Stragglers

Thank you for the comments, emails. I haven't decided quite what I'll do but for now I think I'll keep posting more or less the way I have been. (Let's hope for the more because I've gotten pretty good at the less and it's not as much fun, now is it?)

I realized I was behind on promised pictures! As usual they are clickable if you want to see them larger. Here is Tallulah Rockstar - the crazy conehead - giving me a mournful look. (I particularly like the "You are my sunshine" pillow next to her that I didn't notice when i was taking the picture.) When Wasabi had to wear a cone it paralyzed him. If the edge of the cone touched anything - he FROZE. I would find him standing stock still and have to coax him to move again. Tallulah? The vet told us to try to keep her quiet for the first few days. I raised my eyebrow at him, we both looked at her, and he said, "Good luck with that." She proceeded to smash, crash, and bash her way through the next two weeks. The cone was in sorry, sorry shape by the time she FINALLY got to take it off.
In case you think that Chaos, being nearly 16, might have grown out of his Calvin phase...think again. Here is a picture of Chaos, Mayhem, Uncle Richard, Linus, Bug, The Ninja Princessa, and Havoc. We miss you Uncle Richard!!!

I guess the Calvin look is better than the I'm-practicing-for-my-mug-shot look:
The one where Chaos is sort of smiling? Mayhem is being silly (and Tallulah has snuck into the photo.) This is why God invented Photoshop I suppose.
And finally we come to fun and games with sharp objects. Linus would like you to think he was grievously wounded while defending my honor. In truth, he lost a fight with a box cutter while doing something involving servers at work. He managed to miss all tendons and major blood vessels - thankfully. I should have taken some pictures when it had all those blue stitches in it.
Then I could have framed it next to this picture and had a matched set. Bet sliced her leg open in two places while building our glass block wall this morning. Warning: do not step over razor sharp spikes of metal embedded in a half built wall.
I've told them both that in this circumstance three is not a charm. No stitches for Lilymane. No. No. No. So, how's your weekend going?

Worst Quilting Experience EVAH

I was sure I'd have some quilty goodness to post this morning. Linus and Bet gave me a quilting class as a present MONTHS ago. They wanted to hook me into the quilting community - get my art sparks going and help me meet creative folks. The original class didn't fill up so it was postponed (twice) and finally held yesterday. I was so looking forward to it! Improvisational art quilting. What could be better?

Well, a root canal for starters.

The people who work in the shop are fantastic. The fabrics are lovely. I had every reason to expect a high caliber teacher! I had a reasonable expectation of meeting pleasant, creative, quilt-artists (or at least wannabes!) I got there early. I was directed to a tiny room with about four women in it - boxes, lunch, machines cluttering up the little bit of table space. I was clearly there for the class but no one said anything to me as I walked in. They weren't saying much to each other either. There was no room for me or my purse (which is all I'd brought in until I scoped out the room). I went to the ladies room and came back. I tried to walk around the table and find space. No one moved their stuff or said a word. WEIRD!

I went back to the store front and asked if I was in the right place. The nice sales woman walked me back in to the room, pointed out the back door I could use to bring in my machine and then uncovered room for me at one of the tables. When I got back in the class room she was back out front - sadly. I set up my area in silence. Two other women came in and started setting up. I said hello to them as they came in and I guess that sparked something because the woman who turned out to be the teacher handed around a sheet of labels that had our names written on them. More silence but this time with the teacher schlepping some of her stuff here and there and then a minute or two of her ironing some ratty-looking scraps. Inspiring. (Not.) She eventually noticed that class was supposed to have started ten minutes earlier. She said, "I am _____ but I won't go into a long introduction. Here is some of my work. This framed piece is my most recent - about two years old. Here is my first quilt. I made it after seeing this book." She held up a Quilt National book - the cover of which featured a quilt just like the one she had made. She proceeded to show us five more quilts that looked the same only with uglier colors. She showed us a few small pieces and advised us to frame our work - otherwise people would only be willing to pay $5 or $10 for a pot holder size piece. She had a slow, whining, slightly huffing way of speaking. She sounded bored and ended every phrase in a dribbling off kind of way. She sat down and sewed a few strips of her fabric together - without saying what she was doing or why. She gave us random advice about "ironing" - it doesn't matter which side the seam is pressed to, keep your ironing pad close by, etc. She told us to work in larger pieces, not to worry about bias, or shape, or color other than to start with ten fabrics that "go" together. She told us not to waste our effort on cheapo fabrics and not to bother washing, "ironing", or folding fabrics because they would all get messy when we worked anyway. She sewed a few more seams. Then she said, "Ok. I wanted you to see how I worked. Let's get started." Then she stood up and stared at us. No instruction. No goal. No start point. No hints about design, balance, visual texture, color selection - nothing.

