How many?

When you have pets of any kind there comes a point where, when people ask you how many you have, and you reply " four" or " seven" or however many is true, that they look astonished and want to know " Why so many?" You see, it started like this. My family and I actively sought out and rescued 2 pets. 1 cat ( Jenny) and 1 dog ( Snoopy). This made us happy. Then we moved. Our old house was apparently a desirable place for a feral cat to have her kittens. It was not however desirable to sell a house inhabited by feral cats so we banished them , in the process rescuing Abby. She was tiny and we bottle fed her and we kept her, figuring two kids, two cats. Makes sense right? She does love to sit in her daddy's lap

Meet Forrest. Forrest wandered up one day last year and talked his daddy into patting him on the head, then feeding him, then letting him move in. He moved out again pretty quickly. Naughty house manners, nuff said? But he stayed around and became the "outside kitty". For those of you keeping track this makes a total of 4 critters. 2 inside kitties, 1 outside, and one very spoiled inside dog. Still a reasonable number right? One pet for every member of the family - nothing exotic or outrageous.
Now it gets a little ugly. It seems that Forrest has a wife and kids. We just met them Sunday. Mama ( you know that Forrest loved his mama) is a pretty little gray tabby - very bashful - no pictures available yet. Little Bubba is solid black like his daddy and little Lou ( for lieutenant Dan) is gray and white like his mama. They are also quick as little bunnies and we can't catch them. So now it starts to sound a little nuts. I admit that I have said when I am old that I will be the crazy cat lady on the street. I have also said that I will sit in my rocker and knit and give little kids snow cones. I really never meant for this to happen. I'm not old yet! Oh God, I have 6 cats, and a dog. I need a drink.

Home

As you can no doubt see, St Thomas is exquisitely beautiful, but I am thrilled to be home. After much drama and mayhem involved with the airlines, we actually made it down there. I have mentioned my distaste for Spirit airlines in the past. You may now officially register that as outright hatred and know that I will NEVER fly them again. The nice AIRTRAN and Delta planes went up & came down on time and got me and the guys where we needed to go. I had several enjoyable encounters with the TSA agents as well. Who knew getting frisked could be so much fun? Apparently when you buy tickets at the last minute and then fly with no luggage you set off alarm bells. Who knew?


This is the adorable hubby sitting right above the first completed confetti sock. It is displayed on one of my cool new sock blockers. Thanks Chappy, they finally got here. I believe I mentioned that I would endeavour to locate a yarn shop during my travels. There are none, zero, nil, nada. Apparently the fine folks in the Virgin Islands purchase their Rasta hats at the local K-mart.
These fine folks are however, exceptionally bad drivers. Probably something to do with them driving on the wrong side of the road. Some of you are aware that my tolerance for bad driving has sharply diminished in the last year. Even so, I was a bit slow on the uptake when our erstwhile tour guide/ car rental agent began marking the pot holes on our map of the island. I failed to realize that he was only marking the holes that were deep enough to swallow the car. Needless to say we returned the car quickly and opted to stay in our resort thereafter. Which was very nice. We attended a couple of weddings. Best wishes to Scott and Sandi. We drank a lot of rum punch and pina coladas. And we vegged on the beach and watched the iguanas freak out the other guests. Who could ask for more?
We didn't miss much. Apart from the incredible natural beauty, St. Thomas resembles a third-world country. So I leave you with a photo of the amazing sunset as I go off to acheive whiter whites and brighter brights in preparation for my return to work.

On the record

I want to go on record as saying that Spirit airlines is the chintziest carrier that I have ever had the misfortune to do business with. Did you know that they charge you for luggage? What sort of airline, which takes people, presumably Away from where they generally keep their unmentionables, then charges them for the priviledge of taking some clean drawers along for the ride? I just don't get it. I would not be having this issue if the best airline on the planet flew to St Thomas . Airtran understands that most people feel friendlier and make better passengers when wearing clean underwear and they let you take some with you. Let's all boycott Spirit now. They put the LOW in low-cost carrier.
Now I'm sure the 2 or 3 people ( Hi Dad) who regularly read this blog are wondering what this has to do with the llama at the top of the page. Not a darn thing. Hermione is a llama ( not an alpaca) and she is here to make my friend Jose' happy. Now I am going to take Larry to get sheared . I mean , I am going to take Larry to get a haircut and try to find something to feed him for dinner. Adios.

