Unreserved

Moving Day!

2008-11-12T20:16:00.003-05:00

Unreserved has gone and grown up!
When I started blogging, I wasn't sure if I'd grow tired of it quickly or if I'd stick with it. Three years in, I guess I can say I'm ready to make a commitment. So I moved to:
www.unreservedblog.com
I hope you'll join me there!

One word - plastics

2008-11-07T15:28:00.004-05:00

The sewage guys pulled up this morning in their chauffeured stretch hummer and snaked out our drains. There was indeed a blockage outside at the new trap. A very tough blockage that required augering out with the snake before things could flow again. When they pulled back the snake, they found a chunk of now-mangled red/orange plastic on the end.

What was the mystery object? The world may never know. They suggested that perhaps one of the small people in our house may have flushed something. I'm skeptical on this one because the sole functioning toilet in our house has trouble choking down the things that are supposd to be flushed, let alone chunks of plastic. And whatever it was made it out to the trap before becoming, well, trapped. However, what with all the recent openness going on in our sewage lines, there's no telling what could have found its way in there.

So all's well that ends well. The little Unreservedlings get a sound lecture on what does and does not belong down pipes - water, good. Toys, washclothes, hairbrushes, orangutans, fruit bats, breakfast cereals (undigested), anchovies, bad. The sewage guys went off into the sunset (it does get dark early these days, no?) having relieved us of all of our pond and none of our money.

I'm still thinking about that goat, just in case.

Squish?!

2008-11-07T09:11:00.002-05:00

Last night I was feeling my productivity oats. I thought I would get a few loads of laundry in to help Mr. Unreserved get a jump on things. (Friday is when he usually does laundry.) Now hold up before you go thinking, "Who does she think she is, doesn't she wear clothes, too? Why is she "helping" Mr. Unreserved?" keep in mind that Mr. Unreserved is usually home doing laundry on Fridays while I am at work. He does his job, I do mine. We are an equal opportunity household. He doesn't ask me to do laundry, I don't ask him to calculate optimized stoichiometry for acid catalyzed couplings.

As I was saying, I went down to the basement to put in a load of whites. And while I was doing so, I noticed the rug in front of the washing machine sounded wrong. The fact that it sounded at all was not a good sign. Rugs are ideally quiet.
This rug said, "Squish."

Squish?

I moved my feet around.

Squish!

I felt the rug. It was water-logged.

Bring in the scientific method!
Observation: The rug is soaked.
Hypothesis: The rug is soaked because there is a source of leaking water.
Predictions: The soaked rug is related to the fact that Mr. Unreserved had done a load of towels and a load of jeans earlier that day. Therefore the source is most likely the washing machine. Either the laundry tub that the machine drains into is clogged, the drain hose is loose at the back of the machine, or evil things are happening in the sewage lines that the whole mess empties into.
Experiments:
1. Observe the running washing machine. The hose was emptying into the wash tub, so it wasn't a hose disconnect.
2. Examine the wash tub. No clog.
=cue ominous music=
3. Fill washing machine. Drain washing machine. Observe water backing up from the drain pipe that the wash tub connects to, as well as the floor drain up the line from that. Jump out of the way of rapidly expanding pond in basement.
=insert Psycho knife slashing music here=

Swear vigorously. Conclusion: F*ck. There's something new and excitingly wrong with the sewage line. Sewage line. . . sewage line. . . I seem to remember something about sewage lines at Chez Unreserved. Oh! Yes! They were supposed to be FIXED COMPLETELY at GREAT EXPENSE two weeks ago.

See, here's the kicker. There are two main lines in the house - the first being the one that the bathroom, sink, and dishwasher drain into. It goes merrily out of the house where it connects with the second line, the one that the laundry tub, washing machine, and basement floor drain empty into. They meet up at a shiny new gold lined gem encrusted (on the outside so as not to impede flow) union, whereupon they follow the new platinum piping through the trap, down the brand new titanium line under my mangled driveway and into the sewage main. (all materials are assumed based on the cost of aforementioned repairs)

So Mr. Unreserved and I stood staring and cussing at the burbling pond, wondering what new and expensive troubles we're looking at. Staring at a pond so long made nature call. I went upstairs and answered. I flushed.
Mr. Unreserved yelled, "Did you just flush?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Because the water level just came UP over here."
We repeated the experiment (well, the flushing portion of it). The water level rose again.

Considering that the toilet is on a different line than the laundry facilities, we suspect that all is not well in the magical land of new sewage piping. Which is extra weird considering that laundry was done last week (after the repairs were complete) without incident. The answering service for the repair company promised that someone would be out first thing this morning. Also the gutter guys are back to finish the gutter job.

So I write to ask you if you live in the greater Pittsburgh area, and you happen to have a spare goat* lying around that you don't need, could I please have it? You see we need to make a sacrifice to the sewage gods, and finances being what they are, and what with all of last month's sacrifices, we're fresh out.

*Before I get e-mails from angry goat lobyists, I would never do such a thing. Really. If I had, I wouldn't have had to have my sewage lines fixed, would I? Have you hugged a goat today?

I know I'm not the only one to say this . . .

2008-11-05T17:19:00.002-05:00

. . . but I have to. I am thrilled to know that my daughters will grow up in a world where a black president is not only a possibility, but a fact. I love the fact that every successive generation is a little more open minded, a little more rational than the last.
I have faith that one day that this open-mindedness will apply also to complete acceptance of committed relationships between people regardless of gender. One baby-step at a time!

Good riddance, October.

2008-11-02T20:03:00.003-05:00

Instead of participating in NaNoBloMo, I've elected (har) to write a month's worth of post tonight.

At Chez Unreserved, we carved pumpkins. It's quite the trick to get a good picture of both girls simultaneously.
Either Claire isn't looking and/or they're out of focus

Or Anna isn't looking, or she's pulling a face

So I figured a little reverse psychology was in order. I asked them to make faces. THIS time they listened.

The next day I was off work (oh sweet, sweet vacation!) so I got to take Anna to her class party. While waiting for class to begin Anna decided to try out her wings.

We had a very successful trick-or-treat year. It was sort of odd starting out in broad daylight, but it made picture taking easier.

The girls made friends with a 2yr old Buzz Lightyear from the next street over. The three of them made a formidable candy collecting team.

On Saturday, the fun was over. I had to be the enforcer and prevent the girls from subsisting entirely on pure sugar. Fortunately it was beautiful out, so we went outside and got some work done.

There was a tremendous amount of damage along the back of the house where the deck used to be. This is why the deck fell. We suspect the boards were already in bad shape when the deck went up. Time and moisture didn't help matters any.
The shorter portion of the L-shaped space is what's left of a beam under the original part of the house. It had been the home of a large colony of carpenter ants. We could see that it had been repaired somewhat before on the right end.

This is/was a sizable beam. The floor joists are mortised into it. Removing it was not a desirable option. Enter our chosen repair after much research - a multi-part epoxy system from The Rot Doctor.
I removed the worst of the rotted wood. All I needed was a paint scraper and a paintbrush. That's how deteriorated it was.
Pictured here is the excavated beam with my hand in the picture for scale.

The remaining wood was treated with a penetrating epoxy, as was the new pieces of wood that were cut to fill the excavated space. I soaked the entire beam and the new wood in the epoxy, which was every bit as noxious smelling as the label promised. Our whole house reeked faintly of xylenes for about 24hrs. I also inadvertently soaked my pants, my shoes, my shirt, the ladder, and my left elbow with an unfortunate splash of epoxy. My elbow is now rot resistant. My shirt is history. The jury is still out on the pants and shoes. If the neighbors were watching, they got a quick flashing of undergarments when I stripped in the yard.

I managed to finish the job. Here it is all cobbled together, curing merrily away.

I will give it a week to cure and then fill in the remaining cracks and voids with a mixture of layup and laminating resin and fine sawdust. The result should be a sound, rot-resistant beam that should no longer crumble or harbor ant farms. We will cover it with tar paper and siding. Assuming we can find someone to sell us 8" novelty lap siding.

The longer damaged portion was too far gone to salvage any wood. It's under the new part of the house, "new" being circa 1920, that contains the kitchen. The board that closes off the floor joists and wall studs was almost completely gone.

The pink you can see is foam insulation Mr. Unreserved put up in the basement in an attempt to keep the drafts down in the kitchen. You could see daylight where the floor meets the wall under the radiator. The wood was almost completely gone from under the tar paper. Can you believe someone tried to hang a deck off of this mess?
Mr. Unreserved removed what little was left, Leaving a gaping hole under the entire kitchen.

The sill was rotted away for a few feet under one end, so it had to be replaced, and the floor joists were sistered where necessary. We could see how the floor had been sagging, made worse by the fact that the radiator sits above the worst of the damage and it weighs about 800lbs. Mr. Unreserved also repaired this corner beam.

Lovely, isn't it? Makes us wonder what, other than a wish and a prayer, holds this place up.*
With all the damage fixed, Mr. Unreserved closed it back up with new 1x12s and covered the whole shebang with tar paper. Assuming we can find someone to sell us 6" novelty lap siding, we will then side it. Yes, that's not a typo. The siding on that portion of the house is narrower than the other.

There's no pictures of that side of the fixed corner because I prudently took the camera inside. It looked like rain. I set it on the counter out of reach of children. Claire climbed up on the counter for the umpteenth time even though she knows better and accidentally knocked the camera in the dog's water dish. I'm praying it dries out. I'm not happy.

And finally, I've avoided politics here up to this point. I'm not a fan of espousing my political views via a yard sign or on the back end of my car (though if that floats your boat, far be it from me to look askance) or on my blog. But I must say, all throughout this election season I firmly decided that I was voting for Obama. But then the past three days, the McCain campaign's automated whatnots have called my house roughly three to five times a day. And lo! I have seen the light! I've completely reversed my political opinions in light of these constant phone calls! I'll change my vote now - the phone calls have shown me the error of my ways!

Or not.

*Which reminds me of another digression - while the gutter guys were up above this section of the house on Friday, they asked if we knew anything about a fire in the house's history. A small section of the back of the original structure appears to have burned at some point long ago, perhaps before the kitchen addition was built. We've got a pretty thorough accounting of the house's history from the last owner, but no mention of a fire. I really wish these walls could talk.

Sailing sailing over the bounding waves

2008-10-28T21:06:00.002-04:00

Our fabulous gutter crew has been at Chez Unreserved this week. It's refreshing to look at the house and not see ragged rotted wood hanging from the eaves.
It's refreshing not to be doing the heavy lifting ourselves.
I'm doing my damnedest not to think about the heavy paying that will be going on. It's been a pricey month, but every project puts us one step closer to no more projects. In the year 2028.

I've been on a domestic kick in the kitchen. (also known as "I can't eat Mr. Unreserved's cooking one more day this month") Saturday I made double batches of both turkey and rice soup and chili. And corn bread muffins. And I attempted the "no knead" bread that the internet raves about. That recipe that supposedly a five year old could manage. And I screwed it up for the second time.
The first time, it was rising too slowly so I tried our usual bread trick of popping it in an oven that's been turned on for only a minute. Unfortunately in that minute I ducked outside to collect Claire who was tired of playing. So I burned the bread dough.
The second time, I honestly don't know what went wrong, but instead of a rounded, crispy loaf, I ended up with a shiny flat gummy amoeba.
The third time it worked. We had the bread tonight with the turkey rice soup. It wasn't bad, but I'm missing what all the fuss is about. Maybe the beer laced version is better. I find frozen bread dough just as easy (the trickiest part of bread baking to me is remembering to start it far enough in advance - thawing frozen dough vs. starting no knead dough 12-18hrs early is a wash) and just as tasty.

Yesterday I spent my day "off" shuttling Anna around, shopping fruitlessly for quilts for the girls' room, buying groceries, and making cabbage and noodles. Mmm, comfort food. I reveled in knowing I didn't have to be at work yesterday, or today if I felt like it. It turns out I felt like it. On a crappy day outside one might as well be chained to the benchtop.

I'm making slow but steady progress on Autumn Rose. Mr. Unreserved says it will be done by 2010, but he doesn't realize what great progress I've made considering it's stranded knitting. Stranded knitting that I had to start four times. And I'm still sweating the gauge. It doesn't help that I have to stop and admire the work so far and squee about the color combination every three rows.

Why all things knitting should be metric

2008-10-18T10:54:00.002-04:00

I am knitting Autumn Rose. Rather, I am attempting to knit Autumn Rose. I thought I had all the required needles - size 2 29" circulars, size 2 16" circulars, size 2 dpns, etc. The problem is, not all size 2s are created equal. Size 2s come in two sizes, 2.75mm and 3.0mm.
The pattern specifies size 3.0mm size 2s. I knit ahead heedless of the fact that my needles were 0.25mm smaller than specified. I ended up with a gauge of 36sts/4" instead of the required 30sts/4". My row gauge was 40rows/4" instead of 30. I frogged. Again.
This is not the first time this sweater has been ripped back. This is not the second time this sweater has been ripped back. The first time I joined to work in the round, I twisted it. This was my first twist, and I will have the universe know that I was careful! Honest! I checked and double checked, and the only thing I can figure is that the slippery 296 stitches worked their way around sneakily when I was checking. And that's my story for why it was twisted the second time, too. Yes, my first twist and I did it twice in a row. But the third time worked, that is until I got up to the circular patterning and realize the pattern was all messed up.
I spent Wednesday's presidential debate ripping and fixing only to find out my gauge was off.
So last night I picked up the size 3 (3.25mm) needles I have. Having discussed it with my knitting group of one (Hi Mom!), we figured that my gauge was so tight that going to 3.0mm needles probably wouldn't be enough increase anyway. So I've started again (I think this makes my 4th start) on 3.25mms. If the gauge is too big, I'll know exactly what needle size I need. I still refuse to work a swatch. I'd rather take my chances and wind up back in the frog pond.
I briefly considered putting the yarn away and starting a different sweater, but I'm determined now. I want this sweater, and I want it this winter. It will not beat me!

Deer trap

2008-10-15T20:01:00.002-04:00

The hole from the original sewage clean-out is gone. I'm only slightly disappointed, as I was speculating how we could use it to trap deer.
Instead, we have the Marianas trench through our yard. And our driveway.

All the pipe has been laid and connected. Unfortunately the plumbing in the basement bathroom has been discovered to be not actual plumbing, but 3" electrical conduit. So that's going to be dug up, too. Or rather busted out of the concrete. Which will be an additional expense. I'm going to have to hock a kidney or something.

My mantra has been "God willing, we will never have to have this done ever again." Mr. Unreserved has suggested that we consider paying the gas company's $3/month gas line insurance. Not a bad idea.

It would likely be less expensive than buying that pretty blue excavator.

Boo!

2008-10-12T21:43:00.003-04:00

Friends of ours invited us to join them at Idlewild's Hallowboo on Saturday. After the week we had, we were grateful for a little escape. We all had a great time. We weren't the only ones with this great idea. Hi, Bob and Julie! The girls are rewarding us by driving us bonkers today, but now they are in bed and looking as sweet and angelic as Anna's costume. (Don't be fooled)
Our gutter guy called us back today to schedule the gutter work. I laughed bitterly. Mr. Unreserved went ahead and scheduled it. Might as well go whole hog. *sigh*

A pick-me-up

2008-10-10T20:35:00.002-04:00

My house may be sending me to the poorhouse and/or driving me to drink, but I still have the two cutest kids ever. When they're not wrestling and squeeling like puppies in a cage death match.
Today at school Anna made a scarecrow. (Anna is the one on the right)

For extra irony, the scarecrow is wearing the overalls Anna wore two years ago for her scarecrow costume.

Claire likes pudding. Claire really likes chocolate pudding.

DAMNIT!

2008-10-10T10:16:00.003-04:00

Good news: I found someone on Ravelry who is willing to sell or trade me a ball or two of Tidepool Heather Palette.

Bad news: It's BACKHOE SEASON again!
Remember way back to when we had backhoes digging up our front yard at the last house?
Do you know that it costs a lot of money to have the nice men bring the backhoes?
It does, boys and girls. This is why we do not have the nice backhoe men come over for fun and giggles. In this case, we have the nice backhoe men are trying to figure out the best way to completely redo our sewage pipes. Why are they redoing our sewage pipes? Because the basement is no place for sewage.

Do you know what will happen if I get one more phone call from Mr. Unreserved that starts with, "I've got bad news. . . " (which would bring the tally up to four)? I will crawl off into the corner and cry. That is what I will do.

Editing to add: Well, that's exactly what happened. Mr. Unreserved just called with the news that things are screwed up worse than we thought, and instead of costing almost one month's wages, the fix will cost two. Eating up all the money we had set aside to do the gutters and several thousand more on top of that. And I did cry. And do you know what good that did me? It screwed up my eye makeup. That's all.

Whereforartthou Tidepool Heather?

2008-10-06T21:20:00.003-04:00

It was cheesecake weekend at the Unreserved household. This is an annual October 5th tradition, that date being the anniversary of Mr. Unreserved's birth, and himself having a great fondness for cheesecake.
The verdict: pumpkin mousse cheesecake - a hit. Easy to make as well as delicious.
Fudge caramel cheesecake - also delicious, a pain in the neck to make, and even messier to cut what with the caramel and the incompletely baked brownie bottom.
Also featured this weekend - a trip to the zoo, two fall festivals, assorted shopping, Halloween decorating, and sock finishing. They fit! Finally a pair of socks I knit for the man in my life fit him instead of me!
Oof! Cheesecake caveat - the pumpkin cheesecake just featured a tiny fragment of egg shell. I attribute this to the fact that cracking eggs is the girls' favorite kitchen activity. If I crack eggs myself there are tears of jealousy. Sometimes the eggs get really extremely cracked.

So tonight after all the business and the day job and whatnot, I sat down to start on Autumn Rose. My KnitPicks order had arrived Thursday and I was looking longingly at it all weekend. Only I was missing three colors. I searched the house high and low because I have cats, and cats steal yarn. In this case they were innocent. I checked the details of the order online and learned that the automated "order the yarn for this sweater in the colorway shown" failed to include two of the colors. A third is on back order until next month. The nice woman in customer service is shipping me the other two with no additional shipping charge, and I'm debating subbing out the unavailable yarn and soldiering on. I could wait and knit any one of the other projects I have going, but the antsy three year old in me really really wants to start this sweater nooOOOooow.
Ugh. Have been hanging around preschoolers too much.

