Triangle man hates particle man

I am doing this thing now where I wake up at like 3 or 4 in the morning to pee and then I can't back to sleep and it is not fun, let me tell you. My head is full of words at that time of day and I compose lengthy, eloquent blog posts for you all, but they evaporate right out of my head -- poof -- in the conversion from horizontal to vertical. So lucky for you, I don't have a lot to say today except to tell you about some things I am super duper loving right now.

1. Knitting! I still get it! I don't know why this foreign language suddenly started making sense to me at the ripe old age of 49, but it did and I am glad. I'm still working on the parallelogram wrap and also I made the Selkie Hat from issue #17 of Taproot Magazine (pictured up there just after I started decreasing and just before I had to rip out said decreasing because I lost a stitch somewhere along the way)(hey, I said I understood it, I didn't say I was good at it)(I did finish the hat, though)(and if it ever stops being in the 90s, I may even get to wear it). If you're on Ravelry and got a friend request from saltycrunchy, that's me! Hello! Please be my friend. Don't make me beg.

2. Those pants up there are the Barcelona Pants from Earthbound Trading and I have three pairs in three different colors and I love them so so much, the end.

3. Claire Robertson of Loobylu fame has a new email newsletter, the Small Batch List, and it's one of the highlights of my week.

4. Alice Bradley of finslippy fame ALSO has a new email newsletter and it's one of the OTHER highlights of my week. (Seriously, I have been unsubbing newsletters willy-nilly the past couple of months but these two are keepers. You will love them.)

5. Yesterday C and I were talking about how we both need math refreshers (calculus for him, um ... long division for me, shut up) and long story short, we re-discovered Khan Academy and holy cats is free education ever super cool. (I know that for some of you revisiting high school -- or elementary school, in my case -- math is your idea of hell and I get that but they have LOADS of other stuff, too. Art history! Computer animation! Macroeconomics AND microeconomics! Astronomy! This is good shit!)

6. I haven't managed to read many books since last we talked, but I did like the new Tana French and I'm currently reading and biting my fingernails through The Forgetting Time which is so so good. Just today I bought the Kindle version of The Good Girls Revolt because I tried watching the show but it gave me an anxiety attack and I had to turn it off halfway through the first episode just like with Mad Men, argh. (Have we talked about how I used to be a journalist and how my actual degree is in advertising and what the job market was like in Texas in the late '80s and early '90s and about Good Old Boy culture? Well, let's not. I've expended rather a lot of effort in the direction of drinking away those memories.)

7. Mostly because of the knitting I've been listening to audiobooks and other audio-type media products. Amazon has some kind of deal going now with Audible (because the former owns the latter, from my understanding) such that Prime members have access to Audible Channels and I can't figure out how to link to it for the life of me but Nick Offerman has this Bedtime Stories for Cynics channel and it's so great. Just don't play it with your kids in the room. Unless they're already jaded adults like mine are.

8. My state has early voting and it's pretty much the best thing ever. Enough said.

Okey-doke. Off to take a nap. Happy Friday, everyone!

Callooh! Callay!

Hello, summer break has officially begun over here and I have been trying to spend less time on the computer. You know, more time doing real things and less time doing pretend computery things. Sometimes those real things take the form of watching old episodes of Bewitched and eating pork rinds, or reading Jenny Lawson's book and eating roasted chicken nuts, but whatever. IT ALL COUNTS.

(And by "roasted chicken nuts" I mean mixed nuts -- walnuts and cashews and soforth -- that taste like roasted chicken. That is a thing I invented. You take some raw mixed nuts, right, and you toast them in a pan with sea salt, freshly ground pepper, garlic powder, rosemary, thyme and sage and also a little ghee or butter or olive oil. Well, what would YOU call them?)

I bought these shoes ridiculously cheap on Woot:

Like, seriously cheap. Crazy cheap. I've-spent-more-on-crappy-fake-shoes-at-Payless cheap. I ordered them one size too big and I constantly live in fear that my right pinky toe will escape its little compartment, because my right foot is about half a size smaller than my left foot, but other than that I love them. I honestly had no plans to wear them outside the house except maybe to walk the dog at night (they are very reflective) but I got so many negative comments on this photo when I posted/showed it to people that now I want to wear them ALL THE TIME TO ALL THE PLACES. Because that's how my brain works.

