Kelee: Make Jewelry, Not War

This has not been my favorite week ever.

Starting with those horrible tornadoes in my old stomping grounds.

Now there's massive flooding in Vermont and in Mississippi and everywhere in betwixt.

I watched that horribly terrible movie Bounty Hunter, which made me question the existence of integrity. How did that movie get made? More importantly, why did I watch the whole thing?

All this rain has stirred up an undeniable crochet-caused ache in my fingers.

Nothing reminds you how motherless you are more than Mother's Day. (Unless it's having a baby.)

I have a birthday coming up.

I have a Journey song stuck in my head thanks to Glee.

When I switched from winter-wear to spring wear, I realized I put on a molehillish gut over the winter so I had to start exercising. Now I'm sore.

My kids (aged 4 and 5) have decided my music is not rocking enough for them, which makes me feel old and all “back in my day”ish. The good part of this is that they only want to listen to the White Stripes, which I am pretty psyched about because

1. It's the White Stripes, and they are awesome
2. I was concerned when the girl really liked that “Who Let the Dogs Out” song
   
3. I've been enjoying all the erratic, spazmatic dancing we've been doing.

I made two loaves of banana bread, and after they'd been baking for ten minutes, I found the butter sitting on the counter, softened.

I gave my kids a bath and forgot to plug the drain so the water flowed in and just ran right on out until it was no longer hot and there still wasn't any water in the bathtub. This was right after I read an article about water consumption and preservation. I felt so guilty about wasting all that water, my kids were bummed about the loserness of their bath, and we were all concerned about my brain.

Plus, the Osama bin Laden death – facebook debacle. The excitement, the anger, the patriotism, the misquotes, the conspiracies, the mounds and mounds of politics mixed in. I kept thinking of the wisdom of the 20^th century scholar and leader Elvira, mistress of the night, who said, “Listen sister, if I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you.”

You probably want to gently remind me that I don't have to read stuff just because it's there, and I want to agree with you and say that I just turned it off when I realized it was making me angry. Then we can both take a sip of coffee, look out the window, and one of us will change the subject. Like this:

Oh! Did I tell you about the new yarn I found right next door at the Enosburg Pharmacy? I went on a hat-making spree! Until I bought up all the psychedelic yarn and had to switch to ninja yarn and then I used it all up, too. Gorgey.

The yarn is Bernat's Mosaic Yarn. The hat that is right above these pointers ^^^^^^ is what happens when you just use the yarn in the order that it's made, which is pretty awesome. After the yellow at the bottom, it starts back over with green. For the one on the left, I got two skeins of yarn and merged them together at the yellow to go back through the colors of the greens and blue variety. And I did the same with the one on the top left but with the other colors. Then I added a tiny little black yarn to one of the hats because I liked the way it made the colors look more separate and the stitches stand out. I definitely want to try more of this yarn. Although I bought up all the ninja yarn, I don't have any photographic proof of the gorgeousness that pursued.

There were some seriously good parts of the week, too. Like when my Girlchild said, “I can't believe how incest with Barbie he is.” She says “incest” instead of “obsessed.” Or when she called her chipped tooth a “chimped tooth.”

And when we nearly doubled our garden size.

There was the gallery reception last night that was fun. I got to gossip with my favorite British nurse who uses the best British slang.

I watched Easy A, which restored my belief in the existence of integrity. At least in Hollywood.

My birthday is coming up.

I've gotten to listen to nonstop White Stripes.

So while lots of people discussed important events of national security or insecurity, I kept my head low and made all of these lovely treats. Fresh from my oven...