nice

way back in may i borrowed the knit 2 together book from the guild library. a woman named sylvia was volunteering at the library desk and admitted she wanted that book herself. i knew i only wanted the tie pattern and offered to bring the book to her when i was done.

handily, sylvia owns knitwerks and has a stall at the farmer's market. this morning, the wee monkey and i headed off to the market to return the book. sylvia was thrilled with the book and happily gave me a tour of the booth. i snapped up some alpaca on sale for $6.95 a skein that will make a lovely and soft scarf for the boy.

next to the till, sylvia strategically placed some rubber stitch markers. i'm sure that they are plumbing supplies or something but she smartly recognized their usefulness and voila! stitch markers. i made a comment about them and she tossed them in with my purchase just because i brought the book for her. and! she also gave me two ecualan samples.

nice.

ups and downs

july 9 has been imprinted on my brain for over a year now. i can't escape july 9 and my return to work. as i get closer and closer to july 9 and panic starts to set in, the less i can forget about july 9. it is there looming while it quietly eats away at me and at the time i have left at home with baby j.

this morning i clued in that july 9 is two and half weeks away. where the hell did june go? i'm not ready to go back to work!

i've been taking the wee monkey in to his daycare for little visits. we're working up to leaving him there on his own. the visits are going well. baby j is socialable and adapatable. this bodes well for him and the transition.

this morning i dropped him off for about an hour and a half while i zipped off to the mall.

i picked up a few things and thought that trying on jeans would be an excellent distraction. how can i worry about my child when i'm cramming my thighs into a pair of jeans? i grabbed about 6 pairs of jeans of various styles, lengths, and sizes and headed to the dressing room. clinton and stacy have taught me that i want a generous boot cut or straight leg jean and i know from experience that a little stretch is fine but a lot of stretch is bad.

one pair was not bad but not great. the other pairs were too big (!), too short in the waist, too stretchy. as i was walking out of the change room, the sales person (a full grown woman, not a cranky teen) asked if i had found what i was looking for. i asked for straight leg sans stretch. she happily pulled some different styles for me (fyi, the gap doesn't sell straight leg without stretch. why?), and even said, these ones stretch out a lot so you'll probably want to go down to a size 8.

hold that thought for a moment. a size 8.

i know it is just a number. and i know that really if they stretch out that much that they are not really an 8 but still. but still!

i had to dash to get baby j so i didn't stay to try on the size 8s but i'll probably go back. (he did fine, btw. didn't even notice i was gone.)

also, i'd like to ask what is up with all of the tops in the stores looking like maternity wear? the only people who could wear that look and not look pregnant are girls with no boobs and no body fat. everyone else is gonna look bigger than they are. and i did the maternity wear thing last year, i don't need to do it again. i was hoping to get some tops that are not t shirts but if these ruffly, blousey tops are the alternative, i'll stick with Ts.

ps. no knitting. i didn't get the tie done for father's day. i wrapped it up on the needles and gifted it anyway.

what the? or, steaming piles of crap

this afternoon i took my poky puppy out for a pee. we made it to the corner where jazz dutifully sniffed the hydrant before i nudged her back towards our house. ten feet away from the corner she took a leak.

behind me, a car pulled up to the intersection and i hear "...after your dog!" it took a second to register but i eventually realized she was yelling at me to pick up after jazz. i turned to look and sure enough she was glaring at me with great ferocity before pulling away.

i dumbly stood on the sidewalk with a plastic bag in my left hand staring after her car and thought, what the ...?

i tried to reason it out in my head while vehemently wishing i had been close enough to the corner to school that woman on two things 1) the pee stance of female dogs and 2) manners. obviously she knows nothing about dogs, especially female ones; the curved back poop hunch is way different from the straight back pee stance. what part of her brain made her scream at me from her car window over something she knows nothing about? i had a bag in my hand. i was more than ready to pick up any solid waste material exiting from my dog's bottom. hell, i have even scraped not so solid waste from the grass. once, after an unexpected dog dump, i asked a stranger across the street if i could have a plastic bag rather than run home for one. i pick up my dog's poop!

maybe that's why this rankles so much. i do pick up! i am a picker upper of the poop!

and another thing, in this neighbourhood, people pick up after their pets. it is not like you see steaming piles of crap on every other lawn. i can't remember the last time i came across some poor, neglected turds. feh! stupid people suck!

(sorry for all the poop talk)

sunday night dinners

sorry about the unexpected blog break. i'm not sure what happened. i can tell you didn't happen: knitting. i think it is a seasonal thing; i obviously need some summer knits. the tie is going along at a nice clip. i should spend some time on it this week if i want to finish it in time for sunday. i really really want to get back to the green (plum) gable and have that finished by the time i head back into work.

anyway, the boy and i have a tradition of eating nice sunday night dinners. it is our way of winding down the weekend and gearing up for the week ahead. we usually start planning our sunday night dinners some time on saturday. we spend time gathering ingredients and choosing the right wine. it is nice.

since the wee one was born, we tend to eat later after he is down for the night (we feel very french doing so. zill would be so proud.). in the summers we used to eat up on our rooftop patio/helicopter landing pad. alas, the patio privacy screen i put up fell down repeatedly last year. i need a more permanent solution. so, our temporary solution is setting up our bistro table on our teeny back porch, pouring some wine, lighting some candles, and chowing down on some good grub.