Happy Birthday

Yesterday somebody turned 16 at my house.

She's a treasure -- always something interesting to say, funny, sharp as a tack, and doing that lovely "growing up in front of you" thing so I get to enjoy it. Considerate, no?

Right now she's asleep nearby. I know there aren't many more years I'll be able to say that, so I'm enjoying it (even though I kind of wish I, too, was asleep). And tomorrow I'll watch her run and leap on the Frisbee field and think of how fortunate we all are to have her in our lives.

Not quite up to cuff

My first year at college, my sister and I wrote letters to each other. A lot. We had to keep each other up on stuff, and it was just nice to get letters. Then I moved back home for a while, and we didn't have to write to each other. Through various moves, we wrote, or called, and during one particularly fruitful period, we wrote and called. I have boxes of letters from her just sitting around. Now that we get to see each other in person, we don't write much more than the occasional card. I'd rather have the face to face memories, really. However, I still am fortunate to have a couple of friends to whom (and one from whom) letters go pretty regularly.

My kids may not have this, so much.


Hours on the phone, hours IMing, but scented bundles tied up with ribbons? Let's hope they do, at least some. Besides, we love our postal carrier. I'm sure he would appreciate some good handwritten mail to deliver.

He would not, however, appreciate this mitten, cast on to have something simpler to knit out and about, so much.


The cuff is a little short on Eric, who doesn't have unusually long hands. So far, it's a woman's mitten. I like the way the darker handspun looks as though it has black stripes in it, and how the thumb cap-stripe matches up with the body. Completely unplanned.

On the checkerboardy side, the singles effect really shows up -- the stitches have a straight line marching up the mitten.


I've cast on, at least, for the second mitten and its green stripe on the cuff is moving along. I'm tempted to knit it longer, but I think these are going to have to be a shorter pair, in the interest of getting back to finishing the snail mitten

Add one, subtract one and get one done

What could my kids be looking for


yesterday, in the cold, on the beach?


Elephant seals!


Everyone knows a family who lives somewhere great but doesn't take advantage of their opportunities, right? Generally, we're that family. Fortunately, I have much more organized friends, and every year, they trundle down the coast to one of the very very few places that elephant seals come ashore to pup.

Imagine only spending a few months a year on land, and the rest hunting and swimming in very cold water. Walking near them was cold enough, thank you very much. They are awesomely big up close. They said it was safe, but I couldn't get a good picture of my next-oldest child; she was staying very close to the rest because she was wary of these huge pinnipeds.

Speaking of enormous mammals, Mikey got to play with his neighbor, Star, today.


She's so much faster than he is that it's mostly a chase, and eventually he gives up and just watches, making halfhearted feints as she careers around him. He enjoys it mightily. He does most things mightily, come to think of it.

I'm mightily glad to be nearly done (save the thumb) of mitten the first, aka the second.


The real first is now poised to become the second. Hooray for looser tension. It fits less like a glove and more like a comfy mitt. Still, it is a little daunting to be right back where I started, more or less. Oh well, if one has to stay in place, having one warm hand is something.

When I just couldn't face the thought of starting more colorwork tonight, as it got later and later at my friend's knit night, I decided that I could definitely face winding a plying ball. Turns out that laceweight baby camel and silk makes for a slow-winding ball, but a pretty one:


Alas and alack, the "wobble" on my Bosworth mini spindle turned out to be due to a rather substantial crack in the whorl, just at the base of the central "throat":


I guess we're going to try to clamp and glue it. I love this spindle. In fact, I have a huge bunch of baby camel and silk roving rooting for it to pull through.

Tomorrow is certainly enough time to worry about it.

What's with the snacks?

I am a fairly good cook (tonight's dinner and frequently undercooked broccoli excepted). Nearly every evening, however, at least one child declares the meal "inedible." Generally, I'm a "more for me!" kind of gal, and besides, there's always that old standby:


yogurt.

