Money Monday: April 4, 2011

Have you ever thought about money, and your relationship with it? Not in terms of how much you have, or wish you had, or how much you make or someone else makes, or how much would equate to happiness or what the net take would be if you won the lottery…but about money itself?

Money is, to me, a fascinating thing. On the one hand, it is an extremely logical part of the social evolution of our species; it is far more convenient than, say, carrying around a pocketful of shiny pebbles or a bag of necklaces you’ve made from seashells. It’s easier to value, too – I mean, imagine if we each went through our day trying to barter for everything.

“Whaddya mean my camel steak isn’t worth two fence posts? Are you crazy?! Listen here, pal, our other neighbor gave me seven loaves of bread and a bottle of peapod schnapps for one of these babies yesterday, ya know…!!!” “Ya, well, he likes camel steak…whereas I think it takes like dried poo on shoe leather, so, you can keep it!”

Makes perfect sense that we came up with this money stuff, with its easily grasped valuation, portability, and equanimity: Nobody looks at a dollar and says, “Eh, what I am supposed to do with that? I already have twenty of them in the shed…” (Well, nobody I know of, anyway…but if you happen to know anybody thinking of putting up a couple sacks of dollar bills on Freecycle to get rid of them, let me know, ‘kay?)

Money also follows extremely basic mathematical rules: Two plus two is four. A hundred pennies is a dollar. Four quarters is a dollar, too. You need X% return on investment to get ahead. If you have $200,000 in your retirement account, your “safe” annual withdrawal (at 4%) is $200,000 * 0.04 = $8,000, for a monthly paycheck of $8,000 / 12 = $666.6666666 ohmygah, it’s the mark of the BEAST…which is fitting, because you’re gonna be eatin’ cat food on that, sistah…!

What a sensible, logical, thoroughly-understandable invention money is!

And yet…how bizarre it is, too.

Because somehow, it manages to define our lives. It determines what we can eat and drink, what we can wear, who we will hang out with, where we will live, what kind of schools our children will attend. Its presence permits the fulfillment of dreams; its absence can cause untold miseries to pile upon us without end.

We obsess about it, yet throw it away at every opportunity. We worry about it, to the point where we enter into blistering, hateful battles with the people who are supposed to be our shield-mates – our spouses, our siblings, our parents.

Houses are divided over it.

Crimes are committed in its name.

People even kill themselves over it.

Which always brings me up short because…money isn’t real.

It’s just numbers. Tokens. Placeholders. Dots on a screen.

Your life is real. Your hopes and dreams are real. What you want to have, do and be – those are real.

Money is just part of the game, pieces we shuffle around in an attempt to win our prize.

Seems like all too often, we forget that and give it far more power than it rightfully deserves. We get all caught up in the emotions around it, tangle it into what we dare to dream for ourselves, transfer our attention to it and forget what it is supposed to exist to do.

Have you ever stopped to think about your relationship with money? How it makes you feel, and more importantly why?

Why is it that it can get you into a fight with your spouse faster than just about anything else, short of infidelity or leaving the cap off the toothpaste?

Why do some people spend inordinate amounts of time and effort to hoard it up, piles and piles of cash locked away in a savings account somewhere, while they live on crusts of bread with a little peanut butter on them until eventually they die and we all marvel at the story of This Guy who, like, totally lived this weird almost-homeless existence of abject misery, and then left, like, $2M behind?

Why do other people throw it away faster than it comes in, in a constant attempt to appear wealthy, to “keep up” with that mysterious Jones family, to have a thin veneer of “good life” smeared over a termite-weakened structure…and we sit around scoffing, Ya, like they’re foolin’ ANYBODY…they’re living on borrowed money, they ain’t got SQUAT of their own, never have, never will!!

Why does this person shy away like a gun-shy deer at the slightest hint of financial success (“how come she quit that job? It’s like, every time she’s in the slightest danger of not living on the edge, she immediately chucks the whole offer into the garbage!”)…while that one constantly chases after the next “sure bet” no matter how often s/he loses everything on them (“He wired $2,500 to Nigeria? AGAIN?!...seriously, did his mom drop him on his head a lot as a baby, or what?”)?

Why is it that what we want most always seems to be out of reach, because somehow, we just couldn’t seem to do what we needed to do, financially, to get it?

Why do we keep making the same mistakes, over and over again?

(And why are we so good at spotting the mistakes of others, while our own are all, well, I don’t know, because I personally don’t have any…) (HAHAHAHAHAHA! {snort!*giggle*hiccup*}

The Experts™ frequently say that we do all these crazy, obviously-idiotic-to-anybody-except-us things because of our relationship with money, engrained into us by our own personal histories, taught to us at our momma’s knees, reinforced by every mistake we’ve made.

And I’m sure they’re right.

But in the same way that we are not defined by that Really Bad Relationship we had that one time with that one person, just as we can break free of the cycle of picking Mr. Wrong every single time, we can decide to put money in its rightful place, too.

Have you ever thought about your relationship with money? Tried to track back why you do the things you know “all” your friends are gossiping about when your back is turned?

And if you have…have you tried forgiving yourself, and whatever-all hurt you there…and letting it go now?

We are creatures of now, really; the past may serve to teach and guide, but we don’t live there…and we shouldn’t be slaves to it. I believe we should accept those painful parts we like to ignore or fight or cram down into nice, neat little boxes and pretend we’ve handled – and then let them go. Without a whole lot of hoopla or ceremony, either; just let ‘em go their way.

And then go forward yourself, and make your world what you want it to be...recognizing your tools for what they are and acting accordingly.

Money is just a tool, one of many pieces on the board. Granted, it’s not a pawn – it’s at least a knight, possibly even a queen, but push come to shove, it’s still just a game piece.

You are the meaning behind the game.

You can win this thing…if you know what you want, keep a clear head and don’t let shiny lights, ancient wounds and the incessant noise life throws out distract you.

And keep the pieces where they darned straight belong.

In which irony is not lost upon me

I am in that phase of the commute when I have hurried up to wait, standing around at the shuttle stop waiting for the next bus.

It will be a long wait; as happens all too frequently, I missed the last one by a HAIR, which means an hour of kicking my heels until the next one.

ARGH.

But, such are the fortunes of war, and I tell myself that this is NOT a 'drag' but an 'opportunity'...for extra thought and writing. Because I last actually finished a Money Monday post on a Monday...uh...yeeeeeeeeah.

Aaaaaaaanyway, I'm sitting there, at the bus stop...across from The Mall...sweating like a pig...yawning...unable to keep my eyes open...too hot! Direct sun! No shelter! Tired!

...ambition...fading...world!...growing!...dim...!

...coffee...mall...cooooofffffeeeeeeee, in maaaaaaaaaaalllllllll...!

(Which reminds me: Any reports of Zombie Apocalypse in Pleasanton? Just me. Needing coffee. VERY, VERY BADLY)

As I bellied up to the espresso bar, slapped my card and Contigo down on the worn counter and barked, "Grande quad mocha, no whip, extra hot", well...I got a free double shot of irony.

Because I want to finish working on a piece about money and budgeting, I just paid $3.50 for espresso liberally spiked with chocolate, sugar and milk.

Extra. Hot.

...even though the Final Straw that sent me scurrying (aside: me + scurrying = comedy) across four busy lanes with NO traffic control of any sort (aside #2: why do malls do this? "Let's put the train station and bus stops here! And let's skip crosswalks, stop lights, etc.!") was the fact that I was too flippin' hot.

Ah, irony...you are with me always...

Attachment Issues and Pole Beans

I got the sleeves attached to the hoodie this weekend...it was way more of an ordeal than it should have been. I mean, how hard can it POSSIBLY be to knit across more stitches, right?!

Yeah. Not one but TWO snapped-off cables later (with associated "and then 80 - 120 stitches flew off and ran down 2 - 5 rows each"), they were finally in their proper places. Whew!

This weekend, the husband decided to clear out and organize the backyard storage shed. Much Freecycling happened, but guess what else we found, tucked into the way-way back corner of the loft, where only spiders dwell?

THREE bean towers (space-saving nifty things, like an umbrella-style clothesline only with the strings going to the ground, so your beans and other small-fruit vines can climb up them), and two tomato towers (same basic idea).

The boxes hadn't even been opened, and I don't remember buying them...ship date was 2000!!!

The bean towers are already up, and Kentucky pole beans are planted around them.  I am THRILLED...I was already using my one real trellis for the peas, and had resigned myself to having to wait until fall for the next 'cool weather climbers' planting!

Thank you, Past Me. Don't know what you were thinking when you bought those originally, but they will be EXTREMELY helpful now...

Oh-fer-cripes-sake...

Ya know...I KNOW my boy is smart.

I know this.

I know how he is. I know that he is one of those almost-savant types when it comes to Things Technological.

So why...WHY IN GOD'S NAME...did it not occur to me that handing him my new Android tablet so he could play some games as a reward for getting his 'good day' stickers at school, would INEVITABLY lead to him a) discovering where the Android market was kept and b) cheerfully downloading 42,000 new games, at $0.99 to $3.99 apiece?!

GAH!!!!!!

...sigh...

Well, I suppose I'm actually very lucky...the damage was actually only $15. It could have been a LOT worse. And now I know that Google, FOR MY CONVENIENCE, OF COURSE, auto-links the billing information I have on file for my domain registrations and document storage to the marketplace.

So now, for our combined inconvenience, I've deleted my (ahem) BUSINESS DEBIT CARD from their system. No more automatic renewals. No more paperless stuff. No more "it just happens and none of us have to fiddle with it."

This "feature" that is in place "for my convenience" is going to end up being very INconvenient, Google, for both of us.

But of course, I'd rather be inconvenienced a bit a few times a year than end up with hundreds of bucks in hopping spaghetti marshmallow monster apps every time The Boy gets his paws on my tablet.

