Friday Favorites... beep beep

Took Bean to see Cars this afternoon... seriously funny. Really.

Car-inspired Friday Favorites...

Favorite car - I used to have a Mazda 626. It was small and zippy and could go 300 miles on it's little, weensy 10 gallon tank. I had that car when gas was still around a dollar a gallon - remember those days? I long for that car as I stand next to my SUV, waiting the thirty minutes/$60 it takes to fill the tank. I long for that car as I search for a parking space that is open (meaning there is no car in it) and open (meaning there is enough space on either side of it). (Sigh). A Ford truck ate my Mazda. Chomp.

Favorite personalized tags - my dad has a muscle car with the tag "PINCHME" and I saw an old Chevy Truck this morning that said "OLDNSLO" (My dad ought to get a new one that says "NOTSLOW"). There was "EARGASM," which I never quite understood and a cosmotologist I knew had "CHEVEUX."

Favorite car accident - I know that sounds odd. My friend Melissa used to be a terrible driver. Really, she was a menace on the road. She was a tailgater, she drove way too fast and she didn't pay attention to the road. She would also get distracted if you talked to her while she drove and forget where you were going a lot. She scared me. I used to give her a LOT of crap about her driving. Then one afternoon we were both on campus. It was really cold and icy and teachers were canceling classes and sending everyone home. I ended up behind her in the parking lot - which was odd because we didn't have any classes together. This was in the days before cell phones so I didn't even know that she was on campus. She noticed me behind her and waved and I waved back and we were both very happy and then I slid and plowed right into the back of her car. I wasn't going very fast so there was no damage but it was so funny... imagine that you are a witness to this... it's cold and snowy and yucky outside and then you see a little Mazda run right into a little Ford Escort. You might expect that the drivers would get out of the car and look at the damage and exchange information. Or you might expect that the drivers will either get out of the car and scream and carry on as they do sometimes. What you would not expect is that the two drivers would get out of their cars, run toward each other laughing, hug, look at the lack of damage, laugh some more, get back into their cars and drive away. (I took her to lunch and we never spoke of bad driving again).

Car accident that changed the course of my life - I dated the same guy from the time I was 15 until I was 19. We broke up for several reasons but I think boredom had a lot to do with it. I was driving the Mazda and got crunched by a big truck. The car got hit just about a half an inch away from the driver's side door. It spun around and ended up in the middle of someone's front yard. My head hit the side window, bounced to the right and went through the window. I had glass in my hair, ears, nose, bra, shoes... I was (literally) around the corner from my house (such a statistic) so we walked to my house to call the police. My mom was home and she walked back to the accident site with me. She saw the car and had to sit down - she said she couldn't believe I walked away from it and she was glad she saw me before she saw the car. Here's the life-altering part: the date was what would have been my 5-year anniversary and even though I was sort of seeing someone else the only person I called was my ex-boyfriend. He came over with Chinese food and some videos and we were together for another couple of years. The guy I was sort of seeing was (as it turns out) a huge alcoholic and apparently has a pretty nasty temper.

Some long-winded favorites today... that'll do, pig.

