He's Just So Sweet Right Now--What's Wrong?

My little 2yo is sick. He has slept on the living room couch all day and only surfaced to vomit or drink home made pedialyte.

He's such a sweet, snuggly, small-fry right now. Except for the three extra loads of laundry, two extra showers, five dirty diapers and his absolute misery, I could keep him like this forever.

McVindication

My 5yo's last day of (overpriced) preschool was yesterday. There is very little (enthusiasm) pomp and circumstance at this (overpriced) facility so I took it upon myself to let him forget his lunchbox and surprise him with a happy meal.

All was going well. My 2yo got a happy meal too and was happy as a clam sitting with the big kids and eating their processed, genetically modifed, greasebomb food. I was doing what I usually do--standing there waiting for the kids to finish their lunch while I chat with the teachers when I glanced at my 2yo.

The child had barfed spectacularly. For a kid who ate ten cheerios and a bite of a peach for breakfast there was a phenominal amount of vomit. How can a kid make quarts of puke while eating nothing? Miraculous. Seriously, physicists everywhere should test their matter/mass/energy theories on young children. Don't tell me that in order to create mass you need astronomical amounts of energy. . . oh wait, young children have astronomical amounts of energy.

So now the table, chair, floor and child are covered. Child is screaming. Pregnant teacher is gagging and other teacher is trying to control the class. We all struggle to assist terrified 2yo and manage to get him, the chair, the floor, the table somewhat clean.

And it's time for us to go. I would have liked a better send-off for my 5yo, but it was not to be.

And we are going the whole Summer without Happy meals.

Favorite Thing Friday-Recent Movies

My favorite movies over the past year:

The Red Violin
Keeping Mum-This is what happens when Fargo goes to Britian.
The Illusionist-Great date movie
A Very Long Engagement

Of course, I will always fall head over heels for a good Corset Drama.

The House Fights Back

I felt so virtuous a month ago. I got not one but two gigantic containers of laundry detergent. I got two because they were on sale. It's a brand normaly out of my price range but it was on sale and I bought two. This equates to about six months of laundry. For six months I don't have to worry about if we have enough detergent, if it's the right kind (HE), or if it's on sale.

This is the kind of thing that makes a Stay at Home Mom on a budget happy; deleriously happy. 192 loads of laundry happy.

So I opened the first container. It's one of those spigot things and I don't have a shelf in my laundry room (stacking my machines forced me to remove it), so I put it on top of the dryer, which is on top of the washing machine.

All the domestic goddesses out there know exactly where I'm going with this.

During the spin cycle I heard a crash, but thought it was the possessed box of pasta falling off the pantry shelf (again). An hour later, my 5yo informs me that there is "Poison" on the bathroom floor. I run in to see what he is talking about and there it is:

95 loads of laundry detergent in a huge puddle on my laundry floor. Huge puddle. 95 loads.

The quote of the day goes to my DH:

"I just want to wipe down the walls in case it stains."

God help housewives everywhere if laundry detergent stains.

Zzzzz

I am tired. I fall into bed and fall asleep almost immediately. I fall asleep if I sit on the couch during naptime. I become a walking zombie after 8:00 pm.

I think it's because of calorie reduction. Watching my family consume over 2000 calories in breakfast sausage while I ate a scrambled egg burrito with sauted mushrooms, spinach and zucchini and my mom's canned salsa made me realize this. I'm eating as much quantitywise as before, but caloriewise, it's less.

So I will need to eat more. More beans, more nuts, more grains.

Or my body can start harvesting that nice energy reserve on my butt.

Happy Birthday Dear Yummy Bear!

My 4yo becomes a 5yo today.

I love you Yummy-Bear!

Favorite Things Friday-Cookbooks

My Favorite Cookbooks:

• The Joy of Cooking-Duh. Or as my mother calls it "The Rombauer"



• Rosie's Bakery Chocolate-Packed Jam-Filled Butter-Rich No-Holds-Barred Cookie Book- The quatities are realistic, every recipe works, makes my mouth water



• The Hay Day Country Market Cookbook-Read this in January and you will be inspired to buy everything at the farmer's market in Summer.

I also have all my handwritten recipes in a three ring binder. I have lots of cookbooks, but more often than not, something doesn't inspire. I end up checking books out at the library so I can try before I buy. Haven't bought in a long time though.

