Just short of the finish line

All week I've been slogging away at the melon shawl trying to finish it for the casino night party tonight. I didn't make it.

The border knitting has only gone so-so. The pattern is easy to do, but I bought some cheap metal dpns to knit it with and I wish I had gone shopping for better ones. Not that the needles are bad but they are slick. I dropped a needle and had it slide out more than once. When the needle dropped out the stitch that attaches the border to the center panel dropped and dropped and dropped fast. I redid parts of the border way too many times. I blame that on me staying up past midnight trying to get it done and was just plain ole sloppy.

So Thursday night I put the kids to bed. I finally get everyone settled down, no more waters, no more demonstrating the song they learned in school, no more B won't stop talking, etc. I picked up my knitting at 9:15 and I realized that I was tired. Really tired. I decided that I would just give up and go to bed.

At least I know I'll have it ready for next year and it's going to be beautiful!

Yummy Dinner

I marinated a flank steak this afternoon. On my way home from Valentine shopping, I stopped at the grocery to get some vegetables to go with the steak. While there A mentioned that she wanted those onions, you know the brown stringy & crunchy ones. I had to interpret what "those onions" meant but I figured out it was the onions from this recipe. (I guess I've never blogged this recipe. I've got a pork tenderloin in the freezer, I may need to make it again.) We picked up a big bag of green beans which I parboiled and then sauteed in the pan after caramelizing the onions.

It was all good. I'm going to have to remember this one.

I should have knocked on wood

I spent yesterday evening dwelling on a post.

I dreamed of posting about how after dealing with B still sleeping in the crib and constantly climbing out, we had finally successfully moved him into the bottom bunk in J's room. I was going to say that the boys had finally settled into a routine. I figured out that I had to move the ladder to the top bunk until they were both asleep to stop B from climbing up and jumping on J after he fell asleep. I was going to exclaim that they both were sleeping through the night. No getting up in the middle of the night asking for water or jumping on each other or wanting to play.

Of course it had only been a couple of night in a row of the two of the sleeping in the bunk beds. I had to just think of the post and wait to make sure it was true.

It turns out that just thinking of posting of the wonders of the boys sleeping together is a huge jinx. Nope. We had up and down and screaming and yelling and doors slamming and crib jumping and climbing out then more screaming and calming and soothing and going back to sleep. Then I had to put me back to sleep.

Never again will I start thinking of a post before it is really time to post.

Drama of the Girl Scout Leader

I have 4 girls, A, B, C & D.

A & B are schedule to lead meeting 1.

2 Junior Girls Scouts working on their Bronze award are planning a workshop at meeting 2.

C & D are scheduled to lead meeting 3.

Meeting 1 gets cancelled because of the ice day. I need to reschedule so I decide to push them to an open date in April.

A week or so ago, I get a email from C's mom that she and D's mom cannot make meeting 3. She asks for the meeting schedule so she can try and switch with someone else.

A few days later I get an email from the Junior Girl Scouts who are doing meeting 2. They can't make that date. I tell them to take meeting 3. I let C's mom know. She mentions taking meeting 2 instead but never confirmed.

Meeting 2 is Wednesday. Saturday I still don't know what's going on so I email A & B's moms and ask if they can come to meeting 2. They can and all is hunky-dory.

This afternoon I get an email from C's mom saying that she's planning on coming to meeting 2 on Wednesday. I spent the afternoon thinking about how I've mishandled the situation and how I can diplomatically say no to C's mom.

(Her conflict was that she has a new job and has a hard time taking time off. So if she's planning on Wed then she probably scheduled time off.)

I send C's mom an email and I probably made her mad.

Not two minutes after I send the email to C's mom, I get an email from A's mom that there has been a death in the family and she can't make it to meeting 2.

Great!

I send a note to C's mom suggesting that if she is already free on Wed, that she and B's mom help the girls host the meeting 2 and we'll put A with D in a meeting in April.

Gosh, I really hope that this works out but I highly doubt it. The way things have gone in Brownies this year, it will all fall apart. If things do go to heck, I've already decided I'm just going to cancel meeting 2 and deal with it later.

A year and half later

In November '07 I was in charge of the bake sale at church. I spent all this time worrying about how many baked goods we would have enough stuff. I baked for a week. I made a bunch of stuff.

There were problems with the church calendar and we didn't get to hold the bake sale in November so we pushed it back to this weekend. I'm so over the bake sale this time. If we don't have enough, oh well. I didn't slave over making tons of stuff.

Here are my contributions:

Heart shaped brownies:


Leftover cupcakes from J's class party that I had in the freezer:


Chocolate chip cookies that I'm still in the process of baking:


I just don't feel like baking. I can make something else tonight if I need to but I'm not going to kill myself over this.

What I have felt like doing is knitting. I've started the border on my melon

He's ready

In DH's extensive research for our Canadian Spring Break trip, he figured out that renting ski helmets is pretty expensive, $7/day. He found these helmets on sale for about $20 a piece shipped, a good deal.

B loves his helmet. He spent most of the afternoon in it. Luckily I was able to convince him to take it off before he went to bed.

Solo

DH went to a casino night meeting so I'm flying solo tonight. Aside from the meltdown over studying for the PSIA spelling test, we did fine. Boys went down without a peep, a miracle since B took a short nap this afternoon.

Earlier this evening I got notified that someone had tagged a picture of me on Facebook. It was a soccer picture from when I was 6 or 7 seven years old. I couldn't remember half the people in the picture. One of them ended up going to school with DH. I couldn't remember who she was but apparently she contacted DH on Facebook and told him that she remembers me. There were a few that I recognized and I wanted to tag them too, but I was terrified of getting it wrong. Would you be insulted if someone tagged the wrong person and said it was you? I wasn't sure if I would be. I suppose it would all depend on the person they said I was. It had better not be the ugly kid!

Here's the funny question from B tonight. He was going to the bathroom in our bathroom before bed. He looked up the sports page sitting on the ledge and asked, "Why does Daddy always read the paper when he goes poop?" He got my ready response, "I don't know, ask your Dad."