The Heathen Housewife

So I’m squeaking in right under the wire, but I’m actually posting for my tenth day in a row. Despite continuing to suffer through the cold from hell. Let’s start with the positive stuff, though.

This morning, Sophie slept very very late, and this allowed Julie to come cuddle in bed with me and Joe for a long while – long enough for me to slowly wake up, get some good Julie-cuddles in, and have a little conversation with her about a few things. Then she started saying she was hungry, and she asked if we could have pancakes for breakfast. And a lightbulb went on in my head – a happy lightbulb – and I said “Yes! Yes I will make you pancakes. And we can all have wheat pancakes for breakfast together!” So I got right on it.

And there were many pancakes. Julie ate more pancakes than I though her little tummy capable of holding.

And then she asked for even more. That was the best part of my day.

Next best was hanging out with some great ladies at the yarn store knitting socks. Today was our last class, and they all agreed to share some of their results.

Normally, I bake some kind of treat for my last classes, but I was so polluted with insidious germs, I decided it was better if I bought something. Nobody seemed to mind.

The worst part of my day? Poor little Sophie woke up with her face crusted with dried goo. I had to go in and wake her up at way past ten in the morning. She had a fever, and she spent the day limp and sleepy. It was quite sad. So sad that I felt a little guilty being away most of the day, but that didn’t seem to stop me. By this evening, her fever had broken. She was still very tired and didn’t eat much dinner, but I am really really hoping that she will get a good night’s sleep and wake up hungry and perky in the morning.

Now, instead of going to bed early like I should, or working on that charity blanket like I should, or reading parenting books like I should or all the many other things I “should” be doing, I am going to sit here and watch an episode of Grey’s Anatomy from the Internet and knit on my new selfish little project.

Along with nursing three colds this week (Julie’s, Sophie’s and my own), I’ve been quietly working on a project that is almost as draining of my knitting mojo as the colds…

Remember these squares that I brought home from Camp?

They’re the squares that my knitting students made to be put together into a baby blanket for charity. Put together by me. As in, I get to do all the “fun” part of finishing. Me, the girl who avoids knitting things in multiple pieces because even though I’m pretty darn good at finishing, I really have no fondness for it. And like most UFO’s, the longer a knitter puts it off, the bigger the hurdle to getting that finishing project done.

So I pulled it out, and I knit a couple squares to replace a couple that were a little too wonky. I seamed them all up into groups of four, but it was clear that one mega-square was much bigger than the others (bottom-left).

So I picked up stitches along two edges of each of the three smaller mega-squares and knit a few more ridges of garter stitch to help compensate, then joined all four mega-squares with three-needle bind-off.

And right now it looks like this:

It’s a little psychodelic. The one square is still a tiny bit bigger, but I’m still planning to add a border around the whole thing and block it, which should help.

Tonight, though, I have had just about all the blanket finishing I can handle. I am so tired from a week of taking care of sick little girls while dragging from my own nasty cold. I even ordered out pizza for dinner – something that I couldn’t do until just a few days ago when we were cleared to try Julie on wheat – and we were all pretty much too tired to really enjoy it.

And when we came down from putting the girls to bed, Joe asked me to promise him that I would go to bed early tonight. So I did. I have until 10:00, and then no matter what I am doing I am going to put it down and hit the hay.

In the mean time, I am going to watch a DVD and start a totally frivolous, just-for-me knitting project. I need to feed my knitting mojo. Wish me luck!

I’ve been meaning to put this activity together for a long time, and finally got around to it…

15 pounds of uncooked rice…$6.42
1 15 Quart plastic box…………5.98
350 plastic beads………………..1.99
Measuring cups…………………..3.99
Measuring spoons……………….2.08

Two happy kids digging through rice making a mess….

Just about worth having to clean the mess up when we’re done. There are two major problems with this activity 1. getting the mess cleaned up when they are done without having them track the rice all over the house – where am I supposed to put the kids while I clean up the mess? 2. When one child starts eating the rice and/or intentionally throwing the rice on the floor, I pretty much have to cut the activity off for both children, which feels awfully unfair.

And, by the way, we used to do an activity similar to this one with dried beans, and I stopped about a year ago when Julie kept putting them up her nose. Please I hope she doesn’t start *that* again.

And now, I must go see what’s up with Sophie, who has apparently coughed herself awake, and then I am going to bed myself. This cold is kicking my butt.

It’s 10:21 on a Wednesday, and we’re all still in our jammies (except
Joe, who left for work quite a while ago). The girls are sick with a bad
cold – it was coming on yesterday, but Sophie spiked a fever last night,
so I decided to self-impose some quarantine in the interest of the
herd.

Julie says she wants to wear her pajamas all day, and although I
personally plan to take a shower and don fresh clothing, I’m inclined to
let the girls have a day in their soft fuzzies.

(Crappy photo courtesy of the camera on my Sidekick.)

