anniemiz

Powerless

Unfortunately, I've been w/o a pc for a while, hence no blogging.  My laptop is about 5 yo which, in human years, makes it about 94 yo.  I bought a new power cord a few months ago bc the original power cord died.  Its demise, I imagine, was hastened by first Edison's chewing on it and then Miles & Lizzie teething on it.  Now the new one no longer works.  The kits have stopped chewing on stuff like that, so it wasn't bco them.  So once the battery ran down I was up the river w/o a computer.

I've since read the customer reviews for the power cord and it turns out that it stinks.  Not that I had a whole heckuva lot of choice when it came to replacing the old cord; there only was the one power cord available.  Hmm, I wonder if I could have ordered a non-Dell power cord that would work w/my pc.

Anyway, I've ordered a new laptop...bc my old one is, well, old...(not just bc the power cord doesn't work, silly)...plus, the sound no longer works on the old one...and the battery, which never lasted as long as it should, doesn't hold a charge well anymore.   A Dell salesperson helped me build the laptop via chat.  She tells me that the power cord that comes w/the new pc will work w/my old pc.  The new one won't ship for about 3 weeks though, so I ask if they can just send the power cord out separately now seeing as I bought a new cord about 2 months ago that no longer works.  No can do.

So I thought I'd just return the one I bought 2 months ago and get a new one; it's still under warranty.  Someone else will get the old pc and they'll need a working power cord.  And I did pay good money for one.  Well, I ordered the new pc on Monday, 7/14.  That's also when I started trying to find out how to exchange the non-working cord for a working cord.  I'm still working on that. On the phone, I've been transferred around the world in 3 days.  I just received a phone call from the Resolution Specialist who's responsible for seeing that my problem is resolved.  She just told me that she cannot access my customer number...different departments have access to different accounts, customer numbers and data...yadda yadda yadda...she's forwarding my email and problem to someone in another department who allegedly can help me.

All this for a power cord.  We're talking about a plug here, for goodness sake.

So anyway, no power = no puter for me.  I do use Kevin's desktop some, although he needs to use it, too.  He has to keep track of all his ebay auctions for funfmarks and dreimarks and grossens (sp? all) etc.  His pc is even older than my laptop.  As I'm typing this I occasionally delete something, highlight something, backspace something...it moves so s-l-o-w-l-y...I could make a light lunch for 12 in the interval. 

But!  I am excited about the new pc.  I put it off for a while bc I don't really do jazzy stuff on the computer.  I thought, do I really need a new one?  I'll need to move stuff from the old to the new, e.g., approximately 3,000 cat pictures.  How great would it be if all that stuff could be moved wirelessly?  E.g., since both pcs are Dell, if Dell offered something where they accessed stuff on the old and moved it to the new.  The new one has cool stuff...I could watch DVDs on my old one, but the screen was pretty small and then the sound went.  I might actually watch a DVD on my new one.  The mouse and printer are wireless, as is the keyboard although I don't think I ordered a separate, full-size keyboard.  It has a webcam, which I have no idea how to use, but might be fun.  It's really light.  The screen's a little bigger than my old pc's screen.  And and and it's red!  Yes, it's the little things in life.

In other news, Kevin and I went out to Pittsburgh this past weekend to meet and be godparents to our newest niece, Sofia.  Here's Kevin, my brother Greg, my SIL Marianne, nieces Gabi and Sofia:

A happy close up of Gabi:

Sofia:

Sofia at home, in the baby blanket I knitted for her:

  

She likes it, she really likes it!

Longtime readers may recall that Kevin and I are areligious.  So how can we be godparents, you ask.  Well, it's like this.  Gabi's godparents are Marianne's sister and BIL.  Technically, according to the church, they're Sofia's godparents, too, and we were just standing in for them (they live in MA).  In practice, according to Sofia and her family, we'll be her godparents.  That's a misnomer then, but I don't know what other word to use.  Guardians?

We had fun while we were out there...it was nice to meet Sofia and see Greg, Marianne and Gabi again.  I'll blog more on our visit and put up a photo album in the future.

