My mom’s birthday was on Friday, but we could not assemble the family until this afternoon. Yesterday, in between checking out the knitting machine and going to the play, I baked a cake, and this morning, before heading off to church bright and early to practice with the recorder ensemble, I frosted it. Mom prefers white cake with white frosting and coconut – something which the entire rest of her family (all three of her sons-in-law being notable exceptions) despises. So I made a Bundt cake and put coconut only on parts of it, figuring this way it was still decorated like she wanted, but there were enough uncontaminated parts that the rest of us would still be willing to eat it.

My older sister and her husband and the two boys drove down from Napa after church, and after meeting and conferring (and a little oohing and aahing over my parents’ shiny new Prius) we all headed off to lunch, and then from there back to my parents’ house for cake and ice cream and presents. I made her a knitted hooded scarf (pictures can be seen here).

After the birthday festivities were over my dad and the oldest nephew, who is six, headed across the street to the elementary school playground to ride bikes. The little guy was thrilled because he’d finally decided it was okay to remove the training wheels, and he knew his Grandpa liked riding bikes, so they brought their bikes (or in the younger one’s case, their tricycles) with them to go riding. The rest of us made our way over just to watch, and to take bets on how old the youngest nephew will be when he finally gets his first concussion. This child barrels through life without looking first, laughing the entire time. Luckily there’s only so fast you can go on a tricycle, no matter how furiously you pedal. I say luckily because the younger one would get going as fast as his little legs could go, but he wouldn’t pay any attention at all to where he was going. He missed running into the same wall by mere inches more than once, and came within a hair’s width of tumbling head over wheels through the fence along a ramp by one of the classrooms. My sister would holler out ‘Look where you’re going!’ but my little nephew is King of the Oblivious and would just keep on watching anything but forward. It was hysterical.

The older one tends to be a little more serious, now that he is a big boy in first grade – this is the one that’s been known to do math problems just for fun. While he was riding around, my dad pedaled slowly by him, and dinged his bell. My nephew noted that he didn’t have a bell, and since he was right near us I replied that he’s got a birthday coming up this summer and maybe we could get him one as a birthday present.

He got a thoughtful look on his face at that. “Oh. Well. I don’t know. If I invite you, that is.”

He’s too young yet to realize quite how that came out – in his six-year-old brain, presents come from people who come to your party, and it’s entirely appropriate that he’d much rather have his little friends come over to his birthday party than his boring old adult aunts and uncles. But Richard and I just cracked up, and immediately had to share his response with both his parents. It became the afternoon’s most repeated phrase. “Well. If I invite you, that is.” In about ten years we’ll be gleefully dragging out this sort of story whenever he’s being particularly snotty to his parents, just for the embarrassment factor. Little kids are so much fun.

Since we had so much fun last weekend getting together and doing yarn related things, our little band of intrepid knitters got together again this afternoon. This time it was so the mom/daughter duo could demo to the rest of us the glory that is the knitting machine.

I have to admit that I was not entirely sure what to expect. When I hear the word ‘machine’ I think of something into which one feeds yarn, then presses a button and poof, out comes a sweater. And somehow that seems remarkably like cheating. But these things look nothing at all like I imagined. Over the course of about an hour I learned how to do all sorts of nifty things on one of the contraptions and I think I am now sorely tempted. They are pretty handy little devices, and I could certainly see how they could be useful, but I think I need to ponder whether or not I actually *need* one.

Things have been a little tense in our family because with Oracle’s recent hostile takeover of Peoplesoft, all the Peoplesoft employees were told they’d get a registered letter sometime this week letting them know if they still had a job. My dad is one of a number of people I’ve been very worried about, so it was nothing short of a relief when he called this morning to tell me that he, at least, is safe. Of course, that’s no consolation to the over 5000 people whose letter arrived with unhappier news, but at least everyone I was worried about is safe. For now.

My parents had been a little concerned about the job thing as well, beyond just the initial worry, because apparently they received word their new car had arrived earlier this week, and they didn’t think getting a new car would be a good idea when my dad might be losing his job. Luckily the dealer was willing to wait a few days, and so we all headed off to the latest DMTC play last night in their brand new silver Prius. Yay – it’s becoming a family thing!

Theirs is silver, while ours is blue, and theirs is a 2005 while ours is a 2004. But otherwise the interior looks pretty much the same. I could see my mom being just as confused as I was when I first got mine, since putting the thing into drive, parking it, and turning it on and off are a lot different than what we’d been used to. Next up – to convince both sisters that they should get one too (or if not a Prius, at least one of the newer hybrids).

