Me’n’George (Speed Mentoring)

Here I am with one of my favorite singers (George Strait); a co-worker nabbed him from her daughter’s room.



I photographed her with him on her cell phone. We had to do a retake, because she’s an inch or two shorter than I am, and it looked as if he was letting his fingers do the walking...



Two shots of the breakfast buffet. I had another one, but it showed the keynote speaker’s name and c.v.



Somebody sprang for that good Odwalla orange juice. Yum! Next, we have some handy phrases for the next time you visit the Lone Star State.



Tan asked about speed mentoring. It’s a little like speed dating, only work-related. My law firm is house counsel for a major insurance company; all we do is insurance defense for our policyholders. I came into this office in a lateral transfer from the Arlington claims office, and I have completed about half of my CPCU designation, so I have a good basic grasp about the company as a whole. Many of my co-workers have only ever worked in law, so they don’t necessarily know how the claims process works, or what underwriting does, or Ad. Services and/or Tech Services. And we are one of roughly two dozen offices like this in the US and Canada (eh).

Speed mentoring was a corporate initiative from the legal beagles who supervise our offices; every one of the offices did this activity yesterday morning. We brought in people from the Dallas Operations Center and other offices in the state, people from Ad Svcs, Public Relations, HR, a diversity/inclusion guru, a mentoring expert, etc. We had a keynote speaker and seven guests who manned a cubicle or one of the conference rooms, and everybody in our office went from station to station, getting 15 minutes to visit with the experts on just what it is that they do. And because this is Texas, we put our own unique spin on everything, hence the cowboy hat. When a 15-minute session was over, one of my co-workers walked the office ringing a cowbell.

It was fun. It was interesting. I did some networking. They fed us breakfast and lunch. I got paid for a day and a half to cut, color, and paste. And the managing attorney was so pleased with how well it all went, that everybody got to go home an hour early. I went in at 7:30 and was expecting to get off work at 4:00, but I left a hair after 3:00. Plus, I scored half an hour of OT on Thursday night when I helped with the decorations.

I drove to Brother Sushi’s by way of JoAnn’s, where I picked up a quarter yard of blush pink silk dupioni and another spool of silk thread to make a blouse for Jessica, who will be paid off next Friday and quite possibly here the following week. And then I stopped in at Borders and located a book that one of my attorneys has recommended.

Brother Sushi and I had dinner at Rockfish, where we had a little adventure with the jalapeno cream soup. I was happily spooning away at mine, when he took a bite of his and got a funny look on his face. He had found a shrimp. There is no shrimp in that soup. I am allergic to shrimp. We called our server over, and he brought over the manager, who apologized profusely and offered me a different soup. So I got to try the crab bisque, which is excellent. Brother Sushi and I sat there for a good two hours, solving the problems of the world if not necessarily the conundrums of our respective lives. I took him back to his house, drove home, and was in bed by 8:30. Which meant, of course, that I woke up at 2:16 this morning, but I think I am ready for a small nap as soon as breakfast settles.

I’ll leave you with a little more of my handiwork.

Speed mentoring, part one

We have our speed mentoring activity at work today. I’m on the committee. We spent the afternoon yesterday, decorating the various office spaces where the mentoring will take place.

Then I went to Secondborn’s and had a bite of yummy eggplant parmigiana and borrowed her cowboy hat. (New photo on Facebook, shown below; I look somewhat startled but definitely working that hat.) Because we can’t do speed mentoring in Texas unless we all look like cowboys and cowgirls, and I don’t own a pair of boots [pronounced bee-yutes, only very fast] or a pearl-snap shirt.



I had great fun making this poster. I had even more fun a few days ago, looking up information on the Texas Panhandle via Wikipedia. We discovered that we could not get the images I chose small enough to use the overhead projector for tracing them onto the poster board, so I rescaled them for the poster printer, but it kept messing up. I eventually upsized all the elements and printed them off using the color printer and used some of my favorite scrapbooking techniques to come up with a plausible poster. It still looked a little bare, so I grabbed a black gel pen and freehanded a strand of bob-wahr. Click to embiggen.



Pampa.



Borger.



Hereford.



And one of my favorite places, Amarillo, where they held a blizzard in our honor during our four-day move down from Utah.



Ms. Ravelled, in Secondborn’s hat.



I look as startled as if you had just told me that I was pregnant with twins.

*So* tired of driving!

However did I do it for seven years? Twenty-five miles each way, five days a week. Two hundred fifty miles each week, just to get to the job I love. I love the train. I miss the train. I am driving in again today, because after work we will put the finishing touches on the mentoring workshop that takes place tomorrow. And when I am done with that, I am driving back to Fort Worth and borrowing a cowboy hat from Secondborn (assuming that it fits) so I can be all yee-haw crawdaddies! tomorrow.

I got the most important part of the laundry done last night. I’ll finish up tomorrow night, since my social calendar is [thankfully] free.

@Secondborn, no I did not go out in my jammies at 3:30am yesterday to confront somebody who may or may not have been stalking me or casing the joint. I figured that turning on every light in the house would announce that burglary in my half of the duplex would be unwise and might also tend to discourage it in the other half. And I did do a walk-around before leaving for the office. The only thing out of the ordinary was a big blue box at the far corner of the house that once upon a time contained a whole lot of beer cans. I didn’t think to stop and heft it, to see if the party was recent, and it was still a little too dark to check for tracks.

