I feel like Cousin It

A Biotin update....

I feel like Cousin It.

As you can see from this poorly lit photo, my nails aren't doing much.  They have lost their wet tissue paper quality and now snap when they break.  But they still break and aren't growing as much as I'd hoped.

Admittedly, some of the lack of nail growth could be my fault, not the Biotin's.  At work, I'm constantly either sticking my hands into bags of loose coin or shoving things into little wooden compartments sort of like this:

except smaller and older and much more splintery.  Have I mentioned what a klutz I am?  It's no wonder my nails stay broken.

There's also my diet to consider.  During the summer when I'm working crazy hours, my diet is basically 'college student' minus the alcohol.

So.... the Biotin may not be doing a whole lot for my nails, but my hair....  My hair is out of control.  It's grown over four inches since the last week of April.  That's more than an inch per month.  I feel like Cousin It.  Thankfully, unlike Cousin It, the Biotin only seems to be affecting the hair on my head.  Thankfully, it is not affecting the hair on the rest of my body.  Scientifically, I have no idea why but I am not questioning it, nor complaining about it.

On being boring

You never realize how boring your life is until you start a blog and open a Twitter account.  Suddenly, the realization that your life revolves around doing laundry, cooking the same four meals over and over and over again, and sitting on the couch watching Netflix while knitting.  

I have a “real job” but it is a ‘summers only’ job.  Mind you, I work the same number of hours that a normal, full time employed person works, I just work them all in the summer.  And since I’ve signed confidentiality agreements for work, I can’t tell you much about it.  Well, that and the fact that when you work twelve months’ worth of hours in seven months, there’s not a lot of time for non-work exciting things to happen.

It doesn’t help that I’m a creature of habit.  I tend to read the same genres of books over & over again.  I knit the same style things over and over again.  I have a small group of favorite, affordable yarns that I knit with over and over again.  I shop in the same four stores over and over again.  Actually, I don’t even like shopping, except of course for yarn and books.  I don’t shoe or purse shop like most girls.  I find an item I like and I wear/use it until it disintegrates. I’ve been wearing the same pair of shoes for four years.  I did recently have to buy a new purse, but the old one was three years old and in pretty bad shape. My car has over 200,000 miles on it and the car before that had 380,000 miles on it.  I find something I like and I stick with it, which can be pretty boring. While friends are “finishing” Google, I’m over hear obsessively checking the six bloggers that I stalk follow to see if they’ve published an update.  Hell, even my clothes are boring and habitual.  My idea of risky dressing is wearing the purple sweatshirt instead of the gray.

Part of me likes the rut I’ve dug for myself.  It’s comfortable down in here.  It’s safe and warm & cuddly.  Well, maybe not cuddly.  I’m not sure a rut can cuddle, but it’s definitely safe and warm and fairly drama free.  But it’s awfully boring.  And I’m sick of being boring.  I want to be fascinating.

So what am I going to do about it?  How am I going to become fascinating?

My first thought was to challenge myself to doing or using something or going some place different each day.  Every single day, do something different. Something new and different that I’ve never done before.  

But something new and different that I’ve never done before could get expensive and I am on a pretty tight budget.  Bankruptcy does not need to be one of the new things I try. Plus, I want to challenge myself to stick with the plan for an entire year.  During the summer, when I’m working 90 hours a day (or at least that what it feels like some days) I won’t have time for something new in my life every day.  Plus, the idea of something new every day terrifies me.  Absolutely terrifies me!  I know, I know.  Climbing out of the rut will be scary, but the idea of scaring myself on a daily basis is just too scary.  Both mentally & financially.  

So, I hereby challenge myself to do something different once a week.  It doesn’t have to be a big, giant different thing, but for the remainder of 2016, I will do something different at least once a week.  And to keep myself accountable, I’ll tell you about it on, let’s say.... Fridays.  And we’ll call the project Fascinating Friday.

Minnie

Minnie says, "I'm bored."  Got any suggestions for new, fun, fascinating things for us to try?

It lives!

Yay! The blog is alive!  I was starting to have serious doubts.

Last Thursday evening, I took the blog down so that I could do some major renovations to it.  I'd finally scratched "buy a domain name" off my to-do list and it was time to connect the two.  And while I was in there fiddling around, pretending that I have a clue what html is, I wanted to link my Etsy shop in a way so that you could get to it in one click.

Well, it quickly became VERY obvious that I do not have a clue as to what html is.  Things went badly and then they turned even worse.  I got the shop linked, but then the blog simply disappeared.  I finally got the blog back but then I was locked out of my Etsy shop.  I was finally able to get back into the shop, but now the blog had reverted back to it's old site address...  The new .com address wasn't working.  It was stressful and I consumed, on average, three pots of coffee every hour for about 46 hours straight.

Thank goodness for tech-loving kids!  My son finally got so sick of hearing me curse & swear at anybody & anything that crossed my path that he took pity on me and came to my rescue.  He ended up spending every one of  his non-working, waking hours for two days helping me.  He will now forever be the favorite child.

I have no idea how Zack managed to fix the site for me.  By the time he took over, about all I was capable of doing was sitting, curled up in a ball over in the corner, muttering curse words to myself and barely knitting stockinette in the round.  I was a pathetic mess.

While the whole frustrating process about drove me mad and I'm missing a few handfuls of hair, my teeth are chipped from the caffeine shakes and the neighbors are now very much aware of my potty mouth, I'm sort of glad it happened.  Sort of.  Yes, I wish that everything would have gone as simply as the domain supplier said it would, but I'm glad, sort of, that the blog crashed & burned for a few days.  And the reason is because, I really, really missed blogging.  Which surprised me.  I realized how much I enjoy turning the blank screen into, albeit bad, pictures of yarn and knitted things.  I've got a new respect for the blog and plan to take better care of it in the future.

