Turkey line-up

Why yes, I did make these myself out of pinecones gathered from my backyard.  And yes!  They are cute-and-crafty placecard holders (15 to be exact).

And YES – right again!!!  Ding ding ding.  This is what you do when you have enough time to get ready to host Thanksgiving dinner at your house.

Happy Thanksgiving to all and to all a good night!

Remember my post from the other day wherein I felt like my mom because I didn’t know what the newfangled usage of the word “tight” meant?!?

I concluded the blog post with a shout out to my dad to see if he could help me figure out it out (he always helped my mom figure out all those confusing words the youngsters were using back-in-the-day so I figured he might be able to help me in the same capacity).

Here are the responses I received:

1) From my dad at 6:05 a.m.

2) From my mom at 6:48 a.m. the same day (from the same email address)

Dad doesn’t know.   Ask your own Sweetie.  And let us know when you find out.  LOL Mom

Thanks, Folks.

Oh, and P.S., Mom – LOL means laughing out loud.  Not lots of love.  Really.

And P.P.S. – why don’t you people sleep later?!

Acckkk!!!  Remember that part where I was gonna make my own Christmas gifts?!

Well – I think I’m in over my head.  Way over.  Way, way over.

Sock loom?  Check!  Soft sock-specific yarn (2 balls – one for each sock d’oh!)?   Check!   Loom instruction dvd viewed (a dozen plus times)??  Checkity check check!

Now…to begin.

Measure around the ball of your foot or widest part at base of toes, with foot resting on floor. Multiply the # of inches by the gauge of 7. Subtract 10% of this total which accounts for the negative give of the yarn. The resulting number is the number of pegs that should be used for your sock when using the Flat Stitch (FS). If you get an uneven number, add 1 to arrive at correct number of pegs.

What?!?  OMG!  This is math!!!  No one said anything about MATH!!  I’m just making gifts, I never committed to doing MATH!!!!!!!

And speaking of gifts, I’m making GIFTS!  Isn’t there a handy “rule of thumb” they could provide as to the number of pegs I should use for…say…a men’s shoe size 10?  The way these zany instructions read, I’m gonna hafta sneak into bedrooms while people are sleeping and slip their feet onto the floor (foot resting on the floor, reeeessssttttingggg) and then do math.  In the dark.  About 7 states away.

If I’m gonna do all of that, I should just buy a pair of socks and visit them for Christmas!

How is this ever going to work?!  Absent the handy rule-of-thumb-with-the-pegs concept, it’s not like I can even ask people their shoe size and get a meaningful answer.  And I’m sure you can agree that the shoe size question seems to be a slightly more appropriate and less eyebrow raising question than “can you give me the measurement of the ball of your foot?”  ‘Cause that sort of question is just bound to need an explanation.  And then what do I do?  Reply, “uh – no reason,” and casually walk away whistling while furiously working on my calculator?

Well.  Here goes……

Dad.  Can you give me the measurement of the ball of your foot?  Please??

Uh, no reason.  Fhweeep!  Fhweee fhwe fhweeeeeee!!  [clickety, cliiiick, click]

Gasp!

Worked hot lunch today….

spaghetti, meat balls, breadsticks…

most popular lunch…

am EXHAUSTED!

Too tired to write any more today.

Please see yesterday’s blog about my housecleaning frenzy.  During which I cleaned three bathrooms.  The toilets are now scrubbed as clean as I wish I could scrub the vision from my mind’s eye of the recent vomir (that’s fancy French for throw-up) my son piled in one of the toilets. (my toilet btw.  why does it have to be MINE?!  he’s got his own toilet for heaven’s sake!  but my toilet has some weird homing pigeon effect on vomir.)

The kids in our carpool got sick in the night too.  Their mom thinks it was the undercooked sausages everyone had for hot lunch at school.  In her house, those who didn’t have the sausages, didn’t have the vomir.  Same in mine!

Hmmmm…interesting theory…

but there weren’t any sausages to be seen in the pile when it came back up.  All I saw were about 4 cupfuls (yes, cupfuls) of what I at first thought were those squishy sliced mushrooms from the can.   As I’m trying to puzzle out why my son had eaten 4 cupfuls of squishy sliced mushrooms, it occurred to me that I gave the kids mac and cheese for dinner.  Oh!  That’s what it was.  But why the odd brown/mushroom color?  Must have been dyed that color by the post-dinner oreos.

