Purls O' Wisconsin

So my mother is home. I ended up not calling her back in hospital, mainly because I am just so very....done.  And also, the crying..it serves no purpose but to froth her up. But she called me this afternoon and was all business, sounding in good health again. They got home after midnight last night. She will be needing home oxygen for some time and she  avoided my questions about that  aside from saying she would be getting it. 

In typical fashion, the woman who had desperately sobbed down my phone line on Monday could not be arsed to devote her attention to me for 10 damn minutes on the phone when other people were there. She kept speaking to someone else in her house while on the phone with me. That's charming. Really. While still trying to make small talk with me. She aske me what I was up to and I told her my car was being repaired and it was $500 I han't planned on spending today  (i thought it was universally acceptable to bitch about the cost of car repairs?)and she was just like "oh, um, yeah" I could hear her talking to someone else while I answered her. So rude.

And now onto some random bits and pieces:

• I have been to Bayshore Mall three, count 'em, THREE times since Sunday. Dayum. The Man has been 4 times, he had to take his ipod touch in to the apple shop last night to try and suss out some software glitch with alarm and headphone volume and then i tuned out and whatever. It's logged. For those of youwho have not been subjected to Bayshore, it's a huge, pretty outdoor mall that is set up so it's like driving through a small town. Quaint. Except it is a CLUSTERFUCK because it's like a tiny small town with 1 street that is busy as hell 100% of the time.  Tonight when we were there they were doing hayrack rides!!! Because it's not shitty enough to try and drive through there without involving a horde of children and livestock?! Good Hell!!!
• I was doing new yoga audiobook last night before bedtime, some pranayamas (breathing exercises) and imagine my surprise when all of a sudden the lady on the ipod was telling me to lift my pelvic floor. WTF? Why does breathing need to involve my vajayjay?! Is this normal or did I download some sort of freaky vagina yoga? I was pretty sure I knew what pelvic floor lifting was but I googled it today to make sure (I was right) and the site said to be sure to not hold it for more than 8 seconds. What happens after 8 seconds? Can you break your vagina? Holy crap. It scared me a little.
• My car started making a noise last week or so. It sounded awful and got worse when I made a left turn, and stopped when I made a right turn. I checked Car Talk and asked google and they told me it was a wheel bearing. Which isn't something you can let go. So into the shop she went for 2 days. Not a wheel bearing. It was a piece of the brake heat shield rubbing on the left, but it was possibly caused by the ball joint boots which were going bad, typical wear for a car with 135k miles on it. So, about $200 more than I wanted/planned to spend, but equally as important. And while getting that information, I may have uttered the most amazingly grown up words of my life. "Since you have it there and have the wheels off, would you please look at the brakes, they haven't been a problem but winter is coming." The back brakes needed an adjustment and a cleaning for $30, but they are all in fine shape. SWEET. They also did a general safety inspection and it's all good.
• Except...lol....on my drive home I could not make the radio work beucase it is the original Honda part with an anti-theft device. Here is how that works: if you lose power, the radio will not start until you enter a code. How you get that code is to call your dealer with the serial number on the back of the radio. Or, conveniently, take it to Honda to pay $100 for them to take it out and look up the code. Are you kidding me? So, me, the OWNER of the car cannot get the code without paying, but the cocksucker who is stupid (and desperate) enough to steal a standard honda stereo has all the information he needs to make it work. Screw that. If I have to pay $100, I'm just getting a new ipod compatible stereo. An no, there is no sticker in my glove box, on inside the main fuse box in the engine compartment, or in my trunk, on on the outside edges of the glove box, or in the coin tray and I do not have an ashtray in my car so it's not on the back of that. I had the information with all of my car information. IN MY BASEMENT in a filing cabinet 2.5 feet off the ground. So um..yeah. I called the dealer that sold the car to my inlaws and explained, and the service guy looked it up in the computer but said the code wasn't there. It was a long shot, it was 10 years ago. My last try is to call Honda directly and see if they can help me without a serial number for the part. And I will be calling the mechanic to ask if they have any avice, but if they did put the power saver thingie in the power outlet not even called a lighter in this car) when they disconnected the battery, I think it is faulty so I can't honestly ask them to pay for a repair like that since it's not actually their problem. It seems frivolous, but a car radio is really one of those things I think I must have.
•  Oh yes, it's on. Sunday.
• I am forcing The Man to dress up as Billy Mays tomorrow. Dead Billy Mays if I get my way.
• I am going to bed now! Happy Halloween!!!!

i was all set for a fun and frothy post with crafty goodness. but you're nt getting that. You're getting angst today.

My mom went on a cruise.
She got sick her last day.
Since Sunday morning she has been in a hospital in Ft. Lauderale with pneumonia. Those playing the home game know she hae 4 heart attacks last year (but lied to me and said it was one, and very very minor and then threw it in my face a couple of months ago that it was 4 and they were NOT minor), so you know, this isn't good. It's not viral or bacterial, though, it's from mold in her ship cabin. The cabin she thought smelled like raw sewage..and yet...she slept in it for a week.

