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. 

Answer yes or no

So.

Sweetie leaves tomorrow, to begin the new job on Monday. It's been nice having him home these last two weeks. He'll be staying in a motel until he can find a short term rental apartment or house. What is it with people not returning phone enquiries? 

The really good news is that when we met with the loan officer at our bank yesterday, she assured us that with our good credit, we are a shoe-in to get enough of an equity loan to not only buy that house we're interested in outright, but to also pay off our current home equity loan and the mortgage. We won't have an answer for about three weeks, though. Sweetie said he never in all his life imagined owning three houses, much less two of them outright.

We removed some suspect samples of non-friable asbestos from the new house, and I sent them off for testing. The insulation from the house siding is clean, (yay,) but some of the wallboard in the shed and basement is high is asbestos. This is the bargaining chip we were waiting for. (Non-friable means that as long as it is not cut into, crushed, etc., the asbestos poses no danger.) We'll be making an offer on the house this week.

In the meantime, we had a nice Thanksgiving on Wednesday past. Today, I have disposed of all meat from the turkey; turning it into soup with homemade noodles, and turkey salad. The chickens ate the giblets and I will let them have the skin and fat, too. The poor girls are finally acting less spooked, although they seem to be shunning Fried Chicken, the rooster. He continues to roost on the front porch at night, while the girls are in the tree out back. He calls them to food, and they don't come. Very sad. Still not sure if I will move them out west, but I don't have to decide right now. If I could give them to good homes, it would make my life easier. I am feeling the same way about my houseplants.