Happy 4th of July!

I just thought I would show you my new nostepinne that I bought Thursday and the first (foot)ball of yarn that I wound on the thing. You can't really tell from this picture but it's decidedly not spherical. This yarn is destined to become another pair of socks for Miss A, I think. A couple of weeks ago I bought a book to learn how to knit two socks at a time. And I'm working through the process of getting everything ready to cast on. I'm waiting though until I find a little bit of courage and enough time to sit down and really concentrate as this is a new method with two circular needles at once and while I'm sure I can figure it out, the read through is mondo confusing.

Anyway...

Life has been, while stressful, good lately. Hopefully things will settle down at work as I think we've had the last of the administrative, here's your insurance, 401K, and smile for your badge picture, meetings. Thursday I met with a financial planner to figure out what to do with my old 401K and how to re-invest it all. It was a good meeting where we discovered his family came from the same tiny little Alabama place I'm from and his wife's family is related to one of the girls I went to massage school with. It was nice. And as I told Miss A yesterday, I think I'm getting to an age where I'm tired of not belonging anywhere. I'm tired of maintaining that military brat mentality that anywhere (and nowhere) is home. As far as getting much estate/financial planning done. All we did was fill out paperwork to initiate an IRA which I need to do more research on.

Did you know that with a 401K your beneficiary has to pay taxes on all the proceeds at the time of the dispersal where with an IRA essentially the account gains the beneficiaries name and they pay taxes piecemeal as they draw the money out? I didn't. Like I said, research.

Anyway, yesterday was a holiday for us. Miss A and I drove to Ohatchee to visit with my family, but first she went down the road to the dairy farm and picked up a load of cow manure compost. We shoveled shit for an hour before heading off. Everyone found that really entertaining.

We got to visit with my Nonnie and parents and wonder of all wonders every single one of my brothers. Most of the nieces and nephews were around. I got to see new haircuts and give one her birthday present and got lots and lots of hugs. It was a great day overall.

Today we're going to get some breakfast, do a little grocery shopping, and then working on some ribs. Miss A's mom is coming over to visit and eat. And I anticipate a dip in the pool before the day is out.

Sigh...

Maybe It’s Just Me…

We seem to have developed a flea problem of late. We switched Rosie over to the Comfortis pill that’s supposed to control for a month. I have to say it has worked well until this last week where I’ve spotted several fleas on her belly. They’re moving slow so I’m thinking it is still working somewhat.

For the cats, we still use the topical stuff. We did have to change back to a product that has been on the market for a while because Satan’s cat would go berserkers every time we put the new stuff on her. And then there was one very scary incident with my eye and poison control during one of her post-application hissy fits. So we talked to the vet and they recommended this product and the hissy fits stopped, sort of.

Anyway, the last few days seems like every time I sit down on the couch or lay down in the bed I feel that little tickly feeling, look down, and a flea is crawling on me. They’re slow so I feel like maybe they’re just in the throes of a chemical-induced death and came to me for a swifter, more merciful way out.

Last night was the second night in a row I had a flea jump on me when I got in the bed. It’s no good for being able to drift off with that peaceful easy feeling. In fact, I had the itchy twitchies all night long.

Miss Rosie got her dose this morning and hopefully this evening the cats will get their monthly torture session and we’ll be flea-free again. Keep your fingers crossed, anyway.

Round and Round and Round

Remember that ceiling fan that gave us some problems a couple of months ago? Well, while I was away today Miss A managed to arrange for the electricians that installed the thing to come out and fix it. Free. Woo hoo!

Now if the floor guy comes in with a reasonable offer we might get out of this latest round of home repairs without losing our asses (again).

Whose Bright Idea Was This Anyway?

Urghh... Whoever thinks meetings at 7am are appropriate is sadly mistaken.

It's 3:30pm and I'm dying. I still have another half hour here and then an hour massage to go before I can go home. I think I hit my second wind about 10am this morning. Not sure where I'm going to pull enough energy to do this massage from.

I guess I will though as it's one of my instructor's from school. Sigh...

Sleep needed, soon...

Raiders

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I was so excited about the wren who had built a nest in one of my Christmas cactuses and laid several eggs?

Every day when I go out to feed the fish, I check on mama. If she's not on the nest, I check to see if the babies have been born yet. This morning when I checked, she wasn't on the nest. And there was something wrong. The nest was wrong.

It doesn't photograph well so I'll spare you my attempts. Not to mention the camera batteries died right in the middle of the operation.

Something raided the nest. All of the eggs are gone and the nest is torn up. I'm pretty sure I heard the aftermath. A herd of elephants flummoxed down the porch while we were watching a movie last night. It was a cat. Probably the feral cat that we occasionally see lurking about. I know it wasn't ours because they've not been allowed out front since I found the nest and they were both wide-eyed at the sound of our raider running across the porch.

I've already opened the front cat door so they can have access to the front porch. They've missed it, but they went for the nest every single time they were out there and I just didn't want them destroying the nest. I was enjoying it too much and I didn't want a repeat of the bluebird affair a few years ago.

I didn't tell you about that? Okay... Neighbors cat would come and sit under the bluebird nest and wait for the babies to take their fledgling flight. Then he would pounce on them and eat them. He got every single one of them.

I guess I need to go clean the nest out of the plant. I hope mama made it out alive.

Knit One, Rip Two

I've been working on a summer sweater lately. It's my big project currently and I'm using a silk / bamboo blend. It's nice and soft and yummy. This is the third project I've tried with it and yesterday the curse raised it's ugly head again. I dropped a stitch in the middle of a section of lace. I have a very bad track record with lace.

In fact, lace is why this is the third time I've started a project with this exact same yarn. So, when I discovered the dropped stitch I almost had a cow. Instead I grabbed the runaway stitch and tied a piece of yarn through it so it wouldn't go any further.

I figured out how to reverse knit pretty well yesterday and spent the entire day unknitting and knitting back to where I was to begin with. This morning I've been making forward progress and hopefully I will have a spanky new sweater to wear some time in July. That is, if it fits. I haven't gotten enough done in the last month of knitting on it to be able to try it on. Hopefully some time this week there will be enough of it to slide on and see how the fit is going to go.

Keep your fingers crossed...