The calm before the storm.

I’m sitting in my basement, alone, drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette.  For those of you that may be concerned about my moral fortitude considering the two vices I am indulging right now, rest assured that I am watching Little House on the Prairie to balance things out.

Sunday is Stephen’s birthday party.  He’s turning two, and not only am I surprised that the Birth Center didn’t say oh man we are making a huge mistake sending a baby home with this one, but I have managed to keep him alive, fed and clothed for two whole years!  I have the party decorations, favors for the kids, fixings for potato and macaroni salads, and Sunday morning free to buy the balloons, pick up the cake, and finish up decorating.  Wouldn’t you just know that it’s supposed to be in the 90’s with close to 100% humidity?  There goes the sidewalk chalk and the blowing bubbles.  Too hot!  If you have never been to Delaware in the summer you should know that it is miserable.  I know professors that teach at the university that say they can tell when they’re in Delaware because their noses lock up tight.  It’s amazing, really.  You would think that weather would hold no regard for state lines, but here in Delaware we suffer.  There is just something about this state that is unlike any other state in the Union.  Strange.

I think I have everything together, but I can’t be sure.  There’s bound to be some disaster, some missed deadline, some person showing up that we didn’t count on.  I’m just trying to take these last few minutes and soak up the peace.  Also, rest assured that there will be a nice bottle of wine chilling in the fridge for the moment the last child goes home, and mine is asleep in bed.

Sleep just went bye-bye.

This morning my alarm went off at 6 am, just like every other day.  I hit the snooze and went back to sleep, just like every other day.  Stephen poked his head over his crib rail so he could see into our bedroom and said, “Hello, Goose (that’s what he calls Steve).  Mama, out!”  JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER DAY.  Then he came walking into my bedroom.

WHAAAAA????

That’s right, friends and neighbors.  My son has learned how to climb out of his crib, and since he sometimes wakes up at 2 in the morning, he now has the freedom to let himself out and wander around the house.  Let’s add to the mix.  He can reach the deadbolt and doorknob now, and he knows how to use them.  Oh, good Lord.  It’s a perfect storm for my ass to wind up on nationwide news wearing a stupid Hello Kitty nightshirt crying that I didn’t hear him leave the house and I just want my son back while Nancy Grace posts pictures of him and talks about what a terrible mother I am!

Okay, deep breaths.  Count backwards from ten.  Calm down.

This is my revenge for having a baby that slept through the night since he was six weeks old, isn’t it?

Eczema

has taken over my life.  Seriously.  When I’m at work, I think about eczema.  When I’m home or on coffee break, I google eczema.  When I meet new people or chat with my family, we talk about eczema.  Did you know that children with eczema will likely outgrow most of their symptoms by the time they are 5 years old?  Or that their parents likely suffer from hay fever, asthma, or airborne allergies?  Did you know that even if you use Free and Clear laundry detergent you still have to run clothes through a second rinse cycle to get all the detergent’s chemicals out?  Oh, and dryer sheets are the DEVIL.

What started as a few bumps on the baby’s back developed into the worst case of eczema I have ever seen in my life in 7 short days.  We have been to the pediatrician, a dermatologist, and then back to the pediatrician.  We have an appointment with a specialist at A.I. but that’s not until JUNE.  I have tried Cetaphil, prescription foam, Cerave, Triple Cream, Arbonne, Vaseline, Nozema, Formula II, and Aveeno, all the while dosing him with Zyrtec, which I don’t think can possibly be good for a baby.  I think we have finally found a treatment that works.  I give him a bath every night, letting him play in the tub for awhile before washing him, so that he isn’t playing in soapy water.  I wash his hair and skin with pine tar soap, so when he is good and clean he smells just like a woodstove.  After bath, we apply a topical steroid cream prescribed by the pediatrician.  At bedtime he gets 1/2 tsp. of Zyrtec.  We’ve only been doing this for one day, but he is already 75% better.  I think we may have this licked.

Oh, and the doctor told me that if this doesn’t work we will have to do an oral steroid because he may have SCABIES.  That’s pretty much when I involuntarily screamed and scrubbed my entire house with bleach.  Wasted effort, it turns out.  Scabies is caught from other kids, not from dirt, so the baby may, in fact, have to spend his entire life in a plastic bubble.  (NOT SCABIES, by the way.  The treatment is working well, so it’s just plain old eczema.)

