Third

My last FO?  Jack Leland!

Aside from being a tasty nibble, he is quite the relaxed baby.  I felt like I was in labor forever.  But some how, despite having his cord wrapped around his neck a whooping THREE times, he managed to beat the previous 'shortest labor' record by exactly five minutes.  He likes to sleep through the night (I KNOW) and to snuggle.  This, my friends, is perfection.

Kindness

Sometimes my kids are just so bad, so frustrating, such utter shits, well, I have to kill them with kindness because if I just killed them, I'd end up in jail. Today was one of those days so I decided to get my Pinterest on and make Hotdogopuses ... Octodogs ... a fun dinner.  It was extremely easy.



Cut up a hot dog, break up some spaghetti (or whole wheat linguine in our case), and shove the spaghetti into the hot dog pieces. Drop them into boiling water (which I did not salt because the hot dogs were pretty salty to begin with and they leach all that salt into the water) and let them boil until the pasta is cooked.


Scoop them out with a slotted spoon so they drain, drop them on a plate, add a squirt of ketchup and VOILA! Dinner is served!

Busted

Tonight I made the kids macaroni and cheese from a box. You know, the crappiest type of mac and cheeses out there.  Their favorite of course. The cheese sauce, as you may know, is made by combining butter (yum), milk (yum), and neon orange powdered cheese (uhhhh). Tonight, in my hurry to get dinner ready, I did a poor mixing job and a wad of neon orange cheesy buttery goodness caked onto a few noodles. A good mom would have stirred this in so that the kids could have as much cheesy flavor as possible. I'm not a good mom. I used my fingers, scooped that wad out, and indulged in that strange cheesy paste that transforms blah cardboard into crack. Only to hear J1 squeal, "Mom! You can't eat standing up, from the pot!" I told her she was right. And she told me to go to time out. So I did. And then she told me when I could get up. I suspect that if she knew why I was using my fingers I'd have been in that time out a whole lot longer.

#48293

J1 was telling her little sister that she didn't want to play with her. But she was doing it in a nasty tone and making J2 cry. So I was trying to explain to her other ways she could deliver the message without sounding like a snot and hurting J2's feelings. And this is why, two days later, my kids keep saying, "Please leave me alone, I want to play with myself." Parenting fail.

Maybe I Need Cats

I'm not sure who decided that canned tuna and pasta were a winning combination. It most certainly is not. Hell, I'm not sure who decided canning tuna was a good idea. It is, in fact, also not. Fresh tuna? Fabulous! Canned tuna? The opposite of fabulous. That being said, I've been hard up for EASY and QUICK dinner ideas for the kids. Jillian refuses to eat almost everything and Juliet eats almost everything. So, with this all swirling in my little pea brain, I decided to dump a teeny tiny can of tuna in a bowl with some plain ziti and some butter. A simple tuna casserole type thing. I mean millions of (fucking weird) people LOVE tuna casserole so my paired down version would be okay for the kids. This is what I thought. I mean knew Jillian would be suspect but I thought Juliet would eat the hell out of it. So it was worth the experiment ... also hello Omega-3's nice to see ya!

Well, Jillian was indeed suspect and with the whining and the whining and ohmygod the whining, pushed my buttons to the point where I threw down a bowl of un-tunaed plain ziti with enough force to create a ziti shower ... Woot! Woot! It is raining ziti! Now, while my crazy level is HIGH, it is not so HIGH that I did not realize that perhaps things would be better if I walked away for a few minutes. So I did. And when I returned Jillian had eaten the plain ziti and Juliet, dear sweet, I will eat anything but ice cream and greek yogurt (what the hell is that all about) Juliet, she had also eaten the ziti, while picking off the tuna. Every. Single. Bit. Then she took the tuna bits and rubbed them all over herself. So now I have a baby who smells like cat food. Let this be a lesson ... a-note-to-self ... don't think you can fool your kids into eating something you know is nasty. It will backfire. Spectacularly.

Thank You Sr. Sheen

I've had this big plan, or rather, BIG PLAN to make cake pops for Jillian's upcoming birthday. WINNING! I've even dropped some murmurings about fancy cake pops. BI-WINNING! It is all very exciting. Or rather was. You see, I've had this plan for awhile and was quite bummed when Starbucks started carrying cake pops (in hindsight this probably was the universe telling me to get the hell off the cake pop bus - a bad batch of tigerblood must be why I missed this sign). I was bummed because it both took some of the wow factor away from my future unveiling and also raised the bar being that the Starbucks ones are pretty darn good.

