Thankful

I get cranky when I don't produce something. Needless to say, I've been feeling cranky lately. It is difficult to feel guilty, though. I haven't been sitting around at all. I've just been so busy with things that aren't on my list I haven't really felt very in control of things.

I am thankful for the motivation to keep going when things get unbearable. That motivation derives from the people I love and who love me in return.

I am also thankful for a few days of peace. They have given me the time to get back into my routine and get the real stuff done.

Here are the results!

Remember When...

Once Upon a Time, long long ago I used to knit. There is dusty evidence of yarn wars past amongst the neglected and unfortunate shoes, socks, magazines, paintbrushes, pins and various other items in the forgotten house at playground drive. This was back when people were responsible and took care of themselves and their needs, rather than their wants.

That was a long long time ago. This was when I did my job and not 5 other people's jobs. It's a funny thing being pegged as responsible (ick, my inner child curdles at the very mention of such a characteristic!) these days it means..."HERE take mine too! You're so good at it!" For some reason people consider a responsible person something of a curbside drop off. Dump your stuff HERE! Soon the curbside is no longer a curbside with dandelion's and crickets basking in the sun, but more of a hot messy trash heap with too much going on, and not enough space.

That's how I feel this year. I keep looking at my blog thinking I should post something on it. I chastise myself for not being more productive. I had awesome goals before, a LIST full. I can't remember where it is. The only thing I can see right now is my third cup of coffee, a stack of papers to grade that is as thick as the family bible, and a bunch of emails I have to read begging me to do more.

All I really want to do is knit, read, and nap. If everyone could take their own responsibilities back and reread their job titles that would help me out a lot. I am certain it would clear up the pimples, relieve the knot in my shoulder blade, defog my brain and loosen up my facial expression.

CHEERS! BACK TO WORK!

Asante Sahna Squash Banahnah...

You are a baboon...and I am not! I think Rafiki got it right. Sometimes I feel like I am surrounded, but really I am the crazy one.

Life has taken some wild back roads lately. This project was started in the middle of summer when I had no worries ...I thought for the rest of my days. Alas, I had to work again. Lots of changes swept me right off balance just when I perfected the tree pose and my yoga in the park days were done. I always try to finish what I start however.

Yoga bag completed, which is good. I have hung up my yoga mat for the foreseeable future theoretically, and now I can hang it up in reality as well.

At the end of yoga sessions we say...I forget. I always say it, but I always think ASANTE SAHNA SQUASH BANAHNAH when I am saying it. I have been informed by my bestie that the word is NAMASTE.

Therefore I had to ask my friend, given my brainfart. Angela, I didn't want to give out your phone number so I had to cut off your name in my screen capture, but you are the Yogi to my Boo boo when it comes to nonsense!

Sometimes I have no clue what I am trying to attain, but then again, sometimes it's the simple things, like finishing what you start that give me the feeling of NAMASTE (not the Rafiki version).

This is the park that I used to YOGA IT UP in.

Breaking News

This news may be a complete shock and surprise, but nonetheless here it is:



I am painfully unable to sit still for long without doing something, making something, or annoying something.



*GASP!* I KNOW!



I never knew it about myself.



I thought I never wanted to see another knitted baby item for the rest of my life after making those three baby blankets. I was very done with the comments about how many children I had, and how nice it was that I could take time out of a busy mother's life to create these wonderful items. Do these people see a child around me? Am I carrying a "mom bag?"



Neeeeoooooooo... Here's proof. No one I know can understand why:






A. I bother to carry a bag at all


B. Can fit anything inside of said bag

So, on Monday I sat down on my couch in the morning and said to myself: "Great, A day of nothing. I'll just sit here and bum it. I never do that, it'll be totally awesome and my friends will be so jealous that I do nothing while they go to work."

...30 seconds later...after twisting and contorting on the couch to the point that my head is touching the ground and my legs are slung over the back of my couch, I give up.

I search through all of my yarn in the huge pile in the corner of my living room because I yelled at myself earlier this year for buying yarn and not using it. I found fun colorful stretchy and bouncey yarn! YAY!

Problem: It's baby colors. Dang. Another baby project.

Good news: Baby projects are small just like their tiny little toes, and fingers and eyeballs, and whatever else, so it won't be a huge "baby blanket" kind of project.

AND here is the final product on an actual baby:

The End

May I never knit another blanket again!

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Blah.

More projects are supposed to be done and posted here. Notice them? Me neither.

Background information: When I get annoyed with projects I ignore them until I forget what they were all about.

My first Christmas tree in my very first house on my very first Christmas alone fell over...THREE TIMES. It layed there for two days, broken glass ornaments included, until I mustered up the patience to look the mess in the eye and say..."no prob, I can redo this entire thing after I clean up the mess."

