A Heart's a Heavy Burden

I got to work st a reasonable time today, which was nice. Not super reasonable, but before the bell. I wasn't going to be in first block for most of the time because I was testing a student for Brian. I also went to teach him how to do the ELL curriculum-based testing since I'm not going to be there next year and this is supposed to be the standardized/normed test for students who speak English as a second language, and I'm concerned he won't give it with fidelity. Lol. Even though I made this clear to him, he was still in and out of the room like 4 times... and then at one point, I shit you not, he BURST into the room to yell, "DID YOU GUYS SEE A MOUSE?!" a couple times, because apparently there was a mouse running in the pod outside of the classroom. I was literally doing a timed oral reading with her and she was in the middle of reading out loud. This is an adult man who KNEW what we were doing and we were the only people in that room so it wasn't like he was talking to anyone else. What I do know is that if the ELL coordinator was there observing, she would have lost her shit at him for like trying to ruin the test.

2nd block has been going really well, I pushed about a third of my kids into 2-step equations even though they continue to struggle with remembering inverse operations, and it's been going really well. I forget how much I enjoy teaching at the front of the room with a group, calling on each student in turn in order to give them all practice. In my first group I somehow got not just Ben and Kayly, but Ashawn and Konmeng too! It's like, I got so used to dealing with behavior issues and it being impossible to work with more than 1 kid at a time that I let it fall to the wayside. But I'm gonna keep pushing it toward the end of the year because it's so fun.

I finally did my cognitive observation on Jeremy's little sister, and she is really interesting. She doesn't qualify for Developmentsl Delay but I needed to get an observation on her. She just appeared to tune in and out when she pleased and was generally hilarious to watch. I got the cutest picture of her when I stopped to ask her wtf she was thinking about (I got a giggle and "nothing!").



I couldn't wait to get home to Steve, who is thoroughly enjoying his coasting to a week off. I told Tealie I planned to call in the Tuesday after Memorial Dsy so we could have a long weekend, and I'm so excited. Steve has never just had relaxed free time between jobs really, having only worked at Rainbow, and then Thomson Reuters, which he was laid off from (as has been a large percentage of the company by this point).

I was really in the mood to hang out outside for a bit, so we took Ben's book outside to read while I knit. It ended up being too bright for Steve, who, for no logical reason, refuses to wear sunglasses. He insists that the world is less vibrant and is tinted. I have tried to explain the transitions lenses... *transition*... so you don't notice the shift and it really isn't dark! But still, he refuses, and I ended up reading aloud for awhile until the sky became cloudier and Steve had gotten used to the brightness.


Remember the apple tree in our backyard? It's got beautiful blossoms.

Soon after we started reading, our neighbor's dog came outside. He's about a year old, and he's a Rottweiler, and people are really weird about dogs, so we haven't interacted with him much. But he seriously wants our attention every time he's outside. He huffs and puffs through the fence holes and stares intently at us for long periods of time in between bouts of exploring his yard. We've had bad luck with people like... getting MAD when their dogs come to us, so it's pretty safe to say we're wary. But today he started whining so pitifully that I had to chance it. I furtively started tiptoeing across our yard, CONFIDENT that the dog would start barking the second I got close. To my great surprise, not only was he silent as I walked up to him, but he IMMEDIATELY sat down in a submissive posture for me to pet his back and head, and then got soooo excited for me to scratch his head and neck and just really wanted contact. I talked to him about how I was so happy he was so lovey but I was afraid of us getting in trouble (not sure how our neighbor feels about his dog standing up against the fence), but I couldn't NOT give the pupper some of the love he was desperate for. Eventually I went back to Steve and the reading and the dog (I THOUGHT his name was Roscoe but I'm not sure about that) merrily went to play.

