Ravelry – my new addiction

November 30, 2007 at 8:53 pm (knitting)
Tags: ,

As if I didn’t need to find more ways of wasting time on the internet!  Ravelry is a great database of yarnworks of all sorts.  You have your own page, and you can post what you’re working on, what you have in your stash, and look and see what other people are doing with the kinds of yarn you have.   There are also groups, message boards, you can add friends, send and receive messages, see what people have made with their knitting books, etc.  It is REALLY REALLY cool.  The problem is, there is about a 3 week wait to get in, but it was worth it!  It’s free too.

We are going to be under a winter storm watch tomorrow and Sunday.  We are supposed to get 4-8 inches of show, topped off by up to 1/4 inch of ice!  We’ll see how it all turns out.  If we get ice, I’ll be out getting some pictures.

I started a pair of toe up socks, and I think I like how they are turning out.  Took a little screwing around to get them started but it’s going ok.  The yarn is very soft (got it in a gift exchange – thanks Autum!!) and colorful and I think they will be nice socks.

1 Comment

Is “crap” bad?

November 27, 2007 at 11:39 pm (family)
Tags: , ,

Tonight while I was at our monthly La Leche League meeting, my husband and son had some guy time here with Sophie and me gone.  Apparently, Will was playing with his trains and parts of the track kept coming apart, and under his breath, he was muttering “Crap… crap…. crap…..”  This is a word I happen to use quite a lot.  I think it became apparent when my mom was staying with us for several months going through some medical stuff, and I STILL feel weird using bad language in front of her.  So, instead of the “s” word, I said “crap”.  My parrot was just about a year old at the time and she has never said “s***” but she does say “crap” on a regular basis.  I do still have a potty mouth (I’m half Hungarian, give me a break!) but I try to keep it under wraps since I am have two impressionable young people in my care now.  So “crap” it is.  Don’t you think it’s better than “s***”?  (See, I didn’t even use the whole word in this post!)

So, tonight my husband decided it was a bad word, and not just ANY bad word, but a word worthy of this:

A cuss can!!  And not only a cuss can, but a cuss can made of a 1/2 gallon ice cream container!  I mean, you would think that only the REALLY bad words would deserve such a huge can.  But no, my little “crap” word needs a 1/2 gallon container.  He even took the time to make it on the computer.  Don’t you think a pint canning jar would have been sufficient?  A 1/2 gallon container?  What the crap is that about?

I fed it two quarters tonight because I said “crap” twice while making my husband’s lunch.

5 Comments

Two projects completed!

November 26, 2007 at 12:49 pm (knitting)
Tags:

I finished two projects last week and I just now got to taking some pictures of them.

The first one is a cable knit sweater, size 6, that I made for my son. It’s made from Lion Brand Wool Ease. It is the first sweater I’ve made and it was fun! I got it done in time for him to wear to Thanksgiving dinner.

The next project was a knit along that our little playgroup decided to do. It’s a garter stitch dragon hand puppet. I used Red Heart acrylic yarn (the kind that feels like carpet!). The mouth came out a little big. I’m making a second one and I might change the dimensions of the head and/or mouth and see how it turns out.  I accidentally sewed the head closed before I sewed on the eyes, that’s why the eye in the picture looks screwed up!

Now I’m back to working on socks. It’s gotten a lot colder out and I’d love to have 1-2 pairs done in time for winter!

2 Comments

Thanksgiving and Black Friday

November 23, 2007 at 3:56 pm (Christmas shopping)
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Thanksgiving went pretty well.  Aside from all the stuff we’re most thankful for, I was also thankful that Sophie only woke me up twice the night before, just to nurse, then went back to sleep, THEN I got to go back to bed for a few hours once my husband got up.  However, last night, it was back to waking so many times I lost count, then getting up early and being pretty crabby.  Her third tooth broke through the skin, though, so that would be a pretty good “excuse” I think.

I finished Will’s sweater after having to redo the bind off on the neckline.  I bound it off too tight and when I tried to get the sweater off him, the neck left a dent in his forehead!!  So once that was fixed, it was perfect.  I promise to also take pictures of that soon.  I know I owe you one of that and one of the dragon.  I did make the Parker House rolls for dinner, but the recipe on the website is different from the one I have.  They changed it, I think there were mistakes in the first one, namely not enough yeast and WAY too little flour for the amount of liquid.  I tweaked it myself and they still came out pretty good, just not the same recipe that I linked to in my last post.

