Three on Thursday - Trees

I'm a little worried about the knitting community.  I think this winter must have been awfully tough on the community in general because a surprising number of you showed an odd amount of curiosity over last week's Three on Thursday mention of my three favorite trees.  Even a few non-knitters wanted to know what they are.  So...

My top three favorite trees:

1.  A Christmas tree.  Duh!  But seriously, the plain old cedar tree.

photo courtesy of dailymail.co.uk

There's just something unbelievably magical about the way cedars grow in such perfect Christmas tree shapes.  Maybe I'm weird (who me??) but I get THE biggest kick out of seeing a perfectly shaped cedar tree growing in the wild. And they have those adorable, teeny tiny pine cones.  And the smoothness of their 'leaves' (I don't think of cedar as having needles) compared to their rough, hairy trunks.  And then there's their smell.  Is there anything on this earth more fresh, clean and exhilarating while making you imagine both cold, winter snowfalls and warm, comfy fires?  I have the best childhood memories of playing under the neighbor's cedar tree.  Even though I'd come home with sticky sap stuck in my hair and I'd cry when Mom tried to brush it out, my memories of playing under that tree make me smile.

photo courtesy of greenwoodnursery.com

2.  Crepe Myrtles.  There's just something special about any kind of tree that flowers.  Crepe Myrtles are not the prettiest of flowering trees (mimosa trees come to mind,) but they are my favorite.  They have that wonderful, pale, peeling bark and they come in so many different colors.  Oddly, I don't like the shade of pink in that photo, but it's my favorite crepe myrtle color.  Weird!

And once again, I have happy childhood memories of crepe myrtles.  We had two in our yard.  One was near the back door and a multitude of bird feeders hung from it. My dad was into bird watching and I have wonderful memories of sitting with him on the porch, watching the birds.  Okay, I was more excited about the squirrels than the birds but whatever. 

The second crepe myrtle was on the side of the house and it lived a long happy life, until one day when it no longer pleased the parental units.  I have no memory of why the tree suddenly had to come down but it did.  Maybe Mom just wanted more space to grow tomatoes.  Who knows.  But it was like some kind of zombie apocalypse tree because it refused to stay 'down.'  They poured hot water over the stump.  They covered the stump with salt.  They sprayed it with early 1970's weed killer (and you know that was some serious killer chemical!)  They even put a giant cement septic tank lid on top of the stump... and the tree continued to grow up around the cement. 

Okay, so I have no idea why a zombie crepe myrtle tree rates as a good childhood memory, but it does.  Maybe being the rebel child that I was, maybe my parent's exasperation every time that thing grew back gave me some small pleasure.  Who knows.  But I love crepe myrtles.

photo courtesy of thespruce.com

3.  And then there's weeping willows.  Once again, I have wonderful childhood memories centered around a weeping willow.  Growing up, there was an old, somewhat reclusive couple that lived across the street in what I always thought of as a mansion.  The house was much larger than any of the others in the neighborhood and their yard/property was easily five times larger than anyone else's.  At one time, the yard/gardens must have been something to behold but by the time I came along, the back yard gardens at least, had been abandoned.  It was all very Secret Garden-ish back there.  And I Loved playing in them.  And in the very far back of their property, behind a brick wall with a small, rusted metal gate, was a great big weeping willow tree.  Not often, but occasionally I was allowed to bring a few friends and go play in the gardens.  We'd always hide out under that weeping willow where it was shady and much cooler and do all the things a child does when hiding out in a secret garden, under a giant weeping willow.

It's odd that weeping willows remain on my top favorite list because honestly, they sort of creep me out.  Well, not sort of.  They do creep me out.  I still love the look of them but the noise they make....  The way the leaves rustle and twitch in the slightest of breezes...  It makes my skin crawl.   It makes me think of skeletons crawling across the floor, or some kind of Stephen King spider coming to get me.  Aack!  Just thinking about it makes me twitch.  But despite their horrible noise, I still love the way they look.  And I really do have The fondest memories of playing in that Secret Garden type garden across the street.

So what about you? Do you have a favorite tree, or three?  And more importantly, are you weird enough that your favorite tree also scares you?

To enjoy others' Three on Thursday lists, join me over at Carole's place.

Soup's On!

I'm taking a little break from the knitting to talk about soup.  January is National Soup Month.  Soup Month's timing couldn't be more perfect.  Nothing is as good and warming as a nice pot of soup on a cold blustery day and let me tell you, it's been cold and blustery.  Actually, that's not true.  It's been Freezing, with a capital F and windy.

