Happy Birthday To Me!!!

Well, it's here...the big 4-0...I'm not quite reconciled to being 40. I just don't know if I like the idea of being 40...If I live to be 80, which in my DNA pool people live well into and past 80...still living independently, I am middle aged!!!! If I live to 90 I'm almost middle aged!!!! Somewhat of a sobering thought.

I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out how I got back to basically square one and 40 at the same time...I'm sure I will figure it out eventually.

Like I've said before the "0"'s and the "5"'s are hard for me. It's like these are the times that I tend to get really thoughtful and start looking back and also looking forward. Something like New Year's for most people.

There are things in my life that HAVE to change. I'm all of 5 feet tall and 300 lbs. This, this is one of the things that must change. I don't want to be old and fat and not able to walk because I can't support my weight. That frightens me. I drink GALLONS of soda. The bulk of it is Coke Zero, but still. This is something the must change. I have to find a job. This one thing is paramount. I HAVE to find a job. I am hopeful that the economy is getting better and that I will be able to find a job, but who knows. My SIL R was out of work for 2 years. That frightens me. Fortunately, she starts work on Monday. Very happy for her.

In the month of April, I would like to start making some of the changes that have to be made. I have a physical on April 11 with a full blood panel set of results waiting to be addressed and see just how much change is really needed. I'm sure the list will be long.

I am going to make the effort to drink more water and unsweetened tea than soda pop this month. I know it won't be perfect, but I am going to up my water intake this month. What is it? 28 days to make or break a habit...time will tell.

On a different note...Wednesday when I finally got to my knitting group, my wonderful friend N and her daughters S & L had decided to give me a birthday party. Complete with cupcakes, chocolate, yellow and my all time, level best favorite...red velvet with cream cheese icing! I was so thrilled that they think enough of me to do this.  Not only was there cupcakes...there were gifts!!

N and B, her husband, took a trip that in the grand scheme included a stop at Mitchell, NE and the

Brown Sheep facility!! I was so excited that she go to go and so incredibly jealous when she called while she was there.  I see a road trip in the future.

I had asked for 2 skeins of 

Brown Sheep's new lace weight yarn, which I might add is incredible.

I was very shocked when I was handed the bag containing the 2 skeins of lace weight in blue, my favorite color, and the bag of roving. When I asked what I owed her, she looked at me and smiled and said "Happy Birthday!"

I was so touched and tickled. She is a very good friend and I love her and her girls dearly.              

So far this morning has been pretty good. My SIL R has texted me to wish me a Happy Birthday. Of course D and S have wished me a Happy Birthday. I have even received a call from my step-mother wishing me a Happy Birthday. DS, some of our extended family, wished me Happy Birthday, so it's a good day so far. 

S just came and told me to check my email as I have a surprise waiting. So yes, good day so far. 

I think that I am going to lay down and take a nap. I'm going to knit and spin with no guilt today for the things that I should be doing. I may even take a lllooonnnnggggg hot shower instead of the normally utilitarian shower of 5 -10 minutes I usually do...

Who knows...maybe I will even embrace being 40...

I can't believe that I am turning 40!

I don't remember putting in the application to become an adult...I REALLY don't remember ever asking to turn 40, which I will on Friday. Someone stop the bus, I missed my stop!

I guess that I am a bit of an odd duck. I find that the birthday's that end with either a "5" or a "0" are really hard for me. It's really strange. I have always been like that. 15 was hard, 20 sucked, 25 was awful...30 I still haven't recovered from...there is a hell of a story behind 30, 35 I cried all week...and now 40...Good Lord.

My very dear friend N asked me the other day how I felt about turning 40...I thought it was an excellent question...Hmmmm...how do I feel turning 40???

I have to say that in the grand scheme of things that I never thought that at 40 I would be unemployed, starting basically over, 300 lbs...aka...morbidly obese, nor did I expect to have a grandchild on the way. I didn't expect to be as blue as I am these days...I am sure that I can pinpoint a few reasons that I am blue, but hey, knowing I am blue is half the battle. I didn't expect at 40 to acquire a weight related injury...the so called "heal spur" is not really a heal spur...it is a pain caused by lack of arch support and being overweight...especially in women. At 40 I didn't expect to have to pluck everyday because of the lack of estrogen or the presence of testosterone. I really didn't expect my attitude to be as tainted and bad as it is at this very moment in time. To name just a few.

