Knitting on

Well, actually, to be honest…my knitting time has been badly impacted these last couple weeks by This and That. There’s been so much going on and going down and spinning around. Literally spinning around, since I lost my mind and told Danger Mouse’s teacher that SURE! I could totally bring my spinning wheel and some wool in to the classroom and do a demonstration for Prairie Days, coming up in March!

…and then it occurs to me that my spinning skills are not exactly what could be termed mad skilz and that while I can produce (somewhat) useable yarn, I do so like this: “Whirr, whirr, whirr DAMN! {fiddle, fiddle, splice, smooth, smooth, fiddle} whirr whirr whirr DAMN! {fiddle, fiddle, splice, smooth, smooth, fiddle} whirr whirr…@*^&@ it, I need a drink…”

At the very least, I need to practice not yelling “DAMN!” every time the thread breaks. Because, you know, not every parent appreciates having their child come home with excited stories about how when you spin? It goes whirr whirr whirr DAMN!

But I do have The Most Awesome! Fleece to bring in for the demonstration. It comes from Meridian Jacobs, and is just…a rainbow. OK, not a rainbow-rainbow…but it has all these patches of black, white, red, brown. It’s gorgeous. I haven’t dared touch it yet (despite all kinds of dreams about how cool a sweater I could make from it) (eventually) because my spinning is so “eh”…but it’s a whole fleece and a great thing to show kids who have probably never seen such a thing.

I also have sliver for the actual spinning demonstration, and a whack of ‘eh’ raw fiber to ruin use to show how you wash, card and spin from raw fleece. I’m bringing a ton of drop spindles and of course will let the kids try their hand at the wheel.

I did a similar thing a few years ago at a preschool, and one of the teachers was extremely nervous about the kids touching the wheel and the skein-winder and so forth. “Aren’t they antiques? What if they get broken?”

Well, my wheel is not an antique. It’s a modern Ashford. The skein-winder I had brought was an antique, but it’s not that kind of antique. Abraham Lincoln didn’t use it as a foot-rest or anything…it’s a working tool made about a hundred years ago to do a job that darn it – it’s still good for today. It’s fairly indestructible, and anything they did break, my husband can fix. Since it’s not a “for show” antique but a working tool in my collection of tool, I don’t mind if it has been glued here or there, or if an old hand-carved wooden peg has been replaced with a new hand-carved wooden peg.

That’s just how I roll, people.

Nothing I own is so precious that children aren’t allowed to lay their grimy little hands on it…not even my harp, which is very unusual in the “harping” world. I once had another harpist literally recoil in horror when she saw children pressing around me on my break at a restaurant Touching! The! Harp! She thought I was crazy, and didn’t hesitate to tell me so.

How often do children get to touch a harp? They read about them, some of them even dream about them, but they don’t get to touch. Sure, I have to really monitor and make sure they don’t get too hyper-crazy with the glissandos (that’s the thing where you just “whoosh!” your hands up and down all the strings), I know the grime on their little unwashed fingers makes the strings break sooner, and yeah, I’d better be sure to give the old girl a good rub-down with polish afterward to keep the inevitable dirt, grease and whatnot kids have on their little bodies from damaging the wood…but heck, keep some Handi-Wipes in your gig bag to get the worst of the ketchup and French fry grease off and then let ‘em have at it, sez I.

Just don’t forget to turn the mike off before they start. Trust me on that one.

Who knows what beautiful dreams you might plant, in that ten minutes between sets…who knows what magnificent trees those children might grow in their souls.

…who knows how many parents may take out contracts on your life after listening to “PUH-LEEEEEEZE, can I have a harp, daddy? Please? PLEASE? PRETTY PLEASE? Harp harp harp me me me want want want…” for a few months…

ANYWAY. Undaunted by mere lack of time, I am wedging some time into my day to work on some knitting-things. Right now, I’m a couple fins short of finishing yet another Fish Hat…what? You don’t know about the Fish Hat?

Where. Have. You. BEEN?!

It comes from the latest issue of Knitty, right here. And I am going to humbly submit a couple of my “learnings” on the pattern: It tells you to break the yarn after the ‘mouth’ to begin the short rows that form the mouth. I found that doing one round in the new color before beginning the short rows makes the turning points much less obvious, but doesn’t seem to impact the overall look at all.

Also, when doing the stripes, I moved the starting part of the color to the point under the belly (where it hangs down over the wearer’s head, instead of being on the side in plain sight). Even using Meg’s Jogless Jog, the hiccup between colors was just a bit obvious to be sitting there on the side – especially when I started doing smaller bands of color.

Other than those nit-picking points, it’s an easy pattern that works up pretty quickly. The short rows aren’t nearly as intimidating as they might sound to someone who has never done them – this is a great project to get your feet wet on that whole ‘wrap and turn’ groove. I made this one to give as a gift to a sixteen year old boy man:



That’s not the sixteen year old. That’s Boo Bug. And this is Danger Mouse.



OH NO!!!!! IT ATE HER WHOLE HEAD!!!! (OK, yes, we’re easily amused around here…your point being…?)

The hat was actually a gag gift – we taped an iTunes card in its belly, attached the card to a fishing line and makeshift pole (big branch from outside), stuck the fish into a gift bag and made said sixteen year old boy man go fishing.

You should have seen his face when he pulled that dead knitted fish out of the bag. And then we told him it was a hat, and the look was even more precious.

He was way not sure how he felt about a dead fish hat. (He warmed up to it a bit before the end of the party. A bit. I don’t expect he will actually wear it, but he has a small sister who will probably lurve it.)

Be warned: if you make even one of these and a child between the ages of 2 and about 14 sees it, you will be making one for not only that child, but every child s/he knows because these things? They tickle their little funny bones something fierce.

Boo Bug wore the “practice” one I made out of the Ugliest Yarn Imaginable from my stash, the yarn that I kept almost throwing away due to sheer hideousness, but then I’d say, “Who knows? Someday, I might stumble across a contest where whoever makes the ugliest afghan with vintage 70s acrylic wins $10,000! It could happen! And if I’ve thrown away that ugly vintage 70s acrylic, WELL! Where will I be, huh?”

(This right here is the one real downside I’ve found to this whole Yankee-thrift thing of mine: I tend to packrat an awful lot of stuff I probably will not ever actually use, but YOU JUST NEVER KNOW. It takes serious concentration and willpower for me to throw away anything, even tiny balls of leftover sock yarn that I swear you couldn’t even make a 2x2” square from…you never know, I might someday want to make an afghan out of 1x1” squares of sock yarn IT COULD HAPPEN!!!)

(And then, of course, when I do go through the forty hours of meditation-confirmation thing and the repeated mantra of less is more, less is more and I weed out the special pans I haven’t used in fifteen years and the strange kitchen utensils whose purpose I can’t even remember and the sheets we haven’t used since Noah was a pup…I promptly have a pressing need for them again, thereby reaffirming my unfortunate belief that I need to keep everything I ever get, “in case.”)

ANYWAY. Where the heck was I? Oh yeah. So Boo Bug wore the UGLY! (which actually increases the hilarity) dead fish on her head to school one (1) day.

I have about forty kids sucking up to my kids now in the hopes of getting their very own dead fish for their heads. Because who doesn’t want to walk around school all day with a dead fish on their head?! Especially when you can pull it down like that and it looks like the fish ate your head?! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The other gift I made for that same party was this blue scarf, made from really soft hand-dyed alpaca from Brentwood, California:



I almost didn’t give it away. I almost gave her some little bracelets I unexpectedly won at an auction. Y’all know that “thing” I have for alpaca anyway…this was so soft, and so sweet on my hands, and it just flew into shape on the needle…when I was checking it for length I started loving it and then it blocked so nicely and I was saying, “Wellllllllll…after all, it’s not like she’s going to know I stole her present…”

But then I had a stern word with myself about the value of friendship and I put it in the box, handed the box to my husband and said, “Wrap it quick, and put it away somewhere so that I don’t have to look at it!”

And then I went upstairs and consoled myself by embracing some Atacama hand dyed (variegated brown alpaca, which was going to become a hat for my shivering little pointed head until I suddenly developed a love for lace scarves) and rubbed a skein of Schaefer Andrea (100% cultivated silk) on my face until I felt better. (Reason #152 why makeup and I do not get along: you can’t rub hand-painted silk on your face if you’re wearing makeup. And if you can’t rub hand-painted silk on your face when you’re feeling a little bereft, what is the point of living?!)

I’ve got another fish hat on the needles (because World War III has broken out around here over who “owns” the Ugly Fish hat), and then I need to move on to the The Viking Hat for The Boy Who Is Staying With Us, because I promised (and forgot) (whoops).

Oh well. At least I can honestly say, I am never, but never, bored.

Just call me Benedict Arnold…

Dharma has begun to…how can I put this gently?

Well, she’s stinky.

There, I said it. She smells like a porta-potty on a hot day. And since she is a sweet and also very loving kind of cat who just lurves to spend all of her time snuggled up on an accommodating lap…this is what might be called A Problem.

She needs a bath, is what I’m getting at, here. And I just made an appointment with a groomer who will give her a nice spa-style pampering (stop laughing) (OK, that’s not fair of me…I’m still laughing m’self… “spa-style pampering”? Dude…it’s a cat, she really doesn’t “do” the whole spa-thing…) with nail trim and capping (which only lasts a couple weeks at best but in that time will keep her nails from shredding the carpet on the stairs any further) for forty bucks.

I was going to bathe her myself. (STOP LAUGHING.) No really, I was! I wasn’t going to pay forty bucks to have somebody else torture the cat with soap and warm water. C’mon. I can totally handle this, right?

