A train ate my breakfast:

 Being a dork in high school can make one long to be popular. It may not be until one spawns that the drawbacks of popularity can be observed and appreciated.

Last night, I was trying to get some work done on a new, wool tunic* for Boar's Head this coming weekend, but was having trouble making any progress because Moodles wasn't content to play with her toys. She wanted to be on me. She didn't want to be held. She wanted to use me like a jungle gym. So I was trying to finish up the seam embellishments on my tunic with an 18 lb baby hanging off of one arm, while trying desperately not to poke out her eye with a needle, or gouge her rhumpusing feet with a stray pin.

Maggie was only able to resist the "dog pile" for about 5 minutes before she had to join us, despite her previous experiences involving close proximity to Moodles. (Once again proving that a dog's memory lasts for about 3 minutes... tops.)

Eventually, I had to give up on my project all together in order to save poor Maggie, because Moodles figured out how to ride her like a pony, and despite the fact that the dog was laying down on the couch; Moodles had somehow managed to hook a finger under Maggie's eyelid and was attempting to steer with it.

Popularity is a bitch, yo. Everywhere I go, I am shadowed by my two, dedicated groupies, one of whom is bent on self destruction (Moodles) and the other is sure that she is mortally starved for both attention and food (Maggie). Both are convinced that the other has the better toys and snacks, and every once in a while, I consider getting the dog a teething ring and the baby a rawhide chew. Unfortunately, I know that this would not solve the problem, as it's all a case of "the grass is greener on the other side." They will ALWAYS want what the other is playing with no matter what.

***

So, this morning, Moodles woke up half an hour early to poop. I know I've told her repeatedly that we get up early so that we can be productive, but that's really not what I meant.

Nonetheless, as I crashed around the house in a blind, coffeeless stupor (Because I was up 1/2 hour before the coffee pot was ready for me. TRAGIC.), I did make up a short list of things that I could accomplish with my extra half hour. I could get the bebe to Grandma's house on time for once, and do all the dishes, start a load of wash, check my email, and still have time to eat a bowl of cereal!

Everything was going according to my plan until I loaded Moodles into the car to go to Grandma's house. The dishes got done, and the email was at least thinned out to a manageable level. I was 15 minutes early leaving to drop Moodles off, and I figured I could start the laundry and eat breakfast in peace when I returned. Sadly, this was not to be - for in the middle of the 4 block distance between my house and my Mother in Law's there is a train crossing. And for some reason, they decided that 7:15 AM, in the middle of morning rush-hour would be the ideal time to block off a major through-way with 20 minutes worth of rail car changing.

So there I sat, listening to Moodles in the back seat, composing a complex, gargled ballad to her toes; getting more and more incensed at the seconds lost every time the train reversed directions, but failed to get the hell out of my way. Did they have any idea what I could have accomplished had I at least brought a knitting project along? Did they care that they were eating up literally 1/3 of my private time for the day? And my breakfast... There would be no time for it by the time I got home. About 15 minutes into my inner tirade, when I was nearly foaming at the mouth and weighing the pros and cons of getting out of the car to throw rocks, I noticed that one of the slowly moving box cars had been tagged. All the cars were tagged, but this tag in particular short-circuited my rage-party:

CDC

BABY!

Er. What?

I'm not sure that that means what I think it means... Or that they mean what I mean. Center for Disease Control represent a noble set of objectives, certainly, but I've never been exited about them in quite that way... What could possibly make someone so pleased with the CDC that they would feel the need to immortalize the emotion in spray paint on the side of a moving bill-board?

Cure for cancer
Cure for herpies
Cure for AIDS
Treatment for Syphilis?
Erradication of small pox?
HPV vaccine?

Who gets that excited about a vaccine? Surely not.

My brain chased its tail for the last 4 minutes of train crossing, coming up with more and more elaborate and improbable reasons that someone would be that thrilled with the CDC. I did momentarily consider the idea that maybe "CDC" is a person, band, or gang, but dismissed it, because my scenario was far more entertaining.

