I'm not calling it karma

...because that would imply that there's something we could do to change it. C and I are fated, destined, dooooooomed to turn up in new countries on holidays, apparently it is just something that we do. I can't imagine what would cause that as a karmic repercussion - not taking enough vacation? Being too self-centered with our ambitious "plans" and "lists" and "need to get an apartment"?

We got to Germany at the beginning of October, and just when we were in the time zone enough to go out and deal with business things (like open a bank account so we could get moved into the apartment we'd arranged), oh yeah! It's reunification day! We didn't tell you because everyone knows that. Three-day weekend! Having our plans brought up short by reunification day was actually a theme for us, I think it happened every year we lived there.

We got here October 1st as well, and I laughed when we saw a note that Daylight Savings time started the first night we were here, because I thought that was this move's version of the welcome-to-town holiday. Not so fast! The 3rd was Labour Day (which I only realized after seeing signs about the "October long weekend" and having a familiar sinking feeling), so no apartment hunting, no opening a bank account, no dealing with Serious Important Things. We put the to-do list down and went to the aquarium instead, and I thought, look how much grace and flexibility we're showing here.

And then we needed to call our US bank, and it was Columbus Day, and hardly anyone even gets Columbus Day off any more, but banks do, and it was at that point that I started pulling out my hair. We've got an apartment, though (got the keys today!), so things are looking up.

New perspective

I had a realization the other day that surprised me. I tend to get carried away when I'm worried about things (no, I knew that already, that's not a surprise), and back when L was a baby, I would worry sometimes that I was going to be a terrible parent because of all the stuff I didn't already know. I got really hung up on not understanding elementary school-aged kids, and when I told C that I was going to be a bad parent! because I don't know anything about 10-year-olds! he told me "you do have ten years to figure that out".

L just hit the halfway point in that timeline, and it occurred to me that "big kids" are a lot less incomprehensible than they used to be. I can see ways that they're just bigger kindergartners, and aspects in which they're totally different from littler kids, but I can picture L getting there from here.

Giant fluffy sweater, day 1/2

I almost never knit large projects - I'm more at home with hats, mittens, scarves, and baby clothes. I think it's a problem of limited time to commit to a single project, since my days involve being (and staying) employed, and my evenings involve cooking, playing with Liam, putting Liam to bed, cleaning up, and working more, and then knitting if I have the time. I'm also insanely picky about projects for myself, so I wouldn't make most things I see patterns for, and I change every pattern I use. I found a sweater pattern that I wanted to make for myself, though: this one is straightforward, functional, and cute, and it's done in very big yarn, so it ought to go pretty quickly.

I cast on yesterday, and between the yarn, which is huge (it's like pencil roving), and my giganto needles (which feel like I'm knitting with tree branches or something), I'd used up an entire ball of yarn in five and a half rows. That second ball got me through to the end of row 13. At this point, I started wondering whether I have enough yarn to make this sweater. The lady at the yarn store ordered me a bag of eight balls of yarn in the same dye lot, which was the number that the pattern called for, but if I'm only going to get 8-ish rows per ball of yarn, this might be tight. Back to the pattern to check, and...oh. 8 100-gram balls of yarn, according to the pattern, and I have 8 50-gram balls of yarn. That's...huh. It's totally a matter of perception, but I probably wouldn't have started this pattern if I'd known I would need 15 or 16 balls of yarn. That seems like way too much.

I'm up to row 24 now, and I will get to about row 54 before it's time to add stitches for the sleeves, which will just about take all of the yarn that I have. The sweater is going to be very cute, with the big puffy stitches and the garter-stitch border and the great buttons my friend S gave me for by birthday. I sure hope the lady at the yarn store can order another bag in the same dye lot.

It's my birthday!

Hooray!

I always loved my birthday as a kid; I've pretty much always been up for a party with happy people and snacks. I always used to wish that my birthday was during baseball season, but even if the M's had made the post-season back then (ahahahahahaha), it still would have been over by now. As a kid with a November birthday, you can't really go to the park or go swimming for your party, so what do you do? Some birthdays that stick out in my memory involved going to movies, hosting sleepovers (with movies), and staying inside, hula-ing around in fake grass skirts, and eating pineapple upside-down cake (still a great idea, mom!).

These days it's more of a re-evaluation kind of day: I don't really go for New Year's resolutions, but a birthday is a good reminder that I've been somewhere and done something in the past year. I'm not the same person I was last year at this time. So what have I learned this year?

• Don't move via airplane. Didn't I already learn this one 10 years ago? Apparently not.
• Stop editing so much and just do it already. This is more of a work-related lesson, but also speaks to my tendency to think everything to death, and then not do unexpected new things.
• Brussels sprouts are good. Especially roasted with bacon and walnuts. This is something Chris has been trying to tell me for years: you have to try the new food before you decide you don't like it.
• Be happy. When things are good, enjoy it! At the very least it'll build up your reserves of Zen for the next time everything unexpectedly catches fire right before a deadline.
  

New project!

I saw it mentioned somewhere that November is "NaBloPoMo" now, so that all of the people who make themselves crazy during NaNoWriMo or NaKniSweMoDo can keep the crazy going by posting every day. It sounded interesting, since (as we have previously noted) I am a terrible correspondent and a worse diarist: converting blog posting into a new project and a challenge instead of a reminder of how looooong it had been since I wrote a post about how looooong it had been since I wrote a post. What could go wrong?
So I logged in to the old blog and went to make a list of things that would make good posts, and...what are these ads? Where's all the stuff I wrote in the last year? Oh, hey, we forgot to re-register the domain names (in, like, September. I guess it has been a while since I posted anything), and some company grabbed both our domains in the hopes that we'll pay them lots of money to get them back.
Good luck with that, jerks.
So hopefully this will be fun, and not just a series of notes about what I had for breakfast (though, for the record: it's yogurt. It's always yogurt. Actually, that would make a good post, because I have a few things to say about yogurt). Coming up: German ingenuity, office finches, yogurt and memory, and my birthday!