On the flip side of this grand scheme of things...I'm gonna be a Nana!! Pretty cool stuff. Timing could definitely been better, but mommy and baby are both good. R, my oldest daughter, for the first time in a very, very long time...is ok. She tells me that for the first time in a very long time she can just breath...That fact alone makes all other things pail in comparison. There were many days that I really, really worried that she would do something awful. On being unemployed...well, the job market sucks...no one is calling for interviews...I am giving thought to the fact that maybe I should take this time to go back to school. On being morbidly obese...well, I must have enough to have food in the house or I wouldn't be 300 lbs...the weight related injury...yeah...God's way of saying maybe it's time I do something different...Got the message. My bad attitude and being blue...well, hopefully these will pass...of course menopause lasts how long???

I find that I am very restless these days and crave change. Which for me is really strange as I hate change and surprises. April Fool baby here...yes, that's right...my birthday is April 1. I had sick friends in high school too...

There are days that I feel really weary and old, but for the most part I think blue sums it up.

I have been very introverted this week. Thinking about things and things that I would like to change. There has to be some change in my life or I am going to snap...I just have to figure out what the changes are going to be.

Now...on a lighter note...

I was very excited to receive an email from Leslie the author of the wonderful blog "A Friend to Knit With" asking if I would like a drop spindle...Yes, yes I would!! It came yesterday! What a wonderful way to start the week before my birthday than with a gift!!

I started to pre-draft the roving when it dawned on me that I needed to take a picture of it. I have to say that I found getting started with it a lot easier than I expected to. I think it is really very cool to be able to create yarn while watching TV or talking without being tied to a wheel. Mind you I love my wheel, but I will definitely be using this drop spindle a lot. I can see adding more drop spindles to create a new obsession...I mean collection. The drop spindle also seems to interest my daughter S. Who knows? We may have a spinner out of her yet?!

There has been knitting around the home front. I mentioned above that I am going to be a Nana...and every good knitting Nana has to knit. I found this lovely pattern, "Baby Blanket Latvian Garden". I think that this is a beautiful blanket.  So, I looked through the projects, found one that was done in Knit Picks Palette yarn and well...the crazy ensued. Hence my naming Josiah's blanket "Crazy Train". 

 Rachel has a really interesting sense of color and really doesn't want to have "tradition" baby colored things.  Well, I can truly understand that. There is only so much pastel green, yellow and blue a person can stand. So, when I originally asked her what color she would like her baby blanket she said yellow and orange...I have to say...these would not be my first choices, but it is her baby.

So, while I started a different blanket, I was cruising around Ravelry and found the Latvian pattern and ordered varying shades of oranges, she always liked green I love chocolate and blues...basically everyone is happy!!

Happily, Rachel was here when I received the package from Knit Picks and was very happy both with the color and the pattern!! SCORE for mom.


So far the pattern has been pretty easy and fun. So I hope to have it completed well before August when Josiah is supposed to make his debut...and hopefully I can finish Coming Home for Rachel too!

Gotta tend the dragons...TTFN!

I wish it was Wednesday

You ever find days when you feel incredibly lonely in a house full of people?

I really with it was Wednesday...then I could go knit with my friends...

Contemplation

It's really funny to sit here typing...I have been thinking about posting for several days now...such a slacker.

I have hit almost month 4 of unemployment...it still sucks ass. My quiet little world has somewhat turned upside down with the addition of 3 people, a dog and two fish...that's ok though. I love the additions, I always wanted a big family.

I turn 40 this year...yes, I know...women hit 40 everyday...buy why is it really hard to have the "0" and "5" birthdays? I mean, am I the only one that contemplates what milestones these are? Surely not...I can't be...can I?!

I have been really, really tired lately. I can't really figure it out, I'm not doing anything to get tired...then it dawned one me...

I am so blue...I have started to notice the tell-tale signs that it's happening...not wanting to dress, not wanting to shower...yes it's gross...not wanting to leave the house and yet wanting to fly apart because I need to get out of the house...rushing around at 3 pm to dress because D will be home soon...it's scary and in the same time...comforting...

I have hit the point that at least I recognize these things are happening...so I can get a handle on it...

I have started setting daily goals for myself...this seems to help. I have cleaned and purged my room...I planted roses and peonies...little things, but accomplishments just the same.

The stress I feel is incredible. I don't think that D realizes just how stressed I am about not having a job...I know he is stressed.

