Nopinkertons

Move over, Mozart

2011-05-05T13:42:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I've blogged this before, but I often say that when I was pregnant, I knew I would think our cutie was the cutest baby ever, but I didn't know he would actually be the cutest baby ever.

When I say this, I say it as a joke, but I also totally mean it. My sweetie once tried to explain the joy of parenthood to a committedly childless coworker, and she dismissed his comments with, "Oh, you're just smitten."

Which, well...yes. That's the point.

Anyway, I haven't blogged much, and I don't want to turn this blog into Cute Moment of the Month, because I do know that our cutie is really the cutest only to us--I know this, even though I don't believe it--but I couldn't resist this one.

Our cutie has recently discovered butter. Oh, he's been eating toast with butter (even butter on both sides) for months, but on toast, the butter is melted. You can't see it, and anyway, I've always just called toast with butter "toast," so as far as he knows, toast is not toast if it's not soggy with melted butter.

But recently, I gave him bread, untoasted, with butter smeared on it.

To say he understood immediately the appeal that is butter would be an understatement. In fact, he ate all the butter off the piece of bread I gave him, handed it back to me, and demanded more. When I said, "Do you want more butter?" he nodded and said, "Buh!" Note: instant acquisition of new word.

I learned within a few minutes that the butter must be spread to the very edges of the bread, or he will hand me bare crusts for further application of butter. By the time he had consumed the first piece of bread (buttered twice) he was marching around clutching his buttered crusts and singing, I am not kidding, a Butter Song.

"Buh, buh, BUH! Buh, buh, BUH!"

His first original composition, and what better inspiration could there be? I am one proud momma.

Spring is for rodents

2011-03-24T13:05:00.000-07:00

Back when we lived in Connecticut, when I was in high school, there was a church on the corner on the main road through town which had a lawn that sloped rather steeply down to the street. In the spring, the lawn was covered in crocuses. I didn't think that much of them at the time, but as I've gotten older, I remember that lawn and the beautiful early spring flowers, and I wish I could have crocuses like that. Especially here in Seattle, where it seems like dreary, dreary, wet, gray, dreary winter will go on forever.

Bulbs generally do well in our climate. An hour or two north of here, tulips are a huge industry, and in the spring you can drive up there to enjoy them--if you can stand the hordes of people doing the same. Even in the city, tulips and especially daffodils abound, and in the early days of spring, you might even spot some crocuses.

So, back in November, I planted 100 crocus bulbs along the edge of our lawn. I was very pleased with myself, since my gardening urge does not always extend to actually planting anything. I looked at my little strip of dirt and looked forward to crocuses in the spring.

I saw my first squirrel about 1/2 an hour later. I'm surprised it took that long, frankly. By the next day, there were holes all over the little strip, and half-eaten bulbs strewn around. I took a deep breath, and thought, "OK, 100 bulbs. Surely some of them will make it to spring?" I figure the squirrels took at least half of them, maybe as many as 75, by the end of the first week.

In January there was a warm spell, and some of the bulbs began to sprout. Little green shoots poked out of the ground. The squirrels were grateful for the help finding them. I counted another dozen dug up and gone.

Finally, a couple weeks ago, some more shoots, ones that managed to survive the squirrels' further depredations. I started to see two or three tiny buds. A smidge of purple peaked out.

Then it hailed. The smidge of purple turned to battered purple petals on the ground.

Finally, finally, yesterday, I got my single crocus. Yes, single. 100 bulbs, one flower:

The picture doesn't do justice to the beautiful deep purple. The sun was so bright yesterday, as if spring might come after all. I had to take pictures.

Good thing I did, because by this morning, a squirrel had eaten it.

Old...again

2011-02-26T09:43:00.000-08:00

Last night my sweetie and I had a date night. After a movie, popcorn & soda (shared), dinner at a bar, and the babysitter, we spent $110. That's not what this post is about, but I'm kind of shocked, really. It was hardly a fancy night out.

The movie we saw was "The King's Speech", which we really enjoyed. We haven't been to see a movie in the theatre since "Julie & Julia," I think, so I'm glad it was a good one. It was weird to see Helena Bonham Carter not acting like a crazed freak. I hardly recognized her.

Anyway, maybe halfway through the movie, Bertie's older brother, the future King Edward VIII, shows up. I think, "Hmm, he looks familiar." After another scene or two, I realize he's Guy Pearce. I had a huge crush on Guy Pearce back when he was in "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert." If you never saw it or don't remember it, Google some pictures. He was a beautiful man. Beautiful.

He's still handsome, but my primary reaction to him in this movie was, "Good grief, he's now old enough to play Colin Firth's older brother??? How is this possible? How old am I????"

You see, in my mind, Colin Firth is older than me, and Guy Pearce is my age. Augh!

A quick check of IMDB this morning has relieved me somewhat: they're both older than me, but Colin Firth is the oldest. So there!

Feh.

Bao zi like mom used to make

2010-11-15T12:22:00.000-08:00

Everyone tells you that once your baby is eating solid food, you should feed him whatever you're eating rather than cooking him special meals. We do this at dinner time, but unfortunately, I have problems with feeding my 13-month-old baby cold cereal for breakfast and tv dinners for lunch, not to mention myriad sweet and/or fried crap for snacks. Last week once or twice I fed him frozen cha siu bao (steamed barbecue pork buns), which he loved, but which I felt had too much sugar and mystery red food coloring for my comfort. So, today I found myself making bao zi (filled buns) like my mom used to make.

Now, before you get all excited about some fabulous authentic Chinese recipe, check out the in progress photo:

Bottom left, filling; bottom right, bao zi ready for steaming. Middle and top right, canned biscuit dough.

Yep, my mom made bao zi using canned biscuit dough. I know this doesn't really eliminate every last chemical from my baby's diet, but hey: it's a start, and I figure the canned biscuit dough is no worse than the store-bought bread I feed him. I actually had a little trouble finding the right dough--everything now is huge and laden with "butter" (in quotes because do you really believe it's butter?). Over to the side, I finally spotted some store brand "Homestyle" biscuits that come 10 to a can, and it's a small can at that. They bake up into pretty lousy biscuits, but they're perfect for bao zi.

The filling was where it's all worth it to me: no mystery meat, no food coloring, and only a little bit of sugar, plus some veggies. I don't know what my mom put in hers, but I used:

Two boneless pork chops, ground in the food processor.
A little gelatin sprinkled on about 2 Tbsp of soy sauce.
A medium shredded parsnip.
A small shredded carrot.
A little (maybe 1 tsp) dark sesame oil.
Some grated fresh ginger.
Maybe a third of a cup of chopped scallions.
Some chopped cilantro.
Maybe a couple tsp sugar.
Some salt.

The filling was something of a what-do-I-have-in-my-kitchen? process--the only thing I actually bought for it was the pork--but I think it turned out pretty well.

Flatten a round of biscuit dough, then put a rounded teaspoon (or more) of filling on it. Stretch the dough up around and pinch closed on top. You can really stuff these--biscuit dough is stretchy and doesn't tear easily.

Steam for ten minutes. See how they puff up into pillowy goodness? That's why they're bao zi and not dumplings. Yes, the middle one is missing from the picture--I had to do some quality control testing.

I made twenty bao zi and still have filling left, so I'd say you could get about 25, maybe 28 bao zi out of two small pork chops. I ate, er, six, while steaming the second batch, so I'm hoping there will actually be some left for our cutie's lunch tomorrow, especially since I intend to serve these for dinner tonight for my sweetie and me :-).

Oh, as for my mom, she doesn't make these any more. Like any sane person, she buys her bao zi frozen from the store

Flat Stanley visits Seattle

2010-11-06T21:37:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, there was an obscure book I loved called Flat Stanley, which I had checked out of the library once but which no one else had ever heard of. I remember thinking that hiding in the picture in the museum was cool, but also being puzzled as to how his skull got flat without crushing his brain. No one could discuss these things with me, because no one else had read the book.

Fast forward 30+ years, and Flat Stanley is not only not out of print, it's now something every kid reads, and has, like, 5,000,000,000 sequels and projects schoolkids do, where they mail Flat Stanleys to far-away friends and ask for pictures of his travels. I don't know how this happened, but I'm pretty impressed. Somewhere at some publisher there's a marketing genius who I hope has been properly thanked.

Last month, Flat Stanley came to visit us, courtesy of my sweetie's friend's third-grader.

Stanley and our cutie admiring the view.

Stanley awed by the Fremont Troll.

At Pike Place Market. See our cutie peeking out behind his daddy's head?

We had a good time :-).

Another first

2010-10-30T21:58:00.000-07:00

Well, right on schedule, less than a month after starting day care, our cutie came down with an ear infection. Actually, it should be "ear infectionS", since he has it in both ears.

The cutie has had colds before, but never an ear infection. The first time he had a cold, we were so nervous, but with each succeeding time, I became more and more blase. I would worry that maybe he felt warm, take his temperature, and find that he was perfectly normal, not to mention annoyed that I had interrupted whatever he was doing. My son is very focused; don't get between him and the music table. I became convinced that I would know when he had a fever; I wouldn't just think he was warm, I'd know he was warm.

Yeah, well, I didn't. Yes, he was mildly fussy and clingy, but he has been for a couple of weeks now, so I didn't think anything of it. Yes, he had a cold, but he'd had it for four or five days, and he's had colds before. Then on Tuesday evening, my sweetie said, as we were putting him to bed, "Does he feel warm to you?" Since the cutie was already going to bed, we didn't want to disturb him by taking his temperature. On Wednesday, I forgot, until my sweetie came home from work and said again, "Does he feel warm to you?" His temperature was 101.5.

I freaked out. The doctor's office was already closed, but I called, and talked to a nurse, who talked me off the ledge and told me to give him Tylenol. By the next day, he was at 102, and no longer "mildly" fussy. He was crying continually and refusing to eat--he'd put food in his mouth, then spit it out (or pull it out with his hands). We took him to the doctor, and found out about the ear infection. Poor cutie--his throat was probably too sore to swallow. (Although, oddly enough, he seemed to have no trouble swallowing cookies.)

And I had had no idea. I felt terrible. So much for mother's intuition!

Thursday was awful; by fortunate coincidence, my sweetie had taken that day off; needless to say, he did not do any of the things he had planned to do with his day off. Instead, he held our cutie all day while he cried. The cutie was better yesterday, and almost back to his old self today. He has suffered no permanent damage (yet) from my obliviousness.

We are giving him a pink liquid antibiotic which is exactly the same as it was when I was a kid. Smelling it took me back to my childhood, when we frequently had one of these pink bottles in our fridge. I haven't tasted our cutie's, but I know exactly what it tastes like. He doesn't know yet that it tastes awful; he just thinks it's sweet. He points at the infant Tylenol like it's candy. Doubtless this has been an adventure for him--he gets held all day! And eats sweet liquids in bright colors! Not to mention cookies! And he's acquired several new toys!--but *I* am very glad it seems to be winding down, and we have all managed to survive, even if only barely.

Kind of Evil

2010-10-14T12:17:00.001-07:00

For our cutie's birthday party, we bought a cake.

I actually went to Costco and bought a sheet cake (which, alas, I failed to take a picture of). Well, I guess technically it was a layer cake, since the sheet was cut in half, doubled up, and filled with "2 LBS OF CREAM CHEESE FILLING" according to the label. The whole thing swathed in sugary frosting and decorated with a blue dinosaur and our cutie's name.

The thing about the cake, though, is that while it was cheap ($17!) and actually pretty good, it was also about twice as much cake as we needed. So that leftover half a cake sat in our fridge, getting picked at and picked at by my sweetie and me, until we were both heartily sick of it. Not to mention weirded out by the fact that a) we were eating cake every day and b) after a week and a half, it still hadn't gone bad.

So there I was, staring at a quarter of a cake,wondering if I could make myself throw it away. I have a real problem throwing away perfectly good food, even if it is questionable as to whether it is "food" and definite that it is not "good food."

Then I remembered Bakerella. I have been mysteriously obsessed with her cake pops for some time, but I knew I would never bake a cake just to turn it into cake pops. But here I was, with a quarter of a sheet cake and 1/2 LB OF CREAM CHEESE FILLING. How could I resist?

So, I scraped off the sugary frosting and mashed up the cake and filling:

Then shaped my cake balls.

Here's the tricky part: Do not use chocolate chips to coat them. I did not have any semisweet chocolate in the house, so I thought I could make do with chips. No. Chocolate chips "melt" into sticky goo, which is delightful in a cookie but horrendous for smoothly coating anything. The balls I coated in melted chocolate chips were stringy hairy messes. I'd show you a picture but...my sweetie ate them.

Ahem! Anyway, here are some of the finished ones, coated in nice Ghirardelli chocolate, after a quick run to the store:

Technically, these are cake balls, not pops, since they don't have sticks, but whatever. They are yummy.

And yes, I am fully aware that, even though I just made them yesterday, they are still 2-week-old cake. And we are still eating cake every day. Shut up.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2010-10-08T11:03:00.001-07:00

It's been a whirlwind week and a half of changes. Last week, my sweetie's parents came for a visit, so we left the cutie with them for a day and took off, just the two of us.

Change #1: It was my very first night away from our cutie since the day he was born.

Here is the deep Jacuzzi tub in our room at the Wild Iris B&B. I had not had a bath since I became pregnant, so I was obsessing over it. It was as lovely as I had anticipated.

When we returned the next day, our cutie barely acknowledged us. I would say he didn't even notice we had been gone. I was both sad and proud: he is really an easygoing baby.

My mom also came to visit. Why?

Change #2: It was our cutie's birthday!

We are now the proud parents of a one-year-old. We had a very nice party for him, and he actually seemed to enjoy it very much. He loved being the center of attention, and he ate an entire piece of cake--probably more sugar in one go than he had had in his entire previous life. How could he not have fun? The next day, though, he was tired and very clingy: he wanted mom, and no one else. I think after the party, not to mention several days of Nana putting him to bed and giving him baths, he was missing his usual routine.

Change #3: Our cutie outgrew his infant car seat and graduated to a convertible car seat.

For non-baby-owners, the seat is convertible because it can switch from rear-facing to forward-facing as the child grows. He will probably be in this seat for the next three or four years. No longer can I take him out of the car, seat and all: this seat stays in the car. I'll miss the convenience, especially when he falls asleep in the car, but it's probably just as well: lifting him in his (very heavy) infant seat was becoming increasingly difficult and my back was not happy.

Finally, the biggest of all, change #4: Today our cutie started day care. He will go two days a week, partly so I can have some life to myself, partly so that he can learn to play with other kids. This is a biggie. I had a very hard time dropping him off this morning. He, of course, barely noticed me leaving--he was too busy playing. I worry that he'll miss me, that the other kids will scare him, that he won't eat or nap, that he'll cry all day. Probably none of these thing will happen, or at least, not where he is :-). I, on the other hand, have been tiptoeing around the house as if he were in his room napping and then feeling sad when I realize he's not in the house at all. This is going to take some serious getting used to.

I feel like last week I had a baby and this week I have a little boy. I miss him already!

The 52nd President of the United States

2010-08-11T13:29:00.000-07:00

So, our cutie learned to crawl two weeks ago, and this is his parents' measured response:

Yes, we have fenced in the entire living room.

It's rather hilarious, and makes me think of those historic Presidential houses, like, say FDR's childhood home in upstate New York. All the furniture is set up the way it was when the President lived there, but the room is fenced off so you can't actually go in. You can only view the glasses on the side table or the rattle on the floor from a distance. We're just preparing our cutie now for his future life as a VIP.

(Of course, those historic homes are never in ordinary suburban settings like ours, but I'm sure that's just a zoning issue we could easily take care of, once our cutie is actually the Leader of the Free World. Assuming, of course, that there is still a free world or that it has an American leader in 2062.)

I realize as a babyproofing solution, this will work only until our cutie figures out how to climb onto the couch, but I figure we've got a few weeks before that happens.

Personality

2010-06-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

So, prior to having a baby, I had been told that you can see babies' personalities pretty early on. Not just if they're fussy or cheerful, but also how they sort of approach the world. Which kind of makes you think how much influence you, as a parent, have on them. I mean, as a daughter, I definitely know there are ways I see the world that are influenced by my parents, but maybe I was also inclined in those directions at birth. Who knows?

Anyway, I can definitely see glimmers of our cutie's personality. He is a very good-natured baby. I say this even though, for the past month, he has been getting up at 4:30 am every morning. For the day. When we finally stagger into his room at 6:00 am, he looks at us as if to say, "Where have you been??? The day is getting away from us!"

He's stoic. Every day I give him liquid vitamins fortified with iron, which taste awful. Like grape-flavored blood. Nasty. The first few times he cried and squirmed, trying to get away. Now he just opens his mouth and gets it over with. It makes me ashamed of the way cough syrup makes me gag.

He rocks to music. Seriously, he'll be sitting there on the living room floor, and if you start singing to him, or put on a CD with a nice bouncy beat, he'll start rocking back in forth, generally in time to the music. He does this when we sing songs in Mandarin class, and during music class as well. Usually he also grins. It is insanely cute.

He's very inquisitive. He looks at everything. I call him Linda Blair because when I am holding him, he is constantly whipping his head around to look at whatever's caught his interest--and he can get it pretty close to 180 degrees around. He has never looked at me when I am carrying him. *I* am a known quantity.

The looking-at-everything also includes things in his hands. This has really struck me, because of course as a new parent, you are warned that babies stick everything in their mouths. It's their way of exploring the world--grab something, put it in their mouths. And our cutie does put things in his mouth, but only after he has looked at them for a long time, turned them this way and that, passed them back and forth between his hands, and banged them on the floor. Then, he might--not always--put them in his mouth. Actually, he usually has to have seen something a few times before he'll deign to chew on it. This is very comforting to me as his mother.

He will sit by himself and play for quite a while. Last week he even started amusing himself to the point of laughing. By himself.

All of which leads me to think he is destined to be a scientist who spends a lot of time alone in a lab with the music blasting :-).

Moms, how much of your babies' personalities remained unchanged as they grew up?

Denim

2010-06-03T16:01:00.001-07:00

Check out our adorable cutie in the sweater I knit him! I am so proud of this little sweater; I knit it out of denim yarn, which shrinks in length but not width when washed and dried. This meant I had to do some math and knit it longer than I wanted it to end up, which was especially challenging in the yoke, since this is a raglan sweater (ie, one with diagonal sleeve seams, not a sweater made of rectangles).

Before and after pics:

Before washing: length 15"

After washing: length 13"

It really couldn't have turned out any better, if I do say so myself. I love it!

I think I might be sick

2010-04-23T12:45:00.000-07:00

So this morning, our cutie fell off the couch.

We were getting ready for our walk with a neighbor. I put his coat on, and sat him down on the couch, then turned to get my coat. I heard a huge thud, and when I turned around, he was no longer on the couch. He must have rolled forward and somersaulted off. I thought there was plenty of room between him and the edge. I was wrong.

I was so freaked out that I cannot tell you if he was on the (thankfully, carpeted) floor face up or face down. He did start crying, though, hard. By the time I called the doctor's office, waited on hold, then spoke to the nurse, he had calmed down--a good sign, she said. She gave me a list of things to watch for, but based on my answers to the questions she asked, she did not sound terribly concerned.

Now, a couple hours later, he seems totally fine, and has probably forgotten the whole thing. I am still shaking. My heart is still racing. Very, very freaked out. It might take me days to recover.

Easter

2010-04-07T13:42:00.001-07:00

Easter in our family is an excuse to eat. My sweetie and I are atheists, but he has many fond memories of his large extended Italian family gathering on Easter to consume vast quantities of food, so we are continuing the tradition in our house. I even made his Nana's Easter Pie:

Easter Pie is a wonder: dense as a brick, but so addictive that you will eat a second piece and immediately regret it. It is a pie crust wrapped around Swiss cheese, Italian sausage, ham and hard boiled eggs, then washed with a sugar-and-egg glaze. The sugar glaze makes the pie: it's what convinces you that second piece is a good idea.

The recipe I got from my sweetie's Nana (via his aunt) was just what you would expect from a 93-year-old woman who's been making it for decades. It started out "Make a pie crust," instructed me to assemble "some" ham, cheese, and sausage (but specified four hard boiled eggs), then, for the egg wash, suggested beating an egg with some sugar. When I asked whether we were talking a tablespoon of sugar or a half cup of sugar, no further clarification beyond "Nana just tastes it" was forthcoming.

I made it last year: 2 tablespoons was not enough. This year I used 1/4 cup and it was almost--but not quite--right. And oh yeah: the pie weighed 17 lbs going into the oven. It was a monster. Fortunately we had guests to help eat it. Plus we gave leftovers to the teenaged boy next door.

At my sweetie's insistence, we also dyed eggs:

Our cutie was already in bed by the time we created these beauties. But he got to enjoy them the following day:

Hope you had a good Easter!