I know she is sick, really really sick. They didn't contact me until Sunday evening, because my mom left her cell phone at home in Naperville, IL and apparently told no one about my new  unlisted phone number. Surprise! Of course, this was my fault somehow. How inconsiderate of me to change my phone number 6 weeks before they went on vacation, make sure they knew about it and not make sure they ALL put it in their cell phones. yeah, i'm a total bitch like that. So she called me on Sunday night and we spoke briefly. And we spoke on Monday when I called her , because I knew she was very sick and i figure I could giver her that, you know. I could make a phone call and maintain a distance.

She was suposed to come hom yesterday, on Monday I asked her if she would be traveling with oxygen. She said there was no need for that at all, she was fine. Well, there is a need. She wasn't allowed to come home yesteray because...they want her to travel with oxygen now. And you cannot just get a portable tank willy nilly and take it on an airplane. There is a lot of paperwork involved. So as of now, they hope to get her home Thursday, which makes her desperately sad.

But, she is my mother, so there is more to this. She has enough energy to be doing some game playing while in hospital. But my aunt emailed me about it last night an clued me in on something I had no idea about. My mother has COPD.
I had no idea. Oh, I suspected something was wrong with her lungs, because she can never seem to breathe. But every time she speaks to me she gets so damn mad at me I thought that was why she was wheezing and puffing. I did know she was having edema issues, but when i had asked about that she told me it was her kidneys and was from her heart attack. She lied.
It's from the emphysema. And since I googled it last night, it appears that she has pretty severe COPD from the symptoms I know about  and that's just well...it is what it is. I know you don't live very long with severe COPD, it's how my granny died and frankly my granny was a far stronger woman than my mother will ever be even in her late 70s. My mom turned 60 three weeks ago and has no interest in fighting this since she has continued to smoke after being diagnosed, even thought she has a nebulizer at home full time and you know...her heart attack fest last year.

And again, she did not tell me about this at all. And in fact, lied to me about some of her symptoms. I can't wrap my head around her motivation fully right now. There is a tiny part of me that thinks "Oh, she was protecting me" but that's not true. She was using it as currency, her serious illness was her Hail Mary Pass and I think she has been biding her time to throw it in my face. Waiting for the perfect moment for me to lose control and yell at her and then "hello, how can you be so mean to a dying woman?!" Surprise! She is willing to go that far to manipulate me to get what she wants. And I am slightly astounded because, even for her, that's fucking crazy.
And I don't know quite how she ended up so broken and why she is so willing to try and break me. But I o see that the stronger I have gotten, the more desperate she has gotten. And she gets much more willing to hurt me deeply. For what? To be closer to me?
I pity her, but today I don't feel sad for her anymore. I feel angry that she is so willing to do this. She has broken things so badly and really led me to think it was all my fault and that I was selfish and I was the problem. I don't know why she needs to push me away, but it has worked, the only problem is that it worked better than she planned and now her efforts to pull me back in don't work anymore.

On Monday she cried and cried on the phone when I called her. I was asking her to stop crying because it's just not good for her right now and she carried on saying she was so scared and thought she was going to die and how she needed me in her life and understood things better now. And it's all manipulation.
I think I am expected to call her today and I really don't want to. I'm not feeling too anxious about it, I just really don't want to hear her voice. I don't want anything to do with her.

And sometime i will tell you about my sister, because she has dug rock bottom even deeper than I thought possible.

"i do not care about birthdays, i never remember birthdays or any of that suff, they are just another day, they mean nothng to me! You know this is how I am. I have never in my life forgotten your birthday!"

Allow me to translate this for those of you who do not speak crazymother:

"If it is my birthday, I care. A lot."

Instead of posting a facebook message, I bought a card. I like cards. I'm a card person, I like the personal touch of sending a borthday card. I didn't send it on time, I was debating sending it at all. My husband kept urging me to ignore it. I really thought about that. I thought about it too long and the card did not get mailed on Saturday. Then Sunday evening I started to feel sickly, Monday I was downright miserable with the nutmeg migraine, tuesday the pain was gone but the dizziness and icky feeling lingered. I could have called on the phone, but I won't lie: I didn't want to talk to her. I felt too siclkly to deal with drama and since my whole plan is to not engage her, I knew it would be pointless. She would find a crack in my wall and I would fight back and 1. I will never ever win and 2. it was her birthday.  

So I still had this card. I ran errands yesterday: post office to drop off a larger Etsy order that was insured, so I wanted a receipt for the time of mailing from the AWESOME Fred Johns Station post office where it is clean and smells nice and the people are NICE and HELPFUL and the patrons never smell like beer, or ass, or worse. Perhaps you thought these qualities were inherent in a postal outlet. Go hang out at the Hampton Post Office and then you,too, will sing the praises of the glory of the Fred Johns Station on Silver Spring and 91st. Mmmkay? I forgot to throw the card in my handbag. Then I ran to the market. I grocery shop all the time these days. Like at the real grocery store. I know. Just the small Sentry on Lisbon and 92nd, but it's still kind of a big goddamn deal for me and every time I go it's another bit of victory, it's another checkmark in the positive experience column. But don't let me get sidetracked....