Wrong. It turns out that I (still, because I have to admit that I have always ended up taking my cats to the groomers for anything other than brushing and maybe that quick tip-of-nail trim thing) lack three important things when it comes to giving my cat a bath.

One is the ability to hold onto a cat while wearing thick leather gloves. I can either bathe the cat, or wear the gloves. Not both.

The other, related thing is that I can’t say, “Oh well, skin heals!” in a casual, devil-may-care sort of way. I have a thing about my hands. I am fond of them. I like them in their current state, which is mostly whole with perhaps just a slight dry skin problem. I don’t like them grated.

And the third thing I just don’t have is the ability to instill enough fear into the cat that she will freeze and let me do whatever I’m about to do. Cats, even other people’s cats, generally have me figured out in about six seconds flat. “Pushover…prone to doling out treats…worries about ‘hurting me’ (hahahahahaha!) and thus will not hold tight enough at bath or nail-trimming time…”

Cats can get away from me in less than a second. I’m holding her paw preparing to clip, and {squirm – pssssshooooooow!} the cat is in the Caribbean with a fruity cocktail playing with the umbrella and laughing about how inept I am. “Yesh, purrrrr…I figurrrrrre I’ll stay herrrrrrre for a week or two…she will be so worrrrrrrried she’ll forrrget all about that grrrrrrroooming…purrrrrr…”

“You need to hold that paw really tight,” my husband will say, reprovingly. (By the way…he also can’t make himself hold it or her tight enough to prevent escape. Just sayin’, Mr. “You need to really HOLD that cat if you want to keep her from getting away.”)

“I DID!” I squeak in protest.

“Did not, look, the cat is totally gone. We’ll never find her.”

“Yes. Yes we will. You check under the bed, I’ll go see if she’s booked a ticket to Cancun on my Mastercard…”

In short (in what again, Tama?) (shut up), there are people in this world who bathe their own cats. There are people who, upon hearing that I am willing to pay someone else forty dollars to bathe and trim the nails of my cat, recoil in horror and then try to tell me how easy it is to DIY the cat-grooming thing.

And I’m sure they are correct.

However. The last time we tried to take the tips off her nails, just a wee tiny bit off the tip, I lost a t-shirt and a pair of my good jeans, along with a fair amount of the skin under them. She put a quarter-sized hole in my t-shirt (right over the nipple, and may I just say thank GOD for well-padded bras!?) and then proceeded to rake her claws along my jeans like a rototiller at full speed. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! I had dozens of tiny holes and what seemed like thousands of runs in my jeans. Good thick 100% cotton denim jeans, too, not those whimpy “stretch” jeans that seem to be made of mostly tissue paper with a little cotton just for the sake of tradition.

I was not amused. And then my husband suggested I take off all my clothes before we tried it next time.

You can imagine the look he got.

So…I am going to find her carrier, sneak up on her, and wrangle her into the carrier, probably by unfair play. She will be royally pissed about it, but in the end…she will be clean, and her claw will no longer click on the Pergo or shred the humans she’s trying to snuggle…or drive them away with her powerful miasma of unwashed animal.

She will be a happier cat, in the end.

Honest.

And hopefully, I will still have enough fingers left to continue blogging, when we’re through. (She doesn’t like the carrier either. She really doesn’t like it. She resists the carrier with the strength of ten thousand cats. Sigh. Right…be strong, Tama…it’s for the common good…)

Money Monday, 1/12/09

TODAY! (she declared, boldly!) Is the first day of the rest of my life!!

Which sounds sooooo much better than, “Sigh…okay, holidays are over, we’re back to work, and I’ve got to start dealing with my issues rather than continually saying, ‘Meh, I’ll deal with that after the holidays…’”

I’ll admit there’s a part of me that just doesn’t even wanna deal with it. A part of me that just wants to curl up on the couch and pretend the whole thing away. Working is overrated, why can’t he just work and I’ll just sit here, besides, as long as we’re not actually in foreclosure, we’re doing pretty good all things considered…right?

You can imagine the blistering retorts I come with up when I start pulling that kind of baloney on myself.

For right now, my focus is all about the emergency fund. Even paying down debts comes second to that, because we are now operating on highly unstable income. Could be nothing, could thousands – we just don’t know.

So whenever I’ve got a dime to spare, I’m tucking it into the old emergency fund account like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter. Once I’ve got a full three months of average household spending in there, I’ll start turning my attention to the debts – because frankly, each of those I get paid off reduces how much I need to get through a month. Paying off all of them would turn what was a three month supply into almost five month’s worth…and save me interest payments, and improve our FICO score.

It truly is the gift to yourself that keeps on giving, debt reduction.

So, where am I getting all these thousands and thousands of dollars needed to beef up the emergency fund, pay off the debts and perhaps even (dare I say it?) continue to grow our business from something which merely gets us along to something that helps us not merely weather this storm, but the inevitable storms yet to come?

First, we’re hoping that we’ll be having a few of those awesome! months. A couple windfalls would go a long way toward repairing our scuttled e-fund…and if my calculations are correct (and they usually are, uh, well, give or take a grand or two) the IRS will be sending us back a fair chunk of change this year. Instant e-fund, just add screwed up payroll calculations!

And second, obviously, here’s a shocker: I’ll be applying the LBYMs thumbscrews to our household spending. I foresee a lot of Goodwill shopping and “creative” meal plans in our near future…

I started this week by inventorying the freezer and pantry, to make sure I had a good idea what I already had. That way, as I’m making menu plans I can design meals around what I’ve already got instead of buying all new stuff; I also reduce waste by getting things used up before they turn into science experiments.

Below is what’s on the menu for the week. You know, because I’m sure everybody is just dying to know what we’re serving up around here “on the cheap.” Which is really only “cheap” in the sense that it was a sunk cost, being as how all the meat and a lot of the sides were already on hand and therefore cost nothing new out of pocket…never mind! Here it is! I’m going to go cook something, now…

Monday: Winter Chicken Bake. All in one dish, with winter vegetables my mutant alien children will undoubtedly squeal, “I DON”T LIKE THAT!” about but oh well, more for me, you little runts.

Tuesday: Barbequed Beef Steak with Orange Marinade, mashed potatoes, fresh steamed broccoli.

Wednesday: Spaghetti. (Fast, easy and cheap. Also gets a full servings of vegetables into the kids without their knowledge, since for some reason spaghetti sauce is as acceptable as ketchup, while tomato sauce in about any other form other than pizza topping is “gross.”)

Thursday: Diced Lamb with Roasted Vegetables and Couscous . Another all-in-one dish. I still have about four pounds of lamb left from the locker lamb I got from Meridian Jacob’s farm last year…it’s rapidly getting to the ‘use it or lose it’ state.

Friday: Quick pockets: assorted cooked meats and veggies wrapped in Pillsbury crescent roll dough, brushed with butter and baked. This is junk food at its finest, kind of like American dim-sum. Examples of fillings include chopped chicken, green onion and cream cheese; crumbled up meatloaf with cheddar cheese; just cheese; lunchmeat. It’s not exactly healthy but it is fast and delicious.

Saturday: Roasted chicken, rice, frozen peas and carrots (steamed, though…still-frozen ones can be hard on your teeth.)

Sunday: Individual chicken pot pies. Uses up leftover chicken, padded out with more peas and carrots and a lovely creamy white sauce. The “individual” part makes it more entertaining for the children, although even this is not enough to make them eat the carrots and peas. Their ability to eat everything but those items is astounding.

Dithering or procrastinating

What is up with this, anyway? When I have nothing to do, you know, just say two things on tap for the whole entire day…I dither around goofing off with other stuff until suddenly I realize that I didn’t do either of those two things I needed to do. Whoops.

When I have tons to do, I procrastinate. I’m going to take care of filing that quarterly tax payment (which involves math and looking things up, and a lot of double checking and stuff) after I check my Bloglines, update my Facebook status, check out what’s new at KnitPicks and oh yeah, maybe there’s a new Dale of Norway book out, let’s go see, tra la tra la…

And then I get to the end of the day and realize I haven’t even started the tax filing process and I’m all, “@*^&@!!!! It’s due by the fifteenth! What is wrong with me! AH! AH! AAAAAAAAH!!!!!!”

I confess that I usually work best under some pressure. Nothing lights a fire under me like a looming deadline. But at the same time, that same pressure sets off some kind of “I need to relax, I’m getting too anxious here” lever and I start granting myself permission to look at the LOLCats “real quick” or to spend a little time reading through knitting magazines or perhaps I just need to grab a soda and watch the last half of CSI:Anywhere.

The thing that irks me about it is that I know I’m doing it. It isn’t that I’m not aware I’m being stupid procrastinating and/or dithering…it’s just that I can’t seem to stop doing it.

In fact, I’m doing it now. I have errands I need to be running right now. I need to pick up my business check binder, drop off my daily allotment of empty ink cartridges (I get $3 per cartridge and up to three cartridges per day at Staples, and have an insane number of the things that have been building up for the last couple YEARS in a drawer) (see? Procrastination at work, right there…), finish shopping for a party tomorrow, HELLO, get a nail fill/file (they’re a little too long, so I’m buzzing more than ringing on the old harp strings).

Then I need to install my new accounting software, prepare the 2008 tax forms for the business, pay the bills, take out the recycling, change the sheets on the beds and iron labels into the middle two kids’ clothes so that they will quit fighting about who got which shirt for Christmas.