Next post:  How I was treated at the WallyWorld pharmacy and why they may never get another penny from me.

Guess what I found?

The first person to answer correctly will get some yarn as a prize!

OOOPS!  Unless you’re a guy (Soulloon!), then you will get a book!

Oh My Gosh I Had SO MUCH FUN!

Yesterday was the absolute BEST. DAY. EVER.

I got to work (barely) on time, had a bagel, looked for my wallet and…uh-oh…no wallet.  Where is it?  When did I use it last?  Is it in my desk?  No.  In my truck?  No.  So I took a personal day and went back to the house to find it.  I dug through the diaper bag, under the beds, in the toy box, all my yarn stash, nothing.  Nada. 

Now, here’s the super-fun part.  My license and my social security card were in there.  I know, I know, you should never have your social security card in your wallet, but when we moved last, I didn’t want to lose it so I put it in my wallet and there it stayed.  I just never got around to putting it away.  You know what else I never got around to?  Changing the address on my license.  Hoo-boy!  Talk about a great time!  So how will the DMV replace my license when I can’t prove my address?  How will I get a new social security card without my license as picture ID?  Why would my husband pick that exact moment to call and ask if we had an extra “hundred or so” dollars to pitch in on a trailer for their hunting gear? 

As a matter of fact, we do not have an extra “hundred or so.”  Oh wait, let me run out to the money tree in the backyard and grab that for you!  I just hope they don’t ask for photo ID!

Anyway, the DMV opens at noon on Wednesdays, so I sat around for the longest hour and a half of my LIFE and gave them a call as soon as they opened.  The person on the phone was so great!  I only needed two utility bills and something with my signature!  Then, when I got there I only had to wait about an hour!  Now, I know that seems like a long time, but if you have visited your DMV lately you should know that is very quick.  While I was there, the woman at the counter told me that I was allowed to renew my license ahead of time if I wanted, so I went ahead and did that as well, saving me a second trip in a couple months time.  Awesome!  Oh, did you know you’re not allowed to smile for your license photo anymore?  It’s true, and when the fella taking my picture told me that I couldn’t smile, I just felt the urge, the NEED to smile at the camera.  Too funny.

Once I got my license (with the worst photo in the world), I was on my way to the social security administrative building.  It’s a new building, much cleaner than the old one, but it still smells like urine.  FUN.  I only had to wait about 45 minutes there, and again the woman at the counter was so nice!  I just couldn’t believe it!  I guess all the praying I did before embarking on my adventure did the trick.  I did have to call my parents while I was there because you have to have their social security numbers to get your own card, and my mother said, “You know, after tearing up your whole house, going to the DMV, going to the social security office, putting a fraud alert on your credit bureaus, and taking a day off work, you’ll probably find your wallet tomorrow.”  She’s probably right.

So, all in all, it was a pretty horrible day, but made better with the kindness of the DMV and social security admin workers.  Thank goodness there are still some kind people in this world.

Getting closer…

We are so close to the end of 2008 I can taste it.  This year was so hard on us, so hard on a lot of people I know.  Friends facing foreclosures, auto repos, credit card delinquency.  It seems like we are going to pull out of this, and I can’t think of any other reason than God putting his arms around us and carrying us through the toughest year I think we have ever had to face as a married couple.

On December 31, 2007 K-hubby was laid off from his job, and sat at home for four months trying to find a way to get back into the workforce, get through his depression, and start making his way again.  I feel for any person that has gone through this because he was not the man I married.  He was a shell of himself, wandering around the house like a ghost.  We had to take money out of his retirement, and it still wasn’t enough.  He finally started working again, but it was second shift all the way in South Philly.  I never saw him and it was starting to feel like I was raising K-baby on my own.  When the stove broke, I had to find a way to fix it.  When Cocoa passed away (Cocoa was my cat.  Told you it was a bad year), I had to grieve alone, and try not to wake the baby.  We fought a flea infestation like I have never seen before.  Bills fell further and further behind. 