I got home with my groceries, put them away and checked my email to see if Paypal has decided if a payment I got on Monday is legit or not so I can ship her stitchmarkers. They have not (which is a whole other pile of WTF) Then because it is to me like crack to, well..my sister...I hopped on facebook.
And after about 2 seconds of weeding through mafia wars and farmtown notices ( I don't play, but i get everyone's notices...) I realized my mom's crap was gone from the highlights sidebar.
Yep, she unfriended me. I guess it is because I did not make a big public to-do about her birthday? She did not give me a reason, and I'm not asking for one. And I noticed it hours after she did it rather than taking 7 days. I guess she thought she would fix my wagon and make me grovel for her attention and approval.

I went ahead and ran and dropped the card in the mail though, I jotted a note on the envelope about it being late since I was sick with a migraine since it was the truth. I see that's a mixed message since I feel much more relieved than hurt by her petty behavior. But I also know that it will come up at some point that I went out of my way to hurt her by ignoring her birthday (oh, i know! the crazy..it burrrrrns) and the truth was that I was just unwell.
But since this time it was her choice, I'm letting it lie and won't be adding her back in even on the off chance that she feels silly when she gets a card today or tomorrow and adds me back. I find it slightly amusing, in a weird way. I think it's just rich, really. She hasn't been able to get a rise out of me thus far  through either sending me private messages saying I should stop being mad at her "for my own sake" (holy WTF, batman?!) or posting things on my wall that have hidden meanings so I guess this was how she felt she could get her big dose of "Vitamin Victim" this week. I think it is more likely she will send the card back as return to sender if she is feeling this petty, but if she does, it's her choice. I only have to feel OK about my actions, and I feel ok about wishing her well even though it was late. Too late, I gues.

Oh and guess what made me sick? Probably a slice of cake my husband picked up for our anniversary on Sunday two days before her birthday. Did she acknowledge my anniversary in any way whatsoever? Of course not. See, she cracks me up.  I started reading this book last night called Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers and um, yeah.... I'll be good enough. I only have to be good enough for me.  Also, I got a brand new chocolate brown hoodie from the UPS guy about 15 minutes ago. I love it. So I put it on right away, working on that not saving thing....:

So in internet terms I gues I am now dispwn3d.

 

I'm a saver. I save the best bite for last, save my favorite part of a project, save my favorite tv shows on the dvr until I can watch them all by myself with no one interrupting me. I am not so good at saving money, and the virginity ship sailed in 1990, but other than those two instances, I like to save things.

On the one hand, it sounds nice, because I have a treasure that is special. In reality, it usually blows.
Like the perfect white button down shirt I bought in college. From The Gap. I didn't really fit into anything at The Gap since they didn't do plus sizes, but I did find the shirt there and it fit and I splurged a whole $34 on it. I think I wore it twice. Once for a class and once on a date with some dork from MSOE who did his damndest to get me out of it the rest of the night. But I was just not going to take off My Good Shirt. Oh, I allowed some unbuttoning to occur, but I was not going to sully the white shirt with anything else and it was most certainly not going to get untucked from my acid washed jeans. Shut up, it was 1993.
It was our only date as he was happy to tell my friend he didn't normally date girls "as big as" me, I'm properly fat now, but then I was a size 16 and gravity was still my friend. From the way he kissed, more spelunking than seduction, and freaked out with the giddyness of seeing a boob in real life I am sure he could have ended that sentence after "I don't normally date." and it would have been accurate. And seriously, did you think I was going to put out for a $7 pasta dinner? Really? And some iced tea? Really really?
The shirt never seemed quite as crisp and perfect again after that date, I think he rubbed the magic out of it.

And then there was Dilys, my most favoritest perfume ever. It just smelled like me. I got it in college when I had next to no money an my mom was trying to decide if she would pay for books or not as she was surprised that I needed to buy them each and every semester. I said "WTF?!" about that, too.  So I was working on campus, off campus and babysitting on the side that semester to buy books and I spent my Christmas money on a bottle of this stuff. And I wore it all the time and loved it. It was that perfume where people actually stopped me to ask what it was, not in a creepy way, it was usually other women who wanted to get it.
And then it was discontinued.
So I stopped using it.
And perfume does not keep forever, but I didn't know that. And instead of having half a bottle to savor for years to come I ended up with half a bottle that smelled sour and unbalanced and wasted.

I bought an apple green cashmere cardigan with pretty sparkly buttons. My cat dragged it off the shelf and used it as a pillow and turns out, Marge likes to chew on cashmere. Full of little spitty holes. I wear it with nighties in the spring and fall, though, because, goddammit, it is CASHMERE.

The perfect white cotton summer nightie met the perfect storm of sudden epic menstruation while sleeping and remaining horizontal for hours. EW.

