Too Much Information

Too much information running through my brain 
Too much information driving me insane...

I’ve noticed a lot of distractors on social media lately. I’m happy to see them. There are puppy pictures instead of politics, jokes, games and even some survey says type things where you have to answer questions about yourself. Reminds me of the good old FB days when you could see what everyone was having for dinner!

Recently a coworker asked me to help compile a list of the 'about me' questions she had seen on FB. I thought maybe I’d answer a few. So I did the ‘pick and choose’ and answered the ones I felt like finishing.

Without further ado, here are 20 absolutely useless facts about me.

Who are you named after? 
My dad. I was supposed to be their boy, a junior. My middle name is from my mom’s friend she once told me. I was never fond of that part of my name!

Do you use sarcasm?
Most of the time. Someone told me I’m not funny. I think I’m hilarious.

Do you still have your tonsils? 
I do and almost all of the other parts I came with as well.

What is your favorite cereal?
Depends. Sometimes it’s Rice Krispies and sometimes Frosted Shredded Wheat. If I’m feeling like I should be healthy it might be Raisin Bran or oatmeal. Usually it’s not the super sweet cereals. But sometimes they are good for snacking. I guess I don’t have a favorite.

What is your favorite ice cream?
I like ice cream so I’d probably try most anything I got. Right now it’s Rocky Road with milk poured over it.

What are you listening to right now?
Television. DVR is great and I can multi task then rewind when I miss something. And zooming through commercials is priceless!

If you were a crayon, what color would you be? 
I couldn’t be just one color. I’m variegated at heart.

What is your hair color? 
Really dark brown, almost black. Nowadays it comes from a tube.

What is your eye color? 
My eyes are green but can also be blue, depending on what I wear. Sometimes they are kind of a gray color as well. If you ask people they will tell you different things. But both of them are the same color!

What is your favorite Holiday? 
I want to say Christmas but the past few have been stressful. I never thought we’d become one of those families...but we have.

Where were you born?
I was born in Lubbock, Texas. We moved to Albuquerque when I was three years old and I grew up there. But marriage brought Texas again and I’ve lived in this little town longer than anywhere else. I’m a Texan at heart with a little green chile thrown in.

Do you get nervous before doctor appointments? 
Absolutely. I dislike most anything medical; procedures, needles and visiting any medical personnel, dentists included. They always say this won’t hurt...but it does.

What do you think of hot dogs? 
I like hotdogs. A lot. I like them with mustard, relish and pickles, chili, cheese, bacon. I like hotdogs.

Do you have A.D.D.?
Probably. And H too.

Do you wear glasses?
Only if I want to see to read.

How did you bring in the New Year? 
I waited for E to get here for our traditional ‘party’. But he didn’t come home until 11:45 so I woke Alan, we waited til midnight and toasted then went to bed. Sad, but I think the littles are getting too old for this Mamye.

Do you own slippers?
I own several pairs of slippers. As soon as I get home from work, on they go. I love my slippers!

What is the last thing that made you laugh? 
Some silly joke I read on FB. What a life. FB makes me laugh and cry and lately, it also makes me angry...and scared.

What vehicle do you drive?
I love my Honda Accord. Her name is Bessie Lee and she takes me where I need to be. See how I did that?

There has to be one last question because I don’t like ending on an odd number.

Do you like odd or even numbers?
Apparently tonight it’s even.

Too much information running through my brain... 

Someone wanted a hat without a hole so I made her a happy hat!

The beginning.

Finished product!

 Here’s a last bunch of messy bun hats. Some are in the last picture too. I think I’ll switch to dishcloths for a while!

Too much information driving me insane...

Promises

And she made promises

That she could never ever keep 

January is a time for goal setting. It is a time of pondering; new beginnings, improving any and all things that come to mind, accomplishing unobtainable objectives within ludicrous time limitations. It’s a time of resolution.

