I meant to do my work today…

I meant to do my work today,

But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,

And a butterfly flitted across the field,

And all the leaves were calling me.

And the wind went sighing over the land,

Tossing the grasses to and fro,

And a rainbow held out its shining hand,

So what could I do but laugh and go? -- Richard LeGallienne

Which would be awesome. But I’m not getting anything done because, sensing that I had the day off work today so I could get OTHER things done, my stomach immediately decided to pull the ‘every time you stand up, I am going to threaten to purge everything you’ve eaten for the last three months!’ gag.

(Actually, I suspect it is either a protest against the higher dose of Motrin my doc has me on lately, or possibly that I should not have eaten dim sum for lunch yesterday. Or both.)

I’m really starting to suspect a conspiracy, though. It’s becoming highly suspicious to me, the way that whenever I plan a day off work-work so I can finally!!! get around to {task list items}, some part of my body will immediately kick up the complaints. My back goes out, or my sinuses get infected, my stomach starts roiling around or my hip does that thing where when I walk it’s all like, “{pop!} CRACK! hobble-hobble numb leg! tingling toes! {pop-pop-pop!}” until I’m forced to sit down and kvetch about it – with many obscenities – for, like, three solid hours or something.

This seldom happens on regular work days, you know? (Possibly because by the nature of my work, sitting down for three solid hours is kind of, um, well, what I do.)

I could understand it if I didn’t really wanna do {task list items}; if it was all like, “Oh, MAN! {heavy, long-suffering sigh!} {dragging of feet} why me, why me, OH ALAS, my life is haaaaaaard…{gnashing of teeth}!”

Because then, well, my body is just helping me out, right? It gets that on the whole, I would rather be playing video games or writing long-winded rants about nothing in particular (what?), or reading long-winded rants about nothing in particular, or giggling at silly cat pictures, or watching anime while finishing something that has been languishing in the ‘too complicated / big / whatever for train knitting’ bucket for six hundred years or whatever.

But these are things I’ve been looking forward to doing. Things that are, to me, either themselves pleasant and peaceful tasks (like being outside in the lovely children-are-in-school quiet tending my garden), or are things that I really-really want to do in spite of their not-so-much-fun-ness because the result of having gotten them done means that the rest of my life is made easier and more pleasant.

So it rather irks me when the long-awaited Day of Not Work-Working arrives, only to be bogarted by something random like a wickedly upset stomach, or back muscles that have chosen this of all days to act out, or Flu of the Gods +10 now with more sinus infection, or what-have-you.

Meh.

NEW SUBJECT!! Have you ever seen a sweet potato blossom?

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet managed to get a shot of one when it’s all the way open – they’re beautifully showy, like morning glories.

Also, you want to see something crazy? Remember this? My ‘found object’ teepee thing?

Um…it worked pretty well.

…I got two small but beautiful pumpkins (still waiting for my bumper-pumpkin year, I guess), and some lovely sunflowers from this patch…

…but the vast majority of all that is Christmas lima beans. They kind of like to hide under all that greenery, so when you’re just looking at the vines you’re thinking, …meh, they aren’t producing much, are they… but then you lift up their skirts a bit and OH. There they are!

Something I really appreciate – as a crazy person with a crazy commute who keeps working crazy-long days because she is crazy – about growing shell beans is…you can pretty much ignore them. Just make sure they’ve got water and let’em go. They are ready when their pods are brown and they rattle when you shake them...as long as conditions aren’t getting too damp, you can leave every last one of them out there on the bushes until you’re good and ready to deal with them.

Which is a nice change from zucchinis and tomatoes, which go from ‘perfect size’ to ‘HAHAHAHA, I DOUBLE-DOG-DARE-YOU TO DEAL WITH ME NOW!!!’ overnight for the former, or end up eaten by Something for the latter.

This wild tangle is all kidney beans. Same thing – just keep them happy until their pods are all browned up and the beans inside rattle, then pick a day to deal with them.

The tomatoes are going nuts with the ripening thing. Finally. I was starting to think they were simply not going to get there, and that I was going to end up either having to do that thing where you pull the entire bush out and hang it upside down in your garage to let them finish reddening or something. But instead, I’m getting to deal with the sudden onslaught of tomatoes, right when I have the least time possible to actually deal with them. (Um, yay?)

This is the new bed the husband built for me a couple weekends ago. I loaded it up with spinach, which is sprouting nicely – and the groovy thing about this kind of bed is, I can easily tent it with some clear plastic in the entirely-likely event that our temperatures start dropping too low even for spinach all of a sudden, creating a kind of greenhouse for the plants in it.

I am contemplating turning this into a small wheat field over the winter; I wouldn’t expect to have massive quantities of wheat from it, but I’d kind of like to try growing the stuff, just to see what happens.

I think that’s about it right now; I just planted some brussel sprouts in the front box, because they are all weird and alien looking and I love to keep the neighbors on their toes, but for the most part the garden is starting to get sleepy as the nights are getting colder and colder. I haven’t gotten around to planting the colder-weather stuff yet, or winterizing the beds that are going to just sit there all winter, waiting for the return of the warmth.

There’s a lot I haven’t gotten around to yet.

There always is.

But I suppose when you’re a person who is going to become enamored by everything, you’re just going to have to get used to the idea that you are never, ever going to get everything you wanted to do, done. The best I’ll ever be able to do is to keep plugging at it, one task at a time, and enjoy the heck out of whatever I’m doing right now.

Which is OK. Because I do enjoy the heck out of whatever I’m doing, most of the time. Plus also I think the tummy-settlers I took a while ago are starting to actually do something.

Woo hoo! I might actually do something today, instead of spending the whole day complaining about what I wanted to do and rambling about what I already did for a while before swerving back to complaining about what-all I didn’t did.

Which is terrible grammar, but I don’t really care. Because when you suddenly realize that your stomach has stopped threatening to kill you if you dare get up from your chair has a way of making you all giddy and daredevil like that. GO AHEAD, JUDGE MY GRAMMAR, I DON’T CARE – BECAUSE I AM (PROBABLY) NOT GOING TO THROW UP TODAY! WOOT!!!

A knitter's way of saying "ummmm..."

You know how sometimes, you find yourself confronted by so many appealing choices that you just stand there with a blank, possibly drooling, expression going, "Ummmmm..." for, like, a YEAR?

That always seems to be when I make the daily-useful little things, knitterly 'ums' that end up being worn All The Time.

These are fingerless mittens. Which I wear (and lose just one of) pretty much night and day, all winter long. I'm one of those 'always cold' types, and in recent years (ahem), SANG, but the cold makes my hands ACHE.

Man...laptop rebooted...back to work I go...

The distracting power of the powder

Today, I had the first really tedious day at work in a good long while; the kind of day where I found myself eyeballing the clock a bit and mentally counting up the hours and minutes between right now and quitting time. It was intellectual enough to require that I keep paying attention (dammit!), but at the same time mindless enough that my mind kept wandering.

