SquirkWorld

My Escargot Hat

2011-12-24T11:21:00.000-08:00

The pattern is on Knitty here.

I think my NEXT one will be brown or red or maybe black with a fun color for the trim. Also I disregarded the directions and attached the swirl my own way and THEN looked at the pictures in the pattern and read the directions more closely and realized that I should have done it differently in order to make it look more like the pattern blah blah blah I can't really explain it but I think I know what I need to do differently next time. Also I will check my gauge next time, which I neglected to do this time. (the hat might be a little bit too big.) But it was fun and relatively quick to knit! And I am pretty happy with it!

The yarn I used for this one is Cascade 220.

Now I'm attempting to use up my many many MANY bits of leftover yarn to make a flower blanket (afghan? quilt? whatever you wanna call it). This will probably be a long-term project!

Snaily Hat!

2011-12-08T12:03:00.000-08:00

Ahh! The next thing I must knit! It's a 20's-style cloche but also very snaily!
From the winter edition of Knitty:

Escargot Hat

(I was going to post the picture from the pattern on Knitty, but I realized that I really don't fully understand the "rules" when it comes to posting other people's photos and I don't want to get in trouble. So there be the link! Go have a look, it's super cute.)

Of course I will be posting my OWN photo of my OWN Escargot Hat once I manage to knit one up!

It's the little things that please me so.

Some things I've made recently

2011-10-02T14:08:00.001-07:00

A lace design from a pattern in the book "Crochet Inspiration". It's 2 cats! See them?? It's about 16" by 10" or so. I just thought it might be a fun thing to try, although now I have no idea what to do with it.

A wee hat! (I know, the picture gives no clues as to its actual size, in fact it looks rather large and looming in this picture.) I'm proud of it because I made it "freestyle" without following any pattern (although I've made a ton of this type of hat so I guess I just "know" how to do it at this point) and all scrap yarn I had lying around. It's for a friend who is expecting a baby. (That is to say, it's for the baby.) I had forgotten how much fun and how quick hats are to knit! (The wee ones, at least.)

Last but not least, some of the last flowers from my garden. On a grey rainy Portland autumn Sunday afternoon.

Not gonna do it... yet...

2011-09-29T09:07:00.000-07:00

So... I just cancelled my Lasik surgery and all related eye appointments. I need more time.

Yesterday I had some good talks with some friends who are all very supportive of me getting the surgery and say "everything will be okay!" which makes me feel like yes, everything WILL be okay if I get this surgery! It's good to talk to friends about things. But then I go back to OBSESSIVELY researching on the Internet, desperately looking for the "good" stories, and I get anxious and worried and scared. I wake up during the night worrying about it... not so much the surgery itself, but I worry about permanent dry eyes and eventual decline in vision quality. Or any other million "possible complications". Of course my eye doctor's office and the Lasik clinic want to talk to me about my concerns and help me not feel so anxious, but of course it is in their best interest if I do the surgery because they make money!

Last night my darling hubby pointed out to me that I don't HAVE to get the surgery next week, I can do it a few months or even years from now. I can cancel it and take more time to think about it. So that is what I am doing. I need to feel 100% good about doing this, and right now I don't. I'm probably only at about 60% right now.

I am a little bit disappointed but I am also relieved that I have made a decision for now.

The thing is, if there was no such thing as the Internet and I ONLY had the information I received from the clinic and the recommendation from my eye doctor and the personal stories from the few people I know who have had it done, I would probably go ahead and do it. But there is just SO MUCH negative stuff on the internet. Even stories from people who were initially very very happy with their surgery and then four years later are experiencing problems... and I know, these people could have something completely unrelated going on or they don't take care of their eyes or WHO KNOWS but I'm still pausing because of the stories I am reading. Is that totally stupid? It probably is. But I can't help it.

So I will take some time off from stressing out about this, take a break from looking at the Internet, try to talk to more "real life" people, and see how I feel in a couple months.

A long post about my thoughts on Lasik

2011-09-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

I have been contemplating getting Lasik (which stands for "laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis") eye surgery for a while. For how long? Hmm, maybe just a couple years. Up until recently my attitude was "NO WAY would I ever let someone cut open my eyeballs! I can see just fine with glasses and contacts!" However, at my last eye exam, the technician commented that her prescription was almost identical to mine - WAS, until she got the Lasik and now she can see great! I didn't feel like she was trying to sell me anything, I felt like she was just being honest. My eye doc (who I have been seeing for about 10 years and who I adore) told me that he thought I would be a "good candidate" and asked if I wanted a referral to a Lasik clinic in the area. I said "sure", I'd check it out at least.

I debated even making the appointment for the "free consultation" but then decided to go ahead and have the consultation (since it was free) and find out more info. I would not even be able to find out the final cost until I received the eye exam, since everyone's eyes are a little different, and this clinic offers many different types of Lasik which all cost different amounts. The appointment lasted about 2 hours and involved an eye exam, a tour of the facilities, and detailed discussion about the procedure and possible complications. I felt fairly comfortable and not pressured at all. I left with a giant packet of information, including many legal forms I would have to sign (clearing the clinic and surgeons of any responsibility if my surgery was to turn out badly). They told me my surgery would be about $2000 PER EYE, for the "bladeless custom Lasik" option (my "best option").

The many legal forms and long list of possible negative complications caused me to feel very timid about even considering this. The cost of the surgery is actually not a big deterrent to me, as I have a little savings and the clinic offers excellent payment plans (interest free!). I thought about it for a couple weeks, and during that time did what any good 21st-century-first-world-citizen would do: I did my own research on the Internet! Which was a very bad idea. Well, a fairly bad idea anyway. Because of course the people who take their experiences to the Internet are mostly people with horror stories. Very Bad Experiences that they want the world to know about.

If you do a Google search for "Lasik stories" (or something worded like that) you will come up with page after page of complete horror stories about complications ranging from dry eyes to suicide (yes suicide), and just about everything in between. Double vision, chronic headaches, blindness, eye infections, seeing halos around lights, the need for repeated treatments, the need for reading glasses AND driving glasses AND computer glasses, simply not being able to see well in the end... it goes on and on.

The Internet scared me (a lot) but I did manage to come away with some useful realizations:

1. The advances in Lasik have come a long way just in the past few years. Most of the horrible stories I was reading were from the late 90s and early 00s. (Although I know a few people who had it done back then and had good results.) My surgery will be "bladeless" which means a laser is used to cut the cornea flap, which is supposed to result in less complications (such as seeing "halos" around lights - this was usually a result of mistakes during the "cutting of the flap" by hand, with an actual knife). Also my surgery will be completely customized to my specific eyes, which apparently was not always the case in the past.

2. Lasik has become a fashionable way for eye surgeons to make a lot of money quickly and easily. There are many surgeons out there who are dishonest and incompetent. There are also many surgeons out there who are very competent and very honest. Don't let just any old clown slice open your eyeballs. Do research, get referrals. Seems obvious, but I think many people are lured in by the promise of 20/20 vision and slick salesmen. And Groupons.

3. The cost of Lasik can vary widely from just a couple hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. If the price seems to good to be true it probably is. However, paying a lot of money doesn't necessarily mean you will get the best surgery. Also, it's probably not a good idea to go to a place that accepts "Groupons".

4. Everyone is different. Different eye health, different prescriptions, different thresholds for pain and discomfort. So of course reading other people's accounts on the Internet must be done with several grains of salt.

In addition to grain-of-salt-Internet-research, I tried to find actual flesh-and-blood people who had it done. My results were that MOST people who had some type of laser eye surgery are happy. SOME people are not, but the most common complaint is dry eyes. Also hormonal changes (pregnancy, menopause) can affect one's prescription and a couple people I know have had their eyes return to the state of needing glasses. The clinic I am going to offers "free touch-ups" (supposedly!) and when I asked about my eyes changing with menopause they told me I could "just come back in and get my eyes done again". Hmmm.

I have found the "satisfaction" rating of Lasik surgery listed as anywhere between 95% and 99%. Those odds don't seem too bad, but of course I have been focusing on the 1% of people who experience severe and disabling complications. However, after I managed to STOP looking at the Internet and started talking to the real people in my life, I decided to do it.

Last month I finally went ahead and made an appointment for the surgery. I am supposed to be out of my contacts for at least 2 weeks prior to the surgery, so I have been wearing my glasses exclusively. Boy it has been a pain in the ass to wear glasses all the time. Makes me want to get the surgery even more!

My surgery is scheduled for October 6th. I had to make an evening appointment so my hubby can take me. They only do evening appointments once per month, so if I miss this for some reason (such as migraine, which is one of my big concerns... more on that later...) I will have to wait another month. I also had to schedule 2 pre-op appointments: one with my regular eye doctor to have an exam with pupil-dilation (which is a pain-in-the-butt because I need to get a ride to and from that appointment and of COURSE they can only see me at the most annoying time when no one is available to drive me..), and another pre-op appointment with the Lasik clinic just to make sure nothing has changed with my eyes since I last saw them in August. AND I had to schedule 2 post-op appointments: one with my regular doc again to check on my "eye health" and a next-day appointment with the Lasik clinic (which they assure me I will be able to drive myself to.. WITH NO GLASSES! I don't believe them, but of course that's the whole point of all this, isn't it? To be able to see without glasses?)... And then several follow-up appointments with the clinic over the next several months to check my results. I do feel good that they are really checking my eyes a lot, but man it is turning into kind of a pain because I have to miss work for all this.

So I still have a lot of worries and concerns, and I still feel like I may chicken-out and cancel all my appointments. At the time of writing this I have a week and two days. I am writing all this because I need to organize my thoughts and really figure out if I will go through with it or not.

Things I need to remember about my current vision:

1. When I am wearing my glasses or contacts I STILL feel like I can't always see sharply (even though my eye doc assures me I have very close to 20/20 with my glasses).

2. My contact lenses can be really uncomfortable, but then again I like having peripheral vision (which I don't have with my glasses). The contacts dry out my eyes if I try to do something like knit or read music. And all the various cleaning solutions are expensive and a pain to lug around with me if I am traveling.

3. With my glasses and contacts I currently can't really see at night, and I already see "halos" around lights at night, so those possible side-effects of surgery aren't really that big a deal, since it wouldn't really be any different.

I don't know what my exact prescription is, but it is pretty bad. I can't see 6 inches away from my face, and I have bad astigmatism. I often find myself thinking that getting Lasik surgery is just a rich-person-cosmetic-kinda-thing (not that I am rich of course), but really it is a quality-of-life kinda thing. I mean, right now, I can't see! If I were to lose my glasses I would be screwed (until I could go get another pair of course). So if modern medicine can offer me a way to be able to see, why not take it?

So, anyway, here they are, my biggest concerns at this point:

1. The literature says that taking Imitrex before/during/after Lasik can cause complications, since the medication affects blood vessels and guess what the eyeball is filled with? Blood vessels! So it can cause a problem with the healing process. I do not currently take Imitrex but I take a similar medication. My consultant said it probably is not that big of a deal, they just like to "err on the side of caution". But if I get a migraine around the time of surgery (likely!) I will have to make that decision. If I don't take the medication I will be in bed throwing up for 2 days and how will that feel with my freshly-sliced eyeballs?

2. One warning they gave me is that since I am in my 40s I will likely need reading glasses. I do not currently need them. But I keep reading on the Internet that after Lasik people often develop far-sightedness, that is they can see distances really well after the surgery but suddenly need glasses to read and look at computer screen etc. I don't know if that is a good trade-off or not. I'm concerned about my ability to do all the things I love to do: knit, read, play music (which involves reading sheet music).

3. Dry eyes. I am fully expecting that I will experience dry eyes, because they say that is almost definite. Some people experience dry eyes to the extreme for many months after the surgery. Some people recover from the dry eyes in just a couple weeks. I guess with contact lenses I already have to carry eye drops around with me, so that wouldn't really be any different. It just seems like it might be annoying, the need to be constantly putting drops in my eyes.

4. I am also a little bit worried that I will spend so much money on this, and then something will go wrong in another area of my life, such as the roof of our house will need to be replaced or one of us will lose our jobs or some other Unexpected Big Money Event will happen. OR I will spend all this money and then it won't work and I will have wasted thousands of dollars and time and stress. (Which reminds me of my fertility treatments years ago! Throwing thousands of dollars down the drain for failed medical procedures!) (Okay, it's a little different.) (But still.)

5. Lasik is permanent. Not reversible. That is a little scary. I only have one set of eyes and I really do love being able to see (as well as I already can with my glasses/contacts). This is an elective surgery so how stupid to throw away my only eyes just because glasses are an "inconvenience".

but... what if everything goes really well and in the end I can see even better than I can now with my glasses/contacts? Wouldn't that be wonderful and miraculous? I do feel like I am taking a big gamble. But the thought of good vision is so exciting!

If I do go through with it I will definitely write about my experience, especially if the outcome is GOOD, so that if someone like me is doing internet research maybe they might come across MY blog and read a GOOD Lasik story for a change. (Because my story WILL be good! It will!) And if it turns out bad I guess I will add my voice to the horrors already on the Internet. Assuming I can still see my computer screen of course.

another crocheted top

2011-09-08T08:45:00.000-07:00

I made another crocheted top from "Stitch N Bitch Crochet", the pattern is called "Cupcake". The yarn is a cotton from Cascade brand. As usual I have lost the label so I can't share the exact name or color. But I can say that it was delightful to work with!

The first one I made was about 3 years ago! Crazy! I made this one slightly larger because the first one is a bit small I think. It's a really fun and quick top to make, however I don't wear either top very often... it's a bit warm for a hot-weather shirt but of course too cold for a cool-weather shirt (although it is pretty good for wearing on a hot day when I am inside with icy cold air-conditioning at work). Also I think it makes me looks really dumpy. But I do love the color of this one.

checking in

2011-08-31T20:43:00.001-07:00

I haven't been blogging here, or on my migraine blog, or really even on Facebook very much. Just busy with summer stuff. But now summer is OVER.

What have I been up to lately?

1. I am trying to teach myself to sew dresses, using the book "Built By Wendy Dresses". It.. is not going so well. I have a vague notion of blogging my (non)progress but that would mean I would need to go back in time and record the first million failure steps I've taken so far. I might be about ready to give up.

(But I really LIKE the IDEA of making my own cute clothing!)

2. I am contemplating getting Lasik eye surgery. I even had a 2-hour consultation and exam. But I am scared of all the possible side-effects and of course when I sit down to "do a little research" on the ol' Internets all I seem to come up with is HORROR STORIES. The Internet would have you believe that Lasik was invented by the Devil and Hitler together and it's the worst possible thing a person could ever consider doing. But when I talk to "real people" in "real life" I hear good stuff, mostly. There are a lot of pros and cons I need to spend some more time considering.

(But I do really LIKE the idea of not needing glasses or contacts any more! Maybe I could be part of the 90% satisfied patients? Maybe? Please? )

3. I'm slowly picking away at some recording (I have not abandoned The Big Snail-Pace Alphabet Project!) but technology hates me and I hate it.

4. But I am also reacquainting myself with my clarinet, and making some attempts to feel inspired about the guitar again.

5. Tappa tappa tappa INTERMEDIATE CLASS, baby! Starts mid-September. I can't wait.

6. I don't know what else. We just signed up for streaming netflix so we are watching a lot of movies these days. It's better than "doing stuff" I guess.

7. This album. So good it makes me cry. Seriously.

Scarves

2011-06-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

Now that it's summer, I'm posting pictures of a couple scarves I actually finished a while ago.

This is the "flower motif" scarf I made using Lion Brand "Amazing" yarn in "Wildflowers". Here's a blurry picture of me wearing it so you can see how huge the flowers are:

And here's another scarf I made with this neat-o green yarn my mom gave me (and I've lost the label so I don't know what it is but it has little loops and I think it's alpaca or something).... It turned out a little wide for my tastes. But it is soft and I love the color...

Ta-da scarves.

