Sniff Sniff Sniff

Go wish Jon a fond farewell.

I'm gonna really miss you hun.

The whole reason I started reading blogs was because of Jon. I read his entire archive in like 2 days. hehe

I'm really going to miss reading Jon's hilarious stories. But I do so wish him all the happiness in the world.

I got nothing

(edit: this post was actually started last Sunday but I didn't have time to upload the pictures lol)
Not much has been going on around here.

It's taking me some time to get used to working nights. I only get to see the kid about an hour a day. That sucks.

He is home this weekend. Unfortunately, he has locked himself in his room. heh He has this thing about going in there and locking the door. As if I can't get in if I really wanted to.

He lost one of his front teeth this morning(last Saturday). It was all his own fault.

Friday night he was playing karate in the basement at my folk's house. He was probably watching Power Rangers or something. Anyway, my mom was down there yacking at him and he asked her to "please leave." As she was going up the stairs, he took off after her. She made to do a karate punch at him as a joke. He ran right into her hand full force. hehehe His one font tooth bled a bit and was just hanging there. I don't blame Mom. I know it was an accident.

Nick is just enjoying looking like a jack-o-lantern.


(Sorry for the sucky picture. I swear, I'm gonna get a new camera just as soon as I can.)
(he actually lost the other front tooth on Tuesday I think)

I got my yarn from LittleKnits yesterday. (last Saturday)


I'm thinking I'll use the Cherry Tree Hill yarn to make the kid a Christmas stocking. Yeah, I know it isn't really traditional Christmas colors, but I can't see wearing socks with a metallic thread in it. Yeah color me blonde to not realize that Super Glitz yarn would have metallics in it. :OP

I'm loving the Regia yarn. The colors are just yummy.



Eventually, I'll make some socks with them.

I've been pretty busy this last week cleaning up the house. I've got a bad back, so it is slow going. I do believe after some finishing up tomorrow morning, things will be good enough to get the landlord to go piss up a damn rope.

I've been thinking about moving the blog and getting some real web hosting. Yeah, I know that hardly a soul reads this thing. I have a web site that is dedicated to the sig tags I make for my always list. I was tempted to delete that group the other day though. I swear, no one knows how to say thanks for making them a tag. I don't think they realize how long it takes me to upload 100+ tags each time I make a new one. But anyways, the tag site is on Bravenet and I dunno how I'm getting away with it, but I'm using way the hell more than the 50MB disk space they allow for free sites. I have nearly 150MB of stuff on there. I guess they don't bitch cause I barely use any bandwidth. But whatever. I'm not sure I want to pay for a year of hosting all in one dang shot. Maybe I'll just start a sister site for the tags for the time being. I should probably wait to pay anything big until after my 90 day probationary period is up and the early yearly layoffs are over. I just know I'm gonna get laid off in January or February. I just hope like hell it isn't for the 15 weeks that this one guy got laid off for a couple years ago. groan

Oh, I made some new stitch markers tonight. I couldn't do any surfing while uploading tags tonight, so I decided to play with the ever growing stash of beads. hehe



They fit up to a size 8. I made one with an extra bead to mark the beginnings of rows. Someday I'll get better at twisting the wires.

Well, time to get my arse in gear and get the wash done so I can go to bed. Laters...

Can we forget that today happened??

No??

Ok, so then let's put it all down in all it's horrors so that we will never forget.

It started out ok. I found out Nick lost his other front tooth. He looks too cute. hehe

I came back home after taking him to school and fell asleep.

I woke up to the maintenance guy opening my bedroom door.

I was naked!!!!!

Thankfully, I was covered up. I've told them time and time again to ring the damned door bell cause I can't hear someone knocking. My fan is usually on in here and I just can't hear the door.

So, after I got dressed, I got to listen to the landlord bitch about how messy the house is. She is always complaining that my room is a fire hazard. The maintenance guy even yelled at me about the damn garage. I've got one week to clean up the house to her standards.

All was fine after that until I got to work. Things went bad the moment I tried to go in the door.

