Sabine is getting ahead

Since Friday Sabine has pulled up from sitting to standing three times and crawled a short distance twice. Do realize she will not be 8 months for another 10 days, but is already pushing her physical abilities to the limit. All that exertion has worn her out, so she's taking a nap right now.

My cousin Michael C.

When I was a kid, I spent every summer in Texas, about 5 weeks with my fathers parents on their farm, and 5 weeks with my mothers parents on their slightly larger farm 10 miles away. As my fathers parents became quite elderly, I spent more and more time with my Mimi and Papa, my maternal grandparents. Mostly it was just the four of us: my grandparents, my taciturn bachelor uncle 'Sonny' and myself, plus about 100 beef cattle, plus dogs, turkeys, guinea fowl, my half-blind quarter-horse mare Ginger, and lots of watermelon. I read and played alone, accompanied Papa on his rounds, or helped Mimi make mustang grape preserves.

But some days Mimi's niece Sue would bring her sons, Michael, Patric, and David to visit their city cousin and play. Although I was closest to Patric in age, and so played with him more than Michael or David, whenever there was any sort of combative game (like hoses and water pistols), David and Patric would gang up. Michael took my side, whether because as the oldest he was used to being opposed to his younger brothers, or because his innate sense of fairness wouldn't allow him to see me completely outgunned, I really don't know. I just know that many times it was me and Michael against Pat and David. I never really stood a chance otherwise. Whether it was their rowdy athleticism or sharp humor I was totally outclassed.

But I do remember fielding questions from them, like what was it like riding in an airplane (like a bus but faster). Then I realized just how different my life was from theirs.

In high school, Michael started dating Dawn, a tall sassy blond Texas girl. After college, they got married. His wonderful sense of fairness was probably a boon in his stellar career with Wal-Mart, eventually leading to him being made General Manager for a Super Wal-Mart in San Antonio. He and Dawn used the tract of farmland given by his grandmother (my Mimi's sister) to build a large and beautiful 4 bedroom home, where they lived with their three daughters. We visited last summer, the first time I saw their house, and while Arabella played with Sarah and Elizabeth, the younger two of his girls, we visited a little while.

I enjoyed being around him, but I don't think Michael and I had much in common. Had we not been cousins I think we would have had little to share at all. But we talked business and seasons, the wet year Texas was having. Then he took to girls out on his little garden truck, an ATV crossed with a jeep. After that ride, Arabella was grinning from ear to ear.

Sabine was born the end of last September, and within two weeks I got the news (from his grandmother to mine to my mother to me) that he had cancer, in the form of multiple tumors on his pancreas and liver. He started aggressive treatments, but last week, Michael and Dawn decided to suspend treatments and let him spend his remaining time with his daughters. He was on morphine to hep with the pain, but even that was not always helping. Yesterday, not 8 months after being diagnosed with cancer, Michael died at home. he was 41.

In my mind he will always be the sturdy, strong, protective older cousin who looked out for his younger, smaller, less athletic cousin. He will always be the proud husband and daddy, taking care of his girls. He will always be with us in our hearts.

Don't Knit and Drive

OK, I wasn't knitting and driving. I was knitting and talking. I thought I could talk and do anything, so accomplished am I at talking. Apparently talking and counting doesn't work so well.

I was hanging out with the Ballet Bunch (Tracy, Joni, Jill and myself, we hang out and kibbutz while our daughters take ballet class), talking and knitting and sometimes looking through the glass to see Arabella doing her Arabesque or Zombie Walk. Tracy was bouncing Sabine, or Sabine was using Tracy as a trampoline, since she was really the one doing the bouncing and Tracy was really holding her from flying away. I have a great time with the Bunch, we talk loud and fast (well, Joni and I do, Jill and Tracy are a bit quieter and less frenetic conversationalists), we talk about all kinds of things. Yesterday we discussed plans for the summer classes, so we will all be together again (and the girls will all be together again, we use that as our excuse, since the girls have so much fun together). I've been knitting on the garnet alpaca Pimlico shrug, and it's finally big enough that it doesn't look like a weird little curl of dark red. I've gotten the stitch pattern pretty well memorized, so I was just zooming along. I knit about 4 rows, then tucked it away. Which was good, because a few minutes after Tracy handed Sabine back to me, Sabine vomited banana peach baby food everywhere. It was in my wristwatch, my shoes, my jeans, on the ballet bag, the floor, and on Sabine. At least it wasn't all over the shrug.

However, when I got home and tried to knit a few rows last night, I found I had miscounted while knitting at ballet, and the diamond pattern was more like a fat wriggle snake, all off center. I started to tink back, realized the mistake was about 4 rows back and decided to rip and then put the stitches back on the needle. Note to self: don't do that again. It probably took me as long to try to pick up the stitches as it would have to just unknit the mistakes one stitch at a time. And this time Sabine was trying to help out. Be aware that is irony: 7 month old babies are not helpful at knitting.

But I think I have it worked out, so I'll be back on track tonight.

Mugs:

I am trying a new technique for making a mold of the knitted swatch, which I hope will keep the swatch straight and make it possible to remove the swatch from the mold without breaking the mold. I will be casting a trial before the weekend, with the swatch for the cabled handle. If it works out I will make a new body mold. I am hoping to have the mugs in production for sale by mid-June.

Child update:

Arabella has been more circumspect since Friday's Sharpie incident. And Sabine, while feeling better, still has not cut a tooth. We can see what we believe to be a tooth, just under the gums, but I begin to think it is anything but a tooth. I remind myself she will have teeth before preschool, and not to worry.

