From Chaos Comes Creation

My Moments

2012-01-18T10:02:00.001-05:00

About once a week, I drop BabyCakes off at her grandmother's house so I can get some "me" time. I tell my mother-in-law that I'm running errands or going to the grocery store or going back to my house to mop the kitchen floor. And sometimes I do that.

But sometimes I go eat sushi.

I drive to the nearest sushi bar, about twenty minutes away, and I sit alone at the bar and order a spicy tuna roll and a beer, and I sit quietly for an hour and enjoy the silence. Usually this occurs at about three in the afternoon, so the place is deserted. I think the staff may think I'm insane. I don't really talk, I don't do anything at all, just slooooowly drink my beer and eat my food in silence.

My husband doesn't even know I do this. I don't know why I don't tell people. I'm afraid that my mother-in-law will judge me, I'm afraid that all of my free time should be spent rushing around trying to get the million things done that inevitably get left undone when all of your time is eaten up by caring for and ensuring the survival of a tiny human. I feel guilty- we're not hurting for money too badly, but this is totally an unnecessary expense, and we're saving up for a million different things- college, vacations, renovating the bathroom. The kitchen floor really does need mopping, and I've got a hundred tiny errands to run that are much easier to do when I don't have to lug around fifteen pounds of angry, hungry baby.

But I do it anyway. I need the reminder.

It reminds me of a time when we had the disposable income to grab sushi lunches. It reminds me of a time when I had the time to go out to eat lunch. It reminds me of a time when I was closer to twenty than thirty, when my time, my attention, my effort, my life was all about me. It reminds me that I am a person and sometimes I need to take care of myself.

Mostly, it reminds me that my child, as amazing and wonderful as she is, is not the center of the world. Sometimes she has to be the center of my world, and that's how it should be... but I get lost in all of the diaper changing and shoving a breast in her mouth and soothing and bouncing and holding and shushing and singing and dancing. I need reminders that life goes on around me. I need a reminder that someday this will all be over and I'll be able to go out and grab lunch by myself. That someday all of this swirly, crazy, rushing hurricane of infancy will pass, and it's all going to be okay.

Back in the game

2011-10-07T20:03:00.002-04:00

I have a gun on my hip again.

Damn it feels good.

I haven't been shooting in over a YEAR. I abstained during my pregnancy. And once Miss Baby Cakes came along... well, I haven't had a shower in three days. Where the hell am I going to find time to go to the range? There's a reason I haven't posted in a month in a half. Time is something I am severely lacking. (I realized today that I haven't vacuumed any floor in my house since the baby was born. I am disturbed.)

I am also conflicted about breastfeeding and shooting- I think there may be lead issues. I am having a hard time finding ANY information about lead and breastfeeding. I want to know what kind of risks are involved, how much lead will pass through breast milk, etc. But I just don't know. I stupidly forgot to ask the pediatrician at Miss Baby Cakes' appointment this week.

Oh, I should mention- this holster feels amazing. I have a Fugly from Dragon Leatherworks (whose new website is astoundingly well put together.) I reviewed it a while ago, and I stand by what I said. The only problem I'm having right now is that the leather had contoured to my body- and now that I've had my abdomen contorted and tortured in order to make a human, my body isn't exactly the same. Turns out my hips are a little wider, and things aren't shaped the same. I think a few days of wear and the leather should meld itself to the, ah, "new" shape of things.

I never ended up carrying while massively pregnant. The last time, I was about four months pregnant. After that, I was just too big. The main problem was that wearing a belt was impossible. I spent days and days trying to find some way around this problem. A shoulder holster didn't work on account of my breasts- especially because pregnancy seemed to have "blessed" me with double the assets I previously had. I tried practicing an ankle draw, but my usual clumsiness was amplified greatly by my shifting center of balance. The closest thing I had to a solution was a belt system with THREE belts and my holster sitting on the middle belt at 2 o'clock- but it was unwieldy and my growing girth meant the entire system would have to be rejiggered constantly.

2011-08-17T14:26:00.003-04:00

:-)

A baby girl. Born at the beginning of August. My life is complete. I didn't understand anything before now. (I don't understand anything now, either, but at least I understand that!)

Will get back to blogging when my life calms down. Which, people keep telling me, will be when she leaves for college.

Update

2011-07-17T22:31:00.002-04:00

I was reminded that I hadn't blogged in a while.

No baby yet. Despite me poking my stomach and shouting "HURRY UP AND GET HERE ALREADY", she's remained firmly planted inside. My due date is on Friday- so it's not like she's overdue, I'm just so sick of being pregnant. It's hot. It's humid. I feel incredibly heavy and bloated and disgusting, and I am very sick of having to pee constantly. I miss my old bladder. Old bladder, I never appreciated you.

I've been cleaning. Lots and lots of cleaning. I didn't really understand this whole "nesting" thing, until I was sitting on the couch last week, and I noticed a stain on one of my window blinds. A half hour later, I found myself in tears as I scrubbed at that vinyl with bleach to find that the stain was refusing to lift. It's still there. I don't know what it is or why the magic of bleach failed me, but that stain is driving me insane. Like the baby will refuse to come unless the house is free of tiny beige stains on window blinds.

Keep your fingers crossed for me. That this baby comes soon, that I have a good birth, that she's healthy and happy and wonderful, and that I don't go absolutely bonkers with the waiting!

Baby Crap

2011-06-20T09:48:00.002-04:00

Babies need a lot of crap.

I have spent the past year or so of my life decluttering. I've been throwing away all of the useless sh*t I've amassed over the years, because I realized that we had way too much stuff.

So I purged and cleaned and sorted- threw away lots, gave away a ton of stuff on Craigslist, burned some of the flammable stuff in the firepit (a failed chair experiment ended up blazing up in a very awesome way due to the spray paint and chemicals I'd poured on there!) And I think I have about half the stuff I used to.

I was happy. Our house was less cluttered, there was more storage space for the useful things, and I just generally felt better.

Then I got pregnant. And apparently, babies need things. A LOT of things.

And now my entire house is strewn with baby crap. I'm in the middle of trying to sort through it all and put it away and find where everything goes. I am entirely overwhelmed at how much crap a baby needs. A baby cannot possibly need this many clothes. A baby cannot possibly need her own special towels. We're cloth diapering (at least trying to!) and that brings with it a giant laundry basket full of diapers. Slings and carseats and bassinets and playpens and safety gates and rattles and pacifiers- there's just too much stuff.

I am very grumpy this week that my peaceful and calm living room is strewn with baby crap as I attempt to figure out where to put everything. At first, I thought it was because I like a nice clean room, and the mess was bothering me. But now I realize- it's because this is just a sign of the times to come, and how chaotic and confusing the rest of my life is going to be.

I miss guns

2011-06-09T21:38:00.002-04:00

I miss guns. So much.

I haven't gone to the range... well, it's been quite a few months. Since September, I think. I know that I shouldn't go while pregnant. But... I miss it.

I haven't been carrying. I can't. There's just no way. Dennis over at Dragon Leatherworks tried to help me out with finding a way to carry in my "delicate condition" (ha!), but I couldn't find any method that worked. I took belts and ropes and velcro and spent several days wearing bizarre belt rigs around the house, but nothing seemed to work. I couldn't get the holster to stop falling down, or if I managed to stabilize the holster in one place, it would ride up when I went to draw. Not to mention my constantly growing belly added too much of a difficulty.

Shoulder carry doesn't work, because... well, when you get pregnant, a "funny" thing happens to your breastal area. (Breastal is a word now.) It gets larger. And I have been, um, blessed in this area, and seem to have doubled in size. (I never thought I'd say this, but my boobs are too big. It's ridiculous. I really, REALLY hope they go back to normal, because I don't think I can deal with boobs this size for the rest of my life.)

I miss the relaxation of going to the range. I miss the smell of gunpowder. I miss the percussive sensation that reverberates down my chest when I pull the trigger.

I got a poison ivy rash on my right hand. On my index finger. Mr. HusbandDude started cracking up as I was complaining to him about it. I asked him what was so funny, and he said "You've got an itchy trigger finger!"

2011-06-07T16:22:00.004-04:00

I haven't done any gardening this year.

My front gardens are a MESS. Mostly weeds. A random petunia. A VERY random petunia- first of all, it's white- I've never planted a white petunia in the three years I've lived here- so where is this plant from? And it seems to be growing smack dab in the MIDDLE of my small azalea bush, making it look like the azalea has suddenly sprouted some very weird flowers. I'll leave it for now, so long as it doesn't start choking out the azalea. (Which gave me about twelve blooms total this spring. I think I need to fertilize more.)

I have hops growing, though! Last year, I ordered some hops rhizomes and planted them in various places around the yard. And none of them grew. To be fair, the rhizomes did sit in my fridge for about a month before I got around to actually planting them, and I just figured I'd killed them. So I shrugged and moved on with my life.
Until two weeks ago, when I noticed a very bizarre weed in the garden next to my front porch. I pulled it out, and at the end of the long root was... my hops rhizome? It was a hops bine! There were three more hopes bines (not vines! Bines!) in the immediate vicinity, although those aren't attached to the original rhizome, so it's a mystery as to where they came from. I shoved the bine back in the ground, and now they're growing happily- the big bine is growing a couple of inches a day. I put a four-foot arbor next to them to give them room to grow, but I think they're going to end up climbing up the front porch overhang.

I keep wanting to go outside and plant things, but bending over when seven (almost eight!) months pregnant is hard. I pulled into the garden center parking lot today, intending to get a few fast-spreading flowers and some herbs, and then realized it's going to be 95 degrees tomorrow, and my pregnant butt is going to be very unhappy working in the garden, what the hell was I thinking? So I guess that will have to wait.

I did plant some basil in a pot in my windowsill, and it's coming up nicely. When it comes time to thin out the seedlings, I think I'll transplant half of them into another terracotta pot, and then shove that in my front garden, because you can never have enough basil.

I've given up on pulling out the dandelions that seem determined to take over every garden bed in the yard. There's just too many, and every time I pull one out, it seems like they go hydra on me, and two take it's place. It's insane. So I gave up.

Poison ivy has also invaded one of the front beds, it seems. I thought it was a maple seedling that sprouted, but it's looking more and more like poison ivy. Mr. HusbandDude sprayed Round-Up on it, and now it's a shriveled mess, but I'm worried where it came from and if more will take it's place. (Random side thought- I wonder if my baby will be immune to poison ivy like I am?)

I had such grand plans for the yard this spring. We even worked "Yard And Plants" into the budget this year. I was going to tear out all of the bushes in the front of the house and put in some taller lilacs and shorter, fuller bushes, and trim the Japanese maple way back to a more manageable size, and replace the stupid ugly dinky bushes along the front walk with something that doesn't need to be trimmed every two weeks. If there was money and time, I was even going to tear up the front walkway (which is crumbling pink sandstone) and replace it with some gray patio tiles. It turns out that plans go out the window when you get knocked up.

Eh, there's always next year.

I am not good at this pregnancy thing.

2011-04-25T09:38:00.000-04:00

Girl Scout cookie time has come and gone. I ordered one measly box of Thin Mints, since I figured I'm pregnant, and even when not pregnant, I am easily susceptible to the charms of chocolate. And the charms of cookies. And the charms of anything infused with mint. I thought that one box would be sufficient, and I would probably devour it in a day, but hey, it's just one box.

It has now been six weeks since the cookies entered my possession, and that box is still in my fridge. There's about five cookies left. I think that my subconscious is determined to savor every last morsel. Sometimes, I'll break off a piece of cookie and eat just that. I have never in my life eaten a box of something chocolate so slowly.

Mr. HusbandDude jokes that I am not very good at being pregnant- I'm not doing the late-night pig-outs, I crave very few things, and what I do crave is usually a nice salad with olive oil and vinegar, or watermelon, or occasionally, a nice cut of steak. He has not been sent out for ice cream once, and in fact, he purchased me some Rocky Road that has been in the freezer for about a month, being eaten slowly, one scoop at a time, and usually with diced fruit piled on top. I was experiencing dizziness before meals, so I started tracking my food intake- and now I need to make a conscious effort to eat more calories and more protein. We actually had to switch to whole milk so I could get enough fat in my diet.

I'm the kind of person who can't keep junk food in the house for fear of eating all of it in one sitting. Mr. HusbandDude takes all of the Halloween candy to work on Nov 1 because I demand it stay away from me. Potato chips are forbidden, except in single serving sizes, or if I buy a bag, I must tell myself "This is Mr. HusbandDudes, it belongs entirely to him" and then not eat even a single chip. (And then feel very proud of myself afterward.)

And then I got pregnant, and suddenly I'm the kind of person who savors a box of Thin Mints? I eat ice cream in tiny serving portions with lots of fruit? I crave vegetables? Who am I? Who have I become? What is happening to me? And how do I make sure it continues after the baby pops out???

"Have fun!"

2011-04-21T21:31:00.003-04:00

I went to the doctor's today. It wasn't my regular gynecologist- it was an emergency appointment for something that could have been an emergency, but in the end, thank the lord, wasn't. It was a male doctor, which I'm generally okay with, since a doctor is a doctor is a doctor, and as long as you've got on a white coat, I can mentally move past the awkwardness that is someone touching me in such an intimate area. Maybe sometimes I can move past that awkwardness a little too far, and end up into the zone of flippancy.

Doctor: "Okay, I'm going to digitally examine you now, I need to feel your cervix."
Me: "Yeah, sure. Have fun!"
Doctor: [pauses for a moment, and gives me a look.] [clears his throat] "Well, um..."
Me: [meekly] "I mean, yes, I am ready for that to happen."

The Lost Day

2011-03-26T11:32:00.002-04:00

I lost a day. An entire day.

I woke up this morning, convinced it was Friday. I woke Mr. HusbandDude up in a panic, because he was very late for work. (He was not amused. Mr. HusbandDude takes his sleeping in very seriously.) And the whole day has been very off- I wasn't ready for a Saturday, damn it. Everything feels wrong.

Thursday, I didn't have a car- mine was in the shop, because it had developed a lovely habit of setting the alarm off in the middle of the night. Apparently, the battery for the alarm system was low, and the genius engineers could figure out no way to indicate this except to have the alarm system go off at random times- that's seriously how it's designed to let you know the battery is ready for a change. (Every 8 to 10 years.) There is no fuse you can pull to shut off the alarm, disconnecting the car battery does not work, and putting the key in the ignition and mashing every god damn button in the car has no discernible effect, either. Then, after you get good and mad and are looking around for a baseball bat, it just turns itself off.

The only way to make this stop is to take out the car alarm battery, which is buried near the left wheel well, blocked by the driver's seat. Which is difficult information to find when it's midnight and your car alarm is going off and waking up your neighbors, and you are your husband are shouting at each other. (I was shouting "Why don't we have a baseball bat? I need to hit it!" and he was yelling that hitting it probably won't fix it. But it would make me feel better.)

It turns out later that there is in fact a way to shut off the alarm, but it involves a sequence of events that we would NEVER have figured out on our own, including hitting the button that dims the interior gauge lights when you're driving at night.

Anyways, to end that tangent, my car was in the shop to have the god damned battery for the god damned alarm system removed. And so on Thursday, I didn't have a car. And I didn't have anywhere to go. Or anything to do. And I wasn't feeling very well, I hadn't slept the night before due to getting up to pee every damn hour (on the dot! How does my bladder do that!?). And so... I kind of just napped all day. I watched a little TV, I think I remembered to eat lunch, and... that's it. Nothing else. It may have been the laziest day I have ever had.

And so for me, Thursday never existed. And now everything is off, and I think that today is Friday despite many signs that it is in fact Saturday (I may have Googled "What day is it today?" Google knows all.)

I'm feeling really weird about that missing day. I kind of want it back.

Dragon Leatherworks

2011-03-24T10:29:00.003-04:00

Dragon Leatherworks has a new website, which means some of the old links may not be working. I've updated them where I've found them.

If you had been to the Dragon Leatherworks website prior to this week and remember what the old one looks like, then I think you'll get a kick out of checking out the new site- let's just say the web design has improved considerably, it's quite a difference!

Its good to have goals

2011-03-20T08:20:00.002-04:00

Here are my goals for the coming week:

-Deliver the last of these damn Girl Scout cookies! I want them outta my house! (I haven't even opened my box of Thin Mints yet. For some reason, I just don't want them. I think I've failed as a pregnant woman.)

-Make some bread! I keep meaning to and then forgetting!

-Build myself a handmade blending hackle! I've been looking for a way to combine my fiber, I'm getting bored with spinning just plain ol' dyed roving. I don't want to buy a drum carder, because HOLY CRAP are those things expensive, and I just bought a new spinning wheel, and that's just too much money on spinning supplies when four months from now, I will never have time to spin ever again. (For a few years.)
So a hackle seems to be the way to go with blending- except those are also kind of expensive, generally a bit more than $100. And that's money I don't want to spend. So I am brainstorming ways to make my own- it's basically just a board with some nails sticking out of it. How hard can that be?

-Sort through the baby clothes people have given me!

-Set up the baby's closet, and figure out where all of this baby stuff is going to go.

Carrying While Pregnant

2011-03-17T07:28:00.003-04:00

How the hell do I carry a gun while pregnant?

My nice leather gun belt no longer fits around my belly. My boobs have grown too much for a shoulder holster. And a bra holster is out- a holster that goes UNDER the girls wouldn't fit, that real estate now belongs to my new favorite fetus. And while I love a holster that goes between the girls, and that for a while seemed like my best choice, that means that the barrel will always be happily pointed at the baby, and I am insanely uncomfortable with that. I REALLY don't want to go with the fanny pack option- number one, because holy crap are fanny packs dorky. And again, I am quickly running out of "middle" to which fasten said Dork Bag. (Also, "fanny" is a naughty word in England, and when I say "fanny pack", I like to burst into giggles.)

Off-body carry isn't really an option, because I am forgetful enough normally, but pregnancy brain has rendered me a complete and utter idiot. I forget my purse places. A lot. Embarrassingly often. I dislike off-body carry in general.

So what are my options? Google hasn't turned up much, which is weird, because I can't believe that other women haven't had this problem. Ankle holster seems to be the best solution, except I think my ankles are going to have to get a LOT fatter before they can conceal a full-size M&P.

Belly Buttons Are A Window To The Soul

2011-03-14T09:41:00.002-04:00

You know what?

I hate belly buttons.

Specifically, I hate MY belly button.

Not 'cause it's ugly or gross or weird or anything- it's a perfectly regular innie, it looks like everyone else's innie belly button, but I still abhor it. It freaks me out. It's weird. Someone touching it, or, god forbid, putting their finger inside of it, is HORRIFYING. Just typing that sentence made me squirm. Not. My. Belly Button!

When I was a little girl, my grandfather showed me a piece of baby clothing. It was just a piece of cloth with two strings on each end. He said that it was for a baby's belly button, and in the olden days, doctors didn't always tie the knots right, and sometimes a baby would cry so hard, or his tummy would get too full, or he'd breath too deeply, and then BLAM his belly button would pop open and his insides would explode out of him. So mothers would tie this piece of cloth around their babies, to keep the belly button from exploding open.

Stories like this from my grandfather are common- just believable enough that gullible me thinks they are absolutely true, yet bizarre enough that rational me thinks he's making it up. He tells us stories about his past all of the time, yet I'm still not sure what the truth it- I think he actually met my grandmother in high school, as opposed to winning her in a gunfight/bar brawl/rodeo bet, but maybe not, because there's a picture of him on the rodeo circuit, and hey, didn't they go to different high schools?

(My favorite "grandpa-ism" is that smoking cigarettes around babies keeps them from getting asthma. It started as a lecture on how keeping babies away from germs makes them sicker in the long run, but then became a diatribe about how asthma is on the rise because he quit smoking. It's a perfect illustration of a typical Grandpa-story- begins in truth and fact, and makes some very good points, but somewhere in the middle veers wildly off course and becomes something else entirely.)

So I think that grandpa story about the "Belly-Button-Holder-Inner" is why I am inherently uncomfortable about my belly button. I remember after that being afraid that the knot had been tied poorly, and that at any moment, my insides could explode outwards. I no longer believe this (mostly) but I think that's where me and my belly buttons relationship went sour.

