Is it naptime yet?

Today is a day for Getting Things Done.

After some delightful snuggle time in bed with the baby girl, we got up and got busy. So far today, I have:

- Started two quarts of honey infusing with vanilla beans.
- Loaded and ran the dishwasher.
- Made a double batch of whole-wheat pumpkin pancakes and some bacon for breakfast. (The extra pancakes will be quick breakfasts to send to daycare, so that counts as extra productive.)
- Washed, dried, folded, and put away all of the baby's clothes, including the huge bag of new-to-us stuff we got from my sister. It's official: The baby owns more clothes than I do. (This is probably actually not true.)
- Washed and dried the towels and am in the middle of washing a load of undies so I can stop wearing those awful backup laundry-week pairs I found shoved in the back of my drawer.
- Cleaned up the kitchen from breakfast, including unloading the clean dishes and reloading the dishwasher.
- Cut up and cooked a buttercup squash for the baby's lunches this week. (Note to self for next time: Jesus, this was a pain to try to peel, so next time cook it with the skin on and cut that shit off afterwards.)

I'm waiting for the hot water heater to recover from the laundry, then I'm going to hop in the shower. After that, we're meeting my folks and my brother and his wife and daughter at a local pumpkin farm to pick out pumpkins and pet some goats and be autumnal. The baby's wearing her new sweater and it will be perfect. Might even make some spiced cider to bring with us. Damn, today's cool, but it's only 12:30 and I'm already beat!

The worker called me yesterday to tell me two interesting things:
1. The baby's mom has expressed an interest in starting visits again, for the first time since March. The worker is not confident in the mom's ability to treat herself effectively from the disgusting skin condition (her living situation makes it especially challenging right now) so visits won't happen until the worker is satisfied on that count, but she wanted us to be prepared.
2. The worker couldn't give me any details at all, but there is something going on with the dad that might preclude our baby going to him. Like maybe ever. But whatever it is, it's the early stages of being looked into, so it might turn out to be nothing. Oh, you know, because this isn't a huge deal that made me immediately jump to OH MY GOD WE MIGHT ACTUALLY GET TO KEEP HER. Trying really hard to be patient and to not ask the worker questions she's not allowed to answer. I'm still telling myself it's most likely she won't stay with us long-term, because that is easier on my psyche.

I hope your autumn weekends are as delightful as ours!

Visit and WIC and Olympics

On Wednesday, the worker called me and asked if I was sitting down. Naturally, I assumed that something terrible had happened, which was only partly true: The baby's dad had called her to tell her he wanted a visit. He assured her that he had the empty tubes to prove he'd been treated and that he had treated his house and everything.

Complication: I shouldn't use the treatment cream now, because I'm pregnant. So if the baby gets reinfected, we all get reinfected and my unborn baby is at risk. This is not okay. The worker went through the entire checklist with the dad twice, and he solemnly assured her that he had done everything he needed to do. The worker has had it independently confirmed that his house has been at least minimally cleaned, because it looks like he's getting custody of his other two kids, but the worker is required to take his word for it. Ugh. So she had to let the visit happen. Naturally, since the baby hasn't seen him since March, she had no clue who he was and cried so hard she barfed up half of her bottle, so that's fun to hear. Our solution for dealing with reinfection is that Andy has been 100% in charge of the baby's care since Wednesday. This has sucked a little for all of us, because I can't even snuggle my baby, and because I'm pretty sure Andy thinks it's somehow way more work when he does it than when I do it, and because the baby's fussing for me a lot. Cool. If she makes it till tomorrow without any symptoms of a reinfection, we'll say she's okay, but I don't want to take a chance.

Also, this is the second thing the dad's showed up for this month, which is kind of amazing. The worker said he seemed sort of intent on "getting all [his] kids" and is still talking about moving to a very small suburban town. The worker did remind me, however, that since the dad hasn't been around we have no idea how long he's been "planning" this move, and that he could have been talking about this since February, in which case yeah right it's probably not real. I have a really hard time not jumping to conclusions, of course, so I'm worried that this dude who has never raised a baby and who lives with his mom is suddenly going to be living in the middle of nowhere with no support system and his older kids (both of whom I've been told are a handful) and a baby who doesn't know him, and that he'll be too proud to ask for help.

On a positive note: We changed WIC offices and it was like a different world. The people we dealt with were efficient and helpful and made me an appointment two months out instead of in three weeks like the old place always tried to do. They even offered to cancel my standing appointment with the old place. By the time we were done, I had had them switch me in the computer to make their office my main one and have my records transferred. They also told me that our old office managed to lose their own blueprints during their recent remodel, so that was fun.

