Dear sweet, loveable kitten babies . . .

Dear sweet, lovable kitten babies,
If you do not stop whining for food, I am going to sell you to the gypsies to be made into hats. Lunch happens at 4. You have been squeaking at me since 1. Just because I am home does not mean we have food on demand. You are not starving and dying, and you do not need to eat until you are spherical. You can make it one more hour. Auntie Kim will not forget to feed you. I promise.

Love,
your faithful human slave

house!

All the negotiating and going back and forth and calling contractors and getting estimates and all that fun stuff is finally completed, and I'm getting a house! I am very very excited. And a little terrified. This is the most expensive thing I have ever bought, ever. I feel odd, like I'm waiting for someone to come over and say, "Hey, you! What are you thinking? You're not old enough to get a house!" But apparently I am, and I can, and I will. I'm not closing until late August, which is a little frustrating, because I want to play with my big new toy now! But since I can't do that, here's some more pictures.

My absolute favorite "room" in the house: the screened-in breezeway between the house and the garage. The Best Roommate Ever and I both have hammock chairs to lounge in and enjoy the breeze, and I'm sure the kitties will decide they need to live out there. Dad thinks we could easily build a deck off the back (and possibly even the front, if we want to get crazy), so even though that's pretty far down on the list of improvements, I'm pretty excited.

My second favorite room: my bedroom. It's the upper half story and spans most of the length of the house. I have some very fun plans for paint colors.

Even though the whole process has been crazy, it hasn't been busy enough to keep me from pining for a certain someone I reconnected with in Tallahassee. Why do I always seem to zero in on relationships that are doomed to failure? I once heard the analogy that finding the right guy is like shoe shopping: you can find a really great pair of shoes that you love, but they just do not fit. Unless you want to hobble around in pain, you should walk away and find a pair that fits. I am so good at doing this with shopping; why can I not do it with relationships? Those with a firearm phobia do not pair well with gun nuts. Likewise, a vegan/carnivore pairing is probably more trouble than it's worth.
Sigh. Relationships are impossible. It's much more fun to pick out paint colors.

One cat, free to a bad home.

This sinister little mutant kitten beast


woke me up at 5:44 this morning (my day off) by puking up a hairball on my home inspection report. Free to a bad home.

If you think looking for a house is time-consuming . . .

. . . try buying one. I am Worn Out. So many phone calls to make and people to talk to and stuff to make sure is getting done, and exhausted naps to fall into whenever there is a break in the action.
Knitting continues apace despite the breakneck activity. At Thursday night Knit Night at Knitch, I finished my Hederas.

Thanks to Alice and Nell for the pictures.
Updates, both knitting and house-related, as I scrape out a few moments to blog. Pictures posted extremely sporadically, as I am totally dependent on the kindness of, well, not strangers, friends and family, more accurately. Anybody have any camera recommendations?

room for more sock yarn

Sorry for the long absence, gentle readers. I was caught up in the search for a new yarn storage system. I really like the one I went with; it's much roomier and has all sorts of different compartments and things so I can sort yarn by type, project, etc. Scroll down for a picture.


























3 bedrooms, 1 bath, an adorable screened-in breezeway between the garage and the house, and plenty of space for me, the Best Roommate Ever, two naughty kitties, and a whole lotta sock yarn.

