Sock accomplished

The one good thing I can say about my commute: it does lay on the knitting time. I finally dug these out of hibernation, and bang! Done!

We are going through some changes right now, at home and at work. It's been a challenging few weeks, and I strongly suspect it will continue in this vein for quite a while.

...sigh...

I'm....gonna need more sock yarn...

{censored}

A long time ago, in a random place that had nothing to do with bloggers, blogging, or indeed any form of writing whatsoever, someone asked me if I censored myself on this blog.

“Oh, @^*&@ no!” I replied.

But this was, of course, a bald-faced lie. I mean, just look at the ‘@’, people.

Oh yeah. I censor.

I write a lot more than I post. Most of the time, it ends up in Blog Purgatory because I don’t finish it – Life happens, and time passes, and I can’t remember where I thought I was going with this odd rambling thing about…hmm. Well. I assume it was about something.

But other times, it never gets read by anyone else because it’s angry-writing. Unkind rants about my fellow creatures, blistering critiques of the latest political nonsense, a dissection of the lunacy from the latest pamphlet left on my door by well-intentioned $DEITY-worshippers who feel that I would be an awesome fit to the congregation because who doesn’t think celery IS god? Huh? HUH? AM I RIGHT?!?!

Other times, I’m just whining about something…and then I look at what I’ve written and I think, YA KNOW…some well-intentioned soul is going to ask you if you’ve ever tried {something that comes up in the first five Google pages when you search on the condition}.

And then I’m going to write one of those angry things that I never post. “Thank goodness you’re here, Captain Obvious! You’ve saved the village!!”

The neat thing about writing, though, is that unlike a word that has been spoken where there were ears to hear it, I have the ability to review what I’m about to say in writing and go, “Sigh…I don’t really mean that, not at all…” {delete-delete-delete}

…and thus it is that sometimes, there are seemingly weeks between posts around here…

…which, of course, leads me to feel as though I am cheating somehow.

In real life, I frequently don’t use @^*&@ when I mean to say…well…that other word. Which I don’t put on my blog, because every-so-not-very-often, The Lady My Mother reads it. And being as she is pure as the driven snow, she would surely swoon if she saw the word rhymes-with-spit on here.

Because Lords Knows she herself has never used such a word, yea verily, never once.

Ahem.

Aaaaanyway…in real life, I frequently use words I shouldn’t. I can be snarky and sarcastic, too. I sometimes hear myself say something and think, Um…dude? That was a little…over the top, doancha think?!

I mean, I’m not particularly confrontational; I try to stop myself when I’m about to go off on some wild-eyed rant and run it through the “is it helpful, is it kind, is it true” filter before I fire all cannons.

But every so often, one will let loose; I’ll say something hurtful, or even hateful…or thoughtlessly cruel…and only after the words have left my mouth and settled into the ears of others does my brain-mouth processing kick in and go, “Oh, um? Actually? That last one was not helpful, or kind, or even true…yeah, let’s not say that…oh…too late, huh?…uhhhhh…sorry, my bad…”

In real life…I have bad days. Ugly, shamefully self-absorbed, mean-spirited, angry, tired, limping days. And on those days…I basically say, “I don’t wanna talk about it!”

It’s like the difference between what I really want, and something that just catches my fancy at the moment.

If you go window shopping with me, man, my eye is caught by everything. I’m like a crow – if it’s sparkly, I’ve got my face pressed up against the window and I’m going, “oooooOOOOOOO! Lookit! Lookit the Thing!! It haz apps!!!!”

But what I really want is that glorious freedom…the ability to choose whether I will or won’t “have” to get up tomorrow at Wicked O’Clock to resume the madness in exchange for a paycheck; I want it more than all the apps there are, or ever will be.

What I really want is for the world to have more love, laughter and light in it. I want people to find their own Happy – and I want other people to just enjoy that they are happy, instead of trying to force them to be happy in a different way.

Because there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ when it comes to what is a happy life. What makes me happy isn’t necessarily what makes you happy; what I can do easily isn’t necessarily easy for others, and what others find easy frequently makes me go, “@^*&@, girl, how do you do that?!?!”

I want to enjoy my time among them.

Not be pissy, tired, angry, desperate for soli-frickin-tude, snarky, short-tempered and otherwise you kids get offa mah lawn!!!!

So in the same way that I’ll stare longingly at the tablets and app-store offerings, the fancy dresses I know I’ll never wear (but secretly wish I was the kind of woman who would), the services I’d appreciate and conveniences that would give me more time to enjoy the apps in the first place…and then stick with getting only what I actually need…

…I’ll write something angry, or bitter, or mean…and walk away from it…and stick with what I really want life to be made of: the things that are funny, and/or kind, and/or helpful.

