Random Meanderings

Double Trouble

2012-01-30T18:42:00.002-06:00

Today you get TWO cookies of the week!

Woo hoo!

First up are snickerdoodle blondies.

These were sweeping the web (at least in the circles I run in) about six months ago.

And for good reason!

They were delish.

Well OK, I didn't eat them. I did have a bite of the "leftover" blondies that were left behind after I cookie-cut out the hearts.

These actually were a big thank you to a fellow knitter who gave me probably 100 lbs of baby girl clothes leftover from her daughter this weekend.

I won't have to dress Baby Bez 3.0 for literally a year!

The cookie of the week for the lunches were Chocolate Coconut Toffee Delights.

Oh mama!

Preheat your oven to 350. Melt a cup of chocolate chips in the microwave. Add the melted chocolate chips to 1/4 cup of butter (cut into pieces). Mix in 3/4 cup of brown sugar. Mix in 2 eggs and then 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder and a 1/2 cup of flour. Lastly add a cup and a half of shredded coconut, a cup of toffee bits and a cup of chocolate chips. Bake your cookies for about 9 minutes. They're quite chewy and quite delicious.

Even Dr. Mad Scientist, who claims not to really dig chocolate (I guess I skipped over that part when I was vetting him for mate-material!) really liked them.

Potholder Family Portraits

2012-01-24T20:05:00.003-06:00

Along with the fortune cookies, pretzel challah bread FAIL, chocolate chip cookies, and the housecleaning this weekend, I finally came up with something to do with these piece of fabric that have been hanging out in my stash.

You see, every year my Grandma comes out from the midwest to visit my Aunt Jaywalker in Massachusetts.

Since we've been living out here in Nueva Jersey, we try to meet up for a day at a place that's half way between us and where Aunt Jaywalker livings in MA.

We did miss hooking up in 2010.

Grandma always comes at the end of July/early August.

August is usually when Spoonflower has their Free Swatch Day.

Because the trip to see Grandma and Aunt Jaywalker is always fresh in my mind--I always seem to make my little free swatches using a photo from our recent meet-up.

But then it came down to--what the hell do I do with all of these swatches???

So this weekend I set to it and made some decorative "potholders" out of our family meet ups.

And here they hang in our hallway!

The black and white of the boys (look how little they were!) is from 2009 when we met up at Gillette Castle State Park in Connecticut.

The other one is from this past year when we met up at Howe Caverns in New York. I feel kind of bad--I framed Grandma's face all funky when I ordered the swatch--so she kind of got a head-shave there!

The reason for this is because I almost missed the Spoonflower Free Swatch Day this year and I only had a few hours to upload my photo onto my fabric swatch. The site was pretty slow if I remember rightly--all that cheapass traffic!

Maybe someday I'll hang them from some kind of dowel to utilize the tab tops I sewed in there.

But for now I dig them as they are!

Beware of Monkeys In Trenchcoats!

2012-01-23T05:50:00.000-06:00

Happy Chinese New Year!

2012 is the Year of the Dragon. Apparently a lucky year--and soon we'll have our own little dragon baby to add to our snake and rat.

Even though there is debate whether these were first made by a Japanese American or a Chinese American in either L.A. or San Francisco--the key word in both of those descriptors is "American."

These cookies are distinctly American!

I'll have to post the recipe later--basically if you google "fortune cookie recipe" you're going to get what I used.

They were nowhere near as daunting as the recipe said they would be. They are time consuming though because I only ventured to bake two at a time.

The best part was coming up with the fortunes to stick in them--like the title of this post.

Predictable

2012-01-17T07:20:00.000-06:00

I mean really, what did you think I would pick?

Flowers?

Nah!

It's the Snow Queen Baby Sack.

Pattern: Simplicity 5720

Fabric: "Light Blue Blizzard"

Notes: An easy-peasey pattern for even the beginner sewist.

It's funny, when I was pregnant with Chunky, I had just received The Beast from my Mom,, and I had planned to make him a sno-snoot out of fleece, I got as far as cutting it out, and never finished it. It was nowhere near as easy as this pattern was!

I only made one modification--did you see it?

It's the hole under the zipper.

I made a 2" slit on the front and back right below the zipper, because while these sno-snoots are cute, they're not really easy to transport your kid around in.

Don't worry. Our little snow princess will still get to see her day in the black floral fleece.

I figured I would use the blue blizzard fleece up first because I miss snow, and she's going to fit this thing for all of two seconds before she outgrows it, or it shoots up to 70 degrees in April.

Don't laugh. It's supposed to get up to 50 degrees next week.

In JANUARY.

Marie Grace sent me a lot of different baby/toddler patterns when she sent me this pattern--I'm sure combined with what I have on hand in my pattern stash myself, I'll be able to make Baby Bez 3.0 a cute little fall jacket she'll get more wear out of for the fall/early winter from the black floral fleece!

Sugar Does Not Have a Daily Value

2012-01-16T18:09:00.003-06:00

If you have friended me on Facebook, you'll be familiar with this rant.

For some weird reason upstairs neighbor lady (i.e. "Vector Neighbors") has felt the need to pawn a crazy amount of groceries on us the past week.

She's always done this--a carton of ice cream in the summer here, half a watermelon there. Kinda weird, but only one thing every once in a while.

Until last week.

Last week--over a course of two or three days she gave us:

2 boxes of Trix cereal
1 box of Coco Puffs cereal
1 box of Golden Grahams cereal
1 box Honey Nut Cheerio cereal
1 gallon of milk
2 boxes of those Koolaid drinks in the pouches (20 pouches total)
3 lbs of animal crackers
12 cups of pudding
1 box Little Debbie Valentine brownies
2 cans of Chef Boyardee Spaghetti and Meatballs

Ahhhh....okaaaaay.

Now, granted I'm still nursing a wicked resentment of the infestation they bestowed upon us this past spring and summer, so I'm sure that's tainting my view--but seriously?

What is she trying to say?

I've narrowed it down to three things:

1. I'm crazy;
2. I'm diabetic and I can't have all this sugar laden shit, so I will give it to your kids so they can enjoy a downward spiral into diabetes;
3. Bezzie, I don't think you know how to feed your kids.

Don't get me wrong--it's not like we eat uber-healthy free-range organic free trade nuts and berries all the time--my boys know their way around processed foodstuffs laden with sugar, chemicals and unpronounceable names; however, when pretty much ALL she gives them is this shit and LOTS of it, it's really really annoying.

And borderline weird because she'll come down later to grill Chunky on how he liked XYZ that she brought him.

I know I sound ungrateful, but, the whole thing is just really really weird to me.

What sucks about this is I hate to throw it away because there are starving kittens in Iraq. But on the other hand--is it really humane to donate this type of food to starving kittens in Iraq?

You always read reports on how low income Iraqi felines are prone to high obesity rates...would this food really do them any good? Is bad food better than no food?

But it's kind of moot because I can't find anywhere local that takes donated food during the off season (i.e. not Thanksgiving/Christmas) or only take donations during tiny windows of time that working people can't make (the closest church food pantry takes donations from 1:22 p.m. to 2:39 p.m. every third Wednesday of the month that falls on a full moon).

And most of these places would prefer cash donations anyway. Which makes sense.

So here's the final disposition of last week's "gifts":

2 boxes of Trix cereal -- Trash
1 box of Coco Puffs cereal -- boys will eat
1 box of Golden Grahams cereal -- keep reading
1 box Honey Nut Cheerio cereal -- boys will eat
1 gallon of milk -- I already had a bunch of milk to use up; Dr. Mad Scientist took this to his Friday night AA meeting. The recovering like to have milk in their coffee.
2 boxes of those Koolaid drinks in the pouches (20 pouches total) -- down the drain
3 lbs of animal crackers -- boys will eat
12 cups of pudding -- boys will eat
1 box Little Debbie Valentine brownies -- Trash
2 cans of Chef Boyardee Spaghetti and Meatballs -- these are languishing in the cupboard (probably until the May postal service food drive!)

I feel bad wasting that food...grrrr...but the boys just won't eat/drink it.

As for that lone box of Golden Grahams--

I paired it up with what you always pair up with graham crackers.

Marshmallows and chocolate.

Smores-y type krispie treats for the lunches this week.

Melt 1/2 cup butter w/2 cups of mini marshmallows, add 4 cups of Golden Grahams, press into a 9"x9" pan, let cool. Spread 1 1/2 cups melted chocolate chips over the top. Cool. Cut into bars.

Moral of the story: When crazy neighbors hand you tons of sugary cereals, make krispie treats.

Weekend Sewing

2012-01-14T15:22:00.003-06:00

Well, it's finally chilly outside (for a little bit).

And I have seen a few teensey weensie flurries the past couple of days.

But even if it stays in the mid-40s for the rest of the winter with absolutely no snow, Baby Bez 3.0 will need a sno-snoot (snowsuit) for her ride home from the hospital and for taking her brothers to and from school until the spring/summer is properly upon us.

This weekend I want to make the bunting from this pattern that Marie Grace so kindly gifted me.

I ordered two cuts of fleece from Fabric.com for this.

Shagadelic girly neon flowers on black

and

blue snowflakes.

Any bets on which one I'll use?

Whoosh!

2012-01-11T18:15:00.003-06:00

That's the sound of yet another drive-by post.

Things have just been insane lately.

Work and a nice little bug that has been working it's way around the household are mainly to blame.

So let's do the quickie wrap up--

First, a round up of the awesome presents my Mom and Youngest Younger Sister got me for Christmas:

Black Alpaca Lace from Mom!

My Youngest Younger Sister went on her belated honeymoon (wait, honeymoon? What's that?) to Australia. There she got me the above yarn and Polwarth roving. Love it!

She got a great story out of it too--apparently they had really hoped to see a kangaroo in the wild. By the time they got around to stopping by this fiber store checking out the wool--the proprietress asked them how their trip was going and they mentioned this one regret to her. She told them to hold on a second.

She went to the back of the store.

When she came out--she had a little joey wrapped up in a towel!

Apparently she's got a permit to rehabilitate orphaned kangaroos. Too cute!

I also didn't realize that kangaroos are like the deer of the Lower 48--you see them as roadkill on the side of the road all the time. Huh!

Moving on, here's what I did this weekend---

We went to Chunky's football banquet. Not sure why they had it so late after the season has ended, but there he is "being modest" with his little trophy. All the kids got one.

They said everyone who finished the season got one. Because apparently finishing what you started these days is an awardable feat. Whatever, it was fun and one of his coaches sat at our table had nothing but good things to say about Chunky even though his season was cut way too short.

And how can I forget the Cookie of the Week?

Mmmm! A chewy coconut oatmeal cookie!

Not sure if it's the "cold" weather but I've been on a big oatmeal cookie kick lately.

And finally--and update on the latest addition to our family: Trevor!

He's a snuggler! YESSSSS!

I love Squeaky and Happy Feet, but they're not lap cats. Not like my dearly departed Springs was.

While Trevor will never fill the spot on my lap that my Springsy did, he certainly comes close!

New Year

2012-01-03T19:24:00.003-06:00

The first post of 2012.

I don't really do new year's resolutions. My motto every year is to just "roll with" whatever BS the year throws at us. Which is what I'll be doing again this year.

What a year it will be!

With Baby Bez 3.0 upon us, I know one thing that will be tight come September--money.

Two kids under 5 years old in daycare while I work? Oh that will be $2400 a month. Gotta love New Jersey.

Yes, I realize I could give it up and become a stay at home mom, but it's my decision to work. I saw too many SAHMs have their worlds fall apart when I worked in family law. I can't take that risk, slim as it might be that Dr. Mad Scientist will divorce me or get hit by a bus.

Honestly though, if you have ever driven/walked in New Jersey, that bus-hitting scenario isn't too far-fetched!

But it's OK. It's:

a) temporary -- in three years, Mooch will be in kindergarten or, in the more pleasant alternative, we'll be out of New Jersey--maybe in the land of Grandpa's Dog and Babysitting Service!

and

b) we've done it before -- I had a take home pay of approximately the same after daycare when Chunky was first born. We can adapt.

I'm already squirreling away money for our "fun" yearly stuff that we do that is complete luxury and non-necessity--our summer trip to the shore (or the "beach" if you don't live in New Jersey); our annual apple picking outing in the fall; another year in the township's football program for Chunky; and our Christmas tree cutting outing.

I'm also crossing my fingers that our tax return will be enough to pay off Dr. Mad Scientist's damned student loan (for his BACHELOR'S degree of all things--he didn't pay a dime for his PhD, if you don't count how much of his soul he sold) and we'll be debt free.

So we'll see. We'll just ramble on thru 2012 doing our best to keep up.

Don't worry, there will be plenty of cookies too.

Did you see those cinnamon M&Ms they had on sale at Christmas?

I don't think they were very popular. And while the one I ate was OK, it was nothing I could consume in excess.

I think many people were thinking like me because they had OODLES of bags of them at Target on sale for 50% off this weekend.

Pair them up with your favorite oatmeal cookie recipe?

Delicious!!!

Year in Review - Part 3 - The End

2011-12-31T06:51:00.002-06:00

My last installment of this oh-so-exciting series of posts will focus on the experiences we had in 2011.

I'll start with the bad:

May and July saw us battling the Great Infestation. I wouldn't wish this shit upon my worst enemy. Specifically because right now, my worst enemy resides above us, and that would just mean we'd end up with them again!

We said a tearful goodbye to Springs at the end of June. He was an Old Man Cat, and he led a wonderful life of lap whoring. I still miss my sweet little Mr. McDoodle.

And finally, September saw Chunky breaking his elbow in spectacular style.

Luckily, he bounced back amazingly and all that remains now, 3 months post-break, is a small scar on his elbow.

And we'll end with the good:

In April we did Niagara Falls with Grandma and Grandpa Mad Scientist. Niagara Falls is a really cool place. I totally recommend seeing it once before you die. However, if you go during the off season like we did, while you will enjoy no crowds, it will be COLD!

Memorial Day saw us doing a long weekend in Philadelphia with my Youngest Younger Sister. Again, awesome city. That's one thing I do love about being this far east. There's cool historical stuff everywhere.

2011 was basically the Year of the Relative. In August we met up with my Aunt Jaywalker and Grandma at Howe Caverns, NY. Grandma comes to visit Aunt Jaywalker in MA every year and some years we'll determine a tourist attraction that's halfway between where she lives in MA and where we live in NJ. This year was Howe Caverns. Again, uber-fun day trip!

This was the year Chunky convinced us to let him play football. We've never been a really sportsy set of parents, but we always said, if one of our kids asked to play a sport, we would let him. And Chunky asked. And it was a blast. Although I don't know how the hell real Soccer Moms do it. No way could I keep up with practice and game schedules for a whole year.

2011 was also my first Rhinebeck! Yes, I understand what all the hype is all about. And it's all true. Definitely something to put on your knitter bucket list!

2011 was also the Year of the Cat. With Springs's passing, we introduced Happy Feet (above) and her boy, Trevor, to our family.

And finally rounding out the good--something that will spill over into 2012--

The conception of Baby Bez 3.0--finally a girl!

So, as you can see, the "goods" definitely outweighed the "bads" of 2011.

Here's hoping to at the very least an even balance of the same in 2012!

Happy New Year!

Year in Review - Part 2

2011-12-30T05:11:00.002-06:00

Now I'll highlight a few of my faves from my other more recent hobby--sewing/quilting--that I finished this year.

First off, 2011 was the year Toni Janome came into my life.

With knitting I always hear people say "Don't skimp on tools!" But quite honestly, I learned to knit, and knit just fine on my Susan Bates and Boye cheapy-cheap needles. And Red Heart yarn does have it's place!

I discovered that this "rule" applies much more to sewing than knitting. This point hit home when I first fired Toni up--she sews like buttah!

2011 appears to have been the Year of the Dress.

Seersucker shirtdress. I love wearing this on sweltering Jersey summer days.

Can you tell what pose I prefer? This dress reminds me of Springs. I finished it up while hanging out with him the day before we put him down. He was so frail and weak, but still able to follow me around as I sewed this and tried it on.

This was, and still is, a real winner--the Bob Bob Jammies!

And of course there were a couple of quilts as I dipped my toes into that pool.

The "wonky" Amish Roman Stripe quilt that survived the great infestation.

And of course, my favorite--

The dissected frog wall hanging that now hangs in Dr. Mad Scientist's classroom. Hee hee.

Oh and before I wrap this up, I have to share what my true love gave to me on our 12th year of marriage--

Meet Trevor. I can't believe we're a 3 cat family now. He's still warming up to his new surroundings (as you can tell from the picture of him cowering in the junk closet). I hope he turns out to be a nice lap cat.

Nothing says "I love you" like kitty cat!

On the Twelfth Year of Marriage

2011-12-29T05:08:00.002-06:00

Ok, so it's still morning, and we haven't exchange gifts so I don't know what my true love will give to me.

But he has given me a very wonderful (and very interesting!) 12 years of married life!

Happy Anniversary Dr. Mad Scientist!

Year In Review - Part 1

2011-12-27T18:40:00.003-06:00

Since we're done with Christmas nostalgia, how about some old fashioned annoying "Year In Review" nostalgia? Ha ha!

I swear I've finished more knitted objects this year, but going thru what I've tagged in Flickr, it doesn't seem like much.

Hmm.

