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?

Thoughts From A Whiny Sick Lady

In the comments from yesterday, Anonymous wanted to know what to say when a teen screams, "You hate me!" Tempting as it may be to trot out Rule #5 ("Yes, dear, we do hate you")(or better yet, "Who told you?!"), it may be better to just say, "Cut the crap" - because the kid knows it isn't true. Surprisingly, Anna has never screamed that at us. She has screamed, "I hate myself! I hate my life!" when informed that she is not allowed to go to some social function which she had her heart set on attending, to which we always replied, "Well, we love you, sweetie," just to bug her.

Drama, thy name is girl teenager.

I'm a tad late posting today, as I have been laid low, once again, by cellulitis. Luckily, I remembered what happened when last I Googled this particular disease and so I have stayed far, far away from the search box at the top of my browser. Of course it didn't help to have the doctor talking about MRSA and IV antibiotics, either. I guess I could drop dead any minute. In which case, I should be editing family photos, not talking to imaginary friends.

The good part about being sick is I have an excuse to lie in bed and neglect the children; the bad part is I have to put up with the blank stare Anna gives me when I inform her that I need a little extra help around the house. You parents of teens know that stare - the "You talkin' to me? Why? Do I know you?" look that is probably the cause of more military boarding school enrollments than all the other reasons put together.

And, in case you're wondering, the answer to that look? "Yes, I just came from outer space, dimwitted Earthling; now get your butt off the couch and look busy."

Can you tell it's been a rough week with a certain someone who used to be the cutest little girl on the planet? Sigh. Maybe I should look through all the old photo albums again, so I can remember what her smile looked like. Or maybe that would only make me feel worse.

Ha - she just asked to check her e-mail. I don't think so, sweetheart. Mommy can be waaaay bitchier than you. Just ask Daddy - he knows. And it doesn't help that I am missing Knit Night this evening.

Time to go - the Tylenol bottle is calling my name.

Hypochondria, Unleashed

Sometimes, I like to fantasize what my life might be like if I could take a shower in the morning without 2 little girls in the bathroom with me, bickering over which one gets to unwrap Mommy's Kotex. Just in case you thought there was a cure for sibling rivalry, I'm here to tell you that no, there isn't. Siblings will fight over anything. They're programmed that way.

I managed to pierce my foot on some sharp piece of jewelry crap on the girls' room floor this morning, and the doctor's office recommended that I come in for a long-overdue tetanus shot. So, blowing some finely-laid morning plans to hell, I headed out, down my ice-glazed steps and to my ice-glazed car, which I couldn't open. So I called the doctor's office to tell them that my car was frozen shut. Meanwhile, Theo, always intrigued by a challenge, went outside to see what he could do and came back in to report that the reason I couldn't get the car open was because the doors were...um...locked.

I hate smart-aleck teens, don't you? Especially when they're right?

So now I am defrosting the car. Hopefully I will remember to go back out before I run out of gas. Because otherwise I would be stuck here without a tetanus shot and my inner hypochondriac would take over and convince me that death is imminent. And that would result in my devoting my day to what any mother would do if she felt that her time on earth was soon to end - I would try to organize all the thousands of pictures on my computer so that my poor motherless chicks would at least have a few happy memories of their childhood.

I really don't have the energy to do all that right now, so I think I'll go outside and check on that car.

Toddler Tricks and Money Mayhem

Susie (my 2-year-old) has been on the phone a lot lately. She walks around cradling a plastic banana between her shoulder and her face and saying, "Is your mommy home?" and "Uh-huh. Hmmm. Uh-huh." I've asked her who she's talking to, but she doesn't seem to hear me. Probably because she has a banana in her ear.

Ba-da-bum.

Maybe she was talking to a toilet-training hotline, because yesterday - miracle of miracles - she walked up to me and said those 3 words every mother wants to hear: "Wanna go potty." So I sat her on the toilet, not expecting her to actually use the darn thing, when what to my wondering ear did appear but a tinkling like bells on the harness of 8 tiny reindeer.

Sorry, 'tis the season...I'll try not to let that happen again.

Yes, she actually peed in the potty. I happened to be on the banana, I mean phone, with Larry at the time, so I was shrieking into the receiver, "She did it! Did you hear her tinkling? She did it!" Have I mentioned that he works in a very centrally located cubicle? So now his colleagues think (if they didn't already) that 6 kids may be a little too much for any one woman to take.

