Ugh! Fleas! And Not on the Dogs!

This is the house Rob and I are buying. It's in Silverlake and while it needs a little TLC, (okay, a lot of TLC), we're really excited it's going to be ours.

This pic was taken during the inspection. That's my father-in-law on the left of the porch, me on the right and our real estate agent Jody sitting in the kiddy chair.


Now these pics were taken after the inspection. GROSS!!!!

Appears the crawl space is loaded with fleas and the little f*&#ers just loved me! Oh well, we have to tent for termites and the termite guy has assured us that will kill anything.

Stop, thief!

I planted my garden back in April. I faithfully watered it, fertilized it with coffee grinds; pulled the weeds.

And I've gotten to eat almost NONE of it because someone keeps stealing all of the tomatoes and the jalapenos.

I'm happy to share, but REALLY? Do you have to take every ripe vegetable? Just went down to pick my dinner and I won't be eating ANY of the meals I planned this week because TEN ripe tomatoes disappeared between yesterday and today. TEN?

That fresh mozzarella I bought? Won't be making a caprese salad.

The bacon? No BLT's for me.

The pasta? Who needs fresh tomato, garlic and basil sauce.

Stop stealing my dinner!!!

Phone Etiquette

Since I do sex toy parties for a living, I have to call people all the time to set dates, follow up on orders, etc.

I make these calls as a group. If I don't reach someone, I leave a discrete message and dial the next person on my list. Sometimes I go straight from my work calls to calls I need to make for the animal rescue I volunteer for, or during the presidential election, calls for the campaign I was supporting.

Invariably, someone will call me back and demand, "Who is this?" without identifying themselves. If I ask, who they are, they ALWAYS say, "You should know, you called me."

Not really. While I did call you at some point, you're now calling me, and because you're a total dumbass and didn't listen to the message I left (hm, what do you think the voicemail option on your phone is for?) you're now calling someone whose name you don't know, for a reason you don't know. Not exactly a productive use of time and I shudder to think what Miss Manners would have to say.

Of course, I can't say that. Instead, I explain that I make a lot of phone calls to know why I was calling you particularly, I need to know who you are. (Can you imagine the political fallout if I mistakenly told a registered voter I was calling about the "dildo party"?)

Usually, that explanation is enough to jog the caller into the world of common courtesy and to actually IDENTIFY themselves. Every now and then, however, a person will refuse to tell me unless I tell them who I am. In those cases, I give my first name and when that produces the expected "huh?", I tell them I need to know who I'm talking to so I can figure out why I initially called them. (All the while, biting my tongue so I don't say, "LISTEN TO THE MESSAGE I LEFT YOU, YOU MORON!!!")

This week, however, I got a total psycho. Even after I told her my name, she refused to say who she was. Finally, I hung up.

But then she called again, and again. My phone was turned off while I was at yoga and a meeting and in that interval, she left 3 messages, all demanding to know who I was, but never giving me her name. I finally matched her number to one of my lists and she was a customer. And she booked a party. Yikes!

Does My Car Have A Bull's Eye on It?

First the swastika, then someone decided to use my license plate for origami and now this. Is that V for victory?

Comic-Con Knitting Disaster!

Rob and I spent the last 5 days at Comic-con in San Diego. I brought my knitting for when the booth was slow and because I make toys of his characters to sell. After the show closed yesterday, Rob took a load of things to the car, but forgot his keys. He left my knitting bag by the car (yes, NOT smart) and when he came back, my bag was STOLEN. It had my needle roll in it with ALL of my needles, a scarf I made for my sister in law, at least a dozen balls of yarn and a pair of scissors I’ve had since kindergarten – 3 decades ago. I should probably add that I made the knitting roll myself and the scarf was a new design I had hoped to sell the pattern for.

We drove around the parking lot for a while, hoping whoever took it ditched it when they realized there were no comics in it. No such luck.

And so far, no one has turned it in to the parking garage, the convention center or the hotel connected with the convention center, but I'm still keeping my fingers crossed.

Frogged!

This is what Dad's scarf looks like now. I've knit entire sweaters in less time than it took to get halfway through this project. Sigh. Defeated by the herringbone stitch.

Scarf Season Part 2

Still trudging along on Dad's scarf. I've been working on this for almost two months and I am BARELY halfway done. Yikes! I wanted to make a spring sweater using these needles, but I don't think that will be happening. Good thing Christmas is still 9 months away!

Now that I'm on Ravelry, I've been reading about other people's experiences with this pattern. A lot of them found it tedious as well. Part of me wishes I knew that before I began, but I'm not sure reading about the frustrations of others would have deterred me from taking a stab at this -- my ego usually thinks I am not susceptible to the same issues as mere mortals!

What's worse, is I'm not even sure if this going to look good when it's done. I used a different yarn and the herringbone pattern is barely visible in it. Also, one row of stitches looks completely funky and I have NO idea why. When I look at them closely, they appear to all be slipped and knitted correctly, but for some reason that particular row looks like a run in a pair of panty hose. Ugh! Other ravelers say blocking does wonders for this pattern. I've always skipped blocking, but I'll give it a try this time. After all the hours I've invested in this, I've got to somehow find a way to make it look presentable!

The slow progress of this project has totally gotten me down. To get a sense of accomplishment, I decided set it aside for a while and start a scarf for my Dad's wife, Barb,. It's knitted with Misti Alpaca, on 9's instead of 10's to create a denser, warmer scarf. Rob says it looks like television static. After I got done being mad at him for that, I decided he was right. Hopefully, Barb will like it. I asked my Dad for her favorite colors and he thought she'd like a mix of grays. Then again, I asked my Dad for color advice. That may have been mistake number one!