We'll start with the Hits:

Chunky's Harry Potter sweater. Gotta love Chunky--he pretty much loves anything I knit for him. He still wears this sweater dutifully (I have to yell at him to take the damn thing off to make sure it gets washed!) even if it does look like an Alvin Chipmunk sweater!

Tiny chickens!!! Little Miss Happy Feet (our new cat) looooooves these things. I also knit a flock of chickens for my Oldest Younger Sister for Christmas. This time I got wise and put them in an old candle jar after I finished each one--away from the prying paws of a naughty little cat!

My Ringwood Gloves. I like to keep these in the car for a nice weekend dressed-down glove. (I wear leather gloves with my more formal "work coat").

These were my first attempt at gloves. I didn't hate knitting them, but I didn't really love all those fiddly fingers.

Now for the flops:

The Moochie shawl collar sweater.

Sigh. Toddlers are fickle creatures. I can't get Moochie to wear this. Ah well. It was fun to knit.

The gorgeous but silly-looking-on-me Escargot.

And finally--

I made three scarves out of some acrylic yarn I had lying around. I did this in January 2011. I figured I'd save them for the scarf/hat/mitten drive that Chunky's school has every Christmas.

They didn't last that long.

They perished in the Yicky Icky infestation. I suppose I could have washed them, but I would have also had to dry them on high, and they all had that fringe you see there.

They would have looked yicky icky in their own special way had I washed and dried them on high!

We May Not Have Snow

2011-12-23T19:34:00.003-06:00

And we may not have a chance of snow until, well who knows.

I mean mid 40s and low 50s in December? What a crock!

But we do have holiday baking!

Well sort of. These are a no-bake Christmas tradition.

Date balls! Every time I see this recipe on the internets, the person posting it says it came from their grandma.

Guess where my recipe came from?

Wonder what that's all about?

And then we have the gift cookies/sweet stuff:

Back row in the jars (from left to right): Reindeer Feed and Muddy Buddies.

In the kraft cardboard boxes and the little white boxes are just your run of the mill chocolate crinkles.

I was looking for a simple, polished look for gifting my cookies this year, and I found some reasonably priced boxes and that designers baking twine here. The price wasn't outrageous and they're based out of NY--so I knew the shipping wouldn't take forever.

As for the crinkles in the little white "baskets" those are just paper plates (don't ask, we don't buy them, we are "gifted" them) that you cut and shape. Link to the tutorial (and other great cookie packaging ideas) can be found here.

I used double stick tape and scrapbook paper to decorate them--but trust me, the washi tape looks really tempting!

What's on your baking/baked goods consumption agenda this year?

3 Years Ago

2011-12-19T19:01:00.002-06:00

I had one of these--

And now, I've got one of these--

Happy Birthday my sweet little Moochie!!

Seven Five Things

2011-12-18T07:07:00.003-06:00

Sara ~~infected~~ awarded me the Versatile Blogger Award.

Because as the redundant blog name says---I can randomly meander in my posts!

Part of the schpiel of this award is to reveal seven things about yourself before you pass it along.

So here goes.

1. My deadly sin is sloth, but in the avoidance of vanity I suppose. This is why I wear my hair back and don't wear contacts or makeup. I would rather sleep in the extra 15 to 30 minutes (or however long, I obviously don't know) to do something nice with my hair, pop in contacts, and put on my face.

2. I always have to put my left sock on before my right sock. Same goes for shoes.

3. Call me an Evil Mom, but I don't think the feeling of a gestating child writing in one's uterus is a "magical feeling" that I could "enjoy all day!" I mean it's cool the first time, but after that it's kind of disconcerting. I'm tempted to obtain a tapeworm to see if it's similar.

4. People think I'm just health-conscious for taking the stairs. In actuality, I'm a bit elevator-phobic. Not completely--I will take them if forced to or I am carrying boxes. That accident in the city further solidifies this semi-phobia. The building I work in was built in 1957 and I'm sure the elevators are vintage originals. Doesn't help that the building super is kind of a doofus always dinking aroudn in them.

5. I think those "cake pop" things are disgusting. I mean they're cute and clever. But the thought that someone broke up a bunch of cake, mixed it with frosting and then took their hands and rolled it into a ball and stuck it on a stick makes my stomach turn. I understand people will roll out cookies with their hands--but at least those get baked afterwards.

6. Alright, I can't think of anything else.

So I'm going to do two things now:

1. Nominate the next person for this blog-designation. I tried to think of two people, but I've got a hungry little Moochie whining for "yummy lunch" right now so I can only think of one--

Melissa, that's you. She does quite a bit, crochet, crafting, photography, kids' stuff...versatile if I've ever seen it!

2. I'm going to pimp Sara's pattern in Interweave Knits Accessories. Her pattern is the Jellyfish Scarf.

You can check it out on her blog or on The Place That Shall Not Be Named. I stopped by Barnes and Noble and bought a copy of the magazine just for this pattern. It's a great pattern--it's interesting construction (ha ha!) and yet it's still easy to do while you're sitting in front of the TV.

Gotta say though, I still stand beside my decision not to renew my normal IK subscription. I had to laugh when the pictures of her scarf included the model* yanking at the one end of the scarf. It wouldn't be IK if you didn't have one shot of the model yanking at what she was modeling!

*The model they chose to wear her scarf I found kind of scary in her drag-queen makeup. One of the things I liked about IK in the past was their girl-next-door models. I subscribe to Vogue Knits for their weird looking models. For a better shot of the scarf in all its glory I recommend going to Sara's blog or Rav directly.

Best Laid Plans

2011-12-15T12:23:00.003-06:00

Today is my day off.

I brought my car to the mechanic for a long overdue oil change this morning at 8:00 a.m.

It's 2:00 p.m. and then just informed me my transmission is leaking--PEACHY!

So there go my plans for the day.

Moochie is supposed to wear a pair of black pants to his little holiday program tomorrow. I guess he'll be wearing jeans instead. Ah well.

Just like my plans for today, my latest FO has seen similar results: Not what I anticipated, but not horrific.

See, I'm a sucker for uniquely constructed knitted things* (and bandwagon hats it would seem).

And sometimes (ok, most of the time) those things don't really look good on me.

Behold--Escargot.

The details:

Pattern: The aforementioned Escargot from the latest edition of Knitty.

Yarn: Green is a merino handspun of my own. I lost the tag on exactly who dyed the roving. The white is just some LB Jiffy I believe.

Needles: US6

Overall? It's a great pattern to knit and I really enjoyed it. I had to print myself out a tutorial on wrapping and turning (it's been a while) but aside from that, very easy. After you finish the snail swirl, the rest of the hat goes really fast.

What do I not like about the hat?

Well, I look like a doofus in it.

I wear my hair back. And this is not a good hair back/hair up hat.

You really have to have a cute short little 'do or wear your hair down.

God, I look tired.

See? Not as bad when the hair is down.

However, I hate wearing my hair down.

I suppose I could keep it short, but here's what I hate more than wearing my hair down: The upkeep of keeping it short.

Now as it rounds 3:00 p.m. and I still have no car, and my day of running errands and getting Christmas and birthday shopping DONE are dashed, I do believe this hat will wing it's way to a certain Mom in AK.

She's got a short haircut and at least I think she likes getting my knitted stuff. (If she doesn't, that's the beauty of living so far apart--I don't know and she doesn't have to wear it if she doesn't want to!).

*Except for socks. I'm a traditionalist when it comes to socks. Top down, heel flap, the end.

Meeeemorrieeees!

2011-12-14T19:25:00.003-06:00

My Mom posted a picture of her Christmas tree on Facebook.

Now some might wax poetic about certain ornaments on this tree: "Oh look at the picture of little T. Bud hugging Fudgey the bear!" (At least I think his name was Fudgey...something along those confectionery lines).

But I remember the day that tree came home.

It's fake--obviously.

Circa 1988 is when my parents stopped buying real trees after the last one they bought pretty much lost all of its needles by Christmas.

I don't exactly remember if we bought the fake tree pre- or post-Christmas but it was the way it came home that makes me skip down memory lane.

My mother is pretty even keel. I don't recall her really getting too riled up except as to what would be expected of a stay at home mother of six kids born in a 10 year window.

Keep that little tidbit in mind.

Another integral part of my childhood is a chronology of various "family cars" we drove. Each one was special and each one had it's own nickname.

When we bought this tree, we were riding around in Vanna Green.

Vanna was an 8 passenger 1975 Dodge van that my dad bought at a military auction. She was a decommissioned Army van.

She had NO interior panels (it was just you, a piece of metal and then the road--none of this fancy upholstery you have in cars!), the heat didn't really function that well, if at all (so if you sat in the back seat like I did, you would have to curl up under blankets to keep warm), and there for a time her transmission was kaput to the point where she wouldn't go in reverse. That was always fun--parking in spots you didn't have to back out of!

One of her other quirks was you could only open both of the back doors from the inside of the van. You could get one door open from the outside, but not the other.

So if you had groceries you were bringing home--you had to have someone stand in the back seat, lean over precariously and open the other door for you.

Cut to the day my Mom decides it's time to quit rolling the dice on Alaskan Scrawny Christmas trees or trees that have presumably been on semi trucks up to Alaska since Halloween--just ready to lose all their needles.

She scores the beauty you see in the picture above, and we load the large box into the back of the van and drive home.

And then we get home.

And, do you see where this story is going?

We could open ONE SIDE of the back doors, but not both doors.

The way the tree box was in there, one couldn't do the typical lean-over-the-back-seat and open the door move because the tree box was covering the handle to open the door.

Wow.

I have never heard my my mother swear that much in my life. Even to this day.

There were various maneuvers to get that second door open attempted--including something involving a long handled ice-scraper I believe.

In the end, we had to open the box (which leaning over the back seat wasn't itself too easy to do) and carry each piece of the tree in bit-by-bit.

Then I believe she was able to cut the bottom of the box so it folded flatish and get it out of poor old Vanna Green, where she brought it inside, taped it back up and repacked the brand new Christmas tree.

And to me, that is what makes my parents' Christmas tree special--the memory of my mother swearing like a sailor get that thing out of our crappy ass van!

What's your favorite (kooky if you have it) holiday memory?

Drive By!

2011-12-13T19:56:00.003-06:00

Dr. Mad Scientist has to hop on the 'puter to input progress reports, so I have to make this short.

Two more things I accomplished this weekend--

What is it?

Why it's a...

Gift card holder!

As part of a household that shells out money for school supplies from their own pockets so public school kids get a decent education, I like to give Chunky's teachers Staples giftcards.

Pretty damn boring gift, but I'm hoping this little reindeer makes it a bit less boring.

Finally I turned some of the little Mochi Mochi pencils I knit last year into magnets. I'll probably give a couple of those to Chunky's teacher this year too.

Like the picture? That's a portrait one of Dr. Mad Scientist's students did of him.

I think he did a great job. With the exception he gave him too much hair--hahahahahaah!

Little Sister

2011-12-12T18:16:00.002-06:00

It was another productive weekend round these here parts!

I finished another (and probably final) piece for Baby Bez 3.0's "trousseau."

The details:

Pattern: Little Sister's Dress (if you go on to the Place That Shall Not Be Named, you can find the pattern for free.)

Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in "Iris Gardens"

Needles: US2

Notes: Overall a really easy pattern to follow. It's a top-down design (I'm a huge fan of top-down especially for baby stuff--I find seaming makes already small baby stuff bulkier; I'm not that great at seaming knitwear.), and while you have to pay attention a bit, it still makes for a mindless-TV-watching-knit.

The only mod I made was that I used 3 buttons, not 2.

My crocheted edging leaves some room to be desired, but it will do.

I'm also not too fond of the pooling right at the waist, but eh, look at the target audience. Will a teeny little Baby Bez 3.0 really care?

Thought Interrupted

2011-12-09T20:06:00.003-06:00

Sorry about that. I promised a post yesterday and well, work got in the way.

Good times.

Anyway....where I was going with the last post.

Did you note the way I said for the past three years my office has done "Frostie's Friends" and I've participated in now for the second time?

That's because the first year, times were lean. Dr. Mad Scientist had quit his job to go back to school and Moochie was just a wee little Mooch.

But the years we've been able to breathe a little easier--it's been fun to go shopping for little boys other than my own (I still can't bring myself to pick girls out of the pile of letters--I don't know girl stuff! Yet...).

Bottom line of the "breathe easier" Christmases? We don't really NEED anything.

But the Vector Neighbors have different ideas.

Sigh.

I've tried to politely rebuff their bout of gift diarrhea they will inevitably bestow upon Chunky and Moochie.

One would think one small gift would be ample. No, no, not with Vector Neighbors.

Last year they gave the boys more presents than Santa did.

And they managed to derail one large present Santa bought for Moochie by buying him the same thing--a little ride-on bike.

The both of them just irk me. Last year Male Vector Neighbor gave me shit (did I blog about this?) for buying Moochie a set of play pots and pans and toy food. Apparently those are "girl" toys.

Really? Encouraging a boy to cook is feminine? Try Best Husband Ever training!

So because of this, I feel like they're trying to somehow "correct" what Dr. Mad Scientist and I ( and Santa!) give the boys for Christmas.

This year Female Vector Neighbor has been trying to pump me for gift ideas for the boys.

I've been mum.

She was nice enough to run one idea by me before she wasted her money; she wanted to buy Chunky a cell phone.

HUH?

I kiboshed that one really quick. I mean WTH is he going to call???

And Grandma B. will love this. The new quilt she made Moochie for his big boy bed?

Have you had enough of the Brothers Bez hamming it up in pictures? What a pair of schmoes!

Even though I've told Vector Neighbor he DOESN'T NEED IT, she wants to buy him a Spongebob bed-set.

SIGH.

I mean I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but it's smothering, and it's disgusting.

I'm already researching charities to give away any unneeded "stuff" they insist on dumping upon our boys. There are kids out there getting squat or squatting themselves who could use it more than our boys.

One bright spot of the annoyance that is our neighbors.

Happy flippin' Christmas.

Frosty The Snowman

2011-12-07T18:33:00.002-06:00

The past three years, our office has participated in this thing called Frostie's Friends (I intentionally misspelled that).

It's basically a "Toys for Tots" deal but on a local level and specifically for kids in NJ that are "in need [and] who will be spending the holidays away from the comfort of a home."

The kids write a letter to "Mr. Frosty" like they would Santa, telling him (although I don't know why Frosty is a dude...just because he's made of balls doesn't mean he's gotta be a male, right?) how they've been this year and what they want for the holiday.

The first year we couldn't really afford to do this, but I saw how much fun everyone else had with it.

Last year I did it for one little boy and Chunky and I had a good time picking out a present for him. Don't ask me what it was, but it was fun.

Anyway, this year I picked out two boys--a four year old and a ten year old.

What can I say? I don't like to leave my comfort zone!

Plus I liked these two boys because they were down to earth.

Most kids were asking for stuff I hadn't ever heard of, or really expensive stuff that, as an Evil Mom, I don't buy for my own children.

Not that I can criticize these kids for asking for the moon.

I have fond memories of taking turns with my siblings and writing out our letters to Santa based solely on the Sears Wishbook (seriously--check that site out! I got a kick out of the 1986 edition.).

Asking for the gold plated Barbie Power Wheels is what Christmas is all about!

Well...when you're a kid!

Now this post isn't meant to be a boast of "Look how charitable we are!" it's meant as a lead in to my post tomorrow...stay tuned!

St. Nicholas

2011-12-06T18:44:00.002-06:00

Today is St. Nicholas day.

And in honor of such a day, I give you the rest of the fruits of my weekend.

Oh yes, it's a Mochimochi explosion!!

These are patterns out of Anna Hrachovec's latest book Teeny Tiny Mochimochi.

The Santa is actually a modification of her teeny tiny gnome pattern.

I sort of wish I had put a row of white at the start of his hat. Ah well.

And now that I'm browsing her website, for $2 you can buy a REAL Teeny Tiny Santa pattern. Ah well!

On a total tangent--today is the saint's name day for Mr. Moochie. His saint's name day is extremely close to his birthday, of course. We didn't plan it that way.

Oddly enough, St. Chunky Day is a few days after his birthday.

Since Baby Bez 3.0 is due in March, if we kept with this inadvertent trend of naming our kids close to their saint's day, we would have to name her Patricia. Ha ha!

Skinny Weekend

2011-12-05T18:40:00.003-06:00

It wasn't a four day weekend, so I didn't get as much as I could get done.

But I finished up a couple of Christmas projects.

I'll go ahead and post them because I don't think they visit my blog (just their mom, my Younger Brother's wife).

I made a pair of Dumplings!

Too cute, right?

I hope my younger niece isn't to adverse to pink. I just really dig that fabric. Even before I was rocking the Quad X chromosomes.

Shouldn't a dumpling be stuffed?

The other one is for my 16 year old niece.

She really digs the band Blink 182. Dr. Mad Scientist used to go to their concerts back before they hit the big-big time (they weren't unknown, but they weren't too mainstream either). He had a couple of concert shirts that had seen way better days* so I cut out the logos/art on them before they hit the scrap heap.

The original pattern called for just ribbons on the zipper pulls, but I have more coordinating beads than I do ribbons.

This was a really easy pattern and if you're new to the realm of zippers, definitely check this pattern out.

Tomorrow I'll post what else I accomplished on my normal 2-day weekend.

