I'd Make a Gin and Tonic...

...if I only had some tonic.

The liquid options in my fridge: Sunny D, milk, flat ginger ale, white wine that was uncorked about 6 weeks ago, and some blue Gatorade. Nothing fizzy and nothing tonic-y. Drat.

I would have stopped at the store on the way home, but we're having a typical spring bout of tornadoes and flooding (seriously). And here I am, stuck in the house with no tonic, but I have some really good gin. That makes it even worse. This is pathetic.

It should probably be mentioned that my parents arrive tomorrow for a weekend visit. No countdown this time because I can only do what I can do. Besides, housework just cuts into my knitting/spinning time. So I'm not really going to freak out over anything...well...except the garage. Maybe I'll just board up all doors and windows leading to the garage and pretend it doesn't exist. What garage? No....I never had a garage. Have you been skipping your medication? You must be thinking of Karen. She has a garage. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

I must get back to preparing for their visit, and I think a sheep just exploded in the guest room. Dang, I wish the tonic fairy would show up. Maybe if I put the bottle of gin under my pillow....

Home is where?

All this Facebook stuff has me in a reflective mood. An old classmate invited me to join the "you know you're from Eau Claire if..." group. I checked out the group, chuckled over a few goofy memories of Carson Park, and saw some familiar faces. I hesitantly decided to join. When I hit submit, my computer locked up and dumped me off the internet. A sign?

I lived in Eau Claire (pronounced O Claire) for 12 years and left (for good) a few weeks after graduating high school. I didn't just leave, the whole family left, so that didn't give me much incentive to go back. Actually, I think I've been back 3 times since 1982. Maybe 4. Having spent 12 formative, impressionable and yes, awkward years in one smallish Wisconsin town doesn't really mean I am "from" there, does it? What constitutes being "from" somewhere? Are there guidelines? Rules? I'm feeling a little "from-less" right now.

My parents live in Ohio, and many people think that I am from Ohio. My sister is in Michigan (where they are still buying gas for snow blowers...foolish). I lived there for about 6 years and many people think that I am from Michigan. Ok, so I still pronounce some of my words a bit northern, but I've gotten quite immersed in the local vernacular...ya'll. And if talking the talk isn't enough, I reckon we could discuss which restaurant in town has the best grits. I've become a connoisseur of sorts.

So where am I going with this rambling? No where, really. I'm just coming to terms with "home" and I think it's safe to say, after nearly 21 years, that Nashville is home. But more important than the amount of time I've lived here is the quality of the time I've lived here.

Yes, I'm from Nashville and it's my home town!



p.s. Seriously Karen...ditch the snow blower! We're talking leaves on trees, gas for the lawn mower, flowers, I swear I saw a mosquito. Gin and tonic season starts next week!

80 to 32

It’s March and 80 to 32 is total madness! This is not the final score of a pathetically mismatched basketball game in the first round of the NCAA playoffs. This is the temperature flucuation we've had over the past two days. I don’t think that griping about the weather is particularly blog-worthy (that probably made Karen laugh) but someone has to make mention of the nearly 50 degree drop in temperature. Tuesday—80 degrees. Thursday—32 degrees. Fahrenheit*. Did I mention snow? Yes. Snow. In March. In Nashville. To quote the penguin in “Madagascar”: “Well. This sucks.”


*for the non-non-metric folk

I admit it...It's all my fault

I was talking to my sister Saturday night. She's been battling a cold for quite a while, like weeks. With a certain degree of big-sister smuggness I said, "I had a flu shot and haven't been sick yet this year." Half way through the sentence she tried to cut me off and warn me to not go any further, but being the smarty-pants that I am, I didn't shut up. Apparently I was too brash and boastful about my good health. God heard me, and WHAMMO, I started sniffling during church the next morning. By the time we got home I felt like crap. So I popped a couple Zicam and crawled into bed.

It's now four days later and I'm a chapped, drippy mess. Today, my boss actually said to me, "You're so, so...red," as he made gestures around his nose. I admit that with a touch of white face paint, I could easily pass as Bozo, but what a way to make a girl feel pretty! I've not been able to breathe properly for 4 days, which is making me light-headed due to oxygen-deprivation. My voice sounds like I'm talking into a coffee can. There is not a tissue that can contain my sneezes. My tastebuds are completely gone and everything tastes somewhat like cardboard. Each time I inhale, I hear a faint whistle--I think it's D minor. I'm perpetually soggy. Colds suck.