So now it's Friday and the Olympics start today and I'm totally excited, unironically. I'm planning to watch as much as I can and to knit the whole time. My goal is actually to make a dent in the sweater I started for my mom for Christmas, and to finish the little lovey blanket I'm knitting for my three-month-old niece. We'll see how that goes with a seven-month-old who has recently discovered that she's self-propelled.

Foster parents: how do you deal with visits? Are they rough for you, or are you used to them? Non-foster-parents: Are you geeking out about the Olympics? Any favorites?

Grandma and doctor and rolling and baby shower

1. On Friday the baby had her first visit with her grandma, who will likely be the person the baby ends up with. We were very glad that they had a visit, as the grandma hasn't seen the baby in two months and we want the baby to be comfortable with her if she has to live there! We wrote the grandma a note telling her we were so happy about the visit and how awesome the baby was, and not to be offended if the baby fussed a lot because she's very used to be being held mostly by me and Andy, and that we'd love to hear how the visit went if she wanted to write back. And she did write back! She started by thanking us for taking such good care of the baby (which is very gratifying to hear, for real), and that the baby "wasn't feeling well" and had spit up most of the bottle so she was probably hungry. I'm assuming that meant that the baby did indeed fuss a lot and was worked up when they fed her and then spit it up. The Friday visit with the grandma (and the baby's brother) should become a regular thing, so we're hopeful that the baby gets used to her after a while.

2. We took the baby to the doctor today because she has a cold. If she were my kid, I wouldn't have called about a cold, because seriously, babies get colds, but we want to err on the side of overly cautious. Her cold also coincided with her discovering her ears, so she started pulling on slash holding her ears when she was falling asleep, so I wanted to make sure it wasn't an ear infection. Because she's not my kid, I want to make sure we've always done our due diligence in making sure she's in great shape. The pediatrician reported that she does just have a cold with a mild fever, but her ears look fine, and prescribed Baby Tylenol. She's been fussier at night, which is not fun for me. Andy sleeps through it, but I'm TIRED today.

3. The baby rolled over this weekend! Twice! Like it was no big deal! She's three and a half months old now, so rolling over from front to back is developmentally right on target. I cheered like she had spontaneously started speaking in French. Being a parent is weird.

4. This weekend we had a baby shower for my brother and sister-in-law, who are expecting a baby girl next month. I managed to finish a sweater for the girlie, and wove in the ends at eleven o'clock the night before the shower. By the time my fat baby goddaughter arrived, I had knitted her a blanket and sweater with a matching dress - and I invented the pattern for the dress because I couldn't one that was just right. Turns out having a kid around makes it sort of hard to get knitting done. Oops.

Lovely little evening

I'm still working on perfecting this year's list of goals, which should be up tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm making this soup for dinner, using this awesome immersion blender I got for Christmas, waiting for Andy to get home so we can enjoy the hell out of it. To be honest, I saw "carrot soup" and went, "Meh," but then she said she was inspired by that awesome carrot-ginger dressing you get a Japanese restaurants, and I was back in. But hey, it's not like Smitten Kitchen ever steers me wrong, so I shouldn't have been a hater. Fact: just so you know I'm totally faking it when I act like I have it all together, I knew I had ginger in the fridge so I didn't buy any for the soup. Turns out the ginger left in the fridge was just about petrified it was so old. I couldn't even grate it. Basically, I tried to grate it, then just threw the whole chunk in the soup and decided our soup will be fragranced with ginger instead of full of it. Oh, and the onions I used both had green sprouts on the top, so I chopped the weird parts off and used them anyway. Nice.

I just discovered that Hulu has all of the current season of Parks and Recreation, so I think Andy and I will be hooking his laptop up to the tv and spending the evening on the couch with some dogs and some knitting. I'm still trying to finish my mom's sweater - but I've decided when I'm done I'm going to knit myself a badass hat and scarf set to go with my new winter coat, so I'm feeling more motivated!

How are you spending your first week of the new year?

Doing all the things!

So Andy got free tickets to today's Bills/Dolphins game through work. There are so many awesome things about this:
1. He's never been to a pro football game, but has always wanted to go.
2. The tickets were free.
3. He's a huge Miami fan (but not in such a way that he is an asshole all night if they lose, which was high on the list of attributes that made him marriage-worthy).
4. The first person he thought to ask was my brother, who is a Bills fan. I thought that was sweet.
5. Normally I'd be bummed at spending a full weekend day without Andy (seriously, we just like hanging out), but he's already getting tired of Christmas moves so it's okay that I get full control of the tv all day.

