Ask Poops, Please

It's Been a Good Run, But...

2011-01-14T13:56:00.004-05:00

All good things must come to an end.

Though it's not so much an end as a transition, is it? I'm moving my blogginess over to Wordpress. It's nothing personal against Blogger. Blogger is easy to use, but I've outgrown it, I think.

The new blog is up and running and it's still called Ask Poops, Please, so if you follow me here, you will want to pop over there and click the "subscribe" button to continue along with me.

I'm not going to transfer all this stuff over there because I can't import the pictures with it, so I think I'll leave it here for the time being and link to it.

Come on over to the new place and help me get settled in! I just opened a bottle of wine and a can of fancy mixed nuts...

Sexy

2011-01-12T14:30:00.007-05:00

What's sexier than mittens with a penis motif worked into the cuffs? Nothing, that's what.

I must give credit where credit is due. The penis motif in question is from the delightfully monikered PENISPOOPWAFFLECAKE Sock designed by Wendy Pohlhammer and available as a free Ravelry download here.

The actual penis motif is worked over five stitches, though in the original pattern she alternates the weiners with lace inserts. I cast on 35 sts and worked 7 motifs around the cuff which made ribbing that pulled the cuff in and the bobble scrotums give a nice, almost picot-like edging. From there I did a couple rows of reverse stockinette and then to switch the top to regular stockinette I just added a single column of knit stitches leading from each "head" that gradually "oozed" out into a "puddle" of straight knitting.

From there I worked a regular old thumb gusset and did the rest of the top in plain old mitten fashion.

I call my version of the pattern "Ribbed For Her Pleasure." (Though the poor thing looks kind of sad laying there all limp and unblocked in the snow.)

Sexxxxxxy.

Expectations

2011-01-05T13:23:00.002-05:00

I expected to like being a mother a lot more than I do.

Looking back on it all, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I don't like kids. I mean, I like my kids, but I don't like yours. I will take your word for it that they're awesome. I'm like Ron White and dogs. "I love dogs. No, that's not true. I love my dog. I don't give a shit about your dog."

But in my own defense, I feel like I was sold a bill of goods. You pick up any book or magazine about child-rearing and they make it seem like having babies is the damn be-all-and-end-all of existence. They do not give you any clue as to what is really in store, though how could they? I have a feeling that child-rearing books are written by people who have a personal affinity for parenting. After all, it stands to reason they're thinking that if you're having a child, you share that passion. Which is why I am of the opinion that at least a few people who don't really like kids should write child-rearing books. Let me explain...

I based my decision to have kids on an over-arching belief that having children was an amazing, fantastic experience. From the day the two pink lines appeared, I girded my loins and prepared to become the Best Mother EVER.

I started with my carefully thought out birth plan. Of course I'd explored all the avenues and logically chose to have a natural birth because it's the way women were meant to have children. (I can't even say that with a straight face anymore. The Internet really needs a sarcasm font.) There would be candles and focusing exercises and it would all turn out great. I expected to come out of it as SuperBirthWoman, fount of all life. It would be magical, and a defining moment in my life as a woman.

Of course the books and classes neglected to mention that there's a reason all other pain in human experience is compared to childbirth. It hurts. I mean, it hurts a lot. I don't think you get me...it's lose-your-fucking-mind painful. And I did. Lose my fucking mind, that is. I couldn't focus. I couldn't breath. I could swear and I did, a lot and very, very loudly. I begged that nurse for my epidural and when the medication hit my system, I realized then and there that I'd been lied to. What I expected was nothing like what I experienced.

I became a druggie the day I realized that powerful painkillers equal bliss. Bliss, I tell you. No pain. No anxiety. I could hear what people in the room were saying. I could form coherent thoughts. I could express myself without the excessive use of profanity. I could sleep through the worst of the contractions. The person who invented the epidural should get a Nobel prize.

They woke me up to push and baby was there. To this day, three kids later, I don't get why women make such a big goddamn deal about that one moment in time. It's one tiny bit of what parenting is, and I think it's grossly overrated. No, no, the birth was the easy part.

I expected that I would breastfeed my new baby daughter, deeply in love with her from the first gaze into her eyes, nourishing her as every mammal on the planet is designed to. (Here is where I would use the font described as "dripping with sarcasm".) I had visions of cradling my newborn lovingly in my arms, nursing him or her in the soft glow of pre-dawn, a beatific smile on my face. What I experienced was a newborn with the suction power of a Kenmore shop vac. The first time I latched Mary on, I'm pretty sure she dislodged my spleen. "She's got a great latch!" they said. "She nurses like a champ!" they assured me. "Are you okay?" they asked, as tears streamed down my face and the hard plastic bed rails took on finger-shaped indentations.

"Is it supposed to hurt this much?" I asked.

"It's uncomfortable at first, but you'll get used to it."

I expected it to be uncomfortable at first. However, this was not uncomfortable. Nay, nay. Having a scratchy tag in your t-shirt is uncomfortable. Having a wedgie is uncomfortable. Panty hose are uncomfortable. What I experienced was not uncomfortable. It was painful. With God as my witness, I'm convinced I could have latched her on and vacuumed the living room.

But I soldiered on, nursing her for at least 20 minutes on each side, and then holding her while she slept because if I put her down she screamed until she got the boob again. As it was, if she went an hour between feedings I counted myself lucky. If she wasn't eating, she was screaming bloody murder. And after the first 12 hours, neither my boobs nor my nerves could take it any more. My nipples were bleeding and I was ready to scream bloody murder as well.

Again, I should have seen it coming. We used to make fun of my dad for putting band-aids on his nipples when he'd go out to work in the cold. Apparently, merely rubbing against the inside of a sweatshirt is enough to cause them to chap and to look and feel like they've been painfully sunburned. Turns out, I have Fortin nipples. Who knew? I didn't. Not then.

I never looked down at her with love and adoration. I prayed silently that she'd stay asleep. I had her on Friday at 5 pm and by Saturday at 11 pm she had been screaming for roughly 23 hours on and off. I am not exaggerating. The expression "She has lungs like a Viking" was coined on the third floor of LRGH. The poor nurses...one of them I know wanted desperately to give her a bottle, but I had told them that I was nursing and I'm sure they were under orders to not interfere with that process at all. I didn't ask for a bottle because I was terrified that she'd get nipple confusion, or that the formula would make her retarded or something. Again, there was a lot of lying going on.

Anyway, at 11:30 pm, 30 hours into being a mother, I realized that I didn't want this child, I didn't like this child, and I'd have happily checked myself out and gone the hell home without her at that moment. Seriously. I did. not. like. her.

But here's what happened. They discharged us Sunday morning and I rode home in the backseat with my finger in her mouth to trick her into thinking she was eating. I told Larry to drop us at home and then go to the store and pick up some formula: I don't care what kind, I don't care what brand, just make sure it's ready to drink. He did, and when he got home we shoved a bottle into her mouth, she pounded back three ounces, burped lustily and slept for four straight hours.

I loved her then. And she's been kinda growing on me ever since.

Of course when Emma Bo came along, I expected to do things just the way we'd done with Mary, only better because this time I knew. I knew that natural childbirth was not for me and I ordered up that epidural three weeks early. I told the nurse before labor even started that I was ready for the man with the big needle. She laughed and told me to let the contractions pick up before calling in the big guns.

I expected I'd have plenty of time for the good drugs. What I had was a three and a half hour labor from start to finish with no time for the epidural to take effect. I had my natural childbirth after all, with a 9 lb. 2 oz. infant. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, and I should have slapped that nurse silly.

I expected a baby that would have the appetite of a barracuda and instead got a baby that occasionally flat out refused to eat and had to be coaxed (and even bullied) into it. I expected so many, many things to go just the same way they had the first time, only to have Emma thwart me at every turn. She is her own person, and has been since she got here. She took everything we knew and turned it on its head, but it was in a lot of ways the best thing that could have happened to prepare us for a third child. You remember Dave...the one we did not expect.

Dave is unlike either of his sisters. He's more laid back than either of them were. He's been a good eater and good sleeper right from day one. He wasn't terribly fussy as a baby and isn't a particularly demanding toddler most days. But he came with his own baggage. About the time I thought he was going to be the easiest one of all and began to expect an easy ride, we find out he's quite a bit behind the curve as far as all the stuff babies should be doing.

I've always made it a point to see my kids for who they are and not compare them to each other, or to other people's kids. It's not fair to do that, I don't think. But lately I've been finding myself having a hard time dealing with Dave's developmental delays. Not so much when it's just the two of us here, but when we are with other toddlers who don't have his setbacks. It's then that I feel bad for my little man. I wonder how "normal" his life is going to be. I never expected to have a kid who was less than supremely gifted and wildly talented, never mind one that was merely average, or--God forbid--below average. Make no mistake, Dave's bright, he's charming, and he's come a long damn way, but at age two he's still pretty uncoordinated and he doesn't speak at all. Will he catch up someday? Honestly, I don't know what to expect anymore.

Now, in the midst of parenting my third toddler, I realize that I've actually given up a lot of my expectations. Once Mary showed me that my expectations could be--and likely were--wildly unrealistic, and that my best plan of attack was going to be to stay flexible, things fell into place. I very quickly dropped all the "I'm never going to..." and "I will always..." statements from my parenting plan, because I found out in the first three days of her life that children don't care what your damn plans are. All three kids are constant reminders to keep moving, keep thinking, and stay alert, because the game could change at any minute.

I'm proud of being a flexible parent, willing to assess situations as they come up and deal with them on a situational basis. I can be confident that I'm making the best decision I can based not one some arbitrarily pre-determined set of criteria but on how things are right in front of me. It's the lesson my kids taught me, and it's part of why I like them more than I like your kids.

I wish someone would write a parenting book and let the uninitiated know that you don't have to make all your parenting decisions before the baby comes. Hell, you don't have to make any of those decisions. Wouldn't it be nice to read that there's nothing wrong with changing your mind about how to proceed when your experience doesn't meet your expectations? I think it would have been a big favor to read not What to Expect When You're Expecting, but something more along the lines of, "Hey, you've never had a baby before so you have no idea what to expect. And that's okay. Trust yourself."

But then I've suspected for a long time that a woman's ability to hear her own internal voice and heed her maternal instinct has been stifled by all the other voices out there. From the crunchy-granola all-natural end of the spectrum to the throw-open-the-pharmacy-doors other end and everything philosophy in between, the advice (all well-meaning) can be deafening.

The other thing I expected before getting on this ride was that I'd enjoy it. Unfortunately, I don't. This job is hard. Too hard, I think. And yet it's too important to let slide. So most of the time I feel like I'm stuck doing a job I don't particularly like with a job description that changes almost daily, gets harder every day, and really has no payoff, except the kids themselves. It's like when you hate your job but stay because you love the people you work with.

I love my kids, but I can't wait for them to stop being kids. If you can't understand that idea, it's okay. You probably love being a parent. You're lucky. Personally, I look forward to the day when I can stop parenting them. I'll always be their mother, I know, but someday they'll make their own decisions and call me selfish but I'm pretty sure that will be a sweet, glorious day.

At least, that's what I expect.

First Memory

2010-12-29T17:10:00.003-05:00

I swear my first memory is of my sister coming home from the hospital. I would have been 2 years and 3 months old, and I'm pretty sure I only remember it because I've seen the video of it and have had the story of how I "kissed the baby and then showed off my new shoes" told to me a hundred and seven times.

One of my first real memories that's all mine is going to Kindergarten with my neighbor Hans. I have always thought that I was four and it was a kind of step-up day where preschoolers could go to kindergarten for the day to see what it's going to be like. Only Hans is two years older than me, so if he was five, I'd have only been three. So now I'm not sure why I was there. I'd ask my mother but she doesn't remember what she had for breakfast most days.

Anyway, the memory of it that I have is playing "In and Out the Windows" out on the front lawn. We stood in a circle and the kid who was "It" would weave in and out of the people in the circle while everyone sang:
"In and out the windows,
In and out the windows,
In and out the windows,
As you have done before."

I looked up the lyrics online and I don't remember all those verses, but at one point you had to "Stand and face your partner" and I remember going in and out the windows and standing in front of Hans. I remember being too shy to pick any other kids. I remember it being sunny and I was wearing a dress. Mrs. Bossey was wearing blue.

I have lots of memories of kindergarten for reasons I cannot fully comprehend. I remember how the hall smelled, how our cups looked lined up in the kitchen ready for snack time, playing "The Farmer in the Dell" and how much I loved the felt board and box of wooden instruments.

Top O' the Hill Kindergarten was at the rectory, the same rectory that's still two doors up from my house. When I was five, my Grammie's house was a very short walk across the driveway from my school, which was both convenient and reassuring. I remember liking kindergarten a lot. I also realize in retrospect that I was ahead of the kindergarten learning curve. I remember vividly Mrs. Bossey showing us big cardboard flashcards with colored shapes on them, and underneath the shape was the name of the color written out. I could read the names of the colors, which is unsurprising when The Legend of Poops holds that I could read when I was four.

Anyway, it brings me to my first memory of ennui. You know that feeling of bleccccch you get when you're utterly disinterested in the status quo? It's more than boredom. It's being bored to the point of needing to lie down for awhile. I had that for the first time when I was all of five years old.

I was sitting at one of the low tables in the hall and I had a piece of yellow-lined, wide-ruled paper in front of me. Mrs. Bossey used to rip it in half length-wise so it was long and narrow--perfect for practicing writing lists of words. And for conserving paper, I imagine.

It was free time, and we were told we could do what we wanted, and I don't know if the felt board or the building blocks weren't doing it for me that day, or if there were already too many kids playing with those specific things or what, but I wound up with a piece of paper and a pencil at my desk. I couldn't think of anything to write, or perhaps my muse was feeling stifled on such a warm sunny day. I don't know. I started to doodle on the paper, making gray tornadoes and dark snakelike swirls. I leaned my head on my hand until it got too heavy to hold up, so I put it down and rested it on my arm. (I'd like to say that I was drawing pictures of dead birds or skulls and crossbones or something, but while it would be a good story, I didn't have the wherewithal to do it. I was too bored for that.)

Mrs. Bossey saw that I was rather listless and asked if I felt okay, or if I felt sick. I said I didn't feel good--which was true, I didn't--so she told me to go across the driveway to Grammie's house.

I did. Apparently the fresh air gave me new will to live and the lightly salted granny smith apple Gram gave me filled me anew with the joie de vivre of Being Five. And I bet it boosted my blood sugar too, which I'm sure didn't hurt either. Feeling remarkably better, I asked if I could go out and ride my bike and she said I could.

In full view of the kindergarten class I just left because I didn't feel well.

Dad had just taken my training wheels off and I remember the bike I was riding was still too big for me, but I was determined I was going to learn to ride without them. I was practicing and hot-damn-and-hallelujah I had figured it out! Proudly, I pedaled up and down High Street, turning carefully and steering into the hill when I needed to stop.

I remember the sight of my mother coming around the corner in the car and waving wildly and proudly at her from my bike. She didn't look thrilled that I wasn't in school.

I told her, when she asked me if "I only felt sick until I got to go out to play," that YES, that was exactly it. She was unsympathetic, but I don't recall getting into trouble. She wasn't impressed that I could ride my two-wheeler with no training wheels though. I want to think that under different circumstances I'd have received praise, but somehow I doubt it.

I wonder if Gram caught hell. Somehow I doubt that, too. After all, her cure for ennui worked, didn't it?

Grace Period

2010-12-22T17:30:00.002-05:00

Sears has a new commercial out. "Are you a procrasti-Santa?" There's still time to do your holiday shopping!

First of all, there's no time left for your holiday shopping. There's still time for your Christmas shopping.

Don't get me wrong. If you want to wish me a Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings, Happy Yule, Blessed Solstice, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Hanukkah, or Festivus for the Rest of Us, I'm happy to receive it. I'm inclusive. I don't even object to Xmas. (For the uninitiated, "chi" is the first letter of Christ in Greek, represented by a Greek letter that looks an awful lot like an "X". Christians have been using it as written shorthand for as long as Christianity has been around. It's freaking ancient.) And I hold that while it is most certainly a religious celebration, it's also a secular one too. You don't have to love Jesus to put up a tree, exchange gifts, have a nice meal with the family, sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and hang up stockings for Santa to fill. If you prefer to take the Christ out of your Christmas, go ahead.

Dude, it's all GOOD. Rock your celebrations, my friends.

But let's face it: if you celebrate Hanukkah or Solstice with gift-giving, you're late. You're out of time. Your particular holidays are over, and I hope they were lovely. What you do have is a few days left until Christmas arrives, so let's just say it already. Don't be scared. Just because "not everyone celebrates Christmas" is no reason to not mention it. It's getting to be like the elephant in the room. We all know it's there, but no one dares to speak it's name. Come to that, maybe it's like Voldemort. The Holiday that Shall Not Be Named. The Holiday Formerly Known as Christmas. Maybe the religious and secular holidays need two different names so no one gets offended. (Like that would every happen! Ha!)

But in as much as I'm inclusive and love holiday traditions in a very ecumenical way, I object strenuously to the event I'm beginning to think of as Consumas. This wretched event started weeks before Halloween and right now is in full-frenzied mode. Buy, buy, BUY! Spend, spend, SPEND! Countdown to Christmas! Get it now! Get her what she really wants this year! Don't be a Scrooge--go SHOPPING!

If you celebrate Consumas, and I feel bad for you if you do, your time is short. You don't get a grace period, either. If you don't have your cookies baked, your tree up, your house decorated, your gifts bought and wrapped, and your cards already in the mail, you are royally screwed. It won't be Christmas without...well, whatever it is, if you forgot it, you SUCK. And you better start early next year, Mister, to avoid that kind of disaster.

Good Lord.

There are three days left until the 25th. That's when Christmas is, or if you are Catholic like me, it's when Christmas begins. It doesn't start until sundown on the 24th. It doesn't start before Halloween when the decorations hit the store. It doesn't start the day after Thanksgiving. That's the Holiday Shopping Season. That's Consumas comin' for ya, bearing down on you earlier and earlier, breathing down your neck like a crazed wildebeest.

Shopping closer to Christmas rather than early like the commercials commanded me to doesn't make me a procrastinator. I'm not a Grinch because my house doesn't look like the Christmas section at Walmart threw up. And don't label me as a Scrooge because it only takes me about three hours to pick up all the presents I'm going to put under the tree.

Am I lacking in Christmas Spirit? Certainly. I have the Advent Spirit. And not the advent that's marked with a wee bite of chocolate hiding behind a perforated cardboard door as a mere taste of the bacchanalian orgy to come on the 25th. Advent is actually a quiet time. A dark, cold time. It's a time of watching and waiting and being aware of what Christmas really means. A savior. A redeemer. It's a time for faith, and for hope.

On December 24th, after the children are nestled all snug in their beds and "Santa" fills their stockings and puts their wrapped gifts under the tree, I'll put on a clean shirt, warm up my voice, and at 11:30 p.m. I'll be in my seat in the choir area behind the altar. The lights will be on low, the evergreens lit with thousands of white lights, and red and white poinsettias will engulf the altar. Candles flicker and dance as people come in from the cold and the dark to the warm glow of Christmas. They smile, they greet each other with hugs and handshakes and come together to celebrate the Light that has come into the world.

And from the first notes of "Infant Holy, Infant Lowly" to the last strains of "Joy to the World" Christmas will fill every inch of me. Yes, it's late at night. Yes, it's a long Mass. And yes, my kids get up too freaking early on Christmas morning. But that glow will fill and sustain me through the eight days of Christmas and the rest of the Christmas season. Our tree will be up and lit until January 9th when Christmas ends. When everyone else is saying they're sick of looking at the tree because it's been up for weeks already, it will be fresh and new to us. Where others have been singing Christmas carols for weeks, we've just been getting warmed up! Because we waited and didn't let the retail industry tell us what to celebrate and when, Christmas has changed in a profound way.

So I'm not full of the Christmas Spirit. I'm still waiting. I'm still preparing. And I have a couple of days left pick up the last three gifts on my list.

I like to think of it as a Grace period.

Holiday Bonus

2010-12-08T10:00:00.002-05:00

This isn't original, but I thought it was pretty funny...

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the summer solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great (not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country), and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.

This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

Daffodils

2010-12-05T19:01:00.001-05:00

This post has been hanging out in my unfinished posts piles because as I was writing it, I just felt like I was blowing it. Have you ever had something happen to you that just affected you in a way that defied description? The Fox Trot was one of those things.

On September 11th, a group of us held a fundraising road race, pig roast, and auction to help some very special people. Sarah is fighting cancer with everything she's got, and as anyone who's ever had a major medical event knows, there are lots of expenses to treatment that insurance just doesn't cover. She's a firefighter and her brothers at the Portsmouth Firefighters Charitable Association have been amazing...I mean, beyond words amazing. The work that they've done to make Sarah and her family more comfortable is humbling and inspiring, and on days that I feel like I'm losing my faith in humanity, I just click on the link to their home page and know that there is hope in this world.

I opened this unfinished post today out of sheer curiosity and was pleasantly surprised to find that perhaps I'd done it more justice than I thought. In any event, here's what happened on a sunny day this past September...

Do you all know the story of William Wordsworth's poem "Daffodils"? William and his sister Dorothy were out taking a walk one day in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park when they stumbled upon a swath of daffodils that Dorothy later described as stretching along the shore as wide as a country lane. For his part, William (who it is believed suffered from crippling bouts of depression) was so tickled by the sight of the cheerful yellow flowers that he penned what would become one of his most famous poems--maybe one of the most popular poems ever.

Me, I'm not one for the poetry-writing. I've tried my hand at it and I've written some really lousy stuff..."crapola" is what Mr. Loomer would call it, and I'd be hard-pressed to disagree with him. Prose is generally my milieu, though sadly, just when I've got thoughts that I want to share with the world, I'm finding words inadequate. Isn't that always the way, though?

Just describing the events of the day isn't enough, but it's a jumping off point and I'll use it.

To say that the event started at 10:00 on Saturday is a lie. The event started sometime in the early spring when an idea was hatched. It was only a spark of an idea--but yes, I'd go so far as to call it a Divine spark. Traci had a thought come into her head: we should hold a road race to help raise money for Sarah and the Fox family. We could call it the Fox Trot. She told two friends and they told two friends and ideas were pitched and bandied about. As summer drew near, we sat on the Ennis' deck and honed the ideas into a workable plan. Jobs were assigned and help was recruited. Even at that first meeting, there was a sense of excitement and a feeling that we could really do this. It could really happen.

The summer came, kids were out of school, and plans continued. We had developed a firm event plan. The Fox Family Fund was officially established and the Inaugural Fox Trot had become a three-part event: a 6K road race, a pig roast, and a fund raising auction. We obtained corporate sponsors and sought donations from anyone we thought might be inclined to give, we signed up volunteers for everything from manning water stations, cooking and serving the meal, and setting up tents. And we sold tickets. Lots and lots of tickets.

Last Sunday, the weekend before the event, we had one last group meeting to see where we were and tie up those last minute loose ends. We had 70 runners pre-registered, which was 10 more than our original goal. We had at that point sold 170 tickets to the barbecue with money still rolling in and creeping closer to our goal of 200 tickets. And we crossed our fingers and hoped for good weather.

We all woke pretty early on Saturday, I'm guessing. I had assigned myself to the food portion since running isn't my thing, nor is calling people and asking for stuff. But I do have 7 years of restaurant experience and my secret desire is to be a school lunch lady, and I figured my presence at the coleslaw station couldn't hurt matters. You know what they say, "Never trust a skinny cook."

I got there at 10 and hit the ground running. Not literally, but the runners actually did. I've never been to a road race before, and it was cool to see the runners milling around and talking, pinning their bibs on and loosening up with some stretches. I would have loved to mingle, but food service for 200 doesn't set itself up.

We set up the tables and decorated them with a random assortment of tablecloths. One of our friends came in with two big vases of flowers that he and his wife had cut from his garden the night before, just to dress things up, and I gave them a place of honor on the buffet. I look at them and don't think "Hm, pretty flowers." I look at them and see a simple gift, but a profound one. It says, "I looked at the flowers in my garden and I thought of you." Can flowers do that? Wordsworth sure thought so.

I took a short break in the setting up to watch the runners take their marks and head off up the gravel road. Like I said, I don't run unless something is chasing me, and even then I'm inclined to take my chances or play dead if I have to. But so many of the runners that came back across the finish line remarked how great it was to run past the Caswell's and have them standing in their driveway cheering them on, and getting support and water from the Belmont Middle School Junior Honor Society kids along the route.

Robin reported that she knew she was getting close to the finish when she turned the last corner because she could smell the smokehouse before she could see it, and by the time the last walkers crossed the finish line all you could smell was roast pig and barbecued chicken. I'm quite sure that by noontime the smell had permeated all of Canterbury.

