bday wishes

Happy Birthday wishes to my husband, Tim! :D
I love you!!!

parents

With regular guests, you can expect a certain thing. You have to make sure things go smoothly and provide food, but you can be sure that they most likely won't tell you what to do in your own house.

Parents are different.

It doesn't seem that it matters where we are - whether I am visiting them or they are visiting me. Either place, they get to pick what to watch on tv and the schedule of events. They also seem to think it is okay to tell me what to do and how to do it. It doesn't seem too fair to tell someone how they should do something in their own house, but my mom apparently thinks it is okay. She also moves my things around, like she knows better than I do where I should keep my things.

They also say things and then conveniently forget what they said. For instance, their flight tomorrow is at 6:15am. When my mom told me the itinerary over the phone a few weeks ago, she assured me that they would get a cab or shuttle so that I wouldn't have to wake up at 4am to take them to the airport. Yesterday, on the way back from my graduation, they decided that there is no way they could have told me that and that it must simply be wishful thinking on my part.

No one can aggravate me as much as my mom does.

Though I love my parents, I am very glad they are leaving tomorrow morning.

Meetaversary

May 6th was the two-year anniversary of when Tim and I met. We went out to eat at the same restaurant where we had our first date - Il Postale. Yummy.

Aren't we cute?

3 days until my last class
8 days until my last final
12 days until graduation
:)

spring break. yippee.

So I'm on spring break right now. The very first night of my break (last Thursday), my mom called to tell me my brother was in the hospital. Apparently he took a whole bottle of tylenol on Monday (we don't know why) but didn't tell anyone about it. He had a cold, so my parents thought his coughing and stuff was because of that. On Thursday they were getting worried that he might have pneumonia, so that's why they called an ambulance and found out the real reason he was so sick.

It was pretty scary. His liver was severely damaged and the doctors weren't sure what they could do. My aunt is a nurse who was able to pull a few strings so Scott could get into Baylor Hospital in Dallas where there has been a lot of liver research, which I think is one of the reasons he's pulling through. He was in critical condition when my mom called and I was very close to flying home immediately, but we decided to wait a day to see if he improved. Friday morning the hospital had a meeting to decide whether or not he was eligible for a transplant if it came to that. Since this was self-inflicted, he was denied.

Luckily that day his numbers started looking better. He's continued to improve since then. Though he is still in ICU, the crisis seems to have passed. He can't talk right now because he had an intubator down his throat for the first few days and now his throat is pretty raw and sore. He's tried a couple times to talk to my parents maybe about what happened, but they told him to not talk right now and just get better. We really don't know why he does this stuff :/

They were in Arizona for my grandfather's 90th birthday party on Monday, and were still on their way back to Dallas (in Midland, I think) on Thursday when he went to the hospital. He got flown to Dallas and my parents had to drive up the next day. My mom said they were all having fun and she has no idea why this happened. I don't think we'll ever really understand my brother.

So I didn't fly home and I'm here on my spring break trying to get some homework done. I have a 10-page paper due next Tuesday, a lot of reading, my internship, and a couple other projects I have to do this week. I'm trying to get some relaxation in between those things. Now that I'm not completely worried about my brother, I'm enjoying it a bit. I finally finished sewing up my hoodie a couple days ago. Now all I have to do is block it and it's ready to wear! I'll have to take a picture later.

That's really all there is. I've been pretty stressed and depressed because of recent events. It's making me question things and think in depth about family and the future. It's not going so well in my brain.

well, this was depressing.

Could it please stop raining for at least a week? My poor flowerbeds are drowning.

My mom called this week though and gave me some bad news. My doggy (Oscar) was seeming to be in more and more pain last week. Mom took him to the vet a couple times, but the painkillers he got didn't seem to be helping. You may recall that he is now 17 and that I wrote out the long list of his ailments after returning from my xmas trip. He didn't seem to be suffering then, but his old age caught up with him. His kidney issues were getting worse and worse, so much that he was peeing blood. My mom said that at the end of last week, it was so bad that it was actually making him bark out loud from pain. So my mom took him last Friday and had him put to sleep. She said he fought the sedative - didn't want to go to sleep. But he finally did and the vet gave him the last shot. I'm pretty sad about it. He was 17, which means we've had him since I was 12. My mom was upset and said the house was too quiet, but she also said that my dad was taking it particularly hard. Oscar was his little buddy. But now he's keeping Jingles company. I'm glad I got to see him at xmas. I knew it would probably be the last time, so I said a nice, long goodbye.

As if this wasn't enough, my mom also told me that her cousin died this past week too. (He was actually her double cousin - her dad's sister married her mom's brother). He was her age and they aren't sure what he died of, so it shook her up a bit. Then last night, my mom called again. My Uncle Lewis (actually my great-aunt's first husband) died Friday night so my parents drove up to Kansas today for the funeral. Three in one week. A lot for them to be dealing with. To me, though, they are just relatives I have heard about but don't really remember. I have faint memories of playing with other kids in Uncle Lewis's basement when I was maybe 4, but that's about it.