Ritual

2010-03-14T20:34:00.000-07:00

This morning our family attended a really interesting ceremony. One of the women in our PEPS group is Indian, and it is an Indian tradition to have a ceremony to celebrate a baby's first solid food. It's akin to christening; family and friends gather, a whole lot of food is involved, and there are certain rituals to be followed: the baby starts with sweet rice pudding, then eats little bits of five other foods made especially for the occasion. Then each of the relatives--grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles--takes turns giving the baby a tiny bit of food.

It was really sweet, and the baby was adorable, dressed in a tiny sari with anklets, a headdress and a little tiny ring on her hand. And boy, was she ready for the food! She lunged for the spoon with great enthusiasm :-).

Years ago, I attended a bris, and at the time I thought that it was a really nice to have a ceremony to celebrate your baby's arrival and welcome him into the community. I've never been to a christening, but I would imagine it expresses a similar joy.

When my sweetie and I got married, I asked our officiant what she believed, since she was creating a nonreligious ceremony for us, and she said, "I believe in ritual." She meant that there is something valuable in marking the important events in our lives, and gathering friends and family to make a public celebration. When we were planning the wedding, more than one person wondered why we were bothering to have a wedding, since we weren't religious. Apparently God wants you to spend lots of money on a big party, but without the need to appease him, sensible people would just go to City Hall. Or maybe if you don't believe in God, than there's nothing to celebrate, not even your love. I don't know; this question baffled me each time I heard it. But ultimately, I agree with our officiant: ritual is important.

Some part of me regrets that our cutie will not have any welcoming ceremonies. But he does have godparents, if you can call them "god"parents: my sweetie's brother and his wife. They will take care of our cutie if anything should happen to us. I suppose if they were godparents in the usual sense, they would also promise to raise him in the appropriate faith. We would all stand up in a church and they would swear this. Instead we just called them on the phone and they agreed that we could put their names in our wills.

But, thinking about it now, I realize that, in a way, they are true godparents, because when we considered which of my sweetie's brothers to ask, we chose the one who, like us, is an atheist, and that fact did play a significant role in our choice. I'm not militant about it; I've never in my life attempted to convince someone that God doesn't exist, even though I can't even count how many times people have tried to do the opposite to me (ranging from the combative to the infuriatingly smug "You'll understand the truth when you're ready." Have I ever, ever, said to anyone that should they come down with cancer or something, they'll realize that life is random and God is a lie? Never). But, it's important to me; having a kid has only reminded me how important.

Even if we don't have the rituals to prove it.

Nerves of steel, heart of stone

2010-03-04T16:30:00.001-08:00

The cutie and I are locked in a battle of wills over his naps. He refuses--I mean refuses--to nap longer than 40 minutes. Seriously, I can practically set my clock by him: did he go down at 1:48? He will be up at 2:28. He may be a minute early, but he is rarely a minute late.

I want him to nap longer, not just for my own sanity, but because he needs it. Babies need a lot of sleep in order to learn. Not to mention in order to not be cranky.

He is now five months old; supposedly at four months, babies start figuring out that if they cry, you'll pick them up. Before then, they supposedly do not cry unless there is actually something wrong. How researchers know this, I don't know. But he is certainly crying more determinedly than he used to, and I have noticed that going in briefly to comfort him and then leaving actually now seems to make him cry harder.

So, my effort to make him sleep more and longer, yet not spoil him, calls for nerves of steel and a heart of stone, because that baby will cry for an hour before falling asleep for 40 minutes. This is not a ratio that makes for a happy mommy. Then, after he wakes up, I'll tell him he needs to sleep another 40 minutes at least (his naps should be 1.5 - 2 hours, according to sleep research--and I believe it, because when he gets up after 40 minutes, he's fussy and tired again within an hour), and he will cry for another 30, 40, 50 minutes before I either give up (at this point a solid two+ hours of listening to him cry or waiting for him to wake up and cry, and my nerves are shot) or he finally falls asleep. If he does fall asleep, he'll then sleep for a good hour or more. It's getting past that first 40-minute wake-up that's the trick.

He's still sleeping reasonably well at night, though he's started taking longer to fall asleep after midnight feedings (sometimes he'll lie awake and talk for an hour after feeding, and you can imagine at 2:00 in the morning this does not make me happy. Especially if my sweetie is snoring blissfully beside me), and he's also started trying to wake up for the day at 5:00 am. I feel like pretty much every waking minute of my day is spent trying to get him to sleep a little bit more, and being alternately angry, despairing, frustrated, worried, frantic and just plain exhausted.

I think I'm going to get an ulcer.

On the bright side, I've started reading Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions. What a great book. She expresses so many of the feelings I've had, good and bad, since my cutie was born. Hopefully hers grew up OK, but I don't think I'll research it, just in case.

Camouflage

2010-03-02T09:25:00.001-08:00

Don't ask me why, but I love this picture.

I call it "Baby in the Wild."

The Agony of Defeat

2010-03-01T13:11:00.001-08:00

Alas, I have failed to medal in the Knitting Olympics.

As you can see, I am one thumb short of finishing the main knitting. Less obvious is the fact that there is still attached i-cord trim to do, not to mention the weaving in of ends (oh, how I hate weaving in ends!).

I was slowed not merely by having a baby who requires continual attention (though, thank goodness, no longer constant attention), but also by a special kind of Second Glove Syndrome. Similar to Second Sock or Second Sleeve Syndrome, SGS refers to a reluctance to finish the second one because the first one took the edge off the interest. However, in this special version, as I plowed ahead with the second glove, normal SGS was exacerbated by my absolute inability to read the directions. Instead, I'd assume I already knew what was next, would continue without reading, and find I had misremembered and done it incorrectly, thus requiring frequent ripping back and starting over. I guess you could say I DQ'd due the equipment failure of my brain. It had nothing to do with the pattern, which, I must say, was extremely well written, when I bothered to read it.

Still, I am pretty pleased with the project. Assuming I finish the thumb (which is by no means certain, since it's in the 50s today, other projects are clamoring for my time, and as these past two weeks have demonstrated, I do not have a great deal of uninterrupted knitting time to spend and so the urge to move onto something I might use in our current spring weather is strong), these will be the best-fitting pair of gloves I've ever owned. They fit like, well, gloves :-). I have to say that I cannot say that about anything else I have knitted. The sweaters I've done fit me fine, but in general no better or worse than store-bought sweaters. These gloves, though, are tailored perfectly to fit my wide, stubby hands, even down to this:

I knitted in a bulge for my rings :-).

Two annoying facts

2010-02-19T15:45:00.000-08:00

Fact #1: Even though the Olympics are taking place in Vancouver, in the Pacific time zone, NBC is still showing them on TV on the West Coast on a tape delay. This means that even though the ice skating takes place at a perfectly reasonable hour, if you are not lucky enough to be sitting in the arena in Vancouver, it's still not starting for you until after 10 pm, even if you're a mere 130 miles away in Seattle.

Fact #2: It is a VERY BAD idea to stay up until midnight watching ice skating on tape delay when you have a baby that you know will be waking up between 12:30 and 1:30 (aka, ten minutes after you go to bed), because this means that you are guaranteed to be up until 1:30 or even later. Since the baby will be up again at 4:00 to feed, and wakes up for the day at about 7:00 am, this means you are screwed.

I do appreciate that covering the Olympics is probably a logistical nightmare, but it pissed me off four years ago when I simply had to go to work the next morning, and it REALLY pisses me off now, when I have to be awake enough to keep a baby alive and not screaming, that they deliberately show ice skating so late that you have to stay up past midnight. It's not a live sports event overrun, it's planned that way. It pisses me off. And yes, I will be voting with my remote, because man, I feel like crap.

The feel of cotton

2010-02-17T09:06:00.000-08:00

Today is my sweetie and my second wedding anniversary. It's certainly been a busy two years!

I have to admit, I was a little worried what having a baby would do to our relationship, but I was wrong. Having our cutie has only brought us closer together. We both love having him in our lives so much, and sharing the pleasure with each other is wonderful.

Of course, I am sure once our cutie is a little bigger and we need to start making more serious decisions, we will have more disagreements, but for now, we are basking in the glow.

I want to take this occasion to say: I love being married to this man. There isn't a single moment that I wish I were still single. Sometimes he drives me crazy, sometimes I wish I could have a little time to myself, but I wouldn't go back to my old single life even if I had the choice. I'm really surprised by this. In my twenties, I did not want to get married. I did not want to have to compromise or accommodate anyone else. I wanted to be gloriously selfish and not let anyone make any claims on me.

But the funny thing is, even though I do compromise and accommodate my sweetie, even though he makes claims on me every day, I don't feel like I spend any energy on it. It's nearly effortless. Or maybe natural is a better word--so natural I don't notice it. On more than one occasion, I have thought that I don't do enough, that I let my sweetie take care of me too much, until he turns to me and says, "You're so good to me. You do so much."

I think marriage is sort of a balance between two impulses: the urge to give up and let the other person take care of you, and the urge to be the best person you can be so that he never thinks any less of you than he did the day you were married. So far I think we are striking a pretty good balance.

Happy anniversary, sweetie. I am sorry you are too sick to go out, but I'll make soup and grilled cheese sandwiches :-).

Linen stitch

2010-02-16T13:00:00.001-08:00

I am currently obsessed with linen stitch.

What I love about linen stitch is that it makes handpainted yarn sing. Alas, this photo does not do justice to the lovely contrast of colors linen stitch creates. I have sort of a love/hate relationship with handpainted yarn. I frequently fall in love with a yarn in the skein, but once I knit it up, I am bitterly disappointed. Either the yarn pools, creating uneven blotches of color throughout, or, even worse, it doesn't pool, resulting in little scattered strips of colors, which all run together into a muddy mess. It's like visual static. It's like an impressionist painting, and I do not mean that as a compliment.

Linen stitch, though, creates stitch-by-stitch contrast between colors, and looks particularly good in a skein with highly diverse colors, like this one, which is hot pink, olive green, and chocolate brown. For some reason, this does not result in visual static, but rather imposes a certain order on the chaos, allowing the colors to shine. I discovered this in a sock I was knitting while pregnant (have not yet knitted the second sock), am currently knitting a sweater of my own design using linen stitch, and now, of course, am knitting Bobbie, a pair of gloves entirely in linen stitch.

That makes three WIPs in linen stitch. But the gloves will certainly be done (deadline: the dousing of the Olympic torch), and I am dying to get back to that sweater: it's the first one I am designing myself, and I am loving how it's looking so far, thanks to the power of linen stitch.

Knitting Olympics

2010-02-11T10:22:00.000-08:00

I am knitting like a fiend right now. So much so that I have not had time to take pictures and post. And anyway, how interested are you really in my knitting? :-)

This is a quick post to keep myself somewhat honest: I am going to be participating in the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics. I don't know why: I'm not really a joiner, and I have a four-month-old baby who cuts into my knitting time. Not to mention that I am halfway through a sweater that I really want to finish, but will likely put on hold for the Knitting Olympics.

I guess I just like the Harlot, I like the winter Olympics (way more than the summer Olympics, which I can honestly take or leave), and I do need a new pair of gloves.

Oh yeah, I'm knitting gloves. Bobbie, to be precise. According to the rules, this project needs to be a challenge to complete in the 17 days of the Olympics. I figure this qualifies: I have never knit gloves before (the fingers intimidate me); these gloves are knit in sock yarn (small needles, lots of stitches), entirely in linen stitch (which I love but which will make them extra fiddly) and have attached i-cord trim. I've never done attached i-cord before.

Also, see above re: baby.

To make this project extra fun, I do not yet have the yarn for it, and the opening ceremonies are tomorrow night. Happily, Madrona is going on right now, in Tacoma, a mere 45 minutes away (according to Google Maps). I have never been to any sort of fiber or knitting event before, so even though I am not taking any of the classes, I will pack up the baby tomorrow, before the ceremonies, visit the marketplace, and buy myself yarn for gloves. Hopefully I will be able to restrain myself from buying yarn for any other purpose, real or imagined, but I have my doubts.

How did they know?

2010-01-30T16:10:00.001-08:00

Thursday was my 40th birthday. It was kind of an odd birthday, considering it was a big one: I went out for lunch with my oldest friend (as in, we've known each other since we were 4), but did not do anything big and fancy.

This was partly because my sweetie was out of town this week, on business in Tampa. It just so happens that his brother, sister-in-law, and nephews live in Tampa, and his parents have a winter condo there (to be nearer the grandkids, of course), so while he was there on business, he got to see his family, too. It worked out nicely, except that my sweetie felt bad to be missing my big birthday.

My in-laws sent me a very nice little flower arrangement, but as they were taking my sweetie to the airport on Friday, he happened to mention that it was my 40th birthday. My in-laws were appalled. They had not realized it was a BIG birthday. They felt a simple flower arrangement was not enough. They insisted on stopping and buying me another gift for my sweetie to take home with him.

Here it is:
That, my friends, is a waxed paper bag filled with a 1/2 pound of deep fried bacon.

My in-laws may win me over yet :-).

Say cheese, Part II

2010-01-29T15:16:00.000-08:00

For Christmas, my sweetie bought me a gift certificate to Cook's World, a place here in Seattle that has cooking classes. I was really excited to receive this (although a couple people at my sweetie's office were offended on my behalf, even after he explained that I like to cook), especially once I saw that they offer a cheesemaking class.

Last Saturday was the first of two classes, where we learned how to make soft cheeses. I promptly came home and tried out the recipe for cream cheese.

Here is the cheese after I've cultured the cream and let it sit for a day. I've just put it in the cheesecloth, where it's supposed to drain for 12-14 hours.

Next, you hang it in the refrigerator for 36-48 hours:

Here is the finished cheese, spread on an English muffin:

It is pretty darned tasty cheese, though I suspect the second batch that I have hanging in the fridge will be even better, as I let the cream culture longer.

Tomorrow is the second class, where we will learn how to make hard cheeses. I'm most excited for this part, although I fear it will have less practical application, since hard cheeses require rather larger investments in ingredients, equipment, and time.

Yes, I am mildly obsessed with cheese.

Where do I go from here?

2010-01-20T21:45:00.000-08:00

I applied for a job today. No, I don't really want to go back to work just yet. Our cutie isn't even four months old, and my plan was six months to a year at home. But....I started freaking out about money. Not that my sweetie doesn't make a perfectly respectable salary, one that probably millions of people in this country could live on with no trouble whatsoever, but I am embarrassed to admit that, after years of living as carefree single people in New York City, we no longer know how to live on a budget. It doesn't help that my new unemployment coincidentally coincided with large medical bills (hey, did you know it costs $25,000 to have a baby these days? Good thing we have health insurance. Too bad it didn't cover 100%, but I can't really complain; it was pretty darned good), a trip to New York, and Christmas. So I looked at our hemmorhaging bank account and freaked out. I am very conservative when it comes to money; I like a healthy cushion, and our cushion is shrinking much too fast.

I am wildly conflicted about the whole thing. When I first moved to Seattle, I immediately found a job, even though my sweetie encouraged me to take my time and decide what I wanted to do. But I found I was very uncomfortable sitting at home, not earning my keep, as it were. I am happy to say I am not feeling that same discomfort now: I do understand the value of staying at home and taking care of our cutie. There are times when it is really, really boring (I love my son, but I can only coo at him or squeak the squeaky toy for so long before the fun pales), but overall I just love spending the day with him and watching him change in small ways almost every day.

I don't want a job. Or, more accurately, what I want is income without having to put my son in day care. Because, you know, day care costs a lot of money, which sort of takes a big bite out of the whole purpose of having a job. Not to mention some stranger will be holding (or worse, not holding) my cutie when he cries. I don't give him my undivided attention every waking minute, but I do give him a lot of undivided attention, and I just can't believe he'd get that in a day care.

I believe I've mentioned that I hate job hunting more than anything else. Nevertheless, I've started hunting. I am going to try do it in a very casual manner, applying only for jobs that I think look really interesting. I am not going to get too invested and I am not going to torture myself. That way when I can't get an interview to save my life, I will be able to smile and say it means I get another day or week or month at home with my cutie.

Happy new year

2010-01-02T20:13:00.001-08:00

Happy new year! 2009 was certainly another interesting year for us, and our cutie promises to keep us on our toes in 2010 as well. Here he is doing his new favorite thing, grabbing his feet:

Looking at this picture, I am reminded of something a friend once said to me, when his daughter was tiny: that having a baby, and watching him/her grow and discover the world, is full of little moments and achievements which are utterly riveting to you, and totally boring to everyone else. So: he grabs his feet, now. Isn't that cute????

Here is our cutie during "tummy time," which he generally hates. It makes sense, since tummy time is suppose to be good for him. Even babies don't like doing what's good for them! Anyway, this week he discovered how to get out of tummy time: roll over. Not only will you then be on your back, but your parents will be so thrilled and proud they won't put you back on your tummy for several hours.

Today

2009-12-27T17:20:00.000-08:00

Our cutie laughed. Seriously, he laughed. Haha--haha. Like that. My sweetie had said he'd heard him laugh the other day, but he wasn't sure if it really was a laugh, but today we both heard it, several times in a row. While his was grinning from ear to ear. He used to squeal in this mood; today he laughed. It was pretty exciting!

The line between fiction and reality

2009-12-26T20:27:00.001-08:00

As I've mentioned, I've been reading a fair bit lately, more than I have in a long time. This is because there are several periods a day when I have to sit in a chair and feed the baby, and the only thing to do during these times is read (well, or nod off, if it's a 2:00 am feeding!). At the moment, I am on a sci-fi kick: I am alternately rereading Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series and reading Orson Scott Card's Ender series for the first time. I think the latter is more serious in its themes, but the former is a damned good read.

Anyway, as a result, I am spending more time with books, particularly fiction, than I have in a long time, and since I am not working, the only person I talk to regularly is my sweetie. This has resulted in the characters I read about being rather more real to me than they might otherwise be. To the point where I start to think about their lives outside of what's written in the books.

For example:
Do you think Anne Blythe (nee Shirley) breastfed her six kids? I think she must have, but do you think she had trouble with it? Did Gilbert, as a doctor, have advice for her, or did he stay out of the way?

Or:

I wonder if Miles Vorkosigan, in addition to his well documented medical problems, also had cradle cap?

Yeah: I need to get out more, in more ways than one....

Holiday baking

2009-12-22T08:34:00.001-08:00

Every year I bake cookies for presents for our neighbors. This year, as my overly social husband continues to make friends, that means 14 houses. In the year I have a baby and can't bake like a factory. SIGH.

Normally I bake four kinds of cookies. I did actually bake four kinds this year, too, but two of them were disasters. OK, one was a disaster (ironically, the only one I'd made before) and one was just so utterly boring I didn't think it was gift-worthy. So, it's just two kinds this year :-).

On the left are Maida Heatter's Gingerful Biscotti, from her Brand-New Book of Great Cookies ((c) 1995--so, out of print and no longer brand-new), later reprinted in Maida Heatter's Cookies ((c) 1997 and also now out of print). These are delicious, the big winners this year, easy to make and definitely worth making again. That's saying a lot, because I have thousands of cookie recipes in my house (so not exaggerating there), and not many get made more than once, since I'm always looking for something new.

On the right are what ended up being my version of a Sno Ball, a snack I occasionally crave even though I fully acknowledge they are plastic and gross. My version is a bittersweet brownie base (I took the recipe from Alice Medrich's Cookies and Brownies, but any reasonably dark, sturdy (not cakey) brownie will do), baked a bit thinner than called for in the recipe, topped with the toasted coconut marshmallows from this month's Cooking Light. These are pretty tasty, though I didn't sample them extensively since I barely have enough to cover the 14 houses. Making marshmallows from scratch, something I've wanted to try for several years now, is reasonably easy but has a lot of steps; I don't know that I'll do it again. Maybe as a treat for my son when he's old enough to love hot cocoa.

Speaking of cooking light, these aren't bad: only the brownies have any butter in them. The marshmallows have coconut, and the biscotti have eggs and almonds, but overall these are way down on the fat scale for me. I laid in two pounds of butter for this cookie bake off and barely made a dent in the first pound.

Sleep

2009-12-15T16:19:00.001-08:00

We are in the midst of a sleep experiment.

This is our cutie a week ago, after he had his first shots. Three shots, in the thighs, and he slept for 7 hours in the afternoon, like a log. He continued to sleep through the night, much more than usual the next day, and then everything started to fall apart.

Thursday night, he slept poorly, Friday night and Saturday nights not at all, but slept like log Saturday during the day. Very frustrating. By Sunday morning we were at our wits' end, and decided it was time to try Crying It Out.

Much controversy surrounds crying it out, and the younger you do it, the more controversy is involved. But none of us was sleeping (though our cutie slept Saturday day, he did not sleep Sunday during the day: one day of sleep out of five days and nights does not a healthy sleep habit make), so we had to take some action.

All the sleep books direct you to put the baby to bed drowsy, but awake. We had not been doing this: we would rock the baby to sleep, then put him in the crib. So the first step was to stop doing this.

After putting the baby down drowsy but awake, sleep books diverge, based on their philosophy towards Crying It Out. Some books tell you that letting your baby cry it out will teach him that he can't trust you, that there's no point in crying if he's hungry or hurt, because no one will answer. They tell you that he'll be needy and anxious his whole life because he won't be sure of his parents' love.

