So, now that I am not cooking dinner and working on the grocery order, I took another whack at this here ad thing and I like this one better.

and The Man's commute is sorely interfering with the yarn budget, I got a wild hair today and did this:



except around twice the size. It will be running on the Ravelry main 6 forum pages. Well, if it gets approved and I hope it gets approved!

I have been thinking about it for a while, but hemmed and hawed. Then today I looked into it and saw there was ONE space left for May and that the prices were incredibly reasonable and May was just 2 days away. It was a no-brainer!

FIngers crossed!

Ha ha ha, you got cold again.
Well guess what? I knew you would and you dind't get me this year!



Yes, I bought plants last week when it was perfect, but I dind't put them in the ground yet! 
Neener neener neener

Is there going to be an entire generation of young men crippled by their insistence on wearing their pants falling down? I was at a stop light today and watched one young man attempt to walk  across the street looking cool, but he literally had to skip every few steps to keep his damn pants on. And I was watching him and thinking "I know pegging my pants around my ankles until my feet turned blue was about the least attractive thing I could have done for my pear shaped teenaged body in 1987, but I will be damned if my pegging caused my hips to become misaligned with my spine" because pants around his knees guy? Must have back problems from trying to look so cool. Also, his boxers were hanging out the bottom of his jeans (actually they were man-pris) and the entire affair was hanging below his tightie whities. Dude, I'm an old lady, but for reals, there is nothing cool about walking around in your drawers with pants hanging on to your thighs for dear life. You look like a tool. A tool with a hitch in his get-a-long.
And I think you had skid marks. 

Also, I watched the news tonight and saw footage of the pope being driven around in his fancy popemobile.
With the windows down.
Pope, Pope, Pope.....*sigh* What good is the bullet proof glass going to do for you when you put. the. windows. down? Come on, now. They built you a whole 'mobile! I bet it has AC! It has a La-Z-Boy!

Oh, I got my new camera today and have been playing with it for about an hour. Now, i'm no great photographer, but I can take a decent photo. ANd I have felt since my beloved 27 pound, budget busting brick of an old camera finally puked out that I haven't taken a decent picture with it's replacement. It was the same brand and everything, but the new one sucked. And it sucked hard. Or maybe it was just me?

Well, I don't think it was just me anymore.

Here is the same thing snapped with both cameras, same lighting, both in macro mode, and then I cropped to the same size using markers in the photos to put the focus on the yarn.

Old:




and the new one:




The colors in the second one are pretty much spot-on while the first one makes my Claudia's Handpainted in Freesia look very anemic
and it's such a gorgeous yarn!

I also snapped this picture of Erma and you can see how each of her hairs is tipped with silver wheras in most of my old pictures of her she is a featureless grey lump unless she was in blinding sunlight. 



wheeeeeeeeeee!

Still got ducks!



But WAAAAAY less water than yesterday. Tree island is at least two times larger around and they have to get out and walk halfway across the yard now and then paddle around in the deep parts. I have to be honest, they make me smile.

In other news, I sold my 50th item in my etsy shop!! Yay!! Now I am setting my sights on 100 and just like #50, the buyer is getting free shipping and a free surprise!
I gotta think of something good....

Im ok! For reals!

My mom's recovery has been complicated. And I don't just mean because, you know, she is the most difficult woman I have ever met in my life. I mean complicated. But she has been doing better with some bumps in the road. But you know, feel free to send good thoughts her way, she needs them. 


But in the meantime when I have been slacking on the bloggery, I have been doing some knitting. And some shopping, and a nice bit of etsy selling. 

So the knitting: I finished my Jaywalkers! Finally!


They only took almost a year. I think I like them. 

And I made a market string bag and cast on for a second one for me in the lotus color from Blue Sky Cotton:
http://blueskyalpacas.com/yarn_detail.php?yarns_ID=8 


I love all of their colors! As if I need any. more. cotton. I have cones of it! And  I played around with dyeng some yarn this week, too.  Those pics have to wait until the yarn is dry. And since I literally have ducks swimming in my back yard today:

It's probably going to be a few days until the skeins are dry. It's wet around here.