The race went off without a hitch, and by 1:30 the meat was done and we were ready to serve. The line stretched all the way down the driveway and despite having a cooler full of food, we were still a little worried that supplies wouldn't hold out. But hold they did. The only thing we ran short of was cornbread, and that's really only because we had put a pan in the oven to warm it and forgot it for a bit. We found it right at the end, so the people that worked the food line got to have cornbread after all. Did I mention the apple crisp? Steve and I shoveled it out while Robin and Rachel hit them with whipped cream, spraying two-fisted at times. When all was said and done, we think we fed over 200 people and possibly close to 25o with last minute sales.

I got to see the face of every person there that day because they all had to come past me for coleslaw. With my apron and plastic gloves I was greeted with smile after smile. I didn't realize the effect that would have on my soul. Two hundred people smiled at me and with me. I could see the joy in their heart and later I realized that it was reflected back on me, magnified and concentrated and coursing through me.

I can't really describe the feeling, but everyone I've talked to that was there knows exactly what I'm talking about. Joy seems like such a small word for a big emotion. If I could fill up a giant mixing kettle with joy, and then add in heaping scoops of fellowship and community, that gets closer. Love was added by the bucketful, but the great thing about love is that you can add all you like and it never overflows the container. The poignancy of Sarah sitting in her chair in a shady spot watching the runners come in, unable to even walk the course because of pain added the salt to the mix. But anyone who cooks knows that adding salt adds flavor to whatever you're making. You even put it in baked goods because it complements the sweetness, so acknowledging the fragility of our existence sweetened the day because it served as a reminder that to serve one another is our greatest duty, even as it's our greatest gift.

After lunch was served and folks settled in for the auction, my own little napless boy decided that he'd hit the wall and could not be consoled, so I packed him in the car and took him for a ride in the hope that he'd conk out, grab a few winks, and awake refreshed and ready to play some more.

As I drove up the winding country roads, I was struck again at the perfection of the day. The sky was a brilliant blue with not a cloud in sight and the air was crisp and just a bit cool, especially in the shade. I drove and drove with my sleeping baby in the back and let the feeling that had been growing and developing at the Fox Trot really take root and percolate around.

I knew that what I'd been a part of back at the smokehouse was making everything about a ride through town--a ride I've taken thousands of times in my life--come into sharp relief. From the sight of a couple walking hand in hand down Shaker Road taking in the fresh air and afternoon sunshine to a flock of teenage turkeys crossing the road in no particular hurry right in the middle of Baptist Hill Road, I was noticing things that I might have just gone by without much of a second thought on any other day.

I drove back into the field and parked the car, and as Dave and I walked hand in hand through the sweet grass of the freshly mown field, the sound of a crowd sharing a laugh came from the auction tent and it added another layer to the feelings of the day. I took another all too brief minute to look around and really notice the people. These were the people I went to school with and their spouses and kids and siblings and parents. They were folks from around town and around the area who thought that a pig roast sounded like good fun for a good cause.

Not to get off on a tangent or anything, but a couple of weeks ago I was bothered by some comments made on an online forum where I like to hang out. People who had hated school and couldn't wait to get away from their hometowns made some comments about the folks they left behind.

"You are so much cooler than those losers who still hang on to their junior high best friends - was that when they peaked?"

"The way I see it is that all of these people are still living in the same city that we all grew up in. The farthest they left was to go to University in the same state. They lead lives that are just like their parents, and many of them even still live in the same neighborhood."

"When I think of all the a-holes I knew in school: I revel in knowing that I grew up, left town, have a real life, and am not still in a small town, trying desperately to pretend high-school never-ended. My horizons got bigger, their lives got smaller."

"Moving on means moving."

"High school is awful, isn't it? Decades later, and it's still awful. Ugh."

I feel bad for them. Honestly. There were friends there that I made back when were were still in diapers, and even more that I've collected along the way. If you don't know how good it feels to describe someone with the words, "We've been friends for 35 years," I feel bad for you too.

I have roots here, and they are deep and wide. (That's Sistah and Shake. Friends for 39 years and counting...)

That's as far as I got with my original post before abandoning it for awhile. Maybe I found it now because I needed to see it. Maybe during the dark, cold days of Advent I needed to be reminded of the Christmas miracle. Not trees and lights, not presents and parties, but being awake and ready, "for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of man will come."

Of course we're not supposed to stay awake 24 hours a day. That would be stupid. We're supposed to have an inner alertness and an inner light that allows us to see what we have and count our blessings. It keeps us open to God's presence and lets us get really good at seeing the light in every situation, rather than always standing and shaking a fist at the darkness. It's why we light Advent candles, after all: to dispel the darkness. And it's why Wordsworth, in a funk, would lie on his couch and think about spring flowers. They gave him hope.

          I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:                 
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,              
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

No Strings?

2010-12-02T06:00:00.002-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, Kate of "One More Thing" thought it would be fun to have a Wednesday Blog-Along in which we all write about a specific topic. I quite forgot I said I'd do it, what with the holiday, my commitment (lax as it is) to completing NaNoWriMo as close to 50K as I can, and getting my inventory of knitted goodies finished and tagged before this weekend.

Then I read her latest post and saw myself all listed in the playah's list and such, and damned if I'm going to disappoint anyone coming over here for a steamy slice of the Wisdom of Poops. Also, if you pop over to Kate's blog, you'll see the list of participants and you can enjoy their musings on a theme as well.

Being a bit behind as I am, I am a tad confused as to which topic is for which week, and not sure if the "No Strings" topic is for tomorrow or if it was last Wednesday and I'm two weeks behind...

See, there are strings. Already I don't know if I'm on the right page or not.

Here's what I'll do: I'll post this on Wednesday and combine the two topics of "Thanks...Giving" and "No Strings." If I'm behind, I have a week to catch up. If I'm not, it means I'm right on track.

Thanks and Giving go hand in hand, like turkey and gravy. Sometimes not necessarily in that order.

My Aunt Elaine used to tell me that whenever you have extra money, you should give some of it out to people who need it. She swore that by doing that, whenever she needed money it was always there. She didn't worry about money, in part because she was a fantastic planner. But she also was a person of faith. She trusted that she'd have what she needed because she'd never been let down. She told me it was stupid to be worried about money because if you have faith, and if you give what you can when you can, the money will always be there.

I never knew her to be wrong. One year she was carefully saving her money to have the roof on the house repaired. But I was graduating college and going off to far-flung places to work in theater and she knew I needed a car. I'd just graduated and there was no way I could afford one. I hadn't had a real job to even get the credit to make payments on one. I relied on rides.

Aunt Elaine prayed on it, and decided to spend the money for the roof on a new car for me. She bought my my first set of wheels: a 1978 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. It was a big-ass car and burned gas like you would not believe, but it was mine free and clear and it got me where I needed to go for work.

The first year my summer stock job lasted well into December and I got home just before Christmas for a little downtime. I parked Ava (that was the Caddy's name, Ava) in the driveway and made myself at home on the second floor. One night she was out with friends and I was enjoying a quiet but chilly evening in. I decided to bake cookies and when that failed to warm the house very much, I grabbed some wood and got the stove in the living room roaring hot.

My dad got home shortly after and told me that I had a chimney fire going.

Long story short, the chimney fire caught inside the walls and destroyed the chimney, the walls on all three floors around the chimney, water damaged most of the other walls, and there was a pretty good sized hole in the roof.

The roof she was not sure how she was going to pay to have replaced, having spent the money on my car. The insurance paid for a new roof, and a lot more to boot. You just never know how your prayers are going to be answered.

The hell of it is that sometimes I get into a spot where there's just not a lot of extras, you know? When you're deciding between paying the oil bill or the electric bill, putting an extra sawbuck in the collection plate or the bell-ringer's buckets is hard to do. It's hard to tell myself "Someone needs this more than me."

The middle school just held their annual Gobble Wobble in which the classes compete against each other to collect the most food to stock local food pantries. The class that collects the most pounds, wins. And the food pantries win. This year they collected over two tons of food. It's a lot of food, but a lot of people are hungry.

We donated a grocery bag full, about five bucks worth of non-perishables. I remember a time when, without giving it a second thought, I bought a trunk full of groceries to donate just because Fr. Albert said we were running low. This year it hurt to only be able to give one bag.

"Give us this day our daily bread." Those words mean a lot to me, especially lately. Give us what we need today, right now. Not more. Not extra.

And of course, remembering that the second half of that equation is "thanks." Be humble, and truly grateful for prayers answered, even if sometimes they don't get answered the way you think they should. Sometimes God has to burn down half your house so you can fix the roof.

In the past couple of weeks I'd been lying awake trying to figure out how to get our ends to meet. They weren't even close. Our tax bill is $1700 and might as well be 17 million. Well, today we figured out a way to cover our taxes, stretch our resources through the end of the year, and even get some breathing room. Is it an ideal solution? No, but it means that I won't have to decide between paying the phone and the cable bill, that we can have meat in the spaghetti sauce this week, and come Sunday morning, I can put a 20 in the donation envelope instead of a couple of loose singles.

I believe that I'll be able to spare that 20, and I also know that if I give it with a joyful, thankful heart, that the money will always be there when I need it.

No strings attached.

PSA #2: Friends Don't Let Friends Cook Drunk

2010-10-18T07:47:00.007-04:00

If you've ever watched The Barefoot Contessa, you've likely seen an episode or two where some of Ina's underlings are preparing one of her cookbooks for publications. She's making dishes that look just scrumptious right out of the pan, use only the finest and freshest ingredients, and then there's the whole aforementioned staff working hard to make sure that when they're in print, the pictures make you want rip it right out of the cookbook and stuff it in your eager maw, it looks that yummy, you betcha.

There was a time in cookbook publication where that was clearly not the case. Let's face it: cookbooks have come a long way, baby. First and probably the biggest improvement is that the art of photography and publishing (and food photography in particular) has come a long way. Better equipment, better film (or no film at all), better printing, better lighting...just better everything. Technology is your friend.

The second option is that cookery has come a long way. You can still go to the grocery store and you can pick up any number of recipe books at the checkout stand. I have a Pillsbury one that features their "poppin' fresh" line of refrigerated doughs in the recipes, and I have one from Betty Crocker with cakes and other baked delights concocted from her simple mixes. It seems clear to me that the cooks in the test kitchens were actually working hard to make simple yet very tasty meals with convenience foods you could grab at the grocery. Very seldom does one open to a random page and go "What the FUCK were they thinking?"

The Heinz Cookbook brings a third and far more likely scenario to mind: the authors were just snot-hanging drunk when they wrote this sucker.

It's 1939. One war is over and a new one is Europe is just starting. Prohibition has been repealed and powerful men in natty suits are having cocktails and smoking endless cigarettes around the board room table. They're looking at photo prints and recipes from the folks down in the Home Economics Department. "That looks good!" Harry Bronstein (not his real name) exclaims. "Put it in!"

Harry has a thing for peanut butter and pickles. He developed a taste when his wife was pregnant with their son Skippy, since that was all she served him for dinner for three months. Harry complained...once. The next day she served him peanut butter and boogers. Harry's loved peanut butter and pickles every since.

How else would you explain that this isn't the only PB&P combo in the book? It's not even one of TWO. Is there something about this concoction that I'm just not getting?

Now imagine, if you will, the young exec that looks at the chapter so carefully prepared on "Sauces" and says to the hushed stares around the boardroom table, "I'm not fond of sauces--I want to taste my food."

The first thought, naturally, is to burn the young man with cigarettes until he comes around to the party line, but then our forward-thinking top exec Don says, "Hold up, Harry. Before you touch up young Frank here with your Lucky Strike, let's think about that. What if other people out there are thinking the same thing about sauces? We have to make them think that they've been doing sauce all wrong! Make them think that they're practically cavemen if they don't douse everything in a concoction made from our fine ingredients. Why, they could use Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Cream of Celery Soup, or even Heinz Strained Apricots and Apple Sauce as a topping for everything. "

A murmur goes around the table as options are considered. Don pulls a photo out of the pile. "Look here," he says. "Look how scrumptious these onions look with a can of tomato soup on them! We're not going to be able to keep women from tearing the page right out of the cookbook! They're such simple creatures, you know."

Laughs and hearty back-slaps are exchanged as glasses are refilled and cigarettes are lit.

It's the only way I can reconcile myself to the fact that this is a recipe in the book.

Bologna Cups of Spaghetti

Heat
One large (24 oz.) can of Heinz Cooked Spaghetti in Tomato Sauce
Brown
Slices jumbo bologna, cut 1/8 inch thick
in
Butter
until they cup. Fill bologna cups with Spaghetti then sprinkle with
Grated parmesan cheese.
Garnish attractively and serve at once.

Just be glad there wasn't a picture of this.

You may go vomit now.

A Kinder, Gentler World

2010-10-10T11:26:00.005-04:00

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when grace and gentility ruled the land. A time when the Modern Housewife pored over her cookbooks and planned menus with loving care. She considered carefully the dietary needs of her loved ones and showed her devotion to her family with new and delicious ways to serve them.

Except for those dull stepchildren.

"Fruits of the devil's very loins, those children. Their mother was a no-good drunk, you know. In fact, I ran into Mrs. Eckmann down at Don's Stairway to Beauty on Seventh, and she said that the only reason my husband Frank married that woman in the first place was because she was *whispers* in a family way. Of course Ellen's not his. Just look at that overbite and the vague look she always has. What can you expect of such poor breeding. But my Frank, he gave the child a name, poor thing. No, Alma, I know it's not charitable to speak of such things, even if it is the God's honest truth." *crosses self*

Luckily for the average Alaskan housewife of 1959, havens of gracious living were simply everywhere. The lower 48 has nothing on Anchorage's own Don's Stairway to Beauty (where a beautiful cook could make regular appointments), Eckmann's Furniture and Draperies (to purchase from a wonderful selection of SERVING ACCESSORIES to complement her culinary masterpieces), and of course fresh flowers from Barb's Florists. They wrote the damn book on gracious living.

I'm personally impressed by Market Basket Foods. Here's a selling point for you: "Where You Shop in Wide-Aisled Comfort." No need for the sylphlike matrons of Anchorage to squeeze past any fat-assed Eskimos in the Market Basket.

Curiously, I didn't find one recipe in the entire Favorite Recipes from Alaska (published by the Catholic Ladies' Altar Society of Anchorage, Alaska, praise God) for muktuk, either. No, just standard Alaskan fare like Cheeseburger Pie, Carrot and Pineapple Salad, and Soda Cracker Pie. Go figure.

"Oh, and Alma, as the coordinator of the hors d'oeuvres committee for the Friday Night Fish Fry and Rosary Social, can I persuade you to bring some of those delightful Hot Mayonnaise Puffs you made for the Whist Drive last April. Me? I'm making Mustard Pickle and Peanut Butter Wafers. Trust me, Alma. After your third Manhattan, they're delicious."

Praise God.

PSA: Friends Don't Let Friends Stuff Pickles

2010-10-08T09:15:00.010-04:00

This morning I was surprised by Tanta running up to catch us on our way to the bus stop. Tanta took the day off--hooray!

On our way home, as we reached the foot of her driveway, she invited me up to the big house for a glass of fresh, unpasteurized apple cider and to see if I wanted any of her old cookbooks before she donates them to the Church fair. I do love me an old cookbook and some snappy cider, so up I went.

Oh, the gems one finds in old cookbooks. Aunt Elaine had a bazillion of them at one time and Sister and I gleaned out the best, most repulsive ones we could find to give to Raz on Christmas every year. Raz now has a collection of "Foods To Induce Nightmares" that is well on its way to becoming its own museum.

I thought I'd share a few gems with you from the well-worn pages of such culinary classics as "Campbell's Cooking With Soup" (circa 1968) and "The Heinz Recipe Book" (circa 1939). There's one wee pamphlet called "The Knox Menu Diet" that deserves its own post, and it must be eased into lest you get the bends. Trust me.

So to begin, as a bit of an amuse-bouche, if you will, we will examine some hors d'oeuvres from the pages of the Heinz Recipe Cookbook from 1936. Bear in mind that these people just survived the Great Depression, so anything that didn't taste like last winter's wool coats was probably welcome in the kitchen.

I believe you can embiggen the photo if you set your brower to Wambo. Or by just clicking on the image. If you still can't read it, though, let me spell it out for you.

Step one: hollow out a dill pickle. (You have to know that when a recipe starts with you coring a pickle, it's really all downhill from there.)

Step two: stuff the cavity with your choice of cream cheese, pimento cheese, or deviled ham. (But for the love of all things holy, DO NOT combine them. *shudders*)

Step three: After chilling for 3 or 4 hours, slice thinly and arrange on a plate in threes like wee shamrocks. Don't forget the thin strips of pickle for the stems and the watercress for garnish. Festive!

Oh, and this is what the note says: "This salad (and clearly they use the term 'salad' loosely here) may be used as a main dish salad for St. Patrick's Day, serving sandwiches or hot bread with it." What aspect of St. Patrick's day does stuffed pickles and hot bread celebrate exactly? St. Pat's time in an Irish prison? Good Lord.

Moving on, we have a whole page of hors d'oeuvres from the good folks in the Heinz test kitchens. Next to classic standbys like Deviled Eggs, Stuffed Celery, and Cheese Cubes (and I pity the fool that needs a cookbook to make them, by the way) is this gem: "Frankfurter and Pickle Appetizer."

Appetizer. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Step one: slice a small frankfurter and a Heinz Genuine Dill Pickle (accept no substitutes) into thin rounds.

Step two: using two slices of each, stack alternately then spear with toothpick.

YUM! Oh God, I'm sitting here drooling even as we speak. How can you not find yourself just salivating at the thought of raw hot dog canoodling with dill pickle on a plate? You can't. You just can't.

Leaving the Heinz recipe testers teetering on the precipice of a world war, we fast forward to 1968. America was embroiled in Vietnam, hemlines were on the rise, and the innocence of the early 60's was about to give way to the free-wheeling 70's. Naturally, the first recipe that caught my eye was "Penthouse Chicken" and I have to confess that I've just edited out a whole bunch of copy that was just completely inappropriate and wrong. I'll leave you with the words "fur bikini" and we'll just let it go at that, shall we?

Now, the good folks at Campbell's Condensed Soups assume that any asshole can open a can of soup. And the rest of us, as Sister will attest, know that if you open the cupboard and/or the fridge and throw whatever shit you can find in there into a casserole dish, chuck that can of soup on it, cover it with potato chips or Ritz cracker crumbs and toss it in the oven, you've got a meal. And back in the 60's, if you had a package of hot dogs (or frankfurters, if you will) and a jar of pimentos in the house, you had a feast fit for guests.

But there's a section called "Teen Soups and Snacks" geared just for the youthful set, so in a spirit of wholesomeness, I have selected two award winners.

Remember, you're serving this to your teens. As a treat.

First, we have a "Summertime Special". The recipe claims it's "great after a swim". We shall see, Campbell's. We shall see.

Step one: take a can of frozen condensed green pea with ham soup and a can of frozen condensed cream of potato soup, combine them with 2 cans of water or milk and a pinch and a dash of thyme and nutmeg. (Y'know, for flavor. I'm surprised they didn't tell you to add salt.)

Step two: heat all this shit together in a pan until the soups are thawed, stirring often.

Step three: CHILL FOR FOUR HOURS.

Yes, you heard me. Chill that green mess and serve it in a chilled bowl with crisp carrot and cucumber sticks.

I'm not sure what your teens were smoking back in 1968 that they'd consider this a nice treat after a swim on a hot day. But then I suppose if your appetite was whetted up with pickle-and-weiner-kabobs, God knows what you'd eat.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Actually, I can only begin to imagine what you're thinking. I've had time to let these culinary masterpieces ruminate around in my brain. You're getting them cold. If you have to go lie down with a couple of Tums for a bit, I understand.

What you're probably thinking is, "While cold creamy pea and potato soup sounds scrumptious, isn't there something lighter for my teens to sip while lounging by the pool?"

Of course there is, silly head.

Try the "Sunbather's Special".

Step one: combine a can of condensed beef broth, a half a can of apple juice, and a dash of ground cinnamon and nutmeg.

Step two: pour it over ice cubes. Enjoy!

How's that for a random "snack"? You can wash down your stuffed dill pickles with it.

In my next installment, we will discuss all the ways you can serve Heinz Cooked Spaghetti in Tomato Sauce. I'll give you a hint: one way involves frying bologna in butter until it "cups."

You're totally welcome.

What Your English Teacher Was Thinking

2010-10-02T12:52:00.003-04:00

If you are at work, you might want to save this for later. Especially if you work as an English teacher. And God help you if you do.

If you're easily offended by salty language, you are a pilgrim in an unholy land, my friend.

My Life Is All About Pee

2010-09-30T08:46:00.005-04:00

If a frank discussion of urine offends your delicate sensibilities, I'm quite sure we've never met and have nothing whatsoever in common. You probably clicked away when you saw pee. If not, do it now, and God bless you as you go on your way.

Pee is not for everyone.

I, strictly speaking, am up to my urethral meatus in it.

First, there's Dave. Now, he's only two and can't control where his pee goes. Most days we're lucky he gets both feet heading in the same direction at the same time. When you have a toddler, let's face it, Pee Happens. (As does Poop, Boogers, and Saliva).

But my little man is a very big toddler. He's in the biggest diaper they make "over the counter". If you're sitting there and you can tell me of a store that sells a disposable diaper that goes past a size 6, do let me know. Daytime isn't bad. I can change him frequently during the day and keep his clothes and our furniture dry.

But nighttime? Oh, it's bad. He wakes up every morning completely soaked. I get him out of the crib and then strip it every day, and every day I have to wash sheets and blankets. On the bright side, being wet doesn't seem to phase him in the least and he doesn't wake me up because he's uncomfortable. Which is good. And his mattress is vinyl, so it's not like he can wreck it.

I bought some stuff to make diaper doublers that I can reuse, but haven't found someone to sew them for me. I made a prototype to see how many layers of the absorbent fabric I'd need, and he managed to fill his diaper that night with the most copious liquid poo I've yet encountered. I tried rinsing the doubler out to reuse it, but the poo wouldn't rinse off. I threw it out.

I have some Poise pads in the "necessary" cupboard over the toilet that I might try sticking in there. The thing is though, I'm sure if he was a girl this would work. Girls fill their diaper from the middle and it sort of distributes between the front and back from there. Boys pee all up front, especially when they sleep on their tummies. His diaper is completely dry in the back. So I'm wondering if I stick a pad or a doubler in the front of his diaper--which is already being put to the test, mind you--if there'll be room for his weasel in there!

Oh, the dilemma of what to do about pee.

But is that all? Not by a longshot. Emma is a piss-monkey too. She wasn't completely potty-trained when she entered kindergarten, even though everyone reassured me she would be. So now when anyone bemoans the potty-training process and some other well-meaning soul chimes in with "Just relax. No one goes to school wearing diapers!" I remind them of what Em's kindergarten teacher told me: "Half of them should."

Again, it's the nighttime that's the worst. I can stand the occasional daytime accident, but honestly now that school is in and they take scheduled bathroom breaks, she doesn't "forget" that she has to go and piss her pants anywhere near as much.

But she's officially a bedwetter. Her mattress is going to eventually have to be burned, and this week I got so sick of washing her sheets along with Dave's that I put her back into Pull-Ups at night. Again, she's too big for the biggest size they make, so they're not quite up to the task either. They're for pee-pee accidents, not "I think I'll just let fly right here."

So her mattress is wrapped in a vinyl cover, her ass is swaddled in a Depends, and I'm sitting here waiting for both their sheets and blankets to finish in the washer so I can toss them in the dryer.

My life is all about pee.

But I have a confession to make. In a way, I deserve this.

You see, I slept on rubber sheets until I was in junior high. Yes, I was a bedwetter. And you know what else? Most nights I'm about 10 seconds away from still being a bedwetter. You ever have those dreams where you really have to pee and you're running all around trying to find a bathroom, only there isn't one? Or you find one and it's busy or there's no seat on the toilet, or no water? So you go outside and you're about to pee behind a bush or a tree or in a coffee can but someone comes up and starts talking to you so you can't go and before it goes on much further, you wake up and RUN to the bathroom? I have them almost every night. Except more than once what woke me up is being relieved that I found a place to cop a squat and the feeling of starting to pee wakes me up and I RUN to the bathroom to pee and wipe the trickle off my leg. (Don't judge me, either. I've had three babies and I'm over 40. You do the math.)

Yeah. Is it little wonder that my 6 year old and her immature bladder don't wake up?

I also have a bathroom phobia of sorts. It's better than it used to be, but I peed my pants every day on the way home from first grade. I didn't like to use the bathrooms at school. I still don't. I will use a public restroom as a last resort even now. The upshot is that I didn't like anyone to know that I had to pee. I didn't want to have to ask to use the bathroom because then the other kids and the teacher would know what I was doing. It was none of their business. So I'd pee my pants on the way home. If we'd lived on Sargent St., I might have made it, too. (I'd usually make it as far as the Lyman's before I'd lose it.) As you can see on the following graphic, I was unusually advanced for my age in terms of "Where you can pee v. age".

