Throwback Thursday: Willow and Caddie

Willow and Caddie 1, originally uploaded by jochibi.

We were watching the dog show on TV while having our Thanksgiving dinner, talking about the dogs we would like to have and the NARDs (not a real dog). It was all in fun, but it made me think of Caddie - Willow's first friend and first dog. This picture was taken 6 years ago, and Caddie passed away a little less than a year later. We were so worried when we were pregnant because Caddie had never been around babies or small children except for short visits from the cousins. However, as far as Caddie was concerned, Willow was *her* baby and she rarely left Willow's side, even when Willow tried riding her like a horse as a toddler. Many nights I would wake up in the middle of the night with Willow crying, and Caddie would already be at her door, as if asking me what was taking me so long! On this Thanksgiving Day, I am thankful to have had such wonderful animals in my life.

I See You There

I couldn't find any of my point and shoot digital cameras this afternoon (I have 3 of them, so not knowing where any of them are is pretty sad!), so I tried taking a selfie of me and my new haircut and color with my DSLR camera... to mixed results:

My arm just isn't long enough to get the camera far enough to do anything other than get a close up of the side of my face.  I toyed with the idea of setting up the tripod... but that would have been too much work.  That and I am not entirely sure how to sure how to use the timer on the DSLR.  Yes, I have had this camera for over a year now.  Yes, I have a pretty comprehensive manual.  No, I have not read through it other than to figure out how to use the video function.

Then I remembered where my Nikon camera was (diaper bag!), so I pulled it out and snapped this one:

About 1.5" cut off, and dyed a coppery red color.  I'm really pleased with it.  The last time I had my hair colored in the salon was right before I went on vacation in August, and the colorist messed it up and my hair was really dark.  I much prefer it this way.  I think it is a bit brighter than in this picture - but today is a very overcast and rainy day.

Sometimes You Just Need

DSCN0634, originally uploaded by jochibi.

This Kid

IMG_0995, originally uploaded by jochibi.

Piper has been cracking me up recently. She has been fixated with the idea that she has a brother - I know what most of you are thinking - that she wants a baby brother (and trust me, that is not happening!) - but no... according to her, her brother is older than her. And he took her to the hospital when she was hurt at a soccer game. She also says she has a daughter. Who is a boy. This kid has some pretty wild thoughts and ideas - talking to her always makes me smile.

Saturday Solitude

IMG_1028, originally uploaded by jochibi.

Throwback Thursday: Thanksgiving 2003

DSCF0054.jpg, originally uploaded by jochibi.

I know Thanksgiving is still a week away, but if I wait for this one for Throwback Thursday next week, I may just forget.

Despite the Christmas tree in the background, this picture was taken around Thanksgiving when we went to visit our friends Gara and Asami. Willow was about 16 months old, and Gara and Asami's three boys weren't even a sparkle in their daddy's eye yet. I can't believe how young we all look!

My Favorite Part of My Day

 My days are busy. Up at 5:30am, shower, drink coffee, eat something, take Piper to daycare, work work work, come home, make dinner, get Piper ready for bed, spend time with Willow, knit... and then go to bed.

But it isn't sleep that is my favorite part of my day.  It's snuggling in bed with Andrew and having him sleep while read in the dark off my Nook HD+ until the wee hours of the morning.  Sweet blissful quiet.

And then morning comes again too soon.  

So... About This Daily Blogging Thing.

I've been so long out of practice that I have missed a day or two here. I'm trying! I started a new test knit last night, and I was all engrossed in the pattern and lost track of time.  I also tried one of these last night for the first time:



Seriously yummy!  I was a little hesitant because it is pear cider, and while I don't mind pears, they really aren't my favorite fruit.  My favorite hard cider to date has been Angry Orchard Apple Ginger Cider, but I think this Fox Barrel Pear Cider really gives it a run for its money.

Finished Object: A Time To Reap Mitts

Aren't these gorgeous?

 

 These mitts were a test knit for my extremely talented friend, Melissa, and I have to say I am happy that they are one of the first lace pieces I have knit without having to rip them back! Well, I did have to rip part of them back, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the lace!

 

 The mitts are intended to be slouchy and feminine at the same time.

 

 And as far as I am concerned, they are a perfect match for Willow.

The Particulars:

Pattern: A Time to Reap by Melissa Schaschwary
Yarn: Three Isish Girls Kells Sport in Riley
Needles: Size 2 and 3 Knitpicks DPNs and 16" circulars (I knit them with 2 circulars like I do with socks)
Modifications: I made these for Willow, so I deliberately shortened the sleeve length and length between thumb and last lace portion. Then I inadvertantly shortened the length of the last garter stitch portion by reading the wrong part of the pattern. Design feature, people!
Would I knit this pattern again? Absolutely! I want a pair of these for me!

