June bug -vs- hurricane

Well, I have spent the last two weeks making sure that I will never have another visitor again. Have you ever noticed that when things are clean and looking nice, no one feels like they need to stop by? But kick up your feet with a good book or some knitting for a couple of hours while your house falls apart and see what happens. Try going in your pajamas for an entire day and see how many unannounced visitors will knock at your door. I often wonder if my working friends believe that my job as a "stay-at-home" mom is easy. I get to do things on a daily basis that the rest of the working world has to squeeze in on the weekends, like going to the library, the gym, walks, visiting on the phone, blogging, etc. There is no happy balance, you either stay continually busy keeping your home and family looking nice, or you do something you enjoy, while it all falls apart. And the more you "stay at home" the more house work needs to be done. No one is sitting still while the house is getting clean, oh no, they are all busy working to ensure my job security. I like to joke that if I ever get fired, I will have to get a paying job. But that was a huge aside from the whole point I am making, which is that I have been on a massive de-cluttering mission (ala www.flylady.net) these last weeks. My upstairs looks incredible, and I have managed to keep it that way. It has been a lot of work, not to mention a lot of tossing and goodwill heaps, but wow, if sure feels good. I started the downstairs yesterday. The downstairs is where J keeps all his fishing goodies and the kids keep all their toys. There is a lot of junk down here that needs to be pitched, but taking little steps, I think I can do it and find some sanity. My dream is to fit everything I own in one car load. I hate stuff. Over the years, I have managed to cull my pile into something manageable, basically only the things that I really use. My family, understandably, likes their stuff and wants to keep it, I am trying to make them see how much more useful things are when you can actually find them. I am desperate to make them understand that horizontal surfaces are not to stack stuff upon. Everything should have a place, and it it doesn't fit in that place, then something has to go. It isn't easy to convince a bunch of stuff-lovers that they don't need so much stuff. But when I am the person responsible for keeping up with all their things ("where is that lego that I placed on the entertainment center last year?" "I can't find that Thomas the Tank toy that I left in the kitchen eight months ago." "Who has been messing with my huge box of flies that has been sitting out opened for as long as you've known me?"), I should get to expect them to see things my way. "Where is that ___? Have you checked Goodwill??"

Run Forest, Run!

Well, my 5k was a lot of fun, so much fun that I am going to run another one on the 18th. I don't know my place, but I am pretty sure that I wasn't last, I am also sure that I wasn't first. I know for a fact that a lady with a huge toddler in a jogging stroller, the kid in unlaced skateboarding shoes AND a firefighter wearing all his gear, including his air tank, beat me. My goal was to run more than I walked, and I did. I guess we probably ran at least two miles, or a little more. My time was 36 minutes. Not bad for a chick who had reconstructive knee surgery less than nine months ago. I didn't run this huge, long, neverending hill, seeing how I haven't ran a hill since last summer, but I am planning on remedying that this week.

Here are some pictures of the last few seconds of the race. Unless you are an olympic runner, I am not sure that it is good to see yourself running, at least in still photos. I had this mental image of myself looking tall and powerful with arms at my sides, pumping away. I didn't realize how poor my running posture is, until I saw these pictures. It is a little disappointing to know that I look like I am in severe pain, which I was at that point, but still. No one wants to have their idealic image shattered. Maybe next time, I'll have J take pictures at the starting line, to see if I look less on the verge of collapse. In the meantime, I am going to focus on staying more upright in the future.

The kids ran the kids 300 meter race, which was fun to see. Jack loves running, but I don't think he likes being passed. He is still talking about it, he wants to run again. Mimi came in dead last, but she was smiling and running the whole way. It was so cute, unfortunatly, you'll never see any pictures of that, since we didn't take any. B was conserving energy (which I told him to do) until it was too late to catch up, but he still ran it in a little over a minute, and thinks he came in fifth or sixth. All in all, we are all hoping to improve the next time around, but we had a great time.

Where have I been?

Where have I been? Uh, nowhere really. Just too lazy to blog these days. It is a vicious cycle really. I haven't been knitting, so I feel that I can't really blog because this is supposed to be a knitting blog, but if I wait to blog until I knit, well, then it won't be much of a blog at all, will it? So the guilt keeps me frozen. To blog, or not to blog, to knit or not to knit? Both good questions. I'm taking the middle road tonight. I can't sleep, so I thought it would be a good time to knit, or blog. I guess blogging won out this round.

