Tarot Card for Today -- You Are The Hermit

You Are The Hermit

You posses a great deal of wisdom and the ability to see people for who they are.You are always looking ahead at the future, developing visions.A loner, you tend to travel by yourself through life, seeking your own truth.You don't crave material things or fancy titles. You have no baggage. Your fortune: It's possible that there is a unknown guiding figure in your life, ready to help you.All you have to do is find this person and seek their advice.It's also possible that you need to start seeking the meaning of your own life.Either way, there's some deep thinking you need to undertake, and it needs to be done soon.

What Tarot Card Are You?

Sounds like a lot of work to me. Sometimes I just wish somone would tell me what to do, I'm too lazy to think. When you see too far into the future, you get old very fast. Little girls dreaming up Martha Stewart wedding at 10, desperate to have babies at 20, plan for retirement at 30. Start that college fund before the baby says MaMa. We are feeding financial advisors and banks. Give me yarn and chocolate, I'm happy as a clam (or hermit crab).

No Swimming for Henry

Not for awhile anyway. Looks like Henry is sensitive to chlorine in the pool. It gave him a bad case of eczema flare up. It all started in the summer when he was in summer camp. He never swam much before, so we were all thrilled to have him in regular swimming lessons at the camp. He loved the swimming instructor. At the end of the camp he was this close from being able to swim, so we talked to the instructor and planned to sign up for her private lessons. But for the whole summer we battled the eczema, which was bad when he was a baby but in the recent years pretty much under control. I thought it was something he ate at the camp (he's sensitive to milk) since they cater the food and although the menu sounded innocent, who knows what might be in the ingredients. We tried all kinds creams and lotions, bathe him, not bathe him, wear shorts to expose to the fresh air, long pants to cover them up. Lately it finally started to heal, hey something must have worked! This past Sunday Henry and dad went swimming. At night I tried to put some lotion on the knees that had eczema, the kid started screaming. It was all red patches. Bad bad sign. So we decided to layoff the swimming for awhile and let the eczema completely heal. Not sure what we can do in the long run. Maybe we'll just throw him in the Pacific ocean, no chlorine there for sure.

How Nina Wesson Died

I wrote about Nina Wesson when I first learned about her passing, and this blog still gets hits from people looking her up on search engines. I did a little research on her myself and there is an article posted on Las Madres site about the last days of her life. She died from a severe strep infection. The site does not give statistics on how many people die from the disease, but I imagine it's not very common. The doctor said that her death had been caused by an “invasive Group A streptococcal infection” in her lungs, and she had passed the point of no return long before being admitted in the hospital.

I'm saddened by Nina's passing, partially because I knew her, as a mom, and as someone quit a corporate career to raise a family. There are many women like her, go to college, get an advanced degree, CPA, work in one of the big accounting firms (grueling hours, traveling, high stress), join a high tech company. Then to give up an established career, committing their lives to their families. It is by far the hardest job in the world.

Moms cannot afford to be sick. That's probably what Nina had in mind before calling for help. Moms are too important to be absent, every day, every minute.

Moms, take care of yourselves. Nina, rest in peace.

The "Thing" will be finished

... by me ... soon Thanks for all the comments on the blog, and emails both private and public on the lists. I've replied to some of you on email, hope the rest of you will keep reading this blog for updates on "the thing". Some of you commented on the workmanship on The Thing (or is it workwomanship?), but first, Thank You for the kind words! It contributes to my basic training with my mom, who taught me to knit when I was a wee child. She demanded good attention to details, and great deal of discipline on hand posture and even gauge. I gladly carry the skills with me for life. For now I'm going to take the majority of the advice, do the minimal (a few rows of garter stitch) to finish "the thing". Block it. And call it DONE. The Thing is not big enough for a lap robe. The Thing is probably not big enough for a scarf or shoulder shawl. The Thing is much too hole-y to come in contact with a baby. The Thing wants to be on the back of a big comfy chair (they have a name for it in the old days, the lace that people put on the back of the chair to catch hair or whatever). The Thing might just become a table runner for the next book club meeting. The remaining skeins of yarn will go to my mom for her CIC knitting. Follow the link to see the last batch of her FO (that's Finished Objects, for you non-knitters). Stay tuned. Will post picture of the finished "Thing" soon.

What to do with this thing?

This is a "thing" I started awhile back. The yarn is 50% wool and 50% nylon, not the most comfortable thing to work with, not compare to the yummy wools that I'm used to any way. The pattern is simple feather and fan, with some garter stitch boarders. I've used about half the yarn, if I finish it all the "thing" will be about 3.5 to 4 feet square. Obviously I didn't have any plan when I started it! Now, I'm tired of this yarn, tired of the simple pattern. I don't think it'll become anything useful (baby afghan? square shawl? head scarf?). This is a lace weight yarn on size 4 needles, so there is a bit of time invested. Here are some options I can think of: 1. rip it and donate the yarn 2. throw it in a bag and stash it in the deepest corner in the closet. I might be happy to see it again 10 years from now 3. finish it -- it'd be hard to talk myself into this, plus I won't wear this color so I'll either over dye it or donate it to CIC 4. give it to someone else the way it is, and let them decide what to do Please tell me what you think.

White Shark in Monterey Bay Aquarium

There is a white shark on exhibit in Monterey Bay Aquarium. We visited him last weekend, took some pictures, but nothing came out good. This picture is from the aquarium website.