I picked up Trainman after work last night, and he told me about his dinner date on Tuesday, and I told him about lunch with my friend, and we stopped at the burger joint that my friend had recommended. There were cops sitting near the window. Bliss! And the burgers were good, too. We even remembered to get in the HOV lane on the drive home.

OK, time to go water my plants in Fairyland while the tub fills.

My friend Sooz! Headlining, and not in Vegas!

Click now, or forever hold your peace!

I remember when we moved to Texas 30 years ago: a 1966 Dodge, a five-month-old baby, a 6’ x 12’ U-Haul Trailer, four gas credit cards, and $15.00 in cash. (That’s my crossing-the-plains story; you may have heard it before, and I can pretty much guarantee you’ll hear some version of it again.) A few months later, our best friends from Provo moved down. I assumed that once we were all living in the same zip code, the friendship would pick up where it had left off. It did not.

She was from a large and loving family, where the kids really were each others’ best friends, in spite of nearly thirty years’ difference in age between the oldest child and the youngest. I had yet to learn the tender lesson that some people are in our lives for a reason, some for a season, and some forever. She was always kind to me, but we were never again really close, with that closeness which comes when you are young and struggling and expecting your first babies within weeks of each other. [Not to mention far from home and the greater support system.]

So, I was envious of her close family and the time she spent with them. And I was envious that her husband had a job with a bank and made considerably more money than did the children’s father, who in spite of an MBA could only find work as a management trainee for the grouchiest restaurateur in Dallas. And I was crazy-jealous that they were able to buy their starter home a year or so after they graduated from BYU, ahead of the interest-rate feeding frenzy during which we bought our own wee cottage. [Primary mortgage bumped up to 14.25% from the 7.25% the previous owners had paid, and 20.36%APR on our second mortgage. Woe be unto those who grind the faces of the poor…]

Where was I?

I was envious of the sisters who put together playgroups for their children, and did not think to invite us, because we were poor. I was envious that other people’s kids got the solos at church, because their children were all starched and prim and proper. You name it, and I was envious.

Thankfully, over the ensuing three decades, Heaven and I have made a modicum of progress on the ongoing project which is Ms. Ravelled. I have learned to be [mostly] happy at the good fortune or the hard-earned blessings of others. I cannot claim to be entirely stripped of envy, but we are lurching along in that general direction.

Though when I masochistically view the box-opening posts for other folks whose Cuprit has arrived, I do feel a little green around the edges. I restrained myself to two brief texts to Fourthborn yesterday, out of respect that Tuesdays are her busiest day.

“Box?”

“Nope sorry ♥”

“Tnx.”

And now I am undecided whether to drive in again, in the faint hope that Cuprit will arrive in today’s mail, or take the train and pretty much guarantee her arrival. A box opening tomorrow night would not be good for me; I am on a committee at work for a Speed Mentoring activity that takes place on Friday, and we are staying late to decorate the office.

Had lunch yesterday with the friend who has recently popped up in my life again. No spazzing this time around, just good food and lots of fascinating conversation. Well, I was fascinated, anyway. It’s most instructive to hear the other person’s perspective on why that marriage went south. And also to hear why he has said and done various things over the years. Makes it much easier to finish forgiving him for some of it.

[I wonder how Trainman’s dinner date went last night? Can’t wait to find out.]

Went to Knit Night last night, met some new people, fondled all the yummy yarn that Monica brought back from Stitches East, which coincided neatly with her business trip. *Lovely* stuff, including a 75% merino 25% nylon sock yarn that felt like a wool/silk blend; no trace of icky plastic to it whatsoever.

I am tired this morning. Not sad, not sick, not depressed, just physically tired. I was awakened at 3:34 this morning by what sounded like knocking on my bedroom window, which is about eight feet above the ground. So I got up and turned on all the lights and have been typing away ever since. Lots of other excitement this week, lots of good news, steady progress on various projects, much to ponder, and the laundry is reaching critical mass again. [I think I know what I will be doing tonight; it involves quarters, but no shot glasses.] I might see about taking the afternoon off, if I can get my decorations done this morning. We were having issues with the overhead projector on Monday afternoon.

Life is good. Somebody hand me a Cherry Coke.

Alas and Alacrity

Get your Puffs. And your movie-watching shoes.

Guy called in to the office and said, “Hello, I need to be connected to [attorney] or one of his assistants.” Big, booming voice; painful, actually. I transferred him and remarked to another attorney who was rifling the contents of her yet-to-be-scanned mail, “Hello, I need to be connected to an audiologist.” Oye.

Poor Fourthborn. At a hair before 11:00am, I could stand the silence [re: Cuprit] no longer and fired off the first volley in this exchange, “Well?????”

“Nothing yet. I’ll let you know when it happens.”

“Aughhhh!!!!”

“I know, but there’s nothing I can do about it. ♥ xD”

Thankfully, I had enough work to keep me from going totally bonkers. [Only a little bonkers, not so much as you’d notice.]

I think I may have “authority issues” as great as those of the children’s father, if differing perhaps in venue and application. Why is it that when I get an email from the office manager informing me of a meeting, I automatically assume that I am in trouble? She has never been anything less than polite and professional. She is very good at her job. In general, her meetings run like a well-oiled machine, and she does not micro-manage me, for which I am immensely and eternally thankful.

