I’m loading the moving truck as we speak…

May I brag on Jeff for a minute?

 

We all know I have the smartest, kindest, most handsomest husband ever, right? (I think consensus must be “yes”).  After all, last year he landed the awesome clerkship that sent us here to LA.  Which is why we’re living in a little apartment in South Pasadena now, spending a year seeing the sights and making friends and working really hard for an amazing judge.

 

So why do you think Simon might be decked out in his finest celebratory attire and grinning from ear to ear?

Because by jove, Daddy’s done it again!

 

Yep, my aforementioned brilliant/nice/dashing husband, the father of my child, one of my top two most favorite people in the world, has procured a highly-coveted federal circuit court clerkship for next fall!  He’ll be working for a judge in the Sixth Circuit.

 

A judge who happens to work in…

(this is not a skyline one likely recognizes upon sight)

 

AKRON, OHIO!

 

I may be the only person in the history of the *world*to actually say aloud “OMG YAY WE’RE LEAVING SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA AND MOVING TO AKRON!”

 

But I mean it.  Every blessed word of it.  LA is nice enough, sure, but you know it ain’t my scene.

 

My beloved future hometown is just a hop skip and jump away from two blogfriends, firmly in the land of proper winter and nice people and affordable housing.  Jeff says the city reminds him a lot of Columbia, which I find very promising because Columbia is my second-favorite midwestern city (after, y’know, Duluth.)

 

HALLE-FUCKIN’-LUJAH!

 

I can’t wait. I want to start packing now.

 

AKRON.  SOON I WILL BE IN YOU!

 

Next year, y’all. OMG.

(ganked from here)

 

Granted, it’s only for another year (just like how this current clerkship is just a year).  But still.  It’s a year!*

 

We’re a happy house (err…small apartment), guys.  And I hope y’all are too.

 

❤

K

~~~

*Just like last year, the firm in DC is going to hold Jeff’s job open for another year.  The only thing a firm loves better than an associate who clerks is an associate who clerks twice!

PS> My new most favorite gif ever:

(full clip here)

In which Jeff tries to shove me in a tar pit, and I probably deserved it

There has been knitting. And spinning. And baking.  And sewing.  It’s all wonderful, and I’ve even been taking pictures of it (!!). But if I don’t start addressing this backlog of LA Adventure posts, then I’m gonna scream.  So hold on tight, ’cause it’s about to get all tourist-y up in here.

~~~

Jeff and I have decided that, as often as we can, each week we’ll do one adventure-y thing here in the Los Angeles area.  Last time, I posted about going to the Santa Monica pier.  Here’s our next adventure.

The weekend after the Santa Monica Pier adventure, we decided to check out the La Brea tar pits.

I was RIDICULOUSLY excited for this one.  When I was a wee one, you see, (maybe 5 or 6?), we went on a vacation to the ash falls in Nebraska.  20 years later, that remains one of my most favorite activities ever. I just couldn’t get over how cool it was.  So if ash is awesome, tar is terrific!*

I should also add that this maybe isn’t the funniest post ever, because I just thought the whole thing was too damn cool to mock.  I seriously love this stuff.

I adore this picture, because I got to bust out my Irma impression and holler at Harold  Jeff “Go stand near tha erl hole, honey! I’m gonna make your pitcher!”

So there’s Jeff, standing next to a tar pit (or, “erl hole”, if you’d rather).

Hey! Know what else? I don’t know why this surprised me, but these tar pits actually…smelled tar-y.  I KNOW!!!  The whole park stank like hot asphalt: took me right back to Worlds of Fun on a hot August afternoon.

The other cool thing was that excavation is still ongoing:

Nothing was happening that Saturday morning, but it was cool feeling like we were so close to the actual work – not just seeing what had already been done.

Jeff is making good on our “I carried the baby for the first 9 months (err… 7 1/2). You can carry him for the next two years” vow.

Here’s the actual museum, built into the (manmade?) hillside:

The whole top of the building – which is actually a garden-y thing – was carved with a relief sculpture showing the prehistoric animals:

Isn’t that the neatest thing ever? (Yes, yes it is)

Look! Proof that I was there too!

The museum itself was awesome: just the right size, a lab with viewing area so you could see the techs and volunteers at work, a little garden-y thing in the middle, lots of cool exhibits (including a bunch of hands-on stuff).  It was really super awesome.

They had several of these signs around – by the active excavation areas, at the ticket counter, scattered throughout the exhibits.  Ya think the whole “no dinosaurs” thing is much of a sore spot for them? ;-P

So of course I wanted to go up to someone and be all “So, where are the dinosaurs?”.  But since I can’t wink**, I think that would’ve actually worked at cross-purposes to my ‘hey mr. archaeologist man. I getcha.’ goal.

It really is a shame, since the tar pits folks seem like good people.  I mean look! A pun! In an actual exhibit!

WIN.

I wanted to bring home one of this big guy’s thigh bones for Roxie to gnaw on, but Jeff wouldn’t let me:

That would’ve kept her entertained for 3 or 4 hours, at least!

Jeff and I both loved how they displayed all the dire wolf skulls:

This also apparently has some sort of Game of Thrones relevance to him, but when he started to explain I wandered off to try and nurse a giant sloth or something.

