Cure for the Bah-Humbugs

I've found it. The cure for the 'Bah-Humbugs'!

Just put this in and you can't help but smile. (Whether the smile is humour or recollection, it doesn't really matter, does it?)

Especially Track 7...makes me smile just thinking about it.

:)

On the first day of Christmas...

This is great! You need to watch it a couple of times to catch everything.



PS: Yes, see, I'm still here. Just not feeling like posting much lately. Only rants or long, rambling posts about grief seem to come out right now, so I'm just being quiet instead.

I'm on Ravelry!

To non-yarny people, this will make no sense whatsoever. But to anyone who reads knitting or crochet blogs, Ravelry is the new, cool thing! It's still in Beta, so only accessible to people with accounts, but soon it will be live and viewable by everyone.

I tried to resist, but it really is the greatest resource for yarny types!!! :D

She's gone

On Thursday, Aug 16, my mother-in-law quietly passed away. She's been my "other mom" for 12 years.

It's hard to believe it's been almost a week already. For the most part, we're still in the stunned stage, with moments of reality stabbing us unexpectedly.

On Sunday, her youngest son is getting married. On Monday, we have her funeral. These two events are now entwined. The joy and the sorrow.

When I'm stressed, I create.

Okay, when I'm relaxed, I like to create too. But that has nothing to do with my point. So, whatever.

During the first half-and-a-bit of the year, I've managed to finish quite a few projects. (We won't talk about the huge number of ones I've started.) Some of them are in my project flickr set. Most, I still need to take pictures of.

4 pairs of socks

4 baby blankets

1 pair of baby booties

2 dishcloths

2 summer tops for me

1 summer dress for monkey-girl

2 flowergirl dresses

2 bridesmaid dresses

That's pretty impressive for me. There may even be a couple more things that I've forgotten.

In the queue? Well, I don't know if I should go there...

In progress (meaning I've actually worked on them in the last month or so):

* Cardigan for monkey-girl

* Socks for TKHubband

* Socks for Monkey-girl

* Socks for my Mom

* Shawl for me (I'd like to finish this by TKHubband's brother's wedding in a week and a half...I'm not sure if I'm deluded about this being possible)

* 2 felted bags

And the rest...well, we'll just pretend they don't exist right now. ;)

Oh, and why am I stressed? This is why. There isn't much time left.

Strange thing about smaller cities

Okay, here's some of that Random Rambling that I haven't done enough of lately. :)

Has anyone else noticed this?

In smaller cities, the big chain stores are nice. In bigger cities, the big chain stores aren't.

Now, I live in Canada, so when I say "bigger cities", I mean one, like mine, that has around 400,000 people. When I say smaller cities, I mean one that has around 20,000 people.

I've been to Z------- in a few smaller cities and they have been clean, tidy, well-stocked and friendly. Ours is, well, not dirty, but I just don't go there very often because I can't find what I'm looking for. What I want is either not stocked or all gone already. There are lots of items out of place or on the floor. Not what I would call a good impression.

In our larger centers, we have S----S----, in the smaller centers it's E----F----. Basically the same chain, with the same stock and sales, etc. All the E----F---- I have been to have been nice. Again, clean, tidy, well-stocked and friendly. The S----S----- are chaos.

Even W--M--- shows this disparity.

It is frustrating to go into the 'same' store in another smaller city and find all those things that I've been looking for locally and just can't find. I've said for a few years that "I have to go to small towns to go shopping. They just have better stores and better stuff."

Is it our population demographic? Do all the slobs live here?
Is it an image issue? In larger centers a job at the big chain is looked down at, whereas in the smaller centers, it is considered a good job.
Is it a trickle-down management attitude? Profit, profit, profit vs customer care.
Is it not enough staff to match the number of customers in the bigger centers?
Is it that I have a small-city mentality and I like the stuff stocked in the smaller centers that they never seem to have in the bigger ones?
Or is it that everyone else likes them too and they sell them all before I get there?
Is it just my city? Or, more accurately, the stores' locations in this city. We live in a nice, established neighbourhood that is adjacent to a less nice area. Can the store staff just not keep up?

I will have to make the effort to drive to the farther stores here to see how they are...maybe I'll find a gem or two.

Comic Timing

Monkey-boy is developing quite the sense of humour.

Example #1
There is a scene in Ice Age 2 where the sloth sings, "Hey! Hey! What's that sound, all of the mammoths are in the ground", then Manny tells the sloth he's going to sit on him until he's dead (or something like that). The sloth then says, "Somebody doesn't appreciate the classics." After watching the movie, monkey-girl repeatedly quoted the scene. Repeatedly. Over and over. It was making me crazy. I asked her to stop. She kept going. I asked her again. She kept going. I told her to stop. (I'm very patient.) She tried, but just couldn't. She kept going. I (kind of) lost it. I demanded she stop or suffer some dire consequence. She stopped.
Monkey-boy said in a quiet voice, "Somebody doesn't appreciate the classics."



