chrysanthemum

Not wasting my $8.95 for June

Do you want excuses, or do you want pictures? Me too. I have always hated giving excuses. They're lame. Even when they're true, nobody wants to hear them. So here:

This last weekend was our annual Father's Day camping trip. We went with another family--the ones we always go camping with--to Dosewallips State Park, which has much to recommend it to the western Washington camper. For example:

• It is not far from home. One short ferry ride and an hour's drive and you're there. It feels like a million miles from the city though.
• It's right next to the Hood Canal, on a crazy-productive mud flat full of clams and oysters. We have no license for clamming or oyster gathering, but we've got $5 for three pounds of gorgeous, delicious clams at the local shop. They were amazing.
• Dosewallips campground has platform tents. Big tents, the size of my living room. Up off the cold, stony ground. And full of furniture. I haven't seen tents like this since Camp Windigo when I was 12. And I have never been this comfortable in a tent before. (The cots at Camp Windigo were pretty droopy.)   

On Friday night, I dreamed that I walked out of the tent and saw an owl sitting on a branch in plain sight. It was good dream, and when I told Michael about it in the morning, he told me that dreaming of an owl is good luck. Could be...

 

Saturday morning, the kids (three of them) and I had a short morning hike through the woods. Every one of them urgently needed to pee in the woods at least once in the first twenty minutes, and when things started getting bleaker than that, I made them turn back. It was just a post-breakfast walk--I hadn't brought supplies!

Later we all walked out to the beach. The mud was thick and gooey--two kids lost their shoes and spent a few minutes hopping around getting their socks well and truly black--and the beach was alive with tiny crabs. We were amazed at the number of people of every age and description out there in tall boots: digging, shucking, hauling their goods back to the land. Teenagers carrying huge bags of clams, one little boy proudly guarding his family's lot of oysters, shucked and packed six to a bag. I could tell he was excited about the night's dinner plans.

I always have my reservations about camping trips, which must just be what I'm like, because really, our camping trips always turn out to be fun. Next time I'm just going be flat-out excited from the start.

What really burns me up

about my wallet getting stolen today--right off my desk in the middle of the workday while I was at a meeting--is not the $15 inside (lunch money! coffee money! if-I-manage-not-to-spend-it-it-becomes-my-secret-special-savings-just-for-me!) or the credit card I had to cancel or the debit card I had to cancel and the resulting automatic payments we'll have to reorganize, or the fact that I now have to physically go to an actual bank with my checkbook in order to get any cash for the next 7 to 10 days (how freaking old-fashioned can you get?)-- 

Hmm, honestly all those things do annoy me quite deeply....

But really, the thing that's bothering me the most is the fact that I had a yarn-club card for every yarn store in town, all of them punched at least a few times, getting me ever so slightly closer to Free Yarn at some point in the future, and now, all of those cards, all of those punches, all of that mythical Free Yarn is gone, gone, gone.

I know, I know, cheer the hell up....

Edited to add: Just to clarify, it was not a coworker who stole my wallet. Several people on my floor noticed an unfamiliar man around the same time that two wallets were stolen. There's even video of the suspect leaving the building, and apparently he matches the description of someone who's been loitering around an ATM down the street. Jeez.

Every long weekend comes to an end

The first day back after a long, sunny weekend can't help but seem dreary, especially when it's gone grey again.

But then halfway through the day, I spotted this card on my desk. I found it in the elevator one day last week, and obviously, it was meant to be mine.

The yarn is a luscious skein of Madelinetosh Sock, color Tart, that I ordered last week, and hey, it was meant to be mine too.

And I've just finished the novel I've been reading, The Thirteenth Tale, and wow, I'm feeling pretty fine now.

Forty-two minutes till bedtime!

Loves me, loves me not

This is the first front piece of Flower Child. All the back pieces are finished, but (you knew there'd be a "but"...) I've decided that I'm knitting the wrong size. I picked the 34 thinking negative ease is my friend, but now I'm thinking that's more negative ease than I'm strictly comfortable with. Perhaps zero ease would be a little less... revealing. No one really needs to see the clasp of my bra, right? I can't say I'm thrilled at the idea of unpicking the edges of all five (!) back pieces and lengthening them, but what the hell, it's not my first knitting miscalculation this month.

The real bummer is that I'm going to need to buy more yarn. I bought eight skeins at Churchmouse a few weeks ago, and now that I need two more, it's not really in the cards for me to take another day trip to Bainbridge. Cross your fingers that I can find the same dye lot without having to take a ferry ride.

Oh, Clara...

Cute, right? But totally, completely, utterly wrong. This is what she's supposed to look like:

Must. Learn. To. Read.

