So I'm embarking on a journey project, that will take me through the better part of the next three years...check out my new blog for details! More updates to the page will be coming soon.

So yes, my amazingly creative and loving mommy friend may be completing a gorgeous multimedia collage of the first dream that her daughter ever described to her, a picture of a restful waterfall retreat, but I can feel nothing but dread. Because I vividly remember a dream my daughter described to me. "Mom," she says, "I had this nightmare that was really scary. I was Harry Potter and I was riding a unicorn through the forest, and the little green guy was chasing me, and he caught me and bit off my penis." By "little green guy", she of course was referring to Gollum from the Lord of the Rings. You can see why this upset me. At the tender age of FOUR, she is already dreaming of Harry Potter and LOTR! She is doomed to be a geek! The penis thing? Who cares! There is no escaping her awful destiny!

And what made me think of it? The fact that I just now had to tell her brother to quit playing with his light sabre and get in the shower. No, that is not supposed to be a euphemism, although he's three and he plays with that one quite a bit too. Like I said, penis issues don't bother me, I can deal with that. It's the geek gene that's really giving me grief.

Okay, really, I'm proud of my minimes. I admit it. But it's still amazing to see how early they are corrupted.

And now I gotta go, 'cause W apparently flushed his sock down the toilet.

You probably already know about this site too, but someone on one of my Ravelry groups pointed it out to me...AWESOME!

Okay, I'm having a crazy stalker moment. So I've been obsessed with Ravelry, knitting, and the Lime & Violet podcast. And I'm on a million message boards now, talking about this and that and whatnot. AND NO ONE WILL REPLY TO ME!! Am I invisible? Doesn't anyone love me? Especially Miss Violet...she replies to the other introduction posts, but then she conveniently gets sick and isn't spending a lot of time on the computer when I start posting. Huh, maybe I haven't sung her praises enough?

In all seriousness, I'm starting to get this paranoid feeling like I have a stamp in the middle of my cyber-forehead that says, "DO NOT TALK TO THE ANIMAL". I want the ePopular kids to like me, damnit! What do I have to do to get a conversation going with someone?

Rejection sure takes a lot of the fun out of obsession. It's hard to be stalker.

I added up how much money I spent on indy hand-dyed yarn this last week...and it's scary. It's as much as Gayle paid for a gun earlier this month, which I happen to know since I was evaluating our debt situation. However, in the case of yarn, that amount of money is ridiculous, especially considering that it will result in less than ten pairs of socks.

Did I mention I started Stashalong as of February 1st? My goal was to finish one gift and one other knitted item before buying any yarn, and then limiting my spending based on "gold" earned in Knit Wars. Yeah...so I pretty much blew that. Now I've resorted to telling myself that if you only have to report once a month, then as long as I finish my two things and amass a metric shit ton of Knit Wars gold pieces before the end of the month, then I'm fine!!

But...it's so beautiful. I'm going to go roll around in it, and forget about life for a while. For those of you interested in doing the math:

4 hanks of Ruby Sapphire yarn
2 hanks of Claudia Hand Painted
5 hanks of Koigu Painter's Palette Premium Merino
1 hank of Dream in Color Smooshy
1 hank of Spritely Goods
1 hank of Seacoast Handpainted Panda
3 hanks of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock

It seems like the last few days have been non-stop. Well, really they were. We spent the entire weeking working at the new house, Friday night till 11, back at it at 9 AM on Saturday, till 11 again, and we "slept in" and were there around noon on Sunday. I had told Gayle I wasn't up to working on it through the week, but I was anxious to get painting done, so I took 1/2 day yesterday to work on it some more.

Only, fate often has other things in store for us. We stopped over Gayle's lunch to look at a used Jeep Commander, and ended up haggling. For three hours. And Gayle, unlike me, did NOT have an afternoon of vacation from work. So they finally let us take off, in the Jeep, with the plan to come back when Gayle got off work. By that time it was too late to get to the new place and work before returning to sign papers, so I went home to get changes of clothes for us, and called just before leaving to verify that we were still on. Nope, they were too busy for us to sign the papers, could we come back tomorrow?