A mother who loves food can hope, though, that some day, her averagely-adventurous eating children will say, "This is terrific. You give us the best meals!" right?

At the end of the penultimate ferny thing on the mitten, I realized that I had really goofed way, way back near some antennae on one snail.

For about five minutes, ripping seemed like the right thing to do, then I tried duplicate stitching, at which I am no whiz. It's still visible, but I don't think I'm up for ripping another mitten that much. I'm so close to finishing, and I think that I'll just wear them and not worry.

Of course, I could always change my mind later. What do you think? Rip and redo? Finish this one and start the next, and then decide? Argh.

Doing yoga with a stuffy nose

It's kind of hard to feel on top of things when you wake up to your spouse saying, "The alarm didn't go off," and you thought he was saying, "The dog has to pee," so leaping from bed is the only sane option.

I dragged on my comfy clothes and ran out front with the dog (who did, in fact, very much need to go) and then watched as Eric almost sprinted out of the door, on the way to his new year.

Even though we were later than we'd hoped, it was early enough to feed Mikey in his crate and use that relative peace to do some yoga. Kristin is my inspiration here. I don't have a fancy yoga/honey house like she does, but now I am the proud user of a deck of yoga cards. Nothing quite like easing into a down dog and realizing that there needs to be a box of Puffs as part of your practice.

Waking up is hard to do. . .

Darn you, Neil Sedaka. What else, I ask you, fits this kind of morning?


I've learned that making children go to bed early is relatively useless, but waking them up early eventually works on the other end. They think I'm cruel, and they might be back asleep, but baby steps will do us all.

At the halfway point?


The second first mitten is now halfway done. That has to be some kind of milestone, right?


Breathing in the wave

Just before I woke up, I was finishing a long dream about being at the beach with the homeschoolers. I know I was with them because there was much discussion about which glass lasagne dish was whose, and we hadn't even started with the Dutch ovens. I finally announced that even if no one else was, I was going swimming. The water was perfect -- still and clear, and there was another shore across from us. It was some sort of bay!

I struck out across the water, and then a giant wave rose up under me. I could feel the power as I kept on swimming. Looking at where the wave was going to land after it crested, I knew I was in trouble. Growing up in Southern California, I spent a lot of time riding waves, and landing this one was going to be a doozy. However, in the dream, I had my face right at the level of the water and kept breathing in and out, deeply and calmly. I thought, "As long as I can breathe in the wave, I'm okay."

Since we can't predict the things that happen, it seems as good a way to proceed as any.

Eye can't see well

I need to call the vet this week because it's time Mikey got some shots and other doggy things. But it seems I'm going to have to call the kid-vet too, since Benadryl isn't touching this one:



As a general rule, panic isn't my first reaction. It's still possible that this is a mosquito bite-type thing, but it's gone on for days, and it's getting worse rather than better, and it is uncomfortable. If it's not changed soon, we'll get it looked at.

About four more rows today -- that mitten is halfway done.

As you mean to go on

Resolutions and new beginnings just seem to go together, as do the concomitant disappointment when keeping them is more difficult -- the pounds won't come off, the photos don't get organized, those pesky weeds just keep coming up, and who said twelve pairs of mittens in a year was doable?

I've managed this in years past by not making resolutions, other than the most general: "Eat breakfast. Walk occasionally. Eat kale a lot."

This year, though, I'm brimming with them. Maybe it's tipping well into my final half of life; maybe it's not having a truly little child of my own any more (thank goodness for a new niece!) that's freeing up some space in my head. And this blog is part of that. While researching when we got the cats for a pet insurance application, not only did I discover when we got the cats, thanks to the blog, seeing the pictures of the kids and reading about what we were doing was so pleasurable and not having it was an actual ache. So I resolved to post at least one picture of one kid per day and blog something. Alas, that's only one thing I want to do.

