Friday marked another year, another birthday. 40 wasn’t too terrible, if y’all were wondering. I expect 41 will be about the same.
Category: life
In Which I ponder Christmas in Florida Before Showing You the Contents of My Uterus.
So I guess this is a thing we do now: take the kids to the pool the week before Christmas.
Eventually I know I will get used to the (exceedingly) subtle change of seasons here, but for now it feels weird to be trying to get into the Christmas spirit when it is 80° outside. One thing I have noticed is there are a LOT of Christmas lights down here, sometimes whole developments get into the spirit and when you’re driving around at night, you get these glimpses of entire streets, lit on both sides with house after house covered in lights. I admit that it almost makes up for the lack of cold weather and snow. Almost.
And, the other thing, which I have told the social medias but not the Blog, is that I am pregnant! Here is today’s u/s
This has been a pretty rough pregnancy so far. Being pregnant at 39 is waaaaaay different from being pregnant at 29. Seriously. For real. But things are moving along and the baby looks great. Also, we’re having a girl, so there’s that too. Which reminds me. I knitted up a BSJ a while back, but now that I know it’s a girl, I think I’d like something a little less neutral and a little more girly. You think it’d sell on Etsy? There are matching bootees too. :-)
Happy September
O Hai, blog. It’s September already. I’ve had a pretty good couple of weeks. We survived a glancing blow from our first major tropical storm, Isaac. Omg, so much rain! The canal behind our place got SSSSOOOOO FULL!
(here’s what it looks like normally) We were really lucky, although we did get a leak in the ceiling which got our TV wet. The big thing is our power never went out and so we never lost our sweet, delicious air conditioning. So, yay!
Then I tortured Lolly for fun.
And, yesterday, I cut off all my long hair.
I really admire people who can get good iPhone-in-the-bathroom-mirror shots of themselves. I had such a hard time posing myself, lol.
Also, I’ve been knitting, but of course there aren’t any pictures of that.
Nature Drama!
Today I glanced out the window with the corner of my eye and saw a bunch of ducks in the parking lot walking past the window. “Aw,” I thought, “it’s a duck parade!” But when I grabbed my camera and got a better look at what was happening, this is what I saw:
The ducks were shooing a pair of black vultures away from their favorite area under the bush beneath my window. Once they had convinced the vultures to move a comfortable distance away, they smugly returned to the shade and safety of the bushes. At least 4 of these guys were fuzzy little ducklings when we first moved in.
Here are the vultures looking all dejected.
DUCK PWN!
So they wandered over to the dumpster in hopes of a snack that doesn’t fight back.
But as I was getting ready to put my camera away, I noticed I wasn’t the lone spectator of this tiny drama.
This very lovely red-shouldered hawk was also watching. And waiting.
Lunch, A Short Play in Three Acts.
Act I:
Me: Guys what do you want for lunch?
Chorus (of children): I don’t know!
Me: How about a Sunflower butter and jelly sandwich?
Chorus: I don’t know!
Act II:
Me (goes to the kitchen to make sunflower butter and jelly sandwiches)
Act III
Me (places sunflower butter and jelly sandwiches on the table before the chorus)
Chorus: NO WE WANTED LUNCH MEAT SANDWICHES!
Me: WHARRRRRGARBL!!
Fin
Box Hell
can’t blog now stop completely buried in boxes stop will check in next week stop here’s a cat picture instead stop
Almost done!
Well, we made it! We got down here in time to move in on the 31st!
We really love our new place and we are just waiting on the movers to deliver the rest of our stuff. It was supposed to arrive today, but evidently the truck broke down in Georgia. They rescheduled us for tomorrow, which means today I need to clean up and get ready. Here’s my new kitchen:
And here is my new rug:
Also, meet Snowflake, our new cat. He comes to us from old friends who were leaving the Florida sun for Seattle rain and weren’t able to bring him with them. We got down here just in time to keep him out of a shelter, which turned out to be fortuitous for all of us. He is a very sweet boy and makes a wonderful addition to our family. He and Doozer are already buddies after just one short week. Lolly is taking a bit longer to accept all these changes, but she’ll come around eventually. She is able to tolerate being in the same room with him, so that’s something. So many new and exciting things! How has your week been?
Box City
Wow, this week has gone by so quickly. I’ve been so crazy busy what with the upcoming move. There was so much to do! Today was packing day! The crew arrived around 9 this morning and, after a flurry of packing, our house looks rather a bit like a Minecraft game. BOXES EVERYWHERE! Of course, poor Lolly is freaked the fuck out. She spent the day cowering under the bed so she is highly suspicious about this sudden appearance of all these boxes.
While they were working, I decided to ply up last week’s singles. First (last night) I wound the single into a center pull ball:
Isn’t it pretty?
And then this morning, I did an Andean ply.
Sadly all my spinning stuff is packed away so finishing it will have to wait until we’re settled in down there, but the spinning work is done. Tuesday the movers are coming to empty our house into a truck and then we head to Florida! I can’t believe moving day is almost here! w00t!
Flee the plague house!
Over the weekend the Norovirus which has been going around finally caught up with me. Saturday I woke up feeling kind of icky and by 830 pm I asked the Hubs to drive me over to the ER for some IV fluids and some anti-nausea drugs. It was a most unpleasant day, I must say. But now I’m almost back to my normal self, with just a little lingering tiredness. So, yay!
Yesterday I was feeling well enough to work on my shawl and can say now that I am officially into the twee triangles. It took me the entire episode of this week’s Game of Thrones to knit the first two rows. It gets faster and easier once the pattern is established, as I recall, but GAWD I remember why it was such a struggle to get through it the first time.