*Now that I think about it--Blink 182 released their first album when Dr. Mad Scientist and I were 16--my niece's age. Oof. Yeah, now I feel old!

Nostalgia

2011-12-02T20:10:00.002-06:00

I was talking to a guy at work who didn't know I was pregnant and somehow we got on the subject of our kids moving away.

He laughed when I said, "And in 8 years when Chunky is outta here..." because he's got two boys himself. One who has never left and the other who will be graduating from college this spring and moving back in.

Sorry boys (and girl!), I don't care what the economy is like, but if your dad and I can make it on a shittacular university "stipend," and an entry level secretaries salary while paying daycare that costs more than our rent--you can figure out how to support yourself!

It's one of the tenets of Evil Mom Society--pushing your baby bird(s) the hell outta the nest!

Anyway, the first few years I was out of the house living in the real world (i.e. post-college; college is a "real world-lite"). I realized I reallllly missed my Mom's orange Betty Crocker cookbook.

So I went onto Amazon and ordered it used for not quite as pretty a penny as that link states.

And then it seems that my nostalgia spread to Christmas decorations.

Two years ago I felt the need to add this Santa lamp to my decorations:

Moochie has since claimed this tree as his own!

It's a 1968 Empire Blow Mold Santa. Pretty standard. Nothing rare or expensive about it. But it totally reminds me of Christmas!

Yesterday, nostalgia reared her ugly head again--

The 1978 inflatable Santa (still in his package!) for $8 on Etsy.

We used to hang this Santa from the light fixture in the kitchen. I know we'd have contests to see how high we could jump to smack Santa around.

I also remember having the honor of getting to blow Santa (up) every year--ha ha!

I've already picked out a light fixture for this Santa when he arrives!

Do you have a favorite childhood holiday decoration?

December!

2011-12-01T18:43:00.002-06:00

I love December.

There, I said it.

You've got Christmas.

We've got Moochie's birthday.

We've got our wedding anniversary.

You've got New Year's Eve.

I freakin' love it.

One of the first things I do to get into the holiday spirit is as soon as the turkey carcass is processed for optimal meat harvest, is fire up the Christmas music!

Right now, this is my top ten list of Christmas songs in no particular order--although it's very hard to pick just ten!

1. Jingle Bells as sung by Barbra Streisand.
Babs turns a traditional holiday song into an infectious cheesy dance number. Plus the fact that she did a Christmas album just cracks me up.

2. Swiss Colony Beef Log, Eric Cartman.
I don't watch South Park as much as I used to, but who can resist this festive ode to cured meat products? I also identify with this song because, I too "fucking hate egg nog, seriously."

3. Santa Claus is Back in Town, Elvis Presley
The opening of this song always make me think it would be a great song to strip to. Too bad we don't live across from the Boobie Bar anymore.

4. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Aimee Mann
Have yourself an emo little Christmas! I'll fess up; I was first introduced to Aimee Mann via Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I dig this rendition of Merry Little Christmas.

5. Dominick the Donkey, Lou Monte
I don't think I'd love this one so much if I wasn't living in New Jersey. Ha ha! It doesn't help that Chunky goes to school with quite a few boys named Dominick. And in googling this song--I learned Lou Monte is buried just a few miles from where we live. Hee hee! Or should I say--hee haw! hee haw!?

6. Christmas for Cowboys, John Denver
Actually this is one of three John Denver solo songs that I've got in rotation on my Christmas playlist (the other two being "Aspenglow" and "Please Daddy Don't Get Drunk This Christmas"). I blame my mother for this one. She's the John Denver fan, and it's just not Christmas without country-pop far out carols.

7. White Christmas, Bing Crosby
A classic--but it deals with snow. And it's Bing! Ok, so he was a horrible SOB father to his kids...but, it's Bing!

8. Felice Navidad, Jose Feliciano
This song never fails to give me the urge to go ice skating with Big Bird.

9. Holiday (What Do You Want), Mike Doughty and Rosanna Cash
Another song about snow! And it fulfills my closet-indie rock love.

10. Twelve Days of Christmas, John Denver and the Muppets
John Denver and the Muppets. Seriously. Enough said. Although if you do buy this album, make sure you get the WHOLE album. Not the 10-song one.

So what's your favorite holiday song??

What I Did Over My Four Day Vacation

2011-11-28T18:54:00.003-06:00

I swear to cats, four day weekends are the best. I get so much done!

Thursday was, of course, Thanksgiving. I cooked our 19 pound free Shoprite turkey. And now we'll be eating turkey well into 2012.

Mr. Mooch likes to enjoy his juice box out of a champagne flute. A regular juice box is so pedestrian.

On Friday, I made my Christmas cards.

I stole the idea for these cards from here.

Saturday, we traveled to northwestern Nueva Jersey and got our Christmas tree.

Fresh-cut trees last so much longer than those darn tree-lot trees!

Finally on Sunday, it was a momentous occasion!

Chunky's 10th birthday! Gah, I'm way too young to have a 10 year old! Ha ha!

His cake was a football cake. Thank goodness these boys ask for simple cakes!

I also finished a ton of Christmas knitting, but alas, you can't see that! Sorry!

Now I'm counting down to my next 4 day weekend--only 12 more workdays to go. Of course that 4 day weekend will probably be peppered with phone calls from the office!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T06:52:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving from Chief Whinesalot!

May your turkey be moist and your pumpkin pie delicious!

What I Did With My Weekend (On Wednesday)

2011-11-23T16:18:00.003-06:00

Oh where to start!

First was Saturday--the day of taking this:

And turned it into this:

It's a baby blanket for Baby Bez 3.0.

The top is just a simple "scrappy circles" (sewn on there so that the edges of the circles are raw and will eventually ravel) pattern.

But my favorite has to be the back:

Minky!! Holy crap that stuff is so soft!! And warm.

There's no batting, but I did tie the front to the back.

Not the girliest colors in the world. I still find myself gravitating to uber-girly colors only about half the time.

Sunday, I hooked up with Chris for a trip to the Lion Brand Outlet.

The LB Outlet store is nestled in the New Jersey that the jokes about New Jersey are made of.

It's located in Carlstadt, NJ which I seriously believe is just one giant industrial park nestled in the shadow of NYC.

Which is where the LB Outlet was--you drive and drive past warehouses and down rutted roads, past tons of parked tractor trailers--and then you reach the LB Outlet.

Inside, after you go thru the doors that have crocheted and knitted cozies on the handles...you're greeted by a ginormous knitted work of art.

I'm not sure what was my favorite--the argyle giraffe or the giant snake!

There are rows of deeply discounted bags of yarn that Lion Brand carries.

When you fill up your cart, you'll find this seasonal display by the register:

A giant ice skating lion and a snow-lion (and another penguin!). Again, all knit!

I walked away with a TON of yarn for less than $100. I highly, highly, highly recommend a trip to this outlet if you ever find yourself in northern New Jersey and have the urge to see where Hoffa might be buried and satisfy your cheap-yarn craving at the same time.

Blinky Slippers

2011-11-15T19:45:00.003-06:00

And so the additions go on.

Today I give you little itty bitty baby shoes/booties/slippers, whatever...

The details:

Pattern: Magic Slippers

Yarn: Remember those unisexual colored Koigu mill ends I bought for Moochie's Tulips Baby Sweater? Well I let one girly mill end slip into my haul. This is it!

Needles: US 2

Notes: Now I'm not sure why the one slipper has kind of a boxy looking toe. But no worries. These will probably fit Baby Bez 3.0 for approximately 3 seconds. If even.

Just like the booties I have saved from the boys. Those booties now hang in my rearview mirror.

Chunky's pair were a late gift from a friend (knitted, but not handmade--or if they are by some nameless Asian person in a sweatshop overseas), and because they were late, they never fit Chunky.

Moochie's pair are a pair gifted from a real knitter that fit him for approximately 2 seconds.

Which is why I knit these pretty much with my mirror in mind.

One of the frighting things I learned at my 19 week ultrasound is that this girl has huge feet. Like 3 centimeters (and that was 2 weeks ago) long. Doesn't seem like much, but her femur measured 2.9 cms. Good lord.

How is it that Dr. Mad Scientist and I are breeding these freakishly tall or large featured children??

2X The Girliness

2011-11-14T19:06:00.003-06:00

I cast this sweater on before we knew the sex of Baby Bez 3.0.

I thought it would be a nice unisexual color. Hmm.

Kind of.

I think Chunky summed it up best when he said the color was kind of "groovy."

Details--

Pattern: Tulips Baby Sweater (pretty ubiquitous if you google for the pattern, so I'm not going to link).

Yarn: Socks that Rock, Fire on the Mountain

Needles: US2

Notes: I made Moochie a Tulips sweater from Koigu mill ends I bought on my first (and only!) trip to Maryland Sheep and Wool. I wanted to do the same thing for Baby Bez 3.0 except with yarn from Rhinebeck.

However, everything at Rhinebeck was either to girly or too boyly (this little girl's already going to have a lot of boy stuff to wear/play with/use).

And then it hit me--Jen, our wonderful chauffeur/tour director gave Chris and I "raffle" prizes for our little trip to Rhinebeck. Just like the big tour buses do when a yarn store charters one for a fiber festival pilgrimage. Ha ha! Thus the groovy Fire on the Mountain Tulips baby sweater was born.

I've already got a hermetically sealed bag of girly clothes and handknits for Baby Bez 3.0.

I've been waiting 10 years to knit this stuff for my own kid! Ha ha!

One Hump Or Two?

2011-11-07T19:11:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I packed up 2/3rds of my boys (the big hairy one I married stayed home to do end-of-the-quarter-grading) and drove to Central Jersey to help celebrate my friend Chris's "special" birthday.

I won't give away what number this was for her, but I will now reveal part of her birthday present.

First you have to know that she's got a penchant for camels.

So I made her these:

Hee hee!

I have to say my favorite stitch markers are some that are just like this--some tiger tail wire, a focal bead and some crimp beads. They don't snag and they fit pretty much any size needle.

Unfortunately, I ordered her other present a smidge too late. This is Part #2 of the "special" birthday present. I got the "shipped" notice the day of the party--so she had to settle for a picture of the listing and an IOU!

Happy Special Birthday Chris!

Harry Pottater

2011-11-03T18:58:00.003-05:00

Chunky's school had a "Dress A Potato" Contest.

Of course he was supposed to turn his tater in on Monday...instead he brought it in today, his first day back at school (hooray!).

Basically, you decorate a potato like your favorite character from a book.

Here's what he came up with.

Of course I helped with the scarf--ha ha!

Knitting and potatoes--what more is there to love?

Drumroll Please!

2011-11-02T19:04:00.004-05:00

In case you're not connected with me on Facebook--today was the day of the big unveiling.

The streak is over. It's a freakin' GIRL!

Woah nelly!

I'd post the labia pics for my dear Poops, but I've got a sleeping cat on my lap and no scanner. It's freaking hard to take pictures of these pictures with a regular old crappy point and shoot.

She looks kinda freaky in this picture, but she's totally got her Daddy's smirk.

The technician was nice enough to give us a couple of 3D pictures. Apparently, she doesn't do that for everyone--just the cute babies that pose well. Ha ha!

Good lord! I don't even know where to begin! A girl! All that cute girly stuff I've only ever knit/sewn for other people the last ten years!!!

Happy Halloween???

2011-10-31T17:52:00.002-05:00

Actually it's the crappiest Halloween ever.

All the dangling tree limbs, blocked sidewalks, and live electrical wires made the township "reschedule" Halloween.

So trick or treating is now Friday.

The school year has three snow days built in.

Chunky had one today, and will have one tomorrow.

Guess who will be going to school either until July 4th, or get completely screwed out of his spring break?

Ah well.

At least Moochie got to go to daycare today and wear his awesome costume.

Snowtober!!

2011-10-30T10:29:00.004-05:00

I had planned to show this FO a little closer to Christmastime.

However since we got some good old fashioned snow before Halloween...

I figured today was as good as any.

What is it?

It's a mug rug.

Imagine if a coaster and a placemat had an affair that produced babies. This is what their offspring would look like.

It has room for a mug (or bottle of water as I use--at work where I will actually use this thing) and snack.

Of course I'll be eating something more delicious than Moochie's plastic pretzel.

The only problem with Snowtober in the Lower 48 is that the leaves weren't fully off the trees and these cheechako trees couldn't handle this weather so early in the year.

How I Lost My Stash

2011-10-28T19:01:00.002-05:00

I figure it's almost Halloween, it's a Friday night and I have some time to blog, it's almost my six year bloggoversary, and this is a very, very scary tale.

But here's the deal. Before I go and recant my tale, I'm going to change the name of the protagonist.

Why? Because even though I aim to keep this blog relatively anonymous, someone could stumble upon it. The ordeal we went thru (and I guess are still living through) has been shown to cause discrimination against people in our situation.

Therefore, I will be referring to the petulance that cursed our home this spring and summer as "yickyickys."

I must also humbly ask that if you care to comment to this post, that you refrain from using the correct name for these disgusting creatures. I don't want someone googling the correct name for these things to find this post and be able to link it back to us even though we are yickicky free (knock on wood) now.

I will delete your comment if it uses the proper term for these things. It's nothing personal.

If you have not been through a situation such as ours, I hate to sound condescending and know-it-all, but you have NO IDEA what we went through. And sadly that ignorance cuts both ways--people make assumptions.

I know I certainly did. And I still harbor some major resentments for the instigators of our plague. But I feel for the time being, I'm entitled to that simmering grudge.

Anyway--on with the story.

Picture it:

New Jersey, the Saturday before Easter.

It's dark outside.

We hear some commotion in the stairwell.

Peeking out the picture window we see that the upstairs neighbors are dragging a mattress down to the curb.

Cut to Easter Sunday. Chunky is playing outside and is talking to Basement Neighbor. Basement Neighbor informs Chunky that Upstairs Neighbor #3 (there are three of them up there) (herein referred to as "Vector Neighbor") has yickyickies.

Fuck me. We had just gotten back from Niagara Falls where I had been downright overzealous about inspecting our hotel beds for yickyickies.

I try to remain calm.

On Tuesday, the exterminators spray the upstairs neighbors' apartment for yickyickies. They do not spray our apartment or the Basement Neighbor's apartment.

Problem 1: Any exterminator will tell you, you have to spray the ENTIRE building for yickyickies or they will merely migrate from the sprayed areas to the untreated areas.

It is now Friday, May 6.

Chunky and Moochie are eating breakfast. Chunky makes an offhand comment that his arm itches.

I examine the red welts on his arm.

Chunky's yickyicky bites.

In a half-hyperventilating-freakout-anxiety-attack-rage, I tear his bed apart and lo and behold, there, in his bed are about four yickyickys.

Die mother effer, DIE!

Did I mention Chunky's bedroom is directly BELOW Vector Neighbor's bedroom. Hmm...gee, wonder how the yickyickies got into his room?

I quickly get on the phone and call two people.

First--Landlord (herein referred to as "Clueless") and basically freak the fuck out on him telling him this needs to be taken care of IMMEDIATELY.

Second--I call into the office taking, for the first time in my working career a "personal day."

I drop the boys off at school and daycare and I stop by the grocery store for probably about five boxes of heavy black trash bags.

I put on my big girl underpants, push out the heebie-jeebie jive and I tear apart Chunky's room.

Basically--if it couldn't be washed in hot, hot, water, it got thrown away.

Chunky's bed. The first casualty.

I then proceed to haul all of his laundry to the laundromat where I know I can kill any semblance of the yickyickies with uber-hot water and dryers.

In fact, I just pulled out some of his winter blankets this week--some of his fleece blankets have melted from the dryer I subjected them to in May.

Saturday, the exterminator comes. He is an hour late.

He tells Clueless, had he known that he was a spraying an apartment on Tuesday, he would have insisted on doing the whole building instead of just the upstairs.

Because you know Exterminator, you didn't see the THREE mailboxes right next to the front door, or the fact that you went upstairs and never downstairs when you were here on Tuesday? What did you think was downstairs??

We have to evacuate our apartment for four hours. We kill some of the time at a big park.

Luckily there were some humorous pictures chalked on the bike path that circles the park to entertain us and take our mind off the horror of the yickyickies.

Did I mention we also had to take the cats with us? They weren't too happy.

I also hit Blood, Bath and Beyond to purchase mattress and box spring covers for our bed, and Chunky's soon-to-be-replaced bed.

See the price tag on that?

Let's do a little recap of how much this has cost us less than a week into the ordeal:

Laundry: $50
Mattress covers & pillow covers: $287
New pillows for Chunky: $15
Total: $352

Two weeks later, the exterminator had to come back and spray.

Why? So he could kill any yickyickies that might have been in the egg-stage the first time he sprayed. Because apparently yickyickies can survive toxic chemicals when they're eggs.

We purchase Chunky a new bed and promptly hermetically seal it up.

That trashbag and duct tape box spring cover has since been replaced with the real deal.

He's just relieved not to have to sleep on the couch anymore.

Running tally:

New Chunky bed, box spring & frame: $550
Previous Total: $352
New Total: $902

The month of May comes to a close.

My hatred towards the upstairs neighbors is palpable. They comment about how I must not "like them anymore."

Hmm...

