Congratulations! You may have won!

Actually, I did win! Prize #6 in the November Sockdown at Ravelry. A skein of handpainted sock yarn by Snarky Design. I got to choose the color, so I went with Rosie the Riveter.

See, I told you this was going to be a good year! I found my blank checks in time to pay the rent, I have been smacked upside the head by the Nigella Lawson Fairy [just took a bite of the pineapple chutney after letting it season a bit in the fridge; oh my, I do believe that I have made peace with curry powder after all these years], and I slept nearly eight hours on Monday night. [Tan, it is in How to be a Domestic Goddess, way in the back of the book.]

The one small fly in my ointment is an email from the choir boosters, their latest bit of extortion, which includes the following: “Each student involved in the muscial [sic] is expected to sell ten ads (commercial and/or personal). Please be aware of this and be ready to submit your ads immediately upon the students returning to school.” That would be *today*.

Do I want to put in an ad for my knitting blog? Probably not, since I have ranted occasionally about the mixed blessing of having a child in choir at that school. Maybe the Faith Whittlesey quote about how Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in heels?

[Mumble mumble growl snarl.]

I am back from a dark-thirty run to the grocery store, where I scored a dozen pint canning jars and a package of coffee filters. What is a good LDS girl like me doing with coffee filters? Nothing, at the moment, but eventually this. Thank you, Shiela!

I also saw a pressure canner at the store, but I will need to do a little more research before buying one. I looked for a copy of Texas Gardener, but they didn’t have one, so I’ll stop at the bookstore on my way home tonight. There’s an article on growing tomatoes. I also read an interesting article at their website, on jujube trees. Here’s more. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a jujube tree. I thought jujubes were a kind of junk food, and I see that they are. [Scroll down to the paragraph under Technique for Consumption. It’s a hoot!] I wonder if Central Market carries jujube fruit? Any tree that’s virtually impossible to kill is my kind of tree. Sort of like a Creeping Charlie, but edible, or at least allegedly edible.

I also picked up a loaf of pumpernickel this morning and some deli ham that’s relatively low-sodium. I will be dining exquisitely on a ham sandwich today, with a side order of my new chutney. What I wish I had found was one of those skinny loaves of party pumpernickel; I have visions of little squares with a bit of cream cheese and a slice of the ham, and then a dollop of chutney on top. Wouldn’t that be fun? But it would take too long to assemble the bits for a lunch at the office. It would seriously cut into my knitting time, and that would never do.

I now have a song stuck in my head, a musical joke from when I was married to the children’s father. He would sing to the tune of the old song Pretty Baby, “Every party needs a pooper, that’s why we invited you. Party pooper. Party pooper.” I used to sing it to the girls when I was changing their diapers. It made one of the less agreeable aspects of motherhood mildly entertaining for both of us.

And now you’ll have it stuck in your heads all day.

You’re welcome.