Are You Ready?

I am anxious to see how tonight will go after taking last month off. We are going out the the LEAF grounds for a little shindig tonight, so I probably won't be home all evening to answer questions. I thought that I'd do a little sum up of how this thing works for those who won't get any answers via email after I am gone for the evening.

Here goes:

On the first of each month I open for a limited number of custom orders. It used to take me all day to fill my list, but now you crazies (I say that in the most loving and appreciative way) have started staying up until midnight to try to be first in line. This has turned my monthly customs list into kind of a crazy midnight emailing free for all. I always sell out right at midnight (EST) taking as many orders as I think I can handle in that month and put whoever is left on a waiting list. I have yet to make it to anyone on the waiting list, though. Longies usually run from $68-80 and shorties $48-60, the higher end being XL sizing and custom designs, which obviously take a bit more time. You can use the info@crankypantshome.com email, or some of you have gotten my personal email, which I won't post here, but that works too. They both go to the same place. I am going to try to stay up and send out all of the custom list notices before going to sleep, but I have a designated driver and don't have to wake up in the morning so I'm not promising anything! If you do get a slot, you'll have 3 days to give me your design, measurements ans shipping preference so I can send you an invoice. After that, you have 3 days to pay the invoice to secure your place on the list. After 3 days, your spot will go to someone on the waiting list, unless we have made another arrangement. I know that sounds harsh but I have had trouble in the past with people taking weeks and weeks to come up with a design and people not following through with payment which leads to a wasted spot. Oh, and I don't do ruffles, lol. Nothing against them, they just aren't my thing.

I think that is everything. I am going to go get ready and head out. If any of you experienced Crankypants experts see any newbs asking questions on the boards I'd appreciated if you'd post this link or give them the run down since I won't be able to. Or, I suppose, you can tell them you know nothing in hopes of thinning out the competition. But would you feel good about yourself in the morning?

A Hard Raaaaiiiiiiin...

It has been all thundery and gloomy here for an hour or so and I can't wait for the sky to open up and just pour rain on us (and our tomato plants). I hope it isn't one of those all bark and no bite afternoons. Grey and thunder filled skies with no rain is just so unsatisfying.

I finished Shannon's striped monster redux and it will be going in the mail this afternoon.



Can you tell I am obsessed with PhotoShopping the backgrounds out of things?

I want to do a big post with some customer pictures that I have gotten over the last few months, but I don't have time right now. I am trying to prepare myself for the beginning of this month's madness tomorrow. I have some really cute ones, too. And if YOU have a picture of your wee beastie in some Crankypants, send 'em on! I am redoing the site sometime before the holidays and I'd love to use some customer pictures.

It seems like there were a bunch of things that I wanted to write about but I am so lame that they have all slipped right out of my head.

OH! Speaking of customer input... the theme for the Fall FEAST stocking is all things literary. I picked it, yay me! I have some ideas floating around, but I wanted to open it up to you guys, too. If anyone has any lunimary literary longies ideas, let me know. Harry Potter and Pippi Longstockings are in the works...

Hyena Cart

Phew! The preview is finally up. There are 2 auctions (one pre- and one post- midnight craziness), a regular custom slot, some Pirates Booty Wash and a bunch of super cute tees that Jess from Quilt Baby made just for Crankypants. WooHoo!

Also, I was excited to see that Cool Mom Picks discovered and did her daily feature on Hyena Cart today. How cool is that?

Not much else is going on here. I made some kind of crazy sizing mistake on poor, patient Shannon's multi-striped monster booty longies so I am in a super rush to finish a replacement pair and get them in the mail Monday morning. I am about 1/3 down the first leg. Wish me luck!

Picture Pages, Picture Pages...

...man, do you remember Picture Pages with Bill Cosby? That little pen thing was my favorite thing in the world at one point. I am going to have that little jingle in my head all day.

Okay, Blogger is officially chapping my hide. Every time I upload pictures I get html (which might as well be Vulcan or something) and not a view of the actual picture I uploaded. It makes it much more difficult to organize and label everything. I am going to have to open a preview in another window and figure it out that way. Bah.

First things first, here are Mandy's rainbow Jolly Roger longies, which went out in the mail today:



Jess was kind enough to let me borrow her baby again so I could take some shots of the classic monster booty longies:




While I was in Ct I also started a big ole batch of monster bags. I finished the last one this morning. Here they are:












Let me know what you think! And make sure you enter my contest a few posts back to win one of them.

