Holy Smoke!

Yes, the smoke from the South Georgia fires once more cloaked Atlanta in haze.





With the resulting traffic idiocy, even though it really didn't significantly lower road visibility for Mr. Average Commuter.





However, the entire city smelled like an ashtray and made Ms. Packratty cough. Ick. Charlie was sneezing on his morning walk, too.





Pray for rain in south Georgia and north Florida - not because it's polluting my air, but because it's really, really bad and has already claimed the life of one firefighter.



In the Good News category, Ms. Packratty's relative is recovering well from surgery. We are thankful.

Monday and Tuesday and things to be glad for

There was a little knitting, a lot of reading and just a little de-packratting on Memorial Day. Mostly really taking it easy and snuggling Charlie, who has been suffering from my long hours and fatigue. Ms. Packratty was more than a little tense, because a relative is facing surgery.
But shortly after 2 p.m. Tuesday, said relative was able to answer the phone and convey the news that surgery was successful.
So with that news, Ms. Packratty set off with Marleen (leaving Charlie with his buddy DeeDee) and went ... shopping. Marleen did *most* of the shopping, but Ms. Packratty was able to replace her almost worn-through-the-soles Crocs with a pair on sale and a spare pair to boot. Now, Ms. Packratty needs to remember to take the worn out pair AND the boxes and bags from the new ones and GET THEM OUT OF THE HOUSE!

Still waiting for the latest fix of sock yarn from the sale at www.littleknits.com ... and I'm starting the heel of sock 2 in the Colinette Jitterbug Blue Parrot socks.

Rest and fun

The holiday weekend started inauspiciously, but that turned out to be a good thing, because it just kept getting better. Unfortunately, the inauspicious part included my oh-so-considerate neighbor having a party that lasted into the wee hours of Saturday morning. Since Ms. Packratty had to be at work at 8 a.m. Saturday, this was not especially considerate. However, Ms. Packratty was not the only person who summoned the cops to the party and she looks forward to the new tenant in the apartment under MissTrouble arriving. At that point, the parties and fights will be called in by up to three neighbors. Maybe that sort of unanimity will get the point across?

Sadly, after little sleep Friday night and working Saturday, there was a faceplant on the bed Saturday afternoon that continued into Sunday morning when to my horror I awoke to discover that Atlanta was once again socked in under smoke from the south Georgia fires. It was horrible and I was really afraid that Stephanie - my third cousin on the Skinner side of the family - was going to have to cancel her Memorial Day Weekend soiree. Happily, as the pictures of Charlie above indicate, that did not happen. Charlie comported himself nicely and was invited back. And was he ever one tired little dog when we got home. Very, very tired.

Dear God in Heaven I want to CRY

This was the best part of my day - an absolutely perfect gardenia, with the swooning sweet scent that never ever seems to be cloying

OK, so I've covered the fact that we've had 5 people depart the Tech Support department in the last 6 weeks for various reasons and we were slightly understaffed (1 position) when that happened anyway, so you can surely imagine that the last 6 weeks have been Hell on a cracker?

So what does our manager do? Sails out of the office Thursday at something shortly after 5 p.m. and then sends an e-mail this morning saying "See you all Tuesday." FOUR DAY WEEKEND with no warning. Leaving a grand total of 4 people working.

One poor co-worker was here alone from 7:30 a.m. until 8 a.m. to deal with all the software error calls. There was ONE hardware queue co-worker and then me, the multitasker. I got in here shortly after 11 (because I realized that poor Charlie desperately needed a play date and dropped the poor beast off at Marleen's on my way to work). So the first thing that happened to me was getting totally hammered because the co-worker answering software calls bolted for lunch as soon as she saw me coming and I do not blame her one tiny little bit. Heck, in her position, I might have been bolting for Tower Liquors across the street (classy neighborhood to go with the great pay) about that time.

