Happy Birthday to Me

Have you seen that movie? It was one of my very first dates in high school. Of Mike, the guy who took me to the Bedford Mall (well, his father drove) to see it, my mother would always say, "I wish I could put him on ice!" Meaning, of course, that I should marry him even though we were much(!) too young to consider any such thing. Though technically, in NH, I was legal to marry when I was dating him...with parental permission and judicial waivers...At any rate, my mother picked us up at the end of the date and when she heard I had eaten chocolate ice cream (we had strolled around the mall for a while) she said, "Annnnnnnnnnna! You can't eat chocolate ice cream without getting it all over your face." While true, you can imagine how hard I was wishing for a hole in the floorboards to spit me out onto the road below. When I think back on him, he's probably most like the dude of any of my boyfriends: intellectual, physically large head, quiet, dark, and handsome. But, being from NH, he could ski and the dude, not so much. Of course, I haven't skied since I went away to college lo those many years ago making the dude's lack of shushing skills a moot point.

Wow...what I meant to tell you about was the fabulous gift I got from Paula D. (We were once F&S exchange partners. If you can imagine my exact opposite in the stitchy world, I'm pretty sure it is Paula: seven kids and a husband who is a pastor? preacher? how you say in English? I don't know, I'm still hung up on the seven kids--I can't even handle the one dog. Really, just today the dog got so mad at me because I wouldn't let her out to chase rabbits that she spilled my beads for "Martini" all over the floor. "Look, Mama,* I made the floor sparkly!")

Paula stitched me Lizzie*Kate's "Autumn ABCs" and finished it as a pinkeep with sage green beads around the edge. PUMPKIN! How perfect is that? She also sent quite a package including Just Nan's "Frightful," (more pumpkins) LHN's "Moon and Stars," and Sheepish Designs "That Dern Parrot," which turns out to be one of those patterns I didn't even know I wanted that I am in love with. The envelope also held two skeins of silk mori that match a skein of Northern Lights, two skeins of Crescent Colours, two of Six Strand Sweets, (which are my first. I know! Did you even think I had any stitching virginity left?), some gold very fine braid, and a postcard from the Gulf Coast of Alabama.

Thanks so much, Paula. You've outdone yourself!

Paula also did a really good job for the tourism bureau. When the dude saw the postcard, he asked, "Is that what Alabama looks like?" I told him it did along the Gulf Coast, and he decided we should visit Alabama some day.

*I actually hate when people say I am a dog mother. First, she is--or I am--the wrong species. Also, dogs are easier than children since you are allowed to crate a dog and leave it home alone. Social services frown on you doing that to children. We're teaching Stella to learn our names: "go upstairs with Anna," the dude will say--we are certainly not mommy and daddy. Though, like our heroes Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis, we sometimes call each other mommy and daddy. No we don't. Why would you even believe any part of that sentence?

Accolades

Thank you all so much for your wonderful, kind comments about By the Sea and Toy Gatherer. Thanks especially for not mentioning that it took me 13 years to complete. Of course you wouldn't point that out. You are my people! You understand my plight.

You are not, however, the only ones who deserve accolades. Indeed, you will remember that the dude was playing chess this weekend. On Saturday he was the co-leader. We were pretty proud of him. On Sunday, he came home with the trophy and a small cash prize! He won the tournament outright! My what a big brain he has!

Five Years

Whoa, Nelly.
I'm taking a little breather at work. Literally. I had to interview a pair of docs today who run the anatomy lab. In their office. In the anatomy lab. They didn't tell me that. So I was riding up the escalator and thinking to myself, "something smells funny." Well, yeah. Then a guy wheels a gurney with a black bag by me. I kept thinking, make sure you're still hearing things; if you stop, you're going to faint. But I didn't. Still an hour of breathing formadelhyde is about fifty minutes too many. I need to breathe.

Five Years
This month, I will celebrate five years of blogging. I started blogging when it was just coming in to wider use in academia. My boss at the oru wanted to put a blog on the website. I don't know why I resisted; it probably sounded too trendy. I was reading Knitting Curmudgeon, and I started wondering if there were blogging stitchers. I asked my boss and my friend who was then blogging about his heart condition on Live Journal to tell me if they came across any stitching blogs. If there were any, none of us could find them. So I just started writing on August 21, 2003. I don't even know if anyone was reading--no comments back in the dark ages. I just kept writing into the ether. Soon, I started finding more and more stitching bloggers. And what a community it is! Eventually, there got to be so many stitching blogs I no longer felt obliged to read them all, well, not all the time.

Radical Change of Blog Policy
To celebrate this momentous anniversary, for the next year, I will be having a giveaway on the 21st of each month. Prizes will range from things stitched or sewn or crafted by me to things I buy. Because, let's face it...in the last five years I haven't really impressed you with my abilities to finish what I start. To win, comment on the anniversary post; I'll label it. Using a random number generator, I'll draw the winner on the 21st. I'll ship gifts worldwide because now I have stitching friends the world over. It's a good thing.

Thanks for reading!