When will I learn to keep my big mouth shut? It's time for another dose of Sudafed with a dark chocolate chaser.






But, Dear Readers (yes, plural--because I think there are two of you now) there is a silver lining...Zack has complained that the dog is rather gassy this evening. I haven't noticed.

What's a Wordle?

It's what I learned today!


The text from my blog was used by www.wordle.net to create this graphic. Click on the graphic and it will launch the site. Hours of fun await!

This is addicting!
Zack's One Row Hat:

You Can Teach an Old Dog

I’m not a big resolution person. That may be rather obvious since it’s nearly March and I’m just now mentioning resolutions. Here’s the deal. There’s all the stress about figuring out what to change in your life and then the bigger stress when you realize you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. Just as you are about to throw in the towel on the resolutions, along comes Lent. So now it’s time to give something up. Ok, that's easy--I’ll give up the resolution that I never made. A complete win/win in my opinion. I guess that’s really not in the spirit of either commitment, but that’s how I feel…today, anyways.

Now, I’m not saying that I’m not goal-oriented. I just prefer to do it on my time. Today, one of the senior managers in my office mentioned his goal is to learn something new every day. I like that. We probably do learn something new every day, but we don’t really think about it after the fact. I’m trying to remember what I learned yesterday that I didn’t know the day before. I’m sure there is something, I just can’t recollect what it could be. Hell, I can barely remember what I had for dinner yesterday. So my Lenten Resolution is to learn something new every day and be conscious of what I have learned. I’m not saying that every day I need to learn how to rotate the tires on my car or learn the finer points of atomic energy. Just something simple….like a better way to graft the toe of a sock, a stretchier cast-on, the Portuguese method of knitting, how to eradicate those #$*&#^!(@ pesky moths.

Today I learned how to use Microsoft Communicator and Powerpoint to give a presentation over to coworkers who reside in different office locations. Whee! I agree, that it shouldn't really count because it has nothing to do with knitting is not terribly sexy, but I it was something I've never done before. The possibilities for tomorrow are endless!

Yarn Makeover

Several months ago, my sister received a gift of cashmere yarn. Pink cashmere. As in bazooka-bubble-gum-pink cashmere. It is a lovely fiber, but an unfortunate color for a 40-something woman who's name isn't Barbie. I told Karen to look past the color. Color can be changed. So she sent it to me.


I asked my sister what color she wanted me to dye the cashmere. I kept the e-mail: "Yesterday I thought that shades of brown, a little pink and burnt orange would be cool. This morning I was thinking burgundyish and burnt orange would be nice. I trust your taste so I'll leave it up to you." I had visions of that decorating show "Trading Spaces" where friends redecorate each other's house. No pressure.


And she also sent me this. An alpaca blend in gray. Very soft but very gray. It, too, begged for a trip to the dye pot. The instructions were as follows: "The gray needs to become a somewhat subdued vibrant green. Can something be subdued and vibrant without becoming pastel??" Seriously? Subdued and vibrant? Here's the weird thing (it's that DNA thing again), I understood what she was talking about.



To be honest, I was a bit nervous and couldn't afford to screw up the cashmere, so I didn't dye the yarn right away. I had to live with the yarn for a while. Touching it. Petting it. Squishing it. I waited for the yarn to speak to me. The gray went first.


I soaked the yarn while I mixed the dye, just like always. Then I put about a third of the alpaca in the water in my dye kettle and then poured in the dye over the yarn. (Sometimes I put the yarn in the dye, sometimes I pour it over the yarn...depends on my mood.)


I poured and nothing happened. Normally, the dye strikes pretty quickly. Not in this case. The yarn was still gray. No color change. Oh crap! I pulled the yarn out of the kettle and resoaked the yarn, this time with a tiny bit of Dawn dish soap. There must have been some sizing on the yarn because the water turned a bit cloudy. A few minutes later, and it was back to the dye pot.


This is the gray alpaca:


And this is the cashmere


Ta da! A successful Yarn MakeOver! Hey, that sounds like a new reality show.

• Stash in the Attic
• Rate My Skein
• Trading Skeins
• Guess Who's Coming to Dye
• The Yarn Whisperer
• It's Me or the Yarn

I'd watch!