Category Archives: Words Words Words

Friday Fibery Update

Here’s what I’ve been working on.

First, a photo of the silk scarf I did for my mother as a Christmas gift, now known as Mum’s Orchid Silk Scarf:

I had third of it done for Christmas day; I wrapped it anyway, needles and all, so Mum could at least open it. It was three-quarters finished by the time we left (so much easier to knit something when you can do it openly), and then I ran into a big old wall about sitting down to knit the last bit. (Having to frog the last five inches not once but twice contributed to that.) The silk is lovely, but the lack of stretch means it’s a bit unforgiving to work with. Anyway, I finished it last weekend, and blocked it this week. Blocking solved a multitude of the things I didn’t like about the yarn I’d spun, and it looks so crisp and even!

Wednesday I did some dye tests on the oatmeal (a fancy name for pale greyish brown, really) Blue Face Leicester fibre that Ceri and I bought for her sweater. I used my new Jacquard acid dyes, and was kind of flailing in the dark about blending them. I blended a green from blue and yellow, which ended up quite piney, and tried a straight vermilion red, which ended up a mauvey/old rose colour. The I spun a bit of each and chain-plied them to show Ceri what they’d look like in yarn form.

This was the first time I’d tried dyeing a solid colour on the stovetop, and it worked brilliantly. It will be great for solids. I hadn’t done it yet because I usually hand paint my fibre at least two different colours, and set it in either the microwave or the oven.

Yesterday I spun 54 yards of two-ply Aran-weight from 2.3 oz of 70/30 mohair-merino blend of fibre. It’s nice and fluffy:

It’s slated for dyeing; maybe lavender. (Which I could do by screwing up my blue dye again, stabbity stabbity stab… see below.)

And today, I finished spinning 57 yards of a lovely squooshy Corriedale single. I decided to try crockpot dyeing, as it is a technique I haven’t tested yet, and decided on cornflower blue and willow green. Everything looked just beautiful… until I added more vinegar to the crockpot. At which point the blue broke spectacularly and went purple:

And I was so careful about adding the vinegar, too! Just a wee bit! And not directly on the fibre! But alas, disaster nonetheless. Once it’s dry I’ll reskein it and it may not be as awful as I think it is now. But it probably will be. On the other hand, that’s a very pretty green. Without any blue in it, it may be even nicer.

ETA: It is much nicer after rewinding it on the skeinwinder, because the purple is spread throughout the skein. Still not my cup of tea, though. Once it’s fully dry I’ll reskein it and post a pic for the alien Muppet yarn fans.

ETA: Much easier to take once reskeined. Et voila:

2009 In Review

Better late than never. I’ve had this sitting in a file on my desktop, and I haven’t posted it because I was sure there was something I was forgetting. (There was: Neil Gaiman. Only the most exciting assignment I’ve ever been given, ever. Duh.)


Things I Did In 2009 That I Have Never Done Before:

Bought a brand-new cello.
Bought a spinning wheel and started spinning.
Joined a third social networking site (Twitter, which I vastly prefer to Facebook; I find FB very annoying, with a heck of a lot more noise than actual signal).
Canned a whole pile of garden tomatoes.
Performed a spiritual handfasting ceremony for two dear friends (not the same as legally marrying a couple, which I did for t! and Janice).
Sold my primary musical instrument (to someone very deserving!).
Bought my first Apple product, a Mac mini.
Interviewed Neil Gaiman in person.


Things I Did in 2009 Of Which I Am Proud:

I bought a new cello. If you follow my journal regularly you were privy to the angst I felt about the whole buying a new 7/8 cello when the 4/4 I had was so very excellent an instrument. This was a huge issue for me, because I had to deal with my preconceptions regarding thrift and what I deserve versus going overboard, and what constitutes any of those things. I am very, very happy with my choice to sell my first cello and buy this brand-new 7/8. The sound is evolving nicely and we play well together. We’re a good fit. This was HUGE for me. I am so very proud of myself for taking this enormously weighty step.

I am very proud of not quitting my cello lessons. As of mid-October it was one full year of lessons down, and I can tell that my technique has improved by leaps and bounds. I wasn’t ever really in danger of quitting them entirely, but I came close to asking to move to a biweekly schedule for the sake of finances, a move that would have had negative repercussions on my development.

