The Sun Is Out

We've had quite a few days lately without the sun shining. I know that it's the end of January, but we're used to the sun. So today, it's sunny and not too cold (52º), so it's time to be outside again.


In the spirit of fun, the man I married is going to work on the grill. Being true Southwesterners, we love to grill. We'll grill anything. We love our grill. But, alas, our grill has a problem.


Fire! Something has been wrong with it (as in - there is a blazing inferno everytime we try to cook), so the man I married took the thing apart and discovered that the burner is toast.


Normally this would mean a trip to the grill store (or an order over the internet), but our grill manufacturer has gone out of business. So, we will now have a Frankengrill.


He bought a new burner and will now configure it to work with our old grill. Fingers are crossed, meat is at the ready. We trust this man, so we know there will be meat charring on our grill in time for dinner.


And, in case all else fails, salad is good too.

edit: It's working! Hot dogs for lunch!

When Your World is Spinning, Make Yarn

I've always been fascinated by spinning wheels. Not really sure why, but I love them. In October I had the opportunity to watch someone spin on a drop spindle, and I was smitten.



Thanks to craigslist, I got a really great deal on a barely used spinning wheel. So, now I spin with drop spindles and with my wheel. Actually, I mainly use the wheel to ply, but who's counting.







Anyway: There is something hypnotic about taking a wad of wool and spinning, spinning, spinning. You end up with yarn! It's amazing. I keep thinking that there must be some piece of me that is autistic - I just love the spinning. It's like meditating without actually having to think. You have to focus, but you don't have to count (kinda like knitting stockinette). And the wool is very forgiving - if you make a mistake, or don't like what's going on; you just unspin it and do it again.



So now I have actual yarn that I've made. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with it. It's pretty to look at and pet, so it may just have to find a pretty bowl and sit around, wowing all who see it. I found a pattern for a purse that I'm thinking of making. I need a new purse, I've got lots of balls of yarn that need a purpose in life. Seems like the perfect match to me.

All I have to do is break down and use my precious balls. As my family is fond of saying: Those are some good balls.

A Clean Dog is a Happy Dog?

Ed is a very dirty dog. When clean, he had a beautiful, curly, very soft, white coat. But Ed hasn't looked like that for a while.

It's the poodle in him: It matts at the drop of a hat. Unfortunately, I believed the middle child when he told me that he wanted it to be his responsibility to brush the dog. The middle child lies.

What he actually does is to sit on the couch and brush a teeny tiny spot on Ed's back and then just pet him while everyone else does their chores. To be honest, the middle child does anything possible to avoid work, so I should have seen this coming.

Today I finally got up the gumption to give the dog a bath. Ed is very good when he's getting a bath. He stands still for the indignity of it all, and doesn't shake until I tell him it's okay. Unfortunately it's very cold outside today, so he has to stay inside until he's dry. Also, it has been very dry here, so our yard is mostly just a bunch of dry grass and dirt. This means that on a normal day Ed rolls in this mess and gets full of sprigs and twigs - but on a day when he's wet, those sprigs and twigs combine with the dirt (that was our lawn) and he becomes a brown muddy mess.

Not gonna happen on my watch!

So, for now, Ed must stay inside, must stay clean, and must deal with my haphazard grooming attempts. He looks like a poor little lamb who was shorn by Mike Rowe.

Do you think that the other dogs will make fun of him?

Things and Thoughts

I haven't posted for a looooong time. Holidays, family dilemmas, flu and cedar fever kept me busy and not wanting to share. But, the man I married keeps asking why I'm not posting, so here goes.

My new years promise for 2008 was to knit every pair of Anni's socks for the year, and I did it. I now have enough hand knit socks so that I can wear only knit socks. What a treat it is - although I am questioning my choice of sock yarn colors. What was I thinking? I've already knit my January 2009 pair, so I'm planning to continue the knit-ahton. Here they are, in all their glory, my Sockamania socks from 2008.

I've already finished my first pair for 2009, so I'm on my way. Here's that picture:

I'm currently knitting the BareNakedLacy socks with leftover Sockotta yarn. I've been wanting to knit these socks, but never seemed to find the time. I've been calling these the "Bare Naked Lady" socks because I misread the pattern name the first time I saw it - may have had something to do with the fact that the smiling child was smitten with the Bare Naked Ladies at the time.