So, with that being said....

Not much knitting got done over the last few days.  I knit a few more rounds on 'the hat.'

The Hat

The hat still doesn't have a name.  Sadly, it may go onto Ravelry with the unceremonious name of The Hat.

Marigold Sock #2

The second Marigold sock has a heel and gusset, except I just noticed that that photo doesn't show the gusset.  Oh well.  You'll have to trust me.  It has a gusset and I'm a few rounds into the foot.  And that means I can check that task off for the week.  Well, last week.  This week's to-do says I need to knit until I'm ready to decrease for the toes.

20 minutes into the snow storm

We had our first snowfall of the winter yesterday.  The first hour or so was like a total white out.  Honestly, it scared me a little because it came as a total surprise and we were not prepared for a big blizzard.  It turned out to be the perfect snow storm though.  It snowed like Hell, the view from the desk window was awesome, the ground was covered but it never stuck on the roads at all.  The. Perfect. Snow.

And I just love how the snow looks on the flag.  I don't know what it is about snow on a flag, but I just love the image.  It's just so American.  Okay, so maybe I'm still mentally traumatized by the whole website fiasco.  What ever.  I do love the image of snow on the flag.

So, to put this novel to rest.... Take a look around the new website.  Notice it's now super simple to type into the search bar.  It's just jgknits.com instead of jeanniegrayknits.blablabla.blablabla....  Please make any necessary changes to your bookmarks or however you routinely find me.  Take a look around the site and let me know if you find any links or pages that aren't working properly.  For the most part, I think everything is fixed now, although there are a few improvements I still want to make here and there.  One other important thing - if you have a blog & were on my blog roll, please, oh please send me a link to your blog.  For unknown reasons, my blog roll disappeared in the fiasco and was not recoverable.  And if you know me, you know I can't remember names, which means, I can't remember the name of your blog to search for it.  Help a girl out & send me a link.  Please!

Hoping apologies won't be necessary

So, over the next 24 hours I'm going to be making some really big changes to the blog.  I hope they work.

Minnie

But if they don't and the blog crashes & burns, Minnie & I are both sorry.  Wish us luck.

Giving Thanks, Day 8

So yesterday was a weird one.  This weekend is the first weekend I've had off since the beginning of March.  March people!  That's a long time to go without a Saturday and Sunday off.  All the cool, fun things happen on the weekends and I miss out on all of it.  That's one downfall to the job I love so much.  Another downfall is that working the long hours that I do and never having two days off in a row means that the one day off I do get is spent sleeping and doing laundry.   My entire summer is spent either at work, sleeping, or standing mostly naked in front of the washing machine.  When the season ends and I get to go back out into the real world, it's a bit disorienting.  Literally.  I have to re-learn how to grocery shop, how to cook dinner for the family, how to interact with cashiers and how to be social.  It sounds weird, but it's true.  And I'm not the only one who feels it.  Other co-workers have mentioned they feel the same weird disorientation when they finally get the opportunity to go out into the real world (as opposed to theme park world.)

Anyway.... Since I woke up sick the very first day after the season ended this year, yesterday was my first day out of the house. (I woke up feeling much, much better thank you very much.)  Of course, while I was waking up feeling oh, so much better, the rest of the family was waking up feeling ughy.  Ha!  That's what they get for 'allowing' me to wash dishes while I was sick!  Pay back's a b*tch.  (Picture the evil Mom grin.)

Anyway....  After enjoying a cup of coffee that I could actually taste (glory hallelujah!) I got dressed in real clothes (no uniform!) climbed into the car and hit the Real World.  The Real World being Target.  Now, keep in mind I'm suffering from Real World disorientation so every single thing seems slightly weird, exciting and surreal.  But several things happened while I was there that seemed noteworthy.  First, there was the Halloween 70 - 90% off sale and lucky for me, the only candy left was candy corn.  You know how I feel about candy corn.  I am now the proud owner of six bags.  Six!  Good Lord!  I was also interested to note that the only costumes left were banana costumes.  That may not seem strange to the majority of you, but my closest friends will understand why that would be "a thing," specially when I'm still feeling slightly Real World disoriented.  And then, as I was walking toward the cash registers, I passed the kids' toy aisle and I overheard the most precious thing.  One little twin boy drags the other twin boy over to some special display (looked like Lego's to me, but it was secured in a special glass case so who knows) and the first twin says to the second twin, "Let's talk about The present."  It was so cute!

Next up was a trip to Michael's craft store.  You know I spent hours and hours wandering up and down every single aisle, some of them more than once.  Okay, most of them more than once, some of them more than twice.  The weird thing there  - there was a customer with a bunch of children on the spray paint aisle.  They were down on the floor, spray painting a wreath bright blue.  Spray painting!  Spray painting a wreath on the store's bare floor, with a can of paint off the shelf.  What the Hell??  You don't even get to see that kind of behavior at Walmart!

Next on the docket was a trip to Barnes & Noble.  Where a little boy who looked to be about four was throwing one of those fits that only a four year old can throw.  But this kid's fit was extra special.  While he cried and flung snot every where, he was also kicking his mom and loudly screaming, "I'm gonna beat your a$$!"  Good Lord!

At that point, I decided that I'd had enough of the Real World for one weekend and went home.  Home where I'm grateful to be an American.

#GivingThanks

Okay, that's cheesy, I admit it.  But there's something I just love about the simplicity of this row boat and flag on the edge of the pond.  And I couldn't very well say I was dedicating an entire Giving Thanks post to 75% off candy corn.

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.