I also have a million-and-one things to get done today, many of which are secret and Andy-related. On the top of that list: I knit him this sweater two Christmases ago. It was my first sweater ever, and I didn't take into account that the pattern doesn't include any ribbing to keep the hem from rolling. Which it does. Enthusiastically. So Andy never wears the sweater, because it ends up sitting just about level with the top of his pants. So today, I'm picking up a bunch of stitches around the edge, and knitting several inches of ribbing. This is the one thing I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to find time to do before Christmas, because when would I have a chunk of several hours without Andy? And then the gods of football smiled upon us, and his sweater will be done today.

After the knitting, I'll be wrapping all of his presents, so he's allowed to go in the library again. Then it's back to knitting, so maybe my mom's sweater will be done by Christmas!

Are you done with Christmas shopping yet?

Today is weird.

A list.

• I had celebrated the return of cooler weather by neglecting to shave my legs for approximately three weeks. Decided to wear a skirt today. Used Andy's beard and mustache trimmer to attack these babies, only to discover halfway through leg one that he had apparently shaved this morning and the thing had almost no charge. Used it anyway, just in slow-motion.
• Had to attend a harassment seminar at work (company-wide thing). Turns out harassment is shitty behavior motivated by a bias against a particular legally protected status: so your boss can be a total dick, but as long as he's a dick to everyone, it's not harassment, typically. 
• A coworker who had been out on medical leave for three months came back to work today. She sits a few desks away from me, so I got to hear EVERY SINGLE CONVERSATION she had with EVERYONE IN THE BUILDING who wanted to welcome her back.
• I had to drive half an hour to get a shot. Little-known fact: I hate getting shots. (I hate having blood taken even more.) I had to get a TB test as part of my physical to become a foster parent, but I forgot the paperwork they needed to fill out which reminded me about the TB test, so I neglected to get one on Thursday with the rest of my physical. SO. You have to have the test "read," so I drove half an hour each way on Thursday, then today, then I'll do it again on Friday. Cool.
• I have Pints and Purls tonight at 7, and I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to try to eat something here before I leave the house in an hour or if I should just order food there.
• I don't know which knitting to bring yet. If Andy's coming with me, I'll work on the sweater my mom requested for Christmas, but if Andy stays home, I'll work on the fancy scarf I'm making him.
• I am still fighting the beginnings of a cold, so I want to go to bed early. Going to a pub to knit and hang out with my friends means it's unlikely this will happen.

Reassure me that I'm not the only sissy chicken baby who hates shots! You can see the goo going into your SKIN! 

In which I come through, sort of.

Andy's younger sister has been dealing with some pretty serious health issues. I mentioned that a while ago. She got better, then got kind of worse, there was an allergic reaction, and she spent several more days in the hospital. She's out now, thankfully, but with instructions to take it easy or else. The "or else" here is "or else you'll end up back in the goddamn hospital, so seriously maybe take some more naps and do nothing strenuous."

I asked her if some more ridiculous books would help her recovery. She decided, hey, they couldn't hurt, right? What followed was this series of texts:

Me: Do you need more trashy novels to help your recovery? I recently discovered a "Christian fiction" section at Wal-Mart. There were bonnets.
SIL: Haha! Couldn't hurt I suppose. Trashy passes the time.
Me: Deal. I was scared to look too closely, but I'll see if I can find anything about the Amish.
SIL: LOL You're too funny
Me: If they don't have Amish stuff, I'll try to find one involving a gruff policeman with a heart of gold, or a female attorney who realizes she's missing out on all life has to offer so she becomes a slut.
SIL: Sounds good.

I popped over to Wal-Mart on my lunch break, and managed to find these two gems:
Abby and the Bachelor Cop, AND Hannah's Journey.

Turns out, romance novels really are that formulaic.