Why am I bringing this up now? Because I'm pregnant. Because my rapidly expanding stomach is slowly turning my innie into an outie. Because my belly button is half as deep as it was before a tiny fetus decided to take up residence inside of me. Because very soon, I am going to have to confront the actual inside of my belly button. And this terrifies me more than anything- more than the natural, epidural-free childbirth I'm planning, more than the thought of raising a child- no, the thing I'm scared of most is seeing the inside of my belly button. Because I am not entirely convinced my insides are not going to explode open.

Pregnancy Is Not As Awesome As I Was Led To Believe

2011-03-10T09:23:00.002-05:00

I don't like being pregnant very much.

I know it's kind of a terrible thing to say, and when I say that, people give me this look. If the person is a woman who has children, then I usually get a tale of how wondrous pregnancy was for them, and how joyful they were, and how amazing it was. Yeah, I get it. You liked being pregnant. And I'm quite sure that ten years from now, I'll look back on this time with rosey lenses and love it, too. But right now- this kind of sucks.

I'm just generally uncomfortable. My body hurts. I'm sick of having to run to the bathroom constantly. I'm sick of waking up eight times a night. I'm sick of feeling fat and bloated, and I miss my middle. I'm sick of worrying about the baby's well-being, and lying awake at night worrying that in sixteen years, it'll sneak out of it's bedroom window in the middle of the night and go to some party and start drinking and get into some situation... well, I'm sick of being scared for the rest of my life about the well-being of someone that's not even alive yet.

On the bright side, my boobs are huge now.

On The Road Again

2011-03-07T21:12:00.002-05:00

Driving home last night was utterly terrifying. It was foggy. "Foggy" doesn't quite sum up what it was. It was ridiculously foggy. It was like driving through whipped cream.

When I was on the highway, it wasn't too bad. But when I got to the portion of my drive that was backroads, it got scary.

I got off the highway, and immediately was stuck behind a car going 20 miles an hour. That... that is slooooow. So I got impatient. I tried to pass a few times, but there was never an appropriate place to do so.

So I followed at a safe distance (I can't stand tailgating.) The car in front of me turned onto a side street, and finally I could go at a more reasonable speed!

Except- I could only go 20 miles per hour. Hell, that was kind of fast. No wonder the car in front of me was crawling along- they were cutting through the fog. I couldn't see ten feet in front of me. It was terrifying. I was convinced that the road was going to end in a cliff at any moment. I was convinced that there would be a person stumbling in the road and I couldn't stop in time. I was convinced that a deer would jump in front of my car and I would never see it. It was so scary.

Soon, someone turned in behind me. And immediately started tailgating. Badly. They were clearly unhappy with how slow I was going. So I pulled over and allowed them to pass- I dislike being tailgated, and maybe they could go faster and clear a way for me.

So they passed me, sped up to normal speed- and then immediately slammed on their brakes. Ha. They couldn't see either. They proceeded to drive at about 20mph, exactly the speed I had been going.

This happened several times on my hour drive home. People would come up behind me, tailgate or flash their high beams or try to pass me, so I would pull over, they would pass me, start going fast, and then slam on their brakes as they realized how frighteningly thick the fog was.

I laughed the whole way home. Watching people get angry with me for how slow I was going, then immediately understand why I had been doing what I did- that was a good feeling.

New Spinning Wheel!

2011-02-22T10:22:00.001-05:00

I got a new spinning wheel!

My old one (A Country Craftsman) was wobbling quite a bit, and we could not for the life of us figure out how to fix it. It got to the point where it just would not keep a band around the wheel without it flying off and getting tangled. I and, um, a bit short on patience these days, and I am surprised I did not throw the wheel out the window in a fit of rage.

Spinning is how I relax. Shooting and hot baths are also how I used to relax- but guess what? There's a fetus holed up in my uterus, and I shouldn't be going shooting or having hot baths. And it's freezing cold outside, so long walks are out of the question. So all I have is spinning for relaxation.

So I was starting to go a bit crazy.

So I asked Mr. HusbandDude for my graduation present early. For graduation, I wanted "something that shoots"- either a gun or a camera. I want a DSLR. Except I'm a horrible photographer. I usually blame my horrible photography skills on the camera, and to some extent, that is true. My crappy Kodak took crappy photos, and when I upgraded to the Panasonic Lumix, my pictures got a lot better. But I'm still just a lousy photographer. (My photographer teacher in college agrees. He asked me "Do you actually look at what you're taking a picture of before pressing the button?" is how he so nicely phrased it.) I figure with a baby on the way, a nice camera to take 8,322,012 picture of the baby with would be a nice thing.

But I'd like a new gun, too- I'm shotgunless, something that makes me quite sad. A girl needs a shotgun. Something for home defense and maybe some skeet shooting. But I want a small carry gun- I have been coveting a Kahr PM9. My M&P is a full-size, and it's a pain in the ass to conceal- not impossible, but I'll never get used to it.

But a new spinning wheel costs about the same as a DSLR or one of the guns I want. And I have NOT made enough money selling yarn to buy a wheel. I didn't want to buy a used wheel again, because I wanted something that had no existing problems, and would just work right away. And I really "needed" (okay, badly wanted) a new wheel very soon.

So I took a trip out to Webs in Northampton (A drive I now regret, since it took about two hours, and that's what started my horrible back pain. Apparently my tailbone has separated from my spine, and is not sitting straight the way its supposed too. Stupid pregnancy hormones.)

A Webs, I fell in love with the Kromski Minstrel. The bobbin and mother-of-all is a lot higher than my old wheel, so I can sit on the couch and not bend over when spinning, it's much better for posture. It's also a double-treadle, which means I can start and stop it with just my feet, which is so much more convenient. Most importantly, IT WORKS.

Isn't it pretty!?

This one also has spare bobbins, which means no more annoying winding of balls before plying. (I ply almost everything!) And it has four ratios, which means I suddenly have so much more control over what I'm spinning. I can finally spin a super loose, super lofty yarn! I am madly in love with this wheel.

So, a gun or camera will have to wait. I'm thinking of asking for a gun from my husband while I'm in labor- because I figure whilst pushing his baby out of me is a good time to ask for expensive things from one's husband.

Bored

2011-02-20T16:17:00.002-05:00

I am bored.

I've stopped searching for work, since it doesn't seem fair to employers to get hired, then quit in five months. I'm done with my degree, so no more classes or school work. I'm having back pain, so sitting and spinning for more than twenty minutes at a time is out of the question. (Oh please, let the back pain resolve itself soon.)

I'm bored, but every time I think about how bored I am, I get struck with the frightening thought "holy crap my life is going to be SO BUSY in a few months."

2011-01-01T11:17:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year!

I feel pretty confident in saying that 2011 might just be the best year of my life. I can't wait!

My latest project...

2010-12-29T07:44:00.002-05:00

Big changes a-comin'.

I'm pregnant!

Due at the end of July. I'm scared and excited and terrified and worried and did I mention scared?

I miss shooting. I never realized how much of a stress reliever it was, and how much I depended on it as a meditative exercise. I really don't want to risk going to the range. (My obstetrician is a shooter, too! He didn't even blink when I asked him about the risks, and then we chatted about how stupid the gun laws are in Massachusetts.)

I've been miserably sick. Looking at a computer screen seems to trigger headaches and vomiting for me, so I have spent little time on the Internet- although this does seem to have broken my Internet addiction. Instead, I spend my bad days lying on the couch, watching TV, and paying homage to my new best friend, Mr. Bucket. Good days I spend doing all of the crap I don't do on the bad days.

I finished my last class, although I'm not celebrating until I officially get my grade and credit posted to the web system.

So. Big changes.

2010-12-09T17:08:00.002-05:00

In less than two weeks, I will have completed my college degree.

"You know, a lot of people go to college for seven years!"
"I know, they're called doctors."

I'm embarrassed to admit how often I'm mistaken for a grad student. My own aunt was convinced I was getting my master's degree. But I think at this point, after three schools, and one year-and-a-half break in the middle (because I couldn't afford it), actually graduating is a testament to my persistence. At so many points, it would have been so easy to give up. And I'm not sure it was financially the right decision- will it help me find a job? Will a college degree actually matter in the long run? I want to have babies and stay at home with them, and then work part time. There's no plan for a giant career in there. Someday, fifteen years down the line- well, I guess I'll be glad I have a bachelor's degree when it comes time to go back to a career. But right now, in this crap economy, with impending motherhood in a few years? I'm not really sure it was worth it.

Except it WAS worth it. Simply because of the way it makes me feel to know I did it.

Where I've Been

2010-11-13T10:04:00.003-05:00

Sometimes, blogging seems to me like an inherently selfish act. It's all about me, me, me. My blog, my words, my life, my thoughts.

And lately, I just haven't had much to say.

Life has been boring and wonderful. Mr. HusbandDude and I went on a very lovely tropical vacation. We drank alcoholic beverages and sat under a palm tree and read books. I spent about six hours a day in the swimming pool. There was a waiter who came around and took your drink order from the pool. It was the height of decadence. Ten years from now, when I have four screaming brats and I need a sanity break, I shall close my eyes and think of sipping a Midori Colada (piña colada made with some extra Midori) while floating in a beautiful blue pool in the shade of a palm tree. It's my new happy place.

When I get drunk enough, I speak Spanish. I discovered the trick to getting better drinks and specialty food at the resort was speaking coherent Spanish. I asked, in Spanish, if they had any pico de gallo left, and the waiter told me "of course! I'll go make some up for you- sit down at your table, I'll bring it right out to you!" Then the lady behind me said "Did she say pico de gallo? I want some too!" and the waiter turned and said to her, in English "No more! All out!".

My job is going nicely, soon my degree will be done. The relief I feel at being this close- the excitement, the feeling that soon it will all be over- wow.

My best friend from eighth grade is moving to my town. She's moving two streets away. I am nervous and excited about this. We haven't even really spoken since early high school, but she was a very nice girl, and I think we're both excited that we'll have a friend in town. Sometimes I fail at Girl Friendships.

Very soon, I will have crafty pictures to share. I made an end table decoupage project, a new chair, a spikey paper and glue ball that looks very evil, and several crochet projects that are unidentifiable but make me laugh.

I got a new sewing machine. It is a Janome, and it is beautiful.

Giving Away Crap

2010-10-18T08:59:00.003-04:00

this week was filled with Drama. Couch drama.

I got these stupid couches free off of Craigslist about a year ago. They were in pretty crappy shape, but I thought "eh, I can work with this" and took them anyways. They were not strictly "free" in that we had to pay $30 to rent a truck to get them home, but they were cheap compared to other couches.

I bought a slipcover for the loveseat, but I never found a cheap enough slipcover for the sofa. I was going to try and restuff the back cushions, which were so saggy that they would eventually settle down on top of the sitting surface of the couch, giving you about six inches of space to sit. But foam was expensive and we were on a crazy small budget, and there just wasn't money in there for fixing up the stupid couches.

Then my great aunt decided to get rid of her couch, and we said we'd take it. I just had to get rid of the two Horrible Couches.

I put up an ad on Craigslist for $75. Someone came to look at the couch. They were rude and did not introduce themselves, and the entire time they were here I was incredibly nervous and so thankful I was carrying. The older one (the father) looked at the couch, said "No", made no eye contact with me at any point, and then marched right back out of the house, with a trail of his 20-something children trailing confusedly behind him.

One of them farted on their way out the door. I am not kidding. They were rude, they marched out, and then as I was locking the front door behind them, my nose was accosted by an unholy stench. Many candles were burned as an offering to the gods of Making The Smell Go Away. It lingered for hours. WHO DOES THAT?

Then I decided getting rid of the couches was more important than getting money for the couches. So I put them on several websites offering them for free. The first person to respond never showed up, despite me leaving work an hour early to accommodate her schedule. The second people showed up, measured the couch, and said it wouldn't fit. The third was a husband and wife. They came in, sat on it, bounced on it, examined it from every angle possible, and then had a quiet discussion of frantic whispers. Then the husband looked up and said "no, thank you, it's not what we're looking for." The fourth person who was going to come turned out to be a 16-year-old girl who could not find anyone with a pick-up truck, and is frustrated that the people in her life do not respect her opinions or listen to her and treat her like an adult.... I gleaned this information through the 40 emails sent back and forth between us. She got a mini-lecture from me on telling people something is definite, then canceling. "My time is valuable, and you just wasted it."

I ended up donating the couches to a church that wanted furniture. We used a trailer and dumped the couches in the parking lot, the idea being they would feel bad saying "no, those things are crap, load them back up." Luckily, they didn't, and now the couches have a new home.

The moral of this story: Churches are great places in your time of need. And not very picky.

On Being A Grown-Up

2010-10-07T10:42:00.002-04:00

My transition into a Domestic Goddess is going quite well. I finally have grocery shopping figured out- I can actually plan meals up to THREE NIGHTS ahead!

Okay, yeah, that's kind of sad. But when I first committed to making nutritious (ie, not hot dogs or chicken nuggets) dinners every night, I actually had to go to the stupid grocery store every freakin' day. Because I fail at planning ahead, because I found that I buy things and then forget to use them, and because I just kind of suck at this whole Domestic Goddess thing.

So my goal was to be able to plan dinners/lunches/breakfast two days at a time. So I didn't have to run to the grocery store every. single. day. Then I worked my way up to three!

Then I worked my way up to planning dinners four nights ahead at a time- and that just got ridiculously complicated. Life got in the way of that- we'd go to dinner at a friend's, or people would come over here, or I'd have a horrible day and say "Screw it!" and ask Mr. HusbandDude to please bring home some Taco Bell on his way home from work. Four seems to be the magic number where things get crazy.

So I think I'll settle on three, and be happy with that. I can usually stretch a fourth night out of the leftovers of whatever we haven't eaten. Spanish Rice or chili is a nice dish that involves stuff in my cabinets or freezer.

How the hell did my mother do this? She went to the grocery store every two weeks, and somehow planned everything and had snacks and lunches and breakfasts and somehow remembered to defrost some chicken every night. She's a miracle worker, and I have no clue how the hell she did it.

Being a grown-up kind of sucks. I miss college and dining halls and eating spoonfuls of peanut butter because there was absolutely nothing else to eat in the apartment.

Yarn Pr0n

2010-10-05T08:57:00.008-04:00

I haven't been spinning much lately. I go through phases of what my hands want to do, and after a spring and summer of insane amounts of time at my wheel, I took a break. I've been doing other stuff, mainly cooking and decoupaging comic book stuff. But I missed the colors. Maybe it's a seasonal thing- in the winter and early spring, I like to dye roving, I like bursts of color imposed on my dreary landscape, and then in the summer I need to spin everything I've dyed.

This yarn doesn't have a name yet. I'm calling it "Dream B" because I made one very similar before called "Dream", only Dream had more jewel-toned greens and hints of pink. This one is more blue-toned.

I love the way colors work. Up close, this yarn is white, and purple, and sapphire blue, and turquoise, and sky blue. Up close, it's a multitude of constantly changing colors. But from far away, it's simply "blue". All of the colors make it deeper, more beautiful. Give it depth. There's an annoying metaphor in there somewhere.

This picture reminds me of a hurricane.

A looming cloud.

Mr. Skunky-Pants Part II

2010-10-02T01:00:00.002-04:00

Alright, Mr. Skunky-Pants. You win this round. Your stank has disappeared, and there is no sign of activity around your burrow. I am proposing a truce. But should you or your nasty stank return, I will bait that trap with bacon. Do you hear me, Skunky-Pants? No one can resist the allure of bacon. I'll probably find neighborhood children in that trap.

Do not make me waste bacon on you.

ugh

2010-09-28T10:15:00.002-04:00

I try to deny being a crazy cat lady, but I just realized that maybe buying organic duck breast specifically to hand-feed to your cat every day might not be normal.

Insect Repellant

2010-09-27T08:51:00.004-04:00

We're going on vacation in November. HOLY CRAP AWESOME.

We're staying at an all-inclusive resort. It looks like a great place, highly recommended by the EIGHT travel agents I spoke to/interviewed, and all the reviews of it are good. (When I'm nervous about something, I tend to go overboard with preparations. I was nervous about paying our hard-earned/saved vacation budget for the past two years to a place I've never been, so uh I went a little crazy with the research and online sleuthing.)

So the resort seems to be great, except for one thing: it's in the jungle. Near a mangrove swamp. There's a LOT of mosquitoes, apparently. Reviews online from travelers complain the resort doesn't spray for the mosquitoes, but it's a freakin' swamp, there's no way to keep mosquitoes out of a swamp short of poisoning the water.

One member of our traveling party (that makes it sound like an RPG, haha) has a weak immune system, and one other member (ME) has horrible reactions to certain mosquito bites (not the ones in New England, but the further south I go, the more extreme my mosquito reactions become.)

So I tried to get the best possible bug repellent I could. We're going to be packing three different kinds. Since the party members include a scientists and two engineers, you can bet your ass we're going to be experimenting with what works best.

Here are the top three contenders, which I've found online to be the best recommended bug sprays:

Off Deep Woods
This is our go-to bug spray, it's what we have laying around the house. It works quite well for hanging on our back deck.

Repel Lemon Eucalyptus
I've heard this referred to as "natural", although it certainly smells chemically to me. And strong. This is the back-up bug spray in case of allergic reactions, plus it was very highly recommended.

3m Ultrathon
My husband is kind of a 3M fanboy. So when I saw that 3M made a bug spray, and that it had excellent ratings and test results, I decided to go for it. It was expensive for this tiny 2-oz tube. I didn't realize how tiny the tube was. I'm not even sure this will last us a week. But I'm pretty sure I've used this before on a camping trick, and I'm pretty sure when I accidentally got some on my face, my lips went numb. It's 34.34% (really? did you just pull that number out of your butt, 3M marketing department?) DEET, which explains the lip numbness. If it numbs body parts, it'll probably work quite well.

So check back towards the end of November to see which one worked best. Did one of the party members roll poorly and get dengue fever? Do I get malaria and have to drink nasty tasting quinine for the rest of my life? Will we accidentally light ourselves on fire from slathering flammable chemicals all over? Check back!

Things are changing.

2010-09-24T17:46:00.003-04:00

I got a job. Now I have to figure out how to deal with less free time. It makes me happier. I missed being amazingly good at something.

Mr. HusbandDude got a new job. He's making considerably more money, but there are tradeoffs: much less vacation, FMLA (meaning paternity leave) doesn't kick in for a year, which means if a baby happens to arrive within the next twelve months (which is currently not in the plans, anyways) he gets NO paternity leave. The company is a big corporation branching out into a new market, which means much, much less job security. But he's happy, he wanted this change.

So we're actually going MORE into panicked saving mode, despite more money coming in. I want to build up the savings we depleted while living on his reduced salary. At this stage in our lives, we should be saving like crazy.

I still have not caught the stupid skunk living in my front yard. He's making less appearances and has been less stinky, but he's still there. Jerk skunk has not wandered into the trap yet. I'm giving it another week, and then I'll let him spend the winter in his burrow- his stinky arse is going to be hungry come spring, and I'm quite sure he'll happily wander into the baited trap then. (I should, um, maybe do some quick research into life cycles of skunks, just to make sure they don't give birth in the winter or not overwinter in burrows or something.)

I am stressed. The lack of job security combined with our lack of savings is driving me crazy, and it's going to take a few months to fix the savings part. Because of FMLA and the required year of employment, baby-creating has been put on hold yet again. Our car is not going to survive another New England winter of salted roads.

So here's the good things in my life:
-Our living room is not falling off the back of our house. This was confirmed by a very honest and nice contractor who really, really wanted the work, but sadly informed us that while the construction was shoddy, the room has settled as much as he thinks it's going to settle, and was not as bad as we had been led to believe. This was a point of constant stress for us, and now it is no longer an issue.
-This weekend we are painting the foyer lime green.
-I have four kittens in my guest bedroom
-Mr. HusbandDude got a new computer that has enough memory to make Photoshop usable, as well as the Blurb Booksmart program, which means I have gotten to FINALLY finish our wedding album.
-I have a job, and while the pay is, uh, well let's not get into that, it's something to do, it adds to my resume, I can pay to finish my degree now, and damn it feels good to be useful
-I have a wonderful husband who loves me
-And in an hour, we are going to get into the MGB and take a long drive around New Hampshire and enjoy autumn.