And happy birthday yesterday to my teen - now 16. He's a joy and all he wanted for his birthday was a special meal and dessert and an entire day alone in the house. Gotta love that boy.

What Makes Me Feel Young

They say that smell is one of those things that can take you back. No one forgets the smell of a crayon or the smell of freshly cut grass on a warm summer day.

For me, songs work the same way. I can hear a song from long ago and suddenly I'm transported to the past. Luckily the only songs that seem to do this are ones associated with happy memories.

Here are some of my favorites:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKUBTX9kKEo

The Who "Baba O'Riley" - this reminds me of hanging out at Mary Sue's house (yes, I had a friend named Mary Sue - how 50's). They had a cool pool and horses. What a great place to be when you're a young teen aged girl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6h0Od2F1wk

Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons - Marge and I spent many hours singing into our brushes listening to these guys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQTRIrFmL94

Orleans - "Still the One" combined with M*A*S*H - Does it get any better? This clip combines high school and college for me.

Now my poor kids will have to listen to oldies for the rest of the day. Luckily they don't seem to mind - they probably just think it's funny to watch me dance around and sing.

Shopping and Kids

Lately the princess hasn't been willing to let me leave her sight. I had been in the habit of leaving her with her brothers so that I could go to the grocery store by myself. This cut the shopping time in half, and cost less since I didn't have any little people asking for food and saying that they were starving to death (even though I'd just fed them).

But, since returning from vacation, the princess has been uber attached to me. Today she actually threw a fit insisting that she needed to come with me or she'd cry. I decided to dig in and told her that she absolutely was not going to come with me. In the end we agreed that if she stayed with her brothers (without crying) while I went to the warehouse store, she could come with me to the grocery store.

The teen reported that she'd been good, so the princess got to come with me. I also needed to run a few extra errands, so it was a long trip. Every time she got naggy I just reminded her that coming with me was a privilege reserved only for the best behaved children, and she settled down.

It still took a lot longer with her in tow than it would have taken without her, but I reminded myself that it wouldn't be much longer that she'd actually want to come with me and I let her pick out new yogurt. Isn't it nice when children are still young and sweet enough that picking out yogurt flavors is a treat? And besides, she put on her nicest dress and brushed her hair. How could I say no?

Knit and Glo

A year or so ago I got the bright idea that if I could find yarn that glows in the dark, I could knit things like moons and stars and they would glow in the dark and my kids would be thrilled. I even found yarn, but it was very expensive. So that plan was abandoned.

In the Sunday adds, Michael's advertised that they had Glow in the Dark yarn on sale, so I went to check it out. The skeins are pretty small (less than 200 yards), but the idea that I could knit something that glowed had me willing to make do.

Currently I'm almost finished making the princess a pink glow in the dark scarf. This should come in handy if it EVER gets cold here, and she is outside in the pitch dark (after spending at least five minutes in direct light). What will really happen is that she'll spend time running back and forth between the lighted bedroom and the dark bathroom so that she can watch her scarf glow.

My suggestion for the smiling child was to make a stuffed animal that glows. He thinks that sounds cool, and is currently deciding what type of small stuffed thing he'd like. I'm hoping he picks a bunny, because that is a very easy pattern. With my luck he'll want some complicated thing for which there is no pattern.

The middle child will probably want a knitted something related to fencing. But there is no fencing/knitting projects. I'm thinking of combining the glo yarn with some regular yarn and making him an illusion something. I'm thinking that an illusion scarf with a skull would be way cool. Of course, my other color would probably be black, not pink.

The teen isn't into knitted things. He has his big afghan on his bed. He doesn't have a hat, but it is so rarely cold here..... I'll have to do some thinking.

I got started on the new scarf for my MIL. It's a beigey color and very soft. Hope she likes it. Last Christmas when she opened the slew of knitted dishcloths I'd made her (she always swipes the dishcloths I knit while driving to her house for visits) she got all excited and thought it was a shawl. Expecting/hoping for a shawl and then seeing a bunch of dishcloths is apparently quite a letdown. So this year, she'll get a shawl.

Why We Didn't Go

Juniper Pollen

Ragweed Pollen

These lovely pollens are making me miserable. I just couldn't bear the thought of being in the beautiful outdoors and feeling like I might succumb at any moment. For some reason (probably the extreme lack of rain) my allergies are much worse this year. There doesn't seem to be a concoction that helps much. So, we took the trailer back to it's home away from home, and resigned ourselves to trying another weekend.

