Tales of a Knit Geek and Baby Wrangler: October 2005

Some stripeys.

Is this the perfect Fall picture or what? henry and I took the wagon for a spin to the pumpkin patch at the church down the street. On the way we collected acorns, pine cones, and even some "silver dollars", which forever remind me of Memere. Happy Autumn!

I don't want to link directly to the site, but if you google the company name on the bum of those pants you can see the actual logo. She asked me to leave out the bubbles. I think they came out pretty good!

The logo longies

Adrienne gave me her memory card so I could post some of her LEAF pictures. Here they be.

Don't worry, something will happen soon to make me stop talking about LEAF.

Let's see. Henry has an incredible case of diarrhea right now. This morning he woke up with a whole pajama leg soaking wet. And a soaking wet sock. Poor little man. I am trying to keep him hydrated and eating. He is a touch crabby and a little warm, but other than that he seems fine. Of course I have a huge list of errands today. I am about to drag the poor kid to Kinko's and the post office, and if I think he can handle it, the grocery store.

I also finally took the initiative to contact a real estate agent to look at some houses and I am actually on hold right now with a loan officer. Scary. We're talking about credit. I'm sick of paying rent, especially when the housing market is going through the roof. I wish I didn't screw my credit up so badly as an idiot college kid. See? You should always listen to your mother!

The sisters Bell with Chip and Susie. Erica is super fancy because she got to dance on stage.

That amazing brass band.

The Sugar Shack and the beginning of the tents on the hill.

The sun goes down behind the mountains at LEAF. You can see some fo the tents on the other side of the lake and the Gully Washer coming out at the left.

Where did I leave off?

We did our volunteering and then went to get some pad thai and have a lovely picnic on the hill under a tree. We had a great lunch while Henry ran around trying to play with the big kids. Then we got up and went to go to the tent to get some things for the rest of the day. Halfway to the tent, Kyle realised that he had left the digital camera behind. We ran back to check for it, but it was gone. We went to the lost and found, but no dice. I left our name and number with the security people, who were nice but empathetic enough for me to know that getting the camera back was a long shot. We tried to enjoy the rest of the day, but we were both pretty bummed about the camera so we decided to call it a day. Kyle actually ended up coming home with Henry and I because he was in such a bad mood over the camera that he didn't want to stay and camp. Boooo!

We woke up at around 7 on Sunday morning and he took a shower while I got Henry fed and ready to go. The phone rang at about 8am. It was lost and found. Some kind and honest soul had found our $750 digital camera lying on the hill and turned it in late Saturday night. We couldn't believe it. We went and saw the brass band play on the main stage, volunteered and enjoyed the rest of our day. All in all it was a wonderful weekend.

Adrienne gave us her memory card so I could upload her pictures, so here are a few. There will be more to come later on.

Night night.

Billy Jonas bangin and sangin.

Maybe just a little.

Does it get any cuter than this?

Soooooo...

Friday Henry and I packed up the car and picked Kyle up from work and headed straight to LEAF. It is about a 25 minute drive, so we got there at around 4:30 or so. While we were checking in and getting our wristbands, we ran into Ms. Erica who told us that her folks had shelled out the extra bucks to get a super special parking pass that aloowed themt o park and set up camp right near temporary parking (where we were), and that we should set up with them. This was awesome, as last May we had to lug all of our gear over the hill and far away to set up camp, and we ended up in between a commune campsite and a bunch of drunken college girls. We were confident that Erica's folks would be much quieter. So we hopped on over and set up Kyle's tent. It was amazing how much less we had to take since Henry wasn't going to be camping.

We wandered around and ate pizza slices from Barley's. Henry was so excited to be back in the land of the bubbles, I was afraid he might spontaniously combust. An artist who was running a ceramics booth had set up a huge bubble machine on her tent's roof. I guess she didn't think that bubbles attract kids. Kids and ceramics are unmixy things. The kids had a blast, but all of the parents were hovering stressfully about, making sure their kid wasn't going to be the first one to go crashing head first into the hand painted ceramic bowl display. Luck was with us and nothing was broken. It was like a mob of children frothing around the bubbles, very Lord of the Flies. With more patchy clothing. Henry was the smallest kid by far, and he got knocked around a little, but he held his own. A LEAF photographer started taking pictures of him and following him around for a little while. Henry thought that was pretty fun. He experimented with how the man would like a photograph of a frisbee thrown directly at the camera. We saw some music and ate some organic french fries (YUM!) and a mozzerella, pesto and tomato quesadilla for dinner. After a while, henry and I got tired. We left Kyle at the main gate at around 8 to go home to sleep. Kyle had a blast by himself after we left. Jerk.

Saturday Henry and I wre up and at 'em and we met Kyle back at camp at 8:30. We ate a strawberry and chocolate crepe and a ham, egg and cheese crepe for breakfast (so YUM!) and walked around for a bit. At 10 we went and saw Billy Jonas play. Billy Jonas rocked the house, ya'll. He was so amazing. He is a kids' musician and his whole philosophy is that music is not an esoteric experience. He encourages kids to bang on whatever they can find to experiment with sound. He says "Everybody's in the band, stomp your feet and clap your hands". Henry had a blast. There was a song where we were supposed to clapp 3 times in quick succession at the same spot during every chorus. Henry picked it up right away and did the 3 claps on cue every time. I was pretty amazed. The kid is a musical genius. After Billy Jonas, we had to run down to the main gate to do our volunteering.