I get a little weird in the summer. I probably should have warned you.

Neverending spring

What's happening around here? Well, I'll tell you.

C is busy applying to colleges that will allow him to take only one online class per semester.

H is busy getting physical therapy for tendonitis in her knees.

P is busy working and working and working some more.

The dog is busy being a pain in my ass.

I am busy having tummyaches and trying to figure out why. And also I am reading Ken Jennings's Maphead, which is a book about maps/geography and the people who love them/it, and it turns out I like reading about the former very much but the latter not so much. Because people suck.

This has been the longest winter/spring ever and I seriously cannot believe how cool it's been here in central Texas. I feel partially responsible because I bought a bunch of shorts at Old Navy the other day and since then it's been warm enough to wear them maybe twice. So I probably screwed up the weather with my shopping. Way to go, me. I know I shouldn't complain about the lack of warmth but oh look, here I am, complaining. When I'm whining in October about OMG WHY IS IT STILL SO HOT?! then you have every right to tell me to shut the hell up, except I don't think it's going to be hot in October because I don't think summer is ever going to get here, wah wah.

Are you watching Rectify? It's so, so good. And Game of Thrones this season, OMG! And Bates Motel is BIG FUN and so much better than I thought it would be. Ditto Hannibal. On the other hand, I'm not at all liking this season of Doctor Who even though Clara is a pretty great Companion. I gave up on Orphan Black after about the third episode. And I barely got through the pilot of Defiance. So there you go.

I have nothing to talk about apart from my health, television and the weather. I'm totally your mom. OMG.

Summer continues apace

I seriously can't believe June is almost over. What the heck, you guys? I don't even really remember June STARTING. Where was I when that was happening? Jeez.

I don't have much to tell you, really. We have been busy but we haven't been doing anything fun, if you know what I mean. C is finishing up his summer Communication Applications course this week and I find myself wondering how it would be if EVERY school semester was only 12 half-days long, with the kids only taking one class per semester. Judging by how things went this year, C would be getting WAY better grades if that were the case. Oh well.

H still is busy with community theater rehearsals. Opening night is in just a few weeks! Wow! I absolutely cannot wait to see my kid perform someplace other than a school cafeteria or rec center or library meeting room. Not that those aren't fun, too, just ... this is a real theater! People are paying like $20 to see this thing! I am just so excited for her. Acting is her absolute favorite thing in the world and I love to watch her play to an audience.

Now that it's officially summer, howsabout a quick check in with those summer goals, eh?

1. Lose 17 pounds. I am more than halfway there! Yes! No one is more surprised than me about that, trust me. Here are my weight-loss secrets: 1) smaller cocktails; 2) fewer junky snacks in front of the TV; 3) Jillian Michaels workout DVDs (specifically the 30 Day Shred, Ripped in 30 and Six Week 6-Pack DVDs). I know. I kind of want to punch MYSELF right now, but that's what has worked for me.

2. Read more. Eh, let's see ... I finished Travels With Charley and it was okay. I'm glad I read it, but it's not something I'd go back and re-read. Also finished Marion Nestle's Why Calories Count, which was fascinating. Brian Wansink's Mindless Eating was equally fascinating, but while the Nestle book was more food-sciencey, the Wansink was more human psychology-y. On the fiction side of things, I really enjoyed Karin Fossum's Don't Look Back, a Scandinavian mystery, and now I'm reading the next book in the series, He Who Fears the Wolf, which is very good but a bit confusing at the beginning. And continuing my non-fiction jag, I'm also reading and very much enjoying Terra Brockman's The Seasons on Henry's Farm. So yes, I guess I have been reading kind of a lot. Just not very quickly. As usual.