Normally my husband complains about 'Soup Night.'  He's a meat and potatoes man and expects his meat and potatoes to be large and intact and served on a plate.  He's not thrilled when dinner is chopped up meat and potatoes in a bowl with a bit of liquid.  But this week, it's been so cold, he didn't say a single thing on Soup Night except, 'Is there more?"

Zuppa Toscana Soup, photo courtesy of bigoven.com

This week's soup was Zuppa Toscana.  It had kale in it.  And I ate it!  I ate kale!  I ate kale and went back for a second helping!  Kale!  I have never in my life been served kale that I was able to swallow without gagging.  But this recipe...  Oh!  My! Goodness!  It was Yumm-O!

And I'm sure you're wondering - why did this crazy woman make kale soup if she detests kale?  It's because I didn't  make it.  My daughter did.  In the Instant Pot, all by herself!  (Another Proud Mama moment!) 

Sarah went with me to the grocery store and announced that she was going to cook dinner.  Awesome!  Fine by me!  We picked up the sausage for the soup and apparently the 'giant bag of spinach' I thought she was tossing into the cart was kale.  I didn't find out it was kale until I started talking about how good it smelled cooking and Sarah finally confessed.

It took me a few minutes to gather the courage to taste it but once I did.... I wanted it all.  All for me!  I was not happy to have to share that giant pot of soup.  I may have growled just a little bit when the rest of the family began to dish up their bowls.

So, I'm still in shock that I ate kale and liked it.  I'm so amazed by that fact, it's going to count as one of my Two New Things a Month. (Forcing myself to experience something new each month worked so well in 2017, I've increased it to two new things per month for 2018.)

Kale!

I ate kale!

I willingly ate kale.  And liked it!

Productivity

I didn't produce any knitting this weekend.  I was at work.  But, while I was at work....

My husband got productive.  He did a little "weeding."  Uh, yeah.  Our gardener hadn't shown up to work for a few years.

And he finally got the stone laid around our house's foundation.   That task was only 11 years in the making.

And, best of all, he replaced our broken dishwasher.  We've been hand washing our dishes & using the dishwasher as an over sized drying rack for several years.

I should go to work more often!

Twenty-three

Mike and I are celebrating our 23rd wedding anniversary today.  And it's pretty exciting.  It's exciting that we are still happy together.  It's exciting that we haven't killed each other.  We don't fight often, but when we do, the fights tend to be epic.  Epic fights over silly stuff, like whether we should buy mint chocolate chip or strawberry ice cream.  (It's true.  About 99.9% of our epic fights have occurred in the grocery store!  What does that even say about us??)  And it's exciting that we finally know how long we've been married.

We've been married 23 years, today.  Okay, so most people know when they got married.  Most people have big, fancy weddings with lots of guests who, on the off-chance that the happy couple forgets what year they were married, they could ask.  Most people have marriage certificates and photo albums and scrapbooks....

Mike and I are definitely not 'most people.'  We aren't the mushy, love & roses type.  We decided to get married, bought the rings & said the I do's all within about three weeks time.  We got married in the magistrate's living room with only our parents & siblings in attendance.  We didn't even make reservations for a honeymoon suite.  We went fishing on our honeymoon.  Fishing!  (See, it's a wonder I haven't killed him yet.)  Can you even call going fishing a honeymoon?  Starting our marriage out by going fishing may be part of the reason I've blocked our wedding date from memory.

Anyway...  We didn't have a big, fancy wedding with lots of dated memorabilia.  We also had a flood that destroyed what little documentation we had.  For years, we've known the month and day we got married, but we couldn't remember which year the joyous fishing trip occurred.  Well, recently, while cleaning out a junk drawer, I came across the receipt for my engagement ring.  We were married on June 25, 1993, which means....

Happy 23rd wedding anniversary, Mike.  Despite my sarcasm and complaints about going fishing, I wouldn't have changed a moment of our time together.  Not even the fishing trips.  Despite your choice of ice cream flavors, I still love you and am looking forward to the next 23 years.  Happy Anniversary!

(And hint, hint.... Maybe next time, we can find a fishing hole near a yarn shop.)

Giving Thanks, Day 4

Today's Giving Thanks post will be short.  I've managed to catch a horrible cold & feel all ughy, so besides being thankful for Advil Congestion Relief,

Fall foliage

I'm thankful for fall foliage against a bright blue sky.

Fall on the lake

And the simplicity of walking the dog in the fall.

Sunset on Lake Caroline

And watching the sun begin to set over the lake.

