Company

Expected Company

I've made this chocolate chip oatmeal cookie recipe dozens of times and it's always seemed foolproof. Well, I guess it's not completely foolproof. I don't know what I did wrong, perhaps too much brown sugar or not enough flour. The stress from earlier in the week still hasn't gotten out of my system and I was distracted while measuring. With Melinda coming over to knit and lend us some sock books, I really wanted the cookies to look as good as they tasted. Oh well, at least they tasted like chocolate chip cookies.

Melinda worked on her second sparkly sock and had the finished one with her too, so I got to examine what a handknit heel looks like close up. First one I have seen in person. (Well, except for the ones Elaine was wearing at the Dulaan knitting thing, but I didn't know her well enough at the time to get down on the floor and examine her feet.) Zach fixed his pom-pom, then was looking for something to knit. He finished his warshrag last night and hasn't yet embraced the multiple WIP life. (Isn't that a beautiful warshrag? You can't tell from the photo, but it is wet, from having been used to clean the counters. It was hard for me to put it into service. In fact, I scrubbed out the sink with an old washrag first, so the new one wouldn't have to work too hard.)

While he will probably start socks soon, we don't have the materials yet, so I convinced him to start the hedgehog. This well designed pattern will give him experience in shaping, similar techniques used in socks. Melinda got to see our typical mother son knitting experience of me trying to overexplain new things ("Mom! I Get It!").







Unexpected Company

Well not too unexpected, because I called to ask them to come, just without the same level of cheeriness surrounding Melinda's arrival. Roto-Rooter was however a necessary visitor today.

Is it a coincidence that just this morning our large IRS refund had shown up at the bank. (and yes, I know we ought to arrange not to have a large refund, but trust me, our situation is complicated.) Half is destined for Zach's GET college fund and the other half is to finish paying of the home equity loan. So... to have our old and cranky sewer line flare up today of all days, the very day we can finish paying for past house repair/remodel, just 5.5 months since the last time we had the pleasure of Roto-Rooter... if it had to happen again so soon, it's better that is was 5.5 months while it was still under a 6 month waranty, but does this mean we are finally in for the big dig?

complete non-sequitur happy thought:
Just so as not to leave with having to think about digging up sewer lines here's a photo from last summer's camping trip. Franz was the photographer. We had fun.