YaknowhatImean?

2008-09-29T20:48:00.005-04:00

Every once in a while a day comes along that totally kicks my ass. A day when all the forced optimism in the world isn't enough to keep away all annoyance and frustration with the little inconveniences that life throws one's way. To make matters worse, they're usually minor things in and of themselves, but they band together and beat me repeatedly about the head. None of them are big enough to complain about, but damn if they don't put me in a foul mood.

Editing to add: I fixed my mood with knitting retail therapy. I finally broke down and ordered the book, yarn, and needles to knit Eunny Jang's "Autumn Rose" pullover. I've been coveting this sweater for half of forever, and lo and behold the book was on sale 40% off at Knit Picks. I kept putting it off because I have all sorts of other things here to knit/spin, but the call of color work got too loud to think over. I will now return to my regularly scheduled sock.

Editing again: Okay, what's really under my skin is the fact that I had an appointment at the Midwife center that got all munged up by traffic and apparently I'm a Luddite because I don't carry a cell phone but anyway the longer I stew about it the more I realize what had me worked up more than feeling looked down on for not being a pregnant woman or a woman with a cell phone or a magical flying car is the fact that deep down in my hormonal heart of hearts is the unpractical but powerful wish to be planning adding a third child to our family. I'm not ready for that. Mr. Unreserved is not ready for that. We may never be ready for that. The jury is still very much out. But being in the building where both girls were born, the site of all the prenatal checkups, the building where I was so full of anticipation and excitement and squirming unborn person not once but twice hit me right in the gut.

How a toad made me bake ginger snaps

2008-09-26T19:44:00.002-04:00

On Tuesday the girls helped their father do yard work. At this age, "helping" generally consists of staying out of the way. While they were out there, the three of them found a toad. It must have been a remarkable toad because I got to hear all about it the moment I came home from work.

The story about the toad reminded me that we have a "Frog and Toad" treasury that we haven't read from in a while. I had a Frog and Toad book growing up, and if having your own kids isn't an excuse to relive one's childhood I don't know what is. So we read about the time when Toad baked cookies, and neither Frog nor Toad had the willpower to stop eating them. The story never mentions what kind of cookies they were, but for some reason in my mind they were always tiny ginger snaps. Maybe it's the fact that the illustrations are only in brown and green.

For the rest of the week, I couldn't quit thinking of ginger snaps. Tonight found me back in the kitchen (last week's kolache went over very well at the wedding), baking ginger cookies from Better Homes and Garden's "Giant Ginger Cookie" recipe. I made mine small, though, just like Toad's. I have no intention of feeding them to birds.

Crickets chirping

2008-09-22T19:13:00.002-04:00

It's always quiet when I get up on the soap box (not that I have many commenters in the first place). This is a marked improvement over what happens when I bust out the soap box in "real" life (people begging me to just stop already). That's why I have this blog. On the internet, no one can make you be quiet. Many people have pointed out to me that I talk very fast. It's a defense mechanism. I knew I'd only have so long to ramble on before my family would beg me to stop, so I had to get everything I wanted to say in quickly. I mused while doing dishes in my lab that maybe there's something wrong with a career that you have to convince people isn't awful. But then I'm having a bad week at work. Yes, it's only Monday.

My only brother is nine years my junior. When I found out that my children would be 2yrs apart, I was curious to see what their relationship would be like. I polled people, and it seemed to be a 50/50 split between "they'll be best of friends" and "they'll want to claw each other's eyes out." I assumed the reality would waver between the two.
Anna and Claire are nearly inseparable. They wake up together, go to bed together, and spend most of the day playing together. For the past hour they have been upstairs wrestling like overgrown puppies, complete with shrieks, giggles, and not very muffled thuds. Typically one of the thuds will lead to tears, then an adult will have to go and referee and redirect. I like watching how they interact together. Neither can stand to see her sister in distress, but they each know how to really torment the other when necessary.

I would like to post something about knitting, since I haven't mentioned that much lately, but instead I've been sticking adhesive tiles to the nasty kitchen floor. They're not our first choice in flooring, but they'll stop us from getting splinters until we can really redo the kitchen. So if you'll excuse me, I've got a date with a carpenter's square.

Electricity, chemicals, and cookies

2008-09-19T18:58:00.003-04:00

Our power came back on Monday evening at 10:00 sharp. We had gone out for dinner along with many other disgruntled looking people, managed to score a few of the last bags of ice from the grocery store, and went home to listen to rerun sitcoms on the TV band radio by the light of a camping lantern. We did lose some food, but mostly just small things. I know there were still people without power in the area for a day or two after that, so I am grateful.

Last night we got to attend the premiere event of a mobile science program put together as a joint venture between the Carnegie Science Center and my employer, who as always shall remain nameless. Lalala I can't hear you! And I wouldn't even mention this, except for the fact that I got to be IN the program. They picked fourp people to be examples of "real live scientists." It was so much fun! I was apprehensive about seeing the finished product. I hate hearing my own voice on the answering machine let alone seeing my mug on a big overhead screen. And they let me talk off script! For a program that children will see! Poor, brave, foolish people. And the whole thing was great, and my segments didn't make me want to crawl under the nearest lab bench. The people at the Science Center are creative geniuses and I salute them.

Driving home, I reflected that I feel no small amount of pride knowing that more than likely some middle school girl somewhere is going to see the program, and hopefully realize that not all scientists look like Albert Einstein, or Dr. Frankenstein. Seriously. Do a Google image search on "scientist." I'll wait. Are you back? I saw one woman on the first page, and she was down there a ways. There were none on page two. Wanna try something funny? Still got that Google image search window up? Search on "hot scientist." Oh! There's the females! (hot male scientists everywhere should feel affronted)

We live in an enlightened era where girls are taught that (theoretically) they can do anything they want and (theoretically) be anything they want to be and that (theoretically) they are just as good at math and science as any boy. But the reality is that the unspoken message that science (chemistry in particular) is really hard, or the domain of boys (or really ugly girls that wouldn't get a date anyway so she might as well be in a lab on prom night), or only for uber-smart geeks, or evil, or dangerous and likely to kill us all or at the very least wreck the environment and next thing you know *poof* no more polar bears is still out there.

So maybe that hypothetical 10yr old girl will see me or my colleague in this presentation and be able to relate. Maybe her mind will be a little more open to considering a career in science. She may study for eight years and get her PhD in chemistry, land a job with a successful manufacturing company (after an additional four years spent in a low-paying post doc), and get to see her job outsourced to some backwater in India where cheap labor and a lack of environmental regulations make it impossible for American firms to compete. Go science!
Sorry. Inadvertent bitter tangent.

Anyway, I'm off to bake kolachi. My husband's mother's cousin's daughter's daughter is getting married tomorrow and I volunteered my baking skills. If you're not from here, cookie tables are a sacred wedding tradition (if you're from here, you already know this). While some caterers will stock a table for you, and professional cookie specialists exist, more commonly all the women in the family bake a big ol' batch of cookies for the reception. The table(s) at our reception were unreal - we had TONS of cookies. I'd guestimate several hundred dozen, many courtesy of my grandmother. A good cookie table is a badge of wedding honor, so I pay it forward. Also I like to bake, and I like to show off my grandma's kolachi recipe.

'urricaines 'ardly HEVER 'appen

2008-09-15T15:32:00.002-04:00

Stupid hurricane. Power at home is out. Has been out for 19hrs, will probably have to mercilessly prune the refrigerator a mere two days after stocking up on groceries.
Had to come to work wet-headed and uncaffienated. Not lucky enough to be associated with the more local work location which was closed due to outage - double insult. Family and properties are mostly unharmed, bar the odd horizontal tree. I realize I have no room to complain, considering how hard-hit others have been by this and other hurricanes. On the other hand, I thought that "no hurricanes" was one of the few meterological perks of living in Pittsburgh.

Low carb epic fail

2008-09-07T23:20:00.003-04:00

I've just had one of "those" Sundays. A Sunday where I feel like all I did was feed people. Sometimes this feels like a burden, and sometimes an accomplishment. But they're always Sunday.
Waffles for the girls' breakfast
Cinnamon rolls for a morning treat
French toast and bacon for brunch
Spaghetti and meatballs and salad and homemade focaccia bread and salad
Apple raspberry tart with vanilla bean ice cream
And umpteen mess up the kitchen clean up the kitchen cycles later I am tired.
And full of carbs. Honest, we do like fruits and vegetables around here. But today we were all feeling weary of grilled meats and corn on the cob and hand fruits and all the summer staples we've been subsisting on for months. (I will read this in February and laugh bitterly)
As much as I am raging against the trees that are turning colors too soon, I guess I really am ready to be done with summer. I don't mind fall. I mind what comes after it. And we're still majorly behind on home improvement projects that should be completed before the snow flies.

Knitting like the wind

2008-09-04T19:11:00.002-04:00

I knit "english". I am neither the fastest nor the slowest knitter in the world. My knitting time is, like many working mothers of small people, limited.
For most of the summer I've been forcing myself to plug along on the lace project that will not end. I was happy to see progress on it, but the weeks of having to force myself to pick up the knitting was wearing thin. Don't get me wrong - I love knitting lace. The problem is it doesn't lend itself to working a couple rows here or there. And it's no good for car knitting - the yarn is too slippery.
I hadn't knit any socks since early spring/late winter. It frustrates me to have a finished object that has to wait for the weather to change before I can wear it. When we went away for the weekend I started a pair of socks for Mr. Unreserved. It felt good to be on dpns again. (I especially like the KnitPicks Harmony dpns) This is my second attempt at spousal socks, as the last pair fit me perfectly. Then one went permanently missing. Those were never meant to be my socks and the universe made sure of it.
Socks normally take me a minimum of a month, which is why I was surprised to find myself working the heel flap last night.
Apparently the way to make yourself feel like a fast/productive knitter is to work something tedious for three months.

This post is Green!

2008-09-02T19:23:00.002-04:00

*climbs up on soapbox* Ahem. Your attention please.
The claim of some products or system of products to be more environmentally friendly or "green" does not automatically make them a better choice for you or for the environment. (but almost certainly means they're better for the wallets of those who are selling them)
I am not trying to vilify those who are trying to be environmentally responsible either by creating or consuming such products. I'm just pointing out that some thought needs to be given before giving something the "better" stamp of approval.
Think reusable products are inherently superior to disposable? Maybe they are. But did they take more energy to manufacture in the first place? What resources are required to clean/sanitize said product for reuse? How long is the expected lifetime?
Everyone "knows" that biodegradable products are better. But how many people know the precise details behind the claim? Does this product break down in the environment, but only by breaking into tiny pieces that continue to litter the landscape? How long does it take? Will it perform the same buried in a landfill as it will sitting on a prairie? What is left behind when this product degrades - a mere cornstarch residue, or non-degrading plasticizers and other assorted persistent molecules?
Speaking of corn, we all know that corn is a renewable resource, therefore corn-based products are superior in every way to those made from petrochemicals. Except that in some cases more petrochemicals had to be used to refine and manufacture the corn-based product that its plastic cousin would require from start to finish.
All those completely natural superior non-chemical cleaners are still chemicals. Just because vinegar can be made from apples doesn't mean the active ingredient isn't acetic acid. Is acetic acid more benign than Triclosan? Maybe. But they're both chemicals. "All natural" does NOT mean "no chemicals."
Repeat after me: "Chemicals are not all inherently evil." (some of them just smell that way)

Being kind to the environment is a great ambition. It's just not always black and white.

I'm tired of hearing people compete to be greener than thou while spouting junk science made for the sole purpose of separating people from more of their money.
I'm Sarah Unreserved, and I approve this message.
*climbs down, puts soap box away, goes back to knitting a sock*

Labor Day 08

2008-09-01T21:52:00.002-04:00

There is a family curse that makes women particularly fertile Labor Day weekend. This is made obvious by the eight birthdays my family has during the last week of May. We've joked that in order to prevent more birthday cake eating Memorial Day weekend, all couples should take separate vacations for Labor Day. In a pinch, existing children are excellent at preventing subsequent children. Feeling so bold with our inability to have any private time, we left suburbia for the (over developed resort-filled) wilds.

We had a fabulous weekend at Laurel Hill State Park. This was our first time out in our tent in two years (Claire didn't remember it, which makes sense since she was only 8mo old when last she slept in it), and we were pleased with how well-equipped we were. The first few times we went camping without the benefit of other family or a well-stocked cabin were a series of minor nuisances as we figured out what supplies we were lacking, or tried to remember how to use the Coleman stove. This time we felt like old pros, and our stress levels (at or near zero) reflected it.

When we left it was getting toasty out, but when we arrived at camp we found it cool, overcast, and damp from the morning's rain. We set up camp and entertained ourselves with fine literature. (Sudoku and coloring books)

We checked out the campground and the girls got to play at the playground. This, according to Anna, almost made up for the fact that Pap-pap wasn't there.

I don't know about the rest of summer, but by this time of year, it gets cold at night in the Laurel Highlands. We were cozy in our sleeping bags, and were made even cozier when Claire decided she was scared of the dark and wound up in bed with us.

The next morning I was really starting to wish I'd brought warmer foot-wear than flip-flops. The girls, of course, had a variety of footwear and clothing. I know what kids are like while camping and always over pack assuming they will fall in a creek/find a really big mud puddle/spill their beverage down their shirts/leak out of their diapers. (it was the later) Fortunately the sun came out in a big way. The sky was so beautiful I had to take a picture of it. This is a stupid picture, as it looks like a blue screen of death, but I love it. I live in Pittsburgh. Skies like this are as rare as hen's teeth.

So we went to the beach! I promised Anna we would go to a beach this year. I did not promise salt water. I had to convince my children that there are no crabs in the lake. They would not find sea shells. There are no sharks and no 'occodiles. Claire was in no danger of "falling into the ocean."

Anna is apparently practicing posing for the Sport's Illustrated swimsuit edition.

What you can't see in the above picture is that it was one of Claire's dozen attempts at getting the sand off her feet. She ran up the beach to our blanket, and was dismayed to find her feet all sandy. She ran back to the water, carefully washed them off, and ran back through the sand to the blanket, only to find them coated with sand again. Lather, rinse, repeat while cruel Mama laughed and laughed.

When we got back to camp the girls relaxed by doing something that I never got to do as a (deprived) camping child.

Camping is a perpetual struggle between being equipped enough for comfort without bringing a stupid amount of unnecessary crap with you. This point varies from person to person, sort of like a sleep number. Some people can be happy camping with little more than a tarp and a pocket knife. Some people are not at home with less than a toaster and a microwave. While I normally would scorn the addition of the DVD player, it bought me 30 minutes to cook dinner in peace without my children trying to ignite themselves with Coleman fuel and/or propane. I still reserve the right to look down on those who insist on plugging their children in for a trip to the bank.

I've always found it a downer for "go home" day to only involve eating, packing, and taking off, so we took a little hike this morning out an easy trail to the dam touted on the park's brochure. It did not disappoint.

We even managed a rare picture of the entire Unreserved clan together!

This has nothing to do with our trip, but I have to point out that I would totally believe the news media if they told me there was a hurricane in a given place even if they did NOT send some poor schlub out to stand in it. That is all.

Ch ch ch changes . . . or not.

2008-08-27T23:09:00.002-04:00

Hey! I missed my 3yr blogiversary a couple of weeks ago. I just spent a bit of time looking back at the last three years. I seem to be having trouble coming to terms with the passage of time lately. I just keep marveling at it. Anna loves to rub my nose in this - a favorite tease of hers is, "Mama, I'm growing up! I'm going to be five! And after that I'm going to be SIX! And then I'm going to be. . . um. . . one two three four five six SEVEN! I'm going to be SEVEN!" Then I have to turn on my stern voice and tell her to knock it off. It seems she's been giving her sister ideas, too, what with Claire growing up and all.

Three years ago I didn't even know I'd be in a different house now. Three years ago I was pregnant. Two years ago I was sleep deprived, and took the vacation by which all vacations will be measured. (I don't mean that in a good way) One year ago we were still getting settled in the Big White Money Pit. Unfortunately from the exterior the house looks the same, only minus a busted deck in the back. Inside there has been more progress, but not as much as I'd like. Such is life.

This weekend, like all previous Labor Day weekends, we're going camping. However, instead of joining my extended family in the mountains, we're off as our own little family of four. We need this right now. We've all been so caught up in the business of life that I think we've forgotten to hang around together and enjoy each other. Anna was perturbed to learn she wouldn't be going to Pap-pap's camp this time, but I promised her that she'll have fun and that next time we'll go to Pap-pap's. I'll miss the drunken revelry up there, though.

One thing remains constant year over year: I've got the two cutest girls ever!

Baby wren

2008-08-26T22:02:00.002-04:00

I've mentioned the wrens that have been reproducing in my garage and gutters. A few weeks ago I came home, parked my car in the garage (! Still excited to have a garage, even if it has no practical door) and upon exiting said car realized I was not alone. There were two baby wrens hanging out, with a busy parent wren hopping about with tasty bugs for them to eat. One of them didn't mind having its picture taken as it hopped about near the stroller. If you look closely, you can see the few remaining downy feathers on its head.

The jaded, practical side of me says that baby birds are nothing special, that millions (billions?) of them are born every year. But this is the only one that I got up close and personal with. The wrens aren't shy, and they've been hanging around so long that I know all their calls, and can spot the grown ups from the recently fledged.
What can I say - I'm easily amused. You must be, too, since you've read this.

Posting from the Vineyard

2008-08-25T20:28:00.002-04:00

We've got a grape vine in our yard. Last year we let the critters eat the grapes as we were busy doing things like moving in and cleaning up puddles of raw sewage in the basement and replacing the dead water heater and trying to plug in lamps.

This year we picked the grapes. We picked over 50lbs of grapes. I am not exaggerating. I weighed them.
We gave a 10lb bag to the neighbor. He gave some to another neighbor. The grapey harvest just keeps on giving. On Saturday, I made jelly.

