Crochety

Jamie and I had some conversations about knitting versus crocheting when I visited her last weekend. I crochet; she knits.

Crocheting gets a REALLY bad rap. Most people think it's all granny squares, but I've never made one. I hate them. Truth be told, I've only ever made scarves. Wait. Once I crocheted a "scrubby" with my grandma, made of strips of tulle. It kind of resembled this, but it was double thick.

I think I wooed Jamie a little bit with that scarf I made her. She wooed me with the knitting she taught me. I've always been a bit intimidated by knitting, to tell the truth. But it worked just so very well when I was there, that I decided this week to get my knit on. I stopped by my local "good" yarn store and picked up a few skeins of wool and some bamboo knitting needles (one set of straight and one in the round).

What a pain in the ass this has been so far. First, I had to wind all the damn yarn from the skein into a ball. It took an hour, and I spent most of that time detangling. That's just wrong. Then, when I tried to knit, I just couldn't do it. I mean, I knew WHAT to do, but I couldn't make it happen. The straight bamboo needles were too rough. The bamboo round ones were just weird (that's way too complex for me, I fear) and sticky. I went to my fabric cupboard and pulled out some aluminum needles I had, to see if that made a difference. Nope.

By now I've "knit" and unraveled again about four times. The wool is fuzzy and splitty. Very very splitty. Damn it.

I've given up knitting for the moment. But I want to do something other than just crochet scarves, you know??

So I went on the search for free patterns. Wow. Now I really, really get the stigma attached to crochet. Check these out.

Lacy Crochet Basket
Ornament Jacket
Masquerade Mask
Crocheted Hoop Earrings
Flamingo in Filet (By the way? What the FUCK is a "Star Wars" birthday? 77?)
Crocheted Turkey Ornament
Ferret Hammock
Lacy Candle Cozy
"Apache Tears" afghan
Barbie "Red, Hot and Blue 4th of July Dress"
Bikini

And not least: Doo Rag.

Dude. This is what gives crochet a bad name. Seriously. Woo.

Here are some things I might actually make:

Socks
Toe-up socks
Plastic bag tote


And this is really cute, but I'm not interested.

Speaking of Teen Pregnancy

Trainwreck family Spears does it again. (Oops!)

Jamie-Lynn Spears, Britney's little sister, is pregnant at the age of 16.

She was seen out last night at an early screening of Juno, which, coincidentally is about a teen pregnancy. If YOU TOO would like to see an early screening of Juno, I have several free passes that let two people in. Not guaranteed seating; show up early.

Tomorrow
7 p.m.
Brier Creek

You'd need to pick them up from me somehow tonight. I'm at work until at least 6. Delivery isn't included.


Oh, and BTW? Britney didn't know.

Creepy

Someone standing outside our waiting room door keeps saying "meep meep" over and over again.

Oh, Hai.

Please pardon the posting post World Beer Festival. Cause 2 oz servings really add up. Jesus, am I blogging under the influence aGAIN?

Um, yeah.

So the best part, and there were many good parts, was that I found a brewery from the town where I grew up. Awesome, right?

Well, imagine on top of that the one of the booth people was actually a guy I went to fucking high school with. Almost 20 years ago, because YES, I'm that old. I didn't recognize him at first, but the second time I went back I just had to ask: "Is your name Dave?" "Maybe" "Dave Lastname? It's Stew! We went to high school together!"

He put a temporary tattoo on me. It runs; not so high of quality.

So bizarre. I had to call my friends Nemoid and JJ (both happy commenters) and tell them. I swear it's like the 20th reunion is at bay and I'm actually kind of interested in going back.

Right now, though, I've had too many 2 oz beers to make sense.

A man named Malu cabbed us home.

Oh, and my ex-boyfriend from college's brewery was there too. I called him when I found out. It was weird.

UPDATE: The picture, incidentally, was just some random guy I went up to, not the high school person. I met a lot of people yesterday.

I'm not attracted

I'm sorry, but there are just too many men in NC who a) like Nascar and b) have mustaches. And every single one of them seems interested in me.

As part of my current dating blitz (perhaps more accurately portrayed as a sputter), I've been checking out as many online dating sites as I can. The sad fact is that I've seen precious few men online who interest me in the least.

The men who look at my profiles, from what I can tell, average ~20 years older than I am, and inevitably have that mustache, and dopey eyes to go with. And faux wood paneling in their damn dens. With dark green velour couches. And horribly ruffly curtains like these.

I've got my grump on, peeps.

I can't even find a mustache image on google that is bad enough as to be accurate in the right way.

Things I run across

I have an eensy problem, I fear: there's NO getting me off the internet. I woke up smack dab at 6:00 a.m. today to get a move on. Which has consisted of a) making coffee.

