Erica’s Blog

…well, at least until I become a MIL, he he.

Got an email from Grandma Ruthie this morning, telling me to watch for a package today.  Yippee!  Packages from Florida are always cause for some excitement ’round here.  Well, I left to pick up Thing One from school, when what to my wondering eyes did appear, but a box labelled FRAGILE which, of course, had been tossed over the back fence.  Lovely.  Picked it up.  Shook it gently…nothing rattly or broken-sounding, so I set it down till later.

After the usual Friday afternoon post-school ice cream, I opened it immediately.

Looks promising…there appear to be clothes in that bag.

Oh, yeah, this is a HAPPY package!  One sweater set, two tops, and two pairs of pants, including:

Incredibly soft dress-like-a-grown-up-and-go-out-with-Hubby sweater.  (Color is a much truer red than shows here.)

 Stylish casual Mommy clothes.  (Oh, I can hear Vinny now:  Yes, Erica, we know your mother-in-law dresses you… )

 Cute seasonal candles.

Beautiful ceramic pumpkin!  Hmmm….Maybe I can get Hubby to bring down my fall garland and swag from the attic.  This would go so nicely with them.

THANKS, GRANDMA!

I guess this means the birthday has begun, folks, with seven days left before the actual day.  Cool.  Well, I may end up being 42 and feelin’ blue, but at least I’ll look good.  After all, we all know it is better to look good than to feel good.  (Quick!  Gimme the reference!)  Perhaps I ought to lay off the Margaret Atwood until after my birthday (see sidebar).  That might help my mood.  Oh…and getting more than four hours of sleep at night.  Yeah.  That would help, too.

Nope, there’s nothing quite like the smell of wet wool permeating the house as you felt batch after batch of…stuff.

In addition to the project that shall not be named, I’ve been working fast and furiously on these:

The tree and the three smaller stars have been felted already.  The others are in the washer as I type.  They’re all going to be Christmas tree ornaments for sale at the school boutique, which is in…ACK!…two weeks from tomorrow!  So, now begins the countdown to the boutique:  15 days.  I especially like the laceweight crocheted chain “garland” on the tree.  I’ll be making other, smaller ones, using beads and other bibs & bobs of scrap yarn for the decorations.  I think they’ll sell well, as long as I price them right.  The green yarn is WOTA — and WOTA that I got free at that, now that I think about it — so they’re cheap to make.  Sorry for the fuzzy picture; it’s rainy today, and it’s hard to hold still long enough for the picture w/o flash.

Yes, Adri called it — the other countdown is for my birthday.  Next Friday (7 days!), I’ll be 42.  At the rate I’m going, it will be 42 and feelin’ blue, but hey, it’s better than a lot of other stuff.  I’m planning to sleep in, then at some point kick everyone out of the house for a few hours so I can spend some solid time spinning.  Woot!  Maybe we’ll all go see Flushed Away that night or something.  Most of the rest of the weekend will be spent knitting for the boutique.  Yes, I’m feeling the pressure!

66. I like to crank up the volume and sing along — LOUDLY — with the radio/iPod to Welcome to My Life (Simple Plan).

67. I used to arrange my schedule (Sundays?) around being able to watch In Living Color.

68. I once got grounded for a whole summer for throwing a piece of buttered toast at my dad.  (It was the one time in my life I had good aim;  it hit him in the face with the buttered side.)

69.I flunked an easy class in college b/c I had an incomplete that lapsed into an F.  If I had completed the one incomplete project, I would have had an A in the class.  Stupid, stupid, stupid!

70. I was sick so much as a kid that when I was in 4^th grade and for the first time at a school where we had P.E. class, I didn’t know how to bounce a basketball and had to be taught.

71. When I was in middle school, I went with my dad on a business trip to New Mexico and in Taos got to see some previously banned paintings by D.H. Lawrence that now (well, in the 1970’s anyhow) reside in a Taos hotel.  If you’ve read any D.H. Lawrence, you can imagine the subject matter and why they were banned at one time.

72. I have so many friends named Christine/Kristine/Kristina that when we gave Thing Two the middle name “Christine”, our friends weren’t sure whose namesake she was.

73.  I was in therapy for a year.

74. There’s a 15-year-old girl in
Singapore named after me.

75.  Depending on the brand, I wear anywhere from a size 8 to size 9 shoe — at least as large as my mom, who’s 5+ inches taller than I am!