Learning Through Frog-osis

After this weekend I have determined a few things:

1. One ought not to attempt life too hung over. That includes knitting projects.

2. There is something to be said about understanding different types of yarn and what NOT to use them for.

3. I have an extreme dislike for the North Carolina School System.

Let's address the first one, shall we?

Sangria. Good while you are consuming it. Not so good the next day when you try and accomplish various household tasks such as laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, vacuuming and overall straightening up. Out of these 5 things, I managed to accomplish 1.75 items. Dishes - they count as the 1, and the .75 comes from laundry. Although it's clean and dry, it's certainly not put away.

I'm going to shop for nourishment after work. For some oddball reason, Monday night is "Fish Stick" night in my house and once I pick up Madelini, we're heading to the store. For whatever reason, she enjoys grocery shopping Mondays after school. I try and hit the store during lunch, as there is a sweet little grocery store behind my office, but I'm out of motivation at the moment.

Hangovers allow for work on dishcloths and that's it. Now you all know why there is a constant stream of them flowing off my needles.

Second!

In my last post, I talked about the psychotic amount of silk yarn I had purchased for a lacework scarf. I made it six rows into the thing and stopped. Although I had managed to get the stitches down pat, there was no way my pretty silk was going to work for the pattern. I need something I can soak and block to make it right in the end, and that's just not gonna happen with silk.

So I frogged.

And through frog-osis, I learned the following:

One can be a skilled knitter, but if you are not skilled in the art of picking out the appropriate yarn, you can kiss your pretty little FO good bye. I sat down and thought about this at length, trying to determine if it was the elephants playing jump rope in my head or just overall disappointment with the scarf itself, and after a cup of coffee and a banana, I realized it was the scarf.

Why go blind over a scarf that won't be what you want it to be?

Third!

North Carolina has 3rd graders complete End of Grade testing. It starts today. The state mandates that all 3rd graders pass this in order to advance to the 4th grade. Well, friends, the school has hammered this point so hard into my poor baby's head that she cried and refused to leave the house this morning because she's so scared about not passing.

"Mom, I'm just so stressed out" (Now picture tears the size of raindrops and a quivering chin)

WTF???? I know, and I'm sorry for the foul mouth.

It's a sad day when an 8 year old has had so much emphasis placed on one event that she cannot even remember the successes she has had over the year. She struggles in Math, as I did when I was her age. She may not pass that portion of the test, and that's ok. Her teacher and principal will over ride retention, as she is a straight A/B student except for Math.

I can't tell her this, though... And trust me, I have considered it, just to try and stop her from being so freaked out and miserable, but I just can't do it, because then she wouldn't give it her all. Poor thing. Tonight we shall dine on two of her favorite things - Velveeta Shells and Cheese with Fish Sticks and discuss how good our lives are. Life ought not to be measured by tests and grades, but instead on how you live it and what you give to others through your own personal blessings.

Who knows, she may surprise all of us. She has been a barrel of surprises for the last 8 years, so why ruin a good thing.