5elementknitr

B is for Bialystok

2012-01-03T21:47:00.000-08:00

I started this year with a stellar book. It's The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (a novel of war and survival . Have you ever picked up a book just because of the title or cover. Have you ever started a book and within the first page or two, you knew it was going to be good?

That happened to me with The Red Tent. It started out with a sentence.... something like....

"My sisters, you have been lost to me for so long." and I thought, "Wow. This is going to be good." And it was! I've read that book several times and I always find something new and lovely in it.

I was wondering around the library and saw Hansel and Gretel on a table of new books. I love the cover and the subtitle. I read the premise on the back and took it home. Same as with The Red Tent, the first paragraph, all I could think was, "Wow. This is going to be excellent."

It is a beautiful, deeply colored book. It starts with a paragraph or two from Magda the Witch, explaining that the story you know has been passed down and twisted through time and that now we are going to have the real story.

It's set in Poland and this family has escaped the forced ghettos of Bialystock. A man and his wife are on a motorcycle, fleeing Nazi's (also on motorcycles). The wife keeps urging the man to let his 2 children (riding in the sidecar) out. They are weighing the bike down and they will all die if he doesn't let the children out. Finally, he gives in to her urging and lets them out into the woods. The Stepmom tells them to use non-Jewish names, Hansel and Gretel, and for the boy to never undress in front of anyone so they won't see his circumcision. They run into the woods. The girl is 11 and the boy is 8.

After wandering awhile, they find Magda's house. She is the village witch (in other words, she is a healer and abortionist) and she takes the children in. Her brother is the village priest and she makes him get papers for the kids.

The story follows the kids and it also follows the parents and their struggles through the war. The Stepmom isn't as bad as she is made out to be and Magda is an old woman who puts her own life in jeopardy to take in these 2 small strangers.

The village has a Nazi but he's not too bad (as Nazi's go) and then the batshit crazy Nazi shows up and things start to go south for everyone.

The book is so compelling. I spent much of our small trip to the mountains engrossed in this book. I couldn't put it down. There's so many layers to each character in the book. It is a story of war, so yes, there are some truly heartbreaking moments, but it's also a story of humanity and love.

I, of course, have to buy this book now. I can't imagine a world where I don't have access to reread it whenever I want to!

At the back of the library copy, there was an interview with the author (Louise Murphy). She was born and raised in San Francisco and has no ties to the Jewish community. She researched for THREE years before she started writing this book. She also gave a small statistic in her interview that wrenched my heart out of my chest.

In the book, Crazy Nazi's job is to go from village to village and find children that look Aryan and take them from their families, sending them to Germany to be raised by Aryan German families.

Ms. Murphy's statistic that hurt my heart so, was that during WWII, Poland lost 20% of their children. TWENTY PERCENT. Either to hunger, bombs, or outright kidnapping. I can't imagine.

This book is easily the best book I've read in years.

Other books I've read lately....

I listened to Alice I Have Been on audiobook. It's a moving, if somewhat disturbing account of the woman that Alice in Wonderland was based on. It's one of those incredibly researched, fiction presented as non-fiction type books. Apparently, Lewis Carol was an inappropriate man and Alice's family actually banned him from ever seeing her again. Ew. The book was very good and the woman who read it is an excellent actress. Most audiobook readers have inflection and some can do a variety of voices for the different characters. This reader showed real emotion and there were parts (towards the end) where she was so devastated over events in her adult life, that I was actually crying while driving to school!

My knitting group is reading The Hunger Games for a mini-book club. I had already downloaded it to my ipod and already had plans to listen to it once school started up so it was perfect timing!

I have this thing about downloading books from the library. I use the CD's even though it's a pain in the ass. But that way, I don't run out of time on a download before I can actually listen to it! After I listen, I always delete it. So far, haven't found any audiobooks that I'd want to relisten to. Not that they're bad books - quite the contrary! It's just that none of them have been as moving as the above mentioned "real" books I've read.

The thing with downloading CD's is that the makers are on to us. They never download right. They end up out of order and then there's usually one CD out of say... 16 (looking at YOU, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) that doesn't have any info on it and you have to enter the 22 tracks manually.

With Hunger Games, I somehow missed Disc 5 out of 9. I loved the book and it was flying along from the very start! I went online to put the audiobook on hold again and there's 245 people on hold for it! WTF! I ended up borrowing it from my friend through our Nooks. I didn't even go back to the rest of the discs. I flew through reading the rest of the book in just a couple of days. I can't wait to read the other 2 in the trilogy!

Speaking of trilogy's....

I'm currently reading (hardback, borrowed from the library) the third of The Strain trilogy. It's very good! The first 2 moved much faster but it's moving along and I can't wait to see how it ends...

Also, my current audiobook is the first in the Dexter series. I have been watching the show for a couple of years now (love it!) and wanted to listen to the books it came from. So far the first book

is dead on to the show, so no real surprises, but it's well-written and the reader is very engaging. It's nice, mindless entertainment for my school commute.

Here's my reading goals for this year....

Audiobooks...

I have SO many books I've downloaded, it's mental. And, yet, I still get more (coughDextercough). I need to go through my ipod playlist, see just what I have and make a list of them. That way, I can get a better handle on what I want to listen to, when.

I will definitely listen to...

all the Dexter books

In the Garden of Beasts - Eric Larson (released 2011)

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty - Joshilyn Jackson (I've listened to her read all her books - love them!)

Nook books...

My friend turned me on to Project Gutenberg. Most of my nook books are from here. It's almost all the classics (Dumas, Shakespeare, Shelley, Poe, etc.) and they are all free! So far I've downloaded...

Complete Edgar Allen Poe

Alice in Wonderland

King Lear (and several other Shakespearean works)

Frankenstein

"Real" books...

Garden of Beasts - Jeffrey Deaver (released 2005) (isn't that weird? Almost exactly the same title and VERY similar premise. Bizarre.)

Hansel and Gretal - finished - see excessive gushing above

Eternal Night - 3rd in The Strain trilogy (currently reading)

Wolves of Calla - Stephen King (read all the Dark Tower series before this, need to keep going on it!)
DayWatch - more series books!
Fool - Christopher Moore (after I read King Lear on my Nook)
The Litigators - John Grisham (got this free as a buzz agent and feel obligated to read it)
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - got this in a swap and still haven't read it yet. Still obsessed with zombies so this is high on the list this year!
Looking Glass Wars - first in another type of series.

(Sorry I stopped with the links, but blogspot got weird on me halfway through writing this post and I didn't feel like fighting with it.)

Another book goal this year is to go through my bedroom bookcase and cull whatever I can. I have such a tough time doing that! I'm a total hoarder and I adore all my books and don't want to get rid of any of them. But that bookcase is getting truly out of control.

Looking for the next great novel, Ruth!

A is for Awesome

2012-01-03T21:42:00.000-08:00

I know that my generation is the one who minimized and ruined the word "awesome". Gotta love the 80's! But this past weekend was awesome!

Dave has figured out that a last-minute trip is a much cheaper trip to take. He got us a nice condo in Winterpark for $100 a night. He actually haggled with the guy - so not like Dave! - and finally worked it out Friday night for our weekend trip on Saturday.

We spent more time than usual in the actual dwelling but there was a Husker Bowl game on Monday, so I don't know if that counts.

We left right after I got off work on Saturday (3p) and on our drive up, we weren't even all the way out of town when the wind was whipping across the highway so badly that we saw TWO semi's and one unattached trailer that had been blown over before we got there!! The hitch on the lone trailer was a thick twist of metal.

That made us a bit nervous about the drive up, but we arrived without incident.

We went to the condo, threw our stuff in and then kicked back for a bit, deciding where to eat. We chose Moe's BBQ (mostly because Dave's nickname throughout high school and college was Moe). It was an excellent choice!! The boys got hamburgers that were full size without being giant and very well cooked. I got the pulled pork platter with beans and coleslaw and Dave got the special of a 1/2 rack and 1/2 chicken.

Everything was so tender and delicious!! The BBQ sauce was a bit plain but when mixed with their special hot sauce it was perfect.

Then we went back to the condo and changed into snow clothes. We went to the local park because we read that they were having a family event for New Year's Eve. They had about 20 super cheap saucers and little plastic toboggans for everyone to use on their icy snow hill. There were 2 fire pits with fixin's for s'mores and also hot chocolate - all free! (The s'mores fixin's were marshmallows (some as big as your fist), wooden skewers, and those keebler cookies that are round and have fudge on one side - brilliant!)

We spent over an hour sledding and having a blast! There were about 60 or 70 people there and we shared our 3 sleds and used the cheap ones too (so much faster!!). At one point I was racing down headfirst, hit some killer snow ramp, and landed half off the sled, slamming my knees into the icy hill. Yea, that bruised beautifully! Half the fun was walking back up and dodging all the people coming down. The sledders were of all ages and everyone was laughing and sledding, dodging and being kind to each other, and it was a lovely evening.

The only thing that could've made it better would be fireworks. Good thing they had those, too! They set them off at 9p because it was a family event and there were lots of sleepy kids around.

We got home about 10p and the kids went right to bed. Dave and I stayed up a little longer and rang in the New Year right (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

Sunday we didn't sleep in too late; we ate at a breakfast place that had all the good reviews. It was pretty good. It's called Sharkey's and they specialize in benedicts. Unfortunately, none of us like benedicts. Dave got their biggest breakfast (the 18-wheeler) and I got an English muffin. We split his giant meal and the kids had pancakes. I'm of a mind that breakfast food is breakfast food and it's hard to mess it up - Sharkey's was great! They make their own jam and y'all know what a jam whore I am. They call it Shark Bait and it's a strawberry jam (maybe with some raspberry thrown in?) and it's a red not found in nature. It's a bit thin, almost like strawberry syrup and it's delicious!!

After breakfast, we went to the tubing hill. It's weird because there are two tubing companies RightNext to each other. We went to the one that had their shack at the bottom of the hill. They also had "snowscoots" - miniature snowmobiles for the kids. We tubed for an hour and then we got the boys on the snowscoots.

T cracked me up - he was riding really straight-backed with a big grin, lookin' like gentry....

D2 was all hunched over his snowscoot, very intense looking and serious.

That night we got movies and frozen pizza from the Safeway. The pizza was for the kids; for us, we went to a Chinese place (Pearl Dragon II) and got food for us. That was the best Chinese food we've had since we moved to CO. Wish there was a place like that near us!

We watched the Green Lantern and then we played the game of Life. It is super-complicated to start out with, but once you read all the rules, it's pretty easy. My brother and I used to play that game ALL the time when we were kids! I'd forgotten how much I love that game! We got it for the boys for xmas and I'm so happy I made Dave put it in the car to play on our trip! (T won)

The next day, Dave made his famous breakfast burritos for all of us and we did a whole lot of nothing. Just kicking back and messing about until the Husker Bowl game came on. (Huskers lost) There was a frozen river behind our condo which the boys were fascinated with. Dave was able to stand on it, so they wanted to play on it constantly, too. It freaked me out severely but I tried to hold my tongue and let them be boys and play on it. Even though the ice was easily at least a foot thick, I lasted about ten minutes then I made them come back inside (I was with them on the ice the whole time) and play Life again. The two of them played while Dave and I watched the game.

After the game, we took them to Winterpark proper (our condo was in Frasier) to look around. We were looking for Back Bowl Soup and we found it and it was delicious. Homemade soups and sandwiches. T and I had the Black-eyed Pea and Ham and Dave and D2 went around the corner for pizza (none of the soups appealed to them). Time was spent in a tiny arcade and then we took the boys and rented them some ice skates so they could skate on the tiny frozen pond.

They had someone out there giving "free lessons" and by that, they seem to've meant a nice lady giving tips, "Bend you knees".

Davis started with the stabilizer thing....

He kept falling down a lot and had a hard time figuring out how to get back up. The nice lady showed him how to get up and then he ditched the stabilizer for most of the rest of the time....

(See the lady in the background texting? Her daughter kept saying, "Look at me, mommy!" and the lady kept texting. So stupid.)

T picked it up pretty quickly without the stabilizer....

They had some speed competitions....

As always, the best of friends....

We got back to the condo and the boy's took a warming bath. Hot chocolate and popcorn were the dinner meal and we watched Thor (hot!!).

Dave kept looking in the ads at all the condo spaces for sale. 2 bedroom, fully furnished jobbies for like $100K. That's pretty cheap for that type of thing!

Then, the first night, the train came through every couple of hours, laying on it's train horn each time.

Ah.

But we had a sleep-number bed! That was kinda cool if for no other reason than I now know I'd never buy one. It was such a subtle thing and it didn't seem to make a difference in my sleeping. Fun to try out, though!

On Tuesday, we had donuts at a local shop (Ziggy's), then we went to the other tubing hill and spent another deliciously exhausting hour tubing and laughing. It was a much warmer day and we ended up in snow pants and short sleeves.

On the way down the mountain, we stopped at Beaujo's pizza. That seems to be a tradition we are starting. We've done it three times now. Another tradition is T getting all dramatic about being car sick. He doesn't throw up, he just feels awful and is all mopey and poopy until we get some crackers in him.

He and D2 said this was our best vacation ever! They say that at every vacation and it makes me happy that they think it's so much fun spending time with us!

Best start to a New Year ever, Ruth!

I Forgot the Question

2011-12-14T17:40:00.001-08:00

I almost forgot that after I do my Alphabet Soup, I open up the floor for questions.

Ask me anything!

I may not answer everything, but I'll give it a shot.

I've been doing a lot of xmas knitting!

I've made a Thermis for T's teacher...

And one for D2's teacher as well...

T2's class adopted a family for xmas and I made hats for the three-year-old boy....

And baby hats for the 3 month old twins (one boy, one girl)....

(D2's class also adopted a family but they said no handmades, so they got a grocery card.)

All that is from this month. I still need to crank out a scarf for my teacher in my 80 speed class.

Yes, that's right....

If the boys' teachers get gifts, so do mine.

Made all this stuff last month....

I made these Fetching's for the teacher I had for Theory I and II....

I made this hat for my current English teacher (English II)

(That's me modeling it, my English teacher is a bald man.)

Made this bookmark for my English I teacher (actually, I made this back in... October?)...

Made these candy cane ornaments for the boys...

What does this mean for my studies? It means I'm a slacker.

BUT - I'm already ahead of the game.

I'm going to explain how my school works.
Once you're out of Theory II, the next quarter is Theory III. Well, that's what it used to be called. Now it's called 80 Speed Class.

For each speed, you have to pass 6 Tests: 2 Jury Charge (JC), 2 Lit, 2 QA (like you would hear in a trial. Lawyer asks question, Witness answers.) You get a test every day - a week of JC, a week of Lit, a week of QA, rinse, repeat.

If you pass 2 JC in 80 speed, you sign in to two classes - 100 Speed and 80 Speed.

Example:
I was in 100 class for JC Week and QA Week but I had to go to 80 speed class until I passed that final (second) 80 Lit.

The quarter is 12 weeks long and you have the whole quarter to pass a speed. Sometimes it takes people 2 or 3 quarters to get through a speed (I hear most people get stuck around 120/140)

And for those who have NO idea what I'm talking about...
I went back to school in April. I'm going to a school for Court Reporting, also called Stenography. Can also get a job in Captioning.

You have to reach a speed of 225 words per minute to graduate. (Not a typo - two hundred twenty five words per minute.)

As I said, I started this quarter in the 80 Speed class, and at week 9 I had completed all the tests!

Now I'm a complete failure again in the 100 Speed class! Woot woot!

So, yes, I am slacking a bit.

When I first got to 80 Speed, I was all - motherfucker! I'll never get this speed! Then it seemed a bit more manageable, then doable, then I did it! Now I'm at square one again in 100 Speed (motherfucker! I'll never get this speed!) and I am resigned to the fact that I will be passing no more tests this quarter and that bugs me, but then I remind myself that I'm actually a few weeks ahead of the game!

Looking forward to your questions!

Hope your xmas knitting is going well, Ruth!

Fair Warning

2011-12-09T20:01:00.000-08:00

I've had so many wonderful responses to my last post. I've had comments on the last post and many private emails sent to me about it. I am happy if it helps and saddened if it happened to you, too.

I'm sure most of you are aware that my last post was prompted by the headlines lately.

I read the entire Grand Jury charge regarding Sandusky.

There's so many things about this that makes me so angry, I hardly no where to begin.

The Jury charge says that an assistant SAW Sandusky raping an unidentified boy in the Penn State shower room. The assistant testified that the boy made eye contact with him, that Sandusky made eye contact with him, and that he (the assistant) then turned around and walked out. In the indictment, he says he went home and told his dad and they waited until the following morning to go to the police.

Oh. Wait. Not the police. They went and told the head coach, Joe Paterno. And the coverups either commenced or continued.

Now this assistant is claiming he stopped the abuse he witnessed. He didn't say that to the grand jury but now that his name is out there, he's saying he did. And he still says he didn't stop it physically, but he did stop it before he left the building.

What. The. Fuck.

How do you see that and not pull that man off that boy and beat him to death. How do you SEE that the child sees you and yet you do nothing?

I can only imagine that child seeing another person in the shower room and having that split second of hope that this person will HELP them. And when that doesn't happen, he still has a hope that when that witness leaves, he's leaving to go get help. And then that help never comes. Ever.

Can you imagine what that does to a child's sense of the world and how it works?

I keep picturing my own boys. I picture how little D2 is at his current 8 years of age. I picture T at his ten years of age and how he's tall but he's so thin and so emotionally sensitive. And I picture grown men and how large they are. I can't help but picture the physical size differential between them and it makes me cry every time.

The indictment has so many other things that boggle me.

Like how one of the victims told their mom and the mom went to the police. The police wired her and she confronted Sandusky. He admitted to showering with the boy and said, "That was probably wrong." (Fuuuuuuu) The cops took that recording and confronted Sandusky and he admitted to being the man on the tape and they put him in jail.

Oh. Wait. No.

They told him not to shower with children anymore.

Oh. OK! I won't!
(FUUUUUUUUUUU)

Then there's the janitor who also witnessed Sandusky assaulting a child in the showers; performing oral sex on the boy. He DID make sure Sandusky stopped. He told a few co-workers and also his boss. His boss said the janitor was so upset that the boss feared for his life - thought the man was going to have a heart attack. The boss told the man that it was up to him and his conscious to do whatever he thought was best.

No cops were called. The janitor was too afraid of losing his job to make the call. He died a few years later and the grand jury testimony is from his boss and co-workers.

Another section of the indictment, if I'm reading it correctly, says that an ADA was going to go ahead and press charges against Sandusky but the Penn State CAMPUS COPS told him not to, so the ADA didn't. [My head explodes right about here.]

And, as an aside, can I just say how irritated it makes me to hear it called "assault"? The child was assaulted. It's like they are trying to make it PC. It's rape. Call it what it is. There was no one to soften the blow when these people were raped, why should we make it easier for other's to hear about it now?

There's been all kinds of debate on how Penn State put football before the welfare of children. It's not even a debate anymore, really; it's clear to most people that that is what occurred. I think the real question is how far up and how many people were complicit in this coverup.

Fair warning means that if anyone had any idea that Sandusky was such a predator, he should have been kept away from children. Barring that, spread the word so that he doesn't get a chance to get at anyone else. The investigations on this animal started in early 2000. Nothing of any significance was done and he had another ELEVEN YEARS of access to keep ruining children.

Oh. Wait. He was told by the police to never shower with children again. Let's not forget that!

Sandusky's wife is just now coming forward in his defense. I believe the only reason she's coming forward at all is to cover her own ass, since now she's named specifically in the new indictment that was just released where 2 other victims have given testimony. A new victim has testified before a grand jury that he screamed for help while Sandusky was raping him in the basement of the Sandusky home. The victim says he knew the wife was home but no one came to help him.

She says that no one was ever forced to stay in their basement. The thing is, no one had to force them. They are children and by their nature, they generally do as they are told. Especially when a they are a guest in someone else's home. Especially when they have no idea they are going to be raped.

And even the parents have to be more aware. I feel as though I'll get some flack for this but it's true. If you are allowing your child to stay overnight with an adult, shouldn't you damn sure educate your child about what to do if that trusted adult makes advances of any kind? Educate them about what is appropriate and what's not. Let them know they can tell you if something happens and if they aren't comfortable telling you, that they should tell SOMEone.

When we lived in Parker, our kids stayed the night at their friend's house a couple of times. The third time, when we went to pick them up, there was some random man there and the single dad who lived in that house wasn't there. The random man told us his name and said the single dad wasn't there. This random man didn't explain who he was in relation to the family or where the single dad went. We never let our kids stay there again.

We took these headlines as an opportunity to educate our boys. We'd been watching most of the ESPN coverage of it all and the boys were watching with us. We sat them down and explained (in age appropriate language) what it was we were seeing. We talked to them about what was appropriate touch and what was not. We told them that if ANYone touched them in a way that made them feel uncomfortable, they were to tell us immediately. Even if that person threatened them (or us) or offered gifts or whatever. We told them that if the person were a stranger, a well-known friend, or a loved one, it didn't matter. We went over strategies to get away and when and how to get help.

Sandusky took some of these kids out of state and then told them if they didn't comply with his sick needs he'd leave them there. We told our kids that no matter where they were, all they'd have to do is call and we will come get them.

Parents need to take these steps with their kids. They need to sit them down and talk to them. I had a friend say it was too weird and uncomfortable to talk about things like that with her children and I pointed out, "How uncomfortable and weird are you going to feel if something happens to them because you didn't talk to them about it?" Parents need to be aware of who they are with and most importantly they need to take notice if their child comes back changed.

When I was going through the worst of it during Very Bad Things Part II (or whatever I was calling it), I changed. Materially. Noticeably. I stopped talking. I was the most out-going, gregarious kid and I suddenly stopped talking entirely. I was so traumatized that I started stuttering badly, so I stopped talking all together. A teacher at my school noticed the stutter and sent me to the school's speech therapist and she gave me a couple tricks that helped.

My parents never noticed.

I stopped talking for nearly 6 months and my parents never noticed.

I remember, one time, my mom was lovingly laughing at me and said, "Honey, slow down. You are so smart and your brain wants to do so many things and tell me so many things, that your mouth sometimes can't keep up!"

We need to follow our instincts and teach our kids to follow theirs as well. One of the private emails I received was from an online friend. She asked not to be revealed but said I could use her email as an example if I wanted to.

She told me how her sister called last minute and wanted to bring some random man to the Thanksgiving dinner. She asked her sister why the man wasn't having dinner with his own family and the sister hemmed and hawed and wouldn't be up front about anything. So my friend told her sister No. Later, her mom told her that that man was in jail. She finally got it out of her mom that he was in trouble for molesting his step-daughter. My friend was furious at her sister for nearly endangering her own children but she should feel good that she followed her instincts - even at the expense of causing bad blood with her own blood.

Don't get me wrong. I am in no way blaming the parents of these kids. The fact is, guys like Sandusky (and Bernie Fine and, as of today, longtime Amateur Athletic Union president Robert Dodd) are masters of disguise and manipulation. They seem like wonderful, altruistic men who only want to help less fortunate children. In reality, they are animals seeking prey.

And how fucking predatory do you have to be to start a charity that gives you access to your specific target prey? Dear god.

Wishing I believed in Hell, Ruth!

Open Letter to a Friend

2011-11-18T09:37:00.000-08:00

I think y'all know how much I hate when I first meet someone and they tell me their life story, all their ailments, and various other overshares within the first five minutes of meeting them. If this is your first time at this blog, please go read some of my tasty Alphabet Soup or something. Trust me.

This is another entirely too long post (seriously, we're talking novel length here) but I want to say something to a friend and her letter, for the rest of y'all, will need some back story. The letter is to my friend but I think it's something that needs to be said to everyone, so I'm putting it here. I've changed some details about my friend (including her name) to keep her as anonymous as I know she would want to be in this.

In the past, I've mentioned that I've had Very Bad Things happen to me. I've often said I would talk about it sometime and I think now's as good a time as any. I've had this letter in my head for a long time as well.

First, Back story (get a snack)....

Statistically, 1 out of 4 women will be messed with before the age of 18. Over half go unreported, so I'd say that statistic is a bit shy of the truth.

I got messed with by three different people before I was in 6th grade.

Very Bad Things - The First Time.
The first time, I was 4 years old. My parents used to hang out with this 4WD club and the main couple they hung out with had a son. I loved the wife of that couple. She made me the cutest little sun hat. It was reversible with white on one side and light blue with little white hippos on the other. One night the 4 adults went out on the town and they had that couple's son babysit us. His name was Jay and he was about 15 or 16.

When he came to put me to bed, he lay down next to me on the bed. He pulled his pants and underwear down and masturbated. He tried to put my hand under his, but I pulled it away. He came on his stomach and then he dipped his finger in it and tried to make me taste it. I didn't want to because it smelled weird and I resisted. He tried to talk me into it saying it tasted just like milk, "You like milk, right?" I lied and said I didn't. I remember feeling enormous guilt for lying since milk was (and still is) my favorite drink. He told me it wasn't bad and tasted it himself. I still wouldn't taste it but he got another finger full and shoved his finger into my mouth anyway.

Just about then, my brother, John - who must've been wondering what was taking so long - popped his head in the door and said, "What're you guys doing?" in an innocent 6 year-old's way, as in, "Are you doing something fun, can I play?" Jay yelled at him, "Get out! I'll take care of you in a minute." John closed the door and took off. Up until Jay yelled at John, I wasn't scared. I was confused and uncomfortable, but not scared. The way he said he'd "take care" of John scared me. After John left, Jay stood up, pulled up his pants, tucked me in like nothing happened, and left the room.

I don't think he did anything to John. I don't know if John told my mom but we never saw that kid again. I never knew if my mom knew anything about it. Even if she had known, in the '70's when I was kid, you didn't report things to the police and you didn't talk about it. You certainly weren't sent to therapy about it. You were told it wasn't your fault and it wouldn't happen again and it was best to just try to forget the whole thing.

Very Bad Things - The Second Time.

Not going to cover this one today. I'll give my usual euphemism that the 13 year old boy next door took a rather unnatural interest in me for 2 years, starting when I was 8. I'll talk about this in detail another day.

Very Bad Things - The Third Time.

This is the one that concerns the letter and my friend.

In 4th grade, my parents decided we should go to the private church school. Long backstory here that we'll skip except to say that they were so small they kept falling apart. In 5th grade, it was even smaller and after xmas break that year, we went back to public school (YAY!). During our stint in jail, um.. I mean, private school, both my parents worked and so after school, we stayed at the houses of other kids' families until our parents could pick us up. It's not as random as it sounds; it was prearranged and every one was pretty happy with the set-up.

For awhile when I was in 5th grade, we would stay with Debbie Canfield's family. Debbie was my brother's girlfriend and her younger brother (Jack?) was a year or two younger then me. The four of us would be picked up by Debbie and Jack's grandma. We would hang out at their grandparent's house, running around like crazy people, until our parents would pick up John and me.

Debbie's gpa used to sit in the dark in a front room of the house, watching TV. One time he said to me, "Come give gpa a kiss." He'd just said it to Debbie and she ran in and gave him a peck on the cheek and took off. I followed suit but when I went to kiss his cheek, he turned his head and kissed me on the mouth. This happened a few days in a row and about the third day, he shoved his tongue in my mouth. I was 11 and very sheltered. I'd never heard of a French kiss and didn't know what he was doing. I just thought he kissed weird and clenched my teeth so his tongue couldn't get past them, but I pretty much avoided him after that.

The gparents had an RV in their backyard. I'd never been inside an RV before so I always wanted to go in and check it out but Debbie's gma would never let us, "it's not a toy." One day, we were running around in the back yard playing tag and I heard someone whisper to me. It was Debbie's gpa and he was at the back of the RV signalling to me to come over. I'd never seen him out of his chair, much less outside, so I went over. He said he would show me the inside of the RV if I wanted to see it. I got a weird vibe with him being outside and whispering and all, so I shouted to Debbie, "Hey Debbie, we get to go in!" She was in the garage and didn't hear me. He shushed me and said, "She's already seen it." Then he opened up the RV and ushered me in.

He entered after me and locked the door behind him. I'd never been in an RV before and marveled at the tiny kitchen and other cool things about it. It was one of those long ones with everything in a hallway setting and the bed at the far end. The bed section was raised, the kind that goes over the bed of the truck pulling it. Mr. Canfield lifted me up on the bed so I was sitting on the edge with my legs dangling off. He asked me to get his Bible (being the good Christian he is, dontcha know). It was on a shelf behind a little curtain on the other side of the bed. I twisted around and got it and when I straightened back up, he was standing right in front of me, between my legs. He slid his hands up my shirt and over my brand-new training bra. He stood just like that - motionless save for the shaking of his trembling hands - for several minutes. An eternity. His eyes were half closed and his mouth half open. A string of drool dropped from his mouth and I moved my leg to avoid it hitting me. That movement seemed to wake him up and he removed his hands.

So many things ran through my head while his hands were on my chest. There was a knife on the counter right behind him. I wondered if I could get past him and get to that knife. I wondered if I should bother with it or just make a break for the door. I wondered could I get to the door, unlock it, and get out before he got to me. I wondered if I did get the knife, would he be able to get it away from me. I never once wondered whether I'd be able to stab him or not. I knew that if I got that knife, I would twist in his gut or shove it in his eye without hesitation (although he was so much taller than me, that I doubt I could've reached his eye).

After he removed his hands, he lifted me down and told me to go and play. His pants were sticking out and I walked to the door and left him in there. I wouldn't run. I forced myself to walk. My hands were shaking uncontrollably and I had a hard time with the lock, but I did it and I left.

I immediately found Debbie and told her what happened. As soon as I started telling her, I began to cry. She raised her voice and said, "NO!" I thought she didn't believe me so I tried to stop crying and walk away. She grabbed me and said, "We have to tell Gma." It was my turn to be horrified and cry out NO. She said she believed me but we had to tell Gma right away. I begged her not to. I was crying again and she said that she would tell her but I had to be there. We went into the house.

The way the house was situated, the living room was separated from the kitchen by an archway opening. Her gma was washing dishes and I can imagine what she saw when Debbie said she had to tell her something. I imagine Mrs. Canfield turning from the sink of dishwater and seeing a very pissed-off Debbie standing in the archway holding my hand. The only part of me her gma could see was my hand and part of my forearm. I was standing outside the archway so she couldn't see me, standing with my face to the wall, trying to disappear.

Debbie said, "He touched her." Here's where Debbie stopped talking and started shouting at her grandmother, "He promised he would NEVER do that again but he took Ruth into the RV and he touched her." I heard a dish break as it fell from Mrs. Canfield's hands and I tried harder to melt into the wall. My whole body was on fire and I couldn't get my hand from Debbie's. She held my hand gently but tightly, never letting go. Gma rushed past us like a bull and out the back door, screaming his name.

Debbie took me to the garage where our brothers were. Debbie sat me down and told me how her grandfather had messed with her and her female cousin. That's when I realized that her crying out "no" meant something very different than what I had originally thought. I was devastated. I felt so bad for her. I had no idea people would molest their own grandchildren. I felt like I was going to throw up.

The 4 of us kids huddled together until my parents showed up and John and I left.

I told my mom what happened. After Very Bad Things - The Second Time (which I know she knew about and had helped make sure it stopped), I expected a very different reaction from her. My dad was on a business trip in the back country (he measured water up in mountains for the power company) and she felt she didn't have a lot of options. She said, "I need you to go there after school tomorrow." She had to see the look of horror on my face and I know she heard me emphatically say, "No!!" She said, "I can't take the time off and there's no place else for you to go after school. I know it's awful but he won't come near you and I just need you to be my brave girl for a day or two." She promised me he wouldn't even be at the house and since I had no choice...

The next day, not only was Mr. Canfield at the house, but he was the one who picked us up from school. Something he had never done before. We used to fight over the front seat but that day, all four of us squeezed into the back. I remember seeing him and him looking at me with rage in his eyes. I couldn't take it and looked down at my feet. I knew in my heart, I would never look up again.

When we got to their house, we hung out in the back yard, but this slug of a man who rarely moved from his chair, suddenly had a bunch of yard work to do. My brother suggested we go for a walk. We weren't allowed to ever leave the yard (they didn't live in the best neighborhood) but we left anyway. We walked and walked, all four of us, trudging along in the heat of the day, silent. John tried to talk and joke a bit but I was a silent black cloud and it didn't work.

