So Long, 2010

This has been a busy year.
- Started it in our usual way, hungover at a friend's house. This time with Rob & Mika too!
- Traded in old beater car, bought a "grown-up" car
- Survived a couple of huge snowstorms (which Joe was lucky enough to miss)
- Saw my niece play in a volleyball tournament and hooked up with the family in Baltimore
- Went back to the ATL to spend some time with my girlfriends
- Joe put in for a new job (April)
- Went to Boise for an interview (May)
- Put down an offer for a new house (June)
- Bought the new house and moved all our stuff (July)
- Put our NY house on the market (August)
- Drove 2500 miles in an RV with 4 cats
- Went to ATL again for a friend's wedding
- Went to TX to see family for Christmas

And in all that time, I only knit 7 things, 5 of which were easy hat/baby items. That's gotta change. My 2011 goals (in no particular order):
- Knit more.
- Get healthier. Stop saying it and just do it.
- Hope the NY house sells so I don't have to look for work.
- Blog more.
- Finish unpacking and get the house in order
- Never move again

That should do it. May you all have a wonderful 2011!

Nine Weeks

Okay, so we've gotten through the hard part(s):
- We purchased the Boise home
- Joe started his new job, which he loves
- We moved all our stuff out to Idaho, and it mostly got there in good shape (I don't wanna talk about the Dechar bowl and the Toronto magnet from Jacquie...sniffle...)
- I cleaned ALL THE THINGS that remained in the NY house
- We put the NY house on the market

Nine weeks from today we'll hopefully be loading up a rental RV with clothes and cats, then driving for a few days. So I can finally be here...

...and wake up to this:

I think my blood pressure will drop immediately the morning I first wake up out there. Even if it takes us a while to sell the NY house, I know we're moving in the right direction.

Sigh.

Nine more weeks.

I'm Lookin' for a New Blog, Baby...

In mid-April, when Joe was home for his one weekend (in a month of travel), he was perusing the internet for some job opportunities.
J: "What do you think about Boise, Idaho?"
B: "Sure...Idaho doesn't offend me."

In mid-May, Joe had passed a few telephone interviews and was brought to Boise for an in-person one. They even flew me out there. We fell in love. We looked at houses, we ate at cool restaurants, we spoke with servers/barkeeps/shopowners, and we fell in love.

In mid-June, we found ourselves scrambling for asset paperwork, signing letters of intent, and focused on buying our new home.

And now Joe is in his new position, loving every moment of being out there, while I wrap up the NY house, pack, and try not to go insane.

A lot has happened in 3 months. And since we will no longer have a porch (that does make me sad), I'm thinking this little-updated blog needs to go in a new direction. Maybe towards the Greenbelt.

Hmmmm...

Freezer Score!

And more veggies are on the way!

I haven't been posting about every freezer-dive meal we've had, but score a big WIN for the following:
A little bland-colored, but what you see here is peppercorn pork tenderloin (frozen about 6 mos), mashed cauliflower, and corn pudding (both from last year's CSA share). This meal rocked. A lot.

And tonight our CSA share from this year started. Here you can see what wonderful goodies are offered - I never have the patience or skill to take nice pictures like my knitter friend does. Anyhow, tonight we got strawberries (so sweet...mmmmm.), bok choy, radishes, lettuce, and sugar snap peas. Made a nice big salad with lettuce, bok choy, sugar snap peas, walnuts, almonds, and blue (bleu?) cheese. Joe vetoed the dried cranberries. Wuss.

Going through our share is going to be a challenge this year, because it'll all have to be consumed fresh. I have a freezer filled with the bounty from previous years, but all that must get eaten or thrown out rather quickly, as I have a freezer to defrost in about 6 weeks. The reason why isn't quite "Facebook safe" yet, but if you've read this far, chances are that you already know.

So we've got a lot going on: eating healthier, eating cheaper, clearing out the clutter (physical and mental), and still finding time to have some fun. And there is certainly a lot of fun to be had.

656 Days

In 656 days, I will turn 40.

I want my 40th birthday to be a celebration of epic awesomeness.

And so my goal - in 656 days - is to be the healthiest Beth I can be.

Let the fun begin!

Letting Go

Living in the same big house for almost 10 years is a curse. Seriously. When you can go a week without even entering the back half of the house - and when you have a full walk-up third-floor attic - it's damned easy to accumulate stuff. And it's really easy to not let go, even when you're trying to clean things out.

Today I'm swapping out my summer and winter clothes, and I'm also culling a few items that have been stored, basically since we moved here. I'm ashamed to say that I've put on more than a few lbs in the last 10 years, and while my goal is to once again be my "fighting weight," chances are I'm not going to want to wear 10+-year-old clothes when I get there.

But going through these items, it's tough to let go.

The long red slinky dress with the slit up the side that I wore to a dance my senior year at OU. The flirty little dresses I wore when I went to Italy with my mother, dresses that earned me whistles and stares from those nice Italian men (well, they pretty much stare at anyone). That little black dress with all the sparklies that made me feel like I could dance all night.

