Gardening, Knitting, and Patience

I knit pretty much anywhere and everywhere. I've knit through school board meetings and classes and seminars and road construction and wedding receptions and conference calls and many, many dinners out and parties and social events. I knit because it calms me down. I knit because it gives me something to do while I wait. I knit because I enjoy it and the good feelings of the knitting fit the good feelings of the social event. I knit because the baby I'm knitting for is having a growth spurt AS I KNIT. I knit for lots of reasons. But I don't knit because I AM a patient person. I knit in spite of being an impatient person.

Today Gaye and I went to Lowe's and bought a few potting and seeding supplies for me so I can start my hot pepper plants. I have written on my gardening calendar for today "start pepper seedlings." Technically, this means both sweet peppers and hot peppers, but I don't get as excited about the sweet peppers. I should, given the grocery store prices, but I didn't have as successful a year with them last year, so I'm still kind of hesitant to get too excited about them.

Anyway, we also got the lumber and screws we needed to start putting together the raised beds we're starting in Gaye's back yard this spring. She gets two veggie gardens and a BIG bird and butterfly garden for her backyard. Her yard is huge and open and sunny and right now is nothing but grass. So we're adding some things to it. She doesn't much care as long as we can make the front yard look green and lush and have lots of pretty things growing there. So my job is to make the front yard look that way and then in exchange, I get to plant corn for Chris and melons for Max and strawberries for Max, and flowers for the butterflies, and tomatoes and hot peppers and probably everything else for me.

We got back to her place and I started assembling boxes. This went quickly and smoothly until the battery in the drill died. We tried charging it for awhile while we took a break, but it didn't charge fast enough and the last box will have to be done Monday afternoon.

So I took the twinks home (Chris and Max had gone to a movie) and they played outside, because they could, while I installed new locks in the front door and main bathroom (long story: short version--they needed them). Then I started gathering items for starting the seeds and realized I was missing one key ingredient: the seeds.

I'd ordered them about ten days ago, but they haven't arrived yet. I went through my old seeds and found a couple packages from last summer that might still be viable this year, but mostly I'm just going to have to wait.

So I'm back to knitting tonight.

I will say this. Every spring I am impatient for more spring. Every spring I start the seeds too soon. This year I have tried very hard not to. Last year I started them on March 2. This year it looks like I'll be running about three weeks later on the peppers and hopefully another week after that before I start tomatoes. And I think that'll end up timing things just about right.

I'm off to finish a baby sweater so I can give it to the Mom at church tomorrow. That'll hopefully make up for the things that were started today but not finished.

Mini-Vacation

On Tuesday I packed up the Mom-in-law, the twinks, the big kid, some overnight clothes, and a bunch of maps and headed south for Washington D.C.

On four hours of sleep.

Which is probably a large part of why it was that it took us 6 hours to get there.

On account of that detour I took through New Jersey.

New Jersey is NOT on the way to Washington D.C. if you start in State College, PA, but I went there first anyway.

Here is a photo of the twins in their Christmas shirts to distract you from how incredibly stupid that detour was:



We got there and checked into a Best Western by the Beltway and even though it was past it's glory days--it was really a pretty nice hotel. It was CLEAN, it smelled good, the service was good, it had a free continental breakfast, and it was incredibly inexpensive for the area. Lanham, Maryland. There. Now you know where to stay the next time you want to bring your kids to Washington D.C. but can't afford $280 per night or more.

Anyway, we ate, we returned to the hotel, two hours and much giggling later, everyone but me finally fell asleep. I worked. Finished around 1am.

We got up at 7:30 am, took turns taking a shower, ate at the continental breakfast (the twins made fast friends with "Ms. Jo" which is short for Josephine. We learned a lot about Josephine and she learned a lot about us.), and the drove into D.C. We parked at an underground parking garage a block from the place where we were renting an electric scooter for Gaye. The all-day rate was $2 less than me buying metro tickets for us all. And the drive into D.C. wasn't bad at all, honestly. (Although I should have bought gas earlier in the trip. S'okay. Worked out fine.)

We found the scooter place, decided the scooter was pretty cool. Walked and scooted from there the block to the Museum of Natural History.

We saw natural things.





Stuffed, formerly natural things.



and lots of gift shops.

We were there for hours, then ate in the museum cafeteria downstairs, which was far more expensive than . . . well, anything else we did in the whole trip. Don't ask.

From there we walked and scooted over to the air & space museum, but we hit the sculpture garden on the way (not my photo)



and waved at the Merry-Go-Round at the Smithsonian from a distance with a promise to visit it soon. (Photo not mine. I borrowed it from Christopher George at http://christophertgeorge.blogspot.com/2007/03/grab-brass-ring.html. It is his photo and after a few days of linking here so that my loyal readers get a feel for what we saw, I'll unlink because . . . I'm not sure I should even be showing the photo here without permission.) Honestly, we didn't even get close enough to the Merry-go-round to see it this well.



Okay, so we hit the Air & Space Museum and discovered . . . that we were just plain exhausted. So we saw a funny old black and white short and we looked at the exhibit of the planets, and we visited the highlights of the Museum of American History--which are temporarily in the corner of the Air & Space Museum. I took many photos of Mr. Roger's sweater:



Because I hope to knit one like that for all the boys (big and small) some day.

And then we agreed that the Smithsonian is more than our merry band can do in one trip and we'll have to go back soon:



And we drove home, this time, skipping New Jersey and Delaware. It went much faster that way.

We still took longer than we should have.



20 minutes from home we sat for an hour while police cleared the hull of a burnt-out truck. (We don't think anyone was hurt.)

And then, happily, we were back home.

Can't wait to do it again . . . without the New Jersey part.

But why?

I am a Lily What Flower Are You?

Closing Doors

Not very long ago I stumbled across this New York Times article about how painful it is for human beings to intentionally "close a door." The study detailed in the article uses virtual doors to stand in for metaphorical doors, but this topic is near and dear to me. Understanding the advantage of intentionally closing some doors was behind my encouraging Chris to leave Honda. It is there when I close paid-off lines of credit. It is upper-most in my mind as I try to decide how I want to earn income for the next decade.

In the article, they briefly touch on how difficult it is to close doors on behalf of our children, too--leaving them over-scheduled.

The timing couldn't be better, as the summer is coming and if we're going to do swim team with the kids, I need to figure out how to cram more swim lessons back into Ben and Milo's schedule so they can make it all the way across the pool this year.

But I am loathe to cram anything else into their schedules. I can't tell you how much I would like for the boys to have . . . summer. They will be 6 and a half this summer. We have a big backyard. Grandma has a big backyard. There is an even mile between us with exactly one bad intersection.

What if we didn't join the swim team? What if we just got a family pass to the pool for the summer and made it a goal to go four times a week for exercise?

What if we went down to the creek they are so enchanted with and looked for a safe place to access it, set up the rules, and let them play?

We'll still have piano practice. Max is doing two weeks of summer "camp." We're going cabin camping with one set of grandparents and possibly some of my siblings. I'll have work to do. I hope to work with the twins on their writing. I hope Max reads a lot. And they will, because I don't mind it in moderation, play lots on the Wii and Game Cube.

They can ride bikes at the school at the end of the block. I'll need their help weeding and watering gardens. They can do butterfly inventories (Gramma Gaye and I bought a mix of butterfly and hummingbird flower seed) and have their friends over for playdates.

How bad would it be if the only place we HAD to be for most of June, July, and August was church and the occasional piano lesson?

I write it out like this and the answer seems obvious. It wouldn't be bad at all. Let the door close. Let the swim lesson sign-ups pass.

++++++++++++

I'm having an odd week, mostly because the schedule for pretty much everything I do was different this week and there were just weird blips. OTOH, I've had a lot of fun with Gaye this week, who has pretty much kept me sane. I just drive her places. We hit a garden nursery yesterday and walked away with some new plants for me and some big plans for her yard. Today at the Waffle Shop we planned out where her new raised-bed gardens will go, where the Chris Hults Corn Garden will go, and what to do with the slope in her backyard that could be pretty and not need mowing if we act son.

I posted some of our questions to the Organic Gardening forum and am awaiting answers.

It's about time for me to head over to the school for the usual Thursday afternoon volunteering. Then we're using the kids' book-reading pizza coupons for dinner and calling it a day.

POW! It's Been a Week

And what a week it's been.

I got slammed with work. And while I was having to cancel things left and right, there were things I just didn't feel I could and so I did all those things, too. (One was the teacher appreciation breakfast at the school this morning for which the boys and I got up at 6am. But as ready as they all were to go to bed early, they--especially Max--really had fun helping.)

I'm still slammed, but I have to stop and sleep tonight before getting up and starting all over again. It's snowing like the dickens. Max got on the phone and found a friend to go skiing with tomorrow afternoon. This made me happy. Tomorrow afternoon is my last lace knitting class. Mental note: no more doubling up on knitting classes. One knitting class in a month is fun. Two is a job and it doesn't pay nearly enough.

A lot happened this week. We found a treasurer for the PAC. I had a ton of fun reading poems with the second graders. I had the last session of the "Wellness" experiment I've been participating in at Penn State (I know, I haven't blogged about that at all. Ask me later. It was food for thought. Literally.) I got terribly behind in dishes and further behind in laundry. If the propane people don't show up this coming Wednesday I'll have been without a way to dry my clothes for over two weeks. They keep skipping me and saying, "oops." I'd just have them come get my tank and get a new company--but I don't want to pay the horrific deposit on a new tank.

And it's snowing again. So beautiful. I hope it's the snow that comes right before the big warm up and the crocuses.

