Dear Autumn, I Love You

You don't have to say you love me back, but I feel like you probably do.  I see you peeking around the corner.  I knew you were close by yesterday, when it was all gray and rainy in the afternoon and I wished I was wearing socks.  And when I woke up last week and found our heater running, because the window fans were blowing in so much fresh, cool air.  I knew that was you, too.

Thank you for coming to see me each year, Autumn.  I look forward to your arrival.  I truly love you!

Wib

Easter

 I don't know why the blog is putting the pictures immediately up top and not letting me insert text above them.  Anyway, We had easter at Will 'n Jodi's this year.  Cousins like crazy.  The big kids set up a hunt in the front yard for the little kids while the adults set up a super-hard hunt in the back yard for the bigger kids. 

 I love Easter pictures, with kids racing around in fancy clothes trying to find eggs 'n candy.  I forgot to color any real eggs this year (whoops!) but certainly remembered to stuff plastic eggs with candy.  We had around 150 plastic eggs for my family alone, on top of all the ones Jodi had gotten ready.  We also have a golden egg that we fill with money.  I think it was a dollar this year.  One year it was five dollars.  Jules has found it every year.  Eric was the lucky winner this time.

 We also had a big ham dinner with cheesy potatoes and the works.  Usually the big, outrageous dinner is what defines our family parties, but this event was defined by the big, outrageous egg hunt.  Over the top, is how I might characterize it.

 I keep meaning to get bigger baskets every year.  These plastic buckets from the Dollar Tree are so sturdy, though!  And they stack up so nicely.  It's fun when the children fill their buckets and have to come unload to finish the hunt.

 We made the big-kids hunt super hard.  They did a great job getting the more obvious hiding spots, but we really had to give some hints on the ones that were buried or inside scary cobweb holes. My son Eric may be fabulous in many ways, but he kind of stinks at looking for stuff.  I want to teach him to be super-observant like the dad on Psych, but so far it's not working.

To sum up:  Easter was awesome.  We did the Easter All Week that we usually do, with the spiritual part Sunday Morning.  We topped it off with a Cousins' Rager Egg Hunt.  We'll definitely celebrate Easter again next year.  It's my favorite holiday.

Daddy Daughter Sock Hop

 Warning:  Posts not in chronological order.  I'm posting things as I find the pictures I took.

Jules and Seth were invited to a Sock Hop activity for all the girls 8-12.  I don't think it's the last time I'm going to say:  it was ADORABLE!!  Jules brought the little invitation to her daddy.  She and I worked to get her ready.  I made the circle skirt using this here tutorial:  http://www.danamadeit.com/2010/09/the-circle-skirt-tutorial.html

Too bad Jules outgrew the saddle shoes she used to wear in Kindergarten.  The girls and their dads did several fun activities, aside from dancin'.  They had a "Pick Your Dad's Nose" out of a lineup activity.  The girls got to "Shave Your Dad" with shaving cream but no blades.  The girls got Wrist Poodles, as you can see in this second photo.  That little purse favor is actually a very fancy cookie.  The whole thing was super adorable.  We forced Seth to bring his letter jacket from high school.  He was hesitant to wear it (High School! Nerdy!), but ended up being glad he had it to set him apart from all the other dads in jeans and a white t-shirt.

I'm so grateful my daughter has a Daddy and that she knows he loves her.  I hope she goes on many more dates with her dad, that he teaches her the way she should expect to be treated on dates, and that they continue to be good friends for a long time.

What's The Deal With Conditioner?

I bought a big huge bottle of conditioner a couple months ago.  Jules needs it real bad for her long, long beautiful hair, which is a thick full head of fine hairs and tangles super easily.  I use it occasionally when I feel like it. 

The problem with the conditioner we bought is that it doesn't do anything.  It feels like a water and cornstarch mixture in your hand, but with mostly water and a little cornstarch to thicken it slightly.  I feel burning unhappiness whenever I use it on myself or Jules, because I keep expecting it to do something and it keeps not doing anything. 

Then I looked at the bottle and it says its primary job is "Moisture."  And then I started looking around at all the different products; maybe 60 percent of the hair stuff says it's for "Moisture." I'm not really into cosmetics too much.  I know people have dry hair.  But I am flummoxed by this intense focus on Moisture.  Really?! There are that many people whose hair is that dry, that we have so many products devoted to Moisture?  What does that even mean?  To me, moisture is when I've been out of the shower for awhile but my hair is still slightly wet.  Moisture is when it's too hot outside and your shirt gets sweaty.  Moisture is when your baby has had a lot to drink and it's evident by touching the outside of his diaper.  Moisture is when it's raining and the carpet in your basement starts to get whiffy.  That's moisture.