First the grapes had to be removed from their stems. We put them in bins for storing and subsequent washing. At this point we had about 35lbs:

I filled the dutch oven with as many grapes as it would easily hold and mashed them with a potato masher. I brought this up to a boil and let it simmer for 10 minutes. Then I filtered the pulp/skins/seeds from the juice.
Here is two cups of juice:

In case you're wondering, Clorox Clean-Up is great at removing grape stains from laminate counters.

I ended up with about two gallons of juice.

Each batch of jelly requires a mere four cups of grape juice and a whopping seven cups of sugar! I cooked the juice and the sugar until it was at a rolling boil and popped in a packet of liquid pectin. I cooked it for exactly one minute as directed and ladled it into pre-washed jars. They weren't kidding about that "one minute" thing. I went a few seconds over on the first batch and the jelly went over and burnt all over the stove and smoked up the kitchen. The jars went into the canning pot to be boiled for five minutes. They all sealed and set properly. Success!

I have twenty four jars of jelly and there is still a gallon of juice in my fridge. I went through about 10lbs of sugar and three more packs of pectin. I'm still trying to figure out why exactly I feel driven to make more jelly than any three families need in a year, but I'm enjoying it. (as are the neighbors, and my co-workers, and pretty soon random strangers on the street)

Meow!

2008-08-16T23:14:00.002-04:00

I shaved the cat today. Do you know how tempted I am to title this post "Shaved P*ssy"? I figure I don't need the extra hits it would bring. But I did shave Oliver. He's long haired, and once a year I mangle his fluffy orange coat because it gets to be too much for him to manage and he insists on puking hairballs all over our bedroom floor at 3 a.m. He doesn't mind, in fact with the exception of his belly and backside, he spends the clipping session rolling around as if to say, "Over here - you missed a spot. Okay, now do this side."
Claire saw him and exclaimed, "Oliver is flat!"
I suppose he is. I should change his name to Eric. (the halibut - obligatory Python reference, not to be construed as having anything to do with my brother's significant other)
I also sanded and sealed the wooden steps that go up the front of our yard. It was way too much work for too little pay-off. They're still ugly. They're ugly because they've never been sealed, unless you count the time someone painted them orange. Yes, orange. Such a natural landscaping color. Fortunately most of the orange paint peeled off as the steps were merrily rotting away. This should slow them down until we've got the time/money/inclination to replace them. Did I have twelve other projects of greater impact that I could have been working on? Of course! But I was determined to soak up a little bit of sunshine today.
And this evening I have been soaking up rum, so I will stop posting before I write anything I regret later.

The nature of life is experimentation

2008-08-11T22:24:00.002-04:00

A common question while doing outreach work to try to get kids to consider a career in science is, "What made you want to be a scientist when you were a kid?"
Honestly, I never really thought of myself as the scientific type. When I was nine, I wanted to be a lawyer because they make lots of money. Then I found out there were already lots of lawyers. When I was ten, I wanted to be a commercial airline pilot because I had seen the inside of a cockpit and it was awesome. My guidance counselor took one look at my Coke bottle glasses and gently suggested I explore other options. I considered marine biology (okay, that one is sciencey)when I fell in love with a coffee table book of deep sea creatures, but there's not much ocean in Pittsburgh and I already was fairly certain I wouldn't want to relocate that far. Then I took piano lessons. What budding musician doesn't dream of a life filled with their new love, supported by adoring fans? Dad suggested engineering as being more marketable. Chemistry was a compromise, and one I haven't regretted.

In hindsight, abundant natural curiosity and tendency to experiment were there all along. I still find myself treating life as a series of experiments. Notable experiments have included: What exactly does unmedicated natural childbirth feel like? How do I spin this raw fleece? What happens when I dye wool with this combination of dyes? What happens when I dye my hair with this dye? How do I fix what this dye has done to my hair?

Today I bring you the latest in "Sarah Experiments So You Don't Have To": will duct tape really remove a wart?
I'm not happy to admit I have a wart. It feels like some sort of personal shortcoming. Upstanding, organized, attractive (airbrushed) people don't have warts*. But I've had one under my left upper arm for five years and it's time for it to go away.
I'm happy to report that after one week of duct tape coverage, my viral blemish appears flatter and . . . unhappy. I can't quantify it, but it seems that it might be working. Average time for resolution in the studies I've read was 28 days with an 80% success rate. Stay tuned for all the breathtaking details.

*I was somewhat reluctant to explain my duct tape in mixed company (read venerable in-laws) for fear of grossing them out, but inadvertently started a group recital of memorable skin abnormalities that was enough to turn my stomach.

Fledgling humor

2008-08-05T20:52:00.002-04:00

Anna's version of a knock-knock joke:
Anna: Knock knock!
Unsuspecting Victim: Who's there?
Anna: Man!
UV: Man who?
Anna: Man who fell down the steps and hit his head at the bottom and hurt his arm and then went outside and ate some ice cream!

Claire's version:
Claire: Knock knock!
UV: Who's there?
Claire: Fan!
UV: Fan who?
Claire: [singing] FAN FAN FAN!

Greetings from my bedroom

2008-07-29T22:03:00.003-04:00

We have lived in the Big White Money Pit for a year and a month now, and it's starting to feel like we really do live here as opposed to merely residing in a never ending project. This was made even more so by the addition of carpeting in the bedrooms. (a project made possible by the generosity of parents who understand what it's like to be raising kids and trying to fix up a house and not being made of money) One may not think that flooring can make such a dramatic difference. One would be wrong.
Mr. Unreserved and I have decided that we're living in the bedroom now. Get your minds out of the gutter, we're married people. Married people don't do that. Just ask a married man. We can annex the living room, or perhaps rent it out to victims of housing collapse. There are too many things yet to do in the living room, whereas the bedroom has been converted into a cozy den by the addition of ~300 sq ft of beige olefin. Even the pets have been hanging out here.

There are three things left to do in the bedroom in the near future. Doors, ceiling fan, and fireplace. Yes, fireplace. The last owners "discovered" a previously covered fireplace and ripped the plaster away with reckless abandon. Woo! Bricks! Dirt! A big hole in the wall! Then they quit.
So we did what anyone would do when moving into a bedroom with a gaping hole in the wall. We put furniture in front of it and pretended it wasn't there. The chimney itself, lacking both a cap and a damper, had been stuffed plastic wrapped insulation.
Note the past tense in that last bit.
I noticed a month or two ago that a family of birds had made their home in the chimney. (I assumed swifts; between them and the wrens in the garage I'm starting to feel like a benevolent naturalist) They were awfully noisy, especially at 5:30 a.m.

Sunday evening we removed the furniture, and found out why the swifts were so noisy. The insulation had fallen. The floor of the fireplace had become their bathroom.
They weren't too happy about our intrusion. They registered their disproval by attempting to poop on us.

This interested Oliver greatly.

The swifts are still up there, but there's a new pile of insulation between us and them. Fixing up the "fireplace" wall has been moved up on my priority list. And come fall, we should probably add "capping the chimney." Or we should get a cat that can climb masonary.

This is the song that doesn't end. . .

2008-07-21T19:49:00.002-04:00

I had a cushy summer job when I was in high school. My baby brother is nine years and two days my junior, so I got to practice being a stay at home mom. Or a nanny. Paint it however you like, I got to sleep on the job as long as my brother was asleep. I quickly figured out that I could con an extra 30 minutes of shut-eye out of him if we watched "Lamb Chop's Play Along" on PBS every morning. The show was even somewhat entertaining, in a dopey kids show sort of way. I still remember how to make a bunny out of a handkerchief.

I never suspected I'd be watching it with my own offspring fifteen years later. Every once in a while I'm surprised to find myself all grown up.

Gotta wonder

2008-07-16T19:05:00.000-04:00

I know I'm not writing anything ground-breaking or controversial here.
I know that the vast majority of my readers are family members, friends,
or people who are reading comments I've left at other blogs who wonder
just who the crazy lady is. I write mostly for my own benefit, as a way
of saying, "Hey! I exist!" and also, "My kids are really cute, or at
least I think so!" and, "I knit and live in an absurdly tumble down
fixer-upper of a house!" I am not trying to get a book deal. I am not
trying to sway political opinion. I do not have over 300 subscribers.
Commenters do not fight to be the first to leave their opinions. Ad
revenue from this blog would not support me in my lavish middle-class
life style.
So why am I slightly irritated to find that almost half of the most
recent hits on this blog are from searches regarding the word "spleen"?

Hose heads

2008-07-15T19:44:00.003-04:00

A quick post, as the attempts my offspring are making to kill each other upstairs escalate.

The girls helped me clean off the porch on a fine summer weekend day. (I can't quite remember which one - they're all blurring together)

Tell me, which do you think got clean?
a) The porch
b) The girls
c) Claire's bike
d) None of the above, but they all got soaking wet

I let them have their way with the hose. That's one of those things that all kids (and grownup kids - Mr. Unreserved did not pass by unscathed) should get to do once in a while.

I love our porch; these pictures only show a portion of it. It was a major attractive point to this house. (ignoring the fact that there's a hole in the roof, the ceiling is peeling, the posts have rotten trim, the floor is cracked, and the brick work needs repointing) It's huge, and is now sporting an antique wicker porch swing (courtesy of Craigslist) in addition to the collection of wicker I inherited from Mom. It's the best seat in the house.

Finally, this is what happens when you send Anna upstairs to get ready for bed by herself. She comes down wearing a t-shirt, pants, a belt around her neck, a bathrobe (nevermind that's it's 80deg in the living room) and every barrette she owns in her hair.

I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!

More pictures, 'cause they're good blog fodder

2008-07-10T23:24:00.002-04:00

Last week we went to the museum. If you ask Anna, she'll tell you she went to the Buseum (rhymes with museum). I don't have the heart to correct her. Sort of like Claire's 'ocodiles. They've got the rest of their lives to pronounce things correctly.

They are both in love with dinosaurs, so it was good timing. I promised last fall when the newly improved dinosaur hall opened that we would go eventually when the crowds cleared out. I have to say I was really impressed - the displays were much more impressive than before. I especially liked the ones mounted overhead. Standing under a fossilized pteranodon gives you the distinct impression that it would have liked to eat you had you coexisted. Also, you would not want to park your car under a live one.

I would crop the stranger out of this shot, but then I'd lose "Sharptooth's" head.

This was also Mr. Unreserved's first trip to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. He was suitably impressed, and is all cultured now and stuff.

Anna and Claire visit the Serengeti:

Yesterday I spent the day at a different Carnegie institution, the Science Center. It was business, not officially pleasure, although I had a blast. We were filming for a joint project between the center and my employer. I really enjoy participating in outreach programs - kids in the U.S. need to hear more often that science is fun, relevant to their lives, and not as scary as the general public / media would have them believe.

This weekend we go to Idlewild. I love these little day trips as a family. The girls are just as happy running barefoot in the yard catching lightning bugs, but their parents get tired of swatting mosquitoes and nagging them to put their sandals back on (the kids, not the mosquitoes).

Only six weeks late

2008-07-08T21:30:00.002-04:00

We went camping Memorial Day weekend. I finally got around to getting the pictures out of the tiny memory card. I still marvel that so many high res pictures can fit on something the size of a quarter of a saltine. I'm easily amused like that.

Marshmallow roasting was the highlight of the weekend.

As you can see, it's going to take Anna a while to finish toasting hers.
(note the knitting bag on the ground, just to maintain my knitting cred)
I suggested she move it a little closer to the fire, but the fire was "too hot."
She requested Pap-pap get her something wet to put on her head as protection from the fierce heat:

Claire modeled her marshmallow on her nose. Anna hams it up stage right.

Claire is not to be out-hammed.

2008-06-29T19:51:00.003-04:00

Yesterday the girls went to their first movie in a movie theater. We went to see "Wall-E." Anna and I enjoyed it, I believe Claire did, too, but she fell asleep. The siren song of a darkened theater coupled with a tummy full of popcorn and the comfort of Mama's lap did her in. (she's too light to keep the seat open) The movie was cute, but I think much of the plot was over Anna's head. I wasn't sure how much of it she absorbed, but she did mention later, out of the blue, that pizzas don't grow from seeds.

I'd like to take them to a drive-in, but that will have to wait until they can stay awake long enough to see at least the first feature.

I'm still plugging away at the girls' room. I attempted to sweep out the inside of their fireplace with a (new) shop vac. Two shop vacs full later I gave up, wondering what made me feel it was necessary to sweep the dust and rocks out of there in the first place. The inside of their (closed off and totally decorative owing to the state of the chimney) fireplace is full of rocks, bricks, dust (appears to be a combo of ashes and old mortar), and chunks of wood. The loose material turned out to be about 8" deep, and extends under the floor into where the hearth would have been. I also found a top of a model ship, paper from a pack of drapery weights ($0.19), a guest tag from 1964's Rolling Rock Hunt Racing Association, and a 1960 Mickey Mantle and Ken Boyer baseball card. Mr. Unreserved looked up the card. In mint condition it's worth ~$150. Ours is not mint.

I sealed up the opening with a new piece of drywall and patched the indentations in the painted metal surround where Claire decided to have fun with a hammer.
I realize all of these home improvement projects would be more interesting with pictures but I'm waiting for the big before/after reveal when the room is complete. Okay, actually I'm too lazy to grab the camera and take pictures and upload them.

Just now:
Claire: Mama, what's wrong with the tv?
Me: Nothing. I turned it off.
Claire: Woah. . . Why?!

Beware the 'ocodile.

2008-06-26T19:47:00.002-04:00

Claire has become quite the chatterbox lately. I noticed this as she was relating something in great detail over lunch the other day. I understood almost half of what she was saying. It was very involved. And it struck me as funny to hear Claire expressing herself so thoroughly.

You get to know your children as infants. Infants have their own ways of communicating, both unsubtle (screaming their fool heads off) and subtle (it's amazing what they can express with their eyes, but maybe that's because of all the time I spent gazing into them as a besotted mother). The communications means and sophistication grow along with the child, but even when they learn to talk it's short and to the point. There is no misunderstanding the intent of a toddler thrusting their bottle at you and demanding "Milk!"

The fact that this small person is mostly non-verbal gets tied up in their identity as you know it. You are accustomed to them not being conversationalists. Then one day they wake up and tell you, "Mama! I dreamed that there were 'ocodiles under my cribby! Then the 'ocodile came out and tried to bite me and hid in the closet! I want some breakfast now. I want Cheerios and milk and a piece of 'na, please." And you do a double take and wonder just when exactly this tiny person became someone you could talk with instead of to. And the way you perceive them is permanently altered. And not for the last time.

Growing up is sneaky that way. One day they're learning to sit up, the next day they're learning to drive. I'm really enjoying watching the process, but does it have to go so quickly?

June is slipping through my fingers

2008-06-22T19:40:00.002-04:00

Random bits:
Good news: We found someone willing to give us a realistic dollar figure (read not five figure) for our gutter project. Hooray! Bad news: He strongly suggests we do the roof while we're at it since there's going to be much shingling going on over the damaged ends of the roof. (There's a lot of rot up there.) We weren't planning on doing the roof this year.
We keep going back and forth - do the roof since it makes sense to just keep shingling, don't do the roof so as to incur less debt at the moment, do the roof because it's already 20yrs old, don't do it because there's nothing wrong with it right now. Honestly my biggest fear is that having the roof done will constrain finances such that I'll still be bathing the girls in the basement a year from now. I really want to get to the bathroom project. (but the gutter project is many times more important)

Speaking of projects: Finally touched up some of the paint on the walls and marbellized the mantle in the girls' room. That's only been hanging over my head since . . . January. Hooray for projects moving forward! Yet to do in there: Finish decorating - hang pictures, obtain and hang curtains. Order carpet. Replace doors. Get Claire a big-girl bed, since the littlest monkey has learned to climb out of her "cribby."

Target interior project following the girls' room: The hallway/stairway. The hallway/stairway is dark. Sloppy. A wreck. Big.
There are balusters missing in the railing. (we've got a bucket of matching replacement parts in the garage that the previous owners obtained from a salvaged house) Some of the ones already installed (poorly) are their native dark varnish color, others have been swathed in flat white paint. (like so much of the house's trim work) The stairs need to be finished. Or rather, their refinishing job needs to be completely redone. Correctly. As does the mess left on the decorative trim up the sides of the stairs and along the upstairs hallway. On the walls, there's a spot of loose plaster with a chunk missing. There's many other spots where the plaster has more in common with cottage cheese or Play-Doh in texture. One piece of wall is actually a piece of plywood painted to match. Painted in a very dark orangish-red. And antiqued. As is the ceiling on the first floor, which had first been wall-papered to resemble a tin ceiling. Which is just as well because from what I can tell the wall paper is the only thing keeping the plaster up.

I have no hopes of perfecting the area - only to make it less dark and ominous looking for now. Safer would be nice, too.

Myna birds: There is a dangerous intersection near my house. It's the scene of regular accidents. I was waiting to make a left turn when the person behind me decided that my decision to not barge into oncoming traffic was inconveniencing him/her. They registered their displeasure with their horn, and my knee-jerk response was, "Screw you!"
From the back seat came a tiny and enthusiastic, "Screw you!"
Oh yeah, forgot the kids were back there.

I stand corrected

2008-06-16T22:33:00.002-04:00

Back in the end of May I said a nest of sparrows were in our gutters. They had started out in the garage* earlier in the spring. I reached to take a bag of crabgrass killer off the shelf and disturbed a slightly agitated mama bird, and found a nest of five tiny eggs. The babies hatched and my crabgrass thrived.
The baby birds started to fledge and spent a day or so on the floor of the garage, then they all moved up into the gutter.
Mama and Papa bird are setting up housekeeping in the garage again, this time up in the rafters. I enjoy watching them run back and forth bringing home the bacon (bugs). They're pretty friendly and don't mind me hanging about. I wondered what kind of sparrows they are, so I looked them up. Much searching later I've figured out that our tenants aren't sparrows after all. I believe they're Carolina wrens. Maybe I spent way too much time looking up something so unimportant, but like knowing who's raising young above my car.

Speaking of raising young, sometimes I wonder where the dividing line is between incentives and outright bribes. And whether it matters (especially if it works). For instance, if your previously solidly potty-trained child started having accidents of all varieties, and you could find no cause, would it be considered bribing to tell them if they go seven days without an accident you will buy them a small, inexpensive toy they've been clamoring after? Hypothetically speaking, of course. And this would, hypothetically, come after punishment (in the form of revoked television privileges) didn't help. When does "reward" cross the line into "bribe"? (and does it matter as long as we don't have to scrub or discard any more soiled clothing?)