(Dang, that kid is smart...)

(It's an Archos 10.1 internet tablet - no carrier, 10" screen, fairly robust hardware, and now running Android 2.2, which, funny story there...these retail for around $349. This one was on sale for $180 - because out of the box, it had the 1.9 operating system. This meant that, before it was fully up and running, I had to do a bunch of download / install / reboot / reboot / reboot...download / install / reboot reboot reboot. I also had to run it through its onboard diagnostics about five times, to recalibrate the screen and motion sensors. It did take me about two to three hours altogether, but at the same time, it wasn't hard. In fact, IT did most of the work...all I had to do was get it onto our home wireless system, and it pretty much took it from there. But apparently, the process of tapping "OK" a few times, doing some hard reboots here and there, and then figuring out how to navigate when the 'menu' side of the screen suddenly died (OK, that WAS a little challenging), was soooooo hard for people that the retailer figured it was better to sell them at nearly 50% off and get rid of them than to either provide the necessary support to walk people through it [can't blame them there...I've done support, and have the mental scars to prove it], or to open up the boxes themselves and do all the running around FOR people [at which point, they go, "OHMYGAH, the box is open! I demand 50% off, IMMEDIATELY, because it is OBVIOUSLY a broken machine and NOT factory-fresh!"]. And I love it. It is light, fast, easy to use, I have a little case with an external keyboard for it that makes it easy to use for email and writing and such, it has a big, crisp screen and when I say that it is light, I mean, barely a hair over one measly pound. And now, it even has a whack of cool games on it! AWESOME!!!)

(Ya, except they're ALL 'physics and motion' kinds of games, because that's what The Boy likes...games where you balance THIS on THAT and how many LITTLE blocks can you stack on the BIG blocks and maaaaaaaaan! Why couldn't he have downloaded something more D&D-ish?!)

LOL du jour

Dudes...how often do you see something like THIS at YOUR supermarket?!?!

I laughed. Out loud.

Awesome...

First fruits!

Wait...beets aren't fruits...well, never mind! These are golden beets, from one of the front boxes! The seeds over-wintered in there, and came up like gangbusters not long ago. Unfortunately, I spaced on taking the anti-cats wire off, hence the too-early harvest.

But they'll still be sweet and lovely, maybe baked in a little balsalmic vinegar in a slow-ish oven.

Hi, Spring. Glad you're back.

What to do in an earthquake - good advice - David Icke Website

A friend sent me this today - some good advice in here: What to do in an earthquake - good advice - David Icke Website

Being born and raised in California, this kind of thing is second nature to me...wouldn't usually get put of my car, though, since frankly falling debris - light enough to break your head, not heavy enough to crush your car (and therefore, you IN your car - is the more pressing worry. But of course, I WAS taught to get under my desk in case of earthquake. Or fire. Or nuclear attack.

Come to think of it...I'm beginning to suspect the school leaders had a VERY irrational opinion about just how powerful a desk actually is.

[Ed: Best point from Snopes article referenced in the comment below: Buildings in the US about NEVER collapse due to earthquakes alone. But like I mentioned before, light stuff (you know, like BRICKS) fly around like crazy...personally, unless I had a darned good reason not too, I'd want to stay inside and away from windows until the ride came to a full and complete stop, keeping my hands, feet, legs, arms, head in particular and, well, every other part of me away from flying debris. And I'd rather be under a good sturdy desk watching the show when the fluorescents start plummeting from the ceiling than catching them with my BACK, thanks all the same...]

A large part of what makes earthquakes - any natural disaster really - so terrifying are its Imponderables. No warning. No second chance. No make-up test. Nothing you can DO, to prevent or even mitigate.

I find it helps, as I'm on my way in to the site of the 1902 quake, passing where the Cypress fell, remembering how it was during that awful hours when bridges were falling and I didn't know where my San Francisco-dwelling friends and family WERE, thinking and praying hard for my brothers and sisters in Japan as they struggle to raise their heads again, to reacquaint myself with these sorts of things.

And to then stop worrying about it.

Life is beautiful. I don't ever want to turn the sweetness of it to ashes in my mouth by leavening my mind with pointless worry.

Coffee Memories and 3-D Eyeballs

This morning as my beloved ACE rumbled into Pleasanton, as always I gathered up my scattered belongings at the almost-last-possible-second and flew down the stairs to the doors.

As I stood there, thinking about work and email and the need to call The Lady My Mother during normal human hours, I suddenly became aware of that "I have forgotten something" feeling, washing over me. Something wasn't right...something was missing...(counts bags, checks keys, phone is in place headset in pocket, BUT YET SOMETHING IS WRONG, THERE IS A HOLE.........)

And then, it hit me. OH NO!!!!!!!! MAH COFFEE!!!!!!!!!

So I dashed back up the stairs, snatched my Contigo off the table, rolled my eyes and ran for the shuttle.

The rest of the commute, I worked on Captain Adventure's hoodie. At first, I was going to tear out and redo that eyeball of Googly's, because as you can see, I was asleep or something while doing it and it got puckered.

But then I thought, Huh. I wonder...if I pull it *tighter*...would it be kind of 3-X-ish? That might be kinda cool...

I'm still not 100% sure about that call; kinda like it, kinda don't. But I'm going with it at this point, being so far in Intarsia stepped that to go back is way too tedious to contemplate.

And now...gonna reheat my coffee and get the party STARTED at work. Woooooooooo, work par-TAY!!!!!

When The Crazy Attacks…

I think I am in the middle of some kind of epic adventure, wherein we are going to learn fascinating things about just how exhausted a person can become and still muddle through.

{yawn}

…dunno, maybe I can get a Discovery channel gig out of it…?

Now, I recognize that it is only Tuesday and that really, trying to say that “this whole week {blah blah blah}!” is kind of silly.

But this whole week? OHMYBLAH BLAH BLAH !!!!

OK, so, actually, it all started Thursday afternoon, when there was a mudslide over the tracks which caused the ACE trains (and every other train that uses those same tracks) (but who cares about them?!) to not run.

Hilarity ensues!

Having signed up for the text alerts from ACE, I began receiving a long string of messages that made almost partial sense most of the time. When instructed to call, I did…and received even more confusing instructions.

I suspect the person I spoke with was confused about where the Embarcadero BART station is in relation to the Santa Clara light rail system. Because the dude thought it might be possible for me, at 3:40 in the afternoon, to get to the Santa Clara stop in time to catch the 4:32 Amtrak to Fremont.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Yeah. Dude, I’d be lucky to make it to Oakland by 4:32. Word.

But eventually it all got straightened out and ACE called and paid for a cab ride home for us, which here means ‘the husband and I’ because of COURSE we were both in the office that day!

And four three other stranded passengers.

And since they had a total of five four passengers needing a ride, they naturally called for a small bus minivan one of those big black cars you see around airports a lot a Prius.

…and now you know why we lost Passenger #5…

It was a VERY COZY ride home. VERRRRRRRY cozy. And also it was raining like @*&^@, and the cab driver was one of those guys who likes to tell jokes and stuff while eagerly watching your reaction in the rearview mirror.

Ya, dude, look…this is already really damned uncomfortable and there are about 400 inches of rain on the freeway PLUS you’re doing 75 in a Prius with the four of us crammed in here like sardines and I don’t want you to slow down really but it WOULD be nice if you could LOOK AHEAD OF US and some junk…

So then we got home and went to bed. I was going to have to go into the office Friday (on National It Is A Constitutional Right To Always-Always-ALWAYS Work From Home On Fridays Day?! {GASP!}) because I had left my laptop locked up in its docking station.

Which was a good thing, seeing as how I then spent about an hour standing in the driving rain waiting for the aforementioned Prius to show up. My bag, and everything in it, was soaked.

BUT, well, guess what? The ACE train still wasn’t running on Friday.

I hate driving. BUT, I’m a big girl and I have a driver’s license, sooooo, you know, I’ll suck it up and deal with it. And leave early. Because Friday night traffic + me = reality television fodder. Seriously. Next, on COPS…watch as some INSANE WOMAN screams randomly out her window at other drivers…!

But it did occur to me (as the text messages warning of flooded roads and so forth buzzed on my phone) that I probably better wait until sunrise to start driving. Because good grief, who wants to drive into one of the temporary Not So Great Lakes of California? Not me.

…and so it was that I walked out to the driveway at a little after 7:00 in the morning, looked at the flat frickin’ tire on the Civic, turned right back around and began brewing a second coffee because yup, it’s gonna be THAT kind of day…

And then Big O couldn’t help me on account of because approximately three million other people were already banging their fists on the counters yelling about Tahoe and fix and tire and NOW!!!

I personally feel that my desire to go to work trumps their desire to go to stupid Tahoe and the stupid fresh snow, but, whatever.

So I attended meetings and, well, that was about it. Sigh.

And then, I’m told, a weekend happened.

But it’s all…rather a blur.

First of all, it rained some more. HARD. So I spent Saturday lying around in my personal sauna while a trained chiropractic massage specialist worked on my back and I ate shameless handfuls of chocolate and crap, I just realized, this totally wasn’t me! It was my dream-self, because I was unloading about 300 pounds of meat out of the freezer, giving said appliance a much-needed and very thorough washing out as fast as I could because now I’ve got meat sitting out starting to thaw, and then put it all back again.

But a little more neatly.

And then I did the same thing for the garage refrigerator which was, in a word, ew.

I mean, you know how fridges get, right? A little apple juice here, maybe a broken egg you didn’t quite clean as thoroughly as you thought, and suddenly you look at it and go, “Gross!”

Now add garage funk. Dirt, dust, sawdust even…yeah. Just go ahead and add the exponent of your choice to the Gross Factor.

Then, because I live a life of this kind of excitement…I cleaned the inside fridge as well. Wooooooooo, there ain’t no party like a cleaning-cold-appliances party…wooooo…oooooo…ooo…ahem.