So, with that in mind and knowing that my kitchen is perhaps the world's, or at least my town's, most sucktastic kitchen and such sucktasticness usually negatively affects my baking (yah, dozens of loaves of blank tasting pumpkin and zucchini bread I am talking to you), I decided, for probably the first time in my life, to practice. I went out and got all the fixings and dudes, if I had a tail it would have been wagging on hyper drive, I was so psyched. My kitchen was where it was at and beat anything 99% of the world was doing. I baked the cake and it tasted good. No, GOOOOOOOD. WINNING, duh! Then after it cooled I made the cake ball mixture and it was, well okay. The frosting was meh and took away from the greatness of the cake. But I could use different frosting for the final product so no worries. Tail? Still wagging happily. Once all was mixed, it was ball making time and that wasn't too bad either. My balls were not perfectly round, but they were okay. I tried a few other shapes and they were less okay than my balls (yes, that makes me laugh), but not too totally terrible. Next was stick insertion and even that went well. The last step, the most crucial step, the dipping. The dipping, it is where things went ... downhill.


BYE WINNING! I dipped and I dipped and then I dipped some more and apparently you need a degree in physics or rocket science to get this done right because my balls turn to crap. Lumpy dripping balls of crap. My fingertips radiate not sunshine, but death. My Adonis DNA has let me down. I've watched the Bakerella Cake Pop video, repeatedly, and even another cake pop video, repeatedly. And yet, without fail, my dipping turns to dripping and my pops become massive balls of FAIL. My tale is not over yet, DEFEAT IS NOT AN OPTION! I shall continue to drink tea made of pulverized dinosaur fossils and practice. And practice some more. And if things look still bad, well then I can only hope a team of Vatican assassins take me out before I break my baby's heart with substandard birthday fare.

Realist

This is the first year that Jillian is really getting the Santa thing. Actually that's not true. She doesn't really get it. Let's say she is somewhat aware that there is a guy named Santa and that the soccer ball she wants, well she needs to ask him to give it to her. It was along these lines that we had a discussion on how, exactly, she was going to get that soccer ball from Santa.

J1: Where does Santa live?
Me: In the North Pole.
J1: Is Santa gonna drive a car to our house? In my car?
Me: No. Santa rides on a sled.
J1: A sled???
Me: Yes. He has a special sled that is pulled by reindeer. Santa and the reindeer take the sled from house to house and land on people's roofs. Then Santa slides down the chimney and puts your presents under the Christmas tree so you can find them on Christmas morning.
J1: HAHAHAHAHA. No Mommy! That's silly! You're silly Mommy! HAHAHAHA!

Mine

There are a gazillion times a day where I find myself looking at my kids and wondering "Who are you?" They do these things that just blow my mind and give me a teeny tiny niggling thought that perhaps, just maybe, they give me someone else's kid at the hospital. But. But then. But then there are times, like today, that I am one hundred thousand percent that I definitely have the right kid. To wit:

Jillian was in her crib for "quiet time" when all of a sudden she start screaming MOOOMMMMMYYYYY! MOMMY! MMMOOOOMMMMYYYY! I NEEEEEEDDDDDD YOUUUUU! I hauled it upstairs to find her pressed into the corner of her crib, crying and sucking her thumb. When I asked what was wrong she pointed to a spot on her sheet and said in her most pathetic voice, "There's a buuuuuggggg." Ding, ding, ding! That's my kid. I. So. Get. It. I have been known to freak the fuck out over bugs. It is irrational, but I do it anyway. It turns out the bug was actually a wad of dog hair and I was quite capable of dealing with it and we all lived happily ever after.

I Should Be Packing

We're off to Joisey to spend a long weekend with my MiL. If visions of crazy, baby-free marital nights danced in your head with that sentence, then you probably are unaware that my MiL needs knee replacement surgery and is unable to lug twenty-five pounds of baby around, and thus, unable to watch said twenty-five pounds so that we could have crazy, baby-free marital nights. It is all good though because I plan to have crazy fun nonetheless. Assuming, of course, that I quit Facebooking and blogging and instead start packing. Gah. Packing. Boo. One thing I need to remember to pack are my Jaywalkers. All that ripping paid off and I have two properly fitting feet. I still had to reconnoiter things a bit which meant that my heel flaps are a tad bit short, but I am not alarmed. I just need to knit up the legs and badda bing, badda bam, done! I plan to accomplish all of this knitting while sitting on the beach. Which, unbeknownst to my husband, means he will also be sitting on the beach, only instead of relaxing he will be entertaining the aforementioned twenty-five pounds and making sure it doesn't run or float off into the sea. This arrangement seems totally fair. We each get a kid. He watches one and I grow the other.

