26 June 2007

five good things about today

Today is a Very Good Day. Here's why:

Good Thing #1


ahhh...it just really started getting hot and humid and for the first time in my adult life I now have air conditioning in my ENTIRE house.

Growing up in Tennessee everything is ridiculously air conditioned to about 60 degrees and it is unquestioned that you WILL have air conditioning (except for the year we moved there and my parents thought we could forego it-- I spent the summer playing christmas carols on the piano thinking it might make my 8 year old body cooler if I could pretend it was winter.) Though now it makes me chilly when I go home to visit, it is so lovely to go in and out of those arctic blasts into the simmering hell of humidity outdoors (and vice-versa).

Up here in yankee-land, air-conditioning really IS an option (this was shocking to me when I first went to college, how could you NOT have air conditioning?!?). For 2 weeks of the year it is an absolute miserable hell without it, but you survive. Until last year I had struggled through Minnesota and NY summers with no air conditioning at all. Those 2 weeks never seemed worth the few hundred dollars the air conditioning would cost. But thanks to
A) last summer's string of heat waves that forced me to camp out in my bedroom for 4 days, emerging only for food.
and
B) a generous air conditioning grant provided by the in-laws
...we now have air conditioning. In every room (we live in a small apartment, it isn't as excessive as it sounds).
This means I can knit. All summer. Even with wool. yipeeee!

It also means that I can have Good Thing #2


mmmm coffeee. I love it. I HATE iced coffee. I HATE drinking hot things in the heat. Therefore, today is partly a Good Day because Good Thing #1 and Good Thing #2 go so well together.

Good Thing #3


This picture doesn't do her justice. In the past week or so this bird has become the most entertaining thing in the whole world. She has just started talking and comes out with new words every day. She likes to have little sessions where she puts together everything she knows into various groupings. So far "everything she knows" consists of:
singing the Simpsons theme song
clucking
saying "gris-gris" (but it sounds like a frog ribbiting
"hello"
"good-morning"
"hi"
slidey whistles a la "Groove is in the Heart"
"step up"
wolf whistles
"Guess what?"
"stop"
"no"
"how are you?"
The queen of the night aria from _The Magic Flute_
"oh boy"
laughing
"bye bye"
Shave and a Haircut (two bits!)

She combines all of these words together into hilarious strings. My favorite so far is the, "Good Morning Gris-Gris, How are you? Guess what? step up. Stop Gris Gris, No." Then of course it is interspersed with Simpsons music and unique variations on that theme. It makes me laugh. Then she laughs back. I laugh some more. And it is off for another round of hilarity. She also is doing a lot of funny upside down tricks but whenever I point the camera at her to get a picture she stops and tries to chew the camera. Oh well.

While watching and listening to the birdy show I have finished Good Thing #4


My favorite so far.

Which naturally leads me to Good Thing #5:


So much more dishcloth yarn left to play with. I love looking at all of it in this little basket. I love making predictions about how many dishclothes I will be able to make with so much yarn. I love thinking that weeks worth of entertaining knitting (not to mention a pile of pretty dishclothes) only cost $15.00. I may never stop.................

2 comments:

diana said...

i like your dishcloths. i have a few of those myself. i even turned two of them into a pillow, because i wanted to keep them pretty. i'm currently working on a baby blanket that is taking me forever. if you look at MY outdated blog, you can see the pretty purse i knitted! of course, now i want to do another, but alas, my time is spent at work, sleeping, freaking out about school starting soon, etc.

Anonymous said...

I think birds and babies are very much alike. Like gris-gris, Nora's small repertoire of words get strung together in unintelligible but hillarious ways. For example, "mamamama gar." Which may or may not have something to do with me or the car. I wish I could get her to sing the Simpson's Themesong, that would be quite the trick.

Also she consistently does the cutest things until I get out the camera (though maybe not upside down) at which point she attempts to capture and eat the camera.

So glad you have ac and can therefore drink your favorite hot beverage and knit. You have wonderful inlaws.