During this ordeal, they explain to me that Vector Neighbor kept his room a cluttered mess (yes, it's true, yickyickies aren't a symptom of "dirty" people, but they DO like clutter. Lots of hidey holes for them to live in. They can live for 18 months without a meal, so why not take a nice long rest under a pile of junk?)

They also inform me that Vector Neighbor likes to hang out at soup kitchens with homeless people.

Ok, I get it, you're retired, you're lonely during the day...

But, the kicker is HOW INFESTED they let him get and they didn't do a goddamned mother fucking thing about it.

Dear readers, one of the other two Upstairs Neighbors told me that when he went to the doctor's office (yeah, will you visit your dr. without thinking of who was sitting in that waiting room before you?) the yickyickies WERE JUMPING OFF HIS BODY.

Are you thoroughly grossed out yet?

The best part? The other two Upstairs Neighbors tried to tell me "Well we didn't know about it because they were contained to his room only..."

BULL-SHIT.

So yeah, I wasn't really "liking" the Upstairs Neighbors much.

It was made worse when they pulled shit like this:

Run people! For the love of God! Take your money and RUN!

A garage sale. That's right. A garage sale.

This was in July. Only a few scant months after the infestation.

Seriously, I'm all about cheapassedness, you all know that, but I will never go to a garage sale ever again in my life. You don't know if the people selling their stuff are people like Upstairs Neighbors.

Did you catch that part about July?

That brings us to part two of my story.

It's July 3rd. It's a gorgeous day.

I'm in the back yard.

The boys are playing in the pool.

I'm poolside, knitting a sweater, or maybe I was reading a book. I don't remember.

I do remember thinking "Hey, I'll prop my pasty white legs up to get some sun."

And then I remember thinking: "Gee, that's weird, why does my left leg have so many mosquito bites and my right leg is relatively untouched?"

Cue that half-hyperventilating-freakout-anxiety-attack-rage feeling.

I run into the house and in a blind crazed full on freakout, I rip the sheets off of our bed.

YICKYICKIES.

Living on the outside of the $99 yickyicky cover.

Scroll back up and read about the frantic crazy call to the clueless landlord.

Now imagine that, but imagine that with 100% more crazy bitch thrown in.

Problem #2: Yickieickies like wood. Our bed was wood. That's how they must have survived the first rounds of spray.

Oh farewell sweet bed!! Our first piece of "grownup" furniture!

So cue the same round of laundering EVERYTHING, vacuuming everything, and throwing away tons of items that could not be washed.

And that--if you've made it this far--is what happened to my yarn.

My yarn was stored UNDER my bed. My sock yarn was in nicely sealed plastic bags.

However, the majority of my yarn was in one of those plastic under the bed storage containers.

Which snap shut...

...assuming you don't have them so full of yarn, they don't fully seal shut.

Yeah.

I thought about my options.

I could put it in black plastic bags, put it in the windows of my parked car on a sunny day and basically "bake" it.

Or I could dust it with diatomaceous earth...but that would have been messy.

No matter what I did with it, even if I did annihilate all of the yickyickies that may have been in my yarn, I would never know if they were truly gone.

It would always be at the back of my mind.

I made the decision.

I had to throw it all out.

Sob.

Our bedroom proved to be harder to de-yickyicky than Chunky's.

We had a lot more stuff in there.

After the clothes were laundered and hyperdryed, they were hung back up in the closet.

This time in those gigantic Ziploc bags.

So annoying.

Our dresser is wood. And we kept that. But again, underwear, socks, bras, t-shirts--now all in bags in the dresser.

My fabric stash was mostly saved though--everything that was washable was washed and hyperdried and put into plastic containers. No more stylish wicker baskets.

Yeah, you'll also see that my shoes are now off the floor as well.

All of the knitting books that were on my bookshelf in the bedroom have been double bagged in black trash bags and sit now in the garage with a note that they can be opened in January 2013 (18 months from the incident).

My favorite bagging had to be my clock radio.

I got this clock radio for Christmas when I was younger than Chunky is now.

It still works great. But it's got lots of nooks and crevices that would be idea for a yickyicky to hide in.

But I couldn't part with it!

So I bagged it too.

Yeah, it's a dusty old clock!

What's our total at this point?

Previous total: $902
New bed, box spring, frame, and headboard (metal!) for Dr. MS and I: $1700
Another mattress cover, box spring cover, and pillow covers: $228
Five boxes of XXL Ziploc Bags: $30
New total: $2860

I'm not even factoring in all the plastic tubs I had to buy for stuff and the round of laundry I had to do this time or the pounds (overkill there--but they didn't come in any smaller quantities) of diatomaceous earth I bought and dusted the crevices of our baseboards in the house with.

Ugh.

So that takes us to here, the present day, dear readers.

As of yet, we have not seen another yickyicky since July. But I haven't let my guard down. I still vigilantly inspect our beds every night and the boys know to report any suspicious red welts to me.

The worst part of the yickyickies is it robs you of not just scads and scads of money (and let me tell you how awesome it is to spend tons of money like that when you know your husband is about to be unemployed for who knows how long, and in the summer when he's not drawing a paycheck!), but your innocence.

I am extremely suspiciously paranoid of even the most benign thing--like dr. office waiting rooms, or garage sales--on the off chance it could reinfect our house with yickyickies.

And when you buy your Moochie his first big boy bed (his room appears to have been spared) you are upset because you had to spend extra money on mattress covers that look downright awful.

Night night! Sleep tight! Don't let the yickyickies bite!

And the Upstairs Neighbors wonder why I'm not so warm and friendly anymore!

The best part is, they live so vicariously through our boys--that I haven't told them I'm pregnant yet.* Because I know they'll be gifting us loads of baby shit we don't need.

And which might have been...upstairs.

Where all this shit started.

*If you do the math, Baby Bez 3.0 was conceived on July 2nd. The day before I discovered our yickyickie laden bed. GROSS!

I won't even go into the wrath those fucktards upstairs will endure if anything is wrong with Baby Bez 3.0 because of my exposure to those chemicals days after conception.

Splurge!

2011-10-26T17:48:00.002-05:00

Well, it felt like a huge splurge.

Someday I'll blog about the story of How All My Yarn Got Destroyed. I'm just not ready yet.

To replace some of what I lost I happened upon yarn at the dollar store.

Peaches n'Cream to be exact.

I didn't have a lot of kitchen cotton in my stash, but I did have some. And I have found myself missing it lately (nothing like a mindless grandma's washcloth between projects!).

So I splurged on 10 balls of Peaches n'Cream to replenish (plus some!) what was lost this summer.

I'm realllly digging that pink black and white "black cherry" colored yarn.

Cast Off!

2011-10-24T05:15:00.002-05:00

No, I'm not finishing a project.

Today Chunky gets his cast off!

They don't like to keep elbows immobilized for too long as it apparently leads to loss of motion in the end. So as soon as the bone is healed, off comes the cast.

He's still got to take it easy until Thanksgiving--which will be hard for him to do without the cast there to constantly remind him to do so.

But it's a start!

Top 5

2011-10-20T19:48:00.004-05:00

Elizabeth had posted this top five list to her Facebook feed of online knitting magazines (she's not the author of the list, just place I first saw it).

Of course I agree with the #1 choice...ha ha!

I think I'd put knitty.com above Twist Collective though. Twist Collective, while beautiful and gorgeous, gives off an elitist air to me.

Not a "We're better than you!" elitism, but a "You've gotta be a pretty experienced knitter to knit any of the stuff in our magazine!" vibe.

Maybe "elite" isn't the right word. Not as accessible?

But the same goes for print magazines.

Obviously your Knit Simple isn't going to be on the same wavelength as say Vogue Knitting or Interweave Knits. So maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges in giving my opinion there.

I do know that's why I enjoy Knitcircus and knitty. They have a nice blend of multi-level projects.

And of course the baked goods in Knitcircus are just the best..ha ha!

What do you think? How would you rank your favorite online knitting magazines?

Rhinebeck Roundup!

2011-10-19T18:36:00.002-05:00

Wow.

It IS everything everyone says it is.

Jen, Chris and I met in Parsippany (just say it, fun, right?) and carpooled to Rhinebeck. Aside from the GPS deciding to take us off the NY Thruway for 7 miles only to get back on it, we got there just in time to stand in line.

To the fairground operators' credit--they did a great job herding everyone into the fairgrounds in an orderly fashion.

One of the first places we stopped was the infamous booth--The Fold.

Too crowded for my blood! And there weren't even the fabled lines snaking out of the booth and thru the building! But I can say now that I've "been there and done that."

You can't forget the food.

I basically took that one for my Mom. She digs cows.

The Pillsbury Boy Death Food Cart. Aww...poor Poppin' Fresh!

And of course you can't go to a fiber festival without enjoying some of the meatly-bounty of the sheep!

Roast lamb sandwich!

We didn't go thru any of the animal barns...but I did snap a picture of what I believe was the llama parade (unless they're alpacas).

And the people watching was amazing! My fave had to be the guy Chris pointed out to me sporting a head of balding purple hair. Because, as she put it, if you dye it purple, no one will notice it's falling out!

We even saw the Ravelry Royalty walking around (sans drooling mob, which I was a bit surprised at).

But the best was this woman (on the right) while I was standing in line to purchase a book (more on that later).

Sweet mother of fatzah! Blech! The only thing that would make that sweater authentic is if she spun the yarn she knit it out of from attic insulation.

Of course at the end of the day we had to take a picture of the back of Jen's car packed to the gills with all of our purchases.

Ha ha! Actually I bought some yarn too that didn't make it into that picture.

Here's what I walked away with:

Starting with the book (where I was when I snapped the picture of Squirrel Sweater), I couldn't resist. In fact we went back to get that one! I love Mochi-Mochi and the mini ones are just too much. I swear the older I get the more cutesy-girly I get. We then stood in line to get our books autographed.

The bag of fiber you see there is 2 ozs. of the most incredibly soft fiber I think I've ever touched. It's a camel/silk blend that I purchased from Skaska Designs. It was $25. That's pretty rich for my blood, but when I realized that they're HQed in Fort Collins, CO (Go Rams!) I caved. Had a nice conversation with the guy running the money box about how much Ft.C has changed in the 10 years or so since we've been there.

And finally, I think you know what the last ball of yarn there is.

Yes. Quiviut. Not 100% though. I couldn't cave that much. It's the "Luxury" blend--45% quiviut/45% merino/10% mullberry silk.

I bought this at Windy Valley. Now one of the reasons I wanted to stop there is because this farm used to be located in lovely Palmer, Alaska.

But I guess, unbeknownst to me, they sold the farm and moved to Yuma, CO.

The guy running the money box there really didn't have anything nice to say about Palmer. He mainly complained about the weather. Which, to be quite honest having lived in both Palmer and Colorado--I'll take Palmer ANY day. And dude, it's Alaska of course the sun's not going to shine!

I guess since I was born and raised in the Land of the Midnight Overcast Sun, I don't mind the rain and crappy weather.

All in all though--it was a great little road trip and I'd love to go again!

Week In Review, or Yes, I Can

2011-10-14T18:38:00.003-05:00

I actually took off Columbus Day -- a floating holiday for our firm (you get MLK or Columbus Day off. I'm all about the MLK but coming off of the Christmas/New Year's holidays, I don't NEED another day off like I NEED a mid-October day off).

Anyway, I got a LOT done.

I scored the makings for Moochie and Chunky's Halloween costumes. Those will be made next weekend.

And basically I finished up the canning season.

I started by taking the last of the habaneros and jalapenos from the bushes that Basement Neighbor planted for Upstairs Neighbor, and Upstairs Neighbor didn't know what to do with so many peppers.

Plus I HAD to can these because a certain cat who shall remain nameless somehow managed to keep finding my peppers, pulling them out of the box I had them in, and play with them all over the house.

Mother smugger!

I got one jar of nacho rings (sliced jalapenos), one of mixed sliced peppers (red and green habaneros and jalapenos), and one jar of whole habaneros.

Then I moved on to apple butter.

I took my gross frozen apple cores and peels...

Added a bit of apple cider...

Strained out the stems, seeds and skins...

And then popped it in the crockpot for six hours because I was too tired to sit there and stir it on the stovetop for hours.

Of course I didn't get pictures of just the final apple butter in neat jars.

But I did get a couple of shots of my summer/fall spoils.

All on the counter.

Shoved into the cupboard.

Whew! It was a lot of work--even stretched out over four months, but it's worth it when you open a jar of pickles or applesauce in January!

Stay tuned--tomorrow is Rhinebeck! Oooaaahhhhh! I'm so excited!

Woah, an FO!

2011-10-09T07:20:00.002-05:00

I recently actually finished something this past week!

The details--

Pattern: Smocked Socks

Yarn: Berroco Alpaca Sox

Needles: US 2

Notes: This was a really easy pattern to memorize and very cool the way it "smocked." The smocking is kind of hard to see in the pictures though. But I do love the coloring of this yarn and don't think it was a bad choice for this pattern.

I'm not sure I'm in love with the wear of this yarn. I just washed these for the first time and if you think the color obscures the smocking, you should see the fuzzy halo that obscures it now!

Ah well, they're still warm and comfy, so who really cares?

Less than a week now until Rhinebeck! It's my first (and probably only time) going and I'm quite excited.

I'm actually hoping to find some non-sock yarn.

Why? Because my non-sock yarn stash was lost in a tragic twist of events this past summer.

The twist of events is also why my clock radio is encased in a plastic baggie now until January 2013.

Now I just need to come up with some projects to shop for yarn for!

Apple A Day

2011-10-01T16:08:00.003-05:00

I used the last of our non-eating apples to make this deliciousness.

Honey Lemon Apple Jam.

Holy cow. So yummy.

I have plans to make some biscuits tomorrow night to accompany a chicken noodle soup I want to make and slather some of this on it.

Might want to alert FEMA. There could be more flooding in New Jersey from my drool.

Breezing In

2011-09-30T19:47:00.002-05:00

To say that Chunk had a great day.

Dr. Mad Scientist accompanied him to the surgery center (which was quite easy to find since we had just played that town's football team two weeks ago and was only a few blocks from the playing field).

Moochie and I stayed home (more on that later).

The surgery went without a hitch. Well the only "complications" were that they put four pins in his elbow as opposed to 3 and he couldn't get a red cast like he wanted (to match his football team's colors). He had to settle for a Colorado State green. Not a bad second choice! Ha ha!

When he woke up, he said his pain was only a "3."

Which reminds me, how hilarious is this pain chart?

We have determined that Level 6 is about the face you might make if your goldfish died.

And then the boys determined that Level 8 is the "Costco Mom Face" indicating my level of pain/anger at having to go to Costco on a weekend.

Chunky's such a tough kid, he never said his pain was worse than his goldfish dying.

Anyway, he's feeling much better now that he's got the real cast on and everything pushed back into place. He's not moving like an old man with hemorrhoids now.

Sunday we'll even go to his football game and he'll jersey-up and cheer his teammates from the bench.

But back to the reason Moochie and I didn't go. The first reason was, even though it was a relatively short surgery (he was in at 9 a.m. and on the road by noon), entertaining a toddler in a waiting for hours didn't really seem appealing.

The second reason was, back last week, I made a decision that it was time to get Mr. Mooch a big-boy bed. I timed it so I could have it delivered while I was off from work (Thursday and Friday were planned vacation days for me as Mooch's daycare was closed for Rosh Hashanah). That was obviously pre-elbow shatter.

Anyway, it was delivered, and hopefully he won't fall out of it and break his elbow!!

Why yes, that is a custom made SpongeBob pillowcase I made for him out of a couple of fabric panels and extra flannel from his jammie pants.

Now all he's missing from this bed is a quilt of his very own.

If only I knew someone with a brand new spiffy quilting machine...

Hmmm...

When Egg Meets Sperm...

2011-09-29T18:07:00.003-05:00

...this is the stuff that they don't tell you about when you're gettin' it on and makin' babies.

...they don't tell you that one ordinary sunny, Tuesday you'll go to lunch (something you hardly ever do because well...that's a separate post.

...and it will be the one day you go to lunch without your cell phone because when you went to grab it, you noticed the battery was about to die, so you figure "eh, what the hell, I'll just plug it in and leave it."

...and when you're coming back from lunch, your frantic coworker S will damn near tackle you in the parking lot and breathlessly exclaim--"It's your son's school nurse on the phone--she said it was an emergency!"

...and you run upstairs to your desk, you call back the school and you wade through the world's LONGEST phone menu to finally get to the nurse's extension (the last one they list on the phone menu, by the way).

..and she tells you that she thinks your Chunky has broken his arm.

...and so you leave the office faster than when it was shaking during the Great Overkill Earthquake of 2011.

...and you sit in your car for effing 15 minutes while the slow-ass parking attendants take for-ever to move the five cars blocking you in.

...and then you get stuck behind every slow-ass driver in New Jersey who have just happened to converge on your route from work to Chunky's school at this exact moment.

...and you happen to hit every GD stoplight possible on your way there.

...and finally your husband calls you--he's beat you to the school and wants to know what to do next, so you tell him to meet you at the hospital ER.

...and when you get to the ER there is absolutely NO parking there and you end up parking on a road called "Newark Avenue" which you later find out is pretty notorious for car-break-ins (which thankfully didn't happen to you).

...and so you gently ease your Chunky out of his dad's car and walk him into the ER wherein you are right behind the poor lady about to vomit up her lungs, two kidneys, gallbladder and possibly her spleen all in one fell swoop.

