Spreadin' the Love

I saw a student today who has two older sisters. I asked him how they were, and told him that they had both been in my after school knitting group a few years ago. He told me that they both still knit "all the time", as he put it - the younger one even made a blanket for her new baby brother!

Naturally, I am thrilled. I know how much I enjoyed being able to knit when I was a kid, and if they are still knitting several years later, I know that it is a skill that they can and will enjoy for the rest of their lives.

Hooray!

WOOOOOO! YEAHHHHH!

I still haven't had much time for blogging lately, have I? I did think I would take a moment to share a funny interaction I just had with a gaggle of teenagers. I was in my building, waiting for the elevator, and when the door opened, about 10 kids were in there, and before they saw me, one of the boys shouted VERY loudly, "WOOOOOOO!" he then saw me, looked embarrassed, so I screamed at the top of my lungs, "YEAHHHHHH!" He then started laughing, and said to his friends several times, "That was awesome!"

Heaven forbid he actually address me directly and tell me that my unexpected action was awesome, but I'll take an indirect affirmation of my awesomeness any day.

Poison Spraying Robots??

About once a week, I walk to the library, hand in the books I had at home, and check out a new book or two. Today was such a day, and it was just so nice out! I even wore my flip flops - a true sign of wonderful weather if ever there was one.

The walk is fairly short, and is usually pretty uneventful... but today, at a main intersection, there was a man holding several posters that he had hand printed, and warned of the dangers that laid in wait JUST a couple of blocks away.

Evidently, Bin Laden is in cahoots with our government, and has disseminated POISON - FILLED MINIATURE ROBOTS in the downtown Lowell area! I had no idea!!! This man was shouting, warning us all not to go downtown, or we would get sprayed by these robots. Several possible conversation starters entered my head:

"What are the signs that you have been poisoned? Is it a rash? LIKE THE ONE I HAVE ON MY ARM RIGHT HEEEEERE???" (waves arm in his face)

"I am from the CDC and I believe you have stumbled upon a very important, covert government conspiracy. We need your valuable information, so that we may disperse HAZMAT vans throughout the city to contain the contamination. Of course, it may ALREADY BE TOO LATE."

In a rare fit of good judgment, I kept my fool mouth shut.

STUR

Yeah, yeah... two posts in one day. But I figured a good meal out deserved its own post. And no, I didn't bring my camera, which I REALLY should have!

I went out to eat last night at the new restaurant, Stur, which is located in downtown Lowell. It serves lovely, fancy Mediterranean food (I always spell Mediterranean wrong the first go-round, I swear) in small portions, Tapas style, I suppose, but not Spanish food... so you are meant to get 2-3 plates per person and share them around the table.

The food was delicious! We got a grilled Romaine salad, which caused my friend Heather to want to go back into the kitchen and lick the grill (ha ha), a wonderful mushroom risotto, perfectly cooked seared scallops (and we all know how easy it is to overcook scallops), and pistachio encrusted lamb lollipops. Each thing was more delicious than the rest, and I definitely recommend checking it out. We left feeling full but not sick to our stomachs, and I cannot WAIT to go again. MMMmmmmMMMmmmmm.

But I deserve to be Comfortable NOW!!!

For a few years now, I have wanted to buy a new mattress. My current one is getting painfully close to being 2 decades old. It is also very firm, which is great for stomach sleeping, but I tend to clench my teeth more when I'm on my stomach, blah blah blah. I will stop myself before telling a boring story.

I have hesitated in buying a new mattress, though, because my current platform bed is Queen sized, and I keep telling myself that if I meet someone and want to live with/ marry this fellow, I will want a KING sized bed... let's face it, I am a King sized gal, and will quite possibly end up with a King sized dude!

But you know what? Rather than waiting for this fictional character to enter my life, I do believe I deserve to be nice and comfy RIGHT ABOUT...... NOWWWW! Plus, in my fictionally glorious home with my fictional husband, we will naturally have a guest room which will require a queen mattress, yes?

