Back again, it's been forever

I know it's been forever, and anyone who was ever out there has moved on, but I miss the "mental download" so I am going to try to bring myself back to blogging. I haven't just pulled out of blogging, in many ways, I have checked out of the daily interaction with the people I count on the most, my friends. I have felt for some time that people aren't accustomed to me being "down" instead of "up" and frankly, they don't want to hear any more tales of woe than we all hear everywhere else.

Life is complicated and crazy, home is complicated and crazy, raising a 10 year old is complicated and crazy...marriage is work, more work when there is NO WORK for the other person in the marriage. Family is complicated and crazy when you have aging parents, and when I see in the mirror that I am aging too.

On the upside, spring is almost here, 60 degrees today. It was lovely to not have to bundle up when I went outside. On the upside, in about 2 months I will be back at the lake office, with fresh air, and room for the dogs to run around each day.

I have to be back to blogging, I need the outlet to know I'm not crazy.

Where have I been???

Well, I am finishing a post started in February, which I'll post shortly, and then will catch us all up with a February to July post!

Happy Holidays

Yes folks, it's that time of year again, Thanksgiving is upon us, and Christmas fast on it's heels. I'm not knitting anything in particular for anyone this Christmas, I may do a quick pair of socks for my Secret Santa, but beyond that...nope. I am going to be casting on a few more of the Nisse from last year, one to sell to one of Anna's swimming coaches, one for my Mom, one for the baby born to my friends Mike and Aimee this year..one more, maybe for me - to go with the red one I have from last year. Closer to my schedule is the speed stix blanket I am going to work up in Homespun (3 strands knit at once) this is NOT a portable project, so it will be my nightly knit, for a very short time. I plan on delivering it to my friend for her daughter's Christmas gift the weekend of Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving, we will be home again this year. Dining out last year was a total bust. I don't know how people celebrate holidays away from the home environment. We are sharing Thanksgiving with friends here this year, we have invited Eric's sister and her family, but have no idea what the answer is yet. The good news is, the other family is bringing ham, so we will have quite a variety this year - YUM!

Not much else has been going on, thus far we have avoided any illness, swine flu or otherwise, Anna and I have had a cough we can't shake, but no fevers or anything else. That's the biggest health complaint I have. Just about everyone around us has had a high fever for 24 hours or so, but we've missed that thank god.

The first swim meet of the year is next weekend, and I have found myself a comfy stadium seat to save my back and make it easier to knit. I am actually looking forward to giving it a try. LOL..simple changes.

Eric is back to work, making for a better home environment for us all. As it stands now, he's got signed work through February. It's not like it used to be, with work scheduled for a year and a half ahead, but that can change, and at least we are on a little roll...

Now back to my relaxing Sunday, in pjs, knitting, surfing the internet. I just thought I'd pop over and say HI!

Great, just great.

I'm sure anyone left reading is neglected blog thought I had moved on to greener pastures. In reality, I have been in a state of limbo all summer. Waiting for summer to arrive, but never actually having it show up. It is now September 22, and my pool is closed. It was the summer that never was. Probably just as well, since Eric was home most of the summer, and he would have certainly had a nervous breakdown with all of the company I like to have. I had laid the ground rules, but I know there still would have been push back. I didn't have to worry about it.

As I mentioned, Eric dear was home most of the summer. He did some work here and there which got him out of my house for part of the time, but with no regular contract work coming in, let's just say it tried my patience. He's off now working on a project for our regular customer, and if I cross my fingers, it will all roll in to the next project in 3 weeks. I need this economic downturn to swing up please.

School has begun, Anna is loving it. Art class, and field hockey and swimming have started again, so each week Monday through Wednesday is a bit busy. But then 4 uninterrupted days make it all right again.

Knitting? Well, I don't know what I have been up to, but I finally finished my Clapotis in Noro Silk Garden. Ouch to the pocketbook, but I have decided it was worth it for me. I rarely knit for myself, and I think I deserve the treat. The funniest (?) part was that I kept having to go back for "one more skein" It was like it was just eating up the yarn! But it's gorgeous, and I love it, so hooray!





So sorry to cut this post short, but I need to get on with my day, so Anna makes it to school on time! I'll be back soon

Oh, before I forget, I'm going to try a 365 project. Rain or shine, snow or sleet, I'm going to post a sunrise photo from every morning. I am always raving about my sunrises, it's time to share.

Here is the new spot: Sunrise 365

I just started this morning, so there's just today there. Be patient

March to June (almost July)

Like it's a big surprise, no posts for 4 months or so.

It's hard to sit and write, since I feel like the last 4 months are consumed by a lot of gloom and worry. DH is a builder, and well, the economy sucks. Work is non-existent. We have had to let go of ALL of the guys for now, and Eric is lurking around the house. Lurking is not his thing. We don't want to spend any money, since, for obvious reasons, none is coming in. We can continue on like this financially for a while, but emotionally, it's tough. But no one really wants to hear another tale of economic woe, so...I have been quiet.

Personally, for me, a wonderful selfishly fab knitting retreat I had planned to go on, I couldn't. (see above..the spending thing) I was so excited about it from the minute I heard about it, and it broke my heart not to be able to go. So that sucks.

Let's see...more fun stuff. It's been raining in NH for 2 months straight. I live for the summer. Not happening. More gloom.

