Etsy Revival

Remember when I launched my etsy shop and you nice readers bought some totebags? How awesome are you? And then it withered on the proverbial vine because I got all caught up in silly things like CHILDREN'S CHARITY and made about 46,000 quilts for my quilting group to give to the children's hospital for Christmas. Okay, maybe not 46,000, but still! I won! I made the most! Surely that was the spirit in which they were supposed to be lovingly crafted ...? Even the retina-burning Nascar themed one.

Ahem. Moving along!

I recently added some more stuff to my store - a couple beaded bookmarks, complete with horrendous photography (yeesh - flashbulb much?). I'll also be adding a couple baby quilts on there shortly; right now I just have a Thomas the Tank Engine one listed. I figure whatever quilts don't sell by Christmas I'll donate to the Children's Hospital (so I can WIN, er, experience the joy of giving again!).

You can find my shop here, or from the link on the side.

What won't be for sale: the farm and cow-themed quilt I was challenged to make from some donated fabric to our quilt group. If they didn't want cow quilts, they probably shouldn't have issued a challenge to make even more quilts this year for the kid's hospital. Or solicit fabric donors without a taste for animal husbandry.

Lemonade, Redux

Last week I got to give my good friend Sean and his wife a quilt for their new baby (these are the quilts I gave their old dusty twin sons, born a couple months after Bloomer). I also gave them a onesie that said "New!" on it, because I thought it was funny, and also they live on the equator now and it's never not humid and sticky, so it didn't matter what month it fits the baby. Anyway, now that they are safely on the other side of the planet again and I believe that he's finally shown it to his wife, here is the quilt!

To refresh: Sean is of Irish descent, so the center piece is a Celtic knot and the rest of the pattern is an Double Irish Chain. I believe their 3rd son will be named Gigantor, as he must grow into this quilt that turned out WAY bigger than I anticipated. Seriously, it takes up almost my whole couch. On the plus side, Sean tells me that his 3 year olds use the quilts I made them to built forts, so at least Son #3 won't have an inferiority complex about his fort as it will be the size of Ranikot (thank you, Wikipedia, for the answer to "world's largest fort"!)

Here's a close up of the center:

I got the pattern for the knot here, and blew it up to fit a center block of about 20". It was fusible appliqued, and the quilting was done around each piece of the knot. It looks really neat from the back, which I conveniently forgot to take a picture of before I gave it to him. Whoops.

To keep it a little fun and not completely sappy, see if you can figure out the mildly creepy black fabric:

Monster eyes! Sure to give the poor child nightmares for YEARS. The quilting in the rest of the body of the quilt is just a simple meandering pattern in gray. The back of the quilt is a gray fabric with a small dot and line pattern, called "Zen Sticks", I think. So at least if the boy freaks out about eyes on the walls and voices talking to him, they can flip the quilt over to the "zen" side.

Scenes From A Marriage: Feline Edition

So last night after we finally wrangled the children into bed Brief and I were sitting and watching TV. Zapper, as is her normal, was attempting to burrow her way into my armpit, still working off 6 years of jealously that my human kids got to actually be inside my womb for a while whereas she's been relegated to armpits and crooks of knees. She was in the beginning stages of settling down, investigating all articles of my clothing and the chair, and was obviously anticipating her now-nightly brushing which is sort of positively impacting her shedding-hairball-dandruff issues.

Me (to Zapper): Hey, quit sniffing my boob.

Brief: Well that's something I never thought I'd hear in my life.

Me (pushing Zapper's butt down so she'll sit): At least said by you.

Brief: No, I think I mean ever.

Me: Well, Bloomer's been pretty into sniffing things lately when she's being a cat. I think I've told her that at some point.

Brief: Huh.

Me (to Zapper, grabbing the cat brush): C'mon, let's get your ass dandruff under control.

Brief: And there's something else I never thought I'd hear.

Me: At least not to anyone but you.

Brief (puzzling through the logic of that statement): ...

The Eve of Auspicious Starts

I turn 35 tomorrow, and it's sort of weird to think that I'll finally be the age I've always felt I should be. Admittedly, I often feel 13 in that gawky, awkward horrible way most adolescents feel, but 35 has always felt like it would be "right". I had started boot camp 6 weeks ago to kick start a program of regular exercise to carry me through this year, but the results were mixed. Part of it is that the trainer we had was a little too laid back to be inspirational or motivational. Of the 18 sessions we had, I think I felt part of a team or motivated to do my best by him exactly once. Eh.

So, you know, doesn't look like that worked out as planned. But I hope to continue on the treadmill or bike riding outside since Brief and I are going to do a 5k in October. I'm not sure if we're running or walking or both since we're doing it with a group from the airport where he works, so that makes training a little dodgy. I'll aim for running it, knowing that I don't think I'll ever be the sort of person that would chose to run over any other activity.