More crochet guys

2011-05-31T21:26:00.001-07:00

I'm a little bit behind in "blogging" my knitting and crochet.

Here is "Trojan", the latest from "Creepy Cute Crochet" book.

He was fairly difficult.

Spartan, Trojan, and Knight, Ready For Battle!

Flowers

2011-03-23T10:28:00.000-07:00

I'm still obsessed with crochet flowers!

Even more Creepy Cute Crochet guys

2011-03-05T17:01:00.000-08:00

"Spartan" and "Knight" (as per request from the youngest of the household):

The wee felt swords were kind of a pain. Also I made these guys with cheap-o acrylic yarn so the crocheting process was a little bit annoying. Next ones I make will be wool or cotton yarn! Much more pleasant to work with!

The kids like to play with all the critters I knit and crochet ("play with" usually means "throw around and jump on top of and stuff into the couch and generally be not very gentle with") so I am learning how well constructed they really are. Most of them are holding up pretty well, although a couple have had to go to the "repair shop". (such as: Monkey.)

Oh! And I just discovered that the creator of these patterns has a blog! (Of course she does!) NeedleNoodles. Tutorials and other patterns and neat crocheted things. Also I just joined the Flickr Group for finished projects from the book.

But now I feel like I need to try some other things. Like flowers!

Another Medusa AND crochet flower obsession

2011-02-25T08:19:00.000-08:00

This one has longer snake-hair, red eyes, and red fangs. For some reason her body turned out very small, I'm not quite sure what I did. I want to try another one with even LONGER snakes! But first I have to fill the requests the kids have made for : "Spartan" and then "Knight". And I promised a friend an octopus.

Also I have become obsessed with a crocheted flower shawl (or scarf) pattern which apparently comes from a book written in Japanese... and then several French bloggers figured out the pattern and one even posted it on her blog but the publishers of the book (rightfully) asked for all the copyright infringements to cease. Anyway, I would buy the book but since I do not read Japanese I don't think it would help me very much (I also don't really understand how to read crochet charts, but I am trying to learn! For situations like this one!) ANYWAY an American blogger (Ellen Bloom) who figured out the flowers has some lovely pictures on her blog so you might want to visit there to see what I am talking about. Here it is on Ravelry (although you may need to be signed up with that sight in order to look at pictures and stuff... I'm not sure..) And here is a link to one of the French crochet blogs which has a beautiful picture of her finished shawl and links ("ici ici ici") to other bloggers (all French) who made the shawl.

I have seriously spent many many hours wandering around the Internet researching this pattern. Obsessed. I am determined to crochet a lovely flower scarf or shawl. There is a flower scarf pattern in "Stitch and Bitch Crochet" book (which I own) but the flowers are much more simple and I don't like them as well as these beautiful flowers I am seeing on people's blogs, so I am going to try to combine the SnB pattern with my vague chart-reading knowledge (and rusty French comprehension) to try to create what I have in my head.

Ooohhhkaaaay that was pretty interesting!

I do more than knit and crochet...

2011-02-20T12:27:00.000-08:00

...sometimes I still write and record music! My musical (and life) partner Grilch finally finished mixing down my latest song "Nothing to Say". It's an upbeat little piano tune that I wrote a couple years ago. I posted it on the "recordings" page of my "official" website. (Have a listen to the other tunes too while you are there!) I played piano and sang, and he added the drums and awesome bass and did all the production. He's a talented fella!

In other music recording news, I haven't gotten very far with my Big Alphabet Project. But it is still floating around in my brain. I recorded "P" and started "D" and know what I want to do for some of the other letters, but I keep getting tangled up with (and tripped up by) technology. Recording with computers is challenging for me, I don't seem to have the patience to learn how to do things correctly. I can't get past the "learning curve" that seems to exist with all the various recording programs. But I DO want to be able to do my own recording so I don't have to rely on other people's time and energy quite so much. I know I've said all this before. I will probably say it again.

Inspirational Crochet Dream (I am a dork and dream of yarn)

2011-02-15T08:16:00.000-08:00

Well, I am finally having dreams about knitting and crochet. Last night I had a long involved dream about visiting a couple yarn stores which were connected to each other, and then the dream turned into sitting at my dining room table crocheting away. In my dream the 7-Year-Old (who I think I used to call "Big Bubs" and then he became "Scarecrow") was ALSO crocheting, and he made a really cool eggplant and was embroidering a face on it with much concentration. I was so proud of him! (I really cannot imagine him doing that in real life for many reasons which I will not get into here.) In my dream I was trying to make another Creepy Crochet Creature but it turned into a cute Teddy Bear, and I thought "Teddy Bear? Why not!" Then I decided to try to make a mermaid... Then I woke up and realized that there is no pattern for a mermaid in that book (not creepy enough?) so if I were to make one it could be my OWN design, the first thing I do without a pattern! So now I am motivated to attempt it. Yay dreams!

Medusa

2011-02-13T16:17:00.000-08:00

Another creature from the "Creepy Cute Crochet" book. The 5-Year-Old requested Medusa (because someone at kindergarten was talking about Medusa for some reason) so I whipped her up this weekend.

Side View:

Next time I will make the body a little differently and in a different color (I didn't really understand the directions for her body so I will just make it the way I want to next time). Also I will make her snakes longer. And give her red eyes! She actually has little fangs but they don't show up in these pictures.

(The flash pictures above show the real colors better.)

Next creepy crochet critter will be one of the knight guys... there is "Spartan", "Trojan", and "Knight". I think "Spartan" was the one that was requested by the kids (because he "looks like an owl" in the picture in the book).

Ninja and another Cthulhu

2011-02-05T12:48:00.000-08:00

More from "Creepy Cute Crochet". The kids requested a Ninja, and I made Cthuhlululu for a friend. I think I'm back on the creepy-cute-crochet for a little while.

Gloves! (kinda deformed)

2011-01-17T16:16:00.000-08:00

I finished my first pair of gloves -- the pattern is from the book "Weekend Knitting". They took me more than just a weekend, but overall they were pretty quick. I was really happy with them during the knitting process, they were fun and challenging, and I thought they were turning out great!

But in the end they fit somewhat weird... I think I put the thumbs in slightly the wrong spot, plus the lengths (and widths) of the fingers are a little bit... uh, inconsistent. The fingers look really silly to me. (This is an awkward picture but I am too lazy to retake it. And isn't the aluminum siding on my house lovely?)

I will probably try knitting more gloves at some point. Or maybe... mittens! With gnomes on them!

Monkey!

2011-01-08T11:57:00.001-08:00

My sister had gotten a "kit" to "knit your own sock monkey" (is it really a sock monkey if it is not actually made out of socks?) and it proved to be a bit challenging so she gave it to me. It was definitely not something for a beginner knitter! It took me about a year, knitting on it on and off, and I finally finished it, and it's pretty darn cute if I do say so myself:

Part of the pattern was a wee scarf and hat for him to bundle up in. Here he is with his little scarf on:

Here he is holding his hat:

Here he is wearing his hat and scarf. The hat didn't really fit right over his ears, but it's still pretty cute:

Of course once I finished him (her? I think I decided it is a "he") I mailed him off to my sister and her family. I hope he doesn't fall apart! That's always a fear I have with the creatures I knit.

Anyway, the pattern was a little annoying, but I did it!

Now to finish my gloves...

"Epic Fail", as the kids like to say.

2011-01-01T16:26:00.000-08:00

I tried to crochet a cloche-style hat for felting. I did have a pattern, but for some reason I ended up only vaguely following it. For example, I used a different size yarn, hook, and different stitch than the pattern called for. Also the pattern was written in centimeters and I only seem to have measuring devices with inches on them, so I kind of disregarded any measurement directions.

I imagined myself looking very stylish in a 1920's style hat. This is what I ended up with after felting it (I forgot to take a "before" picture which is probably just as well):

It is comically tall and conical. It is truly ridiculous. It is like a clown hat. I don't think the pictures really do it justice. As I was working on it I ran out of yarn and ended up having to order more from the Internet because no one in town had it. The felting process was long and annoying. I guess I learned a lot of lessons!

Here is a 5 year old wearing it:

For every cute knitted creature I create I also end up with a bunch of ill-fitting, ugly failures. I still can't seem to get the hang of knitting or crocheting things to wear that are supposed to fit a certain way. I suppose actually following the pattern might help. But sometimes even that doesn't seem to work.

I did just finish one glove which I am very happy with. If I can manage the second glove I will post a triumphant picture of them! Assuming I don't run out of yarn half way through and end up being unable to find any more of the same color...

synchronicity

2010-11-19T07:58:00.000-08:00

This is the kind of freaky thing that happens to me all the time (bear with me, it's a long journey to get to the point, sorry):

1. Last night I was playing piano and decided to try to learn "Aquarium" from Saint Saens "Carnival of the Animals". The version I have is way too complicated. so...

2. I went online to try to find a simpler arrangement. I was trying to find something I could just download for free, but after searching for a bit I realized I will have to buy the sheet music. Which is fine. I'm just impatient.

3. I ended up watching a ton of You Tube videos of people playing the piece and realized that there are many different arrangements of it. (Originally it is an orchestral piece.)

4. The piece then went on to play non-stop in my brain of course.

5. Mr G came home from band practice and I tried to share my "pain" with him. He did not know what piece I was talking about.

6. I pulled up a you tube with an orchestral recording. He still claimed ignorance.

7. I said "you know it! I'm pretty sure it was in the soundtrack to that movie... you know... with Richard Gere and Sam Shepard, takes place at the turn of the last century...?"

8. Mr G had no idea what movie I was talking about.

9. Me: "Something... Heaven?"

10. Mr. G: "Heaven can Wait?"

11. Me (getting really frustrated): "No! No! 'Heaven... heaven..' It is a gorgeous film, there are locusts...?"

12. Mr G: "Locusts?"

13. Me: "We watched a couple years ago! You know what I am talking about! Richard Gere! Locusts! Aquarium! Fields are set on fire! It's really long!"

14. Mr G: ......

15. In a fit of frustration I went onto imdb and tried to look up Richard Gere movies but spelled his name "Gear" so I came up with not too much. Finally I figured it out. "Days of Heaven"! Directed by Terence Malick. A most beautiful film which I highly HIGHLY recommend.

16. So then Mr G had to go on a huge Terence Malick internet research expedition (he is crazy like that).

17. I fell asleep thinking hearing "Aquarium" in my head and remembering scenes from that movie, which I haven't really thought about in years.

18. This morning I was listening to NPR and they were interviewing some actor from the tv show The Office (who also just wrote a book or something) who was talking about his favorite underrated movies to watch and #1 was... "Days of Heaven", which he then went on to talk about for several minutes.

Ok, so that was a long story. And it might not seem like a strange occurrence to you, but that kind of thing happens to me quite a lot and it freaks me out! Through a series of events I suddenly start thinking about a (relatively obscure? I think?) movie from 1978 that I haven't thought about in years and then suddenly some random person is talking about it on the radio.

All because my score for "Aquarium" is too difficult for poor little me.

Halloween Spider

2010-11-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

I knitted a spider. It is yet another pattern from the book "Amigurumi Knits".

I didn't realize until I had finished it that when I sewed the abdomen on to the head a huge seam ended up on the top. I didn't mean to do that, and I don't really like the way it looks. (I just wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. sigh)

But I DO like the kind of crazy, creepy, "imperfect" way that it (she?) turned out. The yarn is just some cheap acrylic yarn I had lying around. I did put the "chenille stems" (aka pipe-cleaners) in the legs, but it was a total pain getting them in there, and they poke out, so if I ever do another spider I will just leave the legs floppy. (Much like the 2nd octopus I knitted.)

Also she turned out to be quite a bit bigger than I thought she would be! But that is okay.

Spider!

Sew dresses and new boots

2010-10-07T21:40:00.000-07:00

Today at Powell's City O Books I spent way too much money on books. One of the books I bought was "Built by Wendy Dresses: The Sew U Guide to Making a Girl's Best Frock". Because I am going to start sewing my own dresses. Even though I have never made a dress before, and have absolutely no idea how to go about doing it. That's why I bought the book!

(Of course I am also making: a knitted spider, a scarf, a felted hat, gloves, and probably other things that I am forgetting... in addition to trying to keep up on my composing and practicing and working 40 hours per week ARGHGHGHGHGHGGH)

I also bought some awesome boots at the new Doc Martens store across the street from Powells, ~~but I can't seem to find a picture of them to post here.~~ They are a new design, said the sales girl, ~~so maybe they don't have them up on their website yet.~~ I generally don't think I like Doc Martens (too heavy) (although I think they are really cute - or cool - on other people) but these are not very typical for that company I think. Ok, so I finally found a picture of them:

Yes, I shopped today! Although books are easy to shop for. Clothing items, not so much. So I am fairly proud of myself for buying some new boots which I have been searching for for pretty much two whole years. yay. (Thanks to my mom who convinced me to go into the Doc Martens store and look.) Oh, and they had trays of fruits and cheeses at the shoe store, because it was their very first day in that new location. It was a little bit surreal.

Seeing stars

2010-08-28T12:18:00.000-07:00

I used to do a lot of beading, but took a "break" from it for a few years, probably because I got into knitting and crochet and there are only so many "crafting" hours in the day.

I had made myself a few necklaces with little stars, which I currently wear pretty much every single day (something several of my students have commented on - "you ALWAYS wear that necklace!" I guess that is a criticism?? Or maybe just an observation.). Anyway, I had made a red one, a blue one, and a black-green one, and had always planned on making more colors but then took the "break" from beading and packed away all my supplies. The other day I woke up and decided that I really needed a pink star necklace, so I got out all my beading supplies and made a pink one:

It was a wee bit frustrating because I couldn't quite remember how to do it. But I figured it out.

Here are pink and blue close-up:

Here are red and red/black/green:

(it is challenging to get clear pictures of these! they are so pretty and sparkly in the sunshine but it doesn't quite come through in the pic... OH WELL.)

When I got out all my beading supplies I discovered a whole bunch of stars I had made when I was going through my divorce years ago. For a period of time I was compulsively beading these little stars. It was about the only thing I could bear to do during this time of my life.

At the bottom are five "flowers" I made around the same time. I got the patterns for the stars and the flowers from a magazine... "Bead and Button" (?) I think it was called? The stars are called "Ice Stars". The pattern might still be floating around online somewhere, I think the magazine had offered it as a free download (in the early 2000s)...

I need to figure out a good way to "stiffen" the stars (and the flowers) because they flop around. (The pattern suggests using "Future floor wax" but I don't think stores in Portland even sell floor wax.. not that I have found anyway!) I'm experimenting with clear nail polish, but I don't like the smell. (I probably wouldn't like the smell of floor wax either.) I guess I just need to use heavier thread, but that doesn't help me for the ones I've already made!

I might string up all the stars for a Christmas decoration. Or, put them back in my beading box and get them out once a year to look at them. Or make more necklaces? (I know, everyone always says "OH you should SELL those!" and maybe I should... It's just that I'm always paranoid that the things I make will break for other people and then everyone will feel sad. But that is not to say I will never do it...)

linky

2010-08-16T20:18:00.001-07:00

My mom makes wonderful art and has a beautiful garden of which I am quite envious. Go check it all out at The Dolly Poet Archives! (Be sure to see the Dollies while you are there!)

Sunflowers

2010-08-04T22:48:00.000-07:00

Sunflowers make me really happy.

I hope one day to be able to have dozens if not hundreds of sunflowers in my yard. I am pleased with the few that found their way up to the sun in my garden this year. They are all quite tall.

My favorite flower.

Mr. Octopus gets a mate

2010-07-25T13:11:00.000-07:00

My second octopus from "Amigurumi Knits". We decided her name is Clarissa.

The red one ("Mr. Octopus") - which I made a few months ago - has pipe cleaners (or, "chenille stems") in his arms which make them pose-able, but the pipe cleaners poke out! So I didn't put any in Clarissa. Her arms are more floppy, but not pokey. At least she has her man to hold on to her.