Llama-llama-ding-dong

My husband and I have been thinking about buying a house. We've been thinking about this for awhile. Our parents have been thinking about it too. Like, ever since he moved in with Bean and I they have said "You really should just buy a house" and "Have you looked at any houses lately?" about every five minutes. His parents even drove around on weekends going to open houses looking for "our" house. (blink, blink). I promise you that what I think makes a perfect house and what my mother in law thinks makes a perfect house are sooooooooo different. It's not that we are against owning a home, it's just such a big step! On the one hand, renting sucks and Bean wants a dog. On the other hand, if the heater stops working in a rental, we don't have to replace it. And there's the whole scary grown-up home-owner thing. I want it, but it's scary... But we're 30 and it's time already.
I don't know why it is that I can be on the fence about something for a long time but as soon as I see someone else I know doing it I'm suddenly ready. My friend Kerri decided she was ready to take the home ownership plunge and now I've got the urge again... and I'm thinking I just MIGHT be able to convince my husband that a Llama is just a big, expensive dog.
Anyway, in the mean time I've been looking at middle school possibilities for Bean. If we stay where we are and she goes to the neighborhood school she'll go to the same middle school my husband and I went to (weird, eh?) and I don't know if I'm happy about that. There are several magnet schools and I've been looking at what they have to offer. It's a little early - she'll be in fourth grade this year - but there are some programs that have an application process and I want to make sure we don't miss any deadlines. ANYWAY...
So there's a house I saw online that isn't any big whoop from the outside - basic boxy starter house - but on the inside (whoop whoop) there are new kitchen cabinets and the fridge, stove and dishwasher (!!!!!) stay. It has 3 bedrooms and a big back yard and a covered front porch. I know that even if we are approved someone else will probably beat us to this house but it's peaked my interest again. Bean and I went to scope out the neighborhood this afternoon and the neighborhood is nice - quiet looking street, clean yards, no cars on blocks or crumbly-looking apartments anywhere in sight. And there is a middle school less than a block from the house.
I came home and looked at the school's website and the first picture I saw on the first page was a kid with a Llama. Swear to god. It's fate.

Dear Marianne,

I talked to my friend Marianne today... her daughter is 5 days old and she has had no sleep and her family is visiting. If you have kids you know that feeling, right? That "everyone is coming at you at once and all you want to do is sleep and learn this motherhood thing" feeling. It's interesting... they send you home with this baby and you want to be left alone to figure it out and at the same time you don't want to be left alone because what if she cries/doesn't cry/throws up/turns orange? So this is a letter to her but I'm blogging it because I think we've all been there.