Then there was shopping:

This baby will be here in around a week. YES! Image stabilization, baby.

and then there is this cutie:


no, i haven't taken up drinking. It's a 160 gig external hard drive. Oooooh, and it's so pretty! I put glitter butterfly stickers on it. It nearly killed The Man to see that. But I wanted an external drive to back up the itunes library, which after several years is pretty HUGE, which means it would be waaaay too expensive to replace that music (TONS of music) and also to put important documents (like my two shitty novels and uh, taxes) on and the desktop is at maximum capacity and I would rather not buy a whole new computer right this minute, so this worked for me.

And thanks to a tip from a fellow Raveler, I scored a second skein of Claudia Handpainted in Freesia:
 
that is my old one, hopefully the new one will match it!


So I am OK and all that. :)

My hair is cooking so I thought I would take my five minutes and blog on the run.
I am going with my usual #72 Strawberry Blonde.

My mom is still in hospital, she should be in until Wednesday. But I think she was moved to a rehab room instead of the neuro unit today. It's very painful for her to try and have a phone call right now so I try to call when I am pretty sure my step dork will be there and he can give me the update, so she knows I called and feels loved, but you know, with less actual pain. 

Speaking of pain, for some reason when Sunday afternoon rolls around, my husband seems to stop speaking or understanding English. I'm not sure why, but I will say it's really annoying and we had a conversation tonight that went like this :
"You know what, I was NOT yelling, I was trying to be heard since you were upstairs. I am done defending this and this is the very end of this conversation"
"You are playng games"
"No, I am not." Then I read a book while he sat there and stared at me, as if he could not believe I was seriously just not going to quibble.
He tried to poke me a few more times by muttering "games" and I ignored it. 

That is pretty freaking brave for a man who I horrified beyond all of my previous efforts by using one of those "as seen on tv" Ped-egg foot sander thingies and expressing my disgusted glee that the shavings it collects look like flour. Like floot flour. And then I jokingly told him to be wary of any baked goods. And then he almost threw up. 

And then today he sticks his head up his ass like that??  My other foot is still dry, dipshit.

I have an urge to clean
the Jehova's witnesses showed up yesterday at 9 am
Marge and Elvis both treated me to hairball vomit on Monday (must get petromalt and more oxyclean!))
I saw neighborhood children on bikes yesterday
A squirrel stood on my glass top table on the deck this morning on his hind legs and I swear he shook his balls at me.
     Spring is on the way!

This is what I am dealing with here people:
My mother was out of surgery at 10:30 am and out of recovery and in a hospital bed at 1 pm.
So, you'd think someone would call me.

You would be wrong.
I wanted to call at 2. 
And 3.
And 3:30.
And then I thought maybe I should wait and call when I wasn't home alone, because WHY DIDN'T ANYONE CALL ME YET?

I guess they forgot. 

While I had my stepdad on the phone I kind of blurted out to him more than I had planned to, more than I should have about where my head has been over the past couple months. And I was 100% on the money about the situation. My mother has been just crushed that I stopped calling her, and thinks it was all about Christmas. Even though I told her in plain language that it wasn't the case. But he does see my side of it and he did get it when I asked him when was a good time to begin to sort this out over the past few months. How would that go?
 "I know you are in horrifying pain and facing permanent disability with every day that passes without surgery, but right now, I would like to talk about your failings as a mother, and it's some pretty heavy duty crap so get a Diet Coke and strap yourself in. For an encore, I will be kicking puppies and bunnies. Merry Christmas!"

My family doesn't talk. Everyone perceives that they have been slighted and then goes "hmph!" and a grudge begins to grow. No one ever sits down and says "You know, back when you were a raging alkie, you were really a jackass and I am not able to forgive you right now." No. They all pretend that things are hunky dorey, and then wonder why so many of them drink. Or gamble. Or are wrapped so tight that they measure wrapping paper with a ruler before they cut it. That one might benefit from a  cocktail or 12, now that I think about it.

Well, fuck that, I am talking. And I don't really care if no one wants to hear it. How will it change anything? They think now that I am just an uppity bitch. They might as well know I am a crazy bitch who gets so upset and scared of the world that she can't always even leave the damn house and we all know it has been going on since I was in third grade. While I was doing some of that there talking, The Man handed me a note that said "WHY?" meaning, why was I wasting my time talking to my step-dad. But It's not about making him see what I am dealing with, I know Kevin won't ever get it. He agrees that every last one of us is crazy, but he hasn't lived it, so he will never fully get what it is like. But the talking has to start somewhere, doesn't it? Maybe my motivation is that I don't want him to think I'm the bad guy.here. And why is that so bad? I truly do not feel that I am the bad guy. I know I could have made better choices, but I also know that at some point, I have to take care of me and dealing with her isn't always good for me.

