Annie Knits

Geezers

Since my hip replacement, I'm feeling my age.  I'll turn 50 next summer, and not only has the AARP found me and begun mailing me enticements to join via snail- and email, but somehow the Scooter Store and several assisted living facilities have decided I need their services as well.  It's enough to make my hair turn gray!  Hah.  David's Design Salon and I have that covered, so to speak.  Thank goodness for Shades EQ.

Hubster is older than I am, though, and will blaze the path for me this winter.  And that is as it should be.  

When we saw an ad that Paul Simon will stop here in St. Louis on his next tour, we jumped at the chance for a date night featuring our favorite mid-town restaurant and this concert.  I've bought fun boots for the occasion, even.  Two days ago, the Wall Street Journal featured the tour (that's a link to the WSJ article).  Mr. Simon is garnering a new set of fans with this tour -- he's 70 this year.  

When the $%^& did that happen?!  The last time I watched Scarborough Fair on Youtube, the guy was 28!  Jeez.  And if he's 70, how far behind can I be?

On the bright side, I always have something to contribute when I find my self in the company of an older crowd (which is more often than it used to be it seems).  I think it makes folks feel superior when they're my parents' age and can ask me how I'm fairing with my hip.  Even though I'm doing just great and when I get asked how it's feeling, I say it isn't because it isn't (feeling, that is... most days I just forget I had the replacement done), it still makes them feel the tiniest bit superior to inquire after my health.  I'm fine with that -- it's good karma.  I hope there's a nearly 50-year-old around to feel superior about when I'm 70.  Heck, 80 for that matter.  Which, all of a sudden, doesn't seem quite that preposterous.

Also a positive is that when you're a geezer, you get to sit in the geezer seats at the baseball game. And they're some pretty damn good seats, let me just say that, in spite of the fact that we were surrounded by gray hair and trophy wives.  The guy sitting next to us had on a World Series ring the size of a golf ball and it turns out that he was a personal assistant to Lou Brock.  How cool is that?!

 We made the 14-year-olds we took with us sit in the nosebleed seats behind the first base foul pole on the 300 level and we took the 12th row seats behind the alphabet rows behind 3rd base.  Whatever that means.  (What it means is that Brother-in-Law had a grab at 4 slingshot t-shirts, one of which practically hit him in the numbers for Pete's sake, and didn't catch a one.)

And, at nearly 50, lusting after Yadier Molina - who had a spectacular game last night and was responsible for 3 of our 7 runs (this is a better link than the last one, I think, and goes to the Cardinals website) - is considered quaint.  In fact, Hubster will even make sure I'm paying attention when he comes up to bat.  I yelled myself hoarse.  Gosh, is that catcher cute!  

I was only disappointed that our rally towels didn't have the Rally Squirrel on them.  

Visual Irony

I have a few examples of visual irony today.  Too bad I couldn't think of some catchy, alliterative title having to do with Wednesday.  Oh well.

During school drop off, I noticed that the extended cab Cadillac Escalade EXT in front of me was plastered with anti-abortion stickers and had "4 Babys" [sic] as a personalized license plate.  The platinum blonde middle aged mother driving the thing was otherwise unremarkable.  I thought to myself that while it is admirable that she is very concerned about the unborn, it is too bad that she's not nearly as concerned about the planet on which they are supposed to live.

And, after dropping off Dear Son at his soccer practice at a field located in a small ethnic neighborhood near our house, I noticed a huge McMansion which had been built on three lots, necessitating the removal of the smaller brick homes that had been there.  It filled the entire triple lot, as city houses are allowed to do, except for the rather steeply inclined front lawn.  It is likely a lovely new home, but it is out of place amongst the smaller, more modest homes on the block.  Whatever,... not my call.  In front of the home, however, was a bright blue recycling bin full of soda cans and plastic water bottles.  Next to the bright blue bin was a paper grocery sack full of neatly stacked newspapers.  Probably 9 pounds of recycled material.  You know?  I'd probably rather they had recycled a 62 ton home or three (a number gleaned from an estimate in the Journal of Light Construction) as opposed to assiduously recycling their newspapers.  Just saying.

Aren't I crotchety?  Maybe that woman has 4 children and 6 foster children and has to have a huge SUV to cart them all around in, right?  And maybe the homes knocked down were mold and termite ridden and full of rats and causing the neighborhood all kinds of problems and the neighbors are glad they've been replaced with a lovely new home.  What do I know?

p.s. -- the shetland spins like a dream...

 

And there is stealth knitting...

 
 

Paging Dr.Dream Analysis...