Thanks

On Tuesday, I was looking ahead to taking pictures, so I didn't stop to say thank you for all your kind comments. That's been happening a lot to me lately because of the situation at work. I'm looking ahead and fighting imaginary battles. They tell you, in these cases, to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, but I am so unimaginative that I cannot even think about how bad things can get. I told the big boss that I was unsatisfied in my discussions with the AVP. He told me he could review my job situation after July 17. Right, after you get a month's work for a low, low price. So I told him that was a long time to wait when I am being expected to do 60 hours worth of work. He said we can talk about it when the AVP returns. My cousin's husband keeps saying let them fire you, rather than quit, but I think they don't care how little work I do in protest of my treatment. I think something's better than nothing as far as they're concerned. Tomorrow he's going over the SWOT analysis with my "group." What a joke. I'll tell him what the biggest threat to my department is! My favorite part is that we've been told we can be honest because "there's no place for your name." Of course, if you're the only person in your department...

Anyway, derailed again. I came here to say thank you for all your comments on my picture gallery.

Thank you!

April Showers, May Flowers

Well, it's a good thing I'm not a comment whore, or I'd have to start continue inflicting injuries on myself! Thank you all for your kind get well wishes. Adrienne's right, used properly, this tool is great; I'm just too careless for it. DD asked how bad it was, and I'm not gonna lie to you: I was too much of a pussy to look. I saw the piece that came off--brought it with me, just in case--but look at the wound? Couldn't. The dude can tell you how bad it is...or I can after I visit the hand surgeon. (But maybe for the easily squicked that should be a private conversation.) Fortunately, it's just a hop, skip, and a jump to The Hand Center where I'll be in good...hands, ugh.

Before Barbara starts rumors that I had some kind of wild college life, first of all, I went to Bryn Mawr where I'm pretty sure rule #32 was No-Crazy-Ass-Drunkin'-Whoring-I-Can't-Remember-My-Name-I'm-at-the-Hospital? Fun allowed. (But maybe I did break rule #32...who's talking?) I'm really the kind of person who does something one day and forgets it the next. (I remember everything I read, though, and where it is on the page.) Like after the squid salad incident, I actually said to dd, "Who knows when I will eat fish in a restaurant again?" while I was eating a fish sandwich in a pub in Oklahoma. So the fact that I went to the hospital sometime between 1984 and 1988 and can't remember 20 years later--totally unsurprising.

I made very small goals for this month:
1. Go to Camp (April 3-6) Done! but it seems so long ago...
2. Bring the finish-finishing of 2008 to six items, not counting the ones Mona is giving me at camp. Um, including the birthday gift I just sent off, I believe I am up to two. Pathetic. three!--I finished the little Quaker fob from camp--still, pretty pathetic.

May Goals
1. Finish My Needle and Floss--how is it that I finally get this pattern that I have coveted, and I chop my finger off?
2. Bring the finish-finishing of 2008 up to eight items.
3. Work on some UFOs
4. Start the dude's anniversary present

I Feel the Love!

I want to thank you all for coming out of the woodwork to show your love for the biscornu! I hope the judges are feeling it like you all are! Thank you; thank you; thank you. It's very difficult for me to imagine that I'm not just like everyone else (just ask my therapist), so I thought I was making this contest entry and it was going to be an obvious choice that was just what everyone else would make. You can see how much I really needed your validation.

For all the Cubs fans, dude, you have that C--you can totally substitute it. And the blue would work with the red seams. Instead of a blue star, you could put a baseball button. Anyway, I grew up in NH and because the BoSox totally broke my heart in 1986, I can continue to be a member of Red Sox Nation. I only made the Phillies biscornu because I didn't want to get my head kicked in at Citizen's Bank Park while I worked on it. I do think there are many possibilities for substitutions and changes. You could even make a basketball biscornu or a puck. The (American) football might not work so well, but a soccer ball...

Thanks again to all of you!

More G-Ma

Thank you for all your kind words about my grandmother. Because if she met you, she wouldn't be that kind. In retrospect you might be able to laugh at the things she would no doubt say to you but you might feel a little sting and your eyes might well up if you encountered her in person. (Worse still, if you farted in the stall next to her.)

There is an epilogue to the Michael Mina story. The one where she is in such an expensive restaurant that they don't even print prices on the women's menus. Where they have a little ottoman for your purse to rest on. Where you shouldn't get drunk and pick up your entree with your fingers. That one.

We were all gathered at my cousin's house shortly after mother's day this year. I brought sandwiches from Reading Terminal Market for everyone to sample. (It's a lot easier bringing sandwiches than it would be to haul this crowd from Exton into the city. They are so not city people.) My cousin picked up a giant blondie from the supermarket bakery for dessert--even though she makes the best desserts ever! Anyway, my cousin cut it up and put it in front of her. My grandmother picks it up in her fingers and asks, "What's this?" I had to bite my tongue, and the dude and my uncle were shaking with laughter. My dad says, "It sure as hell isn't a filet mignon!" I almost peed.