So then Jeff set me aright and I nursed the proper thing, instead:

(I love nursing in public. It’s my new favorite.  BEIN’ A MAMMAL, YO.)

We rounded out the trip with an out-of-focus picture of a squished penny.  You know, like I do:

SQUISHED PENNY!!!

And that was it.  I’d rate this adventure a solid 9.5 out of 10.  They lose half a point because Jeff wouldn’t let me buy Simon a stuffed mammoth in the gift shop.

So in summary: the La Brea tar pits are awesome, and you should definitely visit.  Definitely.

~~~

*Forgive me. I don’t get out much.

**No, really. I can’t.  Physically incapable of it. Remind me to show you sometime.

In which I die of warm fuzzies and appreciation

Working to shorten my queue of woefully-overdue posts, I HAVE to share this.

First of all I’ll say that believe it or not, I actually have some real-life friends (I KNOW!).  In addition to living in the computer, they also exist in meatspace, and before I left St. Louis we would regularly get together at this little institution called “Knitorious Knit Night”.

And for SOME REASON (hell if I can figure out why), they have decided that they like me.

They like me enough, in fact, to plan and purchase and dye and knit/crochet and wrench their backs seaming not one but several gifts for me and my little family.

I know, I can’t believe it either.

But look!  Proof!

A month later and I’m still all blubbery about it.  YOU GUYS!!!

I seriously almost cried, I was so touched.  I was touched until I died.

Wait, that came out wrong.

You know what I mean.

Doesn’t the Dyeabolical blanket look lovely in my spinning chair?

(Psst – that’s Dyeabolical roving on Gretchen, too)

LOVE.

(the matching pillow is in the rocker in our bedroom, where Simon’s asleep.  Don’t want to wake him…)

 

Guess what else?  That gorgeous Dyeabolical-dyed yarn is special for an extra reason, too.  A secret reason that I can’t wait to tell you all about.  LATER.  Much later.

 

And if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ve already seen Simon’s blanket in heavy use:

And the car seat blanket, too (which has been SO handy, let me say!)

 

I just get so happy inside every time I look at and use these.  Almost like how I feel when I look at Simon, except I built him.

 

You, my dear knit night-ers (Ann and Rachel and Deborah and Kara and Mindy and Margaret and Rhonda and Lois and Cheyonna and Kim and Davina and Madeline and Monica and Sharon), are the awesomest people ever.  I ❤ you.  And when I’m back in St. Louis next October with a crazy 15-month-old, I’ll be sure to stop by and thank every blasted one of you in person.

 

<3.

The Celebrated Arrival of Simon Neal Hoops

(subtitle: There Will Be Blood)
 
OK so when I left off last time, Jeff and I had just finished cramming several months’ worth of stress and life events into one two-week period.  What’s written below is just the events of the next 24-ish hours, sans commentary (I’ll save my feelings for a later post).  So…
 
They say hindsight is 20/20.  And in this perfect reflective vision, I now see that on that Sunday afternoon I was likely in pre-labor, or whatever you want to call it.  But given all the running around we’d just been doing, it was easy to chalk the little bits of weirdness up to being overly-tired.  For one, I slept in the car almost the whole way back to St. Louis (I never sleep in the car).  When we got back into town that night, I was still feeling sort of generally icky and achy and spent some time bitching about how I was “tired of being pregnant” (note to the Universe: very funny.)  So that evening Jeff sifted me and applied counterpressure to my sacrum and gave me a back rub and generally did all those nice things that one does for one’s pregnant and crabby wife.  I went to bed early, with an extensive mental list of packing and chores to begin the following morning (since, y’know, we were planning on leaving St. Louis in just 10 days…).
 
I woke up at about midnight feeling really warm and even ickier than before.  Jeff took my temp (98.6) and I went back to sleep, vowing to sleep in the next day and “take it easy”.
 
At 2:15 I woke up again, realized “Oh shit I think my water just broke” and ran to the bathroom (JUST LIKE IN THE MOVIES. OR SOMETHING.), where I called to Jeff: “Umm, Love?  Don’t freak out but I think my water may have broken.” (secret, just between you and me? I knew that’s what it was.  But part of me hoped I’d just peed myself or something.  Note to any horny teenagers reading this:  yes, pregnancy is just that awesome.  It makes you hope that you’ve peed yourself.  Always practice safe sex.)  Jeff’s body – operating about 15 seconds ahead of Jeff’s brain – immediately leapt out of bed and ran to the bathroom doorway, where he stood staring dumbly at me (sitting sexily there on the toilet) for a ridiculously long period of time.  “So, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, but we should probably go get this checked out” I said.
 
(Inside my head, though, it was “dammit dammit dammit premature labor and going to the hospital, this was NOT my plan.”  But I didn’t tell Jeff that.)
 
So I got dressed, and he got dressed, and I tossed his laptop, my iPad, and a couple of his bar prep books into his backpack (I suspected that we’d be there for a while, and dude was less than a week away from taking the bar).
 
Now, keep in mind that this Hoopling wasn’t supposed to be born in a hospital, or in St. Louis.  As such, I’d done precisely ZERO research about hospitals in St. Louis (or elsewhere, for that matter).  But in the back of my head I remembered our homebirth prep class instructor (Samanda) making the off-hand remark in one session, “If I had to transfer to a hospital, I’d go to St. Mary’s.”  St. Mary’s was also the closest hospital to our house.  So that’s where we went (this would later prove to be a VGD – Very Good Decision).
 
At the hospital, the receptionist dude directed me up to the women’s care wing, while Jeff parked the car.  I checked in up there, was asked a litany of questions by a very nervous and polite intern (aww), got an IV (ick), a swab to determine if my water had broken (hint: it had), and received the only cervical exam of the whole ordeal (hurt like fucking hell), which indicated that I’d dialated to 2cm.  A tech came in and did an ultrasound, which revealed that Hoopling was still head down, locked and loaded.  They guessed Hoopling weighed about 4.5 lb (HA! in retrospect).
 
It was 3:30 am and I was sitting in a hospital bed in St. Louis with an IV in my arm and a still-dazed husband next to me.  Whee.
 