To this day, I don't want to pee where people can hear me. For those of you who are wondering if I can poop in public, that's another whole hangup for another whole post. And if you are actually wondering about if I have any poop hangups, you must really be my best friends.

Or you're a Jacobs and Thanksgiving came early this year.

Or you've got one hell of a Google browser history to explain.

Farmer Girl

2010-09-06T12:41:00.003-04:00

Remember how I told you that I had proof that Bug was big enough to drive the tractor?

I was right.

One advantage to being too big for the rides at Storyland is that you're probably big enough for way more fun and cool stuff like Tractor Driving.

This, by the way, is how we celebrate Labor Day on High Street: by ignoring child labor laws and putting the kids to work picking hundreds of pounds of tomatoes and then delivering them via tractor.Farmer's markets...pshaw. Them's for city folk.

You Are Now Entering a Storybook World

2010-08-28T17:13:00.013-04:00

Follow this path and it will lead you well.Those words give me goosebumps. I confess, I had trouble sleeping Thursday night knowing that we were going to Storyland the next day. The girls were excited, but I think it can be safely assumed that of the seven guests trekking from Belmont to Glen on Friday morning, Sister and I were probably the goosebumpiest.Aunt Elaine and Ma used to take us every year...or if memory fails me and it wasn't every year, it was damn near every summer until were were really too old for the place. Mind you, we're too old for the place now, but there's a big chunk of childhood memories living there in time for us. From the time we passed through the crooked house (There was a crooked man/who walked a crooked mile...) into a Storybook World where Humpty Dumpty greeted us just like he did for so many years, it was in many ways like stepping back in time.Of course now the place has grown up quite a bit. There are probably twice as many attractions as there were when were kids and my kids tended to blow past the more traditional sights like the Three Bears Cottage and Miss Muffett's Tuffett in favor of the newer, faster rides....well, except for Dave. Dave popped his head into Mistress Mary's little cottage by her garden and Papa had to go in to extricate him.He felt the same way about Peter's Pumpkin--it's just my size!Emma thought the ball pit (dubbed by Tanta as the Giant Germ Pit from Hell) was good fun, and Dave thought the smaller, even germier, toddler-friendly version was pretty freaking cool too. Mary was too big for the "little kid" stuff and truth be told feels that she is at this point a little too old for Storyland, and she's probably right. But she wasn't a bit contrary...not my Mary! She'll humor Mama and get her picture taken stooped down behind the Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary cutout thing. Even if they put in some super-fast and scary Six Flags-type rides, she's getting to be too big to get lost in a land of fairy tales and make-believe. (Just don't tell that to Tanta. She'll keelhaul ye, she will!)Emma, however, is the PERFECT age. Every ride, every photo op, everything within the gates was cause for merriment.

Sister and I felt much the same way. Though I think we now appreciate how Aunt Elaine and Ma must have felt every year after dragging after us through the park and listening to us whine when it was time to leave. There's tired, and then there's Amusement Park Tired. But for awhile we actually reveled in our memories of visiting as kids. We lamented things that were lost to time. The tigers are still there in Mother Goose Land going round and round, but the story of Little Black Sambo isn't the same, exactly. For one thing, Sambo apparently has been seeing Michael Jackson's dermatologist and wants to be called only"Little Sambo", though one hopes that his nose is in better shape. And the tigers don't turn into a pool of butter anymore, which is why they ran in circles in the first place. But not to worry. We brought our own brown beast to the park with us.

We made sure not to miss a photo opportunity. In some cases, we merely recreated a picture from memory. When I was...what was I there? Six? I thought it would be a good--no, GREAT--idea to stand on the Big Bad Wolf's tail to stand behind him while Aunt Elaine took a snapshot with her Kodak Instamatic that traveled in the brown vinyl case and used the stick-type flashes. Turns out the tail was slippery under my sandals and I slipped climbing up and whacked the holy hell out of my toe. I knew Ma would be pissed because I hurt myself climbing up where I didn't belong, so I sucked it up and smiled. I love the resulting picture mostly because of the back story. Though Sister's cheeseball pose makes me laugh too when I look at it long enough.She's a bit too tall to pull off the pose now (and I will add that she refused to kneel on the ground for comedic effect) and that I didn't have to climb on the tail to appear over the top of the wolf's hat, though I could tell by the worn spot on the paint that lots of kids had the same idea as me.I noticed the Big Bad Wolf is not as black as he used to be either. Make of that what you will.

Anyway, after we passed through the archway to Other Lands, Papa got in line for the Swan Boats with the girls while Tanta and Baboo and I decided to walk up to Cinderella's castle. Normally we would have all waited in line to take the pumpkin coach, but they replaced the real horses with a motor, and let's face it: we've all been in a car. It's not all that exotic anymore.

The castle, like most of the place, was a lot smaller than I remembered. As was the Glass Slipper. I nudged my Sister and asked her which stepsister she wanted to be: the one who cut off her toe or the one that cut off part of her heel? We giggled and then started quoting the Ugly Sisters Step. "We're not really sisters, but we are reeeeeeally ugly," and giggling madly and inappropriately. So I took this picture of Sister "trying on" the slipper and I love it so much I may have it framed for display in my living room.By the time we got back to the bottom of the hill, we met the girls and Papa who decided that the line for the Swan Boats was moving entirely too slowly so we went to the Carousel. The carousel is an authentic German carousel that traveled through Europe in the 1800's before being sent over here and it's lived at Storyland I think since it opened We loved the fact that the horses don't go up and down on poles but are mounted on springs so that the rider can make them bounce back and forth and it's ever so much fun! All my kids thought so. (I couldn't get a shot of Bug because she had an "inside"horse and there were too many people from Massachusetts in my way.)

We skipped South of the Border entirely. It wasn't a statement about immigration or anything, we just wanted to get to Freaky Deaky Dutchland. And the kids (and by kids I mean Baboo and the girls) wanted desperately to ride the Polar Coaster. The Polar Coaster was my favorite ride by far when we used to go as kids. While they rode, Larry got a soda and Dave played in a nice flowerbed. The sign above him reads "To overlook the little things in life is to miss the biggest part of life itself." Sigh.

Hey, while I'm thinking about it, what happened to the camel and Arab cutout that used to be outside Crazy Hakeem's Sandwich Shack? Hmmm?

We also skipped over the Slipshod Safari. Seriously. Would you ride a ride that's very name was an allusion to being half-assed at best? Come on, now.

We eschewed the delights of the Safari for lunch. The only blight on a perfectly lovely day. Now we understand why Aunt Elaine insisted on packing the big red and white Igloo Playmate cooler that always smelled of overripe plums with sandwiches, Little Debbie snack cakes, a thermos of Kool-Aid and of course plums.

In preparing for the trip I joked about Sister packing the plum-cooler for trip and she said, "NO! We're going to have lunch inside the park!" Never again, folks, and here' s why. Larry had a hamburger combo. That's a hamburger with nothing on it, precooked and wrapped in foil with a fistful of soggy fries. No drink. For over eight dollars.

Know what? As we were leaving North Conway we saw a billboard for Friendly's that advertised a loaded burger with a ton of fries, a beverage with unlimited refills and a friggin' dessert sundae for $9.99. Let's just say I don't mind paying Friendly's prices if I'm going to get a Friendly's meal. I did not get a Friendly's meal. I didn't even get a Subway meal.

In case you think I jest, or I'm exaggerating for comic effect as I have been known to do, here's the turkey and cheese wrap I ordered as photographic evidence. One slice of turkey, one slice of cheese that cost FIFTY CENTS, and a heaping handful of shredded lettuce.Do you know how much a bottle of soda is in the park? Two dollars and fifty cents. Water too. It was a crazy ripoff, and when we next visit, we will be packing the stroller with a cooler full of cold drinks, big delicious sammies, fresh fruit and lots of stuff for snacking, and perhaps some Little Debbie devil food creme pies. And some plums.Suddenly, Sister and I were retroactively a lot less annoyed at having to leave the park to go get the cooler from the car. It makes perfect sense now. We could have had lunch at Applebee's for that much money.

After lunch we hit the aquatic section of the park, none of which existed when we were kids. There's a splash park for kiddies that we passed on, but we went up to the top and rode the Tractor Ride. I now have photographic evidence that Bug is ready to drive Fr. Albert's tractor. See?Dave and I shared a ridiculously expensive bottle of water while they rode the Flying Farm and then we went down to the Whirling Whales, which is a lot like the Flying Dutch Shoes but without the lever that lets you control when you go up and down. Larry said it was like riding through Canterbury where the bumps come out of nowhere and you get that tickle in your pee pee. Rumor has it there used to be 7 orcas on this ride but one of them killed a trainer last year and was euthanized.

Anyway, when we were getting off the ride and heading down the hill, a savage tiger nearly attacked and ate us!Oh Baboo, you are the master of mayhem!

Back down the hill in Freaky Deaky Dutchland ("I'm from Holland! Isn't that weird?") we walked carefully and slowly to the windmill. Larry posed in the cutout of the little boy who saved Holland from a flood. You know the kid. The one who stuck his finger in a dyke. Where I'm from that shit will get you slapped unless your name is Alice and you own your own security company. The girls ran up the spiral staircase inside the mill and then back down to try their hand at milking the big plastic cow that lactates water.This is the cow where one year, in my excitement to grope a rubber udder, I ran (after being told not to run), caught the tip of my sandal on the cobblestones and damn near ripped my big toenail off. I wanted to cry. I wanted to fall on the ground like Peter Griffin and go "SSSSSSST...aaaaah. SSSSSSST...aaaaaah." But I didn't. I didn't mention it to anyone. Why? Because I was told not to run, I did, and therefore any injury resulting from my horseplay and shenanigans was my just desserts. I spared myself the lecture, sucked it up, choked back the tears, and I milked the fuck out of that cow. I have the pictures to prove it. In one I look like I'm stooping down to milk, but I am actually checking out my injured toenail.

Sister, to commemorate the occasion, offered to lie on the ground and let me milk it into her mouth, but there were just too many people around. Alas. I was pleased to see that the toenail-destroying cobblestones are gone and there's naught but blacktop around.

From the cow one can see the Bamboo Shoots log flume ride and all was lost at that point, the log ride being a fan favorite in our group. Larry took Bug on that, but Em balked at the last minute at getting splashed, so Baboo took her on the Flying Dutch Shoes while Tanta and Dave and I found a cool spot in the shade to sit and have some more precious, rationed water.

From Holland it's a steep hike up the hill to Bavarialand and Heidi's Grandfather's Cabin. First you stop at the Glockenspiel and take a spinning ride that will make you toss your Little Debbie's and overripe plums, and then you say hi to the goats as you pass their pen on the way to the little cabin. One of my favorite pictures of our many trips is currently MIA, but it's of me holding a wooden cut out of Heidi's dress standing in the door of the cabin while Robin peeks her little head out behind the door frame.The outfits aren't portable anymore so we didn't recreate that one. Although if I tried to hold the dress up in front of me now it'd probably look like I was wearing a necklace.

As you come down Heidi's mountain, there's a wee little wayside chapel that is modeled after the ones you find in the Bavarian alps. This sign is outside and it reads:"Deep within everyone's soul lies a secret place, a hideaway. Where rainbows appear and fantasy runs free. Beyond the limits of age, this park expresses fully to every visitor the wonder, the hopes and the dreams that live in childhood and truly remain forever. Storyland invites you to open your heart, to see the world simply, and to look at the grandeur of the universe with freshness and the excitement of youth.

"There are smiles; and where there are smiles, there is joy; and where there is joy there is love; and where there is love, there is the hand of God. Richard Chaput"

Well put, Richard.

The day for us always ended with the antique cars, which was Robin's favorite ride ever in the history of rides, and a train ride around the park on the Huff Puff and Whistle Railroad. When you're ten, driving your own car is just the best. When you're seeing it through the eyes of kids that you love, it's better yet.I'm glad Storyland is still around. I'm glad that I can take my kids there to experience the very same things I did and discover new things I hope they'll wax nostalgic about. Mostly I hope that they'll tell their kids about "the times Mama and Papa and Tanta and Baboo took us to Storyland," just as thinking about Aunt Elaine and her plummy cooler is making me a little puddly even as I type this.It's not the same little roadside attraction it used to be so many years ago, but even as the bigger, better, and faster rides attract a greater number of visitors, the heart of the place stays comfortingly the same.We left the Storybook world tired, thirsty, and a bit sunburned. Amusement park tired, if you will. I hope someday my kids make their kids pose in the giant picture frame before going back to the car, and that they're still good enough friends as adults to want to recreate it together.

How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck?

2010-07-28T19:07:00.004-04:00

From the sounds of it, the one we have living in the field could probably get a couple of cord in without much effort.

He likes broccoli and cabbage...
... and from the looks of his little hidey-hole where he eats his snacks, a nice Natural Light beer. In the can. This is a Belmont woodchuck, after all.One does want something to wash down two full rows of salad. Allegedly (I say allegedly because I've only heard tell of this beast and not seen it first hand), it's HUGE. Sistah though it was a beaver. Fr. Albert maintains he thought it was a small bear until he got close enough to get a look at it. He claims it was sitting atop one of his cabbages with a cappuccino in one hand, scratching his belly with the other, and belching demurely at him. He further states, for the record, that he walked right up to it and it wasn't scared of him. Little wonder. From the sounds of it, the woodchuck's got him outweighed by at least 10 pounds.

On the other hand, this little woodchuck just came in from the living room chewing on something green too.
It's Play-Doh.

I'm gonna go get him a beer to wash it down.

Totally Worth It

2010-07-22T12:33:00.004-04:00

Worth the scraped knuckles from the grater and heating the kitchen up on a July day...
Crazed Monk Zucchini Bread

In a large bowl, combine:
--3 large eggs
--2 c. sugar
--3 tsp. vanilla extract
--1 c. oil
Add:
--2 c. shredded zucchini
Mix well until completely combined, then add:
--3 c. all-purpose flour
--1 tsp. salt
--1 tsp. baking soda
--1/4 tsp. baking powder
--3 tsp. cinnamon
Stir until combined. Don't over mix.Put into greased loaf pans and bake at 350F for 40 minutes (for mini-loafs) or 50-60 minutes (for full-sized loaves). Loaves are done when a toothpick or skewer inserted near the center comes out with just a few crumbs clinging to it.

Cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then remove to cooling racks. Makes 2 full-sized loaves or 5 mini-loaves. Doubles easily and freezes like a dream.

Now, please don't look at this recipe and go "Holy shit! That's a lot of oil" and do something stupid like replacing half of it with applesauce. We all know that it will make the bread tougher, less flaky, and all-around not as good. It's not health food. It's quick bread. Don't go screwing around with the ingredients and then tell me it's not a very good recipe. I promise, it's an excellent recipe if you make it as directed.

Plus, if you're thinking to yourself, "Hey, it's too hot to bake right now, but I'll shred up the zucchini, portion it out in baggies and thaw it this winter to make bread," you're going to be disappointed. Freezing the zucchini alters the water content and throws off the moisture ratio of the bread. You've been warned.

So out of the 6 big zucchini Father Albert dropped off, the first big one made a double batch of bread (10 mini-loaves) and the second made a double batch of zucchini whoopie pies. I used two smaller ones to make a double batch of bread today (10 more mini-loaves) and now I'm down to two left.

I'm taking tomorrow off since I'm out of flour, finally.

Whew.

So, in other non-zucchini news, I had a pattern brainstorm and submitted it to Knitty.
I'm not sure why. I mean, I read every issue and look at every pattern and have been moved to make exactly one pattern. Not my style, I guess. But one day I was just sitting there in my chair knitting a string bag and an idea for a hat popped into my head. I grabbed a skein of Plymouth Encore that was just sitting there by my chair and whipped out a prototype, which was cute, but smaller than what I wanted and the band just wasn't quite...right. I knew just what mods to make, though, and I gave the hat to Bobo (since she loved it) and with two new yarns in hand I set to bringing the visualization to life.
The first one came out just like I wanted, so I used the most "Knitty-friendly" yarn of the three and wrote out my notes as I went along.

The deadline was July 15. I finished it on July 14. Made Sister put on a sweater (so it looked like cold weather) and pose with it on, while trying not to get too much of her face in it per her stipulation to signing the modeling contract. I call the pattern "Hot Cuppa Joe." Check out the pic...squint at her computer screen and see where she's surfin'...the Knitty Coffeeshop, baybeh!
Despite the shameless Knitty plug right in the pattern, I got a nice rejection e-mail from Amy thanking me for my submission. She did say she likes my style, and that she liked the cabled band.
So, while Hot Cuppa Joe didn't get me into Knitty--this time!--my pattern store on Ravelry has a new addition. This one is free too, so go'head and knit one up. You can find it on Ravelry here, provided you're a member. And why not join? Make yourself a Hot Cuppa Joe, and then make some zucchini bread while you're at it.

I mean, it might be 90 degrees out there right now, but it won't be forever...

Ovarian Ambush

2010-07-15T19:05:00.003-04:00

Did y'all know that the zucchini is a fruit? According to Wikipedia (and if you can't believe Wiki, who can you trust?), "In a culinary context, zucchini is treated as a vegetable, which means it is usually cooked and presented as a savory dish or accompaniment. Botanically, however, the zucchini is an immature fruit, being the swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower."

Zucchini's are swollen ovaries. I wish I'd known that before I named my recipe "Crazed Monk Zucchini Bread." Though I don't know if anyone would actually eat Swollen Ovary Bread. It'd be a select group of gourmands, I'm thinkin'.

Anyway, here's today's spoils hand-delivered by the Crazed Monk himself. Six big zucchinis, not to mention a nice haul of fresh cucumbers to boot. There was a ton of yellow squash but I find that's just naaaasty. I think it's going to be a really good year for the garden. It's dryer than I can ever remember out there, and while the lawn is looking really sad and thirsty and crispy, the gardens are lush and green.

I'm salivating thinking of tomatoes already. Though I mustn't count my chickens...

Can I tell you one of the coolest parts of having a blog? I was just wondering to myself if I ever posted the recipe for Crazed Monk Zucchini bread (I haven't, and I will, shortly) and I found myself going back and reading some old entries.

I've had some good thoughts, I tell you whut. And it was fun to read about the things that have happened to me over the past four years. I find I'm better at writing for an audience, albeit a small one, than I am at writing for just me, like in a journal. The only time I've ever kept a journal and gone back and reread what I wrote I blushed with embarrassment for myself. It seemed like so much self-indulgent crap. But the blog...I don't know what's different, but I like it.

I hope you do too. If not, just back away and close the door quietly. I probably won't even notice...

Another Fail?

2010-07-10T15:00:00.003-04:00

Not this time, baby!

I was planning on making some homemade black raspberry ice cream today with my homemade black raspberries. We have them growing wild all over the place. There are a ton of them right behind my house between our house and the neighbors' and there's a good sized patch of them up behind the woodpile just past the clothesline. Unfortunately we can't get to all of those because of an errant sapling and said woodpile. We left them as a treat for the birds this year, but I'm thinking I could get Grandpa Ernee and his love of All Things Chainsaw to take care of those for me before the next berrying season hits. Maybe if I bribe him with a dish or two of this:Homemade black raspberry ice cream! (With a drizzle of Magic Shell...)

I was sure it was going to be a fail of some sort since the black hole has eaten the ice cream recipes that I so painstakingly wrote out after a whole summer and much trial and error in my kitchen.

No worries. The hole can keep them. Here's the recipe for the BEST ice cream EVER.

Black Raspberry Ice Cream--Poops-Style

First, send your kids out every day in the pouring rain or the scorching heat or the stifling humidity to scratch their arms and legs to ribbons picking wee sweet nuggets of black raspberry goodness.

Every day, put the days gleanings in the freezer, because it's going to take awhile to collect enough for ice cream.
When you have at least a cup and half of berries, here's what you do:

In a bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups of ripe black raspberries and 3/4 cup sugar and allow to macerate. (That means let them combine and get all soft and juicy.) I find overnight in the fridge is just perfect. When they're soft and juicy, dump them juice and all into the blender or food processor with three tablespoons of lemon juice and whip them into a thick puree. Put the puree in a sieve to separate out the wee seeds. While it's straining into a thick, purple-pink deliciousness, set it aside and get the base ready.

In a medium saucepan, combine 1 1/2 cups each whole milk and heavy cream and heat it slowly over medium-low heat. Don't boil it!

While you're warming the milk, combine 4 egg yolks and 1/4 cup of sugar in a mixing bowl and beat the hell out of them with an electric mixer until they are thick and creamy and very pale yellow, about 4 minutes.

Now take a cup or so of the hot milk and add it slowly to the egg mixture a quarter cup at a time while you continue to beat them. Don't rush this part or skip this step because you'll cook the eggs. This is called "tempering" the eggs and it's crucial. Trust me.

Now that the eggs are tempered, you can dump them into the hot milk in the saucepan without fear of cooking them. Do so now, and lower the heat a bit. Cook the egg/milk/cream mixture until it gets thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, stirring constantly--about 10 minutes. Again, keep your heat low and don't boil it.

Bring your berry puree over with the strainer and pour the cooked ice cream base through the strainer with the seeds and puree. This will allow any bits of egg that might have cooked despite your most fastidious tempering efforts to stay behind, and it rinses the last bits of the puree off the pips as well.

Now you've got a fabulously-colored, thick custard-y type mixture in a bowl. Toss in a teaspoon of vanilla and a dash of salt, stir it up really well so that everything is evenly combined and put it in the fridge to chill. This takes hours. Overnight is good, but three or four hours will get it cold enough to put in the ice cream maker. (You can't put warm ice cream base into the ice cream machine or it won't get cold enough to become ice cream. Again, take my word for this.)

Put it in your ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturers instructions.

How can I describe the result? Somewhere between ice cream and sherbet. Not too sweet, not too creamy, not too tart.

What I've done, aside from that first bowl that simply could not wait to be eaten, is spread that out in a 9-by-13 inch baking pan lined with plastic and popped it in the freezer to harden. Later I'm going to cut it into bars which I'll coat with chocolate and refreeze, making our own homemade Berrylicious Klondike Bars.

Mmmm, purple.

Flattery Will Get You Everywhere

2010-07-09T14:32:00.003-04:00

And clearly, flattery will get you a new blog post!

Mind you, I realize I haven't updated since April. Do you ever get that Winnie-the-Pooh feeling (I think I've mentioned it before) about your Things being not-so-Thingish outside your head? Don't know what I mean?

"When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it."

That's from The House at Pooh Corner.

But it sums up that feeling one gets when one realizes what one has to say is really only important or entertaining or informative to oneself. So it comes as a surprise to me when someone (Like Auntie Meal--hey, Auntie Meal! *waves madly*) mentions that they miss my blog posts...perhaps my Things are more Thingish than I thought...anyway, what's been going on since April. Well, let's see.

First of all, let's get it on the table that summer has arrived suddenly and full force. True story: on July 1 it was so chilly out with a high around 61F that I had to put a sweater on. It's now July 9 and for the last three or so days we've been oppressed by 90+ degree temps and 187% humidity. Have I mentioned how much I hate summer? I had to put the AC in because poor old Lilith cat started puking and drooling and I knew that wasn't so good. So I dipped her in the tub (a process I do not recommend for anyone whose cats still have their front claws and are younger than 15 years old) and Larry and I rassled the AC unit into the window. It's managing to keep the living room anywhere between 72 and 80 degrees most days. Pathetic. But Lil is feeling much better.

Larry did point out the irony that I was happy to let the family sit and baste in our own juices day after sweltering day, but I'll put the AC in for the cat. Trust me, it didn't escape my notice.

So, needless to say my wooly projects have been temporarily shelved for the time being. But I have finished knitting Dave's little winter jacket/sweater: and Larry's big winter jacket/sweater: and they are reading for finishing as soon as I can bear the thought of touching it. It was bad enough snapping these pics just to show you them in their unfinished states. You'll get the deets when they're done, okay? Know this: Larry's sweater is Lopi. If you are a knitter, you know just what I mean...

In the meantime I've been contemplating a "greener" existence. Not because I think global warming is responsible for this heat wave, and you can bet your butt I'm not doing anything that costs me a lot of money or effort, but I figure I can whip up some reusable shopping bags and maybe give recycling a whirl if it doesn't turn out to be too big a pain in the ass. To that end, while I still haven't acquired my recycling bin from the recycling folks over on 140, I have created a pattern for an easy peasy string shopping bag and...drumroll please...posted it on Ravelry! Now I'm on there as a Designer and hopefully will be able to sell some patterns there as well. It's my first baby step and it's taken me literally hours to figure out how to do it, but there you go!

Oh, and if you'd like to download a truly simple shopping bag pattern to have for your very own, just follow the link to Ravelry and the It's So Easy Being Green pattern. Whee! I have a couple of other patterns here on the blog that I think I'll post over there as freebies too, now that I know how.