Details at 9

I ended up taking a brief hiatus from blogging.  I have a lot on my mind.  In my last post, I'd mentioned that I'd been up for hours one night, worrying about my mother.  I decided to unload on Bro #2.  We worked with him and his family to get a couple of things for our mom.  I mentioned the following in a previous post:

Actually, I've long wanted to do lots of things for my parents/at their house, but didn't.  Why not?  Well, I think at least part of the reason is that I deferred to others.  I deferred to my mom when she'd put me off.  She'd always use my father's illness as a reason to not do something.  I deferred to my oldest brother when he said he didn't need any assistance with the renovations.  I deferred to both of them when they said there was nothing I could do to help wrt my father's care.  As noted before, I (and my brother Greg - we both live at a distance from my parents' home) offered to pay for at least some home care, especially in the beginning  when my father wasn't so sick.  As he became sicker, he received state-mandated home care.  But noooooo, my mother would not accept it and my brother discouraged me from pursuing the matter.  I'm not sure why the latter was the case, but I do think that my mother and that particular brother share some persnality traits that result in common reactions.

It seems, now that my father died, that it's easier to do stuff around their house.  Maybe my mom was truly overwhelmed by my father's care and she just didn't want to deal with anything else; that's certainly a possibility.  I was thinking the other day that, even though the house wasn't as clean as I would have liked, my father's room, bedding, medical apparatus, clothing, etc. - basically, everything relating to my dad and his care - was well cleaned and organized.  I'm sure that my father's care produced lots of laundry, required lots of things to be kept clean, required lots of maintenance (e.g., oxygen thingies, feeding tube machines, etc.), required organization (e.g., medications, ointments, etc.) and so on.

Well, it seems now that maybe it's not so easy to get stuff done around their house.  Bro #1, who has a handy streak and enjoys this kind of stuff, started redoing the upstairs bath.  Very nice.  There had been leakage so the bathroom floor and part of the kitchen ceiling need to be replaced.  He started by, of course, gutting things.  And that's basically where he stopped.  About a year ago.  There are floor studs, but there is no bathroom floor.  Also, half the kitchen ceiling is missing.  No bathroom floor + missing half a ceiling = a big gaping hole between the first second floors.  For almost a year now.

There's a bathroom on the first floor with a shower.   That one also needs to be redone, but the other bathroom was worse.  Mom has always taken baths.  She's 82 yo, that's what she knows and that's what she does.  She may never have taken a shower, I don't know.  So how has she been washing up since her bathtub's been gone?  Like a soldier in the field, she's been taking sponge baths every freaking day for almost a year.  She's basically healthy although she moves more slowly, is more forgetful, etc., i.e., the usual things.  So in a way, I'm glad she doesn't use the shower bc if she fell, it could be disastrous in a way that it might not be for someone younger and with quicker reflexes.  But sponge baths for a year?!?

To me, this is unacceptable.  If you want to live like that in your own home, good on you.  E.g., it's taking a while for our dining and living rooms to get repainted.  Why?  Oh, bc Kevin only has so much time available to work on it and I haven't lifted one paint brush in the effort.  But we can eat elsewhere in the house.  We can relax elsewhere in the house.  Bathrooms and kitchens are essential rooms.  We would never go months and months without having a bathroom and/or kitchen we could use.  One does not leave one's mother, especially a) an 82 yo one who b) goes to extreme lengths not to burden anyone and c) couldn't afford to pay for the remodeling so d) is grateful that someone else is going to do it at little or no cost and e) who therefore will most certainly not complain about the lack of progress, without a functional bathroom for longer than a week at most.  Jesus fucking christ.

So I unload on Bro #2.  Bros #1 and #2 had talked on the phone shortly after my father's death and the former had agreed to consider accepting some kind of assistance wrt getting the work done.  From Bro #2 and I it would be financial assistance bc we're a) not close and b) not terribly handy beyond painting and stuff like that.  I have never plumbed anything and I'm not about to start, especially not on someone else's house.  But Bro #1 never did accept any money...everything's always taken care of, it's going to get done, he just needs a few good weekends, blah blah blah....  Can you all tell how frustrating this is to me?  My mother's house is now not safe from a common sense POV and I'm almost certain it's not up to code in the condition it's in.  And it's been like this for almost a year.

It appears to me that Bro #1 has some odd compulsion to a) see the glass as totally empty and completely drained of any liquid and b) to do everything from scratch.  Bro #2 and his peeps and Kevin and I bought Mom a new bed.  Bro #1 said he would build her one.  WTF?  Don't build her a fucking bed when you have a whole bathroom that needs to be built!  Grrrrr.

