I don't go to church

I've been a delinquent little blogger... I want to post more pictures but it feels like when I get home to my laptop where all the pictures live, I don't want to be doing anything on the computer anymore. So here I am, blogging at work again without any pictures.

The other reason I haven't blogged in a bit is that the things I'm thinking of blogging about are kind of tricky and I'm not sure how to get them out to the best effect. But I'm going to try to open the door on one of those things now anyway. So here we go.

I was showing an acquaintance some pictures from a friend's recent wedding and there was a picture of me and another friend's daughter. I really like this little girl, she's super awesome. So I said to my acquaintance viewing the picture with me, "Ya know, if I knew that mine would come out like her, I'd be way more inclined towards the idea of having kids." By which I essentially meant, I'm not particularly fond of hanging out with kids these days, but this one here is really neat and I like her.

My acquaintance however, took it another way and responded by saying, "Well you can pray about it and the Lord will give you the desires of your heart."

Well hmm. That's not exactly what I was expecting to hear. I certainly didn't mean to imply that I secretly had baby fever but I was just nervous about how my kid would turn out, which is how she seemed to interpret it. So I just disregarded the statement and moved straight ahead to the next picture.

I'm not sure exactly how this happens, but it does from time to time. People I've met since moving back to WV eventually discover that I used to work for a church, a church where I was an active member for a time as well. Now, when this information comes out I try to emphasize that I don't do that anymore. As in, I don't go to church, I don't read the Bible, I don't pray in Jesus's name, and I currently have no desire to recommence any of those activities. I have a lot of good reasons for that and if you want to get to know me better you'll eventually hear about it I'm sure. With certain people though, the second half of that doesn't seem to sink in. They only hear that I was part of church where I used to live. I guess they assume that I just haven't mentioned what church I go to now, or maybe I'm still looking for one I like.

It has definitely been a sticking point with my grandparents (as noted briefly here). And part of the problem is that I never know how to handle it when it comes up. When someone says something that implies that they think I'm into Jesus, how far do I go to correct them? And what if that's just how they're going to talk? Perhaps my acquaintance just suggests prayer to anyone. I don't know. It's not like she said anything inherently offensive. But it irks me, ya know?

I got pulled over

I was stuck six or seven cars back at a long light and I needed to turn right. This was on my route to work and I was running late. Since I have a little car I snuck out to the right and passed them and made my turn. I've done this about every other day for the past month and a half. But this time I got pulled over. I've never been pulled over before and it kinda freaked me out. But the officer was nice and I guess I had the right combination of doing something that wasn't too bad and looking sufficiently scared and shameful about it. He let me off with just a verbal warning about "improper passing."

Like reaching over someone for the butter dish.

Sometimes it's the little things

Most of my life I have been religiously conflict avoidant. Ask any former roommate. (Is avoidant not a real word? I keep getting the red squiggly line. hmmm.) Getting married, however, kinda knocked that out of me. (Er, getting divorced is what really did it.) It's not totally gone, but you try being married to someone who sometimes does things that married men are not supposed to do and see how long you can avoid a conflict. So yeah, I'm way better at handling conflict than I used to be, but the tendency to avoid is still there.

I share an office with my boss, meaning I sit in the small rectangle between his desk and the wall, with my back to the door. This is so not feng shui it's not even funny. There is one particular gentleman I work with who is a pretty big guy. And he was in the habit of walking right into the 1 1/2 square feet of free space in my area and going through my drawers for stuff he needed... WHILE I WAS SITTING RIGHT THERE. It was so invasive and claustrophobic and frustrating it would ruin my whole day every time it happened.

So I resolved to handle this like a grown up. The next time he came in and started helping himself to my very limited amount of free space, I asked him if, when I'm sitting at my desk, he could ask me for what he needed instead of getting it himself. And he said oh sure no problem. And today? Today he walked in the door, stopped, and said "Hey, would you mind handing me the reservation books?" And I said "Sure thing."

