August 04, 2008
The Joys of Motherhood
Guess what time I go to bed? 11:00 p.m. Guess what time the cats wake up? 11:00 p.m.
Last night, while I was wrapping things up on the laptop, odd things were happening behind me:
Rattleclack—A bottle of pills hitting the floor
Rattlerattlerattlerattlerattlerattlerattlerattlerattlerattlerattlerattlerattle—The bottle of pills being propelled merrily along, four-legged-Beckham style
Rattlescrape (silence)—The bottle of pills disappearing into the small gap under the couch, from whence I had to retrieve it since it was a Very Important Bottle of Pills
Kathump—A book hitting the floor
Gnawgnawgnawgnawgnaw—The cover of the book biting the dust
Grubcracklegrubcracklegrubgrubcracklecrackle—Joon, one leg stuck in armpit deep, rooting around in my knapsack, which had a crackly supermarket bag in it
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh—A long piece of yarn being pulled out of my knitting bag
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Ping!—Four wooden knitting needles and one metal one hitting the tile floor
Stuffstuffstuffstuffstuff. Thump! Slam! Scrape.—Me cramming all the knitting items back in a bag, throwing the bag in a cabinet, shutting the cabinet, and sitting down at the laptop again.
Licklicklicklicklicklicklick—Benny on the stove, licking a spoon
Thunk…thunk…thunk…thunk—Joon trying unsuccessfully to open the under-sink kitchen cabinet.
Pick…pick…pick…pick…PICK…PICK…PICK…PICK…PICKPICKPICKPICKPICK: Benny trying, also unsuccessfully, to pull the hair trap, which I forgot to put away, out of the shower drain.
Thwack!—Both of them knocking over a plastic laundry rack.
Mrow?—Benny trying to figure out how to get unstuck from underneath the laundry rack.
Rooooooooooooooooooowwwwr. Roooooooooooooooooowwwwr. Rooooooooooooooooooowwwwr. Roooooooooooooooooowwwwr.—Benny telling Joon she’s a buttface for laughing at him while he was stuck under the laundry rack, and he’s going to pound her good. Joon saying, “You and who’s army?” Benny telling Joon she’s a stupid brat sister and he wished she’d never been born. Joon calling Benny a sissy boy who has no balls. Benny has no comeback to this because (a) it’s true and (b) saying, “Oh, yeah? Well, you have no uterus.,” doesn’t have the same impact.
POW!!!!!—My head exploding.
Oh, and there’s this, the first cat-related, knitting-related casualty:
As much as I’d like to blame this on a cat, I can’t.
Knitters, please explain to me how a whole strand of yarn can be inserted into a small hole between the plies of another section of the same ball of yarn, effectively making the yarn double back on itself, between itself? Based on my limited understanding of physics, the only way this can be done is if the free end of the yarn is physically passed between the plies, like, with a Chibi. But what if there is no free end to the yarn? In my case, one end is occupied by the ball of yarn and the other by a sock, both too large to pass between the small hole in the plies. And yet... Knots I understand, but this, not so much. At any rate, the above is the result of my trying to fix this problem by unrolling the ball of yarn and pulling the end back out between the plies, and not being smart enough to roll it back into a ball as I went along.
Any knitting successes lately? Well, there’s this:
I’m using some wonderfully kickass-bright yarn dyed by Janine, and my low-key Dublin Bay sock pattern since, despite being kickass bright, the sock still needed something. The only bad thing about using your own pattern is if you make a mistake you have no one to blame but yourself on all levels.
Posted by Ryan at August 4, 2008 10:38 AMYes, as much as I love my furry ones, there are times I've wanted to kill them both. For example, the other day I was not responding to Priscilla's attempts to get me out of bed (I was hoping if I ignored her, she'd go away and let me sleep longer), so she bit my nose. Hard.
I love the little lace bit on that sock!
Posted by: Kristen on August 4, 2008 11:01 AMI had the exact same (yarn stuck through plies) problem with my first, last, and only skein of Lion Brand Jiffy. The first three times I encountered it, I cut the yarn and kept knitting.
The fourth time, I walked over to the trash can, pulled everything off the needles, and threw the entire mess away.
I'll be watching the comments eagerly to see if anyone can explain how the yarn can thread itself like that. Damned if I could figure it out.
Posted by: Erika on August 4, 2008 11:16 AMAh, the joys of being owned by kittehs. :) Fortunately my Grace is not interested in my knitting needles, so I've never lost one to The Chewing - but she is very interested in yarn, the thinner the better. She loooooves it when I knit with the laceweight, and sock yarn is good, too!
Speaking of sock yarn, that yarn you're using for Dublin Bay is indeed kickass-bright. Gorgeous!
Posted by: jules on August 4, 2008 11:19 AMPretty sock! I was dying with the cat noises. Isn't it annoying that they can find all the things you THOUGHT they couldn't get to?
