Totally cheating today

I'm going to try NaBloPoMo again this year, despite November being The Worst Month Ever For Internet Access.  There may be some, ahem, scheduled posts during Thanksgiving week, since the internet connection will be spotty where I'll be.

Dreary and drizzly, today we're on the road to Delaware to help my mom get ready for my dad's memorial service on Saturday.

What, did I forget to mention here that my dad died?  Yeah, so ... that happened September 22nd.  It sucked.  We were able to make things as comfortable and in-line with Dad's wishes as possible, which didn't make the decisions any easier or more fun to deal with.  He's been gone for more than a month and we're still getting blindsided by stuff on a regular basis, because that's how grief works.  Normal, but unpleasant.

We scheduled the memorial service far in advance, and on a weekend, so that as many people as possible would be able to come.

Then there was a Frankenstorm, which screwed up power and transportation on the whole East Coast, so we have no idea how many people will actually be able to attend the service.  If there are only 10 of us there, there's going to be a lot of food left over after the reception.  Cake for everyone!

(Complete side note - when my mother and I were killing time in the hospital during my dad's final illness, somehow the pain scale came up in conversation, and I took great glee in sharing this blog post with my mom: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/boyfriend-doesnt-have-ebola-probably.html .  Our particular favorite ratings were,"4:  Huh.  I never knew that about giraffes." vs. "4:  My pain is not fucking around."  Sometimes a good snorting laugh is really, really necessary.)

Anyway, I'm just checking in to let you know that, a) I'm still here, even though I mostly post on Facebook nowadays, and b) I'm going to be here a lot this month, so set your blog readers to check in on me, and guilt me into it if it looks like I'm going to miss a day!

How do you spell the sound of a nose blow?

Because that's the soundtrack of my life this week.  Gah.  But it did lead me to remember a story I haven't told you yet, so I guess it's not all bad.
______
Back in the olden days - 1998 and 1999 - Jason and I lived in Japan, and it seemed like every time we would come back to the US for business or the holidays, one or the other of us would get sick.  I managed to get spectacularly ill one Christmas with a simple cold that went horribly, horribly awry.  There was mucous flying everywhere, I used up more than a full box of tissues in a day, and I was fairly certain that I was either going to dry up into a husk or flip myself inside out while honking away into a Puffs Plus.  I was absolutely miserable - couldn't sleep, couldn't concentrate to read, couldn't do anything other than blow my nose and whine.  We were staying at my parents' house, and things were bad enough that I went to the walk-in clinic to see if they could do anything to stop the Niagara Falls of Snot streaming out of my head.  They gave me some version of Claritin to dry me up, told me to buck up, and sent me home.

Now, I don't know if you've ever actually read the list of side effects on a box of cold medicine, but in addition to the normal "drowsiness" there is also something they describe as "restlessness" or "sleeplessness."  I had never had any problem with cold medicine side effects before, but for some reason, whichever version of Claritin I took had some serious issues with my system.  I got the "restlessness" and "sleeplessness" in spades, on top of an already-mostly-sleepless body that was partly dehydrated and miserable to begin with.  I wasn't able to sit still - it's like I was on crack and meth and Red Bull, simultaneously.  If this had happened today I'd just buckle down and knit an entire sweater that night, but this was 1998 or 1999, and I didn't travel with crafts back then.  Instead, I just laid on the couch and vibrated like a tuning fork.  I couldn't even close my eyes for more than a few seconds, much less sleep.

My parents, needless to say, were somewhat concerned about this development.  My mother became convinced that I was going to "spike a fever and go into convulsions" if someone didn't stay up with me (trufax! this is how her mind works!), so my father got drafted into Sit With Gretchen Duty.  All.  Night.  Long.

Did you know that the only thing on cable at 2am between Christmas and New Years in 1998 or 1999 was The Rocky Horror Picture Show?  Which I had to watch for the first time with my father ... while strung out on cold medicine ... with no sleep for the past two days?  Ever try to explain Tim Curry in a leather bustier and thigh-highs to your dad while trying to make sure you were actually seeing it yourself, not just hallucinating it?

Good times, Dad, good times.  Have you gotten "Let's Do the Time Warp Again" out of your head yet?
________

I'm reminded of this because, until recently, I was unable to take any cold medicine at all because it would give me the same sleeplessness, no matter what time I took the pills.  I could take Nyquil at 8am and vibrate until 8am the next morning.  The effect had worn off somewhat in the past year or so, and I was just getting to the point where I didn't fear for my sanity every time I cracked open a blister pack of pills ... and then I took some DayQuil yesterday morning and paid for it all last night.  I am now intimately familiar with every detail of every wall and ceiling in my bedroom, and I think I've managed to solve both world peace and the energy crisis all at once (if I could just find the slip of paper I wrote it down on).  I also had a sort of lucid dream where I discovered that a mixture of vodka and cranberry juice was perfect for getting out the mildew stains around my bathtub - or at least making it so I didn't care about them anymore.