More Ski Mom

Today the Powers that Be declared it a snow day. I worked through the morning, then tossed the kids into the car and headed over to the ski place so the kids could have some fun in the freshly fallen snow. In the short ski season that is Central PA, the kids can now use their school ski passes any day of the way--they just can't have a lesson unless it's actually 4 or 5 pm. Well, we were having the missionaries over for dinner, which meant the later hours weren't going to work for skiing . . . and since on Monday the boys had managed to successfully get on and off the ski lift without any bodily harm (just once, but once counts) . . . I figured, what the heck, we'll try it without the lesson. Just Ben, Milo, a biiiiiigggg gentle ski slope, and a death trap of a ski lift. No problem.

And it wasn't. Ben DID scare ten years off my life the first time up the ski lift. I won't go into details just in case child protective services reads the blog, but I was right there on the ground under the chair and I yelled, "Stop! Stop! Ben, don't worry about it. Just sit back in the chair and hold still!" And God bless the little bugger, he did. So it was good. And NEXT time he went up, the guy at the bottom who helps the little guys get on the ski chair DID REMEMBER to help Ben put the safety bar down first. God bless HIM, too.

But after that he was great on the ski lift and so was Milo and since it wasn't in the budget for me to get a lift ticket and rental, too, I walked UP and DOWN and UP and DOWN and UP and DOWN the side of the hill, mostly just coaching whomever was in the down position on how to move their skis around perpendicular to the hill to get up on their own. And then . . . I didn't have to do that anymore either. So I stood at the top of the hill and believed them when they sailed by saying, "Just one more time!" until it became clear that they were maybe NEVER going to run out of steam. They HAD it and skiing had THEM and they were happy little masters of Little Bear and Little Bear chair lift. I tried to get video, but I don't think you can really seen anything. The weather wasn't perfect. It kept sleeting for brief periods of time. The twins have goggles, thanks to Gramma Gaye, so the weather didn't phase them at all. I was getting pretty cold though.

Eventually I did have to pull them off the hill. They'd been skiing for about two hours straight. They would have kept going, I think, until they collapsed into little kindergartner heaps. But I was freezing, so we turned in their skis and they gleefully reported their success to Jon-the-ski-rental-guy (who always tells them they're "the coolest twins on skis," which makes him real popular with the twinks).

Meanwhile, Max and Brian came sniffing around for lunch, and I had a bunch of meal tickets to use up, so we all ate lunch (okay, the kids all INHALED lunch. I ate.) and then packed up and went home. We didn't get a full three hours of skiing this time (normally we do, but we didn't get there till 12:10 and the lift tickets were only good 12:00 to 3:00 and it probably took us a good 15 minutes to get out on the snow, so by the time we were done with lunch, we were done).

Max's last Saturday ski school is tomorrow and then I don't know if we'll make it back out on the hill one more time before all the snow is gone or not. Max has a season pass and we'll try to get out more than once before all the snow is gone, but the twins have to wait until I get paid and I can't say today exactly when that will be. I do hope to get them one more good afternoon on skis, though.

It's been a good little ski season for us this year. Totally worth it.

Knit Blogging

A few updates.

Remember this problem?



The sweater knit up far too wide for Milo. I recently got it out and started to make repairs to it. I trimmed off the bottom and knit up, adding additional length so it would be proportional to the width. When I was all done, I realized it was going to fix Max perfectly.

This is a problem because a) I already have a sweater in the works for Max and b) I don't have enough of the red yarn to finish another sweater for Max. The sweater was supposed to be for Milo. So I did the only thing I could do. I ripped out the entire sweater and started over.

But I've been having so much fun with the viking cables on Max's sweater that I decided to do Viking cables for Milo's sweater.

So here is Max's Twisted Orange Twist so far:



And here is Milo's Prince Harald in Red:



I only started Milo's sweater this weekend, so that's just one time through the chart and I'm going to go twice before switching to stockinette until I get to the yoke. I'm planning a shawl collar which doesn't sound too terribly manly, but I actually got the idea from a Rowan man's sweater, before seeing it again in a women's sweater in the Viking book. My version will look more like the Rowan sweater. Anyway, I'm thrilled with the Harald cable pattern and I'm thrilled with how Max's sweater is turning out, and so when I'm not working, I'm knitting on one or the other. I'm 1/3 of the way through the first sleeve in Max's sweater and hopeful of finishing the sweater while there is still some winter and cool spring left to wear it in. The sweater fits him PERFECTLY right now, which is to say, it's too big and there's plenty of growing room--I don't think he can outgrow it until 9th grade, which IMHO, is just about right. (Okay, I may be a little in denial about how much he's going to grow over the next few years, but it should DEFINITELY fit for another year, maybe two.)

Milo's sweater is more fitted, so I keep reminding myself to be generous in length and to decrease in moderation when I get to the stockinette section so he can get three seasons out of it. It's in a cotton blend.

I know someone is going to ask, so I'll say it now--Nope, I don't have anything on the needles for Ben right now. All in good time. It's more important to me to finish these so they can actually wear them before I go casting on a new sweater. I'm learning . . . it's all well and good to take a year to knit a shawl. Sweaters for boys must be finished up while they're still the same size as the sweater.

Ha ha

Today while waiting for his ski instructor, Ben thought it hilarious to practice skiing deliberately into the Ski Lessons sign.

Well, it WAS funny :)

So I took a picture.



This is my second to last week of criminally insane over-activity. The first week of March I get 10 hours back in my week and the following week is Spring Break. I'll still have to work, but at least we'll get a 1-week break from school activities. On the one hand, I'm grateful for the hectic schedule. It's a good way to keep my mind off February, which never feels all that great to me. On the other hand, well, no, it really changes nothing. I can't wait for March.

Ski Mom

It's Saturday morning and that means I'm happily camped out at a table in the ski lodge. It's 10:45 and the music being piped in overhead is from the late 70's, early 80's. It's a little too loud but it's been a long time since I've heard "Life's Been Good to Me" and the longer the music plays, the less I hate it. (For the first half hour I was here, there was no music and the place so so peaceful and quiet . . . .)

I don't get to do much here. I can maybe get a little work done because I have my laptop and my work with me, but the noise is distracting and in spite of good intentions, I only occasionally get much work done.

OTOH, what I do get to do is know that if Max is not here at the table, then he's out there having fun and skiing down the hills. Today we have the best snow fall we've seen this winter. It's beautiful, and as long as you're dressed properly and wearing goggles, it's a lot of fun to ski in. It's supposed to keep snowing on and off all weekend and starting tomorrow the lodge will start making new snow on all the slopes. In short, the forecast is great for my three little skiers on Monday.

For most of this month, I have to leave a little early to go home and change into my knitting-teacher hat. (In this case, I mostly just need to trade cars with Chris because he needs to Taurus to go pick up Max with the twins.) I mentioned this to Max on the way home and he frowned, saying he much preferred things when he knew I was in the lodge the whole time.

I can understand that. If you're out there taking risks for four hours straight, trying all the new stuff your instructor is asking you to do, it's helpful to know that if you really get sick of this, or need a break, or worse--break something, that your Mom is right there in the lodge. And I admit that I like being here to do just that. I can't really see him skiing from here --the best view from the lodge is actually of the learning slopes, and this class doesn't spend any time there.

But I like sitting at the table waiting to hear about how it all went. Drinking a cup of hot chocolate (we've learned to bring food from home whenever possible. The food served in the lodge is both expensive and horrible with the exception, maybe, of some cookies. So I bring two mugs and some packages of hot chocolate and two lunch boxes with hot-food thermoses, some fruit, and some yogurt.) Iming with Chris who is in his garage at home painting plastic car bodies and keeping an ear open for the twinkies.

Speaking of which, some of Max's class is coming in from the slopes now, so I'm going to wrap this up and wait for the update on what he learned so far. It's lunch time and they'll all head back out soon.

We Don't Get to Vote Today

Here in PA, we don't hold primaries until April, so I didn't vote today.

Mostly I whined--about my throat, not about not voting. I came down with a cold Sunday evening and although it's not the most vicious cold I've ever had, the timing is horrible. The kids' school wanted help finding volunteers for the Chinese New Year Celebration on Thursday and the Health Screenings on Friday. Gaye and I have business of hers to take care of tomorrow. I need to write two lessons for one client and take care of a conference call with another.

It's just one of those weeks.

On the upside, skiing went fine yesterday. Ack. We interupt this blog to go lay down or I might throw up. I hate being sick!

Tonight I went out in the slush and the ice and the rain

to put Senator Clinton on the ballot in Pennsylvania. Chris was worried that our neighbors would think I was a looney and judge us, but even though it was 8pm when I started (Chris got home late for dinner and I didn't want to take the twinks out in that weather), everyone was super friendly. The Republicans all got a grin on their face when they said, "Nope," they couldn't sign. The Democrats were all happy I'd come by so they could.

I really think most people WANT to participate in the process, frankly.

We quit when Max slipped on someone's porch. (I asked him to come with me because I'm 39 and I'm still afraid of the dark and our street is underilluminated. He peppered me with questions about the electoral process the whole time and it made the time fly by.) That was the sign that it was time to be done (and it was 8:30--I needed to get out there and get signatures because the deadline is Friday and I still need to mail these to Philly, and I need 50 signatures before I can mail them and this whole week is insanely scheduled, as was last week--but then, I only got my paperwork on Monday. Anyway, having canvased for 30 minutes, that got me over my own fears of going door-to-door, and now I'm ready to go after the remaining signatures before time runs out.)

Tomorrow I have to take Max to his skiing class, and then run and teach a lace knitting class for three hours, but then I'm going to take the twinks and go do two streets over in one of the new developments. Then I'll go around after school hours on Monday--and hopefully have my 50 signatures. (At most homes around here, where there is one democrat, there are two.)