From the newsletter today:

  "White Shark Update Our new young male has only been around here for a few weeks — since Aug. 31. But already his life has been evolving pretty fast. We don’t know how long he’ll be with us; our first white shark stayed for 6½ months. So now is definitely the time to visit if you want to get a look before we return him to the wild. When he first moved in, the shark had to get used to the window on our million-gallon Outer Bay exhibit so he wouldn’t bump into it. A temporary “bubble curtain” did the trick in just a few days. He also had to get used to his fellow exhibit residents, and that wasn’t much of a problem either. At 5 feet 8 inches and 104 pounds, the young shark isn’t the biggest fish in the exhibit by any means. But the others seem to give him the biggest berth. (Who says fish aren’t smart?) Not eating his exhibit-mates is a very good thing in our shark. But at first he didn’t eat any of the food we offered him either, and that wasn’t ideal. Then, exactly a week after he arrived, he ate a California skate. And ever since, he’s been chowing down on a regular basis — sometimes more than five pounds a day — with salmon fillets a huge fave. "

Here is a link to the shark webcam: http://www.mbayaq.org/efc/efc_outerbay/outerbay_cam.asp If any of you reading my blog want to visit the aquarium, we have a family membership there and two free guest cards good till the end of this month. The guest cards are completely transferrable, just drop me a note and we can talk about how to get them to you. That's about $44 savings! By all means, bring your kids to see the shark. No one knows how long he's going to be there or when they will put another one on exhibit.

CIC and Charity Knitting

A generous CIC knitter, Patti, send me a nice package to carry to my mom this weekend. Eight gorgous skeins of Cascade 220, seven of them same dye lot! plus a large red skein of wool. Such high quality wool in such large quantity is a first for us. Thank you Patti! Here is the knitter herself with the yarn and a finished baby sweater. Some of my mom's finished knitting. Sweater and vests are mostly for CIC. Premie hats are for our local hospitals. I'll put a beanie baby in each of the big pockets (see previous story here ).

Blogger Fooled Me

I started a new entry about our Bufkin house the other day and only finished it this morning. When it was published, it went by the date of the draft, so you have to scroll down to find it, or click here. While I was at it, I found the draft I thought was lost long time ago, about the ending of my contract job at Portal. The draft date was in June, and it's linked here. Portal was a cool valley software company. May it rest in peace.

This is just the beginning

Woke up in the morning by a child with a bleeding nose. Said child still has a cold and is off from school today, with the sole instruction: "Rest up so you can go to school tomorrow!" Bucky puked all over our comforter at 12:30am, and this came after him throwing up in the couch while we were watching TV earlier. Then he did it again this morning, luckily in the kitchen. Happy Monday!

Sitters!!!

For the third time in two weeks, second sitter falls through, could this be worse than home improvement contractors or PG&E service guys? Henry has been sick since last week, no big deal, just a cold, but managed to produce fever in the evening so we have to keep him out of school. Our regular sitter is on vacation and gave me her friend's number "just in case". We invited the new girl over Friday night to meet us, very cool young girl, loves Harry Potter (yea!) and has a dog (yea!!). We told her that if Henry doesn't get better this weekend we'd need her to stay with him on Monday. And of course she promised she's going to be free for the next couple of weeks since she's not working and school hasn't started. Henry scored 101.1 degrees at 4:30 this afternoon. Time to call the sitter. Well, it's her birthday tomorrow and she forgot that her mom was taking her to Berkeley. Old ladies, when was the last time you forgot about your own birthday???

Bufkin

buf -- naked kin -- small thing; one's relatives; family Bufkin -- small naked thing, like puppies and babies; a family with small naked ones This is our old house on Bufkin in South San Jose, where we brought up our pups and baby. When we first bought the house in 1995, Trinket was barely ten months old, while our rescued Westie, Macie, at three and half years old, seemed almost senile! Bill took six weeks of sabbatical, and just when he was to go back to work, we snatched up the pug in the flea market, with a few fleas too. For the next three years, two baby dogs and Macie the cone head ruled the house over ten hours a day. Coming home was fondly referred to as "back to the zoo". We potty trained three boys in that house. Over the course of nine years there were so many peepee and poop accidents -- thank goodness for the wonderful hardwood floors! We did replace the carpet in the living room before selling the house, thank you very much. We lived in a rental duplex in Santa Clara after we got married. The rent of cheap and the place was close to both of our jobs. We didn't plan to buy a house until we had the dogs, partially in fear that our landlord might change his mind about pet policy and kick us out one day. We decided on a single story ranch house because of Macie's leg injuries from her first owner; a house smack across the street from a very good elementary school, at a time we (I) didn't want any kids at all. When Henry came into the picture we imagined for over five years how I'd work in the front room and pick him up when the school bell rings; then at the first possible moment we transferred him to another school three miles away. We sold the house to a young couple, self proclaimed pug lovers, and I gave our pug flag to a pug house a block away. One day I drive back to the neighborhood, the pug flag was proudly flying in front of the pug house. I had to stop on the side of the street, to wipe my tears off.

Yahoo email down

Really sucks when your primary email is an online account. Fortunately it doesn't go down every day, but when it does I'm all trapped.

De Colores Blocked

I blocked the strips that I've finished knitting on the De Colores Jacket this weekend, among other things we did. This is what the strips looked like before blocking. These are all the strips for the body. I wrote the number of the strip on the little tags, but somehow I still managed to knit two of the same strip on the back and had to rip one of the them and reknit the top. After blocking, looking very neat already. Two of the strips for the sleeve. The colors are so close, I might have to put them in different sleeves.