Just a Hint of What's to Come

So...since a few days before my birthday and unto this AM, I've had the same eye-jarring, ear bugging, don't-bend-over-or-you-regret-it headache.

And yet I am crazy, because I finished these:

for sock madness #4. (There is absolutely no amount of picture tweeking that will make my ankles look any skinnier or less, um, stumpy, so I didn't even bother. Besides, see aforementioned headache description.)

I have thank-you cards sitting here waiting for me to write up, pictures of crazy nemo that need a bit of tweeking, a check to cash (!) -- I love getting checks for my bday! But not the big fat tax returny kind (which are awesome, don't get me wrong), I mean the ones written for like$10 or $20 from grandma (or in this case, xMIL), they make me feel like I'm still a little kid, um getting checks from grandma...or a godmother or seven seeing as I didn't actually ever get a check from grandma.

Can you tell I might still be on some decongestants/anti-inflammatories? If I didn't have to go in and reconcile other peoples' money for a living? This would be uber funny. Instead I am fighting tooth and nail to clear my head up before leaving the house/apt/whathaveyou. (Seattle, be grateful I walk to work, 'sall I'm sayin.)

More later, promise.

I am Awful

I promise another post and then I disappear for a week...

Work + sick + participating in Sock Madness + new sick = I'm not here, I'm in bed, knitting, and on some serious decongestants & anti-inflammatories.

So yeah, consider this one of them drive-by postings I see in the summer-time when people are out having fun. Only I'm not, cuz I'm either at work souped up on Sudafed and Advil, or in my cave at home, trying not to drop any stitches as knit blindly and try in vain to convince the migraine flashes that they do not want to stick around, that there are way more fun places to be than in my eyeballs...all night long...waking me from restless sleep...again.

Anyone else notice I'm posting at 6AM? Up since 4...I can already tell you it's not going to be a good day.

I shall return more when hearty and hale...or at least more hearty and hale...

Le't Consider This One Practice for the Real One

Soooooooo, technically, Andy had a birthday yesterday (Thursday), and maaaaaaaybeeee today, at around 2:42 PM, I might have officially started my 37th year on this planet. (That makes me 36 now, if you're as confused as I was the first time I heard that phrase.)

But I think we'll actually start celebrating and calling it official after the plague has left chez tactless and moved on to other pastures to spread it's cough and phlegm and massive headaches and exhaustion to them.

I am actually not the one trying to expel any of my innards at the moment, that would be Andy. A party was canceled and everything (he hit that 4-0 milestone, you see). Had he gone through with the party, I'm afraid everyone would end up with the coughing sickness and would no longer want to be friends...and Andy might have caught pneumonia from it all and really, not being too drama-queen about this, the man is ill. Technicolor ill if you catch my meaning.

If the symptoms I'm experiencing are going to become what he has? Yeah, let's just consider yesterday and today practice for the "real" celebrating.

Andy's "birthday" included lots of sudafed, advil, and watching of 2012 (the one with John Cusak that came and went from the theaters before I even realized it was out? Yeah that one.) Watching it made me realize that we need to get a bigger TV for 'splosion watching. That and a good dose of Nyquil before bed was the highlight of the evening. I know, we like to par-tee hard.

My birthday did have a cake, and presents (!) even, but I'll have to post about those tomorrow because the camera is far far away (possibly the living room) and my sinuses are trying to get my attention again. I will share a picture of the candle though (no, Andy would not let me put 36 candles on the cake as I am having enough problems breathing right now without trying to blow out the inferno associated with such a large number of burning sticks.
We found him in our neighborhood Bartells, or as I like to call it, meth-mart. When I was there the other night purchasing the aforementioned Nyquil I got to dodge the fellow who followed me in (by going into the feminine napkin section), try not to get run over by the red-faced guy who really needed a gatorade RIGHT NOW, man, and listen to yelling girl lose her shit with the cashier (I kid you not, I have been at this Bartells no more than 10 times, and 7 of those times yelling girl has been in their yelling at one of the cashiers).

None of these things ever happen when Andy comes with me on a meth-mart run, he is like the shiny little penny I've taken to keeping in my pocket when I go to work. I haven't shared this tidbit either, have I? Penny Man I mean?

There is this guy that stands in the doorway to an apartment building for older underprivileged men that's run by the Seattle Archdiocese (I did my research.) He is older than your average pan-handler, with shoulder-length scraggly white hair and just doesn't seem to be all there.

In this cracking LOUD voice he asks any and all passers by for a penny. As in, "'SCUSE ME, DO YOU HAVE A PENNY!??!" If I have learned anything living where I have? I don't carry an loose change whatsoever. It's just easier for me. But a penny? Really? So I found a penny and put it in my pocket and set out with the idea that I'd give him the penny that next afternoon. But he wasn't there.

Every day for three days I kept that penny in my pocket and no Penny Man. The very next day I use a different jacket and forget to switch over the penny and sure enough, he's there, asking for a penny! And I didn't have one! And sure enough, when I put the penny in my pocket the next day? No Penny Man.

My theory is that if I keep a penny on my person, I will not see him. No really. Today? One the meth-mart run looking for candles? No penny, and what did I spy as we turned the corner and walked the opposite direction of the men's hotel? Yep, white scraggly hair in the doorway. He was a street away so I couldn't hear him and we didn't pass him at all, but still, urgh, you know?!?

Wow, that all kinda got away from me...but YEAH, candle! And it's Nemo with his gimpy little right fin which I totally get with my not-working-right right arm. But those eyes. If the pictures look anything like what I could see from the LCD screen on the camera? Oh just you wait.

Eighteen Years...How Did that Happen?

Is this a hint of what it'd feel like if I had a child of my own reach adulthood?

I've never felt this way about any of the babies I 'sat. Because I just wrote and then deleted the line: "I used to change his diapers!" Before I realized I've changed a lot of kids' diapers who years ago reached adulthood and I just never felt this way.

I fall back to the fact that my baby brother is the very physical marker of the passage of time.

I pretty much fell out of being a regular tenant at the homestead just months after he was born. I think he was crawling when my dad and brother drove me up to school.

He called me "ann ann" and looked for me...or so my mom said, after one of my short stints at home.