But instead…I’m checking out the Friday sale at Amazon and puttering around with website design and going back over old statistics books trying to remember how that formula worked…you know, the one for that thing, with the three parameters and then you figured out maximum profits given you could make X widgets in Y time for Z dollars, versus blah blah blah?

Sigh.

Right. OK. I’m going. Errands. Here we go.

…but first I need to grab a soda. And check my email one more time. And…

Happiness is…

…Christmas candy on sale at the supermarket. 12 ounce bags of York peppermint patties, fifty cents each, just because the wrappers are red, green and silver. WOO HOO!!

Fixing up holes

When my husband first lost his steady job, I sprang into action and began looking for insurance. I knew the COBRA was going to be a killer, and furthermore that coverage had already been murdering us when the employer was picking up not only the premium, but funding the $4,800 into our HSA.

I was a little surprised by how hard it was to get insurance. Sure, I figured it was going to be a lot more expensive than the last time I had to provide my own coverage; I believe I paid something like $120 a month for an HMO back in the early 90s.

But I was stunned to find that we were simply flat-out denied coverage. No amount of money was going to get us an insurance plan. Based on her prescriptions (which are also used for asthma), Boo Bug was declined. Because once in 2007 he saw the doctor complaining of ‘shortness of breath’ (turned out to be seasonal allergies), my husband was declined. Danger Mouse, ADHD. Captain Adventure, PDD-NOS (which is laughable, because they refuse 99% of anything related to treatment of same as being ‘experimental’ or ‘not usual and customary treatment for this condition’).

And of course, my back/hips/knees were an automatic NO!, but thanks for calling hokay buh-bye!

The only person in this family who could easily get medical coverage is Eldest.

We were turned away from Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Kaiser and Sutter. We were told to try San Joaquin Delta because they were “forgiving” – we were too big a group of bashed up cackles for even them to stomach.

We looked into the state’s emergency coverage, designed for “uninsurable” folks like us. Yeah, uh-huh, the $3,000+ monthly premium was a tad much for us.

Finally, I put two very important pieces of information together.

One was that when it comes to group health insurance, you can’t be declined insurance based on preexisting conditions – in other words, if I had gone to work for roughly a third my usual pay and double my usual (already brutal) commute for Company X, we would have gotten automatic enrollment in their group health plan.

The other was that a group can be as small as two employees. Like, say…a partnership…

It took two months of work, the collection of all forms and paperwork related to the business, a great deal of faxing followed by paying top dollar for a thick package of same being overnighted to the broker…but as of January 1, our Enterprises offers its employees a comprehensive medical, dental and vision plan, HSA-compatible. The Enterprises picks up the full tab of the premium, and funds the HSA for its employees each year.

If my calculations are correct, I just saved us over $15,000 this year.

My husband will finally get the new glasses he’s been needing but putting off because, well, we’re perpetually over-budget as it is, and the two Denizens who need them will be able to get braces (I’m sure they’ll be beside themselves with joy), and I will quietly enjoy paying nada out of pocket for cleanings, x-rays and fluoride treatments instead of $800 twice a year.

It’s a great way to start the new year, getting at least a partial patch on the medical care hole.

Now I suppose I should get on with collecting the income that pays for the coverage, huh…?

A big surprise? Not so much.

There was a note stapled to the outside of Captain Adventure’s backpack this afternoon when he arrived home. Uh-oh.

As I followed my half-asleep boy into the house, nestled against his daddy’s shoulder, listening to his slurred insistence that he wanted no nap…wash kurtohns…on doh-fah…, I totally knew what it was going to say.

Sure enough, it began with Captain Adventure had a bad day today…

My first impulse was to dash off a quick apologetic note.

“Oh dear, I’m sorry to hear that…but I suppose it is to be expected, after the excitement of the winter break…”

My second impulse was to roll that note up tightly and smoke it as I dashed off a different one.

“What precisely did we expect, Einstein? You send an autistic boy, a.k.a. His Royal Highness, home to his mother and sisters for two whole weeks of hedonistic delights, including but not limited to HELLO, CHRISTMAS!!!, not to mention too much sugar and being fed all his favorite things on demand plus he got in way too much video game playing because he is apparently quite charming when required and can con his sisters out of their turns simply by smiling adoringly at them and saying, “Pweez I pway it yer game-uh?” and because no force can withstand his beautiful doe-like eyes they say, “Oh, sure, Captain Adventure!” and the next thing I know I’m yelling, “WHO LET THAT KID GET BACK ON THE COMPUTER?!”

All this in addition to staying up far too late on more than one (OK, just about every) night and sleeping in until we feared he might be dead in there for all we knew and woke him.

And then suddenly hey look, first day back to school! So by command of the school district we yank him out of his bed at 6:30 in the morning, hand him a muffin and a cup of milk then just as he’s waking up enough to realize that he likes muffins we yell, “YOUR BUS IS HERE!”, shove him into the cold, rainy morning without so much as a by-your-leave and none of us realize until the bus is pulling away that he’s dropped his muffin on the sidewalk, what kind of day do you THINK he’s going to have?!”

“P.S., Every Monday is bad. And I have it good authority that it is bad for ALL your students. Suck it up, you pansy.”

“P.P.S. Sorry about the pansy comment. That was uncalled for. He is also having what might be called a bad evening. Good luck tomorrow, and may your God go with you.”

But I resisted. First of all, I gave up smoking long, long ago and attempting to smoke notepaper would probably just make me sick. Secondly, the note isn’t supposed to be an attack on my son or my parenting – it’s just a statement of fact. He had a bad day today, a day when he resisted joining the group, a day when he made it quite clear that he would much rather be eating raw kelp in a cave somewhere in Nantucket – nekkid. In the sand.

Most of the kids in his class have a rough time with Monday. Even a return to routine is a change, and a lot of autistic kids have trouble with that.

Captain Adventure doesn’t actually mind change all that much (it’s one of his anti-autism behaviors). He rather thrives on it, loves to do things that are new and different and out of the box.

But Mondays…Mondays stink. I understand all about how and why Monday stinks. I spent a large part of today (a Monday, you may have noticed) resenting having to get back on the old horse myself. I loathed my alarm clock for nearly half an hour, was angry at the world that I had to get up so early, not to mention irritated that I don’t have a personal assistant to handle all these flippin’ forms and faxes for me (what’s up with that, anyway? where is that kid, and where’s my triple extra hot two pump no-whip lowfat mocha?! …oh…wait, that’s right, I’m not rich and/or famous, I don’t have a personal assistant who brings me insanely complicated caffeinated beverages at my whim…damn, foiled again…).

I spent nearly an entire working day today dealing with insurance-related things that needed faxing here, there or somewhere.

And I didn’t wanna.

It was a bad day for me, too.

It was, well, a Monday.

The only difference is, they’ve worn me down, Mondays have. I’ve been forced to accept their dominion over me. It is Monday, and the business world is moving…calling me, asking questions, looking for answers, expecting me to have them by end of business today…sigh…yeah, yeah, I know, let’s get it done today, let’s focus our lives on having that easy-breezy Friday…

I don’t cry for my mother anymore (much). I don’t kick my feet against the wall at nap time, or throw Goldfish crackers at my friend because he looked at me when I didn’t want him to, I don’t tell teacher, “POOPIE HEAD!” and then run laughing like a maniac to the other side of the room.

I don’t combine disdain with showing off when I decide to go ahead and make them all shut up by pointing to all those ‘G’ words, the Giraffe and the Goat and the Girl and the Gorilla and the Gate, not serially with one delicately pointing finger, but by spreading my hand into a claw and slamming one digit firmly down on each of them and going, “UNNNG!” instead of gently saying “Dere dey are!” the way I do when I’m being more tractable about things.

No. I don’t do such things anymore. I’m older. Beaten. Or to use a kinder word, taught. Repeated experience has taught me that I get my way faster, more consistently, and often with unlooked for reward (although I suppose since I’m secretly looking for it, it’s hardly “unlooked for”) by pretending Monday and its return to the strict regime of business life doesn’t bother me. That the best thing to do is knuckle down and barrel through it.

That if I do it with a smile, it makes those around me more pleasant to deal with, and can sometimes even trick me into thinking I’m having a superific day, yessir.

I hope they can forgive me for admiring my bad day son, just a little bit. For being envious of his wild rebellious streak, his angry refusal to tow anybody’s line if he don’t wanna, for his ability to simply end the stupid “find the letter ‘G’” game in a way that makes it very clear that he had it all figured out the whole time, and probably a whole lot more wouldn’t you like to know?!

I don’t want to destroy that. All I want is for him to control it, to loose it when it serves him, and leash it when it harms him. For him to be the lion tamer, not the lion’s prey.

Ah well. The alarm goes off in five hours now, to start another day. If I’m going to keep up with my Denizens one and all, I’d better stop worrying about bad days and whether or not anyone can be blamed for disliking those transitions from leisure to work.

Insanity…it really is what passes for normal around this place…

Let us care for each other

I am having a really hard time writing this. I keep starting, and stopping. Page upon page written, and then I review it and think, Nooooooo…

It’s too dark, or too weird, or too preachy, or too pathetic, or too angry…none of which (well, with the possible exception of ‘weird’, because this is me we’re talking about here) is an accurate expression of what I’m trying to put out, here.

2008 was a rotten year. 2007 was also a rotten year. In a lot of ways, those two years were like going through a hurricane for us, complete with an eye passing over. There was a nice peaceful and prosperous lull in the storm right around the summer of 2008, when we had really good cash flow and said to ourselves, “Whew! Glad that’s over!”