The night Bean was born my parents came by the hospital to take XXX out for dinner. Understand that we had a scheduled c-section so, of course, I hadn't slept in almost 36 hours. She was, maybe, 12 hours old and hadn't done anything but sleep in that 12 hours. She was clean and sleepy and I said, "Go, I'll be fine! We'll just watch the news." They left the room - if it had been a graphic novel I would still have seen the wavy motion lines they left behind. She opened her eyes, opened her mouth and this icky black, watery stuff came out. I turned her over so that she wasn't on her back and yelled, "help!" She started to cry and I started to cry and XXX and my parents came running back in. My mom took the baby and XXX tried to get me to breathe. It was just (apparently) normal "first day on the planet" icky stuff but for that split second I really thought that something horrible was happening to this brand new person. Who was I kidding? I was barely 21 and they were just going to LEAVE me with her?!? I had been babysitting since I was 10. Babies were not a new thing for me... just this one. This perfect, beautiful one. She went back to sleep and my mom put her in a clean gown and I convinced them to leave. I wanted so much for them to stay with me but I knew that I had to learn how to relax about everything and just take care of it. It's like learning to drive... at some point you just have to get behind the wheel and pull out into traffic or you're stuck watching someone else drive your car for the rest of your life. It was so scary, but I got through the two hours they were gone. I was already a mother, but that two hours alone with my daughter were the two hours in which I became a mommy.
Bean is almost ten and from what I can tell there are moments like that all the way through. Moments when something catches your eye and you think, "holy shit, I am not responsible enough to handle this situation." But you do handle it. You handle it the best way you can - and frankly, they're babies, what the hell do they know? They've never done this before either.
My second moment of mommy clarity came two days later. I was trying to breastfeed. I've done the research and I know that breast milk is there for a reason - and that formula costs $4.00 a can. I wanted that absolute bonding, I wanted to provide something for her that she could not get anywhere else. On the hospital admission form I felt proud of myself as I checked the "breast feeding only" box. I knew it was the right thing to do. I sneered at the free samples of formula that came in the diaper bags the hospital was handing out. I knew I was going to breastfeed, even if it was only for a few months.
She, on the other hand, wasn't having it. Everything about it was either boring or frustrating to her. Three or four nurses tried to help, the nice lady from La Leche tried to help. By day 3 she was actually starting to get hungry and I think that she thought I was nuts - she would peer up at me with those serious eyes, I could almost hear her thinking "it's bigger than my entire head, lady, what have you been smoking?" I felt like a failure. I was starting to worry that I was starving her. (They checked her blood sugar levels and everything was normal). On that third day I wrapped her up and we hobbled slooooowly down to the nurses' station and in a sort of whisper I said, "I think she's really hungry, do you think it would be ok to give her just a little bit of formula?" The nurse looked at me and said the most freeing thing, "Honey, you can give her anything you want, you're her mom."
It hadn't even occurred to me that I could just change my mind like that. I didn't realize that the decision-making power was on me. I mean, I'm sure I knew that - I checked the box on the form - but I didn't really know that. Once she said it I never lost that focus.
You get into a routine... you attain physical memory. I know that every mother whose child is more than two months old can change, feed and bathe their baby blindfolded without missing a step (or a spot of spit-up). You just learn it. Suddenly you can just DO it. Just like you can pull your big-assed SUV into a tight parking space without spilling your Diet Coke. Just like you can find your bathroom at 2am. Just like (some of) you can cast on and knit a sock or a scarf. With that physical memory comes a certain amount of confidence that is tested at every opportunity. Don't lose it! Not when the baby falls off the couch or eats grass (or a bit of yarn). That confidence that you have is what tells the baby who is boss - and knowing who is boss is very very important as that sweet baby learns to walk and say "NO." (I should tell you that knowing who is boss will not change the child's actions... but it will make you feel better).
And the baby will fall off the couch. She will find (and eat) the candy corn that fell between the couch cushions last Halloween. She will reach for the plate of spaghetti your server carelessly put inside the baby-reach radius and dump most of it on your least baby-friendly friend. She will find a bottle of dark burgundy nail polish and pour it on her new cream-colored dress, new shoes and a good portion of the beige carpet by the front door minutes before you are supposed to leave for church. She will scream at the top of her lungs all the way through the grocery store. In those moments you will want to pull your hair out and scream along with her... or you'll want to hand her to your mother/spouse/sister and just. walk. away. You will want your own mother to come and make things better.
You will not do these things. You will lower your voice just a little bit and stare her right in the eye and say the age-appropriate equivalent of "stop it right now." You will take a deep breath and you will gracefully and efficiently deal with the things that need to be dealt with. You will soothe her when she falls (and she will be more scared than scarred - so will you). You will fish the offending candy from her mouth and take another run at the couch with the dust-buster. Dinners will be cut short. New dresses will be found. Shopping carts will be abandoned in the middle of the aisles. You will strap her into her carseat as though there is not a thing in the world that is wrong. You know. She knows. Your calmness will show her that you know what you're doing. This will either confuse her into silence or make her really, really mad. Either way, it's naptime.
It's scary and there will be soooooooo many times when you feel unprepared or lost but the trick is to look calm and just go with it. (Practice the calm look in the mirror and try not to scream when you get it right and see your mother's face instead of your own). And remember, all she knows is what you tell her - through your words and your actions and whatever freaky vibe you've got going on. Remember those "cleansing" breaths from your childbirth classes? Try that. Then put her to bed, pour a glass of wine and call me. I've been there.

Blink, blink, blink

Soooooo...... here's the front of the finished hat. (blink, blink)



And here's the back. (blink blink blink)

(do you see the problem yet?!?)

And here's the front, rolled up nicely... (blink).

And the back... Why doesn't it fit the way it's supposed to?!?

(awwwww damn it.) Anyone else notice what's wrong with this hat? The section on the left has the appropriate number of short rows, while the section on the right does not. Apparently I decreased from 38 to 30 stitches instead of 20 and didn't notice... or count... until I had cut the yarn, sewed the seam and worked in the ends.

Fuck.