He almost broke my face that one summer I took care of him when my mom had her knee replaced (children's toys with handles and heft are a big no-no in my book).

I may have mentally scarred him with my "your hands ain't broken" way of correcting his actions. We have a wee bit of the same bad temper mentality...This is what happens when the two "babies" of the family argue. (I was the baby for 17.99999 years after all.)

And yet? Is that why we get along? (I think a big chunk of that is because I am only a visitor when I do go home...much easier to get along with everyone that way, really.)

Whatever the case, my baby brother is 18 today...and days away from 36 myself? I am feeling so aged and worn and has it been 18 years? Really? In a few months time I will have officially reached that point where I will have lived away from home as long as I lived at home...and then? From that point onward? The balance tips ever further away (unless, of course I go and "renest" as so many have lately begun doing...oh let's please not go there).

Oh I'm getting all wordy and weird...but that's the head-space I'm in right now.

Dude, 18. I promise to be better about this next year. But dude, 18!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANTHONY!

Hats & the P Setting

So I totally forgot that I started a post yesterday and now, hello, it's today, and I know I was messing with you all, posting every day for like three whole days in a row...but obviously that didn't last and we're now back to my haphazard schedule.

So back when I was last in LA, for the xmas visit of dooooom, I knit and knit and knit on a hat for my older brother because, hello! His head was RIGHT THERE and I was RIGHT THERE and by gods I would make him one that he could wear and not look like he stole his son's hat.

Or something.

Every evening/into the night, I'd sit and watch my baby brother's DVDs of Bones and Supernatural and knit some more. And finally, when he realized what I was knitting might not look as silly as a hand-knit might (cuz I don't think he's ever really looked at my mom's socks...or maybe he has and pink and light blue and other non-baby brother colors possibly look like poopie to him and any other teen of his age/phase of adolescence...I know, I went through it myself; I'm much better now thank you), he asked if there was any chance I could replicate a machine-knit hat that he'd permanently borrowed from a friend of his.

What? Me knit a beanie on size 2 or smaller needles? Really? And you want me to do it? Not a forced gift?

Dude, I was so there.

As soon as I cast off my brother's gargantua-hat (which I don't have a picture of, unfortunately, but I can tell you all this, it is not too small for him in any way, shape or form...nope, not too small at all) I cast on for my baby brother.

I knit and knit and knit on size 2 needles using a Dale of Norway fingering-weight yarn whose name escapes me in black and dark grey which you can't even see unless you have a much spiffy monitor than me...and once finished I bathed it in COLD water as I usually do...and it barely fit my head, which I have stated before, is MUCH smaller than the heads of all the males in my family. I think it shrank...which makes me wonder what my older brother's hat must look like now...maybe it just fits now, I don't know, whatever the case I am not really sad that I forgot the name of the yarn because I don't think I will ever use it for such things as hats for family members because I was and possibly am still a wee bit peeved.

I put the remaining yarn in a time out and went out into the world to look for more black yarn to make a hat that fit.

That was back when I posted asking about the disappearance of all black yarn in the world...or at least all of the LYS's I frequent, until finally I found some ultra-Alpaca in size cobweb (okay, maybe I exaggerate...but it really is thin) that I actually cast on for and got several inches through the had before I realized I'd be 500 years old before I finished because even I couldn't justify a beanie on size 0 needles. Not in black yarn. During the middle of winter.

So I dug deep into my unfinished sock pile and found some nice black Louet Gems that might do the trick, cast on 150-some odd stitches and perfected my knit-while-I-walk-to-work habit until I finally had a hat in my hands:

Yes, what look like two very similar very black hats. I stretched the bejebus out of the black and grey one until it almost, but not quite the same size as it's all-black brother. If it doesn't fit him, maybe he can give it to his girlfriend and they can be all em0-matchy-matchy. Do kids still do that?

Anyhow, thus ends my tale, and the hats themselves are currently enroute to my baby brother and should (touch wood) be there in time for his birthday...when, sniff, I'll have to stop calling him baby and think of something new...cuz he'll be all of 18 then...dude, I feel so old!

And what about the"P" setting? That's just a reminder to me more than anything. I took my hat pictures using that setting. I must remember NEVER EVER to do that again. This is why you see two black hats as the "P" setting is not my friend. I don't know what it does, but I know it does not differentiate colors that are super close to one another (i.e. black and grey) and when they are set against a super light color? It's all blended together in a weird monochrome I'd rather not have. Okay, that's all.

Creature of Habit

If Google Reader can import my bloglines list, I may have to motivate enough to try something new.

But I am a terrible creature of habit. It's folks like me that have kept certain cereal makers in business nigh on 30-too many years. And/or juice producers. And maybe even the folks at certain pen manufacturing companies, hair tie makers, blank book producers...you name it, if I'm using it, it's probably because I've been using that brand/make/model most of my life. It takes a whole lot to move me to try something new. Beginning with stopping the production of the item.

Dude, that whole "get them while they're young" advertising game? Too damned true.

Anywho...semi-filler for Bloglines. Because I feel like reaching out to the invisible masses right now. I'm at that stage of not feeling quite right that has me feeling like I should crawl into a dark cave and not let anyone see me...and feeling all needy and wimpy and can someone please take care of me?!?

Being an adult sucks hard at times like this.

I am over the worst of it, I'm guessing. It's an infection of the "tract" variety that requires way too much water and cranberry juice/pills and visits to the WC to keep things, um flowing. You can kill me later for not going to the doctor and getting antibiotics, but the fact is that it just never got to the OHMYGODMYKIDNEY phase. And seeing as I love doctors soooooo very much? And spent over $300 for them to tell me that I've never had the chicken pox? That if I can get over this on my own? I'm gonna.

Yes, internet moms, at the first sign of that thudding/throbbibg/unmistakable pain I will go see someone, I promise. I know this can go either way (i.e. go away on its own or kill me), but as I keep saying, with the fever gone and the utter exhaustion now at the "I'm just tired" level, I'm either headed toward wellness, or faking it pretty awesomely.

Except maybe I still want my mommy every few hours. (Which really is much funnier if you'd ever experienced being sick around my mom when I was a kid...I think I got my bedside manner from her...which says it all if you've ever been sick around me.)

