Birthdays, Bees, and other B words....

Well, I survived my 29th birthday. Just barely. The day before, Saturday, the hubby, baby, dog and I found ourselves beset by bees. Okay, not bees, yellow jackets. Horrible, mean, and ugly yellow jackets. How can something that small be so relentlessly evil? I mean, come on, what's their beef? We were on a walk at the SAS campus, which is lovely and wooded, with paved trails. We are ambling along, enjoying the day, when I see the dog go down, attacking her own butt. "Something's wrong," says I, "Something's got the dog."

"Something's got me!" says the hubby.

That was all I needed to hear. I grabbed the stroller and tore ass up the path. I stopped a few hundred feet away, but it wasn't far enough. One had attached itself to my leg, and as I panicked and dithered, Hubby came zooming towards me.

"I need some help, here!" I yelled. But I yelled at his disappearing back. He had on one shoe, and was tearing his shirt off over his head. I managed to kill the one on my leg, and took off again, hoping against hope that the baby would be spared.

We all wind up in an eerily empty parking lot, trying to shoe off the remaining bees without increasing the casualty total, and feeling like we are in a horror movie. Long story, well, shorter, Hubby stung three times, dog stung once, baby and I remarkably unscathed. In fact, baby thought it quite funny and entertaining, what with all the screaming, batting, and running. Little monster.

So, that covers the bees. On to scarier things. I turned 29 yesterday. 29. As in, one year shorter than three decades. Decades, people. Yikes. I celebrated by going to the Cheesecake Factory and stuffing myself. Crabcakes, artichokes, peanut butter cheesecake, and wine. It didn't help. I am still 29. Even bought an entirely too expensive dress. Well, okay, the dress helped a little. It's nice to know I can still make the hubby buy me expensive dresses by modeling them for him and making his eyes bug out. Ha.

Now, I can hear you. You are saying, "But Sara, what about the other B words?"

All right, you caught me. There aren't any. Bye!

Spam, smap, samp, amps, maps....

Ah, the wonders of that magical faux meat. Or rather, the junk in my now almost entirely unusable old email address. I kind of enjoy reading the subject lines, though. They make me laugh. Like, "Happy Father's Day, Sara" or "Have you been ignoring me?".

I had a progressively bitter woman named Linda Strickland spamming me for a while. She began like an old Tracy-Hepburn movie, with "Sara, Linda Strickland here..." She realized her mistake from my radio silence, and continued in High School essay form with, "Why should I do this? from Linda Strickland." At my lack of response she continued with "Sara, Here is the information you requested." Linda, I did no such thing. Finally, she got a little too personal, writing, "Are you internet challenged?" Actually, no, bitch.

But my all time favorite has got to be the following offer I found this morning (please imagine the word sic covering this entire letter):

"Our bank in Cary reviewefd your data and we are acceptineg your motrgage applicatvion. You have bad credibt? No problem at all!
You can get $300,000 with 3.6 %. Please activxate your approvral here
(website deleted)

Thank you.

Best Regards,
Gregorio Pittman
General Manager"

Wow. That really inspires trust, don't you think?

p.s. I kind of like "smap." I think I will refer to it as smap from now on.

Musings....

Just a few random observations, since I am not feeling very inspired today:

....Saw the AFI tribute to George Lucas on Monday. Entertaining, but what struck me most was the brief glimpse I had of Peter Jackson. Whoa! Who was that handsome, slender man? He looked ten years younger, and about half his former weight.

....Finished the second psycho square for my psycho square blankie. Will post a photo when the sashing is finished. It's moving along relatively rapidly. For me. I always get really enthused about a project and knit like crazy for three days, then fall out of favor with it. However, this project is so interesting, I'm hoping I will manage to finish it by fall. Don't know how the Dr. Who scarf is going to compete, though.

....Oh yeah, am making Dr. Who scarf for the Anti-Xan. Have about a foot and a half finished. That just leaves another 10,000,000,000 feet to go.

....The Boy loves C-3PO. I bought a giant Pez that talks and plays the Star Wars theme, and the Boy is fascinated by his shiny golden head and glowing eyes. I'm so glad that Star Wars is genetic....

