40 bags in 40 days - days 1,2,3

day 1 - cleaned out my bookshelves.  these books are destined for my local library:




bags 2 and 3, i did in one evening:



i cleaned out my underpinnings drawers.  i had a ton of vickie secret unders - i haven't had a "body by victoria" since before i pupped the boy.  if it had an underwire or a rib, it got pitched.  if the crotch was bleached (don't ask), it went.  i had a bunch of "crunchy" nylon grannie panties (i wore them when i was pregnant cos they covered my bump) that probably could have walked to the garbage can by themselves.

i also found 2 baggies of lavender, a small hairbrush for petunia to play with, and several bars of soap that long lost their scent.  that left me with near empty drawers full of unders that i actually wear.

i know i'm a bit behind - i'm sick with a cold and sinus infection and sore throat - but it's a start.  


ETA:  i had a **4th** bag of stuff i got rid of.  i cleaned out my hair care basket and beauty shelves and tossed a bunch of shampoos and hair care products i didn't use anymore.  there was shampoo i didn't like becos it made my head itchy - why keep it?  i also tossed pricey "self curling" shampoo and mousse - purchased becos i thought it would make my hair more curly - but all it did was make my hair feel gross. toss, toss toss!  i forgot to take a picture (the bottles were in my garbage can upstairs).  they're at their final resting place now - the curb!

so that makes me only 2 days behind.  ah well...i'll catch up.  there's tons in my house to toss and purge!

women's fashion magazines piss me off

one of my parenting magazines went defunct a while back, and instead of refunding my money, it transferred me to allure to finish off the subscription.

many moons ago, when i was a fashionista and not yet a SAHM, i used to get this magazine and devour it every month.  i loved the make up and hair tips and reading about the celebrity of the month.  after i had the boy, i became less interested in fashion and makeup, and i let the subscription run out.  at that point the fashions pissed me off (who could afford a $500 pair of shoes?), the "forced weight loss" section annoyed the hell out of me (a couple of women would take the weight loss challenge and lose weight by eating rabbit food and exercising for hours on end - they never gave updates a year after they weren't featured in the magazine anymore!)

i can't wait for this subscription to end.  i could scream when it slips through the mail slot.  the clothes are ugly and expensive.  i can't afford the makeup they recommend.  i don't even know half of the celebrities they feature - they are mostly vapid, bitchy twits.  i.  can.  not.  relate.  to.  this.  world.  anymore.


the last issue had a dress that cost $9000.  it was this ugly grey tattered thing.  all i could think was, for the price of that dress i could pay for braces for all of my kids. when i see a pair of shoes that cost $1000, i think, that pair of shoes equals 2 mortgage payments.  i wonder how many people look at the price of something and calculate what they could buy instead?  i'm sure i'm not the only one who does this.

allure is probably the only magazine that i read under an hour, and it promptly gets pitched into the recycling basket.

magazine hoarder

i love to read magazines.  i usually cram one in my purse when i go to the doctor's (next to my knitting of course).  my magazine subscription list is atrocious.  however, since i don't have a lot of time to read much anymore (wonder why?), my  interests have changed over the years, and the fact that magazines are expensive, i have dropped a lot of subscriptions.

over the past couple of years i started hoarding them.  i didn't do it on purpose.  it just sort of happened.

whenever i get a magazine, i skim it, maybe pull a recipe/craft/pattern/article that i really like, then add it to my stack.  initially, my magazines fit into a 12X12 basket.  then they grew into a 12X24 basket.  then i started piling the "weeklies" on top of the basket.  then the weeklies grew a foot tall.

when we renovated the living room a couple years ago, the basket went upstairs to my bathroom, and i kept a small basket of current magazines downstairs.  every couple of months i'd clean out the magazines, sending older ones upstairs and rearranging the ones upstairs.  pretty soon i had a stack of magazines on top of the basket upstairs.  then i had to split the stack in two.  the basket and the stack grew as tall as the bathroom sink (which is probably 3 feet tall).  downstairs, the basket turned into a leather lidded hassock, and i had 2 stacks of magazines, probably 18 inches deep.  the hassock also had a couple of books tucked in around the edges to prop the magazines up.

not long ago, while sitting in the tub (the only place in the house where i do read the magazines in peace), i looked at that pile and basket of magazines and felt sick.  i cleaned it out a few months prior and found magazines that were over 2 years old.  there were magazines that were either defunct or discontinued.  for some insane reason, i thought i could read (or realistically, skim) a magazine a night and then recycle it or give it to mom.  but i neglected to remember that sometimes i read books during my bath, and some nights i don't get to read at all.  and the magazines continued to stack up.