Something Purple

I do still knit. A lot more than I let on, lately, but I do. It's getting my act together enough to snap a picture before I give it away? That I'm having problems with lately.

I'm seeing the attraction of the 3-ish Mega Pixel cameras on the fancy smart-phones wherein you can snap the shot, send it to your social networking site of choice, and bobs-yer-uncle, you have a finished object/brag page/something to account for the squint you're developing.

But I did like making these:

Through the Loops' Socktoberfest Mystery Socks:

I wasn't sure how to link them, so I kinda just liked the first clue. I'm sure you if you're really burning to knit these you're on Ravelry and have the page/project bookmarked (or whatever you do to save patterns...I need more schooling in these matters, obviously.)

I followed the instructions as written, but finished far too late to enter into the "finished socks" contest, which is okay with me, really. With everything else going on? I'm surprised I got as far as I did and even finished! Hurray for me!

So back in the junior high/later elementary age, I really took a shine to purple things. Not so much the unicorn light-colored lavender, but in a pinch, I'll still saunter over in that direction. But purple? A real blue-hued purple? Prince-and-the-Revolution-Purple-Rain-Purple? I like. And I really liked the shades of this yarn. It's Pagewood Farms in the um, Yukon, um, style? Design? Model? In a very nice (to me, maybe purple isn't your thing) variegated purple.

I made these socks for my best friend from elementary school's birthday this year. I had been aiming for her birthday um, maybe two years ago...but time did that running away thing it does, so I failed. Better late than never? I guess?

She lives where they actually do have snow on a seasonal basis and though these are holey, they are woolly, and I hope she got them and that they fit. It's my first time trying out making socks via long distance for someone other than my mom. And I'm totally willing to try again if I failed, 'kay? No pressure! And if you hate them that's okay too, really! (They don't call me tactless for nothin'.)

For my next trick, I finished a couple hats for my baby brother, who in a few days time won't be so baby anymore...but I am exhausted...which is another update I should talk about, but maybe when I feel 100%, cuz writing about how poopie I feel when the sick factor is high? Just makes me feel worse.

More later.

Testing?

Well, bloglines still thinks I don't exist.

That's fine. Really. Last time it posted once I hit three posts. So this is a filler one before I post the socks I finished a million years ago.

My Kingdom for a Boring Life...

But then, would I even bother with a blog at all?

If my writing style is kind off today I'm blaming it on the fever (though once you hit the "sweats" part it means you're finally coming down from it, according so some of the web doctors I started reading...others think I might need to be hospitalized so I'm trying to take the middle road here and just take advil and drink water and see how I feel later.)

I'm at a loss where to begin and it all feels like old news already...but let's start with the fire, as there aren't any pictures of that, and move on to other things which I'll try to "pre-post" so as to not inundate my very dwindled reading population with more posts in one day than I've done in a year, shall we?

But wait, we may need to back up a bit more as it won't explain why the alarm was so dreadful to me by Wednesday. How about let's start with a wee bit more background:

So Monday Andy left for Ohio, and as much as I love living with people and know I will miss them terribly as some point in their absence, I was kinda looking forward to a quiet, empty apartment for the few nights he'd be gone. It'd been a rough week before and I was definitely in the more "I hate everybody" mood, which solitude does wonders for.

Tuesday evening though, I last-minute like (as in I had my bag and sweater over my shoulder for the whole thing) said I'd stick around for the reception my work place had (having moved to the new and kewel building and wanting to show off the lab and workshop, I can't blame them). There might have been more glasses of wine that I thought I'd drunk and some super greasy, but yummy, appetizers that do so very little for absorbing those too many glasses of wine.

I am officially now super grateful that I only live blocks from work, because I am also officially a teetotaler in my mid thirties, really, ask anyone, and the wine and greasy food were just not the right combination for my no longer experienced tummy and liver. But by bog, I was going to get home and watch LOST if it killed me! But I was already passing out as I sat down on the couch.

With how horrible things like too much fish, pork and salt are for my body? I think I might add duck to the list. When I woke up to a very beautiful black man trying to sell me "men's aerobic" products via the tee vee at 2:30 AM? I was not doing very well at all. The room, and my tummy, were spinning...and I had no one to blame but myself. I put myself to bed, admonishing myself for being such a fool, and swearing off both wine and duck empanadas, because they are not the more healthful or wise combination for me, as my swollen fingers were testament to this.

Bleary and in a little pain, which I chalked up to being hung-over and maybe a little poisoned, I went to work, and worked hard. Thank you advil. Thank you makers of vitamin water. Thank you co-workers for leaving me alone. Somehow I made it through the day and my goal was to go home, collapse, and be a new woman on the morrow.

This is where I was/what I was feeling when at 1:30 AM the loudest alarm clock in the world woke me up, and spoke to me. I may have tried to hit the snooze bar on my alarm clock before I realized that my alarm clock did not TALK to me.

WHOOT! WHOOOOOT!
ATTENTION, ATTENTION, THERE IS AN EMERGENCY SITUATION IN THE BUILDING. PLEASE WALK TO THE NEAREST STAIRS AND GO DOWN TO THE LOBBY.
WHOOOOT! WHOOOT!

"No no no no no nooooooooooooo" was what I said out loud and ALMOST pulled the covers over my head. We'd had sooooo many false alarms in the last couple months (3 that I quickly recalled), but never on my floor. Never with that voice. Never with so many voices in the hallway.

So I got up (the room, kinda not quite right) and possibly channeled the younger me who used to live on a boat and woke up that one day to stand in inches of water on the Napa River. I don't think I ever got dressed so fast. But dressed I decided to be as I live on the 17th floor. 17 flights of stairs in my slippers? Not going to happen. 17 flights that ended up with us standing out in the rain (not the lobby?) in my inadequate for the temperatures PJs? Not going to happen.

When I went out the door (then doubled back to make sure I had my wallet and cell phone), there were others milling and one determined floormate that opened the door to the stairs and said, "We should all go." We all did, and it wasn't until we were sitting in the lobby waiting for the firemen to arrive theorizing if it really was a fire or another false alarm that he told us all to go because he passed an apartment on OUR FLOOR with smoke coming out from under the door, but hadn't wanted to mention this as he was all for avoiding a panic/mad dash/trampling/drama. Dude, my hero.