(And Max is fine, don't worry

Making Plans

I really like New Year's Resolutions. I admit this year I didn't really get around to making them in time to start anything on January 1st, I'm glad it just didn't work out that way. As shiny new as the first day of the year always feels to me (which for me carries the accompanying motivation to take a stab at change), this year I just felt like I . . . didn't have enough information.

So here we are three-ish weeks later and one of my work projects has ended so I have a lighter week ahead of me. I'm looking forward to finally putting away my Christmas tree. (What?) And getting caught up on the dishes.

Anyway, here are the things I'd like to do this year:

*get better at reading the scriptures regularly
*hold Family Home Evening regularly. Heck, I'd be happy with once a month as improvement over last year, but I'm in the middle of taking a stab at reworking our family schedule and I'm open to whatever will work.
*lose weight. again. I'm growing more convinced this will require a medication change. again. Scheduled to discuss the issue with my doc on Valentine's Day. (I didn't get to pick the day.)

On a more minor level:
*Decrease the number of WIPs I have going. This feels kind of hopeless. But sometimes I think

I gave up my community garden plot after Gaye said I could have space in her backyard. This is a big relief as I really love my vegetable gardening, but I really need to pay attention this summer to the lawns and flower beds of her house and mine and the chances of my getting across town to the community gardens as well . . . even I had to admit that the odds were not good.

Giving up gardening altogether though--forget it. Max and I have already received two seed catalogs in the mail. He's picking out melons and strawberries. In fact, I keep meaning to get the catalogs over to Gaye's house so she can dream about her flower beds, too. She already has one bed that will look positively lovely once it gets properly watered and has a new layer of mulch. It's crying out for others to go with it. She's very interested in a tall, decorative grass for the front yard, so that will have to fit into the equation somewhere, too.

Tonight Was Kind of Fun

Our house was invaded this evening by a bunch of excited boy scouts and their webelos entourage. They have a Klondike event this coming weekend. I'm not clear on what exactly this is, but I think it's an event where they pull a sled full of supplies from station to station and use boyscout skills at each station. They'll be shooting a gun, tossing a tomahawk, cooking out in the open, and if I recall from last year, getting covered in mud. Maybe this year it will be less mud, more snow. (I'm a little bummed that it means Max is missing the Saturday skiing class, but we'll try to be very careful to make sure he makes the remaining classes. They made such a huge difference to his level of confidence and skill this week.)

I taught Max how to use my sewing machine and he sewed velcro strips on the back of brown furry fabric. They used this to decorate the sled to look like a Platypus. Their team is named the Aztec Platypi. They have a flag and a big sled bolted on to skis and a big cardboard platypus tail.

Today was piano lessons and an impromptu shopping trip to Jo-Ann's for Gaye and I. We were in charge of finding platypus fur and velcro. Did that. Had so much fun looking at all the dollar stuff at Jo-Ann's that we were 10 minutes late to pick up the kids. Oops. Bad mommy.

Alright. I have gobs of work left to do, so I'd better get to it.

AIM Loitering

::::taps foot::::

:::whistles a piece of musak heard earlier in the day::::

:::looks around the Internet a bit:::

Chris is out of town on business tonight and I'm just waiting for him to log on so I can tell him all about our afternoon at the ski lodge. But I think he might be having a bunch of fun with my cousins tonight, so I reckon I'll just write it all down here.

Ben and Milo spent an hour learning about skiing this afternoon. I was a chaperone, for which I earned one lift ticket and one rental. I had intended to sort of keep an eye on their lesson and then ski around Little Bear learning slope with them. However, Max saw me skiing around and even though he was skiing with one of his best friends, he wanted to ski with me, too. Since I don't know how much longer the boy might pick sitting with me on the ski lift over sitting with his friends, I didn't say no. After we went down Little Bear twice, he was ready for Deer Run.

Now, technically, Deer Run is just my speed. BUT. The weather has been all over the map lately and what we had on the hill today was a thin layer of snow topped with a thin layer of ice. In a few places it was bare hill and in a few other places it was plain ice. AND I'm totally out of shape. Totally. I haven't been on a treadmill in a year. I sit at my computer all day and I type. So I didn't really have the thighs a girl needs to keep up the kind of control you want to have when you're skiing on a steep icy hill.

I just plain couldn't keep up!

Max was soooo sweet. Trying to be so encouraging and saying "You can do it!" and "It gets better here soon!" As much as my legs were SCREAMING and I honestly wondered if I was going to lose all control in a few spots (and I was a good 20 minutes longer than Max and Brian getting down that hill. I really had to stop here and there and just stand there until my legs stopped screaming.) I still had my sense of humor about the situation--and the understanding that this was a wake-up call for me. At the bottom of the hill Max asked if I would go up again with him and I declined, knowing full well my only hope to get down that hill one more time would be scooching the whole way on my tush. I said honestly that I just was too out of shape and I'd need to get a little exercise before I could try that again and Max said honestly that he hoped I would because he really wanted to go down Deer Run with me again before the end of the season.

Hmmm . . . get back on treadmill or poke out eye with hot iron poker? Sheesh. Tough call. I came home and had a slice of pumpkin pie to think about it. (What?) Of course I'll get on the treadmill. I don't know if I can make enough progress to ski down Deer Run with Max before the end of the ski season here (it's not like we're in the Sierras . . .), but it gives me something to shoot for.

:::Sigh:::

Eeeenyway. I limped over to the area where Ben and Milo were still having their lesson, and they were just starting to do the thing where the little guy skis like ten feet and tries to snow plow and instead plows into the instructor (which Ben and Milo thought was great fun, but nearly knocked over the tiny petite ski instructor--we need one of the big guys for Ben and Milo. Their instructor should at least be twice the weight/height of the 6-yr-olds). So they didn't even make it down the hill yet.

Here's the thing. I totally can't take them down that hill by myself. a) there are two of them and they can't stop yet except by falling down and in general, I think falling down ALL the freakin' time when you're trying to learn to ski is maybe more discouraging than most of us remember. b) I can't ski backwards, much less snow plow backwards, and even if I could, I sure couldn't after shredding my thigh muscles on that glacial excuse for an easy ski slope.

I was a little bummed because it was clear to me that Ben and especially Milo both wanted to do more skiing and had more get-up-and-go left and I just DIDN'T. So hopefully next week the instructor will actually get them down the hill and I can maybe ski a little with them after the lesson.

One good thing--I managed to get Milo's socks fixed ten minutes before we left the house, so both boys had warm wool handknit knee-high socks to wear with their boots and even though MY feet were totally numb and frozen (I was wearing double layers of cotton socks, because I haven't finished a pair of wool socks for me yet), they were just hunky dory. Which is good, because numb, frozen feet (or really any other body part) will also make you hate skiing. And I want my kids to like skiing.

Which, bottom line, is what all my kids were feeling by the end of the day. Max actually RUSHED through his dinner to get out in time to get two more runs down the hill before we had to leave (it was dark, the full moon high in the ski, but skiing under the lights is pretty cool).

One of the other Moms who is always there through the whole thing is also the mom to one of Ben and Milo's kindergarten classmates. So for the last hour while we waited for the Max to finish skiing, the twinks ran around with T and her little sister, M. They made noise and were a disturbance, so I was glad when 7pm arrived and so did my son and one of his classmates. (We were giving him a ride home.)

So here we are back home. I have to find a way to stay awake because I really need to get some serious workwork done tonight. But I'm going to toss the littles into a hot bathtub and put them to bed early so they can dream big dreams of shushing down gentle slopes.

Sunday Evening Thoughts

KIDS: Chris and I have been talking about our parenting situation lately and while we haven't ruled out a time when we might get out those adoption papers and start filling them out in ink, at this point we've pretty much decided that now is not the time. We say this with some feeling of a heavy heart, because we both realize that the older the boys get, the less likely it is to be "the time." And a part of both of us WOULD very much like to have another child, in particular, we'd like to have the "parent a girl" experience. We suspect it's an entirely different road than the "parent a boy" experience, and we'd like to go down that road.

One of the wisest parents I know is a Catholic, homeschooling, single-Mom who gave me the advice that "the needs of the most vulnerable person in the house come first." Right up to the start of this year, I would have said that was Ben and Milo. Recently, however, we've come to realize that Ben and Milo have reached a nice coasting speed. They have a great teacher, they have us, and they have each other. They like their Primary teacher, they like their piano teacher, they like their school, they each have good friends in class, are ahead in both reading and math, and have cheerful, friendly dispositions.

So we turn our attention back to our eldest and check on him. How's he doing? Is he at coasting speed, too? And if we could honestly say yes, I think that would have resulted in a very different adoption decision, but neither of us could say yes. We both feel that our oldest is a little more anxious than he needs to be. He needs help staying on top of his schedule, guidance making the right decisions with his behavior, his homework, and his friends. Don't get me wrong--he's a great kid, has a good teacher, is doing well in many regards. There's just this very clear feeling between his father and I that he's more vulnerable than he needs to be. We feel he's doing well BECAUSE his father is his scout master and is at his school two afternoons a week, because his mother is at his school all the freakin' time, because we put so much time into what he's doing, where he is, and how he is doing. And there is definitely a feeling that this is NOT the time to let up . . . and won't be any time soon. I don't know if this is typical of parenting a middle schooler, or if it's just our kid. But we feel that if we were to adopt--in which case the new baby or child would be the neediest--that Max would be at risk in some way. I'm not saying that we're sure he would be, and I'm DEFINITELY not saying that there's ANYTHING wrong with the kid. There really isn't. It's just a gut feeling among Chris and I; if we need to "adopt" a kid right now, it's the kid we already have: the preteen. I know there are gobs of families that do adopt when there are teens and preteens in the house and it probably is exactly the right decision for their family. This year it's not right for us.