A perfect day

I'm enjoying a much needed day off today and it has been perfect.  Absolutely perfect.  It may not sound like an exciting day off to most of you, but to me, the day has been pure bliss.

 My workmates thought I was joking about going to Walmart at 4:00 a.m. to stock up on junk food in preparation for the day, but I wasn't.

I slept until almost 2:00 p.m.

I started my day with a few Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a new (to me at least) Paul Walker movie.    The movie itself was not the best, but the scenery (Paul Walker driving a car for 99.9% of the movie) was delicious.

By 4:30, I was into the chips & dip.

Dinner will be a plate of raw vegetables because, as much as I've been craving a junk food filled pity party style day for myself, I am also craving vegetables.  There aren't very many vegetables on the menu at the theme park where I work, nor do the gas stations have many (i.e. any) options at 4 a.m. when I leave work.  I can't even remember the last time I had anything green.  I am looking forward to my vegetable dinner as much as I was looking forward to those Krispy Kremes.

To ensure my body doesn't go into shock from an entire plate of vegetables, there will be Oreo's for desert.

Meanwhile, between making myself ill with fat grams & diabetic comas, I've been knitting on the never ending pi shawl.

I am SO freaking excited!  I have finally started the i-cord bindoff.  It will take me many, many days off to finish it, but at least there is visible progress being made now.

And last but not least, I stumbled across this picture I took of a weird little cloud I saw on the way in to work the other day.

It was just one lonely, weirdly round, little cloud.  It reminded me of a little kids' innocent drawing.  But it also made me think it may have been an alien space craft masquerading as an innocent little cloud.  What do you think?  An innocent little cloud or alien camouflage?

Thank a Lineman

So, did you hear about all the storms that ripped across the east coast Monday?  Thankfully, they skipped over us.  We were under a tornado watch most of the day and night and at one point, the sky turned an ugly purple then cleared & went back to sunny and blue 30 minutes later.  Just before midnight, we got a little bit of rain & it was breezy.  But it was just breezy and the rain was regular rain, nothing like that monsoon from the previous day.

So, late Monday night or this early Tuesday morning, depending on what you want to call 12:45 a.m., I was sitting at my desk watching Netflix on the computer and knitting the first few rows of a new lacy project.

#todayonmyneedles

All of a sudden, I was in total darkness.  Total, unprepared-for darkness.  And let me tell you, you don't know what dark is until you've experienced an unexpected powerless, rainy night in the boondocks.

Sadly, my laptop has no battery.  It's a long story.  But, when the power goes out, or the dogs get so tangled in the cord that they pull it out of the computer, the laptop shuts down.  Instantly.  So there I was, in sudden total darkness.  And I mean TOTAL darkness.  I screeched a little as I attempted to set the knitting down without pulling the needles out of the stitches.  And I instantly started worrying about spiders being in the room with me.  I began the awkward fumble as I looked for my phone, my tablet or a book of matches, all the while screeching just a little each time I bumped into anything soft & furry (yarn, hats, mittens, shawls, the dogs....) as I felt my way around.  (I just knew that visiting spider from the other day had relatives.  Big relatives.  Maybe even big enough to cut the power so they could attack me in the dark.)

Anyway.... My phone was there on the desk just to the right of me but then, so was about a thousand other items.  A thousand soft, fuzzy, spiderish feeling items.  Remember the disaster zone that is my desk??  I finally felt my tablet but struggled to find the On button.  Eventually I was able to begin the long & arduous task of getting it turned on and lit up.  That's a long story too.  While the tablet was taking it's sweet time coming to life, I searched my desk drawer for matches.  I finally found them.  The box contained one match.  One match that broke in half when I tried to light it.

One broken match.  Story of my freaking life.

About the time my tablet finally came to life, the girl child stumbled in complaining that the lightbulb in her room had blown.  No, sweetie.... the power's out.

With the combination of light from my tablet & Sarah's cell phone, I was able to find my own phone in the mess on my desk.  I called the power company to report the outage. (I take pride in always calling within seconds of the power going out.  No way I'm going to depend on the neighbors to make the call.)  The power company's outage reporting recording thing acted a little strangely and I said a few choice words & hung up.  Meanwhile, Sarah had gone in search of more matches.

We lit tons of candles and got the place fairly well lit.  Then I got the bright idea of reporting the power outage online.  What I discovered on Rappahannock Electric Co-op's website was amazing.  I typed in my phone number and the website responded with my address, the fact that there was in fact an outage in my area and the fact that there were 19 houses without power.  In all of Virginia, there were only 19 houses in the dark.  The website further stated that the power would be back on by 3:18 a.m. but I highly doubted that.  Would they really send out a repair crew at 1:00 a.m. for just 19 houses?