so last week, i started cleaning out the stacks.  the only magazines i kept were martha's (which i collect, Bob knows why), some old (and now defunct)  cookie and blueprint magazines, a handful a piece of inStyle and real simple (both canceled) and a couple of organic health magazines that i still wanted to read.  the stack shrank by a couple of feet!

the magazines i pitched:  parents and parenting magazines, a ton of women's days, family circle and good housekeepings, and the organic health magazines i wasn't interested in.  i took piles of magazines and pitched them out the big bathroom window, out into the back yard.  then i went and collected them and piled them into an old wine box.  let me tell you, that box was stuffed to the gills and heavy as heck.

now i look at that space where the magazines were, and i feel a lot lighter and freer.


i got to thinking about why i had so many damn magazines.  a lot of issues were a couple years old.  i had magazines older than my miscarriage.  was that why i held onto them so long?  why was i so afraid to throw them away?  they were just stupid pages bound together.  i figured i'd already culled what good things i wanted from them.  i was so sick of looking at them, and it was definitely time for them to go.

i'm trying a new magazine reading rule.  once i get a magazine, i try to skim/read it within a few days of receiving it, tearing out things that interest me, then either recycle it or pass it on to my mom.  so far, it's been working!

hunkering down, knitter's style

we're looking at our second big snow of the week.  i was digging around my knitting books and found some forgotten gems, and pulled them out to read.  one was a christmas stockings book, and i want to knit stockings for the kiddos for next christmas.  i also dug up yarn for a future project.  i guess this is what "nesting" is to a knitter.

there's a good chance tomorrow will be a snow day.  if that's the case, hubby and the boy will be around.  instead of planning a lazy day of doing nothing (except making soup in the crock-pot - curried yellow split pea soup - and making an pineapple upside down cake, which i think i'm delusional with this one, considering the only baking i do is from a mix) i'm actually going to try to tackle the attic.  that colossus has been haunting me for months, and it's the first time since the holidays i can actually do something about it.  well, i think the least that will get done is moving around the stuff i dislodged during the holidays, and putting back all the crap i moved around.  at the most, hopefully tidying up the side with the kids' clothes, maybe bringing down the boy's old baby toys to sort what the babies can use, and purging old magazines.  i have a couple of boxes of in styles, real simples and martha's, and they all go except for martha.  and this is a biggie - i'm thinking of getting rid of a box of old letters.  not love letters, but letters from old college friends whom i haven't talked to since graduation.  there's nothing bad in there, they're not holding me back, and they don't take up much space - the box is an old copy paper box.  but i don't need them anymore, and like the magazines i plan to recycle, they are best disposed of and taken to their new home, the landfill outside allenwood.  it's time to move on with the future, and let go of the past.

i actually started knitting something different!   this awesome knitted dishcloth, in the shape of a heart (who knew?) that i saw on a blog recently.  my wrists and arms ache from knitting cotton, but i'm having fun with it.  it's a simple quickie knit, which is a nice respite from the slogging i'm doing with the swirl shawl, and i'm holding off on pixie's sock monkey becos i can finish it as a WIP for ravelympics.  i guess this is what constitutes as training for ravelympics, which starts friday!

i'm planning something in the coming weeks.  it's a big thing for me - i'm having fun with it.  i hope people enjoy it.  just watch this space...the details are coming in the near future.

the purge, ravelry edition

i belonged to 88 groups on ravelry.  now that number is 52.  wow.

half of the groups i belonged to was in name only.  i thought it wasn't fair to be a member and not participate.  so long, i love my ipod, only child and TCM.

there were a bunch of groups that i initially participated in when i first joined them, but my interests or schedule changed, and i no longer visit them.  bye bye, charity knitting, prayer shawls and babycakes.

some groups were defunct by nature.  that would be you, eastwick and the forgotten.

and quite possibly the biggest shocker of all, i left my main group, HAPL.  this was the hardest one to leave.

i joined in june 2008, after losing ani.  the group gave me comfort and support as i processed my loss, my anxiety with TTC, getting pregnant and carrying the twins, then caring for them in the months afterward.  i can't remember how many were in the group when i joined, but as of today, there were 188 women.  that's a lot of heartache and loss.