...and you sit there for an hour and a half, of which luckily only an hour you have to listen to Ms. Wretched Retching retch until they take her back.

...and you sit in the ER for approximately six hours, while you don't know what's going to happen to your kid--the tell you they might have to operate on his shattered elbow*, but they can't do it at the hospital you're in, they're probably going to have to transport him to a hospital that will. Oh and can you please just empty your pockets and hand over your valuables now? Because this is going to be expensive.

...and then, as your reward for sitting there being bored out of your gourd with a kid in pain (which they only gave him medication for about 2/3rds of the way into), you are told that the pediatric orthopedist has seen his xrays and he recommends you go home--but come see him the next morning.

..and you're sprung!

...and so now you have an in-pain elementary schooler and a cranky hungry toddler and dinner to figure out and a prescription to fill.

...and so you split the difference with your husband--he takes gimpy-arm and gets dinner, and you take crankypants and get the prescription. Which seems to take forever to fill...ooof.

...and the next day you get in to see the pediatric orthopedist who takes all the nightmares that the ER planted in your head and smashes them to pieces--day surgery! cast for 3 to 4 weeks! Hooray!

...and now you're on the eve of your little boy's surgery, and even though it's day surgery and you know he'll do fine, you don't know if it's just the probable third boy parasitically feeding off of you that's making you misty about it, or just plain old being a mom, you still worry.

I'll let you know how it goes! The great Elbow Reconstruction is tomorrow at 9:15 a.m.!

*That he got playing tag and tripping on a New Jersey 80% cement playground.

Sweet, Sweet Fall

2011-09-26T18:48:00.003-05:00

So it might have been 80 degrees outside.

And tomorrow may be 78 degrees.

But I am assured fall is technically here.

Last Sunday we sent apple picking.

And this past weekend I spent two hours chopping up apple into little bits to make--

A measley three jars of applesauce and a delicious apple pie.

Oh that pie! Oh mama! It's a very interesting recipe. Miss T of Knitcircus fame passed it along to me. It's a "Swedish" apple pie. Not quite an American apple pie with a true dough-top crust, nor a Dutch/French crumb-top pie. Kind of a cross between both--and VERY delicious.

Finally, and I don't know where the hell I get the energy to do this stuff (I'm freaking exhausted right now)--it's time for Cookie of the Week.

Of course now that I go back to link to the recipe, I can see I did it wrong, maybe I was asleep. Ah well, the taste is still amazing!

These are Samoa Bark.

As you can see, I should have folded the coconut into the caramel. Ah well.

I made two batches--one for home and one for work, and they didn't last too long!

Stretched

2011-09-23T19:47:00.003-05:00

Most people stop blogging in summer when they're out and about.

For me, it seems to be fall. Between Bez 3.0 sucking me dry, work, school back up and running again and Chunky's football practices and games, I'm exhausted and not much has been happening in the creativity department.

I did finish my sewing machine cover though.

I had bought a yard of this oil cloth on a whim (I swear those Fabric.com "Deal of the Days" tempt me at the virtual checkout!). I've been sitting on it for a while and figured this would be the perfect.

I didn't really follow a pattern. It was basically like sewing a bag. Well actually that WAS what I did. It's just an upside down bag to go on top of my Toni!

Sew Tiny

2011-09-16T19:37:00.003-05:00

Ever since I discovered sewing (and especially since I got my sweet little Toni Janome), I've been a kitchen table sewer.

Meaning, I always had to haul Toni out of her spot in the bathroom linen closet.

It's been kind of a pain, but I've made do. But I finally decided, and I won't lie--some silverfish in the bathroom linen closet helped me--to find Toni a new home.

I decided the bedroom was the best place to put her as we recently have some freed up space in there--but still not a lot of room.

I had been keeping my eyes on the curb on Fridays (big-trash-day eve), but everything I saw that fit the bill was wooden. I can't have wooden furniture in the bedroom anymore (maybe more on that later).

Scouring the internet I discovered the perfect solution--the typewriter table/stand*!

It's the perfect size for Toni (and honestly not that much smaller than the space on the kitchen table I was using before).

And when I'm done sewing, the eaves fold down and she can be tucked away into the "crafty corners" section of my bedroom out of the way.

First up on the agenda for my new tiny sewing space will probably be a cover for Ms. Toni.

Stay tuned!

*Specifically a "mid-century" typewriter table. I absolutely love the way people are referring to the 50s as "mid-century" now. Does this mean my parents are "mid-century" models? Ha ha!

New Beginnings

2011-09-09T03:26:00.003-05:00

Summer can officially leave now.

School has started--my Chunky is now a 4th grader!

Check it! "Irene" damage!

Kiddie football season also officially begins on Sunday. I'm very excited!!

Chunky's the kid on the red-shirted team squatting like he's taking a crap in the woods.

Mr. Mooch is back at daycare after a summer home with Dr. Mad Scientist and Chunky.

Imagine I have a picture of him there. What can I say? It's been a rough adjustment for him leaving his beloved big brother in the morning to learn about cookies all day.

Seriously, I picked him up yesterday and asked him what he learned about at school and that was the answer the gave me -- "cookies!"

Dr. Mad Scientist is getting into a groove at his new school which is run by administrators infinitely more adept at running a school and school district than Newark Public Schools could ever dream of.

This is a view of the back of his classroom. I had him take pictures for me so I could help advise him how to decorate it. I love this shot because the "acid" cabinet is locked up tight, but hey, we'll just leave the blow torches out for teenager to mess with!

And for me, it's pretty much the same old crap at work day in and day out.

However, I am working on a beginning of sorts that will eventually effect us all.

Number 3 graces us with his (ok, so I can't confirm that pronoun, but who am I kidding? With our luck, it's another boy) presence at the end of March.

Don't say I never tell you anything.

Who Lives In A Pineapple Under the Sea?

2011-09-03T20:11:00.003-05:00

The old funky cut-off jammies are dead!

Long live the mommy-made BobBob jammies!

Hee hee!

Super simple to make. I just traced a pair of pants he had that still fit him folded in half onto some newspaper. Sewed the two legs together, sewed the front to the back, added elastic and hemmed the pant cuffs.

He really digs them. The tops are actually some t-shirts I found on clearance at the grocery store of all places. We went grocery shopping on Thursday before the "hurricane" hit and while it wasn't day-before-Thanksgiving-crazy-busy, I found myself sitting in front of a display of these clearance items while I was waiting in line for 30 minutes.

I just appliqued some stars I cut out of the leftover fabric onto the t-shirts.

There's a story behind those stars too. I cut them out using the paper star that Chunky got from a Betsy Ross impersonator at the Betsy Ross house in Philadelphia. Very cool. I never realized that Betsy convinced George Washington that the five point star was the way to go instead of a six point star that he originally wanted for the US flag.

Regardless--the five point star makes for good jammies!

Well That Was Lame

2011-08-30T04:54:00.003-05:00

We're lucky, but I also blame George Bush for being such a dumbass with Katrina that they over-hyped this damn Irene to the hilt because no one wanted to end up looking like him.

We've had cloudbursts that were scarier than this "hurricane" was.

The "damage":

A tree branch a few houses down fell down. An elderly guy with some hedge trimmers took care of processing it for recycling day pick up.

And the park that's a short walk from our house flooded.

But this "brook" (part of the historic Morris Canal) floods nearly every time we get a heavy rain. I will say the stench was quite delightful....yeccccch!

C'mon Irene!

2011-08-26T19:03:00.002-05:00

It's my first real hurricane. I've only ever dealt with tailings.

We'll be fine though. I'm morbidly curious to see how heavy the rain will be.

Right before school ended we had a gigantic cloudburst that created some serious flash flooding (Chunky was trapped at school by flooding and a transformer fire), so it will be interesting to see how Irene measures up.

I had to go grocery shopping anyway this weekend, so I just did it earlier. The only "different" things I bought was bottled water and candles. Is it wrong that I bought shabbat candles for any possible blackouts?

And the only thing different I'll really be doing is not parking my car underneath this big ass oak tree that has plenty o'branches ripe for the falling!

I'll try to blog about my first hurricane afterwards. In the meantime, can you find the evacuation route sign?

Potpourri

2011-08-23T19:23:00.003-05:00

I'll take Potpourri for $500, Alex!

First up, a Pot Garden update.

Most of my stuff has come and gone. The okra's still doing well but there's a big-ass orb spider living on the plant, so I've kind of let it go. Ha ha.

I'm waiting for these bad boys to get red:

Mmmm...Tabasco peppers!

Next up, some FOs.

Some simple stockinette anklets that I'll wear around the house this winter. This was the other skein of Lorna's Laces (Mixed Berries) that matched my Ringwood Gloves from late last winter.

I also finished this sweater last week as well.

The details:

Pattern: Leaflet

Yarn: Lion Brand Jiffy in "Fisherman"

Needles: US 10

Notes: I liked this sweater. But I've always been a big fan of top-down knit sweaters.

What I'm not too fond of is the puckering where the collar meets the edge of the sweater. I should have added some more stitches as I hit the neckline I suppose.

The only mod I made was adding a button and buttonhole. Not sure I like it. Maybe as winter progresses I'll change my mind!

But I do love the lace inset on the back!

Finally, like many of my fellow ~~sardines~~ east coasters, at 2pm I felt my first Lower 48 earthquake.

As the building started to sway (I work on the 5th floor) was "Hmm, that's a bit disconcerting."

My second thought was that our old building was finally just collapsing. It's not like it's condemned, but it's not the nicest building.

When I finally thought "Oh, earthquake!" I grabbed my purse and keys and fled the building. Which is pretty stupid to do while the building is still shaking.

We were only evacuated for a half hour or so.

The whole thing was a real eye opener. I learned that:

1. I need to bone up on my earthquake reactionary skills;
2. Brick/concrete buildings are scary during earthquakes; and
3. We gotta get the hell out of New Jersey, this place is SO not prepared for earthquakes.

The biggest thing I've noticed about living out here is the complacency of a lot of people.

"Oh we don't get tornadoes here!"
And then a tornado touches down in Brooklyn.
Or "We don't get earthquakes!"
And of course today's event happens.

I don't care where the Bezes eventually land, but when we do, our house will be made of flexible wood and we will have a tornado shelter/basement.

Before I leave, let me keep it light--tomorrow the new Knitcircus goes live. Fall and sweaters are right around the corner!!!

Bob Bob!

2011-08-18T19:31:00.002-05:00

You know how toddlers fixate on ONE thing and ONE thing only?

It becomes an obsession with them--be it a favorite blankie or stuffed animal.

Moochie has two obsessions.

One of those happens to be his pajamas.

Last fall, when the weather was cold, and he was a little over 18 months old, we bought him a couple of pairs of long sleeved footed jammies.

He LOVES these things.

So much so that he refused to give up wearing them to bed when the temperatures started to rise in the spring/early summer and putting him to bed in too-tight footed jammies would be considered child abuse.

In a fit of frustration, and thinking I could get him to give up his tired old jammies, I cut off the legs and arms.

No dice. He still demands to wear them. Sigh.

The second Mooch-fixation is absorbent and yellow and porous is he.

That's right, Sponge Bob Square Pants.

However to the 2 year old tongue Sponge Bob Square Pants is translated to Bob Bob!

Now as the weather is getting "cooler" I've decided to see if I can get one obsession to cancel out the other.

Bob Bob flannel for new Moochie jammies.

Wish me luck!

Peter Piper

2011-08-13T09:40:00.003-05:00

May have picked a peck of pickled peppers...

But I also finally fulfilled a craving I've had for years now.

I finally pickled some jalapeno (and some habanero) rings.

I didn't grow these (I've got tabasco peppers in the pot garden right now) though--I picked them up at the farmers' market.

I like sticking them on nachos, or perhaps just eating them straight out of the jar!

TPS Report

2011-08-10T18:54:00.005-05:00

This is the story of my potatoes.

You'll remember in the winter, I opened my cupboard to discover the baby potatoes I had saved from my harvest last year had gone mutanty on me.

I was a little worried because they had gone so berserker in the dark cupboard, but I planted them anyway, and soon I had my 2011 Pot Potato descendant from the 2007 grocery store potato I had planted on a whim.

And then you'll remember about a month ago, I discovered these growing on my pot potato:

Creepy!

But with a little research I discovered they were "potato berries" and inside they were full of true potato seeds.

I did some research on how to properly harvest true potato seeds.

Here's what I did.

I took my potato berry...

...and cut it into quarters.

See? Just like their cousin tomatoes--but with poison!

Next, I took my knife and scraped the seeds from the hull of the potato berry.

I put the seed goo into a little paper dixie cup (although I imagine any small container would do).

I added some water to the cup.

Then I put the cup on the windowsill in my kitchen and let it sit for weeks. The premise was, that the seeds would sink to the bottom and the schmutz from the rest of the potato berry would rise to the top.

I also forgot to take a picture of what the cup looked like after a few weeks.

But after I felt everything had fermented enough, I poured off the stuff at the top of the cup carefully.

Next I poured the rest of the water on a coffee filter (although the tutorials I read online said a paper towel would work too) and I let it dry.

You'll see some schmutz survived the pour-off, but no worries.

After the seeds had dried, I gently scraped them off with my thumbnail and now they're stored in an envelope for the spring.

It's going to be a really interesting spring to see if I can't get these babies to sprout!

Summer of Sweaters

2011-08-02T17:26:00.002-05:00

I started the summer by finishing a sweater for Moochie.

Not to be outdone--I finished Chunky's Harry Pooper sweater on Saturday!

I think he likes it!

Being the trend setter that Chunky is, Mooch had to go digging thru his drawers and unearthed a sweater that Knitter Bunny gifted him when he was just a wee little Moochito!

Shhh! Don't tell him that he's wearing it inside out.

Or that it's 95 degrees outside!

The details:

Pattern: Harry Potter Sweater by Alison Hansel

Yarn: Red Heart baby!

Needles: US 5

Notes: Ugh! This was a bor-ing sweater! I was so excited to have it done. I seamed it up, and gave it to Chunky to try on--only to find it was too short in the body! Grrr. So instead of frogging the cast on edge to knit a few more inches, I picked up the stitches at the bottom and knit a 2x2 ribbing. I think it looks a bit more polished than the rolled edge, although a ribbed edge isn't as "authentic."

The heat didn't deter him from wearing his sweater on Monday.

Because we went to Howe Caverns to hang with Grandma Great and Auntie Jaywalker.

It was 50 degrees down there--pure HEAVEN!!!

Of course the tour guide asked him if he was wearing an Alvin and the Chipmunks sweater or a Harry Potter sweater. D'oh!

Wake Me Up When September Starts

2011-07-22T19:04:00.002-05:00

Seriously.

This summer crap is for the birds.

It was something like 116 degrees today in Noorick. I always thought it was weird that Newark always seemed hotter than our town, even though they're only 7 miles apart. Now I have proof it's not my imagination.

When the heat goes up, the cranky level of my fellow humans seems to increase too. Be it even more excessive car honking than normal to people being shot.

I seriously think if Newark could bring down their average temperature a few degrees they might see the homicide rate go down.

Tomorrow is supposed to be "cooler." Only 98 degrees.

I would love to finish Chunky's Harry Pooper Weasley Sweater this weekend, but it's just too hot!!

Instead, after I do my Saturday cleaning, I think I'll hit the "pool" with the Cousteau brothers.

And we'll probably enjoy some more of this...

Cookie of the Week has been replaced with Ice Cream of the Week until it's cool enough to start the oven back up!

This week is rocky road. I love this because for some reason store bought rocky road contains marshmallow swirl these days. I like mini-marshmallows in my rocky road! Swirl just isn't right!

And finally, I'll be dreaming of late winter snowstorms--

Ahhhhh! Stay cool people!

Great Weekend

2011-07-16T19:46:00.003-05:00

We've needed a decent weekend.

On tap this weekend was, despite my initial grumbling that he didn't need a kiddie pool and the neighbors bought him one anyway, some Moochie-water-fun:

And another delicious way to beat the heat--my own homemade Jersey peach ice cream.

Oh man, sooooo good! Can't really tell it's "homemade."

And finally, I'd like to announce a new member of our family.

It's Happy Feet!

Normally I wouldn't think about adopting so fast after another cat's passing (McDoodle!), but we have been contemplating adopting another katze for about six months now.

When one of Steve's peeps informed him that the Montclair Animal Shelter she worked at was having a street fair tonight and that cat adoption fees were half-off, we figured, what the heck, we'd check it out.

Ok, so maybe we tossed the cat carrier in the trunk before we left...

And after having TOTAL cat overload looking at so many incredible cats, we settled on Happy Feet.

I'm just excited to have another girl in the house! Happy Feet also has two boys. One of them was my first choice for adoption, but Dr. Mad Scientist really fell for Happy.

She's a little freaked out by her new house, but I imagine as time goes on she'll become a little more adventurous.

If you're interested--here's her Petfinder Listing. There's an even better face picture of her.

Cash Cow

2011-07-15T19:28:00.004-05:00

Chunky and Dr. Mad Scientist are big fans of Harry Pooper.

Me? Not so much.

But I love my boys.

And on this day that J.K. Rowling takes it to the bank one last time (for now), I give you an honest to squash WIP.

Chunky's Harry Pooper sweater.