I respect her, and I like almost everything about her. So why is it that when I opened the email saying that there was a meeting at 1:15, my immediate reaction was to think my favorite childbirth word, very loudly but not audibly? It’s not as if I had been earning myself a Nobel Peace Prize [oh, don’t get me started on that!] or finding the cure to anything; I was opening the mail.

And as it turned out, I had great joy in Mudville because of that meeting. Some of you know that I have been training, off and on, with the legal secretaries, with the hope that I would be ready to roll when the next one retires. One of my friends is retiring next year, but the business plan has changed [again], and all the secretaries will eventually be tending to an attorney and a half. So they need someone who can come in when my friend retires and handle 1.5 dockets, and we all agree that I’m not there yet. Not by a long shot.

B*U*T, one of the attorneys is going out on maternity leave, and her secretary will be out on medical leave for a couple of months and then on light duty for awhile after that. Which gives us an end run around the business plan. This secretary has two attorneys, the one soon to be home bonding with a wee one, and another. Attorney #2 is getting her docket split, and two secretaries will each pick up half. One of those secretaries has an attorney who is very self-sufficient and doesn’t really need her. So she is getting half of the new docket and keeping her other half of a docket and will spend the rest of her day ramping me up.

Starting next Monday, I have my very own attorney, and I like him and respect him, and I will no longer be backup at switchboard, nor will I have one-third of the mail run. This is temporary. No raise yet, and no promotion. I will be moving my desk, after they get a new one for that cubby and another workstation [good thing I’ve given none of you my direct number at work, huh?] so as to be next to my mentor and within shouting distance of my attorney.

When the secretary comes back, she will temporarily take over switchboard, and the receptionist will come back into the cubbies and take over stuff that I do now. I have prayed for her to get off switchboard, nearly as fervently as I have prayed on my own behalf.

The cool thing is that all the attorneys are on board with this. We [the support staff] are going to have to be so flexible that we make Cirque du Soleil look catatonic. But my friend who will be mentoring me has been saying for months-into-years that I can do this job. So she is deeply invested in helping me to succeed. And I have had a grin on my face since 1:20 yesterday afternoon that would dazzle the Cheshire Cat.

I picked up Trainman, and we rode home together. I was so busy babbling that I forgot to get in the HOV lane, but we had time enough to catch up on each other’s weekends. He has a dinner date tonight. And I am lunching out.

And who knows? Maybe this is the day that Cuprit shows up. I’m driving in, just in case.

Oye. With a side order of artistic validation.

I wondered why none of the usual suspects had commented on yesterday’s post. When I moderated comments, I discovered that I hadn’t changed the time stamp on the draft from PM to AM. So please know that I was not twelve hours off-schedule from the rest of my ward, and chalk it up to a senior moment. I came home from church happy and completely wiped out. [The good news is that I did not doze off in sacrament meeting, at least not that I remember.]

After my nap, I finished tweaking the tie skirt. The tulle underskirt is still just a skosh too long, but I’m not going to snip it from the top and redo the casing for the drawstring until I can try it on Jessica and see precisely how much shorter it needs to be. I think the proportions may be different when they’re flowing over her curves than when the skirts are draped along the back of the couch.

I like how the belt turned out. I have about an inch and a half of both trims leftover, and I will figure out a use for them: I might just snip the beaded fringe off and reuse those beads for a pair of earrings for me, or as a pendant for a doll necklace, or an ornament for one of my miniature Christmas trees. Everything but the squeal, y’all, everything but the squeal [i.e., what my farm-kid father told me was made use of, when they butcher a hog].

I went to the bead shop and bought four more vials of beads that pick up the colors in the tie skirt; I want to make a multi-strand necklace and possibly [eventually] a beaded bodice or vest. When I walked in, one of the clerks was wearing a cool witch hat and sparkly jangly beaded earrings with a torque to match. Something I would not be embarrassed to wear, had I not developed an aversion to things touching the sides of my neck. I was wearing Autumn Asters, and she loved that as much as I did her jewelry.

I love getting compliments on my work from other artists artisans, because they have some idea of what goes into what I make, as I do with their stuff; I suspect that she had at least 100 hours invested in that torque alone. [Not that I’m ever unhappy to hear nice things from all y’all. Quit it some more, quit it some more!]

I also found one of my tatting shuttles, so now I can make much of my own trim for my doll clothing and see if my idea for a tatted necklace was inspired. [Or merely insane.] And I curled up on the couch with my three new knitting magazines to see if one of the sweaters wanted to be scaled down to Jessica-size, but it was hard to keep my eyes open.

I think I am about done with the swatching; it’s time to cast on and get serious.

Happy birthday, SisterMine!

No “alarums”. Just excursions.

My friend Bookgrump is always up to something. She has our knitting group handing over leftover bits and bobs of yarn so that the art teacher in her school can give students a wide variety of supplies for their projects. Any strand too short to make miniature sweaters and socks for my Christmas tree, or for Middlest to make doll scarves and sweaters, but longer than my hand, goes into a Ziploc snack bag. When the bag is full, I give it to Bookgrump at Knit Night.

This is something new that she’s helped with. I’ve linked on Facebook. If you’re on LiveJournal or another appropriate forum, perhaps you would like to do the same.