*Our garage has only the ruins of what used to be a door. I don't care because it still keeps the snow off the vehicles.

Gee, your hair smells terrific!

2008-06-09T21:29:00.003-04:00

Sunday. 15 minutes from walking out the door for church. Was congratulating myself on having all of us ready ahead of time for a change, thus avoiding the last minute out the door scramble.
The girls were in the bedroom getting their sandals. Claire brings hers to me. I grab a comb to straighten out her hair, and stop short. Glistening throughout the crown of her golden fine freshly washed baby hair is a copious amount of A&D Ointment.
"I put keem* in my hair, Mama!"

Three shampoos only served to distribute the ointment throughout her head, but it was enough to get us through mass.

A more effective way to remove A&D ointment from hair, if you're curious, is to comb a good amount of talcum powder through the hair with a fine comb, then wash two times with dish washing soap and once with baby shampoo.

*"Keem" is Claire's word for diaper rash cream. She also requests "cheese" when being diapered (due to the resemblance of talcum powder to powdered Parmesan). Anyone not familiar with her might be surprised to hear the request for cream cheese on her bottom. The jury is still out as to whether the brilliant hair styling idea was hers alone or if her sister gave it to her. The only evidence was the guilty looks and evasions of the resident four year old.

Potential

2008-06-01T22:49:00.003-04:00

The thing I like best about weekends is their potential - when it's Friday night and you have two whole days ahead of you with relatively little obligations on your time.
What do I want to do first? Finish painting the girls' room? Knit? Clean? Garden? Brush the dog? Scrub the porch? Wash the car? Run to the store? Sew?
The warped part of my mind gets all in a tizzy over the possibility of doing ALL of those things! After all, I have two whole days! I'll conquer the whole house in a fit of unbridled energy!
So I stand in the middle of the living room and slowly turn in circles, wondering where to begin.
And before I know it it's Sunday night and I'm lucky if I've gotten to even two of the things on my list.

Loverly

2008-05-29T21:09:00.002-04:00

I had a loverly birthday, thank you. I did indeed go to work, where nothing went wrong. Which would be the exception rather than the norm lately. Then I came home and found a beauty of a dogwood tree with my name on it. We went out for dinner, where the girls behaved themselves, and we were home in time to watch the Penguins win. Well, sort of watch them win. Our big night out made us both fall asleep with about 8:27 left in the 2nd period. I liked what I saw, anyway. Go, you cute fuzzy-faced young little hockey players!

On at least three separate occasions this spring I've gone out and weeded the beds for over two hours. I take wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow back to the compost heap but it barely makes a dent in the condition of the yard. (it seems that way, but really the perennials are definitely benefiting from not being choked with weeds)
Tonight I decided that I'm not weeding. I'm harvesting the dandelion crop. :)

All aboard the train of thought

2008-05-27T21:26:00.003-04:00

The girls and I went camping over the weekend at my family's place on top of a very large hill (not officially a mountain, but we think of it that way) near the Allegheny National Forest. I've mentioned it here before. I spent almost all my Memorial Day weekends there growing up. I find it therapeutic. It's a good place for navel gazing, drinking, or just sitting around getting dirtier and greasier. The advantage of the later is the joy inherent in showering after three days with no running water. It always takes me three shampoos to get the smoke out of my hair.
I'm noticing that after these weekend excursions, I'm mentally resisting returning to ordinary life. I think that means I need a vacation. But is there such a thing as a vacation when one is the parent of pre-schoolers?
Tomorrow is my 31st birthday. I will celebrate by going to work, coming home, eating dinner, and reading picture books on the couch. I may watch a little tv. I am a wild woman.
The dog is staring at me.
Mr. Unreserved made more progress this evening in Operation Demolish the Deck.
When we looked at the house, the previous owners didn't even mention the L-shaped deck that wrapped around beside and behind the kitchen. It was snow-covered at the time and I didn't even notice it back there until the 2nd time we came to look at the place. You'd think someone would mention a feature like that.
The reason they didn't, we later found, is because it was not sound. It was sagging noticeably where the deck met the kitchen at the back. Mr. Unreserved chose to stand on it while spraying for ants last fall and *Creak!* dropped the deck. Sort of. (no husbands were harmed in the sagging of this deck) Turns out the beam of the house to which the deck was (incorrectly) attached was completely rotted. As in I could go back there and scoop out the remains with a plastic spoon if I so desired.
The deck itself was no real peach, either. Having never been sealed against the elements, the decking was succumbing to the same fate as the support beam.
After much debate we decided not to try to salvage the deck since we have a plethora of porch space around the other two sides of the house. I'm slightly disappointed, since it filled in a rather useless space between the house and the garage. But I'm more happy that the de-dumpification of the house is continuing.
Besides, it had to go so that we can proceed with the gutter project. The current gutters back there are functioning solely as a nesting box for a family of sparrows.

Still posting with a sleeping baby on my lap.

2008-05-20T22:24:00.002-04:00

I suppose I should wrap the word baby in quotes, as Claire is as feisty as 2.5yr olds tend to be. She was not sleeping well, and conked back out on my lap. I've only got so many years in my life to spend time with a sleeping child on my lap. I cherish them.
Even if they reek of bathroom cleanser.

Earlier this evening, while we were cleaning up from dinner (full disclosure - Mr. Unreserved was cleaning up, I was making a cup of Earl Grey), Claire decided to go potty. Only Miss Claire hasn't figured out that you're supposed to go potty before you, um, go potty. So there was quite a mess on the floor of the bathroom, which she decided to clean up all by herself. She's a very thoughtful devious child.
Lesson learned: child locks are still a requirement on the bathroom cabinet.

I suspect she was mimicking her sister, who's been getting happy with a can of Lysol lately. (note: I am not normally a Lysol person, believing that there is no substitute for good old fashioned "clean," but there was a nasty bout of stomach bugs this past winter and I started to get paranoid)
Lesson: See above regarding child safety locks.

Awwww. . . Claire rolled over, startled by my sneezing, and has her hands clasped in front of her as if in prayer. As if she wasn't angelic enough while sleeping.

Did I have a point?

Well, I did come here to update the adventures in fleece. A second washing and double rinsing has taken the lanolin out of half the corriedale fleece, but it didn't get the yellow out. (You'll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent!) I have decided to embrace the yellow. A quick trial with the hand carder shows me that it should blend into a nice, creamy natural color. The fibers appear sound.

Also I came to brag that with the miserable weather, I spent the bulk of the weekend indulging fibery pursuits. I dyed some hand-spun, spun 4.2oz of merino/silk from Stony Mountain Fibers, assembled and played with the new hand cards, and set the twist in the skein of icelandic 3-ply. (I broke down and bought a new niddy noddy - the original one failed to materialize.)

I've come to the conclusion that I really need to rig up some sort of tension for my lazy kate. I just don't like the inconsistencies in my plying.

Also I need a lawn gnome. Steve and I established this at the Pittsburgh Blogfest, where I am proud to say I spent a whole evening with people whom I am not related to (except Steve) and do not work with. (oof, that sentence was a mess, but there it stands) Okay, maybe "need" is too strong of a word, but really, who doesn't need a lawn gnome?

Le Sigh and also gullible children

2008-05-15T23:44:00.002-04:00

So confident was I in my newfound wool scouring abilities that I got the kiddies off to bed by 8:30, rubbed my hands together, and headed down to the basement to tackle the corriedale fleece. In my ambition, I divvied it up into two portions in two laundry bags and used both sides of the laundry sink. It got two super hot soaks with generous squirts of ultra super duper concentrated Dawn (I added a kettle of boiling water to the 2nd washing, as I feared the first wasn't hot enough) and two rinses and a spin. I was pleased to note that this fleece does not smell as bad as the last one, and the initial wash water was the yellow of lanolin and not the brown of mud.
Yeah, about that lanolin.
The bases of the locks are still yellow. Oh noes! Could it be the dreaded canary stain? (these are the things you worry about after quick Googling) Longer Googling made me think it is not. Or hope it is not. Because ew. Unidentified microbial action is not my idea of a good time. Remind me to tell you about my mold phobia some time (so you can laugh at me).
The stains are all at the base of the locks. They are soft, buttery yellow, not bright yellow. The fiber seems sound. And the most damning evidence of all? My twice washed twice rinsed spun dry locks are still greasy as all get out.
Hrm. Looks like more washing is in order. Stain or no, they're unacceptably greasy.
(but lovely and fine and fluffy and I can not WAIT to get them prepped for playing with!)

And now for something completely different. A man with a tape recorder up his nose.
No, not that. Gullible small people.

The scene: Dinner two nights ago. In addition to our regularly scheduled dinner items, we are having a veggie mix of broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower.
Anna: What's this white stuff?
Me: Cauliflower.
Anna: I like cauliflower. Where does it come from?
Me: Cows.
Anna: [looking appropriately skeptical] No it doesn't.
Me: Birds.
Anna: No. . . where does it come from?
Me: It grows on the moon. That is why the moon is white. It is covered in cauliflower.
Anna: Oh! Okay.
Me: No, I was just kidding. Cauliflower does not grow on the moon. It grows in gardens, or on farms.
Anna: [already tuning me out and on to some other random subject]

Scene II: Yesterday evening
Anna: Mom, what was that white stuff?
Me: What white stuff?
Anna: The stuff we had for dinner. That grows on the moon.
Me: [boggles at how easily she bought that one, wonders what other misleading information I can stuff her impressionable young mind with]

Fin.

More crafty bits

2008-05-10T21:04:00.002-04:00

I've washed the rest of the lincoln fleece. It's still drying. The weather hasn't been terrifically helpful in that regard. I picked up a couple of extra laundry bags so that I can store the lincoln in one and wash the other fleece in another. I've read that fleeces shouldn't be stored air-tight and that sounds like good advice, although I'm a little worried about the fluttering m-word. I also have to figure out where I'm going to store it. The top of my closet it starting to get a little full, as there's already a couple pounds of icelandic roving in it.

I've been reading about people's purchases on Ravelry, including more than a few regrets people have had that they passed by something that they later wished they bought when they could. I can honestly say that for now, between my yarn stash and my fiber stash I feel well stocked.

This would be even nicer if the GIRLS hadn't LOST the middle of my niddy-noddy. I've got a bobbin stuffed with wool/mohair that I plied and I can't skein it up. And it's bugging me.
Mr. Unreserved would point out, and rightfully so, that if I hadn't left my niddy-noddy on the end table, it wouldn't be missing parts.
Then I would point out that I am tired of having to lock down everything I don't want missing or broken. (which is silly because I have small people, and that's what life is like with small people)
I could order a new one. They're not that expensive. But I know full well that the minute it gets here the old one will turn up. Even though we've turned the house upside down looking for it. Even though I've bribed the girls that I will give them $5 (a princely sum!) if they happen to make it turn up. No dice. (which is just as well because if they catch on to that scheme all sorts of things may go missing for ransom)

To reward you for listening to my rant about obscure missing equipment, here are pictures from Easter. These are from Easter Eve, before we went to Easter vigil. The ones from Easter day consist of the girls in their jammies and the girls in their dresses with their winter coats over top. I plan to have nicer pictures done in the dresses later because I'm tickled with how they came out. And the kids aren't half bad looking either, but I might be more than a little biased.

A special kind of stink

2008-05-07T19:39:00.002-04:00

Hello all three of my readers! Guess where I've been?
You're right! I did go to the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival. You must be psychic.
And what did I come home with, ladies and gentlemen?
Two fleeces! (And some roving, and hand cards, and a sachet of herbal moth repellent, and some really nice smelling solid hand lotion) (Having a birthday the same month as MDSW is great - thanks, Mom!)
Two very dirty, greasy, stinky fleeces. Because I feel the need to do things old school. No, I do not, nor do I plan to, churn my own butter. Butter = boring. Fleece = fun!
How much fun?
Let me show you!
First, we have here two pounds, or one half of a black and brown Lincoln fleece. Excuse the glamorous back-drop. I was doing this in the basement. Our basement looks like one might expect from a house that predates cinder block.

It's pretty gross, at least for a city slicker like me. I am unaccustomed to eau de barnyard.
It goes into a mesh laundry bag:

And the whole shebang gets gently lowered into a laundry tub full of scalding hot water and a generous squirt of Dawn dish washing liquid. Holy sheep poop, that was some dirty fleece!

Now we have wet, steamy barnyard odor.
After a 20 minute soak, it got to hop to the other tub to drain while I filled up the tub with new hot soapy water. Another 20 minute soak later, it went into hot non-soapy water for a rinse. And another rinse, with a glug of vinegar, and another rinse. By the third rinse, the water was starting to look less like pond water and more like tap water.

While I was waiting for all these soaks, I demolished part of the laundry cage at the bottom of the laundry chute(I'm still more excited that I should be that we have a laundry chute - little things in life thrill me I guess) and installed a vanity base with a folding counter beside the laundry tub. Also I washed the kids (our only bathtub is in the basement for the time being). And swept the floor. I was in the basement most of the evening. Those were long soaks.

There was still a slight tinge to the last rinse water, but I'd had enough of the basement. Maybe I'll try a third wash on the next portion, or heat up a kettle of water to make the washes hotter. I feel it's clean enough to spin, and it'll get another washing to set the twist after spinning. The scoured wool got to go for a spin in the washing machine, sans water, to spin the water out. I spread it out to dry. It felt eerily like a pile of warm, damp human hair.
Lucy the cat discovered the wool while I was at work, so I popped it back into the mesh bag and the wool got to spend the afternoon in the sunlight outside today.

It clouded up around dinner time like it was going to rain. Lucy was glad I brought her cat bed back in the house.

I was glad for moder conveniences like hot running water and modern sewage. I can't imagine how much work scouring fleeces must have been back when all the water had to be heated over an open fire after being hauled from a well. Then again, laundry day was more of the same 150yrs ago, so I guess they were used to it.

The other fleece is a white 5lb corriedale. I'm in fiber heaven!
I can't help but think that processing my own fleece pushes me over the "hobbyist" line, firmly into "hobby lunatic" territory. But I'm happy here.

Ominous silence

2008-04-29T20:00:00.002-04:00

I've been knitting and listening to podcasts in the living room. My heroic spouse is outside putting new parts on my car.
I realized that for the past 20 to 30 minutes it's been almost completely silent in the playroom. Where the girls are.
Those of you who are parents of small people will understand that if my life had a soundtrack, scary music would be playing in the background as I carefully peeked around the playroom doorway. . . and saw . . .

. . . both girls in the corner, quietly reading books.

I'm not pushing my luck. Time to get them ready for bed. (and check under the bed for pods from outer-space)

Lookout! She's got the pruners!!!

2008-04-28T20:53:00.002-04:00

Why is it that every time I get out the pruning shears the neighbors get nervous?
Look, people, I'm not going to defoliate my entire yard with the lopers. I promise I will still leave some vegetation standing when I give my greenery a good haircut.
Yesterday I went after the deadwood on the grapevines. We've got a little three section split-rail fence that was groaning under the weight of the vines last year. I could feel eyes on me while I chopped away the dead wood. The neighbor poked her head out the door to say hello and assure me that her boyfriend told her that yes, it is good for grapeviles to be pruned back. Um, thanks? Not twenty minutes later another neighbor asked if I was hacking them all down or leaving some of the grapes. Because they're good, you know.
Trimming is good for plants. It makes plants happy. Especially long neglected plants.

In other yard news, we planted one of the two raised beds in the back yard with carrots, lettuce, peas, beans, and sunflowers. The other bed has yet to be turned over. It can wait a couple of weeks because it's destined for zucchini and tomatoes, which can be planted in mid May. I've got to fix the 6' high deer fence before our little seedlings come up. Otherwise I've just spent the weekend getting blisters preparing really tasty deer food. Even with the fence, I think we've just made a groundhog very happy. All we can do is cross our fingers and see what happens. I promised Anna a garden this year. I've got fond memories of working in the yard with my dad, marveling at the tiny carrot seeds and munching vegetables straight out of the garden.

I'm glad I got the garden in last weekend, because this weekend I'm off on a girls' weekend to Maryland Sheep and Wool. Fun grownup time ahoy!

Peep!

2008-03-31T23:14:00.002-04:00

More on Easter when I gather and upload pictures. In the interim, I thought I'd share another favorite sign of spring. Mr. Unreserved came in the house this evening and claimed he heard crickets outside. Already?
Later, while I was upstairs, I heard his "crickets."

Peep!

Grrr for brrr

2008-03-21T23:54:00.002-04:00

Done! I finished the girls' dresses today. Including matching socks and headbands. They're hanging up, ready to go.
I even made myself a dress. Mostly. I got it built, even put in the zipper and hemmed the chiffon sash. I put it on. It fit like a glove. I will not be hemming it tomorrow because there's no point in it. I cannot accept the fact dichotomy of a turquoise blue sleeveless spring dress with 1-3" of snow. I don't care if there's no accumulation. It's just wrong and I won't wear it.
Fortunately the girls' dresses are pretty warm. They have short sleeves and go down to mid shin, and the pinafore that goes over the dress is fairly heavy.
So why did I waste so much time sewing the blue dress today? I think it was to prove that if I really wanted to, I could. If I hadn't sewn the dress, that would have been failure. But it's okay to waste half a day sewing a dress and quit. So now I'm up until midnight and the house is still a wreck. But I've got one batch of baking rising in the fridge and I blocked the baby gift I made last week. Hopefully it will be dry and I'll find time to get it to the recipient tomorrow.
It'll feel nice to not have deadlines again after the weekend. I've been looking longingly at my spinning wheel this week.

Happy things!

