Sunday, September 30, 2007

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Once again, I am saying this in a calm, non-confrontational way: The Phillies lost yesterday and the Mets won. They are again tied for first place. Today is the last game of the season. I am going to work today from 12-5, so everything will be decided by the time I get home.

Please cross your fingers and your toes. It would be kind of, sort of, a nice thing if the Phillies won.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

All I'm going to say, in a calm non-confrontational-with-the-baseball-gods way, is that the Phillies are in sole possession of first place. That's a really nice thing, isn't it? Yes, I suppose it is, if that sort of thing were important to a person. Two games left. Now I shall go on about my business, with my heart defibrillator handy, just in case.....

Okay, so I finished Gus's hoody vest.

It's all great and stuff, but I think it's too short. I had added 2" to the body length, but it's still hitting him right below the waist and I wanted it to hit him (in a cool badass fashion) at the hips. Sooooo, since it only took 4 days to make and because I am not that emotionally invested in it (though putting in a zipper always takes something out of me), I think I'm going to cut it at the bottom and unravel it back to where the stockinette starts and then work an extra couple of inches of ribbing downwards. Exciting stuff.

I went to Granny's Sewing Den yesterday to buy the zipper for the hoody and also bought some of those nice braided leather buttons for the red Momogus cardigan I finished last week. Sewing stores have great button selections! I pored over the racks of buttons for a lonnnnnnngggg time and then eventually struck up a conversation with the woman working there. I told her of my sewing machine woes [I can't get the bobbin to thread - this "woe" will probably give her an anyeurism laughing, but I can't fix it!] and she said that she offers private lessons, so I think I may take her up on that. I feel like I should know how to do everything, and I got stuck pretty fast with the ding-dang sewing machine. Though I did have my (brief) moment of triumph with Gus's Beast Boy costume last year. Ah yes.........

Friday, September 28, 2007



This man should be MVP. He is in my book. The Phillies tied the Mets for first place last night. 'Nuff said.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Sad news on the crazy kitty front: Miss Smokee seems to have disappeared. We haven't seen her for a meal (which she made like clockwork) in about a week and a half. Matthew and I were freaking out about what to do about the kittens last Friday, which was about three days since we had seen Smokee. But our lovely next-door neighbors scooped up the kittens and fed them and cared for them round the clock until a foster family was found. So that was a sweet ending to a sad situation - we're so blue about Smokee. She had become part of our lives. To see her transform from a hissy, swatty, suspicious near-feral cat to have her follow us around the yard companionably and rub up against our legs was really wonderful.

But we do have these nut-jobs who are part of her:

And one last note about this whole ker-AZY cat situation. I went to the SPCA last week to see if someone had caught Smokee and turned her in. She wasn't there, but MYSTERY was! I called Matthew and he said, "Put in an application! She can't be put to sleep!" I did, but there were already four applications in for her, so somebody rescued her. And maybe they'll keep her inside, which means no more visits for us, but also no more visits to the SPCA.

Okay, I am declaring a moratorium on cat posts for the foreseeable future.

I finished this yesterday:

Momogus Knits Child's Cabled Cardigan in Encore Worsted.

I realized yesterday that I could just knit sample after sample for ever and ever amen, but I decided to force myself to take a break and knit something else. So I started this:

Knitting Pure and Simple Bulky Hooded Vest for Gus in Encore Chunky. He's all about black as the coolest color of all, and I'll throw in some devastatingly cool chest stripe so he can strut his badass 7-yr-old Quaker stuff on the playground. I started this when I got home from work yesterday - 3 to the inch goes FAST!

Phillies lost yesterday. Their poor beleaguered valiant bullpen aces (Gordon, Myers and Romero) had to take a rest, so the poor beleaguered and not-as-good bullpen other guys (Alfonseca and Davis) blew the lead. Hamels's gorgeous outing was wasted. I have the strongest feeling of deja vu because THIS HAPPENS EVERY YEAR. In a month, I hope I won't be saying "If only they won 2 more games in April, they'd be in the World Series!" which is what I have been saying for the last 6 years it seems. C'mon, crazy Phillies flag - work your mojo!!!

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

The Phillies are still hanging in there. I believe my judicious alternating of the American and Phillies flags on my front porch has kept them in the race. They're only a game and a half off the wild card lead and only 1.5 games behind the Mets, but still. They have no no NO pitching!! No pitching. How they've scraped 78 wins out of this staff is a miracle. Sigh.