Everything I Know About Cooking, I Learned On The Internet

2010-09-13T23:50:00.001-04:00

Well, that and my handy-dandy Betty Crocker Cookbook. Betty's my go-to guru gourmet.

I love love love recipe blogs. I have been burned by many an internet recipe, since it seems like people enjoy posting recipes they dreamed up but have never actually tried- but this made me a better cook. It made me learn to experiment, trust my tastebuds, and best of all- it let me see that it was okay to fail. If dinner sucks that night, I can always send The HusbandDude out for dinner at Taco Bell. But it's a great resource for recipes and tastes, and since I can be uncreative in the kitchen, it helps me figure out what to make for dinner.

(Although the last time I made Spanish Rice, I burned it so horribly, and was having such a terrible day, that it led to crying and became a metaphor for how I fail at life. But that's not the cooking, that's the crazy.)

So I am in LOVE with the blog How To Cook Like Your Grandmother. LOVE. And after Drew posted How To Make Pesto I saw basil at my local farm stand for $1/bunch. I bought... a lot of bunches. A LOT.

I made a test batch, and then followed Drew's very simple instructions on How To Make Penne Pesto. It's, uh, really, REALLY REALLY easy. Embarrassing that it took a blog post for me to realize "hey this stuff would be great on pasta!". The night previously, I made marinated some chicken breast in a sweet teriyaki sauce, and the end result wasn't great. It was too sweet with not enough tangy, and it was very boring. But I had a chicken breast left over, and so I sliced it up and served it on top the Penne Pesto. Omg! Greatest meal EVER. It was amazing. It was astounding. It was a culinary delight.

Two nights later, we were having friends over for dinner, and I asked Mr. HusbandDude what I should make. His response was "PESTO. Pesto. Pesto. PESTO." I told him pesto in itself was not a meal and his told me "I don't care what it's on, I just want more pesto." So I made the same meal again. Since HusbandDude had liked it so much, I made double the amount I thought we'd need, and then we could have it for lunch for the next two days, I could send him to work with it.

We didn't have any leftovers. At all.

So pesto is my new favorite addition to a meal. I've added to pizza for instant flavor. I am dying to add it to my tuna fish sandwich. I think it would go good on ice cream.

Yesterday, I spent the entire day making pesto. I de-stemmed at least five giant bunches of pesto, and then made small batches with my tiny food processor. The de-stemming takes forever, but my test batch leaving the stems in yielded stringy bits that detracted from the awesomeness that is pesto. An entire shelf of my tiny freezer (stupid side-by-side fridge with an ice maker that takes up 1/3 of the freezer space) is now taken up by pesto in small plastic baggies. I've got at least two month's supply, unless my husband decides pesto must go on every meal.

Gaming

2010-09-13T09:38:00.001-04:00

My current RPG game is experiencing a severe case of escalation. This has happened in a few other games of mine, and it's a bizarre problem; as characters succeed at their tasks, the scale of the game gets bigger and bigger.

The game started out as a simple adventuring knights game. My character had a simple quest that was laughably difficult- find a planet and re-establish her dynasty. The quest was a McGuffin- a hook to gather the party together and give them a reason for adventuring. The party explored unfamiliar planets, survived assassination attempts, and had a few shoot-outs and swordfights.

Three years later (game time), they not only have a planet, they have an army, and are starting a new planetary federation. Now the party ponders questions like "How should we shape the Planetary Congress, and how many votes does each planet get?" We don't do gun battles and sword fights, now we send in fleets of ships and sit back and watch shit blow up. My character has a husband and two kids and is in control of a moon base and two planets with a population of several million subjects. We founded a National Guard and have an industrialization and agriculture plan in place, and now that we've gained entire control of our system, we're making giant alliances with other systems.

It's still fun- I game with a frighteningly intelligent group of people, and should anyone be allowed to create a Planetary Federation, it's these guys. But at some point, it gets too big to survive, and then what?

Yarn Pr0n

2010-09-10T07:32:00.000-04:00

I can't remember how I dyed this yarn. I honestly can't. I remember spinning it, but I cannot for the life of me recall how I dyed it. I think it may have been a dye job I did while hanging out with a friend, but I can't seem to remember.

I really wish I could remember how I dyed this, because it's amazing. I think this may be the prettiest yarn I've ever made. It's all of my favorite colors- blue, green, and purple, and it's even that dark murky, slightly-gray-but-not-pastel shade that I love.

To spin this, I just spun a lightweight yarn, and then navajo plied it. Navajo plying is my favorite part of spinning. It's not always the right choice, it can make your yarn look chopping and the color changes too sudden, but it's a great way to preserve stripes of color, and it's perfect for when your yarn has long periods of transitioning color.

Car suggestions?

2010-09-09T08:16:00.002-04:00

Mr. HusbandDude and I are in the market for a new car. Well, new-to-us. Neither of see any sense in buying a brand-new car. Mr. HD's car is on it's last legs, and the frame won't survive another winter's worth of salt and snow. We thought about keeping it as a "summer-only" car, except we already have one of those- we have an MGB. His car doesn't have air conditioning, it's not a convertible, and it's black. Not that great for a summer-only car. We have no where to store it. But I still want to keep it forever.

We're looking for a newer car. It's got to be under $10k at auction, since we've got a family member taking us to auction. Should be less than 10 year old. Should have four doors, air conditioning, all that jazz. Standard transmission.

But the most important thing: it needs to be fun to drive.

We take our driving very seriously. Driving is a joy. It's fun. In the right car, driving is just moving the car as an extension of your body. Shifting, turning, accelerating- these are feelings my body craves. Decelerating makes me sad. I'm not kidding. A car slowly down feels wrong to my body. But being pushed back into the seat as you take off, shifting from second to fifth- damn, that's the way it's supposed to be. (Don't shift from second to fifth. Unless it's really, REALLY fun.)

Mr. HD's car was fun. It had a very nice turbo. The way he describes it is "You push down the gas pedal, and suddenly you're going fast. Then you push it down a little more- and the turbo kicks in, and then you're going REALLY fast." Today, I was making a quick trip to the grocery store in his car (we trade off sometimes) and I got sad thinking about how we'll be selling it. So my quick trip turned into my getting groceries in a different state- because damn it, I love driving. I love driving fast, along twisty turny New England roads past rock walls and trees. I can go around corners at a ridiculous rate of speed. It shifts like the truck I learned how to drive on- the gears grab firmly into place with a nice definitive thunk that travels up the gearbox into my hand. Not like some crappy tiny car where you can slide the gears in and out with little effort. In this car, you feel the road. You know what's going on in the car- you can hear the engine (okay, that's due to a small exhaust leak...) and you can feel the engine in your hands. It's "primal", if primal were the acceptable word to use to describe something invented less than two hundred years ago.

We've been test driving cars a bit, trying to find something comparably fun. We're not finding anything. The closest we've come is a Volvo S60, except they're very rare in a manual transmission. It's hard to find a mix of "fun to drive" and "can be driven all winter" and "will fit a car seat someday", although to be honest, I'll nix the fitting a car seat in favor of being a fun ride. We also liked a Mazda6 we drove. No one else I know owns a Mazda, and it never occurred to us to consider that brand.

I'm sick of test driving cars. I hate going into dealerships and having crazy sales tactics performed on us. I do not need some 30-something douchebag in a pink Polo shirt and gelled hair telling us "Do you really need a manual transmission? Is that a need or a want?" So I told him "if you want to play that game, I don't really need a Volvo."

So what's a fun car to drive? What car makes you giddy and happy to drive? What car makes you sad to pull into your driveway because it means the journey's over?

Mr. Skunky-Pants

2010-09-07T18:04:00.002-04:00

The skunk burrow has been located. I thought it was under the deck. I thought the skunk was dead- and then the problem became how to dig a dead, decomposing skunk out of an unknown burrow. I spent part of one day in my backyard, sniffing, to figure out where the smell was coming from. But the smell kept changing- one day, it would just be the crazy dank musk of a skunk, then it would switch to the stench of it's spray, and a myriad of smells in between.

Mr. HusbandDude was mowing the yard yesterday, and he pointed out to me a rather large hole dug in the middle of our backyard. The middle of the yard. Uh, what? What kind of stupid animal digs a hole in the middle of the yard, when not even ten feet away is a lovely bunch of dense woods. Because of the ice storm two years ago, there's a TON of ground cover. There's even a shed to nest under- but it choose the middle of the yard.

So we (Okay, The Husband, I'm not going near the hole) covered the hole with tinfoil and put some logs over it to hold it in place. This morning, the tinfoil had been lifted out of place, and the faint smell of skunk musk hovered over the area. Yup, I found the bastard's house.

So now the issue is- what the hell do I do next? I can't shoot him, on account of I live in a suburban neighborhood. I could shoot him, I suppose, but there's legal issues- do I really want to go and ask all my neighbors permission to discharge a firearm? I called some wildlife control people, but there is a waiting list for skunk "relocation." I could trap him, but then what? We only have cars, no truck, no trailer, and I'm not going to transport the stanky thing in my car.

2010-09-06T12:50:00.002-04:00

I went to a wedding last night. A former college roommate. It was open bar. We drank the rainbow- start with a red drink (a cranberry Cosmo), and then something orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. (a nice merlot.) The green drink was the hardest, and the grossest.

Suffice it to say, I'm a tad hungover today.

Woodlands Management

2010-08-31T08:15:00.008-04:00

Our property is a bit wooded. We have nearly an acre, but except for the house, most of it is uncleared. Mr. HusbandDude likes living "in the woods", but after the Ice Storm of '08 (that makes me sound oooold) we've come to realize that having so many very large, very tall trees overhanging the house is a terrible thing.

So now our long-term goal is a slow clearing of about half of the land- to make room for a swing set and a bigger yard, and someday a one-car garage/shed combo for storing our antique car. (Which currently spends the winter at my in-laws.)

I want to leave some trees behind, so we don't look like we just have a crazy empty football field of a lawn. But the trees and scraggly and incredibly tall- to the south of our house is a large stand of very tall, fast-growing pines- which meant they choked out most other trees, and the few maples that did survive are skinny with no growth for the first thirty feet.

So now I'm looking into pollarding or coppicing. Coppicing is when you cut the tree down just above the ground- on many species of trees, a bunch of new shoots will come up, eventually growing larger into trunks. The root system that the tree previously had puts effort into making very healthy, vigorous growth.

It makes for a healthier tree, and brings the altitude of the growth down. And I think it's very cute- it looks like a fairy grove, it adds interest.

Coppicing was done widely in Europe long ago- it was an effective means of making firewood, or long, straight sticks for use for things like poles. You don't see it nearly as much in New England, because trees were more plentiful when settlers arrived, and forest management was not important.

We already have a coppiced tree in the backyard, one of the maples along the yard line was so severely damaged in the ice storm that we had to cut it down- and what appeared in it's place was just a giant bush of maple. I think it'll look pretty neat in a few years.

Pollarding is when you cut the tree higher up the trunk line. The new shoots appear at the end of the cut, giving you a trunk and then a bushy top.

By the time any tree I pollard ends up looking like this, I will be dead. Weird.

I think pollarding is more what I want- it makes the trees look more "Tree-y" (it's a word, I swear.) It's more the traditional shape of a tree.

What I don't like about pollarding is that you get that weird round lump where all the new growth sprouts out of the cut. With time, the tree will grow and it'll become less evident.

Pollarding was generally done higher up to keep the tender growth away from the hungry mouths of deer or cattle. This is definitely a consideration for me, since the woods and conservation land further behind my house have a thriving deer population.

My father is coming up tomorrow, and bringing his chainsaw. If there's time, he may cut down a few trees, and then this autumn Mr. HusbandDude can turn it into firewood. If there's any other maples available near the tree line, then in late autumn, we'll lop off their tops and see what happens. :-)

Food And Nature And Crap Like That

2010-08-29T11:14:00.002-04:00

Mr. HusbandDude and I have been eating some great meat lately. My dad gave us A LOT of venison- he got three very, very large deer last year and they ran out of freezer space. I love venison. Mr. HusbandDude had never had it before I made him some, except in chili, and he said it was some of the best meat he's ever tasted. It's... real? I don't know the word to describe it, except to say it tastes like red meat should taste.
It's also really neat to think "My dad provided this. He hunted it, he killed it, he butchered it." I know exactly where it came from. And that makes the meal better, knowing that.

We've also been eating some organic duck recently. My stupid cat, Evil Cat, tried to die this month. In my experience with cats (a few indoor cats, and lots of random wild barn cats) they tend to stop eating before they die. Our vet explained that a cat, if it "knows" it's going to die, will stop eating and sort of start shutting down in preparation. She said she thinks it makes things less painful for the cats. I agree, having had many independent cats go off into the woods to die, and other, more friendly cats, curl up in a safe spot and then refuse to leave until the end.

So, for the third or fourth time in his life, Evil Cat tried to pull this crap. First time, he had lymphoma in his GI tract, but what was going to kill him first was the lack of food and water. He ended up with a feeding tube/IV in his throat and in intensive care for ten days. We're not doing that again, we don't have the money, and Evil Cat was so miserable in the hospital.

So we had to get food into him. If it was "the end" and the cancer had come back, then he would go soon. But in the past he has stopped eating randomly, and we usually cooked up some plain chicken breast, and by feeding him that for a few days, he'd regain strength and go back to completely normal. Except he can't have chicken anymore- the vet/oncologist told us that chicken protein irritates his stomach and causes puking, irritation, inflammation, and that leads to more cancer. So he's on an all-duck diet. Which is fine, we buy cans of cat food with duck protein in it, it's expensive, but easy to get.

Except try finding "duck breast." I had to call about six different butcher/specialty meat shops before finding one that had duck. Then I had to figure out how the hell to cook duck, which I haven't even eaten in my adult life, other than in Thai food.

So for dinner, Mr. HusbandDude and I had one breast, while the other got cut up into pieces for Evil Cat.

Holy crap is duck good. It essentially tastes like the greatest dark chicken meat you have ever eaten. It's fatty and moist and AMAZING. I fried it very slowly, letting the layer of fat kind of melt off, then fried it at a higher temperature in it's own fat. I didn't season it at all, since most of it was for the cat. It needed nothing, it was just delicious.

Oh, and Evil Cat is doing better. He needed convincing to go near the duck, but once he tasted it, he went a little insane for it. The first day, he ate a little bit of it, and was doing okay. The next day, he ate a bit of the duck and then was convinced to eat his regular food. A week and a half later, he's now back to eating his normal amount, plus he gets a bit of duck every day. He's gained at least a pound. Duck is high and fat and protein, and his has been very good for him. All summer long, he's been very slowly losing weight and eating less, and now all of a sudden his appetite is back and he's healthy again.
He's also been my shadow lately, because of the duck. He's a lot more affectionate whenever I'm anywhere near the refrigerator.

Organic, natural food is better. Beef injected with hormones and chemicals is not as good. Our way of buying meat is cheaper, faster, and more efficient, but the end result is unhealthy for us.

I used to not think this. I had a friend who insists on only eating meat he knows has been treated fairly. So if he researches a company and sees that they treat their animals in a way he deems "okay", he'll eat it. He eats the venison I give him, because he thinks hunting is perfectly okay and quite humane. (And I convinced him to get his hunting license!) He eats the eggs I sometimes bring him from my grandfather's farm, because those chickens are free-range and treated very well.
I used to game with him, and the GM's wife would make us dinner every week. Since organic food is expensive, my friend would give money to the GM's wife to go get the organic, approved meat, and then she'd make it alongside the regular meat.
There is definitely a difference. You can see it, you can taste it. Both meats were prepared in exactly the same way, side by side in the dish. (He's okay with the juices mingling.) Same exact thing, except one was "organic" beef, and the other was the regular crap you get at the grocery store. The organic tasted much, much better. Every time.

I'm still not buying just organic meat. For one, we can't afford it. And secondly, "organic" is a very broad definition that is in no way guaranteed. I don't want to put in the effort right now to researching every company out there to make sure they are what they say they are.

But if I get the chance for free venison, or to eat a bite of duck breast, I'm definitely going for it, and I will definitely appreciate it.

SUPER-AWESOME-TROPICAL-DREAM-VACATION!!!!!!!!

2010-08-27T10:16:00.003-04:00

GUESS WHAT, DEAR READERS?

GUESS! GUESS!

I'm going on a super awesome tropical dream vacation!!!

SUPER-AWESOME-TROPICAL-DREAM-VACATION!!!!!!!!

We have enough money saved up. We want to go on one last SUPER-AWESOME-TROPICAL-DREAM-VACATION before babies come and life gets complicated and we can no longer have any fun, because babies and children suck and blah blah blah I'll love my kids blah blah blah but after kids it'll be quite a few years before we can just go on a SUPER-AWESOME-TROPICAL-DREAM-VACATION.

I will be under palm tree! Probably not this exact palm tree.

All-inclusive. ALL-INCLUSIVE. Do you know that all-inclusive includes? Boooooooze. Lots and lots and lots of boooooze. The more I drink, the more of my money's worth I am getting!!!! (That sentence cannot be grammatically correct. Or can it?)

I want the one on the right. No- the one on the left. Hell, just give me both.

Currently, I am trying to coordinate this SUPER-AWESOME-TROPICAL-DREAM-VACATION with several other couples, who are also interested in a SUPER-AWESOME-TROPICAL-DREAM-VACATION. It is going... slowly. Hopefully later this week we'll finally be ready to book.

I have no idea what country we're going to (I have preferences, but so do other people....) but it's definitely somewhere with palm trees, and somewhere with all-inclusive food and booze, and somewhere with a pool.

HOLY CRAP I AM SO EXCITED. I am bouncing up and down. I do not know what the Internet equivalent of bouncing up and down is, but I AM SURE IT INVOLVES ALL CAPS AND CONSTANTLY MENTIONING MY SOON TO BE SUPER-AWESOME-TROPICAL-DREAM-VACATION.

Something doesn't smell right...

2010-08-26T20:52:00.002-04:00

A skunk has taken up residence somewhere nearby. We first saw his furry little arse one night upon pulling into the driveway. We sat and waited patiently for him to shamble his stinky butt out of there.

Since then, for the past three weeks or so, I have gotten occasional whiffs of skunk. Not the spray, just the regular musky smell. Not pleasant. I don't know where he is, I don't know where he lives or where he's hiding, or what he's up to, but I don't like it one bit. I've checked in the bushes and under the porch, and there's no sign of his little house. (You can tell a skunk's house because it's painted black with a white stripe. Clearly.)

I'm a little worried that most of the whiffs I get are during the day. This could be because I am awake during the day, however I'm a bit worried about rabies now. Our town is having a significant problem with rabies this year, and I have met a rabid skunk before. It did not end well for the skunk, he got his skunky arse shot. So now I'm a teeny bit worried.

Please go away, Mr. (or Mrs., or Ms or Miss or Sir or Dame or Your Royal Majesty, not sure if skunks can hold titles) Skunk. Please just shamble on down the road. Or up to that Big Road In The Sky. Either way, just leave. You're stinking up my yard.

Stupid hair

2010-08-25T08:59:00.003-04:00

I hate having my hair short. I thought it would be a nice change. But... I really miss being able to throw it back in a ponytail and ignore it. Now, it requires time and effort and hair product. Hair product. Ugh. So... just... I don't know. Not me. Time and effort and hair product are not things I do.

I really hope I get used to this. It'll get longer. In about a month, I'll be able to tuck it behind my ears again. In about two months, it should be long enough to make a tiny ponytail. I miss being able to pull my hair back over my face.

Mr. HusbandDude says he likes it, which is pretty awesome. I think it looks rather stupid, but even my mother told me she thinks it's great. (Nice thing about my husband and relatives- they don't lie to you and tell you something looks good if it doesn't. Brutal honesty is their policy. It makes compliments nicer.)

