Just whipped up this tasty & so delicious black eyed pea salad, which we eat as a dip with tortilla chips. When I am tired I substitute a can of Ro-tel for the jalepenos & tomatoes. We like it when it has been beaten up by the Kitchen-Aid for a few minutes prior to sitting overnight in the fridge.

I made plenty so I can send some home with my sister & bring some to a birthday party on Weds night at my brother’s.

Try it! It is fabulous!

I didn’t think I wanted to Google old pancake mix b/c I didn’t actually want to know. Kinda like the time(s) my friend & I were whipped ourselves into a frenzy being just sure we had ebola, which we would say in this way…

Hope I am not too ill to get my flu shot at 7am!

BTW, the Cream of Wheat tasted exactly like every other bowl of Cream of Wheat I have ever eaten - delicious!

This song has been STUCK in my head…

…when we began to clear the smaller of our two full & ample attics in preparation for our great move.

Somethings just don’t need to follow us to our new house, but cannot be tossed into the regular trash, so I have two solutions:

1. shred it & make my own packing material

2. burn it for the heat since the temperature has dropped precipitously.

The fireplace is a sooty mess, my back hurts & my hair smells like smoke, but I have lots of ash for the flower beds & bags of free packing material for dishes.

My new neighborhood…

On Friday we began to update FS’ room. Out was the fabulous handmade loft bed & his (nee my childhood) desk, other furniture & good stuff was moved out or to the middle of the room & we began the de-camouflaging.

In 2006 I painted the room khaki/olive, which was surprisingly quite a beautiful color. I hand painted three of his walls in camo - mixing small batches of paint so that no two parts are quite the same color. Although time consuming (in that I had to wait for paint to dry to continue placing more camo spots), it was a fun project! We loved the result and forsaking primering it for the new color was a little sad. But, FS has selected a gorgeous blue, which looks far better on the walls & dry than I had imagined. (Unexpectedly enjoying colorfully painted rooms could explain my selection of ivory.)

When we were done with the primering we were off to the climbing gym w/ a niece in tow. On the way we cracked up when we saw this on the interstate:

The sheer size of this beast was hilarious!

Climbing…

FS has always been a fabulous influence on all five of his little dainty girlie cousins. For example, once he taught them all to play craps. Now they are in a sweaty boy gym all a-glow. Oh, my sweet, precious baby monkey boy.

He followed this up by showing his cousin that he could eat all but two slices of a medium Dominoes pizza at midnight - two nights in a row. Behold the metabolism.

We wrapped up another excellent weekend by delivering my very tired neice to her home with paint in her hair, sweaty clothes, a belly full of Applebees & a fine layer of chalk covering her arms & legs. Hey, she washed her hands before eating! At least she wasn’t wearing one of those translucent green gambling visors.

She had left that at my house with her cigars & bookie’s phone number. Not really!

Oh, geez, am I tired! Belaying is wearing me down. And my hands hurt, but I shouldn’t complain b/c FS’ hands look like this:

I thought belaying and driving were the archenemies of knitting…then He bought Sims3 for me.

Sims3 is not just incompatible with knitting - it is also incompatible with sleep. Any sleep. The night I received it I played until 4am!

I stopped b/c I am a responsible adult who knows to run a household, cook, drive, clean, parent etc a person must have sleep. I am also a parent who worked a crazy hours when my baby was born, so I am familiar with that zombie state of living on no sleep and I know I can function in this state.

Maybe that is the secret to Sims3: it will reduce your sleep to <3hours/night.

Is it wrong that I justify it by thinking there are far worse things I could be doing than playing some seemingly innocuous game?

Maybe I’ll try blame: HE knew about my proclivity for Sims & Sims2 & the add-ons…maybe HE should be attending Sim-a-non.

For all I know he might. I couldn’t say - I am a little busy playing my little Sims.

In spite of two visits to FS’ favorite climbing gym, BD’s Mongolian BBQ, a visit to the Museum of Model Aeronautics in Muncie & a fabulous FREE dinner for five at Houlihan’s I managed to almost finish this sock:

Love that Houlihan’s for making doing good things so much fun!

If all of this wasn’t enough fun, my Mom was here from Thurs on to add to our fun!

What a great weekend!

