There is a word.

I do not use it often.

I don't believe my friend J invented it, but I do know that I first heard it from him.

I don't use this word often, because it conveys such a depth of sarcastic hatred and complete defiance of authority that I would never want to cheapen this beautiful word by overusing it. By allowing it to apply to simple situations and regularly annoying people who would be sufficiently covered by "jerk" or "idiot" or one of the other, more common phrases circulating in the common slang.

But I use it today, to describe my boss.

Because my boss is, in fact, an asshat.

I'm trying to keep this from becoming a work-bitching blog, because those are boring, but I need to share just this one incident from today, because it was the first time I've actually been glad that I turned ratfink and told the DM about what's ACTUALLY going on in our store.

Today, Mr. Boss took one look at me and said, in a worried tone, "Are you okay?"

I thought, maybe I could be honest. "No, I'm not," I said.

"What's going on?" He asked, although he was pulling out his "sincere tone" and I should have known better than to answers:

"I'm exhausted. I'm tired out from all these 48 hour weeks, and I'm starting to be so tired that I'm worried about my health."

And his answer? Now, keep in mind, that this week, both my co-manager and I are scheduled for 45 hours, but thoroughly know that we'll need to put in almost 50 to even keep the store running at all, and he's grousing about being scheduled for 40, because his Friday isn't "really" a day off, since he has family stuff to do. His answer:

"Well, we don't really have 40 hour a week jobs, do we?"

Well, we don't, but you do. Asshat.

Anyway. Thank you for listening. Now, for pretty things.

First of all, my personal slice of heaven:


And second, the Minnowknits sweater in full progression.



I love the construction of this little guy. Knit the back, keep it on the needles, knit one front, three-needle-bind-off the shoulder. Knit the other front, repeat. Pick up stitches from one armhole to the other, knit down the sleeve. Cast off. This will leave me with two seams, and then just the collar to knit.

And, I think I'm going to buy the pattern for EZ's Baby Surprise Jacket when I get paid this week.

I love baby things.

Officially half way there.

Much love.

Done.

I declare myself done with being overheated, miserable, and bitchy due to my pregnant status plus above 80 temps. I understand that air conditioning turns me into a gigantic wuss because I stop coping with warmth. I don't care. I understand that it's bad for my allergies. I don't care.

Hear me?

I DON'T CARE.

Robb and I are off to attempt to find an air conditioner that will fit in our tiny windows.

Wish us luck, please.

I will write later, from a (I hope) much cooler home.

Two very quick notes:

One:

Watching a cat lick wasabi is hysterical.

Two:

Heartburn bites.

Green?

One of you left a comment yesterday, about a particular color. Now, I would certainly never want to suggest that I discriminate against colors, or that I dislike green-lovers. I mean, I understand about green. I know it's like that boy you loved in high school, and you paid off the girl sitting next to you forty bucks so that you could partner with him on the social studies project, because you were sure you'd invite him over, make him cookies, and then you'd make out all night. I get it. What you need to realize is that green is all slick and sexy looking, but it's always going to call you at the last minute and tell you that it has a big date with the head cheerleader for the homecoming game, and by the way, you'll let him copy the homework, right?

I don't want to hurt you, but I want you to understand the truth. A little hurt now is better than a lot later, right?

Green is not to be trusted.

In this form:

or this one:

green is okay.

In this form, green is always suspect.

I've been up to some non-green things lately.

That bit of yellow-and-blue will turn into this eventually. The beigey yellow is Jaeger Matchmaker DK, one of my favorite Merino yarns of all time, and the blue is Cashsoft DK left over from the Welcome Sweater that I still haven't remember to take a picture of. The pattern is cake, which is good, because my brain is mush.

So much so that I just realized that the picture above was taken with the knitting upside down. Doh!

Baby pictures:

a hand:

and a face:


I'm in love already.

And, we've decided. Kid wants to stay modest, fine. The Kid will be officially known as such until December, when we will find out boy or girl the old fashioned way.

Now, I'm all worn out from the heat, so I think I'm going to close my eyes awhile, and try for some rest.

just so you know

I'm okay. I'm exhausted and miserable for some hormonally based reason that I'm not understanding, but whatever. I'll have ultrasound pictures tomorrow, I'm too tired to fiddle with the scanner tonight.

Knitting a pretty little Minnowknits sweater (because I'm stubborn, the sweater was designed for cotton, and I'm knitting it out of Jaegerknits and DK wool -- just to be obnoxious.