"I wanna hold your hand hand hand hand hand hand hand hand!"

Sock and Garden

2010-07-17T14:43:00.001-07:00

Today, instead of working on music projects or playing outside in the sunshine, I took some pictures of the sock I just finished and am now indoors blogging about it!

The pattern is "Dead Simple Lace Socks" from "Socks from the Toe Up" by Wendy Johnson. I had a few minor problems with this sock (such as my needles breaking) but overall I had fun knitting it and am pretty happy with the way it turned out.

I have started on the second sock. Maybe I will finish it before it gets cold out again and I can actually wear them!

Here are some July pictures of my garden boxes just for the hell of it:

Yes, I tend to crowd a lot of plants together. It seems to work out okay!

Not composing, reading comics

2010-07-16T21:40:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to work on one of the songs from my Alphabet Project (it's letter "P", but don't get too excited thinking I have already composed pieces for 15 letters, because I started on P) and in true Squirky-sleeve-twirling fashion I am, instead, spending my time reading this comic site I just discovered:

Hark! A Vagrant

It's delightful! And incredibly intelligent! Most of her comics are historical or literary, and the artwork really appeals to me.

I can only assume that I have discovered something that everyone else has already known about for a million years, because that is usually the case.

New skirt from old pants!

2010-06-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

I have these pants I bought at a thrift store in Seattle in, oh, probably 1992. They are very baggy, flowing, comfy, green, with drawings of deformed cartoon people. Kinda hard to explain, here's a picture:

I don't have any recent pictures of me actually wearing them because I probably haven't worn them in over 10 years. When I first got them I wore them constantly. I loved them so much. I used to teach pre-school music classes and they were perfect for sitting on the floor with the kids. Eventually I stopped wearing them, but could never bear to get rid of them because I love the fabric so much. Here is a close-up:

(yes, there are "copyright" symbols floating around for some reason.)

So yes, I've been carting them around with me for all these years. I've been attempting to clean out my closets a bit, so I've had these pants sitting out so I could gaze at them and try to decide what to do with them. Yesterday it occurred to me that perhaps I could make them into a skirt! I've never done anything like that before, but I thought: How hard could it be? (which are often famous last words.)

I got out my seam ripper and ripped the legs apart, then got out my circular fabric slicer (that I bought when I was "into" quilt making years ago...) and I sliced off about a foot from the bottom. Then I got out my sewing machine and realized I would need to figure out how to thread a bobbin with green thread (which I luckily had for some reason, probably because I used to have to fix the hems on these pants years ago so I bought thread the same color)... then I couldn't find my little box with extra bobbins, then I found it and discovered that the tube of "sewing machine oil" had leaked all over everything (needles, extra sewing machine parts, thread....) so I spent a while trying to wash off the oil and save some of the stuff. Then I started to feel like the world was working against me so I went for a walk and had some lunch.

THEN I sewed up the front and back seams with absolutely no planning or thought, I just started sewing. And it actually turned out pretty good! But then I realized that since I had haphazardly chopped off the bottom, I really needed to try to make a neat hem. That required finding some chalk and measuring and making an actual attempt and doing things "correctly".

And here is how it turned out:

You can't tell from the pictures but it has nice deep pockets.

My new favorite skirt! I really have no idea what I am doing when I try to sew things. I also generally don't have the patience to try to do things the "right" way. So I am pretty pleased with how this turned out.

doodle upload

2010-06-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

I was looking through some old notebooks and found this doodle I did on 11-17-2000. I like it! I kind of wish I had saved more of my doodles over the years. I do a lot of them, and they have some reoccurring themes (such as the fish with arms and legs and teeth and tongue... the fish has never had a cane before however!)

More notes on Alphabet Project

2010-06-09T08:11:00.000-07:00

More on The Big Alphabet Project... now I have decided that I need to paint or draw a picture to go with each song.

yup, setting myself up for failure more or less every day around here!

I do have pretty much all the instruments figured out, and I have words for "A" and "P". (I'm not saying what they are just yet.) Oh and some vague actual musical ideas that I just need to sit down and work out.

Also I'm learning to use the music program Reason which is super duper fun. I think that will make some appearances on these songs. Maybe.

Okay Squirky, less talk more rock!

Current Favorite blog

2010-06-02T08:30:00.000-07:00

I always seem to "discover" great blogs way after everyone else... But better late than never, right?

Currently I am in love with this:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

Her writing style is wonderful and very funny, and her drawings are perfect illustrations to her hilarious stories. There is just something about her sense of humor that really appeals to me, although it is probably not for EVERYONE. I have gone back and read pretty much every entry, so now I have to wait for new posts! Waah! Reading her blog is my current favorite way to avoid all the other stuff I am "supposed" to be doing. That and playing Minesweeper for some dumb reason. Because I like to pretend that it is actually 1996.

Sock disaster story

2010-05-28T09:09:00.000-07:00

I had decided that the perfect knitting project while traveling would be socks, so I consulted "Socks from the Toe Up" by Wendy Johnson and decided to try the first pattern which is called something like "dead simple lace" (if I wasn't so lazy I could go downstairs and consult the book, but I am too lazy). I cheaped-out and purchased some Paton's sock yarn at the dreaded Joann's Superstore (a place which, every time I go there, I vow never EVER to set foot in again) - as opposed to supporting my local yarn store and spending three times as much on some indie sock yarn. My only other experience with knitting socks involved very small sharp dpns, which I found to be very unpleasant, so I decided this time I would try the "2 circular needle" method. The patterns in the book call for size 0, and of COURSE Joanns had NO size 0 circulars. Because they never have the one thing I am looking for. So I ended up going to a Local Yarn Store anyway (I'd rather shop locally anyway) and purchased two bamboo circulars. I picked the bamboo needles because they were half the price of the "turbo" whatevers (which are metal).

I got the socks started, and even though the short row toes are pretty confusing, I was very happy with my progress! I got quite a lot completed on the airplane, and worked on them a lot while chatting with my family. I got all the way to the heel. (Remember, these are "toe-up" so you start at the toe and work your way up to the top. Which is the only way I've ever knitted a sock so I don't really know what the "traditional" way is like.) I started working the "short rows" for the heel.

I was sitting outside working on the heel, and... one of the needles snapped. Broke right off at the point where it connects to the cable. I was in Wisconsin and it was close to 90 degrees and very humid, so I think that the very thin bamboo did not like that environment. I freaked-out as I watched all the tiny tiny stitches slip away, off the broken needle and down into the sock. I demanded a small crochet hook from my mom, and slowly (with a lot of swearing) managed to get the stitches back onto the cable. I tried to finish knitting the row, to at least get the stitches onto the "good" side of the circular, and... the OTHER needle snapped in half! ARGH! Luckily I had brought stitch holders, so I got all the stitches secure on the holders and put the sock away.

Now I need to go back and purchase the more expensive metal needle, which is what I should have done to begin with. Sigh. I really want to finish these socks!

Octopus on strawberry plants

2010-05-15T10:16:00.001-07:00

Octopus on strawberry plants

I am so very happy with how this little guy (or gal?) turned out. The pattern is another from "Amigurumi Knits" by Hansi Singh. I am definitely going to make more of these. I put "pipe cleaners" (I guess they are actually called "Chenille Stems") in the legs as the pattern suggested, but I think for the next one I will not do that. I guess the idea is to make the legs more "pose-able" but I feel like the sharp ends of the chenille stems want to poke out, so I probably wouldn't give this to a young child to play with. (But without the sharp objects inside I would!)

The strawberries are covered with chicken wire because LAST year something ATE all the strawberries just as they became ripe, so we didn't get any. I'm hoping maybe the wire will discourage whatever it was... (I'm guessing jay or crow squirrel?)

Two flower washclothes

2010-05-15T10:11:00.001-07:00

Two flower washclothes

I knitted these up from a pattern in the book "Weekend Knitting". They were pretty quick to make! The yarn is this cotton chenille stuff that is very soft. Mother's Day gift!

There's a new Shoe in town...

2010-05-13T19:05:00.000-07:00

I have finally come to the realization that it is time to retire my most favorite shoes EVER, Li'l Red Sneaks. I can't say I have ever loved a pair of shoes as much as I love these.

Here they are on 5/13/2010, showing their "good side".

I bought them in... oh probably 2003 or 04. Yes, 6 or 7 years ago. I desperately needed some good walking shoes, so I went to the mall. I wanted some sneakers (what I've always called "tennis shoes" but I guess since I do not play tennis that is the wrong term). NOT running shoes, as I do not run. Walking shoes! But I despise all the shiny white sports shoes that are out there. I went to the Lady Footlocker and just felt ill about the selection -- I'm sure many of the shoes there were very comfy and had good arch support etc etc but SO UGLY! A sales gal came to help me and I said "Do you have any shoes that are not WHITE?" She frowned and said "well, we do have THESE ones, but they are kind of weird..." And she pointed me to some New Balance "retro style" sneakers. My heart did flip-flops! These shoes came in all kinds of colors! Red! Blue! Green! Yellow! Oh my! I tried on a pair, and they felt so wonderful! AND they were not nearly as expensive as most of the other shoes. Score and score! I took them home and they became my main hoofin' shoes for many years.

A couple memories about the shoes:
1.) One day I was wearing them at the Trader Joe's, waiting in line, and a guy in line behind me said "Excuse me, how do you like those shoes?" I said "Oh they are great! So comfy!" And he said "But are they good for RUNNING?? They don't look like they would be." I just looked at him and said "Uh, I don't run." He kind of harrumphed and the conversation was over.

2.) About two summers ago we rented a vacation condo with Mr G's mom, her husband, Mr G's sister and husband and their two kids, and Mr G's two kids. It was really fun! But after the 3 day stay we got home and I realized that I only had ONE sneaker. Boo hoo! Mr G's mom had stayed an extra day and said she found it in a drawer in one of the bedrooms (the kids were at the age where hiding things in random drawers was lots of fun, so I'm guessing that is what happened). She offered to just throw away the shoe, as she thought it was waaayyy past its prime. That was true, the shoes were getting pretty worn out at that point. But Mr G kindly explained to his mom that I am incapable of getting rid of old clothes and shoes, that I wear things until they are full of holes and falling apart. So she hung on to the shoe for me and a couple weeks later the pair were reunited. Yay!

But that little experience made me realize that yes, perhaps it was time for some new walkin' sneakers. I tried to find the exact same pair, but they are no longer being manufactured apparently. I spent a couple years halfheartedly looking for replacements, but I really really hate shopping so that didn't go too well. Finally Mr G suggested I just order some online. I went to the New Balance website, and learned that I could send them back for a full refund if they didn't fit! So I found the pair that looked the closest to the Li'l Reds. I decided to move on to blue: Blue is the New Red. I clicked "buy!" and 2-7 days later received these:

They are almost almost the same. But not quite. For one thing, the "N" is white, not blue (on Li'l Reds the "N" is red so more subtle). But perhaps more importantly, they don't seem to have quite the comfy support that Li'l Reds have. So far I have only worn them around the living room, so the true test will be when I go on my morning walk.

Don't disappoint me, Li'l Blues!

R.I.P. Li'l Red Sneaks! I guess you will be my gardening shoes from now on. Because I just cannot throw you away.

Current soundtrack in my brain...

2010-05-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

It started last weekend. Mr G and I had tickets to go hear the Oregon Symphony. It was our X-mas present to ourselves, and we were just now getting around to it (now that it is May). As we were walking down the street in downtown PDX I got a little melody stuck in my head: "do-do-doo-do-do-DOO!" I knew it was from something, but couldn't think of what.

Me: Mr G, what is that tune???
Mr G: What? I don't know!
Me: Yes you do, it goes like "do-do-doo-do-do-DOO!"
Mr G: Uh, I don't know.
Me: Yes you do! It's from a video game or something! What is it?
Mr G: I don't know what you are talking about!

Then we heard the symphony play some Barber and Dvorak and Kernis and Bernstein (my faves were pretty much everything BUT the Dvorak [cello concerto], which was supposed to be the "main" piece of the evening). (I don't know how to make all the little doo-hickeys for Dvorak's Czech name, sorry.) The little tune finally left my head to make way for some more serious music.

But the next day it came back! It was driving me crazy! I consulted with one of my co-workers, because the people I work with pretty much know everything about anything pop-culture related. I figured this particular co-worker would know the tune.

[approximation of the conversation]:
Me: I have this tune in my head: "do-do-doo-do-do-DOO!"
Co-worker: uh huh.
Me: But what IS it? I think it's from a video game or something! But I can't remember the rest!
Co-worker: Uh...
Me: "Do-do-doo-do-do-DOO!" It's like.... um... Mario Brother or something?
Co-worker: Oh, yeah! It's the theme from Super Mario Bros.
Me: Yeah!
Co-worker: Come back to the computer, I want to show you something!

Then he proceeded to pull up several you tube videos of people playing the tune. There was this one, a guy playing two guitars at once:

Then this one, the theme on a giant Tesla Coil:

And then the original 8-bit version from the game itself:

And of course there are hundreds more versions of people playing the theme.

I never really played this game when I was a young'un, so I am not sure why it popped into my head nor why I am so obsessed with it suddenly. The thing is, it is really a neat little piece of music! I especially love the "b-section".

After all that I decided that I need to learn it on the piano (and possibly the accordion too, although I'm not sure how I would arrange it). I looked online and there is an entire website devoted to piano scores of ALL the music from Super Mario Bros game. (Why would I be surprised about that at this point?) So I printed out a decent looking piano arrangement and started practicing it.

I got Mr G into it too, and now neither of us can get that song out of our heads.

Seriously, it has become a pretty much constant soundtrack in my brain. It is always playing. It is starting to drive me a little bit crazy, but not too much yet. Because I honestly really like the tune!

I tried to find it on bass clarinet but so far have only found tuba. That's still pretty awesome.

Snail #2

2010-05-11T09:08:00.001-07:00

Snail #2 side view

So I attempted a second snail. (Link to first snail.) I made the body slightly shorter, because I felt like the last snail was too big for its shell. But this one also seems too big! I think maybe I need to figure out a way to make the shell bigger. It's good practice, because so far in my knitting I've mostly just followed patterns exactly as they are written. I think trying to make adjustments helps me to actually understand what I am doing. And maybe at some point in my life I will be able to create my own patterns.

Anyway, I am determined to make a snail that I am happy with! But now I am mid-octopus (and thinking about socks). So another snail at a later date.

Currently Making

2010-04-29T19:28:00.000-07:00

Now that the Annual Big Spring Music Recital For My Students is over, I can get back to more knitting and crocheting! (In the days and weeks leading up to the recital I spent most of my "free time" "preparing" for the recital ... which mostly means practicing my instruments like crazy so that I don't look like a complete talentless spazoid at the recital... Usually I just end up looking like a talented spazoid. Which is fine. But since I am currently not really playing in any bands, I am a wee bit out of practice with the whole "performance" thingy. End parenthesis.)

So of course I am (still) uh... "gearing up" to start my Big Alphabet Song Project (yeah, I haven't actually written any music for it yet, but I have been practicing my accordion). But! The knitting! Suddenly all I want to do is knit stuff. Here are my goals/projects of the moment:

1.) I have almost completed another snail... and I absolutely cannot find the first one so I am very glad I took pictures and blogged about it. I made the body of this one a little bit shorter, since the last one seemed too big in proportion to the shell. I was very proud of myself for managing to figure out all the math involved in altering the already very complicated pattern.

2.) I just finished a little something that will be a gift so I don't know why I am even bringing it up. There will be pictures once the gift is given.

3.) After the snail I want to make the octopus from the "Amigurumi Knits" book.

4.) Even though I thought I had decided that knitting socks is just not for me, I suddenly kind of want to try another pair. I got Socks from the Toe Up (by Wendy Johnson of the Wendy Knits Blog fame) from the library and I think I might have to buy this book. She gives several different ways to do the toe and the heel (which were my biggest problems with the pair I made), and she rates the beautiful patterns by difficulty and suggests yarns for each. I have some traveling coming up in the spring and summer months and socks just seem like the perfect portable little knitting projects!