The apple green suede shoes that I lusted after for months and finally scored for something like 80% off. I wore them one time and Marge, who does seem to love the things I love (especially my shoes), fell asleep on them. And then woke up and threw up in them. I had to wash them out with soap and water and they are still OK, but I still know what went on in those shoes, so the wearing of them is slightly tainted. 
 
Long lusted after fantastic yarn finally acquired, and then admired. Knits up looking like clown puke and is heavily pooling  in a color I never even thought was there from the pictures of it.....

Best down comforter ever both in quality and the crazy ridiculous price of less than $50? Pissed on by Elvis 3 days after the basement flooded last summer...so no way to immediately wash it and the only way to combat cat piss is immediate washing.

The list goes on and on, I have gotten better but not totally. This morning in the shower I decided to pull out my big ass jar of philosophy hot salt scrub in the Amazing Grace scent. I bought it last winter and used it twice and it cost a somehwat reasonable $25 for a big ass tub of it, but last year things were pretty tight so it was a fluffy indulgence. But once again, the "saving it for good" silliness got me and the scent has gone off and it no longer heats up when it gets wet, which is kind of the fun part of a hot salt scrub.
But it got me thinking, as I carried on with my slightly odd smelling exfoliation that now is the time for "good". Every day is the time to use the good stuff, why should I save it for some better day. Maybe the day is better when I have little things that I Iove to perk it up.


But I admit that I just bid on an ancient and tiny bottle of Dilys from ebay in case it still smells decent....

I'm back! i'm alive! My sister never got me! Apparently she was after my...car? That's right, my car. See, we offered it to her a few years ago when we had three cars. She would not lower herself to a used older car.
OK, crackie!
She has reconsidered.
But too bad, so sad the car is no longer available, and besides, it didn't get any younger!
But she did not show up at my house, that I know of, maybe she drove by. Whatever. Maybe now she gets that I'm done.

( Keep reading, only a little more wangst and then PHOTOS! No, not of my wang.... )

Yeah, it's been a busy week in crazytown.
I added my mother back as a friend. That situation is what it is. And as it turns out, being in some contact with her is a good thing. Which does not at all mean things are happy families, it means we are speaking.
Because my sister has now unleashed crazy like she has never unleashed it before. Which is really saying a hell of a lot.
She has a friend from high school who has gotten back in touch with her over the summer, that friend lives near my city.
 Apparently the grounds for the sister getting kicked out last week were pretty serious. Obviously she is shooting smack again and probably never stopped.  But she has also made some mighty serious allegations of abuse, which is what she does every time she is threatened. It's always bullshit. And somehow my mother always takes her back, which is also bullshit.

But this time and all that...

Anyway, my phone rings last night with a local hospital on the id. No one I know is in hospital so I let voicemail catch it figuring if whoever called didn't realize it was a wrong number I would ring back and let them know. it was my sister. I said LOCAL, right?
Yeah. She was very chatty and upbeat saying how we needed to talk, how under no circumstances to let my mother know where she was or that she called because they had gone crazy, and she made sue I knew she knows where I live. Riiiiiiight. I left it on voicemail and ignored it.
On a hunch I checked where her friend lives...yup..same community as the hospital. Well, that makes sense. The one person in the world who really doens't know how destructive she can be who might actually think she can be helped.

My phone rang again at 8:30 am this morning. She's not as happy this time. her voice is brittle and I can feel her outrage at being ignored simmering away as she tries to sound like we have spoken to eachother in the past 3 years and that I should give a shit about her.  Again, no one can know where she is (then she should have blocked the caller ID) and she WILL be talking to me. If I do not answer her call her words were "I will stalk you. I will call you every hour of every day until you call me back"
I had a new phone numbe from AT&T by 9 am. Because FUCK THAT SHIT.
And the new one is unlisted.
And I did contact my mother mainly to let her know that this friend clearly is hosting my sister and she needs to end contact with her, and to find out if the police want her at all, because I would be happy to tell them where she is.

So if the crazy bitch shows up at my house, I get to call the cops. Again.

Oh yeah, because two idiots drag raced down my street on Monday night and lost control and drove across my yard by the street, kssed my tree and then smashed into the tree in my neighbor's yard. NICE.
It's been a busy week around here!
I was wide awake and spinning yarn when it happened and at first I thought my spinning wheel was making an odd sound and until KABOOM. I have no idea what hapened to the kid who crashed but he had a head injury and was running around at first until a neighbor made him sit down, then he laid down and then he didn't get back up. The ambulance took him away.

I can haz boring nao?

Wait wait...I also got a spinning wheel! I will have a happy crazy-free spinning and knitting post soon. Cross my heart.

I knew it was too easy.
My mom discovered the unfriending tonight and had a nervous breakdown.
She also finally kicked my sister out of her life permamanently today. Um, again.
Did I know this? Of course not. Why did I not know this? Because the woman has not spoken to me since March 20th when she said she would have to call me for a while as she could not speak freely in her own home. And then she never called me.  And I do not read minds so I had no idea any of this was going on. So bad timing on my part. Oh and FYI, when someone tells you they cannot talk and will have to call you and then never do, what they mean is " i am going to be very dramatic, but please call me next week like none of this ever happened."

