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Small things

I visit antique stores pretty frequently and, 80% of the time, find nothing at all that I want to take home. My standards are pretty strict, I guess. I have no interest in rusty old farm implements or kitchen items from the 1970's. Nor do I want musty old suitcases or Depression Glass. I usually go away feeling a little bit unfulfilled. Once in a while, though, I find things like this. This little ceramic planter was just crying out to come home with me and live on my kitchen windowsill. It's only about 4 1/2" high and so adorable! I wish I was able to take a better picture of it, but my photography skills leave a lot to be desired. You can't tell, for instance, that this little planter is painted a very light green or that the colors of the little flowers contrast perfectly. I saw it and said, "There! That's what I want. It's something I need." Four dollars for a little soul-satisfaction. Not bad!




















I have a penchant for all things small. I have since I was a child. I started collecting tiny things and that's what I look for when I go into antique stores. A lot of people collect tiny things, so there's not usually much for me to find. Occasionally though I find a treasure and it goes into my printer's box hanging on my bathroom wall. See that tiny teddy bear on the top left there? I got that in Silverton, Colorado when Val and I were coming back from Aspen in 1996. We went into a cute little Victorian gift shop and there it was. It's all of two inches high and it's entirely handmade. I paid $25 for it and it's one of my favorite things. A couple of years ago, when I found out about my dad's family, I discovered that my great grandmother lived in Silverton for a short time in the 1880's. She married a man who owned a boarding house and she ran it until he started hitting her. She left him and went back to Boulder. I love that I went to this tiny little mountain town, totally by accident (we were traveling and needed a place to stop for lunch) and it turns out I actually have ancestral ties there. I would never have remembered going there if I hadn't bought the little bear.

Riley and I put this terrarium together a couple of weeks ago. I have always wanted one but for some reason never set one up. I used to be obsessed with houseplants, especially ferns and begonias. When I got pregnant with Travis I was so nauseated and sick all the time that everything that didn't have to do with growing a baby went by the wayside. All of my houseplants died or were given away because I couldn't muster the strength to take care of them. I have two that simply refuse to die no matter how much I abuse them and I admired their tenacity and let them stay. A few weeks ago, Val built a top for our aquarium and mentioned how much he liked it when we had a forest of plants surrounding our aquariums. It occurred to me that, hello-- I now have time to water plants! I've been buying and potting and am starting it up again. It makes it feel a bit more like spring around here, and we could all use that.

I need a vacation from Spring Break

Yep. If I don't post at least once every, say, oh. . . two months or so. What? The average is every seven months you say? Okay. Well, at least the gaps are getting smaller.

The past week has been hell around here. Worst spring break EVER! Last Thursday, Val had a little procedure done. No, not that procedure: we took care of that after Riley was born. This was, well, no delicate way to put this, Rectal Surgery (cue dramatic music). Specifically, a hemorrhoidectomy. (No that's really what it's called! I thought it would have a different, more scientific-y name, but no. Just what you would call it if you didn't know what the procedure was called and were making up a name. All that's missing is the word "thingy" after it.) It was a long time coming. After 4 years of misery, with the last year and a half being almost unbearable, he decided it was time to do this. It is not a pleasant surgery and the recovery time is, well, slow and uncomfortable, as you can probably imagine. On top of the usual recovery issues (oh use your imagination, fer cryin' out loud!), he seems to have come down with some kind of virus and is feeling like he has the flu. Now I don't mind any of this. Really. After all, I do have a nurturing personality and therefore have a constant need to make people feel better. I don't mind getting him food, drinks, pain meds, any of that. Actually, he's been a pretty easy patient as far as that stuff goes. After the first couple of days he was getting around without my help and doing most of that stuff for himself. Except, you know, getting food. He has never done that so nothing different there (sigh). He has to have four sitz baths a day and he's getting kind of tired of that. Anyway, the point is, I don't mind helping out. I am, however, getting extremely tired of seeing my husband so miserable. After a week, he is still sore, sick and pretty darn grumpy. I'll be glad when things are back to normal and he feels good again. Because, we love him, but the grumpiness? Yeah. That's gotta go.