(Edited to add the picture, which somehow did not transfer from my Sidekick, which is doing squirrelly things with e-mail today. Also, they did end up putting clothes on. Julie agreed that it would be worth getting dressed so we could go to Chipotle for lunch. I was going to let her try the flour tortilla, but she said she didn’t like it without actually tasting it. Oh, and as far as we can tell, the cookie experiment last night went quite well. Julie was asking to eat more “honey bunnies” for breakfast this morning. I told her no, we don’t eat cookies for breakfast.)

It’s snowing. Our first flakes of the year are hitting the ground and melting on impact. It is the kind of fleeting, local storm that may come and go all through the afternoon. The flakes are teeny tiny, but many of them. I had to look closely to make sure it wasn’t sleet, but no – they are flakes.

Time to go have another cup of something warm.

I can hardly believe I’m actually posting four days in a row!

Just a few random snippets tonight, though. First, the YouTube video that I took last night. It’s very short, not very good quality, but kind of fun. It’s me, holding Sophie, and Joe’s cousin Sarah holding her Nathan and Katelyn, going down a big slide at Pump It Up. Just kind of silly.

We had a quiet day today, and I managed to get in a little much-needed housework. The bathrooms were going to crawl away on their own if someone didn’t clean them. Joe fell asleep this afternoon and took a rare-for-him nap, so I knew he must need it and I left him alone while the girls and I watched “Follow That Bird” on DVD. I’m pretty sure I remember watching this movie when it first came out.

Before we knew it, it was 5:00 and we hadn’t decided what we wanted to do about dinner. We started the discussion, weak and open to suggestion, so when Julie suggested “Let’s go have pho!” we jumped on it. We jumped in the new van (still loving it, by the way) and headed over to Pho 79. I know I’ve mentioned this place before, but I’ll just say again – it’s one of our few favorite restaurants. The decor is pretty crummy, but the food is really good, it’s very family freindly, and dirt cheap. We always order the #8 – pho noodle soup with thin slices of lean beef.

But the new part of the story is that that they have a tacky plastic Buddha statue on top of a refrigerated display of drinks and desserts, and Sophie kept pointing to it and saying “Baby!” and then I would say “No, Buddah! , and Julie asked who Buddah is so Joe and I were trying to explain to her “He’s kind of a prophet” (me) and Joe countered “He was a monk who achieved enlightenment.” Because you know our four-year-old can totally understand these concepts. And Sophie just kept pointing and saying “Baby!” Maybe you had to be there, but trust me it was cute.

And now, I’m going to watch the season premiere of the Amazing Race, which Joe taped for me on the old VCR, and dig back in to the mitered square blanket we started over the summer at Camp Unistar as a charity project. The guilt of not yet having finished it as promised is starting to get to me. So it’s back at the top of the queue, at least pending news about what classes I’m teaching for the winter class schedule. I just turned in my proposals, and a couple of them would require new samples knit up if my manager(s) pick those.

Our little cousin Katelyn had a birthday this week, and this evening we had the pleasure of attending her party. And a wildly fun party for the whole family it was! They hired this place for the event. A place full of air-filled jumpy, climby, wildly fun activities. Let’s look at the pictures.

There is a video of some of the especially-fun fun, I just loaded it up on You-Tube, but it’s not available yet.

Just as the kids were tiring, we moved on to the pizza and cake room. Julie at peanut butter and jelly and homemade sugar cookies, and was perfectly content. Sophie scarfed down pizza like there was no tomorrow.

Look at this amazing birthday cake. Look. At. It.

It is truly amazing. And it tasted pretty good too.

Happy Birthday, Katelyn!

So it’s day two of this National Blog Every Day thingie, whose real name I can never remember. I was all set to continue sharing the petty, negative stories that can be somewhat funny but that I tend not to put on the blog because I don’t want to hurt feelings and because even though it can be temporarily satisfying, it usually ends up leaving a bad taste in my mouth. I started typing up a petty little story about the in-laws, and how they manipulated us into letting Joe’s dad mow our lawn – it was a very petty little story.

And then I realized that it wasn’t really that entertaining of a story, even if it entertains the heck out of me. So instead I’m going to show you my less-than-impressive knitting. I’m teaching this sock class at the store – it’s about all the various configurations of knitting socks on various knitting needles. It’s kind of funny to me that I’m teaching this class, because I am so totally devoted to knitting my socks toe-up on Pony Pearl double-points. I have my own little ritual of casting on both socks in the pair at the same time and alternating between them.

I mean, I’ve tried most of these other methods, and felt confident that I could teach them. But I knew I was rusty with the two-socks-two-circulars and I had never cast on directly with Magic Loop for a top-down sock. So I decided to do some little socks for Julie to knit along with the class. I let her pick out the yarn, and she chose the rainbow barf hand dye.

Surprisingly, I found myself actually enjoying this magic loop business on the socks. I thought I would hate it, but really it’s not so bad. I’m not sure I would do it all the time, especially for plain stockinette socks. I like my double points with those because I can knit around and around, switching needles and all without ever looking at my work. And it is a tiny bit more fiddly switching sides with the magic loop method, although perhaps with practice I could get more used to it.