I honestly never knew “black” Friday meant that stores went into the black.  I’d always thought of it as “sinister” because I so very much hate Christmas shopping or any other shopping that takes place between now and the end of the year.  I hate even going for groceries because everyone is crazy, and if we couldn’t get enough, then there are all the clearance sales on December 26th!  What is up with that?  I can’t stand it!  I blogged about this last year when I said that I thought people should hunt and kill their own meat, because it would get some of this BS out of their system!

I do like purchasing Christmas gifts for my friends and family but I hate the excessiveness of it all, the crowds, people get angry (Heck, I leave home angry!) and act as though it’s a life or death situation.  What is wrong with purchasing ONE thing at a slightly higher price, then just buying less STUFF?  Did my parents run out at 5 am on the day after Thanksgiving to get me ALL the toys I wanted?  HELL NO!!!  What kind of message does that send to kids?  That they will get all the THINGS they want?

Is anyone else secretly happy when they hear the dismal predictions for this holiday shopping season?  Is anyone else a little glad to not be feeding our capitalist machine?  Does anyone else not care to run out and purchase cheap stuff made in China covered with lead paint, destined to poison our children?  (Ok so that’s a bit extreme but you get the point!)  Are we finally realizing that between consumer debt, the price of oil and everything else going up as a result, that we can’t keep going at this pace?

OH and the driveway people came by Wednesday and dug up a tiny bit of yard, placed the culvert, and left.  They haven’t been back since.  They said something about coming to work today, but we all know they aren’t going to come work today.  Typical contractors!  They were here for only about 20 minutes.  At this rate, the spray paint left by the Miss Dig people is going to be gone by the time they get started!

Leave a Comment

The holidays

November 20, 2007 at 9:37 am (family)
Tags: , , , , , , ,

This time of year is always good, because my husband’s work usually lets up a bit and we get to see more of him.  He’s got time off this week for Thanksgiving, then it’s only about 3 weeks til their Christmas break.  So usually the months of November and December aren’t as intense as the rest of the year.  Especially now with two kids, it’s great when he’s at home a little more!

I don’t have a whole lot of anything earth shattering to blog about today.  Some friends of mine who knit (we also get together for a very casual play group once a week) are doing magic balls of yarn for each other.  Long ago, people would give yarn as a gift, and as the knitter was unwinding the ball while knitting, little gifts would come out that were wound into the ball.  So we decided it would be fun to do this for each other.  I’ve got my shopping pretty much done for it (not telling who it is!) and we plan to exchange them next week.

We also decided to do a knit along and the pattern was for a kid’s hand puppet – a dragon!  It’s pretty cute, I finished mine this weekend (with prodding from my son) but I haven’t taken pictures yet.  I’ll post some when I do.  I had a ton of nasty Red Heart yarn to use up so this made a VERY stiff dragon!  It’s kind of like carpet actually!  LOL

We are going to have our driveway rerouted and that will be taking place either tomorrow or Friday.  Right now our driveway comes out onto a main road but we live on the corner of a side street.  So the new driveway will come out on the side street.  They are going to take out the old driveway and use it for fill, (it’s just gravel) and there will be a 6 foot ditch where the old driveway went!  We will have to figure out how to keep people from driving into it (hopefully it will be obvious enough).  We are also going to be moving our mailbox and our house number will be reassigned.  It will be done before Christmas so I’ll send out change of address notices with our Christmas cards.  It will be weird having a new address after having the old one for the past 9 years!  And we aren’t even moving!  I’m sure Will is going to enjoy the dump trucks and other equipment that will be here!  I don’t know what our new house number will be yet, I will send the form in when they get started on the driveway.

Not going to talk about Sophie’s sleep because it’s still pretty bad.  She is, however, walking a bit now holding on to your hand, just with one hand… she’s getting braver and braver!  She was 9 months old yesterday and now has been out as long as she was in.  She’s always been a good eater but she loves hummus and yogurt!  (Just plain, right out of the container, nice and sour!)  She even had a bite of my stuffed grape leaf I was eating yesterday.  She thinks drinking water out of a glass is hysterical and will do it as often as she can manage to grab your water glass!  I can see more teeth coming too, they are just below the skin.  It seems like they are taking forever!

