Feeling posty

OK, so, knowing how I operate I just want to warn anyone who reads this blog:
Even though my plan is to blog everyday for 1 year, you can probably expect a ton of posts in the first month and then it will trickle down to nothing.
You've been warned.

Moving on...
First order of business: vocal cord or chord? I am getting conflicting information from the internet on this and fear that my "good speller badge" may get pulled.

I just stepped outside my house and what did I see? A perfectly formed ice wang.
I'm not talking neat icicle dangling from a gutter. This is an honest-to-goodness ice wang, formed from our porch up from a dripping sillcock (how appropriate!)
See for yourself:


This would impress even the raggediest of adult film stars and our house made it!
I am not sure if this is our house's goal in it's existence, to make marital aids from nature, but it sure did a good job on this guy!

Random Thoughts Wednesday

Some random thoughts I've had today:

*I dislike when married couples have mismatched wedding bands. Ex: one gold, with rounded edges, the other a platinum pipe cut.
When I see that on couples in public, I always assume that they are not with their *real* spouses, but thinking they are being slick while they cheat with another married person.
I'm on to you, cheaters!

*Why does my throat feel like I've just had a vocal cord scraping? Is there such a thing as a vocal cord scraping?

What's that smell?

For several weeks, when my car gets toasty, I start to smell bubblegum.

This is odd because I have no air freshener in the car, and if I did it wouldn't be bubblegum scented anyways.

On the way home tonight (racing home to see Keith Semple's audition on American Idol - my least favorite show of all time) I noticed that there is a candy cane hanging from my rear view mirror.

When the defroster kicks up, it blows hot air on the candy cane thus producing the mysterious bubblegum smell.

Well, that's one vehicular mystery solved.

The other? Paw prints. Paw prints all over my car.

Last Thursday, when I should have been making a complete stop at a stop sign, I noticed my windshield had paw prints all over it. Like kitty paw prints.

Completely baffled by the paw prints (my car is garage parked over night) I made a "California Stop" at the aforementioned stop sign and got pulled over.

Now, I hadn't noticed that I didn't come to a complete stop at the time. When the officer asked me if I knew why he pulled me over, I really didn't know.

Then I imagined him watching me peer ridiculously at my windshield.

He gave me a warning, and I didn't mention that I had been distracted by cat paws.

I think it was for the best. I didn't have time to do a field sobriety test.

In knitting news, I am still working on The Scarf.

Ugh, I am so bored with it and can think of several other projects I'd rather be doing but I am committed to finishing it.

I am also knitting myself a hat, this also bores me. I need to motivate to get these things done so I can knit fun things! I guess I will just keep reminding myself that once these things are done, I can go back to knitting without deadlines and commitments. Fun things! Baby things for my friend, who is expecting a baby girl in March.

Happy Cat Paws, Everyone!

Starting over...again

Well, after reading some craftily copy/pasta'd blog entries from my old blog I am sure you were able to see why I've decided the name for this blog.

Somewhere between bottled up mental illness and a morbid obsession with weird things is where I exist.

To most, this may sound horrible. However, it's not so bad.

I am married to a great man, we'll call him "The Russian".

We have a cute house in a city with a shady reputation for being "ghetto", but I don't mind. We are a melting pot, we are The Russians (that's us) and The Uruguayans (our neighbors).

Well, technically, I am not Russian but 2/3 of my household is and (barring some reproductive blow-out, in which my organs jump ship) I will someday be the host body for a little 1st Generation Russian born in the US.

I am a good speller, I am not good with grammar or punctuation, and the only math I use is in my knitting.

Also, I spent an inordinate amount of time selecting a layout for this blog and have subsequently lost all my steam for posting a "KAPOWZA!" post.

My goal is to post a blog entry every day, from now until 1/18/2011.

Heh. We'll see how that goes!

A Reproductive Pit Of Despair

December 31st, 2009

Pit of reproductive despair

02:06 am

So, lately I have been in reproductive pit of despair (as the subject line indicates)
I am 30, I have PCOS, I have a temp job and crap insurance.
I feel like I am wasting (or have already wasted) my allotment of fertility over years and years of having shitty insurance that doesn't support fertility treatment, or mates that don't support my wish to reproduce.
Meanwhile, it seems that any reject that forgets to take her pill one time is knocked up.

This leads me to have reproductive jealousy.

Granted, I am not actively trying to conceive since this would put me & my husband into a pit of financial despair and that is a post for another time.
Some days, I long to worry about remembering to take a birth control pill, or "did that condom break??" or "Oh no! My period is late!!" (my period is almost always late). I could construct a small mansion out of the negative pregnancy tests I have taken over the years. Each one a glimmer of hope, dashed at the appearance of just one line.
Surprisingly, a very late period can usually be coaxed out of hiding by taking a pregnancy test. I find that after about 51 days out, a pregnancy test is a good way to get everything back on track.