See?  You wanna scrub now too, don’t you??  And never, EVER eat mac-and-cheese-followed-by-oreos OR 4 cupfuls of squishy-button-mushrooms-from-a-can, right??!

I don’t think anyone’s going to be eating the leftover mac and cheese tonight.  Including me.  Some things – once seen – cannot be unseen.

New dinner plan asap.  Breakfast for dinner is always a fun twist.  How ’bout pancakes and sausage??!?

I utterly detest the carpet in my basement and I’ll tell you why.

I constantly think there are spiders on it.

It’s a fairly innocuous beige berber wall-t0-wall…but there are these darker bits woven into the rug periodically throughout.  And no matter how many times I’ve seen them, they always take me by surprise and make me think a spider lurks there.  At which point I have to approach the dark spot doing some rain-dance type moves in the hopes of sending vibrations through the floor which will encourage the spider to move and thus “out” itself.  And if it IS a spider, I grind griiiiinnnnd it into the rug and make the dark spot permanent!  And sometimes I do that even when it isn’t a spider.  Just to be on the safe side.

This is a totally sane approach to rugs, right?  And spiders.

No??  Next thing you’ll be telling me is that not EVERYONE thinks there’s a baby in the black garbage bag they sometimes see lying in the middle of the road.  No?!?  Then why do YOU avoid hitting the bag?!  (because I have seen you avoiding it)

I’m on to you.  I know what you’re doing.  I ALSO saw the movie Gaslight and so I know when I’m trying to be driven insane.  Well I’ve got news for you.  It won’t work!

I’m already there!  Mwa ha ha ha (evil, insane laugh).

Too many fumes from the housecleaning products.

Thanksgiving’s coming.  Gotta get the house ready.

I felt like my mother the other day.  (Hi, Mom!)

After chairing the kids’ school fundraiser for the previous 3 years, I took a minor supporting role and just spearheaded the registration committee.  In addition to table seating arrangements (pain in my a$$!) I was also in charge of the crew that checked-in attendees the night of the event.

Because I was going to be working for a good portion of the event…and because I don’t have a job and therefore don’t have the money to spend on a lousy $75-a-head dinner…my husband and I didn’t actually attend the event this year.  And I gotta say – it’s pretty liberating not going to the annual fundraiser after six years of consistent attendance!

Working registration is in some ways the best of both worlds.  You get to see and be seen and say hi to all the people.  You get to wear something cute, but not too dressy ’cause you’re not actually attending the event.  (I wore a super cute jacket that I got lots of compliments on, along with a black skirt, high-heeled boots and damask mesh stockings.  Dressy, not too dressy and warm enough for a snowy Colorado November evening.)  And you get to play the part of the hostess with the mostess as you hand out drink tickets.  But then you get to leave after your shift and your free pizza-for-the-workers meal without having engaged in any of the frantic spending o’ the green!

And it was as I departed the venue that I felt like my mother.

There’s this long hall you have to walk down in order to get to the parking garage…and this dude came up quickly behind me on the way to his car.  As he passed me he said, “I love your stockings.  They’re totally tight!”

I said thanks and we both went on our way…but the whole time in my head I’m thinking to myself, “Tight?!  Tight.  Did he mean they’re tights??  But he said stockings, so he knows they’re not tights.  What does tight mean??  Tight must mean cool.  I’m HOPING tight means cool!”

How did I get to the point where I don’t know the modern lexicon?!  This is why I felt like my mother.

When I was younger, my mother was always asking my father to explain terms to her (oftentimes during movies and usually for super embarrassing phrases, to which my dad would always reply “I’ll tell you later, dear.”).  As if my dad existed in some alternate universe where he was exposed to all the super cool new phraseology.  I’m not really sure what the actual thinking was on my mom’s part about why my father would know words that she didn’t (’cause he had a job??)…but we’ll see if it works for me:  Dad – what does “tight” mean?

I have seen my future…and I am frightened.

BTW – did I tell you that I’m a knitter now?  I’m making some of my Christmas gifts because I have less money and more TIME nowadays.  But right now I’m exclusively working on gifts for women (Mom/Sisters/Friends – act surprised when you get your knitted Christmas gift from me.  What could it be?  What could it be?!).  Because that’s the irony of homemade gifts.  They’re mostly for women.  Made by women.

It’s hard to find gifts-you-can-make for men.  But I have an idea and I have my eye on a loom at the fabric store that will allow me to make gigantic men socks for Father/Husband/Brother for Christmas.  (Guys – you act surprised too!)