Yeah.

THEN, I got up the next morning and cooked stuff. Lemon yogurt muffins, and homemade English muffins, which were then used to make some homemade egg sandwiches, PLUS some ham quiches with two kinds of cheese and some diced canned chilies because that’s right, I am a WILD THING. And some tea scones with currents.

Plus eight half-pints of lemon syrup.

Oh. And I made the yogurt for the muffins, too.

Because I am crazy, that’s why.

…and then I’m all surprised because ohmygoodness, will you look at that! Suddenly, it’s almost Wednesday!

Meanwhile in other news, our neighbor has repaired / rebuilt our blown-down fence, for $300 plus materials. Which is about $600 less than we would have paid to have a contractor do it, and by the way, guess what he does for a living?

Yeah, he’s a carpenter.

The fence looks better now than it did when it was brand new.

I’d show you this, but this whole week? Crazy. Yesterday and today went exactly the same way:

4:49 a.m.: Ah! Here I am, on the early train, I’ll be in my chair at the office by 6:30, out right before 3:00, early train home, home by 5:30-ish, couple hours of daylight and a little energy left, it’ll be awesome!

2:00 p.m.: AAAAAAAH! Why is all hell breaking loose?! Seriously?!?! Dude, quit saying we “lost” your accounts, we so totally did not “lose” a @*^&@ing thing…you are making those accounts UP, is what, and I CAN PROVE IT!!!! {typity-typity-typity!!!!}

3:00 p.m.: …crap, I missed the first train…oh well, I’ll just finish this One Last Thing™ and then I’ll definitely make it out of here in time for the middle one…

4:00 p.m.: …CRAP!!!!!

{commuting happens}

7:30: …crawl-crawl-crawl {face-plant!!!!}

BUT TOMORROW, AND THIS TIME I REALLY-REALLY MEAN IT…!!!!!

I am totally going to catch that first train home.

STOP LAUGHING, I TOTALLY AM!

…man, what a week…!

Tuesday and the return of real life

The main problem with having a couple days off is that you start to believe in it...you believe that this IS your normal, that sleeping in, slowly waking up with coffee and a thoroughly-read newspaper is some kind of basic human right.

And then...it's back to work.

But at least you can bring a hoodie with you to work on.

(Actually, I stayed up a leeeeeetle too late last night so I could get past the part where you graft the live stitches from the provisional cast on into the live stitches on the active needles...the thought of trying to do that on a moving train made me feel weak.)

Anything But Money Monday: March 21, 2011

YA KNOW…I had this big long thing that was all blah blah blah budget and suddenly I was all, “You know what is cool? Just about anything ELSE.”

So I went outside and moved about two cubic yards of dirt, the end.

(OK, so, partially true; I did have this big long thing about budgets in mind but then it stopped raining for a few seconds and then I went outside and moved dirt around because you know what says “fun”? Shoveling wet dirt into a wheelbarrow and then moving it from Point A to Point B! Yaaaaaaay!)

(I mean, it had to be done. And so did All That Weeding. Plus also getting the broccoli, onions, carrots, green beans, spinach, and lettuce into the ground. Oh. Plus some potatoes. But now I’m just getting off track…point being, I didn’t think it was particularly cool. Unless we’re talking about the temperature outside right now, which is remarkably frosty all things considered.)

(…and then, to continue avoiding thinking about blah blah blah budget when the rain kicked back up, I came inside and make nine half-pints of lemon jelly. Because you know what ELSE is cool? ANYTHING OTHER THAN BUDGETING.)

…sigh…

I’m having a hard time with getting my arms around budgeting right now. We had a really bad week last week, iced off yesterday morning by the discovery that after the lovely storm we had Saturday night, pretty much the entire back fence is falling down.

Splendid.

Coming right on top of three rapid-fire “surprise” hits that have left me out a good three grand so far…ugh.

It’s somewhat miraculous I was able to keep all the bases covered.

But over this weekend, I just couldn’t sit down and look at it. I’m gonna hafta pull the scab off sooner or later on this deal; but right now, I just don’t want to look.

So instead, I work. I do what I already know needs doing, with single-minded devotion. I keep shoveling, keep planting, keep removing weeds and folding laundry. I make food. I go to Google and ask it what to do with approximately 300 pounds of lemon peels. (And then I resist the urge to go with nothing but limoncello.)

I resist the urge to sign up for one-click buying at Amazon. (My GAWD, I do not want to think about the harm I could do to myself with that ‘tool’ enabled.)

I find myself thinking tonight that half the battle is knowing when to do battle…and when to resort to some mental aikido and redirect your energy into Something Else. I know for a fact that if I’d tried to work on the budget this weekend, I would have ended up in a major spiral of anger and drama. There would likely have been Sweeping Statements made and Drastic Measures put in place and etc. etc. etc.

How many would be actually necessary v. purely the product of me being too pissed off about things I couldn’t control (but yet were somehow responsible for cleaning up after anyway, what’s up with THAT?!), would be a topic for Eternal Debate.

The neat thing about having a constructive plan in the first place is that when all else fails, you’ve got something constructive to fall back on, you know?

Would be nice if it didn’t involve wheelbarrows, though. Just sayin’.

(But the peas are coming up already – I planted them a couple weeks ago –which is pretty awesome. See?)

Money Monday: March 14, 2011

Wow, is time ever playing tricks on me right now! My mind is stubbornly insisting that it is February - early February - and really can't seem to grasp the concept of, you know, March.

My mind works in strange ways sometimes...the fact that I've been steadily receiving W2 and 1099 forms didn't drive home the passage of time; my birthday came and went, eh, whatever; new year, yeah-yeah, sure-sure; but digging a shovel into the richly-scented loam of finished compost suddenly turned the abstract numbers of the calendar into shockingly meaningful things.

Suddenly, things that have been back-of-mind ‘yeah, I really need to think about that soon here’ are...real. Now. Immediate.

Somehow, my contract extension kind of lulled me to sleep, in terms of planning, and figuring out What's Next - I have had the “new contract” feeling ever since, and that happy mental glow of “got it covered, yay me!”

But, um, hello...18 month limit ringing any bells, babe? Yeah, I'm out the door on May 10 no matter how much love we all may still be feeling, or what I'm in the middle of...or how much more headway I wished I'd made on Things, or whether or not I have given even the slightest thought to What's Next.

Time is mean like that. Life, too; we humans scurry around trying to enforce our ideas of what is or is not “fair” on it, but really that’s like trying to tell the wind you disagree with his decision to blow down your fence.

Not only is the wind not going to change his fence-toppling ways, you’re not getting an apology, either. The wind is not merely indifferent to your problems...there is not even the slightest hint of acknowledgement that you even are.

We humans have remarkable trouble with this, bless us. It’s a marvelous thing about our species, really, our willingness to stand naked before God and take Him to task about “unfairness.”

Our refusal to take our individual insignificance lying down has wrought some mighty wonders.

However...at the same time...wellllllllllll...I think we occasionally forget who is actually in charge of our health, happiness, wealth of possession and spirit. Hint: You see that person every day...in the mirror.

Life can be unfair. You can plan and plan and plan and still find yourself caught by surprise; I honestly don’t think there is any conceivable way for any of us to be so completely thorough in our planning and execution (…oh…yeah…that…) that we can be assured of a “perfect” life.

@*^@ happens, ya know?

But at the same time, we can help ourselves avoid it. We can notice that the fence is leaning over and shore it up before it falls; we can realize that unhealthy habits are making our bodies more like a sewage treatment plant than a temple and make smarter choices about what-all we put into the system; we can decide we don’t want to walk the razor’s edge of financial ruin all the time and start taking steps away from it.

This is a storm I can clearly see coming, tracking toward me on the old triple Doppler.

And I know I need to start spending some time getting ready for it.

I admit I don’t feel like it. I have a million things I’d rather be doing than thinking about whether I’d rather take a job in San Jose come May, or try for something local (again) (wait, let me rephrase that: spend a good year looking, in vain, for work that even enters the same ZIPCODE as what I actually do that pays at least a THIRD what I make in The City before giving up and going back to work for MegaBank like I always do), or do something else, entirely, or, do nothing at all.

I also don’t want to be turning the thumbscrews on the household budget, or tucking things in so that my income is left completely untouched, to get a feel for how it would really go, in really-real real-life.

A lot of times, what looks awesome and oh-so-do-able on paper turns out to be…yeah…a tad more challenging on a day to day basis.

But I’ve got to do it, like it or not. Because ultimately, it’s what I need to do – for myself, for my family, for our individual and collective futures.

And also, I need to get our taxes done.

And I’ll get right on that. Right after I finish, uh, organizing the embroidery floss.

(Seriously, I need to get on that.)

(Why can’t my “need to get on that” list ever include something like, I dunno, “try all 31 flavors of ice cream”?)

Testing, testing, one-two-three

This is a test of the emergency blogging system. This is only a test. If this were a real blogging emergency...wait...a WHAT emergency?

Ahem, yes. Well.

Sooooooo, obviously, I am playing with my new phone this morning. I downloaded the 'official' Blogger app...so far, seems to work just fine. I'm getting used to the "weird" touchscreen keyboard...and learning why "Curse you, autocorrect!" exists.

Heh...yeah. Puts some...INTERESTING..word choices in there, sometimes...

Darn, work laptop is booted. Okay, guess I should go work or something...sigh...

BUT FIRST, I gotta test putting a picture in this (you know, in the name of science).

(preview? Yes? No? Wait...huh...maybe I should call in "too new phoned to work" today...?)

Adjusting...

My new phone arrived with ludicrous speed; now begins the fun and excitement of figuring out how to USE it. Having been a Palm user for so long...well. I'm just kind of used to thing being A Certain Way.

Also, DANG! Did you guys, like, KNOW that Android phones are, like, CRAZY with the apps?! Holy shoot...I could get lost for WEEKS in that market...