After a quick conversation with an OB, they decided to move me down to a L&D room.  I was in premature labor, but since I wasn’t having any notable contractions we were all hopeful that Hoopling could stay inside and bake for a while longer.  In L&D I got hooked up to monitors and a magnesium drip to prevent labor, and an IV of antibiotics.  And I got a steroid shot in the hip, to try and expedite maturation of Hoopling’s lungs.  Fun stuff.
 
So we chilled out there for a long-ass time.  LONG. ASS. TIME.  Once it reached a respectable hour Jeff called my mom to let her know what was going on and that there was no urgency, but would she maybe be interested in coming to St. Louis at some point? And then he called the HR lady at WashU to make sure that my COBRA was in effect (since my last day had been Thursday, y’know.).  And I sat there in that stupid bed hooked up to all sorts of wires and crap, wearing a makeshift cloth pad, eating a veggie burger and reading blogs on my iPad.  I was having very mild, irregular, crampy contractions and the monitors indicated that Hoopling was just ridin’ along with them, so it seemed that we were in a holding pattern.  I started recording them on the contraction-timer app on Jeff’s phone just for shits and giggles:  1 minute on, 15 minutes off.  45 seconds on, 12 minutes off.  Really exciting stuff.
 
My mom showed up in early afternoon, and Jeff went home to shower and pick up a couple things.  Since it had become apparent that Hoopling would be born in St. Louis (sooner or later), and since we had done no preparation or planning for a hospital birth, we decided to call Samanda and ask if she would be our doula.  She said yes (yay!), and then offered to stop by that evening on her way to Trader Joe’s.  We said “sure, if you have time.”  If only she knew!  (Also a VGD)
 
So the whole time that we were chatting and blog-reading and bar-prepping and veggie-burger-eating, a steady stream of doctors and students were coming in to look at the monitor and ask me questions. Everybody asked how my pain rated on a scale of 1 to 10; my answer was always the same:  “1.5?  Maybe 2?” After a while it was marginally more noticeable, so I upped my responses to “2 or 2.5, I guess. Maybe.”.  A neonatologist came in and introduced himself; I thought briefly “I like this dude”.  (FORESHADOWING).  Then the OB on day-shift duty came in and I did NOT like him.  Never had to see that twerp again.
 
I need to detour for a minute to talk about this pain thing.  I’ve always known that I have a high pain tolerance.  In our classes with Samanda, we’d practice pain coping techniques by holding ice cubes to simulate contractions.  That’s when I learned that it had zero effect on me (strong Norwegian ice-loving blood, perhaps? :-P).  In class I could always feel the *sensation* of the cold ice, but it never felt unpleasant or painful, per se.  You might also recall that I’m the nutso who knitted through over an hour of on-the-bone foot tattooing.  The tattoo was painful, but tolerable: I knew I was going to have some awesome body art to show for it.  So when asked to quantify those contractions, I had to think of the only really truly excruciating pain I’d experienced:  some absolutely awful cramps I’d had in England last summer, when we were touring Windsor castle.  Fresh off a many-year stint on the Pill, I’d not had really bad cramps before.  But those in Windsor castle took the cake.  The cramps were so bad that I spent the whole tour crouched in a corner of some big fancy castle-y dining room, clutching Jeff’s hand, ready to sob, pass out, and/or vomit at any moment.  (Those only got better when we obtained some special not-available-in-America version of Midol at the grossly overpriced Windsor drugstore.  That I was even willing to take medicine then really says something – I’m not a fan of painkillers.  I mean, if my arm were lopped off in an ill-advised bout with King Arthur I might take a Tylenol.  But that’s about it.)  So anyway.  Compared to the Windsor castle cramps, those contractions were nothing.  NOTHING.
 
Samanda showed up at around 7:00 just to say hi and answer a few questions (which Jeff and I had been jotting down as they’d occurred to us all day).  It was awesome having her there – an expert who knew the hospital lingo, but one also knew us.  By then I decided that it felt nice to sit up and stare off in the distance when I had a particularly noticeable contraction, but again: still irregular, still not very painful.
 
So, it logically stands that a good indication of labor is 1)duration and frequency of regular contractions and 2)pain during contractions. Since my contractions were all over the place and not really very painful, it was determined by everyone (including me) that I wasn’t really in labor.  They needed to free up the L&D room for someone who was actually going to L and D, so I got booted to an antepartum room.  Samanda decided to stick around for that trip down the hallway (VGD #3).
 
Here’s where it gets funny.  Almost as soon as my ass hit the door in that antepartum room, I had one stronger contraction when some twunty nurse tried to make me lay back for the monitors (I’m pretty sure I told her just where she could shove her fucking monitors, but my exact words were “No, I’m not interested in doing that.”).
 
Then just a second later, I needed to push.  (Holy shit!).  I knew no one would believe me because dudes, I wasn’t even in real labor.  So instead of saying “I need to push”, I said “I need to poop”.  People don’t fool around when a pregnant woman says she needs to poop, y’all.
 
Samanda went and told somebody “She says she needs to poop!”, while I pushed just a teeny little bit to feel better. Somebody jabbed another steroid shot in my hip as a last-ditch attempt to mature my poor little 4.5-lb baby’s lungs.  Then a new OB came in (Dr. Potter, who later proved to be my hero of awesomeness) and it all escalated quickly from there (ya think?).  One of the first things Dr. Potter-my-hero said was, “I know this isn’t the birth experience you’d wanted, but I want you to know you can deliver in any position you want.”
 
I FREAKING LOVED DR. POTTER RIGHT THEN.
 
After spending a whopping 20 minutes in the antepartum room, I was whisked down the hall to the closest delivery room, which happened to be one of the giant high-tech shiny metal OR’s reserved for delivering quadruplets stacked like cord wood or something (I think it even had a machine that goes “PING!”).  I wanted to push, but even I knew that heading down the hallway with my ass in the air was not a good time to do that.  (LOGIC.)  That’s also the ONLY time that things were really painful: when I wanted to push, and needed to push, but couldn’t push.  THAT was not fun.
 
