Into the Long Night Moon!

I didn't mind seeing November, the Beaver Moon, go.

On Thursday, we took Lilliane to the vet for her well-baby visit. She was fine - got her required shot - but then the doctor (a partner of our usual beloved vet) said Lilly has a heart murmur, apparently a very serious matter in kitties. (Must be from my side of the family, I have a heart murmur too.) She suggested that we might want to get an ultrasound to determine the exact status. Worst case scenario - she'll need to take medication daily for the rest of her life, which wouldn't be as long as it might otherwise; best case? It's an error, and she's actually fine. As we hadn't heard anything of this before, I'm naturally hoping for the latter. The specialist is coming to the clinic on December 19th (from our mighty-fine Veterinary School at the University) so she'll have the ultrasound that day.

Thursday afternoon I met my friend Donna at Barnes & Noble for our weekly knit date, and I found that they DO have that delicious sandwich I got at B&N in Minneapolis when I went to hear Crazy Aunt Purl. It's a smoked turkey and cheese sandwich on whole-grain cranberry bread. It is WICKED delicious! They told me it was "seasonal" so go get one. I'll wait here. Well, ok,you can go later.

Anyway, we had a very nice time, as usual; I made some progress on my current toque, and got a good start on the Replacement Baby Wrap with the yarn from JoAnn on Ugly Black Friday. I had moved into my super new rolling yarn tote and had the toque, the baby wrap and a scarf plus two extra skeins of yarn, several patterns and my book ("The Secret Life of Bees", it's wonderful). Plus next year's date book, my Little Bag of Doodads (c'mon, everyone has one of those--where else would you keep your withered rose hip? the stone from Lake Superior? the Monopoly thimble? Sheesh) and my Tiny Radio bag. NOTE: I always have my tiny radio because if I'm not home for Dr Phil I can listen to it on the radio and guess what? You don't HAVE to see it!

On Friday I had a doctor's appointment. It has to do with the Wicked Maths. The deal is, I have one prescription where I used up the whole 6 months' worth of pills after five months. HORRORS! Well, the problem is that I take five of them a day (every four hours, which being as I resent having to sleep at ALL means five a day) instead of the four a day normal human people take. The very nice doctor KNOWS Wicked Maths, and gave me a prescription for five a day and not four a day....and Mr Dearling points out that the new prescription will actually last me a whole month. Don't ask me, I don't do Wicked Maths. Or Yards or Gallons or Ounces, and I'm a little dicey on Hours and Minutes. Mr Dearling says I have "a very medieval concept of time" and "a genuine numeric dyslexia" (well, I say that last one). I prefer the Native American concept of time; i.e., the Sacred Hoop. You get up in the morning. When you get hungry it must be sometime around noon and it gets dark in the evening.

After we got home from the doctor, Mr Dearling got organized and prepared to leave for the Twin Cities, so that I could have some uninterrupted tidying-up time. Yeah, it's true, go ahead, I'll say it: GEEZ ARE YOU EASILY DISTRACTED OR WOT?? But it's true, I can be a lot more single-minded when alone in the house. (Mr Dearling is fascinating, and I really love exchanging ideas, getting opinions, and he comes up with fascinating oddments of information - and it doesn't take much to draw my interest away from oh, I don't know, CLEANING?

We have a saying in this house: "Martha Stewart doesn't live here." I've done that in calligraphy as gifts and it's very popular. To his credit, Mr Dearling always adds to that "Neither does Bob Vila." I'm quite passionate about my cozy little homey nest, but it's OURS, and we wouldn't win anything in a Domestic Arts competition. It IS relatively tidy, there are plenty of piles of books around to put stuff on, and the furnishings are a mixture of Rather Nice Antiques (lovely old secretary and two glass-front bookcases from Aunt Lo of blessed memory), old office furniture that Mr Dearling got when the AAA offices moved (like two large office desks with surrounds and several five-drawer file cabinets, all for under $20) and Salvation Army Leftover. Throw in a few 18th century replicas, some toys (MINE!) and yarn...and I just this MINUTE figured out what our decor is! Drumroll please...(how the heck do you write a drumroll?) Our home is richly furnished in.... Bohemian Eclectic.

Feel free to use that to describe your own cozy cottages if it applies, but there has to be at least one teddy bear in a prominent position and a Star Wars toy somewhere (depths of the basement acceptable).

So I got up on Saturday; there was some Fierce Weather predicted. My plan was the following: Knit for a while, work from my Power Point book for a while, work on my presentation (which will be given next Tuesday) for a while. Then, pack up the knitting and go to #2 Son's house, where I get to visit with him and his son while said son visits HIM. Well....that was not the way the day fell out. I spent the morning listening to music on the on-line personal radio station Pandora . You put in the group you like and it continuously plays that group and lots of other groups like it! It's pretty cool. Then I heard from the #2 Son, who said that his son wasn't coming to visit, as he was under the weather. And by THEN, the weather he was under was a very healthy snow. As the afternoon wore on, it became very windy, and then began sleeting. That's where it looks like it's snowing but you can hear it hit the windows. What that MEANS is that Mother Nature is applying a layer of ice on top of the snow. That's the point at which the TV reporter says "Dale-Harriet, fergetaboutit, the police, sheriff and FBI are recommending that you sit on your ass remain indoors." Well - that's not true. I mean, the recommendation is true, but he didn't really tell me personally. Nevermind.

However. What I DID (refer to list of intentions up a few lines) was curl up on the sofa with my lovely feline bunwarmer tucked up behind and knit and watch TV and read blogs. But there was a discussion about lovely yarns, so I thought MY pet skein might like to come out of his sealed moth-free package to spend the day with the family.

Meet Dov. ("Dov" is Hebrew for "bear".) Dov is a skein of Alpaca yarn in slightly variegated shades of brown (he's undyed). He's 820 yards of Peruvian Tweed, and while I bought him (in Colorado) with the intention of maybe knitting something -- he's so soft, so beautiful, so entirely luxurious that I decided to keep him as a pet. This is where he took a nap in the kitty pi, as neither cat was using it.



Later on he came up and curled up to sleep on the cushion. He's actually an exceptionally nice Skein, and while he's as soft and snuggly as the kitties, he has no appetite and he doesn't poop uhm.... poo need a litter box. Frankly, I think he's a bit highbrow and elegant for me; he's clearly fancier than a toque. However, he has confided in me that he prowled around the house one day when we were at the Museum, and he noticed that I have some books on knitted lace....and that it has always been his dream, since he was on the back of his animal 16,000 feet up in Peru (says so right on his tag) that he'd love to be a lace shawl. And you know, some day he will.

Today I've also spent indoors. I cannot tell a lie: I fell into a rereading of "The Golden Compass" and you know how that is -- I was reading while I had breakfast. Now it's suppertime....uhm...well, Mr Dearling's coming home tomorrow. I still have some time to tidy up some, and I can work on my program after that and tomorrow. The Power Point book? It'll keep. Now, where's that toque?