L is for ...

Little feet in handknit Little Coriolis socks.



Handknit socks which are a tad to long if you look closely.



I finished these Little Corilois socks several weeks ago but forgot to do a finished object photo shoot. Aside from the fact that the yarn is crap, the socks came out quite nice. Actually that is not true.



Even though I followed the directions meticulously, the second sock isn't the same as the one in the pattern. The picture of the second sock in the pattern has two lines of stitches going up the arch, which makes sense since the first sock has two rows of stitches going up the arch. Only my second sock, it has one row of stitches. Weird, huh? Lady Bean doesn't seem to mind so I'm not sweating it. Plus these will only fit her for a minute, so I am not going to rip them out.

I have to admit that using little feet in handknit socks for my L might be "cheating" as K was for knitting and the knitting was these socks. I did finish the socks and Lady Bean is wearing them so there is some difference since K was written, but still. I feel a little wrong using the same item twice. So I have a back-up L ... L is for large ass lizard



This guy was chilling on my uncle's screen porch and startled the hell out of me. I was standing on the porch, talking on my cellphone, minding my own business, and turned to look out at the yarn and BAM! There he was in all his reptilian splendor. He was longer than my hand and the brightest green. He was also pretty patient too since he stayed put while I went and got my camera.

So there you have it, L is for lizards and Lady Bean's little lady feet in little coriolis socks.



Yarn: Moda•Dea Sassy Stripes, color #6946 Crush, dye lot #5821.
Needles: Addi Turbo, size 3.0 mm (US 2)
Pattern: Little Coriolis
Time: 3 days.
Care: Machine wash, dry flat.

Alternatively

D could also be for done! As in holy crap, I just completed over thirty thank you notes, I'm finally friggen Done!



Now many of you big-wedding folks may say, "Thirty? That's nuthin'. Quit your bitchin!" But for those of us who eschewed the big-wedding thing and went small and intimate, and then decided that the husband would do the thank you cards for his peeps and the wife would do the thanks you cards for her peeps* and said wife only had like six peeps, well, thirty is a lot. A WHOLE HELLUVA LOT!

*FYI - I totally recommend such a system. It's great. For us, it has evolved into Boo doing all of the cards for his peeps (birthday, anniversary, holiday, etc.) and me doing them for mine. Since I have less peeps, it works out really well. For example, one December we sat at a beach side restaurant and filled out our holiday cards. I was done in twenty minutes and got to spend quality time gazing at the water (and the oddly clad freaks on the beach) while Boo kept writing and writing and writing. The only real downside is that my peeps never get their cards on time because I suck at remembering such things. On the other hand, his peeps get their cards on time because I'm not in charge of remembering such things!

Recovery

Hope y'all are recovering from Christmas (or from the extra time off, if you just, you know, celebrate not working) and getting back to work this morning didn't kill ya. Wait, what? You have today off too? Assholes! Obviously, I do not. And let me tell you, it sucks. As an aside, let me share with you my belief, a belief that I think you will take and adopt as your own ... People should have the day after a holiday off (so that they have time to recuperate from all the fun in which they partook when they were off), instead of the day before the holiday. People like the day before the holiday off so they can prepare. But! They had tons of time to prepare for the holiday, it didn't sneak up out of nowhere. It makes more sense to enjoy the day after in peaceful revelry and to give your mind (and maybe body if need be) recovery time. Think about it. It works for a lot of holidays ... Christmas, New Year's, Fourth of July, Memorial Day, etc. This is my belief, so sayeth The Jenna.

