gaysknits

no i'm not getting a pixie...

i've been there and done that.  i was looking through an old box of crap i have and came upon a pic of my mom and i in south beach and my hair was soooo short and so cute but sooo short.  when i cut my hair for the first time in five years in february i intended to go really short.  if you want to know the best way to get a hairdresser to not cut your hair too short it is to go in there with butt length hair and say cut it off...cut it all off...give me a pixie.  what? they will say... are you sure? have you thought about this?  inevitably they will get to...what is your husband gonna say or does your husband know about this? they do not bother to ask if you even have a husband. then they will proceed to cut your hair the way they think your husaband imiginary or otherwise would want it as long as it is not short. they do this because they don't want to hear you cry or throw a hissy fit or try to stab them with their own scissors.  my evolving haircut has finally reached the shortness that i was looking for in the first place and here it is the end of summer and now i feel a chill coming on and am wanting it to cover my ears again.  the days for a pixie are over. as are the dog days of summer.  if they are not over they are fast approaching.  we took advantage of those days on sunday.  we had 82 degrees of sunny gorgeous day and five family members went for a motorcycle ride together.  the guy and i on his motorcycle, his brother in law and neice on theirs and his nephew and a frequent riding partner for years was riding on the daughters bike.  she is not able and he was visiting from out of town without his bike.  we missed her. i swear we did. all day i could see was her face and how sad it was when we talked of this ride.  i am still haunted by the vision in my head of her lying on the pavement in a neck brace and it sends chills up my spine but i also know that this is a significant  family activity and her desire to participate is great and her absence was noted.  i hope she heals and gets well and then we will talk about her willingness to ride or her ability to ride but for now i will leave you with the thought that tradition is important. family is important and it is important to continue to connect with your family in whatever way possible and in whatever form that connection takes.  some people have connections that look very different from yours. ways of connecting that may seem odd to you or just wrong. that is ok.  different is not necessarily wrong.  on sunday i also discovered the joys of an ipod.  i know  i know i am more than likely the last person on earth to have an i pod but i am catching up with the rest of you...i swear i am. maybe wanting a copy of cornflake girl or pass the dutchie on the left hand side is reason enough for me to get an ipod.  maybe i want to tune out some noise but at any rate i'm joining the club.

    

in the meantime...i leave you with a few pics.  next time i'll arrange the pics better and crop them maybe but i'm tired and this is another first for me.  later...love   g

you know how that goes...

you buy your kid a pet that he or she has promised to clean up after,  take care of, feed, walk, bathe  yadda yadda yadda next thing you know it's really and truly your pet, your responsibility, your chore.  that's how the reptiles became mine.  there was once a mouse that the guy had bought for the youngladygrandaughter when she was 3 i think. he moved in with me and so did zippy.  zippy is now in the pet cemetary with miss emily...the cat i had for twenty years who's favorite activity became sitting on the shelf next to the mouse while i fed him and cleaned his cage.  hobo aka the toad moved in with us after we found him by the railroad tracks on a hike by the riverside. it was my brilliant idea to bring him home with us and he lived two years or more in captivity in a terrarium on a shelf in front of my kitchen window and grew to be about as fat a common american toad you could hope to see but he really did very little to amuse and entertain as he was nocturnal so in a weak moment i proclaimed we should get a monitor lizard but that was before i found out they grow to be 3 to 4 feet long and i'm no crocodile dundee so after doing some research i quickly changed my mind and decided against the whole reptile thing.  against my better opinion and judgment but i did in fact finally concede...the guy allowed that the youngladygrandaugter could purchase the bearded dragon herself...i call her the dragon lady or miss dragon or just lady.  her given name is bendigo but that was when we thought she was a he which the zoo vet informed me was incorrect. she is now living in a large terrarium that sits directly across from my desk and she is watching me as we speak. i am her sole entertainment other than hunting crickets which i always have another terrarium full of in the basement.  the crickets who remain nameless also need to be fed and given water or they will eat each other but they will do that anyway little cannibals that they are.  the dragon lady is not very fond of being held and is pretty insecure about going out side  but likes to run around the house which i cannot bring myself to let her do much of.  when we finish enclosing the front porch that will be her domain in summer and i will let her have the run of the joint.  the youngladygrandaughter no longer has much if any interest in her and does not choose to spend any of her hard earned cash on accoutrement's for her so i have been given custody of her by order of the department of bearded dragon protective services and i am a good mother to her but she is damaged goods let me tell you and she needs a bigger cage!!!  the next time i buy a reptile i will have it tested for adnovirus before i keep it very long and i will handle it more regularly so it is not so freaked out by human touching but this is just another story of things that can go terribly wrong. as is the bonfire.