 

 Wouldn't you want a pair, too?!

Girls on the Run

Willow ran her third 5K race in a month this morning, and it was such a positive, fun experience. Willow's friend, Amanda, has participated in Girls on the Run for a few years now, but until this autumn, it hadn't really worked with our schedule. The girls met and trained twice a week for 7 weeks, ran practice runs, worked on their interpersonal relationships, and this all culminated in a 5K race.

 Here's a pic of the girls before the race started:

 This is how they warmed up for their race:

 

 Here is the best picture I took all day:

 

 (Even Willow said that one was a keeper when she saw it on the camera screen.)

 Here is Willow running and not looking at the camera:

 

 I was peeved about that one - I had a great shot lined up, and some asshat came up and just stood in front of me. After I freaked at him, that was the only shot I had time enough to take.

 And here are the girls as they finished up their race:

 

 And just so everyone knows -

 

(Sorry - I know I didn't blog yesterday - I was under the weather and was not on the computer.)

Throwback Thursday: Jo at 27

I'm going to hazard to say this picture was taken 1999/2000. The background was my office at Boulder Country Day School and I know when we left Boulder in 2001 my hair was down to my shoulders again. Compare and contrast to my selfie from yesterday...

 

 That was a super cute hairdo, but definitely needed to be done every morning!

Forty-One Things I Like...

... in honor of my 41st birthday (in no particular order).

 

1.  That I am damn cute for 41. Being short helps.
2.  Toddlers who sleep through the night.
3.  Mint soap
4.  Doctor Who
5.  Augustbird yarn
6.  Going to bookstores with Willow.
7.  Autumn leaves.
8.  My DSLR camera
9.  French Toast
10. Super hero movies
11. Tegan and Sara
12. Lip gloss
13. Clinique perfume
14. Spooning with Andrew.
15. Business trips
16. My job
17. Vanilla lattes
18. Texting
19. Knitting
20. Learning new things.
21. My Nook HD+
22. Cherry Tomatoes
23. Swimming
24. Baking cookies.
25. History documentaries
26. Getting my hair washed by someone else.
27. Reading to Piper.
28. Driving
29. Vancouver Island
30. Tuesday SnB Night
31. Getting packages in the mail.
32. Land's End clothes
33. My sunroom
34. Entering book blog contests.
35. Hot spinach and artichoke dip
36. Watermelon
37. Yoga pants
38. Getting pedicures.
39. Backpack purses
40. Ravelry
41. My french press

A Little Snow Makes Me Happy

When I was little, one of my best friends was a girl down the street named Lisa. Lisa and I were in the same grade, and her birthday was a few weeks after mine. I remember it would invariably rain on my birthday in mid-November, and then snow on her birthday in early December. I have a really clear memory of being at a sleepover birthday party at her house and we were watching the Sesame Street Christmas special (this was at the end of the 70s) and it was snowing on Sesame Street. All of a sudden Lisa's mom, Gail, points out that it was snowing outside their house. It all seemed so magical... and in truth, I was a little jealous because I always wanted it to snow on my birthday. My friends here don't understand this sometimes. They think that because I grew up in Canada that we must have had snow all the time. Not true, especially the Lower Mainland (Vancouver and the surrounding towns and cities) - we were more likely to have rain and sleet than anything else. In fact, I have experienced more snow in Delaware than I have anywhere else I have lived - and Andrew and I lived in Colorado for 3 years!

We had our first little bit of snow this morning - barely there flurries,  but it made me happy. My birthday isn't until tomorrow, but it is close enough for me.

Stuck in a Movie For 5 Days

Oh, you are going to laugh at this one...

 Today's NaBloPoMo blog prompt:

 If you had to be trapped inside a movie for 5 days, which movie would you pick?

This was one of my favorite movies as a child, and I still get all excited when it comes on television (usually around this time of year - I guess some people think of it as a Christmas movie).  My Mom even gave me my own dvd copy a few years ago, so I can watch it whenever I want now.  The singing, the dancing - it is all so much fun.  I guess as a child I didn't think too much about the actual abduction part of anything like that. And I love how utterly fake the backgrounds are in the movie during the avalanche scenes.  I just looked the movie up on Wikipedia - I hadn't realized it was nominated for an Oscar for 1954 Best Picture!

What's not to like - a movie with seven good-looking red-headed men...

See, maybe they should do a remake of this musical and then cast Tom Hiddleston as one of the brothers:

He's a bit too young to play Adam, maybe he is more of a Gideon - but I am sure he can sing and dance!  

I'd go see it!

My Mom Makes Me Things!

