Petunia rambles on and on….

1. It’s difficult to take a picture of the back of your own haircut.
2. Dieting is not easy when you NEED chocolate – dark chocolate. It’s like an addiction; as bad as cigarettes. Except that I had lots of good reasons to quit smoking and I can’t think of a single reason to give up chocolate.
3. Oh, yes, I can. Have lost 18 pounds and dropped down a pants size! Maybe I could just cut down some on the chocolate consumption?
4. I just had to increase the text-messaging plan that I have. It will now cost me more to say very little to many.
5. I do not need any more purple nail polish, even if the shade is a bit different than all the ones I already have.
6. I suppose it stinks to go into the book department at Target, scope out all the titles/authors that I’m interested in reading, type and save them into the Notepad feature on my new phone, and then either order them from Amazon or get them in e-Reader format for reading on computer/Kindle/cellphone WHILE LAMENTING the fact that another local book store is closing. I know it’s wrong, but I just can’t afford to pay $40 for a book I’m gonna read once. And I don’t have the space to store any more. But I did it.
7. I love cranberries. This is a good time of the year to feel that way. Cranberries and poultry, doesn’t have to be just traditional Thanksgiving turkey. Mix together 2-3 cans of cranberry sauce (or whole berry), about 1/2 tsp of dried orange peel, 1/2 cup water or orange juice and pour into crock pot. Add chicken breasts, cut in half. Cook on low. Go to the store or work, sit and knit for a while, take a long nap. Household chores may be done but not recommended by sane people. Come back hours later when it smells good. Serve with bread stuffing that has had a handful of dried cranberries tossed in for good measure.
8. Living near a large NASCAR track is not fun – I’m so close I can walk there in 5 minutes and staggered back the other way one time in about 34 min. But now, it’s football season and I am about a 2-3 mile drive to the State College. However, because of the large NASCAR track sitting right in the middle between there and here, I am actually less than a mile from the school as the crow flies. There’s a home game tonight. Every once in a while, I hear voices over a loudspeaker. Not bad. Sometimes I hear the crowd roar or boo and hiss. Not bad. Can’t hear much music from the marching band but what I’m gonna do to that drummer and his drumsticks ain’t gonna be pretty and the drumsticks will be unusable afterwards.
9. I think I’m really going to like the new Kindle Fire that I just got, but I’ll write more about it when I’m more familiar with all that it does. Not sure what the learning curve is gonna be with it yet!
10. Just a few weeks back, the fall foliage was gorgeous. Even last week, coming back from daughter’s, the colors were beautiful. In the last few days, though, we’ve had wind and rain – now there’s just a few hold-out leaves clinging desperately to branches and the rest of the view is ugly bare sticks. When will I see that first crocus?

No more needs to be said.

13 November 2011, 4 days old.

I still have this much of the shawl I’m knitting – intact and on the needles.

After a few harrowing moments, I can now think again and breathe at a normal rate.

With thoughts of taking a picture of the shawl, I draped it over my laptop which is rarely out of my reach. Spread it out a bit, all the while knowing that lacework is not going to show up properly. It needs stretching, blocking to really “show it’s stuff.” Spread it out nearly to the ends of the needles. From that left side, the working yarn goes down, across a span of about 2 feet and into my current in-use tote bag. I was sitting here on the sofa, and had a few chocolate chip cookies here, too.

I have a dog with only 3 working brain cells. They control eating, shitting, and planning for those 2 events in the future. When I leaned forward to drape the knitting neatly on the laptop, Stupid Damn Poodle spies the narrow space and sees it as a “window of opportunity” to get those cookies, still in the open bag. (She knows a rattling, cellophane-like sound always usually means food/goodies and the damn idiot would eat a 4-lb granite rock if it was wrapped in noisy paper.)

So as I lean forward, she goes in for the kill, misses the cookies (hey, I’m fast for an old broad when it comes to saving chocolate!) and gets herself tangled in the yarn. She’s looking at me wondering what’s wrong, because I’ve got a death grip on the end of the needle so no stitches slip off and I’m starting to hyperventilate a bit. In her confusion, dog starts to spin around a few times or maybe she was looking for a good spot to take a dump. This activity gets her more entangled and she’s starting to look at her hind end to see why her feet aren’t independently moving as well as they should. I’m starting to feel light-headed about this time, wondering if I should sacrifice the knitting or better yet, the stupid dog??!!

I finally got her settled and sitting down, and with some fake petting on her back, managed to get strands of yarn down off her and puddled at her feet. I then reached behind me, broke off a piece of cookie, tossed it across the room. Sure enough, she leaped up and out of the yarn after that morsel, leaving the yarn behind.

I went out to the kitchen and got a beer.