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KNITTING: I have a lot on the needles right now and feel perennially behind. I spent half of this afternoon trying to fix the mittens I made for my nephew. They were fine in every regard but one--too tight at the wrist. I cut the mittens at the wrist and reknit the area in question, then grafted the top of the mitten to the bottom. Sounds easy in theory, but when you consider that I often make adjustments to a pattern as I go and almost NEVER write down what those adjustments were, I'm discovering this can be a nightmare. I honestly wonder if it wouldn't have been easier to just knit a new pair of mittens. I have one mitten fixed. I'm in the processes of undoing a million little kitchener stitches after discovering a major error--for the second time.

Tomorrow the twinks start skiing for the first time. I haven't finished fixing their knee socks so they don't fall down. I'm close though. I've got Ben's done and one of Milo's. I might get them done by 4 pm tomorrow. I've told myself I can't finish Milo's sock before O-bear's mitten though. That's a lot of knitting to get done AND still get enough Workwork done. Is the post office open tomorrow? I know it's MLK Jr. day. I just can't remember if that's a federal holiday or not.

I'm visiting a friend on Friday who could be in the antepartum ward for another 5 weeks. I'd really like to bring her a little something for her little one. I'm going to blink and it'll be Friday though, so I'm trying to keep an open mind about that.

My eye is starting to twitch. I should go finish my workwork and then do some meditation or something. :)

That's One for Our Side

There's no way around it--it's a struggle to keep Max active. He's not a particularly competitive kid. He's not a particularly coordinated kid either. He is cursed with a not-really athletically inclined father who married a (let's-be-honest)-athletically-incompetent mother. Chris eventually found some activities he liked, and I eventually found some activities I like, but Max has struggled with this. He likes swimming, but the year-round program here is not a good match for him, and the summer-only program isn't enough. Football is soooooooo time consuming and sooooooo competitive, and so this winter I decided to go ahead and try to get Max on the slopes as much as possible during the short three months we call a ski season here in PA. He's doing the school program on Monday afternoons and another program for 4.5 hours on Saturdays. THe last two weeks were too warm to ski, but this weekend we were good to go, so we headed over there for the first lesson.

Max was nervous. He was pretty sure he was going to die, or at least look like he was dying, on the hill. He was worried about being the youngest and least experienced, or the oldest and least experienced, or just in some vague way, in a really bad position.

I gave him a pep talk. I talked about how between this class and the one on Mondays, he'd soon be able to go down with his two good friends who do the ski programs through other schools, but come on the same day our school does. This was encouraging to him. I walked him through understanding that this was a 4.5 hour CLASS, so it was fine to not know anything and to go ahead and hog the teacher's attention and just learn, learn, learn. Max perked up a smidge.

We arrived at the lodge and went on in. He was, indeed, the oldest kid there, but there were two other girls and at least one other boy who were close to him in age. We almost had a case of equipment failure when, for the life of us, we could NOT get one of his boots on. Abby, the youngest of the instructors, agreed to give it a shot and we were relieved to see that it wasn't just us. She finally pulled it off his foot, put her back into it, and popped some part of it back into its proper place. Max was soon buckled into his boots and he trotted awkwardly off after the others to go ski.

I ran to Target and the bank and then came back to the lodge to try to get some work done on my computer while he skiied. In between IM's to Chris I fretted. The last time I sent him down that hill he scared himself silly. It ended in tears and panic and I felt like Bad Mom.

I really wanted this to work. I wanted him to not just get better at going down the Big Scary Hill, but ENJOY it. I wanted him to think, "Wheee!" not "AAAAAAHHHH!" I wanted him to burn a few calories and make a few muscle cells and do it smiling.

Finally, lunch break arrived and he walked in the door, sat down, and said something along the lines of, "I've already been down [the Big Scary Hill] 5 times and I've only fallen down once. I'm learning tons and it's a lot of fun."

And I breathed a sigh of relief. He scarfed down lunch (the lodge has the most disgusting food known to mankind. We bought lunch today and vowed together to bring a bag lunch next week) and then ran back out the door. His instructor today is a father whose name I didn't catch, so I've been calling him Dad Instructor. He seemed genuinely to enjoy Max and Max trusted him. Which is the only way I can explain the FACT that by the end of the day Max had TWICE gone down the center hill (whose name I don't even know because it's the one covered in mogels and we don't go down those hills) and apparently on his second run down that hill he did a bit of it on his head, but STILL came back in the lodge glowing, happy, saying how great it was over and over.

And so, I am hoping it is a LONG and SNOWY winter.

Saving Me the Trouble

of having to articulate the complex feelings I've had on watching the political process lately . . .

Women's Support for Clinton Rises in Wake of Perceived Sexism

I'd been holding off on putting my Hillary bumper sticker on my car because our primary here is still four months away, but I reckon I might put it up sooner now.

FWIW, I'd be fine with Edwards or Obama--although I probably have the most concerns about his experience. But I keep coming back to Hillary.

And that's about as political as I want to get today.

Tsunami!

I am completely and unexpectedly slammed by work this week and my lack of recent blogging has me feeling guilty--so I'll officially blog that I won't be blogging until maybe this weekend, when hopefully I'll have some time to catch up. In the meantime, "Don't cry for me, Argentina," too much work means, well, it means I'll get paid sometime in February, and that's not bad.

We took this picture this morning (Yes! Yes, take down the tree is on my to-do list for this week!) Mostly we're hoping to send the picture to my grandmother, who sent a generous Christmas gift for all of us, and new church clothes is part of what we bought with it (Ben and Milo's pants in the photo were their birthday present from Gramma Gaye). Ben and Milo have matching red ties and Chris and Max have matching orange ties. They look spiffy and somehow manage not to clash.

We're still adjusting to the new winter schedule. Chris leaving every morning at 6:15 am and me getting up 45 minutes later to wake the kids and get us all out the door. It's still more rushed than I'd like and I'm contemplating just getting up at 6:15 when he gets up. Skiing should start tomorrow but we have a freakish warm spell taking us to 60 degrees both tomorrow and Tuesday and the mountain will be a mudslide, not a ski lodge. Maybe it's just as well since piano lessons start up again this week and it's going to be a full week.

More updates later in the week. I need to chase the kids off to bed before it gets any later.

Gathering Around the Glow of the XO

This computer was a gift to the boys from my Aunt Gee-Gee. It's rightful heir was the little tyke staring intently at the screen, but his parents deemed his attention span too short for that sort of thing and so it was offered to my three. It's an educational computer that uses all open-source software. Max has discovered a few of its limits, but I'm encouraging him to google all he can on the computer to see if he can eventually get a few of the websites he likes to work. We think we downloaded a version of flashplayer but we don't know how to get it installed and working. It's Linus-based operating system is foreign to us.

So I suggested that for now we just use it as it was intended--instead of trying to make it like a computer he already knew--to just accept it as an entirely new kind of computer. And we are making ground that way. He has already composed a few melodies using its music-making software, and the twins have spent literally hours video-taping themselves with its built in camera (sorry, we don't know how to send these anywhere else, or even what kind of format they're saved in). Ben and Milo have sore abdominal muscles from laughing hysterically at themselves. Milo has also used the music software.

We do know there is a way to upload the word processing files to a site that will save them in a format that his teacher can receive. We will master this when the need arises. Many thanks to Aunt Gee-Gee for her generosity and to Cousin A, who took the picture and thought of suggesting my kids as a recipient.

Today we had a quiet Sunday. Ben, Milo, and I headed off to church and left the coughing and hacking Max and the confuzzled and snot-ridden Chris at home. They looked very handsome in their new white shirts and ties. Hopefully by next Sunday I'll have their new pants hemmed and they'll look snazzy indeed. I realized as I got them dressed that I'd forgotten about their church shoes. I probably won't get that fixed until Easter now.

By dinner time Chris had showered and shaved and taken dayquil, so since it was our turn to feed the missionaries, he went and got them and managed to stay upright and conscious for the whole time they were here. Right now he's on the couch attempting to read the human resources manual of his new company, but I'm guessing he'll be reading it again tomorrow.

I'm grateful for two more days of Christmas vacation. I really like having the kids around and I've really liked the opportunity to sleep in, nap, and go to bed early, LOL. I tend to be sort of chronically sleep deprived and I can say I have definitely NOT been sleep deprived this week. What's the opposite of sleep deprivation? Sleep abundance? I wish you could store extra sleep for use later. I'd feel much better if I could know the extra sleep could be stashed away for future use.

Check Me Out!

I am so totally on vacation. Yesterday I thought I was due to start another batch of workwork for Client du jour, (du many years, actually) so in a panic and a bit of New Year's mania (I am so ready to kick 2007 to the curb. Not that I'm not grateful for its spiritual bonanza, but I'd really like to be able to pay bills in a more timely fashion. Just sayin'.) I dug in and dug out my office from it's volcanic ashes of writing-gigs past. I threw away four trash bags of materials from this year's projects (technically, I bagged them up and then called Chris to haul them away. He was sweet about it.)

Then I took the pile of "things to do something about" and went through that. Next, I updated the wipe-off calendar over my desk and the kitchen calendar and my desk calendar, which also doubles as a "due dates" calendar. Then I balanced both checkbooks, paid a ton of bills, and then, surprise, it was night and still no fedex package. So I pulled out the schedule again, realized that I'd gone up a line on the tiny little excel chart that was the master schedule and that I'm not due to start working again until the 2nd!