Finally, we stopped. I'd been looking down and had no idea where we were. I remember we stopped near a big wooden fence and a main road with a lot of traffic going by. John had had enough. He tried to tilt my chin up but I pulled my face away. He did it again and, again, I pulled away. He did it a third time but wouldn't let me off the hook. Even so, I wouldn't look him in the eye. He kept moving his face to look in my eyes and I kept looking away until I finally looked up at him and glared. He said, "There you are. I knew you were still in there." I glared at him still but remained silent.

John was instrumental in getting Very Bad Things - The Second Time to stop. He knew me like no one else and I think he knew the fact that I was silent and not looking up was something that could become permanent if he didn't do something.

Holding my chin up the whole time, he told me this:
Ruth, that man is old and weak. He did something that was bad. He touched you but he could never, EVER touch who you are inside. If you change, he wins. You can be mad and hurt, you can even be scared, but you can't let him win. I know who you are. I see you in there. And I don't ever want to see you looking down anymore.

John was 13 years old when he told me that. It broke my silence forever. I cried, not loud or anything, but I cried. Debbie started crying, too, and took my hand. We all held hands and went back to the house. We stayed in the yard and when the slug came outside again, I looked him in the eye and said, "Go back to your chair and stay there." He glared at me but I didn't look away and he went inside.

The next day, my mom had arranged for us to go elsewhere and I never saw the slug again.

Like I already said, when I was a kid, families didn't report this stuff to the police and you didn't talk about it afterward. The thing is, if someone had reported that man, or even told my parents, he would have never had access to me. He wouldn't have had a chance to prey on someone else. It's all about Fair Warning.

And now, my letter....

Dear Renee,
We were having a conversation awhile ago about our busy live. You are so busy and so organized and put together, I was asking how you do it all. You said, "Prozac." I thought you were joking and laughed but you said, "I'm serious. Without Prozac, I have panic attacks and can't function."

I said, "Wow, that's some pretty heavy duty stuff! How'd you get started on that?" You told me that you were molested for 7 years and when you finally went to therapy about it, the Dr. gave you Prozac.

I was stunned! We'd known each other for a couple of years and being such a close friend, you knew about my Very Bad Things but never said anything about yours before. I said, "7 years?! Holy shit! Who did that to you?" You told me that was something you would take to your grave. I ruminated to myself, "Well, it had to be family member." I didn't realize I'd said it out loud but I must've because you laughed and said, "Well, I'm not gonna play 20 questions about it." I said, "Of course, I'm sorry!" and then our conversation went elsewhere.

I can't stop thinking about it and about Mr. Canfield. I know you grew up with a LOT of family. There were three siblings of your parents, with 4 or 5 kids each, and you all lived on the same block. So all these siblings and aunts, uncles, cousins, were all floating in and out of each other's houses all day, every day.

I know you are one of the "good" kids and I can only imagine how alone you must've felt during all those years of abuse. I don't have any confirmation that it was a family member but for it to have gone on as long as it did, it had to be someone who had a lot of access, so either family or church since your family was always there as well.

I know it was a long time ago. You and I are in our 40's and this happened when you were a child. The thing is, people that do that sort of thing are wired differently and they don't stop. They can't. If that person is still alive, they are still on the hunt for a new child, another child. It's a matter of fair warning. I'm not saying you have to turn them in to the police, although that would be ideal. At our age and with the laws back then, you are likely past any statute of limitations on that anyway. I'm saying that if this person is alive and seeing nieces, nephews, grandchildren, or any other kids in any capacity, and no one knows, they are still looking for a way to get those children alone.

They never stop, Renee. They NEVER stop. Not unless someone makes them stop. I know it's a scary burden to be the one who makes that happen, but I also know you can do it.

When you were a child, that person told you something or threatened you in a way that scared you and scarred you and kept you silent all these years about who it was. Renee, you are not that scared child anymore. They can't hurt you anymore.

Again, for that person to have that much access to hurt you for that long, it had to be someone your family was close to. Someone they loved and trusted. If you tell, this is what's going to happen...

People in your family will be furious. They will revile you and call you a liar. They will talk about you behind your back, about how you always were prone to drama and making up stories. They will hate you and some will never speak to you again. Some of the one's you thought you were closest too and loved you the best, will turn on you. I promise this will happen. But I also promise, I can guarantee with absolute certainty, that at least one other family member will come up to you and quietly whisper, "me too."

And the ones that hate you forever.... I also guarantee that if your abuser is still alive, even that abuser's staunchest supporter will suddenly find reasons not to leave that person alone with children anymore. They may not even realize they are doing it but they will keep those kids safer. And that's why it has to be done.

If your abuser is dead, you may feel there's no reason to do it, but there is. It wouldn't be a matter of keeping kids safe now; it would be a matter of that one other family member who also feels like they are the only one. Even if they never came forward, statistically, they are out there and maybe their panic attacks would be a little less frequent if they knew it wasn't just them. They will see the strength it took you to come forward and maybe it will give them the strength to also come forward or at least to seek the help and therapy they never felt they could get before.

I doubt you will ever take the step and no one will judge you if you don't. I'm asking you to think about it. I'm asking you to try.

Holding your hand and tilting your chin up, Ruth!

Z is for Zombie

2011-11-12T06:40:00.000-08:00

My SEAL friend and I have the same twisted Apocalypse attitude. We are stocked up on food and guns and ammo and have exit plans.

He feels when the shit goes down, it will be through a rebellion of people that will end in anarchy and civil war.

I know it will be zombies.

I have this unnatural love for all things zombie.

My favorite zombie movies are:

Shaun of the Dead

Night of the Living Dead (the first one)

28 Days Later

(although, with 28 Days Later, my question is always, why don't the infected attack each other? They only seem to go after the uninfected!)

I was lucky enough to receive the book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in a swap but haven't had a chance to read it yet. (On the book front, I'm listening to the 3rd of the Dragon Tattoo series on my commute and am reading the 2nd book of Guillermo Del Toro's vampire series The Strain - loving them both!)

Can't get enough of the show The Walking Dead.

I want so badly to start a zombie swap on Ravelry, but I fear I don't have enough time to properly moderate it. Also, I want to do it around Easter because, you know, Jesus is the ultimate zombie, but I fear that will be too offensive for the delicate and I don't want to put up with a bunch of foofaraw and drama. What do you think?

Speaking of zombies, my little guy dressed as a zombie skeleton for Halloween...

T, like last year, wanted me to make a costume for him but what he picked was too big to wear to school so we, last minute, went and let him choose a purchased costume. He chose a hot dog. Here's a pic of D2 pretending to eat him....

After this picture, D2 said, "I'm going to eat you and then I'm going to throw up, Bleagh [pretends to throw up]." I would've smacked him for being a brat but I was laughing too hard.

Here's what T actually wanted to be...

You can see the minivan in the background for scale. People either had no idea what he was or knew he was PacMan and would give him extra candy for it! We even did the Dots for PacMan to eat.

We used a pre-colored tri-fold cardboard thing (for science fairs) from Michael's for $5 each, 2 of them, then strong floral wire and Styrofoam balls for the dots. All total, about $12 dollars. We made sandwich board suspenders out of old belts and duct tape. Likewise the duct tape for attaching the dots.

The neighborhood we went for trick-or-treating has a LOT of stairs. T was a trooper! The other kids we were with were about ten blocks ahead of us but I stayed behind with T and we had a great time! D2 was with his friends and some other moms.

D2 hit way more houses but, as I said, T was getting extra for the cool costume. All told, they ended up with about ten pounds of candy.

As usual, Dave and I exacted our "Candy Tax". We tell the kids, "We bought/made your costume, drove you to the trick-or-treating, and drove you home. We get first pick! Candy Tax!"

As for other costumes, the coolest one I saw was a girl in a wheelchair and a Cat in the Hat costume and her parents made her wheelchair into the Cat in the Hat's clean-up car! The worst costume I saw was a teenager in an olive green old-style Army jacket with a baby bjorn holding a fake baby. I asked what he was and he said he was a Veteran and held up the cardboard sign that was part of his costume: "Family killed in WWII, need candy to survive." Wow. That's jacked up.

That ten pounds of candy will look great on my ass, Ruth!

Y is for Yack

2011-11-10T19:56:00.000-08:00

GAH! I can't believe it's been over a month since I last posted! Looks like Alphabet Soup really IS going to take all year this time. I've had in mind what I was going to post for Y and for Z for over 3 months now! There's been additions to Y so it's pretty long. I'm posting this today and Z tomorrow and then I have a LOT of other things I want to talk about. But for now....

This post actually started on...

Tuesday, September 13, 2011 - I get a call from the school nurse at 9am that D2 has thrown up in the gym.

D2 got sick "7 times" when he had the bug. He even threw up in Dave's truck (in a plastic bag the smart school nurse gave him) after Dave picked him up from school. The funny thing is, D2 threw up BEFORE school and told Dave about it. Dave asked how he felt and he said fine, so Dave sent him off to school. If you've been here awhile, you know that D2 has a puking problem. Not so much anymore, he's pretty much grown out of it, but that kid used to puke ALL the time. Got a little cough, D2? Blech. Is it Tuesday, D2? Blech. So it was no big deal.

This time, he really did have a stomach bug and he counted how many times he puked from 8a until I came home at 2:30p. But by that evening, he was fine and running around like his usual crazy little self.

That was Tuesday.

Thursday, I barely made it home from school. I had a nauseous feeling all day and once I got home it started. It was a tsunami and I haven't had a stomach flu in, literally, 30 years. I thought I was going to die. I emptied my stomach and then I emptied my liver, and after that, I heaved so much and so hard that my stomach AND my back hurt.

I made the mistake of trying to eat a saltine cracker and it flipped me off as it came back out. Salty little bastard.

My illness lasted a bit longer then D2's. I was down for the count all weekend. It was right before my break for school and if you read the last post, you'll remember I had all these really productive plans. Didn't quite work out that way.

When September ended, I felt I was being gas-lighted. I never get sick, you see, and I spent most of September and half of October just knocked the fuck out with illness. I had a nasty cold. I got that damn stomach mess. Then I got T's cough. It lasted, like, 100 days. Then Dave got that cough and he's STILL getting rid of it!

My break was spent in bed. Watched a ton of movies, though! Lots of fluff, so I don't remember too many of them. Eat, Love, Pray was very good. Buitiful - not misspelled, it's a foreign flick starring Javier Bardem - deadly boring but at least it was long and depressing. And subtitled. Arthur - the new one with Russell Brand - total mindless fluff but mildly entertaining. The Warrior's Way - LOVED this one!

All these movies, Dave wouldn't watch with me. He was a champ with the stomach flu thing (mine, happily it passed him by without even a glance). He made me tea and soup and went to the store for ginger ale. Later (much later - 10p), went to the all night pharmacy to see if there was any anti nausea med's he could get me (Alka Seltzer really helped!). He even asked the pharmacist if I should go to the hospital (he hates talking to strangers, he barely likes talking to people he knows!) - she told him if I could keep water down, I'd be fine. He did all these things, but he wouldn't watch movies with me. Weird.

Anyway, I watched the first five minutes of The Warrior's Way and told Dave to come watch with me. He said he was watching a football game. I said for him to watch the first five and if he liked it, we could watch it later; if he didn't like it, I'd watch by myself. He saw the first five and ditched the football game he was watching!

It's very stylized (like Sin City or 300), but not all of it. It's a kung fu western movie and the main character is very quiet but there's quite a lot of poignant moments and also a lot of funny bits. I loved it and so did Dave! It's rated R and we couldn't figure out why (what little blood there is was in that stylized/animated category) until the final fight, then we were all..... ah, yes, I see.

So my week off from school was a wash.

But!

Dave thought with all the school and work (for him and for me) and all the illness in our house, we needed a break. So....

We stayed at the Wyndham Grand Desert Condo's - 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, with kitchen, 4 nights - $280! Dave is the KING of finding great deals online. He also figured out it would be cheaper to road trip (11 hours) then to fly all four of us out there. Can anyone say..... knitting time?

We left after I got off work on Sat. and so we spent the night in a hotel in Utah. On the way, we stopped at a really great restaurant who's name I can't remember. It was overlooking a river and there was a pathway down to the river. The kids went to look at it while we waited for our food. Dave went with them first, then I hung out with them a bit. There was a wall with their shadows on it and you could see the sand they were playing with. So we started throwing sand and dropping it and doing a bunch of other silly things to see the cool shadows! Then we went to eat.

D2 ordered a corndog and ate it like corn on the cob so he mostly ate the batter part. He ate about half the hot dog part and we were teasing him about not throwing up. He's had issues with hot dogs in the past.

After dinner, we got in the car and drove the rest of the way to the hotel in Utah. Halfway there, D2 says, "I don't feel so good." and covers his mouth. I was reaching for a plastic bag when he let loose. And that little rat didn't puke by his door. No..... he puked in the middle of the van. All over the bag of spilled library books and library DVDs. He hit the side of my knitting basket but none of it made it inside or I really would have had to kill him.

It was actually a good thing he puked in the car though. If he hadn't, we would NEVER have known we were a good 30 minutes away from the nearest exit!

sigh.

After he let go, he felt fine and popped his earbuds back in and continued to watch his movie like nothing happened. Nice. I got a serious case of the giggles after he puked. It made Dave even madder but I couldn't help it. I just kept thinking that ten minutes earlier I'd commented on the skunk smell on the highway. What made it so funny for me was that all I could think of boiled down to, "Well, can't smell the skunk anymore!"

Notwishtanding the one pukey episode, we had a blast! Dave and I went to 2 timeshare presentations and got $150 in food vouchers at a bunch of different restaurants on the strip, tickets to two different shows for all four of us, a $50 visa card and a bunch of other things! The food vouchers pretty much paid for our food for the trip!

We used the $50 visa card to see the sharks and touch the stingrays at Mandalay Bay...

We saw showgirls....

One of the shows we got tickets for was the magician Nathan Burton. He's the guy who won the first America's Got Talent and he was an excellent illusionist. We had really great seats, too!

We took the kids to see the fountains at the Bellagio and went in to see the artwork. I have this picture of the first time Dave and I went to Vegas together (1999ish) - we are on the big staircase inside the Bellagio and the Van Gogh painting is at the top of the stairs behind us. Not only do they no longer have that Van Gogh, they no longer even have that huge staircase! And the art gallery they do have is $25 per person. It would've been free for the boys but Dave wouldn't let me send them in alone.

They had another gallery featuring the sculptures of a man who uses Cirque de sol performers as models. It was Trevor's idea to see if we could mimic all the twisted body shapes....

The boys were fascinated with all the statuary. We have a bunch of pic's with them interacting with the marble but this post is already too long.

D2 is permanently banned from hot dogs, Ruth!

X is for Xbox

2011-10-06T18:59:00.000-07:00

I've been working on the Xbox program for 14 months now. (I work from home for a company called alpineaccess.com - they hire customer service rep's from across the nation - all working from home - for Fortune 500 companies... QWest, AARP, AAA, they just got Cigna, etc. Xbox is the biggest program they have).

Out of 1300 people, I'm ranked 138! I get pretty good scores on my QA's fairly consistently. I'm just SO glad none of the customers can see my rollin' eyes or my active middle fingers flipping off so many of them. And just to be clear, I'm not doing that for 8 hours. Most of the people I talk to are cool and it's a lot of fun! There's only about 10% that make me feel all stabby.

I've already informed my incredibly cool Team Leader (TL) that he really ought not to listen to my calls whenever I have my last day as I WILL be saying everything I've only been thinking all this time. That last day is about a year and a half in the future but I'm planning ahead. He laughs and says he'll make me take that day off. I remind him that means that the day before that will still be my last day - hah!

I'm collecting stories but I won't post any until I graduate and have another job. I'm smart like that. Oh my god the stories!

I will say this....

When I say, "May I have your name?" and you just give me your first name, I'm going to shake my head sadly, while fearing for our future and say, "Aaaaaaaaaand your last name.......?" because, seriously, do I sound psychic?

The fact that you don't pay your bill/control your children/have no idea how to work that $300 piece of machinery you purchased is not my fault. I will do my best to be patient and help you but I will not (and by our policies and MS's, don't actually have to) put up with you yelling at me. It's a video game people.... calm the fuck down.

If you start cussing me out, I will burst into laughter as I feel with all the breadth and depth of the human language, it's fucking hilarious that we ALL reduce to a select few when angry. And yes, I'm probably laughing at you but don't mean to - it just jumps out.

If you drop F-bombs or any other word grenades as part of your normal speech, I am not going to take it personally or get offended. As long as it's not directed at me, it doesn't bother me as I often cuss as part of my normal speech as well. Not all of my co-workers feel the same way. They don't have to put up with it and can absolutely end the call if they feel the need.

Likewise, you don't have to keep telling me that you are upset and for me to not take it personally. I don't. It's a machine that plays pretend games. Why would I ever take anything involving that personally?

And for the love of pickles, please STOP apologizing for "bothering" me. My sole purpose for talking to you on the phone at that moment is to help you with whatever xbox issues you may have. If y'all didn't call with questions, I wouldn't have a job.

I am still a freak magnet. I have the team record for the most prank calls in a single shift. 12 in one 8 hour period. These people will wait on hold for.... up to 45 minutes on busy nights JUST to prank! So weak. And the calls are ALWAYS the same 3 or 4 "jokes".

If you prank call me, I'm going to sigh obviously and heavily and mutter sadly and out-loud-but-as-if-to-myself, "There's just NO imagination anymore" before I proceed to make you feel REALLY silly for prank calling. I will not get in trouble for this. We have a script to follow and I rarely follow it but I'm diplomatic and at the end of the script, we are allowed to hang up on you and I will do just that.

Most pranks are kids. I can tell because they start giggling. I always end those quickly by saying, "Awwww. Don't start laughing! If you start laughing, it's going to mess up the whole joke!" Then they can't help themselves and giggle uncontrollably before they just hang up.

A surprising amount of pranks are, in fact, adults. And always male. If there's any guys who read my blog, I feel sorry about this but it's true. I've never had a female prank caller. Shocker.

I'm going to tell one story. I hope it doesn't get me in trouble but here it is....
I had this prank call with 2 adult males on the phone - both talking at the same time on separate extentions/handsets/whatever. They said whatever stupid, silly shit they were going to say and I said in a bright, cheery voice, "All right guys, this has been fun but I'm going to have to let you go now...." and one of them said to me, "You're a stupid cunt."

I burst out laughing and said, "That may be, sir, but you're a grown man making a prank call, 3 o'clock on a Monday afternoon with his friend. I still win."

He hung up on me! Can you believe it?!

Maybe not winning, but still slightly ahead, Ruth!

W is for Win

2011-09-27T18:58:00.000-07:00

I joined the So You Think You Can Dance group on Ravelry. They have a pool where you are randomly assigned 2 dancers (one male, one female) and whichever dancer wins, the others in your group have to send you gifts equaling $15-$20! Anyone can join (as long as you're willing to lose!) and the players are split into groups of ten, so whoever wins - the other nine have to send gifties.

Last season my male dancer came in second place. So close!

This season, my dancer won! Both my male and female dancers were solid and amazing. They were paired together from the start and they were super-stars! If you watched the show, I got Melanie and Marko. As good as Marko is, I knew a female was going to win and that it would be between Sasha and Melanie. I thought sure Sasha had it in the bag and I was going to get second place again but Melanie won!

In this Rav pool, if you win, you get to ask for what you'd like. I said I was going to make it really easy on everyone and I just wanted gift certificates to Webs. I want to make the Saffron Cables blanket and I have had my eye on the Amherst yarn to make it but it'll take 17 balls! I thought with these g.c.'s, it'd be plenty to get all that yarn!

I remembered I could find more information on that yarn at Rav so I went and read the reviews. There were ten reviews and eight were bad. The consensus seems to be that it after it's knit up, it pills on contact and who wants to handwash a big ass blanket anyway? I so enjoyed working with the Berroco Vintage Bulky that I thought a washable, snuggly blanket in un-bulky Vintage would be lovely!

I'm also getting some Madelintosh Bulky in the Tart colorway - 3 skeins. My friend Donna gave me two coats she has that she knows I've been in love with since she bought them a year ago. She's so cool! One of the coats is a really pretty green color and one is black; I think this Tart will make a lovely scarf or cowl to go with both coats. I always hear about MadTosh but have never actually tried it. This yarn is backordered so it'll be like getting another surprise package whenever it comes in!

I ordered 2 skeins of Lamb's Pride so I can take another shot at those bunny slippers. Wait.... I don't think I told you about those! I made these slippers and they haven't felted down enough to fit me. My friends say they will felt more but I haven't had time to test that theory. I was just going to make another pair for me and give these away. I'm still going to make another pair as a gift but it's going to be for the Monty Python swap on Rav that I'm in and I'm going to make them vicious bunny slippers!

I think I may be a bit nuts using nearly $120 worth of free yarn money to get such relatively mundane yarn (not the counting MadTosh, of course!) but I really can't think of any other stuff I want right now! Any suggestions? Any yarns from Webs that you just adore? (of course, by the time this posts, I will already have ordered my stuff - hah!)

All this talk of new yarn reminds me that my castonitis has been sort of nipped in the bud (see this year's letter T for links). Martine - the sweater I was going to make from French Girl Knits (love that book!) - is nipped because I don't hav the yarn to make it. I was going to use all this black Cascade 220 that I have but the guage is 20 sts instead of 16 and I really don't want to have to do that much math.

I have the yarn and almost the guage for Pioneer but I need to go up one needle size from US 5 to 6. I trot on over to my Knitpicks Options binder and I have ONE size six needle. SERiously?! I have looked everywhere to see if I can locate it. So far... I can't. So that one is on standstill.

That pretty much knocked the wind out of the startitis! I did cast on #77 and it's an easy pattern if you can read.... which, apparently.... I can't. I got to row 5 and skipped to row 8. Tink. Got to row 13 and at the END of the row my little lace section (a tiny 13 stitches!!) was missing a stitch - tink back 2 rows and try again. I've set it down. I've decided that this pattern will be my football pattern for this year. For the past few years, I've cast on a project during the opening kick to the first Husker game of the season. Usually it's socks, this year it's this cardigan. I like it and I want it to go faster but my gauge is nowhere near what the pattern calls for. I've been looking at others of these on Rav and I think it's going to be ok. I will know around row 40. If I have to rip the whole thing out again and start over, it's no big deal because it's my football project!

I'm also supposed to be in a KAL with some friends for these socks. I have 3 skeins of Mal Lace and short legs. They are toe up so I'm going to keep going until I run out and see where they land! Or at least I will when I can find that yarn. I've lost that, too. In my bedroom. My bedroom is like a hoarder's delight. It's got a track from the door, past my desk to my side of the bed.

Dave's side isn't much better. There's several reasons for this, laziness being at the top of the list, but when we get to the letter Y, we'll see the reason it's really gotten out of control. Stay tuned...

I have my between-quarters break from school from 9/26 - 10/3. My plan is to sleep in every day, work out every day, spend an hour cleaning the bedroom tornado I live in and if I finish that (should take 2 days), then I'll spend that hour cleaning out the garage. I'll then practice on my steno-writer until I have to go to work. Hopefully I'll find that damn US 6 needle!

Living in chaos but still feeling like a winner, Ruth!

V is for Veteran

2011-09-14T18:58:00.001-07:00

A few months ago, I had the privilege to meet and interview some veterans.

The National Association of Court Reporters in conjunction with the Library of Congress is making an effort to record as many personal stories from our military veterans as we can get.

We've missed our opportunity with the WWI vets. The last WWI vet died earlier this year and with him went our shot at those stories. Not a single story from WWI vet was officially recorded. We have very little time to get as many of the WWII vets as we can.

My school hosted a recording day. All the court reporters were ones with experience and the interviewers were students. All volunteered their time, unpaid, to make this day happen.

We had about ten veterans show up.

I was standing at the door when Eddie came in. Eddie is a WWII vet and he's so funny! He came in with his walker and his oxygen and sat down in the chairs by the door. His wife was with him as was his nurse. He looked at me and in his wheezy voice said, "I'm the guy." I smiled and said, "You're the guy?" He laughed and tapping his chest said, "I'm the guy. I'm the guy you want to talk to." Then he told me how he was one of the first off the boat at Normandy.

We led him down the hall and got him a seat. There was this entire formal opening ceremony with a high school ROTC colorguard, the singing of the National Anthem and everything! Then we split off to interview the vets.

My veteran was Philip W. He was an Air Force lifer who was Active Duty during the Korean and the Vietnam wars. I was given a sheaf of papers with questions to ask.... all about his parents/siblings/marriage and then we went on to his military life. Basic Training, AIT (where they teach you your job), and Active Duty service is asked about. (There was a surprising bent toward asking about any racism among the ranks which I thought was odd.)

Philip was adorable! He was a very snappy dresser and had the best smile! He told me all kinds of things and some of those things were very difficuly for him.

He has an enormous amount of survivor guilt. He was signing up for the Marines with his very best friend. The Marines had a waiting list of 2 months. After a month, Philip went down to the courthouse where the recruiters were to see how it was going. In the front vestibule to the building, was an Air Force recruiter who got Philip! He joined the Air Force (no waiting list!) and tried to talk his buddy into it, too, but his buddy decided to wait for the Marines. Philip didn't get shipped overseas during the Korean War but his best friend went right away and was in the first wave of infantry that got completely wiped out.

Philip was tearing up and I was trying hard not to join him. He said how he should've been there with his friend and he still, sixty years later, feels so guilty about that. It was heartbreaking.

The interview went on and one of the questions I had on my list was about pranks! Philip said he wasn't much of a prankster but he did put a ketchup soaked tampon on the pillow of a fellow soldier that had passed out one night. His face was beat red telling us about that!

He told about being in Vietnam, walking along the street and seeing a shoeshine boy blow himself up with three GI's sitting at the shoeshine booth. And he also told about how he was on the flight line the whole time (as a First Sgt.) and never went to the field. They would get about 25 mortar rounds a week lobbed at them on the flight line. One night, he heard the usual whistling sound of a mortar coming in but the actual BOOM was really muted. He went outside to see what happened to that bomb. It threaded a needle and landed inside the door of the barracks right next to his and blew up. He said it was all hands on deck trying to get people out of the rubble and save as many as they could. He said he saw a hand in the rubble and pulled on it - it was attached to an arm but nothing else. He told how this Colonel was taking pictures and not being much help. He shoved the Col. out of the way and told him to help or get the fuck out of the way. He almost got court-marshalled for that!

We talked about his life in the military and about his life after he got out. He talked about the VA and how the "shrink" there was helping him and he was finally starting to forgive himself for "abandoning" his childhood friend all those years ago.

We laughed and laughed with Philip! We cried a bit, too. He was such a great story teller! And, the best part for the court reporter, he spelled every name he mentioned, whether it was a person's name or names of the places he was stationed - brilliant!

This is an ongoing project. If you know a veteran, please let them know about it. If you are a veteran, please participate. If you are (or know) a court reporter, please volunteer your time for this wonderful event. You can make it a simple affair - no colorguard necessary - and the transcripts you make count towards your CEU's (you can do up to ten transcripts for a total CEU of 1).

It's an amazing experience. All the volunteers heard their vet say, " Wow. I've never told anyone this before." I was going to suggest that if you have a vet in your life, to sit down with a tape recorder (or whatever new-fangled equivalent you may have) and ask for their story. I don't know if that would work though. There's something about telling a stranger things that you would NEVER tell your family members (or even your friends, sometimes!). Definitely give it a shot though!

My name is now in the Library of Congress, Ruth!

U is for Unhappy

2011-09-14T16:50:00.000-07:00

Last year, when I was volunteering in T's class, I was given a group of kids who needed help with their times tables. I was handed a stack of flash cards and we went in to the hallway to work on them. I asked the kids how they'd worked on them previously and they told me that the person helping them before would just go through card by card and they'd try to solve the problems.

I thought that sounded boring so came up with a few games on the spot. We had a lovely time learning the multiplication tables and whenever the kids would miss one, they had to do a trick. It was great fun and I saw some pretty cool tricks!

After three weeks, the teacher had me take an extra kid in the hall with us and he was happy about playing the games until we came to a # X 9 problem. This kid's name is... E. E is a doughy child who wears sweats to school every day and they aren't even the shiny sweats with the racing stripes along the side. They are the kind made out of sweatshirt material. With the elastic around the ankles. I've been to the family's house and they are far from poor.

Anyway, we come to this X 9 problem and E has trouble with those. The other kids were showing him the finger trick and I was telling him the other trick. (Saaaaay.... it's.... 6 X 9. 6 - 1 is 5, 5 + what = 9? 4. So.... 54.) He was getting upset, so I asked the other kids to go over the cards they had in their hands and I turned back to E. I said, "It's ok, E, No big deal. Let's take a deep breath and try again. Which trick do you prefer, the finger one or the number one?" He got all huffy and puffy and then said, in this really, whiny voice, "You're making me unhappy."

I was a bit taken aback and gently said, "No, E, I'm not making you anything, I'm just trying to show you the easy ways to remember these problems. Shall we try again? Now, the finger trick...." and in the middle of my sentence, he got up and walked away. He walked over to a one desk in the hallway and sat there pouting. I said to the other kids, "Um. I guess E needs a break. Who's turn is it?" and we went on playing.

The teacher came out a few minutes later and helped E sort things out and he rejoined us and was fine after that.

When it happened, I remember thinking, "Oh, E, honey, I bet at home you're neeevver unhappy." That poor kid's nails are down to nubbs and he seems nervous all the time. I know I'll get comments, as usual, as to the kid's mental state and who knows what goes on at home and blah, blah, blah. But the thing is, I bet if this kid had some direction and boundaries at home, he wouldn't be half so nervous and rude.

I've already ranted many times about how kids are over-indulged and they end up being soft and feeling entitled and act out accordingly. So we'll skip that today and I'll just have a little whine fest of my own.

Ever since that happened, whenever Dave and I are playfully getting on each other's nerves, we say that now, "You're making me unhappy."

These are things that are making me unhappy (and yes, I am also doughy and my nails are currently down to nervous nubbs):

How is 1.5 pages of paper that cites 2 internet sources acceptable, but my 5 pages with no sources but all solid material backed by my TEN years as a massage therapist not acceptable??

Facebook sucks. A friend pops up out of the blue and you have all these great conversations. The whole thing made me very wary at first because back in the day, things ended badly and I got my heart ripped out. But it seems things are different now. It seems we can laugh about those days and talk and heart-to-heart and be friends again. Then, after a long time, you get smacked in the gut with the fact that nothing's different and, sadly, it hurts just as much as it did Way Back When. (yea, I'm blaming Facebook for that. sigh.)

I don't get enough sleep. Still.

I don't get enough sleep, despite the fact that the job I work for is cutting hours for everyone due to low volume of business now. Tuesday I get off at 8p instead of 11p and Wednesdays, I'm off at 9:30p instead of 11p. You think this would be a bonus! But the lack of money due to losing roughly $200 a week in income is keeping me up still.

People in CO won't shut up about the earthquakes here. I get that they haven't had an earthquake here in 44 years so it's something of a novelty but, seriously! It happened, like, 2 weeks ago and it was only a 5.2. Growing up in California, we used 5.2's to stir our cocktails. Calm the fuck down, people.

I had this whole post written up about peeves I've had about swaps:

1. If you join a swap and then start talking about how strapped your funds are, I want to slap you. If you can't meet the minimum requirements, then don't join the swap. Simple, right?

2. Also, for the love of YARN, don't tell me you don't have access to "good" yarn. If you are online, joining a swap, you have access to ALL yarn. And if you don't want to pay shipping twice (once to you and then to send to swappee), then have the seller ship it directly to your swap partner. Equally simple.

3. I don't mind if you're late. Hell, half the time I'm late. Life gets in the way! But communicate!

That last one comes with a tale:

I was in the Alphabet swap in Rav. My swap partner was not only the moderator of the group, she was the founder of the group. It was a straight swap, so I send to her and she sends to me. I sent to her. She sent to me........... nothing. After a week, I emailed her and she was all "Life!" and I said, "np" and she said she'd send. 2 weeks later, still nothing. No communication from her unless I initiated and she kept telling me she'd send that day or whatever. After it was 6 weeks late, I said she could just paypal me the $20 I spent on the yarn I sent her and she could keep the rest of the goodies in the box as lovely parting gifts as I was giving up on the Alphabet swaps.

