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When Times Get Tough, The Tough Bartend in Their Kitchen

Be forewarned, this entry is kind of whiny…

We buried my grandfather last Tuesday at the VA cemetary. It was quiet and peaceful and beautiful – the cemetary is only five years old and only 60 acres of the planned 500 acres has been developed. 

It was an odd feeling, seeing the flag-covered casket and knowing my grandfather was inside there (at all other funerals/memorials I've experiences, the deceased has been cremated). Not gonna lie – I kind of wanted to open it up and see him in there. 

(I am either disturbed, totally with it, or have seen too many zombie movies?)

Anyway…

After the brief ceremony, we headed into Vacaville where we went to Fenton's, a highly overrated and really kind of lame ice cream parlor. Their ice cream is good, I guess, made in house, but their sauces are totally subpar and ruin the whole experience. I've been to the "legendary" Fenton's in Oakland/Piedmont a number of times and it's just not a place that would even hit my radar in terms of places to go eat.

PARTICULARLY AFTER A FUNERAL. WHO GOES AND GETS ICE CREAM AFTER A FUNERAL, IT'S LIKE DANCING ON SOMEONE'S GRAVE.

Apparently, MY family goes and gets ice cream after a funeral!

In protest I had a grilled ham and cheese. It was fine, but nothing to write home about, and they put sweet pickles on the plate, not kosher, I mean come on.

From rereading the above, it's pretty apparent that my reaction to my grandfather's death skipped most of the steps of grief and landed squarely on ANGER which is manifesting in various classy ways! 

OMFG.

Anyway, next weekend is the memorial service which I am not looking forward to because I must continue to behave myself when I all want to do is drink cocktails and have myself a pity party for losing both my grandpas within six months of each other. 

Next time on Behind the Smile: Less complaining, more pretty things to look at!

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2011: 1/3 Gone

Since I last posted on the 8th ( a MONTH ago), I was STILL SICK for almost another week, and went to Disneyland with Abby. On the 9th, my mother came by the house for a "fitting" (she was making me a shirt) and took one look at me and was like, "I am going to buy you drugs, lots of drugs," because apparently I looked like Death Warmed Over or something. But she got me some Robitussin and Airborne, which really helped with my recovery – on Sunday I was able to go to Jason's for one of the final family meetings (to take possession of what artwork was to be salvaged; as family archivist I will be photographing each item carefully prior to redistribution) and I was able to pick up a few other things from the house. My house is now a total disaster of Nice Family Photographs and Nice Family Paraphernelia that I need to find homes for. Sigh. Well, it's been a total disaster since approximately January 5th anyway, so whatever.

Anyway, so then after that I was FINALLY starting to feel better after 2 weeks of the plague (for which I blame coworker Christopher, *shakes fist*) which I was starting to get worried about because Abby and I had our Big Plan to drive down to Anaheim for 2.5 days of Disneyland adventuring. Luckily was pretty much fully recovered by the time we left at 6 a.m. on Thursday. Why so early? Well, I wanted to stop at Sarah's for lunch so I could meet her new baby David! David is completely adorbs and I got my requisite baby cuddles in – and unlike the first time I met his big bro Will, David did not explosively poop all over me! (Yay!) Hee. Anyway, Will is three now (oh how time flies!) and he actually remembered me, I have once again become "Lissa" to a small child, which just fills up my heart (I love hearing my name come from a small kid, is that weird?). Sarah dressed up both kids in nerd wear I got for them – the Star Wars onsie for David and the robot tee for Will. I'm enjoying my role as fake auntie to these boys, buying them all the cute stuff I can! I try to avoid toys, as they have more than enough, but I do like buying cute little boy clothes for them, and books.

We went to lunch at Denny's not far from Sarah's house, where Will wanted to sit by me, and he passed out grapes to us all. This amused Abby, who had not met Sarah's kid(s) before, and Will was climbing all over us before settling down for lunch. Ah, three. Great age! (Can you tell I don't have kids.)

So, after that we headed down to Anaheim, stopped at Walmart for sunscreen (and I found awesome fit-over-your-glasses sunglasses – SO stylin', hahaha!) and checked into the hotel, the Ramada directly across from the entrance. Where I discovered that I had not brought my bag of shoes, and had, stupidly, worn my Chucks down in the car as "travel shoes"; they are not very good walking around shoes for me. I so should have worn my regular sneaks but for some dumbass reason I did not. ANYWAY so what we had to do was go buy me new shoes. UGH. So we headed down into Anaheim proper and located a Payless where I found a nice pair of flip flops. The Payless was right across from a CVS, where Abby popped in and bought me some Blister Block or whatever – it's made by Band-Aid. You apply it to areas that may be forming blisters, and darned if it doesn't work! (I kind of wonder if it would work for thigh rub, which would solve a big part of my I-Hate-Wearing-Dresses situation. TMI? Oh well.)