I gave up resolutions a while back. Although my intentions were always good, my actions seldom reflected what I wished to achieve. I started strong with energy and determination. Within a few weeks I had succumbed to the easier route, the no effort routines of which I was accustomed.

Enter the concept of the ‘word’. Do you remember PeeWee Herman when he had a Saturday show called PeeWee’s Playhouse? It was a little creepy because his character was a little creepy, but it was kind of fun in a weird way as well. The episode started out with a Secret Word that was revealed to the viewers. Whenever the word was heard everyone was supposed to scream and make a fuss throughout the episode. I’ve wondered how effective and also a little fun that might be if a teacher used it to reinforce vocabulary. I taught high school and I think even the tall third graders, which I determined high school students to be, would have enjoyed this activity. Anyone can learn and if the learning is fun it will stick a lot longer. That’s my opinion and I’ve digressed. So I’ll get back to the post. 

Choosing a word for the year made more sense to me. I like words that I describe as ‘all-encompassing’. What I mean by that is that they may be used in different ways. I like words that are nouns and verbs. I like words that can even be adjectives if needed. Last year my word was ‘Stop’. Someone asked me why I’d choose a word like that and there were many reasons, none of which I felt like sharing.

This year my word is ‘Act’. Dictionary says take action; do something, behave in the way specified, a thing done; a deed, a pretense. Fairly broad in content, but it captures my state of being for now.

And she made promises 
But they were all just lies 

The messy-bun hat, pony tail hat, hat without a top craze, whatever you might call it, hit here at home as well as everywhere on the internet. It started when some innocent girl posted a picture she had seen on FB and stated she wished she knew how to make one. I got the picture numerous times asking if I could make one. It’s a hat without the top few rows, so yes, I can make them. The girl who actually created the hat apparently saw the craze her picture started and vicious yarnies came out of the woodwork. They practically crucified the admirer of the original picture, accusing her of plagiarism, etc. Lesson learned: Beware of people who play with string and pointy sticks.

My friend Elizabeth modeling the hat with the smaller opening.

My baby manchild proving that it could just as well be a manbun hat!

A Google search brings a plethora of patterns; some free and many with a slight charge, each with a minute difference over the others. I have crocheted and even sold several. My favorite is this pattern I can’t make one in less than 2 hours at all but it’s a nice pattern and uses some bulky yarn I had on hand for some reason or another. The other one I like, with regular worsted weight yarn is variations of this pattern. It has a larger opening at the top. Aren’t my models great?

I told you I've made a bunch. I have many more.

Breaking her promises 
Disappointment runs deep

2017

2017...Bring it on!

Kids are growing up...only one brother this year.

Human Fly

I'm a human fly and I don't know why… 

I watched an old movie on television the other day. It’s a horror film called “The Fly”. There’s been a remake, but this was the original, sometime in 1958. It’s about a scientist, who when conducting an experiment, mutates into a grotesque, part human part fly, after the insect accidentally gets into the transporting machine, mixing their atoms. The scientist’s wife ends up helping him destroy the creature he’d become and is charged with murder and declared ‘crazy’.

I’ve seen this film many times. In fact, the little fly at the end with the human head, crying in a squeaky voice, “Help meeee. Help meeeeee!” was the source of many giggles shared between my dad and I. Warped maybe, but funny, nonetheless.

Today, though, when I watched the movie I saw something different that I hadn’t thought of before. The wife explained, in detail, the reasons for her actions. It was a strange and incredible story, and it was the truth. But the police inspector, without benefit of doubt, proclaimed her guilty and insane, just the same.

Unfortunately this seems to be a common occurrence. A true story can sound unbelievable. If it is out of the ordinary and/or not what the listener wants to hear, the judge, jury and sentence occur, all without the benefit of a trial. It makes sense that people would not want to share the truth if the consequences are worse than if they make up an explanation to please the listener.

I don’t mean it’s right to lie. I detest liars and if there’s one thing I don’t do it’s lie. To be honest though, I do tell little lies, which I suppose makes me a hypocrite. But those are usually to spare someone’s feelings: “Does my butt make these pants look big?” “No, you look great!” That’s not to rationalize my behavior. Sometimes you just have to choose which ditch you want to die in.

