Outdoor knitting

A Tomten in progress. I'm experiencing a bit of frustration with the pattern, both with the instructions and the amount of yardage it's taking. Someone gave me a ginormous ball of bulky-weight acrylic yarn, and I thought this would be a good way to use it up. The kid really needs a warm, trashable, washable sweater to wear to preschool, and I thought this soft, fuzzy stuff would not only be comfortable, but I wouldn't have a heart attack if she got paint on it (unlike, say, something made from this gorgeous yarn).

Except that I've still got the hood AND sleeves to do, and I'm more than halfway through my 615-yard ball of yarn. Which means I either need to forget the hood and proceed to the sleeves (and I still might not have enough), or go get another ginormous ball of acrylic (the only size this yarn comes in can best be described as "enough to get you through the Apocalypse"). I would definitely have enough yarn that way, but I'd also end up with a bunch of leftover fuzzy acrylic yarn, and probably find myself in this same position next year when I'm trying to use that up. This is actually my second attempt at a Tomten; the one I started last fall ground to a halt when I ran out of yarn, also some given-to-me stuff I was trying to use up and also right at the sleeve joins. Hmm, I'm sensing a pattern here.

I've probably made it too big. Maybe my measurements were off, or my math, or something. Oh, well, better too big than too small, I guess. I'll just roll up the sleeves and get a couple years' use out of it...provided I ever finish the damned thing, that is.

Photography Fail

One day last week when the morning cloudcover provided some really great outdoor lighting, I got her up and dressed and marched her outside to try and take some 3-year pictures, of the sort suitable for giving to the grandparents. The whining about how they never have any pictures and you can never see her face in the ones you send blah blah blah has gotten particularly loud lately. I never get photos taken professionally any more; the few times I've had it done it turned out to be a lot of money for pictures I didn't like all that much and which end up languishing in a box somewhere because a) the grandmothers cannot seem to get me a list of HOW MANY and WHAT SIZES they need and b)I am a lousy correspondent and forget to send them to our friends.

So I thought I'd try my own this year; I have a DSLR and my computer will occasionally cooperate long enough to upload & edit on Picnik. How hard could it be?

I got exactly four pictures before she started jumping around in a mud puddle and fell, covering the cute-yet-not-cutesy outfit I'd picked out in red clay dirt. I think this is the only close-up of her face, which I took with my phone just after her mud-puddle dive. Just be glad it's not a video, or else you'd hear me begging her to stand still for Mommy, just one more second PLEASE as she whines about needing to go inside and change her clothes.

Snapshots: Mid-June 2010

6:00 p.m., on a Wednesday: the thermostat says it is 84 degrees in the house, although, since it is located in a cool, dim hallway, I know the main part of the house is several degrees hotter. My child is running her little Ikea push-cart into the back door over and over, each time causing a loud "THWACK" noise that reverberates in my already-throbbing skull. She is cackling madly, and is, of course, naked.

9:00 p.m. on the same night finds me on the couch, glass of wine in hand. Piper is tucked in bed, happily reading books to a stuffed elephant, and I have the last lonely cupcake from her party. I dug into the tub of frozen leftover frosting and now a mini-mountain of chilled strawberry-meringue buttercream quivers atop the little cake. I boot up the Xbox, flip through our Netflix queue, and put on an episode of The X-Files. Frosting, wine, a quiet house, and the company of Mulder and Scully all combine to give me one of the least-stressful moments I've had in months.

Somewhere along the line, I tripped over or ran into something, injuring my pinkie toes yet again. The right is far worse than the left - putting on my favorite sandals too quickly can cause a grunt of pain. I am constantly breaking, cracking, or bruising my pinkie toes. I'm starting to wonder if I could just have them amputated. I know toes are for balance or...something...that I didn't pay attention to in Biology...but I am not sure lopping them off would make me less of a klutz. At the very least, I could not ram them into things or catch them on stuff, have to hear the sickening crack! noise, then spend ten minutes rolling around on the floor and three weeks babying them.

It's too hot to cook. It's too hot to think. It's 95-99 degrees but the humidity and crap makes it feel like 107. It's too hot to...I don't know what else, because my brain, like our poor, limping-along laptop, tends to fare badly in this weather and can only go for so long before it starts to smell like burning plastic and slows to a crawl. I mean the laptop, not my brain. Well, actually, I mean the laptop AND my brain.

I have 2.5 friends here, and 1.0 of them is moving away. I was okay at first, happy for her and excited for the changes this will bring to her family, but the more I thought about it the sadder I got. She's finally going to get to stay at home with her son, but this will happen hours and hours away, where we cannot hang out all day and watch our kids finger-paint together. She's moving, and unpacking, and will have a whole new place to set up and decorate, but I'll be too far away to go over and help her set up and take her kid to the park for an afternoon so she can get things sorted out. All the stuff we were going to do together - play dates and crafting and helping with years' worth of birthday parties and meeting downtown for lunches and coffees and sharing bottles of wine - is no longer going to happen. And that makes me pretty damned sad.

