Where, Oh, Where ...

... have I been for almost four months?  Well, life took me by the hand, sat me down and said, "Get organized."  So I did.  Chaos of work and real life was making me a crazy person, so I worked on changing a few things.

Regarding work, after making some big changes to our school, our principal resigned to return to a high school classroom.  Interesting, huh?  Then, because he and the IB program left (short version of a long story), the woman who got my job left.  With some help from a few supporters at my school and at the administrative level, I got my job back!  I know!  How exciting!  So, instead of being in a first grade classroom, I'll continue to work with kindergarten through second grade during mornings, and I'll be coaching (yes, you're reading it correctly) other teachers in the afternoons.  I'm not certain I'm mature enough to handle the afternoon part of my job, but other people think I am (golly, they've been fooled), so I'll do my best.  We have a new principal who seems to be level-headed and has a plan, so we'll see what happens next.  I'm hesitantly optimistic about school, which is such a change for me!

During our summer vacation, I've been spending loads of time with this little cutie.

Hasn't he become a tub?  Mother's milk has made Keagan a very big boy.  He'll be four months old tomorrow and he's weighing in at over 14 pounds.  All he wants to do is eat.  That's his job until crawling begins ... if he can lift himself.  Right now he's working on sitting up by himself.  Other than feeling like a milk truck, Nikki is doing well.  Her husband, Grady, has taken a better-paying job so she can stay home with Keags.  I can't get enough of his smiles and giggles.

On the therapeutic activities front, I finally finished stitching Sarah Esh, so here's her not-so-great picture.  How sad that my photography skills haven't improved during my absence.  Oh well.  She's not framed yet, but she's ready to join other A&E samplers when I get something else stitched.  Right now, thanks to a bloggy friend (you know who you are and I love you even though I've neglected you), I'm working on The Yellow House Sampler by Sheepish Designs.

A skill I have acquired while absent is sock knitting.  I know!  I knit socks!  Looky here ...

Shocking, isn't it?  Or should I say socking?  That's my first pair of socks, and I'm at work on a second pair.  In fact, the first sock is finished and I've started the second.  I'll show you a picture in another post.  This summer I've learned that knitting is much easier to manage than stitching is while traveling.  Well, for me it is.  So there's been more knitting than stitching going on.  I've also completed a felted bag for a friend in Maine and a felted bowl.  Wanna see?

As you can see, I haven't lost my obsession for felting.  Hey, it keeps me off the streets and out of the bars.  Sorry to say, I'm just as slow at knitting as I am at stitching!

So much has happened since I've spent more than a few moments in blogland.  Poor Merlin, my old man cat, had to be put down a day after my last post.  All of you pet lovers know how that is.  Dad's been doing ok, by the way.  He struggles, like we all do, but he's working at finding his way through the world without Mom.  During some of my chaos removal, I left the man I hung around with behind. That was hard, but it brought along an opportunity to meet a cool, calm, collected and extremely kind man. My mom always used to tell me that thing about one door closing and another one opening. I really hadn't believed it until now. So we'll see. It's nice to have someone to spend time with besides family.  And he puts up with my hideous golf game!

I hope that those of you who've read here before will start to read here again.  I'll be catching up with what you've been doing and I hope to comment here and there.  I've missed you all more than you know.  The Sisterhood of the Rose is alive and about to move on.  I'll explain where we are with that in my next post.  With any luck, four months won't pass before you hear from me again.

Whatever you do, make some fun!

WHOOSH!

That's the sound spring break made as it flew by. I tried to dig in my heels to slow time down, but no luck. There were even a couple of snowy days during which I could've sat at my computer to post, but I just couldn't do it. I was busy holding a baby and knitting a little and stitching a little and family stuff and ... well, I don't know!