Kid had its legs crossed, and its hand in the way, so no telling if it's a boy or a girl; the end decision by the Robb and myself was fine; if the kid wants to be a surprise, it can be a surprise.

Yellow and green (ew) it is. :)

Until tomorrow.

A superfast, non-spoiler review on HP7, and a shawl update

For a review, and at risk of losing my PG rating:

The book is fucking brilliant.

I hate ends of series. They never, ever end up right. The only one I've ever really, really liked was the last episode of Quantum Leap.

Until today.

Brilliant, I tell you!

And, the shawl for the wedding.

I finished casting off Saturday morning, and had no time to wetblock it. I was planning on steam blocking it, but I thought to myself...I could spend an hour sobbing over how it won't look the way I want it to, or I could relax, read my book, and then have a shower and go to the wedding.

So I did.

Robb has promised to take me out to dinner next week, when both of our lives calm down, and I will have the shawl blocked and wear it then.

If I can figure out where in this apartment to block it out. I actually miss the wall-to-wall carpeting; the padding was so convenient for sticking pins in.

Accepting blocking suggestions.

Harry Potter Fans.

Oh.

My.

Goodness.

The phone calls from my store about various crisis (crises? I can never tell) started around 10:30 yesterday morning, as I was driving all over town buying helium and food and prizes for raffles. The plumber came to fix something and (he denies it, of course) managed to shut off the filtered water for the whole cafe. One of my cafe staff who had been feeling sick all week but refusing to see a doctor chose today (yesterday) to lie and say that someone had said she could go home when she couldn't, leaving no one to cover breaks until 5pm.

At noon, someone was trying to get me to come to work. I lied, said I had too many errands to run. I'd worked three twelve hour days before yesterday, I agreed to come in at 4, I don't figure how I need to feel bad about this.

The party was insane. It was awesome. People were mostly friendly. I had one drunk from the Beerfest who eventually managed to sneak past me and got my boss so mad that he threated to call the police on him. I had one girl who got too warm and had a fainting spell into the arms of a certified First Responder (convenient, that). She's fine, don't worry. We tracked down her dad and called 911 at the same time. The EMT guys were pissed at how many people were in our store and I bet we'll hear from the fire marshall, but hey, it's not me who gets the fine.

We called people up in line in groups of 50, based on colors and letters written on their bracelets. I'd thought I'd be able to call which group when over the PA.

Nope.

After ten minutes of hearing people say "What?" I just gave in and started shouting.

Yup, I yell louder than our PA system. Yeah. I haven't actually tried talking yet, because ironically, I woke up before either of the people I live with. /shrug.

I got my book, read about three chapters last night before it was 4:30am, and I was very nearly unconscious. I didn't want to fall asleep and bend the pages, so I decided to drop off until now.

I have 2.5 garter stitch rows still to go on the shawl. And the bind off. And figure out some way to block it before 5pm tonight. I hope silk steams!

I am alive.

but Harry Potter releases on Friday, and I need that shawl for a wedding on Saturday. I have twenty-rows-and-change-plus-blocking to go. That doesn't sound like so much until you figure I have 300+ stitches on the needles now, and will have 700+ by the time I cast off.

I'll see you all next week. In the mean time, think good thoughts for me; there are some things at work that are not being done properly, and having done everything I could think of inside the store to try and make things better, I'm reaching outside the store for help. As I said to my mother, either things'll get better, or I'll get a hell of a lot of money out of the retribution lawsuit. Personally, I'm hoping for the former. I used to love my job.

Take care, and hug someone for me.

I love polite people

After the ridiculously rude day I had (no, I don't want to talk about it, thanks for asking), it was so nice to come home and find a very polite email from Cornelia Granger at Martingale, saying that they were aware of the issue I'd found, and where to find the corrections in the future. Here is the link, if you're working on the shawl.

Here's the pic:


Um, so the colors are now more visible, but the pattern isn't. shrug. It's pretty. I don't know how you garden people get such good pictures. Is it because of the late afternoon sun? Stupid job.

My life is dramatic today; I'm tired; I'll talk to you all more tomorrow.

Today is proof

That being pregnant has driven me completely batty. Off my rocker. Insane. Yes, you heard me.

This week, the cafe in the bookstore has FINALLY finished being remodelled, and, starting tomorrow, about eight of us in the store have to go through a week of training to be certified to work in the new cafe. It's a franchise thing, they make the rules, not us.

The training finishes Wednesday.

Do you know what book comes out on Friday?

Do you know who is in charge of running our release night party?

Yours truly.

