Toby participated in a sled hockey clinic this weekend:

sledhockey

He had a total blast.  Though when he got off he exclaimed “Mom!  Those professionals make it look SOOO easy!”

He fell over a bunch of times (usually quickly followed by “I’m ok!” in his little voice) – but yanno?  Ice is slippery.  Afterwards the US National Paralympic team played Canada’s team – they are gearing up for the winter games this spring.  They’re awesome to watch – the captain of the team stopped to talk with Toby for a bit while Toby was getting his helmet on – he was awesome with Tobes.  The whole team is very inspiring – amazing athletes and way more ok with slamming into each other at high speeds than I would wanna subject myself to…

A local team is starting up for Nov and Dec – Toby is signing up.  The beauty of the sport is that it works for anyone who has arm control – folks with physical disabilities and folks without can all use the sleds and play together.  If they have a spare sled – I may get out there with them – although instead I may end up being the one to upright kids like Toby when needed.



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was fun and candy filled –

Toby went to school Friday as Moaning Lisa:
moaninglisa

which is actually pretty funny and it was a totally easy costume to make – black pants and shirt, “witch” long hair wig, and cardboard frame covered with paper and glitter. He also had a small picture frame with a printout of DaVinci’s Mona Lisa strapped onto his walker handle. He was hemming and hawing up until the last minute about what he wanted to be – this idea was from a whole list of them he came up with while getting on the bus on Thursday morning. I told him that of his list, I’d work on one of them – and I was able to whip this one up in about a half hour on Thurs evening with Toby’s help.

Hannah did a crazy hair day thing with her friends, though her crutches garnered quite the haul of candy. Both kids did well in that department – though Hannah has eaten way more of hers than Toby has of his. Speaking of which – I’m hoping that the end is in sight of her days with crutches – she still has a way to go on her feet/shins/knees healing but I’m not sure the crutches are helping her out much.

I finished a pair of “booties” for Toby (as he calls them) – thrummed slippers. He wanted a pair of shearling-lined ones – so I added baby camel (soooofffftttt) thrums every four stitches or so and every three rows and voila, sheepie-feeling soft slippers. I used some handspun that was sitting on a shelf in the living room – it was spun pretty tightly and thus created a rather firm fabric – these puppies will wear like iron. They stay on his feet though – even with his toe-pointing ;)

slipper thrums

slipper

For trick-or-treating, Toby insisted on a different costume – I was done with creating and he wanted a Star Wars character (with light saber – which I believe was the crucial component) – he ended up spending his own money on a light saber, and I bought him a Clone Warrior costume from a halloween store. (I know, apparently clone warriors don’t carry or use light sabers – but the Star Wars thing is a very new obsession for Toby and he has yet to see any of the movies). He greeted folks passing out candy saying “I am a clone warrior! I bring peace joy and happiness.” Hard to argue with that as a wish….



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I mean wool insulation for housing construction – walls, attics, floors, etc. Check it out!

I’d much prefer installing it to working with fiberglass. Aside from the obvious “awww, there’s sheep in my walls” factor.



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There’s more to the story (of course) but suffice it to say that my cat can (and does) plant himself on the shower drain and pee down it.

He’s one freaking weird cat is all I can say. I can’t even imagine what prompted him to learn and start this little habit.



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Toby would like a pair of Sully and Mike Wazowski (Monsters Inc) mittens.

Mike Wazowski and Sully

I think I can pull that off though it’s taking some pondering.



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Still.

I finished this sweater this weekend. I had been 99.9% done for *months*. I needed to take out about 5 inches of the collar hem and shorten it by 3 rows and sew it back on again, weave in all the ends, and block it. That’s it.

here it is, crappy picture for the moment but I’m rushed, Marta from Cocoknits:

Reposing on the blocking board

Reposing on the blocking board

In a weird moment of insanity last November, I briefly thought I would try to knit a sweater a month throughout 2009.   Truth be told, I had succeeded at knitting a pair of socks every two weeks that summer so there was a chance I could do it.  I decided to do a practice run in December – giving myself a couple of weeks of a head start.  While I failed miserably at the sweater-a-year plan, all in all this was a pretty quick knit.  It was 90% completed in December.

I made two pattern modifications.  I used an i-cord loop for the button fastener rather than a buttonhole.  And I made it longer below the waist shaping.

While some of the color variation in the above is due to weird lighting in my bedroom, some is also due to different dyelots of the yarn.  I don’t mind it, although it’s noticable – the top of the sweater is lighter, and one sleeve is darker and pinker.