(Jeff has read this already and says I wasn’t as coherent in this next part as I make it seem, but this is exactly how it was in my head.  The sentences, etc. just maybe didn’t all make it OUT of my head.)
 
Jeff and Samanda threw on scrubs, and got to the OR just a minute or two after I did.  I hopped (err…rolled, with assistance) onto my hands and knees, thoroughly tangling myself in the stupid IV and hospital gown (I tried to make Jeff cut that fucking hospital gown off me, but the nurse wouldn’t let him. God I hated that gown.).  The monitors wouldn’t stay on when I was up on all fours, so one nurse, Valerie, (who is also my hero) stretched out next to me and held them in place under me the whole time.  Let me restate this:  rather than make me do what was convenient for *them*, Dr. Potter-my-hero and Valerie-also-my-hero went out of their way to accommodate my comfort and desires.  BAD ASS.
 
With Samanda at my head, holding my hand and encouraging me, and Jeff and Dr. Potter and half the St. Mary’s staff at my ass staring expectantly at a giant hairy head way up in my vagina (SEXY), I pushed.  Pushing felt *good*, y’all.   No one tried to tell me what to do or when; I just went with the urges.  It was very much a “two steps forward, one step back” feeling, which was sort of frustrating.  But the observational part of my brain was still plugged in, so I also kept thinking “Huh.  This is exactly like I’d read about!”  I also recall (but might be imagining) that there was a lot of silence, and patience: I don’t remember feeling rushed or worried at all.  When Hoopling was crowning and I felt the ring of fire, my brain again was like “Aah yes, now I am experiencing the ring of fire.” And in that moment I took a second to sing some Johnny Cash inside my head.
 
Then at 9:37pm I got sick of waiting and head-singing and having my cellulite-y ass waggling in the breeze, so I bore down like a mofo and shoved that Hoopling out.  HUZZAH!
 
I’d been afraid (much to the amusement of everybody in the room) that I would sit on Hoopling after it was born.  I apparently voiced these fears repeatedly.  But when Hoopling emerged and Jeff said “It’s a boy!” and then there he was laying on the bed under my stomach, I definitely did *not* sit on him.  Just so ya know.  (Stupid crazy labor fears).
 
My first thought seeing the little dude was “Wow! He’s big and pink!  And he has hair!”  No way was that giant healthy-looking crying thing the “4.5 lb preemie” I’d been promised.  I sat back and looked at him for a little bit, and then hopped (rolled, etc.) onto my back so I could cuddle him. Someone had put one of those pink and blue stripey hats on him and I kept trying to take it off so I could get a proper look at him.  Since he was quite clearly breathing well and there was no huge rush to  get him immediately under observation, we had a moment.  I didn’t expect him to nurse straightaway, but knew that there were hormonal benefits to even an attempt (no, seriously.  That’s how the thought was in my head: “there will be hormonal benefits to this”), so I shoved a nipple in the general direction of his mouth anyway.  And we did all the requisite toe- and finger-counting, etc. But honestly, this bit was rather an awesome blur.
 
After a moment it was time for him to go wow everyone with stellar Apgars (9!) and I had a placenta to deliver (whee!), so Jeff went off with little dude while I craftily undertook to replicate that hallway scene from The Shining, using only my vagina.
 
(Aside: it always annoyed me reading other peoples’ birth stories, when they just say “and then I delivered the placenta”.  I mean, it’s a whole placenta!  Granted it’s not as exciting as the bit that comes before it, but surely you can spare *some* description of what that feels like.  So I’m going to tell you.)
 
Placentas are awesome.  They’re a whole organ that your body creates just to sustain another being!  They protect and nurture that being, and provide it with the required nutrients for months on end.  And they’re 100%, completely disposable: you have another baby, you grow another placenta.  And best of all, they’re really freaking easy to deliver, what with the lack of bones and all.  It’s seriously like “push, squish, slither, DONE.”  (I apologize for the onomatopoeia.  But not really.)  So yeah, I delivered the placenta.  I apparently even said, “I could deliver 400 placentas!”  I’m glad no one made me try for that record.
 
And then the charge nurse showed it to me, and I said, “Cool. I want to keep it.”  And she said “No. We need to send it to pathology.”  So I tried bargaining (note: I don’t remember this part, but Samanda says I said this):  “OK, you keep half and I’ll take half.”
 
No dice.  I didn’t get my placenta, and yes I am still a bit sore about that.  It’s mine, dammit!  Makes me sick to think of it being tied up in a plastic bag and tossed away with medical waste.
 
So anyway.  Jeff was down the hall with his mini-me, and I got to go to a recovery room.  Samanda stayed with me, and my mom came in, and Valerie-also-my-hero started to do all the standard postpartum-y stuff to me.  I asked again about my placenta and she seemed truly sorry that she couldn’t get it for me; I told her that next time (if there *is* a next-time-in-the-hospital), I’m going to bring some ground chuck in a cooler and switch it for the placenta when no one’s looking.  I don’t think she believed me, but I totally mean it.
 
And thus began the longest two hours of my *life*.  Jeff was off with little dude and a whole bunch of strangers were doing stuff to him and I had no idea what the hell it was, and I wanted to see him but I was told to stay in that goddamned bed, but at least there was apple juice.  And every now and again Jeff and my mom would switch stations (Samanda stayed with me the whole time, feeding me that blessed sweet nectar of apple), and Jeff brought phone pics of little dude and told me all about how well he was doing, and I made sure to grab the list of names we’d written up some weeks prior, which Jeff had smartly stuck in his backpack during that quick trip home.
 
Finally, Valerie-also-my-hero got the go-ahead to help me regain my composure.  Samanda headed home, I cleaned up a bit (OW OW OW) and Jeff and I headed over to the NICU to see our Hoopling.
 