I can, to an extent, sympathize with Bro #1's tendency to expect the worst.  I did that for a long, long time and I still do it.  Anyone who's identified such an unfortunate tendency and strives to overcome it knows that it's damn hard to do.  I sometimes wish I never a) realized that I do this; b) realized that it makes my life less enjoyable; and c) decided I want to change.  I certainly haven't changed things 180 degrees; it's more like 90 degrees; but life is immeasurably better and more interesting and more fun w/even this much change.  I also share my mother's dispreference (I love that word) for imposing on people, but this isn't always a bad thing.  E.g., I'm usually much more positive when it comes to helping someone else achieve something or even just offering advice/an opinion.  (And yes, I could benefit from being as encouraging to myself as I am to others.)  What I'm trying to say is that Bro #1 should not let this tendency (if that be what it is) have such a negative effect on my mother's quality of life.

Annnnnyway, Bro #2 and I have decided that the thing to do is get some estimates from contractors to do the work.  If it's affordable, we might have them do the whole thing; otherwise, we might have them do the work up through rough plumbing, install the fixtures (tub, sink, etc.) and sheetrock and then Bro #1 can get his DIY jones satisifed by doing the finishing stuff (tile, shelving, painting, smaller fixtures, a door, etc.).  I left a message to this effect on Bro #1's machine a week ago and I haven't heard back since, although I understand that he did work at my mother's house for a few hours this past weekend.  I intend to go ahead with getting quotes, etc. even though  he was there for a few hours bc I don't expect he'll be consistent.  Not bc he doesn't want to (although who knows, maybe there's some kind of psychological resistance to doing the work), but bc he just doesn't have the time.  He works long hours at his job and only has every other weekend off.

The thing that annoys me - okay, one of the many things that annoys me about this situation - is that I'm 99.9999999% positive that Bro #1 never looked into hiring someone to do it.  I think this bc he thinks that it would cost $40,000 - $60,000 to hire someone to do the work.  That's about how much it cost us to have our old garage torn down, the old foundation dug up and a new garage built in a new location (bco newer code) from a new foundation up.  Surely a bathroom and half a ceiling are not as involved as what we had done.  So how he got that number, I have no idea, although I suspect he plucked it from his arse.

On that note, I'm off to an appointment and then to work.  Long day today.

The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging

Blogging's been kind of light and lowfat lately, what with me working on a paper and, by extension, my freaking problems.  Well, maybe not lowfat, what with some of those recipes.  And there will be more!  Not all mine, of course.  Kevin made a deliceux dinner the other day: mediterranean chicken in puff pastry with new potatoes and green beans.  I took pictures of him making it, but forgot to take pictures of the finished product.  I'll take pictures of the finished product next time he makes it, which can't be too long bc he has extra pastry in the freezer (yes, he made the pastry himself!), and I'll post the whole thing, recipe and pictures, then.

This was one of his meals for our third Saturday dinner thing.  He got some of the ingredients from the farmers' market that morning.  There's a farmers' market in town on Saturdays during the summer and fall.  Everything he got there was so fresh and tasty!  The potatoes, the beans and the strawberries for the strawberry shortcake (I made that, but again I forgot to take pictures of the finished cake!).  There's such a difference between fresh from the garden and store-bought.  Having that farmers' market is such a delight.

It makes me want to plant a vegetable garden!  But I have to be realistic: right now, there are zero flowers in front.  I usually plant annuals, but this year so far there's nada out there.  I think I'll take a page from my neighbor's book and plant perennials.  Actually, I might take some cuttings from her yard and plant them in the fall. I picked out some red carpet tulips to plant in the fall, but what to do when the tulips are past and the stalks are died back?  Perhaps I should intersperse a few later blooming plants among the tulips so that it doesn't look so bare when the tulips are gone.  I'll have to consult Sandy next door.  I also have an empty area under a tree in the front yard.  I usually put annuals there, too.  She also has a front yard tree and has some kind of lush leafy perennial there.  I think I'll have to get some of that, too.  The annual flowers don't grow well under the tree anyway; they're never quite as nice as the ones along the walk that get more sun.  Funny, the two neighbors that have lived in that house while we've been here have been great gardeners.

The other thing about having a vegetable garden here is that it's 99.9999% guaranteed to be eaten by critters such as skunks, possums, raccoons, groundhogs and whatever else lurks around out there in the backyard.  I'd need a fence: tall enough to discourage jumpers/climbers and dug deep enough to discourage diggers. 

So anyway I just emailed the guy a draft of the first section (no, not the one paragraph introduction, sillies) of the paper.  I hope it doesn't suck.  That's the spirit, innit?  The next section will be on Lewis's criticisms of universals and I'll start on that on Friday.  Actually, I have a draft of it, but it's, shall we say, very colloquially written ('universals stink more than Lewis originally thought').  I once took a very helpful business writing seminar at which they offered one especially important piece of advice: Just start writing.  Write and don't go back to edit anything.  Ignore typos, redundancies, poor word choice, grammar, structure...just get the stuff you want to say down.  Go back later and edit.  I find that very helpful, although it's so tempting to stop and fix things, mull over word choice, etc..  Do I always do it?  Noooo, but it really is good advice, honest!