My pal Heather got me thinking more about this when we were looking around Jordan's Furniture after an IMAX movie a couple of weeks ago, so this past Friday after work, I drove to Jordan's, spent about an hour narrowing it down to two choices, then going from one to the other about 15 times, and then buying a Simmons with a super smooshy pillow top. I am thrilled! It will be delivered on Good Friday, and I just can't wait!

Huzzah for refusing to wait to be comfy!

PUPPIES!

It is my nephew's birthday soon, so I decided to crochet him a small family of puppies. I got the pattern from the book Amigurumi World , and used a bunch of leftover acrylic yarn scraps. They were fun to make!

I know, I am nuts.

Well, here it is, less than 48 hours after getting a tooth pulled, and I just called the dentist to try and make plans to get rid of the rest of my wisdom teeth!

How in the world did I go from traumatized and whimpering, to excited to have it happen again, in such a short amount of time? Well, for one thing, I already don't need any pain relief - I woke up today not even needing a single Advil, so the unknown is now known to me: feeling better afterward is a much shorter process than I had realized. Second, I can already tell how much EASIER it is going to be to brush all of my teeth - those wisdom teeth have been giving me trouble for two decades... enough is enough!

So, I have made the appointment for about a month from now, to get the other upper wisdom tooth yanked, and at that time, my dentist will analyze the situation for the lower ones, and I guess we'll go from there.

Wish me luck!

My Mouth Has a Sad.

I went to the dentist for a simple cleaning today, and came home with one less tooth in my mouth! It was not exactly what I had expected today to say the least.

Until today, I still had all of my wisdom teeth. However, they are really packed in back there, and have always been hard to brush. So, one of them finally got a cavity today. I asked the dentist, "We're not actually going to put a filling in a wisdom tooth, are we?" I also said something foolish like, "Just pull them all OUT!"

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I felt my anxiety level skyrocket and my heart started beating a mile a minute. I actually started shaking a little! The last novocaine experience I had was... not so excellent, and since I clench my teeth, they have become sensitive, and tooth cleanings are sometimes accompanied by zings of pain during scraping.

The dentist agreed that it made much more sense to pull the tooth rather than fill it, because I will continue to have difficulty brushing the tooth over time, and more decay will most likely occur. He said cheerfully, "Well, we can do it right now if you like; I have an open chair!" He also noted that if I really did want all four pulled, he would recommend going to an oral surgeon and getting put under anesthesia.

I bit the bullet, and walked over to the "empty chair". Although it was rather icky, I must say it was not as bad as I had feared, and didn't seem to take very long at all. And of course, once the trauma was actually over, I cheerfully requested that I be able to take the tooth home with me. Right now, the tooth looks a bit gross, but I was told that I can spruce it up in a little bleach for a less gruesome show and tell opportunity. (anyone want to see a picture?)

I don't feel so bad right now, but of course, the novocaine hasn't worn off yet... we'll see how things feel in a few hours!

Don't look now...

but I think Spring might be on its way!

Yeah yeah, I am breaking the longest silence this blog has ever seen, but what can I say... I have been very busy, with nothing very noteworthy! Lots and lots of knitting for pay, no knitting for fun, and a few social outings sprinkled in here and there.

I just got back from my first outdoor bike ride of the season. I kept it short, only about 12 miles... I could have gone longer, but I want to ease my butt back into things, rather than having an incredibly sore posterior the next time I go out. My backside has been through enough over the years, and needs to last me a long, long time (or so I hope - gotta make sure not to walk under any dangling pianos), so I might as well treat it reasonably well.

It's lovely out there today! Of course, it's all relative: I follow someone on Twitter who is supposedly all tough and manly and swings really heavy kettlebells for exercise, but was whining about whether or not he could do an outdoor workout... it was warmer than it is here today! (he's in Texas) But around these parts, 50+ Fahrenheit means all kinds of people frolicking outdoors in various states of undress.

When I got back home, one of my neighbors asked me, "where in the WORLD are you coming back from in THAT costume?" Uhhhh, does the bicycle not give it away? Is it too subtle a hint for you??? I managed not to give a snarky response, but I did think it was a very funny question.

Hm, what else has been going on? I turned *cough cough* thirty seven about a month ago, I went down to CT to visit my childhood friend Laura, I've done some knitting, some hibernating from the cold, and have started working out with kettlebells. Now, those are good fun, I tell you.