But yeah, 17 flights. We stopped a couple floors down to see if we could just hold out on like the 15th or 10th or maybe the 8th floor (where they have a patio and stuff that I never use) but after opening a few doors and hearing alarms and more WHOOTS and not being sure if it was just the echo of ours, we decided that we should just head all the way down, just in case.

And if I hadn't, I'd have never heard that it was the apartment two doors down from mine that was ablaze and that the fire had actually set off the sprinklers and that the apartments to the sides of the inferno should go back up and check on the status of their apartments. However, one wee caveat...the elevators would be out for hours. We could go back to our homes, but we'd have to take the stairs.

17 flights. All I could think of as we passed the 8th floor and my thighs gave their first tremble? I had been offered a place on the 8th floor. By the time I got to the 14th? I was staggering, gasping for air that smelled very much of smoke, and those aforementioned thighs? HATED ME.

I opened the door to my hallway and was met with a lake of water to my left. My apartment, however, lay to the right. It was now 2:30 AM and the adrenaline was pumping, but at the same time my body was balking and so instead of trying to see past the bodies of the fire and maintenance men and catch an idea of what-all had happened, I staggered home and collapsed into my desk chair and emailed work. (Yes, there was electricity.)

There is nothing like a 2AM email to work (this would be my second...the first was the one I wrote after coming home from the emergency room after having been run over by that orange F150 pickup truck a few years ago.) In some ways I think it's worse than the 2AM phone call, because you don't think to just write the minimum, you know, like the voicemail you cut short because your voice starts cracking?

Anyhow, as I told them, I am fine. The apartment is fine. The water damage (I'm told) stopped about 3/4ths of the way across my next door neighbor's apartment. Even the smoke I inhaled too much of in the stairway was being whooshed out by a HEPA500 fan when I finally did get up to go to work the next day. How I managed that feat I will never know.

My body hated me, first for the overindulgence, then for the lack of sleep, and especially for the adrenaline that seemed to seep through my veins like that asthma inhaler I was prescribed that time I had bronchitis so bad it was turning into pneumonia. (Never a dull moment...) And this is where I plug in how much I love my work. They all pretty much said I should go home. This was especially needed by me as I promised Andy I'd pick him up at the airport late that night...as my day had begun at 1:30 that morning? This was not something I was looking forward to and almost pulled a HUGE favor card and had someone else get him. But I am stupid that way and decided I could do it.

No, I do not have a terrible story associated with that part of my night. I think, except for delaying the flight for 40 minutes (which gave me time to finish my fingerless mitts) the gods had finally decided to look elsewhere for their amusement.

But yeah, both my boss and his boss are ready to have an intervention when it comes to me and everything that always seems to happen to me. I am so with them on that one.

It's Not Just Me...

Bloglines is having issues picking up feeds.

This explains why I felt like everyone'd gone off on vacation and left me behind...in absolutely no way similar to that movie with the kid and the family and the vacation...which my mom told me all about sometime in the first year of her retirement when she was finally, FINALLY able to watch a movie to completion without anyone wanting to change the channel.

Okay, I am tangent girl...

Anywho, if you got desperate and just started clicking on your bloglist to see if anything new was going on in the world, like maybe I did...I am still here, not on vacation/winter break/etc. Though I was very much longing for a warm dry climate the other day as my internal barometer started to mess with me.

Instead I'm nursing an inner-ear-like-infection (I refuse to acknowledge it completely, you see). I'm at the "if I close my eyes I feel like I'm on the deck of a pitching boat." Makes for fantabulous times sitting in my office chair staring at the screen and trying to concentrate...my kingdom for the kind of sudafed I used to be able to get in Mexico...sigh.

I'm going to go look and see if anyone else is updating now.

"You Must Have Wanted the World To Know..."*

I am in such a deep fog today.

With so much going on, why do I get bogged down by dreams that suck me into memories of things that happened so very LONG ago now...

I had one of those extended high school era dreams last night, the common denominator being that of one Dr. Gerald Todd, former science teacher at my high school. I tried using the google on his name, but though a number of people popped up, the Dr. Todd of my youth doesn't seem to be on the internets where I can find him.

Is this why I'd drowning in nostalgia? I can't even blame FaceB00k seeing as I'm hardly ever on there and don't stalk people as heartily as the news media think I would. Maybe I can blame the Nivea hand lotion I just got last night. Do you all remember Wondra Lotion in the white bottle with the sky-blue, sometimes lime green top that was really the base because it was of the new generation of lotion bottles that stood up upside-down so you could get every last drop out? (I tried looking for a picture, but wikipeadia tells me it was discontinued in the 80s...except I thought I saw something using the name recently...whatevers, use your imaginations, 'kay?)

Well, my new Nivea hand lotion smells a whole lot like it. No really! I've forgotten a lot of things in my lifetime...more than I'd really like to admit, but certain smells? Definitely stay with me and are bringers of memories past, whether or not I want them to be. And after putting the cream on my hands last night, it's not that much of a stretch for me to be transported to decades past, when life was much more me-centric, and if not simpler, definitely more memorable (otherwise why am I dwelling so much?).

There were no Flock of Seagulls hairdos or Peggy Sue Got Married moments, but at one point a number of us were sitting on the sun-warmed steps of Cantwell Hall shifting through our notes and trying to figure out just what Dr. Todd's quiz was going to involve. I had him for both Chemistry and Physics, and yet, I could not tell you which set of notes these were for.

Gah, high school. I didn't have too rough of a time at all. It was fun in the general sense of the word. But yeah, really and truly was all about "me." Or "you" or "your best friend." The description of teenagers being ego-centric? Well, duh, of course they are. What else could they be if they are healthy and whole? I would hope that they're more worried about whether or not Jake knows they're alive than, say, what they're going to feed their younger brother for dinner and whether or not there will be a place for them to sleep next month.

It's said we infantilize our children a great deal more in these current generations than we ever have...but looking at what the 18 years later Mary has to deal with compared to the me then? I'm glad I had that time to just worry about quizzes and what I was going to wear at Carla's birthday party or whether I could sneak off to UCLA to buy that notebook I really wanted.