Today I visit dear old Mom.  I try to see her on a regular schedule of every other Thursday, although that doesn't always work out.  Kevin took a day off recently and we went out to Amish country, PA to pick up a glider and ottoman brother Greg et al and we ordered for Mom.  Today I'll drive it up to Mom's, unless the weather is very bad.  It's in the back of Kevin's truck, which is open.  It's wrapped in blankets and plastic, but it's not waterproof and I don't want to drive up if it's going to get soaked through.  If that's the case, I'll just drive up in my car and bring the chair and ottoman another time.  Although maybe I could fit the ottoman in my car.  I drove the truck out to PA the other day bc I'd never driven it before and I wanted to have some experience driving it before doing so alone today.  He's had it for maybe not quite a year, but I've never had occasion to drive it.  It was a little odd driving a big truck after driving my little car, but I felt pretty at ease with it.

She usually has somewhere(s) she wants to go and, bc she doesn't drive (never learned), she saves that for when I visit.  Now, she does get rides from others, but she doesn't like to burden them (surprise, surprise) so she saves non-essential trips for me and gets rides to the doctor and other appointments from my brothers.  I'm not sure how she's going to do with the truck.  I'm bringing a small step so I can get in the back of the truck to unload the chair.  She could use that to get in the truck (bc it's kind of high) so we can go wherever she wants to go.  I'll see if she's comfortable with that.  Otherwise, it will have to wait until next time.  If nothing else, there's always cleaning I can do while I'm there.  I reckon tomorrow I'll finish the kitchen counters and cupboards and maintain what I cleaned last time.

Uh oh!  Miles is taking off with a flash drive that has my paper on it!  Nothing is safe around that cat.  Kevin bought two large tomatoes from the market and put them on the counter only to find tooth marks all around both of them later on.  Miles loves to carry stuff around in his mouth.  Apparently, those tomatoes proved too big for him, but, based on the number of tooth marks, he tried for a good long time to drag them off, play with them and then lose them under furniture only to be discovered when we notice a trail of ants going to and from the offending decaying vegetation.

Just as a side note, I typically publish posts in the morning even though I may write them another day at another time.  E.g., I'm writing this Wednesday evening (technically, very early Thursday morning).  I stick with the morning publishing time so that it's predictable for regular readers; if there's nothing posted by 9:00 AM, there probably won't be anything posted that day.  I don't know what made me think to write that, but there it is.  Oh!  I think it was bc I'd caught myself making a few mistakes that wouldn't be mistakes except for the fact that I post later than when I type.

Speaking of cats, tomorrow's cat blogging will be on Edison and Clomicalm, the wonderful wonder drug that stopped his inappropriate urination (i.e., peeing all over the house).

Still speaking of cats, poor Nosey is locked in the bathroom. We need to do this periodically to get a urine sample out of him to test his sugar: we leave him in there w/an almost empty litter box.  That ways we know for sure that it's his urine in there.  We also test it for blood and ph.  He's had a tiny bit o' blood in his urine for a while now.  One specialist said it's nothing to worry about, it's such a small amount.  IIUC, it's not uncommon for dogs to have a little blood in their urine.  We're not real comfortable just letting it be; we're trying to figure out what Nosey's freaking problem is that's causing even this small bit o' blood in his urine.  The test strip we use to test for sugar also tests for blood, ph and a bunch of other things.  He's had an x-ray recently that didn't show any stones.  He'll probably go in for an ultrasound next.  Fortunately, he does not appear to have any pain around urination.

Sometimes it seems like a cat clinic around here.  Right now we have three cats on medication.  Edison gets his daily life-saving Clomicalm (so called bc I was going to kill someone or something if he didn't stop peeing everywhere).  Nosey gets insulin 2x/day and a vitamin B shot 1x/week.  Dolly gets methimazole every day, budesonide every day, chlorambucil every third day and a vitamin B shot 3x/week.  Sometimes I think I should be a vet tech.  Oy.

And A Pony

Just a gratuitous Gabi picture posting.  Gabi is currently hugely into horses.  She lives and breathes horses.  She's taking riding lessons and has graduated to riding a horse.  I believe this is a pony she's riding here, so this picture is a little out of date with her abilities.  I'm sure she will correct me if I've mistakenly identified a horse as a pony here.