As it turns out, yes, they would!  Our power came back on at 2:48.  A whole 30 minutes earlier than they said it would be.  Thank you REC for being the best power company!  I shouldn't have ever doubted them.  REC has always been fantastic about getting our power restored quickly no matter what the weather conditions are or the time of night.  Thankfully it's been many years since I've had to deal with the big power company (i.e. uncaring mega corporation) that services Richmond, but I'd bet my life savings Richmond's power company would have left us in the dark until the regular daytime crew came to work.  I may not always sound it, specially when the bill comes, but I am truly thankful to receive our power from such a caring company as REC.  And since it's #ThankALineman month, I'm shouting out a big Thank You! to REC and their linemen.  Specially the linemen willing to work in the rain at night.

A weekend in review

I learned something about myself over the weekend.  Apparently, I thrive on drama.  Let's review.

Moments before leaving the house to go to work on Saturday, I received a Facebook notice that a favorited band that used to play at most of my high school dances was having a reunion next month at a local bar & grille.  The notice had just been posted but already several friends had replied that they intended to go.  Now, understand that my high school was tiny.  Teeny tiny.  Actually, eentsie, weentsie tiny.  Tiny as in, there were 13 people in my graduating class.  So, getting four or five of us together at one time counts as a high school reunion.  I was psyched.  A high school reunion, a high school reunion that does not include a rubber chicken entree but does include a live band that will bring back so many fun memories.  Like I said, I was psyched.  And I went in to work all smiles & giggles & "Hey, how ya doing?" to everyone I passed.

I walked into work & discovered that all Hell was breaking loose.  Actually, that's probably a slightly exaggerated description but things were going wrong and some manual adjustments were being made that would cause some slight confusion and a bit more effort.  While the panic set in, I continued to tell myself that it would be fine.  We'd deal with it.  And we did.  But as days like that go, things continued to tank.  It was one of those Murphy's Law days that would leave even Murphy quaking in fear & confusion.  Everything that could possibly go wrong did.  And then things that couldn't possibly go wrong went wrong.  The theme park's slogan is about the customers having their 'best day ever' and occasionally when an employee is having a bad day, you'll hear them joking about it being their 'best day ever.'  Well, Saturday was so bad that almost every employee I encountered either asked me if I was having my best day ever or informed me that they were having their best day ever in that weird, giggly, a nervous breakdown is about to occur voice.  It was just one of those days.

And then I came home to one dog growling at the dining room door and the other dog doing her 'there's something wrong' bark rather than her 'Oh, goodie!  You're home!' bark.   My first thought was that a opossum or raccoon had gotten in through the dog door.  But no.  No such luck.

Big spider

After the day I'd had, I really should not have expected anything less.  It was a spider.  A spider so big, the dog was growling at it.  Normally, I kill bugs with Windex but this guy looked like he probably drank Windex for breakfast.  My solution was to put that 2-cup coffee cup over it (while the dog distracted it) and leave it for my dear sweet husband to deal with.  And if you're wondering, that's his sized 12 shoe.  Look how freaking big that spider is!  Holy Moly!

Somehow, I managed to get a little bit of sleep between dreams of monster spiders.  Sunday, I got up & did it all over again.  Things were still going wrong at work but I did at least have a working computer so it wasn't quite as dramatic as the previous day.  The biggest problem was the rain.

It didn't just rain.  It monsooned!  Actually, that's not correct either.  It rained so hard it made a monsoon look like a light mist.  And of course, my rain coat was a mile away in the car.  By the time I got to the car, even my underwear were wet.  And then I had to stop for gas and got even wetter if that's possible.  I was so wet the gas station gave me a free slice of pizza when I went in to pay.  Because of course their pay-at-the-pump thing was broken.

After a few scary hydroplaning episodes, I finally surfed my car home, stripped my soaking wet clothes off, put on some dry ones & fell into bed with soaking wet hair.  I woke up this morning looking like

Only curlier.

But the point of all that is.... all that drama was kind of fun.  Well, maybe not 'fun' but it was certainly exciting and made the work hours pass by quickly.  I never got any knitting done at work though.

But, I did finish a few WIP's (works in progress) in the mornings before work.  I already showed you these, but here are the Outlander fingerless gloves on a hand model and a hat I finished.

