Having mortified one kid, now I get to do it to the rest of them.

Dinner conversation: we got to discussing bad pop songs.  Which morphed somehow into talking about some of the songs in the Shrek movies and a debate between husband and daughter as to whether a particular song was done as a parody of that song, or was it done in earnest?

At which I casually mentioned, “You know why I knit so much baby alpaca?”

No, they asked me, why?

“Because” (breaking into song) “I’m… too sexy for my sheep. Too sexy for my sheep!”

The spiced pecans (hey, wait, I made more than that you guys!) and two batches of cranberry sauce filled the house with Thanksgivingness and good smells yesterday after I posted, telling us, don’t quit your dye job.

The chocolate torte’s about to be taken out of the freezer.

The silk is staying blue.

Yes, Carol, the stole is finally finished. (Quick, grab some new yarn! I can’t go without a project!)

Over the river and through the redwoods, to auntie’s house we go.  Have a blessed, wonderful Thanksgiving day, everyone.

She came running down the hall in mock outrage.  “MOM! What are you DOING!”

(Is this a trick question) “Dyeing some yarn…?” I answered innocently.

“This is NOT a Random Act Of Cleanliness! It STINKS!”

Oh.  But I was desperate. I hadn’t done any dyeing for a whole solid year!  I had wanted so badly to play with my watercolors, and I had some undyed yarn I’d bought to play with, and it only took a few moments to set up…

“This is NOT what you do the day before Thanksgiving! The house is supposed to smell like food, not cooking silk! It *stinks!*”

I can’t lift my heavy dyepot yet, and I’d finally looked up microwave dyeing to see how long the stuff should cook in there.  Just a few minutes’ worth of boiling time? Hey.  I had a dedicated glass bowl, I’d covered it with plastic wrap and poked a hole in the center for venting to keep the thing from exploding dye, and to be certain of colorfastness, I did let it go for ten minutes–a third less time than on the stove.

It did not spill in any way.  It’s gorgeous.  It’s mine. I finally get to sing my own blues. TaDAAH!

I have been sentenced to spicing the pecans in penance.  The silk/wool has been sentenced to cooling outside.  “And if the squirrels dye themselves blue, Mom, they so deserve it!”

I don’t think I’ll mention yet that I’m considering throwing a little green in there in overdye mode.  Just for fun.

I like to bake, but frankly, Trader Joe’s makes a better pecan pie than I do.  A quick trip to the store…

I like to grin and tell my friends that I’m going to be a terror to my kids when I’m 90.

My kids tell me I don’t have to wait that long.

But it was a complete innocent today who was horrified.   Some large and tall hunter-gatherer, oblivious as he focused on his prey, collided with me on his way by. I don’t weigh much. He never noticed.

My sense of balance is visual and tactile only, and if you throw one of those off, you get to see me do my rendition of Olympic figure skating.

Kinda like the time I fell down the carpeted steps at my aunt-in-law’s house during her daughter’s wedding reception. There was a young couple coming up behind me, gasping in horror. I managed to stop finally about 2/3 of the way down while thinking, great, I hope nobody saw THAT little act of gracefulness, turned back, saw them, and got this big cheesy grin on my face as I threw my hands up from where I sat and proclaimed, TaaDAAAH!

They cracked up, mostly out of relief.  Phew!

So this guy goes past me and it all went past him.  But a woman standing on the other side thought somehow she’d done that to me, and was not reassured by my attempt to brush her fears off. It bothered her enough that she got behind us in the check-out line so that she could apologize again.

I’d had no idea, or I’d have been more particular in what I’d said–to me, going flying occasionally is simply how things are, and I do use that cane.  I guess sometimes a person needs to be told more of the story.  Not just, no, you didn’t do that, not even just no, that other guy bumped into me, but also that, really, the only person who needs to apologize is the guy who creamed my car nine years ago.

But it was the strength and warmth of the smile on my face towards her as I said that, not so much the words, that finally made her feel better about the whole thing.

It’s okay. This is my normal now.  Burns extra calories. Keeps me thin. (Hey, look–it works!)

…I solemnly promise my family not to fall down those stairs again come Thursday. Here, you hold the pie.

Don’t have a mattress pad yet for one of the new futons, need more blankets, no hurry, we’ve got till December 22 before the rooms have to be ready for the kids.

(Phone rings.)

I haven’t met my nephew Garrett’s new wife yet; they got married right around my second surgery, it involved a multi-hour drive from the airport, and the reception was held out in the sun. Strike three, I was out.