She knows how many different types of horses there are, which are the smallest horses (Falabella), the biggest (Shire), the only surviving wild horse (Przewalski; interestingly, it's never been domesticated), and so on...I can't tell you all that she told us about horses during our last visit.

She makes up epic stories populated by horses.  There was one saga which featured an Evil Villain by the name of General Shire, who was bigger than Mt. Everest (actually, he was the biggest thing in the world).  General Shire could do anything he wanted, nothing was impossible for him, which would normally be kind of neat except that he used his powers for eeeeeeevil.  She made up this particular story as she went along and let me tell you it got a little annoying to suggest ways to escape Evil General Shire's Evil Clutches only to find out that he could:

• read minds
• reach anywhere in the world
• see anywhere in the world
• hear anything in the world
• move mountains
• destroy vast swaths of land with a single flick of the wrist
• order millions of his minions to do his bidding with robotic obedience
• and basically foil any plot device we might suggest

You may have gathered that Gabi's a little dramatic.  She's very clever, verbal, inquisitive, etc., so I figure she might be a writer, academic, scientist, doctor or something of that ilk, but she might be a playwright, actor,....  I almost said director, but i think she'd rather perform.  She and her dad visited in March and she fell in love with Miles, our little orange kit.  We returned to the house one night after dinner.  It was dark out, but she could see that Miles was sitting in the window.  She got so excited she started running toward the house.  Unfortunately, she fell (there's a step up to the patio from the driveway) and skinned her knees.  Much crying and wailing ensued,including the plaintive, sob-choked howl, 'Won't someone please do something to relieve my suffering?'

I don't know where she gets it from, that's for sure.

Elbow, Grease

Och, the bod aches.  The other day, I went to visit my mother.  I also wanted to spend some time cleaning her kitchen.  (That discordant noise is the sound of Kevin processing the fact that I don't clean our own house, but I will drive 90 miles to clean my mother's kitchen.)  She, of course, protested bc, well, that's just what she does.  Various excuses and reasons why I shouldn't clean it.  Now, if it were clean, I certainly wouldn't bother.  I have no desire to engage in unnecessary and/or superfluous cleaning.  But it's not clean.

Now, my parents never kept a neat and tidy home.  It was basically clean, if not tidy.  My mother keeps stuff.  My father was the opposite; he was always throwing stuff out.  And he did so insensitively, i.e., if my mother liked something, but he thought it was junk or useless to them, he'd find a way to toss it out.  One time, my mother's co-worker went to Japan and brought her back a pair of chopsticks.  My father came across them one day, didn't know what they were and so tossed them out.  He may well have known what they were - who hasn't seen chopsticks at least on TV? - but figured they don't use chopsticks, so why keep them?

But it seems that as my parents got older, the house got less clean.  Counters got dirty.  There were spots on the dishes.  Stuff piled up.  I've long been tempted to be my father's daughter, go in there and toss out buckets of stuff, but I don't really want to be insensitive and indiscriminate.

Actually, I've long wanted to do lots of things for my parents/at their house, but didn't.  Why not?  Well, I think at least part of the reason is that I deferred to others.  I deferred to my mom when she'd put me off.  She'd always use my father's illness as a reason to not do something.  I deferred to my oldest brother when he said he didn't need any assistance with the renovations.  I deferred to both of them when they said there was nothing I could do to help wrt my father's care.  As noted before, I (and my brother Greg - we both live at a distance from my parents' home) offered to pay for at least some home care, especially in the beginning  when my father wasn't so sick.  As he became sicker, he received state-mandated home care.  But noooooo, my mother would not accept it and my brother discouraged me from pursuing the matter.  I'm not sure why the latter was the case, but I do think that my mother and that particular brother share some persnality traits that result in common reactions.

It seems, now that my father died, that it's easier to do stuff around their house.  Maybe my mom was truly overwhelmed by my father's care and she just didn't want to deal with anything else; that's certainly a possibility.  I was thinking the other day that, even though the house wasn't as clean as I would have liked, my father's room, bedding, medical apparatus, clothing, etc. - basically, everything relating to my dad and his care - was well cleaned and organized.  I'm sure that my father's care produced lots of laundry, required lots of things to be kept clean, required lots of maintenance (e.g., oxygen thingies, feeding tube machines, etc.), required organization (e.g., medications, ointments, etc.) and so on.

