I just explained the concept of the Laurel's handshake to B. he had never heard of it, I'm not sure how since he lives with me, I know about it, and as much as I talk garb you'd think HE knew about it. But no. So I explained it to him, and for the cheap seats, it how it's someone who is interested in how your garb is constructed looks at your garb - with their hands. (As a sidenote, I've used this concept to tell small children to look at something with their eyes instead of with their hands, because you have to specify and remind them that those are separate ideas.) Feeling the fabric to see what you used, if there's an interlining or other internal construction that you've covered over with the outer fabrics, flipping the piece over at some point to see the internal stitching or lining or sometimes both. You know: the Laurel's handshake.

B was completely befuzzled at first when I initially said, "Honey, for women the Laurel's handshake is down here," and I bent over at the waist as though I were going to examine the hem of a gown. He kind of started laughing and then said,

"Haha! Show me on the doll where the Laurel touched you...." I bent over at the waist again, laughing.

Okay, I know it's a theme, now, but just wow. Today was just so nice.

Meg got on her bus, which was running so far behind we called the garage to make sure it was running, and Rose, B and I drove off into the sunsetrise, dropped off a Rose who was at first hesitant about the daycare thing until she realized that OMGARETHEREOTHERKIDSINTHERE? At which point her father and I became chopped liver. We signed her in, left her bag of extra clothes with her teacher and sort of giggled as we got in the van. Drove in to town and went over to uni, realizing on the way that I'd left my lunch at home and in getting everyone else ready, hadn't eaten my breakfast, so I had breakfast and lunch there and ate as cheaply or cheaper as I would have at any place that wasn't a fast food joint.

After breakfast there was a nice long time on the treadmill followed by a shower and adult conversation with chasing a very young, bored, active child. After lunch there was a solid, uninterrupted working period of three and a half entire hours. I mean, time was measured in hours between interruptions, not in minutes or parts of minutes. It was amazing; I want to do it again.

Okay, off to bed. Six hours' sleep last night and tomorrow is a trip to Knoxville w B & Rose (she's part time at day care for this and next week) for what will either be imaging or imaging plus installation of B's braces bits and the appointment is right around midday.

K, so it's St. Patrick's Day and green isn't a great color for B. He owns one clothing item that's green, and it's a t-shirt, so inappropriate for a corporate office.

So he just wore his Green Lantern ring. :D

So, this morning I woke up to the piercingly unpleasant reality of a case of double conjunctivits (eye doc tomorrow AM) - and that I definitely am getting something that's affecting my vocal cords.

Long term readers may recall, as it's been a while since I've had anything really affecting my throat, that I inadvertently use the "Service me now, attractive male," voice. The effects are fun - every time, every single time, that I open my mouth and utter a syllable I have B's complete and total attention if he's in earshot.

I'm having a little bit of amusement with this, I have to admit.

I knit an entire repeat of a sock for B beyond where I needed. Then I knit up almost the entire toe until, a few rows shy of where I'd graft it shut, I chanced to compare the previous sock's foot length. So I've just frogged about three inches of knitting of around 8-9 stitches/inch. There was cussing involved and I also had a beer.

At least tomorrow is knit night. Meg's off of school tomorrow for the Snowpocolypse Which Never Was so I'll make some headway then, I'm sure. And then the socks that I started for B's birthday and then put aside for Christmas knitting and socks for the girls will be done.

About four months late. Happy Birthday, Sweetie! *sigh*

Have I mentioned that the pair of socks that I made for Meg, the ones I recently ranted about? Yeah, guess what? She's had a growth spurt. :/ At least I can just knit this second one to the correct length (plus a smidge, you freakin' betcha), knit another and be good and I do b'lieve that by the time that's all done I AM KNITTING A PAIR FOR MYSELF. I put aside two finished socks form different pairs so that I could work on theirs. Those Will Be Finished - one is started and its pattern is easy to memorize and execute while doing other things like RPGs over the Internet with J & J.

No, really, I LOVE knitting.

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Tomorrow I'm going to see about the FAFSA which I was delighted to learn can be filled out online. WEWT! So much easier and faster, dang. Is the FAF still around? We'll get our tax return around the 19th and will get completely current with a couple of things. I'll then be on track for some delightful scholarship begging for the April 15th deadline. The Crohn's/Colitis/IBS foundations that are offering scholarships have deadlines that with I think a single exception will be impossible this year mostly due to the whole timing issue - transcripts, physician letters, and recommendations plus release of test scores are impossible for me to obtain before that time. S'okay. I'll apply for those scholarships next year.