Some of my plans involve the kids in other ways:


And, as any parent knows, rearing kids means limits. Screen time is an ongoing struggle here -- in fact, many things about this child are struggles. Rarely do parents blog honestly about their challenges with their children, and the line between exploitation and sugar-coating isn't easy to find. I hope that this year, we're going to unlock some of the more difficult puzzles with our son, even though paying for the professional help to do so is going to be painful.

I'm also embarking on a self-taught course of dog training. Mikey, who recently joined our family, was trained to be a show dog and not much else. He's big, and mouthy, and not quite sure what's expected of him. He's also very lovable.


I love the look he's giving the kid here. "Squirrel? You call that a squirrel? Take me outside!" In researching training methods, I've fallen completely for Karen Pryor and her positive reinforcement classical conditioning clicker training. Her Reaching the Animal Mind book provided hours of entertainment for us, and then gave me a place to start when Mikey came home. As I've delved more into training, I'm feeling overwhelmed, so finding this website with its structured instruction has been a boon. I think it might also save me a few hundred dollars in private training lessons.

So what else? Um, study Italian, teach my courses, keep homeschooling as effectively as I can, walk briskly a few times a week - that leg is still not at all run-able - do some yoga, keep decluttering the house, and oh, yes, knitting.

I started working on the second of the Norwegian Snail Mittens a few days ago:


This would be great almost-two-years-to-a-finished-object stuff if I didn't also bite the fit-bullet and do this:


And it's not done. That "first" mitten was just enough too tight around the thumb area to make it not up to snuff. In a moment of strength, I figured, "I can do this" and just started ripping. When I get down below the tight part, I'll set it back on the needles and start over. By then the "other first" mitten will be done, and I'll be halfway to the first pair done.

As I mean to go on, I mean.

Numbers don't lie

One of the very best parenting ideas I ever, ever had, was to take a long, thin board and paint a growth chart on it for each child. We tended to move a lot, and any kitchen doorways that had charted kids' growth would have been left behind. (Plus, with four kids, can you imagine? It would look like a New York subway car after a graffiti artists' convention.)


Sarafina's been feeling sleepy and hungry (not to mention a teensy bit grouchy) lately, as well as stumbling around a tiny bit more than usual. The doors, table legs, and cupboards haven't been jumping out at her, so if she's smacking into them, it's probably because she's been issued Another New Body that she's not completely checked out on. So I've been suggesting that it's time to whip out Ye Olde Measuring Boarde and check.

But she's been resistant. "Wait until next week." "Wait until Thursday," and today was the day. Despite my cherished belief that I am Very Tall, the kid outgrew me a couple of months ago. I can tell, because my height is marked (like a goal) on the stick.

Today, she moved past the next inch. Three quarters of an inch in just over three months. Who knows, I might have been grouchy, too.


And why was today the day? Well, of course. She's fully fifteen as of one o'clock this morning. But daddy's height is a goal that might just not get overtaken in this life.

Happy Birthday, tall daughter.

Saddle Up/Feeling Edgy

Two saddles, done and stitched into place. One sleeve, done. Cuff edge, unstretched, matches the waist measurement, unstretched. My waist and wrists are not the same diameter.

I'm going to have to strike model poses to show off these sleeves. Either that, or rip them back and do a less-extravagant increase. Denise pointed out that they weren't going to be warm in the arm area. Maybe I'll knit a ribbed and cabled set of long fingerless gauntlet/gloves to wear with it. I don't know if sleeves like this will look high-fashion, or silly knitter. She also pointed out the effect of adding a new ball of yarn. Yes, I know. It's darker. Semi-solid yarn does that sort of trick occasionally.

I have an urge to set aside the second sleeve in order to work on a design for the collar. Maybe finishing that will allow a sane decision on the sleeve width. Saner, that is, than swanning around striking model-y poses.