Anywho, me, working today. Not only am I missing AMAZING BARGAINS ... RIGHT NOW! it was hard, damn hard, to wake up this morning. It could be because I stayed up late playing blackjack. Blackjack fueled by 'nog where Boo, BiL5 and I all took turns being the dealer and yet I was the only one who ended up broke. Had we been playing for real money, I would have lost $950. It didn't help that the blackjack was a failed attempt to cheer me up after getting my ass kicked (twice) at Don't Quote Me (preferably said like the guy that says, "Don't tase me bro!" and said repeatedly until someone says, "Say that one more time and I swear on the New York Yankees, Miami Hurricanes and anything else you hold holy that I will tase you into silence bro" and pulls out a Tasemaster 2000) and Rummy 500. It seems my game juju of late has been, well, nonexistent. Which is okay, because it is not whether you win or lose, it is how you play the game. Blah blah blah. Though, to be honest, I might have cheated at Rummy 500 there at the end. But my cheating was also a dismal failure, so it shouldn't count.

Other than the bad game juju, Christmas was wonderful. Good fun, good times, good people, good gifts, and good food. Every year we have Christmas brunch. We have a routine and a game plan. This year, however, we decided to mix it up a little. We deep-sixed the china and nice linen and lox. Yes, the lox was left out intentionally; the cheesy grits and the blueberry french toast, left out not so intentionally. Whoops!

Even with the omissions, we were all well fed and I still managed to do all right with my bagel abd lox, cream cheese, tomato and onion ... hold the lox.



There was also some finishing going on over here at Chez SPR! I finished Branching Out! Once BiL5 vacates our guestroom and quits sleeping on my 'blocking board,' I'll have Branching Out blocked and ready for a proper photo shoot. In the meantime, here's a little taste ...

NaBloPoMo, xxiv

I spent today watching the Hurricanes lose while freezing my arse off. I thought gestating babies was suppose to make ya run hot. So not the case. I feel like I got gypped out of the useful pregnancy symptoms. I was so damn cold, most of the 'self-portrait' pictures I took, came out wonky. Case and point:



You can't tell who this is or where we are. In fact, the only things you can tell from this here picture are that my uncle and I ended up wearing matching coats and that my hat wouldn't stay on properly. It's all good though. Despite the poor showing and subarctic temperatures, we had a nice time visiting with each other.

NaBloPoMo, xxi

This morning I worked and this evening I am preparing for Thanksgiving at my SiL's. Last year we spent the day doing Not-Thanksgiving things. This year we are diving in to a traditional Thanksgiving. It's my in-laws' first Thanksgiving since my FiL passed away, but they are marching forward and meeting the holiday head-on. Ironically, they are making me do the same, as we were asked to bring pecan pie. Or I should say pee-can pie ... what the hell is a pee-can? It sounds like something that belongs in an outhouse, not in a pie. My people, a gentle folk, say it puh-kahn. My husband laughs at this. But whatever. I, surprisingly, have digressed.

Back to the pecan pie. Many years ago, my mom would make The Pecan Pie for Thanksgiving. She was the go-to gal for pecan pie. In fact, her pie was so good that my uncle would put one on his Christmas wish list. Having grown up only eating her pecan pie, I never had any others to compare quality wise; but, I am willing to say it was the best pecan pie ever. Since my mom died, I have not had pecan pie. My aunt would make one at Thanksgiving and I would abstain. I once tried to have the pumpkin pecan cheesecake, a pecan pie on top of pumpkin cheesecake, at The Cheesecake Factory. I started sobbing after my first bite. Apparently I have issues with the pecan pie. Or I should say, I had issues with pecan pie being that it is the item we were asked to bring to my SiL's so I can't exactly keep my issues any longer.

Boo suggested buying one at the grocery store, but I just couldn't make myself do that. My mom and aunt would find a way to haunt my ass if I did. So, I dug out my mom's old cookbook, found her recipe, tried to remember how she tweaked it, and made a pie. Well two. My uncle is coming up for the weekend and I figured I could make him one too. He doesn't cry when he eats pecan pie, so it seemed like a nice gesture.

I cheated and used a pre-made roll out crust. Having never made a pie before, this was probably smart. Having never made a pie before it would have probably been smarter to read the directions before I threw them in the oven. In hindsight I have a couple of tips for anyone using pre-made pie crust. One, there is a reason stores sell pie weights. I didn't have those, or beans. This was kind bad. Two, that extra crust around the rim? Follow the directions and fold it over like they say. Ripping it off my result in shrinkage. If you're me, your pie crust will shrink once you fill it and stick it back in the oven. I now have a gap along some of the side bits. Whoops. Notwithstanding the crust issues, I was somewhat worried that the pie part itself might taste like ass. I had some extra filling (as my mom always did, so that has to mean I was on the right track, yes?) so I poured it into a small baking dish and cooked it along with the pies.



