My life, in a list

Well, it's been exactly one month & two days since I last logged on to (or is it into?) the blog.  In some ways, it feels like only hours have passed & in other ways, it seems like years.  It's been one of "Those" summers.  So, what's been keeping me away?  What, other than some crazy long hours at work that is.

Well, let's see....  Besides the crazy long work hours,

• There's been several days spent with my daughter doing college admissions/orientation/registration type stuff.
• I finished the OITNB cowl but haven't blocked it yet.  Or taken photos of it, for that matter.
• Our up-right freezer died.  And of course it died just days after I'd spent an entire paycheck on frozen foods.  And of course, no one noticed it until the smelly, melted stuff started dripping out the door. 
• Several basic stockinette watch cap type hats have been knit.  They haven't been photographed either.  Or over-dyed, which I plan to do.
• The local farm where we pick our pumpkins each year has planted their crop & the vines are now visible from the road.  The day they planted the field, I instantly began craving candy corn.
• It's been a crazy rainy/stormy summer.  A couple of tornados ripped through the area while I was at work one night.  And of course, I get a text from my daughter, who was home alone, saying "I'm okay, it was only a small tornado."  What the heck does that mean??  A small tornado that knocked a few trees down but the roof is still on the house?  Or was she being her usual sarcastic self & implying that we don't have a house anymore?  And of course she didn't answer any of my frantic texts back because, being a teenaged girl, she'd decided to take a 3 hour shower the moment the radio stopped blaring it's beeeep, beeeeep, beeeeep warning.  As it turned out, the tornado passed about a mile away so all was fine & dandy at home.  I am, however, the proud new owner of a few more gray hairs.
• A few nights later, another storm, a little bit of flooding, a near miss with being electrocuted, and an emergency evacuation.  It was quite exciting and a little bit scary.  And pretty funny after the fact.
• Oddly, the 'big bad' storms caused no harm, but several other thunderstorms  have knocked out our power for three or four hours at a time.  And always on my night's off from work.  No power at night means I can neither see to knit nor binge watch Netflix, which means I've been a very grumpy girl.
• My husband got sick & ran a temperature of 103+ for three days before he finally agreed to go to the doctor.  (Men!  Sheesh!)  He had strep throat, pneumonia & a massive kidney infection.  Luckily a month's salary worth of antibiotics and three or four days rest and he was back to his normal self.
• Our water company performed "line flushing" in our neighborhood and for the first two days our water looked like raw sewage, then for the next five or six days, it looked like watered down bourbon.

Thank you, Aqua Virginia

• It's been about two weeks since the line flushing and while our water now looks normal, we still can't even brush our teeth with it because it tastes so bad.  It's like drinking straight bleach.
• On the same day the water company did it's thing to our water, the utility company mowed our easement area out by the road & chopped up our Comcast line.  (Thank you Comcast for ignoring four years of pleas to bury the cable.)  The chopped up line meant, not only did we not have water, we also didn't have internet or TV for a little over 48 hours.  It was NOT a good time in our lives.
• In the process of gagging on the taste of our water, I managed to knock out a filling while brushing my teeth.  Good grief!
• While being unable to do laundry, Netflix binge or watch regular TV, I became so bored & frustrated I returned to knitting on the pi shawl.  I keep telling myself it's almost done.  But it's not.  It's no where near almost done.  In a very frustrated, "I'd like to stick a needle in both Comcast & the water company's eye" moment, I made the horrible decision to put a ruffle around the outside edge.  Just a little ruffle.  Just a couple of inches worth of ruffle.  And since it was going to be a short ruffle, I wanted it to be extremely ruffly.  So I started the ruffle by doubling the stitches.  Good Lord!  What was I thinking?  The round I'm on now has over 1,000 stitches on it.  One thousand+ stitches per round and I'm still not finished increasing.  Good freaking Lord!  Maybe I should just stick the knitting needle in my own eye.

So, all of that to say, I simply haven't had the time or mental capability to write a blog post.

And since this is supposed to be a knitting blog but I have no knitting photos of my own to show you, I'll leave you with a picture of some yarn I'm currently trying very hard not to buy.  I'm trying very hard to wear my big girl panties & pay for my daughter's college education instead of more yarn.  

phydeauxdesigns

But this yarn from phydeauxdesigns, an Etsy shop from California, is screaming my name.  I think it's absolutely gorgeous and that it should come & live with me.  The girl-child doesn't really need a college education, does she?