I will have a bunch of other pictures tomorrow as I am hoping to get my Hyena Cart preview up by the end of the day. We'll see if that actually happens. For now I have to go to bed. How on Earth did it get to be 12:27AM anyway? Damn you, Flickr!!!

New Auction For The Professor

Some of you might remember the auction that I participated in with The Fiber Arts Avengers last year for a little boy, Nat (aka "The Professor" because of his inquisitive spirit) who was fighting brain cancer at age 3. It was a great success and it was so nice to take action (however small) in the face of such powerlessness. Shortly after the auction, Nat lost his battle with cancer. He was almost the exact same age as Henry at the time. A year later, Nat's family is faced with trying to pay his final expenses. Once again, The Fiber Arts Avengers have put together an auction for the family. Being in and out of town all month I couldn't participate this time around, but I would looooove for everyone to go and check it out. There are tons of cool things over there, including some pretty amazing hand dyed yarn that I am going for so hands off! No, no, no, I kid. Bid high and buy as many raffle tickets as you can. So many times people get support in the midst of the trauma and are then forgotten and left to pick up the pieces alone. Let's not let that happen this time, guys. It isn't just about money (though that is nice, too) it is about letting this family know that people are still thinking about them and still thinking about Nat.

Fiber Arts Avengers

Crankypants Stuff Later

Let me start off by saying that I have Mandy's rainbow Jolly Rogers all done and ready to mail out tomorrow. I am finishing up a bunch of monster bags that I need to photograph as well, so I will post pictures of all that jazz tomorrow.

Second, a bit about the subscribe button. In order to use it you need to use a blog organizer site. I use Bloglines. It is really easy to set up and use and it makes checking my 17 blogs I read daily mush easier because it shows you all at once who has updated instead of checking each individual site. Check it out.

I am so excited to introduce you to a couple of new monster-y friends of mine. They were made just for me by my most favorite monster maker Voz, from Fishcakes . I am planning to make a whole lot of neat gear with these guys so keep an eye out.



This is Fancypants. She is the girly girl of the monster world, but don't let her pink and purple get up and tiara fool you. I have seen her change a tire, reprogram the computer and make Hulk hogan cry- all without wrinkling her tutu.



This dapper fellow is Smartypants. He can often be spotted cleaning his glasses or alphabetizing his massive monster library. He also has an extensive collection of rare vinyl 33s.

They are patiently awaiting the arrival of their little brother Crankypants. He should be along shortly.

Since I am so excited about these guys joining the team I am going to run a little contest. Leave me a comment and complete the sentence "Fancypants loves..." or "Smartypants loves...". You can help construct their personalities. Try to think about it a minute and make sure it fits. It'll be fun! At the end of a week I'll pick a winner who will get one of my new monster bags I've been posting pictures of lately. Come play!

Hoooooooome!

Alright so we are finally home and I have all 75876 pictures uploaded to the computer and ready to post. Here goes...

Oh poop. When I upload to Blogger I can only see the gobbldeegook coding stuff and not the actual picture. I was going to try to organize them in order and whatnot but if I can't see the picture that won't really work, will it? I guess a blob o' pictures will have to do and I'll make a separate post about Crankypants stuff later.

Okay.

I think I (okay, okay, Kirstin did it) fixed the problem with the blog feed, so try it again and see if it works. I use Bloglines to organize the blogs I subscribe to, but I'm sure there are other ways to do it, too. Actually, I don't know if it's fixed. I hate computers. I would rather write everything out by hand and send it to each of you individually by courier pigeon. But then I wouldn't have time to knit. Ah well. I'll be over here crossing my fingers and hopefully someone will give me a thumbs up soon. I can't even really say why I want this subscribing thing to work so badly. I only started subscribing to blogs myself last week and I got along just fine. Maybe this is how Kyle feels when he sees a new video game or piece of camping equipment that he all of a sudden will absolutely die without.

Kyle, if you read this, no this doesn't mean you will ever be able to talk me into getting the PS3 so don't even think about it.

*yaaaaaaawn*

The guys are all playing Tiger Woods golf on the Wii. I can't imagine anything more boring than that. Except maybe watching them do it. Kirstin is trying to shush and pat baby Sam back to sleep. Poor babe. Poor mama. Teething is no fun for anyone.

