I hid some Easter eggs in obvious places on the ground for Syd.
She didn’t get it.
She kept looking at me like, “What am I supposed to do with these? You know I don’t have thumbs, right?”


Then, I hid them in the dining room. These were going to be harder because as you can see, these eggs are camouflaged.


Then, she ate the treat out of this one, but kept pushing the egg around….just in case.


…gotta love her!

TH is a little bit high maintenance. But the easy part of being married to him is that he’s predictable and asks for exactly what he wants, so, when he asked for a cake from the local grocery store with extra icing for his birthday, that’s what he got.

I attempted to call the grocery store Friday morning, but their phone line was busy…..forever! I had flashbacks of trying to register for college courses and hitting redial for half an hour and eventually gave up.

That evening, I entered the grocery store and patiently waited as two twenty-somethings ordered a purple and gold cake for their grandmother’s “21st” birthday.
When it was my turn, I held out the white cake with buttercream frosting I’d selected and asked if she could just draw a box with icing in the middle and fill the middle in with icing because the birthday boy wanted extra icing. She looked at me as if I had a contagious disease and said, “you want me to just add icing? I don’t know if I can do that. We normally just write the name on them. I might have to charge you extra.” I said that was fine and she took the cake and went off to ask.
At this point, another lady walked up and asked if I’d been helped. I said, “Yes, but she had to go ask a question because my request was out of the norm.” Then we had a lovely chat about how her daughter was having a birthday and she was picking up the cakes but the party was delayed because the birthday girl had broken her arm in a high school softball game. Oh my!

The baker came back with my cake and there was a blank box in the middle of the extra icing. Um, what to do with a blank box….hmmm. I really kind of want his name on it now, errrr, there just might be a reason TH and I are together, cause I’m not what you’d call low maintenance…but I really want to fill in the blank space. Since, I’d already had one turn at the baker and was in no hurry, I took the cake and stepped aside while Broken Arm Birthday Girls’s mom picked up her cake and cookie cake. We joked about how surely cake would make the Birthday girl feel better and off she went.

I said to the baker, “I’m really sorry, but do you mind writing his name on the cake in this blank box?” and she said, “just his name??” like she really expected me to respond, “You know what you’re right, can you please write, ‘Honey, you are the greatest huband in the whole world and I hope you have a wonderful birthday, Love, Pookie'” But, instead I responded, “yes, please, just his name.” She wrote his name and handed me the cake. I asked her name and she told me it was Kay and I said, “Thank you so much, Kay.” And at this point, she finally cracked a smile and said “You’re welcome.” I might be high maintenence, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be nice about it.


The important thing is not how a cake looks, but how much icing it has!

TH decided he wanted to spend his birthday building me a garden box and helping me plant herbs and veggies….and installing some track lighting in the house and THAT ladies and gentlemen is why I am willing to make an arse of myself at the bakery!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TH! You’re the best! :)

The goal of the Iknitarod is to pick a project and start with the Iditarod racers and finish before the last musher crosses the finish line (and the red lantern is awarded). Iknitarod racers could also opt to pick several incomplete projects and complete those as long as they felt sufficiently challenged.
I cast on February 27. Since the Iditarod started ceremonially on Saturday, March 3 and for real on March 4, this might seem like I jumped the gun a little bit, but since the first blanket took 31 days, I managed to start early and still feel challenged.

Other things that help me sleep at night include the fact that I spent my Friday night knitting time knitting and then unknitting the same rows. I had pretty much just finished the border by Saturday morning. It seems that when doing a second blanket that is identical to the first one, you should still check the pattern regularly and not assume you have it memorized. We all know where that will get you. Ahem, it will get you some unknitting practice anyway.
Saturday (March 3), I knitted and watched TV/movies (London Blvd, the Prince & Me 4 [which was surprisingly better than the Prince & Me 3]) and was THIS far along by the evening.


Sunday (March 4), I knitted and watched more TV/movies (TH wasn’t feeling that great so I watched BCG, Once Upon a Time, Real Steel[which I recommend] and From Prada to Nada [which was cute]).


Monday (March 5), it looks like Lance M. is picking up speed and Aliy is in the top 5.
Aliy gets to number 4. I knitted Monday night during The Bachelor and more Once Upon a Time. I’m starting to pull for Aliy to win!
Two rows of Scotties done!

Tuesday (March 6), I’m about to start the third Scottie row and Aliy is number one followed by Kelley Griffin and Jeff King.
Mid-way through the day, it looks like Lance, John, then Aliy.
That night, it was Aliy, John Baker, Lance, Hugh Neff, and Ray Redington, jr.
Finished another row of scotties that night.

Wednesday (March 7), knitted during the hockey game and made quite a bit of progress.


Thursday (March 8). During the Iditarod, there is a mandatory 24 hour break, so I elected to take a 24 hour break myself to keep with the spirit of the thing.

Friday (March 9), the Leaf was getting a software update, so I did some knitting at the Nissan dealership in town. At this point, I was getting a little nervous, so I looked up some details and the fastest Iditarod was almost 9 days. That seemed a little soon until I recalled that I had until the red lantern was awarded (last musher crossed the finish line) to knit.


…and so it went until Tuesday (March 13). Aliy was trailing Dallas Seavey by about an hour and it looked like he’d win late that night unless something untoward happened. As soon as I got home, I knit like the wind for a while and then got ready to watch the finish.
As I opened the web feed up on my reliable PC, it black screened.
Now, let’s be clear. TH’s PC misbehaves. He upgrades hardware and he changes out things and he asks a lot of his PC. He’s a hardcore gamer. I do things like blog and tweet. As long as I don’t get a virus, I expect mine to work or at least not die when it is MOST inconvenient.
I rebooted it……pulling up the feed and…..black screen.
Imagine profanity here.
TH was busy gaming with folks online and I didn’t want to seem like the crazy high-strung person that I am (even though I’m fairly certain he might know), so I shrugged my shoulders and went in the other room to just cast off and resigned to check twitter later. But, genius that he is, given that I’d been slightly obsessed for almost two weeks, from the depths of the Blizzard ‘verse, he said, “why don’t you just go get my laptop and watch the finish?” Genius! THAT kind of problem solving is why I married him! (Yes, I should have thought of it, but I was too busy being disappointed to think).

So, I set the laptop up on the bed where I could see and began to cast off as I was waiting for Dallas to get to Nome. The world was in perfect harmony! It turned out that I was a little bit excited as my first cast off was seriously tight, so I ripped it out and as I was casting off for the second time, Dallas Seavey won the Iditarod 2012. It was sooo exciting to watch him cross the finish line. Having not watched this before, I was struck by how few people were at the finish line, but then I realized they might stand in the cold for 3 hours and only see 3 people cross the finish line this year. Dallas thanked and congratulated his dogs and then my feed died, so I didn’t get to see Aliy come in second, but I took it as a sign from the universe that it was time for me to hit the hay and went to bed gleefully.

….and so each twin has a blanket – completed before their arrival and I am MORE than a little pleased with myself.

Ps. Happy Birthday, Grandma!