Aaaaaand then the eye passed, and the second half of the storm hit, and because we had set some expensive things in motion during the eye (thinking, remember, that the storm was over and we had two decent incomes to work with again)…well, the second half took out whatever the first half had so graciously left us.

And then when I catalog what-all our challenges are, it seems even worse. Ten years of equity in Den, erased. Emergency savings whittled to a mere $426.27. With already burdensome medical costs now enhanced with a $905 monthly premium charge (Insult, meet Injury! Injury, this is Insult!), we then cheerfully went on to have no steady paycheck whatsoever, and then 95% of what little work I had evaporated along with the remainder of the hope and optimism of local business in San Joaquin. Yay us! We have among the highest foreclosure AND joblessness rates in the nation! GO TEAM!!!!

I took a $10,000 loan to pay off medical bills in July, and then took another $15,000 in November to pay, well, everything. These are the sorts of things you get into, when you go a month without income because your one steady paycheck evaporated…and in so doing saddled you with a sudden need to acquire general business liability insurance and professional negligence coverage (in case his coding brings down the entire Internet or something), PLUS you had to run around re-filing all your paperwork because now you are a partnership rather than a sole proprietor, AND BY THE WAY you have to pay us $905 in COBRA for the insurance that doesn’t cover diddly-squat and no, you can’t charge it. Check only, thank you!

See what I mean? Dark, pessimistic, angry, pathetic writing, right there.

But that’s not actually how I feel.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I had some pretty dark days there. When I found myself taking out that loan to get the medical monkeys off my back and buy us enough time to get through yet another ten day hold, I was about ready to just…I don’t know. Crying wasn’t extreme enough, but getting good and drunk never really helps.

But when I looked around my trashed-out post-hurricane yard…I don’t feel as bad as you’d expect.

In fact, I find a lot to be grateful about.

I’m grateful that we had our own personal credit crisis way back in the mid-90s. It was only because of the lessons we learned then that we aren’t loading up the kids and whatever we can carry into Homer the Odyssey and heading forth on a sofa-surfing quest. We knew better than to refinance beyond our means to repay; we knew to say “this much we can do, and the rest will have to wait.”

When the situation changed, we didn’t have a lengthy period of mental readjustment to undergo. We had a good long run of prosperity, in which we indulged an awful lot of our wants…it’s over for now, and we don’t have a big problem with that.

We’re not mourning the vacations we won’t have, I’m not crying (much) about the yarn I won’t be buying or the steaks I won’t be eating.

Instead, we’re grateful we can still do the things we can still do. We’re enjoying the toys we already have, and thankful that we’re not still making payments on them.

LBYMs 2009 is definitely on. It’s a far more serious business than it was last year. We don’t have a reliable income anymore, I can’t budget around a paycheck and say that everything else is gravy…we’ll have good months and bad ones, we’ll have times when I’m able to pack away savings like there’s nothing but tomorrow, and times when I’m having to draw almost our entire month’s needs out of that same savings because the invoices are low or our clients are being slow to pay.

We’re going to have to be tighter than ever with those nickels and dimes.

But I know that we’re going to be OK. We’re doing what we have to do to make it so.

We’re not victims, unless we decide to be. (This is where I start wandering into being preachy.)

So! I’m putting together my list of things I want to accomplish in 2009, financially speaking. How about you guys? Needing or wanting to work on whittling things down, getting rid of some debts, building up some immediate cash to sleep easier on at night? I know this economy has got a lot of folks feeling downright anxious…are we ready to stop being victims of it, and start reclaiming our rights to everything we need, and maybe just a little bit extra?

I suspect it’s going to be a long, hard slog…but let me share the words of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s friend Andy, which she shared on her blog not too long ago:

"As we head off into a year of uncertainty, there is one thing I know is true. Things will be better if we all take care of each other than they will be if we don't take care of each other."

Brilliant man, huh?

Let’s take care of each other out there. Let’s hope for the best, plan for the worst, and pull together toward a better tomorrow. Let’s cry together, hope together, advise each other (but not get preachy, because nobody likes a bossy-betty), forgive each other and try to shine light into the world. Let’s laugh and love and take joy in all the good things we have – most of us have far more than we realize, especially when we’re in the middle of a crisis.

Speaking of which, my healthy, happy Denizens are demanding food. Which I have in the pantry to give them on plates which are clean because I have a dishwasher that does that for me, while I am off doing other things (like writing lengthy blog posts).

The blessings, they just never stop coming…

Happy New Year!!!!!

Bright blessings shower down upon you, love and laughter and light surround you, may you receive in full measure the bounty of Life in this coming year, and all that follow.

Slainte!

No cold feet!

This Christmas, I declared war on cold feet and made socks for those (thankfully few) adults on my gift list.



My favorite of the bunch has got to be these, which are made with Lorna’s Laces Shepherd sock in Country Christmas:



That’s the Waving Lace pattern from Interweave’s Favorite Socks. The lace broke up what would have been a plain stripe color and made it kind of funky fresh.

Typically, I was frantically finishing the toe of the last sock on Christmas Eve. Not only did Christmas pull its usual thing where somehow, in spite of being there in plain black and white ink on the calendar, December 25 snuck up on me and came at least three weeks sooner than I expected, but also…well.

It turns out that I apparently do not believe in the space-time continuum. Or at least, do not respect it as pertains to my knitting.

For perfect (and extremely recent) example: It takes me between eight and twelve hours (depending on complexity and size) of hands-on knitting to finish a (one, singular) sock. A pair of socks, therefore, takes me between sixteen and twenty-four hours of work to complete.

So when I cast on the last pair, which were for a man (larger size), and also decided to use the Retro Rib pattern both because it makes for a handsome finished sock and is interesting to knit, I said gaily to myself that Ha, ha!, these were probably going to take the whole twenty four hours to knit up, HA HA!

So I cast on Monday, and expected to be wrapping them Wednesday morning. Because in my world, one can find enough time to put in sixteen hours of work-work, keep the family fed and in clean clothes, do the last-second Christmas shopping, pay the end of month bills and deal with approximately sixty thousand insurance and contract related questions WHILE ALSO getting in twenty four hours of knitting and perhaps a few hours of sleep…in a forty-eight hour period.

Imagine my surprise when Wednesday morning rolled around and, in spite of neglecting the housework in a truly shameless way and perhaps attending a little less…attentively…to our business for two days, PLUS staying up until nearly midnight twice, I was only just turning the heel and starting the longer-than-I-expect-somehow jog to the toe.

Stupid space-time continuum. It’s so…inflexible.

However, by ignoring the housework even more (the Den looks like a dump truck drove through it with a troop of rabid monkeys having a party in the open back hatch) (also, nobody has any clean clothes) I did manage to skid my way to the toe as Christmas Eve was inexorably ticking into Christmas Day:



There were a few tense moments in our relationship – the purls felt too slow and I was regretting choosing an “interesting” pattern before I hit the heel of the second sock because I was on! a! schedule! dammit!, but I forgave them when they turned out so handsome and since they are inanimate objects, it turned out that for their part there was nothing to forgive.

And then I promptly tossed them into a box, wrapped them and handed them to my brother. Possibly still warm from the dryer, since I blocked them Christmas morning.

As I was grafting the toes, I told myself happily that now I could take some time off from knitting. Because really, that was an awful lot of knitting and whew. Yeah. A little break would be good.

Which is why, an hour later, I was squinting at five different skeins trying to decide which one was exactly right for a nice, lacy scarf, not too fancy but maybe just moderately, you know, interesting.

This knitting thing. It’s a disease. (But at least it is a warm and fuzzy one.) (REALLY fuzzy, as it turns out – I selected a 100% alpaca that is almost as furry as mohair, which would ordinarily annoy me no end but since it is not sock yarn, I am perfectly content to keep a lint brush handy and enjoy the novelty of the thing.)

“They'll blow their who-hubas! They'll bang their gardinkas!...

…Oh the noise, noise, noise, noise! If there's one thing I hate...oh the noise, noise, noise, noise!" - The Grinch

Guess what it’s like around here this morning? Go ahead! Guess! Need a hint?



Do note that it is not even fully unwrapped. Ahem. Meet my son, the world rattling famous drummer:



This also came with a set of cymbals OH YES IT DID!

The worst thing of all is that this was not inflicted on us by, say, my rotten little brother their loving uncle or perhaps my revenge-seeking mother their doting grandmother, NO!

I bought this drum set for my boy. Me! Myself! Bought it, intentionally. I saw it at Toys R Us and I thought, “Oh! Captain Adventure would love this so much!” and then I bought it for him. And I wrapped it. And I put it under the tree. And then actually gave it to him!

…no, I don’t know what I was thinking, either…

Right now, the house is full of noise-noise-noise-noise.

Boo Bug and Danger Mouse are playing Twister for the very first time in their lives, with their father calling the moves. I’m not sure which is louder, the squeals from the girls or the shouts of laughter from their daddy.

Captain Adventure can’t decide what he wants to do most – bang the drum set? Play with the racetrack? Throw the new wooden trains through a window? SO MANY CHOICES! He’s buzzing around the Den like an over-caffeinated bee, literally careening off the walls and showing everybody his new stuff. (It doesn’t help that Santa stuffed their stockings with chocolate coins, gingerbread cookies, and a Rice Krispy treat in a size that defies description.)

There were whistles and plastic harmonicas in the Christmas crackers. The drum and cymbals. The Twister game, the racetrack set. New dresses…and if you think clothing is a quiet kind of present, you have not been around three fashion divas who do not receive many “party dresses” in the average year.

The squealing was epic.