When I woke up? I was exhausted and lost in my thoughts...which I'm having a hard time wading out of.

~~~

*I was listening to the soundtrack for Romeo + Juliet and couldn't get "Little Star" by Stina Nordenstam out of my head...Yes, I did have to look up the lyrics....not the easiest song to sing along to.

I Love the Internets!

So it was like something out of a bad 80s b-movie...

There I was writing up an email asking for alternative project codes for a payment (okay, even bad 80's b-movies might not revolve around the exciting world of Accounting) when I looked down to refer to my backup and see these weird red splotches all over the paper...deep dark red that you only get from fresh flowing zombie wounds...or my dark red-inked pilot precise roller ball pen, which was sitting innocently at my elbow...uncapped.

I've mentioned the manner of my measuring the suckiness factor of a work day by how many pen marks end up on my arms, yes? Well, when the pen marks are actually on the sleeve of a cotton, non-white, long-sleeved shirt? Yeah, pretty mega-sucky.

The only thing I could think of, aside from whiting-out the red marks all over my document, was to blot as much of the ink off and hope that my mom might be home and could tell me what to do.

Yes, I know about the hairspray trick. Do you? GREAT on ballpoints. Use a damp sponge and get as much of the ballpoint ink off the fabric, then douse it with hairspray and toss in the wash. 99% of your ink will magically disappear. The cheaper the hairspray the better. I used to own a wee can of it solely for such times back when I was teaching and there were more ballpoint pens in my life.

Liquid/felt ink pens? Completely different animal, as I found out when my favorite red cloth lunch napkin was left too close to one of the black liquid ink pens...also uncapped (you'd think I'd know better by now...). It's now my favorite dust rag...COULD NOT get the ink out of the cloth...but I didn't try very hard as it wasn't a piece of clothing, you know?

Mom was not home...and the work day progressed and I kinda forgot to try again...so I went home and sat, dejected, at my desk and randomly googled "remove ink from cotton shirt" and was rewarded with a slew of suggestions and videos...including one that covered both ballpoints as well as liquid ink! (They called them felt pens, but he was holding a pilot precise roller ball!!!)

I'd inadvertently followed the first two steps:

1-Blot out as much of the ink as possible. (I did that bit just so I could stop marking up my arm as well as all the paper that lives on my desk...oh yeah, and the desk itself!)

2- Air dry (Like I had any choice!)

3- The third step called for something I wasn't all that sure about...but the more I think about it, I'm guessing the video is from like Canada or someplace where they call things by different names (chesterfields and toques and the like) because as he held up a common $0.99 bottle of rubbing alcohol he said dab with denatured alcohol, getting more of the ink out, and toss in the wash according to the garments washing instructions.

So I did. And then I just washed that sleeve in the sink and hung it to dry to see if I had to budget a shopping trip (I only have so many work shirts after all) or if it could be saved.

This morning? I could barely tell that something bad had happened to that part of my sleeve. I think I might be able to use it again!

So...yeah, it's a measure of how sucky my week has been that this makes me so very happy...

Lacking Unique Title...

Don't you just hate it when your browser crashes and you lose the entirety of the beginnings of a disjointed post?

Me too. Must learn to click the "SAVE NOW" button more often.

I had a great image in my head of one of those sweatshirts from the 80s that were all cut up flashdance style with the no neck, sleeves and ending all rolled up at the mid-drift. Mostly because Andy tried on the sweater I've been knitting him for the past 5 or so years and um, yeah, it ends just below his pectorals currently. No he wouldn't let me take a picture.

So yeah! I've ditched the idea of knitting myself a cardigan in favor of making Andy his sweater. And just in case you actually remember my posts about his sweater? (Here's one.) I should mention that I took the entire thing apart (again) and restarted it as a top-down raglan. Two reasons for this:
#1 As I was cleaning up my bookshelf, this pattern literally fell into my lap.

#2 This occurred the same day I may have accidentally washed Andy's store-bought (AND SUPER NICE) wool raglan sweater with my "darks." Super oops, but I have a really nice though semi-felted sweater I can wear now...

So...all coincidences aside, I thought I should get knitting. And like I said, I'm just below the separation of the arm-holes/sleeves and working down the million inches of body length...Andy is 6'3" if you all remember...it's a super long torso for which I'll be knitting for years...and don't remind me that his arms aren't stumpy or anything...so, no pictures of that, but here, I'll show you what I gave him for Twelfth Night instead:

Some-a body was a good boy:

Does anyone else do the gift-in-the-shoe thing for el Dia de Los Reyes/Twelfth Night? No? Well, it was a great place to put gifted socks, lemme tell ya :). And yes, those might be Hello Kitty slippers...so?

Here's another picture:
I could tell you yarn and pattern details...but it took me so long to make these that I have seriously forgotten...US 1 needles you see. Size 13 shoe... Or maybe twelve. At a certain point I don't think it matters much. It's Lornas Laces in Forest...I think. I want to say it was a Twin Rib stitch for the leg over 80 stitches. Boring heels and toes as I've not bought any new sock books since the first Sensational one. I just love that they almost match.

This Post Brought to You by Mom, and the Letter P...

I realized late last night the reason I cannot deal with wee small folks on anything other than a non-professional level...barring that, no more than two at a time. (I did a fabulous job baby-sitting back in my day, after all.)

But when my mom called last night, first to lament about the fact that I might have a killer car (and not in that slang-tastic "killer" way either, she was taking about the Toyota recall), and then, and what was really more important, to make me procure "another" piggy bank like the first I'd gotten for my niece....I will admit I was kinda confused on both parts.

As much as I'd love a new car every year...just for that new car smell...my Matrix is not on the recall list, it being older than the models listed...besides, I checked, and the hooks that hold my floor mats? Are kinda burly. I think I'm good (knock on wood).

The piggy bank, however, really stumped me. As much as I think that some Hello Kitty stuff looks as much like a cat as oh, I dunno, my left foot? I never thought it looked anything like a pig. And here my mom was insisting that I needed to replicate the gift I'd given my niece for her birthday so my nephew could stop wailing at his lacking of it...Hello Kitty dolls? Hello Kitty markers? Hello Kitty pens? (A seasonal (xmas) store at the mall was closing...50% off EVERYTHING.) What did he need so badly that his heart was breaking (okay, really it was my heart breaking hearing him crying in the background) with my dad (my dad!) trying to sooth him ("ya, ya, ya, mijo, ya, ya, ya.")