Another 2 weeks later, I forgot to leave that group so I went to take care of that. I saw that she'd ANGELED a really great package to someone else in that same swap! WTF??

I pm'd her again asking her what was up. She said that it was the package she'd made for me but since I'd been so nasty about it and clearly just wanted money, she gave it to someone else. I made it clear that I was polite and patient as I could be but somewhere around the 6 weeks mark, my patience for late packages turns into resignation that no package would be forthcoming. I pointed out that the communication was non-existent unless I initiated and also pointed out that she hadn't even paypal'd anything anyway. She paypal'd the money that day and that was the end of it.

She's making me unhappy.

I've been sick the last week. T has a dry, hacking cough for over a week now with no signs of letting up. D2 threw up at school yesterday - Dave had to pick him up and D2 threw up in Dave's truck (but at least into a bag), and threw up 6 more times at home (in a bucket). I was at school so I couldn't be home taking care of my little guy. That breaks my heart.

Good things:
Absentee Girl quit. Not good for her, obviously, as she owes about $6K with nothing to show for it and that sucks. But when you're absent so often that people start calling you Absentee Girl, you're going to have a tough time catching up to all the stuff you missed. Class has been kicking along much faster since her departure.

Theory II has one day this week and four days next week, then it's the break between quarters. After the break.... the real work starts! Speed tests and practice all the time. I can't wait! Yesterday, the teacher skimmed through the last 4 chapters of the book. There wasn't much in them that we hadn't already learned and so as of yesterday, I know about as much Phoenix Stenography Theory as I'll ever learn and I just have to practice it all to get the muscle memory and the speed.

That's all the good I can muster today.

I stapled my thumb in class and it's making me unhappy, Ruth!

T is for Tackle

2011-09-03T09:24:00.001-07:00

I've been knitting away at some small (socks) and some large (sweaters) projects that take forever so I needed a quick and dirty project that I could kick out and then WEAR.

I present Emmaline....

Back of it....

This was so fast and so easy! And the Berroco Vintage Chunky is a dream to work with. I made this sweater in about 3 weeks. The BO took another week. I haven't had a problem with too-tight BO's in years! I did the BO and couldn't pull it over my head. I pulled it out, backed out the last row and went from a US 11 to a US 15 for the last row and the BO. Too tight. Backed the BO out again.... oh, did I mention how much I HATE backing out a BO? I don't mind tinking but undoing a BO is a bitch.

I went up to a US 17 and re-did the BO. It was still a bit tight and I didn't want it to be tight! So, threw it in the corner and a few days later, backed it out again and used the US 17 and Jenny's Stretchy BO and ta-da! Perfection!

Still too warm to actually wear it, but it will be worn. Oh, it WILL be worn.

Someone needs to tackle me and pry the yarn and the needles out of my hands. The speedy success of Emmaline and the anticipation of cooler weather has caused a SEVERE case of startitis. We won't even go into the 15 things I currently have on needles (as usual) coughThreeSocksThreeSweatersAndWeWon'tEvenTalkAboutTheClosetOfNoReturncough. I have the strongest urge to CO three, no, four sweaters and three blankets!

I have the yarn (and the patterns) for all of them...
Sweaters:
Pioneer
Martine
#77
#106

Blankets:
Girasole
Hemlock Ring
Saffron Cables

I'm undecided about what yarn to use for the blankets. I have all this Ornaghi Filati Gong yarn; it's sport weight mercerized cotton. There's 18 skeins (142 yards each), in varying but coordinating colors, and I would love to use it in the concentric circles that is Girasole but I'm afraid that when it's finished, it will weigh a metric ton.

I have 12 skeins of burgundy Encore Worsted and I'm either going to double it and make the Hemlock Ring out of it (leaning toward this) or I'm going to use it for the Saffron Cables. I really like the Saffron Cables better but after the Never-ending Blanket, I'm wary of making a big blanket all in one piece again - so heavy and hard on the wrists! Also, with the Hemlock Ring, I discovered with a previous scarf, that I really love the way feather-and-fan looks but to make it is rather deadly boring!

What to do.....
Any suggestions? I'd especially like feedback on the whole mercerized cotton thing.

Speaking of tackling, college football starts today! Dave is so happy and adrenalized, he's been up since about 6am! I'm pretty happy, too! Not that I care that much about the Huskers, but when he's watching the games, I get quite a lot of knitting done.

That may be another reason for all this castonitis that I'm having. I know there's some lovely, long weekends ahead and I want everything I plan to make to be cast(ed?) on and ready to go. I think I'm going to re-implement my WIP Sunday rule (after I whip up a little something for a swap tomorrow) and try to clear some stuff off my needles.

Other nesting things are going on in my head as well. I'm still going round and round with Dave, trying to get him to let me use his shop office (mobile home with no bathroom but 4 rooms that have not much of anything in them since we moved the office stuff to our home office). I am consolidating the stuff in our one-car garage so I can move it to that office so I can get my yarn and other crap out of my friend's house. She's been generously storing it in her secret room and her crawl space for two years now and besides the fact that's so far above and beyond what should be expected from any friend.... I want my shit!

I want all my yarn at this house. I want all the garage stuff (which is waiting for that far-off someday when we can buy a house again) in the office-home. The garage stuff is mostly books and baseball cards and boxes of memorabilia from our lives. It's mostly books. I want my massage table and the Christmas stuff out of the garage. If I got rid of the 5 or 6 bins that are out there now, I could fit the 5 or six bins of my yarn in there! As to the stuff in my friend's crawl space, that can all go to the office-home, too.

I need a good organizer to tackle this mess for me! That's not even starting on the mess IN the house! Our house is a bio-hazard. More then usual. It's gotten so bad, it's even bothering me (and that's sayin' something). It's gotten so bad that I've actually lost a lovely project bag with a pair of socks (two-at-a-time with only the half the feet and toes left to go). Lost it. Disappeared somewhere in our house. Shameful.

Tackle me - I must be stopped, Ruth!

S is for Sizzle

2011-08-30T14:56:00.001-07:00

S is also for Sunday. And Soaked. And Suck.

And SON-OF-A-BITCH!!!

I was having the best weekend!

Friday, I had a lovely picnic in the library park with my best friend, her toddler and about 30 yellow jackets. (If you know me at all, you know I'm terrified of flying, stinging things). Stinging assholes not withstanding, we had a great time!

Saturday evening, Dave and I went to have dinner with a couple we really like to hang out with. They served brisket and some really divine sides! We drank and hung out in the hot tub and had a blast!

My whole plan for Sunday was to get some yarn dying (special for a swap), sit on my ass and knit and watch movies all day. Maybe get real ambitious and take a nap.

I have this really thick stainless steel pot I use on the stove for dying. I usually put the yarn in with the dye and get it cooking then set it outside to cool. This time I was trying a different technique, so I had the dye cooking and the yarn soaking in a bucket outside, waiting for the hot dye bath.

Thankfully, the pot had no yarn in it.

Thankfully, Dave and I were actually watching TV downstairs; usually we are upstairs, Dave on his computer playing poker, me watching TV in our room, knitting. The kids were in their room playing on their computer and Dave and I were chillin' downstairs, flipping aimlessly through the channels.

Then I hear some water on the stove start to sputter. I looked at Dave puzzled. There was no WAY that water could be boiling over! It's got blue dye in it, so I made sure it wasn't anywhere near the top of the pot. It wasn't even halfway and that pot is about 2 feet deep. I started to get up off the couch when we hear this electric sizzle, then a loud pop, and see the stove arc some fairly amazing electricity off of it!

I rush into the kitchen and see boiling blue-dyed water gushing all over the place. I turn off the stove and look around the pot to see where (and, for fuck's sake HOW) it's boiling over. That's when I realize it's NOT boiling over. There's a hole in the bottom of the pot.

Dave was a champ. I was an idiot.

See, I'm also terrified of electricity. When I was a kid, my big brother used to make me touch the hot wire in the front pasture to see if it was on. If I didn't do it, he'd punch me. Half the time, I could SEE into the garage and see the little green light meaning it was on, but I still had to touch it.

So, Dave is hollering at me to get something to poor it into. I stand there, dancing from foot to foot. He grabs the stockpot we used the night before to cook corn in, dumps that water into the sink and tells me to get the gushing pot off the stove and let it drain into the stockpot. I say, "It's too hot!!" So he hands me the stockpot and, very calmly, gets.... you know... hot pads, lifts off the gushing pot and holds it over the stockpot in my hands. We stand that way until the stockpot is almost full, then we look over at the sink and realize we could've used the stockpot to transfer the leaking pot to the sink and dump it there! Duh.

(So Dave's been laughing at me this whole time and how I'm not good in crisis and I remind him of who always takes care of D2 when he pukes.)

My lazy Sunday turned into a blue Sunday. I spent the WHOLE damn day cleaning blue dye from my pale kitchen. My feet, my hands, splotches on my legs, and my attitude were (are) all blue.

Dave lifted the top of the stove (who knew you could do that?) and there's these two wells under there, apparently for just such an occasion. I made him turn off the breakers to the kitchen. The stove was turned off, but the little light by the dials - the light that tells you the burner is on - wouldn't turn off.

These under-stove-top wells are FULL of hot, blue water. We look at each other. We look at the 3 feet of white linoleum between the stove and the sink. We look at each other and start laughing. I say, "Turkey baster?" and he says, "We're not trying to impregnate it!" and we start laughing harder. I get the turkey baster and start draining first well. We realize this will take an Ice Age. Dave asks if we have a giant sponge anywhere and I say that we don't. He trots off to the garage to double check and I can hear him laughing again. He comes in with our wet/dry shop-vac. Oh yeah.... we own one of those! We had to go online to see how to use it as a wet vac but get the blue water sucked up pretty neatly!

Here's the burner that arced...

See the hole towards the bottom end (beginning?) of the coil?

Here's the Giant Stainless Steel Pot with my thumb for comparison to see the thickness of said pot,

Here's my thumb next to the hole the stove blew into it....

On the plus side, I've discovered the only thing that can remove blue dye from Formica countertops is Formula 409. I used ammonia on Sunday and that got most of it off the enamel of the stove and the linoleum of the floor, but didn't remove any of the dye from the countertops.

On Monday, I tried using bleach soaked rags on the counters with very little results. Today, I used the 409 - blue's all gone! Now I just have to find something other then Time to get it off my skin.

On the only speck of bright side... I had enough dye in the smaller stockpot to actually dye the damn yarn.

Still blue-handed, Ruth!

R is for Remember

2011-08-06T05:56:00.000-07:00

When T was a baby, Dave had to get up at about 4a and leave for work. I used to get up at the same time, but just to get T and bring him into the bed with me. If I didn't get him, he'd wake up for good at about 6a; if I did get him, he'd (we'd) sleep until about 7:30-8a. (Two years later, I did this with D2 also.)

One morning, when T was about 4 months old, he and I were just waking up. It was about 7:30a and my phone rang. I reached over and picked it up and heard Dave's voice say (rather urgently), "Did I wake you? Turn on the news."

I said (rather sleepily), "You didn't wake us, we were just barely awake though. What's on the news?"

Dave, "I don't know. We were all working on the [golf] course and someone from the shop radioed and said it's all over the news that someone bombed the Pentagon. And they also said someone flew a small plane into the Twin Towers in New York."

That woke me up! I flipped on the news and started a full day of horror. It was 9/11.

I couldn't watch and I couldn't look away. I watched TV for over an hour and I turned to T and whispered, "I'm sorry this is the world we have for you. We will try to make it better."

I watched all day. I didn't eat or get dressed or even go to the bathroom. I held my baby and watched.

I saw the towers fall and I saw the people fleeing and the cops yelling at the people video-recording. They weren't yelling at them for recording, they were yelling at them to get the hell out of the area.

I remember seeing the tire of one of the planes that hit the Towers. It was at the foot of the Tower and people were pointing and taking pictures of it. It looked so big and the people looked so small.

I remember seeing one man. I saw him several times during the day and it broke my heart every time. He was wearing business clothes and had a baby carrier strapped to the front of him with a baby in it that was just about T's age. They were both covered in dust and he was holding a dust mask over the baby's face. I saw him at least 4 times that day and in different areas. Whoever was filming was in the same group of people that man was in.

I remember when Dave came home, I was completely drained. I'd been crying all day and I couldn't take any more. Dave wanted to watch. He'd been at work all day and hadn't seen any of it. So we watched together. After a few more hours, it was bedtime and I was begging him to turn it off. He said, "I can't. I feel like if I turn it off, I'm..... I don't know.... abandoning all those poor people or something."

This shocked me. When it comes to strangers, Dave doesn't have a sympathetic bone in his body. Whenever I tell him some horror news story or I'm watching some show where the story makes me cry (Extreme Makeover - Home Edition, etc.), he's always says, "What do you care?? You don't even know those people." But this...

This effected him deeply. He couldn't stop watching and it was about midnight when he finally felt he could turn it off.

I think that day is this generation's JFK assassination. If you ask anyone from that era where they were when they heard about it, what they were doing, and how they heard.... most of them have complete and total recall of those moments.

I remember for months afterward, everyone was telling those stories.... when, how, what..... no one would ever forget.

At the spa where I worked, I remember a few months after 9/11, I worked on a man that lived just a few blocks from the Twin Towers. He worked from home and thought an earthquake had hit when the first plane crashed. He said he was in the Towers when they tried to blow it up years earlier and that was why he worked from home. So for a split second, he thought it was an earthquake, but, deep down, he knew it was a bomb. He stayed inside as long as he could but when he heard stronger crashing sounds, he stuck his head out his front door and saw that WALL of dust and debris coming at him. He went back inside and got in his bathtub because he figured it was the safest place in his brownstone.

Then, almost 6 months later, I worked on another man with close ties. Too close...

He was IN the Tower. The South tower. He was on the floor with the gym (5th floor?), and had just finished his workout. He was showered and had gotten dressed in his business clothes - fancy shoes, 3 piece suit (he's a high-priced lawyer). He said he heard the crash but didn't know what it was. He told me some gym worker popped his head into the locker room and told everyone they had to get out. Gym Worker said there was a bomb threat and they had to evacuate the building. This lawyer blew it off and got ready at his leisure and left.

He told me that he had just gone outside and was looking at the North tower and the burning wreckage when the second plane hit the South Tower. All hell was breaking loose and it was about not very long before the Towers collapsed.

He told me that the authorities were herding everyone away from the towers and he was less then a mile away from the Towers when they fell. He told me he couldn't find any transportation home and had to walk ten miles before he could find transportation the rest of the way home. He told me that he had his gym bag with him and I asked if he changed his shoes to his sneakers. He said that he didn't, that that had never even occurred to him during that whole ten mile walk.

Then he starts telling me about how his best friend since high school was giving a presentation in the restaurant on the top of the North Tower that day. He said they went through college and law school together. He also told me that his daughter and his friend's daughter are in soccer together and it hurts his heart every time he sees that girl. How it kills him that she has to grow up without his friend as her dad, because he was such a loving dad.

Yea.... he's face down and telling me all this. I'm giving him a massage and crying like an idiot. I was using my shoulder and my shirt sleeve to wipe my eyes and my nose and trying not to let on that I was crying. When I flipped him over to work on the other side, I put a cool, rolled up washcloth to cover his eyes so he wouldn't see that I was so upset.

Ten years later, we all still remember so vividly.

When bin Laden was killed, some people celebrated. Some people were angry at the celebrating people. None of it made any sense to me. I mean, they gotta know that his death isn't going to make a difference. If anything, it will make things worse!

I told T that we'd do our best to make this world better. Dave and I have no ability to make the world as a whole better but we have every ability to make his small world the best we can.

Where were you? What were you doing? How did you hear?

I'll never forget, Ruth!

Q is for Quiet

2011-07-16T07:22:00.001-07:00

I mentioned how I put my foot down and we went camping. It seems we own this really amazing tent that Dave had before he and I even met! I've never seen it put to use. And we live next to these really amazing moutains that we rarely ever go explore - so lame!

Here's the view from inside our tent...

You can't see it in the still picture but those trees were swaying gently in a cool breeze and making a sound like you hear in an ocean shell.

Here's the view from behind our tent...

That's Turquoise Lake in Leadville, CO.

The boys ran down to the beach the moment we arrived....

There was lots of relaxing by that lake...

We taught the boys to bait a hook...

to hold a pole...

and lines were thrown...

and thrown...

patience was practiced....

They actually caught one fish! It was 14" greenback trout and Dave caught it. T made him throw it back since, apparently, it's the state fish. Dave went ahead and did as T asked because it was after dinner and the campfire was already out so no use keeping it, really.

There was a lot of bbq'ing and we made s'mores. I've been camping about a hundred times (as a kid) and I've never had s'mores. We used to roast marshmallows for sure but never made s'mores! They are really good!

The kids were pretty wiped out and slept in both days....

We relaxed and had a great time with no electronics. Just peace and quiet....

We played board games and I read some more of the first Harry Potter book to the kids. We all read a lot of whatever books we had brought and I knit quite a bit.

The first night, it was insanely cold. So cold that Dave and I didn't get much sleep. The next night, we all dressed in many more layers and Dave heated some bricks in the fire. We put the bricks on a towel in the tent and wow - what a difference! We all slept like babies!

It was all so lovely! The first night around the campfire, in the dark, I looked at Dave and said, "I'm so happy!" and I actually got all teary. The quiet and sitting there with the family, in the woods, around a campfire.... nothing better!

Got to do that more often, Ruth!

P is for Potential

2011-06-30T20:30:00.000-07:00

A friend from high school posted this video on FB...

It's a video of every one of the 600 kids in the Senior Class of 2011 going through pretty much the whole campus lip-syncing and working together to make this video in what looks like one take.

My high school, mimicking Fresno State, used to have a big lip-syncing competition every year. One year, I played Magenta in a rendition of the Time Warp. It was always great fun to see and/or be in! I wonder if they still do that?

Anyway, I love this video for several reasons...

I love seeing my high school (even though I mostly hated being there Way Back When).

I loved that ALL the kids participated and seemed to be enjoying it. My high school, with about 600 seniors then and now, always seemed small to me. Everybody was on at least a nodding acquaintance with everybody else and there were no real enmities. There were the usual petty high school dramas (I used to beat up cheerleaders who made fun of me or my friends) but nothing serious.

I love all that potential. All that confidence and perpetual motion and shining youth. For a long time, after I got out of the Army, I used to crash high school graduations. The first time happened purely on a whim. I was driving home from work and was rather intensely unhappy. I passed a high school that I always pass and the marquee told about the graduation. I could tell by the lights on the football field that it was actually in progress. I found myself turning the wheel of my old Mustang into the parking lot.

It was fantastic! Everyone was buzzing with excitement and everyone was SO happy! When I left that graduation I was happier then I had been in months. I found myself trolling other high schools in Tucson and I went to 3 other graduations that year. It was so much fun, I did it every year for three years. Then I told a friend about it and she told me it was creepy and I could get arrested so I stopped.

I see my boys running around like little crazy people and I love all that energy and joy they have. I can't wait to see where their potential takes them and I have at least two more high school graduations to look forward to!

It's NOT creepy, Ruth!

O is for Over

2011-06-23T13:40:00.000-07:00

Over-share - Last week, I was at school, waiting my turn to buy from Burrito Lady. (We have Dueling Burrito Ladies and after much research, I like Thursday Burrito Lady best.) This other girl was buying her burrito when a third girl came in the front door of the school. Third girl is.... we'll say..... socially awkward. She inserts herself in lots of conversations and then takes over that conversation. She's nice but in a sort of needy almost pushy way.

Anyway, Burrito Lady says, "I haven't seen you in awhile! Been busy? Life keeping you busy? School?"

Socially Awkward Girl: Life is keeping me busy. My dad... no... my kid's dad is trying to take him from me.
Burrito Lady: Well, that's no good
SA Girl: Well, he won't get my little one because he raped me.

Oh. my. FUCKING GOD. Seriously?? Are we best friends with Burrito Lady? Are there not veritable strangers standing around innocently waiting to buy a breakfast treat? WHY would you say that?? I can NEVER unknow that about you now. Fuuuuuuuuu......

This is how the conversation SHOULD go:

Burrito Lady:I haven't seen you in awhile! Been busy? Life keeping you busy? School?
SA Girl: Yes, very busy! Good to see you!

An exchange is made, money for tortilla-stuffed goodness, and you move on with your life.

I haven't felt that verbally violated since the time I used a Groupon for a haircut.

I adore my hairdresser but since we moved, it's too long a drive to get it done and it's too expensive anyway. My hair is quite long. Not sister-wife long, but close. So getting a cut and color is usually around $100 and because of that, I only do it about twice a year. Since moving, I've been trying to find something a bit more local and that I can still afford. I saw a Groupon for a salon and the coupon was a haircut, color, manicure, pedicure, facial and massage for..... $89. That salon could've been in another STATE and I would've jumped on it! AND, you didn't even have to do it all in one day! I booked the cut/color because I really needed it. My hair had about 3" new-growth and was so splitty I could barely brush through it.

I got to the salon and the hairdresser seated me at her station, put the drape on and immediately mentioned that she was finally back to work after being in the hospital. I cringed inwardly and gave a non-committal murmur. In the next 3 or 4 minutes, she mentioned the hospital twice more. It was clear she wasn't going to let it go, so I was forced to play along and ask about it. I spent the entire 2 hours having to hear, in great and excrutiating detail, about a complete stranger's lady surgeries. It was miserable.

I'm trapped in a chair with a woman who I can't just walk away from because I'm full of hair color. Nor can I even gently suggest that we change the subject; not because I don't know how to gently suggest things (shut up, I do know how!), but because pretty soon she'll have some scissors and my hair in her hands. So I have to listen to her tell me all her woes.

I fucking hate that. First off, she's a hairdresser... she's supposed to be listening to MY woes.

Just kidding, I wouldn't be sharing my woes with her because I don't know her. But I have to listen to hers. To make matters worse, I don't even want to go back and get the rest of my treatments for fear of either seeing her or having another beauty employee do the same thing. Not that they would but every time I think of that salon, I cringe.

What I really hate is having a stranger tell me all their ailments (or whatever other inherently personal business I don't want to know) within the first 5 minutes of knowing them. I never know how to deal with that and it pisses me off that they force this information on me and I have to walk around the rest of my life knowing this about them and likely knowing nothing else as I'll spend my time avoiding them in the future.

Over-joyed - I got an A in my class at school. First quarter, you only take one class - Theory I. I got an A and I'm happy about it but it's not a real A. It's one of those classes where if you turn in all the homework, do the 3 extra homework assignments (super-easy), pass the 4 quizzes (oh-my-god-so-easy), and show up sober most of the time.... you get an A.

Of course, you have to show up sober all the time, BUT you get up to 8 absences in the 12 week (4 days a week) quarter. I didn't miss a day. I saw a woman we started with miss 2 days the second week and I saw how MUCH we covered in those two days and I knew that unless there was a blood-borne illness involved, I'll not be missing ANY classes. (That woman dropped before week
three started.)

The thing I'm happiest about is that I'm right where I am supposed to be at the end of this class - 40 words a minute. I, of course, would like to be ahead instead of just where I'm supposed to be, but considering my schedule, I'm fine with it!

Over-tired - Today was the last day of the first quarter. I'm still loving it! (Good thing as I've got another 18-20 months left!) I'm tired all the time though and am looking forward to this 10 day break we get in between quarters. Between work and school (and my commute to school), I have a 70 hour week. I am lucky that my work-from-home job allows me to get some practice and study time in during my shifts. But, I still get off at 11p and get up at 6:45a to make my commute to school.

The worst part of having hours like that isn't how tired I am, it's how it makes me sleep. I sleep like the dead, which, with bouts of insomnia sprinkled in, you would think that would be a great thing, right? I hate it. When I sleep like that, I don't dream. Normally, I dream every night; my dreams are vivid and in full-color and I remember them in great detail, I mean, I can remember which way the grass is blowing. I get inspiration from my dreams. Some of my best ideas have come from my dreams and I certainly get a lot of entertainment from them. I miss my dreams.

The second worst part of a 70 hour week is the fact that it leads too...

Overweight - Last year when I was working out 4 or 5 times a week for 8 months, I lost 20 pounds and several inches. I hit a wall with the workouts and stopped for quite some time. Then I got this job, and I was tired all the time and barely went once a week. Then I started school. So I sit for over 70 hours a week. I've gained back 15 of the 20 I lost. And maybe I was too tired to notice but I swear it all came back in one night. I went to bed a little bit softer and in the morning - BOOM!!! I swole up like a puffer fish.

And, when I sit for hours at a time at my desk while I work, I get these weird fluttery feelings in my legs. It's like I can feel the blood slugding through my veins and it's freaking me out. So now I'm trying to eat better again and to find the time (and the energy) to work out at least twice a week. I started last week, we'll see how it goes.

Over-excited - On my short break, we are going camping! I haven't been camping in years and I can't wait! We are going Sun. and Mon. night.

Dave is so funny, he's all, "Should we take the dvd player [the one you plug in to the car]."

Me: Um.... no.

D: What about T's shuffle, should we buy a car charger for it?

Me: Um..... no. We're not taking it or any other electronics. If we want to sit on our asses and use electronics, we should stay home.

D: That's all well and good for you, you'll knit the whole time. But what are WE going to do for entertainment??

Me: We'll all be hiking and fishing and playing board games.... cooking over an open fire.... all the shit you're supposed to do when camping.

D: Yea, I guess so.

Me: I have just one question, though. Will we be doing.... our business in the woods?

D: No, Miss I-Want-To-Rough-It, there's some bathroom facilities there.

Me: phew!

Overly random, Ruth!

N is for News

2011-06-11T14:05:00.000-07:00

This morning I got an email from a girl that was one of my very best friends in high school titled "News".

Only it wasn't from her.

It was from her wife, Sue.

Tuesday evening, Chelsea Markell took her own life. She was very sick and had been in daily, unmitigated pain for years.

The thing about the suicide is that... it's SO her, ya'know? I can just see her saying, "Fuck this. If I'm going to die anyway, I'm going to do it on MY terms."

Chelsea and I became friends in jr. high, when we were both in band. She played clarinet, I played flute. She moved on to orchestra and played cello. We were on the flag team together in 8th grade, then again when we were freshmen in high school. We both survived our crazy, anal-retentive (but very creative) drum-major's attempt at Winterguard competitions.

I graduated in '88. Chelsea graduated in 3 years so she could spend her senior year as a foreign exchange student in Sardinia, Italy. We kept in touch here and there over the years. She and her wife, Sue came to our wedding when Dave and I got married in Tahoe (2000). She still came to our 20 year, Class of '88 reunion when that came around. That's the last time I saw her.

In the email, Sue apologized for telling us through email but knew of no other way to reach everyone.

I adored Chelsea. Despite serious bouts with depression, Despite all that, she made me laugh like no other. She was brilliantly smart and musically gifted. She was kind and thoughtful; always there for a friend.

I remember one night, we had gone to a house party with some other friends (Rick and Jaime) and were pretty drunk. On the way home, we were all making plans to run away together and go live in L.A. We were getting all teary and mental about it when Chelsea opened my glove box. There was no glove box, it was just a door with a light behind it. Chelsea said, "Is that your engine??" and we all just about died laughing. She always knew how to stop the teenage angst-ridden madness and get us all to lighten up.

The same day I got the email, a completely unrelated friend posted this Peter Gabriel/Kate Bush video...

Yea. That didn't unhinge me at. ALL.

Unhinged and bawling, not because of the message of the song (I don't blame her for taking her life - I can't imagine being in that much pain every day) it's just that it has that message and also just happens to be one of the videos we loved best. So now I'm spending a lot of time looking at all the other 80's videos we loved - David Bowie, INXS, etc., gettin' all sad.

It's so stupid because there's nothing to be sad about. Chelsea left in her own way (as was her way) and is no longer in pain. She's fondly, lovingly remembered by anyone who knew her. I'll miss her so much and I can't wait to see her again someday.

I wish I'd had the chance to say good-bye, Ruth!

M is for Marriage

2011-05-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

A dear friend of ours got married on April 1st. We were fortunate enough to be able to take some time off from our lives (work and school and such) and attend. It took place in Kansas City, MO.

We road tripped out there, going a day early and Dave booked us into a hotel that overlooked the Kansas City Royals baseball field. When we were driving past the ball field, a bunch of fireworks went off! The hotel Dave booked had a great view of the ballpark and also a really nice waterpark. We totally surprised the boys with that! Dave bought the tickets cheap with the hotel booking, but we didn't tell the boys about it. When we got there, we asked the boys if they wanted check out the pool and they said a resounding YES, so we all got our suits on and took the elevator down. We got to the water park area and you should've seen their faces! We stayed and played at the water park for nearly 4 hours!

After that, we got dressed and went to a place we saw on one our favorite shows, Diner's Drive-In's and Dives. It's a little pizza joint called Grinder's that's also (by the look of the patrons) a hipster hang-out/art gallery. The food was excellent!

Then we went back to the hotel and fell into beds and slept deliciously until the morning. The next morning we had an excellent breakfast buffet at the hotel and then we checked out, we picked up the $10 zoo tickets we purchased with the booking.

The wedding didn't start until 4p that afternoon so those zoo tix were one of Dave's best ideas yet! The KS zoo was really nice! We had a great time walking around and seeing all the beasties.

The polar bear encasement's main part was about a story up from the water encased part and there was a huge plexiglass to watch the bear play in the water. It would swim around a little rock island, swoop (under water) RightNext to the plexiglass, plant his giant back feet against the plexi and give a mighty shove so he'd cruise halfway across the watery part on his back. It was SO cool to be that close! We'd put our hands up to his paws when he'd shove off and it was amazing how large those paws are!

We also had a couple of interesting encounters with monkeys. We saw the baboons and they were right up against the plexiglass hanging out, a big female and a baby female (not a tiny baby but about a year old). The big female looked at me and smacked her hand on a rock. I smacked my hand on my leg and that female freakin' LAUNCHED herself at the plexiglass! Snarling and screeching - it was nuts!! Then the little one followed suit and they kept baring fangs and slamming into the plexi. It was really scary! I thought, "Good thing that plastic is so strong or she'd rip my throat out!"

In the rain forest exhibit, I had my other monkey connection. There was a black and white gibbon high up in his enclosure. He was looking right at me, tilting his head back and forth like a bird. I started mimicking and it gradually made it's way closer and closer to me. It would tilt it's head and I would tilt. It would make poochy lips and so would I. Slowly and surely, it made it's way to the glass right next to me and then it put its hand on the glass and I put my hand against his hand on my side. Then he turned his back on me, rubbed his back on the glass and looked up at me. I patted the glass and he patted the glass, then patted his back. Poor lonely thing wanted me to scratch his back!

After our zoo adventures we went to the new hotel where the reception was to be held. The wedding was at 4p at a church. We dropped the boys at the hotel, dashed to the nearest Target to get the wedding gift we picked off her registry, dashed back to the hotel, got everyone ready for the wedding and off to the church we went.

The boys were just shy of 8 and 10 and this is the first time they'd ever been in a church. We explained that it was going to be very quiet and they were likely to be bored but they needed to stay quiet and still as they could manage. They did beautifully! We sat in the last pew and there were hymnals and little pencils and pieces of paper. T and Dave played hangman, D2 worked on a note for D'Lynn ("Congratulations on your marryiage") and I perused the hymnal.

The ceremony was very sweet. The bride and groom wrote a letter to each other w/o showing them until the female minister (priestess? hah!) read them aloud. Her's was sweet and romantic, his very funny. He wrote, "After our first few dates, I knew that I wanted to spend all my time with.... Sky. I knew I didn't want to live without her so I'd better ask D'Lynn to marry me." [Sky is D'Lynn's dog.]

After the wedding, everyone headed back to the hotel. D'Lynn and her man are brilliant! The reception wasn't until 7p. The hotel was a short distance from the airport so people flying in for the wedding didn't need to rent a car AND the hotel has a FREE happy hour from 5-7p. I'm not just talking well drinks here. It was all drinks! I discovered White Russians and promptly had about 5. It's like drinking toffee!

The reception was lovely! A DJ, a slide show of the couple, all kinds of great food! And an open bar but with the hotel's happy hour, people were pretty well already set for drinking!

The boys had their first fancy shirts with ties (clip-on)....