We are having Thanksgiving dinner at Clane’s brother’s house, fortunately they only live about 10 minutes away so that will make things much easier.  I’m making bread, probably Parker House rolls.   This recipe is good and it makes a ton!

1 Comment

Nap strike

November 14, 2007 at 6:19 pm (baby stuff)
Tags: ,

She has napped 20 minutes today.  IN TWO INCREMENTS.  She was up for 2 hours last night.  Just wanted to play.  I don’t know how much more of this I can take.  It sucks.

2 Comments

A 3 year old’s birthday

November 12, 2007 at 12:04 pm (family)
Tags: , , , , , ,

I have to say, I am feeling quite a bit better than I was the last time I posted.  I had another very rough couple of days after that, then, things seemed to be looking up.  Maybe it took a 3 year old’s birthday party to help lift my spirits, maybe it was because my husband was already up and he took the baby so I could sleep.  Whatever happened, I’m thankful and I just hope it gives me enough to float me through til Friday, when my husband is off work and maybe I can get another little recharge.

My son turned 3 yesterday.  Parenthood does something really weird to your sense of time.  Some days go by so fast it makes your head spin, and other days seem to last 1oo years.  We were trying to remember what we did before we were parents and we can’t.  We just don’t know!  We thought about the 3 years before Will was born, and we could barely remember what happened during that time.  (Actually one thing that happened was, we got married… but at the moment, we didn’t even think of that!)  I got to spend some time with my niece and nephew yesterday.  They are both in high school now.  I remember when they were born.  It seems like it wasn’t that long ago, but really, it was.  My nephew saw a picture of him holding Will when he was a baby, and he commented on how he (himself) looked weird!  I had to remind him that he was a little boy then!  And only 3 years later, he’s a full blown teenager!  It makes my brain ache!  I have to stop thinking about this now.

The party was nice.  None of us were feeling that great on Saturday, but since I’d bought all the food and had gotten a cake made, we decided to have the party anyway.  I made tacos (actually, stuff for a taco bar) and we had fresh veggies with dip, and a plate of meats and cheeses with little cocktail bread and spicy mustard.  (Can’t forget the pickle tray!)  The food was good, easy to prepare, looked great all laid out, and everyone kept going back for more.  (In fact some people stayed in the kitchen so they could pick!)  I also made some really good punch.  The recipe came from a friend of mine, it’s very basic:  1 2 liter of ginger ale, 1 can of frozen pineapple juice, thawed, and 1/2 container of sherbert.  I am guessing you could use 7-up or another kind of citrus juice, and whatever sherbert you want.  I happened to have lemon-raspberry.  I even picked up a punch bowl for the occasion.  You could easily double it for a bigger party.  The cake came from Hamiltons, Will wanted Nemo so that’s what we got.  It came with two squirt toys for the bathtub.  He screamed bloody murder when everyone sang Happy Birthday.  I think he doesn’t like people making a big deal out of him.  (I didn’t sing, for the record!)

He got some nice gifts, my dad sent a wooden train track set, and we splurged and got him Cranky the Crane.  (He’s cranky because he works 24/7 and never sleeps… it’s true!  Just watch the show sometime.  Hmmm.  Now I know why I’m cranky!)  He got some Thomas PJ’s, a remote controlled car, Candyland, a Leapster (with Thomas cartridge), and a Mr. Potatohead!  I also blew up a picture of the train I took when we went to “A Day Out With Thomas” for him to hang in his new room.  We had the party at 1 pm, and that was a good time for a party.  I was done and cleaned up by 4 and there was still a little bit of a day left.  Sophie held out fine, she was tired, but she did great.  They both have colds, and I found out from my doctor’s office today that there is a cold going around that goes on for about 3 weeks.  So that stinks.  And, I think she is teething too.

I was lamenting about not ever getting enough sleep, and my 15 year old niece said, “Don’t worry.  It will get better.”  And you know what… she’s right.  She’s such a sweet girl.  Wish we could see them more, but they are always gone with sports.  It seems like they wind up taking over your life, but that’s another topic for another day.

