Lots to do

And no will to do it. I'm having one of those days when I just wan to stay home alone and just do nothing all day long, at least nothing for anyone else. I really don't have that kind of luxury so I will now go forth and list this beautiful wish here. I mean what else is there to do if not fantasize about it. Here goes: Ahem, cough, cough ahem, ahem.... If I had the day to myself, I would:

1. Sleep until I was no longer sleepy.
2. Stay in my pajamas and make coffee.
3. Knit while the coffee brews.
4. Have a hot bagel with cream cheese and jelly.
5. Go back to bed and knit, read, write or sleep.
6. Have a long soak in the tub and read.
7. Feeling rested and renewed I'd get dressed and head to my LYS
8. Hang out there 'till they kick me out.
9. Go home and fall asleep while knitting.

That is it y'all that is my perfect restful day. Alas it cannot be, you see I have these 3 people in my house, and they don't like it when I rest. It makes them want to take all the clothes out of their drawers the go into my drawers take out all my unmentionables and spread them everywhere and even go as far as hide them in the couch cushions so that one day when my sister in law is visiting she finds a red bra behind the couch pillows. Not that they've ever done that (cough) but it could happen (last January)

What is you fantasy day? Inquisitive (read, nosy) minds wan to know.

Happy Monday!!

I have no water. Why, because I'm a little bit on the dumbass side of smart today. Last Thursday my apartment complex posted a note on my door saying that they'd found a leak somewhere in the great beyond of pipedom and were therefore going to turn the water off on Monday morning. I being the great panicker of the century thought, "Gosh I better fill up one of the tubs with water". Well I guess you can tell what I forgot to do. Now I have no water. Label me forgetful. To make things worse, I didn't run the dishwasher before I went to drop off the gurlies at school this morning. Oh and I didn't do the dishes after dinner last night either(didnt' have a full load), so now I will have dirty dishes until dinner time. It's kinda driving me bananas. Not because I'm a neat freak with a perpetually clean house (far from it, if you know me personally then you know what a huge lie it would be if I said my house was clean and tidy) no, it's driving me mad simply because I want to have clean dishes by the time the gurlies come home from school and now I wont. Usually my dishes are still dirty by the time I bring them home so it's not like it's an anomaly around here. I just always seem to want what I cant have. Maybe I should try being a grown up. Nah. I'll just have to knit all day then, seeing as how the day is pretty much shot :P

Finally!

Last night my buds and I were finally able to meet up again, after Hurricane Ike ruined everything around here. We ended up having a change of venue because our local Whole Foods(WF) is closing a 9pm for now. With the city still under a 12am curfew many places are closing earlier than usual so my buddy Grace suggested a cool little tea house located in the same shopping strip as WF. I had a yummy passion fruit slushy with mango jellie, it was a bit sweet for my taste, but I have a low sweetness threshold. I hope we get to go back soon. It was great seeing them again, well not all of them Rachel is on a very difficult and taxing trip. *I'm sure she is having no fun what so ever and is itching to come back into the arms of her beloved knitting night. Fare the well Rachel, I'm hoping that this trip is over quickly and that you at least try and have a good time without us. As far as the knitting goes, sigh. I had a terrible gauge accident and had to frog the stripey hat. I have gone down a needle size and am happy to announce that having another bout of insomnia has really paid off, I'm up to the decreases again. I hope to have it finished in a few hours. Luckily it's acrylic (found on clearance) and I can just toss it in the wash and have it ready to gift by tonight (thanks for saving my hinney Carroll, hope you feel better!). My mom's socks are almost finished as you can see, they should be finished by tomorrow. Well I better get back to my knittin', Scratchy is napping so I better go. Later gators! * I hope she can't read minds, or else she'll find out how jealous I am. If she comes back and gloats about how much fun she had, I may have to throttle her a little.

Mother of the year, right over here.

Santa or an elf? You decide. I'm leaning toward elf, myself. I think it'd the short legs that give it away.

Isn't she cute-a-luscious? Don't freak out, I only left her in there long enough to snap these pixies. Well not counting the 10 seconds she was in there before I noticed she was in there.

When I found her there she just gave me this gappy goofy grin and continued trying to climb up the chimney. I asked her what she was thinking and again her only reply was the grin, then I grabbed the camera.

That girl is adventurous y'all, and fast! I turned my back to put some laundry away and bam she's gone, we were in the same room for goodness sake! I bet she waits for the exact moment when my mind wanders then she escapes.

A few weeks ago I left her on the couch and went to the kitchen to get an apple and when I came back I couldn't find her. Dude I can see the couch from the kitchen, I can see the kitchen from the couch, our apartment is tiny and in 2.8 seconds homegirl gets down from the couch and ends up....in my older daughter's closet! I had to walk into each room to look for her because when I called out her name she wouldn't yell back! Scratchy is going to be one heck of a _______(teenager(!) spy(!) headache!)) Pray for me y'all

She's 1, and not even walking yet but somehow she manages to give me the slip almost daily. I'm thinking of going old school and tying her little leg to the dining room table when ever I have to leave the room, is that legal?