And speaking of "greens", in non-knitting news, my cousin Bean is expecting her first behbeh in August and we had a lovely shower for her. I made the centerpieces. To say she's an "avid golfer" is like saying I'm an avid knitter. So the theme was "golf" and here's what I came up with for the centerpieces. There was a lovely buffet and she got enough stuff to outfit three newborns, so now all we have to do is sit back and wait for baby Cole to arrive. *taps foot impatiently* And yeah, she's going into her ninth month and still swinging a club. I don't know how, honestly. I was so uncomfortable and hot and cranky by my ninth month that everyone I know thought it best to keep potential weapons (like a 9-iron or a sand wedge) out of my reach.

Old Home Day is fast upon me again and I'm nowhere near as ready for it as I was last year at this time. Having trouble lining up crafters this year, which is a switch since they nearly bombarded me last year. I'm afraid they didn't do very well and maybe rethought it this year. If I don't get many, I'm not sure what to do. Perhaps push the bake sale harder. I don't know, really. I'm open to suggestions!

Okay, that's all I can think of at the moment. I need some more iced tea and a spell in front of the AC. Because as Pooh's friend Eeyore once pointed out, "This writing business, pencils and what-not. Overrated if you ask me."

The Joy of Free Stuff

2010-04-17T18:23:00.003-04:00

I realize it's been a long haul between posts, but I had been recently crippled in the computer area. I was limping through life, praying day by day that I'd be able to get where I needed to go before the virtual world collapsed in around my ears. Update my blog? Nay nay! I can't take the chance that one random auto-save might cause the whole motherboard to fry. (And it wouldn't do the fatherboard any good either...)

But now I'm all updated with 21st century technology and surfing like a muthafuggah. However, upon unpacking I realized that I didn't get what I thought I was getting. Where's my Word program? Where's Excel? Helloooooooo.....

At first I was sad when I discovered that my updated hardware didn't come with all the usual bells and whistles generally bundled with a Windows OS. I didn't read the fine print which is my own damn fault. No worries, thought I, I'm sure the old discs from the old 'puter will show up and I can yank 'em off of there. Because things just show up around here eventually.

In the interim, however, I was in need of your basic functions but not all that keen on paying for them. What to do, what to do?

Free stuff makes me leery. (Not weary. You're thinking of leery or wary...don't combine them. Weary means tired. You're not tired. You're apprehensive. Christ, learn to speak English.)

I've always held to the adage "You get what you pay for." In general, free stuff is generally the equivalent of crap. The less it costs, the worse it works, right? It's true of cars, mattresses, shoes, Mexican pool boys, and anything you purchase at the dollar store. "Hey, this toilet cleaner isn't getting rid of the hard water stains!" Well, you paid a BUCK for it. What were you expecting?

It has been my experience to date, however, that the opposite seems to be true when it comes to software. So far I've downloaded free virus scan software, a free office suite, a free browser (coming to you live via Firefox with a custom Family Guy skin!), and my latest acquisition: Photoscape.

I take a shitty photograph as a rule. Not my fault, usually. My house is abnormally dark if you ask me, sunlight is unpredictable, and I find most light sources give things a yellowish cast. Now that's annoying enough when you want to take pix of your kids or their toys or your two-count-'em-two-Christmas trees, but unthinkable when you're photographing knit items to sell. Folks want to know that the colors are true. It's my Achilles heel.

I've been using the photo editor that came with the old 'puter and was happy. But I'll tell you what, there's no keepin' me down on the farm now that I've seen Paree.

This program is fan-freaking-tastic. Check out my etsy shop if you don't believe me. Look at how good my stuff looks! I'm not taking my pix any differently...it's still mostly a crapshoot as to what I'll get when I upload the pix. But I can fix anything with this program.

Case in point: check out this photo. Larry took it today. No flash, gray and rainy and dark as a tomb in the living room, kids against a navy couch and Larry was across the room. Here is the un-retouched version.

Now look what I did to it in no less than three minutes flat!
I improved the color, brightened it, cropped it, added a kicky frame and some words there, sharpened it right up suitable for framing! I could have really tightened it up if I'd been inclined!

Photoscape...ask for it by name!

(Especially if you're like me and are *ahem* photographically challenged.)

Birthday Fail

2010-02-27T15:16:00.003-05:00

From the annals of my ever-growing list of holiday fails, I present the lastest chapter.

It started when Sistah found this awesome cake pan on the Williams-Sonoma website. "How perfect would this be for Emmy Bo's birthday?!" she asked, gleeful that the PERFECT cake had been found.

If you've ever met Emmaline Beaudalaire, you would know that she's an Oreo FIEND. She is a wee chocolate monster, if you will. Naturally, her first choice for a cake would be chocolate, and to find a pan that makes an Oreo cake? Priceless. Plus, Grandpa's an Oreo hound himself and we could make it pull double-duty and get our money's worth.

Of course if any of you reading this are bakers, you can see where this is going. Take a good look at the pan. Yeah, that's a lot of pretty deep crevices there, my friend. You ain't kidding about that.

But I'm a good baker, if nothing else! I dutifully took my small pastry brush and worked soft butter into each and every groove and curve and detail. Then I liberally dusted it with cocoa powder and tapped off the excess just like the directions said to. I melted the butter and chocolate, whisked the ingredients, beat the eggs and sugar...I did it all to spec. I didn't vary one iota from the recipe on the box. I took it out when there were a few crumbs sticking to the toothpick and let it rest for 15 minutes before turning it out.

Here's what happened. The second one was worse and came out in no less than three pieces.

So I grabbed my coat and my keys and took 20 bucks from The Breadwinner and headed to the store. Laden with provisions, I snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

Not every six-year-old gets a Birthday Trifle, but then since day one Emma Elaine's been...unique. A special "cake" for a special girl! Happy birthday my wee angel!

*** You want the recipe? Okay, first bake a cake and screw it up when turning it out of the pan. You can do this with brownies as well, or heck, even a cake that does turn out okay that you just lost your ambition to frost. Don't judge me, it happens. When it's cool, crumble it up and separate it into two neat piles. Make up a box of instant chocolate pudding. Whip up a pint of whipping cream to which you've added anywhere from a tablespoon to a quarter cup of sugar and a splash of vanilla. I go with soft peaks but that's how I roll. Now, put the crumbled up cake in the bottom of your trifle dish (or your sister's trifle dish, or a big bowl, whatever you got) and squirt some Hershey's syrup on it. Top it with half the pudding, then half the whipped cream. Now spread some crushed Oreos on top of that. (I was going with a theme here. This step is a good place for any kind of crushed candy bar as well...I'm partial to Heath bars and they come in convenient bags in the baking aisle.) Repeat with the second half of your ingredients, cover and refrigerate. Enjoy! Feeds enough for the whole Lord's congregation.

Pants on Fire

2010-02-06T15:10:00.006-05:00

What with all the lies?

Toyota: "There's nothing wrong with your brakes. Okay, well the gas pedal sticks sometimes. Well, more than sometimes. We're working on it. Here, have some new floor mats. That'll fix you right up. What? No? Hell, recall 'em all. But the Prius is fine. Who's on the phone? Steve Wozniak? The guy from Dancing With the Stars? Oh, and Apple computers, gotcha. Get rid of him. Well, what do you mean he might be right about the problem with the computer system. Okay, sometimes it makes the headlights turn off by themselves. But that's all. And there might be some acceleration issues. But that's it. Damn..."

John Edwards: "I did not have an affair with that woman. That there's my campaign worker's girlfriend. Why no it's not at all suspicious that she lives with him and his wife and children. Lots of married guys have their pregnant mistresses live with their family. Baby? What baby? Let me see that picture. Well, I don't know WHO that is. DNA? Love to take a test. She did what? He said what...WHAT BOOK? 20/2o? Tell George Stephanopolous I'm not here. Okay, well it seem that it i my baby but I didn't really lie about it. Much. Damn..."

Bob the Roofer: "I'll be there in two weeks. June. July. August. I got hurt. You're next on my list. I'll be there next week. What's this envelope from the District Court? She's suing me in small claims court? And I have to pay what I stole from her plus the court fees? Damn..."

Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.

Toys

2010-01-25T15:14:00.007-05:00

When your house looks like Toys-R-Us exploded on any given day, it stands to reason that from time to time you might notice something about said toys.

Today Dave and I were working on his hand/eye coordination by stacking wooden blocks. I was showing him the letters and pictures on the sides. "That's an M, for Mama. That's a bee! B...B... Bee!" Then I got to this one. What in hell is this supposed to be?

The closest I can think of is two candles in a candleholder. It doesn't make much sense, but if you turn it different directions it makes even less sense. "P...P...Podracer." You must train the padawan young, you know.

This is the other one that made me go "Huh?" I get that it's a house, but if that's a stovepipe coming out the side of it, how big is the stove inside? What purpose did sticking that pipe on there make artistically? Is it not still a house with no chimney? Would it have looked too much like a crayon wearing a pocket protector?

*shrugs*

I've also finally taken notice of the differences between New Barbie and Old Barbie.

Some feminists got all het up because Barbie is a completely unrealistic body image for little girls. Now, I don't know about you, but in all my many years of Barbie-playing I never once thought, "Gee, my life would be complete if only I could look just like Barbie."

Au contraire. I discovered at an early age what I imagine fashion designers throughout the ages have: clothing looks better when the model is shaped like a coat hanger.

If it wasn't for Barbie's tightly honed waist and giant blouse bunnies I might never have understood either the concept or the execution of a well-placed dart.

But for those of you who haven't had the chance (because ostenstiably you don't have a Naked Barbie Orgy in your bathroom every day), check out the changes.

First of all, her head got bigger and her features are slightly more pronounced. She looks a bit older and a bit sluttier, I think. She's also less pink, which you might notice in the rest of pics. I attribute that to her years as an airline hostess. Too many nip bottles of vodka at 40,000 feet. Though if you had plastic businessmen groping you all day long when all you wanted to do was to hop into your pink Mustang, speed back to the Townhouse and slip into a nice hot tub, you'd be hitting the Stolis too. Not to mention the fact that if Ken had stepped up and made an honest woman out of her she wouldn't have to be schlepping drinks on the red-eye from Columbus in the first place. But she tries not to be bitter because that just causes lines, and let's face it: Botox can get pricey.

That's NB on the left, and OB on the right in case you're keeping score.

Second, her rack got smaller. Not a lot, but her back got wider in proportion. I bet she has a easier time buying bras now. (NB on the right this time, OB on the left...)

Third, I'm impressed with her waist. I like the bit of definition in the abs and the belly button. It makes up for her inabilty to do the Twist.

Check out her ass! That's a fine badonkadonk Barboo is rockin' these days! Honestly, you could bounce a quarter off it! If I stare at this picture long enough I swear it moves. Tell me that's not enough ass to get Ken to sit up and take notice. (Though I'm pretty sure Barbie gave up on Ken years ago and has been letting G.I. Joe hit that behind the dumpster at Stuckey's.)

Okay, her feet KILL me. I always loved how smokin' Barbie looked in high heels. I loved that she walked tippy toe when she was barefoot. I didn't even mind that she couldn't keep a pair of sneakers on. Now she' s got feet like a lumberjack. She's shopping for shoes in the tranny section. You can paint those piggies any color you want, those are some heinous looking Sasquatches.

That's all I have to say about Barbie. Other than you can't mix and match Barbie fashion anymore. New Barbie's too fat for Old Barbie's clothes. What message does THAT send? "I don't want to play with Fat Barbie! None of the clothes fit her and she has to wear G.I. Joe's combat boots!"

In other toy news, Dave got a new bike yesterday! In an ongoing effort to improve his musculature, his trainer Deb brought him this sweet ride-on. He's walking most of the time now and is steadier every day which is as always a mixed blessing. You know when they're just sitting in one place like a piece of furniture you don't have to chase them. Not to mention his ability and inclination to touch EVERYTHING. And if it makes a banging noise....sweet!

Please excuse his cruddy face. He had just finished his sister's Cocoa Puffs and they leave a residue. The wet shirt is from the constant drooling. Still working on one more canine tooth. I wonder how he doesn't dehydrate, honestly.

See that box in the rocking chair? Is it full of yet more children's toys? Nay nay. That's FULL of my Christmas yarn! Which counts as toys for me, and brings me up to my last item.

A new pair of pink and brown mittens for the shop. Unblocked as yet so this is just sneak peek. I need to talk my hand model into a photo shoot soon so that I can list a bunch of fingerless mittens and such in the etsy shop.

See, it might be a long lag between posts, but it's not like I'm not thinking thingish things.

Tree Fail

2009-12-21T09:01:00.004-05:00

In the spirit of Advent, this year I decided we would wait until the last Sunday of Advent to put up our Christmas tree. Admittedly, half of it was wanting to keep Advent separate from Christmas, thus keeping our religious celebration of the Nativity of the Lord separate from the consumer-driven extravaganza that runs amok from Thanksgiving to the 25th. The other half, however has to do with the fact that I hate putting up the tree. Though not as much as I hate taking it down.

So I sucked it up and on Saturday we hauled the Beast out of the shed and assembled it. As I was putting the flimsy plastic stand together I noticed that one of the legs had a wee crack in it. I shrugged to myself, as I sometimes do, and decided that budget permitting I'd shop for a new tree after the holidays.

We got it up and together, put the lights on (despite two of my three strings of lights being half-dead) and started decorating. I put on the breakable heirlooms and got a box of unbreakable ones together for the kids to put on at their leisure. I noticed as I was hanging stuff on it that it was a bit wobbly, but it was holding firm and I didn't give it another thought, even on Sunday night as I headed off to church for religious ed.

But when I got home, I saw immediately that the tree was leaning up against the wall. Not a good thing. "Larry," I says, "the tree is leaning against the wall!"

"I know," he says and proceeds to 'splain that Bug put an ornament on the tree and the whole thing gave way and almost landed on her. So he leaned it against the wall pending further investigation and/or decoration.

We tried jerry-rigging the thing. The leg was hanging by a thread like a five-year-old's loose tooth, so I mercilessly pulled it and tried to find something to brace that fourth side instead. We tried a lunchbox....too high. And a stack of Interweave Knits didn't do anything to hold the tree in place either. I thought perhaps an old stand that I had in the shed for a real tree might work, but the "trunk" of the fake tree was just too narrow.

Now, when Larry is lifting the tree so that I can "fix" the stand, the trunk of the tree separates into two, then three pieces and many of the individually assembled branches have come loose as well and are floating around tethered by a string of half-dead lights and plastic beads.

I looked at the clock and announced that I was going to Walmart to get a new tree. I couldn't leave it in fifteen separate pieces all day. It would drive me mental, for one, and while Dave's shown no interest so far in anything tree-related, it would stand to reason that a tree collapsing on itself would prove just too tempting to resist.

We've discussed my luck, have we not?

So, much like the Epic Costume Fail of 2009 in which I abandon the girls' homemade costumes in favor of a late-night run to the Walmart, I pull on my mittens and schlep to Tilton in search of a new, adequate artificial evergreen tree. And one that doesn't cost too much, because we are beee-roke.

But as luck would have it, someone died last week.

I know that's an awful thing to say. It was far from lucky for the family. It was a horrible death, a horrible time of year, and if there's one consolation I take in singing at funerals it's that often times music says what words can't say, and I'm glad to be able to offer that to the family. It's a ministry, and it's mine, and it means a lot to me to do. I would do it for free anyway.

But practically speaking, funerals are a paid gig and to get one right before Christmas when money is needed but moths are flying out of my wallet is lucky for me and mine. Perhaps God knew that if the stand hadn't broken that I wouldn't have spent the money on a new tree and put that dangerous, broken, tippy one up next year again. Who knows?

So I got to the Walmart and looked at the selection and to replace the tree I had would have cost nearly a hundred dollars. Didn't want to do that. But there were some smaller 6.5 foot trees that looked pretty good--prelit to boot--for $35. Drawback: ain't no WAY my ornaments are all going to fit on that little thing, cute as it is.

Then Poops got an idea. An awful idea. Poops got a wonderful, AWFUL idea.

Well, not awful...frickin' brilliant if you ask me. I got the $35 shorter, thinner tree AND a 3 foot pre-lit tree for another $18. The little tree is for the kids to put the ornaments on that they make in school, and the ones that I give them every year for when they're grown and have trees of their own.

We put them up, transferred the decorations from the old tree to the new ones, and I have to say that having the two trees next to each other is such a unique look that I really like it quite a lot. I didn't plan it, but like my Epic Halloween Fail of 2009, I came away much happier with the costumes I cobbled together at the last minute better than what was planned in the first place.

And the girls can go to school and tell all their friends, "We have TWO Christmas trees!"

Yep, we're like the freaking Rockefellers!

This will have to be quick

2009-12-01T14:21:00.005-05:00

...but then you like it that way, don't you? Yeah, you know you do.

Photo-heavy, 'cause that's what I promised and posting is cutting into my knitting time. I have a craft fair Friday night at Canterbury Elementary School, and Saturday from 8 - 2 in Sanbornton at the Old Town Hall. Prayers to whatever gods you worship that it's a profitable weekend would not go amiss. I just gave the Town of Bellymont a shitload of money for taxes and I'm still a bit queasy.

But here are the pix I promised.

First, three pair of felted mittens. My own mitten pattern adjusted for felting. The white and red pair are both from Patons Classic Merino and the green ones are from the lovely Elizabeth who called it "1970's Arnold Palmer Green" and that is what I always think of it as. The booties are a mix of Patons and Knitpicks WOTA leftovers and odds and ends.

Enjoy!

Yeah, yeah, yeah...

2009-11-28T20:11:00.006-05:00

I know, I'm behind things with the postings and whatnot. But you're getting free Poops, and remember what they say about getting what you pay for.

First, some knitting content before I forget what the hell I've been up to. For starters, the matter of the backpack, or as I've come to think of it, A Tale of Twin Bags That Aren't.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, I knit and felted a small bag for my BIL's wife. She wanted one just like mine and so I made her one just like mine and she lovedlovedloved it. Total birthday present hit. And as luck would have it, I had plenty of yarn left over to make another whole bag.

So I'm knitting along on SIL's bag and thinking the whole time, "This would make a cute backpack, I think. If I did this and this and this..." So, when the purse was done, I launched into the backpack version making the necessary changes as I went along and lo and behold, it totally worked.

I was PSYCHED, dudes and dudettes. There's nothing like thinking up something in your head and having it come out exactly the way you pictured it. Especially when felting, 'cause man, you just never know what is going to happen in washing machine!

So, utterly pleased with my success, I decided that I should write up the pattern. Now, the construction had changed completely with the backpack-making, so that wasn't a problem, but the stripe pattern is not my own so I thought I'd just make up my own unique pattern and then the whole pattern would be mine! Yay! I bought a big box of all different colors of yarn from Knitpicks and launched into a really cool but simple colorwork pattern. The results prefelted were exactly what I wanted and I could see that it was going to work just as I had forseen.

You see where this is going don't you? I know you're thinking "Poops is thinking too well of herself again. Pride's about to goeth before this fall."

You'd be right.

For you non-knitters that might still be following my narrative (or you knitters who are colorwork/felting virgins) yarn felts the long way. Like, if you were to take a piece of yarn a foot long and toss it in the washer, it would get shorter, not necessarily narrower. When you knit, the yarn still goes predominately in one direction, that is "the long way", so whatever you knit for felting needs to be a lot taller than it does wide, because it's going to shrink in length way more than in width.

Usually.

Unless you're doing colorwork. In colorwork, strands of yarn are carried along behind your work on the inside of the item. They run the "short way" or width-wise. Basically, those strands are going to shrink and cause the item in question to shrink more in width than in height. You live, you learn. I came out with a very long, very narrow backpack.
(I am aware that the picture posted sideways. I can't make it go t'other way. Tip your head to the left, it's easier...)

It's still pretty cute and I love how the colors came out. And when I described it to Yorkie she said I should call it the Quiver Bag since it is shaped like an quiver for carrying arrows. Which is what you could put in it. Or a couple of baguettes and a bread of wine. So behold, The Quiver Bag, by Poops. (The jury is out on whether or not I'll be offering this pattern or not. I mean, it's a success-from-failure kind of thing, but I just don't know...)

Now see it side by side with the pink stripey one. They started out the EXACT SAME SIZE pre-felted.

Let this be a felting lesson for you. The longer your floats on the back of your colorwork, the more it's going to shrink in width. Make a note.

I had a pantload of colored yarn left, though not enough for another bag, so I decided to apply my newly learned methods of pre-felting guesstimation to mitten making. I long ago perfected my own mitten pattern. I have the numbers for every imaginable size under the sun right up in my noggin. I never use a pattern anymore. So I figured I could adjust my own pattern to make them longer pre-felting and then see what happens. I worked in stripes as to avoid the horizontal stranding issues, and had at it. And I have to say, my first effort was far from horrible.

I embroidered a bare tree on it and stitched on the leaf buttons. I sold them at my last craft fair. Which emboldened me to tweak my pattern a bit where it needed tweaking and perfect it, and I think I've done it. I've got three pair ready for next weekend's back-to-back fairs and they are wicked cute if I do say so myself. One pair is green with embroidered sheep, one is red with embroidered and beaded snowflakes, and the last pair is winter white with jeweled leaves in amber and green. So I may indeed offer up my felted mitten pattern sometime down the road. I will also photograph the mittens in case they sell like a mofo and disappear. Which would be grand.

Finally, I made a couple of baby sweaters that are too cute not to share. The first is some baby alpaca I got at WEBS. The sweater is freakishly soft. Baby soft. Amazing, really.

This last one is from my own handspun and this quilted stitch pattern makes it extra "lofty" and I'm sure quite warm. It got lots of oohs and ahs from the looky-loos, but no takers. *shrugs*
It comes with a hat.

So that's all that's new. In my next installment I will share some new booties, the mittens, and I'm working on a really, truly awesome mitten idea that I CANNOT wait to start on. They're a Christmas gift though, so it may have to wait...

Feel Free to Get Your Teeth Out of My Ass

2009-10-20T11:11:00.002-04:00

Am I wearing a sign that says "Just Screw Me"? Is it written on my forehead with Sharpie? Because sometimes it feels that way.

You know I'd rather walk a mile on my tongue than complain, but...

I've been trying to get a roof put on my house since April. I still don't have one. He has until the 31st to get one on or I get the money back that I paid him for the supplies. What do you suppose the odds of that are, huh? What do you want to bet I find myself in small claims court in November? You want to put some money on the date my insurance company decides to drop me for not having the roof done?

See, that's the way my luck runs. I get fucked over at every turn.

I'm the kind of person that gets into a line at the grocery store only to find that it's the slowest line in the store. I'm the gal that goes in to buy a sale item just to find out the the guy in front of me bought the last one, and no they won't be getting any more or issuing any rain checks, so sorry. I'm the person who gets a hell of deal on a pellet stove only to find two years later that the price of pellets has skyrocketed...and good luck finding any come Spring!

I once brought my car into the shop for a simple state inspection. It was running great--needed an oil change, but other than that it was great. I go to pick it up and the guy tells me Bad News: you have a broken something or other. It won't pass inspection without it, and it will cost you more than the car is worth to repair it. I told him I'd get back to him and in tears called my FIL, who is a mechanic for the State of NH. I asked him if it was something he could maybe find me some after-market parts for...and there was a pause on the other end of the line.

"What did he say was broken?" I told him what the guy told me about the something or other.

"When you look at it, does it lean to the right at all?" Nope.

"When you drive it, does it pull to the right at all?" Not a bit. It runs fine.

"Then there's no way your something or other is broken. You wouldn't be able to drive the car if it was." Really. "Really. Take your car to another mechanic, don't even mention the something or other since it's not even part of a state inspection in the first place, and get your sticker. Chalk the 20 bucks up to knowing better than to patronizing that particular car place again." Which I did.

Would that that experience was the only time I've been upsold at a car place. Here's a lesson for you, folks (especially if you don't have a FIL who is a mechanic): if they tell you that you need something else done besides what you asked for, DON'T GET IT.

Just prior to sitting down and venting my spleen about Things That Don't Go My Way, I called my Sister. She shares my opinion that I'm probably out 900 bucks, and to quote Han Solo (not that she would), "I've got a bad feeling about this."

Sister just had some guys come and blow insulation into her old house. They came when scheduled, did the job on schedule, and did just what they said they'd do with no additional charges. I pointed out that it would never have happened for me.

She laughed. "No, they'd have stuck the hose in and blown the plaster clean off the wall. Or you'd open the cellar door and have insulation up to the top step."

Yeah, if they didn't skip town with my check and head for Florida.

So, feeling better having vented to Sister--as I often do--I sat down to tell all y'all about this, and I see the reflection of the Lowe's truck in the back window. It's sort of my nosy-neighbor-rearview mirror-early warning detection system. I turn around and look out the front window and see that it's probably Sister's new washing machine (front load, high efficiency, fucking nice) being delivered. Only I just hung up the phone with her and know she's not home yet. So I run next door like Gladys Kravitz and let the guys in. ("Abner! They're delivering the washer and she's not home! Abner! Are you listening to me? It's the WASHER!")