And try to make the words I speak do the same.

And thus shall I fake it until I make it what I want it to be.

Hallelujah, amen.

Captain Adventure came into the kitchen with one of his many, many, many, many, oh-so-VERY-many inventions and asked - nay, demanded!, that his portrait be taken forthwith. As his loyal subject, I of course did. Forthwith. Many pictures of him feature this slightly strange, grimace-smirk. It's his Picture Face. He came around to check my work, frowned, and said, "Oh. So DAT'S mine face when I do dat. Hmm." And then he went back to inventing. Ah, the things we 'Typicals' have trouble grasping....can you imagine not just KNOWING what kind of expression you were making, when you smile for a camera?! The way autism crosses wires can be so...fascinating, sometimes.

What a world, what a world...

[ed: um...yeah...posting from moving train...using cell phone...NO idea why all that HTML-stuff ended up in there...on only HALF of the post...fixing, because I am compulsive that way...]

[ed2: holy moses...does auto-correct do this all the time and I haven't noticed yet? "if" instead of "of" and "in" instead of "on" and...wow...I think my toes are curling up...]



The baby blanket is in the final stages now...I "just" have to pick up a total of 636 more stitches along three more edges, knit five rows in garter on them, then cast off.

Then seam the three panels together.

Fix a portion where I'm not happy with how the yarn was carried.

And then promptly hide that fixed part under a fabric backing, unless I come to my senses FAST and realize this is totally unnecessary.

IN OTHER NEWS...I forgot my wallet this morning. Which is hardly a surprise, because I am still so wildly off my groove post-vacation, it is a wonder (and a blessing my coworkers aren't aware they should be thankful for) that I am remembering to put on clothes in the morning.

I also decided to give bringing a lunch a miss, because I am currently "between bags" for toting my work-stuff, my last wheeled case having spontaneously combusted literally over the course of three days.

These two things were rather disconcerting, when put together. I mean, we're talking about a 24-hour fast before I would be somewhere where there was FOOD-food. Sure, I could get lucky...scavange some meeting leftovers or something...but....well.

I'm already having some trouble with "unexplained" weight loss lately - my lifestyle being literally 20 hours of 'go' to 4 hours of sleep all week, high-energy at work, dashing for trains and shuttles, then getting home, changing into Garden Clothes and taking a stomp around the garden weeding, picking, fertilizing, etc. etc. etc., before coming in to cook something, clean something, and research something before bed, I go through an awful lot of calories every day.

You too could be this "effortlessly" skinny. Why people aren't jumping on this diet plan is BEYOND me.

So I was...a little panicked. I have a couple crackers and a small bag of dried apricots in my drawer at work.

AND THEN.......I remembered.

There are apps for this.

So I went into Starbucks, got a scone and another mocha...and swiped MY PHONE in front of their reader.

And they gave me food

And I can do the same basic thing later for lunch, using online ordering.

What a world we live in, huh? We can spend our money so effortlessly, we don't even have to have any direct way to access it on our actual person.

...um...yay?

[ed3: I got a HUGE salad for lunch - I mean enormous. And I used Ebates money that was sitting in my Paypal account, so, no actual forms-of-payment were needed. AND THEN, they were so badly messed up (and I was so 'don't worry about it, man, happens to all of us sometimes') that I got a free cream cheese croissant with peaches! Which is still in my fridge! BECAUSE! One of my coworkers? She got us these jelly cookies with powdered sugar on them? And I ate it? Like, in three bites, between the words "oh {chomp!} I {chomp!} couldn't {chomp!} possibly {belch!}"? And then I was all, THIS IS SO COOL, because, now I can have my croissant [you hafta say it right, cwaaaaaaa-SAHNT!] on the train, and I filled my thermos with hot water so I could drop one of my tea bags in there while waiting for the shuttle so that I could have that Perfect 8 Minute Tea thing by the time we got to the station [what? that's totally normal] and then I would dine on my cwaaaaaaa-SAHNT on the way home ooooooooonly, guess what else? I had a small bag of chocolate toffees in the SUITCASE-sized bag I'd been meaning to bring home for about a week now but hadn't, but then today I said, "Look, you don't have THAT much stuff, and this thing...it's got to get home sometime..." AND THEN THERE WERE CHOCOLATES IN IT. Coincidence? I think not. I think it was $DEITY going, Dang, girl, you are sooooo entertaining! Can't believe I could make something so flighty...here, have a candy...then do that thing where you try to run away from your seat while the strap of your luggage is wrapped around the middle bar of the seat, because you were trying to finish that row [like THAT was going to work anyway, heh, they're so CUTE at this age!] even though you totally knew your station was coming up fast...]

