Always Changing Rearranging

posted in the middle of the night, excuse my mistakes or rambling please =)

This is just SAD!

I'm glad we have an old Corolla laying around in the garage! =) I'm going to suggest that we leave our guzzler parked for a while and start driving the Toyota again. I love that car. I love Toyotas. Now that the kids are mostly in boosters, the Corolla won't feel SO small. Rear facing car seats in that thing were a NIGHTMARE. Something else to rearrange in the days to come.

Rearranging is the name of the game these last few days partly because......I got my push mower! YAAY! Of course, that means I have to put it somewhere, which means I had to clean out the garage. It's been pretty much a disgrace for ages. For the most part things were packed very well, so it didn't look like a death trap or anything, but when I took the stuff out, I couldn't beLIEVE how much crap was in there. (with BOTH cars!) How did we do that? Mostly I think we did it by tossing stuff on top of other stuff on top of the stuff we tossed there the time before...etc etc until it's ridiculous. It was a dirty job, too. I won't go into that too much - suffice it to say there have been mice in and out and a possum (once upon a time).

Things it's surprising will fit in a garage with two cars:

• 1 full size refrigerator
• 1 half size refrigerator
• 1 deep freezer
• 1 giant dog kennel thing
• 1 double stroller
• 1 telescoping triangular two story ladder
• 8 boxes of random stuff off loaded from my husband's work truck that was only going to be there for two weeks (more like 3 years now)
• 5 lawn chairs
• various garden tools, rakes, shovels, hoes and stuff
  
• 7 or 8 tool boxes (some completely empty - why?)
  
• 2 coolers
• 1 small step ladder
• 2 bags of ready mix concrete
• 6-10 flower pots
• 3-4 bags of garden/potting stuff, soil, weed-n-feed, fire ant killer and the like (there's usually a bag of mulch in there, too, but I just used my last one.
• Most of the bricks left over from building the house.
• 4-6 boxes of other random stuff
• 2 boxes of magazines
• There's more, but this is getting old

Oh yeah, I think there was about 3 gallons of dirt. (is that how you measure dirt?) Maybe it should be 1.5 square feet? I don't know, there was a lot of dirt.

It's mostly finished, but I still am not SO sure where the mower is going. LOL That's okay, I'm SO glad I did it. I was in SUCH a mood today, it was just awful. Nervous energy, thinking too much etc. It was the perfect thing to do in that mood. I even built a shelf using random scrap wood, my little hand saw and ALL those bricks. It's not pretty or anything, but it's sturdy, fairly practical and able to be taken apart and rearranged on a whim.


Of course it's full of stuff now, but I didn't take that picture. I like it, because it's a shelf. lol

While moving the bricks I found evidence of other wildlife. The tiniest little eggs I've ever seen. I sorta felt bad for disturbing someones great little place for a nest, because it was a very protected spot. Whatever it is, it's very discreet, I've never seen the layer of these or the babies, that I know of. Oh, that's a penny, for scale. (insert camera rant AGAIN)

blurry, sorry

funky angle action

One of the eggs was a dud, but it was too old to be real evidence, and in my experience, rotten eggs are NOT to be trifled with. (but that's another story, I'll put that together for another day when I need material) I tried to preserve the scene, but my husband unknowingly kicked it aside while moving some large object out of exile in the garage back to the upstairs. I'll probably search the web for tiny eggs in the next day or so and see what they are. The closest guess I have is gecko, because we do have quite a lot of them, but these eggs look too big for those little people, unless the mommas are just much bigger than I think. Not sure. Anyway, I hope they find another good spot. The bricks were stacked just inside the garage door, so they had quick access in and out. OH NO! I'm a wildlife habitat disturber! =) They're probably shaking their little fists at me now, "Why did she clean the garage!? NOOOOOOO!" Maybe I'll take some of the bricks from the backyard and put them back in that spot. Such sweet little eggies.

I'm still riding my bike to the store! 2 more errand things done this weekend, yaay again! I'm thinking of working up my endurance to see how far I can reasonably go. I used to ride my bike all day back when I was a kid. baaaaa

Alright, it's past 2 and I think I'm wound down enough to sleep. These cleaning frenzies, you know, they can really get ya revved up! (two v's together look weird)

Whasssssaaaaaa!?

Yes, I'm aware of how old that is, but it just popped out. These things can't always be controlled, you know. Besides, I was thinking, what's up with you? Here's what's up with me.

About Knitting/Designing

I finally got the design to do what I had in my head. As you may recall, I had it going this way, but it looked weird, and decided to make it go that way. That was better, by a long shot, but it still looked odd because after it went that way, it wasn't long enough to tell it was going that way. So I ripped a second, time (actually I think there were several ripping incidents before I actually got started, because I had to figure out needle sizes and whatnot - you know how it goes) So now, I'm to a certain could be nearly finished stage, but I have to ask my 'boss' a question about what he had in mind or if I'm just supposed to roll with my own odd visions. I have a certain thing in mind, but only a bit of a concept as to how to accomplish it. I think I've finally got it worked out in my head, and I can't find ANY other similar things in my searches, so.... either it's actually my own concept (? yeah RIGHT) or it's just so fiddley that no one else wants to mess with it. (don't ya LOVE it when you have NO idea what I'm talking about?)

