Knitters-Knitters

Sunday, Monday, and Ron Nemesis

Here's Sabina's confirmation class, in its entirety.  8th grade boys look like a completely different species than 8th grade girls, don't they? 

A shot of the crowd.  LB's mom is on the left, in the green shirt and black sweater.

Here's a lovely picture of the seed stitch, ruffle-edged scarf I knit two years ago, with Jo Sharp silk georgette yarn and 2.5mm needles.  Also pictured: LB and his parents.

LB, his parents and the 4 middles:

Here's Sabina being baptized.  The shiny pastor on the left is more or less responsible for our coming to this church.  He arranged for Olive's Sunday School class to have a extra teacher (his wife!) so that Olive would always have a 1:1 ratio, preemptively planned for Olive's supervision so that LB and I could both attend membership classes, and somehow makes it feel as if we're the ones doing him a favor.

On Monday Olive had school and the rest of us went on a tour of Autism Academy (home of the Sacred Notebook), which LB's parents had never seen.   It was wonderful to see Judy (the program director), Jeni (speech therapist), and the lady at the front desk who always had a special hello for Agatha (my usual drive companion).  Teacher Emily was occupied with a student having a bathroom issue, so we did not get to see her.  It's noteworthy that in the year since we've been gone, the players at Autism Academy have remained the same. Olive's current classroom has had 4 staff changes since she's been attending.  Each change has been met with backsliding, periods of sleeplessness and increased anxiety.  And Olive didn't much care for it, either.  Her aide, Miss Sally, has been our rock.

After the academy tour, we went to the pond across the street and saw my old nemesis:

I'm reminded of a book or a story I read in which the main character has a nemesis named Ron Nemesis.  But where did I read this, and who wrote it?  I asked LB if  it rang any bells, and he said, Sounds like Chao.  It does indeed sound like something from the writings of Tom Chao.  If it's yours, TXC, weigh in and claim it.

We broke into study groups and took pictures.  The best candids happen when the subjects are posing for someone else.

The four middles, again:

Agatha collecting dandelions:

Dandelions tend to shrivel in captivity, so the children left them for the next visitors to the pond...whoever they may be.

Warm-Up

The problem isn't really Thanksgiving and the raft of food I must prepare between now and tomorrow afternoon.  The problem is that the swarm of locusts LB and I naively, insidiously committed to raising will also expect to eat today, Friday, and every day thereafter.  Somewhere between cooling pies and marinating beef, regular meals must continue.  It's not enough to prepare whipped potatoes for 11 people: one must do so while simultaneously baking frozen pizza rolls, slicing apples and distributing baby carrots with ranch dressing. And this year, LB has requested I perform something really kinky and flat-out unreasonable amidst all this extra cooking.  He has asked me to make a turkey.

Given the fact that we're also having beef, I was able to talk him into a smallish one: 12 pounds.  I can take it in a fair fight.  I have a baster and I know how to use it.  I know about the bag of innards I must remove before putting the turkey  in the oven.  I know that stuffing the turkey should not be taken as a challenge to see just how much that turkey can hold.  I have a good support system: a house full of witnesses, and my mom on speed dial. 

But still, the bird, she frightens me.    The beef is docile and looks nothing like the animal from whence it came.  It's trimmed, tied, and wrapped in white paper.  The turkey, however, looks disconcertingly like a turkey.  She's defrosting in the 'fridge as I type, and once this process is complete, I fully expect her to kick her way out.  Wish me luck.

Jiggety-Jog

The Sullivans are home again, home again!  I survived both flights with a minimum of bargaining with God, thanks to lots of reading material and large, carefully-spaced doses of pharmaceutical courage.  Thank you for your wonderful comments about boring flights--it helped, and LB is especially grateful.

I'll post lots of photos in the days to come, but this evening I'll leave you with a snapshot of the world's most spoiled chicken.  Her name is Bucket, and she lives on Lo's back deck where she lays her daily egg from the safety of her flower pot and beach umbrella.  Every time we walked past, she'd ruffle her feathers a bit in annoyance, as if she were expecting a cabana boy bearing a tiny mojito.

Swan and Duck are Not Friends

By now you all know about the swans that live at the pond across the street from Autism Academy.  But what you may not know is that there are also ducks. 

These ducks are tagged, like the swans, and are clearly supposed to live there, with all the rights and privileges this implies.  And yet, eating is a pretty risky proposition for the ducks.

I don't think enough has been said about how truly hostile swans can be.  One "teenager" swan (half gray, on his way to becoming white) is particularly unfriendly.  He has hissed at me at least once, and yesterday, was observed grabbing one of the ducks by the neck and tossing him several feet away from the communal food dispenser.

We'll just call him the perp.

But it isn't just him, as this photo attests.

I tell myself the swans are sorry afterwards, as evidenced by their bouts of depression.