Priorities

In these days of high gas prices, war on terror, starving children in Iraqi orphanages, I know that all of us are very deeply concerned about how Paris Hilton is tolerating prison. I ask you - Does any body really give a damn how spoiled little Paris is getting thru her time-out for drunk driving? I can't be the only one tired of hearing about her on TV and radio.
Paris - GROW UP!
Now, Off my soapbox and on to more pleasant topics. The bribery socks are complete along with their miniature pals to go to the bereavement box at work. The hat was still on the needles when I took the picture and I was too lazy to go get it. It's a hat. Use your imagination. The confetti sox are started but since only the toe is done , I thought I'd spare you the photo. The Go-live of the new electronic medical record at work went surprisingly well. There were some glitches. There had to be. It's the Rock after all. But overall - Not nearly as painful as anticipated. Countdown to St Thomas - 8 more days!

bipolar

To quote Mr Rogers " It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood". If you like bipolar weather. This morning was rainy and dreary and after sitting in godawful Conyers traffic for 30 minutes I finally made it home from helping teach a computer class . The sun is now shining brightly beckoning me to come freeze my big white tushy off in the pool. And I will soon oblige. But first I will ramble on about knitting. The second bribery sock is well under way - the heel will be turned before the afternoon is over as long as I don't get called in to work. And as soon as they are finished then I finally will get a pair for myself out of this cool confetti yarn.

This project will be going with me on vacation as small easy endeavors are best for travelling. Plus, the airlines don't wig out so much over little bitty sock knitting needles as they do over big, "I'm making a blanket large enough for a small third world nation" terrorist needles. Just fourteen more days til St Thomas. I'm thinking that Caribbean countries probably have little use for knitted items except maybe Rastafarian hats but before the week is over, I will KNOW if there are any yarn shops.More later.

More already ! AH & Larry went fishing recently. Please admire the lovely bass Larry caught. Notice Abby sitting next to her bowl. She was most disappointed. This is her looking disgusted about the whole situation.

Rainbows and bagpipes

This has been an insanely busy week both at home and at work. As in two sets of preterm twins simultaneously on Friday. The NICU was running amok and there were only three nurses on the floor for WAY too many antepartum and labor patients. Some days if everyone survives you have to consider it a success. If you're wondering, yes it was a success. Needless to say very little knitting was accomplished. It's hard to correlate how aching feet and legs translates to not knitting but it does. Probably something to do with not being able to knit in the bath where I was gulping Smirnoff Ice. Friends don't let friends Knit drunk. The first of the bribery socks was accomplished on Thursday and a test drive indicates that looser casting off is needed. This revision will be completed hopefully this weekend as I enjoyed the toe-up pattern so much that I'm actually looking forward to the second sock. This is unheard of. I'm still waiting for my new yarn to be delivered so the second sock needs to be well under way so I'm not tempted to abandon it.

I am writing this from my newly put together office on my new (put together by Larry) desk. Yeah Larry! We'll see how he feels when the bookshelves come in next week. The office is barren except for a futon & wall decor by Mo ( see above) and of course the computer. I can look out the window at the brown grass in my front yard and if I open the window I can listen to the guy down the street practising his bagpipe. The window will be staying closed. It sounds like he stepped on a very large pissed off cat. Did you know that bagpipes are loud? Really really loud? As in I can hear the darn thing with the window shut loud? Oh well, Kenny Chesney will have to sing louder. Did I mention that he is coming to Atlanta for my birthday? Not exactly, but I will be seeing him on the weekend of my birthday so it's sort of the same thing. Not.

We have gotten a little rain this week in the form of late afternoon thunderstorms that last about 30 min and then are gone to leave steaming pavement and an incredibly pretty rainbow. Leaving work on Thursday there were little kids splashing in the puddles and dancing around pointing at the sky and darned if there wasn't a huge rainbow. It was a nice way to end the day.

Mo Graduates

The last post I promised a sunrise picture. I accidently deleted it so I had to substitute a sunset photo . If I hadn't fessed up would you have known the difference?

On June 1st Mo completed high school. Finally. And he looked pretty spiffy doing it

I'm told that successful parenting means working yourself out of a job as your kid moves into the adult world and actually manages to function without screwing up too much. We'll see how successful I am over the next few years as he takes off to serve in the Air Force. Mo's a man who knows what he wants even when he's not entirely sure how to go about getting it. I'm sure it will all come together eventually. The USAF is going to have a really fine biomed engineer one day. Mo - We're really proud of you. Now come home and mow the grass.

Now that school is over maybe there will time to finish some WIP's and start some new knitting. I'm off of yarn restriction and since my bud Sheri says that sock yarn doesn't count as stash, I've got some sweet stuff coming my way. The dreaded homespun is getting sent to ebay in a day or two and I see some Debbie Bliss in my future to replace it. The bribery socks in the new toe-up pattern are almost to the heel so I'm looking forward to seeing how they work out. I'm doing them in a blend by Bernat - I lost the ball band so I don't know exactly what the blend is. There is definitely some cat hair involved though. Gotta love those helpful kitties.