There had been no piggy bank in my gift box...I was at a total loss. Then she went on to describe it (in a pink box, with "shelves" for the paint and decorations), and I absolutely knew it was neither Hello Kitty, nor something I had bought. But I would be damned if I could not find one to placate this child.

My mom handed him the phone and he calmed down enough to describe it in utter detail (it was at his house, and he was at my folks' house)...and I just about started to cry when he was sniffling and telling me it was bigger than a matchbox car and has glitter and stickers and he didn't care if the box was pink. Did I mention he just turned 5?

Then technology came to my rescue. I googled as I spoke to him and thought I'd maybe found it, but needed to be sure (I could not send him something almost but not quite what he was lamenting about...just could.not. So I asked him to get one of the adults to send me a picture of it using their cell phones. Tio Tony! We were at the point of having him take the phone to my baby brother's room when my mom said she'd go to their house (they live next door) and have my SIL send me the picture.

It's a match: Decorate your Own Piggy Bank by Melissa & Doug. The only catch is that I can't find a local place to procure it. I'm totally calling them this AM to see if they can help me find a place here in Seattle or down in LA so that this can be taken care of. And it must be taken care of.

Andy was totally baffled by all of this...along the lines of, "You must really like your nephew." Well, duh, but aside from that...it's who I am and how I react when someone of the young and helpless variety are so upset that they are losing it. (Remember Sally Struthers and her suffering kid commercials? KILLED ME.) And as the tia, auntie, big sister, or even just good friend of the parents? I can do stuff like this. Well, especially for the niece and nephew, gramma is the usual suspect, spoiling rights are obviously hers, but I had the google at my fingertips this time...so we had to do it in tandem.

This, however, is also why I could never walk into a classroom of under 6th graders (dude, sometimes, 6th graders were just so wee and so pathetically helpless that I had to give them up too) as a substitute teacher. And NO WAY was I taking on a class of my own super-littles when I did do the teaching thing. I can't be everyone's go-to auntie, it would have drained me dry.

I'll just keep spoiling other peoples' kids, as is my right when I'm not being paid to look after/teach them.

The View from Up Here

So it's just dawning on some of my coworkers, as we are walking towards their bus stops after work, just how close I live to the new building. Especially when I point and say, "See that one? That's where I live."

But all flowers and gravy it never is. And where did that idiom come from? Or is it to early for me to think straight?

Did I ever recount (okay, too early if I'm using that word) the tale of us looking at the apartment back in May/June of '09? You know, last decade? When we may have seen a rocker and a baseball player in the hallways? Both being this place's claim to fame? (Both most likely having moved out as people like us vs. people like them start renting space here...another story all together.)

Anyhow, so as we were given the grand tour I noticed that the HUGE neon-looking sign out the windows that face both bedrooms. "Does that thing light up?" I asked.

"Oh, no, no no. It's just a sign."

I was a wee bit disappointed, simply because it was REALLY BIG and I thought that there had to be a catch and/or maybe a way to get the rent reduced if, say, we had to live with a huge neon sign burning our retinas every night. But the rent was super reduced anyway and we decided to take it.

Sometime around November I noticed that there was great movement on and around the hotel with regards to refurbishing. Especially the lights and lamps that give it it's particular...um, whatchucallit...personality. They are either fuchsia or purple you see. Outside lamps. Shining on huge pots of flowers. (If I've mentioned this hotel or you've stayed there, you don't have to let everyone know where I live, but now you know....although I may have blabbed this somewhere along the line anyway...I do that...)

Where was I? Right...lights...refurbishing...cuz you know, winter is DARK and maybe they need to let more people know where they are? Was it around xmas time that they finished? I want to say so...And January is traditionally the darkest time of the year in Seattle...and I mean, you have to bring in the customers somehow...after all, the name side of the sign points out to the world...but the "HOTEL" side? Right towards our building...and it's pink:There isn't even an alleyway between us from this view...seriously must have been there back when my building was a parking lot or something. It's about as high as the 8th floor...i.e. they are the ones whose retinas are probably all burnt out by now. Or maybe they are even more sleep deprived than I am with the fuchsia glow coming in THROUGH THE CLOSED BLINDS and reflecting vividly across the walls of the bedroom.

This morning? While over-thinking my latest dream in the shower***? I realized maybe why I'm having so many god-awful dreams with pain and death and chasings and knives and mean parents and a constant flashing pink hotel sign somewhere in the middle of it all...

Back in May/June, I remember joking that it would be the bomb if it was a flashing hotel sign where the neon was giving up the ghost like in all those creepy killer movies from the 80s...And in my dreams? It flashes.

~

***On a semi-drifting off topic...I want to note this here for me more than anything...dreams about parents...I've been having a lot of them lately. Not memory dreams...not always my parents, just parents, interacting with their kids, all pretty much in the same way. No, this is not me wanting children, possibly the exact opposite.

The conclusion I came to as I was rinsing the conditioner out of my hair is that my folks, who wanted me to be more learned and accomplished and successful than they were, kept fighting against my teen-aged self when I did become at least more learned and accomplished than them...because it's one thing to fill a person's head with all this "stuff"...and quite another for them to grow into it. (And oh my gods how I thought I knew EVERYTHING when I was sixteen and why are these people holding me back!)

I don't dwell on the "what would have beens," it just gives me indigestion. Besides, I knew then, even if they refused to see it, that it was completely against their mexican natures to let me be the american teenager I wanted to be. What I wouldn't have given to have them come to this conclusion sooner. See, raising two kids and seeing how they came out before my baby brother even hit puberty? Oh how they've changed...old fashioned they might still think themselves (and ACKNOWLEDGE), and too strict and mean my BB may think them...but man, he has NO IDEA how easy he has it.

I Must Be Looking in All the Wrong Places...