The teen had his braces adjusted on Thursday and isn't feeling too great, so he was more than happy to stay home this weekend. The smiling child and the middle child were still itching to go, so the man I married took them to an outdoorsy festival. They'll be shooting, fishing and paddling all day. They'll arrive home this evening tired, dirty and sunburned; but it is the best we can do. If they'd gone camping, they'd have also added mosquito bitten, but this will have to do.

The smiling child didn't want me to tell the princess where he was going; he was afraid that she'd want to come and that would ruin the "guy" day. Since she's been in a "I need to be with mommy" mood lately, I knew that I could tell her the truth and she'd still want to stay with me. I was right. She's excited to have a girl day (she knows that the teen will just want to hang around the house anyway) and is already planning what color we'll paint our nails. I might even pull out the hidden stash of "fairy dust" and fill her with glitter!

Wish me luck - I still haven't gotten the glitter out of her hair from our visit to the mouse, and we've been home for three weeks.

Camping Plans

We bought a trailer at the worst possible time (probably why we got such a great deal). It was summer, it was hot, it was a miserable time to be outside. So we parked the trailer and waited.

Now it's finally time to go camping again. The weather is lovely. The man I married and I decided that we should go camping this weekend. The reservations have been made. But (insert whiny voice here) we don't want to go camping - we feel yucky - it's too much trouble - what will we eat?

But we're tough, the man I married and I: yes we are. We're going camping this weekend. I'll pack lots of allergy medicine. We'll have fun. We won't whine.

I'm sure that the reason it seems like so much trouble is that we've only gone camping once. And that time was VERY hot, and the campground was really not much more than a parking lot. We pretty much spent the entire time inside the trailer playing games. The only outside fun was watching the park rangers catch a stray dog.

To make life easier on this, our first trip, I've decided that I won't even try to pack food. We'll set up camp and go to the nearby WalMart and shop. The kids love to have bacon for breakfast and we can get by for two days on hot dogs and sandwiches.

We're taking the dog too. Last time he got a bit (a bit?!!) nervous and wanted to sit in my lap the whole time. I'll give him a bath tomorrow so he'll at least be clean when he sits on my lap. We can give the bird some extra food, so he should be fine.

Hope we still remember how to do everything. If you see us looking confused, please feel free to help us out.

I Wanna Be A Princess

When I was little I always wanted to be a princess. When we were at the land of the mouse, I took a picture of Cinderella's coach. We hadn't paid the over $50 extra per person to go to the fancy party, but I got a picture of the coach and the man I married has the ability to Photoshop me into the coach.

It's okay, my castle would probably be drafty anyway. Although, since it's still hot here, I wouldn't mind a little draft. We are all having a dreadful time with our allergies, and I can't wait til the first really cold night so that all of those pesky pollen things will get out of the air. It doesn't help that we've also had almost no rain for months.

The smiling child has been so sweet lately. He's decided to take the princess into his loving care and is teaching her baseball. Since baseball is his first love, it was a natural that he would want to teach someone else. The middle child is totally unwilling to let his younger brother teach him anything, and the teen is much to mature to play baseball out in the yard; so that leaves the princess.

I have a princess - I must be the queen. Yes, the queen of all the land. Right now my royal minions are setting the table for dinner. The queen has proclaimed that we will have lasagna for dinner. All hail the queen.

Just hope that the minions do the dishes.

Ed and the Socks

After all of the commotion during the beginning of September (vacation and hurricane) I didn't think I'd ever get around to starting my Sockamania socks. But, since I'd sort of promised myself that I'd make a valiant effort to knit all of the socks for the year, I went ahead and started them.

Turns out these were pretty easy socks to knit. Easy in that I didn't have to keep looking at the pattern, not easy in the knitting. I had to keep counting to make sure I put the cables in the right place. But they're worth it. All orange and yellow - sort of Longhorns meet cheddar cheese.

I always have to take pictures of my socks to post to the knitting blog, and since the sun was getting lower in the sky, I went outside to try to get a nice picture. Everytime I put my feet out for a picture, Ed had to get in the frame. I had pictures of my socks and Ed's nose; my socks and Ed's tail; my socks and Ed's hiney. This was the best picture of my socks and Ed. Isn't he a cutie?

