Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya...

Pam had this up on her blog and loving The Princess Bride as I do, I had to take the quiz. I was actually surprised. I thought I'd come up Vizzini! Which Princess Bride Character are You? this quiz was made by mysti

In my absence

Okay, so I haven't been blogging, I suck. I've been trying to finish up some UFOs before my new needles from Knit Picks come and I'm forced to start a new project with them. Aside from that, here's what I've been up to:

That trollup, Rain!

Several months ago I asked Rain to do me a favor and send some stuff to my SP who loved British "food" which she did. In return I sent her some yarn from Knit Picks. Just a trifling of stuff since the international postage boxes are pretty small. Friday afternoon I get the mail and find a package. A package absolutely stuffed with candy, stickers, trinkets for the kids, yarn, and a fantastic handbag made especially for me by one of the busiest knitters on the planet. What a bitch! How dare she send me an adorable bag, more yarn, and other assorted nifty things! I may indeed beat her with a toilet brush as she suggested in her note. I have the distinct impression she may have just started a gift war that will cause me no end of internaitional postage issues. In other words, thanks Rain, we loved it!The kids had an absolute blast with the punching ballons and used the stickers to decorate Father's Day cards for Red Todd Kidd. We haven't gotten to the candy yet but we will. Oh, we will. We had to put it in the fridge because I could tell it was melted and then I forgot about it until just now. Okay, it's mostly gone now. Yum. Cadbury... Ahem. Anyway, I carried my new little handbag all weekend. The very first place it got to go was to my sister and cousin's graduation. They both graduated from college (University of Phoenix, no not in Arizona, a private college with lots of locations) this weekend and were very excited. My sister is one of about three people ever to go to our local comunity college and eventually get a degree. Way to go!

It begins.

Summer break. Today is the first day of it here. It's 9:30am and already the kids are devouring all snack foods in sight and generally driving each other, and me, crazy. Fabulous. I haven't been knitting at all. Instead I've been trying to keep up with the SP7 Questionnaire game and also working on one of my other incredibly nerdy persuits, an RPG. We've also been struggling to decide whether or not to move to San Jose, thanks to an offer given to Red Todd Kidd by his company. It's a lot more money but it's far away and something we had never even considered until this offer came up. Our goal has been Oregon, our purgatory has been San Diego, and this is way random. I don't think we'd consider it at all if it wasn't for the fact that we do know a few people there. My Uncle Elvis and Aunt Ivanna live there (in fact one of the apartment bulidings I found had a really familliar address, I realized it was their old place!) and I discovered Cpurl lives there too. Eh, I don't know. I'm completely on the fence about it. Not to mention it would totally give me away to my CASP! Nothing else is really happening here. Lola Beans has taken to eating frozen chicken nuggets but that's it. No other interesting stuff. As soon as that sewing pattern gets here, though, there will be plenty of ranting on the blog, of this I am certain.

Go to the head of the class.

Prompted by Penny Karma's pop quiz (which I totally rocked!) I've put up a quiz for the three people who read my blog. If I had to bet on it, I'm thinking high score will go to Rain. Wanna prove me wrong? Click here!

Cupcakes, cute kids, and crap.

Okay, I never did get around to knitting on Tuesday. Lola Beans kept waking up and by the time I finally got a minute to myself I just ended up sitting on the couch watching VH1's countdown of the 100 Greatest Child Stars (number one was Gary Coleman if you're curious). How sad is that? Since I have no cool projects going the pictures in today's post are going to be of Lola Bean's Birthday cake, which was cupcakes, and the kids eating them. No pictures of Miss Beans eating them since she slept through the whole party. Poor kid. Anyway, the cupcake tree there is how I managed to maim myself. All those little pictures of the Little Einsteins were made by me. Cut out with those fancy scrapbooking scissors. When I finished making them I noticed that my thumb was numb and tingly. Two weeks later it's better but still a bit tingly. I can't believe I pinched a nerve that bad on something so silly and didn't even notice until it was too late. I couldn't even knit for several days because I couldn't feel anything with my right thumb and it was just too weird. I'm used to it now but I really hope it goes away. The numbness not the thumb, that I'd like to keep. I'm kind of in a knitting funk right now. I don't have any deadlines left so I'm not pressed to work on anything. I don't really have any projects ready to start either. I'm just kind of "meh" about the whole thing right now. That's probably best since I have a major sewing project coming up. Yes, sewing, the bane of my existance. I'm going to make a few diapers and some adaquate training pants for Miss Beans since I'm sick of buying diapers and the Pull-Ups are the worst invention ever. I can't even begin to tell you about what a nightmare those things are for a parent of a stubborn child. All I'm going to say is that cloth training pants are uncomfprtable when wet and the kid will start going to the can instead of in their pants right quick if you switch to undies and make them help you clean up their messes. Maybe you think that's harsh and traumatic but I'm betting you don't know what it's like to have to do diapers for an infant, deal with a potty resistant three year old, AND clean up after an inconitnent cat day in and day out. There's literally only so much crap I can deal with without going barking mad and my limit is somewhere less than two small children and a cat. So anyway, I'm going to be doing some sewing and hopefully I won't sew my shirt to my project like that one time, completely forget seam allowances like last time, or give up in misery like all those other times. I should either take a class, buy a book, or just give up on sewing altogether, shouldn't I? Oh well, we all know I'm a crafting masochist so that's not going to happen. Makes more interesting blog reading for the lot of you I guess, silver lining and all that. *The boys in the pic are my son, Darth, and my nephew, Tank. Acoording to my sister the frosting made Tanks poop blue. Aren't you glad to know that?