I like that it looks more polished and put-together, though. I no longer look like a teenager, now I actually look like a person in my mid-twenties. I use way less shampoo now, and I can shower in under five minutes. It also no longer takes an entire day to air dry. So there are definite benefits. The biggest benefit was that it was a change- for the past two years I've had the same hairstyle, it was definitely time for a change.

That Feeling

2010-08-24T11:20:00.002-04:00

Every now and then, I get that feeling. That crazy feeling that I can't quite explain. It's like my heart swells up and I have to stop and notice the world around me, and I am incredibly, incredibly happy. Even if shit is going wrong, even if I'm unemployed and money's tight and my ingrown toenail is freakin' painful as all hell- doesn't matter. I just get hit with this extreme feeling of contentment. Of peacefulness. Of happiness. It's a very mellow joy.

If I were a cat, if I were capable, I would be purring right now. I would just sit here, and purr. I'm pretty sure that's the feeling.

If I were religious, I'd chalk it up to God. Some sort of divine revelation that says "Everything is going to be okay!" Instead, I prefer to think of it as a mystery. Some sort of brain chemistry that happens and I suddenly realize that life is gonna be okay.

Guess what I did with my hair?

2010-08-23T20:15:00.003-04:00

I cut my hair. It's short. That's what happens when you cut hair.

I chopped off about 16". That's a lot of hair. You know what I did with it? I sold it. To a dude on the internet who makes hair extensions. I could have sold it for a lot of money, but the people who pay a lot of money for hair are creepy dudes who insist on cutting it themselves. Yeah, no, dude, I'm not driving a state away, going to your "home salon" and letting you near my neck with scissors. I'm not an idiot. $400 is very tempting, but holy crap no.

Anyways. So I sold it for a little bit of money. That little bit of money finally put my "fun money" account over the amount I needed....

for a 10/22!

Hooray! So I am now the proud owner of a used but lovely Ruger 10/22 with a beautiful walnut stock. I have not shot it yet, since I'm pretty sure I'm behind on my gun club dues, and I've been without a car because Mr. HusbandDude's car is dismantled in our garage for body work. The moment I have a free second to go, I'm definitely grabbing it and going. I am so freakin' excited. My first rifle!

Review: The Fugly

2010-08-16T20:20:00.007-04:00

The Fugly Holster

First off, let me say, that the Fugly Holster is an awesome name for a holster. I'm not sure it's that ugly, but it's certainly fun to say.

Dennis over at Dragon Leatherworks saw that I was frustrated in my search for a holster. I wanted a holster that was reliable and well-constructed, and concealed well. I also didn't want to pay $70+ for one. It turns out, he has a product that fits the bill. For the very reasonable price of $39.99, Dennis will handcraft you a leather holster.

The package arrived in the mail, and it was beautiful. This thing ain't fugly- it's a functional work of art. Dennis asked me what color he should make it, and I told him I was partial to green. Well, it's an airbrushed beauty. Black on the outside, with an inner glow of emerald green.

Parts of it are ugly. It's unfinished leather on the bottom- but that's the part you tuck in your pants. Hell, the entire thing can be ugly, since no one is supposed to see it at all. After all, it's a concealed holster. But it's gorgeous.

I've been wearing it for the past four weeks to get a feel for it. I took it to the range twice, and I wore it everywhere. (Well, everywhere legal.) Luckily, it's been freaking hot, and I sweated- oh wait, I'm a lady, I glowed- all over the thing, which is good for the leather. It's now conformed to my body, and somehow it's an even better fit.

How It Hides
Oh, it conceals. It conceals amazingly. This is the best holster I have ever owned. (Take that with a grain of salt, since I've only tried a few, most of them crappy.)

Let me tell you a little something about the female body, or at the very least, this female's body: it's curvy. It's very curvy. I got hips, baby. Seriously. I hit puberty and BAM! my body decided to create a super-breeding machine with a pelvis to match. When anthropologists discover my body somewhere awesome, they will instantly nod and go "female".
I'm also overweight. And I got boobs. The end result is a whole lot of curves, which makes concealing a gun very, very difficult. Something's always gonna stick out.

So when I tried on the holster the first time, I was thrilled. It wasn't perfect, but it certainly hugged to my body to a degree I found astounding.

I put on a tank top and asked Mr. HusbandDude if he noticed anything different. He said he didn't. I then spent the entire day wearing the gun around the house, and at no time did Mr. HusbandDude notice the gun. It wasn't until I was undressing for bed that he said "holy crap, where did that come from?" Yeah, the dude I live with, who I hugged and sat next to and spent the entire day with, he had no idea. That's some good concealment.

So I decided it was ready for the outside world. And boy did it work. No one noticed it. I went out with trusted friends, and then asked afterward. No one noticed anything!

How It Feels
It's soft. The leather on the back of the holster is soft. I am not a leather worker, and I have no idea what it's called or what the technique is, but it's soft against my skin, and it's comfortable. It doesn't rub, it doesn't chaffe, and after 10 hours of sweating and moving, the skin under it is still happy. I don't know how that is even possible.

How It Works
The draw is smooth. Dennis canted it at an angle for a female shooter, given where I carry it. It's smooth. The opening of the holster stays open, so I can holster it one handed. (Very important.) It stays in place. I can get a nice grip on the holster before drawing.

The Downside
Yeah, there's a downside. My only complaint about this holster is that the trigger guard is not entirely covered. It covers the Very Important part- that is, the area in front of the trigger is covered, but the area behind the trigger is not. Dennis says that this is necessary because of the construction of the holster- it's all leather, there are no plastic bits, and so the leather has limitations. The holster lip being lower allows me to get a better grip on the gun before drawing. It's a trade-off.

How I Like It
I like it a lot. It's my new go-to holster. I was starting to think that I was physically incapable of concealing a gun, and then this baby came along- it's a miracle. I love that the holster is handcrafted by a very nice guy. It's not some impersonal object created namelessly somewhere- it's homemade by someone who really knows their shit. Dennis is clearly an artist, and I'm happy he decided to use his art to make something so incredible useful.

So go to Dragon Leatherworks and check out the Fugly. Heck, check out the Pistol Pouch while you're at it, because it's beautiful, too. You won't be disappointed.

2010-08-04T12:48:00.002-04:00

God, life has been simultaneously sucky and wonderful at the same time.

First of, the thing that has been coloring my perceptions for the past month- I've been having some, er, lady area pains. Pains that are not normal and had me make an appointment with my Lady Parts Doctor, aka the Gynecologist. My gynecologist, it turns out, is the worst doctor in the world. That may be an exaggeration. But he is certainly the second worst doctor I have ever had the displeasure of being seen by.

World's Worst Gynecologist (WWG, for short) examined me, mumbled something about endometriosis and infertility, and then handed me a stack of papers he printed off of the internet. Seriously. That's his idea of "doctoring". Asshole.

So, in the end, I had some doctors appointments, had an ultrasound, had some tests, and the result was... nothing. The result was "everything looks marginally normal, and we don't know why you have this pain, come back in a year if you can't conceive."

The three weeks or so that this all dragged out was miserable and I was snapping at Mr. HusbandDude and everyone around me, and just generally a total bitch to be around. I'm still worried, but since tests were run and there's not a giant tumor lodged in my ovaries, I'm a bit relieved, but I'm still worried because the random pain is still there.

Whatever. I got a new doctor now, and I see him in September, and maybe he'll be a bit more reassuring. Or intelligent. Or able to use his words clearly.

Other stuff sucks: still no job, despite lots of trying and a few interviews, still on decreased salary and trying to make it.

The "wonderful" part comes in because I'm not depressed. And every freaking day that I wake up, and I'm alive, and functioning- well, that's wonderful. If you haven't been depressed, I don't know if you'd understand. Basically it comes down to "live is beautiful and amazing, and I'm thankful I exist."

The Great Yogurt Search

2010-07-21T09:43:00.002-04:00

Next up, I'm trying Dannon Light&Fit Key Lime. This one has aspartame in it, but it's way down on the ingredients list, and I'm a sucker for nice packaging- I liked all the limes on the cup.

I think this may be my favorite one yet! It's not sickeningly sweet, and in fact has a bit of a sour bite to it. It tastes like a very well-made key lime pie filling. It tastes remarkably like a lime, not like "lime flavoring" (Although to be honest, I found the tiny word "FLAVORING" underneath the flavor label to be disconcerting, I wasn't expecting it to taste great.)

It's also less than half the calories of the Yoplait. That's most likely because of the aspartame. It didn't leave too much of the nasty aftertaste in my mouth, but I can definitely taste it. I think that the fact that it's half the calories, plus the incredible lime taste, makes this one the front runner in The Great Yogurt Search.

Stoneyfield Farms

2010-07-20T10:17:00.002-04:00

Up next is Stonyfield Farms "Chocolate Underground" yogurt.

Verdict: KILL IT. KILL IT WITH FIRE. BURN IT UNTIL THE BAD TASTE GOES AWAY.

Gross. Disgusting. This may be the worst yogurt I have ever had the displeasure of eating. First of all, the texture is WEIRD. There were a ton of tiny little lumps, and you had to stir the chocolate from the bottom up, and it never mixed well, and it looked disgusting. But I ate it anyway, for science, but I wish I hadn't.

It had this weird "chemically" (spell check recognizes "chemically" as a word. Wow.) taste that left me gulping down milk to get the taste off of my tongue. It didn't really taste like chocolate so much as it tasted like chocolate flavoring. Do they taste test this stuff?

I bought two of these, but I'm just going to throw the other one away. I tried to give it away to a friend, but she said this brand of yogurt is banned from her fridge for tasting like ass. I checked with my eight-year-old niece, and she agrees that this is a really, really icky yogurt. So into the trash goes the other one.

Weird, because I've used their plain yogurt for cooking and for making smoothies, and it doesn't taste like this.

I have the same brand, different flavor (Key Lime) to try later. I've been putting it off, because ugh I don't want to have to taste that again, but maybe it was just the chocolate that tastes so bad.

The Great Yogurt Search

2010-07-19T12:13:00.002-04:00

I am looking for a good yogurt. I am trying to add more nutritious crap to my diet. The only problem is that I'm picky about yogurt- I love a good yogurt, but more often than not, they can end up tasting awful.

So, even though no one cares, I'm documenting my quest to find the perfect yogurt.

I went to the grocery store and grabbed a bunch of brands of yogurt. I'm going to keep trying this until I find one I love.

Up first is Yoplait Original. In Key Lime, since that's my favorite flavor and most companies seem to have that flavor. And I dislike vanilla.

"Meh" just about sums up this yogurt. It wasn't horrible, it wasn't bad, it just wasn't great. It was kind of middle-0f-the-road. I had previously been eating the blue Yoplaits, which are "LIGHT!", which means they're packed full of aspartame, which leaves my mouth feeling really funny. I am not a fan of aspartame, I do not like the taste it leaves, and I do not like how incredibly sweet it tastes.

So this yogurt was definitely a step up from the "light" version of the same brand. So far, it's the best yogurt I've tried.

Diets and food

2010-07-17T20:37:00.003-04:00

I've been dieting. Well, not really dieting so much as "trying to eat less food and expend more energy." I've been using the power of the Internets to track what I eat. For the first week, I only tracked, I tried not to change anything. (Although by the end of the week, I was definitely making healthier choices, now that I was acutely aware of the nutritional content of the food.)

So here's how I eat: one day, I'll eat around 900 calories. Then the next day, I'll eat like 3000, then the next day, around 900. It's weird how little I eat some days, and then the next day I eat like a pig. I don't know why, it's not a conscious thing, that's just how it happened.

So now: I eat lunch every day. This week, it's been nothing but tuna fish sandwiches. Dunno why tuna fish, but I've been craving it like crazy for the past few weeks, so I bought a bunch of cans and now that's what I have for lunch every day. Whatever. Sometimes I crave things, and when it's moderately healthy, I give in to the cravings. Hence the entire month where I eat cucumber salad with dinner every night. Poor Mr. HusbandDude does not understand eating the same thing every day.

Tracking my food intake is a bit of a pain in the arse, because now I have to remember everything I eat. But it is making me hyper aware of everything I eat, so the net result is positive. Today, at a bridal shower, I declined cake, solely because I had no idea how to track the calories.

I found a really great farm stand down the road, too, and for the moment, my fridge is full of amazing veggies grown right down the street. Man, I love summer.

I haven't weighed myself to see if I've lost any weight in the past week of eating "healthy". I think that if I haven't lost any weight, it would make me very disappointed. But the truth is, I feel better already, now that I'm eating as many veggies and fruits as I can fit into my day, and I'm not eating as much "crap food" as I used to. Who would have thought that eating breakfast and lunch every day would actually make me happier?

Posts coming up this week: A holster review, and my search for yogurt that doesn't taste like ass.

Glasses

2010-07-10T09:58:00.002-04:00

I went to the eye doctor last week. I've been having trouble reading street signs for a while, but it was at an Appleseed shoot this spring that I realized just how blind I've become. I was having serious issues seeing the target at 25 yards. I am planning on getting a scope once I get my 10/22, so that at the next shoot I can actually see what the hell I'm aiming at, but it turns out that normal people can just use iron and actually see the target. (It doesn't help that the AQTs are grey on beige.)

So I went to the doctor and got my eyes checked out for the first time in several years. One eye has gotten more nearsighted, while the other one... improved? The doctor said that's normal, as you get older your eyes change, and sometimes they happen to change in the right direction.

Since I have such a high prescription, I need expensive lenses. I went to Lenscrafters to price out a pair of glasses, and they wanted over $500 for a pair. This is a lot. This is money we don't really have to be spending. So we talked it over, and decided to take a risk on buying glasses online. Mr. HusbandDude also needs new glasses- I don't think his prescription changed very much, but his frames are literally falling apart, and for the past month one of the arms has been held on by tape. (It looks so adorably nerdy.)

Except I can't buy frames without trying them on. The things that I think look good on me are usually not actually so. I went to the eyeglass store and tried to pick out frames I liked. I narrowed it down, and I like a slight metal frame in a dark black, in a rectangular shape where the top of the frames stick out just slightly more than the bottom.

So I called Zenni Optical, which seems to be the cheapest website for ordering glasses online, and they will let you buy several frames for half the listed price (without lenses), and then return them for 50% of the cost. So if I order an $8 pair of glasses without the lenses, they cost me $4, and then I can send them back for $2. Which isn't horrible- I'm willing to pay a few dollars to be able to try them on first.

So I ordered six pairs today, and hopefully they will be arriving soon. It's so hard to tell online. I had picked out two pairs I loved at the eyeglasses store. I mean, I loved them so much I was trying to justify spending that much money on them. Of course, one was a freakin' Versace pair, and just the frames were $269. But I wrote down the style number, and then later went online and found out all of the frame measurements, and then tried to find styles on Zenni Optical that were similar looking with similar measurements.

So keep your fingers crossed for me that at least one of the six pairs looks good!

I've Returned!

2010-07-09T14:44:00.003-04:00

I spent part of this week on Cape Cod, vacationing with my family. It was hot. Very hot.

I actually kind of hate Cape Cod. It's insanely crowded. My grandmother always books the cottage for the same week- the week of the Fourth of July. That means even more people. The traffic is horrible, you can't go anywhere without sitting in traffic. The grocery store is a nightmare, the tourists traps are horrendous. The first year Mr. HusbandDude came with me, he was absolutely miserable, as he was driving us places and we were doing the whole "tourist" thing, going to P-town and visiting various places of interest.

The next year, we decided not to do any driving. At all. We drove up late one night to avoid bridge traffic, and then we parked our car at the cottage and refused to go anywhere. (I did take one trip to the grocery store to help my family out, but that was it.) We just grabbed a few beers and sat on the beach with our books. We're insanely lucky in that the place we stay is right on the water, and has it's own beach. The only traveling you have to do is the walk down the stairs to the beach. And wow did that make a difference. It's amazing how relaxing it is when you have nothing to do but sit on a beach and read. It's heaven.

So that's what we did this year- read, swim, drink beer, hang out with my family. Since Cancer Cat aka Angry Kitty no longer needs his stupid chemotherapy drugs every evening, we actually got to stay for two nights this year. We slept on a ridiculously uncomfortable futon. I know, I know, futons are inherently uncomfortable, but this was uncomfortable even for a futon. I have bruises on my hips, because I like to sleep on my side, but the mattress was so thin and so freakin' lumpy. It's also impossible to get a full night's sleep- there were about a dozen family members staying in the one bedroom cottage, and the last one's to go to sleep at night went around midnight, and then my grandparents get up around 5am. Since we were the last to arrive, we slept in the central downstairs room, which means we have to go to bed after everyone, and then are waken up by my grandmother deciding to move around pots and pans at 5:30am. (WHY!?)

It was so hot. We stay on the bay side, so that when the tide goes out, it goes way out- it's about a mile walk on the flats at low tide to get to the water. And low tide happened to be around noonish the days we were there, which meant that when the day was hottest, there was no water to swim in. And then all afternoon as the tide crept slowly in, the sun baked down on it. Both days we went swimming simply to cool down, and the water was only up to our knees, and about 80 degrees in most places. I ended up wading out to one of the channels in an effort to find some colder water, and then realized I was about half a mile away from the beach.

It is a very bizarre experience to be swimming and hit patches of freezing cold water and then the next second be in body temperature water.

We came home to discover that Angry Kitty had gone on a hunger and cleaning strike, and was looking bedraggled and miserable. (He doesn't groom himself when he's very pissed off.) In the days since we've gotten back, though, he's been a little shadow by our sides, following me from room to room, and occasionally purring, which he almost never does. It was 98degrees in our house when we got back, and it took five hours for the air conditioner to cool our bedroom down to a reasonable 78.

The Moth Situation

2010-07-05T13:17:00.002-04:00

The Moth Situation seems to be doing okay. The rovings have been in the freezer for several days now, that should have killed any larva still around. Tomorrow I'll lay the bags out in the sun, to let any eggies hatch that weren't killed, and then stick it back in the freezer. That should be more than sufficient.

I have inspected every piece of roving in the house quite thoroughly, and I found nothing. Not a thing. No moths, no larvae, no eggs, no damage. I'm still perplexed as to how three wormies got onto the roving, but I don't want to dwell on it too much. From now on, when I'm not actively spinning the roving, everything gets stored in Ziploc bags.

I'm not sure how to keep moths out of the house. They come in when the garage door opens, and then flutter into the mudroom, and then into the house. Usually they get trapped in the mudroom, we keep a pair of flipflops out there specifically to smush moths with.

Happy Independence Day!!

2010-07-04T11:00:00.001-04:00

Hey! Guess what I love? America! Hurray!

You know what else I love? Fireworks! The beach! Hamburgers! Alcoholic beverages! A giant bonfire! Guess what I'm doing tonight? All of those awesome things.

There will be fireworks. Awesome fireworks. A certain grandparent of mine may or may not have given me a certain large quantity of cash and sent me to New Hampshire for "good fireworks- not the crap they sell here." I definitely did not take that money and go to the fireworks store in New Hampshire, which happened to be having a "buy one get one free sale."

"Buy One Get One Free". That's right- double the fireworks! It was the best shopping trip I have ever been on. Buy one get one free- that's 50% off! (Oh look, I can do math!)

Then I immediately went to a large clear space of land in New Hampshire and lit off the fireworks, and I did not put them in the trunk of my car and drive them to my grandparents' house. 'Cause that would be illegal. Illegal and wrong. And immoral.

So, happy Independence Day! (In second grade, "independence" was a spelling word, and I got it wrong, I spelled it "independance", and my teacher didn't notice and didn't mark it off, and she gave me a big '100%' mark at the top and a gold sticker and then everyone who got a perfect score on their spelling test got a Hershey's Kiss, and I still feel guilty about this. However, I'll never spell "independence" wrong ever again.)

Go eat some grilled meat and drink some alcoholic beverages and watch explosions in the sky!

oh HELL no

2010-07-03T10:11:00.001-04:00

Mothereffer. I am not very happy right now.

I found two live moth larva in one of my rovings. Oh HELL no. This is so not good.

I don't do well with bugs. It is an entirely irrational fear, I know, but it's insane and I can't freaking help it, I hate insects.

Last time this happened, I found a DEAD caterpillar in my roving, and freaked the hell out and threw out everything even near that roving, and cleaned insanely and checked every piece of clothing and every bit of wool in the house. And I found... nothing.