Here they are with D'Lynn, our lovely bride...

When the reception started, we found a table and D'Lynn was making the rounds saying hello to everyone. T tapped her on the shoulder and shocked us all by saying, "May I have this dance?" He led her to the dance floor and he got the first dance with the bride. None of us had the heart to tell him she's supposed to have the first dance with her new husband.

T and D2 were dancin' fools once the real dance started! After we all ate and they had the bride/groom dance, the bride/father-of-the-bride dance, cutting the cake, etc., the boys were on the dance floor for almost 2 hours! T even asked the flower girls for a dance but they both turned him down. Too young and boys are still icky. I'm so proud of him for asking, though!

It was a wonderful wedding, a much-needed mini-vacation and a fabulous trip!

D'Lynn - Best of luck in your new life, Ruth!

L is for Lolly

2011-04-20T13:19:00.001-07:00

I just finished listening to the latest Joshilyn Jackson audiobook - Backseat Saints. I love her stuff! Backseat Saints is her fourth book and I have listened to them all via audiobook with the author reading it. When I listen to audiobooks, I prefer the author to read it, that way you get exACTly where/what inflections they were thinking when they wrote it.

This book is just as excellent as the others. The main character, Rose Mae Lolly (audiobook, so that's probably all spelled wrong), is actually a tiny side character from a previous book (Gods in Alabama) but the author wondered what happened to her and so wrote a whole other book with Rose Mae as the central character.

Books like this have convinced me I can't write fiction. The way she seamlessly segues from past to present to past in her books is a thing of art. And there will be setups in the book that never seem like setups. It will be this tiny bit of seemingly unimportant information said in passing that later becomes a pretty significant detail to the story. It's amazing how she does it!

In a previous post, I said I was in a reading slump and that I was stuck on that Forest House book. I also re-informed y'all that once I start a book (or a movie), I can't leave it. I HAVE to finish it. It's like a compulsion. Forest House almost beat me. It took over 3 months for me to get through it. I considered putting it aside for awhile and reading other books (another thing I can never bring myself to do) but I decided against it. Then I got sick.

I never get sick. I come from good peasant stock and I rarely even get a cold. But Brothers and Sisters, I got knocked the fuck out. I was so sick that I called in to work and I work from home! I ached all over - the sheets hurt! - and I had so much snot that (and, yes, I know how gross this is) whenever I'd blow my nose only half would be in the tissue. I was in a sea of misery and mucus and pain.

I didn't want TV (which, in and of itself, tells people who know me how sick I was) and I thought about reading but when I looked at Forest House, it seemed too..... rich. Like having a stomach virus and trying to eat an entire sticky toffee pudding. You know how delicious it is and also you know if you try it, you're only asking for trouble. So I put it aside.

I read Secret Diary of a Call Girl. It was a book made from a blog and so the "chapters" were short and the book was deliciously salacious and I flew through it in a few days. It was the perfect chicken broth for my tired and aching head. On the cover, was a picture of Billie Piper who, apparently, plays the Call Girl in the Showtime series made from this book. A bit shocking to me since I only know her as Rose from Dr. Who! My library didn't have the book or the series. I ordered the book a coupla weeks earlier off amazon and it arrived just in time for my dog-sick days. I'm going to have to do an inter-library transfer to see the series.

After I got better, I trudged through the last 100 pages of Forest House. GAH. It ended badly. Like Hamlet only with more death and misery. sigh. There's 3+ months I'll never get back.

I forced myself through the rest of it because we were going on a small road trip and I wanted to read something else for that. I started and finished Christopher Moore's You Suck in TWO days! I flew through it, laughing out loud most of the time. It's the sequel to his Bloodsucking Fiends and it was perfection! I'm reading the third one - Bite Me - and it's going a bit slower. The first 30 pages or so are just backstory and having just read the other two... it seems a bit slow. But it's still funny!

I'm also reading short stories by Richard Matheson. How have I never heard of this guy before?? His stories are creepy and tense and well written. I was reading the 4th story in the book when I noticed the quote on the front cover, "The author who influenced me most as a writer was Richard Matheson", Stephen King. Wow. SK is one of my all-time favorite writers!

What else.... I'm on a crazy cookbook kick. I take my lunch to school 4 days a week and even though I'm making awesome turkey-spinach-thinly-sliced-green-apple-and-Havarti sandwiches, it's getting old. I've looked at so many cookbooks that it's all starting to blend in. And I never really have time to cook anyway! Any suggestions? It doesn't have to be cold food but there's only 3 microwaves and about 30 students with the same 20 minute lunch! I'm open to hot and cold stuff, it's just got to be something I can throw together quickly.

I also picked a book from the library and even though I'm in the middle of two other books, I started to read it while the kids played in the park next to the library. It's called The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky. Sounds like another cookbook but it's not. I'm only on page 24 and it's already engaging and funny and odd and I really like it! Oh, and the Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks (son of Mel Brooks). I had just started that but Dave finished his book and despite having over 300 books in this house he had nothing to read. (He's declared all my books to be "lame" or "too girly" and won't even attempt most of them.) He started the Zombie book last night. Guess the reading mojo is back and kicked into high gear!

Up next for audiobooks..... The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. Or not, I just checked and there's 20 people ahead of me! Any suggestions?

Reading is fundamental, Ruth!

K is for KAL

2011-04-18T14:33:00.000-07:00

I signed up on Ravelry for a KAL. (For those who don't know, that's a Knit-A-Long and yes, most knitters know that A-Long is actually one word - along.) I normally hate KAL's since I never finish any and it's just pressure for no reason. Not that these KAL's are all serious with KAL police or anything. The only pressure is what I put on myself.

Anyway, I saw this particular KAL and it looked doable and fun. It was an ornament-a-month and that appealed to me since that's something I've been thinking about doing for the boys for a few years now. Every January we hit the after-xmas sales and let them pick a new ornament. We also have the ornaments they've made over the years. They are already pretty well set for when they have trees of their own someday! Even so, I've wanted to make them some ornaments. I was going to do 2 a month so in December, they would each have 12 to add to their collections!

I've done one each.

Here's D2's pickle ornament, Pickly...

I asked what face he wanted on it and he said he wanted it to be surprised at all the presents under the tree.

Here's T's Mr. Pickles....

I asked T what face he wanted and he said he wanted Mr. Pickles to be happy about the presents! They slay me.

So that's all I've done with this KAL. Well, these and adding to my queue the other 11 I want to make them.

As for the rest of my knitting goals, I'm hat crazy. I've made at least 6 hats this year, I'm halfway through one sweater, 1/3 of the way through 2 others and I'm working on several socks.

In other news....
I can't thank you guys enough for the tremendous outpouring of kindness and support about my last post! School is going really well and I adore it! It's challenging and fun and my 4 other classmates are great. The teacher is outstanding and I'm really getting it. Today, my brain wouldn't work as well as it did last week, but there's going to be days like that so I'm OK with it. It's weird because the slower I do the "writing" (which is what they call it - like typing but faster/more efficient), the worse I do. When I stop wrangling my brain and just let it flow, my hands do better.

Last Wed was my birthday (41!) and on Tues., Dave called and said, "I've got something that's going to change your life." I said, "Divorce papers?" (We laughed because that's how we do it!) He wouldn't tell me the surprise and when he came home, he handed me my birthday present.

I think I've mentioned in the past that Dave is the best at giving presents. If he had asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I would have said this exact thing he got me. I didn't ask for anything for my b'day this year, we spent $450 on a new laptop for school, we are paying about $60 a week extra on gas for me to get to school and the cost of school.... oy. But he still gets me a present.... it's one of those dealies that you plug into the bottom of your ipod and it plays through the radio! So I am no longer at the mercy of DJ's during my commute!!

When I came home from school, there were two lovely handmade cards from my boys on my desk. I took the day off. As long-timers here may remember, I NEVER work on my birthday (except once during Basic Training, when I had no choice). I did go to school because that's not work for me!

On Sunday, I went to my knitting group and LaDonna brought a 12 pack of giant muffins from Mimi's Cafe, Jen brought fancy cupcakes and they all pitched in to get me a gas card from Cosco!

What a great birthday!

Many years to come, Ruth!

J is for Justice

2011-04-08T14:25:00.000-07:00

Lots to tell, you might want to get a snack….

I believe I’ve mentioned that I’ve been depressed lately. It was getting hard to breathe. I got a job and that eased up a bit but then it got as bad if not worse. I’d wake up and look at that desk and that chair and think about my job and how I talk to Xtards 40 hours a week and I’d think, “Is this my life for the rest of my life??” And after I take the kids to school, I’d go back to bed until I had to sign in to my computer for work at 2:30p. I’d stay in bed and sleep or watch movies and try to breathe.

I’ve had some bad times in my life. I’ve had some really Very Bad Things happen when I was a kid and I’ve had times that were just really difficult. Through the bad times, I always had a spark of optimism because I always knew it couldn’t last. I knew that something would change or I would change and it couldn’t be like that always. I think that’s the biggest difference between my brother and me. I don’t think when he was in the pitch black tunnel he ever realized that no matter what, eventually there would be light again when you came to the end of it. I think that’s why he had so much trouble with addiction all his life. He sees the here and now and needs an escape. I always waited for (or sought out) the light.

For the first time in my life, I had no hope. I couldn’t see an end to where we are now. No way out. I owe $50K to my in-laws for the business that failed and I sit at a desk in my bedroom and make $9 an hour. At 40, I find myself with no marketable skills. The massage market here is so flooded that even with my 10 years experience, I can’t get a job.

I looked around to see what was out there and thought seriously about going back to school. Dave kept telling me we can’t afford it and he’s absolutely right but I can’t sit around doing nothing either. Since the economy tanked my business and I have my current job now, I realize that making $9/an hour is never going to do anything to get us out of debt.

I have about $5K in credit card debt from trying to keep my business afloat and Dave has about $200K in debt from buying the landscaping business he has. His business is doing so-so. We make our bills and that’s it. With the economy, many people are choosing to take care of their own yards and there are tons of fly-by-night operations that will charge 1/3 of what we charge. (Doing front and back yard for $15?! There’s no way they are making money off that.)

If something doesn’t change, we will never be able to let the kids play sports or have music lessons or summer camp or a backyard in a real house.

I’m going back to school. Not real school. I signed up at the court reporting school in Denver. I know that may seem out of the blue but I have actually been interested in it since before I got out of the Army. I looked in to an at-home course right before I got out of the Army (waaaaaaay back in 1995-96, not everyone had computers and most online courses were scams) but using your GI Bill before you get out of the Army eats it up twice as fast as using it after.

When I got out of the Army I dicked around the Community College for two years, trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up (I know, I know, still waiting), then I started thinking about the court reporting again and I was also looking into massage school.

I flipped a coin.

Just kidding, I didn’t flip a coin. There was no court reporting school in Tucson and there was an excellent massage school, so…… touching strangers it was.

Back to the present….

I was looking into online court reporting courses and Denver Academy of Court Reporting came up. I called and got information. I started making small hints and comments in Dave’s direction. I had a webinar with the school. I had a long talk with Dave. I went to take a tour of the school and Dave came with me. (We thought it was going to be about a half hour tops but we ended up being there for 2 hours!!). I called the agencies that hire out the court reporters. I emailed a lawyer and a paralegal that I know with my questions. (My main question being, in this age of technology, is this even a viable thing anymore? Apparently, all around is a resounding yes, so that’s good news!)

Dave and I went back and forth with it. There was quite a few of frustrated arguments but, as usual, I got my way (at least that’s what he said). His biggest fear is about the cost of school. I know it’s another big debt to be adding but in the long run, I’ll be making much better money and hopefully I can get a job with some benefits. His other, entirely valid, concern is the commute. The school is on the other side of Denver and the commute is going to cost $15 a day just in gas money.

One of the biggest frustrations I had in our discussions was the fact that he kept saying, “It’s not going to be easy. You complain that you don’t get enough sleep as it is and with school, you’ll be getting less.” “It’s not going to be easy….this.” “It’s not going to be easy….that.”

Finally I yelled at him, “I’m not looking for EASY. Stop saying that!! I am looking for something I think I would be good at and that wouldn’t make me want to kill myself rather than go to work!”

Dave: How do you know you’ll like it? Everything you’ve ever done, you end up hating!! Massage, your recruiting business, Target, the job you have now.

Me: What are you talking about?!? I didn’t hate massage or the recruiting.

Dave: You always bitched about every job you’ve ever had. Me: So do you!! When have you EVER had a job you even remotely liked, Dave? At least I enjoyed the massage and the recruiting. People bitch about their jobs , even if they love them! That’s why it’s called “work” and not fucking “Disneyland”. I liked massage and the recruiting but it wasn’t viable out here and I have to find something else. As for Target and my current job, we needed money so I found a job. It’s not something I want to do for the rest of my life!

Dave: What should we tell my parents?

Me: [trying not to explode into red mist, I say quietly….deadly…]They are NOT in charge of our lives. We’ll tell them I’m going back to school.

Dave: Are we going to tell them we shut down your business?

Me: [yelling again, screaming it actually] YES!! I wanted to tell them a year ago when we did it. Every time we see them [at least twice a week, btw], I get all nauseous and nervous wondering if they are going to ask me about the business and what the hell am I going to say? I’ll remind them of when your brother got laid off and he had to go back to school to update his resume/learning/life and get another/better job. This is no different!

Dave: Fine. We’ll just be like America owing China. We’ll just keep on borrowing money until we are owned by China.

Me: The difference is that this is actually a step to stop having to borrow money and to have a better life.

The next day I dropped the kids at school and went to the in-laws place to talk with them. By myself. Without telling/asking Dave. I know he would’ve wanted to come with me but I felt that this was my failure so it was my responsibility to deal with this. Like a big stupid-head, I started crying the minute I walked in the door but I laid it all out. I told them we had to shut down my business because it was costing money without making any money. I told them we were still going to do our best to pay them back and Dave’s mom said, “No. We’re going to rip up the papers [we did a promissory note] and don’t worry about that.” I said that was ridiculous and we are going to pay it back, it was just going to take longer. I told them about going back to school and that it was a commute and expensive but that I didn’t see any other way to have a better life for all of us.

Anyway, we had a long talk and I apologized profusely for not being able to make the business fly and explained that with the economy tanking, it just wasn’t viable anymore.

They were very kind about it all and Dave’s mom’s only concern was that the children didn’t “suffer” because of it. The only change the boys will see is that they have to walk to and from school now. It kind of freaks the MIL out but they are almost 8 and 10 and it’s not that long a walk (part of it is by a major road though and that makes me nervous too but so far, they’re fine).

I’m enrolled and writing this during a break on my fourth day of school. Everything I’ve heard about this program, the key is practice until your fingers bleed. One can get through the program as fast as one can pick up the speeds. After first quarter, one should be able to write (they call it writing instead of typing) at 40 words per minute (WPM) and upon graduation, one should be at 225 WPM. Every day I come home, Dave asks, “Do you have it down yet?” He’s only half-joking. It’s a 2 year program but you can progress through the speeds and the fastest anyone’s finished is 18 months. That’s my goal. The program has a 75% drop-out rate. That’s not my goal. That’s not even an option. I really like it so far and I am already getting it down. Dave also likes to tease me about my lack of tact/poker face. He’s all, “You’ll either start crying if things are sad or you’ll stand up in court and point to the accused and yell ‘GUILTY’ .” Hah, hah.

So here’s my day now…..

I work from 2:30-11p and go to bed. In the morning I wake at 6:45a to make the commute to school, I get there at 8a and set up to practice; I have class from 8:30a-1:30p. I haul ass home to sign into my computer for work by 2:30p. That’s M-W, I have class on Thurs also but that’s one of my days off, so I’ll be staying after class to practice.

I figured out how I can practice while working but I need another outlet so I’ll be adding to the 10 octopi already under my work desk. I also figured out that I can work an extra 6 hours a week to make up the gas money. Dave’s all, “You are NOT going to want to work another 6 hours a week!” and I countered with, “Well, you don’t’ want to mow anymore but we can’t afford to hire the employees we had last year. We all have to make sacrifices, you more than any of us, Dave. I’ll be fine.”

Another sacrifice is my Sunday knitting group. We meet every Sunday morning for about 4 hours or so. We switch off, one week in HR, where I live, the next in Parker, where I used to live. I won’t be making the Parker ones anymore. The cost of gas alone, combined with my weekly commute gas bill…. I have to cut the Parker meets. Sucks but it will give me more time to practice or to jump on for a few extra hours at work.

There is another student making the same commute and I’ve approached her about car-pooling but she’s all skittish about it and while she’s said yes, I’m having a difficult time pinning her down to it. I don’t know if it’ll work anyway since I have to leave so fast after work. I’m afraid I’ll have to change my schedule from 2:30-11p to 3-11:30p which is going to be less sleep and suck more.

I’m adding a donation box to my blog. I know some people object to those but they don’t have to use it and it’s my blog so I’ll do as I please here, right? Hah! If you like what I write and you feel like you wanna.... it's on the bar of stuff on the left. If anyone wants to buy about $30K in debt (at 10%, $250 a month payments) let me know. (Riiiiiight.) Or if anyone has a tiny car that sips gas or a motorcycle (and a few lessons) that I can borrow for a couple of years, let me know (riiiiiiiight). I’m going to start doing some other things to up my Stitch Saver business and any other (legal) thing I can think of to add income to our little debt the size of China.

Somewhere in all that, I’ve got to schedule time to practice, practice, practice to get through the speeds (and therefore, school) as quickly as possible to get out in the work force. Oh yea, and see the boys a few minutes per day.

I’ll miss my little guys most, Ruth!

I is for Insecure

2011-04-05T14:10:00.000-07:00

T is in choir. He heard about it last Sep. and wanted to join. The day before the first rehearsal, he came home and said, “I don’t want to do it.” I asked what happened and he said that the choir from last year sang at assembly and he just didn’t want to be in it anymore. I asked, “Why? Were they really bad or really good?” He said they were really good. I said, “Are you nervous or scared you won’t be that good?” and he nodded. I told him, “T. You should still try it. The beauty of choir is that, even if you aren’t that great, they teach you how to be better! And who knows, maybe you’re already pretty good! The thing is, you’ll never know if you don’t at least try it.”

He was still skeptical so I told him a little secret, “Little Man, you have music in your heritage. Oma [my mom] plays piano and organ and she was in choir all through high school and college! She even has a record of her college choir and she has this really great solo in it. Her dad used to write music and had several songs published! I played flute in elementary school and jr. high. Music is already a part of you!”

That convinced him.

I said he should go to the first two rehearsals and if he didn’t like it he didn’t have to participate. Then we had a little life talk… I told him how awful it would be to go through life being too scared to try things he really had an interest in. I explained that without taking risks, he’ll miss out on a lot of fun and all the things he may truly love! I also grounded it in a touch of reality that there were going to be things he tried that he wouldn’t like, sometimes even things where he’ll fall flat on his face! But without trying different things, he’ll never know which way he wants to go in life. (I left out the part about me not liking the flute and how I really/still wanted to learn the piano.)

He went to the first practice, had a blast and is still in choir. He isn’t crazy about getting up so early to go to practice before school, but he’s still with it and I’m very proud of him!

T is the one to the left of the really blonde kid in the front row. Sorry for the craptastic pic's, we are still trying to figure out our new camera. Here's T and D2 with T's choir teacher. (D2 is so silly!)

I have this friend who is absolutely fearless. She thought it would be fun to go sky-diving and she went. She has over 100 jumps now. That led to a job in aviation and then she thought, "That looks like fun!" and got her pilot's license! As far as I can tell, if she thinks something would be interesting, she just up and tries it. That's crazy to me! I'm so jealous!

It takes me years to get to a point where I'm comfortable enough to try something I want to do. It took me 2 years to call the massage school to even see if they take the GI Bill. A simple yes or no and I could've started my life a lot earlier! Of course it was yes and I signed up a week before my class started. So lame!

I've recently conquered (well, attempted anyway) a knitting fear. I've said for years that I'm going to learn fair-isle. I have 2 projects on my list for this year that involve fair isle. They are both small-ish and I finished the first one last week. It came out OK, not perfect by any stretch but here it is....

(Wow, my new camera really does suck ass! Anyone know how to work a Nikon Cool pix?)

Anyway, I want my kids to be fearless and try anything and everything that interests them! Not in a flaky, can't-decide-what-I-want-to-do-with-my-life kind of way, but in a I'm-finding-what-I-love way. As I talked about in the last post, I'm trying to make some changes to set the example. More on that in the next post....

Fearlessly diving into the breach, Ruth!

H is for Hoarding

2011-03-30T17:51:00.000-07:00

I come from a short line of pack-rats. My mom and her mom are/were pack-rats. (My grandma was #11 out of 12 kids so I can't imagine her mom keeping anything that couldn't be considered a hand-me-down!
I have watched that Hoarders show exactly once. It's so crazy! And the people on that show have SO much stuff that I don't feel like a pack-rat at all. I feel like I have an adequate amount of junk and that I am perfectly normal. I know I have definite Hoarder tendencies but I do my best to keep them in check if for no other reason then I don't want my kids to end up like me! I see T heading that way already. Every toy, rock, bit of clothing, book, etc. that he's ever owned or laid eyes on will be his forever. I was making them clean their room and I held up a small plastic cup and asked who it belonged to and T said it was his. I asked if I could toss it and he got all mopey about it. I made him toss it.

I'm waiting for the day when they do what I did to my mom. When I was 11, my mom was hassling me about my messy room and wanted me to clean it. Without saying a word, I took her by the hand and led her in to her own room and presented her space. It was like a cyclone hit in there. I had a tornado and she had a cyclone. She laughed and made a deal where I never had to clean my room unless hers was clean. (I never had to clean my room much.)

So back to that Hoarders show.... They focused on 2 women, one who lives alone and one who's 16 year old son called Child Services on her because he could no longer get to his bed for all the crap she was hoarding.

The first woman had a 3 bedroom house, so all totaled..... about 6 rooms in the house. She travelled a lot with her job and whenever she traveled she was well and when she was home she was very sick. When the clean-up crew showed up, in the first day, with the first 3 rooms, they removed FIVE TONS of stuff! Five. Tons.

Her house had those little hoarder trails throughout. A thin line into the kitchen where the fridge and all the cabinets were blocked with stuff. A small trail to a bathroom where the shower and sink were completely inaccessible (she could still use the toilet though!). A sliver of floor into a bedroom where she slept on a small, hard chair because the bed was buried. There was about 2 inches of mouse crap in drifts under all that stuff they took from those first three rooms (no wonder she's sick when she's home,right?).

They had the woman outside and the clean-up man showed her a children's board book and asked if she even knew anyone with a child that age anymore. She said she would find someone to give it to. Then he said, "No. What family is going to allow you to give this book to their toddler?? It's covered in rat feces and urine." She said, "I can clean it up!" He said, "No. You can't clean urine off a book." He finally convinced her to let him throw it away.

It was tooth and nail the whole time and after three days, the clean-up guy finally gave up and told the therapist that the lady was no where near ready to let them finish the job. I think the final straw for clean-up guy was when they got through the first three rooms and uncovered a door. A whole 'nother room, they didn't even know about. They opened the door and behind the door was floor-to-ceiling stuff. You couldn't get in the room! It was full of things from Home Shopping Network - most still in the shipping boxes! One of the boxes had a $600 set of pots and pans when they opened it. It was under so many things that some of the pots had actually collapsed under the weight and the set was useless. Wild.

The other woman (the one who's son turned her in) had 2 grown daughters that live within a coupla miles from her. When it was clean-up day, the woman had a panic attack and she started tearing in to her daughters, mostly about the fact that they never visit and bring their toddler children (her grandkids) to visit even though they live so close. One daughter said, "Mom. Last time we brought them, Sally was nearly crushed by falling bins! You call and it's always the same argument how you have all this stuff and we never help you. There's TWENTY people here today and their sole purpose is to help clean up and you won't let them." Mom said, "You need to read your bible."

Wow. Just..... wow. I'm guessing she was referring to the honor your parents or respect your elders bits of the Bible but I'm quite sure (I'd lay money) that she pulls out that little gem every time she's losing an argument.

She finally let them clean out her house and was all overjoyed and felt so much "lighter and happier" and vowed never to go back to that way of life again. And 6 months later, her son had to call Child Services on her again.

We were watching a CSI episode that also dealt with a hoarder as their primary story line. The hoarder in the episode was a highly organized hoarder and all her stuff was in matching bins! After we saw the episode, Dave looked at me and said, "Doesn't that make you want to get rid of some of your stuff?" (He's always harping on me to get rid of my stuff.) I said, "No. It makes me want to buy more bins!!"

I actually am going through my bins in our garage. When we moved from Parker, to where we are now, we moved into a smaller place. We went from a 3 bedroom, 2 car garage, finished partial basement house to a 1 car garage, 2 (large, master-bedroom-sized) bedroom, no basement townhouse/condo thing. 90% of my yarn and a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff has been generously housed at a friend's house in Parker since September 2009.

There are things in our garage that I want in our house but it's hard to find the room. The boys have 2 small bookcases in their room. One actually holds books, the other holds treasures. I made them move the treasure so I could give them the set of children's classics that I received as a gift when I was in 3rd grade. I want them to have them (have access to them) while they are still young enough to really enjoy them.

Other then that, it's time for me to go through all my stuff and start making some hard decisions.

But wait.... is it that time yet? I remembered that Dave has this little mobile home that we own as part of his business. It used to be the office but we moved the office stuff to our home (partly because it's just more convenient, mainly because that little house has no bathroom), so now it sits on the property he rents to store his equipment and we even pay $30/month extra for it to have electricity we rarely use. It has 2 big office spaces and one smaller room. We had a bit of an argument about it. He says he's put stuff in those rooms and there's no room for more. After some angry back and forth (mostly him telling me to get rid of some crap; mostly me saying it's my crap and I shouldn't have to get rid of it if I didn't want to), he agreed to move some stuff around so I can put some things there. I figure it can be my pay for being the secretary for his business.

Dreaming of matching bins, Ruth!

G is for Goals

2011-03-08T11:38:00.000-08:00

Last year [2009] I didn't do nearly as much reading as I am normally capable of. I didn't even do the R.I.P. Challenge this year [2010]. I think I read maybe 7 books in 2010. Another goal in 2011 is a lot more reading.

Here's my book list so far:
Forest House - Marion Zimmer Bradley (started this a few days ago)

Hansel and Gretel

Dark Tower V - Stephen King

The Kiss - Katherine Harrison

Poisonwood Bible - Barabara Kingsolver

Fatal Cure - Robin Cook

You Suck and Bite Me - Christopher Moore

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley (R.I.P. Challenge)

Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein (R.I.P. Challenge)

Daywatch - (R.I.P. Challenge)

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - (R.I.P. Challenge)

I also want to read more plays so I'm going to read at least one play each from my favorite playwrights - Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and Oscar Wilde.

OK, I wrote the above a few days before the new year and I am still trudging through Forest House. It's not bad, but it's just not really grabbing me and last night, when I realized it's March and I still have over 200 pages left!, I think I might do something I NEVER do. I think I might actually put it down for a bit and crank out a couple other books.

I definitely want to crank out the Christopher Moore books and maybe a play or two and that may jump start me getting back to reading.

I hate putting a book down. I can't stand not knowing the end of the story even if the story sucks.

Forest House does not suck. It's really quite good but it's sort of the same as Mists of Avalon in that everyone is being used by older people with political agendas and no one seems to have any choices.

I did read a book last year that was almost sucky. I don't want to say the name of it because if it was at all my cup of tea, it probably wouldn't have been sucky. It was a "cozy" mystery so no blood or guts and it was all very sanitary. I don't much care for sanitary. There were over 200 pages and by page 30 I knew who was going to die, how they would die, who killed them and what the motive was. I was wrong about the way the victim died and half-right about the motive. Blah.

Sometime last year, or maybe even the year before, I completely lost my reading mojo. I used to be insatiable with books. I watch a ton of TV and movies but I always read, too, but lately, I just don't ever feel like reading. It makes me sad because I feel like I'm losing something I once loved.

My knitting goals are coming along. I finished a WIP pair of socks and a bath mat I started 3 years ago, I've made about 6 hats, 2 pickle ornaments and I'm making progress on two sweaters. I throw in a bunch of little stuff here and there to make myself believe I've finished lots of things.

One of the things I did to help with my knitting goals was to make a list of what to work on each week:
Monday - Hats
Tuesday - Socks
Wednesday - Socks
Thursday - Dealer's Choice
Friday - Sweaters
Saturday - Sweaters
Sunday - WIP/UFO's

I know it seems like a special piece of crazy but it's really working for me! And it's not set in stone, if I want to work on something non-hat on Monday, I do.

My health goals haven't even been attempted. I was working out like crazy for 8 months, I lost 20 pounds and 2 sizes but I hit a wall and haven't worked out in months. I bought a size 12 pair of pants at Old Navy (yay!) and they are already a bit loose (double yay!). No explanation for it other then maybe because I quit grazing all the time, I'm still losing weight?

In anticipation of this year's Alphabet Soup, I started this post and a couple others at the end of last year. Just wrote down ideas for letters and a line or two to remind me what I wanted to write about. When I wrote this one initially, it was all full of promise and hope, but as March rolls around and I see where I'm at, it's ending with a bunch of Fail. That's not depressing at all.

A bowl full of sunshine, Ruth!

F is for Fear

2011-02-28T16:22:00.000-08:00

On October 30th, last year Comedy Central's Daily Show put on a rally in D.C. It was a Rally to Restore Sanity. The Colbert Report put on it's own corresponding rally - The Rally to Restore Fear. It was held on the same day at the same venue and was mostly all in fun. People across the nation thought it was a good idea and corresponding rallies were scheduled at many major cities. We went to the Denver one.

There were about 200 people there and we took quite a few pics...

Here's T surveying the crowd...

Another crowd shot...

They invited all the political candidates to speak but none of the Dem's or Repub's showed up. This guy was a Libertarian candidate. He took off the mask and laid the scythe down before he spoke.

He had some good ideas but lost me when he said we had to abolish the CIA. Yea. Good luck with that one!

They had skits, too. This man was in a skit and the kids wanted a pic with him so we went "backstage" of the amphitheater to get one. He is apparently very serious about his Star Wars fanship. This is his "B costume"....

There was an adorable cupcake truck...

As it should be, the kids could've cared less about the political rally. They were much more interested in what T appropriately calls "public art".

D2 kept holding his hands up to make it seem like he was holding up the sculptures but he's a bit small yet to pull it off...

Here they are in front of one of the capitol buildings (D2 trying to hold it up)...

And the other capitol building opposite (D2 striking his "adorable" pose)...

We had a great time - the weather was amazing, everyone at the rally was mellow and calm. The political speakers were polite and the skits were funny. The signs were the best part. They encouraged people to bring signs and some of my favorites were:

"George W. Bush is NOT Hitler (pic of W); Obama is NOT Hitler (pic of Obama); HITLER is Hitler (pic of Hitler)"

"I fear my cat is Hitler (pic of white cat w/black spot on upper lip)"

"I'M MAD AS HELL and I want to discuss it rationally."

"Make awkward sexual advances, not war."

We dvr'd the actual rally with John Stewart and Stephen Colbert. It took a couple of weeks but when I watched it, I was really impressed! They had a lot of great music and some real heroes and, like the Denver rally, there was no drama and everyone seemed really happy to be there.

I was very excited this rally even existed; I still am! I know "if it bleeds it leads" is nothing new, I think that phrase was coined somewhere in the 60's or 70's (maybe before) but things have gotten SO out of hand that it makes me very sad.

Just recently, the headlines screamed "Christina Aguillera RUINS the National Anthem". Really? Ruined? I think she got a line or two wrong, I think that the song is actually still intact and well-loved.

Everything the President or the Senators/Congresspeople do is punished and rehashed ad nauseum until none of it means anything. Every little thing is blown to such large proportions that we have become desensitized to anything less then what is screamed into our faces. None of it means anything anymore; that is what makes me sad. Things that actually deserve attention, important things that could really change lives in this country (or others) are ignored. Things that don't mean a damn thing (DID Obama dye his hair? Who the fuck cares!!) are trotted out and dissected like they are important.