Other books tell you that babies need to learn to soothe themselves, and that will involve some crying. If they don't learn how to do it, they will be lousy sleepers their whole lives. My sweetie's cousin, at 25, is still a lousy sleeper, and she blames her mother for always rocking her to sleep. Her two younger siblings were allowed to cry, and they can sleep through a tornado.

(As a side note--do you detect a theme? Anything you do will affect your child for the rest of his life. No pressure.)

Anyway, we chose to let him cry, going in after a certain amount of time to reassure him that we were still there, and he was not alone. The first night, after some struggle (boy, is it hard to listen to him cry!), he fell asleep and slept--no joke--for eight hours. Last night he did it again. And, since good night sleep promotes daytime naps and vice versa (yes, sleep begets sleep--don't ask me why), he has been starting to take longer naps during the day.

Well. I hate to think he thinks I can't be trusted and that I don't love him, but I sure am glad that he (and we) are getting real sleep at last. Fingers crossed that the trend continues!

Home in one piece

2009-12-06T22:04:00.000-08:00

We took our cutie on his first cross-country plane ride for Thanksgiving. My sweetie's family lives on Long Island, NY, so we took a trip to visit and introduce the cutie to his great-grandmother, great-aunts and -uncles, regular aunt and uncle, first cousins once removed, and second cousins. And, of course, the grandparents, whom he's met before.

It was not a bad trip. Our cutie was very good on the plane ride east (a red-eye); for the most part, he slept. It was harder on us, because you can't sleep while holding a baby: you might drop him. And our arms got very tired. I thought that at home he never lets me put him down, but apparently I do get a break every now and then, because even sharing the duty with my sweetie on the six-hour flight, my arms were tired. Or maybe it was the combination of holding him and being jammed into a cramped window seat on a very HOT plane.

During the visit (12 days long!), the cutie charmed everyone with constant cooing and smiling. Everyone agreed that he was the smartest, most advanced baby ever. While my rational mind takes this with a grain of salt, my mama mind is very proud. We also discovered, via a trip to a pediatrician (it turned out to be a blocked tear duct--nothing serious), that our cutie now weighs 12 lbs.

This is noteworthy because that visit to the Long Island doctor occurred on November 23, a mere 21 days after his one month appointment with his Seattle doctor. This means that in 21 days, he gained 1 lb, 10 oz. I'm kind of terrified to hear what he weighs at his two month appointment this week!

Despite the trip to the doctor, our cutie made it through with flying colors. I had been so nervous about exposing him to germs on the plane and among the relatives that I got an H1N1 vaccine before I left. I do not usually get a flu shot, but he's too young for the vaccine, so my getting it became my sort of talisman against him catching anything. Apparently, it worked: we've been home five days and he's still healthy. I think any sickness he shows now would be home grown.

Mornings

2009-11-17T08:27:00.001-08:00

The cutie has turned me into a morning person.

He has a fairly predictable nighttime schedule (though now that I've said that, he will probably deviate from it tonight): He goes to sleep some time between 10 and 11 pm; wakes up for a feeding around 2-3 am, for a second feeding 5-6 am, and then up for the day 8-9 am.

I used to go back to bed after the 5-6 am feed, to get a couple more precious hours of sleep, but lately I've been finding myself getting up, so that I can take a shower, eat breakfast, surf the web, and have (whispered) conversations with my sweetie that do not focus on the baby and his bodily functions. It's ridiculously luxurious.

I'm not the only one who enjoys my sweetie's company: I am slowly developing the theory that our cutie likes his dad more than me. Yesterday, and last Monday, he cried all afternoon, which at this point is somewhat unusual for him. Then my sweetie came home, and the moment he walked in the door, the baby stopped crying. It's enough to give a mom a complex. SIGH.

Anyway, here are some pics of our cutie, looking ever cuter:

"Let go o' ny liff! Let go o' ny liff!"

The requisite "naked baby" picture--he'd have been fully naked, but he started peeing when I was taking the picture :-)

Definitely smiling! (Note shirt with wishful-thinking printing.)

And finally, a shot of our cutie wearing a one-piece I knit for him, out of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. I'm pretty proud of it, since I made up the pattern myself. The closures on the front and at the crotch are closed with sewn-on snap tape (a first for me, since I think knitting and sewing do not mix well; I did cheat and sew it on by hand: no running the knitting through the sewing machine for me!). And I actually managed to finish it before he was too big for it; quite a feat when you have a baby and cannot knit one-handed.

Of course, I've heard many stories of kids who refuse to wear hand knits. The cool stuff is bought in a store. So I thought I would get in a few hand knits while he is still too young to protest.

Obviously I was wrong about the protesting bit :-).

Quick post while the baby's napping

2009-11-12T17:06:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, he's napping. In his bassinet. He's been doing this for about four days. Each nap lasts about 1/2 an hour, and I treasure every minute of free arms.

Anyway, I've been reading a lot, usually while feeding him, but I've been rereading children's books from my youth. I guess I haven't had a lot of mental energy, and rereading children's books requires very little effort. Plus, you know, I only get to read in ten-minute increments, which is not at all my preferred method of reading, so it's good when I already know what's going to happen. I've reread a number of Anne of Green Gables books (though not ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, which is actually my least favorite of the series), I've reread A LITTLE PRINCESS and THE SECRET GARDEN (finally figured out why I always liked the latter less than the former: it's because I really don't like and don't care about Colin, and his story hijacks the book).

However, this week I read a new book, HOLES, by Louis Sachar, which will probably become a classic children's book itself. I will certainly buy a copy for my son when he's old enough. I really, really liked it. And, I have to say, it made me appreciate anew that children's books are tough to write. I know every celebrity is doing it, but you know what? HOLES is as interesting, well-written, and complex, both stylistically and character-wise, as many adult books. It surprised me. I'm still thinking about it.

Whoops, there he goes; my 1/2 hour is up!

Halloween

2009-11-02T16:14:00.001-08:00

Our cutie's first Halloween was a success:

OK, he didn't care, but we enjoyed ourselves :-).

Today he had his one-month appointment with the doctor. He is now 10 lbs, 6 oz. He also shocked all of us (including the doctor) by rolling over during the appointment. The doctor had him lying on his stomach on the examining table, she was commenting on how strong he is (he can lift his head and hold it up for quite a while), when all of a sudden, he just rolled himself right over onto his back. He may not do it again for a month or two, but we were pretty darned impressed, and convinced we have the smartest, strongest baby ever born :-).

Now if only he would sleep.

One month old

2009-11-01T15:14:00.000-08:00

It's a disgusting mess we come through to be born, the sticky-wet of blood and afterbirth, mother wailing, child crying...the helpless soft spot at the top of its head pulsing, waiting to be kissed. Our parents and teachers say it's a miracle, but it's not. It's going to happen no matter what, there's no choice in the matter. To my mind, a miracle is something that could go one way or another. The fact that something happens, when by all rights it shouldn't, is what makes us take notice, it's what saints are made of, it takes the breath away. How a mother comes to love her child, her caring for this thing that's made her heavy, lopsided and slow, this thing that made her wish she were dead...that's the miracle.
--From The Birth House, by Ami McKay

I haven't finished reading The Birth House, and at the rate I'm going, I probably never will (I started it while I was still pregnant, and I'm on page 25), but this passage struck me really hard while I was waiting...and waiting...and waiting for him to come. It's resonated even more as our cutie hits one month old, and has spent the last week crying all night. Either my sweetie or I has threatened to throw him out the window at least once, if not multiple times, every night for the last week, usually at 2 or 3 in the morning, after he's been crying for hours and refusing to be put down. Yet morning comes and he's still with us, and we still think he's awfully cute and lovable. We're idiots, but that's probably hard-wired, hunh? It's got to be, or I think the human race would have died out long ago. So I guess it's not a miracle: we're slaves to our genetic compulsion to Not Kill the Baby.

By all reports (from friends who are already parents and laugh at our difficulties) it's going to be months yet before this stops. Last night we actually broke down and brought him into our bed with us, but this only worked for a short while; once he woke up, he couldn't be soothed even in bed. I ended up having to sleep with him in the recliner. Forget the bassinet--even if he's put down asleep, within half an hour (usually within ten minutes), he's awake and crying. I can take this during the day, but at night it's really, really trying. We were spoiled by three and a half weeks of relatively good sleep--he'd go down for a couple three- or four-hour blocks per night--so being up all night now is especially difficult in comparison.

I confess I have occasionally thought that the only thing stopping me from giving him up for adoption is that the grandparents already know about him, so it would be difficult to explain.

He's a charmer

2009-10-26T18:07:00.000-07:00

So, I know our cutie is not supposed to be able to smile just yet, but doesn't he look like he is?

Here he is on our daily walk. A nice walk is one of the more reliable ways to keep him from crying. Today it rained a lot, but we took the opportunity of a break in the rain to walk to the local cafe (what Seattlites we are!). He seems to like looking at the passing scenery.

Finally, the other night as I was feeding him at 3:00 am, I realized something.

My son has hair like Linus van Pelt's.

The scale

2009-10-20T15:05:00.001-07:00

I know I am not supposed to be obsessing about it, and I really am not, but yesterday, just out of curiosity, I got on the scale. To my complete astonishment, I have lost at least 35 pounds by having a nearly 10-pound baby. I say "at least" 35 pounds, because I don't actually know what my final pre-birth weight was, since I decided in the last weeks that it was best to live in ignorance.

I'm pretty happy about this, though I want to know why I still can't fit into any of my normal pants. That includes the size 12's I bought way back at the beginning before I gave in and got maternity pants. Heck, even some of the maternity pants I bought early on and eventually had to give up as I got huger are still uncomfortable. My only explanation is that, while I am only about 15 pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight, my body shape has changed considerably. That is: all 15 pounds are in my belly. SIGH. I've got to start going to Pilates again. I never thought I'd say it (because who knew I'd ever have them to miss), but I miss my abs!

Our cutie continues to be cute, which is a good thing because I'm about ready to defenestrate him (hey, I wanted to use the word :-). I thought I was prepared for the sleep deprivation, but I didn't fully appreciate the mental exhaustion involved in listening to constant crying and being unable to stop it. I am newly impressed with stay-at-home moms; I don't know that I will be able to do it. I know working moms are typically called supermoms, but they're total pansies, if this is what they're leaving at home with the nanny.

We did go for a nice walk today, in the lovely autumnal sunshine. He seemed to like that, at least :-).

Maternal myopia

2009-10-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture of our cutie in one of his matching outfits:

OK, I admit it's totally a cheat since it's a one piece, but hey, he's a Houdini when it comes to getting out of socks, so I love the footed one-pieces :-).

This pic does show his current greatest trick: being awake without crying. This is new in the last three days, and we love it. He is also not wearing mitts because I finally got up the courage to cut his fingernails, which were like little needles. No, I did not nick any of his fingers, so I was very proud of myself.

I haven't taken a huge number of pictures of our cutie, because the pictures I've taken have kind of disappointed me. They do not show how cute he is :-). I realized yesterday, though, that part of the problem is that they do not show him the way I see him: that is, at a distance of about 8-10 inches (and through a maternal hormonal fog, but that's another story). When I'm feeding him, or he's lying on my chest or my lap, that's when I think he is about as cute as it is possible to be, and you really can't take that picture. The camera can't get that close and still show his whole face or body. I will have to start experimenting to see what I can do about this. In the meantime, here's a first attempt, a shot of him sleeping on my lap (he does not like to nap in a crib):

Sigh. He's just too cute!

Control freak

2009-10-13T17:17:00.000-07:00

So, since the birth of our cutie, we've had family in town. First, my mom was here, from before he was born, until about five days after, when my sweetie's parents came. They are leaving tomorrow, and my mom will then be back for another week. All in all, we will have had guests/help for the first three weeks of the baby's life.

For the most part, it's been great. I have been recovering pretty well, but like all new parents, we're still pretty sleep-deprived, so having help on hand is really nice. And my mom and mother-in-law cook dinner every night, which is about as great as you might imagine. Both women also vacuumed, cleaned the bathrooms, and generally kept the place looking presentable and not like a baby bomb hit it. All much appreciated.

But I have surprised myself in one area, and that is laundry. Mind you, I hate doing laundry. When I lived by myself, I would build up a truly shocking amount of laundry--a good three or four weeks' worth, then haul it down to my building's laundry room, take up five machines, and wash it all at once, just to get it over with as quickly as possible. In our house, where we have only one machine, I do a load here, a load there, but typically only when absolutely forced to by my husband's lack of underwear (I never run out of underwear since, after all, I have three or four weeks' worth :-). Heck, as often as not, my sweetie will do the laundry in order to have clean underwear.

With a baby, there is a lot of laundry to be done. He is 12 days old today, and I'd say we've already done at least three loads of purely baby laundry. Plus plenty of parental spit/pooed/peed-on laundry.

Laundry is something I am not allowed to do--the machines are downstairs, and I am forbidden to use the stairs, both by my mother, who says Chinese tradition dictates I am not use stairs or do anything for a month, and by my doctor, who says I can climb stairs but not while carrying anything. I hate doing laundry, and my mom and mother-in-law have been doing it for me. And what do you know? I've completely surprised myself by hating allowing other people to do my laundry. Of all things, this would not be the one I would have expected. I am somewhat territorial about my kitchen, and so I would have thought I wouldn't like to be cooked for, but in fact every meal that appears before me with no effort on my part is a thing of beauty, and if things get put back in the wrong place, I don't care. I usually don't like people cleaning my house and moving stuff around, but I don't even bat an eye.

But laundry? I can't stand it. They don't do it right! They use the wrong detergent, or they don't sort it the way I would, or they don't put it back where it belongs, or they lose socks or mitts, or who knows what. It drives me completely crazy. Who'd'a thunk it? I'm a laundry control freak. I actually went downstairs, risking wrath of mom and doctor and sweetie, and did a load today because I didn't want anyone else to do it and it needed to be done.

No one is more surprised by this than me. When I was in college, I used to wonder why all mothers seemed to be clean-obsessed, when not all women are. I thought maybe some weird hormonal thing kicks in, and you just become clean. If I'm scrubbing floors in a month, you'll know: I've gone over the deep end.

True Birth Story

2009-10-06T13:07:00.001-07:00

So, those of you who guessed that blog silence = baby were correct: our adorable son was born on Thursday, October 1, surprising the heck out of me that he didn't wait to be ejected by force, though he still required medical intervention to make his way out.

Here is his True Birth Story:

Somewhere around midnight on Wednesday, I started feeling contractions. I had felt "false" contractions before, but there was something about these that felt different--they were more painful, I guess--so I got up. Around 2:00 I started timing them, and by 4:45 they were coming every 4-5 minutes, lasting anywhere from 45 seconds to 1:20, and had been doing so since about 4:00. They tell you to call once your contractions are 5 minutes apart, 1 minute in duration, and have been so for one hour. So, I jumped the gun a little, and called my doctor's office.

The doctor on call said I could either go to the hospital and have them check me out, and if I wasn't very far along they might send me home or have me walk around a bit before checking me in, or I could wait until the contractions got "more intense" and regular, then come in. By about 5:00, I thought, "Well, gee, they feel pretty intense to me, and I'd rather know what's going on than not" so I woke up my sweetie. He was mighty annoyed I had let him sleep all night! I told him he had time to take a shower and have some breakfast--I even made the coffee (which is my sweetie's favorite part of the story). Then we woke my mom and got on our way to the hospital.

We got there about 6:30 am, and by that time the contractions were really starting to hurt. We got to labor triage, they checked me in, then examined me, and what do you know? I was already dilated to 7-8 cm. The nurse later told my sweetie they were amazed I had walked in under my own power. She asked me if I wanted an epidural and I screamed, "Yes!"

It took maybe another 45 minutes before I got the epidural, and they were not the proudest minutes of my life, even if they were maybe the longest. I can only say, wow, those contractions hurt. I really started to panic a little, thinking there was no way I could do this, it was way too painful. But they finally got the needle in, and let me tell you, the difference was amazing. I couldn't feel the contractions at all, yet I could still feel my body. It's some kind of weird voodoo. Creepy.

Since I was already at 7-8 cm, everyone thought the delivery would be quick, but we pretty much just stalled after that. The baby was in the wrong position (sunny-side up), and the usual things they do to try to get him to turn were not working because every time I changed position his heart rate decelerated. They gave me some pitocin to try to make the contractions more productive, but they could only increase the dose so much before his heart rate objected. He was a very particular baby!

Finally about 5:00 pm or so, they decided I needed a c-section, so off we went. Our son was born at 5:23 pm, weighed 9 pounds, 6.5 ounces, and measured 21 inches. It turns out when they opened me up, they saw that in addition to being the wrong way up, he was trying to come out the wrong way (over my pubic bone instead of under), so there was no way I could have pushed him out on my own. As my sweetie said, "You can tell he's my kid: always going the wrong way."

The weirdest thing about the whole experience for me was that I was incredibly sleepy all day--maybe because I had been up all night the night before, maybe because of the drugs they gave me, but during labor, I would doze off between contractions, and during the c-section I could not stay awake to save my life. I was dimly aware of things going on, I could feel them doing things to my body (no pain, but I could definitely feel pressure and movement), and I heard the baby's first cries and heard everyone saying how big he was and how cute he was, but I could not wake up. For this picture, I forced my eyes open, but I cannot say I really saw him:

I feel a little sad that I essentially slept through my son's birth, but the days since have been sufficiently intense that I don't feel I missed too much :-).

Here he is in the bassinet in our hospital room the next day (they no longer take the baby from you unless you specifically ask them to--more on that in a later post, maybe).

And at home:

I am SO HAPPY to not be pregnant any more! And I love having my cutie in my life, even though he has been quite a handful so far. But he is amazingly cute, even though, whatever anyone says, he doesn't look like either my sweetie or me. Recovery from the c-section has so far been painful but not problematic, and since I never got to push since he never descended that far, recovery "down there" has been pretty much unnecessary. We've already had our first pediatrician appointment and have been told that we are successfully not killing him, so we feel pretty proud. Only a couple decades to go!

+ 4 Days (5 Days)

2009-09-30T14:34:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe the list yesterday helped, but I am feeling better today. Either that, or it's because I slept until 9:45 this morning (10+ hours of sleep...mmmmmmm :-).

I've sort of resigned myself to the idea that this baby isn't coming until modern medicine intervenes on Sunday. This has freed me up to run errands, work on curtains (2nd panel done; two to go), knit (the Ribby Cardi is one sleeve, front bands, and a collar from being done) and generally ignore the fact that I am pregnant, as much as I can. Everyone keeps telling me not to wander too far from home, just in case, but I figure if the baby's not coming 'til Sunday, I have nothing to worry about.

Yesterday was cold--and I discovered that I cannot zip my jacket any more. This was a shock to me, as I believe as little as two weeks ago I managed to zip it, and now it is too small by a lot--at least two inches. This kid is going to be huge. My maternity clothes are starting to be too short to cover my belly. I told him that if he doesn't come out soon, we are both going to freeze to death, because I am NOT buying a new coat!

+ 3 Days (6 Days)

2009-09-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

You know, I'm kind of amazed that we don't regularly hear stories on the news of very pregnant women going on killing sprees or stabbing themselves in the stomach with butcher knives just to have it over with. I'm not there, but I can kind of see how you could get there, if you were just a leeeeeettle more psychotic. Out of the millions of women pregnant on any given day, I'm amazed it doesn't happen.

I'm not joking.

So, I decided I better make a list of good things about this pregnancy, just as a reminder. In no particular order, consider this my List of Reasons Not to Be Mad at the Baby:

I threw up only once in the entire nine months, and I believe that was actually food-related, not pregnancy-related.
I have had various aches and pains, but no excruciating constant back, hip or leg pain.
I have not been confined to bed rest for any period of time.
My hands and feet have swollen, but not to the point where I can't wear my shoes or have debilitating carpal tunnel syndrome.
Though I get up during the night four or five times, generally I do not have trouble getting back to sleep.
I don't have gestational diabetes, despite having eaten (and continuing to eat) way more sweets than is good for me.
Despite being really old (39), I had no trouble getting pregnant, and the pregnancy has been pretty complication-free (one trip to the emergency room notwithstanding).
I do not have any stretch marks (knock wood).
My belly button is still an innie.
The baby has been really good: he moves around, he looks healthy, he grows predictably, and he has generally never given me reason to worry. Even the trip to emergency room was about me; once we got a look at him, it was clear he continued to be happy as a clam. So happy, I guess, that he sees no reason to change things.

There, see? Maternal serenity achieved, even if only for about ten minutes.

+ 2 Days (7 Days)

2009-09-28T17:32:00.000-07:00

So, in an effort to keep from being angry with my son before he is even born, today I spent a few hours making a curtain for his room. The baby's room has some plain curtains in it, but we've been wanting to have some cute curtains instead. Cute curtains are hard to find--if you look for kids' curtains, mostly what you'll find is either licensed character stuff (Disney et al.) or just valances. I think valances are dumb.

