This is the afghan that never ends...

...yes it goes on and on my friends!

Knitting blankets is hell. And I'm only knitting a damn throw, not a bed-sized cover!

Yeah, it's an easy pattern and yeah I have "turbo" needles (no, really) but it's taking for. ever.

I still have a Latifa to finish for myself and Paul has given up hope of ever getting his alien illusion while the snow still flies.

And then I want to make this, this and this.

Must. Keep. Knitting.

Twas the night before...

...and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, because all the damn cookies were made. I don't think I've ever made as many cookies as I did this year. Eventually, when it became obvious last night that the "fivetuple" (whatever's after quadruple) batch of shortbread I made was indeed not going to be enough, I grinchily decided that two people on my list simple weren't getting cookies this year. Sorry Grandma.

In addition to the hearts, I also made little white men, little brown men, stars and circles.

All batches included, I made, count em' SEVENTEEN BATCHES OF COOKIES and it STILL WASN'T enough. I'm getting smaller tins next year.















After all that, I collapsed on the couch, brewed a cup of tea and watched the 1951 version of everyone's favourite holiday Dickens tale.

Gah! I underestimated the number of cookies I'd need to make to fill the 14 medium-size cookie tins that we're giving away this year.

I asked Paul to fill up the Pod with some new Podcasts so that I'll have something to listen to this afternoon while I make. more. damn. cookies.

It's gonna be a long day

Ugh. So. Tired. This is what I get for going to see a three-hour movie on a Monday night. My body simply isn’t designed to do strenuous things like stay awake until 11 in a darkened movie theatre, go home, collapse into bed and then, like, get up in six hours.

...

Anyway, King Kong was fantastic and I would have cried in the movie theatre if I hadn’t been sitting with five guys. It’s got everything – love, tragedy, comedy, irony, a big ape, huge bugs, a T-Rex and some awesome depictions of Depression-era New York. And I’m not ashamed to say that Adrian Brody made this woman’s… uh, heart…yeah, heart, go pitter pat. Hrrmm.

...

I wish I looked that good running around the jungle in a slip.

It pays to read the recipe

Last night at 7 p.m., after a lazy afternoon of lolling around on the couch watching the Food Network holiday specials following a huge buffet brunch with some friends, I was jerked out of my near comatose state with the sudden guilty thought that I had promised to bring in a plate of gooey brownies to work the next morning as part of a United Way commitment. Gah!

I hoisted down my copy of Regan Daly’s “In the Sweet Kitchen,” which in itself tips the scales at 10 pounds, and blearily looked up the recipe for Really Really Fudgey Brownies. I didn’t have enough chocolate in the house for a double recipe. Double Gah!

I pulled on some boots, threw a coat on and stumbled out the door with Paul’s “don’t drive too fast, for cripes sake!” ringing in my ears. I got to Sobeys’ 24 Hour and picked up six boxes of bittersweet and unsweetened chocolate, congratulating myself for thinking ahead and buying more than necessary. You know, just in case.

I got home and got to work melting the 20 ounces of chopped chocolate with an entire pound of butter in a double boiler. I got out the vanilla and noted that I would need eight eggs, 4 ½ cups of sugar and 2 ½ cups of flour. Yeah, I only had four eggs in the house, maybe a cup of sugar and a dwindling amount of flour. For the love of pete!

I took the giant bowl of melted chocolate and butter off the stove, put my boots and coat back and drove to Sobey’s. I picked up everything, made sure I didn’t get the same cashier, silently cursed the father and son in front of me in the line who were buying four litre tubs of both Oreo and After Eight ice cream, which they obviously planned to consume that night, no doubt in front of the TV, where I belonged, and arrived home loudly declaring that if I’d forgotten anything else, I. Didn’t. Care.

All’s well that ends well though, because the brownies turned out fantastic. They are decadent. They are dense. They weigh a tonne. They are the best damn brownies ever. Let me know if you want the recipe. Just make sure you read it first before you start.

Scared and excited

My mother is going to have surgery in January to have the Cochler implant, well, implanted into her inner ear.

What is a Cochler implant? Here’s a link but essentially the implant allows a hearing impaired person to hear sound in a way that hearing aids can’t provide. As they explain on the site “Hearing aids are designed to amplify sound. To a person with severe to profound hearing loss, amplification won't provide much hearing because sound is still being delivered through a damaged part of the ear. A cochlear implant doesn’t make sounds louder – it bypasses the damaged part of the ear and sends sound directly to the auditory (hearing) nerve to provide a clearer understanding of sound and speech.”

Sounds cool eh? It is and I’m excited for my mother who is also really excited. As someone with only very slight hearing loss, I can try to imagine how I might feel knowing that the possibility of somewhat normal hearing might be available to me. As my mother could tell you, hearing loss is a very isolating disability. Not only are you isolated from joining in people’s conversations and experiencing the world in the way that others do, but you also isolate yourself. You avoid people and situations where your hearing loss will be a disadvantage to you. You worry about not hearing something and being made a fool of or ignored. It happens all the time and it’s often perpetuated by people who should know better.

So yeah, the possibility of improving that situation for my mother is damn exciting. But I’m also scared. I’m scared something will happen to her during the operation. I remember being pretty much anxious through her entire last two pregnancies thinking that something would go wrong. I’m also scared the implant won’t work in the way she expects and maybe she’ll be disappointed.

So, scared and excited. If that’s how I feel, I can’t imagine how she feels.

- 6

Yeah, that's about what it feels like...in my office. At home, we keep the thermostat at a respectable 23 degrees when we're home. It's a bit cool for my taste, so I put on a sweater.

I wish that were all I would have to do here at the office. Currently, I have my scarf wrapped around my neck, my coat tucked over my lap, my heater going full blast to the point where it's making the arm of my plastic chair a bit gooey, and a heated bag of oats at my feet.

I kid you not.

It hurts to type with cold fingers.

You Must Try This

Try this in Google. Type in your name followed by the word “needs” and see what you get. Hilarious. Here are mine.

Melanie needs

...to become more tolerant, especially of emotions.
...to become somewhat flexible and leave some of the pig headedness behind.
...a DIVORCE.
...a man's body. A dead man's body.
...to be part of a novelty act to get attention.

Bwa ha ha! Try it yourself and let me know the best ones.

shopping goodies

Thanks to my sister-in-law, I managed to buy a pair of Seven jeans for a good price. I've been hearing about these jeans for a while now and I have to say, I have bought into the idea that designer jeans really are worth the extra dough you shell out, just for the quality. Anything that can make my bum look better is worth it to me. Not that it looks as good as the one in the picture above, but better than my squishy average. Hah!