Earthwhisper Fiber Arts

I have been meaning to share this gem of a story.  The other day  I heard the neighbor’s dog barking very loudly and some voices near the front door.  I live in a townhouse and my front door is pretty close to the neighbor’s front door.

I innocently opened my door to see what was going on, only to see this man dressed in black, pee’ing behind the neighbor’s garbage can but on their house.  Yes, he was about 6 feet away from me pee’ing on the neighbor’s house (or maybe towards the ground there…I didn’t go and examine.)

Even worse, he saw me see him.

Those who know me personally would think that I would have said something.  I am a pretty direct person.  However, I have to tell you that I was so shocked that I just said “GROSS!” and came back in the house.

Thank goodness the girls weren’t with me when I walked outside.

The next day, I saw the neighbor-lady of the house and I told her what I witnessed and described the man and his car, time of day, etc.  She also said “Gross!”

That whole day I had that image in my head.  I kept wondering why he just didn’t take two steps into their backyard where it is fenced to go.  Or, better yet, why didn’t he just go in there house to use the restroom.

Sadly, this is the second time in about a year that I have witnessed someone pee’ing outside our house.

I told my husband that maybe we should get a little sign.  You know, some people have “Beware of Dog” or “No solicitations.”  Our will say, “No Pee Zone.”

Okay, enough about that.  I have no knitting stuff to share.  I can tell you I finally re-organized my yarn desk.  There was some major yarn creap all over my house as well as my desk threw up yarn onto itself and it became one tangled mess.  It is all fixed now, thanks to Target’s canvas cubes.

In school news, I got a C on my first test.  The class average was a D.  I got an A on my second test.  I am divorcing my lab partners and will get new ones at the next lab.  Basically, they want to speed through the lab and get it done quickly.  I want to take my time and learn.  It is hard for me to compromise this.  One of my lab partners told me “that is how life is, some people are just faster at learning than others.”  So…that is how life is, huh?  I am thankful she tried to teach me that lesson.  I let her know that while she might believe that, I will still be asking for new lab partners.

Don’t you worry about the C grade.  I am not.  I still have the option to drop one test score.

Finally, I wasn’t feeling good a week or so ago with bad back pain, headaches, sore throat, chills…type stuff.  After a few days of sleeping and not knowing what was wrong with me.  I even at one time thought the screws in my back were unscrewing.

It ends up I had the flu, probably a mild version of it.  Tony got it over the weekend and was bad.  He rarely gets sick, but when he does it is absolutely terrible.  He even missed 2 days of work…GASP!!  (He is a workaholic, so that is rare.)

My father took pictures of this outside his kitchen window and asked my mom to send them in an email, with the subject: Large hummingbird disguised as a woodpecker.

Sierra and I had a great laugh. So, here is a Monday laugh for all of you.

So my husband got promoted at work and he has been dressing nicer with collared shirts.  However, the buck stops at his pants as he won’t wear pants since it gets too hot for him.

So we decided that “dress shorts” would be his compromise.  This week he went to work and everyone noticed his change in appearance and joked with him that it looked like he was going golfing.  He laughed, too.

Tonight he came home and I noticed that his brand new shorts have a 2 inch rip in the back.  I pointed it out and he was just like, “huh?”  “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”  Apparently he had backed into something sharp earlier in the day and didn’t realize that they had ripped and nobody told him.

Which…brings me to my question to you.  Why didn’t you tell me that one shoulder looked shorter than the other shoulder in my Plum top?  HUH?  Yes, I was one repeat off on one side, which is actually 12 rows off or 3 inches off.

3 inches off!!  Can you believe that I didn’t even noticed.

Can you believe that I finally figured out the crab stitch and had it all put together and was about ready to block it when I realized…

One shoulder looked shorter than the other…oh, by about 3 inches.

I ripped it out, the crab stitch, the grafting, the stitching and then fixed it all, adding 3 inches to one of the shoulders, grafted it back together and after what seemed like 3 hours…I am good to go again.  Well, except for the fact that I have cut the yarn so many times that I don’t think I have a long enough piece to go around the neckline

Tomorrow, I will work on the crab stitch around that shoulder and the neckline and then will block it and be done.

Man, sometimes I am stupid.  It is easy to get confused with cables and lace patterns and you know it is my own fault for taking both of the shoulders off the one needle and working them separately.  The double balls of yarn were getting twisted in the one cable needle, so I figured doing them separately was better.  I was wrong there.

On a side note, the crab stitch hurts my left thumb muscle.  It is the first time I have felt any type of hand strain from crocheting.  Did I mention I don’t like the crab stitch?  It does look good, though…

We are all in shock.  Tonight the girls were playing upstairs in their room.  I usually let them do this a bit before bed.  Then, they clean it, put pj’s on and go to bed.  Tonight, Sierra got scissors and cut off all of Madeleine’s curls.