That’s when Jeff and I got to look at him in the calm, quiet, for the first time, together.  And I had the name list folded up in my hand but we didn’t need it, because we both looked at him and were immediately like, “Wow.  There’s Simon Neal.”
 
Awesome NICU nurse Amy stood quietly next to us, and when we were ready she explained just how strong and healthy he was, and pointed out how he didn’t need help breathing or anything, and answered a bunch of stupid questions that I asked but now I don’t even remember what they were.  Then after a long, long time we went to my postpartum room (it was like 2am by this point), and my mom fetched Taco Bell (best damn bean burrito of my LIFE), and I was feeling quite sore so I took the Motrin that a nurse offered (that’s how you know I was *really* feelin’ it.  One whole Motrin!), pumped a quarter-milliliter of colostrum, and fell asleep.
 
And so our NICU adventure began…
 
In conclusion, I cannot *wait* until Simon is old enough to explain exactly what he thought he was doing, coming early and all.  I just wish that labor had been more painful (the better to guilt him with, you know).  “Fetch Mama a Diet Coke.  I LABORED PAINLESSLY FOR 16 HOURS THEN PUSHED FOR 20 MINUTES TO BRING YOU INTO THIS EARTH YOUNG MAN” just doesn’t have a strong effect, does it?
 
PS>I pooped, and Jeff saw.  But he still loves me.  HE’D BETTER.

Poor little guy doesn’t stand a chance

After proving his mettle at breastfeeding, Simon got to come home from the NICU yesterday.

 

Just in time to celebrate Harry Potter’s birthday, Hoops-style:

Sorry, kid.  You’re destined to a lifetime of geekitude, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

 

And yes, I promise we’ll read Chapter 2 tomorrow night.  And Chapter 3 after that.  And on and on and on.  We’ve got all the time in the world, little guy.

 

They say it’s never too early to start reading to your kids, y’know…

Finally!

When Jeff and I were poor undergrads, living in Kirksville and tending two ill-behaved felines, I used to go to garage sales a lot.  It was a great way to have a day’s worth of fun for just a few dollars.

One time, at one of those sales, in that neighborhood just behind Wal-Mart on the east side of Baltimore, I found a chalkboard.  It was so cute!  It was the perfect size, black slate, with a little chalk tray.  I loved it.  But it was also $15, and in those days that $15 could literally mean the difference between eating decently for a week, or subsisting on mac ‘n cheese.

So I was good, and I didn’t buy the perfect little chalkboard, and it’s been haunting me ever since.

I just couldn’t forget about my chalkboard.  I keep a list now, on my phone – a shopping list of sorts, but just of antiques I’d like to track down: a big old wooden bowl to make a centerpiece, a perfectly-sized hall mirror, a sturdy coat rack…stuff like that.  And of course, the first item on that list was “chalkboard for kitchen.”

Over the years, I’ve built up big plans for this hypothetical chalkboard: it would live on the wall in my kitchen, right above Grandmother’s kitchen stool (which I still need to restore…).  We’d use it to write notes and weekly menus and stuff, and Hooplings would write on it too once they’re tall enough to reach.  It was gonna be awesome.

The only obstacle was, of course, that this chalkboard only existed in my mind.

So as I’ve gone through antique shops since then, I’ve always kept an eye out.  I would occasionally find a board, but it wouldn’t be quite right: too small, or massively too big, or painted with chalkboard paint instead of being real slate.  I even started looking at new ones online, but just about fell over backwards at the prices.  My dream wasn’t worth $200, no sirree.

That takes us to last Saturday, that fateful day.  Mom was in town with a friend (hi, Mary Ann!), and it was my job to chauffeur them around St. Louis.  They wanted to visit one of the antique shops on Big Bend, so there we went.

It was waiting for me midway down the third aisle from the right.

The chalkboard of my dreams was right in front of me!  At last!  I may have screeched joyfully.  It may not have been an exceedingly ladylike exclamation.  I may have almost fallen over (literally) in my excitement.  (No, really.  I almost fell over.  Mary Ann caught me.  Jeff is forever in her debt.)  There, right in front of me, was the chalkboard that had been haunting my every domestic daydream for years and years.  And for the low, low price of $38.50 plus tax, it could be mine.

Look! It’s even double-sided!  What a value!

That’s, like… ::puts on old-timey accountant visor::… $19.25 a side!  What a bargain!

My hand was shaking as I handed over my credit card to the clerk.  I was fairly giddy as I danced out to the car with it (if you’ve never seen an almost-8-months-pregnant clumsy redhead in cowboy boots dance with an unwieldy chalkboard, well, you’re missing out).

My excitement was shared – to a lesser scale – by my shopping companions.  Mom said “Well thank god. I was so tired of looking for one of those for you!”  Mary Ann said “I’m happy that you’re happy.”  And when I texted a picture of my find to Jeff, he said “So are we just going to store this until we get to DC?”

Spoilsport.

Yes.  We are just going to store it – along with most of our other furniture and books and pictures and “stuff” – until we get to DC.  I admit, it’s maybe a bit goofy to spend hard-earned money on a thing that will spend the next year or two in a storage unit before it’s hauled halfway across the country.

But to be fair, I really wasn’t going to risk losing it again.  My beloved chalkboard is mine forever now.  And I’m never ever ever letting it go.

THIS is why I go antiquing, y’all.  Nothing beats the rush.

Blogs to adore: 2012-nearly-midsummer edition

It’s been a LONG time since I’ve done one of these posts.  So long, in fact, that I could barely remember what clever tag I used to use, or even find the old posts in my archives.

Granted, these days I’m doing good if I can remember my middle name (I *think* it’s still Monson, but admittedly haven’t checked lately.  Jeff might’ve changed it while I was asleep) or where I am (I just wander campus and try my key in various office doors until one works).

So maybe don’t be expecting too much from me, ‘s all I’m saying.

ANYWAY.  It is Friday, and I have no exciting new pictures of any of my myriad WIP’s (of the knitty, spinny and sew-y varieties) to share with you, and I just bought Brandi Carlile’s new album (OMG SO GOOD) and ate cafe sushi for lunch (OMG SO…adequate?), so let’s keep this “happy calm afternoon” thing rollin’.

