See back cover for details.

Sweetie left yesterday to get back to Missouri and his job. It was wonderful to have him home. The 3 1/2 day work week is really nice, since it gives him time to make the almost 6 hour drive each way. Also, where he is living now and where we hope to be living, is only a 5 minute drive to work. A pleasant change after 15 years of 45-60 minute commutes. 

Fannie Mae made a counter offer on the new house, which we have accepted. It is almost $13,000 less than the original asking price. If everything goes smoothly, we should close at the end of January. Sweetie was able to get a VA loan, at a tiny fixed rate interest rate. Yay, us! I guess I need to start collecting boxes. 

I'm knitting on the socks. Had to rip out the heels after a wrong stitch count on both of them. Cheese and crackers! Oh, and the pattern on the one wonky skein has suddenly corrected itself. The original skeins were $4.29 each, and then were on sale at 40% off, which means the yarn cost me just a little over $5. The blend is 50% superwash wool, 25% bamboo, and 25% nylon and it has a soft hand. I like how certain things I make hold memories of events that went on during their construction. 

Howard hasn't been doing too well, and I know squat about ducks. He hasn't been eating his feed or quacking ever since the week I was gone and we had the ice storm, and is having trouble getting around. Yesterday his eye was matted closed. Sigh. I'm ashamed to say that I was secretly hoping he would die, but he has kept hanging in there. So today I brought him inside, and he is in an inch of water in our tub, along with Rubber Ducky. He ate some bread and drank a lot of water, and his eye is better. I figure he can stay there for the time being. I can take sink baths. He seems happier. I wonder if he wasn't depressed and lonely after losing his little friends, Omelet and Buffalo Wing. 

Henny Penny and her two kids, Peg Leg and Wing Man, are in cramped quarters, but doing well. They will go and live with Fried Chicken and His Hens once the chicks get big enough, or we move, which ever comes first. I hear that Fried Chicken loves cat food, and would come into the house if allowed to. They are all doing well, and I am so delighted that they are safe and happy.

Do Not Shake.

In the midst of this mess I call my life, I am knitting. I began these socks just before I drove to Missouri last week, and worked on them off and on while socked in (Ha! a pun!) by bad weather. 

The yarn is Serenity from Premier Yarns, the Deborah Norville Collection, in the color way Saffron. I remember Deborah Norville as a news reader, or maybe she was a weather person, on a local Atlanta TV station, back in the way back. I had no idea she is the host of Inside Edition until I just now Googled her, nor did I know that she had a Yarn Collection until I found this yarn on sale. 

And thank goodness it was on sale, because you can see the dye job is totally fucked up. The pattern starts out in symmetry, then one ball crapped out and went white. When the color returned, the patterning was reversed. I thought about ripping out the one sock, but thought that it would make a great memento of my trip.

I Feel Like June Cleaver

So. 

Arrived back home on Thursday, several days later than intended, but the time was well spent and I am safe. Sweetie left today to get back to Missouri, and his job which wants him at 6 in the morning.

There was much weather last week. First the wind and snow, and then the ice. We had hoped to travel home Wednesday afternoon, but the forecast was for freezing rain and I made the call to stay one more night and drive during the daylight. The motel we were at is not too busy, especially since their cable is out, but Thursday morning I took Princess out to a lobby filled with sleeping people, a full parking lot, and 4 dozen tractor-trailers idling in any spot they could get. The roads were ice. MoDOT had even called back their snow plows/salt trucks to put chains on their tires, as even they couldn't get around. 

We left near 11, eastern time, and it was white knuckle driving for the first 60 miles. There were so many wrecked vehicles and evidence of wrecks that I gave up counting, but not noticing. But we made it home without incident. Yay, us!

As I said, my time there was well spent. Sweetie had had his eye on another house since he moved there, and the for sale sign finally appeared one day. We looked at it from all around the outside, then contacted the realtor, and we looked at it from the inside, too. 

It's a helluva house, and we have made an offer. Now, I am collecting and sending just about every bit of financial information about us to a Missouri bank in order for us to get a VA loan. (I remember when banks didn't want to fool with VA loans.) It's all very tedious and tiring, and I am glad I am as organized as I am, as I have been able to lay hands on every single thing that has been asked for. I have been dealing with our local bank, in order to pull in every single dollar possible.

I've been stressed. And elated. And tired. And numb. And thinking where to put our furniture in the new house. And what kind of curtains it needs. And about how all of this is going to happen.

From the outside, one can see how symmetrical it is, and that there is a shrubbery. In the back is a white picket fence. 

Here is a bad quality video of the inside of the house.