Yesterday was all about doing unto others. It was my privilege to attend the stake RS leadership training meeting, which was pertinent, well-run, and mercifully short. And because it was a Relief Society meeting, there were refreshments that covered most of the major food groups.

Then I drove up to the Bishops’ Storehouse [never quite sure where to put that apostrophe; maybe one day I will just toss it into the middle of Storehouse for a little variety]; I picked up two food orders for families in our ward and ran a little further up I-35 to L&L Hawaiian Barbecue, where I bought a small tub of that macaroni salad and grabbed a plastic fork.

There was quite a bit of traffic on the drive home. I ate nearly half of the salad [and nothing else until after I woke up from my nap]. Back in Fort Worth, one of my friends asked how best to help a friend of hers who moved here recently and came back from a business trip to find her home burglarized; the thieves took all her stuff including the contents of her fridge and pantry. We put our heads together and figured something out. And when I did my drive-by fooding of the missionaries, I picked up a copy of the Book of Mormon for my friend to give her friend.

I suspect that the necessity of our sweet conspiracy was the real reason I had felt such urgency to drive to the B’i’s’h’o’p’s’ S’t’o’r’e’h’o’u’s’e. [That felt good. Weird, but good.] I suspect that, other than warbling “Happy Birthday to You” into the cell phone at Fourthborn, it was the most important thing I did all day, because I had been prepared, through service, to heed the whisperings of the Spirit.

I even got a nap after all that driving: an uncharacteristically short one, only two hours; when I woke up, I still had a few hours left in which to be crafty before [a sensible person’s] bedtime.

Behold [imagine picture here; no time to import it before leaving for correlation meeting] the finished tulle underskirt, much improved over its previously austere incarnation. The only problem is, now it’s too long for the overskirt, so I am tweaking that.

Hey, Brother Sushi, what about here for dinner next-month-my-nickel? My friend Francis says it’s good. He hasn’t steered me wrong yet. Here’s the menu.

OK, y’all, I’m out the door.

*Huge* sigh of relief.

Huge. I’ve been grinning since Wednesday: so nice to know that Cuprit is once more on shipping, though the tracking number no longer works. (Fourthborn, have they given you a new one? I tried last night and got a rather snarky error message.)

Even though I drove in to work yesterday, just in case she was delivered, the trip was not wasted; I took Fourthborn the money for Beyla and took her and Fiancé home from work while having a brief but enjoyable chat.

OK, we now need to pray for a dry spell once Cuprit arrives, so that we can do her faceup. If it’s too humid, the fixative or sealant doesn’t work properly. And speaking of dry spells or the lack thereof, I got a text from Middlest while at work on Thursday morning.

“Flooding in Fort Worth! You okay? It was on CNN.”

“Presumably yes. Hang on. …[typety-type, typety-type] … Nothing on web or in FW Star Telegram. Levees between river & most of FW. I am uphill from Cultural District & park where you got lost.”

“OK just wanted to make sure.”

“[Co-worker] says flood stage [for the Trinity River, which runs through both Dallas and Fort Worth] is 30 ft & it’s @ 32. Isolated flooding in BigD so maybe also in FW.”

“Definitely in FW. Saw it on CNN. Waist deep where they were showing footage and cause it isn’t local news, they didn’t say where exactly.”

Must have been a slow news day on Thursday. Here are some beautiful, brilliant, inspired images. Grab the box of Puffs first. [Proving that even though there may be localized flooding, Somebody is still definitely in charge.]

I had a possible brainstorm yesterday, after seeing a jewelry form/bust in an article in the fall issue of Cloth/Paper/Scissors/Studios: paper clay @ Michael’s to make jewelry forms to display doll necklaces. Lightweight, can be sculpted, nontoxic, requires no baking or firing, can be painted. I may pick up a brick of clay while I’m out and about today.

Last but certainly not least: happy birthday, Fourthborn!

A nice quiet evening at home.

Listened to Enchanted while sewing a belt for my Jessica, who will arrive next month. Began attaching the ruffle to the tulle underskirt that goes with the tie skirt.

We were discussing the recycled tracking number for Cuprit, at work. It would make sense if this is the package which was shipped in September and possibly returned to Korea without authorization. Nevertheless, it’s frustrating not to be able to hit that number and see where she is, as opposed to where she was.

I’m driving in today, in case I get a call from Fourthborn saying that Cuprit is here. And also because I need to hand over my penultimate payment on Beyla. [I love that word; I use it as often as I can!]

It’s “wear your favorite team jersey day” at work. I may have ranted a little on that subject, over on Facebook. I am wearing my don’t you wish your girlfriend could knit like me? t-shirt and declaring knitting to be the newest Olympic sport. Nyah!

I wonder if CafePress has official Knitting Olympics t-shirts?

Ms.Ravelled hits the bar...

Courtesy of Fourthborn, and lurking in the fridge for a couple of weeks. We are celebrating. Keep reading to find out why.

She may be “just a kid”, but she speaks eloquently. I really enjoy her column on Meridian.

And Richard Eyre, who also writes beautifully, must have been tired when he proofread his third-from-last paragraph. [I believe that he meant to say “tenets”, not “tenants”. No, I have not read any of Dan Brown’s books, nor am I particularly interested in doing so. But I do have a well-honed sense of irony. So I enjoyed the article.]