I had a bite. I did not cry. I did not vomit. In fact, I kinda smiled and thought, "This ain't too bad." I am going to have my husband try it and see what he thinks. If it passes his taste test, then I am bringing a pie (shrinkage and all) to the in-laws. If they don't need their stomachs pumped, I'll be giving my uncle his on Friday.

Lest you think I am some sweet nice pie making girl, I should confess that I am also submitting my in-laws to my favorite Thanksgiving dish in the world, mashed rutabaga. Having not made it in a few years, I kind of lost my sense of perspective and ended up with two huge pots of boiling rutabaga. This is not actually the first time I've done this. Several years ago I made Thanksgiving dinner for Boo and I. Only the two of us, yet our entire apartment bar/counter top was covered with food.



It might have been overkill for just two people. I might have eaten Thanksgiving dinner for weeks afterwards. Anyway, I seem to have done this whole too-much-food thing with the rutabaga. Hopefully someone besides me likes it. Boo, he does not, not in the least. In fact, he says it smells like farts. He, of course, is an idiot. Rutabaga smell earthy, homey, delicious, not farty.



If, however, the rutabaga did smell the least bit farty, which it totally does not but just say for arguments sake that it did, well then my entire house would smell farty. There is no way you make that much rutabaga and not smell up the entire house. My husband could be a very sad camper when he gets home and takes a deep breathe. Maybe the puh-kahn pie will cheer him up. Either way, I need to figure out whether to mash the rutabaga now, or wait until tomorrow when we get there.

Whoopsie

Did I promise knitting content for today? Hahaha. Well you see there is this little thing that I forgot, that is to say, I may have needed to bind off my latest project and WHOOPS, don't ya know, I don't know how to do the picot bind off. Yet. Soooo, that is my project for this afternoon. Picot bind off. In the meantime, let me use a little razzle dazzle, huggle muggle, something or other to divert your attention from my lack of knitting ... Hey! Look! A Dog!



This is my Uncle's dog. His name is Precious. Why aren't you laughing yet? Okay, think The Silence of the Lambs ... Buffalo Bill ... Precious. Ha! Got it now? My aunt and uncle named their white toy poodle pup after a fictional serial killer's white toy poodle pup. Amusing, well, to me anyway. Having never seen the movie, they didn't get it and didn't want to hear about and his name is Precious because he is precious and that is the end of that so shut it. The dog is cute and yes, even precious when he isn't going all Jeffrey Dahmer on his toys, and I love him to bits and enjoy chewing on him, but his name is still ridiculous. So anyway, here is a cute little puppy, sitting on the porch, in South Florida, WEARING A SWEATER! If his name didn't make you giggle, shouldn't the fact that a dog, who has a fully functional fur coat, is wearing a sweater in the hottest place on earth get you to chuckle? No? Not so much. Damn, it is the sweater isn't it? Made you think of hand knit sweaters and my non-knittingness. Crap.

So, uh, you wanna hear about my experience at carmax (yah, I am naming names, you people SUCK so there) where a random appraiser attempted to bend me over and then NOT use vaseline? No? Okay! Okay! I'll go learn the picot bind off!

Visitors

I haven't been posting as much as I usually do. Not because my life has settled down into normality, it hasn't, unfortunately. I've had boatloads of crazy, and Crazy, and maybe some goofy going on. But all this crazy/Crazy/goofy is taking up time, a whole lot of precious time*, all kinds of fun blogging time.

For example, this weekend my husband's oldest sister and her family came up for a visit. This wasn't really crazy or goofy, but it did eat up my free time. My husband was quite excited because he's lived in Connecticut for ten years and his sister was finally visiting for the very first time. I was excited because the mountain of pet hair accumulating behind the couch/love seat/television/bookshelf/any piece of furniture we have was finally going to be evicted. Not that I wasn't psyched to see my SIL and her brood, I was just a little more psyched that we were going to have a very clean house. Because honestly, isn't that the best part of having house guests? Yah, I had fun playing put-put golf (being that I shot not one but two legitimate holes in one because I am awesome and am the put-put golf master of the universe) but it really wasn't as exciting as sitting back on my freshly vacuumed couch, while my bare feet bounced around on our Stanley Steamered carpet and my eyes watched television on our freshly dusted screen. I mean don't get me wrong, we aren't total dirt bags when we are left to our own devices, but you may have to pick of a stray piece of lint or cat hair if you are employing the ten second rule.