 I think I have mentioned this before, but no, my Mom didn't teach me how how to knit. Not for lack of trying - more like my lack of interest in learning when I still lived at home. I wished she had taught me - I've kind of cobbled my technique together over the last few years and while I knit fast and have very even tension... my creative yarn-holding makes it very difficult for me to learn new cast ons. But Mom is a fantastic knitter, and from time to time, I'll send my Mom a pic from Ravelry and ask her if she thinks she could make something for me. She hasn't said no yet! Damn! I probably just jinxed myself by writing that. 

The shawl above was designed by my talented friend, Melissa of Another Dandi Day and you can find the pattern on Ravelry: Bradbury Shawl. And, right now, since it is Melissa's birthday month (mine, too!), she is offering 25% off all her patterns on Ravelry with the code Birthday Bash until the end of November. Go check them out!

Beaucoup de Books

 Look what I bought today for a grand total of $2.50!

 Books 2 - 6 of Vicki Pettersson's Signs of the Zodiac series. I already had book #1 at home, so I was quite happy to find all of these in my library's for sale section at 50 cents a piece. The spines don't even appear to be cracked, so I wonder if someone donated them unread. Looking at the covers, I am curious why the publishers went in a different direction with the covers and artwork for the last three books in the series.  The first three had very specific artwork and style, then #4 (City of Souls) has a different font, and then books #5 and #6 are different again.  Wait a second - I just realized there are 3 different publishers going on here as well - Avon, EOS, and Harper Voyager.  Perhaps that had something to do with it.

I don't frequently buy paperback or hardcover books anymore (I know my sister, Teri, is groaning out loud at this because I used to send her all of my read books).  I almost exclusively read on my Nook or Kindle - I am really not sure what it is, but I read much faster on my e-readers as well.  However, I just couldn't pass up this deal.  Happy reading!

Dream Jobs

 Don't get me wrong, I love my job. So much so that it was nearing 5pm on a Friday night and I found myself wishing I could stay and continue working on a project because I was getting to an interesting part where I had to think up some recommendations and potential outcomes for a situation, and I love doing that. But I started to think about what I would like to do if I wasn't in my job, and I came up with these things:

1) Book Editor 
I read many, many books - if you look on my sidebar, I am within 5 books of my goal of 120 books for the year, and there are still six weeks to go in 2013. I also have a degree in Linguistics, and my study of Linguistics was heavy in grammar and semantics. This is a good thing and a bad thing - good because it makes me great at my job (writing and interpreting contracts and rules), but also bad because I notice every little mistake and it can really detract from my enjoyment of books. I have actually put books down and not finished them because of *how* they are written, which is too bad because sometimes the stories are promising.

2) Auditor
I love digging stuff up and finding out the whys and hows of things.  Luckily, this is part of my job as well, but not something I get to do as often as I would like.  I have also had the opportunity to do developmental assignments with the Audit Group at my company, and I have always enjoyed those audits.  Unfortunately for me, most auditors I know come from an accounting background - which, while understandable on one hand because many audits are financial audits - but on the other hand, that isn't the only kind of audit there is, and some of the other audits I have been involved with have required more investigative skills and soft people skills to get to the bottom of things.

3) Attorney
I add this one with the knowledge that this will never happen and I am A-OK with that.  I saw Andrew through law school when we were first married, and it isn't something that I am interested in repeating.  However, I do find law immensely interesting, especially in the government area that is my specialty.  I know have friends with opinions on both sides of Health Care Reform, but this legislation has made my job so much more interesting in the last few years.  I love grappling with this and parsing out what works and doesn't work, and getting to discuss this with other experts in the field.

There you go - and I am interested to hear from my friends.  What would your dream jobs be and why?

Throwback Thursday: Willow and Soren

 This picture is 5 years old - I can't believe it. Willow and Soren were preschool buddies, and when they were very little, people used to think they were brother and sister. Soren's mom, Jenny, and I used to joke that we should just plan their wedding now and save on the booking of the hall 20 years down the road. Unfortunately, the two of them drifted apart when they went to different elementary schools, and they haven't seen each other in a few years.

Wretched Wednesday

I am not having a very good day. Let's look at this pretty rose from my Gram's garden and try to reach some zen.

 

 I have nothing. I had to resort to using today's blog prompt, which I kind of had to snicker at when I saw it:

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? 

 It's kind of niggling at the back of my mind that I have answered this before and I said I wish I was taller. Well, I have a different answer today. I wish I wasn't so quick and uncontrollably to anger.  My parents and family may have a different view, but I don't think I was a particularly volatile child.  In fact, until I was in my mid-20s, I kept most of my anger bottled in.  Sublimated.  That probably wasn't very good for me, either.  But it's harder when you have children - especially when one child legitimately makes me angry, and I lash out verbally at the uninvolved child because her toddler meltdown happens to intersect with Mama's warpath.  I feel like I have such a short tether these days between Willow's tween cluelessness and Piper's nascent independence.  And poor Andrew gets caught up in all of this, probably wondering most days just what to expect when I walk through the door.