The program we were volunteering with is called LEAF in Schools and Streets. They make grant money available for artists to go into schools and help teacha portion of the curriculum using whatever art they do. The kids then have the opportunity to come to LEAF and participate in the performance of that artist. It's an amazing program. It was our job to check in the student and give them their wristbands and things. It was the most disorganized thing on the planet. But it was fun. Henry slept in the little red wagon during our shift so he was up and ready to go by the time we were done.

And now I can smell a poopy diaper smell wafting into this room on the breeze. I must go interupt Henry's first Sesame Street watching in 3 days to go change that thing. And then we are off to knitting group. I know, it is cruel to leave you hanging on the edge of your seats like this. It will make the conclusion of the story so much sweeter.

*smooch*

Well, we just got back from LEAF. Maybe I'll have the energy to tell you about it after Henry goes to bed tonight. Maybe. For now you'll have to settle for a few pictures...

This was an amazing brass band who specialized in old spirituals. This was an impropmptu jam session between them and a bunch of dirty hippies on hand drums. It was prett damn cool.

Henry having a blast at the dress up tent. He left us shortly after this picture was taken to go have high tea with Laura Bush.

Henry and Mama looking out onto the lake.

Henry "the bubbleman" Kett had a blast playing with the other kids in front of the bubble machine. A lot of the kids were older and he got knocked around a little bit, but he held his own.

This is Lake Eden (LEAF stands for the Lake Eden Arts Festival). You can see a few of the tents around it. The thing you see coming out of the trees to the right above the little dock house is a gigantic waterslide called "The Gully Washer".

As you can see from all the new pictures, I have been a busy little bee. I am still pretty behind, as wool season is getting under way. I have also had some odd requests as of late. Someone wanted me to put this ---> http://support.uni-oldenburg.de/~floyd/pics/pig5.jpg on the bum of some pants. LOL! But she'd settle for the Pink Floyd prism logo. Ummm...I don't know about that. Then someone from the UK (who didn't send extra for shipping) wanted all vertical stripes (which I don't do) with her store logo on the bum. Two kids' heads, wearing sunglasses, in a pile of multi-colored bubbles. I would think you would send me an email and ask me if I could even DO that before you send money! Especially since I can't do it.

There is other knitting and biz stuf going on, but I don't feel like typing it all out.

Henry has been a total poo the past few days. He has become obsessed with Bert from Sesame Street. BERT! Who loves Bert? Henry does. He begs to play his game on teh computer all. day. long. He wants to sort bottle caps with Bert. I think there may be soemthing wrong with him.

He also got stung by a bee the other day. He cried like hell, but he didn't swell up at all, which is good since Kyle is WAY allergic to bees and we weren't sure if Henry would me as well.

Okay. Just a quick update. Off to sort some more damn bottle caps.

Multi stripe pants. Can you feel the carpal tunnel?

Steeler Your Face longies. The Dead and football-two great tastes that taste great together...

My son, the baby model. Just finished Stealie pants.

I really need to develop my computer skills. I can do your basic things. Things that a Literature major would need to know. I can do research, I can write long and witty emails begging for paper extentions, I can organize photos and use Word fairly well. That is where it all ends. I used to be able to use Quark and PageMaker, but I am positive that faced with that software, my retention of that knowledge would be at about 10%. My brain just doesn't work that way, computers aren't intuitive to me at all.

That said, I tried to set up a mailing list the other night for Crankypants. I set up an account at Bravenet and started enetering all of my customers' email addresses into the little mailing list box thingie. I thought-'Oh, I compile the list of emails, then I compose a message to send to them asking them if they want to sign up for my newsletter'. Nope. I was suppose to do the little message first and then enter the emails. As it was, as I entered each address, a completely generic and nondescript message was sent to them saying "Join the mailing list". It had my personal email attached to it. There was no way any of my customers would know that it was me trying to sign them up and there was no cute little message to entice them into joining. It could have been the "Take Viagra and enlarge your penis" or "Reasons why George W. Bush is the next Jesus" mailing list for all they could tell. Oops. So I had to delete all fo the emails, compose the little note and start all over, including an apology for sending the first email. Doh! Well, even with the big snafu, 10 people joined so far. It has only been 2 days, so that's not too bad. I think I am going to have Sarah add the code to the site that lets people sign up there.

Let's talk about spam commenting on Blogger, shall we? Do they really think that I believe they just randomly came across my blog, loved it and decided to leave me theirs? Seriously. Now if I got comment spam that said "I actually never read your blog because I don't care what you have to say, but I am trying to promote my own, so come read it" I might go check it out. Kind of like giving your change to someone holding a "Need money for alcohol research" or "Spare change for Old English" sign. I appreciate the honesty.

So Tom and Katie are all pregnant. Sca.Ry. I am trying really hard not to wish post partum depression on her, but secretly I think it would be hysterical if she did get it and then beat the crap out of Tom with a sack of dirty diapers when he suggest that she exercise and take a vitamin. Hee. I can't believe they actually did the deed. He was thinking about "Iceman" the whole time, I just know it.