So the house was clean and waiting for our guests who some how took a three hour drive and turned it into a five hour one. Which was fine because those extra two hours were vital in our preparations. You see when people stay with me they are quizzed on our amenities. Is this weird? Maybe, but it is also quite useful. During one such quiz session, Joan pointed out that it would be nice to have bedside lamps so that you could read in bed and not have to get up to turn off the light. Since I don't think I have ever had a bedside lamp, this was both foreign to me and a brilliant idea I had to act on. So brilliant that I forgot about it until about thirty minutes before my SIL's scheduled arrival. Fortunately they were still a state away and I had time to run up to the triple B and buy some bedside lampage. Crisis averted.

When they did arrive, a tour was given (although "tour" may be a misnomer because we don't live in some fifty thousand square foot mansion which would be nice but also weird because what the hell do you do with all that space) and the kids decided they didn't want to stay in the same room as their parents which meant they were going to bunk down in The Yarn Room. I found this oddly reassuring. This confirmed that my little yarn collection isn't really all that scary. I mean a twelve year old girl and nine year old girl were asking to crash on the air mattress right next to the bountiful yarny plushness. How scary could it be?

By the time they left I had somehow lost at Cranium and Life (the real 1963 version, not the new mamby pamby version that has Shady Acres or some such nonsense instead of the Poor Farm and lacks Revenge spaces), but had succeeded in spreading the joy of the playground spinning pole, so I would say it was a good visit.

I didn't get much knitting done while they were here, which is probably not surprising. Though I did get a row or two done on the Monkey peds showing my SIL's husband, an engineer, how to knit. He was intrigued but not interested in becoming a knitter. Odd, I know. I finished my Wild Kat socks some time ago but have not had custody of the camera and have been unable to photograph my pretties. Yah, yah, my husband's whole department is moving into new, high tech space and yah, they are going to have a mini JumboTron (MiniTron??)in their new office area which may be worthy of a picture or two, but hello, I need the camera for blogging purposes!

*Know where this came from? Yah, probably not. Like I said, I have had all sorts of goofiness going on, like this song floating around in my head.

No Beach For You

I'd like to tell you that the Joisey shore was wonderful. But it wasn't. No, the damn thing was closed ... for bomb removal. For real! Yah! What the hell is that all about? Apparently when they rebuilt/replenished the beach, they did it with old munitions. The whole thing is odd. I mean, do we have bombs along our entire coast? And also, I don't understand why the devices didn't detonate when they were drug up to shore to rebuild the beach. Anywho.

Even with out the ocean beachfront closed, we still had a nice time. Especially Dogert, who still managed to go for a swim ... in the bay. Which was not a pre-approved swim. She may have just taken a running leap and dove in head first. I may have stared at her in horror for a few minutes before ordering her out. Then I may have laughed. I might not be the best dog mom in the world. But, I am the best sock knitter in my family. Which I can say with the utmost sincerity as I am the only sock knitter in my family!

And, being my sock knitting self, I finished my Queen Kahuna socks while we were in Joisey. Kind of befitting, yes? The shore ... the beach ... Kahuna ... never mind. It works in my head. I had to use the directions to finish the second sock being that my memory, not so good. So it slowed me down a bit. That and the fact that I summarized the directions on a handy dandy post-it note which was only seventy percent legible. But they were still a quick knit, heck, they're only a footie/ped/ankle sock, there isn't much to 'em.



My favorite brother-in-law watched me knit and was horrified that it took me a WHOLE WEEK to knit a sock. I explained that if I didn't have a job, I could probably do a pair in a few days, but that was equally horrifying to him. He actually said, "Doesn't a real sock take only minutes to make." I think I blanched. I know I felt faint. He quickly said that he didn't mean that my socks were not real. That obviously my hand knit sock was real. "Just, you know." Yah, I know. But it was too late. He may be my favorite, but he's not getting any hand knit socks!

Which might not be a bad thing because I had an issue, an embarrassing issue, an issue that makes me feel a little dirty. I had a return of the ladders. On both socks! I don't know why. I used all of the tricks. But they appeared anyway. I haven't had a ladder in quite some time. I'm hoping this was just a fluke. The yarn, upset because I call it dirty-looking, decided to mess with me. Something other than I suck.