I just hope it's not too small for him by the time the cold weather rolls around!

You Say Tomato, I Say Potato

2011-07-11T18:34:00.004-05:00

Time for a little update from the Pot Garden!

My pickle cucumbers are going berserk.

So far I've been able to can three jars of pickles/pickle chips.

Dill pickles with my own homegrown dill too! They're soooo much better than last year's pickles. Crunchy!

Next up, my experimental plant of the year--okra.

The pods are getting bigger! I'm very excited about these. If I get enough of them, I will pickle them too--along with either some garlic or jalapenos. Mmmmmm!!!

Finally, I give you a weird twist to my Great Urban Potato Experiment.

Longtime readers will remember that back when we first moved to Nueva Jersey, I took a grocery store Yukon Gold and stuck it in a pot and let it grow on the steps of Squirrel Gables.

That was back in 2007. Ever year since then I save a little baby potato or two from the previous year's harvest and I plant it the following spring.

Some years I get more potatoes than others, sometimes I don't. I always get at least enough for one dinner's side dish of potato-something (baked, homefries, etc.).

Saturday night I was outside watering my plants when Chunky said "Hey Mom, I didn't know you planted tomatoes!" and he pulled this out of my potato plant:

But I knew there was NO WAY these were tomatoes...well maybe. I mean I did use compost in my mix, and sometimes you get hitchhiker seeds (like the time I got a pumpkin plant growing out of my peas...), but these didn't smell like tomatoes.

If you've grown tomatoes, you know what I'm talking about, it's that tomato oil smell from the stem. It's quite distinct.

If you're really into it, you too can smell like a tomato.

So I hopped online and through some googling and posting on Facebook (one of my old HS friends grew up on a potato farm)--I realized that these aren't tomatoes; they're true potato seeds.

What you do is harvest them, squeeze out their guts (which are allegedly slimy just like tomatoes*), wash the seeds, dry them, and plant them the next year.

How cool is this??!?! Maybe I'm easily amused but I'm am already pretty damn excited to grow potatoes from the great-great-great grandtater of my original Pot Potato.

Apparently, the appearance of true potato seeds is kind of rare. And there's a ton of other stuff out there on the internet about the chromosomal uniqueness of taters and their various breeds. Basically, the potatoes from these seeds, if I am understanding my quick internet research correctly, will be a completely unique strain of potatoes.

Perhaps I am easily amused, but this is just so damn cool! Ha ha!

ETA: These little "berries" although they look like tomatoes, they are highly poisonous!

*I also learned that potatoes and tomatoes are in the same family, and when you stop and look at them, they do look a lot alike!

Summer Sewing

2011-07-03T07:09:00.002-05:00

It occurred to me that I've done a lot of sewing lately that I haven't blogged about.

Most of it occurred on my "summer vacation."

First up, a couple of additions to what I am dubbing The Summer of Dresses.

I don't know if it was the early June heat or what, but I had the urge to make myself some sundresses.

First I did this one during the throes of that early June heatwave:

This is Simplicity 5112. I've made the discovery that with my build I can wear either fat-junior's sizes or medium women's sizes. I'm going to milk not looking my age all I can.

This dress turned out OK. It was a little shorter and a little less flowy skirt than I wanted. I pair it with a light (storebought) cardigan for the office and it looks cute.

Next us is a dress that will always be near and dear to me. I made this on Tuesday of this past week. Springs was lounging in the bathroom giving me commentary as I tried it on to adjust the fit.

Excuse the blur...my self timer has a hard time taking non-blurry pictures.

This is Butterick 5351 made out of a linen blend I picked up at Joanns.

I really like this dress. I like the fit, I like the length, and I like the flowy-ness of the skirt.

I did have to modify the bodice though because it was waaaay too loose. I did so by adding some armpit darts.

And finally--and this is a big thing--why? Because I'm about to reveal Moochie's real name to you in this picture (some of you already know though!)

First a little back story: He's 2 and he's starting to learn his letters.

And the day I made this was my birthday -- and I had hung up one of those dollar store "Happy Birthday" banners with the jointed letters (because it's a tradition that my best friend from college and I have--every year before the others' birthday we send the sign to them...we've been doing it for shoot, probably over 10 years now!).

Anyway, Mooch REALLY liked the Happy Birthday banner.

So I figured I'd make him something similar so he could learn the letters of his name.

This hangs on the wall over his crib and he already can identify "I" and "O" on his own.

My favorite part is how he pronounces his name: "Kiki." Okaaaaay!

It Was the Best of TImes, It Was the Worst of Times

2011-06-28T09:01:00.003-05:00

Today is my last day of my vacation.

It's been nice. I've been able to hang with Chunky.

I got a lot done on my to-do list.

Dr. Mad Scientist got a job.

I got to experience the New Jersey Judicial System from the other side (maybe a separate post on that later).

But today is a very, very sad day.

Today we say goodbye to a beloved member of our family.

Springs the cat.

He's been becoming pretty frail, and in the past three weeks has really declined. He's not the cat we know and love. We decided it was time to say goodbye and have scheduled him an appointment late this afternoon.

We adopted Springs as an adult cat from a coworker, S, in Michigan. Her husband had always been allergic to cats, but could tolerate them well enough.

However, as time went on, his feline induced allergy/asthma got worse, and as he was an EMT/firefighter, breathing clearly was kind of an important part of his job!*

I'll always remember the day S brought Springs to come live with us. About a year and a half prior we had admired her sleek, playful, long Bengalese cat at the baby shower for Chunky that my coworkers hosted for me at her house.

He explored our Michigan apartment checking out the lay of the land. I had a garden statue of a pig I used to keep our closet door open and I remember him stopping, arching and hissing at it.

Mr. McDoodle (one of his many names) had quite an amazing life.

I remember, with great apprehension, the idea of moving from Michigan to Texass with him and Squeaky.

He and Squeaky did pretty well. And Bengal cats, while normally very vocal (you could have a full "conversation" with him), are even MORE vocal in the car!

By the time we moved to New Jersey we were old pros at moving with cats. However, while we were holed up in our hotel in southern New Jersey while we tried to find a place to live, there was one day where he slipped out the hotel door.

We discovered that he was gone pretty quick, and so Dr. Mad Scientist went to look for him. He discovered Springsy chilling in a room a few doors down with the cleaning staff.

That hotel experience is also where we opened the door (because we had no choice!) of letting him sleep in the bed with us at night. In Michigan we would close the bedroom door at night and he was OK with it. However, when we tried to do that in New Jersey, he knew what he was missing, and we were weak and let him in!

In addition to being a lap whore, he also had that habit of blanket humping that some cats seem to do (even though they're fixed!). Many a night I awoke to the rhythmic kneading of pokey cat paws on my legs as he got down to business with his favorite afghan (a hot pink and blue acrylic nightmare that my grandma made me when I was around Chunky's age).

I joked to Dr. Mad Scientist in 2008 that if Moochie was born with a cat tail, we would know who his real father was.

You could always count on my sweet Old Man Cat for a good snuggle be it on the couch watching TV or in bed reading.

That's where Dr. Mad Scientist will miss him the most. He likes to read, grade papers, play DS in bed and Springs is always there with him. Or in the mornings, when I wake Dr. MS up, you could bet that Springs would spring into action and lie on top of him, pinning him down and sapping his motivation to get out of bed to go to work.

I dubbed this phenomenon "Lazy Man Society" with Dr. MS and Springs sharing the presidency. Perhaps Lazy Man Society even had a theme song.

Lazy Man Society!
Lazy Man Society!
We only get up when we have to pee!

Springs was also amazing with the boys. Somewhere, and I can't for the life of me find it, there is a picture of Springs sleeping in Chunky's crib with him.

I will admit, as McDoodle became and Old Man Cat, he got a little grouchier with kids.

When Moochie was still in that not-quite-crawling-but-flailing-around-on-the-floor phase, I caught Springs nipping him once. But despite this, he tolerated the occasional todder-tail pull quite well.

In fact, it kind of saddens me that I don't think Moochie will be old enough to remember Springs. I think back to my first memories, and I was a little bit older than he is today.

You might also remember that Springs was quite the connesieur of crafts and yarn.

Be it modeling my handknits...

That's his aforementioned "girlfriend" afghan he's posing on.

To huffing yarn/knit items...

To even helping me with my sewing patterns.

So finally, if you've made it through this therapeutic rambling of mine--

Farewell my sweet little kitty cat. We will miss you so much and our laps will be cold and lonely without you.

* S also had a son that was a year and a half older than Chunky at the time. When he was little he never showed any type of pet allergies, however as he got older and would visit other people's cats, he too seemed to be like his dad in reacting to them. This made me feel better about adopting Springs!

Release

2011-06-25T18:53:00.002-05:00

Thursday was my birthday.

For my birthday I bought more blueberries so I could make 8 jars of jam--

Now with 100% less glass. I should have gone with my instinct before. But I started reading up on blueberry jam on the internet and the recipes I kept looking at kept saying to heat to 221 degrees.

Stupid stupid.

So the second time around, no temperature monitoring. Just a stockpot full o'Jersey blueberries, four and a half cups of sugar, a shot of lemon juice and you stir the whole thing for an hour and a half to two hours.

Also on Thursday Dr. Mad Scientist had another job interview.

This was his fifth one.

Interviews #1, #2 and #4 he interviewed for and did not get.

Interview #3 happened three weeks ago and he was invited to give a practice lesson shortly thereafter (I guess practice lessons are the teaching equivalent to a second interview, plus they get some free labor out of applicants.)

We still haven't heard back from #3. I assume he didn't get it because they started advertising for the position again. The least they could do is reply to his email asking the status. There's nothing worse than stringing along a job-seeker. Dicks.

Anyway, needless to say, we weren't holding out much hope for Interview #5.

I was off work for my birthday (as part of my end-of-school-fill-the-childcare-gap). When he came home after the interview, he told me it went well--which usually is an indication that he didn't get the job! (The aforementioned rejections he had a positive feeling about after he got back--the one he got to do the practice lesson for he thought the first interview didn't go all that well).

He told me that they wanted him to come in for a practice lesson (summer school session) and then he paused when retelling the story--and then said that at that point the Principal interrupted and said "I really don't think I need to see a practice lesson, would you like the job?"

HOORAY!!! Best birthday present ever!

So come Fall, Dr. Mad Scientist will no longer be working at the institutional cesspool that is known as Newark Public Schools and instead will be working for a high school here in Our Town.

The school is actually a vocational/technical school that's part of a county set of high schools that have their own county-run school board.

The Principal is actually a graduate of the high school.

It's a Blue Ribbon School.

It's a five minute commute for him!

It's actually more money than he made at his old job (not like that matters...as long as he can cover Moochie's daycare, we're golden).

And the best part: He'll be teaching biology! He taught chemistry this past year, but his first true teaching science love was biology.

So, did you make it this far?

Good. I will reward you with pictures.

Pictures of something I made to grace the walls of his new biology classroom this fall.

It's a dead frog!

My favorite part?

This little detail!

Unzip Mr. Froggy to reveal--

His dissected innards!

Ha ha!

The pattern is my own. I googled some diagrams of dissected frogs, drew the frog body applique and innards.

I appliqued the innards into the "cavity" of the frog, sewed the two abdominal "flaps" with zippers an then appliqued the whole thing onto the brown background (remember those brown wax dissecting trays?).

For the quilting I just traced around him and then just kind of doodle-traced around that original outline.

The binding is my favorite kind--just flipping the backing over the edge.

Speaking of the backing--it's morbidly cute!

Ha ha!

I even gave him a bit of a New Jersey twist by inking his scientific name on the tag below him.

He's not actually a Hyla andersonii, but I couldn't resist!

Sob

2011-06-22T11:29:00.003-05:00

I took these.

And some of these.

And filled up this.

And I made seven jars of blueberry jam.

While the jars were in the stockpot sealing--I munched on the dregs of the jam left in my stockpot.

And I crunched down on glass.

The tip of my candy thermometer had broken off into my jam.

Seven jars of jam contaminated with broken glass.

Seven jars literally down the drain.

Sob!

Vay-Kaye-Shun

2011-06-20T19:43:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow I say farewell to being the mom of a third grader (Dr. Mad Scientist astutely pointed out that Chunky will officially be halfway through elementary school by 12:30 p.m. EST tomorrow...gah!).

And I will say hello to five(ish)* days of vacation!

The school year for Chunky ends tomorrow and Dr. Mad Scientist doesn't start unemployment until June 28. So there's a five business day gap where we didn't have anyone to watch him.

Thus my seven day weekend!

There will be baking--

This week's Cookie of the Week: oatmeal sandwich cookies--a homemade version of the Little Debbie kind. So damn good!

There will be sewing--

A summer knitting bag I made myself this past weekend out of some oilcloth and cotton scraps I had lying around.

And depending on the weather, lounging by the "pool"--

Basement neighbor built a platform for the pool this year so it's perfectly level. The boys are going to have a blast in this thing!

If I can accomplish all this stuff and lounging in one weekend, imagine how much fun it will be during this time off!

Although Dr. Mad Scientist and I are already making bets about how many times the office will call while I'm out. Ha ha!

*"Fiveish" because the last two days of my vacation I got called for jury duty. I was told by work I don't have to count those as vacation days. However what they don't understand at work is: ANY DAY I DON'T HAVE TO BE THERE IS VACATION! Plus I always get boned out of taking all of my 10 days off a year. If I don't count those days as vacation days, I'll probably have to say goodbye to them on January 1, 2012. I also don't want to have to show up at work if I get dismissed early. Chunky will go to school with Dr. MS those two days and help him chip the gum off the bottom of the desks.

Saturday Deep Thoughts

2011-06-18T17:26:00.003-05:00

This might not be something you know about if you don't live near places with Hispanic populations or watch Spanish language TV...

But why does the T-Mobile girl have a Latina twin?

(click to embiggen--sorry about the rainy-day drive-by shot)

She looks almost exactly like the Gringa version, but I swear her dresses are a smidge longer in the hem.

I'm holding out for a Spanish speaking Verizon Can You Hear Me Now Guy (even though he's officially retired).

¿Puedes oírme ahora?

And finally, continuing in the vein of shit I see while I'm driving around:

Why would anyone patronize a gas station where the gas is $1.02/gallon less across the street?

And no, it's not because the expensive station is full-serve and the other isn't--New Jersinians enjoy the fact they don't have to pump their own gas. Little do they know it probably contributes to their leadfoot/flip-you-the-bird-if-you're-going-too-slow tendencies.

Pumping your own gas is MUCH faster.

Tweet Tweet

2011-06-15T04:43:00.004-05:00

When I met my Youngest Younger Sister in Philadelphia over Memorial Day weekend, she brought me something she had been promising to mail me for a while, but never got around to it.

It was this sweater.

A nice little purple cotton zippered hoodie that she got from American Eagle.

She gave it to me because it was ruined with two or three of these:

Basically she gave it to me because it had a really nice metal zipper and she knew I'd enjoy ripping the zipper out and using it for something else.

But when I ripped the zipper out, I felt kind of guilty just throwing the rest of the holey sweater away.

With Toni Janome, and this pattern in mind, along with a few scraps of fabric from my stash, I made Youngest Younger Sister this:

A little birdie pillow.

I used a coordinating fat quarter I had in my stash for the back of the pillow.

All I did was applique a birdie out of some scraps on the back of the sweater. Then I cut out a decent sized square from the back of the sweater (I left the bottom ribbing in because I thought it gave an interesting effect. Maybe it looks like grass...and the birdie is floating over it...ha ha!).

Then I just sewed an identical sized square of the aforementioned fat quarter onto the back, stuffed it, and sewed it shut.

(But seriously, who doesn't know how to make a pillow in theory at least?)

I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. The pillow could use to be a bit fluffier, but I ran out of stuffing!

Now, just as she kept forgetting to mail me down the sweater, I need to remind myself to mail her up the pillow!

Fee Fie FO

2011-06-08T20:25:00.003-05:00

I've actually got a knitted FO to show you.

Because it's supposed to reach record highs of 100 degrees tomorrow (they've called a half day of school because of the heat...which is coincidentially Reason #100 Why I Hate The Lower 48: In Alaska school isn't cancelled for heat) I finished a sweater!

The details:

Pattern: The Shawl Neck Cover Sweater from Sirdar Baby Crofter #377

Yarn: Sirdar Baby Crofter in some numbered color--i.e. a faux green fair isle.

Needles: US 5

Notes: Chris and I went on the NJ Yarn Crawl and while at The Blue Purl in Madison, they had a shop model of this sweater all knit out in the blue Sirdar Baby Crofter yarn. I'm usually not one to fall for stuff just by looking at the shop model, but I fell in love with this sweater. It helped that the booklet had tons of cute BOY sweaters that go all the way up to a six-year-old size. (There are some cute baby girl sweaters too, as if the knitting world doesn't have enough of those already.) So I caved and bought the booklet and five balls of the yarn. Unfortunately they didn't have five balls of the blue that I originally wanted, but the clerk was able to sway me on the green.

And I think Mooch will look just fine in it.

Come winter time!!!

My favorite part has to be the shawl collar.

Which, now that I look at it, I think I crossed the collar in the "girl" style instead of the "boy" style. Whatever. I didn't realize there was a difference until I was reading the directions.

I made it a bit big, so when the weather does go below zero (aaahhhhh!) it should fit him just fine.

