So about that swimming thing

In an effort to catch up on all that's gone on in the last few weeks, I've made a list:

1) Halloween, costumes, and the totally ludicrous amount of candy collected by my children
2) The no-Gillyweed experiment
3) Dyeing with Devil, parts A and B
4) Manon, and my poor Mommy brain that cannot read patterns, or comprehend them even when they are read.
5) What am I, an Aggie?

I can take care of a couple of those items in this post. Starting at the bottom...

I was posting last week from College Station because I was invited up there for a work-type deal. I got to spend two and a half days in a hotel room without anyone yelling for Mommy (except when I talked to Devil on the phone on Tuesday night), and I got a bunch of knitting done (Manon, TBD).

Back up to #2: I did actually complete a 5K swim last weekend. It was a near thing however. Let me set the scene...

Week before race: Ironman was in the UK, and I came down with a horrific lurgy of some sort, which meant I did not set flipper to water until the day before the race. Tapering is one thing, but this scenario was not ideal. And then there was the entry problem.

I sent in my race entry and check in the beginning of October. And then heard absolutely nothing. I figured that, since they asked for my email address, I might get an acknowledgement of my entry, or some pre-race info or something. But nothing. On the Tuesday before the race, I finally got around to checking my bank account and realized that my check hadn't been cashed. I hunted down the race director's email and sent him a message.

And then I heard nothing.

By Friday, I was getting a bit concerned, so I hunted down the race director's phone number and called him. The very nice lady on the other end said "Oh, you mean you didn't get his email? I know he wrote back to you." Suffice to say that no, they didn't get my entry and, for once, Yahoo's spam filters had actually worked, only the message they worked on was not spam. Harrumph.

You will not be surprised to know that the idea of getting up at 4:30 am on Saturday to drive 3 hrs to Austin was not popular at that moment with yours truly. But somehow it happened. Actually, it mostly happened because Ironman, who arrived back from the UK that day, said "Well, I'll be awake then anyway because of the time change, so I'll drive." What a trooper.

Off we went to Lake Travis, which was a balmy (!!!) 73 degrees for this endeavor. And it went quite well - I wasn't last (my biggest fear), I didn't drown, and the distance went by a lot faster in the open water then it did in the pool. But it is not fun to wear a pair of swim goggles for 1.5 hours without a break - talk about a headache!

The best part of the weekend was taking the girls to Lake Somerville to camp out that night. They enjoyed playing in the tent (although I had to lay down the law about bringing handfuls of dirt in there as "food") and eating hot dogs and marshmallows for dinner. And only three parties of duck hunters came by and launched their boats off the boat ramp next to our camping site. At approximately 3:00, 4:00 and 5:00 am. Niiiiiice...but we saw lots of birds, and deer, and a live armadillo (usually only seen as smudges on the pavement around here). It was a very nice weekend.

And no, I haven't been back in the pool yet!

OK, that takes care of two items...

1) Halloween, costumes, and the totally ludicrous amount of candy collected by my children
2) The no-Gillyweed experiment
3) Dyeing with Devil, parts A and B
4) Manon, and my poor Mommy brain that cannot read patterns, or comprehend them even when they are read.
5) What am I, an Aggie?

Oh wow

I am sitting in a hotel room in College Station, watching CNN with tears running down my face. And all I can think of is a story I heard on NPR last week, in which they were interviewing voters in some of the swing states. And one man spoke about a text message he had received. It said

Rosa sat so Martin could walk.
Martin walked so Barack could run.
Barack runs so our children can fly.

African-American children, Latino-Americna children, Asian-American children, even my own hybrid Yankee-Texan children. All of them.

This is an amazing moment. Truly.

Just heard

Levi Stubbs, of the Four Tops, has passed away.

Which made me think of this song, by one of my most favoritist musicians ever.

Excuse me for a moment

There are many reasons (too numerous to list) why I'm not going to vote for John McCain (Exhibit A: a VP candidate with a belief in creationism is not conducive to my productive life as a scientist), including but not limited to his inability to be on stage with his opponent for 90 minutes and keep a straight face*, but this right here pretty much sums up another good reason.

Regardless of how you feel about abortion, his cavalier attitude and dismissal of a scenario that could have killed me and my first child, and his attempt to portray exceptions to a late-term abortion ban for the health of the mother a "liberal" plot to plant a Planned Parenthood with a drive-through D&C window next to every Starbucks in the nation**, makes me want to throw up. And then hit something really, really hard. And then maybe scream a little.

I know that everyone is sick to death of the election, and it's not something you want to read about on a putative knitting blog. So I'll stop the rant here and we can move on to something more productive.

(Please let the next 20 days go by quickly!)

* Seriously dude. You'd have a better chance of convincing people you're ready to be President if you stop rolling your eyes and sneering. That's all I'm saying.
** No, he didn't actually say that - please grant me a little license here.

Color me entertained

Is it just me or does anyone else wonder if Sarah Palin realizes that, when she refers to a "shining city on a hill" (and John Winthrop predates Reagan's use of the term by approximately 350 years), she's actually refering to this Bastion of Liberal Elitism? OK, maybe it wasn't that liberal in the 1600s - you know those wacky Puritans - but it is certainly seen that way these days. Enquiring minds want to know.

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A fine example of Love and Logic parenting in action:

A couple of weeks ago, Devil and I had a disgreement about getting dressed. Which is to say, I wanted her to put her clothes on and she was more interested in running around naked and hiding from me. Finally, I laid down this ultimatum:

"You can come and put your clothes on now, or you can take them to daycare in a bag."

Sure enough, ten minutes later she was getting strapped in to her carseat starkers, and off we went for the day.

About an hour later, I got a call from Ironman to inform me that, upon arrival at daycare, Devil hopped out of the car with nary a care in the world, and then decided she'd put on her shoes because her feet were cold. She made it all the way through the daycare, dropped Boo off at her class, and walked in to her class before she finally deigned to get dressed. Thankfully, the daycare staff chose to be entertained rather then concerned, and did not call CPS or the police for the blatent display of girlie parts parading through the center.

I was a bit concerned about the success of my tactic, but...last week when Devil and I had this exact same conversation, complete with an identical ultimatum, she immediately came over and got dressed. What's a little fatherly mortification when it works, hunh?

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Why I love fall: three pairs of handknit socks and one new sweater worn this week.