3. Make peace with the whole shorts thing. Er, well kind of. Thanks to the aforementioned Jillian Michaels DVDs, I am pretty much okay with the way my legs are SHAPED now. But the pasty white skin and plethora of spider veins still give me pause. (Although my mom told me the other day that one cluster of spider veins on the back of my right knee looks like a flower tattoo! So that's fun, right? MOMS ARE JUST THE BEST.)

4. Quit buying coffee mugs already (also cute drinking glasses). FAIL. My new drinkware obsession is BPA-free reusable plastic cups with lids and straws. Cold-brew iced coffee to go, baby! I had to get rid of some stuff to fit them into the cabinet. (But NOT any of my cute mugs or glasses, dammit.)

5. Hit the farmers market every week. Does every other week count? Sigh.

6. Kill all the hornworms in the world. Well, no. But the ones that ate my tomatoes back in the spring are dead, and that's good enough for me.

It's already in the 100s here but we're not going to talk about that. Let's talk about how lovely the morning and evening light looks streaming into my north-facing back windows, shall we? SO LOVELY. And how I can't get enough raspberries right now. And how limiting myself to 5 oz. of wine in the evening doesn't really do it for me, but I'm trying to adapt. And how there are officially LESS THAN TWO MONTHS until high school football/marching season, which will be the beginning of the end of my backwards seasonal affective disorder.

Yep. So. What's new with you?

May days

If you have school-age kids then I don't have to tell you that May is sort of insane. When they're little it's field day and science day and fine arts day and field trips and class parties out the wazoo. When they're older, it doesn't get any less busy, I'm sorry to say. Between AP exams and end-of-course exams and plain old regular exams and band concerts and banquets and 8th grade prom and theater performances and getting signed up for summer classes and whatnot, school is trying to give me an ulcer right now. Thank God it's almost over. (Although summer isn't looking much better, with summer classes and summer band and wisdom teeth extraction for C, oy.)

Hey, remember when I set some winter goals (making more homemade granola, taking more photos, drinking more chai tea)? Those didn't go all that well, at least not while it was actually winter. I don't think I even set any spring goals, and now spring is over, at least here in central Texas. So I've been thinking about summer goals and right now mine are:

1. To lose 17 pounds. Oh yes. It's time.
2. To read more. A LOT more. (I am reading A Prayer for Owen Meany. STILL, in case I've told you this already. I feel like I've been reading it forever.)
3. To no longer give a damn how I think I look in shorts and just wear them, already.
4. To quit buying cute new coffee mugs before we need to add on a room for them.
5. To shop at the farmer's market every single week.
6. To eradicate hornworms from the face of the earth.

I think I can hit a good 50% of those. It's a start.

Random for your Monday

I was waylaid by a malady last week. When I took to my bed it was spring, with the flowers and the mild temperatures and the dampness and the leaves budding out everywhere. But when I shuffled outside a couple of days later and peered, mole-like, up at the sky, it had become summer. Yeah, it's like 90 over here. The bulbs are done. Everything is green. And oy, the humidity.

There is a cage match going on in my guts right now, probiotics vs. antibiotics, but I am mostly feeling better. Of course, now the kids are sick (with something completely unrelated)(yes, I'm sure) and home from school today. Ain't that always the way?

Being ill for a couple of days had one advantage: it allowed me to catch up with Season One of Game of Thrones. Ho. Lee. Crap. That is my new favorite show. We didn't have HBO when it first aired, and we won't have it anymore starting about halfway through this current season (we have a free trial right now because of our recent switch to DirecTV)(which I still HATE), but I will enjoy it while I can. P is reading the first book now, so shhhh! No one tell him anything! He doesn't know about Ned yet! Or Viserys, even! Also, I'd like to take this opportunity to go on record as having been a huge Peter Dinklage fan since WAY before this series started. Hello, 13 Moons, anyone? Am I the only one who saw that movie? Probably so. Anyway, I have dibs on the Dinklage, is what I'm saying.