5.) I still really want to make a RAG RUG! (Something about that requires caps and an exclamation point. RAG RUG!) I bought a giant crochet hook. And I have an attic full of rags and fabric scraps. Maybe a good summertime-around-the-house project?

6.) Oh yeah, I almost forgot, I had started another crocheted purse, with an attempt to make a big star on one side (it's a little lopsided)... but I think I have lost steam with it.

I've realized that I need to have the following 2 kinds of projects happening at all times:

1. something portable, simple to pick up and put down, something that doesn't require a lot of concentration (stitch counting) or pattern following or yarn changing. A scarf, hat, probably simple socks. Projects I can do in the car or in a waiting room or between students.

2. Something bigger and more complicated that I can do at home while listening to music (or sitting in silence) -- like the crocheted and knitted creatures, which require yarn changing and patterns and stitch counting. The RAG RUG! will fall into this category. When I eventually start making an afghan it will probably be an "at home" project too.

Ya. I am going to stop babbling about craft projects and go play piano. And then work on the snail for a while. Which is all I really want to do, but I feel like I should take advantage of a quiet empty house to play some music.

[Hey, wow, I have three people who "follow" my blog! Oh wait, 2 of them are my dad.]

Garden

2010-04-25T21:49:00.001-07:00

Peas growin' up!

Some peas that are comin' up. I am determined to have a great garden this year. More photos later....

Blue Cthulhu

2010-04-18T10:56:00.001-07:00

Blue Cthulhu

Ok I'm posting just one more Creepy Cute Crochet Critter.

Now I'm working on a gift for someone (so I won't say what it is yet!) and then I have big plans to make another snail and an octopus. Big plans I tell ya! Oh, and of course RAG RUG.

Things I don't do and things I do do (heh I said "do do")

2010-04-15T18:27:00.001-07:00

I don't:

Own a television set, or even care about watching tv programs.

Own a microwave.

Use any commercially-made toxic chemicals to clean - just white vinegar, baking soda, sometimes borax, Doc Bronner's soap, essential oils such as tea tree oil and lavender oil.

"Style" my hair or use "products" in my hair.

Go to a gym (or even enjoy exercising other than walking or biking and I have to force myself to do those things).

Drink soda pop except on special occasions.

Eat mammals.

Eat very much processed food.

Own a dishwasher currently, but that is just because ours broke.

Remember how to spell or how to do math very well.

Watch or listen to (or care about) sports.

Enjoy shopping.

I do:

Watch movies on my computer.

Use commercial (toxic) deodorant (because I am a sweaty, stinky girl).

Blow dry my hair.

Wear a little bit of makeup - although I try to buy beauty products that was not tested on animals whenever possible.

Drive my car 1.7 miles to my job pretty much every day except for non-rainy and not-too-hot summer days when I ride my bike.

Drink coffee, black tea, green tea. All day long.

Eat birds and fish, dairy products and eggs. And sugar. And wheat.

Buy organic whenever possible.

Love potato chips.

Try to grow my own food.

Plan on buying a new dishwasher (although I don't really mind washing my dishes by hand).

Read books.

Play Chess.

Make art.

Spend too much time on the Internet.

Buy most of my clothing at thrift stores.

Try to be nice to other people.

---------------------

Most of all I don't think I am better or worse than other people because of the things I do or don't do. We all do what we do. And we do things the way we do them.

Instruments

2010-04-10T08:43:00.000-07:00

This is what I've come up with so far for the instrumentation for my alphabet song idea:

Accordion
Bass
Clarinet
Drums
Electric guitar
Flute
Guitar
Harmonica
I ?
Jug or Jingle bells
Keyboard
Loops
Mandolin
N ?
Omnichord
Piano
Q ?
Radio ?
Synth
Twelve string guitar
Ukulele
Voice
Whistle
Xylophone
Y ?
Zither

I think each song will feature the instrument with the appropriate letter, but I can use other instruments as well. (For example, probably most of them will have voice but V might be JUST voice...) (unless I learn how to play the violin...)

Ya. Now I just have to pick song titles and get writing!

More thoughts on the Alphabet Project

2010-04-06T08:16:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking more about my new music assignment and another element I've added to it is that each song will also feature an instrument whose name starts with the same letter as the song title. I came up with an instrument that I own and can fairly competently play for every letter of the alphabet except: I, N, Q, and Y. J, L, and R are iffy: all I could come up with for those letters is: Jug, Loops, and Radio. Loops and Radio are not actually instruments in the traditional sense, but they can be used to create music, so I think it's okay. "Jug", well, I guess 13 Floor Elevators had a "jug" player, right?

In true Squirky fashion I am spending far too much time thinking about this project instead of just jumping right in and getting started. Also, I can't decide if I want to pick all the words/titles FIRST (and then jump around to different letters as I get inspired), or just start with A and work my way through the alphabet. Having to make decisions is usually what paralyzes me with a project like this.

I think I will just start with A and then see what happens. A will feature the accordion so I'm kind of excited about that. I just have to pick an A word now. I'm kind of leaning toward "Ambitious" (because that is what this project is) although I think the words need to be words that I am not already familiar with and they need to sound somewhat musical. hmmmmmmm. I think I might need to add a "rule" that it is okay to break the "rules".

Hippy Burpday To Meeeeee

2010-04-01T15:01:00.000-07:00

My birthday! 41. I don't really have any deep thoughts surrounding 41, like I attempted on my 40th. It just kind of... feels like 40. And 39. And 38. And so on.

To "treat" myself today I took a little break from work and walked (in the sunshine no-less! Thank you, whoever-controls-the-weather, for sunshine on my bday!) up the block to a thrift shop that I frequent. Sometimes I go there and feel like they only have total crap. Sometimes I find many things. Today I found several tops I liked (that fit me) and one skirt. Yay! So clothes shopping isn't always a bad negative experience. I guess a lot of it depends on my frame-of-mind or mood. Duh.

I had to work today, but I am doing my best to not work very hard. I am also eating a lot of sugar.

Yup, not a lot to comment on for my birthday day this year. But I feel happy! Hooray!

Another music assignment for me!

2010-03-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

I have been listening to the songs on my iPod nano in alphabetical order because I like to hear "random" mixes of music, but I don't like the "shuffle" feature because I feel like it repeats the same songs too often and never plays other songs. It has been an interesting way to listen to my tunes, I get some neat combinations, such as all the songs that start with the word "Baby" or "Love" or "Oh". As I've been doing this (I am up to "O" right now) I have noticed that some artists have a lot of songs that start with a certain letter. For example, so far in the "O"s I have heard a lot of Beatles and solo Beatles: Obla-di-obla-da, Octopus' Garden, Oh My Love (J Lennon), Oh Darling, Old Brown Shoe, Old Dirt Road (J Lennon), Only a Northern Song...

So that got me thinking about song titles, and I wondered how MY songs that I have written fall in the alphabet, is there a certain letter that I start with more than others? Have I ever written a song that starts with, oh, Q or X? (This would be an easy enough thing to find out using iTunes, but I haven't done it yet. I don't mind just wondering about it. Because I am laaazzzyyy.)

THEN I thought: hmmm, maybe I should write a song for each letter of the alphabet? (I know this is not really an original idea.... but so what.) Then I thought some more about this "assignment" and this is what I came up with:

Each song title will be one word. I will open up the dictionary randomly and find a word I like for each letter. Then the song will be about that word! I don't think I have ever written a song by starting with the title. Usually I write the song then decide what the name of the song is. So this will be a good way to get some song ideas! In the end I will have 26 songs, each with a title starting with each letter of the alphabet. Some might be instrumentals, but that's okay!

Lately I have felt so uninspired musically, maybe because I am in a happy relationship. Plus I am old and work a lot. Having a little assignment like this will be a good motivation for me! I am excited about it already. I just hope I can follow through.... my prediction is I get up to about D or E before I give up. No no, that's a bad attitude. I'm going to do it! Yeah! Woo! And then I will record them and post them on my website.

2 A-Zs

2010-03-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a break from bitching about lame stuff to share a link:

A-Z of Awesomeness

I found this to be very funny. But it seems to be a blatant take-off (rip-off? homage?) on this:

Superhero ABC which is a book we sure do love around here!

A long rambling post about buying clothes

2010-03-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

I hate shopping. No, let me clarify that: I hate shopping for clothing. I actually enjoy shopping for other things: housewares? Sure. Groceries? Sometimes! I even like shopping for shoes. I LOVE going to book stores, music stores, gift shops, fun little quirky shops, antique stores, YARN stores. But I hate hate HATE clothes shopping.

I used to enjoy going to thrift stores, consignment shops, and "vintage clothing stores" to find unique, neat, cheap (well not so cheap at the "vintage" clothing stores anymore) togs for myself. But I don't really enjoy that anymore.

Most of the clothes I currently own and wear are: second hand from thrift shops, second hand from friends or family, new but given to me as gifts, or clothes I have had in my closet for 5-10-20 years. (I still have a couple articles that I got in high-school. I was in high-school in the mid-80s. That is pathetic. Although, now those clothes are considered "vintage"! So I'm cool, right?) Every once in a while I will buy a brand new article of clothing. But it is always a very stressful traumatic experience. (I always buy underwear, socks, and bathing suits new, btw.)

Yesterday we had a bunch of errands to do which involved going to a mall. I am down to TWO pairs of pants currently (one is blue jeans that I had bought new at the Gap Outlet a couple years ago, and the other is bright red pants that I bought at a thrift shop and the zipper is broken so I safety-pin them shut to wear them) ...so I decided I would buy some pants!

The mall we went to was actually just a "strip mall" (or "promenade" as they call it) so there weren't a lot of choices. I went into Old Navy and tried on many pairs of pants. NOTHING FITS ME. Most of the pants they had there were "low rise" or whatever the hell it is called, where the waistband dips down beneath one's tummy. I absolutely cannot stand to wear pants like that. I also do not want to wear "mom jeans", but there has to be something in between! (Like the Gap jeans I own.) So I got very frustrated and depressed.

But I am not explaining this well enough. Here are the problems I have with new-clothing shopping:

1. Sizes. I do not understand sizes, nor do I really understand what size I am. Since my current wardrobe is a mishmash of vintage, old, and new, the size tags in my clothes are everything from size 2 to size 14. My understanding is that over the years the "sizing system" has changed, so that someone who wore size 12 in 1965 might be a size 6 in 2010. I don't know where I heard that. So, when I go to try something on, I pick what I think might be right, but it rarely is, so then I have to keep trying more and more sizes on. And then I usually end up in between two sizes so I have to decide... should I buy it a little too big and hope it shrinks, or a little too small and hope it doesn't shrink? On our shopping trip yesterday, I tried on a cute dress at Target, and really really wanted it to fit, and I spent about 1/2 hour going back and forth between S and M. Finally I had to ask the teenage dressing room attendant what she thought, and she said to get the M because it might shrink up a bit.

I am 40 years old and I do not know how to buy clothes. Nothing ever seems to fit me! And I am a pretty average height and weight and body-type.

2. Time commitment: Since I am incapable of figuring out what size I need and so indecisive about deciding if something fits correctly, shopping for new clothes is a huge time commitment. Time that I could use for playing music, or gardening, or reading, or knitting, or pretty much anything else that is more enjoyable than shopping.

3. Sensory overload: I have a really hard time in big, busy stores. I get panic attacks due to sensory overload. And I get intimidated by all the choices. I think that is part of the reason I tend to prefer shopping at thrift stores - there might be ONE skirt on the rack that is in my size and a style I like, as opposed to dozens of styles, sizes, colors at a new clothing store. Is that crazy? I guess most people might prefer having more choices, but to me that is just too much.

We went into Nordstrom Rack and I really did have a bit of a breakdown there. To the point where I had to step outside and cry a little bit. (Mr G said "If you are going to start crying you need to leave the store.") I just couldn't handle all the people, all the many many racks of stuff and there was nothing I liked. But Mr G got a good deal on sneakers (American made!), so it wasn't a total loss.

5. Made in China by Slave Labor: I am not going to get all PC here right now, but I do have a problem with buying clothing that was mass produced, possibly by child labor (does that still happen or has that become a myth?). Plus everything seems so cheap! I did buy a dress and some "clam diggers" at Target yesterday, and there are loose threads and they just seem cheaply made.

....Yeah...I know... that's because it is cheap clothing! I could spend more money and buy better quality stuff. And when I am able, I do. But the big chains like Target and Old Navy and Gap etc are just so damn convenient because they are everywhere. That's how they get ya. As a general rule I choose not to shop at these places.

What I would like is to make my own damn clothing. But these days I just don't seem to have the time, energy, or gumption to do that. It's a nice idea anyway. So then the next choice would be to buy locally handmade clothing. Also a nice idea. But expensive and time-consuming to find it. I always think that I just want to wear cute vintage dresses, but then I end up just wearing my old jeans everyday because it is easier. BLAH.

Where was I...

6. Sticker shock: related to the above. Maybe I'm just a cheap-o, or maybe (likely) because I am so used to shopping at thrift stores, but I always think new clothes are too expensive. Even when I'm shopping at the budget places.

6. I feel like a freak: I think part of the reason I had a mini-nervous-breakdown while shopping yesterday is that I look all around me and everyone else is happily shopping away, finding clothes they like and whipping out their credit cards to buy buy buy. Is there something wrong with me that I do not enjoy this experience? I guess most people just do not think about it. That's my biggest problem: I think about things. A little too much sometimes.

Soooo I tend to wear clothes until they have become pretty much literally rags. A lot of my clothing is safety-pinned together, faded, frayed, filled with holes, stained. Too far gone to donate to Goodwill or wherever. So I just hang onto them. And keep wearing them because I neglect to replace them.

This whole rambling post seems like such a whiney middle-class-white-person problem. I mean, at least I have clothing to wear in all seasons, and if I need a new pair of shoes or something, I can just go out and buy it. So I am lucky. And I am going to shut up now.

I'm almost ready to move on...

2010-03-25T21:40:00.000-07:00

A few more crocheted friends I've made (all from "Creepy Cute Crochet" book):

Purple Cthulhu (Or, "Dr. Zoidberg", as I like to call him). My nephew requested him, and requested for him to be purple. (He has wings on his back too.)

Monkey #3. I think this will be my last monkey for a while.

Two Day of the Dead couples. It's a party! (Mr G's kids decided that the gals are Princess Leia.)

I also made a third devil, but he looks exactly like the other two (except now the devils get evil yellow pupils in their eyes), so I'm not gonna post a picture. Most of the friends I've made I have given away. They are quick and easy gifts! But I think after I finish one more Cthulhu/Zoidberg I am going to take a little break. And return to the knitted sea creatures and bugs.

devil, robot, monkey

2010-02-28T11:15:00.000-08:00

On my visit to my family this past week I finished another monkey, another robot, and another devil (in this picture the devil doesn't have his tail yet, and his head is not actually attached to his body...) I like the face on this monkey better than the other one.

I left all these critters with my nephew, so now I need to make some more! Pretty soon I will take a break from the crocheted critters and make something else. But I'm getting really fast at these guys! And they make great gifts....

Monkey in a Fez!

2010-02-17T20:30:00.001-08:00

Monkey in a Fez!

I finally finished the "F&#$ing Monkey". The book declares the difficulty level of this one to be "epic" and I think that is true! But I definitely want to try another one. The star-shaped eyes are a complete accident. I didn't think I liked them at first, but now that he is done I think they are okay.

He's the Devil

2010-02-16T19:40:00.001-08:00

He's the Devil

My latest "Creepy Cute Crochet". The NEXT li'l devil I make will have more defined fangs, perhaps slightly larger horns, and a wee pitchfork. He was relatively quick to make, however!

