Tangled

Ah Ha! I get it now! hahahahaha! That's funny!

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive" That's why the Disney movie's called "Tangled!" Thank you Sir Walter Scott!  The movie title works with the quote and with hair! Hah! The classics still live! Ok, that's all, now back to studying.... Ciao!

My crazy Project

So, I saw this pattern for a knit Skaters Coat in a book I was flipping through at Joann. That's the kind of coat with the hood and little skirt that you see all the girls in the "olden times" pictures wearing as they're ice skating around the pond. Anyway I always wanted one when I was a kid, but they don't sell ice skating things in the middle of the desert...go fig!
Anyway I became obsessed with the coat, wanting to make one for Kit; because I knew she would be too cute in it. So, I got the book and the yarn and needles and stuff for my birthday and jumped right in.

Then fell on my face. Silly me I didn't look to see that the coat had the instructions for an adult size. Eh, I'll just tweak it so it'll fit, no problem. Silly me, I didn't look to see that the knitting level on the coat was EXPERT!!!! um, let me remind you that I started knitting the end of June. This was the end of September, a mere three months from when I found out how to hold the dang things, let alone create something with a consistent look. hehehe

I had to restart three or four times adjusting and readjusting my size tweaking. A month later, I am a LOT better at knitting, and this is what I ended up with:

It's got puffy sleeves (yes, it's supposed to have them).



The skirt is a little short. I forgot to take into account her Uber-torso, so the waist is higher than it should be making the skirt shorter.



But the hood is cute, and she actually wears it!
 Which is what counts.

It looks pretty cute on Tristan too!

 So, it turned out to be about a 3T-4T size, but I'm glad of how it turned out.

Halloween

Yup, here's a little halloween festivities to brighten up your Christmas. Kit wanted to be a dragon again this year; since she loved being one last year so much. Well, lucky for me I made her costume a size too big last year so it still fit this year. WOO HOO! I asked her what Tristan wanted to be, and he had to be a dragon too. So I let her help pick out the fabric, and she got the job of keeping the cats off the pieces while I got the job of everything else. Not that I minded. I have found that I really like sewing. Just don't remind me while I am grumbling at the machine for fritzing again and throwing knots in the worst, most obvious places. My machine is a 1930's relic my parents bought second-hand for me for my eighth birthday. It's solid steel and heavier than my children. But it works, so that's what matters. Anyway back to the pictures!

The tails were the favorite. Especially for bopping each other on the head.



These two pictures are so cute, but I feel bad
because Tristan was freaking out about having the costume on.

See. I was afraid he wouldn't wear it for Halloween, but it was just because it was nap time and mom HAD to get her pictures before she forgot.

What a sweet girl... um, Dragon.

Brent's enchanting castle



Here's Brent's first woodworking project. It was a Doozy. It took him from The beginning of September to the end of November; so, three full months. It might have been less time if he didn't have to wait for his wife to finish painting all the deails she wanted.

Step one: Start with big piece of wood





Step two: Make it look like a castle



Step Three: repeat step two

Step four: see step three



The two pieces can be combined to one big castle

 


 


Step next: make it Beautiful.
The climbing ivy was my idea, everything else was Brent's,
including making it blue. I was really hesitant at first, but now
I really like it. Especially with the scenerry on the outside.

The silver thing is the crank for the drawbridge. But Kit likes it better
where you can just pull the string to raise it, so we'll see if it stays.

The princesses are stickers, but they look great on there.
Plus they are the size of her little pirncess toys, so it's perfect.



There's the whole thing. I like the Rapunzel's tower (pink) the hearts turned out really well.
Which Brent did by sight with a jig saw!

Kit is SOOOOO excited! She kept sneaking over and playing with it while we were painting our trial boards, and once the drawbridge was on, there was no stopping her. So, I had to stop working on it while she was awake, and trek it from its hiding place in my closet down to the Kitchen at night to paint it, and then after it dried scrape the stairwell walls all the way back to the closet. No, really, I didn't transport the thing once where I didn't almost take a chunk out of our wall. I think the walls would go before the castle, it's sturdy. The kids were both sitting on it at one point, and it didn't even wobble.

The castle was built for the polly pocket sized princesses, but Kit had found out that it works for My Little Ponies too. I asked her why she played with her ponies and not her princesses, (worried that the ones we got her to go with the castle will be left to the side) she replied that she simply couldn't find them in her room. heh. That's my girl. 