Faux cabled hat & Outlander fingerless gloves

I really like that cable pattern.  "That" being both the faux cable on the hat and the cable on the fingerless gloves.  The gloves look much more complicated than they are, as long as you don't forget how to count to three.  It's surprising how many times I failed to correctly count to three.  I'm blaming it on the spider.

blue faux cabled hat

I finished a blue faux cabled hat as well.

hand dyed fingerless gloves

And I dyed these fingerless gloves.  Actually, I dyed them late Friday night.  And that was a whole other bit of drama.  It was late, late Friday night when I was dying them and I'm blaming it on the hour.... but I stupidly stuck my hands into the dye bath without putting on gloves.  My hands instantly turned a nice bright magenta color.  And then I proceeded to get the dye on one side of my face as well.  So when I bounced into work on Saturday, not only was I grinning & saying "Hey, how ya doing?" to strangers, I was also a lovely shade of red that made me look like I had extreme blood pressure issues.  Like I said, Saturday was definitely a 'best day ever' said in the most sarcastic voice possible kind of day.

Anyway...  I was excited about the dye job though.  And it could have been worse.  I was using black dye so I could have ended up with gray hands instead of bright pink ones.

Anyway....  I turned this

brown and white tweed

into this

hand dyed fingerless gloves

And yes, it's sort of a mahogany reddish brown, not black.  Black is really made up of a whole lot of blue plus a little bit of red.  I'd been warned that black dye would most likely separate and I wouldn't end up with black fingerless gloves.  And I was cool with that.  I didn't really want black gloves.  I also didn't want those brown & white tweed gloves.  As you can see, the black dye did separate.  I have no idea where all the blue went but I ended up with reddish gloves and magenta hands.  I'm happy with the way the gloves turned out though and with all the drama & nervous sweating that went on on Saturday, by Sunday, my hands & face were back to their normal color.

And last but not least, I managed to knit a few more rounds on this slouchy hat.

#todayonmyneedles

And yes.  As you can see in the backgrounds of these photos, my desk is still the disaster zone it was last Monday.  In fact, it's even worse.  I have the feeling it will be November before I can call it truly organized and clean again.  It's just another bit of drama we'll have to learn to deal with.

Going Minimalist

Don't laugh. Okay, what the heck - go ahead and laugh. Laugh so hard you roll around on the floor, spraying coffee out your nose.

I've decided to become a minimalist.

I know, I know.  I'm laughing too.  Except remember this?

I've put away and put away & thrown away & put away some more.  And it still pretty much looks like that.  The whole house looks like that.  There seems to be no end to the junk I own and I'm sick of it.

I spent yesterday de-junking the kitchen.  I can't say that I created a lot of counter space but I did get rid of a rolling shelf that stuck out into the room & drove me insane.  Granted, we will have to start meal preparation an hour earlier than normal to allow time to find the needed pots & pans but that annoying shelf thing is gone.

In an attempt to de-clutter the craft room, I decided to knit another ribbed hat.

#todayonmyneedles 01/07/15

It's an easy, quick to knit pattern & will use up some left over yarn that was in the stash pile.  See?  I'm multitasking.  I'm knitting And de-cluttering.  And if you look closely at the photo, you'll notice a lot of empty, uncluttered desk space off to the rear left.  Empty desk space!  Okay, so there's like four inches of empty desk space but hey, empty space is empty space.

I am such a good minimalist!

Top Five Procrastination Tips

Five?  Forget five.  If you take your procrastination seriously, you only need one.


After finishing the cat ear hat & the fiasco that is currently my life where the gray & white baby blanket is concerned, I was having trouble deciding which Christmas Panic knitting project I should start next.  So,

I decided to rearrange the furniture.

Mike had brought home one of those desk top things that fits over two filing cabinets.  For unknown reasons, I've always wanted one of those desks.  Now I was going to have one.  Never mind it meant switching file cabinets with Mike and loosing an entire drawer.  Never mind that the table I was using as a desk seems to have grown 3 feet wider in each direction & no longer sits quietly in the middle of the room waiting for someone to come craft on it like it used to.  Never mind that in the process of moving things around, I made such a mess the vacuum cleaner wouldn't fit into the room.  Never mind that I had to move furniture in order to make space to vacuum.  Never mind that it took me over an hour to find my phone in the mess.  Never mind that all the boxes of Christmas decorations were already cluttering up floor space.  Never mind that I tried to move a table with my full coffee cup sitting on it.  Notice the word "tried" in that sentence.  Never mind that I had to move even more furniture in order to mop up the spilt coffee.  Never mind that the next day, the room still looks pretty much like it does in that photo & I have totally lost the urge to rearrange.  Never mind that I don't really like the new desk format.  It's got a much smaller surface area and the pencil drawer hangs down & prevents me from crossing my legs.  Can't even comfortably cross my ankles.  Never mind that I'm throwing myself a giant pity party and have decided to knit Christmas gift mittens instead of cleaning up my huge, giant mess.