So anyway, I mosey on up there the other day and cleaned the kitchen from 2:00 to 5:00 PM.  And I didn't even finish the kitchen.  I spent at least 45 minutes, quite possibly a whole hour, trying to clean the grime from the range hood.  There must be a product that would have made that easier; if so, somebody please tell me.  I cleaned two counters and all the stuff on them (e.g., microwave, coffee pot, tea things, etc.) and the exteriors of their associated cabinets.  I cleaned the table, tablecloth and place mats.  I managed to get her down from 12 placemats to 4.  Her table only seats 4 comfortably; you could squeeze in a couple of extra people, but it would be a squeeze.

She doesn't like to throw things away.  I'll guess that she probably got these placemats from who knows where or maybe found them anew and thought, 'That's pretty.  I'll put it out on the table.'  And before you know it, she's got a dozen placemats there, placemats under placemats.  Gah.

Again, if the placemats (and other things) were clean, I'd be much less interested in doing anything there.  If they were clean, but just sitting there minding their own business, I'd probably ignore it.  As noted above, I have no desire to engage in unnecessary cleaning, yet I have even less desire to organize someone else's stuff.  You start doing that and it's like free diving; you just hope you make it back out alive.

So I cleaned.  Although my mother initially protested, I noticed she found a few things to add to my bucket of things that were soaking to make it easier to clean them, so maybe she thought it wasn't such a bad idea after all.  Maybe she feels she needs to protest at least a little bit.  Next time I see her will be about two weeks after this cleaning session; I'm interested to see how it holds up.  I don't care if it requires regular cleaning (either from me or someone Greg and/or I provide),  but I don't want it to get to the point it reached before.  Heck, she said that Bro #4 #3 offered to clean the kitchen.  He's no neat freak himself, so that's saying something if he's offering to clean the kitchen.

Knitting: Michael's Baby Blanket

Friends Eileen and Rich recently had a baby, Michael Richard.  It was, therefore, time to get myself to Nonna's Yarn Cafe, pick out a new baby blanket pattern and get going before the kid outgrows itty bitty baby blankets.  I went with Needful Yarns Kids Collection #500, baby blanket and cardigan (I'm not making the cardigan at the moment, although I will probably give it a try at some point in the future; it doesn't look too hard).  The finished blanket would be 20" x 24", which is kinda small, so I doubled it.

The blanket is a basket weave (again...love that basketweave), with a repeating pattern of 8 rows.  The edges are finished with a little crochet, which I don't know how to do, so I will probably either skip the edging or put fringe on it.  I suppose I should learn how to crochet sometime; it seems to show up as finishing in a lot of knitting projects and they say it's pretty easy.

I ended up choosing 3 yarn colors bc the store didn't have enough of one or two colors I liked in the baby yarns to make the blanket.  After having problems finding more yarn in the colors for Kevin's afghan, I decided to always buy enough yarn at the start of a project.

So.  The yarn is 'Oh My!' by Plymouth Yarn in the following colors:

• #9 - white
• #12 - soft yellow
• #19 - sagey green

I'm using circular knitting needles: size 15 for casting on and binding off and size 13 for the body of the blanket.  Yarn is used double, i.e., knitting two strands together as one, throughout.

Contrary to the photographic evidence, not all of my knitting projects come complete with a cat.

Here's what I've got so far:

Close up:

Even though I originally wanted to knit the blanket using one color, I think having stripes of multiple colors makes for a more interesting looking blanket.

I almost choked on my tapestry needle when she rung me up.  I won't give up the gory details, but let's just say that I had to reach for the credit card to pay for it all.  'It all' includes the pattern and, since I'm such a knoob to knitting and don't have a lot of needles, the needles.  The yarns I've used so far have been, I think relatively inexpensive or at least not out of the ordinary.  Now that I think about it, maybe this particular yarn isn't very expensive, but since I had to buy 16 small balls of it, things added up.  Oh well.  You live, you learn.  Next time I'll check the price before I choose the yarn.

I think it will be a lovely blanket, though; the yarn was very soft to the touch in the store and when I felt a display item made with it, it felt so soft that I was immediately sold on it.  I think any baby would love this blanket.  I wonder if it will get softer with use and washing?

In His Spare Time

Kevin's been working very hard on painting the dining room.  The house is about 85-90 years old and the dining room walls are the original plaster with decades of paint over it.  Flaky, garish paint.  Kevin scraped and sanded until either he hit plaster or the paint stopped flaking off.  If he's said it once, he's said it 42 times: 'Prep work is crucial to a good paint job.'