My MIA Cuprit, or her replacement, left the factory in Korea yesterday. She needs to get here, clear customs, and then thread the minefield [who knew?] which is the USPS. But this time the manufacturer has the correct shipping address; so now it’s just a matter of her being delivered on a day when Fourthborn’s office is open for business. Most likely next Monday.

I am so jazzed that I woke an hour and a half ahead of my alarm this morning. Thankfully, I have no meetings tonight after work; an early bedtime is a real possibility.

And I have about half of the first bit on my sister’s birthday present done; roughly 3.5 bits to go, and my gauge is sufficiently more loose than the pattern specifies, so that I may be able to get the entire project out of one ball rather than two.

Somebody had fried chicken on the train home last night. Trainman and I were both going out of our minds. After the baptism, I asked several church friends where the closest Chicken Express was, but nobody knew, so I called Secondborn. She told me exactly how to get there. I don’t often get in the mood for fried chicken, but last night my limbic brain would accept no substitutes. Mm, chicken tenders and a biscuit, all dunked in cream gravy. My ankles are none too happy with me this morning, but the rest of me is quietly content.

A “Host” of Ideas

For those of you who are not sick of the Twilight series, and maybe for some of you who are, this essay from another LDS writer.

And for those of you who are musically or culturally inclined, Natalie Cole and David McCullough are the soloists for the Christmas broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

I forgot to read the entire article, so at this writing I am not sure if it is David McCullough of PBS fame, or David McCullough who was Ilya Kuryakin on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Oh wait. That was David McCallum. [Oops!] Who according to Wikipedia is apparently on 'NCIS' (NCSI?)these days, which I would know if I watched TV.

Now that I have thoroughly embarrassed myself, this might be a good time to distract all of you by revealing that Cuprit’s second incarnation may be imminent. Fourthborn got an email from the manufacturer yesterday, stating that the extra set of eyes she had ordered is no longer available, and they will be crediting her account. [They sent her an identical email two or three days before shipping out Ms. Missing-in-Action in early September. She emailed back, to that effect.] So when I went to bed last night, we were hoping for a fresh shipping notice, though it is entirely possible that she will just show up when we least expect her.

Or not.

I have the bag with her clothing, waiting in the trunk. The reigning mood chez Ravelled is cautious optimism. Enhanced by the civility with which the Buffalo Gold Lux is behaving on my needles as I work on my sister’s possibly-won’t-be-belated-after-all birthday present.

We live and die by the sticky-note.

Ticklish people should not keep their cell phones in their hip pockets. It makes for startled squawks and leaping about in one’s chair.

I have my planner, to make sure that I’m where I ought to be, when I ought to be there. But much of what I do in my church calling is tender and private and sensitive, not suitable for archiving for the next umpteen years. So you will frequently find little yellow and purple sticky-notes on the cover of my planner, because they can be shredded once I have followed through.

I had to laugh at myself yesterday. I took a number of calls on RS business, one of which concerns a funeral that may or may not happen in our ward. It is not a question [as in The Princess Bride] of the fine line between “dead” and “mostly dead”; you will not find your favorite RS president going through somebody’s pockets for loose change. This was an individual who was only tangentially connected with our ward, and thus presents a question of jurisdiction and the wishes of the extended family.

One of the calls was a response from our good bishop, who is on-call for work for the next little while, so if there is a funeral, one of his counselors will necessarily preside. My sticky-note, scribbled hastily with one hand, says “Call Br. M arrange fun svcs if here.”

I devoutly hope that when it’s my turn to go, there will be a fun service.

In knitting news, the second beginning of my sister’s birthday present is going far better than the first one on Sunday. A cable needle is truly essential. It’s a pattern with a fourteen-row repeat, and I am trying to figure out how to keep track without marking up my brand new copy of Vogue Knitting Holiday 2009. I would use a sticky-note, but I’d hate to get it confused with RS stuff and accidentally bury my knitting.

Maple-Blueberry Sausage!

Every so often I go nuts at Central Market. [As opposed to going nuts at the yarn shop, fabric store, bookstore, etc.] Back in March I bought several types of sausages and froze them, two by two, just like the Ark: some chicken, some turkey, some pork.

All summer long I could not bear the thought of cooking them up, but now that it is imitating fall out there, I am suddenly feeling carnivorous. Every few days I grab a package out of the freezer and toss it into the fridge to thaw. Last week I had applewood smoked bacon for two breakfasts. Last night I poached two maple-blueberry sausages for about five minutes, then browned them in my skillet.

The larger one is going to the office with me today, accompanied by a hot dog bun and maybe some mango chutney, just to make sure I get my daily five in the fruit and veggie department. [If ketchup is a vegetable (thank you, Jimmy Carter), then surely chutney is the farmers’ market in a jar.]

Last night I sliced the smaller one into coins and also frizzled up two eggs, over easy, in [not quite enough; I should have added a dab of butter] sausage grease. It is at moments like that, that I wish I had one of those hollow tongues like butterflies, so I could get every smidgen of goodness. I toasted one last slice of the buttermilk oatmeal bread for wiping up the bowl.

Heaven.

I am up to 65 projects in my queue on Ravelry. This does not count the projects that caused me to buy three new knitting magazines last Saturday. I need to solve the mysteries of time travel, or clone myself, or both. Though two [or more] of me is a scary thought, even to me!