So this time, I'm trying to be a bit calmer. For one thing, we have the occasional moth in the house. It just happens. For another, I've been ordering roving from different places, occasionally they come with their own little friends. Everything I've spun lately I've dyed first, which means it goes into the oven at 350 degrees for 40 minutes, and that definitely kills the little buggers. Which means that these two larva were "fresh" and came onto the roving in the past three days.

So I'm trying not to freak out. I mean, most of my roving is stored in a plastic airtight bin, so that stuff is all safe. It was only the one roving I've been working on. So that's in plastic bags in the freezer, and that'll kill anything that might still be on it. And I'll just keep an eye out.

I am finding it difficult to remain calm and not freak out. I will remain calm and not freak out, I will remain calm and not freak out....

This post is far too long.

2010-07-02T11:33:00.003-04:00

I'm back! Didya miss me?

New York was... meh. I didn't get to do half the things I want to do. I got stuck in horrible bumper to bumper traffic on top of a bridge, and I'm not a large fan of bridges, so I spent about a half hour breathing deep and trying not to notice that my car was parallel with the the twentieth or so story of the building right next to me. Normally, things like that don't bother me (or they do a little bug I ignore it), but the feeling of being trapped and unable to move in traffic combined with the ridiculous heights, and that was not fun.

I dropped the chair off. She liked it so much, she asked if I could make another for her other son. Uh, heck yeah. So now I've got to finish another comic book chair, which is going to take a LOT of time. I've got to run down to the comic book store today and pick up some more "reject" comics, and then comes the cutting- snipping out tiny sound effects. So much cutting, so much gluing.

I have decided that my next "gun related" craft project will be probably similar to the comic book chair- I'd like to decoupage a gun stock. I'm not sure if I'll decoupage it with comic books, but I'd like that color- the reds and greens and yellows, interspersed with blocks of black and white. I think comic books are the only thing that'll give me that effect.

So I dropped the chair off, and then headed into the city to one of the parking garages I had found that had good rates. It took forever to get there, more traffic. I parked. I walked around the garment district for a while. I stopped in a few stores, but to be honest, at that point I had a killer headache and was in a grouchy mood, and I ended up buying nothing except a bottle of water. I don't need more fabric, and no one had what I've been looking for, which is a heavy-set deep purple for a cheap price, to make curtains out of for my bedroom.

I didn't get to go to The Cloisters, since by the time I left the Garment District it was after 6. So I just got in my car and went home. Traffic wasn't that bad, after 6:30 the streets seemed bizarrely empty. So I drove home.

And I hit construction in EVERY SINGLE CITY I passed through. By the time I hit the traffic in Worcester as a result of the work they're doing on 290, I was ready to cry. I just wanted to get home. I ended up taking the back roads, and when I got to my town I was so happy to see my house all lit up and happy.

I've decided I hate cities and that I hate people. Well, I've always known I hate people, I just think that cities happen to contain more people, thus more things to hate.

My second year of college, I had an opportunity for an internship. It was basically a dream internship, working right on Times Square for a company that had people going "holy crap." I'm ballsy and after a conversation with a stranger, I asked for an internship.

So I was going to spend the summer living in NYC and working at this Awesome Company. I went down to NYC and looked at apartments to sublet and did some interviews at Awesome Company and met the department I'd be working with, and then got to meet the president, which I think is the most famous person I've ever met. It was pretty awesome.

Then things fell apart- I discovered that financial aid doesn't cover summer internships and that I had to pay several thousand dollars to do an internship for school credit, which I guess is standard but never occurred to me that my university would charge ME to work. Then the apartment I was going to sublet fell through, and even though we had an agreement, they decided to sublet to a relative instead. And other things kept piling on, and it seemed pretty obvious to me that this wasn't going to work out, either logistically or financially. Sometimes I feel like fate is sending you messages, and in this case, fate as not being subtle about it.

And I've always regretted not being able to go, and live in a big city for a while. And then I switched colleges and met my husband, and life took a different path.

Yesterday, I realized something important: I'm really, really, REALLY happy I took this path. I mean, I've always been happy I took this path of finishing college, getting married, buying a house, someday having kids. I know it's the right path and I've never wished I hadn't taken this way. But sometimes I regretted that I only get one path, and I wish I could do it all, or at least more. I wish I could take all the options.

(On a side note, I find it bizarrely comforting that in the many-universes interpretation, where every choice/possibility spawns off a new reality, I'm doing all sorts of fun and exciting things. Of course, in even more parallel realities, I'm most likely dead. Sometimes when I do something stupid, or come pretty near to something awful, like when I was driving and the car in front of me suddenly fishtailed and spun out and suddenly I was facing a car head-on while going 70mph, and I still don't know how I managed to weave around them- I'm dead in another universe, or paralyzed or seriously injured in a million different ways. But I still find it comforting to think that I've never made a wrong decision or a wrong action, because somewhere there's a me who has done everything right. I probably wouldn't recognize her, the smug bitch.)

(Did you know that the guy from the Eels, Mark Everett, was the son of Hugh Everett, the guy who originally came up with the multi-universe theorem? I don't know why I find this so funny.)

So before I went off on this tangent about nothing important, I was saying that I had realized that I was really happy with my path- I would have been miserable living a city. First of all, I would have been miserable without a car. I LOVE driving. When I'm having a really bad day, I just get in my car and drive. I live in a part of the country where I can just drive and not hit traffic or see people, I just can drive through farmland and gently rolling hills and cute New England towns. I NEED to be able to drive. Secondly, I hate people. I mean, some people are nice, but most are not. People are driven by their own selfish needs, and while I generally hope for the best in people, I kind of expect them to just do whatever is best for themselves, 'cause that's human nature. And I don't think I could stand being around so many people all of the time. I like that I'm alone in my giant (compared to a NYC apartment) house, surrounded by grass and trees and flowers and my neighbor's cows. COWS. I like the every morning I'm woken up by the stupid rooster.) I like that if I don't want to interact with people, I can.

Damn, this post is long. I'll end it now. So let's just say that I am happy in my life and my choices, and this trip reaffirmed how happy I am. So I came home and hugged my super-awesome husband extra hard, and slept with the air conditioner off that night so we could leave the window open and listen to the bullfrogs in the pond behind the house.

Yay for adventure!

2010-06-30T00:09:00.003-04:00

Someone bought The Comic Book Chair on Etsy. For an additional fee, I offered to deliver it the next day or day after to the buyer, who lives outside of NYC. They took me up on that, and so now tomorrow morning I'm visiting New York!

I've got directions to my deliver destination, I've got the chair all packed up, but that's about the extent of my planning. I think I'm going to just go with the flow. I'll bring my travel laptop with me (it fits in my PURSE) and I've got a few cheap parking locations bookmarked. I want to try visiting The Cloisters, since I've passed it a few times and it looks interesting. I also want to hit up the Garment District, since the last trip to that area was unsuccessful due to a giant street fair.

So yay, adventure tomorrow! It looks like it's going to be gorgeous tomorrow as well, so it's the perfect day for a nice drive.

Baby Makin'

2010-06-28T17:36:00.004-04:00

So, we have a plan. I mean, it's not really a plan, more like a timetable. 'Cause things are happening in the future that kind of interfere with baby-making, mostly that we are going to have to go on a cruise next year for a family member's wedding, and there is no way I'm going to be heavily pregnant on a freakin' cruise. (Mildly pregnant, maybe. Maybe.)

But I'm not sure I want to tell people about the timetable. I've got a plan, calendars were used and counting on fingers and calculating how not to be eight months pregnant in July. 'Cause I can handle labor, I can handle morning sickness, but I cannot handle the heat very well even when I'm not carrying around an eight pound bowling ball of baby in my lady-parts. I am terrified of being in my third trimester in the summer.

So I'm not sure what to do about telling people about trying to conceive. On one hand, I want to have a Pre-Pregnancy Party, in which I get to do all of the super awesome things you're not supposed to do when you're pregnant. It's like a bachelorette party, except for pregnancy. I want to go on a roller coaster then eat some deli meat that's been sitting out on the counter, have some sushi, spend an entire day at the gun range, and then drink a crap-ton of alcohol and coffee. Probably not all of those things, but damn am I going to miss guns, alcohol, and sushi.

But on the other hand, I don't want to be asked constantly "are you pregnant?" 'Cause I think that month after month of telling people "Nope, not yet" might get frustrating. Not being able to conceive is a large fear of mine. And having to deal with sympathetic friends making sad faces would be difficult.

So I'm not really sure what to do.

In the end, I think I'll end up telling people we're trying to conceive, and having a big Pre-Pregnancy Party. Because that's the kind of person I am- I'm no good at keeping secrets, and I'm no good at keeping my fat mouth shut, and I think I should just embrace that.

RPG Update ('Cause You Care)

2010-06-24T10:06:00.001-04:00

My schedule has been crazy when it comes to weekend gaming lately. For a while, I was in a weeknight game, but that kind of fizzled out, and I let it be known that I was in the market for a new campaign. So two friends let me know of games starting up- one meets on Saturdays, and one meets on Fridays. So for the past few weeks, my weekends have been a little insane. Usually I do a Friday night game (Changeling) where we meet at my friend's apartment. It's fun- the group is small and consists solely of friends from college. This is unusual for us, since my college-friends kind of merged with my husband's friends- one of my best friends is married to my husband's old roommate, another college friend dated our husbands' friend for a long while, and the two groups have basically merged. For some reason, a lot of us moved to Worcester after graduation- some it was for relationships, others just happened to find work in the area and liked that there was already a friend-network existing. So it's kind of nice to have part of the old college gang gaming again.
I started bringing dinner a few weeks ago, since most of the group works and we're all trying to save money. I've been making various meals in my crockpot and then transporting them, but last week disaster struck- it was rush hour through Worcester, and there was a Statie on the side of the road with his lights on, and the car in front of me decided that slamming on their brakes was an appropriate response. So I slammed on my brakes, and the crockpot flipped over and spilled onto my passenger side floormat. I need to start making dishes that don't require the crockpot to keep warm. Also, I've now got to shampoo my floor mat.

The other game meets most Saturdays (or the occasional Sunday) and is pretty awesome. It's Fading Suns, a system I had never before played, but I've decided I love it. The GM made my character for me, because I don't have a source book and was unable to find one for sale in time, and everyone was using their copy. The GM knows my personality, so my character ended up being a gunslinger, which I find very often. She also happens to be a noble, which makes the insane gun skills way more fun. That game is going very well- my character, for various reasons, had the goal of finding a planet and conquering it and establishing her own lineage- which everyone agreed was quite insane, but went along with the plan because she paid well. And this week, we ended up conquering a planet and having several nations declare allegiance to my character, due to some spectacular dice rolls. I find it all hilarious. I am loving Fading Suns- it's science-fictiony, with jumpgates and interstellar travel, but there's the nice fantasy aspect of royal houses and intrigue and feudal systems.

I'm not that huge a fan of Changeling. It's part of White Wolf, so it's in the same world as Mage and Vampire and Werewolves. Except it's not nearly as fun as any of those. You roll D-10's, and only 8's and above count as successes. You start out very low level- there was one night where no one succeeded on any roll. It's not really fun playing an inept character who can't do simple tasks. We're changing the rules a little to make it more playable (7's are also successes now!) but I think if a system has been play-tested well, then you shouldn't have to change the rules to make it playable. The setting and the characters and the plot are fun, but that's less the system and more the gaming group.

I think Mr. HusbandDude has been enjoying his time off from me. Yesterday, he sealed our deck and worked on building a frame for the shutter for the whole house fan. Marriage is awesome- I think I first knew he was a keeper when I realized that when I told him "I just want to be alone", "alone" meant "away from everyone but you." But it's still nice to do stuff separately.
Mr. HusbandDude doesn't game. He has a few times, he's just not that interested in it. We are both dorks, but we are entirely different kind of dorks.

It's like Christmas in June!

2010-06-24T00:13:00.003-04:00

I've sold some yarn recently on Etsy (hurray!) and rolled some of that money into buying more fiber. I placed a big order at Webs (yarn.com, omg can't recommend them enough!) and currently in transit to me is a big box full of delights!

I ordered several pounds more of Corriedale roving. Corriedale is kind of my go-to roving, it's dependable- soft and fluffy with a long staple length that makes it easy to spin. I'm using it for a project I'm doing involving drop spindle kits, since it's a great fiber to learn on.

I also got some Merino superwash. I've spun Merino before (so soft! So luxurious!) but never superwash. It's supposed to not felt when you wash it, which makes the yarn easier to care for.

Then I got this Merino/Tencel blend. Tencel is this synthetic, sparkly fiber. I absolutely love how it looks in yarn, I'm a sucker for glittery things. I've never spun a blend before, since I don't have a drum carder or anything, so usually I just stick globs of it into whatever I'm spinning- with the blend, it'll be a smoother, more even bits of sparkle.

And then I got some "Firestar", which seems to be like Tencel, in that it's a synthetic fiber to add sparkle. I've never used this brand before, and the Webs website didn't a description, so I'm not really sure what to expect. I only got a little bit to experiment with.

I spent a while pondering whether or not I wanted to try spinning flax. I've never spun it before, and I have no clue what I'm doing. You've apparently got to keep your fingers wet, and I think that may be a pain in the ass. I decided again trying it this order, but maybe next time.

There was a bunch of other stuff I drooled over and decided against- Webs sells yak fiber, which I thought would be neat. They have some silk blends and angora and other soft and pretty fibers, but they were expensive and I was shopping on a budget. They have cashmere fiber. CASHMERE. FIBER. I'm going to dream tonight about spinning cashmere.

Webs' shipping is usually incredibly fast, I've already gotten confirmation that it's left their warehouse, which means that either tomorrow/today or Friday, I will have a box of treasures to play with.

I sell my yarn on Etsy to get rid of it so I can buy more fiber and spin more yarn. It's a cycle of AWESOME.

The worst part of painting...

2010-06-23T09:25:00.002-04:00

...is choosing the colors.

These are the colors that we're trying out. There are swaths of these colors painted in various spots in the foyer, and at one point or another I have liked each color. Right now, the upper right one ("Carolina Parakeet") is winning. My in-laws aren't wild about any of the colors. I'm making my friend come over for dinner in the next few days to get her opinion. I have no idea. I have spent hours staring at these spots of paint on the wall, and I still can't decide. "Carolina Parakeet" seems almost too weird to put on the wall, but it's not like it's a room we spend any significant time in, it's just an entryway. But on the other hand, it's the first impression people get of our house.

Which color do you like best?

Painting!

2010-06-22T09:45:00.001-04:00

It has come time to paint another room in our house. When we moved in, every wall of our house was painted this hideous vomit-brown. It's dark, it's ugly, and I hated it. Oh, and the trim? Coral-orange. ORANGE. Throughout the entire house, except for a wall in the living room which had been painted a murky turquoise for some inexplicable reason. And the walls of the master bedroom, which were a lovely "urine" color.

So we've been slowly painting each room. The three rooms I want to paint are the living room, the bathroom, and the "foyer"- the downstairs entrance and the stairs leading to the second floor, and the second floor landing. Since our living room is currently falling off of the house (which I don't want to talk about online due to pending legal issues concerning the fact that a room is falling off of my house) and may have to be rebuilt, and the downstairs bathroom involves hanging wallpaper and buying a replacement sink to be mounted to the wall correctly (I hate the former homeowner so damn much) that narrowed it down to the foyer.

I love bright colors, I love insane deep shades of colors. But I keep getting talked out of painting my walls anything out of the ordinary. I never got to choose paint colors for walls before, except once- and I ended up making a spur-of-the-moment decision, and the end result was something I like to refer to as "Barbie Puke Pink". So I'm nervous about paint decision. Plus, that sh!t is expensive.

I tried to paint my guest room lime green, I picked out two shades and tried them out, and both looked absolutely terrible. So the guest room is now a very subdued light blue that I randomly selected at the paint store without too much thought. It's a boring color, but eh, it works for a bedroom.

Then Mr. HusbandDude mentioned to me that he thought it weird how subdued the colors in our home are so far- a light pastel grey-purple, a light, more purple-grey, and two rooms of the boring blue. (We had an entire gallon of paint left over from the guest room, so we used it to paint the office.) The Mr. HusbandDude said he kind of wanted something a little "crazier", so I guess the foyer it is.

I went to Sherwin-Williams -we painted one room in the house using Dutch Boy or whatever the hell was cheap, and afterwards, a friend recommended we try at least one gallon of Sherwin-Williams. Holy crap. It's expensive, but you end up spending the same amount of money- the Dutch Boy took several coats and then lots of touchup, and the paint has that annoying nubbly texture. The Sherwin- Williams we always have leftover paint, because it usually takes only one coat. It's a frightening difference. It made painting much easier- it goes faster, it's less frustrating, and the paint is much smoother and nicer looking. Plus, we get a discount for signing up to be a "frequent customer" or something like that. (Doesn't actually matter how frequent you are.) I absolutely hate spending money on something expensive when there's a cheaper alternative, but in this case, it's totally worth it.

Another tangent: We switched back to brand-name paper towels after several months of experimenting with store brands. We tried Big Y, Hannafords, and Market Basket brand paper towels because they are significantly cheaper, and they sucked. I'm so glad to have quality paper towels again that actually mop up spills. I spill things a lot.

Back on topic: So I went to Sherwin-Williams (remember how I was saying that before I went crazy off-topic?) and got three sample quarters. Two are shades of purple, and two are shades of green. One is a very bright but light lime green, the other is called "marsh green" and is a kind of spring green. The purple ones are the same- one crazy bright purple, and one that's a little more subdued. This weekend, I'll coax Mr. HusbandDude into getting up the ladder and painting test swatches all over the stairway.

At first I was worried that a paint color with less white in it would be very dark, since the stairway has no windows and can get pretty dark. But then I held up paint samples to the wall, took a picture, and used Photoshop to make it grayscale- and it turns out that the bright greens and purples I liked were just as dark as the current paint. (who paints every wall in their house brown?)

I really, really hope that either the green or purple ends up looking good. Because my backup color plan is a very boring "biscuit", which is, er, the color of the inside of a biscuit.

Yarn Pr0n

2010-06-21T10:03:00.000-04:00

I spun a white merino roving super, super thin, then I tried to dye it half blue and half green. Except I used far too much dye, and the colors ran into each other in the pan, and I ended up with a mottled turquoise/ocean blue. So I wrapped it into two balls and plied it with itself to give it a more uniform look. The subtle shifting of color gives it a nice watery appearance.

random ramblings

2010-06-18T09:12:00.005-04:00

Sorry I've been lax about posting lately. My life has been busy but boring. I can't remember the last time I went to the gun range. This makes me sad, and I think I'll go either today or tomorrow. I'm not sure that I'm still a member at my club- the club meetings were the same night of the month as my Girl Scout leader meetings, and so I haven't been in about eight months, and I have no idea if membership resets for everyone the same month, or it's rolling. I guess I should try to find that out.

I really wish I had a smaller carry gun. I have a M&P 9mm, the full size. In the winter, it was no problem. Well, not totally no problem, it's fricking huge, and I find it difficult to conceal. But it's my only option right now, so I just wore giant sweaters when I was carrying. But in the summer, it's harder, and ewwww I sweat and it's gross. I need a better holster as well- I have a cheap generic one I bought online. I was waiting to buy a nice one when I had money, employment, something like that, but I'm still unemployed, we're still living off one decreased salary, and things to spend money on keep popping up.

Not that I really mind much. When Mr. HusbandDude and I first moved in together, I actually complained because our apartment was too nice. (Jeez, I'm a bitch.) No, hear me out- it was my first apartment on my own, my first rent on my own, and I feel like it should have been a craphole. I felt like I had to suffer a bit and have some hard times. My best friend told me "that's stupid, why can't you follow your own path?" and that made sense.
But still- it was kind of easy. And then we got married, and we bought this amazing house that literally has more rooms than I know what to do with. (Once we have kids, I know what rooms are going to be what and we'll be full up, but for now, what the hell do I do with two guest rooms?)

