Saturday in New Hampshire

Playoffs

DH got tickets for the football playoffs, so we'll be watching those on Sunday. I'm still mystified as to why anyone thought it would be a good idea to have an outdoor stadium in this climate. (At autumn games you get sunburned; in winter games your toes freeze.) He says it is because our team wants to be seen as a tough team, and so they will have an advantage over the cosseted indoor players.

Maybe they could put the field outdoors and have the rest of the stadium enclosed?

Heat miser: heat me, sir!

We'd decided to keep the thermostat nice and low this winter. Things were going well (and we could see it in the heat bills) until Echo's arthritis started acting up and she could barely get around. So we turned the heat up, stationed the big comfy kitty pillow right in front of the heat vent, and added a space heater for good measure. (Of course Echo won't stay too long in any one place, and has since moved into a cardboard box in a different room, but Eisa sure loves it.)

Speaking of heat misers, we recorded and watched the Heat/Snow miser holiday special... was the original "Year without a Santa Claus" THAT bad? (IMDB says no.)

Here's a bit of the original here. LOVE that they got the original Heat Miser voice actor back 34 years later! Go, Mr Heat Miser, go!

Truffle's categories

Food:
- anything mom is eating (see also "toy")
- flying things (e.g., a moth)
- crawling things (e.g., a spider)
- anything that is sitting on the surface of the floor (watch the vacuum cleaner get a good workout!)
- anything that sticks out (e.g., pencil in a pencil cup, corner of a book, curtain holdbacks, etc. He is teething.)

Toy:
- anything mom is eating
- plastic eyedroppers
- anything that can be rolled with the paw
- water in a cup or bowl
- suds
- ice cubes
- a nail or a ding in the paint (see also "anything that sticks out")
- door knobs and handles
- Eisa's tail

The mind at rest

I take great joy in wordplay and (sometimes terrible) puns, but always thought that was a waking phenomenon.

Two nights ago, I dreamt that I was out in the woods and stumbled upon four black bear cubs. They were all clustered together inside a hollow tree trunk, drowsily playful and very, very cute. My first impulse was to pet and snuggle them, but, having seen dozens of nature documentaries over the years, I had better sense than that. If there were cubs, there would be a mama bear not far behind.

And indeed it was so. A quick glance revealed mama bear on the horizon, heading my way, with clear intention in her gait. I yelped and took off as fast as I could go.

My friends, watching from a distance, didn't know what had happened at first. One moment I was peering curiously into a old tree trunk; the next, I was streaking across the field toward them at top speed. Then they saw the bear behind me and hightailed it on out of there after me.

In real life, a bear can run at a rate of approximately 30 m.p.h. Fortunately for us, this was apparently the world's slowest bear. We hurled ourselves through the doorway of a conveniently located wooden shack (love how these things appear just when you need them in a dream), slammed the door, and slumped to the floor, panting our sedentary lungs out.

Then I woke up... and thought how absolutely strange it was that I had dreamt of being chased by a bear. I hadn't been to the zoo. I hadn't even been in a toy store. My day had been entirely devoid of encounters with any kind of bear, real, fictional, or stuffed.

And then I realized my brain's inspiration: a conversation about mooning people and being mooned.

How does that fit?

I was streaking across a field with a "BEAR BEHIND."

O brain of silliness, I salute you!

The Lotus-eaters

On Superbowl Sunday, one of the quilt stores in the vicinity had a pretty impressive sale. I was trying to exert some kind of self-control, so when I saw a gorgeous Kaffe Fassett lotus leaf fabric, I told myself sternly that it wouldn't work for any of my current projects, and left the bolt there on the shelf.

I kept thinking about it, though. And as we were standing in line to check out, DH made the mistake of asking if I had gotten everything, or if there was anything else I wanted. I admitted sheepishly (from underneath my great stack of fabric) that that there might still be one more thing. Just then, a woman walked by carrying the lotus fabric. "THAT one!" I blurted out.

The woman glanced over at the exclamation, so I smiled and explained I was considering getting some of the fabric too. Could I have the bolt after she was done getting her piece cut? Well, she cradled the bolt possessively to her, and told me she was buying the whole thing(!) for the back of a queen sized quilt. Alas. I expressed regret that I had missed my chance earlier; but assured her (on a more positive note) that her quilt would be beautiful. She paused, and said reluctantly that she supposed she could let me have some of the fabric if I really needed it. But it was abundantly clear that she really had hoped to take it all home with her. And since I didn't have an actual plan for it, and couldn't really justify making a request without it, I politely declined.