Long story short, not two minutes after they did their job swiftly and efficiently and an hour ahead of schedule, Sister pulls in. I explained that it's all in, and I made if official by putting my old Jane Hancock on the delivery slip.

Of course if the hoses detach and start spraying water everywhere, we'll know who to blame for that, won't we?

This Kind of Thing is Totally My Bag, Baby

2009-10-13T09:14:00.003-04:00

Check it:

For my SIL with the same name as me. Now we have the same bag too. Every time she sees mine she says she wants one, so for her 30th birthday she's getting one. I was amazed at how good it came out, and how much it looks like the original. It needs some de-fuzzing, but other than that it's good to go.

The specs--Pattern: "Baby's Got a Brand New Big Bag" free online; Yarn: Cascade 220 and one skein of Nature Spun Worsted (that'd be the darker green); knit on size 9 needles and felted for two cycles in the washer.

At least felting is safe.

The town is under a boil order from the state since "unsafe levels of the e. coli bacteria" were found in the municipal water supply. It'll be at least a couple more days until we're safe to drink again.

It's mostly an inconvenience. Remembering not to run your toothbrush under the tap, boiling up a gallon of water before using it for my ever-present pitcher of Crystal Light Iced Tea, remembering to keep my mouth and eyes shut tight in the shower, adding bleach to give the clean dishes a final bacteria-free rinse...by last night it was all quite tiresome.

But then at choir practice, as those of us who live in the village area kvetched a bit about our lot in life, Lillian reminded us that Doris' daughter is currently in Africa working with people for whom the daily pursuit of clean water is a life-or-death struggle.

It kind of put boiling a pan of water in perspective.

Victory is Mine!

2009-10-08T09:39:00.002-04:00

I know it probably doesn't seem like much to most parents. Here's a perfectly healthy 16 month old boy who is sitting in his high chair eating crackers. Most kids do that anywhere from 6 to 9 months or so.

This is the first time he's fed himself. Yep, my little Princeling has not felt the need to shove food into his own mouth until this point. He meets with a therapist once a week because we already know he has some delays with his fine motor skills. As far as the putting things in his mouth goes, she seems to think he can do it, he just hasn't known up until now that he can do it. But he put it all together in the last couple of days and FINALLY he's figured out what to do with that cracker. As you can see by the tray, he still would rather smoosh them up and sweep them to the floor, but he's getting some into his face which is a start. Anything small and/or slippery (like cereal or pieces of fruit) kicks his ass, but if it's big enough for him to hold and take a bite, like crackers or toast, he's got it!

I find myself wondering if he's going to go the same route as Bobo.

Miss Bobesie has been entered into our school's extended-day kindergarten program. It's a special Title I literacy program that helps kids that need extra work with literacy skills. I wasn't sure why she got picked...they choose the 15 kids that need the most help. I mean, Bobo can read! Like, read the newspaper, read. So I asked her teacher about it. She said that the Title I teacher was surprised too. Her scores on her kindergarten screening weren't "low, low" and she can in fact read. But here's what she said: "I see her sometimes thinking a bit longer about what her next step is with a project or with a task, and working hard to 'put it together'." She seems to think that the full day of school will give her more time to experience the classroom environment and work with the demands that come with it, thus making her better prepared for first grade.

I told her that the issue with Bo has always been not that she can't do things, rather that she won't do them until she's good and ready. And if she's doing something she doesn't want to do, rest assured she is paying it minimal attention, if any. So I told her teacher (who is awesome and I love her so!) this bit of insight and explained how I tell when she's just flaked out on me because she's uninterested in what she's supposed to be doing. Hopefully it will help. I don't know...it's taken me five years to get a handle on how she is.

So I wonder how much of Dave is going to be just him doing things when he wants to do them, and how much is him just not knowing how to do it. Like eating. It never occurred to him to put things in his mouth. He is late getting to that stage of development. But with walking, he can. I've seen him do it--when he's not thinking about it! As soon as he realizes what he's done, he chickens out and drops down to the floor to crawl. He can stand, he can take steps unaided, he can get up without holding onto anything. The kid can walk. But will he? Hell to the no!

Bug? Did everything she was supposed to when she was supposed to, and on the early side of normal as well. She's always been happy to learn new things and to share what she's learned. Bobo is the exact opposite. Dave seems to have a bit of both in him.

Three kids, three very distinct personalities. They are interesting people. Victory is mine!

Pride Goeth Before the Fall

2009-10-06T11:39:00.001-04:00

So I'm all pleased with myself for troubleshooting my printer issues by myself, what with Sister being a gazillion miles away in Denver doing God-knows-what, when the sheer excitement of it all makes me have to pee.

I go and sit down only to realize that I'd failed to lift the toilet seat cover. Nearly peed all over the potty instead of in it.

Yes, I'm a freaking genius.

Take Three: Randomness

2009-09-13T12:44:00.003-04:00

Randomocity. Randomnity. Randomliciousness.
With the end of summer comes the harvest. That there is Father Albert on the tractor with Miss Bobo riding in the wagon. He's coming up the lawn where he'll park and summon me and a basket and have me take my pick of the pick of the gardens. His green thumb enables me to fill the freezer with stuff like Crazed Monk Zucchini Bread

and my as-yet-unnamed but superlative Eggplant Parmesan. It was a good year for green peppers and eggplant, but a bad year for zucchini and tomatoes.

I made those zucchini breads for the Old Home Day bake sale. How pretty are those?

I also made these bracelets. I called them "Hunger Awareness Bracelets" and sold them at the fair with all the profits going to the food pantry. Did I mention how well we did that day? To recap: between the bake sale, craft fair, penny raffle, food sales from the kitchen, used book sale, and cash donations, we made almost exactly $1100.00. The Altar and Rosary matched that number and donated $2200 to the food pantry.

Speaking of eating, right before school started, Bobo lost her bottom two front teeth. The first one fell out on Grandpa's watch. She was eating some "Chef" (Bobo-speak for Beefaroni), and bit down on the spoon. Voila, one tooth out! The new tooth was already coming through. She never mentioned that it was even loose.

To tell you what kind of kid she is, I checked her other teeth for looseness and the one next to it was pretty loose too, so I was keeping an eye on it. One day she comes in and stares at me for a moment with absolutely no expression on her face. I grinned at her, and she grinned back at me and I saw that her second tooth was gone! I said, "What happened to your tooth?"

She replied, "*insert spitting noise* I spit it out."

"Where?" I asked.

"On the lawn," she said.

Her sister went out to look for it in the grass but naturally it didn't turn up. Only my kid loses a tooth, spits it out like it's no big deal to have parts of your head falling out, and then fails to mention it even in passing. Bug wrote a note for the the tooth fairy explaining that it was on the lawn somewhere, which the fairy must have bought because she left a nice blank journal for the Musings of Bobo.

And then before we knew it, summer was over.

Yay! First day of school! Cool mornings and warm afternoons! Cold nights and warm blankets and pj's!

Oh, I love fall.

Two girls off to the elementary school. Bug to the fourth grade...last year at the elementary school. Next year: middle school!

And Bobo is a kindergartener. Despite her expression, We really do Like Kindergarten.

Me: "What did you learn today?"

Her: "Stuff."

What do you expect from a kid that spits her tooth out and keeps playing?

Now that fall is upon us, things are starting up again. I'd forgotten how homebound summer can be for me. But tonight I have a catechists' meeting down at the church in which I get my class list for the year and so marks the point that I start preparing for classes.

Class has always been on Tuesday night, but because money is so tight and heating the church so expensive, they've decided to move all the religious ed classes to Sunday. Grades 1-5 meet between masses from 9-10:15 as always, but the middle grades (6, 7, & 8) will meet in the early evening from 5 to 6:15, and finally the confirmation prep classes will meet from 6:30 to 7:45. I rather like the streamlined-ness of having all the classes on one night.

Choir practices resume on Monday night.

Girls' open house at school on Tuesday, Altar and Rosary on Wednesday.

Oh, how I love fall!

Take Two: Knitting

2009-09-12T11:33:00.003-04:00

But not just knitting!

I haven't done much knitting, to be honest. My desert-dwelling cousin inquired as to whether I could make some beanie-type hats for her daughter since she outgrew the ones they bought last year. I made the first prototype:

but there were some problems. First, Bobo won't give it up. She's worn it everywhere but to bed since I finished it.

Second, it's a bit long since cotton stretches and doesn't spring back like my beloved wool. Unless you buy the cotton with the elastic in it and I don't have any of that hanging about. So the beanie kind of loses it's shape quickly and as such becomes a tad too long. But no worries...

Version Two is shorter and this yarn doesn't seem to stretch as much. It also has a tendency to slide off. *shrugs*

The first one was made with leftover bits of Knitpicks Shine Sport and the second was some odds and ends closeout balls of what I believe was a Louisa Harding cotton. I would have no idea since the ball bands went away a long time ago.

Version the Third so far is a cable rib, as yet on the needles and still unphotographed. I think the cables will help it hug the head better so that it will stay on in the shorter length. We shall see.

Once that last hat is done I will likely start a new sweater using up that lavender/pink homespun and a pink and blue homespun I finished last year. And Bezz, it is VERY sproingy and bouncy. And soft...reminds me of cotton balls for some reason.

After that, who knows? Right now there's a baby napping and nothing on the wheel. I have some pretty green to work on.

I need more green in the stash. I seldom have any when I need it. Yellow either. It's weird. I should buy some.

And I can! I've been selling off some of my old stamp sets on eBay and they've been moving really well. So we had some spare cash to have breakfast out this morning. I needed it. I did not look or feel my very best this morning.

This year has been a great one for birthdays! Me and all my friends it seems have turned 40 this year and it's been one great party after another. I haven't had this much fun at birthday parties since we all turned 18! Polly was the latest and we played at her house until 12:30 in the morning.

I have the best friends in the world.

I brought my camera but didn't take any pictures. What happens in Canterbury, stays in Canterbury.

Take One: Spinning

2009-09-11T09:30:00.003-04:00

I can only get out the wheel when Dave's asleep. He's very grabby.

Lately, I haven't touched my spinning much at all. I had some lavender merino languishing half-spun for months and months and months. I seem to find other stuff to keep me busy whilst Dave naps.

But inspired by Zonda's recent success with her singles, I decided to devote my afternoons to the merino until it's done.

And now, it's done.
The last picture is the only one that makes it look at all lavender. It's quite pink in the other two, and honestly...I think it's more pink than purple.

It's uneven. I had a lot of trouble keeping it one thickness, and I couldn't remember how thick I was trying to make it to begin with. That's the trouble with letting it sit so long. Plus, I tend to "spin thin" and have a struggle getting it thicker so I think I went back and forth a bit despite myself.

But, if I wanted perfect yarn I wouldn't be spinning. I would buy it already made. I like the thick and thin and slubbiness of homespun. It has character.

And We're Walking, We're Walking...

2009-09-09T09:07:00.003-04:00

Well, kinda.

Mostly we're still standing in one place and letting go for longer and longer stretches of time. Moving the feet is still a bit scary if I think about it too hard.

And crawling is way faster. I can go way more places and get into way more stuff if I crawl!

But then it's awfully fun being big!

What's in the Bag, Poops?

2009-09-03T17:42:00.007-04:00

What's in that cute, green shopping bag, Poops? Sure does hold a lot of stuff! Shall we take a peek inside and see what's been flying off the needles at Chateau Poops?

First, we have more shopping bags! Perfect for hauling those groceries around and soooo much more comely than the ugly 99-cent things they import from China and sell at the checkout!For those occasions where you're not picking up a lot of groceries, we have the mini-market bag. Perfect for grabbing a few tomatoes at the farm stand or perhaps a handful of Snicker's bars at the local convenience store. I don't judge. You can save the planet and eat candy too, it's okay by me.
Having mastered the adult-sized Norwegian mittens in many different permutations, I've scaled it back and made a kid-sized version of two of my patterns. I cuffed these bad boys so that they'd stay on better in the snow. These are some truly odd looking fingerless mittens in their unblocked state. Gotta say I'm less than proud of these, but what the heck. I figure someone's bound to think they're totally awesome...Some of you may remember two things: first of all, this underlining and linking to a photo of the photo in question happens to me randomly and I can't seem to get it to stop. Which is what you're seeing now. Don't let it bother you like it does me, mmmmkay? Second, I have designed my own pattern for paper coffee cup sheaths and can cozies. I call them Coffee Cozees and Sudz Soakerz, respectively. Today I'm introducing the third part of the Beverage Trinity: Bottle Buddeez.
Here's a few of those Sudz Soakers I toldja about. They sell really well at the Christmas craft fairs...great stocking stuffers!Finally, some more baby booties...true Poops Originals! They really don't get any more one-of-a-kind than this! First, we have bottle green with red soles and an apple/worm motif.For the hippie-come-lately, we have homespun turquoise with black soles and a lava lamp/"groovy" flower theme.Brown is the new black, so the third pair is chocolate brown with brown soles and has wee flowers on the bottom in shades of pink.Last, but far from least because they are my favorite pair, is the sweet as honey pair in mustard wool with brown soles. One pied de sous has a beehive and the other has a sunflower. I love these. Might keep 'em to hang from the rearview or something.I bet your wondering what I'm going to do with all this stuff. Perhaps you've already clicked on over to my etsy shop to snatch something up before they're all gone. But you're back and now you're all like "What the heck, Poops?"

See, there's this store in Maine that contacted me through etsy asking if I would be interested in selling some of my stuff there on consignment. I'm a whore, so of course I said yes. It's an all-girl enterprise and they feature handmade goodies from all 'round New England. So I boxed up all my booties, Norske mittens, a few hats and all the fingerless mittens I had and sent them off. Now I have a hole in my inventory and the Fall/Winter craft fair season is coming soon. I believe the Canterbury Holiday fair by the Ladies' Benevolent Society is in October, and the St. Joseph Christmas fair is at the beginning of November.

If all goes well and the stuff I sent to Maine sells as well as they think it will, and provided I do as well at the Christmas fairs as I usually do, I should have some nice Christmas cash.

Oh, and money to spend at the Patternworks New Year's Day sale....

Wanna Hear Something Gross?

2009-07-31T10:37:00.003-04:00

Of course you do.

I read a thread the other day about how "cool" it would be to make one's breastmilk into cheese, yogurt, or to use it in other consumable food products.

That alone was enough to make me gag. But then you know how I feel about lactivists.

If half the human population can do it, it's not a fucking superpower. Get over yourself.

But just to up the ante, yesterday I read that a woman from Seattle (naturally) made beer from, and I quote, "yeast from her lady parts." It's good to know that there's a use for the by-product of sleeping in underpants for a few nights in a row. It's not funky! It's starter for homebrew!

Yes, I'll hang on while you swallow that bit of bile that just came up. But you know, it's no weirder than eating breastmilk yogurt as far as I'm concerned.

So when I told Yorkie about the gag-me-with-a-spoon cooking-with-breastmilk posts that popped up unexpectedly, (I haven't told her about the lady-bit-beer yet--she's pregnant and her stomach might not be able to handle it yet) she told me that she has a cookbook with recipes made from semen. I shit you not a pantload. I swear to God it's the truth. Look for yourself...

Natural Harvest--A Collection of Semen-Based Recipes

The best part is the comments. Scroll down and read them...I laughed out loud. Let me share a couple of my favorites....

Steve O'Hara writes...."We raised 400$ for a church during the bake sale becuase people could not get enough of the cream cheese cookies we made. Thanks Semen cookbook!"

Fucking awesome. Here's another one.

From Ryan House..."IT'S BABIES!!! NATURAL HARVEST IS BABIES!!!!!!"

*poops falls off the chair laughing*

A thoughtful question from Sam Post...."how long and you store cum for eating later and how should you store it?"

Excellent question, Sam. Thanks for writing. Though no one ever answered him. *shrugs* Maybe it's in the book.

But here's my favorite by far, actually two. Points and props for their creativity...

Rosie Palm says..."The Choked Chicken recipe is by far my favorite, hands down.
Some others I've tried and enjoyed are the Creamy Homemade Fudge, Weinerschnitzel, and Creamed Spinach. The Cumin Rub is also good to marinate your meat."

In the same "main" vein, Spanked Monkey listed his favorites as well...."These recipes are easy to make, even for cooking "new comers."
The Tossed Salad was a big hit at our Mens' Club Meeting. A slathering of Creamy Cucumber dressing really made the flavors pop."

That's all for today. I'm baking up a batch of homemade bread today (from homemade yeast no less!) with some Gar-lick Boy Butter on it and I gotta get churning...

Poops On Tour

2009-07-14T13:06:00.002-04:00

Here's where to meet Poops in person and snatch up some nifty knitted things...

Saturday, July 18--Sanbornton Old Home Day--11-3 at the Lane Tavern (or in the Town Hall in case of rain) .

Saturday, July 25--Canterbury Fair--9-4 in Canterbury Center.

Saturday, August 8--Belmont Old Home Day--9-1 in the St. Joseph Church parish hall, downtown Belmont

And I'm open 24/7 at poops.etsy.com!

Mutually Assured Destruction

2009-07-13T10:03:00.003-04:00

So, y'all know how I still live in the same house in which I grew up, my motto being "If you live at home long enough, your parents will move out"?

Apparently, in some parts of existence, this is an odd occurrence. Some people find themselves elsewhere, some people run and never look back, and some people have to go where their heart or career or the wind takes them. There are people in my acquaintance who cannot fathom living in the same small town their whole life.

Luckily for me, many of my closest friends did not find this to be the case. With few exceptions, my buddies live in the same town, sometimes in the same house, right next door, or a mere few miles from where they grew up. We hang out together and have cookouts, our kids play together and go to school together--we still get along after all these years. We get together often enough--though it never does seem to be often enough--to continue making our history and not merely living in it.

So, a friend from HS who did get away from NH came home for a visit this past weekend. I told her (via the Facebook) that should she find herself in NH to give us a heads up and we'd get the gang together to hang out and catch up.

She did, and we did.

If there's one bad thing about getting together with my friends it's that I laugh so hard that it hurts. It doesn't matter how often we get together, or how seldom, we always have a great time.

What those of us who grew up together found out a few years back is that we all know something about someone that his or her spouse or children doesn't know. Amongst ourselves, the stories are the stuff of legend. The kind of stories that only get better with each retelling. The kind of stories that twenty years later could destroy marriages, damage careers, and cause mental scarring in those of a tender age. I'm not even sure that the statute of limitations has run out on some things.

I could keep you people in stitches for months with the things we did back in the day. Unfortunately for you, though, I have signed a pact of Mutually Assured Destruction. Well, not signed. It was more of a pinky swear kind of thing. Or maybe we just drank to it. I forget.

We're like the Superpowers during the cold war. Each of us has our finger on the button and is capable of raining down destruction from the skies. But we know the other guy has nukes too, and won't hesitate to fire back and go down fighting. And we have no problem with taking out the rest of the planet with us.

My friends are terrified that I have a blog.

And secrets.

And a penchant for exaggeration...or call it"embellishment", if you will.

And that I'm afraid I'll have a stroke someday from all the truly scandalous information I'm storing in my mental hard drive.

No worries, my friends. Your secrets are safe with me. Unless, of course, you shoot first, in which case it's going to be Global Thermonuclear War.

How about a nice game of chess?

I Know Where to Find a Serial Killer

2009-07-06T10:11:00.003-04:00

This guy is currently wanted for questioning in the shooting deaths of five people in South Carolina. If you've seen him, contact your local authorities. They should know what to do. Hell, call the FBI if you want to.

Here's the guy.

And here's the thing. Every time I see that picture on the news, I can only think that I've seen him somewhere before.

I think they should at least question Kevin Costner, if only to find out why he never made a decent movie after Bull Durham.

The Durham Bulls are part of the Carolina League. Coincidence?

Could It Be?

2009-07-04T07:51:00.004-04:00

I just erased a blog post so boring it actually hurt.

Here it is, Reader's Digest version.

1. Kids are sick with two colds and one bladder infection. I'm coming down with aforementioned cold. Bladder is fine, thanks.

2. Roofing guy assures me that as soon as it stops motherfucking raining, he'll be buy to slap a roof on the dump.

3. It has stopped motherfucking raining for the moment, but thunderstorms and spot showers appear to be in the forecast for the next five days. Still, some sun is better than none.

That was much more efficient.

Okay onto the fun stuff.

I like to write, and sometimes I manage to come up with something other than a blog post so boring it makes the angel's weep. My problem with creative writing is that I never know what to write about. Well, did you know that if you Google "writing prompts" you will get just that? Seriously, it's true!

I entered a writing contest last month, squeaking in just by the deadline. The top prize is 500 UK pounds, which is a bit more than 800 bucks. A nice chunk of change, if I win. If not, it's nice to be writing stuff again.

So this cool writing prompt site I found, you roll your cursor over the numbers and a wee blurb pops up to tell you what to write. I closed my eyes, rolled my cursor and where it landed, that's my prompt.

My current assignment is "Write about the metaphor 'a plate of fear'."

Story in progress.

Anyway, while I was looking for writing prompts, I found this really cool thing called Wordle.

Here's what you do. Find something you've written, or someone else has written. Cut and paste the text into the Wordle box and hit "go". It makes this really cool collage of the words in the story, or paragraph, or chapter, or poem, or whatever you've cut and pasted. The more often a word is used, the bigger the word. The less it's used the smaller. And you can pick the font, the colors, the layout, all that stuff.

It's supposed to be a tool for writers to see how often they use certain words in their writing, but I think it just makes really cool collages.

Here's one I did:

Happy Birthday, America!

You Know I'd Rather Walk a Mile on My Tongue than Complain

2009-07-02T08:58:00.003-04:00

It's been raining for almost an entire month.

Today it's POURING.

I can only hope for some localized flooding to make the damn rain interesting. The kids are sick of being inside. Hell, even I'm sick of being inside, and let's face it: I'm an indoor kind of gal.

I actually find myself wanting to go for a walk in the sunshine. (Quick, someone feel my forehead!)

Nothing dries. I'm starting to smell mildew. I'm scared for the tomatoes (though they look to be doing just splendidly.)

Until I've got enough sun on me to feel human again, enjoy this view of the lush tropical rainforest I'm growing.Doo doo doo, looking out my back window.

Glory Days

2009-06-30T08:44:00.002-04:00

I like these kinds of things.

It's odd, I know, but one of my favorite things to do is filling out forms. I like doing my taxes, even.

I like to read these because it gives me an idea of what someone is like. I like reading answers to questions I would have never thought to ask. In turn, for the most part I enjoy thinking about the questions and formulating my answers. It's theraputic, in a way.

This one is again lifted from CBear who is currently on blogging hiatus as she moves!

IN YOUR SENIOR YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL...
1. Did you date someone from your school? Yes, yes I did. Do I wish now that I'd dated more people from my school. Not to slight the guy I dated in the least, but yes, yes I do.

2. Did you car pool to school? No, but my boyfriend gave me a ride every day, even though I lived within walking distance of the school.

3. What kind of car did you have? I didn't get a car of my own until after college. Aunt Elaine bought me a 1978 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. It was AWESOME.

4. What kind of car do you have now? 1998 Toyota Camry. Got it used and it's been worth every penny. I'd own another one in a heartbeat.

5. Its Sunday night...where are you now? At home. The kids are usually in bed by 8, so someone has to be here!

6. It is Sunday night...where were you then? Definitely not out. School night. I was probably on the phone.

7. What kind of job did you have in high school? I worked during the summers for the town's Park and Rec program, then the next year I worked for the Belmont Village Store. I worked into the school year until it was too much to juggle work, school, clubs, sports, and a boyfriend.

8. What kind of job do you do now? I am a Personality Development Specialist. (I'm a stay-at-home mom to three.)

9. Were you a party animal? Yes, on occasion.

10. Were you considered a flirt? I don't really know. I think I probably was and still am, but I don't know what impression others got, or get.

11. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir? No. I didn't play an instrument and I didn't join choir until college.

12. Were you a nerd? No. But I've always had underlying nerdy tendencies. I try to keep them in check. I was probably more one of the cool kids.

13. Did you get suspended or expelled? Heavens, no. I had perfect attendance in high school. I didn't miss a day because I liked to be in on everything and anything.

14. Can you sing the fight song? We didn't have one. Rest assured if we had, I would still know it. We had a school song in college...Salve Regina. In Latin. Chanted. Seriously. And yes, I can stilll chant it.

15. Who was your favorite teacher? I don't know as I had one favorite. I liked (and still like) a lot of them for different reasons. Some teachers had a teaching style that helped me learn really well--Mrs. K and Mrs. D come to mind for that. Some pushed me to do more than I wanted to, which was good for me and rewarding in the end--Mr. L. Some were fun people and taught fun classes--Mme. P. Some I appreciated then (as now) for treating me as an adult and giving me responsibilities beyond what was expected--Mrs. A and Mrs. R come to mind. Some I admire simply for their level of dedication to the students and the school, like Mrs. B and Coach B.