This is way more house than we were looking for. I didn't video the full basement or the attached garage, or the grounds. Closing looks to be in a little over 30 days, if all goes well.

I am trying to be the calm in the middle of the storm.

Think of a number between 0 and 100.

Cabinet of Wonders: If Only I Had A Fourth-Dimensional Mirror

As a 50-something, I really enjoyed reading this blog post.

What would Freud say?

I'm in Missouri. The winds are a constant 30 mph, but there is no ice and little snow, but what there is, is being blown into drifts. I am safely inside.

Looking at another house tomorrow. Sweetie and I drove around yesterday, looking at properties, until I grew bleary-eyed and cranky. This new one is nothing at all like what we were looking for. It is two-story, in-town, on a small lot. But, on the plus side is a living room fireplace, a full basement, a large screened-in back porch, and a fenced in back yard. It is also within our price range. Also found another possible in a little town just north of Montgomery City.

I had a dreams Friday night that I am trying to puzzle out. Two separate dreams featuring tornados that were nearby, which focused and then landed on me, and then were quickly weakened and gone. Very weird. i can only surmise that there is chaos all around me, but I am the calm in the center of the storm.

Any alternate explanations are welcome.

A duck walks into a bar...

As the old joke goes, "I have some good news and some bad news. Which would you like to hear first?"

I'll start with the bad news, I reckon. When I got home from my spinners' weekend, it was to find Omelet dead, and Buffalo Wing and Easter missing. A hawk is the suspected culprit. Whatever it was, Howard the Duck was too big to be taken. 

The remaining 3 hens, along with Fried Chicken, have been staying very near the front porch, day and night. 

(I don't even want to write much about the road kill bunnies that I have had to attend to, in the last few weeks. It breaks my heart.) 

So much sadness.

The good news is that I captured the hens and rooster this morning around 5:30, and then took them to my friend's house. She has at least 15 hens and a couple of roosters that free range like mine do. 

Then there is Henny Penny, the Buff Orpington banty hen, and her two chicks that are a week and a half old. It has been so cold here, that I brought them all inside last week. They are in a large cage in the laundry area, where they are safe and warm. I call the chicks Peg Leg and Wing Man. I will keep them inside until other arrangements can be made.

Also, I will see Sweetie this weekend! He had a professional inspect the house we like, and the story gets more dismal as the wiring is all fucked up and needs to be replaced. Crap on a stick. On the bright side, that's one more bargaining chip and not a deal ender. He has been spending his free time looking at other houses, and wants me to look at them, too. He has another week of this all-week training before his 3.5 day work week kicks in, so I expect him to come home the weekend after this.

It's lonely here, rattling around in this big ol' house with only the cats and dog. (And the duck and rabbits.) I can't say that I am thrilled to be moving to Missouri, but, so it goes. I'm putting on my big-girl panties, and making the best of it.

Also? My doctor has prescribed me some new happy pill medication. Maybe now I will be less with the weepy.

Temporary Registration

KNITTING NEWS! I finished the Seaside Cardigan! (Pattern found on Ravelry.) Still need to block it, but otherwise, it will be wearable this weekend at our Friendship Spinners retreat at Shakertown in Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. I have been doing little else but trying to finish this for the last few days. Am I that slow of a knitter? I know that I am a deliberate knitter, as I am not a knitting machine, and because of this, I have no problems with my hands or wrists when I knit a lot. Touch wood. So far anyway. I modified the sleeves, and made them straight instead of bell shaped. I think blocking will do it a world of good. You can't really see it, but the front bands were finished using a 2-stitch I-cord, and it's one bind-off I will absolutely use again. 

The color is more true in the first photo. I wonder now if green is a good color for me, but I will liven it up with some magenta and purple knit flowers. Those are more my colors. I'll wear my usual black underneath. I can always dye it a darker color. Nah, this has a nice, subtle tweedy look as it is.

So, Sweetie is gone to the new job. I miss him. He says things are going pretty well, though, and he has a line on a rental house for him to live in instead of the motel, until our house is ready. We are in suspense about everything as nothing concrete is known about anything. (How's that for a sentence?) 

In the meantime, workmen have been here for the past three days, putting in a new subfloor in the laundry area and bathroom, replacing some outside wooden siding and clapboards, and a few other niggling little matters. The practically new toilet I got for free on craigslist last fall has finally been installed! It's a shame that we didn't have this work done before we knew we were moving. So it goes. This relatively small investment has assuredly made our house easier to sell. 

I haven't sewn on kites in three weeks, and I hope that I can tomorrow, now that my plate is less full.