Mice

Well . . . .

We are all settled in here in Clawson. My girls are doing great. Joe's working here and there and I'm still looking for a job, but all in all, we are ok.

Except for the mouse.

We moved back into our lovely, clean, freshly painted home and it's stayed clean, believe it or not. So when I saw the mouse poop in the bottom cupboard, I wanted to cry. I don't like mice. They are disgusting, sneaky, creepy little rodents and they belong outside, far, far away from my house, not in my freaking pristine cabinets!

I will show no mercy. I was all for poisoning the little bastard and his family. But Joe pointed out that when you poison them, they have to go somewhere to die, potentially in the walls and that's just creepy. He also said the Billy the Exterminator didn't like using poison. I told him if he was willing to call Billy the Exterminator and have him come over and kill the mice, I'd be all about not poisoning him. Of course, Billy costs money and since we are unemployed, we went with the traps. Oh, not the humane traps. Look, if they want to live, more power to them - they just need to live OUTSIDE. Inside, all bets are off. So we put out the old fashioned, snap their little spines, mouse traps.

All that did was provide the little fuckers a steady meal of peanut butter for a couple of days. Once again, I pointed out the need for poison, but Joe, in his wisdom, said perhaps we should try a more sensitive trap. I said fine. But if they ate the damn peanut butter again, I would by the d-con myself.

This morning Sophie woke us up by telling us there was a dead mouse in the cupboard! Victory! Joe threw it in the garbage. But that reminded me of what a friend did, when confronted with the dead mouse in the mouse trap.

She made her teenage son take the thing out and swing it around the front yard a couple of times so all the other mice would know what happened to mice that ventured into her house! Genius. As another friend pointed out to me, you've got to let them know who's boss!

My blog got mentioned in my Alumni Newsletter!

Does that qualify me as famous?

Really, Kalamazoo College's Be-Light E Newsletter mentioned me under the Class Notes section - and I totally did not send that information to them - so who did?

I was totally shocked, they mentioned that I had a blog and that in it I chronicled my experience of finally finishing my SIP twenty years later, and linked to that post! I feel kind of cool now!

But guess what? Not only am I now finished with my SIP, but I've completed my gym credits and in December (which is when they print up the diplomas) I will be the proud owner of a Bachelor of Arts Degree with a French Major from Kalamazoo College! Yay!!!!!!!!! Although, word to the wise for other people thinking of majoring in French - double major in some kind of business-y thing, because really, I'm not very marketable at the moment. I plan to remedy this by taking the GRE and getting into Library Science School, but really, it would have been much easier to do when I was younger.

moving back home

I've posted it on Ravelry already, but I thought I'd do it here. I'm moving back to the D. Or, well, the metro Detroit area, which is the place I call home. I tried to call Alpena home. And I'm very sad to be leaving. I'll miss my friends, my job, my book club, the swans in the river, the snowy winters (really, I mean it, I love the snow). Oh, I know I complained but I thought this was where I would be, for a really long time, and so I adjusted. Only to have the rug pulled out from under me. From under my entire family really. I'm not ready to talk about why we are leaving, but someday I will be. I can't wait for that day.

But in an effort to look on the bright side, here is a list of shit I won't miss in Alpena.

1. Road kill that lays on the side of the road for weeks at a time.
2. The melting plastic smell that permeates the air 4 out of 7 days a week from the panel processing plant in town.
3. The way the most of the locals look at you like you are still a stranger after two years.
4. The absence of any real Mexican cuisine.
5. The lack of a decent bookstore (ok, at least there is one here, but let's face it, it's substandard)
6. The absence of any real Chinese food (really what I mean is that there is no Young's here!)
7. The only radio station that played semi-decent music (it's catch phrase is "playing the 80's, the 90's and now" emphasis on 80's and really it should say "80's no one listened to)
8. Going to the store without showering and seeing at least three people you know.
9. How the "important" people here think that they really are important
10. All three McDonald's and all three Subway's.

His first (that I know of) "college story"

So. The 18 year old found some friends, of the smallish rodent variety, in his apartment. Three mice to be exact. Now, he IS a boy, and we've had mice in our houses before, a couple times and he didn't seem to traumatized. However . . . .

Last night I was IM'ing him on Facebook, and I asked if they had seen anymore mice - here, I'm just gonna quote the conversation verbatim. Read it, it's pretty funny.

Me: Did you see anymore mice?
JB: I don't know.
Me: What do you mean you don't know? Any mouse poo?
JB: I don't know. I don't venture into the quarantine area.
Me: (chuckling) The quarantine area? Where is the quarantine area?
JB: My room.
Me: Where are you sleeping?
JB: The couch.
Me: Did you get your clothes out of your room?
JB: No, only a select few.
Me: Ok, you know mice can smoosh themselves flat enough to go underneath a door.
JB: Taken care of
Me: How
JB: Hoodies rolled up along the edge of the door, smashed in with a large metal box.
Me: How long is the "quarantine" going to last?
JB: Until the PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) stops.
Me: LMAO - are you having flashbacks?
JB: IT'S NOT FUNNY!
Me: It's kinda funny! LMAO
JB: It's like you are making fun of a war veteran!

I'm sorry, I just thought this was hilarious. I'm still picturing my 18 year old son curled up in the corner of his couch with the computer actually having flashbacks about mice running across the floor and his cousin throwing a shoe at them, stunning them, and then beating the crap out of them. It is kinda funny, isn't it?

Forget Cat Bordhi

Ok, too hard. I'm back to knitting a plain old vanilla sock. My Cat Bordhi creation was ginormous and didn't so much resemble a sock. I know when to say when.

always read ahead

So I started a Cat Bordhi sock, and I thought the beginning was odd, because there were like, 15 different cast on amounts. I picked the one closest to 64 figuring that would be normal. I picked sixty.

You had to cast on 60 on a size 2 (I used 3 because it's all I had) straight needle (I used a double point because it's all I had AND I had to smoosh all the stitches on there and pray none fell off) and knit 1 1/2 inches of linen stitch ( I think that's what it's called, it's all "slip wyif, k1") back and forth.

Then you have to join it in a circ on two circs , size ones, (which I have!) and knit8 more rows of this pattern. Then comes the trouble.

You are supposed to downsize the whole cotton picking thing by four stitches. Turns out I should have cast on 70, not 60. Need I say I literally spent from 5 to 9 getting that two inches knitted before I realized I messed up? Did I frog? Hell no. I increased 4 stitches and am praying the thing goes over my foot. We'll see. I don't hold out high hopes. I see frogging in my future.

Read ahead people, always read ahead.

Cat Bordhi - mind blowing

I got the two latest Cat Bordhi books from the library today - New Pathways for Sock Knitters and the one after it, something about insouciance. They are (as the title of the post implies) blowing my mind! She has rewritten the sock. She calls it "sockitecture". No more leg, heel flap, gusset, foot, toe. She has sort of rerouted the whole heelflap/gusset part, so that you can increase, basically anywhere to make room for your heel. It's crazy. I can't claim to understand it yet.

My problem is, I am not patient. I don't want to knit the little baby socks on huge needles to practice, and Cat says I must practice. But I don't wanna. I want to knit all the really cool looking socks in the book. I've had this problem before. It's why I can't knit two socks on two circs or magic loop. I tried to do the projects instead of the practice projects. Does anyone else suffer from this particular form of delusion? Maybe there is a support group. Or better yet, maybe there is an enabling group, that can tell me exactly how to not do the practice crap and still be able to knit the fun stuff!