Never Say Never

For Thanksgiving we went down south to visit some family. Living in San Francisco has many perks, but unlimited parking and proximity to chain shopping stores are not two of them so I've been making up for that down here. While I'm staying in on Black Friday (as well as on Thanksgiving), I did get some shopping in earlier on in the week.

At Target I saw boys' long-sleeved T-shirts on sale, three for $18 so I stocked up for Not-a-Bub. After I got home, cut the tags and threw the shirts into the washer, I checked the receipt and realized that they charged me $7 each instead of $6. Why does Target do that? This isn't the first time it's happened where there's a discrepancy between what I'm charged and what was advertised. But it's only $3 and gas being as expensive as it is, it doesn't seem worthwhile to go out of my way to haggle. It does make me want to stop shopping at Target though.

In the picture above you should see, clockwise from top: a ski helmet, a make-your-own headbands kit, two pairs of kids' ski gloves, girl's lined Crocs, women's Hunter rain boots, big boy's leather loafers, and Hello Kitty rain boots. On Wednesday I hit Nordstrom Rack, Michael's and Costco. The ski stuff was from Costco; I don't actually like to ski but we go skiing all the time because Not-a-Bub loves skiing (so skiing we go). I'm not at the point where I feel comfortable buying my own skis or boots, but seeing as the helmet rental is extra and I'm the type of person who worries about head lice, buying my own helmet to use for an unforeseen number of future ski trips seemed like a good idea. Not-a-Bub lost his ski mittens last ski trip, so he needed another pair, and honestly, it doesn't seem like a bad idea to have extras.

Actually, the Hello Kitty rain boots were from Costco too. They were the last pair and what do you know, in Princess' size as well. Serendipity. The added bonus was that they cost less than a pair I was eyeing at Nordstrom Rack.

Which brings me to Nordstrom Rack. Everything else (but the headband kit, which is obviously from Michael's) was bought there. On Monday at the Santa Ana Mall Princess stopped at the Crocs store, gazing lovingly at the plastic, multi-colored shoes. The rest of us were bemused but she really seemed entranced. At Nordstrom Rack she really wanted a pair of sequined shearling boots, but she has so many pairs in different sizes at home waiting for her I couldn't justify them. These, however, I could. Not-a-Bub found the loafers on clearance and apparently, the style agreed with him. I made him promise to wear them with jeans and not with sweatpants or shorts (he would do that too), and that brings me to my new rain boots.

When I lived in Southern California I swore I would never buy Uggs or rain boots (let alone the name brand Hunter ones that are prevalent in this area). After we moved to San Francisco, I spent my first winter with cold, sore feet due to the shoes I had been wearing--mesh-paneled Merrells for hiking. Perfectly fine for Southern California most winter days, not so much in the Bay Area with its wind and damp cold. When it rains up there, I still have to walk one to six miles in a day so I find myself wishing I had rain boots. A few months ago I caved and bought Uggs as well as a few pairs of the fake Costco Uggs (the Costco ones are predictably plain; the Uggs I bought are "fancy"). And now I've also bought rain boots. My only saving grace is that at least both were bought on sale at Nordstrom Rack. So never say never, you just never know.

On Wednesday night, we began festivities early.

I also got a treat for the kids on Tuesday:

Coconut! Not-a-Bub has been dying to have a fresh coconut and they were on sale at Mother's Market, so we cracked some open, drank the water and ate the meat. Between all of that and catching up with friends and going to the Science Discovery Cube, it's been a very nice Thanksgiving.

Daylight Savings

I am not a fan of daylight savings. Let me preface that by explaining that I had no big problem with daylight savings (aside from having to wake up an hour earlier one day each spring) until I had children. Then it made a much larger impact on my life.

When the kids were babies, it was always so shocking, such a jar to have to switch an hour forward or back. It messed up their nap schedules. It ruined their bed times. Now that they're older, without naps, it's a little bit different.

A few weeks ago when Daylight Savings ended, I gratefully looked forward to sleeping in for one hour. One extra hour to sleep. Priceless. Unfortunately, I forgot to take into account the kids, who do not run on alarm clocks but the position of the sun coming in through their blinds.

What happened was this: they woke up at the same time they had been, in effect, one hour earlier. Then, they were cranky all day, because they were tired. When I started trying to put them to bed earlier, I couldn't be certain I was helping them catch up on sleep, or reinforcing their new pattern of early wakefulness. All I knew was that days full of whining and fighting had to end.