2 Comments

Feeling spent

November 8, 2007 at 10:16 am (motherhood)
Tags: , , ,

Today is one of those days. The past few days have been pretty rough. Will has been super needy for some reason, and Sophie, very clingy. She’s had a bit of a cold and I think her teeth are bugging her, even though there are absolutely zero signs of them coming through. Will has been going to bed late and getting up early and has been coughing a bit too. On a good night, I get enough sleep to function. I never get enough sleep to actually feel well. Last night was awful. I tried to go to bed right after 10 and she wouldn’t sleep the second she was in the bed with me. We traded her off all night and she was up for the day around 6:30.

I got together with some friends yesterday and we all have kids the same age. One of them was saying, what do you do when you have to give and give and give, and you are SO empty, then you have to keep giving… what do you give when you are completely empty? What do you give when you are already in the red? What do you do when you can never, ever replenish yourself… when you do get a break but then that night is a bad night and the next morning you are right where you were before your break? Does this ever get better? What’s the alternative? Suicide? Not for me, I don’t believe that’s a good solution for anything… plus it would wreck a lot of people I care about. What do you do when you are spent and in the red and you can’t get one emotional cent back into yourself for more than an hour? Then it’s gone? What do you do?

I think those of us who are attached parents are particularly vulnerable, because we don’t (and can’t) just put the baby down and let it cry itself out, we can’t hand the baby off to someone else to feed all day while we run off and do something fun (unless we pump for days before, and the whole time we’re gone). We cannot bear to leave our children for a week, because we start missing them at the mere thought of it. We were talking yesterday, that I don’t think we were meant to raise children alone. I think all the village women helped care for everyone, women even nursed each other’s babies, kids had many women they called “mom”. We are so isolated now and I don’t think it’s supposed to be this way. Cultures who breastfeed til 4 years and beyond, who wear their babies during all waking hours and sleep with them snuggled up close, THOSE cultures have many women at home tending to the whole group’s needs, not just one person trying to wrangle children for 11-12 hours, then most of the night as well, plus food preparation and other household responsibilities. The culture is set up in such a way that raising babies and making sure mothers have a lot of backup is a priority.

But that still doesn’t answer my question… what do you do when you are bankrupt? If you are financially bankrupt, you can get your debts pardoned. It leaves a mark on your record, but you get relief. As long as nothing unforseen happens, and you manage your money wisely, you will be OK. But that doesn’t happen for this. I am beginning to feel like a shell of the person I used to be. I have two beautiful kids yet I feel so empty, I’m just spent. Overspent. How can I meet the needs of needy kids when I am so needy myself? And the really sad thing is that most of my mom friends (with kids in the 0-3 year range) feel the same. We are just a big group of need. I feel like I could suck the universe dry and not feel better. I should weigh 95 pounds with all this stress and lack of sleep. I don’t understand it.

My friends at Sleep Is For The Weak have a category in their blog called “so tired I could die” and that’s how I feel today. Except, I feel so tired, and empty, that I could die. And, I am losing hope that this will ever get better. It just isn’t going to happen. Sometimes I wonder if I should have even done this, maybe I’m not cut out for it. In fact I’ve never felt so unsure of anything.

And, does anything we do matter, ever?  Sometimes I find myself wiping the blood off my forehead because all I do is pound it on the wall all day.  Do I have to wait 20 years to see that my mothering has done a couple of people any good at all?  What about me???

6 Comments

Curmudgeon – the word of the day

November 3, 2007 at 9:19 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags:

I saw this word in a book today and was reminded of what a great word it is.

–noun a bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous person.

You know how some words just sound like you’d picture how they would look?  Like, a curmudgeon seems like a grumpy, gruff, surly bump on a log kind of guy.  And he’s probably old, with bumpy skin and wiry hair.  Curmudgeon.  Use it today!  :)

1 Comment

3,000 hits

November 3, 2007 at 11:02 am (Uncategorized)

Hey!  Check out my counter!  I can’t believe people have looked at it that many times!  It’s at 2,998 at the time of this post.  Which one of you will make it 3,000?  If you read this and see 3,000 hits, would you leave a comment so I know who you are?  Thanks!  :)

3 Comments

« Older entries