I was hoping that I would be able to post a bunch of pictures from our trip thus far: The Boston Cchildren's Museaum, Boston Harbor, blueberry picking in Glastonury and many "New England-y" shots for my friend Melissa who is recently enamoured with the idea of the Northeast. but alas, my Papa's photo software was not being cooperative last night and I don't have the heart to go through it all again on my brother's Mac.

Today we woke up bright and early and hopped in the car to make the 4 hour drive to my brother and sister-in-law's house in Burlington, VT. We got here just in time for both boys to go down for a nap. At the same time. And angels sung from on high at the miracle that it was. We had an hour and change to visit before they woke up and it was tiem to entertain once again. We walked on down to a nearby park and took turns making our hair go all static crazy on the twirly slide. After we had our fill of that, we walked downtown for dinner at a local Irish pub called Ri Ra. Then back home to hang out and chat a bit before putting the boys to bed. And now I'm ready for bed, too.

OOOOH! I almost forgot! Up in the top left hand corner of this blog I tried to make a little button you can click to subscribe to it. I have the computer skills of a 6 year old rhesus monkey, so will someone please drop me a comment and let me know if it works? I don't know if there is anyone out there besides my mother who would really feel the need to subscribe, but I thought I'd give the option just in case.

Sweet dreams...

Here!

After a long day of travelling yesterday we are all in CT safe and sound. I spent the whole trip rereading the last Harry Potter so that I am prepared to read the next one on the way home. Henry is in the kitchen with Memere telling her all about the differences between the "good frog" and "bad frog" on the Rice Krispies box. I think he woke up already talking. Memere is loving it, of course.
I got myself a tiny treat yesterday that will be waiting for me on my doorstep when I get home. A set of fancypants dangle free stitch markers from Hide and Sheep on Etsy.

I can't wait to use them. They look so pretty. Now if someone could figure out a way to do a fancy and pretty split ring marker I would love them for ever and ever. I don't know how you'd do it, though.

Today we are taking a family field trip to Boston. We are going to take Henry to the Boston Children's Museum and then poke around a bit. Kyle has never been before, so we'll do Quincey Market/ Fanieul Hall and some of the other touristy stuff. Kyle wants to go to the harbor and look at all the boats and things. When Henry and I woke up and came downstairs I caught my mom on the laptop with a "Boston yarn store" Google search open. Gotta love my mom.

And now it is time to rescue her from Henry, who still has her trapped at the kitchen table telling her all about every random little thing that pops into his head...

Packin' and Repackin'

I am almost all packed up and ready for our early trip to Ct tomorrow morn. Our friend Tommy is going to pick us up at 7 to go grab some coffee and a bagel and drop us off at the airport. I am so excited! Henry can't wait either. He was a total spazmatron as I was trying to wrestle him down to bed. I had to sing Sweet Baby James aaaaand the Nocturnal Animal song before he'd even put his head on the pillow.

While Kyle was giving him a bath tonight I whipped up some more bag pieces so I hope I'll have more monster bags finished soon. Yay monster bags! I have to admit that I am going to have a hard time letting those guys go.

Henry got his birthday present from Auntie B yesterday and I finally got pictures of it. These will no doubt launch Henry's illustrious career as a child model. You can see how gleeful and cooperative he is while getting his picture taken. And I took out the other 53 pictures where he is either waving his arms around so much that he is just a blurry blob or completely covering his face with his hands. That's m'boy.


Note his monogram on the front. And yes that is a giant TV in the background. Kyle bought it as a wedding present to us when we got married. He said "It looked smaller in the box". Wha? I always feel weird about owning such a big TV.

Super cool red robot on the back of the hoodie. How many 4 year old have hoodies specially designed for them? He is going to rock preschool this Fall. Thanks Auntie B!!!

And I'm off to bed. Morning is going to come early. Oh wait! Christopher Walken is on The Daily Show! Maybe I can stay up just a leeeeetle bit longer...

Almost There...

I was hoping to have the whole list done by the time we leave for CT tomorrow but it looks like eI'll have one pair left to do while we're there.

Here are Nicole's bright red monsters:




They will go in the mail today. Now I am off to get dressed and run Henry over to Jess's house so we can do a mock up of our booth for the Crafting Patch Fair, hash out some details about the (hopefully still happening) W. Asheville holiday craft fair and maybe do a little photo shoot with Ethan and some of my baby gear. WooHoo!

