It turns out that there is an etiquette system when it comes to blogging and comments and I have been very, very rude.

The kindest, bestest bloggers, esp the wonderful craftay bloggers, often respond to comments via email.

I do not.

It’s not because I am lazy (entirely, but we know that I am a lazy sow). It’s because I treat e-mail addresses mostly as sacred bits of privacy whose main purpose is to validate your existence. I try to respond directly in the comments section here and pretty much always respond to comments now, especially if someone asks a question.

But, as I said on the whipup entry, I am often secretly thrilled (because I am a dork) to receive an e-mail from someone after I’ve commented on her blog. If I am secretly thrilled, it then stands to reason, shouldn’t I be sending out e-mails, too?

But then, I have to consider the fact that I not everyone may be secretly thrilled to receive an e-mail from me!

I will say that a few people have e-mailed me out of the blue from this blog and I have enjoyed corresponding with them very much. I now “speak” regularly to a woman in California and a woman in Wisconsin and they’re crafty (-ier than me, by a long shot) and funny and smart and I like that. Neither of them have blogs, but I wish they did and I would want to see lots of photographs.

So, e-mails? Yes? No?

On a related note, ever since I made my e-mail addresses obvious on this blog, I have started getting a lot more strange spam in my inbox.

Real Simple readers may remember the birdhouses pictured in a gift guide last November or December.

They were adorable at $30 and I wanted to give them as gifts, especially since I gave several Golden Calf glass bird vases (also from that issue of Real Simple), but the price was too steep to buy in bulk.

I think $9.99 is a swell price, even if the blue one is the only one left. Need a birdhouse?

(I already shopped. Your turn.)

I’m hankering to make the Amy Butler Weekender bag. Do you think I can do it? I did put a zipper in something recently, after all, and only broke one needle doing it. Also, I didn’t photograph the efforts, but I made a fully lined totebag, complete with embroidered outer pocket and coordinating fabric straps, in about an hour two weeks ago. It was a birthday gift for a 4 yr old girl–I filled it with some art supplies.

Very Talented Claire, illustrator and blogger from whom I purchased a needlebook (see her etsy shop) recently which was immediately claimed by selfish McPantses (but who can blame her–the birdie needlebook was that adorable), made a lovely one in perfect fabrics for the bag. I think she was inspired by this fantastic birdie one (and I do loves the birdies).

And then, for even more inspiration, there’s absolutely perfectly perfect one, which is just to die for. Not sure how ye olde Singer Fashion Mate would do with the very thick layers of Sunbloom and denim fabric, tho.

I might like this fabric for the outside, with something either coordinating and dotty on the inside or something mismatchy, but somehow still matchy on the inside, with an orangey red trim to match and little silver feet on the bottom because I hate fabric bags with no feets.

Here’s a good review of the bag-making process, and her finished product is wonderful. I am not a big fan of those fabrics, but it’s just because they’re so popular around here. To me, they scream “8 yr old girl gets to redecorate her room” or “high school graduation gift: laundry bag for dorm room!” But, you’ll see that the bag maker’s 17 yr old niece picked out the fabrics, so it makes perfect sense.

Crazymaking excuse to spend too much money on something I will never complete (and never be able to complete) or magically delicious, promising great results and will surely be something I turn around and make another three or four to give as gifts? I guess the bottom line question is: will this project make me weep into the bottom of a bourbon glass when I’m two-thirds into it, on my third spool of thread and nowhere close to a bag that looks as good as one of the ones here?

Non-bottom line question: should I test it by making one for McPantses out of inexpensive fabric just to see if I can do it?

One more question fueled by a.m. caffeine: wouldn’t this bag look great in the light turq floral linen fabric I used to make so many things recently, piped in orange? Ooooh, ahhhhh.

ETA: Perhaps I should start out with a cosmetics bag first. The Small Hands tutorial is very good and the bag seems to incorporate many details that the Weekender bag would. The quilter/lawyer who blogs at Small Hands oughta make a Weekender bag for me to ogle!

And one more [insert many superlatives here] Weekender to feast yer eyes upon.

Dearest McPantses:

I would like to think that you zipped happily into the kindergarten kick-off picnic last night, ran up the bouncy slide and proceeded to hold court there* for a full 90 minutes because your spectacular parents raised you spectacularly well, but I know that’s not the case at all.

You were born happy and ready to go. You stick out your chin, make a quick study of new situations and jump right in, mostly–it’s not because we want that for you (but we do). It’s just how you are.

You’re at kindergarten camp right now, for mornings this week, with sixty or so other little kids and you’re not the smallest kid there. We were a little afraid you would be. You’re not remotely the shyest and your father reported that you’re already having a great time at your new school. I wasn’t ready for kindy to start a month early, but we get a few weeks off before the real deal starts mid-August.

