. Whew! I just finished knitting the second sock last night and did all the finishing this afternoon!

I have finished the knitting on the kimono sweater for Maddy, and I washed and blocked it, sewed in all the loose ends, and now I just need to do a little bit of knitting to make the ties and a button loop and it will be done!

So I have a feeling of accomplishment like you wouldn't believe, and now I'm thinking about what I will make next!

Maddy was at my house for a couple of hours this evening and we had such a nice time. She wanted her hair brushed when she found my brush laying on the desk, so I brushed her hair while she sat at the desk and watched some Sesame Street videos on Youtube.

Then she started playing with the back-scratcher that was also on the desk, so I used it to scratch her back, and she loved it! Her eyes practically rolled back in her head with joy at having her back scratched, so I played some funny cat videos from Youtube and scratched her back for about 20 minutes, but then I was worried about scratching all the skin off, so I distracted her from the scratching and we went to play with the button box instead.

That was my day, what did you do?

That time I fell down...

At first I couldn't think of a time when I fell down, and was feeling a bit superior, what with my excellent coordination and all, but then the memories started flooding back and there were so many I couldn't decide on just one!

The time I caught the toe of my sandal on the lip of the top step of the four stairs up to my office, tried to catch myself with my arms windmilling and slammed into the glass door, which luckily, didn't break!

That time I was getting on the exersize bike in my bedroom, and threw my leg over it too enthusiastically, lost my balance, and fell backward with the bike on top of me. That was on a bare wood upstairs floor, so it echoed through the house like an elephant had fallen through the roof.

The time I parked on a hill, got out of the car carrying a large Diet Pepsi from McDonalds in my right hand, and the car wasn't all the way in gear so it started rolling forward. My right arm was still through the seatbelt, so it was pulling me with it, through the intersection until it bumped to a stop on the curb at the bottom of the hill. My seven-year-old daughter was watching in horror from the window of the school bus! (When I stood up, I was still clutching my Diet Pepsi.)

There were two times when our sheepdog, Buffy, tripped me while we were walking, because that dog was always trying to kill me!

And then there was the time when I was doing the two mile walk with Kim, who was babbling about Pokemon and driving me crazy, so I looked up at the sky and rolled my eyes, which caused me to not see the broken sidewalk, and when I stepped on it, fell and broke my foot, thereby proving that exersize (or Pokemon) isn't good for you.



That was just hitting the highlights. I'm leaving out the times I have fallen on ice, because anyone can do that, and the time I slipped in a miniature mudslide while walking Buffy, who laughed all the way home as I cursed out loud because I was covered in mud! (She didn't plan that one, but it made her happy anyway. That dog hated me.)

So that is probably enough of my humiliating incidents for now. See you next time, when I will maybe tell you about that time in 1978 when I tripped and fell outside a club when I was wearing my Candies 4-inch platform heels and tore a hole in the knee of my Calvins and looked like I was drunk when I had not even had one drink!

In which I have nothing to hide.

I'm getting tired of the 30 days of shamelessness, and I've been making up some better and more interesting topics that we can use when this series is finished.

In the meantime, hmmm, something dirty that I usually hide? OMG, when do I hide anything? I haven't had a cleaning lady for at least two years now, since the one I had (for about 10 years) decided she had more important things to do than clean houses, so that's how long it's been since my house was actually clean!

Or do you mean something dirty like Bondage Fairy comics? I bought some years ago on a trip to a comic book store in Phoenix with Diana and Sarah, and they were very entertaining and very dirty, but I haven't seen them in years. I think I threw them out so my cleaning lady wouldn't see them.

The next thing is Sweat, which isn't really something I want to talk about because ewwww, I hate sweat! I hate looking at sweaty people, and I get crabby when I am sweating in the summer. I was very surprised to find that we sweat in yoga class! I thought yoga was all serene stretching and, you know, thinking about nothing!

No, the truth is that we go to class, spread out mats, and then the teacher works us like a rented circus monkey! Today we had to tuck one foot up against the opposite inner thigh and bend over the extended leg, only not really over it, just off to that same side, and stretch the top arm up and outward, over our ear, and look up at the ceiling, and then the teacher got up and went to talk to a student for a couple of minutes and left us all sitting there bent over to the right and stretching our left arm up and over and we were just holding it forever with our rib muscles gasping in shock!

And that is why, when I get home from yoga, I am not only sweaty, but in need of a handful of ibuprofen!

In which I keep doing something that I don't think I'm very good at.

Some people know that I want to write a novel, in fact I am working on three books right now, two fiction and one non-fiction. I thought that I was a good enough writer, but now that I am actually writing, I suddenly see that I am not as good as I thought I was. What?? Oh noes!

The thing is, my whole life I have been told that I am so good at writing, that I have such talent, blah blah blah, and even though I blew it off, I secretly kind of thought it was true.

Here's the thing, though. It's not that I can't write, because that's not the hard part, it's actually sitting in my chair and doing the writing. Not just a scene that I imagined one day, but the whole story! I have the vaguest idea of what I want my story to be about, but I don't actually have a story in my head!

It's hard, and I am hoping that if I just keep writing, the story will come from somewhere. I had a sudden epiphany the other day in which I realized that I have to keep writing to find out what happens!

I have two quotes that I keep in mind to encourage myself:

Inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just show up and get to work. -Chuck Close

and this one:

I hate writing, I love having written. -Dorothy Parker

In which I am not very girly

I can't think of anything especially girly that I do, and I hate that gender-specific stuff anyway, so it took me two days of pondering to come up with...hmm...nothing!

I went grocery shopping on Friday, and when I got home, I carried six plastic grocery bags in two hands up to the front door and kicked it so Rich would let me in. As I staggered to the kitchen I ordered told him to get the case of Diet Pepsi and the giant bottle of laundry detergent out of the car, and when he brought them in and deposited them on the floor of the kitchen, I told him I was going to put that in my journal as the girly thing I hardly ever do, i.e. asking him to carry heavy stuff into the house for me, and he said actually I always make him do it!

I think he's wrong about that, because I know I carry those in myself all the time but sure, whatever you say, honey.

I considered getting a pedicure, so I could write about that, but none of my pedi friends are around, and it's no fun to go by myself. If I go to the one place, I don't like to talk to the idiots that work there, but if I go to the Asian place, they don't speak enough English to talk to me.

As I write this, I am suddenly realizing that there are a few things that I always call on Rich to do, like killing gross bugs and disposing of (their) bodies, and also burying small dead pets. So there. Times when I am girly. You happy now? I have to go smoke a cigar and scratch myself.

In which you learn the name of the film.

When I was talking about which uncool movie I like, I didn't tell the name of it, because I was kind of thinking that one of my kids would name it in the comments. I forgot that none of them actually read my journal, either because they don't have time or they just don't care (sniff!).

Karin suggested that it might be America's Sweethearts, but no, that is an excellent movie that I am proud to love, unlike another John Cus@ck movie, Serendipity, that is so terrible it sucks the cool right out of you through your eyes. I can pretty much watch Mr. Cus@ck in anything, but that one makes my ass ache.

The actual movie that everyone in my family thinks is so terrible is Nashville, which was a huge hit back in the day and it is a classic! A classic!! What is wrong with you people??

In other news, I spent an hour with Maddy this evening, walking around the neighborhood, mostly in my neighbor's backyard. Her yard is all pretty with landscaping and nice outdoor furniture, and she had a couple of jars of bubble stuff on a table for her grandchildren, but they are getting a little old for bubbles, and she was happy to see me blowing bubbles for Maddy to catch.

We stayed outside as long as I could stand it but the humidity was so high that I was miserable, and mosquitoes were eating us both, so I coaxed Maddy back into the house, where she played the piano, plucked at the harp, and typed on the computer in the den.

That's all I've got. Tomorrow I'll get back to the 30 Days of Shamelessness.

In which I like many movies, and they are all cool.

As with TV shows, I feel that if I watch it, it must be cool, but I know my kids don't agree with that at all. They have spent some happy hours mocking my favorite movies, with special attention to anything by Robert Altman.

My friend Axel, from work, is the movie guru. He can give you the year of release and the director and leading actors in almost any movie you ask him about. He owns a large library of movies, and has loaned me quite a few.

When I watched movies, the kids got so they could recognize Axel's influence, and they thought he had terrible taste. I told them they wre getting an education in film that they would appreciate later, and assured them that I was doing them a favor, really.