Anyway, there was a major bit of software stupidity and a whole great mountain of user stupidity going on and then the hardware guy bailed at 4:30; the other software person split at 4:15 and the second line desk supervisor bombed out of here at 5 p.m. and I'm stuck here alone answering calls from mentally deficient and arrogant users in California all by myself and I swear to God there is one girl with a voice so whiny that it makes my teeth itch. I was sitting there telling her I couldn't fix her broken spreadsheet if she couldn't tell me what columns the spreadsheet was intended to add and subtract from what columns and she actually said "Is there anyone there who knows anything about Excel?"

Head:Desk

OK, so I have to be back here Saturday at 8 o'clock of the morning and some of my co-workers have to work Monday (but most if not all of the Suits will be enjoying THEIR weekend). You know, growing up as a military brat really ruined me for civilian employment. Because officers in the military work the same kind of long hours as their subordinates. Sometimes longer. When I was a kid, especially when we were overseas, Dad was gone at way-too-dark-to-be-awake-let-alone-shaved-and-kitted-out-in-a-perfectly-starched-uniform and he rarely if ever got home before dark most of the year and dusk in high summer. Plus he worked every single Saturday that he wasn't on leave from way-too-early until mid-afternoon at least. So the managers who take every long weekend and so forth really don't impress me much at all.

So anyway, when 3 p.m. came around, I bolted the place and headed up to The Needle Nook since I had an email saying that she had the newest colors of the Colinette Jitterbug in stock and I needed to buy more teentsy-tiny #1 bamboo needles since I bent and broke ANOTHER one yesterday. Well, I wanted the Colinette Jitterbug Seabreeze color pattern and it turned out to be much ... browner than the pictures on the Colinette site indicated. I mean really muddy BROWN. The web site picture looks like a light beige and this stuff was dark. The Monet was muddier than the web site too. So no more sock yarn. I was saved. Which considering my little falling down the other day is a good thing. The Packratty budget can't afford much retail therapy. Although I did buy needles and a row marker. An appropriate row marker for my recent progress . . .

Life is Just a Bowl of . . . CHERRIES!

Yes, indeedy, it's cherry season again and Ms. Packratty has been on the "fruit and tea" regimen that always seems to set in when cherry season peaks and the cherry prices drop under $3 a pound. Thank heavens this phase only lasts for about 3 weeks, 4 tops, because by the time cherries once again become insanely budget-bustingly expensive, Ms. Packratty is TIRED of them, if one can indeed be tired of the Nectar of the Gods.

Fruit and tea means that Ms. Packratty stumbles home from work (more on that later) and washes off a good mess of cherries in the colander and dumps them in a paper-towel-lined bowl and then goes forth to read her email. Somewhat later, she thinks about dinner but is already stuffed on cherries, so she makes a cup of tea and tries to stay awake long enough for the news at 10 to come on.

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The reason that Ms. Packratty is stumbling about in a daze is that the staff at her workplace is currently about half of what it should be, yet our users continue to mess up the programs, the hardware and the data at the usual pace. This sudden decline in workforce is due to the canning of two co-workers (one of whom richly deserved it); the lateral move of a third; and the defection of a fourth to a position with almost no commute, better pay, better benefits and no requirement that he wear a tie every bloody day of the year. The fifth co-worker developed kidney failure and congestive heart failure and nearly died, so it is difficult to hate him for his absence.

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Management has scurried about recruiting replacements, who might be competent to answer the phone by Labor Day, while motivating us with the occasional lunch and some movie tickets. Forget that noise - motivate me by taking the pay for the 5 empty positions and divvying it up among those of us who are carrying a double workload! Cash bonuses? Ha. They think a cold quesadilla from Chilis is going to do the trick. Can we say "updated resume" boys and girls?

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Meanwhile we have the Memorial Day weekend approaching and while the parking slots for the Executive Gods are already mostly empty, the Help Desk will be staffed both the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend and on Memorial Day itself. Those who matter (the expensive cars in the reserved spots) will mostly be gone for a week centering on Memorial Day itself. Really motivating. Really. Truly. Ms. Packratty will be working on the Saturday and have the Tuesday off.

