Foggy Random Day

Rainy and foggy and dreary today - just the sort of day that makes me want to curl up in bed and sleep and sleep and sleep. It also makes me sort of random - just a warning.
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Why isn't there a drive through that only serves good, filling, low fat food? Why must I either be organized enough to plan ahead (~snort~) or eat bad food? I know, I know, a lot of the big chains are making an effort to offer healthier choices... but there are only so many times I can eat a soggy chicken breast on wilting lettuce.
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I need to clean out my car. This may actually require some kind of equipment - a backhoe maybe? Andie suggested a laundry basket... I estimate it will take more than 15 trips using just one average-sized laundry basket. I may have to do this in stages... but I need an oil change and it's just too embarrassing to take it in like this.
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I hate Extreme Makeover Home Edition - mostly because of Ty. He's like that woman on "Out of Control" crossed with Pee Wee Herman. Only on crack. And whose bright idea was it to give him a bullhorn?!? But I watch it anyway, the other designers are cool and I like the before and after shots. Anyway - I love Ed. Doesn't everyone love Ed? And Ed got hurt on last night's show - I feel so bad for him and for his family! I know that they tape ahead so he's probably ok now (right?!?) but I just want to send him cookies or something.
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I have been craving macaroni and cheese a lot lately. I could eat it every day. Seriously. Not the homemade kind, the Kraft kind in the blue box. And the microwavable single serve kind is disgusting - not the same thing at all. I have a dedicated macaroni and cheese pot, too. Not like "all I can cook in this pot is macaroni and cheese," because that would be crazy, more like "this is the pot you use for macaroni and cheese." I don't know what I would do if I had to make more than one box at a time for some reason. I'd have to use a larger pot and that would be wrong. It probably wouldn't taste the same.
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TMI ALERT!!! TMI ALERT!! Skip down if you don't want to know!!

I have not had near enough sex lately. Short of grabbing my husband by the ear and dragging him into the bedroom and pointing vigorously at the bed I don't know how much clearer I can be with him on this subject. Oh, and coming to bed and waking me up at 2 in the morning when I have to be up at 6? Not a workable solution to this issue.

TMI SECTION ENDED!!!
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My favorite holiday in the world is Valentine's day. The husband is not so good at the gift buying, but he's getting better. How hard is Valentine's day anyway?!? You all know what I want, right? I want to buy myself some yarn and knit while I eat the ginormous box of (good quality) chocolates he is supposed to buy me. This is not complicated people!!
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My dad is cool. And also full of good ideas. I was over there yesterday and he was mixing chocolate milk into his coffee. I love that man.
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Andie and I saw Catch and Release on Friday. Now we have determined that someone must give us a large sum of money so that we can move to Boulder and open a yarn shop/music store/cafe/bar/B&B/bookstore/bakery.
Clearly we need a business plan. And a shitload of money.
And I love the soundtrack - as much as I loved the Garden State soundtrack and for some of the same reasons.
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Avon has a new addition to their Naturals collection. Honey Lemon. It does not, in fact, smell like lemon Pledge. It smells really good and they have a body balm that feels really good on dry, wintry skin.
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Sad knitting, Happy knitting.

More retail therapy... it's been a sad week.

There have been a few reasons...

A good friend's mom has colon cancer - but all looks well. She had surgery this week and came through like a champ. They're still waiting for some more results but it seems like things are good. But still, your mom is not supposed to get sick. Your mom is supposed to be strong and make you crazy and ask why you aren't married or pregnant or skinnier or less of a slob. My friend is handling this all beautifully - it helps that all of the news is good, but I would give up chocolate to learn to handle stress with such grace. I wish I could help.

Of course, I did teach her to knit so maybe I helped after all.

One of my professors has a brain tumor. She said that if you're going to have a brain tumor this is the one to have -there are no symptoms, it looks benign, it's in an operable area and has well-defined margins. I don't know her very well - it's only the fifth week of class and I missed two classes - but she is a fantastic teacher. It's probably totally inappropriate, but I'm going to make her a hat. I even ordered Rowan Calmer in a beautiful plum. It's too cold to have a bare head - even if they only have to shave a spot the size of a quarter. She lives with and cares for her parents - they're in their 90's - but it is more than that. The brain is a crazy thing
and she is a researcher. Her brain is her life and her living. I think the scariest thing I read as a child (or since as far as that goes) is Flowers for Algernon - have you read it? Holy shit. In a nutshell: Charlie is mentally retarded and becomes part of an experiment and becomes a genius - then looses it all. The worst part - the most horrifying part - is that once he looses his intelligence he still remembers that at one time he was smart. Alzheimer's and dementia scare the bejesus out of me. Mostly because you know you're sliding. There are moments of lucidity that happen... not like Gray's Anatomy, more like when you wake up from a dream and you think, "I need to buy apple juice and cat litter ," and then you go back to sleep and three nights later you wake up again and think, "Shit. I still need apple juice and cat litter."

