Today the boy-child turns 18.

     Today the boy-child turns 18. Wow where did the last 18 years go?  Did I really get that much older???? As I think back 18 years ago the room around me shimmers and the lights go dark, maybe that is the memory of the drugs. That day I was 1 week over due, thank you very much, shopping at Wal-Mart, getting ready for my graduation ceremony from DBU. I was shopping with Michael, Cassondra, and my parents. It was about 4:30 on a Friday night. We were supposed to leave Wal-Mart, go home to get dressed and be at Lakeview Castle by 6:00 for dinner. I started to feel “funny” and went to the front of the store to sit down and wait for everyone else to get done shopping. My feeling funny got a whole lot worse and I had my mom paged. I asked a kid in a blue shirt if he could page someone for me and he said “umm yeah it will be just a couple of minutes. Is everything ok?” I answered, “Yeah, I’m just in labor.” The color drained from his face and he almost did a back flip getting to the intercom. He stuttered and stumbled but he finally got her name out and everyone gathered at the front of the store.
     We left for the hospital quite quickly. When we got there, they had me go directly to the floor and we called my brother to come to the hospital so Cassondra, age 3, would not be present for the birth of her brother. Not exactly how we planned it. I got into my room and all set up by 5:15, Michael and my parents were with me. A beautiful 8.1 lb baby boy was born at 5:35. Now those of you thinking “Gee what an easy labor, not fair!” You should know I was sick for 8 ½ months, lost 35 pounds, was hospitalized 3 times, and went into pre-labor 4 times. I feel this all counts!! At 5:45, my darling husband looked at the clock and said “Hey, everything is done here, we could still make it to the Castle for happy hour and dinner, and it is already paid for!” I was not so impressed with this statement. I still to this day, do not know how serious he was but one look at my face and he decided it was not such a good idea.
      The next week my mother was shopping in the same Wal-Mart and heard a story from the cashier about a woman who had given birth there last week. Dang!! Only another ½ hour and maybe I could have owned part of Wal-Mart. Yeah, but I really wanted the drugs. The lights are coming back; I must be coming back to reality. As I think about all the trials and tribulations of raising my baby boy to adulthood I think about life in general. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a book we were handed at 18 that explained it all? Well I guess we all have to figure it out as we go and make the best choices we can. At least he knows he has the love and support of his family backing him up. Ok, so I got a little deep with this post, sorry! Maybe I need some more of those drugs they gave me when I was in labor! All though if it means I have to go through pregnancy, labor, and delivery again, Ahhhhhhhhh just the thought of that sends me screaming. I am in my happy place, I am in my happy place, I am in my happy place. OK, deep breath, all better.

Crochet Addict???

Addictions have a reputation for being bad. Well I guess it would depend on what exactly it is you were addicted to. Hobby, obsession, addiction, call it what you will it seems to be lurking in most crafters. To determine if you are a crochet addict, actually you could insert the hobby of your choice for most of them. Knitter, Scrap booker, Stamper, Beader, Weaver, Spinner, Quilter, Rug Hooker, etc. You get the idea.

Symptoms of a Crochet Addict

• You're proud to be called a "hooker".
  
• You have a room for your yarn, not a shelf or a drawer, you have an entire room.
  
• When someone greets you they start off by saying, "What are you working on now?"
  
• You have more crochet hooks and patterns than you can count or will ever use.
  
• You walk through a yarn store and look at the colors and feel the skeins and you have to own that yarn, with no project in mind.
  
• You have a designated crochet bag that you carry projects in, and the bag isn't small. (You probably don't have just one.)
  
• You always keep a crochet project in your car or at work, just in case you have some down time.
  
• Your hands get fidgety when you go a day without crocheting (as if you would ever do that).
  
• You have a list of TV shows on TiVo you don't really have to pay close attention to while crocheting. (CSI, Law and Order, NCIS)
  
• You memorized when the major yarn stores have discounts and coupons.
  
• Your family makes fun of you because you can't sit still without working on something, not at a hockey game, movie, church. It doesn't matter where you are.
  
• Your most recent searches on your Garmin are for yarn shops in areas surrounding you.
  
• You crochet with things other than yarn, such as plastic bags, cassette tape, duck tape, rags, etc.
  
• You've learned to die yarn with Kool-aid and spin yarn out of your pet's hair.
  
• You wear one of those necklace medallions that cut your yarn for you.
  