I'm still working on the Monkey-in-a-Fez (which I lovingly refer to as "That F**king Monkey").... almost done!

Cleric

2010-02-07T20:44:00.001-08:00

Cleric

I am still waiting to have a chance to go get some "supplies" so I can finish the monkey-in-fez (and maybe make a bunch of them)... But I wanted to make another creature from the "Creepy Cute Crochet" book. So I showed the book to Mr. G's kids and asked them which one I should make. They chose "Cleric". They do not even know what a cleric IS, but I guess they thought he looked neat. (I told them that a cleric is a religious guy, and they said "Oh, like the religious guy in Wallace and Grommet Curse of The Were-Rabbit?" uh.... sure. Just like him.) Also I think they liked that in the book he has a mace (or sword or whatever) but I didn't have the right kind of materials to make one. So that was perhaps a little disappointing for them. But, I finished him, and Bib (the younger of the two) LOVES him. He said he wants to sleep with him tonight and so took Cleric (and the robot* I made a while back) to their mom's house. Which means I may never see my creations again. But, as long as they are appreciated, it's fine. Plus they are pretty quick and easy to make, so I can always make more!

*They call the robot "Robot's Friend" after a character in the coolest computer game which we all play together: Machinarium. I can't recommend it highly enough! The artwork is gorgeous, the soundtrack is super cool, and the game itself is intriguing and challenging - it's more for adults than kids just because it has some complicated puzzles to solve, but it is very rated G and point-and-click and no violence so kids can at least enjoy it on some level. You can play a free demo on their website (linked above) but it's worth spending the 20 bucks on the game!

Every day

2010-02-02T08:13:00.001-08:00

I MUST do these two things every day:

Go for a walk.

Play my clarinet.

Walk because that is the only kind of exercise I can stand to do, and I must get some exercise every day as a migraine preventative and general health thing. Once the weather is nicer I can ride my bike to work, but I just do not like to ride in the cold and the rain.

Play my clarinet because I am so incredibly out of practice on that instrument, and I would like to get my "chops" back for a variety of reasons, one of which is that I may be joining a musical group! (But more on that later.... ) I recently put some clarinet tracks on one of my songs I'm recording, and it was tough. It is necessary to play every day to strengthen up the ol' embouchure.

I've already been on my walk this morning, but I still need to play clarinet and do my other morning chores, so I better stop typing and start doing!

Day of the Dead Guy and Gal

2010-02-01T09:55:00.001-08:00

Day of the Dead Guy and Gal

My next creations from the book "Creepy Cute Crochet". I think their mouths turned out too vampire-like, next time I'll try to make them more skeleton-like. These are so much fun to make! I still have to get some supplies to finish my "monkey in a fez"...

Finished socks!

2010-01-31T18:42:00.000-08:00

I finally finished the "second sock". Both socks have problems such as holes and weird stitches. They are two slightly different sizes, even though I followed the same pattern for both and continually compared the second sock to the first to be sure they would be the same size. The pattern I used was "Wendy's Generic Toe-Up Socks" from the book "Wendy Knits", which is a great book by the way, full of knitting-related stories as well as patterns. I think she now has a book (or two) out that are entirely about toe-up socks.

Will I knit more socks? I really like the idea of knitting socks, but I think I am too impatient. I got pretty bored, which is part of the reason it took me 7 months to complete sock #2. The fact that you have to make TWO... argh! I am discovering that I prefer to make things that are single items, such as hats and scarves and toys. The yarn is pretty, at least - it is "Regina 4-fach haltbar in Galaxy-Saturn". (Hmm, as I am looking at the label for the yarn I see that it is "Made in Italy for Coats GmbH Germany". That seems weird to me.)

I am afraid they might fall apart when I wear them, but I will give it a try and report back. If I ever do attempt socks again I think I will find a more complicated pattern (believe it or not) just to keep me interested.

Hat (back view) (there is no front view currently)

2010-01-24T11:46:00.001-08:00

The pattern is "Ela's Favorite Hat" from book "One Skein Wonders". The yarn is Noro Silk Garden. I'm not sure what the color is called. I used 8" circulars until the decreases, used 8" dpns for decreasing (and for the i-cords on the top). The pattern has all kinds of switching needle size business which I ignored. This was one whole skein plus a little of a second for the dealy-bobbers on the top. (I used the rest of the 2nd skein for a thin scarf.)

(I just noticed the lovely spray bottle in the background. I don't know why we took this picture in the bathroom, instead of in one of our more "attractive" rooms. OH well.)

Robot!

2010-01-18T14:54:00.001-08:00

I made this little crocheted robot a while back, right after xmas I believe, and had wanted to post a picture of it, but then Teddy got sick and then I was back at work and now I can't even find the robot to take another picture (I generally try not to post public pictures of Mr G's kids...) (It IS a mighty cute pic of "Bib", however!) So here it is, my first creation from the book "Creepy Cute Crochet" by Christen Harden. Next up: The monkey-in-a-fez, who I have already started, but I need the gold embroidery thread for the details on his little vest and hat, and I need to get some felt to make the faces of the creatures who require that (such as the monkey).

I'm also excited to try the Day-of-the-Dead couple. Too bad I don't know anyone who is about to get married... (do I??)

There is too much to knit and crochet right now! I really want to get back to the knitted sea creatures and vegetables that I was so hot on last summer.

I just finished another hat, which I think is pretty good. I will post pictures of that next (after I take some).

The Thread

2010-01-08T19:32:00.000-08:00

So the time has come to take a break from our regular scheduled programming (feeling sad about losing my beloved pet) to share a link. This is something that you may not be able to fully appreciate unless you had been there from the start:

The Duover Situation (aka The Thread)

The above link is a link to a blog which is a blog tracking a thread of a Facebook email. Confused? Basically, my friend and co-worker Nathan Jr just finished recording an album with his partner Becca. They call their project "Duover". They put the songs on the Internet for people to listen to and/or download. (Mighty fine songs, very folky, rootsy, lots of nice harmonies... that's my quick mini-review)... Nathan wanted his friends to know about it, so he innocently sent out a FB message to a very large number of his friends. FB is a "social networking" site, right? So he was networking. Socially.

The thing about FB email messages is that you cannot reply to only one person, or only to the sender. You can only reply to EVERYONE ON THE LIST. (See where this is going?)

At first the replies were along the line of "nice job Nathan", "I listened to your album today!" and etc. Then the replies turned into more of the "Please remove me from this list" type. Nathan sent out a big apology, he had no idea that everyone's inboxes would become inundated with messages. Then some people started to get REALLY angry and indignant that they would have to endure so many messages. Nathan (and many recipients) tried reporting the email as "spam", but it did no good. Still the responses flooded in. People got angrier.

Then for a while the messages were comprised of people trying to explain to others how FB works ("if you don't reply, we will stop getting messages" etc) ... then people got angry at the people who were replying with directions on how NOT to reply (and therefore creating even MORE inbox clutter)....

Then some of the more "laid-back" people started to criticize the angry people. Some of the angry people continued to be extremely angry.

Then... The Thread became a living breathing organism all of its own. (Practically!) The messages started to get sillier, more abstract and creative. People started to use The Thread as a creative outlet. Some people were still completely pissed-off about it and at it, but the larger majority saw humor in the situation.

Many people (myself included) have become obsessed with The Thread. I feel compelled to check back frequently. Since I don't have an iphone or device like that I do not receive the constant updates, so for me it is a place to go to when I fancy. (The pissed-off people receive cell phone notices every single time a new reply is sent, so I can imagine that gets a wee bit annoying... but you can turn off the notifications!)

The blog link I posted above is for a blog started by one of the Threaders (I think I just made that up but I'm sure someone else has thought of it too... one of the constant message themes is plays on the word "thread"...) ...this person decided to take periodic screen shots of The Thread and post to a blog, just in case the email ever goes away. Also, so that people who are not in The Thread can read the posts too.

Because, as a few people pointed out, we cannot leave The Thread, but also no one else can "join". (But now people can join the FB group "Nathan Jr's Thread" that someone else started!)

It's pretty out of control. I think it is very funny.

The part that I think is the funniest is that some people have become SO INCREDIBLY OUTRAGED AND MAD that they are being "forced" to be a part of this.

Like all things on the Internet, this will die and go away very soon. But for the moment I am pretty fascinated by it.

I wrote all the above and then went to check the name of the FB group, and found this update on it:

"The Blogspot page is now starting to trend across twitter in Portland. Those of you with Twitter accounts can follow it at #theduoversituation.

I have also registered the site with Digg, Stumbleupon and Reddit. I will let you know what kind of stats we pull tomorrow morning.

I can't continue to update the page t...wice a day. Im going to need to set up a fake email for us to share and move the account over there. I just don't have the time to do all the formatting necessary to make it legible every day. Any suggestions on this front would be welcomed.

I love you Becca and Nathan. The gift you gave us will hopefully be repaid shortly by lots and lots of people listening to your music."

I don't know why the formatting is different. Probably because I cut-and-pasted it. Anyway, it's by the person who is doing the blog I guess.

AND NOW: I will get on with my life! But first, one last thought: If Nathan Jr was looking for a little exposure for his album, I guess he found it! Ahh the Internet. Love it and hate it.

Another post about mourning

2010-01-07T19:46:00.001-08:00

Today was the first day I didn't start to sob uncontrollably as soon as I walked into my empty house.

But I did make one of my students and the mom of another student cry when I told them about Teddy. (Which then made me start to cry.)

The "Dignified Pet Services" called today to let me know that her ashes are ready for pickup. Yes, I had my dog cremated. Part of me wants to keep them on a shelf somewhere in the house, but another part of me wants to "scatter" them somewhere out in nature, somewhere she liked to be (maybe Camp Sherman?)

Today at work I looked down at the sweater I was wearing and realized it was covered in dog hairs. I think that will probably be happening a lot for a while... she was quite the shedder.

Oh Teddy, I really miss you.

Dear blog readers (if any), I'm sure I will stop writing such heart-breaking posts soon. But I might have a few more in me. I'm just saying.

Will I always feel so sad?

2010-01-04T19:09:00.000-08:00

The difficult things so far:

Going for morning walks by myself.

Coming home to an empty house.

Not having a reason to rush home in the evening - no furry friend is waiting for her dinner.

Going to sleep at night without the soothing sound of her snoring.

I even miss her barking at every person who walks by our house and every car-door slam in the neighborhood.

It has been hard to explain to (some) people why she had to go... They say "Well, there must have been SOMETHING they could have done to save her..." Well, that is very complicated. We decided not to put her through possibly unnecessary and definitely painful surgery, with no guarantee of success or recovery or even survival. I truly believe we did the right and humane thing. No living creature should have to be in so much pain.

I'm glad she is no longer suffering, but it still hurts so much. I miss her so much. I know it will get easier with time. It's just very difficult right now.

Goodbye Teddy

2010-01-03T11:57:00.001-08:00

Teddy Zuzu Poopoohead Pullen Grush Gilde, 1998-2010.

Named "Teddy Zuzu Poopoohead" by her first owners. We just called her Teddy. Also: Miss Teds, Poops the Doops, Teddy Bean the Doodle Queen, Doggie Doodles All The Day (and all of the night, and partly every day), "She IS a Wuz."

She was born sometime in fall 1998, adopted by my husband-at-the-time and me in November 2002. No one ever could figure out what kind of dog she was -- a loveable mutt. A d-o-g dog. She was red and oh so soft. Liked to snuggle. And lick. She always wanted to be with the people.

I think she had a good life, overall. She got sick a few times, but nothing too serious up until the end. She survived two separate attacks by my former neighbors' vicious pitbulls. The second attack was quite serious, but our Teddy pulled through. Most people who knew her loved her. Sometimes she would bark and snap at visitors. But mostly she had a lot of love to give. And she gave her love unconditionally, like a good dog. She was such a good girl. She had personality to spare.

I never thought I could love a dog as much as I loved Teddy. I can't believe she is gone. It's almost too much to bear.

I love you Teddy.

My Teddy Flickr Set - lots of Teddy pix.

Goals

2009-12-28T17:41:00.001-08:00

haha I sat down to write a little list of "goals" (or, "resolutions") for the "New Year" but instead I looked at what I wrote for 2008. And it's all pretty much the same. Go me.

And, I linked to the exact same post on January 1, 2009. So I guess I always have the same goals but I never manage to accomplish them. OR they are just on-going. (Um, as I suggested in my 1/1/09 post. Which is mostly about food. A theme I don't think I revisited very much after that. Maybe once.)

This morning I decided that really, my ONLY goal for the New Year is to keep on top of the mess. Our house gets out of control with clutter and filth and there is no reason for that to happen. One of us is unemployed and the other (me) actually has lots of time to clean, or at least put away the laundry once it is washed. I guess it's just not that important to us right now. However, I DO prefer to live in a clean house. Not squeaky-sterilized clean, but maybe with a little less pee on the bathroom floor.

Facebook Love/Hate

2009-12-18T12:42:00.000-08:00

Why I love FaceBook:

All of my family and many of my friends live in other states so it is an excellent and quick way to keep in contact. Especially since I hate the telephone and I am not so good at remembering to write letters, or even email. It's nice to just "pop in" real quick and see what everyone is up to.

I do enjoy being able to "reconnect" with people I have lost touch with over the years.

Pictures!

It's really cool to post something and then sit back and read the resulting conversation between a friend from highschool, a friend from college, and someone I just met last week, three people who don't know each other and live in different parts of the country, but are connected because they all know me. I think that's awesome! (Except when they come away from the conversation hating each other. Then it's not so great.) (I actually don't know if the hating part has ever really happened, but you never know!)

I get to find out about things like the Muppets singing Bohemian Rhapsody. (But would my life be any worse if I never knew that existed? Hmmm, in this case, yes. Yes it would.)

It's a nice ego boost to post a picture of something I've created (ie knitted) and get lots of compliments. (Which is probably part of the reason people with kids tend to post a million pictures of their kids.) Just wait until I actually finish recording some new music!

If I need advice on something, all I have to do is ask, and I get lots of comments. Because people always want to tell you what to do.

Why I don't love FaceBook:

It is definitely an Evil Time Sucking Vampire.

I don't REALLY need to know which Classical Composer or Peanuts character I am. Do I?

As I obsessively read about other people's lives I start to feel bad about my own life because I'm not as successful, cool, fertile, creative, smart, or whatever. (But then I realize that FB is the place where most people exaggerate and/or only show the successful side of their lives. Myself included!)

... but I also feel bad for the friends who only post negative things.

I feel like I have to "hide" from ex-spouses (not necessarily mine) for a variety of reasons, and I just really don't enjoy being sneaky.

I keep forgetting that many people out there don't "get" sarcasm, and FB is not a good place to leave really sarcastic comments. Because other people tend to get upset. Or confused.

If I need advice on something, all I have to do is ask, and I get lots of comments. Because people always want to tell you what to do.

New blog

2009-12-05T14:57:00.001-08:00

I just started a new blog: "Squirky's Aching Head" (yes, I know, silly name). I decided (at Mr G's suggestion) to make a blog specifically and only for tracking my migraines. I do "track them" on paper, ie I mark down on a little chart when I get them, and if the medication works or not, but I don't really keep track of the little details (the time the migraine started, if there was nausea or not, etc)... And I think keeping track of all that stuff might just help me. Or I hope so. Because I am still quite mystified - why does the medication work really well sometimes but not at all other times? For example.

So, the SquirkHead blog will not be something fun to read, but for now I will just go ahead and make it public.

SquirkWorld will continue to be crafts, music, and complaining about pointless things. Yippee!

Another hat

2009-11-22T11:12:00.001-08:00

Hat

I wanted this to look a little more 1920's. It turned out a little bit bigger and more poofy than I had wanted. (The picture doesn't really show the unwanted pooy-ness.) Also the yarn is more stripey than I thought it would be! It's some kind of acrylic-mohair stuff that I've had in my "stash" for a few years. The wee flowers are my own addition, they are all Kidsilk Haze mohair. I followed a pattern that I copied from a book that I had checked out of the library a couple years ago. What book? What pattern? I have no idea! Basically just double crochets all around with a little scallopy thing at the edge.