We need to find a new way and hopefully we can begin to do that this spring when she is feeling stronger. I will have to let go of some pretty big hurts, which is REALLY not my forte becuase sometimes it is just easier to stay hurt and stay away. But she is going to have to also accept that trying her best, wasn't always good enough. And a lot of that is that she didn't have a full toolbox to deal with the world when she was pushed out into it, and I get that. It doens't mean it didn't suck for both of us.

 My mom is having her third spinal fusion right now as I type, so I am pretty much a bundle of tummy ache and nerves. I keep trying to think about other things, but whatever, I'm me and that's not realistically going to happen. But I'm awake and dressed so that's not too bad.
I did call her on Monday night, because her surgery was supposed to be yesterday, but they moved it last week. Did she call me to let me know? Well, of course she did not, because that would not be passive aggressive at all, now would it?

I was thinking about all of this yesterday while I picked up a little bit (maybe I should clean more, I have deep thoughts when I do) and you know what? I think it is interesting that a woman who has basically spent 58 years of her life eating shit has a spine that has fallen apart. It's like her inability or lack of motivation to get a farking metaphorical backbone just rotted her actual backbone away or something. Because that is what her issue is. She did have a terrible whiplash injury as a child, but the crux of the issue now is purely degeneration. And it's the worst degeneration that the doctors have seen in someone her age. She has the spinal column of someone twice her age, it's just fallng apart. This surgery is the last attempt to put her back togethger and if it's not successful, she will probably be disabled and in pain for life. There is no obvious cause, either. No behind the scenes disease at work that they can point to, other areas of her body are not suffering from such terrible bone loss. 

About 10 years ago she found out that her jaw had pretty much rotted away, from severe periodontal disease. My mother is an incredibly anal retentive tooth brusher, flosser, and listerine gargler. She has to be to keep the rot at bay and she has been for my entre life. She was born with bad teeth, baby teeth that never left, molars that never came in. All four wisdom teeth came in, of course. It's a family trait to have these crazy teeth (and one that I somehow escaped. I grew into my huge front teeth and they are all pretty straight except for one front molar that came in perfectly sideways).  So anyway. she has gone to the dentist every three months for as long as I can remember, so how did her jaw rot away to nearly nothing? 

They said it was stress. In some people, the way they deal with stress is basically bone loss and things like periodontal disease. So they pulled all of her teeth, put in implants and told her to find a way to manage stress in her life because it was eating away at her.

Which, of course, she did not do as this was all before Carrie even picked up a crack pipe or had her guts mutilated. And now her back is toast, she is competing to be crowned in the Miss Passive Aggressive USA pageant and she is still letting life just walk all over her wearing the Fuck You Shoes and then wallowing in her wretchedness. She obviously cannot stop my sister, but she can get help in managing her stress. She sees a shrink for her meds, she just never TALKS to this shrink more than once a month or so. And I did ask her if she was honest with him about what was going on in her life and if so, why the hell wasn't he asking to see her once a week? So something tells me she is probably not upfront with him. Which isn't very surprising given that I have been in counseing with her before and she puts a really good spin on thngs. Especially things that are not flattering to her or paint her in any light other than "victim".

So Monday night I called her. I haven't called her since before Christmas, because that sucked so hard that I decided she can call me for a change if she wants to see how I am. It wasn't JUST Christmas, it was a lifetime of this crap and I see it now in a way I wasn't fully grasping before and I don't want it. I want a relationship with my mother, but it's going to have to be one that works for both of us and has give and take and I honestly don't know if she is capable of that. I hope she is, but I don't know. She's going to have to deal with some of her shit and take some responsibility. But it's kind of impossible and unfair to go into all of that right before someone goes into such big surgery, so what she thinks right now is that I am just mad at her. And while I bristle at the unfairness of that, I have also been sucking it up for the past 2 months because it's not the right time to say "as a mother, you really blew and we have to find a new way to interact with one another or the alternative is going to be that we do not interact at all". I think I am being a grown up and I keep reminding myself that caring for myself is not the same as being selfish. The selfish part of me wants to have a tantrum like I am thirteen years old again because she has called exactly once to see how I am in the past two months. And it wasn't on my birthday, though she did send a gift this year. And I sent a thank-you note back to her, I am nothing if not polite while being a bitch. See what I mean with the passive aggression? Send me an $80 pink iron from my wish lsit, but forget to call. Ouch.