On the other hand, I finally made a pie this morning after several failed attempts in the last 10 years. Yes, I used ready-made pie crusts (baby steps!), but I made the filling myself with some cherries I picked up on sale. Unrelated, one of the kids' teachers at school is doing a fundraiser for a mission trip and is selling 4 lbs of blueberries for $4. I put in an order for two bags, and will give one to my MIL. I'll probably resort to cobbler, since I just like those better - less anxiety on my part. But hey! I'll be 35, and finally made a damn good pie.

I often think of all the other things I think I can't do, and am wondering what other ones I should tackle during this momentous year:

1. Swim
2. Run a mile without stopping
3. Do a pull-up
4. Make a king-sized quilt
5. Make a garden
   

I already signed up for #4 when I offered to make a quilt for my parents, and it will be done by the end of October. I'd love to tackle #5, but we have some other yardwork sorts of things to tackle first before figuring out where to put such a thing. Also, I married into a family with 3 acres of land and a crapload of tomatoes. There's not a lot that we lack in fresh produce come harvest time, so I might just go for a really kick-butt herb garden. #2 is pretty doable if I just set my mind to it.

#3 is laughable, since I couldn't do it when I was 13 and significantly lighter. #1 will probably never happen, amd I'm okay with that. My lifestyle doesn't demand it as a requirement, and it would be great for the kids, but I think the best I can hope for is less anxiety when the kids are swimming.

Brief wants me to do #1 desperately, and also learn to fly a plane. Well, he'd rather I knew how to land a plane in case something happens while he's flying and I need to land it. I just can't muster the same excitement he has for planes and cars and motorcycles - they are modes of transportation for me, and not necessarily something I need to relish in while it's happening. I think perhaps I'm just too much of a "destination" person than an "enjoy the ride" sort of person.

Like Christmas on my Thigh

So Tuesday night when I got into bed I scratched absently at a bug bite on my thigh and thought, "Oh hey, that's itchy." And the immediate second thought was "itchyitchyitchyitchyitchyitchyitchyitchyitchyitchyitchy!" Fortunately, I feel asleep before I could claw into my skin and make it bleed. I did notice I had another bug bite on my calf, and another one up my leg alarmingly close to some delicate bits, but I questioned if I had been dry-humping misquitoes or something weird and then... zzzzzzz.

I woke up Wednesday and noticed that the Primary Itchy Bite (PIB) was a bit of an attention hog and had turned a 3 inch diameter of surrounding skin red and puffy. Awesome. Fortunately, the other two were not similarly affected (thank goodness for all that extra stretching in Boot Camp that enabled me to actually see it!), and I offered up a grateful prayer to the God of Weird Things On My Body I Don't Want To Show Other People. For the rest of the day, I slapped some Caladryl on the PIB, and some peroxide. Nothing seemed to have much of an effect, so mostly I tried not to scratch it. I took some Benadryl before I went to bed and hoped that would help control it.

And then when I woke up this morning and the PIB had obviously staged an overnight assault on the rest of my leg and grown to 6 inches in diameter, well, I became alarmed. And also curious- should I wear the longer shorts that would hide the spot, but possibly make it itch more from contact, or should I wear the normal shorts that would make it visible to others? I opted for the normal shorts, made an appointment with the doctor, and took to looking askance the PIB whenever the opportunity presented (note: this is a euphamisn for "staring at it during conference calls until I lost my train of thought").

When I got to the office, the first thing I noticed about the doctor was that she had a pen-like thing in her hand. My immediate thoughts were, "OMG A HUGE NEEDLE!" and then "Oh, maybe it's a pen light!". I didn't not, in fact, think she actually had a green marker in her hand that she'd use to draw a (green) around the PIB to mark how big it was. Because nothing says, "Move along! Nothing gross to see here!" like a giant green circle around a blotchy, swollen red patch on your thigh.

Basically, we don't know what it was that bit me, but I am on oral steroids and oral antibiotics, and have some topical steroid cream to put on it. While I was waiting for the prescription to be filled, I became paranoid about if people were staring at the green target on my leg, and attempted to stand such that it was masked by my other leg. Yes, this was actually as ridiculous looking as it sounds. And it made it itch. Not exactly the best way to avoid sticking out in at the pharmacy - balancing on one leg, scratching like mad at the other like I were trying to find the treasure buried under the green circle.

I go back tomorrow for a recheck of the Green Circle Of Doom, but in the mean time I am left to ponder if I should actually wash my leg, or if there should just be some rinse off action. And more importantly, which type of shorts I should wear.

