ponderings

You know how some people are stupid? I'm wondering if it's instilled at birth or some kind of conscious choice... cuz it seems no matter how hard people try they're just stupid for a good long time. They can't ever break the habit.

Whoever thought thinking BEFORE speaking would be a major problem for people in today's society.

"Are we just going to wait it out?"

all for love

Thank you, tiny love muffin who grew up to save the world. You give my life purpose even when I don't realize it.

Merry Christmas everyone!

p.s. there is a marathon of White Christmas on ALL DAY today!

All I Want For Christmas...

the Christmas season is in full swing complete with sideways blowing snow and the little light up snowflakes and bells on the lamp posts.

I am in a much better Christmas mood than last year. Last year I wasn't happy AT ALL with my state of unemployment and everyone being so happy about Christmas just made me more sad. This year is way better. Despite the galeforce winds that are happenin' today.

I have made a Christmas list every year since before I could read and write. It's just tradition. At one point my lists were extravagant filled with lots of WordArt and red and green but this year I don't actually want anything. Right now I'm into knitting so I would appreciate a couple hanks of Blue Sky Alpaca Chunky yarn above anything else. Is that weird?

I made a mistake today, too. I looked at someone's facebook (sadly I am guilty of a little Fb stalking) and I definitely should NOT have because I totally miss having that person as a close friend. And I just realized that this person bothers me more than other people... like if this was anyone else I would still have the same standard but it wouldn't affect me as much, but it's not anyone else. I just got Imogen Heap's new cd today - well it's not so new but when you ordered it in September from the library and it just got here haha! - and it made me think of EVERYTHING so... buh. Emotionally I'd like to say, "I MISS YOU SO MUCH" but dealing with something emotionally is never good. Can I still be sad about it by myself though? I might just do that...

On the upside of things the knitting is going very well. We are set to launch in March - so look out for my family's etsy shoppe - Blueberry Cobbler (if you knew us you'd know that it's the PERFECT NAME). I was hesitant at first; more than hesitant I shut the whole idea DOWN. Now I'm open to it and my sister and niece are over the moon excited. Check out my Flickr for pictures of things we have so far - under Blueberry Cobbler : ) let me know if you want me to knit you a Car Cozy: for the winter season.

not even a little rogue

today ended up being pretty sucky. i went downtown to go to the Renegade Handmade Holiday Sale. I've only been waiting for it since September. Turns out a friend of mine couldn't go so I decided not to go. It's a LONG way to Wicker Park and trekking up there and back alone just... isn't as fun as going with someone. I also figured I could buy my Ork! Poster online - that was really all I wanted. So there that was.

I did my first errand, which was to get wool roving, which was AWESOME. The knitting part of the day was exceptionally awesome. I spent... well more than I wanted and I STILL didn't get everything I had originally in my hands. I found yarn, 1 skein of yarn, for 110 dollars! It was FANTASTIC. And it stayed there haha

So I desperately texted Anisha right before I left saying I hoped I would see her and walked on to Starbucks. I get there and wait like 45 minutes while not being able to reach her getting more and more down. Besides the knit shop everything was going to pot. Finally she calls and is like, "Oh I thought I told you I couldn't come..." That was when I completely just broke down. I couldn't even hold it in. There was some creepy girl starin' at me probably texting her friend that a girl is crying... jerk. I just gave up and started for the train.

Anisha, being the best friend that she is, came to my rescue. She had to work and was trying to get out of it but I guess I missed the part where she couldn't. I just... cryingly told her I "had to go and that today was horrible and I didn't know and I was going home." Just. Like. That. So I turn around - STILL CRYIN! - and go back to Starbucks... and pretty much just cried some more HAHA. Once the flood gates opened (IN PUBLIC) i just couldn't stop. Eventually I did and Anies made me feel better about the Day That Turned to Crap.

I think I'm just bad at planning things... so... now to stay indoors for a little while and recuperate my tear ducts.

oh!... christmas tree!

This is what my Christmas tree looks like:

This is what my tree looks like when I take my glasses off:

I thought these both were accurate points of view : )

handmade catch-up

I did all this cool adventuring and told you the high points only to completely forget that I have some fruits of that labor! The labor being... all the cool adventuring. Well in October (which seems so far away now) I went here:

pretty much. the coolest place ever. ya know besides Argo and most local yarn shops.

here are some FRUITS!