Well, this was the ugly scrap yarn that my grandmother included in a bag full of miscellaneous knitting supplies. She bought this yarn something like 20 years ago to make a sweater or something. So it was free. And the hat only took 2 days of knitting to make and is an easy pattern (though not, apparently, idiot-proof).

Did I mention that I've been having a hard time sleeping lately?!?

I was going to...

I was going to post a picture of my new purple crocs with the Crusoe socks... but I never managed to get the shoes, socks and camera in the same room last night. Maybe tomorrow. I'm wearing he crocs right now and I have to say that if you don't own a pair, go now. Go here and order a pair or eight. They are comfy and provide enough arch support that even my freakishly high arches are happy.

I was going to send my friend Marianne a Baby Shower in a Box, complete with something I knitted before her baby came. I finished the knitted object MONTHS ago, but I still haven't sewn in all of the ends. I bought every cool baby thing I had (or wished existed) when Bean was a baby and all I have to do is wrap it up and send it. I did not send it in time... Grace is here and incredibly beautiful and healthy (and BIG! Marianne is on the "not tall" side - I saw pictures toward the end, she looked very uncomfortable. Now we know why). So, welcome to the world baby Grace. I'm sorry that your gifts are still in a box in my bedroom, but your mom can tell you that I am the queen of procrastination.

I was going to go home last night and go straight to bed but my work spouse dragged me to this spa party thingie. Sort of like a tupperware party, but I got a facial out of it. I felt sort of bad, though, because I didn't buy anything. All snarky comments about parties like that aside, my hands are really soft. Here's the thing - that scrub stuff that you can buy in a thousand different places for $40 a jar is sea salt (Dead Sea salt if you can get it), kosher salt, oil (I like apricot kernel oil) and fragrance oil. That's it. Go make some.
I actually had an ok time, despite my anxiety levels. They are sort of high (and by "sort of" I mean really really really). We did this relaxation exercise - little spa booties on our feet, masks on our faces and little eye de-puffers on our eyes - with a CD. One of those "picture yourself on a beach, you're safe, you're warm, you can relax completely" CD's. I realized about 4 minutes into the relaxation exercise that it is actually my tension that keeps me from crying all of the time. About everything. So I kept my eyes closed and head back and just pretended to relax.

I was going to go home after THAT and sleep but my husband was hungry when I got home. I was hungry, too. I can almost always manage hunger but I really didn't eat much yesterday. We're sort of broke right now (again, by "sort of" I mean really really really), and he is usually the one who says "that sounds expensive" and freaks out if our checking account falls below $300. (I, on the other hand, give myself a high-five if I make it from one paycheck to the next without needing to transfer money out of my savings account). If it's Wednesday and we get paid on Friday and there's $50 in the account I'm on the way to Target. If it's Wednesday and we get paid on Friday and there's $50 in the account he's convinced that we're going to be living in the car. Anyway, he suggested a trip to Denny's. (Are there Denny's everywhere? It's a kind of a trashy IHOP). We had a really good time - Denny's was the late-night hang out place for teenagers when we were in high school so we got all nostalgic and started talking about making out and fights and people we hadn't thought about in years. It was really fun. Now my stomach hates me. A lot. Don't eat a lot of bad food and then go home, sleep for 4 hours and then go to work. I feel hung over.

I was going to go to the gym today but what I really really want to do is go back to bed (shocking, I know). I haven't been sleeping well at all lately and it's really starting to affect me. I'm sure that my sleeplessness has something to do with my emotional fragility. And I know that sleeplessness is what is making my eyes feel like sandpaper.
Sleepsleepsleep.

TV Confession Time

(In which I lose any and all respect that any of you might have had for me).

I promise that this blog will not become another TV critic blog. I know that nobody really cares what I think about TV shows - if they did I'd be getting paid for it.