Conferences vs poops

2009-11-19T19:23:00.001-08:00

Part-time-step-moms don't get to go to parent-teacher conferences, at least not in the first couple years of the part-time-step-mommedness. (Who knows what the future will bring?)

But we also don't have to wipe poopie bottoms or pick poop up off the floor (Mr G, aka The Dad, mostly takes care of all things poopie, since they are "his" kids*).

So, in a weird way, it's kind of a trade-off!

*I am more than willing to deal with bathroom stuff, and I do if The Dad is otherwise occupied, but mostly he deals with the missed potty attempts. And he changed all the diapers back when there were diapers to be changed. HIS choice! I think he's putting money in the poop-karma bank, so if we ever have a baby together, ALL the poopie duties will be mine.

Two dresses

2009-10-28T21:48:00.001-07:00

aaahhhh!!! Tetris Dress!

I really need to learn how to sew my own cool dresses. The woman who writes the "A Dress A Day" blog (Erin) is one of my heroes.

Also: Darth Vader Dress!

Why does it bother me so much?

2009-10-23T12:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes my FaceBook friends post "status updates" about how their kids are annoying them for whatever reason (won't shut up! won't sleep! drew all over the wall! etc!), and then their friends with kids will comment with similar stories, or "funny" comments such as "Too bad we can't just lock them in the closet for the weekend... lol!" And it's all I can do to resist the urge to write a comment like "Well at least you were able to have kids. Some people don't even get the chance to be annoyed by their children. Because they can't have any. Be thankful for what you have." Or something to that effect.

Of course I would never actually post a comment like that. I UNDERSTAND and APPRECIATE that fb is a place where friends can vent about stuff. And I do realize that children can be very annoying. (Take the Wee Gs for example! Take them, please!) (haha just kidding LOL ROTFL smiley face blahhhh) .... And I understand that some people who have kids didn't originally want them or plan for them (is that too harsh of a thing to say? It's true, though.), so of course on some level they may resent their kids even while loving them and caring for them. And I know that ALL my friends with kids DO love and appreciate their kids. It's their right to complain about them as much as they want. But the thing is, after all these many years of trying to have a baby and failing, I feel that if I did manage to have a child I would love her dearly and appreciate her existence and NEVER be annoyed by anything she does. I know, you are thinking: "HA!" The reality is that I would probably right there venting with everyone else about how I'm so irritated that she won't eat broccoli or that her screaming is making me want stab pencils into my ears.

And maybe that's just it. I want to be in "The Club", but I'm not. I feel left out and therefore bitter. Sometimes it is incredibly difficult to be an infertile-childless-loser in a sea of breeders. [Yes yes, I'm "lucky" to be a part-time-step-mom (VERY part-time during the school year). I do feel fortunate that at least I have that.] But it's different. I feel like I'm from a different planet. A lonely planet. Everyone else is "normal", I'm the weird one. And we can't quite relate to each other. So I will keep my comments to myself. (Well, except for writing my blog.)

The Whole Gang

2009-10-05T13:23:00.001-07:00

The Whole Gang

It's time for me to take a little break from crocheting pumpkins, I think.

The very first one I made is still my favorite. Isn't that always the way? (She's the second from the right.)

More pumpkins...

2009-09-30T22:32:00.000-07:00

Mr. G's oldest son does NOT like the white one. My facebook friends suggested I call it an onion instead of a white pumpkin. But I think it's the face that Wee G doesn't like.

I can't seem to stop crocheting pumpkins! There are a few more completed already, and I have plans for some others. I will stop soon. I have to, the hermit crab I had started knitting is only an empty shell right now!

Wee Pumpkin and other stuff

2009-09-12T13:44:00.001-07:00

Wee Pumpkin

Apparently I'm currently concentrating on crocheting pumpkins. This is the first one (and my favorite so far)... I've done another orangey one, with a much less cute face, and now I'm doing a white one. I have visions of dozens of little pumpkins for Halloween, but after 3 I'm already starting to get a little burnt-out with them.

Also in the last couple weeks: started the shell for the hermit crab; made some headway ("footway"?) on the dreaded Second Sock; found a good pattern for LONG arm-warmers (since it's 90 degrees today I don't feel any pressure to get started on those); finished two baby hats for a friend; and I keep thinking and plotting all the millions of things I want to make! Hats! Toys! Scarves, yes, scarves! Gifts for people!

But I am also trying to record some MUSIC (sometimes I do remember that I am a musician!) -- I would REALLY like to get another album completed. I have at least 10 songs waiting to be recorded. Everything always takes such a long time. Plus there are only so many hours in the day. SIGH.

Thoughts in the night

2009-09-10T16:37:00.000-07:00

I woke up in the middle of the night a couple nights ago with the Beatles tune "Flying" going through my head for some reason. You know it, it's the short instrumental piece from Magical Mystery Tour. (Hmm, actually it might not technically be an instrumental because I think they sing "la la la".) Anyway, in my hypnagogic state I decided that it would be a good song to be played at my funeral when I die. Then I started to worry about what I would do with my enormous yarn stash when I die. Give it to a friend or family member? Donate it to a charity group? Leave it in a box to get moldy and discovered many years from now and tossed in the landfill?

These are the things that go through my mind in the middle of the night. I don't worry about losing my job or getting my car insured. I worry about what I should do with all my yarn when I die. I have no plans to die anytime soon, so I'm not sure where this came from. Well, that's not true. I know why it's kicking around in my subconscious. A friend of mine died from cancer last month, and she has been on my mind a lot. She planned her own memorial service, which was a very lovely memorial indeed, and it got me thinking about the idea of planning one's own memorial. I wonder if I would be able to do that, if it ever came to that? I'm not sure.

I suppose picking "Flying" is a start. Thanks, strange subconscious brain!

(PS the spellcheck suggested "spongecake" for hypnagogic. It's kind of the same thing.)

Quick Quiz - or, ARGH!

2009-08-22T15:59:00.000-07:00

Q: What size crochet hook do I keep having to buy because I keep losing or breaking them?
A: Size H.

Q: What size do I need for the project I'm dying to start RIGHT NOW?
A: Size H.

Q: What sizes of crochet hooks am I able to locate in my house right now?
A: Sizes: G (x2), I (x3), J (x2), K (x2), and N.

Q: What size is missing from the above list?
A: Size H!

Q: Where did I JUST GO a couple hours ago?
A: A yarn store where they were having a HUGE SALE ON EVERYTHING!

Q: What did I not think to purchase at the sale?
A: Another freakin' H size hook. Because I know I own about THREE OF THEM. Where. Are. They!?

I know there are people in this world with much bigger problems than missing the correct crochet hook. I know! I'm lucky to have a house and food and love and health and all that... but... AAAARRRRGGGHHHHH this is frustrating. And typical.

Hee-larious footnote: After writing the above I did find my H hook... in the bag with the sock I am knitting (don't know why I would have a crochet hook in with a knitted sock)... and then I decided to use a G hook anyway. Squirkworld! Squirkworld! Party on! Excellent!

I Knitted A Pleisiosaur

2009-08-22T14:43:00.001-07:00

Knitted Pleisiosaur

Wellll I haven't really been blogging lately I guess because I've been Facebooking a lot, and also working, and also taking time off to hang out with visiting family, and etc. It's summer. Anyway, I haven't really felt like rambling on about anything lately. I'm feeling overwhelmed by life and stuff.

But I DID finish this Pleisiosaur (Loch Ness Monster).. another pattern from "Amigurumi Knits". That's three I've completed so far. This purty sea monster was fairly easy to knit, although there are a few holes (one really annoying one right on her nose, as you can probably see from this picture). There are a lot of M1L, M1R, and w&t in this pattern and I still just cannot seem to do those. Oh well. I made her for Mr. G's kids, and they love her! So that's all that matters. I really like how her sweet little face turned out.

She is kind of a reverse-eggplant, since I used the same colors I had used for the eggplant lady. But in reverse.

In sad knitting news, my favorite LYS "Abundant Yarn and Dyeworks" is closing its doors and going online. They are having a huge sale this weekend, and I went and bought a LOT of yarn. Well, a lot for me anyway, there were ladies there who were going CRAZY with the yarn buying. I kept expecting to see fist-fights break out over the last skein of a particular color.

Now I have to find time to knit and crochet all these projects I have in my head! Which include but are not limited to:

- LONG wrist and arm-warmers (for the chilly mornings of t-shirt afternoons..)
- a baby hat for someone who will be born in October
- scarves, hats, and mittens for myself and various other people
- MORE Amigurumi creatures! I've had a request for the hermit crab next, and I really want to try the octopus. And maybe another snail or 12.
- I'd like to try more clothing at some point, but I don't know what. Sweater? Poncho? (Something more complicated than scarves, hats, and mittens... )
- oh yeah, and I still have to finish the second sock.

I spend way more time thinking about the things I'd LIKE to knit rather than actually working on stuff.

Knitted Snail

2009-07-19T13:51:00.001-07:00

I finally finished this snail, my second pattern from the great book "Amigurumi Knits" by Hansi Singh. I had some troubles, like picking up stitches for the body, but I got through it and am FAIRLY happy with the results. I feel like the body is way too big for the shell, so I don't know what I did wrong. I might try to "make some adjustments" for the next one. (As if I know what the heck I am doing!)

The next pattern from this book that I am going to try is the Loch Ness Monster. He will probably have to be the same green and purple as the eggplant, since buying more yarn is not currently in my budget! Stay tuned!

Amigurumi Eggplant

2009-06-28T11:56:00.001-07:00

Eggplant
Originally uploaded by abigailgrush

My first knitted friend from the very cool book "Amigurumi Knits" by Seattlite Hansi Singh. I added the face myself, although I'm not entirely happy with how the face turned out. But the eggplant itself wasn't too difficult to knit. The book is great, I love it mostly because the patterns are: vegetables, sea creatures, bugs, and mythological creatures. Cool, weird, creepy friends to knit! A nice departure from all the sickenly cute bunnies, mice, kittens, etc. The patterns ARE kind of advanced, however. It's good for me because I am learning lots of new techniques. I only had to swear and tear my hair out a few times.

The eggplant isn't exactly what I would call "mini", it's about the size of a real, big and fat eggplant. Next I'm attempting the snail (of course!), and it too is turning out to be rather... non-mini. But maybe it's just my gauge or something. I AM using the yarn and needles that the pattern calls for (which is another thing I LOVE about this book: all the patterns call for the same type and brand of yarn, Cascade 220 which is super easy to find and not very expensive, and all the patterns call for the same size needles! -- at least that I've noticed so far, sorry if I'm mistaken about that...)

first sock

2009-06-20T13:19:00.001-07:00

first sock
Originally uploaded by abigailgrush

It took a while, but I finally finished a sock. One sock. I used the "toe up" method. It has some sloppy moments, especially the cuff and cast-off.... After I finished it (the first time) I went to try it on and couldn't get it past the ball of my foot. I had cast-off too tightly! (And completely ignored the part of the pattern that suggests adding a few stitches at the end and casting off loosely...) So I un-did the cast-off, added a few stitches, and re-cast-off loosely.

I really like the colors. Not sure what the yarn is. I wonder if I'll ever do the other one?

Wish I could sleep in the sun all day

2009-06-04T08:30:00.000-07:00

Guess I'm not really writing new blog posts these days. I think I spend too much time on the Facebook and the Flickr. OH well. It's possible I might be gearing up to write about some gardening stuff, but in the meantime, please enjoy another picture of my dog:

It has been sunny and HOT around these parts, and, despite wearing a thick fur coat, she loves to sleep in the sun. What a life!

Cozy!

2009-05-12T07:55:00.000-07:00

What's this?

Oh! It's an iPod cozy - an "iCozy" as my dad says! (Dear Steve Jobs, please don't sue us for using a lower-case "i" in front of a word!)

(I don't know why the pictures aren't centered. So I guess you need to click on each picture itself to see the whole image. Duuuhhhhh I'll learn how to blog one of these days....)

I made up the pattern myself. It's crocheted. There is a tiny hole at the bottom for the headphone cord to come out. I know you can go to Apple store and BUY lots of iPod holders and accessories, but I just wanted to try to crochet up a little something to help me carry it around when I don't have pockets. One of my students said "but iPods don't get cold..." Don't they?

mother's day

2009-05-10T12:35:00.000-07:00

A recent exchange I had with the cashier at a fancy gift shop while purchasing a gift for my mom for Mother's Day:

Sales Gal (a very well-put-together blond woman, probably in her late 30s): "ooh, I love this lotion, we sell a lot of it!"

Me: "It's a gift for my mom for Mother's Day."

SG: "Great!" - then - " ... Are YOU a mom?"

Me: ".... No. I'm not." [bracing myself for The Look which says "oh, then YOU aren't in The Club and therefore I can no longer relate to you as a human being."]

SG: "I'm not a mom either!"

Me: !

Me: "Well, um, actually, I'm a part-time-step-mom, but I don't think that really counts."

SG: "I'm about to become a part-time-step-mom, too!"

Me: "Oh!......."

SG: "Yeah, I don't know if that really counts or not."

Me: Sigh.

SG: Sigh.

then the transaction was over so we said our goodbyes and I left. I actually walked away feeling pretty good! Someone else in the same situation as me. I almost never encounter that. Instead, I frequently find myself in a situation such as the following:

Recently at work I got to be a part of this conversation: The wife of one of my co-workers stopped in with their baby, and we were all oohing and aahing over it, and someone made the comment "it seems like EVERYONE is having babies these days!" and everyone agreed, "oh yes, I know SO MANY PEOPLE right now in all areas of my life who are having babies!" and someone said "it must be something in the water!" someone else: "Yes! It's all the hormones in the water and the food!" This went on for awhile until finally I said "Well, I'M not having babies, I'm INFERTILE!" and the woman with the baby looked at me and said "Ooh, you're LUCKY!" She really said that, and was completely sincere. I slowly replied "Nooooo.... NOT lucky..." and I felt everyone kind of bracing for a freakout... and I ALMOST lost it, but I managed to turn the conversation back to fertile, breeding people (aka "normal people") and said "and then there are my friends who just had TRIPLETS, so I guess... you know, be careful what you wish for...?" and everyone happily started to talk about twins and triplets and how difficult that must be ("Goodness, I can hardly handle ONE!") and etc etc etc. And I slipped away and went off to be by myself for a while.

I did write up another long woe-is-me infertility post, but I think this time I might keep it in my private journal, and leave you three people who read my blog with the above anecdotes, and wish a very happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there -- especially the part-time-step-moms, adoptive moms, foster moms, and all the other non-biological mommies.

80s movies!

2009-05-08T11:49:00.000-07:00

Mr. G and I have been on an '80s movie kick lately.

Here are some of the films we have watched in the past few months/weeks/days (and my lame exclamation-point-filled-mini-reviews-that-aren't-really-reviews-because-they-tell-you-nothing-about-the-movies):

Less Than Zero (1987) -- I almost ALWAYS enjoy seeing both Robert Downey Jr AND James Spader. (Together? Even better!) Maybe this is not the best movie ever made, but it's an interesting view all these years later.

After Hours (1985) -- Directed by Martin Scorsese! I absolutely love this film. I could watch it over and over. If you have never seen it, rent it immediately. I'm serious. I'm not even going to say anything else about it.

Something Wild (1986) -- This is one of my all time favorite movies. Directed by Jonathan Demme! Starring Jeff Daniels, Melanie Griffith, and Ray Liotta! It's a comedy! It's a mystery! It's a road-trip movie! It's a love story! It's a horror movie! It's very colorful! Soundtrack by David Byrne, Jerry Harrison, New Order, Oingo Boingo, Jimmy Cliff.... etc! I saw it in the theater when it came out and loved it then, and I love it to this day.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) -- I had never actually seen this movie (other than a couple scenes) until a few days ago. It's a much better film than I expected it to be. Very enjoyable! And SO early '80s. I never knew how much I love Judge Reinhold. Is there a movie with Reinhold, R Downey Jr, and J. Spader all in it together? I think I would need to watch that.