And then I’d have to pull it back to what I was trying to do. Wait. Did I note ALL the columns, in the joins too? or did I JUST pick out the ones in the SELECT statement…?

It’s like getting to work and then wondering if you’ve left the garage door open…only way to know for sure is to drive back home and check. (Or call a neighbor who happens to be home, I suppose, but that has never worked out for me.)

I was working from home today, which ordinarily is a tremendous help when I’m dealing with things like this. Our office has an open floor plan, no cubicle walls to provide even an imaginary sense of privacy, and a lot of the people right around me spend their whole day on the phone; add one highly distractible database analyst and you’ve got a recipe for never being able to focus on any-oh look, a squirrel!

I spend so much time actively trying to ignore conversations around me, it’s a wonder I ever get anything done.

But today, being home didn’t help that much.

Because I kept thinking about tomato powder.

I know.

That is quite possibly in the top ten most random things I have ever said. What the heck is tomato powder, you are probably asking yourself. And, does this woman need psychiatric help?

#2: Probably.

#1: Tomato powder is, um, well…powdered tomatoes. And as it just so happens, I am starting to have a tomato problem. It’s like, now that the nights are getting no really colder and the days are shortening, the tomato plants suddenly went, “HOLY CRAP, THAT’S RIGHT! We’d better get these babies reproducing, and FAST!!” and now I’m walking out there every other day to find another dozen or so have gone from queasy-looking green to firecracker red.

Or purple with faintly green tops.

black krims…which aren’t actually black but rather a kind of funky pink-purple

Which reminds me: wanna see some funky-lookin’ tomatoes?!

These are called “Costoluto Genovese” tomatoes. They’re an Italian heirloom tomato, and they are IN-tense in flavor. Like, wow. Like, I don’t like them on a salad because they overpower everything else around them so that you’re just sitting there going, Dang. I thought this was a spinach salad, but no! It’s a tomato salad, with extra tomato and tomato dressing and tomato sprinkles on top.

So after having decided that they were a little much as a slicing tomato, I said to myself that they would, however, make an unbelievable sauce tomato.

And then I read about tomato powder (you see how this is coming full circle now?), which is basically making a thick puree, pouring it onto fruit leather trays (or plastic-wrap lined regular trays), drying the heck out of it and then grinding it into a powder using a mortar and pestle (because who doesn’t love repetitive fine-motor activities that just keep going, like, forever?!) or a food processor (for those of us with lives they’d like to get back to).

So having brought in approximately three million pounds of tomatoes (or twenty) (details), and having cored and quartered them (which took about three years), AND having swept all the quarters into my next-biggest stock pot, I had this.

which does NOT look all that appealing, actually, but it smelled amazing…99.5% Costoluto with a couple Black Krims that didn’t duck fast enough and about five Romas that waggled their tongues at me and I do NOT put up with insolence from tomatoes…give them an inch, they’ll take a mile, guys.

And then I put that on the stove for about fifteen minutes – just long enough to heat things up and get the skin loosened a bit from the flesh and the juice ready to come out.

Meanwhile, I did battle with set up the food mill. This little contraption separates the pulp and juice from the seeds and skins. It’s like a magic trick.

pulp and juice in one bowl, skins and seeds in the other

hi, my name is Compost!

And then begins the really long and tedious process of boiling down the juice. What you want is something that looks like…ketchup. What you start out with is something that looks like really cheap tomato juice.

but the flavor of this stuff is like a punch in the face…these are some REALLY tomato-y tomatoes!

{fast forward about five hours (!!!!) of gentle-simmering time}

I have fruit leather trays, so I used those – the puree gets ladled and spread evenly at about 1/8” depth.

and it looks almost exactly like strawberry fruit leather…you can imagine the Denizen Disappointment™ when this bright red substance turned out to be a VEGETABLE thing instead of a FRUIT LEATHER thing…

Then the dehydrator goes on its highest setting and then…well. You wait.

And wait.

And wait.

It takes about fourteen hours to get to the first “flip” – where you gently peel the leather off the tray, turn it over, and put it back on.

Then another fourteen hours of drying.

Then, if it’s still not powderably dry…another flip and yet more drying.

Then, you break it into pieces and give it another four hours or so.

I’ve flipped it twice, and I think it should be done by the time I’m leaving for work tomorrow. From what I’ve read about it, it can be used as a thickener in soups, or in lieu of ‘regular’ canned tomato paste – add 2-3 parts water to each part tomato powder, until you have the consistency you want.

I tried a nibble of the leather that had broken off while I was flipping it, and man…it’s going to be good no matter what I use it in. In general, when you dehydrate things they tend to intensify in flavor; I’ve used dehydrated tomatoes all year from last season’s harvest and they’ve been killer flavor-additions to otherwise boring foods.

Which of course means that I will be spending the whole day tomorrow thinking about what-all I can make using tomato powder. Instead of thinking about what-all columns we're using from which-all sources in wherever-all processes and procedures.

The distracting power of the powder: it is mighty, yo.

So many words, so little time

Life is barreling forward, as it likes to do, without any regard for my feelings about it. I have tried to explain to life that this is rather rude, but it just stares at me for a brief moment, then blurts out, “So anyway…!” and proceeds to continue rattling along at breakneck speed, as if I had said nothing at all.

Things have just been relentless lately. It’s been the kind of quarter where one Drama piles on top of another, where noise and rush and Crazy just swarms like ants on a neglected piece of chocolate left on the floor.

Things are breaking (like my ovens and the minivan’s windshield). Things are rotting (the roof) (because nothing says ‘getting ready for winter!’ like discovering dry rot in your roof – awesome! let’s sing another round of the Happy Homeowner Song, LA LA LA LA LA!).

Work is bat poop crazy. Just…insane. Which on the one hand is, um, well, nuts, and sometimes I feel like standing on my desk and screaming, “WILL YOU ALL JUST PIPE DOWN A DAMNED MINUTE AND LET ME THINK ABOUT ONE (1) THING AT A TIME?!?!?!”

But at the same time, I’m much happier in that kind of environment. I thrive on challenge, and on being challenged. I need to be off-balance, to have heavy demands placed on me, to have high expectations – to have people looking at me expectantly, saying confidently, “Tama can figure this out. Tell us what’s wrong with this. Why is it doing that, and how do we make it not do that any more times? Oh, by the way – four people have spent the last two months trying to figure this out and really didn’t get anywhere. Think you can have it done before we run tomorrow?”

Where most people would be howling with frustration, I find it exhilarating; the constant onslaught of Stuff That Needs Figuring Out Immediately keeps me brilliantly entertained.

My brain spends most of its time in Park. It’s kind of cool to actually run it through all its gears.