And lucky day!  I have a Veteran’s Day coupon good for 60% off one regularly priced item at Jo-Ann Fabrics (I’m a Preferred Customer naturally).  Loom here I come!

So I…along with all of the other crafters in the Western Hemisphere…were at Jo-Ann’s today using our 60% off coupons.

Is it just me, or do all the other crafters seem to be wackiest of wackadoodles?!  These women actually KNOW what all those weird, reminiscent-of-torture-device knitting needles are actually FOR!  Which is something to be admired.  But it’s the greasy hair and absolutely no fashion sense (ill-fitting dark velour sweatsuit sprinkled with dandruff and cat hairs anyone?) that has me concerned.  Oh!  And the fact that they’re all a good 20 years older than I.  Not a man in sight.  Surprise, surprise.

Is this what my future holds?  20 years from now, will I have stopped dyeing my hair (and washing it?  Thin AND greasy??  One or the other, Ladies.  We don’t need both)?  And stopped dressing like I care??

I care now!  And even for a trip to the fabric store where I knew it would be just us gals, I was dressed super cute – gold dangly earrings and jeans tucked into boots I’ve gotten tons of compliments on because they have a Ralph Lauren brown edging on the top of the black quilted leather (can you say Kohl’s 30% off coupon combined with Kohl’s cash?  Score!!) along with a deep purple, slouchy shirt with a gold colored rose-shaped applique all down one arm and on left hand side of it.  Totally cute, right?

But THEY were looking at ME like I was the wackadoodle.  Was it because they were all stunned by my beauty and the memory of what it was like to be a fresh-faced, enthusiastic crafter with a coupon?!  Or were they trying to figure out where I got the gold rose applique and how I ironed it on to my shirt?!?  (psst!  I bought it this way.  At a boutique.  Back when I had money.  Are you kidding me?  You’d never find something like this at a craft store!)

Hey!  Turns out there IS something worse than dealing with the unemployment compensation agency.  And that “something” is going on a 3rd grade field trip to the Museum of Nature and Science.

It all started last night when my son explained to me that they got to pick their own field trip groups.  And that he tried really hard to get some girls, but they were all “tooken” by the time it was his turn to pick.  So his group of 5 was comprised of all boys.  Or monkeys depending on how you look at it.  But thanks for trying to get some feminine balance of power in there for me, Sweetie!

Waaaaaay too much free time in the museum today.  In between lunch and the planetarium show, it was just free-time.  Hours and hours and HOURS of free time.

And when we have that much free time, we all tend to get anxious.  Take the boy who stuck close to me and wasn’t as monkey-ish as the rest in the group.  He was totally anxious about the time – all day long.  Even after I had proven that I could get them where they needed to be, ON TIME!  He just kept asking over and over, “is it time to go to the planetarium yet?”  and “how much longer until we should head towards the planetarium?” or “how about the bus ride home?  When do we need to get on the bus home??”

Ugh!  Enough with the questions about time.  After about the 23rd one, we came to an understanding that in today’s play, I would star as the chaperone who was totally keeping an eye on the time and he would play the part of the boy who was just having fun and enjoying himself on his field trip with his friends.  There was a subtle nuance to his role in that he was ALSO playing the part of the boy who was going to ask Santa for a watch for Christmas.

And yes.  Yes.  An 8 year old boy’s nose WILL bleed 15 minutes into the dinosaur exhibit especially if 1) getting to a bathroom means another 10 minute rush-walk out the other end of the exhibit 2) there are no tissues anywhere on God’s green earth or in the Museum of Nature and Science and 3) HE’S BEEN PICKING HIS NOSE ALL DAY!!!

Perhaps HE was playing the role of the mummy embalmer (the boys grossed themselves out over in the ancient Egypt Exhibit) who pulled brains out through noses?!  And I’m not even going to mention the extraordinarily weird one-off conversation I had with the Ear-Nose-Throat doctor in that same mummification section who felt it was necessary to describe in detail to me the way that he worked (past tense since he’s retired naturally and now spending his days at the museum BOTHERING ME!!!) with neurosurgeons  to remove pituitary glands.  The description came with “close talking” and overly descriptive finger pointing.

Perhaps the museum is actually located in another dimension where the weirdest stuff on earth happens?  And that’s why it takes so long to get there in the seen-better-days Greyhound bus??  (No, boys.  I know the candy is still wrapped.  And I agree, they DO look like a perfectly good Butterfinger and Baby Ruth bars, but if you found them on the windowsill of this bus – DO NOT EAT THEM!!).