You do have to admit that the wires are a little tangly and floppy, though. But it looks kind of cool when you’re mid-stream and they’re all criss-crossed and loopy.

As I was taking these pictures, Joe came through the kitchen and I mentioned to him about the not blogging about the in-laws and instead blogging about the magic loop, which lead me into explaining what the heck the magic loop is and how it works. And then I showed him. And he stood there slightly dumbfounded for a moment, then laughed and said “You and your crazy knitting tricks!”

Sorry for the boring, incoherent post. This is what happens when I force myself to blog every day. Ack!

I’m sitting here soaking my foot in warm water because it’s a little ouchy still. Yesterday I didn’t mention my visit to the doctor in the morning because I didn’t want to spoil the warm-fuzzy-happy-halloween post with the ouchy and the gross. But today’s post is all about the me-me-me, so I am going to share.

I had an ingrown toenail last year, and I was getting so excited that the darn thing was finally growing back out and soon would look like a normal toenail again instead of some kind of Frankenstein-monster toenail where the doctor had – well – done what they do to ingrown toenails, and you don’t want to know if you don’t know already. Then, last week, it started to hurt and it became clear to me that the darn thing was not going to grow out normally, but instead it was going to become ingrown again. Yuck! Ouch!

I chose to live in denial for several days, then for a couple more while it got progressively worse, then I tried to make an appointment with a podiatrist who could maybe somehow magically fix it without doing that thing that they did last time. But I couldn’t get an appointment till next week, and finally I ended up going back to the same urgent care that had fixed it before. (And I think they actually did a fine job, for the record)

But it totally sucked because I had to ask Joe to stay home from work to watch the girls while I went and had torture done on my poor foot, and I got very little sympathy from anyone because a)they are squeamish and b)they are irritated at missing work because they are overwhelmed with busy. Oh! and I think I may have mentioned here before, but it’s worth sharing again – topical anesthetics don’t work on me. Lydocaine, Novocaine, any of the -ocaines – they don’t stop the pain. Even in large large quantities and even given plenty of time to work.

The nice lady at the urgent care remembered me from last year, and she drugged my toe up good. Oh, how the -ocaine stings going in, and oh, how the pain was still painfully painful as she did that-thing-that-they-do-to-toenails-that-are-ingrown. And I was shaking and sweating, but I survived. And I swear that if this toenail does this thing again, I will get an appointment with a podiatrist the moment I suspect that it is misbehaving, and I will insist on some better drugs of some sort, and I will also insist that they do that thing in a more permanent manner so that it can never, ever grow back again.

In the mean time, I am stuck wearing my Birkenstock sandals with socks because they are the only shoes I can wear comfortably without hurting my poor swollen, disgusting, sad toe. I even wore them to work tonight. Luckily, when I pointed out how embarrassed I was, they all told me it was okay and they liked my socks. Thanks, work people!

I’m in the market for some new shoes because my everyday no-brainer Birkenstock clogs may be part of the problem. Even though they have a nice, wide toe, the doctor thinks maybe my foot is sliding around in them when I walk, causing my toe to hit the front all the time, and that maybe if I get some closed-back shoes the nail will grow back better. I’m considering a pair of Earth shoes, since Wendy recommended them so highly.

Today was actually a much better day on the Me-Me-Me front. I had pre-scheduled an appointment with the optometrist for my “annual” eye exam, which was six months late because I just hadn’t managed to align the appointment-making with the asking the in-laws to babysit before now. But it was great because I got to drive to the mall by myself, and I got to have grownup conversations without interruption. And I got to pick out new glasses because Sophie got ahold of mine a couple weeks ago and snapped the arm right off. This is what I ended up with:

And, for the first time in my life, I got a pair of prescription sunglasses too. Maybe now I will be a little more willing to wear my glasses on days when my eyes are irritated. I have extremely poor vision – as in quite blind without my glasses.

And the best part was that for the first time ever, the glasses place actually had my crazy huge prescription lenses in stock – even for the sunglasses – so I *had* to wait an extra hour at the mall by myself while they made the glasses. An hour! To sit! And eat a meal! By myself! I did a little knitting and listening to my audio book too. The joy! And then I came home and was happy to see my kids, and then only a few hours later got to leave again to go to work. Downright decadent, I tell you. So decadent I can almost forget the throbbing in my toe.

Oh, and one other thing. I joined NaBloPoMo. Because somehow even though I can’t seem to pull together a post every day for the rest of the year, maybe I can try to do it for the month of November. Actually, I’ve been having a very hard time writing blog posts lately, so maybe the routine of doing *something* every day will help break my mental log jam. I think there have been too many things that I want to write about but don’t feel able to write about, so it’s been stopping everything up. Maybe I can let some of that go this month and get back in the groove. I’m just wondering how I’m going to keep up with the added work of reading everyone else’s daily posts while also coming up with my daily post. But that’s the neverending conundrum of the bloggosphere anyway.

Now I must wrap this up because my foot is all wrinkly and the water has gone cold. See you tomorrow.