And of course, I also have BART. Good old BART. Where would we all be out here in the Bay Area, without BART? Our very own mobile Petri dish, where every imaginable disease comes together in a glorious symphony, and we can all rub elbows with each other and contract The Crazy, in ways small and large.

My latest BART story: Last week, I sat amid the tumultuous ruin of peace, steadily knitting on my Halloween tam. It seemed that by some common will, every other soul on the train was determined to be heard in one way or another – shouting Baby Daddy Drama into their phone, yodeling news of the day to each other across the aisles, shouting to comrades far and near, blasting their music through earbuds that utterly failed to keep the beat within the personal space of the listener.

Having spent the majority of the ride twisting back and forth between her five companions, airing opinions on everything from politics to religion to Young People Today™, the lady across from me fell into a brief moment of contemplation, watching as I twisted yarn back and forth. Then suddenly she leaned forward, tapped me on the knee and, as I popped my earbuds out of my ears and assumed a posture of listening, demanded to know if it was legal for me to be knitting on the train.

{insert expression of huh-wha-now? here}

Seeing that I was not catching her drift, she began telling me that seeing as how it was illegal to knit on planes, she assumed it was likewise illegal on trains, and that she was very, very surprised to learn that it was not illegal for me to be wielding such dangerous weapons with such careless abandon, in public.

I gently informed her that actually, knitting was once again allowed on planes, blah blah blah TSA blah blah blah discretion of the screener yadda yadda.

And I did not point out that the Young Person Today™ slouched in the seat beside her had, at that very moment, a knife tucked into the sock on his left foot. Which I had only noticed because as he had sat down beside her, I was pretty sure I’d seen the hilt of…something-not-gun-but-definitely-weapon-ish…jammed into the waistband of his underwear…which naturally was way, way above the top of his jeans, which were damn near around his ankles.

Somehow, I rather suspect that my #3 circular needles and folding scissors are the least of the BART security team’s worries. Just sayin’.

Speaking of…I finished this on the ride home this afternoon.

It’s stretching over a plate now, which is amusing the Denizen no end.

Also, I am going to have to fight Danger Mouse for it. She has been circling it all night, looking for an opportunity to make off with it and squirrel it away in her ever-increasing hat-stash.

She’s also after this one, which I finished a while ago.

This is Rabbitch’s “Pining for the Fjords” from about a million years ago (she doesn’t have any in her shop at present...I also have a couple other things of hers from Stitches in my stash, one of them a fingering weight in ‘cornsilk’ [I think it was] that was purchased even though I had sworn with many solemn oaths that I was NOT going to buy ANY MORE fingering weight yarn, pretty much ever, seeing as how I already had enough to shawl the entire Eastern seaboard but then this blue was just so…compelling…and I had to buy it).

And then I made…a hat. With stitches.

Many stitches. And I did that thing where you do a turning row? And that other thing where you knit two together and yarn over all the way around, so you get that picot edging thing after you’ve turned it and tacked it down.

And then I made too much i-cord on top and stitched it down kind of flower-ish on the top. Randomly. I thought.

Didn’t notice until after I was done tacking it down that my “random” looping thing was pretty much always an over-under thing except that one (1) of the crossings is over-over.

And since I’ve noticed it, it now drives me nuts so I’m going to have to un-tack and re-tack it, in proper over-under fashion. Argh.

…and now I’ve just realized I have nothing to knit on the train tomorrow. HORRORS.

Talk amongst yourselves, people, nothing to see here but a crazy woman throwing stash yarn around at an hour past her bedtime…

Fickle knits

I am definitely suffering from a case of knitting ADD lately. I must have something like seven or eight WIPs lying around right now, not to mention all the things I've started, done a couple hours work on, then gone, "Nah..." and pulled out.

I get this way from time to time.

Unfortunately, the times when I get in a "finish ALL the things!" frame of mind...do not occur at a 1:1 ratio with my Start-itis fits.

In unrelated news, I think I may be catching the flu. And it may have been a grave tactical error saying, firmly, "For heaven's sake, girl, you're awake, you might as well just get going, you KNOW you'll be fine by the time you get to the office!"

Which is usually quite true. When I stay home because I feel a little seasick, I am generally 100% fine by 6:30.

Today, I seem to be getting queasier and queasier. And now I feel hot. Although of course, I'm also DWELLING on how I feel, which has a way of INVITING such things.

Like when I start whining about how my hip hurts, SO NATURALLY my back starts up too...OR DOES IT?!?!

...I strongly suspect my back is a gah-danged liar sometimes..

Anyway! I'm making another hat, everybody! Unless of course I get distracted by something shinier in the next five minutes...

Lady Bast...

…please welcome Dharma to your realm tonight, and give her a place of honor there. She was as fine a cat as any that ever lived, an example for kittens with eyes yet unopened to wonder upon.

She commanded reverence and respect from her humans. The phrase “I’m catted” was well understood as reason enough to not do anything - after all, to get up would disturb her regal repose.

She got what she wanted by whatever means were necessary; through cunning or charm, as suited the situation. She would act the adorable buffoon for ham, or creep behind distracted humans to lick ice cream left unattended. Who has been licking at my ice cream?! Not I, said the cat.


She fiercely protected what was her own. Invading cats would find themselves most severely hissed and gesticulated at through the sliding glass door, and would run with ears flat to their heads from her wild, would-be attack.

She loved her humans, poor bumbling things. She bestowed upon us her grace and benevolence, and made the house warm with the sound of purring and meowing.

She bore her final days bravely. True to the ways of her kind, she hid her suffering well – and she fought, she fought with the heart of a lioness, to the very last of her strength and beyond it.

The honor and love she earned in this house will never fade.

Please welcome her now, Lady, and give her honor in your house.

She was as fine a cat as ever lived, an example for kittens with eyes yet unopened to wonder upon.

Frenzy and Fatigue

Man, have I been tired lately. Which on the one hand is kind of like, "Duh, really?!" because expecting NOT to be falling flat on my face at the end of days like these would be excessively optimistic, even for me.

But still...geesh! It has been really, really, REALLY, excessively, crazily, seriously-did-somebody-slip-me-a-mickey bad lately.

Which is probably why instead of getting much accomplished this weekend, I made a hat. And now I'm making some wrist-warmers from the same yarn. BECAUSE I AM A WILD THING THAT WAY.

But I love the colors in this...it's Pining for the Fjords from Rabbitch, which I bought approximately seven thousand years ago. It has been marinating in the stash forever, waiting for the day I needed a project in bright, cheerful, enthusiastic, energetic COLOR. (Hello, Today!)

(I am not using a pattern. I didn't use one for the hat either. I am apparently going completely undomesticated that way.)

Friday Randomness

A large part of what has had me so MIA lately is that I’ve shifted to a new team at work. I feel like I got a really lucky break on this deal, all things considered. There has been a lot of upheaval and movement in and around our department, and frankly I saw the writing on the wall - in pretty big letters, too - that I was so going to end up being poached out of my chair.

