Thinking

The past week has been one of those where I have done just too much thinking - not that thinking is bad, but I get into these spells of thinking too hard and too long over things, and I drive myself insane!  These are not things like, "Can I pay the bills?" or "What should I fix for dinner?"

Instead, I think about when/where/how I will die.

Or what will happen to my pets in that event.

Will I die first?

Why do people - myself included - judge others so easily?

Have I done anything worthwhile for anyone while I've been on this earth?

What could I have done?

What can I do?

Why don't we have any chocolate in the house?

Does God really exist?  (I think so, for what that is worth.)

And on and on and on.  Big things, small things, unanswerable things.  Some things that are entirely too self-absorbed.

Does anyone else have times like this?  I think I deal with them well, but in my case, I also find it exhausting.

Then this week, I seem to have caught the cold that The Tim had last week.

I tell you, it's like my mother used to say, "It's either an a** or an elbow with you, isn't it?"

Have a good week - and try not to do more any more thinking than you have to!  :-)

Say Cheese!

Today's Ten on Tuesday topic is: Your 10 Favorite Cheeses.

For as long as I can remember, I have been a cheese lover.  If I didn't love it so very much, I could possibly consider becoming a vegan.  But a) I don't really want to, and b) I love cheese too much to give it up easily.

Anyway, in no particular order, and as they came into my brain, here is my list:

1.  Swiss cheese.

2.  Cream cheese.

3.  Cottage cheese and ricotta cheese.  Different cheeses, but a similar category of cheese to me.

4.  Cheddar cheese - particularly horseradish cheddar!

5.  Sharp provolone - I like regular provolone, but given a choice, I'll take sharp.

6.  Brie cheese.  A few years back, a friend of mine sent us a 2-pound wheel of brie cheese for Christmas.  Trust me, that's a LOT of brie.  However, we made the sacrifice necessary and finished it ...

7.  Blue cheese and gorgonzola cheese.  Though they are different cheeses, I think of them as similar, and love them both.

8.  Smoked gouda.

9.  Mozzarella - especially those fresh mozzarella bites you can get at cheese shops!

10. Parmigiano Reggiano - this is my favorite cheese to put on the top of pasta.

So many more cheeses ...  there are not many that I *don't* like, and my "favorite" changes pretty regularly!

What about you - are you a cheese fiend?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

May flowers always line your path,

And sunshine light your day.

May songbirds serenade you,

Every step along the way.

May a rainbow run beside you,

In a sky that's always blue.

And may happiness fill your heart,

Each day your whole life through.

May your thoughts be as glad as the shamrocks.

May your heart be as light as a song.

May each day bring you bright, happy hours,

That stay with you all the year long.

The Ides of March

This week has been so weird.

It started with me going to the dentist this past Monday.  The tooth that I broke over the summer in The Big Fall, which has subsequently been repaired, started bothering me.  By last weekend, I was in incredible pain, and called the emergency line at my dentist's office.  He suggested I call on Monday morning, and tell them to "squeeze" me in to the schedule. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was definitely NOT a root canal in the back of my front tooth!  Needless to say, even with pain meds, it was not pleasant.

Tuesday, I had a morning of marathon meetings at work.  I mean, straight through from 9:00 until 12:30.  On top of which I was not feeling great (see above paragraph).  Ugh.

Wednesday and Thursday were a bit of a fog, due to a) pain, and b) tiredness, so I feel like I missed them altogether.

Friday, two colleagues took me out to lunch (nice), and then we had a meeting with our VP - at 4:00 ON A FRIDAY (are you kidding me!).  Fortunately, it went better than expected.

Yesterday was my birthday!  It poured rain all day.  Poured.  It was also the funeral for a police officer killed a little more than a week ago, and it was held in an area very close to our neighborhood.  I felt so bad for the whole family, but especially for the officer's 10-year old son.  He'd been on patrol and stopped in a Game Stop store to buy a gift for his son, whose birthday was on the 9th, when the store was robbed, and there was gunfight, killing the officer.  This is all bad enough, but I know from experience that having your father's funeral be on a day when the weather is awful only makes it suck more.  God bless the officer and his family.  My heart breaks for the whole situation.

And even though I felt awful for them, life does go on, and I had a good birthday. The Tim baked me a lovely cake, we went out for lunch, and I received great gifts.  I acutely felt my luck, even more than usual.  This next year will be the last in my fifties.  That seems rather unbelievable.

Today, we took Dug and walked up to the St. Patrick's Day Parade.  It was terribly disorganized this year, so not as enjoyable, but we had a good time, Dug got LOTS of attention, and it was nice for a change to be somewhere where we actually blended in to the crowd.  :-)

I saved up extra hours and so I have Monday and Tuesday of this week off as well.  I am looking forward to it, for a number of reasons.

Here's hoping that your week ended on a good note as well.  :-)

Way Too Late or Way Too Early

I am finally able to show you my first FO for 2015.  And it's kind of ridiculous.

Perhaps you are thinking to yourself, "Weird. Those look like Halloween colors."  You would be correct.  I  bought the yarn for these a couple of years ago, and finally in the beginning of October 2014, I started knitting myself a pair of socks with it.  You may remember that October was also when I started the Kidney Socks for The Tim.  Well, once I started concentrating on those exclusively, these got put to the side.  And then the holidays kept me busy with other things, and suddenly it was January, and they were still languishing.

But I liked the way they were looking, so I decided that I would finish them before I let myself start anything new.  That way, I wouldn't leave them until the last minute for Halloween 2015.  This turned out to be a good thing, because having other things to work on, and not being able to, meant that I really did dedicate myself to finishing these.

Jetsam approves.

Project:  Halloween Socks
Pattern:  Classic Socks for the Family, by Melinda Goodfellow
Yarn:  Vesper Sock Yarn, from Knitterly Things.  Colorway:  Trick or Treat
Needles:  Size 1 1/2US
Modifications:  Nothing major, but I did make them taller than usual.  I was amazed when I went to block them, to realize that the stripes more or less match up perfectly!  This is not something I would ever have gone to the trouble to work to make happen, so it was a funny surprise to me.

I loved the yarn, and have a nice amount left for some little thing, or sock blanket squares or whatever.  The socks fit perfectly, and now they are ready when Halloween rolls around this year.

So ... yeah ... my first FO of 2015 is a pair of socks I will wear in October.  I know I'll be thrilled that they are waiting for me!

Dinner at Eight?

For this week's Ten on Tuesday, Carole wanted us to imagine that we were hosting a dinner party, and wanted us to tell her 10 fictional characters from novels that we would invite.

I love this kind of thing, and of course have thought of so many possibilities ... then forgotten them in two minutes, and thought of more.  So here is my list of dinner guests that are in my brain for the current two minutes, in no particular order.

1.  Atticus Finch, from To Kill a Mockingbird.

2.  The Three Musketeers (all of them, as one invitation).

3.  Adrian Mole, from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4.

4.  Armand Gamache, from the Louise Penny books featuring him.

5.  Jo March from Little Women.

6.  The two dogs and one cat from The Incredible Journey (I am counting them as one, since they are from the same book, and inviting only one of them would not make sense).

7.  Ellen Foster.

8.  Thursday Next, from the Jasper Fforde novels - and I would ask her to bring along Pickwick, her pet dodo, even if he caused trouble.

9.  Ramona Quimby.

10.  Black  Beauty.

Looking at this list, the menu and the seating chart is gonna be quite a challenge!