The Bean, She Grows

We have had two days worth of mad appointments, ranging from Oakland to Palo Alto, and can I just say here, y'all, I am SO GLAD IT IS OVER. I swear I've spent more time in my car than housebound. Which is maybe not such a bad thing, but you know, the traffic. The irritating other drivers. Etc.

The Bean had an ocularist appointment yesterday at 8 am in Oakland. Note. We do not live anywhere NEAR Oakland for all intensive purposes, so needless to say, getting up vilely early was necessary. Still, we made it, Bean got her scleral shell retrofitted and enlarged, all is well, la la la, except...she is melting down tired, and we still have a dental appointment back aross the bay at 2 pm. Fortunately we had about 45 minutes in between where we could hit the boat, she laid down for a "rest" (read: playtime) and I read a book. Dentist. Fast, amazing...she was really falling apart at this point, but they managed to get at least two X-rays and the teeth cleaned and fluoridinated (yeah, I know that's not the real word but it's more funner). Seeing her adult teeth lurking underneath the baby teeth was...startling to say the least. I was just gobsmacked, which I'm sure amused our lovely dentist, Dr Dhaliwal. Who, for the record, is the best dentist in the world. Go see him if you live near Redwood Shores.

Today was an endocrinology appointment at Stanford for the ubiquitous "growth issues"...except, we almost got a get-out-of-jail-free card this time. Doc says, well, she's lean, sure, but it's not adversely affecting her linear growth, plus any real big problems usually crop up before age 5. Let's do a total blood workup plus the cortisone "stress test" thingy which necessitated a sharp pokey thing (she was MAD, let me assure you), but in all likelihood, they can effectively discharge her from endocrine visits when we go back next year. We've moved from every 3 months to every 4 months to every 6 months to next year to probably never again.

How happy am I? So happy.

Onto a completely unrelated thread, please please please go read this blog: www.crazyauntpurl.com.

She is now my new hero, most particularly for her captioning of her cat pictures and the fact that I have cried, literally CRIED with laughter while reading more than one post. Go read. Please.

This is California?

I discovered the below on our back deck after a rather intense day of weather:

That, my friends, is hail.

I am knitting and drinking, upon the recommendation of the brewer, our friend SpenceFu, hot mead with a cinnamon stick and cloves. It's most convivial. Just need the fire.

If I Were Knitting Needles

Warm, cozy, and thoughtful, you take your time and enjoy how things feel, smell, and taste. You love the craft and beauty of traditional things, and you value the comfort and experience of knitting as much as the results. But while you are reveling in your warm cozies, don't get stuck. Warm is wonderful, but so is the whole wide world!

You are bamboo.

Oak Trees Are Evil

Our house is surrounded by oak trees, lovely, yes? Yes, if you are on the outside looking in. From the inside looking out, they are fine and all, but it's more what they DO in my house that annoys the everliving fricketyfrack out of me.

Take a look at a dried oak leaf. Spiky, yes? Brittle, yet tough, yes? Sneaky? OH YES. Somehow they manage to weasel their way into our house on a regular basis, which would be fine if our vacuum cleaner could handle them. I won't go into my diatribe against our vacuum cleaner here, but suffice it to say, it gets crabby if oak leaves are forced into it, whether right at the beater head or in the hose later, whatever. So fine, we leave the oak leaves. Look for the broom. No broom. Where is the broom? Never mind, I'll use the dry mop. Which also gets crabby if it's expected to do any work. The head fell off for the LAST TIME in this girl's book. I chucked it and kicked the oak leaves out the door as best I could.

Sacred trees they may have been, but let it be known here and now, I hope if I move from this house, I will NEVER have to endure oak leaves again in a residence.

Some People Spend Money On

Shoes, or clothes, or computer equipment. Or drugs or hookers, but anyway. I have begun to spend money on, yup, yarn. My first mail order showed up a little while ago, and I thought I'd document the momentous occasion.

I made a shrug out of the light green yarn...it was okay. I forgot I have fairly wide shoulders, so it is a little tight, but I think the yarn is stretchy enough to compensate. The other yarn will hopefully turn into a cardigan type jacket.

Latent KnitBlog

So these are my new bamboo needles, ordered/won off of eBay recently, shipped quite swiftly from Hong Kong, I think. Only problem? They're all double point needles. Did I catch this before I blithely put in a bid? I did not.

My first thought was, well, I'm going to be making a *lot* of socks. But then I realized, except for seriously large patches of knitting, I can MacGyver a solution with small clear hair elastics on one end of the DPNs...instant straight needles. It has worked remarkably well, and the best part is that I end up with basically a full set of bamboo needles, in both varieties.

And I only paid $12.50 for the set. Not a bad deal.

I Lied

My new favorite distraction is the "Backstage" section on The Smoking Gun. If you ever needed further proof that celebrities, particularly of the performing monkey variety, were batshit crazy, you have found the veritable Holy Grail.

Hours upon hours of entertainment.