16. Where did you sit during lunch? In the lunchroom. I seem to remember sitting at the table directly under the big calendar in the cafeteria, but I know we didn't hold to one specific place.

17. What was your school's full name? Belmont High School.

18. When did you graduate? 1987

19. What was your school mascot? Red Raiders.

20. If you could go back and do it again, would you? I don't know. Not to do it all over again, but maybe, if I could know then what I know now, I might go back for an extended visit.

21. Did you have fun at Prom? Yes, I did.

22. Do you still talk to the person you went to Prom with? On occasion. We are both part of the same circle of friends, but we don't seek out each other's company if the gang isn't all together. Some of that circle I talk to all the time.

23. Are you planning on going to your next reunion? Abso-friggin-loutly. Our 20th reunion was so much fun that quite a few of us get together as a group on a regular basis. A lot of us still live locally, we have kids in the same schools we attended, and we still have a lot in common. So it's logical for me. And I like the men and women they've become, not just holding onto the boys and girls they were, you know?

24. Do you still talk to people from school? Oh yes. And not just from my class, either. Two of my best friends are from my sister's class. I'd say I'm in regular contact with about 20 people from HS, all grades and teachers included. Casual contact...probably double that, maybe even more.

25. School Colors? Red and white. GO BIG RED!

26. What celebrities came from your high school? None.

27. Did you play a sport? No, but I was the volleyball manager for four years, and I managed boys' varsity basketball junior and senior year. It was a great position for someone who liked sports but sucked at them all equally. And it was fun to be part of the team, but closer to the coaches than the players. I got a unique perspective, I think.

28. What was your favorite club? I loved being Yearbook editor and working on the newspaper. I still love to write and edit, and I have an eye for layout.

29. What class or teacher did you fear? I never feared a teacher or a class, but I hated Physics and Calculus. All math, for that matter, and the only science I ever liked was Chemistry. And there were teachers I didn't like because I felt they were ineffective and I learned little, and felt they didn't really care that I learned little.

30. What class was your favorite? I always loved English classes. French was fun, too. But I also really enjoyed any business classes I took with Mrs. A. I would say of all the stuff I learned in HS, typing is the one thing I use every single day.

That's all from me. I don't know what it reveals about me, though. I'll leave that up to you to decide.

If you want to relive a glorious youth, or share why your senior year sucked and sucked hard, I'd love to hear. Leave a comment and let me know if you decide to share!

Tito, Get Me a Tissue

2009-06-27T13:08:00.003-04:00

It's been a rather sad week, I think.

For all the scandals and circuses, the musical icon of my generation is gone. Like Elvis, like the Beatles, love him or hate him, Michael Jackson changed music forever. I feel lucky to have been witness to it.

I saw this the other morning on Good Morning America and cried. I think the reason it gets me is the song is from when he was a just a boy singer and not the King of Pop. Most of the pictures they show are of him performing and there's such joy in them--not the creepy mugshots or the paparazzi pictures. I'm sad for his kids, and for his mom.

Anyway, for Michael Jackson fans, I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Last night, however, I caught part of the documentary special about Farrah Fawcett's fight with cancer. I didn't watch it all because, quite frankly, it was too hard. I think it was hard to watch because throughout it all she was so brave and honest about her feelings, her struggles and her pain. You had to admire her great strength of spirit, and her great faith. And despite the ups and downs she and Ryan O'Neal have had, it was obvious how deeply they loved each other and how desperately they clung together through all of it. I'm sad for him.

But while I admire and respect the woman she became, it was hard not love her for the sassy young thing she was.

So for Angel fans everywhere...lest we forget.
Been a lot of death this week, I'll tell you what.

I was at a funeral this morning too for a dear old lady from our parish. I hope someday to be a dear old lady, though I think I'll probably be more of a spunky old gal. Here's hoping I get more years on earth than Michael and Farrah did. Perhaps my star will burn longer since it doesn't burn quite as brightly.

It's Hard Out Here

2009-06-24T08:55:00.002-04:00

Just pimpin' today, folks!

Pop on over to my friend Mike's etsy shop and make some of his lovely photography yours.

How I envy people who can take nice pictures. My skills have improved with the acquisition of a new camera, but I can't ever seem to get what I see in front of me to translate to print.

Mike, on the other hand, finds simple beauty in everyday objects. I'd post some of the pictures here, but I don't know how to add a watermark so that no one can use them elsewhere without his permission. So you'll have to link, and I think you should.

In other news, I notice someone finally punched Perez Hilton in the face. I'm not an advocate of violence or anything, but I kind of felt this was a long time in coming...

Just a Little Off the Top, Please

2009-06-19T09:26:00.003-04:00

Big Dave got his first haircut today, courtesy of Mama. He was a bit shaggy in the front, there.

He liked it okay, except for the bits of fine baby hair that stick to everything and make your face tickle. But it's cool, because Mama will blow in your face and get them off, and even though she has nasty coffee breath, it's pretty fun.

Grandpa still thinks it's parted the wrong way, but I have to go with the cowlicks, not agin' 'em. I didn't touch the back because those are his sweet baby curlies and I love to nestle my face in them and kiss them. I'm just not ready to let them all go.

The best part about his hair is that it's a very light strawberry blonde. In the sun there's a lot of it, but it gives it a lovely golden glow that his sisters' didn't have.

I feel bad that the girls never really got "first haircuts". Just bangs trimmed or ends for a long time, and when they did finally get a bunch chopped off, it was by no means their first time in the hairdresser's chair.

So he's slowly--or quickly, depending on how you look at it--growing out of babyhood. He's crawling, standing, drinking regular milk and eating regular food just like a big boy. He'll be walking before much longer and probably weaned completely from his bottle by the end of summer, provided he decides he likes the sippy cup.

He was just a wee baby, wasn't he?

A-Muse-Ing

2009-06-17T12:53:00.003-04:00

Inspiration!

A while back I sent Yorkie a little felt bag I made. No reason, just because she's her and thought she might be cheered by some mail. Who doesn't like getting mail they didn't expect, right?

She said the other day that she used the bag with it's hanging wrist strap as a camera case.

Just that very day I was at the Staples looking at their selection of camera cases and not being happy with the ones I saw.

Why did it never occur to me before to make a felted one? Huh? Answer me that!

So, inspired by a most amusing muse, I knit, felted, and embroidered myself a camera case for the Canon. And I quite like it. It was such a good idea I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier.

It has room enough for some spare batteries, a place for the camera strap to hang out (so I didn't have to sew one one) and a ceramic sheep button embellishment.

I'm pleased.

I also listed a couple more pair of slippers in the etsy shop. The teal pair has the cutest pair of ceramic bat buttons and a big grey moon with little bats in the background.

The red pair is simple with a fancy-schmancy gold-embroidered ribbon.

I've got another brown pair on the needles and that after that...I don't know. Nothing in the queue at the moment!

I'm going to go have a cold drink now and wait for the muse to strike again.

Magic Church Bread

2009-06-15T09:32:00.004-04:00

In light of the fact that yesterday was the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)--and you all know that, of course--I bet you're afraid this is going to be about the Real Presence of the Eucharist.

C'mon, that's what I have 9th grade Confirmation I students for!

My blog is about something more practical, possibly the best invention since sliced bread...since the circular knitting needle...since the toll house cookie...

Cheerios.

This bag practically guarantees me an uninterrupted hour in church. Mind you, Dave isn't quite to the point where he likes standing up so much that he's fussing to get down all the time, so a bag of snacklets keeps him quite happy for a rather long stretch in the grand scope of infant-measured time. I imagine this is the last of a precious few months in which he happily accompanies us as a family for awhile.

I'm all for families attending Mass together, I truly am. I don't hold with kid-friendly soundproof rooms at the back of the church. The Mass is for everyone, including the youngest. How do kids learn to behave in church if they never go?

But I make an exception for toddlers.

Babies are easy enough to amuse, and if you're lucky they'll sleep through most of it like mine did. A little milk and it's goodnight Irene. When they're bigger, it's Cheerios and more milk, and Big Dave loves to sing along. His pitch isn't great yet, but we're working on it. He loves to chant, I swear.

Then comes the age of squirming. They don't want to sit in a lap, or even by themselves in the pew. They want to run, and run free! They want to get down and get up and get down and get up and if they are restrained...they SCREAM.

You can pull off maybe 20 minutes, half an hour if you're lucky.

At St. Joseph Belmont, that barely gets you through the homily. Fr. Albert is Benedictine, and monks have NO PROBLEM with quiet contemplation. We take our time. We sit and listen, and then we sit quietly and reflect on what we've heard.

And in addition to being a contemplative monk, he's a showman to boot. He believes the celebration of the Mass is to be something to be savored and enjoyed. Everything he does, he does with meaning. Every gesture, every prayer, literally everything is done with intent, and intent takes time. He does not rush. He doesn't whip through it like the diocesan priests so everyone can get to their golf game by tee time.

The upside is that by slowing it down, you learn to appreciate the subtleties of the ceremony. Prayers are said more slowly and reverently, the Creed is said with emphasis and inflection, and rather than having Mass flung at you at lightning speed, you're pulled into participation at a pace that is comfortable and relaxing.The downside is that you're there for an hour at least, more if it's a feast day or if there's something extra going on like a baptism.

Which is fine unless you have a squirmy toddler on your lap.

So there is a stretch of time in every one of our kids' lives when they stay home with Papa on Sunday morning. He's happy to take one for the team, what with him being a marginal Catholic and all He had very little catechism growing up, so he doesn't know what he's doing, or why he's doing it. It makes for a boring and pointless church experience and I feel bad for him and every other Catholic in the same boat. (I've tried to explain it, but he doesn't really much care. And you know what they say: never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.) All things being equal he prefers our church to any others he's attended, much to the disappointment I'm sure of some family members who shall remain nameless, yet he doesn't seem to want to be a full participant here either.

But it's his life, so whatever. He's all for raising our kids up as good Catholics and is supportive of my ministries, so if that's to be his calling, I guess I can't complain. I'm luckier than most.

No, the problem around here isn't with the lack of basic morals of the human members of the family, or even the cat.

It's the Barbie dolls.

Are you familiar with the Bill Engvall routine he does about his daughters and "Naked Barbie Land" and how there's naked Barbies as far as the eye can see?

That's my bathroom. I caught this on camera this morning.

Shameless hussies.

Now That I'm Done Ranting

2009-06-12T20:32:00.004-04:00

I believe I shall regale you with some knitting content.

First, you can all be jealous of the sweet little set Auntie Meal scored for a friend of hers with a new baby. It's the pink cabled hoodie cardigan from my shop, only I jazzed it up a bit.

I added a small patch on one of the sleeves with two small bunnies on it, one facing front and one facing back.

Why, you ask?

Because she commissioned a pair of my Baybee Bootayz to go with it, but I'm out of that exact pink and can't get any more. So I said, "How about a white pair with pink soles and ribbon ties and I'll embroider wee white bunnies on the soles instead?"

Sold!

She's also interested in my latest pair of felted embroidered slippers which I didn't even get to list in the shop. If they fit her, they're hers. If not, well you still might have a shot at them. I'm also working on another pair of teal ones right now.

The only things I actually got listed in the shop today are six small amulet/poultice/keepsake drawstring bags. I wanted to make one for myself to keep my rosary beads in, when I got the idea of making a bunch of them from scrap yarn. I put a nice satin cord on and a wee charm to decorate, and BOOM! How cute is that?

Finally, I've got a baby sweater ready to block. It's a baby kimono in about a size 24 month/2T or so.

So that should catch you up on my knitting for awhile. I'm also thinking quite seriously of entering the Knittyspin contest they're having over at Knitty this month. I like the Spunky Eclectic fibers and I sort of have a project for handspun in mind.

Something is telling me to DOOOO EEEEETTTT, so you see, I must.

I'm Sorry, But You've Been Hidden

2009-06-11T18:15:00.003-04:00

I realized today what a liberating feeling it is to block people from my Facebook feed. I feel much lighter already.

I had to do it, you see. I was beginning to type in appropriately snarky responses to things they posted and deleting them before sending. I realized I was on a slippery slope that was going to escalate (I think that was mixed metaphor) into not deleting but just going ahead and speaking my mind, to finally writing things just to piss annoying people off. 'Cause, you know, I can do shit like that.

So I blocked a few friends, and here's why. First of all, each is annoying in his own way. Annoyance is the one over-riding thing that will get you banished from my sight.

Guy number one, the first person to be hidden months ago, fancies himself a stand-up comedian, so we shall call him CaptainUnfunny because sadly, he is not funny. I have the YouTube clips to prove it. His crime is posting what he thinks are witty and urbane observations--and trust me, they're not. Or worse yet he lets us all know his latest gig and the latest gigs of all his performer friends.

Now, if I start going on everyday and saying "Hey! Check out the new stuff in my etsy shop!" I would hope people would block me too.

Which brings me to Gal #2 who we shall call YouCrackMeUpLOL. She's one of those type of people who thinks we're closer than we are. I have two of those type of friends. This one got blocked because of her constant need to tell people what she's doing and/or thinking every minute of every day. I bet she tweets. Which I don't mind, if you are amusing. Want to know what isn't amusing?

I am gonig to bed yawn lol

I just had a cup of coffee lol

AforementionedComedianFriend you are so funny lol

You get the idea. Despite being my complete political opposite in every way, she manages not to irritate me with the grand pantheon of things she has the potential to use.

Which brings me to PossibleLesbian. I don't know if she's gay or not, but I'm betting on yes because if not, she's the most Pro-Gay straight person I've ever met. (Most people I know agree with Bette Davis when she said "I'm all for gay rights, but what's in it for me?")

PL is actually the sister of a friend of mine from way back, and what makes PL annoying is not that I can't figure out if she's a lesbian or not, not that it matters because I truly don't care, but it's the fact that she thinks she's smarter than she actually is. Her posts are mostly pseudo-intellectual blather, but it's the righteous indignation over perceived injustices that pushed me over the edge.

She posted an article from Salt Lake City about a Mormon-owned bookstore that stopped carrying the Twilight books in their store. According to the article, the bookstore in question specializes in religious books and books that would be of interest to Mormons. They carried the Twilight books in the first place because the author is LDS. However, at some point they realized that because they weren't selling well (who goes to a religious bookstore to get vampire books?) and space was limited, so they said they'd stop selling it in the store, but you could order online if you wanted.

She posted that with a rant about not banning books.

They didn't ban ANYTHING. But she's one of those activist cuckoos who always has her Jockey's in a knot over something.

Which brings me to LesbianActivist. This is the other friend who thinks we're closer than we actually are. And she's on the front line of every liberal cause there is. She's so far to the left she's practically coming around to the other side. Me, I'm libertarian in my political leanings, conservative in most areas of my life, and I have an uncanny abililty to see both sides of any argument. If there was a perfect job for me in the world, it would be Devil's Advocate. Which is a real job, by the way.

LA sees one side: hers. She's a gay activist and would like you better if you were too. She's a recovering alcoholic, and so are you. She's had gastric bypass, and so should you. And so on, ad infinitum.

Her posts are all about all the terrific gay things in the world. Sometimes I suspect she's gay because she loves the lesbian lifestyle. I am friends with more gay people than I can shake a fist-shaped dildo at, and I gotta tell you, she's the only person I've ever suspected of choosing to be gay. Every single one of my gay friends is gay the same way I'm straight. We just ARE. It's not a club they joined, or a cause they support, or even something they have to mention. It's a non-issue, truly.

And I am all for gay marriage. I say everyone should have the equal right to ruin their life. I don't think broadening the definition of marriage will in any way cause the institution to deteriorate. I think it will make it stronger. I also realize that not everyone shares the same religious convictions and it is as unfair for any group to push their religious beliefs on someone as it is for gay activists to force anyone to back down from the basic tenets of their faith.

But I also believe that any church has the right to say No Way Jose. I think a church, a minister, a photographer, whomever objects to providing services should be left alone. Anti-discrimination lawsuits can and will happen, and I'm glad that Gov. Lynch had the foresight to attempt to protect religious freedom while allowing sexual freedom to win the day.

I hope it works. I want everyone to be happy.

But here's the kind of shit I find annoying as all get out.

The first was a picture she posted a week or two ago that was an...we'll call it an homage, though I don't feel that way...of the famous photograph of the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima. The photo is two women in wedding gowns and two dudes in tuxedos raising a rainbow flag.

I feel very strongly about veterans and veterans affairs, and that rubbed me the wrong way. That black and white photo should remind people of how many lives were lost in a war that did nothing short of freeing the whole world. I get the point that was being made, but I object to the method used to make it.

The second one was the flag image she posted that was the US flag with some sort of gay rights symbol in the blue field instead of stars. Again, I couldn't help but feel a bit slighted on behalf of the men and women who fought and died to protect the freedoms that flag symbolizes. Fly it as is, or don't fly it at all. Again, I found it inappropriate.

I thought seriously of posting my own version of the flag but with a cross of stars instead and claiming it was the Christian American flag. Or perhaps a nice Star of David instead. How about the Islamic Crescent? No?

Changing the image of our flag doesn't win any victories, or make any points, other than that we are a country divided at all times over any number of political, social, and religious issues. It serves to widen the gap, not close it.

But I had to block her before I posted my own Catholic Rights flag. Or alerted my local VFW. And I thought seriously of signing up for the Legalize Polygamy group because...well, why not? When you think about it, polygamy should have more support than gay marriage. The Old Testament is FULL of it!

Anyway, I digress. The straw on the back that told me it was time to cut bait was her post about her friend winning Gay Idol. I have no idea what that even means, but when the response that came to mind first was "Hey, you're still gay? Cool, I had NO IDEA!" well, I'm thinking it's time to walk away. And blog about it.

LOL.

I hid a few other people only because I friended them because they were friends once and they asked, but I've since realized that I have nothing in common with them and really don't care much what they're up to, so I just hid them instead of scrolling through a flurry of unwanted info. And I'll hide anyone that cannot or will not use some semblance of proper written English in their posts. Hell, I'll happily attempt to read your posts if you're fluent in say German (like Yorkie) or French (like Mme P, my HS French teacher). But if you start "u r so funny lol" -ing me, I'm hiding you faster than kiddie porn on a hard drive, mister.

I say, thin the brush. Cull the herd. Weed out life's little annoyances. G'wan...it's liberating!

Nine Years to the Day

2009-06-09T09:36:00.003-04:00

My Buggy Girl made her appearance on the planet. Today, I am feeling old. I can't believe it's been nine years already.

We had a big party for Bug and Dave on Sunday with our family and friends in attendance. It struck me looking at the kids all playing on the lawn and NEW SWINGSET how big they're all getting.

Dave got a bunch of new clothes which he desperately needed. He's one and is wearing size 2T clothes. As it is, one of his new pair of summer pajamas is too tight in the arms! Bug got some nice jewelry crafting kits, lots of books, and some new outfits. And a new slip and slide.

And they all got a NEW SWINGSET.

I made chicken and Italian sausage on the grill as well as the potato salad, and we had a fruit platter, a fruit salad, two kinds of cole slaw, and macaroni and cheese. There was about a cup of potato salad left when all was said and done, and of the two cakes we had, there was 3 small pieces of one left.

Folks were hungry, I guess.

I know by 5:30 I was ready for bed! But then we'd been up early Saturday, Sister and I, building a NEW SWINGSET and all.

My metalworking experience with stair railings served me well, indeed.

Every Now and Again

2009-06-03T09:43:00.004-04:00

Every now and again I think it's important to make a blog post that says, Yes, I do STILL knit!

Though, like CBear, I'm kind of into the embroidering thing these days. Probably because summer is coming and while I love to knit with wool, it can get sweaty to work with. And I just don't feel the love when I'm working with cotton. I may turn my summer energies to flour sack dish towels for awhile. Maybe some dishcloths.

Of course if you ever wonder what I've been up to, wander over to the etsy shop. I tend to knit, photograph, and list them without ever showing them off here. So here are a few things I've been whipping out!

First, inspired by my favorite pair of wool socks that Mr. Poops put through the washing machine and dryer, is the Loden Slipper. What DH did by accident (made the Bug a warm pair of slippers!) I did on purpose. It's my regular old all-purpose easy as pie sock pattern that I knit in worsted weight on size 9 needles (with mods being a very short cuff and a very long foot!) and ran through the wash--on purpose this time! I did remember to make them in the biggest size so that they'd fit a grownup when they were done. Then I added the embroidered embellishments. They sold within hours of being listed, but I've got another pair on the needles now in navy blue.

The Midnight slippers are their twin, a bit smaller. Same yarn, it just felted better for some reason. Oh, the yarns are the Valley Yarns Northhampton from Webs. It's your basic wool, nothing fancy. These I embellished with hematite beads in a vine pattern in silver. I think they're quite sharp.

I'm thinking with the navy ones of doing the embellishment on felt and appliqueing it instead of embroidering right on the felted slipper, but I don't know yet. Honestly, the whole felted slipper thing came out of my need to embroider something.

The Baybee Bootayz was what got me started with the embroidery thing. I made Big Dave a pair awhile back in a bigger size, but this is the original pattern for the smaller ones. I knit the booty, then I embroider a felt sole and blanket stitch it in place. These are a few of the booties I've got listed.

That's about all for now. Oh, except I should mention that Big Dave is one year old today. I watched him devour his oatmeal and pears for breakfast this morning and got weepy thinking of how very grateful I am to have him. My blessings are truly without number.

Hard to Believe It's June

2009-06-01T10:27:00.002-04:00

Honestly, I'm freezing. It's in the 50's today and pretty breezy. I seem to remember at this time last year when I was hugely pregnant and overdue it was hotter than the hinges of hell, everything from the doors in my house to my fat sausage toes was swollen. Figures. I could probably be pregnant and comfortable this week.

So this weekend I put a railing on my porch stairs. Here it is.

That motherfucker pisses me off every time I look at it. Why? Because it doesn't need to be there. Not according to local building codes. Not in the opinion of the insurance company that has been covering this house for 41 years. But we switched insurance companies, and this company sent a monkey out to do our inspection. They signed on to cover us, then after the inspection canceled it due to disrepair--which they'd reinstate if we got stuff fixed. They started with four things, then added a few more for good measure when my agent called them about it.

Long story short, I got them down to three, one of which is the roof which I was going to do this summer anyway.

The second is the railing on the stairs. No one BUT the insurance company thinks I need it. Fuckers. Seriously, now that I have coverage, I have half a mind to burn this shithole down. I swear I'll stand in the yard and shoot the first son of a bitch that tries to put it out. If I could work my will, there would barely be enough left of it to pick up in a dustpan. And then, since they raised my coverage because it's an old house, they can build me a new one. One that doesn't have plaster falling down, a new furnace, decent plumbing, insulation...you know, stuff like that.

Don't ever let anyone tell you that anything is "free". There's no such thing.

The third thing is I have to put clapboards up on the back side of the shed in the space above the woodshed. The woodshed that they called a "carport" despite the fact that you couldn't drive up to it without going over the lawn, and even if you got to it, a car wouldn't fit under it, no way no how.

Got 'em on that one.

But I still need to replace a handful of clapboards. Whatever.

Memorial Day 2009

2009-05-25T14:35:00.004-04:00

Ray Craigie and the Belmont High School Marching Band coming up the Main Street. Some of our American Legion veterans.

Our Girl Scouts!

Brownie Bug marching in the parade.

The Girls Scouts: one Daisy, one Brownie, one Junior, one Cadette, and one Leader tossing a bouquet of lilacs into the Tioga River. Off to the right of the picture is a police bagpiper playing "Amazing Grace." (You have to squint--he had a nice shady spot.)
Two lovely Brownies on a breezy spring day. The flags atop Monument Square.

In grateful remembrance of those soldiers who gave their lives in service to our country. May God bless their families and hold them in the palm of His hand.

It's Time for a Wardrobe Update

2009-05-22T09:45:00.004-04:00

No, not me. I'm always the very embodiment of fashion-forwardness. *snort* I crack myself up.

Here's your quiz for the day. What is wrong with this picture? Other than Dave's hair sticking straight up like the Heat Miser's. It was about 90 degrees when I took this, so it's not far off. And it doesn't make his hairstyle wrong, just kind of funny, I think.

(Need a hint? The answer is NOT "They should be wearing [Insert Lesser Team of Your Choice Here] shirts. We're a Red Sox family. Get over it.)

Give up? Neither Nomar Garciaparra nor Manny Ramirez plays for the Boston Red Sox anymore.

Can a shirt be a collectible if it's been drooled on? I didn't think so. See, honey? I told you you should have worn a bib.
You too, Dave.

How to Know When You Should Just Stay Home

2009-05-21T08:43:00.003-04:00

When you see this in the sky, it's a good day to go back to bed. Things just aren't going to be going your way.

