Kiddo...

...got an A for their first semester class. Not bad at all, yay for kiddo!!!

Hokay...here are some aprons (not all of them, but some)

The first one obviously isn't done but I thought it was kind of fun...yes, that's part of a little tablecloth I cut up and used. The next is a loud hot limey green with multicolored rick rack. The next is a pair of aprons, a big chef and little chef apron. I'll post more later...

The menu for tonight

Roast turkey breast, baked potatoes, spinach salad...my attempt at keeping some normalcy going.

Moving ahead, albeit at a crawl

I've been making aprons. They are pretty therapeutic, I guess. I'll post some pics.

Gut punches

Hubs and I have been dealing with serious issues that have devastated us, save for the grace of God. I don't want to get into it here but we received two severe blows in the last 36 hours or so. This was not what was needed and I swear we have PTSD. We're trying to do some things to get help with this. The pain, anger and seemingly powerlessness is overwhelming.

Somehow with God we will get through it. I have no idea how. I can hardly process anything to be honest; I'm barely functioning.

Metro at it again...

The kiddo's teacher said "oh, I thought I had to go through the entire book for this four week semester, but it turns out I only have to go through half the book this three week semester and the other half the next three week semester."

It took the teacher two weeks into a three week class to figure this out. Supa-sweet. Is the administration even paying attention enough to tell the faculty what they have to cover in a class? Apparently not.

So they had rushed through almost all they had to cover in two weeks and now will be slowing down. I'm glad the teacher finally figured it out but you can imagine the stress of doing almost a half year's work in a couple of weeks. Insane.

I had to buy the kid a textbook for the class as I had mentioned before. Between that and copying pages from a "reference only, can't be removed from the library" copy of the book I have surely spent almost sixty bucks on the the book situation. Stinks.

Oh, yeah, this is ANOTHER reason I'm glad we've been out of Metro Schools for the past several years. Didn't really need any reminders, but hey--they graciously provided some.

Texting my patience... ;-)

Kiddo has a cell phone we got him because there is no phone at his house and he would have no way to contact anyone if his mom is gone. He has been very well behaved with it--followed the rules and hasn't gone crazy with minutes.

After his workout today he sat on the couch to rest and regroup. He had his cell phone in his hand and I said "what game are you playing?" just to be friendly and show interest. Turns out he was texting. This was quite a shock. Yeah, he's fifteen, but WAY behind socially/emotionally. Very bright but pretty much hates everyone his own age. Hangs out with adults and young kids. Except maybe for that girl he met at school??? (I wonder if she realizes just how much younger he is than her--probably three years younger by the sounds of things). It's easy to think a 6'2" kid is a senior, when he is most assuredly NOT and not even close.

The reason it was a shock that he was texting was that he has a written language learning disability and generally avoids writing like the plague (unless it is on his laptop, where he writes quite creatively, albeit not always with great spelling or grammar).

I said "you have always done a great job following the rules with the phone and I don't want to be a hard butt, but we don't have a text messaging package with our phone plan. So every message you send is an additional charge. I'm not saying you CAN'T text message, but I would expect you to pay for a text messaging plan. And you need to realize that I will be able to see all the people you contact on our itemized bill." This was all done in a friendly, non-accusatory way.

He angrily blurted out "well, then there's no text messaging!" and snapped his phone shut. Of course, with him EVERYTHING is angrily blurted as he assuredly has an impulsive rage disorder of some kind. As angrily as he dealt with that phone I am kind of surprised it still works.

I kind of felt like a good "fake mom" at that point. Hey, if he doesn't like me all the time, so be it. I'm not here to be his friend...I'm here to be a (as loving and kind as I can be) parental figure and influence in his life. I figure if a teenager doesn't like you all the time, you just might be doing something right. At least I hope so. ;-)

Aran-esque afghan

This is an afghan that I busted my butt on. It was easily the most advanced I have done to date. It was crocheted in strips to resemble an aran type pattern. There's only so much I'll put up with though, as it was done with double stranded worsted yarn. Things are slow enough with big yarn, I'm surely not going to use small yarn for an afghan... *L*

After I went through all this work, I was sorry that I had just used Red Heart Super Saver for it, but it is hard to afford better yarn for something this big anyway...at least in the last decade or so. *L*

DH's aunt got married recently and I parted with it for a gift for her. Not expensive in terms of yarn, but still a big commitment and she and her new hubs appreciated it a lot. One thing about super saver, they can actually use the thing and not worry about it, and wash it easily in the washing machine (I'd at least use the delicate setting myself, but maybe that's because I know how much work this was.

I'm a speed demon crocheter but this still took a while. Learned a lot of new stuff including front post/back post, a nifty cable, and something that a different book called the shrimp stitch which is worked in the opposite direction of most crochet stitches...

If you are looking for speedier afghans, try "afghans on the double", a nifty book in this genre, where all the patterns are with double strands of worsted weight. This afghan came from that book, and is not the only one I've made from that book. It helps if you have color imagination and can see beyond the somewhat basic cheesy color combos in the book. It's not a new book, but is a very practical way to kick out some decent to nice looking afghans in less time...

Oh, yeah, that's the diva cat, princess Amanda...otherwise known as Mandy. She was very miffed when this thing was packed up and mailed away...

various bulletin boards

I made these after seeing a similar idea on the show "Creative Juice", which sometimes has a few tasty nuggets floating around in a very strange brew.

Quillow we made for hub's goddaughter

DH's cousin's daughter is going to the University of Colorado (Boulder) this fall. We're a little short on big-bucks gifts for her, DH's goddaughter. But we came up with something that we hope is cool. It is a fleece quillow I made for her with hub's help. For those of you who don't know, a quillow is a quilt or blanket that has a pocket on one end, so you can fold up the quilt into its own pocket (often a decorative pocket), making it into a pillow.

This one is made in school colors of course. The quillow blanket part and pillow pocket parts are both blanket stitched with pearl cotton (an embroidery type thread but thicker) and the logo was copied out by my dear hubs. I tracing-papered it to iron on interfacing which I had set up so the glossy side would iron on to the fleece wrong side, to correctly show the logo on the right side of the fleece. The interfacing gave me just enough oomph to blanket stitch the logo onto the pillow pocket.

My hub had suggested putting a larger contrast logo on the blanket part. After all the blanket stitch I have done on the thing already, I said heck no. Here's your quillow, mail it to your goddaughter and find a card, will ya? ;-) We'll get her something else too, but we're hoping she likes this custom gift.

out of the blue

The kiddo all of a sudden said "can I invite a friend bowling tomorrow?" Kiddo wants to invite someone once in a blue moon at best...usually bowls alone. Met a girl at school. Sounds like she's older and he might have fallen fairly hard for her, at least for him. Yikes....stress! He's more than a little immature and is majorly impulsive and rage filled. So this is a nice layer of stress to add to the mix. Ah, well, ya gotta expect it at his age...

...later, he called me back and said "it'll just be me bowling tomorrow." Sounds like the dude got his heart broken or at least trampled pretty soundly...ah yes...poor thing!

happy anniversary to us...

Took a couple days off and they were nice. Went to http://www.ellendales.com/ as a special treat for 24 years of marriage. We always used to say "one year of hell and twenty something of bliss, in that order" but I think we might see it differently now...probably the last few years hellish as well. But he's a fab dude and I love him to pieces. Came back to the stress and it hit me like a ton of bricks when we returned. We need a real vacation...something fearsome.