So, whether you are looking for an excuse to procrastinate or motivation not to procrastinate, rearrange the furniture.  Preferably after bringing in an additional piece of large furniture.  And make sure that in the rearranging, you have to trade furniture "ownership" with someone.  Trading dressers or closets would work if you don't have file cabinets.  And that folks, is the only procrastination tip you need.

Throwback Thursday - The Pumpkin Patch

It's TBT & in celebration of our annual trek to the pumpkin farm...

That's a 2001 shot of my daughter, Sarah, on the left, my son, Zack, on the right & their friend, Lorane, in the middle on a wagon ride at the "The" pumpkin patch, other wise known as Mt. Olympus Farm.   We've bought our pumpkins from Mt. Olympus every year since.  It's tradition.  Zack & Sarah are almost-adults now (almost 18 & almost 20) but they still love going to the pumpkin patch to pick their own pumpkins.  Zack even rearranged his work schedule so that he could go this year.  I like to think it's because they like hanging with their mom, but I have the sneaking suspicion it's more like they know Momma's buying.

So, that's our pumpkin picking tradition.  What's yours?

Dasher & Dancer

It's only October but the reindeer are fattening up in preparation for their annual journey.

Okay, so maybe they aren't reindeer, but they are certainly fattening up.  In our yard.  Just steps away from our front door.  And our barking, snarling dogs.  Our dogs do not appreciate interlopers in their yard, even if the interlopers might be Santa's helpers.

That was yesterday.  Today, it's pouring down rain & I'm celebrating the rainy day by watching Paul Walker movies & knitting.

Normally, it would be Buffy re-runs and knitting but a new Paul Walker movie popped up on Netflix and, well, who can resist Paul Walker?  Certainly not me.

The Monarch shawl is coming along nicely.  I probably shouldn't jinx myself by saying this, but it's progress is right on schedule.  I only have to knit two green stripes per day in order to finish it by Monday.  Thankfully, the shawl's color is slightly off in that picture.  In real life, the blues & greens are deeper & less shiny looking.  Apparently, Paul's radiance was casting a weird light.  But who cares. Paul can do anything he wants.

Well, those green stripes aren't getting any shorter so I better get back to them instead of blathering on about my TV boyfriend.  I'll leave you with a shot of Vixen.  Okay, okay, okay - it's Vixen's wife.  What ever.  She was close enough to lean over the porch railing and pet.  Isn't she beautiful?

First sign of fall

I am so freaking excited!  Take a look at the view from my back door.

Do you see it?  No?  Take a closer look.

The leaves are starting to turn!  I am so excited!  I love fall.  No, that's not really accurate.  I LOVE fall!  Love, LOVE, LOVE it!  Autumn is my absolute favorite time of year.  I like it even more than Christmas!  In the fall, the nasty humidity goes away.  The days are still plenty warm but the nights cool off.  The green leaves turn into beautiful shades of yellow, orange & red.  The local farms' fields are filled with pumpkins and every store you go into has at least one shelf of candy corn.  Have I mentioned my love of candy corn?  And, while it may be too early to start playing Christmas music (although I'll admit I want to,) it's not too early to start thinking about Christmas.  I can make my Christmas knitting list (which I should have made six months ago but apparently I prefer total panicked pressure knitting.)  I can even start fantasizing about how this will be the year the house gets decorated like something out of a Southern Living magazine and how all of the baking will turn out perfectly without a single smoke alarm going off.   And as long as I'm fantasizing, let's say the candy corn is calorie free this year.

Ah, I love my fantasy life.

Sadly, I'm not living that fantasy life at the moment.  Yes, this is a knitting blog without knitting photos.  That's because my house is so messy & gross there's nowhere to photograph my knitting.  There literally isn't a clean, junk-free space big enough to set Mr. Creepyhead so that I could take pictures of the two hats I finished this week.  Janet, the mannequin, is wearing clothes I haven't gotten around to hanging so she's not available to show off the scarf I finished and the dining room table (where I always lay my blocking mats) is still too covered in junk to block my Allegro sweater.

That's going to change though.  I am going to get this house cleaned up.  Right after I knit another round or two on the cowl I started last night.

