The Last Day of November

I’m back.  From Outer Space.  I finished NaNoWriMo for the fifth time, sliding over 50,000 words on November 24th.  Just in time to jump in the car for an eleven hour drive to Garland, Texas.  Driving at highway speeds, that trip should, by all accounts, take only about seven hours.  That little stretch, though, from Austin to Waco, woohoo, watch out!  That little stretch of road will suck you into a time vortex on the day before Thanksgiving, making you feel like you’re in that episode of Doctor Who where all of the people are stuck in traffic for their entire lives.  And some of them look like cats! 

But I digress.

This NaNo was my most disorganized.  In previous years, I sort of tried to keep things in reasonable order, sticking the cursor where I thought the new words would fit in best.  This year though, whatever I felt like writing about on any particular day began on the next blank page.  This NaNo was also my first foray into Science Fiction.  Only because it was set on a planet far, far away, and has space cruisers.  It also might have aliens in a future revision.  Who knows.  But I had fun, and I’ll do it again next year.  

The rest of November has been lovely.  South Texas is making the transition to cooler weather (finally).  Today, in fact, is quite cold.  But I won’t bore you with weather talk on the blog.  

Thanksgiving was fun.  I met Robert Kennedy.  He was cute too.  He’ll let you call him Bob Stokes if you want, but don’t confuse him with the guy on The Weather Channel.  Whoops.  More weather.  

Since I’m rambling about nothing in particular here, I should ramble about the Sonars too.  X9 talked Grandma into teaching him how to crochet.  I know how to crochet too, but I hold the hook weird and I’m dead slow.  Grandma is the speediest, most graceful crocheter I know.  And now X9 is following in her footsteps, churning out eight feet of crochet chain in the past two days.  He’s not ready to move on to single crochet yet.  He wants to make chains to put on the Christmas tree first.  X4 has a birthday in three weeks and has decided he likes asparagus and playing outside without his siblings.  X6 now has a social calendar, and has found that he very much enjoys birthday parties, especially ones with gymnastics or bowling.  We’re thinking of putting a piano in the living room and making them all learn to play it. 

Spouse’s garden is growing well.  This weekend we canned eight quarts and eight pints of green tomato salsa.  That’s two-and-a-half gallons.  And there are a lot more vegetables out there!  

I’m not ready for the holidays yet, but I’m ready to get ready.  That means I’m itching to bust out the sewing machine for some handmade gifts I have planned.  I have a piece of finished knitting to show you later this week, and I started a Clapotis.  

Now that NaNoWriMo is finished though, I am really looking forward to reading a lot more.  Reading tends to grind to a standstill when I’m trying to squeeze in writing time.  I have started to read at least six books, and I’m ready to finish them and start some others.  Who’s with me?  

So, in the next week or so, you should watch for some scarf pictures, and the long-ago promised comments on The Sheriff of Yrnameer, as well as talk about my holiday craft plans.  What are you up to?  xox

Choose Your Own Rambling

I know there are about five of you out there who occasionally read this blog, and in the interest of giving a vague appearance of audience-awareness, upcoming blog posts may be chosen by you. Here’s a list of things I’ve been doing and thinking about. Let me know if you care to hear more about any of these things, or if you’d like to suggest a topic for rambling.  In the absence of actual votes, I will, as usual, ramble randomly.

1. A pot of chili. For dinner.

2. The Magic Wheel of Chores. In which I could tutorialize the creation of a device to order and maintain offspring chores, and in which I could further pontificate that it may not always get the children to DO the chores, but that it has worked better than I ever expected as an organizational tool.

3. The Pouf of Using Up T-shirts. In which I could talk about the construction of a device for sitting, or napping, or whacking a sibling.

4. String Theory. In which I could tutorialize the almost magical transformation of two lowly (free) string backpacks into one (free) messenger bag. With pockets!

5. Free Parking. In which I could share photos of Partner’s clever (free) solution to the pile of bikes and skateboards in the garage.

6. Upcycled personal portfolios. In which I could tutorialize the transformation of fabric scraps and a sheet of corrugated plastic (found in the neighbor’s trash) into sketch portfolios for our vacation this summer.

7. Mama Ray Jack (and her brother Monty). I won’t talk about her yet, except to say that she’s a bit Cheesy, and she might be the subject of my NaNo novel this year. Unless I come up with an actual Real and Serious idea before November.

8. Books books books. In which I could review the books I’ve been reading, starting with the Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray. Or perhaps you’d like to wait and hear aboutThe Strain when I finish it? No? Too scary? Maybe.