There's people on both sides of the political line (looking at YOU Glenn Beck and Keith Olberman (I used to love Olberman!)) that talk and talk and talk and people are actually drinking their poisonous Kool-Aid. I wish people would stop listening and start thinking. Do their own research and come up with their own opinions. Even if those opinions are completely insane or backwards at least they would be their own.

In this country, we are heading for certain disaster. When people are losing their homes because they can't pay their medical bills, when war widows are being forced to marry (or not marry) at a certain age to retain the benefits their spouses paid for, when [insert current issue that pisses you off here] is happening and the talking heads on TV are saying that since the Prez dyed his hair it means he's a deceiver and people are buying into that nonsense.... something is seriously wrong.

When that Congresswoman (Senator?) got shot in the head in Tucson, the first thing I thought of was, 'Good thing she has all that FREE health care. Good thing her family will never have to worry about losing their home to medical bills.' (The second thing I thought was, 'Damn, Ruth, that's fucked up!'.)

I saw a news article about the State of the Union Address - they were making this huge deal about the fact that the Dem's and Repub's were sitting together. It took awhile for that to sink in for me. Sitting. Together. SITTING TOGETHER??!! Apparently, they never do that. They are so at war with one another, they can't even stand to sit with the opposing party? They are so at war with one another that even if one wanted to sit with an opposing party member they would be shunned by their own party if they did.

One of the Republicans said, "I sat with Dem A, Dem B, and Dem C. They were nice to me and I hope they thought I was nice to them." That, sadly, is almost verbatim what T said when he came home from his first day of kindergarten.

The article made a big deal out of the Senator who came up with the idea for them to sit in "mixed company". Apparently, there was quite a bit of pushback until a reporter got ahold of it and then everyone decided to "play nice". I don't understand. I don't get why that Senator is such a hero for bringing up a what should be a non-issue. I don't get how they can expect to run a country together when they can't even sit together. It really gives me pause.

And WE are the ones hiring these yay-hoos! It makes me laugh when people bag on the President - ANY president in our countries history - like they actually have any authority. They can't do much of anything without years of bureaucracy and things going through Senate and Congress, etc.

I don't have the answers (at least not all of them), I only ask that you do your own research, think for yourselves, and act accordingly.

At the end of the Rally, John Stewart made a little speech. They showed a video of a turnpike somewhere on the East Coast. Apparently, there's 5 or 6 lanes that narrow down to one lane to go through a tunnel. The video showed cars letting each other in and Stewart compared it to how government should be. Give and Take; you go, then I go, then you go, then I go. This is one of the busiest roads in America, people are going to work or coming home and they all need to get where they are going. They all work together to make it happen. All different types of people, all strangers to each other. He said that, yes, occasionally some asshole cuts in but people flip them off then forget them and continue to work together. If they can do it, why can't the government?

You go, then I go, Ruth!

E is for Evans

2011-02-07T08:08:00.000-08:00

Last August, our buddy Ty came from Tucson for a visit. We took him to Mt. Evans. We ended up going 2 days in a row. The first day the weather was... less then optimal...

That first day, we drove to the top and as the sign indicates, it's the highest road made for automobiles in North America; I was terrified most of the way. The visibility was so bad, because of the low rain clouds and the height of the mountain, that we could not see the car in front of the truck that was in front of us! Dave is swivel-heading to see all the cloudy sights that were available and it was freaking me out. The road to the top of the mountain is precarious to say the least. It's barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other and the drop off is... impressive (read: terrifying).

We did see a couple of real life, wooly Mountain Goats! When we got to the top, we got out of the van and ran to the bathrooms. Not that anyone really had to go but with the torrential rain, the clapping thunder and the lightning that looked close enough to lick, none of us really wanted to stand in the open!

The amazing view from the top of the mountain was obscured by cloud cover so we didn't stay long and trundled back into the minivan most immediately.

Our park pass was good for two days so we went back up the next day and the weather was much more friendly.

We had a picnic of Subway sandwiches, chips, and soda...

Old friendships were renewed
Small boulders were climbed upon

Stumps were conquered

and leaped off of

tiny bridges were crossed....

and a great time was had by all!

We drove to the top once again and although the drive was just as precarious as the day before, it wasn't nearly as frightening when you could actually see more then a few feet in front of you. It was really amazing to see the end of the tree line. It was like someone had literally drawn a line in the ground and the trees refused to pass that line.

When we parked at the top again, Dave, T and I took the trail to the top of the mountain. There was still an icy drizzle so Ty and D2 opted out and went back to the warm minivan. The climb up was really easy but the the icy rain made it a bit miserable. Evans is a "14'er" which means the top is 14,000 feet above sea level. At the very top, there's a brass circle embedded into the rock establishing it's height. I would've taken a pic of it but the weather was so bad, we ducked on down. On the way back, my husband, Magellan, took a wrong turn and we ended up going the shorter way which is straight down over some nasty looking big rocks. T loved it! I thought it was kind of cool too but was scared T might fall.

More recently (as in a couple of weeks ago), we took a minivacation to Keystone. We stayed in a lovely "condo" (read: 2 story apartment on the third floor).

The kids both got new snow jackets and they were all bundled up to go out and play in the snow...

(D2 looks like Kenny!)

Apparently, there's a culinary school nearby and the students did all these really cool ice sculptures...

We went up a gondola to the top of Keystone. We shared our 20 minute ride with a lovely older couple from PA who have EIGHT kids back home! The oldest (a set of female twins) just graduated college so they are taking a 3 week vacation to celebrate!

D2 asked, "If we fall, will we die?". He is SO morbid! The other couple laughed and said that in their previous ride up the mountain, there was a 4 year old boy who asked, "If we fall, how would we get out?" The man said he told the boy if they fell, getting out would be the least of their worries! Then we started talking about the gondola that fell in Maine and how it took three hours to get to the people to rescue them. I said, "I'd be set, I've got my knitting in my pocket!" Then the lady and I started talking crafts (she quilts) and the men talked sports and it was a lovely encounter!

At the top, they had a big snow fort for the kids to play in....

But our main goal at the top was to go tubing! It was So. Much FUN!!! There's 4 groomed runs and attendants at the top and bottom to help you. They help you into your tube and give you a push and, if you like, they will whip you in a circle first so when you go down the run you are spinning like a top! I'd get to the bottom and as soon as those attendants let me, I'd RUN across the lanes to the covered conveyor belt that takes you back to the top to go again! You rent your tube by the hour and it's worth EVERY penny.

We had a guy take our pic and if you look closely, you can see a couple of the attendants in the background waving "hi" to you....

Every body that works at Keystone was SO nice! I mean, genuinely happy to be there and really going out of their way to engage and help you. I realized that, hell yeah! it would be so awesome to work there that, of course, they're all going to be nice!

After our tubing adventure, we went to the lodge at the top for some snacks. It was packed with nowhere to sit really - at least not a table to ourselves - so I walked up to 2 guys sitting at the end of along table and asked if the seats next to them were open and they said yes. After we ate, Dave took the boys to the bathroom and I took out my knitting. As usual, it starts a conversation with strangers. The 2 men were from the Czech Republic but live in Boston now and were in CO on vacation. I said, "So you went from the cold to the cold to the cold!" They were funny and sweet and very sleepy from a day on the slopes.

When we got back to our condo, we got the everyone into their swimsuits and their "fancy pants" (that's what we call our fleecy pj pants) and went to the indoor/outdoor pool. There's also a hot tub, a dry sauna, and a steam room. The boys had never been in a sauna or steam room and they didn't really care for either. I prefer the dry sauna since the wetness of the steam room just makes me think it's got to be all mildewy and gross (even though I know it's not!).

The pool was mostly outside with a small leg inside to break you in. The boys would get out of the water (which was a bit heated but not as warm as you might think) and they were little steam monsters standing on the edge of the pool, counting slowly to see who could last the longest! Then we'd go inside for the hot tub and warm back up.

We were only there for two very expensive nights but it was much needed break from the stress of our lives down the hill and I wish we could've stayed for a week! We ate at great restaurants, had fun snow adventures and relaxing evenings by a fireplace.

Heaven for a price, Ruth!

D is for Done

2011-01-11T14:00:00.000-08:00

I finished quite a lot of projects last year, due in large part to the 10 in 2010 group on Ravelry. I spoke of this group in my "A" post this year and I said I'd talk details later so here they are...

This group had a goal of making 10 different projects using 10 different yarns in the year 2010. There were no restrictions on project type or yarn usage but they wouldn't count WIP's. They had a thread for posting a list then another thread for your final list. You were able to change your "final" list as much as you please as they know how fickle knitters can be with shiny new patterns coming out every quarter (or more) in mags, e-mags, and all over Ravelry.

Here's what I posted in the Final List Thread complete with changes I made and adding pic's of the things I did finish (if the pic's aren't here it's because I posted them in my last post already)[also, today I'll be adding commentary in brackets]...

This is exactly the list I had when I posted in the non-Final thread. The only difference is that I’ve decided on a more reasonable goal for my Ravelympics project and switched the order of things. And I keep wavering on the yarn I want to use for my first project. I didn’t have any sock yarn that was grabbing me for it and I’ve had the Kathmandu in my stash forEVER but recently I’ve received some sock yarn that would be perfect. Decisions, decisions….

Is anyone else thinking of having a Cast-On-O-Rama on January 1, 2010? Because I’m thinking I’m going to cast on every single project except my Ravelympics one! [hmm, apparently I have this same exact thought every year] I’m not a fan of casting on so I think I’ll just do it all in one day and get it over with. Who’s with me!

Impatience Cowl - Kathmandu Aran (US 8, CO 136 and hope it works!). - Replacing with Pretty Thing

Owls - Malabrigo worsted (this is my Ravelympics project) Finished! [As you saw in my "A" post, I have this finished sweater on my WIP list to make the arms and body longer.]

Nutkin - STR mediumweight Muddy Autumn Rainbow [Finished these Dec. 29th as seen in my "C" post]

Towel/Dishcloth set - kitchen cotton (for my kitchen) - Finished [I guess, technically, the towel isn't yet finished since I still need to put a button on it to hang over the oven door handle.]

Fake Isle hat - Noro Kureyon and mystery wool. [Frogged due to huge size and crappy fair isle skills] - Replacing with Skew Socks - Black Trillium Sock Yarn/Coraline colorway [these are also on my 2011 list - Sock category]

Mitts of my own design - koigu and waterlily [another project on my 2011 list - My Designs category]

Inaugural Sweater - Malabrigo Worsted - Finished [This is an excellent pattern. Unfortunately, I messed it up as posted here.)

Swirly hat and matching mitts - blue sky alpaca silk and Noro silk garden [Another that should've made the 2011 list. I have had this set on my list and in my head for over 2 years now. I want to make fair isle but as with the Fake Isle hat, I'm no good at it yet so it's still on the back burner. I'm going to start smaller with the Zombies Need Not Apply wristers.]

Pet bed of my own design - tbd [Another that made my personal 2011 list in the "my designs" category. This is also a thing that's been swirling around in my head only this one's been there so much longer. When I first learned to knit, one of the first things I ever made (after 30 scarves in 6 weeks) was the cat bed from the original Stitch and Bitch book. After making that cat bed, I had an idea for a different design of cat bed and I've yet to get that design out of my head and onto my needles.]

Viviane - more Malabrigo - I figure it’s OK to use Mal again since I’m using multiple different yarns in some of the other projects? Also, this cable masterpiece may be the one that breaks me and doesn’t get finished in 2010! Setting the goal a bit high but… that’s what I do! [on my 2011 list in my WIP's category]

Swirl Socks - mystery DK yarn. [this got moved to the 2011 list - Sock category] - Replaced with minisweater/boob holder - Kathmandu Aran yarn - Finished

All these yarns are stash yarns and all the projects are from my current queue. Both stash and queue are completely S.A.B.L.E. and QUE.B.L.E. so I should really get on that.

ETA: Failed miserably with the Impatience Cowl. Twice. It’s being replaced with Pretty Thing. I don’t know how to do the Strike-through thing but if I did, I’d strike Impatience down with a vengeance. (Totally not the pattern’s fault!)

Failed again with the Fake Isle Hat. This is the Year of the Frog for me! Substituting Thorpe.
Thorpe is done!

ETA - October 19/2010 - Totally changing my whole game plan! I see that I have actually finished 6 items (splee!) but here’s what I’m going to do for the remaining 4:

Finish Nutkins - Finished
Finish Dave’s socks in Skeindalous’s Napalm colorway sock yarn - Finished
Scarf for teacher in Big Wool [actually did the Noble Cowl in Malabrigo
Silky Merino] Finished
Hat for other teacher in mystery grey wool [Basic Cable Hat - Alpaca With A
Twist Highlander] - Finished
Slippers for inlaws (4 pairs, so if I finish at least one pair - that’ll be my 10!) - Finished them all!
Got to get on that holiday knitting! eep!

As you saw in the "C" post for this year, I had quite a prolific amount of xmas knitting. I also finished many other small things throughout last year - 6 washcloths, a minion for D2, etc., some big things already listed - Inaugural and Owls and then there's these socks I made...

Pattern: Heath's Socks Yarn: Skeindalous Lone Ranger colorway
The colorway was perfect! The pattern was easy and flew by - the only thing I changed is that the pattern calls for the cable to be inbtw the needles so I rearranged the stitches to avoid that.

With the Thorpe I had hope that I'd broken my hat curse. (For "K" in comments who asked, my hat curse is a personal curse. With the exception of that Thorpe, I've never made a hat just once. It's always too big or too small for any normal human head and I have to rip the damn things out and do them over.)

How was your knitting last year?

Looking forward to this year's List of Insanity, Ruth!

C is Christmas

2011-01-10T18:11:00.000-08:00

I was a knitting machine in late November and December!

T's Teacher gift....

Pattern: Basic Cable Hat from the Stitch 'N Bitch Yarn: Alpaca With a Twist Highlander - cranked it out in three days (12/2 - 12/5). The pattern practically makes it a yamake so I added a few repeats for length. I was going to make him my typical Hat Fit For A Boyfriend but that's a plain rib and he saw me knitting once and told me how much his wife loves to knit so I felt I had to do something a bit more impressive then just 2X2 ribbing.

For D2's Teacher gift...

Pattern: Noble Cowl Yarn: Malabrigo Silky Merino. I had 30 stitches left in my bind-off and ran out of yarn! I bought 2 more skeins from someone's Rav destash and finished. I bought both skeins because I love this yarn! The pattern's really great, too; easy and quick.

For my 2 BIL's and their wives I made Ribby Slippers for the men and French Press Slippers for the women.

I had to work so didn't get to hand Jerry and Jackie their slippers at the annual xmas dinner at their house in Denver. My MIL told me Jackie put hers on right away and didn't take them off all evening. My MIL also told me she'd like a pair!

I'm glad Jackie's fit her. I put both pair into a zippered pillowcase and washed them in a small load with some jeans. No felting. Then with a load of towels. No felting. Then with THREE other loads of wash and they hardly felted at all! Then I threw them in by themselves (still pillowcased, of course) and they felted almost too much! ARGH!

Here's Jackie's....

Here's Joan's...

The men each had three slippers made for them since both times I picked yarn in my stash, made one and realized it wouldn't be near enough yarn for the second slipper. Damn big feet in this family.

Here's Jerry's....

Here's John's...

(For those keeping track, that's Jerry and Jackie then John and Joan. There's also an Aunt JoAnne and her husband Jerry. Jerry and Jackie and John and Joan and Jerry and JoAnne. Took me YEARS to get all that straight and I'm pretty sure I still spell the women's names wrong!)

I also made more Ribby slippers for the boys. I finished them in late November and haven't yet taken pictures. I used Wool-ease with a Berroco Comfort cuff for T's and Red Heart with a Berroco Comfort cuff for D2's. It's nice that they wear them ALL the time when they are home (even to sleep in!) but T's already has 2 big holes in one of them. I used Alpaca With A Twist for the ones I made them two years ago and they felted and holed up after few months. It was a damn waste of some fairly expensive yarn and I should've realized they'd felt like that! Well, I figured the Wool-Ease with it's acrylic content would last longer but it didn't last AS long. sigh. I'm doing what I did to Dave's old pair (also made 2 years ago, also made with AWaT, also felted huge holes in both), I'm making tight garter stitch, 2-strands-held-together, rectangular patches for the bottom w/more Wool-ease. (I also made Dave's patches in Dec. - Size 11.5 US Men's shoes.) Hopefully, it'll get T through this winter!

The night before and the day of xmas, I made these two cat toys...

The cat seemed to be doing his level best to actually tear the bone apart instead of flip it around and play with it (like he does with his store-bought toys). Perhaps a touch too much catnip inside?

He pretty much ignored the mouse completely but I caught him walking around with it in his mouth today. He saw me, dropped it and walked away. hah!

The day after xmas, I started this toy for my friend's baby....

(They were in England until the 29th so no rush there.)

Pattern: BBF Yarn: Trendsetter Delicious.

This yarn with it's little sparkly bits may look like it's not very soft but it is so thick and squooshy... you literally can't stop touching it! You don't feel the sparkly bits at all and it's yummy!

I finished my 3's a Charm Nutkins around the 29th.

I say 3's a charm because I restarted it three times. It was way too tight at first, went up a needle size, still too tight, went up to a 3mm needle and it seemed OK. It's actually a bit loose but not so bad I can't wear them! My pictures of these are horrible and don't even begin to do justice to the amazing STR's Muddy Autumn Rainbow colorway. And the yardage?? Even going up to the 3's, I have a racquetball sized ball of yarn left over!

My short-row heel is kinda crappy. I don't think you can see it in the pic's but in real life, if you look closely, it looks like yarn-overs instead of how a good, tight short-row/wrap-&-turn heel should. I fear with those holes and the looseness of the sock, they'll probably wear out faster (although I haven't yet had a pair of handmade socks wear out on me. Then again, I've only been wearing handmade socks for.... well, this'd be the second winter of the handmade sock for me.). After seeing my sad short-row heels, I didn't do the short-row toes called for in the pattern. I did one purl ridge on the top of the foot to simulate the 3 needle bind-off in the pattern, then did my usual toes.

There's still some December clean-up knitting I need to finish (coughstartcough) - MIL's French Press slippers, T's patches, a couple other things, but for once, I actually finished all the xmas knitting I set out to do!

The boys had a great xmas as usual! They are the only grandkids on both sides so they aren't spoiled or anything!

My mom sent them each a camera and she sent us a fifteen pound box of treats. Cookies, breads, fudge, you name it! Yea, those fifteen pounds are gonna look great on me. sigh.

Dave's parents got the boys some toys, some clothes and gave each of them a $50 Target card. Then Jerry and Jackie also gave them each a $50 gift visa! They had a blast at Target picking out new video games and more toys. John and Joan also sent some great games and gifts (They live in New Mexico but usually make the trip every year. John is ill and they couldn't make the annual dinner either.)

We got the boys some of the toys they asked for and Trevor got an electric guitar w/a little amp. I figure it can gather dust next to the keyboard that we also can't afford lessons for. My friend Becca, however, turned me on to some really good beginner guitar books/cd's so we'll get them going on those for now.

I love that after the melee of opening all their gifts and seeing all the toys, the first thing D2 did was sit down and start in on his new chapter book. So cool!

I gave Dave two new big-and-fluffy towels since the really nice ones my mom gave us 5 years ago are starting to show their age. I also got him some books he wanted.

He got me this very beautiful sweater dress. He took the boys to Macy's and they picked it out together. He said he knew I would return it and he almost bought the ugliest sweater he could find so I'd have to return it and get what I wanted. He's so funny! I love the dress but when he told me it cost $80?! Yea. That's going back. I can buy several outfits for the same price!

He also bought me a 90-minute massage! Splee! Can't wait to use that! Sitting at a desk for 40+ hours a week doesn't do my body a bit of good. I'm always achy now.

Wondering what y'all got, Ruth!

B is for Baseball

2011-01-07T13:22:00.001-08:00

Last year, during my Alphabet Soup, I had other things I wanted to tell y'all about but when I'm stuck in Alphabet Soup, I dedicate myself to it and try not to cheat.

One of the things that I didn't get to write about was the boys' baseball adventures!

T was on a "beginning" team for his age group and he did really well! He improved his catching and hitting and just look at that stance...

On the team, he usually played either 1st base or catcher.

He was growing his hair out until the first game on a hot day when he spent most of his on-field time in the catcher's outfit. He asked us to cut it that very night! (We usually clipper-cut their hair at home, really short. This past year, both of them have been growing it out and it looks quite good on them!)

The coach for T's team was about 6'7" and a very big guy. His son was the main pitcher and was also quite a bit taller then anyone else on the team. He was very mellow and laid back and the kids seemed to really like him. Dave assistant coached as many practices as he could make and all the games as well. I think he really enjoyed it! It got him to thinking of joining a softball team of his own because he really loved playing back in the day. Of course, with his schedule, he found it to be nearly impossible and didn't do it. Anyway....

The last time Trev played baseball, he was about 5 years old, playing T-ball and the smallest baseball pants were so loose on him that he had to hold them up when he ran around the bases.

D2 played, too. He played on an "advanced" team in his age group, despite never having played before. The other kids on this team were mostly from his class at school and the coach said not to worry about the "advanced" label and that he would work with D2. He did work quite a lot with Davis and the 3 other boys that weren't as skilled as the rest. He is a very patient, high-energy guy and a great coach. There were three other dads who also helped with the coaching and they were all very kind and patient with the boys.

Of course, every team (or classroom) has a horrible child, and the one on D2's team.... every time I saw that kid I wanted to smack his dad. The kid's name was... we'll say J and he was such a shit. During practice one day, he was being rotten and his dad said, "If you do that again, I'm going to make you run to the fence and back." 20 seconds later, he does "it" again and Dad says, "OK, go run to the fence and back" and J says "NO" and Dad says, "ok, well... don't do it again" and 10 seconds later... J does it again. Aaaaand There You Have It, no consequences, and J is quite the little shit. I've seen that kid KICK his dad and throw his glove at his dad and the dad never did ANYthing about it!

Before each game, the dads would pair up the kids to play catch and warm up. At the last game, J got paired up with D2 and he flat out refused to play with D2 saying how "crappy" a player D2 was and how much he sucked. D2 just stood there, not really paying attention (but I know he heard that hateful child) and J's dad also just stood there saying things like, "Now J, that's not nice. You have to play with him. Be nice. Stop saying that." blah, blah, blah. J wouldn't "be nice" and he refused to play w/D2 (again, throwing his glove at his dad) and I was getting out of my chair to handle it when one of the other assistant-coach-dads (the really uber-competitive one of all people!), walked out there, took J by the arm and said, "You do NOT treat your teammates like that. AND, you do what the coaches tell you. Now shut your mouth and practice with D2 or you don't get to play today." J shut his mouth and did as he was told. Amazing what a tiny bit of discipline can do, right?

Here's D2 at bat, wearing his ball cap under the batting helmet (told y'all he was new at this!).

Here's D2 after the season with his first ever tiny trophy...

He was more interested in the trophy then he ever was in the game. Next time, we'll put him in a beginner team and maybe he'll like it better!

One of the coolest things that happened during that time was a different ball game...

One of Dave's half-brothers got tickets for all the boys to go to a pro-game on Mother's Day. (And, as an aside, can I just say what a joy it was having the house all to myself to knit and watch whatever I wanted all day!! Best Mother's Day present ever!)

So both half-brothers (Jerry and John), Dave, their dad (grandpa) and both the little guys (T and D2) went to see the Rockies play the Brewers at Coors Field in Denver. After the game, Dave and the little guys were in the stands at one end of the bull pen watching the relief pitcher throw baseballs to the crowd on the other side of the bull pen. Dave told T to shout out and ask the pitcher to throw one their way so T did.

Dave told me that the pitcher threw hard and Dave was making a move to get down to the edge of the balcony to get it. He slowed down though since he saw that the ball wasn't going to make it. He said, "T reached over the railing with his glove and 'boop' CAUGHT that ball!" He said it was such a great catch that the crowd on the other side of the bull pen all cheered!

I loved having my day to myself but I'd've given almost anything to've seen the look on T's face when he caught that ball! He slept with that ball for over a week!

Maybe this year they'll try Basketball, Ruth!

A is for Ambition

2011-01-01T12:35:00.000-08:00

(This post is long and full of links. For sake of ease and sanity, all the knitting/yarn links are Rav links and TBD means To Be Determined. You don't have to click on every link, obviously, but after all this writing, I timed how long it took to link everything and it was about 45 minutes at which point I decided not to link all the yarn. And so dear friends, let us begin our journey into my 3rd annual Alphabet Soup....)

This year I've got plaaaaans, baby!

I have BIG knitting plans this year! I also have many small knitting plans, like the KAL where you knit a xmas ornament every month, only I'll be doing two every month - one for each boy. But here' s the bulk of the big plans...

On Ravelry, I joined the 10 in 2010 group and it was enormously helpful in setting some knitting goals and actually following through! That group stated that you needed to do 10 different fiber projects using ten different yarns. I like that the group lets you change your list as much as you like - that was a HUGE help in my ability to make my list! It changed several times throughout the year but this post is already too long so I'll post about all that later.

One thing I wasn't crazy about with that group is they didn't count WIP's. Donna's idea for the WIP Cup helped out quite a bit but there's still too many WIP's and UFO's in my life. (For those that don't knit, a WIP is a Work In Progress and a UFO is an UnFinished Object. My personal definition for UFO vs. WIP means that a UFO is something that's been dormant for over a year.) But they've change that this year! The 11 in 2011 group isn't so much a list of 11 projects, they've opened it up to 11 goals. Here's my 11 goals in several different categories...

WIP’s/UFO’s:

Vivian - one sleeve and part of another done (WIP)
Thorpe Mittens - wristy parts done (WIP)
Cranberry Throw - 1 of 4 panels half done (this may get frogged if first panel isn’t big enough) (WIP)
Mom’s Vest - 1/3 done (it’s terribly boring but at least the yarn is splitty!) (UFO)
Icarus - 25% done (UFO)
Baudelaire - one foot of one sock done - I'll probably start the other foot, then join the two for 2-at-a-time-toe-up to finish the legs. (UFO)
Blue/Green socks - half of first leg part done (need to switch it from DPN to Magic Loop) (UFO)
Habu Lace Scarf - 25% done
Fix Woodsy Owl - My 2010 Olympic project; finished it, but apparently I’m not as short as I think - need to lengthen
Jitterbug socks - 2-at-a-time toe-up, both feet 1/2 done
Stupid Bath Mat - 14 ever-growing rounds to go - blech

My Designs :

Cat Bed
Mitteny things
Handspun Vest - half done (UFO)
Grace - half done but may start over. Again. (UFO)
Fair Isle - 10% done (UFO)
Yellow Scarf - 80% done
Reunion shrug - restart. Again.

New Sweaters:
Poet Sweater - Yarn: Classic Elite Miracle
#77 - Yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky
Pioneer - Yarn: Lorna's Laces Worsted
Isabella - Yarn: Rowan 4ply
Arbor - Yarn: TBD, possibly some Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece I have
Washington Square Vest - Yarn: Araucania Ranco Solid (saving this one for Octobervest)
Aleita - Yarn: Rowan Calmer

Socks:
Saxon The City - I have all that Malabrigo Worsted in Jaen color that a friend gave me. I've overdyed most of it (leaving some un-overdyed for the contrasting bits) (thigh-high KAL)
Dave’s Diagonal Rib Socks - DIC Smooshy Raining Cats and Dogs
Skew - Black Trillium Coraline
Eleanora - Blank Stare Crater Lake (knee-high)
DK Swirl Socks - mystery pink dk yarn
Gothic Temptress - Casbah (knee-high)
Naniboujou - KnitPicks bag ‘o sock yarn
Anastasia - blind grab into the sock bin
Francie - Dizzy Blonde Studios Queen of Tarts
Lakeside - Fearless Fibers Smoke (knee-high)
Candle Flame Stockings - TBD (knee-high)

Hats:
2 Shark Hats - Berroco Comfort
Turn a Square - Cascade 220 and Noro Silk Garden
Bounce - TBD but probably Malabrigo
Hannah - TBD
Dorothea - TBD
Miniature Top Hat - Patons Classic Wool
Caulfield - blue tweed stuff I lost the ball band for
Hermione's Hat - Cascade 220
Nottingham - 2 colors of Berroco Jasper (one color for the bottom and top ribbing, a different color for the cable section)
2 Thorpes (one each for the boys) - Berroco Comfort doubled
Claudia - TBD
Marsan Watchcap - TBD
Trilobyte - TBD
Sutro Heights - TBD
Knotty But Nice - Rowan Pure Wool Aran (I actually finished this last night, but as usual with hats, I'm going to have to frog and reknit it. I thought the Aran was thicker then worsted called for in the pattern but with my overly tight knitting and the cables, it's too tight to pull over an adult-sized head. sigh.)

With all these hats, I'm determined to break my hat curse. As you can see with the Knotty But Nice, the hats are still winning.

Miscellaneous:
No-Sweat Pants - Bernat Illusions
Flutter Scarf - Habu laceweight Smoky color

Colorwork:
Every year I say I’m going to try/master Fair-isle. This time, hopefully, I will! I'm starting small with wristers and then longish finglerless mitts.
Zombies Need Not Apply - Knitpicks wool
Snowball’s Chance - Knitpicks wool

Goals:

1. Stash ONLY (the one exception is the Lamb’s Pride Bulky Charcoal Heather I need for #77) I know I've said this before but I had a bit of a wake-up call when I was doing some xmas knitting. I had my Bin 'O Felting Wool and I dug through it looking for the things I needed. I saw that I would need some dark brown and some black felting wool for my projects. I was going to buy some in a few days but inbetween, I had to dump out all the yarn to temporarily use the bin for something else. When I dumped out the yarn, there was the dark brown AND the black wool I needed! Even digging through the bin from the top, I missed it. My stash is completely out of control and I have to STOP! To that end, I've joined the Ravelry Cold Sheep group which is a support group for those trying to stop yarn purchases cold turkey. Also, all the lists above use yarn I already have and if I complete them all.... that's about 150 skeins of yarn. I feel if it's gotten so bad that I don't even KNOW what I have? That's pretty pathetic. Which leads us to my next goal...

2. Photo and post ALL stash
I have about half of it posted now. (OK, maybe quite a bit less then half.) I suggested to my knitting group that we get together for a stash photo shoot. We are doing this on the 2nd of January and I can't wait! I'm bringing my Ott lites, my tripod, my cameras, my light box and a gaggle of yarn. One of the women in the group was kind enough to offer her house and it should be lots of fun! I've already put all the stuff I want to photo tomorrow into my Ravelry stash - the make/model, the color/dye lot, and the quantity of each. I've still got a LOT that needs to be done but it's a start!

3. Organize/cull queue
I have Q.A.B.L.E. as well as S.A.B.L.E. This may be my downfall. I try to be brutal but I really do want to make EVERYthing in my queue! Plus when I'm working, I can see Ravelry but it's very "look but don't touch". I can click on things, I can type in the search boxes (pattern or yarn or whatever) but I can' talk to people in the group forums or respond to messages. If I try to, it disappears like a popped soap bubble and takes with it any other web pages I had up. So basically, all I can do is read the forums and look stuff up. Looking at patterns leads to a a bigger queue.

4. Assign stash yarn to suggested projects
I think finding projects (from my extensive queue) for the yarn I have will go a long way to keeping me stash oriented.

5. Four squares each of the boys’ blankets.
I’m taking the stitch-pattern-a-day perpetual calendar I bought years ago, using dates that are relevant to our family (birthdays, anniversaries and such) and making each boy a 16 square twin-bed-sized blanket. 14 squares of dates and 2 squares with their initials. I want to be finished by the time they go to college. They are currently 7 and 9.

That's it!
I know this seems like a special kind of crazy; like I'm biting off WAY more then any one person can chew but the 12 hats are small projects, there’s 16 things that are in various states of WIP/UFO/partially finished (that includes the half-finished ones in the “My Designs” category), and the new sweater projects…. all but 2 of them don’t even have sleeves and one of those is bulky yarn! The socks will be the killer challenge - especially all those knee-highs.

In 2010, I designated Sundays as WIP/UFO days which meant I could only work on the older stuff and it seemed to work pretty well for keeping me on board with finishing those items, so I'm going to go with that again this year. Also, my new job is me sitting at my desk at home for 40 hours a week answering customer service calls (AlpineAccess.com - if you need a job) and I’ve got it down enough now where I can actually do quite a lot of knitting while I work. So that’s like a generous 15-20 hours a week of knitting time!