So, what has been happening around here? Well, first, I'll throw in some obligatory knitting content, for those keeping track. I handed off the dayglo slippers and hat to a very hugely pregnant forth grade teacher well over a month ago. She actually really like them, and then quickly gave birth to a baby girl so she could try them out. I hear tell (tale?) that the baby has already outgrown them, after only wearing them a few times, which is probably for the better, now that the weather is getting warmer...not. Anyway, I started the other fingerless glove on a trip to the Arkansas River a while back, but since I hadn't worked on it for so long, I forgot which needles I was using, and now I have to start all over again. This will be the second time, since one ill-fated morning, Mimi drank my cold coffee,(while I was showering, under the watchful eye of her four year old brother) and in a caffeine-fueled rage, ripped out the entire thing. So, I can't remember what I did to achieve the darn thing in the first place. I'll need to play around with that...

What else, what else? My new gym opened up, and I was going a lot at first, then our entire family (excluding B, but it is early yet) got way-laid by a nasty stomach flu. I really wanted to blame J for it, but since I can't very well trace the origins before it hit him, I guess I'll let him off the hook. Luckily it goes through a person rather quickly, so only an entire productive week was lost. (there are five of us, twenty-four hour bug, you do the math) And since I have a rule that no child of mine will set foot in any kind of nursery within forty-eight hours of vomiting, there goes my whole week. But we are all feeling better by the minute, and hopefully B will be spared. I was really hoping to miss this one, since I signed up for a 5k on Sunday. Yes, you read right, I am running a 5k, or at least part of it. I got some new running shoes and I have been running a little on the treadmill at the gym. They have TVs, so I get a little excited about hanging out on them, especially since they also have cable. The other day, I ran right through Beverly Hillbillies. It was great! And my knee was fine. So, I am going to participate in my first ever race, with my friend from Denver. I am a little excited, and I was worried I was going to miss it because I felt so badly yesterday.

We (as in J and I) watched the new Rambo tonight. Don't worry if you haven't seen the first eight, I never have and I was able to keep up with the plot just fine. Although, to call it a "plot" may be a bit of a stretch. There was maybe three seconds of dialogue and then there was about fifty-five minutes of fantastically gory fighting scenes and then it was over. J and I both agreed that a good fighting flick shouldn't try to be too deep, just blood, guts and vomit, thank you very much. There are some edgy-artsy-type scenes where blood and body parts actually come flying right into the camera lens. Genius, I tell you. Ugh, not really. I gather that Rambo hasn't really transcended his past, and that there may be another movie in his future...Maybe they will show it in the cardio-cinema. That would probably get J to join me at the gym.

We took a nice trip to Springer for Memorial day. The kids love going there so much, it is always so much fun to see them play with their cousins and enjoy their grandparents. Except for the wind, it was perfect.

Yes, that is a giagantic mud pie, and here is the mastermind behind it:

We had a lovely dinner on the fine china, we got to drag stuff around with a tractor, and I even made a gate, which was strangely satisfying. I might take up metal arts...stay tuned. Anyway, I love to see my husband do farm-type stuff. He knows so much and it is attractive to see my life-long companion using his brawn, as well as his brains. It makes me remember that I chose an alfa male. No wonder he likes Rambo.

Trojan comes full circle

Back when I was a smallish-type child, there was a book in my local library that showed a picture of a big wooden horse on wheels, and then in a little side picture, it showed that the horse was full of men, waiting to sac a kingdom once it was pulled inside the castle gates. It was a trick, the trojan horse. It was bad and you didn't want it.
Then, when I was a lot older, trojan meant something totally different. It meant protection, and you definitely wanted it. The trojan was good and it worked. Trojan was your friend.
Now, a few weeks ago, I got a little window on my virus scanner that said it had detected a trojan. This trojan is bad, you don't want it. End of internet, end of word, end of e-mail, myspace, blogger, facebook, msn. Beginning of major headaches, worry (Who has been reading my bank statements? How will I know if my identity has been stolen before someone buys a yacht in my name?) irritation, frustration. This trojan is a real pain in the patella, and I don't say that lightly. Trojan is bad again.

I heart the nineties

Lets take a stroll down memory lane, shall we?

Remember when huge geometric buttons and bicycle shorts were all the rage? How about when you wore skintight jean shorts rolled up just over you knees and buttoned just under your breasts, with an awesomely huge magical hyper-color tee-shirt? High-topped white Reebok sneakers and leather fanny packs, anyone? During the eighties, people fried their brains on drugs, in the nineties,we fried our retinas with day-glo. It was nation-wide hysteria, of this, I'm sure. Fast forward to a much more fashionably sensible time, like yesterday. Here is what I bound off the needles:
What child of the nineties can look at that baby bootie and not immediately conjure up images of the oh-so-heinous AquaSock? I never had a pair, but I may have fantasized about them...