Just Call Me Lois

When the show Malcolm in the Middle came on the air it felt like they had a hidden camera in our house. Every week we would sit, nodding our heads and laughing. Not that our house was quite as bad as Malcolm's house, but there were enough similarities that when Lois got pregnant at the same time as I did we became really suspicious.

Anyway, in the first episode Lois is doing laundry and decides to put her shirt in the wash. She picks up the basket full of clothes to fold and answers the door; forgetting that she doesn't have on a shirt.

So...I was putting clothes in the wash and realized I needed to wash the pants I had on. I took off my pants, put them in the wash and like a good mother, went into my bedroom to put on new clothes. You would have thought I was nekkid!

There was yelling, eye hiding and lots of groaning. Jeepers - I only took off my pants. I didn't answer the door or anything!

Reminder to self: If you want to clear a room, just take off your pants.

Ode To Joy

Music is alive and well in our home. The princess has learned how to play Ode to Joy and since her brothers know a lovely version as well, it's a song we are hearing a lot these days.

Is there anything that makes the $$$ spent on music lessons more worthwhile than hearing all the children playing a song together? Next we'll be cutting up the curtains to make clothes and climbing mountains while singing. Who will play me in the movie version?

Did Freud Like Bagels?

For the past two nights my dreams have been full of bagels. Eating bagels, buying bagels, smelling bagels. I told the man I married about my bagel dreams and he asked why I hadn't just gone to the bagel store. I'm not sure of the answer. I woke up this morning really wanting a bagel - even decided that I'd take my refillable coffee mug so I could save money on the coffee I would drink while eating my bagel. I wondered if the bagel store was making their fall bagels yet - they have a cranberry walnut bagel that is heavenly.

But I didn't go to the bagel store this morning. I'm still thinking of bagels, so I've told the kids that there will be a bagel trip in the morning. The smiling child suggested that we buy three dozen bagels. This is not as crazy as it sounds. We generally buy two dozen bagels: That's five bagels on the drive home, five more for a mid morning snack, five for lunch. The end of the first day sees us with with less than a dozen bagels remaining. The boys especially love the chocolate chip bagels - they're like cookies for breakfast. I love the cranberry bagels with turkey and spinach for lunch.

If the bagel store was open in the evening, I'd be on my way. I'm going to set my alarm clock. See you at dawn in the bagel store. I'll be the one with the coffee, bagel and several quiet kids.

Another Day, Another Load of Laundry

Oh, how I wish there was a laundry fairy! Or, a washing machine like they had in Lost in Space. They just put the dirty laundry in, and a few minutes later, took out clean, folded and covered in plastic wrap laundry. Being ecologically sensitive, my fantasy washer would eliminate the plastic wrap part; but clean and folded would be wonderful.

The man I married and the middle child are still at the fencing tournament. They seem to be enjoying it, although the middle child was too young to fence and was a bit disappointed (you had to be 13 to fence with the adults). The man I married thought it was for the best, though, because he didn't think adults would be comfortable fencing against a child who might just beat them!

All of this has left the smiling child feeling a bit left out. The teen loves to have time away from the middle child, so he's happy. The princess is a princess no matter the situation (she's currently outside with three dolly strollers, three dolls and the swing set). I have to do laundry, so it doesn't matter who's where as long as there's some ice tea and the possibility of knitting.

This leaves the smiling child.

He's playing video games, but they aren't quite as fun without his brother. He played tennis with the princess for a while; but she wanted to include the dolls and he had to draw the line. We're going to grill burgers for lunch, so at least there's a bright spot in the day for him. We may also go get the car inspected - and that always means that we'll sit at the DQ and have an ice cream cone. That should return him to smiling status.


Is it wrong to wish for rain? It's been so dry here, the grass is brown, everything is covered in dust. A nice rainy day would be lovely. While I'm at it, I also wish for cooler weather WITHOUT increased allergies! We only have a few weeks a year when the weather is perfect, and those are always the weeks when the allergy counts are highest.

When I was young I used to spend most of the summer outside; barefoot, running in the grass, sitting under trees with a book. Summer here is too hot to do any of those things. If you are outside barefoot you'll burn your feet. The grass is brown because we're on water rationing. We don't have any big, shady trees to sit under. So I wait patiently for those few weeks a year when the weather seems to want us outside. I live for those weeks. And when they arrive, so do the itchy eyes and runny nose.



I'm going to save up my pennies and move to Tahiti.