After that, we finally headed over to Disneyland! Or rather, California Adventure, where we picked up our picnic lunches that came with Fast Pass Tickets to the World of Color…

I described the show to Malvina as "The Bellagio Fountains on Disney Crack" which seemed apropo. I would have enjoyed it more if the night hadn't gotten inexplicably cold, so when the middle section full of FIRE happened, I was appreciative of the added warmth, hah. But it was pretty cool, and definitely worth your time if you're a big Disney fan (I am not, as I have mentioned before I am a DisneyLAND fan, which I realize doesn't make a lot of sense but whatever.)

The next two days were spent gallivanting around the two parks and trying not to get blisters. The blister block worked like a charm; I was so glad.

I managed to get on Tower of Terror twice before Abby had had enough of that ride (it's one of those herky jerky zero gravity rides, oh how I love it! After the first ride I squawked, "Again! Again!" and Abby obliged, but refused to go on after the second ride. I could have ridden it ALL DAY, I am telling you. Though nothing compares to my and Sam's epic four-times-in-a-row adventure a few years ago, haha).

Abby and I discovered the Bug's Life section of CA Adventure, which I don't recall having been to before. I photobombed her picture of herself while in line for Heimlich's ride (you sit in the body of a caterpillar).

I want you all to take a moment to admire my super sassy old man sunglasses that fit over my actual glasses. I know you are jealous of my untouchable style. Also note fluorescent shirt and margarita.

Anyway, trying to get back on the blogging horse here – I met my friend Amy's brand new baby Colten a couple weeks ago and I also attended the first ever gourmet food truck event in Sacramento last weekend. Finally, I survived another family tragedy this week.  I unfortunately lost my other grandfather this week. You can read the obituary here, if you'd like. We were lucky enough to celebrate Easter with him before he wound up in the ICU the very next day with sepsis. Once I found out what sepsis was, I realized it was only a matter of time before we lost him.

So that's been the last month in a nutshell. More frequent postings soon, I promise.

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A Bevy of Beautiful Shawls

Since I'm clearly on a shawl kick at the moment, I pulled all my finished shawls out of their special shawl drawer (yes, they really have one) and laid them out on my bed to compare with each other. I was curious to compare the different sizes of the different projects with each other, since Eiki turned out a bit larger than I was expecting.

Eiki, Brandywine, and Aeolian are basically the same size, with Aeolian edging out the others by a bit. By virtue of its construction, Eiki is larger than Brandywine, which is more of a true triangle shawl – both Eiki and Aeolian are curved to some degree.

The smallest shawl is my small orange Ishbel, then the Swallowtail shawl.

My least favorite shawl is Charlotte's Web, my favorite is Eiki. (Favorites are, as always, changing and somewhat subjective.)

The best shawl I've made is Aeolian, by far.

From left to right, in order of when I knitted them, oldest on the left: Charlotte's Web, Swallowtail Shawl (yellow-orange), Aeolian (turquoise, beaded), Ishbel (small; orange), Ishbel (large body, small edge; purple), Annis (light turquoise), Damask (olive green), Brandywine (mustard yellow), Bellingrath (hot pink), Eiki (dark red). Not pictured: Multnomah, which lives at my mom's house.

Considering the trouble I went to to get the Charlotte's Web pattern, and the Koigu to knit it with, I'm super irked that I don't really like it all that much down the line. I may take the unholy fringe off and reblock, which will help, but at the end of the day, I just don't really like the colors. At the time I knit it the pattern was at the height of its popularity, in 2004ish. I really liked all the different ones I was seeing on the blogs and was just dying to make one. I finally tracked down the Koigu and the pattern at Hill Country Weavers in Austin, TX. My friend Daphne and I were staying in Austin with her mom, who was at a teacher's conference there. That was a fun trip – we were only there for a couple of days, and went to Plucker's, a delicious hot wing restaurant, the world's biggest Half-Price books (so big, in fact, that neither of us bought anything – we were both a little overwhelmed!), a mall, a couple of bead stores, drove through UT Austin (Longhorns, boooo), and stopped at Hill Country Weavers, which is one of the best yarn stores I've been to in this country (and Lord knows I've crossed off quite a few on my list). Here, I finally found the koigu I'd been searching for. I liked the colors I chose at the time all right (they didn't have a huge selection), but they never won me over. I'd like to make the shawl again, but in my signature blues/greens/turquoise. 

Under-the-sea colors, if you will. And I wouldn't use Koigu, I'd likely use stash yarns. 

I was unable to resist piling the shawls in rainbow succession:

I could go for a few more colors stuffed in there, yes? A true green for sure, and a blue, both of which are on the needles, actually. More on those later, I'm terrible at photographing WIPs. But I'm working on a Snuggery Shawl in the Sanguine Gryphon Eidos I got at Stitches in an awesome green colorway (Hydra), and the Holden Shawlette in a yarn that I lost the ball band for, but got at Stitches I think 2 years ago in a lovely royal blue. 

I'm still sick, what is this plague???