So this morning, the dogs got up at 3:44 a.m. and absolutely had to go outside.  Insistently.  And when big dogs are insistent about going outside, I take them outside, no matter the time.  Big dogs, you know, have big accidents.

Anyway.  Back in the house and abed by 4, I despaired of falling asleep again, but I did.  And had a dream.  

I was back at the high school at which I taught English for 10 years and I was substituting for the college credit teacher who was taking some kind of leave.  Quite a stickler she was and there were 5 preps, but I'd begun the first class, game as a pebble, when an earthquake struck and we had to hunker down in the hall for the rest of the day.  Easy enough.  The only problem was attendance because since she hadn't been there, the grade book had other kids' names in it.  However, there were, of course, helpful kiddos and I got it all straightened out, but not in alphabetical order, which I would have to remedy.

When I got home, the neighbor's four young boys were playing with my kids in our living room.  There were little truckle beds set up around the edge of the sofa and they had settled in quite nicely.  I wondered aloud to the oldest what he and his brothers were doing there, and he told me that they were staying for the week while his mom and dad went to Barcelona.

Hmm.  I looked out the front window, and sure enough, at the end of their driveway was a mountain of luggage and their mother piling the luggage and herself into a taxi.  I hurried out to ask her what was happening and she told me that her husband had indeed purchased a week long cruise to Barcelona (??) for their 10th anniversary and would I just look after the boys.  All 4 of them.  Aged 11, 9, 5, and 3.  

Fine, I told her, but I have to work this week teaching school and we'll have to find someone to watch them during the day.  She gave me a slip of paper with a friend's number on it through the window of the cab as it drove off.  In I went and fixed macaroni and cheese.

The next day, I taught the advanced high schoolers about Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and the Industrial Revolution.  It was a very detailed lesson with journal questions (Just because you can accomplish something, should you do it?) and a brainstorming session on the white board.  No earthquakes.

I didn't awake in a cold sweat ... I awoke wanting to go and substitute teach some literature lessons.  Which I apparently miss.  I also had in my head to fix a more nourishing dinner than mac and cheese.  Maybe some kind of roast.

Husband thinks that the dream means that I don't think I'm accomplishing enough in my life and I should decide on some additional activity to which to apply myself.  Like teaching again or taking classes.  Hmm.  Maybe.

Maybe my subconscious mind wishes for more children (fat chance!).  Maybe it wants to teach English again.  

Maybe the duck confit pasta with kalamata olives and tomatoes that I had for dinner last night at the Shaved Duck was too rich after all.  

If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say...

Don't say anything at all.  Right.  We've heard it a million times.  And it's good advice.  Especially for a a blogger.

That said...

The next person who says to me, after I COMMISERATE with her about something by saying, "Oh, I'm so sorry ..." , "Why should you be sorry?  It's not your fault!" is gonna get a pop in the schnoz.  Of course it's not my fault.  I should have said what I meant which is that I'm sorry this or that has happened to you.  Why must you, when I am being NICE to you, slap me around?  Humph.  

And the next teenager who leaves a piece of trash, like a used up water bottle (why the heck are you drinking those in the house where we have RUNNING water anyway???) or the wrapper of a power bar (again, I say, those are for convenience when we are out!!!) on my floor is gonna get that piece of trash put where the sun don't shine...

And the next dog that jumps up on my newly painted window trim to bark at a squirrel, fer Chrissakes!, is gonna get a piece of my mind!

And I'm finished with the green sweater and it mostly fits.  Except I have to weave in all the ends because there were at least two knots in each skein of that Rowan Summer Tweed, but that's not the problem.  I lack the force of will to decide on my next project, which I could start TODAY if I had a lick of sense and not having a project waiting in the wings is just plain stupid.  Well, I have sock and blanket and lace projects, but GAH.  Having no sweater project gives me sweaty armpits.  (I'm not counting the silly pink baby sweater for nobody, Smartypants.)

And the next piece of freakin' technology that gives me an error message or fails to boot up as it should is gonna get TOSSED ACROSS THE ROOM!

AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ABOUT ST. LOUIS DRIVERS!!  If I don't get KILLED on the way to or from my errands today, it will be a miracle.

Ahem.

Awww.  Husband just brought in the freshly brewed pot of coffee that he himself prepared, and topped off my cup.  All better.

He Called Me Crabby

Husband hadn't been home 12 hours before the words came out of his mouth.  Hmph.

We were sitting at the kitchen table discussing happenings in the neighborhood over the past week and a half (since I'd seen him last...) and the kids and, you know, stuff.  I was rambling as usual, and he was reading the paper and making appropriate, agreeable noises when called for.  I suppose I thought he wasn't quite listening, but he was.  Hmph again.