In 2006, I started a lace rectangle for my mom. This year, I bound off the edge and decided to see if I could get it done before a Significant Gift Giving Occasion. Nothing like a three-year hiatus, eh? A simple pointy edge, sewn on because picking up and knitting made a wonky join, and turning a large item to knit back and forth made no sense. It's altered so it's a stockinette design, and it will do. At this point, "done" is a terrific thing.


Many delightful things already this month; many delightful things to come. One child has become so mature, with double digits and all, that she didn't even mind that I dorked her birthday cake pretty badly. I didn't have enough red icing to spell out "Happy Birthday," so I told her I was abbreviating it. She didn't seem to mind.


And today, I decided off the cuff to gather the three youngest and head out to Marine World for the homeschooler's day. Turned out it was probably the right decision. We got to see Sarafina (who had already made plans to go separately) and her friends -- who were cool enough to take an almost-8 year old Tor on big coasters with them, and I discovered that all four of my children have their mother's affinity for roller coasters.

This bodes really well for the future.

Re-Newed

Maybe you're blessed with naturally photogenic looks. The camera doesn't have to see a classically beautiful face to love that face. Some people just always have flattering pictures of them -- something about the arrangement of cheekbones and eyes, chin and forehead.

I'm not one of those people. I routinely allow my children to take pictures of me, only to gasp in horror at the Sicilian crone looking out from raccoon-dark eyes, wild, mind-of-its-own hair, and horrifying expression. In them, I'm only inches away from grabbing a broom and chasing them around. Fortunately, I'm in charge of deleting pictures from the disk and figuring out what to print, too, so I only leave about every fifteenth of those in there. No sense lying to the great-grandchildren that I didn't start the slide into cronehood at about 25. Maybe they can use it as a warning, and start investing into good under eye cream early on.

There is one picture of me, though, that I adore. Fortunately I get to carry it around all the time, but it's not quite the same. I'd like, ideally, a 14x16" print of it on my wall, in one of those oval old-timey frames. It's that good. I look Sicilian, but more Sophia Loren than a little old village lady. It came in the mail today. Unfortunately, it has some holograms right over my hair, and it's only about an inch square.


(wait for it)







Something that's not often seen -- a beloved driver's license picture. This one's good until 2014, so maybe I can keep it until I truly am a little old lady and it will more obviously be the vanity it is now.

Something else got done today.


This one was started way back in 2007 for Tor. I must have messed up the cable and put it away in a fit of pique. I found it yesterday in a shopping bag, didn't know why on earth I couldn't have fixed it earlier, and figured I'd finish it off. It will, of course, only fit Caterina right now.

Unfortunately, I created some more mistakes in the finishing, none of which I'm going to either point out here or dwell on, firstly because I'm not doing that to my knitting any more: good knitters can see the mistakes and think I'm an idiot, non-knitters won't see them, and secondly, I'm not willing to reknit this baby a single stitch more. I'm also out of yarn and would have to rip, cannibalize, and then reknit. Not going to happen.

Instead, I'm going to encourage behavior like this as long as she's wearing it:



See? No mistakes! Amazing how fast a sweater gets done when 7/8 of it is already finished. I wonder if I can arrange to have that happen to all my knitting from now on?

They're all unique

That's at least what I hear about snowflakes; we don't get enough snow here for me to do any personal research.

My only recent experience with the singular nature of snowflakes was a wooly type. I finally (finally!) finished the Stashbuster Raglan, and was embroidering snowflakes along the red band, as I'd planed.


"How hard could it be?" I asked myself. Well, three snowflakes in, I realized that for me, it was "hard," perhaps "impossible," to embroider snowflakes I was both happy with and that bore some relationship to one another, designwise.

Duplicate stitch! That would surely save me. Nope. Apparently making duplicate stitches resemble one another in more than a third-cousin-once-removed way is also beyond my capacities.


Leaving it with just one finally made the most sense, I figured. We'll go with the "it's as unique as you are" approach.