I am reading Barry Estabrook's Tomatoland right now and it is blowing my mind. I knew that off-season grocery store tomatoes didn't taste like anything, and that the conventionally grown ones were covered in pesticides, but what I didn't know was that they were most likely picked by slaves. Actual slaves, as in people "owned" by other people with absolutely no civil/human rights. I'm not quite halfway through the book but already I have vowed never to buy another out-of-season grocery store tomato, or a non-organic grocery store tomato, or a tomato grown in Florida, ever again.

Let's see, what else is going on?

Today is Autism Awareness Day and son C, who has an autism spectrum disorder, is vehemently opposed to the entire concept. He explained why very eloquently on his Facebook page, and I won't copy and paste his words here, but I will say he gave me a lot to think about.

Our next-door neighbors to the east have moved away and the new neighbors haven't moved in yet and I am nervous, because I don't like change. Or people. Or people who change. I liked the old neighbors just fine -- they were a couple maybe 10 years older than us whose children were grown and out of the house and whose dog never barked (their cat pooped in my garden though, I'm pretty sure). We know nothing about the new neighbors except that it's a family and the dad is from the same neighboring state as P. What if their children are obnoxious? What if their dog barks? What if they tear out all the beautiful landscaping, like we did when we bought this house? I might need medication to get through this, you guys.

(Incidentally, if any of this sounds incoherent it's because H has come in and interrupted me about 4,783 times since I started typing. Yeah, she is SO TOTALLY going back to school tomorrow. What is it about the sound of fingers on a keyboard that brings children and spouses running? And P wonders why I haven't written that novel yet. HA HA HA.)

In closing, here are some things I've tried and liked lately:

• Yes to Blueberries cleansing facial towelettes (large, soft, non-irritating, they remove all my makeup and they smell nice)
• Covergirl & Olay Tone Rehab foundation (feels and looks lovely on the skin)
• Covergirl Lash Perfection mascara (removes with plain water but doesn't smudge!)
• the Green Machine flavor of Naked juice (looks so gross, tastes so good)
• wearing my hair in a ponytail (it's almost long enough not to need clips, and it's either this or cut it all off again)
• showering at night instead of in the morning (saves time, helps me sleep, and makes a lot  more sense during pollenpalooza season)

Things I have tried and NOT liked:

• Garnier Miracle Skin Perfector B.B. Cream (felt icky on my skin, did not like the fragrance, and the lightest shade is too dark for me)
• Method fabric softener (the pump weirds me out and it doesn't soften as well as my usual Seventh Generation)
• the new Seventh Generation fabric softener bottle (WTF with that redesign, Sev Gen?)
• unsweetened 100% cranberry juice (oy)

And that about brings you up to speed.

* This is NOT a sponsored post. All of the products mentioned were purchased by me with my husband's own money.

Friday night and Saturday morning

It's really spring here, now. Everything is green. I've bought my herbs and tomato plants. Yesterday the weather was absolutely gorgeous and dinner was cooked 100% on the grill -- sausages, asparagus, potatoes and onions (in the big foil packet), artichokes (in the smaller foil packet), wine for me. Delicious. I will be grilling EVERYTHING from now until it gets too hot, which is usually sometime in July. And then I'll grill everything again from mid-September until the time changes in November and it gets too dark. That's just how I roll.

This morning after dropping H at a theater contest, P and I took the dog to the farmer's market. I just started going again after not going for months and months. I get out of the habit in the fall -- this market is only open on Saturday mornings and we can't do anything then during football/marching season because C has contests every Saturday. Last week I came home with eggs, beets, radishes, asparagus, artichokes (the ones we ate last night, actually), strawberries, mushrooms and broccoli. This week it was eggs, strawberries, asparagus, mushrooms, bloody mary mix, pecans and dog shampoo. And a food truck breakfast from The Peached Tortilla -- chorizo-egg taco for P and bacon jam slider for me. So good!

Now I'm back home drinking an iced coffee. It was damp and foggy and grey up until about 5 minutes ago; now it's sunny and gorgeous again. I think it's going to be a good day.

(All of these photos were taken with my Droid 3 phone using the FX Camera app, ToyCam setting, Dreamy Blue and Vignetting (Soft) filters. NOT a sponsored post; it's a free app I've had forever and I love it.)