The story in the movie had a somewhat happy ending. The scientist’s son rushes in to say he’s found the odd looking fly, the fly with a white head. The inspector and the scientist’s brother rush out to find the fly with the scientist’s head and arm, stuck in a web with a large spider quickly approaching. The terrified fly screams “Help meeeee! Help meeee!” (I’m laughing again here.) Just as the fly is about to be eaten by the spider, the inspector smashes them both with a rock. Thinking nobody would believe such a story, the inspector and the brother concoct a lie about the details and the wife isn’t convicted of murder.

Help meeeeee! Ha ha ha

Too bad we didn’t know about DNA. That could have saved the truth being covered by a lie. I suppose then they wouldn’t have had a plot for the movie. At the last scene the wife and the brother are explaining to the son why the scientist died. He died doing the most dangerous act for humanity, but also the most beneficial: "the search for the truth".

I don’t know why people choose to lie. The truth is best even when it’s not pleasant. Everyone has their own reasons for not telling the truth. And everyone has their own reasons for not believing the truth. And life goes on.

I say buzz, buzz, buzz and it's just becuzz 

We got new to us furniture for the place in Ruidoso. It looked nice but something was missing. I decided we needed pillows on the couches. So through Amazon, I found a bargain...or so I thought!

They had throw pillows for only $3.50 each! I glanced through the designs and picked some I wanted. When they got here I was disappointed. I read it wrong. They were pillow covers, not pillows!

I had an idea that I thought might work. I thought if I took an inexpensive bed pillow and cut it in half, then sewed up the side it would fit. My daughter in law, Jenn, had just the pillows I needed! She cut and sewed them and they were perfect for the new pillow covers!

I’m knitting a cover to recycle another pillow I had laying around. It’s gray, in a thick yarn, so should be finished soon.

Well I'm a human fly it's spelt F L Y

Crazy Train

All aboard! ha ha ha! 

He looked fairly normal, meaning average and like a lot of people. He was dressed in a t-shirt and pull on shorts and, except for needing a shave and haircut, wouldn’t have stood out in a crowd. I glanced at him as I sat in the airport waiting for a plane.

I went back to reading my book and looked up again. He was still sitting in the same spot but this time when I looked he appeared to have a bloody nose, tissue hanging from his nostrils. That still didn’t seem too strange because I’d seen it before. I felt sympathetic because I have had a bloody nose in an airport before and felt very self conscious and helpless. Then he started rocking himself.

I am a rocker and always have been. My mother tells a story of us living in a two story apartment when I was a toddler. I had a red rocking chair with a separate foot stool that matched. It was a platform type, meaning it sat flat on the floor and rocked. I would rock in the chair so hard that the platform would come off the ground and bang on the ceiling below. They complained.

Usually if someone rocks in public it’s subtle. He wasn’t. He had his arms crossed tight across his body and rocked himself to where he came out from the seat back, almost touching his knees then moved back to his original position. Over and over he rocked. My first impulse was to see if I could be of some comfort but I decided against and stayed where I was.

He had a backpack and a cell phone and he made a call. But he had the phone on speaker and spoke loudly to the recipient. It was in his lap. I couldn’t hear the whole conversation but did hear him say, “I love you too Papaw.” Again, I went back to my book.

The next time I looked he was gone. I checked my phone and continued reading. Someone came up to the chair beside mine and when I looked up, it was him. He had two pieces of what seemed to be sweet and sour chicken. I came to that conclusion because there was a Chinese food stall across the way. He took one of the pieces of chicken and sat it on the table between the chairs. There was no napkin or paper or anything. He sat it straight on the surface while he prepared to sit in the empty chair.

He settled, then picked up the chicken and popped it into his mouth while wiping his hands down his shirt. He rested quietly but he was fidgeting, twirling his fingers together. I read this was a sign of autism and I wondered if he was on the spectrum. I didn’t know but felt there was some kind of mental problem.