2008-03-10T19:09:00.002-04:00

Reasons I am in a a good mood tonight:
New glasses! Ones that I am actually happy about!
I am nearsighted. Very very nearsighted. I like my contacts, but am required to not wear them to work. I hate wearing glasses. My main objective in purchasing glasses to day has been to try on fifty frames at the eye doctor's, sigh, and resignedly pick the least obtrusive pair that I don't hate too much. So imagine my surprise to find myself in a snazzy pair of deep glossy red Kenneth Cole wire rims, and loving them. Perhaps the best part? The 1.67 refractive index lenses. With AR coating. Yes, I am a geek. But I am a geek in lenses that in no way approximate Coke bottles. Hooray for high index monomers! (now there's a phrase I guarantee will not show up in my SiteMeter searches that bring up this blog, unlike "raw sex in river city" and today's favorite, "setting up nursing bars for baby goats." Which I read as nursing bras for baby goats, which is a completely different mental image.)
I got to spend the morning at the Carnegie Science Center!
I volunteered to represent my employer and all our nifty inventions as the annual SciTech exhibit. This is a fun event wherein us geek types get to go out and interact with real, impressionable young people. And tattoo our company logo to the backs of their hands.
Annual raise time!
No explanation needed, I hope.
New babies!
I love it when friends extend their families. It makes for many warm fuzzies, and it gives me an excuse to ignore my yarn moratorium (gotta save up for MSWF) and start new baby projects. Makes me extra glad I devoted an entire Saturday to sewing Easter dresses. Dresses are done, bar buttons, and the pinafores are well started. And there's just under two weeks left. If I keep this up, I'm going to lose my cred as a master procrastinator. (not bloody well likely)
Buds!
As caro noted, spring is springing as signified by buds on the trees. I noticed this last Friday while hopping around my laboratory like a toad on speed. The maples outside the windows have fat, red buds on them. That never fails to make me smile.
And yes, I was literally hopping. I'm easily entertained that way.

Progress?

2008-03-04T22:49:00.003-05:00

I woke up to sunshine on March 1st and knew deep down that February was over and life is good. I find it interesting that no matter how fierce or how mild, every winter gets to the point that it seems that it will never ever ever ever end. And then it does.

I really got back into Cromarty and the end fell off my circular needle. I stuck it back on and kept knitting. The cat stole the end of the needle while I was sleeping.
I ordered new needles. I got the wrong cord length.
I started a tank top instead.

I've been thinking about the pullover I sort of made back in the fall. It was knit in the round, so no seaming. Still, the underarms need to be sewn shut, the ends need weaving in, and I need to re-do the bind off on the neck - it's a little snug. It was done enough to try it on, and after blocking and growing it fits well. So why haven't I finished it?
I'm afraid I just don't like this sweater.
I am toying with frogging the whole thing and knitting something else.
The thought of undoing all that work (really it wasn't an epic project, but still. . .) makes me queasy, but I would be equally irritated having a finished object that I just don't wear.

I've got the bodies done on both the girls' dresses. Part of me wants to sew like mad and be done with them quickly. I could - I've got the time if I worked on them exclusively every evening. I can't sew when I've got no sewing mojo, though. If I'm not in the right frame of mind, I will screw up everything I do and spend even more time fixing it. That was how I rationalized working on the tank top this evening while the sewing sat in a pile in the corner.

Now if you'll excuse me, there's a little person sleeping on my left arm and it's making it hard to type.

Yeah, February sucks.

2008-02-20T21:34:00.002-05:00

This year I started out February feeling like it wasn't going to get me down the way it has in the past. Normally my mood in February is as gray as the weather.
I made it to roughly the half-way point oblivious to the black hole of despair that is our shortest month before I was completely fed up with pretty much everything. Work has been a collection of suckitude, Valentine's Day was a bust, the whole family shared a gastro bug, I think I'm catching Anna's cold, and our furnace is fueled by lighting $20 bills. The rest of the year I strive to count my blessings - things like a generous tax refund, newly knit socks, or heart-shaped biscuits covered with creamed tuna (quite possibly the world's most disgusting-in-appearance yet tasty food). I've learned not to mess with February.
What I want to know is why couldn't they put that extra leap day in June?

I figured as much

2008-02-10T17:29:00.000-05:00

I really didn't think I'd find the fabric for the girls' Easter dresses at JoAnn's castle of polar fleece, and I was right. I'll have to order it online and cross my fingers that I like the feel of what I get.
I did, however, get fabric to make myself a dress. I'm not sure how I feel about the fabric I chose, though. I'm having a hard time feeling the "spring dress" vibe when it's snowing and blowing outside.

This has been one of those weekends for doing all the little random things that you've been meaning to get to. Things like organizing the sewing drawer, hanging pictures, and doing taxes. I don't mind doing the taxes, thanks to a year of house monkey business and itemized deductions. Things that don't get too involved (like painting), as Mr. Unreserved is feeling poorly again. This is an odd and wicked year for viruses.

A year ago, if I remember correctly, we had made an offer on the house with the contingency that we had to sell our old house. Around this time we got a phone call that there was another offer on the house with no contingency, and we thought we had missed our chance. We were crushed. Then we found out that we still had a chance to drop the contingency, and so were back in the running. It was just the first emotionally charged portion of that long, drawn out adventure. The whole experience has imprinted on my subconscious, apparently. Last night I dreamed of touring a huge tumble-down old house. It had a bizzare rec room in the basement made to look like the inside of a municipal bus, and upstairs was a maze of odd rooms with crumbling brick floors. I was grateful to wake in our own house, with its crooked wooden floors and missing ceilings.

Ash Wednesday

2008-02-06T16:13:00.000-05:00

The Catholic church teaches that people are to observe Ash Wednesday as a day of fasting and abstinence. Only one larger meal is to be eaten, with two small meals permitted, and no snacking. Meat is right out.
This observance is easy to make when one has gastroenteritis.

Catching up with pictures

2008-01-31T22:12:00.000-05:00

Every time I tell people about the work we're doing on the house, they say, "Take 'before' pictures! Document your work!" So we have.
One of the first things I did in preparation to move in, after giving the place a good scrub down, was to paint the living room. Mr. Unreserved did the spackling. In this picture, you may be able to tell that I was painting the ceiling:

This picture gives a general idea of how the living room fireplace side turned out.

That was taken after the floors were screened and polyurethaned and the new ceiling fan was installed. I'm still figuring out what to put on the mantle.
I didn't bother taking pictures of the kitchen. It merely went from yellow to beige, mostly to clean it up a little. I haven't yet taken the "after" pictures of our room yet, but that's on the list for a sunny day.

Since just after Christmas, I've been working in the girls' room.
Before:

And during:

In that picture I've painted the ceiling and touched up the plaster on the walls. It's far from perfect, but it'll do for now.
People ask me, "Where do you find the time to do all this?"
My secret:

Since I employ preschoolers as slave labor, it gives me more time to do crafty things.
I dyed a merino/soy silk blend of fiber with a dye kit from ProChem and Dye:

It sort of looked like a rainbow colon lying there on the rug like that. I spun it, Navajo plied it, and knit it using the "Palette" pattern from Knitty.

I like the way it came out, but I can't say I'd do it over again. I didn't really like the way the soy silk spun. I hope the recipient liked it!

Since I finished that project ahead of schedule, I was able to bail out my brother by knitting his assigned giftee a hat/scarf/fingerless gloves set:

I found the hat pattern free online here, and made the gloves and scarf to match.

I blocked that off, and moved on to my final hand-made Christmas gift - Dad's bar mirror. I purchased the mirror from Michael's, and the etching stencils and cream from Etch World. Gosh I love the internet. I used Word to help me with the layout and font for the center lettering, which was cut out of contact vinyl with an exacto knife. This was great fun! If you look closely in the reflection you can see the faux marbelized slabs of drywall we've employed to close off the fireplace until we can have the gas burning insert installed.

Don't worry, it's not all work and no play for the girls. I let them take a break from painting now and then:

And then there's nights like tonight, where I vow to put down the stencil brush for an evening and snuggle the kids until they fall asleep in my lap. Those are the best.

Huh?

2008-01-21T18:00:00.000-05:00

Claire is snoozing on the couch. She is doing this at dinner time despite the fact that I spent an hour trying to get her to take a nap this afternoon* to no avail. She was snoring due to her odd position on the couch, so I moved her. This woke her up. She sat up, took several pulls off her empty bottle, set it down, said "ding ding ding ding ding," rolled onto her tummy, and went back to sleep.

*Last night she was up at 1:30 and pretty much hourly all night. When she slept, she slept on my head. I couldn't stomach the though of going to work today (no, we don't have MLK day off, thanks Employer) and called in a precious vacation day. I love that I can call in vacation days at will (within reason - I had no pressing deadlines to meet today). It makes them seem even more decadent. I had planned to finish painting in the girls' room. Instead I played with the girls and baked pies. Mmmm, pie.

Houston, we are go for heat

2008-01-18T19:30:00.000-05:00

Another house project conquered! The girls' room is now heated.
Now to finish painting and carpeting. While we're at it I ordered new beds for the girls. Claire is almost ready to leave the crib, and Anna only has a mattress set on a frame. I'm looking forward to seeing how the room turns out. It's the motivation that keeps me painting.

Meanwhile, I'm the happy owner of 2lbs of icelandic roving. Spinny fun!

Blatant refusal to acknowledge there are only 24 hrs in a day

2008-01-14T18:57:00.000-05:00

After being banned from their playroom for a day, the toysplosion is back to more manageable levels. The girls are currently playing their favorite game - "Choo-choo." This is a fairly simple game. Anna runs around the house in a circle yelling "Choo Chooooo!" and Claire grabs on to the back of her shirt and follows. This can go on for upwards of half an hour and usually ends when the choo-choo gets going too fast and the two of them fall on top of each other and cry. Lather, rinse, repeat. Who needs toys?

I got a bunch of spinning done yesterday while Mr. Unreserved worked on the floor in the girls' room. This was my excuse from not painting. I can't paint trim while the floor project is in progress. I had worked up such a good amount of momentum in painting the walls last weekend, but I don't know where it all went. The trim is still. . . colorful.

The floor project is a quest to fill in the gaping hole in the floor (kept carefully boarded up when not in use) that is the result of having a radiator reinstalled in that room. Why the original one was missing when we bought the place is a mystery. All the plumbing is in place now. Once we get the floor built back up the plumbers will come and install The Beast. The Beast is a 32 fin 56"x22"x12" cast iron behemoth that we managed to catch on Craigslist for $50. Unfortunately The Beast is so large and heavy (estimated at roughly 800lb) that the workers are going to have to crack it in two to get it up the steps then reassemble it upstairs. This adds four times the cost of the radiator to the project, which has already been a money suck. I must remind myself that the expense of the ongoing projects is reflected in the (comparatively low) price we paid for the house. Also, I like ramen.

I'm about to have another project competing for my time. I've ordered the pattern for the girls' Easter dresses. "Already?" you say, "It's only January." I am well aware of that. Are you aware that Easter is the 3rd week of March this year? It's pretty much as early as it gets. I've got a track record of time consuming dresses to uphold. I figure I might as well because in five years they're going to want to be wearing the 2013 equivalent of low-riding yoga pants with "Princess" printed across the ass end. I've got to enjoy the cute while I can. This year's matching dresses involve a ruffled old style button down dress under a pin-tucked pinafore. No smocking this time. I saw the pattern two years ago and have been waiting until Claire is big enough for the smallest size (2). I'm thinking the most difficult part of this project will be finding suitable fabric, seeing as the local JoAnn's has little more than polar fleece, quilter's calico, and home decor fabrics. If I have time after their dresses, I may make one for myself. I haven't done that in years. Two months from now when I'm tearing my hair out and berating my sewing machine I can look back on this post and see what stupid optimism looks like. I blame my multitasking work-aholic perfectionist parents for infecting me with their particular sickness. (but only because of the snickering from the last post)

It's a toysplosion.

2008-01-09T21:09:00.000-05:00

The girls have a playroom. This is a good thing, as it keeps us from impaling our feet on Legos and having to clear baby dolls off the furniture so as to sit down.
The playroom is complete and utter mayhem. I understand that toddlers and preschoolers aren't going to be good at putting things away. I don't mind that there are toys about. What bothers me is the pointless and gratuitous toysplosion that happens in the playroom.

There are bins. There are shelves. There are places for books, puzzles, and games. There are places for dress-up clothes and toy kitchen items. There are places for art supplies and cds and play-doh. And the girls' favorite thing to do is to trash the whole place with thoroughness. The books are knocked off their shelves. The games are opened and their contents scatter to the four winds. (it's a drafty house) The blocks are tossed, the toy box emptied, the bins upended. Crayons are dumped. Tonight they took it to a new height and upended both the art desk and the play kitchen. Flipped them upside down and tossed them across the room.

The result is puzzles with half their pieces missing. Games rendered unplayable. Mr. Unreserved says, "We can still play that game - all the pieces are in here somewhere." Yes, that's what I want to do with my spare time. Scour along the walls and under the furniture for enough tiny cherries to play Hi Ho Cherry O. Assuming the spinner is ever found. I wouldn't be irritated if the mess was from playing with things, but it's mess for mess's sake.

I am 100% certain that this is nothing new and I am not alone. I'm just not sure what to do about it. The girls need to be taught that this isn't acceptable. (You can quit snickering now, Mom.) Part of me thinks that the trashed toys are punishment in their own right, but I know the girls don't care. There's such a bounty that if they can't find enough body parts to build Mr. Potato head, they'll just go back to coloring themselves purple with markers.
Hm. . .

Birthdays - check. May I please go back to work now?

2008-01-01T21:54:00.000-05:00

Things I have done on my "vacation":
Skim-coated the girls' room
Sanded the girls' room
Cleaned up the dust from sanding the girls' room
Painted the ceiling in the girls' room
Painted the trim in my room
Cleaned the house
Shoveled toys
Twice
Loaded and unloaded the SUV for holiday festivities
Twice
Baked five varieties of cookies
Baked two birthday cakes
Baked two pepperoni rolls
Cooked a broccoli casserole
Put together a veggie tray
Aborted a batch of guacamole due to unsatisfactory avocados
Bought wine
Bought beer
Bought and installed a shower head
Bought groceries
Twice
Bought Christmas gifts
Bought birthday gifts
Went yarn shopping
Twice
Knit a heel on a sock
Finished a hat, two fingerless gloves, and a scarf
Etched a mirror
Listened to the girls whine
Umpteen thousand times
Wrapped gifts
Twice
Took videos
Took photos
Charged batteries
Changed batteries
Watched the 5th Harry Potter movie
Slept in, sort of (if you count dozing among flailing children "sleeping")
Knocked down fevers with acetaminophen and ibuprofin
Dressed and redressed children in various cute outfits
Brushed, trimmed, washed, brushed, and brushed the dog
Played Memory, Hi Ho Cherry O, and the Very Hungry Caterpillar game
Built puzzles
Played with baby dolls
Ate, drank, and made merry

Am I ready to go back to work tomorrow?
I think so.

Christmas - check. On to birthdays!

2007-12-29T23:58:00.000-05:00

If you are foolish enough to have your children born the week after Christmas, do yourself a favor and have the birthdays be five days apart. It makes party planning that much easier. I keep saying if we have a third it won't be right after Christmas (if I can help it), but the more I think about it, I should just have a third Christmas baby. It's convenient! *snerk*
In our household, the birthday decorations mingle with Christmas decorations. I don't have the heart to take them down before New Year's Day. Mom and I went out birthday shopping yesterday (with a side trip to the newest area yarn shop, of course), and today I baked two cakes. Now I've got to find a shovel to clear out the living room so as to make room for guests amidst the toys.

Christmas was its usual marathon of festivities that left us all in a holiday coma in our jammies on the couch the day after. Holidays, like vacations, make you happy to see them arrive and happy to see them pass. I thought Anna would be very excited to see a big girl bike under the tree. She took one look at it and said, matter of factly, "See. I told you Santa would bring me my bike." I suppose when magic is so very real, it's not all that surprising. Claire was happy with everything she opened, whether she knew what it was or not. I notice she spent today playing with the animal train she got last year and seldom touched. Go figure.

I finished painting our bedroom Thursday (it just wouldn't be a vacation without a paintbrush in my hand) and Mr. Unreserved started prepping the girls' room for a much needed overhaul.

I finished all my Christmas knitting in the nick of time and am enjoying working on the socks I started back in August. Not that I enjoy them - they're boring - but I'm enjoying the fact that I'm knitting a) for myself b) with no deadline c) so that I can allow myself to cast on something new.

Twas the night before the night before the night before Christmas

2007-12-22T23:39:00.001-05:00

And all through the house
Not a creature was stirring
Except me.
The shopping is finished
The cookies are baked*
The house looks half decent
Could it be a mistake?
Could I really be missing
The pre-Christmas rush
Drinking wine and relaxing
In the late evening hush?
I'll admit to still knitting
On an optional accessory
But I find that it's fitting
Oh hell, nothing rhymes with accessory.

*Three of the five varieties of cookie are neatly tucked away and the kitchen is all clean. Tomorrow I will finish baking the thawing frozen cookie dough and the chilling pinwheel cookies, but that's simple compared to the mess I made in the kitchen this evening mixing up all the doughs and batters. It's SO nice to have more than 2 square feet of counter space.

I was expecting this

2007-12-17T19:39:00.000-05:00

I think all children go through a stage of dressing themselves in various inappropriate articles of clothing. Anna hit hers today. Frankly I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner. I came home to find her wearing a pink and orange gingham short sleeved button down shirt. Under that was a white long sleeved cardigan. For pants, she had found a pair of red and white seersucker pants one size too large. On her feet, piggy slippers. The effect is somewhat clownish, but at least she is covered up. Mr. Unreserved had to veto the sleeveless top that goes with the pants as well as a bathing suit.

Tonight we tried making cinnamon ornaments. I believe I had the applesauce/cinnamon ratio off. They were messy no matter how you slice it. I hope they turn out okay, because the persistent smell of cinnamon on my hands is getting on my nerves.

Determination

2007-12-12T20:56:00.000-05:00

I'm still here - the house hasn't fallen in on me. Yet.
House progress: Thanks to the wonders of Craigslist, we have procured a radiator for the girls' room. Yes, we have no radiator in the girls' room at the moment. No, it doesn't get freezing cold in there. All hail convection. Installation of said radiator will be pushing four figures. Someone remind me why I like old houses again, please.
I have painted our bedroom. Well, I painted the walls. I didn't just paint the walls, I primed the walls, put two coats of paint on the ceiling, filled in the gaping hole from the old light box on the ceiling, and slapped two coats of "quiet veranda" on the walls. Instead of being glossy eggplant, they are now a light golden yellow in a satiny finish. I'd share my opinion of the previous decor, but you just never know who is reading. Suffice it to say it was not my taste. The trim awaits my attention. Then it's off to the girls' room. It's really amazing the difference a fresh paint job can make.
The gaping holes in the fireplaces have been filled in with drywall that was painted to look like marble. I'm really impressed with how the faux marble came out - decorative painting isn't really a skill I call my own.