So how about it... a little bit f a weekend rant.  You know, to get it out of my system so hupster doesn't have to bear the brunt.

I love it when people honk at each other during a traffic jam.  Like last Monday when I was trying to hurry home from a dr. appointment because Rachel was waiting for me there watching soccer with Dear Son and there was a horrific accident that closed the highway going both ways and we were all at a dead standstill and I was almost out of gas and several people were having a way worse day than any of us were?  The very handsome guy driving some kind of expensive black sedan banged his palm on his steering wheel and laid on his horn for like 6 seconds after several firetrucks and ambulances squeezed past us all.  Yeah, I love it when that happens.

Or when the Wall Street Journal publishes a story (above the fold in the weekend journal section) about how a study has been done that proves that raising children can suck the energy and happiness out of their parents but parenting them well is often worth the trouble.  Someone paid for that study?  Compare apples to oranges much? Do we have to quantify every aphoristic bit of age old wisdom?  Raising children is hard work but well worth the effort.  Not enough anecdotal evidence around to just leave that one to the rest of us?

The oil spill... I had a conversation with a customer yesterday about her friends canceling vacations to the Gulf of Mexico and about how they were having a hard time getting their deposits back from a vacation spot that is raking oil globs off of its beach.  Gawd, I'm just sick.  These vacation spots will not be such again for a long, long time.  The owners won't be able to sell.  I'm sure that that owner doesn't even have the money to send back to this local family.  And BP says quantifying the cost is difficult... well, that $760 is an easy total for me.  BP and all the oil companies have made hay for years using obviously (in hind sight, but not really) dodgy, even dangerous deep sea methods.  Seems their run of luck has run out.  I think they should have to buy the ruined coast land and hire folks to clean it up for the years to come until it's fit for habitation again.  Seems only fair.  When my kids spill apple juice, and I hate it when they spill apple juice, I don't just let them wipe it up with paper towels... they have to get out the mop and mop up the sticky stuff.  Sometimes two and three times.  That's what you risk when you drink apple juice.  

My leg is tons better.  Good news one might think.  Not in my present state... Perhaps I could have withstood the trip to France to pick up Dear Daughter after her sojourn after all.  I'm sorely disappointed.  

I even had a crabby dream last night.  Serves me right.  And since Bridgett is sharing her anxiety dreams, I'll share mine.  

So I'm home alone and taking care of Dear Godson, who, it turns out is not a baby after all, but an animatronic child with artificial intelligence.  Our friends and I love him as if he's alive and we treat him as such.  The problem is that I have to go to Walmart for some groceries and while I'm there, I get blurry vision.  I pull some kind of worm from my tear duct and the vision specialists at Walmart tell me that if I shine a light in my eyes they can tell what kind of medicine I need to get rid of the worms.  I have to take animatronic Godson to find and buy a flashlight at Walmart and in doing so, offend some Deliverance types in the fishing isle and they start stalking us.  

It was a very scary and unsettling dream, evinced by the fact that I still remember it this afternoon.  I tried to wake myself several times even.  Near as I can tell it was prompted by the following:

• We watched Dear Godson a few evenings ago.
• My eyes itch terribly from something that's flowering now -- plaintain maybe?
• I've been reading the People of Walmart blog too much lately -- it's a creepy time suck.

I have to say that I'm afraid to take a nap today.  Even if hubster thinks it would improve my disposition.

Break Out the Cigars

The Annie Knits family has a baby in the house.  Psych.

 

This, blog friends, is Dear Daughter's Parenting Class baby, Stirling.  With an 'i'.  

Stirling is Dear Daughter's responsibility for six days.  24 hours a day.  

He does many of the things a 2 month old baby does.  He needs his diapers changed often.  A chip in his anatomically correct nether regions tells his micro processor whether she's changed his chip imbedded diaper for another one.  Once new pants are installed, he coos contentedly.

He eats about every 2 hours -- she's chosen to breast feed.  I'll give you a moment to clean the coffee off of your keyboard.  Ahem.  That square clipped to his chest?  She clips it to hers and he ... well ... feeds.  There's also some kind of attitude measuring do-dad that records whether she's holding him right or if she's cheating and just sticking that thing on his face.  There is a lot of fussing if he's not held in the correct attitude.  FYI, if you want to freak your husband out completely, have your 16 year old daughter breast feed her plastic baby at the dinner table.  It's a sure thing.