This is one of those things that I find hard about contracting sometimes, especially in a department like this one where there are lot of individual teams doing lots of different things, but we're all under one umbrella. You don't always have the ability to say, "Um, no please!" when someone charges up and yells, "Congratulations! You're going to be working with Satan on the Inferno project! Isn't that awesome?!?!"

It wasn't so much that the options were "bad" or anything (well...there were a couple...heh...yeah, this one time a couple of people were standing around talking about how they needed to find somebody to fill this position on this one team, and I suddenly realized that I was literally slinking down further and further in my chair, practically lying under my desk, trying to become invisible).

Which is why I was jumping out of my chair yelling, "I WOULD LOVE TO!!!" when the offer to move a couple rows over came up, because it was like not-leaving my current team. My new team is both a heavy consumer of and provider-of-stuff-to my old team. You see the beauty of this, right?

We’re basically one system – soooooo, when I'm continuing to run my usual daily statistical monitoring scripts and eyeballing the batch reports and kicking the BA in the shins and hissing, Yer bank id changes are showing, dude!!!!! ...I’m just heading off our potential errors by catching theirs before they happen.

See? It all works out.


And, I get to keep watching my previous teams collective backs. SCORE!

I’m funny that way…the work may be interesting and all like that, but the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning when on the whole I’d rather just stay put, or gets me to log in when I’m just not feelin’ it right now, is usually something along the lines of, “I need to make sure nobody on my team is going to look bad today.” I’ll even overcome my intense dislike of confrontation and {gasp!} argue with people, if I really think one of my BA team is going to get raked over the coals if I don’t head off whatever it is I see coming.

The one thing that bothered me most about seeing that ‘I am so going to get yanked off this team, any second now’ feeling was the thought that I’d be leaving my team without another ‘me.’

You know – an OCD/ADHD squirrel who just pounded back a plate of glazed doughnuts and a six pack of Red Bull…?

Because what team doesn’t NEED one of THOSE around, am I right?!?!


Ahem. Anyway. Yeah. It’s been a crazy couple weeks as I’ve been settling in and trying to ramp up on all this new stuff.

Meanwhile in other news…you know one of the cool things about working near the Ferry Building? Far West Fungi.

They have stuff like this.

Which is a mix of lion’s mane, crimini, shitake, oyster, and golden enoki mushrooms.


Which can be put with stuff like this.

Which would be a wild rice mix I picked up for fifty cents from the Extreme Discount Cart at the supermarket


And a little of that.

Yeah, onions and celery go in EVERYTHING…along with butter and chicken stock.


And then you end up with this, which is a mushroom and wild rice soup.

Which was awesome and we had to beat Eldest away from it to get any


And finally, in other-other news…I started seaming the baby blanket last night.

Oh, come on…you know…the baby blanket?

From, like…a…while ago? For my neighbor's baby? The one that got here almost two months ago now…?

It is taking approximately three thousand years to seam each section. And it is still in the upper 90s out here all day, and I strongly suspect it is at least 327 degrees in my bedroom, which is where I do most of this kind of stuff, and in related news, this is a surprisingly warm blanket…feh…


And this-time-I-really-mean-it-finally-finally…I have an Important Tip on choosing appropriate viewing material for while-seaming-a-baby-blanket brain-candy: Do not pick an anime show that is in Japanese with subtitles.


Unless, of course, you speak Japanese.

Which I am seriously tempted to try to learn to do (thanks to my recent rediscovery that I love anime), even though I have had precisely zero luck with learning any language other than English apart from about five words in Spanish, a few phrases in French and a couple cuss words in Vietnamese. I can read a few Welsh words and phrases, but cannot speak them to save my life and would not try to because even those of us who are experts at embarrassing ourselves don’t necessarily want to, at least not all the danged time.

All evidence to the contrary aside. Ahem.

Slow in coming, few in number

It has not been a banner year for the tomatoes. The romas are producing heavy yields of heavy, dense-meated fruit.. but only three plants survived through flowering.

The Black Krims are covered with green tomatoes, all of them developing cracks around their tops ...and if we can just get a few more good, hot days and the persimmons and cornucopias live up to the promise of crazy quantities of hard, green ones they gave now...I may have to revise my 'rotten year' assessment.

And until then, enjoy the special glow that (almost) only children have - aren't they awfully pretty?!?!

Taking off the training wheels

I tried to reply to this in the comments from this morning, but it got too lengthy. (Me? Lengthy? Never!) Anyway, you know the number one reason I feel I absolutely cannot continue the ‘modified plan’ for Danger Mouse the way I am for Boo Bug and Captain Adventure?

It’s this. The first week of school, I put $60 into her lunch fund. I KID YOU NOT, less than a week later – she skitters past me, stopping just long enough to blurt out, “Oh! And! I’m out of lunch money!”

“No, you’re not,” I said confidently.

“Well, the lunch lady said so, and I had to have cheese and crackers for lunch,” she tells me.

Uh, wha-now?!

MUCH. PRODDING. LATER., I learn that my beloved idiot of a child has blown through $60 buying French toast sticks and fruit snacks for “everybody,” plus getting cash-back (!?!?!) at the register of her middle school for the ice cream truck later.

(I’m sorry. I need a moment. I am still so @^*&@ing pissed about that last one. IN WHAT REALITY is that even possible?! I MEAN, I KNOW, it’s middle school, blah blah blah responsibility blah blah blah growing up etc. etc. etc., BUT LORD LOVE A DUCK, that is just…ARGH!)

Needless to say, I called the school the next day and said, “Yeah, hi, I’m Danger Mouse’s mom – can we put a block on her lunch account so she can’t purchase the a la carte stuff?”

This is what we did at her elementary school to keep her from doing the same exact thing, minus the cash back part which they were not STUPID ENOUGH to allow.

{collects self…deep breath, and hooooold for a moment…long slow release…OK! moving on!}

The fact that she couldn’t do it didn’t teach her a damned thing. The instant she discovered that she could do it, bam. Her lunch money burned a hole right through the floor of the cafeteria.

And now? Now? We are in Middle School. Which apparently is some kind of magic ‘all-grown-up’ place where the same kids who three months earlier couldn’t be held accountable for wiping their own noses are suddenly more than capable of handling all their own responsibilities without anything by way of adult intervention.

Which is why they responded to this with, “Oh, hell to the no. SHE has to take responsibility for HER OWN actions.”

And I looked at this kid of mine, starting to wear bras, about two seconds from having to arm-wrestle her big sister for the box of menstrual pads, and suddenly…it hit me, hard, that this kid, this same kid who had just done this incredibly brainless thing, this too-smart-to-be-so-stupid child…was never in a million years going to be “with it” enough to make a lunch in the mornings. Or remember the lunch. And I’ve been out of the house for three hours before she leaves for school – it’s out of my hands.