Yesterday turned out pretty well, although we're a little tired from it, today - and from Rose's work on several teeth at once.

B wasn't able to get to his Heroclix tourney because that would have required leaving the house at 8 AM and since yesterday was his birthday and very little appealed about getting out of bed at a time to make that possible. We hit the road about ten-thirty, instead. We were able to hit the fiber festival that I thought we'd be missing out on and we bought homemade peach fried pie, actual kettle corn, two big jars of preserves (plum butter and a quart of beet pickles that were nice and small and should be quite tasty), and a skein of indy-dyed sock merino in shades of pink, red, and purple called "Punchy." At a generous 440 yards, I'll get a pair for me and one for the girls, likely. After we headed over to the store where B would have played. He hadn't been there before and he and Meg spent a long while in there while Rose and I napped in the van. We headed inside when we woke up because we got over warm but by that time, B and Meg were wrapping up.

It was still a while till dinner time, so I imposed upon him to head over to Franklin and Bliss Yarn where, yet AGAIN we got there some 15 minutes before close. I picked up a skein of Colinette Jitterbug sock yarn in "Raspberry" which was nicely saturated and entirely appropriately named.

Then Demos's for dinner and those people can make some steaks. Mmm. It was a bit overdone from what I wanted but it was so tasty and juicy that I didn't care. I just ate the leftovers for breakfast and so it was even more overdone and I still don't care. Well marinated, mmmm. They have a seafood alfredo they do and I had that as a side and while a bit over-rich I can still see myself ordering it again. A little lemon was called for and they had thought to a wedge to the plate.

They had a soup that both of the girls liked. I was kind of surprised to see Rose liking a soup - but that didn't prepare me for when she nommed on the bits of now-well-done steak that she ate from my plate. Anyway, I obviously need to recreate that soup, which shouldn't be too difficult at all. Though at this stage I will be leaving out the parsley.

Then we headed home and after nearly giving B a heart attack thinking we'd won $50K when we stopped to grab some caffeine we arrived and I pretty much fell over after getting Rose changed and back down to sleep. I intended to stay u and play Aion with B but that didn't happen.

But now, Rose is trying to pants her dad because he's not picking her up. Haha, and now she's using him as her personal bridge. I need to go help with that. Haha!

B thought he was on his way to Smithville in order to get a gander at Yet Another Used Car Lot. Should be ~20 min.s from Sparta according to company routing software. You'd think that at the 45 min. mark, he'd've stopped to check his directions.  Why, sillly person, would you think that? At 1.5 hr.s in it's my job to call him and tell him to ask. Duh.

I love him. This is his congenital defect, I'm sure of it. The man didn't wake me up to ask about navigation on our trip home from Pennsic and we ended up 45 minutes north of the NE Virginia line before I woke up and asked where we were and he HAD to admit he didn't know. We should have been at the NE corner of TN, instead.

All this said, I'm going to tease him about wanting more time with the buttwarmer in the rental's seats.

I'm just here to say that after three sessions of Warhammer 40,000 RPG I have determined that not only do B's dice hate him, they hate him SO MUCH that at all other times they're inanimate objects with no mind of their own. This lasts until he picks them up at which time they achieve enough sentience to hate his guts' guts and roll the opposite of what he needs.

Literally his number of failing rolls, and the ways in which they failed him, were STATISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. Not merely "improbable." Impossible. In battle, rolling d10s, he should have hit around 40% or better. In three sessions, he's hit what he's aiming for somewhere around 20%. On top of that, he's hit to damage what he's up against FOUR times. Four. Five battles, all told, with as many times he's fired his weapons - double-fisted, mind, and fifty projectiles in this session alone - when his dice didn't fail him and cause him to outright fail a fear check and either sit there in acute hallucination or laughing like a ninny and RANDOMLY FIRING HIS WEAPON AROUND. And he's hit four. times.

Four. Seriously. Statistically impossible. My husband.

Sleep now.

So in a couple of hours, B and I are going to -- get this -- got to a movie.

By ourselves. (Thanks to novalyne and hubby - and son.)

Holy cow, you guys, we haven't done that in years! Years! Wow. Hopefully we'll remember how this works. Popcorn, coke, baby on the boob - no, wait, not quite right.... Popcorn, coke, no, Meg you can't bring your GameBoy. No, no.... Hm. Well, I'm sure we'll figure out how this works.