3 O'Clock High (1987) -- I had never heard of this movie! Mr. G had seen it years ago and remembered it as being pretty good. I think it holds up pretty well. The characters are much more complex and interesting than they tend to be in your typical "teen comedy". It's actually a pretty suspenseful film.

Fletch (1985) -- I had never seen this movie before because I (stupidly) assumed it would be stupid. But it's not stupid! It's very funny and well acted! (The painfully '80s soundtrack gets a little annoying, but, whaddya expect from a film made in 1985. Hi, Harold Faltermeyer, didn't you also compose "Axel F"?) Chevy Chase is really really good. In this movie, I mean. Hey, didn't he go to Bard?

Ruthless People (1986) -- Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, Bill Pullman (in his first film role, I believe), Helen Slater, and... Judge Reinhold! My new boyfriend! (Sorry, Mr. G. I know you understand.) I had seen this one before, probably on the t.v. It's pretty dated, but very funny! Danny DeVito at the top of his game.

Phew. And we have a couple more waiting to be watched... Then maybe we will move on to a different decade.

another ukulele set list

2009-04-16T09:32:00.001-07:00

I've been writing this big long weepy thing about infertility, which I may or may not post at some point...

But in the meantime, please enjoy our current set list for our Ukulele Duo (expanded from our previous list):

1. Aba Daba Honeymoon
2. Are You Sleeping? (Harry Nilsson)
3. The Crying Song (Pink Floyd)
4. Dream a Little Dream
5. Drivin’ (Kinks)
6. Down to Earth (Peter Gabriel, from "Wall-E")
7. Echoes (Pink Floyd) -- just the singing part, not all the whale sounds and stuff.
8. Every Night (Sir Paul McCartney)
9. Fearless (Pink Floyd)
10. Galaxy Song (from Monty Python's Meaning of Life)
11. Hello Goodbye (Beatles)
12. Hold My Hand (Rutles)
13. It’s Looking Good (Rutles)
14. It’s My Party
15. Java Jive
16. Junk (McCartney)
17. Just What I Needed (Cars)
18. Mother Nature’s Son (Beatles)
19. Nowhere Man (Beatles)
20. Piggy in the Middle (Rutles)
21. Pigs on the Wing (pt. 1) (Pink Floyd)
22. San Tropez (Pink Floyd)
23. Something (Beatles)
24. Space Age Love Song (Flock of Seaguls)
25. Sunny Afternoon (Kinks)
26. Take It Away (McCartney)
27. Think About Your Troubles (Nilsson)
28. Two of Us (Beatles)
29. We Gotta Have Peace (Curtis Mayfield)
30. When I Grow Too Old to Dream
31. While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Harrison)
32. Whispering

I'm too lazy right now to find the composers for the jazz standard songs.

I don't know that we will ever perform in public or record anything, but it sure is fun to sit around and play and sing these songs! I play soprano uke and Mr G plays tenor. Uke uke uke!

Not very observant sometimes

2009-04-15T10:17:00.000-07:00

Last month I got the official notice in the mail that my car's tabs are due to expire in May, and the Emissions Test is needed. So I set aside this morning to make the trip out to the D.E.Q. in Clackamas. I took the long route so that I could get the engine of my beloved '96 Toyota Wagon good and warmed-up (like "they" say you are supposed to do). I brought some knitting and lesson stuff, in case of a long wait. But I pulled in, no wait at all, pulled into Bay #3, handed the fellow my paperwork, got out of the car as instructed, went into the "waiting area". After a couple minutes the guy came in and said "do you own a 1985 Subaru wagon?" I said "I used to!" He handed the paperwork back to me, saying "well, you're good on your Toyota until October." I looked at the paperwork and saw that the notice was for my Subaru. Which I sold about a year ago. Duuuuuhhhhhhhhh I could tell the guy was trying really hard not to laugh at me. I kind of stuttered "oh, um, gosh, uh...." and he said "Have a nice day!" (meaning: get the hell out of here you crazy lady!) So I got back into my car and drove to work.

An hour of driving around town for no reason whatsoever! Weee!

The only good and or interesting thing that came out of this little experience is that I drove through a part of town that I used to drive through frequently, but haven't been through in about three years. It is a part of town that was always kind of run-down and beat-up, but today I noticed that it is all being renovated. New store fronts, new businesses. Interesting! (I'm talking about se Foster road out near 205, for my readers ["readER" singular?] who live in these parts...)

Two more finished objects

2009-04-12T14:03:00.000-07:00

I'm a little behind in posting pics of the stuff I've been making. Here are a couple things I finished recently (and by "recently" I mean sometime this year...)

#1 Pointy Elfish Hat:

I actually knitted it when I was visiting family in February. I just kind of made up the pattern as I went along. I think originally it was going to be for a very small child, but then it got too big so I turned it into a hat for an adult (um, for ME). It was a little too short so I crocheted a brim. I was mighty pleased with myself for figuring that out!

#2 "Airy Scarf":

It is a pattern which I believe is in the book "Last Minute Knitted Gifts" (but I only have this one pattern...) I used Rowan Kidsilk Haze but I lost the label so I'm not sure what the color is called. It's a pretty mustardy color. (I'm a bad knitting blogger apparently... I never know what things are called or where they came from. ) It was fairly easy and quick to knit.

I don't have a knitting or crochet project right now, and I need one! I'm thinking of giving in and learning how to knit SOCKS, although I don't know if I would enjoy that, since I seem to enjoy working with chunkier yarn (sock yarn is so very skinny) AND I get bored if I have to make two of something identical. But the portability of socks is attractive to me, plus there is so much pretty pretty sock yarn out there. In the warmer weather I never want to work on hats or scarves or mittens etc. So, socks? Or maybe another purse. Or more toys! Hmm, lots of possibilities...

other fools

2009-04-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

Other (famous) people born today (many of these I did not know about!):

Debbie Reynolds

Lon Chaney

Nikolai Gogol

D. Boon (cool! I share a bday with one of my all time favorite guitarists and songwriters!)

Jimmy Cliff

Method Man

I'm sure there are even more, but these are the ones that have come up today.

Hooray for April Fools!

I've also met many other April Fools throughout my life, and I've always gotten along quite well with them.

Rambling about birthdays

2009-04-01T07:24:00.000-07:00

Today I am 40. Forty-freakin'-years-old. The Big Four-Oh. I haven't quite figured out what that means, if anything. I've suspected for some time now that one's actual age in years doesn't mean a damn thing.

A while ago I found one of my old journals from when I was a teenager. I read an entry that I wrote on my dad's 40th birthday (I would have been 14 or 15) in which I stated that I couldn't understand why he was so upset about turning 40. I wrote something like "age doesn't mean anything! It's just another year, just a number." I didn't want him to feel old, or worry about getting old. Pretty perceptive for a 14 year old!

As I was lying - laying? oh damn, I'll have to consult Dr. Special... ok, let's start over. As I lay in bed last night, wide awake for many hours, I thought about all the "big birthdays" and tried to remember what I did for each.

What are the "big birthdays", the so-called "milestones"?

1st birthday: a big one, you've survived one whole year as a person! I don't remember mine.

10th birthday: because you've reached the "double digits". I don't remember my 10th, although at that time in my life I had lots of big fun parties with lots of friends. My parents were really great at putting on fun events for us.

13th birthday: you are a teenager now! I have a memory of a birthday party from around that time, I shared the same birthday with a friend who was slightly more popular than I was, so it was kind of a bummer since everyone wanted to crowd around her and not me... hmm, but I'm not sure if that was my 13th. Those pre-teen and early-teen years totally sucked anyway.

16th birthday: Sweet 16! Get your driver's license! I absolutely don't remember if I did anything special for this one.

18th birthday: you are now officially an "adult". I don't remember this one either. Great job with the memory, Squirky! Must be my advanced age.

21st birthday: seems to be a big one nowadays, since it's the legal drinking age in all states now (right?) I do remember my 21st, I was in college but it was Spring Break, and I stayed on campus instead of going home or going on a fun trip with friends. So I was pretty much alone. My parents sent me a great package of presents. I went into town and bought a bottle of wine, and was disappointed that they didn't ask to check my i.d. (So.... I could have been buying booze all along?? Jeez!)

29th birthday: Not a "big bday" for most people, other than it being the last one before 30, but I got my first (and so far only) tattoo on my 29th.

30th birthday: All during my 20s I dreaded turning 30, it seemed like such a huge landmark, or some sort of deadline. I felt that before I turned 30 I needed to: 1. Get Famous with My Music! and then 2. Get Married and Have Kids! Well, I didn't manage either, but I DID release my first album right around my 30th bday. And I had a huge party with tons of friends and no less than three delicious cakes. It was quite fun. I felt loved.

40th: Well, since it is today, I can't really say yet how it will go. But I have a suspicion: I will go to work and work all day, and my younger co-workers and students will be AMAZED and AWED that I am 40. I'll probably obsessively check Facebook and my email throughout the day. Then tonight Mr G and I will go out for a nice dinner. I think that's probably about it. I'm hoping for chocolate cake somewhere along the line, but I won't hold my breath.

Also I will spend most of my day worrying about my good friend who is undergoing quadruple bypass surgery TODAY. In fact, he's probably in the midst of it right now as I write this! Get through it Jamie, okay??? And recover quickly so we can play music and/or frag again soon! That is my birthday wish.

Young!

2009-03-31T10:02:00.000-07:00

I got "carded" for beer at Trader Joe's again this morning (possibly because I am dressed like a 10 year old)... Hee hee! Because I turn 40 tomorrow!

Um, that's all I've got for now.

Beanie Revelation

2009-03-13T14:18:00.000-07:00

Lately (um yeah over and over and over) I've been stressing-out over what to eat, and it seems like there is nothing TO eat, because:

- I'm trying to avoid "processed" and "pre-packaged" food.
- I don't eat mammals (makes me feel like a cannibal). (ps I don't care if you do.)
- The conditions in which poultry is raised is questionable, even so-called "free-range" (Plus I get really freakin' sick of eating chicken or turkey all the time).
- Many fishes contain mercury, or are "over-fished", or "farm-raised" (and I can't remember why that is bad but I think it is). (Also I tend to feel intimidated about cooking fish at home.)
- Tofu may or may not affect one's hormones and fertility. (I keep reading in fertility books to eliminate SOY. It's harder than you might think. It's in everything.)
- Too many eggs are bad! Because of cholesterol. (But they are a "perfect" protein..!?) (and so delicious!)
- Dairy is "bad" too, because of hormones in the milk and um, why else? I forget. All I know is dairy always seems to be the first thing "They" tell you to eliminate for whatever health reasons. And I've tried. OH how I've tried. But cheese is just too good. As is yogurt and ice cream... mmmm... ice cream....
- etcetera and etcetera.

But today for lunch I had brown rice and black beans that I had spiced-up quite nicely, and it was sooo yummy, and I realized - That's it! Beans and Rice! Duh! It's a complete protein, pretty cheap (especially if you buy everything in bulk), and the variations are endless. Last night I cooked up a can* of organic black beans with carrots, red peppers, a little wine, a little oj, basil, cumin, coriander, cayenne, cinnamon, and a pinch of baking cocoa (yes I did!) and I let it all simmer for about a half-hour while the brown rice cooked. (I actually cooked the rice in chicken broth instead of water, only because we had some in the fridge that needed to be used up and Mr. G came up with that brilliant and delicious idea.) It was a filling dinner last night AND a filling lunch today. (*I had a can in the cupboard, but in the future I aspire to buy dried beans in bulk.)

I'm getting excited about all the possibilities: different kinds of rice! different kinds of beans! add vegetables! spice it up Latin-style or French or Indian or Asian or... etc! And it's a meal that I can make a big vat of and freeze into individual servings for lunches.

Yay!

(p.s. My list up there of all the things I feel like I "can't" eat? Currently, other than mammals, I am still eating all of them. Just in case you were wondering how full of shit I am! Quite full, thank you.) (Metaphorically speaking, that is.)

Distractions

2009-03-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you've already seen this (as usual I'm kind of late to the party), but I find this pretty hilarious:

Garfield minus Garfield

This clever fellow removes Garfield from the Garfield comic strips which results in a very surreal and bizarre comic. They make me laugh out loud! (Which I can't say that the actual Garfield strip ever did...)

Just a little humor break from neighbor stories and worrying about sick friends and "The Economy". It's important to laugh!

Another good distraction? Battlestar Galactica! OH my God I love that show. We don't own a t.v. set (as I may or may not have mentioned before...) but we have a wonderful friend who has purchased the DVD set of every season and lent them to us. We got to the end of the most recent season out on DVD ("4.0") and just couldn't take the suspense, so we've been downloading the most recent episodes from the Internet. (Shhhhh.....) We are almost caught up to all you tv watchers. So don't give anything away! I just don't know what I will do when it is all over. Maybe start back from the beginning again?

Ok, I'll get back to bitching about my neighbors pretty soon.

Neighbor Story

2009-03-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

Even though it raises my blood pressure to think about this, I feel like I need to write a little about my former neighbors in order to put the situation with my current neighbor into perspective. I am going to try my best to keep it somewhat brief, although I could probably write a book about these people.

(I'm changing everyone's names just cuz that seems to be the polite thing to do.)

In my "old life" (former marriage) we lived next door to this... family. Our neighborhood was (is - I still live in the same neighborhood) somewhat "up-and-coming", that is to say formerly crappy and kinda scary but now houses have been renovated, quiet families moving in, etc. Our next door neighbors seemed to be one of the last houses left over from the "crappy" era. The house was run-down looking, broken windows, trash in the yard... When we were deciding whether to go ahead and buy our house or not (we LOVED it in every way except for the house next door) we actually knocked on their door to find out what the deal was. We were afraid it might be a drug-house or something like that. Turned out it was a family, run by a single mother and grandmother ("The Matriarch") who lived there with her second-oldest son ("Joe"), his wife ("Suze"), Joe and Suze's two kids ("and another on the way" Suze said, patting her pregnant belly while taking a drag off her ever present cigarette), TM's twin daughters ("Sheri and Terri") and their boyfriends (who were all probably about 19 years old), and TM's teenage son ("Bart"). They actually seemed like very nice people, just a little... messy and... under-educated, if I may be a snot and say that. (None of the young adults had finished high school, so I think it's okay for me to say that.) TM had lost two husbands, one in a trucking accident, and the other committed suicide while in prison. Fate had handed her a rather difficult existence, and she was trying to make the best of it.

During the three years I lived next door to them, Suze had her (third) baby, she and Joe split up, they both moved out but the kids stayed, TM's oldest son ("Shmoe") and his wife ("Nance") and their three young kids moved in, Sheri and Terri BOTH became pregnant (but moved out shortly after that), Joe disappeared for a while (turned out he was in prison but I never found out why)... at one point I counted around 15 people and kids (not to mention dogs and cats) living in that house, which was a three bedroom one bathroom bungalow with an identical floor-plan to my house. I don't know how they managed with that many people.