There was some reprieve in the “Discovery Zone” section of the museum, but it was way too short-lived.  And the whole time I had to keep an eagle eye on the worker WEARING the hissing cockroach on her cardigan like a jaunty brooch.   And based on all the crazy stuff the boys were touching and sniffing (??) in there, they’re all gonna get rhinorrhea shortly.

Also, the kids are studying Native Americans and the museum did have a nice little Native American exhibit going on, so we were able to get a little “research” in while we were there.  But that mostly consisted of everyone running through the life-size Navajo hogan.  And gawking at all the stuff you can make with buffalo bones.

At the end of the day I’m sure all the boys went home and told their mothers what a mean mother my son has.  Well – let them see what kind of rave reviews they get when THEY star as the chaperone in the next field trip play!

At least I didn’t fall asleep in the back of the bus like one of the other mothers.  And that was only after she had broken the rules about buying the kids in her group something.  She bought them all chocolate.  And she bought herself a coffee from the cafeteria.  Really?!  I didn’t even know there was a gift shop or a cafeteria.  I was too busy being run ragged by monkeys to go SHOPPING!  And SHE has the nerve to fall asleep??  She’s for sure not gonna win any Oscars for her chaperone portrayal.

We’ve established that I live in Colorado.  And if you’ve paid any attention to the election…or the news…or the election news…you may have heard that Colorado passed Amendment 64 yesterday.  Amendment 64 allows those 21 and older to purchase up to one ounce of marijuana at specially regulated retail stores.  Possession would be legal, but not public use.  Adults could grow up to six marijuana plants in their homes.

Not sure who wrote this law.  Probably some brainiac smoking weed that he grew in his basement.

BTW – did I mention that I’m in the midst of fighting with the Unemployment Compensation Agency about my unemployment benefits?  The fight goes a little something like this:

THEM: You have received severance from your recent employer.  Severance is not considered wages.  But if we divided your severance amount by your weekly wages, we find that it’s like you got paid every week by your employer through the end of December.

ME: Sigh.  Ok, you just said my severance wasn’t considered wages, right?  And I looked up the Advisory Bulletin from the Colorado Division of Labor online and it said that severance pay is a benefit offered by employers at their own discretion.  It also said that severance pay is not wages or compensation.  So…while I received a BENEFIT from my employer, I didn’t receive WAGES or COMPENSATION – BY YOUR OWN DEFINITION!!!!  Arggghhhh!!!  So therefore give me my unemployment compensation ya %&$^#&%!  And also, if we’re being honest here, you (and by you I mean the government) took out half of my severance in taxes.  So if we’re sticking to the letter of the law, the wages I DIDN’T get paid DON’T cover me through the end of December.

THEM: You filed your appeal late.  Your reasoning as to why you are entitled to unemployment compensation may or may not be acceptable, but first you have to tell us why your appeal was late.

ME: Gaaaahhhh!!!  Ok, you gave me 20 days to file my appeal based on the day you sent my notice of denial of benefits.  You say you sent the notice of denial on this date in September.  Yet, the envelope was actually postmarked 2 days AFTER that date in September when you said you sent my notice.  And I didn’t receive it until 5 days after that what with those pesky week-ends and such.  So I sent my reply within 20 days OF THE DATE I RECEIVED THE NOTICE OF DENIAL!  Oh.  And also?  The two choices you provided for how to respond to my denial were counterintuitive.  One, I could reply by mail.  Yeah.  Right.  I saw how well that worked for YOU on the outbound trip.  And two, I could reply by fax.  Well, that there would be a really nice option if I were sitting in an office where they have fax machines galore.  But you see there’s a little catch.  I AM UNEMPLOYED SO I’M NOT SITTING IN AN OFFICE WHERE THERE’S A FAX MACHINE!  The only one who has a fax machine in this scenario is the unemployment agency and my husband at his place of employment but he travels constantly and so faxed it when he was able.

THEM:  Radio silence.

So…while they maintain their radio silence, I’m thinking of ways to earn me some of that there money everyone is talking about but which I don’t have.  ‘Cause I didn’t get paid wages, did I?!?

Makes growing those 6 plants referenced earlier look like a mighty fine option from where I’m sitting.  But if I sold anything from said plants, would it be considered wages?  And therefore would it effect my unemployment compensation??  Wait!  I have the perfect people to ask about that!!!