I am officially living in crazytown USA

Maybe I'm the crazy one and everyone else is normal. If so, I don't wanna be normal.

First, the knitting part...Apparently not all the schaefer esperanza hand painted yarns do the cool funky color pooling thing. I started a new trial of my bag that I'm now calling the "Felted Groove" in a colorway in the kids colors called "Hermione" to test out the changes to make the bag easier and more sturdy. The yarn has a lot more colors, and shorter lengths of each color, and really does more of a mottled appearance. I was disappointed, but it still looks cool. Just not funky. I want to work out a few kinks so I'm going to finish it, photo it and then choose a color with fewer colors. I think that was the key. Hoping to have all the details on here by Monday. I'll also post the best colors to pick to get the groovy look.

Back to crazytown...a few of the things going on around me lately:

#1 the crazy ernie laugh is back. This is for the old dungeon dwellers to understand. creeps me out bigtime.

#2 my assistant is trying to convince me that "God wrote the Bible." I should know enough NOT TO TALK about things like this, but my mouth and my brain are not always connected. I said, "God picked up a pencil?" in a joking tone. She thought I was serious. Yes, apparently he possessed these men and wrote the Bible, every word, but she worded it differently. After mentioning that a belief in each and every word exactly as it is written doesn't work either as the Bible was not written in English and has been translated and modified. Oh Lord, that set her off on a strange tangent. My brain said "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP DAMMIT" to my mouth and I quit talking other than "uh huh" and "oh" and she went on for at least 45 minutes straight. Now she feels the need to save my soul. I agreed she was right (hey, I had to get some work done) and told her my soul's already doomed to purgatory as I'm Catholic, don't worry. I'll be there until enough little kids are forced to pray for me to bump my way out.

But now I'm screwed as little kids don't have to do all that scare & tactics the way I was raised. I don't even know if kids are taught about Purgatory now, do Catholics even believe that anymore? I've kind of created my own little religion where I just try to do more good than bad, accept and help others, and go to Mass once in a while just for the extras. Cripes even the confession is a piece of cake now. They all say their MODIFIED prayer of a few sentences that now MAKES SENSE instead of my old Act of Contrition that I STILL can't say without missing a step or two...and then they talk to a nice Priest about what they will do in the future to avoid wrong acts and you know what my daughter got as penance? Instead of coming out of "the box" and spending 45 minutes on my knees reciting Hail Mary's, Our Fathers and a couple other prayers I don't remember any more, my daughter had to help me with the dishes that night. WHAT?!!?? OK, I am all for the new, improved Catholicism and making religion accessible and understandable and more useful, but a little bit of me misses the good ol' doily-on-the-head days where you didn't understand a lot of what was going on, but the mystery and awesomeness was almost overwhelming....(Yes, I realize it is a stretch to think I'll end in purgatory instead of somewhere much worse --my brother always told me Dante'd have to create a special layer of Hell just for the things I've done-- but I still believe God has a sense of humor, and those extra points of Good Mom-dom will hopefully cancel a lot of the not-so-good stuff out, plus if God's a chick, I'm THERE BABY!)

#3 My daughter is all excited about her field trip to the local high school's science lab. She is going to pet bunnies, hold snakes and let a big fuzzy tarantula crawl on her hand and arm. On Saturday, while driving Jill's van down the road a spider the size of a straight pin's head landed on my son's leg and he let out a scream the likes of which I haven't heard in 25+ years. Many tears, screams, sobs later my daughter smooshed the thing, we stayed on the road barely and I had tears streaming down my face as it was the funniest thing I'd heard since my little brother (the tall, dark, quiet, dignified one) let out a scream of such a high pitch when we went down the big hill at the end of the log ride at Six Flags or somewhere when he was about 6 years old. In all my years and all the screams I've heard, nothing has ever come close to these two. I almost wet myself I laughed so hard. (Yes, I know a good mom probably wouldn't be laughing at her own child's fear, but oh Lord, you didn't hear it.) Since then we've talked about how spiders are actually good as they eat bugs, etc. But then he asked "mommy, then why do you squish spiders?" We determined spiders INSIDE get squished by Mom, while spiders OUTSIDE are good. Then his school read that book "be nice to spiders" or something. damn schools, I was just getting past the "mom, my teachers said yellow lights mean slow down" crap.

#4 I think I'm going camping and canoe-ing three times now this summer. Yes, I like air conditioning, yes my boy screams like a girl around spiders, yes I'm lazy, no I really don't know what I was thinking at the time, but beer was involved in the planning each time. Maybe that had something to do with it.

#5 I got a phone call from an old metrosexual friend/boyfriend wannabe I hadn't heard from in about 2 years. I'd gotten a new phone since the last time I talked with him and didn't put the number in my new phone. He's got the same first name as the guy I was HOPING would call me from the dealership/flirty/thing last week. I started talking thinking it was the guy I WANTED to talk to and ended up setting up a lunch date before realizing IT WAS THE WRONG GUY!!! I ended up tactfully getting out of it, but cripes. THEN it got me thinking, why hasn't my flirty guy called? and I really REALLY hate all that will he/won't he crap of dating.

#6 I'm now officially adddicted to the new Little House on the Prairie on Disney on ABC Sat. nights. I was all excited to watch the 3rd night (from 4/9) and realized it didn't record on our Time Warner I-control thing (tivo wannabe system) and it ruined my whole afternoon. Yes, I'm a grown woman and Yes I was all pissed off for a few hours.

#7 I'm all alone in this big ass basement building. My aunt is sure I'm going to be abducted or something because I write "personal details of your life for psycho's to read" on a blog. She does not have access to my blog, so it's all good. Just the idea that I write about living in the kc area freaked her out so that conversation ended right there. Just for the potential psycho's out there, I'm not actually ALONE, as the office upstairs is full of people and all that. But, still, it's quite creepy down here. I think I heard an echo...echo...echo... Ok, I'm a dork, dork, dork.

back to work. all by my lonesome.