I have to admit that we’ve tended to be a little hesitant with each offering over the past year from DMTC, since the quality has been rather unpredictable. But tonight was a reminder that they can actually do pretty good work. They put on Evita, which can be difficult if you don’t have good singers. But the guy they had as Che and the woman they had as Eva Perone were full of energy and talent. So with the knitting fun, and the fact that my dad and all my friends still have their job, and the nifty new car, and the after-play pie, it was a very good day.

********

Oh, by the way, today is my Journalversary. I’ve been doing this exactly five years. Wow!

It being a brand new year, tonight was the kick-off meeting for all the councils for the church. Even though I’ve attended this several times in the past, this year I got to attend in a very different role. I am no longer the secretary of the Administrative Council – no, this year I am now the chair of the Board of Trustees, which is the group in the church responsible for the physical needs of the building – painting, repairs, landscaping, that sort of thing. When they asked me if I’d be interested, the woman doing the asking noted that they knew they could count on me to push to get things done. And this is certainly true – if something *must* be done I can side-step those pesky procrastinating tendencies and get it finished, dragging people along with me kicking and screaming if necessary. It’s all those things that *should* be done, but aren’t as important, or have no end date, that I have a problem with.

One of the other members of our 20’s and 30’s group is also on the board with me, and when it came time to figure out who was going to be the vice chair, since no one else wanted to do it, she volunteered. Each of the new councils sat around the table and came up with a quick list of projects that we wanted to focus our attention on in the first part of the year. And then we all came back together to give an overview of those lists and to tell everyone else who the officers in each group would be. When she and I identified ourselves as chair and vice-chair, both our moms, who were attending as members of a different council group, took one look at each other, raised their hands, and to much laughter of everyone else, objected. Seems that the perception of people on the Board of Trustees is older people, and neither of them felt old enough to have children who are now heading that sort of group. Heh. Admittedly I’m not sure either my friend or I feel quite old enough to be heading a committee of this nature either, but such is the price we pay for becoming responsible adults (shh, I’m still trying to fool myself that I’m not quite old enough for that either!).

Of course, by volunteering to be involved in this committee, while I no longer am responsible for typing up minutes, this does mean I’ve signed myself up for few years of workday Saturdays spent at the church doing little repairs and such around the building. I am telling myself it will be good for me.

Addendum: Richard, upon reading my entry from yesterday, wryly remarked that it does not read as if written by an agnostic. It made me laugh, since I can see his point. But I guess *my* point is that I can still be excited by being involved in this project; energized by the enthusiasm around me, and looking forward to participating, even though I may not necessarily share their same beliefs. My section focuses on service – something that I find important, and something that I know I can write well about. One can still be agnostic and believe in that.

A month or two ago my mom made an offhand comment that the Disciple Board was looking for people to help write some new curriculum. Since I actually enjoy writing, I noted that I’d be interested in getting involved. I didn’t think much of it until late December, when I got an email from my mom, with the subject line ‘Careful what you wish for’. Turns out that the board was thrilled to have a layperson actually volunteer to take part, so even though I’ve absolutely no curriculum writing experience at all, somehow they decided to include me anyway.

The kick-off workshop was the past two days. All of us writers drove (or flew) in to Sacramento and met at the conference offices. It was more than a little unnerving to be sitting in this room, surrounded by mostly clergy – and not just regular clergy, but clergy with multiple publications under their belt. There I was, just a little layperson, and while I’ve done a pile of writing in my day, somehow technical manuals, white papers, and magazine articles aren’t quite the same.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, and it did take them a while to get around to what they were looking for. But by the end of the sessions yesterday evening I knew what I was supposed to do, and I could see I wasn’t the only one itching to go back to the hotel and get started.

They put us all up in a hotel for the night, figuring that having a place with no distractions would help us get the ball rolling, and they were, of course, right. I stayed up pretty late last night scribbling madly, trying to get a sense of how to put all my ideas into a six-day structure. I’d been worried I’d have nothing at all, but it turns out I managed to churn out pages of notes. Not, mind you, that most of those will be useful for the final product, but at least I felt as if I’d managed to come up with something cohesive.

Today you could almost feel the energy in the room. We all went around the table and talked about what we’d come up with. The guy who tends to focus on the more academic was assigned the week which focuses on the brain of Christ, and even though we all agreed he was probably giving the students far too much to do each day, we also all decided we wanted to take that week’s class right then. The woman who seemed to wear her heart on her sleeve (and I don’t mean that to be mean, but rather to note that she was so very full of life and love and energy) was assigned the week focusing on the heart of Christ and the subjects she came up with took our breath away. I went through my notes, and the room was full of positive feedback and suggestions.