9. More pictures of those Sonars and some rambling about the amazing/annoying/cute thing(s) they’ve been doing.

10. The supposed separation of church and state in United States public schools. This one would likely be a rant that wouldn’t be pretty. It might go something like this: I respect everyone’s right to their own religious beliefs and practices, but draw the line when they judge my children and make them feel inferior in the name of that religious ideology, especially if a person is employed by the government and directly or indirectly responsible for my children’s education. On second thought, Let’s not go there.

11. The frog. You want to see the frog? As far as I can tell, she has no religious ideology or educational prerogative. But she does like to eat fish.

Heeeere, fishy fishy.

I Am Not *Your* Mother

I am a firm believer in that adage, ‘if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.’  Perhaps more accurately, if I don’t have anything constructive to say, I don’t say anything.  Usually.  

Sometimes I get aggravated though, just like anyone else.  I frequently get aggravated at myself, but more often, I get nerved at other people.  Especially at other people who should be behaving better but aren’t.  

When my kids leave the door open to the outside, letting the same-price-as-a-new-car air conditioning flow unimpeded out into the humid, South Texas swelter, I have been known to holler (because that’s what we do here in Texas, holler), “Did your mother raise you in a barn?”  But there is perhaps a more constructive approach wherein I tell them how much the open door costs, both in terms of our actual dollars and in terms of the negative effect on our human habitat to waste electricity. 

I can do that with my children though, because I’m the mama and that’s my job.  It is my responsibility to teach them what I think is the right way to navigate their way through childhood in order that maybe, perhaps, hopefully when they are the grown-ups, they will make thoughtful, responsible decisions.  

I can’t really do that with everyone I encounter, no matter strong my urge to correct and instruct.  People look at me funny (at best), or tell me to mind my own !@#$% business (at worst).  Ok, no one has ever actually told me to mind my own !@#$% business, but I credit that to me not actually dispensing unwanted advice to people who are not my children.  

Still, the urge is there.  When I see people doing things I think they ought not do, well, I want to offer constructive suggestions.  And since this is my blog and I can say just about whatever I want, I have a few things to say to people who should behave better.  Let’s see if I can make it an ongoing series.  I’ll call it “I’m not your mama, but…”  

My first admonishment goes out to Amazon.  

[GoogleNews results for #amazonfail]

You should treat your customers like human beings.  All of them.  Not just the heteronormative ones.  And if you’re going to make it your business to sell books and be successful at it, labelling LBGT-related books as “adult” by default, glitch or no, might diminish your customer base.  Something to think about.  

And shut the door when you go in or out.  

Happy Heart Day

A photo of a hand-knit, somewhat anatomical heart.  Pattern is from Knitty, featuring fleece artist yarn in a colorway I cannot recall because I cannot find the ball band.  With a cameo by my ugliest towel.

Bunnies

Shopping for fabric at The Family Thrift Store in Corpus Christi yesterday…

I was digging through the piles of odd stuff.  Black glitter felt.  Baby zoo animal flannel.  Orange polyester.  Eight yards of green mosquito net.  Four quilt tops.  A hundred baby blankets. 

Partner hands me a bag.  It’s a bunch of little balls of white yarn.  Each ball in a little plastic bag, all the bags in a bigger bag.  No tags evident.  The bag is stapled shut, and yes, I know, people open and/or poke holes in those bags all the time, but I don’t like to do that.  It seems tacky.  The price on the bag is $2.92US.  Some of the white yarn is discolored in places.  I think I’d have to wash it.  I almost put it back, but in an impulse I take it.  Along with the four yards of red tulle, the green mosquito net, and several different bags of jammie flannel.  

When I bust open the bag of yarn at home, I find that every wee ball is tagged.  ACA Supreme 100% Pure Angora, Made in France.  Huh.  I say.  Thinking this is pretty rich.  

Twenty-seven, ten gram (or 1/3 ounce) balls of white Angora that is so fluffy and soft.  So incredibly soft.  At some point in the life of this yarn, it was marked at $1/ball.  So my $2.92 was a steal.  Only it was even more of a steal than I initially thought because I see ten gram balls of angora yarn on the internet priced at anywhere from five to seven dollars.  Per.  Ball.

I bought $150 worth of yarn for three bucks.  Knock me over with a feather.  

Whuddya think I should make with it?

About 800 yards of worsted weight angora.  Not enough for a sweater, I don’t think.  

Hat?  Scarf?  Pidge?  Fuzzy bunny from Knitty Gritty?