So today I did a meal plan for the next week, put together a shopping list, and took the kids to Target to spend their Target gift cards (and then we went grocery shopping, of course). Since Santa brought me a new sewing machine, I got a sewing kit to go with it. It comes with a bunch of thread (LOL, I had to search for the right term for that: yarn? string? What's that sewing stuff called? Oh, yeah! Thread. Right.) When I got home I spent 20 minutes going through all the notions that came with the machine and my new kit. I felt like a little girl lining up all the tiny shoes that came with her new Barbie. "Oooo! Lookit this little brushy thing!"

So instead of working half of each day for the next five days, I get to, well, clean my house and knit and sew--which I think is a fine trade off. My mother did most of my laundry while she was here, so a significant portion of the "mess" in the living room is just putting away clean laundry.

Speaking of domestic stuff--another gift I received for Christmas is a new iron. Our old one was a Black and Decker work-horse that still did a pretty decent job of ironing out wrinkles, as long as you weren't too picky about these things. Chris did his homework in researching irons and got me a nice one. Nothing too spendy or flashy--we only have our church clothes and the occasional dressy occasion to iron for. But he was thoughtful enough to get one with a steaming function so that I can also use it for the occasional bit of blocking. I used it on the sample I finished for the yarn shop today. The steaming thing was fast and fun.

My plan for tomorrow is to get Ben and Milo's new church pants hemmed up, Max's old church pants hemmed up, and the living room picked up. That about covers it :)

Merry Christmas

We had a very nice Christmas day here with G'ma Gaye and G'ma Judy. Emily got a stuffed squeaky squirrel for Christmas and was pretty thrilled with that. The kids got a perfect mix of toys and clothing. (I'm so happy, for we are once again a family with clean socks and underwear for all our boys.)

Ski season starts here in a few weeks, although it looks to be a repeat of last year's early warm January, in which case, ski season will be delayed. G'ma Gaye outfitted the twinks in new gloves, ski goggles, and balaclavas. I had picked up Max's skis from the ski shop yesterday--these were a garage sale find for $10 back in August or September. I had them waxed and they got some other maintenance done to them (grinding the edges or something) and we replaced the outdated binding with new adult bindings. The finished product looks much nicer than the pair I paid $10 for, LOL, but then, they're not a $10 pair of skis anymore, either!

A lot of what the kids got this year were things they really needed. With money from my grandmother the kids got new jeans, socks, underwear, pajamas, white dress shirts for church, and sneakers. My sister bought them all snow boots. G'ma Donna and G'ma Gaye both got them t-shirts they loved. G'ma Judy bought them slippers. I knit them all socks. These were all greatly appreciated. There were terrific toys for the boys--transformers, nerf shooters, puppets, and legos. There were wonderful books on warriors, art, animals, and science topics. There were two games for the Wii and two games for the gamecube, and a few controllers to replace the ones that wore out (and Santa brought some spare controllers for the Wii so that the boys can all play at the same time).

I had expected a *very* simple Christmas, as we budgeted mostly for the kids. But I was spoiled. Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled. Thank you, Chris and parents.

We also got the amazing gift of being offered the purchase of my aunt's 2003 Ford Taurus. We took her up on it and will get rid of the Expedition as soon as that is possible.

Tomorrow we're off to visit relatives in Philly for the day and then it's back home to dive back into work, but today was a quiet, peaceful day with good food and family, and we enjoyed it.

Bits and Pieces

For the past few winters we've put together goodie boxes for friends and extended family for Christmas. We've done this in part because the things are yummy and in part because it meant we could put together something nicer with the funds available.

This year I was having a heck of a time coming up with ideas for what to put in the box. Everything was either too hard to put together or too expensive to ship. I was reluctant to go with a box of cookies because that is so "done." In the end though, that's what we went with. I already had most of the ingredients in food storage and the kids love our cookie cookbook, so.

But the baking gods were in a foul mood. The first two cookies and a bar recipe went great. But I didn't put the boxes "up" enough and Emily ate all but a few over night. (And lived to tell about it.) I couldn't get back to baking again until Thursday because of workwork (and having some bug on Thursday) and the first thing I did was ruin 6 lbs of fudge. I quit and tried again on Friday. Finally, things started going better.

On Thursday Milo stayed home from school because he was sick. He sent his classmates a note:


He's still got a cough, but doesn't seem particularly sick anymore. However, Ben and I are sharing a new cold and I really just wanted to lay on a couch, whine, and knit, but I have guests coming all afternoon tomorrow (one set coming at 1pm for a quick visit on their way out of town, another set coming at 2pm) so we needed groceries.

This means the gift boxes/bags are nearly done.


We also received today a special delivery.


That is Snowball and Hoodie. We're rat sitting until their owner gets back from Christmas vacation. I'm a little nervous about having a dog who gets lavishly praised for killing vermin in the same house with two ratty-pets. So they're staying in Max's room for the duration and the door to his room is to remain firmly closed. Nevertheless, I'll be praying for them just in case. Having them here is a little like vacationing in Mexico. It could go well, or then again, it could go very badly.

Christmas knitting has gone relatively well. I don't know if I'll finish the last item in time for Christmas, but I did finish Oliver's mittens. I think they turned out very cute.


So did the piano teacher's mittens:


I'd better get back to work on Max's sweater.

It's a Mad Life. A Good Life, but a Crazy One

My brother-in-law is in the process of raising funds for a black box theatre in Columbia, Missouri. He is a busy guy. In an earlier version he did spontaneous Shakespeare. He had to cut it, but it's too much fun to miss.

I ran my PAC meeting Monday night. We approved the purchase of new swings for the school and the purchase of two urns for coffee and hot water. That was fun.

We interrupt this blog for breaking news! Chris has a new job!! He starts January 2nd in the management team of a local furniture company! He got the Offer yesterday but there were questions to be asked and he has signed the revised offer! We'll have new, better, GOBS cheaper health insurance WITH OUR SAME DOCTORS on January 1st!

Please. Everybody get up OUT of your chairs and dance with me!

Our new totally out of debt (except for the 1st mortgage) goal: December 2009. That's HELOC, car loan, and all. We hope to have everything except the HELOC killed in one year. No new toys! No shopping sprees for us! We won't be going out and getting cable. (Although we will probably buy more vegetables. What is wrong with this planet? Why are tomatoes more expensive than beef?) In 2008 we're buying back our FREEDOM.

Our Weekend

I'm sorry it's been so long since I blogged. The last two weeks have had crushing workloads and so much to do personally and I just haven't had the time. Let me at least catch you up on the most joyous weekend I've have since, oh, maybe my wedding (my kids were all born on weekdays ;)

It is HARD to sit down and type at the computer today because I am floating so HIGH off the ground.

The service for the baptism was the most beautiful I have ever been to. There were some snags. Thursday night Chris learned I could talk on ANY gospel topic instead of just baptism and so he urged me to say whatever was in my heart. Friday was so full with getting the house ready and grocery shopping for the Potluck and other preparations--plus the arrival of our friends and enjoying their company and young children-- I didn't sit down to write until about 10:30 and at midnight I gave up and just shut the computer down.

The baptism was at 10 am, so in the morning we were up and 'at 'em. Max, Chris, and Gaye took most of the potluck stuff to the church and plugged in the crockpot and hung out to greet people with the missionaries. I took the twinkies to the grocery store to pick up dh's cake and get a few more 2 liter bottles of drinks. Our friends went over to one of the local hotels to pick up another dear friend who had arrived from Ohio and they met us at the church, too.

Approximately 70 members of the ward, including some of their children, were there. Plus either the missionaries or Relief Society or SOMEONE had already set up all the tables in the cultural hall. My friend from Vermont, Sarah, and her mother (from Ohio) had both attended my baptism. So we had asked Sarah to give the invocation. I felt warmth on my head and was calmed while she spoke. There's no other way to describe it, but all the worry about getting everything done just melted away. I have to say I was blessed to not think about work ALL DAY.

We sang "Because I have been given much," and then I bore my testimony. It went fine. I don't know what I said but everybody cried and said it was perfect later. Everybody cried through the whole service, honestly. Brother Penn gave a terrific talk on the Holy Ghost. We all crammed into the area where the baptismal font is. The tiny little room seemed to stretch and make room for everyone. The Bishop baptized Chris and when Chris came back up my twins laughed with joy--I hadn't thought to tell them to stay quiet during the baptism--they're normally good at being quiet when they're supposed to be quiet, but they are very happy little people and laugh often and easily. But it was okay. It was so clearly a laugh of delight.



We returned to the chapel and Bro. Penn opened the mike to testimonies. Four people spoke and they were sooo wonderful. One speaker talked about the joyous memories the occasion brought back for him as his wife had joined the church during their fourth year of marriage. He talked about what that day had meant to them and the good things that had happened within his family since then. Another speaker talked about his reaction to hearing the twins laugh. A third speaker talked about a recent experience she had had with hearing the Holy Ghost during a time of need. The fourth speaker (Sarah's husband, Justin) spoke about the way his love for the scriptures has grown since his conversion a decade ago. (He knows Chris struggles with the language in the scriptures, but also knows Chris is determined to get past that.) Chris and the Bishop returned at this point, so the Elders' Quorum president gave a talk welcoming Chris to the Elders' Quorum, and that was fun because he got to have some fun with the fact that Chris had been attending regularly for some time now.

We sang, "Come Follow Me" and Max gave the benediction. He did great. There was much hugging and congratulating and more tears and then we set up the food, fed everyone, visited, told stories, enjoyed each other's company, and smiled a lot. I was really glad Gaye was with us. She had a good time and I could NEVER have done a good job telling her exactly what it was like. You really had to be there.

I was really glad I'd gotten the full sheet cake, LOL! Anyway everyone helped clean up and we went home with our out-of-town friends. At the potluck other members of that same family joined us, and so now we had 9 members of that family. We went back to our house with my mom-and-law and visited for the rest of the afternoon. Sarah and I made dinner for Chris's 38th birthday and we grown-ups stayed up late talking. (Somewhere in there I washed the kids' Sunday clothing so they could wear them again to church today.) Happy Birthday, Chris!