Dinner tonight was Naf Naf. Hummus bowl with couscous, falafel, all the fixins (including extra pickles because they have the BEST pickles), and Naf fries. Soooo gooood. While Steve was a darling and got that, I started playing ITG, dying out my new Fitkicks. Steve, Ben, Dmac and I are all "sock" ITG players. Many ITG players of course play in shoes, but those of us that have our own pads will modify them so the arrows are more flush as opposed to recessed in the pad, making it easy to play in socks. My problem with playing in socks is that my feet require a lot of annoying specifics, particularly when it comes to slipperiness. If it's too slippery I fly off the pads and can't get stable, and if it's too sticky I can't move fast enough. A lot of people in our ITG Facebook group love this type of kind-of-shoe, and they're cheap, so I thought it worth it to give it a try. So far my thoughts:
Pros:
-satisfying tapping to hear the rhythm
-good traction but not too much traction
-Steve and I can switch off because his pay doesn't affect the pad slipperiness with the shoes
-I can see theme being so much more consistent and so much annoyance will be reduced with trying to find the right socks for that day

Cons:
-I often rely on my socks for fast songs once I get going, and sort of fudge it. I've always known this wasn't the true way to play, but of course it's a hard adjustment
-kinda similar but different, because the soles are rubber, if I don't pick up my feet, the rubber will drag and it will fuck me up
-even though I bought the smallest size, supposedly for 5.5-6.5 feet, there's enough room that when I play, my foot slides forward and my big toe gets pushes super hard against the front. I eventually was able to play fine with two pairs of socks on, filling out some space in the shoe and also providing more cushion, but now both my big toes are throbbing and the toenails are sore. Boooo.

After my blood sugar settled, I had a decent ITG day, getting two new 98's, including one that had previously been a 95! Usually my improvements are small and inconsistent, so improving a song I'd been struggling with for so long with such a big leap really made my night.

The other thing that super made my night was brought to us by the amazing and lovely Steve. With me leaving SPPS, I have to turn in the computer I've been using for 4 years, as well as the iPad. Steve had suggested I get a tablet instead of a laptop and I thought it was a good idea. I was upstairs getting ready for ITG, and I couldn't find the shirt I wanted to wear. I saw my suitcase sitting on the bed, still mostly unpacked from when we went to Madison last weekend. It was put on the bed several times this week by Steve, and I just assumed he moved it when cleaning and would put it back on the floor when it was bedtime. Today I decided to dig through it to see if my shirt was in there. What did I find?? A BRAND NEW IPAD!! It's the 256Gig 10.5 inch 2017 version, which is precisely what I wanted. I'm sooo excited to get a keyboard case for it to turn it into a mini laptop, but I've been of course having fun with it, getting it set up and apps installed and whatnot. He wrote me the most adorable note to go along with it, and talked about it was an anniversary present but he just couldn't wait (our anniversary is May 29th). He was getting us food when I found it, so I couldn't attack him right away, but I might have gotten tearful with joy when reading the note and bursting with love. Definitely top 3 love notes. Oh man. This boy.

For the last month or more, the only thing I've wanted to do in my free time is knit. I finished my first experimental pair of socks on the way back from Madison. When Steve and I were at Distant Worlds at the Chicago Symphony Center, I was the crazy lady with the yarn. When we were walking to our seats, I was knitting on my socks, and when we sat down I realized I wouldn't be able to work the decreases in the dark, and that meant I needed to start Sean's scarf.

The problem with the yarn for Sean's scarf is that it is not wound into balls yet. This meant that I would need to wind it myself, which often has disastrous results. I did not want to have an inner meltdown due to tangled yarn during my fun concert. So I tried to elect Steve's help:



The look of exasperation on his face as he struggled to get the yarn around his big feet, coupled with the fact that we were in the front row of these balcony seats and people were DEFINITELY staring, had me in uncontrollable giggles. Unfortunately, this method did not work as the yarn refused to pull or rotate the way I wanted. Steve got his repreive from being used as furniture, but he DID have to sit next to me with the yarn hanging around my neck and me rotating it around and around while I wound it into a ball. This unconventional method worked far better than I think it should have, and before long I had a cute little ball of this soft gorgeous yarn.


A simple pattern, yes. I loved the sample wrap at the yarn shop, but can't tell if I hate the plain garter with yarnover decorations...

A woman at my yarn shop talked about how she ALWAYS winds her yarn by hand, so she can get the "feel" of it. That without winding using your hands, you can't get to know the yarn - you can't develop an understanding of its tension, its personality, if it's splitty or smooth, if it's uneven, or if it's content. After winding my own ball without major issues (a first - normally I'm too busy detangling to notice anything but how difficult it's being), I totally understand the desire to experience the yarn in that way... But I still prefer the convenience of a machine winder.

As for the socks, I returned to them the following day after lunch.

