The sewing machine was humming yesterday afternoon at our house. It’s been quite a while since that has happened, possibly only once since Christmas, but I haven’t forgotten how to sew. Yesterday the humming was producing a new pair of pajamas for B. His flannel ones were getting too small and though it’s not too warm here yet (outside or inside) to wear them, summer is supposedly coming so summer pj’s were in order.

Ignore the awful "cheeeeeeese!" face, the lovely ponytail sprout on his head (he requests one a few times a year), the flash lighting and therefore the colouring, and the pose. The pose in itself isn’t bad, but it doesn’t display the clothes at their best. And I love this pajama set. A lot.

The shirt is the Ottobre curved raglan in size 104. I’m not sure which issue this one came from but the curved raglan is found in a couple of issues. The pj pants are regular cotton woven (not flannel) and are the same pattern as the alligator waffle-knit pajamas that I made back in February. The pattern for the pants was originally traced from a pair of ready-to-wear pj bottoms, all I did for these newest ones was make them straight legged instead of tapering a little to the ankle. B loves the fire trucks, police cars, and "ambilances" that repeat all over the fabric. I love the fit, big but not too big, room to grow and once again making him look like my little boy unlike when he’s busting out of his too-small clothes. There are more in the works - tonight I cut out two more pairs of pajama pants with shirts to follow.

I’m torn between sadness and laughing. I’m leaning more towards the laughter part (and did let out a chuckle or two); B doesn’t feel the sadness of the situation so I have no concerns there.

This is a conversation between 4.5-year-old B and his nearly-4-year-old cousin, whom he declared "my bestest buddy!!" this morning as I was driving him over to play while I went to my appointment. My sister sent me this via email a few minutes ago.

Overheard after I had explained to C and B that daddy/uncle M would be driving B home and then taking C for a haircut instead of C going to play at B’s house because they had played here instead:

C:  Daddy drive you home
B:  Not my daddy
C:  Where you daddy go?
B:  I don’t have a daddy
B: S tells me he’s my daddy but he isn’t

A few minutes later….

C:  Where yous daddy go?
B:  I don’t have a daddy
C:  Yous daddy want live you? [probably meaning to ask "don’t want to live with you"]  Where yous daddy go?
B:  You mean do I have a daddy?
C:  Yeah
B:  I don’t
C:  A bear?  [insert eating noises]
B:  My daddy?
C:  Yeah.  Yous daddy died?
B:  No.  I don’t have a daddy.

I’m not sure what the part about S telling him he’s his daddy is about because he doesn’t do that. Maybe he’s referring to when I asked him if he wanted to change his last name or to when we talk about getting married and living in the same house.

Reading the conversation through the email, I can see that C is struggling so hard to figure out why B doesn’t have a daddy. I mean, what possible reason could there be, right? Poor guy. I love the part where he wonders if a bear ate B’s daddy. It’s as good a reason as any, I guess.

Do not google for causes of thigh pain. Do not google to try and diagnose yourself.

Since February or March, I’ve had a sharp, deep, ache in the left side of my left thigh. My B12 was low and I was in the midst of a series of injections when I mentioned it to my doctor. He said that low B12 can affect the muscular and neurological systems and that it may go away with the continued shots. I had a series of five shots - once a week for five weeks - and it did indeed go away shortly after the last injection. And so I thought that the doctor was right, that it was related and had been taken care of. Since then, I’ve been taking a sublingual B12 pills and have been feeling fine (as opposed to the tired, completely worn out, sluggishness of pre-B12). I have a follow-up appointment in early July to check my levels again.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, the 11th or 12th of May, when the ache, which had been present again mildly all week, hit me hard and I ended up crying mid-conversation on the phone with my boyfriend. We had just picked up house paint at Home Depot and were in separate cars driving back to our respective houses. The next day as we were painting on the house it hit again. These aches were so much stronger than they were back in the winter - not any deeper as it was still unreachable, but much stronger, much sharper, and it hurt a whole lot more. I was of the "it won’t kill me, I’ll just whimper quietly" mindset but my boyfriend wanted me to call the doctor (he was worried about blood clots from being on the pill) and so I did. And they booked me an appointment for May 27, weeks into the future. The receptionist told me, "I’ve checked with the doctor and he said it’s definitely not your B12 but I can’t get you in until May 27." At that appointment, he referred me to the Vascular Clinic with "DVT" circled on the requisition. I have never been of the opinion (uneducated, however) that is was a blood clot since I don’t have any of the usual symptoms with that - soreness, heat, swelling, redness. So today I went to the Clinic and they used a doppler on my leg and told me that it wasn’t a clot. She said that my doctor may now have me get a full ultrasound on the leg but that it definitely wasn’t a clot. So now I have to wait until Monday to call my doctor to book another appointment as they’re closed Fridays and since they won’t call me if there’s nothing abnormal in the results. I don’t know what it is but I believe that it’s not normal.