~~~

• Posie Gets Cozy is a blog full of pretty things and happy things and warmth and softness and beautiful textures and also knitting and food.  Coincidentally, this is also what my brain looks like when I’m listening to Brandi Carlile.

• Want some darn good blogging?  Schlabadoo takes storytelling to a whole ‘nuther level, each little self-contained anecdote offering a chortle, a sigh, and usually a whatever-sound-one-makes-when-one-is-musing.  Umm…I’m not really doing a good job selling this blog.  Just go read it, and prepare to nostalgize.

• Smart, Pretty and Awkward is like Oprah for normal (read: weird and awesome) people.  I check in every day, and am a better person for it.

• Margaret (Hi Margaret!) just told me about this next one:  Zach Aboard is a lifestyle/home/crafting/mommyblog full of awesomeness and beauty and free-range kiddos and fun.  Oh, and they live on a boat.  Why?  Well, why not?  I love this blog, and might decide to stow away if they ever wander up the Mississippi 😉

• OK so you know the thing where you to to Trader Joe’s and you get your 29c bananas and your Smart Dogs and your cracked-pepper bread and your granola bars and your tart frozen yogurt, and then some new (or maybe just new-to-you) item catches your eye?  So you stand there way too long trying to decide if you want to buy the new-to-you item?  But you really don’t want to spend $3.99 on it if it sucks (and let’s be honest, some of TJ’s experimental stuff really does suck).  So you don’t get it, and then you wonder if you’re missing out on something awesome because you’re a cheapskate and a weenie.  You know what I mean.  OK.  Well, What’s Good at Trader Joe’s? fixes that problem for you.  These intrepid bloggers boldly go forth and sample all the new stuff and report on its awesomeness (or, occasionally, its lack thereof).  Good stuff.

