Random Bigfoot & Rice Krispies Treats Terrorism

How long exactly does the self-cleaning feature on my oven take? There's something about letting your oven get to 8000 degrees and stay there for hours that's a little unnerving. So far it's been 2 1/2 hours and my head is about to explode from the worry.

This has led me to eat an entire box of Rice Krispies treats all by myself. Probably not the healthiest thing, but tasty nonetheless. How many glasses of green tea do you think I need to drink to counteract that?

And Aidan has decided to turn into Mr. Terror tonight. Why does he never want to go to the bathroom? He would probably be a lot less cranky if he'd just do it. He is being absolutely horrible to his sister. Every time I tell him "no", he grabs one of her toys and holds it hostage, threatening to throw it in the trashcan. This starts Abbey howling with fright over the fate of her My Little Pony or Furr Real Pet (which, incidently, cries and whines when mishandled). I don't know where he picked up this technique, but as far as Abbey's concerned, it's very effective. Maybe we've been watching the news too much.

In other Aidan news, he loves "unexplained" stuff. You know, Bigfoot, Loch Ness, extraterrestrials, crop circles and Ghosthunters. He eats it up. He also really likes dinos (of course!) and mummies. I have a budding archaeologist on my hands I think.

Abbey went to catholic church with her friend Mackenzie for the first time on Saturday. I asked her if she liked it, thinking that she was bored the entire time. She said it was fun cause she got to read books and sing. That's my little heathen child for ya. Wouldn't want any of that religion stuff to sink in ;).

I have knit! A whole 15 rows on the anniversary socks for The Man. And there's still a ton to go for it to be long enough. But I knit, dammit, and it felt goooooooooddd!! Maybe that's why I've been so befuddled lately. I've been witlessly knitless!

Stick a fork in me, I'm done.

Waiting

I was reading over my last few posts and realized that I am a terrible proof reader. Please don't judge.

The whole post about the blog and the life and the knitting was kinda self-serving. Like my blog wasn't already about my life before I superciliously declared it so! And like I should worry about what those that read my blog think. ("Hey, there's no kntting today! I thought this was a knitting blog. I want my money back!!") Isn't the idea behind the whole journal/weblog thing to do it for yourself? But then we had to go and publish the crap on the internet, and that makes us want people to read it, and like it, and then it just turns into stress. I guess I was trying to say "like me, please, even if I didn't feed the knitting monster today". But I've decided it doesn't matter. I'm doing this blog for me, and maybe for the munchkins. I don't care if anyone reads it. (Okay, so that was a lie, but I'm trying not to let it bother me.) Someday when I'm senile my children will be able to look back on this blog and say they could see it coming.

Abbey is loving food shows right now. Cartoons? We don't need no stinkin' cartoons! We've got the Food Network. Bring it on Rachel Ray and your 30 Minute Meals! Come on Alton Brown and give me some Good Eats! She will sit mesmerized through an entire evening if I let her.

(Can't you see the senility already? Skipping subjects all hodge-podge like that.)

And now for something else...
I've not said too much about this in the past because I don't want to sound whiney or anything, but I've decided I need to just get it in the open. I have some strange disease that the Dr.s can't quite pinpoint. Most agree that it is some kind of connective tissue disease with a lean towards systemic lupus erythematosus. Not a big deal, I don't want a pity party. I first got sick in high school with mostly joint problems and fatigue and have just learned to deal with it. Most of the time I feel pretty good, but it does cause me to go to about a million different doctors for a million different reasons. Again, not a big deal. You learn to cope. Lately I've had a bit of a flare and I went to the rheumatologist last week. He gave me some meds, ran some labs, the usual stuff. The reason I bring all this up is The Man. I was telling him about the new rheumatologist and how I thought the nurse that drew my blood did it in a spot that hurt more on purpose because I had pissed her off about a sewing machine one time when he said "We've got to get our shit together." Huh? What did that have to do with Nurse Revenge?
Me: Okay...
Him: One day you are going to get sick and we need to get everything under control before that happens.
Me: silence...
Him: It's going to happen.
I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. Is this how he sees me? How he lives his life with me? Waiting. Waiting for the day that I get sick and go into kidney failure and can't do anything for myself anymore? I certainly don't live that way. I might never even get that sick. All the indicators now are that I have a relatively mild disease that can be controlled. Nothing as drastic as he makes it sound. And has he always felt this way, or just since I've been having a few problems? I've had this thing for 14 years and I'm doing pretty good. I've never had to have radiation or methotrexate or even high dose steroids for that matter. I'm fine. (Or I'm in denial.) The whole thing makes me wonder about everything else in our life. When he had the chance to leave me, did he stay out of love? Or pity? When he lets me sleep in, is it because he's pampering me? Or is it because he thinks I need it? Is he staring at me because he loves to look at me? Or he's worried about me? I understand that the whole thing is probably hard to handle from his side, but we've never really taken the whole thing that seriously. Or at least I hadn't. "It's just a little arthritis. Ha ha, I have to go to all the old people doctors. I'm the youngest patient they've seen in years." Maybe that's why I was always so flippant about it. If I lived my life waiting, or knew he was, it would stop me from living my life. What good does that do? But now I'm waiting. Waiting to find the words to talk to him and make him stop waiting. I might be waiting for a long time.

Things...