When Rachel was younger, we had a fun activity we called a "Crapfest", in which we would go to the movie rental store on a weekend night and rent anything that looked the slightest bit like it might be ok, even if we suspected it would be terrible. We would rent a movie based on who was in it, like Steve Zahn (who we both love and it's too bad he can't pick a decent script), or based on a review on an obscure film website, or just the blurb on the back of the box.

We had rules, like if the movie had a member of the Friends cast in it, we knew it was going to be crap, but sometimes we rented them anyway. Unless it had David Schwimmer in it, then we knew there was no hope at all. (The only exception to the Friends rule ever was The Good Girl.)

Another rule was that if it said on the box that the movie was "hilarious", we wouldn't touch it. Hilarious almost always means that it is stupid and/or slapstick, and I hate both of those things.

One memorable weekend, we accidently struck gold - three of the four movies we rented that weekend were wonderful! That never happened again, but we have seen lots of movies that we enjoyed, but we would never have rented them if we hadn't been having a crapfest.

There is one movie that I am famous among my family for loving and making each of them watch with me, insisting it is part of their film education. I won't even tell you the title of it, but when I ask them what movie I like that is uncool, each of them will tell me the same thing. (I just called Rachel and asked her, and she said it right off!)

How I waste time.

Diana thinks she is getting ahead of me by posting the Day 4 topic, Wasting Time, but I am going to camp onto her post about wasting time with Dr. Mario! See? Everything's a competition!

I probably knew at some point that Diana played Dr. Mario, but I have forgotten about it if I did know. We must have been wasting our lives playing Dr. Mario at about the same time.

I also played Tetris, so much that I felt slightly embarrassed about it, because I was good at it, and I would spend hours playing it while the kids were in bed, with tears running down my face because the game was moving so fast at the higher levels that I couldn't blink! I would just play and play with burning, tearing eyes!

One day I saw in the paper that there had been a Tetris competition in Detroit the previous weekend and some kid had won a largish amount of money. When I told Rich about it, he said I should play all I wanted to, since there was money in it!

It was after that (and I kind of think I hadn't been playing Tetris as much because eventually I did get tired of it), that my kids brought home Dr. Mario for me to play. It is very similar to Tetris, and I was pretty good at it, but although I did waste plenty of time on it, I think I had lost the fire for stacking things and I got over Dr. Mario relatively quickly.

I wouldn't mind playing a little Dr. Mario right now, just for fun.

I'm lagging behind already!

Diana just took the 30 Days of Shamelessness challenge and ran with it, and I'm limping along behind her, trying to catch up!

This, therefore, will be my catching up post!

Day 2 - Look Like a Fool

This is not a problem for me, as I have many opportunities to look like a fool, and I just have to pick one. Let me tell you about my yoga class...

It was Laura's idea to take the yoga class a few weeks ago, and I have always wanted to try yoga, so I happily signed up to do it with her, and then I mentioned it to Shelley, who said she wanted to do it, too, so we all did a six week yoga class this summer. It was so much fun, and we went once a week, but we really wanted to go more often - like every day!

Rachel had to work most of the days of class, but she went with us a couple of times and she liked it too, and when Carolyn was visiting, she went, too. Everybody liked yoga!

Fast forward to this session, and Laura and I were not going to be able to go to yoga class because we had microbiology on that night, but then I dropped that class, because people, I am so not going to be a nurse. I like it in theory, but when it comes down to taking care of actual sick people? No, thank you.

Once I had dropped micro, that freed up my life a lot, and I signed up to take yoga two nights a week for six weeks!

So tonight was the first night of yoga. Rachel and I went in and parked our mats, and the woman next to me introduced herself and made some little conversation, and then it was time to start, but Shelley wasn't there yet. She came in a few minutes late, and it was fine, we were still breathing and centering our chakras, so no problem.

There are different kinds of yoga, and this kind is Vinyasa, or Flow yoga, which is a series of movements that flow into each other and it moves rather quickly once you have gone through the sequence, so you can work up a sweat and you get to use many muscles and they will all report back to you later in pain.

We were doing a series of sun salutations, which is how it usually goes, with some slight variation, depending on what the teacher feels like doing that night, and oh my goodness, it was hard work!

At some point we stopped to change what we were doing, and I whispered to the lady next to me that she was doing an amazing job, and she said she teaches yoga at another studio in town, so that explained why she was so good at it. Then she told me it's not a competition, but I assured her that everything is a competition, and she just laughed. Did I mention that she was in her sixties? Oh yes.

So then halfway through the series of sun salutations, when I was trying to inhale and exhale the way we were being directed to do, I got hyperventilated, and rather than pass out, I decided to sit down for a series, which worried Nurse Rachel a bit! I was fine, and I got up for the third series and finished the rest of the class.

That is my story of how I looked like a fool, when I was getting shown up at yoga by a woman 10 yrs older than me, and I had to sit down in the middle of it. How embarrassing.

Day 3: Eat Whatever You Feel Like Eating

Remember a week (or more) ago when I mentioned that all I wanted to eat was tomato and bacon sandwiches? It has been a couple of weeks of constant tomato and bacon sandwiches, and finally yesterday I finished the last tomato in the house, and I think I will not buy any tomatoes for a few days, so that I can eat something else.

I'm not tired of tomato and bacon sandwishes, not at all. I just think that in the interest of balanced nutrition, I might want to eat something else. Just for a few days. The Farmers Market isn't until Saturday, and I will probably go buy a few then. It's tomato season, though, and if anyone were to offer me some tomatoes from their garden, I would certainly make a few sandwiches!

In which I am shameless.

Sarah suggested that we take part in a blogging activity called 30 Days of Shamelessness. I think by "shameless" it means things that we are a bit ashamed of, but that we don't need to be; in other words to let your weird flag fly.

Day one is 'A show you watch that isn't cool,' and I had a hard time thinking of one, because hey, if I watch it, it must be cool, but then when I was watching the coverage of Hurricane Irene on the Weather Channel, I realized that was the one. I love the Weather Channel when there is any kind of extreme weather going on! If there is a blizzard, or a hurricane - well anytime, really, that Jim Cantore is standing outside wearing protective weather gear? I'm there!

I love to sit in my chair with my knitting on my lap, drinking a diet Pepsi, and watching the wind blow! It's harsh! The reporters get buffeted, and sometimes pieces of roofing or lawn furniture blow by!

Once when a big snow was blowing into Chicago, I turned on the Weather Channel (over the protests of Kim, who was probably watching Spongebob), and there was Jim Cantore, wearing a parka, standing at an empty intersection in the middle of the snowstorm with a microphone in his hand, and I ran to the kitchen yelling to Rich, "Come on, Jim Cantore is in Chicago! We have to go right now!"

Rich just rolled his eyes and laughed at me, but when I went back to the living room, Kim was putting on her shoes. It was latish, and I asked where she was going, and she said, "You said we were going to Chicago!" in an annoyed way, like why was I even asking when it was my idea, and I had to explain that I was just being funny because it was Jim Cantore! In Chicago!

So yeah, that is probably the show I watch that is the least cool. Although I have also been known to turn on the TV Guide channel and just let it roll by, over and over, while I knit and watch it hopefully, waiting for something, anything, to look good. That might be considered a bit lame.

In which I talk about my knitting.

When I mentioned the mystery shawl knitalong in my last post, I completely forgot that my friend Wendy might be interested in making one, too, so this is just a PSA for her - we're making a pattern that's on Ravelry - the 2011 Mystery Shawl: Earth & Sky. Go take a look at it, it's really fun, and it goes fast, so even if you start right now, you can get caught up by the weekend, and you will get the last clue when everybody else does.

If I can remember, I will take a picture of my shawl and post it here tomorrow. I have a couple of things to do when I get up tomorrow, and then I have my Microbiology class, so I might forget. Send me a reminder if you want to see a picture!

When this knitalong is over, Sharon from the yarn shop is going to start a sock knitalong for us, and I'm looking forward to that! She's going to start it after Labor Day, which will give everyone time to get their mystery shawl finished.

What I'm knitting today:

I promised someone that I would make some mittens for her to sell at Civil War re-enactments, so I'm making a few pairs for her. Last night I knitted a complete mitten, then decided it didn't look right, and ripped it all out, back to the wrist ribbing. Today I looked at the pattern again, asked another knitter for her thoughts on the mittens, and now I am reknitting what I tore out yesterday. I'm an idiot.

It's almost Fall!