Why, I might not even try to take some knitting!

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Yesterday was a recuperative day, thanks to a Crohn's flare that started Friday night. I'm feeling a lot better today and it seems like Rose is off of her sleep regression of last week. She took a decent nap this morning and bodes well to catch another such this afternoon. ( Comparison of today and last week in RoselandCollapse )

And this morning? I tickled Rose - and she laughed! What a great sound!

I have been faithfully and monogamously knitting on the sockalong socks for B. Dang. hubby's got a big foot, y'all. It seems that it is sooooooo tall, but I know that when he wears these they won't hit halfway up his shin. Part of it is just the construction of this particular sock (adding increases evenly over the height of the arch means no gusset, which means that you can take a pattern right down to the bottom of the back of the ankle and back side of the foot). I've completed the heel and am about halfway finished with the remaining foot. Knit a couple more inches and I'm starting the toe. And then weaving in forty billion ends, heh. Good thing I did all that handsewing or I'd feel much put upon. As it is, I'm *veyr* grateful that I'm doing this in a fingering weight as opposed to a finer weight (8 stitches = 1" on US3 circs) or this would take *forever*. After this one, I'll finish up the pair for Meg and then my next pair of socks will be something nice and lacy, though likely still from the Cat Bordhi book because it's got tons yet for me to explore. Like. Like very much.

In listening to my forty billion downloaded podcasts (which by the way is a ton better than cable with the exception of a very few shows that I rather miss) this lady Kelly Petkun of the Knit Picks podcast mentioned her many reasons to love circular needles and a few of her uses just had my jaw dropped. Clearly I need to bring my head up and look around and play around at some point. I wonder what *I'd* discover about my newest hobby? Anyway, the one the most interesting that just might have had me paying less attention to my driving than was perfectly safe as I quickly reviewed the many possible ways this could be applied, was doing 2-3 washcloths at a time. Duh. I like knitted washcloths but actually knitting them can get a little mindnumbing - but knitting up several at once in different yarns *would* likely keep me interested enough to finish all of them and then, poof! I'd have more washcloths. Which would be good, since the underwear gnomes have evidently purchased a local franchise over washcloths here in the house, too.

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Rose is getting to be very, very clingy. I'm not sure what's up. She's crawling much more so it may just be the whole "dannnnnngggg the world is *hyooge* and the cats won't stay still for me to denude by the fistful and Mom won't let me eat that botton and safety pin that I foundon the floor, ahhhh!" But I simply can't give her 100% of my attention 100% of the time. Today's clingy can be placed firmly at the feet of the Hep B innoculation that she got at her 9 month appointment yesterday but she's just been like this in general for at least a week and a half. She may have also caught her sister's head cold - but then again she's certainly babbling at us when we speak, so she could also simply be coughing in imitation. Who knows?

Given how often she's woken up thus far tonight, I think that it's going to be a long one. And that'll make tomorrow morning less than delightful, especially when you add on that B's got to go in first thing for a half day. Dang.

The world feels very, very weird this morning. Paul Harvey is no longer with us. I feel like I've put on an old and comfortable sweater but it just doesn't seem to fit right for some reason....

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I cast on for B's socks last night for the Sockalong over on Ravelry. Five minutes past midnight. At about 2 A.M., I frogged the whole thing.

See, this is a different usage of a particular cast on. The cast on is really nifty. I wondered how this cuff was formed and it's very simple but not what I know to be usual - it basically formed a closed tube with live stitches at the bottom which you use to knit the rest of the sock. But it's really funky for me and it was slow going as well as being done on what are essentially twice the stitches you'd use. I literally cast on more sttiches for this cuff than for a baby sweater knit bottom up.

And then, folks, I get my rather deceptively complicated cuff done and I am proud with myself and look at the pattern to see what's next. And I discover that I've read the wrong section and cast on too many stitches. Reduction afterwards would have annoyed me and IMHO looked poorly. Argh. So I frogged it. I'll restart it sometime today, I'm sure.

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We're watchting The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and we've just watched the scene where the Silver Surfer creates a crater that drains the Thames.

B, imitating an onlooker: "Look! There's the Mary Rose!"
H: Dear, the Mary Rose was at sea.

....

GAH! I AM SUCH A GEEK!
B: Dear, now who's the geek here? That you know that it was lost at sea or that I knew about the Mary Rose?

