One of those days

So, Tuesdays are my one day that I have to work full time and be an only parent.  I am aware that there are other people who do this every day but one day a week is enough to wipe me out.

My day was normal until I got home. I have two hours from the moment I get through the door till the boys go to bed.  My elderly dog peed in the bathroom, Bugs knocked his dinner on the floor on accident,  I realized a stitch was missing two rows down on my fair isle Sheep Heid hat, I found the DVD that I swore to my friend I had already returned it to her and then Bugs busted the mirror in his bedroom, also on accident.  So, after all the clean up, feeding, bathing and tucking in, I smothered my sorrows in a peanut butter & bacon sandwich while surfing the internet and listening to Boo NOT go to bed.

Then it hit me.  I remembered that I can just make the missing stitch from two rows below and then ladder it up like a dropped stitch.  Somehow, that made me feel much better (well, the bacon didn't hurt either) and I am going to bed on a high note.  

E-mail Quiz

Do you remember back in the old days when friends used to send each other quizzes through e-mail?  Like "Who are you more like, Brenda or Kelly?"
Or "Which New Kids on the Block singer is your soul mate?"

You answered the questions and got points for your answers or sometimes it would just say Mostly A you are...mostly B you are ...

So, one of these quizzes hit a nerve with me all those years ago. It was the "Are you Selfish or a Pushover?" quiz.  Really only one question hit the nerve. It said:

If you are headed to the public restroom and you know people are coming in behind you. There are 3 stalls. Do you:
A. Go in the first stall which is the handicapped stall
B. Go to the second stall in case there is someone behind you who needs the handicapped stall
C. Go to the third stall to allow others to have the first two

There were other questions like this and when you got to the bottom you found that people who picked A's were selfish and C's were pushovers.

Now, every time I go to the public restroom (yes, every time) I think of the woman (I just know it is a woman) who wrote this stupid quiz.  I know that she liked the first stall at work. She wanted it all for herself and she didn't want anyone else to use it. So, she wrote this quiz and sent it to her co-workers.  Then the other women were brainwashed into believing that they needed to use the second stall or they were a selfish person/ pushover.  I wonder how many women were affected by this e-mail. Then I wonder if I could make a quiz to convince my co-workers to clean their own dishes and not leave them in the work sink.

By the way, I was a Brenda and Joey was my soul mate, of course.

Boo Says

I think from now on I am going to have a "Boo Says" at the bottom of my blog post when my four year old says something funny or profound. To get you up to speed, he are some of the things he has said in the past:

• "You do not cut a banana with a tree trimmer. "

• "You call it a skylight, I call it a window."

• "Daddy has brown eyes like me...No, I did not get his brown eyes, he still has them."

• "If we get sick we might die but if we are dead we will not be sick." (This was sung.)

•  Boo told his stuffed bunny, "That is not good to hit, that is sad. We do not like hitting, that is why you are in time out. And only dinosaurs can kill other dinosaurs."

• "Red means stop, green means go and blue means cops."

• Boo was sharing his pretzels with me. I said, "Thanks Bud." He said, "Don't call me Bud. You can call me Sir."   

 I am not making any of this up, that is what makes it funny.

My feet got cold

At the beginning of the month, I was telling myself I just had to weave in the ends of my "Katniss Socks" (which is a misnomer because I hardly used the wonderful pattern by Rose Hiver, I took the braid/ ribbing and knit some DK toe up heel flap socks using David's Toe-up Sock Cookbook)

So then last Sunday, I washed the socks but didn't weave in the ends. They hung dry till Tuesday and then I put them on my night stand so they could mock me.  They sat their glaring at me until Friday night.  It was cold in the house and Daddy was out at the fire hall so the boys had piled into my bed.  I already had all the lights off but I couldn't sleep. My feet were so cold.  So grudgingly I turned the lights back on and as the boys happily looked at books a little longer while I sewed in the ends of the socks. (Yes I have a darning needle in my night stand. You don't?) 

They are super warm.  Like maybe too warm for my bed but they would be great for walking through the snow with no shoes. They will be great when I am sick and my feet will not stay warm.

Made from Suffolk Dorset boot sock by Solitude Wool made fuzzy with Angel's dog hair.

Bugs went missing

I was sitting with my laptop early this morning and watching Tim Minchin and Only1Noah.  Boo was in the TV room watching cartoons and I had not seen Bugs yet.  Then I looked up at the clock. It was too late for Bugs to be sleeping. He wouldn't go to bed on time if he didn't get up soon and tomorrow is a school day. 

So I strolled into his room and his bed was empty.  His covers were on the floor.  I picked up his covers but he wasn't under there. I ran to his brother's room and our room on the chance that he woke up and crawled into another bed.  Nope and nope.  I started to panic (as I am apt to do) and I ran through the bedrooms again. I looked under the beds, around the closets, and under all covers again. What will I tell his father, should I call the police, OMG where the heck could he have gone! Would he have gone outside, could he be in the basement, maybe the back deck.

