Nervousness

I leave for Germany tomorrow morning! I have an idea for a book that I’m very excited about, tons of things to research, one backpack of clothes, and some prescription-strength motion sickness medicine.

I should be good to go!

I will miss my boys, though.

I need to stop eating. All of my nerves are working themselves out with endless snacking.

To my new neighbors…

A few months ago, the house beside us was sold to a nice young man intent on renovating and flipping it. He made some nice upgrades, brought the decor up-to-date, and put up the “for sale” sign. When it didn’t sale immediately, he (or perhaps his friend, we’re iffy on that) moved in.

Then came the “price reduced” sign.

It is a gorgeous house in a family-friendly neighborhood, next door to one of the best elementary schools in town, yet still it doesn’t sell.

Some possible reasons for this:

• the nightly gathering of 20-somethings on the front porch resembles a frat party. Potential buyers driving by see that and wonder what has been done inside the house. It does not fit the family-esque tone of the rest of the neighborhood.
• the parking lot filled with cigarette butts is a turn off. I would wonder how the inside of the house smelled.
• the cooler and plastic furniture on the front porch. Classy. Although it does look better now that the empty beer can has been removed. I mentioned that to Dave and he admitted that he couldn’t take the beer can any longer and removed it himself.
• claiming the house is 3-bedrooms. It is really a 2-bedroom house with a large common area upstairs. By calling it a 2-bedroom, you are disappointing people who really need the third bedroom and weeding out customers looking to downsize to a 2-bedroom.

Big Weekend

We trekked back South to the Mountain State for the long weekend. Alex played “bughouse chess” with his dad, uncle and paternal grandpa (above) and hung out in the shop with Danny and his maternal grandpa (below). The boys don’t get to see my parents very often.

Another chess action shot:

This is my grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s and inspired my essay in Knitting Through It. She knew who I was and was very excited to have her picture taken.

On the way home, we took a scenic train ride in southern Ohio. Dave was very excited to see this so I snapped it. I don’t know what it is. It has something to do with coke.

The train ride included a layover at a restored frontier town, where the local nature center had a hands-on snake demonstration.

Dave and I cheese on the train. Yes, I wear snap-on sunglasses. Contacts are not my friends and I opt for the path of least resistance over fashion.

Picking Up the Pieces of my Knitting

One of my goals for this summer is to become proficient at knit weaving. I incorporated a small knit weaving motif into Danny’s afghan with success. David’s will be a sampler of several different patterns. It is a slow but fascinating process and I’m learning a lot — especially about correcting my mistakes.

So, for posterity, how to pick up dropped stitches on a 3-over, 1-under knit weaving pattern.

 

I can’t resist a book meme

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (some, not all)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Take me out to the ballgame!

Yesterday we watched the local minor league team lose after two extra innings before we spent the night camping out in the outfield. I was shocked at how much fun a baseball game could be! I was really expecting to be bored and have to entertain bored children.

We have to go back. The organizers created a nice event for the boys and families. There were fireworks after the game and a movie to help the boys wind down and keep them occupied while their parents set up the tents. Despite the threat of thunderstorms, the weather was perfect. Breakfast this morning was protein-laden (good after all the ballpark treats) and served promptly. We were back home before ten — tired but happy.

One thing I really love about Scouts is that it makes it easy for us to enjoy activities that we just would never get off our duffs to organize if left to our own devices.

 

Book Wow

I’m reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and I am completely blown away.

Clothes

I’m in a feminine mood lately and just want to wear skirts and dresses — not particularly practical when chasing after Danny, but still the pull is there.

My boys are back

Dave and Al are savely back from scout camp. Alex seems older somehow.

We’re all camping out this weekend, weather permitting, which should be a blast. Almost the entire pack is going.

I like camping. I like being disconnected from the phone, television, and computer. I like waking up early and running through the woods. I like the night sounds and huddling together in the tent. I like the stickiness and smells. I like the boys having to occupy themselves with only sticks and time.

Last night, I realized that if life is cyclical than I’m just a young, fledgling soul. There is so little wisdom in me. I’m like Danny, wondering at the world, marveling in it, but never really understanding anything.

Afghans

Another day of Dan and me on our own. Yesterday, we walked into town to get baking supplies and drinks at the corner grocery, then sat at the green space and watched traffic for a while before coming home and making angel food cake. “Cars,” popcorn, and lots of cake before bedtime — Dan doesn’t miss his brother at all. I think he likes being the one and only. We’re having fun.

I’m machine knitting an afghan for Alex and have almost completed the body. It’s crazy — random-sized blocks of his favorite colors. It’s put together, but I need to come up with a good way to even up the one remaining rough edge, cast off the live stitches (I’m thinking e-wrap) and crochet on a plain black border. It is huge, so the border will take some time.

I also want to start on Danny’s afghan. The plan is to use something more challenging than stockinet. I’m thinking tuck. Maybe we’ll go pick out colors today.