He doesn't seem to care that I managed to knit one red arm-end with a too small needle, since I picked up the last needle I'd made the rolled edge on the other one to finish the second. He just likes it because it's warm and soft. I don't think I'd do the purl ridges on the arms again.


They look a little bit like weird arm gauntlets, but the bustin' out all over apricot doesn't mind, either. And I don't live in Blueland, it was just evening when I took the picture.

The brown cat doesn't mind the children, as long as they're asleep.


Oh! For those of you who care, I pulled a total Bee Whisperer move yesterday! I had talked with a new beekeeper at the Association meeting on Tuesday evening, and he was telling me about his mentor, who works his bees barehanded and often veilless. And yesterday, I wanted to super one of my hives. Didn't want to get in it, didn't want to powder sugar them to treat for Varroa mites, just wanted to make sure I got that honey super on before the flow.

So without changing any clothes or suiting up, I walked to the hive, and with lots of slowness, eased off the top cover very slowly, set it on top of the super, and turned toward the hive. A bee landed on my hand. So I made like a statue, and held very very still. Tor called across the yard, "What are you doing?" I just said, "Waiting for this bee to fly away." After some moments, she took off. Various other bees had been landing on my shirt and pants, but just sitting there and flying off when they were done doing whatever they were doing.

Without moving my feet too much, I turned again toward the super, grasped the sides, and pivoted to place it on the now-topless hive. I didn't want to crush any bees, so I placed the first corner of the super on one corner of the hive, then gently, so gently, lowered it along the sides so any bees in the way could move. Once it was on, I walked away.

Then I felt the shakes. Apparently I'm not quite the Zen beekeeper I was acting as. Not yet. I don't think I'll open hives at least without veils, but it made me feel as though I was making some progress.

In other catch-up news, I'm still maintaining the running schedule, although my slowness and literal feeling that I'm "hauling ass" down the street (like dragging a bag of rocks) hasn't changed much. And I'm supposed to be on a panel discussion on local food production for Earth Day, so I have to get my talking ducks in a row. Someone asked me yesterday how many hours a week I knit. I laughed and laughed. I consider it a bonus day if I even get to pick up needles lately. With four kids, three classes to teach, and a household to run, who has time?

Dreams Can Come True

Last night I knit and watched a movie on the laptop with Sarafina, while poor Eric slept next to us. Even though we were using earphones, we're movie-talkers, and he found it amusing that we couldn't just watch quietly. Didn't keep him from snoring away. Being really sick will do that for you, I guess. Anyhow, I woke up this morning -- for the final time -- from a dream involving John McCain's tailless silent helicopter, about which I said, "No matter how cool it is, it's not worth sitting with him to get to ride in it." Subsequently in my dream, I was contacting a student in one of my classes, and going through someone's estranged father's custom-made study: drawers for everything, including old letters. I remember thinking, "I have more old letters than these; no matter how beautiful the cabinetry, this study isn't very practical."

I called the student up, and apparently the student's mother disapproved mightily of this Older Woman calling, even though I wanted to talk about the missing paper. And then I realized what I was riffling through the study for -- the perfect Blueberry Cinnamon Swirl Coffee Cake recipe!

In my dream I never found it, but on my run through the quiet streets this morning, I figured it wouldn't be that hard to do, so after I got home, I boiled eggs to assuage any guilt, and pulled a Bill Cosby. Behold, breakfast:


Not enough blueberries for the berry-lovers and too many for the berry-haters, but it is a compromise, even if it is a dream come true.


Before succumbing to the Land of Nod after the movie, I'd done the collar on this little beauty. I figured that it was all done, short of weaving ends and embroidering snowflakes.


Then Tor tried it on this morning, and in a medical miracle, apparently his arms have grown two inches overnight. Sigh. This entire stashbusting sweater has been a labor of knit, rip, reknit, rerip, and still it's getting done. Just a little slowly, and there are two skeins of green sock yarn wanting to be knit into Embossed Leaves and a rainbow Kauni still patiently waiting for attention.