So in a bizarre way, I'm kind of glad that right now, money is tight. I have this cultural norm that when people first get married, times are tough and they've gotta scrimp. It's how my parents did things, it's how both of my parents' parents did it, and it just seemed right. Which is kind of a stupid thing to say, because basing life choices off of "it's always been done that way!" isn't a great idea, but there you have it. So I've been pretty upbeat through this. Mr. HusbandDude finds it a little weird that I'm happy about it, but meh, he's accepted my quirks.

Cooking With Laura!

2010-06-11T23:27:00.003-04:00

Today, I was insanely ADD. Ugh.

I have ADD. Sort of. I've been diagnosed with it, I have a prescription. I just don't really take meds for it. I hate taking medication, and I kind of hate NOT having the ADD. I like my racing thoughts, I like the crazy wild jumps of logic. It's what inspires me to be creative.

I used to take my meds for it a lot more- but I also used to be in college and sitting through three hour classes.

I was in therapy (for my depression) one day, and I was having a particularly crazy day and jumping all over the place, and my therapist said "Wait- do you have ADD?" and I said "No, although people are constantly joking that I do." And she said "Let's take a test!" and then I took a test and got a diagnosis and it changed absolutely nothing. But then one semester I had three once-a-week courses that met for three hours at night, and it was driving me insane. One of those classes was tiny, ten people sitting around a table, and it was absolutely impossible to not pay absolute attention.

I have some coping mechanisms that got me through school- I never sit by windows or doorways where interesting things happen. I don't sit directly next to people I know. I twirl my pen under the desk. I tap my feet. I take insanely detailed notes and try to focus on making them look a certain way- that's the best one, because then I can go back and read what I've written later, when I'm feeling calmer. I doodle like crazy. Doodling was a BIG coping mechanism- by keeping my hands busy, it allowed me to actually focus on what was being said in class. Except then professors/teachers would think I wasn't paying attention- most of the time, I absolutely was, I just needed to keep my hands busy. I used to constantly get in trouble in high school for doodling or not "paying attention", but it never occurred to me to iterate to my teachers that it was how I paid attention.

So this tiny, tiny class, I couldn't doodle in. I tried to explain to my professor that I keep my hands busy so I don't get distracted, but she was pretty dismissive and told me "if you're not looking at who is talking, you're not paying attention. And I don't want to see pens moving when people are talking!" The room we met in had two walls of windows, so unless I got to class super early, I usually ended up in a seat facing a window.

So I ended up taking ADD medication. It helped me survive that class. In fact, it was incredibly helpful. It was almost bizarre how well they worked. I did not expect results like I got- I expected it to be more like my antidepressants, which is to say, a slow gradual thing that I don't really notice until one day I do. But the Ritalin was immediate. I took it, I went to class, and suddenly I could focus. It was weird.

So I take it sometimes. I take it when I'm gaming with my friends. They can totally tell when I've taken it, too. Sometimes they remind me I need to. ;-)

But I'm not that big a fan of the meds. I like my mind the way it is, and I'm kind of okay with jumping all over the place. It just doesn't feel right otherwise.

Which brings me to tonight- tonight I probably should have taken the meds. We're having a birthday party for a friend tomorrow. And so I was running around my kitchen, simultaneously mixing cupcake mix, chopping onions, cooking pasta, baking bacon (it's easier in the oven), loading the dishwasher, and rearranging the refrigerator. It was chaotic and insane and holy crap I should have focused on one thing at a time. But somehow it ended up okay, and I can't believe that I didn't dump eggs into the dishwasher, throw out the bacon, and put macaroni in the cupcake mix. I guess tomorrow we'll taste everything and find out.

Yarn Pr0n

2010-06-09T14:50:00.000-04:00

This one is called "Dream".

I need to work on taking better pictures. My little digital camera's focus gets confused by fuzzy things like yarn and roving. And the color balance is off. I tried to fix it in Photoshop, but it's still not exactly right. Those pinks are more like a hot fuchsia.

I'm getting more into double plying. I like how it changes the colors from stripes of color into more of a mottled mixture.

This one's a bit thicker than I'm used to spinning. I got bored of ultra-thin. I like to see the striations of color as the fiber gets pulled together into the twist.

THE COMIC BOOK CHAIR!

2010-06-07T08:32:00.007-04:00

The Comic Book Chair is a many-year project. It started on a different chair, but I ended up switching to a more simple, straighter Ikea chair.

The decoupage is in four layers. The first is just strips of random comic books. The second, I cut out of my favorite comics and tried to include interesting dialog and my favorite characters (lots of X-Men and Batman!). The third layer was character portraits, cut out of their backgrounds and then glued onto the chair. The fourth, and my favorite layer, was sound effects and dialog boxes. The chair didn't really come together until the fourth layer- the sound effects pull everything together and makes it look like a cohesive piece of art.

You know what's hard? Cutting out individual letters of sound effects. But it was so worth the effort.

The chair was then sealed with a hard coat of sealant specifically for furniture, sanded, sealed, wet sanded and sealed several more times, and then several coats of UV-resistant urethane were added. The combination of the urethane and the fact that many of the comics were older to begin with adds to the yellow, faded look of the chair- but it's not going to fade anymore, thanks to the UV sealant.

I'm selling it in my Etsy store. I love having it in my house, but right now we've got a plethora of kitchen chairs. Four of them have been "crafted" by me, and I need to get rid of them to make room for more. Two chairs are currently in my garage in various states of painting and sanding. (oh, Glitter Chair, I can't wait to see how you come out!) (Jeez... I have a serious addiction.)

If you, my readers, want the chair, just let me know and I'll cut you a deal. Really, I just want the thing gone and to make enough money to justify buying another chair and doing it all again.

My iris bloomed

2010-06-05T07:47:00.000-04:00

Girl Scout Camping

2010-06-04T09:44:00.000-04:00

In an attempt to get my Daisies excited about Girl Scouting and to make them insist that their parents sign them up for Girl Scouts next year, we did an activity last meeting where we drew pictures of what we'd like to do in Daisies next year- it could be anything at all, I told them if they wanted to fly an airplane or ride a unicorn, just draw a picture and we'll talk about it. (Okay, I didn't actually say "ride a unicorn", because they're 6 years old and I would end up with 14 pictures of unicorns.)

The vast majority of the girls drew camping activities. Two drew tents, one drew an absolutely fabulous picture of a campfire, one just drew trees. One also drew a jellyfish, which I'm not really sure about, but maybe we can take a field trip to the aquarium.
So we talked during circle time, and shared our pictures, and all of them are insanely excited about camping.

*sigh*. So now we gotta go camping. Which I am simultaneous excited and terrified of. On one hand, holy crap, first graders in the woods. Fire, bugs, tripping over roots, sleeping away from their parents, bats (apparently that's something I need to be aware of...), holy crap so many ways girls can get hurt or it can all go horribly wrong.
But on the other hand, I really loved camping as a Girl Scout myself. Our troop only went camping once a year, at the town-wide camp-out every June. And it rained almost every year. Two years in a row, I got sick. Like, sick sick, puking my guts out, my mom had to come pick me up sick. I've only had the flu a few times in my life, and twice it was while camping. But still, I loved the experience. It's where I learned to build a fire, how to braid and how to make friendship bracelets, how to read a map. Those are some of my favorite memories, and I'd like to give the girls the same happy memories. (Minus the vomit.)

We're going to ease into it, starting first with a picnic at a campsite. Then we'll slowly go through the process of learning, and then hopefully by next summer we'll be ready to do a one-night trip. This trip may involve most of the parents, but hopefully by next year they'll be a little better behaved and I'll be less nervous about that aspect.

I also need to get trained. Girl Scouts has lots of training and certifications and such that I'll need to get. So that's what I've got to work towards. It'll be an interesting journey, and hopefully by this time next year, we'll be ready!

My Etsy Store

2010-06-03T10:50:00.003-04:00

Yarn Pr0n

2010-06-03T09:33:00.000-04:00

I've posted a picture of this yarn before, but it was nice out the other day and I set up a "light box" on my back deck and took some much nicer photos.

"Light box"= white poster board duct-taped to the back of a kitchen chair.

Maine Trip, Product Edition

2010-06-02T08:19:00.001-04:00

This is the brand of hand soap the Chinese restaurant we stopped in was using:

I like a product where the name is so avidly descriptive.

And when we stopped at the dollar store to pick up some supplies, this was at the check-out counter, where they usually put "impulse buys". I laugh every time I think that 1) Someone thought this would sell well at a dollar store and 2) Someone considers it an impulse buy.

yup, that's a dollar store pregnancy test.

Yarn Pr0n

2010-05-31T13:04:00.001-04:00

Happy

2010-05-30T12:41:00.003-04:00

This week was a very exciting week for me:

I made my first sale!

For the unspecified business I am doing. It's small, I don't see a very large potential for growth (I'm not going to get rich doing this) but it's something to do, and it makes some nice pocket change.

I feel so amazingly good that this was successful. I've been very busy this week getting product ready and working on packaging. My computer crashed horrifically in the middle of designing the label, and then refused to boot for me, telling me that the directory containing Windows was corrupted. Mr. HusbandDude is my hero, and somehow managed to restore everything except all of the Photoshop edits I had been working on that day. Eh, oh well, next time I'll remember to hit "save".

So I've been riding the high of making this sale. It was a small sale, but the organization is probably going to order more, potentially many, many more.

I also opened at Etsy shop to sell yarn. No sales yet, but lots of views and people "hearting" my item. I took pictures in my improvised light box, which was just two sheets of white posterboard taped to a chair dragged onto my back deck. Not the greatest. Tuesday, I'll visit Mr. HusbandDude at work and use his company's light box and nice camera, and hopefully I will get some better shots.

I spent all day Friday weighing skeins of yarn and counting yardage. I wind my skeins onto an 18-inch niddy-noddy made out of PVC. So when you take the skein off of the niddy-noddy, you have a 1-yard skein of yarn. So to get yardage, I just count how many strands go by one particular point, and then multiply by two to get a pretty accurate yardage count. But it takes a long time, and if I get distracted I lose count. I'm a huge fan of spinning lots of yardage- it's very frustrating to have this amazing, beautiful yarn, and then not even have enough of it to knit a hat with. Usually I dye in 4-oz batches, which means that if I'm spinning something very thin, I end up with A LOT of yards.

Hot

2010-05-25T20:34:00.004-04:00

omg it's hot.

We ordered a whole house fan replacement cover today. Why? Because we have a lovely whole house fan installed in the attic, only, uh, it has no cover. Well, it has a piece of plywood screwed over the opening. When you take off the plywood, there's just four giant metal fan blades, and the attic. No screen, no covering of any kind. Suffice it to say, we haven't used the fan very much.

Sometimes, I really, really, REALLY wish we had just built a house. Dealing with this house has been an exercise in frustration. From a slowing collapsing living room to leaky windows to holes in the bathroom wall, I'm fed up. It's hard just maintaining a damn house, let alone trying to fix it up from the craphole it used to be.

Why would someone remove the fan's shutter? WHY?

It looks like there used to be a shutter there, but it was cut out. WHY? Maybe because the giant fan actually blocks the only access to that portion of the roof? But there's still an effing giant fan in the way of getting to the attic. Maybe the previous owner really liked bats or squirrels and wanted the animals to be able to have easy access into the living space.

The most likely answer is the answer to every other weird thing in this house: the previous owner was a contractor who never actually finished a project. When we moved in, the backyard was home to a giant used bathtub, "because someday [he] was gonna get around to refinishing the bathroom." Okay, well, someday ain't coming, and now there's a freakin' bathtub in my backyard, a two-foot hole in the drywall over my toilet, and linoleum that has rusty screws driven into it for no apparent reason. It looks like he sat on the crapper one day with a screw gun and decided to practice.

Anyways. The point of this post is that the heat makes me incredibly bitchy. But you probably can't tell.

Guns and gays

2010-05-24T08:22:00.000-04:00

I don't see things in black and white. Or even gray- hell, I'm pretty sure I see the world in shades of hot pink and purple with a lot of glitter mixed in. (I am not a seven-year-old girl, I just think like one.)

Now, there are two issues that stand above the rest in the world of politics that seem to sway how I vote.

Gun rights and gay rights.

Both of these issues show a lot about a person. The first one shows how much a politician respects the Constitution and the government laid out for our country 200 years ago. These are principles our country were founded on, and absolutely should continue to guide us. Our forefathers knew about tyranny and about how governments can become oppressive.

The second one, gay rights, shows about how a politician views humans and decision-making. Should they police "morals" by forcing everyone to follow a strict code of behavior that they personally subscribe to (and often don't follow them- I'm looking at you, George Alan Rekers.)
Or are you a politician who believes in the inherent good of people, and that ALL people can make decisions for themselves concerning their lives, and that there is no "strict moral code" that must be followed. I don't care if you think homosexuality is immoral, you have a right to think whatever the hell you want- but your rights stop when they start to impede on mine. I think that asparagus is disgusting and can't believe anyone in their right mind would eat it, but I think I'm going to draw the line at insisting we outlaw asparagus. (It makes your pee smell funny! That can't be legal! Think of the children!)

So gun rights and gay rights are the two causes close to my heart. I believe that it states quite clearly in the constitution that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed (so stop infringing on them, Massachusetts) and that two consenting adults have a right to marry whoever they want.

You know what sucks? It's hard to find politicians and people who support both of these things. My gun friends aren't so big on the gays, and my gay friends aren't so big on the guns. I'm not sure how to make gun people love gays, but I am certainly working on gay people loving guns- I love to take my friends to the range and show them how to be safe and have fun.

The thing about both gun rights and gay rights is that it boils down to freedom. I have an inherent, basic self right to self-defense, and I have an inherent, basic right to be attracted to whomever I find myself attracted to. Government's job is to build bridges and roads and provide police and fire and ambulances and schools, not to make broad, overarching laws that restrict my most basic rights.

We're Back!

2010-05-23T18:25:00.003-04:00

We have returned from Maine.

It was AMAZING. Uh-Maine-Zing? Oh that pun is terrible. Please disregard. I suppose I could just go back and delete it, but I find it kind of hilarious, despite knowing how stupid it is.

Anyways. Our motel was perfect, it was on a little peninsula off of an island, so everywhere you looked you could see water. It was calming and relaxing. The lilacs on the island were still in bloom, which made me ecstatic. We had a lovely drive up, skipping 95 and just meandering up Route 1. We had amazing gelato, we stopped in at a Chinese restaurant that had the best quality-to-price ratio I've ever experienced, I got to stop in at a yarn store AND a gun store, we got lost and the 1976 map of New England that my husband keeps in his car (why does he have a map that is older than him?) disintegrated and was unreadable so we got a bit lost and kept driving anyway, to discover we were somehow on the exact road that led directly to the motel.

I'll write more about it later- I took a crapton of pictures. Right now, however, there are two VERY PISSY cats. Evil Kitty is demanding I pay attention to him so that he may ignore me.

Commence Vacation Countdown.

2010-05-21T17:54:00.004-04:00

A location has been chosen, and a motel has been booked: we're going to the southern coast of Maine! I've got a bunch of possible places to meander through on our drive up, it depends what we're in the mood for.

It was a bitch finding a good motel/hotel. Ideally, I wanted a little bit of luxury- I was hoping for a jacuzzi in the room. Currently, I can't really take baths at home. There are a number of factors that add up to a very cold bath: our hot water never gets hot enough (because our oil burner isn't working at full capacity, and the former idiot homeowner installed a 40 gallon holding tank for hot water, and it's a non-heated tank, which means the water just sits there cooling down), and the bathtub is a thin shell kind of bathtub and it's uninsulated and the water loses heat very quickly. Baths are kind of my coping mechanism, they're how I relax and when I'm feeling utterly miserable, baths were what calmed me down.
So I just wanted a room with a nice bathtub so I can light some candles and drink some wine and tank a bath. I couldn't find a hotel for cheap enough that also had a jacuzzi, so I decided to settle for just "has a bathtub". And then THAT became difficult to find, two places I called had just showers.

I found one resort that seemed perfect; it had lots of acreage and hiking trails and free canoes and rowboats for guests, and a heated pool and every room had a view of the ocean. Except they open next weekend, not this weekend. I bookmarked that one, and someday I'd like to try it out. I found one hotel that also seemed perfect for a more relaxing vacation; it had in-room fireplaces and a giant whirlpool tub and a deck overlooking the ocean, and it was a very affordable price. It was entirely booked.

So I ended up finding a small motel on a small island (there's a bridge) and it's right next to the water, and we can just sit outside and read and be near the ocean. Which I think is what both of us want- just a change of scenery and having nothing important to do. If we stayed at home, Mr. HusbandDude would feel guilty about not sealing the deck or stacking wood or replacing the MGB's transmission. So this way there's no need for us to do anything. We've got our books picked out, a suitcase packed with a bottle of wine and some plastic wine glasses, and we'll be taking the backroads as much as possible. Tomorrow and Sunday should be very nice days.

Yarn Pr0n

2010-05-21T08:49:00.000-04:00

This is 100% corriedale that I bought at a farmer's market. It is SUPER SUPER LOFTY. There's 348 yards of this stuff yet it weighs very little (about 4 oz.)

This yarn is old- I made it about three years ago. I dyed the yellow strand using Lemon-flavored off-brand Kool-Aid. I hated the color, it looked less "lemony" and more "banana-y".

The green strand was dyed using a small amount of green food coloring. I found a giant bottle of green food coloring on sale at Shop Right the week after Christmas, and so for a few months everything I dyed had some shade of green in it.

The two separate strands were not meant to be plied with each other, but when I put them next to each other they had such similar colorings that they asked very nicely to be united together in holy matrimony, er, a single thread.

I wanted to knit this into something for myself, but it has sat on my shelf for three years and I have had absolutely no inspiration for what to turn this into.

HOORAY! Emergency Vacation!

2010-05-19T20:13:00.003-04:00

Mr. HusbandDude has been pretty cranky-pants lately. So we were talking tonight, and decided that a very inexpensive mini-vacation was in order. Hooray!

We need a change of scenery, and it feels like lately we've just been hanging on and not really enjoying things.

So the plan is to leave Saturday morning and drive to our destination. Our destination should be within five hours of Massachusetts. It should be near water- a lake, a river, or the ocean. I'll find a very cheap hotel or motel or bed and breakfast. (Man, I love looking for things online. How did people do this before the Internet?)

I think that it's more than a five-hour drive to get to
sandy white beaches and palm trees, but a girl can dream.

Mr. HusbandDude is not very picky, he just wants to spend a night away from home and be near water, and not spend very much money. I think we can totally accomplish that. So now I get to spend tonight searching for an appropriate getaway.

Do you have any suggestions for when we can go? So far we have brainstormed Hampton Beach, and "Maine", so anything you can suggest would be helpful!

Hey Guess What?

2010-05-19T15:04:00.000-04:00

I'm starting my own business.

It's freaking terrifying.

It's just a very small, minor thing- I'm selling something spinning related. But it's still effing terrifying.

Like I said before, we're kind of broke. So maybe not the best time to be doing this? But I'm at home, I'm bored, I've got the idea, and other things I don't want to talk about online have aligned to make this quite do-able.

But every time I buy supplies for this, I get this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, like "I'm never going to earn this money back." Even though I'm quite sure I will, and it's not like I'm spending hundreds of dollars, but still.... eek.

Every single decision I make, I end up a bundle of nerves, thinking to myself "Was this the right decision?" Jesus, it's not even like I can't change things once it gets moving, but still... how do I know I'm doing this correctly?

Economies are cyclical, right?

2010-05-17T18:17:00.001-04:00

Due to "budgetary concerns" (we're broke), the lovely Mr. HusbandDude and I have been on a strict spending freeze. Technically, we have a very strict budget and if we stick to it absolutely, then we're fine- we're spending exactly the amount of money which is coming in. Which is so not how you're supposed to do a budget. Before The Big Pay Cut last spring, we were doing well- we had money for pay the mortgage, money for other bills, money for some fun stuff, and enough money to put into the bank for savings. Then The Big Pay Cut happened, and life got much scarier.

We dealt with it by "decreasing spending", which basically meant that every time we wanted to buy something, we had to stop and think "should we?". And then usually we bought it anyways. I guess we went out to dinner less often.