I need to just breathe...

It's really funny to me...the bluer I get, the more complicated things that I try to find to do. I have a big project that I am going to be starting next week. I have hopes that the "Crazy Pond"...at least that is what my friends are calling it...will help me shake the blues...more on the project next week.

I will also be posting some things in my life that I am going to try and change in the next few days...things are changing around here...let's hope that I have it in me to complete the trip...

Breakfast of Champions...or...I REALLY need a job

Bread Pudding with real maple syrup...does a body good! Besides, what is bread pudding but French toast with a better publicist? I mean really, bread, milk, eggs, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla...French toast or bread pudding.

It was very tasty and exactly what I needed. We have had major weather the last couple of weeks. I think a total of about 3 ft of snow in an area that we are really doing something to see about 3 inches of snow a year.  Almost 2 weeks of school missed...2 weeks of horrible cabin fever. I am SO ready for spring and  the coming of green!

I have been knitting on "Coming Home" aka Spanish Armada.  I am currently on row 78 of 159, ending chart 4 of 9 and currently, if my calculations are correct, at 368 stitches per round...I am having a ball with this pattern.

This is my 4th lace project and I think that this one is my favorite so far. It is going to be huge and it is going to be beautiful. I cannot wait to see how it turns out.

Of course, there has been other knitting...My friend N made a pair of Duffers and I thought that they were adorable. So, like any rational knitter...I cast on and knit a pair.

I got gauge, I used two strands of worsted weight yarn...then I felted them. Yeah...they are exactly 1/2 in too short...after felting and stretching them within an inch of their felted little life...You have to love the knitting gods...
I'm still looking for work, very depressing. My house is somewhat clean, a good thing...

I have decided that I am going to spin yarn for the Morning Surf Shawl. I am going to do it at least 2 times. The first yarn I am working on is in teal, green and purple. I will spin singles of each color and then ply them to get something of a variegated yarn...at least that is the plan.

For the second one I have an idea that I am working on. I would really like to Navajo ply variegated yarn for this shawl. No waste. The only problem is that I have only solid color roving...but...I have a plan...

TTFN...

How can it be February?

February 4...really?! Where did January go? I know I slept in there somewhere...but February?

January was a long, long trying month. I finished the now doily. That was good...I lost my job. That was really, really bad...Got a clean bill of health from my ob-gyn...that was good...except for the fact that I now have to have a diagnostic mammogram...not so good. Found out I am going to be a Nana...both good and bad. Happy to have a grand baby...could have been better timing.

With the baby come...BABY KNITS!!!! This could be a good thing...R is thinking about becoming an RN...this can be a good thing...Not getting married just because she's pregnant...that is definitely a GOOD thing!

I am going stir crazy...I don't like to not work. I am not at my best when I am not working. I feel less than worth anything...dumb I know, but it's how my head works...I was home with R for 12 years and while I loved being at home with her...I really like to work. I love the sense of having somewhere to go in the mornings.

I have discovered that while some things drive me absolutely bat poop crazy...I love to knit lace...I REALLY love to knit lace...the more complicated the better.
                                                                                

This is the "Spanish Armada". I have decided to call it "Coming Home". The sole reason that I am knitting this piece, other than the need to knit lace, is for my daughter R to have an heirloom piece to make the birth of her first child.

I hope that she will wrap her wee babe in it to come home. That will be up to here. Use it, save it, throw it away...it's up to her.

Well, 2011 is proving so far to be an ass kicker of a
year. I am somewhat scared of what else the year
will bring...but you know what they say...God hates a coward.

I would like to use this year to kind of pull my head out of my ass and try to fix a few things. I would like to get my head straight...it that is at all possible. I would like to start repairing my credit. I would like to start some kind of savings. I would like to work on my health. I would like to work on being more of who I am...That of course means that I have to figure out "Who" I am.

It dawned on me the other day that for the first time in my life I don't have a parent that I have to placate or keep happy. That there is the potential for just...being.

I would really like to eat more local, sustainable, organic when affordable and available and whole. I realize that most people say that, but I feel far to old to be as young as I am. I need a change, and the change is inside me. Not scenery or anything like that.

I just really need to get things straight...gotta tend the dragons...TTFN

Yearning For The Past

I find that there are times when I want to write...times it seems that I need to write...it seems that it helps me get things straight in my head...sometimes.