I asked Boo to come outside and take some pictures of my socks for me before we left (while everyone laughed at my request), thinking that the change of scenery in my sock pictures might be nice. My MiL has all sorts of pretty flowers and stuff in the back yard but the shadows turned out to be killers. Also, my family is a bit whack. The minute a camera is out, everyone wants to play and ham it up.


Needless to say, the sock picture taking quickly disintegrated into a picture free for all with cameras and cell phones and such. Which turned out to be amusing because in all of the pictures, I'm clutching my socks. So even though I was mocked (yah Favorite, I'm talking to you!) for taking pictures of my socks, everyone else took pictures of my socks too!


Which in a way is a kind of sweet revenge for having my ass handed to me at Rummy 500. You might have killed me at cards with your wonky scoring and strange rules that make NO SENSE because DUDE! This is rummy, not UNO, I don't need to tell you if I only have one card left. And I can pick up the one card at the end of the pile without using it right then. And if you laid down three of a kind, I can lay down the fourth. And ... I could go on, but I'll spare you. Just know that the Joisey rules for rummy suck balls. And if you are a rummy champ in normal circles, you won't be in those Joisey ones. Oh, and wine won't help make the rules more clear. Neither will a toasted almond ice cream bar. Nothing makes these rules not suck. But I digress. Where was I? Ahh yes, my revenge, ha! All of the pictures, the nice "family" pictures, have my socks in them. Front and center. Wah haha!



Yarn: Opal, Rodeo, Farbe 1154, Partie 3, 1/2 a skein
Needles: Addi Circs, size 2.5 mm (US 1)
Pattern: Queen Kahuna
Time: 11 days.
Care: Machine wash, dry flat.

Holy Yarn Batman!

So I'm home. I like being home. I get to love on the husband and animals. But Miami, it was awesome. And hot. Very, very hot. I kinda miss it (except for the hot part).



On Sunday, I got to catch a baseball game at my alma mater. We won by like 100. Typically when I go to a Hurricane sporting event that is not football, we lose. By a lot. But not this time. I was so excited by the win that I tried to get a picture of me and the Miami Maniac. It turns out that his huge fuzzy head took up the entire space. Or I suck as a photographer. I shall choose to believe it was his big head that was the culprit. You see that sliver of a person on the right? Yah that's me! I look good huh?



I also took a picture of the sock I was working on. I had it in my purse and thought, hmm, let us give this knitting in public a try at the game. But the minute the wool hit my fingers, I started to melt. I decided a picture would be better. The sock picture though, it is a bit of a dud (too) because the guy at the plate ready to hit? On the other team. Yeah me.



Lest I mislead you, my trip wasn't all sunshine and baseball. Oh no. There was sunshine and yarn. A whole bunch of yarn. My uncle and I destashed my aunt's stash and HOLY SHIT! She had bags and bags and bags (and bags - to the infinity power) of yarn. I didn't even go through all of the bags. I'd just take a peak and put it in the yarn-to-be-shipped pile. When we finally got all of the bags out and lined them up, my uncle looked at me and said, "Hmmm. I think I need to go charge the battery on the Bronco. This will never fit in my trunk."



Turns out he was right. It was a good thing he charged that battery because we ended up needing all of the space. There is one bag that had suede ribbon and a fur coat. But the rest ... yarn. Lots and lots of yarn. Some of the yarn was in UFO form and there are maybe ten partially completed sweaters. Most of it though, just balls of fun waiting to be stitched.



Once we got to the pack and ship place, we started to carry it all in and box it up. Multiple people asked if I had, or was opening, a store. I scared them with the large amounts of yarn. It took a little over an hour for three people to unload the car and two people to pack the boxes. In the end I had nine big boxes. I'm not sure what I am going to do when it all gets here. I may have to take a guest room and convert it into a yarn room.



At this point the sheer quantity of yarn is a bit overwhelming and I haven't been hit by the melancholy my-aunt-should-be-knitting-this-I-hate-you-cancer stage. I suspect that will come. But for now, I am just looking forward to opening each box and each bag to see what really is inside.


