Learning to relax again Tuesday, June 01, 2010
So during my first full day of unemployment I ran, biked, laid out in the sun, knitted while listening to NPR (outside), read some and then took another bike ride and organized some of my knitting needles (whoa boy, organizing knitting needles? That is exciting stuff right there- isn't it?)Seriously.
Kind of sounds awesome, doesn't it? Well, perhaps not the part about organizing knitting needles.
It was, but honestly- I've been running full tilt for the last 2 months that all this time off I'm not entirely sure how to handle it anymore. For example, two weeks ago I was in Florida for 4 days for work, home for one, drove to Cleveland and back in less than 24 hours, packed a bunch boxes, went to my going away party, and had a house guest. All those things in 7 days.
Now I know I should be exhausted, and I am a bit...but I had Sunday and Monday of this week to do very little and so by today I was just ready to bust on out and do stuff.
Perhaps I should recap moving? Eh, it was moving- same as it ever is...too much crap and by 6pm that night I was just throwing shit away. Every single hanger I owned, a whole bottle of bleach, random cake boards I'd never used, old duplicate photos, a storage bin I'd had since I was 18, etc. There just wasn't room for them and they are all things easily replaced. My storage until was packed to the ceiling, my dad's car was filled with my stuff and so was my car. WHY do I have so much fucking shit? WHY?
I'm hoping to get every penny of my deposit back, and my mom was a champ at the cleaning of the apartment and it looked great. I'll need every penny to fund my unemployed summer of laziness plus a deposit on an apartment in Milwaukee and then paying the rent and utilities until I get on feet. Oh and money to buy food would be nice.
I'm not so secretly hoping that with all this free time I'll really get in some good bike rides and running, by the time the summer is over I'll have really amazing calves and thigh muscles. Then of course I'll have to figure out how to deal with the slow return of my regular body once I lose a majority of my free time due to a job and classes in the fall.
But I will know that for one glorious summer when I was 30 my calves were at their most athletically awesomest.
Labels: Awesomeness, bike, cleveland, knitting, reading, running, school
nothing of consequence Sunday, January 25, 2009
I've been seriously boring lately. I've not gone out in weeks, preferring instead to hide from the sub-zero temps by spending ungodly amounts of time squirreled away inside my apartment. Inside, where I'm either staring blankly at the TV or cooking. I think there is some sort of disastrous disconnect in my brain that causes me to forget entirely that I'm one person and end up cooking for about a family of 45. So then I've got entire pans of chicken enchiladas and double batches of Swedish meatballs. Ridiculous.In good news though I finally finished a blanket I started working on when I was a junior in college. Finish is entirely subjective though because the yarn I bought, lo those 8 years ago, has gone missing. Pth! So I just bound off the edge and considered it done. And since I've finished it I've found it to be the perfect couch companion. It's exceedingly warm and perfect for snuggling under since it is so freaking enormous (originally slated to fit a queen sized bed).
This following bit is stolen from my facebook, but since it took me over a whole day to write I felt it should get a bit more mileage. Also, have I mentioned sometimes I'm epically lazy?
So 25 things about me:
1. I occasionally can be a horrible procrastinator, this is a perfect example considering I got tagged over a week ago.
2. I love a good dirty martini with a shot of hot sauce. Or a glass of bourbon. Or a Bombay Sapphire and tonic.
3. I could easily spend days knitting and being completely happy doing so.
5. Yellow roses are my favorite, hydrangeas are a close second, peonies are third.
6. I have deep and abiding love of good corned beef. A good reuben (with sour cream and mustard instead of thousand island) might be the most perfect food in the world.
7. I could easily spend the GDP of a small ex-U.S.S.R state on makeup and other skin care items from Sephora.
8. I miss playing softball.
9. When I was about 8 I was in a grade school talent show. I've blocked most of it from my memory but do recall there were very sparkly tights, big hair and a choreographed dance routine involving bouncing a basketball.
10. My two favorite books are Pride and Prejudice and East of Eden.
11. I hate eHarmony commercials. I want to throw a lamb shank at those overly happy, smug couples.
12. I want a dog.
13. When I was a little girl I had to wear braces on my legs to correct my walking. I shared an orthopedist with the Cleveland Browns. This makes me feel special.
14. My grandparents gave me a claddagh ring for my Confirmation and a few months later I lost it when I was playing hide and seek in a cornfield. I felt awful about it because I loved that ring, luckily the next time they went to Ireland they bought me another one and I hate to admit I like the second one better than the first. It's prettier.
15. I hate it when people call me Susan or Suzy. Yet I let my Grandmother get away with calling me Suzy, only because she is very old.
16. I remember Sr. Nancy who taught American History would let Katie M and I talk all the time in class and never yelled at us for it. She sure did yell at Devon for telling us to be quiet.
17. Thinking of 25 things has been immensely hard.
18. I'm wickedly allergic to cigarette smoke.
19. I still love the times I had in Apartment #2. The Bitchin' Bitchass Bar was the best home bar ever. It was totally Ro-bitchin'.
20. Apartment #2 had two squirrels that lived on our back porch, we named them Gwen and Ron. Ron fell into our keg bucket and drowned. We felt really bad about that as we dumped him over our porch railing to his final resting place on the roof of the house below us.
21. I love trashy romance novels, especially if they are British period ones.
22. I love to shit talk and am very competitive. Consider that fair warning.
23. I've been weirdly obsessed with the idea of living in Wisconsin for long time. I think it is the availability of cheese curds and lots of breweries.