And I have begun the new incarnation of my sister’s main birthday present. Thank you, Vogue Knitting! Sometimes you just turn a page and think, “Oh, so that’ s what this yarn wants to be!” I ran the idea past her in a quick call on Saturday afternoon; she was intrigued. The only downside to this project, and it’s a very small quibble, more like une quibblette, is that I will not be able to cable-without-a-cable-needle. I tried, briefly, during sacrament meeting, gave up on it, and promptly dozed off.

Further swatching on the doll sweater is set aside for the moment, in the hope that I can get this birthday project in the mail to SisterMine sometime between her actual birthday and the end of the month. At which point Secondborn’s birthday gift becomes the project du jour. But as that brat Miz Scarlett was heard to say, “Tomorrow is another day.”

How beautiful upon the mountains...

...are the feet of [him] that ... publisheth peace. [That would be my other homeboy, Isaiah (52:7, KJV); he writes me love letters that are frequently mysterious and hard to puzzle out, but he always has something edifying to say, and I always feel better and stronger and smarter and more hopeful when I read them.]

I got some good news from a good friend, about a mutual friend. The kind of thing you love to hear, told by somebody with the authority to share it. Absolutely made my day when I heard it! [You know who you are.]

So, I found that box of blank checks; all I need to do now is to print up return address labels and slap them down where the preprinted [but out-of-date] address is. Yes, I am that frugal.

Yesterday was another terrific day. I only got twenty bajillion things done, instead of the 40 bajillion I did on Friday, but the next-to-last one involved dancing with a bunch of other old people, and the music was great, and the company was better.

Today’s goals are short and sweet:
1. Stay awake in all my meetings (which begin in approximately half an hour).
2. Get a long, sleep-wrecking nap after church.

Oh, and I solved the mystery of that last perfect thing to give my sister for her birthday. It will be part of goal #1 for the day.

What I did yesterday - and into this morning

1. Washed dishes.
2. Put the printer up on a wire shelf.
3. Made a PBJ.
4. Watched an episode of Ace of Cakes.
5. Cleaned off the couch.
6. Browsed a copy of This Old House and then put it into the recycling bag.
7. Pressed the ribbon that tied up my bag from Coldwater Creek [new plum shirt to spill food on when I went to lunch with NintendoMan earlier this week] and stitched it into a hoochie-mama skirt for one of Fourthborn’s dolls.



9. Ate some cookie dough.
10. Washed more dishes.
11. Wrapped Fourthborn’s birthday presents; tossed the hoochie-mama skirt into the bag. It needs a fastener at the waist, and it needs the little strap that will become built-in bloomers tacked at the back of the skirt, but I’m going to let her adjust the fit.



12. Put away the stuff I used to make the skirt.
13. Cannibalized my favorite red T-shirt for doll clothes and split it three ways.
14. Started a new pile of stuff to send to Middlest.
15. Watched another episode [or three] of Ace of Cakes.
16. Hung up the last of the clean clothes from in the fridge.
17. Hung up the laundry bag.
18. Cut out the dusty plum underskirt for Jessica and/or Cuprit but did not make it as full as the one for Fourthborn’s doll.
19. Made a pot of egg and lemon soup, but also wanted some spinach, so when I cooked the rice, I threw in a block of frozen spinach. [This was done by a skilled stunt cook; do not attempt this at home.]
20. Stitched up the back seam of the underskirt while the soup cooked.
21. Threw in a can of chicken chunks and the rest of the chicken stock. Called it egg and lemon casserole. Not the prettiest meal I have ever cooked, but reasonably tasty. Last time I made the soup, I put in too much lemon juice. This time, not quite enough.
22. Bound the top edge of the underskirt using SeamsGreat and threaded a length of skinny cream double-faced satin ribbon through it. It’s too long and not full enough at the bottom; I need to pick Fourthborn’s brain on what to do to make it better.
23. Finished watching Ace of Cakes.
24. Mended the edge of an afghan belonging to Fourthborn’s Fiancé’s mom. It got seriously chomped while in storage. It’s vintage yarn, so no way of matching it, plus it’s crocheted. So I just built a little cage around the chomping using strip after strip of SeamsGreat, which is pretty much invisible even if my stitches aren’t.
25. Went to bed at 1:00am feeling happier about my living room than I have in awhile, and having not spoken to another living soul all day, but ready to change that.

What happens today:
1. Breakfast at Chef Point Cafe with Trainman. I am dressed and ready to rumble [my tummy has already begun].
2. Trip to Arlington to deliver the mended afghan.
3. Haircut, oh please, haircut!!!
4. Hook up the scanner?
5. If so, scan and shred the paperwork here on my desk.
6. Birthday card for Fourthborn.
7. Study Sunday School lesson and Relief Society lesson.
8. Figure out the rest of my sister’s birthday present and get it ready to mail on Monday.
9. Find the box of checks or order new ones; this might really be the last bundle of blanks.
10. Take scarves to the dry cleaner.
11. 12. Wash the lights and the darks.
12. 11. Go to bank. Get quarters, just in case. I need that fridge space for more carrot sticks.
13. Eat chocolate.
14. Don’t worry.
15. Be happy. ☺

When in Rome...

Have you ever wondered how [or if] the Romans pronounced Roman numerals? All these years, and I never thought to wonder until now. I somehow doubt that they said icks for the number 9.

