Kiss My Knits!

I love this. 🙂

(if you take an islove test yourself, you’ll have to put a pound sign before all the colors, as in bgcolor=”#5131fa” as opposed to bgcolor=”5131fa”)

And the crappiness just keeps coming.

Every year, we have Cornish game hens with garlic, rosemary, and lemon.

This year, as I went to pour the mixture of white wine, broth, and olive oil on the hens, the predictable happened. It had never happened before, but of course in hindsight it was predictable.

Room temperature mixture + 450 degree Pyrex = EXPLODING CASSEROLE DISH.

All over the kitchen. Great.

Sigh.

We have an incredibly fat cat. (The orange one in this pic.) She’s prone to weird behavior, just because she’s so danged fat.

At 11pm last night, she was just fine. Her usual freaky self. Sometime during the night, she started breathing through the mouth, which we didn’t think much of, because hey, she’s fat.

Later on during the night, she knocked a toy off of the dining room table. Again, no big deal, she’s a cat, cats knock things over in the middle of the night. That’s what they do.

At around 4:30 this morning, she was standing near our bed, mouth-breathing, but this time she was also making erratic scratching sounds, like her claws couldn’t get purchase on the hardwood floor. We turned on the light. She was foaming at the mouth and just kind of… crouching there. We called the vet. While we were on the phone, she peed right where she was standing. Cleaning up just now, I notice she also defecated a little, very loose and with a little blood. She had also thrown up in a couple of spots in the hall.

My husband is en route to a local animal medical emergency clinic with her.

Please, please don’t let this Thanksgiving be remembered as the one where I had to explain to my daughter that our cat died… and what death is all about.

UPDATE! They’ve tentatively ruled out their first guess, which was FUNGUS OR BACTERIA EATING FROM HER EAR INTO HER BRAIN and are thinking maybe toxoplasmosis – which is treatable. So far, she’s still doing okay under the care of the hospital.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful that we have the ability absorb (with difficulty) more than a grand in expenses for a cat that is honestly not our favorite. I’m also thankful that we always have Thanksgiving here at home, and thus weren’t out of town last night. AND that we live in a major city with two emergency veterinary clinics. Here’s hoping it all works out for the freaky, fat little girl.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE! Now they’ve ruled out their second guess and are leaning toward the ears again (so to speak) as the probable culprit. Our cat generates enormous quantities of hard black wax. This, apparently, is weird to the point that whenever we take her in to have them cleaned, the vet calls over other vets to look at it and marvel. So they think now maybe an inner ear thing. They’ll sedate her later (goodbye, $300!) and clean her inner ears and see what’s going on. If that’s all it is, she should recover with time, leaving her with nothing more than a mild tendency to lean her head toward the right. Because she’s not weird enough, I guess.

Like mother, like daughter. If the dark blue isn’t dark enough, I can always redo it, but barring that, I think I’m done with the coronets for now.

I opted not to rip out the seam on the dark blue one. With everybody sick, I just didn’t have the kind of concentrated time it would take to figure it out. So the youger one will get to lord it over the older one a bit. Heh.

Now, some of y’all know that politically, I’m the leftiest left that ever lefted a left. Well, I want to tell you about a great site for supporting our soldiers.

http://www.booksforsoldiers.com is a clearinghouse where men and women who are posted overseas can post their wants and needs through the board’s moderators. It varies widely from soldier to soldier and from posting to posting. Some guys in Afghanistan need shower bags because they have no running water and want to bathe. Some gals post asking for Better Homes and Gardens or “girly stuff” to be sent to them. Most folks just seem to be bored out of their gourds and want books, magazines, CDs or DVDs to help occupy the “wait” part of “hurry up and wait” that is so prevalent in the military.

My dad was in the Air Force in Alaksa in the 50’s, back before it was a state. As near as I can tell from his stories, the main entertainment was, 1) drink beer, 2) listen to music, 3) repeat 1 and 2 as necessary. Now, though, he’s got everything he needs. The one thing he loves to do is to help people, to give special treats to kids or co-workers or a stranger on the street. He’s a genuinely caring, wonderful person, the original cream puff.