I tripped on the door jam and I damn near smushed one of the ladies I work with. She thankfully was stepping forward when I ran into her and she was able to keep her footing. I pretty much ended up with my arms around her half on the floor laughing my ass off.

She was afraid that I had gotten hurt and I was scared that I had smushed her. lol

She finally believes that I'm a world class klutz. I warned her. hehe

Later on I was walking on the catwalk carrying a box and I smashed my poor little pinky on a railing. I'm gonna have one hell of a bruise on it in the morning.

I swear I'm getting a crash course on how horrible this particular job can be. The first 6 hours tonight was fine and then everything blew up in my face. Thankfully, I don't think my boss blamed me too much. hehe

When I punched out from work I smacked my pinky on a cabinet. I damn near started crying.

I think I need to go to bed now before I hurt myself worse. hehehehe

freakin meme

Yeah, ok so I got nothing better than a meme. Sue me.

Four jobs I've had:

Fast food goddess. I've worked for Burger King, Hardees and Subway.

Ran the snackbar at an arcade outside of Chicago. It was a kickass job. It just didn't pay shit. lol

Quality Assurance tech at a plastics factory. Very boring. I've actually done this job twice. Once for a factory that made plastic medical bags and then for a factory that made plastic bottles and caps.

Distribution specialist. That is my current title. Figure that one out. lmao

Four movies I can watch over and over:

The Silence of the Lambs. I soooo love this movie. I've been known to quote this movie in the midst of most any conversation. hehe

Army of Darkness. We are talking high quality shit here.

Any of the Back to the Future movies. Gotta love me some Michael J. Fox.

The Scream trilogy. I love horror movies. They are all the better when they are a little cheesy. hehe

Four places I have lived:

Dubuque, Iowa. I spent most of the first 17 years of my life living in various neighborhoods in this god awful town.

Cascade, Iowa. My folks decided that it would be real cool to move to a little bity shitass town my senior year of high school. We stayed exactly one year. Big surprise there.

Carol Stream, Illinois. My one escape from Iowa landed me in this Chicago suburb while attending DeVry. I had way too much fun and it didn't last very long. lol

Peosta, Iowa. My home sweet home for nearly 7 years now. Very small but not very far from Dubuque and all the stores I need.

Four television shows I love to watch:

Lost. Can't miss this one. Sawyer is just too damn hot to miss.

Law & Order et al. I adore all 3 versions that are on the air right now. I love catching old episodes of the original whenever I can.

Medium. I can't wait for the new season to start. It old you I love spooky.

Super Nanny. This is my son's favorite show and I just love threatening Nick with having her come and take over our house. hehe

Four places I have been on vacation:

Gurnee, Illinois. I was just there last weekend at Six Flags. Fun place to visit.

Panama City Beach, Florida. We went down to Georgia to get my brother from basic training and drove down to PCB so we could see the gulf. I almost moved down there a few years ago. Longgggg story.

Devil's Lake, Michigan. I've visited my aunt there a few times. Hopefully next summer we will go visit her for a weekend.

Sadly, I can't think of any place else. Unless you can count going to Ames or Cedar Rapids to visit friends for a day. I've never had much money for vacations. sigh

Four of my favorite dishes:

Pizza. I love love pizza. Sausage and pepperoni are my favorites. I do love taco pizza too though.

Tacos. Mexican food is just yummy.

Home made french fries. mmmmmmmmmm

Fried potatoes. Mom makes the best fried potatoes with onions. yummmm

Four websites I visit daily:

Yahoo. I read my mail online and then download what I want to save.

Bloglines. I'm a bit addicted to reading my blogs.

Queer Joe. For some reason I can get Bloglines to read his site for shit. hehe

Stuff on My Cat. I'm sorry but seeing those poor cats dressed up in goofy outfits just kills me. No I don't much like the ones where stuff is piled on the cats. That is just mean. But there is nothing funnier than a cat in a dress. hehe

Four places I would rather be right now:

Bed. I'll be heading that way in just a few.