I am proud of sticking it out in second chair at orchestra and not asking to be moved. I really, really struggled with the music this past fall, and I came very close to asking to be switched. Actually, I did ask, indirectly; I told the section leader that if she wanted to rotate me to the back to give someone else a chance, I’d be fine with that. She immediately vetoed that idea, which felt nice on one hand, but made my heart sink a little on the other. I’m sure this is very character-building for me.

I am thrilled with, and proud of, switching to a Mac computer. I’m pretty set in my ways (mainly because it takes energy to learn something new and there’s not a lot of that to spare) and learning a whole new interaction with a computer system was a bit intimidating. Apple made it very easy for me, though, and I’m terribly pleased with the whole affair. I vastly prefer it to Windows machines.

I am freakishly proud of stepping into the spinning hobby. Like the 7/8 cello and the move to a Mac, I researched exhaustively for months (rash is nowhere near my middle name) and finally decided to buy a spinning wheel. I thank Ceri form the bottom of my heart for giving me the early birthday present of a spindle workshop last spring.

And finally, I am also proud of the interview with Neil Gaiman. Not only did I step up to the plate and take the assignment from the lovely and talented Tamu at fps magazine instead of backing down because it would have been easier, but I actually got through it without fainting or choking or forgetting how to speak English. It was also just a pleasure to meet him and talk for twenty minutes. He is a wonderful person.

Good Things About 2009:

Taking up spinning. I can’t communicate how deeply this has affected me. It relaxes me, engages a part of my mind that I haven’t often engaged, and occupies my mind just enough to let everything else settle. Plus I get pretty yarn out of it.

Like last year I’m sure there’s more, of course; a lot of this year was good. But these are what stand out in my memory. I am still thankful for my friends, appreciative of them and their strengths, proud of their accomplishments and successes, and love spending time with them. I’ve also further refined my stop-spending-time-with-people-who-drain-me technique, with excellent benefits to my psyche and physical health. And I’m still working on the maintaining a decent balance as regards my physical energy, too, which goes well enough now that I understand I have to manage the energy carefully thanks to fibro.

Not-So-Good Things About 2009:

Scarlet fever. Come on. I mean, really. (Not that it was bad, just annoying. It was nowhere near as awful as the time I had it as a kid. I was fully operational and non-delirious the entire time. But still – scarlet fever?)

How Did I Do With My 2009 Wishes?

Further refine and develop my cello skills
Yay!

Finish and polish and start querying Orchestrated
Finished writing it and did a full edit on it, which is two out of three, anyway. Then the last quarter of 2009 happened and bam.

Keep on writing
Um. My writing has really, really, fallen by the wayside. I’m so tired that I can’t think ideas through any more. This really upsets me on one level, but on another I don’t have the energy to be upset. I suspect I’m shifting into a more editorial phase of my career, and you know, that’s just fine right now. After five books for the publisher and two and a half for myself over the past six years, I figure I’m entitled to some down time.

Start making all our own pasta
Fail! And all due to the unwillingness to invest in a pasta maker or attachment for the KitchenAid.

Plant, harvest, and preserve more vegetables from the garden
Win! We enlarged the garden by a quarter this year and got a really good crop of tomatoes, lettuce, peas, and carrots. We had a surprise cucumber plant emerge three months after we’d planted the seeds. The potatoes really worked well this summer, too, and they were delicious, although we didn’t’ get anything like a big yield (better than last year’s afterthought experiment, though). Our green onions did well too, but they were so small that it was hard to use them. It felt like I was wasting more than I actually got into the pot. Perhaps not the most efficient of crops; maybe full-size onions next year.

Save more money
Well, debt accumulation has been stopped in its tracks, but paying it off is happening very, very slowly. Part of this has to do with my income readjusting, since I no longer consult with the publisher and get large chunks of money as a result; I get smaller amounts trickling in on a pretty regular basis.


Wishes for 2010:

1. Further focus my energy on a smaller group of friends. This means narrowing my online circles as well as real life. I just don’t have the energy or the time; I can’t help or support everyone. HRH has already begun doing this in his own way. It’s not that I don’t like certain people with whom I’m easing myself out of a closer sphere of interaction; it’s mostly that I can see there are people who end up causing me exhaustion both mental and emotional, whether I enjoy interacting with them or not (and that covers both online and/or off).

