Delayed Blogging...

Argh! I thought I would do better at this whole blogging thing once I moved into a house with reliable Internet...but so far not so good. I've decided to make up for my lack of bloggerliness by double posting. First off, so that you all know how good my intentions are, I will post an entry with a selection of photos that I took with the full intention of blogging. Secondly I will post an entry about the art fair I did this weekend, which will serve the purpose of "catching me up." It is (as always) my intention to post on a more or less regular basis, but since that hasn't been happening so much of late I suggest that you ration these entries. Read one tomorrow, read one next week and hopefully by then I'll have posted another one.

And if you don't like it you can blame it on this little guy:

Yes yes, as you may have guessed from my last post, Ragnar has gone and joined the breeders. Say hello to Ragnarson everyone, he's waving at you. What does being pregnant have to do with not being able to update the blog? Absolutely nothing, but it's one of the perks of allowing your body to be a duplex for 9 months, you get to blame every lapse on being pregnant. Really pregnancy just gets better and better. Aside from the back pain, the swollen fingers, the strange churning in my belly (actually that's pretty cool), the extra 15 pounds, and the need to urinate every 15 fuckin' minutes (I know all the good bathrooms, if you need to pee within 100 mile radius of the Lansing area, you just let me know and I'll hook you up,) this pregnancy thing just gets better by the minute.

Anyway, here are some things I haven't blogged about since getting knocked up.

Manimal and I had a teenager for awhile. He rented our front bedroom for 3 or 4 months, and it was pretty entertaining. He isn't an official teenager, since he's 25 or so, but in all other respects it was exactly like living with a 15 year old. I'd give him 16 or 17, but he didn't have a car, so we were always giving him rides "up to the cafe to study." Yeah, I used to go up to the "cafe" to "study" too, so I know that it's code for hanging out with yer buddies and mackin' on chicks. Highlights of living with a teenager:

The night we found one of his friends passed out in the recliner and women's clothing strewn at random around the living room.

The many times I found him staring into the refrigerator with something vaguely edible in one hand, like an unwashed carrot while he stared into the chilly depths waiting for food to jump into his mouth.

And of course, dressing him up to go to his first toga party:

"Do either of you know how to tie a toga?" emerging from his bedroom holding a sheet patterned with blue and brown flowers.

"You can't go to a toga party dressed in that."

"It's my only sheet."

So Manimal loaned him a black kilt and he togaed (to toga, I togaed, they will toga...yeah) it up with the pirate flag. Smashing, really, it gave me a little shiver and a premonition of what it'll be like to watch Rat Girl get ready for her first school dance. (Manimal and I saying, "You can't wear that...it doesn't have skulls on it. Here borrow the pirate flag, you can just sort of drape it around your shoulders like a shawl or something.")

And I do knit, really. Actually I've been knitting quite a lot....mostly sweaters in size 0 if you know what I mean. I can't really get the energy I need to rescue any of my "for me" sweater projects, since they won't fit me for awhile, but I am trying to get one made for the rat girl. The "little red riding hoodie" stalled after the first sleeve, since it has A LOT of shaping and the instructions for the second sleeve read: "mirror shaping from the first sleeve." I can barely tell my left from my right on a good day, so remembering to ssk when I had previously k2tog, not to mention knitting the short rows from the opposite side, felt like a monumental task. The LRRH languished for several weeks until I had the fabulous idea of getting a mindless DVD. Enter "From Russia with Love." Exit, the left sleeve of the LRRH. Unfortunately since then I have actually tried the sweater on Rat Girl and it looks really awful. This is a sweater that is meant to fit very tightly over boobs. It doesn't fit tightly and Rat Girl won't have boobs for at least 3 or 4 years. The unhappy ending to this story is what LRRH will be frogged and turned into something more flattering. I'm going to measure her up today. In the meantime, I can knit a sweater in size 0 in about 3 days, and since Ragnarson is due in August, he's going to need LOTS of sweaters. No really, babies get cold very easily.
We have moved out of our house. See, the cupboards are bare. Also our remodeling project has a mascot. When my parents were visiting for the East Lansing Art Festival they brought tons of loot with them....many pirate related objects since it was right around my birthday (my 30th! again) and also this "Bob the Builder" doll, which proclaims "can we fix it? yes we can!" with confidence whenever he's squeezed in the balls....I think his voice box might have slipped a little bit. Manimal is quite taken with him...either that or he needs a boost of ol' Bob's unflagging optimism, because I hear "can we fix it? yes we can!" about 45 times a day.And we've moved in with Kevbot, who has a burn barrel in his back yard with a smiley face drilled into the side. When it's really going it looks like a happy guy with crazy red hair. Kevbot has a bank of computers in his basement that makes the deck of the Enterprise look like a laptop...but can I get a blog entry up on a regular basis, no I can't.

And lastly, I have been in line behind some crazy people lately. Firstly I had to go and pay our gas bill, and this man in bike rig with full body tattoos was in front of me. This man was at least 50, but I think he was more like a fit 60. You can't see too much of it in this photo because of his backpack, but his entire back was covered with thick tribal tattoos. He also had many large gauge piercings in his ears and both nipples. He was clearly in a hurry and was quite irritated that the people ahead of him didn't have their money in order. He even turned to me with an eyerolling sigh that clearly communicated the fact that "some" people really needed to get their shit together, (the guy in front of him was trying to get out of paying his bill by saying "I don't know why my gas bill is so high, I haven't even lived there for the last 6 months.") Anyway, it does my heart good to know that rather than mellowing with age, I can become a crazy biker with nipple piercings and that the clerk at the gas company won't even blink as she takes my money (counted in advance and exchanged with out delay or comment.)

And then a week or so after that we had to pick up something at the Walgreens and this guy was ahead of us. Yes. He is wearing a skunk on his head, a real skunk. You can't tell from this photo (because, I don't know about you, but when a guy is wearing a skunk on his head I'm a little nervous about approaching him and asking him to pose for a picture) but this was basically a whole skunk, little skunk face ahead, big fuzzy skunky tail behind. It was also about 85 degrees outside, so it's not like he was wearing it to keep his head warm. It became pretty obvious that this was a source of family pride when he picked up his prescription. I don't like to put people's name's up with out asking them, but it was only one letter off from "skunk." I wonder what sort of hat he would have worn if his name had been "Moose."

See? It's not like I don't think about blogging...I just don't manage to find the time to actually do it.

Ragnar...it's because I'm pregnant.