So, I thought I would make some, but cute fabric is also tough to find, as much of it is pastel or flannel or just way too cutesy (which is not the same as cute!). But today, armed with a single item 50% off coupon, I went into Jo-Ann's and found some stuff I liked, and which I think my sweetie will like (we have, in this as in everything, very different tastes).

I also bought some blackout lining fabric so that the curtains will keep the room nice and dark. My sweetie thinks this will help the baby sleep; I have my doubts.

The baby's room has two windows, and therefore will need four panels. I managed to make one panel today before my needle broke; now I need to go back to Jo-Ann's and buy a needle. I was kind of amazed that the one panel took several hours to construct, but I was being unusually meticulous, as I wanted the blackout liner to hang well. It looks pretty nice, if I do say so myself.

My sweetie has accused me of nesting. I am not so sure. If I have the baby tonight or tomorrow, I will concede that maybe I was nesting. Otherwise, I was just really bored.

+ 1 Day (8 Days)

2009-09-27T00:30:00.000-07:00

In "The Story of Rowsby Woof and the Fairy Wogdog," a tale-within-a-tale in one of my favorite books, Watership Down, Rowsby Woof says to El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle, "Dirty little beasts!...Get out--out! Out--out!"

That's how I'm feeling right now.

Every time the kid kicks me, I think, "Stop kicking me and get the hell out!" Every time I get a pain or a cramp or a gas bubble, I think, "If it isn't a contraction, then don't bother me!"

I realize he is technically only one day (OK, 30 minutes) late, and I realize (hope!) that once he gets here, it won't matter a whit that he was late, but right now, this minute, I am feeling really angry and resentful.

I'm tired of being nothing but an incubator. No one is interested in me for any other reason, and that includes myself. Various people check in every few days to find out if the baby has come, as if we would somehow forget to mention it. My mother arrived on Friday, and as I feared, we have spent the last day and a half sitting around staring at each other, bored out of our skulls, waiting. People make jokes about giant babies and tell me stories about women they know who were weeks late, and I grin and say it could be worse, and inside I think, "I am going to the f--king hospital and having this thing cut out of me if it's the last thing I f--king do." I've heard all kinds of theories on what might bring on labor, none of which have any real proof behind them, and I am wondering if simple seething rage will have sufficient psychosomatic effect to get it moving.

Maybe that's the secret: labor is really just a giant temper tantrum where you are finally fed up enough that you eject the baby out of pure fury. I suspect I am going to be one of those women who spends the entire experience cursing.

2 Days (11 Days)

2009-09-24T11:22:00.000-07:00

Well, I did try some spicy Indian food last night, but all it did was make the baby jump around a lot. SIGH.

Saw the doctor this morning. She says I am further along than last week, but still not about to pop. She said she cannot strip my membranes because my cervix is still too far back. But the baby does appear to be in the correct position for birth (his back to my front).

But the basic upshot is, I can't have the baby without contractions, so until I have them, we're just waiting around. Going nuts.

On the bright side, she's put me on the schedule to be induced. She can't induce me until I am one week past my due date, which will be October 3. So on Sunday, October 4, if I still haven't had the baby, she'll give me a ripening agent (softens the cervix) which, given where I am now, she thinks will be enough to bring on labor. If not, then on Monday, October 5, she'll induce me.

So, either way, this will be over in 11 days. Maybe I should change my count, 'cause there is no way this baby is coming without encouragement. Just what we need in this family, another procrastinator.

Rituals to make the baby come

2009-09-23T09:31:00.001-07:00

Since jumping up and down for several hours a day does not seem to be working, I am trying other methods for moving this baby along:

I've packed a hospital bag, and put it next to the door. Yeah, I don't think this is going to be very effective, so I've also done this:

This is Chic Knits' Ribby Cardi, and I am already 12 inches into the body (started Sunday night). I have calmly informed the kid that I fully intend to finish the sweater before he shows up.

I am knitting it for myself, which I acknowledge is a bad idea, since I have no idea what size I am going to be, but there you are. It also calls for putting in a zipper, which intimidates me. Plus, I am using yarn from a neighbor's destash (ie, she was getting rid of yarn; I acquired sufficient yarn from this that I had to buy a whole new bin to house it), and am not positive I have enough. With all these roadblocks, finishing the sweater before the baby comes is going to be a challenge, but I am going to do it. Unless he himself decides to thwart me, of course (hint, hint!).

My sweetie has done me one better: he's bought a kayak (read: he's invested a lot of money in making the baby come), and we're supposed to pick it up tonight. If this doesn't make the baby come today, he is just hopelessly stubborn.

Finally, on a totally unrelated note, a picture for my friend Shirley:

The neighbor's kid put up a homemade bird feeder made from a milk carton. This was about fifteen minutes later.

4 Days

2009-09-22T05:02:00.000-07:00

It's 5:00 am, and I've been awake since 3:30. This is because when I got up at 3:30 to go pee, it was the fourth time I had gotten up tonight, and I couldn't go back to sleep. My shoulder hurt from sleeping on my side for who knows how many months (I am naturally a stomach sleeper. You side sleepers--what the hell do you do with your shoulders when sleeping on your sides? My shoulder always curls under, which makes it hurt), so I couldn't get comfortable, and in 20 minutes I needed to pee again, so I just gave up.

Not to get all political, but as I've gone through this pregnancy, I've really wondered how anyone could experience the process and still believe in intelligent design. Design, OK, maybe, but intelligent design? No freaking way.

9 Days

2009-09-17T09:59:00.000-07:00

Went to the doctor this morning, and had the following conversation:

Me: I was going to tell you I haven't felt him very much in the last day or so, but then on the way here I felt him, so I am less worried.
Dr: You won't feel him as much now, but you should still feel him every day.

Later, while she's using the doppler (a sort of sonar device she uses to listen to the baby's heartbeat):

Dr: He has a nice acceleration when he moves.
Me: What does that mean?
Dr: I'm watching him move, and when the baby moves, he should have a slight acceleration in the heartbeat.
Me: (Extremely puzzled expression--we're not using an ultrasound)
Dr: Oh, I can see him moving around [note: from the outside]. Do you not feel that?
Me: No, I don't.
Dr: Well, that's pretty common. At this point your belly is so stretched out that your nerves just kind of give up. You might have to actually use your hands and press down from the outside to feel him move.

So, it's official: my nerves have given up. Did I mention that I call the baby "The Parasite"?

Anyway, I am 2-3 cm dilated, but still have a ways to go on the "thinning" front (which I take to mean effacement). She doesn't give me a number for that, and I haven't asked for one--why torture myself? The baby has still not dropped. He's too busy working a number on my nerves (I think this is only the beginning of that....). She said next week we can start discussing my options if he still looks like he's not going anywhere.

In other news, I actually lost weight this week. I may just manage to stay under 200 lbs. It'll be only a smidge under, but hey, every triumph must be celebrated.

This week is my first week off of work. I've been knitting like a fiend, and not doing much else. I feel a little guilty, because there's still a lot to do around the house, and I've just been sitting around twiddling my thumbs. On the bright side, this baby's going to be late, so I still have time.

Yesterday, instead of cleaning the basement or doing laundry, I baked these, for a neighbor who helped us with a little toilet leak issue we were having:

They are green tea shortbread, and black sesame shortbread. These are the extras I saved for us :-). The ones we gave the neighbor were a little fancier: I spread the bottoms of some of them with white chocolate, and some with dark chocolate, and left others plain. I really, really like the black sesame ones: not too sweet and very sesame-y (if you like sesame). The green tea ones are OK--I think the problem is that I used sweetened matcha (which is what I could find) and so the cookies are a little sweeter than I'd like and you can't really taste the bitterness of the matcha. Next time I will reduce the amount of sugar.

I've also done some knitting for other people's babies:

My third Baby Surprise Jacket. I love this pattern, have I mentioned? Fun, fast, cute. This is for a baby who's about ten months old, but I used Debbie Mumm Traditions yarn, which has a gauge of 4.5 stitches per inch, so the finished jacket is a good size, I think. I used Jemima Puddle-Duck buttons :-).

I hated the yarn, by the way. It's mostly acrylic, and I hate acrylic, but I talked myself into it because the colors, especially this yellow, were beautiful. It's a loosely spun yarn that looks a lot like Noro, but a lot softer. But as soon as I got it on my needles, it had that nasty squeakiness that acrylic yarns have. Hate that. Plus, as I've mentioned before, it threw up a knot in the last row, which just pissed me off. I know, I got through two skeins without a knot, but the inconvenience of that one knot just soured me on the whole thing.

This is a Topaz, for a neighbor who is expecting a daughter one month after me. Knit in a skein of Blue Sky Dyed Cotton (red) I had leftover in my stash, and a bit of Manos del Uruguay Stria (blue) I bought for the purpose. The Stria was not a good match for the Blue Sky--it's a lot thinner, for one thing, which is why I decided to skip the accent on the shoulders--I thought the gauge in Stria would be too far off. I also don't really like the bumpy texture of the Stria, which makes your stitches look kind of uneven. And the fair-isle style border was a pain in the butt. This was my first real try at stranded knitting, and boy, I wasn't very happy with it. It was really hard to get the tension right, and I hated the way the yarns got all tangled up. My dreams of someday making a full-on fair isle sweater have suffered a setback!

Fortunately, since Topaz is knit at gauge of 4 stitches per inch, this little dress took just one day to do. And I think it turned out nicely, despite my frustrations with it.

OK, that's enough updates, at least on knitting, for now. I was thinking this morning, you know how on police procedurals the cops seize the suspect's computer and go through all the files to find evidence? It occurred to me that anyone who did that to my computer would be profoundly bored.

Socks

2009-09-09T20:11:00.000-07:00

So after all the baby knitting, I decided to knit something else:

These are Sunday Swing socks from knitty.com. I knit them out of Pagewood Farm's Denali sock yarn in "Fabulous Fall," on size 2 needles. They were a quick knit, about nine days, on and off, which is what I love about socks. I knit them for my sister-in-law for Christmas, so I am feeling quite proud of myself for getting a jump on Christmas presents in September :-).

Th only mods I made were to make the socks symmetrical instead of identical, because I like them that way. I simply twisted the rib on the cuff for the second sock the other way, then mirror-imaged the stitch pattern. It worked out really nicely, and I think the pattern does indeed show off the handpainted yarn very well. Of course, my sister-in-law lives in Florida, so I don't know that she'll have much use for wool socks, but there you are :-).

I'm thinking of tackling a scarf for another sister-in-law next. Hey, I've got time on my hands right now--I feel sort of restless, like all I am doing is waiting for this baby to arrive, and I can't do much while I am waiting. So.....knitting. I'm also in the middle of a pair of socks for me, but am stalled because I think I need to frog what I've done (about 2/3 of the first sock--I'm past the heel turn) and make a bigger size. I am hesitating only because I know my feet and ankles are swollen, but I don't think they're swollen that much. The decision may have to wait until after the baby's born, drat it. How long does it take your feet to de-swell?

17 Days

2009-09-09T07:50:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all the encouragement, guys! I am avoiding the scale and my sweetie and I are getting ready for the baby. Over the long weekend, we did a lot!

Among the many, many things we put together, the bouncer:

We made more progress on setting up the room:

I am particularly fond of this:

We had had the crib and changing table previously, but we still had piles of things that had nowhere to go, and so were scattered around the room in boxes and bags. With this lovely little bookcase from IKEA, we've got it all off the floor. I have no idea how long it will last once the baby is here, but hey, for now it's a marvel of organization.

We were on our feet a lot over the weekend, and my hips, legs and feet were killing me. It was really good to get some things done, though--we also did a lot around the house that wasn't directly related to the baby. We've never really fully unpacked/organized/set up house in the year we've lived here, so we're trying to get some of it done (finally!) before relatives descend.

Friday is my last day of work--whee!!! We'll see what I can get done once I am home all day. I suspect that I will feel pretty happy if I manage to get out of bed each day (not because I am so sleepy, but because it's literally difficult to heave myself out! :-)

26 Days

2009-08-31T20:10:00.000-07:00

26 days 'til my due date. I can't wait. Every week I feel noticeably huger than the previous week. Today as I was sitting at work, my back was tired the whole day. I know lots of women have bad back pain during pregnancy, and I should count my blessings that I haven't had any up until now, but boy, was it exhausting. It's 8:10 right now, and I really, really want to go to bed.

I think I am going to top 200 lbs by the end of this. I can't even express how much this depresses me. After everything I did a few years ago to lose weight I had carried around my whole life, here I am bigger than I ever imagined I could ever be. The thought of having to do it again, eat salad for lunch every damned day for a year again, makes me want to cry.

Anyway, I went to the doctor today. Since I am now in my 37th week, she checked my cervix. Apparently it is softening, is halfway thinned, and 1 cm dilated. When I asked what this meant, she said it reduces the chance that I will be late, but does not by any means eliminate that chance. She says most first babies are late, so I should plan for that, and that way if he comes early, I will be pleasantly surprised. SIGH.

Our kid is going to be a math whiz

2009-08-19T19:45:00.000-07:00

So, we have been watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? which is currently running again in prime time, with Regis as the host. Every night they use the last five minutes for some celebrity to come on, answer one question, and win $50,000 for their charity. Two nights ago, the celebrity was Patricia Heaton, and her question was this:

If one Euro equals $1.50, how much does 5 Euros equal:

a) 30 quarters
b) 70 nickels
c) 50 dimes
d) 90 pennies

Patricia Heaton freaked out. She moaned "I'm no good at math!" She whined and cried. She didn't even try, before deciding to use a lifeline to call her husband so that he could answer the question. They called, he had 30 seconds to hear her read the question and to answer it. Look at the question again: are you surprised that after she got through reading it, he asked her to read it again? He didn't answer in time. She was on her own. She moaned and moaned some more. Finally, grabbing her head like it was killing her, she managed to figure out that at $1.50 each, the 5 Euros would equal $7.50. That was as far as she could go. She moaned and cried some more. Finally Regis couldn't stand it any more, and said, "Look, how much is 90 pennies?" She wailed, "I don't know!" "How many pennies in a dollar?" "100!" "OK. So, how much is 50 dimes? How many dimes in a dollar?" "That's five dollars." "OK, 70 nickels; how many nickels in a dollar?" "That's $3.50." "OK, so the answer is....?"

When she finally got the answer right, the audience cheered.

Last night, the celebrity was Wynonna Judd. Here's her question:

If you have three shirts and four pairs of pants, how many combinations of one shirt and one pair of pants could you make?

a) 6
b) 9
c) 12
d) 16

OK, never mind that math is apparently so obscure a subject that a math question qualifies as a trivia question not once but twice in two days. What was Wynonna's response? "Oh, I'm so bad at math"! At least she didn't cry and moan like she was being killed. Regis, having been through Patricia Heaton the previous night, went straight to the coaching: "OK, you've got one shirt and four pairs of pants. Then you have another shirt, and four pairs of pants...?" Wynonna was having none of it; she called Aunt Margaret. Aunt Margaret, thank goodness, got it right in 30 seconds. Sheesh.

Watching this made me so angry. Seriously, what is wrong with these people? Shall I say, what is wrong with these women? I remember the uproar over the Barbie that said, "I hate math!" but this is just as bad. These were not difficult math questions, and they didn't even try. Wynonna even said, "This is why I became a musician, so other people could do the math."

I was an English major. I didn't like math. I didn't like math because it was boring, not because it was hard. But I already want our kid to be really good at math (I'd want this even if he were a girl). Math is important! And yeah, it does piss me off that people are illiterate (if I hear another person on TV use the egregious construction, "him and I", I might have to go on a Strunk & White-throwing rampage), but honestly, collapsing at the mere thought of doing math? Infuriates me.

Progress

2009-08-18T22:12:00.001-07:00

This weekend we started serious work on the nursery:

We put together the crib.

Doesn't Histrionic Dog look comfortable?
(Yes, for those of you who don't know him, Histrionic Dog is aptly named)

We also put together the changing table:

This was a nightmare: a surprisingly large number of holes were misaligned, and so we were doing a lot of forcing things together. It's funny: it's pretty decent quality in terms of materials--mostly solid wood, not particle board--but cheapie IKEA furniture goes together a lot easier. I guess they really know what they are doing, those Swedes.

We also had our Childbirth Prep class on Sunday, so we know a little bit more of what to expect. They showed film of some births, and I have to admit, I was checking out how quickly the women's stomachs went down after birth. Pretty quickly, I'm happy to say :-).

After that little bit of trauma, we went out yesterday and had a picnic. My sweetie decided to get in some kid practice....

Knitting for baby

2009-08-15T10:22:00.001-07:00

There hasn't been a lot of knitting content (or, honestly, any content) on this blog recently. For the first several months of the pregnancy I completely lost interest in knitting. Maybe I figured I was creating a baby, what more did I need to do? :-)

Then, about June, I started getting the itch again. The first thing I knit was a baby blanket:

This is Oat Couture's "Auntie's Afghan" pattern. I fell in love with this pattern years ago, long before I even imagined I'd be having a kid of my own. At the time I thought, "Too bad I don't have someone to knit this for." Well, then.

I knit it in Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, one of my favorite cotton-based yarns (it is 20% merino). I got a deal on "unevenly dyed" skeins on eBay--you might be able to see that the color is slightly variegated, especially towards the edges. I actually like this, because a totally solid color can be a bit overbearing. Cotton Fleece is machine washable, and the merino gives it just a smidge of fuzzy spring that keeps the knitting pleasant (I find pure cotton to be a bit tough on my hands) and makes the finished product a little cuddlier.

The only modification I made was to make it smaller than the pattern calls for; I started the border when each side was 95 stitches instead of 111. I did this for a few reasons: I was mighty sick of the acres of stockinette; I thought the blanket was already big enough (I ended up at 32" square, which I think is a perfect size); and I was a little concerned about running out of yarn (as it turned out, this fear was completely unfounded). I ended up using a little less than four skeins.

After finishing this (in three weeks, which has to be some sort of record), I immediately cast on yet another Baby Surprise Jacket, which I have finished knitting but haven't bound off or sewn up--I became irritated by the yarn in the last two rows, so I threw it down in disgust. Seriously, after getting through the whole thing without any knots, it threw up a knot in the last row, and I think I have to tink back, cut out the knot, and refinish it, and that has me so disgusted I've put it down. So, no pictures just yet.

After I threw down the Baby Surprise Jacket, I cast on the for the previously mentioned Stella Pixie Hat. The knitting on this is finished, I just have to sew the neckband onto the hat. I hate seaming, so I've put this one down, too. I have a real problem with finishing things :-). That one should be done this weekend, though.

What next? I'm thinking of a sweater for myself, even though I have no idea what size I am going to be (I measured myself this morning: my boobs are 4" bigger than they were when I got pregnant. So are my hips. Let's not talk about my waist). I've got a big, messy project in mind, where I am going to mash together a bunch of ideas and patterns. This should keep me occupied until I actually give birth. Six weeks to go (though my sweetie is convinced it will be only five weeks, since that would kind of inconvenient for him, work-wise)!

The fruits of our labor

2009-08-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

My sweetie and I planted a small garden this year. Naturally, the hottest, driest year Seattle has had ever. SIGH. Still, we're pretty happy with our results: we didn't exactly devote a lot of attention to the plants (watering them was about all we did) and we have vegetables! See?

So we have Anaheim peppers, bell peppers, cherry tomatoes and Cherokee Purple tomatoes. The Cherokee Purples are an heirloom variety that's really sweet--I really like them. Unfortunately the plants set one bunch of tomatoes, then the tops of the plants shriveled and refused to grow any further, so we won't get a lot of tomatoes from them. But after all, there are only two of us, so how many tomatoes do we really need?

Of course, once I took the above photo (styled by my sweetie), he informed me that my picture was not sufficiently arty. So, he took over the camera. I present Still Lifes with Vegetables:

(All pictures are better with coffee in them)

What is the use of a blog without pictures or conversations?

2009-08-12T18:32:00.000-07:00

So a couple weeks ago, during the hottest heat wave on record in Seattle and all over the Pacific Northwest, my sweetie and I went to Mount St Helens.

It wasn't too bad: we had an air-conditioned car and an air-conditioned hotel room. And, as someone who finds volcanoes endlessly fascinating, I was not about to let 90-degree heat stop me from doing a little hiking.

Although the 361 steps up to Windy Ridge did almost defeat me....

Believe it or not, Mt St Helens erupted 29 years ago. Yes, you're that old. The devastation is still pretty impressive to behold (click on the pictures for a better view of the matchsticks formerly known as trees). Forest does take a heck of a long time to grow back.

Check out the dead trees still floating on the surface of Spirit Lake. Which, by the way, is 200 feet higher than it was before the eruption: the debris from the volcano raised the floor of the valley and the lake by that much. See how the hills seem to end kind of abruptly in the lake, no shore or anything? Yeah: the shore is 200 feet down. It's crazy.

And for those of you inexplicably clamoring for pictures of "the bump" (god knows why).....

Yeah, there it is. Now stop asking me!

