Mossy Cottage Knits

How Could I Not?

I'm posting this for two reasons, the primary one being to force the round photo of the salad off my screen. The image of the salad itself is fine but the excruciatingly simplistic, anally clenched, uber-exact roundness of the photo makes my teeth hurt. I'm more an artsy-fartsy, blur-the-edges, toss-some-sepia-at-it kind of gal. So, in my world, where lazy is all relative and posting something new is easier than editing and reposting an existing photo, you get my second entry in two days.

The second reason speaks for itself:

What Heat Wave? No, Seriously.

The obligatory summer salad shot, fancied up with a newly discovered circular cropping tool.

Everything in this salad—lettuce, carrot, cherry tomatoes, lemon cucumber and celery (minus the cheese and inadvertently slightly undercooked egg)—came from my garden.

The catch? This is it. This is The Salad of the Year. The Only Salad of the Year. Why? Well, let’s see if I can explain with another photograph (perhaps not cropped with the circular tool which has revealed itself to be supremely tacky). See the tree with the white blooms?

Today is, what, August 11? That tree usually blooms in April. By way of further illustration, I had the heat on three weeks ago.

I am consoled by the fact that the salad was delicious. And that, with enough lettuce, you can pad any food to make it look big.

Joon Discovers Purrpetual Motion

I must be out of my mind.

Remember the pink ball Joon loves with an almost fetishist love? It being light pink, made of foam, and subjected daily to dampening kitty saliva combined with whatever horrors lurk underneath the furniture, it had become downright putrid, even as cat toys go. So I stopped at the toy store and bought another packet of four balls which were, to my mind, exactly the same as the pink one, only they were each a different color and gussied up with black pentagons to look like miniature soccer balls.

(The truth be told, my real motivation in buying the new balls was that the pink ball was, once again, under the chest of drawers and I didn’t feel like getting the flashlight, getting the tongs, and crawling around on my creaky knees to fish it out for the gajillionth time. Oh, now, don’t judge. It’s the same thing as buying new underwear instead of doing laundry….Oh, you don’t do that either? No, you do; I really think you do.)

The plan was to trot the new balls out over time. As each one got gross and dirty, it would be replaced with a new, fresh one from the foam-ball stash. But I have no willpower when it comes to cat toys, especially ones gussied up with black pentagons to look like miniature soccer balls. Within five minutes of arriving home, I had removed all four balls from the packaging, waggled them with great Mommy excitement and baby-talk gushings in front of Joon, and lobbed them about the house.

She ignored them. Stone cold ignored them. By some kitty standard of measurement that I'm not privy to, they were not The Hallowed Pink Ball. So, despite my attempts at avoidance, there I was, flashlight in one hand, tongs in the other, grubbing about under the chest of drawers. Because that's what mothers do.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand, tonight she “discovered” the other four balls. This means she has spent the entire night bringing me one after the other after the other after the other after the other after the other after the other after the other after the other after the other after... Oy. At least with the one ball, I could put it away when I was d...I mean, when play time was done. Now I don’t even know where half of the damn balls are. And she does. And she likes it that way.

(Ooooo, fun. I just threw two at the same time. Her eyes almost popped out of their sockets trying to track both balls simultaneously.)

No knitting news you say? Um, yeah. I’m officially on some stupid doctor-prescribed knitting hiatus which will involve some stupid cast thing that will immobilize my stupid thumb and stupid wrist for some stupid four weeks. The good news? The injury was caused by Too Much Knitting (in fact, Four Straight Hours of High-Quality Knitting and Conversatin’ with LindaK and Devorah at the Donut Shop) so I can’t really complain. If you gotta go, that's the way to do it. However, I have the pleasure of teaching BFF Ken’s wife Beth how to knit this weekend so I will conveniently not get fitted for the cast thingy until next week. In the meantime, if you’re looking for me, I’ll be crouched down near the chest of drawers, flashlight in one hand, tongs in the other.

How Do Seattleites Survive That Foul Weather?

Sure, it's true; Seattle does have bad weather sometimes: Unending weeks of lowering gray skies; rain so pea-soup thick you can't see your windshield, let alone what's on the other side of it; freezing rain that blows sideways; not much snow but inches of lethally slippery ice... And then there's this:

Neener, neener.

(Ignore the rapidly descending temperatures around Thursday. Just give me my moment in the...er...sun.)