I should have seen this sign a couple days ago when I woke up with the kids' cold. I'm feeling rather poorly this past couple of days, and you would know it's one of the busiest weeks I've had.

Monday night was our last choir practice. We played "Choir Roulette". One person stuck a finger in the hymnal and we sang whatever song he picked at random. It turned out to be one we didn't know, so we all learned it on the spot. It was a nice song, and it was fun to do.

But choir is over for the year, at least the practices. And we have two new cantors on the schedule so I'm not heavily scheduled this year.

But then Tuesday night was Bug's chorus concert at school. I wish I could say how much I love watching kids perform and how wonderful it was, but it's like torture for me. I love to see my Buglette up there and her little buddies, but at the end of the day, I don't like child performers. I find the talented ones truly creepy...like those little girls who sound like grownups, or the little boys that dance like Michael Jackson could before his nose fell off. And the untalented ones--well, I go between feeling bad for them and bad for myself.

And what's the deal with movement when kids sing? Why can't they just hold still and concentrate on the music instead of acting out the song? I know her music teacher/chorus director well and I may ask if I can find a way to do it tactfully. Even Bug says it's hard to do the movements because while you're trying to remember what movement to do next, you forget the words.

Then again, I think show choir is intrinsically evil.

So that was Tuesday. Last night was Confirmation for all the area churches over at Sacred Heart in Laconia. There were 70 kids being confirmed, and the place was packed. The music was everything that is wrong with church music, in my opinion. I like my church music to have some life. I like it to be joyful, especially on a joyful occasion. Sacre Coeur has a big ass pipe organ and every song sounded like it was being played on Valium. I felt like I was stoned. I wish I was stoned.

Dave decided he was hungry again last night, which means that he didn't get enough solid food yesterday evening, and even though DH got up with him since I felt like crap (and still do), I still had to listen to his big mouth while he settled himself back down for sleep.

So this morning I'm tired, and sick, and dragging ass.

Oh, and the TiVo shit the bed yesterday. I'm going to plug it in later and see if I can make it work, so let's keep our fingers crossed, shall we? Thank God all my season finales are over. Would have sucked to miss those!

And today is the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord, a holy day of obligation. I'm cantoring at Mass at 6, then we have our monthly Altar and Rosary meeting afterwards. It's going to be brief, I think. But I have to make something for a funeral tomorrow, probably cookies, 'cause I said I would.

And then tomorrow is probably going to be blessedly peaceful. DH has a half-day and if he's home in time I may go to a funeral, or not. I don't know. We'll play it by ear anyway.

That's my life in a nutshell. Busy, busy, busy. Sometimes you have to read the signs in the clouds.

Another Screw Loose

2009-05-18T09:13:00.003-04:00

Actually, another screw is gone. You know the sliding shelf thing that holds they keyboard on a computer desk? Well, mine loses screws from time to time. At any given time I'm missing at least one. Which is not a problem. But when there's only two, then there's issues. And that's where I am this morning.

Someone was sitting here when that screw let go, but rather than find it on the floor and pick it up (and God forbid screw it back in), they just slid the keyboard back and walked away. And it wasn't me. It's never me, but guess who has to put the screws back? Yeah, you guessed it.

I am the only one who can fix anything in my house, and I'm kind of sick of it, to tell you the truth. Particularly when it seems like something is always broken.

At least the weekend was pretty cool.

The concert Friday night was excellent. The concerts are interesting in that the program has the refrains (and occasionally the whole song) in it, and we are encouraged to sing along. As the concert is held in a church and the music was written especially for liturgy, it stands to reason that the great unwashed masses should be able to sing along. And we did, with great gusto. The ride down and back was great fun in the big van, and it was good to see Lori again and meet David. I was able to put in my request for a few more verses of "I Know My Redeemer Lives". (We sing it a lot at the end of funerals--it's a popular choice--but there' s only two verses, so we wind up repeating them ad nauseum until everyone is out of the church.) I'm sure he'll get right on it.

Anyway, I got back really late Friday night and left at 7:30 the next morning for Webs. I got a nice bit of stash enhancement to play with. I don't think we'll do the tent sale again, though. To be honest, neither sister nor I ever need a whole bag of one yarn at a time. So we could go down at any time during the anniversary sale and just avoid the crush of people. Most everyone was really nice and patient, though. And it got really hot in there. A/C would have been nice.

So, what did I buy? Well, I got 5 skeins of the Valley Yarns Northampton, a nice basic wool, in navy heather, teal heather, chocolate brown, black, and cranberry.

I got 6 skeins of their closeout yarn called "Poems". It's a single-ply variegated yarn that looked interesting to me.

I got three skeins of Plymouth Yarns Baby Alpaca. God, this stuff is soft. Delicious.

And one random skein of Cascade Jewel in the purplest purple I've ever seen. I have no idea what to do with this, but I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It's just awesome. The picture doesn't do it justice. Pour yourself a glass of Welch's Concord Grape juice, and set it in a window so the sun shines through it. That's pretty close.

So, not a bad haul, particularly when you combine it with the Malabrigo from my secret pal qdgirl and the birthday gift certificate to Knitpicks from Sister. My stash is robust again! So much yarn, so little time!

I Can't Help It

2009-05-15T16:51:00.002-04:00

This just makes me laugh.

Is This Your Fear Too?

2009-05-14T13:19:00.002-04:00

Pooped

2009-05-13T21:11:00.002-04:00

I'm crawling, I'm crawling, I'm crawling....I can't seem to go forwards...what is this thing in my way....can't go backwards...in some ....sort....of .....cage......so tired....must rest my head on this Barbie dress and....

zzzzzzzzzzzz..................

(He's under the rocking chair. He can only crawl backwards and lacks a rearview mirror.)

Mom Toes

2009-05-13T10:16:00.003-04:00

As I'm sure you're aware by now, my Mother's Day wasn't going to be anything to write home about. Mr. Poops was off to TX for the weekend to fulfill family obligations, so I was left at home to keep the fires burning, so to speak.

It went well, but it meant no Wool Festival for me this year. Disappointing to begin with.

Sunday was pretty ordinary. We picked Papa up at the airport with no muss, no fuss, and headed home. I got a gift card to the Olive Garden for my birthday so I figured we could stop there on the way home. Only there was a line out the door to get in. Nope. Not with three kids.

So we hit the road and I said, "Let's try Makris" which is a seafood/family restaurant kind of place. The parking lot wasn't even full so we went in and were told since we didn't have reservations there'd be a half hour wait. The redheaded hostess ignored us for a couple of minutes while we stood right in front of her, and when I told Larry I wouldn't wait that long, she rather snarkily told me that it was Mother's Day and we should have made reservations.

I walked out and said mostly to myself and anyone who could hear me that the restaurant should try to employ hostesses who aren't red-headed harpies.

Doubt she knew what a harpy was, but she knew I wasn't happy and it was aimed at her. Happy Mother's Day to you too, motherfucker.

Anyway, we went right home and DH went out and got me Chinese food from my favorite place, the kids went to bed happy about their little gifties Papa got them, and I got to go to bed early.

And I got my toenails painted by Buggy. Not normally a fan of the painted digits, but I have to say I'm feeling fresh and funky.

Please ignore how potato-esque my feet are. My favorite Chinese food is chock full of MSG goodness. I know I can order it without, but what would be the point? It's what makes it taste so yummy!

I can almost get my rings back on today, so it's all good. No harm done. And the toes are a lot less sausage-y too, thanks for asking.

To make up for my lack of a decent Mother's Day Fiberiffic Celebration, this Saturday my sister, mother and I are headed down to Webs for the annual tent sale. I'm am going to try not to go crazy, but I make no promises to you. Other than to show off what I get so you can live vicariously through me.

Oh, and Friday night I'm going to a concert down in Durham. David Haas and Lori True are going to be singing and stuff, and quite a few of us from the choir are going down in a van. (It's the nice thing about those big Catholic families--someone you know is bound to have a twelve-passenger van.)

Lori is a friend of our choir director. I've had the pleasure to bend an elbow with her and play some cards on one of her visits out, and if you flip through a Catholic hymnal you'll see David's name everywhere. He and Lori write music for liturgy specifically. Which is a challenging order. Lori has a truly beautiful voice, too. She did a cantor workshop for us on one of her visits out here and I learned so much in just a few hours about liturgical singing. She made me want to learn more, and I think that's the sign of a truly great teacher.

Some of my favorite church songs are by Lori and David. If you've got the iTunes, you can take a listen. Search for "Lori True" and hear the sample of "May the Road Rise to Meet You". Such a pretty song. And David's psalm "The Name of God" is my favorite one to sing. Look that one up too. It's worth a browse. Take a wisten.

And I leave you with one final thought, as I contemplate packing a hip flask for the ride to Durham (open container laws be damned--I'm not driving!):
Can I get an "amen"?

The Stars at Night are Big and Bright

2009-05-07T20:34:00.005-04:00

Mr. Poops is off to Texas. Or he will be tomorrow morning before the cock crows. He's spending the night at his sister's house and they're all going to Manchester together. He'll be back Sunday.

So that means I'm a single parent for the long weekend. And what a long weekend it will be.

I know what you're thinking. How could three angels like these cause you any trouble at all?

They went to bed with no problems tonight, and bedtime is where I've had a bit of anxiety.
Bedtime is Papa's gig most nights, and all things being equal, Dave really prefers to have Papa do it. But though he fussed for awhile, he's quiet now and I'm satisfied.

He's been waking me up every morning this week at around 5. Before the sun, and it's not right, I tell you.

And sadly, I won't be attending NH Sheep and Wool on Mother's Day, what with me stuck being a mother and all. It's both ironic and sad. But I do have most of the roving I bought last year still to spin, so I guess it's best that I work on that before buying new, I would think. And to make it up, next Saturday I'm going with Sister to the big WEBS tent sale. It's a giant cluster-fuck, it's hot and you can barely move, but if you go home empty-handed, there' s something seriously wrong with you.

I plan on not having to buy yarn for the rest of the year.

I know, I crack myself up sometimes too.

Mountains and Molehills

2009-05-05T09:44:00.003-04:00

I'm writing this from my sealed, germ-free hazmat suit. It makes typing tricky, what with the big rubber gloves, but we must be vigilant! This is a deadly strain of a worldwide contagion!

I'm so sick of it I could puke. But then they'd probably just quarantine me.

They closed two schools yesterday because a kid tested positive for what I'm still calling the Swine Flu, even though the WHO (Horton hears 'em!) isn't calling it that. Fuck the WHO. They're pains in the ass, the lot of them. The CDC is bad enough on their own.

Why close a whole school? Doesn't it make more sense to keep the sick kid at home? For that matter, what happened last cold and flu season? You know, the HUMAN flu that's as contagious as this one with more severe symptoms--where were the school closings? Nope, just use precautions. No masks, even. What about this past winter when the Noro virus was running amok and we were, to quote Fr. Albert, all shitting our pants at Christmas time? Where were the school closings? Just wash your hands, you'll be fine.

But swine flu? OH MY GOD WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!

Enough already. Rant over.

I made a sweater! Did I tell you I was working on one? I can't remember. I should take the time to re-read my latest posts before I post a new one so that I know what I already told you. I usually post the new one and then read the last one to find out that I already said this, that, or the other thing. I know. I don't get it either.

Oh, the sweater! Here 'tis.

The cream color is Ella Rae Classic wool (dirt cheap at Little Knits) and the green and yellow are Knitpicks WOTA. The turquoise color is my own homespun! Can't even tell, can you? I'm pretty pleased with myself, yessiree.

On the boy...

Close-up of the sleeve detail. One is solid off-white, the other has colored stripes and an embroidered felt patch. 'Cause symmetry is for squares, man.

I took some pictures of the kids too, all three together, but I'm going to use them as a distraction for when I don't have anything interesting to say.

In other news, I have two Confirmation classes left for the year. Tonight I'm going to answer some of the questions they've come up with as part of a year-long assignment. I told them at the first class that one of my favorite quotes is "Unthinking faith is a curious offering to the creator of the human mind." Question everything. Always want to know more. Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. And they do, but it takes some time for them to understand that I mean it. I will answer any question you have to the best of my ability. I'll never tell you "I don't know" without a promise to find out the answer. So tonight I am fielding questions ranging from "Will you go to hell if you burn a bible?" to "Why are there sometimes 3 altar servers and sometimes 5 or more?"

Then, after the Q&A session, I'm going to teach them about the 7 deadly sins. The History Channel did a 7-part series on them that was fascinating, and I'm going to do a lesson that ties fairy tales like Snow White in with them. I'll tell you the story, you pinpoint the sin. Snow White? Envy, and you could make a case for Anger and Pride as well. I should be working on some visuals right now. So I may have to cut this short.

Finally, I had Fr. bless some St. Joseph medals. He's our patron saint and the patron saint of families, and I give it to them to remind them that wherever they go, they will always have a home in our parish. They are part of our family. And I wrote them each an individual note as well.

Choir practices are almost done as well. Only a few more there. I'm going back to work part-time, but I don't have much to report as yet. More on that when I have details ironed out.

Okay, whilst the boy grabs a nap, I shall prepare my second to last lesson. Whee.

Gifts Galore!

2009-04-29T21:53:00.003-04:00

I'm doing a secret pal swap on the Knittyboard; this one is for Knittymamas.

I don't know who my SP is yet, but she sent me a lovely box of goodies this week. Each of the kids got a new book, and they were perfect choices. The Trumpet of the Swan for the Bug, Bobo got a cool book that's hard to explain but it's like paper dolls only with cloth and you don't have to cut anything out. Both girls get a kick out of that one. And Dave got a squishy bath book to drool on and bang on the floor with delight.

But the best was for me. I got two Lindt chocolate bars which I did my best not to scoff down before opening the rest of the package...PMS can be an ugly thing, my friends. They were timely, and hey, chocolate is medicine in my book.

And I got two gorgeous skeins of Mmmmmmalabrigo yarn in a grapey purple shade. They are so pretty. I vow they will become something for me, though I'm not sure what yet. Not that it matters. I'm going to pet them like a lap dog for awhile anyway. I love the way it feels in the skein, and then it knits up so bouncy and beautiful and soft...I think it's my favorite yarn.

I will let it speak to me for awhile and tell me what it wants to become.

I planned on taking a picture of it to show y'all, but I had chocolate all over my fingers...

So to distract you, LOOK!

(I know it's sideways. Tip your head.)

This is my nod to green living. I call it the "It's Not Easy Being Green Shopping Bag." A very simple easy-peasy string bag out of dishcloth cotton, quick to make, washable and very strong.

Now, if we can remember to use them when we grocery shop. I'm not good at all this save-the-planet hoohah. Baby steps, baby steps.

I Rock

2009-04-27T22:42:00.002-04:00

I just figured out how to do the coolest thing. Wanna hear? Of course you do.

I have this teeny-weeny little Sony digital voice recorder that I used to use when I first started as a cantor at church. I would record the psalms as I learned them so that I could practice at home.

The thing is, it's the kind of recorder one would use for notes at a meeting or something like that. It is not made for music recording, but those were freakishly expensive at the time and this really does suit my purpose. It just doesn't make singing recordings of any kind of quality for your listening pleasure.

I also have on the mighty 'puter a freeware music editing program called Audacity. I got it when I was making a soundtrack for the slide show I did for our class reunion a couple years back. I used it then to cut and paste clips of songs and fade them together, blah blah blah. I never looked at the other stuff the program could do because I didn't need it. It's been languishing on the computer ever since.

Tonight I had our choir director record herself playing just the piano to this weekend's psalm. We usually sing with the organ and the piano; Lillian plays the chords and the melody on organ and Jeanne plays the chords on piano. When Lillian's not there...no melody. Which, for someone who is tonally challenged from time to time like myself, is reallllllllly hard.

So, I recorded just the piano to practice. Jeanne gives you NOTHING when she accompanies. She plays chords. You have to find your note or die trying.

Did I mention I find that hard? Even Bob said it's hard. And he would know.

So I get my recording home and it is static-y, which is the best way I can think of to describe it. It's full of what you would describe as tape hiss if I had taped it. It's the digital version of tape hiss, whatever you call it.

Anyway, in a fit of genius, I opened it with the Audacity program and pulled down the menu of special effects things it could do, and lo and behold, there was "noise reduction."

Sweet!

So I singled out the "hiss" and told the program to remove that particular sound from the track, and guess what? It did.

It's fucking awesome.

Now I can rehearse to just piano without fighting all that extra noise. Plus, it's saved to the computer, so I can sing to it while I record myself singing, then I can take out that hiss and I'll have a good recording of my own singing with piano accompaniment. As if I had laid down the tracks or something. Only a lot less cool than that.

It seems like a lot of work, but it's cheaper than buying a better recorder. I might start recording more of rehearsals again now that I know I can clean them up.

I should have taped the weekend Bob came up. I was so jazzed for him to hear me cantor, and I got to tell you, whenever I'm feeling particularly chuffed with myself (as Yorkie would say), God finds a way to teach me a lesson about humility.

The Sunday he came, the choir sounded like cats in heat. Now, I have enough trouble finding the right notes when it's just me and the piano. You add three tone deaf sopranos all warbling in three different keys and an alto singing the tenor line of Lift High the Cross behind me and you can imagine how it sounded.

Better yet, don't. Just don't.

I was nervous on the psalm--I'm always nervous when Lillian's not there pounding out the melody for me--and it was worse because I wanted to do well so that Bob would be impressed.

Turns out I should have concerned myself with singing for God's glory and not my own. I sucked so bad that it was laughable, and I did laugh when I sat down because I knew I got what I deserved. Too funny. I'm there to pray not to perform, and I need to be reminded from time to time, when I get too pleased with myself.

I'm going to rock the house this weekend though, what with my new and improved voice recording and editing system in place.

If anyone knows how to post a .wav file to Blogger, let me know and I'll let you have a listen.

Unless I suck, that is.

Seen on Penny Karma's Blog

2009-04-25T14:32:00.002-04:00

Like my friend Yorkie, I too am a regular reader and frequent flyer over at Penny Karma's blog Behold My Brilliance. She is funny as hell, people. That's all I can say. She's just fucking brilliant. If you are ever in a bad mood, pop in. Read the archives, or as she calls is "What Did I Just Get Finished Saying To You?"

Anyway, this is a clip from her most recent entry. Yorkie quoted it, and I will as well, since it actually made me laugh so hard I choked on my own saliva, and that's a rare joy indeed.

She calls these "Mommy Mad Libs" and as anyone who has kids and is honest about their thoroughly irritating qualities can attest, these are spot-on. If you're not prone to swearing around your children, much less at them, you might not find them funny. And I feel bad for you.

Anyway, here they are. Penny Karma's Mommy Mad Libs. Enjoy.

How did the (foreign substance) get (preposition) the (noun)?

Oh, (adjective) (deity), why can't you (verb) like a normal person?

Do I even want to know why you'd put a (noun) in a (appliance)?

For (expletive)'s sake, will you stop (verb ending in -ing) so (adverb ending in -ly)?

You can not tell your (relative) to (verb) himself.

Did you just give a (snack food) to a (wild animal)?

No, we're not going to the (fun place); we're going to the (boring place).

If you (verb) in (house of worship) (number) more times, I'm going to (verb) your (body part) so (adverb), it'll be (color) for (number) (measurement of time).

You gotta be (expletive) (expletive) (expletive) kidding me.

The woman needs a book deal. Anyone? Please?

Did It Work?

2009-04-23T22:46:00.003-04:00

Elizabeth says that if I put one lovely picture in my blog post that no one will notice my content is thin. Or something like that.

How's this for lovely?

Big D is working hard on his crawling skills. He can get himself almost all the way up on all fours, but isn't quite sure what to do when he gets there. He lays on his tummy and stretches his arms out in front of him and kind of squirms and pulls himself along that way to whatever he wants to grab. He is a big fan of the phone cord. He loves anything with a cord, really.

Today he was squorkling around the living room doing whatever it is he does, and he must have come over all exhausted because next thing I knew he was sound asleep. On the living room floor surrounded by toys, phone cord at hand.

He slept there like that for two hours. Which meant that he wasn't tired in the afternoon but was WAY tired at bedtime, so much so that he was too tired to go to sleep. I hate it when that happens too.

Speaking of that, I went to bed last night at 9. I got up around 5 to pee and then went back to sleep. When the alarm went off at 7 it was all I could do to get up. I felt like I hadn't slept a wink, even though I slept like a rock. It took three cups of coffee just to get my eyes to focus.

What's up with that?

Did I tell you I had a dream about Heidi Klum the other night? I did. I dreamed I was working for Project Runway and we were in a production meeting. She's pregnant again and in the dream I asked her when she was due and she said "two hours ago." She sure didn't look it to me, but that's a supermodel for you.

I'm not sure what I ate before I went to bed.

Just When I Think I Can Be Entertaining

2009-04-23T11:20:00.002-04:00

You ever sit down to blog about summat only to read a couple of blogs before you begin to write and then feel like you have nothing remotely interesting to say?

Happens to me all the time.

It's like Pooh Bear once mused: "When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it."

You know how that is?

Take Sunday, for instance. I had my birthday party on Sunday. I had a blast. I had a great weekend with Friend Bob who came for a visit. We had amazing conversations about everything. And I want to share it all.

But dammit if I don't feel like the most pedantic, pedestrian writer on the block today. I bore myself to tears.

Damn you, Yorkie! Damn you, Penny Karma! Stop being so brilliant! I love you! I hate you!

*poops breaks down sobbing*

Damn Dog.

2009-04-17T10:48:00.003-04:00

I hate the Obama's new dog.

I think it's a ugly breed to begin with since I loathe poodles and that thing is decidedly "poodle-esque".

I hate that it came from Ted "And When I Returned, Mary Jo and the Car Were Gone" Kennedy. The man has made a career of cheating, lying, boozing, womanizing, and let us not forget the murder he got away with. 'Course he's Saint Teddy now that he's got the cancer. Whatever.

And I'm a little nauseous that not only does Bo (the ugly dog) have a book deal in place, there are people who will actually PAY TO READ IT.

Until Bezzie gets a deal for the Cheapass Bible that I think she should write, Yorkie gets her novel about the Monks published, and Penny Karma is a household name in the way Erma Bombeck was for my mother's generation, I'm calling for a boycott. Just say no, people. Just. Say. No.

In less vent-y news, I've been spinning again, trying to get back into the rhythm of it, and I have to say, so far so good.

I used up a bit of some turquoise blue roving that I had hanging around to get warmed up, then I finished up the burgundy colored merino I started last year. It came out pretty good, but like most reds it photographs poorly. I have some olive-ish green that complements it beautifully so when it's spun up and I figure out how much I've got I'll see what I can combine them to make. I just started some lavender merino as well, and I've got two more fibers in the stash to work on.

I told you I'm not going to make it to NHSWF this year, right? Yeah, my mother's day is shot to hell, but I'll survive. Another rant for another day.

I've knit some stuff too, and I think most of it is in my etsy shop already listed and for sale. I even got picked for a showcase recently which made my whole day. Yay for me! I'm currently working on a scarf from four skeins of Reynolds Sea Wool sock yarn Kashmir Knitter sent me. It's really bouncy and should make a fantastic scarf.

That's all for now so that I can get this posted and do a spot of cleaning. Bob is coming up for the weekend and I expect him this afternoon, so I better get the laundry switched over and clean the kitchen! My birthday party is Sunday which will complete the Octave of Poops.

Yea, verily.

Sexting

2009-04-16T22:08:00.002-04:00

I've solved the nation's crisis of teenagers sending dirty pictures to each other via cell phone text messages.

Take away the damn phones.

You're welcome. Next problem?

Still Kicking.

2009-04-13T11:47:00.003-04:00

Well, I'm on the other side of 40 now. Doesn't feel any different than 39. I've decided to celebrate the Octave of my Birthday since we're not having a party until next Sunday. So it will by my birthday until then. Try and stop me.

I've been meaning to post for awhile, but every time I sat down to type, things came out all vent-y and I don't want this to become that.

So, in lieu of my political issues, I have little blog about.

Well, Easter is here! Holy Week went off without a hitch, and my goddaughter was baptized at the Great Vigil on Saturday night. It was lovely and exciting, and I have to say that she and Bug were good as gold. It was a four-hour mass and they didn't fidget, didn't giggle (when they weren't supposed to--parts of it were funny), didn't talk or even slump down in the pew. I couldn't be more proud of the both of them.

The choir sounded excellent, I thought.

I haven't been doing much knitting lately. I've done quite a bit of spinning and I'll have some pictures soon of what I've been working on. I should go set the twist on a skein while I have the freedom. I figure it won't be long before Dave figures out I'm not in the same room.

And I know, I should get some new pics of the kids up.

Tomorrow?

Poops Nature Preserve

2009-03-31T09:44:00.003-04:00

I did a bit of birding yesterday! Saw this out the back window and had to call Sister to identify it for me. She's jealous, but then she loves her bird folk.