He then started speaking. He was having a full conversation...with himself. I could only hear snatches of the ‘conversation’ but I listened. He quoted bible verses. He spoke of the Jews and the return to Zion. He would begin a sentence and then repeat that sentence. This happened over and over. He mentioned having someone systematically eliminated. It sounded like he was reciting passages of a book or something similar.

After a while he stood and walked in a tight circle in front of his chair while he spoke. The lady across from us was working on a computer but when he started the pacing she noticed. She watched him intently and when she and I made eye contact I shrugged to say I don’t know what is wrong.

I went to the restroom and when I got back someone was in the chair I had occupied. He was still there however, walking and speaking, but had increased the circumference of his pacing. I waited at the end of the row as it was almost time for boarding. The woman who was in the chair directly behind him stood up and looked at me. She asked if he was on the phone as he was speaking loud enough for people to notice. I told her no, that something was wrong. She commented, “And he’s getting on our plane”.

It was time and I boarded the plane. His pass had a number that was after mine and I was thankful that he chose a seat near the front. The flight landed in another location but I was a through passenger and stayed on board. He got off the plane and I didn’t see him again. That was Friday.

Fast forward to Sunday when I traveled again. It was another through flight with a stop midway. I got on the plane and when we landed at the first stop, moved closer to the front like we are allowed to do after a through count. The new board was a full flight and my row had all seats occupied.

I heard someone behind me asking the lady beside him if the book was about Arnold Schwarzenegger. She replied it was and the plane took off. We landed and as we taxied to the gate and people could speak on their phones I heard someone say very loudly, “hello”. Evidently there was no sound from the other side so he spoke again, louder. Then he said, “I love you mom. I’ll see you when I see you”, still speaking loudly, enough to be considered shouting. He repeated, even louder than before, “I said I’ll see you when I see you!” The person on the receiver at the other end still apparently did not hear so he said it again, screaming, “I’ll see you when I see you!” People were looking around and snickering, glancing with embarrassment at the poor guy. I stood to disembark and turned to see who had the difficult phone conference. Guess who it was? Yes, the same sad guy that has conversations with himself in the airport. What were the odds of that?

The whole incident was funny but not in a humorous way. Mental illness isn’t funny. And, we all live with our own bit of crazy. That's how it goes...

Mental wounds not healing 

Several studies have been done recently on the benefits of knitting. The stimulation knitting provides your brain can result in better memory and attention span and also increase your problem-solving abilities. Besides all that, the gentle rhythm of the needles moving with the yarn brings relaxation and causes a drop in heart rate and blood pressure. It’s been said it also helps with the symptoms of depression.

So we continue with the knit-along. Progress is being made but with all of us being so busy it could take a while! It’s funny how Kerri, Miya and I all have our own take on this project. It will be fun to see the finished products.

Huckle Wrap

I doubt any of us will be depressed at the end of this endeavor, for sure. In fact, the feeling will probably be relief. And we will still have our sanity!

I'm going off the rails on a crazy train...

Brush Your Teeth

When you wake up in the morning, it's quarter to one...

The meeting went well and all were gathering their belongings to depart. Goodbyes and thank-yous circulated throughout the room. There were hugs, laughter and many smiles. I loaded supplies on the cart to take back to the closet. While there I took a quick restroom break as well. As I was washing my hands I looked in the mirror and for some reason, smiled. There, big as a dime at least (well maybe not) was a speck of black pepper, right in the crevice between my front and second tooth! OMG!

I know. It happens to everyone. How about you? Have you ever discovered, after much time with many people, that you had something green or brown or even pastel in your teeth? If so, you know the sinking feeling I had in the pit of my stomach! And you wonder how long it was like that and why nobody told you!