So to honor my dad, this year instead of getting something for him for Christmas, I’m getting something for someone else. A guy posted on the Air Force boards saying that he and his crew would surely love to have a copy of Strange Brew. That’s one of Dad’s and my favorite movies. So I posted that I’d fill his request, and I’m sending this care package to the guy. That’s some entertainment, snacks, and a letter, with envelopes and paper so he and his can write to their families. (I’m given to understand that envelopes tend to run out.)

I hope you’ll consider going to books for soldiers and registering, so that you can poke around and see if any requests strike your fancy. Remember, you only have to pay domestic postage to a military post office in the US. Shipping is free from there. I managed to stuff all that crap into a flat rate priority envelope, so it’ll only cost me $3.85 to ship it all to the Middle East.

Even if you don’t send anything, (but really, a Christmas card for someone under the “forgotten soldier” section will only cost you 37 cents), still look around. It’s a good reminder that we’ve got a lot of good folks a long way from home. Regardless of what the folks in Washington may say or do, those individuals deserve our support.

The good news is, I’m on the mend. I’m still kind of sniffly, and I keep having dreams where I’m being chased by a loud propellor plane or something, only to wake up and realize that I’ve been snoring. But I’m definitely getting better.

The bad news is, it’s not just my snoring, it’s my usually non-snoring husband, too. He’s sick now. And even worse, my five-year-old daughter was home sick today, coughing miserably. She decided that she wanted to scrub her rubber ducky, so she’s soaking in a tub now bathing her duck with a toothbrush. Maybe the moisture and heat will help.

Just in time for Thanksgiving. Let’s hope they start feeling better soon.

Yesterday, I thought, “well, at last while I’m lying here on the couch, I can try to get some knitting done.” Trouble is, I really couldn’t. I gave it a go and joined the band on the second coronet hat together. Only I did it BACKWARDS. So instead of having a nice smooth join on the outside and a bumpy ridge on the inside, I have the bumpy part on the outside. Here’s a picture. The top one is done right. The bottom one is not. I have no clue what I’ll do now, but I guess I’ll tackle it when I’m more clear-headed.

Too sick to knit is a sad, sad place to be. The only reason I’m up and writing this is because I kept drifting off and I have to pick my daughter up soon. Thankfully, hubby’s coming home early, having seen that yes, I truly am sick, and yes, I really do need extra help today. I don’t know how single moms do it.

I did the knitting demo thing for the kids this week, and one of them was hacking and sniffling like crazy. Because I was teaching the kids to finger-knit (really finger-crochet, but whatever) I had to hold their little hands a lot and show them how to do it.

Yep, I’m sick now. I hadn’t been feeling well a couple of nights ago, but it really blossomed yesterday. I got no sleep last night, and neither did my husband because I would go five minutes and then try to discreetly clear my throat or cough into my pillow. Yeah, that really kept the noise down.

I ran out of Sudafed and other assorted drugs, so I did venture out to the grocery store today. Also rented Shrek 2. I’m about to go lie down on the couch and smear Vaporub all over my body and watch TV, gape-mouthed and vacant-eyed.

In keeping with the depressing mood, witness the worst use of the internet to date.

I had a friend and her daughter who admired the coronet I knit, and so I am knitting them each one in their choice of color.

The daughter’s is done. The mother’s will be started tonight. I did mine in Galway, but these will actually be done in the recommended yarn, Lamb’s Pride worsted (unless I hear otherwise from the mama half of the hat duo). The Galway is a little bit softer, I think, but the Lamb’s Pride is a blend of wool and mohair with the mohair giving the wool a nice bit of sheen. They’re both good yarns to work with.

The daughter’s hat actually looks *better* than my hat, because I learned from doing the first one. The seam on the band on mine looks fairly obvious, but the daughter’s is much more smooth and unnoticeable.

This hat seems to be pretty popular with folks going, “ooooh, do me one!” right now. The pattern is here, if you’re interested in trying it yourself.

A host reports for extra assistance.

Host: I’m with (player), who thinks his soul is broken.

I love it. I just love it.