At any rate, I'm getting most excellent at charting stuff and reading charts and all that jazz, which until lately seemed like a foreign language. So that's cool. I'm considering making another version of this project with a slightly different chart because the numbers may work out better for the regular knitter (not the one that has to do everything the hardest and most complicated way with prime numbers on accident so that there is no way to divide them in a way that is equal - what WAS I thinking)

Another odd issue I'm having is, that my gauge seems to change every single time I start knitting with this stuff. Either I'm more comfortable, so less stressed and knitting looser, or my hands are now SO strong that I can now knit with whatever in the world I want, and it's not hard anymore. (not that those two things are mutually exclusive or to be compared to each other, but they do seem to be factoring into this equation) The first one I did, drew in a BUNCH, so that it turned out insanely small, the next one I did, was big enough for a rhino and the third one, is just right, but with, like I said before, prime numbers. (DOH!) I think I've been infiltrated by the improbability drive. (Not AGAIN!)

I can't wait until I can share it with the general public, whatever form it may take. (I'm glad I have a truck load of this yarn)


Something Completely Different

But what else have you been up to, since your knitting is clearly all top secret, except for the whisper of a beginning of a sock you showed us and since haven't knit a single stitch more? (I don't know, what have YOU been doing?)

Well, I was over reading Claudia's Blog and she's doing a new project that is also not about knitting except for the fact that knitters are the ones participating. (whatever could THAT be?) Basically, you substitute a car errand for a bike errand. Two stores I frequent are fairly nearby, so I decided to try it, and so far I've been to the store TWICE on my bike. This makes me feel all good because: 1) I love riding my bike 2) It's good exercise - major cardio going on here! woot woot 3) My car is a serious disgrace when it comes to emissions and fuel economy.

Number 3 doesn't bother me SO much because I just don't drive that much. I mean, we've had the car since... 2002 or 2003 and it still barely has any miles on it (compared to the average car of that age) So that's one consolation. However, I'm trying to become more of a green thinker in lots of ways.

I sort of always have been that way, but I really want to challenge myself and my family. We already have Green Mountain Energy - which means all the kilowatts we use come from wind power. I put my eggshells and coffee grounds into my garden. (eggshells are good for blooming plants and coffee grounds are good for stuff in the rose family - like apples and (duh) roses. ha ) I'm seriously considering getting one of those little push reel mower things, since lawn mowers are some of the major offenders when it comes to green house gases (they always tell us to avoid using the lawn mowers on our bad pollution days, anyway, and we get some doozies around here red and purple ozone days when you can just see the gross brown stuff hanging in the air, it's seriously nasty) AND I want to start composting. My family used to do that when I was a teenager and I've always thought it was a good idea. (I mean, why throw banana peels and apple cores into a landfill, when you can turn them back into dirt and fertilize your plants, eh?)

You'll have to excuse me, back when I was an impressionable tween/teen my folks subscribed to "The Mother Earth News" and I got all indoctrinated =) OH yeah, and I had a subscription to "Ranger Rick" which was all about wildlife conservation, so I never had a chance not to be all hippie like and earthy. (minus the narcotics, fortunately, I only ever inhaled second hand weed smoke at concerts by accident) hey, I'm barefoot now and being born in the Summer of '69... well, like I said, no chance not to be this way, lol.

The Other Stuff Occupying My Time

Just when you thought it was safe, there was another subheading.

In the last 6 weeks, we've had Strep 3 times, Bronchitis once, and some other undefined fever
incident and now it feels like I'm coming down with something. (which totally explains why I could NOT wake up this morning - I mean I woke up to get the kids off to school, like always, but then crashed in a heap and experienced delicious REM for another 2 or 3 hours)

This sort of explains why the blogging isn't so frequent.

OH! My BESTEST news of late is.... my oldest will now be enrolled in the same school as my daughter! It's been a while since I mentioned her school, but it's an elementary school that approaches everything from the perspective of art. So, when you learn math and science and everything else, art is worked in some how. It's a whole other environment compared to the other elementary prisons, I mean schools, around here. My oldest has needed this freer environment from day one. It's been SO good for my daughter. They started it the year she started Kindergarten, as sort of an experiment, and since it's all about Fine Arts, that means artistic, more laid back type of teachers, who don't expect you to be miniature adults and always walk the straight line between here and there (I could go off on a serious rant here... but I won't) I needed that environment when I was in grade school. I had the worst worst WORST experience with it. It's like if you happen to have a smidgen of a personality, they just try to stomp it out of you like you are on fire or something. they suck

ANYWAY! He's IN, for at least the next few years. They aren't sure if they are going to be able to do 7-12 like they had planned (OH I hope they do, can you imagine going from the nice relaxed environment, back to that THING? ugh) At any rate, I think it will really really help him not to have those critical beasts looking over his shoulder all the time. (I didn't exactly NOT rant, did I?) They aren't ALL like that, but the lions roaming the halls.... it's like they've already got it in their heads how some students are, and they treat them accordingly. I've sat in the halls and watched them, all sweet and nice to one sort of student and all hateful and screechy to others.

I'm SO relieved! It's been bugging me for some time that I couldn't protect him from that before. If I could have handled home school, I would have done so, but these kids need a better teacher than ME! lol - I mean, more focused. I teach well, I just don't have the organizational skills and all the other things it takes to be a great home school mom/teacher person. I know a really AWESOME one, I wish I could be like that - Granted, she's not pushing FORTY, (omg) either, so that may have something to do with it. It's okay - I can accept my limitations VERY easily. Helps me to sleep late when I wanna.

Anyway, this novella must come to and end, I've been typing for a LONG time, and you deserve a break. This is EXACTLY the sort of blog post I can't read when I'm not in the right mood for it, so I should have mercy on your souls. I haven't even taken any good pictures lately! I'm really slacking, eh? Ah well.

Take care of yourself and I'll catch ya in a few days!