Norma inspired this sweater – although she finished hers months and months ago and has ripped it out already. I can’t believe she ripped it – it looked perfectly lovely on her.

More pictures to come – I love love love the button!



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We have a FIRST Lego League team – BrightonBots has not disappeared this year.  We start meeting next week – six 9-10 year old boys will descend upon our house every Wednesday after school until dinner time.

what was I thinking?!

Actually I’m looking forward to it.  I’ve started reading the material that comes with the Lego Mindstorm set, and for this year’s Robot Game and Challenge.  We’re getting a very late start, so are scaling back all competitive urges, but really?  Constructing robots and programming them will be a blast :)

I tried really hard to not make it a boys-only team this year – maybe I’ll have better luck next year.  Hannah’s team was always pretty mixed – which is rare but it worked really well.



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Ketchup, as Marta says.  While sparse in posting, I’m not ready to give up blogging altogether.  I am on sabbatical now, and have had a chance to start and finish some projects and regain the head-space to post.  No doubt, many details that I have wanted to blog about will be forgotten and lost – but heck.  It’s still worth it to pick up and go, rather than fading out completely, eh?  I am facebooking more – and while it’s entirely not the same as blogging?  It’s nice that some of the same “chatter” with online friends has picked up there.

Sabbatical. It’s a wonderful thing.  Last year at work was pretty much hellacious from start to finish.  I transitioned out of my Institutional Research job (with some regrets, but all in all, with open arms), and back to a regular faculty member.  It’s a good time to do so for a lot of reasons – I have a year left on my grant to finish up (and it was getting entirely shafted while in IR), it’s a good time to be home a lot with the kids, it’s a good time to gear up and produce a lot in the soonish bid for promotion.  I am making headway on getting one manuscript for publication, with two more planned for the year – if I pull 2/3 out of my hat this year I’ll be happy.

Fibery Things. Oh My.

  1. Knitting. As usual, I have a gazillion things on the needles.  Unfortunately my socks-in-progress are all at hard places – I skipped the heel turn and went right to picking up the gusset stitches on one so need to rip that out and remember how to turn heels; I’m on sock #2 of another pair and despite using the same needles and having the same row gauge – one sock is skinnier than the other (the stitch gauge is off – I KNOW – that seems physically impossible doesn’t it?  To have the stitch gauge change but not the row gauge?  It did.  The socks are fraternal not identical.  They’re intended to be a gift, and I’m not sure what to do about it.).  The third – I’m down the ankle of the first sock and I have decided that the gauge is really just too tight – I don’t want socks of armor after all.  There’s a fourth pair somewhere I believe and no doubt something is wrong with it too.
  2. I am so so so nearly done with a sweater (Marta), though I need to rip out 5 measly inches of a neck ribbing and redo it.  It’s nothing really.  I just need to do it.  I have another sweater started and it’s suffering a similar gauge issue as that sock – I used Sweater Wizard and my gauge to generate the pattern, which is turning out nothing like what it should.  I now have a giant gauge swatch of the top part of a top-down raglan (nearly to the split of the sleeves at the underarm from the body), and have no clue what the problem is.  I have about 3 more sweaters I am desperate to start and since I seem to only complete about one a year, well, something needs to start making progress.
  3. New Equipment! Risa put her NZAK circular sock knitting machine up for sale, and I’ve been wanting one for oh about a decade, so I bit the bullet and met her somewhere in Pennsylvania (I was traveling back with Hannah from sleepaway camp and a stay with Marta and family; Risa was traveling back from a stay with her sister), and brought it home.  The learning curve is shall we say steep.  I have figured out how to cast on and how to knit tubes.  Next up – heels/toes and the ribber – I was going to start with the ribber, but that’s not going well, so I think I’ll back off of that and wokr on heels for a while.  B/c socks can be knit without ribbing after all.  AND, this weekend I took the kids off to the Syracuse Rabbit Show and picked up a small table loom from Kim – there  showing her rabbits.  Oh my gosh the bunnies were cute.  Toby is now pondering starting a rabbit breeding business (ever the entrepreneur).  How I managed to come home without a black and white spotted one with ears the size of its body I have no idea.  But the loom – it’s perfect – I’ve been intrigued by weaving for a little while, and starting with a small table-top one??  Perfect.
  4. Spinning. I have some Brooks Farm roving on the wheel, and totally love it.  I picked it up at Hemlock (aka Finger Lakes Fiber Festival) probably a year ago.  There’s a lot of it – I haven’t been spinning a lot but it’s pulling at me to do it more.

Kids!