• Your number of WIPs (works in progress) and UFOs (unfinished objects) keeps multiplying, and you blame it on your cat/dog/spouse.
  
• You occasionally stumble upon started projects that you have no memory of ever starting and have no idea what it was going to be.
  
• You are crocheting while reading this post.
  

After writing this list, I became a little afraid of my addiction. Does anyone know where I can find a crocheter anonymous meeting??? I think I have a problem and need to admit it to others. Well I think maybe they are having one at Yarn Harbor on Sunday. I think I will attend, I am sure they can help me.

Ugggg Homework!!

      Today I spent about 5 hours doing a 12th grade project for economics. Most of the time I kept thinking “I am reasonably sure I already passed economics”. I started to wonder where the line between “helping” and just doing the work so he will get it done and pass the class and hopefully graduate, really lies. I can remember my mother helping me with reports in school but back then we had to actually write everything out on paper and look up definitions in a dictionary. We did not have a set of encyclopedias at our house but my grandmother did. I had to go to her house to look up stuff for my work. I had to take a bus to get there, write down with pencil and paper the information I needed and make sure I had all the reference material to list at the end of my report. When I got home I would have to type everything out and hope I did not make a mistake because I did not have correction tape in my typewriter. White out??? Yeah right, I think that came out about the time I got my first computer. (I was well out of school by then.) I was a senior in high school when I took my first intro to computer class, on the Apple 2E.

      What did I start ranting about? …… …….. ………. Oh yeah The Boy-Child’s homework. So we; like that “we” had to do the Abc’s of economics. Write an ABC book using terms found in his economic s book. It amazed me how I was able to set it all up and input photos from the internet while sitting on my couch watching a CSI marathon. Tell me again how these kids have it so much harder than we did?? I experienced the law of diminishing returns. Remember what that is?? (I relearned it today.) The more of something you have the less you want it. Yeah well 26 letters is a lot! We had to get a little creative in the end. I did Google economics terms and found a list of them in alphabetical order. Now there is something I never would have found in Grandma’s encyclopedias. I was just corrected by Microsoft Word, Google needs to be capitalized. Again not found at grandmas.  Ok so we got all 27 pages done, oh yeah did I forget to tell you about the title page.  Went to print and we are out of ink the first 3 pages came out green.  Guess I will be making a run to walmart this weekend.
      I believe I had a point at the beginning of this, homework - I really am not sure where that line falls. Where do we as parents help them just get it done and where do we let them fail to learn a lesson? I guess with graduation looming only a few months away I am less inclined to go with the let him fail route. Am I setting a bad precedent by bailing him out? Maybe, but I really want to get to graduation and not have to do another economics project next year. I also know that there are 580 words to this point in today’s entry. Something else I would not have had on my typewriter. Cool huh?? Oh well enough ranting today, I need to go look over the Algebra homework that is also due on Monday. Dad will have to check that over cuz that one is beyond mom! Ohh ohh up to 598!

One of these things is not like the others....

      One of these things is not like the others. When I started doing some research for my blog, one of the things I did was go to several others with the same sort of intentions as me. I read one after another, and found one thing they all had in common. Everyone had a cat. I however do not. Now I am reasonably sure that no one has a cat that knits or crochets or even writes for that matter, so I don’t think this affects their blogs but I feel I may not fit in.
      We had cats while I was growing up but now I am a dog owner. The cat we had, we named JFK (Junk Food Kitty). It loved to eat, and it ate anything. Most cats will come running to the sound of a can opener, well JFK only came running to the crackling of a chip bag. Doritos were his favorite. He sort of adopted us. He came into the house one day and stayed for a couple of years and then decided to move on and find a new home. My father really, really, did not like cats but he must have been able to sniff that out because JFK would go sit on his lap and purr nonstop. After a while even my dad decided maybe he wasn’t so bad and he could stay.
      I wouldn’t say I love cats but we get along alright. It is not that I am completely opposed, my son had very bad asthma as a child and we could never have one, so we just never have had one. I have to admit that I also truly believe that someday cats will own the world. I know that if I were to die during my sleep that a cat would eat me and I am not totally convinced it would wait till I was all the way dead to start.

What am I working on now??