Uh, not quite what I had intended.

On the plus side, I came across this gem on a website I read. I may have accomplished nothing I had hoped to this morning, but at least I laughed.

Eek!

So far, a great day. Woke up early, made some coffee, had some cherries, and Maria arrived. We hit the market here. She knows EVERY-freaking-BODY in the farmer's market culture, I swear. I love Maria. She also made the fabulous suggestion that we go to the quarry that Philcito first took me to a couple of years ago. We hiked in, swam for an hour or so, hiked back out and stopped at a scary gas-station/oldmantobaccobaitgunshop. DC for me, agua for Maria and back to the house. Gave her some cherries and chard (my chard is apparently the envy of the town), and sent her off.

Then I spent the rest of the afternoon either resting or obsessing.

Off to the American Tobacco Campus. See you around.

Noooooooo

This is way too early to be awake.

WEIGHTLIFTING

Announcement:

I have a roommate. She's fantastic. I love her. She's a health educator, too. We do almost the identical job in the same community. That might be a little weird, but she's fabulous.

I've invited her to the neighborhood happy hour tonight.

SO HAPPY!

(That's a nice chunk of money I can use for my new computer! Woo Hoo!!!)

(re: the post title? think metaphorically)

Title goes here

Maybe just maybe you can help me understand why I thought that third 20-lb box of tomatoes was a good idea.

Here are some pictures of the process involved with putting up 18 quarts of tomatoes with approximately 15 lbs left to boil down for sauce. Which I think I'll freeze. I am VERY sick of canning.

Below: 60 lbs in the boxes. The plate has my tomatoes and two eggplants that will soon be baba ganoush. Outside the window you can see the scary snake that is going to eat any birds that DARE to approach the tomatoes.



Next: The first batch that came out of the canner had some issues. Half the jars didn't seal, which typically corresponded with the ones that seemed to lose 1/3 of their contents during the time spent processing in the canner. In reality, I messed up by not squishing the tomatoes in tight enough with this first round. I reprocessed the ones I needed to. By the way, 85 minutes is a LONG time to boil, but that's what the instructions I came up with said.

After the third round of quarts went into the canner, I still had loads of tomatoes left. They barely all fit in the large, enormous, vast slow-cooker Marianne so graciously gave me last fall. I use it All. The. Time.


Ok, I've got to take the last set of jars out of the canner and hope they seal. If not, I'll just make some more sauce or something. Cause I am truly sick of canning. Whew.

Oh, it's also time to scoop out the smoky eggplant.

Glad I'm not going directly home today....

Cool!

So, I was over reading Xta's new blog and made a comment. She has word verification turned on, and for the first time I noticed that there's a little wheelchair icon next to the field where you type.

Blind people! I clicked.

It is extremely bizarre to hear how a visual word verification translates to an auditory one. I was lost. Check it out yourself, with any Blogger blog that's got word verification turned on.

Another day, another diagnosis

Finally had my doctor's appointment I had mentioned a couple of weeks ago. I did my homework and went through the blog to check out what I'd written about depression/anxiety, how often, and when. Brought that in and was SO PREPARED!

In addition to tweaking my meds a bit for that, my doctor started asking me some other questions that seemed unrelated.

Did I procrastinate?
Um, yeah.

Am I messy?
Uhhhhhh....

Do I lose things?
Why, yes, just this morning. And last week. And....

The questions went on and on, getting more specific.

(My favorite: What happens when you do cocaine? Uhhhhhhhh...I have no idea.)

Anyone who has talked to me at length will know that I get distracted at the drop of a hat. And that I start projects and then lose interest. But then I also have times when I can do nothing BUT concentrate. Like when I get so focused on birds that I don't hear my boss talking about the meeting we're walking to. I live by my calendar. If it's not in there, it's not in my mind.

In retrospect, considering my sister and father and nephew have all been all diagnosed with the variations on the theme, it shouldn't have surprised me that I have a sluggish cognitive tempo thing happening here.

Anyhoo, THIS is what I get to work on now. That's the good news. We have an idea of what we can try.

The bad news: Most of the first line of battle medicines are contraindicated for people with one of my other fascinating brain issues. So none of this or this. We dont want me having a seizure!

Instead we'll try a couple of the more inventive ways to start out. If they don't work, then I get to call in the neurologist to work with the psychiatrist to figure out where to go. That might be here.

I'm feeling kind of weirded out by this.

Out of whack

Am back from my whirlwind tour of the S.E. USA. In addition to great times in Atlanta and Athens, I ended up stopping off in VA to visit another friend. This friend happened to be a boy, and a quality one at that. He also is pretty firmly ensconced in the NE, far from here. He's temporarily in the area, though, and we were able to take advantage of that.