A few of My Favorite Things

I love podcasts. I listen during naptime and while working out. I subscribe to about 30 but there are a handful I really look forward to getting:

Agatha Christie Radio Mysteries-The original episodes from oldtime radio
Cast-On-My favorite knitting podcast. Her show is like reading a knitting magazine.
Librivox-Free audiobooks in the public domain read by volunteers.
Wait Wait Don't Tell Me: NPR's News Quiz, the only news I get during the week
Wormwood: A cross between Twin Peaks, X-Files and every other twisted story you love but are afraid to admit.
Yogadownload.com-free 20 minute yoga classes. Pictures provided.

Like I said, I listen to many, but these are the one's that I reserve for special moments.

And I'm thinking about blogging a "Favorite Thing Friday." Time will tell.

Woe to the Housekeeping Homemaker

I have a friend visiting me and the housecleaning is on the front burner--I figure she might not want to sleep on the crumbs in the fold-out. The other day I was talking to a lady who said she hired a housecleaner once a week for two hours "just to have the whole house clean for a day."

Yes that is a lovely dream. A typical day in my house:

Prepare breakfast, do a load of laundry, pick up living room, clean kitchen,

Children invade living room--toys everywhere.

Clean dining room, now dirty dishes are in kitchen, clean kitchen again. Put away clean laundry, pick up in bedroom and bathroom.

Children invade, clothes and toys everywhere. Two boys in bathroom (use your imagination).

Pick up living room, sit down a second.

Realize it's lunch time. Start whole process over.

An entirely clean house? This indeed is a wonderful dream. But why hire a housekeeper if I'm home all day?

Soul Searching

For the past month I have been making some changes in my lifestyle and diet:

• I have been baking ALL my own bread. Including tortillas (though when I break this, it will be with tortillas).
• I have switched to making my own natural cleaners that are more environmentally friendly.
• I have made an effort to cut back on red meat. This proved easy as I rarely eat red meat, so I have decided to remove meat from my diet.
• I will make an effort to avoid eggs, fish and dairy, but I will not beat myself up about those if I slip. Eventually they will be gone too.

I have been soul searching this month and my reasons for the above are, in order:

• Environmental concerns
• Personal health concerns
• Animal Ethics concerns

And to quote Colleen Patrick-Goudreau from http://www.compassionatecooks.com/:

Don't do nothing because you can't do everything. Do something, anything.

I had a pleasant (crappy) surprise the other day.

I started knitting a summer tank from Vogue knitting. I loved the lace hem and the braided straps but I added some waist shaping. I pulled out some paper and wrote up a lovely little schematic with my measurements and determined how much to decrease, then increase, and how fast to do it.

I cruised along merrily for four days. I took it to my SnB and made it to the straps. The next morning I tried it on to determine how long to make the straps.

The thing was huge. It looked like a shapeless bag. Hugging no curves. Looking not cute in the least.

What happened? Is my guage off? I had swatched (I always do...now...but that's another story) so I checked the guage and it was darn near perfect (the entire bust was 1/4 inch more than I was aiming for, but that's pretty near perfect. Were my decreases wrong? Nope, everthing went as planned.

What then? I measured myself.

I have misplaced two inches of my bust. I don't know where they went. They're simply MIA.

Now, it's great that I'm shrinking. Quite frankly, I could stand to lose about 10 more inches. However...

If I had to chose one measurement to decrease by two inches I would have nominated my waist, or butt, or thighs. Not my rack. And alas that is the only shrinkage that has occured.

So I frogged the whole thing and for somereason I'm knitting much slower now. Weird.

Other Projects

Although I am in love with Ravelry I recently completed a project which I am very proud of, but I cannot post in ravelry as it's not knitting.

It all started on a trip to the thrift store yesterday. Behold the chair:

Ugly huh?

But wait there's more: It's child-sized and it reclines!

(Yes those are hand knit socks)

Ugly as it is, for $12.99 I can't pass this up! Next door the the thrift store is a craft store where I found clearance upholstry fabric for $2.00/yd. Two bucks! And it coordinates with my home!

Some grunt work, a million staples out, a million in, new foam and batting:

And Voila! A new chair!

And the mini-man doing what men do best.



As I was icing my hand last night from staple gunning like a sniper, I don't forsee too many reupholstering projects. But it's nice to have options.

Hiatus

So it's been awhile. It's the usual excuses: busy, Christmas, busy, sick, busy and all of the sudden ooops, it's been almost two months.

But the biggest excuse:

http://www.ravelry.com

This is the only place you need to go if you are a knitter on the net. It will link you anywhere else. Just the most amazing website. It's still in beta and they're constantly adding new features.

The Poisonscarf Bible

This post is for theadnostic.

Your scarf will tend to curl lengthwise and you will need to know how to "block" it. It's easy but I want to give you thorough instructions

You can wet the thing and gently squeeze out the excess water. Lay the scarf out on a clean, carpeted floor (or on a clean sheet on the floor), coax it into shape and let dry completely.