In classic Leah fashion, my body is built all wonky, including my calves and feet. I have huge calves, regular human-sized ankles, and smallish feet (I wear a US 6.5 usually). Because of this, when knitting top-down, I have to cast on an abnormally high number of stitches for your average woman, decrease around the ankle so it's not baggy, and decrease even more for my feet themselves so there's not extra material on the bottom of the foot.

I knit the two socks very differently, as I learned things from the first sock and applied them to the second sock. I didn't account for the fact that with less stitches and more stretch, I would need to make the foot longer, technically speaking, on the second sock than the first. Unfortunately, I learned this AFTER I bound off and sewed in all the ends. I was shocked to discover I was a full inch and a quarter short when I tried to slip the sock on my foot.

Also in classic Leah fashion, I had a moment of panic where I thought,
"OH WELL! Guess I'm just NOT having two socks. They're my first pair anyway, who cares?! I don't need to wear them! WHATEVER!!!"

And then in defiance I worked some on Sean's scarf with the beautiful handpainted Mountain Colors Twizzlefoot yarn, a mix of wools, silk and a bit of nylon, which calmed me down enough to realize I was being overdramatic, and even though my toe decreases and end-weaving were perfection, it wouldn't take too long to undo, add rows, and redo again.



In the last leg of the four-hour drive back from Madison I sucked it up and returned to the sock, carefully finding my woven-in yarn, making one gentle cut, and I undid the toe. I inserted my three needles to the row before the decreases, and then I frogged out all the yarn until that point. It was as painless as I knew it would be, and my finishing toe ended just as well as the first. I was able to weave in all the ends and have two functional, finished woolly socks for the first time in my knitting career. Yes, it is long overdue.



You can see the difference between the two socks - the left far looser than the right due to the number of stitches. I decreased much more gently on that sock, whereas on the second sock I decreased aggressively, but not soon enough. I might actually have made the ribbing too loose! I also recently saw patterns where you change needles for the foot, using one size smaller instead of decreasing as much as I did. I'll have to keep trying.

I already can't imagine NOT making millions of socks. My next pair of will be knit toe-up, as increasing seems to be more logical in this type of situation. So will begin my NEW learning and experimentation with socks in the reverse.

A friend on another blog posed the question in my subject line. She described her heart in the way I would think many in the world do: transparent with cracks. She described her love interest as opaque, like polished obsidian. I think my heart is like a ball of yarn. It's made of fibers woven together, criss-crossed experiences and memories folded and wrapped and twisted, with bits that are thicker, bits that are thinner, with frays here and there from getting caught on the various things that may pull it out of place. It's beautiful, and dense, and malleable. It's tough, but has a lot of give.

What's your heart made of?

During our cutie week, Steve and I have decided to sleep whenever we feel like, and be awake whenever we feel. This has led to long "naps" XD It's our last week to sleep at the same time, and we're taking advantage of it.

We went to Ikea yesterday (It was my first time!!) and wandered around the entire store. We have some very good items selected, which we will purchase on Thursday. The only things we actually bought from there yesterday were a small (cute!) lamp, an adorable wavy full-length mirror set for me, and some pan holders. After that, we went to Mall of America, because it's right next door.

There we ate (I had Pita Pit! Mmm) and wandered. We stopped in the two Love Sac stores (one is generic and actually feels better than original Love Sacs) to get an idea of the price. I think we'll ask for gift cards to help us get one at the end of the year or something. We stopped in The Tea Garden and sampled all the teas, and Steve admitted to loving that I love tea and wanting me to make some for us! Awww! By the time we left, we were both exhausted, but we had to stop in Shakopee and go through my old room and the bookshelf, so all my stuff will be ready by the weekend. We probably can't get the bookshelf til Saturday or Sunday, because Nick's dad is the only one with a truck, and Nick stupidly took Saturday and Sunday off instead of Friday and Saturday! We'll probably be done with moving most things by Sunday :/ It'll be a great help not having to take our two crappy entertainment centers, and instead have the easy-to-carry new ones we'll have bought.

I've been watching a lot of Jon and Kate Plus 8 and knitting Courtney a birthday card. Steve's about to beat Halo: Reach. Athena was correct; I found regular-sized almond milk in the milk aisle! ^_^ They were 2 for $3, so we got 2! Unsweetened.