Still, there were small miracles.  When I recieved a repo notice for my truck, K-hubby got an extra paycheck.  When it seemed like our cards were going to charge off, he got a better job, close to home, with all the overtime he wanted to work.  When I thought my truck was going to run out of gas and the small car broke down, the gas prices dropped.  When I knew we couldn’t make rent and buy groceries, our landlord let us pay the rent in two checks, broken up through the month.  K-baby didn’t get sick.  Not once.  There were no extra medical bills, besides the stitches and prescriptions that come along with having a heavy equipment mechanic for a husband.  When I decided our marriage was over, hubby woke up and is still trying to get back to the man he was.

I guess I need to post this today because things have been getting a little weird around the house.  I am terrified that I will open the bank account and it will be overdraft, K-hubby has been really moody, and we are just at each others’ throats right now.  I couldn’t figure out why until K-hubby pointed out that we were coming up on the one-year anniversary of our lives being permanently changed, and our Puritan hardworking values being torn down and the hard work that it has taken to build them back up.  We lived so many years figuring that if we worked hard and we were honest and direct that we would be the last ones standing.  This year has proven to us that there is no such comfort, but it has also shown us that we can still power through the hard times, wallow in shit and come out smelling like a rose.

Tuesdays are usually for spinning.

Unless you get a virus.

And I don’t mean in the belly.

While I was away for the weekend visiting my brother (more on that later), Knithubby was playing around on the internets and wham!  Windows started flying open, nothing would stay, just flicker on and off…my quick thinking hubby grabbed the main power cord and off it went, but the damage was done.  The virus got into our Windows program, so the start bar would bounce on and off, icons would randomly disappear, and I couldn’t make it better.  I called Gateway, who informed me that my one-year limited warranty was expired, but they could help me for the low, low price of $59.95 for 30 minutes.  Are you freaking kidding me?  I don’t think so.  Monday night I tried to manually find and extract the virus, getting only 2 hours of sleep and having no success.  Last night I updated my anti-virus program, ran a sweep, found FOUR virus threads with 174 traces throughout, put the offenders in quarantine, and did a little google-fu to find a way to get rid of the interloper.  I found that MS Windows OneCare offers a 90 day free trial, so I installed the program (with broadband it only takes about 15-20 minutes), and let it do its thang.  In 5 minutes I was virus-free.  No lie.  I was so happy, I celebrated by going straight to bed.  I didn’t even correct the awful, awful Kitchener job I did on a pair of Christmas socks while at knit night on Monday.  That can be taken care of tonight.  Also, no spinning, but I have a new spindle on its way to me, so I imagine I will be spending a disproportionate amount of time this weekend making sweet spindley love to it.  (TMI?  Not to my spinning friends, it’s not!)

I have been working diligently on my Christmas knitting, but I must confess that my list is ever-changing and developing in response to my psychological needs.  For instance, Baby K was supposed to get a new sweater, but he will likely get a hat now.  My mother was going to get the February Lady sweater, which was downgraded to the Friday scarf, but will now likely be a pair of mittens, but in fair-isle, to give it that added value we all so desperately crave in our Christmas gifts.  I don’t know why we as knitters worry so much about the added value, most of our recipients’ don’t know the difference either way.  I mean, will my 6 year old niece understand the difference between a fair-isle or cabled tam versus a bulky weight wool cap?  Not likely, she is a good egg and will love it and wear it either way, but I know.  I know I didn’t do the absolute most of my knitting ability on this cap.  So what?  I still took the time to knit her a gift, right?  It’s just not the same, and don’t ask me why, because I don’t know.

R had his open-heart surgery on Tuesday last week.  Everything went so well, even the doctors were amazed.  They said the aneurysm in the valve they replaced was so swollen that the valve was paper-thin.  It was a flat out miracle that he hadn’t already dropped dead.  That is the sort of medical anomaly that amazes me, I mean, somehow his heart held on long enough to get a replacement.  And the replacement valve itself!  It’s artificial, so it’s supposed to live for, like, 40 or 50 years!  Amazing!  He was sitting in his recliner on Sunday and I could hear it ticking (sounds like a wristwatch).  Amazing!  One of my buddies on Ravelry sent me a pattern for a knitted heart, and if I have time I am going to make it for him for Christmas…scratch that.  I AM making him one for Christmas.  Top of my list.  If anyone deserves added value this year, it’s him.