My classmates and I looked at each other and then back at her. The other ladies began tentatively pulling out the fabrics they had brought. One woman said she wasn't sure about colors or prints. The teacher said to use batiks because they were printed on both sides and had lots of colors. The lady blinked and waited for more. Receiving nothing, she was brave and asked specifically about the fabrics she had planned to use but now wasn't sure about. The teacher made a few bizarrely disparaging remarks like, "Well that orange isn't what I would ever use - but it goes well with this shiny fabric you brought. I stay away from shiny fabrics because they look cheap, but I guess you could go for a playful, juvenile look if you wanted to. It's up to you. It's your quilt." The teacher took another one of the students out front to "help" her pick out a few fabrics. I decided I could live without her help.

I almost just packed up and left right then and there. I talked myself into staying. I started randomly pressing, cutting and sewing together blocks of the fabrics I had brought. Fun enough. I like to play. At the very least - I'm spending time quilting with other women. I thought, "Maybe it won't be a total loss if I meet one even half-way pleasant fellow quilter." The woman on my right was older, stern, silent - except for her incredibly loud and numerous farts (OMG!), and had the ugliest collection of fabrics I have ever in my life seen. O-K. I turned to my other side. Reading her name tag, I struck up the following conversation:
Me: So Sherry, are you from here originally?
Her: Yes.
Me (after a pause to see if she'd say anything else): Do you belong to one of the guilds?
Her: No. I'm not a joiner. I'm not a social person.

So pleasant. Over the course of the next two hours, the only other conversation occurred when two of the ladies got in a fight over which scissors belonged to whom. "These are badly nicked. I take care of mine so these must be yours." "No, I keep mine sharpened and those are dull." "Well, I've never put tape on mine so these can't be mine. See this sticky spot here?" And so on. The next closest thing to conversation was when the teacher informed us all that she hadn't been able to make any money as a quilt artist and now sold plexi-glass clocks and worked in metal. Nice.

Absurdly, I kept thinking that surely once we got a few pieces together the teacher would discuss composition or design elements or embellishment techniques or SOMETHING. She didn't. With about a half an hour to go in the class, one woman asked what we'd be doing next week and the teacher said, "The same thing we are now." I just couldn't stand it any more. I lied and said I had to leave early to go get my children from school. I can't imagine going back next week. I have never been in a class before where I didn't learn anything. I kept waiting, hoping, desperately trying to get some tiny thing from the experience to make it worth the effort of having lugged my machine to and from the car - forget the $75 class fee. But it did not happen. Not even close.

The only speck of enjoyment I got out of the experience was talking to my kids about it afterwards. Havoc laughed so hard he almost fell off of his chair when I described the icky ladies at my table. The kids gave me sweet hugs and told me to look on the bright side. Next week I could stay home in my own studio and if the dogs started farting, at least I could make them go outside! Ah, the bright side.
Peace.

