Problems

1. You would think, knowing how helpful knitters generally are, that someone, upon reading this post a couple of weeks ago, would have e-mailed me posthaste to warn me that, if I'm switching needles midway through a pair of socks, I might want to recheck my gauge on the new needles. But no, I heard nary a warning; so I've been happily knitting away to make a mate for the perfectly sized sock, the sock of my dreams, that I created on those accursed bamboo needles, enjoying the relative ease with which my new metal DPN's slide through my knitted loops, without even suspecting that I was careening toward a knitting disaster.

In short, the second sock is appreciably narrower than the first. I could leave it as is; but then every time I would wear it, I would be reminded, by the discomfort in my left foot, that a mistake had been made. Here I was fantasizing that I could become one of those knitters who actually manages to produce more than one item per year. Alas, that was all it was - a fantasy.

2. Last night, after approximately half an hour spent figuring out a)which photos are already in my Snapfish shopping cart, b)which photos have been edited but not placed in my cart, and c)which photos have been both edited and already purchased as prints - after all of that, I determined a devastating fact: I have not, in fact, edited a single photo from 2008. None. I remember editing a lot of photos somewhere in the first part of the year; but those photos were, in fact, from 2007. But only the last 4 months of 2007. I have no idea what is going on with the first 8 months there, either.

3. The trip today to my local library was once again humiliating. I picture them someday just snapping handcuffs on me in front of the children. No, I don't want to talk about it. But, damn, those fines add up fast.

I have to go now, to edit approximately 2800 photos (I am not indulging in hyperbole here) and to pull apart the sock I just about finished tonight. And, no, I didn't get around to calling the doctor, all right? I had a carpool to drive, and a library visit to make, and a sock to finish (sob). Tomorrow, though. There's always tomorrow.



Whew! Now I can't get that song out of my head. Nor the picture of the multiple Dutch Annies. That was too weird, don't you think?

Free At Last!

That's how I feel, anyway, after spending 4 months trying to clear my account at my local diabolical library. Today I was able to walk in there with my head held high and check out books on my own - no need to be debriefed by the librarian about which items are still missing and how many overdue fines I still need to pay. My account wasn't "blocked," my fine was at an acceptable level (you didn't think I would have nothing to pay whatsoever, did you?), and no one looked at me as though they wanted fingerprints.

If our country ever turns into a police state, I swear, those librarians will be the first on board. Don't mess with 'em.

2 years ago, it seemed to me to be a good idea to rent an organic community garden plot down the road from our house. You can read about that here. Although we have had 2 relatively unsuccessful growing seasons (for which we pay 48 dollars each), hope springs eternal in my plant-killing breast; so I insisted that Larry cough up the cash yet again this year for our rather unproductive piece of earth. Being a wise man, he complied; he knows better than to try to confront me with reality.

I didn't manage to get out there in February, as I had planned, and clear out all the dead weeds before they sprang to life again; after all, it is an entire half mile down the road. So, when the children and I arrived at the plot in late April, we were greeted by a scene reminiscent, say, of an Amazonian jungle. I'm surprised there weren't monkeys swinging from weedtop to weedtop. After some effort, we were able to locate the approximate locations of the 6 planting boxes my husband had so lovingly installed for me back in 2006; and we proceeded to hack our way through the undergrowth (where is a machete when you need one, anyway?) in order to clear some space for planting. No poison allowed, remember - these are organic plots.

So now, after several sessions of weed pulling and soil-turning, we have 2 (count them, 2) 4x4 boxes cleared of weeds, surrounded by a sea of unwanted (but organic) vegetation (including a couple of small trees). The compost pile is in there somewhere. I had a picture to show you, but now Blogger isn't letting me upload any more images. I'll try to add it later.





This is not our plot. It is one of the gardens near ours. They are all, apparently, green-thumb overachievers. And we are the white trash of the community garden plot world.





I wish I could show you the other pictures. One garden has a grape arbor in it. Another has a small pond and cute little figurines. Ours has a trash bag, some old windows I dreamed of making into a cold frame, and a forgotten bag of topsoil. And the weeds, of course. Our gardening neighbors must hate us. In an eco-friendly way, of course...

The Taxman Cometh

Well, some of you may recall my boasting smugly about having finished our taxes way back in January. I guess that irritating smugness may have deterred people from reminding me that I now have a teenage son who managed to be gainfully employed last year and who just might need to file some taxes also. Luckily, I remembered at the last minute; so Theo received a crash course yesterday on W-2's, FICA ("You mean, I don't get that back?"), and why it's best not to guess when typing in your SSN on IRS forms.

To tell you the truth, I just don't remember being that young.

