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!

Wasn’t it W.C. Fields who said that you should never work with kids or dogs b/c they would always steal the scene?  I can see why…

Basic (huge — 10.5″ x 10.5″) warshrag in its natural habitat.

Both scarves are about 39″ long.  The brown one will stay “as is” b/c I like the texture.  The pink one will get some strong blocking, so it will end up longer & wider.

Nine days.

I’m still sick and about to dope myself up with TheraFlu (Did I tell you I locked myself out of the house in the rain yesterday?).  Not much brainpower today, so here’s a silly quiz for you:

What Color is Your Brain?

BLUE:

At work or in school: I like to be with people, sharing with them, inspiring them, and helping them. I work and learn best when I can take into consideration people and the human element. I flourish in an atmosphere of cooperation.
With friends: I always look for perfect love. I am very romantic, and I enjoy doing thoughtful things for others. I am affectionate, supportive and a good listener.
With family: I like to be happy and loving. I am very sensitive to rejection from my family and to family conflicts. I really like to be well thought of and need frequent reassurance. I love intimate talks and warm feelings.
Take this quiz!

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We haven’t used our actual video camera in quite a while, but we’ve wanted to have the videos organized.  Many of them weren’t marked, and we were really afraid of accidentally losing something important (just don’t ask me about our wedding video, OK?).

To that end, Hubby spent some time this weekend going through the unmarked videos, watching them on the camera, and listing out what was on them.  We had a blast looking at some of that stuff!  It was amazing, seeing the Things really teeny but with their personalities already showing.

The videos we were really concerned about losing were the ones of Paul.  We knew they wouldn’t be pretty, but when memories are all you’ll ever have of someone, those memories become pretty important.  Turns out, there were three video clips of him — two from the day after he was born, and one from the day he died.  We won’t be putting the second one out there for people to see; it’s just too, too disturbing.  The one we’re putting out there is good, though.

• Click for the day after Paul was born.
• Click for Thing One attempting to blow out birthday candles on her 4th birthday.

More to come in the future.

Speaking of pictures and movies, I’ve started working on stuff for Hubby’s big 40th birthday bash in February.  Yes, it’s quite a ways off, but he did such a terrific job on my 40th birthday, and he deserves something great.  So, I’ve been going through old pictures to find good ones to scan in for a photo montage.  It’s been a lot of fun.  If any of you out there have any funny pictures of Hubby, please do email them to me.  I’d be especially interested in any sort of Don’t forget where you came from type pictures of him in his younger, wilder days….

No pictures yet b/c of the aforementioned hacking, snorting, and squirting, (AND the bad rainy-weather light), but I did finish some stuff yesterday.  Since I didn’t get to go either to church or to Suzanne’s baby shower, I parked myself on the couch, had a Lord of the Rings movie marathon, and got a bunch of knitting done:

• Finished the Basket of Browns scarf.  I don’t think I’m going to block it b/c I’m afraid blocking would mess up the bumpy texture.  What do you think?
• Cranked out a wide, open-looking twisted drop stitch scarf in fine yarn on big needles for the boutique (Lu, I love that stitch!).
• Made a mindless, laaaaarge dishcloth.
• Started another scarf for MEY’s Christmas commissions.  Anybody else out there had problems with Cashmerino dye coming off on your bamboo needles?  Feh.

I’m hoping to have some pictures for you tomorrow.  Between falling asleep on the couch, locking myself out of the house, and running to the bathroom, I just didn’t have it in me to figure out a way to get decent pictures in this light.

In other news, today is Elizabeth’s birthday.  Go wish her a happy one; it’s not too late!  Oh, and she has a great cabana boy card on her blog, too. 

Well, I could tell you what it is, but then…well…that would be telling now, wouldn’t it?  And besides, what does it LOOK like?

Snort, hack, snort, squirt…Oh, sorry about that.  Well, as you’ve probably guessed, I didn’t make it to the baby shower for Suzanne and her Baby Bean yesterday.  SUCH a bummer, but I would never have forgiven myself if I’d gotten her and the Bean sick and caused the Bean any further problems.

Here, however, are some highlights, courtesy of Hubby (sadly, no stills of her & the blankie):

Suzanne (L) and a pregnant pal of hers

The Things belly up to the bar.

Gabi and Baby Sedona.

Heather and Mansour

Look at my teeeeeeeth!