To Boo, on the occasion of her first birthday

Hey baby girl. Here you are. Amazing, isn't it? A mere three hundred and sixty five days ago you arrived,


and now all of a sudden I turn around and you're doing this?



I think perhaps I should be a bit worried.

The night before you arrived I went in to your sister's room where she was sleeping in her crib, and stood there for a moment before heading off to the hospital. I was sort of sad. It wasn't that I wasn't excited about your joining our family, but it was the last time I was just going to be Devil's Mama.

What I didn't know at the time was how much fun it was going to be to be your Mama too. You are smiley and cuddly and give the best hugs. You eat approximately 12 times as much as your sister, and we know you're done when you sweep your hands across the tray and gleefully push everything on to the floor.



You climb up on every single thing you can - a few weeks ago your Daddy was in the kitchen while you were playing on the floor. He turned around and discovered that you had climbed up on the front of the stove, holding on to the door handle and planting your feet on the lower drawer handle.


You adore opening and closing doors. You crawl into the back hall or your room without us and close the door for fun (and then get pissed off and yell when you can't open it again).


You love the water and splashing around in it as much as possible. You are definitely my water baby, and I have grandiose plans for your Olympic freestyle career.



You chase your sister around the house, doggedly crawling around in circles while she happily laps you repeatedly. But it's not going to be long before you're giving her a run for her money I know.



Happy Birthday baby!



Love, Mama

The problem with unblog-able knitting projects

is that you have nothing much to write about if that's all you're working on. Well, that and a never-ending intarsia baby blanket. The StR is nice to work with, and it's knitting up quite nicely, but my internal vision of what these socks will look like has changed pretty dramatically over the course of the last week. I think, having muddled my way through the heel flap/shaping and up into the ankle, that I've settled on the final version. I just need to peruse Barbara Walker and see if there's a neat edging that will work well. Oh, and knit the other sock of course. And write up the pattern. And do more math then I'm really comfortable with to get sizes to fit people with normal sized feet. I never quite trust that my math is correct, and I've got an 8 stitch pattern repeat to contend with, so the pattern writing may take longer then the actual knitting of the socks. Stay tuned.

Duck is coming along, slowly - it's the perfect project for watching silly movies on DVD. This weekend's installment was "Good Luck Chuck", which I enjoyed more then I thought I would. Very silly, but some unforgettable (and extraordinarily un-PC) lines, particularly from Chuck's plastic surgeon friend whos name I can't remember. Last weekend we watched "40 Days and 40 Nights" in which Josh Hartnett gives up sex for Lent. Timely, and also entertaining. I'm sensing a theme here though - maybe it's time to stop letting Ironman go to the video store by himself.

Tonight I plan to sit down with Ivy, finish off the damn seaming and get on with the neckband. I will be flipping back and forth between election returns and Season 2 of Buffy. There will be beer.

2008: New year, new challenges

I don't have much luck with "resolutions" per se, but I like to make a list of goals each January. I may not ever look at that list again, but at least they're written down and codified somewhere. So here are some of my goals, fibery and otherwise:


Fibery:
- knit one gift item a month. While it's somewhat entertaining/envigorating to spend the last few weeks before Christmas in a permenant adrenaline rush, it doesn't leave much room for anything else. If I can make one thing a month (knit or spin), I should be all set by the time the holidays roll around again, without the stress (or at least, with less stress).

- do some more designing, of something! Doesn't have to be a sweater, but I've got all sorts of ideas that I'd like to make into reality.

- spin and knit a sweater for Ironman. While we don't currently live in a climate that allows for regular wearing of wool sweaters, there is a very significant possibility that we will be by the end of the year. However, given my normal speed on doing any of these things, said sweater will probably be finished by the time we're preparing to move back to Houston.

- spin and knit a surprise. Has to be machine washable, so the superwash and I will be getting up close and personal.

Otherwise:
- independently, both Ironman and I decided that we need to de-clutter in a major way. While we don't have a huge overflow of random stuff, we do have lots of things (books, clothes, etc) that we don't use anymore, that would be much better off in someone else's house being used. We've already started the pruning process, but the trick will be keeping the clutter under control.

- be more proactive about cooking. Our usual MO is to arrive home around 6:00 pm, with starving kids/parents, get the kids fed, get them bathed and more or less settled in bed, and then feeding ourselves. Along the way there's usually some snacking, which means that the motivation/energy for cooking a "real" dinner is pretty low. So far the last week or so, I've actually managed to know ahead of time what I was going to cook for dinner that night, and it's worked out really well.

- I always feel like I need an athletic goal of some sort. Last year's goal was just to get back to racing again after Boo was born, but this year I'm not entirely sure of what the goal will be. I'd like to do some more racing this year then last year, and there are a bunch of races locally throughout the season so that shouldn't be too difficulty to arrange. But there's nothing in particular grabbing at me. I always want to improve my running (which is very, very slow and usually painful), but I also need to be consistent with swimming and riding as well. And figuring out how to fit all that in is a serious challenge.

Of course, that's a lot of things to try and accomplish, with too few hours in the day. We'll see how things progress as the year goes along. But it's good to have a starting point.

Why commuting rocks

It's the wildlife you see. I love commuting because I get to overhear exchanges like this:

Young man bearing a striking resemblance to Bill Gates only not so much with the money. And with very little awareness of how loudly he is speaking: (to the large man who has just sat down next to him on the train) Excuse me sir. Can I ask you a question?

Innocent man minding his own business: OK.

Bill Gates Jr: I just moved down here from Montreal and I'm trying to get some sense of the culture down here you see. And what I want to know is this: how do I keep the Christians from coming around and ringing my doorbell at the crack of noon on a Sunday?

Innocent bystander: ???!!!!

Porpoise: (silently to herself from her seat across the aisle) What the F$%^&* kind of question is that to ask in a city that is home to this? With a congregation of a mere 23,000+ people? Dude, you're not as smart as the guy you look like...

The conversation continued on in this vein for a while, with my Canadian friend (who quite honestly seemed like he just wanted someone to talk to) got more and more heated about "the Christians". Finally his seatmate more or less told him to shut up, and things got much less entertaining from there on. The topper was when I caught the eye of the guy sitting across from me, and we shared a grin at the antics across the aisle. He then leaned forward:

Seatmate: Are you in college?

Porpoise: (clutching orange backpack and thinking hunh?) No!

I choose to believe he asked because he was convinced I was a hot young thing on her way to class at UH. And not because of the potentially high number of "non-traditional" students they might or might not have. Because we all know I don't look 35, and married with two terrors, I mean kids.

The crowning glory of the commuting entertainment was the next morning, I was sitting at the bus stop, reading and being enlightened by Steve Inskeep, when a small Asian woman approached me.

SAW: Excuse me...

Porpoise: (removing headphones and looking quizzical)?

SAW: I know you're reading but...(proffers pamphlet)

P: (looks at cover, notices "The Watchtower" in large letters) No thank you, I'm not interested.

SAW: Thank you (scurries away with her compatriot).

One day it's the Canadian atheist offending 99% (an estimate only) of the passengers on the train, then next it's the Jehovah's Witnesses. Never a dull moment I tell you.