So in the meantime, I will refrain from googling symptoms to check out the possibilities. I don’t need to read about Ewing’s sarcoma first thing in the morning. Actually, I’m not sitting here on pins and needles all worried, but I don’t want to find out what it is and how to fix it. Of course, the ache hasn’t been there since the week after I called to book the last appointment but I don’t doubt that it will return. Going gray and falling apart. Am I that age already!?

I think I may choose to do just that - grow old gracefully. I’m talking about my hair, which skipped gray and started sprouting whites when I was around 17. The grays are starting to arrive so there is a mix of both to take over my colour. I’ve coloured my hair for years. When it was long (at its longest it was down to my waist) it took me two boxes and when it’s short (it’s currently at its shortest), it takes me anywhere from less than half a box to a whole one. I had a trim today and, as I haven’t coloured my hair in a couple of months and my hair is super-short, the gray/white is very evident, especially at the sides. The top is still hiding it relatively well (except for where the odd white peeks through in all its wire-y glory) as it’s a little longer on top and the boxed colour hasn’t grown out yet.

Complete with eye baggage and perturbed expression. I was not perturbed.
I was, however, cold. Note the two sweaters over the t-shirt, which was over the tank.

Do I really want to go grey at 30, nearly 31? Not really but I’m kind of intrigued by the idea. I think it will be far easier to go grey with my hair this short than if it were longer. We’ll see. For now I’ll leave my hair as is and see how it goes. It’s definitely a lot less hassle.

Another week begun and another menu plan to create. This week I’m working night shifts tonight and tomorrow night and then day shifts on the weekend so B and I will have five dinners at home together. I’m already over budget for my groceries this month so this week will be a pantry challenge. I shouldn’t need to go to the grocery store at all this week. I’ve included one of the vegetable sides because I need to use it this week before it goes bad.

Monday: spinach salad
Tuesday: leftover-and-frozen chicken pot pie
Wednesday: pop-up pancakes with canned/frozen fruit
Thursday: Baked Teriyaki Chicken with broccoli
Friday: Friday Night Chili with toast
Saturday: Fluffy French Toast with berry syrup
Sunday: Moroccan-Spiced Tomato Chicken

Head on over to Organizing Junkie for many more menu plans for this week.

Simple thoughts on happiness, today, for Quotable Sunday:

"The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular reason for being happy except that they are so."
        ~ Dr. David Ralph Inge 

"Act the way you want to feel."

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us."
        ~ Helen Keller

"Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine."
        ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happiness is a choice.

I am overly proud of my potato bed. I can’t stop looking out the window at it! It’s nothing spectacular - quite the opposite in fact - but I made it myself and I’m enamored with it. I even used the level to make sure it was sitting level in the ground. Turns out the shed beside it is not level though. It looks pretty scrubby around the bed but I’ve sprinkled grass seed and once I get rid of the pile of dirt that came out of it and is now heaped beside it, I’ll sprinkle seed there too. The bed sits in the perfect spot in my yard as the grass there was scrubby and sparse and it was no loss to dig it up.

The grass in the sun is beyond blown out. I couldn’t fix it in Photoshop.