Here is a list of just some of the things we had to put up with during the time we lived there:

- Rats and roaches. OUR house was infested with roaches when we moved in (somehow the housing inspector missed that.) We managed to get rid of them, luckily. We also had the city come out and exterminate the rats for our neighbors, who had no interest in dealing with the problem.
- Garbage in our shared driveway (oh yes, we shared a driveway).
- Poop-filled diapers in our shared driveway.
- Garbage piled up in their "garage" (which shared a wall with ours). I don't think they had garbage pick-up, due to not paying their bills. (Hmm, I wonder why they had rats and roaches?)
- They also burned garbage (including DIAPERS) in their fireplace and the smell wafted into our house. In all seasons.
- Car parts and old cars in their front yard, back yard, parked on the street.
- People coming and going ALL the time.
- SCREAMING KIDS. Man, those kids could scream.
- SCREAMING ADULTS. They screamed at each other. They screamed at the kids. They threatened each other. They threatened the kids.
- Frequent visits from the police.
- Frequent visits from social services - they would take away the kids. Then bring them back. Then take them away. Then bring them back. Those poor, doomed kids.
- Pit bulls: They raised pit bulls for a while. To sell. To other "under-educated" people. Their pit-bulls attacked my dog Teddy twice. The second time she almost died, had massive wounds that took months to heal. After that they got rid of all their dogs. Because we threatened them. Their pitbulls also killed one of our chickens (we had pet chickens). On Christmas Eve. My husband at the time ("HATT") put the carcass in a bag and brought it to them, "Merry Christmas!" They didn't seem to feel bad about it at ALL.
(The really bad attack on Teddy happened while I was at the fertility clinic having an IUI. I'm pretty sure the stress of the attack had something to do with my procedure not working.)
- The little kids cut all the heads off of all my tulips one year, and when I confronted TM about it her attitude was "well, that's what you get for growing flowers".
- BB guns - they would put bread out for the birds, then shoot at the birds. I yelled at Bart several times for doing that. Right when we put our house on the market we discovered a small hole in one of our windows, and even found the freakin' BB on the floor. We demanded they pay to replace the window. They actually managed to come up with the money for it, but then I ended up requesting that they just use that money to replace their OWN windows, since they were all cracked and broken and the house looked like total SHIT and I didn't think anyone would want to buy our house because of that. I told TM that people thought their house was a "Crack House" and she was pretty upset by that - "I'm just a single mom!" she said. I said "okay, so, let's do what we can to make your house NOT look like a crack house!" I think the new windows lasted about a week before they got broken again.

One GOOD thing I can say about them is that although they were quite noisy during the day (mostly with all the yelling and screaming that went on over there), they were usually SILENT at night. And TM had a strict "no alcohol" policy in her house, which I respected her for. (I think her former husbands had alcohol problems, and she was done dealing with it.) However, after we moved out, the teenage son ("Bart") started dealing drugs, and apparently wasn't very good at it because the house got SHOT AT one night (thankfully no one was hurt), and I think he ended up in juvenile jail or wherever kids like him go. (I get updates now and then because I still occasionally talk to my former neighbors on the other side and across the street from my old house, and - funny story - the guy who bought my house found my Myspace page soon after he moved in, and emailed me with some news. [that news being that the house got shot at.] Haven't heard from him lately, however.)

More fun snippets:

- Joe and Shmoe both frequently wore "wife beaters", which is what people sometimes call those white (and often stained) tank-top style undershirts. To me these guys seemed like total stereotypes.
- Everyone in that house smoked like a chimney. I would not be surprised if the little kids smoked too.
- They had these cats who were constantly breeding, but they refused to get them fixed. Other neighbors even offered to take the cats to the vet and pay for it, but they refused. They thought it was "cruel" to "fix" animals. (!?!)
- Suze tried selling Avon for a short while, but she wasn't very successful at it, possibly because she looked like total hell. This woman was only in her early/mid-twenties, but she was missing teeth, just looked old and haggard. I bought some Avon products from her because I felt sorry for her. I ended up throwing most of it away because it was so awful.
- Suze got a job in the cafeteria of a school at one point, and asked me if I wouldn't mind watching her three kids "just for a few hours a day" since "you're home all day anyway" (which, um, I was actually working almost full time at that point so I don't know why she thought that)... She said "it would only be from 7 until 3." I said NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. (Nicely of course.)
- Suze really wanted to be my friend. I was relieved when she moved away because I did not want to be her friend. She left her kids when she moved away. Nice gal. To her credit, she "got her tubes tied" after her third kid (or so she told me).
- When my marriage broke up and we put our house on the market, the neighbors on the other side of us (who were very nice people and I actually miss them a lot) told us that pretty much everyone who lived in our house ended up with a failed relationship, probably due in part to the stress of dealing with TM and her clan.
- Almost every morning that our house was on the market I would put on rubber gloves and go pick up the trash and cigarette butts in their front yard. They would watch me out the window and laugh at me. I did it because I knew they wouldn't, and I really wanted someone to buy my house. It was amazing how quickly their yard would get covered in trash.
- When our house was on the market TM asked me if they had anything to do with our decision to move, and I totally blew my chance to tell her how I really felt. I ended up just mumbling something like "there are a lot of factors..."
- When our house sold, TM asked me if it would be a nice family moving in, and I told her that it was just a young guy and his girlfriend and maybe some roommates, and she made a sour face and complained that she really wanted a family next door. I wanted to say "You are such horrible neighbors, you don't deserve a 'nice family' next door!" And the truth is that some nice families came to look at our house, but they decided not to live there only because of the house next door. But of course I didn't say any of that to her. I just gave her a sympathetic "sorry".

When I think back to this time, I wish I had dealt with a lot of things differently. HATT and I were (and still are) both pretty non-confrontational people. We let a lot of things slide. We spent a lot of time hiding in our house, feeling much anger and even hatred towards the neighbors and stewing in our anger but not knowing how to deal with it. There really were a lot of factors that contributed to the end of our marriage, but I have no doubt that the stress of our living situation was a big part of it.

Since I still live in the neighborhood, I drive by the house almost every day. The house still looks the same, garbage in the yard, old junky cars, cracks in the windows. I always feel thankful that I no longer live next door to those people. But I also feel sorry for them, especially for the little kids. I feel like those kids are so doomed to live the exact same lives as their parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles. Lives of cigarettes and junk food and dirty clothes and rats and roaches and dropping out of school and drugs and jail and babies-having-babies and poverty.... But I don't know what the answer is. I dealt with them by moving away so that I wouldn't have to be close to their lives anymore, so that I wouldn't have to see them. I don't know if they are happy or sad. The times I talked with the "adults" they always seemed angry at life, or sad, or hopeless.

Okay, this has not been "brief", but I really could keep going on and on.

Next I will write about our current "bad" neighbor (who is really not so bad, all things considered). Stay tuned...

Finished projects pics

2009-03-02T07:27:00.001-08:00

Just got back from a (mostly) fun visit with my family in the Midwest. I say "mostly" fun because many of us got a nasty stomach bug (including me) so I didn't get to see everyone or do everything I had planned. And I feel like I'm STILL recovering from the sickness. But it was good to get to meet my new niece and see my family. And relax a little. I got a lot of knitting done!

So instead of writing about all the things I'm planning to write about (health stuff, fertility, food...) I'm just going to post some pictures of some of my recent knitting and crochet projects.

"Baby Bolero" from a book I can't remember the title of.... It didn't turn out too well, so I didn't actually give it to the baby. More about the blanket further down...

Snoopy modeling crocheted monkey hat for baby. The pattern for the hat and the blanket are from the "Stitch N Bitch Crochet Happy Hooker" book. Gifts for my new niece!

Sock Monkey blanket from SnB Crochet book. I'm pretty darn pleased with it.

"One Skein Wonder Baby Sweater" from the book "One Skein Wonders". I used different yarn and needles than the pattern called for (because I can NEVER EVER find the yarns that patterns call for!) and sweet sunflower buttons. My first sweater! I'm happy with it, although I have no idea how it will fit on the baby. But it's pretty to look at, at least!

Hat pattern from "One Skein Wonders". I actually made this hat for myself but it turned out to be way too small (as my hats always seem to do) so I gave it to this 3-year-old and it fits him great!

Toddler mittens. My first mittens! They turned out mostly okay, although the thumb on the left one up there looks pretty strange. The 3-year-old requested mittens to go with his hat. I think he has used them once. It was a fun learning experience! Next winter I will attempt some grown-up mittens.

Ta da!
(ps I don't like the way blogger crops the pictures, but I don't know how to fix that!)

Is "Valentine's Day" un-PC?

2009-02-11T08:38:00.000-08:00

I know that Valentine's Day is a stupid "Hallmark Holiday" and all, but still.... is there some problem with the concept that I'm not aware of? Celebrating love? I ask because I noticed that Mr. G's kids are having a "Celebration of Friendship" at school on the 13th, where they are encouraged to "make friendship cards for everyone". So it's not called "Valentine's Day" anymore?? Will the kids be shunned if they draw little red hearts on the cards they make? The note they brought home about Friendship Day is very self-conscious in its tip-toeing around any mention of valentine's or love or hearts etc. In fact, the note says "out of respect for diversity we are calling it Friendship Day." To respect cultures that aren't tv-watching, candy-eating, card-buying consumers? I guess that's admirable.

Ok, the kids are ages 3 and 5 and really don't seem to care, and I guess pre-schoolers are a bit young for "celebrating love" anyway. And maybe I'm making too much out of this. I just hope the "healthy snacks" people bring for the party aren't pink or red or heart-shaped! That would offend me!

Is this what it means to be 40?

2009-02-09T12:20:00.000-08:00

(Okay, I'm not actually 40 yet. 51 more days.)

I am freaking out just a little bit right now. I have a good friend who is only 36 (or pretty damn close to that anyway) who has just learned that he needs immediate quadruple bypass surgery, because the tubes to his heart are all mega clogged-up. Um, what the hell?! That's something that happens to old men! OLD. Mid-thirties is not old.

I have another friend who had to have an emergency hysterectomy last year because of aggressive cancer. She recovered from that scary and sad experience only to learn that she now has LUNG cancer (she has never been a smoker) and she is now undergoing treatments for that. She is also in her mid-thirties.

So is this what happens as one gets older? Friends who are much younger start developing really bad health problems? I don't think I like this too much. I feel so helpless. And worried. So so very worried.

On the (happier) flip-side, there are all the new babies... I can think of about TEN babies who have been born to friends and family since November, and I'm sure I'm forgetting about someone. Plus I know a few people who are expecting. I was talking about that with a similarly-aged co-worker, and he said he mentioned the Baby Phenomenon to another co-worker (who is only 20), said "Man, so many babies are being born right now!" and the 20-year-old co-worker absolutely could not relate. In his 20-year-old reality there are NO babies being born (which is probably a good thing). So I guess maybe it is just a symptom of the age I am. Which is almost 40.

spending too much time online

2009-01-14T20:15:00.001-08:00

One of my "goals" for the New Year is to spend less time on the Internet. Less time. What's the date today? January 14th? Um, yeah, it would appear that so far this new year I've signed up for Facebook and raverly.com (which is a "knit and crochet community"). Two sites that are quite time-sucking. I swear, I'll sit down at my computer to "quickly check my email" and suddenly two hours have gone by. I haven't (yet) spent very much time on the ravelry (although it looks quite interesting), but the facebook? I can't seem to get enough of it!

I'm also learning how to edit videos in iMovie, so I'm starting to post the little home-videos we've taken on my Flickr page (which you can only see if you are my friend or family).

Didn't I use to play music or something?

Meh!

Now I can post pictures of the xmas gifts I made

2009-01-07T20:46:00.000-08:00

Gift for mom: "Branching Out" scarf, in Rowan Kidsilk Haze in "blushes". I found the pattern on knitty.com and worked on it on and off for over a year. I had to start over many times, and at one point even knitted a swatch of the pattern using thick cotton yarn on big needles so I could see what the heck I was doing. I've discovered that I don't really like knitting delicate lace patterns with sticky thin fuzzy mohair. (I think I used size 6 needles for this.) It doesn't look exactly like the example pictures on the knitty.com website, but I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, despite some of the little mistakes (which you might be able to see in the close-up picture...)

also:

Gift for my 3 year old nephew: sock monkey face hat! I got the monkey face pattern from the Stitch-n-Bitch Crochet (Happy Hooker) "L'il Monkey" pattern, and I made up the hat myself. It's just a very simple crochet job. I wanted to take a picture of Mr G's 3 year old modeling it, but he refused to wear it for more than about 2 seconds.

I'm knitting and crocheting a bunch of other stuff, for myself and for others, so stay tuned for pics of those...

Food goals

2009-01-01T14:40:00.000-08:00

I just sat down and wrote up my "New Years Resolutions" (in my "paper journal") and then looked at my goals for 2008, and, HA ha, they are pretty much all the same this year as last year. Does that mean I accomplished nothing last year? I guess it must mean that these are areas of my life that need on-going attention.

This year, the big goal for myself and for Mr G is to stop eating processed food. We don't really eat too much junk food, and the processed food we eat is pretty much all from Trader Joe's so it tends to not have any preservatives or weird unpronounceable ingredients, so we could be doing worse, but we both really want to cut out the pre-made pre-packaged food all together. For health reasons, but also to cut back on all the extra garbage all the boxes and wrappers and packages create (not to mention energy consumed in the processing of the food and packaging and transportation of it all). (I believe I've babbled about all this before, maybe more than once.) It will be challenging for us, because we are used to pulling something pre-made out of the freezer and popping it in the oven at the last minute. Now what we pull out of the freezer will be something we have prepared ourselves, days earlier. We need to learn how to plan ahead a little bit. Oh, and how to cook delicious and simple dishes.

Eventually we want to work towards eating mostly local and seasonal food as well, but I can tell that there will be a lot of baby-steps involved in this whole process. Plus with Mr G's kids eating meals and snacks at our place, we will have to have a few processed foods around for them, like "Smart Dogs", rice cakes, and Joe's O's. They are 3 and 5 years old and I cannot see them being reasonable about changing their diet right now.

As I envision us cooking up big vats of stew and soups, and then freezing it for later, I wonder if we will need to break down and get a microwave. I have never owned a microwave, and have never felt the need for one. I heat up my food on the stove-top or in the toaster-oven, and I'm perfectly happy doing it that way. I do use the microwave at work to heat my lunch, but at home it has never seemed necessary. I guess this will be part of learning how to plan meals in advance... in the morning before I leave for work, I can pull a container of soup out of the freezer to thaw, and by dinnertime it will be ready to heat up. Would that work for us? I wonder!

OK more on this as time goes by. Food blog!?!? hmmm......

face-crack

2008-12-31T13:05:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally gave in and joined Facebook. Which means now I'm checking it obsessively and not getting much work done. It's pretty cool to rediscover old friends! I'm sure the novelty will wear off soon... Just like it did with MySpace, Flickr, and Blogger....

not that I don't still check and update those places...

obsessively...

yeah.

Coming up soon: New Year's Resolutions! Wooo!

see? snow! Told ya!

2008-12-23T10:51:00.000-08:00

My sweet dog, resting in the snow on 12/21

And here's my car on 12/22:

It's still buried. I'm not going anywhere!

We've gotten well over a foot of snow. It's more snow than Portland has gotten in something like 40 years. We don't have snow shovels or salt or plows or things like that, so everyone's cars are just sitting, buried. The roads are still completely covered with large drifts of packed snow (can "drifts" be "packed"?) We did manage to dig out Mr. G's car and put chains on the tires so he could go pick up his kids from their other house. So now we are all here, driving each other crazy with cabin fever. Yay!

snowy limbo

2008-12-22T08:40:00.001-08:00

Ah, such fond memories of last week, when school and work and my music lessons were all canceled due to a little ice on the road. Ha! That was nothing! Now Portland is positively buried under at least a foot of snow, and it's still falling! I haven't really thought about Xmas or even "real life" for many days, because the world seems to be frozen (literally!) in this icy white limbo. It's as if suddenly I get to take a break not just from going to work, but also from things like paying bills, preparing for my students, xmas shopping, um, WORKING...

Speaking of taking breaks from things, my dog seems to be taking a break from peeing. She just can't seem to figure out how to pee in the snow (which currently almost reaches her belly). Luckily she always eventually figures it out, but it's tough going for her. She does love the snow, though.

Man, I need to post some pictures. Maybe that's what I'll use my day off for... get all the pics off my camera and post a few here!

"Day off." That's funny! NOT going to work feels like the norm right now!