I'm worth a million in prizes

Look at me, I don't blog at you for ages and then I only pop in to tell you about my trip to Ireland, like an asshole. Well, Ireland only took up a week, you guys. Plenty of other stuff has been going on!

You may remember that we had to pull H out of school just before the end of her senior year for reasons that are too complicated to go into, but I am happy to tell you that she worked her ass off and completed all of her graduation requirements over the summer, and one evening last month we got to see her cross the stage in her cap and gown to receive her high school diploma. Proud doesn't even begin to cover it, y'all. She's taking a semester off from school to work full-time and will be starting college in January if all goes according to plan.

C decided that getting around town via an electric bike and whatever crappy excuse for public transportation exists out here in the 'burbs wasn't really cutting it anymore, but he still felt that driving an actual car would be way too anxiety-inducing, so long story short, he's now the proud owner of a Class M driving license and a new street-legal scooter.

When he and P first discussed doing this, I was picturing, you know, a little moped scooter. Like this:

But what he actually got was one of these:

I know, right? Did you know that a scooter is just a motorcycle with automatic transmission? Because I did not know that. But I do now.

I finally found some books I like! When did we last talk about books? Holy shit, I think it was in December? When I did my yearly wrap-up? That's just wrong. Here are the books I've loved so far in 2016:

• Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel - LOVED LOVED these books. Thomas Cromwell, who knew?
• The Snow Child and To The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey - not series/sequel type books; they are unrelated apart from both taking place in Alaska and having the same author, but they are so, so good. Gorgeous storytelling.
• Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith, aka J.K. Rowling - the third Cormoran Strike book. My husband doesn't love these as much as I do, but I do, oh I do.
• In the Sounds and Seas by Marnie Galloway - incandescently beautiful graphic novel that explores the nature of myth and humanity and community and creativity and all sorts of big topics but in such a beautiful and approachable way.
• The Rook by Daniel O'Malley - it's like a grown-up Harry Potter, y'all! So great. He writes female characters so well, it's nuts.

Right now I'm re-reading all of Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad books because (a) I've actually been to Dublin now! It's not at all how I pictured it. And (b) there's a new one coming out in October.

After trying to knit in fits and starts for approximately the past decade and a half, I had some weird cosmic knitting breakthrough a few months ago and yeah, I knit now. I am a knitter type person. Really what I am is a pedantic pattern-follower, and when the patterns actually work out it gives me an inflated sense of my own competency, but whatever, it counts. I spent late winter and early spring of this year knitting a layette for my cousin's new baby girl and it was BANANAS; at one point I was holding stitches for this teensy little cardigan on two different sets/sizes of circular needles while knitting another bit on straight needles and I had NO idea how it was all going to come together, but it did and I felt like a superhero. So yeah. Knitting!

While knitting that layette I managed to watch 10 seasons of Bones on Netflix, heh. Now I'm knitting another thing, this weird parallelogram wrap with double moss stitch and chevron stitches and stairsteps and all kinds of weirdness, and I had thought I might watch all the seasons of Gilmore Girls (which I never saw when it was on TV) while knitting it but about halfway through the first season I decided I REALLY  hated Lorelei and toward the end of the second season I started hating Rory too, so I had to stop. And I've still got like a million pattern repeats left on the wrap. What should I watch, you guys? I've already seen Stranger Things and didn't love it as much as the rest of you did, so ... yeah.

In other news, my most recent pedicure (pictured up there somewhere) left me with a nasty case of onycholysis in both big toes, so now my knitting will smell like tea tree oil (antibacterial) and coconut oil (antifungal) because I knit with my feet. (Not really. Just wanted to see if you were paying attention.)