My dearest child has left the only school she had ever attended, for the last 5 years. 2 years of preschool and 3 of K, 1 & 2. I am not a fan of change, so great. Happy times. I have been having dreams of teachers and other school staff who don't care about some invented stranger I saw in my dream enter the school. So even in sleep, I don't end up with unicorns and rainbows, I have strange men in bathrobes (really.) entering the school.

The end of school brings the pool party and cookout, which, yes, is WAAY fun. Even in the rain. This year, there was even a batch of margaritas to go with the downpours, so all is well. Good food, and great friends, I am blessed.

Work is, as always FAB. I can't complain there. If there is any downer, it's the rain, but we've covered that. I have a new office with an even more gorgeous view right from my chair. Wonderful, glorious photos to come some day when the rain, rain goes away. I have had 2 great days where I watched the rain clouds lift slowly off of the lake, giving way to sunshine. Sadly, no camera.

What else? Knitting..good stuff. Baby booties, a pattern I modified from knit flat to knit in the round. Sock Wars 4, I had a size 11 target, and was killed before I knit the foot. The assasin who ended up with my socks in progress was kind enough to say how wonderfully I had knit them up for her to finish off. I am still working on my clapotis, in Noro...I'm more than 1/2 way there, but am currently distracted by some .49 cotton yarn I got at the Patternworks annual tent sale. Looking to make a washcloth or two. That's today's thinking work.

Books? Yep, I've got a pile. I am about 5 pages into "The Girl Who Stopped Swimming" by Joshilyn Jackson, it's good so far..but 5 pages isn't much.

On the docket for this summer? Working in the mornings at camp, afternoons home by the pool, or at the lake. A wedding, a 50th birthday (not mine), a 40th birthday (mine), a 10th anniversary (ours), maybe a trip or 2 to NJ, (one quick weekend turnaround trip, and one HOPEFULLY for a few days to see my much missed friend who moved there last fall), my Mom will come visit, I will go there. The requisite 3 or 4 days at the family too-close-for-comfort beach commune/cottages/compound - silver lining there? Apparently, there are a TON of starfish around there this year, no one knows why. I only hope we find some on the beach.

Are we caught up? What is going on with you?

Fun on "share" day

You'd think after 2 1/2 years of primary school under our belts, Anna would have brought something mildly inappropriate to school long before now. Nope. And today, I just stood back and let her do it. In my home, there is kind of a no big deal approach to the human body and nudity in general. I have always wanted her to know that not all women look like Elle McPherson, and not all men look like, well you fill in the blanks of your perfect specimen. The standard line when discussing any of this is "It's standard equipment, it may look a little different in some ways on different bodies, but it's NOT a big deal. EVERYONE has the same standard equipment" This brings us to today, as we are heading out the door and she remembers it's her share day. The class has been studying the human body, the SKELETAL system. Anna decides to bring her rather graphic Human Body book to school to share. Yup, the one with depictions (photographic) of the reproductive system (and related EQUIPMENT), the one with little drawings of a gestational baby..oh yeah, THAT'S the book.

So what did I do? I said nothing, and laughed a little inside...I had images in my head of the pages she might choose to share....putting her teacher on the spot..hee hee hee...a little excitement in second grade. Then she came home. "Oh Anna, did you share your book? Did everyone think it was cool? Did you pick a certain page you wanted to show or just flip around the pages?"

Go ahead, guess. What page do you think ?

Three Little French Girls

Once upon a time, in a town not so far from here, there were 3 little girls of about 6 years old. They each were the youngest in their families. They each had significant age differences between them and their siblings. They each were of French Canadian origins. They each went to the Catholic Church right there in the center of town. Their older siblings were friends with each other. None of them had young, trendy, "hippy" moms; their moms were the older crowd, the conservative crowd. As many things that they had in common, there were differences too..subtle, but there all the same. One Mom was busy and involved in town and in school, one preferred to be at home, while the third found her place in her love of music. At holiday fairs, and ham and bean suppers, the girls played together without fail. As they got older, there were sleepovers, then boyfriends, then proms and graduations. There was suntanning in the backyards, swimming in the pools, days at the beach. There were parties, and late nights, tears and laughs. Two of the three had a tighter bond in their 20s, they moved away from their hometown, and had a bunch of wild years together in a sunny place. Eventually, they both came home again, the third little French girl was married already, settled down into her life, one of the two came home pregnant, about to be a single mom, the other hadn't found her future yet. That baby was born, and welcomed into his grandparents home with all the love and care that could be bestowed on a child.

The Moms of the three little French girls were a huge part of their lives, of my life. Today, I mourn the loss of one of our Mothers. I was blessed to have known her, quirks and all (no perfume in her house..pots and pans to wake us up if we weren't moving fast enough..to name just a couple). I always felt "at home" in her home, you could always count on fresh baked bread when you walked in her kitchen, and more often than not, she would be eating something just a little too odd for us to try (sardines famously) too! She was an individual - followed the beat of her own drum, she loved her family, she loved her home. She was a devoutly religious woman, believed in miracles, and prayed for so many in her work with the prayer group at church. If there is a place in heaven for any of us, there is a place for her. She truly did "God's Work" here on Earth. I know she put in her fair share of good words for me and her daughter over the years. The poor woman has suffered with leukemia in the past few years, I am glad her pain is over, she endured more than a kind sould like hers should have. She will be missed.