The family room at my folk's house. We are talking a comfy recliner, big screen tv and cable. What more could I ask for??

Georgia. My buddy Ally lives down there. It would be cool to go for a visit.

Sue's house. I can't remember at the moment if she lives in North or South Carolina. I'm so bad. She is Ally's big sister and my other best friend. Sheesh, you would think I would remember where she lives at. hehehe

Four bloggers I am tagging:

Ummmmm I doubt there are even 4 people who read this damn blog. hehe If you wanna do the meme, do it. If not, don't.

WTF???

I admit that this pattern is pretty, but are these people stupid???

At this writting, the bidding is at $71.99 for one stinking pattern. Just a leaflet. Not a book of patterns. One freakin pattern leaflet with holes in it.

sssssshhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeessssssshhhhhhhhhhhh

OMG!!!

Working until 2AM SUCKS!!!!!!

The only thing worse is having to get up at 6AM to go get the kid.

wwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I wanna go back to bed damn it.

boy oh boy

It is gonna take me some time to get used to working 2nd shift. It might be easier if I could get my sleep all in one block.

As it is, I get to sleep for about 5 hours and then I have to get up and go get Nick ready for school. After I drop him off, I come home and try to get another 2 hours of sleep.

I'm not getting much of anything done here at the house. I really need to get some cleaning done.

I did finish the short row heel on my sock. But, I'm gonna rip it out and do it again. I just don't like the way that some of the wraps are looking. Somehow I ended up with an extra wrap on one side. That isn't the part that looks bad though. I think I'll take the hat to work on on breaks and work on the heel this weekend when I can sit and do the whole thing at one time. I think working 1x1 rib in spurts will be a little easier than trying to turn a heel 5 or 10 minutes at a time. hehe

So far Nick is adjusting well to not seeing me much. He did have to go to bed an hour early the first night at my folk's because he wouldn't eat his dinner. Last night though, he ate like a dang pig. lol He had a hot dog, tater tots, spaghetti and chicken nuggets. Most nights I'm lucky if he will eat a few bites of just one of those.

Mom has decided it is a waste of money for him to be in daycare after school. She doesn't want to have to drive back to town to get him. So 3 days out of the week, I'll pick him up after school and race like hell to get him to their house and to work on time. Traffic around here sucks big time around 3pm. We have lots of factories, 2 elementary schools and a community college that all get out around the same time. Granted, the traffic isn't as bad as if I lived in a big city, but it can still take 5 minutes or more to get onto the main road from my house a block away. I may try going through the college's parking lot today when I go get the kid from school.

Anyways, I'm off to try and clean up the living room some. Nick was only home for about 90 minutes yesterday but he sure made a mess. hehe

Good news

I've finally been hired on at my job. I'll be switching to the night shift tomorrow.

I'm not real happy about having to work 2nd shift. I'm really hoping that it will only last a couple months. I'm really going to miss spending time with the kid.

I already warned him last week that I would be working at night and he will be spending most of his time at my folk's house. I also promised him that we would be spending lots of time together on the weekends.

I will get to see him every morning before school. I'll head over to my folk's house and get him up and ready for school each day.

Mom was thinking that she would bring him home each night and put him to bed. I had to remind her that I wouldn't be getting off of work until midnight and that there would be times that I would have to work until 2am. If she brought him here every night, she would soon be getting very little sleep. I really can't see her sleeping on my couch.

I thin it makes much more sense for him to spend the night at their house and for me to go out there to get him up for school.

I think Nick is going to like getting that extra hour of sleep in the morning. I have been getting him up at 6am every day. Now he can sleep in until at least 7. I don't have to have him to school until 8am.

In knitting news, go make a hat for Rabbitch. I've started one using some no name unknown content yarn that I got off of eBay. I'll do a bleach test on it before I send it off to make sure if it is wool or not. No, I can't promise that I will actually finish the hat. I'm horrible about finishing stuff. But I'm gonna try this time.