Then again, there are some memory lanes that should never be walked down again. A pair of jean shorts, color: butter. Yes, butter. A mini skirt that was basically one stretchy black tube. I think I wore that to a concert or two, but those stories are best left off of the internet. Numerous items that should stay in the early nineties, like my turquoise and white "suit" that was a tailored jacket and long shorts. Yup. Even wore it with white tights and tan shoes to the accounting firm.

And so while it's tough letting go, it feels great "digging through the stash" and getting this weight off of my shoulders. Much like my freezer project (which has been slightly on hold but will resume), we're just digging through what we can use and dropping what we can't. Life's too short to hold on to 5-year-old clam sauce and butter-colored jean shorts.

A Lovely Yarn Giveaway!

Please to be looking at this beautiful blog for a contest! For gorgeous yarn! What's not to love?!?

As a side note, the corn chowder survived beautifully, but the corn pasta did not. I should know better by now...cooked pasta does not freeze well...

A New, Frozen Direction

My poor, neglected blog. Either not much going on or too much to sit down and blog about. Since most of my peeps keep up with me on Facebook and Ravelry, I thought I'd turn my blog into a little reflection of a project I've started.

Freezer Diving.

Yes, folks, CSA time is fast approaching, and I've got an ass-load of stuff in the freezers (both the small and large ones are pretty much full). So I'm spending the next weeks/months hauling out meals that are both interesting and boring, wonderful and...trashworthy. Plus it'll get me out of this processed food funk I've been in. When you work long hours, you tend to fix / purchase what's easy, not necessarily what's healthy.

As spring turns to summer, I'll also be working on new recipes and new techniques for the fresh farm produce. I hope by the end of this season I'll be in the midst of creating a healthier lifestyle, as well as learning a few new things. And I hope to find lots more uses for corn.

For today's adventure: corn chowder from July 2009, Linguine with corn and sage (date unknown), mashed cauliflower (2009), and some peaches (2009). We'll see how they survived their storage.

Introducing...ELWOOD!

...or, How Many Cats Do You Have???

Joe and I moved to NY with three cats, adopting a fourth in 2002. Having a big house with plenty of space, the addition of another cat was a no-brainer, especially since all of our cats had basically come to us - either rescued or abandoned. After the rough patch of late 2007 / early 2008 where we lost both Milo and Cosmo, we spent a little while with only two cats, then realized that Otis and Dobby hate each other too much to be on their own. So we adopted Willow.

This didn't work out so well...now we had three cats that pretty much hated each other. There was some playing between Dobby and Willow, but it frequently escalated into hissing. I thought another younger cat would help Willow with her playfulness, so I'd had my eye out for an addition for a while - I just didn't know how it would materialize.

One afternoon, while searching Petfinder, I came across a small rescue organization with one picture, a little marmie-white kitten named "Liam." They would be at PetSmart over the weekend, and I stopped by to check them out. There were several kitties, all of which were beautiful and fun. But I was so unsure about "Liam" - was I just getting another cat on impulse, or was this the cat for us?



I brought him home in early December, and he soon became Elwood. After one day of being quarantined and shy, he quickly owned the house.



The other cats hissed at him, but he just went on his merry way with a 'tude of a king. Within a week, he was cuddling with his surrogate mom, Willow.





The older boys still don't care for him much, but I never could have imagined how positive this would have been with Willow. She's grown up, become a "Mom," and has a play buddy.



We might have four cats, but it's certainly not too much - it's the perfect number for us right now.

So How'd That 2009 Knitting Go?

Remember this list of things to knit in 2009? I think I did pretty well, considering how busy things were this year:

- 6 pair of socks (at least). Five pair completed, two pair in progress
- This shawl, in some groovy Egyptian mercerized cotton I have. Started 11/12/09, 2.5 repeats into pattern (roughly 1/4 of total).
- A scarf pattern that came with my Buckwheat Bridge purchase at Rhinebeck 2007 Started 12/22/09, about 1/5 into pattern.
- Another hedgie for one of Joe's coworkers (who just had a baby) Completed, also made another hedgie for niece Jessica
- Possibly this scarf using this yarn NOT DONE
- A hat and scarf for Joe to replace the really crappy ones I knit him when I was first learning Started the scarf, haven't worked on it in a while
- Another Clapotis, this time for me, out of some awesome yarn I got at Rhinebeck 2008 (the purple stuff at the top of this photo) NOT DONE
- This fish hat. Because how can you not make a fish hat? NOT DONE

Also completed:

Angel Lace Shawl with yak/merino blend



Windy Valley Scarf with Qiviuk



Noro striped scarf



Three baby hats, four pair baby socks/booties








Knucks for Mom



Cigar gloves for Russ



Cool Amelia hat from a kit given by a friend in Toronto



I'm not sure what my project goals are this year, but I'm definitely going to work on "shopping from stash" rather than buy any more yarn. It'll be nice to work the stash size down a bit. Edited to add: my completed projects of 2009 consumed approximately 4,554 yards of yarn - over 2.5 miles! According to Ravelry, I only have another 33 miles to go...

Of course, I have the same old goals of health and making the world a better place - this year I'm going to be very mindful of all of my goals and hopefully simplify my life. Too much clutter - in the stash, in the home, in the soul, and on the body.

Happy 2010 to all!