Eventually, I did get the bebe dropped off at Grandma's house, and managed to catch the bus to work, but the Train still ate my breakfast time, and now I have to spend all morning Googling alternative organizations represented by the initials "CDC."

And I wonder why I never seem to get anything done...

* I notice that Amazon.com has 100% wool suiting/60" wide for $4.99/yard. If I didn't already have a ROOM FULL of unused wool, I would be all over this.

You're probably wondering why I've asked you here today:

If you know me in person, or are familiar with my facebook, livejournal, instant messenger, etc, you may be wondering why on earth I decided to set up a brand new blog? And why, in setting up this new blog, did I choose one with ads on it?

Well, I'll tell you: College is ridiculously expensive.

I'm 33 years old, and never finished going to college myself, and I'm only just now paying off my student loans. Husband is even older than I am, and he's got student loans too, and the cost of an education is rising.

I have the usual Roth and savings accounts set up for Moodles, but I'm very worried that they won't be enough to send her to school, and I can only put away so much per month before we have to start telling her that she's going to need to cut back on her formula intake if she wants to be able to go to a good school. I think that's kind of sad, and that's where all of you, this blog, and the advertising come in.

Any and all funds that I receive from the ads on this blog are going to go straight into Moodles' college fund. It would be the coolest thing ever if someday, she is able to say, "the internets paid for me to go to college."

I don't intend to run any more than the one ad at the side of the page, and the relevant links to Amazon.com (This includes the little store widget under WELCOME, because after two days, I've decided that I'm too lazy to keep up this constant linking. I'm doing it all once and putting it where y'all can find it if you're interested.). To keep things from getting obnoxious, I will only ever link to things that I own*, or am saving up my allowance for. Moodles will only make a commission if you actually BUY the thing in the links or the store widget, so there's no point in me linking to a bunch of useless dreck that none of us needs**.

If you share this blog with friends who have kids, or friends who like crafts, or friends who are going to college and wish their parents had had this idea first, I would be much obliged to you. But in the end, I hope you're all just here because I am sometimes funny, or interesting, or creative, or inspiring and make your work day seem that much shorter.


*I have paid for this. Twice. (Once for myself, and once as a review copy for a friend who writes for Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.) To say that I have buyer's remorse would be understating things egregiously; however, if you are the kind of person who enjoys the tantrums and obnoxious behavior in "reality TV", this might be the novel for you. I did write a review of the book on the product page, if you want to know more.

**I don't need this, but that won't stop me from licking it if I ever see it in the store...

Cleaning out the animal cages:

Yesterday for breakfast, Moodles and I made some honey wheat bread in the bread-maker.

• 1 1/8 c water
• 3 T honey
• 2 T vegetable oil
• 1 T molasses
• 1 T gluten
• 1 1/2 t yeast
• 1/3 t salt
• 3 c whole wheat flour

Add all ingredients to bread maker in order suggested by machine manufacturer. Set machine for light crust. Entertain bebe and goggie intermittently for 45 minutes watching the dough go 'round in circles. Go do something else for the other 2.5 hours... Sadly, bebe will only watch the dough for so long before she tries to figure out how to open the bread-maker and presses a bunch of buttons, resulting in the machine getting set for "pasta with medium crust".

Moodles greatly approved of the resulting bread, and nommed on "heel strips" all day long. She'd get about 1/2 way through each piece of bread before Maggie would interpret all the delighted bread-waving as an invitation come eat. There were crumbs EVERYWHERE in the bebe enclosure. If I find a musical toy with a bread crust in the battery compartment, I'll know how it happened.

Eventually, I had to take the bebe enclosure apart, shake off all the stuffed animals, and sweep, because Moodles was trying to "save" little bread balls in the corners. I felt rather like a zoo-keeper, cleaning out the lion cage. I transferred Moodles to her jumparoo, from which she supervised me with a grave countenance and violent bouncing. Maggie took notice of all the uneaten food while I was sweeping, and decided that the inside of the bebe enclosure was an untapped source of mana that she should harvest at the first opportunity. A few minutes later, I had the bebe changed and dressed, and the enclosure back together with the bebe inside. Maggie implimented her plan with all due haste, and found out almost immediately why Jasmine had declined to join her:

She had failed to realize that being inside a bebe enclosure would limit her ability to back up or turn around, while giving Moodles an unprecedented "reach advantage." And adding insult to injury, was the fact that there weren't even any treats in the enclosure anymore, because Maggie executed her plan right after I cleaned. Maggie is just lucky that she's a short haired pooch, or Moodles would have had her in corn-rows and bows by now. Jasmine and I sat at safe distance on the couch and laughed up our sleeves while Moodles stretched out Maggie's lips and drooled on her ears.