• Grasping for Objectivity is nominally, I suppose, a mommyblog.  But it’s also wickedly funny and sweet and warm and educational in a fantastically snarky way.  Like a total creep-o stalker, let me just say: I wish I were cool enough to have Rachel for a meatspace friend.  But then I’d do something like this and she’d run away and I couldn’t blame her.  (Especially because I just compared her to Wayne Newton on my stupid blog.)

• 269 Days.  Two words:  pregnancy webcomic.  If you are pregnant, have ever been pregnant, or think you might ever become pregnant, you’ll LOL.

• Almost every single “OMG PRINT IT AND MAKE IT NOW” recipe I’ve found lately has been from Joy the Baker.  She has impeccable taste and inspired creations.  Prepare to fall in love.

• I’ve been reading S. of Simply Bike since her Academichic days and love that now she’s sharing cycling, travel, and mommyhood with us.  Her daughter is about a year older than Hoopling will be (that’s really awkwardly phrased but you know what I mean), so I love getting to follow along with their new life adventures.

~~~

All right, that’s all I’ve got!  Tonight Jeff and I are off to watch the Cards trample the Royals (because anything short of annihilation would be an embarrassment).  Tomorrow I hit the massage table, pick up the fruits of my sunglasses-shopping angst, and end the day with a friend’s football game.  In between times, I’m knitting a wee little February Baby Sweater and will undoubtedly wander the neighborhood with Speshul Dog a time or two.  How’s that for a weekend? 🙂

PS>Don’t forget to call your dads on Sunday!

Fourth time’s a charm

Until very recently, I thought that sewing machines and I just didn’t get along.

No hard feelings, really (OK well maybe some, on my part).  But we just weren’t meant to be.

When I was a kid, I learned to sew on a 1980’s Brother model, set up in Grandma’s kitchen.  Laboriously, painstakingly, I pieced three or four quilts on that machine.  Every 5 minutes something would jam up, and I’d have to holler for Grandma to come fix it.  Of course, those problems were NEVER my fault. I never had a lead foot on the electric pedal, or mis-threaded the machine in my preadolescent haste, or tied knots when the bobbin thread snapped.  Who me? Of course not.  Definitely the machine’s fault.

Mom’s Kenmore at home wasn’t much better.  Even though she used it to hem all of Dad’s work pants and jeans, made umpteen polyester fur and/or ric-rack’d Halloween costumes for me and Ryan, and even used to make our everyday clothes when we were wee, the machine never worked for me.  Just like at Grandma’s, I’d sit down to sew on it and hop up two minutes later with a problem for Mom to sort out.

In a marked difference from sewing adventures at Grandma’s house, though, Mom didn’t possess a 80-year-old grandmother’s sense of indulgence and time and patience.  When I screwed up that Kenmore, I’d usually wander off to work on something else (like the World’s Longest Crochet Chain, or the pitiful book of “happy families and smiling people cut out from LLBean catalogs”, or whatever else it was that other completely normal children did) before Mom could find the time head down to the basement sewing room and sort out how I’d screwed up her machine *this* time.

Unfortunately, the curse didn’t break at midnight on my eighteenth birthday, or at my first kiss, or even when I lived in the forest with a bunch of funny-nosed dwarfs for a while (that was a crazy summer, let me tell you).

Five or six years ago, Mom and Dad gave me a basic beginner-level machine of my own, for Christmas.  I eagerly set it up in our bedroom in Kirksville, and while Jeff was out with friends I’d occasionally flip the machine on, pour a glass or three of wine, and make a half-assed attempt at sewing quilts or curtains.  Of course, after just a few minutes, the inevitable would happen:  bobbin vomit.  Or hitching or wild unspooling.  Or something.  Alway something.  So I’d wail and gnash my teeth and pour more wine and wander off to work on something else (like hand-piecing the hummingbird quilt of doom, or knitting ,or whatever else it was that other completely normal college students did).

By this point, of course, I was an adult of sound mind and logical reason, and had begun to suspect that perhaps my little sewing machine problem lay less with a giant coincidence regarding every sewing machine I’d ever touched, and was perhaps a personal problem of my own.

But even though I was aware of the problem, academically, I steadfastly maintained that maybe I just didn’t want it hard enough (I think I watched too much Peter Pan growing up).  So every six months or so since then, I’ve turned that machine on, sat down, and made a half-assed attempt at sewing something.  Two minutes later I’d get frustrated, say a few (dozen) curse words, throw the plastic cover back on, and forget about it.  Rinse and repeat.

Until last winter.

Last winter, you see, we hosted Christmas at our house.  Mom and Dad came in from Kansas City, and I put Mom straight to work sewing a runner for the holiday table.  I figured that just like every other time she touches a sewing machine, she’d have no problem using mine.  That it would bend to her will and turn out yard after yard of perfect, even stitches.

So I was surprised when, while I was back in the kitchen frosting a red velvet bundt cake and Mom was in the craft room working on the runner, I heard her sweet, kindergarten-teacher voice muttering “piece of shit machine”.

Score: Kate – 1, Machine – 0.

After inspecting the machine’s innards like a soothsayer reading animal entrails, Mom figured out that my sewing machine was actually a Frankenmachine.  Not that it supported the comedian cum politician, I mean, but that it had been cobbled together in the factory from the parts of three separate models.  And like one might expect from a mechanical object with a bunch of moving parts, that didn’t exactly work out so well.