Michelle assures me the bride is a peach.

My little sister, on the phone an hour ago scouting ahead for the couple and her new daughter-in-law’s sisters, said that the young’uns’d like to come to San Francisco after spending Thanksgiving with the girls’ aunt in Reno, and what’s four more hours on the road, right? Would we like a visit?  Could they come? For a few nights?

Heck YEAH!!!

Oh.  (Shhhh…)  Suddenly that yarn and project sorting/clearing/putting away/blanket shopping/carpet cleaning/scrubbing/you name it/ is on the fast-forward list. Could we repaint the house and redo the driveway while we’re at it?  No?

The house, of course, is not what it’s all about.  We’ll do our best, they’ll be patient with the rest.

…I wonder where I put the pictures from a dozen years ago of Garrett and his brothers and our kids splashing together at Stinson Beach.  I had knitted an afghan that was a picture of a beach, for someone else, and when the film came back, I had accidentally double-exposed it.  I could not possibly have superimposed the knitted tide on the real one if I’d tried, but by not trying, there’s John, foot held high in glee, about to stomp on the incoming knitted (and the real) water…

I can’t wait!

A little more so-put-on-a-sweater-if-you’re-cold-in-here weather, a little more housework, a little more room readying.  (Don’t mind that Rooster Rock blocking the way on Sam’s floor.)

Looking forward to being able to pick up the kids at the airport next month with a little silliness for my 1111th post: picture from Icanhascheezburger.com but, as the one small person in a tall-person family, the scroll-over caption is totally mine.

He surprised me this morning with his new toy.   You know you’re married to a geek when…

The problem (there was a problem, dear? Okay, I suppose…) is solved. There will be no fire hazard when we put out the glass Noel tea-light holders this upcoming season (but no, I’m not digging out the Christmas boxes from the garage yet for their photo op) –just blow the light out.

Now blow on it again (see those three handy little holes at the top, dear?) for it to come back on.

Who *thinks* of these things! Delightful creativity and it doesn’t even involve yarn or musical instruments!

Yesterday, after part of our kids’ old bunk bed got picked up as a nice wooden bedframe for someone else, the last piece to go out the door, I was reminiscing to my daughter about the bunk beds we had in our family when I was a kid.

There were two, identical, one in the boys’ room and one in the younger girls’ room (meaning mine.)  There was the bedframe, and then there were wooden slats (not that those guitar necks reminded me of them or anything), connected by a fabric connector piece to either side, like sets of thick Venetian blinds running the length under the mattresses.

Our older brother, when he got mad, would run down the stairs to their room, lie on his lower bunk, and kick upwards at those slats.

Which is why one night Bryan rolled over in his sleep and innocently fell down on his big brother who was out cold below him.  Justice was served.

…That’s the thing about sisters, they tell tales on you all your life, you can never get away from it. Heh.

SO.  (Ahem.)

Bryan was at a show last week, selling his handmade guitars, and I just wanted to show him off a bit. Said the justifiably very proud older sister. He does *nice* work.

I find I want to just stare at it.

I knew it, I mean, I really did. But it wasn’t till they were actually in there that it truly hit me.

My blocking space is gone.

Well, no, not really, but yes, it is. The way I did things is over.  No more climbing over the two side-by-side twins in Sam’s old room with my wires and damp lace projects, trying to smooth things out at the line between the two beds.

The next stage in empty nesting is that we finally ditched the twins for queen futons for both older kids’ rooms.  We bought a model with no arms  because queen size is 80″ long and our older son is 81″ long–those feet have to have somewhere to stretch.

They were delivered today.  The cover for Sam’s is on backorder, though, and I don’t dare touch that mattress till it’s safely tucked away inside it.  And hers is the room where I usually block my projects.

I could, of course, pull out this one, put the mattress pad and a sheet over it and block away to my heart’s content.

But so far I haven’t quite been able to. (It’s only been a few hours, I’m sure I’ll break me in on the idea fast enough, give me time, knitting desperation should set in shortly if that cover doesn’t hurry up. I do have just a few more rows to go on the shawl.)

I keep finding myself standing in the doorway of that one finished futon, staring.

I am really, really pleased.  Christmastime and visiting children here we come! Yay!

The rest of the story.