Things I'm loving right now:

• Jack Johnson's Curious George CD- I'm loving the cheesy-bop-your-head-sing-along-ness of it. It's like my kid's version of Mulligan Stew with songs like "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" and "The Sharing Song". It makes me want to go rent "Free to Be...You and Me" and wear some polyester.
• Tank tops from Old Navy- I am obsessed. I use them for undershirts, overshirts, nightshirts & dayshirts. I have a million colors and three different sizes depending on what layer they are gonna be. Don't ask me. I'm a freak for tank tops right now. Last year it was socks.
• John Legend- His music is like dirty gospel. A choir sings about "making freaky sounds". How can I not love that? Oh, and he's from Springfield, so we're like practically related, right?
• THIS book-it's like one big long laudanum trip.
• My hair- at least this minute.

Things I'm NOT loving right now:

• My hair- well that didn't last very long now did it?
• My brain- for some reason my thoughts won't come out right lately. It's like my head is a big filing cabinet, you know like the huge-mongous ones they have at the library, and someone has gone in and scrambled the shit out of everything (Hence, the lack of posts. I dislike incoherent babbling as much as the next guy. Oh, this is incoherent babbling, I forgot.) I try to pull the drawer marked "memory" and half the stuff is missing. Ugh. I think a lot of has to do with the next thing.
• My rut- yes, a literal rut. I swear I am doing the same things that I have done before with the same people, but no one notices but me. And we're not talking about a little bit of de ja vu, I mean, I am really quite sure we have done these exact same things, had these exact same conversations, felt these exact same feelings. My life has a bad groove that I can't jump out of. Oh, I know I'm not actually reliving these things, there are some differences, but everything is very familiar.
• The Great Influenza- now, I loved the book, but I am now scared shitless of the subject matter. Not really shitless. I'm not one to run around shouting that the sky is falling, but it was very sobering to think of the incredible numbers of people that died and what that would amount to in today's poulation. And the scariest part is that we haven't learned our lesson. We don't spend nearly enough money on influenza related research and development- after all, it's only the flu. But the flu has a much higher mortality rate than, say, anthrax (which we can use antibiotics on- not that they are very effactive anymore) or west nile virus, and look how we reacted to those threats. It's yet another glimpse into how the bureaucracy that we live in rally works. Don't cough on me, thank you very much.
• The base hospital- (Speaking of bureaucracies) I tried to get a copy of my medical records. Nope, not allowed to touch them. That's what they said to me- "You are not allowed to touch them. But you can pay us $8.30/hr. plus $.15/page for us to copy them for you." What?!?! They are my medical records, are they afraid I might tamper with them or steal them? They're mine, right?
• Work- but I've got to go- I am seriously late.

Neighbors

We have new neighbors. Well, they're not exactly new new, they moved in before Halloween. But the frigid cold of Ohio keeps everyone inside in the winter so we haven't had much contact. I met her on Halloween. They are music types- her classical, orchestra teacher, gives violin lessons; him orange spikey hair, guitar yielding, rock boy. They are both young. The funny story is that he saw The Man running the other morning and said "wake up earlier and we can run together." Yeah right. The man's current workout regimin consists of lugging his bag of junk back and forth to work and running once every 3 months. Yeah dude, he'll see you in May.

SIX

Don't you people know it's hard to be six years old? Ghheeeessee!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AIDAN!

Well, I did name him something that means "fire". I guess it's my own fault.

Life

I've been thinking lately that I've been neglecting the blog. Not on purpose so much as subconsciously. I think about the blog quite a bit and all the great things I can write about, but then I realize not too many of those things have to do with knitting. Well, you say, get a stuff that doesn't pertain to knitting blog. Yes, that would work for someone that wasn't lazy with a cap L like me. That would entail posting to two different blogs and I know that one would go down the drain. So, by executive decision (meaning I was wearing work clothes at the time), I deem this my everything blog. What does that mean to you? Probably nothing. Ideally it means I will post more often, though not always about knitting. This is good, because then I won't be one of those "sorry there's no knitting content" bloggers. The guilt will be gone. Don't worry, there will still be plenty of knitting. I tend to go in cycles, though, and this time of the year has more to do with reading ten million books than knitting. For some reason, summer is my choice season for knitting (I openly admit that I am a bit backwards).

So what will my first guilt free post about anything be? The Man. He's driving me boinkers. We have been married ten years and together on & off for 15 and I have honestly never nagged him. He nags me, but I don't. If I'm stressed he might get a snap or a sarcastic prodding, but no nagging. Well, he started online classes this quarter towards his bachelor's degree(he has an associates) in criminal justice. Yay for him! He is in the Air National Guard and gets 100% tuition assistance plus the money he earned for the GI Bill while he was in the Navy. More than enough to pay for me to actually go back to school and get out of the retail hell that I am living right now. But, me being thirty and sensible now, I want to pay off our debt with the extra money first. This means waiting til fall quarter- AS LONG AS HE DOESN'T DROP OUT LIKE HE DID TWO YEARS AGO!!!!! Yeah, this has been a plan for a bit. So, I have officially become a nag. I ask him every day, "did you do your homework?" "Did you get your school stuff done?" "Do you have any stuff to do for school today?" Yes, a nag I am. I don't care. My ability to overcome my crappy, albeit self-imposed, job is directly linked to his success. What does he expect? I've put my brain in the closet for ten years and it is screaming to GET OUT. Nag, nag, nag. NAG!!!

Whew, got that out of my system. Hey, believe me, I am happy with my family. I love them dearly and wouldn't change a thing. But pushing sewing machines to little old ladies is not what I expected at thirty. The creative outlet of fiber arts that my job affords has helped a bit, but I'm bored. I'm apathetic to my sales numbers, which in retail is not a good thing. Maybe I just need a vacation-- a nice loooong one.

So true, if cheesy...

Go here. You'll see what I mean.