Monday, January 31, 2011

Age.



I refuse to accept the fact that I am old.

Last weekend I spent all day learning to tat. It looks easy. You just hold one hand still and move the other hand about, creating knots. The videos on youtube make it look simple and easy. In a 2 minute video, 5 perfect knots and 4 perfect picots were created. The picots were all the same size. The thread behaved. The knot transfer was effortless. I suspect she could have gone faster if she wasn't demonstrating.

I created a two ring thing, in which there were 48 knots and 6 picots. Not only were the picots all different sizes, the knots were different sizes and the two rings, which had the same number of stitches, were different sizes. The thread continually twisted and slipped off the fingers. Elapsed time, which should have been 50 minutes, was actually 4 hours. That does not include the lunch break or chocolate break.

I spent the rest of the day knitting, that is, doing something at which I was competent.
Signs of old age include: talking about all your illnesses, getting advice from other people suffering the same or sort of the same thing because it is free, and not being able to learn anything new fast and reminiscing about high points in your personal history.

When I hit 50, I decided I could not even pretend I was young anymore, but I could pull rank. "This was before your time." "This happened before you were born." This happens so often in our household that the exchange student is absolutely thrilled when something occurred AFTER he was born. The nice things about exchange students is that, next year, you can tell the same stories all over and they haven't heard them before!

Ask me, I will tell you all about my gallbladder operation and thyroid disease and back problems.
In about a month, my youngest siblings hit 50.

I am going to go do something I can do.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

It is a dog's life


Well, Checkers had a good day today.

A 5-year old friend came to visit and Checkers could finally play with somebody her own size! We went outside, climbed on the long neglected swing set and found all sorts of things, including old wasp nests, doggie land mines...and, most exciting of all, an egg sac from a praying mantis.

So of course we had to find a picture of a praying mantis, since he (the boy) had never seen one, and that picture including a gripping story of the praying mantis, who is faster than the eye can see when it wants to be and absolutely still when it wants to be, laying in wait for an unsuspecting slow little caterpillar. The caterpillar did get caught and eaten, which my little (male) friend enjoyed immensely. Plus he thinks they look pretty cool because here is an animal which looks like kind of like a leaf. I've promised him pictures of the mantises when they hatch.

Praying mantis is sometimes misspelled "preying mantis," which, if you think about it, works too. The scientific name is mantis religioso. The actual word mantis comes from the Greek meaning prophet, which somehow ties right in there. I'm happily looking forward to another year of natural pest control in the garden.

Then another friend called, and ended up bringing her grand-dogs over for a run in our backyard, which is about 2/3 the size of a football (American) field. They loved it.

My dog had a play-date.

The only bad thing about Checker's day was that I refused to give her one of the chocolate chip cookies that the five year old and I made. But the five year old thinks the cookies are absolutely wonderful.

Monday, January 17, 2011

First Grandson pictures of the year








He is getting fast. He is not quite up to doorknobs yet, but that will come.

He is getting good at bumps like doors and things, steps take a little planning.
He can get on and off the rocking horse.
He does things with legos besides eat them. Although he still eats them.

And, most importantly, he approves of the chocolate chip oatmeal cookies!

I really don't want to childproof my house all over again.