It's disappointing when you plan to use "I think I just peed myself" as a post title, then find out you've already used it, darn it

Because I did, when I saw this:
http://the-panopticon.blogspot.com/2010/06/proof-that-no-matter-how-bad-it-is.html

Especially because it makes me remember this:
http://oxymoronassoc.livejournal.com/462027.html#cutid1 which is not safe for work, seeing as how it's rather crude, but hilarious all the same, as it imagines Edward Cullen of Twilight fame as someone who picked up a lot of hobbies while everyone else in his family was hooking up.  A small sample:

oxymoronassoc: i bet he went through a phase where he knitted shit
oxymoronassoc: to keep from strangling emmett
oxymoronassoc: everyone got a lumpy pullover for xmas that year
welurklate: ESME GOT SOMETHING WITH A CAT ON IT
oxymoronassoc: EMMETT'S HAD NO NECK HOLE AND EMMETT TRIED TO PUT IT ON ANYWAY AND STRUGGLED AROUND A LOT UNTIL HE JUST RIPPED HIS HEAD THROUGH

Did I mention we went to the zoo last week, too?

Liza has found a new career goal -

Camel Driver.

Meta action shot!

Why yes, I am tweeting one-handed while holding a butterfly and being photographed by my daughter.  Why do you ask?

First of the year

Look at that beauty!  And way earlier than previous years.  Shame this is my only tomato plant that's even set flowers, much less produced fruit.  We may be relying on the kindness of strangers Tabitha for our tomatoes this summer.

Guess what I did for two hours today?

Good thing I had the radio on, as pitting eight cups of cherries at one sitting is a bit on the tedious side.

Finally, I'm writing again

It's just not here.  Check out a post I'm sort of proud of over on the new blog:
http://sustainablesummer.blogspot.com/2010/06/meaning-of-cherries.html

Nom nom nom

Turning my family room into a sweat shop

Why yes, I am encouraging my 5-year-old to help me iron fabric scraps so that I can rend them into useful sizes before I store them.  And she loved it so much, she wants to do it again tomorrow morning.

Am I awesome or what?  Now if we can just get her trained to do Jason's collars and cuffs, Daddy will look much more dapper at work :)

Carpentry project of the day

"Mom, what's wrong with my swingset?"

"Nothing's wrong with your swingset."

"Yes there is.  Look at the end."

"What, did a bird poop on it again?"

"No, look!"

"Oh. ... Well, I guess we'd better fix that, huh?"

Yes, the end of the swingset fell off completely with no warning.  The bolt holding the uprights onto the beam pulled right out, as did the screws on the L-bracket that was supposed to be holding the bolt in (great engineering job, there, former owners of the house who built the thing).  Luckily, this happened when no kids were on it, although I'm pretty sure the beam the swings hang from wouldn't have crashed to the ground under the weight of the 11-year-old next door.  $100 in supplies, two weeks to wait for the mail-order bars, and an entire day of work later ...

I still have to drill the hole on the little extended piece to hang the disc swing, and cut off the old support the swings used to hang on, but that hasn't stopped somebody from using the monkey bars continuously since the moment the concrete footings were cured.

You can't see it in the pictures, but it looks pretty funny to have all of the new construction (pretty close to) square and plumb, and the old structure ... really not.  Maybe I'll get around to fixing that some day, since I had so much fun doing the monkey bars all by myself.  If I ever pry the kid off of the bars, that is.  Of course, she only goes hand-over-hand for one gap, then she stretches for the rest of it, the little cheaterpants.

Oh, well - stretching is good for the body, too.

What do you say when everything was just ... perfect?

One week ago today I was in the car, driving through five states with a friend, en route to Squam Lake, New Hampshire.  The trip was easy, if long, and while we didn't see any moose ...

... we did see a deer fly off the hood of a car in the next lane on the highway.  Did you know that deer bounce when they hit the pavement at 65 mph?  Now that's something I never expected to learn at ...

Four and a half days of crafting bliss - just me and 150 other crafty people taking over a historic family summer retreat on an idyllic lake ...

... for classes, camaraderie, and (at least for me) a lot of this:

Our first class was at a cabin that was, as I fondly referred to it, at "the ass end of nowhere," which was reached via a brisk 10-minute hike through the woods ...

Luckily, I had a hearty breakfast that morning, so I even after the hike I was ready to tackle my first class - Latvian fingerless mitts in five color stranded knitting.  I've done colorwork before, but never with so many colors, and she really opened my eyes to some of the things I've been unintentionally doing wrong.