Shortly before my xmas trip down to LA I got a bug in my ear (does that sound like the right idiom) to make some beanies for the bigger boys in my family: My older brother (OB) and my baby brother (BB).

I started a beanie for my BB from my stash as the boy has this thing about "if it has purple in it, I'll take it" so there was some yarn, with purple in it, and yeah, I started it. (Though, to clarify, he did not know he was getting a hat made, he did not specifically state the above purple statement, both just came to me in a "shower thinking" moment.)

Did I mention my BB has a big head? See, unlike OB, it's because of his hair. He's got more hair on his head than the rest of us, mom, dad, me, OB...put together. So I cast on a million stitches in sock-yarn, cuz there was purple in it. Suffice to say, as with all last-minute/desperate knitting ideas I've had...it didn't work out. Along with the purple there was way too much yellow and the green looked awfully fluorescent...I'll take a pic. later, promise, as it's still sitting in a time-out on my desk as I write this.

Instead I decided I'd focus on my OB. I'd tried (and failed failed failed) in the past to make him a hat that would fit. Both, it seems have inherited some ancient Tarascan BIG HEADS. This time it would be done. So shortly before leaving I ventured into a bit of yarn shopping to find some Dale of Norway Falk yarn (as it's worked super well for me in the past for hats) in black, grey, or other dark dreary colors that my brother would wear...

Did I miss something in the yarn world? Or is it a Seattle thing? I could not find a skein of black yarn in Falk or Louet Gems or any other superwash sock-ish yarn to save my life! By utter chance and mistake I dug out the very last dark grey and two very battered black skeins of Ull in the back of the very last shop I had time to go to...(seriously, leaving the next morning and thinking, "Oh, why not try one more shop...")

But I was armed with yarn and needles and cast on as soon as I got on the plane (I'd be there for a few days before xmas, I could do this...) I knit and knit and knit and caught the attention of the children who helped me lie bold as anything and swore that the hat was for MY dad, not theirs (gotta love kids who will go in on capers with you). But also caught the attention of my BB, who very much wanted a black hat also, please.

Well, after finishing my older brother's hat, I didn't have much yarn left, so I told him I'd see what I could do with what I had and started a duplicate hat for him...It fits my head wonderfully...maybe even my nephew's head...my BB's? With a 25.5" circumference? Not so much. And I'd run out of yarn...

So off I went in search of more black yarn...This was December 20th or so.

It's now January, the 20th even. I finally found some black machine-washable-ish sockish yarn for his hat...Seriously, did everyone buy out the yarn stores of their black yarn from LA to Seattle? (Well, it was xmas after all...)

And yes, I know I can order stuff over the internets...but I really wanted to touch and feel and see what I was getting myself into...again, he's got a 25.5" circumference on his behaired noggin', those are a whole lotta stitches if all I could get was super-ultra fingering weight vs fatter heavier fingering (and you know they are ALL labeled JUST fingering...). And with the shipping charges? For yarn I wasn't sure I wanted? My cheapassed nature got the better of me and instead I worked in running a few blocks to a yarn store into my regular Seattle-centered excursions.

When I was picking up my glasses I again figured, "eh, I'm here" and dropped into the yarn store where I'd neither found Falk or Ull or anything close to what I was looking for, but you never know, right?

Hello battered skein of Berocco Ultra Alpaca...I'm about to finish casting on 180 stitches for this boy's hat...I must like him just a little, eh?

Me Again...

I was talking with my boss's boss when I noticed there was a chip in her lens that, thanks to an ill-timed fall (she was traveling that week) she would have to live with it until further notice. It got us on the topic of glasses and the importance of spares and backups. What we didn't say, and what I now share with you, is the importance of a spare or backup that you like.

See, back in October my eye doctor pronounced that my left lens needed more tweaking. This is not a new thing. My eyes aren't so bad that were it not for modern technology I'da been eaten by the saber toothed tiger as I'd have mistaken it for a kitty. (Okay, 'member Adventures in Babysitting? Did the movie also have the girl who lost her glasses petting a rat and thinking it was a kitty? Cuz the book was especially good at mentioning that bit...and I can't remember the movie all that well...) But my eyes require the use of my glasses to keep me from say, walking off with complete strangers in low lit crowded rooms thinking they're the folks I went to the party with...

Anywho, the wonders of insurance stated that they'd pay for the lenses, but not the frames...given my knack for eating through metal...I don't have many old frames just lying about, and given the state of the economy, I didn't exactly have the cash to spend on a new frame (new frames?) So I grabbed the only pair of glasses that did have serviceable frames and turned them in for lenses. I know I could have tried wearing the super old prescription as I waited for my more favored pair of glasses to be updated...but there was that whole "can't see to drive" hurdle that I just could not jump. All you Seattle drivers are welcomed :).

So, for the last three months I've been wearing a pair of glasses that..I'm not sure how to describe it...except to say they just weren't me anymore.

I mean, back when I got them, I liked them. A lot. They were, um, well, just like all the other glasses I've had since I got away from the BIG PLASTIC FRAMES of the 80s. Nothing fancy, just wire rims that let me see. Wire rims that faded into the background and could be taken off at a moment's notice to take a picture (back when I could still see the camera clear enough to not squint...). I know this stems a whole bunch from the fact that my mom did not want me wearing glasses, at all, ever! And was actually shocked by how bad my eyes were when I did get them (I was thirteen...glasses and braces and bad hair, oh my!)

Somewhere along the way though, I totally came to accept my glasses as a part of me. So much so that frame choosing became a fun part of the doctor's office visit, and I'd force friends to come with me as you would on any shopping excursion. Sometimes I laughed right out loud when after hours of searching I'd choose something that looked just like the one I had before...no really.

But...going back to this pair of frames that I chosen so long ago? It felt like I was putting on an outfit I hadn't worn for years...and maybe didn't quite fit right anymore...or look right...or feel like I should still be wearing...like that embroidered jean jacket I still have at my mom's house...I love it to death, but wear it? Out in public? Like I said before, they are serviceable, they let me see, but...they're just not me anymore.

So I did it. A few weeks back I took my mom's xmas present (cash) and my first month of no car payment (did I mention I paid off my car? Go me!) and brought my favorite frames (that had no corroded metal damage whatsoever thankyouverymuch) and asked the nice ladies at my doctor's office to make them work again...which they did.