Okay, our visitors have come and gone, and the only popsicles that got made were one batch of Jello pops. They were great, and they don't melt and run down your face and arms as readily as the Koolaid pops. I never made any other popsicles, because I was busy chasing after kids all day, except when they were napping, and then I was too busy collapsing and enjoying some quiet knitting time to bother with popsicles. So at this point, having made that one successful batch of popsicles, they come out to about $7.50 apiece.

It was fun to have Soren and Carl and their parents here, and Soren read the map of Asia to us, and Carl is very sweet and has a rabbit named Bunnicula. Maddy went to GenCon with the adults and had a time, and came back with a cold that she shared with her parents.

It is a lot quieter at our house now.

What I am knitting today:

I finished a lot of half-done projects in the last few weeks, and now I have started a shawl. It's really going to be more of large scarf, because I am getting tired of the long rows, so I'm going with the smaller, scarf option. It is a mystery project, in which we get one clue a week for four weeks and we knit up the new clue and then eagerly wait for the next clue. Several people from our knitting group are making it, and it's fun to see how everyone's project is going - we're all using different yarns in different colors, so every shawl is special and different! (Could I say different any more?)

What I am eating today:

All I want to eat, since I saw an article on the internet about tomato sandwiches that referenced Harriet the Spy, which is only the best book ever, and I am not even exaggerating when I say I have read it a hundred times, are tomato and bacon sandwiches! I am not usually a fan of plain raw tomatoes, and Kim will tell you that I don't even love red sauce on my pizza (to her disgust), but tomato and bacon sandwiches on whole-grain toast with mayo? Are the best thing in the world.

Rich's mom and dad were here last weekend to visit while all of the grandchildren were here, and they stopped at a farm stand to buy corn (fresh! it was so good!) and they got tomatoes, too, just in time for Tomato Sandwich Madness! When those tomatoes were gone, I got RA out of bed early on Saturday to go to the farmer's market and buy more tomatoes!

You know you want one, so go make a tomato and bacon sandwich! I use instant bacon, the kind that is already cooked and you heat it up in the microwave - it doesn't get grease all over the stove and make your whole house smell of bacon.

Why my hands smell like rubber gloves:

I am taking microbiology this semester and the first class was tonight. It is all very interesting, but I am a bit germ phobic, and I have been picking at my cuticles so I wore a rubber glove to protect myself from the live bacteria we were handling in the lab! Eek!

Laura is even more squicked out about the germs than I am, so she was using her herbal calming spray in class, and practically hyperventilating in the lab! I thought we'd have to carry her out on a stretcher, but she did okay. We're going to get used to it and be fine. (Pass the Purell.)

In which I make popsicles!

Rachel brought Maddy over tonight to play in the sprinkler. It's pretty funny to watch Maddy with the sprinkler, because she doesn't so much play in it as she skirts around it to avoid the water. The first time she played in it, she was more excited, and she happily ran over and put her head right up to the water, but she is more wary now.

I called a plumber to come and replace the missing faucet from the side of the house that has been gone since forever (actually since about the first year we moved in, but it's a long story involving freezing temperatures and elderly neighbors that I don't feel like getting into), and now we have a faucet! Then I bought a hose, and Rich found the old sprinkler in the garage, and now we are ready to entertain children! Except the ones who don't like to get wet.

Scott and Carolyn are coming to visit, and bringing Soren and Carl! The boys are going to stay with us for a couple of days while their parents go to get their nerd on at GenCon in Indianapolis, and that is why I'm making plans for children, the entertainment of. We're pretty excited!

Another brilliant idea that I had was to buy a popsicle maker. I read about it on one of the knitblogs, and it sounded very cool - it makes popsicles in just a few minutes, using Koolaid, or yogurt, or whatever. I immediately ordered one, and then the day before it arrived, I was in W@lmart and saw that they had a similar product, only theirs was much less expensive.

So anyway, my popsicle maker arrived, and I put it in the freezer overnight to get cold, like the directions said, and the next afternoon I made some Koolaid popsicles for Maddy! That was when Rich found out how much a popsicle maker costs and how steep the learning curve is for making them, and began to mock me for the whole briliant idea. He keeps asking me how many boxes of popsicles I could have bought for the price of my amazing popsicle maker. He needs to shut up.

So I am going to show him how fabulous my popsicle-making skills are! Diana told me that Jello makes better popsicles than Koolaid, so today I used Jello (and I also have instant pudding, for future pudding pops), and while Rich and Rachel got the sprinkler set up and dressed an angry, kicking baby in her Hello Kitty swimsuit, I was making popsicles! I made a bunch of them, and put them into freezer bags and stored them in the freezer, so next time Maddy comes over, we have popsicles!

She didn't actually get a popsicle today, though, because after she spent 5 minutes outside avoiding playing in the sprinkler, we brought her back inside and she was sitting on my lap eating a peach and watching a Youtube video of Elmo, when I saw the clock and realized I only had 10 minutes to get to my yoga class!

Rachel has been wanting to go to yoga, too, so we dropped Maddy off at the Y's daycare center (which Maddy is familiar with and she loves it!), and we went to yoga. Laura is out of town, but Shelley was there, and we put our mats down by her. It was a good class, and Rachel loved it! Yay! I'm so glad, because I love it, too, and I want to go more often! So we're going to see if they have two classes a week for the next session. We would like to go every day, but the Y doesn't offer that many classes, darn it!

What I'm knitting today:

I'm trying to finish two little tunic sweaters with hoods for Soren and Carl. Laura told me that this style - which is commonly seen on college students, more so a couple of years ago, but you still see them occasionally - is called a Drug Rug. So we refer to these sweaters as the Drug Rugs. Anyway they are cute and simple, and I'm making one with some blue/gray/brownish Noro that I bought from the sale table at the yarn shop, and the other one is made of a wool blend called Coffee Beenz, in olive green. The pattern can be seen here.

It was a day. A long day.

It's been a long day, but overall a pretty good one, minus those 45 minutes of my life I spent trapped in the car with Maddy screaming furiously in the back seat and there was nothing I could do that made her happy!

On Fridays I get up in the morning, having slept in my own bed the night before because I have Thursdays off, so that is nice. I almost always go out to breakfast with RA on Friday morning, but when I accidently woke up at 6:30, I thought it was too early to go out to eat.

I went back to bed for a while, and woke up again at 8:30 when I got a text from a knitting friend asking if I would be at knitting group in the afternoon. I texted back that I would be there, and then I went back to sleep.

When I woke up for real, it was 10 a.m. RA was ready to go out for breakfast, so I took a fast shower and was ready to go! We usually go to one of two restaurants, and each of them has their good points and also their bad ones, so we go to one for a while until the bad starts to outweigh the good, then we switch to the other.

Today we were tired of both of them, so we drove through McDonalds and got a breakfast sandwich. I hadn't had one in a long time, but today it was delicious. That and a large Diet Coke was a perfect breakfast.

We drove around in the country (it looked like a postcard, Diana!) so as to find the location of an outdoor wedding reception RA is invited to. We didn't find it this time, but we still have a couple of weeks.

We stopped at the health food store to get some Wheatgrass powder for Rich, as recommended by a friend for the cough and congestion he still has after the bronchitis in May. In the parking lot of the heatlh food store there is a farm stand in the summer, and they have the best peaches, so we bought peaches and sweet corn. I looked at the cantalopes, but they were so huge that I couldn't get excited about the idea of cutting them up, so I didn't buy one - this time. Maybe next week.

Later Laura picked me up for knitting, which was pleasant. Rachel met us there, and it was fun to see everyone. We had planned to leave together to go to Rockford for shoe shopping, so we picked up Maddy from Rachel's place, and took her to Shoe C@rnival, the happiest place on earth.

Maddy and I just walked around the shoe store while Rachel tried on shoes. Maddy was wearing her monkey backpack, with a tail for a leash. She looked at herself in the mirrors, and she found out that pushing the shoeboxes in is fun. They are all stacked up and she just shoved random boxes inward as she walked by.

We went to @ld Navy next door and bought cute shoes for Maddy, and a very beautiful new sweater for Fall. She found a tub full of soccer balls, and she really wanted to take one home, but she had to leave without it, and that is where things took a turn for the worse.

Starting with being mad about us not buying that ball for her, which looking back, I so wish we had done, she was mad about the cashiers, mad about getting back in the carseat, furious when we offered her some crackers, and she just screamed and flailed all the way home. Even her favorite Ben Folds and Cake songs didn't make her happy. By the time we got home I was ready to cry myself.