Oh and I forgot... for those of you who have asked, I WILL be selling the little monster bags eventually. I am making them for the Crafting Patch but do plan on having them in the Etsy shop, too. I hope to have a bunch more done later this month.

Well.

We just got back from getting dinner and seeing Harry Potter and a I just have one question... How hot is Gary Oldman??? Geez, Louise! He has been on my laminated list since I saw him in Prick Up Your Ears way back in the day. My friend Carrie and I used to have Gary Oldman film festivals. But as Sirius Black??? A girl could swoon.

Tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn I have my life insurance physical. I am not looking forward to the blood taking portion of that program. Needles + amy = bad news.

Another monster bag:





Notice Henry throwing the devil horns.

Rock.

Happy Anniversary!

To me. Today is Kyle and my seventh wedding anniversary. I can't believe it's been that long. I'm not old enough to have been married that long! I wish I had pictures to post so I could take a little walk down memory lane, but it was so long ago that I have actual prints of the affair and not digital files. If I had a scanner I'd do it up, but alas, no. To celebrate we are going to leave Henry with friends and go to see Harry Potter and go out to dinner. I'm really crazy excited about the new book, but I am looking forward to seeing the movie, too. Even though after seeing certain internet pictures of a certain young wizard with all of his business blowing in the breeze it might not be quite the same.

Only a few more days until we leave for CT. Henry said he is "very happy to be going to see Memere and Pepere". When pushed to say why, he noted that Pepere "is the silliest guy of all" and Memere lets him "throw squishy balls at her". All true.

I made this cool monster bag over the past few days. I knit it on the Bond and then pieced it together. Then hand felted it (since I have a front loading washer) and let it dry overnight. After that I used heavy duty iron on adhesive stuff to stick this kick booty monster patch from Fishcakes onto the front and then sewed all around with some red embroidery floss to give it that extra little fanciness.



Worst. PhotoShop. Ever. But I hit "Save" accidentally and don't think I can get Henry to model for me again.

I made it so that it is a good size for a small shoulder bag for an adult or and across the chest bag for a wee beastie. I like across the chest bags for Henry because he can run and stop and bend and jump and put things in and take things out without having it fall off of his shoulder every 5 seconds. It is just the right size for a wallet, sunglasses and a Blueberry Morning Luna Bar, or... a sock knitting project, or... 27 rocks, a pine cone and an emergency juice box.

Bad Mommy Moment #754

Weeeeeeell, yesterday was not my most shining moment as a mama. The scratch in the floor. Well, I'm not sure if you guys remember when Henry scratched up the whole side of the van with a rock, but...I do. And with that in mind, I kind of let Henry have it over the scratch in the floor. I said I knew it was an accident but it was going to be really expensive to fix and Daddy might be mad and he needed to apologize, etc, etc, etc. He told me that I could use the money from his monkey bank to fix the floor. Jeez. It killed me. So after all of this, Henry met Kyle at the door when he got home to show him what he did.

Kyle did it.

Kyle did it stepping on the jack in the box the night before and just didn't realize it until he saw it in the light. He said that the scratch was so deep there was no way Henry would be able to do it. AHHHHHH! So I had to sit Henry down and apologize (even though he told me he and McKai did do it for some reason, I think he just wanted to say sorry so I wouldn't be mad anymore-poor kid) and I felt like ass all night. Henry couldn't care less. I sat him down and tried to do this big long heartfelt thing and he was like "Cool mama, can I play with my cars now". Man. Bad mama.

I also had a Bad Knitter Moment #30096746. I was down in the basement playing with the Bond machine knitting a little bag. I was moving right along, listening to Rufus Wainwright on my IPod, singing along with Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk happy as a clam when it all went wrong. I felt a tug and realized that in my zeal I had managed to knit the cord of my earphones into the bag. Oops. So I had to take the whole thing off and start over (I'm not good enough at the machine to fix mistakes yet, it is pretty much all or nothing). Leave it to me to make that kind of mistake. Though I guess it would be an interesting piece...