Oh and I tried the play-pen, but there was a bit of a snag with that method. You see her older sisters cant bear to hear her cry, they get this uncontrollable urge to make it stop, so when she began crying in the play-pen they came up with a super ingenious and ultra fantastic way of making her stop that noise she makes when she's not happy.

You aren't going to believe it, ready? They cut the mesh with scissors!

That's not even the worst of it, I think it took me a week before I found out how they were getting her out.

Mother of the year over here.

I was so proud of Lily and Jess for working together and figuring out a way to get lift their baby sister out of her play-pen. Imagine my shock and horror when I realized they had gone all prison break on me, about a week later. Needles to say I no longer trust any of them.

What does it mean when 3 people under 4 feet tall with a combined age of 11, outwit a person who is 20 something and over 5 ft tall? It means that I will have a completely gray head of hair by the time I'm 30, and in an insane asylum by the time they graduate high school.

(Oh my goodness 3 teenagers in 1 house, 3 female teenagers in my house)

I'm gonna go lie down now, the room is beginning to spin.......

like a square peg

Oh yeah, its accurate. It has me absolutely pegged. I can die happy :P

you are whitesmoke #F5F5F5

Your dominant hue is red... you are passionate, energetic, and unafraid of life's changes. You're all about getting out and trying something new, even if it means taking risks that other people would be afraid of. Hey, if they're afraid and you're not, more power to you, right? Your saturation level is very low - you have better things to do than jump headfirst into every little project. You make sure your actions are going to really accomplish something before you start because you hate wasting energy making everyone else think you're working. Your outlook on life is bright. You see good things in situations where others may not be able to, and it frustrates you to see them get down on everything.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

But then what about this?

you are violet #EE82EE

Your dominant hues are red and blue. You're confident and like showing people new ideas. You play well with others and can be very influential if you want to be. Your saturation level is lower than average - You don't stress out over things and don't understand people who do. Finishing projects may sometimes be a challenge, but you schedule time as you see fit and the important things all happen in the end, even if not everyone sees your grand master plan. Your outlook on life is bright. You see good things in situations where others may not be able to, and it frustrates you to see them get down on everything.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

Joy!

That's all I've got today y'all! The girlies are back at school and I am haaaapppieee!!! WooHoo! It's been difficult having them here so much. Not because I don't enjoy spending time with them (which I do), but having to break up fights and answering a bajillion questions a day is not my idea of quality time, you know?

We had fun making tortilla pizzas, baking cookies and having yelling matches, but I gotta say, absence does make the heart grow fonder. I miss them.

They will be back this afternoon so I'm sure I'll be okay.

Meanwhile it's been a productive week knit wise. It's been easy finding time, what with my insomnia back, I've found gobs of time. I finished the green hat in just one night!

I think it also has to do with me getting faster, I'm a thrower so I'll never be as fast as a continental knitter, but I'm still purty fast yo!

Those stripey things are for a certain buddy o' mine. They are heel-less, so they can be newborn socks or mittens. I've yet to cast on the matching hat but I hope to do so after I finish one of the other 2 projects I have on the needles. Oh and that orange thing is my fancy shmancy 8" ruler and calculator (It's okay to be jealous, I would be too).

Those be socks for my mom, they will be gifties for her birthday, I "designed" them myself (by design I mean I used a stitch pattern I found in this book and used DK weight yarn and used a totally different gauge) I can write up the pattern if anyone likes, so let me know. Oh and that picture is deceiving that there is actually 2 socks in 1, you see I knit up the sock down to the toe and then drowned it in the frog pond, I hated the gauge that much. The second sock is 1 pattern repeat short of the heel so I expect to have the pair finished by Friday if Scratchy takes her naps properly.

Last but not least is another hat, I love the way the colors are spiraling around. It's going to be a plain stockinette hat only because I don't want to disturb the flow of the colors, I should have this one done by this week end too.

Well I'm off to go do the dishes and fold laundry and make diner.

Cheers!

We want Ike!

NOT!!!

But ain't it funny. My love for all things History and the current political atmosphere compounded by the horrifically fantastic hurricane that just ran over us makes this little pun quite amusing to me. (Sadly very few people get it and most think it's morbid, idiots!)

We actually fared quite well. In fact we made it through absolutely and completely unaffected. Seriously. It was scary as all get out and I will never ever be the same person again but thank GOD we made through.

We never lost power (unlike 95% of Houston) so we have had all the comforts we could possibly ask for. We did however lose our water for about two or three days, which was inconvenient but not terrible. I had hoarded enough water to get us though about of week of waterlessness(I like making up words, can you tell?) And that's not even counting the drinking water I had hoarded, which was also in biblical proportions. Yep, you could say I was a bit prepared.

Unfortunately the same could not be said about alot of people here. Most thought that this was just another scare and just barely got around to getting water, if that. It was expected that Ike would hit somewhere south of here, I cant remember where right now. But it ended up slamming right into us in the end. Well, not us, Galveston to be exact which is about an hour from here, so I'm guessing that puts it about 60 miles from here.