But I digress. What a shocker.

Anyway, if it were me I would be terrified - not necessarily about the possibility of death, more that I might lose my thoughts. So she needs a hat. I have only knitted one hat and it was well intentioned if not attractive. I have also never (successfully) done cables. The hat I found is from Knitty's breast cancer special issue. It's a hat full of cables. Soft and stretchy and warm. I could knit it full of good energy and send it to her, all plummy and soft.

So I ordered the Rowan and I ordered some yarn from Knitpicks - Andie is knitting Danica with me and after the shaping that Danica requires I think she'll be ready for socks. I ordered her sock yarn and dpns and when we're done with the scarf we'll knit some socks. Yay!

I'll have Danica pictures soon - and also a pair of socks that I have been working on... though I didn't check my needles first and grabbed size 3 dpns instead of size 2 so they're a little, um, loose. Maybe I'll dry them in the dryer for a little teensy bit.

You know, when I said nobody else can get sick I meant NOBODY. So let me try again.
NOBODY ELSE CAN GET SICK.

I love you, Danica

So Andie wanted to learn how to knit Danica for her daughter. I looked at the instructions and got scared and hid in a corner knitting garter stitch washcloths. Then I looked at the instructions again and dug out some yarn (Wick, Columbine and Cream... not at all what the pattern called for but I don't have any Patons Wool just sitting around. And mine is machine washable).

I love knitting stuff that looks way more complicated than it is. I ordered some more Wick - I'm not going to worry about dye lots - because I want to finish.

I KNOW! I'm starting a pattern with an eye toward FINISHING! In a more or less timely manner. Crazytown. I'd also like to knit Danica with yarn that is at least the same weight that is called for in the pattern so this is not the last we will see of this particular pattern. Thanks, Ingrid, for assuring me that it was, indeed, easier to knit than the instructions would lead you to believe.

The best part is that I think Andie will be ready to knit socks once she finished her Danica.

I would have more done, but the husband had a little too much to drink and sat on my needles, bending them almost in half but magically not hurting himself or damaging my knitting. Ass. I happened to have the right size needles at my desk at work but they're circular and I'm finding that knitting this particular pattern on circs is requiring a little more effort.

We're having a staff meeting at work today and someone is bringing cake so I might actually go.

Andie and Kerri and M (the knit-virgin from my pj party) are coming over tonight to knit. Apparently M has taken to yarn like a kitten to tuna. Everyone is on some kind of diet, limiting the types of food I can serve to things like raw veggies, no dip... oh well, it's probably time for me to attempt the whole "eating well, exercising, losing weight" thing again.

Damn it.

Book Meme - consider yourself tagged...

Instructions:

1. Grab the nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.

5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

6. Tag 5 people


The first book I saw was Joan Didion's book The Year of Magical Thinking. I know, no wonder I'm so depressed if that's the first thing I saw!

"I said that she had been intubated for three weeks at Beth Israel in New York. The doctor looked away. 'The rule at Duke is also a week,' he said, as if under the impression that the mention of Duke would settle the question."

No Sleep For You!

And also no reading, knitting, eating or fun of any kind.

My mother in law has been sick - she has pneumonia and has not been getting any better despite the gazillion pills she takes every day. She hasn't been eating or drinking much - and she has been smoking. (I think that was my favorite "comedy of errors" moment from last night - she is sitting at her dining room table with a cigarette glowing away and she's talking about a mile a minute about how she can't breathe. "L," I said in my best social worker voice, "let's put this out and try to calm down and see if your breathing improves. If it doesn't we need to go to the ER. At the very least you can get a breathing treatment and they can make sure you're hydrated." She really wasn't breathing well, but if you can't breathe you might want to start by not smoking and not talking. You know, calming down a little to figure out how much of it is that you can't breathe and how much of it is that you're not letting yourself breathe.

At 8:30 we took her to the emergency room. At that point I had been home a total of 15 minutes since 6:40 that morning. Not that it's about me - I was not the one sick and hooked up to monitors - on the other hand, this blog is about me so you'll forgive me if I sound a little selfish. Also we drove her car to the hospital so I had no books, no knitting, no snacks.

She really is sick. But she goes into this helpless little old lady routine every time she's faced with a professional person and she defers to me. TO ME. To the person she thinks is going to leave her son penniless and alone and spend every cent of the "family" money on, I don't even know, bubble gum and chocolate malts? (Mmmmmm, chocolate malts).