For now he'll have to be content to run around in his socks and sandals while it's still cute for a person to do so.

At least the Pot Garden is enjoying this hot weather.

I'll catch you all later--I've got a cold shower to take and an air conditioning unit to curl up with.

Longest Short Week Ever

2011-06-03T18:16:00.002-05:00

Or so it felt!

I capped off the week with not getting paid. We have a new office manager and allegedly the payroll company did something wrong so that we'll get our paychecks on Monday, not today.

Lovely.

We could have opted to have the firm write us hard checks. But then imagine the pain in the ass it would be to have to return the paycheck that will come on Monday...ugh. No thanks.

I really need to find a new job. But right now we're concentrating on getting Dr. Mad Scientist one. His contract is up in a few weeks and then it's back to square one. Literally.

I feel bad for teachers. Their careers are pretty much made or broke on an hour of someone watching you do your job. What the hell else other job is like that?

He's had a couple of interviews, and a couple of rejections already. All told right now he's got about 30 applications out there.

And while I'm sure there are things he could have done better, when he told some of his students that he wasn't coming back next year and some of them literally cried and others wanted to take out the department head (hee hee...welcome to Newark!) I think that speaks volumes.

But I'm going to finish this post on an up note, because it's the weekend and the weather here isn't supposed to be sufferably hot.

I leave you with a snippet of my pictures from our Philadelphia Memorial Day weekend.

Thing #1 I learned about Philadelphia: Ben Franklin is always watching you!

From the facade of City Hall...

...to the Library of the American Philosophical Society...

...to fire station plazas...

...from his final resting place...

...and finally from face down on a $100 bill in a fountain in Washington Square. So I don't know if it's a real $100 bill, but the fact it was in such great condition in the water leads me to believe it is.

There were three homeless dudes sleeping on the benches around this fountain and you know it was obviously put there intentionally--assuming it was real--it seemed wrong to fish it out!

Happy Memorial Day

2011-05-30T18:18:00.002-05:00

Whew! I'm exhausted!

We just got back from an incredible trip to Philadelphia.

Here's a Memorial Day Appropriate photo from the trip.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington Park, Philadelphia.

Kinda creepy walking around so many unmarked graves.

Chunky thought it was kind of thoughtless to be walking all around them...but then we explained it was even more thoughtless to go digging them up and was easier just to consecrate the whole area instead.

More less solemn pictures to follow when I have a moment!

Just Give Me Something To Blog About!

2011-05-24T19:34:00.003-05:00

Due to:
a) a tragic yarn atrocity here in our neck of the non-existent woods; and

b) the fact that it's starting to get hot out again (Bah! Give me the snow drifts of February any day!) I haven't been doing too much knitting.

However I have been doing some sewing!

I think I picked this style dress because I saw my now ex-boss wearing this type of dress and I really dug it.

The style?

A shirt dress.

Oh my waspy little waist!

The details:

Pattern: 4/2010 Shirt Dress #116 by BurdaStyle

Fabric: Some hot pink seer sucker from Fabric.com

Notes: Oh where to start!

This is the second BurdaStyle pattern I've sewn. The first one had seam allowances built into the pattern. This one did not. (Most of the BurdaStyle patterns don't seem to have seams..ha ha!). I compensated for this buy cutting for a size larger than I needed and using mainly 1/2 seams except on the side seams where I used a 5/8" seam.

It's not bad. A bit bulkier than I'd like but shifty and cool. I think the general fit stays true to the original pattern.

The only problem with sewing it the way I sewed it were the bust darts.

They're a little too low. Ah well. It's not like the girls are getting perkier in their old age!

Some of the things I learned doing this pattern were how to sew a yoke on a shirt. I used this tutorial to figure it out since I find Burda patterns (all two of them that I've done!) kind of scant with the instructions.

And I got more practice sewing a stand collar. This is the fourth shirt-collared item I've made and this is my best collar yet!

One of the things I didn't like about this pattern was the fact that it neglected to tell you that it's actually a pattern for a shirt AND a shirt dress. So there are options for long sleeves. That took me a minute to figure out.

Additionally, there's no pattern piece for the belt. They show it on the layout diagram, but it's not there.

Not a big deal though. It's a belt.

Overall I gotta say I love this dress!

Finally I'd like to give a shout out to my lovely assistant Moochie--

Who kept the floor warm for me while I finished this!!

Gray Brown Sunday

2011-05-15T14:48:00.003-05:00

It's raining. And stinky here in lovely Nueva Jersey.

On Friday night/Saturday morning I was jarred out of my sleep by our doorbell being frantically rang.

I wasn't about to answer it. Mainly because it could have been crazy drunk people from across the street and I didn't feel like putting pants on. Mainly the latter.

On Saturday morning we discovered why.

Allegedly the daycare center two doors down from us flushed a mop head (swiffer???) causing the sewer lines to back up and flood about eight houses with raw sewage in their basements.

The house to the left of us got it bad and so did the house to the right of us. If you go outside or crack the windows, it smells like what I imagine a Brazilian shanty town would smell like.

And just like a Brazilian shanty town, the neighbors to the right of us, while they were waiting for the cleaning crew to extract their shit-laden belongings from the basement (note to self, when we purchase a house use basement only for tornado shelter purposes, not storage), the decided to start dumping sewage by the bucket load into the gutter in front of their house--and thus in front of ours.

Seriously?

At least Brazilian shanty town residents have abject poverty as a legitimate reason for living in poorly sanitized conditions. Not supreme ignorance and apparent common sense retardation.

Aside from the stank wafting from all angles--we were luckily pretty much untouched by the back up. I think because Basement Neighbor lives in the basement so it's a finished basement. I also heard that Upstairs Neighbors had some shit squirt out of their dishwasher when they tried to run it Saturday. We luckily had none of that happen to us.

Since it was raining and the stink and the rain confined us pretty much indoors, I took the opportunity to whip out my annual summer skirt.

It's my standard bias skirt from McCalls's pattern 2255. I made a skirt from that patter in 2009, 2010, and now 2011.

This year though I went with 100% rayon.

The print is a Kaffe Fassett for Rowan called "Asian Circles." I got it on sale from Fabric.com.

Dr. Mad Scientist thinks it would be great paired with a coconut bra and roasted pig.

Whatever, I like it and it will be wonderful to wear when the weather gets up to 90 degrees.

Which, I gotta say am glad it wasn't this weekend when the brown tide came rolling in!!!

TGIS

2011-05-14T06:58:00.003-05:00

I love weekends that I'm not obligated to do anything.

I had one of those two weeks ago and so Chunky and I hit up the annual Newark Public Library Book Sale.

They didn't have as great a selection in the craft and hobby section as they have had in the past.

I almost didn't buy anything.

I contemplated buying this:

But I'm not as into crochet as I am knitting (only because I can't follow a crochet pattern to save my life!).

However, when I flipped open this book and saw this:

I figured I'd spend the $2 to buy it!

I haven't been able to find out much on Annette Feldman, but hey--$2.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to head back to my regularly scheduled lazy weekend!

It Was Bound To Happen

2011-05-11T18:19:00.000-05:00

Have you seen this article about a study they did that says the average woman turns into her mother at age 32.

Well I'm right on target it would seem.

With a little over a month left of being 32, my latest creation is this:

A real honest to god quilt! Just like Mom would make! (Although hers would be better...).

Ok, well it's like a wall hanging/baby sized quilt.

Remember that jelly roll I teased about?

This is what it became.

Partially inspired by the Amish quilts my mom used to make back in the day and knottygnome's wonky-quilt obsession (I tried to make this wonky, but I think it looks more "sloppy chic" than wonky), I decided to use the jelly roll to make my take on what I believe is called an "Amish Roman Shade" pattern.

In keeping with the Amish tradition of intentionally effing up one piece of the quilt (because they believe only God can make perfect things--or at least that's the word on the street as to why they do this) I quilted one black triangle in white thread.

Um, yeah, totally intentional *cough.*

Overall I am HIGHLY impressed with Toni Janome and her ability to quilt. She went through the layers like a hot knife through butter. I am very satisfied with my purchase of a DC3050. I wanted a machine that could sew clothing and quilts with no problems--and she does.

The Beast would have had a seizure as soon as I tried to stitch the first stitch on this quilt.

I had to wash this quilt after I was done with it to, for reasons to be discussed later. Normally I'm not into the crinkly-quilted look for decorative quilts--but I'm a convert now!

Two thumbs up!

Great Minds

2011-05-10T19:29:00.003-05:00

So did you happen to see Turtlegirl's Zebra Socks?

The cool mismatched stripey socks she made for her mom?

I laughed when I saw them--for the socks I finished last week bear a striking resemblance.

The details--

Pattern: Nothing fancy, just my own.

Yarn: Spud & Chole Fine--80% wool/20% silk (purrrr!)

Needles: US 2

Notes: When I saw the skein of yellow sitting next to the skein of purple at the yarn store, I instantly thought of Mrs. Zimmerman.

No, no, not Elizabeth Zimmerman--Florence Zimmerman. While kids today read Harry Potter, I cut my teeth on John Bellairs books. Mrs. Zimmerman was a witch who had an affinity for purple. She had a magical cane that glowed yellow and purple in its knob when she was battling the evil dead.

I always think of Mrs. Zimmerman when I see dark purple and bright yellow together. Not LSU, not the Vikings...

My favorite part has to be the contrasting toes and heels.

They look good in scuffed mary janes too.

Can't wait to wear them next winter.

Before I leave--a pair of teasers of sorts.

First, the most incredible brownie I've ever made.

And it's NOT because of how it tastes (which isn't half bad actually). More on the story behind the brownie later.

Finally, another FO of the non-knitted variety to show you.

I'm so happy with the outcome (I love my Toni Janome!)

I Am Doubly Gratified

2011-05-08T07:20:00.000-05:00

Happy Mothers' Day!

The World Needs More Cookies

2011-05-02T18:56:00.004-05:00

It's been a weird day for those of us on the East Coast who don't watch TV at night.

I think there's enough people who are thinking like I am so I'll save my finger strength for blogging about less controversial things like the cookie of the week.

Hawaiian cookies!

I know I've blogged about these probably twice before, but they're soooo good! Ha ha! They're number two on Chunky's list of favorite cookies. (Plain old chocolate chip is number one.)

I've recently developed a new obsession--cookie plates.

As we have a serious lack of thriftstores in North Jersey and I'm hesitant to garage sale (for reasons I can't blog about yet) I've been scouring the internets for interesting little teacup saucers or dessert plates. The trick is finding interesting ones that aren't really expensive.

This little blue saucer is a ubiquitous Fiestaware saucer.

I've never technically seen Hawaii, but I imagine the water and/or sky might look like that saucer.

In the mood for more cookies? It's a Knitcircus kind of week! New issue on Wednesday! The cookie this issue is another one that's on Chunky's top 10 list!

Lazy Weekend

2011-05-01T12:13:00.003-05:00

I wish last weekend I could have been more productive, but I was catching my breath from the Grandma and Grandpa Mad Scientist visit.

This weekend hasn't been too bad though.

It has been beautiful weather, so I started on the outdoor portion of this year's 2011 Pot Garden.

The plants that are to the right are not mine. Those are Basement Neighbor's. He's redoing the scheme of his garden this year. He always buys baby plants.

I'm old fashioned and believe in growing them from the seed if you can. However, I realize not everyone can do that and they have to adopt plants from their local garden store instead.

Today I focused on planting my mutant seed potatoes.

Remember them? Here's what they looked like today when I pulled them out of the back of that dark corner of a cupboard they had been lurking in right before I stuck them in the ground,

Yikes!

We'll see what happens. I'll do what I did last year--every other week or so layering on a bit of compost on top of them to get a higher yield of taters.

These are the grand-taters of the grocery store potato I planted in May 2007 on the back steps of Squirrel Gables.

Chunky wanted in on the action this year as well. In that yellow pot he planted some beans he harvested from some of the bean plants that Basement Neighbor wasn't able to get to and they dried out on the vine.

Assuming the squirrels don't yoink his bean sprouts, I think he should be pretty successful with them.

Chunky wasn't the only one who wanted to get in on the gardening action.

Mr. Mooch was quite content to scoop dirt in and out of Basement Neighbor's wheelbarrow.

So what did you do with your weekend?

Sardines, Not Just For Breakfast

2011-04-29T19:00:00.004-05:00

I think I'm getting a bit of blogging mojo back.

No knitting to show. I've got a couple of things that are coming down the river that will be able to be shown off soon. And I'm hoping to canoodle with Toni this weekend if the mini-men will let me.

A couple of big things have gone down here.

One involves Dr. Mad Scientist. He wasn't recommended for renewal at his school.

Not surprising. There's a big old rant here about how no one should be judged by three 30 minute snapshots of their work. But I'll save it.

His supervisor, (who word on the street is also getting shitcanned) said he's a good teacher, just not in a Big Urban High School. And neither he nor I can deny that.

I think he would do well at an Urban-Lite school--like the one he went to high school at.

Nice thing about the whole situation is that he found out now--and not say August 31st, which is more typical of the way Newark schools tend to run. He's got plenty of time to hit the pavement.

And he has been. There's a couple of jobs he found that I think would be an amazing fit, but I'm not counting my seeds before they're transplanted.

There's another issue that's been dragging me down that I'm hesitant to blog about until it's over.

Let's just say it directly deals, again, with this highly urban setting.

I've been battling home (or maybe just open space)-sickness as a result.

The other night I got undressed to take a shower. It's been warming up enough to keep the windows open at night (ugh). So I'm sitting there by the (curtained) open window nekkid and I can hear Next Door Neighbor Kid playing frisbee with his dad in their back yard/large driveway.

And then it hit me.

I was literally 50 feet away from them stark naked with only some sheetrock, 2x4s and 1960s siding separating me from them.

50 feet.

I mean I can watch these people make dinner from my bedroom without binoculars.

I know it's not that shocking to urbanites who have lived like sardines their whole life, but it's starting to wear thin on me.

But let me leave it on a positive note.

Since we're on the subject--would you like to see a picture of my nip?

Catnip that is! Not sure what that plant is on the right--it's not basil which was there last year, but I'm gonna leave it and see what pops up. Maybe a pretty weed?

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T10:14:00.002-05:00

If you're into that sort of thing...

Hope you had a good weekend at the very least!

Ooof!

2011-04-21T19:17:00.003-05:00

Well Grandma and Grandpa Mad Scientist have moved on to the next leg of their tour.

You see, when you live in Alaska and have children living in the Lower 48 and one of them does something like pop out a baby or get married*, you do the "Kid Tour" where you visit all of your kids by skillfully taking 1 week layovers in Newark before you continue on to Ohio to visit the next kid.

Basically they hung out with the boys while I worked. Dr. Mad Scientist is on Spring Break this week and Chunky was on his last week.

But of course, as promised, we went to Niagara Falls.

First up--No. We did NOT go to the Canadian side. Nothing against Canada, it's not really worth all the hassle of securing a passport for a toddler just to get a different photo op of some falling water.

That's the first question I get asked when I say we went to Niagara Falls and it's getting kind of tiresome.

But enough ranting! Our weekend in a quick photo-nutshell!

We rented a Toyota Sienna minivan and drove up there.

Wow. What a sweet ride. Almost makes me want to buy a minivan. But I'm not quite there in my life. I'll keep rocking my modest sedan.

We got in about 5pm Saturday and checked into our hotel.

Holiday Inn, Niagara Falls, New York. Great hotel. Very clean. Friendly service. Close to the Falls. Only problem was the toilet in our room backed up. But did I mention we brought our own plumber? Hee hee! Grandpa Mad Scientist!

We had dinner at the hotel's restaurant. I almost ordered this off the menu.

But too much white whine puts me to sleep.

Dr. Mad Scientist and Chunky made me sleep with Moochie. Yeah, I could never co-sleep with my kids. How does a 2.5' person take up so much room?!

But before I went to bed on Saturday night, Grandma and I hit the casino--my first time!

I spent $20 and I lost $20. Dr. Mad Scientist won back $10 of it the next night. I think I'm too cheap to be a good gambler.

Sunday we set off to see the Falls.

This picture is so dear to me--Chunky throwing gang signs, Moochie looking away, Dr. Mad Scientist trying to get him to look at the camera and Grandma and Grandpa with their eyes closed!

The Falls were amazing!

The weather was less than favorable. It was very chilly and very windy (and it even snowed)! But even despite this, it was great. The crowds were light. They say in the summer the place is packed. No thanks. That would have drove me bonkers. As it was we were able to get great access for pictures and wonderful parking!

Later on in the afternoon we went to the Aquarium.

The boys watching the sea lions swim around.

We finished the day up by eating out at the Hard Rock where Moochie had to eat all the condiments and Chunky enjoyed doing air guitar solos.

Overall it was a great trip! It was a lot of fun to see the boys get to hang with their grandparents. Especially Grandpa since the last time Chunky saw him, he was only 8 months old at the time.

This picture pretty much sums up Moochie's time with Grandpa--

They spent all the time on the road there and back goofing around. Hee hee!

It was sad to see them go!

*Biggest Sister Mad Scientist gets married on the 29th!

Checking Out As They Check In

2011-04-13T17:45:00.003-05:00

Grandma and Grandpa Mad Scientist will be boarding their plane soon bound for Nueva Jersey.