I promised to be a slave to my boss for the entire week if he'd promise me that Saturday off so that I could go to a wedding about an hour south of us. Friends of Robb's, I've met them once, but still. It's a chance to dress up and feel good. And buy a new shirt.

So, do I use my common sense, realize that the week will be completely insane, and go out and buy something? Rather than become obsessed with a new project that will take up all my spare time this week?

Exactly whose blog do you think you're reading?

I couldn't help it. I lost control when I saw this. Robb and I had just gotten back from Essex, but I heaved myself back into the car and tore back through town to make it to the LYS before they closed. I got there with about ten minutes to spare, picked out my yarn (Blueberry Hill, and the only humiliating thing is that Kalen totally called it; I'm spending too much time there if they know what I'm going to chose before me) and headed home.

Lookee.

Don't even ask if I balled it up and started knitting. I have 11 days. Of course I did.

I took pictures of how it looked so far, but they came out horribly, so I'll take more tomorrow. There will be more lace to drape on the purple flowers outside that, as Alison points out, are trying so hard to be adorable.

Side note: I'm pretty sure I've found a relatively small error in the pattern; I've emailed Martingale about it, and I'll let you know what they say. I don't want to be a blabbermouth until then.

So, off to knit more rows (I'm currently on 15 out of 64). Cross your fingers for me, and know that I do my best knitting under stress. It's the blocking that tends to get me.

To wordpress, or not to wordpress

Debating, debating.

I could take my blog to wordpress. It's better than blogger, it's more reliable than blogger, I could actually learn CSS and make my blog look like I WANT it to look, instead of the pale imitation of how I want it to look that I'm managing with blogger. I've been doing this for a year, clearly I like it, clearly it makes me happy.

I could import my old entries from blogger and Livejournal and actually have the whole blog in one place.

I would end up paying for the CSS upgrade and probably the space upgrade.

But I would like it.

Thoughts welcome.

I went to the yarn store

and I didn't buy yarn.

My roommate asked "Are you feeling okay?"

The answer to that is, technically, no, but we'll leave that aside for now. The fact that I stubbed my toe on a 20 lb barbell because I'd forgotten that I'd used it to prop the bedroom door open isn't really anyone's fault. Except, ya know, mine. But whatever.

Look what I got at the yarn store:


Robb's instructions were to "look excited." He takes direction well.

Alison, it's beautiful. I've actually hugged one of your shawls, and I was still surprised at how gorgeous and soft and wonderful this book is. I want to make all of these shawls at once. I was only saved from actually casting on for about four of them by having given away most of my larger size needles in favor of my Denise set, and that's being used for my AbFab kit, and because I don't have the right sort of yarns in the right sorts of amounts to do them justice.

But soon. Soon. I haven't decided which one will be first...but I love the book. I love the stories. I love the pictures.

Yay!

Here's the other thing I've been working on, in this stupid heat.

Baby socks are the most adorable things ever. The leg of that sock? 24 rows. The heel? Turned on 22 stitches. Holy canoli adorableness!

Photo taken in the anorexic garden planted on by my landlord's ex-wife. Don't get me started. Seriously, when I saw the collection of annuals she had planted, nicely spaced out about twelve perfect inches from one another (seriously, I saw her with a ruler), I thought of grabbing a shovel, claiming "the dog did it," and then offering to replant the garden myself.

Sheesh.

Anyway. :)

More smiles, later.

Still.

Some things I am still.

Still Healthy. Had another doc's appointment, and everything is still great. Heard the baby's heartbeat again (140, described as "great" by Dr. Amy). Found out I was allowed to take Claratin, so now I just have to cope with sinus headaches, instead of constant sneezing and exhaustion. It's a fair trade.

Still Frustrated at work. My boss is being a bad-word badditybadword, and I don't know what to do about it. No, it's not about me being preggers (although that isn't helping) and it's not about me being female (which I could shut him down over in about three seconds), it's more that...well, the biggest part of a general manager's job is to be a leader, right? Not a threatener, or a yeller, or a shover...a leader. The guy who stands out in front going "Come on, guys, we can get there!" My co-manager and I spent half our time running around doing damage control for this guy, and both of us are too damn busy for that kind of nonsense.

Still not knitting much. Yes, I am perfectly aware that this whole "birth thing" is like five months away. Yes, I know how much clothing that means I should have by then. Why do you ask? The allergies were awful, it was like hell with a runny nose, and all I could think to do was sleep. It's getting better now, but I can still feel my body being all off-kilter.

More still soon. :)