Rachel dropped me off and took that angry baby home, and I went into the house, where Rich had been enjoying a quiet afternoon of dogwalking and watching a Star Trek movie. He had also bravely drank a glass of wheatgrass powder mixed with, I think, water. He reported that it was disgusting. I didn't mean for him to just drink it like that, I was planning to make him a smoothie or something! I'll try that tomorrow and see if I can make it taste better.

I was so tired from the screaming car ride home, and I certainly didn't want to watch Star Trek, so I went up to my room and got into bed, planning to take my evening nap before work. I had a message from an old friend on my phone, so I called her and ended up talking for an hour! So that was a better end to my day, and now I'm at work.

Rachel says that poor baby was cranky all evening. Maybe she is getting more teeth?

In which Maddy has a lot of teeth and she knows how to use them.

I wasn't going to go to Knit Night because for the last two weeks it has been so crowded, and when there are too many people it isn't as much fun. It's just too big a crowd and then someone brings three little girls with her, and one of them eats a lot of sugar cubes from the coffee table, and gets a little too energetic, but it wouldn't be a problem (because she's not my kid) except the group is just too big.

So tonight I was thinking of not going, except that it really is nice to go sit and knit with everyone. Rich wanted to go to the movies to see Green Lantern, and I thought about going, but then Laura came over and we both almost swayed over to the idea of going to the movie and at the last minute, decided to go to the yarn shop instead.

It turned out to be a good night! There was about half the amount of people that were there last Tuesday, although the Annoying One was there, but when she was really shooting her mouth off, I ignored her (Personal Growth moment!) and texted a message to Laura's sister, instead of thinking about how very annoying the Annoying One is. And I was glad I went.

What I'm knitting today:

I finished a very cute little short-sleeved shrug for Maddy to wear with her black tutu. It was small and easy to make, and it took less than one skein of a random fuschia-colored wool I bought off of the sale table at the yarn shop. That pattern was fun and went fast (because of its small size, and also because it was knitted from the top down, my favorite way), so I bought another pattern from that website, Knitting Pure and Simple, and I started a hooded sweater for Carl. I think I will probably make one for Soren, too.

What I bought at a garage sale today:

I don't usually go to garage sales, ever! because I have plenty of stuff of my own, thanks, but today Rachel and I were out in the car and drove by a garage sale that had a little dog on wheels for a toddler to ride on, and we stopped to try it out for Maddy. It was just the right size for her, and then the guy who was running the sale brought out another little scooter for her to try, so we bought both of them.

We took the scooters back to my house and taught her how to sit on them and walk her feet to move them and also how to say "Wheee!" when she rides! She thought it was good entertainment, and Rachel took one of them home and we kept one at my house.

Why Maddy's breath smells like dog food:

I'm sure you can guess why Maddy has Alpo breath, but here's the other thing that she tried to eat - stitch markers! She snatched one and shoved it in her mouth, and then grabbed the other one in her pudgy fist! They are small rings of rubber, and it wouldn't hurt her to swallow one, but dammit, I wanted my stitch markers back!

It was easy enough to pry the one out of her hand, but Maddy has a mouthful of teeth like a shark, so you have to be pretty brave to go in there after something. I tried holding her upside down and shaking gently to make her laugh, hoping the stitch marker would fall out, but she was determined to keep it in her mouth.

Finally I cowboyed up and put my finger in her mouth and she bit down on it, but I didn't yank my hand away - I felt around and got that marker out of her mouth! I had a deep dent on the top and bottom of my finger where she sunk her little chompers in! Tonight there is still a faint pink mark, but I got my markers back, so I win!

In which it's life as usual.

What I'm knitting today:

I have been working on the Baby Blanket of Doom, but I am finished with my part of it and ready to pass it on. I didn't have the (very simple) pattern right in my mind, and I ripped it back twice before I got it right. It's a lovely soft blanket for one of the knitters in the Tuesday night group who is pregnant, and everyone is taking a turn to knit a few rows on it.

Why I have sore muscles today:

I went to yoga again on Monday, and we worked so hard! I was aching when we left the Y, so I took some ibuprofen when I got home, and went to bed to get my evening nap, but when I woke up I was so sore and stiff that I took a hot shower before work. I felt good after that, but ooooh! Today I have some sore muscles! It's a fun class, though.

How fast a baby can climb stairs:

Apparently a baby can climb stairs at the speed of light! Maddy was at our house this afternoon for an hour while Rachel and Ash went to the Y to swim laps, and she wandered off to the kitchen, presumably to take cans out of the pantry and put them into one of the other cupboards like she always does.

I was sending an email so I didn't follow her, and Rich was sitting on the floor with her toys, expecting her to come right back, and after a minute he got up to check on her, and then I heard him say, "Where did Maddy go?"

I said, "The kitchen," but he said she wasn't there, so he went to look in the dining room and I started up the stairs to see if she was in our bedroom. I was calling her as I went but she didn't giggle or answer me like she does when I call her, and she wasn't in any of the rooms on the second floor, so I went up the stairs to Rich's office, and there she was, playing with a tube of lotion! She had gone all the way to third floor just that fast!

How much fun is Kim having today:

I am assuming she's having a great time on her island vacation. I hope she doesn't have a mental breakdown without internet access for a couple of days! We should get to see some good photos when she gets back to Taiwan and updates her blog!

In which I have nothing else to report.

Kim actually wrote a blog post about her first day in Taiwan, and she has pictures that she says she will post later, so if you want to follow her adventures you can go here.

What I am knitting today:

I didn't get Kim's top done in time for her to take it with her, but it is almost done. I'll work on it and get it finished and she can have it when she gets back.

I took a bunch of baby sweaters that needed finishing to knitting group this afternoon, and got several of them finished! I'm pretty happy about that. There is only one Baby Surprise Sweater that still needs the shoulders seamed up, and the other sweater that I didn't finish is a Wallaby that I thought was all done, but it turned out that I need to finish knitting the hood! I'll do that when the weather is cooler and Maddy needs a sweater.

I just brought a sock to work on while I read tonight. It's knitted with a soothing blue and green varigated yarn that has aloe in the yarn so it's supposed to be good for your hands while you knit, and good for your feet when you wear them.

What I'm reading today:

I'm reading a paperback mystery that I bought at Walmart yesterday for research and inspiration. I am hoping to write a mystery novel to sell for the Kindle, but I need to get started! I stupidly bought a paperback, though, when I know I don't want to hold it open while I read! I like to read on my Kindle so that I can just prop it on my lap while I knit! What was I thinking? I don't know. I blame it on Maddy - she was distracting me in the store and I was just throwing things into the cart!

What other things I did today:

1. Went for a walk with Laura, her sister Rachel, and their little bulldog Annie. Are all bulldogs named Annie? In my experience, they are.

2. Attended Friday afternoon knitting group where I got urped on by a baby, and also brought home the group baby blanket to work on. We're all knitting a few rows on a baby blanket that will be a gift for a pregnant member of the Tuesday night knitting group.

3. Mailed a piece of paper that Kim needs that she forgot to take with her, and while I was at the P.O. I asked what it would cost to mail a five-pound package to Taiwan. The answer was 45 dollars, so I think that if Kim needs anything else, she can buy it there!

4. Talked to Kim on the webcam. She says the humidity is unbelievable! It takes forever for her hair to dry after a shower, and if she naps, she wakes up covered in sweat. Apparently Taiwan is hotter than Hell or Arizona. She held her Coke bottle up to the camera so that I could see that the label is in Chinese!

In which the dog thinks I am intruding.

I talked to Kim on MSN Messenger this afternoon. It was 4:30 a.m. in Taiwan. She was eating a bowl of ramen soup, and was wide awake. She said she had been traveling for 30 hours altogether, and had been on two planes, a bus and a train. It was quite the adventure for her.

When she got to Taipei, Taiwan, she had to get her bags from the baggage claim, then go to a machine to exchange some money so she could go to another machine to buy a phone card. She used the phone card to call her contact person to meet her at the train station.

Then she found the bus to take her to the train station. The contact person, who is a friend of the principle of the pre-school, helped her get her ticket to Hualien, and asked a couple of girls who were also boarding the train, to help Kim get off the train at the right stop.

When she arrived in Hualien, the principle met her at the train and took her to the apartment. What a journey!

So Kim is fine and arrived safely. When I talked to her again tonight, she said she had slept for about 3 hours, so that's good.