Or, you can use the steam from your iron. Lay the scarf on the floor or ironing board and steam the snot out of it (DO NOT PRESS--Hold the iron about an inch above it). The wool is very subservient when steamed and will obey you (which will appeal to you I'm sure). Let cool/dry completely.

I recommend hand washing. If you're daring, use the gentle wash cycle and dry as above. It's Superwash wool so it should be able to handle a washing machine.

Enjoy!

Sow's Ears and Silk Purses

For years I have heard of people who poke through garage sales and thrift stores and find these wonderful treasures. I go through them, and I feel like I'm looking at junk. There are no finds, no steals, just a lot of dirty laundry and broken junk.

So a new Goodwill opened in town and we popped in just to look around. I finally found a gem!

I found a pair of children's Gortex Elefanten boots for $3.99! I had never heard of Elefanten, but I know Gortex and the treads had no wear. I could tell I had a boot that would survive two children and I knew I needed to get my 4yo a new set of boots anyway, so I got them.

I knew they were European and I asked a friend from my SnB if she was familiar with them and this was how I learned I had a treasure.

Who knew?

Face Book

Recently, I have been receiving a lot of mumblings from Facebook. A freind invited me, then another friend sent some request, then a few other people came out of the woodwork.

I have to say, I am confused by facebook. What is it exactly? The pages I visit seem to be disorganized blogs and/or photo galleries. There are various comments from other people and overall, it just doesn't seem organized.

I don't get it. It confuses me. So if you do happen to tag or poke me or whatever, don't be offended if I don't get back to you right away. The closest the cyberworld will get to being inside my life is right here.

Camera Status

The camera is fixed. And it was still under warranty.

I should explain why breakage of said camera was so annoying. Let's start with a list of things that have broken since May:

Digital Camera 1
8 month old washing machine-out of service for two months!
Laptop computer (okay, I dropped it)
Waffle iron
Crock pot
Toaster oven
Digital Camera 2
Light fixture
Car headlights
Garlic press
Comcast Modem

Just when I think I can take a little bit from the budget to make headway with a home project, I'm stuck replacing or fixing something. It does not seem to end. Granted, some items are small, but we didn't realize how much we liked our garlic press until it broke.

And, I can say that Comcast and BestBuy are on my happy customer service list. Sears Customer Service is so high on my poop list that I still won't go in their store and DH and I will never consider them for any future appliances.

At the rate we're going, this could be sooner than later.

Tiramisu

Before we married, my DH and I started the tradition of making eachother's Birthday cakes. I usually spend a month thinking about what I might want and reading cookbooks and finding a tricky recipe--half the fun is watching him bumble around the kitchen. My husband buys a box of cakemix and a tub of icing and begs me to make it with oil (instead of the applesauce I usually use) because that's what the box says. I did trick him one year because the box actually had the applesauce as an alternative recipe.

This year I chose tiramisu for my cake. In general, I'm not a huge cake fan. I like gingerbread but that was a disaster the year DH made it and I had to make a second one for myself. I usually choose cheesecake, or ice cream cake or some such concoction and this year I want tiramisu.

Bday is tomorrow so DH said he'll make it today. I laughed because liquor stores aren't open on Sunday. so I had to settle for Rum we had on hand and grocery store marsala.

With the heavy cream and marscapone I'm sure I'll have no problem, regardless of the substitutions.

Pirates of the CarriPoison

An old college roommate of mine found a scarf pattern on the Internet and asked if I would knit it for her. I sent her the link to Knit Picks and we're off.

The scarf is an illusion skull and crossbones design. From straight on it looks like a badly garter stitched scarf, but seen from certain angles, a blood red skull and crossbones jumps out.

My 4yo calls it the pirate scarf. The mom in me thinks of it as the poison scarf.

Anyway, I have a project with a deadline (albiet a loose one). Someone wants a scarf and it simply wouldn't do to get it in the heat of Summer.

Technology and other Scary Monsters

Last May we realized that our camera was dead. It was almost four years old and it wasn't entirely shocking that it was kaput. So we bought a new one. My husband spent more time researching cameras than he did when he made the decision to quit his job and move his family across the country (oops, did some bitterness slip in?) and decided on an Olympus. Whatever. we are not shutterbuggy people and the point was simply to have a camera on hand if our kids ever manage to be cute.

The stupid thing is broken. I think it happened when my 4yo dropped it about 2 feet. I didn't think a drop that small would affect it, but it is broken. The screen is black unless I give it a good shake and the pictures are blurry.

And this just makes me mad.