....Why is the organic milk at Kroger $5.69 a gallon, and only $3.49 at Whole Foods? WTF? I could %$#&@ walk to Kroger! ARRGH.

All right, enough. Enjoy your weekend, folkies.

The plagues continue....

Now, for those of you who don't know, our house is constantly being beset by plagues of insects. In the last year, we have had cockroaches, woodroaches, camel crickets, giant ants, fleas, and frogs. Okay, I admit that frogs are not insects, but bear with me. Last night the latest in a long line of home invaders began its slow, slimy charge in the kitchen. Yes, slime. Slugs have been oozing their way between the door and the jam to enter my kitchen and gorge on dog food. Yes, dog food. I had no idea that slugs eat dog food. Three different times I had to evict slugs from my kitchen. One had almost made it to the dog's bed.

Hmm. Do you think maybe I have slugs that think they are dogs? Maybe the first one to taste of the glorious dogfood caused a strange mutation that has affected the entire community of slugs living by my kitchen door. Maybe soon I will hear faint barking and whining in the night, and then they will start to leave little slug-dog turds all over my front step. Maybe I could attach tiny threadlike leashes and lead them, slowly, around the block. Maybe they will be so happy when I return from an errand that they will jump, slowly, up on my legs and bark, demanding to be patted on their shiny slug heads.

Ewwwww. Please feel free to join me in a shudder of disgust.

AFI's hundred movie quotes....

...was on last night. Good, but damn, do they have to stretch it to three hours? I swear I felt like I was watching more commercials than anything. I probably was. Of course, during the commercials I played with the kid, so all was not lost. Also, I suspect that the hundred quotes were voted on by mostly men, because, me? Not so much with the Godfather. Two of the top three quotes were Marlon Brando, one from Godfather, one from On the Waterfront. I thought that at least one of the six bajillion Casablanca quotes should have been in the top three. And why is Casablanca not AFI's top movie of the century? I mean, I liked Citizen Kane and all, but if I had the option of rewatching Citizen Kane or Casablanca, Casablanca would win hands down. But I am definitely a slut for dialogue.

In other news, finished the first square of my "going to rip off the baby blanket on Mason Dixon Knitting" baby blankie. If you don't know it, she made this really cool blankie out of mitered squares that kind of slowly devolve. Doesn't make sense, does it. I will try to include a link, but it might be a touch outside of my current blogging knowhow. I also will somehow include a picture of psycho square number one. At least I hope so.



Newsflash! I was emailed by a knitting blog celeb! I don't comment much on the blogs I read (even though I read them every day and love them more than words can say) since I just don't see how my agreeing with the other six bajillion people that commented before me will actually be interesting. But I did leave a comment with the Harlot the other day, just a little short one about how I wished I could go to the Alexandria book signing but couldn't because of motherly duties, and she wrote me back! I can't believe it! How cool is that! Okay, she would probably laugh at me for being so durn excited, but I can't help it! The Yarn Harlot! Wrote me back! An email! From the Yarn Harlot!

Stop me before I blog again....

The first photo blog....

DSCF0640
Originally uploaded by scifimama.

Well, I am still working out the kinks of this blogging thing. Meanwhile, here is a photo of a Luna moth I found next to my back door. Probably six inches across, this guy. Beautiful, no?

The Second Post....

Why is this so hard to manage? Why, oh why? I can't see the appropriate buttons when I go to Blogger in Explorer, and Camino doesn't let me add any text. Why? Why does this happen to me?

In bigger and better news, I finished the first square of my psycho squares blankie. Well, almost. I finished the psycho part, just haven't finished the sashing. And now it is wet and blocking, so I guess I won't finish it until much later.

In other news, the little one decided to be wide awake this morning after his feeding, so I haven't had enough sleep. And he was wet through. Why are paper diapers so leaky? Why, oh why? Why does my boy have the worst diaper rash ever when I put him in the cloth diapers I would really rather use? Why, tell me, why? Why, why, why?

Enough. To breakfast.

So, this is a blog....

Well, this is my very first blog entry. Not sure if I am going to actually do this or not, but hey, it is nice to dream. I left the title purposefully vague as to subject matter, since I can't decide on what kind of blog to have. Knitting? Science Fiction? Motherhood? All possiblities. But since I can't decide, I guess I will just have to wing it for now.