I also got a bug in my undies last night about the fastest knitter in the world. I was talking to Robert from Mahar a while back and he said that one of his crocheters had won a blue ribbon at a local fair for having "The Fastest Fingers in the West". Immediately, my heart (and fingers) yearned for my very own blue ribbon. Last night I finally got around to looking up what the actual world record is. The first one I read was 180 stitches in 3 minutes using DK weight yarn and size 8 needles. Just for giggles I made Kyle set an on line stop watch and time me. I did it twice and the best out of the two was 161 stitches in 3 minutes. Not too bad. Then I read an updated record of 111 stitches in ONE MINUTE! Are you kidding me???? I knit pretty damn fast and that is almost 3 times as fast as I am. I suddenly heard the Rocky theme song in my head and had visions of the training involved for such a record. One fingered push ups? Breakfasts of raw eggs and a pinch of Alpaca? Breaking 2x4s into splinters using nothing but a set of size 7 12" Addi Turbo circulars? The World Finals in speed knitting are at The Mall of America in Minnesota in 2008. Hmmmm...

In Crankypants news, all Etsy packages went out today and Mahar orders are on their way to Santa Monica. If you live in the SoCal area, stop by Felt Club XL on Sunday in LA and see Robert at the Mahar Dry Goods booth. And then send me an email and tell me all about it so I can live vicariously through you. I am insanely jealous of everyone who gets to go. Oh yeah...Crankypants... I have 2 orders to go. I am down to the bright green lips on Nicki's monster longies and then only Mandy's rainbow Jolly Rogers remain. YeeHaw!

Oh Sweet Jeebus

I just went into Henry's room to get him up from his nap and was confronted by a 2' gash in the hard wood floor. Oh we are in sooooooo much trouble. He had his friend McKai over today and from what I can tell one of them put all of their weight on his vintage metal Cat in the Hat jack in the box and slid it across the floor. It usually sits on the top of a tall bookshelf just for decoration, but Henry asked to take it down and play with it the other day and it never got put back. He said that McKai did it and then he said that they both did it (which isn't really possible) so I'm not sure what happened. Gah! Kyle is going to flip. out. This is major damage. Majorly expensive damage. Henry cried about it for about a half hour and now we are waiting for Kyle to get home from seeing the Transformers so we can tell him. It is not going to be pretty.

I promised to post a picture of the Mahar order before I shipped it out this afternoon so here goes:



I also have started making some kids' magic yarn balls. I was going to do a kids' knit kit with a felted project bag (and still will later) but I thought these would be fun, too. They are 100+ yards of Malabrigo merino wool yarn (this one happens to be the Curacao colorway), which is perfect for kids because it is single ply and won't split. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it is the softest merino out there (in my humble opinion) and it is kettle dyed by a women's cooperative in Uruguay. The 100yds. should be enough for a kid's skinny scarf-a perfect first project. The yarn is wound around a wee little monster o' love with little goodies in the mix as well. There are 4 hand beaded (by me) stitch markers, a sticker and pin declaring monster love for knitting from Fishcakes and a set of kid sized, hand painted wooden knitting needles from Peace Fleece.


Now if I could only sell 7,000 of them I might be able to fix that scratch in the floor. Gahhhhhh...

They Just Wanna...

I am counting down the minutes to my "business meeting" with Jess from Quilt Baby and Nancy from Heart Mommy tonight. We are going out for dinner and drinks and lots of talk about craftiworkinmamahood. I. can't. wait.

So my secret has been found out. Jess and I are doing The Crafting Patch Etsy Festival in Charlotte this October. This requires that I have a stocked and functioning Crankypants Etsy shop for the show runners to look at since it is a juried show. I tried to keep it a secret until after I was approved so that the shop would stay stocked, but someone found me! Luckily I was accepted into the show before the few pairs I had hidden away got snatched up. I will probably only keep the Pirates Booty Wash in there until after the show so that I have time to build up some stock for it, but file it away for future reference. Things might pop up there now and again.

Okay. I am going to go try to finish the last leg of the last pair of my Mahar orders before I head out the door. I hope everyone is well!

A Tale of Two Cities...

We're home! Yay home! I feel like writing a sonnet about how much I adore my sweet, sweet Asheville, but that will have to wait until later. And I might need to consult my poetry handbook first. It's been a while.

I have so much to write about, it is kind of overwhelming. I'll just wait for the pictures to upload and tell you about those, how's that?

Snacking.

Henry discovered Suzy's golf bag umbrella and thought it was the coolest thing ever. She took him out in the front yard and made it rain with a sprinkler.