On top of this, I've been babysitting all week which is kind of difficult because my whole routine is off, what with the whole family here and underfoot. To be fair, the kids have helped out a ton and the babies love them so it's actually been easier as far as that goes, but it's so crowded here and Val has been sleeping a lot in our room which is where I put Tyler down for a nap so, like I said, the routine has suffered. Then, THEN, on Wednesday, Travis kept complaining that he wasn't feeling well. Mostly his stomach wasn't feeling good. We have had issues with Travis's stomach before, so I was like, okay, we know what is isn't, let's wait and see what happens. He felt worse towards evening and went to bed late. I also went to bed late and then Riley woke me up at about 12:30, after I'd been asleep about an hour and a half, saying her throat hurt and could she go downstairs on the couch. The couch was currently being occupied by her father, who came up to bed so that she could have the sofa. He was restless and I couldn't get back to sleep. Then, at around 2 a.m., Travis came in our room and said he "thought" he had diarrhea. Uh, yeah. To say the least. I sent him into the bathroom to get cleaned up and then got him back into bed with a barf bucket, which he ultimately ignored because, guess what. Half an hour later I heard, "Mom!" and he had thrown up in his bed. He had also had another bout of the big D so I put him into the shower while I changed his bedding and started a load of laundry. The rest of the night is a blur of puke, poop, Lysol, Clorox wipes and laundry which ultimately ended up with Travis on the couch, me in the chair and everyone else in their respective beds. Val had come back down to the living room at around three and found Riley eating a bowl of cereal and watching "Leprechaun" on tv. Yes, that movie. (Why yes, I do have excellent parenting skills. Why do you ask?) Val sent her back up to bed and took over the couch until I booted him back upstairs so that I could put Trav there to make it easier for me to keep an eye on him. I think Travis went through five pairs of underwear that night. Truthfully? I threw them away because I'd rather buy new undies than wash that stuff out. (You'd do the same, I promise.) Anyway, I felt so sorry for him. He was so exhausted and would fall asleep only to be woken up a few minutes later by either his bowels or me making him go to the bathroom. And he was so good-natured about the whole thing. He'd come out of the bathroom with a smile on his face, saying, "Mom? I think I'm done now. I really think it's all over!" Towards the end there, he really got punchy and, once, when I tried to go in the bathroom to help him, he pushed me out the door and said, "Be gone, Woman!" Then, by 7 a.m, he was magically better and feeling just fine. I, on the other hand, was a bag of crap. An hour and a half of sleep doesn't go very far. I only had Marie for half a day yesterday (Tyler's dad decided to keep him home because of all the carnage here) and when she went home, I officially checked out for the day. I will say though, that I think all of my obsessive applications of Lysol and Clorox paid off: no one else has come down with the stomach bug. I'm still exhausted, though and plan to catch up on sleep this weekend. Or, you know, that's the plan anyway. We'll see.

New Year

I'm just going to say it: 2009 was shitty. Not all of it: we elected Barack Obama into office, and that was a stellar event. There were a few other little goodies in there too, but overall, for me at least, it sucked. I'm glad it's over and I'm looking forward to a new year and good things.

One good thing already: I am knitting more. It's getting a little bit easier every time. I am s-l-o-w-l-y mastering (well, maybe not mastering) the Continental method. I have the knit stitch down but purling? Not so much. It's work, baby. It's like my left hand leaves my body and has a mind of its own. I have to concentrate so hard to make my fingers do what they're supposed to. It took me forever to even get as far as I am. I really wasn't getting the written instructions. I'm a visual learner. When I decided to try Continental I just kept watching videos of the knit stitch on YouTube over and over again without trying it. I watched until I got it and could visualize myself doing it. Then when I picked up the needles and tried it, it was like my fingers just knew what to do. Amazing! I felt like Luke Skywalker or Caine. (Way to go, Grasshoppah.) Knowing how to knit Continental style literally changed my knitting life. It's so much faster! I whipped out a couple of hats on some circulars and reveled in my new knowledge. After I got over myself a little bit, I decided it was time to learn to purl. I have been doing the same thing as before: watching videos, visualizing, etc. And it has gotten a little easier. It has. I had a breakthrough a couple of weeks ago. I tried it out and it actually worked, sort of. It's just much harder and it's like training my fingers to do something they really, really don't want to do. My left hand keeps cramping up. I made a scarf in the mistake rib pattern and, in order to keep my sanity, I did almost the whole thing in my weird, half-assed English throwing style. It actually went pretty fast, but I did try a few rows in my still weak and awkward Continental method and it went much more slowly. And you can totally tell the rows I did because they're really uneven and wonky. It will come, I guess. I just need to sit down and really work at it.

Meanwhile. . . I did this! I started this scarf last spring and finished it in late summer, before I learned the Continental method. It went very slowly and it was a little tedious and I could only do twelve rows or so at a sitting before I got a little crazy. But I was really proud of myself when I finished. It's from Last Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson. I saw it in the Knitpicks catalog and ordered the book and the yarn (in the exact colors shown because I have no imagination or confidence in my own yarn-choosing abilities, apparently). It was actually a pretty easy pattern, which surprised me. It looks difficult and impressive, though, right?

Before Christmas, I used one of my gift certificates to buy some new yarn. I had been fondling the Baby Alpaca Grande at the quilt shop for several months but wasn't sure I liked the colors they had in stock. At the last Sanity Seekers meeting I scoped out the yarn and noticed they had gotten some more colors in.

Yummy! This yarn is unbelievably soft and squooshy. Like, incredibly soft and squooshy. I've been trying to figure out how I can afford to buy the fifteen or so skeins it would require to make a decent-sized afghan and then curl up in it and not leave until April or May. At $14.99/skein, that would be a pretty expensive afghan. But oh. my. god.

Anyway, I could afford two skeins. I chose this beautiful heathered purple and hoped two skeins would be enough to make something I loved. I did some pattern searching on Ravelry and found a very simple pattern for a scarf. It worked up very quickly and I love it. I wish I could post a picture of it but sadly, Travis took the memory card out of our camera to put in his video camera and I don't know where it is. I will post, though, because it's awesome. It's incredibly cuddly and squishy and I love it. I wear it at every opportunity and force people to feel it. "Isn't it soft? Feel how soft it is!"