Sunday, December 29, 2013

So Very Lost in Translation

All my mom wanted for xmas, apparently, were wool leg warmers.

  • Me: Leg warmers?  Not leggings?  Cuz you described leggings to me, not KNITTED wool tubes for your legs, which, you know, I could have made for you!


  • Her: Oh yeah, huh? (Or my translating abilities paraphrase for you.)

This makes me giggle just a little as it was 80 degrees in LA, just a couple days ago, when I found this out.  It's not like she was sitting there freezing at the moment.  But she was trying to decide whether or not to keep the footless tights I hunted down for her all over Seattle, ones almost thick enough to be leggings that would fit her diminutive figure!  (Yey for gift receipts!)

But seriously, were I a religious person, I would swear on a stack of bibles that it was footless tights that she painstakingly described to me (or so I thought).  Including telling me that I used to buy them at UCLA when I was in high school (or so I heard).  That was what cemented it into my head.  They could only be footless tights, or those god awful white waffle-patterned thermal underwear bottoms. (It was an all girls school, warmth beat fashion any day on cold days, even in LA.)  Because when I was in high school leg warmers had gone off the school uniform list.  But she insists that what she had actually said was what that the girls used to go buy across the street at UCLA.  The girls...she worked there for over 27 years.  "Girls" could mean anyone between 1976 to 2003...(sigh.)  I will, of course, give her the benefit of the doubt.  Cuz hey, I get to knit for her!

I've hunted down a pattern and pulled out the only skein of Machine-Washable Cascade 220 wool in a color so not my mom's (dark purple) to test out this pattern.  See, the issues my mom will have with regards to obtaining store bought leg warmers, of course, is that they aren't wool, and (she measured for me) they need to be not much more than 12" long.  Yes, not a misprint, 12.  Standard leg warmers? Acrylic and ~19", or so I found out when I started looking for a twelfth night gift for her.

I'm probably not going to make the deadline, I'm only halfway through the first one, and that's okay.  And if they aren't her style (and definitely) not her color, they are just the right size for my niece.  And if she outgrows them before the next time it's cold enough in LA for them to be used, she can use them as arm warmers or something.  Those are a thing, right?


Friday, December 20, 2013

There was Wrapping Paper and Free-Form Pie...Why do I Feel Hung Over?

There is snow on my windowsill!

And the ugly tree in I can see through my window as I write this, the one they planted int eh "alley" of the building behind mine that makes NO SENSE because it gets maybe an hour of sunlight (during the summer!) a day, is beautiful!

And I want to crush in my own skull if it will make it stop hurting.

Okay, maybe just my nose and around my eyes.

I know I got a wee bit uncomfortable in Tahoe when it would start snowing, why yes, I am a human barometer, I know, but this is ridiculous.  If I'm going to feel this sick from sinus pressure, I might have to start drinking again so that the hung over feeling at least has someplace to call home.

I want to go out and see snowflakes!  They really are pretty in real life and when you don't have to shovel.  Oh my, the shoveling, I don't miss that at ALL.  Or see a miiiiillllion of them as the obstacle between you, and work.  Every. Day.  For a whole season.  Snow on an off day in Seattle?  Rock on!  Let me see the cars slippy sliding and the pretty decorations nature had given us to hid the ick of Seattle City Living!

But first I need to let the meds kick in.  Which sucks!  I am a whiney complainer, I know.  I'm embracing it.

Happy one day of snow, Seattle!  I'd commemorate it with a picture but my head is splitting just looking at the dimmed down computer screen, I'd probably bust a vein going outside to the brightness of the almost white snow and overly reflective cloudy sky...so let's just pretend I did and use our imaginations!  Yeeesss.

Wednesday, December 04, 2013

A 28 Degree Walk to Work, Of Course I'm Craving Pineapple...

My mom used to say I was a backwards kid.  But for the wrong reason.  She thought it completely bonkers that I ask for ice cream for dessert in winter.

Hello?  I have ice cream for dessert no matter what the thermostat says.

But today, this morning, I walked to work in the coldest weather this year thus far...yes, even colder than the January oh-my-toes-and-fingertips cold.  This is Seattle after all, not the Midwest.  We don't have snow, just frost on the streets.  Mild is as mild does and all that claptrap.  But 28 degrees is still 28 degrees and just a wee bit painful and obviously wintery.  And I craved pineapple so badly I stopped in at Whole Paycheck for some on my way to work.

No, not preggers.  Just desperately missing tropical weather, I think.  It's going to be 82 degrees in Hilo today.  Yep.  Just putting that out there.  If we're lucky we'll see 37 today.  That is just...so...yeah, not tropical.