Thursday, December 07, 2017

Soup To Nuts

I had a brilliant opening sentence, but it's gone now, lost to posterity.

The good news is, one of my neighbors had a baby this morning and she had him AT HOME. I mention this because, 20 and 17 years ago, I also birthed babies here at home, a practice which I'm pretty sure was looked at askance by the neighbors but everyone was polite and didn't say anything. 2 decades is a long time to wait, people, but FINALLY someone else has had a baby right here at home in our neighborhood and I'm no longer the only weird one.

Thank you, lovely neighbor. I shall knit your wee one a tiny winter hat, in gratitude.

Yesterday I drove a woman home from cataract surgery and it turns out her father is 102 years old. He actually ran a CCC program in New York State in the 1930s, which means he's living history (just like that former British WAAF I ran into, earlier this year, when I was waiting for one of my clients at the dentist). Sometimes my job is sort of cool, you know?

Looks a lot more appetizing warmed up, honest
Also yesterday, I threw caution to the winds and tried out a new soup recipe, Slow Cooker Chicken Enchilada Soup. You see, I recently had a vision of developing a whole repertoire of soup recipes so I could whip up one or two a week, and the whole family would gather round the soup pot during the cold winter evenings and eat out of our bowls of warm steaming soup, as we chatted and reveled in the camaraderie of the family hearth. There was homemade bread involved in this vision, too, if I remember correctly. Large hunks of bread, torn off a communal loaf and dunked into our warm steaming soup...

Unfortunately, Brian was working and the two girls are steadfast in their vegetarian ideals, and I was going out to Knit Night, so Larry was the only one eating from the family soup pot yesterday evening, after he picked up Susie from CCD and before he had to rush out and take Rachel to dance class. So I guess we have to work on the camaraderie part of that plan.

And I do admit, that was a heck of a lot to expect from a crock pot full of soup, anyway. I KNOW. But hope never dies, people. Hope never dies.


In other news, I finished another hat. (Remember? It's a hat Christmas.) I can't decide whether or not it needs a pompom, though. I also can't decide whether pom pom is one word or two or maybe hyphenated? Feel free to weigh in on either issue, thanks. Here's the hat:

Pom Pom? Yay or Nay?

Okay, back to the yarn pile for me. It's December, and there is no rest for the knitters. NONE.



14 comments:

  1. That hat NEEDS a pompom...maybe hyphenated but definitely not two words.

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  2. Soup can carry heavy burdens and lift the heart, especially when we imagine the warm fire inside and the brutal winter outside of our dear shack in the woods. Wait, what century are we living in?

    Yellow and pink pom pom for that hat. Go all out!

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  3. Pompom is English for pompon, which is French for pompom. They are interchangeable unless you are a purist. I think the baby's hat needs a pompon, as do all the others.

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  4. So you are adding ANOTHER hat to your Christmas knitting list? No rest for the knitters! I love me a good soup in the winter. We have a chicken wild rice one that everyone loves. The kids even get the leftovers out themselves to eat the next day.

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  5. I didn't know you were a home-birther! That's awesome! I really wanted to give birth at home myself, but my father-in-law and brother-in-law were both OB/GYNs and I was intensely pressured to birth in a hospital. I even got crap from the family for choosing a midwife birth for my fourth baby. I found out after my mother died that she planned a home birth when she was pregnant with me, but was also intensely pressured to go to the hospital, where she had the exact miserable, medicalized birth she was trying to avoid. :( Sometimes I think the entire course of my life might have skewed a bit better if I'd been born at home.

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    1. We had a bad experience in the hospital with our first one, with some lifelong effects, so I was desperate to avoid hospitals after that. Believe me, I'm not exactly in love with the birth process or anything. But, boy, did I hate that hospital!

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  6. All of my nieces and nephews (mid-thirties down to newborns} are wearing hats WITHOUT pompoms this year. Just saying.

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  7. I admit to not being a big fan of pompoms. I don't really mind them on other people, but I can't pull it off. Wow, a home birth! Brave. That's all I can say about that. I was just explaining to Mini after she got sick from having blood drawn (she and I both have issues with passing out when grossed out) that when I was going to get an epidural when about to deliver Lad, I told the doctor who was trying to show me the needle he was going to use that I would be better off if he showed me nothing and told me nothing.

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    1. NO ONE wants to see that epidural needle. And a home birth is no more/less gory than a hospital one - I've done it both ways, and in both places I yelled at the birth attendants to put the damn mirror away, I don't WANT to see what is going on down there.

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  8. You are the hat queen! I skip on the pompoms myself. Your multicolored yarn is beautiful without additional adornment.
    Homebirth is something I wanted but never achieved, although with #3 I did stay home until I couldn't smile anymore (done in desperation because of terrible hospital policies at that particular military hospital). Since I was GBS positive, I couldn't take the risk of not being in the hospital but my first baby experience made me wish I could be at home.

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  9. No to the pompoms. Unless you are going for a retro look. I had quite a few hats with pompoms way back in the day.

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  10. Okay, I have to admit my first thought on the home birth was- what, you're having a kid *and* the house has to be ready for company? And I like pompoms, but I mostly reserve them for outfits going to children too young to express opinions on their clothing.

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  11. I've done the whole soup a week thing. Usually my family thinks it's a side dish though.

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  12. Done a little bit of everything myself. Rural hospital back in 2001 with a family practitioner where the only pain relief offered was a shot of nubain, which we learned I was allergic to. (But I will say that was the most progressive / family friendly labor unit of any hospital I have ever seen, family docs had hospital privileges, deep, deep birthing tubs, real queen size beds dad could stay if he wanted-that part was great). So moved to another state and had a CNM in hospital where I learned I'm also allergic to the concoction in an epidural. By the time the next one rolled around they had moved away from the nursery in favor or rooming-in with mom. So I'm allergic to pain meds and I don't get any time to rest/recuperate? I'll just stay home. That's what we did from there on out. Last week during high school car pool the conversation turned to the crazy people who have babies without drugs to which my daughter said, "well, y'all have a certifiably insane person as your uber driver today". I thought that was pretty funny.

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