WHICH COMES IN HANDY, AS I'VE HAD A REQUEST THAT I WRITE ONE. Not kidding. Some good friends of ours host art shows in their home, and they're having one at the end of summer entitled "In the Garden." Seeing as how I'm the only one of the group who does not create art (unless you count knitting, which I don't know, maybe counts or something, I'm good at it and all and I AM NOT DEFENSIVE ABOUT MY NON-ARTISTIC NATURE), they suggested that I write something. I can handle a few haiku, maybe knock out a tortured sonnet, but my English degree is the other sort, the kind where you get to discuss shit other people wrote. But a friend of the friend hosting the show has a secret, quite lucrative career writing weird, fetishistic romance novels. We died laughing about how funny it would be for us to write a garden-themed romance short story ("he gently pulled back the petals of her most delicate flower" OH MY GOD IT'S SO EASY), and somehow by the time we left, many beers later, I had been elected the author.

A. Please, for the love of god, help me out with this. Suggest your most ridiculous garden-ish romance novel clichés and phrases. B. Please don't call the foster care people about this. Thanks.

On the needles

Duck feet pattern via

When we were kids, we used to play a game we called "duck feet," wherein we'd take the yellow dishwashing gloves that were kept under the sink and stick our feet in them and clomp around the house quacking. I did not realize until recently that no one else I've ever met has played this game, and people seem to think I'm a little weird. I am pretty sure my mom just let us so she could have five minutes to get some shit done, or whatever.

In an effort to keep my sister's kid from having the same weird kind of childhood, I'm knitting the child some proper duck feet.

But that's not for a little while yet. A good friend who lives around the corner is due with her second kid in mid-April, so I've just started a blanket for that one. Problem is, I freaking hate the yarn and it's so fuzzy it's obscuring the pattern (which I used in a blanket both for the parents and for the big brother, so I'm hoping to stick with it). Ugh.

I also have a simple striped blanket for the Kid's baby started, but not finished. And last week I bought five balls of a cotton-silk blend yarn in a dusty pink that will become a little sundress. I'm excited about this.

Except that the baby shower for the friend due in April, I've just discovered, is this Saturday. Oops. And the kid's shower is a month from tomorrow. Perhaps I've bitten off more than I can knit, if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor.

What are you all working on? Any knitters out there?

Busy, busy, busy.

Gorgeous (and free!) pattern via feministy

I'm in the middle of trying to untangle some really pretty, soft, fluffy, pale grey alpaca yarn so I can start knitting the pattern above. It's a scarf! With leaves! And it's named after a character from Bones! I'm obviously pretty excited to get started, so I wish I had been a teeny bit more effing patient instead of making a giant mess out of winding the yarn from a skein into a ball.

I'm meeting up with my knitterly friends in a bit so we can trek to a new-to-us yarn store, and I'd seriously be ashamed for any legit knitter to see the mess I've made, so I have to go take care of that.

Before we go to the yarn store, Andy and I are taking Rooster to meet a possible new dog friend! The way it works at our pound is that they hold the dog until a certain date, and you can sign up for said dog during the holding period. On the day and time they release him, he goes to the first person on the list who's signed up for him. We signed up for a sweet little Dachshund mix (note to self: if we get this dog, learn to spell Daschshund) but we're third on the list, so we won't know if he's ours till Saturday! It's hard not to get my hopes up. Making sure he and Rooster aren't arch-enemies from birth is an important step, don't you think?

Also, we're accepting suggestions for names for Dog No. 2. I really like "Monster" but am worried about it sounding too close to Rooster. Thoughts?

Have you ever gotten a pet from the pound? Any tips on not making a mess out of winding yarn next time? What would you name my second dog?

On people being weird.

So I was exposed to three different, totally bizarre things today that I want to share with all of you.

1. Sand-pouring ceremonies. Have you seen this shit? I mean, no offense to you if you're totally into this, but I didn't plan to come away from my wedding with a craft-fair piece of clutter.

Apparently, people actually do this.

We had one of those candle-lighting things at our wedding, which was pretty tacky to me, but we had someone important to us get us a candle for it, and it gave us a chance to have Andy's sister sing a really pretty song while we stood around and people stared at us. I guess the sand-pouring thing is only a little bit crazier than the candle thing, at least symbolically, except that I don't really get what the layers of sand are supposed to represent. At least with the candle thing, there's only one flame that represents the two people.

In a somewhat related bit of crazy, I found out my work-friend's friend almost included a broom-jumping ceremony in their pagan wedding thing which also involved sand-pouring. I seriously think that two white folks performing a slave ritual in honor of some goddesses or something would be pretty offensive. But then, I'm kind of an asshole, so whatever.

2. My friend sent me a link to a knitting pattern for a shawl for a chicken. I'm not kidding. The website on which she found it also features updates on what's happening in the lives of the author's Sims characters. With screenshots. It was riveting. I couldn't stop reading about which Sim refused to take out the trash and which one peed herself because she was having too much fun painting. It is 2011. I can't believe the Sims are still a thing.