But I couldn't get that fabric out of my head. I saw it around in other colorways, just not in the shades I loved the best. Maybe, I sighed, it would just have to remain another of those missed opportunities, one of the unattainables of which you dream...

Then today we ventured into town to one of our less-frequented quilt shops. And there it was, my beautiful lotus fabric!

I scooped up the bolt and headed straight for the cutting table. As I handed it to the woman who was doing the cutting, another customer craned her neck over and started ogling my fabric. "Oh, that's a beautiful print!" she said, "...How much are you getting?"

And suddenly, I found myself struggling to resist the urge, like the woman at the last shop, to claim that I "needed" the whole rest of the bolt! I am almost sure that I blushed as I pointed out the other colorways in a rather transparent attempt to redirect her attention elsewhere.

Consoling myself for my foolishness later on, I recalled that no less a literary personage than Odysseus spoke of the addictive nature of the lotus, and how it drove all sense and other thoughts from one's head:

"[O]n the tenth day we reached the land of the Lotus-eaters, who live on a food that comes from a kind of flower. Here we landed to take in fresh water, and our crews got their mid-day meal on the shore near the ships. When they had eaten and drunk I sent two of my company to see what manner of men the people of the place might be.... They started at once, and went about among the Lotus-Eaters, who did them no hurt, but gave them to eat of the lotus, which was so delicious that those who ate of it left off caring about home, and ... were for staying and munching lotus with the Lotus-eaters without thinking further of their return"
(Book IX, The Odyssey)

Tennyson, speaking in the (collective) voice of Odysseus's sailors, spoke of the lure of the lotus (or lotos) in terms befitting drug addicts.

So, all things considered, methinks my wee addiction to such a delicious lotus fabric may be not entirely without precedent.

Me also thinks that I should restrict use of such a dangerous and addictive fabric to the backing of my own quilt, so as to avoid being accused of being a pusher!

We want change

I took a package down to the post office today. Earlier I'd relocated a plastic container full of coins, so I filled up my pockets to see if I could do the whole thing without breaking into the paper money.

(Yeah, I probably sound like a dork. DH finds it a pain to carry change, so it's my job to deal with it. Otherwise he starts casting longing glances towards the CoinStar, and if I'm not careful, we end up with a gift card for something we don't need.)

Sometimes cashiers are irked when I hand them a hill of coins, but the little old postman was not just content to accept them (along with one limp dollar bill), but seemed actually delighted to do so, telling me he had been running low on quarters.

Over all, it was a satisfying little exchange. I lost a glove on the way, but on the other hand ;) I disposed of a goodly stack of coins, sent out a surprise to a friend, and made the postman smile all in one fell swoop.

Save stress: sacrifice a sock

If you have been tracking my progress on the To Do lists below, you may have noticed that one of the lists grew before it was completed. This is the story of how and why.

I pre-wash all of my fabric. In certain cases, a single cycle through the washer on Hot may not lift out all the unbonded dye particles. To cover such cases, I try to send a test sock or other white item (ahem) through with the fabric to check for colorfastness. This isn't always a popular move around here, particularly when the nearest white item may not be my own! So if I've recently been caught redhanded trying to pass off the color of some rather pink, er, manties as "a trick of the light," I may find it more prudent to omit this step.

That must have been the case with the border fabric for the little star quilt. Since I've run into issues with dark hand-dyed fabric before, I made sure to verify that all of the yellow stars on the front had remained that color before the quilt went into the dryer. And they were, all well and good. But, alas, I neglected to check what was going on on the back...!

With that heavyhanded foreshadowing, I am sure it is no stretch to imagine what happened when, after ironing the front of the quilt, I turned it over to sew on the label.

Banishing fleeting thoughts of "Maybe I can claim the fabric was always like that," I returned to the laundry room... where, to my disappointment, I discovered a deplorable dearth of Synthrapol.

It may have a name fit for an old-time intelligence agency, but Synthrapol is actually a detergent. (No doubt I have sung its praises here before.) A deeply colored piece of fabric may be so saturated with dye that there may be excess particles that have not bonded with the cotton fibers. When this fabric hits water, these particles are equally happy to go sit on other fabric. That's where Synthrapol comes in: it lifts and separates the unbonded dye particles from the dyed fabric and keeps them in suspension in the wash.

But there was none on the premises and, at 8:45 at night, our options were limited.

After calling around, we found a promising store 29 minutes away. It would be open for another 30 minutes. But, DH cautioned, he had heard the clarion call of "Shoppers, it is now 9 PM" when we were on hold at 8:55, so we would have to adjust accordingly.

Never let it be said that a Prius has no zoom. We made it there in 20. I think the clerks, learning where we had come from, were a little stunned.