Today's goals:

1) Eat three meals, none of which consist entirely of snack foods. --Did it! 2) Research and prep for purchase of big girl pants for Miss Beans. I'm so sick of buying diapers that I'm not going to do it anymore. --Bought a pattern! 3) Laundry. --Done and put away! 4) Dinner; make something that doesn't suck. 5) Get Miss Beans to bed before 9:30pm, try to get her to go to sleep in bed intstead of in arms. --Skipped her nap and down by 7:45! 6) If there's any time left, knit. --Off to do that right now! I rule! Formidable goals but I'm on track thus far. I had some toast for breakfast, I'm about to make some lunch, I've done some preliminary research on "Cloth Pull-Ups", I'm thinking about dinner, I've put a load of laundry in... I think I'm doing well. Last night Lola Beans put herself to bed but then she played in there and woke up her brother so I had to get her up and rock her. That didn't work either. At almost 10pm I took her in her room and put her in the bed and just sat there making her lie back down until she gave up and went to sleep. By the time I got her to bed no one else in the house was up. Sigh. Oh, by the way the diet plan from yesterday makes your tummy feel very rumbly, I'm going to have to rethink it.

The Cheetos Naturals, Coca-Cola, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Diet

I'll let you know how that goes. Oh, and if you haven't tried the bliss that are Cheetos Naturals, don't. They're hard to find and I want them all to myself. Red Todd Kidd finished his MCSE last week, we're pretty excited about that around here. That means we're coming up on the end of his classes and we're all the closer to getting out of my parent's house. Yipee! Don't get me wrong, I love my parents but as an adult is really sucks to live with your parents. You may think you want to feel sixteen again but believe me, you really don't. The thing I will miss about living here is the weekly dinner. We have dinner every night, of course, but once a week RTK makes a big dinner for everyone and usually a couple of extra people we invite. Last night it was pork tenderloin, mashed potatoes, biscuts, and gravy and we had my grandma and RTK's mom over (his dad was out sailing in some race or something). It's just so much fun to have the great food and a few drinks in a relaxed atmosphere. In a couple weeks we're going to try and do a vegetarian meal (which I've never done before) and invite over our neighbor from across the street. The artist and his wife not the drug dealer. You know what I've been craving (other than the stuff in the title of this post)? A good poker game. RTK and I used to have our friends over for Texas Hold 'em pretty often. We ended up watching a WPT game on television the other night and now we're both rabid to get a game together. Sigh. I got one of Rachael Ray's cook books, 365: No Repeats. I picked it up at my sister's and flipped through it and it seemed pretty good so I picked it up at Costco this weekend. Yeah, Costco where we sepent almost $240 and I couldn't even tell you what we bought. Except peanut butter, I remember we got peanut butter. And the Cheetos Naturals, can't forget those. I was meme-ed and I somehow missed it! Oops! 1)What's your favorite LYS? : The Antique Yarn Shoppe in Poway which despite it's name is a very laid back, cool place run by a very cool lady. 2)What about it do you like most?: That the staff is just two hippies as opposed to other places I've been where the staff has been pretentious or INSANE. 3)What is your 2nd favorite?: I don't have a second I don't think. I guess if I have to I go to Two Sisters and Ewe but I don't love it. 4)What would you improve about it to make it a tie with your first?: I'd have to live closer to it since it's way out of my way. I'd also have to there and make freinds with people. Really It's on me, I suppose. 5)What's the last thing your bought at your #1 LYS?: Addi Turbos and two skeins of bulky weight Alpaca. 6)Who's Next?: I'm breaking the chain. I'm a rebel and I'll never, ever be any good.