How quickly we forget.

Did you know it’s less than 2 months till Christmas?  Did you know I’m a knitter, and subsequently feel this overwhelming need to knit everyone gifts?  Last weekend I put together a comprehensive list of everyone I’m knitting for, and this is my knitting list to date, without recipient’s names because some of them may be reading.

Monkey socks-done!

Monkey socks-one sock done!

Marigold socks-one sock done!

Footies-done!

Juneau earflap hat

Man’s hat

Two boys’ hats

Tam

Girl’s hat and mitts

Baby sweater

February Lady Sweater downgraded to Friday scarf.  I may be ambitious, but I’m not nuts.

Sweater for knitbaby

Homespun scarf

So, not so bad!  Socks are very time consuming for me, and I only have two socks to knit!  Hopefully will have pictures as I progress.  Also, I did finish the baby sweater mentioned last week, but I still need to sew on the buttons and block it.  The baby arrived first, so it will be going in the mail Saturday to the happy Mom and Dad!

Along Comes Trouble.

So I’m cruising along life’s highway, trying to get the bills caught up, spending time with my family, constantly forgetting to pay the electric and trash, and BAM!  A phone call to let me know my brother had a stroke and is in the hospital getting tests done.  My brother is about 11 years older than me, so he became a state trooper when I was 9.  I remember how proud I was at his graduation when he walked across the stage in his dress uniform.  I would brag to all my friends that MY BROTHER was a state policeman, the best in the state.  I also remember the meetings we had to have as a family with other troopers who made sure we were prepared should we ever get the call.  If you have family in law enforcement or the military, you know THE CALL.  (Cue ominous music of doooom.)  Anytime I would get a phone call in the middle of the night, anytime someone started a conversation with, “Your brother R,” anytime we couldn’t get hold of him, I would prepare myself for the words.  Lately, he’s been having a pretty rough time of it.  He just had a baby in July (number four), who’s been diagnosed with failure to thrive.  They’ve had to drive him to AI DuPont hospital, get specialty formula, the works.  I know his stress has been at an all time high, and he shoulders it all in silence.  He has never been one to complain about his circumstances or want a lot of attention.  When he had a knee surgery a few years ago he didn’t want visitors or anyone coddling him.  He’s just that way.  So, when I got the phone call last night I was certain I was going to hear the words, either about him or the baby.  It was actually a relief to hear that it was a stroke.  How weird is that?  I was grateful that was all it was.  R is only 42, in great shape, runs marathons, eats better than anyone I know, and still this got him.  I just don’t even know what to think right now.

Brand New Day

Since things have been a little gloomy lately, I’ve decided to start fresh…new blog, new theme, etc.

Knithubby got a new job!  He started last week and seems to like it so far.  He gets to work with one of his best friends since high school, so I know he enjoys that.  Also, his boss has no trouble letting guys work all the overtime they want, so hopefully that will really help us with our (very) past due bills.  Best of all he only has to drive across town-so no more enormous gas expenses!  I’m not sure if I told you before, but he was working night shift in South Philly and it was really hurting our funds and our marriage, but there was no other work, so we stuck it out.  It is great to have him home at night to help with the baby and other chores.  I can actually sit down before 9 pm now!

Knitbaby got his 1 year pictures last Saturday (a month late, but better late than never).  I can’t believe he is over a year old now!  It honestly seems like yesterday that K-hub and I were struggling to get pregnant-look at us now!  He went through a (thankfully) brief biting stage, but seems to have given that up for tantrums.  My mom thinks he is going through his terrible twos early.  Let’s hope so because I certainly don’t want him to get any worse.  The biggest problem is that he gets angry because I won’t let him do things like climb up on the table or eat an old cheerio he found on the floor!  Um, get as angry as you want, dude, you’re still not allowed to do that.  So, because there’s no resolution he just gets madder and madder, until finally he is prostrate on the floor, screaming and crying.  Blah.  Oh, and he said his first cuss.  K-hub and I were trying to decide on dinner, and I recommended a frozen pizza K-hub said, “I don’t want to eat that shit.”  And K-babe said, clear as a bell, “Shit!”  I guess we’re all on our best behavior from now on!