She’s going to be going without food from dinner the night before until 3:30 the following day, every day, because this is how she is, she’ll never get her act together on this, it’s just not how she is, it’s not her nature, and hang on a second…why do we take that ‘as read’ with her?!

I sat there in this tunnel of past and future rushing by me, counting up all the various ways we’ve tried to impress the concept of budgeting on her; all the times we’ve walked her through how this stuff works, slowly, carefully, with charts and graphs, with budgets and ‘tell me what $7 plus $5 is,’ with real money and pretend money.

And always, always, having to bail her out. Having to wrestle the money out of her hand, slap her upside the head and say, “What did I just say?! You cannot spend this whole thing at the first churro stand you run across!!!”

We intervene. Every single time. We go back to the charts. We explain how 2 + 2 ends up as 4. We talk it to death. We have different color cards. We use different kinds of money-markers. We talk until we’re blue, and the instant we hand her money again?

The instant you take your hand off the brake, she is full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes.

It’s like giving an ADHD squirrel a plate of frosted sugar cookies for snack with a Red Bull to wash them down, and then trying to take it for a walk on a leash made out of embroidery floss.

After six years of trying to teach her self-control…I’ve got to start letting her crash, if she’s going to insist on speeding up as she approaches the wall instead of applying a little brake…and then instead of rushing in with the Neosporin and band-aids, I’ll have to just tell her where they are and remind her what to do with them.

Hopefully, by the time she’s having to buy gas (OHMYGAH, WHA?!?!), she’ll be better able to remember to take care of those most important things first, and then have her fun.

(I don’t promise not to nag, though. I can’t help it. I’m like a walking, talking calculator with her. “That’s $6.50…that would leave you with only $39.75, are you sure you want to…I mean, seriously, dude, you don’t even like that color, why do you need to buy…OK, it’s your funeral, I’m just sayin’…!”)

(MEANWHILE, Boo Bug [her younger sister] is all, “Oh, I’m out of lunch money…oh, wait, it costs how much for breakfast at school? Welllllllll, we have plenty of muffins and waffles in the freezer, how about just lunches…and I’ll make a lunch on Thursday because I don’t like the school lunch on Thursday…” Heh. How can four kids with the same two parents all be so different?!)

Sometimes I hate being the grownup

I’m constantly trying to figure out a “good” way to teach the Denizens how money…um…works.

As in, “No, there isn’t a magic money tree in the backyard that spits out twenty dollar bills whenever y’all want something.”

Or, “Just because you saw an ATM receipt that said $387.29 does not mean that I actually have $387.29 that I can spend on just anything right now.”

And the ever-popular, “I know you were innocently looking for mints when you accidentally (ahem) noticed that I have $200 in cash in my wallet, but this does not mean I can ‘totally afford’ to hand over $15 to the ice cream truck for six popsicles that would cost me about three bucks at the supermarket.”

About a month ago, I instituted a new thing: I gave each of the kids a blank checkbook. Every month, I give the girls a $100 deposit (it’s not into a ‘real’ account! don’t hyperventilate! breathe! breathe, people!), and they can also earn extra cash for doing extra chores.

Everything they want or need is then paid for out of this money. If they don’t feel like making a lunch because this is “too hard,” then almost half of their $100 will be going to the cafeteria. If they want a cell phone and minutes to use it with, they’d better think about that before they decide they need whatever shiny thing just popped up on their little radar.

It’s already been a fascinating – and painful – experience.

Captain Adventure is on a modified plan: He has a checkbook, but instead of a big deposit from mommy that covers everything, he gets a weekly deposit based on his ‘checks’ – he’ll get a check for decent behavior at school, two checks for really good behavior, and four for super-extra-awesome. He also gets them for doing well on school work, and for doing his chores. Each check is worth a quarter – and then he gets to use them for the things he wants, like treats from the ice cream truck and Wii games.

Eldest, on the other hand, has had her own real checking account since her birthday in March – Wells Fargo has a ‘teen checking’ that is kind of like a checking account with training wheels. There are no ‘regular’ fees (ATM transactions, low balances, that kind of stuff), and reduced fees for the ‘oopsie’ things (overdrawing the account). There are also no checks, but she has a Visa debit card she can use to get cash and make purchases.

She has been incredibly mature and responsible with it. She keeps careful track of her balance, has been very conservative with her spending, and I believe has bought something like three shirts and five book since we opened the account. She hasn’t come anywhere close to overdrawing it, and is already becoming the kind of customer the banks fall all over themselves trying to acquire. (*sniff!* I’m so proud…!)

Boo Bug still has a heavy amount of…ahem…let’s call it parental advisement. OH yeah. I am totally running interference with her. I’ll make her sleep on decisions, and I’ll even flat out tell her no. You need this first. You have outgrown all of your jeans – we are going to find you a couple pairs of pants before I let you sign up for a twenty year membership on the Pixie Hollow website, kid.

But Danger Mouse…she’s the kid that tends to be the reason I find myself muttering, “I have got to find a better way to teach them about These Things!!”

She lives entirely in Now. Not only is she really into instant-if-not-sooner gratification, she has limited-to-zero ability to remember that there even is a tomorrow…let alone that she’s got something she has to do in that far, far away world.

This weekend, I had to do something that I found horribly difficult: I had to allow her to run through the balance in her virtual account on festival froodideries.

Which I knew was going to happen. Before we piled into Homer the Odyssey for a day of fun at our annual Bean Festival, I said to myself, firmly, “Now listen here, Momma I’m Going To Protect You From Everything Forever: You KNOW she’s going to blow it. It is her nature. It is this nature that must be brought under control. She can either learn this lesson now, when it is safe and she doesn’t go hungry or without a roof over her head…or you can go ahead and wait until she’s out there in the Real World on her own and then has to figure out what happens if you spend your entire paycheck the minute you get it, without remembering that you’ve got to come up with $X for rent and $Y for food.”

With this internal pep-talk ringing in my mind, I proceeded to practically have a nervous breakdown as she zipped through her entire balance over the course of about three hours. By the end of the day, I was repeating things like what her balance would be, reminding her that the next ‘big’ deposit wasn’t coming for three long weeks, and listing off the things she had said she wanted or needed ‘more’ like I was an electronic parrot with brand new batteries.

It did no good. She ripped through her cash like it was nothing, and only at the very end of the day, when she was sitting there with a $9 tri-trip sandwich (which she wasn’t going to eat more than three bites of) in her hands staring at $13 left in her account did she realize…that’s another month without the coveted cell phone.

“That’s why I wanted to go there first,” she wailed. “I knew this would happen!”

“Then it’s good that we couldn’t go yesterday,” I shot back. “You have got to learn to think about tomorrow today, kid!”

Which was pretty brave talk for someone who was trying to figure out a loophole in her own system that would allow her to let the kid get the cell phone anyway, huh?

