Swap!

I’m excited because it’s almost September. I just realized I sidestepped mentioning my birthday back in July. I feel like birthdays are really weird now - I just can’t seem to wrap my head around the idea that I’m in my thirties - 33, in fact. I seemed to have a concept of what this age would be like in my head, and I’ve realized that age really isn’t what I made it out to be when I was younger. Like I’m settling down - ha! Sometimes I feel like I’ve just recently grown into myself enough to start really being nuts.

SO - I’m all ready to get out the fall stuff. The days are getting shorter, the temps are only in the nineties and I’m doing a swap! It’s called the Very Vintage Halloween swap. I do not really know what “vintage” Halloween means, but the idea somehow still appeals to me.

If any of you have any ideas about what might count as vintage-y Halloween items, I’d appreciate hearing them. Seriously. I mean, Halloween to me is spooky things and cauldrons and black cats and witches in red-and-white striped stockings! Carved pumpkins! Hasn’t it always been that way? One thing I did suggest to my swap partner, the lovely Claudia of The Knitting Blog by Mr. Puffy the Dog (isn’t that an awesome name?) was Dia de los Muertos. That’s sort of retro … to me. The catrinas of Dia de los Muertos and The Nightmare Before Christmas always struck me as having a similar vibe, too. I love those things.

Meanwhile, I seem to have gotten my crocheting vibe back. I’m working on both my blankets again, and possibly a third if I can just manage to decide on the pattern I want to do. One of the blankets is a revisit to the very first thing I learned crocheting on. It’s going to be four very large granny squares (that’s a pic of one there to the right). I’ve decided to finish one large square per year, and I’m on #2. I would finish it faster, but I’ve found that it’s interesting working on this project over time. I can tell how much better I am at crocheting now than the last time I worked on it. I’m interested to come back in a year and see if I can tell a difference in my skill then. One thing I will say is that Red Heart Super Saver is very rough yarn. I mean, I can see starting out with it, learning and stuff, and I use it for stuffed animals still. But … wow. I do believe I may be exfoliating my fingers with this stuff.

I have to say that I’ve been pretty amused today because my cat Callie is very, very high. It’s nothing big, just pain medicine, but she’s being very loopy and her pupils are dilated and she’s kinda crossing her eyes. Dilated pupils must be rough for a cat, since they have such light-sensitive eyes. Poor kitty. She was spayed yesterday. When Jeff went to get her, he got the usual finger-shaking-in-our-face from the vet about her - about how she’s violent, and she wouldn’t eat, and she wouldn’t let them give her pain meds last night.

Honestly, I’m not terribly sympathetic. This is a veterinary practice, yet they’re lecturing me because my cat was defensive about being terrified, in pain and locked in a cage away from everything she knows? Pardon? This doesn’t seem right to me. I’m not arguing that the cat isn’t a handful, she is, but surely if you’re a vet you have a few tricks up your sleeve for handling terrified, defensive animals, right? Surely instinctive defensive behavior isn’t a shocker, either.

Off to investigate my bed. I’ve spent a bunch of time working on Photoshop and HTML today, and my brain is BEAT. I’ve been Twittering things today like “there’s nothing like a computer to make you feel like you’re being ignored.” Ain’t that the truth.