Weird dream

2009-08-09T08:45:00.000-07:00

Supposedly being pregnant give you weird, vivid dreams. Last night I had a rather hilarious one.

I used to work in publishing, and even though it's been a year and a half (that long?) since I quit, I still miss it sometimes. My job involved a little traveling and a lot of books, and even though I eventually became tired of books, I still kind of miss books. (This make no sense, I know. It's hard to explain.)

Anyway, my job was selling foreign rights to our books, and this sometimes included selling UK rights. This can be tricky, especially as the world economy becomes more and more borderless, because selling the rights to a UK publisher to publish our books means that somewhere in Asia both copies of the book will one day be on sale, and we will be in direct competition with our own book, if you see what I mean.

So, in my dream, I was back working in publishing. But the office was nothing like the corporate offices I knew; it was in an old building with lots of wood and a garret, like you see in movies about academics in New England, and somehow we were a scrappy little company instead of a giant conglomerate. We had a success, a book about John F Kennedy, to which I sold UK rights before we knew it would be such a big success. Since in my dream we were a scrappy company, this was our first big success, and it was really important that we not let anything kill it. Then--horrors!--the UK publisher informed us that they were planning to publish a cheap hardcover version for the international market. Visions of lost sales in Asia were causing a panic. A young man in a sweater vest and glasses (who was either the editor, the publisher, or the legal dept, or possibly all three, since we were a scrappy little company) and I were frantically figuring out what we could do about it, if there was any way we could stop them, when suddenly, it hit me. I didn't think I had sold them the right to publish in hardcover.

(I know this realization doesn't mean much to non-publishing types, but bear with me)

The young man began frantically looking for our contract with the UK house. It was not neatly in a file, it was in a scattering of papers on the floor. He was on his knees, rifling through the papers; the contract was not stapled, so he kept whipping out individual pages, none of which were the right one. The suspense was unbearable. Finally he pulls out a page, and I know the information we need is on the other side of the page. I yell, "Turn it over! Turn it over!"

He does, and lo and behold: the line for hardcover rights is crossed out.

Relief is instantaneous. We start dancing around our garret office, and I yell,

"In your face, Random House! In your face!"

OK, maybe you had to be there :-).

Bitch 'n' Moan

2009-07-29T15:11:00.000-07:00

It is HOT. Seattle is in the midst of a heat wave. Today it is supposed to hit 101 degrees, which will make it the hottest day ever. Last night the low was 70 degrees, which, believe it or not, was the hottest night ever. That's right, there had never previously been a single night since they started recording these things that it did not fall below 70 degrees. By the end of the week, we may well have broken the record of five consecutive days of 90+ degree heat. (Yes, Seattle has never had six days in a row of 90+ heat.) To top it all off, it is unusually humid. Not as bad as NYC in August, to be sure, but it's bad.

Since Seattle's usual July average temperature is 75 or so, very few houses have air conditioning. This includes our house. Yesterday when I came home from work, it was 88 degrees in the house. It was also 88 degrees outside (evening temp, down from 97). Yesterday at work the air conditioning was not working well, and downstairs there is never any air conditioning at all. The woman whose office contains the computer servers measured her office temp at 98 degrees. The servers actually sent her a warning message saying they were too hot and she'd better damned well do something about it.

I am off today, and I spent the morning running errands, then spent the better part of the afternoon shopping for no reason other than that stores are cool. Last night I slept on the recliner in the basement. I have never been great with the heat, but being pregnant and hot is just about as bad as it gets, really. Oh yeah: I've had a headache for the last week, too, probably from the heat.

All I have to say is that, when I moved here, people told me it did not get hot in the summer, and that it did not snow in the winter. Seattlites are really big fat liars.

One of the errands I had to run this morning was a visit to the lab to have a Glucola three-hour test. I had to have blood drawn four times, once when I arrived, then once every hour for three hours. My veins are notoriously hard to find: every time I have blood drawn, the person doing it comments on it. Techs frequently have trouble, but oddly enough, doctors never miss (I don't know why this should seem odd, since they're doctors, but I guess I imagine they do not draw blood as often as techs and so might be less practiced). My favorite was the guy at Student Health when I was in grad school who asked, "Would you mind if I missed?" Um, yeah, dude. I'd mind. He called in a nurse, who called in a doctor, who asked, "Did you bring your veins today?" He didn't miss, though.

Anyway, for four blood samples this morning, I got stuck seven times. I thought she was going for the full eight, but on the last one she finally managed to hit the vein on the first try. Both arms have multiple marks. I feel like a junkie.

Anyway, I am going to go hide n the basement now. If I can stand to move (because I still sweat in the basement, even though it is much cooler down there), I will continue knitting the Stella Pixie Hat which I began during my three-hour wait in the lab this morning. If I can't move, I will sleep. Ugh.

Random blog post

2009-07-24T00:45:00.000-07:00

I'm awake when I want to be asleep. Must learn to control rage.

This is not what I am angry about, but I thought I'd ask: does anyone think those Prius commercials, the ones where people take the place of nature, are kind of disturbing? They remind me of that old Star Trek episode where Kirk is trapped on a model of the Enterprise with a woman who wants to catch germs from him so she can infect her planet and let some people die. At some point you get a glimpse out the window and the people, dressed in tight bodysuits, are packed in cheek by jowl with this kind of soulless misery on their faces. That's what I think of when I see the Prius commercials: not harmony between man, machine and nature, or whatever it is they're spouting, but nature so completely overrun by people that there is no nature left.

Not exactly the message a commercial for a hybrid car is supposed to be giving me, I suspect.

I'm not so sure about this parenting thing

2009-07-03T10:16:00.000-07:00

So, after a long silence, I’m back. I have been feeling much better, although I am now getting to the point where I feel huge, so the period of comfort was fleeting.

I have come through my company’s busy season in one piece. We do overnight high school graduation parties, so June is crazy busy. Last year I worked the parties themselves; this year, because I didn’t think I could be on my feet all night, instead I stayed in the office overnight and manned the phones—a sort of nerve center of operations for nights when we had multiple parties going on. I worked 11 overnight shifts in a row, and boy, was my sleep schedule messed up!

Prior to the graduation season, it loomed like a huge monolith on the horizon and I could not see past it. Now that I am on the other side, I am thinking about September, when the baby is due. As I start to have trouble getting out of bed each morning (both literally—who knew sitting up was such a chore?—and figuratively—I could sleep all day if I didn’t have to get to work) the baby is making his presence known at every moment.

Oh yes, “his.” It’s a boy. I was surprised, I think because I was assuming the baby was a girl because I’m a girl. Duh.

Anyway, with the graduation season just past, I’ve been thinking about kids and what makes a successful parent. These parties are celebrations of an achievement, yes, but I don’t know that graduating from high school is the landmark it once was. Are these kids really adults now, and are their parents’ jobs really finished? Somehow, I doubt it.

We ask a few of the kids at each party to fill out evaluation forms to let us know what they thought of the party. Reading through them, I’ve been rather appalled at how few high school graduates can spell well, and how few can form complete and coherent sentences. Our boss’s 17-year-old daughter has been working in our office the past few weeks, and when she was asked to file a series of documents alphabetically in boxes, she asked for 24 separate boxes, one for each letter in the alphabet (yes, 24. Don’t ask). She had to have it explained to her several times that when you alphabetize things, each letter doesn’t need to have its own box; you can start with A and keep going though B and C until you run out of room in the first box, then start a new box. And it is not the first time I’ve heard of a teenager being unaware that one continues alphabetizing beyond the first letter of a word. That is, Aaron comes before Abel, and it’s not enough to just throw all the A’s in one spot willy-nilly.

All of this had me very down. I came home and said to my sweetie that I expected our son to be able to write whole sentences without spelling errors, and that he had better know how to alphabetize by the time he hits junior high, much less by the time he’s graduating from high school. I fretted, “What if our kid is stupid and I don’t like him because of that?” It’s one of my faults that I have a very low tolerance for stupidity, and though I’ve worked on it, I don’t know how I’d react if my kid were stupid.

My sweetie looked at me like I was nuts (he often does) and suggested that perhaps, at least on the subject of spelling and alphabetizing, we as parents might have a little bit of influence in the matter. Which I would take comfort in, except that I seriously doubt that any of these kids’ parents set out to make sure their kids didn’t know there are 26 letters in the alphabet.

So, what happened? I mean, I don’t know how much my parents taught me about these things. I know they emphasized the importance of school, and that I should get good grades. But other than trying to teach me the multiplication tables a grade early at home, I don’t recall them really actively helping me with school work or teaching me anything in particular. I definitely learned to alphabetize at school—I can remember it. I assume my boss’s daughter did, too: why didn’t she retain it?

On the other hand, my parents, who both learned English in their teens, never say “lay down” when they mean “lie down,” never say “he and I” (or, worse, “him and I”) when it should be “him and me,” write in complete sentences with good spelling and never confuse “it’s” and “its.” So maybe there’s something to leading by example.

Friends tell me that my sweetie and I will be good parents. But I don’t think anyone plans to be a bad parent, so I want to know: how can you tell? I don’t think my parents were great parents, but they weren’t bad parents. I think they muddled through. I think a lot of parents muddle through. They do the best they can. And school stuff is relatively easy to measure; if I wanted to be obsessive, I could play my son music in the womb, teach him sign language at age one, grill him with flash cards at age three, enroll him in five hundred programs by age six that will teach him three languages, how to do geometry proofs and the basic principles of chemistry by age ten. I am fairly sure that with a little effort I could sit at his high school graduation confident that he knows how to alphabetize.

But: will he know how to think? Will he know how to be compassionate? Will he know how to work hard? Will he know the world doesn't owe him anything?

Hah. Let me fret for now about what I will do if he's stupid. We'll worry next week about what I will do if he's lazy, narcissistic, mean, or downright evil.

In hiding

2009-04-13T07:57:00.000-07:00

OK, so, I have been in hiding. I haven't felt much like blogging, or emailing anyone, or talking on the phone, or being a generally socially bearable person. It's hard to go to work. I suspect I am a little depressed.

Why, you might ask?

I'm pregnant.

With that intro, it might be a surprise to hear that this was planned, and I really wanted it. Heck, I still want it--we always knew we wanted kids, and I'm grateful, given how old I am, that it was relatively easy to get pregnant. And so far, things seem to be progressing well.

What I wasn't prepared for was the feeling lousy. For about six to eight weeks there, I felt lousy 24 hours a day, every single day. For the last two or three weeks (I just finished my 16th week), I've been feeling better, but it's precarious: if I eat the wrong thing, or, worse, fail to eat something, I'm back to feeling terrible.

Of course I've heard women complain about feeling lousy during pregnancy. I thought I was prepared for that. But what I wasn't prepared for was the mental and emotional strain of feeling lousy. I don't enjoy being sick--I'm very impatient with it--and feeling lousy every minute of every day for weeks on end tried my patience pretty much to the breaking point. I'm amazed by how little I care to do anything: I don't want to cook or eat (eating doesn't make me nauseated, I just don't feel like eating), I'm not interested in blogging or knitting or working. I just want to sleep all the time, because when I'm sleeping, I don't feel lousy. I am a total wimp.

On top of it, I feel guilty: after all, I'm not barfing fifty times a day, like some women I hear about. I'm not in pain. I just...don't feel 100%. Big, fat, hairy deal. I'm disgusted and embarrassed by how much this has bothered me. I have friends who are struggling with cancer and parents dying, and I'm whining about a little intestinal trouble. I have a sweet, wonderful husband who has made so many accommodations for me and has barely complained that I hardly ever cook any more, I never clean, and I just lie about and don't want to do anything. In fact, a couple weeks ago he actually thanked me for just being quiet and low-energy, and not turning into a demanding unreasonable bitch from hell, which friends of his have said pregnant women generally do. I felt awful that I get points for not being nasty, when actually I think I've been pretty pathetic and letting him/making him do all the work of our marriage.

I commented to people at work that I feel cranky all the time, and they claim that they haven't noticed. In fact, compared to the *last* pregnant woman they had here, I am apparently keeping up my efficiency quite well, even though I feel like I'm working in a fog and taking bathroom breaks every five minutes.

So, maybe the patheticness has been all in my head. I'm not sure how to get out of it, but it's not especially fun. Hopefully if the weather starts to improve I will feel better: last week there were actually some sunny, warmish days, and I was amazed at how much better I felt.

I am in hiding, or maybe it's hibernation. But hopefully I'll be coming out soon.

Playing Catchup

2009-02-19T20:48:00.001-08:00

Sooo, I've been very lax updating the blog. Lots has been going on!

For one thing, we bought a new car:

Well, new to us, anyway. It's actually a 2000 Mazda MPV, with 110,000 miles on it. Hey: it was cheap. It also smells very, very strongly of some sort of nasty aggressive air "freshener". It smells terrible, but fortunately it's the car my sweetie is driving, and it doesn't bother him as much as it bothers me. That hasn't stopped him from naming it Stinky, however :-)

Some knitting catchup:

The finished Amused. I've already worn it several times. The Cash Iroha doesn't seem like it will wear terribly well, but I still think it's beautiful, and the color just sings.

I made a few mods, the most bizarre of which was making the left sleeve about half and inch longer than the right. I carry my left shoulder higher, and that made the sleeve look shorter. The weirdest thing about it is that I don't really notice it in other clothes; maybe it was because I was making this one--I got picky!

Tuesday was out first anniversary--we made it! We spent the weekend in Vancouver; pics to come.

Serious knitting

2009-01-18T12:09:00.000-08:00

So, here are some boring knitting details. Non-knitters can skip to the end of the entry :-).

I'm almost done with Amused--just one sleeve to go! I still love the pattern, although I discovered a problem with the collar as written in the pattern, and it caused me considerable agita for a while there. I fixed it, though, and am rather proud of myself: this is my first real cable project, so having to fix a problem with the cable pattern was not easy, in particular because this is a two-sided cable (ie, it needs to look good from both sides of the fabric). It involved a fair bit of frogging, which didn't make the yarn very happy, but it was worth it.

I still love the yarn, which is really lovely deep purple (the pics are not really accurate). I am looking forward to being able to wear this one--when I try it on (the advantage of a top-down construction), it looks really nice. I'm pretty happy about this, too, because to be honest, I don't wear a lot of my handknits, because I usually make something where I love the pattern, but the finished project is a little too wild or uncomfortable or sleeveless for me to wear often. I think this one is a winner, though.

Knitting content over now; feel free to turn up the volume :-).

So, I haven't mentioned it on the blog, but my sweetie has landed a new job. He managed this feat just two weeks after he received his notice at WaMu, before Christmas. It was a huge load off our minds, let me tell you! We were especially amused by my parents' reaction: you see, I've only known my sweetie for three years, and my dad only met him after we got engaged (my mom had met him a few months prior, when she came to NY for a visit), so they don't know him well. My parents *like* him, but I think they were not sure of the content of his character, as they say, and so when they heard he had been laid off from WaMu, after he had had me quit my job, uproot my life, and move all the way across the country for him, they were worried. The lousy economy did not help--it would be tough for anyone to find a job right now.

Not that they said any of this to us, mind you: they're not *that* tactless! But in their joyful reaction to the news he has found a new job, it became apparent. By finding a job so fast, in the middle of the holiday season, before the end of his notice at WaMu, even, so that he did not have a single day unemployed, he has proven himself to be a Worthy Provider for their daughter. They were extremely impressed. He is clearly the Best Son-in-Law ever. My dad emailed, "Now M----- can stay home and have babies."

Knitting

2009-01-04T20:59:00.001-08:00

It's snowing again. We've already got two inches. Bleah. Time for some knitting pics:

This is the Cobblestone pullover I started knitting for my sweetie last year. I had to stop because of my shoulder injury, but picked it up again in time for this Christmas. Actually, looking back at that post, I am very proud to say that I completed all three of those projects :-).

Right now I am working on Amused:

I am knitting this out of some Noro Cash Iroha I've had lying about for a couple of years, waiting for the perfect project. I am loving it, frankly. The gauge is not what's called for in the pattern, so I am making a larger size, and I've made some modifications, but I'm staying pretty true to the pattern. I love the yarn, and so far I love the pattern. It's my second top-down sweater (well, third, if you count a WIP I haven't finished), and I do like the top-down construction. No seaming! I hate seaming. It also used a crochet provisional cast-on, which was so easy it may become my favorite provisional cast-on. We'll see what I think once I unravel the crochet chain and pick up the stitches.

The cable border on the placket is really appealing to me, which is kind of interesting: I haven't much liked doing cables in the past. But this is a pretty easy cable, and it's so pretty in the Cash Iroha I'm totally charmed. Cash Iroha is probably not the best yarn for doing cables--the thick-and-thin quality of the yarn is kind of at odds with even, regular cables. But since it's not an all-over cable, and the yarn has such a pretty glow from the silk content, I'm not caring. Can't wait to get this done so I can wear it!

Last hurrah

2008-12-24T20:45:00.000-08:00

It's supposed to warm up this week. Of course, you couldn't tell when we woke up: it was snowing again. And it's supposed to snow again tonight. But in the middle of the afternoon, it crept up over freezing, and it's supposed to each day this week. So, before the snow is gone forever, I decided to take advantage of it:

What's this giant pile of snow in my front yard?

Yes, I built an igloo.

When I was a kid growing up in Illinois, I always wanted to build an igloo, but I never did. Maybe the snow was never right. Maybe I got tired. Maybe I just didn't have enough understanding of how to build things. I don't remember why, but I never managed it. Then a few days ago we drove by another block in our neighborhood, and one of the houses has a huge igloo, at least eight feet tall. You could stand up in it. I got jealous.

So, with the weather over freezing and the snow nice and wet, I put my mind to it. My sweetie dug snow, and I built. The neighbor's kids "helped" by throwing snowballs at both of us during construction :-).

It's pretty big inside. You can't stand up in it, but there's lots of room for sprawling.

When we dug into the snow in the front yard, I'd have to say it was at least twelve inches deep. Amazing. I built the igloo from the sides up; it probably would have been easier to make a giant pile of snow and dig into it, since we certainly had enough snow, but I didn't want to take the easy way. It'll probably be all melted tomorrow, and my back is pretty sore after all that digging and packing, but hey: one of my life's ambitions is fulfilled!

Real football

2008-12-21T19:41:00.001-08:00

Well, we did it:

I pulled out my long down coat, my sweetie put on long johns, and we went.

It snowed the entire game. I loved it! In my opinion, real football is played in the snow. Football played in air conditioned domed stadiums in hot states is pansy football. If we were only going to see one game this season (and we are), I am glad it was a real game.

Alas, the Jets lost. Oh well, you can't have everything. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly nonetheless, and were glad we braved the elements and this stubbornly plow-free city to go.

OK, this is ridiculous

2008-12-21T08:56:00.001-08:00

OK, I love snow, but this is kind of ridiculous.

It snowed again on Thursday morning, and then again last night. And each time, it snowed a lot. Thursday morning I attempted to go to work, in the pouring snow. My sweetie came with me, because we were nervous about the driving. And rightfully so: when we turned the corner to go down the hill, we sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid out of control to the bottom. Very slowly, but still: I was scared. It didn't help that there was a kid sledding on the hill. In the street. When we got to bottom, I turned to my sweetie, and said, "I'm not going to work." We returned home and had a two-hour snowball fight with the neighborhood kids (and their parents). (Embarrassingly, my throwing arm and all down my right side were really sore on Friday and Saturday. Sheesh.)

Then last night, this:

Can you tell we had a huge snowball fight in our backyard on Thursday? The snow was all torn up. There were snow angels. Really, there were.

See the arrow pointing out the walkway in front of house? This walkway was totally cleared yesterday morning. We are responsible homeowners! We shoveled the walk! Sigh.

For Christmas, I got my sweetie tickets to the Jets game. People around here keep calling it the Seahawks game, but what do they know? Anyway, the game is today. I don't know how we're going to get there. Seattle is totally unprepared for snow. They never plowed after Thursday, so all this new snow is on top of packed three-day-old ice. People are trapped in their homes. As someone who grew up with snow and snow plows that start going even before the snow has started accumulating, I am finding this a little maddening. My sweetie saw the city official in charge of streets clearing on the news, and they asked him how he planned to deal with this. His answer was essentially, "Hopefully it will get warmer."

We're thinking if we go to the game we will start early. Maybe we will walk.

More suburbia

2008-12-14T22:58:00.001-08:00

It's very, very cold in Seattle right now. Below freezing, which is unusual. And last night it snowed quite a bit, also unusual:

I was very excited to see the snow. I love snow, and I didn't get enough of it in NYC (I think the city was just too hot for snow). Last night it started snowing early in the evening, light snow that was collecting on grass but not on pavement. But around 10:30 or 11:00 it started snowing heavily, so that it started collecting on the streets and sidewalks. I insisted on going for a walk in the snow.

As we walked down the block, I scooped some snow off a nearby parked car and discovered it was the perfect packing consistency. I started rolling the ball along the street. My sweetie said, "Why don't you do it on the grass? The snow is deeper." So I did. We left a 12-inch diameter ball on the lawn of one of our neighbors and went on our way.