3. I got a book out of the library on spinning. I know how to park-and-draft, which is basically where everyone starts with a drop spindle, but I need to know more about, like, what to do when my spindle's getting full and how to ply the singles and stuff. (Does any of this make sense to any of you?) Well, the book I got turned out to be part of an awesome series on self-sufficiency. I think the publishers are trying to help people get ready to live in a post-apocalyptic world. Other titles in the series include: Keeping Chickens; Cheesemaking; Beekeeping; and Preserving. I seriously found myself thinking, "I live in the suburbs so I don't have to do any of that." I know there's a big push for local, sustainable agriculture, but I have no desire to start a farm. I like sleeping too much for that shit.

However, I do think that my fiber skills would be quite helpful in a post-apocalyptic society. I'd trade my yarn and hand-knitted goods for some of your chicken eggs, or whatever. I get it.

1. What do you think of sand-pouring ceremonies? Am I just being an asshole, or are they tacky? 2. Do you still play the Sims? Do you blog about it? 3. What skills do you have that would translate well to a post-apocalyptic world? (Answer one, or all three, or whatever! There are no rules in the Land of Awkward!)

Three quick things.

1. I am hosting my knitting club tonight. Actually, we're spinning tonight, which is even more cool and not at all a weird thing for twenty-somethings to be doing. I've spent the last hour getting the house into passable shape. But they'll be here in a little bit and I still have to figure out how to make something appetizing out of half a loaf of stale Italian bread and the contents of my fridge, and I have two huge laundry baskets full of clean underwear sitting in the living room. I might just stick the laundry in the bedroom, which will mean we will root through the baskets every morning until we're out of clean stuff again.

2. Speaking of clean underwear: I bleached a load of whites last week. Today I'm wearing a pair of undies from that load. Got to work this morning, went to the bathroom, sat down to pee, and went, "Who the fuck has been swimming?"

3. I am so mad that Dove stopped making the face lotion I was using. Apparently they don't make any face shit anymore, and I'm having a hard time finding something that works. I have dry/combination/sensitive skin, and basically all the shit that's out there is for fucking oily pizza-faced motherfuckers, apparently, because I've tried like three lotions (which aren't cheap!) and each time I ended up all desert-y, which my face compensates for by pumping out oil like whoa. Do any of you have dry skin? For the love of god, tell me what you use, because this Oil of Olay Complete All Day Moisturizer is full of shit. And I don't care about anti-aging or firming or highlighting or what-the-hell-ever else, I just want some goddamn lotion that doesn't cost $37 an ounce. How the hell does everyone else know what to use on their skin?

How do you clean your house in a hurry? Do you have dry skin? Please share your product reviews, so I can learn from you and be a better person or something.

On making it up as you go

Picture via

I spent last evening knitting with some friends. One of these friends in particular is a fairly ambitious but relatively new knitter. She also is one of the most interesting, dynamic people I've ever met, so it doesn't surprise me that she's not interested in starting with a garter stitch scarf. She knit one of those big enough for a doll, announced that she knew the basics, and demanded to be taught the next step. When I'm not around and she decides she wants to move on, she spends hours on YouTube watching tutorials, trying, ripping out, and trying again. She has decided she needs a pair of wristwarmers, but most of the patterns out there are too advanced for her, so she figured she'd just knit some and figure it out as she went.

WHAT? I totally love this about her. She is fearless. She has just about finished her first wristwarmer, including a somewhat-improvised thumb gusset that she sort of made up as she went along. (For those of you who don't knit or crochet or sew or whatever, thumb gussets are the sort of thing that scare people away from knitting mittens for a long time.)

There are a group of people out there, crafters who don't follow patterns and who feel that trying to follow a pattern restricts one's creativity. Sometimes this results in really bizarre things that you might see while tripping on acid (I'm not even trying to be mean here - Google-search "freeform knitting" and you will see what I mean), but every once in a while you'll find something so stunning that of course it was made up on the spot by a brilliant, inspired mind. That's pretty much happening with my friend's wristwarmers. They're stunning.

I am the kind of knitter who follows a pattern (even if it's one I made up) 96% of the time. I always have an idea what the end result will look like before I even pick up my needles.

This girl is four years my junior, but I want to be like her when I grow up.

Who is inspiring you lately? What lessons are you absorbing?