over the past few weeks, however, i felt like i didn't fit into the group anymore.  the majority of women who had losses around the time of mine now had babies of their own and were busy with their own lives.  there were a lot of new faces in recent months.  there are several women who struggle with TTC and i feel alienated from them as i will never know the pain of infertility and TTC for several years, and not months in my case.  i have no idear what it's like to have a D&C, or an overdue miscarriage, or to have multiple losses, one after another.  i felt disconnected from the new mom's thread as other moms discussed breast feeding, cloth diapering and other things attachment parents do that i just can't relate to.  i'm sure even my ravatars, which featured the twins often, probably made others uncomfortable.

so i took a deep breath, sighed and clicked on the leave this group button.  HAPL served me well during my hard time.  i pray that some of my experience helped another grieving woman.


this has been a rather shitty week.  i'm working on week 4 of bronchitis/cold, the boy is working on week 6 of his respiratory infection, petunia has a runny nose and is fussy (i pray it's teething and not a cold), fredster has a cough and hubby is teetering on the brink of getting sick.  we're exhausted, i feel depressed and cold, and i really wish we were moving into march and not february.  the good thing is, we are heading into february, it is a quick month, and hopefully soon it will be spring and we can be outdoors more.



ravelympics starts in 2 weeks.  i need to get my yarn at the ready, the patterns sorted, the projects planned.  i'm making preemie caps for the NICU at GMC, sort of a thank you for taking care of my little ones when they were born.  if i'm lucky, i can also finish petunia's sock monkey (a WIP) and maybe even the baby monkey, which was to be a gift for nudge, but maybe intended for someone else.

my swirl shawl goes slowly.  it's a tricky process.

holiday redux

my self imposed internet exile went okay.  i went from wednesday until sunday without logging onto my computer, and went until saturday without looking up something on my ipod touch.  of course, i spent gobs of hours last night fixing up my blog, trying to figure out how to put progress bars up and to show flickr pictures, so i might have undone all the good i did over the weekend.  but now my blog is pretty much how i want it, so i'm going to let it settle for a while.

this was quite possibly one of the best thanksgiving holidays we had in a very long time.  we spent the day just by ourselves, no family (except for obligatory phone calls).  it was almost like a saturday to us.  we didn't have a traditional meal, we made hot sausage and peppers in the crock pot.  we barely ate.  hubby had ulcers through his mouth from being sick, and i still had no appetite.  i think we were the only people in america who didn't gorge themselves.

i cleaned out a storage cupboard in the boy's room.  it held christmas tchotches and odd holiday things.  there were a lot of things in there accumulated over the past 10 years.  some stuff (like a nativity set we got when we got married) got relegated to the attic.  some sitaround stuff got sent to the yard sale box.  some stuff i found hadn't seen the light of day since before the boy was born.  i used to have all kinds of christmas things around the house, but after he was born we lost a lot of surface areas, plus added new things i'd acquired over the years.  it was so much.  it felt so good cleaning out the cupboard.  we inadvertently cleaned the cellar that evening.  we brought up the christmas tree and decorations, and i reorganized my fall decorations (basically put them in one shelf unit), and started a pile of yard sale things.  it's amazing what accumulates over 10 years!

on friday we stayed home most of the day.  i used to do black friday sales when i was younger, but i refuse to get in that mess again.  we ate out with my folks and grandmother at country cupboard, where my eyes were bigger than my stomach.  baked macaroni, baked corn, pumpkin pie...i love traditional thanksgiving dinner.  i just hate cooking it.

i spent the afternoon and evening decorating the tree.  we got a smaller tree last year.  that tree forced me to not use all of my ornaments, so i pick and choose what goes on.  i have a lot of old ornaments that belonged to grams, ones that i picked up at sales, the german glass ones, my snoopy ornaments.  i was really prudent this year - i could/should have added more, but didn't, and the bottom of the tree looks bare (i put the glass and breakables on the top of the tree, with the snoopy ones and unbreakables towards the bottom).  oh well.  it'll take less time to undecorate in january.

i got new storage boxes for the glass ornaments.  i had some rubbermaid containers that were canvas, and one ripped last year and some ornaments fell out - fortunately the only casualty was a snoopy canoe one (now fixed).  these new containers will take less space, and also keep the ornaments dry and safe in case our cellar takes on water.   hubby hung the outside lights, and i put new candles in the windows.  these candles have timers, so we don't have to run around the house anymore unplugging them or setting up many timers to set them on and off.  i love when decorating gets easier.