Really, it's not that hard once you get used to the whole idea of controlled chaos on the back side of the piece.  Don't give me that look - you know you want to try it, too.  Look how easy it is - I didn't even break a sweat!

My class the next day was even farther away from our home cabin, which gave me plenty of time to gather inspiration from the woods around me.  I'll spare you the approximately 48,000 pictures I took of ferns, and instead show you the most interesting bit I stumbled upon:

I swear, those puppies looked so fake, I was tempted to see if somebody had hot-glued plastic mushrooms to the tree.  Anyway, I needed all the inspiration I could get, because I was supposed to be designing botanical-inspired things to print on fabric.  I was also totally copying designs out of that Japanese book on the corner of the table :)



Squam wasn't just about crafting, though - there was plenty of time to enjoy the facility and its surroundings. I decided to use a free afternoon to drag myself up to the top of a mountain the hard way (i.e. on the shorter path that went straight up the side of the damn thing, which meant there was a lot of actual "dragging myself  up the hill" involved).  Luckily, the view was totally worth the schlepp.

My last class was only half a day, which was a shame because I really had a good time meeting Jared Flood and starting the blanket he designed.  The thing was so fun that I couldn't resist working on it more in the car on the way home.  

Luckily for me, wool is very absorbent, because there may or may not have been a few sniffles from my side of the car as we drove off into the sunset (well, actually just away from the sunrise, since we were heading west at an ungodly hour of the morning).

I'm not a normally effusive person, but I have to say, this was among my best vacations ever.  Nothing went wrong, everyone got along, I didn't forget anything, the people were nice, the place was spectacular, there was plenty to do, nobody thought you were weird if you didn't want to do anything but sit on a dock with your feet in the water, and everybody was crafty.  I'd go back in a heartbeat, and while I don't know if I'd say it was life-changing, it was certainly awesome.  And fun.  And inspiring.  And only slightly mosquito-filled.  So if you're even slightly crafty, go check it out.  You'll be glad you did.

I came, I S.A.W., I Squammed!

I'm still planning to put together my thoughts on the experience, but here's a video from Jen Grey that shows where I was last week.  I'm in the video (look for the red capris around 1:30-2:00) and my partner in crime is the lady in short overalls walking through the dining hall later in the movie.  Thank you, Jen, for capturing the experience so wonderfully and sharing it with us all!

Radio silence

... commences .... 

NOW!

Back on Monday with really, really cool stories and pics.  Promise.

Feeling a little sentimental

Memorial Day weekend always makes me a little verklempt.  You see, it was four years ago this weekend that this little thing ...

... worked past her many difficulties getting mobile and finally got a move on.



Memorial Day weekend 2007 was when Liza had her first run-in with the fountain in the children's garden:

Last year we took her back to the garden - again - on Memorial Day weekend, and again with the fountain encounters ...

So it was only fitting that we drag her back for another encore this year, this time with a kid who is almost exactly the age Liza was when she first saw the fountain:



While we were there, my butterfly-obsessed kid had to stop by the glass house in time for the release - just like last year.

And then today we visited our former neighbors for their annual party, complete with the "runts vs. 'rents" kickball game, which we had to move to an actual field this year because some of the runts are strong enough to actually kick the ball past second base.

This was the first year that I wasn't too hot, too tired, or too tied up with kid duties to participate, and I actually had a really good time.  The fact that I scored a run and caught somebody out on a fly ball didn't hurt, either.  We're going to have to be careful next year - after a previous record 35-2 parental win, this year we called the game after 9 innings with the score tied at 14 all.  We were generous with the scoring - dude, we totally could have gotten the 2-year-old out instead of letting him score twice - but they're gaining on us.

Even in 2006, it wasn't a Memorial Day party without a trip to the pool ...

And that's still true today.

So now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go hum "Sunrise, Sunset" to myself while rocking quietly in a corner.  Ta!

Best Buds

Preschool graduation was on Thursday, and we celebrated by going out to dinner with some friends before the ceremony.  The girls were all gussied up and in a good mood ...

They looked a bit more shopworn after sitting around in the un-air-conditioned church for more than an hour, so I'm glad we took so many pictures beforehand.