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Needless to say, not much knitting or de-packratting has been getting done, but there have been a number of interesting things going on.

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First of all, it has been late spring and that has meant all sorts of raging animal attraction going on everywhere. While it was cool enough to have the windows open there for a while it was too darned noisy - too much muskrat love sort of stuff going on. It's been dry, so the frogs have been very quiet, though, those can be deafening even with closed windows in a rainy spring.

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Dry brings me to other things, like the fires burning a hole in south Georgia and northern Florida. The winds shifted early this week and on Tuesday, Atlanta was blanketed in stinky smoke - heavy enough to look like fog, but smelling like the bottom of an ashtray. It blew away, but it was sheerly awful while it lasted. Thousands of acres have burned and hundreds of people are losing homes and livelihoods.

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In other developments, the woman who lives downstairs is either fighting with her old girlfriend who moved out but who seems to be hanging around a bit or is fighting (usually at 2:30 a.m.) with someone new. The style of fighting - slamming doors, screaming, thumping on walls, does not seem to change, regardless of who the second combatant is. I'm really, really, really really tired of this woman and her dysfunctional lesbian love life. I'm tired of the fact that she cannot seem to shut a door without slamming it so hard that things rattle upstairs. I'm tired of her untrained, unaltered and badly-bred Boston terrier yapping at me and getting Charlie all worked up.

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Yes, Danielle, I want you gone. I don't care how anymore and that's why I no longer call the cops when you are fighting - because horribly enough, I find myself hoping that either you or your partner in combat will seriously damage the other, leading to jail or hospital or something for you and peace and quiet for me. And yes, I am horrified that I possess this sort of evil desire for bad things to happen to you, but dammit - you've woken me out of a sound and peaceful sleep or prevented me from attaining same too DAMN MANY TIMES. We will not even discuss the fact that you don't want your creepy assortment of scuzzball friends smoking cigarettes or joints in your house, so you send them onto the deck, where the clouds of stinking smoke drift in my open windows, meaning that even in marginally clement weather, I am forced to shut the windows and sliding doors.

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Exhaustion does have some good points - at least budgetwise. Ms. Packratty has managed to resist the siren song of various yummy yarns and continue knitting when possible on the chocolate brown merino monster or the Jitterbug socks ... but she had a little sort of yarn falling down thing when she found a sale at http://www.littleknits.com/ and might have ordered a wee bit over the minimum purchase in sock yarn. Not much, just 3 pair of socks worth including some Fleece Artist Merino in Nova Scotia ... I was hideously tempted by the Hand Maiden Sea Silk, but resisted. The CBMM and the hat for Dad and the shawl for Marleen are all in queue ahead of anything else. I will be strong. I will be strong. I will be strong.

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The other thing that irritates the pee out of me lately is when someone is conducting a knitting blog or a dog blog or whatever and they drag political comments in with this smug assumption that all right-thinking people must think the way they do. Well, I have news for them - when I log in to read a knitting blog, I am not there to read about your politics, etc. For whatever record there might be, Ms. Packratty considers herself to be a moderate who does not think it is ever appropriate to call the President demeaning names. Ms. Packratty even refrained from calling former president Clinton names when he was in office and given that Ms. Packratty is a feminist and she believes that the former president is a rapist or the very next thing to one, that was *difficult*. Hereby ends Ms. Packratty's political commentary.

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Nor does Ms. Packratty ever want to see or hear anyone ever demeaning or disparaging the men and women of the US Armed Forces. Please note that while there have been bad apples, in almost every case of said bad appledom or bad actions in the US military, it has been people within the military who blew the whistle on the bad actors. Unlike the civilian world where warrants, investigations and grand juries are often required to sniff out malefactors. Not to mention that military justice is both swifter and nastier than civilian justice. Nor does she much like the bashing of graduates of the various service academies - especially when such bashing is coming from the mouths or pens or keyboards of persons whom Ms. Packratty is mortally certain could not have hacked it out at West Point or Annapolis or Colorado Springs for so much as a month, let alone 4 years. Yes, Ms. Packratty is biased. She has relatives and ancestors who attended the service academies and believes them to be superb insitututions that focus on physical, mental and moral discipline.