Down to the nub:

With a coat of primer:

Once again we enlisted the help of our neighbor, Sandy, to choose colors for us.  Let's see if I can remember the color numbers and find them online.  Hmm hmm hmm....

Okay, I think I can link you to the colors.  Go here to look at Benjamin Moore's paint chips.  Choose 'Historical Colors' from the drop down menu.  IIRC, the walls will be Georgian Brick HC-50 and the trim will be Peale Green HC-121.  Dark!  I think of the new colors as the old colors, just much darker.  I do tend to go too light when choosing paint colors.

The Benjamin Moore website also has this thing where you can play with colors in different kinds of rooms.  Huh.  Maybe I should have done that before buying the paint.  I just did it and I like it.  Whew!

He'll paint the living room, which is off of the dining room, next in the same colors.  We got some light fixtures for those rooms and the foyer (the rooms all run together).  After painting, we'll get the floors refinished.  At least, we hope we can get them refinished.  They're not in great shape and there are some fixes that are much more practical than attractive (e.g., small pieces of floorboard that were inserted for a fix, but inserted perpendicular to the original floorboards).  It's an oak floor, but it is not the original floor.  The original pine floor is underneath; you can see its underside from the basement.  I don't know what kind of condition it's in on the floor side.  I don't mind that the floor's imperfect, unlevel and kinda funky in spots.  I like old houses precisely bc they look lived in and not just by us, but by lots of people before us with their own stories.  So yeah, get the floors done.  Then we can get dining room furniture!  And we'll be able to sit down at a nice table!  And have more than two people over for dinner!

We bought my mom a glider at Snyder's Furniture in PA; we'll probably pick it up next week.  That was a task, finding an unupholstered glider.  Saint Bridget insisted that she does not like upholstery and wanted the plainest chair possible.  It's hard to tell how much of that is actual personal preference and how much is martyrdom and wishing to save us money.  Aargh.

Anyway, when we were there we looked at their dining room stuff, liked it and might get our stuff there.  I like the Mission style furniture.  One thing that annoys me about dining room chairs with arms is when the arms don't reach the end of the seat.  Most uncomfortable if one wants to sit and yammer on for hours after dinner with their friends.  I think they have a lot of other stuff there that's not on the website.

Seeing as I'm becoming the domestic diva, what with my forays into cooking and knitting, I'm considering making the curtains for the dining and living rooms myself.  Nothing fancy, just panel curtains that can be hung on rings with 3/4 lace sheers underneath.  I basically want the same style curtains for almost every room.  E.g., we have curtains similar to these in the Mens' Room, hung on brass rods like these, using rings like these, and 3/4 length lace sheers like these.  The 3/4 length is so that the cats can sit in the windows without having/getting to fuss with the sheers.  We think of everything.  You know, it might have been easier to find a picture.  Let's see what we can find.

Okay, here we go; this was taken shortly after Kevin repainted Slimmie's room.

Let's just take a moment to remember our dear boy, Slim.

Mwah!

Why bother making curtains?  Well, for one thing, about half of our windows have radiators under them.  Most curtains that I can buy are too long (even if only by a few inches as you can see in the above picture) and end up bunching up on top of the radiator or behind it.  Unattractive.  I also don't like the idea of the fabric in contact with radiators.  If they're just panels, I should be able to handle that, although I would like to line them with insulating and/or blackout material.  Of course, I will consult with Sandy next door wrt fabric selection.

Thanks for all your hard work, Kev!

He Can Has Cheezburger

Our niece Gabi's favorite restaurant is Red Robin.  We learned that during our last visit to Pittsburgh, when considering where to go for dinner.  Alas, we did not go to Red Robin.  Neither Kevin nor I had ever been to Red Robin.  It's a very family-friendly restaurant and looks like they have a lot of fun stuff for kids.  Burgers seem to be their big thing.  Anyway, Gabi is a member of RR's online club where she can get coupons for free burgers for friends and family members on their birthdays.  She very kindly entered Kevin's name and birthday (which was in April).  He received his coupon and we went there the other day on the coupon's expiration date just to get that free burger.  As Kevin said afterward, 'Never let it be said that I passed up a free burger.'  Preach it, brother.

Inspired by I Can Has Cheezburger's LOLCAT pictures, I give you LOLUncleKevin:

 

Friday Cat Blogging: Those #@$?&* Kids Are Back!

Kevin and I recently visited his parents, Jack & Fern, at their home in the Finger Lakes region of New York state.  We celebrated two slightly belated holidays: Mother's Day and Fern's birthday.  Pictures here.