I visited a local mega-church today. A friend of mine invited me to drop in on some talk she was giving, and I jumped at the chance to see one of these places. (All right, the words "free child care" did have some influence on my decision to attend, also.) Being the type of person fascinated by the logistics of efficiency and scale (in other words, being the mother of a somewhat large family), I was awestruck by the organizational skills that are evidently required to run a place like that. And, as a person who attends Catholic Mass with her husband and children, I was also shocked by how modern it all was. I mean, the average Catholic parish simply does not have 2 huge video screens projecting the words of the hymns (complete with slideshow), accompanied by piped-in professional worship music.

So, at dinner tonight, when Rachel was commencing on her 5th glass of whiiine, I had a sudden vision of how to implement mega-church tactics in my very own house. Picture, if you will a large video screen mounted up in a corner of the kitchen, with the words "Shut up and eat!" scrolling continuously over a slide show of pictures of starving 3rd-world children gratefully shoveling spoonfuls of rice and beans into their hungry mouths....I mean, talk about getting our message across to the kids in a multimedia, 21st-century sort of way. I'm still trying to decide on the soundtrack. Suggestions?

Oh, also at dinner - I boasted to Larry about how I didn't even have to pay any back fines at the library today in order to be able to borrow some books, and he said, "Oh, really? Have they started automatically charging our credit card instead?"

Now, was that nice? You'd think he could give me the benefit of the doubt, for once.

This And That, And A Penguin

Now, admittedly I have gotten a bit lax on the childproofing as my youngest approaches the august age of 3; so there might be a small chance that maybe I left a tube of Vick's VapoRub in her dresser. And it is just possible that, in her desire to be just like Mommy (isn't she smart?), Susie may have decided - upon discovering what looked like Mommy's hand cream in her sock drawer - that her sweet little baby hands were in urgent need of some moisturizing therapy. And acted accordingly.

All of which may explain why Larry came home from church today complaining that everyone within 3 rows of our little mentholatum bomblet was blowing his/her nose constantly during the Mass. Maybe.

But I say there is just something going around.

Have I mentioned Susie's fat little legs lately? Her round little bottom? Her big brown eyes that stand out even though they have to compete with her extremely big, round cheeks? We squeeze her all the time and threaten to eat her up. Yum.

Round is so cute. Maybe it will be the new black...

And, boy, could I identify with Opus's anxiety closet today. I mean, the librarian part - not the Clinton part - of course.

All Politics is Loco

One reader yesterday brought me to task over my assertion that waterboarding is indeed torture, pointing out that sometimes torture is sometimes necessary to elicit vital information from detainees. Actually, I wasn't arguing for or against the use of torture (although I respectfully disagree with his thesis, as do professional FBI interrogators). It's just that if you are going to torture someone, don't start splitting legal hairs and saying it isn't technically torture. They remind me of Anna arguing that she didn't really push her younger sibling, she was just moving him forcibly out of her way. Hello? Let's have a little personal responsibility here.

And, yes, I do think the current administration is a little short on that.

Don't think you have me pegged, politically speaking, simply because I dislike the Bush administration. I'm one of the vast number of swing voters that all the candidates are desperately courting these days. In fact, I still have no idea which candidate I am voting for this November. Every day I change my mind. If you're waiting in line for the voting booth, and you see the person ahead of you frantically flipping a coin? That'll be me, I'm afraid...

But I do think we've got a bunch of good choices, for once. And that makes me happy. If this campaign isn't making you happy, it's because you haven't listened to its front-runners take on the challenge of making an omelette, brought to you courtesy of Garrison Keillor and his gang. (Look for "Segment 5" and then "the omelette script")

It also makes me happy that so many other people in the blogosphere are library deadbeats. I think Jenn won the prize yesterday by admitting to "...the time I had $300.00 in fines and kept hiding the notices from my mom until the Marshal showed up at the door with an arrest warrant." There were a lot of good contenders, though; so I would like to thank all of you for playing "Why My Librarian Hates Me." You're great! What do we have for the winners, Johnny?

Excuse me, I'm just giddy because I am being allowed out this evening to attend Knit Night. And I don't even have to wear the ankle monitor this time. I've come a long way, baby...

No Kidding

I had to clean the stove today, since I can't even turn it on without setting off the fire alarm; so I thought I would make the task fun by taking before and after pictures. Well, I must be a lousy photographer; despite my best efforts , the after pictures really do not look much better than the before ones. Go figure. Maybe it is my camera's idea of an April Fool's joke.

I hate April Fool's Day. I have never understood what is so funny about making someone else (as in, um, me) feel like an idiot. Not that I resent it or anything, Another Gray Hair; but if you do end up actually pregnant at some point in the future, enjoy that morning sickness, okay? Humph.

I took the younger kids to the library this afternoon; I only had to pay 25 dollars this time to get my account thawed out. If any of you are keeping a running tally of how much money I have paid to that lovely institution this year, please do not share it with me - I don't want to know.