Silly faces on the porch.

We went to this strange raft race in a neighboring town called Cheboygan. The rules were that you had to make your own raft, have 6 people on it and race down the river while simultaniously cooking a pot of chili. This was my favorite team, The Pirettes.

We took Henry to the playground to run off some steam and this was him taking a make believe picture of Kyle as Kyle snapped shots of him.

This picture was taken at the fish hatchery in Oden. We had fun feeding the different kinds of huge fish in the stocked ponds and walking on the trails and Kyle got this great picture of the little man with his Papa.

A few days after we got there, Kyle's cousin Stacy and her wee man, Drew, came to visit, too. The two boys had such a blast together. Here, they are throwing 800 metric tons of rocks off the front deck. After each time, they would shout "Sorry down there", just in case they had inadvertantly hit a snail. Cute? Maybe just a tad.


To my absolute delight, we made a special trip to Alanson to visit the coffee shop/bakery/yarn store. Does it get any better than that? Actually it must, because they didn't have the pattern for my Noro dream sweater that I was fully prepared to rationalize buying yarn for as a "vacation yarn purchase".

Henry takes a break from a very serious game of soccer with Drew and Uncle Jamie.

Flying!

The tiny town of Indian River has a Fourth of July parade that consists mostly of fire trucks flinging candy out the windows. Kyle's cousin Stacey (my fellow mama in arms) and I had let the kids chew gum as a special treat so they wouldn't gobble down all of the candy as it was flung at them. We realized at the same time that 5 minutes later that we both had somehow managed to end up with said gum chewed up and stuck to our thumbs. It was a true mama bonding moment.

Waiting for the big trucks to go by.

We borrowed the neighbor's super cool jet ski and Henry took a spin around the lake with his Daddy.


Henry helped to frost his Papa's 60th birthday cake. He's very helpful when it comes to chocolate frosting.
On the way back to the airport, we stopped at Waloon Lake to visit some old family friends. They had kids and grandkids up so we thought it would be fun to get the kids together to play before a long trip home. More lake time! How cute is Henry in his little life vest?

The other folks (who have grown up around lakes) convinced me to let Henry go tubing with their little girl Annie Green. I was scared out of my mind, but he really wanted to go and it seemed pretty difficult for them to fall off in the deep tube. We watched Annie Green and her brother Carson go around once and then Henry took a turn. I was pushing for him to go with Kyle, but he wanted Annie Green. And they had a blast.

Until a complete fluke sent them both tumbling into the lake and Kyle had to dive in and get them. Annie Green is on a swim team (at 5!!!) so she was fine, but Henry had trouble keeping on his back in his life vest. He was pretty freaked out. Kyle was exhausted from water skiing all day so he barely managed to keep Henry on his back and keep his own head up until the boat pulled around to get them. Scary much? By the time Henry got back into the boat he had stopped crying, but we were all a bit shaken for a while. And then it was time to get a travellin' on.

The best moment of the trip home? In Detroit Metro airport they have this huge underground tunnel that connects to two main sections of the airport. You get on the moving sidewalk and go through the tunnel, which is all light panels that change color and it looks kinda like you are under water. They also play this kind of ambient music as you go through so it is kind of being at a really chilled out rave or something. In the middle of rushing to make our connection we were going through the tunnel and racing along the moving sidewalk when Henry yelled out "Wait! Let's dance!". We momentarily turned the "Stand" lane on the moving sidewalk into Dance Party USA and had a little break in the stressed out dash for the plane. I love that kid more than anything on Earth, I swear to you. I actually had this touching 4th birthday post all planned out for last night and then I ended up zonked out in front of Heroes all night. Lame.

Okay, now for what you really want. Wool pictures...

The bum of Heather's crabby shorties.

Stitching in the front.

Sarah's hot pink and aqua monster shorties.

Billi's rose and leaf green sabertooth monster shorties.

Two shots of Shannon's deep olive multi stripe monster longies.

Lisa's teal and hot pink birthday monster longies.

Little red shroomie mushroom shorties.



Wooooooooool!

Phew! That was a long post. I know I left a million things out, but you get the gist. And Henry has been waiting patiently for his turn with the computer, so I am Audi 5000.

Still kicking (and knitting)...

The tummy was feeling better for a few days, so of course I had to immediately overdo it and I am going to be back on the couch for another day or two to make up for it. Come on, am I really supposed to turn down a cuddle or a boat ride around the lake with little Mr. Man? Not on your life.

