winter weekend

No food. Rummaging in the backs of the cupboards, we pulled together bits and scraps and forgotten boxes.

I made cereal candies, which the kids poked at suspiciously. Gavin opted for back-of-the-fridge yogurt, Leif ate a butt wipe.



Covered up the smell of the neighbors' ciggies and spliffs with a loaf of beer bread, made with the new batch of home-brewed honey beer.



Slim pickings are good eating.

Knitting occurs in the in-between bits, amidst mid-morning coffee and evening popcorning. Yesterday, a mitten was born.



Then I remembered that I hate double-pointed needles. Also the thumb is too stubby. Mittens are stupid and I WILL NOT MAKE ANY MORE MITTENS. Pulled out the super-squashy Dark Horse yarn to soothe mitten rage, despite the fact that it was an absolutely hideous color.



variegated yarn = gross

Knitting not doing so well. On to sewing instead.


To Do List

As soon as these illustrations are done, I will run back to the embrace of my sewing cupboard. There are several pregnant women who have been holding in babies while I stall for time.

Realized that I forgot to show off the manly quilt, which has already been in use since Halloween, and blessed with cat barf. Thrice. But you can't tell, because it is black! I win!



Still needs some more quilting.

In the works: the Deer Valley blanket. Has been basted and slowly hand-stitched for ages now.




note: these are the stairs of doom which we keep cartwheeling down. Points detracted for endangering my first-born offspring by perching him on the landing.

Nowhere near finished: the Anna Maria Horner quilt - last year's Mother's Day gift to myself. But the top is done!



Yes, will be very productive when I get a break from all this stuff I'm doing.

The power of trend

Finally bought a drapey cardigan, as per insistance of women's fashion magazines.



It is too long in the front and too short in the back and tries to hang in the toilet, but has garnered praise and fanfare from co-workers (who said I looked "very Esquire" - slightly worrisome), and caused three still-acne-pocked college tourists in backwards caps to follow me like ducklings while picking up the post. I may have to start wearing winter boots over my pants and cinch enormous belts over my t-shirts.


In other news

* Paid for the meat-hammer threats by getting my heel stuck in my pants and falling down the stairs, flinging my keys up over my head and into the banana trees in attempt to free hands and grab railing.

* Sub and janitor have begun saying "bah-rah?" in response to everything, including my threats to bludgeon them with a stick.

Pet Project cont.

Step 2: wiping clean the ipod. GONE are the wailings and gnashings of my youth, GONE are the landmines that stud the landscape of my shuffle, GONE are things called love and presences still lingering and standing by you. I am reloading Pinkie with upbeat hipster librarian tracks - Gogol Bordello and Modest Mouse and the Decemberists and Franz Ferdinand and the like. Will brainwash self with barrage of perkiness.

Recap: Step 1 is adrenoline and excitement; have decided this will be our trip to New York in a few weeks. If the drive to Washingtonville with the speedy [ex]mother-in-law through New Jersey traffic doesn't do it, a ride on the subway with a child and a nazgul should. There is also IKEA, Anthropologie, Trader Joes, and the Lindt store to fall back on. This failing, we can go to the grocery store and get goose-bumpy about gallons of milk for under $9.


come to me

stashes, wool, and bruises

The latest from my needles:




The incognito cowl from knitty.

red stickers

It is with sadness and resignation every year that I watch the winter wear pass through the clearance racks and away from my life without justification to savage the racks of delicious squashy sweaters with consumerist abandon. Not this year! Feeling wanton and unburdened after hefting two garbage bags of old clothes into the thrift store donation bin, we became addled by the "oh please just take them!" sales in Old Navy, piling ourselves with two dollar winter wear and slavey-children hoodies. I pulled a lovely black woolen pea coat from the rack and gasped when I saw it was the last one in my size, then gasped again when I put it on and looked like a tired starlet from one of the library's trashy magazines, then gasped a further time when I saw that it was down to $19 from $90, then hyperventilated all the way to the register.