How you spin it

It's all in how you spin it, right?  The last few weeks have been horrendous with one disaster after another.   Not major disasters like level 5 earthquakes or deaths in the family, just little mini disasters.  And I'm choosing to focus on the "mini" factor.  I'm staying positive because it could have been a whole lot worse.  I'm also choosing to document the positive spin so that I'll remember to focus on it rather than throwing myself a(nother) pity party.

Remember the missing camera?  I found it.  Then misplaced it again.  On the positive side, it was found long enough for me to charge the battery so that when I find it again, it will be ready to use.

Remember me getting a new (to me) car?  Someone smashed into it in the employee parking lot & didn't stop to report it.  I can not tell you how angry I am.  I'm not sure who I'm more angry with - the fellow employee who didn't have the guts to admit what they'd done or Security who acted like it was just way too much trouble to write up the report.  But, to look at it positively, my daughter has recently gotten her learner's permit.  If she wrecks the car while learning to drive, oh well.  She won't be the first one to do so.

I found another snake, a teeny, tiny baby one, in the garage.  Google tells me that, based on it's size, it was recently born & there could be nine more just like it somewhere close by.  On the positive side, it was not poisonous & Google also tells me they eat bugs as well as mice.  I'm having a hard time accepting the possibility that there may be nine more bug & mice eating, non-poisonous snakes out there, but at least it wasn't a copperhead.  That's the true positive side of that story.

Our household a/c died but the brother-in-law came to our rescue.  When I got home that night, it was so cold in the house I had to put on a sweater & socks!

I caught the Cash Control Creeping Crud disease that we've been passing around at work.  It's a nasty, nasty bug.  It's the worst possible cold you can imagine times about ten gazillion.  My sinuses were so stopped up & sore I couldn't even put lotion on my face.  Even my teeth ached.  My ears felt like someone was shoving cotton balls into them with an ice pick.  To add to the fun, I kept tipping over because my balance was off from the ear congestion.  I had weird Frankenstein type lumps sticking out of my neck and I used more than two rolls of toilet paper blowing my nose over the course of one day.  (We never have tissues when we need them.)  On the positive side, I had no appetite & lost a pound or two.  I also didn't seem to spread it to anyone else in the family.  Thank you, Jesus!

The house took a direct hit from a bolt of lightening.  The noise was deafening & it felt like the house had been knocked off it's foundation.   On the positive side, we are not deep charred crispy critters.

The a/c is broken.  Again.  Of course, it's also the hottest day of the year.  (Which in itself is weird.  We are having our hottest day in September instead of July or August.)  On the positive side - think of the electricity we are saving by not having the a/c running.

And the biggest positive of all.... The theme park where I work "closed" for the season yesterday.  I say "closed" because it's still open on weekends for special events.  But, I have my weekdays, at least most of them, off now.  Yay!  Freedom!

Move to the city

This city girl turned country girl is ready to return to city living.  Yes, the country life is relaxing and there's a lot less traffic & only one stoplight.  But the wildlife!  OMG!   There's just too much wildlife here.  Since the bat incident two weeks ago, I've seen more deer & rabbits than I can count.  Deer & rabbits are fine as long as I'm not trying to garden, which I'm not.  Due to the deer & rabbits, I finally gave up that ambition.  We've also given up using our front door due to the insistence of a group of hornets & wasps.  They are both determined to make our front porch their home.   I've also seen something large & dark with green, glowing eyes run across the road, a bobcat, a coyote and multiple snakes.  One of which was a large copperhead.  A large copperhead between our hot car full of groceries & our back door.  In order to protect the ice cream, we had to brave the wasps & hornets.  And then there's the bear that lives in our woods.  I haven't seen the bear recently, but he/she's out there somewhere.  And today, ants are trying to take over the house.  And let me tell you, nice, earth-friendly, non-toxic bathroom cleaning spray does not begin to work as well as Windex for killing ants.  The ants seem to be flocking towards it instead of running from it.  Perhaps it's the nice minty scent.  What ever.  It may clean mold, but it sure doesn't kill ants!

One more wild creature, just one, & I'm packing my yarn and moving back to the city!

In knitting news, I'm proud to say that I'm not suffering (badly) from second sock syndrome.

I had a rather fun day at work the other day & got quite a bit accomplished.  The day was spent training someone so other than about an hour of explaining what to do, the rest of the shift was spent sitting & knitting & being available in case the trainee had questions or ran into problems.  And because I'm a master trainer (in my own mind at least) she had no questions or problems.  Thus, I'm almost ready to start the heel.

Now, if I can only convince work that I need to train someone else, I may actually finish the Christmas sock before Christmas.

