monkeymom's Diaryland Diary
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Tomorrow we can drive around this town.
I'm writing this Thursday morning, but it's my Wednesday night entry. I'm at work and when I go home at 7, we're all leaving town for a couple of days.
Rachel needs to go to Edwardsville and talk to a counselor, register for fall classes and look at an apartment with her new roommate-to-be. I was going to go with her and then somehow it turned into a family trip.
So we bought snacks for the car and got the new Harry Potter book on tapes (they were out of the CDs at Walmart) and we are ready to go. Oh, except that I haven't packed anything yet. I know what knitting will go with me, though, and that's pretty important.
While I was sleeping Wednesday morning, Rachel and Kim started planning their trip to Mackinaw Island. They are going next week, and they were looking at a website and discovered that there are no cars on the island - only bikes! Well, guess which one of my kids can't ride a bike?
Actually if Kim hears me say she can't ride a bike, she insists that she CAN ride a bike, because one day a few years ago I insisted that she learn and she eventually rode 50 wobbly feet down the sidewalk and ran into the neighbor's birdbath. Then she walked her bike back home and put it in the garage and went inside to watch cartoons and has never ridden since. Because she did it once, therefore she can ride a bike. Except that she can't.
So the girls went out to the garage and looked at all of the bikes out there of various sizes and found two that were in decent shape - one is Scott's bike from college that he rode all over Provo in the snow last year, and the other is some random old bike. Rachel ran alongside Kim, coaching her, and Kim was terrified of falling, but she rode the bike! They practiced on three sides of our block for a while (the fourth side was too hilly!) and then they took a break, and made a plan to go practice in the park later.
Well, I got up and they told me all about it and then Rachel and I went to Curves and then shopping for supplies for the trip, and then after Kim's harp lesson, the girls loaded the bikes into the van and went to the park. An hour later they were back and Kim was pleased with her progress, and had the skin scraped off of her entire elbow and some of her hip! Apparently Rachel thought it would be fun for Kim to fly down a big hill, but didn't think of telling her how to use the handbrakes to slow down. She went flying over the handlebars and skidded on her stomach! Oh my gosh, she could have broken her arm! (Rachel did, when she was that age and went flying over the handlebars of *her* bike!) I bandaged her up and they told me about the otherwise successful bike ride at the park, and now we're calling Kim the Road Warrior. They are planning to practice every day so they will be ready to ride around Mackinaw Island.
We finally took the baby sweater over to Karin's sister for her new baby. Which is the tiniest baby ever! She only weighs about 4 lbs and I could hold her in my two tiny monkey paws! We took a bunch of Rachel's clothes to give to Karin and I hope she can wear some of them - I hope she GETS to wear some of them, because her sister was very interested in the dresses and Rachel was very irritated about that, which amused me, since Rachel is usually very good natured.
While we were there, a friend of Karin's showed up, and proceeded to be just as charming as he could be, and I have a huge crush on him now. Almost as big as the one he appears to have on Karin!
So I brought the cream wool cabled sweater to work tonight and started knitting, but the mistake that Rachel pointed out earlier today was bothering me. I crossed one of the cables the wrong way, but it was about 8 inches back in the knitting and I thought of dropping the stitches down to the cable and knitting it the right way and then knitting back up to the top, but that seemed like a lot of work. Then I remembered something I read once about snipping a thread and reknitting just that section, so I proceeded to snip a stitch and pick out that area, but you know what? That was a mistake. A big one. I had a large hole and I was getting very upset and thinking of ripping the whole piece out, but it's such a labor-intensive piece of work I did NOT want to tear it all out! Finally I decided to drop the stitches down to the HOLE and try to knit it back up, and with great ingenuity and perseverance I did! It took forever! And from this I have learned to just drop the stitches down and fix it and don't try to be cleverer than I am. Isn't the dropping of stitches and knitting them all back up clever enough? (And we're talking about 15 cable crosses that had to be knitted back up!) I think it is.
5:34 a.m. - 2003-07-17
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