Thank goodness for socks. They may have different patterns, color schemes and so forth, but their basic construction, where the needles and yarn go...that, I understand...

So, before you ask: It's an Evo Android smartphone, which is all 4G and some junk. I'm slowly getting it figured out. It has all kinds of calendars and live weather and GPS and REAL video games and Facebook and email plus web conferencing and streaming videos and whole entire books can be downloaded to it in, like, five seconds.

Oh! And also? I'm told - and this may just be wild speculation so grain of salt and all - that it can also send AND RECEIVE...wait for it...phone calls.

I KNOW! What will they think of next?!

Sent from my HTC

This may be the last of these...

..sent from my Treo. It has been getting jicky lately, batching up communications on me and such...it'll be absolutely silent alllllll day, then suddenly spasm into buzzing, chiming, etc....and then show me 27 text messages from earlier in the day, inform me that I have five missed calls and three new voicemails.

So I called Sprint and they said, "Uhhhhhhh...hey, lookit that! You are TOTALLY done with your contract! We have UPGRADE OFFERS for you!!!"

Been "out of contract" for almost four years now. And the phone HAS been....slowing down. And a couple of the keyboard buttons are cracked. And the ringer doesn't work anymore.

Ahem. Yes. It is time. And also, I got an extra $75 incentive - on top of the "usual" $150 for new contract AND $100 mail-in...because I was all, "...meh..." about it on the phone and the kid was DESPERATE to get my dinosaur-phone OFF their network.

So, I show you my breakfast (coupon at Subway this morning...bought a $1 orange juice, got the flatbread egg and ham sandwich free), AND the sock-in-progress (part of the Great Actually DEALWith Your Stuff Issues campaign of 2011), AND....check it out...that little bag?

Perfect size for sock and other small, portable projects. Snaps onto my belt so I can be a TOTAL dork and knit while I walk. Has an exterior pocket for my Knit Kit, so I can even click my row counter as I go.

Dollar. Tree.

Woot!!!!!

Happy Thursday...may your coupons be good ones!

(sent from my Treo)

Disorganized Finishing

We had a houseguest this weekend. A most delightful and awesome houseguest, the kind of houseguest that is not merely welcome, but the sort where you wish things like he would buy the house next door, and maybe his wife won’t notice if we just KEEP him. (I think she’d notice. And also, she could totally beat me up in a fair fight. Which is why I wouldn’t fight fair, bwa-hahaha.)

He brought all kinds of good things with him; good memories, good conversation, fun times, and last night we went out to dinner with him and a bunch of other people we haven’t seen in way too long – the old gang, cutting it up.

…until almost midnight…

NEEDLESS TO SAY, I did not catch the 4:49 train this morning.

Or the 6:09.

In point of fact, it is miraculous that I managed the 7:09.

And then I was heading for the shuttle and had a moment of confusion because it recently changed so that now instead of the 54 I take the 53, which used to be the “wrong” one but now it isn’t the wrong one and in the couple of heartbeats that I was going all autopilot to the 54, the 53 slammed shut the doors and took.off, soooooooo, I went ahead and got on the 54 whiiiiiich now takes approximately 3.5 hours to actually get to BART.

…but at least I got a seat, which it is looking like the people at the next station (which is where the 53 is now going all expressly) are not going to get.

So, I’ve got that going for me.

Plus, I spent more than half of the weekend going, “Blah blah blah blah blah!!” at our guest (the lucky devil) instead of tending to my usual anti-Chaos pre-next-work-week business, and then worked from home yesterday (which means I didn’t have to get my commuting act together until this morning, after said late night) soooooooooo, ahem, yeah.

I am more than tad discombobulated this morning.

How bad is it? Yes, well, let’s put it this way: I am wearing a dress today.

That’s right. Girl. Clothes.

Because, my usual attire is…well, I’m not sure where it is, actually. But where it is not is in my closet where I can find it. But the dress was there, and clean, and hanging up and all like that (because I have never actually worn it before, ahem) (yeah…had to cut the tags off it this morning) (huh…hope I got all of them, come to think of it…), so I threw it on and then there was this farce about shoes (oy), and since I have no full length mirror in the house, I have no idea if the “look” I have thrown together here is even marginally OK.

But, it’s what I’ve got soooooo, I’ll just have to go with it.

Welcome to my life, people.

But! I did manage to finally remember to grab my new laptop. Which is not the new laptop the husband bought for me a while ago.

It’s actually a very old laptop that has been re-re-re-re-re…hang on a sec…{counts on fingers} re-re-re-purposed.

SEE, the new laptop was…too big. It was heavy, and awkward to carry around, given that I had another laptop with me as well. A bunch of the function and number keys were in the “wrong” place for me, and I was having a remarkably (ridiculously) hard time adjusting to it.

So reluctantly, I gave it back to the store and the husband and I went back to the drawing board…and just as the fun and games were really ramping up again with the I dunno, netbook or notebook, or maybe a tablet thing, he had one of those a-ha! moments.

“What about that little machine?” he asked, pointing at the rather large paperweight sitting on the table – having recently been regurgitated from a long-forgotten box of Laptops That Only Need A Little Work To Function Again.

One $69 hard drive later, this older Dell is more than sufficient for my needs. Woot!

Now, a large of the reason that this extremely obvious option didn’t occur to us was that we are shamefully disorganized – things just kind of get shoved wherever they’ll fit instead of somewhere logical (ha!) or accessible (hahahaha!), and also we have so much crap potentially valuable bits of this and that (one of the dangers of the LBYMs lifestyle: You hold onto stuff because it “might be useful.” Which is fine up to a point, that point being the point at which you can’t get into your garage anymore because you’ve got so many boxes of cables, plastic parts that don’t fit anything you currently own but might be useful, you know, if we should happen to get another circa 1952 refrigerator someday! and the like).

I have actually been trying, really hard, to fix this situation; over the last couple months, I have been an organizing fiend. I’ve been going through all kinds of areas, one at a time, and really dealing with them; not just getting things to look neat, not just to get an idea of what-all kinds of Crazy I’ve got shoved in that cupboard or drawer, but to actually take everything out of them, really look at them, decide where it “should” live, and then {brace for revolutionary thinking, y’all} put them there.

I KNOW. I should write a book or something. I don’t think anybody in the history of ever has had this kind of crazy-awesome idea!

But it is very, very slow going. I totally know why it is that things have gotten to the level of Nuts that they have; it’s because the only person who actually cares enough to deal with this kind of stuff (that would be me) has almost no natural patience.

So when I’m sitting down with a file cabinet full of old papers from 1996 and deciding what I can scan-and-shred, what I can just shred, and what I’m going to have to go ahead and hold onto…I get real twitchy, real fast. It’s boring, it’s pointless, I have “better” things to be doing, aaaaaaaand then I shove it all back into the file cabinet to deal with “later.”

Which should be pronounced “never.”

It’s very slow going. My bedroom currently looks like a hurricane hit it. Right after a big earthquake. Which came on the heels of a yarn store throwing up in it. And then a classroom of ADHD children visited. And brought a farm-load of dust with them.

Plus I think I could knit a second cat out of all the cat hair. Oy. (How only one [1] cat can produce that much hair is a scientific mystery. If only we could harness this power, baldness would be a thing of the past.)

But you know one of the cool things about this kind of frenzy, where you pull out a bag full of something and say, “No! You will not just shove that back into the cupboard! You will deal. with. it!”?

You finish stuff.

Like…little Dale of Norway “Lillehammer” sweaters that have “only” needed their steeks sewn and cut, and their sleeves set in, and approximately 32,000 stitches picked up around the neck to make the collar.



(Alas, it is too small for Captain Adventure now. I could weep, even though it totally serves me right; you canNOT set aside a sweater for a 4 year old until he is SIX and reasonably expect anything but sorrow to come of it.)

I will have to make another one for him, someday. I do love it so…and it would look so smart on him. Plus also I did a pretty awesome job on the collar – if I do say so myself, and you will note that I do (shameless!):



BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Like another less-little sweater for a more-bigger sister.



Fortunately, this one was being made a size too big for Danger Mouse to start with, so it does still fit her! WOO HOO!

I’m not as thrilled with the collar on this one, though; these Dale of Norway sweaters do a nifty thing where you do the collar, then purl a turning row, knit another fourteen rounds (or so) above the collar, and then fold that down and stitch it to the inside of the sweater – it makes for a very neat looking finish on the collar, and (if you do it right) a smoother join for the wearer. Win-win.

But this one…I dunno. I just had a lot of trouble getting the stockinette to not pucker around the neck on the inside. (It doesn’t show from the outside and doesn’t bother Danger Mouse at all, but I know it’s there. All wrinkly. And pucker-y. Feh.)



The other thing that has me mildly alarmed on this sweater is…after I washed it and stretched it out on the PVC sweater blocker the husband made for me…I found a couple holes in it. I’m not sure it is actually moth damage; they don’t look chewed so much as like I split the yarn (possibly because I was daydreaming and looking out the window on BART instead of looking at what I was doing with my hands right now, which was actually a recurring problem on these sweaters), hooked only one of the plies with the needle and then that gave way in the wash.

I repaired the holes (pulled out the broken bits and tacked them down on the inside, then used a duplicate stitch to pick up the “dropped” stitches, graft them back together and keep the pattern intact), but now I’m regarding the sweater with Great Suspicion.

Which makes Danger Mouse nervous, because of course she doesn’t know I’m squinting irritably at the sweater as she dashes by, so she’s all, “What?” and I’m all, “WHAT-what?” and she’s all “I didn’t do it!” and I’m all, “Wait, WHAT didn’t you do?!” and it just kind of goes downhill from there.