We’ve all headed home now, with several weeks to finish up the project. Ultimately this will become a six-week class for adults, planned for introduction at this year’s Annual Conference. I am still more than a little overwhelmed by being surrounded by all those amazing people for the last two days, and feeling more than a little undeserving to be in the same project with them. But I’m excited about my topic – since it’s rather near and dear to my heart. I know that my part, of all of them, will need far more feedback and help, since I don’t have the theological training and background the rest of them have. But that’s okay. It was an amazing experience and maybe, if this actually works out, one of these days I’ll get to do it again.

Friday night was the usual craft night. I brought along a bag of yarn and spent the evening starting and ripping out the same baby blanket over and over. I finally settled on a pattern that seems to work with the yarn (which, by virtue of its mohair content, has a wispy quality that creates the occasional knitting issue), which means that the evening might be considered not very productive, except that I am going to call this my version of swatching and thus useful after all.

Last month at craft night one of the other women mentioned a really nice yarn store in Walnut Creek, and somehow or other we all decided we ought to do a field trip. We did that today, meeting at the craft night hostess’ house, and piling into one car to begin our journey. It was just four of us – me, my knitting-enabler friend, and a mother and daughter team who are funny and smart and who have been a recent and wonderful addition to our craft night gatherings.

The yarn store is tucked away in a tiny strip mall across the street from the Kaiser hospital, right next door to a quilting shop, and it doesn’t seem like much at first glance. But then you open the door and walk in and you are surrounded by a selection of yarns that would make even the strongest get a little dizzy. We wandered the aisles, reverently touching skeins of this yarn and that yarn, swooning over the colors and the styles and the textures. We were not the only women in there experiencing this place for the first time. I had come with projects in mind, and with a short list of yarns to track down, since I knew I’d be tempted to buy, and figured I might as well buy something I needed. So I poured over various wool and cotton blends and compared yardages and weights to what I needed, and I must admit that I did succumb to the lure of a silky soft selection that I do not need in the slightest.

It was while I was digging through the colors of the yarn that I did not need (but ended up buying anyway because I simply could not resist) that the day’s excitement happened. Turns out the daughter of the mother-daughter trio ended up chatting with the manager, and to make a long story short, we were given permission to fill up a sack with an assortment of yarn, to take home and swatch for the store, for free. Free!

We were like kids in a candy shop. She and I skittered around the aisles, picking up and discarding skein after skein, looking for things that had not already been swatched (for those of you non-yarn addicts, since many of the yarns have unusual color combinations or textures, having a swatch already knitting next to the yarn display lets the buyer get a sense of not only what it might look like when knit, but also what it will feel like, since it’s often impossible to tell that just from picking up the skein). We ended up with a dozen skeins, and probably could have taken more but we were still half convinced that this was all somehow a joke and she’d make us put it all back. Free yarn! We were going to get to play with yarns that were new to us, to see how they worked, how they felt, whether we would ever want to justify the expense of getting enough to make a real project later! It was a knitter’s dream.

We were pretty much giddy the rest of the day. We left the shop carrying bags of new fiber goodies and headed immediately for the California Pizza Kitchen for lunch. Once there, we could not stop talking about that wonderful bag of yarn just waiting for us in the car. We ate our pizza and talked about knitting and yarn and other yarn stores, and more about knitting, and had a wonderful time.

Back at the starting house we piled all the free stuff onto the table and then divvied it up between the four of us. We’re meeting again next week (they’re going to demo knitting machines for us) and our goal is to for each of us to have our swatches completed by then. There is also talk of another lovely knitting store in Benicia, located quite conveniently next to a tea shop. I sense more field trips in our future. And if all goes as we are hoping, the owner of the shop in Walnut Creek will like our swatching so much she’ll let us do it again. Yum!

Most of you out there probably have at least some artistic abilities. I’ll bet that a majority of you can hold articles of clothing up to each other and determine whether or not they match. Most of you can probably slap a teeny tiny swatch of paint on a wall and somehow find a way to visualize what it will look like in the entire room. Most of you probably would have been able to pick your own house’s colors instead of pathetically begging someone else to do it because you have no damn clue.