I've already printed out all the above patterns and put them in their own pretty binder. It's a 1" binder and with all those patterns in there it isn't even that fat, so that's encouraging!

The only thing wrong with all these exciting new projects is that I want to cast on all of them RIGHTNOW!!!!, so I'm trying to be reasonable about that as well.

Casting on some of them, Ruth!

Five Minutes

2010-12-31T13:25:00.000-08:00

I’d say I never dated guys I met at the clubs I worked in but that would be a lie. For the first six months or so, I’d meet some guy that seemed really cool and I’d give it a shot but it always turned out to be one of three things…

1. They thought I’d be stupid and easy. I’m neither.
2. They turned out to be married. I don’t play with other people’s toys.
3. After about the 3rd date, they’d start bitching about my job. Hello? Where’d we meet?

I pretty much just gave up on men altogether for a long time. Not like I changed teams or anything, I just realized that it wasn’t worth it to try and date someone I met at work and since all I did was work and school… I was just happier alone.

There was a firefighter I dated for a few months that seemed promising but he turned out to be a heavy drinker and I already babysat one drunk and wasn’t about to go that route again.

I started working at the clubs in April 1996 and by October 1998, I was really getting burned out on it all. The money was amazing, the hours were short but I was really starting to hate guys. I was trying to hang on until I graduated massage school the following April but I wasn’t sure I was going to make it.

One night, it was SUPER slow and there was a feature dancer so the money wasn’t flowing well. It was about 10p and I had another hour to go on my shift. I was walking over to the manager to see if I could leave early when this group of 6 guys came in the door. I figured I’d squeeze $50 out of them real quick, and then go. One of them had a streak of blood down the front of his knee from a cut of some sort and since he was the cutest one and had a built-in ice-breaker, I went up to him first.

I leaned over him and said, “If I promise to be careful of your knee, would you like a dance?” He looked a bit shocked (odd) and said yes. I gave my usual up sell, “Would you like it here or in VIP?” and he said VIP so up to the little bench-couches we went.

By then the song was mostly over so we decided to wait for the next song. I forgot about the feature and the next song started her next set. We aren’t forbidden to work while the feature is up but it’s strongly advised that we don’t. It’s considered rude. Whatever. So this guy and I sat in VIP and we started talking. He was crazy funny and was really crackin’ me up! We talked for nearly an hour and I finally gave him a dance.

This is where the story differs as he swears he asked me out but I know I asked him. I told him that I was getting off work and that my friend and I usually went to the 5 and Diner to get something to eat and if he and his friends wanted to meet us, that’s where we’d be.

I went upstairs and changed and when I came outside, that guy was there by himself. He said his friends didn’t want to leave but that he could use a bite to eat. We drove our separate cars to the Diner. I was really embarrassed that Mary didn’t show, like I was just giving this guy a line or something, right? But it turned out just fine! We talked for 2 more hours and Dave and I have been talking ever since!

Even at the diner he was killin’ me! After we ate, he said he’d pay and I said, “Don’t be silly! I invited you. I’ve got money. In fact, I got-ch-your money!” The waiter laughed at that but Dave insisted so he paid.

Our first official date was a double-feature Jackie Chan at the Drive-in Theater. I suggested it but Dave went for it and I thought that was cool!

I worked at the club for a few more months after we met and he was never weird about it. He knew it was just a job for me. It wasn’t until months later that he said the reason he agreed to get a dance was because I caught him off guard asking about his knee. He’d just recovered from reconstructive knee surgery recently and was shocked I could see the scar in that dark club. I told him about the blood on his knee and we had a stupid laugh over that.

I actually got fired New Year’s Eve 1998. I was dancing for one guy and his buddy kept touching my leg and I did that “I’m-smiling-but-I’m-pissed” thing and said, “Stop touching me.” and signaled the bouncer. I saw the bouncer heading our way, so I turned my back on Touchy McToucherson and continued the dance for the one guy. The Toucher one smacked my ass about as hard as he could. I turned around and clocked him right in the mouth. I hit him so hard his chair tipped over backwards! By this time the bouncer was there and stopped me from stomping that asshole with my heels.

The manager called the cops. He apologized to me for it but said for liability issues, he had to. When the cops showed up, they asked McTouchy if he wanted to press charges; the guys lip was split, puffy and bleeding and he said, “Hell yeah!” Then the cop turned to me and asked if I wanted to press charges for sexual assault. The customer was all, “Wait. WHAT?? WTF??” and the cop said, “Look, sir, you know you’re not allowed to touch anyone in here and as far as we’re concerned, she was just defending herself.” I said to forget it and I just went home. Before I left, the manager said he had to fire me (liability purposes again) but that if I wanted to come back in a month it’d be fine. I said, “You know, Mark. I think I’m done. If I can’t be diplomatic anymore….. I don’t know, man.”

I borrowed some money from my mom and finished massage school. Dave and I moved in together the following April and got married the April after that!

The thing is… I was leaving! And Dave never goes to any bar much less a strip club (a fact a friend of his confided to me a few months later). He and his crew just finished a huge 3 month job at the golf course and they talked him in to going out to celebrate. Had it been 5 minutes later, we would’ve never met.

Fortuitous five, Ruth!

Friends In Low Places

2010-12-30T15:46:00.000-08:00

Part One. Part Two. Part Three.

Part Four:

I didn’t make a lot of friends at the clubs I worked in. Most of the girls that worked there were all full of drama and I don’t have the patience to put up with it. But, as I said before, I have that face that makes people tell me stuff I don’t care to know and then they ask my advice even though my advice is usually along the lines of “fix it or shut up about it already”.

There’s the tiny, young chick who was complaining to me about her boyfriend. She said to me, “You wouldn’t like him.” I said, “Why do you say that?”
Her: He’s in jail.
Me: What’s he in jail for?
Her: For putting me in the hospital. He nearly beat me to death. I was in the hospital for 2 weeks.
Me:……..[silence]……
Me: Why do you like him?
Her: I don’t. Not really. Not anymore. We have a kid together and I think I’m pregnant with another one of his.
Me: How’d that happen? You said he’s been in jail for a few months now.
Her: He pays off the guards so we can sneak into the bathroom together. I don’t really want to even visit him anymore much less have sex in a jailhouse bathroom but I have no choice.
Me: What do you mean you have no choice?? You always have a choice.
Her: No, you see… he’s head of a gang and he sends all his little gang-banger cronies to check up on me. Last time I didn’t visit him, he had one of his boys come find me and beat me down. I’m scared to not visit and do what he says.

I gave her the name and number of a person who helps abused women get away safely. I don’t think she ever did anything with it and she was pregnant again.

There’s the girl who’s boyfriend would drop her off when the club opened at 11am and pick her up when it closed at 2a then next morning and take all her money to buy crack.

There’s many others and like I said, before and after work, I got ready in the locker room as fast as I could manage to avoid all that mess and drama.

I did have a couple of friends though.

At TD’s, we had a “customer appreciation” night and the club wouldn't have to pay the club the usual $5 an hour to work those nights because there were lots of “free” dances. I put free in quotes because if the DJ or waitresses caught a guy not tipping after a free dance, they would call them out on it and embarrass them.

On these free dances, you would give a guy about half a song and move from guy to guy. At one point Cheryl and I ended up at the same guy and we laughed and gave him a double! It turned into a very profitable gimmick for us and we would dance together for people all the time. Sometimes, after work, we’d go get something to eat together but that was about the extent of our friendship.

At Ten’s I became pretty good friends with a girl we’ll call Mary. Mary and I talked at work all the time and we hung out outside work quite a lot. She was another with man troubles though. She was dating one guy who was a complete tool and dating is a rather loose term for what they had. He mostly booty called her and she’d always go when the phone rang. She was at the end of him when we started hanging out. I remember she called me from a bar a few miles from the really crappy part of town I lived in. She was there with that guy and his buddy and they were all playing pool and did I want to meet them?

I had nothing better to do so I went. She and I were sitting by the pool table waiting our turn, she put her feet up on my knees and I asked how her ankle was doing (she’d twisted it slightly at work the previous week). Her guy came over and said, “Oh, now I know why you like her [meaning me], she’s obviously a dyke.” I said, “I’m not but with guys like you around I wish I was.” He got all up in my face and we almost threw down! What a dick! When she finally dumped him, she told her mom how much she liked him and how heartbroken she was over the break-up and her mom asked if Mary would mind if she [mom] dated him!

We actually saw them at a hockey game we went to. They were on a date! WTF?

Mary ended up dating and eventually marrying and having a kid with some other abusive asshole and we fell out of touch. Last I heard, she divorced that guy. I wonder where/how she is?

The club had Feature Dancers about once a month. These were “professionals” – either porn stars or women who made their living posing naked for magazines. The feature hangs out in the locker room and every two hours from 7p-close, she comes out and does a 4 or 5 song show. Different costume each time and lots of build-up inbetween. Then she signs pic’s of herself and sells them or sometimes, she’ll take polaroids with the guys and sign/sell those. On top of the picture sales, the clubs pay them a few thousand a night to show up and do their thing.

I remember one skinny neck bitch whose man had parked his truck practically on top of my Mustang in the parking lot. His back bumper was touching mine and had scraped some of my paint. Now the old girl's paint was bad enough without help so I asked for their insurance info. They refused to give me that info so I had to call the cops and it was this big stupid scene. It was pretty funny though when she made a run at me and the cops put her ass on the ground!

There were the twin sisters feature act and I thought that one was a bit…disturbing. They didn’t touch each other but one show they did, one sister was seated, topless, blindfolded and tied to the stage pole while the other (wearing a floor-length hooded cape and not much else) dripped candle wax on the seated sister’s tits. Ummm. Ew.

One feature was really nice to me. She was a tiny, curvy blonde and her claim to fame was getting the cover of Swank magazine more times then any other model. She took a shine to me and we talked for a long time in the locker room, when I was getting ready to leave. I told her how cool it was that she could be so sexy and never wear stilettos in her shows! (One outfit was a construction worker’s costume w/timberlane boots). The conversation went from there. When I mentioned her impressive number of Swank covers she said, “It’s not as impressive as it sounds, my dad owns the magazine.”
Ummmm. Ewwwwwww. I went home shaking my head the whole way. One of those things you can never unknown, right?

One of the best features I saw involved a shower. I thought it was her own set-up but turns out it was a new thing that Ten’s had purchased for the club and she was just the first one that got to use it.

They put a kiddy pool at one end of the barbell stage and she stripped her way over. At the top of the pole, they had a shower set up and when they hit the strobe light, she crawled over to the kiddy pool, dipped her long hair into it and flipped her head back. With that strobe light? Mesmerizing!

I used that shower set-up a few times myself. Ten’s had a couple of “Best Dancer” competitions and I entered them all. I didn’t actually care about being voted best, it’s just that the prize money was pretty great. I got second place ($250) when I wore the chaps, stripped out of them and did that same thing with my hair, that strobe light and that pool!

Still flipping my hair flirtatiously, Ruth!

The Regular Crowd Shuffles In

2010-12-29T10:49:00.000-08:00

Part Three:

I wanted to finish this story that I started before the year ends so here’s the next bit about how Dave and I met….

Working at the clubs, we would have “regulars”. I think being a regular at a strip club is not a very good thing. I mean it’s not so bad if you come once a month with the guys or once every few months; but I’m talking about the guys we’d see once or twice a week and a couple that would come nearly every day. That’s just sad.

Of course, most of the regulars had nicknames that they didn’t know about and I’m going to tell you about them here. This isn’t for the eyes of minors or the delicate of composition – it’s a strip club, people! Nothing too disgusting, most of them actually made me laugh but I guess most “decent folk” may find it a bit gross.

At TD’s West, there was this older guy (had to be late 60’s/early 70’s) that we called The Flinker. He’d wear these khaki shorts that were mid-length (not super-short but not to his knees, sort of in-between). The whole time you were dancing for him (whether it was one song or 10 – 3 minutes each, mind you), he would be flinking his junk. That means he would flex his keigels (do men have those?) and just slightly bounce his peen the whole time. He got air dances from even the dirtiest of dancers (“air dancing” is dancing a good foot away from the customer). Flink, flink, flink…. the WHOLE time! It was actually a bit impressive but also super-gross. He never tried to touch anyone and he looked you in the face the entire time but it was probably to make sure you were looking and seeing what was going on in the groin area. Blech.

Another guy with a shorts problem was The Cyclist. He always showed up in his cycling outfit - the tiny hat, the skintight shirt, the special shoes that click into the pedals, the cycling shorts with padded bottom - and he'd get dances. Those shorts are too tight to be getting lap dances from sexy women. Ew.

There was another guy the girls called ShitMan. He carried a baggie and $100 cash. I’ll let you take it from there. Far as I know, no one ever took him up on his offer. (Gross!)

Then there was The Fisherman. When I started working the clubs, Regina warned me about him, even pointing him out to me so I’d know exactly who he was. He was this harmless looking, skinny guy who would get dances from all the girls he was attracted to and eventually would make them an offer – if he brought in a fish, would she slap him with it for $300. At this point the dancer would turn him down and he’d stop getting dances from her (and when I say he’d stop, I don’t mean just that day… he’d NEVER get another dance from her. I think maybe he was too embarrassed after he reveals his kink and gets turned down?). Regina said it was pretty easy money since it usually took him awhile to build up the courage to make his request and he paid for every dance after each song ended, tipping quite well along the way. He never got dances from me (not his type I guess) but I always ask anyway. [Aside: The thing about strip clubs, you ask everyone, every time you go ‘round the room. Enough beer, they all say yes eventually.] One day, he said yes! Regina was right; it took him nearly TWO HOURS to get the courage to make his request. I leaned over, gently gathered the front of his shirt in my hand, pulled him close and whispered in his ear, “Baby, for $300, I’ll beat the shit out of you with a Bass.” I was just joking, of course, but when I let him go, his mouth was agape, his eyes were agog and he sat back in silence. When he’d collected himself, he handed me a $100 dollar bill and left the building. Now, I didn’t work every day but I never saw him again!

The Painter was this morbidly obese guy who would come straight from work to the club. He always wore a white chambray shirt and jeans and it was covered in dried paint, like a house painter or something. He never showered (and from the smell of it, “never” is a little more literal then I care to remember) and he always looked super-pissed and never spoke a word. I’m a jokester so I’d always try to make him laugh or even crack a smile but it never worked. I always wondered what in his life made him look so angry all the time and I always wondered when I’d see him in the news after he snapped and went all postal somewhere, killing everyone around him…hoping it was never going to happen at the club because it’d be a bitch to try to run in those 6” stilettos!

Santa Claus would show up about every 3 months or so. He was a long-haul trucker and looked just like Santa on his time off. And he never came around during December. Hmmmm. (just kidding)

The Widower was just that. He never got dances but would pay you to just sit there and talk with him. Most of the girls hated it and wouldn’t sit with him; they don’t want to get to know you, they want to give you a dance (or 10) and leave. I didn’t mind, it was a nice break from standing in those heels and he was a nice, seemingly-normal guy (which probably means he killed his wife, right?). He’d talk to you for about 30-60 minutes, pay you the regular rate of the dances you would’ve done in that time, plus a healthy tip and he’d leave. He showed up about once every 3 months or so. He was lonely and sad and just wanted to chat.

Foot Guy would always take his sandals off and try to put his feet on your feet or lower legs. Gross! I would remind him that he wasn’t allowed to touch us and that touching with feet was still touching. I told him this diplomatically at first then I looked at him with a big smile but a voice that indicated I was about to kick his ass and said, “Don’t touch me.” I also put my stiletto on his foot and told him that if he stepped on me, I was going to step on him. He put his shoes back on and never tried that again with me. I would see him do the same to other girls and they’d never say anything to him but…. GAH, that’s so nasty!

Most of the other regulars were just normal guys that didn’t seem to have much of a life outside the club.

There was a gay guy who came with some friends and he was a sweet, flamer who would always compliment you on your outfit and say even though he was gay, he still loved “the boobies”. He always made me laugh!

One guy I remember that wasn’t a regular but I’ll never forget him…
He was there with an older man and the older man said, “Come give my nephew a dance!” So I did and halfway through the dance, the man said, “Make it an extra good one, girlie, he just got released from prison after a ten year stint.” I was a bit shocked at that and thought the man was kidding since the guy looked too young to have been in prison that long but then I took a look at the kid. He had a bunch of prison-like tattoos and a sort of dead look in his eyes. The part about his eyes may sound like I’m just being dramatic but I actually noticed that when I started dancing for him. His eyes reminded me of The Painter and it was a bit creepy. When his uncle told me about his prison time he got pissed, “Why do you have to tell people that? I served my time and I just want to forget about it.” He got about 5 dances from me and was polite and quiet and that was that. But I’ll never forget the hurt look in his eyes when his uncle laughed at him for getting mad about telling me.

There was a deaf kid (about 21 years old) who would come with his cousins. His cousins would get drunk and act like jerks (trying to touch and being rude) but he was always sweet and since I was taking a lot of ASL classes back then, he and I would sign to each other from across the room (or at the same table) and have a good laugh about his asshole cousins.

I guess that’s about all I remember of the regular crowd. Like I said, most guys that came to the clubs weren’t regulars and were just there to have some fun and blow off steam. It wasn’t a bad job and oftentimes was actually quite fun. But there were times/days that you just wanted to start smackin’ people. I guess in that respect, it was like any other job!

Remembering regularly, Ruth!

WIPorama

2010-12-14T12:54:00.001-08:00

Several months ago, my friend Donna had a great idea for a WIP Cup to coincide with the World Cup. We started a Ravelry group and I actually got quite a few WIP's finished but I don't think I ever posted about them. Here they are...

The Chevron Scarf - started 3 years ago and never finished is now done. I adore the way Feather and Fan looks but I discovered I hate making it. It's not even hard, just boring.
I also discovered if you're going to take a pic of a blue-ish scarf, best not to take it on blue sheets.

This picture is much more true to color.

Way back in 2003 when I first started knitting, my LYS had two lone skeins of koigu on sale because they were different colors and not enough to make a pair of socks each. I bought both with no clue what I'd ever do with them. I didn't even knit socks back then! This scarf was perfect for them and I love it!

Next up, we have my Odessa hat. About 2 years ago, I received a luscious ball of this yarn in a swap, found the perfect beads, cast on for this, did the ribbing edge and tossed it in a bin. I have no idea why but maybe I was intimidated by the beads and the fact that I didn't understand how the swirlyness happened without moving stitch markers and such but it does! It just does and it's amazing!

I wore it all day when I finished it and am still waiting for it to actually be cold enough to wear it again.

Next up (and the thing I'm most proud of finishing) is the Bed Jacket of Doom. If you were here a couple of years ago, you know the saga behind this. Let's just keep it brief and say this pattern was kicking my ass. I finally finished the whole thing except the edging (even seamed the sleeves!) and threw it in the closet. With the WIP cup, I finished the edging. It took an entire skein of the Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece plus a little extra to do it! I'm actually thinking of pulling half the edging out but for now, it's finished.

Here's a shot of the little edging I put on the sleeves. I tried the original edging called for in the book but learned that I am NOT a fan of sawtooth edging - too court jestery for my tastes. Also, you need to knit miles of edging and sew it on?!? No thank you. I crocheted this edging on and it only took about a day.

I made this specifically for wearing about the house when it's chilly and I've been wearing the hell out of it lately! I'm one of those mean moms who says, "Leave the heater off, go put on a sweatshirt!"

The WIP on my list that I didn't finish are these chunky mitts. I was following a basic chunky knit pattern but the thumb seems to be way too high up!

I was also in the Ravelry 10 in 2010 group. My list changed quite a lot during the year (perfectly allowed within the group - yay!) and I finished 8 things so far with an easy goal for the last two to be done before the year ends.

I have already joined the 11 in 2011 group and next year they are allowing WIP's so I've got these mitts on that list. My list is pretty... impressive (read: stupidly large) but I think I will still manage it! We'll see. I'll post that list here soon....

WIPing away in Margaritaville, Ruth!

Halloween

2010-11-16T06:30:00.001-08:00

The boys get very definite ideas of what they want to be at Halloween. I hear tale of kids who change their minds daily until the hour is nigh, not so my little ones!

Somewhere in August, D2 decided he wanted to be a skeleton. When the time came, we got him the skeleton outfit he picked out. It came with a matching mask but at the school party, they aren't allowed to wear masks so the night before, I went on youtube and found a tutorial for the skull make-up....

Here's a close-up (although I still haven't fully figured out my camera)....

I know he looks super-pissed in these photos but he was actually trying to not crack up the whole time. He said he didn't want to smile because I drew teeth so he didn't need to! I caught him smiling once...

T decided he wanted to be a spaghetti monster. That sort of morphed into just spaghetti. I wasn't really sure what he wanted but this is what we came up with...

He made most of this himself. I rolled the masking tape meatballs and he painted them. I cut the holes in the tablecloth poncho (he painted that too with splotches of sauce, looks like blood to me, but what're you gonna do, right?). I cut the cardboard and he covered it with tin foil, 80% of a skein of Lion Brand Wool (huge skein that!) and for the sauce, part of another skein of Vanna's Choice or some other cheap acrylicrap from Michael's. We used nearly a full can of spray adhesive!

When we were trick-or-treating, T got tons of compliments. One woman even yelled in to her house, "Come here! This is the one I was telling you about from school! Get the camera!!" Too funny!

The boys and Dave also carve pumpkins every year. They pick the pumpkin, draw what they'd like and Dave carves them. If you've been here at all, it's pretty easy to tell which pumpkin belongs to which kid....

(If you're new, the happy-go-lucky vampire is T's and the disemboweled one is D2's. It's pretty odd considering D2 hates anything even remotely scary on TV or in books!)

Hope you all scored lots of candy, Ruth!

Kind Children Are Kind

2010-10-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, the kids' school had Field Day. Field Day is where there are a bunch of different stations and they have silly things to do at each station. One station, they loosen their shoe and see how far they can kick it, another station, they balance a bowl of water on their head and try to fill the bucket across the way... you get the idea.

This year's Field Day theme was The Amazing Race so each station was either a state or a country. (At one station, the man asked the kids, "Do you know what country this is?" and a boy yelled out, "The Suburbs!" How true!)

I got to hang out in the morning before I had to start work so I got to see D2's class play at Field Day. They all trooped out to the big field in single file and the last kid stopped at the edge of the field. I held out my hand and said, "Come on! Let's go play!" At first, he took my hand but then he looked up at me and pulled his hand back. D2 looked back to see; he and another boy came back and got the hesitant child. D2 looked at me and said, "This is E. He's never been on the field before - it scares him." D2 and the other boy (B) each took one of E's hands and coaxed him onto the field. That's when I got it (not the brightest bulb, I know) - E is a Special Needs child.

D2 and B slowly but surely got E over to the rest of the class. D2's teacher told me that D2 was always very nice to E and they usually hung out and played together with 2 other boys at recess. E's mom showed up and she was telling me how sweet D2 is to E and that at the end of the day, D2 always makes a special effort to come and say goodbye to E. She went on and on about how nice and patient D2 was with E. It was makin' me all misty!

Later, when E got a bit nervous (all the kids were all over the place and he seemed to get confused as to where to go), he found D2 and walked up behind him, putting his hand on D2's shoulder. D2 looked back at E and said, "It's OK, we're just going this way." and led E to the next station.

About a week after this, I came down from my break at work (the kids were already in bed) and Dave handed me a letter from school. It was from the Special Needs teacher. It asked us if we would be willing for D2 to participate in a group that taught social skills to Special Needs kids. The group would meet once a week and our child was chosen because his teacher said he would be good at it. Of course we said yes!

Dave handed me the envelope the letter it came in and D2's teacher had written on the outside:
To the parents of D2: If you wish D2 to participate, I know he would enjoy the group. He is so good with E and he too can benefit by interacting socially with this small group of 2nd graders. Thanks, Ms. M

Ok, so that totally made me cry! I'm such a dork! It's not like any of the kids are ever mean to E, but most of them don't play with him or anything. D2 and B always plays with him.

I was telling this to the women in my knitting group and Tina pointed out that when people talk about their kids, they say they want them to be doctors or lawyers and stuff but when it really comes down to it, what they really brag about... what's really important is that their children are kind and good. She's so right!

Proud of my kids, Ruth!

Purses! Foiled Again!

2010-10-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

I am not a purse girl. Don't get me wrong, I love a good knitting/project bag and I have several! They are all very cool and I love them all dearly! But when it comes to my actual purse, it's like the Highlander.... there can be only one.

It takes me forEVER to pick a purse and once I find one I truly love, I buy it and use it to death over the next 2-3 years. I never got the appeal of having different bags for different outfits and having to switch all your purse contents every time you switch purses. If I did that, I'd always forget something really vital, like my wallet or something.

I tend toward smallish purses. I had a huge, overstuffed purse all through high school (as was the style in the '80's - everything was big!) and I'm convinced my left shoulder is still a bit higher then my right from those 4 years of trying to keep that giant, heavy bag from dragging on the ground.

Once I got out of high school, I ditched a purse altogether. Whenever I went out with friends, to dinner or the clubs, or whatever, I'd only take some cash and my ID, tucked neatly in my jeans pocket. If I wasn't wearing jeans (ever so rarely), I'd get a friend with pockets or a purse to carry my ID/cash for me!

Years ago, while still in Tucson, one of my favorite purses got stolen. While working at the spa, I stopped taking my purse inside with me when I caught a client going through my purse. Seriously. I finished the massage, went to get his water and while standing outside the door waiting for him to come out, I heard the cabinets being opened/closed. I opened the door and there he was, standing there with my purse in one hand and his other hand inside my bag! I looked at him incredulously and he stammered, "Um, I was just looking for something." I said, "Well, I'm pretty sure it's NOT in my purse. You can go now." So I started keeping my purse stuffed under the front passenger seat of my car. It was a small one so I could get it pretty far under there. But it had a long, skinny strap.

I had a client that requested me all week and on that Thurs. I had brought a book about stretching that I told him about. I parked, stuffed the purse under, went inside and a half hour later when my client was showing up, I remembered the book. I went out to my car and as I walked up to it, I thought, "Did I leave that window open??" and as I got closer, I saw my window.... on the ground next to the car. I went inside and called the cops.

The cops said that the same robbers had hit 4 cars in the shopping center at the bottom of the hill from the resort. They said that the thieves didn't leave any fingerprints, they pried something into the edge of the window, popped it out, reached in and stole the purse/wallet/sunglasses whatever inside without really touching anything! I guess they saw the purse strap coming from under my seat and did their thing.

I was pissed! Not only did they steal from me, they took my ID (a trip to the DMV is always fun, right?), some pictures that I didn't have other copies of and.... my purse! I was going to have to go on a hunt for another purse!

Strangest thing....

6 months later, I get a call from a cop saying they found my purse! It was in some bushes of an elementary school near the spa. He said he'd bring it by when he got off work as it was on his way. I said OK, but after I hung up, I got all freaked out thinking that the spa and my house were nowhere near each other, much less "on the way" from.... well, anywhere! Maybe that wasn't actually a cop calling me! I was pregnant and worked myself up pretty good. I called Dave but he couldn't leave work and so I called my friend John and he came over. Of course, there wasn't anything sinister, it was just a cop being nice! I got the purse back but it was ruined from being out in the elements for 6 months and EVERYTHING was still inside! Even the credit cards! The cop said the thieves were probably just looking for cash.

The last purse I bought, I thought I had it covered. I saw a seller on Etsy that can put just about anything on fabric with her fancy embroidery machine, so we pm'd back and forth a LOT and I thought I'd have the perfect, custom-made purse coming to me. It was going to be black with my 5elementknitr logo on the front in blue thread. I was really specific with the dimensions so I was pretty disappointed when it showed up wrong. It looked like a tote bag. I don't like tote bags for purses (for knitting projects, they are just fine!). I had to pay to send it back and she made adjustments. When it returned, all she did was chop 2" off the top and sew it back together. The middle pocket was stretched weird because she didn't take it out and make other adjustments. And I was never really happy with the logo - it looked.... well, not perfect for sure. I'm not really a perfectionist but it looked.... sloppy.

I bought that purse about 6 months ago and last week, the strap broke. That's another thing, when I got it back, the sewing on the straps look really crappy - haphazard and sloppy. Well, last week those crappy stitches came apart.

So I'm on the search for a perfect purse again. My dream purse would be Jordana Paige's Knitter's Satchel but about 1/3 the size. I love the shape and the pockets of that bag but it's GIANT!

I've been looking for awhile now (plowing through Etsy's vast array of purses). I like this vintage one because it kinda looks like a bowling bag and I am also rather enamored of this vintage one, but mostly because of the insides. I think the one I'm actually going to get, however, is the new Namaste bag.

It's just about perfect! It's the right size, the right price ($39 at Dreamweaver's Yarn) and I love the blue color and the fact that the strap has options (hip slung or over the shoulder!). They carry my Stitch Savers so I think I'll email and see if they want to trade.

Hate shopping for purses, Ruth!

Starting To Breathe

2010-09-22T08:54:00.001-07:00

I have a job!

That's one of the reasons I've been a bit AWOL lately.

It's a smallish job and the hours are a bit unhappy but the job is kinda cool and fun!

I didn't want to say anything yet, as I was in training and I wanted to make sure I at least made it out of training before I said, "I have a job!" and then if I didn't make it through training, I'd be all, "Um. Never mind. le sigh."

There's a company called Alpine Access (alpineaccess.com) and they are sort of a warehouse of customer service reps for Fortune 500 companies. These are customer service reps who work from their own homes. This is a legitimate company that I found while doing job searches. They were interviewed by Newsweek magazine and also featured on msn.com's home page in an article about best at-home jobs.

I was originally interviewed for Qwest. The interviewer has you open a bunch of web pages and makes sure you can find things on these pages and navigate the web. I failed. I couldn't find the local weather on cnn.com. I was putting all kinds of variations of local weather into the search engine and it kept giving me articles (damn that bubble boy's parents!!) so I timed out. After I timed out, she, very kindly and gently, showed me that if I had just scrolled halfway down cnn.com's home page, there's a local news and weather button!! I'm so lame.

She said not to worry, that my test scores were really high (when you first apply, there's a bit of a test to see if you can navigate things online and retain info and stuff) and that she was going to put me back in the pool of candidates and she was sure that another company would want to interview me. The very next day, I got another interview offer for a gaming company. That interview went much better (found the weather right away this time!) and I was hired!

We had about 2 1/2 weeks of training and now my class is in the "nesting phase". We are taking calls but we are rather closely supervised and after this 2 week nesting phase, we are in regular production like everyone else!

My first day went really well. I mean REALLY well! I had lovely customers who were patient and kind and I got stuck here and there but not too bad. Yesterday, my second day, was brutal! I was stuck all day and about 90% of my calls needed to be escalated for one reason or another. But everyone was still fairly nice and even though my call times are atrocious (I don't think I've had a single person that I wasn't on the line with for at least 20 minutes!), I'm working on that and since it's only been 2 days, I'm not that bunged up about it. Also, this company (has an X or two in it but not in any kind of porn way) is not as concerned with call times, they are more concerned with happy customers so that takes some of the pressure off as well.

Yesterday, it was discovered (not just by me) that when a call is escalated, it goes to Manila and if you get a man on the escalation side, they are very unpleasant and even downright mean! Our team leader says that the gaming company is in talks with Alpine to bring Tier 2 back to the states as well (they already brought Tier 1 back - that's the tier I'm on) and so people in T2 are rather on edge as they may be losing their jobs soon. Another female co-worker typed in the chat what I was thinking was that it was also a cultural gap. I mean, they aren't snippy with the guys on T1 and the females on T2 are usually quite kind. Just sayin...

Anyway, I work from 2:30p - 11:00p MST so I see the kids on my 2 10 minute breaks and my 1 30 minute lunch break. I have Thursdays and Sundays off. After 30 days, I can ask for time off but I think I'll keep this schedule as much as I can and see if I can switch a day here or there if I need to for kids' events or a night out with Dave or something.

It's not particularly high pay but it's not peanuts either and it's definitely more then I was making in the past 18 months which is zilch (except for my Stitch Saver sales!). I should at least make the rent money each month! And that means that both Dave and I can breathe a bit easier now. Takes some of the stress off.