I made pancakes for my kids and me this morning...snow day...to do this I did the things that I always do...with one difference. Lately, I have been very lonesome for my grandmother.

I'm not going to get sappy and all kittens and flowers...we didn't have that kind of relationship. She had her family and a hard road, she had a child that was a cerbal palsy victim, she cared for him until she died. She also raised me...I came to her after her oldest child, my father, was out and going through his second divorce. Now think, 1972 and his SECOND divorce...

She grew up in the depression, she was use to making due, and did. She really didn't have the time or energy for an infant, but she did what needed done. For that I am greatful...

On Saturday I made pancakes, from scratch like she did, and instead of scrapping the left over batter into the trash, she would have not approved, I put a piece of plastic on the dish and put it in the fridge...I never saw her wash the container that she made pancake batter in...if she was running low on batter, she would just add an egg, some oil, a bit of sugar, a scoop of powdered milk, a small glass of water and self rising flour then mix it up and go on about making pancakes. That is what I did on Monday for S and I.

I pulled out the left over batter, it now had a bit of a sour-dough smell to it, added an egg, some oil, some sugar, vanilla, buttermilk, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt...mixed it up and made pancakes...When I bit into my pancakes, I could have been 5 again and in her kitchen...they were a taste of home and I cried. I miss her.

I miss having someone to call and talk to, though she didn't approve of my lifestyle and made it very known that she didn't. She often accused me of "being ashamed of my raising", which I am not. I always wondered why she didn't think wanting more out of life was a good thing. I wish that I could wake up and smell her house first thing in the morning...coffee, bacon and fried eggs, the tell tale smell of a very old cast iron skillet and just a hint of my granfather's cigarrette smoke...

Regardless of how we got along, which was not good at best, the comfort of knowing I could call her was a comfort...and I miss it. Painfully...

Funny how something as simple as pancakes could dredge up all of these emotions, but they did...She would have been the first person that I called when I got fired, she would have let me cry and then told me it was indeed my fault because I didn't do enough. Because of who my parents were, I could never do enough or do it well enough. I guess maybe she thought that if she could make me do enough, well enough, that her son dropping off his kid at her door would be null and void...I never quite made that point for her, and that always bothered me.

I often wonder what she would have thought about my knitting and quilting. She crocheted and could quilt, but didn't knit. I remember her making a couple of afghans and quilts, I made her a few afghans and quilts...I often wonder what happened to them when she died...

I remember that she didn't buy toys and there was really no reason to ask for "extras" there was not money for them...one thing that has always stuck in my head though...when I was about 12 or 13 I found a pattern for a sweater and told her that I wanted to make it. Never mind that I didn't know how to knit, I wanted to make this sweater...You could have knocked me over with a feather when she looked at the pattern and went to the yarn section of Wal-Mart and asked me what color did I want to make it in. 

Without hesitation she bought me a "Learn to Knit" book, knitting needles - aluminum 14" - and the yarn to make the biggest size sweater on the pattern...It took me almost a year, but I wore that sweater until it could not be worn. It was wonderful. Dark reds and burgandys...against my red hair...garish I'm sure...but I made the sweater and have made several since.

Enough with the maudlin side of things, it's a side effect of being out of work, being stress and worried and really needing to be hugged and held for a bit...

There has been knitting! I completed a piece of lace and it turned out really well. I am very happy with it. It's name is "Stor Lysedug" http://ravel.me/Angeliakay/4j6iy and I had a great time with it. I had orginially planned to give it to a girl that is pregnant, but she had the nerve to have a boy.

My friend N has graciously agreed to take it off my hands to use on her dining room table and that works for me. As long as it is loved and used I am really happy. Plus, I adore N. She is a dear friend.

To date this is the most complicated piece of lace I have made yet, so I am really happy. It took me about 4 months of somewhat dedicated knitting, I had to start over once. I used stitch markers between each repeat so it made fixing any mistakes a lot easier.  By looking at the pattern as one repeat at a time and not looking at the whole it made it seem easier to do. Not too over whelming. 

I am somewhat at a quandry as to what I want to knit right now...so many things bouncing around in my head and only so much one can get done...I also have a quilt bouncing around in my head that I may start...You can never have enough going on...

I am giving serious thought though to working on Tina http://ravel.me/Angeliakay/2huzw ...I started a pair of "Fetching" fingerless mitts to bridge the gap and have the first one almost done, so we shall see where I go next...

TTFN...gotta tend those damn dragons...