Larry and I are trying to pick out a paint color for the living room. I'm thinking we may need to hire a mediator. What with our divergent tastes in home decor and the fact that there are approximately 14 billion different shades of gray available at our local paint store, we'll probably get this place painted, oh, maybe 9 years from now. Or perhaps we won't bother. I mean, we've got lots of different shades of gray smeared all over the living room walls at this point anyway. We could leave it and go for the variegated look. Like multi-colored yarn. I bet I'd be the first knitter to paint her walls to look like her favorite skein. Take that, all you knitting bloggers!

We gave up today and agreed to pay a friendly service technician lots of money to explain to us how our gas fireplaces work. It's galling. Add to that that we brought the second car in for an oil change today and ended up paying the garage almost 500 dollars (that's on top of the 1000 dollars from yesterday), and Christmas is looking less and less merry. I mean, for us. There's a bunch of mechanics who are gonna have a pretty good time, though.

Anna is speaking to me again. I have no idea why.

Larry came home for dinner and then went back to work. Good. I didn't want to see him anyway. Now I can waste the entire evening on the computer and he won't even know. I do still have about 1500 photos to edit. And a photo calendar to put together. I don't know what the heck I did with my time before we went digital. Sleep, maybe?

Sleeping is a good idea. Maybe I'll just go to bed early. (And you know you're middle-aged when that seems like the best way to spend a free evening.) G'night, all!

Thanks A Lot, Pilgrims!

Okay, time to quit supposing. It's not 20 years ago, we all have Thanksgiving dinners to prepare, and why am I wasting time in the blogosphere right now, anyway? Probably because I have a Thanksgiving dinner to prepare, but I don't know who's coming. We always wait until the last minute and invite whoever's alone (I mean, people that we know - not perfect strangers) to come eat. Those are the only people who might want to share their holiday with a teenage girl casting death glares at everyone, a whining 5-year-old, a spoiled 2-year-old girl (who's cute as a button, but loud), a 10-year-old vegetarian who nags people not to let their turkey touch his plate, and a 7-year-old boy who has just learned to burp at the table. And even then, the anticipated guest sometimes turns us down, thinking that one of those Swanson frozen dinners in the peace and quiet of his own home will do him just fine. In other words, we only get the truly desperate.

Thanksgiving just ain't what it used to be.

But that's okay, it will be over soon. And then there's Chanukah, because my side of the family's Jewish. Luckily, Theo likes to fry up potato latkes (anything to avoid doing his Chemistry homework); but I still need to locate the dreidels, the menorah, the candles, the Chanukah tablecloth - all of which (in an unfallen world) would be located in a box marked, well, Chanukah. But they aren't. And then I have to make the life-or-death decision of whether or not I can use the homemade applesauce from last year as a side for the latkes. Would you like your holiday celebration tainted with the risk of botulism, or no? It would certainly add a certain frisson of excitement to our party, I'm sure - like Russian Roulette, only more fatal.

And then, because I wasn't smart enough to marry within my faith and keep my life simple, we have Christmas. Throw in 2 flute recitals, the church Christmas pageant, and the New Year's Neighborhood Open House that I told everyone I was hosting, and things start getting a bit crazed around here. Because I'm expected to keep all my regular balls that I juggle up in the air while I take care of these extras.

But, I did manage to order the Christmas photocards, a task which was time consuming, folks, in the way, say, that evolution is time consuming. No matter that I have well over 2000 digital photos online for this past year. I had to find the right combo of four photos to show off each kid, plus I had to find a template which will offend neither side of the family (Christian and Jewish, remember? Thank Allah there are no Muslims to deal with), plus I had to make myriad other decisions (20 or 40? Photo or Stationery Paper? Express Ship? Text of Greeting?). In short, Larry found me actually sobbing at the keyboard at 10 last night, unable to navigate my way through the maze of choices being offered to me. He had to take over.

(Silver lining - I got to use a line from Casablanca: "Oh, I don't know what's right anymore," I said, in my best Ingrid Bergman voice. "You'll have to do the thinking for both of us.")

So that's done. And I remembered to start defrosting the turkey. What's up with all those weird safety instructions for thawing out old Tom, anyway? If cooking him for 5 hours doesn't kill whatever's dangerous, I don't think it matters how you defrost it. And no one's died yet. That's why I don't serve the applesauce at Thanksgiving - if someone did die, we wouldn't know which poisonous foodstuff to blame.

Hmm...getting a little morbid for the holidays, aren't we? Time to sign off - tomorrow's baking day and I need to defrost the pumpkin for the pies. (Just had to slip that hyperlink in there - it makes me feel so blog-savvy.)