Did she call me tonight? Of course not. Her friend, the daughter she never had called me to ask what my problem was and to let me know my mother was gasping for breath and sobbing because her heart was broken. So I told her what my problem was. That I had enough. That I don't know what to do with a woman who refuses to talk to me but wails that no one loves her. That I will never measure up to what she wants in a daughter, that I will never feel good enough, that I had reached out again and again and again and come back with nothing in my hand and I gave up.
And then I got a bit better and finally when I got strong enough to take a stand I damn near killed her. I was told that she sobbed so hard she could not breathe and had to take nitroglycerin.

She hasn't called me because she is angry at me for not coming to see her last year after her heart attack. No wait, she had 4 heart attacks. But she lied to me and told me it was one, though. So I had no idea how serious it really was all along, yet she is angry at me for not taking it as seriously as she would have liked. It makes my brain hurt, too.
 So she is mad at me, and I accept that. She has a right to be angry at me, she wants something from me that I am unable to give, I disappoint her. But I cannot give her what I don't have to give. And seeing her last year and even at this time, is more than I can do.  She has a right to be angry, I have a right to do what is within my capacity for my well being. And during that time I called her every day, I arranged for healthy meals to be prepared and frozen by a local dinner by design place so all my stepdad had to do was pick them up and put them in their freezer, I made her a quilt, I kept in contact with her caregivers. Well, I tried to keep in contact with her caregivers, but they did not return the favor as she was hospitalied twice and no one bothered to even call me. They were punishing me for not being there I suppose. That's nice. I did everything I could do for her within my power. And it was not enough for her and for over a year she has been nursing this grudge and being angry at me. Yes she had a horrible thng happen to her, but my response and what I was going through at that time, was not all about her.

I know that my actions are a natural consequence to her actions. I know that I did not cause her heart to race because I do not have that power to control another person's body (and if i did Glenn Beck would pretty much be shitting his pants every time i wanted. Which is always).  I know that if she was not so messed up that things would not have reached this point. I know that as crappy a daughter as I may be, I have earned my crazy by having two freaky parents every bit as much as she has earned her crazy and that I have the right to control my exposure to hurtful things. I know that she is using her heart issue to manipulate me into getting something that she wants and I think it speak volumes about her that she will play that card but won't call me for months on end. She has no other tactic to try and control me. I do not accept "you know your mother will not discuss her feelings" as an acceptable reason for this bullshit to continue. If she is going to have somone call me and basically tell me I am such a bitch that I about gave her a heart attack, she can discuss some goddamned feelings.

I added her back as a facebook friend because if it makes her happy to see pictures of my cats and read my lame status updates about what I am making for dinner then I can give her that. I regret that it came at a time when things were so bad for her, but I don't regret the choice I made to cut that tie. I do not foresee us mending fences, because she will not accept blame whatsoever, she will not tell me anything and she does not want to listen to anything I have to say about how life events that we have both lived through may have affected me. She does have to accept my add now, and who knows if she will even do that. You just rolled your eyes, didn't you?
I did too.

 

You can probably guess this might be about my mom. It is.
I just unfriended her on Facebook. Why is this even a thing, you might wonder? Because Facebook was our last  connection. We've not spoken on the phone since March, when she said she would call me back. She just occasionaly cracks a joke about my status, like when we flooded in April she cracked a joke about my laundry. Because 8 inches of water is fucking hilarious, yo. thanks for taking 10 seconds to stop and think how upsetting that might have been for me because I don't have another fucking ten grand for a new furnace and all new appliances 10 months after my last round.
She didn't call then to see if we were OK, either.
I've not seen her in person since the debacle that was Christmas 2007, though she begged me to come see her last winter I could not do it.  I was simply not well enough to do it and her response to my telling her about the agoraphobia was to say she had to go pay her cleaning lady. She never spoke of it again with me.

She gave me terrible grief about not seeing her at Christmas, even when as luck would have it on Christmas eve day we had a leak from the roof (yes the new roof, it has been fixed) that was filling 2 gallon buckets every couple of hours and causing a HUGE section of my kitchen ceiling to begin to sag until I figured out where the water was pooling up there and jammed some screwdrivers through the plaster to get it out before it all caved in. But she still gave me grief about not being there with her on Christmas.

Then in July there was a family reunion in Indiana. My mom went, several cousins I haven't seen in over 20 years went.
Pictures were posted.
No one told me about it.
My mom seems to have been the organizer, so I guess she doesn't consider me to be family. When the penny dropped and I left a comment she did not respond. Nice.

