Happy Mother’s Day weekend!! 11 May 2008

[This was written last night, but WordPress went down just as I hit Publish, so I'm publishing it this morning.  I'm far too lazy to go back and change all instances of "today" to "yesterday" and "tomorrow" to "today."  Sorry for the confusion.]

Wow, this weekend has turned into more than I would have expected.  I knew Kurt had a few plans for Mother’s Day, so I thought today we could hang out in the house.  I even had plans to go through Grace’s closet and try to get rid of a ton of crap before this new baby comes and takes over her room.

And that, my friends, is quite an undertaking.  The fact that I was finally motivated to do it was rather amazing.  I tend to lean towards the “lazy.”

As I was reading back issues of the Newport Daily News (somehow I had missed Tuesday, so I had Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday’s editions to read this morning; I never read my Saturday editions until Sunday anyhow), I noticed a photo of a kid petting a sheep, and the caption mentioned the Watson Farm Spring Festival, during which the sheep on the farm receive their annual shearing.  I showed the photo to Kurt, and the next thing I knew, we were racing around getting things ready so we could go to the festival.

Kurt even packed us all a lunch, and once we got to the farm, we sat on the tailgate of the minivan and ate our sandwiches.  We’ve been trying to be a bit more economical about eating out; we seem to eat out more than almost anyone we know, and it’s getting rather expensive.  Thanks for that “economic stimulus check,” but with the price of everything going up, it’s really not helping much.  I just spent $60 to fill up the minivan today.

Let’s not even discuss groceries, shall we?

The farm at which the shearing was held is absolutely beautiful.  So scenic and picturesque.  The sign says the farm dates to 1796, and it’s possible that the farmhouse is that old.  And inside the barn are all these old farm implements, and the grounds have several old tractors enjoying their retirement in the sun.  It’s like how one imagines a farm to be in one’s mind.

The sheep-shearing was the main event, obviously.  There were so many sheep to be sheared, and their wool was so long!!  You’d think they had been growing their wool their entire lives, but it was only one year’s worth.  The shearers would grab a sheep, flop it over on its back, and begin digging into the wool with their shears.  Slowly the wool would fall away in one big layer, until the poor sheep was completely shorn.  Then the shearer would wrestle the sheep so it was sitting on its bottom again, and trim its hooves down.  Finally, after having endured all these indignities, it was finally allowed to regain its friends and complain about its treatment.  I bet the sheep was pretty cold, too!!

The shearers would gather up the wool, and it would be this enormous wad in their arms.  The entire process was really quite amazing!

And then the shearers would grab another sheep from the many that were waiting their turn, and the whole thing would start all over again.

From there, we saw the wool being carded into more manageable fibers, and then it would be spun into yarn.  Then the yarn would be woven on a loom into fabric.  You could even buy things, like hats and bags, that had been made from the previous year’s wool.  The whole process was represented at the farm, and it was amazing for this city girl to see the wool harvested from the sheep, carded into fiber, twisted into yarn, woven into fabric, and sewn into useful objects.

It’s really mind-boggling, though not that long ago it would have been just another skill I would have had to have as a farm wife.  How times change.

The rest of the farm was really neat too.  We were able to wander around as much as we liked, and we saw cows and draft horses and turkeys and chickens.  The male turkey was really bent out of shape, probably because we were too close to his hens.  He kept making a huge racket that you could hear over most of the farm.

What’s funny is just yesterday, as we crossed over the Jamestown Bridge, I noticed the large patch of green land just past a development of expensive homes, and I wondered what it was used for.  Today I ended up on that patch of green — it’s pastureland for the farm’s cows.  It was just a gorgeous place to wander around, absolutely lovely.

Tomorrow should be even more fun.  Kurt has some kind of surprise planned for me.  I have no idea what we’re doing at all; he won’t even tell me.  But after the surprise, we are heading up to see the Pawtucket Red Sox (affectionately known as the PawSox) take on the Norfolk Tides.  Both are Triple-A teams, which is what I prefer if I’m going to the stadium.  Major leagues are too expensive and too crowded for my taste.  The amazing part of this is I love the Norfolk Tides!  When I was a kid, they were the Tidewater Tides, and I remember my real mom rooting for them.  I don’t really remember going to a game, at least not till I moved in with Kurt and he took me out to several games at Harbor Park.  I am so excited to see my favorite Triple-A team, and even more amazed that they would be playing my local Triple-A team on this particular weekend!!