EOT

Finished things and blooming things and new socks

First of all, I have finished and mailed to Mom the pretty socks out of the pastel On Line yarn. They turned out nicely.

I was so pleased with them and so bored with chocolate brown merino, that I immediately contemplated another pair. Went off to the yarn store and was thinking of buying more in a different color pattern when I was thumped on the head by the gorgeousness of some Colinette Jitterbug 100% merino sock yarn in the Blue Parrot color pattern. Oh heaven. I can't believe I spent that much (classified) on a skein of sock yarn.

Here's the beginning of my Jitterbug sock:

The maroon and green bits don't come out very distinctly, nor does the enchantingly buttery texture. I am in love. Enough to have scouted out the newest colors for this spring and finding one that I crave.

However, I am rationing time with these socks and requiring a certain amount of work on Chocolate Brown before I can return to Buttery Socks. Fortunately the yarn is expensive enough so I won't be stockpiling it. And when I finish CB, I need to move on to the silk and wool fuzzy yarn for Marleen's present.

In other news, my doorway clematis, after 2 years of sitting and doing little or nothing, has gone crazy - it's grown most of the way up it's supporting string to the loggia and is covered with blooms. It had been sitting there in its pot and doing nothing for so long that I'd forgotten it was supposed to have lavender blooms.

And that's all from Chez Packratty. I have an *entire* weekend with no festivals, nothing scheduled, no work, no committments elsewhere and I intend to devote it to maintenance on Chez Packratty and on Mz. Packratty herself.

And lots of time with Charlie.

MayDay

I remember being a child in Europe in the early 1960s when we would not leave the post on or around MayDay because it was a Communist Party event and they always whipped up a lot of anti-American sentiment.
Nice to be in the US where it means flowers at most.

Was spelunking around an old journal trying to find my remarks from a couple of years ago about GRONK! GRONK! is a Canada goose of the male persuasion who has been courting and nesting near my condo for a couple of years.

Here are my comments from 2005:

There's a reason for the phrase "birdbrain".

GRONK! GRONK! GRONK!

There are some houses being constructed behind my condo, about 50 yards away. There's a pond about 100 yards south of the first house. There are Canada geese who visit the pond. Bad enough that you can't walk anywhere near the pond in the spring without sliding on a slick of goosepoop; nor will we mention the aerial precision bombing they perform on parked cars.

GRONK! GRONK! GRONK!

Now what we've got is one confused member of the species, gender unknown, but I'll call it "him" for simplicity. For the last 3 nights, this idiotic bird has been perched on top of the southernmost house every night, emitting a series of GRONK! GRONK! GRONK! GRONK! GRONK! GRONK! GRONK! GRONK! GRONK! through the night.

Just when you think he's quit, he starts up again.

GRONK! GRONK! GRONK!

So thinking he was hurt or unable to fly after the first 2 nights, one of the neighbors prevailed on the construction crew to put a ladder up to the roof so he could rescue the bird and take him to the wildlife center, only to discover as he got to the top of the ladder, that the bird could fly just fine. Not to mention that he'd have never been able to catch the bird as the roof is befouled with 2-3 days of accumulated goosepoop.

GRONK! GRONK! GRONK!

So the goose was gone for a couple of hours and just as I started to think about shutting down the computer and going to bed .... GRONK! GRONK! GRONK! GRONK! GRONK! GRONK!

I'm alternately thinking that I may lose my mind and fantasizing about roast goose.

Well, GRONK! is back, although he has a GRONKETTE! and they no longer GRONK for hours, just a couple times a day. Goslings on the pond soon, I suspect.

However, the burning question remains - why do they call them migratory when they won't migrate?

Of Mice and Men ... or rather, rats ....

