J is for...

Jerseys


We're not really much of a sports house. No one watches much football or basketball. No one ever watches golf or baseball. Husband will watch tennis if it's a major tournament and someone he likes is playing.

Daughter and I, however, prefer hockey. Because her first experience with hockey was when the Red Wings won the Stanley cup last year, they are her favorite team. She's been asking for a hockey jersey for a while now, and on her birthday she finally got a Red Wings practice jersey with "Datsyuk" on the back. As far as I can figure, he's her favorite because she likes yelling his name: dot-SOOOOOOOOOK. (voice as low as you can get it on the second syllable, oo like zoo, not book.)

I like the Blackhawks because I live in Chicago. Also, they have a very good, very young team. In fact the captain of the team turned 21 on the same day I turned 41. When he attempted to grow a playoff beard, other members of the team were heard to call it "embarassing." So in honor of Johnny Towes (pronounced taves) I have a #19 jersey.

J is also for Jerseys because I couldn't think of anything else besides jeans, and though I wear them constantly during the cool and cold months, there's no way I'm taking a picture of that for the blog.

They'll Fit, Really

** Knitting Content **

I'm in the midst of making a pair of socks. I'm making them for a man, which in and of itself is a challenge. They don't really make yarn in "man" colors. I looked all over the internet to try and find something that a man would be willing to put on his feet. I finally settled on Socks that Rock in Shadow. The next hurdle is that all I know is the shoe size of the intended recipient. I don't have easy access to the feet in question, so I have to guess on number of stitches and such. Here's what I've got:


Sadly, that is my foot, and it fits me just fine. This leads me to believe that there is no way that this will be a comfortable fit for a 6 foot, 200 pound man. I may have to go back to the drawing board on these.

Socks, in a Manner of Speaking

So Son came upstairs yesterday and said, "Look Mom, you're not the only one who can make socks."




I'm so proud.

I is for ...

Insomnia


Like many people, I occasionally suffer from an inability to sleep. My problem is not in falling asleep, but in going back to sleep if something should happen to wake me up. Once I'm all the way awake, it takes me 2 to 4 hours to get back to sleep. It doesn't happen a lot, which is a good thing because it's all kinds of annoying when it happens. I've adapted several strategies for dealing with it. Most of them do nothing but pass the time.

1. Counting. Usually heartbeats. Most commonly every 4th one. Or use the same number for four sequential heartbeats. Start over at 100 or you'll start getting numbers that are too long. I used to try to imagine the numbers being drawn on a chalkboard, but my chalkboard hand couldn't keep up with the heartbeat tempo.

2. Breathing. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Same thing you do every day, only now you're thinking about it.

3. Plan tomorrow. I don't often use this one because I figure the more active your mind is, the less likely you are to fall asleep.

4. Mental vacation. Picture a beach. Picture yourself at the beach. Picture whoever else you want to have at the beach. Or go with a waterfall, or a rainforest, or whatever relaxing location floats your boat.

5. Talk to God. Or yourself. What was good in the day. What could have been better. Same problem with this one as with #3.

6. Word bubbles. This is actually what I do most often. Clear your mind totally, then let a random word or short phrase (no coherent sentences or thoughts) bubble up to the top. Metacarpal, dungeness, factorial, esplanade, quixotic, fundamental, fungible, retardant, multiplicity, ectoplasm, frothy, hammerhead, winnow, darling, preternatural, etc, etc. Nothing that makes sense, just whatever random thing pops up to the top. For some reason my words all seem to have a lot of sylables.

7. Blog. When all else fails, think up an entertaining entry for the blog, preferably something that will move the ABC-along along.

Ah, The Sweet Sounds of Birdsong

Location: Crouse House, somewhere in the Chicago suburbs

Time: 30 minutes before the 4 day camping trip hits the road.

Characters: Me, Husband, Daughter

We hear water running in the background, then shut off. Moments later Daughter enters, dripping wet and wrapped in a towel

Daughter: Mom, I just threw up

Me looks at Daughter completely nonplussed.

Me (to Husband) Well now what do we do? If we leave now and she has to come back home because she's really sick what will we do? We can't take two cars because the mid-life-crisis-mobile you bought only seats 2 people, and Daughter is bringing DBF with her. Do we call the whole thing off? WHAT DO WE DO NOW!!??

Me and Husband spend 15 minutes discussing options, making phone calls and taking temperatures.

Me: Oh the heck with it. We'll just go. If she needs to come home later we'll figure it out then.

Turns out whatever she had was a short term thing. She got sick once in the car on the way to Devil's Lake, then one more time in the afternoon and then she was done. Good thing too, because I really don't know what we would have done if she had to come back home. I imagine that Husband would have been left stranded with no car for a couple of days.

This camping trip is an annual affair, with a large group of friends and neighbors who go out into the wilderness for a long weekend, usually near the end of June. This year we were staying at Devil's Lake State park in Wisconsin. We let Garmin tell us how to get there, so we got to experience something that we had never done before. We rounded a corner and the pleasant GPS lady told us, "Board Merrimac Ferry."

We've never been on a ferry before. Husband panicked became concerned and had me look at the map to see if there was an easier way to get to the other side of the lake. (I think he was concerned about how much this was going to cost.) I checked the map and determined that the fastest way for us to get where we were going would be to bite the bullet and take the ferry across. Turns out it only added about 10 minutes to the trip and didn't cost a thing.


We arrived at the group camp site around 5:00 and commenced setting up the tents.

Husband and I slept in the blue and gold tent, Daughter and DBF in the green one. If we should ever have a similar setup in the future, we'll put the girls tent a little farther away, as it turns out that two tent walls don't have a lot of noise reduction properties.