Memories: of being first-time parents, scared, holding our very, very sick six-month-old, trying desperately to get her fever down.  Nighttime.  On the phone with the doctor, sorry to bother him, grateful that he was as concerned as we were. The cool-but-not-cold bath on his advice, after Tylenol proved useless, that brought her down to 104 from 105.4, but that temp just refused to budge more than that.

She’d been given her DPT shot that day.

There are people who wonder if their kids will react to their shots, and for most, they learn there’s nothing to worry about.  (Please: there will not be a debate here about the alleged autism thing.  I have too much of a scientific background to give it any credence.) We were one of the unlucky few for whom the DPT was actually a problem.  The pediatrician had no doubt it was the Pertussis part of the shot at fault, and insisted she not be given the full trio again.

So, K-12, we knew that if any other child at her school should test positive for whooping cough, our kid was the one who was going to be isolated at home by order of the school district (and common sense). Okay; you do what you have to do.

Which is why when our youngest was born, the Stanford researcher who knocked tentatively on my maternity-ward door in ’88 was surprised at how fast I said yes when she asked if we were interested in enrolling him in a study of a new, acellular DPT shot after she explained that, so far, two million Japanese two-year-olds had been given it without one single reaction ever.  But it had never been given to infants.  Did we want in?

Heck YEAH!!!

That acellular vaccine is now the standard shot.  It has meant that there is less genetic material for any child to hyper-react to like ours did, while still being immunized.

You’re welcome. And thank you for providing herd immunity for our oldest in return.

After all those years of knowing there were all these what-ifs…

Thank goodness for the astute doctor who recognized a rare disease.  And for the fact that it’s safer in adults.

Whooping cough in one’s late 20’s.

Now the trick is for her not to get swine flu on top of it.

I finally admitted it: Dude. I’m sorry, but I *hate* your screensaver, and I turn off your monitor every time it looks like you’re not coming right back. (His being next to mine).

Oh! Why didn’t you say so? What would you like?

Anything else.

Oh, that’s specific.

He fiddled around with things a bit while I was off elsewhere, and when I came back, there were saved photos fading in and out: really good close-ups he’d taken of the birds at the feeder, mixed here and there with–our son’s wedding pictures from last year!

I tell you. If I sit and knit now, it’s like our own little silent movie going on, grabbing my eyes and enticing me to stay over there watching, knitting away. So that’s how those finches angle to a different direction midflight faster than I can see!  And to the folks at Handmaiden? You did a really, really nice job matching the dye on your Camelspin yarn to my dress.  Thank you all over again.

You may now kiss the bride at the reception…  Michelle exclaiming, “I have NEVER seen my mother and father dancing before!”  Not even at our own, hon, not even at our own. But we did that day.  There’s Uncle Marc and his wife, as happy as newlyweds themselves, as we all were that day.  (We had no idea that a month later…) Made me cry.  I am so eternally glad they came. If you have a chance to get together with family, GO. Tell them you love them. Make it worthwhile.  GO.

(My favorite double-stalked amaryllis just popped on the screen! Pardon me, I need to go back over there to my needles where my eyes aren’t so busy.

Oh, look at those two holding hands, silhouetted by the sun, their shining rings moments old. I think my husband totally won in the Anything Else category.)

No ‘Net.

No Michelle’s Special hot cocoa.

I had to start moving all my yarn and knitting out of one of the kids’ bedrooms.  Okay, let that sink in a moment.  ALL. MY. YARN. and ALL. MY. PROJECTS of the last five years, the ziplocs growing steadily with the emptying nest (and perhaps a book or so might have played a part?)  There is new furniture going in that room being delivered Saturday and everything has to come out–and I can’t just toss it all in the other unused kid’s bedroom, because the same thing’s happening in there. Closets? (Have you SEEN my stash?!)

And Michelle is sick and wasn’t up to helping.

Then we got a message from another of our children and she is–well, let’s just say she’s sick, because she is, but she went for the drama. (No, we don’t know anybody like that.)

And I was thinking how very petty it was to be thinking, I’m not even getting my mug of Michelle’s Super Special Better Than Anything (except Coupa Cafe’s) Hot Cocoa nor even my emails nor online friends to escape to for a moment. I did knit. I knit a lot. While thinking, since it was going to be one of those days anyway, that you know, I really should put this down and work on that room more, tired or no tired, but if I’m going to be knitting anyway, I really should be working on such-and-such for so-and-so rather than insisting on finishing this.  I had to keep reminding myself to just *look* at the yarn in my hands: steadily, calmly, steadily, growing, becoming what it needs to be.