Let me start by saying that I am aware that I watch too much TV. I know. But while I watch TV I also read or kit or do homework. But I love stupid sitcoms, I love game shows and judge shows, and I especially love weekly dramas. I was a Sex and the City and Six Feet Under junkie and I love Huff and Big Love - though I managed to miss enough that I'll have to wait for the DVD. I love some of the new shows, too - What About Brian and Windfall. It's no secret that Bean and I have a severe addiction to Gilmore Girls and I have watched ER since Clooney was still walking the halls, and anyone who knows me knows of my unflagging love for Gray's Anatomy. But here's what you don't know... I never watched any of the teen angst dramas. Not 90210, Melrose Place. Not Felicity or Dawson's Creek... I used to think it was because I saw myself as being "above" all of that... but I think it was just that I didn't get into the first season and then thought it was too late. I rarely watch a series that I didn't see from the first episode of the first season... you miss so much of the setup if you're not into it from day one. With the advent of the DVD and the simplicity of Netflix, though, I found myself yearning for some honest-to-god teen angst drama.
By the way - renting a whole season at a time has a lot of advantages. You don't have to wait a whole week for resolution, there are no commercials, and each disc has 4 - 6 episodes on it so it provides a lot of time to knit - much more time than a feature-length film. Try it.
So I started with Dawson. A few months ago I started renting the series and I have to say that while I hate James Van Der Beek as much as the next person I really liked the show. It's mindless and fun and doesn't require anything from me... but I found myself getting emotionally involved anyway. I watched the series finale last night and I cried like an idiot and said the cliched "awwwww" when Joey picked Pacey. (Through the course of the show I managed to pick up a pretty major crush on Joshua Jackson. What's a girl to do?)
I rented the first season of Felicity a few weeks ago and it's pretty disappointing. Maybe the whole Dawson's Creek addiction - now that it's over - was just the teen angst fix I needed. Or maybe it's time to try 90210. Or maybe I should check myself into a clinic of some kind. I think I might really need help. Of course, I will watch the rest of the season, and I might have to rent the next season to see if it gets any better...
So what's with Felicity and the sweaters anyway?!?

TV inspired Friday Favorites:
1. Favorite Episode of Dawson's Creek: Pacey and Joey get locked in a K-Mart. Not only is Dawson not actually in this episode, but we get to see Joey shave Pacey's horrible facial hair and we get to see what a sweetie Pacey is again.
2. Favorite TV comercial: Commercial for some office-supply store - the guy in the commercial has a cat painting a pie chart with it's tail. He says it's a "copy cat" and will save them money on color copies.
3. Favorite activity while watching TV: Duh - knitting, though using my new yarn winder runs a very close second.
4. Favorite TV snack: Cheese and crackers and fruit
5. Favorite way to watch TV: wearing pj's in bed with the husband at home. He is not as much of a TV person as I am so he will come in and watch with me for awhile, then get up and bring me Diet Dr. Pepper and then go back to whatever he was doing. He will also come in periodically to check my Diet Dr. Pepper levels.
6. Favorite late-night channel - it's between Nick at Night and TV Land, depending on what they're airing, but I dig being able to watch Mad About You and Murphy Brown in the middle of the night.
7. Shows I wish would come back: Six Feet Under, NewsRadio, The Homefront

Ta Daaaaaaa! (three things)

This was waiting for me at my desk when I got to work!!! My birthday swift and ball winder!!! AND it came before my birthday yarn showed up from Knitpicks so I won't even have to wait once it gets here!!!


~AND~






I finished the Crusoe socks!!! I love them love them love them!!! I need more sock yarn to make more Crusoe socks!!

~AND~








My brother wanted a hat. An "ugly" hat. I don't know that I can make a truly ugly anything (at least not on purpose) but in my bag of mixed knitting supplies from my grandmother came some ancient Red Heart yarn in brown and cream.



So I cast on and am halfway finished with the Tychus hat from Knitty. I don't even hate the colors! It's my first hat ever and I am digging the short row construction. It's wicked quick to knit. I think that Bean needs one in pink and purple. I might need one, too. I'll post finished pics soon!!


All in all it's been a pretty good day for knitting. I need to wind something into a cool ball, though. Wonder if there's any yarn in my car...