There are those of us, however, who do not posses the color gene. We stick to solid colors, and basic styles because at least we can be pretty sure we’re not wearing things that make people’s eyes bleed when they’re put together. We’re the type that stand, paralyzed, in front of the paint chip aisle, before grabbing a few colors that look pretty, and then sticking them on the wall and leaving them there for years because we have no idea how to go any further. We’re the type that cannot visualize designs and hues – cannot do it at all. Give us a starting point – say a small palette of colors to choose from, or a basic design on which to build, or a paint-by-numbers kit and we will be thrilled, because then we can make a few teeny modifications here and there and do our very best to pretend that we really aren’t completely hopeless. Sometimes, however, we get a big fat smack in the face of reality. Right now, for me, is one of those times.

As I work my way through the lessons for this Photoshop class I am slowly coming to the realization that perhaps this was not the wisest of choices for the artistically impaired. The first few lessons were deceptively straightforward, walking the student through the various tools, explaining colors and pixels and bits and far too many file formats and how to move things and crop things and make layers. It was on layers that the instructor decided we should all build something – out of layers – and send it to him, just to show we know what we’re doing.

Oh, sure. Building a thing in Photoshop out of layers is really not at all difficult – provided you have the layers to begin with. And if you are not given a set of layers with which to build something, that means you have to make them yourself. And if you are artistically deficient (like me), this means that suddenly you have to come up with not only pictures to mangle down into things that can be used as layers, but you have to come up with something even worse – an Idea. A pictorial, layered Idea. Let the screaming in terror commence now.

I do well with patterns that tell me what to do – because I can take an existing pattern and modify it to suit me. I can take templates and plans and mess with them at will – that part is the easy part. The hard part is making up that pattern or template or plan out of thin air – something I’m not the slightest bit good at doing. So suddenly this oh-so-simple little homework assignment has become something big and scary and enough to make me try very hard to forget all about whose idea it was to take this stupid class in the first place, until I finally told myself that this is really stupid and even better, I remembered that once upon a time I actually had an Idea, and actually used layers to do it. And if it can be done once, why shouldn’t it be done again, this time correctly since this time I sort of almost know what the heck I’m doing.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I sent off my (probably rather pitiful) homework assignment this evening. But I know it’s far too early to start celebrating. I’ve peeked ahead. The homework with layers is only the beginning. By the end of the class I’m going to have to be creating collage type things from scratch, and I’m not going to be able to dredge up old projects to use instead. Layers I might have done before (even though I had no idea that’s what I was doing). More than that? Ha. If I’d figured out how to do more than that I wouldn’t be taking this class in the first place, now would I.

I have until about mid February to finish. I’m not sure just what I was thinking. I am currently telling myself that surely between now and then I will be able to dredge up at least one Idea, complete with concept and scribbles and actual pictures. However, if by Valentine’s Day I am curled up in a corner whimpering, you’ll know why.

Yesterday afternoon I sat down and figured out the list of things I knit last year, and was actually pretty happy with what I’ve accomplished. Later this week I will likely sit down and make a much longer list of things I am hoping to knit this year, and I imagine it will be a little overwhelming. The biggest problem with diving into a new hobby head-first is that there are too many things to do with it and never enough time to do them all.

This was the week Richard was due for his allergy shot, so we went in together after work and made the nurse roll his eyes when he caught us beaming games to each other on our Clies. But when one has to sit at a doctor’s office for twenty minutes waiting for one’s allergy shot-induced welts and hives to properly mature, one needs something to do. PDA-versions of solitaire and Boggle help a lot.

I am now supposed to take antihistamines the day of my shots, except that I keep forgetting and since they are upping my doses with the expectation that I am medicating myself appropriately, this means things tend to get even more itchy and welty than before. And taking allergy meds immediately after getting home from the shots helps somewhat, but it also means my hives are more likely to last until the next day and make my arms hurt. You would think all of these petty little inconveniences would help me remember to take the damn pill once a week, wouldn’t you. You would obviously be wrong.

We made dinner together – Caribbean Pork and Sweet Potatoes – which turned out quite delicious and watched the episodes of The Simpsons where Maggie shoots Mr. Burns, and then watched Lost and, for the first time since starting to follow this show, were disappointed. There are 41 people supposedly on that island from the crash and we keep getting snippets of back stories for only a handful. This evening’s episode seemed too much like filler and gratuitous displays of skin.

Bah. I feel as if today I am just mostly grumbly. I am tired and all my coworkers are tired and two of them are sniffling and sneezing through their second run with the current bug that’s going around and all I want to do is rewind back to Monday and have a few more days where I don’t have to do anything at all. And this time I really will do absolutely nothing productive except maybe sleep. I could really use a vacation to just sleep.

This has been a Holidailies entry.