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night (Again)

Taking it a little more seriously than perhaps North Carolina weather requires, we weren't comfortable having the kids sleep through the storm upstairs. Upstairs being where the wind and the trees were colliding violently and near where the roof that could get ripped off in a tornado was. Two kids slept in Linus' bed, two in the studio and one on the pallet beside me. The dogs enjoyed playing musical beds. They thought it exciting to have everyone up an hour after settling down. They were the only ones. We're all a bit tired and grumpy today.
The bright side? RAIN. We need rain. We like rain. And it's 65 degrees now. Makes it kinda hard to be tooooooo grumpy. (But we're trying.)
Peace.

Somebody 'Splain Me

I weighed myself just before I went to bed last night. I weighed myself when I got up (right after I peed and before I got in the shower) this morning. Somehow I gained three pounds while I was sleeping. How the hell does that work??

Old MacDonald's Farm - Version 5.1z

I'm not sure that washing dishes is good for my children. Sure, they're learning great lessons in terms of cleanliness and responsibility. It's the intellectual contamination that has me worried. KP spawns absolutely weird conversation here in Lilyville. Some while back I was called in to referee a debate about which animals are smarter - dogs or pigs. (That part is normal enough, I think. Most people don't really know - or don't want to know - that pigs are pretty darn smart. Wilbur and Lassie could go toe to toe (or hoof to paw) in an IQ test. But bacon is too yummy to have to eat with a side of guilt so we conveniently ignore the idea of smart pigs. To return to our muttons - or dogs and pigs...) After putting in my two cents, I went back to the library while they continued to argue loudly enough for me to hear. They debated which kind of smartness would make a better guard animal. How loyal are pigs? How trainable? How sneaky can they be? (Stealth pigs.) And how strong are they? Could they carry Uzi's?
Errrr, WHAT??
Their conversation veered off from there. They began equipping different barnyard animal armies with various weaponry. Pretty soon they had chickens with grenades, cows with semi-automatics, and pigs with plastique. Nice, eh? This is apparently a game they are designing. There is a forest version too. It has upgrades with foxes, squirrels, frogs, and manatees. At that point I did have to butt in and point out that manatees do NOT live in the forest. "That's why it's an upgrade," they explained. Ahhhh. For a low, low extra charge you too can get the Manatees of Death!
Lest you think my children are merely bloodthirsty wackos, I must tell you that the next part of the conversation is worse! Zombies! (Naturally. It seems like every single darn conversation my children have these days includes at least a token mention of zombies.) Overheard:
Mayhem: Dude, zombie goats! We gotta have zombie goats.
Chaos: Goats? Naah, how about zombie weasels?
Mayhem: Dude, have you seen a zombie goat?! They're AWESOME!
(In my head, I'm thinking, "Dude, have you seen one? Because maybe we need to go to the doctor or something if you have.)
Ninja Princessa (not to be outdone): What about vampire cats? That would be better.
All three boys (shouting): NO VAMPIRES! No, we hate vampires! Vampires suck!
Silence.
Gales of laughter. Finally Chaos gets a hold of himself enough to say, "Zombies only."
Mayhem: What about fish?
Chaos: Oh! Piranhas! Zombie piranhas!
Bug: How could you tell they were zombie fish as opposed to regular fish?
Mayhem: Dude, they'd try to eat your brain!
Bug: Piranhas already try to do that.
Chaos: Good point. No zombie fish.
Mayhem: I'm telling you. Zombie goats. They're awesome.

I have no idea what the eventual outcome was on which zombified animals got the nod. They had finished up their chores and carried the conversation upstairs. The kitchen was spic and span. I had absolutely nothing to complain about, except... zombie goats? It's just weird, man. I'm telling you. To make matters - well, not worse - just more public, this whole conversation happened on a night when Mayhem's best buddy, Justin, had stayed for supper after ultimate practice. When Jan came to get her son, she and I had such a nice talk. She's articulate and put together, but still down to earth. She has two sons (the youngest of whom is Mayhem's buddy). I think we could be friends - if she wasn't secretly put off by the zombie obsession my children are foisting off on those around them.