 I started yelling his name as I checked the bathrooms. Screeching when I turned the corner and there he was, coming out of the TV room.  He had walked right past me earlier while I was glued to the computer. I picked him up (hard to do because he is 7 and all legs) and I said, "I thought you were kidnapped by Aliens!" He looked at me and said, "Mom, Aliens aren't real." Touché.

Fair-isle Fingerless Mitts Get Fingers

I mentioned earlier in the week that I have been working on a fair isle project.

It is a project for a gift that was completely finished in June 2011. I followed the pattern exactly.
Heather's Mitts by Spilly Jane


 (There are three because of a gauge error.  The first one was practice)
The pattern is great but my friend here has small hands and they trumpet out. Plus she mentioned that it would be great if they had convertible mitten tops.  So, I stole them back, frogged out the top, re-knit the ribbing and then picked up the stitches on the back and knit up the top.





Then I will do the second. It is lots of fun because I had to make my own choices on lots of it. No pattern to follow. :-)

Computer stuff

I have been taking computer training this week for work. It has been very interesting at times and at times it has almost put me to sleep.  I did learn Binary, which is so much easier then people make it out to be.  It is simple addition.  If you can add 128 & 64, you can do Binary. Why do people act like it is this big secret?

On another note, my knitting widget (in the right corner) is lying.  I have not knit only 127 yards since Jan 1st.  I just normally don't put in my totals for knitting until I finish a project. I will soon have more when I weave in the ends of my socks. Then I will only have two projects on the needles.  Time to cast on a whole bunch of stuff and get overwhelmed.

Regress

When my mother stays overnight with me, no matter if it is one night or many, I start to revert to my teenage ways of sitting and watching her work. She does the dishes, laundry and seems to have a blast doing it. 

Her favorite part seems to be reading bedtime stories to the boys.  It is the one thing I am happy to take over after she goes home.  Harold and the purple crayon, Good Night Moon, Llama Llama, I could read children's books out loud for hours.  My real favorite is The Long Long Letter by Elizabeth Spurr. It sees to be out of print but I got a second copy on Paperbackswap because we have loved our first copy to death.

Do you have a favorite children's book that isn't well known? Please share it in the comments. We are always looking for new books.

Easily Amused

I want to training today. I got to drive a work car with work gas and a work toll pass down the toll road (which is normally way too expensive to drive) to a training place that had free parking.  Then their kitchen had free bagels, donuts, soda, filtered water and TWO Kureg coffee machines with tons of different flavors of tea, coffee and hot chocolate. Then they gave a voucher for $5 off to go out to lunch and my work paid for the rest of lunch.  Plus there is the whole thing of getting paid to be trained and work paying for the training.

My friend said I need to get out more.

Check, Check, Check, Check, Check

Today I slept in, fed my one kid, did 3 loads (so far) of laundry, knitting on my fair isle mittens and washed the socks that still need the ends woven in along with 1/2 a week of wool socks and under garments.

Katniss Socks

Then we went to the pool where we met up with my Dad and Bugs. We had tons of fun and I ended up walking 5 laps in the pool with 35 lbs riding piggy back. Now I am working on my blog (including posting yesterday's entry.) If you read Friday's post you will know that I have worked on all 5 of my goals for the day. Woo Hoo. Now to go to a Super Bowl party. TTFN!

Knitting in public

Bugs, my 7 year old son, went off to Grandpa's house today and left me home with just Boo, 4 year old son.  I asked Boo what he would like to do and he said Monkey Joe's. Imagine a warehouse with 10 big moon bounces plus video games and party rooms and you have the basic idea. Imagine also that it is 14 degrees outside on a Saturday and you can guess that most of Winchester with small children was there.

Boo ran around getting on all the moon bounces and I congratulated myself on dressing the child in brown/orange/blue and white stripe shirt.  It stood way out so I could see him from where I was sitting.  I still worried as I sat knitting, with him in eye sight.  Lots of parents were following their children around, huddled in front entrance of each moon bounce for their child to get back out.  I didn't want to do that because I hate standing in crowds but did that make me less of a parent?  Would he be safer if I followed him around?  Then my brain caught up with this train of thought.  I am a great parent and if he gets hurt, it will not matter if I am 1' away or 10' away, he will still be hurt.

Sometimes I would lose sight of him and I would worry that he was hurt or that someone was going to take him (kinda hard to do with the security system MJ's has in place but my anxiety has little to do with reality.) When this happened, I would take a deep breath and tell myself I had to finish a row before I went looking for him. Only once did he not show up before the end of the row and it turned out he was talking to a pretty female employee on his way up a slide.

So, knitting in public keeps me sane. It calms me down and it prevents me from acting before I think.

He fell asleep on the way home and I got to listen to NPR. Win-Win.

PS. I was knitting on my SKYP in the Woods socks.

Fair Isle/ Finish up/ Focus February

So, for the month of February, I am going to focus on things that have gone by the wayside.  Like my blog, my work out routine, my laundry, the fair isle fingerless mittens that need mitten tops, the pair of boot socks that just need the ends woven in. So, I am going to do a little of each every day. So, talk to you tomorrow. :-)