Charlie did it!
My smart, handsome dog went to an Earthdog Workshop and was the best dog at the workshop.
He was the first to go through the tunnel, the first to find the rats, the first to bark! What a wonderful boy.

We went all the way to Chattanooga for this and it was worth it. No pictures, I was too busy keeping control of my wild boy, what with there being other Westies, dachshunds of all types and a couple of Scotties. The other Westies were better behaved than Charlie and not too adventurous - my boy was not so inhibited. He made a new friend with a Scottie named Fergus and spent a good 30 minutes wrassling good-naturedly with Fergus. This makes me hope that Charlie will be able to do Junior Earthdog next time we have a chance. In the meanwhile, Charlie will have to practice ... a lot.

The drive was quite taxing - I-75 is a real mess. On the way up, barely out of Cobb County, there was a relatively minor, but messy (small produce truck) accident with one lane of four blocked. Yet the traffic backed up for well over a mile and 20 minutes to goggle at it. On the way home, I was just around Lake Allatoona when I spotted a traffic jam clogging all the southbound lanes ahead of me. I nipped off at the approaching exit and ended up taking the Generica tour of the northern exurbs. I do have to say that the bit right above Allatoona was country in the sort of way that the roads up in Cumming were not too long ago - house trailers, horses, firewood for sale. All to be gone sooner rather than later, I'm sure. Made it all the way through the wilds of northern Cobb County, Cherokee County and into Roswell, only to be stymied, just when I was getting so tired I felt like weeping, by the remnants of the end of the Tour de Georgia. Normally, I'd at least have enjoyed watching the muscular legs, but by 5:30 p.m. on a day that started at 5:30 a.m., I was more interested in getting home. Charlie, who'd been sleeping with his head on my leg for the entire trip, was equally ready to get home. In fact, he took a nap with me, then slept right through the night and was still ready to sack back out after the morning walk.

In other news, the spring colored socks are done - a present for my mother.

Progress on the afghan proceeds slowly - in fact, I have joined the Slogalong http://www.masondixonknitting.com/slogalong/ for people working on seemingly endless projects . . . pictures or links to follow soon. I'm itching for some smallish project, perhaps it's time to resume dishcloths.

Other than that, I have attended the Atlanta Dogwood Festival (twice); the Inman Park Festival; been working on a plan for http://www.hildrethcemetery.com/ and trying to cope with a workload made significantly greater by the involuntary departure of two of my compatriots - one of whom was "Mr. Coffeepot" from prior posts. Needless to say, the powers that be did not
consider the impact on the rest of us in terms of workload - or perhaps they considered it and decided it was unimportant. I would beg to disagree, but they aren't asking me and neither are they answering the calls. Ah well, there's always caffeine . . .

Succumbing to socks

OK, I needed a break from the brown brioche afghan. And it was Monday. And I'm knitting from stash, but sock yarn is allowed. So off I went to the Needlenook and indulged myself in something spring and summery.

And so last night, on went the caston onto #2s and with a little bit of news and weather watching knitting:

Very nice. I think.

And MORE blue

OK, I've been waiting for a day when my arms and shoulders could take it, and after exerting myself yesterday a bit helping Marleen's Joe move some furniture, I realized that I could do it.

Mood: Gratified.

Those who are less than impressed with a single light fixure also need to know that this had to be put up hanging out over the 2-story stairwell.

Blueblueblue blue

Most of this weekend has been eaten up with an allergy attack and the effort to finish the blue paint in the laundry room. I am happy to say that the horse-sized antihistamines work and also that all the blue bits are done.


I also finished the gloss paint on the (sole) shelf. I plan to put up another narrower shelf for tools and stuff above the wooden shelf, which is 18 inches deep. But I am not going to start in on the white semigloss. For starters, I need to wait until all the blue is dry and then razor out all the taping (and replace a couple of electrical outlet covers. And I need to shove the dryer back into the washroom and get some clean clothes for next week, plus sheets and towels, so this:




is what we have for now. The lighter area up in the upper right is just touch up over the overspray from attacking a waterstain with Kilz.