30

Well, it's been two years since I posted here, I guess it's about time. Anyway I had all these ponderously wonderful thoughts about turning thiry. Then I didn't get around to posting them, and now since it's been almost two weeks, I have forgotten them completely. Yup I got senile for my birthday! It's too bad too I really had this great spiel. Well, anyway to make something wonderfully written into a blurb:
So, this birthday was the first one I looked forward to in a loooong time. Probably since I turned 21. Perhaps it's because I feel legit now, like I am a real adult instead of some teenager thinking I'm all that and not really being it. Perhaps I was excited because I actually feel good! I have been back on my ADD stuff since April. I was pretty much bonkers before then. Being pregnant and having Tristan had sent me over the edge. I had post-partum really bad, for pretty much the a year after having him. I didn't realize it then but I had all the symptoms, but I was waiting for someone else to tell me I needed help. What really clued me in was one time when Iwas flipping through Brent's radio presets and there was an oldies station. For giggles I started listening. The song that was on was "ain't it funny what children say" it started out with silly hopscotch and jump-rope rhymes, and then turned into racist, sexist, and other derogeratory remarks. The song repeated it's chorus about how children say the funniest things, and then the final verse went somber and pretty much smacked you in the face that the kids are learning it from their parents as they are watching them. I turned off the radio after the song was finished. I was deiving in the car at the time, and so I just drove for a while thinking how true that song was, and then it hit me. When Kit played with her toys, all she would do was scream at them, and have them yell at each other not to do things. I had thought this was odd, and tried to get her not to have her toys yell so much. (which I was probably yelling at her to get her to stop yelling). Then I finally got it. Kit's playing was all yelling because that's what I was mostly doing. Could it be that I was teaching Kit to lose her head over the smallest things. So I started watching what I was doing and how I reacting to things. I had lost most of my impulse control. Now that I was aware of it I tried to be calm and more level headed, but I was still losing it over stupid things, and I lacked the ability to stop. Impulse control.... I need my ADD meds!! So anyway I got back on the meds and our home is sooo much happier now!!!!!!!! Kit's toys still do the wrong thing, but now she talks to them and explains why they shouldn't do that. Like today her horse "scratched" her zebra. There was no yelling at all. Kit told her horse not to do that and showed it how it hurt the zebra, and then made it say sorry and gave it time out. Ahhhh that's much better. Not to mention that my impulse eating has ceased and that I am now almost to my Pre-Kit weight! (10 more pounds to go!) So yea, our home is a great place to be. I have several projects going on (and I am finishing them too!) and am keeping busy playing with the kids, knitting, reading, and doing chores. (pretty much in that priority order too. *What do you mean we don't have any cups again?*)

Anyway I'm older and hopefully wiser now. That's good. and as the Tim McGraw song goes:"Lord have mercy on my next thirty years"

Book

Yea, so after three years of planning and development I thought I was ready to start typing my book. Then I got this other twist and am now thinking about revamping again. Someday I'm going to get it perfect, and the typing will be the easiest part. :)

Sentimental

I have to say that the National Anthem makes me cry. Yup, it does, and not just on special occasions. I really realized this when I got bombarded over the 4th. Everytime I got all misty, ok, more than misty, let's call it drippy. We sang it at church, it was on the radio, the scottish festival played it, and everytime drip, drip, drip. It was really annoying when I was in the ROTC and they played it once a month or whatever. Here I was surrounded by a bunch of macho guys in BDU's (That would be Battle Dress Uniforms, or Camo) and I'm blinking like crazy and trying not to sniff or sob. niiiiiccceeee.

Whether Weather

I just wish that the stupid weather would decide to stop being nasty and start being springy. I don't mind the kinda cool April showers that push the flowers and trees into a flowering frenzy. It's this stupid "warm for three days, snow for 5 days" that I hate. It's warm enough for some quality time outdoors so Kit and I get all excited and say out until I remember that we could get burned and so we retreat into the house for a few hours just to venture out again later that day. Kit loves it outside, so she really loves the warmer weather. We start getting into a pattern (I even got into a waling group with some neighbors) but then it SNOWS!!!! we get two or three beautiful days, the last one gest really windy, then BAM! that night it starts snowing and it doesn't stop for DAYS! Kit wakes up and asks for shoes "shooo" and the dog "g'boey" and then when mom pretends not to notice, she gets her shoes on(sometimes on the right feet), puts on a jacket(usually backwards & inside out), trompes over to the door, grabes the handle, looks at me and says outside "oou-IDE" I get all bundled up, but after a minute outside I realize it's about 20 degrees with a nasty wind, and we can't go out and play. Kit freaks out that I ahve to pull her back inside after an inadequate time outside. Then for 5 days I have to keep telling her "no" everytime she wants to go outside. Whihc of course results in a freak-out, and I stand there giving Kit the "really? are we throwing ourselves on the floor again?" look. It's all quite tragic. Well, it snowed on Saturday (those Conference watchers could see that). Sunday it started clearing. Yesterday it was around 60 degrees today was closer to 70, and now the wind is trying to tear the roof off, and tomorrow through Sunday is supposed to be Wet,Wet,Wet (and cold). Blast it ALL!

Just 'cause

Ok, so I updated my other post and this poor one has been sitting longer. It's amazing that all my pondering comes after bedtime. Most of the time I can ignore it and sleep, but sometimes not. Those are the times I create these beautiful, articulate, spectacular posts in my head. But by the time I am done editing them in my head I am tired enough to go to sleep. Go figure.