This morning we got up and got dressed again. We'd had freezing rain, so Justin struggled, but somehow managed to get his car packed up in spite of a layer of ice everywhere. I had given Chris a leather quad as a birthday/baptism gift, which meant I got my scriptures back (he had swiped mine many months ago, but it's not like I was going to insist he give them back, LOL.). It didn't last long. Max took them to Sunday school. Maybe if Santa brings him some scriptures, too, I'll get to keep mine. At any rate, we got to church on time. Everyone was still feeling the glow from yesterday. It was like no time had passed since the baptism. They confirmed Chris a member, and bestowed upon him the gift of the Holy Ghost, and then the ward sustained Chris as a member of the ward. Then they proposed that the ward sustain Chris as a priest and we did that. (Max loved that. Oh, heck, *I* loved that.) Then we sang the Sacrament hymn and the Sacrament was blessed and passed. Chris then bore his testimony, beginning with the fact that never had bread tasted so sweet.

And then Chris joined us back in the pews and the rest of meeting was a sort of ordinary Christmas Season Sacrament meeting. A violinist and a pianist did a special music piece and there were two brief talks and then it was time to say Goodbye to our Vermont Friends. (They had stayed to witness and participate in the Confirmation.) I hope they made it back safely home. I did a few things for my calling, then joined Chris in Gospel Principles. Interestingly, I'm not fond of being called on to give any of the opening or closing prayers because I just get so nervous, but noone else offered to close, so I did. And as I walked in the door of Relief Society, I was immediately pounced upon to give the opening prayer by someone to whom I couldn't say no, LOL. So I did.

After Relief Society, we rounded up the boys and met at the Bishop's office to witness Chris being ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood.

Who knew this day would come? But it did and it is sooooo sweet.

When I got home from church though, I lay down next to Chris on the couch and didn't wake until four hours later. I was tired!!

Monday

Yesterday was a semi-ordinary Sabbath. We went to church, which was a skeleton of its usual self, since at least half the congregation is either a student or an employee of Penn State--they all went home to whereever they're from (admittedly, a large portion went to Utah). You add that to the usual number who go out of town for Thanksgiving and you're left with, primarily, the townies with older children. Still, we had a good morning of church, picked up Gramma Gaye and headed home to decorate the tree. We made good progress until we got to the lights and discovered that exactly half of EVERY light set was out. Now, I don't know if you've tried to replace lights in your mini-light set in the past few years, but they make it terrifically hard now. You're pretty much just supposed to toss the set and buy new ones. Last year I fought this and it took five trips to Target to get all the outdoor features with mini-lights working. (To complicate things, there are different sizes of bulbs in those mini-lights and then you try to match colors--only they're out of the color you need in the size you need . . . .) I had learned from my experience, sort of, so this year we decided to just run to Target to get new lights. Because this was supposed to be a day with the family, we decided to all go.

What we learned was the wisdom of the council to avoid shopping on Sundays. Especially Sundays right after Thanksgiving with all the students coming back. Especially those conditions with Target. It was insane and took far longer to get out of there than we had anticipated. The only good that came of it was that we were successful in getting the gold mini-lights that we wanted.

Years ago we had a tree with a red and gold theme. We'd collected ornaments and a beautiful lighted angel tree topper and something like 8 strands of gold lights in there. Then in California rats got in it and ruined it all. The tree, the ornaments, the lights--it was all contaminated. Just disgusting. So we threw it all away. Over the last four or five Christmases, we rebuilt our collection, but we had given the "eclectic collection with multi-colored mini-lights" theme a run and since we had to replace all the lights this time around, we decided to take the opportunity to go back to red and gold. The extra ornaments went back into storage. In a future year we'll add a second tree for downstairs and give it the eclectic collection with multi-colored mini-lights theme.
In the meantime, the red and gold tree looks beautiful. We'll get a picture up at some point this holiday. The Christmas Tree skirt went traveling this year and I won't have it back for a bit yet.

Anyway, around 6 or so, Gramma Gaye went home, so I pulled out one of my new cookbooks to read:

I put my knitting in my lap and worked away at a sock for probably five rounds or so as I read--I made it through most of the introduction before completely passing out. I woke up at 9pm just in time to watch the ending of a movie with Ben Stiller as a nightwatchman at the Museum of Natural History. Then we all put on pjs and went to sleep. I woke up this morning feeling pretty well rested.

(Oh! Never fear on the buttons. I found them in one of the places I'd already looked twice. So now I just have to stay awake in my green chair long enough to get the knitting done!)

Today should have been a day full of workwork, but the kids don't go back to school until tomorrow and my tummy was a little off, so I paid the bills, got some work done, and otherwise entertained myself with other errands. I got more wood pellets and bought groceries for dinner and for the kids' lunches this week. Now I'm going to try to finish up the workwork I was supposed to get done earlier today so tomorrow I'm well positioned to start a final four-day push to write two lessons in the amount of time it normally takes me to write one. I'm also hoping to get the toe and top done on two different socks tonight. That would finish one pair of Christmas socks and get me to the half-way point on a second pair. That's what I was supposed to do last night instead of napping in the green chair :)

Jo, if you're reading this, please email me. I have questions about your grocery bill on this new way of cooking you're doing for your family.

Outfoxed

First let me say that we had a great Thanksgiving. We had lovely guests and great food and it ranks up there with one of the best Thanksgiving's we've had thus far. Ben and Milo were a little squirrely, but that happens when you hold them off lunch too long. Well, actually, it just happens sometimes.

Thanksgiving was followed by Friday in which Chris and Max left for 24-hours of boyscouting in sub-freezing temperatures and I entertained my mother and her friend for about the same length of time. I also did some workwork, which is what I'm off to do here again, soon. I have eight pages to finish before bedtime.

This is a hard time of the year knitting wise. You want to give everyone on your list something handknit and there just aren't enough hours in the days remaining even if you could quit your job, stop sleeping, and neglect your children. There are even fewer given that you can't quit those things. Just now I had just put the turkey casserole in the oven to heat up and I sat down to do a couple rounds on Max's socks. I thought about all that needs to be done by Christmas. There's the little pink thing for cousin Sofia, Max's socks, Chris's socks, Max's sweater, Milo's mittens, Oliver's mittens, and a couple of sample lace pieces for the yarn store.

I had really wanted to go into December with only Max's sweater and the mittens left to do, but I don't know how possible that is given that tomorrow is church and then we're decorating the tree together, and then I have a workweek so full of deadlines that our supervisor on this project is already sending out nice, but clear, "get 'er done" emails.

So there I am, sitting in the green chair in the living room, chewing on my lip and working away at this sock, trying to triage the knitting projects. It occurs to me I can't do the button bands on the pink thing until I have the buttons and I start mentally reviewing the known buttons at my LYS, rejecting each, when I suddenly remember BUYING the buttons for this sweater already. And they were perfect. They were little "Peter Rabbit" buttons and I bought them at Peight's in Belleville. They were in a little white bag and I remember unpacking them at home and tucking the bag and buttons away somewhere until I needed them. But for the life of me, I can't remember where. I have torn the stash apart looking for them (having become acquainted with others stashes on Ravelry, I can now say with some authority, that I do not have much of a stash. I've seen 20-yr-olds who have already achieved Stash Aquisition Beyond Life Expectancy there. I could knit up all my yarn in under 12 months if I needed to.) and they are nowhere to be found.

I'm really bummed. They didn't cost a lot and I'm pretty sure if I went back to the store, I could get them again, but Belleville is a half-day errand and I'm looking at my calendar and thinking that I have absolutely no idea where I'll get that half day between now and Christmas. And besides, I KNOW those buttons are here in the house somewhere. I just have not a smidge of a clue about where.

You Say That Like It's a Bad Thing

Yesterday I had to go see my doctor for a small, but irritating issue, and their scale was like 5 lbs off, causing me to go into near hysterics, because the weight I have gained back this summer from eating all sorts of garbage in an attempt to feel better about our financial situation (I know, but it makes sense at the time, go figure) is bad enough and if you add 5 lbs and jeans and snow boots to that, it--well, it can make a grown woman cry. Having hopped on the scale this morning and reassured myself that I can still lose this weight and get back to that 167/168 that made me feel so good and happy, I can now view that conversation with a sense of humor. This was my favorite part:

[Doctor wraps up lecture on how my anti-depressant is notorious for weight gain, which I nod and can appreciate, but know that it's not the pill--it was the brownies I had in food storage. A year's supply, LOL, consumed in one summer. I didn't have a year's supply of GRAIN in the food storage, but by golly, I had a year's supply of BROWNIES.]
Doc: And then of course, there's your age.
Me: [surprised by sudden change of topic] My age?
Doc: Well, you turn 40 this year. That means your metabolism is slowing down and it's just plain harder to lose the weight.

I pause for a moment to consider this. I mean, it's not like it's a well-kept secret or anything. Everyone knows that the older you get, the harder it is to lose weight--until you're 86 and you've eaten every delicious thing you can think of and food just doesn't hold the attraction it once did for you--so this was no news flash. What was a newsflash was that she was seriously thinking of my turning 40 as a negative. I stared at her for a moment while my thoughts raced around, and I had to face the fact that my response to this assumption was simply far too complicated to go into and--as friendly as she is--really exceeded what she was expected to listen to as my doctor.

I settled for something along the lines of "Um-hum" and "I'll mention it to my psych."