I guess I don't need moisture for my hair.  I'm just blessed that way.  What I need is Conditioner.

Response: This Morning's Paper

Seth sometimes doesn't want me to read the paper because of my strong responses.  I'm going to try to keep the stronger responses bottled up inside and only respond to the other stuff.

Scientists find extreme galaxy Washington>>Scientists have found a galaxy that gives birth to  more stars in a day than ours does in a year.  Astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-Ray telescope to spot this distant gigantic galaxy creating about 740 stars a year.  By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy spawns just about one new star each year.  The galaxy is about 5.7 billion light-years away in the center of a cluster of galaxies that give off the brightest x-ray glow astronomers have seen.

-First response:  We're not capitalizing the important words in titles anymore, Wire Services?  That's lame.  It's news, after all.

-Second:  EXTREME GALAXY!!!  The Tony Hawk Galaxy?  The Shaun White Galaxy?  Everything's so EXTREME! these days!

- Third:  ewww!  Galaxies giving birth to stars.  Too graphic!

-Fourth:  A Gigantic, Extreme Galaxy actually does sound pretty cool.

Bumbo Baby Seats recalled Washington>>About 4 million Bumbo Baby Seats are being recalled after nearly two dozen reports of infant skull fractures.  The Consumer Product Safety Commission says babies can wiggle out of the floor seats. 

-First response:  This is super lame.  Two Dozen?  That's it?  That doesn't sound like a dangerous product. This sounds like a case of irresponsible parents badmouthing a company/product that has helped millions of responsible parents.

-Second:  It says right on it not to use it on tables or chairs.  FLOOR ONLY.  I have five little ones of my own, and I will be the first one to tell you that babies are made of rubber.  Babies heads will be, what? 12 inches off the floor? in a properly used Bumbo.  From 12 inches off the floor, no baby is going to suffer a skull fracture, even thrashing the crap on out of that Bumbo.  Even baby Mr. Glass from Unbreakable.

-Third:  Parental supervision.  What does that phrase mean to you?  Yes, you, idiot parents?  That skull fracture?  Your fault!

OK.  It's getting a little heated in here.  Let's all just simmer down now.

And Lastly:  Letters to the Editor.  I can't get into it here.  These are the Forbidden Responses.  Much too inflammatory.  But I did want to say something about two things on the Editorial page.

Obesity is a parental issue [Denver Post editorial on topic of childhood obesity, government "roles" and parental responsibility]

-First response:  FINALLY!  Some sense on this personal and family (but NOT community!) issue.

-Second:  The Post puts a provoking headline and then spends the entire editorial piece talking about Government Commissions and Michelle Obama and then tacks one little paragraph on at the end about it ultimately being a parental responsibility and personal decision.

-Third:  Most things are a Parental Responsibility!!  As a Responsible Parent, I have to say, "Keep your government mitts off my child's weight, eating habits, nose-picking habits, and all the other things that are MY RESPONSIBILITY!"

Debating a new Walmart at former CU med campus

This one is about a series of letters responding to the zoning/public funds/NIMBY/development fight around the proposed new Walmart.  I hate Walmart, because it makes me feel icky.  But more than that, I hate a serious newspaper publishing letters to the editor that instead of intelligent debate, spew cynical, ironic, sarcasm to put forth their point of view.  Isn't that why we're so into public education?  Higher education?  To teach people to express their views using words, reason and logic?  Hmm?

And speaking of logic, it is a delight to me to find logical fallacies.  I find them in commercials, political ads, letters to the editor, tv news stories, and newspaper articles.  They're everywhere!  It's way funner than trying to debate topics with boneheads.  Just find the fallacy in his argument!  Done and undone!

And these are my TAME responses!

I Love Good Writing!!!

What I don't love is bad writing that gets published and made a big deal over. Seth was sharing with me just the other night the horror of opening a professionally published book and finding total crap.  He forced himself to finish reading it, because Maybe!  Maybe this will all be worked out and I can forgive whoever did this to humankind!  Bleeaaah!!  We shouldn't have to do that.  My other main point is, everyone's always saying how hard it is to get published...So, if this is what DOES get published, imagine the barf-on-a-page that gets rejected!!

Ow! My brain!