Sometimes, I hate being the grownup. I hate when teaching bleeds over into torturing. I hate watching my kids cry when their own choices come boomeranging back and smack them upside the head.

I hate it when it seems best to let them take a fall and find out it hurts.

The rest of September is going to be ugly for #2. She’s going to “need” things, and I’m sure there will be tears and lamentations that she cannot have them right now. And I am going to be sorely tempted to just…get them for her. BECAUSE AFTER ALL, she is still so young! AFTER ALL, this is hard for grownups! …because after all, it’s not like our parents ever taught us…this…stuff…

…oh…yeah…kinda…my job here, isn’t it…

…sigh…

Someday all too soon, she’s going to be leaving this little nest of ours. She’ll be out there on her own, with a real paycheck, and a real checking account…and real obligations, none of which are likely to give her a free pass on account of her youth, or their own tender feelings.

She’s got to learn how to do this, and so many other things.

It sucks being the grownup. And I suppose it isn’t much fun being the one who is growing up, either.

I just hope that someday she thanks me for it half as hard as I think she hates me for it right about now, as it settles in on her just how many things she traded for an afternoon of new hats and tri-tip.

To be clear, I have NO idea

I don't know what it is I'm making here.

I mean, I'm FAIRLY sure it is a sock. And that there is some knitting through the back loops and it looks like cables decided to join the party.

But there is no pattern, or overall "theme," or any semblance of a plan.

Except to knit what amuses me, rip it back if I had it, and eventually...there should be a sock.

I think.

This...could be an *interesting* project...

Morning, Day 4 of Three-Day Weekend

First I stood in my closet staring at the vast array of choices (where ‘vast array’ is pronounced…hang on, must go count…six (6) pairs of pants [including the winning pair currently sagging around my waist], nine (9) shirts, and four (4) pairs of shoes) until I finally (almost literally) shouted at myself to Just choose something, dammit, we gotta go-go-GO!

But wait, there’s more. Which I shall now tell you in ‘picture this’ format.

Imagine if you will that you are my neighbor; and that, inexplicably, you are hanging out on your porch at about 4:33 in the morning when this crazy-haired, wild-eyed thing erupts out of That Hippie House dragging a reluctant “rolling” backpack behind her – only it isn’t so much “rolling” because one of the backpack straps has come loose from its “safety pouch” thingee and is wrapping itself under one of the wheels, causing tremendous instability and becoming effectively a brake.

She stops on the porch, drops her keys (for the third time that morning, by the way), picks them up, starts to lock the door behind herself, then WHIRLS! in an attitude of PREPAREDNESS! …because she’s pretty sure she just HEARD SOMETHING that was probably a BIG MEAN DOG that has gotten loose and is about to CHOMP on her CALF…(or possibly, it is the beginning of the Zombie Apocalypse and the first of the diseased flesh-eaters is upon me…you know, either-or…)

And then this itty-bitty cat streaks across the lawn in a blur of fur and with its cute little collar going “tingle-ringle” as it goes. It’s just a cat, pretending to be a big, mean dog (or apocalypse-heralding zombie, either way) – which is a thing they do whenever it would make a human look completely idiotic, which is also a thing they do.

To which the harridan mutters, “{unintelligible} cats!” and almost shouts, “DON’T YOU POOP ON MAH GREEN BEANS!!!” after it as it claws its way into her backyard, but fortunately remembers that it is 4:33. Wait. 4:34. Crap-apples!

At this point, the grumbling hag starts lug-dragging the bag – still with the strap wrapped under the wheel because attention to detail is, like, the first or second thing on her resume – to the back of the car, across part of the damp-with-morning-dew-which-would-be-a-lot-more-poetic-if-it-weren’t-so-flip-flammin’-early lawn (this little detail becomes downright hysterical in a moment, trust me), pops open the trunk and throws her bag in there.

It stands there, upright, in stark defiance of the laws of mathematics, which state that a trunk with X” of clearance won’t be able to shut if an object (X + Y)” (where Y > 0) high is standing in it.

So she gives the bag a gentle nudge to tip it over. Which it does not do because please see references to “backpack strap + around wheel = brake,” above.

Eventually, she gives it a vicious shove and sure enough it topples over and also the car trunk playfully (and rather briskly) swings downward and whacks her on the back of the head, which is a thing it does in order to make her look like an idiot.

Which is obviously not that hard to do, if an inanimate object can do it – repeatedly.

Which the car does, about three times a week on average, with this same exact “ha ha, I swung my trunk shut unexpectedly on your head, ha ha!” thing.

Third or fourth item on the resume: Fast learner.

a-HEM. Moving on.

SO THEN, she picks up the keys (what, you didn’t  just know she dropped them again?!), rushes around the side of the car (4:35, GAW-DAB-BLAME-IT-ALL-TO-HECK-ARGH!!!) opens the car door, throws herself wildly into the driver’s seat, muttering and swearing and raising all kinds of Cain about broken-this and busted-that and crap-arsed-the-other and why can’t anything ever just work around here, cranks over the ignition, throws the car into Fly Gear, slams a foot on the accelerator and, as the car begins a rather enthusiastic exit of the driveway, is screaming inside, “…AND FURTHERMORE, WHY DOES THE ACCELERATOR FEEL…all…funny…?”

Well.

You want to know why it felt funny?

You really want to know?

I’ll tell you why it felt funny.

Because the idiot in question is NOT. WEARING. SHOES.

See?! I told you the fact that I’d stomped across the damp, morning lawn was funny!

Now, I can’t explain why it was that the cold concrete (1), and the damp lawn (2), and the more-cold-and-rougher pavement of the driveway (3) did absolutely nothing to penetrate the Cloud of Distraction that was apparently gathered around my bunions, but the weird ripply-feel of the accelerator under my socked foot was like a huge neon sign going “Warning, warning, woot-woot-woot, something is not right, repeat! Something! Is! Not! Right!!”

I can only say that I'm glad it did, because what I would have done if I had gotten all the way to the station and then discovered my lack of footwear...I really can't begin to guess. (But suspect that some form of hysteria would have been involved.)

So then I ran back into the Den, dropped my keys on the porch again, considered kicking the door in to save time but decided I’d probably only break a toe, picked up the keys, jammed one into the lock, shoved open the door, RAN up the stairs {thumpa-WHACK-thumpa-WHACK-thumpa-WHACK!}, grabbed the first pair of shoes that came to hand, ran back DOWN the stairs {skip-thump-skip-thump-skip-thump!} (<= that’s my bum hip, by the way – I go up stairs kind of heavy every other foot, but going down I use the banister like a cane and essentially ‘skip’ every other stair when I’m in a hurry, which probably looks damned funny), skidded back toward the door and WAITASECOND!!!!! {sound of tires screeching to a halt on painted concrete – schreeeeeeerrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkkk-k-k-k-k-k!}

…that’s my coffee…!

