Turkey Week - an Update

So just to start off, get the whining out of the way - last week SUCKED. Tuesday night as I was coming home from the IHOP, my car acted funny for a second; but I couldn't tell if it was the engine, or me losing traction, because it had just finished dumping rain, and I was too busy looking at the road to spare a second to look at the tach to see if it was spinning up because I had no traction. SO anyway, DH was out cold when I walked in the door - he'd been to the doc for the pulled muscle in his back, muscle relaxer was doing it's thing - so I let it go, chalking it up to the water on the road. But by the time I got 1 mile down the road the next morning, though still wet out, I KNEW it was something with the engine, misfiring like it does when a certain vacuum hose goes bad, which we'd just replaced again a month or so ago. So back home I go, and call DH, who really doesn't have time to deal with it, having been out for 2 days with his back.

As he's on his way home, he calls to tell me HIS Check Engine light is now on, and he can't go over 30mph - on the interstate. WTF???? TWO cars - on the SAME DAY? I know I have some bad karma following me around from somewhere, but this is just ridiculous. So to sum up a very long story, my car now has new plugs, coil packs, and one of the coil pack "brains" is new, too - I am going to knock on wood and say nothing else about it... DH's car is still down, because no one can tell us what kind of transmission is in it - including the yutz's we bought it from - so we don't know which kind of speed sensor goes in it; it's either the $20 pop-in/pop-out one, or it's the $280 one you have to drop the pans to get to; one dealer told the Chevy guy across the street that it doesn't have one at all! Nothing like ambiguous engineering...




Add to this some really unpleasant family news concerning events from this past May that came on Thursday, which, while not unexpected nor much of a surprise, still, when it's in your face, it's just enough to get your blood boiling, you know? So last week sucked, and I'm seriously hoping this other car thing gets resolved without too much financial hemorrhaging - at the rate we're going with cars & dogs, Christmas ain't happening this year... Which is all my fault because I finally ordered the beads I've been trying to save up for for months, so I can do IC Growth Rings finally. Just like the last time we went on vacation, the week we mailed the payment to the condo owner, the fridge blew up. I didn't think $60 worth of beads would tip the cosmic scale so much - but I guess I was wrong... When the only working car is the 20 year old toy with 185K on it, you know you've pissed off somebody...



So anyway, BEFORE things went to hell last week, I worked on my yellow Santa at Tuesday night's stitch in, and now have a teddy bear and a bag, as well as one mitten:



I have also, in between holding lights and staring blankly at torn apart engines, have turned the last corner into the homestretch on Knotgarden. And if I can keep the last-minute frogs away, I am SO CLOSE!!! And I was right, doing that 4th corner was a nice break from topiary pots & black gates, so I'm hoping this last little bit will go quickly! Here is last week's:



And now this week's:



And surprise, as I was finishing the last of the silks, the woven Scotch stitch bottom center, gee, what do I find but one of Martina's lovely chart errors. So I had to take it out (easy enough - just irritating), and move it all left one stitch, and start again. If I could see any of the other 3 sides, I'd have seen it right away, but as they are all wadded up under the clamps, I had to rely on the CHART. Silly me. I do have to say that she's consistent - as old as this chart is (2001 according to the chartpack), she's still making the same simple mistakes and not correcting them from then until now...

So this week, being a short work week and a long weekend, I hope to make great progress on Knotgarden. Thursday will be a stitching day, ONCE I get the massive meal done, and Friday, it's time to get all the Christmas stuff out and up - so I can spend the next month trying to keep the dumb dog's tail under control around it. I missed the November PINS meeting this weekend, due to being the third hand/light holder while working on the Zoom Zoom again, so I didn't get the stress relief I needed. Hopefully I can make up for that this weekend by not leaving the house. I won't be doing any shopping until the car thing is done, with whatever, if any, is left of my Christmas funds. And I don't know about you, but I think I am ready to be done with 2011...

Did you know that Dammit I'm Mad is Dammit I'm Mad when written backwards? Awesome, huh???

On that note, Happy Stitching this week to everyone!! And yes, sometimes stitching really IS the only thing that keeps me going...