I don't feel like doing my 30-day thingy today. Will resume tomorrow

I've been in a rut lately, and it's the annoying kind of rut. Not the kind where I just sleep all the time, but the kind where things irritate me more easily than normal, and I'm snappish. I don't like it. I'm also back to 130 pounds D: I feel gross and all my pants are tight and everything is just frowny.

But! Good news? I GOT THAT JOBBBBB. Woo. I'd be far more ZOMG YES SQUEE BEST THING EVAR if I wasn't so pants-shitting nervous about all the responsibility I accepted, and my selfish crybabying about Steve and I going back to opposite schedules. That means only two more weeks of cleaning and sitting around doing nothing though! I really can't wait. Mom was very insistent on letting me know how Paul was all gushing to her about it, which was cute. My auntie Connie also sent me a bunch of kind words and good vibes via Facebook because her phone won't text me (lol, or her daughter. Two of the people she texts most!). I love her to death! She's the best.

The job has 18 days of vacation time, 9 holidays off, I'm salaried (at least they gave me the impression that I am), and they offered me the highest pay they could. Looking at statistics online, it would appear that I make around the 77th percentile for a Case Manager. Which is likely true, because I passed up a LOT of great-looking jobs based on the fact that they pay equal to or even often LESS than what I make as a glorified janitor. Sooo... woo! A few thousand more dollars per year won't hurt me, and I think I got lucky because I have a variety of experience but very little targeted experience, and basically NO experience in making connections with resources (ahhhhh!). Like I said, 9 times out of 10, if I get the interview, I get the job.

INTERJECTION RANT: Skateville hasn't returned my calls and I haven't gotten my amended tax form (it's been a month), so I STILL can't file for my tax return yet  >:[

/rant

This weekend we went to my sister's new place. It's really nice. Three-bedroom, shared with her best friend (and her boyfriend and her son) and her own family. The boys share a room, Sarah and Chris get a room, and Bethany and Tony get the biggest room. Sarah and Chris's bed is exactly what Steve and I are probably going to get (framewise, I already have the bed itself).  Here's kinda what we're looking for, but much less swanky. I LOVE the style of bed where the mattress is recessed into the frame. It's cute and compact, and prevents the cats from climbing under the bed. Sarah said they got theirs from Ikea (and that it was pretty cheap), but Ikea's website is complete crap so I can't show you.

It was Sarah's boy Tristan's birthday, so it was a good excuse to check out the new digs and get free homemade egg rolls from Chris's mom, Summai. XD She makes like a billion egg rolls for every huge occasion and they are YUMMY. Tony said he was interested in seeing OUR place. I assured him we went the money-saving route and our apartment is not nearly as nice-looking as theirs. Because it's not. It's gonna be cute!

At 10am Steve and I are signing our lease!!! SOOOO excited for that. I have all these plans for food and spices and jars to store things in instead of plastic baggies and painting and book shelves and game shelves and the cat tower! Oh, so excited. Speaking of the cats, I've switched them AGAIN foodwise. I discovered that Nero just licks the juice from the wet food and leaves the rest to get crumbly and dry, and Grim still prefers the dry food overall. So! I spent like a half hour at the store, reading ALL the labels on the dry food, and finally selected a food that had gross things like corn meal or brewer's rice as far down in the ingredients as I could get without breaking the bank. I can't remember what brand it was, probably PurinaOne, but it was a special type that only comes in smaller bags and has turkey as its first ingredient, and some other meat as the second. I was going to completely wean them over a week, but Grim went crazy immediately for it and is actually AVOIDING the food he's been so set on for the last... his whole life! Yay!

I opened an ArtFire account. Only the basic account until I see if my items sell. I only have two things up on there right now, just experiments I made yesterday. You can check them out here. They're not anything great, but I wanted to at least get SOMETHING up on there. I'm starting a pillow tonight, my first attempt at double knitting (not to be confused with duplicate stitch)! Yayyyy knitting! Yay being crafty!