In other Nick news, we had a talk tonight about his dad. He made the comment that we didn't have a dad in our house. I explained to him about how his dad took off before he was born and that maybe someday he will decide that he wants to get to know him. And that if that happens, we will try hard to work something out.

That is when he told me that he though his dad was dead. I dunno where he got that idea. We have only talked about him one time before and I basically told him the same stuff that time. I told him that no, his dad was alive but he lives far away from us and I don't know how to get ahold of him.

Nick even asked me what his dad looked like. I do have pictures of him put away somewhere, but I don't feel like digging them out because I'm not sure where they are. I think the thing that most shocked him, was that he now knows that his dad has the same name as his uncle. When I told him that his name was Joe, he looked quite surprised. lol

Anyways, I'm gonna head off to work on the hat. And Joe, wherever you are, call your son.

What a weekend

It started with having to get up at 5 am yesterday. I do NOT like getting up that early on a weekend unless I'm getting paid for it. Just sayin... Besides getting a shower and getting the kid up and dressed, I had to try and straighten up the house enough to keep the folks from yelling about the mess. I swear their house looks like no one lives in it most of the time. I prefer the "lived in" look. Ok, so I'm messy. Whatever. The folks showed up a little after 6 am and we were off. We headed towards Madison and then turned south through Janesville. From there we headed towards Lake Geneva and finally our destination. Gurnee Illinois.

I have no freakin clue why the hell we needed to drive up to Madison and back down in order to get to some place that is no farther north than where we started out.

Anyways, thanks to Dad missing one exit and stopping for breakfast, we arrived at Great America at about 11 am. All during the month of October, they are celebrating FearFest in honor of Halloween. So right off the bat, the kid was nervous.

When we entered the park, everything was done up for Halloween. Nick was not liking all the headstones and "dead bodies" all over the place. There were performers in front of the carousel dressed up as zombies and singing some creepy songs. They didn't get too close to us, so he was pretty good.

Our first stop was the motion simulator. Normally it is set up as the space shuttle and you get to experience a space flight. In honor of Halloween, it is set up as Elvira's haunted house. When we first went in, Nick had to flirt with the lady sitting next to us. It made me smile that it didn't faze him one bit that she was black and he just chatted with her. I say this because my folks are bit prejudiced and I so do not want my son following their lead. They aren't openly rude, but they tend to go out of their way to not have direct contact. Anyways, the ride was real cool. I swear it felt like a real roller coaster ride. I had to keep reminding myself that we never actually moved anywhere. hehe Nick claimed afterward that it was scary, but he seemed fine during the ride.

I did manage to talk Nick into going on a couple of the smaller rides. We went on a scrambler first. Halfway through he told me he changed his mind about going on a roller coaster later and then got real quiet. After we got off he was fine though and we headed off to the Whizzer. It’s the smallest of the regular roller coasters. He did really great and I think he enjoyed most of it. I had enough reaction to it to realize that I wasn’t going to be going on the larger rides any time soon. lol

We played a lot of the smaller games that you can win tickets off of. Nick managed to get a small haul of junk toys. My wonderful father talked him into getting a harmonica. The man is a pain. hehehe

The food of course was outrageously priced. When we finally got around to eating lunch, I paid $13.50 for a slice of pizza, some bread sticks and a large Coke. Granted it was a huge piece of pizza but still. They take a small square pan pizza and cut it from corner to corner in fourths. So basically, you end up with a very wide short piece of pizza. I bought the bread sticks for the kid but he of course wouldn’t touch them. I swear I dunno how the kid didn’t pass out from hunger yesterday.

Nick went on all the rides in Camp Cartoon Network. He even went on the mini roller coaster all by himself.

That’s my munchkin in the gray shirt. He looks a lil scared if ya ask me. hehe Forgive the poor quality of the picture. It’s the one that the park snaps of you and is really the only picture we got of him. Mom forgot the camera in the car. Doh!!