I have become a belayer; more accurately Favorite Son has joined a climbing gym & has climbed for the past three days. At FS’ gym one must be at least 14 y/o to belay & I am at least 14. They didn’t even check to be sure. Imagine!

To add insult to injury, this belaying activity is woefully is incompatible with knitting.

And the gym smells very sweaty. Very BOY sweaty.

And I am getting blisters. What I really do love, love, love is that FS is free & able to pursue his own varied interests and is available to run all over the city with lucky me

Today when we went to the gym, which is half an hour from home, I forgot to turn off the Pound of Rain lightly watering my little garden.  It sprinkled for many, many hours. Maybe I will be like Jack and the Beanstalk tomorrow! My beanstalk story will include me making & freezing salsa, pasta sauce etc with my monster tomatoes, onions & peppers.

Yesterday I threw some dye on my hair to deal with the root situation. Then I got distracted with laundry, cooking, letting the dog in-n-out & His problem of too many choices, which requires much consideration. I left the dye on just a bit too long & now my hair is black. Black!

FS feels I may be goth or emo, which seems much more up to date than having dark roots sprinkled with silver.  The corrective products have been purchased, but I haven’t yet had time or felt like dying again. Maybe I will stay Goth or Emo. The last time I tried something new (lower cut pants) I had to buy new & seriously uncomfortable under garments. If you know what I mean. I’m committed to only staying Goth/Emo if I don’t have to wear some new uncomfortable boy cut undergarment. Really now.

Last night as I was ready to decrease for toe #1 I found that a sock I have been knitting for Him does not fit over his heel. I cast on 70 with 2mm needles, which has been even slightly too large in the past. I guess it is the Deborah Norville cheapie yarn from JoAnn’s. Or his heel has grown.

As I went to sleep last night I listened to something I got from Libravox. I remember trying to stay awake to listen to additional chapters, but for the life of me I cannot remember one other detail! Oy! I did wake up with the ear buds out of my ears, but I can’t remember turning it off or removing them. It may still be on under my bed!

I’m off to find my Ipod….

A bit more than an hour from our house is a state park, which is a nice mix between wilderness & civilization. There are far too many people there for us to love it sincerely, but that is the trade off we make for the conveniences. Of course, no one was on the trails deemed “rugged”, so we had them all to ourselves.  Thanks to you, rugged boots! Love you! Mean it!

The boots were shed the second time we visited the waterfall on the second day at the park to allow everyone to wade and cool their tootsies in the lovely waters.

The water wasn’t the only thing falling. Because I had changed into an old pair of Crocks, which are worn smooth by NYC etc. I lost my footing on one of those smooth flat rocks & fell back onto the point of one of those rocks shown above. There was pain, but I did not allow myself to cry. The sitting bones are still a bit sore, but I am very thankful I did not fall forward onto my knees or face, which would have been a much more painful ordeal.

He said my hands flailed a bit in circular motions reaching through the air as I was falling. I think it was mildly amusing, but I think the nastiness of the spill prevented him from enjoying the cartoon motions. He also assured me the ground did not tremble as my backside made contact. I sustained the aforementioned sitting bone pain, a scrape on my little finger and my forearm. Nothing to prevent me from knitting!

We also met this little guy on our second day:

(click 4 big if you are interested)

Sporting that golden bling around his neck, he was only as big around as a kindergarten pencil, and quite tenacious! We think he is a ring neck, but should be called a bling neck. My interpretation of “Ringneck snakes rarely bite” is “ringneck snakes do bite”.  Now that I think of it…I think the best plan is to assume all snakes bite & let them be in their own living rooms. Just passing thru…don’t mind me, Mr. Snake!

We also found what looked like a cave entrance:

(click pic 4 big)

It was just a small indentation in the St Louis Rock w/ the St Genevieve Rock overhead, we guessed after reading a sign about the falls. Who knows, maybe there will be a waterfall in front of this someday!

So two days in the woods left me with TONS of laundry & one fabulous discovery: if a cat ever marks your hiking leather boots fear not! They ARE washable. Here is my reasoning: they wouldn’t get any wetter in the washing machine than in the woods. They are waterproof. So, I washed all of the boots (with Tide with Bleach, baby!) & set them out on the porch to dry. We have “new” boots! Ha! Now you know, too! Enjoy your brand new boots!