HA.  This one wasn’t my fault after all!  For real and for true!  I wasn’t cursed!

In the few months since that discovery, I’ve been gimping along with the Frankenmachine.  I briefly experimented with an old machine of Grandma’s (not the  Bother  Brother that I learned on), but that was a bit too rusty for my limited restorative skills.  Me and Frankenmachine just sort of made it work.  I’d curse at it, thump the side for good measure, re-thread the bobbin for the umpteenth time, then sew a quilt block or two without incident.  Rinse and repeat.

Until last week.

I was making a rag baby quilt, and had just about had it with Frankenmachine.  It was hitching every single time I started a new seam, and something had shifted out of alignment because it began eating needles like they were delicious steel candy.  After a little bit of a temper tantrum on my part, I called Mom for advice – what could I do to make Frankenmachine work once and for all?  I may have cried a bit.  I may have called Frankenmachine some unladlylike names.  I may have threatened to chuck it out the window.

So then we went to Kansas City (for unrelated matters, not due to any sewing machine temper tantrum). I told Mom all about how I’d managed to beat Frankenmachine into submission and finish that baby quilt, but that I was *also* just about ready to give up on machine sewing once and for all, and spend the rest of my life piecing everything by hand, until my eyes become cloudy and my enfeebled, claw-like hands can no longer grasp a needle.  Not that I was being dramatic or anything.

So then on Saturday night, Mom did a very Mom-ly thing.  She and I headed to JoAnn’s, allegedly to find some embroidery thread for Grandma.  But first, of course, Mom cruised past the sewing machine section.  And started talking with the sales clerk.  And told me to start comparing features and figuring out if any of those machines would meet my needs.  And said she wanted to buy me a new, non-Frankenmachine as an early first Mother’s Day present.

And then, an hour later, this happened:

We found me a new machine.

World, meet Hazel:

Hazel is sexy, and a workhorse.  (like me.  Neigh.)  She does 23 different stitches, has a drop-in bobbin, and can sew at a good clip for hours on end.  She’s given me no problems whatsoever, and I’ve been using her almost nonstop for a week.  Just keeps on truckin’.  Her thread never tangles, she doesn’t eat needles, and the little swirly pattern on her front sort of reminds me of my tattoos.

Clearly it was meant to be.

Three cheers for Mom, and three cheers for having – for the first time in my life – a sewing machine that truly loves me!

Tomorrow I’ll show you what beautiful music – err, baby items – Hazel and I have made so far.

This always happens

Jeff and I KNOW better than to go to the local bookstore with $75 worth gift cards and a Saturday afternoon to kill.

 

We know better.

 

But we never learn.

 

I love Left Bank.  I will miss it sorely when we leave St. Louis this summmer.

 

(Also?  I read The Hunger Games last night, in one sitting.  Such a great, quick read. I love the universe they created – and even though it was really dark for a young adult novel, it also felt like nothing was gratuitous.  Sort of reminded me of The Giver, which was one of my most beloved books as a preteen.)

 

(Also also? In the interest of self-preservation, I’ve decided to read Raising Freethinkers before delving into The Handmaid’s Tale.  I don’t think I can handle too much dystopian fiction all at once.  I ain’t THAT masochistic.)

 

(Also also also?  I will never crack any of Jeff’s three scifi paperbacks.  No sirree.)

The hatred just gets cuter and cuter

Sorry about the problems with commenting, guys.  I’m still not sure what’s up, but from the looks of this WordPress forum post it seems that they’re changing some things w/ the commenting system, so it’s not just my site.  Hopefully it’ll sort itself out within the next couple days, but if you still can’t get a comment through just shout at me on Twitter or email me, OK?

All right, it’s time for the long-awaited cat torture post.

So, shortly after Valentine’s Day I was browsing My Cat Is A Dick, as I am wont to do, and I found this:

 

“Self!” I thought to myself, “This is too unbearably cute!  And humiliating to my favorite feline! I must endeavor to replicate this, so as to most effectively embarrass him and increase the chances of having my face clawed off while I sleep!”

So I took a sheet of red cardstock, and I carefully cut it into the shape of a perfect heart.  Then with Jeff safely out of the house at his evening class (so he couldn’t stop me, you see), I set out to accomplish my goal.

It went about as successfully as you might think.  That is to say, not at all.

Within that blur:  POINTY TEETH DIGGING INTO MY FLESH.

We struggled.

He tried to flee, but neglected to consider that I am larger, meaner, and more tenacious than he.

Eventually, he resigned himself to his fate.

But though escape had proven impossible, he still felt no obligation to cooperate.

(This cat photography thing is harder than it looks)

After he calmed down a bit, I realized I’d made a critical error:  the cutout’s head hole was too big; the heart kept slipping down ’round his widdwe beebee neck.

That and he was still refusing to play along, behaving in a most catlike manner.

You can almost see the fantasies of my demise flashing in his eyes.

So in the interest of self-preservation, we made one last go of it…

And we were done.

He made me prove that it was over, that such atrocities would never again be committed.

The Cardboard Heart of Death and Shame had been annihilated, and we vowed never to speak of it again.  He made me swear to secrecy, evermore.

Good thing he doesn’t know I have a blog.