Let's Catch Up

I'm sitting here with you and a cup of coffee, wrapped up in a blanket (because our house is COLD in the morning) and wearing my husband's slippers (because our kitchen floor has concrete underneath and is cold even in the summer). (Yesterday Michael said, "Someday we get your OWN slippers, Mama." Probably a good idea.) The kids are still asleep (!!). A lot has happened that I've been meaning to tell you about, so let's start with November. :)

Happy Dominic took awhile to get over the shock that there was a cake on his tray.

Gregory took it more in stride. Of course he got cake!

Usually he's the cleaner eater ... 

The twins had a birthday. It's hard to believe they're 14 months old ... they still seem like such babies to me. (As opposed to Michael, whom I firmly believed was on the verge of toddler-hood at this age.) We had a small party--just grandparents and godparents--and they obligingly wore their birthday crowns for about five seconds before diving face-first into cake.

This guy had a birthday too. 30 years old! November was a big month for us. :)

I would've loved to throw him a surprise party, but he would've killed me. But I did get to surprise him in other ways and throw him a party, so it worked out nicely. Several days before his birthday I went out to a "craft night" ... and came home with his best friend from high school who had flown in from across the country. His face was the best.

And because Keith has fond memories of story-tellers around the bonfire at a friend's house when he was a teenager, I also hired a story-teller who came dressed in a hat and cloak to his party as another surprise. I made a huge pot of chili, we had gourmet s'mores over the firepit (which we bought for the occasion and found out the hard way is not safe to use on our deck ... part of it melted!!), and a friend brought a bottle of champagne. There were tons of kids, and the weather was warm enough to be outside.

The other big thing that happened in November? Our bathrooms fell apart. One morning as I showered the soap rack just sort of ... fell off the wall. And then less than a week later the same thing happened with some tiles in the other bathroom. As I type this post I am waiting for the guy to arrive and install a new facet in the shower ... then hopefully tomorrow they'll start putting in the new tile. It will be nice to have this shower back; the one downstairs is functional but pretty funky.


This post is getting long and the kids are awake, so let's catch up on December another time. :)

Twelfth Day

Good morning!

I haven't written in this space for almost a month. That was not intentional, but looking back I think it was a bit inevitable. Sickness, out-of-town company, the Christmas season, and this past weekend more sickness ... I guess I needed a time of rest. (More in my head than any place else ... anyone else get "blog guilt" when they aren't posting like they "should" be? Just me and my writerly paranoia?)

Today Keith starts a new job. The commute is further than his last and he had to leave the house at 7am. And so right now I have the house to myself. Everyone is still sleeping; the lights are glowing on the Christmas tree; the light outside my window has that fresh, still quality that only morning light can have. (Well, it looks still from the window. I don't think it actually is outside. Brrr.)

Maybe this will be my new writing time.

This past year has been hard on many different levels. There has been so much goodness in it, but it has been hard. A year of surviving. I've learned a lot in and through survival mode (and the periods of something easier that were sprinkled throughout it), but I'm ready for something more. I want this to be a year of growth. Of fruitfulness.

I'm not exactly sure what that looks like, yet. One thing I've learned in 2014 is that when you aim for "growth" or "holiness" or "virtue" or even something a bit more specific like "patience" as an abstract goal, with only your own willpower and vague ideas of what that means to move you forward, you're not going to get very far before falling flat on your face (and then despairing that growth is ever possible because you're just a horrible human being and whyyyyy ... or is that another "just me" thing? ;) ).

Christmas Baby!

Anyway.

Tomorrow is Epiphany. I think this evening I will make a cake--not a King Cake/Galette des Rois, but a sacher torte, because that's what I want to try my hand at. :) Tomorrow we will have a friend over for dinner for cake and mulled wine and (possibly, if I get ambitious) carnitas. Christmas has been beautiful, but I am definitely ready to move into ordinary time. To reestablish a daily rhythm.

And maybe early writing mornings will be a part of that rhythm.

Christmas Animals

I am now officially knitting like mad to get everything done by Christmas.

Well, and sewing. The twins are getting a (knit) stuffed animal and a (sewn) cushion apiece. Gregory is getting a cute little dragon, which is all done but the face and the ears and wings.

And maybe horns for the head? I don't know. Right now I'm thinking no horns. (And yes, the arms are crooked. I didn't even notice until I took this picture, grrr. The angle makes it look worse than it is, but I will have to see what I can do about that.) 

And Dominic is getting a polar bear.

Except the face shape turned out a little pointy. Keith and I were laughing last night about how it looked like I was knitting an albino badger. I may undo the grafting and see if I can plump the nose up a bit more with stuffing. 

After that knitting is all done, I may turn back to Christmas stockings. We'll see!

Reading: I zipped through Leviathan and the sequel, Behemoth, and the last book (Goliath) is waiting on my couch. But I've put it on hold while I read Lavinia by Ursula LeGuin, which I am reading with some other lovely ladies who are part of the St. Greg's Pittsburgh Pocket. 