We had our busted car towed last week and she was shocked that we still own it. And yeah, we do still have a 16 year old car, because you know what? When you give me an incredibly generous gift like a 2 year old car back in 1995, I take care of it. I take care of it so good that the mechanics are amazed at what good shape the innards are in and it has no problems. Sure, it's not the cutest thing on the road and the upholstery is disintegrating from the sun, but it's a good car. As long as it runs on routine maintenance and repairs, we see no reason to take on the debt of a car note for something for Jeff to commute to work in and sit in a parking lot all day long.
Also, see the part about how last summer my house cost me over 25k, so yeah, no new car for me in the near future.

But today was the day I finally decided to put down the shit sandwhich and look for something else for lunch.
She posted something about the daughter she never had.

She has two daughters.
What the fuck?
I am thrilled for her to have found a good friend in A, truly. A stepped in last year and took care of my mother in every possible way when she was literally unable to care for herself and I have no ill will towards her at all.
But my other didn't say she was "like a daughter to me" or  even just plain daughter. No, the daughter she never had.
She has two daughters and while one of them is a crack/smack/xanax whore, the other is me. Im not perfect by any stretch, I'm difficult and I annoy the shit out of myself. But I have hung in with this as long as I could, somehow expecting things to change. They never change.  I shore my weak spots up, I harden myself and retract into my cocoon to try and protect myself and nothing works. She always finds a way to get to me.

And now, I'm done.
And the relief I felt after clicking that little blue square tells me this is probably the right decision for me.

I just drove past a fancy brand new church and the side of the building had huge letters on it that said "the bush is still burning"
and all I can think is how much I wish I was a spray painting thug so that I could go back tonight and tag it with "so get some ointment" or something else really mature.

A pile of bags and zippies and a needle case and box bag all to be listed today.

I've been busy sewing! FYI, the feed dog is the crunchy metal bit that comes up out of the sewing machine to feed your fabric through. Putting your nose to it would actually be quite horrifyng as it would be getting pierced by the needle...bleargh. Then I was busy cropping photos and today I will be busy updating Etsy and then I will be going upstairs to start it all over again!

I have been knitting as well, I have one sleeve done on mky Bohus sweater, I am now in a sea of stockinette for the body. Hopefully this evening I can take some tine to chill out and just knit knit knit on the deck for a while. Ahhhhhh.

Oh, we dd not get basement water after all. Knock on wood. The heaviest rains skirted around my corner of Milwaukee, so we were good.

Speaking of Milwaukee, our mayor kicks ASS.

Oh and I ordered a spinning wheel......
 

Ok, maybe not becuae we really. need. some. rain. but could it maybe not be....4 inches in an afternoon?
Please?
Just a normal soaking rain?

We are under a t-storm warning now and I read on WISN that this ystem dumped 2-3 inches in 20 minutes in the western part of the state and my breakfast was ready to reappear. I have prepared as much as I possibly can, I have both pumps at the ready with their new wider sump pum style hoses, the basement window has been prised open while I was still calm enough to work it ever so delicately with a screwdriver instead of freaking out and hitting the glass with a hammer to get the hoses out once the water is comoing up from the floor.
I unplugged everything and did a check to make sure no clothing was on the baseent floor under the laundry chute. and i once again tested the water alarm.

and now I wait and hope the storm will go around us or at least not flood my basement again.
And iIhope John Malan shits his pants royally for showing weather footage from 20 years ago when County Stadium flooded  so badly. I thought I might be safe in late summer, but no, he had to dig that scary old shit up even when the forecast was nothing but sun and some showers ahead. Thanks for that. Really, asshole.  

I am back to the point where I was last week when I had to rip out my sweater. Nice! Now I need to begin on a sleeve to avoid getting the dreaded sleeve burnout syndrome. I figure i will whip through one sleeve pretty fast, knit on the body a bunch and then do the other sleeve. I would like to have this sweater done by early September, but given my best laid plans always go to shit, we'll see how that works! I want to be wearing this sweater this winter, though!
It was a fantastic morning to do a bit of knitting out on the deck, warm but not too warm (yet!) and very breezy and not too sunny. I listened to  podcast and enjoyed a strong mug of PG Tips tea. Ahhhh.

With these shoes:

and some sweet handknit socks!
I scored these in a sale last week for $13.19. They are selling at Zappos right now for $51! And I love them. the price of Payless, but actually good for feet, not bad at all! I have knit several pair of socks this year and plan to crank out many more before the end of 2009, so I will hve plenty of choices to wear with these!

I'm talking to you, refrigerator. WTF is your problem?! My milk is either turning into cottage cheese in the door or things like tonight I grab my fake plastic lemon out of there and turn it over in my hands about 5 times looking for the cap before I realize it's a real lemon. Just frozen like a freaking rock.
I thought I was grabbing a real lemon, but it was so rock hard I then thought "it must be the fake lemon!"
WTF am I to do with a frozen solid lemon?!

So let's pick a temperature....how about 38 degrees...and stick the hell with it, mmmkay?

Now back to my regularly scheduled flurry of crafty bitchness.

And yes, that is a BIG HUGE GIGANTIC mistake on the front. The sweater body is taking a time out while I work on a sleeve. I know how I made the mistake, it involved knitting after 2 am. I don't want to talk about it. I am on the fence about ripping it and beginning again or living with it and loving the sweater anyway.
I would really like to live with it, but dammit if it's not already bugging me a little bit.