It might not seem like such a big deal. Except for the fact that I have a huge smile. I think it came from my mother, but regardless, when I smile, I smile large. So there’s no doubt in my mind everyone saw. Maybe they thought it was a shadow. Maybe they thought it was a cavity. Hmmm….what is worse? Them thinking I had poor dental hygiene or that it was tooth decay, or worse, some dread periodontal disease? I’ll survive and won’t have to see them again or at least not for a while as most were from out of town. But still...OMG!

And you want to have a little fun...

My knitting (and good) friends, Kerri and Miya and I are doing a knit-along. That means we are doing a project together, virtually. That’s how we did the February scarf too. But this project was planned since around May of last year. Finally, we are going to start and now I just have to figure it out so I can show them!

Purple and aqua from Knitpicks

Cast on...and begin!

 It looks fun. I hope it is….for us all!

You brush your teeth, ch ch ch ch, ch ch ch ch...

Egg Man

I ran to the fridge and pulled out an egg...

Chickens are kind of dumb. They wander around all over and make noises and messes and run if you try to get near them. Or maybe they are lucky that’s all they have to do! That and lay eggs. If there was ever a perfect food I suppose it could be the egg. It’s portable. It doesn’t need refrigeration (although now they say store-bought need to be refrigerated because they have been washed) and it can be prepared in a multitude of ways. It is also a great source of protein!

My husband likes chickens. So for the time being I am wealthy…in eggs! He has several different breeds of hens (they all look like chickens to me!) and they lay different colored eggs. We have brown, light brown, dark brown, green, light green, olive, speckled and, oh yeah, white. It’s like an Easter egg hunt with no dye!

Colored Eggs!

When the Littles visited a couple of weeks ago they loved gathering the eggs. They brought them in and I scrambled them. I fried them. I even boiled them a dozen and a half which they ate them in no time flat! If they remember anything from their time here, they'll remember that “Mamye can boil eggs really good”!

Fresh eggs...scrambled!

We have so many eggs that I’ve started selling them. I had no idea how to price them so I said $5.00 a dozen or $4.00 if you bring a carton. We had to order cartons to start with so there would be enough. Now people bring me cartons all the time!

One day there were so many eggs I had a ‘special’. They were on sale, that day only, for $3.50, carton or not. You wouldn’t think a mere fifty cents would make a difference to people. But it did.

When people buy eggs, I open the carton to show them the eggs and to make sure nothing is broken. One day someone came and when I opened the carton one of the eggs had a little silver spot on the end. I picked at the spot, wondering what it was. I lifted the egg and looked closely. It said 1.69 on the bottom. It wasn’t real! It was a glass egg!

Don't eat it! It's not real!!

Ceramic eggs are placed in the egg boxes to encourage the hens to lay. They are also there so the hens will lay where they are supposed to and not out in the yard or under a bush. I’ve found eggs in some strange places! Anyway, when the eggs were gathered one of the ceramic eggs was accidentally picked up too! I told my husband and he said the funny thing is there was another ceramic egg, in addition to the one I found, that was missing. That meant two were accidentally put in the cartons.

I sent out an email to all the people I had sold to letting them know to watch for a fake egg. My husband did the same. To this day nobody has admitted to finding that lost ceramic egg!

You know, I'm the Egg Man 

I’ve been working on a baby blanket for a friend whose baby was born a while back. I was finished except for the border and binding off. There was a little time during spring break so I decided to get it done and take it to her. I knitted six rows to make the border and proceeded to bind off the edge. I worked the ends in and it was good to go. That is until I decided to take a picture.

Right side/wrong side. See it?

That's a lot of mistake!!

When I spread it out I discovered that somehow I had switched so that the front was now the back and vice versa. It wasn’t a little bit. It was about a foot worth. Would the ordinary person have noticed? It’s doubtful. But I did so I had to have a do-over. I 'unworked' the ends (and that’s hard when they are hidden well). I pulled out about 15 inches total. I got it all back on the needles and am finally going forward again. I just hate it when I do that!

It comes from a chicken not a bunny dummy. 
Yeah, I'm the Egg Man...