Yarn

I'm in the middle of a Christmas Project that involves sewing with yarn. As I was sewing along last night, I was thinking about my history with yarn.

My mother is a yarn enthusiast. There are caches of yarn all over the house of every conceivable color and texture. And she keeps buying more. There are knitting needles stashed in odd containers in every room. As a child I trailed after her to specialty yarn shops (with eccentric names like the "Loopy Ewe") full of vibrant colors and wonderful textures. She even raised sheep at one point with the idea of dying, spinning, and knitting the wool product. (I remember the sheep being shorn, and some of the wool carded, but I'm not sure much got done with it after that. There were several bags of wool in storage for quite a few years.)

I love yarn. I love the idea of spinning, the aesthetics of a spinning wheel, the idea of dying wool with splashes of different colors. It's comforting and homey. Of course, I don't do anything of those things--I don't even knit. (I have learned to knit at least half a dozen times, but it never quite took.)

My children have no idea of the possibilities of yarn. They don't know that there are yarns available beyond the cheap, horrible brands available at WalMart and Hobby Lobby. When Grandma came to visit last week, we found a yarn store for her full of expensive and wonderful yarns. There were a small group of ladies who were there for a class, or maybe just to work on projects together. They all had that knitter's camaraderie, a sort of comfortable sisterhood that speaks in the language of "knit one, purl 2, cast off." My children were entranced. They wandered around the store, feeling the different yarns and helping with the wool winder. Everything was new and wonderful and beautiful. They all planned to buy each other Christmas presents of yarn (at $25 a skein). That was when we left the store.

Maybe I need to finally learn to knit. Or just move close to Grandma again.

Friday Night Date Night

or

One of These Legs is Not Like the Other

So, we got to go on a date Friday night. That's a pretty rare occurrence, unfortunately. It was nice to spend some time alone, just the two of us. Oh, and the doctor. Because we spent our time together at the hospital. This is the background:

One of my legs became swollen. Just one. My doctor didn't think it was a problem, but said if it happened again, I should go in and get checked out. So, it did happen again, after the ward Christmas party--complete with blurry vision and headaches. We headed into the hospital, where I was hooked up and monitored. By that time, the swelling had mostly gone down, of course. I am fine, the little one is fine, and it's always nice to have alone time with my husband. Even if I'm in an attractive hospital gown that opens up the back with monitors stuck all over my body.

Come what may and love it!

It's a . . .

My amazing, best-ever doctor is being deployed to Iraq. (Why do they need an OB in Iraq? Good question!) So, with six weeks left, I am being transferred to a new doctor whom I know nothing about. I am, of course, overjoyed and excited for this opportunity. Yay. I have this dream of having a water birth with a mid-wife in attendance. It worked for Helene anyway (granted, she is an iron woman with a pain threshold higher than Superman) but it's not going to happen for me. The hospital looks fairly decent, and I'm sure the doctor will be competent, but I'm still unhappy.

As to the baby, we still don't know! We're certain it's a boy or a girl, but we probably won't know until it's born now. The baby was uncooperative and the machine was fuzzy, so we are still clueless. So, give us another six weeks, and we'll know for sure.

Pets

We own a cat. Her name is Angel, and she is a shy calico creature. She came into our lives two years ago through a string of circumstances:
1. My oldest daughter wanted a cat.
2. My oldest daughter had bargained with her father for a cat in return for wearing her dreaded, hated, abhorred eye patch every day.
3. She only had to keep her part of the bargain for three more weeks (surprise! joy!)
4. Right at this juncture, a secretary at my husband's work rescued an abused and neglected cat.
5. The secretary needed a home for the poor, darling thing.
6. As the official Home for Unwanted, Deformed, and Unusual Animals (The hissing, biting, clawing, Jack Rabbit; the Unusually Stinky Guinea Pigs; The Three Miracle Fish that would not die; our dear, deformed parrot Quasimodo; etc.) it was inevitable that we would end up meshing together a little girl who wanted to cuddle and adore her very own cat with a cat that despised all humans.
We have reached a separate peace with Angel. She lives in the attic of the garage and generally ignores us, and we give her food and water, the occasional scraps, and if she's lucky someone changes her litter box. Sarai gets an occasional happy glimpse of her cat, and her cat has kept our big house rodent-free. It's a win-win for us all.
So, the other day, I was remembering what it was like to live in a house where the cats paid you the courtesy of ignoring you to your face. 'Wouldn't it be nice to have a little ball of fur to curl up on your lap every so often?' I thought. (As if all of the fuzzy small people curling up on my lap at every opportunity aren't MORE than enough).
And then, the surprise. Unbeknownst to us (and with no effort on my part, for once), our family expanded. A rare Angel sighting was augmented with a tiny black fuzzball trotting along behind her. We have a kitten! Just one, but it's an opportunity to start over with a cat that likes people and wants to be petted and loved. We just have to catch it first. And since all efforts in that direction have ended with scratches, breaking tools, and small people stuck headfirst in large piles of lumber, that might be a challenge.

Survey!

I have been working on my master's degree for awhile now, and for one of my class projects, I have created a survey. So, if you are home-schooling your academically gifted children or know anyone that is, please, please, PLEASE go to this link to fill out my survey. It should take about 15-20 minutes, and unfortunately there is no reward at the end other than my undying gratitude. Thanks, everyone!

Click Here to take survey

Come walk with me

A few years ago, right after we had moved to a new base, my doorbell rang late on a Sunday night. It was a group of young girls dressed up in women's bodies, and they invited me to come out and take a walk. These neighborhood women were unfamiliar to me, but I gathered up the courage to say yes, anyway. I left my small children home with my husband, and started a journey that changed my life. Every Sunday night, this group of women would start walking around the neighborhood, ringing doorbells and picking up other friends. We would walk and talk about husbands, children, school, losing weight, gaining weight, books, and all sorts of trivia. We also talked about our heartaches, heartbreaks, and daily miracles. Faces changed as time wore on and families moved in and out of the neighborhood, but the tradition kept on. The common experience of sisterhood wove our hearts together as we walked. There were hot dry nights where we walked through sprinklers, and cold windy ones where we were bundled up to our eyeballs, but still we walked. There was a night where some sisters split off to try mattress-surfing with a mattress they had found among other treasures put out at the side of the road. I discovered kindred spirits inside women who seemed so different than me: different backgrounds, different life experiences. Those walks refreshed my spirit, kept me sane, and reminded me that someone else always had more serious problems than I did. So even though we have all scattered far and wide, this blog is for all of those sisters to come and walk together again.