Okay, must stop futzing on computer. O_O

Steve and I found a place we liked within that apartment complex. The first apartment we looked at was really bright and homey, but it was very small and one of the sinks was all rust-stained. And it was on the second floor. Steve realized that he wanted a ground floor apartment more than he'd originally thought when he discovered that intense DDR (or any DDR) wouldn't be an option. So we talked to the property company and were told there was a ground floor apartment in a different building on the property (it's like a little community of several apartment complexes with four apartments each mostly). Turns out the "apartment" used to be the office, so it has its own private entrance and doesn't appear to have any neighbors at all! It's far bigger than the other apartment, but it's a bit darker because it's kinda like a basement. The bedroom and the living room appear to be the same size, like 300 sq. feet each (minus a bit for the bathroom, which is inbetween the two rooms). There wasn't a fridge or stove, because they're being replaced (I like new things!), and the shower was janky, but the woman said it'd all be taken care of by the time we move in, in April.

Soooo excited!!! One thing I find really odd and quirky about the property is that each apartment appears to have two doors... which are next to each other. Ours is cool because one door goes to the living room and the other to the bedroom, and there's a third door that appears to go to the basement (aka no neighbors!!!). The other apartment we looked at, the doors were right next to each other. XD

As a present to the kitties I bought them a giant cat tower to replace the two they... broke. To be fair, they were from Wal-Mart and relied on being able to hold against the ceiling, and Nero liked to take flying leaps at it. And he's huge. So... that's why they broke. In half. XD I wanted something sturdier and bigger and something great to scratch on. Currently they just use an old base from their poor destroyed tower. Yep, housewarming gift for my cutie kitties.

Kitty and Red Forman, on cats:
Red: "Here's my problem with cats: best case scenario, you get the smartest cat in the world, he still craps in your house!"
Kitty: "Well it'd just be nice to have something to take care of!"
Red: "I'll tell you what, Kitty. Instead of getting a cat, why don't we all stop flushing? It's the same thing!"

I just discovered That 70's Show is up through season 8 on Netflix. Woo!

Anyway, I'm so excited for us to be able to put all of our things in the place! Our plan from now until April is to be super strict money-wise (with each getting one "splurge" within reason - Steve's will likely be on games, and mine will probably be on Bre's birthday because she wants to go to the Gay 90's [local gay bar] for drinking and the drag show) to save as much as we can, and also so I can start digging myself out from paying Grim's vet bill. Steve's sister is super into what we're going to put into the place and is trying to procure us a bunch of furniture. We've already got a kitchen table and chairs promised, and I want as many seating places as possible to make up for having basically no space for the last 2 years XD So I want couches!! I think we're going to end up with a couch and the bed in the bedroom, because we've gotten so used to sleeping on the couch, sleeping on a bed will be weird. It's nice to have both options.

I want it to be Friday! Payday! I love putting money towards bills.

Here's what I got for Xmas from Steve:

( This way~ )

These are:

• Super Mario Bros. collection of games (1, 2, 3 and Lost Levels)
• When They Cry season 1 (Higurashi no Naku Koroni)
• A Joker plush to add to my car collection (It was funny to me because just a couple weeks ago I had seen the Batman plushes at Suncoast and went all homo for them and Steve had already gotten me the Joker XD)
• A book about Stephen King's works (It's like my own personal Ripley's Believe It or Not and I keep having to tell Steve every little thing I learn about stories)
• A Sgt. Frog messenger bag (ZOMG TAMAMA IS THE BEST)
• And a Gir hoodie! ♥ ♥ ♥

( Here's the inside cover to my Higurashi season. So cute! )
So good and exciting!

I got him-
Hoshigami for PS1
A new PSP with Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep in the package (his old PSP was falling apart and we needed the game!)
A sushi shirt!
And a 5-pack of socks because he always destroys them. I bought them each seperately but from the same store. I guess MOST men don't like fun socks, but Steve likes socks that aren't either plain white or old man dress socks. And it's tough to find argyle socks that don't end at the ankle (aka he likes the pattern to continue to the foot so you can see it). And when I typed in things like "men's patterned socks" in Google, half of what I pulled up for images was porn for some reason, lol. But I got him okay socks. Last year I got him som argyle ones from Old Navy, but I couldn't find them this year.

Tomorrow (today) we're gonna brave MOAR SNOW (it's snowed 2 inches already and is expected to be around 6 or so) and drive to my mom's for 2 Xmases, at 9:30 and at Noon. Then we're probs gonna come back here and sleep for awhile, and then drive the 4-5 hours up north to spend the weekend with Steve's family.