Example #2
After trying to explain rust to the kids, I asked them "Does that make sense?"
They responded, "No."
Then monkey-boy says, "It doesn't make dollars either."


He's 5.

The days go flying by...

They really do.

Here we are at the end of May, and it seems we just had spring break. The kids will be done school in 4 weeks and then it will be summer. Yikes.

DMIL (dear Mother-in-law) is still in the hospital and has good and bad days. The cancer seems to be receding (Yay!) but she's still very sick. We hope she'll be able to go home in a few weeks (she's been in hospital for almost 2 months now).

I haven't been taking many pictures lately, so here's one from last summer, just for colour. :)

I feel better now

Wow. Writing that last post really made me feel better. :)

I think the word is catharsis.

Anyways, now that I got that out of my system, I am once again functioning normally.

Well, normal for me.

I have so much to post. Really, I do. Lots of craft stuff that I've finished...in the last four months. Ouch. I'd better get going on that. And the monkey-children have been their cute selves throughout: "Mom. Mom. Mom. See my cute look? See? Aren't I cu-u-u-ute?"

I have been 'hermitting' myself

Is that even a word? Hermitting? Making a hermit of oneself? Whatever. When I am stressed, I...well, hide, I guess.

My dear mother-in-law is battling cancer. This struck pretty much out of the blue. A year ago, she was fine. Now...not so much.

I feel very helpless. I do what I can, but I feel I'm failing her somehow. I want to pass on valuable information to the family, but I don't really have anything new to pass on. I want to ask intelligent questions to maybe help us understand what her 'health care team' are doing to help her, but I don't know what to ask.

I want to rant against the health care system. Surely they could be doing better. Surely if only they were doing something better, she would get better. But realistically, they are the trained ones. I am not trained in medicine, or cancer. I have to believe they know at least a little more than I do.

She's very optimistic. Very hopeful. Planning for the summer at home. I don't even know if she'll be going home. I have to believe, to have hope...but I am afraid.

Wonky thing about me

I hate emptying the dishwasher. I put it off longer and longer, and work around it, and avoid unloading the clean dishes into their waiting cupboards.

I LOVE loading the dirty dishes into the dishwasher. Once it's empty I am so happy to get all those messy things off my counter and into the dishwasher!

If only I could transfer just some of those good feelings to the first step...

Teapot Troubles

I am a tea drinker. I don't really drink coffee at all (unless I'm looking for some caffeine). I usually make 2 pots a day; one for breakfast and one for lunch. Each pot gives me 2 large mugs of tea.

Over the last three months I've broken three teapots.

The first was a cute chinese-style pot TKHubband got for me. This was my everyday pot because it was the perfect size, made yummy tea and had a strainer that fit in the top so I could easily use loose tea instead of bags. I think I dropped something on it.

The second was a tall indigo-coloured pot with hand-painted snowflakes on it. I usually used this one when we had company. I could make a BIG pot of chai in it. The handle broke off while I was washing it and it fell into the sink, breaking the spout off and into two pieces.

The third was a very pretty white teapot with blue flowers on it. I got it at our T&T Supermarket. It's shaped like what I consider a traditional victorian teapot. Yesterday, it was sitting on the edge of the sink and I brushed against it and it fell into the sink chipping the top edge and cracking it down the side (I didn't notice the crack until this morning).

I've had all of these for a while, but the rate I'm destroying them has me a little worried. I still have three more, but only one is the right size for everyday. Of course, it's an enamel Corning Ware one, so it shouldn't break as easily as the rest. It's got the blue cornflowers on it. TKHubband's Gramma G bought it for me because I loved hers so much. One of the others is a very cute tea-for-one set (with the cup on the bottom and the pot nesting inside it). It's not really a very practical pot, but it's very pretty and cute. My last one is another BIG pot shaped like a bee hive with little bees attached to it.

I think I'll have to go teapot shopping. I have seen a really nice stainless insulated one which is tempting, but I also really like porcelain ones. Then again, I saw a snazzy glass one. (Yeah, I wonder how long that would last, the rate I'm going!)

Yawn. Stretch.

Hello again!

I know it's been a while...I decided to ease slowly into the new year...yeah, that's right. ;)

Now that I've upgraded my Blogger and settled into the routine of school again, I hope to post regularly. I have lots of stuff to upload and it's going to take me a while, but I'll give it a shot.

Ciao for now.