  1. Hannah has started 7th grade, she’s still playing the bassoon, and after much todo involving her being sick for all of week two of school and missing tryouts, she is on the cross-country team and enjoying it.  She’s a tired puppy at the end of the day – the team meets from 3-4:30 Monday through Friday.  Love it.
  2. Toby has started 4th grade.  He is rising to the increased homework expectations and settling in nicely.  He starts instrumental music this year – and after trying out a number of things, settled on the baritone.  He was going to start with the trumpet – but, the baritone is easier to hold and similar in many ways.  Bonus for me, the baritone is too big to carry on the bus (school rule), so the school rents it to us for $50 for the year – one for home and one for school.  Love it.  No need to track down an instrument myself.  (Hannah does the same thing with the bassoon, which is still bigger than she is.)

Other.

I seem to be in a weird (albeit productive) sort of ‘nesting’? phase of life.

  1. I did a clean-sweep of the basement playroom, sold a bunch of it and had a big yard sale, and am now working on repurposing the room.  The top contender idea is to turn the space into a movie-watching room – with couches and chairs and a DVD projector.  I figure it’ll get used throughout the teenaged years (which are soon for Hannah, very soon!).  A big craft table is moving down there too.  Really I could do without the room (I know, how “eesh” to be in the position of wishing for less space), but – moving is not an option.  The basement only has one egress so it’s not suitable for a bedroom – though Hannah did have a sleepover down there.  I may sort out some sort of rope ladder/window breaking thing for a small high window exit – and not worry so much for future sleepovers.
  2. Hannah’s room also got a big clean and purge, and Toby’s got a once-over.
  3. I am done – well, ok, nearly done with what I can do until I sort out one last problem, with the front deck project – it was built last year when Toby’s ramp was put in, and never painted or stained.  The main part has a coat of paint on it (and needs a second, and then varnish).  I am using linseed oil paint which really functions as a stain – it’ll never peel and won’t need re-doing.  The unsolved problem is tracking some down in a specific trim color for the uprights on the railing.  Eesh.  I could paint it with the regular exterior trim paint used on the rest of the house…
  4. I am now focusing on the kitchen – I want to add a wheel-chair height counter to the one empty wall (with probably a base cabinet, or more likely, an under-counter freezer that we currently have in the basement, under it) – to give Toby more usable workspace in the kitchen.  It’s not an enormous project, but it does require some time and tools, and the time has been the issue lately.

Lego League. For three years, Hannah was on a FIRST Lego League team. She had an awesome time – although it ends with a challenge competition that – like anything else with a competitive component – can get a little intense (often more on the part of the parents than the kids).  She sort of wants to do it again, although Toby really wants to do it.  The team coach from the last couple of years is not doing it again – though he’s willing to pass on all the equipment (table, kits from prior years, etc.) and to mentor someone new.  It’s a little late but not too late (yet, Oct 15 is the deadline for signing up teams), and I have calls out – if I can get a group of kids together I’ll coach it.  I love the program – kids research a problem, present their research, and also build and program a robot and put it through its paces.  It focuses on teamwork, and kids end up learning a lot and – what’s not to like about playing with robots???  Last year the research component was focused on climate – and Hannah’s team did a whole thing on the local climate and maple syrup production.  Yes, I feel slightly insane even pondering taking on a task like this – but heck.  If the team thing doesn’t sort out – we’ll just do informal robot building and playing.

Last for today – I had an essay on knitting published in Times Higher Education.  I already posted this pretty liberally on Facebook – but I’ll link it here too.  It was a really fun article to write – the goal of that column is for academics to write about something that is specifically *not* in their academic field of study.  There are some awesome articles about things that folks are passionate about.  I was asked to write it by a fellow adult skater – one I have not met in person but who I have connected with via blogging.  She’s on my list of people to meet in person and skate with someday :)   Thanks Karen!



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and the kitchen sink, is how I think this post will end up.

Work seems to be calming down – I am winding down in my current position as an Institutional Researcher, and moving back to the faculty ranks as of June 30th.  Yes, that means a low-key summer.  I am really happy about this decision – while it came about due to a number of majorly stressful and awful work events involving a stolen computer and sensitive data, it’s a good move at this point in my life.  Hannah is screaming towards teen-dom at an alarming rate, and being home more when she’s a teenager?  As near as I can tell, it’s even more important than when they’re toddlers.