We got to make cutouts of styrofoam so you could layer paper on top of your paper. I made the bird and the moustache, in true Abbers form, and they were a hit! I love the ragged and curled edges of the paper. My favorite is the oatmeal bird on the vibrant green. The lighter color was made with newspaper and magazines - if you look close you'll see a tiiiiny clipping haha. It was a cool day. I'd really like to take their letterpress class. It sounds so awesome!

remoulade

i don't even understand how this story didn't end up here but here it is.

there was a mouse in my apartment like 3 weeks ago and honestly I can't tell you how. We live on the 3rd floor. THE THIRD floor! It must have ninja-army crawled its way up the gas pipe (and how did it not DIE from asphyxiation) and my niece spotted it. "Too big to be a bug." Those words struck fear in my bones. I remember having a mouse in the house on Dixie. I came in the kitchen and we stared at each other before running off to our respective holes.

So we told Autumn (the niece) to go back and check, with my mom in tow, cuz apparently she LIKES disease-ridden rodents and sure enough there was a mouse. What happened next can't really be described but I'm going to try. There were 4 people in the apartment - my mom, myself, my niece Autumn and my nephew Aaron - and there were 4 completely DIFFERENT emotional reactions to this tiny, scared, little, fat mouse.

Mom - ends up yelling, "THERE'S A MOUSE! THERE'S A MOUSE! THERE'S A MOUSE!" while turning in endless cirlces on a rug in our living room. Then she burst into tears and got angry and accepted it. My mother went through all 5 stages of grief in 5 minutes.
Autumn - as aforementioned, wanted to befriend the mouse and named him Alfalfa. My grandmother named him Alfeefee.
I - FREAKED OUT and stayed off the floor as if it were mouse infested hot lava.
Aaron - the processor, stayed quiet and then asked if anyone had a gun so he could potentially shoot the mouse.
*scenario* "This is your nightly 10 o'clock news. In the sleepy village of Flossmoor there was a quadruple homicide allegedly accidental but no one's alive to tell the story! The only witness? A grey mouse spotted under the stove in the kitchen." that's how it would have went down.

So there were 4 vortexes of emotions happening all the while this mouse is just CHILLIN' under our stove. My mom went into army warfare mode after the brief teary scene and tried to call a bunch of people. Meanwhile my niece is still fawning over it and my nephew is still pensive with the occasional, "........So is it gone yet?" I close EVERY DOOR in the apartment and my mom YELLED at me for it!
Mom: "I can't be claustrophobic in my own house OPEN THAT DOOR!"
Me: "MOM!... MOM! MOM!... MOM!...MOM!!MOM! MOM!" *hands flailing wildly*

Yes, in case of a mouse keep everything OUT IN THE OPEN. What?!?!?!

Finally we contacted a friend who took my mom mouse trap shopping and we caught it in a few days. I told my niece who was distraught. My mom said I shouldn't have told her buuuut I didn't care! DISEASES! That word alone justifies my case. I win.

Even though it's been however many weeks since we caught it I still flip the light on in the kitchen, peek my head around and THEN enter the kitchen - ya know just in case any more army warefare ready mice decide to invade again.

We still laugh over this story mostly over the 4 vortexes of emotion that happened. I wish I could show you how it was... it's way better when I tell it.
Did I tell you I stole something from Jewel once? Ah, another day. :0)

misunderstandings of flapjack

Some friends of mine decided my family needs to be on television. It's true... we do... we're absolutely out of the box in terms of families. I'll be posting stories of dumb stuff we do, dumb stuff I say and things like that. So that means I'll be posting a LOT more : ) HAHA

For example today:

It's cleaning day. We have an annual cleaning day before each high holiday of the year because family comes over. We revamped the living room to accommodate the tree and put up like... 4 picture frames. There's lots of Pledge and Fabuloso involved - it's just what we do.

Anyway my mom is just outside my room doing something that involves rugs and cleaning them. She comes into my room and looks at the scratches on the bottom of my door and goes, "Ooh, a dog lived here."

I'm at my computer and turn slowly around, "Mom! I know I have a lot of hair and that I shed but there is NO REASON to call me a dog. I'm gonna clean up! Promise."

My mom looks confused. "Abby! Look at the door. AN ACTUAL DOG used to live here. Why would I call you a dog haha"

"Oh... I thought you were trying to drop a hint that I needed to clean..."

my bad... I mean my mom usually will just SAY clean up not be like 'hey mangy mutt clean your JUNK up!'

or yesterday when my mom told my grandma not to bring food to Thanksgiving dinner because she is getting older and doesn't need to do the brunt of the work. She wants to help so we give her a few things. This year it was macaroni and cheese and sweet potato pies. This is the gist of the conversation she had with my mom.