I cried.  Sierra cried.  Madeleine didn’t really understand what happened, but when she did, she cried.  Tony wanted to cry.  He is very mad.  He can’t understand why Sierra would do this to her sister.  He only ever remembers being a good kid, one that didn’t cause trouble, sneak or steal things.  Daily, Sierra has been sneaky and getting into trouble.

Sierra told me she did it because she is jealous.  She wanted Madeleine’s curls.  Unfortunately, I knew that this was only a matter of time.  Madeleine gets compliments on her hair daily.

The scissors were put away, but an (almost) 6 year old can stand on chairs and sneak and get up where she shouldn’t…

Tomorrow I will be taking Madeleine to my hair dresser to see if she can fix it…which I am not really sure what that means, since there are spots that are almost down to the scalp.

I am sad for Madeleine, she wants her curls back.

I am also sad because I have been wondering if Madeleine will always have curly hair.  I don’t know how her hair will grow back in.

I guess this is one of these things that we are all upset about now, but years from now we will look back on as a memory.  The day Sierra cut off all of Madeleine’s hair will be burned in all of our memory banks.

I have been spending every bit of last energy that I have trying to clean the house. The very first thing I did was the toilets. I think I used over half of the bottle of clorox soft scrub. Overkill, I am sure. Just had to make sure no germs existed.

Well, my mothering instincts are on full clean mode and even though I am still exhausted and not full strength, I moved all of the furniture and carpet shampoo’d the living room carpets. Yes, Yes, Yes…Crazy!

However, the kicker is that I was doing this at 3am. Yes, I am CRAZY. No need to give me a lecture about my back or anything else. If my mind is set on something I do it. I pay for it later, story of my life.

Now, the real crazy thing, and the whole reason why I turned the computer back on is that I had to share this next little story about my carpet cleaning adventure.

So I am working my way around the living room and in the center, Madeleine had colored on the floor with blue crayon. I went over it several times and it looked fine. Well, a bit later I started to notice these BLUE streaks all around the living room. First it was just a little here and there. However, next thing I know it is every where.

There is BLUE streaks all over my white carpet shampoo’d floor.

Where is the BLUE coming from? It is driving me crazy. I empty the water. I look under the machine, just the normal fuzzies and dirt under there.

I am thinking about what a carpet machine would do if it got crayon stuck on the brushes.

I am thinking about maybe an invisible pen that is now no longer invisible.

I am rolling the wheels and the brushes and cannot make sense of the blue. I wipe everything down and then start making my way around the room again.

MORE BLUE! I have literally dyed my whole living room carpet BLUE! It is like a scary Dr. Seuss book!

Well, this really defeats the purpose of shampoo’ing the carpets if I am going to make a worse mess of what is here. I knew that Tony would flip out in the morning if he saw what I had done. He would then probably point out that I should have done THIS instead of THAT.

So, I do what any CRAZY wife would do and I wake him up (he had gone to bed about 45 minutes earlier) and I tell him to help me.

Usually if I ask for help at 4am in the morning it is because I was up doing aerobics and twisted my ankle and couldn’t get up or because of some other crazy stunt. So he came downstairs pretty quickly to see what I was up to.

He also was perplexed by the BLUE, but not mad at me. He was confused, as was I. He watched me shampoo the carpets and watched as the BLUE would suddenly appear.

Then…AHA…My shoes! It must be my shoes! I flipped them off and looked at the bottom of them and…

No BLUE! However, I was determined there was something wrong with the shoes and so I changed shoes.

I stood back behind the carpet machine, drove it again around the living room, and again….

Yep, Painted the damn room BLUE! As now you can imagine the living room is one big BLUE mess.

BLUE, like PEN, like DYE, like the DYE that was bleeding out of my BLUE jeans.

Yes, everyone, the CRAZY woman that writes this blog, successfuly dyed her living room carpet BLUE with her own BLUE jeans tonight.

AND, as you might have suspected, I finished the job in my panties, as I was too lazy (or tired…matter of perspective) to go put on shorts) and now my living room is well, no longer BLUE but is clean.

Oh…and I need to add, thanks for the well wishes.  I am feeling better, no more belly aches, etc.  Sierra seems to have bounced back quick as well as she was able to eat chicken noodle soup for dinner without much of a problem.  If she doesn’t have a fever tomorrow I told her she could go to school.  If she is feverish or has other symptoms I will send Tony to her school with her valentine cards.  I know that is strange, but we bought them and I don’t want her to miss out.  He can bring her cards home.  She is off of school Thursday, Friday, and Monday, so has plenty of time to read all of her cards.