I had taken the night off on Tuesday so I could be up in the morning to go with Rich to take Kim to the airport. Rich was already asleep when I went upstairs to bed, and Sonny was asleep on the bed, too. Not in his usual place at the foot of the bed, though. Apparently when I am not home, Sonny sleeps on my side of the bed!

I was surprised to see Sonny laying in my place and I gave him a little push and told him to move, and he ignored me, so I gave him a push and told him to move again, and he growled at me! I had to use both hands to shove the dog to the end of the bed!

I read for a little while, and then I got up to brush my teeth. When I came back to bed, guess what dog was laying up in my place again? That's right, and he was very annoyed to be pushed out of it!

So tonight I came upstairs to read in bed and found the dog asleep on my side of the bed again. This time when I told him to move, he growled in a disgusted way, but he got up and went to the end of the bed. He has since rolled over and is laying right up against Rich's leg, as far from me as he can get

.

In which Kim goes on an adventure.

So we got Kim safely off to Taiwan today. We got up early to drove to the airport, and actually parked and walked in with her instead of just pushing her out on the sidewalk in front of the terminal and driving away. It's a good thing we did, too, because it turns out that her big bag was too heavy by about 7 lbs! She would have been charged 200 dollars for the overweight bag!

We helped her cram a few things into the smaller bag, and we took a couple of books and her notebook full of CDS home with us. She was taking the CDs because she hasn't moved all her MP3s to her new netbook, and she wanted her music. Once her bags were repacked, we sent her off to the security line. She reported later that she just went through the big xray thingy and did not get molested patted down by the TSA.

Rich and I had a leisurely drive back home, listening to an audiobook while he drove and I knitted. It was extremely leisurely, because the last few miles of the expressway before Rockford were under construction and the traffic was moving slo-o-owly.

When we got home I picked up everything Kim left strewn around the living room and carried it all up to her room and closed the door. I'm planning to clean that room this summer!

I didn't finish the top I'm knitting for Kim, but it is almost done, and I'm going to get it done this week, just so I can say it is finished! Then I will fold it neatly and save it in her room until she gets home.

When this top is done, I am going to do the finishing work on a few things that have been resting in the knitting basket(s) for a long time. I just want things to be done, so I can start a new project with a clear conscience. I think there are four baby sweaters that need a tiny bit of seaming, and some Civil War mittens for Suzy that need thumbs. That won't take long, and maybe I will take them all to knitting night and finish them there, with people to talk to (and listen to) while I work.

In which the air is too thick to breathe.

Oh my goodness, it is so humid tonight! When I left the house to go to work, you could see the air! It's so humid, the air is hazy! It may be 104 in Phoenix, but the air is so thick you can eat it with a spoon in Northern Illinois tonight, so hah! I...win?

Tonight was the first night of the summer concerts in the park, and we all went because we actually know someone who is playing in the city band this year. Rachel and Ash took Maddy to her first concert in the park, and guess what? She's really too little enjoy it. Rich and Rachel took her to play on some of the park equipment and to ride the carousel, instead.

Laura, Rachel and their mom were there, and various other friends, so it was fun and a nice little outing. When our kids were little, we went every Sunday night and sat on the grass on the hill behind the seats, with all of our friends and their kids, but since our kids have grown up they are no longer interested in rolling down the big hill or picking blackberries while fighting off giant mosquitoes.

Now that we have a reason to attend the concerts, it is fun again, and I hope we'll keep going. It will be something more to add to the list of Things We Can Do for Fun While Kim is Gone.

Kim and Sando are having their last gaming night at our house tonight. I think they are going to ride bikes together on Tuesday, so this is not the last thing they will do together before she leaves, but it's the last gaming night! (Until she gets back in December.)

The top I'm knitting for Kim is moving along and there is an actual possibility that I could finish it before she goes. I'm going to keep working on it!

(Insert cursing here)

I am so sick of spending my life at the cell phone store. I hate them very much right now. I got my replacement phone today, and took it to the store to get my service switched over from the loaner to the new phone. I waited forever in that freak show of a store, texting descriptive messages about the clientelle to Laura to amuse myself, and finally a clerk was free to help me, but something is still not right!

I can make and receive phone calls, but my email, facebook, and Twitter are still not right! I get a message that I don't have a data plan to allow me to access those things! Really? Because I pay a largish amount of money to your company every month to have that data plan, so I think someone has made a mistake somewhere!

I will have to drag back over there tomorrow to get this new problem straightened out, and you know what? I am very tired of this, and I am running out of nice.

I would write more, but I have to get back to my knitting!

Kim is going to Taiwan in a week, and we are ready! She has her passport, a visa, an armful of shots, and today I ordered an electric outlet adapter for her to take. I cannot imagine what else she might need, but whatever it is, she can buy it when she gets there.

I started knitting a very cute top for Kim because I wanted to knit something with the yarn made from recycled blue jeans, and tonight at Knit Night I thought it would be an exciting challenge to make the top in time for Kim to take it with her to Taiwan, which means that I need to finish it by next Wednesday morning! I blame Laura for this madness!

Therefore I will be knitting this top every waking moment for the next week. Good thing Kim has a new video game to play that will amuse me while I knit. She bought the new Harvest Moon game for the Wii yesterday and it is so frantically fun that she played it far into the night last night and all day today. I will be sitting in the living room watching her play and play and play!

In other news, I seem to be DEATH on cell phones and have killed another Blackberry. I will be getting a replacement phone in the mail tomorrow, and in the meantime they gave me a loaner phone to use. I could not be happier, and it was totally worth the two hours I spent waiting in the cell phone store while they dinked around with my phone and waited on many, many other people, to get this loaner. Not like last time when I went to the smaller cell phone store on the other side of town because it is never crowded and I didn't want to wait. They didn't give me a loaner! I was without a phone for three days! I will always choose the crowded busy store - I have learned my lesson.

In which I am so sick, but I still have to do things.

I finally have the bad cold that everyone else has had, and I'm not happy about this. I went to work last night and felt terrible for the first couple of hours because I just couldn't breathe, but then Rachel had the bright idea for me to call Kim to bring me a decongestant pill from home, so I called Kim and she came to my rescue. It was 1:30 a.m. when I called her, but hey, she was up!

With the decongestant and much ibuprophen, I got through the night and was so happy to come home this morning and get into my bed! I didn't sleep well, but I slept, and now I'm up, sitting in my chair in the living room, thinking of going back to bed.

How the trip planning is going:

Kim got her passport in just 10 days (yay!), and now she needs to go to the Taiwanese consulate in Chicago to get her visa. She called this morning to make an appointment, and we are scheduled to go on Friday. That might change to Wednesday, we'll have to see how next week goes.

We have an appointment at the health department on Tuesday for a consultation with a Travel Expert, and to get the shots she'll need. It sounds like she will only need Hepetitis A, and possibly Typhoid. Ugh.

So things are moving along.

Why I am sick of Pokeballs:

Yesterday I went to the Post Office with RA to mail packages to our grandchildren. I had a couple of books for Soren and Carl, and a very cute plush Pokeball that Kim bought for Soren at an Anime conference she went to in St. Louis a few months ago. After I mailed the package, actually, even as I was putting the Pokeball into the envelope, I started thinking that there is only one Pokeball and two boys, and that is not a good equation.

When I got home I called Scott to consult with him, and he agreed that Carl is certainly going to want a Pokeball if Soren has one, because Carl is not a baby now, he is big! Big like Soren! Doing whatever Soren does!

So I did a quick search on the internet and found an identical plush Pokeball on Etsy, and ordered it to be sent to their house, and then I called Scott back and told him that whichever package arrives first, he will have to hold it until the other one gets there, so that there will be two Pokeballs! Scott assured me that he can do this, but I think I had better tell Carolyn too, because you know husbands forget to tell you things you need to know.

Why Henhouse is a funny word:

On Wednesday night I worked the 3-11 shift at work because my schedule is very different and mixed up for two weeks, and I am tired of telling the story of why, so just accept that it is and move on.

When I got home shortly after 11, Kyle and Kim were sitting in the living room, surrounded by Arbys bags, playing a video game that takes place in a futuristic Old West. They were talkiing in terrible Western accents, and I asked them to please stop because they were so terrible as to be painful and I was getting this cold, so I was not a well woman, and their accents were killing me!