I make no promises that I will blog any time soon, but who knows... maybe one of these days, I'll have something extra interesting to report! Until then, enjoy the Spring!

A Narrow Escape

I don't know who remembers the enormous car repair bill I got around this time of year last year, but it hurt quite badly. In remembrance of that horrific event, my car decided that the "check engine" light needed to be lit, perhaps as a candlelight vigil of sorts.

When I saw the light, my heart sank. I REALLY want and need this car to last me a couple more years, at least. Perhaps even longer. And I don't want it to keep costing me $3000+ per year in repairs in maintenance, like it did last year! Yuck! The following options ran through my head, in case the bill ended up being painfully astronomical:

1. Push car off cliff; walk everywhere for two years, stick with Master Repayment Plan. *
2. Pay astronomical bill; keep driving the Skittle until the next giant repair comes along; proceed to option 1. Try to stick to Master Repayment Plan.
3. Sell car, (probably to local gang member who will trick it out and shoot people from it, no doubt they will keep the cool leopard print seat covers) lease CHEAPO car for two years, Try to stick to MRP, buy NICE new car at the end of the two year lease.
4. Sell car, (again, probably to local gang member), rewrite MRP to last about 4 years instead of just over 2 years, buy NICE new car now instead of waiting.

It was interesting to mull about these ideas for a few days until I could get the car looked at. I tell you, option 1 was sounding REALLY bad in light of the extra cold weather we've been having lately... trudge to and from the grocery store when it is 11 degrees out and super windy? No, thank you. I'd probably be wearing out friendships asking for rides to the grocery store. However, pushing the car off a cliff might be kind of fun!

Option 2 also felt bad to me... why would I plunk down thousands of dollars for a car that is probably going to start having repairs more and more frequently?

Option 3 was actually sounding pretty good. I was doing some cursory research and found that I could probably get a pretty cheap lease on a Civic for a couple of years... I definitely don't drive a lot of miles every year, and it would be very nice to spend the same amount of money on a NEW car that wouldn't be breaking down all the time, instead of continually fixing the old car. I might also be able to be frugal elsewhere and still stick to the MRP.

Option 4 was tempting. I mean, a shiny, newish new car sounds awfully nice. However, I have been working awfully hard on the MRP to throw it all away now.

Fortunately, I don't have to pick any of the above options. The repair will only be a few hundred dollars. I guess I will revisit the list the next time I need a repair. Cross your fingers for me!


*master repayment plan is the plan to get rid of all debt but main mortgage. The aggressive version has me finished in about 26 months.

How Will the World Remember You?

A friend of mine tweeted this question today... "How will the world remember you when you're gone?" It gave me food for thought...

To be perfectly honest, I have absolutely no aspirations whatsoever to have "the world" remember me. I will be completely satisfied if a few close friends and family members think of me fondly. Hopefully, those few close friends and family members will have a nice knitted item from me that they can remember me by, paired with some funny memories of fun things we did together.

What about you? Do you wish the world to remember you? Will you be perfectly happy if only a dozen or so people show up for your memorial service, or will you only feel that your life was well lived if hundreds of seats are overflowing with people?

A Visit to Cece's House!

I got to hang out with Maggie (um, and her mother, Cece) this past weekend... as soon as I arrived, an adorable sleeping Maggie was deposited in my arms, where she slept and cuddled for quite a long time, actually! Being half the size of Max, she felt small and light and wee. I loved it!

Eventually, she woke up, and I was able to get a couple of pictures of her, including a shot of her in her new Viking hat, knitted up by Yours Truly. She was a bit of a Crabby McCrabbersons during the photo shoot, but still managed to look adorable.





I love that last arty shot of Maggie, don't you? All professional-like.

And, a couple of cutie pictures of her older brother, lovingly referred to as Hulk:

Christmas Pictures, FINALLY!

I don't know why I was dragging my feet on this, I really don't. No, wait, I think I do... I took SO MANY pictures, and I kind of dreaded going through all of them and culling out the good ones, deleting the terrible ones... so, here they are.

