I Am A Butterfly

I’m going to start fresh after all. Stay tuned.

I seem to be back, with all my old posts mostly intact. I decided not to start fresh after all. However, my categories got all kinds of messed up in the upgrade, so I have to start categorizing all 6 years worth of posts again.

Oy.

Wanna hear the great part? The not getting comments emailed thing? The whole reason I started this upgrade thing in the first place?

Yeah. Not fixed.

And also, comments seem to be disassociated with all the old posts, at least for the purposes of getting a comment count on the front page. That? That I’m not going to worry about.

Apparently, my blog comments aren’t being emailed to me, and haven’t been since at least the 7th. I just now noticed that I have comments from the past few weeks!

Update: Oh. Good. I decided to upgrade Wordpress to see if that would fix the comment email problem, and ended up seriously breaking the blog.

Fantastic.

There’s a guy on a message board I read. He has advanced prostate cancer, and is on his second or third bout with the disease. It just keeps coming back.

And this time, it’s not only come back, but it’s spreading, and it sounds very much like this guy is going to die. He has kids, including a new baby who was born a few weeks early. He started his current round of chemo and radiation while she was still in the NICU.

I don’t know this guy well at all, but it breaks my heart. My heart aches for his wife, and especially for his kids, who will miss out on so much with a loving father. It’s a tragedy. An honest to god tragedy. One that’s played out every single day all over the world.

Sometimes, I’m absolutely astounded that there is yet to be a cure for this disease. With everything that’s possible in our modern world, how can it be that cancer keeps on going?

Every year around this time, my regular UPS guy acquires a boy. I’m not sure from whence said boy comes, but he’s usually around 16 years old and appears as if by magic some time in early December. Once the boy arrives, that means the holiday package delivering season is in full swing. It also means that my regular UPS guy gets to sit in the truck while his boy does all the work. My regular UPS guy’s mama didn’t raise no fool.

Yesterday morning, the UPS boy trudged through the sleet to my door with no fewer than five packages, ranging in size from small to quite large. Two of them were things I ordered for Christmas gifts. The rest were gifts for Scott and me from my mother-in-law.

Some of you may remember that last year, she gave Scott a towel for Christmas. One. Towel.* I got an amaryllis and counted myself lucky.**

This year, Scott’s mother decided to bury us in baked goods. English muffins, to be precise. Two of today’s packages were from Wolferman’s.*** We received both the Christmas Bloom Tower and the Merry and Bright Presents gift box. That comes to a grand total of seven bags of English muffins, along with some jam, crumpets, cocoa, and tea breads.

I don’t think I need to buy baked goods for 6 months.

I’m not complaining. I like English muffins, and they freeze well. It just makes me giggle, is all, to see all those many bags of English muffins lined up on the counter.

*Don’t get me wrong, the yearly Mom Bonus Check and B&N gift cards are really the true gifts, but the side stuff is always a little wacky.

**That was a lovely gift which I tried to regrow this season, but my Black Thumb of Death^TM kicked in and that bulb was having none of it. I gave in and tossed it a few days ago.

***Incidentally, if you’ve never had a Wolferman’s English muffin, I really to recommend them. They’re delicious. Pop in for coffee some time and I’ll toast one up for you. I may have spares.

My knitting needles are empty. All of them. I’m not knitting anything!

At long last, I just finished Scott’s Berkshire Pullover, about half an hour ago. The ends are woven - blessedly few, thanks to spit splicing (with water, not spit, thank you very much) - and it’s spinning free of its Soak water right now. I’m still not happy with the neck, but whatever. It’s a casual sweater, so no big deal. As long as his head fits through it.

In with the sweater is a purple scarf knit in Misti Alpaca, in a horizontal rib pattern. This was knit for a secret Santa swap and will be shipped out to its new home this weekend.

Lady Eleanor is off the needles, her ends are woven in, and she’s been soaked and blocked. She’s just waiting for me to finish cleaning the kithen so I have space on the kitchen table to work the knotted fringe. She is stunning even without it.

I think I’ll cast on for a pair of socks today. Or maybe for Ice Queen. I just got my Fire Mountain Gems order today, with the beads I need for Ice Queen, so it’s most likely going to be that project that gets started today.

Photos of everything completed will be forthcoming once they’re dry.

Alex just said that to me in a text message. I think that will be my new motto.