So we had a very superficial phone conversation where I confirmed dates, asked if she needed anything, offered to alter some t-shirts with snaps at the shoulder seams to go easily over her large neck brace and tried to be helpful without making her any promises about what I am willing or able to do during her recovery.  I asked if they had enough disposable litter boxes. And no, she thinks she has it all covered this time, but if she does need anything like that, she will email me so I can drop it in the mail. 

And then she mentioned that my grandma's best friend had called her the other day to offer some comfort and advice about the back surgery. She had heard about it from her daughter, one of my mom's closest friends. This couple were my grandparents' very best friends for over fifty years and now the other three are gone.  Doris has had several back surgeries so had some really good advice for my mom this time and I think it comforted her. She told me "It was wonderful to just get some mothering, I really needed that right now more than anything." Which kind of felt like a dig because I haven't been there to comfort her as usual, and i wanted to tell her that I just want some mothering, too, dammit! And it stung, and just kind of hung there in the air since I didn't have anything nice to say I didn't say anything at all for a few moments. After all, I am not her mother.
 
But, oh, how I can relate to that feeling.

Uh, yeah, you do.

The Man is resistant to change. He gave up control of his closet very early in our relationship, now he just wears whatever is in there. And over the past 10 years I have devised a sort of Man Garanimals concept. Everything pretty much matches. But doesn't match TOO much to avoid what I called his "zookeeper outfits". He gets to pretend he is picking out his own clothes that way while I can happily sleep in knowing he won't come home from work in something that makes me cringe knowing he wore it in public. Except for socks, he never wears matching socks. I give up on that.

Shoes are still a battleground for us and the only way to force him into getting new shoes is to sometimes just buy the damned shoes and hope they fit. I am generally successful, or he has no idea how his shoes should fit. 
Sometimes I just ambush him.
Such was the case last night at Target. He went to go get some crew neck t-shirts while I wandered around the ever shrinking plus size clothing section (Dear Target: the world is getting fatter, do you want our fat asses to go nekked? Where did all your cute plus size clothes go? Also, I am fat, not knocked up, it is 27 flavors of insulting to just lump the fattie section and the preggo section into one big area.  Do you not want my fat ass dollars? Fuck you very much, Annie) and I told him I would meet him over in the shoes.
I grabbed a pair of springy flats for me. and lo, the men's sneakers yawned before us.
"What size shoe do you wear again?"
"Why?" I have gotten his attention, but he doens't yet realize he is getting new shoes.
"It's an 11, right? You wear an 11?" I made my choice quickly and shoved a box at him. "Try these on."
"What?!  I don't NEED shoes! I have two pair of sneakers! The mowing shoes and the grey ones!" (He caught on.)
"Your grey ones are going to be the new mowing shoes."
"WHAT?"
"You heard me, try those on."
"No, I don't need new shoes."
"Fine, I will just get them and we will hope they fit when i throw your other ones away."
That worked because he knows I am not messing around. I warned him about his Schaumburg High School gym shorts back in 1998. In his senior year of high school, he was 6 feet tall and weighed around 150 pounds. By the time we got married in 1997, he was NOT 150 pounds and yet still wore these burgundy polyester delights around the house. Well, around the trailer we lived in after an apartment flood (it was really nice!). I called them "birth control shorts" And they were very effective. They disappeared and it took him weeks to notice. But ooooh, when he did it was shock and awe. So when I say I will be thowing his shit away, he listens.
He sat down and grudgingly took off his old shoes. Revealing one white sock and one inside out blue dress sock. Nice. 
"I don't know WHY you think I need new shoes! My mowing shoes are just fine."
"They are not just fine, they are NASTAY. Also, you. keep. wearing. them! Do you see any grass to mow lately?"
"Well, no, they are my mowing and shoveling shoes!"
"They are your rotting shoes and they will be no more! Do those fit?"
"Well, they aren't too big."
"Oh, so are they too small?"
"No"
"So they......fit?"
"I suppose. But I don't need new shoes!"
"Whatever, put them in the cart."

So now he has new shoes. And those babies up there are about to go for a dirt nap. They are even grosser in person. The cats cringe from them and they LOVE shoes. Well, they love MY shoes. Seriously, Marge likes to stick his head in my shoes and just hang out. They like cute shoes. But nothng could save those bad boys. I think we got every penny of our $14.99 out of them.