I know you all are probably wanting to see the Max pictures most of all, because really, who doesn't like to look at a cute baby doing cute things? Even if you don't like babies, it's just PICTURES of a baby, without the reality of bad diaper smells, screaming, drooling, or other things that dislikers of babies generally object to. So, on with the cuteness!

First up, how much fun is a Viking in the box... especially a lampshade box!


"Isn't there more? Please???"


"I like my truck!"


Father and Son


"Hewwo!"


Max and Auntie Amanda (sure, it's not the most flattering pic of me, but... don't we look like we're having fun?)



Up next, a few candid family shots:

My pretty mom:

Her snazzy husband, my dad:


My grandma:


My sister Liz, and her future husband (!!!) Markos:



It snowed over the time I was at my parents' house, and I took a ton of snow pictures... but I cheated and took them all from inside! Hahaha! Here is one I liked a lot:


And finally, some photos of the Christmas tree decorations:





You all are in for another treat for my next post... pics of my friend Cece's kids! Yippee!

Fresh Bread

Next up on the list, making my own bread. I used a recipe for whole wheat bread from the book, "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day". I got the book from the library, to see whether the idea of pre-making the dough and storing it in the fridge for future use would be of any use to me. The actually turned out fairly well, but I think I will need to do some tweaking in the future in order to come up with a bread that will be good for sandwiches and such. A big bonus was that the bread was no-knead, which made it pretty low maintenance. I think I will wait and take a look at "Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day", which features more breads with a higher percentage of whole grain flour used in the recipes, which is more my speed.

So, things are already looking up - making my own bread and croutons. The toilet is looking like it's ready for a cleaning with some home made cleaner, so maybe I'll have something new to report soon.

Also, I've been sick with a disgusting cold, so have been low in motivation... I have a bunch of pictures to upload of my nephew from Christmas - I WILL get to them eventually, I promise!

Croutons!

I love making enormous salads, with a wide variety of veggies, and lots of croonchy stuff on top, too, like nuts, seeds and croutons. However, store bought croutons tend to have some weird ingredients in them, so I decided to make some of my own. I looked at my new cookbook, "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian", and decided to try a hybrid of the crouton recipes I found. The dry baked croutons sounded a bit TOO dry for me, and the others sounded a bit too oily. So, I cubed a few slices of bread, tossed the cubes with a tablespoon or so of oil, along with some Italian seasoning and some salt and pepper. I spread them out on a baking sheet, baked them at 300 degrees for 10 or so minutes, tossed them around again, and baked until I was satisfied with the crunch level.

Verdict? Very yummy! I will definitely continue making my own croutons. I get to use whole wheat bread, no weird ingredients, and the cost is much lower than buying them at the store, too.

Confession: I initially tried the oven at 400 degrees as suggested by the recipe, and promptly burned the croutons. I figured a lower temp would give me more time to notice that burnination was happening.

Second confession: I ate said unburnt croutons before I could take a picture of them atop my lovely salad. Many apologies.

Not Exactly a Resolution...

... but sort of. It goes along with my free floating idea of being nice to the environment, as well as the idea to being nice to my body, too. The resolution? As products/items in my home are used up, I will think about how to replace them with healthier, eco-friendlier products.

The first opportunity for making a change is going to be finding a new toilet cleaner. I will be turning to a great book by Linda Cobb for a lot of the cleaning solutions called "Talking Dirty with the Queen of Clean". It contains loads of make-it-yourself cleaning ideas. For cleaning the toilet, she recommends vinegar and borax. I have also seen suggestions of vinegar and baking soda, and borax and lemon juice. I believe I'll give the vinegar and baking soda a try, and see what happens.

Actually, in my research, I have found that baking soda and vinegar appear to be rather popular for all sorts of cleaning applications, including washing one's hair!

I will naturally continue the updates as they occur, but will continue to use whatever products I have in my home until they run out - it seems silly to just throw them away!

Max the Conqueror!

I jumped the gun and HAD to try the hat on Mr. Max before gifts were exchanged... I just couldn't resist! It's not like he knows it was supposed to be a gift anyway, right? Without further delay, here he is - and the hat is a perfect fit, with just a little room to grow.