There was a path just behind the girls tent which led about 100 yards to the shower building. This building is surrounded by 80 foot pine trees, at the top of which nest Blue Herons. Turns out that when Blue Herons nest, they like to do so in large groups. This is certainly the case at Devil's lake.

The treetop photo isn't a great picture, but I have a less than perfect camera for this kind of photography. In any case, the birds were there, a lot of them, and they vocalized pretty much all day and a good part of the night. Because it was continuous, it wasn't hard to tune out after a little while. The larger problem came at night when the turkey vultures would come and try to raid the nests. At that point there was a lot of screaming and shrieking. Because it was midnight when it was happening, I'm not sure which species was making the noise, but I would guess it was the Herons.

We spent the weekend doing a lot of hiking


Swimming


And hanging around the campfire.


Not a bad way to spend a weekend.

Precamping

Tomorrow Daughter, Husband, Daughter's-Best Friend (who will from hereafter be called DBF) and I are heading to Baraboo, Wisconsin to go camping for 3 days in Devil's Lake State Park. We go each year with a larger group of people and spend a *relaxing* weekend communing with nature. This is a tent camping excursion, not RV camping or hotel camping, so we're going to be going with just the bare essentials. Since we're leaving shortly after lunch tomorrow, today is precamping day. The day we start organizing our simple supplies.

First, DBF does not have a camping cot, so her family borrowed an air mattress from a neighbor. We wanted to make sure that it didn't have any leaks, so Daughter graciously tested it for DBF last night.

No leaks, works like a charm.

Next we start organizing the tents and tent related equipment.

Tents, cots, sleeping bags, chairs: check. We even had the foresight to get out our tent a couple of days ago and make sure that we would all fit in it. We could, in a major emergency, all fit in the main tent, but no one would be comfortable. The cots take up a surprising amount of room, and if you don't want to get wet you need to make sure NO ONE touches the inside of the tent if it rains. (Ask me how I know this. Or ask brother when he gets done laughing hysterically at the memory.) To ensure everyone's comfort, Daughter and DBF will be sleeping in their own tent this year. What? No I haven't lost my mind. Yes, I'm sure they'll stay in their own tent. YOU can stop laughing now.

Since there won't be anyone catering this particular event, we also need to get all of the cooking related items together, too.

Paper plates, plastic cutlery, cooking utensils, marshmallow forks, etc. All present and accounted for. Also accounted for are the multiple lists that make this whole endeavor run smoothly. Why so many lists? The first year of the camping trip, Husband and Daughter went without me. When they got home Husband mentioned several things that he forgot to take. I told him he should write them down so that he would remember next year. He scoffed. The next year we all went, and he remembered a lot of the things that he had forgotten the year before... because we had forgotten them again that year. I started making a list. I keep it in the camping box. Last year the only thing I didn't have was earplugs. Turns out Rock Cut State Park is 3.5 miles from the Rockford Speedway. Who knew?

After getting everything together I can only say that Lewis & Clark had less stuff to haul around while they were searching for the Northwest Passage. We are probably going to end up putting the spare luggage carrier on top of the Explorer just to get everything there. And we haven't packed the clothes or food yet. They're on another list.

Rocky Mountain High

Husband, Daughter and I spent a week in Montrose, Colorado visiting Husband's family and celebrating his 40th birthday.

Shortly after arriving at In-Laws' house Daughter snuck my camera and snapped a few pictures of the birds in the back yard.

This is fairly representative of the 37 photos she took. Mixed in with the birds, she also managed to get a couple of pictures of Nephew smiling.

He's almost 5, and he's a great little guy, but he doesn't quite trust me. He was quite serious for most of the time we spent with him. He has recently mastered both tying shoes and putting on belts. He likes to practice these skills on everyone in the vicinity. If you're wearing lace-up shoes and aren't paying attention you'll have your shoes retied and quadruple knotted in no time.

One of the disadvantages my Colorado family has to deal with is the horrible scenery around their homes. This, for instance, is the view looking down the street from In-Laws' house.

Go ahead and click on that to make it bigger. Those would be the San Juan mountains. Imagine having to look at that kind of nastiness all year long. One of the days we were there we visited one of Brother-In-Law's friends who has an annual pit barbeque. This is Bill's house:

He made it himself. Seriously. His own two hands. Sweat of his brow. Here's the view from the front deck.

Again, who would want to live with that? Who would want to be able to walk outside in a bathrobe before taking their shower in the morning knowing full well that no one can see them? Who would want to be able to shoot skeet from the yard and not worry about hitting anyone?

Those two on the left side of the picture are boys aged somewhere in the area of 11 and 13. They were shooting every bit as well as the adults were. It was both impressive and a bit humbling.

One of our other side trips was a visit out to Uncle's house. While we were there he got out his bow and arrows, and we spent a good bit of the afternoon shooting. Even me, though I don't think I've had my hands on a bow in around 30 years.

I remembered many of the things that I learned long ago: Arrow goes on the inside, odd colored fletching faces you, stand sideways. I did forget one thing, but I don't think I will again. Don't turn your wrist in. This is why I won't forget...

I've had that for a week now. It's a little smaller, but has turned some really interesting colors.

While some of us were peppering the target with arrows (or losing them in the bushes) Daughter and Nephew were having fun on "The Red Tractor."



Colorado. It's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. Well, actually if my family wasn't all in Michigan I'd move out there in no time flat.

While we were visiting I came to realize that some of the people who read the blog don't really care about knitting at all. So in order to make it easier for them, I will now set the knitting content apart from the family news. So...

*** Knitting Content ***
During the odd moments in between family functions I made a pair of socks. They're plain vanilla socks made from Deborah Norville Serenity Sock weight.

They should look good with jeans. Which I won't be wearing in the mountains because I live in the flat, flat Midwest.