 

we had the children here this weekend so their mother and father could have a day to themsleves after the daughters release from the hospital. the little guy has been yammering for three weeks about smores this and campfires that so we planned a campfire in the back yard and he and i bought fixins for smores.  the youngladygrandaugter was quite offended that he and i went shopping without her for a shirt and a clean pair of underwear for him since he came here as a last minute decision and has been wearing my sweatpants and tee shirts to sleep in for two days. so after i took him shopping then i took her shopping too.  she is in school shopping mode...that is where all her hard earned cash is being funneled but while shopping i found a really pretty linen cropped bolero sweater for myself which the guy cannot fathom why i need to buy a sweater at all but it was really cute and it was linen!  i didn't take a photograph of the linen bolero but...

  

i also found this cute cotton smock which i expected would look great with my newly dyed chocolate brown tulips and i was right.  i love this.

   

i promised to model this weeks ago after i dyed my tobacco colored  tulips a more chocolate brown to even out the color and this is the best i can offer in the way of a photograph but i love this combination and expect to find it very wearable for work in the cooler temperatures.  in the meantime the little guy ate a smore and some marshmellows and a few extra chocolate bars and then within minutes  became quickly bored with the campfire which continue to burn bright for a few more hours after he tired of it.  if it would've been a video game or a campfirefire on tv we'd have slept out there!   later...love   g

i'm not the only one...

who is down. down and out. down in the dumps. down about their knitting. down on blogging. just down. i haven't even been reading blogs. don't know why...can't say for certain. i used to get a lot out of the communities with which i interacted online.

the sexy knitters inspired me to knit and knit and knit some more. the self portrait challange inspired me to take photos and to try to take better ones. ravelry inspired me to organize and gave me a place to research knitting patterns and yarns and look for the perfect project. i cannot find any interest in any of the above these days. summer is usually such a fun time for me. i motorcycle, i kayak, i camp, i go to the beach, i garden a bit, i knit...always i knit.

this summer i have not done any of those things in large quantities. �i don't now what's up with that and i don't know why that is. it has been hot. the economy sucks. everything is more expensive than it used to be. people are desperate and demanding and unpleasant to deal with. employers have become unreasonable to a fault and the expectations placed on their employees are at a new and all time impossible high. the guy and i are exhausted with our lives this year.

our enclosed front porch was slated to be finished this summer but we started a repair job on the motorhome roof instead. the tree was felled and we are now cutting wood and bundling sticks instead of finishing the front porch or working on the motorhome roof repair...which if it doesn't get repaired eliminates a camping trip this summer.

i haven't found much time to knit in the evenings due to exhaustion and a strong desire to veg out. so i follow my best instincts and i do just that. i've perfected vegging out. every night last week rather than knit anything i wound yarn into balls instead. i have all my yarn wound into balls and have yet to start my latest project out of the yarn i wound.

the daughter and son in law built a beautiful pool and i have been in it exactly three times this summer. the daughter is in the hospital again with even more complications than at first revealed from her motorcycle accident and the guy is there with her tonight. he is worried about what is to be her second surgery. the kids are with relatives or friends or here with us and are in good hands but are not where they expected to be this summer and the son in law is running from hospital to work and back home collecting children and puppies and no one is swimming much.

tonite i decided to get up off my ass and take a few pics of my back yard. we thought we should document this whole ordeal so we remember never to do this again and if you say it looks like a wood pile i can only say this...it was a lot worse last week! now we have piles of this type of wood and piles of that type of wood but it used to be a big pile of broken tree. two days ago we decided to take down another damaged tree since we don't have enough to do already and i nearly broke my hand and the fence in the process and we managed to get two chain saws stuck in to different tree trunks and yet we still didn't kill each other

but rather we laughed ourselves silly! on the bright side we work well together. my second sleeve and my balls of yarn...that's all the knitting news i have. later...love g

ooohhh...

aaahhh!  click to make these bigger...

one of my favorite captures...

the grand finale...

a little street photography...

and some snaps of the family in the family pics photo album. hope your fourth was as spectacular! later...love   g

ok so i'm still not jacques cousteau...

because my videos of our day on the river leave quite a bit to be desired but maybe the guy will be able to edit them within an inch of their lives and still come up with enough kayaking/water play footage to make a small, small video.  i took not a single decent photograph that's worth looking at so i'll borrow one of the guys photos to post today.

the youngladygrandaughter and i ended up with wicked sunburns on our legs today and the little guy fared better...he paddled a kayak by himself tied off to his pap's kayak of course. we could have let him paddle up river alone but the wind was wicked strong and made controlling the kayak's a little tricky so we'll save that activity for another time. we took a short paddle, a long swim, ate about a half dozen sandwiches and came home with a rock for my garden and the aforementioned wicked sunburn!!!  as the little guy says...this is the life...i could do this all day!  later...love   g