I ended up not using weed mat partly because I didn’t have any, partly because I couldn’t justify buying some when all I’d need was a small piece, and partly because the ground looked pretty good at the depth that I’d dug it. I just spread on a thin layer of the 1:1:1 mixture of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost/manure that I used for the raised garden beds, planted my potato pieces, and spread on another layer to cover the sprouts. When the sprouts break the surface and grow a few inches, I’ll put on another layer of mix to cover them. I’ll repeat this until the mix is a couple of inches from the top of the frame and then I’ll let the potato plants do their thing. I can’t wait to see those first sprouts! I’m a little worried that my potato pieces are too small. After I’d cut them a week ago I read that they should be two ounces minimum. Each of my pieces has two to three eyes but I have no idea how big the pieces are.

Yummy rhubarb!

It was an absolutely beautiful day here weather-wise and I had big plans. Unfortunately, I ended up not being as productive as I had hoped but there is always tomorrow. And tomorrow will be without a little boy slowing things down as he’ll be in school. I had planned to plant some more seeds as well as cut some sod to create a potato bed, get the bed framed and filled with Mel’s Mix, and the potatoes planted.

The frame is just some 2x6 (or is it 8?) that had been kicking around. I had planned to do it three-sided as it’s going to butt up against my shed, however I now think that I’ll make it a four-sided frame because of the grass and weeds that extend under the shed. And I’ll make it deeper. I’ll sink a same-sized frame of 2x10’s into the ground and sit the frame I made today on top so that it too is sunk down an inch or two with the rest above the ground so the bed is only partially raised. Or, I’ll sink this frame into the ground and set the frame of 2x10’s on top instead so that I don’t have to dig down 12 inches into the dirt. However I do it, this bed, approximately 5 feet by 2.5 feet, will house the potatoes. Tomorrow after I drop B at school I’ll pick up a bit of weed mat.

Someone has been playing in my dirt!

I planted more beets in the raised vegetable beds today. I had planted seedlings out a couple of weeks ago but they didn’t look happy so I pulled them out. I also planted more kale and romaine as only one seedling of each had survived (out of two for each) and put in my onions,  bok choy, carrots, rosemary, and marigolds. I have one pea out of eight that has sprouted but I didn’t plant them that long ago and I think I planted them a little deep so I’m not worried yet. Tomorrow I’ll plant another eight peas and a nasturtium. My radish has been up for a week or so now and my chives are thriving after poking through the dirt weeks ago when it was still blustery cold out. All three of the kohl rabi are up and in another week or so I’ll plant another three (and then another three a few weeks after that). I’m a little worried about my tomato starts as well as my pumpkin, zucchini, and squash seedlings. They alternate between looking very happy and healthy and looking like they’re on their last legs. I started them in peat pots and even though they’re not overly big, I think they want to be planted and have room to spread their roots. I think it’s too soon though. Maybe next week. Next week I’ll be planting my beans and corn too. And I have to figure out what to do with the two square feet in the third bed that were going to be filled by potatoes. Maybe I’ll plant more beets since I want to pickle some this year. That will give me 32 more beets, provided they all grow.

It feels good to be outside in the beautiful sun and fresh air even if I am very much opposed to the dirty and sweaty feeling that I have to endure all day as a result.

Another week, another menu plan, another in-a-rush blog post. Today was the last day of a long weekend for us up here and I had to work. It wasn’t too bad and I’ll get 15 extra hours on my paycheque because of it but I could have used the awesome weather today to get some things done outside at home. I came home after work today and shlepped and placed some pieces of sod (chunks of grass/dirt, not nice neat rolls) and I’m very much ready for bed right now. My boyfriend brought over some pork chops and we had chops and potatoes on the barbeque along with corn and peas (from frozen) for supper. I’ve just come upstairs from where I dozed for about an hour putting B to bed so it’s a quick menu plan post and then off to bed for me too.

Monday: pork chops on the BBQ
Tuesday: tuna melts on multi-grain pitas
Wednesday: leftover chicken pot pie
Thursday: Moroccan-Spiced Tomato Chicken
Friday: French toast
Saturday: homemade tomato soup
Sunday: creamed peas on toast