Alpine, so far, is an excellent company!! It has opportunities for advancement and all the people I've worked with (particularly our instructor during training) have been kind, impossibly patient, knowledgeable and helpful. Oh, and when I'm taking calls, one of my team leaders.....

is a knitter.

Who could ask for anything more?!

Hello, thank you for calling, my name is Ruth, how can I help you today?, Ruth!

Time Out

2010-09-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

The Inaugural sweater is in time out. It's banished in it's lovely carrying bag to a corner of my knitting basket. It will probably resume it's normal knitting schedule this weekend but it's been in time out for about two weeks now.

It's completely my fault but I've mucked up the whole thing. Not really, it's just not what I want and not what the pattern called for. I still have only the collar and the sleeves left to finish and this is when I actually read the pattern. See, I've always been told that in America, seed stitch and moss stitch are interchangeable terms. They are not. This American pattern clearly writes out what moss stitch is in the glossary box. I didn't read that and knit the whole thing with seed stitch front panels instead of moss stitch.

Much as I love seed stitch (and I do! lots of people hate it, I really like it!), I picked this pattern to make because I loved the look of the front panels and collar. Which are moss stitch. Moss stitch that is different from seed stitch. The whole time I was knitting it, I kept thinking, "This doesn't quite look right." and then I'd keep going. I blamed the yarn. It's that really dark black/green yarn and I just thought it didn't look right because the yarn was so dark.

And that's the other reason it's in time out. I am becoming less and less enamored of that super black "green" yarn. So it's in time out. And I know when it is finished, I will never wear it.

I'm thinking once it's finished if anyone wants to buy me some Malabrigo Twist in enough yardage (and the color of my choice) so I can make the Inaugural like it's written, I will give them this one. The hem was sewn by my knitting-award-winning-at-the-fair (blue ribbon!) friend, Tina, so that part is perfect! The rest is perfect too, it's just slightly the wrong pattern stitch. It's the 40" bust size. I know Twist is more expensive (yard for yard) then the regular Malabrigo that I used but I figure that's fair as you're getting a ready made sweater! I'll even leave the buttons off so you can pick whatever buttons suits your fancy! (I'm generous like that) I'll post pic's when it's done.

Truthfully, if Tina hadn't already sewn the hem for me, I would've ripped it all out and started over. I'm that irritated with myself over it.

This Inaugural Time-Out put me squarely in the sights of my own cast-on-itis. The flood gates are wide open people! I've started a round Minion (body, one leg and most of the second leg finished), another pair of socks (Skew from knitty.com, yarn is rolled and I'm just waiting for my brain to remember how to do Judy's Magic Cast-on), and I made the mistake of starting Vivian.

Vivian is like crack cocaine to me! I was right about wanting something more challenging and her supple cables and seed stitch (for real this time) V-shaped areas are like knitting porn. I started on a sleeve and didn't put it down for two days! I'm about 2/3 done with that sleeve but the siren song of startitis called again and I also cast on for...

this Lion Brand blanket pattern called Lenox Square Throw. I bought 11 balls of beautiful cranberry colored worsted weight Encore yarn when I was a new knitter. My Tucson LYS was having one of it's 4 annual sales and I wanted to try my first sweater (Rachel from Melissa Leapman's Hot Knits - I couldn't find a picture to link to). I don't know why I thought I needed 2200 yards of worsted weight to make a sweater but either I didn't have the pattern with me and/or didn't trust my math and wanted to be sure I had enough. I never made that sweater and I'm happy about that as it would've been a mistake to make a sweater that's supposed to be form-fitting and close to the skin in that itchy acrylic! I've always loved the color of this yarn and when I saw that blanket pattern and you just use worsted held double and there's cabling? I knew I'd finally (7 years later) use that acrylic Encore!

Thinking of starting 3 more projects (and using more parentheses), Ruth!

Paint Me...

2010-08-27T09:21:00.000-07:00

I bet y'all thought I stopped knitting. Not so! I knit everyday. I've made minions for Davis and robots for Trevor (my crochet skills are weak at best and my embroidery faces are terrible!) I've finished dishcloths and I'm plugging along on two pairs of socks. I knit all the time!

Lately, I've noticed that in the past few years I go through these color phases. About three years ago, it was all teal all the time. I was in search of the perfect teal yarn. I found several perfect teal yarns!

Two years ago, it was anything variegated - couldn't get enough of the stuff! But only in sock yarn. This year I'm in a dark charcoal grey phase. I'm loving gray! (And I love it so much that, apparently I can't decide which way to spell it.) I've got enough to make a couple of sweaters so I think I'm starting to fade on the gray/grey.

I'm also starting to fade on the sock yarn. I think I've told y'all but I've got enough that if I made a pair of socks every month, it would last me 17 years. I don't make a pair a month. I wish I knit that fast!

I'm definitely getting away from variegateds, transitioning into those gorgeous semi-solids that I'm seeing everywhere now. I'm in search of the perfect deep garnet red. I want enough to make a sweater. I have a couple of bites of that color in sock yarn and I'm swooning over it! I really want a sweater in that color.

I have enough worsted Malabrigo in Pagoda to make the ever-lovely Vivian (I also have the pattern - thank you Donna!) and I was in love with worsted Mal but now I'm over it and am slavering over Malabrigo Twist! I'm such a fickle girl!

I'm also getting a major case of startitis. I've been pretty good this year, maintaining a fair amount of monogamy to one project after another. The WIP Cup got me finishing 3 out of the 5 things I listed and even before the WIP Cup I was holding fast to my self-imposed WIP Sunday knitting. That's kind of fallen by the wayside and I've cast on a couple of extra sock projects. I've been sort of stops-and-starts with that Inaugural sweater I'm making. I think that sweater is what's giving me this startitis. I only have the collar and the sleeves left to finish it and I always get Cast-On-itis when I'm near the end of a big project. It's like I want an excuse to fling the almost-finished piece aside and start something new. I won't. I'm holding fast.

I've been putting off winding the next skein for Inaugural because that means I have to continue with it. Part of the problem is the color. I wanted a really dark green so I picked Cypress. In the photo it was a very dark forest green. When it showed up, it is black. You can only see the green in certain lights. I'm disappointed in the color. Not that pattern though! It's an excellent pattern and it's not even boring or anything! (It's a touch boring.) The body is stockinette with moss stitch panels so it's perfect for not having to think too much. Maybe that's the problem!

I want to sink my needles into Vivian's cables. I want to have to concentrate on something knitwise. Most things I've done this year are so easy that it's starting to stifle my knitting mojo. I need a challenge! Maybe I'll just cast on for a sleeve? I definitely want to do Viv's sleeves first. A sleeve's not really cheating, is it?

I'm also getting fairly obsessed with the idea of making knee-high socks. I want, like, three pair of knee-high socks. If sock yarn doesn't count as stash, do socks count as projects?

Aaaah!

OK, enough of that nonsense.

What colors are y'all into right now and where can I find some silky-soft-garnet-red-not-too-expensive yarn? I don't even think I care what weight, just so long as it's a sweater's worth!

Attempting monogamy, Ruth!

North Pole (or Santa Declares a Winner and Gets Change for a $20)

2010-08-25T13:55:00.000-07:00

Part Two:

Where was I….. oh, yeah – dancing with no top on.

I once had a friend that compared something to dancing and he said I’d be really good at because I was a dancer. It took me a minute to realize he didn’t know my past college history (I was a dance major before I went into the Army) and that he was talking about my job. I said, “That’s not dancing.” He said, “What is it?” I said, “It’s walking around in impossible shoes, twisting myself into impossible positions [one of my gimmicks was that I’m really bendy], wearing improbable clothes and occasionally striking a pose.”

Don’t get me wrong, for the most part, that job was so much fun! Regina had shown me some gimmicks to make money and I eventually developed quite a few of my own. One of the easiest was to walk up sort of next to and a little behind a guy and put my stiletto clad foot on his knee. His eyes would look at the foot and follow it up and I’d say, “Would you like a dance?”. Usually, they just nod with their mouths hanging open. Or, if you think they’ll go for it, walk up to them head on, put your foot in their chest and push them back into their chair, then ask. Again, jaw-dropped nod and you’re set for the next 20 minutes of money-making. (This only backfired once. I had a guy who grabbed my stiletto heel and wouldn’t let go. My foot was on his knee and I’d gently pull away and he wouldn’t let go. I said, “Look, you’re not allowed to touch us and you should really let go of my heel before you get hurt.” He said, “Do I scare you?” I said, “No. Are you trying to?” and I signaled the bouncer who threw him out. Creepy much?)

The money was amazing! I saw how easy it was to fall into that trap and just stay in that job until your looks or your body gave out. Again, kind of like the Army! I know lots of people who joined for college money then got sucked in to the comfort and security that the military gives. But like the Army, you sell your soul for it.

When I first started, lap dances were $5 each. They eventually went up to $6 each, which seems like a nice raise but it was such a pain in the ass – we need to make change for people? Seriously?? Making change wasted time. All the songs were 3 minutes each. That’s 20 songs per hour and if you were moving and it was a good crowd, you could average about 15-18 songs per hour (that’s giving time to move from customer to customer). If you were lucky and had a guy fall in love with you, you could spend the whole hour (or more) with that one person and make even more money. I didn’t much care for dancing for the same person for too long. It was easier money but it got really boring. Also, I did basically the same dance every time so if I got stuck with someone too long, I had to start getting creative and that was always annoying (you mean I actually have to work? C’mon!).

On weeknights, I’d clear $150-$200 in about 4 or 5 hours. Cash. All cash. On weekends, I’d make between $200-$300 bucks. I never worked Sundays (only because it was terribly slow and not worth it), I never worked on my birthday (in any job I’ve ever had) and I always worked New Year’s Eve. New Year’s Eve I’d make at least $500 in less then 4 hours.

But you do sort of sell your soul for it. I’d have to check my brain at the door and not think too much about my job. A lot of the girls were just 21; I was 26 when I started – certainly old enough to realize how stupid the job was. But it was easy and great money and the hours were such that I had plenty of time for school and study. So check my brain at the door I did. I’d bounce around that club with a big smile on my face and act bubbly and brainless and all “I’m just a girl!” Something I always hated on the outside of that building.

Some girls showed up for work all decked out and made up and all they had to do was put on their T-bar (thong) and their nipple glue and they’d be ready for work. (Oh yea, the nipple glue – one of the more retarded parts of the job. By law, you couldn’t actually have your nipples completely uncovered so to get around that, all the dancers bought theatrical glue and covered their nipples with that, then they used blush to dust the glue so it wasn’t sticky. You could see the nipple and it was uncovered but technically it had a cover – so stupid! Also, if the glue was old (it had a shelf life of about 3 months) it would start to peel off about halfway through your shift so you looked like you had leprosy or weird scaly lizard nipples. Not a good look. And going back to the locker room to reapply wasted time which loses money.)

I showed up to work like a schlub. I’d wear baggy shorts and a big baggy T-shirt and sneakers. I’d get ready as quick as I could once I was in the locker room – slap on the make-up, put on the costume, off I’d go. When my shift was over, I’d remove the spackle on my face, put the baggy clothes back on, tie my hair up, pick up my brain at the door and leave. I remember one girl would show up with a long, wavy red-haired wig, green contacts, full make-up and she’d leave that way, too. She told she wanted to make damn sure no one recognized her outside that building.

That happened every now and then. I’d be at the mall or at some restaurant with friends and some guy would see me and he’d get that look like, “Where do I know her from?” and I’d just wait patiently…. Either they’d not remember and move on or they would remember and, if they were with their woman, get that deer-in-the-headlights look like I was going to bust them out. Why would I do that?? I didn’t want the recognition anymore then they did. I’d just smile, roll my eyes like, “Relax, dude” and move on.

I also never wore anything that would get people in trouble later. A couple years later when I was a massage therapist at that spa in Tucson, I could always tell who’d been to the club the night before – that glitter on their forehead was a bitch to wash off. It’s just bad for business. If someone gets in trouble for going to the club, they won’t be able to come back and give me their money!

Another reason I’d get ready so fast was because, apparently, I have one of those faces where people tell me ALL their drama and want my advice. I never understood that as I was never very compassionate about it. I’m usually of the mind that if you don’t do anything to fix the problem then you can’t whine about it and if you continue to whine about it to me, you get no sympathy! And, as I’ve mentioned, a lot of these women had more problems then Ally McBeal and I’m not a psychotherapist and we’re not friends so I don’t care!! If they were friends of mine or something I would understand but for the most part, I didn’t befriend anyone I worked with at these clubs. Too much drama.

I’ve seen girls throw down in the locker room and beat the shit out of each other over a guy or money or just looking at each other wrong. Whenever that happened, they’d get fired. It didn’t happen often but it would occur now and then.

What else can I tell you?

I had another decent gimmick for making money. I’d walk up to a guy and say, “Would you like a dance?” and if they said yes, I’d say, “Would you like it here or in VIP?” because, like Regina taught me, I’m all about the upsell! Usually they’d just say yes or no but sometimes they’d ask, “What’s the difference?” and then I’d lean over and whisper in their ear, “Well, here I’ll make you smile, but up there…. I’ll make you cry.” Then they follow like little puppies. The only real difference was geography and cashflow.

The VIP areas were only a different area of the club. They weren’t blocked off or private or anything! Here’s the layout of Tens…
You walk in and there’s the desk where they take your cover charge, then you pass through a doorway and to your immediate right is a staircase. At the top of the staircase and to the right is the door to the locker room. The rest of the top floor only covers the kitchen below and 1/3 of the downstairs area. There’s leather couches, some tables, a bar at the other end of the top floor and two stages. The stages are one at each end of the upper area, they each have their own pole and they’re at the edge of the balcony looking down on the lower floor. There’s a plexiglass and brass half-wall all along the upper level so drunks don’t fall to the lower part. That upper area is one of the VIP areas and it’s also for bachelor parties and such. We rarely had to dance on those upper stages only when it was super-busy or if there was a party up there.

Back downstairs….
If you don’t go upstairs but still turn right downstairs, there’s the ATM and the bathrooms. The main bar is all along that back wall and behind that wall is the kitchen and the manager’s office. The entrance to the kitchen is at the other end of the main bar – opposite the bathrooms. Yes, they had a kitchen. At 5p, they’d have a free prime rib meal. Prime rib, mashed potatoes and gravy. They also had really good burgers and other bar food available. I ate that free prime rib every time I worked! (They let us eat, they aren’t slave-drivers, remember.)

The rest of the downstairs area/main level was surrounding the stage area. The main stage was a barbell shape with a pole in the middle of each circle that went all the way to the ceiling. The wall opposite the bar was the other VIP area with 3 or 4 steps leading up to it. If you’re facing it, the left 1/3 of it was the DJ booth and the rest of the wall was lined with little… benches? I don’t know how to describe them. They were comfortable seats, wide enough to fit about 2 ½ people. They had plexiglass table/armrests between each seat and each table/armrest had a pole at the end of it from the floor to the ceiling. Again, no “privacy” and no need for it. The only difference was the price. A VIP dance was $11 instead of $6 and for each dance we did in VIP, we had to pay the house $1. (Told you… the owners made money 6 ways from Sunday under that roof!)

This is getting long again so I’m going to tell one funny story about Tens then announce the winner and continue my topless adventures next time.

In the last post, I pasted a video of some amazing pole work. I said I could never do any of that stuff and here’s why. The only way to practice was on stage. It wasn’t like they let us in the club off-hours to try stuff out and I was never brave enough to try out new stuff in front of everyone! The only thing I did that even came close to a pole trick was to use the pole as a support and do a headstand, then the splits with my legs, then curl over to the splits on the floor. There was one girl who was very impressive – she was strong without being too muscly and she would do a handstand on the floor near the edge of the stage, do the splits with her legs, then do handstand pushups!! Loved her!

There was another girl who would take a running leap at the pole and swing around. And when I say a running leap, she would go to the inside edge of the opposite barbell circle and freakin’ all out run to her side of the stage, when she was about 3 feet away from her pole, she’d launch and then catch the pole and just swing around it until physics made her stop. There was a long-running money pool as to when she would miss and sure as shit one day she did. She launched herself, missed the pole entirely and went sailing off the edge of the stage, landing on a table and the two guys sitting there. It was sad but it was also fucking hysterical! Someone won $100 bucks off that dumb girl’s antics!

Now for a winner….
Since this contest involves Dave, I told him to pick a # between X and Y (the amount of comments in the contest blog). He picked and the lucky winner is Yarnhog! Congrats Yarnhog! Email me your mailing addy and I’ll send you your prize.

I know I promised yarn in this post but my camera and my computer(s) still aren’t talking so I’m going to have to figure that out and get back with pic’s later.

Yes, even Santa got lapdances, Ruth!

Pole Position

2010-08-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

OK, so this is the post where I reveal the winner of the contest of guessing where I was working when I met my husband. Only it’s not because it’s getting so long that I’m breaking it into two parts. It’s got a ton of back story so you might want to get a snack….

So there I was….

If you’ve been here awhile, you know that I got out of the Army kind of fast. Not in a bad way, no dishonorable discharge or anything, just that when I had a shot to leave, I fucking ran at it! (Also, if this is the first time you are meeting me, it’s probably going to be weird for you – sorry.)

Leaving like that also left me without a job. I had a little mobile home I needed to move from Sierra Vista to Tucson and my old Mustang was busted as usual. I needed money. My friend Gina (the Corporal/NCO of the Orthopedic clinic across the hall from the Eye clinic where I worked) had a girlfriend named Regina. Regina was a topless dancer. She was all, “Ruth! You should totally come to the work at the club!” I said, “Yea, maybe waitress there.” She scoffed, “The waitresses make jack. You need to come dance.” I said, “I don’t know. I just don’t think I could do it.” She said, “It’s no worse then wearing a bikini most of the time and it’s amazing money!” I said, “Right, because the guys want to see the fat girl in stripper heels.” She laughed, “You are most assuredly NOT fat and you’ve been to the club enough to know that the girls come in all sizes and they ALL make bank.”

She was right.

Being stationed at Ft. Huachuca meant being in Sierra Vista, AZ – a relatively small town. There was one nightclub – a shit-kicker bar called Texas Annie’s and that opened shortly after I arrived from Germany so I don’t know what the soldiers did in SV for entertainment before that! Mostly, even with Annie’s, we’d all head up to Tucson for our weekend fun. It was an hour drive away but still worth it. We’d go there to hit the clubs/restaurants/concerts/whatever. When I hung out with the other women that worked at the hospital, we’d often go to The Biz. Ain’t Nobody’s Business was the lesbian bar in Tucson (remember that on the Meddac Softball Team, I was one of 2 and ½ that were straight). And sometimes we’d go to the topless bars. Also, when I hung out with the guys I worked with, sometimes we’d hit the topless bars. One of the strip clubs was across the street from a regular night club so sometimes we’d do both in one night. Not saying this was a weekly event or anything but probably about a monthly event.

So, yeah, I was familiar with the topless bars and their constituents.

Still skeptical, I said, “What if I can’t make [X number of money that I needed to live off].” She said, “Ruth, that’s… if you work 4 nights a week, that’s just….like, 3 dances an HOUR. If you can’t get 3 dances an hour, then yes, you’re right, you shouldn’t be doing it. But trust me – you’ll be fine.”

Regina put me in a bunch of her different outfits to see what looked best on my shape (turns out, that’s a push-up bra and hot pants that only cover half my ass). She also taught me a bunch of the tricks of the trade. (OK, bad wording, there was no “tricking” going on.) She showed me some moves for the stage and some moves for the lap dancing. She told me that when on stage to discreetly look around and see who was really watching me, that’s the first person to hit up for a “dance” when I got off stage. Same for when I was giving someone a lap dance – she said to pay attention to the guy I was dancing for but when my back was turned to see who was watching me, flirt with them and then go take their money. She said if there was a couple (man and woman) to always ask the woman first if she wants a dance, that way it cuts down on the jealousy and drama and oftentimes they say yes! She said when you finish the first dance, you ask right away, “Would you like another?” and if they said yes, to see if they wanted to go to the VIP area. Regina was the queen of the upsell! What else…. Oh, my favorite, “Be nice. Smile. There are a lot of girls who walk around that club like Queen High Bitch and some guys are into that but honestly… most guys… they have the bitch at home and that’s why they are at the club!” Best piece of advice she gave me!

Regina said being nice was, for her, the hardest part. She started stripping when she was 18 (I think she was 24 when I met her). She had to start at the full nude place because you had to be 21 to be topless, which I just think is weird. From a law standpoint, I get it, the topless bars serve alcohol, and the full nude places are BYOB. I think that’s weird, too. BYOB at a strip joint just seems like a recipe for disaster. She told me that the VIP dances there were in these little booths with a slot to put the money in and glass between the dancer and the patron. She said for the first dance she would be really mild and not even go full nude, then usually, the guy would be all, “Um… I was hoping for something… more.” And she’d tell them, “Oh. You must want the $50 dance.” And when the guy balked at the price, she’d tell them, “Look, put the money in the slot or get the fuck out.” And they’d either pay or leave and she could move on to the next sucker.

After all this instruction and education, she took me on my “audition”. Audition. What a laugh! If you are not morbidly obese, are willing to take your top off, and can walk in those heels without falling, you have the job. I remember being nervous as hell. I remember Regina, bless her, standing at the end of the stage and walking me through the whole song, “OK, now give a butt shot. OK, walk slower. OK, breathe!!” What I remember most about that the first time I took my top off on that stage is thinking, “Well. There’s goes the Presidency.” I get off the stage and Regina hugged me and told me I did great! The manager (a woman named Christina) said I had the job. I went to work and made $60 in the next 15 minutes before Christina told me I couldn’t start right this second and had to fill out some paperwork first. (Oh. Yea. Told y’all I was nervous!) I picked a stage name (Daija which sounds like Déjà vu but is actually a Korean term of endearment that means “little pig” – already not taking this job too seriously, right?) and started the next day.

I started at TD’s West (Topless Dancers - I'm embarrassed to say how long it took me to figure out what TD's stood for). I got a great shift because of Regina. Mostly, with the new girls, they have to work the first shift for at least a couple of months. First shift rhymes with worst shift. It was from 12p-5p and it was super-slow, not a lot of guys and the guys that were there were lifers with no money. Circumstances previously stated (house and car issues) had me living with Gina and Regina and riding with Regina to work so she talked management into letting me work the same shifts she worked – 4 nights a week, from 6p-10p (or later if the crowd was good). When circumstances smoothed out a few months later and I got my house/car back, I moved over to TD’s East because it was a bit closer to my house. Then later, still, I got fired. I got fired because I took a week off to study for finals! Actually, I got permission from a manager but he quit or got fired or whatever and didn’t tell anyone he’d given me the time off, so me and three other college students got fired for no-showing. Then I went to Tens and worked there for the rest of my stripping career.

Yes, they fire strippers. There are so many misnomers about this job, I can’t even begin to tell you but, of course, I’ll try. I did that job for 2 ½ years. I never told anyone where I worked until they got to know me a bit better since there are so many stereotypes about that job. People would get all weird and judgemental about it. What are the basic stereotypes? Well, what first popped into your head? All strippers are stupid and easy and they are all drunk/drug-addicted hookers with daddy issues and fake boobs? That’s usually what people think about.

So let’s address them…
Yes, most of the women I worked with had more issues (daddy or otherwise) then Ally McBeal. Yes, a lot of them had fake boobs – the club would even pay for them sometimes if the dancer was loyal and popular and signed a contract to work there for a certain amount of time after the surgery (kind of like getting college money from the Army, right?). Some were addicted to drugs or alcohol. And yes, a majority of them treated being a stripper like a lifestyle rather then just a job.

Plenty of them were married with kids or in long-term relationships. Lots of single moms, too. And lots of lesbians – by my small calculations about 40% (Regina used to joke that it was the perfect job for her/them – they already don’t even like men!) Quite a few, like me, were working their way through school but some lost their way, blinded by the money and the realization that they could go back to school anytime but their stripper looks wouldn’t last forever. Regina was a hell of a businesswoman – she squirreled money away like a…. well, like a squirrel. She used some to buy her truck but the rest she had tied up in stocks!

And the club wasn’t going to put up with any bullshit. For most of my 2.5 years, I worked at Tens. Tens was a bit strange in that it was owned by a woman and her two sons. She won the club in her divorce and her sons ran it. Does that give anyone else the creeps? But they made money hand over fucking fist and they weren’t about to lose their licensing over some triflin’ girl’s habits or issues. There was always another girl they could hire, right?

If a girl left with a different guy every night, they’d suspect her of hooking and they’d fire her. If a girl was caught high or drunk, they’d can her ass so fast it’d make her head spin. You could even get fired for wearing body oil! The oil gets on the stage and the next girl slips, falls, and sues? I don’t think so!

. There’s a two drink minimum with no bottle of beer or anything else costing less then $8 each! They have their own ATM machine which gives them $4 per transaction! Then there’s the money the club owners make from the girls and here’s where we get rid of another stereotype.

When people tell me that stripping is degrading and objectifying to women, I just smile and nod, not wanting to argue too much about a subject the speaker obviously knows nothing about. All the clubs I worked in (or heard about), the girls are “independent contractors”. We got paychecks but they were pittance checks (kind of like those states where wait-staff at restaurants get less then minimum wage because they make tips). All the girls paid to work there. We paid $5 per hour we were there. So say there’s a minimum of 10 girls per shift and 3 shifts per day, that’s $150 per day the club makes just from the girls working there. These girls who choose to work there of their own free will. We also had to give 10% of our “tips” to the bar and another 5% percent to the DJ (that part always kinda pissed me off as those people were making their actual wages plus tips anyway).

I always loved when guys would try to pull some superior bullshit or tried to act like they were in charge. I’d laugh right in their faces and take their money. The women in that bar ran shit. If we didn’t like a way a guy looked at us, they’d get kicked out.

My favorite example of this was when one day when I was working an early shift (covering that shift for a friend) and it was deadly slow. There were like 10 guys in the whole place and so you had to keep going to each guy for every song, “Would you like a dance?”. It got to be a funny game because it was actually a rule to keep moving and keep asking but there was no one to ask! There were two men in suits, one was not getting any dances but was buying all the dances for the other guy. The other guy was firmly entranced with one dancer so no money to be had there. I kept asking Paying Suit if he wanted a dance, he clearly didn’t even want to be in the building. I’d seen him before, always with a client, always buying them dances, never getting any for himself, always treating the girls like we were so beneath him. Finally it got to the point that whenever I’d ask him for a dance, I’d be laughing when I said it because I knew his answer. Finally, he had enough of me "bothering" him so he looked up at me and said, “Are you pregnant?” with this evil grin on his face. I’ve always had a little pooch-belly and it never interfered with my money-making skills so I laughed and said, “No, just fat, but thanks for asking!” Then I pulled up a chair and laid it down for him with a big smile on my face, “You know, no matter how much money, power and prestige you have outside this building, once you cross that threshold you’re just another loser who has to pay for attention. Or in your case, a loser who can’t seem to close a deal without us. You might want to think about that the next time you feel like being rude.” Then I stood up and, laughing, said, “So. Would you like a dance?” He said no but the look on his face when I called him out about using us to close deals was fucking priceless!

Jeebus this post is getting long! Man, y’all think the Army gave me some stories? This job has its own set of crazy tales, for sure! I’m going to cut out for now and finish next time. But I promise, next time, there will be yarn!

Also, here’s a video to keep you entertained. I think it’s safe for work. The women don’t wear anything less then the average bikini would show and it’s more Cirque de Sol then anything else. And in case you were wondering, I can’t do any of this shit! Never could. There was one dancer who could climb that pole to the ceiling and spin like a monkey. She was a tiny, skinny, overly-tattooed, little thing. I don’t remember her name, I always called her MonkeyGirl. I do remember the DJ couldn’t use the strobe lights whenever she worked. She told me that she had done so much crack in her life that she’d developed epilepsy! Crazy tales, man….crazy tales.

Still own the shoes, Ruth!

Cinema

2010-08-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

I'm essentially unemployed right now. The economy has effectively totalled my business.

For those who don't know, in August 2007, Dave and I bought a biz for me to run. We borrowed the money from his parents and bought a recruiting biz that can be run from home. It was stellar the first year we had it, I cleared over $40K working in my basement just 3 or 4 hours a day! My only concern with buying this biz (other then owing Dave's parents) was that the previous owner had taken it down to working with one company. The original owner dealt with about 20, she retired, selling the biz to her office manager - that owner took it down to 5 companies and the man that bought from her took it down to one. I didn't like having all the eggs in one basket.

That basket broke.

The company went on a hiring freeze over a year ago and it still shows no signs of thawing. They are shifting people around and promoting from within and my business is bust. I've had several of the hiring managers call me to say, "I'm not looking but if something comes up..." because they want to leave the company. The company changed their comp packages three times last year and none for the better.

I'm so depressed I can't breathe right most days and I keep thinking how we.... no. How I won't be able to EVER pay Dave's parents back. I keep having nightmares (nearly every night) of being lost or late and also of being deployed to Iraq.

During the day, I look for jobs.

Dave's business (he bought a landscaping biz last August) is doing just OK. It's not doing near the numbers the previous owner was doing but again, that's more because of the economy then anything else. People are opting to take care of their own yards and then there's the schmo's who buy a lawnmower and an edger, have no overhead and undercut our price by, like, half. (We've actually had people in both categories come back to us because Dave does a much better job!) Then there's the slave labor....

Another mom of a kid on Trev's baseball team told me that her neighbor hires a Mexican to do her lawn (that's exactly how she put it). This guy cleans up the poo from their three dogs, mows/edges/trims their front yard and their back yard for the princely sum of..... $15. Are you fuckin' kidding me? The other mom disapproved. She, like me, thinks it's cruel to hire slave labor like that. And then we went on to discuss the illegal immigrant situation and we agreed that they wouldn't be here if people like her neighbor didn't hire them. But that's a discussion for another day.

Anyway, back to me - hah! If I don't get a job soon, I'm going to self-destruct. I have panic attacks some days and meltdowns on other days. We decided in June to shut down my business. It costs money, even being run from home - extra phone, website, etc. From June to July, I lost about 12 pounds. Mostly because I pretty much quit eating. I am so stressed that every time I eat, I get super nauseous. It's not as bad now but June was ugly.

I have all this time on my hands and so I've taken to getting an ass-load of movies from the library. Sometimes I even score brand new releases. I'm on the waiting list for those but they hold back a couple of copies to put on the shelves and sometimes I get lucky.

So I'm going to start doing movie reviews here as well as the rest of the snot I write about. There will be spoilers so I'll put the movie titles at the top of the post each time. If you don't want to know, then skip it, right? Also, I have an unexplainable love for dross. I love cheesy movies and old movies and there's not much I won't watch. You've been warned!

This week:
CopOut, The Crazies, Brooklyn's Finest, Bounty Hunter, The Shield (Final Season), Nip/Tuck (Final Season), The Box, My Sister's Keeper, Adventureland, Wolfman, Armoured, Doctor Who
(Normally there won't be this many but this is what I've seen over the last two weeks or so.)

The Crazies:
This not-a-zombie zombie movie was really pretty good! I love zombie movies and my favorite part is how they explain the outbreak. This movie took steps to insure the zombies didn't look like zombies, because like 28 Days Later (besides Shaun of the Dead, one of the best zombie movies ever), these aren't the living dead. They are live people who are infected with something. The explanation The Crazies gave was entirely plausible and that makes the movie all the more frightening! The characters were likeable and real and compassionate. There was very little gore and lots of jump-out-at-you scares. That's how I prefer my horror films. Excessive gore is, well, excessive and rarely necessary.

CopOut:
Sucked. Don't waste your time. This movie was like a really bad buddy-cop movie from the '80's. And I'm not even sure what purpose Sean William Scott's character served. He was in it briefly to set up a scenario - he stole a baseball card Bruce Willis needed. At the end of the movie, they basically kidnap SWS so he can use his cat-burglar skills to break into the gangster's house and get the card back. So SWS is at the top of a tree about to go in a window, he looks at Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan and gives them the thumbs up, then falls out of the tree and dies. WTF? It's a shame as I really like SWS! This movie was beyond stupid and not even very funny.

Brooklyn's Finest:
Excellent movie! Amazing all-star cast and outstanding performances by all. The ending was very Hamlet in that pretty much everyone dies. It sort of reminded me of Crash in that people you thought were good, maybe not so much and people you thought were bad, also, have another side to them.