On the positive side of things, this time I wasn't craftless, so I now only have about 6" of the yoke left on a sweater I'm making for myself.  Can't feel my fingers or my forearms thanks to the carpal tunnel action, but at least my lifeless hands and arms will be warm when I'm done.

**honk-shuuuuuu-phththththththtph**

Gesundheit.

Congratulations are in order

Congratulations to my parents, who, after years of putting up with the old equipment, have finally committed to buying a new stove and oven. You can't imagine my shock when my mother casually mentioned today that their cooktop was sitting on the floor in the kitchen and the double oven was next in line for the wrecking ball. Of course, she was calling to ask for recommendations on new stoves because they sort of removed the old stuff before they bought replacements, but it can't take that long to get a new stove, right?

The old appliances were a thorn in their side from virtually the moment they bought the house, but until today they managed to limp along without replacing them.

Since 1985.

Wow. I'm not sure if that proves their thrift, ingenuity, or lack of common sense, but I'm sure it says something.

In honor of this momentous occasion, I present a quick multiple-choice question.

Which of the following choices did not apply to my parents' kitchen?

1. It made my 12th birthday party more memorable by having an oven door fall off in my mother's hand when she was checking on the pizza inside.
2. It lit once lit up the house like the Fourth of July when one of the heating elements arc-welded itself to the floor of the oven.
3. It baby-proofed itself by requiring you to push in and turn two obscure knobs by at least a certain amount in order to turn on the oven, and even then sometimes it would shut itself off.
4. It possessed an oven that was never actually at the temperature you set it to - on a good day, you were lucky to be off by only 25F.
5. It had a stove burner that was so warped that pans would wobble and or spin when you used it.
6. It necessitated conversations like, "No, don't use that burner, it takes forever to heat up. Use that one, but remember that it gets much hotter than whatever you set it to."
7. It hasn't had two working ovens and a working broiler in at least 10 years.

Answer: None of the above.

Congrats on not keeling over yet, Dad!

My father turns 70 today. He's been awesome for at least 36 of those years (I can't vouch for the ones before I showed up, although based on the photographic evidence, he was pretty cool back then, too).

In no particular order, here are 70 things my father has made over the years - some he made just for me, some he made just for the fun of it and I've absconded with them when he wasn't looking, and many I'm sure he's forgotten about completely:

1. A toy shelf with my portrait painted on the back in white enamel
2. Another bookshelf for my toy room
3. Bookshelves for my bedroom
4. Loft for my dorm in college
5. CD cabinet
6. Art supply cabinet
7. Shelf for my stereo
8. Sawhorses to use at our first house
9. "That's one" plaque to remind me of a traffic accident
10. Name plaque that declares me to be a boatbuilder
11. Head sculpted from clay he dug from the beach near our old house
12. Yard sale signs
13. Silk-screened t-shirts for the entire low brass section in my high school band
14. Garden tote
15. Toolbox
16. Plant labels for garden
17. Golfer crossing sign for Jason
18. Wooden toy truck
19. Dollhouse
20. Dollhouse furniture
21. Wooden ladder to help me climb trees at our old house
22. Splinter the Wonder Horse
23. Stilts
24. Rope swing with wooden seat
25. Tire swing
26. Bench to sit on in my hiding spot behind the lilac bushes at the old house
27. Swing set at the old house
28. Basketball hoop
29. Balance beam
30. Manger for the hideous salt dough nativity scene I made in elementary school
31. For Liza: Toy fairy house with furniture
32. For Liza: Balance beam
33. For Liza: Rocking balance board
34. Ultralight kayak
35. Yarn swift
36. Partridge carving
37. Beaver carving
38. Whale carving
39. Fox carving
40. Goose carving
41. Wooden spoons
42. Wooden butter spreaders
43. PPG Man carving
44. Santa with a Cat carving
45. Santa with a Goose carving
46. Pumpkinhead Man carving
47. Red Christmas sleigh
48. Reindeer carving
49. Cardinal carving
50. Balancing bird carving
51. Big Ralph carving
52. Medium Ralph carving
53. Spirit of St. Louis Christmas ornament
54. Wright Brothers airplane Christmas ornament
55. Santa face Christmas ornament
56. Peeking mouse carving
57. Hand carving to hold yarn
58. Scarf pins
59. Name sign for my office with a carved wooden plane on the top
60. Santa gargoyle carving
61. S-W Man carving
62. Goat carving
63. Penguin carving
64. Snowman face Christmas ornament
65. Ball in cage on a chain carving
66. Skunk carving
67. Winnie-the-Pooh carving
68. Caroling mouse carving
69. Angel with trumpet carving
70. Carved wooden flour scoop