I was so into chipotle-flavored things: chipotle black bean burgers, chipotle hummus, chipotle sauce, chipotle salsa. I think I would've happily slurped on a chipotle lollipop if I found one. Then, just as I made a HUGE pot of this soup, (I altered the recipe sligthtly by adding more onions, because I had a drawerful of them) the very smell of chipotle anything makes me want to yak. Actually, no, wait - the very thought of chipotle anything makes me want to yak. So now I have this giant freaking pot of bean soup (and those baby limas gave me hella trouble, despite what Heidi says, and I feel compelled to point out that I pretty much worship that woman's cooking and this is the first thing of hers that I did not fall madly in love with at first bite) and I am the only one in the house who is going to eat it. Er, um, not eat it, because...yak. So I tried to puree it into some sort of hummus-like bean dip/spread that my husband would eat (and maybe I could put on a sandwich), but it was gritty and full of flecks of crunchy baby limas.

So I stuck it in the crock-pot overnight to try and cook the beans into mush, and now I have semi-gritty bean mush that I cannot stand the smell of. It made my house smell like chipotles, yak, and really the whole ordeal just pissed me off. I hate it when cooking things fail, and I especially hate it when I am left with a freaking cauldron of some inedible concoction. I guess I'll cook it some more and see what happens. My house already smells anyway, how much worse can it get?

Don't answer that.

Beatle Birthday Brainstorm

Otherwise known as a shameless plea for ideas and advice because I am clueless.


My child is not the only one with Beatles on the brain right now. I have spent every waking minute lately thinking about the Fab Four, because Piper's birthday is in just two weeks, and although I have been musing over a Beatles-themed birthday since, oh, January or so, somehow this just snuck up on me. Like so many things.


I had grand plans to start early, but it is only now that I find myself spending three hours Googling "Yellow Submarine quilt" and "Beatles Fabric." She's still in her "toddler bed" (aka Ikea crib with one side taken off and a rail put on), so whatever I come up with only has to fit a crib mattress, thankfully. I have a couple pieces of the Cranston fabrics that were put out in 2008, but it's not quite enough to do a quilt. At least not a very interesting one. The stuff is still available at some places online, I suppose I could order more. I only have one set of the four panels, a yard (I think) of this print and a yard (I think) of this print.  I've looked around at a lot of the quilts made with these fabrics, but none of it is exactly what I'm looking for. She already has a set of pillows made from the pillow fabric, and I feel like doing a whole quilt in the same stuff would be too much. I want something sort of modern-looking, kind of understated, not too cartoony, something that won't look like just a bunch of fat quarters held together by sashing. Then I saw this woman's quilts. You see it there, in the top row? Go ahead, click the picture and take a look. I'll wait.

I know, right? It's FABULOUS.

It's totally Yellow Submarine without being too cartoony, which I think was the trouble with trying to put together a quilt from all those bright print fabrics. I'm not even sure if "not too cartoony" even makes sense since we are talking about a 90-minute cartoon movie here, but I think you get the idea. Anyway, I am so in love with that quilt, and I want to make my own. It's just some strips and some applique, right? Even though I can't hem napkins properly, I could do that, right? And in less than two weeks? Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.

I have also had fantasies of knitting her some Beatles dolls, which, since I am a super-slow knitter, not good at making up my own patterns, and don't know how to do colorwork, are clearly not going to pan out.

Although I am usually opposed to cartoon characters on clothing, I think I could make an exception and churn out a skirt or a dress from Beatles fabric, either what I have or one of the other fabrics in the collection. I'm thinking a skirt or sundress in this rainbow words print might be kind of cool, and this blue or this yellow would also make a nice but not too loud dress. If I want to go all-out, there's this crazy print (they have it in orange, too). I'm running out of time to order anything, but I have no idea what to do here.

What I do have is a plain white hoodie I picked up on clearance for $1.50 several months ago, and I've been trying to figure out how to Yellow-Submarine-ize it. I'm ordering some iron-on patches, but I think I could do something cool with inkjet iron-on transfer paper, too. I was trying to figure out how to stencil a big yellow sub on the back, but it would be a 7-color stencil and I don't think I'm up to that challenge. Which reminds me, have you ever used the inkjet-printable transfer paper? Do you have any recommendations? We've done it twice and both brands we bought sucked. If I can get it to work, it will be a 30-minute project, which is great, because between my quilting delusions and the dress I am knitting for her, I don't have much time.