To let that be enough for this moment as I put my feet up.  Everything will be okay. And I knew that. (It’s not *that* dramatic.)

Well, obviously now, my ‘Net’s back up.  My sweet Michelle decided I needed the cheering-up of some of her world’s best soy- (but you can’t tell) -based intense hot cocoa, and nobody can make it like her, so she made me some after all. (I’d long since made my own, but hers is better.)  She’s such a sweetie.

Chocolate to the rescue.  Via the post office, too, when it opens tomorrow: closest thing to a hug and chicken soup I can send my vegetarian.

Lots of shorter private answers, time to write a public one.  The fingerpuppets: I originally discovered their existence at a booth at Stitches West, years ago, when I bought a little penguin and put it on the joystick of my electric chair that I use for long days out. I found it was at eye level to and made me instant friends with every little kid being dragged around by their moms, and I ended up going back and buying more.

I later googled, found my own bulk supplier, and ordered directly from Peru–but that website has since disappeared. (I’m sure there are others now.)

So these days I take the easy way out and order them via Ebay.  Here‘s one seller, 20 for $20, free shipping, or he’s also got 50 for $34. Or here, 50 wool ones for $38.99 including shipping.  Some sellers will let you specify what type you want–farm animals, llamas, fish, people–some won’t. If you don’t want Decembery-specific ones right now, do say so.

Although, remember my dad’s axiom and be careful how you state your preferences: people remember the negative item only out of the negative request. He once ordered me a birthday cake in “anything but chocolate” while making reservations for a surprise party, and all the restaurant remembered was that lovely word “chocolate.” I got THE most glorious, the most intensely chocolatey cake my 13-year-old self could possibly have hoped for. I was in heaven.

Dad, whose allergy to the stuff was why we didn’t have it around the house, was not amused. At the time.

Back to the puppets.  The last time I bought them, it was a seller in Peru for whom I was his fifth Ebay sale. Unfortunately, his second and third sales went to someone who didn’t understand that the guy was in a third world country and mail might occasionally go at llama pace down there; they negatively rated him over a three-week delivery time, and he disappeared shortly after. Which is a shame; $24 for 100 plus $12 shipping?  Well worth the wait; I keep hoping he’ll pop back up again somehow (or I could certainly try googling again).

At any of those prices, one of those finger puppets is a heck of a lot cheaper than, say, paying the $4 bridge toll over the San Francisco Bay for the guy driving behind you.

Which is great fun and highly recommended too.  Cheap thrills.  I love’em.

The first picture, taken this morning through double-paned windows, is for Lene, who has a much better camera.

Let’s see, what’s in the fridge that needs using up…  Zucchini, leftover guacamole, bacon bits, some cheddar we could melt in there, hmmm… (offered to make some on the side with tofu mozzarella and the kid heated up a can of chili instead.)

She: “I’m sorry I forgot to cook dinner.” (She’d made and decorated and filled up on chocolate cupcakes.)

Me: “I bet he’s more sorry I remembered to.”

He: “No thank you; that’s enough Venusian slug guts for me.”

He: “She’s giving me that look.”

She and he more or less in unison: “MOM–she’s LOOKING at me! Make her STOP!”

We’re all space aliens here.  Pass the black holes on that flying saucer for me, willya?

My daughter wanted to go on a shopping trip to the new Nordstrom outlet and wanted a little company; sure, why not.

We were three blocks from home heading out when I exclaimed, “I don’t have any knitting with me!”

She was dumbfounded. “How could YOU not have any knitting with you?”  I mean, were we talking about her mom here! Seriously? But it was true, I hadn’t yet started the next small throw-in-the-purse project, and there you go.

Talk about role reversal from her still-recent childhood.  I looked around at all the utterly unwearable clothes and the marked-down-to-only-$200 handbags and the like and found my inner child: I got a laugh out of finding myself wanting to whine, ‘Shel. I’m BORED.  Can we go HOOOOoooome yet?’

I wandered through the aisles. Down past all the shoes.  Imagined an overhead announcement: “Attention. There is a Lost Mom in aisle six. Will ‘Shel please report to aisle six? Again, we have a Lost Mom. Thank you.”

And then, on our way home with her at the wheel, as I was glancing over towards the Bayland marshes, suddenly a flock of pelicans appeared, fanning out in a circle in the water, fishing, brightly white against the soft colors of the water and the cattails, the water waving in small ripples before them.

And Solomon in all his glory could never be so arrayed. I’m glad I went.