the boy and i also worked on a school project - decorate a paper tree with your family.  we used my glitter and glue, and i crocheted a chain of gold yarn for garland, and made a tree skirt with short rows (like our real one).  the boy drew pictures and colored them, and also stuck stickers on it.  i also found cute sequins and glued them on.  we also made a figure of the boy, hanging a jingle bell, with his face cut out of an extra picture.

can i just say how much i love my glitter and glue?  it's a PITA to do and clean up, but glitter just rocks.  i'm trying to think about how i can GG some stuff for xmas.

also, i got the tree skirt finally finished!  well, i have 8 flowers to knit, assemble and sew to the skirt.  then it's done!  if you hear angels singing the "alleluia" chorus, it's becos i finally finished the bloody skirt.

i can't say how great it felt to be just the 5 of us this weekend, without family influence.  every year we spend t-day with hubby's family down south.  this year we bagged it.  it felt so good not to be sucked into everyone's drama.  it's actually quite depressing.  for once, our family had a pretty good year.  it feels good to feel good again.  i just can't take misery right now.

MIL has 2 more chemo treatments, one is this week, and the other will either be right before xmas or the week between xmas and new year's.  hopefully she will be "cured" after her final treatment, so things will maybe go back to (new) normal.


well, i have 8 flowers to knit.  and some decorations to sort and put away.  they won't do it themselves.

knits from the past

i am finally cleaning the attic.  i needed a saint bernard to guide me through the colossal mess.  it took me a good 2 hours just to move tubs and boxes around to areas where they belong.  i have my work cut out for me.  the last time it got a good cleaning was 4 years ago when we did a purge.  but there are also 4 years worth of the boy's clothes, toys, and junk in general.  i need a day to sort the boy's tubs (cos i know the clothes aren't in the tubs with correct sizes), organize the toys so i know where they are when the twins are old enough to play with them, sort through hubby's and my clothes to ready for yard sale, and sort all the general stuff - gift wrap supplies, knick knacks, etc.  i'm in a purge mood.  i feel ruthless.  there is stuff up there i know i don't want.  i have back issues of martha, real simple and inStyle and all except martha are getting recycled.  that will eliminate several boxes.  i found snoopy paper towels up there.  why hold onto them when they can be used?  i have dishes and things that i moved out of the china cupboard last year - seriously, i don't plan on serving tea or having parties any time soon, so i'd rather get a couple bucks for the stuff than let it clutter the attic.

after i'm done with the attic, the cellar gets it next.  that area isn't too bad but there's stuff that i want to sell.  and i want hubby to clean out an area of the garage so i can move the "yard sale" stuff there and get it out of the house.  i also need to clean out the mud room.  there's crap out there that i should just plain get rid of.

i found the box that held my old cabbage patch clothes.  i was looking for my old baby hair brush/comb set for the babies.  i didn't find them, but i did find these little gems:


this little pink hat.  i have no idear who crocheted it for me.  prolly my nana.  i know my mom has pictures of me wearing it.



a little red scarf.  i don't know who knit it.  i don't think i did when i was little.  i can't believe that i would have knitted a scarf and not remembered it!  i think it was for my cabbage patch doll.



one lone mitten.  i think i remember wearing these as a kid.  it looked handknit.  i looked high and low for the other one, but couldn't find it.



a little crocheted barbie hat.  my nana made this for me.  it was for a doll that also wore a crocheted cheerleader dress.  i'll have to find the doll.  it's prolly with my barbies.



i also found some cute baby outfits that used to be mine.  a little yellow jammie set with an embroidered flower, a little shortie set, a cute pinafore.  i'm going to wash them, hopefully the pixie can wear them.  it was neat finding little pieces of my past.

i finished monkey ear's blanket:

also finished my MIL's prayer shawl.  she seems to like it.  she complains about being cold.  not the greatest picture to show it off.  i look incredibly sad.  more likely sleep deprived.



the pixie's blanket is almost finished.  and i started a new pumpkin hat.  i liked the yarn i was using - dale of norway - but it was too scratchy for a delicate head.  so i got horror of horrors red heart collage.  it's much softer, and i like the rusty orangy-brown blend.  but the price of acrylic yarn!  freaking a!  i'll never complain again the cost of good yarn.  nearly bloody $5 for a ball of acrylic shite.

it's bottle time.  i have to make up 8 bottles.  and i have headache, so i better eat something.