I made these little shoes for B's forth grade teacher who is about to burst forth with child. Please, don't misunderstand my intentions. I am not trying to have B flunked out of elementary school, nor am I trying to damage the delicate mechanisms of newborn eyes. I let B choose the colors, and seeing how he was born in the late nineties, after the day-glo craze had died down, how could he have known that such a color-combination would bring back some memories that are better left unremembered (is that a word, spellcheck says yes)? He loves them, and thinks they are perfect for her baby. I have my suspicions that they may be perfect for goodwill, but what the hey. He is happy. To make myself a little happier with them, and to make them look less like AquaSocks, I went ahead and slapped on a couple of little flowers. Cute(er), no?

I'm working on a hat to match. A girl can never have too much day-glo in her newborn layette...

My Hips Don't Lie...

Well, maybe they do a little bit. Or maybe my mom does. She said that people with hips look good belly dancing and that it is easier for them. I took a belly dancing class yesterday, and maybe my hips just don't know what is expected of them, perhaps they think it is funny to be so large and useless (except in childbirth, in which case, they have outlived their usefulness) but they simply refused to do anything right. I was really hoping that it would be something that would come easily and that I would surprise myself by being good naturally, that I would look like Shakira. Nope. But I did have fun. I didn't feel very feminine, actually I felt like an awkward teen aged boy, it was a little silly. And speaking of teen aged boys, I was at the gym the other day and didn't bring anything to read on the elliptical, so I grabbed a magazine from the rack. I find it somewhat annoying that the only magazines at the gym are Vogue and Popular Mechanics. I would sooner have bamboo shoved under my fingernails than read Popular Mechanics, so I grabbed Vogue. Does anyone else think that all those "super" models look like really awkward teenage boys? And what is up with they way they jut their heads out the way that they do? Is that supposed to be attractive? They all look like they are dead. Ga-ross. And the funny thing is, I found it at the gym, shouldn't they be promoting health and vitality there? Not a bunch of women who look like death sucking on a lifesaver. Let me tell you, it wasn't very motivating. I felt like having a nice burger and milk shake, just to affirm life.

Ok, enough of that. I have some knitting to show you...well, fifty percent of a finished object. And, AND it is sort of my own design. I give you the Surfing Glove!

These are from that Brown Sheep Hand Paint Original that I picked up a few months ago. I looked around for a pattern for it, but as I have mentioned before, the yarn contains mohair, and I can't even fathom putting that around my neck or on any other skin, except my hands which are dishpan hands anyway. Less sensitive...Anyway, I found a pattern for a fingerless glove called Jacoby from Berroco. I cast on the recommended 60 stitches and found that it was big, so big that I thought that my gauge was off, but no, I was right on. So I am not sure what is going on with the pattern. So, I cast on 45 and just winged it. And it worked. I used the thumb instructions for the House Mittens from Charmed Knits as a guide, isn't that so smart of me? I feel so accomplished. I almost had an original idea. Too bad that if you get on ravelry, there are a kajillion different patterns for fingerless gloves. I'd be willing to bet there is one that is the same as mine. So, why do I call them Surfing Gloves? Because I plan to use them while surfing the net, and on those rare occasions that I play games online. My hands, particularly my right hand, gets really cold when I spend a lot of time mousing. So, I am hoping that they will take care of that problem for me... That is my angry fist, for J. Not because I'm angry at him, but because he says it looks harmless. It isn't meant to look cute and harmless, it is meant to incite fear and obedience into the heart of those I shake it at...fear me. Stop that laughing...

And here is a birthday shot of Jack on his new bicycle. He could probably sleep on that thing if I let him. My baby boy is a big four year old now. Time flies when we're having fun!

Cuter than Cute

These are my second pair of newborn slippers which are found here, as a free pattern. LOVE LOVE LOVE them, could they be any cuter? And they are easy too, perfect for all the babies in the world. I know the picture is a little dark, I couldn't get a decent shot with the flash on. I modeled them on this freaky little Urkle doll, who, oddly, has the same size feet as a newborn baby. Bizarre, I know, but kinda fun too.

Spring break is in full force right now, and we spent our Easter with J's parents. It was fun, and then they took the boys for a few days, so the house is sort of quiet. It is a little boring actually. I don't have anyone to play trains with me. Or anyone to take swimming. But they are having great fun, and they'll be home soon enough. And these are J's parent's neighbor's horses. Twenty pregnant ladies, all looking miserable and ready to pop. The cool thing was that you could see the little horses (foals) moving around in those big pregnant bellies. That is something I will always remember feeling and I still miss it, but just seeing these mares looking so ready makes me thankful it isn't me that is about to burst!