Obsession

Ok, so I finished reading some books the other week, and I can't stop thinking about them. No! it is NOT the Twilight series, thank you. It's Kristin Britian's Green Rider series:

The Green Rider,

The First Rider's Call,

The High Kings Tomb,

The library didn't have the third book in stock so I had to go and buy the last one. and I had to drive around to find somone who had it in stock! Of course she couldn't finish her series in 3 books, and I am DYING to know what happens next. It was 4 years between the publishing of her second and third book, and that was published a year ago. If I have to wait another three years I am going to go BATTY. I am still having parts of the books invade my dreams. That is a common occurance when I am actually reading the books, but I have read other books since then. I also havn't enjoyed the books I have read since finishing The High Kings Tomb. I don't know if it's because I have chosen poorly in my last few book selections, or if I am now tainted by the series. There's enough action, comedy, romantic tension, "fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, true love," it's got it all! Plus she has a faboulous editor! The 5 book series I read before the Green Rider series was full of errors, and I don't mean just punctuation and tense problems (although those were there) but the dude got the character's names mixed up! (unless his characters can transport to other spots and start doing what another character was doing in the previous sentance, and then in the next paragraph be where he was supposed to be) OH! It was soooo annoying and he did it more than once!!! So the Green Rider was a beautiful breath of fresh air. But after I finished the thee books, I read a book that the author would have three years pass without mentioning it and just assume you knew, and then mention it 20 pages after the fact. ARG!!! There was a quote on my google page that said something along the lines of "many best sellers could have been prevented by good English teachers." Amen to that!!!! So now I went back to the Edddings because I enjoyed the Belgariad and the Mallorean, but The Dreamers series is like pulling teeth!!! I don't really watch T.V. or anything, so most of my days are spent reading. I read about 200-300 pages a day if it's a good book. It has taken me 2 weeks to get to page 199 in the first book of the series. It's soooo Dry!!! So not only am I fighting to read the book, but the time I would spend reading is now spent being totally bored. Lucky for be we are haveing beautiful weather so I can go for walks and stuff, but that's going to change tomorrow, so I'm out of luck. :( Ok, frustration ebbing. Perhaps I have to go to the library and try again.

Perfection?

So in the past months I have been trying NOT to be perfect. (No, not as in my ultimate goal of exaltation or anything) It's more of the little things. I found myself inturrupting Brent's converstations with others to clarify that it was only 4 o'clock, and not 6 o'clock. Or that it cost $10 and not $20. Just the little things that don't make any difference, but just point out that I either know more than whoever I am correcting, or that I am just more Anal than they are. Those kind of specifics, when unimportant, don't need constant refereeing, and that way I am not as likely to offend whoever is speaking by pointing out that they are WRONG. Granted I still correct them in my head, but I can hold my tongue now.


The interesting thing is that I seem to sway the other way too. I exaggerate when I should be conscise. I noticed it a lot when I was trying to make friends iwth the people in my neighborhood. I would exxagerate to the point of absurdity, and they would just stand there looking at me like I was insane.

I guess that was a learned thing, along with describing things with gestures and sounds instead of words. How was I supposed to know that when I said the bird went "WaFoof, whump,whump" that not everyone understands that I am implying that the bird was not only huge but that the fence it landed on reverberated with the impact? I mean DUH!!!! right??

Here's some random pictures. These I took outside of the apartment we were living at this time last year. I love the contrast of the snow and the clear sky.

I actually didn't take any pictures of the first snow this year. I don't know why, Kit sure was cute in her snow stuff, but Comet was the best he would kick up snow and then chase it, and then while running kick more up. It was funny to watch. Kit was laughing at him too!

Star date ?!?!?!

As I was thinking about my best Shatner impression and coming up with the star-date it got me wondering. If my blogger post can automatically put the date and time on my blogs, what was wrong with his journal? I get that he probably didn't have the internet where no man had gone before (and dug up the roads and took 4 months to put in the cables) but come on!!!





*** Note Yea the technology wasn't created at the time the shows were written, but It still makes it hard for me to post the star-date when it's right there on top of the blog anyway







Here's a picture to make Mark happy.

Pretty huh? It was one of the ones that came with the computer, but it's nice.

**Later note: I have now noticed that my Blog has not accounted for daylight savings, no, wait, it's just in Pacific time. I wonder how I can change that..... I guess saying the star-date is safer than relying on these stupid contraptions. But if that's the case why not write the journal entry and have a voice dub reading what was written, or was that the case and I missed it in all the episodes???

Mapotomus Log

I find that as I think of things to Blog about I have a hard time expressing myself as myself. I can take on a persona and that persona can tell about the feelings & events that I seem to have such issues expressing. Thus the creating of this Blog. I also found it hard to post my stuff on the other blog just because it was the "family" blog and not "mine." That blog will still be updated in it's same unregularly fasion, I just get to put some of my stuff on this this one too!