I am very pleased with the lucency and depth of the blue - the semigloss gives to a light quality that I think would be missing with flat paint.








This is the blue tile that I found while shopping with the fabulous Tobye T in Adairsville at the tile outlet back in 1999. I think it was right after Miranda came to me and just before Tobye absconded for Colorado. I think I shelled out $20 or so for this tile, which sat in forlorn stacks in the laundry room until like 2004, when I had the cash to get the tile laid. Unfortunately, there was no way (or enough tile) to remove the water heater and furnace and tile under them. When I have to replace the furnace



I hope I'll be able to have the water heater pulled too and some sort of plain white tile laid under the water heater, as the old lino is coming up in shreds and really disgusting. Hmm, there are 5 of the blue tiles left - enough to cover almost all of the floor that's visible between the wall and the furnace and the existing marble curb and the water heater - so almost anything in white past that would work just to make it more cleanable. The other thing I'd like to do in the laundry room is get the vent pipes arranged more compactly. They did at Deb's next door but it mine, they stick out overhead. Makes perfect sense - she's short, I'm tall , but that's probably a bit more long term. A new light fixture to replace the ceramic-socket-bare-bulb arrangement is definitely on.

So next, I need to muscle the 350 lb. front load washer back closer to the walls and start a load of wash and then I can drag the dryer back (again) and hook it up. Next weekend I can de-tape and start the reverse taping for doing the white paint. Progress.

On the knitting front, I am still slogging away on the chocolate brown brioche afghan. We've been at black hole country for a while - it's at lightly less than 6 feet and no matter how much I think I've knitted, it's doesn't seem to get longer. Since it's for a married couple, I want it long enough to wrap around two sets of shoulders on a cool night. I've passed from enjoying it to hating it back to enjoying it, but I'm really truly starting to look forward to knitting something else.

No exaggeration about the pollen

This is what the pollen looks like after it rains and it piles up behind an obstacle in the parking lot.











And this is what it looks like when you swipe some up with your fingers - just an inch or so from the above accumulation:















Yes, it really is that bad. A thick paste, discernably gritty when rubbed between the fingers.

In other news, Joy delivered 4 more lovely pups for Marleen in the small hours of the morning and looks much happier now that the puppies are on the outside. Just like human babies, they like to come in the night, apparently — Marleen said the first pup arrived about 4:30 a.m. and the last around 7:30. Ms. Packratty went by on her way home from work to admire the new babies. Joy was proud. Pictures soon.


Now, it's time to limber up the masking tape and paintbrush and get back to work on the laundry room. More blueblueblue.

And the rains came

Last night, leaving work, the temperature had turned deliciously cool. Like 20 degrees cooler than at lunch. It was so delightful that Ms. Packratty rushed home, walked Charlie and then turned her attentions to the laundry room, where she successfully got the easy 50% of the painting job done.

This lovely luminous blue in a semigloss was a Packratty find at the infamous Home Depot OOPS shelves in the paint department. $1 quarts and $5 gallons when you can find someone else's mistake that is your perfect (or reasonable facsimile thereof) color ... and for $5 a gallon, Ms. Packratty finds she can be VERY reasonable.
Of course, tonight the taping and cutting in and the second coat on the areas that weren't ready for a second coat last night will happen and then the painting the walls that will be remaining white begins. That will be considerably less speedy and nowhere near as dramatic. However, the contrast tells Ms. Packratty that the white appliances against the blue wall with white shelving will be dramatic and very clean looking.


Then better things happened. The new washer required only a minor adjustment and when the repairman was leaving, Ms. Packratty noticed with delight that the first rain in weeks was starting. By the time she departed for work, the rain had been gently falling for at least an hour and the immense amounts of pollen were starting to wash away.






And, just because they were so tiny and beautiful, as if Faberge had made a beautiful enamelled pear:

Yellow season

Just as New England has a peculiar season known as Mud Season, Atlanta and much of the Southeast has it's own vile precursor to full Spring — Yellow Season.