The only relatively quiet kid in the house is Eldest. See, she received a new wireless card for her laptop (which is so old I think it is somewhat miraculous that a) any modern wireless card would work with it and b) it can actually, you know, surf the Internet with anything that could be called reasonable speed), and the whole entire world (or at least, that part of it our perhaps overly zealous parental controls will permit) is now at her fingertips.

We may not hear from her again for a week. Except when she emerges to yell, “GUYS! Come see the cool game I found!!”, which will be swiftly followed by pounding footsteps up the stairs and a pair of voices shrieking, “COOL!!!!!” from her inner sanctum bedroom.

Nossir. The Grinch would not be happy around here this morning.

But for us, it’s a glorious tintinnabulation, a raucous celebration of unbridled childhood happiness. The one time of the year when our children are indulged, immersed to their armpits in gifts, doted upon, permitted to eat solid blocks of sugar for breakfast, petted and pampered and spoiled absolutely rotten.

It’s a good day to be a kid around here.

And a good day to be a parent, too.

Hope your holidays are full of the noises you love best, gang.

…now. Where did I put the ibuprofen…?

I am not very accepting

My Daily OM horoscope today is all about Accepting Uncertainty.

The important life decisions you are facing today could make you feel like being more cautious…Since we can’t control the ways in which our future unfolds, it is important for us to learn to find the balance between discretion and acceptance of uncertainty.

Oh…whatever!

OK, OK, I’m having one of my “frozen due to excesses of Important Decisions” moments right now. And by “moments” I mean “months.”

Or perhaps I mean quarters, since really I’ve been in this kind of state since my husband’s “real” job went *poof!* at the beginning of October.

I am not accepting uncertainty particularly well right now – even though I have no choice. It’s not like me saying, “I don’t accept that I can’t know what is the right/wrong choice here” is going to change the fact that we are awash in factors outside of our control and that really, there is no “right” or “wrong” choice to make.

It’s all a matter of degrees. Whether I go with Insurance Choice A or B, there will be some percentage of wrong, and some percentage of right. Neither will be perfect. Neither will be unfathomably horrible.

What is horrible is the “none of the above” option. The option where I just sit here and do nothing, hoping that maybe it will all either resolve itself, or somehow become, you know…clear.

But I’m really struggling anyway. I know that the only bad choice here would be no choice at all, and that it will be OK because, well, what’s the worst that can happen, really? So, just…go ahead. Do the best you can with the knowledge you have now, and then just relax and enjoy the ride, right?

After all, my horoscope insists that:

By realizing that you can’t control the outcome of your decisions today, you will develop a greater peace of mind about what the future holds for you.

See?

So. There you go.

I should be developing greater peace of mind aaaaaaaaany second now…here it comes…peace of mind…arriving shortly…

(hmm…maybe it’s stuck at the post office? After all, it is the busy season for them, right…?)

Epifi-…effifin…epifan…realization!

Yesterday, I had an epifi-…effifin…epifan… made a realization, and it went like this: Holy @*&^@, Christmas is NEXT WEEK?!?!

That’s right folks, you heard it here first! Christmas is in fact next week.

As Dog is my witness, I had somehow convinced myself that it was still three weeks away.

I was convinced of this even though I know that Friday is the last day of school for the Denizens. And that they have two (2) weeks off, one for Christmas and one for New Year’s. Not to be confused with, say, three (3) weeks off before Christmas. Or five weeks off, two before, week of, and two after. Week of, and week after. Period. Starting next week.

I remained unshaken in this belief even though I have been making plans for all the assorted darting around we’re doing because of Christmas next week.

I maintained oblivion even though I not only own a calendar, but use the damned thing DAILY…I just…sort of…I don’t know. Convinced myself that this is not the Christmas you are looking for, and then I moved along.

And then yesterday while I was nervously fidgeting at the chiropractor’s office, I found myself fixated on the calendar hanging on the wall across from me.

Let’s see (she said to herself, trying not to think about the fact that the dude was about to come in there and manhandle a back that feels broken as it is, are we sure this is a good idea?)…there’s today, that’s the fifteenth, gracious me how time flies…soooooo, Friday is the nineteenth, uh-huh, surely is, now, I’m going to need to fit in a {shudder} shopping trip to Modesto between now and Christmas…not today obviously, not tomorrow, hmm, not this week I guess, so I suppose I could do that next week Wedn-HOLY CRAP, THAT’S CHRISTMAS EVE?!?!?!

Epiphany.

Which, unlike the word that first popped to mind upon having it, does not have an ‘f’ in it.

I am making time for the stupid shopping trip tomorrow. I do not actually have the time, so I am hoping that I actually do have magic powers over the space-time continuum and can shove about three extra days into this week.

So. Just FYI: Christmas is next week.

You might want to pass it on, in case somebody you know is also an idiot date-challenged.

Selfishly holding on through gift making

I was sitting in the gallery at Eldest’s gymnastics center, galloping toward the toes of the then-current sock in progress, gleefully checking off another gift from the list of Christmas knitting and busily pondering the riveting and all-consuming question of which yarn and pattern would be best for the next person on the list, when I was approached in that sideways direction Muggles often take when they’re about to make a comparison between what you’re doing and something they saw recently at WalMart.

“I’ve never seen anybody doing that,” she exclaimed. “So, is that…weaving?”

“Ah, no, it’s knitting.” Weaving, huh? That’s a new one.

“I thought knitting was two needles?”

Blah blah blah socks on four DPNs, yadda yadda in the round yes it is pretty cool.

“So, where do you get the, uh, the stuff, to make those?”

“Oh, well, we have a really nice yarn store right downtown – she carries everything you’d need to get started. Sock Hop on Friday nights, come on down, she’ll teach you how and everything!” Just call me the walking Yarn Store Billboard…

“Sooooooooo…how much does it…you know, how much is that…” Ahem. Yes. Here comes the WalMart comparison…

“Well, that depends. The needles you only need to buy once…” (unless you lose them all the time like I do, in which case you buy them four or five times and then you start finding them all again and then you have Storage Issues because for heaven’s sake how are you going to keep thirty-seven 2.25mm double pointed needles “neatly contained” somewhere, but let’s not talk about that right now) “…so, you know, that’s about five bucks once and you use them forever. The yarn…”

Oh, the pause that happened there. It hung heavily in the air between us. I knew I was inviting the squeak of, “But you can buy six pairs for three dollars at WalMart!” explosion.

Still, there are no two ways around it. Making socks instead of buying them at WalMart is not economical. I’m not making socks for Christmas gifts because I’m trying to be cheap, and if you factor in the number of hours it takes me to finish each one, Good Grief.

These are, like, a $900 pair of socks.

(I’m not a fast knitter – determined, yes; fast, no) (willing to overlook the housework as much as I must to get the job done? oh hell yes!, because as all’y’all know, I am all about the noble sacrifices…my gracious, I would much rather be scrubbing a toilet right now, but it is my sacred duty to handknit something with love in the stitches for my rotten little beloved and only brother)

The silence hung there and grew for a second.

“Wellllllllllll,” I offered at last, right before the Bubble of Silence popped and spurted Awkward all over us. “See, OK. You can get enough sock yarn for a pair of socks for anywhere from, uh, well, let’s see. This here is from an online store called KnitPicks, and it costs about $4 a ball…and you need two of them for a pair, so that’s $8 for the pair.”

“Wow,” she said. I was waiting for the WalMart comment, and sure enough…I got one. Different store name, and a different sentiment, though.

“Wow. And that’s so unique. It’s nothing like what Old Navy is selling for five bucks right now. That’s only three dollars more, but they look really expensive.”

I almost yelled, “HA! YOU’RE NO MUGGLE!!!!! REVEAL YOURSELF, CRAFTER!!”, but figured blowing her cover in public like that might not be my most tactful move ever.

“Well, yeah…so, this is about the least expensive you can go, and then, well. OK. So, I made this other pair a little bit ago? I used a hand painted [brief digression while the concept of ‘hand painted’ yarns is discussed] yarn, see, and those…well, those cost $25 just for the yarn. But, OK, so, the thing is? I made them for my grandma because I had made her a shawl for her birthday out of a silk yarn that was painted in the same exact colors.” There was a pause while we both contemplated the crazy that this is. “So it’s like…you know…a theme gift. Sort of.”

There was another long pause. She watched me twiddling the yarnovers, moving around and around and around the four double pointed needles for a while.

“That is really smart. I mean, you go out and buy something for twenty five bucks and, what are you going to get? I could get my sister one of those $10 scarves at Old Navy but, you know, she’s going to know it’s a cheap $10 scarf. She shops there too, you know? I spend $25, it’s still going to be on cheap crap.”

You are SO TOTALLY a crafter, I thought. What is it, beading? Scrapbooking? Quilting? C’mon, give…you’re SO not a Muggle…

“Do you do any crafts?” I asked casually. (Because I am not a bit nosy, just making idle conversation and all.) (Shut up.)

“No. I don’t have the time,” she tucked her hands under her armpits, snickered and corrected herself. “I don’t make the time. Look at you. You’re making the time, huh?”

“When I’m sittin’, I’m knittin’,” I admitted. Soon I was whizzing around the toe decreases. The socks would be blocking before bedtime, and I’d be rooting through my sock yarn drawer searching out the next pair.

As I began grafting the toes together, she leaned over to watch. I showed her the crazy-talk that is the Kitchener stitch, and explained that it made a good strong seam that wouldn’t let any cold in (unlike drawing up the stitches, where there’s often a little hole right at the tip), or leave an uncomfortable lump under my Undisclosed Future Recipient’s big toe.

