I just wanted to share more of the loveliness that is, officially, the "How Deena Got Her Oohs and Ahhs" Blanket from The Yarn Girls' Guide to Simple Knits. I have finished the triple single-crochet edging and now just have to weave in thousands of ends on the back. Steph, sorry I didn't stick precisely to your color scheme on the edge, but the purple was closer, so it went on the inside! I think I like the turquoise (aka "cayman") better on the edge, since it's more prevalent in the afghan. Sarri, if you're reading this, I need your collage/mosaic help! I just did this in paint, but how do you do the fine-looking ones you've been doing on your blogs? Help a girl out!
Today was quite active, though I just couldn't shake the sleepiness out and wake fully up until the evening. I way overslept this morning, waking up with just five minutes to go before we had to leave for the bus. I was like a marathon runner's coach, getting Chloë ready: "Come on! Let's go! Go potty! Take your clothes off! Hurry up, let's go, go, go! Shorts on! Here's your shirt! Get some socks! Here's your shoe! Here's your other shoe! Don't undo them all the way! C'mon, c'mon, you can do it, almost there...!" and so on. But, hallelujah, we made it with two minutes to spare! I call that a victory.
I came home, checked email, chatted online with a friend for a bit, and then lay back down to snooze for an hour until I had to get Jack ready. Well, I overslept again and this time had just ten minutes to spare before his bus arrived. And he was still in his jammies! Normally he jumps right up and dresses himself, but not so this a.m. So I had to do the whole marathon coach thing again, shouting up at him, "Your bus is here, your bu is here, get your pants on, let's go, buddy!" etc. At least this child had breakfast, since no one wrapped up the leftover strawberry biscuits and he'd eaten four of them! Rotten mommy, I know I am. Thankfully, they both had a decent lunch, since I had time to pack him one and she buys at school.
I got Sophia dressed shortly after that and jumped into the shower, so I could go visit my nemesis Dr. Pal, aka my prescribing shrink. He tops my list of Medical Types Not to Love. He's just so... cranky! For no reason. It's not necessary. Sophia is a lovely, charming, ingratiating child, but he always glowers miserably whenever I walk in with her. Jerk. But then she starts chatting away while he's writing out my scripts (my visits invariably last less than ten minutes and go like this: "How are you doing on your meds?" "Fine, I feel good." "Good, here's your prescriptions, see you in X weeks") and he softens considerably. Finally today he acknowledged her by saying, "She talks a lot." Which, I think, was a compliment to her verbal abilities. In any case, I'm going to take it that way.
I've been seeing him a little more frequently lately because of the allergies. We have narrowed down another suspect: Trileptal. It's now eliminated from my medicine diet because, having gone off it, I'm taking far less Benadryl and having fewer reactions than before. So right now the Big Baddies are: Trileptal, Anceph, Percocet, chlorine, manmade fibers, and apples. Who knows to what else I will fall prey? Hopefully not strawberries, but either way, I'll no sooner give them up than I will my beloved pool time!
Anyway. So he's a jerk, but I can handle him for less than 10 minutes a month, right? At least he makes me laugh and not cry, with his crotchety self.
It's two weeks tomorrow since I got my nails done, and I definitely turned out to have fast-growing nails. Who knew? They break so easily. So, Sophia and I went to the nails shop for a fill, and OH. MY. LORD was I IN PAIN. She kept burning my nails with the motorized file thingy, and I kept having to jerk my hands away. This was a different nail tech than the first one, who was very careful not to hurt me. And oh! I can not stand all the filing and buffing and filing and buffing that it takes. I'm very sensitive to filing anyway, so getting my nails done is like pure torture for me. I very nearly gave up all the national secrets I knew, but she couldn't break me.
We ran next door to Farm Fresh to get the grocery ad, and then we went next door the other way to Subway for lunch. Sophie saw the marquee and wouldn't stop pestering me about it, and right now I am a pushover when it comes to a tuna sammy. But in the end, she refused to eat, having only one bite of sammy and maybe four chips, wanting instead to go home and have some juice. Uh. So we did just that.
I was going to go upstairs and tackle the laundry, but we had less than an hour left by that point before Jack's bus would come, and I didn't feel like going up and down, up and down. I was so tired, after all. So we watched a little PBS Kids while I completed the two edgings on the blanket to end all blankets.
The boy came home and wanted to finish watching Super Why! with his sister (they love, love, love that show). I agreed and told them it would be nap time when Chloë arrived, which appeased them. I kept my word, and as soon as they were all in their rooms, I finally collapsed under my loverly blanket for an hour. The dog wiggling around in her kennel woke me right up after that, and surprisingly, I wasn't tired any longer.
Good thing. We still didn't have any food in the house, and that's my job to rectify. I got out my previously-fetched grocery ad and wrote down all the sale items that we use on my list, then retrieved the Sunday paper to scour for coupons. I found a lot of good ones and saved nearly $40 this trip, 11% of my total. We were darn near out of everything except meat, which we rarely eat nowadays except when I go to the fishmonger at the Farmer's Market for seafood. I shopped for an hour and a half; my cart was full before I even finished getting half of my list. For the first time ever, I tipped the bagboy who loaded up the van (hurts my back to do it) because it was so much. But the cashier forgot to give me my 5-cents-per-bag discount for bringing in my own. Grr. It annoys me that the policy isn't better known among the cashiers and isn't advertised to customers at all. Come on! That would bring more people like me into the store!
I'm starting to ramble, aren't I? I know some of you are saying, "Isn't that what all your posts are?" Yeah, it's true, I'm a babbler. And yet you stay!
We had dinner plans (by that I mean, I had picked out what Rob was to make), but the kids just kind of ended up eating as we unloaded and put away the food: some baby carrots (shared with the bunny), some Italian bread (still as delish as yesterday's), milk, Tic-Tacs. So they went to bed when they'd had their fill, and then we cooked our crab-stuffed whitefish pinwheels. They were good. Not as good as fishmonger food, but I'd had them in the freezer for a few months and wanted to get rid of them.
So do you want to know about our plan?
We've talked about this many times over the past 7.5 years of our life together, but tonight we really started being serious. Rob retires in five years. After that, we may just sell off a bunch of our stuff, put the rest in storage, and buy a boat on which to live. We'll travel around, bipping around the country, the Caribbean, go through The Canal, see where we go... and homeschool the kids as needed. I like to call it "worldschooling" them, because they'll gain such an education from traveling and meeting different cultures. Once our European cruise is over, I'm going to start putting us on a tight budget, so we can pay off our ever-accumulating credit card debt, start building a retirement fund, and see what it's going to cost us to live on this boat. I'm excited about it, and I know Rob is. It's his dream! Sound fun?
Of course, there better be room for my yarn...
Fin.
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