I called Rachel, who was still up because we are all Night People, and midnight is not too late to go to the store. I needed to get some Echinaecia because I was getting a cold and Kathy at work had recommended it. (Note: I am still sick, so it was not a miracle cure!)

While I waited for Rachel to pick me up, I called Diana to whine about my cold, and also about the terrible accents I was hearing. She said she would be so happy if anyone at her house was playing a video game to entertain her, and if she was here, she would be begging them to talk Western for her!

When I got back home with my Echinaecia, I told Kim and Kyle that Diana said if she were here she would beg them to talk Western for her, and Kyle said, "She wouldn't have to beg!" and then they both went on babbling in their twangy accents about gunfights and henhouses.

So that is what's going on here. I am going back to bed to rest, and hope this cold goes away.

In which a baby gets so mad!

So here's the thing - everyone around me has been sick - Rich has had, and is almost over, bronchitis, Ash has been sick and now his went into an ear infection, Rachel has been bravely resisting a cold because she has had to keep working, so she has sternly kept hers under control, but still, she has had one, and now Maddy is getting sick. Kim is the only member of my immediate family who has not been sick for the last three weeks, and that is only because she hasn't been here until just a week ago.

Through all of this, I have stayed healthy! I have not been around all these sick people very much, I have avoided contact with them and washed my hands diligently, but now, tonight, I am feeling the first little hint that I might, possibly, maybe, be getting a cold! Oh noes!!

I am not going to get sick! I am going to drink a dose of EmergenC every hour tonight and I'm going to take ibuprophen, and I'm going to ignore any incoming symptoms and I will be just fine!

Rich, Kim and I went to dinner at the Chinese buffet tonight so Kim could practice her Chinese language skills in conversation with the waitresses. Rachel met us there, with Maddy, who was a bit flushed and had a little temperature and a hint of a runny nose.

Dinner went well, with Maddy getting a little cranky toward the end, but she really held up pretty well, and would have been better if she had had a little baby Tylenol to take. I need to start carrying that in my purse!

Kim talked to the waitresses, and showed them a letter that a friend had written to her in Chinese characters, and the waitresses were pretty impressed that an American wrote that letter! Kim has been translating the letter into English, and now she is going to write back, so she can practice her Chinese writing. So that was fun. We told Kim we would keep going back to the restaurant often so she can practice talking until she leaves for Taiwan.

After dinner we all went back to our house so that Maddy could get some Tylenol and play outside. We took her for a walk - she rode in the stroller and Kim walked Sonny on his leash. We walked our usual two-mile walk, and then we turned to walk into the cemetary so that Maddy could get out of the stroller and run around among the tombstones.

Which was a good idea, because there is open space to run around in, and the cemetary is enclosed by fencing to keep the baby contained, but there was a yappy little dog on the lawn across the street, barking it's foolish little head off and Maddy would not stop trying to go over and get a closer look at the friggin' dog!

We could not distract her at all, no matter how shiny or interesting a tombstone we showed her, as soon as Yappy Von Fleabag started barking again, Maddy wanted to go over and cross the street to get to his miserable yapping self. Finally we put a furious baby back in the stroller and wheeled her tantrumy butt back to our house, where she walked around the yard and picked up sticks to give us until her fingers were so cold (and we were tired of our yard), that we had to take her back inside.

In which Kim is planning a trip.

So Kim called me at work at 1:30 on Thursday morning, and said she had gotten an email from the owner of the preschool in Taiwan where she had applied to work next January. They had a teacher cancel suddenly, and they wondered if Kim could come in July, instead?

Kim was very excited and wrote back immediately to let them know she could do it! Now we have to get all of her paperwork and shots and whatnot done, so she can leave at the end of June to be there ready to start teaching July 4.

She exchanged several emails with the owner of the preschool over the next couple of hours - it was daytime in Taiwan - and I started googling for information on the fastest way to get a passport. She'll need a visa, too. And some shots. We've got a few things to do!

When we got up Thursday afternoon, we ran right out and got the passport application taken care of. So that's done.

Kim is excited about going to Taiwan and improving her Chinese. We just got her home from school, so we're a little sad to have her leave again so soon, but also, I am hoping she'll get everything she brought home from college put away before she goes! She's taken some of it up to her room, but there are still boxes in the living room and in the kitchen.

In other news, I am finally finished with Chemistry. Woot!

In which my phone is a problem.

Rich went down to E-ville on Thursday - just a quick run down and back to get a load of Kim's belongings to bring home. She wanted to stay until Saturday to say goodbye to all of her friends, so she ended up being the last one out of the apartment, and brought home her own stuff, plus whatever the other girls left behind that was worth taking.

So Kim is home, and her stuff is slowly being carried out of the main floor of the house, and stashed in her room, or in the basement. She is washing her clothes, and getting a lot of sleep, and by next week she'll be ready to start looking for a job.

My phone has been acting up again, and the last time the 'fix' was to update the operating system, but the problems are back now, except they are worse. I took it back to the store again and this time I am getting a replacement phone. It should be delivered tomorrow!

I can hardly wait to get the new phone, since one of the problems (but not the worst one) is that the bottom line of keys, including the space bar, will not work. It's not impossible to type messages that can be read without a space bar, but when you don't have spaces AND you can't type an N, M, or C, it is almost impossible.

Knit Night

What I am thankful for today:

I'm thankful that Laura came over with her knitting and her (finished) chemistry homework, and held my hand while I worked on my chemistry homework, but not literally, because then she wouldn't have been able to knit! She kept me going until all of the homework was finished, even the optional parts!

What I am learning from knitting night at the new shop:

I am learning to knit quietly and let other people talk, something I am usually not very good at. I am learning, but not fast enough, that if someone else's project is ugly or dumb, it is not necessary for me to point it out. I am learning to be tolerant even when people are going on about stupid things like sports - just because I am not interested, doesn't mean that other people shouldn't be. Even if I think they shouldn't be.

What I am cooking today:

Nothing, because it was Knit Night! Yesterday I made Tater Tot Casserole, however, and it was so good! I had some leftover casserole today.

How many times Maddy and I went up and down the stairs at my house today:

I couldn't even tell you, but it was a lot. She went into all of the bedrooms to look around, and when the cat sees Maddy coming, that cat shoots out of there. A cat who is peacefully sleeping on your bed can go from zero to sixty in no time at all when a baby comes toddling in, saying, "Cat!"

What I am reading today:

Charmed Life by Diana Wynn Jones. I think that is my favorite book ever. I have given so many copies to people, because I want everyone to enjoy it. When Jenna came to live with us, she told me about a book she read when she was younger and it was her favorite book, but she loaned it to someone and never go it back. I asked her what it was about, because I thought I could help her find it in the library or a bookstore, but she couldn't remember enough about it. Then one day she came to me, and she was so excited because she had been reading a book she found on a shelf in our house, and it was the book! It was the amazing book that she had loved! And it was Charmed Life. You should read it.

What I am knitting today:

1. A shawl. It's the Brandywine shawl. I saw a photo of a finished shawl on someone's Ravelry page (Pynnski), and it was so beautiful, I had to have one! I had a big hank of handpainted yarn from the Fiber Festival, and I started it, with hope and doubt. Hope that I could knit it, and doubt that I could follow lace instructions without messing them all up, because I am terrible at knitting lace! It's moving right along, though, and I'm very excited about it!

2. A Jayne Hat. I made one for Scott three years ago, and now a friend of Kim wants one. It's kind of a joke, and if you walk down the street wearing that hat, everybody knows you aren't afraid of anything.

3. Socks for Paula. The socks are pretty but a pain to work with. She brought me some yarn made of microfiber, and it's pleasantly cotton-y, but the thing about cotton is that it has no give, so my hands get tired of working on it.

4. A Chicknits classic cardigan for Kim. I'm making it with mauve Galway yarn, and it's coming along slowly.

5. Still working on the classic cardi for Kelly, too.

That's all the news for now.

In which there was knitting. Also, cookies!

So there is much rejoicing tonight as a new yarn store opens! In my town! I've been keeping an eye on the place since I noticed it a few weeks ago - there was a sign that said it was opening soon, and then on Friday I was downtown and saw a woman sitting in a chair inside the store, knitting!

I waved at her and she beckoned me inside! There wasn't a lot in the store, but she said she was waiting for a delivery, and she let me look around. She said they would be opening on Monday, and there would eventually be classes offered, and it all sounded very exciting!