And I suppose that the Kitty Network is working overtime because this young lady showed up the other day and sat on our front porch for half the day.

Smokee came up and tried to make her leave, but she goofily thought Smokee's hissing and growling was some sort of play. "Yay! That seems like a really fun game!!" She had a collar with no tag on and the neighbors said she lived on the next street over. She was funny. Gus called her Mystery. Though I had a moment of premonition that our house might become beseiged by cats at the windows a la "The Birds", I hope she comes for a visit again. She was delightful.

Here's what I've finished knitting-wise over the past couple of days:

Momogus Knits Easy Fingerless Gloves. A new pattern. These were knit in two new DIVINE yarns that the Web just started carrying. The red ones are Autumno and the goldy ones are Peruvia from Berroco. Highly recommended.



I also started the Child's Easy Cabled Cardigan pattern. The back went smoothly, considering there was nothing to do but knit a rectangle. Then there were the fronts. I knit the right front without incident. Then I knit the left front:

Looks great, eh?


Well, when I went to bind off the shoulders together, I realized that I had picked up a different color ball of Encore. Huh? It's not like I have dozens of balls of Encore lying around the house. So I sighed and picked up the right color of Encore and knit up the left front AGAIN. I finished it last night and when I went to bind off the shoulders I realized that I had forgotten to do the cables in the opposite direction.

Oy vey. I didn't have the heart to do anything else last night. I just sat with idle defeated hands. Today I will start a NEW left front.
This was my soothing project on the way to the Shore to visit my in-laws this weekend:

This is Momogus Knits Adult Cabled Hat in forbidden contraband Noro Kureyon, which I purchased at another store. We haven't carried KFI-distributed yarns for a couple of years now after some unpleasant dealings with them. We've never regretted the decision, except for the Kureyon. It's scratchy and unevenly spun, but the colors are demented. The above combination of pattern and wildly-variegated yarn is something I tell customers all the time is a no-no, but I couldn't resist. And I lurve it.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

I'm whispering it this time.....the Phillies swept the Mets! Shhhhh........

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Krazy Kat Lady Post!

Guess who got pregnant WHILE she was weaning her kittens and just had three more which we will have to wrangle?

Yes, our very own Tramp with a Heart of Gold, Miss Smokee. Here she is, arriving punctually for dinner on the day that she appeared looking suddenly all svelte again. Matthew discovered her and her kittens hidden behind a fence in our neighbor's yard. I thought I would have more than, say, three days to catch her before she became pregnant again, but I was wrong! And now we have to wait six weeks now before we can catch the kittens and then her. Smokee!!!

Here are three pictures of the aptly-named Silly, taken in the last three days. We actually have a whole collection of pictures of "Silly On Things", because that is her way and it makes us laugh:

Silly on some quilts from my parents' house that I had put on that chair like 30 seconds before this was taken:


Silly on the old broken toilet that the plumber had JUST moved into the hallway. She likes to help repairmen who come to the house. All morning I heard him saying patiently, "Okay, kitty, you have to leave." "Okay, kitty, go out in the hallway." "Okay, kitty, c'mon get out of here.":


And here is Silly, two minutes after I brought the kittens home from the vet where they got fixed. I like that she chose the top cage:

Sunday, September 09, 2007

My dad got married yesterday. It was the last of the Triumvirate of Dreaded Events this summer (sister Laura moving and the family house being sold were the others, if you're keeping score.) But this morning, as I reflect on yesterday, I feel much much better about everything.

Not that it was easy, seeing my dad marry someone who was not Mom. It was really really hard, maybe the most difficult thing to get through in this whole crappy year. I think the minister was a little worried about us. But now I see that Dad is happy and contented and settled and with someone who loves him and will take really really good care of him. And for me, it's not so much about Mom anymore, which was the toughest adjustment to make in my head. I know Dad loves and misses her. I also know that he wants to look forward in his life, not backward. (My sisters and I are all about looking backward and pining for Mom, so it was tough for us to understand how Dad could move on.)

We went back to their new house after the ceremony, and I had two pleasant surprises. One was that, contrary to what I thought with my shaky grasp of geography, they are only two minutes from Valley Forge Park, one of our favorite hangouts. So he is not now on the other side of the earth where I would never see him, as I had formerly thought.