The Bounty Hunter:
Meh. It was OK. It was entertaining and Gerard Butler takes his shirt off a lot which is always nice! The storyline was predictable and the characters didn't have a lot of depth but it's worth a watch if you want something fluffy and mindless. The only thing that truly annoyed me was at the ending and it's just a petty thing.... There's a gun battle in a police evidence locker and although there's cops downstairs and there's gunfire upstairs, the place wasn't swarming with cops instantly. Also, if you are in a gun battle in a police evidence locker and you happen to find that much-needed extra shotgun in an evidence box (thank you V. Gotti), I'm fairly certain it would not be a loaded weapon. Just sayin...

The Shield (Final Season):
This show has always been sort of a corrupt-cop-with-a-heart-of-gold show. It's very violent and as graphic as basic cable will allow and it's an excellent show. The last season, they made Vic (the show's lead character) and Shane (Vic's right-hand guy) sort of trade places. All along, you kind of root for Vic because he shows glimpses of these small saving graces and all along you hate Shane because he's a total shit. In the last season, Vic becomes this desperate, narcissistic animal who is only out to save his own ass. Shane, equally desperate, keeps trying and trying and failing miserably to pull his butt out of the fire. The difference is that Shane is trying to finally do right by his small family and Vic, though trying to also save his own family, is mostly out to save himself, his reputation, and make some cash. Amazing show the whole way through. The end was sad and harsh and justice was served - keeping in line with the entire series. In the end, Vic gets his just rewards in the form of a living hell for his character. A slow death, chained to a desk, with constant supervision. Perfect!

Nip/Tuck (Final Season):
I've really liked this show so far. I'm not excited about this last season. So far, it's making me just sick of these people and waiting for it to end. So why am I still watching? I hate not knowing the end of a story. So, I'm slogging through this last season but I'm so over it all.

The Box:
This movie was SO much better then I thought it would be! It was excellent! It was imaginative, well-developed, creative, touching, sad, poignant, redeeming, and outstanding. It is based on a short-story by the same man who wrote I Am Legend - Richard Matheson. It was so good, I went to the library and got an audiobook with a collection of his short stories including this one.

My Sister's Keeper:
This movie is one of those ones you rent when you want a good cry. It was well-done and had an excellent cast. I never wanted to read this book because I knew it would destroy me but I figured I could watch the movie and be only marginally wrecked. I was right. I cried through most of it and I highly recommend it.

Adventureland:
This movie was good. It wasn't nearly as funny as the trailers made it seem but it had several funny bits and many touching moments. Totally worth the rental.

Wolfman:
I loved this movie! It was creepy and well done! It held true to the original 50's movies without resorting to campiness or too much cheese. Anthony Hopkins was stellar as always (I'll see anything he's in just to hear him speak!) and Benicio Del Toro was a dream.

Armored:
I have a confession to make. I still have the Matt Dillon Trivia book I bought with my allowance from 1984. I'll watch anything he's in! This movie was OK. It was entertaining and they didn't resort to a too-perfectly-happy ending. Most everyone dies or gets severely injured in this movie. Worth the time of you're killing time.

Doctor Who:
I got this series because I was wondering what all the hype was about. We are completely hooked! The kids would beg to see the next episode and even Dave got into it! I have a huge crush on Christopher Eccelston - such an amazing smile! I'm sad he's only in the one season. We are on hold for the next season, anxiously awaiting.....

Watching all this film, I've been doing a lot of knitting. I have a new camera and as soon as I can get his old computer and the new camera to speak to each other civilly, I'll post some knitting.

Next time I post, I'll announce the winner of the contest. The contest is still open until I post about it.

Swimming as fast as I can, Ruth!

Airport Sightings

2010-07-29T14:18:00.000-07:00

The boys and I went to the airport this morning to pick up Dave's best friend, Ty.

We were a few minutes early and we got to see two soldiers in desert camo get their tearful, squealing, "Welcome Home" mugging from their girlfriends and their families. It was totally making me tear up seeing the sheer joy and relief on the faces of their loved ones.

We also got to see a woman in a full burka. She was with her family and the 4 year old little girl with them wore a headscarf and the 2 year old little girl with them had her head uncovered. When T saw the woman in the black burka with only her eyes and hands showing he turned to me and asked, "Is she a ninja?" When I got done laughing, I explained that her religion requires her to wear clothes so that nothing of her body can be seen. He said, "Hmm, that's cool." (which is what he says when he means, "How interesting."). I said, "No, T, it's really not cool at all. It's very repressive. But everyone is different and that's just how they have chosen to live so it works for them."

And who knows? Maybe underneath those robes, she really is a ninja!

What was evident was her delight in her daughters. The little one started to wander off and the mom held out her hand and called her back and you could see the mom's eyes light up at the sight of her smallest child! Even with nothing else showing, you could tell she was smiling.

Seeing Ninjas, Ruth!

Coasters and Baseball and Skeptics - Oh My!

2010-07-19T07:53:00.000-07:00

We had such a busy and fantastic weekend!

Dave took Friday off and we went to Elitch Gardens. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but Dave and I are crazy for coasters. On our honeymoon, we went park hopping in CA. Last year, we left the kids with the grandparents and went to Elitch with our friends Dona and Daren.

This year, the library's summer reading program had an end game of Elitch tickets for the kids! They read the required amount (12 hours? 20 hours? I can't even remember) and turned in their papers for some paper tickets. The tix also had a discount for adult tickets so off we went!

We got the kids on the easier rides first then worked them up to the bigger rides. We got them on the Tower of Doom (which D2 LOVED and wouldn't stop talking about all day) and one roller coaster (the Boomerang) which they both hated. They are super-skinny guys and if you are smallish or short (like me) you know that the restraints on roller coasters only click down so far and if you are smallish or short, you get banged around in your seat pretty good.

The Tower of Doom takes you up slowly to a height of 200 feet then drops you straight down. D2 loved it and after a few more spinny rides, we figured out that he liked the spinny rides but hated the coaster because he didn't like being upside down. That combined with being flung around in his seat made him feel like he was going to fall out. T didn't like either one. He's a bit of a scaredy cat when it comes to rides. There were plenty of other rides that they loved (the swing ones, the log ride was a big hit, the teacups.... yes, we actually rode the teacups!).

I took some sock knitting with me and I got about 2" done while standing in line for the rides! I knew I was going to rip it all out when I got home but I kept going anyway as it kept me entertained. How did I know I was going to frog? I set up the sock the night before - CO and ribbing cuff (it's the Conwy sock from Knitting on the Road) and when we were driving away from home on Sat, I pulled it out to work on it. I then realized just by the feel of it, that the needle was too big. I didn't pay much attention to it the night before as I was just trying to crank out a little bit so it'd be ready for Sat. I was working on a US 3/3.25mm and I wanted to have it on a US 2/2.75mm. Oh well.... good thing I like knitting! Ribbit.

We also went to Elitch's waterpark. We should've gone there first as it closes at 6p and the rest of the park is open until 9p but we still spent a good couple of hours in the wave pool and going down the kid's water slides! My glasses have these magnetic sunglass cover thing and they popped off and are lost forever in the wave pool - so that kinda sucked.

Dave and I took on a couple of the big people water slides - he went down the really fast blue one and I went down the twisty purple tube one. I hated it! I was trying to hold my head up but the centrifugal force forced my head back and the tube isn't smooth. WHAM, WHAM, WHAM every time you pass the sections of tube-seaming. It gave me a monster headache!

We left our house at 9:30a and didn't get home until 10p! We left the park at about 7:30 or 8p and went downtown to Sam's #3 for dinner. It's a great diner with really good food. The whole ride home (about a half hour or so) D2 went on and on about the Tower of Doom - "Which was your favorite part?" "Which was your least favorite part?" "Which part did you like the best?" "Which part of the Tower did you like the least?" "Which part of the Tower was the scariest?" "Which part of the Tower was the least scariest?" The same questions to each and every one of us and asked over and over and over. He really liked that Tower!

Saturday the boys both had games. D2's game was at 11a and T's was at 2p.... on one of the hottest days this summer. It was super hot at D2's game but one of the parents brought this big collapsible gazebo thingy and a couple of other parents had squirt bottle/fan thingys so the boys did OK. D2 and I didn't go to T's game - it was just too hot! I'm sorry I missed it because T finally got to play pitcher! But I'm not sorry I missed it as Dave told me there were no collapsible gazebos and no dugouts so no shade at all! It's all relative as the 100 degree weather here is a cold snap in Tucson! We have become heat wimps just like everyone else in CO and we pretty much melted at home the rest of the day.

Sunday, we went to a picnic/pot luck thing. Dave signed us up! I was so shocked that Dave signed us up for anything even resembling being social that I didn't even mind missing my knitting group! He found this Secular Parents Club (Secular Parent's Club? I guess it works with or without the apostrophe) at meetup.com. He actually found it right before we left Parker but we haven't had the chance to go to any of the meet-ups until now.

It was great fun! I've never seen Dave be so outgoing with strangers! The shindig was at Bear Creek Park and we had this huge wooden gazebo to ourselves and it was right next to a bathroom and also right next to a largish creek. Their were only 2 or 3 kids that were the same age as our boys, everyone else had babies or toddlers. But the kids had a great time and the adults were similarly entertained. Everyone brought food and the adults stayed in the shade and ate and shared stories of our past religious lives (or lack of) and our current state of skepticism and/or outright atheism. One of the guys was a minister and is getting his degree in religious studies! With his current beliefs/doubts, he's not sure what he's going to do when he graduates. His dissertation is on TV evangelism - I can't imagine the horror stories he must be finding!

There were about 20 people there (including the kids) and I am looking forward to spending more time with these like minded folks.

What a weekend, Ruth!

P.S. I haven't forgotten about the contest. You can still enter until I reveal. I'll tell all soon....

Rock, Paper, Scissors

2010-07-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

I'm cleaning off my floor. I have this filing cabinet next to my desk and I usually just put things in front of it instead of in it and sort things out later! (Lazy much?)

I'm going through all the papers the boys brought home during the school year to see what I want to keep and what to toss. Their file cabinet slots are getting way too full, so yesterday I bought two plastic bins to put things into.

Going through T's papers I found this story....

One day Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln raced outside from the White House to see who would steer the helicopter. They got there at the same time. They had a big fight. Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln had an election. They tied nine to nine. They did Rock, Paper, Scissors but Abraham kept cheating. Barack decided that they should play bowling.
THE END
by T (edited for minor spelling errors)

That kid slays me!

Loving Summer Break, Ruth!

Wheeee!

2010-06-30T12:05:00.000-07:00

I want to live where people do shit like this...

Yes, I realize it's a commercial but look how many people jumped on board! I especially love the businessman at the end.

Addicted to EpicWinFTW, Ruth!

Good From Bad

2010-06-28T07:21:00.000-07:00

I was over at EpicWin this morning and saw this really cool video...

When I saw the title (Reverse Graffiti), I thought it was going to be some yayhoo messing up some public property but it's not that at all. It's an artist who goes into a highway tunnel and uses wet rags to wash off the soot-covered walls here and there, making art.

If you don't have three minutes to watch the video, I'll just tell you. A bunch of cops show up and they seem to be puzzled as to what to do. He's not breaking any laws, just washing the walls! They seem to write him a ticket! At the end of the video, a city worker comes and sprays the walls, washing away the art and the soot and the last shot of the video is the solvent-and-soot laden water going down the gutter to be washed out to sea.

This next video shows how the artist disposed of the soot in his rags...

Again, if you're short on time...
He turns it into paint and makes more art!

Wish I was this talented, Ruth!

Thanks One and All

2010-06-23T10:11:00.000-07:00

I've been remiss in issuing many Thank You's to several different people...

We live near the library in HR, CO and the library has a huge, beautiful, open, grassy amphitheater behind it. It has a sizeable stage and we've discovered that they have a free summer concert series. They kicked off this summer with the Denver Youth Ballet doing A Midsummer's Night Dream. It's been about 13 years since I've seen a live ballet and I made Dave and the boys come with me.

Now I understand that with an outdoor concert the rules of concert etiquette are a bit more lax but I just really want to thank the lady in front of us for yammering at full voice for the entire ballet. Oh and Lady, when you let your phone ring for ten or so rings before finally answering and having an entire conversation? Wow, that was awesome. Oh, oh! And when you're friends that called you showed up halfway through the performance and started screeching at the top of their lungs - "WOW I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU IN AAAAAAGES!!!!!" - well, that just made the performance so much more special for everyone around you. So.... Thanks!

(When those screechy women showed up, even Dave was all, "Jesus Christ, Really??" Also, Lady, at one point, my nine year old asked, "Mom, can I go ask her to be quiet?" I told him no but I also told him that if Daddy wasn't there, I certainly would say something to her. So thanks also for letting him realize that at nine years old, he has better sense and more manners then a woman your age. Sheesh!)

Dear Random Neighbor,
I would like to thank you for teaching my cat a lesson. I know you know there are no leash laws for cats and I'm sure you've seen the four or five cats being allowed to roam the neighborhood at will, our Oreo being one of them. I appreciate that you don't want them in your area and you should absolutely spray them in the head to keep them out of your space.

However, may I suggest that next time you use a squirt bottle full of water instead of bug spray? It would be much cheaper and equally effective. I say cheaper because I imagine water is cheaper then bug spray but also because I believe it would save us both quite a lot of money in other areas. It would save you some serious hospital bills and it would save me some, I imagine, very expensive lawyer fees keeping me out of jail for having put you in the hospital if I ever find out who you are.

Special thanks goes out to From Robin's Nest in Utah. We had such a lovely conversation last year and you seemed so funny and pleasant that I went ahead and shipped the first order of my Stitch Savers for your shop without getting paid up front. I want to thank you for reminding me why I changed that policy as I'm still awaiting payment from you. I've emailed and called several times and even pm'd you on Ravelry - all with no response. The last time we spoke was about a month after I mailed them (last September) and you said you received them and would mail payment but since then you've just ignored my attempts to resolve this issue. It makes me sad but it also reminds me that not all knitters have basic manners and integrity.

(Readers, if you shop there, please continue to do so as she obviously needs the money. However, I do ask that you not buy my Stitch Savers there as she hasn't yet paid me for them. If she ever does, I'll let y'all know and then you can buy them from her locally! Otherwise, if you'd like some, please purchase them elsewhere. You can always get them from my Etsy store, ScoutSwag, The Loopy Ewe, Yarn4Socks, and many other fine LYS's both online and IRL.)

Now for some very real and belated Thank-you's....

Thank you to my Secret Pal 15 for this lovely little package!

I know I still need to put up my questionnaire for SP15 and I'll do that soon - promise!

Thanks to Joe over at ReviewYourOwnBlog for posting my review. It's a very interesting concept! You're to write an objective review of your own blog. A lot harder then it sounds! Here's mine.

Thanks so much to Mary from my knitting group for the outstanding package she mailed me for the Beltane Vampire Swap. (I still think it's funny that you mailed it from Parker, CO to.... Parker, CO - hah!)

Look at all the goodies!
First there's the first two books of this series I've been dying to read...

I'm loving the first one and can't wait to get to the second!

There was a lovely handmade card and some much needed 24" cables for my Options set....

She crocheted a measuring tape cover and a sweet little Nosferatau....

She made scads of these really pretty stitch markers...

And the yarn! Oooooh, the yarn....

That's a skein of Malabrigo sock on the bottom and a skein of some sock yarn she dyed for me! Droool.....
Here's a close-up (if somewhat overexposed) pic of it...

I'm in love!

Lastly....
I want to give an extra big hug and thank you to the woman I glared at in the Sports Authority parking lot last week. I was in a huge hurry, with too much stress, too many errands to run that day and not enough time. I felt you weren't moving fast enough to get your clearly-old-enough-to-do-it-himself child out of your car. It wasn't until you helped him out that I realized he has CP and I'm so very, very, sorry that I was such a shit. Thank you so much for giving me some much needed perspective not only on my day but on my life in general.

Don't forget to enter my latest contest!

Feeling thankful for my life, Ruth!

Answering Service

2010-06-21T19:54:00.000-07:00

I just keep disappearing don't I? Lots of stuff going on here. Very little of it any good but I won't bore you with it all today.

Let's answer some questions!

Yarnhog asked:
Did you enjoy being a massage therapist? If so, why? I always wonder when I get a massage if the person giving it is actually enjoying it, or if it's just a job and they're really watching the clock and thinking about what they're going to do after work.

My good friend Sandy from Tucson answered her in the comments. She writes:
This is for Yarnhog. I'm a massage therapist too, like Ruth, and I have to say it is an incredibly enjoyable thing to do. While there are some massage therapists who, undoubtedly, think of it as just a job, the really good ones don't.

Trust me, the client can tell whether the massage therapist is focused on him or her or is thinking of something else. It will come through in the therapist's touch.

There is something amazing about feeling the muscles and other soft tissues respond to our touch. It is the therapeutic connection between the therapist and the client that makes it worthwhile and fulfilling to perform massage.

Massage therapy is so much more than the therapist just doing some techniques. When it is done correctly, with genuine concern and regard for the client, it is a way to have human to human contact for no other reason than to help someone else feel better. It doesn't get any better than that.

I've been a massage therapist for 19 years. I can't imagine ever doing anything else.

Sandy in Tucson, AZ

I have to agree with everything she says! She is the most amazing therapist and also a published author!

For myself, personally, I did enjoy it. I worked at Loew's Ventana in Tucson for eight years. I also had my own practice. Working at Loew's was always a challenge. Not necessarily because the clients but because of the spa/resort itself. As the massage therapist's employed there, we would lovingly call it the "ghetto spa" as we were constantly running out of things like.... massage lotion.... fresh sheets (and they had their own laundromat in the hotel). In the 8 years I worked there I had 5 different Spa Directors and 8 different Spa Managers and that about sucked. There was only one Spa Director (the third one) who had any prior spa experience and the rest just made an easy, fun job into something full of misery and stress. On the plus side were 90% of the clients! Except for a select few, all my clients were lovely and appreciative! I did over 1000 massages per year and almost all of them were out-of-towners and rarely did we ever work on the same person twice. I worked on people from all 7 continents and all 50 states! I even got to work on some famous people. Lots of fun stories there and I'll get to them all someday. For now you can read my How-to's on getting a massage. Part one. Part two. Part three. Part four. (They have lots of juicy stories!)

Truthfully, yes, there were days (or clients) where I'd be looking at the clock but for the most part my job was to make people feel better! What better job then that!

Pretty Knitty asked:
How did you come up with the idea for your stitch savers, and do you do other metalwork as well?

That's technically two questions. . .sorry!

I saw a tutorial online. In the tutorial, they used wire cutters and pliers to cut/bend things. At first I was making them for friends and the cut/bend thing didn't work for me. The hooks kept breaking. I got frustrated and broke out the Dremel. One friend showed them to the LYS owner and she said I should sell them to her wholesale and send them to knitty.com for their cool stuff page. I did both. I was one of the smaller features on knitty.com's cool stuff page (Spring 2008) and it's been pretty much gangbusters ever since!

I don't do any other metalwork. I don't think I'd like to either. I burned through three Dremel's in the first year, then I got some more heavy duty equipment and it's been a lot easier to make them. There's two stages for me: 1. Making them (this is the power tools in the garage phase) and 2. Putting them together (this is the jewelry making phase - beads, jump rings, etc.). I hate phase 1. It involves a really heavy duty gas mask thingy and there's aluminum dust EVERYwhere when I'm done. It's a real drag. I listen to books on tape while I'm in the garage and that makes it a bit easier. Last year, I listened to 26 books on tape this way!

K asked:
And tattoos? Pictures? Whys?
And how did you meet your husband?
And are the kids a detour, or was this the plan?
Garden?
Coffee or tea?
Favorite artist? Favorite color?
Favorite time of day?

I have six tattoos but it looks like only four. I have one around another one on my right scapula, I have one covering my first one on the front of my left hipbone and I have two on the outer side of my right upper thigh. I'll save the stories and pic's of those for their own post (mainly because I have to find those pic's of when they were fresh and beautiful!). I will say this....
I loved them when I first got them and I still love them. I want at least two more! I find that tattoos are oftentimes like religion. The only people who care if you have them are the people who don't want you to have them! (I guess that's the reverse of overly religious people?) I love when people say things like:
Them: What are you going to tell your children about them?
Me: I'll tell them the truth! I got my first tattoo when I was 21. When they are 21, they can do whatever they please with their body! Also, they've never known me without tattoos so it's really no big deal to them.

Them: If you like them so much, why didn't you get them where people can see them?
Me: I didn't get them for you or anybody else. I got them for me.

Them: What are you going to do when you're 80 and they are all old and stuff?
Me: If I'm 80 and my tattoos are the worst of my problems?? I'll be gooood!

How did I meet my husband? Another post. Actually, let's just make it a contest! (Yay - contests!) I'll let y'all guess where I met him. I will say that I met him while I was at work. But where was I working? I'll close this contest at the end of the month.....

The kids were totally planned. Dave's parents didn't have him until they were 40. Dave and I got married at age 30 and there was this whole negotiation about when to start having kids. He wanted to start immediately and I wanted to wait a bit. We compromised and after getting married in April 2000, we started trying to have kids in August 2000 (so I guess he won more then we compromised - hah!).

We chose August for a few reasons. Mainly because the baby would be born in May and 1. who the hell wants to be super-preggers in the soul-sucking summer heat that is Tucson and 2. the summer is the slow season at the spa I worked at so missing work wouldn't be as big a deal. It worked out so well the first time that we chose August again for the second one! We were lucky that both tries - BOOM - there ya go, first try and we're pregnant!

Garden? I'd love to but I've been known to kill cacti. My family had a lovely vegetable garden when I was a kid and I've always wanted that for our boys. So far, we've been renting in CO and have not had a real shot at planting anything. We tried a container garden at our Parker house but it failed rather miserably. We hope to buy our own place next year and then maybe we can plant some stuff!

Coffee or Tea? Neither, really. I've never liked coffee (love the way it smells, though!). My friend Donna has me addicted to Chai Lattes from Starbucks (sooooo sweet and spicy!). I don't drink hot tea but we do make quite a lot of iced tea in our house. We use two Luzianne bags and one bag of Celestial Seasonings Passion Peach in the iced tea maker. So lovely!

Favorite Artist? I recently kind of covered my tastes in art in this post. I can't really pinpoint a favorite.

Favorite color? I like dark red. Like really dark red. Not a purply red, not a bright red, not an orangey red, a deep garnet red. mmmmdeepgarnetredmmmm. Strangely I own nothing in this color (at least not clothing-wise, I have a few lovely specimens in the yarn department!) Most of my clothes are blue. You know, I don't think I've ever met anyone who doesn't like blue. Have you? Anyway, I tend to gravitate towards deep jewel tones. Not a fan of pastels.

Favorite time of day? Either 9am or 9pm. I used to be a total night owl but now I like to go to bed btw 9 and 10p and I like to wake up btw 8 and 9a. Sadly, neither of those times seems to happen for sleeping or waking.

Anonymous asked:
you never talk about your family - just your husbands family - why?

In high school one of my friends used to tease me saying my family was a "walking Oprah show". There is sooooo much to talk about with them that I rarely know where to start so I usually don't say much at all. The short version is this:
As of today, my dad is on his fourth marriage, my mom is on her seventh and my brother is a recovering meth addict who's last girlfriend was a prostitute (he said what did he care, he didn't have to pay her. Ew.). Dave is much closer to his family then I am with mine. I talk to my dad about once a year. I talk to my bio-brother about the same. I talk to my mom a bit more - about once a month or so. I talk to my stepbrother Ron probably most of all lately (Hi Ron!). My mom and Ron read this blog but I know I've told my mom and I'm sure (since he reads this blog) that Ron knows, I don't censor my writing. This blog is as much diary/memoirs as anything else for me. I know I'll get into all that someday on this blog but it's such a convoluted mess and despite quite a bit of very effective therapy, it still has the power to make me all pissed off at how my family acts/acted.

Also, Dave's parents live about a half mile away from us so we see them much more then I see my family (most of them still live in CA where I grew up).

OK, so - don't forget the contest! Leave your comments about today's blog on this post but also put your guesses of where I was working/what was my job when I met Dave here! For those of you who know the answer, just raise your hand and say, "I know!" and I'll put your name in because I'm thinking there's two prizes. One prize for a correct answer (if more then one person guesses correctly, I'll put the names in a hat and draw) and a random-thanks-for-guessing prize.

Reliving the moment, Ruth!

Two More Letters

2010-06-08T06:58:00.000-07:00

Well, that Alphabet Soup seems to keep getting longer and longer each year!

Anyway, I've got lots to talk about but I'm going to take a bit of a break and so, once again, I'm opening myself up to a Reader's Q & A.

Ask me anything!

I'll answer any questions that come in in the next week....

Riddle me this, Ruth!

Z is for Zoo

2010-06-04T08:38:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, Martin Luther King Jr. Day coincided with the Free Day at the Denver Zoo. We took the kids and even though this free day landed on a holiday and the Zoo was PACKED, we had an excellent time! There were several hundred people and everyone acted kind and patient and courteous to each other.

I didn't get pictures of the grizzly bears wrestling but I did get a few other pic's.

I got a good shot of the kick-back Asian Black Bears...

And the kick-back boys on front of the kick-back bears...

(Excuse the crazy faces here, they were looking into the sun)

We got to see them feed the tiger...

They put the tiger away and then a woman with a 10 lb. chub of burger walked around the area leaving chunks here and there. It took the tiger about 15 minutes to find them. It was like his own private egg hunt!

Davis wanted to pretend he was a baby gorilla on the gorilla statue...

About a month after the Zoo, we took the boys to the free day at the Natural Museum. The boys got to play scientist...

We spent most of our time in the outer space section....

This "dinosaur" was a big hit...

If you look at the dinosaur's feet, you'll see two legs and if you follow them up, you'll see the man who is the amazing puppet master of this creative beasty...

Both of these outings reminded us of what terrible parents we are! Both times we didn't think to bring any water or snacks and both times we were at these places for over FIVE hours each! We were all starving and grumpy by the time we left but we quickly found burger joints and all in all they were wonderful, fun days.

Lovin' the free, Ruth!

Y is for Yammer

2010-05-20T07:08:00.000-07:00

I thought I had all the letters planned out from R-Z.

Apparently, I forgot there's a letter between X and Z. Or else I planned something for Y and forgot what it was. Either way, the only Y word that keeps coming to mind is Yammer. Lucky you.

Completely Meaningless and Random Yammering....

A couple weeks ago, I came out of the kitchen at 8:30p and saw D2 still sitting on the couch next to Dave. I said, "Um D2, pretty sure I told you to go to bed." He sits up, looks me dead in the eye and says, "I'm watching TV..... Woman!"

Dave about fell off the couch laughing. I said, "Oooh, I will cut you little boy, you better get your butt upstairs!" but it wasn't very effective (and not at all serious) since I was also laughing pretty hard. What 6 year old talks like that?? He only said it as a joke and it was the pause that completely did me in!
"......Woman!"

Two days ago, I made an excellent sandwich. It was half a soft baguette of brown bread spread with cherry jam, then some thin deli ham, a slice of Swiss cheese then put in the oven to broil the cheese. Heaven!

Yesterday, I wanted to make another with the second half of the bread but I realized I was out of cherry jam. I almost panicked then realized I have literally 17 jars of jam in the pantry (I counted them). This sandwich is just as good with Peach jam!

I also discovered a lovely soup by accident. I put a bunch of leftovers together and decided to call it soup. Busch's Fiesta Black Bean Extravaganza + can of corn (the kind with very little water) + cut up cooked chicken = Hell Yeah!

Some strange mid-life crisis has caused me to go and buy a bunch of thong underwear. I had a brief thong phase in 1991 (when I was 21 and it made more sense). A girl I knew wore them and got me to try them. She said, "They are way sexier and normal underwear is usually up your butt anyway, right?" She's right! With these new ones I just bought, I switch them out with the bikini style I normally wear. Also, I found out the hard way that wearing a thong while working out on an elliptical machine can cause a near-fatal wedgie situation.

Speaking of working out, I forgot to tell y'all in my W post about the Singer. When I was working at that spa in Tucson, I would go to our little gym-for-hotel-guests after work and workout. That was one of the few perks of working there. The gym was located in our spa building and if no guest was waiting on you to finish, you could use it as much as you pleased! I'd go in there and workout on the recumbent bike for about 10-15 minutes each time I worked.

One day, I came into the gym and there was a woman in there, on the elliptical machine and she was singing at the top of her lungs! And, man, could she ever sing! She saw me and didn't stop, just kept on singing along with the radio. The recumbent bike was next to her machine so I had no choice but to be right next to her. The next song was one of my favorites and she saw me bobbin' my head along and said, "You should sing with me!" I was all, "Um, I don't sing well." She said, "It never matters, Little Sister, singin' is singin' and it always makes you feel good! Besides the breathing needed for singing helps you maintain better breathing while working out!" So that's how I ended up belting out Best of My Love with a complete stranger! She was a regular there and we'd always sing together - so bizarre!

I still sing while working out only, you know... not out loud. I mouth the words and breathe like I would if I was singing it loud. I save the loud singing for my car.

Movies I've Seen Recently:
Where the Wild Things Are - this movie sucked ass. We got it to watch with the boys and I was so excited about it because that's always been one of my very favorite books. The movie was horrible. It was depressing as hell, dark and really just disturbing. This movie tried it's absolute best to ruin the book for me. It failed.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - this movie was very excellent but also very difficult. It's about a little boy in a Nazi concentration camp. No. Scratch that. It's about a little boy who's dad gets a promotion and is now the Nazi in charge of a concentration camp. The family has to move out to the country, into a house near the camp. The family of the Nazi has no idea what's going on there. The mom knows the Jews are there but she doesn't know what exactly goes on until the Lt. Nazi accidentally tells her (about halfway through the movie). She has a big fight with her husband and starts drinking heavily. The little 8 year old boy knows nothing. He doesn't understand about the war and only knows he has moved somewhere where's there's no other children and he's lonely. He goes exploring and meets the camp-boy. They become friends.

I knew this movie was going to end badly for the camp-boy and that I would cry.

It ended so. Much. WORSE! During the last 5 minutes of the movie I had my fists at my temples and I was rocking back and forth saying, "nonononononono". That movie fucking destroyed me.

So. Yea. Now I want to read the book. (Apparently I enjoy being emotionally destroyed.) Seriously, though, there were so many nuances alluded to in the film that I've got to read this book.

Speaking of Books...

Shutter Island was finished last November (I need to change the sidebar thingy). It was EXCELLENT! I started Stephen King's Dark Tower 4 (Wizard and Glass) and it took me forever to get through it. No fault of the book, I just got into a rut reading-wise. It was a thoroughly enjoyable book!

I took a Dark Tower break (I'm reading through the whole series but I'm reading at least one book in between each of the series books) and read a book a friend gave to me about six years ago. It's called Chemical Pink and it's so very strange. I ate that thing up! It took me about two days to tear through it. I mean, it's only 270 pages but it was so bizarre and twisted I couldn't put it down. It's about a woman who wants to be a professional heavyweight bodybuilder and the man she meets who is very rich and very strange. He offers to put her up in a house, buy her a car, pay for all her training and all her drug training as well. In return, he expects... favors. His sexual tastes are.... strange. I think the least strange thing he did was to dress like a silkworm (in a tube made from silkworms) and writhe around on the floor while she steps over him in "dangerous shoes" and he begs to not be squashed.

The training and the drugs they gave her were all very detailed and fascinating. And the relationships in the book were disturbing and strange and you can't look away. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. You stare and feel dirty for staring but you just can't. Look. Away. Great book!

Now I'm reading Nightwatch. I've been wanting to read this book forever and I received it and the first sequel (Daywatch) from my friend and upstream swap partner in the Vampire Swap. So far, out of all the swapping I've done, that Vampire Swap has yet to disappoint. It's the best!

Nightwatch is one of the few books ever that I'm glad I watched the movie first. My friend Donna got Nightwatch and Daywatch on DVD and we watched them together. They are a bit confusing but VERY cool! The book is also a bit confusing but very cool! Between the movies and the book, I understand them both better and I'm flying through Nightwatch. I'll read Daywatch next then Dark Tower 5.

Giving the Best of My Love, Ruth!