My dog must have experienced a close encounter with a werewolf and then been exposed to a full moon and chewed up my back door, leaving sawdust, sweaty dog breath, and various debris. It stayed in a scattered mess on the floor, eventually tracking all over the house because I couldn't even look at it. It took me a month to clean it up. As in START to clean it up, or even acknowledge a mess even existed.

Needless to say...my house is rarely clean. You should see my car.

If a person halfway knits a project, gives up, and rips it out (expletives included)...does it count as a project? I've had three of those so far. I finally re-balled the yarn today. Yay me.

The teacher in me is coaching myself: "But think of the things you've learned about knitting because of those projects?"

The student in me responds: "BUT think of how much more DONE they would be if I had done it right already?!"

I'm just saying I get my students. I erase their work and they puff out all of their breath like I'd just given them the Santa Clause talk. "You mean I have to start my life ALL OVER!?"

YUP.











Positive Note: I read "The Girl Who Chased the Moon" in basically one day. Take THAT progress!

Daddy

There is one thing my Mom said about her father at his wake. It stuck with me because it is simple, true, and perfect:









"Here's to you, Daddy. The first man I ever loved, and the first man who loved me."

Just sit there for a moment and read it over a couple times...






In my family, we have Daddies. Lordy, "Father" is such a stiff, unfeeling word. It feels unnatural when the syllables clunk around in my mouth. Someone once told me that I wasn't a little girl anymore and that I was being juvenile when I said Daddy.

"I mean, at least say Dad."

"I can't, he's my Daddy."

This very MAN, a couple years later saw his "father" driving his car in the opposite direction we were driving and involuntarily shouted out "DAAAAADDDDDAAAAYYYYYY!" (sober)

It makes me laugh uncontrollably STILL.

BUT, you know what that means? He has had some stellar moments with his Daddy. He has bonded with his Daddy and he knows his Daddy would take care of him if he still needed it. Kind of like being a little juvenile child.

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Once upon a time, in a quaint village filled with sidewalks, brick townhomes, and freshly cut grass there was a brood (SIX) of children driving two adults mad. In this little piece of heaven, known as Collingdale, behind the house filled with thumping feet, squealing voices, and things that could never be kept nice, there was a small garden patch.

This is the place where small little girls learned the value of grass stained knees, bare feet, bumble bees, and tangled hair. You see, one of the adults, the leader of the nuthouse, always dreamed of being a New Jersey Tomato Farmer. He swiftly realized that his dream would not come to fruition if that meant he must also raise little wild children. He knew that the only thing worse than wild little girls were wild and crazy Jersey folk. You know, the kind that live near the tomato farms, in a trailer, circa 1945, with no distinguishable road leading into or out of the trailer lot? The Jersey trailer folk were not to be trusted, especially with the whispered rumors that they, themselves, were housing the Jersey devil in the off chance that a small little Jersey girl wondered off in her barefoot splendor. This very thing did happen ONCE...and that is how we got Snooki.

So this adult, nay, Daddy folded his dream into his pocket and replaced it with a backyard strawberry patch that was safe and warm and deliciously located in the sane world of Pennsylvania.

He never forgot his dream, it continued to thrive inside his pocket. It shone through, though, and all of his children grew in the sunshine of his dream of farming and growing and cherishing everything from the outside and natural world.

One of his little girls, watched his every move, followed him with her little plastic bubble blowing lawn mower, drank her juice when he drank his "juice." Tried to weed and mulch and pick up heavy things that were five times her size. She even tried to touch the worm on the end of the fish hook even though it was really gross and slimy and dying because that's what her Daddy did. That little girl carries her dreams in her right pocket, but also carries her Daddy's dream in her left pocket.

SO, whenever her shiny headed Daddy comes up with a hair-brained scheme to build ANOTHER barn, or replace a roof (where she still tries to carry things up that are five times her size), or EVEN BETTER: drive donuts in the snow on the ATV, she is there. Even when he retires and she has her own job and house and dog and life, she visits to make sure the tomato plants are tied up, the strawberries have been picked, the "varmints" stay out of the garden and that the dream that has been kept in pockets for so long has been tended and watered and given sunshine.

____________________________________________________________________

You see, strawberrries remind me of my Daddy's dream. That is why I love strawberries. They represent the beginning. The first step in a decade long plan towards a dream that continues and evolves. Strawberries represent the simple truth that my Daddy told me when I said I wanted to play football in middle school:

If you want it bad enough and you WORK HARD ENOUGH, you can do it.

(I didn't want to play football bad enough)

Love you Daddy