The other pleasant surprise was Jean's family, whom I had never met before. My father has three daughters and Jean has three sons. Yes, we can make up a nutty middle-aged Brady Bunch. (As one of them said yesterday, "I smell a crazy Christmas card!!!"). Two of the sons were married. The sons and their wives were absolutely wonderful - warm, funny, kind, welcoming. My sisters couldn't make it back to the house afterwards, so I was feeling a little outnumbered beforehand. I don't know what I expected, but I have been known to wildly exaggerate anticipation in a bad way in my brain. They took a potentially awkward social situation and made it delightful. After all, they lost their father not so long ago, so it must have been weird for them too.

So, even though it was not a day I would particularly wish to repeat, I'm in a better place than I was before (remember, it's all about me!!!). I feel like my father's not out of reach - maybe he'd even want to poke around Port Kennedy train station with us! And I feel like, in a weird unexpected way, I gained a whole new nice family.

I said to Matthew this morning, "I feel like everything might actually turn out okay..." And he said, "Ya think?!"

Mazel tov, Dad and Jean.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

It Happens Every Year.....

By the end of August every summer, I can't wait for school to start. Gus and I are both cranky and bored and kind of both pills to each other and ready to spend some time apart.

And then, the first day of school comes:

And I drop him off and cry all the way home.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

This and that....

Well, apparently I taunted the baseball gods with my broom post because the Phillies have lost every game since. I even took down my Phillies flag and put up the American flag to fix things. Didn't work. I think the godawful pitching situation is finally sinking them. It looks like they're going to do what they've done every season in recent memory: have an okay spring training (MM's hopes rise), bad April (MM's hopes fall), great middle of the season (MM's hopes rise again!), turdy autumn (MM's hopes fall), get reeeeaaallllly close to the wild card spot (MM's hopes rise again!), and then fall short by one game (thunk. MM's hopes fall again....until next spring....)

Gus and I went to a Camden Riversharks game for a birthday party on Sunday. Can I just say that this was the most beautiful baseball park I've ever been in?! I don't think this does it justice, but you get an idea:

Look - you even get an occasional Patco High Speed Line train going by! I would have enjoyed the game more if our seats had been up there in the shade. Our seats were in the front row right next to the dugout, which thrilled the boys but of course made Nervous Momogus Nellie fret about her precious boy being knocked unconscious by a screaming line drive foul ball. The Riversharks and the Somerset Patriots (managed by Sparky Lyle, of all people) couldn't manage much in the way of screaming line drives, so I only kept a vigilant watch on left-handed batters. Even though it was not a really hot day, I baked in the sun for a couple of innings like a bad peach cobbler and so left my son to his fate and took refuge up in the shade with a corn dog and some lemonade for half an inning and took that picture.

Anyway, it was an absolutely gorgeous place to see a game. I wish that it was a true minor league game so you could speculate on who would be called up and who was a future star and all that, but they're Independent League so all you can do is ooh and aah about all the former major leaguers who are managers (Sparky Lyle, Rick Wise, Joe Ferguson, Glen Murray, Bud Harrelson).

I finished this little sweater for my sister's sister-in-law's new baby Trevor. I am ambivalent about the little "t". I think it is adorable in theory, but not necessarily in fact:

Momogus Knits Basic Baby Pullover and Basic Baby Hat (shameless plug) in Plymouth Dreambaby. I'm going to send it off as it is, because I'm tipping toward thinking the T is okay and also because picking out duplicate stitch is a pain in the patootie.

Tomorrow: First day of school. Ahhhhh..............

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Corrective Emotional Experience:

This is roll-your-eyes-back-in-your-head delicious peach cobbler, recipe courtesy of wonderful Cathy (aka NaturalBlonde).

Many of you kind folks took my recent peach cobbler disaster to heart and sent me your own personal recipes. Or sort of taunted me with the news that you had the perfect cobbler recipe, if only I had known. As a responsible member of the internet community, I consider it my duty to respond to you all by making each and every peach cobbler recipe sent to me and also by tasting said recipe. I will probably need to consume the majority of the resultant dish in order to give an objective opinion of each. I still have my friend Dianne's recipe to try out. Anj and Lisa need to send me their recipes already and stop taunting me with their perfect recipes that they have not sent me. I'd be happy to sample any more recipes that readers would like to submit. In the interest of fairness, of course.

Yours happily up to her eyeballs in cobbler,

MM