This is when the billions of pine trees (and oaks and hickories and dogwoods and Bradford pears and so forth) burst into bloom and coat everything with a fuzzy layer of the reproductive cells of plants. All takes on a yellow hue. Normally, this season falls during the spring rainy season, so that the coating of yellow is washed off or diluted every day or two, sending swirls of yellow through the gutters in scummy little cakes. This year, we've barely been able to summon up a heavy dew and the yellowness is getting intense. In the mornings, the first car or two through the parking lot leaves visible tracks through the yellow, just as if it was a light coating of snow.

Besides coating windshields, Yellow Season has other perils. During the morning commute, one occasionally sees cars swerve out of control, or speed up suddenly. It is Ms. Packratty's firm belief that these actions are not related to cell phones, coffee drinking ot makeup application by commuters, but are instead caused by fits of uncontrollable and profound sneezing.

She has also considered taping off a square yard of a neighbor's car roof (a car that has not been moved in a week and so it's coating is undisturbed) and carefully scraping off the pollen load and weighing it. If one knew the weight if the pollen coating one square foot, the pollen load per square mile could be calculated. And from thence, the pollen load for the square mileage of the greater metro area could be extrapolated. Ms. Packratty suspects the gross weight of the tree gonads coating everything would indeed be ... gross.

For those who might think this exaggeration:



This is the roof and back window of Charlie's Chariot, which was washed on Sunday. Picture taken mid-morning Thursday. The streaks were caused by excess fluid from window spritzing.


Now excuse me . . . aaaaitttchhhhooooooo!

Here is the queen herself, looking sulky.

What? No, you don't need to pick up these papers or CDs.

And here she is, marching down the bed, the instant she realized that Ms. Packratty was sorting out the desktop.

"Mine. It's ALL Mine."

Too Long Silent

OK, it's been a while.

Life has been more than a little insane - ranging from the death of the washing machine and a scramble to find cash to pay for a replacement, to a reprise of last summer's back problems, to an endless slog of too much craziness at work.

The span of silence also encompassed the visit of my dear friend from Colorado who came through to see her first grandchild and roosted with me for about 18 hours between her arrival at the airport and being taken up to Lake Lanier where her son and daughter-in-law and the baby are living. It's always wonderful to see Tobye and I was able to give her the book and the skein of alpaca silk lace weight that I'd been unable to resist buying for her.

I am still knitting on the chocolate brown afghan and I am within about 1 1/2 skeins of being completed, thankfully.

There has been some chiding for my failure to post pictures of Delilah Fuzzybutt, the real owner of Chez Packrat - Ms. Packratty being permitted to live here with Charlie only because she requires certain attentions, such as a steady supply of high priced kibble and a clean sandbox ...

Therefore, here we have Ms. Delilah as she makes sure Ms. Packratty's efforts to tidy her desk and sort things went to naught. OK, Blogger doesn't seem to want to accept pictures. We'll try again later.

Why is there no Packrats Anonymous?

Ms. Packratty spent most of her weekend excavating the guest room. Bags of assorted crap were trundled out to the garbage. Yarn was herded back into yarn bins. Clothing found its way into "dry cleaning" and "mending" baskets or onto hangers. More junk and trash and crap was bagged and hauled away. The bed is now clear of stuff. The new little basket system for the laundry room is working well.

That said, the bathroom still needs caulking and debriding of junk. And some general scrubbing.

The foyer is still a bit of a tip. And the kitchen needs one more big push. I'd like to sit on the floor and pull things out of the lower cabinets and decide which things are going to MA and TX and then be able to stow the nice new Calphalon stuff I've been buying. If I can clear the cabinets, I can deal with the countertop over the dishwasher which has been accruing clutter like a magnet attracts iron filings. Maybe I need another one of those clever bins for collecting the various semi-disposable food containers and lids ... Hmm, it's working for the laundry.

And I don't even want to think about what's behind the couch and needs to be cleared out.

That said, if I can put in another good solid hour in the guest room tonight and tomorrow night, that should be done and then I can work on the bathroom and kitchen.