Don't even get me started on what I want to do for the party. The party that we are not having. Memorial Day is the weekend before her birthday so we can't do it then; my in-laws will be here the weekend after, so that's a no-go (there are many, many reasons why not, starting with "If one Grandma gets to come to her b-day party and the other doesn't, all Hell will break loose"); the weekend after that my family might be coming for a visit (see above), and we don't know that many people here, so if we did it at all, it would be a three-weeks-after-the-day celebration for two other kids and eight other adults. Yet I am scheming about cakes frosted in many shades of yellow, playing pin-the-ring-on-Ringo, and making rainbow beanbags to toss through a Sea of Holes cardboard cutout. Hmm, maybe I could combine them into one game and have a toss-the-rings onto Ringo...

Buying This Game For Your Kids Is Redundant

Seriously. Why would I willingly bring that box into my house?

Oh, Hell No

Sorry Anthropologie, but even you cannot convince me that pleated khaki shorts are cool.

Yeah, Mom, Turn Around

It was really hot last week so I set a bucket of water in the front yard, gave her some measuring cups and toy boats, and let her have at it. Except she has this thing about drinking water from places she shouldn't (mud puddles, the swimming pool, bathwater, the toilet that one time - that we know of, dishwater) so I had to tell her over and over to STOP DRINKING THE WATER YOU JUST DUNKED YOUR SHOES IN. NO IT'S NOT OKAY, NOT EVEN IF YOU PUT IT IN A CUP FIRST.

Me: Piper, if you drink any more of that water, we are going inside.
Piper: You're not supposed to drink the water, it's just pretend.
Me: No, not even pretend. Not this time. You clearly cannot handle even pretend-drinking this water, even though it's got dead bugs and grass clippings in it.
Piper: This water is gross. Don't drink it.
Me: That's right.
Piper: Hey Mom, turn around!
Me (thinking we are playing some fun new game and desperate to distract from the water-drinking): Okay! I'm turned around!

(slurping sound behind my back)

Me (turning back around): Piper, did you drink that water?!
Piper (giggling): Hey Mom, turn around again!

Downer Days

The past seven or ten days turned into one of those crappy periods where I just can't seem to get it together and my guilt over (and frustration at) not being employed outside the house seems to dominate my thoughts and I really just phone it in most of the time.

I served the same not-so-great "leftover stew" (i.e., pull out all those Tupperware containers lingering in the fridge, throw it in a pot, add some stock + spices, then tell my family "oh, you'll EAT it and you'll LIKE it, Buster) three days in a row last week. I tried to be sneaky and mix it up as lunches and dinners, throw a little grated Parm on top, even made fresh, hot cheddar-garlic biscuits one night to go with it...but it was still the same pot of sucky leftovers that still suck when they are stirred together and simmered for 20 minutes.

I keep knitting the same thing over and over, because it's easy. I tried making something else, and after knitting it to near-completion and ripping it out four times, I gave up and made another Milo (#3 in about as many months, but out of cotton this time). I haven't touched that sewing machine, even though my head is stuffed full of projects I want to work on. My "project box" full of almost-done decorating stuff sits getting dusty in the corner. My camera stays in its protective bag most days. I wander around the house repeating out loud lines that I should be typing, in hopes that I'll remember them. I was doing great with the writing stuff for a while, self-imposed deadlines and mandatory page counts and all that, but not lately. There has been so little time for the real, honest work of writing that I'm not even sure I can do it any more. 

A neighbor asked me to take some photos of his kids, which I did, and now he's asked me to photograph an event at his church. I desperately want to do right by him, because he's a good man and he's counting on me. I also desperately want to be a better photographer and I can't figure out how. Nothing I read in books seems to stick; we don't have the money (or with R's crazy work schedule, the time) for a class; I don't know any other photographers. I feel envious when I see great photos by other people. Envious, and a little angry, because I can't do what they do. I'd love to be able to tweak the controls on my DSLR and get what I want out of it, to have long conversations with other camera nuts about f-stops and Photoshop actions. So far? I can't even change the shutter speed. Oy. The user's manual makes me go cross-eyed trying to digest it all, and though it came with DVD's, somehow I have not, in nearly two years, managed to find a spare hour or two to watch them. Again I say: oy.

To tell you the truth, I have been in an ever-increasing funk since Alex Chilton died. I can't say for sure that this caused it, but that seems to have been the tipping point. I would just like to tip back soon.

Edited to add: Oh, look. Now, because I am so off my game and not paying attention, I managed to post three posts in one day instead of saving the drafts for later this week like I intended. Niiiiice.

