red belt

This is going to be a short post because, well, I took down the ceiling in the dining room (yeah, I get to find even more knob and tube wiring - lucky me) but my computer is now on my bedroom floor and it is really hard to type sitting with my legs criss cross applesauce. I spent two hours last night trying to remove the sticky big gap filler from my hands (yes you are supposed to wear gloves). I got slimed when I cut into a piece of the foam, which I thought had dried. I basically flayed the flesh off my fingers with repeated bouts of goo gone, nail polish remover, baby oil and heavy duty hand cleanser all with a nail brush - my hands are still probably highly flammable from all that crap. I will never not wear gloves again, my lesson has been learned. Oh, but when will I learn my lesson about taking down ceilings...
So Owen got a red belt tonight, here he is breaking his board, he could have done it with his head but chose the more sedate elbow strike
Let's hear it for the boy! Oona clearly worships her brother and was cheering him on when she wasn't telling people that Owen was her big brother.
Owen gets his belt
Oona also found a new best friend in A-. When we left she was screaming her name like Stanley Kowalski screams 'Stella' inStreetcar Named Desire. Little A- is french and unbelieavably adorable, they played very well together during the belt testing - thank God!

lemongrass scarf

Here's the moss stitch scarf that I finished last night. I love the acidic green of this yarn, it's lion wool-ease thick & quick in lemongrass. Obviously I'm getting most of my yarn from Joann fabrics at this point. I'll read about all these exotic skeins that people write about on other craft blogs, it all sounds so lovely but with my newbie knitting skills and wee small portion of my income being disposable, I figure I'll stick to the cheap yarn until I feel skilled enough to branch out to the hard core, expensive knitting yarn. Although anything with wool seems to drive my neck crazy which is problematic in terms of me enjoying what I've knitted, oh dear. The moss stitch was easy enough to figure out how to do especially after viewing a couple different youtube videos, one was very helpful in recommending having an odd number cast on so you don't have to figure out whether to knit or purl for each row. I like knitting where the thinking is minimal. But my Mom would like a more lacey shawl type thing so I think I'm going to have to start counting stitches and paying more attention with the knitting, at least for whatever I make her for Christmas. Can anyone recommend a relatively easy lace stitch and/or shawl pattern? Hope everyone has an enjoyable weekend, I'll be panicking about how I'll manage Thanksgiving of me and the kids when I don't really enjoy cooking and the kids don't really enjoy eating. What to do what to do...

Here's a peek of scarf number 6 in my knitting madness of late. It's a boucle type yarn (by Bernat, courtesy of Joann fabrics) that is so so soft and itch free. The scarves I made with homespun yarn scratch me to much so I gave one to my therapist, she remarked on how lovely the color of the yarn was, hopefully she wasn't just being nice. God knows I owe her much more than a scarf worth of thanks, she's been super helpful in helping me adjust how I look at things, especially myself. Thanks to Kristi's envy inducing post I already learned the moss stitch, via youtube. I hope to have my moss stitch scarf completed by this evening, will post a pic when it's done.

In a venture I'm still questioning my sanity on... I signed myself up for match.com. Oh my. It's like high school all over again. It's a bit of a social experiment for me. I am pathologically shy and unflirtatious in the 'real world' so we'll see how I fare in this virtual circus. I'm not even sure that I'm ready to date at this point, it's more to see what is out there. It's scary, so far the person whose profile interested me the most was a girl who winked at me from Far Rockaway New York. She probably just winked as a joke but I winked back because she's one of the few who can spell and use grammar correctly, actually reads books (gasp!) and she looked cute, much cuter than 99% of the men who have winked at me. And let me tell you, some of the people on this site are downright sleazy here are three emails I received from one guy, I use the term loosely

1. hi can u text me a picture of your self? (sic)

2. are you real??? lol

3. hi what part of city you in?

my response

Hi,

I'm not texting pictures to people who won't put a picture of themselves up here, but there are photos of me online now so the point is probably moot. In reference to whether I'm for real? Um, I don't really know how to answer that, in what respect do you mean? If you write back with a photo and something of substance I'm more than happy to have a conversation but I've got to tell you the notes you've written so far are really close to demeaning.