Despite being somewhat embarrassed over this mistake, I still managed to convince Maggie to clear all the crumbs out of the bebe enclosure this morning... But only if I took the bebe out first...

We are thankful for blueberries and goose-shit-green:

I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving! ("Thanksgiving" will always look wrong to me... I have been trying to write it as two words all week, because it IS two words... "Thanks" and "Giving." When and where did the freaking space go???)

Husband and I and Moodles and MIL and Zartan all went out to the Capitol Chop House Buffet to celebrate our various and sundry Thanksgiving traditions. MIL is a vegetarian, and Husband and Zartan are meat-a-tarians, Moodles is still only working her way through semi-solid foods, and I am a dessertivore. The buffet has been our way of solving these diverse feeding patterns all at once without anyone needing to buy $29,849,484.42 worth of absurd and obscure groceries, and then spend a week in the kitchen, slaving over a hot convection toaster.

Moodles ate her way through blueberries, strawberries, bananas, salmon, potatoes, stuffing, noodles, waffles, and rolls, and then succumbed to her food coma right there on the table in the restaurant.

Yesterday, Moodles and I hit JoAnn fabric for the sale on flannel and spent about 3 hours waiting in line to get our fabric cut. (When we arrived we took a number before we even started licking all the bolts we wanted to take home with us. We got number B94 and they were serving number B6...) Being as Moodles was feeling somewhat clingy, and therefore content to be pasted to my back in her backpack, we still managed to get our $5.99/yd flannel for $1.27/yd. Yay, us! Our wait would probably have been tragically long (I only brought 1 bottle, and stupidly didn't think that I'd need to change her diaper more than once while we were out...), were Moodles not Kryptonite to the willpower of Little Old Ladies. We traded line numbers like baseball cards, and Moodles and I eventually ended up getting served as number B71. Moodle's diaper did not make it. She sprang a leak, but didn't seem to care. We managed to make it all the way home without any tantrums.

We ate breakfast with Husband/Daddy, gathered up our white things for dying, and then headed over to Evil Aunti Eithni's house to soak white things in stinky water.

Moodles was NOT in a good mood, because she was having a very off-schedule kind of day, plus, she was teething. Nevertheless, she still managed to play some fun games with Auntie Eithni's stash of cool toys:

Meanwhile, we grown ups, used a whole bunch of red onion skins, and the Three Kinder Pot (tm) to dye ALL THE WHITE STUFF "goose-shit-green." And that's not just an excuse to use the word "shit" in a post. "Goose-shit-green" is a really, real medieval color, and one of my favorite colors in the whole world.

We mordanted everything in alum and cream of tartar, and then in the first batch of dying, we did about 3 yards of wool, and a onesie for Emily. (Eithni bought me Natural Dyeing, for 12th Night, either last year, or the year before. It's awesome and full of pretty pictures and more exact recipe-type-things for what we did.) Red onion skin dye looks red in the pot. In order to get goose-shit-green, we added "Pennsic Water" to the dye pot, and the heavy iron content of the water changed our fabric, like magic, from pinkish to greenish!

In the exaust bath, I did two separate balls of white roving. One we mordanted, again in alum and cream of tartar with a late addition of Pennsic Water, and the other ball we just tossed into the dye bath with Pennsic Water only. We left the roving to soak overnight, because we had moved on to dying with madder. Also, being an exaust bath, the dye was weaker, so we wanted to give the wool maximum absorption time.

Moodles was pretty much DONE by 10:00 PM, so we had to head home before the mordanted roving went into the madder exaust bath, but with any luck, I will have some pretty pink and green wool to spin soon!