I haven't been updating much. You might have noticed. Busy with school and getting ready for kitchen remodel (which should start next weekend). I've also been getting a little knitting time in. Went to Stitches West last weekend (big knitting conference in Santa Clara). I took two classes - one about gauge (loved it!) and one called stashology (which was okay, but not what I was hoping for). I bought lots of yummy yarn though: some really soft, fuzzy stuff which I'm making a baby blanket out of; some "suede" type fabric which I will make a poncho out of; some alpaca for a sweater, pattern still to be determined; and a couple other fun things. It was a pretty fun time.

Tim left today for Pittsburgh and the house was very quiet and lonely. The cats really are boring when you have to look to them for entertainment. I did some homework and then took Emy's advice and went to the snb for awhile. I have a hard time with those usually because I can't knit while having conversations; I always screw something up. Today I was working on that easy baby blanket though, so I was able to talk a little bit. It was fun. Maybe I will find time to go again soon - though probably not until after kitchen remodel.

I'm really wanting to get ahead with papers and stuff so that I won't be stressed out later, but that never works out. Hopefully I will get a lot of reading done while Tim is gone this week though. It's up in the air whether I will be more or less productive without him around. Will just have to wait and see.

I got some coffee this morning on the way back from the airport and my head is still wonky because of it. Nonetheless, I am going to try to get some sleep now because I have to get up to go to my internship tomorrow, even though no one else seems to have to work. Lucky bastards.

holiday update

Okay, okay. I guess I should make an update.

Our Christmas trip was fun, sicky, cold, very social, warm, frustrating, fulfilling, stressful, relaxed, and many other things. We missed snow by less than a day 3 times (it snowed before we got to Virginia but then melted before we got there, same with Dallas, and it snowed right after we left Virginia...DAMMIT). Camping out on the floor at Tim's brother's house was not as bad as expected, especially after we moved into the guest house with my sister-in-law and her husband and cranked up the heat (unbeknownst to the host, but you just don't freeze your guests. You just don't.). I enjoyed spending time with Tim's sister a lot and had a great time with her and Walt. Tim's brother tried. He's just not a very social person, which isn't good when you have 7 guests for a few days. They made tons of yummy food and we all exchanged fabulous gifts. We also were only without one of our sleeping bags for one night, until the airline found it.

Dallas was more of the same but with less people and less luggage. This time the airline lost all our luggage until the next day. I remembered why I usually carry on my toiletries, especially contact solution. We went to the Dallas World Aquarium which is just FABULOUS. Really, anyone living close to Dallas really needs to check it out. Tim also was nice enough to hook up their dvd player (which they got for xmas LAST year). Well, after he hooked it up (which took awhile because their system is wack), we found out that the crappy dvd player didn't even work, so we went with my dad to buy a new one. Tim and I have been working on a dvd of wedding and honeymoon pictures to give to our parents, so we got to give them a sneak preview. Hopefully we will finish that up soon.

The saddest part of my trip was seeing my doggy. He's a dachshundt and is named Oscar Mayer. He turned 17 on December 27. Which is OLD for a dog. REALLY OLD. And it showed :/ He now: is mostly blind, is mostly deaf, has a heart murmur, has kidney stones and other kidney trouble, is missing most of his front teeth so he has trouble eating, and has arthritis so bad in his hind legs that he can barely hold himself up. My parents have to carry him out to the backyard for him to take care of business. When my parents leave the house, they often come home to find him wandering around lost because he got up and didn't know where he went. He bumped into walls, furniture, people while we were there too many times to count. He is taking pain meds so he isn't really suffering, but boy is it hard to see. That will probably be the last time I ever do see him. I sat down with him and petted him a lot and said a nice long goodbye before we left. :(

The only picture I have here is one of him opening a xmas present a few years ago:

I will have to find better ones to share. My next post will be of knitted presents, but it will be another couple days most likely.

happy almost halloween!

My brother and I when we were little (I'm guessing I was maybe 3?).

I was an extremely horrible looking Broom Hilda. What a crappy plastic costume that was. What were you thinking, mom?

Now, if only I can resist eating this large bowl of candy long enough so that the children who come to the door Sunday night can actually have some.

well, hello there

It feels like it should be Thursday already. What a long week this has been already. I feel so tired all of the time. So much reading making my eyes tired and making me want to sleep. What can I do to make myself more awake and energetic? No more coffee for me though because it seems that it may be part of the reason my bladder is so unhappy with me all the time. So I'm cutting it (mostly) out of my life.

Speaking of cutting things out of my life...ha. Let's just say, I've decided to let it go. People can skew things in their minds and think what they want; that doesn't make it true.

And for a non-vague statement, we close on the house this Friday. What a great birthday present! Well, a better present would be that we could actually move in, but I have a feeling that the 45 days will fly by.

Tim's parents just left this morning. We had a good weekend together, which involved a lot of restaurants. That's kind of a treat, since we have been cutting back on eating out to save money. On Saturday, we took them to the winery we are members of for some free wine tasting. Then Sunday we took a tour of the Winchester Mystery House, which was fun. I hadn't been there since I was 13, plus we also went on a "Behind the Scenes" tour and saw some things I had never seen before. That sure was one crazy lady.

Now to get some house papers notarized and then back to homework.

Whee!