Must never confess to my mother that I am wearing asthmatic-murdering wool, but can't help myself. If the children start gasping like fish around me, I will put on a plastic garment bag and pretend it is a stylish dampness repellent. Got home and realized that the infink still does not have a pair of shoes. If this continues, we will have to rubberband his pant legs shut over his feet when we get to New York. Poor little shoeless child.

Also he is very pathetic because he toppled off the bed in his sleep and gave himself his first goose egg.



And Gavin says I don't post enough pictures of him, so here is the boy not eating his dinner of cheesy broccoli, chicken in balsamic reduction (boiled salad dressing), and garlic sandwich bread (the french bread burned into charcoal while I was making iced coffee):

Hopes Fulfilled

Not even a week into the new year and already one of my wishes has come true; rabid media obsession. Having watched all 6 seasons of Peep Show within a 5-day span, the man revealed that he had uncovered movies and an entire other series starring my new boyfriend Robert Webb (sorry, Jack Black, you're out), and I just about had a stroke.



In further rolling-over-of-the-yearness

My new ambition this year is to stop being a hedgehog and force myself to uncurl, even if it means being jabbed in the underbelly by the sharp finger of love. Step 1: trick myself into falling back into school-girl-type love with the man, instead of just the comfortable limb-type love one grows into after 13 years. According to a new self-help book I have flipped through, this can be accomplished by adrenaline-producing activity within close proximity to the intended object d'affection, causing the brain to associate the hapless bystander with crazed excitement. Activities like sky-diving, or rolling a hobo. Neither of which I can do with a man who has fallen down the stairs and is limping around howling like a big ginger wookie. Maybe I can threaten him with a meat hammer to the knee to get things going.

Gossip-ish

"It's called 'misinformation'," Officer Cleanshaven said, tapping his nose at the wary teenagers loitering outside. He came in and crouched down to eye level to whisper across the desk with me about breaks in the Case of the Grievous Graffiti, and I did my usual cop-induced transmogrification into Happy Cat, unburdening every rumor and suspicion I had heard rumbling around the library for the past week pertaining to the vandalism. He gratified me by making scandalized noises and a little dance of excitement before running out to follow the new leads. Felt like fast-living C.I. in a crime drama. Spent the rest of the afternoon scanning barcodes. Oh, well.

New Year 2010

On Oahu, the boy was dashing through the smoky firecracker-riddled streets with his cousins and waving sparklers beneath the blossoms of the neighborhood's illegal aerials; on Maui, the infink snoozed peacefully and the cats tipped their ears at the distant pops of the odd firework while we curled sleepily together like hamsters in front of a terrible action film. Mike called his family as the ball dropped in New York, and we admired the blue moon from the front patio.



We were too drowsy to fetch the champagne, but flipped to the rerun of the Times Square countdown, gathered ourselves up in the couch blanket, and for the first time in 4 years I was properly kissed as the clock struck midnight. That's good for a start.


Pau vacation

The man flew off for the weekend to fetch the boy back from grannie. As he left, I dragged myself from my bed of pain (the bathroom - yay food poisoning) to wave goodbye. "Be safe!" "I will!" and he fell down the stairs.

While I have been trying to apply the burners and attempt to meet my illustration deadline, the infink has:

Stripped off his clothes and dunked them in the Physics Bucket (cat litter tray with an inch of water)
Learned to ask for water with a sweet lilting "baba?"
Dumped the water on the downstairs neighbors
Peed on the couch
Gone into a frenzy of gollum dancing
Laughed maniacally singing "Willaby Wallaby Woo" for every animal in his books while he mimed smashing them to death
Eaten part of a used diaper


He also escaped via cat door,


and then tried to bash in my head with a jug.


He's a deliciously wicked little nazgul, and I loves him.

Will be happy to get the security-man back so I have a human shield between me and the axe murderers again.