I love Netflix. But I'm still pissed about their slow phase out of the friends feature.

I'm currently close to the end of the documentary, No End in Sight. It makes me sad that I really had no idea about the beginnings of this current Iraq war. I like to excuse myself because I was in college - but that's no excuse to be so completely uninformed. It is crazy how decisions were made, how that war was undertaken. And suddenly I feel that much worse for Obama - I think it's almost impossible to fix that situation. I think Bush or maybe Rumsfeld ruined a country. Literally, broke it.

As I'm watching, I really wanted to know who, of my Neflix friends, had watched this and what they had rated it. Before, it was as simple as visiting the movie information page. Now? I don't even know how I'd find that. I wonder if the Netflix API provides friends information and if someone, somewhere is building a "friendly" movie page.

Did you watch it? If so, would love to hear your thoughts.

I recommend this movie to everyone. Fuck you Donald Rumsfeld.

I used to sleep walk. I didn't do it often at all but there is a story that my Mom likes to tell. It was the morning. She was in the kitchen with a friend. I walked into the kitchen and tried to sit on the kitchen trash bin. Apparently I needed to go to the bathroom but was still asleep and thought, in my sleep state, that the kitchen trash was the toilet. She managed to redirect me to the bathroom, no harm done. As far as I know, this was not something I repeated, ever.

But last night, I sleep talked. Not so much sleep talked as woke up loml pointing to the bed side table. In my dream I was excited because I wanted him to take a picture with a logo he had designed and, hooray, there was a camera on the bedside table. In real life, I didn't say any of that, just woke him up pointing at the bedside table. I half woke up myself after he gave me a tissue. He was concerned I had been crying and needed a tissue. Really, I just needed a picture of him with that fantastic logo.

When I woke up this morning, I noticed a tissue next to me. And thought, oh shit...that all actually happened.

It is proof that it was a lovely weekend when you step in cat puke barefooted and don't seem to mind that much; when your stomach is really unhappy and it doesn't matter. A little 409 on the bottom of said foot, doing nothing all day to humor your stomach...and everything is perfect.

I am tempted to do a marathon post here about everything that's been happening in my life for the past few months. I promise it's been more than just knitting and paper craft. I do admit though, ripping up paper and playing with rubber cement has been helping distract me from stress. I'll write more about the stress soon.

***

My grandma has Alzheimer's and it has slowly been getting worse. Yesterday was the first time I really saw her so confused - she was mistaking people for her mother (loml being one of them). She also can't seem to find words for the things she fears she has lost (which she hasn't). We're fairly sure she was trying to find a "lost" key that she was holding. She described it thus:

• the black thing
• the thing that you put in the city
• the part
• the part that looks like a clock
• (pointing to a plate with american flags on it) like this

My Dad and his siblings mostly remember a fairly stern, mean Mom. She believed in whacking children with brushes and as recently as a few years ago did not hesitate to call her son an asshole. But I remember a really involved grandma that would have us over for sleepovers and let us go through her large collections of junk and take stuff. Who painted and would help us paint pictures. Who had big dogs and was kind of awesome to us.

She is a completely different person now. And it's sad and weird to know that the grandma I knew...even though she's alive and well, is no longer with us.

I am not a sports fan. But if I like one sport, its hockey. And being from Chicago, this was a big year for our team. And me:



This is one of the only teams I support and so last Christmas my stocking stuffer bet was Blackhawks/Stanley Cup while my other family members mostly got Cubs/World Series. Bad deal for them really...

I am about to mail this to Vegas to collect my winnings but wanted a copy somewhere. Blog it is.

Journal swap round 3: librarian.

ps. those are her people.

Journal swap round 3: me.

I like the ripping of the paper. Song lyric got stuck in my head and made its way into the journal...

Journal swap round 2: librarian.

I shouldn't even dignify it with words, but I did in fact, just get lady in red stuck in my head....

Journal swap round 2: mine.

I'm not going to editorialize any of these, in this case I ripped up a book and made trees. Apologies about the quality of the pictures. Blurrrry.

Journal swap! Round 1: Librarian.

For some reason I'm giggling at the fact that it sounds a bit like a boxing match. Probably because I'm super tired from a fabulous weekend celebrating my sister's nuptials. Congrats Mr. and Mrs. Sister. Ha. Newlyweds.

Rounds two and three will be posted over the next few days...

I made a hat that fits, I made a hat that fits! It's a miracle. And finished object number 6...

Busy with a blanket for quite some time. May work in another project before I finish that blanket, we'll see....

Journal swap!

A few months back I stated that I wanted to get creative again and was hoping to do a journal swap. One of my friends, whom I shall refer to as the librarian, agreed to the swap. We bought two journals from Paper Source (one black, one white, to be covered/completed at the end of the project) and off we went. We've only managed to hand the journal off twice now. I'm going to document all of our attempts at craftiness. I'm going to go in order from start to finish for each of the journals (it'll be interesting to see if there are any patterns). Since I only have one journal at the moment, I only have one first attempt. I'll photograph the other first during our next swap and share it right away. Since we're already on our third round, I'll be able to share the second and third attempts shortly after.

My round one:

Phew, it's been almost a month. And it has been some month. It's gone so quickly I don't even know where it went...

Over the next few months I am probably going to be super busy, but I'd like to promise myself to fit the following in:

1. Blogging regularly. At least once or twice a week. I have been working on a journal swap with a librarian pal of mine and I'll start to share that. I'll continue to share my knitting. And hopefully there will be shared posts about a house and a move, a wedding, a fun summer.
2. Continuing to workout. Starting over after taking time off from the gym SUCKS. And today was the first time since I started back up a couple weeks ago that I had a great workout. I've never been the type where working out energizes me. Consistently 7 time out of 10, I get tired after a workout. Today was the other 30%; I felt great during and great after. Maybe if I seriously continue, I can get that up to 40%.
3. Continuing to pick up some stuff I lazily dropped. Mostly this meant knitting, often it means the gym; these two are back in full swing. But I've also stopped stuff I enjoyed like blogging, contributing on Yelp and even cleaning. Keeping the apartment tidier feels fantastic. I really just got soooo lazy: work, home, zone out, sleep. Maybe this just means winter hibernation is over.

This feels weird to post because it's written mostly for myself, but what else for the blog.

Just a quick tidbit for you since it was a bright spot in a kind of less than bright 24 hours. I mentioned briefly that Mona hates loml. Hisses at him when he moves (yet loves it when he pets her). What I didn't mention is that Boku loves him.

Here's the thing: I acknowledge that my cats might be...lemons. I mean, they spayed, declawed and vaccinated Boku and gave her to me for $0. And Mona was the same treatment for $75. But I'm a sucker and they're mine and they're awesome. And I've always had hope that they'd get better.

Then loml came around and won Boku over with his tireless petting. And my scared, clearly previously abused cat transitioned yesterday to letting people pet her when she was in a stationary position. SHE LET US TOUCH HER WHEN SHE WAS LAYING DOWN. Still kind of on her terms, but it's awesome. Maybe in the next 5 years she'll be a normal cat. Or....10 is probably more realistic.

I felt weird posting this to twitter, due to the facebook status update public aspect of it, but I am currently weirded out by the fact that loml and one of my cats are snoring in tandem. They are making snore noises just opposite of one another. It's freaking me out. They're meant to be.

In order to postpone getting in bed until it is respectably dark outside, I present FO number 4:


Bed + book is kind of calling my name - I wore a skirt today and have not managed to feel warm all day (it was a lot windy and cool today). Plus, cat allergy attack. Way to go Mona.