2. Focus on my spinning. I going to let this be my relaxing thing for the year, and I’m not going to worry about using what I spin. A couple of months ago I decided that in early 2010 I’d open an Etsy shop and list stuff there as I spin it, and hey, if it sells, then I recoup the money for the fibre and some of the time, and I get to do more. It’s the process I love, not the product to be used for a specific project of mine. (Actually, I do love the product; I adore looking at skeins of yarn I’ve spun, and petting them, too. I just don’t want to be saddled with piles of them that I’ll never use.)

In Summary:

If I had to assign a value to 2009, I’d say that again, it’s been an overall good year. Watching the boy grow and develop in leaps and bounds (if one more person tells me that he’s ahead of his peer group in language, social, and physical terms I may pull my hair out) has been fabulous. HRH got his permanency, which means barring humungous disaster, we’ll be okay for the next twenty-five years as pertains to his career. We’re looking at a move to the south shore in 2010 as well, to be closer to HRH’s job and the boy’s kindergarten. I hate moving, but I’m actually looking forward to this because eof what it means to us.

So here’s to a quiet, successful, fulfilling 2010.

Warning: Technology Upgrade Ahead

I’m about to start trying to install the new wireless modem. If we vanish from e-mail and online interaction for a couple of days, you will know that things went horribly, horribly wrong.

Wish me luck.

(At least I got the penultimate draft of the book layout to Emily yesterday; I wanted that done before I tried this, just in case.)

ETA, 30 minutes later: Huh. That was fast. How refreshing to have something go well the first time when dealing with this company. The wireless through my Mac mini even works; my iPod Touch is accessing the Internet with great glee. Did you miss me?

Weekend Roundup, Capricornucopia Edition: Sunday

Previously on the Weekend Roundup, Capricornucopia Edition: Friday and Saturday!

Together with t! and Jan, we figured out that we’d have to get up around 7:30 and start making breakfast at 8:00 in order for the rest of the day to run on time. As it was, we all kind of lingered in bed and got up around 8:00, but we only ended up running about fifteen minutes late (Although we got a bit later each time we had to pick someone up, which always happens; I just didn’t account for it in my schedule). We had waffles and sausages for breakfast, and then Jan and I picked up Daphne and Ceri and headed out to Karine’s place for our monthly Random Colour crafting meeting. Four of us even finished projects: Karine started and finished a birthday necklace for Daphne, Jan finished her socks, Ceri finished her mitten, and I finished Mum’s silk scarf at last! After a lunch of soup, salad, and brownies, I dropped people off at their respective homes and got back to hand the car off to HRH, who went and collected the boy from his grandparents’ house. The boy was overexcited and evidently really enjoyed his overnight. They set up a really quiet movie to watch, as it was a no-nap day, and I packed up my cello and music and drove to my monthly group lesson. It was the first one of the new year, and I love getting new music. We’re doing a lovely quartet arrangement of The Entertainer, a trio arrangement of Ashokan Farewell, and a quintet arrangement of a Corelli theme, and the sight-reading went pretty well in general. We finished by sight-reading some quartet and trio arrangements of some of the Suzuki material, trying them out to help our teacher decide what to programme.

And then after dinner, I had the incredible experience of actually scoring a Phat Fiber box on my very first try at one. It’s a monthly sample box coordinated by the Phat Fiber project, which showcases samples from indie dyers and sellers. There are three kinds of boxes: Fluff (mainly spinning fibre), Stitches (mainly yarn, patterns, and little accessories for knitters), and Mix (which is a selection from both). There’s only about fifty boxes per month, and competition for them is crazy. They go on sale in the Phat Fiber Etsy shop at a very specific time, and sell out within a minute. The only reason I remembered is because I checked my Ravelry forums late in the afternoon and saw the latest thread about the January box going on sale that day. I thought I’d missed it, but then realised that there’s a separate morning drop and afternoon drop for the boxes so as to make it fair for people in different time zones. So I sat here at 6:55 & reloaded till they came up at 7:00, and was absolutely stunned that I managed to get through the entire checkout process without losing the box from my cart to someone else with a faster Internet connection. My box is a Fluff box, of course, and I’m thrilled to be able to sample all sorts of different kinds of fibre in batts and roving braids and locks, lots of them blended with angelina or firestar for sparkle. The best thing is that every month has a different theme, and this month’s theme was For the Love of Books, so every sample will be inspired by a different book. This is the video preview of the January box, and I am so looking forward to getting the box in the mail and sorting through all the wonderful stuff inside! It’s a terrific way to try things out without committing to a large purchase form someone you don’t know, or to try something new you might not otherwise would have tried. And the best thing is that it’s only the price of a hardcover book. This was total beginner’s luck, and I’m still on the high of winning it.