By the time we came back, about 45 minutes later (we stopped for a drink in a neighborhood bar which was surprisingly crowded), the ball was still there, the snow was still falling, and I decided I'd better make a snowman while the making was still good. I picked the ball up, took it to our house, and made some additions:

I love it :-). The next morning it was still there. We went out to sweep the snow off our car and started talking with various neighbors who were out playing with their kids (the kids were excited: snow is rare). My sweetie and I got into quite a snowball fight with a couple of the kids. At least three people asked us how we had made the snowman, because by the time the sun came out this morning, the snow was too cold and icy to pack well. Thus proving that when the snow is perfect, you must seize your opportunity. I was out there at midnight, and I have my snowman to show for it :-).

We finally got our lights up, too. We visited several stores before finding lights: the Lowe's in particular looked like light-eating locusts had descended and devoured every last bulb. It was creepy. But if you look closely, you can see what we did manage to buy at the nearby drugstore, standing by the porch. My sweetie calls him "Snowy."

One advantage of suburbia

2008-12-06T09:56:00.000-08:00

OK, I realize that I do not technically live in the suburbs: I am in Seattle. I don't have a gigantic scary huge grocery store to shop in, I just have a big store. But seriously, after years in Manhattan, this is plenty suburbian for me!

I noticed this past fall that the changing color of leaves were really stirking me. I'd turn a corner (in my car) and see a whole avenue of orange or red, and it would lift my spirits. It made me realize that I didn't get a whole lotta nature in Manhattan, and while I wouldn't say I really missed it (after all, I never sought it out), it's kind of nice to have.

One thing I did miss in Manhattan was sky. I like sky. When the Hale-Bopp comet swung by earth, I had to go out on a boat on the East River to see it. I visited the Orkneys once, and was completely enchanted by the sky. When I got home, people were like, "Um, why did you take so many pictures of the sky??" When I went rafting in Idaho some years ago I was amazed at the night sky. I don't know much about the sky, but it's sure pretty.

So today, as I left the house at 7:40 am to go to my Saturday morning Pilates class (so worth it, seriously), I was struck by the gorgeous sky. Normally I don't look up. It's often overcast here. It had been dark when I had gotten up. But this was not ignorable. I whipped out my camera and took pictures....of the sky.

East:

West:

Same sky. Cool, hunh?

I'm not sure what to think

2008-12-04T21:14:00.000-08:00

So, not unexpectedly, my sweetie was laid off this week. Most of his coworkers were also laid off. WaMu is truly no more.

It's got me thinking about a lot of things. I recently got into a brief discussion in comments on someone else's blog about choices, the economy, and how to fix this whole mess. Twenty years after I first got on an online message board and learned the meaning of the word "flame," and you'd think I would know better :-). Anyway, this person told me that we make our choices and have to live by them, and her husband had survived 25 years at his company and countless rounds of layoffs, so "he must be doing something right." Implying that if my husband got laid off, it would probably be because he was lazy. She did use the word "lazy". The smug complacency in this statement left me breathless (though no longer speechless) with rage. I heard on the news that 80% of WaMu's Seattle workforce lost their jobs on Monday. I suppose you could say that it's no wonder a company with a workforce consisting of 80% lazy people failed.

I wish I could be as sure that making the right choices is always guaranteed, or even that making the right choices, assuming you can manage it every time, guarantees health, happiness, success, etc. I wish I could believe that nothing is left to chance. That there are no flukes, that you cannot be affected by anything that you are not personally responsible for. I mean, of course, that I wish nothing had ever happened to me to make me think otherwise.

There are a lot of reasons to be down--how about the WalMart employee who was trampled to death on Black Friday by shoppers who continued to shop even when they knew someone had been killed? The self-centeredness depresses me. That's why I think even though the election supposedly changed things, nothing will change, because everyone thinks they're better than everyone else. Everyone thinks the other guy should suck it up. We'll be pointing fingers at everyone who is lazier or stupider or more morally bankrupt than we until we're a snivelling footnote in history.

All of this has me thinking, too, about love and marriage, because what makes everything OK is that we're in this together. I know that sounds smooshy and cliche but...it's kind of true. However worried I am, being with my sweetie makes me smile. I can't say we haven't had a few stressed moments during this mess, and or that we won't have more, but I think we are both very happy to have each other. Though I sometimes miss NYC and my comfortable single life without any real worries, I don't really wish to be back there. I like it in Seattle. I love our house. I like my job, though now more than ever I wish it paid more. And I love my sweetie. Life, for all its scariness right now, is better than it was. So I guess, on balance, we ended up making some good choices after all. Ask me what I think in a couple months if my sweetie has not found a new job :-).

And, because I am the way I am, this got me thinking about divorce. You always hear about marriages falling apart during periods of crisis--the loss of a child, or a job, or the aftermath of crime. How do people get from here to there? Do they make a choice to give up? Does the lure of comfortable single life, where there are no decisions to live with but your own, become too strong? Is it a fluke? Does it always mean that the choice to get married was a bad one? Maybe our crisis isn't bad enough yet, or hasn't lasted long enough. Maybe divorced people were just lazy.

Sigh. I think I'll go curl up with my sweetie now. At least until we start blaming each other for everything that's wrong in our lives.

Third time's the charm

2008-11-26T23:54:00.000-08:00

This will be the fourth winter I have known my sweetie. We met in November of 2005--it seems like I've known him forever, but it's really been a short time. When Christmas came, we had been dating about seven weeks, so I didn't know what to give him. I knit him a hat. I had only just started knitting, and the hat was the first thing I ever just made up. Alas, because I didn't know him well, I did not yet know he is a pinhead: the hat was wayyyy too big for him. When he wears it, he looks like the kid from Fat Albert, whose pink hat comes down over his face and all you can see are his eyes and mouth.

The second winter, I knit him the fabulous Mets/Rangers hat. I still love this hat, but again, it was too big. Not too big around, at least, but too deep: my sweetie could easily pull it down over his eyes. Even my doormen made fun of him when he wore it.

Last winter, I didn't knit him anything because I had a sore shoulder and was trying not to knit.

This winter, my sweetie requested another hat. God knows why, since I clearly don't have the knack for fitting his head! But I took a deep breath, knit it in the round, and made him try it on periodically while I made it. Things are easier when you're not trying to keep it a surprise :-).

I made it out of Noro Kureyon; I have a few balls lying around from a moment of madness. I was inspired by the Noro scarves the Yarn Harlot has been knitting: you alternate balls every two rows in order to get a graduated striping effect. Since I didn't want to use two halves of two balls, I simply alternated ends of my single ball, which made for some more subtle striping in the middle, especially as this particular colorway is not as wildly varying as many Noro balls. I think it looks very masculine, no?

Happily, my sweetie loves it. And I have to admit, I do like the Noro colors. Kureyon is not the softest of yarns, but my sweetie is not sensitive that way. And it knits up into a nice dense fabric, so it is pretty good in the wind. I guess the third time's the charm. I'm sure it helped that this time, I wasn't overly ambitious: it's a pretty basic hat :-).

One ball Noro Kureyon, knit on size 7 needles. About 4 stitches per inch.

A refresher lesson in gauge

2008-11-23T15:51:00.000-08:00

I have been knitting like a fiend lately. Partly because it's cold. Partly because I am stressed (WaMu: they suck). Partly because Christmas is coming and knitting presents from stash doesn't cost any money. Although I have only knitted two things as Christmas presents, so I guess the last reason is more an excuse than a reason.

Anyway, here's a pic of the Hemlock Ring Blanket, which was a really fun and very quick (just two weeks) knit:

I knitted this out of Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool, which I really like. It's surprisingly soft, and comes in 465-yard skeins for $9 at Jo-Anns (which means if you're more patient than I you can wait for a sale or a coupon and get it for less). Knitting this blanket took only a little over one skein, which probably should have been my warning, since I knit two pattern repeats more than brooklyntweed calls for and yet used less yarn. Oh well.

Yes, I was a bad girl, I didn't check my gauge. Two years of knitting experience, and I still have a love/hate relationship with gauge. I figured since this wasn't a garment, gauge was not critical. (For what it's worth, by the way, Lion Fisherman's Wool is really 5 stitches per inch, not 4 as it claims on the band :-) Alas, I forgot, as always, about row gauge, so my blanket is much smaller than I wanted. I wanted something over 4 feet in diameter, and I had to really push it in the blocking to get it to be even 40 inches.

If you look closely, you'll see through the holes that the fabric isn't even touching the blocking board: this baby is stretched taut.

I still think the blanket is pretty.

But alas, it's not a baby blanket. I actually knitted this for a coworker who is battling cancer. Before, she was famous in the office for always being hot. Now, she is always cold: not a good sign. Unfortunately I think this blanket will be of very little use to her, since it will cover her lap and not much else. I'm bummed. I will probably still give it to her, but I really wanted it to be more useful. I should have checked my gauge. Feh.

Fuzzy cellphone pic

2008-11-15T17:33:00.001-08:00

Today my sweetie and I raked leaves. It has been a very long time since either of us have done this--I, at least, have not done it since high school, possibly even earlier. We only have two trees in our backyard that drop leaves, but boy, that was plenty!

Seattle collects "yard waste" as well as trash and recycling. They are supposedly quite draconian about the yard waste: you are even supposed to put your vegetal kitchen scraps into yard waste, and if they catch you putting it in the garbage, they say they will not take away your trash. Yard waste cannot be put in regular old black plastic leaf bags, because those are not compostable. Therefore, all the hardware stores sell giant brown paper bags for yard waste. We filled up seven, and I got an idea for my Halloween costume next year.

That's right: paper bag puppet.

$25 richer

2008-10-31T20:11:00.001-07:00

Happy Halloween!!

At my office today we had a costume contest. Everyone came in costume and voted on the best costumes. I won second place--$25!

I have to say, I am very proud of this costume, which I made myself out of felt, stuffing and styrofoam balls for the eyes. I think it looks pretty convincing, even though it's only a head and a collar.

We had a lot of trick-or-treaters at the house today; it was the first time I had passed out candy to kids since I lived in my parents' house. Of course, I did it wearing my Kermit head. We had a lot of candy, but became concerned we were running out, so my sweetie went out and bought more. Now we have lots of extra candy :-). It was great to see all of the kids in their costumes, though, especially the kids on our block, whom we know. They're so cute!

Behold the Batter Blaster

2008-10-13T19:07:00.001-07:00

We had friends visiting this weekend. They are grad school friends, and it was fun to see them, and their small daughter. When we were in grad school, N was particularly a cooking friend. She and I would frequently bake or cook something just for the fun of it, then invite our friends over to eat it. My favorite instance of this was the day we made three desserts because we couldn't decide which one to make; fortunately, a starving grad student social circle means a) everyone is generally home when you call and b) they're never going to turn down free food.

So it seemed totally natural that we go grocery shopping while they were here. And, in the store, we discovered this:

It's the Batter Blaster. Your eyes do not deceive you: that is a spray can, of the sort you usually find containing whipped cream. The instructions on top admonish you to "Shake Well." But this, dear friends, is not a simple can o' whipped cream. No, it's spray-on pancake batter! You shoot it directly from the can onto the griddle, "No mess, no clean up!" The bowl of batter in this picture is our control: we of course decided to do a head-to-head comparison between the Batter Blaster and regular old made-from-scratch, propellant-free pancake batter.

Here is my friend N making pancakes with the Batter Blaster. The batter comes out looking exactly like canned whipped cream does, with little ridges in it. However, unlike whipped cream, the batter quickly spreads on the pan until the ridges disappear.

In the end, we found that the homemade batter pancakes were both tastier (because they were less sweet) and fluffier than the Batter Blaster pancakes. The latter was a surprise to us: we remain puzzled as to what the batter gains by being pressurized in a spray can, if it does not gain fluffiness. If anything, the Batter Blaster pancakes were a bit rubbery, and a smidge squishy, like marshmallows. But hey, don't worry: the Batter Blaster is organic.

Finally, a really nice picture of my friend and her daughter on the ferris wheel in the Seattle Center. We do not appear to have harmed the small child with our experiments.

Notes from suburbia

2008-09-30T19:56:00.001-07:00

I've been incommunicado for a few weeks because it took us forever to get Internet access at the house. It involved three different Comcast guys (and three different days with my sweetie at home for no reason--OK, at least the last day there was a reason). The last guy arrived on a Sunday and was the only competent guy we saw. Clearly he works on Sundays dealing with the customers who have been driven to the breaking point during the week. Anyway, here are some notes from the intervening weeks.

Here we are in front of the new house, wearing our WaMu "Whoohoo!" shirts. At the time we took this picture, it was already a little sarcastic. At this point it's just sad. If you're wondering, my sweetie still has a job, and we still have the house. We shall see how long this lasts. Marriage has been a very interesting journey so far.

My second baby surprise jacket. I love the little fish buttons! The second time around, this pattern still has not lost its charm. It's fun to knit, and it's so cute!

Our brand new living room chair, which I love. I love the cool almost mod pattern! I love the cool pastel-yet-bright colors! I got this chair by spending two hours in the store with my sweetie, after which he said, "OK, whatever fabric you want. As long as we can leave."

And, finally, our new couch!! I love this couch, and it has a great story behind it, too, which I will share in another post.

That's enough catchup for now!

Brief political comment

2008-09-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

I have no intention of using this blog for political commentary. I don't care to get into arguments with random strangers, and honestly I'm pretty conflicted about this election. I don't know what to think, and I can't get passionate about arguing for either candidate.

However, I do have to say, that last night on the culminating night of the Republican convention, they showed a "tribute" video about 9/11. They showed footage of the WTC and the Pentagon burning, of the WTC falling. They made references to "bodies falling" and said "We will carry memories of your beautiful faces and those loving voices now gone forever" while showing footage of distraught survivors and their frantic "missing" signs with pictures of their loved ones. They implied that only they can prevent this from happening again.

As someone who lived in NYC at the time, I don't think I can even begin to express how offensive I found this. Actually, "offensive" is not even a strong enough word. "Filthy" comes to mind. "Revolting." This is political exploitation of the most morally bankrupt and disgustingly cynical sort.

Yes, I "remember where [I was] that day" and no one is going to tell me what I should have learned from it, nor are they going to win me over by showing footage of thousands of people dying for their own political ends. How dare they? How dare they??? In the days after 9/11 the local news channel just turned on the camera and showed family after family with their signs and pictures, begging the camera for anyone who had seen their relatives to come forward and tell them anything. It was agony. How dare they speak of "your beautiful faces" in generic terms and exploit other people's suffering to scare the country for political reasons? How dare they reduce this to yet another opportunity for jingoistic flag waving and saber rattling?

The next day, I am still enraged. But I guess they figure no one in NYC is voting for them anyway. So, what the heck? Exploit away for the benefit of those who weren't there.

All-Clad forever

2008-08-29T13:34:00.000-07:00

I have several All-Clad Stainless pots and pans, judiciously acquired over the years. I say "judiciously" because they are expensive pans, and I am cheap. But one of the things I am willing to spend money on is good cookware, and All-Clad is the best.

I bought my first two pans about ten years ago, when I was a poor 20-something with two roommates in a crummy walk-up apartment in New York. I bought a 1.5-quart saucepan and a 3-quart saute pan. I researched cookware for quite a while before settling on All-Clad. I dithered and dithered and dithered, and finally bit the bullet with help from a birthday gift from my brother. Hey, a pan which costs close to $200 was a huge purchase at a time when my daily take-home pay was $70. Those pans meant a lot to me.

I've used those pans heavily for the last ten years. I love them. The little saucepan got a lot of use when I was single, and once I started cooking for more than just me, the saute pan began to see heavy use. Nowadays, I use it nearly every day. I've added other All-Clad pans to my arsenal, but these pans, especially the saute pan, are my workhorses.

But, as we were preparing to move into the new house, I realized that somehow, over the years, the bottom of the saute pan had warped a bit, so that it was no longer flat. I hadn't cared when I was cooking on gas, and even on our apartment's electric coil stove it wasn't a problem. But in our new house, we have a ceramic smooth-top stove (bought from the Sears outlet--bleargh!), and when I was researching these stoves, I read comments from a lot of people complaining that you have to have perfectly flat pans to use them.

I became concerned. I began to worry that I would have to abandon my beloved pan. And, now that I have a started my career over again, a $200 pan is once again a huge purchase. I didn't want to have to buy a new pan.

So, I went on the All-Clad website, and sent them a message, asking if there was any way I could fix it. I thought they might direct me to a dealer or someone who could, I don't know, bang it out for me. Who knows? Instead, I got back an email which said, essentially, "All-Clad pans are guaranteed for life. Send the pan to us for evaluation for repair or replacement. Here's your return number."

To say this was more than I expected would be an understatement. I was a little worried about surrendering my favorite pan. But, a month ago, I dutifully packed up the pan, sent it off to All-Clad, and waited. I cooked without it for a month (very tough, let me tell you!). Then, this week, when I came home, there was a box waiting for me.

I'm not kidding: they sent me a brand-new pan.

I love All-Clad, and the little pauper who bought that pan ten years ago with more money than she really should have been spending on a pan? She feels like crying.

Corvidophobia

2008-08-16T16:52:00.000-07:00

My sweetie hates crows. I think it has to do with an incident a year ago, when he first moved to Seattle, and was trapped in a courtyard populated by crows. The crows thought he was invading their territory and proceeded to divebomb him in threatening ways. It was like a scene from The Birds. He's hated crows ever since. There are crows that hang around our new house, and whenever he sees them on our roof, he mutters under his breath and glares at them.

This morning, his hatred of crows bore fruit. Today was the day we were going to start seriosuly moving into the house. We've hired movers to move our big furniture next weekend, but we are planning to move the smaller stuff and boxes ourselves. We were going to do it this weekend to get them out of the way of the movers.

So, this morning, we get up bright and early to drive down to Tukwila to collect some boxes from one of my sweetie's coworkers who recently moved. We get back to the apartment, and have the first carload packed and ready to go. He goes out to bring the car around. As he gets to the bottom of the steps, he sees a pair of crows on the curb. He comes down the last few steps quickly, and as he launches himself off his right foot to run at them, something snaps in his right calf. Instant, horrible pain. He can't walk. We have to go to the emergency room.

Fortunately, the doctor at the ER tells us it is a not very serious, albeit very painful, injury, and that he should ice it, elevate it, pop some painkillers, and stay off it for several days. They gave him a pair of crutches. So much for packing and moving.

Personally, I think the crows gave him the Evil Eye.

Jaguar Cove

2008-08-12T21:01:00.000-07:00

My sweetie and I went out to dinner tonight with some of his coworkers. It's a long story, but essentially we were meeting an executive from his company at the zoo. Neither of us was much looking forward to it, but my sweetie felt obligated. Then we arrived, and found ourselves here:

Dinner was in the zoo. To be specific: in the Jaguar Cove.

See Junior in the back there? Yeah, he's not thinking about dinner at all.

It turned out that the executive is on the board of the zoo, and tickets to this dinner were part of a charity auction of some kind. My sweetie's boss had bought the tickets, but in the end couldn't go, so he gave them to us. What we had feared was going to be a dinner all about work turned out a lot cooler. And the executive had all kinds of cool things to tell us about the zoo.

For example, Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo is a breeding zoo. They have a female jaguar, too, but they're letting her and Junior acclimatize to each other slowly, so they're not kept in the same exhibit yet.

Having never been this close to a jaguar before, I was fascinated by his shape. Totally different from a tiger: much more muscular; the legs seem shorter, proportionately, and he's got big shoulders and a big head. While we were eating, several times he made a weird, kind of grunting, huffing sound, which I've seen described in books but never quite understood. Definitely would not want to run into one of these while hiking in the rainforest!

Afterwards, we went to see the flamingoes, who are a new exhibit in the zoo.

Did I mention the zoo was closed? So cool.

Oh, were you wondering about my knitting?

2008-08-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

Probably not, but this is, by subtitle anyway, a knitting blog. And I have been knitting, in the evening hours, when work on the house has stopped. Here are my current projects.

A baby hat of my own design, knitted from Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Astrakhan, which will never, ever, happen again. The stuff is a nightmare to knit, even if the end result is kind of cute. The baby is due in September, but no one told him, because he arrived yesterday. Luckily, my knitting is already done. Hah!

Knit and Tonic's Tender Blankie, knit from Blue Sky Organic Cotton. The stuff if hell on my hands and shoulder, but it's lovely soft. This baby (my sweetie's second nephew, which I guess makes him my second nephew. Hmmmmmm) is due in October, so I have a bit of lead time. I hope!

And, finally, Manon:

Knit from WEBS Valleys Yarns Sugarloaf, in a slightly more deep raspberry color than the picture shows. Yes, this is my fourth Norah Gaughan. I freely admit my addiction. I will not seek help; you can't make me.

A galaxy far, far away

2008-08-03T21:24:00.001-07:00

Continuing our adventures in what feels like some sort of science fiction (who knew house ownership was so alien?), my sweetie and I made three trips to the dump today.

