Unreserved

We've got a little chocolate fiend on our hands. To stem the flow of Hershy kisses last night, we promised Anna she could have more "tomorrow."
The first words out of her mouth this morning was, "I want more chocolate now."
I told her she could have more later in the day after eating some healthy food, to which she matter of factly replied, "I certainly hope so."
It's like living with a mina bird. Not always in a good way.
While watching the turkeyday parades on Thursday, I figured it was as good a time as any to clean the fish tank. Anna helpfully warned me not to spill any water on my pajamas. I did anyway (unintentionally - honest!). Anna saw this and said, "Mama! You got your pajamas wet, dumbass!"
She's not always so harsh. After the chocolate exchange this morning, the cat was in my way. She asked me why he was in the way (we're still very much in the "why" stage of life around here). I said it was because he was stupid. (I'm not a morning person)
I was promptly scolded, "Don't talk about Oliver like that."

An now for something completely unrelated.
Home improvement lesson learned this week: To remove leftover grout from reclaimed floor tiles, the Dremmel is not your best tool of attack. Sure, you can grind the grout off. Slowly. With much wearing of the designated grinding bit. And more wearing of one's patience. A hammer is much faster and every bit as effective, provided you're careful not to chip the tiles. I only hit my thumb once. I think I still have grout dust in my nose. Only 55 more tiles to go.

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Oy. I've got pictures of finished knitting projects, but life has been so hectic here that they're trapped in memory card land.
Instead, I share some (figurative) snapshots of the past week or so:

I love me some Craigslist. I got a china cabinet that is just the right size for our dining room. I needs refinishing. Just what I need - another project.

While the china cabinet fit in the back of a Mazda Tribute, full sheets of plywood and drywall do not. This stymied my weekend plans of doing more work in the kitchen. I did manage to pull all the linoleum (technically sheet vinyl - I know it's not real linoleum - either way, it's gone). With the neighbor's assistance and pickup truck, the necessary materials are now on site. Work in the kitchen continues to crawl along.

I also picked up shades for the chandelier via Craigslist. By the time you figure in the gas I burned while looking for the seller's house since I forgot the map I had printed (twice), I suppose they weren't such a bargain. Mission accomplished anyway.

Hypothetically speaking, if you were to buy a treadmill, and you were planning on keeping said treadmill in your basement, and your husband were to suggest that it would be a great idea to assemble the treadmill in the living room and take it downstairs in its folded position, this would be a good time to suggest otherwise. There's a possibility that your hypothetical treadmill comes in a box that is closed with many thick plastic straps. Inside that box, you may find a big, yellow sticker that warns you not to cut the straps until you are prepared to assemble the treadmill. Once the straps are cut, supposedly the treadmill portions are not to be moved until completely assembled due to some nonsense about powerful springs and severed fingers. You may be thinking it would be helpful to put such a big yellow sticker on the outside of the box, but you see, that would make sense. It's possible that you would assemble the treadmill in the living room and find that never in a million years will it fit through the doorway. You will then have to disassemble, move (at great peril to digits), and reassemble the treadmill. Or rather, your spouse will. After all, it was his idea.

Claire took four consecutive, unaided steps Wednesday.

This morning I was rushing around getting the girls in their Christmas finery to have their picture taken. For some odd reason, finding black dress shoes for Anna was a trial, but I had secured a pair. I reached for a shoe for Anna - it was the left one. Since I had her right foot in my hand, I grabbed the other shoe out of the box. It was also a left shoe. Now I know why they were such a bargain.

I am so glad to be going back to work tomorrow. You have no idea.

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Yes, I'm a smidge late with the posting and the pictures and whatnot. If anyone has some spare time that they have no clue what to do with, please feel free to donate it this way. Also accepting donations of sleep and money. Come to think of it, I think those may very well be the three things no one can get enough of.
Here are my little heathen* critters:

Claire is a pumpkin. She had no opinion in this matter. Anna, on the other hand, picked out a duck costume a month ago. Saturday she decided that there was no way she was being a duck. She was to be a scarecrow. As I am a total sucker, we ran around Sunday and picked up things to make it so. What you can't see well in this picture is the costume's piece de resistance, the black crow perched on top of the hat. The craft store was lacking in crows, so we bought a Christmas dove and painted it black. For some reason, this tickles me to no end.

I'm happy to report that the sleep demons are gradually releasing their hold on our house. We got a few stretches of uniterrupted sleep this week. We're still not quite back to normal, though, which makes for generalized fussiness all around.

I have three charted rows to go on the Icarus shawl. I've been just about to run out of the undyed KnitPicks merino lacewt all week. The remaining yarn has been a golf-ball sized lump for the past five days, and yet somehow never manages to run out. It's okay, because my yarn pusher supplied me with another skein, which she has rightly pointed out will prevent me from running out of the original skein. Had I not had some in reserve, I would have run out halfway through the very last row.

I took a day off from Icarus to make a tiny baby hat for a small co-worker gift. It's rather unremarkable, as it's just a simple hat. I used the leftover red boucle from Anna's winter hat from last year. It's modeled here by one of Anna's many naked baby dolls. Experience has shown me that this doll is approximately 6 month size.



*Each year at this time I get a self righteous smirk at all the people decrying Halloween as the devil's holiday. I suppose we're all going to Hell for some fun-sized KitKat bars.

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