It's been a few weeks now. I think they've finally adjusted. But let me reiterate: I am not a fan of daylight savings.

Eureka! (A new world has started)

We've started Princess on Explode the Code (phonics), which I never did with Bub, but Princess seems more hesitant to read. Rather, if she's not sure, she won't put forth even a guess, without a lot of tooth-pulling. And a lot of the time her guesses are correct, she just doesn't want to seem wrong I guess. But I digress. I think she needs to feel stronger about reading, so we're doing more remedial stuff. Thus, phonics. But it seemed like such a colossal waste for her to cross out things on such simple sheets, I put the workbook sheets in page protectors.

Which leads me to my Eureka! moment this morning: I'm now putting all of our handwriting worksheets in page protector sheets. I suppose at this point I should be creating a link to such office supplies so that if you wanted to buy, you could just click on it and I could get a cut or whatever it is bloggers are doing nowadays. But let me continue. Bub has had atrocious handwriting for years, only improving in the past few months. We've been on Getty-Dubay's Handwriting Book B for maybe two years. I'd been photo copying the worksheets out of the book I bought for him because he'd have to keep doing them over again, but just sliding the handwriting sheets into page protectors for him to use dry erase markers would save so much paper! I'm sure there are more put-together homeschooling parents who had this epiphany much earlier, but mine was now and I thought I'd share. 

It's like that song from Disney's Aladdin: A Whole New World! (I'm not a fan of Disney, but the seemed apropos.)

'Tis the season to go shopping

The Man (from hereafter, I plan on calling my husband The Man; aside from the fact that he is, indeed, a man, he is also the witness to many of my rants so it seems fitting) found out when his work holiday party would be this year. Assuming we can find a sitter, we'll be going. Which brings a host of problems for me. The problems are called dress and shoes.

The Man bought a dress for me many years ago, from MaxStudio. It's a white slip dress, with a diaphanous, beaded black over-layer. All silk. It trails the ground. It requires a special bra. And high heels. Very impractical. But he loves it. I thought I would wear it to this year's holiday party. Until I got some of the details. The location is in the East Bay. So we'd be taking MUNI into downtown, and then taking a shuttle to the destination. And of course, the reverse to get home. So probably not a silk dress that trails the ground. Because aside from ruining the dress and possibly getting mugged, even wearing my full-length wool coat, I'd probably be cold. And that's just the dress, what about the shoes?

I find almost all shoes uncomfortable; I seem to be happiest in my unfashionable Birkenstocks and hand-knit wool socks--my feet are happiest that way, at least. Unfortunately for me, Birkenstocks and formal dresses do not go together. The last time I bought a dress was several (maybe three or four?) years ago; it was a grey, cowl-neck, sleeveless cocktail dress by Kenneth Cole that had a panel of ruching down the front and back. Is ruching still in?

What I still see are peplums. I am not a peplum person. At this point I'm starting to suspect that fashion is all a big game that tastemakers play to convince the general public to buy ugly clothes: "This is the height of fashion, this is what's in right now!" So at this point, I feel that my choices are to either wear something that I like that is horribly out of fashion, or buy something new that will be marginally more fashionable but overpriced and ridiculous. And either way, I'll still be cold and my feet will hurt.

Recent projects

A few things I've been working on the past couple of weeks:

Now that I've knit myself Christmas socks, I thought I might knit Itty Bitty a pair too, since she expressed interest and I had enough yardage for knee highs for her. I think they'll look really cute peeking out of her shearling boots. These were knit in KnitPicks' Felici in Jingle; standard toe, 2x2 ribbing and a short-row heel.

This one is for me:

Awhile ago I was gifted with some Fleece Artist BFL sock (which I'd been longing to try), in the Rose Garden colorway. This sock is knit toe-up with a short-row toe, and reinforced Riverbed architecture (Riverbed architecture is from Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters, Book One; the reinforced part is my own creation). The ribbing is the Baby Cable Rib from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks.

And most recently from yesterday:

I made some stitch markers out of Swarovski beads, tiger tail and crimp beads. They would have been prettier if I had a crimping tool (I just used chain-nosed pliers). The one on the left is to keep track of four-row patterns (with the "pattern" row being the fourth row). The one on the right is to keep track of increases when I do more socks using the Riverbed architecture. I'd already made myself a set of three--row stitch markers awhile ago, but these were prettier and I was experimenting.