Heart Day

Hello there! I hope you are having a good Valentine's Day if you enjoy celebrating it. We do celebrate, usually with cards and treats, but the primary focus of the day is this guy's birthday:

Today, Pip turns 13 years old! Yep, he's a teenager, so now he'll probably start ignoring us, get lots of piercings and tattoos, and roll his eyes whenever we make a joke ... 😊

Later we'll have a cheesecake and presents, and the kit kats will get some special treats to celebrate. Pip is well worth celebrating, as he is an amazing kitty, and it would be hard to find a cat who is sweeter. So Happy Valentine's birthday, sweet boy, we love you!

Today is also Ash Wednesday, which signals the beginning of Lent for Christians. When I was a kid, I would always agonize over what to "give up" for Lent. Since my birthday was always during that time, I didn't want to give up anything that could jeopardize my birthday celebration or my birthday cake, so it was hard. (I was a good kid, but I wasn't any kind of ridiculous sainted child who was *that* willing to sacrifice something!)

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I just spent about an hour with a guy who came to the house to give us an estimate on a new front door. I have no idea how old the current door is, but we have wanted to replace it since we moved in. Now that we have some money saved up for repairs, etc., it was time. One nice thing was that the estimate was much less than we had expected. Even though the door is not standard, because of course it's not - nothing in our nineteenth-century house is, so no surprise there. Still, it's always just a matter of waiting to hear it whenever someone comes to check something.

As would be the case, the guy left after giving the estimate. And now Alfie is bereft. Alfie loves nothing more than having workmen come to the house. He has to be with them the whole time, and rubs against them, purrs, etc. Fortunately most people who have shown up have been animal lovers, or amused enough to not mind him terribly. However, the guy today was here for a while, and I think Alfie thought he was going to stay for lunch or something. So the fact that he left was quite upsetting. Alfie has been pawing the door and crying ever since. Even Esme was compelled to come downstairs to try and comfort him, but it just isn't enough. So please keep Alfie in your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time ... 😝

Alfie: "If you are reading this, please contact PETA and let them know how neglected I am. As you can see, I'm nearly skin and bones from starvation and neglect."

Our poor house - we've lived here now for 30+ years and never had the available funds to do much fixing up or repairs that weren't absolutely, immediately necessary. Now that the mortgage is paid, we can start to get things done. I can only imagine the house breathing a sigh of relief - "The roof and now maybe a better door! They do love me after all!"

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Today I am hoping to get some things organized as far as my knitting projects are concerned. I'm trying to be more conscious of what I am making and why, and part of that means keeping better track of everything. I have a "system" that I think will work, and I'm going to do my best to set it up today. Who knows, I may be abandoning it in record time, or it may actually help, but I won't find out until I actually give it a try.

Are any of the rest of you having a sudden desire to knit every single thing in the world right away, or is it just me? I generally see things that I might want to knit and am happy enough to wait until one or more things are completed. But lately, I see something I like and instead of seeing it in terms of a down-the-road project, I feel like if I don't make it NOW or SOON, I just won't survive another day. Fortunately, most of the time I don't have the yarn on hand to make it, so I just wait for the feeling to pass. But this has never been something I've felt before, and I can't say I enjoy it. Like all of a sudden I have knitting FOMO, but I know in my heart that a) I probably won't care by the next day, and b) most of the things I see are not the kind of things I would enjoy knitting or that would fit in my wardrobe anyway. 

I'm sure it's some kind of temporary insanity on my part. And it is true that a lot of it is a "this moment" kind of feeling. So temporary that it's forgotten when the next amazing thing comes along. That's usually not my M.O., but especially the past few weeks it's been the case. 

However, it does mean that trying to get organized today will make me aware of what projects I am enjoying, and that should help to get me back on track. I'll try to take some photos, so I can show all of you what is happening knit-wise around here.

So enjoy your day one way or the other and if nothing else, feel free to give yourself a treat in honor of Pip!

Not Much to Report from Here

That's the truth.  Last weekend was fine - nothing much to report, except that I did dedicate part of my Sunday afternoon to another cooking/baking session that was successful.  I made a big pot of creamy potato soup with roasted brussels sprouts, and some applescotch crisp.  We ate the soup on Monday night for dinner and I had some leftover for lunch yesterday and now sadly it's gone - but it was pretty yummy, let me tell you.  And we finished the crisp last night, so that's it for this round of cooking ahead.

I did make a swatch for my sweater project on a set of smaller needles as I had planned, and the good news is that using smaller needles, I was able to get the proper gauge, which was pleasing.  However, that's as far as I made it at the moment.  I also have my yarn and pattern ready for this coming Sunday, when my friend Andrea and I are starting a sock KAL for March.  I spent a little bit of time on Sunday doing another square on my Cozy Squares of Memory blanket, and I did lengthen a pair of socks for The Tim over the weekend, but have otherwise not knit a stitch since then.  I haven't even really done that much reading over the past few days.

No, I'm not sick or anything, or even suffering from a lack of mojo - I'm just really really tired.  I know that I have mentioned in passing that they are "renovating" our space at work (I put that in quotation marks because, well, it's more of a spruce up and not really a nice one, but I digress).  Anyhow, it's close to being finished, and we are moving stuff back in to the space now.  Which is a very slow and tedious process, being that with all of the $$$ they spent, they were too cheap to pay for movers for the bulk of the stuff.  So it's up to us to get it done.  The custodial staff has helped with the truly heavy or extra large things, but the rest is all us.  And it is exhausting, as I'm sure you can imagine.  Yesterday by the time I left work, I realized that I had been on my feet, lifting, shifting, and pushing carts except for the 30 minutes I took for lunch. 

So I do not have the physical or mental energy to do anything other than just sit and stare at the TV.  Fortunately, we have a lot of stuff in our to-be-watched queue! 

The rest of the week will likely be the same, so I probably won't have anything "exciting" to tell you about or projects to show you.  I am hoping that I will be able regroup enough to get started on things this coming weekend.   The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak - so to speak!  :-)

Today is Ash Wednesday, and I have been able to organize my thoughts for Lent and am ready to go as far as that is concerned.  But whatever you are busy with, or not doing, I hope all is well and that here at the middle of the week, you are in a happy and/or content state of mind.