M. I. A.

I have been missing in action from my blog this week. I would have taken a picture of all of the hats I have been knitting, but uploading the pictures takes time and frankly, I can't be bothered right now.

Audrey's holiday bazaar is in 6 days. Less than one week. I have become a knitting fiend. And I have to say, a significant portion of my stress is the fact that I don't know how many hats to knit. I've never done this before and I've developed a sort of bi-polar attitude toward my progress. In a 60 second period I can swing from "Oh my word I'm a crazy person who has just spent the last month knitting 500 hats" to "I'm going to sell out in 10 minutes, and then what will I do?". I don't know what to expect. And yet I keep knitting. Diane from Venue has told me to start bringing the holiday items, so I'm feeling that pressure as well. To date I have:

Cinderella
a pile of plush cupcakes
a pile of felted pears
3 snowman hats
2 candy cane striped stocking caps
1 viking hat
8 cupcake hats
2 pumpkin hats
1 strawberry hat
1 watermelon hat
1 blueberry hat
5 different hats that I think are adorable, but no one on Etsy seems to think so

It's been all knitting all the time. And I have a special order to do, I still working on that birthday cake, I have my mom's socks, and Ryan keeps checking in with me to make sure I have the right yarn to make his Harry Potter bookscarf from my new birthday book.

Oh yeah, and I have a family and a life to lead. And by "a life to lead" I mean it's my job to make sure other people in this house have a life. I cleaned the bathrooms yesterday. It had been a while. A long while. The kids were commenting. So I spent some serious time cleaning bathrooms. Alice's new litter box is in the boy's bathroom and between the boys and Alice, that room is practically a bio-hazard. When I'm not looking I think Alice is sneaking a little shovel into the bathroom and digging a hole in her litterbox, tossing the contents of the shovel over her little kitty shoulder. On to the bathroom floor. I have to clean that up twice a day. NOT that I'm complaining, mind you. Alice has not had an accident in weeks--even though she is too lazy to take her 15 year old bones down to the laundry room litterbox, we are delighted that she has agreed to use the litterbox 7 feet away from our bedroom. I have to tell myself that each and every time I clean up the cat litter.

I have boys to take to school, swimming lessons, birthday parties, kid's choir and playdates. I have laundry. L A U N D R Y. I have thank you notes to write for birthday gifts I received 2 weeks ago. Notes I really want to write because I received some very thoughtful gifts. These people who live here keep telling me they want to eat. Most of them don't actually eat what I give them, but I still feel obligated to provide them with food when they ask for it. And then I feel the need to clean up the food. And today we're having lunch with Ryan at school because he is a Student Of The Month, and Students Of The Month get to eat at a special table, invite their families (who are instructed to bring McDonalds. It's really funny--a big long table lined with McDonald's bags, because that seems to be the universal special lunch of choice) and hear a presentation from the Principal.

I've volunteered in Ryan's class, and I've volunteered in Eric's class. I completely cleaned my kitchen from top to bottom--including washing out the pantry and the refrigerator--because we brought fruit flies home from the grocery store (Mike and I spent hours cleaning out the kitchen on Saturday. Hours. And we still have fruit flies). I repaired my garden after the septic tank guy came and I've made about 3 trips to Target this week.

THAT is why I have not been blogging.