The 24-hour affair kind of messed with my mind a bit. On the one hand, I am more optimistic that there has to be someone out there for me. Unfortunately it does nothing about my fear that there isn't anyone HERE. And I also have the feeling (based on little more than gut) that there's an imbalance of interest.

There was no "what next? (if anything)" discussion. I feel very out of my element.

Moving on

So I caved. Just for 30 minutes though. I got home from a 12-hour day that will be followed by another one, and then a weekend where I'll work both Saturday and Sunday, and it was in the 80s inside my house. I can't take that tonight.

For less than 30 minutes I switched on the air. It got down to 79 and I've turned it off. It's still warm enough that lolling starkers is comfortable, but I'm no longer sweating while sitting still.

from NCgangcops.org

Gang Presence Checklist
To be used as a guide only

1. Is graffiti showing up in your neighborhood or school?

2. Has any graffiti been crossed out by other graffiti?

3. Do some students or young people in the neighborhood wear noticeable
“colors,” bandanas or tattoos?

4. Do some students or neighborhoods display behavior that may be gang
related, such as meeting in groups?

5. Do some students or neighborhood kids flash hand signals?

6. Are drugs available on or near schools or neighborhood?

7. Has there been a significant increase in physical confrontation or “stare
downs” in the last year?

8. Are weapons increasingly present in the community?

9. Do students use or have beepers, pagers, phones?

10. Have there been “drive by” shows or displays of weapons?

11. Have there been any “drive by” shootings in the neighborhood or near the
school?

12. Has the truancy rate noticeably increased during the past year?

13. Have the number of racial incidents increased in the community and/or
school?

14. Does the community have a history of gang presence or activity?

15. Is there an increasing presence of “informal” social groups with unusual
names such as “SUR” or “East Side”?

16. Have your children come home with bruises for no reason?

Life goes on...slip sliding on by

Hey, thanks for the calls and emails yesterday...things look a lot better today. I spent some time brainstorming what to do, and while the short term will continue to suck big monkey balls, the end results will be worth the discomfort. Fiber Optic Jesus will help and combat evil clown-Jesus, who appears at left.

So back to hair: I don't think that the baking soda on the dry hair treatment worked. I woke up this a.m. and it was as greasy as ever. But that's fine. It just gives me an opportunity to go to the next idea: absorbant powder in the form of cornstarch.

I parted my hair down the middle and shook a little baby powder onto the roots. I then parted the hair a couple inches to the left and repeated. Ditto the right side. I then took a brush (of the "space-between-the-bristles" sort) and brushed vigorously, so as to distribute the powder evenly around the head. I followed up with another brushing, this time using a bristle brush. Again, I'm trying to make sure the powder is covering any and all grease producing areas.

The results so far are that I have greasy roots that look like they have dandruff. No fears. For the sake of science I will continue my day with this look. I'm wondering if the powder will absorb the grease and then fall out as the day wears on.

I wondered whether my gal Ols's suggestion about a tinted hair powder designed specifically for this purpose would work better. But I'm not about to buy one.

Here's a fascinating* review of the Bumble and Bumble hair powder, as compared to plain cornstarch, such as I'm using today.

*to people who are currently obsessed with their greasy hair

UPDATE:
Here's another fun read, this time about Pssst! spray shampoo. At about $5.99, I think I'll be going to look for it.

My not-so-interesting life

Hi. Did I mention I got stopped by the police for the second time in under a year? When I'd NEVER been stopped before that? Yeah, I did. And? It was for the same thing; my little black Honda's registration expired on 12-15-06, yet I had not received a renewal form in the mail.

Apparently in New Town of Residence, an expired registration "usually means the car is stolen," according to the nice cop who stopped me. I was so nervous, for some reason. She let me off with a warning, since the "registration actually came back to [me]". She was so young and petite. She wore a wedding ring. If I were so tiny, I'd be scared of stopping people after dark. But I guess that's why I'm not a cop. Or tiny for that matter.

I felt like I had messed up, and I really couldn't figure out what had gone wrong. I went to renew the registration the following day, and the DMV told me that I had neglected to pay the taxes on the car. Hm. Not true, I thought. WAAAAIIIIIT. That's right. I had written the check for the wrong amount; $2.72 less than I owed. Gah.

Anyway, after one trip to County Seat and then back to DMV, $35.72 poorer, I am now legal again. But I have another problem. My hair.

It's begun to get greasy not 24 hours after washing. I know lots of people who go 2, 3, 4 days with one hair wash. I have dry skin! This shouldn't happen. WAAH!

Oh my...if this is the worst of my worries, I've got it pretty good. (Of course it's not. It's just easier to bitch about than the deeper worries!) I still have it a lot better than other people.

SUCK it up, STEW!