First off, I had a whole thing going where I was taking photos all through the creating part of jocelyn’s costume. then my sewing machine broke and that went to hell. But here’s a few:

But enough of that. Let’s get to the actual Halloween photos themselves:

And now. I’m going to bed. the sugar high has crashed and I am falling over asleep. G’nite.

– amy dreams of Almond Joy. And of having a pair of those cowgirl pants for herself.

so this past weekend has been a busy busy one. I actually dreamed Saturday morning that it was halloween night and I hadn’t made Jocelyn’s costume, and couldn’t find her boots and the people that opened the door to her were like, “Uhhh… what is she supposed to be?” James said it sounded like those dreams he has of not finishing his homework in time. Ergh. – Random tangent. Whenever I was sick and had those messed up feverish dreams in high school, I was always doing math problems. Trying to solve for X, what was X? Lines and lines of working out the 2 sides of an algebraic problem trying to find x in that weird dreaming state where everything is surreal and yet you can feel the pencil gripped tightly in your hand as you cancel out the +2 on both sides, etc. You would think this means that algebra was my worst nightmare, but the opposite was true. I love math. Tangent over.

So this weekend I made Jocelyn’s costume, broke my sewing machine (it is now “out of timing” according to the repairman) had to hand sew the last bits, made gingerbread cookies for Ethan’s class, along with other non-time-pertinent things. We all went to Costco (where miraculously, Ethan NOR Jocelyn saw the rows and rows of toys and demanded to be driven down them) to get more floor padding stuff to go under the laminate flooring in the basement, which I am finally trying to get going on again. There is a sad corner of about 6′ by 3′ that is started on. It is going to be a pain in the ass just because of how much shit we have in that room. Not really anywhere to move it to, so it’s tricky. The nice thing about laminate is as soon as part of it is laid, you can put stuff on it right away. I just need to get some done so some stuff can be moved over onto it to make room for the rest of the floor to be laid. It’s a catch 22.

Anyway, I was all nervous about remembering the items that needed to get done for Halloween and the kids’ school “Masquerade” party. This is because I guess Halloween is evil and they don’t want to celebrate it. So instead, they make masks and have a party the DAY BEFORE HALLOWEEN. That’s right. THe party was Monday. When did I think it was? Today, of course. HALLOWEEN. Ergh. So even though we HAD the cookies all made for Ethan’s party (gingerbread cookie cutouts no less, not just drop cookies) and HAD the bag of candy for Jocelyn’s party (someone else had already signed up for cupcakes, so I grabbed candy), I thought the party was on Tuesday. And so nothing went in to school. Ethan was sad that there weren’t any cookies at his class party. Jocelyn was kind of oblivious, and kept calling the bag of candy, “MY BIRTHDAY PARTY! I WANT MY BIRTHDAY PARTY!” (“You mean your MASQUERADE PARTY CANDY, honey.” “YEAH! MY PARTY CANDY! MY BIRTHDAY PARTY CANDY!” Bah.)

Anyway. Kind of bummed. After the kids were in bed, and we had watched 2 fraking episodes of Battlestar Galactica (we’re still on season 1), I sighed.

me: “I can’t beleive the parties were today. I mean, I made cookies! I bought candy! You would think the damn party would be tomorrow, ON HALLOWEEN.”

james: “Yeah. That sucks.”

me: *sigh* “I’m a bad mother.”

james: *flips a page in his magazine.*

me: *glares at him*

james: *totally oblivious. FINALLY looks up. sees me looking at him.*

me: *gives him a more obvious glare, that says, “welllllll?”*

james: *the cogs finally start to turn in his head* finally he blurts out, “You’re not a bad mother.”

me: *glancing down at my pretend watch on my wrist*

james: *blush*

me: “You are fired.”

The boy plays hard:

the girl is dainty

they’re very cute

Well it has been a rough few weeks, and I haven’t really written about it here. Actually, mostly because I just have not had a lot of time to write. But especially because I am have had a very good week, I wanted to check in on the project skinny stuff.

When we last left our heroine (that’s me!), she was sick for the weekend and thus, had a big loss. She was nervous that the whole starvation diet that sickness threw her into would not make that loss a maintainable one for the next week. HOWEVER! She managed to maintain! No loss, just maintain. The NEXT week, however, had a friday lunch at a chinese buffet place, bunko hosted at her house, and a grilling event also hosted at her house. There was gaining. So what did our heroine do?!? First off, she’s going to stop refering to herself in the third person, because while it was fun at first, it’s becoming a pain in her ass.

I buckled down and WORKED, baby. The weigh-in after being a social butterfly was not a good one, at +5 lbs. I am happy to say that this morning, I weighed in at -4.5 lbs. YAY ME! Now, that is a little much to lose in one week, but honestly, I don’t care. I will take it, and I’m going to keep working my butt off. Seriously, I have like a 10 pound threshold that I need to cross. When I was doing this last year this time, I would get up to that 10 lb mark and then it was gain lose gain lose gain lose never getting anywhere until I tossed in the towel. Same thing in the spring. Getting past the 10 lb point is a major milestone for me, and I’m feeling good baby. Next week, I want to see the total loss to be TWELVE! That’s right, I thumb my nose at you, Halloween! I can do it anyway!

– amy misses project runway already.

