Sarah Jane Humke

I mailed off the Christmas cards today.  They were almost all 59 cents, which is the standard going rate for wedding invitations.  I think this is the divine raspberry in my face since I never mailed out any wedding invitations to our wedding since I wanted to elope.  Oh, and we had a grand total of 10 people at our wedding including us.  Invites were not big on my to-do list.  Anyway, so I was given the choice between the pastel love-y, wedding-y heart or a stamp with James Michener on it.  I think that you can guess which way this girl went.  The man was in a Hawaiian print shirt with a lei on it!  How perfect is that?!  Anyway, I had 4 international envelopes and 34 national ones that went on their merry way today.  I also mailed a package.  Tomorrow I will have 4 more to go out and then I am done with the packages.  Done I tell you!  Done!

I am not, however, done with the blue and white pain-in-my-ass that has been plaguing me for months now.  There is something wrong with this pattern, I don’t know what but the math is just not working out.  I need to sit down and graph it but there is just something that isn’t working.  So what do I do?  I keep trying to make it work.  This tendency helps to explain some of the relationships in my mid 20’s.  Actually, a lot of the relationships in my 20’s.  Anyway, I kind of like how it looks even though it is turning out a little bumpy due to the math, or perhaps due to the lack of it.  Who knows?!  Either way, I really wish that Anne Halliday could sit down and explain this bitch to me.  I would even start it yet again if I could get that….  

This is why I don’t follow patterns.

However, the other pattern that I have loaded in my crochet machine gun is going swimmingly.  I don’t mind patterns that are squares or, in this case, octagons.  Less math, I think, and the math on the last piece isn’t going to affect the rest of the darn afghan.

In other news, I am mostly done with the Christmas shopping.  Tomorrow I will be done with the shopping for Tech support.  I am getting him what I can think of and then to heck with the rest.  I mean, if he wanted something he can go and make an Amazon.com wish list like the rest of us normal folk!  Seriously, he even admits that he is seriously hard to shop for so I have pretty much given up.  Oh, and did I mention that his birthday is in a few days?!?!?  Seriously, he is so fucked on so many levels in the whole gift receiving department.  

So, I have been doing some seriously covert operations in the neighborhood in the past couple of weeks.  There are new people living across the road from me.  I haven’t actually seen them at this point, just cars going in and out, but I am pretty sure that they exist.  Because they leave boxes.  Lots of nice, clean, reasonably sized boxes.  Out by the curb.  2 nights a week.  I am like a cat drawn to empty boxes or maybe a 5 year old.  At the very least I am a 30 year old who is moving in a couple of months.I have gotten a LOT of boxes from them so far.  I’ve risked being run over by the crazy rednecks in my neighborhood or running into the bear (garbage nights are also bear nights [seriously, we have bears in the neighborhood and no I am not talking about “wash-bears” which is, I believe, the Dutch term for raccoons.  We have those too. No, these are nice North American Black Bears which are omnivores though in this area are mostly herbivores and garbivores.]).  What can I say, I live on the edge.  However, I probably have some new neighbors who think that people come and steal their garbage in the middle of the night in their new neighborhood.  And in a way, they are right.  But I’m not really stealing it per se, more like I am reusing it then I will recycle it or freecycle it (assuming that there is freecycle over there) and they will get reused yet again before getting recycled.  Either way, it is one big, green circle of cardboard love.  

The Hookers Do the Holidays was a blast.  I hope that we didn’t get Lily into too much trouble with her neighbors as we got pretty loud there.  Hey, Mango-mosas will do that to, well, us.  We all had a fun time.  There was WAY more food than we could have possibly eaten and the gift exchange got pretty heated.  Those are the best when people really get into them.  I got a very cool plastic yarn holder and some red and green yarn.

There is also a pattern that came along with it (scowl muttering under breath “fucking patterns…”).  Nothing against this pattern in particular which I am sure is a charming and lovely pattern.  I am just so…….off of patterns right now.  Maybe for the rest of my life.  I’ll let you know….

The blankets for the parents and in-laws are finished, washed, and in at least one case, packed.  The other is being mailed tomorrow.  I love Christmas once all the hard work is done…..