Then yesterday I was gone all day, so the store opened without me, but this afternoon Rachel and I took Maddy to her first yarn store! Maddy thought it was just great! There was lots of open floor space for toddling around, and there were yarn balls to pull off of shelves while Rachel and I ran along behind her, putting the yarn back on the shelves!

I texted Laura to come see the store, and she was there in just a few minutes, and by then we were having to distract Maddy by letting her pull everything out of my purse, and she was sitting on the floor wearing a necklace I had put in my purse just for her to play with, and on the floor around her were my wallet, some random receipts and lists, and she had pulled one of the needles out of my current sock project.

Rachel had to go home to get ready for work, anyway, so she took Maddy, and left me there with Laura, who then picked out yarn for a hat and started making a swatch to find the right size needles. I sat with her, and fixed the knitting that Maddy pulled out.

Tuesday is going to be Knitting Night at the shop, so I called another friend (Paula, a friend from work), and told her to come and check it out, and bring her knitting! The official start time for the group knitting was 7, so we had time to go to my house to start some dinner for Rich first.

When we got to my house, Rich was already gone, but I threw together some Curried Chicken and left it for him to eat when he got home, and we went back to the yarn shop to knit!

It was so nice to sit with other knitters and just knit! There was just a small group tonight (Paula, Laura and me! Who needs any more than that?), but I think it's going to grow, and I'm very excited about it. It's so great to have a yarn shop in town again!

In which someone got fingerprinted.

What is the world coming to when Diana is shaming me by writing in her journal more often than I am?? I just don't have anything going on, just the same old thing, blah blah laundry blah blah walked the dog blah blah made/didn't make dinner blah blah knitting. Now you know that's not very interesting!

Today I actually left town and did something, so I have something to write about! Wooo!

What I did today:

Laura Chem (all of my friends from Chemistry are listed in my phone contacts by their first name, with Chem as their last name. Diane Chem, Joann Chem, Nick Chem, Kim Chem... Kim Chem. Heh.) So where was I? Oh right, so Laura is applying for her Illinois license for massage therapy so she can get a job in Illinois instead of commuting to Wisconsin all the time, but part of that process is to be digitally fingerprinted, and apparently the closest place to do that is in Rockford.

Rockford is a longish drive, so she asked if I wanted to ride along to keep her company, and you know me, I will ride from Hell to Israel if I have my knitting and a pop to drink, so I said I would go along.

We left at two in the afternoon, but first we had to stop and get a pop and a hamburger for me because I had just gotten out of bed, and then Laura needed to put a couple of things in the mail, so we stopped by the post office, but after that we were on our way.

The drive to Rockford was uneventful, and I did several rows on my knitting (the yellow sock for RA). To my delighted surprise, our destination turned out to be not a police station, but a detective agency! We were greeted by a tall thin woman with big blonde hair, wearing a leopard-print scarf to accessorize her sweater and pencil skirt. She was wearing heels, too, and the overall impression was that she looked quite a bit like a Barbie doll.

Detective Barbie allowed us to use the bathroom, and I noted the collection of hair products in the glass-fronted cabinet in there, but then she got a bit pissy with me when I asked about the pink camera on her desk. She told me I could wait in the lobby while she did Laura's fingerprints, so I wandered out and read a book on my Kindle, and knitted on the yellow sock while I waited.

There was a table display in the lobby of gift cards you could purchase - in case your friend has been wondering if her husband is cheating on her? I think those would make pretty hilarious Christmas gifts!

When we left there, we kind of felt like we had come all that way, and that we should do something in town while we were there. We headed over to the main drag of strip malls, and went to see what we could find at Borders. We each bought a couple of books and I looked at a stuffed rabbit for Maddy ("Cat!"), but I didn't buy it.

We stopped to get a turkey sandwich on the way home, and it was a really great sandwich. Too bad the restaurant is called Beefaroo, I'm embarrassed to tell anyone where we ate.

We stopped at Laura's house when we got back to town, and there was cake, and her 'girls", including my new girlfriend, Mazey, were so happy to see us! All the girls jumped in the car for the ride to my house!

By the time I got home, it was really time for my evening nap, and I was ready for it. I slept for a couple of hours and when I woke up, Rich and Sonny were ready for bed! I got out of the bed and they got in it!

So there you go, that was my day. If anything else happens, I'll let you know.

And the heroine always has red hair.

It's been a busy weekend, and I'm trying to remember what we did. For one thing, Kim was here this weekend, and she went back to school this afternoon. She got here Thursday night, and before she came home, we had made plans for cooking her favorite things, and letting her rest and relax, but things didn't work out quite like that.

What we planned to cook this weekend:

Kim told me she wanted salmon for dinner one night, and another thing she wanted was roast beef hash. Neither of those things happened. Salmon was so expensive I couldn't bring myself to buy any, and we ended up with pizza that night, and then I was gone most of the next day, so I didn't cook anything for dinner at all and she and Rich got some takeout.

What we made instead of dinner:

It was Kim's birthday last weekend, and we wanted to make a birthday cake for her while she was home, so I bought a cake mix, and was going to make a Jello cake, but I am not actually sure how to make one! I asked RA about it, because she makes them all the time, and she said if I gave her the cake mix and the Jello, she would make it for me, and that's what happened with the cake. It was delicious!

The other thing that we made, and this I actually did make, well okay, now that I think about it, Rachel made it and I just chased Maddy around the house and kept her out of the way, but anyway, the thing was that Kim said she wanted salt-water taffy. I didn't think we would be able to just buy some, because isn't that something you can only get when you go on vacation, like when you go to Mackinaw Island?

Then I kind of remembered a long time ago, my friend and I wanted to cook something, and her mother helped us make taffy in a pan on the stove, so I thought maybe we could do that and it would be really fun! Didn't pioneers used to make taffy and it was an evening's entertainment? I got a recipe on the internet, and I borrowed a candy theromometer from RA, and Rachel came over with Maddy, and we worked on making candy.

Can I just tell you, that making taffy isn't as easy as you'd think, and what we ended up with was a pile of hard, sticky candy, a lot of dirty dishes and a big blister on Rachel's thumb. I think that pioneers were easily amused.

What I did at the Fiber Festival:

Rachel and I were up early (for us) on Saturday morning, and we were pretty excited to take Maddy and go to the Fiber Festival! They have yarn! We looked at everything, and we saw people that we knew, and we maybe bought a little yarn...

Rachel took Maddy home for a nap, and I went home to fondle my new yarn (and to wake up Kim). RA kind of wanted to go the Fiber Fest, and I was supposed to go back to meet Laura too, which is why I was back there again in the afternoon, but I only bought one circular needle, that's all, and that other bag of yarn I carried home was not purchased by me! RA doesn't knit, but she buys yarn for me, and I knit it into socks for her - do you see how everybody wins?

What I am reading today:

I just finished the new book, City of Fallen Angels, and I am thinking that maybe I need to take a break from Urban Fantasy for a while. I'm feeling a bit sickened by all the melodrama, and the professions of undying love! Can anyone just get a grip on themselves and maybe do something relaxed and ordinary like take a class or eat a hamburger? No, it's got to be all magic and the love that burns like fire and fighting with your last breath and your amazing magical skillz to save the person you brought back to life (magically) because without them you can't even freaking breathe or walk your dog. I might have spent too much time with this book, but I couldn't put it down, even while I was mocking it in my head.

What Kim forgot when she left:

When kids come home from college for the weekend, they always leave something behind - like their glasses, or their retainer, or oh, I don't know, a dryer full of their jeans!?! So Kim was about an hour away from home when she remembered that she never got her jeans out of the dryer. I told her to use her (my) Old Navy card that I gave her for emergencies (and yes, there are emergencies in which a person needs a pair of jeans and this is the perfect example of one), but then later I thought that I will have to mail a package to her this week when the birthday present I ordered arrives, and I can put in a pair or two of her jeans, and anyway it's not like she has nothing to wear, because I know she has clothes down there at school. So I called her back and said I could send her some jeans and also the t-shirts she left drying in the dining room, and she said did that mean she couldn't go shopping?

So that was our weekend, and I'm back at work tonight, knitting socks for RA with some beautiful merino sock yarn that is hand-dyed in pale yellow, and I'm going to look for something else to read on my Kindle, maybe something with no frantically attractive supernatural creatures?

In which I take a test and am kissed by a dachsund.

We had the second big test for our chemistry class tonight. Diane told me a couple of days ago that she dreamed that when she took the test, she marked all of the answers "C" and got a B on the test, so we joked that she would mark all of her answers that she didn't know as Cs and I would mark mine Bs.