You know, it just figures. I hauled my camera around with me all last week, and didn’t really use it. And then I REALLY WISH I had it last night on my way home. The moon was a beautiful sliver hanging in the velvety violet sky, which grew purple and then dark orange closer to the horizon. Fluffy clouds spotted the night, the sort that you wish you could just fly up and ride around on. Jocelyn kept saying, “THE MOOOOOOON! THE MOOOOOOON!” (which I first thought was, “I’M HOME!” but quickly caught on to) I tried to take a picture with my camera phone, but it really sucked big time. I wish I had not only my camera, but a tripod.

And then I wish I had it with me again, because last night, I finished my crochet hat, and I’m wearing it today. I took a crappy camera phone picture, but it really is crappy.

So what do you do with crappy photos? Why, photoshop and filter the hell out of them of course! Now instead of just crappy, it will look crappy, AND ARTY!

So here you go:

Now I am going to HAVE to learn how to knit!!

So I was driving home from work, going to fetch the kids from school, and was only a few blocks away, when I pulled up to a red light at the intersection of Sudley Rd and Godwin. This is the main drag through Manassas, and my side of the road has 1 left turn lane, 2 straight lanes, and a right hand turn lane. (VERY BUSY.)

I was pretty dismayed to see a friendly looking dog loping around right in the street. The cars were stopped, but I had JUST pulled to a stop, and there were many cars zooming along in the right turn lane.

This little (not really that little) guy was running RIGHT up to the cars, and I even saw him rear up, put his paws on the hood of one car and turn his head sideways to look at the driver. He kept trying to look at the people, get at the people, “hey! look at me! I need to find my people!” he seemed to be saying. I could see he had a collar, and I kept thinking, someone has got to do something. SOMEONE HAS GOT TO DO SOMETHING OR THIS DOG IS GOING TO GET HURT. I heard a horn honk as the dog sort of galloped into the right turn lane, not someone about to hit him and trying to scare him away, but one of the stopped cars trying to warn oncoming cars of his presence.

I got out, and a simple, “Here, boy!” brought him to my side. I opened the passenger door beside me, and he hopped right up, panting and wagging his tail happily. “Look at me! I found help! I’M SUCH A GOOD BOY!!” (drool) (pant) “OH IMA GOOD BOY!) He was adorable. (Definitely a boy. Definitely un-fixed in any way.)

I called James and set him on the path of finding where exactly I should take the dog while I continued on my way to get the kids. Soon, the kids were collected, and fascinated by the cute pooch in the back and I took him to the Manassas animal shelter. Jocelyn kept saying, “No poochie!” because that is what she always says to the cats at home, until I said, “how about, “Good poochie!” and then she said that, over and over and over. Ethan kept asking the directions to the shelter. And kept telling me all the animals they would have there. “Cats, mommy. And dogs. And RABBITS.”

The lady behind the counter gave me some withering looks as she commented, “You put the dog in with your kids?” I paused, blushed, and said, “Nooooooo… I got the dog out of the road… and THEN went and put the kids in the car with the dog.” But really, the dog was in the back of my SUV. (Not that he couldn’t have gone over, but still. He wasn’t sitting in their laps.)
I can see her point. I have no idea what sort of dog this is. I quick google image search on ‘pit bull’ makes me go, “Hmmm.. maybe.” But I just knew from the few seconds watching him trying to look into all the cars stopped at that light, that he was a dog looking for his home. I’ve heard the scare stories about pitbulls, and the other side of sweet pitbulls, and this guy sure was a mellow dog. Not a rabid, scared animal who is on the offensive (or even defensive). The whole time he was with me, he was a complete sweetheart.

I’m posting on craigslist, and any other ‘lost pets’ websites I can find. Hopefully this sweet pooch will find his way home again. And hopefully they put some ID tags on him!

psst.

hi.

how are you?

I am good. The household, however, is falling into sickness.

First, it was Jocelyn. She woke up around midnight friday night with a fever. Saturday morning she spoke in a whisper all day, despite my attempts to get her to “use your normal voice.” Her glands were as big as basketballs, and the fever re-emerged around noon, so after her nap, I took her to the doctor, who looked her over and gave us a prescription for amoxicilan.

She’s doing better now, thank you.

Now however, James is sick. He felt woozy last night, went to bed at 9pm, and stayed home from work today.

Ethan better not be next.

And I sure as hell better stay WELL. Despite the fact that I stayed up til midnight and am guzzling diet coke (2 things I never do when Sickness is just Waiting To Pounce) I’m feeling pretty good. I’d like to keep it that way.

I’ve completed the baby dress for Tamara and Andrew’s baby (due in February) and let me tell you, it is sooooo super cute. I’m only a little nervous that it may be too small. This is one garment the baby will be able to wear right away.

Next I started on a cute little open weave hat out of the Happy Hooker’s book. I started out making it for Jocelyn, but decided it was for me (it will be too big for her anyway). I’ll have to make another one for her and figure out how to downsize it a bit. Except she could really use a WARM hat, and this one is definitely not a warm cozy hat. So I’ll have to pick a warm patterm to make for her.

Anyway. This was just a quick hi.

Hi!

The downside of having a new hobby (hi, that would be craftyness, more specifically this week, crochet) is not much time for internet-ness. But I’ll try to write more this week.

-amy

…when I came home and found this on our answering machine.

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I knew it would turn up. (OK, so I’d given it up as gone forever, a girl can pretend, can’t she?)