Why Did We Like This? An American Tail

Friday night was a good night for snuggling on the couch together and watching a movie. We were flipping through our choices on Netflix (Netflix + XBox = Netflix streaming on our TV, wheee!) and Ryan settled on Don Bluth's 1986 feel-good paean to the American dream, An American Tail. We remembered both liking the movie as kids, and figured we'd give Piper a run at it. We're pretty picky about what we let her watch, but from what we remembered, this should meet our critera. And it's not like she could ask us to buy her 586 Fievel toys next time we go to Target. Until she learns how to use Ebay, we'd be safe.

She got squirmy and ran around destroying things after about 15 minutes, as usual, but begged us not to turn it off when we tried. Which was unfortunate. Like so many things we enjoyed as children, this movie made us want to poke our eyes out as adults.

R: Why did we like this again?
S: I don't know. I just don't know. 
R: His tongue is freaky. It just keeps poking out of his mouth like it has a mind of its own. Why the hell does a mouse have a tongue that huge?
S: His adorable child-like manner of speaking makes me want to punch that little mouse in the face.

R: Why don't his clothes fit? They don't have proper clothing in Russia?
S: I guess not. Not even in Imaginary Cartoon Russia.
R: You think at some point he would just cut off the ends of those sleeves.
S: If he loses that stupid hat again, I am going to SCREAM.

R: Why is the seagull wearing a tuxedo and a top hat?
S: I think it's a pigeon.
R: Okay, but why does he have to be French?
S: Uhh...because pigeons just crap all over everything and are completely annoying and useless?
R: And have to take prostitutes everywhere they go, apparently.

R: Oh, COME ON! That's like the fifth time Fievel has almost but not quite crossed paths with his family. The fake-anticipation is making my eyeballs itch.
S: Now I understand why my mom got that look on her face whenever we asked to watch this movie. I understand why the videotape would mysteriously disappear for months at a time. And why, when they took us to see it in the theater, all the other parents looked physically uncomfortable.

R: Oh, wow! You know what this means?
S: What?
R: The entire rest of the Mousekewitz family went through Ellis Island or wherever, like they're supposed to, but Fievel snuck in. He's an illegal alien!
S: Ooh, they're gonna have to come and get him with guns, like Elian Gonzalez.

S: Oh, look, they got the cats. Does this mean the movie is over?
R: YES. And now let's never watch it again. We shall not even speak of it from this day forth.
S: Agreed.

Unfortunately, we forgot to get Piper in on this little pact. She's been asking to "watch the mouse one again."

P: You wanna watch the mouse one again? Please? We can watch the mouse one.
S: Uhh...I don't know kiddo, I don't think I can find it.
P: Can you look for the mouse one please? Mommy can find it?
S: Here, let's watch this instead! ("This" was the Shirley Temple verson of Heidi, non-colorized thankyouverymuch)
P: I don't like this one. I want the mouse one. Can we watch a different one? The mouse one?
S: You don't like this one? It's about a little girl and her grandpa.
P: I don't want this grandpa one. I don't like this one. I want THE MOUSE ONE.

Lucky for me, it was bedtime.

We're Not Gonna Take It (To The Potluck) Anymore

I usually knock myself out for potlucks.

Pies made from scratch 100% - not even so much as a pre-made crust. Crisp, cheesy Crock-Pot potato recipes that start the day before. Chicken fajita dip that requires warming and mixing just before you set it out so it will be at its yummiest. Cookies that take all day; layer cakes threatening to cover my car interior with homemade buttercream on the drive over; fruit crisps taken out milliseconds before departure so that they are served at a still-bubbling temperature. Complicated transport rigs involving cardboard boxes, silicone potholders, aluminum foil, kitchen towels, and bungee cords. Presentation in my best ceramic or glassware, with hand-lettered signs and decorative ribbon. Big chunks of the grocery budget taken up with quality butter, goat cheese, red wine, white chocolate, imported sugars, organic flour.

For a long time, I did it because I loved to cook, I loved to show off my kitchen skills, and I got satisfaction from knowing that I'd used top-quality ingredients and put my heart and soul into it.

But that was before.  Before this past holiday season wore me down.  It wasn't a horrible, stressful Halloween-to-New Year's run; no more than usual, anyway.  But somewhere in there was the straw that broke the camel's back.

This year was just one too many.  One too many times I'd stood by a long, extra-leaves-added table in someone's dining room, watching as people inhaled Minute Rice and Velveeta while giving my lovingly-made food a wide berth. Too many years of work potlucks where people passed up the pie I'd made from scratch in my tiny, hot-as-Hades kitchen while fighting over the last grocery-store doughnut. One too many times all those expensive, quality ingredients sat getting soggier and sadder in my fridge as I struggled to consume the leftovers I'd had to bring home.  Schelpping my beautiful glass bakeware in its own insulated carryalls home at the end of the night, their weight only marginally less than when I'd taken them out the door a few hours earlier - this had become my own personal walk of shame.