Fun without yarn

I don't often have fun without yarn, but yesterday was an exception.  It was one of those miracle days that only seem to happen about once every 56 years.  My husband & I both had a work-free day.  On the same day!  And there were no plumbing or automotive issues to be deal with!  We actually had 20+ hours to enjoy each other's company.

We had no particular plans but knew we wanted to do something away from the house.  It was hot, humid & storms were predicted for the afternoon.  We decided not to bother heading towards the beach.  We decided we'd find a few winery's to tour but somehow in the process of searching them out online, the spouse ended up in the real estate section of Craigslist.  The river front section of the real estate section, to be exact.

Instead of touring winery's, we toured our future home site.

2.57 acres off a creek leading out to the Potomac River.

The pier permit is pending per the realtor, but Mike is standing where the pier would go.

The creek narrows considerably on the other side of what I'm already calling "our" property.   The land part of the property wasn't all that exciting to look at, but it's located at the end of the wide part of the creek & the house would sit facing out the creek & out into the river.

The neighbors are friendly.  This dog greeted us & hung out with us the whole time we were there.  I love the way he plopped down in the water.  I also love the way his butt fits perfectly in that spot. Sort of makes me wonder if that spot is naturally occurring or if he dug it out himself.

Now, if I can only convince the spouse that water front living is worth the extra 60 minutes he'd have to tack onto his daily commute....  Actually, it wouldn't even be an extra 60 minutes every day.  Depending on which area he was working in, some days it would save him about 45 minutes.  I really, really think we need to buy this land.  Besides, we've already sketched out the house we'd build & decided on what we'd name the dog we'd get to celebrate tidal water-front living.

A visit from Dracula

So, Dracula came to visit last night.

How does my house know that the spouse, i.e. Mr. Repairman/Problem Solver is out of town?   The minute he leaves, something goes wrong that I can't/won't fix.  Last week he was out of town & the stove broke.  This week....  Dracula shows up.

Off & on during the night the dog kept waking me up scratching at the wall & either his nails on the wall sounded like nails on a chalkboard or something was making a squeaking noise.  We occasionally (ok, frequently) get birds, mice &/or squirrels in our walls so I didn't think too much of it other than to continuously beg & plead with Max to hush.  Finally around 4:30 a.m., I realized I'd never heard the boy child come in from work.  Being an over protective mother & the fact that it had been storming pretty badly, not to mention the fact he normally gets home around 3 a.m., I was a little freaked.  While waiting for him to answer my "where the hell are you" text, I noticed a shadow swoop across the room.  Then the shadow swooped by going in the opposite direction.  That's weird, the shadow is bat shaped.  Holy Hell!  There's a bat in my room!

After laying there a while trying to figure out if I was imagining it or not, I finally got brave enough to crawl out from under the covers, flip the light on & run to the safety of the bathroom.  A few minutes later, I cautiously came back in the room but couldn't find any signs of a bat flying around.  Phew.  It must have been my sleep deprived brain imagining it.  I flipped off the light & got back in bed.  I rolled over & looked at the window.... and there he was.  Crawling on the window ledge.  Aack!  There's a bat in my room.

I donned my bat fighting costume

and found that in the time it took me to get geared up for bat fighting, Dracula had crawled into  the one window in our whole house that has a window air conditioner.  So now, there he is, between the windows where I can't get to him.  Part of me is not complaining.  I really didn't want to get to him.  I have no idea how to go about bat removal, but I'd also really like him not to be hanging out in our house.  

Not to mention - he's in the yarn room.  Dammit!  There obviously won't be a lot of knitting going on today!

The Wild Side

A few more squares have been added to the mitered square "thing" but not enough to make it photo worthy.  So, instead of knitting pictures, here's a few of the wild life at my house.

A late afternoon visit by our neighborhood deer.

Mr. Bunny,

It's no wonder I can't grow anything.  The other day, there were six rabbits (that I saw) in our yard at one time.

And then there's this.

I'm totally freaked out by this animal den.  I'm convinced the black panther lives in there.

You'd think I'd be more worried about the wasps & hornets building nests on my front porch, but nope!  Black panthers actually worry me much more.

The other day, I was outside when a thunder storm was brewing & I took a few pictures of it rolling in.

The pictures were taken only moments apart & show how quickly the storm was forming.  I like the contrast in colors.

And, to take my mind off black panthers living in my yard....  wind chimes.

 I love these wind chimes!  We were at the beach on 9/11/2001 & brought these back with us.  They've hung on my porch, year round, ever since.

What kind of wildlife do you have at your house?