You know that I love Anne Perry’s work nearly as much as Orson Scott Card’s. Here is a link to her latest Letter from the Highlands on Meridian.



You also know that I am an exceedingly amateur photographer. I look at BrooklynTweed’s photography of his knitting designs, or ThePanopticon’s, and I just sigh. I’m not a big fan of the great outdoors, or natural light [one look at my shins, if I ever revealed them, would tell you this].

I used three settings on my rookie-proof digital camera to photograph this swatch. The ones with my flash were overexposed and bleagh, and you couldn’t see the individual stitches. Here I got down on my knees by my bed and attacked from the side.

At least now you can see how beautiful and crisp those cables are, even if the lace does not show up in either photograph. And you can see how even the plain stockinette stitches are, and the wonderful relief in the knit-purl section.



I truly, madly, deeply ♥ this yarn. To the point where I could see myself not-buying-dolls long enough to save up and order two full bags of it [20 balls] to make a sweater in human scale. Or maybe that will be my treat when I get my bonus next year.

What’s on the agenda, you ask? A mental health day; I love that I get three weeks of vacation every year. I slept in until 7:15 (I know!) and am about to put on my jeans and my painting shirt or something equally disreputable.

I think there will be some furniture-shoving here in the living room, and possibly in my studio as well. There will be a modicum of dusting. The Swiffer is going to get a workout. I am going to set my ladybug kitchen timer for varying amounts of time and see if I can beat the clock.

There will be frequent knitting breaks to reward myself. Cookie dough will mysteriously vanish. I might even go so far as to connect the scanner to the computer and the VCR/DVD player to the TV, though that might be pushing things, and I might leave that for Trainman or Brother Sushi the next time one of them is here.

I am also going to study my Relief Society lesson and my Sunday School lessons for this weekend, but mostly I am going to be an avocado all day. [i.e., incommunicado] No email, no cell phone, no Facebook until I am once more pleased with my surroundings, and myself.

Later, gators!

In which your intrepid heroine falls asleep during the monthly staff meeting.

It ran long. Two point four hours, to be precise, and somewhere in the middle I was just gone. I fought it and fought it, but when I awoke, it was to discover the office manager beholding me with polite vexation.

I’m truly sorry. She doesn’t want me to knit in the meetings; she thinks it’s rude, and they’re her meetings. 99.9% of me is fully supportive of that. The one-tenth of one percent of me which is not, is unfortunately quite visible, as it’s located midway up my face.

I’m using my CPAP, I got to bed at a decent hour on Tuesday night, and I’m trying to eat sensibly. Though it was really hard to do with all this to tempt me.



And more food.



I’ve already learned to great chagrin that I can’t stay out dancing until all hours if I have a 7:00am correlation meeting at church the next day. All those candles burnt at both ends and sometimes in the middle, when I was in my 20’s, are paying me back now that I’m in my late 50’s. I was sitting at Knit Night, put my knitting into my bag, and immediately wilted. It was if somebody had turned off the master switch.

I dozed off at switchboard a couple of times when I was covering the receptionist’s lunch hour. Finally I stood up, did some stretches, a few slow yoga moves in the chair, refilled the paper tray in the fax machine, did some more stretches, visualized world peace, read the in-house propaganda publications, stretched some more, played some FreeCell.



But I’m awake now. And I’ve got my eye on you.

Why boys should not take me to lunch.

9:00am – four hours until lunch
10:30am – two and a half hours until lunch
11:56am – one hour and four minutes until – holy cow! I forgot to go up to switchboard at 11:30!
12:17pm – I hope my stomach doesn’t growl in the car on the way to the restaurant
12:20pm – my hands are shriveling and crêping as we speak
12:22pm – I have the soundtrack from the club scene in “Shall We Dance?” running through my head; all those trumpets are making me nervous
12:26pm – (while scanning documents at switchboard) oh-my-heck, my face is breaking out
12:31pm – holy cow, he’s early
12:56pm – we are outta here!
2:25pm – je suis rempli des poissons [and dirty rice, and coleslaw, and tartar sauce, and hush puppies, and there is a slice of lemon pie waiting for me in the fridge]
2:30pm – (as I am logging in my request for half an hour of PT because the service was, ahem, leisurely) we could do this again sometime

[Let the record show that the first time I had dinner with Brother Sushi, I spazzed, even though we agreed beforehand that we would only ever be JustFriends. And the first time I dined with Trainman, I called two daughters and Brother Sushi and gave them all Trainman’s license number, just in case I came up missing between the appetizer and the dessert. New male presence in my life or shift in context with male presence in my life or reintroduction of male presence in my life, it mattereth not. Spazzing, there will be. Once I had the plate in front of me, I relaxed. Oh, and that pie? He was right: best lemon pie ever; I ate mine at my desk while transcribing a tape, just before leaving the office.]

@Firstborn: Not the top shelf, honey; that’s where the milk and juice go.



You will be pleased to know that all the stuff I hung up Monday night is dry, and I hung up more stuff when I got home from Knit Night; the bag [while back in the fridge] is considerably smaller.

I also did a lot of swatching yesterday. All my shots were blurry, so you will just have to wait. I’m still not done swatching. I ♥ this yarn! It is easy on the hands, easy on the eyes, crisp without being stiff. I think the next bit of swatching, after I finish the current eyelet pattern, is going to include a few cables.

Makin’ Whoopie!