Then a few months went by and the economy still sucked. And we started to actually not buy things unless they were "necessary". Our definition of "necessary" at that point was kind of out of whack- video games and craft supplies still somehow fell under "necessary".

Then a few more months went by, and we realized that holy shit this isn't getting better and there was no pay raise in sight. And I had "finished" school and was unable to find a job and holy crap we need to reassess.

So made out a very strict budget that involved a lot of arguing. Like, Mr. HusbandDude wanted to spend a certain amount a month on computers, because he's a giant computer nerd and we do a lot of things with computers. And I said, okay, but that same amount you want for computers? I'd like that for a gun budget, because guns are awesome and I only have the one pistol and damn it I want a shotgun. And a rifle. And another pistol. And a bigger rifle. And maybe a revolver. And that led to an argument over what's more important, computer or guns, which somehow led to a larger philosophical argument about technology in the military, and I think I compared my husband to a nuclear bomb.

Anyways. So now we're not buying any computer parts or gun or gun accessories- we each get $50 a month "fun money" that we can spend on anything we'd like, and I have blown the past three months fun money on ammo, and Mr. HusbandDude is quietly and patiently saving his fun money up to buy parts to build himself a new computer. Which I think is a metaphor for our relationship.

So now we have a budget. We can go out to Friendly's for dinner twice a month, but sometimes we decide on Taco Bell instead. Yeah, that's our date nights now- Taco Bell. We used to go to the movies, but now we download them for free and watch them in our living room. My grocery budget is low, so we're eating a lot of rice. I've tried to make more dishes without meat in them, since that sometimes seems to be the most expensive part of the dinner. No actually unnecessary purchases whatsoever- when Mr. HusbandDude found a gas grill on the side of the road, we actually debated whether or not to spend the $40 to make it work again. (We ended up doing it- it's a seriously nice gas grill, and Mr. HusbandDude cleaned it out and scoured all of the rust off, and we always figured that if things got really bad, we could sell it for more than $40.)

I'm having a bit of communication problems with my friends concerning all of this, however. They totally understand the situation, but they're not quite "getting it". When I say "I can't afford that", I am not saying "Please talk me into spending the money, I just need a little push", what I am actually saying is "I do not have the necessary money to pay for that." I do not need to be cajoled, convinced, or strong-armed into doing something I can't. I want to, trust me, I want to:
-go to the movies with you
-go see that concert with you
-go out to dinner with you
-get take-out for dinner with you
but I actually can't.

Then one night a discussion ensued in which I was told to "just put it on the credit card". And it turns out that nearly everyone there that night was carrying some credit card debt. And so it became clear that holy crap they really don't understand not being able to afford something. They actually think that I am being rude when refusing to do social things that involve spending money, because to them, I always have the credit card option.

We actually DO put pretty much everything on our credit card- we have a very nice cash-back card. It's also very easy to track our spending when we can just look up what we spent, where, and when. But we pay it off every month. There were a few months, back when Evil Kitty got very sick and the vet bills became ludicrous (thousands of dollars) and we were so sick with grief over the cat that we just charged it without thinking about it. We paid it off in a few months, but those few months of debt were really scary. I can't imagine living with it all of the time. Well, living with credit card debt is probably made easier by all of the concerts, movies, and restaurants you get to go to.

A Tiny Confession

2010-05-15T09:32:00.000-04:00

I am totally waiting for my cat to die.

I swear I'm not a bad person. I love my cat, probably more than is entirely normal. I am not a crazy cat lady, per se, it's this specific cat that I'm crazy about. Evil Kitty is, well, quite evil. He was socialized rather poorly as a kitten- he was raised by a bunch of boys in college who all thought it was cute when the tiny little fluffball of a kitten attacked them with vigor, so they would laugh and playfight back. And so tiny little fluffball kitten grew up and kept doing it, and by then it was too late, you've got 19 pounds of fury bearing down on your head from his hiding place atop the entertainment center. It doesn't help that he's also a very large cat; he can put his front paws on the top of the counter (soooo not allowed, but that doesn't stop him) and if he stretches just a tad, he can lift his head above the height of the counter.

Evil Kitty also has a hell of a temper. He hates being picked up, being pet, being held, or generally being treated like one would treat a cat. When he was a kitten, he lived in a house with many people and many, many guests, all who thought the tiny fluffball of a kitten was adorable and needed snuggles- so many, many people force-snuggled him or pet him or touched him. It got to the point where as a young cat he actually started losing fur. So to combat constantly being adored, he decided to attack the crap out of people, I suppose. And now he's got this temper, and if something pisses him off, nothing can calm him down.* What Mr. HusbandDude usually does when Evil Kitty is losing his temper is offer the cat his arm- the cat will spend about ten seconds scratching and chewing the arm, and that seems to placate him.

*When Evil Kitty gets mad at me, I rub his nose. I don't know why, and it doesn't work for anyone else, but he always lets me rub his nose, no matter how angry he is at me. It's become my way of telling me "I'm sorry, I know I pissed you off, I promise I won't take any more pictures of you wearing a sombrero/I'll stop brushing you for the time being/I won't try to take you in the shower anymore (HOLY CRAP BAD IDEA!)/I'll stop tying bows around your collar and calling you "Princess"."

So while Mr. HusbandDude and I love Evil Kitty very, very, VERY much, he's also really annoying to have around. We can't really go on vacation. Last year, when Evil Kitty had cancer, we had to give him chemotherapy drugs and other medication every freakin' night. And no one else could do it- it was a two person operation that involved me shoving my finger into the cat's mouth and Mr. HusbandDude laying on top of the cat- it's not exactly the sort of thing you can casually ask a friend to do. It's certainly not something a kennel would do, or even be able to do. We couldn't go away anywhere for more than 24 hours, which made the past summer kind of suck.

Now, we've discontinued his medication, but we still can't go away for long periods of time. We went to Mexico two years ago for a week-long vacation, and a very close friend took care of the cats, but he was pretty scared the whole time on account of Evil Kitty likes to hunt him like a lion hunting a gazelle. Evil Kitty was fine with us being away for the first four days, but by the fifth day he started to go a little crazy and get a bit aggressive. By the sixth day, I got an email saying "YOUR CAT TRIED TO KILL ME, YOU GUYS OWE ME BIG TIME." The seventh day, aforementioned friend decided that the cats could go one day without food because he was too scared to come into the house.

Mr. HusbandDude took a business trip to Asia once, and he was gone for three weeks, and Evil Kitty went through his stage of extreme anger, and after that didn't work, he just decided to stop eating. I had to cook the freakin' cat chicken breast and coax him to eat by handfeeding him the chicken piece by piece.

I really, really want to go on a long vacation. (Not that we can afford it right now.) I want to drive cross country. Mr. HusbandDude and I have been making plans and looking forward to this. Except we can't go until Evil Kitty is dead. We can't bring him with us for a number of reasons, mainly I don't want to be that crazy lady who took her cat on vacation. We want to go for about three weeks to a month, and Evil Kitty would either die, or kill someone if we disappeared for that long.

***What about Hungry Kitty in all this, you ask? Don't you care about how sad Hungry Kitty will be if you go on a month vacation?
No. Hungry Kitty does not care if we live or die, so long as Hungry Kitty gets food three times a day. Hungry Kitty is pretty stupid, and I'm pretty sure he forgets we exist when we're not in his direct line of sight. If we dressed up a traffic cone in something soft and warm and put an automatic feeding device into the traffic cone, traffic cone would be Hungry Kitty's best friend.

Other life plans are also interfered with by Evil Kitty. Like, um, babies. 'Cause I can't have Evil Kitty around kids. He is an ASS and he looooves to attack children. He can't stand kids. Our niece comes over every few weeks, and Evil Kitty takes great delight in scaring the crap out of her, by waiting until she isn't paying attention or her back is turned, and then he runs at her, screaming his attack yowl.

I suppose you might be asking yourself, if this cat is such an absolute asshole, why do you keep him around?
'Cause I really, really like him. He likes me. For some bizarre reason, when Mr. HusbandDude and I started dating, Evil Kitty randomly decided he lurved me. One day, we were watching TV, and he jumped in my lap. "No big deal", I thought to myself. Well, this freakin' cat never voluntarily sits or snuggles or shows affection to anyone. Ever. But he jumped in my lap, made an angry "Hmph" that he makes, glared at Mr. HusbandDude, and curled up to go to sleep. It was weird and bizarre, and after that, Evil Kitty was my best friend. He followed me happily around the house, he curled up by my side whenever I sat down, and whenever I came over he'd greet my happily at the door with excitement. The whole meanwhile, he was also busy attacking Mr. HusbandDude's roommate's girlfriend with vigor to the point where she'd call my cellphone in terror because the cat had trapped her in the bedroom and she couldn't leave because he was in the hallway waiting for her.

I was super depressed at this point in my life, and for some reason, having this totally evil and mean cat love ME for no apparent reason made me feel really good. It made me feel like maybe I wasn't a totally awful person if something can think I'm worth loving above all of these other people. And that was kind of the push I needed to get my self-esteem back and start loving myself.

Mr HusbandDude later pointed out "Didn't you worry he loved you because you were as evil and twisted as he was?" No, no I didn't worry that until you pointed it out.

Damn it, though, I really, really, REALLY REALLY REALLY want to take a cross-country vacation. I want to be able to leave the cat for more than four or five days. I want to be able to have guests in my house without always making sure my body is in between the cat and any of his potential prey.

Good news and bad news

2010-05-13T20:32:00.003-04:00

When we got home, my husband was the first into the kitchen. He came out with a weird look on his face, and said, "I have good news, and I have bad news."

"What's the bad news?"

"Can I tell you the good news first because it's funnier that way?"

"Fine."

"The good news is that the ants have most definitely found the Terro liquid ant bait."

"And the bad news?"

"There's currently a line of ants leading from the ant trap to the wall..."

And he was right. There's a freakin' fifteen foot line of ants marching to and from the trap. We moved a few traps closer, but they haven't found those yet. So my kitchen is currently freakin' literally crawling with ants. So much for my dinner plans tonight- I'm not freaking going near the kitchen for the next few days. And once I do, I am sanitizing everything. Nothing in that kitchen will remain unbleached.

The line of ants also makes it very, VERY easy to figure out where the nest is. And it's not at all where I thought it was- it's on an exterior facing wall where the previous homeowner used to stack his firewood. So now that we have narrowed down where the nest is, should the current strategy of ant traps, ant bait, and poisoned sprayed around the perimeter of the house fail to work, we can go on to more invasive measures.

But oh god. I am very, very itchy. Seeing insects makes me itchy. I can't help it. Just thinking about insects makes my skin crawl, and then I scratch, and then I end up with giant gashes on my leg from where I clawed myself. It's taking a lot of self-control, deep breathing, and a nice cold glass of Jack&Coke to keep from freaking the hell out.

Anti-Depressant Free!

2010-05-12T19:58:00.000-04:00

It has been over two months now, so I feel secure in officially saying:

No more antidepressants for me!!!!

I was on and off antidepressants for ten freakin' years. For five years I have been on a steady and high dose of Cymbalta. But in the next few years I want to get pregnant, and I am very uncomfortable about the lack of any studies concerning Cymbalta and pregnancy. There just isn't very much data out there.

I hated putting chemicals into my body. I did it because I absolutely needed to. Antidepressants saved my life. They got me out of depression. But I just hate messing with my brain chemistry. And every time I'd forget a pill, I'd get these awful headaches and be reminded that holy shit I'm chemically addicted. It made me feel weak, it made me feel scared. Two years ago, I switched insurance plans and it took two weeks for the new plan to approve my medication, and the pills were like $12 for a pill, and so I went one week without the medication, and it was absolute hell.

(It was, however, sort of reassuring to be reminded that my suicidal urges and my insane depression were medical, and NOT MY FAULT. In a one week period, I went from happy and well-adjusted to a complete sobbing mess who was afraid to be left alone. Most of that was simply from the withdrawal symptoms, though.)

I decided to go off of my antidepressants at this particular moment because of a weird reason- because life kind of sucks right now. I am unemployed and am having a very hard time finding a job, and because we're broke I can't finish my degree, which means I basically stay home all day and do nothing except spend an hour each day sending out resumes. Mr. HusbandDude's salary got cut by a significant percentage at work and his work slowed way down, which means he's insanely stressed. We bought a house last year and now have the burden of mortgage payments. We're having a very hard time with money- we're just making it, and I constantly feel like we're teetering on the very edge. Each month I breath a sigh of relief we've made it, and then something happens, the car breaks down or someone chips a tooth or our town raises taxes, and then it's back to teetering.

So I thought that if I can go off antidepressants now, and still be okay, then I'm definitely fixed.

And holy crap was it hard. I had some serious withdrawal symptoms. They're called "brain zaps", and it's like this bizarre headache that, umm... it's hard to explain, but it's like your entire head quickly fills with pressure and then pops. From what I've read online, it seems like they may be mini-seizures, and your brain suddenly is overwhelmed with electrical activity. Again, there isn't much research into the withdrawal symptoms associated with long-term use of Cymbalta.

I ended up having to decrease veeeeeery slowly, and by the end I was opening up 20mg capsules and counting out the individual grains of medication.

But it's been two months since my last pill of some minuscule amount, and I feel great. I feel... well, I feel pretty much like I did before going off the medication. No suicidal thoughts, no depression symptoms, I'm doing well.

The only thing that is different is that my body hurts more. Cymbalta is also a general "pain reliever" (I don't know why) and while I was taking it, I don't think I felt pain as much. So now suddenly my body is full of these aches and pains that I never knew were there before. So that's kind of weird to get used to.

It's great not having to remember to take my pills every night. It's great not having to pay $45 at the pharmacy every month. And it's amazing not to get horrific headaches every time I forgot to take a pill. It's also great to realize that I am no longer big-D-Depressed. I know I'll always have to watch out for it, but right now, I am actually living life like a normal person, with feelings of happiness and sadness and everything in between. Maybe not exactly like a "normal person", because now, whenever I feel happy, whenever I feel content, I look around and I appreciate it. Because I can remember a time when I couldn't, and I remember thinking to myself "I'll never feel happy again", and I am so amazingly happy that I was wrong. I appreciate happiness now.

This Means..... WAR

2010-05-11T22:01:00.006-04:00

How can I not fear this? God, it's terrifying.

We have a carpenter ant problem.

It started small. When we bought the house two years ago, we would occasionally find a carpenter ant or two, usually right in the threshold of the door. Eh, no biggie, I could deal. Then last year it got a little worse, and maybe every week or two one would show up on the floor. Eh, slightly larger deal, but no reason to worry.

Well, clearly the past two years were just exploratory missions to decide the feasibility of colonization, and the Ant Monarchy hath decided that our house would make a suitable home. Because over the past two weeks, those little f*ckers are everywhere.*

*To normal people, "everywhere" means I found about twenty on the stairs one morning, and one or two every three or four days. To someone with a bizarre and unrelenting fear of insects, that's "EVERYWHERE."

Today, however, today was when I was pushed too far. Today was when I went from warily mistrusting my Wall Neighbors, and declared six-legged creatures Enemy Combatants.

Today... THEY INVADED MY SALSA.

I was craving tomatoes, I was craving cilantro. I had three lovely ripe tomatoes, an onion, and a fresh pot of cilantro on my windowsill. So I made salsa. I lovingly crafted salsa. It was the greatest salsa that ever was. Okay, it was actually pretty simple: tomatoes, onions, cilantro, basil, black olives, salt, and pepper. But to me, it was exactly what I was craving, it seemed pretty damned healthy to me, and it was lunchtime. That, my friends, is a recipe for awesome.

Then I went to transfer some of the salsa to a small bowl for serving. And, that's when it happened...

THREE CARPENTER ANTS FELL INTO THE SERVING BOWL.

Oh lordy, it was awful. It was terrible. My mortal enemy, falling out of the Greatest Dish Ever.

See, the salsa took some time- I diced up the tomatoes really small, and then the onions looked too big compared to the tomato bits, so I diced those up really small. And in the approximately half hour it took me to slice all the ingredients to ridiculously small pieces, some ants must have crawled into the bowl of tomato bits that was sitting on the counter.

I moved the bowl into the sink, and behind the bowl were three more. The first wave had sent for reinforcements!

So I threw out the salsa, because the very thought of salsa now turns my stomach and makes my throat tighten up in a bit of panic, and I Lysol-ed the crap out of the entire area. And then I cleaned my entire kitchen for good measure. And then I took a shower.

So this was kind of the final straw. Plus, my mother tells me that this means they've got a nest in the house somewhere, if I'm seeing so many of them. Oh, you little shits, you couldn't have just lived outside, where there's tons of dead wood for you to make nests in. Noooooo, you had to come into my house and try to eat my salsa.

So I guess now the carpenter ants have a human problem. Prepare for war, bitches.

Frost Warning

2010-05-10T19:11:00.002-04:00

For my more local readers, just wanted to let you know there's freeze warning tonight for the area- most of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

I meant to go to the garden center and get a few more plants to put in the beds flanking my patio, but instead I stayed indoors all day and read a freakin' awesome book. (The Ghosts of Belfast, Stuart Neville) So now I don't feel guilty about that, I feel psychic. Yeah, that's why I completely ignored today's to-do list and read a book instead- I'm clairvoyant!

2010-05-10T08:21:00.004-04:00

I have been spinning so much lately that I broke my spinning wheel. It was working, and then suddenly the pin that connects the footman to the wheel started slipping. It had already broken once a few years back, and been repaired, but it was the kind of repair that can only be done a finite number of times before we run out of wood to reattach it to, and that means the end of the wheel's life. (Or a very costly replacement of the center of the wheel.)

I started to get a little upset, because HOLY CRAP BELOVED WHEEL IS BROKEN, when Mr. HusbandDude leaped up and said "I can fix it!" And within five minutes, he had repaired the original repair, and everything was right as rain.

I know it's a bit (okay, more than a bit) sexist, but hot damn I love it when my husband fixes things. It makes me feel taken care of and secure, like there isn't any problem that one of the two of us can't handle. I also really admire the fact that my husband gets mechanical things. I am a moron when it comes to mechanics of objects. I cannot hold a three-dimensional object in my head, it completely baffles me. In order to finally understand how the clutch on a car works, I actually had to dismantle one and physically see what the hell was doing what. Yet my husband, he can not only picture the item in his head, he can also picture how to repair said item in a variety of creative and ingenious ways.

More Yarn

2010-05-09T08:34:00.001-04:00

I'm on a yarn-making streak here. I don't know why. Whatever, it's productive and I can sell it later, and it makes me happy. I don't think I've ever spent this much time spinning.

Dyed using Jacquard Acid Dyes. The roving is this chunky, not-very-smooth domestic wool I got from a yarn mill up in Maine. It's slubby and chunky and erratic- sometimes it's super thin, sometimes it's very thick. I wanted something that looked absolutely "hand spun" and had a very eclectic quality to it. I'm thinking of calling it "Mood Swing". There's about 100 yards of it.

Employment

2010-05-07T12:52:00.004-04:00

I am starting to get pretty frustrated with my employment situation.

I had a job for a week and a half, but I quit. Why? Because they weren't paying me. It was a sales commission-only job, and I was told that it would be several weeks before I would be "allowed" to go on sales calls on my own. My main job duty for that week and a half consisted of compiling leads and information on leads for the sales manager, who would then go and make the sale, and collect the commission.

I feel terrible for quitting, mostly because I'm the kind of person who never quits anything- I took piano lessons for ten years, until I went off to college, and I'm still in Girl Scouts, as you can see. Quitting that job made me feel like such a failure, but working insanely hard for no money and no real benefit to me is insanely stupid.

So I'm back to applying for jobs. And I'm frustrated. I try to apply for at least one job a day, but it's usually more. And sometimes I get phone interviews, I've gone on about twelve in-person interviews, and I've gone back for five second interviews, and one "third interview" for a doctor's office that couldn't make up its mind. But no job. And it's driving me nuts. I feel powerless, I feel unimportant, I feel like a failure. We're making ends meet with Mr. HusbandDude's job; when we budgeted for the house and our daily lives, we made sure to stay well within what his salary could provide, since I was still in school. But then Mr. HusbandDude's salary got cut significantly, and we are still making it, but barely. So every time we have a money issue, or the stupid car breaks down and needs $1000 in repairs (like it did this week) then I just get this feeling in my chest of... well, I don't know what, but it hurts like overwhelming sadness. I feel helpless.