I am going to have quite the trip to the post office next Tuesday. I have a bajillion packages to mail out. I don't trust the teensy weensy post office here. It would probably take longer to mail them fro here today than to wait and mail them from Asheville on Tuesday. I am looking forward to being done with the list and hunkering down to some knitting for the Crafting Patch Festival that I am doing with Jess from Quilt Baby in Charlotte in October. I am hoping to get at least a handful of things done a month until the festival so I don't arrive with a pop up tent and an empty table. That wouldn't be good.

I have a bajillion pictures that I'll be uploading and forcing you to look at when we get home, but until then I probably won't update again. This dial up thing is driving me b-a-n-a-n-a-s. I just wanted to check in super quick.

I hope all is well.

The 48 Hour Rule...

When I hurt my stomach all of the information we found said that the first 48 hours is horrible and then it gets better from there. I am happy to report that it is true! I don't think I am going to do the Iron Man any time soon, but I am up and around. I can even chuckle.

Last night the rest of the family arrived and the house is abuzz. Aunt Cindy and Uncle Jamie, cousin Stacey and her little boy Drew all piled into a minivan (I covet her 'stow and go' seating) and came up for the fourth. Henry is so thrilled to have another little crumb snatcher to play with. It is actually the first time he's met his (second?) cousin (once removed?) and for the first 2 hours he called him "Drool" instead of "Drew". Oops. Right now we are getting ready to go to a small nearby town where we heard rumors of a yarn store/bakery. I plan on giving my son to his father and poking around in there for a bit. I must remember, however, not to get my pie too close to the cashmere. That could only spell disaster.

And we are off...

Childbirth, Smildbirth...

Up until this point I have compared every painful experience to Henry's birth and up until this point they have all fallen far short. Last night, however, is right up there.

We had been having a wonderful, relaxing vacation. We went to a small town street fair, ate fish and chips, watched movies, played cards and so on. Wonderful. Last night my in laws had to go to the wedding shower of the son and fiance of friends. Sicne we had played Trivial Pursuit with the son once, 6 years ago, they thought that it would be great if we also stopped by to give our congrats. Feeling kind of awkward sitting at a table in the middle of a crowd I didn't know, I wandered off to a small playscape with Henry and we played on the swing and ladder and whatnot. He also enjoyed swinging from a rope swing and tossing the rop back and forth between us. In a moment of very poor decision making, I thought I'd be "cool mom" and swing across the rope swing with wild abandon, just like my 4 year old sprite. Unfortunately, I managed to grab the rope, pull up with my knees and twist in such a coordinated way as to completely tear my lower abdominal muscle. "Cool mom" proceeded to collapse to the ground in a heap and beg Henry to go get Kyle before some stranger (one of the 100 strangers to witness my spectacular leap) came over to help me. By the time he got there I couldn't talk. I was a sobbing mess. Somehow we got into the car and he got me home and onto the couch where I freaked out for the next 2 hours about not wanting to go to the hospital. From everything we read on line (dial up diagnosis) it seemed that there would be nothing a doctor could do anyway, so we decided to give it 48 hours. Round about hour 18, I emailed Dr. Rob to see if he could refer me to a doctor up here. I am still waiting for a reply, and would honestly be shoked if I heard from him before office hours tomorrow.

The good news:

I can still knit! And since I am insisting that everyone else in the family try hard to go about their vacation as usual (and since I can't stand up straight, walk at more than .02 mph or bend), it seems that I will have plenty of time to do so.

The bad news:

Well, the bad news is a 2 parter. First off, the thing that makes my stomach hurt the very most is laughing. I somehow managed to severely injure myself on a rope swing in front of 100 strangers and I cant laugh about it without having to take a Percoset (my father in law just had a root canal and has offered up his pain meds until I can see a doctor. I caved and took one last night after a super giggle fit that left me gasping for breath and screaming like I was having triplets. Kids- don't try this at home). The second bad news is that I am pretty much completely couch bound. This means I can't drive to the post office to mail packages. If I feel better later in the week (or if we go near it if I can get a doctor appointment) I'll give it a try, but it is a 20+ minute drive and I can't do it right now. Sorry guys.

I will try to update again later in the week. Dial up isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be for this kind of thing. Later gators.