Um, question?

...why am I so easily amused?!?!

Home again home again…

We got home last night, and got back to work today. This was not easy. I mean, it wasn’t easy because when is it ever easy to go from hiking around looking at stuff like this…



…to composing emails that are all like, “Well, if we don’t want to niffle-bing the rels pertaining to the hoozerwhammer, we’ll want to make sure we recursively scrub for the nickel-plated nimbuckets before we zizzerwhal.”

Or…something like that. Whatever. I had a few slight motivational issues.

Also, it took me almost two hours just to get out of email jail. Two hours! To clear out enough stuff that Outlook would once again send and receive emails.

…and then lock me back in jail because oh dear, somebody ELSE sent me a spreadsheet…

Plus, I forgot (it having been about twenty years since the last time I spent any time above 8,000 feet) that I have some Interesting Issues when descending from On High back to sea level.

Headache, body ache, hung-over feeling, and then? Nosebleeds.

It was an awesome day. Also, for about the next week or so, every time my nose even threatens to run, I’ll be diving for the Kleenex like a demented person because I am now traumatized.

But fortunately, the headache was bad enough when I woke up at @^*&@ o’clock that I kicked the alarm clock clear across the room and went back to bed. So nobody at work had to witness the sudden explosion from my sinuses. Or deal with me and my incessant whining about it. And everything else. Because the hung-over feeling includes that weepy / angry / somebody-done-smack-the-wasp-hive emotional thing.

Double Awesome!

But tomorrow, I’m definitely packing up and going back to the office.

It’s for my own good.

Because the zucchini bushes? They are trying to kill me.

(No, really. I grated about eight pounds of them tonight and threw them into the dehydrator…there’s another fifteen pounds or so on the dining room table waiting for me to do “something” with them, and the bushes are still making MORE.)

(The pole beans are still all “eh, we’ll get around to making beans when we’re darned good and ready, and we’re not ready yet…” but OHmyGAH, there are so many “gonna be” beans hanging off those vines, when they do go, it’s going to be bean-a-palooza around here.)

(And the kidney beans are popping up all over the place. But the stuben yellow-eyes? Not a single one yet. The seeds may have been too old…or they might just take WAY longer to germinate than the kidneys. Time will tell.)

(Why do I always have 52,000 more things to tell everybody than I have time to talk about?!?!)

(Also, seriously, that picture up there? DOES THAT NOT LOOK TOTALLY FAKE?! I mean, I was standing right there, in front of that, and it STILL looked like something from a movie set. Like if I walked over and pushed at it, it would just fall right on over. That's the Devil's Postpile, and it is a crazy example of Nature being way better at creating alien landscapes than we are.)

I really am not sure what's going on here

I am told it is called a 'vacation,' but it flies in the face of everything I thought I knew about vacationing. When the husband announced that he, too, was taking time off this week, and then insisted that I rearrange MY time off so that they overlapped, I was all, "How sweet! He wants to help me work on the back-back-back 40 yards!"

But then he's all, "Where is your swimsuit?" and "do we have a duffel bag around here anywhere" and "go get some cash, we'll need it for the drive" and I'm all, "Oh! Are we going to the GOOD feed store? OH. MY. GOSH!!!!!!!, you're getting me my chickens, aren't you?! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH HONEY, YOU'RE THE BEST!"

And he gave me this REALLY patient look and said something like, "Oh, HELL to the no. Get in the car."

And now, we are here. Mammoth Lakes, CA. We're staying in a nifty "condo" (read: exceptionally nice hotel room with more than the average amenities - like a full kitchen, fireplace (off now for summer) and guess where the Denizens are?!

At home with their Wonder Nanny.

I....I....I....um...this is....ah....well, I'm not sure it's a particularly EFFECTIVE use of time and resources, because we still have an awful lot of...wait, is that BBQ? Mango-habenero sauce, you say....welllllllll, maybe just a BITE or two (NOM nom nom nom nom sluuuurp !belch! ...groan...nibble...nibble...scooooooop nom nom nom nom [thud!] zzzzzzzzzzz) <<= that was the food coma from last night. I ate so much I felt a little ill. And then I passed out. And probably snored like a hibernating bear that is allergic to itself...but it was wooooorth it.....

Aaaaanyway, I'm just saying that it would be more sensible and prudent if OOOOOOOOO, GONDOLA TO SUMMIT, HIKE BACK DOWN?!?! YESSSSSSSSSSSS, LEMME TIGHTEN UP MY LACES....ahrm!