Sitting on the desk!

Next to the door!


Where I cannot drink it after I have left!!

Well, THAT won’t do!!!! (Obviously.)

SO NOW, with much-needed caffeine in hand…I snatch the door open and charge out into the darkness again.

Still in my socks.

Keys held with excessive tightness in one hand.

Coffee mug in the other.

Shoes held by their uppers…in my teeth.

Because they had no laces to loop over a finger or something, and everything was tumbling to the ground because third hand had I none and it just seemed…safer…to carry them that way.

{face-palm}

Holy Mother of Mohair, as glad as I am there wasn’t any photographic evidence of this…if I got a penny for every YouTube hit I probably would have gotten from the Hidden Camera Footage on this deal? I could retire, like, tomorrow as a ludicrously wealthy woman.

NOW, if you’re a sane person (like my husband is), you are probably asking yourself, “Why on earth didn’t that lunatic put the shoes on her feet before she left the house again?!” WELL, BECAUSE! It was now 4:38, and the train is supposed to be pulling into the station at 4:49, and it usually takes me about twelve minutes to get from my driveway to the platform. Cinnamon-coated crap-apples!!!!

So I had reasoned (ha! ‘reasoned’! hilarious!!) that I would put on my shoes at the first inevitable stop light that turned red just to be spiteful along the way – which is why it takes about twelve minutes to get to the train station when it “should” take maybe seven or eight, tops.

So of course, none did.

Which is why I pulled into the station at 4:47, yanked them onto my feet (right foot, first time, woo hoo!!), spilled out of the car, dropped my keys (yes, again*), popped the trunk, grabbed my bag, got hit on the back of the head by the randomly-auto-closing trunk (…yes…again…) and then rushed up the platform and got onto the train and got to work.

Where I imitated a reasonably intelligent person most of the day.


I think I’ve fooled ‘em!, she said, sitting at work all "I iz so smarts!!" in a shirt that came pre-stained with Something.

Yeah.

Nine shirts to chose from, naturally I picked the one that had a big old splotch of Something all over one shoulder…

…honestly, why they let me out without a keeper is beyond me...



* OK, so, the dropping keys thing...that happens a LOT in the mornings because I have some nerve damage in the left hand from an old surgery; plus, due to hard-riding mileage I've put on the joints over time, I wake up with hands that FEEL like if I looked at them they'd look like great big overstuffed sausages - but they don't actually look that way. They just look like normal hands. But, they're also usually kind of numb / tingly / painful in different spots (HOURS of amusement, cataloging which parts 'hurt' and which parts are 'just numb' and isn't it curious that the FIRST joint hurts on this finger, but the SECOND joint one is just kind of tingly?), and they don't always actually have the grip on things they say they have until I've worked the life back into them with a bunch of stretching exercises (which come to think of it, must look really bizarre to other people on the train...heh...Invisible Piano! Now with Witch Claws and Kung-Fu Fists of Fury!). Which take too danged long, so I frequently am charging out the door before my hands have actually finished waking up, and hence - I am constantly dropping my keys, pencils, coffee mugs, jackets and anything else my hands have said "No, dude, I've totally got this!" and I was foolish enough to believe them at that hour. C'est la vie. But I do get a little tired of the crash-jingle of my key ring hitting the pavement at times...

It had to be done

Microwave 2-3 minutes...bake at 450 for 13-18 minutes...pan-fry 4-6 minutes...deep-fry at 350 for 3-4 minutes...

...huh...deep-fry the chicken patty...iiiiiiiinteresting...different...

So OBVIOUSLY, I had to try it.

In the name of Science.

Along with some golden potato "wedges" (fried with just a little sea salt) and zucchini (barely shown some heat and drizzled with Balsamic vinegar). And a little jalapeno jelly for the chicken.

The things I do for science...SUCH a burden...

(yeah, they're pretty good deep-fried...crunchy outside, moist inside...and jalapeno jelly ought to be in every cupboard because that sweet-heat goes so marvelously with so many things...)

You know you are "other directed" when...

...you see a magazine called "Soaps In Depth - ABC" with a description of "in-depth coverage of only the ABC soaps!", and you don't immediately think 'TV show,' you think, 'huh, is that a brand of melt-n-pour glycerin I've never heard of?!'

...I really do live in some kind of alternate universe, don't I...

Sock accomplished

The one good thing I can say about my commute: it does lay on the knitting time. I finally dug these out of hibernation, and bang! Done!

We are going through some changes right now, at home and at work. It's been a challenging few weeks, and I strongly suspect it will continue in this vein for quite a while.

...sigh...

I'm....gonna need more sock yarn...

{censored}

A long time ago, in a random place that had nothing to do with bloggers, blogging, or indeed any form of writing whatsoever, someone asked me if I censored myself on this blog.

“Oh, @^*&@ no!” I replied.

But this was, of course, a bald-faced lie. I mean, just look at the ‘@’, people.

Oh yeah. I censor.

I write a lot more than I post. Most of the time, it ends up in Blog Purgatory because I don’t finish it – Life happens, and time passes, and I can’t remember where I thought I was going with this odd rambling thing about…hmm. Well. I assume it was about something.

But other times, it never gets read by anyone else because it’s angry-writing. Unkind rants about my fellow creatures, blistering critiques of the latest political nonsense, a dissection of the lunacy from the latest pamphlet left on my door by well-intentioned $DEITY-worshippers who feel that I would be an awesome fit to the congregation because who doesn’t think celery IS god? Huh? HUH? AM I RIGHT?!?!

Other times, I’m just whining about something…and then I look at what I’ve written and I think, YA KNOW…some well-intentioned soul is going to ask you if you’ve ever tried {something that comes up in the first five Google pages when you search on the condition}.

And then I’m going to write one of those angry things that I never post. “Thank goodness you’re here, Captain Obvious! You’ve saved the village!!”

The neat thing about writing, though, is that unlike a word that has been spoken where there were ears to hear it, I have the ability to review what I’m about to say in writing and go, “Sigh…I don’t really mean that, not at all…” {delete-delete-delete}

…and thus it is that sometimes, there are seemingly weeks between posts around here…

…which, of course, leads me to feel as though I am cheating somehow.

In real life, I frequently don’t use @^*&@ when I mean to say…well…that other word. Which I don’t put on my blog, because every-so-not-very-often, The Lady My Mother reads it. And being as she is pure as the driven snow, she would surely swoon if she saw the word rhymes-with-spit on here.

Because Lords Knows she herself has never used such a word, yea verily, never once.

Ahem.

Aaaaanyway…in real life, I frequently use words I shouldn’t. I can be snarky and sarcastic, too. I sometimes hear myself say something and think, Um…dude? That was a little…over the top, doancha think?!