“You know, I really need to learn how to do that,” she said, with surprising force. Usually those words are spoken dreamily, in tones that make it clear this is merely a social nicety, and should not be construed as an invitation to inform the speaker of all the various ways and means by which they could learn before sundown this very day.

“Well, Kathy would be delighted to show you how,” I said. “Her yarn store is right downtown, by the big Bank of America building.”

“I think it’s the kind of thing everybody should be doing,” she insisted. Before I could admit that there were people who would rather hang by their thumbs than take up knitting, she reached out and poked at the sock. “This takes a lot of thought. I mean, you have to think about size and color, and…and…what stuff to use, and things like lumps in the toes…”

“Uh…”

“You have to think a lot about each person on your list, when you make things for them.”

“Well…”

“It’s personal. It’s really, really personal. It’s…well, it’s like…I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

Well…I’m afraid I do know where you’re trying to go, there. I’m terribly sorry, my dear, but you’ve been bitten by a rather dangerous little bug. The symptoms might be purely seasonal, and may go away on their own…but then again, they might not.

So, uh, you might want to think about clearing out some storage space for whatever craft you’re about to take up. Just in case.

Because, girlfriend…you’re feeling the need to give yourself to the people you cherish. You’ve got that vague itchy feeling that you want to give things that aren’t merely things, but things you’ve created specifically for this one person.

Something with some of your own sweat, and blood, and tears, and maybe a choice cuss word or two, woven right on into the fabric. With love, dammit!

It isn’t about trying to spend less money. Shoot, if it was, I wouldn’t have moved on to the Lorna’s Laces for the next sock, trust me. This particular infection is an utterly selfish, utterly absorbing need to hold onto the experience of giving to this person longer. To think about them as you dig through the yarn store (or your stash, if you’re lucky enough to have a big enough one to be able to “shop” it) to find a color and fiber that suits them, to hold them in your mind as you flip through pattern after pattern, matching the style to them and the yarn…and then each time you pause to look at what you’re doing, to think about the next steps, as you’re creating the Something for them, you’re bringing them back into your mind again and again and again.

Some people just get the seasonal version. After the holidays, it fades for a while. Lies dormant through the summer, and only returns when the festive seizure season is upon us and we’re trying to find gifts to express our love and affection for those closest to us…and finding everything comes up short, somehow, no matter how high the price tag goes.

Some of us get the incurable form of the disease. In the ‘knitting’ version of it, we’re shopping for Christmas-gift yarn by January, and putting sticky notes on patterns all year around. We’ve got drawers dedicated to stashing the gifts we finish in February, and are constantly on the lookout for sales on empty gift boxes.

We also manage to tell ourselves that spending caps don’t count if you use stash yarn. Sure, granted, the cap is technically $25 for this particular gift exchange and technically the Schaefer Andrea is $52 a skein but!, see, I bought it, what, two years ago? So it’s a sunk cost, and I’m sure if you add in a little depreciation, it’s sure to be under $25 by now, right…?

Besides, what the Muggles don’t know won’t get me busted. And if there’s one thing Muggles really don’t grasp well, it’s how much a skein of hand dyed, 100% cultivated silk runs out there in the retail yarn world.

It’s a sad, sad condition. And worst of all, we think we’re happy, enfolded in warm fuzzies, aglow with the happy task of making by hand that which could be purchased for five bucks at a discount retailer near us.

Pathetic.

And Lord, I hope they never do find a cure…because those socks are the perfect color for my Undisclosed Future Recipient, and I think they turned out rather well. For the inquiring minds, they were the Girly Girl socks designed by Robin Fouquette, from Interweave Press’Socks. The yarn is KnitPicks Essentials, in Burgundy.

The sock blockers are relatively new, and I am amazed that I went without them for so long because having owned them for, what, four months, I can’t imagine life without them:

Exciting news, or what passes for it around here

Captain Adventure has finally started using the potty again. I know, I know. HOW NICE, THANK YOU FOR SHARING GEEZ WHAT IS IT WITH PARENTS AND WANTING TO TELL US ALL ABOUT THEIR KIDS’ TOILET HABITS?!?!?!?!

But what makes this exciting is that, well, first of all, he’s four, for Pete’s sake. FOUR. 1-2-3-4. Almost halfway through four, actually, and he has steadfastly refused to even admit a potty exists since a brief flirtation/fascination with it a year ago.

I was beginning to wonder if I would be packing the Pull-Ups in his briefcase when he headed off to work.

But what makes this extremely exciting to me is that he has started not only using the potty, but insisting on using it, RIGHT NOW because he has finally, finally, finally begun to understand the if-then statement.

One of his developmental delays has been around this ability to grasp things like, FIRST we do this, THEN we do that.

IF you do this, THEN you get that.

IF you do that again, THEN I will scream until my voice gives out, you little @*^&@.

He had trouble even with very immediate, very direct things. FIRST sit at the table, THEN I will give you juice.

Honey, sit down. Sit down, and I will get you juice. No, don’t start crying, I’m getting you juice – but I want you to sit down first. Sit down. See? I’ve got the cup. I’ve got the juice. You sit down, right there, at the table, and I will hand you the…sit down. Sit down first. If you sit down, I will hand this to you.

And he stands there reaching out imploringly, screaming like someone is driving bamboo under his toenails. Why won’t the woman just give me the juice?!

ARGH!!!!

So the other night, he was skipping around and around and around the coffee table…and then he suddenly stopped and assumed an expression most parents of toddlers recognize immediately. A look of extreme concentration.

Definitely there is some action going on.

“Hey, Captain Adventure, do you need to go potty?” I asked. He shook his head no and grunted. Uh-huh.

“Hey, buddy, I think you need to go potty,” I suggested. This is a delicate thing. Push too hard and he’ll go into meltdown…but at the same time…COME ON, KID!!! I’ve been changing diapers non-stop for more than ten years, cut me a break, will ya?!?!

“No,” he gasped. Not gonna do it. No way, no how, I like me m’Pull-Ups…

“Hey. Captain Adventure? If you use the potty, then you can pick a treat from the bas-” ZOOM! He was in the bathroom with his pants down working mightily toward getting a treat. “-ket.”

Whoa. Behold the power of the Reward Basket, people! He did it twice yesterday, and this morning flat out refused to come out of the bathroom until he had done some business…and collected a reward. He was within moment of having to get on the bus without any breakfast, but by God, he went in the potty and got a bag of fruit snacks.

I almost sprained my wrist giving Daddy a high five.

These are the things that you just never think you will get all swoon-y about, when you envision raising children. I mean, sure. There’s a definite thrill involved as a child graduates from diapers to potty for the parents. Each time, I was relieved that there was one more little bottom I didn’t have to wipe five-six-ten times a day, ya know?

But Captain Adventure adds a unique kind of joy to these mundane domestic moments. Things that our typically-developing daughters achieved to little more than a sigh of relief, or an absent-minded, “Wow, smart kid, huh?”, from him bring tears to our eyes.

Each time we can talk him away from a meltdown, each time we can use reason when he’s heading for a hissy fit, each time he thinks something is cool and wants us to see it, too…little things I frankly took for granted with my other children.

Each time he hurts himself and comes to me for cuddles and kisses…each time he asks for a favorite show by name…each time he uses specific words to tell me what he wants…each time I understand him…each time he understands me…it’s a thrill of victory.

He understands that if he uses the potty, then he can select a reward from the basket. And he understood it without me having to get the basket and lead him to the potty, and hold the basket in front of him saying, “IF you use the potty, THEN you can have something from this…” and physically leading him through what I was trying to say…with him just not getting it and going hysterical because he doesn’t want that potty-thing, he wants the reward, he wants the reward, he wants the reward, why are you not giving me the reward, it’s right there, RIGHT THERE IN YOUR HANDS…!!!!! NO, NOT THE POTTY-THING, THE REWARD! ARGH!!!!

He could see the basket in his mind’s eye, and understood what I was saying without having to be physically taken there. He got it, and he acted on it.

My God, it’s exciting, heady stuff.

Or what passes for it, around these parts.

Tune in next time, when I’ll get all dewy-eyed because Danger Mouse remembered something she was only told 7,176 times to do.

A cut above

Right before the cold weather descended in earnest, I got a haircut. Not my usual haircut. Not the ‘why don’t we just neaten up the ends’ request my Supercuts team is accustomed to, oh no.

I went and did it.

My hair is now officially short. Really short. Short-like-a-boy short.

Right before winter. Because I am always thinkin’.

It has been what you might call an adjustment. While the cut has gotten good reviews from people (once they pick their jaws off the ground, anyway), it still…well, it kind of freaks me out. In unguarded moments, I forget I’ve gotten a haircut, and then I’m all, “OH MY GAWD, TERMITES HAVE EATEN MY HAIR OR SOMETHING!!!!!”

OK, I don’t actually forget-forget. I remember the instant after I’ve done a startled double-take upon passing a mirror. Whoa, there’s some short-haired chick in my bathroom! Oh wait, that’s me…

I’ve been pondering getting this haircut for months. Months. I’ve been carrying around a picture of a model in my iPod for months-months-months, telling myself that c’mon, now, really – if you’re not going to “do” your hair, for Pete’s sake, do something about it.

I had the kind of long hair that looked fantastic, if I spent, you know, half an hour or so messing with it.

No, I don’t really know what that means. “Spending time on your appearance” doesn’t really appear in my dictionary, either.

I also regularly neglected to shampoo it, even though in recent years my scalp has gone from “normal” to “oily” and there is simply no way that I can go a day without a shower and honestly believe that nobody will notice.