The only ride in the campground that scared him was the 10 foot high ferris wheel. lmao The cars were enclosed and there was no danger, but when it stopped with him at the top he started crying a little bit.

Next we spent quite a bit of time in Bugs Bunny National Park. It is full of things for smaller children to do. He spent half an hour in the nature trail. It’s just like the play equipment at the McDonald’s playland. I dang near had to drag him out of there. hehe They had this one lodge that was a total madhouse. Imagine like 50 kids with air guns and air cannons shooting foam balls all over a 3 floor barn. I lost Nick the moment we walked in the door. After about a half hour, I had to drag him out of there so we could go find my folks. They had wandered off to a smoking area and weren’t able to find us when they got back because we were in the lodge getting pummeled. hehe

Next we came on some park employees dressed as evil clowns. Nick just flipped. Mom had gone out and got her camera and tried to get pictures, but later realized that she was hitting the power button and not the one you use to take the pictures. hehe One of the guys was a complete jerk and kept coming after Nick even though he had to realize the kid was terrified. I wasn’t too happy and it reinforced my dislike of clowns. I just don’t like em.

It took us 3 tries to get on the train that runs around the park. It was worth the trouble though. They had a mini show included. The train was highjacked by wild west zombies. Nick was a little freaked out by the actors getting so close to him but afterwards was real excited about the whole show.

Later we went back to playing some of the games. At one point we were at some of the crane games outside and Dad managed to get his quarters stuck in the machine. While we were all hunched over trying to get them out, I got a very pleasant surprise. An absolutely gorgeous Hispanic gentleman came up and gave me 2 Finding Nemo toys to give to the kid. If my folks hadn’t been along with, I would have tried to strike a conversation with him. As it was though, I just thanked him profusely and made the kid thank him too.

It was about this time that we decided it was time to head home because it was getting to be about 7 pm. On the way back to the front of the park we encountered the trolley coming through with a load of zombies aboard. The trolley stopped and right there the zombies performed a few songs. Nick did not like that they were so darn close. We left when one of the guys got up and started singing Bad To The Bone. Lemmie tell you, he was no George Thorogood. hehe

We ended up heading home a different way than we came up. We went through Rockford and then Galena. It was much more direct than the trip there. I don’t think Dad enjoyed the ride through Rockford much. We saw at least 2 people pulled over by the cops and one real nasty car accident.

I was going to post about the trip when we got home, but it was nearly midnight. Needless to say, I was pooped. We took most of the stuff out of the car and just dropped it all in the living room. Then I crawled into bed and passed out.

All in all, we had a great day. Nick is being quite lovey today. I’m thinking next summer we are going to have to visit when they have the water rides running. I think he will get a kick out of that. :O)

There was some knitting done on my green socks on the way to the park in the morning. But frankly, there was no way I was going to be doing a short row heel in the dark on the way home. I'll post pictures once I get the heel done.

I've been bad

I had been doing so good lately. It's been weeks since I've bought any yarn.

Then someone from LittleKnits had to post to the sock yarn sales group that they were having a sale. lol

I picked up a skein of Cherry Tree Hill Super Glitz Sock in Spring Frost, and one skein each of Regia Surf in Dune (Color #5421) and in Sylt (Color #5418). I got all of that for under $35 with shipping. Color me tickled.

I've finished the turban. Well, the ends need to be weaved in. I'm not doing that until I figure out how the hell to get it on my damn head. roflmao If I can't figure it out, I'll turn the yarn into some footies for my mom.

Turns out that the kid and I will be going to Six Flags alone. When my cousin told her son about going to the park, he freaked. Turns out the last time they went he got scared shitless. He wants nothing to do with it.

While I'm sure Nick would have had a blast with Lars, I'm glad it will just be the two of us. Makes it easier to plan for the yarn stores on the way. hehehe I just want to be able to walk into a store and fondle some good yarn. I can't even bring myself to go into Hobby Lobby any more. Most of the stuff just makes me cringe. sigh

Well, I'm off to bed. I almost fell asleep at work this morning. I better get some zzzzzs.