And this asshole's response was 'some people just don't know how to have fun'. Yeah. So as I say, it's high school all over again.

sunshine

My daughter is trying to seduce me, and it's working. She turned a corner with her fourth birthday. She's much more even keeled and doesn't throw nearly as many temper tantrums. She'll still get upset about things and whine but it's a minor blip compared to the flare ups she used to have where she'd shriek in a way that must have instantly spiked my blood pressure to imminent stroke levels. But I road it out, miraculously enough, and she's still strong willed but so much more manageable. Now it's Owen that's throwing mouthy comments my way, sulking or stomping off when he feels I've wronged him, although he never gets far since he won't go upstairs without me or his sister also being up there. Of course it would work this way, when one's nice I'm on the other's shit list. Driving to karate this evening Owen was pouting because I said no tv for the night after he breathed on my sideview mirror and put yet another happy face on it. I sound like such a bitch, I know. But I've asked him not to do this at least half a dozen times, one of which was 45 minutes earlier when we were entering the gym. So he stared off in his back seat while Oona sang a song she made up, she's always making up songs.

I love you Mom
I love you Mom
You're my best friend
I love you Mom

I turned around to thank her for singing such a sweet song to me and then she started to sing You Are My Sunshine but put Mommy in for Sunshine. I told her I was going to cry that was such a sweet thing of her to do and then I had to explain what I meant because she couldn't get how I'd be happy and want to cry. Once we got to karate she did act up a bit; little fits, trying to get things out of my purse, she caught my neck zipping up my jacket, it's hard not to act upsitting for 45 minutes while her brother practices. But after her bath I read her a story and snuggle bunny (our term for cuddling) with her for a few minutes, and she falls asleep within five minutes. I know I can't get my hopes up too high, she's yet to hit her teen years but she's so so nice to be with right now. I'm just enjoying this sweet stage she's in.

sidelined

Well my career of cleaning houses has hit a rough patch. I seem to have a pinched nerve in my neck, at least that's the only explanation I've got for the pain from my ear to wrist along with the various aches along the right side of my back and the fact that my hands go numb at night. I saw a doctor yesterday, with the kids since they were off for Veteran's Day, what fun. And I got an X-ray of my cervical spine. So I'm supposed to take it easy and pop 800mg of ibuprofen and if I don't improve by next week I can start physical therapy - yeah! Nothing like squelching my source of additional income with an injury that will probably negate any money I made after the co-pays for all the doctors visits are paid for.

One thing I omitted on the previous post was that the woman who gave me the massage last week apologized for it taking a while to schedule an appointment with her. Apparently she had had three clients die within the past week. When she told me this my initial thought was, do I really want hands that seem to be a harbinger of death on my body? But then I swatted that superstitious thought away, I was just being silly. Now I'm not so sure. My entire right side, above my hips, is in pain. I've been dealing with some other pain too though. My Dad came to visit me last week and, though it was wonderful to see him, I think Jabba the hut is more active. Okay, that might not be fair, I picked him up from the bus stop and he was easily winded, he's having problems with his left lung and was supposed to get a chest cat scan this week.

But he stayed for five days and at this point in my life, which is more than a little stressful, if you can't help me out at all when you visit (okay he did do a few loads of laundry but that includes his own stuff) I can't handle the additional stress. I had driven to Home Depot for 15 minutes and in that space of time Oona took my knitting off the needles (I make it a point of impaling them into my ball of yarn), dumped the contents of my purse and drew cat whiskers on her face with my lipstick. When I came in my Dad was oblivious to this, which happened in the living room where he was sitting not 5 feet away from her. He would go up the street every morning to the Rite Aid where he'd pick up couple papers and spend the day on the crossword puzzles, followed by suduko and then he would read while I did my daily beheaded chicken dance of the beleaguered mom. I asked my Dad if he could leave a day early so I could gut my kitchen ceiling, yes I am insane. He did and we had a lovely last night out for dinner where he paid. I was going to treat him for his birthday but he insisted on paying, he'd come into money since winning in fantasy baseball - woohoo!

