About Me

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Ten years into widowhood, after one year of incredible happiness and nearly 14 years of single blessedness. Retired, and mostly enjoying it. Still knitting. [Zen]tangling.again after a brief hiatus.

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Happy Birthday, Secondborn!

[I am setting this post to publish while we are at stake conference this morning, so as not to spoil the semi-surprise for Secondborn.]

She was born twenty-eight years ago today. And two days later, she accompanied me to the voting booth, both of us in our jammies. My best friend held her while I helped to vote in the new administration. Nobody waiting to vote seemed to mind letting us go to the head of the line. They just asked, very respectfully, “How old is that baby?”

This is the one whom her father and I nicknamed The Prophetess when she was not much bigger than a toddler. (Her sisters called her The Perfect Child. It was not always a compliment, proving that old scripture which says that a prophet[ess] is not without honor, save in [her neighborhood] and [her] family. But she had some amazing insights when she was a wee one. And the girls all seem to get along reasonably well, now that they are grown. I am so thankful that the bitterness, spite, envy, et al, of raising a houseful of girls on little to no money, appears to be in the past.)

While I was trying to find the scripture I referred to above, I also found this address from a priesthood session of General Conference. Can I get an amen?

I managed to leave my cell phone at home when I left for the meeting last night, so I didn’t get her text message which said, “We’re on row 3, on the left.” They had saved me a spot in the cushy seats. I sat in the back on a folding chair. It was so great to visit with them after the meeting and to introduce them to two of my friends from the singles program, who sat behind me.

Memo to self: take lots of tissues to the meeting this morning. The keynote speaker was dynamic, and I spent a good chunk of the meeting wiping my eyes. He’s speaking again today.

Here we have Secondborn’s birthday gift, Fiddlehead by Knitspot. Behold the piquant hem.



And a bit of detail. The KnitPicks Gloss Lace blocks like a champ!



Middlest and Fourthborn had this on their blogs for Halloween. The comments in italics are mine. Once upon a time, Fourthborn drew a picture of me in my Famous Red Dress, brandishing a pair of scissors, in which she christened me “The Dangerous Tomato”. I looked a lot like this cartoon, minus the leaves.




What Your Cute Monster Says About You



You are a vibrant, vivacious person. When you live, you live as wildly and loudly as possible. Except, of course, in bookstores and libraries.

You are very bold. You are willing to stand up and be a leader. I will lead you straight to the yarn store, or the Ben and Jerry's.

Your inner demon is intensity. You have a tendency to let your passions take over. I used to let my passions take over; I keep them on a very short leash these days.

People think you're cute because you're fiery. When you get worked up, it's charming. When I get worked up, good men duck and bad men run away!


The Cute Monster Test

In shopping news, I was exceedingly frugal and responsible at Central Market yesterday:
1 Golden [Something; couldn’t find the variety online] pear; it rang up as a Bosc, $.76
2 Pink Lady apples, $1.69
1 pomegranate, $1.99; Persephone got a bum rap, is all I’m saying
1 blood orange, $0.90
.43 lb vanilla almond granola, $1.29
2 Roma tomatoes, $.63
.41 lb Atlantic salmon, $3.69
3 bananas, $0.75
1 perfectly ripe avocado, $0.99

My two splurges?
.14 lb of gingerbread-flavored candy corn, $0.56
.30 lb of apricot glazed carrots, $1.20
15 oz bag of frozen julienne sweet potato fries, $2.49

Total? $18.78, or a little more than I would have spent had I gone to the Black Eyed Pea for their grilled salmon with glazed carrots, pilaf, and red beans and rice. But now I have fresh fruit until payday! And I had salmon with lemon dill sauce and half of the carrots yesterday afternoon.

I am nearly done with the calf decreases on Eleanora. Since I am going to have to be at church at a ridiculously early hour in order to get a good seat, I expect to get a lot of knitting done today.

I am also in the process of setting up a formal budget in Excel. I used to keep everything on Quicken, and it got to be too much of a bother, so for the past three or four years I have just kept it in my head. But you know? I am getting older, and while my stress level has dropped enormously now that I no longer have kids in high school [with demanding teachers who mostly demanded my time and my take-home], I don’t ever want to find myself in the position of having a mind like a steel trap, rusted shut. I am tired of juggling numbers in my head. I’d rather juggle balls of yarn, or bananas, or pints of Ben and Jerry’s. They make less of a mess when I drop one.

When I sold my books, I got enough cash for them to do laundry without having to hit the ATM. Sweet. So I don’t have to change my name to Godiva for another three weeks or so.

3 comments:

Bonnie said...

I love my birthday scarf, thank you so much!

punkin said...

Pretty scarf! I like Knitspot's designs.

Black-eyed pea !!!! Ha ha ha ha....

Jenni said...

I was wondering why there was no post when I looked in the monring. I'm glad that Bon liked her present.