And it's off the needles.
I was also knitting the wrong size, and superwash stretches out like crazy, so will be casting on for a smaller one.   So it's good that it bugged me since how upsetting would it have been to finish it and make peace with the wonky cable rib fuckup and then find out the sweater was all schlumpy and baggy? SO UPSETTING.

So there is a sweater I have been lusting after., and I do know it is pronounced "bo-hoosh" but I could not think of a work to rhyme with -oosh. Well, except douche. And this post will not be involving douche. My life actually does not really involve douche.....but the word cracks me up. Because I am 12.

So the sweater, yeah, back on track. It's here:
Bountiful Bohus

and isn't it glorious? I have the book, I have been threatening, umm, planning to make this sweater for quite some time.
But what yarn to use?! I have a couple of options, all in the stash so in theory, no additional monies need to be spent. This is an option that appeals to me as I am saving up for a spinning wheel, a new deck and possibly a car.

I can do a chocolate brown kettle dyed for the body with two shades of pink for the color work. or pink and cream for it. Or lime and cream against brown....

Or I could do the body all in a muted lime and then do the two shades of pink for the yoke...
When I say muted I just mean not day-glo. it's still quite a perky lime green. Leafy spring green.


My original plan was to go for the green body and pink accents. I have 17 balls of Nashua creative focus superwash ready to go.
But then there are 10 skeins of glorious 100Purewool merino.....
here are my options:




And option 2:




The Nashua is superwash, so less worries about felting.and I have over 3500 yards of it, so I am sooo good to go on yardage.
The 100PW is oh-so delicious, though. AND this sweater is steeked, which means I will be knitting it all in one piece and then...sit down...I will be cutting it up the middle. I know, it makes me catch my breath, too. But the grabby non superwash wool might be better for my first steeking project. I am close to the limit on yardage, though, but I think i should have enough. i could alwys cheat a bit and do a band of the pink around the cuffs and hem if I had, too. I cannot get more of the 100PW as their colorways are a bit of a crapshoot on the best of days since it really is all done by hand, and I don't think it is always the same hands and it can REALLY vary.


So here is where I am:
NASHUA:
PROS:
machine washable
pretty green
I have 2 shit tons of it
nice, basic yarn that should give me a sweater to last for years
less pilling
already wound into tidy balls
pink and lime is my favorite color combo
It probably won't itch because it is superwash

CONS:
not as sticky as regular wool for the steekage
it's a LOT of green on a fat girl
A fat PASTY girl, the green will reflect on my face to some degree and could make me look....greenish. Or act as a concealer for my pink cheeks in winter. oooh this could be a con and a pro...



100PUREWOOL:
PROS:
it feels like malabrigo
really pretty semi solid brown loveliness
The color name is chocolate lace. Wearable chocolate!
probably more practical than lime green and will last for years, but I'm also probably going to still love green and pink for a long time.
I just freaking LOVE this yarn.

CONS:
It will pill like 27 bitches
the variegation might be just a bit much for the sweater
I was eyeballing the chocolate lace for a second Lady Sweater because I have way more than enough yardage for that.
I really really like the green and pinks together!

I need to figure this out and then I want to cast on!

MyHeritage: Celebrity Collage - Geneology - Free family tree

random postapalooza!

I have been sewing like a mofo for the past few days. it's good, but draining the rest of m creative mojo. But is stocking the Etsy shop pretty nicely! I have aother pile of bags cut out, pressed and ready to assemble this week.

I opened the dishwasher today and i swear it smelled like Jeffery Dahmer's apartment in there. Jay. Sus.  I thought it was clean. I was wrong. So wrong. The man ran it last and emptied it immediately and then reloaded the hot dishwasher and then shut the door. That is a really, really bad idea. I could not even stomach it long enough to shove more things in. I tossed in an electrsol tab and ran it. Sorry, environment. :(

I finally finished my Speedway Socks!


wheeeeeee!

And I cast on for a new pair today:


I am nearly ready to work on the heel already! yay!

I also dyed up a pile of yarn for a Kool-Aid dyeing swap:


I just want to swim in that! But it's not for me, though I did do up an ombre skein in sky blue to keep for myself! That yarn will be packed up with some treats to go.....somewhere outside of Wisconsin! ;)

I know, I already have the express pass to hell.

Way back  in time when my sister was less psycho crackhead (well, less crackhead anyway....), George MIchael wasn't sexing himself up and passing out in Land Rovers, Michael Jackson was Awe. Some. and McCauley Caulkin was but a zygote.
You know you spent more than one afternoon painstakingly learning The Thriller Dance. The wolfish raised arms to the side part, the scrapey foot in front while doing the sideways head bop part and the impossible turn and step to your right while doing tiny little pelvic thrust maneuver. I was pretty good at it if I was one of the backup zombies where looking stiff and disjointed added to my overall performance.