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I do think that I married the right guy. :)

Sarah Palin was using a Yahoo! email account for government business - and it got hacked, with the hackers posting the results on the 'Net via a government watch site. Now the GOP wants everyone to please not look, thanks. Uh huh. Next up, Hell still melting snowballs.

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Warhammer Online opened last night at midnight. It arrived yesterday and I installed it. Silly thing took an hour (which you can bet I was not sitting at the computer for). Last night registration and the game in general started, and B got to make some characters before hitting the sack. He rather resents having to work today and it's also a CSA drop-off day *and* we need one or two things from the store on his way home.

I'll miss my husband.

(I played after he went to bed, intending to only make a few characters. Then I got curious and looked up to see that it was FIVE A.M. Yeah... my eyeballs feel like they're made of steel wool dipped in glue and then in sandpaper grit.)

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Speaking of B, he did NOT get his head nearly-shaven. He just got it much shorter. :/ Oh, well. I have kept my promise to him. He really, really wants his hair of 13 years ago back, but I just don't see it happening. He won't buy monoxidil because he says he's not that vain - but I notice that he still didn't shave like he said he would. Poor B.

The husband is a wee tired tonight, so right now he's vegging on the couch, having emptied and loaded the dishwasher twice tonight.

On comes a Budweiser commercial with the requisite cute blonde chick who in this case is drawing a draft pilsner of the... stuff while extolling its questionable virtues. "We've been using the same recipe for 130 years!," she says in a blend of smirk and perkiness.

B: "That doesn't make it right!"

Off goes the commercial and B voices over: "Budweiser: Making crap for 130 years!"

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Also Nastia Liukin's mom is on crack. No, she's palsied and on crack. Holy crap lady, sit still and quit bumping the people around you!

The hubby and I are having a fun time gently mocking one another while watching what seems to be a really good version of Beowulf with Stellan Skarsgård, who will be in Red Sonja in 2010 with Rose McGowan, poor man. Um, there's a lot of heads rolling around without benefit of shoulders in this version.

But we're not far in and B has already mispronounced some stuff on the screen, and I realize that he's forgotten that it was written in old English. So I stick out my tongue and say "Geatland" - like yer sposed ta - and followed it up with "Daneland," and stick my tongue out. B sticks his tongue out at me and says ," Mneh! I forgot it was in Old English!" There were many raspberries after that - and I did NOT pick any up at the market yesterday.

Passing a pleasant afternoon, yes, we are.

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*Maybe* Rose has figured out how to take a nap by herself. I had enough time this morning to prepare and snap a large bowl of green beans, which are cooking now. This is an exciting development that will let me do things like sew for her and for her dad, sister and me.

Won't that be nice?

So. The hubby's genetics dictate that soonish, he will be unable to grow but a horseshoe of hair at which point he'll shave it all off. He's recently been contemplating at what point he'll just shave it off. The shame is that the rest of the hair not on on his head is quite thick and nice. However, I'm wondering if he shouldn't shave it earlier. Folks who've seen him, what do you think?

So, I'm watching several videos on YouTube, and the last one is a video on doing undulations (shoulder to butt) in purportedly Egytian style. I'm not all that great with abdominal work, AND I'm recovering from the surgery, so I think, "Hm! I'll have a look and try that out kinda slo - oh, hey, she's *doing* it slowly! Great!" And her suggestions for visualization of proper movement make sense, so to sort of nail it into the noggin I decide to get up and try her move out. I've just handed B the baby and so he's sitting on the floor with her between me and the TV. He's been watching Jurassic Park III because there is absolutely nothing on now, as is normal for Sunday night in these parts, even with satellite. So his attention is divided between cleaning up his daughter's poopy butt and watching the ginormous dinosaurs on t.v. have their story climax.

And then I get up and start practicing torso undulations at the computer.

My husband is adorable - he's now attempting to divide his attention between THREE sets of stimuli, and get this: he doesn't even consciously know he's doing it. His brain literally cannot decide where to look because all of those different sections are pulling. I laughed (fondly) and explained to him what he was doing ("I was?") and didn't so much as look sheepish, which I thought was *even more adorable.*

Keeping him.

I managed to overdo it my very first day. I was very much in the bed for two days almost straight except for only the extremely necessary stuff. I had Tylenol III, and I took it, you betcha - one pill at a time, accompanied by a Tylenol-only Tylenol. It made life bearable. The left side is still pretty prickly, but now just Tylenol makes it bearable. Yay! Progress. (One nurse's comment in the hospital was that I was her She-ro for using only Tylenol for pain. I did explain that I've got a high pain threshold and TOTALLY asked for the morphine on day one - but I was evidently foiled again, because she knew I'd had only half-doses - and even explaining that the other stuff puts me out of my head for inordinate amounts of time didn't change her opinion.)