Because here is how I really feel about turning 40:

I. can't. wait. Bring it on!

Turning 30 was fabulous. I had a better understanding of my moods and the stupid things I do when I let myself get too low or too high. I understood that in the throws of a sudden shift from low to high brought on by stress or even a fever or a dramatic change in sunlight in the spring, I was capable of astonishingly stupid decisions that might even be criminal in nature (although never with malice aforethought, and I'm not capable of violence or neglecting my children). I was developing the coping skills to stop myself before I got to that point. I was learning a little bit about how to manage my money like an adult. I was getting work that earned real money. I had managed to stay married for four years to the same guy and I--I wasn't twenty-something anymore. I was only too happy to put that decade to bed.

I have even higher expectations of 40. Here at the close of my thirties, my highs don't go so high and my lows don't go so low and I have survived the battle of secondary infertility and cloth diapers and Southern California cost of living and come out on the other side ahead. With a few exceptions, I get more sleep, I am paying off my debt instead of accumulating more of it (this year was a setback, but we're nearly through the worst of it), we probably have all the kids we're going to have so the house will probably gradually look cleaner and neater over time instead of progressively more chaotic. We are determined to soon be in the position of having no debt other than the mortgage and to be more aggressive about saving for our retirement.

I expect the following things to happen in my forties:
1. Grow ever closer to my husband.
2. Save more.
3. Watch my sons start to cross that bridge from child to man. (start to. Not complete it.)
4. Have more time for spiritual pursuits.
5. Take some vacations that require a passport.
6. Grow better tomatoes.
7. Watch my husband establish and grow his photography business (even if he gets a "regular" job in the meantime)
8. Enjoy my children's teenage years because they will also pass too quickly.
9. Go further gray and start to get white hair patches.
10. Knit more.

If my twenties taught me hard lessons about what I am capable of screwing up by being too willing to take too many risks, my thirties have taught me hard lessons about what I am capable of missing by working too hard and always setting impossible goals.

Somewhere in the middle of this is a place where you let go of control to the others in your life and to your God, while maintaining responsibility for the things you can control. My mantra for my twenties was something like, "Life life to its fullest." and that sometimes led me astray. And my mantra for my thirties was something like, "Where there's a will, there's a way." without an understanding that it needs to be GOD's will, not mine (well, except to the extent that my will be to do God's will). I anticipate my 40's mantra to be the serenity prayer. Let's look at it:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change; the courage to change the things i can;and the wisdom to know the difference.
--Reinhold Niebuhr, 1934 [lower case i intended by author]


There is, apparently, a mother goose rhyme that expresses a similar sentiment. Like many synonyms, it contains a slightly different take on things, and I like it, too, so I'm including it here.

For every ailment under the sun

There is a remedy, or there is none;

If there be one, try to find it;

If there be none, never mind it.

And for my forties, which will be the last decade in which I have an opportunity to really MOTHER my children, I plan to keep this quote from this year's general conference talks in mind:

"We can lay down our lives for those we love not by physically dying for them but rather by living for them—giving of our time; always being present in their lives; serving them; being courteous, affectionate, and showing true love for those of our family and to all men—as the Savior taught."

--Elder Claudio R. M. Costa, "Don't Leave for Tomorrow What You Can Do Today", October 2007 General Conference


So yes, I'm turning 40 in 2008, but you won't hear me saying it like that's a bad thing. In my 40's I'll have sons that can help with the raking of the leaves, write me wonderful works of Science Fiction, and tell me how great it is to be 8 or 12 or 16 (and how hard it is, of course). I'll have more time with my husband, not less. I'll have one more decade under my belt of understanding how to be a better me. I understand I will have to work harder to lose the weight and I'm at peace with that because the older I get, the better I get at keeping things in perspective, recognizing when it's the kind of day I shouldn't make any long-term decisions, and in general, spend a lot less time worrying about what others think of me.

Now don't get me wrong--I don't feel anywhere near where I want to be yet. Maybe I never will. But I know I bounce back faster than I used to and I'm a better "half" to the whole that is Chris and I. And a person can't feel anything but gratitude about that. With things internally improving so much with each ten years that passes--it's hard to get too upset about things slowing down on the physical plane. Oh, I reserve the right to curse my metabolism from time to time--but I've never had a particularly speedy metabolism anyway, so that won't be all that new. The news that I'll have to stay on my diet longer to achieve the same results doesn't really sound like news. Dieting sucks. Always has, always will. But the rest of the stuff about being in my 40's--that all sounds good. I'm at no new risk for anything that could kill me and I'm past 2am feedings and high-interest rate loans. I think I'm going to find my 40's wonderful. I really do.

Ben, Milo, and BB King

There is a song that BB King does called Better Not Look Down. I thought of it tonight for my two larger-than-life, stars of the YSCP Kindergarten class, as tomorrow is their birthday and they are SURE that turning six will bring them even more wonderful things.

Usually their birthday brings back all the memories of that time just before and after they were born. The fear and joy and exhaustion all wrapped together with the lights and sounds of the Holiday season. But this year, well, it's been a humbling year. And I am living a little more in today and a little less in yesterday. So this year my advice for my sons comes in the chorus of this song:

I've been around and I've seen some things
People moving faster than the speed of sound
Faster than the speeding bullet
People living like Superman
All day and all night
And I won't say if it's wrong or if it's right
I'm pretty fast myself
But I do have some advice to pass along
In the chorus of this song

Better not look down, if you want to keep on flying
Put the hammer down, keep it full speed ahead
Better not look back, or you might just wind up crying
You can keep it moving, if you don't look down

An old girlfriend of mine showed up the other day.
That girl has lived in love, and for love,
And over love, and under love--all her life!
If the arrows from Cupid's bow that had
Passed through her heart had been sticking
Out of her body--she would have looked like a porcupine.
She asked me "B.B. do you think I've lived my life all wrong?"
And I said: "The only advice I have to pass
Along is in the chorus of this song." Girl,

Better not look down, if you want to keep on flying
Put the hammer down, keep it full speed ahead
Better not look back, or you might just wind up crying
You can keep it moving, if you don't look down

I was walking down the street at sunrise one morning, in London, England
And there was a very large Rolls Royce limousine,
Pulling slowly along the street.
And in that Rolls Royce was the queen of England, looking tired,
Just go back from a party, and the queen leaned out and,
She said: "Aren't you B.B. King?"
She said: "Oh B.B., sometimes it's so hard to pull things together.
Could you tell me what you think I ought to do?"
And I said:

Better not look down, if you want to keep on flying
Put the hammer down, keep it full speed ahead
Better not look back, or you might just wind up crying
You can keep it moving, if you don't look down

[And from me, the "forgotten fifth verse"]

I was flying along in the clouds at dusk one evening over New York City,
And there was a very bright light just ahead of me,
Floating serenely by the plane
at 34,000 feet was the Lord of us all, looking expectant,
Like he knew I had a question, and so I leaned out,
and said: "Lord, if I don't look down, where do I look,
when I don't know which way to go?
Sometimes even I don't know."
And He said:

Better look up, Son, if you want to keep on flying
Bend your knees to the ground, keep prayer in your heart.
Don't get too puffed up, for that road leads to crying
We can keep things moving, leave the blessings to me.

Happy Birthday, Ben. Happy Birthday, Milo. I love you.

For Ann and Dy

Dy gets a baby sweater because I totally dropped the ball and LOST smidges dimensions and then completely wiped it from my brain until I found the yarn I'd set aside for his sweater WITH the dimensions about a month ago in the back of a closet. Needless to say, Smidge is not that size anymore. So Dy just has to email me her snail mail address and the new baby gets something when we know a little about which team he or she will be playing for--pink or blue.

Griffin gets a baby sweater because he's a baby and I can still knit him a nice size 12-months something and get it done before he'll grow out of it. Griffin needs to get his mom to email me their snail mail address and any pertitent information like "warning, he's in the 99th percentile for growth," in which case I'll knit him a nice size 18-month outfit to wear at the 12-month mark.
It's really only big people like dear hubby and (as he not only is a big kid, but continues to insist on growing at an alarming rate) oldest son who have to keep on me to keep knitting. For that reason, I have sworn not to start any new baby sweaters until after Max's Christmas sweater is done. Griffin and baby Dy shouldn't expect delivery until early Spring.

But they can expect cute. ::Gasp:: I'm starting my first Elizabeth Zimmerman Baby Surprise Jacket soon. I have enough to make TWO of those! They're on the rustic side, but they're made in the most incredible Peruvian Organic Cotton and aside from the whole hand-wash only annoyance, they're plenty warm enough for the mild winters you both have. Oh these would be PERFECT.

::claps hands:: send mail address to my email! It is decided!

Yay! It's Strep!

As in "Yay! We have health insurance!"
And, "Yay! We got a doctor appointment for just 20 minutes after I called!"
And, "Yay! the new doctor is great!"
And, "Yay! A friggin' strep test takes FIVE WHOLE MINUTES in 2007,"
And, "Yay! We have health insurance!"
So, "Yay! He's on antibiotics."

I'd prefer NOT to have to pay $390/month for the privilege of having health insurance, yes, I would. I'd prefer to have a $25 copay instead of footing the bill for every appointment, every medication, because our deductible is higher than some people's annual income.

But at the same time I'm so glad it was an option, I'm glad that we were covered. Funny what you get grateful for when your kid gets sick. (Now, who wants to hold the pot so we can all place bets about whether the twinks get sick or not?)

Emily had a vet appointment today, too. I got a lecture on plucking her ears and Emily got a lecture on keeping her ears clean. SHE is on anti-yeast meds for the next ten days so it was MEDS all around and a donut at the grocery store for Mom.

And NOW I will go get some work done.