But it was not all debridement this weekend. In addition to last week's dishcloths/potholders, more got knitted this weekend. The round ones are easiest - Ms. Packratty watched the first half of the PBS version of Jane Eyre last night and completed an entire dishcloth during the show, which was marvelous. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/janeeyre/index.html Next Sunday will definitely find Ms. Packratty perched on her couch, knitting and teapot at hand.

Love these colors, however while one brand of cotton yarn produces two dishcloths, the other produces just shy of 2, so the best alternative is to buy 2 balls and make three round and a small square, I guess.

The potroast, once cubed, produced a lovely stew, and since it is cold and dreary outside still, Ms. Packratty suspects that it will be as comforting tonight as it was last night after getting damp and cold walking Charlie.

Ms. Packratty has been taken to task for failing to post more pictures of Delilah Fuzzybutt. Despite having the camera at hand all weekend, Delilah obstinately refused to pose. We shall continue to endeavor to get pictures of her looking adorable or imperious or amusing.

9 days and counting

Ms. T will be here in 9 days and the guest room and loo must be ready for her.

Today's progress: a bunch of junk removed from the computer corner of the room and dragged out to the dumpster. Also a bunch of linens run through the wash and all the grout in the tub squirted with grout cleaner. I found TWO dead keyboards lurking in a corner - did I suppose they were going to be healed? Sheesh. And some more dishes washed and a start on getting the kitchen spiffed up a wee bit.

Friday am's task is to remove still more junk from the computer corner, take hanging clothes up to the upstairs closet and start getting all the rest of the loose yarn back into bins.

Friday p.m., I plan to get the bins back in the closet and make sure all the tub caulk that needs to be scraped out has been done. And continue to work on hanging, washing and sorting stuff, including getting all the stuff needing drycleaning in one place and all the shoes in another.

Saturday a.m. is time to caulk the tub and cart out all the boxes from the foyer that accumulated in the last 2 months.

Let's see how I do with these plans.

I did go buy 4 shallow bins for the laundry room shelf - one for socks, one for undies, one for kitchen stuff and one for things like bluing bottle, bleach stick, dryer balls, dryer sheets, stain spotter, etc. I do need to do more to fix up and organize the one shelf until I can put in a track shelf system with a bit more storage, but it's a big start. It feels like something that Ms. Packratty can deal with. And bought more hangers as I clearly need them. Can one have too many hangers - I mean the good plastic kind, not the metal and paper ones from the cleaners?

Dishcloth pictures tomorrow - can't find the batteries right now.

Thank you, Knitty.com

After plundering every knitting book in the house and a couple at the library, my head hurt. I could see the drawings of the cable caston, but they might as well have been Attic Greek. Then I went to www.knitty.com and there was an explanation with photographs. With contrasting colors of yarn. It made sense. I think. Now I have to see how I do when the yarn finally comes to start the hat for my father.

And got half of a dishcloth done at work between calls and other stuff. Done on much smaller needles, I think these will be thick enough to be potholders, without sewing two together.

10 Days until Ms. T arrives and there is about a month of work to be done on the guest room and guest loo. Tomorrow, the plan of action.

Sniff, sniff

Yes, Ms. Packratty still has the sniffles, but she is feeling much better and boy, is Charlie happy. Walkies, walkies. Sick leave is a wonderful thing - when a cold shows signs of colonizing the Packratty throat or chest, it's time to rest and try to stay well.

One of Ms. Packratty's dearest friends is coming East in 2 weeks after the birth of her first grandchild, so Ms. Packratty is contemplating the heaps in the guest room and going "oh dear". On second look, she estimates she should be able to finish grouting and caulking in the guest loo and dejunking the bedroom ... sometime after the newborn's first birthday. On the other hand, in an emergency, there's no limit on what the Packratty hands and back can accomplish.

Picture of the day is Charlie with little fellow who was visiting a neighbor Monday. Charlie has never heard that West Highland White Terriers don't like children ...