Remember the other dad Larry spent 24 hours with on the Boy Scout camping trip? The one whose son became best friends with David? Turns out Larry learned neither his last name nor where he lives. This incident just may explain why Americans resorted to torture* to get information out of detainees: the interrogators were male and had no idea how to gather information in a normal fashion.

*If you are one of those benighted individuals who doubts whether waterboarding is technically torture, I suggest you go experience it; then come back here and make your report. Make sure to bring pictures so we can see what a great time you are having.
[No one splits legal hairs better than our current Administration, I must say.]


And yes, I did let my toddler poop in her pants while I wrote this post - how did you guess?

More Pounds, Less Dollars

Regular readers know that I have a small issue with overdue library books and late fines; nothing I can't handle, just a bad habit that costs me 10-15 dollars a month. I'm okay with that.

And I knew I was facing a hefty fine today, as Christmas and New Year's had both landed on my regular library day this year (are they always exactly a week apart?).  I expected to pay as much as 30 or even 35 dollars, like I did the year we were all sick and couldn't make it to the library for a month.

But folks, today's fine was in the triple digits. I thought I'd die. To make matters worse, I hadn't gone to my usual branch (where someone may have pitied me and erased half of it).  No! I went elsewhere and got the strict German-lady librarian, who looked as if she wanted to fingerprint me. And then take my children away, so that they wouldn't have to be raised by a criminal.

It was a lot of money.

I didn't even have the comfort of coming home and treating myself to some chocolate, because I had finally dragged myself back to Weight Watchers today. Some of you may recall my boasting about reaching my goal weight, way back in April of 2006. Yup, I was pretty proud of myself.

Well, let's not live in the past, okay? I walked up to the receptionist and said, "I haven't been here in a year and you have to promise not to say anything critical when I step on that scale." Because if she did, I knew I would cry. Fortunately, she was a nice person who had apparently dealt with similar situations. And who took 40 dollars from me, because I was over my goal weight. Just add that to my tab today. I'm trying to spend money faster than Larry can earn it, is all.

The good news was that my weight, while way up, was still 5 pounds less than what I had thought it would be - so I feel as though I lost 5 pounds today (after only one day of dieting! Cool!) Isn't Weight Watchers great?

In other news, we managed to get rid of our gingerbread house village today, despite David's best efforts to hang on to his little creation forever. I had to stuff it in an opaque garbage bag when he wasn't looking, and then I ran out to the garbage cans and threw it in. I felt like a murderer, disposing of a dismembered corpse.

Oh, and I seem to have struck a nerve with my last post - apparently, many women out there hate dinnertime with kids. I'm all for starting a new cultural trend to feed the kids early and put them to bed, much as they did in Victorian-era England. Larry and I never have been able to understand all those experts who claim that eating dinner together is a healthy family activity. We strongly suspect that they don't have any children.

Okay, I need to get back to dealing with a bunch of small people suffering candy-cane hangovers. It's not a pretty sight.



[Librarian image: Fragile What?]

[Scale image: First Aid Warehouse] 

[Family dinner image: Arya M. Sharma, MD]

Sick, Sick, Sick

I'm baaaack! Can't get rid of me that easily, you know. I seem to have picked up whatever bug my kids have (without the sore throat, fortunately). I refused to come downstairs this morning and left Larry to deal with everything - the hungry kids, the tile guy, the toddler who pooped for the first time in 3 days (sorry, no pictures). Larry solved the hungry-kid dilemma handily, by letting them eat the candy canes they got from Santa last night. Way to go for a healthy breakfast!

Yes, we saw Santa himself yesterday evening. Our church had its annual Christmas pageant and party, and Anna plays in the ensemble, so we all went, even though half of us were sick and looked pathetic. Of course, if I had been a really good mother, I would have remembered to sign up the little kids to be angels and shepherds; but I guess that will have to wait until next year. The little disease-vectors would have coughed through the whole thing, anyway.

I dragged everyone to the library yesterday - I needed to return our way-overdue books before they put out a warrant for my arrest. I did my best to ensure a local croup epidemic by letting the little girls cough and sneeze all over the kids' section of the library. Then, because the tile guy was here (amazing, but true!), we headed out to Pizza Hut for lunch; they coughed and sneezed all over that place, too. I'm nothing if not thorough.

I fell apart sometime mid-afternoon, but pulled myself together enough to dress everyone for the party. I was hoping to be able to stay home with a sick child or two, but they all insisted on going. So I went, too, and had a pretty good time, while the kids scarfed down quantities of cookies and cake. You know, good nutrition doesn't seem to be job one around here lately.

Tile Guy is still here, working on the kitchen. Tomorrow, too. Which presents a problem in terms of food preparation and consumption. I guess we'll just have to get some more candy canes.

And I'm feeling like crap again - I'm going back to bed.