I mean, I’m not particularly confrontational; I try to stop myself when I’m about to go off on some wild-eyed rant and run it through the “is it helpful, is it kind, is it true” filter before I fire all cannons.

But every so often, one will let loose; I’ll say something hurtful, or even hateful…or thoughtlessly cruel…and only after the words have left my mouth and settled into the ears of others does my brain-mouth processing kick in and go, “Oh, um? Actually? That last one was not helpful, or kind, or even true…yeah, let’s not say that…oh…too late, huh?…uhhhhh…sorry, my bad…”

In real life…I have bad days. Ugly, shamefully self-absorbed, mean-spirited, angry, tired, limping days. And on those days…I basically say, “I don’t wanna talk about it!”

It’s like the difference between what I really want, and something that just catches my fancy at the moment.

If you go window shopping with me, man, my eye is caught by everything. I’m like a crow – if it’s sparkly, I’ve got my face pressed up against the window and I’m going, “oooooOOOOOOO! Lookit! Lookit the Thing!! It haz apps!!!!”

But what I really want is that glorious freedom…the ability to choose whether I will or won’t “have” to get up tomorrow at Wicked O’Clock to resume the madness in exchange for a paycheck; I want it more than all the apps there are, or ever will be.

What I really want is for the world to have more love, laughter and light in it. I want people to find their own Happy – and I want other people to just enjoy that they are happy, instead of trying to force them to be happy in a different way.

Because there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ when it comes to what is a happy life. What makes me happy isn’t necessarily what makes you happy; what I can do easily isn’t necessarily easy for others, and what others find easy frequently makes me go, “@^*&@, girl, how do you do that?!?!”

I want to enjoy my time among them.

Not be pissy, tired, angry, desperate for soli-frickin-tude, snarky, short-tempered and otherwise you kids get offa mah lawn!!!!

So in the same way that I’ll stare longingly at the tablets and app-store offerings, the fancy dresses I know I’ll never wear (but secretly wish I was the kind of woman who would), the services I’d appreciate and conveniences that would give me more time to enjoy the apps in the first place…and then stick with getting only what I actually need…

…I’ll write something angry, or bitter, or mean…and walk away from it…and stick with what I really want life to be made of: the things that are funny, and/or kind, and/or helpful.

And try to make the words I speak do the same.

And thus shall I fake it until I make it what I want it to be.

Hallelujah, amen.

Captain Adventure came into the kitchen with one of his many, many, many, many, oh-so-VERY-many inventions and asked - nay, demanded!, that his portrait be taken forthwith. As his loyal subject, I of course did. Forthwith. Many pictures of him feature this slightly strange, grimace-smirk. It's his Picture Face. He came around to check my work, frowned, and said, "Oh. So DAT'S mine face when I do dat. Hmm." And then he went back to inventing. Ah, the things we 'Typicals' have trouble grasping....can you imagine not just KNOWING what kind of expression you were making, when you smile for a camera?! The way autism crosses wires can be so...fascinating, sometimes.

What a world, what a world...

[ed: um...yeah...posting from moving train...using cell phone...NO idea why all that HTML-stuff ended up in there...on only HALF of the post...fixing, because I am compulsive that way...]

[ed2: holy moses...does auto-correct do this all the time and I haven't noticed yet? "if" instead of "of" and "in" instead of "on" and...wow...I think my toes are curling up...]



The baby blanket is in the final stages now...I "just" have to pick up a total of 636 more stitches along three more edges, knit five rows in garter on them, then cast off.

Then seam the three panels together.

Fix a portion where I'm not happy with how the yarn was carried.

And then promptly hide that fixed part under a fabric backing, unless I come to my senses FAST and realize this is totally unnecessary.

IN OTHER NEWS...I forgot my wallet this morning. Which is hardly a surprise, because I am still so wildly off my groove post-vacation, it is a wonder (and a blessing my coworkers aren't aware they should be thankful for) that I am remembering to put on clothes in the morning.

I also decided to give bringing a lunch a miss, because I am currently "between bags" for toting my work-stuff, my last wheeled case having spontaneously combusted literally over the course of three days.

These two things were rather disconcerting, when put together. I mean, we're talking about a 24-hour fast before I would be somewhere where there was FOOD-food. Sure, I could get lucky...scavange some meeting leftovers or something...but....well.

I'm already having some trouble with "unexplained" weight loss lately - my lifestyle being literally 20 hours of 'go' to 4 hours of sleep all week, high-energy at work, dashing for trains and shuttles, then getting home, changing into Garden Clothes and taking a stomp around the garden weeding, picking, fertilizing, etc. etc. etc., before coming in to cook something, clean something, and research something before bed, I go through an awful lot of calories every day.

You too could be this "effortlessly" skinny. Why people aren't jumping on this diet plan is BEYOND me.

So I was...a little panicked. I have a couple crackers and a small bag of dried apricots in my drawer at work.

AND THEN.......I remembered.

There are apps for this.

So I went into Starbucks, got a scone and another mocha...and swiped MY PHONE in front of their reader.

And they gave me food

And I can do the same basic thing later for lunch, using online ordering.

What a world we live in, huh? We can spend our money so effortlessly, we don't even have to have any direct way to access it on our actual person.

...um...yay?

[ed3: I got a HUGE salad for lunch - I mean enormous. And I used Ebates money that was sitting in my Paypal account, so, no actual forms-of-payment were needed. AND THEN, they were so badly messed up (and I was so 'don't worry about it, man, happens to all of us sometimes') that I got a free cream cheese croissant with peaches! Which is still in my fridge! BECAUSE! One of my coworkers? She got us these jelly cookies with powdered sugar on them? And I ate it? Like, in three bites, between the words "oh {chomp!} I {chomp!} couldn't {chomp!} possibly {belch!}"? And then I was all, THIS IS SO COOL, because, now I can have my croissant [you hafta say it right, cwaaaaaaa-SAHNT!] on the train, and I filled my thermos with hot water so I could drop one of my tea bags in there while waiting for the shuttle so that I could have that Perfect 8 Minute Tea thing by the time we got to the station [what? that's totally normal] and then I would dine on my cwaaaaaaa-SAHNT on the way home ooooooooonly, guess what else? I had a small bag of chocolate toffees in the SUITCASE-sized bag I'd been meaning to bring home for about a week now but hadn't, but then today I said, "Look, you don't have THAT much stuff, and this thing...it's got to get home sometime..." AND THEN THERE WERE CHOCOLATES IN IT. Coincidence? I think not. I think it was $DEITY going, Dang, girl, you are sooooo entertaining! Can't believe I could make something so flighty...here, have a candy...then do that thing where you try to run away from your seat while the strap of your luggage is wrapped around the middle bar of the seat, because you were trying to finish that row [like THAT was going to work anyway, heh, they're so CUTE at this age!] even though you totally knew your station was coming up fast...]

Um, question?

...why am I so easily amused?!?!