Yes, the dump is indoors. Strictly speaking, it is a "Disposal and Recycling Center," also known as a "transfer station." You back up to the chains guarding a precipitous drop down onto a mountain of garbage, and just chuck your stuff over the side. Presumably it gets transported later to a landfill somewhere.

My only regret is that I didn't get a picture of the huge earth mover, with all its windows covered in grillwork to protect its operator from flying garbage, that was pushing all of the garbage into that huge tunnel at the back of this picture (NO METAL. NO METAL). Everything was grey, industrial, and very, very dirty in a sort of post-apocalyptic sci-fi way. Seriously, I felt like I was in the sewer of the Death Star, though it was perhaps not quite as smelly. And no underwater monsters.

Team Destruction

2008-08-02T22:36:00.001-07:00

So, we are rewiring the house. Or rather, we are having the house rewired. We've owned the house about six weeks, and we're going about systematically destroying it. First, we cut out a cabinet in the kitchen to fit in our new fridge. We love the fridge, it was totally worth it, but we had to destroy the cabinet to get it in.

Now, for the rewire. The house is from 1952, and it has 1950s wiring. None of the outlets are grounded. In many of the rooms, the outlets only have two prongs. In the living/dining room, the outlets have three prongs, but they are merely cosmetic. The outlets are not grounded. So, since we're not living in the house, we decided to get the rewire done now. But the electricians need access to the insides of the walls. They apparently can go through the attic and through the basement ceiling, and claim they can do the whole house with minimal damage to the walls.

Only problem: we have a finished basement.

Maybe I should say we had a finished basement. Can I wield a crowbar or what?

Here's my sweetie in the garage, brand new reciprocating saw in hand:

I believe we now own six saws. Six. The destructive possibilities are endless.

Malted Milk

2008-08-01T19:48:00.000-07:00

I love malted milk. I have no idea what it is, but I love it. I always have a jar of malted milk powder in my pantry, and every now and then when I am feeling blue, I'll have a glass of malted milk.

Mind you, this is not chocolate malted milk, which I do not like.

When I was a kid (and, if I am honest, to this very day), I would nibble all the chocolate off the outside of the Whopper so that I could get to the crunchy, malted goodness in the middle and let it melt on my tongue, unadulterated by chocolate which is much too sweet, and much too overwhelming for the subtle flavor of malt.

Why bring this up now?

Well, it's summer. And our new neighbors on our fabulous new block are having a block party next week. The organizers gave everyone on the block a little map showing all the houses and the names of the people who live there. You can imagine that my sweetie and I find this very useful. We are really looking forward to it, and of course, since it's a block party, everyone is supposed to bring something. I've decided to bring ice cream.

I love making ice cream, but I must confess I only make it for occasions where there will be people to help eat it, because I actually get bored with a flavor before I finish a whole batch. I love ice cream, but not that much.

So, for the block party, I decided to make two batches of ice cream. One will be my favorite old standby, orange ice cream, the recipe for which comes out of my 1975 Joy of Cooking. This is the ice cream which caused me to buy an ice cream maker, because a friend of mine made some, and after one bite I felt I must always be able to have it whenever I want it. It tastes like a creamsicle, only much, much better.

I was going to make chocolate for my second flavor, because I have a very good recipe for a dark chocolate ice cream that's very easy and very good, but it's very dark, and therefore a very adult sort of chocolate. There are a lot of kids on the block, and I wanted a more kid-friendly flavor. But wasn't going to make ordinary chocolate ice cream because, you know, you can buy that stuff in the store :-).

After toying with a few things, I finally hit upon the idea of malted milk ice cream. Not chocolate malted milk! Malted milk ice cream with Whoppers mixed in. Trouble is, since no one on earth besides me seems to like malted milk without chocolate, I did not have a recipe for it. So, I made it up.

OK, OK, so really all I did was take a vanilla ice cream recipe and add about 1/2 cup of malted milk powder to it (as well as almost double the amount of vanilla extract), but hey, I created a whole new ice cream! And when it came out of the ice cream maker today, I was licking the beaters like some demented kid. I actually think I could eat the whole batch and not get tired of it. I love malted milk. When's that block party???

Malted Milk Ice Cream

2/3 cup sugar

2 large eggs

2 Tbsp flour

1/4 tsp salt

1 2/3 cup milk

1/2 cup malted milk powder

1 cup heavy cream

1 Tbsp vanilla extract

1 cup chocolate-covered malted milk balls (Whoppers)

Beat sugar and eggs until thick and light yellow. Beat in flour and salt.

Put milk in a medium sauce pan over low heat. Whisk in malted milk powder. Bring to a simmer.

Slowly beat hot milk into egg mixture. Pour the entire mixture back into the pan and set over low heat, stirring constantly until it thickens slightly. Do not boil! Strain the mixture into a large bowl. Cool slightly, then stir in cream and vanilla. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Stir the chilled custard, then freeze in your ice cream machine. When almost frozen, pour in the malted milk balls and let the machine stir then in. When the ice cream is done, it will still be soft.

Pack into a container, cover and put in the freezer to harden. Lick the beaters until your tongue hurts.

Heaven.

Roses in bloom

2008-07-27T20:41:00.000-07:00

I've counted: our new house has 30 rose bushes.

Roses have a lot of old associations for me. When I was a child, my father had a gorgeous rose garden along the southern wall of our house, in a narrow strip of dirt between the driveway and the house. I can remember him walking up and down the driveway for hours every day, tending to his roses, pruning and watering, smoking cigars and swatting flies. He always kept a pair of pruners on the windowsill outside the house, to be grabbed at a moment's notice.

He owned several books about roses, and I liked to look at the pictures. The roses had exotic names, and he knew the names of all of his roses. There was Tropicana, a bright orange rose that was my favorite because of its delicious sweet smell. Peace was my dad's favorite, with its delicate cream coloring with pink and peach undertones. There was the newfangled Double Delight, an ostentatious bicolor rose with petals that were white in the middle and hot pink on the edges. American Beauty was the classic deep red rose. When I was ten or so I bought him a white rose bush named Honor for his birthday, or for Father's Day.

For me, ever since, roses are not about bouquets. If I had to choose my favorite cut flowers, roses would be pretty far down the list. Cut roses are kind of tame, a little boring. Roses, real roses, are fragrant, extravagant, showy, slightly wild, but always stately plants. They are garden royalty, tended with care and supremely confident that they deserve every minute of the attention. Flowers are cut from these plants only for very special people.

We moved away from that house in 1983, and my father has not grown roses since. In Connecticut, where we moved, he was discouraged by tales of evil Japanese Beetle infestations, and California, where he now lives, is too hot. He sees other people's exhausted roses and scorns them: if they cannot be beautiful, he does not want them.

But when I told my dad I have roses, he immediately thought of what I need to do. In particular, he said, I should look out for fungus, because in a place like Seattle, which gets so much rain, fungus is probably a serious problem. 25 years since he last touched a rose, and he put his finger on the problem: many of my roses are covered in black spot, a nasty fungal infection which is common up here because of the rain. So common, in fact, that the nursery told me I should plant only disease-resistant roses, and if I have some plants that are very far gone, I should probably just dig them up and get rid of them altogether.

Some of the plants are pretty far gone.

I've never been a gardener, since I've never had a yard. When I was a kid I had a tiny flower patch in the back corner of our yard, but I took care of it in a very haphazard manner, so the flowers quickly died. I also do not have a terrific record with houseplants. In my last job my boss actually arranged to have the plants in my office watered, because I would never remember until the poor things drooped pathetically. From this I've concluded that I do not have the knack or the patience for it.

To my surprise, though, I find myself caring very much about these roses. I want them to survive. I don't want to dig them up. I want to kneel down and weed the beds and water deeply and apply the right treatments to help the survive. We are not living in the house right now, but I find I keep wanting to go over and check on them, pull a few more weeds, spray a few more leaves for aphids, deadhead a few more flowers. My sweetie complains that he has to work at keeping the lawn alive, and weeding everywhere else, while I do nothing but obsess about the roses.

But...the roses are my childhood. My father and I have a complicated relationship. He infuriates me a lot, and I know I am not as patient or kind with him as I should be. As they say, he pushes my buttons extremely well because, after all, he installed them. But when I look at these roses, I'm a kid again, and I want to make them grow well and make my dad proud of me. He asked me if I knew what roses are there, in a sort of wistful way, no doubt remembering the days when he pored over the rose books and sought out the award-winning roses each year. I don't know all of them, by any means, but there is an Honor in our garden, and a Peace. I can't wait to show him.

A Tale of Two Stores (Or, Sears Kinda Sucks)

2008-07-18T18:52:00.000-07:00

So, we have this new house. New to us, anyway: the house dates from 1952, and while the appliances were probably not that old, I wouldn't have been shocked to hear they were from the 70s. I am absolutely positive the washer, at least, was exactly the same washer my mom had when I was growing up. The refrigerator....well. Let's just say that we were keeping drinks in the freezer, and they were juuuuust right.

So we had to buy new appliances. As with the house, I really mean "new to us," because having just bought the house, we are broke like we've never been broke before. We were going strictly used or scratch-and-dent, and we were making no bones about it.

On July 4th, we went to the Sears outlet. I was incredibly happy to discover that they had the exact range I'd had my eye on: a Maytag 6875 electric range. Yes, we have abandoned our dream of running gas to the house (see: broke), so the one thing I wanted to spend some money on was a nice electric range. After a lot of research, I thought I'd be happy with one of these, and I was even contemplating paying full-price for it. But: they had it at the Sears outlet, and at a really great price. Heck, we even got a stainless range for less than the price of a white or black one (usually stainless costs $200 more). Of course, once you added the warranty/maintenance program ($199), the delivery ($69) and the haul away of the old one ($10), it was still pretty steep, but we were pretty happy, still. We set delivery for the following Saturday, July 12.

On July 5th, we went up to the Maytag Store, which also has a clearance room. No, don't worry: we didn't see our range there (well, we did, but brand new at $600 more, so we were still happy). But we did buy a refrigerator (French doors, bottom freezer: exactly what we wanted, in super-cool black) and a front-loading high efficiency washer and dryer. By buying three appliances, even from their clearance room, we qualified for a rebate of $200. Their service/maintenance program was $99 for each appliance. Delivery for all three: $59 flat rate. Haul away of the three old appliances: $0. We scheduled delivery for July 12.

On July 12th: Maytag said they'd come between 8:00 and 10:00. Sears said they'd come between 10:15 and 12:15. Sears arrived at 10:13 (early); Maytag arrived at 10:15 (late, though they'd called at about 9:45).

The Sears guys ran in. They picked up the old range, they ran out. They ran in the new range, they set it down. The lead guy said to me, "Do you have the plug?" (Ranges are not sold with the plug already attached, because you need to buy the plug that fits your home) I said I did. He said, "Great, you just stick that in the back and plug it in." I was surprised. I thought they were supposed to hook it up for me. But I figured from the way he said it that it must be like a printer or computer plug: it plugs in in the back, and then into the wall, no problem. I said, "OK." I'm a fool. He ran out the door: he had 19 deliveries to do.

By the time he left, the Maytag guys hadn't even finished unloading the truck.

The Maytag guys:

Measured all the doors to see the best way to bring in the appliances.
Took the front door off its hinges.
Unhooked the old appliances and hauled them out.
Brought in the fridge, hooked it up, turned it on.
Brought in the washer and dryer.
Hooked up the washer, which I wanted in a different place than the old washer had been. This meant that the hoses the washer came with were not long enough, so the guy went to his truck and brought in 8-foot hoses. Which, by the way, he did not charge me for.
Hooked up the dryer. Which meant attaching a plug, because dryers are also not sold with plugs attached. Not only did he attach it, he supplied it, after seeing which one I needed. Sears had me buy one when I bought the range, and I had to guess if it was the right one, based on the age of my house.
Started both the washer and dryer to make sure they were working, and instructed me to make sure to let the dryer complete its cycle to burn off the protective coating on the inside.
Put the front door back on its hinges.
Left, at least half an hour, more likely forty-five minutes, after they'd arrived. I bet they were late to their next delivery, too. I didn't care that they were late.

Note: $79 versus $59.

Of course, when my sweetie and I went to attach the plug to the range, we discovered it wasn't as easy as we thought. There are three wires, which need to be attached to three screws. There were extremely vague instructions that came with the plug, and none that came with the range. We think that the middle wire needs to go to the middle screw. But we don't know if it matters for the two outside wires. We don't think so, but we're not sure, and we do not want to fry our range before we even get to use it.

So, we called the store. The salespeople at the store were very surprised to hear that the delivery guys had not hooked it up for us. After all, we had paid for "white glove service" (which means they bring it into the house and hook it up, instead of leaving it on the curb!). They were very apologetic. They said they'd call the delivery guys and get someone to come back out. After a couple hours, I haven't heard anything, I call back. The salesguy is flabbergasted: the delivery people are telling him that they are not going to hook up my particular range. He says he's arguing with them, and will call me back when he gets it figured out.

An hour or so later, the store manager calls. He says they'd made a mistake in telling me the range would be hooked up: the delivery guys do not hook up slide-in ranges, because they need to be hard-wired. I point out that I don't have a slide-in range, I have a stand-alone range. He is very surprised. He asks if I have the plug, and I say yes. He does not understand why the delivery guys did not hook it up. He is very apologetic. He says he'll take care of it.

A few minutes later, I get a call from their delivery call center, in Scottsdale, AZ. The guy is calling to schedule the appointment. Unfortunately, Sunday is totally booked. I say that I have to, you know, work, so if they could come at 8:00 am on a weekday, that would be great. He says he can't guarantee anything, but he will make a note that I've requested this, and since we're setting the delivery day for Wednesday, with that much lead time, I'm very likely to get it.

Of course, when they call me Tuesday night, the delivery time they've scheduled is 11:15-1:15.

My sweetie calls the 800 delivery call number. They can do nothing for him. They say that they cannot guarantee any particular time. He points out that the whole reason they have to come back is because they screwed up in the first place, but they are unmoved. He says he doesn't see why we should have to take a day off of work because they suck. They don't care.

Let me just say: I understand that these things are computerized, and that there's not a lot of control over things, and you can't give people requested times because everyone will want the same time, but there ought to be a way to override the system to take care of customers who are really pissed, especially if they're really pissed because you f**ked up. The fact that there is no way to do it suggests to me that they have so many customers who are really pissed, they cannot afford to give any of them special treatment.

At this point I am shaking with rage. I call the store again. They close at 9:00 pm, and it is 8:57. To my astonishment, someone answers the phone. I almost feel sorry for him, except that I am in a rage. I explain the problem, my voice shaking in that annoying way it has when I get so mad I'm in danger of crying. He is hugely apologetic. He says that he will call the local delivery people the first thing tomorrow morning (when I am calmer he admits it won't be him, because he won't be working, but he'll leave a note for the morning manager) and try to fix it. But he tells me honestly that they probably won't be able to get me an early-morning time. I say, fine, if you can't, then get me Saturday. He promises to do so.

The next day, someone from the local delivery center calls, and confirms the appointment for Saturday. At this point I'm so disgusted I say fine. He says I will get a call the night before to confirm the time window.

I've just got the call: they will come tomorrow between 4:00 and 6:00 pm. My sweetie had only one thing to say: "F**kers."

I just want to point out that it's a damned lucky thing we're not living in the house, or I would have had no range to cook on. I have 30 days to return the range if I need to, and seven of them are already gone. Heck, if we're counting from the day we bought it, we're at fifteen days out, and I still haven't been able to turn the thing on. Meanwhile, I am keeping plenty of drinks cold in the refrigerator, I'm making ice in the freezer, and I've already done two loads of laundry in the washer and dryer.

I cannot say anything for Maytag reliability, or for the services of the mythical Maytag repairman. But the Maytag delivery guys? I love them. Buy from the Maytag Store. The difference could not have been starker.

Sexy

2008-07-02T06:53:00.000-07:00

Drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrumroll, please!

Ready? Ladies, I present, pictures of my sweetie:

Mowing our lawn. Is that hot, or what??

Ahhh, the buzz!

2008-06-24T12:16:00.000-07:00

So, today is the day we close on the house. I actually took today off, but to my surprise, there is actually nothing to be done today. My sweetie and I went to the escrow company's office last week and signed all the paperwork, so there is nothing to sign today. In fact, since possession doesn't happen until 9:00 pm tonight, we aren't even going to get the keys until tomorrow morning. A little anticlimactic, I guess.

But, since I have a free day and nothing to do, I decided to get back into the swing of things and sign up for Pilates classes. Since I moved to Seattle, I have taken only one Pilates lesson, and I fully intended to keep it up, but then I got the job, and I went on my honeymoon, and life happened. Plus, Pilates is expensive, and it's even more expensive here than it was in New York, so I felt a little guilty about spending so much money on something just for me. (BTW, if anyone ever tempts you to move to Seattle by saying the cost of living is lower than NYC, don't believe them. It's complete BS. By all means, come, for the space and the nature and the slower pace of life, but don't expect it will be cheaper) So, after six months of taking Pilates classes two or three times a week, I have spent four months doing nothing. But a few things conspired to finally make me do it:

1) My watch. I have a very nice watch, given to me by my dad on my college graduation. It is supposed to wind itself from the movement of my wrist, and in NYC I never gave it a second thought. In Seattle, it stops every night, and often needs to be reset as it slows down during the day. This is annoying. It is also scary: I move so little that my watch cannot stay wound. Which led me to:

2) The realization that I really do not walk anywhere any more. I walked all over in NYC; I walked to and from work, I walked to the grocery store, I walked to restaurants, I walked to go shopping. I thought I was a fairly lazy person, but simply by living in NYC, I walked. Here: I walk about 25 seconds to my car in the morning. I get to office and walk another 25 seconds to my desk. Occasionally during the day I walk five seconds to and from the bathroom. At lunchtime I walk for about 15-20 minutes, just to be out of the office. That's it. I've gone from walking at least an hour every day to walking 20 minutes if I force myself. If I'm busy and don't take my lunchtime walk, we're talking two minutes of walking, if that. No wonder suburbanites are obese.

3) How physically trashed I was after working the graduation parties. Yes, I was tired from lack of sleep, but I was also physically sore all over. After the first 13-hour marathon, I could barely walk, my legs hurt so much. After another week of these parties, my back hurt, my knees hurt, and my shoulders hurt (so much that even just wearing a bra was exhausting). I just do not have any endurance any more.

4) The realization that I have become reluctant to walk. I was always lazy, but now I am extra lazy. My sweetie wanted to go for a nice walk along the Burke-Gilman trail on Sunday and he had to bribe me with shopping first. Once we did it, I enjoyed it very much, but he really did have to make me. I didn't like that.

5) My resistance to the walk on Sunday made me realize that I feel restless, but trapped. The house, the job, everything, is making me just a bit anxious. I want to do something, but there's nothing, really, to do. I'm kind of in a holding pattern right now (though that will change when we finally close on the house!), and when I am stressed, I get very sluggish. I want to hide in unconsciousness. I sleep a lot, and I hate to make any effort to move. But what I really need is to focus on something else and relax a bit. Pilates is great for that. When I was freaking out over the wedding and the move, Pilates was the one thing that calmed me. For the hour of the class, and even a couple hours afterwards, I could forget about things and just take it easy. That's worth a lot to me.

So, today, I took a private lesson. And, having learned from my previous failure to follow up, I immediately signed up for a group class session this weekend and made an appointment for another private lesson next week. And, let me tell you, I loved it. I focused on nothing the whole hour but what I was doing with my body (one of my instructors in NYC referred to Pilates as "the thinking man's exercise" because you really think about what every muscle is doing and when; there's no running on automatic in Pilates!), and when I was done, I felt that buzz, that energizing lift that I had forgotten about. I am sooooo happy I did this!

Honestly, Pilates is not aerobic, so I don't know that this will solve #1 or #2, but I think it will totally help me with #3, #4 and #5. And just getting in the mindset of exercise will help a lot, I know.

Plus, I really want my abs back!

I feel old

2008-06-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

I am wiped. I just finished my first busy season at my new job.

The company I work for organizes safe and sober high school graduation parties. June is the busiest time of year; more accurately, three weeks in June is our busiest time of year. On our busiest nights we have a dozen parties just on one night. These parties run from 11:00 pm until 5:30 am: the idea is to keep the kids busy all night so that they can't be out partying themselves. Statistics show that more teens are killed drunk driving on their graduation nights than on any other night of the year.

Needless to say, during "grad season" everyone in the office is completely trashed from lack of sleep.

I worked several of these parties this season. They're pretty cool, very elaborate parties. It is the first time I have spent significant amounts of time with teenagers since I was a teenager myself. That's a long, long time ago. Here are some things I've come away with:

I am so old: I looked around at these kids and realized that I am old enough to be their mom. And I wouldn't have had to be a teenage mom to do it, either.

I am so old: my first party was an unusually long one, about 13 hours, and after being on my feet for 13 hours, my legs were killing me. I was limping around the next day like an old lady. Which I am.