This year, it felt like I spent more time than usual working my ass off on food nobody wanted to eat.  Maybe, if I'm being honest, the seeds were planted last March, when I made, per a friend's request, a chocolate-bourbon-pecan pie (again, from scratch) for his birthday.  He forgot about our plans and failed to show up to eat it (my husband polished it off for him). We re-scheduled and I made my friend another pie...which he also didn't show up to eat (though this time at least it wasn't because he forgot). I made a third one - the third one of these in less than a week - and he finally showed up to eat it, but with just a brush off "Oh, thanks." Three rounds of pecans and bourbon and crust and toiling in a hot kitchen, all in less than a week, and all I get is "Oh, thanks"?

This same friend completely forgot about my birthday a few months later.  He (and his wife) didn't even give me an after-the-fact courtesy "happy birthday" when he asked about my new phone and I said "Oh, it was a present, for my birthday last week." Not a word. Disappointed didn't quite cover what I felt.

Fast-forward to this Thanksgiving, when I was visiting my parents' place and made seven pies in one day.  First there was some whining because I'd only made one pecan, and that was the only pie some of the non-family guests wanted to eat; then, two of my beautiful pies had to be thrown out after a couple of days because nobody thought to refrigerate them.  They were both untouched, the sweet potato's delicate asiago crust uncompromised and the pumpkin's smooth surface unbroken. 

As Christmas time rolled around, I got invited to a cookie exchange.  I figured I'd better bring my A-game, so I got my mom to give me the recipe for a family favorite, small butter thumbprint cookies with a creamcheese & candy-cane filling.  They were a real pain in the ass to make, but delicious.  I also made a pan full of these, a clone recipe for Starbucks White Chocolate Cranberry Bliss Bars. I figured if my fellow exchangers didn't like one, they'd like the other.

When I got to the cookie exchange, I discovered that not everyone thought a cookie-exchange party meant "bring something really cool." There were plywood-tasting slice n' bake cookies, break n' bakes that had been baked in their original squarish shapes, and at least 1/4 of the entries were plain old chocolate chip. One or two people brought bakery cookies, and at least 1/3 of the participants left without taking anything home. I pushed some of my peppermint & cream cheese drops on people as we were filling containers at the end of the night, because even though I knew I'd have no problem eating up the leftovers, I couldn't bear to take a box full of my own cookies home. I already had to take home the cranberry white chocolate bars, which had turned out too crumbly to dish up, not that it mattered because I and the hostess were the only ones who tried them anyway.

Dejected, I soldiered on, readying myself for a friend's Christmas-Eve potluck.  This would be our second year attending, and I think we were the only non-family people on the guest list both years.  I decided not to do anything too elaborate, but I knew that my friend adored both sweet potatoes and goat cheese, so Heidi Swanson's Sweet Potato Spoon Bread (from Super Natural Cooking, the book that changed my life in the kitchen life) seemed like a slam-dunk.  I also brought an apple crisp, for which it was no picnic finding decent out-of-season apples. Both items were made the day of the potluck, and transported fresh from the oven, so they would still be warm for serving.

Which would've been great, had anybody actually eaten them.

Since this crew is all family, everybody pretty much brings the same thing year after year, and I overheard a lot of "Oh, you brought your rice! I'm so glad" or "Did you bring that mac & cheese?  I was hoping you would!" I have no problem with this...but they don't even try anything else. As I filled my own Chinet plate with items I could easily feed to Piper, I watched as spoonful after spoonful of fluorescent yellow macaroni and cheese or greasy Lil Smokies disappeared, while the perfect golden-brown, cheese-flecked surface of my spoon bread remained untouched.  I eventually grabbed a spoonful for myself, since it is delicious, and my friend said later that she did try it and liked it. But we were the only ones who even gave it a second glance.

My apple crisp fared only slightly better. When I went in for a round of desserts, I at least found I wasn't the first person to broach its crispy surface with the spoon (although I'd wager I was the second, and only other person that night who did). At the end of the evening, as I packed up my dishes and my now-cranky child, I felt like crying. I had a moment of deja vu, and realized that this was the second year in a row I'd left feeling disappointed in this way.  The previous year, I had made an apple pie and, because I know there are people like my husband who don't like fruit pies, I had bought a frozen Oreo pie from the store.  All night I'd watched as the store-bought one disappeared, its peaks of chemically-solidified whipped cream being cut into again and again. Meanwhile, my hand-made love letter to Washington apples sat in its glass dish, with only one piece gone. I had apple pie for breakfast for the next week.

I decided right then and there that I wasn't going to do it anymore. No more pies for people who wouldn't eat them, no more food-from-scratch for work potlucks or places where it hadn't been appreciated.  From now on, I will bring plates and cups as my contribution.  I will bring drinks, or napkins, or help clean up afterward.  But I'm not going to break my back cooking for people who don't appreciate it anymore.  If they'd rather have Velveeta on Minute Rice...well, let them. I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. 