After my crafting has slowed down I am really hoping to post more often here. Life happens and I meant to write about it and then it just keeps moving. Which is a good thing, the moving! But not the not-writing. I need to write. 

Linking up with Ginny's Yarn Along! 

Finished Stocking ... and Steampunk!

Just a quick picture of Michael's finished stocking. It needs to be blocked and then I'll add his name.

Picked up these books from the library today after reading the first on the Kindle. Steampunk WWI alternative history with zepplins and flying whales. Good stuff!

Hoping to start some gift-crafting tonight!

Linking up with Ginny's yarn along.

Stockings

I don't think I'm going to finish stockings for all of our family members by Christmas. Right now I'm aiming for two--it seems a reasonable goal and takes into account other Christmas crafting I want to accomplish. Maybe three since there are three kiddos!

I hit a wall with Acedia & me and turned instead to A Mother's Rule of Life . I can't seem to muster enough focus for non-narrative books right now. It's been very busy around here--in a good way! We've had many birthdays and tomorrow, of course, is Thanksgiving. The snow arrived just in time ... I love snow on Thanksgiving. :)

I have fond memories of it snowing on Thanksgiving when my cousins were visiting, and we went outside and ran around barefoot in it. Because we liked to live on the wild side, you know. ;) 

Michael and I celebrated with some hot cocoa. 

He had a great chocolate goatee afterwards. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Linking up with Ginny's yarn along.

More Stripes!

My blogging companion this afternoon. Gregory thinks he only needs one nap a day now. Yikes. He's pretty happy in that box as I type this. :)

A couple more stripes and I will finish the first sock up. It's coming along a bit more slowly than before. The past two weeks have been just ... kind of crazy. It seems to be all-cranky-all-the-time around here these days! There has been more than one evening when Keith's come home and I've just sort of given up on making dinner. Dominic was sick AND teething, so hopefully that's past!

Still reading Acedia & Me. Parts are narrative memoir, parts are a more intellectual discussion/exploration of acedia. I fly through the narrative parts because that's how I read; with the other chapters I feel the need to slow down more and let it sink in.

A few weeks ago I bought a yarn cupboard from Target. (My yarn is still in the freezer though.) It's not moth-proof, but it is better than open storage. Right now my knitting books and paraphernalia are in there, along with the box of yarn I'm using for my sock. It hasn't been eaten yet. (I did buy moth traps that arrived just today, and will be setting them out this evening.)

(Sometime in the next few weeks I'm going to move that changing table out of the living room. I moved the bag of poopy diapers out of the frame for this picture. You're welcome. ;) )

I'm thinking eventually I will store yarn in ziplocs in the cupboard. It will still be colorful but a little more safe.

Linking up with Ginny's yarn along.

How many battles make a war?

I know you were all dying to hear an update on the moth situation, right? Or maybe just assuming there was no update because I killed all the buggers?

There is, sadly, an update.

First of all, the downstairs freezer still looks like this.

So it's a really good thing we have an extra freezer downstairs. There are also shawls and sweaters shoved into the freezer upstairs, not to mention all the sweaters that went into my mother's chest freezer.


Last month I laundered EVERYTHING in our closet, took all the coats and suits to the drycleaners, scrubbed the HECK out of our closet with Pinesol, and moved the bookshelf that had my yarn and scrubbed the heck out of that whole area. I vacuumed our rugs every day for a few weeks. And I felt okay, because I'd done everything that I could reasonably do.

And then I found a wool cardigan in the bottom of another closet, complete with holes and moth poop.

Deep breaths. It looked like old damage. No larvae or moths or pupae to be seen. Scrub the closet. Wash all the things. Okay. Deep breaths.

Well, I had the vacuum out, so let's clear the dust bunny out of the twins' closet. Which has no wool. Just some shoes, some bins of baby clothes, some duffel bags on the floor.

Except look ... an old forgotten glove on the floor next to the duffel bags.

Freak out. Throw away the glove. Pull out the duffel bags. Find a LIVING MOTH running away from me! VACUUM IT TO DEATH. Scrub! Wash! PANIC! And while we're at it let's throw ALL THE TOWELS AND SHEETS from the linen closet in the washing machine and dump the rest of the Pinesol in there and banish the baby-towel basket to the deck for two weeks!

Because the last time I talked myself out of overreacting apparently I missed the moths.

That was two weeks ago.

Today, I found this.

A fingerless glove that was waiting for its missing mate in a bucket of odds and ends. The little white sandy stuff is either eggs or poop, and the whitish cylinder is either an old pupae or casing. There was a moth living at the bottom of the bucket.

Blargh.

Whenever enough time passes that I feel safe, perhaps up to tackling the yarn in the freezer, I find another place the moths have landed. The hard part is not knowing whether it's new or was simply there all along.