Well, that's, um, kinda cool in an icky way

After walking my 18 miles for training yesterday - booyah, baby! - I discovered that it's possible to get a blister on the bottom of my pinkie toe that is so big it actually spurts a fountain of serum for several seconds when I try to drain it, and then continues to dribble sporadically on the floor for more than a day.

I went to bed last night with a piece of toilet paper tied to my toe like a tourniquet - it looked like one of those old cartoons of somebody with a piece of cloth tied around their jaw to help with a toothache.

I wasn't able to find the toilet-paper-iquet when I woke up this morning, so goodness knows where it's gone.  Dissolved in a flood of serum, I suppose, or else it will turn up as some sort of a disgusting blob next time I wash the sheets.

Better go drink some more water so I don't get dehydrated from all the seepage ...

Argh! The horror!

Forget Pumpkinhead ... the real menace around here is ...

Lettucehead!

Run away!  Run away!

Camouflage!

When I read one of the comments on the last Toenail post, I realized that I have nail polish the exact same color as the bruised toe.  And so, The Toenail (which is unpainted so I can keep an eye on it) is now camouflaged.

And every time I think about it, instead of "camouflage" I hear "sabotage," which reminds me of the Beastie Boys song that Jason likes to play on Rock Band, and then I have to go and headbang for a while.

Let the trail of sand and rocks begin ... here!

It was "beach day" at preschool today, and since the girls were in their beachy attire anyway, we decided to surprise them with a trip to the real beach.  It went over well, judging by the number of cheese-its consumed and the volume of sand that came home in the car with us.

Baby's first legal document

On Liza's 5th birthday I took her over to get her very own library card.  She's so excited, you'd think it was a Porche.  Or a butterfly.

Bookworm

I had to bodily remove her from the car because she was so entranced in this book that she wouldn't stop reading long enough to get out under her own steam.  Then I set up the hammock and she retired there, cup of Trix in hand, and I didn't hear a peep from her for an hour.  It would be totally charming, except the book she's reading is The Adventures of Captain Underpants. It's about two fourth-graders who write their own comic strip, play pranks on their fellow students, and hypnotize their principal into believing he's the titular hero.  Not sure this is a good influence on the kiddo ... although it does make for a blessedly peaceful afternoon around here.

Why? Why would he think that was a good idea?

The Toenail has been doing much better recently, especially since I was converted to the wonders of soaking injuries in Epsom salt.  Turns out those old timers knew what they were talking about, at least when it comes to foot pain.  Honest to god, the first time I soaked the still-swollen, achy Toenail for 15 minutes, it immediately cut my pain level in half.  I did the same thing again the next day, and not only did The Toenail no longer hurt, but the ache I get in my big toe joint was gone, too.  Wicked cool!

That was a week or so ago, and now that things aren't swollen anymore, the parade of colors in The Toenail has stopped.  It hasn't fallen off yet, or even loosened, but I figured I'd better ask the doctor about it while I was there getting my prescriptions refilled today anyway.

My doctor is a bit, um, eccentric sometimes.  Ask Jason about how he and the doctor used to play with the leftover liquid nitrogen when Jason was getting some warts frozen off - good times, good times.

Me:  So, it's still on there, and it's not like it got bad enough that I broke down and bought one of those little drills to relieve the pressure, but I still thought I should have you look at it.
Dr:  No, you don't want to do that.  They actually sell those drills?  You don't need one of those.  All you have to do is heat up the end of a paper clip in a candle and burn a hole through the nail.  You don't need a fancy drill for that.

And while he's saying this, he's poking around at the toenail, and trying to actively lift the thing off.  My precious toenail, the one I might sort of NEED IF I'M GOING TO WALK 18 MILES THIS SATURDAY FOR TRAINING.

Me:  Gah!  Are you crazy?  Dude, don't do that!  I want it to stay on as long as possible!
Dr: It's totally going to fall off anyway.
Me:  No!  Look, it's still pink around part of it!**  Maybe it will hang in there!  Besides, everything I saw online said I should leave the old nail in place as long as I could so the new nail wouldn't grow in all crooked and stuff.
Dr: Psht.  Nails don't grow in crooked.  What else did the internet tell you?

The internet told me that there are 50,000 hits when you search for "runner toenail grow in crooked," and close to 200,000 if you change it to the past tense.  Also, it just told me not to look at the wikipedia entry for ingrown toenails on a full stomach ... blargh.

**Lovely photo of my injury after the jump to protect all you squeamish weenies out there ... you have to click on the title of the post in order to see the part after the jump (I think).