Mark it With an "H"

Piper got invited to her first-ever birthday party of a classmate last weekend, and we were both psyched for her and nervous.

She's only been at this school for a couple of months (less than, actually), so we didn't know the birthday boy well.  I think it was one of those "invite everyone in the class" things.  Still, we were excited, as much for the opportunity to hang around other adults and possibly make friends as for Piper to have a social outing.

The party got re-scheduled; it was supposed to be on a Saturday afternoon at 3:30, but the birthday boy took ill and it was re-scheduled to the following Sunday.  At 10:30 in the morning.  While this sounds like a weird time to have a party, once I thought about it, it actually seemed better than the middle-of-the day times I'm used to seeing. Most of the under-5's I know still nap, and nap right after lunch, somewhere in the 1:00 to 3:00 range.  The party was at a Bounce U, and I couldn't think of a better way to wear my kid out than pumping her full of birthday cake and turning her loose in a variety of bouncy structures and obstacle courses.  About the time everyone is getting sick of each other and ready to drop in their tracks, taa-daa! Party's over, time for a nap.

Anyway, we didn't know the kid well but figured books were a good bet - all the parents I know get sick of reading the same ones over and over and welcome a change in the roster - so we got him a collection of Stuart Little adventures and Syd Hoff's The Horse In Harry's Room. I was going to craft some sort of fabulous stenciled hoodie or...something...but didn't get to it (and wasn't sure if these were the sort of people to appreciate handmade gifts), so I figured I'd better bring my A-game to the wrapping table:

The birthday boy's name started with "H," so I ran with it. The brown paper is kraft paper that was used as padding in some shipping package; the brown ribbon was saved from a friend's sweet cupcake-box decorations at her son's party; the "H" letters I traced from my own home-made templates and cut out of double-sided scrapbook paper. I glued down both the ribbons and the H's.

(Please excuse blurry phone photos, I only remembered to snap a couple shots as we were zooming out the door) 

They looked cute, but the paper was a little thin and I double-layered the (sturdier and hardcover) Stuart Little book.  This plus the glued-on ribbon and letters created a nearly-impenetrable fortress of gift wrap. It took the poor kid several minutes of struggling to get it open. He had similar trouble with the second one (although it was only single-layer-wrapped) and his mom helped him because she was afraid he was going to tear the softcover book.  Whoops.

But he seemed to like the books, and forgot all about his other presents once he cracked open the Stuart Little. His mom thanked me, saying "We always need more books, we get so tired of the ones we have at home." So that made me feel good, even if my fancy wrapping job was kind of a fail.

I was really glad we went, because (due to the re-scheduled time, I think), it was just the birthday boy, his older brother, a friend of the older brother, and Piper.  The other parents (birthday boy & brother's mom and dad, friend's mom) all agreed that maybe it was better this way, because four kids under age 5 was totally manageable, whereas 12 kids...maybe not so much.

The kids got to visit two different rooms in the bounce place, and there were different activities and structures in each room.  It was pretty cool, because by the time they got bored in one room, it was time to move on, and then when they started to wind down in the second room, it was time for pizza and cake. The cake was this huge squashed-face Elmo cupcake-cake which the other parents thought was cute but we found a little disturbing.  I find cupcake-cakes a little disturbing in general. Most of the kids just ate the two inches of technicolor frosting off the top of their cupcakes and left the rest.  A good time was had by all, and an excellent nap was taken shortly after the end of the party. 

In Which My Clumsiness Astounds Even Me.

A few weeks ago, we took Piper to Monkey Joe's, which is this sort of indoor playground full of inflatable bounce-houses and slides. It's all soft, air-filled non-threatening equipment, designed so little kids can shove each other into it and jump around like howler monkeys on speed all day long and not sustain so much as a scratch.

And yet, somehow, despite all the inflatable bouncy protection, I managed to bunge up my foot so much I have been limping for nearly three weeks. When we arrived, I was perfectly happy to let Piper wear herself out climbing all over everything, and to let my husband chase after her and help her on the things she couldn't quite manage, but he wanted me to join the fun! So I scrambled in my stocking-feet after my own crazed little howler monkey as she navigated a foam-and-rubber obstacle course which ended in a short climbing wall studded with toe-holds. Since these toe-holds were designed for small kid feet, not Sasquatch-sized adult flippers, she was much faster than me. As I tried desperately to clamber after her and not look like the out-of-shape couch potato that I am, my cotton/poly-blend socks surrendered what little traction they had and my foot slipped. I crashed down onto the mat below, my foot still at an awkward angle, and heard a snap! sound when it hit. The almost-immediate burning sensation along my ankle let me know what something not good had just happened.