It was like magic to this former conflict avoider. =)

Fun with Iron-on

I mentioned this in a previous post, but now that I have pictures I thought I should show them! My boyfriend turned 30 last Friday and in honor of the occasion I made a special t-shirt.

The front:

The back:


I have some friends who started a t-shirt company called Backstory Prints and apparently it all started cause they made some iron-on shirts for special occasions. They did it enough times and decided to get serious. After experiencing how stinkin fun it was to make a custom t-shirt for Aaron's birthday, not to mention how great everyone's reaction was to it, I understand why they turned pro.

Unexpected Domesticity

It seems these days it's pretty hip to be domestic. Handmade and home cooked are trendy? Hey, I'm all for it. As a knitter, I definitely appreciate handmade. But knitting takes SO LONG. And I never got into sewing, I hate the idea of stabbing my fingers all the time. It feels like in the time it would take me to get the hang of a handmade lifestyle, it'd become hip to by mass produced goods again. And cooking? It's not just not my thing, I'd ALWAYS rather get take-out or buy a frozen pizza. But I guess every now and then everyone does something a little out of character.

I did this:
Pasta salad. I have no intention of eating this till tomorrow evening at the earliest. I just wanted to make it. What is up with that?

And then I did this:

Cut up veggies for an omelet that I apparently will make sometime soon. (???) I just voluntarily prepped vegetables. This is not normal. The empty wine glass in the back of these photos is normal, but the culinary production is very, very odd.

WIPs

Though my last burst of crafting and blogging has obviously slowed down, I'm hesitant (but hopeful!) to say that another is around the corner. Yesterday I had a burst of "git'er done" and managed to go birthday present shopping for the boyfriend, go jeans shopping (both successful), do laundry at my parents' house, restart the capelet, and make an iron on t-shirt that says "I <3 AARON" on the front and "EVEN THO HE'S OLD" on the back. Wearing it tonight for his birthday party.

I'm excited about (knock on wood) getting the capelet done. I swatched (gasp!), cast on, and got most of the way through the ribbing last night between loads of laundry. Once I get into the rhythm of the raglan increases it'll start cranking along. ("rhythm of the raglan"... sounds like a folksy knitting song.) I've got a lot of weddings to go to this summer and I'm imagining wearing it over a cute sundress. So far the Wool-Ease Thick & Quick is really nice! It's all soft and squashy, it actually feels a little softer than the Rowan Polar. It's also thicker (super bulky as opposed to regular bulky), so I'm hoping that the difference in gauge will help with the difference in bust size between me and the designer. I also made some mathematical adjustments so here's hoping it all works out in the end.

And I've decided what to do with the sheet from crochet rug 1.0. It's going to get knitted into seat covers/cushions for my dining chairs. Boyfriend doesn't think the chairs are very comfortable (he's right) so I'm going to knit seat covers with my trusty size 11 straight bamboo needles. I like having a project for these needles cause they were my first ever pair and I haven't used them in a good long while. Once I get the time and space in my head (Lost has eaten up most of my spare brain power) I'll measure the chair seats and get cranking. Should be a pretty quick job. I cast on a handful of stitches just to try it out, which is why I'm talking about it in a post titled WIPs. ("WIP" - for the uninitiated - stands for Work In Progress.)

Fortunately, my "git'er done"-ness bled into this morning a little and I finally finished all my dishes! B knows that though I hate dirty dishes, I often don't do much about them. Once I vacuum the living room and couches, my apartment will have reached that magical "pretty dang clean" state that happens once a month or so. I like to let it get fairly dirty/messy and then I go crazy cleaning all in one fell swoop (well, over a couple of days). And then I sit around till it gets dirty again. The cycle of life.

Gross stuff makes me laugh

As an exercise to try and come up with something to post, I went through and tagged all my posts with different labels. I was trying to come up with categories that would continue to be useful in the future. Obviously labels like crochet, knitting, and "addicted to TV" came up. But after rereading a couple of posts I realized I needed the label, "gross stuff makes me laugh." Cause the truth is, some pretty gross things make me laugh.

Like this video:


I laughed so hard I cried, then I almost gagged, then I laughed some more.