Today: Finishing the cello manual layout and sending it off for approval; blocking Mum’s scarf; and that will take up the rest of my day, thank you very much. I’ve already handled a chunk of correspondence.

Weekend Roundup, Capricornucopia Edition: Friday and Saturday

This was a heavily scheduled weekend! It made for a long post, so I’m breaking it into two parts: this one (Friday and Saturday), and Sunday.

Going back into last week a bit, the layout of the cello manual is going very well, and it’s looking more and more like a real book. Today I get to finish photo sizing, adjusting placement, and adding captions, and then I have to look at the ordering of sections to maximize the use of the space available so that people don’t have to turn pages in the middle of an exercise or to compare the before/after kinds of photos.

The landlord is currently here, patching holes made by the plumber who had to come in to handle a leak last week. We averted disaster by moving things in the basement and setting up buckets and giant Tupperware storage containers underneath the buckling ceiling, because it was coming down at some point; the only question was when. Fortunately HRH got home in time to take a drill to the bending gyprock and drain it safely, and only our bathroom sink was out of commission (a pipe rusted through between the sink and the main drainpipe, so when the sink drained it flowed out a no-longer-existent join and poured right down inside the wall; fun).

We upgraded our ISP plan last week too, because we’re really being dinged for bandwidth use. We were looking at alternative to Sympatico, because my Sympatico address doesn’t work and hasn’t for a year; they claim it’s all right on their end and all the fixes we’ve tried on our own and via customer service have been useless. I’ve phased use of the address out, but there’s a SMTP issue as well that doesn’t allow me to use Sympatico server to send my domain e-mail since I switched to the Mac, but I’m phasing a lot of those out as well, so it’s less of an issue. We were more concerned about being charged a fee for change of service in the first year with a new company, as we’ll be moving to the south shore at some point, so when Sympatico confirmed that an upgrade wouldn’t be considered a new plan, we decided it was easier. The new wireless modem we ordered to go with it arrived on Friday but I haven’t set it up yet, figuring that if something goes wrong I’ll want it to happen after I’ve finished the layout on the cello manual and sent it to Emily for approval today. So the modem switch currently scheduled for tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to being able to use my laptop in bed, and the Touch anywhere in the house.

And last but not least, also on Friday we got the appointment to register the boy in kindergarten at the school right around the corner from his current preschool, and if the stars align his teacher may very well be one of the educators who was doing a stage in his preschool last year. I’ve tracked down all the papers we need, and the appointment also covers applyign for the certificate of eligibility for English instruction (bless my mother who has lept every single report card I have ever gotten, from elementary through high school; not only that but my parents had my own certificate of eligibilty in their safety deposit box, so I’ll bring that to the appointment as well). We were all misty-eyed; he cannot possibly be old enough to get on a school bus without us and go to school already. We were concerned about the living here and registering in a school in another zone under another school board entirely, but they didn’t bat an eyelash and said that if we hadn’t moved by the time school begins, we’d just have to be responsible for getting him there and taking him home every day. As this is essentially what we do every day as it is, there isn’t an issue.

Saturday morning I had my weekly cello lesson, where we worked on musicality, using the Lully Gavotte as the focus. I learned a tonne of stuff about using the weight of my bow arm and staying in the string, which was really nice considering I hadn’t worked on my lesson stuff at all during the week. (There was lots of work, and orchestra, and I looked at the orchestra stuff and not the lesson stuff, okay?) We looked at the Boccherini minuet, which I’m starting next, and talked about my solo for the spring recital; I think I’m going to do the Bach Gavotte in C minor. HRH dropped me off at my lesson and while I was there he took the boy to get his hair cut, then picked up birthday presents for a party happening next weekend. They came back to get me and we dropped a snowsuit off in Pointe-Claire for a little boy coming over from England next month (half an hour early, argh, but my lesson didn’t go twenty minutes overtime the way it usually does), drove home to drop off the cello, and then we went to get groceries. Back home we did a whirlwind cleaning session, had lunch, then the boy napped; under duress, but he did, thank goodness. When he woke up we took him over to the local grandparents’ place for his very first sleepover ever, which was very exciting. Back home I made a scallop gratin with extra butter and garlic, and spooned the extra sauce over pasta for a very nice and easy supper. Then I started getting ready to go out to Capricornucopia, the annual January cooperative playwriting and -staging extravaganza hosted by various friends born in January, with audience participation.