The floors are all sucked clean, the bathroom has been wiped down and holy hell, the bedsheets have been ironed.

Seriously? Why the hell am I ironing bed sheets? Who does this? I just felt they needed it.

If it was my Mom and Dad coming to visit, I don't think I'd bother. Ha ha! Sorry Mom and Dad!

I'll be back sometime next week or next weekend with lots of pictures of fun with Grandma and Grandpa and our trip to Niagara Falls (we're sending Moochie over in a barrel! Hee hee!).

Manut Maid

2011-04-11T19:43:00.003-05:00

My Dad had this guy that was his friend -- they were coworkers? Air Force buddies? Something...

But when they moved out to the Valley (the Matanuska Susitna Valley that is) from Anchorage or whereever the hell they were living, they felt the need to socialize with us.

They were originally from Georgia and they had three boys. Now the two older boys were numbnuts. The social equivalent of cold oatmeal. The youngest boy was more of a spazz. Like he had to make up for the personalities his brothers were lacking.

And the wife was kind of an airhead. But she with her thick Georgia accent gave our family some good schtick that has peppered my childhood and even yes, my adult life.

For example, one of the scant times we visited them at their house we were offered "gooey rolls" (cinnamon rolls to us crazy Northerners) and to drink she proffered "Manut Maid." Which is how she said "Minute Maid" in her Georgian accent--and how I have always pronounced it ever more.

So where am I going with this lame rememberance?

Cookie of the Week of course!

This name of this week's cookie, I feel, should be pronounced with a thick Georgia accent.

Pee-cahn Pray-leen Cookies!!

I wasn't too happy with the way the first batch of cookies turned out. But with some tweaking--i.e. adding a bit more flour to stop the massive spread these cookies did--they turned out great.

Sweet, chewy, and nutty.

Normally I don't post the recipes for Cookie of the Week because I get them from cookbooks. I see other dessert bloggers posting recipes straight from cookbooks--but doesn't that infringe upon some kind of copywrite? I realize recipes are a bit trickier than other written things, but when you gank it straight from someone's published book, I dunno. Things start getting gooey.

However, since I modified this recipe, post I shall.

Pee-cahn Pray-leen Cookies
(Pecan Praline Cookies)
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
3/4 cup butter
1 egg
1 teasp. vanilla
2 cups flour
1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream together the butter and the sugar. Add in the egg and the vanilla. Next add in the flour. And finally stir in the pecans. Roll into 1" balls and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 7 to 8 minutes. If you find the cookies spread and become flattened, add a 1/4 flour to the remaining dough.

Y'all come back now, ya hear?

Keep On The Sunny Side

2011-04-08T20:36:00.005-05:00

On the eve of what will probably be a shut down of the US Government (I won't go into it other than to say, "Stay strong my Government Weenies!*"), I have come upon a small anecdotal, completely unscientific sign that the economy is bouncing back.

Back when I wasn't up to my eyebrows in my paper pushing nightmare I call a job, and I used to be able to take a lunch hour--instead of shoveling a peanut butter sandwich into my mouth at my desk--I used to walk from Newark to Harrison to buy a bottle of soda.

To the unknowing, Newark is separated from Harrison by the beautiful (snicker) Passaic River.

To get there, you have to cross a bridge.

Scene from the bridge I cross on to get from Newark to Harrison, circa August 2010.

On my way back from purchasing my soda, if I have change, I do this weird thing that I started doing two years ago when our firm moved to Newark and I started on my Friday Afternoon Caffeine Pilgrimage.

I leave a penny on the railing of the bridge.

Part of the reason I do it is because I know what small thrill it is for me to find a penny/nickel/dime/quarter on the ground. It's kind of fun to leave it there for someone to enjoy picking up. Plus, because it's on the railing, it's obvious that it was left there intentionally--not just escaped out of my pocket landing on the ground.

The other part of the reason is I'm just weird.

There for the longest time, every week the penny would be gone, assumably picked up by one of the other pedestrians crossing the bridge.

However, this week, when I crossed the bridge heading to buy my soda--I was greeted by my penny.

I seriously cannot remember the last time I trekked to Harrison to buy a lunch-soda. December? January? Maybe later than that??

But there was my penny in April!!

Perhaps people are starting to become more stable that they don't need to pick up my bridge penny anymore?

That's what I would like to think anyway.

* I am the offspring of two Government Weenies, I am related to many Government Weenies by blood and marriage, and I used to be a Government Weenie myself in a past life. Weenie is a term of endearment.

Emergency Knitting

2011-04-07T19:10:00.003-05:00

Mr. Mooch has been cutting out his afternoon naps on the weekends.

Quite annoying.

So on Sunday when I pulled up in front of the apartment after running some errands and noticed this in my back seat--

I turned off the car, cracked a couple of windows, popped in some tunes...

And grooved on my car-sock...

Got a whole half hour of sleep out of him before my damn neighbor walked up to the car and asked me loudly what I was doing just sitting in my parked car--waking up my little Mooch.

Grrrr!

WIP Wednesday

2011-04-06T18:32:00.001-05:00

I'm stalling...

I don't normally do WIP Wednesday.

But it's bath night. And Moochie hates baths/showers.

So you get to see a WIP.

What could it be now?

Quack Quack Honk

2011-04-05T19:27:00.004-05:00

Duck.

Duck.

Goose!

Moochie made me make a detour through the park when we went to buy a Sunday paper Sunday morning.

He loves checking out the "quack-quacks."

Can't wait till the baby quack-quacks hatch!

Monday, Monday

2011-04-04T19:05:00.002-05:00

You know what that means!

Cookie of the Week!

It's a recycled cookie. Not to be confused with a tossed cookie--meaning I've blogged about this recipe before.

I took this:

homemade cranberry almond granola...

And made these:

Mmm....granola cookies!

Fun On Wheels

2011-04-03T07:00:00.003-05:00

A weekend and a half until Grandma and Grandpa Mad Scientist land in Nueva Jersey.

So I tackled some of the spring cleaning on my list. Aside from cleaning the microwave (oh blecccch!)

I cleaned out my car which was full of dirt, salt, kitty litter (don't ask) and glitter (from the art projects Moochie makes at school).

I also had to flip this--

Forward facing.

Yes, I realize that Mooch is nearly 2 and a half now and he was still rear facing.

No, we didn't care about safety. We were just lazy. Installing a kid's car seat properly is a royal pain in the ass. Locking clips, towels, LATCH hooks...ugh.

I also took out Chunky's booster seat. Sniff sniff. He's surpassed the size/weight and age limits for state laws requiring booster seats--and the new recommendations they just came out with.

Mark my words, I'm going to have a 5th grader taller than me. Sob!

Anyway, moving Moochie's car seat front facing meant I had to take out the car trashbag that I had hanging behind his seat on the neckrest of the passenger's seat.

But it didn't fit anywhere. So I had to make a new one.

I had ordered some oilcloth in anticipation of this moment.

I bought a 1/2 yard of 2 types of oil cloth from Fabric.com and they mailed it to me on these gigantic industrial tubes.

The boys enjoyed them.

Anyway, with a little measuring, and a little time with Toni Janome, I came up with this.

A small oilcloth-lined bag. The oil cloth gives it stability and helps the bag keep its shape.

The whole thing fits nicely around my duct-tape festooned drink holder.

And I have to say it matches my calico toll change sack and polka dot sock bag also adorning my now glitter-free car (those two things were gifted to me by other knitters).

Now all I need to do is squeeze a pair of parents-in-law into my car and I'm set to go!

Spring Is In the Air

2011-03-31T19:54:00.003-05:00

Yeah, not really.

And I'm OK with that.

We're supposed to a rain/snow mix tomorrow.

People Northwest of us are supposed to get accumulation. You would think that it was raining acid (Whatever happened to acid rain? Remember how that was a big concern in the 80s? Did that become uncool to worry about as global warming became the en vogue environmental cause?).

April (snow) showers bring May flowers people!

Speaking of flowers--last week I got the final part of my spring seed order in the mail.

I splurged on a blueberry bush for pots!

And the darn thing is already flowering--wha?!?!?!?!

Spring is also a time for cleaning. Which we will be doing a lot of in the next two weeks--for in a scant 14 days, Grandma and Grandpa Mad Scientist are coming down to visit. See, Oldest Sister Mad Scientist is getting married at the end of the month, and they're coming down first to visit with us and then on to the wedding.

We've got some cool stuff planned for while they're here. Stay tuned! Ha ha!

April 16 will also mark the 1st anniversary of our living in this apartment. It was a mere year ago we were getting ready to leave Squirrel Gables for good.

And while I don't get to see the evening arrival of the strippers anymore at the Boobie Bar across the street--I get to see the March of the Maids every morning after I drop Chunky off at school.

Drive by picture shootings means I don't have to blur out the phone number for privacy!

Is it bad when you imagine how much you'd rather clean up other people's filth than do the job you actually have? I sigh wistfully every time I pass the March of the Maids in the morning packing up their mops and vacuums into their cars. (And yes, I've been a Mop Maiden in a past life--I know what it entails. And yes, I still wish I could trade spots with those girls!).

Finally I'll leave you on an upbeat note. After seeing this idea, I couldn't help but do it myself.

I didn't use string though, I used ribbon. Just as good.

And Mr. Mooch couldn't get enough of it when I hung it up...hee hee! I think he'll really enjoy hunting for Easter eggs this year.

Timing

2011-03-28T19:54:00.007-05:00

Two posts in one day!

Gasp!

But I had to laugh at the timing of this story I heard on the way to daycare/school/work today.

I don't know where I stand on e-children's books/reading apps. I kind of see the things they describe in this story as more high-tech versions of those leapfroggy things.

What I do have an issue with is giving an expensive piece of equipment to a toddler.

I'm not going to shell out $500 on an iPad II and then let Moochie slobber all over it.

Call me low-tech Mom.

But better yet, call me cheapass Mom!

Cookie of the Week

2011-03-28T05:06:00.003-05:00

Three minutes until I have to get the boys up for their day...but quickly-

Cookie of the Week!

Holy freaking cow!

These are "Mocha" Cookies from that Gourmet Cookie Cookbook I talked about in earlier posts.

There's nothing mocha about these though. I ommitted the espresso powder they called for.

Didn't matter one bit. These are rich, soft, and fudgey. Almost like the love child of a cookie and a brownie.

Two thumbs way up!

I've Got Gizmos and Gadgets Galore

2011-03-26T06:26:00.002-05:00

For Christmas, I received a very generous American Express gift card from 75% of my bosses.

There was a moment when I thought about blowing it on buying an e-reader of some sort.

But I nixed the idea when I saw the e-book offerings out there. It seems to me that to really use an e-reader to their potential you have to either be a big fan of old books that are now free in the public domain, or recently published books. (I was looking at the library's offerings and this is what they mainly had.)

I couldn't seem to find things published between those two time periods. And sadly, that's what I like to read.

And besides, who doesn't like a nice good old fashioned-touch-the-pages-yourself book?

I worry that someday that paper books will become scant.

But then something occured to me that alleviated that worry.

Yes. Moochie.

Would you give a fancy schmancy e-reader to your baby/toddler?

Yeah probably not.

Well maybe, lord knows kids are already 21st century digital kids...

But if books die out, I think picture books will be the last to go.

Drive By

2011-03-23T21:35:00.002-05:00

I can't believe tomorrow is Thursday already!

Thank goodness!--in some ways--and "Oh crap! I need more hours in the day!"--in other ways.

Work has been kicking my butt.

We're divorcing a client that we've been doing a lot of work for and they have not been paying us for. Part of the final divorce agreement is that we'll finish up document production before discovery ends.

In layman's terms: "Here's 50 boxes of paper, Bezzie. Organize it in a way that's rational by the end of the week, and oh, make sure you still do the work your other three attorneys (and whoever I'm backing up that day) want you to do."

Ugh.

As such, until the divorce is finalized, you'll be getting scant post-age from me.

I'll leave you with a couple of highlights from my week:

My license plate fell off when we were bringing our Christmas tree home this year (it fell off as I was tying the tree to the top of my car--using the front bumper as a rope anchor for the tree).

Because my car is a Michigan car--and Michigan doesn't require front plates--but New Jersey does--I had to rig this g-fab wiring of the plate to my bumper.

After four years, the wire finally rusted thru. Basement Neighbor noticed that my front plate had fallen off and was on my dashboard so he offered to drill some holes in my bumper to secure it.

As a thank you I gave him a half dozen of the Cookie of the Week--just plain-jane chocolate chip cookies.

I couldn't resist doing the license plate tag. Ha ha!

And finally, in the upcoming weekends I'll be playing with this:

My first jelly roll of fabric! Still waiting for the rest of the fabric to come in, but I may get started on what I have planned to do to this this weekend. We'll see!

Could be a complete fail. But it should be fun trying!

Top O'The Brownies To Ya!

2011-03-17T05:11:00.003-05:00

My younger sister has a theory about bringing brownies to work.

You have to take the first brownie so that people won't be hesitant to take the first on themselves.

These are Virgin Irish Cream brownies. They're OK. Not as Irish Creamy as I would have hoped, but meh, what are you going to do?

They're made with Bailey's Irish Cream Coffee Creamer instead of the real deal.

They're coming to work with me. 90% of the women in the office started Weight Watchers yesterday. They held their meeting at work in one of the conference rooms -- and totally jacked up the conference room scheduling. And everyone participating took their normal one hour lunch plus an hour for WW.

I've got nothing against Weight Watchers, and I can let the conference room thing slide. But a two hour lunch?

I'll be a passive-agressive little lunch-deprived leprechaun bringing tempting brownies in today.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Look To The Cookie

2011-03-14T18:59:00.003-05:00

This week's Cookie of the Week is brought to you by Seinfeld:

Mine are a little different though--mini black and whites!

I got the recipe from here:

I asked for this book for Christmas. But someone was incapable of ordering it online or going to the bookstore to buy it for me.

I had an Amazon credit (from buying that certain someone's birthday present--see? It's so easy shopping online!) so I only paid for shipping on this baby.

Love, love, love this book.

I though about posting a review, but sometimes I feel like I'm betraying the original spirit of this blog--which was started as a knitting blog. (Which I still do by the way--I just don't knit fast enough to show you ton's o'FOs and I really find WIP posts kinda boring to write).

Pimped Out

2011-03-12T17:40:00.002-06:00

I've seen people who have decorated their spinning wheels in various ways.

The tricked out wheels I've seen are usually pretty jawesome, but I've never been inclined to jazzify my own wheel.

However, for some reason, I had the urge to pimp my Toni Janome.

But I didn't want to permanently mar her.

I did a little surfing around and purchased a sheet of hot pink vinyl from here (great customer service by the way--she somehow screwed up my address so my purchase took a little longer to get to me, so she added a few extra sheets of vinyl for my troubles).

Next, I went onto this site and downloaded the the trashiest looking font I could find -- I picked a font called "Creampuff" -- how appropriately named!

Then using my exacto knife I got down to business and came up with this for my darling Toni Janome:

Hee hee!

I added the little heart that dots the "i"; that wasn't part of the font.

Pimped out--yet completely removable with no residue!

Even my little ~~shadow~~ helper liked it!

Mustache March

2011-03-06T10:26:00.003-06:00

I wasn't aware of this, since I don't possess the ability to grow substantial facial hair, but my brothers on Facebook were talking about it -- Mustache March.

Actually I'm not sure if what they were bantering about was specifically the movement found at the link above.

However, the idea of Mustache March has dredged up some great childhood memories.

When I was growing up, my father usually kept a full beard and mustache.

However, when he'd get bored on weekends and the fancy struck him just right, he'd shave in different ways.

And each way he'd shave he'd assign an alter ego.

For example, (and I don't know if I'm remembering the egos to their facial hair configurations correctly, but you'll get the idea) when he would shave himself a goatee, he would assume the identity of Chip Lauderdale, a washed up nightclub singer.

Just a mustache was "Biff O'Connor." Which now that I think about it, kind of sounds like a 1970s porn star name.

Biff O'Connor poses with his eldest daughter on the date of her first communion. Ha ha!

And everything shaved off -- no mustache or beard -- was a guy named Arley Snakebite. I can't remember what Arley's schtick was...rough and tumble cowboy?

Needless to say it was always hilarious to see who would emerge from the bathroom on Saturday mornings.

I wonder if the Old Man still does this now that we've all grown up and left?

Hee hee! Do other people have parents this delightfully weird??

Sometimes I feel bad for Dr. Mad Scientist. I mean his parents are so, normal. Ha ha!

Spud Dreams

2011-03-01T19:24:00.002-06:00

I noticed something peeking out of the top shelf of one of my kitchen cupboards this weekend.

Here--I took a picture by holding the camera over my head.

The little seedling potatoes I tossed in a mason jar decided to sprout. Looks like I had an escapee potato from a normal bag of potatoes I keep on that shelf too.

My potatoes aren't the only things thinking about sprouts.

I placed my seed order this past weekend. I'm excited. Last year we were in the throes of moving and I didn't really have time to plan out my pot garden.

I ordered some container pickles, tobasco peppers, scallions, and dill. I splurged on a container blueberry bush and okra. Yeah, I don't know if the weather will be right for okra, but I love okra. I bet it would be great pickled too. Wait, strike that, I KNOW it would be good pickled!

Soon my dear potato will have some friends to hang with outside!