UPDATE *Gross*: Moodles discovered blueberries on Thanksgiving day, and ate them by the handful at Eithni's house on Friday... This morning, I have discovered that they are just about the same color coming out as going in. Unlike carrots, which you put into the baby, orange, and they come out green. Blueberries go in blue, and they come back out blue... So now I have a goose-shit-green onesie, and a Moodle-shit-blue diaper. Go fig.

New Blog

The problem with a new blog is the overwhelmingness of the number of questions it wants answers to... and how do you answer them to maximize cool points and not look like a lonely dork who sits at her computer all day eating cheetos and mocking her peers for minor grammatical missteps?

It makes me panicky, it really does.

Take, for example, the problem of the basic question: Interests:

Every single social networking site EVER, asks me about my freaking interests and that question alone is enough to freeze me with indecision. At first I go to town and just type all the stuff that comes to mind:

string, knitting, reading, dogs, spinning, weaving, soap making, children, sewing, writing, CHEESE, cooking, strippers, belly dancers, lemurs, medieval stuff, re-enactments, World of Warcraft, computers, making things, crafts, eating, breathing, food that is yummy, funny stuff, my husband

YAY! I have a list! That question is DONE!

But then my inner Writing Center tutor comes out and smacks me in the back of the head with a dictionary (The big, fat, heavy, leather-bound, Oxford-Edition-of-DEATH, and not the kinder, gentler internet kind that doesn't even make you spell properly to figure out what word you want..) and yells at me, "THINK ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE!"

So then I think about my audience. Who is my audience? My audience is the internets!

Uh, oh. The internets are a very big place. I need to narrow things down some. My audience is cool people on the internets!

OK. So now I have to review my list of interests and list only things that will be relevant to Cool People.

string, knitting, reading, dogs, spinning, weaving, soap making, children, sewing, writing, CHEESE, cooking, strippers, belly dancers, lemurs, medieval stuff, re-enactments, World of Warcraft, computers, making things, crafts, eating, breathing, food that is yummy, funny stuff, my husband

There! The list is narrowed. But that list now looks disorganized and kind of boring. And to be honest, I know plenty of cool people that like all the things that I just crossed off. This is just a list of what cool people will ADMIT to liking. Maybe.

Plus, I'm not sure I really want other cool people to be interested in my husband. I am interested in my husband, and really, that should be enough. I'm not sure if I'm man enough to handle all the cool people of the internets being interested in my husband, so he has to come off the list too.

Then, there's the problem of redundancy. String is probably redundant with spinning. And probably also knitting and weaving, since those are things you can do with string. Maybe also crafts, since lots of crafts can be done with string. Oh, and making things. I make lots of things with string. So all of that will have to go. I don't want the Cool People to think that I'm talking down to them. Surely they know that all of that stuff can be accomplished with string.

string, knitting, reading, dogs, spinning, weaving, soap making, children, sewing, writing, CHEESE, cooking, strippers, belly dancers, lemurs, medieval stuff, re-enactments, World of Warcraft, computers, making things, crafts, eating, breathing, food that is yummy, funny stuff, my husband.

I guess I should also eliminate stuff that everybody is interested, because I don't want to appear cliched. Eating, breathing, and food that is yummy will just have to go, because I don't really know anyone who isn't interested in those things. They're pretty much universal. The computers will probably need to go to, because everyone will be reading this on the internets, which will mean they already have a computer, and hence, at least some marginal interest in computers.

What does that leave me with?

string, reading, writing, soap making, dogs, lemurs, belly dancers, cooking, and funny stuff.

Well! That's certainly a manageable list! ... But it really does make me look boring. With that description, I look like a super-clean, literate, animal lover, who may or may not have a pervy interest in dancing girls - though possibly only so as to have something to talk about. And that's just not true. And I can't even talk authoritatively about lemurs. I just kinda think they're cute.

*This is where I really start freaking out because there is just too much pressure involved in answering this question.*

WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT FROM ME, INTERNETS?!

