Pajama Day

Sunday was the CaveTroll's 3rd--I had some adorable pictures but they wouldn't upload period the end, so you'll just have to take my word for the grave look of concentration on his face as he blew out his candles and clapped his hands over the perfectoin of the cake. The cake itself was something of a triumph...Baskin-Robbins does not own the Cars logo, so I had them make a white cake with a brown road on it (they added some rocks and a tree) and then I put two toy cars--the Lightning and the Mater cars, to be exact, and he thought the world had adjusted itself to his specifications. It was awesome. It was a small celebration-- a couple of grandparents and friends of the family...my older kids had the hugeomolous parties when they were little, but, live and learn, Kewyn's biggest joy was sitting on the floor and playing with his new toys BY HIMSELF. Of course, he loves playing w/his older brother and sister (and, touchingly enough, given the age difference, they love playing with him) but a rival for his two new toys would not have been welcome, and any more than two new toys would have been quite over the top. Anyway, it was a nice day, and the house was clean, and after the prep for the party and taking four kids to see FLUSHED AWAY http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424095/ and, of course, hating my job so badly this year that it causes an empty aching in my chest like a sore and rotting tooth, I decided...

Not to go to work on Monday.

Yup. In some professions, it's called a sick day. In my profession, it's called a mental health day, and it starts when the alarm goes off and the sobbing starts, and you decide that God made sub-recorders so that you didn't have the humiliation of telling your vice principal that you just couldn't face the little bastards one more lousy rotten stinking day without some goddamned time for yourself, thank you very much. (I once had to report all my absences to my vice principal at dark-thirty a.m.--it was when Trystan was an infant and wouldn't stop screaming...imagine, "Yeah...uhm...I can't make it in today...because my baby sitter bailed...because she couldn't stop crying...because my son screams all day...no, no, I didn't drink when I was pregnant...no, no drugs either...yeah, I COULD bring him in, but remember, he WON'T STOP CRYING!!!!" Good times... too bad I lost that job, I now live 1/2 a mile away from that high school...)

So it was me, and the babies, and we wandered around the house and watched movies (oddly enough, not CARS, I guess ater 3000 repetitions in six days, Cave Troll decided that Cinderella was a refreshing change) and I...

Wound Yarn.

I love doing that... You turn twisted fiber ingredients into cute little fiber cakes...it feels very crafty without the exertion of actually thinking for yourself or doing anything with real skill. Or at least you think it doesn't take skill until you let your 12 year old daughter do it and she somehow bolluxes it up beyond all recognition (would you call this B.U.B.A.R.? And if so, could you ever say it without laughing uproariously?) Anyway, I think I'm gonna have a coupla pairs of socks with a LOT of splices... no matter...

I finished everything but the many skeins of Knit-Picks lace, which is just as well because, hey, when am I going to have time to knit lace, and I even finished the twin hats and socks...speaking of bolluxed, I managed to screw up two absurdly simple pattern stitches--one for each hat--so badly I couldn't even see where the mistake began, and, again, this is why I'm a dilletante...I've got FOUR more of these to go, and I decided, for better or for worse, to simply let the errors stand. The people I work with love me enough to know how pressed for time I am--and to love the garment for the thought and not the accuracy, so I'm going to rely on their great hearts and take a little craft leniency for myself...you couldn't spot these errors from the back of a sleeping cat, much less a prancing pony, so, hey, let's call them character flaws and get to blocking on the bread rack, shall we? (The bread rack/w a towl on it, btw, is a great blocking flat for stuff that's not really meant to be pinned. Like ittle-bittle baby socks and hats. Really, only for ittle-bittle baby socks and hats, come to think about it...)

Anyway, all that aside, my three great moments of yesterday and today came, as usual, from my children. The first one made me wish I'd been born sterile, and the second and third ones made me glad I kept having the little goombahs.

The first one was when Trystan asked if he could turn up the thermostat because, hey, it was 67 degrees F. in the house, and heaven forbid the kid who won't wear shorts in the summer actually put on a sweater in the winter, but I said yes, because it was the baby's bath time, and a half an hour later I had ass-sweat starting underneath my sweat-pants and about the time I started to wonder how hot 69 degrees could get, Trystan said "Doesn't it feel good in here? I turned it up to 80 degrees!" Holy crap--I'm such a bad samaritan, I don't even turn it up to 80 degrees in the summer time!


The second moment was when ARwyn, the little genius said, clear as day, Dadad, Kitty, AND Momom... all in the same three days. SHE'S SEVEN MONTHS! I know, I know--I'm sure many of you have little geniuses that spoke at six or even five, but I swear to toast, this is the first of the four to ever give us a glimmer of speech before ten or eleven months. Holy shit--we're gonna be so under siege when we're fifty I don't even want to speculate.

The third moment was...(and this was so damn cute) when Kewyn, who, remember, saw ALL of the CARS dvd, including the short about Mater and the Ghostlight, greeted me from the car with his little cow-flashlight and said, "Mom--Mater's Ghostlight!" Clear as a bell!!! Damn, so cute I can't hardly top it, so I'll just sign off!