(She did too do it. That’s a given whenever a child randomly blurts out, “I DIDN’T DO IT!” The trick is discovering what she did. Like maybe shoving five travel mugs full of hot cocoa under the upstairs bathroom sink instead of bringing them downstairs to be washed. WHICH SHE DIDN’T DO. AND NEITHER DID BOO BUG.)

(You’d think I beat them bloody, wouldn’t you? The way they struggle to avert all blame, for anything and everything, you’d think I practiced Old Fashioned Spanking-Style Parenting…which I don’t, not because I’m “100% dead-set against spanking, period” but because by the time I’m pushed to the point where I don’t wanna use words anymore, well, I shouldn’t be raising my hand to anybody, let alone a little child…)

ANYWAY. That’s the news, in brief, now from BART, straight from my cluttered-up, hopeless mind to yours. (Wait…waaaaaaaait…here we goooooooo…AND! IT IS UNDERWATER BLOGGING! WOO HOOOOOOOO, UNDERWATER BLOGGING!!!!!)

May your day be free of madness, and may your filing systems be systems…instead of “where can I shove this envelope full of whatever-it-is, AH! There’s a little daylight...!” operations.

Changes and lack thereof

Add a few years, and some things change. Friends move away. Stores close. New ones open. Music becomes incomprehensible, and also bad.

I look around me these days at my kith and kin and see…a lot more gray hair. Laugh lines and crow’s feet. We limp, we grouse, we have a we can’t fathom how the world isn’t going to careen into the abyss of absolutely DOOM in the very near future because ohmygah, the KIDS these days!

“Where we goin’, and why we in this handbasket?!”

Today, I am attempting to clean up my bedroom.

I know. I am the most exciting person alive.

But this is one of those too-seldom done things; our bedroom is not just the place where we crash at night, but is also my home office, and my craft room, and until very recently, my music room.

This means that all roads lead to it. And many, many things travel these roads. And then they pile up on every surface, get shifted from here to there, until eventually I try to grab a magazine and get buried by twenty thousand books and a few balls of Merino and who the heck left a crane in here, anyway…and I say, “Right, that’s it, I need to get some control over this!”

Which brings me to today.

When I yanked out a very dusty box from the back of a cupboard, and found a bunch of pictures. Pictures of me looking like a walrus that swallowed a beach ball (Boo Bug…man, I was huge while pregnant with her, and afterward for quite a while…), pictures of us in costumes for Renaissance fair, pictures of me with my harp, pictures of us in bizarre costumes at the Sea Dogs Halloween party, pictures of my brother when he was still a twerp…

And an envelope of our engagement picture proofs.

(You have no idea how hard it was for Ray [our Awesome Photographer] to get us to quit LAUGHING and look all SERIOUS and THINKY and like we were CONTEMPLATING THE FUTURE and some junk like that…Tim kept whispering things and I’d dissolve and Ray would kind of sigh, and smile, aaaaaaaaand wait for us to GROW UP A LITTLE @^*&@ING BIT…! (still hasn’t happened, but, well, whatcha gonna do…?)

Lots of things change. We’re both a bit…ahem…fluffier…than we were back then. We have our first round of Welcome To Aging crap; gray hairs, diverticulitis, interesting hormonal changes (I hates them), plantar fasciitis, waking up stiff and sore to face what seems like a truckload of therapist-recommended exercises for this or that Sore Bit, and a bewildering array of pills (wait…did I just take your hypertension thingee?...uh…am I gonna die…and if I am, is there time for coffee first…?), and oh yeah, speaking of, in desperate medical need of coffee.

Other things haven’t changed at all.

We still make each other laugh, really hard, really often. We don’t fight, or even argue much; whenever we get in danger of it, I walk away…and he lets me.

We still have tremendous respect for each other, for our individual and combined needs, for our strengths and weakness, too.

I still think he’s about the greatest thing ever.

Technically, he ain’t perfect or anything close to it; not going to be on the cover of Perfection Made Flesh magazine any time soon.

But he’s perfect for me.

And I still love him like crazy-mad. And still think I will for the rest of all time.

Even if he does have hair that is always about three seconds from going all goofy and stick-y-up-y.

Newly Rediscovered: Pre-Sliced Bread is COOL!

OK, first of all: Is everybody sitting down? You’re not, like, standing on a bus reading this on your Android-whozit-thingee?

I’ll give you a second to get settled in a safe position.

Ready?

I bought bread last week. At Target. I KNOW! The apocalypse (which I just spelled in a CRAZY weird way, what the HECK was THAT?!) (seriously, like, I went with apocolapse…and I have no idea why because yeah, I know it isn’t spelled that way…), it may be here…

That’s the first time in…wow. You know? I really don’t know how long it has been since I last bought bread in a store like that. I’ve bought Boudin sourdough (because of course I have), and I’ve bought the occasional box or bag of bagels or croissants, but when it comes to “sandwich and toast” bread…I think I might not be exaggerating when I say it has been years.

My homemade bread spoils me; it costs me a hair over a dollar to make two one-pound loaves, you know? And since I’m a compulsive spreadsheet addict, I know this. Furthermore, a loaf of bread will vanish in less than one meal around here; so, I’m not looking at one loaf of bread, I’m looking at two or even three.

And we’ll still be out of it in what seems like mere moments.

BUT. I was tired and still not feeling too great and had too much to do, so I bought this bread at Target. Plain old bread-bread. Normal bread, like everybody has.

Fast forward to later that day, when Danger Mouse comes tripping in and says, “Can I make a sandwich?”

We said, sure, knock yourself out, kid.

She climbs up to get the bread, dumps it out of the bag, regards the jumbled up slices with great surprise and then chirps out, “Oh, WOW! It’s already sliced! That’s cooooooooool!!”

This just in: Sliced bread? Is coooooooooool.

The latest in chic bedding

Oh, you guys thought I was exaggerating about the stash enhancement? A little coloring of facts, perhaps, or poetic license?



I would be embarrassed, except that ohmygah-ohmygah-ohmygah…it’s yarn!!!

And I’m thinking maybe I’ll just leave it right here on the bed. Because what we’ve got here is mostly super-fine Merino, with some cashmere blend and a little alpaca and a lot of Lisa’s beautiful sock yarns…two kinds this year…one the good old Sock!, and the other a new-to-me-anyway BFL (Bluefaced Leicester). It’s a slightly finer gauge than the Sock!, and has the feel of a yarn that is going to be a great combination of soft but hard-wearing.

What’s kind of funny is, as I was unloading all of it and going, and I’m gonna make THAT out of THIS and THIS outta that and OH YEAH, that’s gonna be etc. etc. etc.…I suddenly realized that…this year's haul…and may I remind the Gentle Readers that I went out the door Friday morning saying, “No sock yarn! No laceweight! For carp’s sake, get some good old fashioned worsted, some DK, some sportweight, some nice thick stuff!!!”…

99% of all this is fingering.

ALSO, I still suffer from that short term memory loss problem. After finally finishing the VIP sweater, I was swooning on the couch, fanning myself and gasping, “Never again! Never will I subject myself to knitting a whole adult-sized sweater in fingering weight yarn! I choose life! LIFE, I TELL YOU! I CHOSE IT!”

Fast forward about three seconds, and I am enthusiastically pulling bag after bag of fingering weight yarn out of the box going, “Ooooooooh, yes! And this is going to be a cunning little Fair Isle sweater in two tones of gray – super-fine gauge of course as this is fingering weight yarn! And these? TWO adult sweaters, one that is mostly rust with some brown and the other that is mostly brown with some rust! In super-fine gauge because oh look, more fingering weight! And eeeeeeeee! Four kids sweaters that are sort of match-y but also different because there are five different coordinating fingering weight yarns, see?!”

Plus about fourteen pairs of socks. Some assembly required.

…and seriously? I’m…really not sure…where I’m going to, you know…put all this. I’ve kind of overstuffed my available storage areas and Space Bags can only do so much…

…hmmmmmmm…

…maybe I could convince the husband that this is the latest trend in bedding? The ultra rustic (by which I mean ‘still in raw material form’) “look”?

(Dear $DEITY please let me get about 62,000 times faster as a knitter, amen.)

(p.s. thank you for sending me a husband who thinks my yarn addiction is ‘cute’ and loves hand knit socks and reacts to large boxes of yarn by yelling, “DIBS!!!” and putting in orders for sweaters and stuff instead of, you know, having me committed to a sanatorium or something, amen)

A teaser and a VIP

Whew! OK. I think I am mostly recovered from my Stitches experience. I may have…overdone things…just a tad. Eeeeeeyeah. Ahem. Just a wee little tiny bit of perhaps a slight excess of…exuberance…may have been experienced by Your Faithful Correspondent.

Which may have resulted in a tiny bit of…stash enhancement.

And a hint of reference material collection.

Two phrases which should be pronounced, “Holy crap, woman, did you leave any books or yarn for the other attendees?!”

…well, uh…they…should have been faster off the mark.

But I can’t really show you much at the moment. SEE, I got to the end of the day, and I was dragging my cart behind me, and had all these bags piled up on top of it (stop laughing) and then I got my coat and the bag I had checked earlier back from the Girl Scouts (OK, seriously, stop laughing) and then I was all trying to get All That out of the marketplace to the lobby and it was like, I need five other people and possibly a MULE right now, and then I was attempting some kind of crazy-advanced packing technique and also attempting to bend physics to my will in such a way that hauling all of this three long blocks, in an impressively cold and soaking downpour, and then stacking it alllllll up on the ACE train for the long ride home would…work.

I do not want to discuss just how much volume of stuff there really is, here. ALTHOUGH I MUST POINT OUT, yarn is…you know…fluffy. Sooooo, it’s not like I had this kind of volume of marbles, or lead bricks, or…like that.

It was yarn.

Yarn is fluffy.

It always looks like a lot more volume than it really has, is what I’m getting at. Just because it may have seemed like I had the entire national output of Australia in my bag doesn’t mean I actually did.