I picked up the kids, McDonald's, and chocolate chip cookies, and determined that I would accomplish SOMETHING. I drove out to the new house and arrived around 6 PM, before Gayle even got there. Set the kids up in the bedroom doing homework and addressing valentines, and went to town with some primer. I promised myself that we would be out of there by 8 PM, in time to get the kids in bed at a decent hour. Of course we ran over, and there was a ridiculous wannabe blizzard raging by the time we left. Sigh.

Today - no better. William had no clean underwear, since I haven't been home to do laundry, so I sent him to daycare commando in hopes that there was a spare pair in his cubby. No such luck. Of course we were late as usual, because they finally cancelled Kayleigh's school just as we were walking out the door, and I had to turn around and pack a lunch for her to take to daycare. And the Jeep was on empty, because the dealership hadn't cleaned it up and filled the tank before postponing us the day before, so we had to get gas. Gayle picked me up on my lunch break to go sign the papers, and climbing in to the new car, my soda can slipped out of my glove and spilled all over my lap, the leather seat, the center console, and the floor carpet. Sure, why not?

Luckily, all's well that ends well. We got the Jeep. They cleaned it (including the spilled soda) and filled the tank (we only put in $5 worth). And I insisted on sitting my ass on the couch and taking a break tonight, before losing my mind. Actually I also did some laundry, made W's bed, got the kids showered, cleaned up some mail, and feel like I'm back to somewhat normal.

Well, as normal as I ever get.

Why? Because they ROCK! Everyone kept telling me to go there, and I thought since it was a smaller store, out in BFE, it wouldn't be worth my time. Man oh man was I wrong. They had the BEST customer service, the BEST dresses, and the BEST prices (how they manage that is beyond me), and after two months of misery trying on dress after dress after dress that just wasn't the one, I FINALLY FOUND IT! WOOHOO!

I thought about posting a picture, but (1) I want to surprise you all at the wedding and (2) that's BS, really I'm just lazy.

So, I don't really know if Daile's a knitter, but I was checking out knitting patterns and this reminded me of her!    I haven't had a chance to check out all of their stuff yet...I just know that the Vinnland sock pattern is GORGEOUS, and who knows what else is on this fab site?  Well, my favorite quote for one: "Start warping your spawn while they are young and impressionable"!

So, there are basically four weeks to my life:

Week One: I am normal (well, for me)

Week Two: PMS starts to set in. I become unfocused and angry, and basically just act like a stark raving bitch.

Week Three: I lay on the couch bleeding, moaning and crying about the horrible, horrible pain in my gut. Absolutely nothing gets done.

Weeh Four: I head into a crazy rampage of frenzied energy, just thankful to have lived through one more menstrual cycle.

So. Picture my household, heading into Week Two above, as all plans for moving grandma out of the new house go down the drain, and Gayle becomes incredible irritable at the lack of support that he is receiving on this whole house situation. He is gone every night, working on the house, leaving me with the two kids and the two dogs. He is barely speaking to his family on account of their ingratefulness and complete unconcern for his feelings. I am avoiding them on account of his mother's belief that my children are the spawn of hell. In the meantime we are loading budgets at work, which is pretty much all my responsibility, because everyone else is too stupid to do their job themself and yet they *still* refuse to bow down and call me master. Go figure. So then William gets sick.

Friday I call in, after staying up with him all night. I sleep. All day. Kayleigh stays home from school because she decides that if William is sick, she must be too. I sleep through pretty much the rest of the weekend. William runs a fever and wakes up constantly each night, although he has NO other symptoms to speak of. Kayleigh begins to get the sniffles (but William does not). We are heading into Week Three.

Monday morning, Kayleigh has begun to run a temperature as well. I call my parents. Dad reassures me that I can call anytime, that he is always willing to help out. He proceeds to call my sister and *beg* her to come watch the kids, because he can't handle it. I come home over lunch, pick up the kids, take them to the doctor, pay $60 in copays only to be told that they look great, it must be viral, and we'll have to ride it out. He recommends Ibuprofen, alternated with Acetominephin if necessary. Like I would have made it this far into parenthood without knowing that.

