Chick with Sticks

I’m considering deleting this blog, unless you can talk me out of it. Or I will at least stop blogging as often. Lately it seems I will force myself to write something because I feel obligated to do so. It might just be a slump that will pass, or it might not. We’ll see.

Recent happenings, in bullet points:

• Jody was in his first car accident ever this past Sunday. Actually, it was the first that he has had to report. In past accidents he has been able to make arrangements without having the cops or insurance companies called. But this time he hit a rental car, in a parking lot. And, even though the other guy could have easily stopped to avoid the accident, he didn’t and technically it is Jody’s fault. And yes, we’re OK, again it was in a parking lot – we were backing out of a parking space and the other guy was pulling into the parking lot, so everyone was going really slow.
• I had to have two ultrasounds today! The non-pregnant kind, of course. One on my abdomen, and the other was…ahem, internal. And nothing was found, thankfully. But it was kind of weird because the technician was someone that I went to high school with. We weren’t really friends but I knew who she was, and I assume vice versa, and it’s just odd to have someone you kind of know poking around inside of you. Fun fact: Apparently my gall bladder is hard to find.
• In a psychology class in college I was taught that dreams consists of random thoughts that have gone through your mind recently. Your brain, in an attempt to put the thoughts together in a way that makes sense, will create a story out of all of the pieces, and we call this a dream.
  Well, yesterday I placed an order for Pampered Chef (cooking products), I spoke with my mom about the cabin in Tennessee, talked to someone about the Maps feature on my iPhone, and I watched a news story about Iran on TV. So…in my dream, I was at a cooking demonstration, apparently being performed by the Iranian government. I realized this when I was trying to find directions on my phone from the cooking demo to the cabin, and some guy next to me was giving me this serious “If you are caught not paying attention they will kill you” look. So I put my phone down and started paying attention.

I’ve been knitting a sleeveless top for myself for quite a while, and I finally finished it this morning!

Don’t pay attention to the strings hanging off of it, I still haven’t weaved in the ends.

I was so thrilled to finally finish it! Until I tried it on…. and it’s too big. It’s baggy on me, it looks like I’m wearing a blue potato sack.

You see, knitters are suppose to do this thing called “checking the gauge” which is a way to determine if the pattern needs to be adjusted so that the item will fit properly. Yeah…I don’t do that. And as a result, I spend weeks on a sweater that does not fit! But will I learn from this mistake? No, probably not.

Oh, well. It was fun to knit, at least. Maybe one day I will be able to wear it.

Per your request, here’s a picture of my brother, sans the long wavy hair.

There is a guy down the street from me that I sarcastically refer to as my favorite neighbor. At this point, the partying and loud noises are a weekly occurrence at his house. In fact, we were pretty sure that he went out of town last weekend for the 4th, but we decided to stay at Jody’s apartment that night just in case he decided to come back. He is known to get drunk and light fireworks on any random night, so I was sure that if he was home, I was not going to get any sleep. Better safe than sorry.

Well, Saturday night – beginning at about 8 or so – he started lighting fireworks. I walked down there at about 1am and asked him to stop, and I know my neighbor across the street asked him to stop, and possibly other neighbors as well. Cops were called by me and according to the woman at the police station, they have received several calls about him that night. Cops came, he stopped for a little while, but shot another one at about 3am (just one really loud firecracker, just enough to wake us up and piss us off!). Even after the fireworks ended I couldn’t sleep because he was riding up and down the road on a four wheeler and I was concerned about him trying to seek revenge for calling the cops by smashing my mailbox or doing something to the cars in my driveway – my neighbor across the street has had his mailbox vandalized before. So Saturday night I slept for about 2 hours, at most.  I had to induce a nap by taking NyQuil Sunday afternoon, after all of my errands for the day were completed.

He is so annoying. But what can we do besides call the cops!? We can’t kick him out of the neighborhood. I used to cut him some slack since he would usually quiet down by 11pm, but now I don’t care – if he makes a peep after 11pm (time the noise ordinance starts), the cops will be called.

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On a different note, my brother – the biker, with long flowing hair – has cut his hair off! I’m sorry I don’t have a decent picture of it yet. I didn’t think to take one last night. He really liked his hair long so I was surprised that he cut it, but he has been trying to find a job and felt that the hair may have been hurting his chances. So he had someone cut it off, and he is donating it to Locks of Love.