So tomorrow I shall be one happy and exhausted Karyl, and then I’ve got to run some errands with my friend on Monday.  I guess Tuesday will be my rest day.  By then I’ll need one!

I’m not the carefullest 9 May 2008

I posted some old photos of myself on Flickr, including one of me modeling my good buddy Skittles’s hat. That was a big deal in and of itself because Skittles absolutely refused to allow anyone to wear his hat. Why he let me, I still don’t know. But it was such a momentous occasion that I had to immortalize it on film.

Hence the photo.

I was looking for some old photos that I had taken of a festival in Suffolk, VA, called Driver Days that celebrated the tiny community of Driver with a parade, lots of local vendors, and plenty of delicious eastern North Carolina barbecue (which does not have barbecue sauce on it, and instead a simple sauce consisting mainly of vinegar). The twisters that touched down in southern Virginia last week devastated this little town, so I wanted to find my old photos and post them online for whomever might be interested.

In my box of 1000 photos, I also found that photo of me in Skittles’s hat. Kurt saw the photo when he was at work this morning and mentioned to me that he liked the way my hair had looked in that photo. He studied me with his eye half-closed, and intoned, “You are going to grow your hair out.”

BUT!! Couldn’t he have said that before I just chopped the whole damn thing off?

Men. Sheesh.

For the record, I did want to grow my hair out, which is why I had that mass of frizz on my head before I cut it into the bob. But now that I have this awesome cut, I really don’t want to grow it out anymore! It’s so easy to style — just wash, blow-dry, and brush it the way it looks good. It takes me maybe five minutes to do my hair, a wee bit longer if I have to dry it straight out of the shower.

So remind me why I would want to grow it back out. But I may anyhow. It does look pretty on me, either way.

Tonight we tried out a new Japanese restaurant up in Cranston. Kurt had gotten a recommendation from his co-worker JC, who happens to be TC’s husband, the girl who ended up leaving her kid with me without even asking if it was okay. I’m a bit bummed that it’s somewhere they frequent because this place was so awesome. I just don’t want to run into them.

This new restaurant was amazing. For one thing, they bring out a row of complimentary Korean appetizers with every meal. There’s a small dish of spicy cucumbers, some dried anchovies that were just a bit too fishy for me, a dish of kim-chee, some sweet black beans, and fish cakes. I devoured at least some of every dish, minus the anchovies. But at least I tried them.

What amazed me is I liked the kim-chee!! Growing up in northern Virginia, there was a large community of Koreans who had immigrated here. Two doors down was a family who I hung out with a lot, and one day the daughter cooked up all this Korean food her mother had left when she’d gone back to Korea for a visit. I tried the kim-chee then, but I did not like it. Not one bit. But today I tried it just to see if I still hated it, but I loved it! Gosh, it was good.

Now I know why Caroline can’t get enough of it. Yum yum!

Along with my order of maki sushi (what comes in a roll) and nigiri sushi (a lump of rice covered with raw fish), I decided I needed a side dish of sushi. I ultimately decided on a Screaming Spicy Tuna Roll. (FYI, I have been craving the spicy with this pregnancy.) So when my order of Screaming Spicy Tuna Roll arrived, Kurt wanted me to listen to it to see if it really was screaming:

It didn’t actually scream. But it was spicy!!! Part of what made it so spicy was the wasabi oil inside of it. Ohhhhh that stuff is HOT! In a good way, though. Like horseradish, when it hits your nose just the right way, you think you are going to die. It totally clears out your sinuses. What I like about it is the spiciness doesn’t linger in your mouth. When I ate that spicy pepper during our foray to the Turkish restaurant, my tongue tingled for a good hour after eating it. That is the part I hate about spicy food. I don’t mind a zing, but when it lingers forever and ever, that’s when it bothers. Hence my love for wasabi.