Jan: Thanks again for letting him stay. I thought his dad would be at practice or I never would have made a doctor's appointment.
Me: Oh, he was no trouble. Polite, fun, and he helped with the dishes even though I told him he didn't have to. We love having him.
Jan: That's great to hear. Wish he'd help me once in a while. (<- Said archly, eyebrows raised, looking down at her son.)
Justin: Well, I helped the kids. The kids do the dishes here.
Jan: Oh! Great tradition! Let's start that too.
Justin: Mom! It's no fun at our house. Here they have lots of kids and they talk about cool stuff.
Jan: We talk about cool stuff.
Justin: Mom, I mean really cool stuff. Like zombies. And manatee bombadiers.
Me: Zombies. Their favorite topic of conversation. I try not to worry about it. (I may have laughed in a nonchalant way at that point. Or perhaps it came out more as a worried chuckle.) Do your boys talk about zombies?
Jan: Not that I know of really.
Me: Ah. Hope it's ok with you.
Jan: You know, if it takes talk of the undead to get kids to cheerfully clean the kitchen, I'm all for it! You should write a book.

Don't you LOVE her? What should my book be called? Zombies Onboard? Parenting Teens The Undead Way? Peer Pressure: The Z Factor?

Peace.

Snapshot Of A Divided Day

I have the blah's. I can think of good things this morning, but I'm having a hard time feeling them. I'm a little whiny and grateful at the same time. Does that ever happen to you?

The Titans, the Colts, the Dolphins AND the Redskins lost yesterday. It's been a LONG time since all of the NFL teams I like most lost on the same day. (Still a bad football day in November is waaaayyy better than a day without football in March.)

I'm sore all over and tired. (Bet and I ran 10 sets of 6 x 2's - which means we ran for a total of an hour and walked for 20 minutes. Without the ocean. Yay us! This week we're upping to 7 x 2's. I'm determined to get my short runs in this week so I don't die on the long run next Sunday.)

The kids are out of school again today which means the house will be loud and busy. Unlikely that I'll get much time for my writing projects today. (It's a fun change to get so much play time with them. I've gotten one on one time with them and had enough time for them to get together with friends.I love having long weekends with them - even if by the last day I'm worn out from it.)

Linus has to go out of town today. (I shouldn't complain since I got an extra day with him. Originally he was to leave yesterday.)

I'm craving rare steak and Snicker's bars. (I don't eat chocolate.) I want salted, mashed potatoes with a pool of melted butter in the center. I want Coca-Cola. Oh, goddess I want Coke. (I haven't had any in almost a year but I will never stop being addicted to it. I LOVE Coke!) I need something cheesy and hot, maybe with pepperoni on it, for breakfast. That or french fries. With cheese. PMS much?

Peace.

Mid Point

Greetings from East Asheville! We're a traveling circus - we have four adults, six mostly teenage boys, a dog, two U-Haul trucks (one of them towing my 12 year old Rodeo), and two VW's all trekking east on I-40. Our closing took about 10 minutes (and most of that was chat!) Our realtor gave us a huge canvas bag stuffed with goodies. She laughed and said she tried to put some healthy stuff in there. Her ratio? 40 lbs of junk topped with a two peanut butter crackers and a token bag of trail mix. I think we'd gone about thirty miles before all of the cookies, the M&M's, the jelly beans, and one of the peanut butter crackers were gone. The trail mix and the vitamin fortified water bottles were all that was left. Yep - Lindy the listing agent rocks the house!! Smartest gal on the planet! What else can I say about someone who sells my house in two days and then gives me the perfect present to appease a car full of teenage stomachs??