This alpaca sweater fits Caterina very well, but when I suggested that she ask her brother if he still wanted it, and she interpreted that as an opportunity to prance in front of him wearing it and announcing, "Do you want this, because it fits me!" he screamed, "Mine! mine!"

It's nothing but amity and high level communication around here, I tell you. Let them eat cake.

Has it really been 14 years?

I went out for a brief run this morning (I'm still not quite admitting to a Training Program, but still) in the rain-washed air. Then it struck me -- fourteen years ago I had just done something really hard, too.

I haven't scanned the old pictures, but I had just given birth to a baby, my first one. She'd started in one of the most beautiful deserts in the U.S., and despite the months where the only thing I wanted to eat was chocolate malts, and the fact that easily 90% of this baby girl was made of ice cream, the pregnancy was a hoot.


Birth had its funny moments, too. But mostly, it just felt miraculous. I had been oddly alienated from my body for years, and having her at home, in our bedroom, with screams and some blood and some extreme silliness, just gave me back myself. I remember holding her immediately after she was born and having the stunning realization: It was you the whole time -- you were who we have been waiting for.


Eric and I stayed up all night, just looking at the exquisite beauty who had showed up.

We should have known, then. We'd stay up all night for a lot of nights. This one wasn't what you'd call a sleeper, and we were still learning how to do this parenting thing.

But we made it through her babyhood and toddler years. I think she spent most of them tucked into a sling on my hip. And she stayed beautiful. And got funnier and funnier.


There were the "dress and leggings" years, and "Swan Lake" mania, and adjusting to siblings, and a couple of very cranky periods, but through it all, she's been fascinating.

Now that it feels like she's fully into "youth," she's even more interesting. I know, I know, how could it get any more interesting than Ballet All The Time, but it is. She's a boon companion on walks, watching movies, discussing books, playing Frisbee. She's a fierce friend to her few chosen compatriots, and a sometimes patient, sometimes irritated sibling. She's a fun Big Kid to her cousins, even though they try her patience. She loves her pets and keeps having interesting insights that she will sometimes share with me.


That radio silence is in itself a miracle, since she literally talked without stopping for a few years there. I thought it would never end.


But one thing this precious firstborn daughter did teach me is that it ends. . . it goes by fast, and maybe increasingly faster. The journey has been constantly interesting and it appears to be getting ever more fun.

So happy birthday, Sarafina.

New Beginnings

That's going to be the theme of our Mother-Daughter meeting tomorrow. Thing 1 and I figured that since we had to have a theme, and "Themes are Stupid" wasn't an acceptable one for this group since they're a bunch of overachievers, we'd get people to talk about the new things they were doing. She was amenable to any of my crazy schemes as long as a) she didn't have to talk about her feelings and b) there was birthday cheesecake involved. I'd planned to make it tonight, but it's too late now.

I offered to gel-draw some Feegles across the cake, but she said this group wasn't into them and so I should save my efforts for her actual birth day. I think practice wouldn't be a bad idea, but I don't have either the gel or the time, so we'll go naked cheesecake. Snort.

As she's growing older (almost 14! Where did the time go??) we've been enjoying watching movies together. Recently, we watched and talked about "The Matrix" trilogy. I walked into the living room the next day and saw this:


It's Fred, immediately post-freeing by Morpheus and the gang -- you can still see his ports from the "battery fields." She cracks me up. Thank goodness for Magz toys. 1000 uses, one small box.


The baby apricot tree has put out little buds, and I'm thrilled to think of a future with Blenheims in it. New beginnings, indeed.



Today's garden pickings. The new beginnings out there are, obviously, the seeds and seedlings taking the place of the pulled things. Poor broccoli raab. Once such a nice, bitter, rare green, and today perhaps I pulled all of the remaining stems of it and composted them. [Even my sister had started leaving bundles of it, lovingly picked for her to take home, in the refrigerator "accidentally."] There wasn't enough garlic in the world to render it edible any more.