And I seem to remember an entire, glorious, weekend spent at Nickie Patrick's house where she choreographed a truly awesome baton routine to PYT. Yeah, that song got pretty creepy in the 90s.....

I was a Wham! girl, though. I was all about Wham! and Culture Club, my taste in swanky gay Brits was established early on, surprisingly influenced by my father. In perhaps his one good parenting move he took me to Sears (god, remember when Sears sold record albums?!) to buy the Quiet Riot album I could not live without. As we stood there in line at the Sears in the Concord Mall  my dad flipped the record over and looked at the song titles. Loves a WHAT? Bitch? Cum on..WHAT? This was unacceptable! I was nine, I just thought they were lousy spellers.
He dragged me right out of the queue and back to the records to put it back. He was huffing and puffing at the salesman about how there was no way he was going to buy THAT for his little girl. There was a huge Boy George poster on display and I remember him saying "Who is that? Is she any good? Yeah? She's not dirty? Great, give me that poster and that album." The middle aged man happily picked them out and rang us up and 25 years later I still love me a big old nelly Brit.

But my sister was all about Michael Jackson. She had the yellow sweater poster, you know the one with the yellow bow tie? She used to sing Ben and Rockin' Robin all the time. She also had one of those cheesy Tiger Beat magazine faux scrapbooks and it was a prized possession. Interestingly enough, her next huge crush was Corey "wanna be Michael Jackson" Feldman! I guess she had a type, too.
 
Fighting wih my sister when we still had to live in the same state house was pretty much constant. She would pick at me behind my mother's back until I just lost my shit and then I would get in trouble. And she was quick to get physically violent and even though I was much taller and two years older, she was crazier and meaner. So I had to be sneakier to get to her, something that was rare because I was too quick to fly off the handle. But really, you would be, too if you'd been stuck with her.
She did something to me, I don't remember what it was, but I was obviously quite upset about it. Upset enough to search out all the leftover wallet size photos  from my third grade pictures, some scissors, and a bottle of Elmer's glue I took her beloved scrapbook to the basement one afternoon and set to work. I spent hours cutting out a pile of my heads from the picture packet and then carefully pasted them next to her beloved Michael in every photo where he was with a date and let it dry so the pages were not glued together. Then I cleaned it all up and put the book back where she had it and waited.
It took weeks for her to see it and lose her shit for a change, but they were sweet weeks filled with anticipation knowing that I was going to get her and get her good.
It was worth it. Honestly, it's one of the fondest memories of my childhood.

I'm sticking my toe in quickly with a random, disjointed post.

My basement flooded AGAIN on thursday night, Third time in just over a year. Joy. That water alarm was good, I was down pumping and it didn't even spread across the entire floor and was only about 1-2 inches where it did reach. Only loss is a really cute pair of shoes that i grabbed when the alarm went off. Oh, I am still fucking pissed, but you know. They are going to be fixing the sewer this summer so OMG what it my problem and all that. Stomp, hair flip, repeat.
Because one pump was almost enough, I ordered a second pump (while the basement was flooding!) and now a backup power unit and 2 larger hoses to pump the water out faster for WHEN this happens again. Because who am I kidding? It will happen again! So I should be able to pump out up to 5000 gallons per hour now.

The corner of the basement that the work crew dug out? SEEPING LIKE A SON OF A BITCH during the storm. I am so not amused by that I cannot even tell you. I hope fire shoots out of someone's ass for that.

The tv station that routinely scares the crap out of me with their doom and gloom forecasts got hit by lightning during the storms. So that makes me happy. Which is mean, but I don't really care. i did not wish it to happen, it's just a bonus.

The move of my craft cave to upstairs is complete and curtains have been sewn, it's pretty cute. I need to finish putting away some of my junk and then I will share photos.I know you want to see yarn porn. But I really like it up there and I know The Man enjoys not seeing my sewing machine sprawled all over the dinign room table. It's like we get a whole new room in the house. Sweet. I have many sewing projects up my sleeve but so far I made two valances and 5 pillows up there. Nice!

i finally tracked down the magical elixir of calmness for my damn cat and it should be here on Monday, well in advance of serious firecracker action by the neighborhood kids. Richard's Organics pet calm in the blue bottle.  Petsmart has it online.

I am thrilled to bits that I need to go to target tonight and all of my discretionary spending money has been spent on freak ass live in a bunker in Montana survival supplies because the city of Milwaukee cannot seem to handle the rain. it's a small thing to be pissy about in this economy, I know. But I do not like it when things come between my and Target..

And now i need a new crock pot. Because in the height of the flood I THREW MINE AWAY. It was not near the action. But it was dirty from cooking in it on Thursday. And I was too exhausted from pumping and panicking and being up until 9 am to do a proper panic clean of the rest of the house so I just picked up the dirty crockie and threw it in the garbage and called it good.
It seemed to make sense at 4 am.
My husband did wonder what the hell, but he was scared of me at that point and let it go.
 I see his point and don't blame him, but damn. I liked that crock pot.