I may be a touch insane

I thought about typing a post on how I didn’t have time to write a post.  But then I thought that was pretty lame.  And then I thought, well, you’re kind of lame, Jaime.  Just go with it.

And so here I am.

Note: I really don’t have time to be doing this.  In addition to the myriad issues, responsibilities and time spent telling someone that no, you can’t stand on the end table and jump off holding onto the jump rope you’ve somehow wrapped around the doorknob so many times that it’s holding fast, I’ve also added my own impossible deadline.

I’m trying to knit a baby sweater in four days. 

Now, depending on the gauge of the yarn and the size of the needles, this is a totally doable project.  If I didn’t have children.  Or dinner to cook.  Or groceries to buy.  Or stuff to clean. 

(I’m actually thinking of shipping every member of my household to Alaska for a couple of days just so I can finish.  Chris already has convinced Sebastian that they need to go fishing up there.  I’m sure if he just slaps a lifejacket on Adele she’ll be fine.)

So there it is.  Since both children are in bed for a little bit I’m going to knit.  And later, when they’re back in bed for the night (otherwise known as the best part of the day), I will knit some more. 

I have exactly no chance of finishing.  But it’s still fun to try.

I didn’t play badminton myself as I was wearing a dress and didn’t want my generic Spanx to show

I went out again this weekend.  

Out as in I left the house without the children. 

It wasn’t exactly planned. Chris has been working 11 hour days for the past few weeks and pretty much stays exhausted.  It probably doesn’t help that I keep him up late because after he’s done with his homework for the night is the only time we have during the day to talk and just hang out.  

We’d been invited to get-together-slash-badminton tournament at a friend’s house in Louisville.  We planned to go and just bring the kids along since I knew there would be at least a couple more there.  Chris thought everything would be fine, but I told him that he would probably have a blast but I was pretty sure I’d spend most of my time alternating between keeping the baby from eating dirt and grass and crawling into the road and asking the 3 year old if he had to pee.  (Funny, off-subject fact – Sebastian’s school is teaching him to say he needs to go to the ‘restroom.’  He corrects me now and every time I feel like just a bit of my properness dissipates. Also, I’m worried they think we’re gross because we don’t say ‘restroom.’)

So Saturday morning after another night of not enough sleep, Chris makes the ‘executive decision’ to see if his parents would watch the kids so we could have a night off.  Luckily they agreed.  If they hadn’t Chris was threatening to pull out the big guns – as in Sebastian – and have him call and ask.

On our way to the party I slid back into ‘old Jaime’ as Chris calls it.  Meaning I was able to loosen up a little bit and return to who I was before I became a mom.  It doesn’t happen very often but when it does it’s glorious.  I think.  Or at least a little goofy.

I did, however, have to worry about there being a couple of people my mom works with there, so I wasn’t able to be too much of an ass.  Nothing like worrying about someone telling your mom on you to make you put down the bong, you know?  

And so I drank too much beer and played some really, really, ridiculously bad cornhole, watched my husband and his brother unfortunately be beaten in the first round of the ‘Highland Invitational’ badminton tournament, ate some awesome brisket, laughed a whole hell of a lot, talked even more, and stayed up way too late again.  

But the difference was I also got to sleep until 9.  And it was glorious.

Not from this weekend.  But it accurately
displays what happens when I go out
without the children.

Homemade Friday: I’m trying to create memories here, child! (Balloon Lanterns)

As I said last week, so many of these craft-type things I try to do with Sebastian always end up with me doing them and him watching.  And this was no different.

I’d seen these lanterns online and thought they’d be really neat and easy to make and had been thinking about it for awhile.  So one night when Sebastian was being especially cantankerous I used it as a bargaining tool to get him to go to bed.  As in, ‘If you go to bed like a big boy and stop the fussing we can make a really cool balloon ball tomorrow.’  

It worked, and once he was in bed I began researching how this whole thing was done.

And then got a little bit scared.

There would be glue.

And cornstarch.

And string.

And water.

In other words, a gigantic mess.

But I couldn’t back out now since Sebastian remembers everything.  And I correctly predicted that he would ask about it first thing once he woke up.

So just went with it.  I used these instructions, except I didn’t use Vaseline since it was in Adele’s room and she was napping when I started.

I got us all smocked and aproned up and blew up the balloon, mixed up the glue, tied everything up outside then found some old yarn I thought would work.

Sebastian grew impatient, of course, and by the time everything was ready to go he’d lost interest.  Apparently Thomas was much more fascinating.  As was hitting the other two balloons I’d hung up in the hopes of making more than one of these things.  (I was a little too optimistic in the amount of glue required and I ran out so was only able to make one.)

So I got everything started and attempted to focus his attention on the bright shiny balloon and goopy mess of a pile of yarn.  He touched it once and said it was too messy.

But I couldn’t let that whole bottle of glue that’s required for this task go to waste so I carried on.  And on.  And the thing about making these outside is that the yarn, covered in the paste concoction, falls to the ground picking up whatever happens to be around.  In our case it was sand and random pieces of dried grass.  But I just smiled through my clenched teeth and considered it as added decoration.

By the time I was finished I was covered in paste and dirt.  I stepped back and took a look at the balloon ball and decided that I didn’t like it so I took it all apart and did it again.  And then one more time just for good measure.  Now, for reals, I was finished.  I thought.  

I left it outside hanging up and went on about our day.  Sebastian asked over and over again when we could hang it in his room and I told him each time that it had to dry first.  He went down for his afternoon nap still waiting.

And during said naptime the sky darkened and I know I heard a bit of thunder so I raced outside to cut the drying balloon ball down and hang it inside, where it could hang and mock me for freaking out about the rain that didn’t happen.

A couple of hours after that I decided that if I just poked a small hole in the top of the balloon and let the air out slowly it would come away from the ball easier since there was no grease to help it a long.

Maybe you can see where this is going.  About 20 minutes after the hole was poked this is what I saw:

Do you know how depressing that site is after you’ve worked so hard on something?  And so I threw the whole mess away.

But then thought better of it and dug it back out, making sure to brush the coffee grounds off of it, and put it in a bowl with a tiny bit of water to try again.  Sebastian was still sleeping at this point so in order to keep him from finding out what I’d done I used the same color balloon and tried again, this time using an old standby to prevent the same thing from happening again. 

I also left that damn thing hanging for two days before I popped the balloon.

Of course, it’s been a week and the ball is still sitting on my kitchen counter waiting for someone to hang it in Sebastian’s room.

But it was a pretty neat craft and I’d actually like to make lots of them to hang around the house.

If I make it again, though,  I’ll be sure to load it up with grease first.