It's like I sent my one rain jacket to get dry cleaned or something. Making due with whatever I could until it was time to pick it up (but not the faded, embroidered jean jacket, mind). I picked them up today and when I put them I could not help smiling...wrinkles be damned! Hello me! Where have you been?!?

Lesson learned...I will budget for frames every year. Like a pair of shoes, I need to both like and be comfortable with what's on my face helping me not walk away with complete strangers or crash my fully paid for car.

The Good News Is...My Mom was Right

She doubted herself. Tomorrow I will praise her logical thinking.

It's official, I have never had the chicken pox.

Everyone at my Dr's office was all, "Of course you have." And, "Maybe the case was so mild you didn't even know it." Or the brutal but true, "Sweetie, at your age you'd better hope you've had it!"

Nope. Never. Not a speck of it in my system. Damn.

See, and this is where you can't trump my mom's line of thinking:
a) My mom has the best memory of everyone in the family.
b) In my 18 years of living there, she does not remember me ever sprouting any tell-tale fever and dots.
c) Had I gotten the chicken pox as a child, why/how did my older brother & dad escape? (Yep, that's me saying that my dad was also not a chicken pox survivor until...)
d) My baby brother got the pox at age 3 (and I was far far away at college) and both my older brother AND my dad (at the not-so-old-to-me-now age of 48-ish) got it, full boar (bore?), no holds barred.

So, when I have the paper results (as opposed to the voicemail), I get to head down the the health department and see if I can't get an inoculation.

Somehow that doesn't seem like a reward for being right though...

Does It Count as I Actually Cooked, Twice?

Yesterday was supposed to be a productive go-shopping day.

My trip to LA made me realize just how lacking I am in "non-work clothes." See, work clothes? I have sufficient slacks and blouses (okay, I think of silky/rayon with puffy sleeves and maybe a bow or some-such thing when "blouse" comes to mind...but really they're all cotton knit things that I got in the woman's department at JC Penny's or Macy's...) to get me through...I'd say 2, maybe 2.5 weeks without even having to think about "matching" (they all match) or laundry.

Ask me to go out on a Saturday for a casual brunch or day with your kid and I'm frantically searching for a clean pair of jeans and a non-work shirt/blouse that is not part of my "lounge around the house t-shirt collection" which should never see the light of day, and maybe something that makes me look not too frumpy...but also not like I'm ready to go to a business meeting...with jeans...and I'm super lacking; unless I've been really good with the laundry.

As I scanned what I'd packed in LA for such an outfit to go to my nephew's birthday party? You know with kids? And cake? And ice cream? And kids covered in cake and ice cream? I realized I honestly had nothing to wear. Everything I'd packed was just wrong. Nothing was comfy enough to chase kids in, if the need should arise. And let me be all single-no-kids female here...I was not looking forward to getting "kid" stains out of anything I owned, should the need arise.

So it's been in the back of my mind that I need to shop for such occasions. Especially since more and more folk are getting in the family way and I so do not want to be that person that can't enjoy their time with their friends and their kids because my pants are too nice to sit on the grass and chill out in. I've never been that kind of person, yet somehow my wardrobe is vectoring in that direction.

I know what happened...bike accident + weight gain + pants that HURT my HIP + way more work-style clothes on sale than non work clothes = me with exactly 2 outfits to wear on a "go out" weekend.

Yesterday was supposed to be the day to amend this problem.

Then I woke up with the gnarliest of sinus headaches...so I sat up in bead and started re-re-reading the Harry Potter saga in between naps of epic proportions, sudafed, and advil. I'd say I did absolutely nothing? But I got hungry around noon and made breakfast during the more medicated of moments. Had I not been loaded up on sudafed I think the sound of cracking eggs might have killed me...or made my head explode...that's how bad it was.

Then I went straight back to bed and hit repeat....until dinner.

Seriously? I made dinner? Though Andy helped mightily with this as I was getting super distracted by my head, nose, and I also seemed to have thrown my back out...but as I figured out later, it was that aforementioned hip twisting my tendons and back out of whack again. I think it's something to do with the 11 flights of stairs I went down on Friday (fire alarms cause the elevators to park in the lobby until the firemen make it all better, FYI) in order to leave the building.

Whatever the case? I did not make it to the stores. And I'm rather glad of it. My body needed to collapse and be useless (except for maybe also doing some laundry) after all these weeks of go, go, go! It's winter and I honestly think we are meant to do WAAAAAAY less during this time of year than society says we should.

Today being a whole new day and my headache finally subsiding at about 4AM...maybe I'll venture out, depends on how the hip is doing (Tiger's Balm Muscle Rub is my friend). After all, I did wash my weekend jeans and I'm almost positive I have a t-shirt worth wearing.

On the Twelfth Day of Xmas...

I'll be at work and probably getting that "third day" soreness from moving that will prevent me from doing much celebrating...so I did my baking a night early:

One Slightly Lop-sided Rosca De Reyes

Why do candied anythings remind me of super old ladies? The smell, the sticky sweetness of them...And why do they always taste as if they've been around for a few decades? I mean, I did check the "packed on" and "sell by" dates and though they might be considered "fresh" for candied cherries and what might be pineapple and some other thing that turned into hard jelly, it just boggles the mind. Some day maybe I will candy my own (and thus I shall complete my training and become a full-fledged little old lady.(Insert Darth Vader breathing sound effect, here.))

But the more things stay the same:

...The more they change.

I made two wee Kings Cakes this year instead of my usual way-too-big-for-two-people one so I could not die a sugary death (because it really is, VERY sugary, and Andy will only have one slice)alone, instead I will share the love with workmates.

Now the hard bit...which one to take in? I'm leaning toward the all red one...though the red/green does look more like a crown...yet it's a wee bit more lopsided as well.

Whatevers. That decision will have to wait on the 'morrow, cuz it took about 5 hours to make these things (silly 70's messican cook books with their "stir by hand" for a million stirs and kneading for like 15 minutes, or something...some day also I will follow the recipe without my skipping a step or seven...), and it's past my bedtime.

Feliz Dia de los Tres Reyes! If you celebrate and stuff.