(Back story: My family JUST congregated last night for our family Christmas celebration) - tonight will be Christmas Eve, complete with a Thanksgiving-like turkey meal, as requested by my sister who lives abroad where there is no Thanksgiving. As is traditional in our family, we will open most Christmas gifts tonight, after an early-ish dinner. I always loved that when I was a kid - after I opened my presents, I ran to the phone to tell all of my friends what I got, and they were always VERY envious that I had gotten my gifts a full 12 hours before they had! Tomorrow will be Christmas day, where we open up our stockings. When we were younger, "Santa" filled the stockings, but now that we are all much older, we pick names from a hat and fill the stocking of a family member; it takes the burden off of Santa. It's fun to try and guess who filled your stocking!

Well, although we are just about to have a merry Christmas, I know it's almost New Year's... I need to nail down that resolution thingy, and soon! Or maybe since Christmas was late, I have some more time to decide, hmmm...

Stay tuned for more Max pics... I've already taken a bunch!

Adorable Hat!

I'm pretty sure that Max doesn't read my blog, and for that matter, I'm fairly certain my brother doesn't, either, so I think I'm safe in posting this - I just couldn't wait! Of course, I'll post more photos once I actually get the hat onto Max's wee head, don't worry.


Isn't it cute? I hope he enjoys wearing it as much as I enjoyed making it!

I basically followed the Viking Hat pattern by Becky Veverka, with a few changes: I had a different gauge, so I cast on fewer stitches, and also rewrote the pattern for the horns so that they were a bit smaller and so that they could be worked in the round... ANYTHING to avoid seaming!

Finally!

Well, after being at this job for 3 1/2 years, I FINALLY have an inhabitable office! They came in and gave me a thermostat that WORKS, and set the temperature to a very bearable 68 degrees. For some reason, it still gets up to 10 degrees warmer than that at times, but not because hot air is pumping into the room, but maybe just because I"m on the top floor and in the middle of the building.

I can live with that. After all, it's below 90! Woo!

It is so nice to be able to actually pick out a sweater to wear to work, that I'll be able to wear ALL DAY and not have to plan ahead to have a light, summery top on underneath...

Finally!

The Holidays: The Problem, and The Cure!

We all know what the problem with the holidays is... rushing around, trying to find gifts for everyone, cooking cleaning, party hopping, and whatever else is unique to your own life.

For me, my regular job is extra busy around this time... when teachers are stressed, kids are stressed, which stresses teachers out even more, which stresses kids out to the max! My office has been a busy place, because it's one of the places stressed kids get sent.

In addition, it's the busy season for selling jewelry, and I spent the first two weekends in December at my studio, selling things. This past week, I brought my jewelry in to work, brought it to our monthly social work staff meeting, and then brought it to knit night up in New Hampshire. By the end of this week, I was totally frazzled!

Friday night, I was so 'on' that I really couldn't sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night, going through checklists of things that still need to be done, FINALLY fell back to sleep, and was then awakened at 5:50 AM by a terrifying zombie dream. TERRIFYING! My heart was in my throat, and I think I woke up gasping in fear. At that point, I gave up on getting any more sleep, and just got up for the day.

Anyway, the jewelry selling frenzy is over for now, most of my gifts are in order, and my 11 day winter break starts after work tomorrow. To celebrate, I BOOKED A MASSAGE. A friend of mine mentioned that Oasis Day Spa in Lowell, MA was having a 50% off sale on all spa treatments, so I signed right up! I was hoping to get the appointment for tomorrow after work, but ended up having to book for last night.... ohhhhhhh my, it was so very relaxing! The name of the massage therapist was Erin, and she was really great. It was a very nice combination of relaxing massage and deep tissue work to get out some of those awful knots that build up - I hate it when there is NO deep tissue work, but I suppose an hour of deep tissue might be a bit awful! Anyway, hot stones were involved as well, which I really liked, and I totally started falling asleep and SNORING at one point. I figure that is actually a high compliment to a massage therapist, that it feels so good and relaxing that you fall asleep, right? Another big plus was that Erin took her cues from me regarding when I wanted things to be all quiet, and when I was feeling more like chatting a little... I wish I could go every week! THAT would be nice...