Far from it.

(Peru, maybe, but not Australia. Let’s not be silly, people!)

Ahem, anyway. So then as I sat there, with time ticking away and my need to figure this out becoming more pressing by the moment – the last ACE train was due in about half an hour, and it wasn’t going to sit there waiting for me if I hadn’t gotten my backside over there to the station on time – I said to myself, said I, “Self! There is no way this is going to work. Your back is on its way out, your hip is already crinkling and grinding, you can’t take any more Stuff because you’re going to have to drive yourself home from the station in Tracy in the rain no less, this is way! too much volume to be dragging on there in the first place – you’re going to be taking up, like, eight seats at this rate! – and furthermore what do you have against UPS, anyway?!”

So I went over to the UPS store, looked the nice man in the eye and said, “I wanna ship some stuff home to myself.”

“OK, no problem!” he said brightly. “So, uh, how much of…all this…will be going?”

“As much as we can fit into a box,” I said grimly. And he then grabbed a small (well, maybe medium) moving box and started cramming yarn into it. The man was good, people – he understood that yarn squishes and was not shy about packing it right on in there.

The box was bulging.

And I was a pretty interesting shade of crimson because apparently, I left my self-control at home Friday. CURSE YOU, NEWTON’S YARN COUNTRY (Cashmere merino blends, superwash of all kinds, angora, cotton, etc. at 50% off!!)! And also Yarn For Sale and your blasted (but oh-so-delicious) downsizing sale! PLUS ALSO I’m not too thrilled with Solvang Village Spinning or the Sanguine Gryphon - go and check out their patterns. They have a lot of funky-cool stuff for knitters that might be looking for something that isn’t “just another sock” or “yet another stockinette sweater.” (Their Fall 2010 patterns? “Our Steampunk line.” Cooooooooool!)

And of course, Lisa Souza.

Now, because I boxed almost everything up and sent it to myself…I can’t actually show y’all what kind of crazy we’re talking about here. There was only one thing that actually made it home with me, and it was this:



This is Montreaux, which is a laceweight 70% superwash extra-fine Merino / 30% silk blend, in the Amazonia colorway, from Lisa’s booth. As always seems to happen, the photos don’t really do this justice. There is a depth and shimmer to it that I don’t think is coming across.



Highs and lows, splashes of deep green with plays of bright kelly and hints of turquoise. I love this colorway. Love. IT. I also got the same in the sock yarn. Even though I said to myself Friday morning as the train was chugging toward Yarn Heaven, said very firmly indeed, that there were two things I absolutely did not need even ONE CRUMMY BALL of this year, and that was lace or sock yarn. I have enough to last six lifetimes already, I said. Do not need more, I said. You behave yourself (ha ha), and stay awaaaaaaay from the lace, and the sock yarns. I REALLY MEAN IT.

I did pretty good on that, too…until I walked into Lisa’s booth. Sigh.

AND GUESS WHAT ELSE? She’s got a book coming out soon: 10 Secrets of the LaidBack Knitters: A Guide to Holistic Knitting, Yarn, and Life .

Sweet!

The rest of my Crazy Made Tangible should be arriving on Monday. Which will be a lot like having Christmas and my birthday and Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day and pretty much any other occasion on which someone might drop presents in your lap all at once.

ALSO, I got my camera figured out, so, hey look, a cardigan!



I thought I was never going to finish this. All that twisted seed stitch and knit-thru-back-loop cabling, and then the smocking stitch you can see here next to the buttons, with the ‘slip those stitches back and forth, like, four hundred times and wrap the yarn around them’ thing:



…but, I think it made for a very lovely sweater at the end of all things. I made it in the Knit Picks Comfy Fingering , 75% pima cotton – 25% acrylic, machine washable. It’s a very soft and, well, comfy yarn. Easy on the hands and with very good stitch definition – the twisted stitches really stand out nicely in it.

Which is good, because I’d be pissed if all that extra fiddling didn’t, you know, show up.

This weekend, it has been pouring rain. Pouring. So instead of gardening, I’m trying to finish up some of the projects that have been languishing around in the bottom of my knitting bag for about six months longer than Forever…like Captain Adventure’s Lillehammer, which he has by now almost outgrown, and I had to do this weird-funky thing to make the neck big enough for his head.

I only hope I can get it smoothed out enough that it isn’t too lumpy for him on the inside…he can be really fussy about things that poke / itch, and what I did was kind of…fold down part of the shoulder and whip-stitch it to the inside, making the collar wider and deeper than originally planned…but there’s a little extra ‘bump’ right beneath the shoulder bone that I’m afraid might offend him…I may have to put in some extra stitching to keep it from running and then cut it off or something, which would also mean I’d need to add a couple extra rows above the turning row that I can stretch it over that as well as the collar pick-up lump.

…and even so, we’ll be lucky if he gets to wear it once or twice before a) the weather gets way too warm for double-wool and b) he outgrows it entirely.

Serves me right for not finishing it quickly…children grow so fast you can practically hear their little bones creaking, when you’re making clothes for them you must not set it down to do “later” and then walk away from it for a year…(or two…)

Time out for a class

Continental knitting should be a natural fit for me. I'm left-handed, for Pete's sake! But, every time I've triedto figure it out, I've said, "Aw, heck with it!" - my left hand just gets all tangled up and the knitting is all wonky and GAH! HOW DO YOU PURL?!?!

Dudes. Instructor stands there and does ONE knit stitch - slowly, deliberately, and on what looked like #17 needles - and I was all like, "....ooooooooooh! I SEE!"

It's not exactly "as natural as throwing" for me yet, but I can envision a future where it is...and I'm knitting a LOT faster. Woot!

(sent from my Treo)

Live(ish) from Stitches: FANCY breakfast

(Overpriced but tasty) Eggs Benedict, and (also overpriced, but DANG is it good!) coffee. Breakfast of yarn-shoppin', market-session-class-takin' champions, yo!

I love Eggs Benedict. Usually (well..."usually" on the, like, once a year occasions when I'm eating breakfast a) at all, b) in a restaurant that c) is "fancy" enough to have it in the first place), I swap spinach for the Canadian bacon.

But this time, I got the salty, fatty, porky goodness.

Look out, Market...I'm gonna be a fully-caffinated, fat-sugar-and-carb driven ANIMAL in a few minutes....!!!

(sent from my Treo)

On the way to Stitches!

Cast on the What A Character hoodie from KnitPicks this week - Captain Adventure is VERY excited. And also impatient...last night, he came to check the progress. Alas, I had found the sleeve WAY too big (oddly, we breed small children...I mean, I'm on the "little" side, structurally, but with a 6'3" father, I'm a little surprised the Pixie genes have prevailed, ya know?), so pulled it out and started over one size down.

He was Not Amused. holding the pathetic beginnings of the sleeve, he looked at me sternly and said, "Mommy. You need-it to be doing a GOODER job for mine alien-sweth-THER." (he has chosen the grinning one-eyed monster, naturally).

I'm on my way to Stitches via ACE train this year...because I can take my "good" pain medication this way. Last year got a little...miserable that way. Feh. Stupid back! Stupid hip! FEH!

But it has given me a gift today...because it's been bugging me so much lately, I am here now. The rain has given everything that bright, clean look...the creeks are full and burbling along.

The ride through the hills is lovely beyond all reason. My coffee is good and hot. I am knitting on my way to what may be my ONLY yarn-buying trip forthe year.

I have a paycheck. I've made enough progress this year that today, I have disposable income.

Life?

It is good.

(sent from my Treo)

PTO, Codeine and Button Bands

I just logged off for the day a little bit ago. Which on the one hand is, you know, like, wow, really, at 1:30? redefining ‘bankers hours’ much, there?

…but on the other hand, seeing as how I’m ON VACATION TODAY, well, you know…yeah.

See, I forgot to turn on my out of office notification yesterday. So I logged on “real quick” this morning at about 8:30 to do that. And there was this email with a spreadsheet and ‘can you look into this’ and I went, huh…that IS kinda weird…welllllllll, just a real-quick look… and then FOUR HOURS LATER I went, “OK! This is the VERY LAST one-last-thing, and I really mean it!!!!”

I find this to be both an occupational hazard, and continual reassurance that I picked a pretty good career for myself. It keeps being interesting and absorbing and I-don’t-mind-working for me; it’s like doing puzzles. Why does this lead to that? How come X because Y? Where did they get that?

…and then the ‘a-HA!’ and feeling of smug self-congratulations when you figure it out.

Dang, I’m clever…!

Of course, people who manage to completely forget that they have upcoming PTO probably shouldn’t be going around patting themselves on the back for cleverness.

Yeah, I did. I managed to forget all about it for about a week. I blame being sick, and also the codeine cough syrup. Which, especially in the early days when I was also still kind of woozy from fever and lack of sustenance, hit me so hard in the brain that…that…that…well.

You know the VIP cardigan I’ve been working for approximately the last fifty years, give or take an epoch? Well, it’s finished, and I’d love to show you a picture of it, but my laptop won’t recognize the camera card…except to reformat it. “Oh, hey, I don’t know what this is…so, I’ll go ahead and reformat it for you! Oh, I’m sorry, did you want whatever was on that? Yeeeeah, sorry about that…hey! Ouch! Quit banging me against the wall like that, I’m a delicate piece of precision engineering!!!!!”

But I digress.

So I thought finishing the sweater would be a great use of my sick time. Something that could help me feel productive while in actuality I was sitting on my backside.

Which it was.

Except…well. The button bands.

There were…minor technical difficulties there.

The directions said to cast on X stitches, knit them separately (but not cast them off), and then graft the live stitches to the fronts with a crochet slip-stitch. OK. No problem, right?

Heh-heh…yeah.