While I was getting ready my cell phone beeped, telling me that I had a text message. I don’t get many of those, so I went to check it out, and when I read it I laughed and laughed. During the week a friend had asked if I’d be interested in recording a message to be used in a game he was running on the weekend, in which key information and plot points would be delivered to the players. I agreed, he sent me a script, and we discussed different ways of recording it. The Mac mini has proved recalcitrant in recording till now, refusing to recognise my microphones or pickups, but I had the idea of using the MiniDisc in record mode as a sort of preamp while running GarageBand, and it actually worked. I sent the first message to him in mp3 format, and it had worked so well that he had the idea of recording a longer sequel message to be accessed by the players if they got to that point in the game and needed the next set of information. Well, evidently they did, because the text message I received Saturday evening was from one of the players, sent in character, thanking me for the tip. And since the point of the first message was to maintain cell phone silence so they couldn’t be traced, I texted back that I’d told them not to use cell phones, which the GM tells me got a good laugh from the players. It was a lot of fun to do, and I’m told that the players not only didn’t recognise my voice (which boggles my mind, as many of them know me, but pleases me as well) but thought the recording quality comparable to a video game tutorial or something. I am terribly chuffed. I am also glad that we did this only a couple of days before the actual game, because I don’t think the GM or I would have been able to keep the secret much longer than that.

We then headed out to Capricornucopia, which was wonderful because we got to see people we don’t see often enough, as well as people we see often but always enjoy seeing more of. This year’s play was a Choose Your Own Adventure style, where the playwrights had chosen key points at which the audience voted, and the actors were given different scenes to follow according to the audience’s vote. It was ambitious, and hilarious, and featured on the spot singing, dance numbers, and jazz hands (because jazz hands make everything better).

Afterward t! and Jan came home with us and slept over.

More! Go on to Weekend Roundup, Capricornucopia Edition: Sunday

First Finished Yarn of 2010

It’s a 36-yard sample, but still; finished yarn, yay!

Half-ounce of oatmeal BFL (which seems to be more of a grey-brown, really) spun as a single, semi-woolen draw on the 1:5.5 ratio, around 11 wpi after blooming. I expected it to be thicker than 11 wpi; it looked loftier on the bobbin, less so after skeining. I really did think I was spinning a thicker than heavy-worsted single, so I’ll be trying again. I must draft even less. The yarn is nice, soft, and bouncy, though, and certainly my best single so far in that it stays together. It was fun deliberately trying to shock it between hot and cold water while setting the twist, and agitating it to felt it ever so slightly so that it would be less likely to drift apart. It does vary a small bit between thick and thin, though; I’m not as consistent in the self-contained single department as I am in the thinner-single-to-be-plied department.

Why does damp BFL smell better than any other damp wool?

Fifty-Five Months Old!

It was Christmas, which always kind of decimates the January monthly post. The boy had a terrific holiday season, ranging from Santa to various parties at school and with friends, such as the godfamily singalong. He helped make cookies and pies, and to prepare meals, and was very helpful in general. He really got into the spirit of things, and having a four-year-old child in the house means you can’t help but get into the spirit along with them. He’s still a little unclear on the concept of a secret, though, and was so excited that he would often run up to people and say, “We got you a present, and it’s [insert gift here]”. Fortunately we did a lot of clapping hands over ears or mouth, and what bits of information managed to escape were either missed by the giftees or were about gifts the recipient already knew about.

He was terrific about opening gifts this year. Last year he was ill and lost interest in the process, and at recent birthdays he’d been more excited about ripping the paper off and seeing what was inside before jumping immediately to the next gift. This year, though, he returned to his previous behaviour of opening and playing with the item inside, exploring it thoroughly before moving on to the next thing. Unless it was clothes, of course, which didn’t interest him much at the time, but he was been enjoying them very much as we take new shirts and socks out of the drawers come time to get dressed of a morning. He got piles of new books (we had to remove the basket of toys on the bottom shelf of his bookcase in order to make room for them), clothes, and a few very carefully selected toys. This was a Star Wars Christmas in a couple of ways: we got him the Clone Wars animated movie, and the local grandparents gave him a ship from the Clone Wars line. It was also a Lego Christmas, as he got kits from the upstairs neighbours, the Oakville grandparents, and MLG.