Monday night, sister takes the kids to her house to keep them overnight, since it doesn't appear as though they will be getting better anytime soon. I actually get a full night's rest, despite the fact that she attempts to call me at midnight to tell me what a pain in the ass William is when he's sick. He wouldn't sleep for her either. Apparently he had to pee in the middle of the night, but refused to open his eyes because the light hurt them, so he just peed with his eyes shut. I guess that didn't turn out so well.

Tuesday, my angel of a sister brings them all the way home for me, allowing me time to rush to the church to meet with the pastor about the wedding. She ends up staying the night at my house after my dad begs her, so that he doesn't end up getting called in the morning. I get Kayleigh ready in the morning and take her to school, leaving William home with Hannah, and head to work. An hour later the school calls and informs me that Kayleigh is sick to her stomach. I give it up for a lost cause, take *another* sick day, and pick Kayleigh up on the way home. My sister leaves with much relief, and the kids and I pile into my bed for a day of watching cartoons and cuddling.

It seems like things might actually be getting better -- at least I'm relaxing a little -- when William wakes up from his nap, confused about where he is. I think nothing of it when he gets up until I hear a sound, and look up to see him standing in the doorway to my closet, with his pants around his ankles. I yell to stop him, shocking him the rest of the way awake. He realizes where he is and falls to the floor sobbing from embarrassment. I am torn between assessing to row of piss-covered shirts hanging from the bottom rack, and quieting the irrational screams of my poor sick child. At this point Gayle walks in, apparently home early after a doctor's appt. It's just the welcome everyone wants to get when they walk in the door.

There is a point where all you can do is laugh. I call the neighbor to see if he will watch the kids for today, and he agrees, only to go out and get drunk with my ex and pull a complete no-show this morning. Yes, seriously. I know. And when things are going like this, it is *really* hard to show some self-control and not blame the assholes for doing it on purpose. Seriously, I wish I was a single pseudo-adult male who could abandon my family, just throw all responsibility to the wind, and get wasted instead. Anyway, Gayle graciously agrees to throw away one of his sick days so that I can go in and finish the budgets (at the deadline no less). Thank God. If it weren't for him, and my sisters, and the other family who support me, I probably never would have made it this far.

So yeah. This is my life. Someone told me I could write a book about it; considering my time constraints, I thought I'd just write a blog. And it seems as though Week Four might just be setting in...at last. Maybe now we'll have some clean underwear.

Is there some damn reason why "hobbies" or something like that isn't a category on here? I guess I'm in the minority of people on MySpace that don't only discuss "Parties and Nightlife" or "Fashion, Style and Shopping". If it weren't for all of my friends on here...anyway.

I am now addicted to Ravelry. Which is probably a good thing for MySpace, since it means I will be linking to this site and this blog, and probably be online updating it more often. However. After spending the last three days faithfully photographing and uploading all of my knitting-related paraphenalia, I have realized I am one of those horrible, consumerized acryclic yarn hoarders that the "yarn snobs" make fun of. It's embarrasing. If anyone looks at my stash, they will disown me forever. I have TONS of novelty yarn from when I first started knitting two-strands-at-once garter stitch scarves, and bought up everything I could find on clearance within twenty miles. I have balls and skeins and hanks and rolls and YARDS of nasty old acrylic, which my grandmother gave me when I was in elementary school, for the sole purpose of learning the fine art of plastic canvas. Ugh.

I see all these beautiful art yarns, hand-spun and hand-dyed fibers by indy businesses being sold at small LYS, and I wish that I had a stash full of THAT stuff. Then I would look really cool when people checked out my profile. I could be Miss Politically Correct, Death-to-Wal-Mart, Support Local Farmers, (and don't forget the non-local poor farmers in Uruguay), Buy from Small Business Owners, Organic Fiber Knitting modern young knitter that everybody wants to be.

Or I could just be myself, and keep buying the most ridiculous furry pink yarn off of the clearance rack at Jo-Ann.  While I would LOVE to knit a beautiful Aran out of organic hand-spun 100% wool fiber made locally, I know that realistically I will more likely be knitting some man-made fiber monstrosity that will be well-loved and well-worn by my ostentatious daughter, and even if she goes to school in an ugly sweater that doesn't match whatever pants she picked out, I will have the comfort of knowing that I can throw both in the washer and dryer without any fuss and she'll have something relatively clean to wear the next day!