Also, must rip out bodice and re-knit. Mercifully, the would-be owner of this wee dress is still only a month old, and it's not supposed to fit her at least until fall, so what's another week or two?

59.41

Way back at New Year's, I promised myself that I was going to get serious about running and do at least one 5K race in 2009. I actually started running on January 1, even though it was rainy and I was hung over, because I really seriously meant it this time. I did run a 5K on March 15. I was nervous as a cat, and it was a horrible day, weather-wise: snow, sleet and rain. Disgusting. But I ran it. After that, I promised that I was going to run the annual Beat the Bridge race, which I only even know about because my company is a big sponsor. Turns out that one is 5 miles, not 5 kilometers, but I had promised, so I had to do that too.

I've been training like crazy for the last few weeks, following a program that got me out 4 days a week (most weeks), generally by 5:30 am. I'm not really a morning person, but that's the only time I can reliably squeeze in a run. Makes it hard to blog, though, because I've been too tired to even think once the kids are in bed, let alone write something coherent here.

Anyhow, the race was yesterday, and I was sort of surprised that I wasn't a nervous wreck. We'd sent the kids off on a sleepover at a friends' house, and the morning was positively leisurely. Relaxing, even. Also, it was a beautiful sunny day. Instead of standing at the Start feeling doomed and afraid, I felt confident that I could make it through the race. I didn't expect to be fast (and I wasn't), and I knew that I would walk short distances when I needed to catch my breath, and I felt OK about that. I'm working up from pretty much nothing, after all.

Michael ran with me, and he's a great kick in the pants. He's not one to walk five miles because I'm just not feeling inspired to run at the moment. He's the perfect amount of encouraging and supportive and proud and don't-you-dare-stop-now. The second mile was the hardest, I thought; that's the part where I always want to quit. The fifth mile felt incredibly long. My time was 59.41 minutes. Not fast. Not fast at all, but hey, I scraped in under an hour (there was a point a month or so ago, when I was certain that it was going to take me an hour and a half and I just wanted to call the whole thing off). I'll be faster next time. I just have to pick the next race.

Yes, she really did

Lyra emphatically did not want to go to school today. She thought that if she refused to put her clothes on, no one would make her go in her pajamas. Personally, I don't care if she goes to school in her pajamas, especially if that means I don't have to forcibly dress a kicking, screaming 4-year-old. She was thisclose to walking out the door in her purple Dora pj's when I pointed out that she wasn't wearing any underwear. That made her think twice, and she ended up putting on undies and her apple leggings (technically too small, but totally cute as capris, I think, though I much prefer them with something other than a pajama shirt). Anyway, sheesh, I probably wouldn't be telling you this, except that I started this silly project, and this is actually what she wore today. Let's pretend that it doesn't make me a bad mother.

Double feature

When Lyra got dressed yesterday morning, I thought the day was going to be a wash, photo-wise. She picked a cute dress with matching tights. Nothing to see here. But then, just before we left I told her she had to have a barrette or a headband or something because her hair was all in her face. She disappeared into her room. When I remembered her again a minute later, she still hadn't come out, and I could hear her rooting around in the corner where the dress-up box is. When I called her to come put her shoes on, this is how she showed up:

 

It's true, I did make her a headband with a little bird on it, and I bought those dumb Dora the Explorer sunglasses, but who knew they went together? Also, let the record show that it was raining, and we'd discussed already that it was going to rain all.day.long.

Today she dressed to impress me. Her class Mother's Day performance was this afternoon, and I think she wanted to be sure to stand out.

 

She really wanted to stand next to the truck when I took her picture, and it wasn't 'til I'd snapped a few that I realized she was really posing. Not sure how I feel about that... Anyway, the octopus shirt was made for Ben's eighth birthday a few weeks ago; we all have one. And in person, the red tutu sparkles. I wish that had shown up in the pictures.

Matching, part 2

This morning was a bad one, filled with various injustices (improperly prepared pancakes, summarily rejected and then thoughtlessly given to her brother who, gasp, ate them when they were hers) and a prolonged tantrum (hers, not mine) that really didn't taper off until we were halfway to school (with properly prepared toast in a carefully chosen box). I find it especially interesting that a person so deeply committed to her black mood would choose the very most colorful elements of her wardrobe to wear all at once. I'm not surprised, though, that she felt the need for a crown. A person has to show her dominance somehow.

Pop quiz

I trimmed these branches from a bush next to the swing in the backyard on Sunday. I have no idea what they are, but I'm really loving that persimmon shade of orange. Anyone know what this flower is?