We have added an aquarium and fish to our mengagerie.  It started with the gifting of two betta fish, supplied in a teeny tank (divided down the middle so they saw each other but did not fight each other), where they both got progressively more lethargic and seemingly unhappy – as near as I could tell anyway not being any sort of expert about fish states of being.  Last week I started looking at Craigslist for a second-hand set up of a tank larger than an ice cream bowl but not seriously huge – nothing panned out by the end of last week so Saturday I went and got a 10-gallon tank from the fish store.  Before I could get water in it and the fish transferred over etc., Toby’s fish died…very sad timing and Toby was rather distraught.  However it did result in not needing to separate two aggressive fish, and extensive googling on what might fit in there as a community tank with one betta.

The next day, we visited the fish store again and came home with a pleco (which eats algae – it’s the craziest thing, it sucks itself along the glass), a small aquatic Dwarf African frog, and a broad vertical striped platy (a fish about the same size as the betta, which is a smaller female).  While it took a day or two for the fish to settle from the stress of transferring to a new habitat, once the heater heated the water and now that a filter has been added filtering the water – all seem pretty zippy and happy.  The betta got some new food today – she’s a picky betta (damn).  She had been spitting out the little pellets of betta food – but this morning ate about seven freeze-dried mosquito larvae (aka bloodworms, yummy).

I have no pictures yet – the tank doesn’t have a light at the moment, and it’s set in a “well” of a dry sink piece of furniture that we have – leaving it rather dark and unphotographable unless you’d like to see a grey blob of water.

Toby’s emotioanal development has been on my mind lately.  It really deserves it’s own post, and I have pieces of the story saved from various emails etc.  In short, as he nears the end of third grade, he’s struggling with coming to terms with his own reality and “limits” placed upon him with CP.  He apologizes ALL the time for really nothing – often for moments when he needs a little help doing something, often for moments when he perceives someone else’s tiredness or frustration – he takes it on as “his” fault when really 99.9 times out of 100 it has nothing to do with him.

In some ways where he’s at feels so utterly familiar to me – I remember taking on so much as “mine” growing up that really wasn’t mine.  I reacted by moving more internally and not expressing some really pretty basic needs (and it was not helped by the reality of all the moves my family made, resulting in new locations, new languages at school, building new friendships while learning new langauges, etc.).  Toby does not seem to suffer that same internalization – I am so proud of when he advocates for himself and tells us when something is bothering him (and  yes, I tell him so grin).

But the bigger picture is that we’re sussing out finding some help for him.  In many ways – it’s a developmental process – third grade is the right timing for him to be struggling through the issues of differences – he’s cognitively aware enough to process his differences in ways that he couldn’t before this point.  He started some of this “grieving” earlier this year when the school year started, and even if it’s all developmental – it doesn’t mean he needs to go through it without help and support.

We have also spent the better part of the year trying to get a wheelchair for him.  Insurance doesn’t want to pay for it b/c he can walk 20 feet in his walker (or something like that).  He CAN walk in his walker (and canes for shorter distances) but he is slow, and if we want to go to a place that has a lot of distance to walk (this local festival like the Lilac Festival; or mall which ok doesn’t happen much but sometimes you just gotta go; or even the grocery store; or etc.) – more often than not we either don’t go, or he sits on the back of his walker and we push him.  (Which is so not what the walker is designed for – while we turn it into a defacto wheelchair jeeze he just needs a wheelchair already.)  While he’d use it in school for sports and stuff, it’s not really appropriate as a school-funded piece of equipment as he needs it outside of school too.  Medicaid won’t cover it because the right wheelchair for him is an atypical choice – it’s lighter than what they’d pick (as an example).  We’re on it – we’re waiting for the final “Medicaid denial” piece of paper and then a local agency will cover it.  That it has taken SO much effort (including detailed assessments of his functioning in the Medicaid-approved wheelchair vs. the one that suits him better – tracking down a loaner version of that to do so) and that it’s not done yet is just – mind-boggling.

Related to all of that – I have an article ‘published’ up on the Exceptional Parent website – about some of our advocacy efforts in building an atypical slate of services for Toby while he was in EI (Early Intervention, from birth to age 3) and during his early elementary school years.  For now, the story is here – their “top story”.  Shortly, it’ll be moved to this url (in the “Family and Community” section of their website).  I’m pleased to finally have the story out somewhere – it’s a good story and an important one to share with other families working with designing services for their children.

I have been spinning up a storm lately.  I need to upload pictures to Flickr to get them here – but I’ve taken the pictures which really is half the battle. Knitting has taken a backseat for the moment – for now, it’s all about adding twist.  Or more likely, unwinding my own tension and putting it to good use.



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Courtesy of this blog post on some work-related “larger issues” (we’re sorting though “business intelligence” decisions – at a glacier pace), I found this picture – whereupon my institutional research and fibery worlds collide:

data/sheep = story/knitting

data/sheep = story/knitting



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