And holy cats, the progress he’s making on following directions in those kits. On the harder kits we’ve been getting him to sort the blocks and help put together the simpler parts while we assemble the bulk of the unit, but he got a kit of small work vehicles on Christmas day and he pretty much followed the pictograms to assemble one on his own, being talking through the harder bits by myself or HRH. It’s thrilling to watch that kind of thought process, the ability to turn a picture into a fine motor process with actual three-dimensional items.

He got very upset about our Christmas tree. You see, we left on the 23rd, and there was no point leaving it up while we were gone; for one thing, it would be prime cat disaster material, and for another, it would be a fire hazard. We got it early in order to enjoy it for two weeks, planning to take it down the night before we left. The boy cried and cried, and said that he wanted to keep it, and that Santa had to put presents under our tree. (He was going to put presents under the tree at the house we’d be in on Christmas, we pointed out, but this did not calm the angst about whose tree under which Santa would be placing whose presents.)

It’s winter, and there’s snow, which means he’s ecstatic about being outside and rolling around in the stuff. Back when the local grandparents bought him the wagon for his second birthday, we asked them to get one that could be converted to a sled of sorts by switching the wheels for skis. For the first time this winter HRH swapped them out, with the boy’s help, and the boy has been gleefully dragging it all over the yard. They took it down to the corner store, and while it bumps and scratches on the barer patches of the sidewalk it really flies when it’s on snow. It’s like a new toy. Also in backyard news, the slide from the back deck has been built again, this year with extra banking so that when the boy goes down on his saucer he really zings around the perimeter of the yard and ends up pretty much at the base of the stairs to the upper apartment. He only has to get up, grab the saucer, and drag it a couple of feet to the deck stairs, drag it up the steps, and he’s ready to launch himself off the back deck again.

His nap is officially being phased out. He naps only twice a week at school now, otherwise staying awake through the general rest time in another room with an educator and his best friend at preschool, working on letters and words and reading. Unless, of course, he very obviously needs a nap, in which case he has a lie-down. At home we’re playing it by ear. If he’s running on high, then we do the nap thing in order to give him a break. If he’s fine, then we carry on without it.

With zero surprise to any of us, the new TMBG album has been a super hit. So much so that after owning it for three days he was singing a good chunk of the songs and acting out the videos. They’re doing a dinosaur unit at preschool this month, and he informed one of his educators that he was going to be a paleontologist when he grew up. “Ah,” she said to the educator who had been running the material, “so you’ve gotten to the paleontology part of the unit?” “No,” said the dino-unit educator. “We haven’t.” And they both just looked at the boy, who went on to burble happily about what paleontologists do.

We’re about to embark on the kindergarten open house merry-go-round, which terrifies me to a small degree. I happened to see an ad in the local paper for one this past week, so I casually looked it up and discovered that kindergarten registration happens at the beginning of February. In two weeks. With education being a provincial responsibility, and children being on the civil roll, one would think the government would think to point out the necessity of upcoming registration via mail, but apparently not; one is supposed to pick this up by osmosis or something. Perhaps daycares generally mention it, but the other kids in preschool with the boy have siblings so everyone else knows, and mentioning it to us may have slipped his educator’s mind. We’ve already missed the open houses for the more exclusive schools (last November, how helpful), so now we get to catch what we can. And there’s the added tangle of moving at an undetermined time this summer to be closer to HRH’s job (and oh, the money we will save on gas alone) so will there be problems registering for a school in anther zone and under another school board’s aegis while we’re still living here? The Internet is remarkably unhelpful in this respect. Actually, the Internet is remarkably unhelpful about the whole kindergarten issue; I am mostly directed to contact individual schools. Which makes a certain amount of sense, I suppose, but isn’t comforting at all for someone who likes to research intensively before walking into an actual person-to-person encounter. I hate not having information. I’m also told by the Internet that I should have obtained a certificate of eligibility for instruction in English a year ago to make sure we have one on time in case there are bureaucratic issues, which is not constructive in the least. If I don’t know I have to do it, I can’t do it. It will all work out, I’m sure. I’m just going to quietly deal with anxiety attacks here in the corner until it is.

And finally, the other big news of the month is the removal of the back of the car seat to make it a booster seat only! This is a huge relief for everyone. The boy is at a height and weight where it’s possible, and it’s much less fuss. We’re all thankful.