Jack and Fern have a cat, Misty.  Misty only recently began living with them.  She was a stray living near them.  She had her newest litter and a couple of older kits with her when Jack & Fern were able to trap her to get her spayed.  Kudos to Jack & Fern for spaying her!

They kept the cats in a heated room off of their garage.  They couldn't bring any of the cats inside bc their resident cat, Reilly, would not abide other cats in the house.  In the meantime, we ended up taking Miles & Lizzie home with us (ostensibly to foster and socialize them iot find them a new home, which we did: said new home is our home).

Unfortunately, the lone surviving older kit got out of the room one day and never returned.  Misty also got out, but she returned, albeit with a mouth injury.  The vet thinks Misty may have climbed under a car's hood for warmth (it was winter then) and been injured when the car was started up.  She was gone for about a week and then returned to the house with her poor mouth all busted up.  Jack & Fern brought her to Cornell's vet school where she got all fixed up.  Apparently, Cornell has some kind of good Samaritan program to provide low cost care for strays that area folks help.  Kudos to Jack & Fern for taking care of her!  Kudos to Cornell for offering a low cost program!

It was roughly around this time that, sadly, the majestic resident cat Reilly died.  Reilly's death had the silver lining of allowing Misty to come live inside the house, where she's been ever since.  She is a timid cat, although she's getting used to Jack & Fern and is staying out more and more when they're around.  She also enjoys playing with toys with them.  She does allow some petting and scratching.  Keep the faith!  She'll continue to come around.  That she allows you to pet and scritch her is very good.

We took Miles & Lizzie with us during this recent visit.  It had been about 6 months or so since we took the kittens home.  We wondered how the three - Misty, Miles & LIzzie - would do together.

First, they had to meet each other.  But before even that could happen, Miles & Lizzie had to come out from behind the water heater.

Lizzie:

Miles:

That's pretty much where they stayed until we peeps all went to sleep our first night there.  And Misty stayed under her peeps' bed.  Then they were all out and about during the night.  We could hear the sounds of their explorations and Misty's concerned meows when she obviously met up with a kitten.

Misty mostly stayed away while people were awake and about.  She's still getting used to Jack & Fern; I think it was very disconcerting to her to have two more people in her home.  I did get one picture of Misty during a rare foray abroad:

Lizzie takes after her mother very much.  The kittens were out more during our second day there.  They enjoyed playing with toys.

Misty would sit in the window in our bedroom at night.  She hightailed it out of the room if she saw me looking at her.  Her kits enjoyed sitting in that window during the day.

By our last day there, they were looking pretty darn comfortable and at home.

I think Jack and especially Fern would have been delighted if we left Miles & Lizzie to live with them and Misty.  Given time, I think Misty and the kittens would have become thick as thieves.  Although Misty is timid, I think all three cats share a similar easygoing (wrt inter-kitty communication and interaction) nature.  Kevin put the kebosh on that.  I had asked him what he would say if his parents asked to have the kittens back.  His reply: 'Over my dead body.'  You heard it here first.

I feel obliged to note, if only for legal reasons, that the morning after I recounted the above conversation to Jack & Fern, Fern inquired of Kevin if we had wills, what would happen to our cats if we died, etc.  She suggested that he make sure our wills say who we want to care for our cats if we die.  She also offered to take in Miles & Lizzie.  So, my dear readers, remember this post when if something happens to us....

The kittens were excellent travelers.  Notwithstanding the above mortal risks we'd be taking in visiting Jack & Fern again, we'd definitely consider traveling with them again. 

Knitting: Sofia's Baby Blanket

Yay, Sofia's baby blanket is finished!  It's my second knitting project and the first one I've finished.  Kevin's afghan is my first project.  I'm still working on that.  I interrupted work on the afghan when I heard Sofia was coming along.  We heard today of a friend's newborn son.  I mentioned to Kevin that maybe I'd knit that baby a blanket and he asked, 'What about my blanket?'  Seems like all my projects these days are blankets for babies.  Just kidding, Big Guy.

Sofia was born two weeks ago.  Here she is on her birthday.

Here's an picture of the baby blanket, although the colors don't show up accurately in this picture.

A close up:

You can kind of see the pattern in the blanket.  And the colors are more accurate here.

I'll send that off shortly.  I've asked big sister Gabi to give it to Sofia from Uncle Kevin and me.  We'll include a little something for her, too.  We want to make sure Gabi continues to feel how special she is to us even though there's a new baby in town.

If I'm so fortunate as to receive a picture of Sofia with her new blanket, I will surely blog it.