Crafting: I've finished the scarf, I finished the afghan. I cast on for a hat, and immediately cast on for a different hat. It's a new emergency holiday project and it's moving right along. The one year I manage to finish things ahead of time the universe laughs at me anyway.

Holiday preparations: I'm closing in on the end of my shopping. The Christmas cards were picked up today - I might get them addressed tonight. Maybe. Don't hold your breath. The girls' holiday picture was taken, Santa was visited (Anna was terrified, Claire happily chatted away), the train was ridden. The house is decorated inside and out with the exception of the tree. That's this weekend's project. I'm afraid to put this in writing, but there's a slim chance that I'll escape the frantic pre-Christmas race to the finish line. Maybe.

Question: Why is it that children will be almost perfectly behaved when only one parent is home (it does not matter which parent), but the minute the other parent walks in the door they turn into complete nut jobs?

Computers are great . . .

2007-11-28T22:09:00.001-05:00

. . . except for when they suck.
I get a fair number of hits here for "linksys wireless adapter inactive." This tells me that I am not alone. I use a Linksys brand wireless adapter in the laptop, as well as a Linksys wireless router. Approximately once a year, the adapter decides to go inactive for no apparent reason. This year it really thumbed its nose at me - it would work for Mr. Unreserved during the daytime, but not for me in the evening. Why the software throws an annual hissy fit is beyond me.
The only solution is to uninstall and reinstall the software. The software has long since been lost. The last time this happened I had to download it on the other computer and burn it to another cd. You'd think I'd have learned and hung onto that cd. This time when I burned it the cd was bad. I burned it again and came downstairs to find the laptop, tv remote, and portions of the couch slathered in raspberry yogurt.

Pretty!

2007-11-26T18:51:00.000-05:00

I finished the mandatory portion of my Christmas knitting. I blocked the hand dyed hand spun hand knit scarf last night - I really like the colors! Will take a picture shortly. Right now It's still stretched on the ironing board covered in pins and doing a dead butterfly impression. (the ironing board is a great place to block something that is long and skinny as it is out of arms reach of bolt wielding children)

I added a bit of optional Christmas crafting. Like I needed to. More knitting? No. I've gone back to my (shameful?) roots of crochet. I signed up for "Presents for Patients" at work as I do every year, and on my person's wish list is a blanket. Presents for Patients is a program whereby nursing home residents are matched with a person willing to provide them with a Christmas gift. Normally I'd rather participate in an "angel tree" type program that provides for needy children. Buying toys is more fun than buying lotion and slippers. Several years ago I volunteered to help deliver the presents from my workplace. It was eye opening. Many of these patients have no one left on earth to care enough to give them a gift. Sometimes the requests are for things like underwear and bedspreads. I never minded not shopping for toys after that (and now I get to do that anyway).

I acquired a bunch of yarn from an aunt who passed away a few years ago. She was a nurse, and she loved crafting. I'm using the yarn to make a blanket for my patient this year, time be damned. Cyndi would approve.

Pow!

2007-11-25T20:21:00.000-05:00

I tend to read the instructions that come with small appliances. I'm easily entertained that way. They have all sorts of amusing warnings regarding the safe and proper use of small appliances. Usually these warnings make you wonder what kind of idiot would need to be told not to use the toaster in the bathtub, but there they are in print, presumably to prevent lawsuits.

Today I decided to make banana crepes for brunch. I put all the crepe ingredients in the blender and turned it on.

POW!
(normally one would expect crepe batter to go "whir" more so than "pow.")
A chunk of glass flew out of the side of the blender. Crepe batter ran through the hole. The blender made horrible noises, like when you accidentally drop silverware in a garbage disposal.

I turned off the blender.

In the sink next to the blender was a 4" long bolt and a hunk of glass. Another bolt was still in the blender. These bolts were not part of the blender. I can only assume they were put there by small people monkeying around in the kitchen. Probably the same small people who put the cup for the top of the food processor in the bathroom sink. Where exactly the bolts came from we're still not sure. It's that kind of house.

WARNING! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BLEND 4" STEEL BOLTS! DAMAGE TO THE BLENDER MAY OCCUR.

Amazingly the blades of the blender are completely unharmed. All we need to do is get a replacement glass top. And put it on a higher shelf in the kitchen.

The day after

2007-11-23T17:42:00.000-05:00

I hope you all (both?) had the happiest of Thanksgivings.
Anna has just now suggested tonight's dinner menu:
Carrots
Broccoli
Marshmallows with cranberries
an Orange
and Bread
What we will be having is Thanksgiving leftovers. (Thanks, Mom!) There will be no carrots or broccoli.

Perhaps even better than Thanksgiving is the day after, which I typically have off of work. Back in the days of yesteryear when Mr. Unreserved was employed full time outside the home, he usually had to work. I would take that day and use it to start some sort of home improvement project. One year I painted the living room. Another I stripped paint from the mantle and newel post. This year I considered painting our bedroom. Instead we all hung out like slugs, all four of us. (Mr. Unreserved did break this pact for an hour or so to venture forth to procure for his family a new stereo receiver - I think this is the first time we've ever purchased something on the Friday of ill repute; I did my shopping du jour on line) I took a nap with Claire, and I am not ashamed to admit I still had my bathrobe on at 4:00. Every once in a while you need a day like that.

I am thankful, of course, for my family. (There is no sound in this world better than the laughter of small children.) For sold houses, car warranties, and fiber to spin. For sweet cuddly kittens, and for a house in which we no longer trip over each other, even if there's no ceiling in the kitchen and I have to plug my hair dryer in in a room adjacent to the bathroom.

Take that, universe!

2007-11-19T17:03:00.000-05:00

Cost of towing vehicle 1/4th of a mile: $85
Cost of diagnostics done on vehicle: $60
Cost of new transmission: $2900
Cost of new seals on front and rear of transaxle: $160
Cost of after market warranty we purchased less than 36 months ago: $800

Knowing we don't have to pay for the new transmission: Priceless.

The verdict is in - the universe really is out to get me

2007-11-18T15:42:00.000-05:00

We mistakenly thought that with the sale of the old house, things would begin looking up. There was the whole water heater thing, and the (fortunately minor) getting hit by a car in the parking lot (I take that as the universe's way of pointing out what it could have done to me). Now the transmission is out in our other vehicle. Out as in it's going to have to be towed the remaining 1/4th of a mile from the BP station where it's stranded to the shop where we were taking it to be fixed.
Being a grown up sucks.

You know what's a funny word? Spleen.

2007-11-15T18:15:00.000-05:00

Seriously. Try saying it several times. Spleen spleen spleen spleen spleen. I vote it the most oddly named bodily organ.

Anyway, we sold our old house today! Woo hoo! I wish the new owner many happy years there. I suggested she crowbar her water heater. On the way home from the closing we picked up my knitting needles from the yarn shop and my arbor from the old yard. I said goodbye to the old house. I scratched around a bit for St. Joseph. St. Joseph has mystical powers! He turned himself into an ordinary rock! I said goodbye to St. Joseph. Serves him right for taking so long anyway.

Ah, nostalgia. When we moved into the old house we were fresh faced (well, one of us) newlyweds (it was two weeks before our first anniversary). We never planned on staying there more than about 10 years. We planned on having enough children to outgrow the place eventually. Still I can't help but smile over the good memories we had there. That's the house where we collected grow up furnishings and power tools. That's the house we brought our newborn girls home to. It's a place where we spent many a weekend covered in paint or caulk or sawdust.

But this morning as I stood in the kitchen making salad for 20 to send to preschool, the girls were playing around my feet. (this would not have been possible in the old house) I had plenty of counter space to lay out vegetables. The dog went running out in the yard to chase deer. Looking around this house overwhelms me with the things we need to do, but we'll get there. Eventually. We're still fresh faced enough to take this on. (or at least one of us is) I won't have to scrape my car in the mornings anymore. There will be new memories, eventually. Meanwhile, I've got more painting to do.

You know, if I didn't know better I'd swear this house hates me

2007-11-12T19:20:00.000-05:00

A friend stopped by my office today.
"Did you do something different with your hair?" she asked.
"Yes, I didn't condition and I used a cold water rinse."
This was not out of a desire to give my hair more bounce and sheen so much as it was out of necessity. My choices in water temperature this morning were cold and also cold. Any water that may once have been hot had long since vanished down the drain in the basement floor.

Trying to look on the bright side, replacing the water heater was on our list of things we intended to do eventually. The old one was manufactured in 1983 and wasn't at the pinnacle of efficiency. And while my first instinct was to lament that it happened on a Monday morning, at least that was a regular day for the plumber. Yes, I suppose we could have replaced it ourselves, but we had an extraneous gas line removed and some old less than optimal (read possibly unsafe) valves replaced. Also there was 100% less swearing (not counting the repeated curses I launched at the old heater pre-coffee and sponge bath), and I didn't have to use a vacation day to wrangle children while Mr. Unreserved cursed at the plumbing.

In the last house we needed a plumber once in seven years. Since all this housing nonsense started, we've had to have a sewage clean out replaced (old house), gas line replaced (old house), two sewage overflows fixed (new house) and the water heater replaced (obviously new house). We now have a favorite plumbing company.
The water heater at the old house is very old also, but that house is now under a shiny 1yr warranty for the benefit of the new owner. If she's wise, she'll take a crowbar to the thing before the year is up.

Damned squirrels, always trying to make off with religious icons

2007-11-09T19:26:00.000-05:00

Never underestimate the power of a kitty. Get your mind out of the gutter.
Closing is scheduled for next week.
On our to-do list: Find St. Joseph. We're not sure he's missing, as we haven't gone looking to dig him up yet, but we're wondering if he's going to be hard to find after his six month dirt nap.
The flower bed where I buried him was semi dug up three weeks ago in order to replace the gas line at the old house. (not this old house, which is older than the old old house) There's a slight chance St. Joseph is now 10' under instead of 5" under. I'm also concerned that the squirrels might have made off with him. They're always after the tulip bulbs in that area. They dug him up once about a month after I planted him, and Mr. Unreserved put him back.
The rule is that once the house sells, you're supposed to dig up the statue and put it in a "place of honor" in the new house. There was no provision in the directions for what to do if he's been squirrel napped.

Maudlin

2007-11-06T21:37:00.000-05:00

Claire, at her own request, went to bed this evening at 7:30. That in and of itself is worth marking on the blog to me. Anna was in bed an hour later, also remarkable. In the process of getting Anna to bed, Mr. Unreserved apparently got himself to sleep. This I know because I can hear him snoring. He sometimes claims he doesn't snore. Why on earth would I make that up?
Profit.
What have I done with my bounty of "me time"?
Mostly goofed off on Ravelry.
What did I do after that?
Read through all my blog posts going back a year.
Why did I do that?
Because it's been a heck of a year.
Is this Q&A format getting silly?
Yes.
Once upon a time I was an angsty teenager. Then one day I realized I had no real reason for angst (It was the 90's - it was trendy. Angst goes well with flannel) and gave it up. For several years I made a deliberate effort to be a more positive person. Don't get me wrong - I'm as sardonic as they come - but I realized that life is too short to let the details get to you.

Lately the details have really been getting me down. And I don't like down. All of this house buying and moving and selling crap has really gotten under my skin. It has gotten under my husband's skin. We have gotten under each other's skin. It's been tremendously difficult to remain positive and I'm tired of the effort.

I haven't lost my optimism - I have high hopes that in a matter of weeks (or less) the bulk of this will be over and we can move on with life. Then when I read this post I will be able to see the contrast and know that things got better. Meanwhile, I've got a warm kitty on my lap. Warm lap kitties are always good for what ails you. (but can they close a deal?)

Sweet merciful heavens!

2007-11-05T19:54:00.000-05:00

I'm not talking about the house today. I'm tempted to, but there's enough negative energy in the universe as it is, and I've vented plenty to those who love me too much to tell me to shut up already.

(That's the only picture I managed of Claire in full costume and it came out wonky because I forgot to change the camera settings)

We had a happy Halloween here. Did you? If not for this blog I may never unload the camera card. Our new street has only 10 houses counting ours, and one of them is vacant 99% of the year. Still, the remaining houses all gave out candy - and what a haul it was! The girls filled their bags twice over just from those eight houses and I got to meet neighbors I've only seen in passing. Great weather, too.

Claire makes my knitting needles disappear. This month she lost three size 0 Inox dpns and four size 7 Clover bamboo dpns. I was working on Bayerishe with the Inox. When the needles went missing I started a sweater instead (Refined Raglan from Interweave winter 2006). I had just started the second sleeve when the Clovers went to points unknown (pun intended?). I'm reasonably certain it was Claire because I've caught her pulling needles out of things before and making off with them. Two weeks later I found (or rather Mr. Unreserved found by accident) one of the Inox buried in the cushion of the couch. The other two may be in there, but the size 7s would never make it through the fabric. I even searched the fireplaces (old houses have odd quirks) but all I found was two bottles, a nipple and ring (for a bottle - get your mind out of the gutter), a baby doll hairbrush, a golf ball, a tennis ball, three plastic toy balls, a baby doll sippy cup, a marker, and two crayons. I bought a new set of Brittaney Birch size 7s and borrowed Mom's size 0s (all the shops seem to be out of them at the moment).

Now that Claire is really learning to talk, I find myself eavesdropping on conversations between her and Anna. They're usually pretty funny. This morning I overheard:
Claire: What's that [noise]?
Anna: That's the garbage truck.
C: Mama?
A: No, the garbage truck.
C: That Mama?
A: No! It's the garbage truck.
Apparently I sound like a garbage truck. They're also starting to tattle on each other. Claire just came in from the playroom looking very pouty to tell me "Sissy not play nice." I had already gathered that from the shrieking coming from both girls, but they usually work it out on their own.

Oh, and Lucy, the new resident kitty, is the most patient kitty I've ever seen. The things she puts up with from these girls amazes me daily (and of course we're always teaching the girls about proper kitty handling)

And lastly, I end with a picture of a portion of our neighborhood herd. There are 12 deer in this picture - can you spot them all?

Shhhhhhh!

2007-10-09T18:55:00.001-04:00

Don't say this too loud - I don't want to jinx anything - but it appears that we have found a buyer for our house.
More specifically, I found a buyer. We no longer have a realtor.
What a harrowing 6.5 months it has been!
I have learned things in this process. If I had it to do over again, there are definitely things I would do differently. Of course hindsight is 20/20 yadda yadda.
What really matters is that if all goes well, we will only have one mortgage soon.
Praise be to St. Joseph!

I think I'll go spin some merino to celebrate.

It's a busy busy world in Unreservedville

2007-10-01T19:46:00.000-04:00

We just had a great weekend. Mr. Unreserved was in a wedding - and a very nice wedding it was. I'm very happy for the happy couple. Also nice was the fact that I finished my handspun hand knit Luna shawl in time to wear to the wedding. The weather was nice enough to wear the sleeveless dress as I had hoped, but the shawl came in handy to deal with extra enthusiastic air conditioning. (And also to show it off, of course! It's not every day I get to wear lace.) Also also nice was the face that my kind parents took the girls for over 24hrs. We got to sleep in for the first time in years! Woot! The girls (and grandparents, I presume) had a good time. We feel greatly refreshed and ready to resume the parenting yolk.

It was such a good weekend that I was extra crabby to wake and find it Monday today.

What else have we been up to? We got a kitty! Just what we needed! (does anyone ever need a kitty? At this moment, the kitty is hiding behind the couch. I'm not sure if she's hiding from the dog or from Anna who was "keeping her safe" from the dog.

We had been thinking of getting another cat for a while. I knew it wasn't just me when Mr. Unreserved showed me a cute kitten posts on Craigslist. We contacted the poster and I made arrangements to get one after work on Wednesday. The poster said she'd be home, and to call her if I had any trouble finding the house.
She stood me up. I arrived at the agreed upon time and there was no one there. I called, but got no answer. I waited 45 minutes, gave up, and went to the Humane Society five minutes before they closed and came home with an all black medium haired already spayed current on her shots and microchipped three month old kitty.
We have agreed (after much discussion) to name her Lucy. Oliver has grudgingly accepted her presence, but she's still getting used to Zoe.

Housing hijinks have been active as well, but I don't feel like talking about that.

This message brought to you by laryngitis.

2007-09-11T19:31:00.000-04:00

I've been taught that it was rats that were primarily responsible for spreading black plague around ye olde Europe. I think if historians looked more carefully they would find that the real cause was small children. They certainly are effective vectors of disease at our house. Cold - 4 humans - 0. I knew I was really sick when I didn't even have the will to knit. If my voice doesn't come back by Friday, I'm going to have to track down one of those robovoice vibrating throat things. (Do you know what I'm talking about? I'm sure they have a real name.) Yelling at children is not so effective when one can only whisper. And talking on the phone at work has become completely futile. The girls are confused and keep whispering back at me, thinking they're supposed to be quiet. I guess there is an upside.

The good news is that we're five days sewage free, and nothing has broken down so far this week. The "service engine soon" light is still on in my car, though. I wonder how long it takes for those things to burn out?
Anna survived her first solo day at school. Getting details about the day is like pulling teeth. I have learned that her teacher has a roller coaster.

I'm really looking forward to fall. I've got a pair of handknitted socks that I haven't even had a chance to wear yet! I haven't forgotten Cromarty in my UFO stash, either. For now, I'm trying to finish the Luna shawl I'm working out of my own handspun mohair. I like it, but I've hit the all too familiar ennui that occurs when the project is too far from finished and too long worked on to be novel. I've got a bobbin of alpaca from Reiland's that I spun over Labor Day weekend - I'd love to spin up another bobbin and see what it's like plied. I also haven't washed/set my multicolored yarn from the merino/soy silk I dyed. I seriously love having my hand in too many projects at once!

