Denver

In a few hours Jay and I are hopping on a train and heading over to the airport. We're going to Denver for the weekend. My friend Siet is getting married. I'm so excited about it. Like, I'm crawling out of my skin.

I've been working hard on her wedding gift for days now. Really, I've been working on it for a few months, but I have only started diligently knitting and purling for a few weeks. It's still not done. I will need to finish it on the plane.

Because we'll only be in town for a short while and our time is allocated, I'm not able to make the sort of plans I normally do. Generally I send out messages and let people know that I'll be around and would like to get together. This time I refrained from doing any of that. We arrive at 10 AM tomorrow morning and I'm meeting one friend who I haven't seen in 14 years, her husband and her kids at the park. Otherwise, I'm not going to extend myself too far. That's hard to do, but definitely for the best, I think. Less is more for this trip.

On Monday, expect to see beautiful pictures. She's getting married in a wildlife preserve and her wedding will be entirely green (even the dresses.)

This picture was taken yesterday at the park.

After coming home, Lila was a bit aggressive with Pandora. It's actually very loving, but Pandora is old and she doesn't have the patience to be picked up and hugged by a three year old. Also, she doesn't have claws to defend herself, so someone really needs to step in as her advocate. I asked Lila nicely to stop picking Pandora up. She continued to do it so I asked to go in to her bedroom and sit on her bed and think about how she can be kind to our pets.

Little did I know that while on the way to her bedroom, sneaky Lila swiftly lifted a pair of my scissors and retreated to her bed to give herself her first hair cut.

See those braids? Aren't they beautiful? She cut all the hair from the rubber band down off of one of them. It's roughly 4 or 5 inches of hair. I am taking both she and Bunny to the salon today to get new hairdoo's. Lila is very unhappy about having a haircut. Bunny is excited. She loves it. We're going to do an extreme angled cut on Bunny. Not that this is the greatest example, but something like this:

Stressed Out

I have so much anxiety right now. It came on tonight, aggravated by an incident with Butter, our new family member. Butter is a very old cat (17 years old.) He's been living with my parents but they are unable to keep he and their other cat Pandora, so Jay and I have them. Both Butter and Pandora have long, fluffy fur. They need to be brushed every day... particularly as they get older and don't take as much pride in their grooming. Unfortunately, they have some mats in their fur. I tried to brush them out, and was more successful with Pandora's fur than Butters. So, tonight I tried to cut some of the mats out of Butter's fur. While doing this, I clipped him with the scissors on this side. I was surprised to see that I had done it, as he didn't react. It also didn't bleed... but there is clearly a small patch of skin missing. I feel sick with guilt. I put a bit of neosporin on it. Should I do something else to help him? Is he going to be okay? I'm so scared.

Also, someone peed on our treadmill this morning. It was a cat. It's been cleaned... but all of our pets were sniffing around it today. I am petrified that we'll develop a problem with accidents. We can not have a smelly pet home. Until this incident, no one has had any problems (outside of the occasional pee pee from Sidney right where Jay steps out of bed when she has a bad attitude.)

I found a bug on my arm and I am scared that it was a lice or a flea. Jay says it wasn't. We examined it and set it free. But still... (shudder)

And last...

My wedding gift is not done. It's about half done... and I have one more day to work on it. We leave for Denver on Friday morning and I won't have any free time on Thursday. I have to take the girls to my mom's house in New Jersey and then visit the dentist to have some work done (eek) on Thursday.

Feeling the heat (from my needles)

I've been a knitting fool!

Thought you should know.

House Sitting- A Week of Hell, In Review

As I've mentioned in previous posts, my friend V called us late last week with an emergency. No one was able to house sit or dog sit Fluffy while she and her family vacationed in Mexico this week.

Today is the glorious day that we are able to pack up our shampoos and toothbrushes (actually, I"m throwing our toothbrushes out) and head back to Philadelphia.

We have had THE WORST WEEK EVER! I mean, nobody died, the house did not burn down (though we had a close call) and every one is still in one piece (though barely.)