What I am TRYING to get across here is that just because they have HORSIES!, gah!, day rides, and some of the most beautiful hiking terrain around, and some pretty thumping good dining and...um...stuff like...rock walls and...zip....lines...and...mountain bike...rentals...

Um...

...well...

I'll have to get back to you guys on that whole 'why this isn't a particularly good use of our time and resources' thing.

(All kidding aside, this appears to be an EXCELLENT time to be here; the room rates were very low because this is their, "No, really! We're year-round! PLEASE come spend money here!" season. There were plenty of rooms still available, and while we had a LITTLE party-action outside the window last night, it wasn't TOO crazy. I'm looking forward to getting my hiking boots good and filthy today...they are SHAMEFULLY clean!)

(And the mountains don't care what month it is - they are 100% awesome 365, 24/7.)

A post would go here, if I weren’t so tired

I know I’m tired when things like this occur to me: Super hero names that start with ‘Captain.’ Captain America. Captain Adventure. Captain Underpants.

Now. Try to make up a female “Captain Something.” Now you see where I’m going with this.

We have Captain Jane Smith, United States Armed Forces, right? And yet, when I sit here trying to think of a good female superhero named Captain {$Heroic-Something}, I have precisely bumpkis.

This is my brain on Tired.

I see things like Gold Painted Jeans and I go, “OHMYGAH, why, why, have I not thought of this before?!?!”

Which is probably a touch more likely for someone to think when they have three (3) girls. Because if you were to tell most boys that you could put a doily pattern on their jeans in gold paint, they would look at you with an expression that clearly said you were two crackers short of a snack tray.

But with girls, well. The opposite. A few girls (like, um, Eldest) will just give you that look. But the other ones start bouncing up and down emitting this insane sound (‘eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!’) that sets every dog in the neighborhood barking.

Of course, I am way too tired to even look at the website anymore. (Although I totally intend to get my hands on some of those fabric paints because how cool is that, seriously?! - and, after heat-setting, they are [allegedly] washable.)

This is because – and try to look surprised here – my ‘vacation’ to date has involved…wait for it…shovels.

Lots, and lots, and lots…of shovels.

Plus organizing the shed, because I finally barked my shins on something stupid that shouldn’t have been there in the first place for the last time. After having spent thirty minutes looking for something that wasn’t where I thought it was for the last time. ARGH.

Plus weeding. And mulching. And more shoveling. And planting. And every single day this week, I have said (seriously, as if I meant it) that today, I was going to get out there early (check) and finish up fast, before it got hot, and move on to other things, like, I dunno, the inside of the house.

Which I would totally get on, if I weren’t so tired that I’m falling asleep in my chair here.

Funny how sometimes, I look at my yard and think, Dang, I wish I had about four times more space!…while other times, I drag in from it, throw myself into a chair and go, Gah, that yard is WAY too big!

At the moment, it’s way too big. Ginormous. Ridiculously large. And the weeds grow so fast I think I can actually hear them doing it. Or maybe that’s the bugs, chewing.

I have spent four straight days out there doing hard, manual labor, and I am still not done.

Yard = too big.

But, I did make some really good headway. And I learned a lot about how to fix broken sprinkler stuff, because the husband wasn’t available to help with it.

And the watermelon patch is taking off.



And there are even watermelons in it.



I haven’t counted them, of course, because only a crazy person would crawl around a melon patch on her knees counting even the itty-bitty-tiny watermelons, so it isn’t like I know I have fourteen watermelons out there right now, plus six bumps that will probably become watermelons.

It’s just an educated guess is all.

Ahem.

Also, there was actual food I could actually bring in and actually eat.



I still love the potatoes.



Pretty soon, I’ll find out how the Yukon gold potatoes did in their somewhat unconventional planter.



And the sweet potatoes are doing well.



The yams…are surviving. And today I found out why they are doing so “eh”: Persons Unknown had turned the main valve on their water source alllll the way down. The trees were getting drips, and the yams were getting {nothing}. For I don’t know how long, so really it’s a bit miraculous that they aren’t dead right now.



If yams could talk, “somebody” would be in BIG TROUBLE right about now.

And they might just end up fed to the artichoke blossom. I think it could take care of things, if you know what I mean…


…FEEEEEEEED me, Seymour!

Thanksgiving dinner is SET!

That's right...the cranberry sauce is on me this year, baby...because I have a (one) (singular) (lonely) cranberry...

(yeah, well, MAYBE if I hadn't let them get shoved into a forsaken corner during the recent Sprinkler Drama, and/or remembered to water them once in a danged while during same...there MIGHT have been a couple more than ONE, ya think?!?!)