Tragidal!

That's Bug's pronunciation of the word "tragical," which, for a drama-prone four-year-old, is essential vocabulary. We are always in the midst of some tragedy or another, but now Mama is the one with the tragedies!

Tragedy, the first: Near misses with the Yarn Harlot. In late May/early June, we were in the Portland, OR area. We left early Wednesday morning to return home and while we were driving, the Harlot was appearing at Powell's Books in downtown Portland. In my finest display of stoicism, I sucked it up and accepted the fact that sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles (or the vacation schedules work out). So, a couple of days ago, I was blog reading at Chez Harlot and there were new tour dates listed. My eyes immediately picked out the word "Madison" from the list. I clicked the link to see the tour schedule and skimmed through the list until I found the word "Madison" and, lo and behold, it was positioned squarely next to my birthday! At this point, I was wavering between complete hysterics and wanting to maintain a little grown-up dignity (and not frighten the children), when I get smacked between the eyes with two little letters following "Madison": Dude, they looked way more like "CT" than "WI." Fer cryin' out loud, our Madison is over ten times bigger than their Madison. No stinkin' fair!

Tragedy, the second: Related to the recent laptop tragedy, I have discovered that I haven't the slightest clue where the USB cable for my digital camera is. My laptop had the right size memory card slot built in (well, still has, but only in the sense that a rock with the right size slit would have a memory card slot built in), so I would pop the card from camera to laptop and copy pics and off we go. Well, the desktop has no such slot. I even have a new FO picture in my camera. *sigh* I need to either find the stinkin' cable or invest in a card reader. Until then, a pictureless blog, I'm afraid.

Tragedy, the third: My lace shawl has continued to grow and is rapidly reaching the point where a single round has 1000 stitches! It is a little demoralizing to knit and knit and knit and discover than I can't mark off any rows finished! Fortunately, the chart I am working on is worked four times per round and has a central 34-stitch repeat and edges that only grow to about 50 stitches before another central repeat is added, so there are LOTS of stitch markers, so it remains pretty easy to pick up and put down frequently. Besides, now that I am on the fourth time through the chart, I am familiar enough with it that I only have to look at it at a few key points rather than slogging along one stitch at a time like I did at first.

Okay, so maybe these tragedies don't compete with stuff like human rights violations or world hunger, but dang, I'm 31-1/2 weeks pregnant, it's hot and humid, and I'm tired. Cranky is about the best I can manage on a good day! I feel entitled to a little drama. Hah! I'll do my best to get back to cute kids and knitting stuff again, though. Meanwhile, I promised said kidlings that we would go to Farmer's Market this afternoon, so I had better go round up shoes (and shorts for Bean) and deliver...

And I shouldn't forget to add that Kitty Daddy appreciated the well-wishes and sympathy! The stone is out and, as is inevitable when general nurseness and Y-chromosomes are combined, he took it to work to show it off to his co-workers the next morning. As a non-medical-professional and a female, I just roll my eyes. We happen to have a book about the human body out of the library, so we found the page with kidneys and talked about Daddy's owie. Since then, both kids like to pull out the library book and explain the whole situation. Bean's two-year-old interpretation is absolutely hilarious, if a bit difficult to understand. Bug's explanation is clearer, but last night after his bath he didn't want to get dressed, so he got the book out and explained it all to Daddy. Between the four-year-old earnestness of delivery and the nudity, Daddy had to work pretty hard not to crack up!