B was going to mow after the heat of today broke, but, uh, I think it's a little late for that - that's some good cloud cover coming on there. In his defense, when he was ready, I delayed him so that I could grab a late lunch and a shower. He's a good man, and I'll keep him. Yeah, no mowing today - he's heard thunder, and looking out the front windows shows that the wind is picking up.

Yes. He's a very good man. He kicks ass in ways large and in ways small. "I try," he says, with this sort of worried voice. "You succeed in trying where other men only think they've accomplished."

I'm KEEPING him.

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Rose continues to do really well. Long around Wednesday, she started that thing that babies do wherein they practice the facial expressions that they've seen over the day while they're asleep. We're starting in on the cloth diapering thing - I need to sew up some more wipes and a diaper pail bag, not to mention a few diapers that fit her *now*. She's undersized for the ones I made by likely a couple of pounds, at this point, and they weren't made with an umbilicus gap. :/ However, the Sumbums newborn that I bought fits her *perfectly*, raving_liberal, so thanks for that notice.

I can tell that she's putting on weight well, though likely someone else might not be able to do so. Her noggin's bigger, and she's starting to fill out some. Our breastfeeding is going so well, it's like God is apologizing for what happened with Meg. I'll take it - it's marvelous and a thing of beauty that has nothing to do with the aesthetics of appearance.

One of the few things that DID turn out well with Meg (and that I did totally out of fatigue and on no one's advice) is sleeping with Rose in our bed. People keep making the usual "bet you're looking forward to getting sleep again at some point in the future!," but really, I feel perfectly well rested. Wake up to either crying or grumping baby, put her on, go back to sleep, wake when she comes off (er, most of the time), burp her, go back to sleep with happy me and happy baby. Due to the Tylenol schedule I can't necessarily change her diapers all night, B has to help with that still, but we both get tons more sleep (and tons less pain on my part) with her sleeping in our bed.

A sling that *fits* is a great thing. She's been cozily asleep for a while now, and I've had both hands free to do various things, like install the new external drive and get it started on imaging our hard drive. Yes, yes, I know, welcome to the twenty-first century.

With it being in the eighties today, I changed out of what I had on earlier (light cotton pants, t-shirt) and into a bikini top and my shortest pregnant lady shorts. I'm *much* more comfy now.

Y'all that have known me in the past know that while I don't feel I get to pick for others, in general I feel that I certainly should NOT wear belly-baring swimsuits, pregnant or not. Yeah. Changed my mind. It's hot enough that I don't really care if the belly and the Ginormous Scar of Huge Longness shows. I may need to go pick up a couple cheapy bikini tops at W-M, now. This is awesome for around the house. My sense of humor demands that I get one of the ones with cherries on it.

No. No pictures. I'm not that much less body conscious.

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I'm bored out of my gourd, today, too. ( also a bit about the bodiesCollapse )

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I rather feel like a heel about it, but I had to ask B to start forgoing his regular Friday evening gaming. ( Read more...Collapse )

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Okay, I feel a little better, getting that out. A little. I'm going to go and try to be slightly more useful, now, maybe make a final decision on that bodies decoration.

Well, Rose's outfit is as done as it's getting in the next couple of days. The sewing machine is not handling putting in buttonholes well at all. I'm getting some heavier thread tomorrow to use for hand-sewn buttonholes. The order from kassrants will complete it when the silk ribbon arrives and is put through the casings at the neckline and waistline.

Be sure to click through. There's a detail shot of the sleeve edge (go, go, macro setting!), and a closer-up picture of the bodice front. The back's really neat, too, with pleated growth tucks, but I don't want to get a pic of it up till it's done.

In the meantime, I'll get started on working on either those towels or on some newer pieces. Or possibly cutting out that Burda slipper pattern.

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Additional:

My husband, who is quite fond of Firewater, Rammstein, and Concrete Blonde? That guy?

Happily taking in a Marty Robbins show on NPT. In spite of Beggin' Week Fortnight interruptions.

Yeah, "Down in the west Texas town of El Paso/ I fell in love with a Mexican maid" Marty Robbins. Yes. I'd feel for fever, but my hand might get between his eyes and the television. That would be bad.