I took a chicken out of the freezer on Saturday eveing to thaw out for dinner tonight.
It was a freaking turkey breast.

That is so annoying. Damn me. It was still partl frozen, I stuck the mofo in anyway, It's already going to take for freaking ever.

Ahhhh, sweet Shaun Cassidy memories. Not as cute as David, but still teen dreamy. Even though I wasn't a teen in his heyday, I still had a crush on him and cherished the 45 record my cousin gave me with "Hey Deenie" on one side and "Do You Believe in Magic?" on the other. I wanted nothing more than to be as cool as my older cousins when I was around 6 years old. And if it meant preferring Shaun over David,I was prepared to lie. 

But that is not the point of this post. No, it is actual knitting content. SHUT UP!
I finally learned how to Magic Loop! What inspired me? Laziness. Im not ashamed, I figure some great things have been inspired by laziness. I know I sure as hell don't have a mortar and pestle in my kitchen or an outhouse in my backyard, so I am ok with laziness.
I was finishing up another hot water bottle cozy, and this time it was for ME,and I was thinking about how I was going to have to switch from the circ to the DPNs to do the neck and then what a damn drag it is to do all of those increases on the DPNs and I thought "Ooh,I could magic loop it, I have the freaky long Denise cables....oooh, but that would be so haaaaaaaaard." And then I googled it and what the hell?
THAT is what had me all askeered? That was soo easy! So I set to it and switched cables on my needles and away I went . I really liked it!

So I decided to take my current sock project off the beloved bryspun DPNs and magic loop away since I had just turned the heel and so far so good. It is kind of fiddly, but the lack of ladders is enjoyable. 

And of course, there is a gratuitous knitting picture:



The yarn is "Light Breeze" SuperSock from www.sunnysideellen.etsy.com and it is just as pretty in real life.

Here are the other things I tried:

Steam, both sitting in a steamy bathroom while the shower runs and taking a wad of paper towel putting it into a juice glass, pouring some hot-ass water on it and then clamping the glass over your ear for ten minutes. The key here is that you do not want any free range water in the glass, hence the paper towel.  Who needs boiled eardrum?
This has worked well for me in the past. When i was 17 (oh, I am so sorry mothers of 17 yr olds) I flew from Chicago to Boston ALONE to visit my boyfriend in the Navy. Oh, saying goodbye at Boston Logan was a tear soaked affair. This was during Gulf War the first so he couln\dn't go beyond the gate to wait for my plane with me. So not only did I blubber while we sucked face   made out   played tonsil hockey  um, said goodbye. I blubbered until I boarded the plane. And then I cried into my cheesy ass teddy bear stuffed animal all the way. Oh, yes I did. partly because we said goodbye and party becuase I was pretty sure the first thing my mother would say when I got off the plane was "DID YOU HAVE SEX ALL WEEKEND?" and duh...I was seventeen. Of course I did. And of course she did.
Oh, yes, my point...I was damn near deaf when I got off the plane with all the crying and flying. Which meant I couldn't hear her ask that question and she could only say it so much louder since my much younger step siblings were in tow. Muwhahahaha. But when we got home and I was in misery my stepdork showed me the glass and ear trick (he travels a lot) and it worked a treat on my tear clogged ears.
It failed yesterday. Well, on my ears. it did not fail to crack my husband up and inspire him to make jokes about me playing telephone. Thankfully my middle finger was totally in working order.

I ate 17 million curiously strong mints hoping the peppermint oil would open things up. Nope, but I can say without a doubt I had fresh fucking breath, which is no mean feat with a cold. 

I used similisan drops, which once they worked their way down into my ear, were the first thing I could taste in 2 days. Mmmmm, glycerine. Still cloggy.

I drank a concoction of what was about a quarter cup of lemon juice, some huge globs of honey, a sleeptime teabag and boiling water. It was vaguely sour, but no real kick to it for me. The Man tasted it and his face turned inside out, so he says it was sour. I thought it lovely. Also, no pop. 

I walked around the house with my head tilted to the left stomping my left foot. Also cracked the man up. Also useless.

I did the Night At The Roxbury Dance until I thought I might barf, nope. 

I finally just laid with my head on a hot water bottle until I had perma grooves in the side of my face and somewhere around 2 AM it unclogged. Ahhhhhhhhhh.