After Stirling eats, he has to burp.  Sometimes he burps right away, sometimes it takes awhile.  Dear Daughter is very patient with him.

Sometimes Stirling just fusses.  Like yesterday at 5 p.m. he just fussed for half an hour.  He didn't want food (no contented sucking at the blue square) and his diaper wasn't in need of a change (no cooing when we swapped them out).  He didn't burp either.  He just fussed.  Sound familiar?

Stirling doesn't sleep through the night yet either.  I heard him fuss last night at about 1:40 and again at about 6:00 a.m.  Dear Daughter said she fed, changed, and burped him and that he stayed up about 20 minutes each time.  That's a pretty good baby.  I remember mine would want to play in the middle of the night after they'd eaten.

Anyhoo, she's upstairs now taking a shower.  She asked if she should take him in the bathroom with her because what would happen if he cried and she couldn't hear him.  I told her that I'd taken showers with her in the bathroom at that age when her dad was traveling.  See, if it takes her more than two minutes to respond to him, when the teacher downloads his activity for the week, it'll show up and affect her Parenting grade.  

I'm seriously glad that my babies didn't come with microprocessors that recorded my level of attentiveness to them.  Yikes.

As an aside, I laughed until I cried and had hiccups when she fed him at the table last night.  Then I went and got my camera and took a bunch of pictures.  To which Dear Husband archly responded, "You know, we are not all here for your amusement."  

Could have fooled me.

 

Here's the giant pile of cables next to my knitting chair.  I'm 6 inches from finishing the back of Portland.  Still loving it.  And the Aran Wrap Cardigan of Doom?  6 20-minute rows from finishing that sucker too.  Since I have to ice my lower back several times a day to reduce the inflammation there, I'll certainly be done with both soon.  Before the Olympics are done?  No Way.

Finally, I watched a little Curling with Dear Husband who's home with a cold today.  Donald Sutherland was in the audience.  He looked about as glazed over as I felt.  I have composed an email to NBC requesting that there be subtitles translating future curling commentary.  Because, at this even end, my rock is not even in the house and my pool shot swept wide.  Whatever.

Ruminations That Devolve into Rants... As Usual

I'm ruminating again.  

• I've had a new experience.  We've all heard of Tourette's Syndrome, I'm sure, and I've seen it on Oprah or some such show, but until yesterday, I hadn't experienced it first hand.  It's a devastating condition.  One of the receptionists at the singularlyunpleasantdoctor office had what I assume was Tourette's as she let loose eeps and such as well as a great deal of truly foul language along the lines of n*gger and c*cks*cker seemingly directed at a black woman receptionist and a male nurse delivering film (well, certainly not really, but uttered in conversation with same) ...  Kudos to the office for hiring her.  I guess, since it's an osteopathic practice and I was the youngest patient there by at least 20 years, they get very few kids and the adults among us can handle the nature of the outbursts.  Kudos to her too.  I'd be curled up in a ball I think.  The experience put my little hip thing in perspective.  
• Adolphus Busch IV is quoted at the top of our illustrious print newspaper's sports section today.  He's lambasting Mark McGuire's lapse in judgment.  You know, the one on which the statute of limitations for prosecution has run out?  Yes, St. Louis, a neer-do-well of our former first family has something stupid to say about something irrelevant.  Shout it from the mountaintops!  I swear to God, I'm canceling my subscription.
• And along these lines, Al Sharpton visited our fair city last week for the MLK festivities and spoke at a nearby traditionally black college.  The speech was covered breathlessly by the same print newspaper.  It was said that Mr. Sharpton achieved a cadence reminiscent of a Sunday sermon.  Really?  And that his voice climbed as he chided the black population of St. Louis for abandoning the city and moving to Mc Mansions in the county and sending it's kids to private schools and letting them listen to loud music.  What the coverage didn't report was the part where Sharpton intoned his regret at losing his political relevance.  No, wait.  I made that up.  God forbid people should move to good neighborhoods and have normal teens. Shame on them for forgetting that Al Sharpton needs a raison d'etre and they're it!  Gawd.
• The fog and rain and drear is slated to remain in St. Louis for at least the foreseeable future... the clouds thinned somewhat this afternoon, but not really.
• We've got more construction going on Chez Annie.  The kid's bedrooms have been shuffled about and Dear Husband has claimed one for his Man Cave.  We've painted it medium khaki, installed manly window treatments (an oxymoron if I ever saw one ...) and we're in the process of having bookshelves built to house our prodigious collection of books.  He just poked his head out and asked if I wanted to house any of my collections (pottery, milk glass, blown glass) on his new shelves.  I gave him the answer he wanted.  "No, honey, you choose what goes on those shelves, I've put my stuff all over the rest of the house."  He gets credit for asking.

