Blown Off Course

"Ahoy!"

"Oh, hey there, Pirate Skull Planter. What's up?"

"I be wantin' to thank ye, lass."

"For?"

"Fer the fine scarf ye've wrapped 'round me neck, o' course. It'll keep the icy spray of the sea from chillin' the bones. Might be a tad long, though. We're ya aimin' to make a neckerchief or replacement rope for the mainsail?"

Aww. He seems so happy. Nobody tell him that the long foundation chain isn't going to be a scarf for him. Also, nobody tell him that he doesn't actually sail or have a neck.

Yes, with only an hour's worth of work left on my Tagliatelle ribbed tank, I've abandoned it for another stumbling attempt at crochet. Daisy took it up a couple of weeks ago, and she's already producing beautiful, complicated work. She's currently about halfway done with the Butterfly Wrap from StitchDiva. I, on the other hand, keep making foundation chains and ripping them out again.

Complicating matters, because nothing's ever simple in Bananaland, I seem to have broken my middle finger on my right hand yet again. Remember when I said that I have no depth perception? Way back in high school, I broke my finger trying to catch a football, because I couldn't really tell where the football was in relation to my hand, and more importantly, to my face. It's a thing I do, panicking when something appears to be flying at speed toward my head. I throw whichever of my appendages is handy in the flying object's path.

"Aye! I've got better depth perception, though I be missing both eyes and wear a patch o'er one of the holes."

Thanks for that, Pirate Skull Planter. Anyway, a couple of weekends ago, I pulled a rolling cooler off of the top of the beer fridge and lost control of it. I kept it from landing on my head by deflecting it with the tip of my middle finger. The cooler had a bottle opener in it, and I wanted a beer, but I didn't want to go inside to get the opener off of the bar because I didn't want to wake up the dog. What? Like you've never almost clocked yourself in the head with picnic furniture because your dog was napping on your couch, but you really wanted a bottle of beer, even though you were standing inches away from a keg refrigerator and a freezer full of pint glasses. Yeah, like I'm the only one who's done that. Right.

I probably chipped my finger again, so it's kind of hard to knit because I curl my middle finger in around the needle, and there's not too much finger curling to be had right now. The last time I did something like this, during the landscaping madness of 2003, the hand specialist told me to soak my hand in warm, soapy water and simply wait for it to stop hurting. He suggested that I might accomplish this by washing dishes in the sink. I suggested that he might go soak his sexist head in that same sink, and we had a good laugh at each other's expenses.

That's what I get for wanting to celebrate my clean garage with a Sam Adams Summer Ale, I guess. I should have taken pictures of the garage. It looks spectacular. I've rearranged all of my craft supplies so that they fit in the cabinet that used to hang in my kitchen.


That center cabinet is on my garage floor, now. I keep all of the beading, knitting and craft supplies in it.

Oh, yes. We've done some work on the kitchen. I haven't talked about that at all, and since I'm being fueled by too little sleep and an extra-strong cup of tea this morning, I feel like talking about it now.


We went crazy a few weeks ago and did a little work on the bland kitchen. We tried out a couple of colors before deciding that we'd already found the one we liked, and it was all over the walls of our old house. "Why do we keep trying to make it different? We know what we like." Now we have another gallon of paint that we know we don't like sitting out in the reorganized garage, but never mind about that now.


You know the really crazy part? I'm actually starting to like this kitchen more than the old one. It's bright, even though the color on the walls is called Burgundy Black. The electric cooktop is easier to use and clean that the gas. I'm actually finding that I don't mind the tiny oven. It heats up fast because there's not much room for air in there. I can't roast a very big turkey, but I only try to do that once a year anyway. It'd be nice to have better cabinets and countertops, and maybe a vent fan, but we're doing alright without those things.

The paint and new lighting were less than $250, even including the gallon of Celestial Yellow that we're never going to use. The kitchen remodel at our old house cost about four hundred times that much. I think we might be getting smarter.

Maybe it's the caffeine talking, but I'm in a good mood about the whole thing. I feel like it's finally becoming our house now that we have the time and energy to put our stamp on it. I love having everything organized and clean, no dead spaces for spiders and vermin to hang out. Next up? The hedges along the side yard. Me, the broken finger on my trigger-squeezing hand, the two-foot blades of my electric hedge trimmer, and dangling power cords. What could possibly go wrong?