I am so old: my legs recovered after that first party, but by the end of the season, after several parties of being on my feet, my knees are hurting. So is my back, and my shoulders (which already hurt, but hurt even more now).

I am so old: spending several hours in video arcade (I should say, a noisy video arcade) is not my idea of fun. And I never saw anyone playing the Ms. Pacman machine!

I am so old: what the heck is with the dancing these days? All the kids are pressed up in a big clump, humping each other. I'm told this is "freak dancing." At one party there was a pretty big floor and a lot of kids, but half the floor was empty because the kids were all pressed together in one corner. Weird.

I am so old: I had never heard of Soulja Boy or his Superman Dance, until I saw/heard it at every single party.

I am so old: I heard a fair bit of Michael Jackson at these parties, mostly Billie Jean and Thriller. I guess this year is the 25th anniversary of the Thriller album, which is the only explanation I could come up with for why these kids were dancing to songs older than they are. Older by a lot.

I am so old: this week I saw Dance Dance Revolution for the first time. But hey, at least I'd heard of it!

Squeeeeeee!

2008-06-10T10:23:00.001-07:00

As promised, a squee:

This is the front of the house. Isn't it cute? It is, I must admit, a lot like the house I grew up in, at least from the outside, which I didn't fully realize until my dad pointed it out.

Note the sidewalk out front. This is a long-standing joke between my sweetie and me, because I grew up in a neighborhood with sidewalks, and he didn't. Whenever we are walking somewhere, I am always yelling at him to quit walking in the street. This block is one of only about three blocks in the area with sidewalks; when we turned onto the block and saw the sidewalks, I was so happy my sweetie started laughing.

Inside, the house is different from the one I grew up in. The part I love best is this main room, the combined living/dining room, which is just huge and full of light. The hardwood floors are new and just gleam.

The master bedroom is on one end of the house, and two other bedrooms are on the other end. There is also a bedroom in the fully finished basement.

The kitchen, which could use a little work. Mostly I'd love to run a gas line to the house so I could have a gas stove!

And, the crowning glory: the backyard. My sweetie and I really wanted a yard for our (someday) kids, but yards are hard to come by in Seattle. Lots are small and frequently the house takes up the whole yard. This house has a big lot, almost a quarter acre, and a large expanse of yard, with lots of beautiful mature trees (too bad the rhododendrons aren't in bloom in this pic: they're beautiful). The best part is that the lot goes all the way to the street in back, so there is no house behind us. My dad made us laugh by referring to the lot as "only 1/4 acre" and "such a small lot." He has, after all, lived in the suburbs for decades. Trust us: this is a huge lot for being in Seattle proper.

Don't get me wrong: the house will need work. It's from 1952, and needs updated plumbing and electrical. It's still on oil heat, and the windows are original, if in very good condition for being over 50 years old. My sweetie has fantasies of ripping out the bathrooms and remodeling them before we move in. I've pointed out that a full-scale bathroom remodel is perhaps not the ideal first project for a couple of people who have never owned a house before. Still, we've moved past terror at the expense to Big Dreams about our house.

We close in two weeks. Squeeee!!!!!

(All pictures from the listing agent, Lake & Company)

Wait, what's going on?

2008-06-06T10:42:00.001-07:00

So, I've been feeling lately like I've become an adult, and I don't like it.

I've been working hard at this new job. I often feel at sea. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I hate it. Sometimes I wish I could lie around at home and do nothing. It is not yet a habit, the way my job in New York had become. It's work. Sometimes it's fun, and I expect (hope) it will become even more fun as I get my feet under me, but right now, it's work.

My sweetie and I spent a huge amount of money in Italy, and so we are trying to be good. It's hard to be good. We were used to a carefree, high-living, high spending life in New York. I mean, we were never huge spenders, but we didn't worry about money. Now, we worry about money. A friend of mine recently sent me the menu of an extremely fancy meal he recently ate, and my major reactions were: I used to have meals like that and I can't afford meals like that. If my sweetie and I blow $60 on dinner for two we feel guilty.

Then, this weekend, we bought a house. This is wildly exciting, and I will do an excited, squeeing post later (with pictures), but this has turned our worry about money into full-fledged panic. Don't worry--we can afford the house, but....it's a lot of money! And, though I owned a condo in New York, owning a house is a whole different animal. There's the sewer line, and the yard, and the roof, and the pipes, and the electrical systems to worry about. There's the water heater, and the furnace. Every one of these things either needs work or needs to be monitored until such time as it will need work. And that means even more money!

So, now I have a job that is work (and pays less than I'd like), I worry about gas prices and the cost of groceries, we're about to assume a mortgage and a house, and we're thinking kids, maybe in the next year or so. Heck, we bought the house because of its yard and its sidewalks and the fact that it's around the corner from one of Seattle's top-rated elementary schools, so we've just committed a heck of a lot of money to the just the idea of kids.

I miss my carefree single days! I got married and life became, well, difficult. I know it's what I want, I love my sweetie, I'm excited to be doing all these new things, but....but geez, I think I wasn't ready to grow up just yet.....

Say cheese!

2008-05-19T19:02:00.000-07:00

This weekend I volunteered at the Seattle Cheese Festival.

It was utterly gorgeous weather, and so the festival was packed. I was assigned to the booths of two different cheese distributors, handing out samples and selling $5 blocks of cheese. Yes, I snuck some tastes.

I also attended a couple seminars.

This is the plate from my second seminar, "From Curds to Consumer." Yes, both seminars featured a plate of cheese and complementary wine. Even turophilic me was cheesed out by the end of the weekend!

We've been back from the honeymoon for two weeks now, and have not had a moment's rest since, what with various obligations.

I started my job the Tuesday after we returned, so I have been working and learning. It's been interesting so far; I am not sure it's the job I hoped it would be, but it did not suck as much today as it did Friday :-). So for now, I am sticking with it. We are coming into the busy season, which will mean I will be working insane hours for about three weeks in June--including overnight--so that will be a trial by fire if nothing else.

The Italy trip seems very long ago now, but we had a lovely, lovely time. I offer this photo as proof:

Yes, I am in an Italian cheese cellar.

Gulp!

2008-04-17T18:46:00.000-07:00

Well, surprise, surprise, I accepted the first job I was offered. My streak continues.

However, I did cancel an interview with three hours notice at company #2, because I had decided to take job #1. Company #2 sounded quite disappointed, tried to persuade me to come in anyway and hear what they had to offer before making my decision, and then asked me to call them if my "plans change." Leading me to think I would have been offered job #2, also, if I had gone through with it.

I.....am freaked, actually. Job #2 would have been the safe, well-paying job with a big corporation in a business very in line with my career to date. Very familiar, very doable, very boring. Job #1 is the poorer paying job (although they offered me more than I expected, which made me happy), at a small business (15 permanent employees!) with very very few benefits. I've never worked for a small business before, and am quite boggled to hear, for example, that they don't offer any kind of paid maternity leave (yes, I asked. Just speculative). No retirement benefits, either. This is going to be a very different world.

And, did I mention, I have zero experience in the job they've hired me to do? Yikes.

My stomach is doing crazy flip-flops. I am not a risk-taker. And it has been a very, very long time since I have gone into a job with absolutely no idea of what my day-to-day work life will look like. My last four jobs were all pretty similar to the job I had before. Sure, each company had its own idiosyncratic way of doing things, but the basic activities, the way the contracts read, the way meetings were held, the way fairs were run, the way sales were made, recorded, serviced--these were basically the same. With this job, I know what the job is, but I have no idea how it gets done. I will be learning everything.

But this job is in an area I am very interested in getting into, and didn't know how I was going to convince anyone to hire me in. Just like that, I've got the entry, and I'm pretty excited, when I'm not terrified.

My sweetie and I are heading off to Italy for our delayed honeymoon tomorrow. When I come back, I will be a working woman.

Wow. I totally should have enjoyed my free time more!

Some nonsense

2008-04-16T14:52:00.001-07:00

Meet Howard:

A few years ago, I acquired a couple random balls of fun fur yarn. I had an idea that I wanted to make my sweetie a fur lined hat. However, none of the fun fur yarns were sufficiently fur-like to realize my vision, and I also found that I hated knitting with fun fur--it's utterly impossible to find or fix mistakes or dropped stitches, and don't even think of trying to frog the stuff!

Howard is made from the last ball I had left (I turned a few others into a potato chip scarf), and as it lost its ball band long ago, I have no idea what it is, who it's made by, or even how much yarn I had. I discovered, too, that the very things that make fun fur annoying to knit with are kind of advantageous when you're making something a bit haphazard like Howard: you can make mistakes and no one will ever know :-).

This took me maybe six hours to make; I had a tiny bit of black yarn left from my long-ago alien scarf, and his eyes are buttons from my button box (consisting entirely of spare buttons from clothes I've owned), so Howard is a true scrapyard monster. I wish this picture were sharper, because his button eyes are some sort of shell, and therefore somewhat bloodshot with pink streaks.

I think he's kind of cute, actually.

Job hunting

2008-04-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

I've been job hunting. Job hunting is my least favorite activity in the world. I would rather go to the dentist every day. I hate it.

For some reason, I have always been absolutely convinced that I am unemployable. When I was in college, I went to a group interview for Cutco knives. I honestly don't remember why I went to this interview, but I did, and I was offered the job. My mom made me turn it down, because it involved going into people's homes and demonstrating the knives. She thought this was unsafe. I remember crying, and saying, "But I got the job! No one will ever hire me for anything!"

To date it remains the only job I have ever turned down.

It's not that I don't think I'm capable or smart. I actually feel fairly confident that I could do most any job that does not require specialized education (like a doctor or rocket scientist or something). The problem is convincing someone to hire me. I absolutely believe that I am incapable of landing a job for which I am not the obvious candidate because of my experience. No one will think creatively about me. No one will even interview me to give me a shot at convincing them.

After I left grad school I spent several months in London. I had a 6-months work visa, and so was trying to find a job. I interviewed all over the place, generally for retail jobs, and couldn't land one. I was either overeducated or underexperienced, or both. Finally I got a one-month temporary Christmas season job. I took it. After it was over, I didn't even try to find another job. I goofed off for another month in London, and then continued traveling.

When I moved to New York, I found a job fairly easily, because I had gone to a publishing course over the summer. This was a way of getting a short track into the industry, a leg up on finding a job. I absolutely believe I would not have gotten a job otherwise. As it is, I only got offered one job, after I had interviewed at half a dozen, though of course this could be attributed to the fact that I took the first job I was offered.

Some years ago I was desperate to get out of my job, and I tried to apply to jobs outside of publishing. This was a miserable failure: I never even got an interview.

Every job I've gotten after that first job in publishing has been because I had directly applicable experience and, eventually, a network of people who knew me. Publishing is a relatively small world.

Now, though, I am looking for a job, outside of my little world. My sweetie and I are leaving for our honeymoon at the end of next week, and he has been encouraging me to relax until we get back, to not look for a job now. I haven't been able to listen. I am convinced I am unemployable. I got started early, because I figured this will take a very long time. I figured I would have to apply to a billion jobs to get even one interview.

Well, this week I have had interviews with two companies.

One is a job where my publishing experience is actually relevant. The other is a job for which I have absolutely no experience, but they like my resume and they are happy to train me. (Who knew companies with that attitude even existed any more? Everyone wants directly applicable experience these days; they figure if they get someone who already knows how to do the job, they won't have to train them. this is a total fantasy, but it's pervasive.)

The first job would probably pay me in keeping with my last job, and with my years of experience. The second job will pay me an entry-level salary, well below half what I was making at my last job. But the first job seems like it could be quite boring, and the second job new and interesting. I am torn.

Of course, I have not yet been offered either job, but I'm pretty hopeful about both. And, for the first time, I'm in a position where I might actually have to turn down a job. This is weird. I've always been so grateful to be offered a job, any job, that I've always said yes. But here, I'm actually a little worried that I will take the first job that offers itself just to have a job. But if I turn down both jobs, what are the chances I'll find another?

God, I hate job hunting.

Useless rant #18

2008-04-06T22:03:00.000-07:00

It happened again.

My sweetie and I went out for sushi tonight. I opened the menu, looked at the list of a dozen or so "special rolls." I went down the list, reading the ingredients of each roll, and rejecting those which included avocado. I hate avocado.

As usual, there were only two rolls which did not list avocado. I shouldn't say "as usual"--this is actually pretty good. Sometimes there aren't any rolls without avocado.

I chose one of the avocado-free rolls. I said to the waitress, "It doesn't have avocado in it, does it?" She said, "No, I don't believe so."

The roll arrived. It had avocado in it.

This has happened more times than I can count. Avocado has apparently become a standard ingredient in sushi rolls, so standard that it doesn't even warrant mentioning on the menu. Like rice and nori, you can expect avocado in your roll. However, no one has bothered to alert waitstaff to this fact, because I am always assured that, if it doesn't say avocado on the menu, there is no avocado. Depending on my mood, I have been known to send the damned things back. Otherwise I just pick it out, grumbling the whole time.

This has happened to me many times in New York. It has now happened to me in Seattle. You know where it never happened to me? Japan. Never. Even though I could not read the menus and was often ordering by pointing, or not ordering at all, just eating whatever was put in front of me. In two weeks traveling in Japan, I ate a lot of weirdo things, but I never had avocado ever, at all, period.

It isn't authentic, and it bugs the crap out of me that it is so utterly unavoidable. My sweetie says I should just order everything "no avocado" even if the menu doesn't say it has avocado. That way, the waitress will write down "no avocado" instead of assuring me incorrectly that I needn't worry.

But for some reason, to me, it's the principle of the thing. I don't want to accept that avocado is as much a given as rice in sushi. I want to believe that avocado is an ingredient which must be listed. It baffles me that it can go unheralded, because most people like avocado; you'd think if a roll has it in it, it would be worth advertising.

Consider this useless rant #18. Actually, given how often I have cause to use it, I could move it to position #1, but I hate to admit is pisses me off that much :-).

Magic

2008-04-05T18:48:00.001-07:00

This is Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Jacket:

Elizabeth Zimmermann is something of a legend in the knitting world. She wrote books in the 60s and 70s that approached knitting in a very relaxed, no-nonsense way, and she's regarded as kind of a mother of the craft as it's known today. I admit I haven't read much of her work, but I have heard about the Baby Surprise Jacket for some time, and have been determined to knit one.

I have to say, the thing is a marvel. Look at that picture above. It's a blob, right? You can't imagine how it's going to turn into a jacket, right? It's knit all in one piece; in fact, if you have a length of yarn long enough (I didn't), you could knit it all in one string--at no point do you need to cut and reattach the yarn; that in itself is cool. Not only that, even though you know it's not the case, you feel like you're knitting a big rectangle, and that both cuffs are knit on one side of the rectangle, and the buttonholes are on the other end, and you have no idea how the thing is going to rearrange itself. I consider myself fairly good with spatial visualization, but I have to admit, the jacket is well-named: the "surprise" is that it makes a jacket at all.

Voila! Here is the Baby Surprise Jacket, properly folded up:

There are only two seams on the thing, running from the neck to the cuff on top of each sleeve. There are no seams under the arms or at the sides. Furthermore, if you examine the thing, you'll find that the cast-on edge runs across the back and around each cuff, while the bind-off edge runs around the hem and up each front edge. This is cool because the cast-on edge is always stretchier, just the thing you'd want to have at the cuffs. I swear, after I finished the thing, I spent about twenty minutes just looking at it, marveling at the design.

Seriously, it's magic.

Stupid cute

2008-04-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

I know that, according to the last post, I am knitting a yellow sweater. However, I must confess I became disenchanted with the project this weekend, and I have frogged it ("to frog" = to unravel knitting, so called because when you unravel knitting, you "rip it, rip it") and begun something else with the yarn. To console myself for a week's worth of wasted knitting, I turned to a small project, for the new baby of one of my sweetie's coworkers:

These are Old World Booties from Interweave Knits. They took about three hours each to knit, and then 30 minutes in the washer to felt. They shrank, also: they were over 5" long when they went in, huge, even for the son of a man over 6 feet, but now they are about 4" long. Still big, but not laughably so.

I am utterly enchanted with them. They are my very first felted project (finally, I live in an apartment with a top-loading washer), and they're little and fuzzy and stupid cute. I am fighting the urge to dig up every random scrap of wool in my stash and knit up another dozen.

I've already started counting the expected babies in our social circle. There will be more.

Notes from Seattle

2008-03-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

My friend Brian sent me this:

with a note reading, "So plant 'em yourself!" A friend in need is a friend indeed.

However, check out the view from our balcony today, March 28:

Yes, yes, I know the cherry tree is lovely. But look, look to right, where I have drawn a very very dim circle (I still haven't mastered Photoshop). I know it's hard to see, I know the tree is pretty and distracting. But let me tell you: it is snowing. Hard. Big, fat, wet flakes that aren't sticking, but it's snowing. Last night I slept with three comforters on me.

I would plant the seeds anyway, since they say to plant them 6-8 weeks before last frost, but we'll be leaving on our honeymoon soon, and there will be no one to water them.

Oh, and one last shot:

I've begun knitting again. No, my shoulder isn't any better. But the latest Vogue Knitting arrived, with a pattern I had to try. And I had the perfect yarn for it. And I have nothing to do but sit around the house, unpack, job hunt, and twitch about being unemployed. And do my taxes, but doing my taxes would involve finding my files. And, you know, doing them. My hands needed occupying. This picture represents about a week's worth of knitting. I tell myself that knitting is better for my shoulder than sitting on the computer all day.

Yeah.

Miracle pill

2008-03-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

My eyes have been itching a lot lately. I have allergies, hay fever, mostly, and the way it most affects me is in terribly itchy eyes. If it's really bad, the inside of my mouth and my tongue also itch. Sinus problems are either less severe or less annoying, I don't know. I notice the eyes the most.

For years my allergies were at their worst in May and June. But the last two years or so, I've noticed I have symptoms all year round. Since I've moved to Seattle, they've been pretty bad, especially the eyes. I'd blame it on Seattle and its plethora of flowering trees (there are two outside our building, but I am not complaining: I love flowering trees), but I have to admit I first noticed it getting unseasonably bad in New York before I left. I thought it was all the dust kicked up by my moving, but who knows? Anyway, it was so bad that on my very last day in New York, I came up with the following song celebrating my #2 Drug of Choice (#1 being Excedrin), Benadryl.

(Sung to the tune of "Spiderman")

Benadryl, Benadryl
It's my favorite miracle pill.
Clears my nose,
Clears my head,
Nothing else will do instead.
Oh yeah! Bring on the Benadryl.

Is it strong?
Listen, bud
It courses through your allergic blood.*
Takes on cats,
Takes on dust,
It's an absolute musty must.
Oh yeah! Bring on the Benadryl.

When your eyes, in Spring,
Drive you wild, 'round the bend,
You don't need a thing
But your pink little friend!

Benadryl, Benadryl
It's my favorite miracle pill.
Clears your nose,
Clears your head,
Nothing else will do instead.
Oh yeah! Bring on the Benadryl!

* This line provided by my friend Laura.

Hey, nothing else is going on right now: unpacking, unpacking, unpacking. Ugh!

Toto, we're not in NYC anymore

2008-03-03T12:12:00.001-08:00

Photo from gourmetsleuth.com

This is broccoli rabe, also known as rapini or broccoli di rape. It's an Italian vegetable, bitter, leafy, with flowers that kind of look like broccoli. According to Wikipedia, it's related to turnips. It's an acquired taste, as it is quite bitter; for many years I didn't like it, until I learned the secret: blanch it first.

My sweetie loves broccoli rabe, and it was a staple in our New York diet: easy to cook, readily available year-round, not expensive, healthy. Saute it with garlic and olive oil and you've got a side dish; toss it with some pasta and you've got a quick and easy meal. It goes well with Italian sausage, peppers, chickpeas. When I don't have a lot of creative energy but want a tasty meal with vegetables, I choose broccoli rabe. It is a vegetable I can cook without a recipe.

For my first cooked meal in Seattle, it seemed natural to use some broccoli rabe. Imagine my astonishment, then, when I went to two grocery stores and was unable to find it. In the second grocery store, I even asked the produce guy for it, and he asked a second guy, who asked a third guy, and they all agreed that, not only did they not carry it, they'd never even heard of it. Flabbergasted would not begin to describe it. Broccoli rabe is something you can find in the crappiest grocery store (and there are many crappy grocery stores) in New York. Not having it is almost equivalent to not having spinach.

Have I mentioned there are a lot of Italians in NYC as well as Jews?

One of the fun things about moving to a new place is seeing what is different in the grocery store--in my wanderings looking for broccoli rabe, for example, I saw bok choy, something you can't get in the average store in NYC--but, wow. No broccoli rabe. I learned to love broccoli rabe in NYC, so I honestly cannot say if it was readily available in California. And I'm not saying NYC is so much better because it has broccoli rabe; I'm just...stunned. I had not realized the extent to which broccoli rabe had become my go-to vegetable until I could not go to it.

I bought mustard greens instead. They're bitter, too, but not as yummy, or as substantial, as broccoli rabe. Sigh.