First, the button bands were too long…but I didn’t realize this and cheerfully grafted them neatly to the fronts…and up the collar…aaaaaaaand pretty much all the way up to the point where the top button would have been right beneath the earlobe of the wearer.

For bonus points, I didn’t realize this until I was about to graft on the collar and was all, …???...

For even more bonus points…I’d done the one side with the slip-stitch thing, so that side was all, “Zzzzzzzzzzip!!” and bingo, it was removed.

…the other side hadn’t gone so well. The graft just wouldn’t work right. It was lumpy and dumpy and ugly. Sooooooooo…I…did a very neat and also very thorough traditional grafting on it. It was beautiful, and perfect, and absolutely flat and “invisible” and all like that.

And it took approximately three centuries to unpick. {weeping}

This should have been a warning to me, but no. I pulled them out, went, “Huh!”, squinted at the directions again, and then cast on exactly the same way, knit exactly the same band, tried to smoosh it into the narrower space and then went, …oh…it’s too long… because what a revelation this was.

{face-palm}

SO THEN, I said, “OK, you know what? Not feeling the love for figuring out why I have perfect gauge BUT am ending up with a significantly longer button band, I’m just going to be clever [uh-oh] and do it the old-fashioned way, to wit, picking up the button band straight from the front and knitting it!”

Which worked great on the first side.

And then I took a hit of cough syrup, settled back into my chair, picked up and knitted the second button band.

All the way around the right armhole.

And didn’t realize what I’d done until the next morning, when I crawled downstairs in seven kinds of agony, a layering of stuff like “normal” back and hip pain exacerbated by not being able to take the “normal” stuff for it due to the not normal Other Stuff I was taking for the cough/cold PLUS I’d pulled a muscle in my stomach and popped a something-or-other between two ribs with the coughing, so, yeah, owies…and I picked up the sweater…and OHMYGAH, it was like, BIG! NEON! LETTERS! FLASHING! ERROR! ERROR! ERROR!!!!!

It was a see-from-across-the-room mistake, and I just stood there holding the sweater and asking myself, “OK. Laugh, or cry? Or possibly scream like a demented lunatic and hurl it out the nearest window?”

So I folded it, very neatly and carefully, turned my back on it, made coffee, took medicines, sat still for a good twenty minutes with my hands folded in my lap and my head bowed, meditating and breathing and thinking happy thoughts about kittens and lollipops and unicorns and forest scenes and such, until I felt like I’d probably live.

And then I tore it all out – again – and, calmly and as if it had never happened, picked it up properly along the right front, and serenely knit the eight rows with the precisely places buttonholes and cast it off in pattern. And then I attached the collar, and ran in the eleventy-mazillion ends, and finished the buttonholes because Nancie Wiseman would approve (I took a class from her at Stitches West once – it was righteous…she is very nit-pic…no, wait! Knit-picky [hahahahahahaha, I slay me!]), and attached the very cool buttons I got from Brazen Button and I love them because they are steampunk…but not too steampunk.

Like this.

And then I was all yay, me! because it is one damned good-looking sweater.

Which I’d show you.

If my computer weren’t eating the photos off the SIM card instead of uploading them. (But, I’m not bitter.) (OK, maybe just a little.) (Although that fugly picture of me somebody took while I was sick? Not sad about that one getting chewed up, thank-you-very-much.)

Digging out

Wow.

Ya know…?

Man.

Yeah.

Today, as not-exactly-promised by the good doctor, I was feeling a lot more like myself. Enough so that I emerged out of my bedroom, walked into my kitchen, and said, “!!!!!!!!!?”

Because holy crap, people. You would not believe the state of this place. It’s the kind of thing that makes me wonder what really would happen to these maniacs I live with, if I weren’t around to keep things going.

The bathrooms are in an advanced state of funk. The laundry is still piled up on the dining room table. There is a thick layer of dust on everything. There is crap on the kitchen floor that I’m pretty sure was there last weekend as well.

I’m also fairly certain Captain Adventure hasn’t bathed since I got sick.

The garden is in a pathetic state. The seed potatoes are sprouting merrily on the hutch. The craft table was buried beneath half a ton of stuff that nobody wanted to deal with, soooooo, they brought it up here for me to deal with, later.

The words, “Go put that on mommy’s table, honey” are starting to give me a nervous tic.

Most of the time, I really enjoy my lifestyle…but I have to admit, it’s long on hard work and short on convenience. And when I get behind on things, man, it’s a killer.

And I am behind. Way, way behind.

I should already have things in the ground – I don’t even have three inches that are clear of weeds. I should be ordering a couple cases of canning jars, I still haven’t test canned anything with the samples I got. I should have soap curing, I should have made butter today, I didn’t make bread, I didn’t rack up stuff for dinners this week, which undoubtedly is going to end up meaning either that we’re going to be eating spaghetti with butter sauce or out of a greasy bag at least once this week.

I’ve got stuff waiting to be dyed and stuff I need to weave and stuff I need to wash and stuff I need to put away. Stuff that just needs a nip here, a collar there, a few buttons sewn on. Fabric that needs to be cut into strips so it can be sewn into a rug.

…and work-work to be done, to boot…and I’m behind there, too, thanks to three and a half days out sick…which also leaves me light in the paycheck…argh…!

“Insult, I’d like you to meet my good friend injury – injury, insult!”

Feh.

I know it is a self-inflicted and needless madness; that we have a supermarket less than two miles away and the fact that I won’t have onions ready to harvest in my yard for six long months doesn’t mean there can’t be onions sooner.

It’s just…well. I don’t want to be buying these things when I know I should be able to walk out into my backyard and yank them out of the ground. Heh. It’s like the reverse of the old saying: How will you keep them in gay Paris, when they’ve touched the generous earth?

How will you get us to love what is fast and convenient, when we’ve had the rich satisfaction of growing it from a seed…with blisters and oaths and wondering what went wrong…

It’s funny, really; sometimes, I really wish I could just drop it, and live like everybody else. Watch more TV. Sweat less. Buy things that are ready to use. Get bread in plastic bags and zucchini grown in Mexico – waxed and precious like museum pieces, finely sprayed with water every so often for maximum freshness and to give it that dewy-fresh look that is so appealing to the eye.

But the minute I stomp out in a defiant, I’m a modern woman, dammit, and I have a PAYCHECK and should not have to stoop to Such Things huff to buy-not-make, well.

I don’t get much past the produce section. I look at a stack of perfect, precious carrots, uniform in size, prettily stacked, looking like they’ve never seen a bug’s foot.

It’s an amazing sight to me now, those perfect carrots and flawless onions. I might have one carrot in thirty that looks like something from the supermarket; the rest are oddly twisted, stunted, coiled back around on themselves thanks to the heavy, fertile clay that resists all attempts to lighten it up. And yet at the same time, I think about how the cost of a single carrot would buy the seed for a hundred of them; three onions would buy me a hundred and fifty starts.

And when I pick up a loaf of bread and look at it, I’m taken aback by the way it feels. So soft and squishy, so impossibly light for its size…and when I flip it over and read the ingredients (which you should never do with packaged foods, trust me on that) and find myself trying to puzzle out what polysodamawhichitmathide might be…eh…well…

…maybe I’ll just head on home and start some rising, and be grateful for the tremendous convenience of pre-ground flour…

I have things I want to do this coming year; things that last year I think I got wrong, or could have done better. I want to plan the garden better, and plant it more wisely, and tend it better. I want to be more organized, and less wasteful.

And now I’m two more weeks behind. After a couple weeks where the weather chose to send us sheets of rain on our weekends – and beautiful, sunny weather all week when I was trapped in the office – and the husband’s social life keeping him safely away from helping, well.

I’m not just behind. I’m impossibly behind, and I’m not sure how I can possibly catch back up again.

But there’s really only one thing to do: Keep going. I might not get to do everything I want to do, but it won’t help to sit around moping about it.

So I just keep at it, one small thing at a time. Clean the bathroom, make some soup for dinner, do what can be done and try not to worry too much about all the rest.

And try to be patient with myself, and with time, which never seems to give me enough of itself in a given day, and with life itself…which manages to be so complicated in its simplicity.

Well isn’t that special…

So I saw my doctor yesterday, and he gave me a whack of stuff for my assorted grievances.

There’s a codeine-based cough syrup for the rib-cracking coughs, and a butt-kicking antibiotic that allegedly does in five days that takes a lot of antibiotics two weeks to accomplish. Namely, it kills everything in your whole body…and then lets nature sort things out, you know, later.

And some promethazine. To encourage my stomach to let food happen instead of tossing it straight back up.

I was skeptical. And irritated, because the cough syrup also contains promethazine; which means that I have to do math and keep track of when I took what, and how much of what I took and cumulatively speaking, how many mLs of this-or-that have gone into my system.

Which is a bit harder to do when one has been pounding back the codeine, jest sayin’.

But I was needed to believe in it. My body had been rejecting food for eight long days. I was hungry, exhausted, strung-out, light-headed and beyond irritable.

I needed food. Actually? Not just food. I needed food, dammit.

So I took one of those little pills and, while giving it a little time to work, tried to balance believing with all my SOUL that these little pills would work with a reasonable amount of caution.

It is my firm belief that what any medication will accomplish relies heavily on what we believe it will. If I do not believe that a sleep aid will help my insomnia, well, it generally doesn’t…if I do believe it, it could be nothing more than a tablet of pressed powdered sugar with a little yellow dye added, and it’ll work wonders for me.

But at the same time, chemistry can’t always be overruled by what my brain thinks should be the case. If I swallow antifreeze while firmly believing that it is no more harmful to my body than Gatorade, well…yeah. Still gonna die.

Chemistry can be mean that way.

So I sat there telling myself, firmly, that this was going to work.

And by golly, it did.

It took every last ounce of self-control I had remaining to me not to plow straight into the refrigerator and not lift my head from it until every last scrap of edible material had been sucked into my newly-quiet stomach.