Poor Robbie the Realtor on the other side. She is working probably four times as hard for not nearly so much joy. We will all breathe a huge sigh of relief when we get through the closing on the new house. The people selling us our new house are ... crazy. Like ape shit crazy. From the first week of weird negotiations with them where they ended up not even being able to accept their own offered price, we've known they weren't right. The house is perfect for us or we would have walked away at about the third obstacle. I no longer buy the excuse that they are young, don't know what they're doing, and have stressful jobs in Chicago. Normal people, even young, inexperienced ones with stressful jobs in Chicago can figure this stuff out. I would add that they have their own realtor to help them through the process but I don't know if she's speaking to them anymore.

We knew they wouldn't do any repairs. They have no money. Integrity seems to be in short supply with them too. Emotions, however, they have in spades. They have bitched and whined about how we're taking advantage of them by buying their house at the list price. We have received more than one letter accusing us of "taking advantage of a marketing strategy" by purchasing the home they've been trying to sell for months and months (with several agents and more than one agency). Ok fine. They are crazy, but we can work with crazy for a limited time. Let's just get through this!

We say to them - we hear you, no repairs, but please provide us with the building permits for the work you had done as the inspection shows that there are some code violations which we will need to address. They refused. Not only did they refuse but their response was a "how dare you ask for such a thing" type of letter. They blathered on about how they'd had licensed professionals do the work - NOT day laborers (a strange defense since we'd not even thought of that - we just wanted the papers to cover our butts about the permits). According to our sellers, they'd paid good money (here we were treated to yet another digression about how we had NO IDEA what kind of deal we were getting on the house) and the work was done flawlessly (despite our evil inspector's malicious observations to the contrary). They will not be providing documentation of any description - not even the name of the (supposedly licensed) contractor who did the (provably not flawless) work.

Sometimes I really don't understand how people work. Do they expect us to believe what they say even when it makes no sense? Do they have friends who listen sympathetically to their woes and say, "There, there. Your buyers are just whacked. It will all be over soon"? That's all neither here nor there. We have in writing what we need legally to cover ourselves. Our inspector gave us detailed instructions on what needs to be done to make everything right. We're ready to close and be done with these jokers.

Then on Friday our realtor lets us know that there's a teeny, tiny little problem that affects them, not us, and as far as she knows we are still set to close on Wednesday morning. This infitesimally small issue turns out to be nothing other than a LIEN against the house, a dispute with the neighbors, and a pending court case. Poor Robbie had to tell us (yet again) that she's never had anything like this happen in her 20+ years in real estate. It's the third never-before-seen thing these people have achieved. I think it is a remarkable act of faith that we launched ourselves out on this journey with so little assurance of a successful end. Granted, we hadn't many options considering our homelessness as of 8:30 a.m. yesterday. Might as well launch and hope for the best, eh? Of course it wouldn't hurt if all of you out there, my lovely internet friends, would hope for the best for us too! Maybe that will tip the cosmic scales and the universe will allow Wednesday to proceed without a hitch. A girl can dream, can't she?
Peace.

Weather Anyone?

The county schools were all released hours early today for "weather". It's a bit odd and I haven't been able to find anything other than the school closings on the news. (Mostly it's soap operas on the stations with scrolling lists of counties closing.) If the cub scout mom leading tonight's program hadn't called, I wouldn't have even known to go get my kids from school! The skies are blue and it's stopped raining completely. Mind you, the kids aren't complaining but they did want to know, "Why now? Why not this morning when it was pitch black and storming? Why did we have to race to the bus in pouring, sheeting rain with lightning flaring and thunder crashing all around us but we get out when it's sunny?" I don't have an answer for that. What I do have is popcorn and juice boxes and a fervent hope that this is more than a break between big fronts. Send us some good weather mojo?
Peace.

Good Luck, Bad Luck, Who Knows?

Good Luck: old water heater did not blow up
Bad Luck: new water heater for the low, low price of $1000

Good Luck: we do not have termites
Bad Luck: we do have a wood eating fungus

Maybe we should have known better than to call the plumber and the pest folks while Mercury was in retrograde? (At least we didn't call the electrician!)
Peace.