Anyway, I'm reading Middlemarch by George Eliot.  It's like a delightful breath of fresh air for my brain. Here are a couple lines that made me glad I can read:

"...she was spared any inward effort to change the direction of her thoughts by the appearance of a cantering horseman round a turning of the road."

"...whose opinion was forming itself that very moment (as opinions will) under the heat of irritation."

"Sir James interpreted the heightened colour in the way most gratifying to himself..."

Ah! Words!  You can be such useful tools. There's nothing special about these quotes, really, except that they are well-written. And they're all from the same couple-a pages. 

Pray for me to finish Middlemarch this time.  It has been my goal for the last 15 years to read all the classics...I plowed through Uncle Tom's Cabin and Madame Bovary, among others.  I already donated four or five dollars in late fees to the Aurora Public Library system the last time I tried to read a classic.

PS And one other awesome thing about reading the classics:  the authors are able to convey thoughts, ideas, stories, personalities, and themes without ever talking about crotches!

Finish Line

 It's called Barb Wire.  I am annoyed at the title.  Is it at least named for your friend Barb, pattern designer Grace McEwen?  I hope?

So the pattern says "The cardigan is a tighter fit...If you wish a looser fit you will want to knit a larger size to ensure the desired fit."  If there's one thing I don't want to do, it's spend a bunch of hours knitting a sweater that's too flippin' small.  So I took my measurements and went one size up from that. 

I guess I've also lost 15 or 20 pounds since I first began this sweater.  Anyway, it was a couple years ago that I spent all the driving time on our vacation knitting this up.  I was using the hilariously large needles required to get the suggested gauge.  I hated how loose and floppy the fabric was, but by the time I could tell I hated it, I had knit too much to rip it out.  Ha ha!    The above picture shows how much I knit before I realized there was no way I could use this garment if I finished it in this size.  It was GIGANTIC.  I measured it before I 86-ed it, and it measure something like 54 inches around.  I bit large...

Jules, Eric, and I spent about an hour ripping and ripping the yarn, trying to separate the two separate strands of very fine-weight yarn without breaking them, and then rewinding it all.  It was a stinkin' mess.  It felt strangely satisfying to rip out all that work.  I didn't have any regrets. What I did have was two extra balls of $8/ball yarn...

The pattern calls for six balls for the size I WAS knitting, but only four balls for the size I started knitting.  Oh well; there's a lovely silk and wool scarf, socks, or hat in my future, I guess.  So I heard about an event called the Ravelympics a couple years ago.  The knitting/fiber online community Ravelry has people who pick a project and knit the whole dang thing while sitting and watching the Olympics.  This is right up my alley.  I need a strong motivation to finish things, instead of setting them aside to start something new; I watch the Olympics almost religiously; and I needed to get this sweater finished, since this is The Summer of Finishing Projects.  The Trifecta!

Except I didn't have this undone and rewound by the opening ceremonies.  Instead I began and finished another project, a cardigan for Jules' American Girl doll, Julie Albright.  It's a cute little sweater, if a bit boxy. That was finished by Tuesday of the first week of Olympics.  Thursday of that week, I had everything ready and started reknitting Barb Wire, with smaller needles and in the smallest size.  It turns out I hate lace knitting.  Glancing every two seconds at the chart, always worrying that I'd made a tiny mistake that would doom all the rest of my work, and knowing that it can't be washed without a bunch of TLC.  Bleeeaahh.

BUT back to the project:  I had a lot of time to work on it in the back seat as my brother, sister, father, and I drove to Utah for a weekend.  I worked on it all week watching track and field events.  I was going to make a big push and get the dang thing finished on Sunday after church.  And then I discovered that I was Too Sleepy to Knit Anything.  I was almost too sleepy to watch the Closing Ceremonies.  I did not get the sweater finished.  I stalled out on the shoulders/sleeves, the most arduous part, because it has the most stitches - 200something per row.

Bump this, is what I decided about trying to finish Sunday.  Monday, though, was a beautiful cloudy day, the kind of day that makes Summer worth having.  I sat by my front window all day and finished every stitch of this sweater, in between making sandwiches, changing diapers, moderating arguments, and getting boys to clean up legos.  I FINISHED THE DANG SWEATER!!  I used two full balls of yarn and less than a third of the next two, so I have plenty left for another full project.  I'm not sure I like the fit of this sweater, but it's not blocked into shape yet.  The main point is, that in the Summer of Finishing Projects, I have gotten over a major hurdle.