Setting The Twist

2010-05-06T09:10:00.002-04:00

A few skeins I've spun recently have been very twisty, and I needed to set the twist. Sometimes, just wetting the skein and letting it dry is enough to "set the twist", and sometimes you need a little tension to stretch out the twist just a bit.

Why yes, that is a large model rock, styrofoam cooler, Christmas tree stand, and a chandelier.
Holy crap I need to clean the garage.

Mr. HusbandDude came home from work today to find this bizarre rig in the garage. At our old apartment, I had built a cool rig over the sink, where the yarn would hang down from a PVC pipe between the cabinets and I'd just tie the end to a bottle of laundry detergent laying in the sink. But The New House doesn't really have any places I could think of to do this. So I ended up rigging bungee cords hanging down from a hook in the ceiling for an engine mount. Right now, it looks like there's some strange Yarn Bondage going on in there.

I have no idea how I'm going to get each skein off without sending the other ricocheting through the garage.

Yarn!

2010-05-05T21:04:00.008-04:00

I dyed this batch of roving using Easter egg dye tablets- they were on sale at Wal-Mart after Easter. I used about 1/3 of a cup of vinegar to dissolve the tablets, and then I poured about half of each color on the roving, then I diluted it with some water and poured more on until all of the white was gone. I was trying to make areas of differing brightness of the dyes, but I failed.

Oh well, it's still pretty:

WHY WON'T YOU BURY YOUR POOP?

2010-04-26T20:36:00.007-04:00

I am pretty sure that my neighbors think that I'm insane. First of all, sometimes I bring the cats out into the front yard- on a leash. Yeah, I'm that crazy cat lady who takes her cats outside on a leash. Evil Kitty is downright stupid. He eats cigarette butts. And it's not like once I caught him chewing on a stray cigarette butt- he's a freaking nicotine-seeking missile. He will sniff out any and all cigarette butts in the yard and immediately devour them like they are Kitten Candy. Gee, I wonder how he got stomach cancer. Okay, it was actually lymphoma, so probably not from the cigarette butts, but damn cat, those things cannot be healthy for you. The weirdest part? This cat has the most delicate, sensitive stomach I have ever seen- he eats a blade of grass and within a few minutes he's puking up everything he's had to eat that day, occasionally if you get him stressed enough he'll just randomly puke, (he's an angry puker) but damn if he's ever vomited up a frickin' cigarette. Those seem to agree with him.
So that's me, standing in the yard with a cat on a leash.

Plus, I'm pretty sure I've accidentally flashed my neighbors on more than one occasion. Damn it, I hate pants. I hate wearing pants. And if I don't have to get dressed then damn it I don't want to. I'm definitely sure that the UPS guy has seen me naked, he doesn't ring the doorbell anymore and there was a very uncomfortable moment a few weeks ago where I was heading down to the laundry room (to get pants, damn it) and we made eye contact through the window panes. *Sigh*. I've since realized that my house is not conductive to no-pants-wearing, and I've started at least putting on a bathrobe. Stupid suburbs with their stupid houses with windows. I miss my second-floor apartment next to the cemetery. No pants were ever necessary there.

Anyways. So my neighbor's kids were probably not that surprised today when they rode their bikes by and they could hear me standing next to the screen door, screaming at my cat "WHY DON'T YOU BURY YOUR POOP? BURY IT! BURY IT!" Jesus, that cat is stinky. He's on this stupid frickin' duck-protein only diet because of his sensitive stomach and his previous bout with lymphoma, and his poops have become the most vile things. He runs to the litter box, drops a deuce, and then immediately runs out of the litter box, yowling as he runs. Yeah, dude, I know, it smells. It must smell if you insist on running away from it in fear. But because it smells so much, he wants to get away, and he won't bury it. Occasionally, Hungry Kitty will wander over to the litter box, scrunch up his nose, and try to bury it for him, but by them it's been sitting out in the open and the damage has been done. I feel bad for Hungry Kitty, it's got to be pretty sad to have to bury someone else's poop, but I admire his bravery.

2010-04-24T16:15:00.002-04:00

This is my FAVORITE time of the entire year- the time of spring when the leaves have juuuuust burst forth and aren't at their full size yet but the entire woods is this explosion of light green that wasn't there the week before. The week that I suddenly look around and go "holy cow, winter is over!" and realize everything's lived through winter. I survived!

I have spent all day being deliriously happy working in my garden. Actually, there was a half hour of horror when I found a bee walking on my arm, and that required some tears and fleeing to the house. I hate bees. I'm terrified of them. I try my best to ignore them and get over it because I'm 26-frickin'-years-old, maybe I should stop crying at the sight of them, but I can't help it. But the rest of the day was great. I planted a lilac bush that my sister-in-law gave me for my birthday, and I transplanted a small Korean lilac that my best friend from kindergarten gave me as a wedding present. (I had planted it in a bed and then last year when digging a hole for another tree, we discovered that when the previous owner had moved the driveway, he had neglected to dig up the old one- he just poured dirt over it and left it there.)

I'm so damn happy today, it's starting to concern me. I can't remember the last time I smiled this much.

Pet Peeve

2010-04-23T22:05:00.002-04:00

I hate, hate, HATE, HATE websites that play videos automatically. It drives me insane. I'm surfing alone, clicking "open in new tab" as I'm wont to do, and then suddenly noise is playing from somewhere and I have no clue and why is my computer making noise I didn't ask it to?

I went to fabric.com and a little pop-up ad of some lady starts playing. She offers to help me navigate the website. No! NO NO NO!

I just split a nice* bottle of red wine with my husband, and I'm slightly drunk and very distracted and so confused as to why my computer is talking to me.

*nice=cheap. The local liquor store had a sale on some merlot and shiraz, 4 for $12. And it doesn't suck, either.

The Checkout Game!

2010-04-16T20:02:00.004-04:00

The Checkout Game is where you try to find a combination of items to freak out the cashier. For some reason in high school my friends and I found this absolutely hilarious and would play constantly (which led to our possessing a lot of weird items.)

Today at Wal-Mart I purchased 1,100 rounds of ammunition, plastic sheeting, and several boxes of tampons. The lady at the sports counter was giving me some really weird looks, and I couldn't figure out why.

What Snack Should I Bring To The Daisy Meeting?

2010-04-16T17:20:00.003-04:00

There are a couple of things I wish my Daisy parents would consider when deciding what to bring for a snack to the meetings. Next time I send out a mass e-mail, I'll probably include a less snarky and more generic version of this.

1)Allergies- Allergies are probably the most important thing to consider. Holy crap are kids allergic to things these days. None of the girls in my troop are allergic to peanuts, but we still can't have anything with any nuts in them, because one of the girls has a brother who is allergic and she can't get anything nut-related on her. So definitely ask your Daisy leader if there are any allergies or issues to be aware of.

And don't bring in something awesome for everyone and some "alternative" snack for the sole girl with allergies. That's rude and mean and how would you feel if someone brought in something awesome for every girl except your daughter? It's not the Daisy's fault she has allergies.

2)SUGAR - Wow does sugar affect their behavior. After certain snacks, the girls become wild. Processed sugars generally make them into little terrors that have me kind of wishing I had an electric cattle prod. Two weeks ago, the snack parent dropped off CAKE and said "have fun with them, I know what *my* daughter's like with sugar in her..." Why??? Why????
I think that next year we're going to have a big push for HEALTHY snacks. Carrot sticks and natural pretzels.

3)Messiness - We meet in a room in the elementary school, and I am responsible for keeping the room neat. Well, technically, the girls are, but they are five and six years old and I tried that the first meeting and they just made a bigger mess of things. I mean, they clean up after themselves quite nicely as far as throwing away their napkins and cups, but crumbs get EVERYWHERE. Frosting? Oh, how the frosting got places- their hair, under the table, on the chalkboard, on me... I ended up going over every surface with a wet wipe. So before you decide on a snack to bring, think "Would I want to clean up the results of fifteen hyper girls eating this?"

That's really it- it's easy. And it's in order of importance- allergies, sugar, and messiness. You can bring in the neatest, healthiest food but if any of the girls are allergic, it's a crappy snack. And if you bring in something that everyone can eat and is healthy, I won't mind the mess as much.

GLITTER IS MY FAVORITE COLOR

2010-04-15T18:41:00.003-04:00

I keep searching the Internet, but I have been unable to find bulk glitter. The biggest amount I can buy is 1lbs.

I have two upcoming craft projects planned with glitter. One is a practice run on the other. The other, oh the other, it is going to involve the stock of a Ruger 10/22. I cannot freaking wait to see how this comes out.

A wise crafty friend once told me that glitter is the herpes of the craft world- it spreads really easily and stays on you forever. So these are summertime projects and that shit isn't coming into my house. I have nosy, stupid cats who will roll in anything, and my last apartment's carpet bears the glitter scars from the last time I attempted it.

Yay Root Canal!

2010-04-14T16:27:00.003-04:00

I just had a root canal done. It was WONDERFUL. Okay, it actually sucked quite a bit before, during, and for about a half hour afterward, but right now I am sitting here and for the first time in five days, my mouth is not in absolute unbearable pain. It was also super fast- I was in the office for two and a half hours, but most of that was prep work, the actual drilling and scooping and washing and filling part took about ten minutes.

I just wanted to share my joy with you, Dear Readers. 'Cause HOLY CRAP IT IS NICE TO NOT BE IN PAIN.

Since Saturday, I have spun A LOT of yarn. A ridiculous amount. Because spinning keeps my feet and hands busy and lets me be easily distracted without too much mental effort. I'm so glad I dyed all that roving last week, because I've spun nearly all of it.

Tooth pain is the worst. Popping a kid out is going to be no sweat compared to this week's pain.

2010-04-12T19:27:00.003-04:00

I have a toothache. Except "toothache" does not quite accurately portray the IMMENSE DAMNED PAIN I AM CURRENTLY IN. It's a combination of things that have combined into a perfect storm of pain in my mouth.

Long story short, we have no dental insurance, and I had to wait two days to see the dentist. And then the dentist slammed the drill into my tooth. Twice. And then acted surprised at the tears. "Oh, does it hurt that bad?" YES IT HURTS THAT GODDAMNED BAD.

I'm miserable. I can handle pain, but only when I know it will end. My lovely (now former) dentist told me "it will probably feel better by next week". I asked him "how can I make it stop hurting? Tylenol? Numbing gel?" and he said "oh, I don't know, just give it time, a week or so..." NO TELL ME WHEN THE OUCHING IS GOING TO STOP.

I would gladly trade falling down a flight of marble stairs and breaking my arm ANY TIME for this tooth pain. I didn't mind the stupid broken arm, but the pulsing throbbing pain in my face is driving me insane. I miss eating. I miss sleeping.

Dyeing Yarn!

2010-04-08T11:20:00.013-04:00

I spun up some Romney wool roving. I spun it kind of thick, mostly because all I've been doing lately is super-thin, and I wanted a change.

When I wind my skeins, I do so on a half-yard niddy-noddy, so the end result is that one complete loop of the yarn is exactly a yard- it makes counting yardage easy. But I didn't want the striations in the yarn to look "stripey" or appear too uniform in the final skein, so instead of wrapping the skein to be dyed on the niddy-noddy, I wrapped it around two chairs. Hopefully those two chairs were not exactly a yard apart, or it was all for naught.

For this particular batch of dyeing, I used Jacquard Acid Dyes. Sometimes I use Kool-Aid if there was a sale at the store, sometimes I use food coloring, and occasionally I will use those Easter Egg dye tablets. The tablets are really just food coloring in a dissolvable tablet- stick it in a cup of vinegar, and you're ready to go.

So first, you're going to want to soak your yarn or roving for a while in room temperature water. The fiber needs to be wet. If you are dyeing with Kool-Aid or food coloring, you're also going to want to add some vinegar to lower the pH of the yarn. That will help set the dye.

After the yarn has soaked for a while, GENTLY squeeze the water out. You've got to be very gentle- wool can easily felt, and if you're dyeing roving and you agitate the wool too much, you're just going to have a big lump on your hands, and you won't be able to spin it.

Now comes the really fun part. You probably want rubber gloves. If I don't wear gloves, then I end up with bright red or bright blue hands for a week. Plus, you should probably keep those chemicals off of your skin.

Here's how I dye: I wing it. The whole thing. I learned a loooong time ago that when it comes to me and being creative, I cannot plan it. I just get too frustrated when what I picture in my head cannot come to fruition. So I just sort of "wing it" and see what I end up with, and enjoy the ride. Which is a pretty good metaphor for how I live life- I used to care and worry about everything, and life sucked and I was really stressed. Now, I try not to worry- there are so many things I can't control, so I should sit back and enjoy the ride.

So if you're the kind of person who likes exact measurements and scheduled timetables, this method of dyeing is not for you....

After the yarn has been gently squeezed out and is no longer dripping, I arrange it in a baking pan as flat as I can get it. I use a disposable aluminum pan for this, because 1)I don't want to use chemical dyes in something I am going to cook food on and 2) I accidentally dyed a pot green using Kool-Aid and I'd rather not do that again.

Okay, now tap a little bit of the dye powder into a container. I used a jar to make a more concentrated dye amount, and then I poured about half of the dye solution into a plastic cup and filled it up with water. Why? Because now I had two different dye solutions- one more concentrated which will be more vibrant and bright on the yarn, and the other less concentrated and more diluted, which means that the spots I dye with that solution will be paler.

Really, I'm not sure why I am using jars- it seemed like a good idea at the time. But since I'm only mixing a small dye amount and using it all, I don't really need to save the jars for any reason. Next time, I'll just use plastic cups.

Yay, it's fun time! I used a small plastic syringe to draw up and dispense the dye. Some people recommend using a thick bristled round paintbrush, but I didn't have one of those. In the past, I have just poured the dye in strips over the yarn, but I wanted to use less liquid here so that the colors would bleed less. The wetter your yarn or roving is, the more likely the color is to "bleed" into one another and mix on the edges. Which is a very cool effect when you get the colors mixing.

Here's the final dye job. I did yellow on the end, vermillion next, then another small stripe of yellow, then fire red. The stripe of yellow in the middle of the two reds was an attempt to make orange. I added extra liquid there to make the colors run into one another.

Now cover the pan with aluminum foil, and bake in your oven for a while. I say "for a while" without being to0 specific, because people's recommendations for this method of "baking" the fiber are all over the place- some people say 45 minutes at 150°, another said half an hour at 350°. Really, you just want the dye to get hot and it to get really steamy inside the pan. So I did 45 minutes at about 300°, and that seemed to work pretty well.

Once it's done baking, turn off the oven and just let the yarn sit there to cool off. Do not expose the fiber to extreme temperature changes! Yarn hates that.

The finished product! It looks, um, exactly like it did before it went in the oven, except trust me, it's much hotter to touch.

Once it's cooled down, rinse it with tepid water- do not let the faucet rinse right over the yarn, that will agitate the fibers and cause it to felt. I like to plug up the sink, and then slowly let the water fill over the yarn, and then drain, and then do it again until the water runs clear. The water should run clear very quickly. If you heated up the dye properly, then there should be none left to rinse out.

Okay, I've got some dye left over, let's do some roving!

I'm super careful not to felt roving. This particular roving was a 100% Romney, and it is a dream to spin- it's super soft, and the draft is incredibly smooth. So I didn't want to inadvertently felt it and end up with a nasty clump of gross on my hands.

I did pretty much the exact same thing to the roving as I did to the yarn. The stripes of color are not as apparent here because I flipped over the roving to get to the underside, and I pushed it around with my fingers a lot to spread the dye.

Then I baked it, rinsed it, and spread it out to dry. When the roving comes out of the pan, it won't be all fluffy and cute, it will be twisted and compacted. So you need to spread it apart to let it dry. Just pull the fibers apart gently by hand to make the roving lie flat. Separate any big clumps of fiber to let it dry.

I cannot wait to spin this!!

It still wasn't dry this morning, and I am very impatient to spin this roving, so I hung it outside over two lawn chairs to dry.

So that's how I dye! (Sometimes). Check back later, I'll post pictures of the skein of yarn, and of that roving once I spin it.

2010-04-07T17:13:00.007-04:00

Today is gorgeous. It's in the 70's, sunny and beautiful out.

I planted a bunch of iris rhizomes my mother-in-law gave me. She dug them up in the fall, but I procrastinated putting them in the ground for too long and then it snowed. So I have no idea if they'll actually grow or not. The only advice I could find on the Internets was "put them in the ground as soon as your separate them" and variations on that, so I'm not sure how well the little rhizomes will do after wintering in a paper bag in my garage. Some of them have tiny little green buds shooting out, so I'm thinking that's a positive sign. We'll see.

I've got some hops to put in the ground as well. I don't home brew beer, I actually don't particularly care for beer, but I just love how hops look. I've never seen them growing before, but one night Mr. HusbandDude and I were watching some home improvement show on TV (probably Ask This Old House, we love that show) and someone had hops growing in their yard. They're funky looking, and they grow super fast. I want to grow some sort of vine along my deck to kind of hide the exposed underside and give the yard a little more greenery, and I think hops will do the trick.

Hungry Kitty, my little fat cat, is being a pain in the ass right now. He is sitting at the front door meowing to go outside. He's an indoor-only cat, except on rare occasions when he gets to go outside under supervision. But lately, he's been meowing constantly at the door, and now I hate taking him outside because when I pick him up to take him back inside he actually hisses at me. I feel bad forcing him to be an indoor cat when he clearly loves the outdoors, and we do plan on someday letting him go outside on his own, but right now-

1)Our town is having a serious problem with rabies, there's been two rabid raccoons killed within a mile of our house

2)Last year, we had coyotes living in the large area of woods behind our house, and the coyotes had pups. I am assuming that they are still out there.

3) Ticks- we had a HUGE tick problem last year. They were everywhere. You couldn't walk from the house to the car without getting at least one tick on you. I thought this year would be better, since we've cleaned up lots of brush and debris from the yard and cut down trees that were overhanging the yard, but on Saturday we had a bunch of people over, and again, lots of ticks were found on clothing and skin. (I'll make a post later about chickens and other tick prevention I've been looking in to.)

4) Hungry Kitty is kind of stupid. I worry that he'll wander off, beg someone for food, who will then feed him, because Hungry Kitty is very good at convincing you he is starving to death. And so they'll feed him, and then he will never come home because he found a house that will give him food, and then they'll feed him too much and he'll get really fat and die. (Both cats have collars with tags, and I thought about getting engraved on the back of his tag something like "I am in fact not starving to death, please do not feed me.")

5)Poison Ivy- when we first moved into the house, there was a serious poison ivy issue going on- the entire woods next to the side of the house was infested. It was growing along the wall, growing up the sides, growing over the trees and all over everything. I didn't want the cats going outside and getting the oil all over their fur and then coming inside and contaminating all the furniture. I'm not allergic to poison ivy, but Mr. HusbandDude is, and one of my best friends is crazy allergic.
That's not so much a problem anymore, my grandfather came over and ripped down every vine he could reach and then sprayed everything with poison. And then I did it again two weeks later, and repeated every month. So I'm hoping that all of it is dead by now. I need to find some shade-loving ground cover plant to cover over the ground to choke out any intrepid poison ivy vines that decide to stage another hostile takeover.

Right now I've got a skein of yarn cooling in the oven- I spun it thick and then dyed it reds and yellow to make a kind of fiery look. (Don't worry, I took pictures.) After the pan's cooled down, I'll use the leftover dye to dye a bit of roving, and then I'll spin the roving. It'll be interesting to see the difference between the dyed yarn versus the dyed roving.
I've got another skein of yarn drying in the bathtub right now. (I like to wrap it on the niddy-noddy tightly, then get it wet, and then let it dry on the niddy-noddy as a way of stretching it out and keeping it from kinking up when I ply it.) I'll dye that one, and then ply it together to see what the colors do there.