But all's well that ends well. My Synthra-stash was restocked; the drive back was uneventful; a few cycles through the wash removed every stray trace of indigo dye. And the quilt finally found its way off the To Do list.

(But surely it would have been worth a lavender sock or two to avoid the whole thing, don't you think?)

One snow angel, no whiplash

It's been warm, and nearly all of the old grey ice lumps melted over the last week. Overnight we had about 8" of flakes. So today, after I dug out the walkway, I lay down on the front lawn and treated myself to making another snow angel.

This time, in the fluffy, pristine snow, it was perfect.

"How bad could it be?"

Do you have a particular phrase that you say before you convince yourself to do something a little foolish? Mine seems to be "how bad could it be," a statement which was uttered before I flung myself backwards onto the lawn to make a snow angel.

On the positive side, icy snow (ouch!) does hold an image pretty nicely!

The thrill of victory and the agony of the feet

DH and I have gotten into this friendly competition over what we can do on the treadmill. He automatically gets a better workout when we do the same thing because he's bigger; however, I have a very important advantage, and that is that my knees can take walking on an incline. So I can ultimately do as much as he can in the same amount of time (although I'm having to do it all uphill).

We've been one-upping each other every day, just to keep it a little more challenging. This game was all well and good until I made the decision to do about 150% of the previous day's workout. I had a reason for it that didn't pertain to our game, but I forgot to mention it to him.

When he saw the number I put up, he was very unhappy indeed. He retreated to the basement (where the treadmill is housed), and I came upstairs to check my mail.

Slightly more than an hour later, he came back upstairs and I checked with him to see how it had gone. He broke into a big grin, and announced that, once again, he had one-upped me.

RATS! Now I have to do more (not looking forward to that on today's blisters) or be the wimp who throws in the towel. Why, oh why, did I not announce I was calling the game off - back when I was still ahead! ;)

Brownies

Two weekends ago, DH had to go into work all day Saturday to help conduct interviews for potential college hires. I decided I should bake him something nice to make up for it, so I took some of the peanut butter cups left over from Halloween, chopped them into wedges, and folded them into some homemade brownie batter.

When they came out, I tasted them - delicious! I let them cool, put a bunch into a plastic container, and left a half dozen or so on a plastic-wrapped plate on the table.

Some time after dinner, I wandered back through the dining room and was shocked to find one of my cats on the table hunched over the plate stuffing her face!

I burst into laughter at the guilty look on her fuzzy little face - even while I began to worry, knowing that chocolate in quantity is toxic to cats. The question was, how much was too much?

DH googled for information. And, after I gave him the amount of chocolate in the recipe, and the weight of the greedy kitty, he concluded that she was right on the border. So I got on the phone to animal poison control, and, ultimately, they suggested we'd better take her in to the emergency vet.

We knew we'd be about 3 hours in the waiting room, if they were as busy as they'd been in the past, but there was nothing to be done about that. We loaded the guilty party into her box, and headed off to the vet.

Not 3 minutes before we arrived, my husband the engineer almost stopped the car: "Wait... did I get the math wrong? I think... I think I multiplied instead of dividing at the end!"

Sure enough, he re-ran the numbers and confirmed it.

We called poison control back while sitting in the emergency vet parking lot. As he suspected, they told us we could just go home. Sigh. (At least we figured it out before they put kitty through some unpleasant procedure. The car ride she didn't actually mind.)

Tomorrow DH goes in to do another round of interviews. I'm thinking maybe this time I'll stay away from the baking...

Green, no, blue!

What is your favorite color? What does your favorite color say about you?

I have said for many years that my favorite color was green, but if there is any validity to these descriptions, I am not so sure:

Green: The color of harmony and balance, Green symbolizes hope, renewal, and peace, and is usually liked by the gentle and sincere. Greens are generally frank, community-minded people, fairly sociable but preferring peace at any price. Green people can be too self-effacing, modest and patient, so they may get exploited by others. They are usually refined, civilized and reputable.

I can hear a couple of you laughing at some of this from here! ("Too patient" especially amused me.)

Perhaps I need to rethink this favorite color thing... ;)

Personalize your fictional family!

DH suggests, given people's tendency to gravitate towards the familiar, that there might be a market for popular picture books with parental permutations. Just sketch in (or erase) a parent in the background, do a global search-and-replace on some pronouns, and the book appeals to a whole new audience!

You could imagine extending this so that potential buyers could go through a checklist to select the parent's/parents' genders, races, statures (endomorph vs. ectomorph), features, etc., and really come out with something completely personalized.

Do you think it'd sell? ;)