First day of school!

2007-09-06T13:58:00.000-04:00

It seems like it was just yesterday that Anna was a tiny little red-faced baldy newborn. Today she went to her first day of preschool!
Anna has been begging to go to school for a year now. We promised her she could go if she potty trained, then we had to convince her that she had to wait until fall. It's been a long wait!
Anna liked school, but had mixed feelings when it was time to leave. She missed her daddy, but she didn't want to go home. She was a little perturbed that she hadn't learned the names of all of her 14 classmates.

Last weekend in the mountains was beautiful, and I think I can speak for all of us when I say we had a great time.

And I don't have a picture for this one, but I just had the dubious pleasure of looking down our sewer line. *sigh* For the second time since we moved in, we had a "situation" in the basement. Can someone tell me which tree is it in the back yard that the money grows on? Because its roots are clogging our pipes.

Photographic evidence that we are insane

2007-08-30T20:17:00.000-04:00

Finally I have pictures of the big white money pit to share with you! I have pictures of the inside, too, but I don't have the patience to upload them tonight.
First is the official front from the street:

But this side is the "real" front. The house is older than the neighborhood, of course. Much older. I love telling people it was built in 1810 and they do sort of a double take and say, "Eighteen? Not nineteen?"
Yep. Mr. Unreserved found a penny in the yard from 1847. I can't quit thinking how cool that is. I like to think of all the people who have called this place home before us. I like the fact that this house was standing when Beethoven was alive.

This is the front from the back yard. It's a great yard - the girls and Zoe have a ton of fun out there, and I can't wait to put a garden in next summer.

This is the side of the house I see most often, as it's the side that faces the garage/driveway. The deck is falling off. The paint is falling off. There is vermiculite falling out of the walls. We've got work to do.

Let this be a warning to all you overly optimistic dreamers - be careful what you wish for!

The girls and I are off to the mountains this weekend. Poor Mr. Unreserved has to work, but will join us later. Anna's looking forward to it, and I know Claire will enjoy all the dirt there is to get into. The girl is a dirt magnet!

Like pea soup

2007-08-07T20:04:00.000-04:00

The weather makes me feel like I'm living in a big, steamy bowl of pea soup right now. Not that I've ever lived in a bowl of soup, but this is how I imagine it would feel.

Ironically, looking at my last post from July 16th, I'm doing the same thing I was that evening - being stood up by the gutter people. Fool me once etc? Only sort of. After being stood up those several Mondays ago, the next evening they called to reschedule with nary an excuse or an apology for missing the previous appointment, short of "we didn't make it." No kidding. (incidentally, why doesn't apology have two "p"s? it's words like that that make me bad at spelling) Mr. Unreserved simply told them, "No."

Well, they called again yesterday and for some reason that I can't fathom, he allowed them to set up an appointment for tonight. Claims he, "I just want to see what their price is - I have no intention of using them after this." Well I had no intention of spending my evening being stood up by gutter assholes again. (Gutter Assholes would make a great band name)

Meanwhile, we have a shiny new toilet upstairs that only leans to the right about 15 degrees but flushes marvelously. Also the flooring is in less danger of rotting out completely, which is nice because I don't care for toilets in the middle of the kitchen. We've got a very pretty ceiling fan in the living room, which is starting to really feel like a living room. This would all be much more interesting if I had pictures, but that involves finding the camera, downloading, uploading, etc., which is way too much loading for me this evening. Down with loading! Also, I am happily writing this post from the living room as I've managed to reconfigure the wireless router by using my now standard "monkey with it until it decides to start working again" technique.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch. . .
I spun approximately 800yds of lace weight mohair for a shawl that is marinating in my head. It's very pretty. You'll have to take my word for it. Also I finished a wool/cotton sock from yarn I picked up at MSWF. I bought the yarn because summer is too hot to be wearing pure wool socks. You know what? August is too hot to be wearing any socks, even if they're a wool/cotton blend. (never mind the fact that I also only have one sock yet)

I have a stash closet in my bedroom. It used to be a kitchen closet in the old house, but wonder of wonders, here we have adequate kitchen storage without co-opting Ikea bedroom furniture for the purpose of stashing sippy cups.

I think I'm in the mood to do a little dyeing this evening. I acquired 4oz of merino/soy silk and a sampler dye kit for this year's Christmas grab bag project. I can blog about this one because I'm 100% certain the recipient doesn't read this blog. Stay tuned!

Can't think of a title today

2007-07-16T20:19:00.000-04:00

How's your summer going? Ours is flying on by. We went to Idlewild Saturday and had a lovely day. Anna is 36.5" tall, so she was able to ride to her heart's content. Claire couldn't figure out the wait for a ride thing, or the ride is over thing, which resulted in much sadness. Sadness of this variety can be fixed with a nice long train ride, some ice cream, and some Canada geese to watch.
Speaking of Claire, she had her 18 month check up today. She is roughly 40% for height and weight, and 97% for head circumference. My girls have big noggins. This they get from their mother, who has occasional trouble buying hats.
Do you know what time it is? It is 8:22 according to my clock. Last week we went to a fair, whereupon we were encouraged to sign up for a free estimate on having the gutters done. Sure, thinks I. We need more estimates on gutters, seeing as the last laughable estimate gave us a price that would buy me a nice new car. They called last Friday and set up an appointment. It had to be a time when my spouse and I were both home so that we could both agree upon the demo materials. *rolls eyes* We set one up for 7:00 this evening.
The gutter business must be really good. Not only can they afford to solicit people for estimates, but business is so booming that they don't need to show up for appointments! Gutters sell themselves!
Bah.

How green was my valley

2007-07-09T21:58:00.000-04:00

Hot enough for ya? The bad news: The "new" house has not whole house air.
The good news: People back in 1810 knew how to build houses that didn't get quite so hot when it hits nintey-whatever degrees. Shady trees, a shady porch roof, and high ceilings have been making it very livable in my living room. I'm not a fan of central air anyway.
So about that living room.
Thursday I painted it. It only took about 5 hrs. (see high ceilings, above) Technically you could say I painted two rooms, since we've got one big dining/living room combo. I painted it "pickling spice" by Pittsburgh Paints. I was very happy with the coverage. I'm afraid the color is a little too minty, but Mr. Unreserved and UnreservedBrother like it.
Today the oriental rug I ordered from Overstock.com arrived. The rug was labeled "sage." It is sage in the same way that pink is brick red. That is to say my rug is deep dark olive green. Yurgh.
The good news is the nice people at Overstock are good about returns, and via the wonder of FedEx's website I've learned that it will only cost me $21 to return said monster sized 57lb rug. That is unless I can unload it on Craigslist first.
Now I'm gun shy about ordering another one, but extremely eager to have another rug. Anna was disdraught when I told her I was returning the rug. Said she, "But I like it! It's soft!"
Apparently she misses wall-to-wall. Too bad.

Oh, also I made some socks. And started another pair. And am spinning laceweight (hopefully) ivory mohair pencil roving. In my spare time. And I painted the kitchen.

That is all.

I've been hangin' around

2007-07-06T15:42:00.000-04:00

Hello! I moved! It's been an advenutre! Sort of the way having one's toenails extracted with a pair of pliers is an adventure!
The short version:
Moving sucks.
Verizon really REALLY sucks.
Painting sucks.
The "new" house is a money pit.
Even more so than we thought.
Verizon? They still suck.
They suck really hard.

Anyway we're getting settled in, although it's far from feeling like home yet. It will. I keep telling myself that.
Now I'm going to go do something fun, because I've just spent two entire days painting.
Tootles!

Milestones

2007-05-31T20:44:00.000-04:00

Milestone #1: On Monday, I turned 30.
Milestone #2: On Wednesday, I picked up the keys to our new house.
Milestone #3: On Thursday, I found my first grey hair.

We haven't moved in yet and already the place is turning me grey. It's either that or the kids. Or Mr. Unreserved. Or work. Yes, the lack of pigment in one hair at the very front and center of my hairline has nothing to do with age. It's all stress related. At the rate I'm going, it'll all be completely white in five years.

We got our first real look at the yard yesterday - such a great lot with so much potential! It's brimming with potential! And weeds! And dirt! And rocks! Which means we'll be brimming with yard work. Mmmm, but at least all the yard work on this house will be for our own benefit, as I have no plans of leaving it, possibly ever. (I say that now, but I guarantee at some point, deep in the middle of a project that has gone on far too long and cost far too much, I will wish we had bought a condo.)

I had a vivid dream last night that I was about to give birth to a third child. In the dream my skin had stretched so thin that I could clearly see the babe within and was trying to figure out the gender. This tells me that my subconscious isn't satisfied with all the actual sources of anxiety. It feels the need to go and dig up some new, fresh, completely fictional anxiety. I've had several third baby dreams lately even though we are just as far from deciding that matter as we were a year ago (which is to say completely undecided and not really worrying about it). I've also dreamed that we bought a huge, empty department store with attached living quarters, all in deplorable condition. Gee, wonder where that one came from. I also spent an entire early morning wandering a dream grocery store full of angst because I wanted to bake a cheesecake and needed six 8oz packs of cream cheese and all I could find was 12 4oz packs. For some reason that wasn't good enough.
Why can't I have nice dreams about Brad Pitt in a pile of kittens like normal people?

This weekend we have been promised our (new) house will be vacated for real. Laisser les bonne temps rouler!

Life in pictures

2007-05-22T19:21:00.000-04:00

Have camera card, will blog!
As mentioned before, Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival was a blast.
Mom, Aunt Sue, and I filled the role of "girls gone (fiber) wild":

Mom was happy with her find of baby camel/silk:

Aunt Sue got up close and personal with a friendly sheep who liked his head skritched:

(in case you can't read her shirt, it says "Too much to knit, too little time.")

I managed to wait to assemble my wheel until we got home.
Anna had to try it out, having already had treadling practice with Grandma's wheel:

It's monkey see monkey do in our household. Claire jumps on the treadles every chance she gets. The wheel has been stained and waxed in this picture - I really like how it came out!

The fiber obsession, it starts young. The force is strong in these two:

Claire gets into everything she does. Literally.

Bartender? One beer, please!

Ahhhh, there's nothing like a cold one after a hard day at the office.

Lest you call CPS on us, the beer bottle was empty, and she made a healthier choice for her beverage enjoyment.

Where was Anna while this was going on? She fell asleep in her seat. This has been a common occurrence lately as she refuses to nap and all that fresh air and sunshine wipes her out by dinner time.

And every time she does this her foot falls asleep and she wakes up fussing and we put her down on the couch and she konks back out once her foot quits tingling.

Also, isn't my dining room wallpaper lovely? Don't you wish you owned a house with such lovely wallpaper? You can! For a limited time only, buy the dining room and we'll throw in five additional rooms, a basement, a garage, and a lot at no additional charge!

Yard Sale - literally

2007-05-20T13:04:00.000-04:00

So the (old) house has been on the market since mid March now. I keep telling myself that it really isn't that long in the grad scheme of things, but as May trickles away and the first double mortgage payment looms, we're even more anxious to move this house. I honestly thought we'd have more people looking than we have, and I realize that current conditions make it a buyers' market.
Towards that end, we had a "Moving Sale / Open House" yesterday. This area is a terrific place for yard sales and the like. Our neighborhood typically has two a year, and the traffic in our quiet back streets gets really heavy. I figured the best way to get people at least looking at our house was to hold a sale. We had a bunch of junk to clear out anyway. Everything we sell off is one less thing to move next month.

Yesterday morning I got up, tidied the house and got the girls and critters fed. Mr. Unreserved came home from work, and we put all our assorted random stuff on tables in the yard. Once we were set up, I went back out to the shed and grabbed the bulb planter. I dug a 5" hole suitable for tulip bulbs in the front flower bed, and plopped in St. Joseph, feet pointing heavenward, facing north. I said a little prayer, and sold off a bunch of household belongings. We made about $85, but had no takers on looking at the house. However, this morning I had a little chat with a man in a pickup who was stopped out front taking down our realtor's number.

I am Catholic, but admittedly of the "cafeteria" variety. I never really bought into the bit about praying to saints, looking at them more as interesting stories about people of faith that have little impact on my life. I've got to admit if the house moves in the near future, I think I may do a little double take.

I'm a spinner!

2007-05-17T00:01:00.000-04:00

I spun for 2.5 remarkable hours tonight. I say remarkable because no one woke up screaming, and I didn't fall asleep. I'm getting the hang of this spinning thing!
I filled a bobbin with singles of creamy white wool/mohair blend (I think. . . Hey, Mom, what was that fiber content again? I think the tag got left at your house.) and very rarely was it kinky or lumpy. It feels like yarn and not twine. I really like the Ashford Kiwi, not that I have a whole lot of basis to compare it to, but the treadling is effortless and I find it very easy to control.
Now all I have to do is repeat it with another bobbin then it's on to learning to ply.

This entry is a placeholder of sorts. A longwinded placeholder.

2007-05-14T22:14:00.000-04:00

I want to post pictures, lots and lots of pictures, and details. I am too tired to get up and round up the camera and the card reader and the names of things and places. The only thing that will motivate me to get up off the couch this evening is food, so this will have to do for now.

Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival was awe inspiring! It was everything I hoped it would be and then some. It felt so good to be surrounded by fellow fiber enthusiasts, especially considering we're in the minority in everyday life. No one minded if you checked out their sweaters behind their backs. People understood the oohing and ahhing over beautiful fibers in gorgeous colorways. Apparently now in addition to being a regular garden-variety geek, I'm also a fiber geek.

If the conversion to full-blown geekdom wasn't complete before we left, my mom made sure it was by the time we got home. My birthday present - a starter supply of fiber and an Ashford Kiwi! Fun! (Thanks, again!) I spent as much time as I could this past weekend making kinky yarn (that ought to make for interesting google hits) between getting Claire out of the trouble she's gotten very good at finding. (more on fiber acquisitions when I get pictures and details at some later date)

Things Claire got into / trashed this weekend:
Dumped the remains of two beers and a Pepsi all over the dining table and played in the puddles
Climbed on the table and ate margarine straight from the tub with both fists
Completely ransacked the bathroom drawers
Completely ransacked every storage device in the living room
Incompletely emptied the bin of giftwrap from under our bed and began unrolling and ripping it into shreds
Dumped the dog's water dish all over the kitchen floor
Ransacked the playroom (but that's par for the course - that's why it's a playroom)
Unraveled many yards of kinky yarn and wrapped them around the living and dining rooms
Dumped the contents of my purse and began eating my ipod headphones

Keep in mind that all of these were really over the span of about a day and a half, as we went visiting our mothers for Mother's Day. Maybe we should supervise her more closely? Ha! You are full of such helpful suggestions! Why didn't we think of that!? Certainly we don't need to prepare meals or change clothes or shower or go pee. Also imagine all of these things happening while Anna whines and throws herself around in dramatic fashion at the cruelty of being served milk in the WRONG CUP. She wanted the one with the MONKEY ON IT. NOW. Each misadventure was followed by a screaming fit from Claire as we stole her newfound fun from her. Now you see why I have no time for uploading pictures.

We are learning how the other half lives - we're the proud owners of TWO houses! And TWO mortgages! Heaven help us! On my to-do list: Bury St. Joseph in the flower bed. The closing was a nightmare. Do any of these ever go smoothly? We're landlords until May 31st, after which the sellers can kindly vacate the premises or find their belongings on the lawn. Honestly, I'm a nice person until pushed too far. I've been pushed too far a few too many times since February. As if this blog didn't have a fuzzy enough focus to begin with, I expect it to be even more of a renovation blog as home improvement takes over even more of our lives. I especially like the saying I found on another renovation blog: We call it "home improvement" because it couldn't get any worse.

Now with 25% more randomness!

2007-04-25T20:53:00.000-04:00

Hi! How are you? I am going slowly crazy!

The landscaping is healing from its encounter with Mister Backhoe. Our crabapple tree decided that it's going to bloom after all, now that the snow is gone. It's going to be SOOOO pretty. That tree and the weeping cherry tree that was a birthday gift are the only two bits of landscaping I'm going to miss when we leave this house. When we bought it, very little of the house was visible from the road. The first weekend we lived here my parents brought their his and hers chainsaws and we all got very busy uncovering the house. Unfortunately this revealed that the paint was coming off the shakes in sheets. We spent an entire summer scraping, priming, and painting the house since it was cheaper than new siding, and I ended up liking the charm of the old shakes well enough that we never sided. Sometimes I'm afraid that our (my) color choice is putting off potential buyers. The house is grey with purple trim. In certain lighting it has a tendency to look lavender all over.

I learned I hate painting and swore I wouldn't buy another house until I could afford to pay someone else to paint it. The new house needs painting, and I've yet to hit (or even play) the lottery. Good thing we saved the brushes.

The new house is 3.9 miles north of our current house. Ironically the sellers are considering a house down the street from us.* I love our neighborhood, but most of the houses here are the same size as the one we're in (or they cost 6 times more than ours - it's an odd neighborhood). This means that in order to continue throw rocks at Shaler, we'll need one heck of a potato gun. Even though we are not switching townships, our township has requested our names, social security numbers, and employers' information for taxation purposes. The fact that they already have this information does not matter. Mmmm, bureaucracy.

*May it please the gods of housing that the sellers might find alternate lodging so that we might take occupancy of the house we are attempting to purchase, and may the powers that be grant unto us a person or persons who wishes to buy an odd but cute not really lavender cape cod with all possible haste, or at the very least before May 7th. Amen.

I'm knitting a sock! I'm afraid I'm going to run out of yarn. This is why top down socks irritate me. It's making me not want to finish the sock, even though I'm not sure I'll run out. I can rip back past the heel and take one lace repeat out of the cuff (they're plenty long), but that makes me just a little mad. Every few rounds I keep squeezing the remaining yarn as if that will tell me if I'm going to make it to the toe.

At the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet festival I picked up enough pretty variegated Brooks Farm yarn to knit a lace pullover I had fallen in love with. The pattern is Louisa Harding's Mandolin. I had seen a shop model of the sweater and fallen in love with it. It was done in two different variegated yarns that were a little rich for my blood. I thought I could sub the Brooks Farms yarn, but after knitting up one sleeve I realize that it's just not going to work. A new sweater is marinating in my head, one of my own design, but I haven't the mental energy to actually swatch, do math, and start it just yet.