24. Currently I only have 5 minutes of hot water, my landlord is sending someone out to fix that this next week. Thank god.
25. Even though I don't go out without sunscreen my freckles have suddenly reappeared after having been missing for nearly a decade. I love them.
Labels: food, knitting, lazy, TV
Woah Thursday, November 06, 2008
First off, holy shit! Obama is going to be President. Simply spectacular news in my opinion. I'm wickedly happy and in awe.Although when I went to vote there was a problem with my address and those poll workers acted like I was trying to pull something over on them like perhaps I'd murdered the REAL Skeezix and was wearing a mask pretending to be her. Yes, you figured out my diabolical plan...Mwahhahaha.
So clearly I have a posting problem. I come home at night and blankly stare at my computer screen trying to think what I say. Frankly, nothing interesting comes to mind and I end up knitting instead.
Knitting has taken over my life. I'm obsessed. Everyone is getting homemade presents this year and they are going to like it. Damnit. I must have some justification for my obsession, no?
So I'll leave you with a photo from my zip lining adventure, which was awesome. Go do it.
Labels: Awesomeness, knitting, lazy
A post in which I even bore myself Thursday, September 04, 2008
I have been entirely meaning to write more but I just cannot seem to get my ass in gear at all. Everything lately seems to move very slowly and it's all I can do to get my laundry put away. Or not. I've had a bunch of it sitting in basket for 2 weeks now. Crappity crap crap.Instead, I seem to be practicing the sort of things that would make a person you'd want to be married to in case of an apocalypse. I spent the whole of the Labor day weekend knitting, canning and refinishing furniture. Really, come on over once all hell breaks loose- I'll have whiskey and vodka and knit you things while preparing a meal from homemade canned goods.
Granted, I only canned one jar of tomatoes this weekend...I thought for sure I'd get two out what I brought home from the farmer's market. This weekend I plan on buying a boatload more, since I'd like to think that my homemade canned tomatoes will be better than what I get from the store. I might try to oven roast some of them to concentrate their flavor and make it deeper.
I also canned up a couple more jars of pickled okra. Because one can never have too much pickled okra- delicious for eating straight from the jar or in your Bloody Mary.
When I moved my parents brought me a table from my grandparents basement. A table that my grandfather had randomly drilled holes into and splashed a million different types of paint on. It was a dingy green color and in need of some serious loving care. After scraping off the layers and layers of paint, removing a few random nails and filling all the holes I was ready to paint.
Before:
After:
Oh my, this is boring isn't it? Fuck, it really is. I'm sitting here reading my own crap and drifting off.
So whatever. I painted, knitted a bunch and canned some food.
Really, I think whatever I write will not compare to the drama surrounding the Republican VP nominee. It's like the best lifetime movie ever. I can't get enough of it.
As usual the best commentary is coming from The Daily Show:
Badass Knitter Tuesday, January 15, 2008
I somehow stumbled upon Fig and Plum last week and immediately became obsessed with the idea of the Koolhaas hat by Jared Flood . OBSESSED.So it was only fitting when the new man joked that he wanted me to make him mittens that I was "No mittens, but how about a hat instead?" (I would make him mittens but he doesn't really strike me as a mitten-wearer and I insist that my knitted items be worn not shoved in a drawer never to see the cold.)
I ordered two lovely skeins of yarn fromLoop (who happen to ROCK! They shipped super fast and even wrote a cute "Thanks Skeezix!" across the top of the receipt). It seems everyone is making the hat from Malabrigo and like I lemming I had to as well. God, their blue color is just lovely. And soft. And nice to knit with. Go buy some. Ok?
In addition to the yarn I also went down to my local yarn shop and picked up another pair of Addi Turbo needles. These seriously made my life beautiful. Sure, they are expensive but worth every penny, from here on out they are my go-to needles. I adore them.
So needles in hand and yarn wound into a ball I got to work. And nearly immediately cocked the whole goddamn thing up. But I trudged on thinking I could fix it/figure it out. Yeah. Not so much. It was my first time working with traveling stitches/cables and while it was a rocky start I'll say that I think I've figured it out. And by rocky start I mean I totally and utterly fucked up the hat and had to rip it all out (about 5 hours worth of work) and start all over again. I think partial blame goes to Brett Farve because I kept stopping what I was doing to watch him rock the Seahawks. Then I'd forget where I was and things just sort of fell apart from there.
See, I thought I could fix the cock up I made but it just devolved into a pattern that looked nothing like the Koolhas hat at all. Although it did still look like a hat, just a had with big fat center cables. So Sunday morning I sat down and ripped it all out, then loudly began berating myself for doing so because I had several false starts with the goddamn ribbing (too many stitches/not enough because I cannot count to save my goddamn life). So I turned off the TV (what I listen to while I knit) and sat in silence until I did the first whole set of stitches, and it was like something in my head clicked into place and bam! it started working for me.
So I sat on my couch for an ungodly number of hours alternating between watching Friday Night Lights and the Cowboys/Giants game. Finally I put the damn hat down at about 9:30 and then tossed and turned worried that I would fuck it up again when I started to do the decreases. Seriously. I laid there for 2 hours thinking about it. I should have just gotten up and starting knitting again but I didn't.
Last night I finished up the decreases and didn't mess up, I'm so bloody proud of myself I can't even tell you. I'm beaming with pride. Now all that is left to do is worry that the slight pink tinge that is present in some parts of the yarn is too girly for a boy.
Labels: Awesomeness, knitting