And then I napped. Hard.

This is where I’d love to say that I got up this morning and was feeling so much better that I dug out all the weeds in the garden and did the laundry and put away the dishes and then worked a regular full day before heading off to run a marathon to raise money for abandoned sea turtles.

Eh…not so much. I’d kind of hoped that maybe I’d be feeling a lot better sooner, but apparently my doctor’s guess of two to three days before I started seeing much improvement was more accurate.

I still felt really bleh today. Some of the medication has raised (ahem) other issues, the rest of it makes me a marvelous combination of tired, listless, and brainless.

And doesn’t work on my cough. Makes me more cheerful about my cough (codeine + me = giggles), but I did absolutely zero work today of any kind.

Too busy coughing, you see…

I’ve dozed off in my chair. And played a video game. And tried to read, although my eyes are still kind of fuzzy on me. And tried to work on the cardigan, but what I needed to do kind of needed my eyes not to be going all fuzzy on me every time I try to focus them.

As things turned out, I have a sinus infection, a probable GI tract infection, the possible distant rumblings of a urinary tract infection as well, and a possible if not probable case of pertussis, a.k.a., whooping cough.

Astonishing. Shouldn’t be, but nevertheless is, somehow. I mean, I know I’m not young and that by extension this would mean that vaccinations I have not had “boosted” since I was a child are likewise old. And I know that they can lose efficacy over time. And I even knew that we had a fairly ugly round of pertussis going out here.

And that it was crazy-contagious.

What I hadn’t known was that sometimes, even if you are fully and recently vaccinated, you can still manage to contract pertussis. It’s a virulent, fast-spreading, easily-caught bacteria; it lives a long time outside the body, and has a million ways to get there.

And it hitches a ride for quite a while before you have any inkling that you’re sick; I was probably highly contagious for days before the first symptom hit me.

It’s a wonder any of us survive, you know? A testament, really, to the human body’s ability to take care of things on its own.

Most of the time, anyway.

You know, except when it doesn’t, and instead lets every bacteria it meets just come right on in and make itself at home, breed, fill up all the available spaces, dude, my parents are, like, in Malibu, come on in and PAR-TAY…

I was assured that I should start feeling a lot better in two to three days. And instructed to stay away from people for five days, giving the antibiotic time to kill off the bacteria enough that I won’t be spreading this thing any further than it has already gone.

…sigh…

Well…could always be worse. All things considered, I actually got off pretty light here, and should probably just count my blessings and be glad that…oh…

…OH…

Wait. I forgot something. Yeah. The cough syrup? Yeah. Grape-menthol flavored.

Grape. Frickin’. MENTHOL. What demented lunatic came up with that as a good way to make this stuff palatable? I’ll tell you what kind: A sadist, that’s what kind.

That’s it. I am officially the most abused person in the history of ever.

(Lord-Lord, it is nasty, seriously, abysmally nasty…it is like sucking down used antifreeze, mixed with crushed grape candies or something…UGH…!)

On day seven…

“Hi, you’ve reached the office of Dr. Awesome. If this is a life-threatening emergency, please hang up and dial 911. Otherwise, please leave your name, number and a brief message, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.” {beep!}

“Oh. Uh. Yeah, hi, uh, I think I might need to maybe make an appointment? Yeah, because? I’ve sort of had this thing for a while now? Like, it’s been over seven days, and I think it’s actually getting worse instead of better? But still, I think it’s just the flu so maybe it’s just a waste of time. I dunno. But it isn’t getting better. So, yeah, I think I should probably make an appointment. So, uh, here’s my number, and, uh, yeah. Lemme know if I should come in.”

That’s right. If you look up the word ‘forceful’ in the dictionary, you’ll find me listed there.

Under ‘antonyms.’

{face-desk}

I don’t know which is sadder: How long it takes me to call the doctor in the first place, or how conflicted I still am about the “need” to go.

On the one hand, seven days is a long time to be under the thumb of a germ. It’s just not letting up, not at all. Oh, it acts like it’s going to; I feel better in the mornings and think, A-ha! Finally! I’m getting better!!, and then, right about now every afternoon, WHAM. Covered in sweat, chilled one second, baking the next, whole body feeling like it’s being beaten with sticks, stomach cramps, sinuses exploding, etc. etc. etc.

Also, I haven’t managed to hold onto solid food since last Sunday night. This morning when I put on my jeans, I thought the gap between the waist and my body seemed a little more…generous…than usual: Twelve pounds have come off me since last Monday morning, when I felt just fine and had no idea I’d be kneeling in front of a toilet in a BART station by Monday afternoon.

…if only it were the kind of weight loss that would actually stick, you know? Because sadly, as I suspect we’ve all experienced at one time or another, losing weight this way is usually a very temporary sort of thing. Within hours of hitting the feeding trough again, I’m sure those pounds will be right back around my middle again.

Which seems bitterly unfair. I mean, not that “diet and exercise” are a particularly easy way to go, mind you, but still…this has been a miserable, rotten, lousy, no-good, wretched week for me.

Seems really unfair that the only good thing about it isn’t real, you know?

…feh…

But, on the other hand, long duration alone does not change the fact that it is probably just the flu. (In point of fact, it rather confirms that it is just the flu…as opposed to a really bad cold or something.)

Which means that going to the doctor about it is likely going to mean handing over $200 to hear the words, “Go home, go to bed, rest and drink plenty of fluids.”

BUT…at the same time…well. Much as I don’t think I am suffering from anything more dire than possibly a new sinus infection that is just starting up (…yeah…owies…), the fact remains that this has just been going on a while too long.

And wouldn’t I feel like a proper jackass if I were walking around with pneumonia or, or, or I dunno…Legionnaires disease…or…something?

Yeah. I would.

Even though I’m totally not.

I don’t think, anyway.

(On a related note: Do not ever attempt to look up your symptoms on the Internet in an attempt to determine for yourself whether your lungs are “crackly” enough to warrant a trip to the doctor. Holy crap. It’s either just a garden-variety flu bug, or…flesh-eating bacterial meningitis with raging coccidioidomycosis double-pneumonia radioactive cancerous nose job with a side of jelly-dipped bacon!!!)

(…wait, what?!…)

On the eve of the big deploy

I have read, and damn near committed to memory, just over 600 pages of business requirements documentation.

60 pages of it seven times, due to “one last” change being made to it by the business team.

I have received 1,400-and-a-handful emails about it.

And written about 300 replies.

Plus over 6,300 lines of testing code.

I believe I have written more code to test this thing than was needed to, you know, make with the magic.

I have sat through a lifetime and a half of meetings.

A lifetime of which had nothing whatsoever to do with anything to do with my part of the project.

And naturally, not been invited to the scant handful that I really ought to have been around for.

In the name of getting it right, I have made so great a nuisance of myself to the business analysts, partners and development team that it is a wonder they are still speaking to me.

Fortunately, I can make scones. This, I find, goes a long, long way toward making people forgive you for sidling up to them going, “Yeah, uh, about this field? Should be a varchar. You’ve got an int. Oh. And you’re missing a source. Oh, also…?” fifteen times a day for two months.

Found three more bugs today.

Was not amused.

Thought about not reporting them.

Because, you know…really? The night before freeze? Really?!

Got a little (well, more than a little) irritated that nobody else had, because come ON, people…have you, or have you not, likewise been testing what we’re sending you…?

Realized that most probably, my irritability had more to do with a climbing fever than actual irritation.

…by golly, 102.7 and rising, yeah, that’ll make ya pissy all right…

Dosed up.

Dug back in.

Tomorrow? There’s a go-no-go meeting.

I do not appear to be invited to it.

So I don’t know when it is being held.

Chances that I’m going to get an !!!!EMERGENCY!!!! phone call at some weird, random time tomorrow morning or night to dial in, Now!!!!!, to explain something?

Extremely. High.

Chances that this is situation normal?

100%, kids.

Either way, we’ve gotten through it. Whether we go or not, we got through this psycho period.

I think we did good.

And I further think…that I am going to bed.

This haul has been long, and it isn’t over yet.

I’m looking forward to the end of tomorrow, and a return to (what passes for) sanity around here…

…where I have the flu, and Captain Adventure has a sinus infection, and the girls have been cycling in and out of school like it had a revolving door all week…

When the plague strikes

Well. This has been a splendid week so far. Monday started off just fine, just another day, off we go, working, la la la…

By 4:00, I was so thoroughly wretched that I was beginning to wonder if I was even going to make it home; only the fact that really, I didn’t have a whole lot of other options got me through that homeward journey.

And Monday night was even more wretched. My “usual” night time back pain was intensified by what I can only presume is the flu; I spent the whole night with my back cramping up, throbbing, and otherwise feeling like there was a thirty pound monster chewing on it.

Here we are at the end of Wednesday, and while in some ways I’m definitely much better…I’m still going to be working from home tomorrow, because I’m still feverish and coughing and ugh.

…and I’m not alone…

Today, I had three of the four kids home sick with me. Two of them are either not-really sick or not-very sick, but Captain Adventure has been laid out with this thing.

A couple hours ago, he wandered into my office and stood there staring at me for a long moment.

“What’s up, buddy?” I asked, looking up from my oh-so-important view testing.

“Iiiiiiiiiiii…welllllllllllll…I wannit to be unsick now,” he announced.

And then waited.

For me to…do something.

Oh, man…!

About every half hour since then, he has sought me out to announce that he is still not unsick.

And there’s really nothing I can do about it, other than to gather him up onto my lap and rock him, saying all those inane things you say to small children who find themselves bewildered by these sorts of things. …I know, it’s not fair, it’s no fun being sick…that’s my good boy, poor baby, sweet heart…

Nothing else to be done, really; when medicine doesn’t work, the only thing left is touching, cradling, crooning and loving.

…and wishing that one could buy “unsick” in convenient tablet form at your local pharmacy…