Pics of at least one finished sleeve tomorrow.  I hope.  

Ho Hum

That is what you say on your blog when you're too busy to have any interesting thoughts about which to blog.

Ah me.  The house is cleanish.  The Halloween decorations are on the steps ready to go up and replace the Christmas stuff in the closet.  Laundry's mostly put away.  Dinner's in the crock pot.  Hum drum, I tell you. 

I can't find my camera charging cord, so no pictures.  The Hemlock Ring blanket is nearly 600 stitches around and 6 rows from what I am going to call  finished.  Turns out it's recipient has been checking the blog to see how I'm doing, so I shouldn't post pics of it anyway.  Maybe on Ravelry.  I'll link you to it when I get around to it. 

What's in the crockpot, you ask?  The standard pulled pork.  3 pork tenderloins, 1 bottle of Newman's Own Balsamic Dressing.  10 hours on low.   Yum.

I think I'll throw out some controversial statements, in no particular order, and see if I can get you to bite.  Howzat?

• Moon Sand, while a wonderful time filler for sick kids, ought to be put on some recall list.  It's just too messy.  Or it should come with a warning. 
• I hate mice.   In general and specifically the one that has found a place to live under my corner kitchen counter.  I think I will hate even more though a dead mouse on a trap.  Which by the way is a very effective dog catcher -- the sticky thing has caught Monte twice.  He is not the sharpest crayon in the box.  Cutest, but not sharpest. 
• Dressing up like the Jamaican Bobsledders or Tiger Woods or even Al Sharpton for Halloween is not "donning blackface" as my local paper called it no fewer than 9 times in a recent article.  Painting your face black with a white O for lips and singing like a black minstrel is "donning blackface".  The first bit is inflammatory and misleading and simply historically incorrect -- using the term under those circumstances smudges it's sharply and deeply offensive nature.  Which I think might be just the exact opposite effect from the one the esteemed editorial department was expecting.
• Helping people learn to knit is super rewarding.  It's my absolute favorite thing to do.  Except that I do it so much that I've been missing the Wednesday Night Knittsters at Knitorious pretty consistently.  Which is a bummer.  I miss my peeps. 
• Meeting random people who then tell me that they read my blog is disconcerting.  Which is counterintuitive.  I publish this thing so that people will read it right?  Then why do I get a pit in my stomach when unexpected people do?  It actually has had a dampening effect on my writing.  No, silly, not soggy writing, less writing.  And no, I'm not talking about you.
• Spinning is a fascinating, compulsive, time sucking black hole of a hobby.  I've got about 800 yards of fall colored 2-ply yarn and about a 3rd of the roving yet to spin.  What do you think, Deborah, can I get a ribwarmer out of that?  (You should see Deborah's Ribwarmer... simply smashing.)  And some singles of Dyeabolical superwash. Rachel will know the colorway.  To ply or not to ply.
• I'm raw feeding my dogs -- at least partially.  And Big Dog's allergies are disappearing.  Even with no hard freezes yet.  But raw feeding is yucky.  You need one of these and lots of soapy water to mop the floor around the food bowls after each meal.  At least I no longer have a toddler around the house. 
• A funny thing to do is to take the Thanksgiving turkey carcasses and make a stock out of them (I feel so virtuous -- I always say I'm going to do this and never quite get around to it) and store some of it in what is usually the lemonade pitcher.  I didn't quite have the heart to let Dear Son actually pour a glass and take a swig of it, but nearly.   'Cause that would have been hilarious.  I have a dark side.
• I got a sinking feeling in my stomach when the Irish Composer said, during a recent practice, "Next year, when you do this, blah blah blah..."  Next year?  God, don't talk to me again about Irish Gaelic anything until July, 'k?  I didn't even hear what she said after "next year".   Love, love, love this challenging thing I'm doing, but I'm bonkers tired of it right now.  I wake up with "Taw esagawn ina lee, es kuhloo sa wanshayre twee" running around in my head.  Oh, pipe down, that's the phonetic pronunciation.  I don't even have the keys on my keyboard to write what it really looks like...
• 5th grade math is way over my head.  Or at least it's way too fiddly for me -- and I really don't have the patience for it between 4 and 6 in the evening.  All those factors and long division.  Yeeeuuuccckkk!

Well.  That's enough of that.  The paper should be here by now and I'm off to get jerked around by their editorial staff once again.  It'll be fun.  Promise.