After we shipped everything off we felt pretty good about ourselves. We returned home and decided to put together my uncle's stereo. As we were putting away the the turn table component box, I noticed some other boxes tucked up high in a corner. Boxes labeled "alpaca" and "wool." I said, "Umm. Huh. I think we may have missed something." Needless to say, that is when the delirious laughter started. We never did check those boxes. We decided to wait until my next trip. Instead we cleaned up and went out for dinner and a nice frozen concoction.


Now I'm home and planning for my next mini-vacation. I got a lot of sock knitting done on my plane flights so I have to start thinking about what is next on the needles. Since we are driving to Joisey to see the MiL for Mother's Day, I will have tons of car knitting time. Maybe I'll work on the Kangaroo Duo sweater. Nah. Who am I kidding?

Sadness

My father-in-law passed away unexpectedly of a heart attack Friday morning. He was 76 years old and in good health. It is such a shock and just so damn sad.

I first met my father-in-law the month I turned eighteen. Boo and I had been dating for several months and I flew up to spend winter break with him and his family. It was my first trip to New Jersey. The second day I was there, Boo had to work for a few hours. Dad, trying to help entertain me, asked if I would like to go to the library. I said, "Sure!" He then said, "Great, I'll drop you off and then later I'll give you a ride half way home." Half way home? I started to get nervous. Wow, he must really not like me. Does he want me to get lost and wander back to Florida? Is he hoping I'll get hit by a car. Is this a test of my mental prowess? Hoping I must have misunderstood, I let him take me to the library. I concentrated on the route with every fiber of my being, and after the third turn, I knew I was screwed. There was no way in hell I could find my way back to the house. This was back before cell phones so I had no way to call Boo and say, "Help!" When I watched him pull away from the library I thought for sure I was in trouble. I sat and read, for what felt like days. I couldn't concentrate because I was so worried about never leaving the Metuchen library. Dad showed up later and ask if I was ready to go home. I said yes. As we walked toward his car, my stomach in knots, I worried he might be planning to toss me out of the car somewhere along the road. It turned out that he did only give me a ride half way home. You see, Dad, he liked to walk. So he had parked in front of some random person's house, midway between the library and his house. We had to walk, half way home, to reach the car. As we approached the car, he smiled at me and winked. My father-in-law was truly a lot of fun to be around.

Just last year he and my mother-in-law came up to help us re-wire a bathroom. He had a lot of electrical knowledge from his work and was more than willing to help his youngest son out. While mom napped and Boo finished some work on the computer, Dad and I plotted our project. I was thanking him for coming to help us with the wiring when he stopped me to tell me how proud he was of Boo and to explain that Boo's talents and in his career were just important and impressive. That was typical.

My father-in-law had that unique ability to value any skill, whether it common or complex, and never disparage someone because they were different than he was. That sounds so awkward when I type it, but it wasn't awkward in real life. He was a genuine person. He lacked artifice and pretense.

"They" say that it is natural for a parent to pre-decease a child. I (still) say it fucking sucks. It never gets easier to loose someone you love. I'll miss you dad, have a piece of celery for me.

The Eats

For me, Christmas isn't just about the gifts, it's also about the food. When you start your Christmas morning at 10:30ish (I know, but gimme a break, we don't have kids, sleep was important!) you need some sustenance to be able to get all those presents open. So before we started, I put together a small snack to tide us over ...



Nothing like some coffee, muffins and coffee cake to get you through the stockings and the first round of giftage.

Traditionally, my family has always done "brunch" on Christmas (though since we ate at noonish, I guess it was really more like lunch). Brunch was a great way to help eliminate the stress of who is going where for dinner, since it seemed most people always did dinner. In any event, Boo and I have kinda tweaked the brunch to make it more ours (this means no oysters, why oysters were brunch food, I'm not so sure). So our spread has bagels and cream cheese and lox. It also had eggs, bacon, hash browns, cheesy grits (yum!), and fruit salad. BIL5, Boo's brother that is closest to him in age, was so impatient, I thought he was going to kill me while I tried to get a picture or two. The man was armed with a butter knife!



Food for everyone,




Food for me,


Since we eat brunch, we don't really have much of a dinner. This year, however, I made an exception and actually cooked dinner too. There was meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, salad and biscuits. Not really traditional, but good!





By the time dinner rolled around, I had figured out that it was smarter to get my pictures before I told the boys that dinner was ready. It worked out well, I didn't have to sweat any knife wielding masses!