A row of scratchy new uniforms waits, tags still attached, at the back of the Crabcake’s closet. I guess I can go ahead and cut off the tags, kid. You’re ready for big school! I am proud of you. Last night, the hosts took a picture of all the new kindergarteners together in a big group and we talked about how you will all look 13 years from now, and how many of you will be together in school the whole time. I am already scared of how fast those years will go by. Breathe deep, child, and enjoy, because as you do, I get to enjoy you.

Dearest Crabcake:

Thank you so much for finally sleeping. Thank you for delighting in new words (tongue! Tongue! TONGUE TONGUE TONGUE! BLAHHHHH!), in your family, the pets, in life. Thank you for being as loving and huggable as you are rough and tumble and screamy.

You’re growing up so sweetly. You’re the personification of my baby statement, of the thing I tell every friend who’s deliriously tired and having trouble adjusting to parenthood: it gets better every single day.

It does. You can ask for some of the things that you want now, instead of just grunting and pointing, but there’s still plenty of grunting and pointing to keep us on our toes. You can toddle alongside me when you choose, but you’d still rather be carried.

You’re still my baby boy, son. Every time I listen to Emmylou Harris sing that, followed by Mark Knopfler singing “with our pride and joy,” I instantly well up. I cherish your babyhood, perhaps more than I did your sister’s because now I know what it means and how fast it all changes. I love that I can still hold you while you sleep. Saturday night, you fell asleep in my arms–we enjoyed our family hug and you and I said your prayers and your eyes were shut before I even lowered you into your crib. I watched you breathe and thought, one day you will be bigger than me and taller than me, but you will always be my baby boy and, like your Sistah, our pride and joy; you’ll be the one who slept so well in my arms. After McPantses, who slept so well anywhere, I think I needed someone who would sleep well in my arms.

Dearest Clapotis:

You’ve become as beloved to me as a third child and you seem to weigh about as much as the boychild. Happily, you need no breastfeeding, no pesky immunizations or doctor’s appointments and no special childcare–the most important thing I can do for you is to leave you in a high place where the dogs can’t eat you and the cat can’t snuggle up to you. You’ve outgrown your ziploc bag home and now require better storage and I’m okay with that. I’m on the sixth set of repeats in the straight section and my love for you grows each time I get to drop a stitch** I am fully aware, at this point, that you will never be finished, and I embrace our quiet evening moments–you represent two sleeping children and a peaceful house.

Be warned that when you are finally finished, I am going to cuddle you for a day or two, wash you carefully and then (deep breaths) give you to McPantses, who doesn’t even like your color all that much. She just wants you to have you. She will probably ruin you and I will want to cry, but she might just love you and treat you well. She might try to halfway pick you up and carry you around, but end up really just sort of dragging you across the floor like she does her brother, though. You’re in for a tough life, Clap, but you’re loved.

* Note to self: warn kindy teacher that you and your hellion friend might need to be separated if you end up in a class together. Neither of you appear to be hellions on your own, but the two of you girls together seem like you might blow up the science lab.

** Beastie Boys let the stitch uhmmmm-drop?

What any normal, mature mother and daughter would do when 1000 yards of gorgeous Brooks Farm Harmony yarn wings its way across the hot states to their house:

Muppet Hair!

I absolutely, positively did not try that myself twice (once at home alone during lunch, when I opened the package on Friday and once in front of the Husband who agreed that I did look a little like the hippy Muppet) before helping her do that. I also did not stand in front of the bathroom mirror and run my hands down my long, citrus-colored locks twice (once home alone during lunch).

Can I take this massive amount of gorgeous yarn to my LYS and confess that I am having yarn affairs with online yarn shops and still ask the LYS to wind this stuff for me? I usually wind by hand, but this is a bit much.

(said by McPantses on Saturday a.m.)

Alternatively titled “How I strongly desired bourbon at 9:45 a.m. on Saturday.”

Friday after work, I noticed that the tiny leak of water near the street end of our driveway had grown to a visibly moving trickle of water. The water company had already been by on Thursday to check our meter and declared the leak on “our end” of the problem area and they were right. The leak was about a foot past the water meter on our end.

I called our plumber from the driveway at 5:05 p.m. on Friday and asked them to call me Monday morning so we could set up an appointment for this week to get the leak fixed. They’d quoted me an amount over the phone to replace a water line from the meter to the house. The assumption was that the water line would be galvanized something because the house was built in 1954 and we knew of no repairs. Galvanized = a bitch to repair. I had visions of my driveway being ripped up and a trench dug across my yard, neither of which are particularly appealing to this lazy, lazy homeowner. I assumed the bulk of the cost would come from having the driveway put back.

Saturday morning, someone knocked at our door at the unholy early hour of 9:30; I was in my pah-jay-jays and the boychild was still pantsless and tottering around in a diaper and we all looked at each other in confusion.