No, not me, y’all; I have not fallen off the chastity wagon. But Amazon tells me that Diana Krall has a new CD, and she sings this as a duet with her husband, Elvis Costello. I love Dr. John’s rendition on the Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack. [And I sing a plausible version myself, but what’s the point? There’s nobody to sing harmony.]

But for all you married types, this might be just the ticket. Amazon says that the CD is mostly bossa nova, which for me is one of the charms of Texas de Brazil, all that lovely music murmuring in the background.

I got my manicure after work last night, huzzah! And I got a bushel of compliments on Autumn Asters when I wore it to work. Everybody else was shivering and complaining, and I just grinned and said, “I don’t know what all of you are talking about. I’m warm as toast here.”

I also got the most crucial part of my laundry washed but not dried. I bought a cheapie rolling rack, because both change machines at the laundromat were out of change, and if I hung everything up on the shower rod, it would fall apocalyptically in the middle of the night, because it’s just mean like that.

So, today I am lunching out. With a guy. One who is neither Brother Sushi nor Trainman, but whom I hope will become as good a friend. He says I get the privilege of watching him eat at least half a dozen raw oysters and assures me that this place serves more than just oysters; good thing, because I don’t think I could eat one to save my life. I like the flavor of cooked oysters but not the texture. I would have to eat them after somebody else had minced them into smithereens. It has been roughly 40 years since the last time I ate oysters, and I no longer have to eat what my parents tell me, so there too now. Plus, I have dysphagia [intermittent difficulty in swallowing], and I choked on fondue once, so the less gaggy the food the better.

I ran out of hangers before I ran out of things to hang up, so I shoved the laundry bag into the fridge in the hope that its contents will not sour before I can hang them up tonight. I just was not in the mood to run to Wally World at a quarter to midnight to get more hangers.

It worked, mostly. It would have worked better if this were still July and the room I laughingly call my studio were 85°F. I had to use my blowdryer to finish the job this morning.

And I am out the door...

I wore "Autumn Asters" yesterday.

The house was chilly when I woke up. Not cool enough to require running the gas fireplace, but enough to give me hope that it might be a sweater-wearing day. And it was. I picked up Fourthborn and took her to the strip mall that has both a JoAnn’s and a Hancock’s so she could get cow fabric for her Halloween costume. And then she bought us lunch at Chipotle. I trusted her on the contents of my über-burrito, and I was not disappointed: steak marinated in something spicy, rice with a decided lemony flavor, and just enough sour cream and cheese to smooth off any rough edges. I ate part of it for lunch and the rest for dinner.

While she shopped, I sat in the car and knitted, just in case I am contagious. She passed on a trip to the bead store near Secondborn’s, because “bead stores are much more fun when you can say, oh look at this, what do you think I should put with it?” When I took her home, she loaned me the first three seasons of Ace of Cakes in case I found myself sitting on the couch the rest of the weekend with my knitting and my boxes of Puffs.

I made a bunch of phone calls regarding various meetings that require my presence today as I headed down to Firstborn’s to drop off Lark’s birthday present, which I had sealed up with its card in a Ziploc storage bag, with instructions that they should pop the bag into the freezer for a couple of days. As Sandberg said, “Ice is nice, and will suffice.”

From Firstborn’s I drove to the bread thrift store and picked up enough loaves for the better part of a month. And then down to Wal-Mart for milk and juices and Greek yogurt and a bag of salad. [The woman who checked me out, loved the sweater. Props to Sarah Rose Orne.]

Back home to putter for a couple of hours, until it was time to do my drive-by fooding of the elders.

I don’t know what was up on southbound Montgomery; it must have taken the better part of ten minutes to get down to the light at I-30. I called the elders and told them I was running late, and did they prefer Jack in the Box or Subway? “We like both. Surprise us.” If I had been feeling perkier, I would have gotten one of each and told them to fight it out. I ended up getting them marinara meatball subs with cheese and black olives [Brother Sushi is rolling his eyes] and oatmeal cookies for dessert. It was cooling off again outside, and they were on their bikes. Hot sandwiches were just what Dr. Mom ordered, though I didn’t get one for myself. Looked great, could almost smell them, would love to have one some other time, but meh.

The elders were most appreciative and made the male equivalent of there, there noises when they saw my poor chapped beak. One of them said, “Let us know if you want us to give you a blessing.” At which point I turned off the engine, opened the door, unbuckled myself, and pivoted my feet out of the car so they could get at my head to anoint me.

If you ever, ever have the opportunity or the need to have the elders of Israel lay hands upon your head and pronounce a blessing upon you, take it. The priesthood which these young men hold is the power and authority to act in the name of God The words which come out of their mouths, are the inspired word of God and are exactly what He would like you to hear at the time you ask Him. Last night I received comfort, the promise of healing, counsel to pace myself wisely, and acknowledgment of my efforts.

One of those blessings where, as I told them afterward, it was almost worth getting sick to hear.

Moving from the levitical to levity, here is a creative use for candy corn.

And by way of Unclutterer, here are five links to useful articles on keeping medical expenses under control.

[Well, I thought I had made all necessary calls re: meetings, etc., and I got a text at 10:25 asking if I could have one of my counselors come to the 7:30 meeting in my stead. Texted back that it was probably too late to call but that I would email them. Which I did. When I went to bed at 10:59, I was feeling significantly more human.]