Posted by: Carrie on August 4, 2008 11:27 AMSnort! Your live-action description of cat sound effects brought back lots of fun memories, thank you. I haven't lived with a cat for more than 34 years (my husband is allergic), but your blow-by-blow scenario says it all. It's like living with perpetual Terrible Two's, isn't it?
Oh, & those knotty problems? Gremlins cause them. :)
Posted by: Nutmeg on August 4, 2008 12:15 PMI feel your pain. Two new greyhound pups recently joined my clan (with greyhounds, 2 years old=puppy). In addition to your noises (because I think I have had all of those also) I have to include the squeaka squeaka squeaka of my favorite flip flops getting chewed up. And then my least favorite noise with these hoodlums, the quiet. Because then what they are into is REALLY bad!
Here is a good shot of what has happened to my home. www.flickr.com/photos/35113172@N00/2700841162/in/set-72157600787699270/
Posted by: Laurie on August 4, 2008 12:44 PMFirst of all - you've missed the point... You *can* blame everything on the cats and it doesn't even have to be plausible. That's what they're there for (that, and to tease unmercifully with a cat toy on a string that you keep just out of their reach which makes them jump insanely high which causes everyone in the room to laugh so hard that milk comes out their noses) ...(not that I'd know that from personal experience or anything)... but I digress...
Second, the whole yarn problem is easily solved. All you have to do is open an interdimensional portal which has all the space you need to get the pile of yarn through. I know this is easy because I saw Jordy LeForge do it on Star Trek once. You just have to reallign your warp coils and invert the antimatter flow through the time-space rift that was created by using a confinement tachyon particle beam. If that doesn't work, I'd make a cat-toy out of the whole damn mess.
How did I miss the Dublin Bay sock pattern? Oh, I wasn't knitting socks until just recently. Do I have the perfect sock yarn for these or what? And yes, you must always blame the kittehs. Especially for farts.
Posted by: Laura Sue on August 4, 2008 01:32 PMWhat were my cats doing at your house last night?
Posted by: daisy in the shenandoah valley on August 4, 2008 04:15 PMYou likely don't recall, but forever ago I blogged a kitty-chewed dpn. My solution? Dremel.
Thankfully, most of them do outgrow this stage. Sort of.
Posted by: Mel on August 4, 2008 11:19 PMPotential cat-sitters, pay attention. Be very afraid.
(Laurie's Greyhounds, however, run a close second.)
Thanks for a great, much-needed laugh!
Now I go to contemplate the Great Birdhouse Disaster.
Posted by: Gail, whose brilliant birdhouse construction deserves a Darwin Award on August 4, 2008 11:35 PMI've had more than one wooden dpn suffer the same fate. I keep my projects in zip-top totes now. I always said one of my cat thinks she is a puppy, she is so fond of chewing on things. But I couldn't do without them.
Posted by: Joan In Reno on August 5, 2008 03:28 PMOh, yes. Life with young cats. They do calm down after a while, usually.
all of our, for instance, are pretty much asleep all the time.
The young DOG, on the other hand. Now, there's some trouble.
Love the lace!
Posted by: Pandora on August 5, 2008 07:07 PMI'm so glad mine are grown-up, respectable, sleepers.
At 7 and 17...It does make a difference - OH! Except for the catnip addiction! *wink*
(((hugs)))
Boyohboy, for someone with depression problems, you sure can write a post to cause coffee to be ejected from your reader's nose. Love the cat noises. So true. I'd recommend cat-proofing your house to within an inch of its life, then inserting earplugs before you go to sleep. Let them do what they will; you can clean it up in the morning.
But they do grow out of it, although it takes a good ten years. Aren't you glad to hear that?
Posted by: kmkat on August 6, 2008 10:45 AMAt my house we have this competition we call Nasal Regurgitation Olympics. How this works is this: You wait until someone has a mouthful of liquid, and then make them laugh. Really hard. Big bonus points if it is semi-solid. Carbonated beverages really hurt.
Up until this very moment, I claimed that my second son was the absolute best in the world at this event.
He has been dethroned, and how. You, my dear, are the champion.
I really like the whole interdimensional portal thing. It goes right along with the whole time/space warping thing that Stephanie does ... why is it that other people get to do the cool things and I only get to be a judge at the Nasal Regurgitation events?
Posted by: Carol on August 7, 2008 12:52 PMHaha. My older ones are fine and if they feel like getting up in the middle of the night they just jump down and walk away. The young ones, on the other hand, get up about 2am, and one of them loves me so much she meows, licks my knees, and jumps on and off me till I throw them all out in the hall and shut the door. It's like having a 1 year old again.
Posted by: CarolineF on August 8, 2008 05:08 AMYarn is evil.
Posted by: Judy on August 8, 2008 06:17 PMWe've got to get cats, obviously. Our lives are getting far too dull, we need cat excitement. However, for the moment I am loving enjoying vicariously the excitement you are having. Please keep up the reports.
Posted by: Liz on August 8, 2008 06:40 PMoutside wood burning heater
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