Erica’s Blog

Grandma Ruthie arrives on Friday.  This, of course, is the reason why Thing Two is sick, right?  Grandma is in CA for work (MBE good, UPS bad!).  As long as she’s in the state, she’s going to come up and spend some time with my BIL and SIL and some time with us.  We’re all really excited to have her come, even if it’s just for two nights.  I didn’t get her Mother’s Day present done on time, but I’ll give it to her when she comes. 

OH!  Just realized I haven’t talked to my parents about borrowing their van when she comes.  I’ll have to do that today.  It’s hard, though — when we borrow the van, we trade cars.  This didn’t used to be a problem, but the last time we did, my car was vandalized while it sat on their parking platform.  I’m hesitant to let it spend time up there again, but I don’t think anything will happen to it this time.  Well, it could, but only if hubby puts one of his “Anyone But Hillary 2008″ bumper stickers on it before then.  I tell ya, for a tolerant place (anything goes there — they even have the US witchcraft capital in their county), they’re not very tolerant at all!  It’s  a tough situation.   We’re 98.75% sure who vandalized the car, but we don’t have proof, and we never will have, so there’s not a whole lot we can do about it.  Oh, well….

The reason I got so much knitting done yesterday is that Thing Two is sick, so I stayed home with her yesterday.  It was relaxing, and I was glad to kick back b/c I’m starting to feel like I’m catching the same crud she has.  She’s been hacking up hair balls since Saturday evening.  Poor kid is on everything — Zyrtec, Singulair, Albuterol, Q-Var (sounds like a place to play laser tag!), and Phenergan (plain during the day, with codeine at night).  Still, I’m really grateful b/c she’s been so much less sick since we moved into this house.  Having hardwood floors and blinds instead of carpets and drapes has made all the difference in the world!  She took a long nap in the afternoon, though, which meant she couldn’t get to sleep last night until about 11:00.  Poor kid!  She wasn’t trying to be rebellious or anything; she just couldn’t sleep.  We couldn’t be mad.  We just laughed.  She finally fell asleep after hubby found her in the kitchen, cutting up construction paper.  He brought her out to the living room and held her for a while, then went and snuggled in her bed with her till she was solidly asleep.  What a dad!

We had a busy Saturday.  I went & faced the music at WW (Up over three pounds!  Guess I really was feeling a lot this week!) and dropped off paper goods for our leader’s surprise wedding shower, then home to change clothes and leave with hubby, Marky Mark and Bobcat for a church marriage workshop from 9:00 - 2:00.  After that, a quick lunch at Fresh Choice, then home to change, change the Things, then off to a friend’s daughter’s first communion party.  Whew!  And with all that, we also missed a bday party for one of Thing One’s classmates and a Mary Kay party my sis-in-law had.

At the workshop, I picked up a couple of devotional workbooks for the Things (see sidebar).  They LOVE them!  It’s really cool to see them get into it, especially Thing Two.  Since she can’t read, I have to do it with her.  She did the first eight or so chapters yesterday.  She’s also gone ahead and colored the pictures about a third of the way into the book.  Thing One scanned through her workbook yesterday, then did one or two chapters last night and one this morning before school.

Because yesterday was a “jammie day”, we watched a lot of movies.  The two latest “kid movies” we’ve rented were The Black Stallion and the original Katherine Hepburn version of Little Women.  The Black Stallion was OK, but it’s interesting that Thing Two really wanted to watch “the family movie” (Little Women) again today.  I’ve read that book SO many times, and I was really looking forward to seeing how it translated to a movie.  They had to leave a bunch of stuff out for sake of time, but the movie is very faithful to the book.  It’s funny, though — what is good in the book comes out kind of hokey in the movie.  I found myself crying when Beth died, of course.  Maybe I should rent the version that came out in the ’90s to see how that compares.

What IS that first thing?  Is it a spider tangled up in some Pound of Love yarn?  NO!  It’s proof positive that I finally took the time to sit down with a book (Knitting for Dummies — thank you, Hobbes!) and figure out how to use double-pointed needles (dpn’s).  Getting going is the hardest part and REALLY frustrating, but once you’re going it’s easy.  Gee, how I wish I’d figured this out about 60 baby hats ago!  It will be great to make my hats for the UCSF ICN w/o seams.  If I ever finish this huge ball of pink Pound of Love, I’ll deliver the hats.

The second picture is the detail of the fuzzy blue lace scarf, finished yesterday. Whooppee!  Now, should I make the Boobie Scarf or the Heart scarf next?  Probably the Heart one.  I have some fuschia Wool Ease (yes, I know, I’m cheap) that would look nice in hearts.