Monday was fine. I packed, got the girls together, said good-bye to Sherbie, Butter, Pandora and Sidney and headed out to the beauty of scenic New Jersey. After settling in at V's, we met my mom for dinner at Bunny's favorite Chinese Food restaurant.

On Tuesday I was invited for a play date at my friend C's house. I enjoyed the sunflowers that Hubot's friend E gave me so much recently, that I will never give anyone anything but sunflowers ever again (season providing.) That said, I picked C up a bouquet of sunflowers and went to her house for an amazing meal. She always hosts the most incredible playdates and cooks and pampers us.

When we returned home I decided to make the girls chicken for dinner with salad and bread. I got a call from R. who's daughter came home from the play date with a tic. Then she called back to tell me that D's daughter had two tics and her son had five and that both of C's daughter's had tics as well. Clearly, a bath was in order. I pre-heated the over for dinner and ran upstairs to give the girls a bath. While they were in the bath, the fire alarm began going off. I ran out to see if there was something in the oven that was causing this. I guess V's family keeps some plastic in the oven? I can't say what it was, because it melted everywhere... but thankfully, it scraped off of metal after cooling relatively easily. For a moment I almost had a nervous breakdown. The way melted plastic looks all over a hot oven is creepier than you may think. I ran to turn off the alarms. I got them off, but one is now making a beeping noise and has been all week. I think that means that the battery is in wrong... or is no good. I tried to fix it but failed. The battery is probably bad. I had too much on my plate to think about replacing it. When I went back up to the bath I was greeted by the strongest smell and my daughter sitting next to an open bottle of BRUT cologne! Awesome! They had poured the whole bottle in the bathtub and were soaking in it. So, I took my little BRUT children out of the bath, rinsed them off in the shower and carried on with life.

The next morning I woke up, sat up and threw up. I stayed that way for 24 hours.

The following day went smoothly. I was busy recovering and just tried to take it easy. We popped in at the pool, did a bit of shopping and relaxed. That night, before going to bed, a bird crashed into the house. It was not dead. It was very much alive but unable to fly and was flailing around on the back porch. I first looked up bird rescue, knowing that if I left it there a vulture or fox would get it. When I couldn't find anything online I ran to a neighbors house. They helped me so much. They took the bird and drove it to a rescue the next day.

On Friday morning we had VC's birthday party. As all the children sat down to eat pizza, Lila threw up all over herself. Obviously we ran out very quickly. After leaving, she seemed fine. We rested for an hour or so and after decided that Lila didn't have my horrible stomach thing, we went to meet CK for lunch. The day progressed just fine...

Until one o'clock in the morning when Lila woke up projectile vomiting all over the beds, walls, carpets and then the bathroom... she puked into the bathtub that was full of water and she was soaking in. IT WAS HORRIBLE. It was aggravated by the fact that she was sleeping in bed with Bunny, so I had to wake Bunny up and put her on the floor. Then, I started to wipe some up and put it in the toilet... and the toilet OVERFLOWED and I had puke toilet water all over the floor.

Guys, I nearly had a nervous breakdown. For real.

...I can't even finish this post... I think that was about the point in the week when I lost my mind.

It's The Small Things...

I don't think that this is new, but it's new to me.

Bunny, Lila and I watched this three times in a row tonight.

Be prepared to be DAZZLED!

The Dentist

I had a visit with the dentist prompted by a bit of a tooth ache. I, like most people, hate the dentist. I've never been able to shake This early memory!

So, as I was shaking in my flip flops, eyes bugging, face white, feet elevated, I told the dental assistant how scared I was. She told me that I "should be thankful. I should be grateful to have the opportunity to see a dentist... to be able to afford to have my problems resolved." She went on to tell me that there are plenty of people out there who don't have the means to go to the dentist, have to live with the pain until they finally end up in the Emergency Room only to have the tooth pulled and be sent home. She said that people die from the infections in their gums that they can't afford to treat.

Someone served me up a big ole slice of priviledged pie. And I choked it down. Every so often someone comes along and puts things in perspective. For these people, I am thankful.