I stopped reading about trying to conceive, and natural remedies and warning signs...blah blah blah.
All this reading leads to thinking. Thinking which leads to worrying: "Oh my God, did my ovary just explode?" "Oh my God, I am pregnant, but my hormone levels are too low and not triggering the chemical in the Walgreens brand pregnancy test!" (Yeah, I switched to store brand. Less costly.) This worrying would usually lead to doctor's visits, however, since I have shitty insurance (lets call it a "medical discount plan" because that's really what it is. It rewards you for seeing your GP and OB/GYN and punishes you for getting double ear infections, sinusitis and a throat infection on Labor Day, which warranted a trip to the ER...but, I digress...) I would stew in my worry, and this would - I'm assuming - cause my period to be late.
Ah, my period. If my cycle was a person, it would wear a helmet all the time and give strangers great big hugs. It would lick glass and burn itself on the stove, even after being told "No! Hot!" repeatedly.
When I worry, my cycle says "She thinks she's pregnant. So, let's pretend we're pregnant!" It's like a game.
It's only over when I take the test, and cycle says "Whoops! The jig is up! Open the flood gates!"

I know that being in this funk about my reproductive health is irrational.
I don't tell other people how I feel because I don't want them to think I am crazy and obsessed.
I worry how I will react when my friends start to have kids before I do.
I suppose I am lucky that half my friend circle has already had their kids.
I am more worried about people I don't care for getting pregnant, and that they will rub it in my face: "Look! I got pregnant! All I had to do was go off the pill, just for one cycle and bam! Instant fetus!"
I can't really imagine anyone doing this to me, well, because I obviously don't talk to those people and they don't know that I am secretly in competition with them to breed first.
There is a couple that are friends of mine, they got married a few months after me and I remember talking to her about her plans to procreate and she said that a month before she got married, she went to her OB/GYN to discuss "Preparations" for pregnancy. You know, the normal thing that women without reproductive retardation do.
This plan included a timeline for going off the pill, taking prenatal vitamins and waiting for the blessed event.
As she told me this, I was boiling on the inside.
She has no idea I probably will never get pregnant "the old fashioned way", so she had no reason to not talk about it. It's usual married person talk (so I am told.
All I could think about is "If she's pregnant by Christmas, I am just going to die."

Well, the good news is that it's 12/31/2009 - and I haven't gotten an invite to her baby shower yet.
Keeping my fingers crossed that her ovaries didn't make it back through customs after her honeymoon.

Bloggity blogging

December 10th, 2009

Bloggity blogging

10:43 am

So.
I keep forgetting to blog. Maybe I should RSS feed off someone who blogs regularly, and that would remind me to blog here?

I dunno.

I am currently knitting like a fiend, having made knit-mitments (knitting commitments) that I may not be able to fulfill ("2-4' long celtic cabled scarves, knit and blocked by Christmas? SURE!")
Knitting on a deadline doesn't really work for me. Something always happens and the plan gets sabotaged.
Example, one of the scarves I am knitting was supposed to be a celtic cable pattern, well, after knitting for a bit I discovered that the cable pattern was far too complex and since most of my knitting is done during down time at work, I worried that I wouldn't be able to keep track of the pattern. Also, the cabling made the scarf really dense and heavy. Since it's meant to me more of a ladies' fashion scarf, than one to keep warm - I tossed out the celtic cabling.
OK, now to find a pattern that will work with the yarn, the needle size I have and be a more delicate knit fabric. Also, the pattern needs to be pretty mindless and easy to remember, but still look like I worked really, really hard on it(Ha!).
I found a Wave Stitch scarf pattern, and for some reason, it just wouldn't work. I am assuming that I was knitting the pattern as written. However, I suspect there was errata that was not my fault.
OK, the pattern search is on again - I found "Summer Scarf" which had a delicate V pattern in it. After knitting for about a foot and a half, I noticed that every few rows there wouldn't be enough stitches on my needles.
While listening to Meghan on the Stitch It! podcast, she was talking about the fact that in lace patterns, every decrease needs to have an increase - ex: one row of this pattern was k2tog, yo, SSK - well, that's 2 decreases and only 1 increase, so I was ending up short.
When I held up the scarf to inspect, I found that the V pattern was pretty askew.
Alright! So, that got frogged.
Meanwhile - I have had this yarn since October, it is now 2 weeks until Christmas and I have about 3.5 more feet to knit on this FIRST scarf.
I have the same amount to knit on the other scarf, which is the celtic cabling that I can really only do at home, without distraction.
I found the correct directions for the wave stitch in my stitch dictionary, and even though I can't tell the difference between the first pattern and the new one, it's turning out really nice. I amy dying to see what it will look like blocked.
Alright! Had enough? Good! I'm done!