And so that’s an update I guess! How was your weekend? Hopefully better than mine was. Have you managed to avoid this current Norovirus outbreak or have you been unlucky as well? How is your knitting coming along?
Well Then.
So it looks like I let 2 whole months go by without a new blog post! And while I ordinarily wouldn’t let it go so long, I think that I must’ve needed the head space, because I am returning to you revitalized and more inspired to write than ever. So inspired, in fact, that I purchased a new blog domain over the weekend which I will move over to eventually. But more on that another time. What today needs is one of those posts where I tell you all about my adventures during the months of my absence.
Firstly, my knitting. Back at the end of March, I finished another utterly random Baby Surprise Jacket.
[ravelry]
It just needs a wash and 3 little buttons. Of course this cute little jacket needed some matching bootees, too.
[ravelry]
And so there you go. Very cute. But in between finishing the BSJ and the bootees, my fibery doings took a bit of a detour.
I finally got off my lazy ass and warped my loom. Seriously, the whole time I was asking myself why I waited so long. It’s not that hard, you guys. Really. It only took about an hour to warp this project and then it was about 2 or so hours of weaving.
[ravelry]
Of course I neglected to get a photo of the finished product before I delivered it to its intended recipient, you’ll just have to take my word that it came out beautifully. And, it was so much fun that I made another one.
[ravelry]
As you can see, I have a lot to learn about weaving still. But first and foremost this project taught me that weaving sock yarn isn’t necessarily the best idea. Plus, my skein of Saami had a lot more orange in it than I remembered. Still, it’s warm and cozy and very colorful and cheerful. I’m thinking this is perfect for E, if I can get him to wear it.
When I was finished with all that weaving, I kind of lost my knitting mojo for a while. To say that I am sick of the Orange socks is a bit of an understatement. I even tried to force myself to work on them, which we all know never works to endear a project and make it more fun to work on. Plus I was a bit bored with baby sweaters, to be honest. All I could think of was how I wanted to make another lace shawl like the one I’d made for my sis. Ultimately I accepted that there was no denying lace’s siren song. I acquiesced and cast it on.
[ravelry]
It’s actually quite a bit larger than in that photo. I’ve already increased again and am almost finished with this middle section. Then it’s on to the twee little triangles which gave me so much trouble I enjoyed so much the last time. I can’t wait!
Now, on to other things. March was kind of a strange month. My husband went to Florida for business for two weeks in March, leaving the kids and me to our own devices. We celebrated Pi Day:
And I took the boys up to Kent Falls to enjoy the March Heat Wave of ’12.
Yes, they are hot and sweaty and wearing shorts. I think it was like 80° that day. But, as is Connecticut’s wont, the weather turned cold again and we are back to wearing layers and wool.
It was so cold, in fact, that the favors for the outdoor wedding we attended on the 31st of March (the Mister’s cousin’s) were fleece blankets. No pictures of all the frozen attendees, sadly, but I did get a couple of shots of my little cuties in their tuxedos.
It was a black tie optional affair, and we optioned the shit out of it. Here we are back at my MIL’s place afterward:
Matchy!!! OMG we all look so tired. Not the kind of regular tired that you get when you’ve been working for a living, but a fancy sort of tired from being strapped into an uncomfortable bra and wearing pinchy shoes for hours and hours. (Good gravy my hair is straight. I know for a fact that I set that shit with hot rollers before we left but by the time we arrived at the wedding it had already reverted to its natural state: straight straight straight. Gah, stupid hair.) We had a lot of fun anyway and we looked damn fine too.
And then it was April. April was a rather busy month here. We celebrated Easter with another family in New York and had so much fun that future Easters have been ruined for us. Here we are setting off fireworks.
Because that’s how we roll, bitches.
Hubs went away to Florida on business (again) the following week, but it was too cold to do anything fun with the boys while he was gone. Mostly we hunkered down and got ready for the next week. Remember how I said we are moving to Florida? Well, the day after the Mister returned from Florida, I got in the van with the kids and drove down to find us a place to live.
OMG you guys I loved it down there! I am so much more excited for our move than I was before, I can’t even. Have you seen these beaches?!
This is in Ft. Lauderdale. The sand was soft and deep and the view was gorgeous. The waves are enormous though (well, compared to Long Island Sound). Everyone is going to need swim lessons.
[wiki]
These guys live in the canal behind our new place (all the water there is heavily managed and so there are canals and man-made lakes and ponds everywhere). Yes, they are considered a bit of a nuisance down there, but aren’t they cute? That big male on the right was making quite a show of himself for the little female that came with him over to us to beg for food. Birds are strange and feral ducks are even more so. We also saw a flock of ibises and tons and tons of little Indo-Pacific geckos. The kids are hell-bent on catching the little things, which reminds me of the alligator lizards which are common in southern California. I spent many happy afternoons with my friend Jen hunting (and failing to catch) one for a pet. Speaking of alligators, we did not see any alligators, although the realtor assured us that due to our proximity to the Everglades conservation area (literally less than 5 miles away) it’s fairly certain we’ll see an alligator in the canal or even our yard at some point. So yeah. And, even better? There is a nature center just around the corner and down the street from where we’ll be living. This move is going to be a good thing for us. I can’t wait. Only 28 days to go!
And here is Doozer because he hasn’t been on the blog in a good long while.
And now you are all caught up. What have you all been up to?
Knitting Interrupted 
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