The Husband greeted our mail lady, who paused as she dropped off our daily ration of junque mail to tell us that there was a plume of water shooting up from our driveway.

Insert mass pandemonium here.

Also insert many happy birds pausing to sit and bathe in the growing puddle (aka suburban whitewater rapids–but not quite).

I located a plumber with Saturday hours and tried, per the gal who answered the emergency hotline, to turn off the water at the meter and was unable to do so. The Husband insisted on taking a shot at it, too (there was much grumpishness about all this on the part of the adults at our house and much wonderment and glee on the part of the heathen spawn at our house) and squashed back inside a minute later. We were highly upset by this point: the plumbing woman had already informed us that if the line was galvanized, they couldn’t fix it until this week and that no one could repair galvanized pipes on a Saturday. The idea of several days with no water source makes for a peevish household, indeed.

After I called the water company’s emergency line to come shut off our water, I filled the pet water dishes and the pitchers in the fridge, sent McPantses for a bathroom pit stop (and a good hand-washing and teeth-brushing), started a fast load of clothes and did as many other quick water-related actions as I could accomplish in the 25 min or so it took the water dude to arrive.

I started plotting where and when we would shower and wondering about jugs of distilled water and washing hair and hotel rooms and the pets and on and on and on. Then, lovely lovely Kevin from the local water works shut off the water (it took a long metal pipe thing he called “the key” to do this, so neither the Husband or I could have done it, no matter how hard we tried), pumped out the water in the shallow area where the meter is, scraped back the sludge and pronounced the pipe leading from the meter towards the house to be PVC and not galvanized.

We got so lucky.

By the time the plumber arrived 15 minutes later, my heart rate was approaching normalcy again. The guy was shockingly handsome, except he wore shiny plastic sunglasses the entire time (the kind that waterskiers wear, if that tells you anything), so he could have had a cyclops eye or cyborg eyes for all I knew. He also had the weirdest voice I have ever heard and talked like he had a mouthful of rocks, so there was a strange disconnect in dealing with him.

McPantses stood on a chair and watched from the front door window while the plumber dug up just the cracked part of our driveway right over where the leak was, mucked out the sludge and made the repair. She called out a play by play while I knitted on the couch and the boychild consented to close his eyelids for a moment.

“You should see how much this man can lift, Mama!”

“There is SO MUCH DIRT, MAMA!”

(I think that’s about when the boy woke up.)

“This is aaaaaaa-maaaa-zing!”

The plumber was finished and gone in less than an hour. I’m thinking McPantses got a solid 2.5 hours (from “plume of water shooting out of driveway” to “small gaping hole in driveway marked off with PVC poles and yellow caution tape”) of very fine entertainment, notwithstanding the dollar-sign/possible lack of water-induced stress the Husband and I felt for the first half of the day.

It was so bloody hot outside that the suburban river rapids were dry before the plumber finished working and later that day, the Husband swears, he saw birds looking for the puddles.
We both held off on drinks until about 4 p.m., when we met friends out for an hour.

I can’t decide if my mother or I will be the first person to back a vehicle into the hole in our driveway before we can get the concrete fellas over.

What does it mean that my son, who will be 17 mos old in ten days, now announces his bowel movements about 15 minutes before they occur?

He is aware. He tilts his chin and peers at us with a question and an announcement on his face and says “Duh duh? Duh duh. DUH DUH!”* And then, five or twenty minutes later, there it is.

Now what?

Uh-oh, part II:

Why must you insist on coming to stand next to my chair when you come in my office? Do you really need to walk all the way around my desk to come peer over me while I try to help you find something you should be able to find on your own?

My office is enormous. There are two chairs on the “visitors only” side of my desk. There are three large tables and an additional chair at one of the tables. There is plenty of room for you on the other side. You do not need to hover over me and breathe my air while I am thinking and working on the answer to your question.

Go.

Away.

Seriously, who does that? For the record, a woman has never ventured beyond my desk to stand over me or to go so far as to clap her big manhand on the back of my chair while I work. Does no one appreciate personal space?

I’m going to have to tell this kid to back off. He’s been in four times in the past two workdays. He knocks at the halfway open door and then strides across the length of my office to get behind my desk.

How do I stop him? Noxious fart cloud is the first thing that comes to mind, but one can’t always summon that up upon demand.

* He also now says “die die” for diaper. The vocabulary continues to grow exponentially.

First commenter to whom I have not mailed something in the last few weeks gets goodies.

Included will be a Wee Wonderful Put-Together book along with a notebook from me (I have three left and I think I can part with one) and another goody or two.

I bought two extra Wee Wonderful booklets to give as gifts and decided to just give one and save the second copy for that one individual who has somehow managed not to purchase one so far. It’s yours if you claim it!