Grandma: OK, so I'm making a ham for here (meaning her house) and some dressing. Do you need me to bring dressing?

Mom: *giant pause* No, mom that's... we're... we're good.

Grandma: Oh, ok I'm making greens for here and potato salad. Are you makin' potato salad? I could bring the potato salad. Oh I'm makin' sweet potato pies, too. OO! and I'm bringin' the cake right?

Mom: Mom, I'M making the cake... but I mean you can... uh...

NOT ONCE did my Grandma even mention the macaroni which we THOUGHT she was bringing!!! She does this every year. We'll give her a small task so she's not overwhelmed and she like bogarts the menu and brings EVERYTHING. I swear to bob next year she'll break out and be like, "This duck was ON SALE for $0.39 a pound! I just had to get it!" Plus we have this running joke about Peking duck. I don't... actually remember how that started, what it's about or why it's still funny but all three are still goin strong. That's just us.

Tomorrow I'll tell you the story of the mouse... cuz the world needs to know. I'll have to figure out how to write that down it works much better when I tell it. I guess that's the good thing about writing EXACTLY how you talk... eh? eh? right???

triple chapel! triple chapel! triple chapel!

try sayin' that... it's difficult right? I knows.

Last weekend was my Olivet adventure. It was extra interesting from start to finish. It started out with me going to the gas station to fill up my tire. In all my awesomeness I ended up DEFLATING my tire while trying to inflate it. Yep, you heard correct. I let more air out while trying to put air in. This is no small feat. It's a learned SKILL, passed down from ancient Incans who invented the car and used air pumps CENTURIES before Henry Ford. *ahem* Sounds plausible right? After freaking out and semi crying/hyperventilating I drove to my trusty mechanic who filled it right up after expressing concern at how dangerously low my tire was. I explained the situation and he told me to keep an eye on it. Did I mention I paid $1.50 in quarters at the gas station to DEFLATE my tire? Did I mention my trusty mechanic will fill your tires for FREE anytime? You live and learn.

After finally getting on the road and making it down to B-town I trekked over to the field, where I had to pay 10 bucks to get in!! I would have gotten in for free if the tire mishap didn't happen. I haven't had to pay for a football/basketball game in 9 years. NINE! Travesty. Blood thirsty money suckers! I'm better. The game... well our football team seriously sucks tennis balls. I did enjoy seeing band friends, including this one kid I don't even KNOW who called me a hero. I mean I am a lil bit... if you don't know you better ask somebody!

I watched halftime and commented on sexy flute angles and my signature move (seriously I'm a lil awesome!) I went and had lunch with Sarah, bf, Crystal and Katherine. It was good to see everyone and, of course, the Chinese food was fantastical. Shout out to Sweet Annie's who still holds the record for the best red velvet cupcakes in the WORLD. It's the frosting. I think it's whipped cream cheese frosting. It's lighter than air, which almost justifies eating way too many in one sitting.

During dinner I realized I triple booked myself. I committed myself to eating with Sarah and Kat, Josh and April, AND Maggie. I honestly don't know how I did it. I stayed the longest with Sarah and Kat cuz I told them first. Then I went to El Burrito with Maggie for a $1 churro and horchata (cinnamon-y loooove) for like half an hour then... well then I went back to the music building for a potty break (heh) then to Panda Express/Oberweis for NO food and Josh, April, Sammy, Faith and MATT. WHITE! Busiest day. ever. All of it was fun though!

It was nice to see everybody and that people actually wanted to SEE me. Exactly the opposite of living up here. All in all a good weekend of CRAZY awesomeness.

Next weekend is the gospel choir concert! yaaaay. Let's hope I don't have to fill up any tires before then.
p.s. happy 100th post! : )

writin' this down!

This keeps poppin up in my head and I want to get it out:

I want to own a knitting shop/bakery one day. I think it would be awesome. As soon as I typed this my heart went a little sour. I don't know if it's nerves or the wrong thing to want. I think my mom could work there and my niece and sister as well. It would just be a family run... cute little business. I like it. And my heart is still like, "NOOOO!" lol mixed emotions...

Also, goin' down to Olivet this weekend for homecoming and copious amounts of eating haha. I think I'm going for the gospel choir concert as well in two weeks. I can't resist good music/dancing all for Jesus whaaat?! haha

b the dubs i finished 1 hat. workin on the reincarnation of the other one now. same style. same button. same color. same AWESOMENESS.

preeeviiiiew!