I'm not gonna sugarcoat it here y'all, the storm was scary as all get out. It was loud and scary and big and powerful, which in my book makes it worse than having to speak in public or the color yellow or fartin' in public and getting caught. Hurricanes are horrible terrible abominations of the earth, right up there with beets and rotten eggs and political corruption and all the other horrible things that can pop into your head. I'd rather have no coffee(!)

Many people are still without power which makes everything more difficult. Your food goes bad, cant get more because the grocery stores are without power and so are the gas stations so you have no gas either. Fortunately on my side of town almost everything is back up and running so it makes life a whole lot less inconvenient.

I know I've rambled but please understand that I'm just now coming off of panic and survival mode. I promise next post will have some knittin'. Meanwhile here is a picture. But keep in mind that it is nothing compared to what Galveston looks like, in fact if you look at it in contrast to the devastation that has befallen Galveston you will realize that in reality there is nothing wrong with it at all.

So how goes the knitting?

Well I'm glad you asked. I hadn't been feeling the knitting mojo for a long time. There were even days when I didn't knit (gasp!), but then September rolled around and I came to the realization that Christmas was coming and Superman had already requested 5 pairs of socks and the girlies want new hats and mittens. So I began perusing the stash. I don't have pictures of any of that yet, so be patient. I figured if I start now, I should have at least 2 items finished per person by then. That would be 3hats and 3pairs of mittens for the girlies and maybe a hat and 2 pairs of socks for Superman. That is a decent amount of knitting if I think, but not an overwhelming amount, so I should be okay.

Then I realized that in November my family has 4 birthdays. Superman should have at least a pair of socks. My mom is offended that I've never knit her anything, so I have to make her something. Jess wants all her hats and mittens to match, so I have to do that. And I should really finish that sweater I started for my sister by her birthday. Crap!

My best buddy, Yancy is a crossing guard so she is out in the cold during the winter around here and her birthday is November too, she has requested a scarf, a hat and some mittens. Crap!

Her kiddos also want me to knit them stuff, but they can wait till Christmas. Her son wants a hat, her girlie wants a hat and mittens. Crap!

My brother told me he is also still waiting for a hat and a scarf. Double Crap!

Meanwhile I have been entertaining myself with this beautiful Hand Maiden Seasilk in the Paris colourway. mmmm garghhhhaaggah.

So lets recap. For November I need to make.

1 Cardigan (Meli)

2 pairs of socks (Superman and my mom)

2 pairs of mittens (Yancy, mom and Jess)

3 hats (Superman, Jess and Yancy)

1 scarf (Yancy)

CRAP!

I better go.

Edouard, then Gustav...

And now Ike, yikes. No they are not former boyfriends, they are Hurricanes.

Well technically Edouard was a Tropical storm, but still, it looks like all the dudes are aiming for Texas this year y'all. Superman wants to leave and personally I kinda don't, only because Ike is so freakin' massive that it will have an impact as far inland as Austin. I might as well just stay here, and get hurricaned on at home (my stuff makes me feel safer).

Honestly right now, I'm making a list of all the pros and cons of leaving. Wanna see it? Here goes: Ahem...

Pro:

Category 3 winds here in Houston, cat.1 in Austin, for sure.

Con:

I'm far enough inland that, maybe it wont be that bad

Pro:

I will get to have a mini vacation.

Con:

Too freaked out to enjoy it.

Con:

I'd have to pack for 5 people

There may not be room for my yarn(some but not all )

Possibility of being stuck in lots of traffic, maybe in the rain, with a 6, 4, and 1 year old.

Pro:

We will feel better not having to go through the storm with said 6, 4, and 1 year old.

I can finally get rid of all the acrylic in my stash.

I will meet new people and get to see new places, Superman is really good at making lemonade.

Lots of knitting time, Superman wont let me drive, he gets all Superman-ish on me.

It's dead sexy!

All in all I still don't want to leave. I think a big, huge hastle. But I keep remembering these sweet children of mine and realize that in the end it's best if we do.

Send good thoughts our way people, we will need it.

See y'all on the other side of this.

PS. Porpoise, and Knitlet, thanks for the kind words for my no longer a real baby, baby.

They really made me feel awesome. Thanks.

And so it ends.

The most beautiful year in a baby's life. My baby is now 1 and the first year of her life is now only an amazing memory.

Y'all don't want to know how much this sucks!

I have always had a problem with my babies' first year coming so soon after they are born. It's like one day they are born and a week later they are One. I hate that. I know, it's a huge milestone and technically I should be happy about it, which I am, but it always feels like it was way too fast. Sort of like when you go on an amusement ride and it's exiting at first, then it gets a little scary and when you finally get used to all the ups and downs and you begin having so much fun, it just ends. That is what it feels like for me, every single time. Sure, there is more fun to come, more milestones achieved, many more adventures to have, but for me, nothing compares to that amazing first year.

We spent the day mostly at home, then in the afternoon we gathered at ChuckE.Cheese. I know she's too small but she really did enjoy it. She got really happy during the birthday celebration with Chuck E, she wasn't even scared of the huge rat, how awesome is she! Here are some pixies.

Elizabeth, thank you for letting me be your mommie.

Sorry this post is so choppy, and too un-well written, I'm having a hard time being happy and sad. My girlie's' first birthdays are always a bit emotional for me.