Well, before we took the test in class, we talked about it again, and that is pretty much what I ended up doing. I actually knew the answer to one of the questions, and a few more of them I made (sort of) educated guesses on, and the rest? I marked them B. So we'll see how that works out for me. Diane said later that she did the same thing, marking the ones she didn't know with C. I think Nick mixed them up a little more than that, but it was mostly guessing on his part also.

After class people were complaining talking in the parking lot, and when almost everyone was gone, Laura invited me to come walk the dogs with her, and I said I would, but then told her that I was going to leave my phone in the car to charge up while I was gone, because it was almost dead. One of the guys from class was still standing there near her, and when he heard me say that, he offered to give me the battery from his phone and take my dead one! I gladly accepted his charged battery, and felt guilty for mocking him behind his back to my friends earlier!

So Laura and I went to her house and took her "girls" for a walk in her neighborhood. It was fun, and then when she drove me back to get my car at the college, all the girls jumped in the car to ride along. They each have their spot in the car - the poodle sits on the driver's lap, the doxie sits on the front passenger's lap, and the (English Bulldog?) other dog sits in the back seat. That doxie gave me a couple of kisses while we were riding, and slipped me the tongue! I think we might be going steady.

Maddy came over for an hour tonight before class, and it was the first time I've seen her this week, I think! I was going to walk her around the block in the stroller, but when we went outside she started toddling away across the lawn toward my neighbor Judy's house, so I followed along, guiding her away from the street. I coaxed her into Judy's backyard, where there is a wooden bench swing, and we sat on that, which Maddy found delightful, until the dog in the next yard started barking!

There is a high wooden fence all around the dog's yard, so I couldn't show the dog to Maddy, she could only hear the loud barking! It's a friendly dog, but Maddy has no way of knowing that, and I'm not sure she even knows that dogs bark like that, because the only dog she knows is my dog Sonny, who rarely barks at all, and never when Maddy has been around.

Judy came out of the house to say hello, and when Maddy saw her, she started to cry and reached out for Judy, who must look like a comforting grandma-type, because hello? I was holding her! Then Maddy came back to me, and we took her around toward the front of the house and sat on the porch with her, but when I gave her a toy to hold, I saw that her little hands were trembling, and she still looked like she might burst into tears at any moment.

The dog stopped barking when he couldn't hear us talk any more, and we got Maddy to sit in a little chair on Judy's porch and eventually she laughed and forgot about that dog. I hope so! I hope it won't become the dark beast that haunts her baby dreams!

In which Sarah is showing me new ways to waste time.

It's all my sister Sarah's fault that I have spent hours on facebook, looking for entertainment and farming. Now she has discovered Twitter, and I am getting sucked into that along with her.

Actually I've been on Twitter for quite a while, I just don't really twizzle much, because I feel that when I do tweet something, it should be of such astounding wit that people reading it will writhe in envy, but I rarely have anything like that to share.

Also, Rich is all about the Twitter, and has about a million followers, so many, in fact, that the last time I bothered to tweet something he didn't even see it because it was lost in the shuffle of his many twiddles, the avalanche of tweets that he has rolling across the bottom of his screen constantly. Are that many people really interested in his rate of Twinkie consumption or how many ladybugs are crawling on his keyboard? My point is that he is always babbling about Twitter like it is a Big Deal, and I lost interest in it because for me, he was gimpifying* it.

So now Sarah is all Twitterpated and is Tweeting right, left and center, and following people and whatnot, so I updated my profile, and followed some people (no one you've ever heard of), and I may possibly even tweet in the near future! Wait for it, it's going to be legend...

If you want to follow me on Twitter (and who wouldn't?), I'm @oozaroo. Don't expect too much.

*Gimpify (v.) To make a previously cool thing lame.

In which I had a great title, but I forgot it.

As I was falling asleep tonight, before my evening nap, I thought of a great title for this journal entry, and I thought I would remember it when I woke up, but no, I forgot it. Darn.

So I woke up at 2 this afternoon, like I had planned, because RA and I were going to pick up some Papa Murphys pizza to take to someone who was supposed to have a minor outpatient surgery today, but as soon as I woke up, I had a call from RA to say that the surgery was cancelled. We didn't need to take the pizza to our friend, but we went to get pizza anyway, because I wanted the chicken, bacon and artichoke pizza for myself for dinner!

Diana and Laura were coming over to do the Chapter 16 homework and quiz, and Laura brought some great brownies, so with the pizza (and the desert pizza!) and her brownies, we had plenty of food to keep us going while we slaved over chemistry! We actually managed to get it all done in three hours, and had a wonderful feeling of accomplishment at the end.

I didn't do anything else today, just got up and went to get a big pop and the pizzas, then home to do chemistry. I came to work a few minutes early tonight and took some leftovers up to Rachel's floor for her to snack on tonight.

In which I slept all day.

I worked last night and when I went home this morning I went to bed just a little after 8, and then I slept all day! I usually get up about 2 so I can go out with RA to get a big pop and do some shopping or errands, but today I didn't go out at all.

What I cooked today:

Because I didn't go out, I had a little lunch at home and then did some laundry and made supper for Rich and I. It was fast and easy with almost no preparation - I put frozen tilapia fillets in a baking pan that I sprayed with cooking spray and baked them for a half hour, and cooked two sweet potatoes in the microwave for 10 minutes. I thought about steaming some broccoli but that didn't happen.

What I am knitting today:

Still working on the Wallaby for Maddy in size 4. The baby Wallaby is done, it just needs some ends woven in. That always takes longer than the actual knitting because of my dread of finishing. What usually happens is that a finished object will wait until I have two or three other things to finish and then I'll do tham all at once, usually at the last minute when someone needs one of them. Or when there is something boring and long on TV and I need something to do with my hands while I ignore it watch (like if Rich is watching golf or 2001, A Space Odyssey).

What I am reading today:

I'm almost done with Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, and then I'll have to look through my Kindle archive and see what else I've got. I bought a book written by someone I know, and RA insists that it's good, so I will probably force myself to read that next, and then I can read the murder mystery I got as a free book today.

What Maddy did at Nan's house today:

Maddy came over for an hour tonight, and here is what she did. First, she had to go upstairs because she loves to go up the stairs! Sonny was so excited to see her, and he has to stay near her in case she drops something edible, even if she isn't carrying any food at all, because you just never know!

So Maddy and Sonny went upstairs. She went into Kim's room, which is a treasure trove, but we have put everything she can't touch up too high for her to reach, so she just walks around and looks at everything and checks the bed to see if the cat is sleeping there.

Maddy left Kim's room and went into the bathroom, where she looked in the cupboard, looked in the toilet (then I closed the lid), and headed for the dog's upstairs water bowl. I hastily moved that because last time she was in the bathroom, she spilled the dog's water all over the floor and my socks got wet! Ick!

Then she went into my room, where I threw her onto the bed, thinking she would like that, but she found it too scary, so we just slapped the surface of the bed and yelled Boom! Well, I yelled Boom, and she laughed, over and over, until I got tired of it. Then she looked at everything on the headboard while I made the bed with both Maddy and Sonny on it. That's right, I changed the sheets on my bed with a baby and a dog ON the bed! I am amazing like that.

After the bedmaking, Maddy was ready to go back downstairs, and Rich had some toys out to entertain her with. She watched her ZhuZhu hamster run around, and then she carried a toy cell phone off to the kitchen (probably to make a private call). I followed her to the kitchen to move the dog's food and water bowls up out of her reach before she could make dog soup with them, because dogs? They don't like dog soup.

I filled a coffee cup with Sugar Pops and we went back to the living room, where Maddy sat on my lap and ate cereal, one piece at a time, and watched some Sesame Street music videos for a while. This is why I can never get the Wubba Wubba song out of my head!

Rich enticed her back to the toys then, and they played with a fun toy that has a plunger in the top and when you push it down the insides turn around and around. It was a present for Maddy from Rich's parents when she was about 6 months old, and she has always liked it, but she couldn't push down the plunger by herself until recently, so we had to sit with her to plunge it for her entertainment. She can almost do it herself now, so I made a little video of her and Rich playing with it. I was planning to send it to his parents, and I will when I figure out how to send it from my phone! The best part is that you can hear Rich in the background, singing a little song about the dog's dirty butt.

And then Ash came back to get Maddy, and I went upstairs and took a nap on my clean bed.