I would pull out her med list every time someone new came in because GOD FORBID they look at the chart. And I would explain again why we were there and what meds she was taking when she saw a name tag and would go all limp and helpless... and I would ask for pain meds for her. She was also having a lot of pain in her hip. She thinks she injured it shoveling snow from her driveway ("Because who else was going to do it?" Seriously). They ran a lot of tests, including an EKG and this really cool science experiment looking thing involving blood cultures in little bottles. Every time someone new came in my husband grew more and more pale. I swear I thought he was going to become invisible. He doesn't do well in hospitals. He doesn't do well watching TV shows about hospitals. Not even something like Scrubs.

At 3:30 (that would be a.m.) they decided she should stay the night. All of her labs were back and her oxygen levels were lower than normal due to the pneumonia so they wanted to treat that a little more aggressively but otherwise she's ok. She more or less kicked us out so we could "go home and get some sleep". I got home at 4, took a shower and went to Wal Mart. When you get home at 4 and have to be at work at 6, "getting some sleep" is probably not the smartest thing in the world. So I am exhausted and probably completely incoherent here and on the air. At noon I'm going back to the hospital to take her some things - she had the foresight to pack a bag but she didn't pack any toothpaste or lotion or anything like that (hence the trip to Wal Mart).

I may not make it to Andie's house for the Super Bowl party. I may just make it home and to the couch...

Cat Personalities

I tried to knit last night. I cast on 30 stitches and made it thought two whole rows of the most simple stitch in the world and it took me almost thirty minutes.

Sammie, who is the sweetest cat in the world, does not understand that the yarn is for me to play with. Just me. Serena is perfectly happy to lie next to my knitting - though she sometimes feels it necessary to roll around on the pattern - just to see if I can do it without actually looking at the instructions. She also looks at me from time to time as if to say, "Listen human, if I had thumbs I could knit so much better and faster than you. Hell, I could probably do it without thumbs if I really wanted to but I choose to ignore the yarn because you like it so much." Sammie thinks the yarn and the needles and the tape measure are all for her enjoyment and when I say, "No Sammy," in a stern voice she purrs louder and latches on to the yarn. So I gave up and cuddled with the kitten. Nothing like rewarding bad behavior. She's so spoiled.

It's funny, when we cuddle with the kitten Serena comes in to see what's going on and if cats could roll their eyes and make fake gagging noises she would. If she gets close enough we pet her too, but she doesn't let that happen very often.

So today I'm at work, knitting a little and reading a little and waiting for it to be time to go.

Today I have a lunch date (yay!!) with Andie and Denise from my knitting group. There is a Mediterranean restaurant near my house that is soooo good and we're all hummus addicts. I will probably spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning. (HAhahahahahahhahaaaa. Whew, sorry. That was funny!) If by cleaning you mean napping then yes, I will be cleaning. Like, if by dieting you mean eating everything in the house. Like if by studying you mean watching old episodes of M*A*S*H. I could continue, but I won't.

Lunch date today and then tomorrow is the Super Bowl (Stupid Bore) but there is a party at Andie's house. Her friend Larry will be there so I have to get the ingredients to make garlic dip. I showed up with something else one time and Larry suffered severe emotional damage. Now I am obligated to make garlic dip and also have a special container that is just for Larry to take home any time I see him. I love Larry, so it's all worth it.

I'm off to knit a bit and read a bit and, oh yeah, work a bit.

Must Get WARM!!

It's less than 10 degrees right now and it's supposed to hover around this temperature for the next few days. It's freaking cold. My bedroom windows are leaking cold air into the house, too. Not good. I am definitely planning for the new siding/new windows that we need. I want those windows that are so think that gorillas couldn't break through them.

Because roving bands of gorillas are a worry in this neighborhood.

But seriously, I keep seeing commercials for these windows that don't let cold in and don't turn your room into a greenhouse in the summer. Nice. I'd like to find out how much it would cost without having some sales guy come over and try to pressure me into doing it RIGHT NOW.

In the spirit of being warm, I am knitting this weekend. Not for myself, though. Someone from my knitting group found Warm Up America and we're all going to knit squares to be turned into blankets. I am excited to be knitting and love the idea of helping other people find warm. This weekend is all about sitting around watching the Stupid Bowl commercials and eating garlic dip, so why not knit for charity and help someone out while you're doing it?? I wonder how many 7x9 inch squares I can knit!!

I'm cheating a little and starting tonight... and I plan to keep knitting tomorrow and Sunday.

I'm off to find a sweater and another blanket for the bed and knit like a madwoman.

Knit on, knitters!!