What am I doing up so late, again?! I've got to pop some mega ibuprofen, get to bed and hope I don't wake up feeling like elves have pummeled my back and torso during the night.

bite your tongue

I was all set to write a post about this woman I got a massage from yesterday, who is a little out there but her massages are incredible, truly. And she'll offer little plums of wisdom while working on knots, like the huge one lodged in my right tmj area (I can't wear my bite guard anymore because I've ground it into a serrated knife that hurts my tongue when I wear it, in seven months time) You're holding back on saying things tell me about it I managed to say. Oh. My. God. I'm a flipping people pleaser, I've held my tongue so many times I think it's why The Namesake appealed to me so much as a book because I could understand the characters so well, especially Moushumi Mazoomdar when she described her obedient, bookish, desperately lonely years in college. She had harbored lengthy infatuations, with students with whom she never spoke, with professors and TAs. In her mind she would have relationships with these men, structuring her days around chance meetings in the library, or a conversation during office hours, or the one class she and a fellow student shared, so that even now she associated a particular year of college with the man or boy she had silently, faithfully, absurdly, desired. I'm like that now but my imaginary conversations can be much more pedestrian, like just talking to people instead of being this mute dork who panics around men. I don't even need to be romantically interested, although that ups the dork factor exponentially, I just am a complete silent spaz around the opposite sex from ages 18 to 55. But I digress, I wanted to sing the praises of the masseuse but dropping the kids off at school today I bent over to help Oona out of her seatbelt and whacked my head against the car. I don't know how I managed this, it was like I suddenly was half a foot taller or unable to negotiate my body space with a coffee mug in my hand. I think I might have gotten a small concussion, I definitely have a bump (fortunately just where the hairline starts) but the worst was I wrenched my neck backward and any residual body yumminess from the massage just blew away with that blow to the head. Ugh. Oona is such a dear though, when she saw that I hurt myself she got all worried, making little whimpering sounds as she wrapped her arms around my legs hugging me. She can't bear to see those close to her in any pain, physical or otherwise.

So the bump might have affected me more than I know because this post isn't really following a coherent thought. As long as I don't wake up to find what I've typed to be illegible though I figure I'm okay. Here is documentation, as if you needed any, of my compulsive nature. Two weeks into knitting five scarves down.
Scarf prototype. I had this yarn for twelve years, it's a good colored scarf for the fall/halloween season.
I made this one for Oona, although she doesn't seem particularly interested in wearing it, which is okay because I remember some John Cheever short story about a girl wearing a scarf who is killed when it gets caught in the t-bar skiing, I think that's how it goes I read that story in college, gulp, probably twenty years ago!

I've had enough of my face. I like this green but I think I'm going to have to start making cashmere scarves, my skin is so sensitive my neck is getting really itchy from these soft wool blends. No real surprise, when I exercise after having gone a few days without my skin will itch (I can't believe some people can get anaphylaxis from this, yikes)

And here's a blue blend, double strand, chunky yarn and fat needles are the way to go for knitting newbies. This scarf was done in three hours.

This orange blend is just like the blue one above it (and you can see it hanging out as a skien in the loden picture). Lion brand homespun yarn from Joann, no frills. This photo doesn't do the many beautiful color variations in the scarf justice. I got some beautiful pale blue alpaca and another super soft (hopefully not itch inducing) wool in this lovely heathered wine color,This Christmas will be the year of the scarf, and I got a crochet hook because I really really want to be able to make afghans, Christmas 2010 might be the year of the afghan. Pittsburgh winters are cold and I'd rather have a bunch of pretty afghans than a bunch of snuggies for all. Okay now I really need to stop procrastinating and start studying for this Clep test. The academic monkey on my back, I need this done before my birthday (5 weeks give or take).