OK, look:

• string - Because it's so useful and universal! Think of all the things you can do with string!
• knitting - I like knitting socks and sweaters. But apparently only for other people. I knit all the time and own 0 things that I have made myself...
• reading - My secret shame is romance novels. I read lots and lots of romance novels. But also other stuff. Like blogs.
• dogs - I have three dogs. They are big, tough-looking, marshmallows. They might be kind of stupid, but I love them all. They tell me they love me, even if my interests aren't good enough for the Cool People on the Internets.
• spinning - Spinning is for making string. String is hella useful. Ergo, being able to make string makes me practically a super hero.
• weaving - Weaving is what you do with all the string that you have obsessively made while watching the NCIS marathon over Thanks Giving. Well, all the string that you did not use up with the knitting.
• soap making - I have an ALLERGY, OK?! DON'T JUDGE ME! I can't use a lot of common soap because the perfumes make me rashy. But I still want to smell good, and if you want something done RIGHT, you have to do it yourself. Or use the soap the doctor recommends, but then you will NEVER, EVER SMELL SEXAY. YOU WILL SMELL LIKE A DOCTOR'S OFFICE.
• children - Not all children. Just my children. Though, she's really not plural. She's singular. SINGULAR. Moodles is very cute. It's the only thing that keeps me from eating her. I am THAT KIND of mother. It's true.
• sewing - Look! More things you can do with string! After you're done with the weaving. I like sewing things for Moodles to wear. It's like making barbie clothes, but you can totally feel that you have ACCOMPLISHED SOMETHING, because, "Look! The baby isn't naked anymore!" Plus, there is a serious dearth of smarmy, goth baby clothes on the market.
• writing - You're here, aren't you?
• CHEESE - Ok, this is a very particular thing. I don't just like cheese like most people like cheese, because EVERYBODY likes cheese. Unless they're a FREAK OF NATURE... I just like cheese so much that I have taken up making my own cheese, so that I can afford to eat all the crazy-expensive cheeses that I crave. Scotch flavored cheddars are my specialty.
• cooking - This is really only here because I don't want to starve to death. Husband doesn't cook. Mother doesn't cook. Without this skill, I'd be VERY HUNGRY.... I guess, technically, I could take this off the list.
• strippers - They're like the everyman of circus performers. Some of them have giant bosoms that would work well in the freak show. Some of them are AMAZING areal acrobats. And whether it's because I'm a little pervy, or because they're a total trainwreck and I can't look away, I really like looking at strippers. So there.
• belly dancers - I have lots of friends who belly dance. They do not like to be confused with strippers. Let that be a lesson to you. I like to look at belly dancers - especially the ones that dance with SWORDS! It's really not pervy. Really.
• lemurs - They are cute.
• medieval stuff - Knights in shining armor. Need I say more? I do? Uh... Well... In medieval times, they also made things. And making things is another one of my interests! See?!
• re-enactments - Because there really aren't any places that I can go to do medieval stuff that AREN'T re-enactments. When they start selling time-travel vacations, I'll be ALL OVER THAT SHIT.
• World of Warcraft - I suck at this game, and I think my membership expired. But it's fun to binge-quest when you have a three day weekend and not enough money to visit Northrend in person...
• computers - Internets. Duh. Plus, Warcraft.
• making things - I am curious. I want to know how stuff is made. I am also kind of a control freak. Or maybe a little OCD. But I like my stuff to be made JUST SO. And if I do it myself, I can be sure it is done RIGHT. see also: soap making and CHEESE
• crafts - Crafts are not the same as making things. Just so you know. Crafts are things you make that you don't really NEED. Like a tea cosy. Do you NEED one? No. Would a chartreuse tea cosy look totally cute in your kitchen? Probably. See?
• food that is yummy - see also: cheese
• funny stuff - I try to be funny. It keeps me from getting beat up. Also, it means that people might like me more. I want people to like me more. When I fail at being funny, I go read about other funny people. They make me laugh, and laughing makes me feel better about not being cool.
• my husband - I am very interested in my huband. You all had better only be moderately interested in my husband. Or I'll cut you.

Self Esteem