I tried to tough it out and accompanied Piper up and down a few more of the giant slides, until my husband noticed my grimace and pointed me to a row of lounge chairs conveniently provided for parents right in front of a big-screen TV. The arch-side of my foot had a rapidly-swelling lump and the burning, tingly sensation was getting worse as I propped it on an ottoman and tried to work on the knitting I'd brought with me.

Eventually we packed up and I limped home, tried putting it up and applying ice, and it hurt less, but I was still left hobbling around. I poked at it and decided nothing was broken (although, with no health insurance, it's not like we could afford to pop down to the Urgent Care for an x-ray anyway). I think I whacked the little bony part on the arch of my foot and bruised a bone or something. After a week, an ugly greenish-purple bruise blossomed on that side of my foot. The bruise has faded, but it still hurts to stand on it too long, it hurts to wear tight shoes, and anything besides tennis shoes or my trusty boots will leave me grimacing and hopping around.

Every time I step down and get a bolt of pain up my leg, I mentally kick myself for being such an idiot. I mean, who else but me could injure themselves that badly in a room FULL OF INFLATABLE SOFT THINGS?! Honestly.

Wait, where did summer go again?

I know that the weather turned Fall-ish promptly on September 1st, and I even blogged about how much I was looking forward to the change of season, but it hadn't really occurred to me that summer was over. Somewhere the dark recesses of my brain held the fact that school was starting, temperatures were cooling, and apples were coming into season, but my mind as a whole had not quite processed the fact that summer is gone. The thought "Hey! Fall is here!" was flitting around my little brain like a butterfly.

All the things I was going to do this summer (go to Michigan for a visit, start sewing again, finish the Pay It Forward packages before Labor Day, knit the six different shawls my mom wants, make and send off the birthday presents for all the August birthdays, get started on some sweaters for Piper, start work on the October birthday presents and the Christmas stuff) have slipped through my fingers like sand. But I wasn't worried, because hey, I still had some summer left, right?

Then I woke up this morning and saw a yellow leaf on our back stoop. I raced to the windows on the side of the house and there they were - patches of reddening leaves scattered throughout the trees. My happy little butterfly went away and was replaced with "HOLY CRAP, IT'S FALL ALREADY AND I AM SO SCREWED."

Looking at those trees, thinking about that leaf, I realized the following things:

* The preschool I had hoped to send Piper to started this week.
* I have not even looked up dance studios around here so I have no clue where to send her.
* The August birthdays have come and gone, and I have not even started their projects.
* Labor day is over, and neither the Pay it Forward packages nor my package for the charity I'm sending stuff to are ready to go out (click that link and check out Mel's contest; it's a really worthy cause).
* I can't even find all the yarn for the first of my mom's six projects. I seem to have misplaced a ball.
* If I want to get to Michigan for a visit before Christmas, I'd better get plane tickets NOW.
* We are almost halfway through September.

I have no idea how I'm going to catch up. Apparently I have some sort of time problem, because this is not the first time I've had this issue. I bop along, content to make half-hearted stabs at my gargantuan to-do lists, blissfully filing almost everything under "do later." Then when it actually is later, I scramble and work like mad to get everything done in time. I was never this inefficient when I worked in an office; I just don't get it.

Much of my recent time was spent working doggedly around the house. The mess and clutter and boxes still unpacked after almost 18 months finally got to me and I couldn't take it anymore. We bought actual bookshelves and cd racks so we could finally get rid of the boxes in the spare bedroom. I packed up or gave away most of the (approximately) two tons of baby clothes & toys we owned. I got all my craft stuff together, organized it, and packed most of it up so it can go into the attic until I have a craft room (or, at this point, any little corner would do). We've been tackling one project or so a week, trying at least to tame the chaos of moving our stuff four times in two years. Although my House Project List is by no means finished, my brain is a lot happier and better able to think now that some of the physical disorder is gone.

I am still working on my items for Cris, Jen, Emily, and Lana. I had a wee little setback last week, because I bought the wrong supplies the first time and had to go out and get new and start over. I would up buying the stuff that I wanted to buy in the first place. I should've just trusted my instincts, because then I wouldn't be out the first round of supply money and six hours of time, nor would I have found myself charging through the hillbilly-est Wal-Mart in the area at 9:30 pm. There certainly are some, uh, colorful shoppers at that hour. Oh, well. Live some, learn some, right?

9/17/09: I changed the date of this post retroactively. My apologies if it shows up twice in your feed reader.