I think I need to go snuggle with Piper.

French Kiss

French Kiss, originally uploaded by jochibi.

This was my work group on Halloween this year. In the back is Starchild Ryan, and in the front from left to right is Demon Rebecca, Spaceman Jo, and Catman Tami. We didn't win the costume contest, but I think we did damn well for an idea we lifted off Facebook and only decided on 24 hours before the party. Even if some people just thought we were mimes...

In Which I am Thankful for Alicia and Melissa

If you are friends with me on Facebook, you probably see me frequently sharing and praising the designs of my friends, Alicia and Melissa. I met both of these lovely women over three years ago on Ravelry in a 'Due in January 2011' due date group. I want to thank them for bringing me out of my knitting shell. This past year, I have had the opportunity to test knit (or just knit if I missed the test call) many of their designs, and not only have Willow and Piper both benefited from these tests, but I can't even remember the last time I made so many things for myself that weren't socks or other accessories. There is a certain fear when you are a larger size or curvy that nothing is going to fit no matter how you try to adjust the pattern. Both Alicia and Melissa's patterns come in larger sizes, but on top of that, are simply written as well as easy to customize when you want something a little different. Here is a sampling of things I have knit for them over the last year:

Piper's Magpie Redux:
 

 My Backshore sweater:
 

 Piper's Countryline vest:
 

 My East End Sweater:
 

 Willow's Lighthouse Keeper's Wife sweater:
 

 Piper's Sebago Cove 2.0:
 

 My Sturgeon Sweater:
 

 Piper's Sebago Cove 1.0:
 

 My Earthen Hat:
 

 I don't remember a year where I ever knit three sweaters for myself, much less three of anything that I love to wear as much as these three sweaters. I urge you to check out both of their blogs - Alicia's Two Little Plums and Melissa's Another Dandi Day and see their patterns for yourself.

Book Review: Hyperbole and a Half

Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is not the type of book that I normally read, but having read Bosh's blog before and especially having enjoyed her posts on depression, I picked up the book when I saw it in B&N. I am so glad I did. Well, first I had to pry the book out of my husband's hands - I made the mistake of telling him about the blog as we left the store, and since I was driving, he was able to start reading it while I drove home. I have not had such a visceral reaction to a book in such a long time - within a a few minutes of opening the book, I was laughing so hard I had tears streaming down my face, and I was afraid I was going to wake up my kids. Bosh's posts run the gamut from silly and irreverent to stark and heart-breaking, and so many times I found myself wondering, "How does she know what I am thinking?!!?" I especially enjoyed the segments concerning Bosh's letters to herself as a child, and the parts about her dogs. I wholeheartedly recommend this book - especially to those of us who spend too much time in our heads and let it get the better of us.

View all my reviews

First Family 5K

 This morning, Andrew, Willow, and I walked the Brandywine Y's first 5K race - our first 5K as a family. Piper was there, too - and you can see by the look on her face how much she enjoyed it... She was okay for the first 20 minutes, but then after that she wasn't interested in looking in other people's leftover Halloween decorations and the pretty foliage. All in all, we were timed at 53:45, which was a little more than 17 minutes per mile. This was slower than my time of 51 minutes a few weeks ago, but then again, I was pushing 50 pounds of toddler and stroller in this race, so I will accept the extra 3 minutes! I really hope we can do this again as a family soon - although I don't know how much longer we will be able to manage this with Piper in a stroller (sneaker bugger knows how to undo her seatbelt straps!)

It's That Time Again - NaBloPoMo!

You know, I have to look that up every time - I can never remember the abbreviation.

 

 It's getting harder and harder to maintain this blog - other social media outlets are so much easier to maintain and quicker to update. But, I'm going to make the effort to blog every day in November for National Blog Posting Month, even if it is just a quick snapshot to let you know something that happened that day.

 I don't have any big creative thing planned today - it's just a start. The picture above was taken last weekend when we were at the final day of the PA Rennfaire - I love autumn for the changing colors, and this leaf was just sitting on the floorboards of the place we were sitting at for lunch. Piper picked it up and carried it around for a while afterward and I don't think she realized how fragile it was and how easily it would disintegrate in her hands. But once she figured out that, she made it her mission to crunch as many leaves as possible. Yes, we still call her Piperzilla for a reason.

 

 Me and Piper painting a pumpkin at the Rennfaire. Or rather, me trying to keep Piper from getting paint all over every surface but the pumpkin. Andrew said Jackson Pollock would have been proud.