the Best Roommate Ever

So, last night, I was fixing my dinner and the Best Roommate Ever was watching TV, waiting for me so we could watch the last DVD in season 1 of Heroes. As I was settling in, the picture went black, and we thought, "Hmm, that's weird. I guess that channel just went out." So she got up to put the DVD in, and we realize: it's all the channels. And the DVD player. We can hear the DVD playing. But we can't see it. Nothing but blackness. Crap.
BRE, brave soul that she is, dug out the manual and called the customer service number. She was on the phone for, I kid you not, at least an hour and a half. She had one customer service guy hang up on her; one who knew nothing, and her supervisor knew nothing and cared even less, and then she spent a better part of an hour getting switched from department to department, with nobody actually being able to give her any information. At one point, I heard her yell, "No wait, don't transfer me, I just came from there- crap!" All she wanted to know was, is this a $20 repair, or a$300 repair? Sadly, no one knew. I knew it was getting bad when I heard her yelling, "I'm trapped in the Customer Service Vortex of Hell." Never a good sign. She was finally able to find an actual repair center, although it wasn't open, so she thought she'd leave a message. Did they have an answering machine? Of course not! By the time this was all over, the throbbing vein in her forehead had subsided and she was laughing, kind of hysterically. Poor BRE. This is why I make her socks.

Yay! I'm one of the cool kids!

Well, the camera has well and truly bitten the dust. It was beyond even my Dad's considerable powers of resurrection. See what happens when you taunt a good camera? Let that be a lesson to us all. So, sadly, there will be no pictures until I can procure a new camera. Fortunately, all my knitting projects are either second socks or completely failing to get beyond one inch of knitting before I have to rip and try again, so you're not missing much. Jaymie has discovered the joys of licking ice cubes, which is massive cuteness, so no cute kitten tongue pictures for a while.
Fortunately, the incomparable Chicken Goddess has tagged me for a meme! One of the cool people thinks I'm cool! Happy dance! Okay, on to the meme.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago?
Hmmm, lessee. Ten years ago I was 17, so I'd have been in, what junior year of high school, just finished with what we all affectionately dubbed "hell year", spending my summer volunteering, visiting colleges, and attempting to repair the damage to my circadian rhythms.

2. What are 5 things on my to-do list today?
1) Call in sick because my stomach is doing that horrible clenchy thing it likes to do every few months. Check.
2) Blog. Check. (So sad that I have to prioritize this. I've been really bad lately because I was getting sick but didn't realize it yet.)
3) Shower and put on real clothes. Yeah, that'll happen, um, at some point. Maybe.
4) Keep trying to give my stomach food even though it doesn't want it, so I can keep my blood sugar somewhat level. I've discovered that popsicles help to kind of numb my angry tummy a little, before I eat something crazy and challenging like a banana.
5) Pounce on disk 4 of Heroes as soon as it arrives and watch it all the way through while knitting. (The Best Roommate Ever has the day off too, although she is doing actual productive things like laundry. I think she'll be on board for this plan.)

3. Snacks I enjoy: strawberry yogurt-covered pretzels, dried pineapple (tastes just like candy, yet it's a fruit. Genius!), cheese popcorn, edamame (Edamame turns me into the Cookie Monster, I swear. "EDAMAME!!! NOM NOM NOM!!!)

4. Places I’ve lived: Wisconsin, North Carolina, Atlanta, and Tallahassee.

5. Things I would do if I were a billionaire: OK, who has that song stuck in their heads now, "If I Had a Million Dollars"? Sing it with me! "If I had a million dollars (if I had a million dollars)!" I'm better now. I would buy my parents a beach house, with lots of porches. And I'd pay off their mortgages and all that so they could retire. I'd probably pay off the Best Roommate Ever's student loans. And I'd hire someone to follow my sister and her boyfriend around and say, "Are you sure that's a wise financial decision?" every two or three minutes. (Lovely girl, but can't manage money for crap.) And then I think I'd travel, see more of the States, and do Europe, and go hang out in Australia for a while. Oooo, and probably go to New Zealand and beg Peter Jackson to let me be involved in The Hobbit, in some tiny little insignificant way. Cuz that would be awesome. I would probably still work, though, once I got home from all this adventure. I'd get too restless otherwise. I'd be organizing the spice rack by color and shaving words into the cats.

Alex says: Just try it. Make my day.

Tagging: The Mad Crocheter, Treats for Breathing, Gotta Knit!, Rereading Proust, Knittin' Mittens for Ma Kittens, and SouthBork.