I've got some rayon ribbon yarn from last year that needs to be knit in to something summery and shapely, but again that involves math and thinking and swatching even if I do find a pattern (and I've got a couple in mind) Right now what I need is mindless. Good old mind-numbing non-frustrating un-house-related knitting.

Or lots of liquor.

What we've been up to, in pictures.

2007-04-17T19:54:00.000-04:00

Did you have a happy Easter? We did. I finished the girls' dresses just in time. They are of an age to really appreciate the whole holiday thing.
We colored eggs:

On Easter morning the girls found their baskets and had almost pure sugar for breakfast. (marshmallow peeps are acceptable breakfast food on Easter)

I had to hurry up and snap this pic before church while the girls were still clean and tidy. I had no hopes of it lasting, but they did pretty well, actually. I'm disappointed we didn't get any "nice" shots, but I had no intentions of posing outside in the snow this year.

We went visiting all the requisite family members and had a good day.
Claire has fun wherever she goes:

Do not try to take pictures of Anna while she is watching "Alice In Wonderland."

It was nice to be done preparing for the holiday after a flurry of preparing for the house to be show-able. I was very happy to put the finishing touches on the kitchen. *note to self - take pictures of the kitchen*

Today, however, I am at the end of my rope.
Work has been stressful. Nothing is working in the lab, and deadlines are looming. Claire is teething and therefore not sleeping. This whole house buying/selling thing is being a pain in the neck. More accurately, the people involved are being a pain in the neck. Also, someone please make an offer on our house. Or at least come look at it. And when you do, wipe your feet so you don't track mud everywhere. I just mopped the floor.
Today, there is an extra source of mud in our yard:

In preparation for selling the house, we had a dye test performed. Or, we attempted to have the dye test performed. Turns out the clean-out for the sewage line was cracked and needed replacing. Turns out that it never should have passed 7 yrs ago. Turns out that this is going to be really expensive.

If I had photoshop, and photoshop skills, I would edit the backhoe to have a bulldozer blade on the front. Then I would put on my bathrobe and lie down in the mud in front of it.

As if we weren't having enough fun this evening, here's a picture of Claire, taken 10 minutes after her bath:

I'm laughing because it beats the alternative. I post this not to garner sympathy but so that later, when things are running more smoothly in Unreservedville, I can look back on this and laugh and actually mean it.

I represented!

2007-04-01T19:55:00.000-04:00

Friday was not a typical day for me. I judged projects at the Pittsburgh Regional Science and Engineering Fair. It was a great time. I loved the sight of approximately 900 students ready to tell us all about their adventures in the sciences. I also enjoyed getting to meet the other judges. We represented a wide swath of pursuits, from academia to industry, from protein folding to animal behavioral studies. It was a refreshing break from what's been a frustrating time in the lab.

I went home, switch clothes and gears. Mom met me at my house and we trekked down to the south side and had a great dinner and got to meet The Yarn Harlot. She was entertaining as expected, and didn't even say arse once. (during the official talk - there was one slip-up in the Q&A period) It was almost as fun seeing all the knitters. I've been to the Pittsburgh Bloggers meetup before - it makes me think a Pittsburgh Knit Bloggers meetup would be great fun. Probably most of them already go to knitting groups, but I get the impression that many of us don't already know each other. I've often thought of joining a group but I'm spread too thin as it is right now for another regular commitment. A one-time or not as often thing (like the 'burgh bloggers) would be nice. Hrm. Will have to think on that.

And what have I been knitting? Well, I've got Cromarty on the needles, I've got a Louisa Harding lace pullover in the works that I'm itching to work on, of course I've got a pair of socks on the needles, and I haven't touched any of them in two weeks because I'm still smocking. I'm bicraftual! I'm almost done with the embroidery for Claire's dress, then on to Anna's. Fortunately the assembly of these is significantly simpler than last year's Vogue pattern. That was a killer. And when I'm done, rather than work on any of the three UFOs, I'll probably cast on for the Alpine Lace now that I've got a nice, sharp set of Addi lace needles and I wound all 800yds of my lacewt alpaca by hand. (said DH, 800 yds? I replied in the afirmative. He thought I misspoke. No, there truly is 800 yds of yarn in that ball.) (This reminds me of Stephanie's talk of "trigger words." For those who know what I'm talking about, mine are "How much yarn do you need?" Never ask me that.)

We haven't gotten many more bites on the house. We're nearing serious nail biting time. Our realtor failed to get the paperwork in to the newspaper for a listing today, and next Sunday is Easter of course. *sigh* I know the house is going to sell, but until it does we're going to be jumpy wondering how long we're going to have to carry two mortgages. We close in May. Wanna buy a house?

There is a "For Sale" sign in my yard

2007-03-20T19:26:00.000-04:00

As of today, our house is on the market. The sign went up this afternoon. Someone is already coming to view it tomorrow.
I suppose I should finish staining and sealing the kitchen cabinets.
I really meant to last night, but by the time I got Claire down to bed and curled up on the couch to read Anna some books, the nap monsters that live in the couch got us both. Before we knew it, it was 12:30 and Claire was up.
Claire has not been sleeping lately. What is it that makes babies who've slept through the night since they were 5 mo. old suddenly decide that they can NOT sleep unless they are right up against you?
Words Claire can say:
Uh oh
Ducky
Woof! Woof!
Kitty
Meow
Elmo
Want bottle mo-mo
Daddy
Baby

Do you see "mommy" anywhere on that list? Me neither. I recall her saying it months ago, but lately she has decided that all parents are summoned by yelling "Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy!" until someone responds. I was greeted at the door after work tonight with an enthusiastic "Daddy!" Every time I correct her and say "Mommy" she replies with Daddy.
So for now, Claire has two daddies.

The sales agreement is all signed off for the purchase of the new house. Our complicated mortgage juggling paperwork is being processed, and some of it is complete. We've started getting estimates from movers. It's starting to feel like we might actually do this house thing. Which is good, because if it doesn't happen soon I'm going to implode from the anticipation.

I was dealing with the anticipation by knitting, but Easter is sneaking up on us. I've finished gathering pleats for two bishop dresses and am ready to smock. When I mention the crafty bits I get up to, a common response is, "Where do you get the time?" The answer can be found in the fact that I don't think I've watched television in roughly two years. I listen to it, but always with some sort of hand work in progress. I think most people would be amazed if they realize a) how much time the television eats from their life and b) how little you actually have to look at the screen to follow most television programs.

Urine big trouble

2007-03-05T22:00:00.000-05:00

The good news: Anna has not worn a diaper in 17 days.

The bad news: Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get pee out of a reclining sofa?

***********
It's been a busy weekend at Chez Unreserved, soon to be the house formerly known as Chez Unreserved if all goes as planned. Which almost wasn't the plan yesterday. Oh this whole house offering nonsense is nerve-wracking. It isn't over yet, but as of today it's one step closer (good news). Unfortunately we're going to be owning two houses (hence two mortgages) for a time (bad news). I am praying to the housing gods (metaphorically - although a coworker did query me once as to the heathenistic idol worship practices endemic in Catholicism) and perhaps sacrificing a goat*. We put laminate flooring in the dining room all day Saturday. I'm happy to say the girls let us do that and for the most part played peacefully in the living room while we worked. The kitchen inches along, and the house will be listed ASAP whether it has cabinet doors in the kitchen or not. I will simply tell people to imagine the cabinets all nice and glossy and shiny and door covered.

I'm biting my cuticles down to bloody nubs. Bloody, caulk covered, paint stained, sand papered nubs.

*No goats were harmed in the listing of this house. Yet.

Knitting Olympics, only one year late!

2007-02-26T23:31:00.000-05:00

Last year I bit off more than I could chew. Quelle surprise! A mere two months postpartum, facing a return to working motherhood, I signed up for the Yarn Harlot's Knitting Olympics. I opted to make Claire a lace baby jacket based on a general recipe from Heirloom Knitting. I say general recipe because the instructions give you the stitch count and basic dimensions, but I chose a different (more complex) lace pattern than the one suggested. That's what I like best about this book - it's a great tool for design it yourselfers who like guidelines but don't want to adhere to a strict pattern.
I didn't finish in time. Duh. In fact, it was intended to be part of Claire's Easter dress, and I didn't make that deadline, either. But I did finish. I finally dug the knitted cardigan out and seamed it and put a button on it back in October. I just now got around to releasing the pictures from their captivity on the memory card.
It's sort of hard to see how the lace pattern worked out, as my model was being less than professional, but I'm happy with it. (and fortunately it's very stretchy since it was 8 months late!)

Some assembly required

2007-02-13T20:03:00.000-05:00

Hrm. Remember that project afoot that I declined to mention? I'll understand if you don't. I'm sure you've got a lot on your mind. By the way, you spouse told me to remind you to get milk on the way home. Anyway, the project was operation find a bigger house. It appears to have been successful.
We've made an offer on a house in the same municipality. It has been accepted. Now I actually have to finish the kitchen. Rats. (no, there are no vermin in the kitchen unless you count the cat)
Lets compare the two houses:
Current house-
Bedrooms: 3 Sort of. You see, the 3rd one is "captive" to the 2nd one, which means you have to go through one to get to the other, which means that no matter what we do the girls will be waking each other up at 2 a.m. Like last night. Oh, and again at 3 a.m. And then at 5:30.
Dining room: Just big enough for a small table and my piano. DH points out we'd have room for a great china cabinet if we didn't have that piano taking up space. The piano is non-negotiable.
Kitchen: Miniscule.
Garage: The house has a garage. It is 9' wide. You could, theoretically, put a car in it. You'd have to stay in the car though, because there'd be no room to open the car door.
Closets: Two. Well, more like 1.5. The second one is in the captive bedroom, and is halfway up the wall. It's an odd house.
Bathroom: One. Not for tall persons. It's squeezed under the cape cod roof, so we had to get creative putting in a shower. Most people do not have to cut portions of their shower curtains off to account for the ceiling.
Basement: Good for storage and laundry, but not big enough to bother finishing.
Yard: Mostly level, standard suburban lot
Age: House was built in the mid 30's.

"New" house-
Bedrooms: Four at the moment, subject to change when the master bath goes in. * Three of them have fireplaces. **
Dining room: half of a big, open, sunny greatroom that is open to the living room and perfect for entertaining. Plenty of room for both a piano and a china cabinet. And a buffet. And a big table. And a desk.
Kitchen: Nice and big. Not eat-in per se, though there's room for a small breakfast table. Currently missing a ceiling. ***
Garage: two car detached. Needs a new door. I don't care. For the first time in my life, I would have a roof over my car in the winter.
Closets: The house has closets! What a concept!
Bathroom: Here's where this one fall short in the near term. There is one functioning bathroom. By functioning, I mean it has no tub, which is sort of a must for washing small people. However, eventually* the house could have 3.5 bathrooms.
Basement: Big enough to stand up in. Big enough to finish.**** Has a laundry shoot.
Yard: Big enough to possibly merit a riding mower, but small enough to manage.
Age: According to the info in the posting, it's approximately 197 yrs old in spots.

Remember that post I wrote about liking old, fixer upper houses? Oh, maybe you didn't read this blog back then. I could link to it, but that would require effort. It appears I may be getting my wish in spades. And yet I have a very strong sense of ohcrapwhatarewegettingourselvesinto. Not that that has ever stopped me.

The whole thing isn't a done deal until we've sold the little casa. I've got a soft spot for this house even though we've always known we'd be leaving it. It's going to be an emotional ride no matter what happens.

*Two bathrooms have been gutted to the studs and need reinstalling. A half bath is half installed on the main floor. There is a great clawfoot tub in the basement that is intended for the upstairs gutted bathroom, and the current homeowners planned to build a large master bath in the fourth (tiny) bedroom.
**The house has six fireplaces, some of which work. At least two of them need their mantles replaced, but mantles are included with the house.
***A dropped ceiling was removed from the kitchen and allows access to the plumbing for the planned master bath
****There was a finished room and a full bath in the basement, but it's gutted at the moment.
Gutted is a running theme in this house.

I like to think of myself as not superstitious, but I've got a thing against February. Bad things happen in February. In an ideal world, this house wouldn't have been listed until spring. Spring when I could get a look at the yard without 4" of snow on it. Spring when our house is at its cutest for listing, with the crabapple and cherry trees in bloom looking all quaint and cottage-like. Spring when it's not so frigging cold and dark and dreary. I'm having a hard time accepting that this whole situation may happen and that, theoretically, we could be living in a new house before summer. I'm afraid February will mean things will go wrong. Or that things will go right, we'll move in, and decide we made a terrible mistake.

So hey! La la la! I can't hear February! I'm on row 25 of Cromarty!

Come again?

2007-02-08T20:10:00.000-05:00

Anna, being three years old, and perhaps more importantly being my daughter, is chatty by nature. Go figure.
Last week, Anna was sharing one of her rambling monologues with DH:
Anna: See the tree outside? There was a cock in the tree!
DH: What?
A: There was a cock! In the tree!
D: Um....
A: It was sitting on the branch! The cock was on the branch!
D: [translation light bulb going on] Do you mean a hawk?
A: Yes! The hawk was in the tree!

*********************

The wisdom of small people
A few weeks ago, Anna and Claire were at the grandparents' for an overnight. They had popcorn for a snack. Since then Anna has developed some interesting theories regarding unpopped kernnals -
They are eggs. You put them in a nest and a bird will hatch out of them.
They are popcorn seeds. If you put them in the ground, a popcorn tree will grow out of it, and
popcorn will grow on the tree.
It's not just any bird that will hatch from popcorn "eggs". Turkeys come from popcorn eggs.
Which explains why she claimed she found a bone in one popped piece. Must've been a
turkey bone.

*********************

I've typed this entire entry with Anna "the cat" rubbing her head against my arm. That's fine, I just hope she doesn't start yakking up hairballs like the regular cat.

*********************

This Saturday is the Pittsburgh Knitting (and crochet) Festival.
If you're an area knitter, it's worth the trip! This is their third year. The first year they had very little advertising and got at least four times the number of expected attendees. Last year the festival was much larger. None of the classes really appeal to me (I don't consider myself a "class" type knitter anyway - I'd rather screw things up 15 times first while teaching myself) but it's a great chance to experience lots of local and not so local yarn shops in one spot.
Restraint will be a must, however, as a) I've yet to knit the yarn I picked up last year b) we've got plans to attend Maryland Sheep & Wool this May. Woot!

I'm still here...

2007-02-03T17:34:00.001-05:00

You know how sometimes you think, "Hm, I should update my blog."
Then your brother points out that you haven't updated in a while. (not that he updates that frequently - pot/kettle anyone?)
And you think maybe you'll post, but you've got to upload those pictures off the camera and find that sweater you've been meaning to take a picture of and just where did I put the camera anyway I think it's in the desk and oh look! Here's something completely unrelated and interesting and all of a sudden it's 11:30 at night and other people would like you to turn off the light in the bedroom so they can go to sleep.
Then your mother mentions you haven't updated.
And so you plan to update the next time you're on the computer, right after you check your e-mail accounts and make sure you haven't missed anything good on Craigslist and you see an interesting house posted so you jump onto the multilist and start digging around to see if it's worthwhile but that site is slow so you check your bloglines while you're waiting for the page to load and by the time you've checked everything you notice Letterman is on and if you don't go to bed soon you're going to regret it the next day.
While you're at work the next day you come up with a BRILLIANT idea for a post, but you enforce your self impmosed no blogging at lunch rule and by the time you get home and eat dinner and get the girls their bath and clean up the bathroom and get three bed snacks and read 12 stories and put Claire back down to sleep for the second time and you finally sit down you think it might be nice to knit on your sock for a bit instead of computing and besides you can't remember that brilliant idea for the life of you.

So here I am with a quick, meaningless, contentless post full of excuses, as if there's some sort of obligation to this whole blogging thing anyway. As if I have to write X posts a month or what? I won't get paid for it? I'll never get that lucrative book deal? My many minions will protest lack of entertaining content and seek greener pastures?

I was just stopping by while grabbing some more podcasts with which to entertain myself while I go scrub down the kitchen walls. There are projects afoot, but of them I will not speak for fear of jinxing things.

Happy Birthday(s) to my girlies!

2007-01-02T19:40:00.000-05:00

There are pros and cons to having one's children within a week or so of Christmas. Yesterday was Birthdayapalooza. Anna turned three (technically tomorrow) and Claire is now one year old. If I thought our house was buried under toys before, I was mistaken. I actually went through Toys R We looking for something to get Claire that she didn't already have and it was difficult. Is this too much consumerism? (don't answer that) I am powerless to stop it. I couldn't very well say, "Sorry, kid. Between the toys we already had around here from your sister and the ones you got a week ago, we figure you're all set so no present for you." Actually I could have. Claire's one. She wouldn't know the difference, but I couldn't live with myself. So now both girls are all stocked up for 2007.

Speaking of the new year, I will now do the in-blogger thing and share with you my resolutions for 2007:
I resolve not to make any resolutions for 2007.

I started knitting a pair of Jaywalkers. I got past the heel, tried it on, and found out it was too tight. Off to the frogpond with ye, Jaywalker! I must make them in the near future, though, because the girls each have their own already.

I started a second Debbie Bliss baby shrug. This is my first time knitting a pattern twice, I guess that means I liked it. It's quick, simple, doesn't use boatloads of yarn, and makes a cute sweater. It is destined either for gifting, if friend's mystery baby turns out to be the female variety, or for Claire since the first one ended up fitting Anna.

I anticipate more pictures in the future, as we got a snazzy new camera for Christmas and am promised quick and simple uploads. Wheeeee!

Kids say the darndest things

2006-12-27T23:58:00.000-05:00

Forgot to add:
The scene - the Saturday before Christmas. Claire is wailing after having been clobbered in the head with an ornament by her sister.
Anna: I'm not being very good.
Me: No, you aren't behaving.
Anna: Why?
Me: I don't know. It would be good if you'd behave.
Anna: Why?
Me: Why did you hit your sister in the head with a Santa Claus?
Anna: I didn't hit my sister in the head with a Santa Claus. I hit her in the head with a snowman.
Me: Oh, well that makes it okay then.