They may be too nice to say anything, but I’m pretty sure they do notice.

Then finally, things began to really go downhill with my hair. It was heavy, dull, had split ends all the way up to my scalp, made me look tired when it was down and lazy when it was up, I hated it with the mad passion of a thousand burning suns…so I burst into Supercuts and got the super-short cut.

My stylist almost fainted.

But even though I did this over a month ago, it still feels weird.

I still find myself occasionally startled because something! touched! my! neck! (It’s called a breeze, and we get them occasionally around here).

I try to stick DPNs into my ponytail. Whoops. No, heh heh, no ponytail back there anymore, heh heh, yeah, I knew that…

My head also still feels lighter, and I find myself reaching up and toying with the shorn ends at the back of my head compulsively. Ohmygawsh, there used to be, like, HAIR…back there…

At this point, I’ve run into about everybody I know in town…but I tell you what, you don’t realize how many people you know until you do something shocking to your appearance and have to explain it to six thousand people, everywhere you go.

“Hey, how’s it going,” I’d say casually.

{Incoherent shriek} {sputter!} {gasp!} “Oh I mean wow! YOU CUT YOUR HAIR!!!!!!!!!”

Why yes, yes I did. Thank you for noticing. And then we’d go through the whole discussion of our hair and how much we hate it and yes, it was a pretty big move and so forth and so on and seems like everybody I know wants to do the exact.same.thing but doesn’t think she has the guts (you don’t need guts to slash your hair short…just momentary insanity will do…) and then four minutes further on into the store, “Hey, how’s it going?” {SHRIEK!!!!!}

Ahem. Yes. I know a lot of people in town.

And now I know this.

Today at drop off, I learned something else: There is a pool going among all this people I know here in town.

One has already been won, which was the how long until she gives up on that whole ‘what a great opportunity to just let it go gray’ natural-kick and dumps a box of dye on her head pool. Yeah. Hair dye happened already. Vanity, thou art my nemesis.

Although actually, it isn’t so much about appearance as feeling. That stupid gray makes me feel old and also tired. I feel tired and old enough just from General Conditions, y’all, I don’t need to look in the mirror and think, Wow, look at all those gray hairs…I must be tired, if I’ve got that many gray hairs… (I don’t know. A psychologist would probably have a field day with me, doancha think?!)

The other pool is whether or not I’m going to keep the short cut. I cut it somewhat shorter last summer, and then let it grow out again right away.

Apparently, a fair number of people are betting good coupons (we don’t bet money around here, we bet coupons, and the occasional $5 Starbucks card if you’re loaded) that I will be sporting a ponytail again by the end of summer.

Oh ye of little faith…besides, I’ve got a $5.00 off $50.00 purchase at Savemart on myself to make it at least to Spring Break 2010…

Coming up this week

One of the things we’re doing to try to keep the overall costs down without making the kids feel like they didn’t get to go or do anything is keeping a sharp eye out for low or no cost fun things to do with kids.

Last week we had the dress rehearsal of The Nutcracker, which could be a little hard for the general public to duplicate – we got our tickets through Captain Adventure’s autism program, and most of the other people in the audience were friends, family or students at the college where the performance was held.

This week’s “big” thing is a bell choir performance being put on in a local library – out in Ripon, California. It’s free, and family-friendly. As a former bell ringer, I’m loving this opportunity to expose my kids to what the heck I’m talking about when I reminisce about being in a hand bell choir.

To find these sorts of things, I look first at the library’s own website. From preschool story time to professional clown performances, bell ringers to arts and crafts, the library offers a nice array of family-friendly stuff to do for little or no cost. In our area, these things are often poorly attended, as well – I suspect because many of us commute long distances, and frankly getting home and organized enough to go back out again in time to arrive by 6:00 at the library is a task beyond most of us.

Another good place to look is in the local newspaper…if you have one. Our little corner of paradise is so small we no longer have a daily newspaper (it comes out a couple times a week these days). You don’t need to subscribe to get the events, just go to Google and put in your nearest big dot on the map. You can easily find stuff like Holiday cheer, a listing from the Stockton Record of parades, festivals, cool places to see bright lights and so forth.

Speaking of which, we’ll probably be giving them just one more week to put on their finishing touches, but it is almost time for our annual “putter around town looking at lights” night. We have some very enthusiastic Christmas decorators around here, with one entire neighborhood taking the thing to extremes each and every year. So, I load up the Denizens and we go for a good old fashioned “little drive,” puttering through the neighborhoods to shriek and giggle about all the lights and statues and whatever-all-else our neighbors have scattered all over their homes.

Sure, a lot of these things are hardly Cirque. The parades aren’t Disney, the craft projects aren’t Martha Stewart, etc. etc. etc.

But they are inexpensive, and local – the thing that made the holiday parade fun wasn’t that it was just ever so brilliant a performance. It was the kids saying, “Oh! That’s officer Steve, he talked at our school!” or “Isn’t that our mayor? He talked at our school, too!”, not to mention the wild screaming and waving when friends from school were in the parade oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh, performing with their cheer squad or gymnastics or church groups.

Yeah. My ears are still ringing from those encounters.

At the end of the week…

…I have $16 still in my wallet. Not too bad, all things considered. And I suppose this is a lot like casino gambling: If you don’t lose more than you intended to lose when you left the house, you’ve won.

This week was light on groceries ($12) and gasoline ($0 – no fill-ups this week!), but heavy on clothing needs. Two days after I’d done the laundry and put it away, my girls were all running around barefoot claiming they had no clean socks or tights. A drawer inspection concluded that my gut feeling that I had thrown away “an awful lot” of toeless tights and unraveling socks was correct – they were down to about two pairs of socks apiece, and no decent tights.

So I spent $12 on food, and $83 on clothes – but get this. The first almost $60 was on nothing but socks and tights (twelve pairs of the former, nine pairs of the latter). The second $23 got twelve long-sleeved shirt or sweaters for the girls, plus two for me – one of them a dark brown cashmere, hello!, courtesy of the local thrift stores.

One of the shirts I got for the girls is currently sold at Target, right this very minute, for $6.99. New with tags, for $2.50 $1.25, because it had a green tag and on Wednesday, everything with a green tag is 50% off! Which is also why the $5.00 cashmere! sweater cost me $2.50 at the register.

I simply adore green tag Wednesday, don’t you?! (Soft warm milk-chocolate-colored cashmere-ness…I haz it…)

We got our Christmas tree ($65) and went to see a dress rehearsal performance of The Nutcracker ($0). We also half froze to death enjoyed watching our hometown Christmas parade last night (but $0, again) and I just got back a little bit ago from the Sugar Plum Fairy Tea Party, the tickets to which I bought a couple months ago (sunk cost).

Apart from the tree and the foot-coverings at Target, the biggest ticket items this week were actually from the charity auctions and like that. The tickets to The Nutcracker were free, but we did end up putting $20 into the donation box, and another $10 went to stuff from the fundraising table. Pretty good value in exchange for six tickets to the production…even if it was technically a dress rehearsal. It was the perfect venue for our Denizens, who are fidgety and otherwise not exactly cultured.

Captain Adventure was entranced…for the first twenty minutes. Then he wanted to sit on my lap. Then he wanted to chat about Things. Then he wanted to get down, and also he was DONE…which I know, because he turned to me and bellowed, “MOMMY? I DUUUUUUUN!!!” at the top of his little lungs.

Ah, these are the moments in parenthood that you just treasure always. But the girls really enjoyed the performance (in spite of their brother being DUN! DUN! DUN!) and were blissfully unaware of the little things that marked it as a dress rehearsal environment – like the performers’ siblings running up and down the aisles, the ‘interesting’ sound handling and the occasional long…awkward…pause on stage, smiles glued desperately to their faces, arms held stiffly upward…waiting…for the music…to…start…again…aaaaaaaaaaaaany time now…

At the parade, the Red Cross had a silent auction running. I put in a ridiculously low bid on a lot with three handmade bracelets, a bottle of wine and a pair of wine glasses, fully expecting that I’d be outbid within moments.

Instead, well, apparently nobody knew they were there or something. I felt a bit like a thief, but since I was down to my last two twenties and still hadn’t gotten the kids any of the promised hot cocoa or snacks, sheepishly handed over my crummy $20 and took my ill-gotten goods prizes.

$14 in cocoa and hot snacks later, I loaded up the Denizens (and the extra young friend who had come along), came home and counted up my remaining cash. Sixteen bucks and a little change. Not too shabby…granted, I was hoping I’d have a bit more leftover, but hey.

Lots going on. I’m just glad it wasn’t worse – I had the opportunity for a fair bit of madness that I took a long, deep breath and said, “No thanks!” to over the course of the week, from buying new video games to a severely tempting sale at Webs.

The best cheap thing of the week has got to be the cashmere sweater I got for $2.50. WOOT!

The thing that makes me say, “Oh, man!” the most would be the Christmas tree…but frankly, it isn’t that big a groaner. I prefer to support community efforts where I can, and the supermarket conglomerate is not what I would normally consider a Worthy Cause. Their trees stank, the boy scouts had gorgeous ones, and while I really wish my husband had noticed the Douglas firs were less than half the cost and gotten me one (because they are, in fact, my favorite Christmas tree)…oh well.

It is a beautiful tree. It fills our home with that wonderful pine scent, and its trunk will make a nice Yule log for the rest of the year.

It was a good week.

Here’s hoping next week will be better, though, because we have travelin’ to do around Christmas!

Really, I'm working hard...

The cool thing is, this is totally one of my favorite games! Snagged the link from wilderness witch knits...