     What am I working on now? I am currently working on a Crochet felted monk satchel that I wrote the pattern for. I have taught this class at Yarn Harbor for the last year and it has been very popular. It is a 3 week class, we learn how to make the pieces, put them together and felt it. This is the last night of class and the girls are working on the final single crochet seams. They can then go home and felt their new bag. The one I am working on will be a bag for my new laptop. I did not have my “homework” done for class one night and the boy-child thought it was great. He said “Mom, don’t you think you should have gotten your homework done for class right away and not put it off till the last minute?” Don’t you love, as a parent, when your own words come back to haunt you? I answered him “I am the teacher and I am there to help others with problems, not work on my own pieces.”  Ok so technically I should have had it done but I was not going to let him know that.  I teach several crochet classes at Yarn Harbor. Check out the website to see what other classes they offer. www.yarnharborduluth.com they also have a great blog: yarnharbor.wordpress.com

This is Julie, she is just finishing her crochet felted monk's satchel. 

This is the bag I am working on right now.  I have made it oversized, I want to use it for my new laptop bag.

This is the first bag I made.  I then wrote the pattern from this one. 

Select Comfort beds are great!! Till they deflate in the middle of the night.

      We have a select comfort bed. You know the one, “choose your sleep number and you will sleep like a baby all night.” I have to say over all we have been very happy with it. Mike had trouble with his back and it really has done him a lot of good. That is, until it deflated in the middle of the night. Then, we were not so pleased with it! We went to bed and suddenly Mike says “umm something is not right here!” I looked over at him and he is lying on the bottom. Not for those of you who do not have this type of bed let me explain it is like a waterbed only it has chambers filled with air. Ours has two separate sides so we can each set our own side to the level we want.
     We got up, about 1 am, and investigated the problem. Yup his side had a hole and would not hold air. I offered to sleep on the couch and let him sleep on my side but he refused because he said it was the wrong side and he could not sleep there. You may notice that my husband does not flex well. I found a thin mattress we had rolled up from an old pullout sofa and put that in the hole so we could get to sleep. The next day I called and talked to several people at customer services, who were all very apologetic when I told them that Mike deflated and fell into the hole during the night. Mike said it was nice of them to feel bad for him but they all got a good night’s sleep! Well long story short, we have a new air chamber coming, but it will be about a week. In the mean time I had to find something to fill the hole under the meager mattress I put down. Mike did not sleep well, I may have mentioned that he does not flex well.
     Mike looked around our room and decided we should try to use the piles of jeans I have stacked in every conceivable space. I have these because I had decided a while ago to do recycled jean crafts. That went well for a while and then I of course moved on to something else and still had lots of jeans, people still bring me some cuz I guess they think I will again get back to doing something with them. Maybe someday I could cut them into strips and make rugs out of them, that was one of the plans, or quilt them together to make a blanket for the dog, ohh ohh, I know… but I seem to have lost the original thought of my post….. Oh yeah the bed, so we filled the hole with some jeans and so far it actually worked. See there are reasons to keep stuff around because you never know when it will come in handy!

Who am I????

      I started to write a post about whom I am and as I started writing, the words just started flowing. I have to admit when I finished I was a little surprised at the list I had. Here is my list and they don't seem to be in any particular order of importance.

Who am I???

A wife, a mother of teenagers, a teacher, a care giver, a taxi, a loan officer, a woman, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a pet owner, a massage therapist, a healer, a crocheter, a needle felter, a fiber artist, a designer, a crochet instructor, a craft show vendor, a crafter, a list maker, a family member, a peace keeper, a warden, a line judge, a cook, a dishwasher, a waitress, a blog writer, a pattern designer, a US citizen, a voter, a book reader, a TV watcher, a “goofy” hat wearer, a child of the 60’s, a diplomat, a singer in the car, an occasional junk food binger, a yarn addict, a “stuff” collector, a hoarder, a beader, a scrap booker, a stamper, a quilter, a theatre student, a story teller, a mime artist, an Ex-Mountain Dew addict, an Ex-smoker, and occasional drinker, a girl scout, an art teacher, a craft Nazi, a colorful person, a betty boop collector, a wearer of purple, a blonde, a brunette, a red head, a purple haired chick, a tattooed woman, a gadget junky, a salesperson, a volunteer, a maid, a laundry attendant, a music listeners, a blues fester, an organizer, a camper,

 a bag lady, a ……

I do not know if I have fully decided who or what I will be when I grow up so I do not think my list is complete yet. I am sure there are some among you who could add to my list.

I encourage you to take a few minutes out of your hectic day to make a list like this for yourself, I think you will find it very revealing.