Please forgive some more grandmotherly picture-bragging, but here's a little of my knitting with Keagan (yes, in my here's-my-new-grandson post, I didn't realize the actual spelling was different from my version ... bad, bad grandma). I knitted this Baby Pea Pod (available on Ravelry) in no time a couple of weeks ago. It was super easy and he loves it. Nikki took the pic with her cell phone, so it's awful, but you get the idea. He's just as cute as he was last time.

In other knitty news, I've been working on a pillow from the book One Skein, and when I checked out the photo I took on the monitor screen, it was incredibly out of focus. What I was thinking when I took the pic, I have no idea. Chalk it up to old-lady vision. Anyway, I branched out with the pattern, using different-than-called-for alpaca yarn (oooh, pretty and soft) and larger-than-called-for needles to make a larger pillow (yes, it seems I'm a knitting experimentalist), and it's turning out just the right size. I know! Who knew I could wing it? I know enough to realize that one day this knitty thrill-seeking will bite me right in the butt. Until then, look out. I also knitted a felted bowl from the same book (a great book), but I haven't felted it yet. Pictures of the pillow-in-progress and bowl will magically appear in the next post ... whenever that is. Oh, I almost forgot. I also finished a felted bag for Nikki and another one for me. No pictures because I figured you've got to be bored with the bags. So I really have been doing something with my time.

Then there's Miss Sarah Esh. I've been working on her, but work is a little slow. My goal is to finish this week. Uh huh, dream on. Goals are a good thing, right? So sorry for another awful photo.

That pretty much brings us up to date. I'm hustling through this post to get to my purple chair before my eyes close. Keagan and his mom and dad are doing great, school is as it is, and home is a nice place to be. Make some fun.

Is It March Yet?

Well, another 12 days has passed between posts. It's been a very long couple of months. I've been stitching and knitting a little, but I'm incredibly distracted by life and work. I have quite a plateful right now. You know about Nikki and her son's birth within the next few weeks, and you know about my mom. I've pretty much stopped telling you about my job. It goes back to what my mom said: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

My job will change in a huge way next year. In my former teaching life, I spent 13 years as a classroom teacher in third through sixth grades, with one very interesting year in middle school. Bekah was born in 1991, and I figured out some at-home jobs (data entry and charting needlework for designers) in order to stay home with the kiddos. In 1996, Bekah died and I got divorced, so I returned to teaching in 1997. During that time, I've worked with small groups of kids who need help learning to read, but I haven't had my own classroom.

Because of our district's enormous budget shortfall, all of that's gonna change. My job has been eliminated and I must be "absorbed" into the school I was unhappily assigned to last year. That means that my only option was to accept the offer that my principal made to me. So, after 19 years out of the classroom, I'll be returning next year as a teacher in first grade (gasp!). I know! How scary! How fun!

I love first-graders, so that's not a problem. I'll be able to catch up with all of the math stuff, so that's not a problem. My teammates are very nice, and I've known them for years, so that's not a problem. My only problem is that I work for an ass. A boob. He's an immature, bird-brained, former high school administrator with negligible leadership skills who knows absolutely nothing about literacy and has no intention of learning. In fact, he never passes up an opportunity to display his ignorance or his lack of integrity. He's the only issue I have with the daunting prospect of enormous change. Unfortunately, it's a very large issue.

So now I'm gonna shop around the district to see if I can find a better spot. Because of the budget, there's not much movement in and out of positions, but there are bound to be one or two. We'll see if anyone is silly enough to hire an old lady who hasn't been in a classroom position for 19 years. It can't hurt to try, and I've heard from several former coworkers (displaced by our school's closure last spring) who want to help me get into their schools. I'm updating and polishing up my 13-year-old resume, and thinking about interviews This could be interesting, huh? Things to remember: it's not life or death, only my job; it's good to be employed.