It's an American Woodcock. Apparently common as mud from "lower Canada to the Gulf coast". (That's pretty much everywhere for you geography buffs.) Elusive, however, as they come out at dusk and dawn and stick to wooded areas with lots of leaf litter. Yesterday was cloudy and it made an unexpected visit to my back yard. It caught my eye, and I realized it was something I'd never seen before in my life.

Curious thing. It bobs up and down as it walks, which I found oddly disturbing, though I can't say why. And it's long beak is kind of creepy. They're pretty big, too. Bigger than the biggest Bluejay, but smaller than a chicken. Bigger than a squirrel, but smaller than a cat.

I say it was creepy-looking, but understand that I'm not a bird person. I prefer furry critters. And fleecy ones, of course. Speaking of furry, I wonder where all the squirrels are this morning. They're usually doing the Squirrel 500 up and down the trees outside my window by this time. Perhaps there's a squirrel convention up by the garden. Hard telling with squirrels.

In other news, besides the interesting fauna and the budding flora, I did a bit o' spinnin' yesterday to see how me and the wheel are performing. We're both a bit off, but I guess it's just like riding a bike. After all, there is pedaling involved.

I'm trying to spin this a bit thicker, just for practice, and again I can't find the tension knob for the wheel. I bought a new one some months ago and can't remember if I put it on the wheel and it fell off and got lost again, or if it's still in the envelope in my craft room somewhere. I shall take a peek later, but I suspect it's the former. So it's coming out a bit ropy in places, but it's nothing some plying and twist-setting can't cure, I think. If nothing else, I shall call it "art yarn" and be happy with it.

I'm gonna go spin some more whilst the babe naps.

Feerst, Some Updates

2009-03-30T09:32:00.002-04:00

A few quick updates just to keep you in the loop:

1. The baby sets were well-received and the shower was quite nice. I had a good time with my in-laws; we laughed our asses off and as we were sitting way in the back we managed to be quite inappropriate at times. She opened my gift last and it got the requisite oohs and aahs so I was satisfied. 'Cause it's all about me. Plus, my new nephew was there and wearing his Handknit by Poops original sweater and hat set and looked cute as a button in it.

2. "Jane" received a public smackdown for her vilification of Coach Blair by past players who came forward and in proudly signed letters said that yes, he was tough but fair, and the overwhelming sentiment was that they were all better athletes, better people, and better women for having been coached by him. Not to mention the smackdown the editor of the paper got for quoting an unnamed source like she was Deep Throat or something.

3. Grilling season is in full-force here. The reason we don't grill all winter long is for lack of a place to put the grill. We store that bad boy in the old woodshed and can't quite get to it until the snow recedes somewhat. We could grill on the porch, but our porch is dry pine and we use charcoal, so the fear of burning the place down with a stray briquette makes me nervous. Especially now that I own the place.

4. You heard me right. I now own my home. Up until a couple of weeks ago, this house and the house next door were the property of my dad. He lives in the other house with my sister and her husband. In a nutshell, the properties were joined and a mortgage applied to both of them. The fear was that should dad die suddenly, we'd have been homeless when the bank took both places back. So he refinanced the mortgage, and in the split second the properties were free and clear, we split them and put the mortgage on the big house next door. Which my sister and Baboo now own and will pay the mortgage on, while DH and I own mine. Now we have to cover the homeowner's insurance and the taxes, but everything else stays the same. Some people think it's unfair that my sister gets twice the house that I do, but she also got the mortgage, higher taxes, more expensive upkeep, a bigger insurance payment, and the old people. I think it's fair.

5. I love chipmunks. It's not profound or anything, heck we all do, but for me it goes much deeper than that. (What I see when I look out the window right next to the 'puter screen.)

6. DH is going to TX for his brother's graduation, but may leave too early on Sunday to see him ordained as a pastor. Depends on the flight he gets, but he'd like to be home earlier rather than later. And the new pastor and his family will be moving to VT at the end of May so we'll be seeing them more than once a year. Stay tuned for that. The new place is on the other side of Keene and as anyone from NH knows, you can't get thay-ah from he-ah, least not 'fore dahk. Nossuh.

7. I have a kindergartener! Bobo is all registered and starts in the fall! And she's potty trained at last. Not at night, but I really don't care if she wears a pull-up to bed when she's 20 as long as she's dry all day. It's about time, really, since she's FIVE for chrissakes, but I'll take what I can get. We still have a parent meeting or two to attend and she has some testing to take, but I think she'll be ready. I don't know if the school is or not. Time will tell. She's starting to read after not being interested in books in the slightest, ever. Now she "reads" them to us. She can look at a book she doesn't know by heart and pick out words she recognizes and sound out ones she doesn't.

8. You may have noticed a sad lack of spinning content. Truthfully, I haven't been able to do much since Dave arrived. Knitting I can pick up and put down with no trouble, but it's harder to do with spinning. Plus, I'd been having issues with the wheel. The top went "flaccid" for want of a better term. I tried tightening the obvious knobs, and they're as tight as they go with no difference. Then another spinner suggested tightening some of the less obvious screws and knobs and it made a bit of difference, but not enough to use it. Today, however, I happened to notice that it was erect and while it will droop if I push it down, it stays up when I put it back into place. I also noticed my cupboard doors aren't closing all the way anymore. Know why? It's spring! We burn wood pellets all winter and the air in here is frightfully dry. My cupboard doors all fit nicely when the air is dry, though I can't keep a kitchen chair from falling apart. As soon as the rain comes and the snow melts and the stove is off, suddenly things get sticky because the extra moisture in the air makes the wood swell a bit. So doors get sticky in their frames, cupboard doors don't quite close all the way, and apparently my wheel maintains it's proper posture. I might give it a go and see how it performs on a bit of "practice" wool. I might have to get a bunch of practice in just to get my spinning chops back.

9. Because of BIL's graduation being on Mother's Day weekend, I'll not be attending NH Sheep and Wool this year. Which is sad, but I've barely touched the roving I bought last year so I'm not that put out. I'm hoping to get to the Webs annual anniversary sale instead, and perhaps a concert and cantor workshop down in Durham as well. I suspect it will all come out in the wash.

10. And finally, I've had quite a run of business in the etsy shop! Just when I thought mitten season was over, I sold a couple pair, some fingerless mittens, and two of the four pair of booties I just listed. I'm working on some more fingerless ones right now with beads on them. It adds a nice touch, I think.

I'm thinking of having a blog contest to celebrate my upcoming 40th birthday. Stay tuned!

The Pussy-fying of Sports

2009-03-23T10:29:00.003-04:00

So, there's a coach at my alma mater, BHS, that has come under fire recently for his coaching techniques. I'm here to tell you that no matter what you've heard on the street, it's all bunk.

Jeri Blair has been coaching girls' basketball and cross-country for. ev. er. He was coaching when I graduated high school 22 years ago. He was coaching when I entered high school 26 years ago. He's brought home state championships. He's coached thousand-point scorers. He's coached All-State athletes. And in all that time, I've never heard a word from a player, parent, or another coach that he's done anything but a good job. Well, I'm sure there were grumblings from time to time because you can't please everyone all the time, but suffice it to say that in the Grand Pantheon of Great High School Coaches, Coach Blair shines in the firmament of all-stars.

The scuttlebutt 'round town (received from another parent with a daughter on his current team) is that one of the parents of one of his basketball players is upset because she doesn't get much playing time. According to the other parent, this is because said bench-warming daughter, in a word, sucks. Basketball isn't her sport, apparently, but because her sister was one of the aforementioned thousand-point scorers, Dear Old Dad feels that younger sister should have the opportunity to score as many points as she can as well. Dear Old Dad is on the school board. You can see where this is going.

Coach Blair gives court time to the players who work hard, follow directions, play together as a team, and get results. By the time you're playing high school sports, you are playing to win, or should be. This isn't grade school where kids are learning the basics and playing just for the fun and the experience. In the world of HS sports, the Varsity team is the Big Leagues. In my day, if you made Varsity, it was the equivalent of a baseball player being moved up from the minors to the major league, it was "going to the show". You felt honored just to be a part of the Varsity team. I managed two varsity teams and wore my letters with pride. I kept the books, calculated the stats, and shagged more balls than a Times Square hooker during Fleet Week. I never stepped a foot on the court, never saw a moment of playing time (because I sucked), but I still found a way to be part of the team. I worked hard at my job and earned my place on the team and was damned proud of it. I still am.

At some point between 1987 and 2009, something changed. Apparently making a team became a right, not a privilege, nor an honor to be earned. Every kid should have the right to play, some parents said, and all kids should get equal playing time because it is bad for their self-esteem to sit the bench all season. Their kids, they said, feel like they're not as good as the "star" players who start every game, score most of the points, and get to be the captain when they're seniors. You know, the coach plays favorites.

If your kid's self-esteem can't take warming the bench, perhaps the band would be a better place. (Though I'm here to tell you that if you suck at playing your particular instrument, Mr. Craigie is going to be a douchebag about it because you're making the whole band suck. I'm just saying.)

In today's paper, there's an article about how his coaching style is under attack. For the first time in a bazillion years, someone is coming forward to say how awful a coach he was. The best part is that "Jane" is a professional educator who played for Coach in the '90's and expressed her views in an anonymous letter to the free paper, knowing that anonymous letters won't get printed due to editorial policy. After numerous emails and phone calls she agreed to make some statements for an article, but using an assumed name.

She said he was mean and yelled at the girls. He played favorites. He was a tyrant.

I wonder why in 22 years I've never heard of such a thing. I never saw it when I was a student and my friends played for teams under Coach Blair. I didn't hear it from the girls who played volleyball for Coach Garneau, and he was a bigger ball-breaker (if we'd had balls, that is) than Coach Blair could have dreamed of being. Hell, I managed a couple of boys' teams and I saw Coach Rainville throw a chair at a player who was being lazy. Good times, good times.

Yes, it's as I thought. Jane is a pussy. I bet she didn't get on with Coach Blair because he has no time for pussies. He coaches girls to have character, strength, fortitude, and resilience. He teaches good sportsmanship and fair play. Jane doesn't have balls enough to sign a letter to the editor of the local free paper. What does that tell you about her character, her sense of fair play?

Coach Blair has said that this will be his last year coaching at BHS. Which is a loss for the school and the current crop of players who will miss him a lot. You can bet if I write a letter to the free paper in support of Coach Blair, I'll sign the fucking thing. I'll let you read it first.

I don't know as it will be necessary. I never played for him in high school, nor did I manage any of his teams. But lots of my friends did. And I saw their practices and their games and he always did what he was supposed to do as a coach. He encouraged them in any way he had to to get the best from them. He made them run faster, jump higher, and shoot straighter. He laughed with the girls in the sheer fun of the sport, and he cried with them when they lost a hard-played game. He yelled at them for not working hard enough, and praised them when they gave it their all, even if they fell short of their goals.

In short, he understands that what marks an athlete is not necessarily her skills, but her constant striving to be better than she is. And as a coach, that's the attitude he nourished. He knows that true self-esteem comes when an athlete knows she's done her very best to make the whole team better.

I know I'm not alone in thinking this. I'm hoping to hear from them in the paper in the next few weeks. Jane the Coward of the unsigned letter can go back to her "professional educator" life and feel confident that the new crop of coaches coming up will make sure every kid is allowed to progress at her own pace and gets to play every game. Because God forbid anyone have to work harder than she thought possible and surpass her own expectations of herself. God forbid a student sit the bench most of the season but still get to be a part of a winning season or a state title.

I wish Coach Blair a happy retirement, and I hope that he realizes the example of service he has set. I'm sorry that after so many years and so much time dedicated to the kids of our district that he doesn't get more of the benefit of the doubt from the school board. He and coaches like him have set the bar of excellence pretty high, and I hope that his successors in the years to come can live up to that in today's climate of entitlement.

Though quite frankly, I doubt it.

A Sure Sign of Spring

2009-03-18T00:32:00.005-04:00

What says "spring" like hot meat on a grill? Those two with the Swiss cheese would be mine, thank you very much. I had me a double cheeseburger that couldn't be beat.

They were sooooooo good! While they cooked, I raked the bits of front lawn that have alreayd been freed from their icy grip. We should lose a lot more snow this week as temps have been in the forties and fifties and are supposed to be every day for the next few days. Rumor has it the maple syrup boiling is going just splendidly this year as well since the conditions have been perfect for the sap running.

I think winter's lost its grip on us at last. I know it'll have another run or two at us before all is said and done, but you can just tell that it has no power here anymore.

It should be gone before someone drops a grill on it, too.

The Second Best News I've Had All Day

2009-03-16T17:23:00.004-04:00

First, this article.

Why Breast-Feeding Isn't Best

When I tried nursing the Bug, it didn't work out. Suffice it to say, it was horrible. It was nothing like I thought it was going to be. Through tears, I fed her formula, feeling that I'd let her down. I had been led to believe that I was now doing what was "second-best" for her. Hell, even the side of the formula can says "Breastmilk is best." Unfortunately, breastfeeding isn't, and may even harm mother and baby in the long run. I found that out after four days of sheer hell.

Minutes after putting that bottle in her mouth, I realized that all the breastfeeding books and articles I'd read were quite possibly--dare I say it?--Flat Ass Wrong.

Bug took that bottle, sucked happily and greedily, burped lustily and slept for four hours solid. Slept.

People, she was beautiful. I loved her from that moment on. I'd been nursing her for days and had yet to feel any of the blissfulness of bonding with my newborn. It didn't happen the first time they put her to my breast howling like a rabid monkey in heat. It never came when every hour on the hour she sucked with the force of a Hoover Windtunnel Upright. It didn't come as I sat crying as she sucked, weeping with pain and frustration, and certainly not as I watched her pass out exhausted from crying, hoping to God that she wouldn't wake up because then the screaming would start all over again. I prayed that she wouldn't wake because she'd want to eat, and I just didn't want to feed her anymore. She was a couple of days old and I didn't want to hold her.

The day I gave her formula, I loved my child. We bonded like never before. Feeding times became a pleasure. Eventually, my nipples healed and I vowed before God and anyone who would listen that I'd NEVER do that again for any reason.

And I have not.

Of course the nagging feeling that I was not doing the best for her weighed heavily on my mind. So I started doing research of my own into the benefits of breastfeeding and I couldn't find anything that put it out head and shoulders above formula. More disturbingly to me--feeling vindicated that my formula-fed babies were turning out just fine--is the complete lack of support for people like me who think formula is Da Bomb.

Until today. This article made me weep with happiness. Finally, someone is saying what I found out nearly 9 years ago. As a mother, I am convinced that the Nipple Nazis have long been trying to sell me a bill of goods, and now it's good to know that I'm not alone in feeling duped about it.

The only good reason I can think of for breastfeeding an infant is Because You Want To. (Or if you're too cheap to spring for formula, which occupies the number two spot in my book.) Really, as far as I'm concerned the only good reason for having the critter in the first place is Because You Want To.

I'm not opposed to breastfeeding. I'm not saying anyone shouldn't do it. If you want to do it, that's lovely. If you enjoy it and want to do it forever, that great too. I always say that I'll try anything once, twice if I like it. Breastfeeding was no exception.

What I am saying that if you don't want to do it, or you give it a shot and you find that it sucks donkey cock, YOU ARE NOT A BAD MOTHER. You are not doing less than your best. You are not a failure as a woman. I'm fiercely opposed to statements like "Breast is Best." Best is a subjective term. What's best for your baby might not be best for mine. (Or my tits, for that matter.) My babies aren't any less bonded than any other babies in the world. My babies are healthy and happy. They are strong and beautiful.

Formula has a bad rap, and it is completely undeserved. Perhaps if more pediatricians like mine spoke up and said what we have always known to be true--that there is no actual difference between a breast- or bottle-fed baby. None. It's time to wipe away the stigma attached to formula feeding and tell the truth: formula feeding has its benefits as well, and should be considered in every way an acceptible source of nourshiment for infants. Or at least force some truth in advertising where breastfeeding is concerned and root out some of those exaggerated claims, skewed studies, and subjective terms.

But enough about breasts.

That article was awesome, but it's not the best news I had all day.

My dad found three old savings bonds in his stash. All in my name, dating back to the year of my birth, 1969. I figured I'd be lucky to get face value on them. Which would have been a hundred bucks I didn't have yesterday. Heck, if I got back what she paid, 62.50 would be a nice chunk of yarn money in the depths of a recession, right?

Kids, those baby keep earning interest. For thirty years.

I'm 350 bucks richer today because my aunt thought they'd make a lovely gift for her niece. And they were. Many belated thanks, Auntie!

And finally, a couple of finished baby sets, as promised, all ready to wrap.Sorry they're sideways, and sorry again for this weird linky thing that won't go away no matter what I do.

Pretty cute, I think.

Next up, more etsy listings and some new Bootayz.

Fookwa

2009-03-16T09:56:00.002-04:00

I just left a response over at Yorkie's blog and my word verification was "fookwa". It made me smile to myself because I liked the way it sounded.

Sometimes I get word verifications that I like so much I wish they actually were words.

Let's do something fun today. Here's what you do. Pretend you have something to say (maybe you really do, that's okay too) and go to leave me a comment. Look at the word verification that comes up under the comment box and make up a definition of the word and type it into the box. Don't forget to tell us the word too.

I'll go first.

"Fookwa". An Asian-inspired dish of jumbo prawn and rice noodles flavored with peanut butter, scallions, and bok choy. Sentence: I prefer to eat my fookwa with chopsticks rather than a fork.

This should keep you busy while I take pix of the baby sets that I finished...

Capital N, Small Y...

2009-03-13T10:13:00.003-04:00

Big Fuckin' Q. That's Ny-Quil, baby. I'm rockin' a NQ hangover, but I do feel less congested this morning. Of course, had I not combined the two gelcaps with a Tylenol 3 I might be a bit perkier this am, but whatever. I had to make the coughing stop, people!

No photo content for you today, alas. Nothing done, though I should be able (God willing and the crick don't rise) to get the two baby sets done today. If I can find the other card of buttons for the girl sweater. One has gone missing to parts unknown and as such I am two buttons shy of a full band. Worse luck, that.

But I have a new washing machine at last! Yay! Got all the laundry washed and folded too, so that's not hanging over my head like a storm cloud.

Bug and Dave are all but fully recovered, but Bobo is taking the brunt of this cold and got herself a trip to the doc yesterday with a fever. She has the beginnings of an ear infection. Not bad yet, but on antibiotics to wipe it out. The doc said her throat looked "beefy" and ran a strep test but it was negative, so that's good. Might be why she's off her feed these days.

She's much better this morning already.

Now if my cold would go away, that'd be just swell.

Here's a tidbit I picked up from GMA this morning. Now I know I shouldn't watch that show because it irritates me, but my unhealthy obsession with Chris Cuomo won't be denied. Don't judge me.

I was interested this morning because Diane is in Lapland, wayyyy up there at the top of Finland. I guessed where she was when one of her clues was a Lapp hatt. I recognized it right off, and any knitting content at all is reason enough to stay tuned. And did I mention Chris Cuomo? Where was I? Oh yes, part of her report was on a couple and their baby and the fact that unlike the US, the Finnish government pays a parent to stay home for the first year of the baby's life. (I think it was the first year--it wasn't clear to me. And I'm not sure if the government pays the company or the couple, but they did say it was a law. I got that part right.) It sounded lovely to me, at any rate. Because no one is paying me to stay home, that's for sure.

In a following segment, just before Emeril unveiled the winner of the Crock Pot Cookoff, there's a discussion of Obama's plan to implement mandatory pre-K for all public schools. And a group of parents and educators are outraged at the waste of taxpayer money for supporting this. Their POV was along the lines of "Why shell out all that money for an unnecessary program? As it is we supply K-12 education for all children and we're woefully behind other countries in all areas. Why would adding one more year advance us at all? How about spending those tax dollars on improving the 13 grades we already have?"

Which I thought was a good point.

One woman, a parent and director of a private preschool said that as an educator she'd prefer to run her own school on private funds and provide an outstanding education experience than to become a public school and subject to the restraints of government. Plus, there are plenty of private preschools around, and if you can't afford it there are also publicly funded preschool programs as well, like Head Start. We are not wanting for pre-K education.

Also a good point, though I don't see why there's not room for private and public preschools. Even with public ed available, there's still a plethora of private schools from which to choose. And many do, for a variety of reasons.

So melding the two reports together I decided something. You know what I'd like? I'd like someone to cut me a check for the cost of putting one of my kids through a pre-K program for one year so that I can extend my maternity leave that much longer. My kids don't require preschool so far as I can tell. How 'bout Obama pays me to stay home for another year? That'd be sweet.

When did having your kids home with you as preschoolers become a bad thing?

Which has got me feeling a lot more sympathetic towards homeschooling families. I've always maintained that I would never do it because I don't think I'm qualified to teach my own kids. Knowing things yourself and being able to impart that knowledge is a skill, and my own skills there are rudimentary. I'd rather my kids be in the hands of trained, skilled educators.

I love teachers, and I always will. God bless them for the work they do.

Plus, I like to know that my kids will be meeting and dealing with a cross-section of people. They'll meet rich kids and poor ones, ones who were well-raised and ones who were raised by imbeciles. The world is made up of all kinds of people and we learn from them. We don't necessarily become like them.

I freely admit that one of my biases against homeschooling comes entirely from my own experiences with homeschooling families around here. The only ones I know do it for religious reasons and there's a fanaticism to it that bothers me. It's as if they don't want their kids to ever hear anything that goes against what their particular church teaches, or to spend time with other kids who might be of a different faith and upbringing. In short, all the homeschool kids I've ever met are frighteningly sheltered. I've never met any homeschool parents who want their kids to go out and suck the marrow out of life. Homeschool, church, and that's it. That's all you need.

It's certainly off-putting, especially if you rely on a homeschooling group for social interaction and these are the only people in the group. Sounds neither social nor interactive to me. *shrugs*

I only know one family locally who does it out of other circumstances. They live in a sub-standard school district and have kids with special educational needs on top of that. I can't relate to their experience either since I'm in a fabulous school district. I really can't complain. Plus, those kids are in HS and are learning online. It's a little different at that point. And they're competitive snowboarders and skiiers on the junior national level and spend much of the year out in the snow. Regular school doesn't jibe with that. Homeschooling for that mom became more of a "you gotta do what you gotta do" kind of thing.

I guess when I think about it, I never want my kids to be "sheltered". If the downside of exposing them to the world at large is they learn too much, too quickly--well, that's what I'm here for: to sort things out for them at the end of the day. To teach them right from wrong and instill those values that we hold dear, as well as how to apply those values in everyday life, no matter who you meet or what happens that day.

So on the one hand, while I'm in no hurry to get myown kids in pre-K--kindergarten comes soon enough if you ask me--I certainly don't begrudge parents who do want their kids in for that extra year of school. But on t'other hand, I do wonder if that public education money couldn't be better spent elsewhere, you know? I'd never given it much thought before.

And my desire to keep my babies home with me for as much of their "formative" years as possible feels somehow at odds with my desire for them to have a good, well-rounded public school education.

I'd be interested in hearing from more homeschooling parents. Why do you do it? What benefits have you seen, and what drawbacks have you found? I want to know more.

I always want to know more.

Added in a later edit:

*Here's something interesting. If you want to homeschool your kid, but you don't want a religious curriculum, you're kind of hosed. Try finding information on secular homeschooling online. You will find information on pagan homeschooling groups or athiest homeschooling groups, and tons of brands of religious homeschooling in every denomination under the sun, but nothing in between. I'm going to keep looking, but WTF?

Maybe more people would do it if there was more middle of the road support? It's an interesting new thesis for me.

And It's a Snow Day for...

2009-03-09T10:26:00.005-04:00

SEARS. Apparently it's too icy for them to make their deliveries today.

I won't get my new washing machine until Wednesday, now. After I busted my ass getting the old one unhooked and ready to haul away. Do you wanna see the laundry I'm amassing here?

No, you don't. I don't even want to face it.

At least the bathroom/laundry room is cleaned out a bit. It needed to be done. I also need to get back to work on the kitchen while Dave is sleeping, but I felt the need to tell you about the bastards from Sears scared by 3 - 6 inches of snow. We didn't even get a two-hour delay from school. And I could have used the sleep, people.

I will tease you with the almost finished sweaters for the twin babies. Just some detail shots until I get them all put together...

Buttons for her:Buttons for him: (complete with an entirely unnecessary link)And a side-by-each shot of the stitch patterns. That's the little butterflies pattern on the right and quilted lattice on the left. I'm making a hat and booties for each to match as well. The colors are muddy without the flash, but you can't see the stitch definition if I turn it on, so I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't. I'll arrange better lighting when I show them off good and proper. And they'll be blocked too, so that will make a difference.
That's all I've got for today. I'm going to clean the kitchen some more whilst Dave continues to nap.

Talk amongst yourselves...

*edited to add: I think the "little butterflies" look a lot like bats in this picture. Or six-legged spiders. Which tempts me to work up a swatch and make them proper spiders. Please tell me to wait until these sets are done.