Since he's made me all these things over the years, I thought it was only fair that I make him something impressive for his birthday. Behold, the Liberty Blanket:

That sucker used up 13 skeins of yarn (that's more than 1.5 miles), is about 7 feet long, weighs a ton, and is guaranteed to keep you warm in sub-zero temperatures. More importantly, the chart for the pattern was 70 rows long (get it? 70th birthday, 70-row chart? Yes, I'm geeky like that), and I worked on the blanket intermittently from October 2008 until the end of January 2010. The size of the project translates out to me knitting on it for 2 hours every night for more than 70 total nights at the top speed I managed once I was good at the colorwork ... but in real life it took much longer than that because I was really, really slow at the beginning. It was my first serious colorwork project, my first steek, my first hemmed project, my first full-sized knit afghan. And it was all worth it, because he seemed to really like it, and he used it twice while I was there (and found an old pillowcase to keep it in so their cats don't shred it right away).

Happy birthday, dad. Eat some cake, then go finish up that ginormous dragon head so I can add it as #71 to the list for next year, okay?

For mlf

You can either pierce the shawl or wear it threaded through like a backpack strap, although most of the time you see them displayed pierced through the knit of the shawl. Most of my shawls are sturdy and holey enough that I wear it pierced through, like this:

The super-fancy shawls I wear threaded through the loop like a backpack strap. They tend to be one size fits all, unless you're using something that is super thick (like polarfleece) or super thin (like gauze).

You can wear it wherever you need to in order to keep the shawl or scarf on. Most of my shawls are sized so that I end up wearing the pin in the front somewhere near chest level, but plenty of shawls and scarves are long enough to do the "fling one end over your shoulder and pin it up closer to your shoulder" look. Some people use smaller ones as an accent on regular scarves or cowls. Check out the results you get for "shawl pin" on flickr and you should get some ideas.

Now I'm pimping out my dad, too

My very handsome and talented father has been carving for decades - actually, we can actually measure it in fractions of a century at this point - so it was no problem at all for him to whip up some shawl pins for me when I started whipping up shawls. They were so beautiful and functional that I encouraged him to make some extras to sell. And the owner of River Colors Studio in Lakewood agreed that they're awesome, so now you can buy them there!

Stop in and grab one before they're gone, because you never know when Lazy Dad will get sick of making these and then they'll be gone for good.

I get it naturally

So when the folks at the Kalmar Nyckel decided to honor Senator Carper last weekend, who did they ask to make the award?

My dad. Because he's all kinds of awesome.

I tried to convince him to go to the awards banquet, but the thought of renting a tux for the first time since my wedding was enough to prevent that from happening. Probably a good thing he didn't go, because he would have been all, "It was nothing, Senator, and besides, you can see the tiniest bit of endgrain in this part here, and speaking of endgrain, did I ever tell you about the time ..." and after fifteen minutes the senator's handlers would have had to pry him away from my father.

Anyway, since Dad is too technophobic to set up an etsy shop, and not motivated enough to do craft shows with any regularity, he doesn't get a lot of feedback from "regular" people. I know we're not exactly normal around here at Chez Mind-Flush, but let's give him some props here anyway, okay?

All those who think my dad's awesome, raise your hand! Or at least post a comment for him.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled program of bitching about the snow and posting cute kid photos.

A multitude of Ralphs

Remember my snide comments about the original Ralph the Christmas angel? Dad did. Big Ralph lives with us now!

Dad also brought Micro Ralph, on the right below, next to the Mini Ralph from my tree. That's either a 50-cent piece or a silver dollar, I forget which - it's not a dime, Micro Ralph isn't THAT small. He's made to the scale of the dollhouse my father started when I was a kid, the dollhouse that's still not finished, yet my parents keep trying to dump it at my house so the two-year-old can wreck it. Not so fast, there, buckos. Let's let her trash the $2 plastic one you found at the yardsale first, and then we'll give her access to the expensive handmade one.

My Dad at the cottage in Cape May - then and now

When I was in college (top)

Last September (bottom)

Look for more scintillating action shots of my father reading after our Cape May vacation this September!