The Wrong Rachel

A couple of months ago, I decided to get my hair cut. I'd been growing it out for a while with no particular plan other than making sure the remnants of my former, horrible-mushroom-head cut were gone. All I did was pull it up in ponytails that made my head look too big and my hair look overly greasy. I decided that something much fresher and cuter was in order, something closer to my short-ish hair incarnations of several years ago. I loved (most of) my short haircuts, because they were cute and easy, and I remembered one cut that had been the easiest and cutest of all. It was short but not too short, layered but not too poofy, and all I had to do was shower and run my fingers through it and it always looked great. Ding ding ding! We have a winner.

I have learned my lesson and NEVER EVER EVER EVER go to the hairdresser without a picture anymore, but I had long since thrown out the magazine cover that inspired the much-loved short n' cute haircut. I Googled around and found the same image I used several years ago to get the original cut:



In its original incarnation on my head, it was like this but a little shorter and a tiny bit curly because my hair naturally does that. So I went in armed with my inkjet-printed Vanity Fair cover and explained what I wanted. Unfortunately, the hairdresser apparently thought it was 1996, because I walked out with this:



So now I either pull it back in a (very small and stubby) ponytail, or walk around looking like I did in my high-school graduation pictures. I know I sometimes wish I could look like I did back in high school, but this is NOT what I meant. However, if I were to go to a class reunion this year, nobody would have any trouble recognizing me.

Gauze Celebre.

After seeing this post on a knitting blog, I coveted not only the fingerless mittens (never mind it's 82 degrees outside right now), but also that scarf. She was kind enough to link to the website where she bought it. I decided to click through, y'know, just to see.

I looked at the Uniform Studio shop page, and realized that the "scarf" was gauze. Closer inspection of the product pages made me realize that this "light as air cotton scarf" with "textural, distressed raw edges" was just a 20 inch by 6 ft. piece of cotton gauze fabric they ripped instead of cutting and didn't even hem. And it costs $40. It even comes in my new obsession color for this spring, mustard yellow. But $40? Seriously?

Now, generally I'm a champion of the "buy handmade" ethic and support the little guy and rah rah rah, but in this case I think "make handmade" will suit my budget a bit better. I'm sure they are very nice pieces of cotton gauze scarves, but for about $7 I can get enough cotton gauze to make one and rip it in half myself. I'd even have one to give to a friend.

Of course, assuming I ever make it to the fabric store/get around to ordering it, and the store or website has what I want...I'd get it home safely and spread it out and spend forty-five minutes laying it out on the floor, supposedly trying to see how wide I want it but really spend all my time yelling get off, cat! and Piper, NO NO NO! before I realize I can't find the fricken scissors, then fold it all up and tell myself I'll try again tomorrow, but there it sits for six months until I forget why the hell I bought it in the first place.

Uhh, not that this has happened with other craft projects or anything...I certainly don't have entire closet that might as well be labled "Where Good Crafts Go To Die." Nosir, not me.

Hmm...maybe $40 isn't such a bad price after all...

Totally Lame-Ass NYE

My parents are here, and staying with us, which means we have FREE babysitters for as far into the wee hours as we want to party.

And yet, we are so deeply, profoundly lame that we don't have anywhere to go.

There's a celebration in Charlotte's downtown (er, Uptown) district, but we don't really feel like going to that. It's cold outside, parking downtown is expensive, and I think it's alcohol-free anyway. Any decent bar is charging $20 cover tonight and we don't feel like shelling out $40 to stand around crammed in with a bunch of people we don't know and sip warm $3 Budweisers and a glass of watery champagne at midnight. There's not even a movie that we want to see bad enough to pay full price for. Some friends have invited us to hang out and watch movies at their house, but it's 40 minutes away and we are both pretty tired (we went to bed at 2:00 a.m., our visitors got here at 6:00, and I got a 2-hr nap but Ryan didn't).

So we are hanging around the house with our daughter and my family, snacking and watching movies. I have taken advantage of the baby-occupiers to do a little pretend/fantasy-shopping and indulge my bag obsession. It's nice to spend a couple of hours frittering away time on the Internet without anyone whacking me in the face with a copy of Goodnight Moon.

Fail: Handcrafted Holiday Cards

I may actually get around to doing Christmas/etc cards this year. They will not be handmade, however, as my ridiculously-optimistic plans for making handmade holiday cards were a big fat FAIL. Realistically, I knew it wasn't going to work out, since I had only the vaguest idea of what I wanted them to look like when they were done, but that didn't stop me from going to the craft store and spending $25 on materials. I promptly came home and found 3 boxes of cards tucked under some old ornaments in the battered, dusty cardboard carton marked "XMAS LIGHTS DON'T DROP." I took a long, hard look at the pile of random paper scraps, paints, stencils, and brushes awaiting me on the dining table and decided maybe I should cut my losses.

Maybe next year I'll start early and make the beautiful embossed holiday greetings I had envisioned, each one a little different and all of them carefully hand-crafted by me.

But probably not.