The Girl is Crafty Like Ice is Cold

Reading: The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. Yes, still. This is a fabulous book if you want to learn every single detail of the life of BFrank. It's not a general overview. Whew. So it's long and sometimes tedious. I'm thisclose to the Boston Tea Party episode though so I can't put it down now! I need to finish it though so I can move on with my life... my pile of books to read and reread (Gone With the Wind!!) is just getting larger.

Coffee Intake: One cup a day! And by one cup I mean one single little scoop of grounds. Go Casey! Go Casey! I think it would be fairly easy at this point to drop that cup, but I enjoy it so much that for now I'm keeping it. At one cup a day I wake up feeling great rather than like I'm going to die if I don't get coffee. Although... that could also be due to the fact that I've been sleeping more than our cats lately.

Sleeping: a lot. A ton. A plethora. I'm not sure what happened but I've been falling asleep between 7 and 8 every night. Not that I was staying up late before... but man, I've been pulling a Jimmers (my dad) and falling asleep while tucking in C (like he used to do to me) OR coming out of a kid's room from tucking-in, turning on The Twilight Zone, and falling asleep on the couch 2 minutes later. Oh well, at least I'm still getting up early. Lots of people need 10 hours of sleep... like cats... and teenagers.

Crafting: Why, yes, I have been. Thanks for asking. I miraculously finished this:

I think I'm going to rip out the date and put it smaller in the corner. It takes away from the family. And hey, what's a cross-stitch without 50 million rip-outs and redos, right? In case you can't tell, it's our fam. From left to right: Max (or a rapid racoon?), Chris, Carolena (holding her lovies Whoppie and Howie behind her back), Nils with his "night-night" blankie and a dead racoon "King Julian," and moi with a cup of coffee and a book about polar exploration (in theory the white stitches on the book are a Compass Rose with bigger N/S arrows... in reality it's just a blob), and of course, Lieutenant Square Body, the fiesty Olive herself (with a purple calm collar on) rounds us out on the right.

I love it. If you want me to make one for your family I'm charging $400,000 due to the cost of labor. Man, cross-stitches would really be a breeze if it weren't for all of the "that looks weird" and ripping out and restitching.

I also pulled out my sewing machine yesterday and made a dress for Carolena. I used an old pattern that I tweaked (look at me, tweaking a pattern!). She LOVES it and when she tried it on yesterday so I could mark where to cut and hem she insisted that she wants it "looonnng" - so it looks like we're going long. Still needs to be cut and hemmed though.

et cetera: Yesterday I taught my son to wipe his nose on his sleeves. Yes, on purpose. It just breaks my heart to see Nils sitting there with a runny nose and he's snot going to get up and go get a Kleenex. So that's a habit I'll have to break later but for now his life will be all that much better. Tonight is Kinder-Expo at school! What?! I'm excited. C is just starting to show signs of restlessness at home. I think by the end of the summer she'll be jumping out of her skin to start kinder. I've got a date on the calendar to go to the beach with my mom and sister (woo!) and I'm feeling footloose and fancy free. I'm dying to see the new Christian Bale movie (*sigh*) so I need to either go next week or find someone (cough cough) to meet me halfway. Yesterday Nils pointed to the sky and yelled, "Bird!" but I heard "Batman!" and was about to put on some fresh lipstick in case it was Christian Bale. Unfortunately, it was a bird.