You Are Boggle

You are an incredibly creative and resourceful person. You're able to dig deep and think outside the box to get things done. You are a non linear thinker. You don't like following directions You draw your inspiration from the strangest places sometimes. You're constantly inspired.

What Board Game Are You?

(The training videos? Take boring to whole new levels. Seriously. I was actually nodding off. On the bright side, however, I have finished about 3" of a sock! Yay, instructors who can't see you knitting while they drone on and on and on about management studio and query windows and something about blah blah blah k2b, yo, k3, yo, k2tog, p2...)

{blank}

The above title captures my entire brain activity right now.

Just…{blank}

I can’t explain it. I really can’t. It isn’t that I don’t have plenty to do. I have a ridiculous amount to do. I have Christmas decorating and knitting to do, I have housework that has been neglected a tad too long, I have business-related tasks coming out my ears…but somehow, each day goes by and I find myself looking back over it and saying, “Tsk!”

I didn’t get this or that done. The laundry is still all over the coffee table in the playroom. The counter hasn’t been clear of dishes for a fortnight. My bedroom floor hasn’t been swept in weeks.

I mean, really. Pick a task, any task. Pick one! Do it! Finish it! Go-go-go!

But instead…{blank}…

Thus far this week, the only really constructive thing I managed to do was pick up fourteen cold-weather shirts for the kids at $2 apiece from local thrift stores. And three loads of laundry. None of which have been put away, which kind of makes them useless. I mean, if the kids can’t wear their clean clothes, what good is it to wash them?

It’s like having a bad cast of start-itis. I start to do things, but then veer off into something else (or nothing else) and it isn’t until I’m trying to get to sleep that the fact that I didn’t actually accomplish anything occurs to me.

Each night I go to bed vowing to do better tomorrow.

Tomorrow (I say confidently) will be better. Tomorrow, my children will not be allowed to forget to brush their teeth or hair. Tomorrow, I will put away all those clothes, and scrub that whatever it is off the front hall tiles. Tomorrow, I will not give up on everything by 12:30 and spend the rest of the day sulking.

Tomorrow, I will watch the training videos so that I can take the practice tests so I can take the real tests and be named a Microsoft Certified Professional. (Ooooh, aaaaah.) (Gag me, OK? Just gag me. My disdain for such things is rather long-standing, and yet lo, they are becoming the new if you have it, so what…if you don’t, WHY not question. Argh!)

Tomorrow, I will fix our ugly company website. Tomorrow, I will get around to researching liability insurance in case our code brings down the global banking system. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

And here it is, yesterday’s tomorrow, and I’m just all…{blank}

I’m not sad or hopeless or actively avoiding work because I am lazy…I’m just a walking (or parked in front of the computer-ing) null space.

I’m dithering and thinking about maybe getting on with one thing or another, but the rubber just isn’t meeting the road, somehow.

And I suppose that blogging right now probably falls in the “dithering instead of getting on with things” category, huh?

Sigh.

OK. Fine. Training videos it is. But I reserve the right to make gagging noises, roll my eyes pointedly and snort frequently as they enthusiastically tell me how SQL Server 2005 is a powerful data management solution and that Microsoft engineering provides state of the art power to business intelligence.

And then there will be diagrams showing the Magic Circle of data input, storage, retrieval, mining, ‘meaningful reporting’ and so forth and so on. And probably some pictures showing hip young smiling people looking intelligent in carefully pressed shirts with more charts in the background showing profits are up-up-up and a caption about how Analysis Services makes it possible for hip young people in carefully pressed shirts to sit in meeting rooms smiling intelligently at each other with joy and enthusiasm because with the help of Reporting Services they have made a chart! GO TEAM!!!!!!!

(I’m sorry, was that sarcastic…?)

(It’s just that I hate training videos. And taking tests in things I know that I know, but now I have to know what they want me to know, and then there are ten ways to get the same answer and somehow my way is never the way they want me to do it and then they tell me my way is WRONG even though it isn’t wrong because hel-LO! Do we get the same result? YES WE DO. And my way is usually faster. So there. Nyah.)

(I swear, I’m not procrastinating. I’m just sayin’, is all.)

(Fine. Be that way. I’m going. Seriously. This is me, reaching for the training disk…extending my hand…toward the disk set…oh yes! It’s a set! A hideously long, twelve CD set of pictures and charts and sales pitches for Microsoft products training material.)

(I just suddenly remembered that I have something else I need to do right now. Something, uh, downstairs. Something else, which is downstairs, which needs doing right away…)

Attention Coin Collectors

Coinstar has a promotion running right now: Cash in $40 in coins in one go onto one of their participating gift cards or e-certificates, and they will give you an extra $10 when you mail in the bottom of your receipt. Through December 7, 2008 only, so grab those jars and get moving!

Read all about it.

Rolling up my sleeves

Oh look. Another holiday in the rearview mirror, Christmas on the horizon, four sparkly-eyed Denizens who by their very unselfish and forgiving natures make the idea of disappointing them unthinkable, and I’m on a “just opened a new business” kind of budget.

So! Game plan time! The question is simple: How to get through this festive season without going into the red.

The first thing I’m doing is opening up my wallet and taking out every last credit card. Believe it or not, it is possible to stagger through a day without one.

The second thing is, I’ll be taking a cash draw at the beginning of the week. That cash is for everything that doesn’t involve an online payment or automatic charge. Groceries, gasoline, gift buying, taking the kids places, everything.

Cash – you know, actual tens and twenties, that stuff? – has an amazing power. It can really force you to reorganize your priorities, when you know that what you hold in your hand is it. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

If you blow through your stash by Thursday, say goodbye to those weekend plans, friend.

Thus far, I have bought precisely one (1) present for the kids. I love the rhyme eclair shared a couple weeks ago…

Something they want
something they need
something to wear
and something to read

…and I’m sticking to it. Unfortunately, I’m still short three wants, four needs, four wearables and four books. Ahem. Well. Nice time to be starting a cash-only accounting method, huh?

But, I do love me a challenge.

So! Each week I will be giving myself a very generous and seasonally adjusted $240 for the buying of Christmas wants, needs, wears and reads, as well as the mundane, routine groceries, gasoline, and all the other etceteras of daily life in these United States.

What I hope to accomplish isn’t so much a trimming down of Christmas as keeping myself in check during a very frustrating and emotionally simmering time. The job market remains tighter than my purse strings, I’m still without my own work to do, we’re all just waiting-waiting-waiting. There is every danger that a bored, frustrated Tama who was just told for the umpteenth time that, while she is exactly what the employer was hoping and dreaming of finding, she is not going to get the job, is going to wander into Big Lots one day while her squirrel-mind is bent on hoarding against a hard winter to come and come home with yes, really, some 8’ or bigger lawn-frackin-ornament with its own generator and lights and holy Moses, what was I thinking?!

Well. What I would have been thinking would be something like this. We’ve worked long and hard, and it is not fair that “everybody else” (oooh boy, here it comes) has Christmas Spirit stuff bedecking their halls while our house looks like (oh yeah, it is on now, baby!) some kind of semi-abandoned Scrooge Lives Here place. We’re both college educated, we both work in high tech arenas where big salaries are normal, surely we deserve and/or can afford a few little things, right?

Next thing I know, I’m backing up a truckload of jingling whatnots we now “deserve” to store for 330 days a year in anticipation of The Season. Nice.

And then I’ll start in with just a few “little” things for the Denizens and before I know it, I’m up until midnight on Christmas eve wrapping crap they don’t want or need because I am not a loser!

Yeah. The Care Bears DVD proves that, for sure. Ahem.

There are times when you have to just know yourself. And I know that even in the best of years, I get somewhat, um, pensive in the wintertime. I have a long, convoluted theory involving sunlight, lack of same, and wearing of long sleeves all the time around it, but the upshot is, I go through “winter blues.”

And no, knowing that it is common doesn’t make it a bit better. I get testier than a bear that should be hibernating, and as irrational as a squirrel when it comes to hoarding. Oh yes, I hoard things through the winter. You slap a sale sign on it, I’ll probably toddle along and pick up a box or three within minutes. Doesn’t have to be something I need, want or even like…if I’ve got an empty inch of space at home, I’ll buy something to cram into it.

The worst part is the food. I buy food like this is the last opportunity, ever to buy it. That’s right, after this sale, I will be forced to survive by wild-crafting along the Delta. Sigh.

Yarn, clothes, food-food-food, books…there’s no real rhyme or reason. I just feel the need to pack my Den with stuff. It doesn’t “make me happy,” in fact it just makes me more anxious…but I do it anyway.

Unless I stop myself, look myself in the eye and say, FIRMLY, “Tama. Honey. You’re doing That Thing again. Knock it off.”

In good years, I can do that. Even in “eh” years, I can keep myself mostly in check.

This, though, has been and continues to be a very bad year. Between the financial stuff and the emotional stuff, and now it is getting cold and the sunlight is getting weaker by the minute (I’m telling you, California Girl over here needs her five-ten minutes of direct, more than 5% of skin exposed sun-cuddling at least a couple times a week)…I’m really worried that I’m going to actually break the hinges on the freezer stuffing it with on-sale stuff, or overload the upper story of the house with all the new toys I felt I just had to get, seeing as how they were 50 to 70% off and all…

It’s just better for all concerned if I ensure any damage done is limited to cash actually on hand, right this minute.

In slow doses, so I don’t blow the entire wad in a single mad romp through Goodwill.

And I do believe I will want to start with a nice weekly menu and a carefully controlled trip to the supermarket, if needed.

Onward!