Fever Dreams

It's been an interesting couple of days here at the house. On Thursday evening Max informed me that the he thought he was coming down with something, and might not be up to going to school. In any other 11-year-old, you'd immediately email the teacher to see what test he was supposed to be studying for, but Max's teacher is a seasoned ex-high-school teacher who usually schedules exams for Thursdays. Now that's clever. At any rate, Max was convincingly sporting an unpleasant cough and his throat sounded swollen. So when I went to check on him Friday morning and found him running a fever, I didn't even wake him. I dressed Ben and Milo and took them off to kindergarten and Max had a relatively pleasant morning at home playing his gamecube until . . . he discharged the contents of his stomach around 11am. This led to the first of many naps and that led to the first fever spike and in the meantime . . . . .

Downstairs we had Mom trying to finish up a work project and Dad watching the snow fall steadily all day, feeling extremely concerned about going, and accusing Mom of having it in for him because she was encouraging him to keep his date with Boy Scouter Leadership Camp destiny. He really only had one concern: despite his best efforts, he was going to end up cold. So in between edits I tried to round up all his missing wool socks and get them washed and dried and eventually he was packed and showered and in full Boy Scout Leader regalia and off he went.

Around 2:00 pm Max's fever hit 103 and with it came the first of many hallucinations for the weekend. This set off a massive panic attack and in that frame of mind, only Mom gets through. I was supposed to leave at 2:15 to pick up Gaye and go through my pattern books and those at the yarn shop to find a nice hat or scarf to knit up, but it took 40 minutes for the advil to kick in and bring the fever down, which turned off the anxiety and hallucinations--and I was given permission to go. So I picked up Gaye and she looked at patterns in the car while I went into the school to get Ben and Milo. From there we went to the grocery store to get provisions for the weekend including a new thermometer, more poscicles, and more ibuprofin. (Max gets the adult stuff.) We got dog food and cereal and frozen chicken bits and headed home. Chris left for the frozen tundra Boy Scout Camp and I settled in for what I thought would be a quiet weekend at home. I would write textbook copy. The kids would play electronic gadgets. Grandma Judy was scheduled to visit briefly Saturday night/Sunday morning.

But it was not to be, for this was no ordinary virus. Every time the fever came back, it came back more viciously. It resisted normal pharmaceutical attempts to bring it back down, taking up to two hours to come all the way back to near normal. Every time the fever went over 103 (and it always does) the hallucinations and anxiety are near constant. If he falls asleep in this state, he has fever dreams that are far worse than the halluciations. He wakes up screaming about spiders, or "No! NO!" or something else that turns another fistful of hair on my head silver.

I prayed sincerely for Chris to be having fun, staying warm and dry, and learning lots of useful things about camping with boyscouts because the idea that this was some sort of cosmic retribution for me making him go in spite of the sleet and ice and snow and rain would just mean we'd both be sick and exhausted come Monday and I really want one of us to be up to dealing with Monday when we get there.

It was 3:30 am when I finally found the combination of pills that would bring the fever down long enough for him to fall asleep and stay asleep. It was 4:00 am when I fell asleep, too. I woke up at 8:30 when the phone started ringing. The first thing I did was give Max more meds before the others could wear off completely. Gaye and I had originally planned to do a weekend tour of the ski swap and the local craft shows and holiday fund-raising auctions, but I didn't trust Max alone that long, so we just did a quick run over to the Lion's club which is a quarter-mile down the road from home. I got lucky and found gifts for three of the women on my list. And a pumpkin pie. The twins ate Lion's club cookies and then we went back home. I got the kitchen partway cleaned up and the dishwasher half unloaded. It was about 11:30 when I headed back to the bathroom, stopped by my bedroom to just rest for a moment. I woke up briefly for a reason I can no longer remember (but it was child related) at 2:00 and then crawled back to bed under the covers until 4:00. In the living room, Max was doing much the same thing. I'd given him more medicine at the 11:30 mark, but failed to when I got up, so it was around 5:30 that the fever came back. And with it the hallucination and the anxiety and the--boy, there's just nothing to do but worry about the kid in that moment. You give him the meds and the fever just laughs at you. He had bright angry red streaks down the sides of his face with an angry red rash that didn't go away even when we put cool, wet cloths on it. We put these cool gel things on his forehead that were supposed to work up to 8 hours, but seemed to be at boiling point after 30 minutes.

It's just a fever but while it's there he's so freaked and so miserable, that you just would do anything to get it to go. He said something about the fever at one point so I did some asking around and determined that it was possible with his symptoms that he might have scarlett fever. Might. The rash he has is classic on his face but on his body, I don't see the sandpapery stuff, just little red dots around his armpits and in the center of his chest. It fades when the fever finally gives in. My Dad told me to take him to the ER, and I was waiting for Grandma Judy to get here to do that when my brother called and talked me back down. My Dad is a grandfather who believes in "better safe than sorry" and my brother is a doctor who believes that ER's are for organ failure and bones poking through the skin. I was able to balance the two and decide that as long as Max was feeling comfortable again (and by the time I talked to Dr. J, the two hours were up on Max's fever and he was his old self again, albeit, one with a funny-sounding voice because of the swollen throat.) that we could wait and find a clinic tomorrow, or maybe even Monday morning. I'm leaning more towards tomorrow because if there is strep in there, we should get him on antibiotics early enough to get him to school on Tuesday.

Anyway, I suppose in a way this weekend has been good for Mother-son bonding. I don't mind giving him the weekend. It hasn't done anything for my work relationship, which is really intense right now. But there is nothing to be done for it. Sometimes even a big kid needs you up with them at 4am and that's what you do.

My brother likes to tease and sometimes he says things that get under my skin, but he knew just how to cheer me up at the end of our conversation tonight. "O-bear needs a pair of thumbless mittens . . ." And 10 minutes later I was cheerfully clicking away at KnitPicks.com. My Thanksgiving vacation knitting project will be two little toddler mittens in Cal Berkeley's blue and gold colors. Then they and the Finnish Mittens (which are for the O-bear's mother) will wing their way further East to keep their little hands toasty warm. I think the only thing that a Knitter likes to hear* more than, "Can you make me . . ." are the words, "I've worn a hole in these, can you make another?"

*from a loved-one. From a stranger you want to ask, "do you have any idea the work that goes into these?" A loved-one does know, and also knows you'll say no if you have to. Although technically this wouldn't apply to a pair of toddler-sized thumbless mittens that won't even use a quarter of skein for the pair.

On the needle for Christmas: Corazon mittens for Piano Teacher Carol; Pink wool sweater for Sophie, the last-of-the-spring-baby-girls-cousins; Viking Twist on Orange Twist for Max; Pair of socks for Chris; Pair of socks for Max. I think that's it.

Ben and Milo Welcome Lakshmi, goddess of Wealth

My kids go to a "World Languages" Charter school and about a third of the school doesn't speak English at home. One of their classmates gifted every child in the class with a Divali light on Friday. We got a little note giving a brief explanation of their use and a pretty colored lamp with a votive candle. (Milo's was missing its wick, so we punted with his candle.)

However, the boys also get Ladybug magazine and this month there was a very nice article on Divali, which the boys read and connected with the information they learned in school (I think the Mom came in and actually explained more about Lakshmi to the kids than was on the slip of paper) so they brought me the magazine and the lights last night and we read all about them. And when the sun went down today they were adamant that they had to light the lamps for Lakshmi.

So we did and I took some pictures to send in to the Mom as thanks for sharing her traditions with us in such a generous way. I thought I would share them here.

(How can you tell these lights are in an LDS home? Those are food-storage buckets ruining the picture ;)





(And ohmyheck, don't their faces suddenly look older? They totally have that "And Now We Are Six" look to them!)

Happy Birthday, Dr. J!

Today is my younger brother's birthday--Happy Birthday Dr. J! I hope it's a good one for you :)

Yesterday, of course, was Halloween. We had Ketchup and Mustard.



and Zorro



I was trying for a portrait I could use in Christmas cards, but I don't think we're there yet. This is the best we got.



Yesterday was a wild day. The boys' school administration is very anti-Halloween, but they'd somehow failed to communicate this to all of the new teachers. So there was a big fuss the night before Halloween as numerous "costume parties" (they'd all been careful not to call them Halloween parties) were canceled. The kids were bummed, the teachers were bummed. It was a mess. So I offered to bring in some no-artificial coloring, no-food die, no icing pumpkin muffins just to cheer up the class and that was accepted.

Now, the recipe I have feeds, oh, 60 or so. But I'd only made it once before and I couldn't remember if those portions were the result of doubling or not. So to be safe, I doubled. I was safe alright, but I had like 10 qts of pumpkin muffin batter. (I used the real pumpkin that I'd prepared for pumpkin pie, since I still have plenty frozen left for the pie.) I discovered at 9:00 am, that I was completely out of muffin pan liners, too. So I managed to pull Chris out of his workshop and we went shopping for muffin pan liners and a second, cheap muffin pan. By 11:00, I was pulling into the school parking lot and I delivered a couple dozen muffins to the 6th graders and 4 loaves of pumpkin bread to the Kindergarten (the leftovers were delivered to the teacher's lounge) and still had a couple dozen muffins left at home (which are all gone this morning--totally scary).

Nevertheless, by the time I sat down at my computer to get workwork done, it was 1:15 and then I spent another half hour answering email. In the end, I think I got about 4 hours of work done yesterday. It was a great day, but it leaves me feeling terribly behind with work. I'm trying not to panic because, honestly, this project isn't over until the day before Thanksgiving, and it's just going to stay like this until then. I don't get a day off until Thanksgiving day. For the record--I am not complaining! Not after this year! But if the blog seems less . . . inspired this month, please forgive me. I have to save my inspiration for teacher guide lessons this month.

And now, back to work! (Rabbit!)