Pool Party

All 3 of Brief's brothers have a pool, which makes us the poor relations with only a kiddie blow-up version. I will say, though, that at least we don't sit in it ourselves, in the middle of the driveway, talking loudly on the cordless house phone and smoking like several of our neighbors at our previous house did. That's how we could tell it was Saturday night in the old neighborhood.

Boxer has been bugging asking us about when we can go to Uncle B's house and swim in his pool, and we've told him that he needs to ask Uncle B himself when he sees him at family events. Sadly, Boxer is often distracted by the presence of... well, something shiny, I'm sure, and has never yet done so. As it turns out, we didn't need to turn our son into a stoodge to get an invite since Uncle B asked us over for a pool party on the 4th of July.

You can tell Boxer wasn't at all excited to get in the water.

As it turns out, two weeks of swim camp actually produced more than a case of swimmer's ear. We discovered he can now tread water. And sort of swim.

I love how when I showed this picture to Brief he swore he wasn't pushing her under water.

Which is funny because in this one, he's in the tube and she's mostly submerged.

Hmm.

Uncle B also has a grandson who's about to turn a year old. This baby is the Mellowest Baby Ever. Now, normally, I don't fawn over other people's babies - I've never been a "kid" person, even when I was one myself. But Baby H, our grand-nephew, just sits and smiles all the time. At dinner time he gave some happy squawks. He had been up for 4 hours, and instead of hollering about being tired, he just kept blinking a lot. Seriously, kid. You need to speak up for yourself, especially in this family.

He's not been around a lot of other kids, so he just kept goggling at Boxer and Bloomer, who were very good with him (even when they were monopolizing his toys). We finagled another invite to the pool in August under the guise of helping "socialize" Baby H to other kids. Sweet!

And So 4th.

Sometimes the best parts of holidays are the part where the everyday becomes extraordinary. Or just really, really, entertaining. For example, on the 4th we did our usual trek to the warehouse club in the morning, and then packed up 4 containers of watermelon and 2 containers of grapes and took off to the airport where Brief works for their cookout.

I'm going to be the sort of lazy aviator that Brief loves to hate and tell you the kids are standing in front of this plane because it's blue. I have no idea what sort of airplane it is. But if he asks, I'm totally telling him the kids picked it out because the orange one clashed with their outfits.

Most of the people at the airport know me and the kids, but I have to confess that it's not quite a two way street. I recognize the faces and say hello, but mostly retreat to blowing bubbles with Bloomer, or seeking out whatever dogs have been brought to the party. Boxer, of course, bee-lined for the guy that took him up in the helicopter last year. I pried him off the nice man's leg and lured him away with those popper thingies- I think they are gunpowder wrapped in paper and you throw them on the ground and they make a popping sound. Boxer was way impressed.

The best part of the airport picnic happened behind the scenes, and OF COURSE it's a poop story. Bloomer had been going in the bathroom (there is one for men and one for women - a single toilet in each) saying she had to go potty. She was all talk and no action about 3 times, and I'm sure it was amusing to all the men she would flounce by in her foofy dress, waving and smiling. Finally, on the fourth time in (she had happened to be in the men's room this time, as she was alternating between the two), I asked if she wanted me to leave. Her eyes lit up and she nodded.

As I left, I could hear her, um, "getting down to business". And then I heard her singing Jingle Bells. And then the two sounds joined in a concert of pure joy, rising in level and clearly audible outside the immediate area. A woman wandered back to the bathroom area, and I smiled and nodded and said, "She doesn't really like an audience." She had obviously witnessed the Bloomer Parade of earlier, and nodded knowingly and headed to the ladies room. At this time, about 5 minutes has passed and I'm still hanging around outside the men's room, listening to what I now think is Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

I'm straining to hear her tell me she's done, because the one time I opened the door to check on her she gave some sort of otherworldly shriek and told me she wasn't done. Alrighty! Back to my post. Guarding the men's room door. Listening to the 3-year-old version of elevator music. Awesome.

At this point I notice people are actually leaning in to hear what's going on back in the bathroom area. Men who were previously focused on consuming barbeque or trading stories of fabled take-offs or landings in crazy weather are now glancing back at me, either suspicious of my attachment to the men's room or intrigued to hear what's next on the playlist.

After another couple minutes I finally hear the melodious "I'm dooo-ooone!" I'm pleased to note that she hasn't unrolled all of the toilet paper on the roll (as has happened in the past), and we get her put back together despite the foofy dress that is a tad high maintenance in the erroneous tuckage department. As we leave to head back out to the front porch where Brief and Boxer were, she does her smile and wave routine, grabbing a grape off the table as we walk by. I hear the soft tones of "Jingle Bells" from the corner.