Thank you for allowing me to whine a little bit. OK, a lot. The stress knot under my shoulder blade feels better already. I wanted to explain my distractibility, because my stitching and knitting progress has been so lame lately. Sarah Esh has been occupying my lap (along with Merlin) while in the purple chair. I love, love the Olympics (another distraction), and Sarah's been watching with me. Once in a while I actually put a stitch in. I'm not completely satisfied with my choice of natural linen, but it's growing on me.

My house is largely back to its former self, minus the ugly beige carpet. At home, life is very good. I'm still allowing myself to engage in some slide therapy after school. Whatever helps, right? So here are some pics for you. The teeny tiny kitchen (note the Cedar Hill kitty on the wall and the bag o' magnets on the counter) ...

The living area (sorry about the glaring sun, and the speaker will move to a less conspicuous spot later on) ...

The small dining area with my piano, my parents' dining set from the 50's (I love it), and the crocheted tablecloth I found in a Rhode Island antique store for $35 (I know!) ...

Home is a happy place to be! Too bad I can't retire and spend more time here, huh? Next, after some recovery time, will be the removal of ugly beige carpet and cheap-ass vinyl in the upstairs bathrooms. Ah, something to look forward to.

I leave you today with a very late look at my TUSAL jar. I took the picture on time a few weeks ago but couldn't remember to post it (duh). I like the look of yarn in there.

Make some fun!

Whoopee ... Shores Block 3

Finally, Block 3 is finished! What's taken so long? It would take forever to list all of my excuses, so I'll just say that I've been distracted. There's so much going on here, and I'm ready for the more boring part of my life to reappear. For now, just lots of sighing and a very crooked, dark (it's dark all the time!), wrinkly picture of my accomplishment.



I tried to get a picture of just the mermaid, but I couldn't seem to hold the camera still enough to get the job done. I love her.
I had good intentions of showing you some progress on my most recent start, but I really wanna wait until the face (yes, a face) is finished. Until then, you'll have to be content with the supply picture:
Doesn't it look fun? I know! I'm so excited to be working on another Ewe & Eye & Friends Limited Edition Santa. If this guy ever gets finished, it'll be my third. Gee, that makes me sound like a Santa slut, doesn't it? This Santa is from (get ready) 1994. Yes, kids, you read it correctly. It's been in my stash for 14 years (eeeeek). I know! Am I the worst person you know? The really bad news is that this isn't the oldest item I should've already stitched. There are several kits that are older and probably hundreds (no, I don't think I'm exaggerating) of charts that are older. Do you think an intervention is in order? Or do you wanna come over and check out my cedar chest and file cabinet? Uh huh, I'll bet you do! Anyway ... I took a picture of the picture so you could see what Santa will look like in a few weeks (yes, Delusional should be my middle name) ...




My new plan (really? a plan? me?) is to work on him when I'm hanging out with the man I hang around with. We usually end up watching football (sniff ... poor Broncos ... sob), and I can work on him (Santa, that is ;)) during that portion of the weekend. Another good place to work on him will be when I'm visiting Mom during chemo sessions. We always stitch together then, and this is a perfect take-along project. I'm also gonna give him one evening a week while I work mostly on Shores Block 4. I'm afraid that if I set down Shores for the holidays, it'll somehow work its way more deeply into the dreaded WIP pile, so I have to stick with it. Then, just to give myself some variety (a way to ward off distractability), I'm gonna give Sarah Esh an evening per week. Will some organization in my life help to keep my nose pointed toward my stitching? I reckon we'll see.
Another exciting bit of stitchy news is that I got to pick up my son-in-law's stocking from the finisher (who must be working at the speed of light) on Saturday. As soon as I can remember to get a picture of it when it's still light out, you'll see it.
Finally, yesterday I completed another trip around the sun. My 54th! How can that be? Do you ever feel like you're still in your 20's? Never when I look in the mirror, of course! But once in a while, when I'm skiing or riding on the back of a motorcycle, I feel too young to be in my 50's. That's one of my favorite feelings, and I'm thinking it's a good thing.
Make some fun.