Kid for sale, cheap

On Thursday, at the annual evaluation day for Arabella's school, her preschool teacher reminded me that she believes Arabella is a child who must be constantly supervised. Constantly. So I have no good excuse for leaving her to watch tv in the diningroom for an hour. All I can say is I thought she was watching tv. Silly me.

Yesterday, while I was in the living room with a sleeping Sabine (she really needed the sleep) and Michael was upstairs taking his post-work nap, Arabella got a Sharpie. She did not find this lying about, unattended. She had to climb on the computer desk, probably stand on top of the desk itself, to reach a jar of pens on the top shelf above the computer, high enough that I can't always see which pen I am getting.

With this Sharpie she marked on (in order clockwise from the desk):

• the stove
• the teakettle
• a cookie sheet
• the kitchen cabinet
• the kitchen wall
• the refrigerator
• the dry-erase board
• the large white and blue ceramic bowl we use for salad
• an unglazed ceramic lion
• the file cabinet
• the antique cherry cabinet
• the dining room walls (yes, multiple) including a circle large enough that were it a door I could have stepped through.
• her easel, including the chalkboard
• her 3-drawer cabinet for crayons and paper
• a green living room cushion

Daddy is ... determined ... enough that he managed to erase nearly all the marks with Windex and a Mr. Clean eraser, but Arabella is grounded until she is 20.

Talking

"Sabine, I'm going to learn you to talk, like this! Hi! Hi! Hi!"

*****

Sabine is cutting her first tooth. It is barely visible, but there is a tiny speck of white on her gums, and we're pretty sure it is an emerging tooth. The funny part is that Arabella cut her first tooth on Mother's Day, although she was just 6 months old at the time, and Sabine is 7 1/2 months as we go into Mothers Day.

*****

Although I keep checking my gauge,and it seems I am on target, the Pimlico shrug seems awfully small, so I am pausing while I consider whether I should frog the whole 5" and restart on larger needles. This may seem strange, but better to unravel now than have a completed sweater that I won't wear because it's too small.

I voted for the Antichrist, how about you?

We voted yesterday, early, to make sure that the polling place didn't run out of Democrat ballots, what with all the reports of Republicans jumping ship just so they could interfere with the Democrats primary. And as we went in, there was a man holding two ballots, a Democratic one and a Republican one, just to see what he would be voting for. After a long and deliberate contemplation he decided to go with the Republican one. What a schmuck.

Aside: The only time in my life I was not a registered Democrat, I was a member of the Green Party, but I think they eat Greens in Indiana (with a little breading and ketchup).

I like both Clinton and Obama, I think they are both smart and principled, they both have their strong and weak points, and I will proudly and confidently vote for either one in November. I think Clinton is more politically savvy, but Obama is right on the gas tax issue. I don't give a rat butt about race or gender, I just want a good leader, which I think they both have the capacity to be. What decided my vote was Rush Limbaugh goading Republicans to jump party lines and vote for Clinton just to gum up the Democrats primary. I really loathe Limbaugh, and whatever he says someone should do, I seriously consider doing the opposite.

My Dad's politics are somewhere over to the right side of the spectrum the way ultraviolet is a color. It's so far off, you can't even see it. He was telling me that he really fears what might happen if Obama is elected president, since he firmly believes that Obama is the Antichrist. He may mean well, but his election will signal the eruption of widespread war and pestilence in the middle east, spreading to engulf the world. Or something like that.

So I voted for the Antichrist.

We have a winner!

Congratulations MJ, it is a Eucalyptus seed pod. Anyone walking past Eucalyptus trees has seen / stepped on the little hershey kiss sized seed pods. In college in San Francisco I had to walk through a grove of Eucalyptus to get to where I parked my car. In San Diego I had to clean up countless mounds of bark and leaves from the huge Eucalyptus in the front yard. I was in San Diego that I picked up a seed pod and wondered what it would look like pressed into clay. Of course, Eucalyptus are not native to California, and are a huge fire hazard, but you see them all over the West Coast, in the drier inland areas especially.



Now, Californians, aren't you feeling silly?



OK, back to our regularly scheduled programming
Because of the election today, Michael had a rare Sunday off, and spent it helping me out. He had already built the frame for the vegetable garden ( pressure treated 2 x 6 boards, in a 8' x 3' frame, and I had bought the soil, so he dumped it all and mixed in the bale of peat. I planted the 3 tomatoes and one red pepper, caged and fenced the plot. It's looking very tidy, and is the envy of my neighbor, Erin, who is both fearful of poison ivy and worried her yard doesn't have enough sun. I love vegetable gardening for the wonderful anticipation of summer harvest.


Sabine helping in the garden by eating dirt.


Sabine is trying to crawl, especially in pursuit of Miro, our bowling ball disguised as a cat. Miro is much more patient with Sabine than she was with Arabella, I guess she has figured out that they grow up to feed and brush her. But Sabine is really crabby, and just wants to be held all the time. No teeth yet, but I keep expecting them every day.


I have started on the Pimlico Shrug, in garnet alpaca yarn. It's all curled up, but it's a diamond eyelet lace pattern, easy once I got the hang of it. I may be knitting this for a very. long. time.

Arabella is taking after me more every day. Yesterday, while I was feeding Sabine in the livingroom, she took the vitamin bottle out of the kitchen cabinet (I had moved it to a lower shelf while looking for something) and ate 4 orange brachiosaurus vitamins before I caught her. Yes, it is a child-proof bottle.

When I was about 7 or 8 I played a game with a friend where we opened a child-proof bottle of C vitamins, and each time we opened it we ate a vitamin. I probably ate about a dozen to twenty, and then had a stomach ache. My mother was ... unsympathetic.