So in place of some of it went a dozen cippolini onions, with a backup band of "True Siberian" kale and some tat soi. They've both done well and been delicious, so while we're waiting for the tomatoes and peppers to grow very big and the outdoors to warm enough for them, they can be the cool weather's last hurrah. Even though garden books remind you to reseed replacement plants every two weeks -- and sometimes I dutifully note that in my calendar -- I have yet to do it, so there are these vegetative boom and bust cycles. I overplant, forget to provide succession plantings, eat everything, and have bare soil until the next round. Maybe the garden can qualify for its own stimulus package. Real California real estate.

It's to my credit that there are no new knitting beginnings because as a result of not casting on for either another pair of Embossed Leaf Socks or a baby blanket for a friend, I'm only one sleeve away from finishing the stash alpaca raglan for my boy. Maybe he'll still fit it next week, and maybe it will be cool enough to wear a few times.

Of course I have three new courses beginning next week also, plus this session's three courses to pack up, gradewise, and the first meeting of the community fruit exchange. I had planned to make a batch of marmalade tonight for timing purposes -- if I'm going to lead a group, I should probably have trod the ground at least once. But I'm not going to. There's enough work to do and enough going on that I can let it go for tonight. And anyhow, if I'm not going to bake a cheesecake at ohmyhowlateitis PM, I'm certainly not going to break out my new jam pan and start shredding zest. Sometimes it's time for a new beginning, and sometimes it's time to go to bed.

Let the sun shine

The three children who were not sick in bed and I went to Sugarloaf Mountain State Park today to check on the status of a wonderful waterfall which of course runs better when it's been raining a lot, as it has. Since rain is predicted again for tomorrow (not enough to ease the drought, since reservoirs are at about 30% of normal now), we figured we'd get in and out during the dry.

And we did, although I remember the last time we were there having that odd, liquid light also. Middle of the day, lots of trees, but just. . . not really bright. That was okay, though, since that meant hand me down sweaters made by mom. Seeing my children in sweaters worn by their older siblings just makes me want to eat them up, especially this one, the last little one. Even though she didn't want to put up the elfin hood, she was yummy:


Things 2 and 4 found the entire experience rather meditative


(Insert sound of me and Eldest daughter laughing and falling about here), and if you noticed that I looked a little tired in these pictures -- trust me, I have not put up the ones that really show the effects of the last few nights -- the dog has been getting us up multiple times during the night to go out and do his business. Seems that the heavy drinking is not in fact a sign of kidney failure, but of canine diabetes. Fortunately I have lots of experience with insulin needles due to a couple of exciting pregnancies, so I'm the one shooting him up every day.

The fact that he ate an entire cheesecake that Thing 1 inexplicably left in her room today is probably not something I'm going to share with the vet during next week's glucose tests, though.

Sigh.

In more cheering news, when we came home, this is what the enormous walnut tree in the neighbor's yard looked like:



Doesn't the chicken coop look like something out of a movie about dust bowl farmers? I'm not one to willy-nilly cheer the chopping of large trees, but this one has dumped an enormous amount of leaves on the chicken wire over the chickens, making it dark in there, but more importantly, it shaded a huge part of our yard. Urban farmettes live and die by the sunshine hitting their yards, and this effectively doubles my growing area. It also means I don't have to dig up and move the Fuji apple tree right by the coop into a sunnier spot, as I had planned to do. Maybe I'll pop a fig tree back there instead!

So the next time it's really sunny, I'm sending the oldest kid up into the front yard street tree with strict instructions to trim out enough leafy branches that the sun at least dapples into the yard. The new persimmon and apricot trees are beginning to bud out, and I just put out six of a variety of rasp-and boysenberries out there. Come on, sun!

And tomorrow, I'll have pictures of an actual finished knitted object. Amazing, even to me.