intarsia

Friday, October 31, 2008

Happy Halloween, and it's a Knitting Post too!

I will post trick or treating photos later this weekend. :) In the meantime, here are a few photos from the Fall Festival thingie we took Brent to last week near Kingsland:




I actually also have some knitting content that I've been needing to put up, so here it is. I finished the BYOB, which came out much larger and floppier than I was expecting. I may make another but if I do, will use all seed stitch, and a stiffer cotton.


I completed my first-ever nostepinde center pull ball! Ain't it purdy? I'm proud of it, yes.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Potty Power Part 2

Or should we say, Number 2. Well, he's almost got it. He has finally decided, quite possibly with the help of the colder weather, that he no longer must poop in the grass like a dog. He now is okay with pooping on the toilet. I had bemoaned with our few previous successes how difficult it is to wipe his bottom when he's done; the paper tears and sticks and doesn't clean off a thing. I mean, what the..? Is his poop really that much stickier than mine? It's a male thing, I'm told by other moms. A little pondering over the laundry hampers (as suggested by them) confirms the theory. Wow. What is the physiology behind that? Men have sticky poop that cannot be wiped entirely clean. News at 11.

Anyway, the boy is not only pooping in the big potty, but trying to wipe himself when he's done. It doesn't work. I now not only have to wipe him when he's done but also the entire bathroomful of poopy fingerprints after he tries it himself. Guess I'm back to 100% supervision. But it's another big step toward independent potty time for my big boy, and boy am I proud. :)

So, even though the beagle tossed a bowl of chicken noodle soup on the kitchen floor -- plastic bowls bounce, and the diameter of soup spray off a 3 ft bounce is impressive, lemme tell ya -- and even though I had to scrub poop off my walls, cabinets, and sinktop... it's a much better day and if this headache will just go away I will be a happy camper! State of contentment photo:

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Welcome, Autumn

My head hurts and my body aches. Trying to decide if it's just the pressure changes of the continuous waves of cold fronts, because those are a guaranteed sinus headache for me, or if those are just compounding an onset of depression. I SOSOSO do not want to go on antidepressants again. I'm terrified of them, truth be told, and not convinced that they work well enough to be worth it. But therapy? Difficult at best. We'll see.

I've missed putting together my meager little blog posts, but I have so precious little time lately. And I lost access to the laptop I was using while I nursed Gigi in The Blue Chair. Not really possible to blog at my husband's filthy crumb-caked desk in this creaky dump-me-on-the-floor-any-day-now chair with a 3 month old hanging off my titty. Speaking of which, breastfeeding is such a blessing... and I'm slowly becoming disillusioned with it, which upsets me. I'm sore. Too sore to hold my enormous 14 lb Amazon baby in a comfortable position without significant discomfort from the pressure. I'm exhausted. I can't take a break without pumping and I can't pump without losing sleep. I'm starving. Can't seem get enough to eat, and would gnaw off my right arm for a big glass of milk, but that would upset Gigi's stomach, not that she hasn't been fussy as a beast for nearly 2 weeks now anyway. But I can't give up after what I went through to make it happen in the first place... and we can afford formula like we can afford our groceries right now, which is to say, almost not at all.

And while I'm pouring out bitch and bile, can I just say how frustrating men are? I love my husband but he infuriates me. Everything seems like his fault lately and despite how horridly unfair that obviously is, I can't stop feeling it. I tell myself it's not true and wait until he spends a day working on the bathroom and playing with our son and everything is better, and have a nice long talk with him so that we feel like friends again, and ...then he needs a big fat money order by Thursday for his probation officer when our bank account is already in the red, and he spends a 14 hr day on his laptop and cellphone working on the day he requested off so that he could help me with the kids, and he wakes me up at 1:30 am in the middle of the only period of the night that Gigi lets me sleep more than 2 hrs straight asking if he can grope me while he rubs one out.

The baby is crying. Hitting the Publish Post button and walking away to cry with her. Maybe I'll post again in a better mood.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Out of the mouths of babes, or BrentSpeak #3

So, I was watching "opportunity knocks" last night and had a giggle at a contestant who was given the task of understanding a video capture of a bit of Bam-Bam-ese, what her family calls the toddlerspeak of her little brother. But it was an easy one! Even I understood him. But she was nervous! Still, she guessed right and won $5000.

Anyway, just thought I'd mention that occasionally in life, it does pay to pay attention to what those peanut buttery little mushmouths are gibbering about. ;)

Here's my lesson for today: (actually, yesterday, but the light finally came on for me sooo late in the day I didn't get around to blogging about it before bedtime) "Toddy Lodah" = Charlie & Lola, demonstrating the monkey-boy tendency to leave out unimportant little things, like conjunctions, and also a nice example of how letting your child watch cross-cultural shows can only confuse things, as I might have guessed what he was talking about sooner if there had been an "R" in "Toddy" for "Charlie," but the boy was repeating the British-accented way of saying "Charlie." If you know what I mean.

Where's my five thousand bucks?!

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

And the winner is...

Samsara! Congratulations for winning my 1st ever blog contest and your choice of pink yarn yumminess. :) I chose your story because that sounds like a real disaster and you totally took it on. Way to go!

Ria (Ravelry's tonyfan4ever) is my runner up and will get the 2nd choice of my prizes. I have an IT sugar daddy too!

This contest thing was a BLAST and I will definitely be doing it again. Thanks to all who sent me their stories. They were both hilarious and tragic, as computers were meant to be. ;)

Saturday, October 11, 2008

How much is that baby in the window?

Would it change your bid if you knew that's a yarn shop window?

And the kid's got skillz!


(If you're looking for the contest, it's just one post below this one. And with 10 entries already and such fun ones to read besides, I've decided to have two winners! If I make it to 20 before Tuesday, I'll give all three prizes away, so tell your friends. :D And, no, the baby isn't one of the prizes.)

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

100th Post! and a Contest

In celebration of this auspicious event, I was going to ask for Blogger pros to help me figure out what happened to my Posting Template text window, but I figured it out while I was typing this post. (Security settings had gotten reset and I needed to re-allow the script.) How cool am I?

No, really. Talk to me about triumphing over IT woes in a comment. I'll choose the one that makes me smile the biggest, or cry the hardest, or pee my pants laughing. Or if I can't choose, I will draw names out of a hat or something. :)

The winner gets to choose ONE of the following (I hope y'all like pink):

A) 2 50g skeins of Melon-Pink Shelridge Farm Soft Touch Ultra 100% Wool (3-Ply Fingering Weight Hand-Dyed, 175 yds, handwash, lay flat to dry). This stuff feels GREAT, has a nice tight, springy ply to it, and if I don't destash it first will probably turn into socks for moi. Photo.

B) 1 100g skein of orange/navy/pink variegated Hill Country Yarns Sweet Feet 100% merino sock yarn (1"=9 sts, 4oz 400 yds, handwash, lay flat to dry). I threw this into the list to make a 3some of choices. I actually really love it and would wear the socks constantly. If I ever got around to making them. Color-poor photo. (will get a better one for the winner if requested.)

C) 1 skein of pink/orange/gold variegated Landes Geeks hand painted by Danielle mohair yarn (90% mohair, 10% nylon, 500 yds, laceweight). The photo doesn't do this justice; unless you like your yarn to look like an internal organ. It's lofty and fluffy and the colors are to die for. If mohair didn't give me hairballs, it would already be a headscarf. Photo.

I will announce the winner next Tuesday!