I need to get me some wasabi peas. I’ve never had them before because I didn’t start really enjoying wasabi until I had it on some nigiri sushi back in Washington state. They’d put it on the sushi as they were making it. I only wish they would put the wasabi on my nigiri at our favorite restaurant in Newport, but when I asked if they would that for me, the waitress told me it’s not something they do there. Bahhhh. My nigiri already had wasabi on it tonight! I peeked underneath some of the fish to see if it was there, and I saw a teeny little schmear. I was worried at first it wasn’t enough, but one bite was enough to convince me it was plenty. Yum yum yum!

What an exciting life I lead, eh? Getting excited over kim-chee and wasabi. Hey, I’m easily amused!!

Nodding off 7 May 2008

Are you sick of my photos yet??

Yesterday I was feeling a little blah, and so Kurt decided what I needed was some new clothes. I was really surprised by this, but he’s completely right. All the clothes that fit me now are leftovers from when I was pregnant with Gracie. I’m not a terribly fashionable person, so it doesn’t matter to me that these clothes aren’t the height of fashion for May 2008. But I got them from consignment and thrift stores to begin with, and since they were really the only clothes I could wear (and hence got lots of use), I feel they look more frumpy than what I prefer to wear.

I’m also a size smaller than I was when I was pregnant with Grace, so most of my old clothes are pretty baggy on me.

We headed up to the mall in Warwick to check out possible clothes. I tend not to buy clothes from the mall; I usually prefer Target and even Wal-Mart for clothes I won’t be wearing for very long. However, our Wal-Mart has just one tiny rack of maternity clothes, and both of the Targets near my house are so small that the only maternity clothes they carry are the ones by a designer. I would really prefer to pay less than $20 for a freakin’ t-shirt, thanks. Old Navy is usually an option as well, but there’s only one or two that carry maternity clothes in my area. Plus I always get depressed going into our Old Navy stores. They’re always completely trashed, and the signage is always rather misleading. There will be a sign that reads “2 for $15″ or what-have-you, but it’s only for one particular color or style on that shelf, and you have to dig through everything else on the shelf to find the exact style that is on sale.

But on our way, I snapped a wonderfully beautiful photo with my little point-and-shoot camera through the dirty, dirty windshield of the minivan as we crossed over the Pell Bridge between Aquidneck and Conanicut Islands. I didn’t think it would come out well, but Kurt encouraged me to at least try.

So try I did, and here is the result:

I guess there’s a benefit to listening to your husband once in a while.

I managed to find some cute things at the Motherhood Maternity inside Macy’s.  Some of their stuff is really expensive!!  Gahhh!!  There was one really cute t-shirt with ruching up both side seams, and in a lovely turquoise which would look gorgeous against my red hair.  But $25 for a shirt??  Yeeesh.

I got four shirts, a pair of Bermuda shorts (which, of course, look like pedal-pushers on my short, short legs), and a dress for just over $100.  Thank you, Rhode Island, for not charging sales tax on “necessities” such as clothing and shoes.  That saved me $7.50 right there.

I also realized, while trying on a plethora (neener!) of clothing, that I really do look pregnant.  I guess I don’t really see it since I am still rather chubby in my belly from before my pregnancy, and when I sit down, the chubbiness sort of melts away.  When I stand upright, especially after I’ve eaten, my belly actually sticks out farther than my bosom — and that’s saying something!  Some of the shirts I tried really accentuated my belly.  It’s really the first time I’ve looked into the mirror and said to myself, “Holy cow, you are pregnant!!”

But then there was the lady I was chatting to today, and when I mentioned to her I was pregnant, she said, “Oh, you are?!?”  Wow, that did not boost my confidence.  In her defense, she says she never assumes anymore after assuming incorrectly that someone was pregnant while she was at a job interview.  Apparently it didn’t end well.

Now I have a dress for a couple of family reunions coming up, as well as a nice pair of shorts I can wear with a nice shirt.  I bought a button-down as well so I look a bit more dressy than my normal “t-shirt and denim capris” look I usually sport in the summer.  My in-laws are coming to visit next month, and my mother-in-law always wears slacks and a nice shirt, so I just want to look a little nicer when we’re together.

Kurt’s been bugging me as to what I want for Mother’s Day this Sunday, and I told him, “Look, why don’t we count this shopping spree as my gift?”  That works for him, since he usually has a hard time figuring out what he wants to get me.  Hopefully he’ll still cook me dinner on Sunday; if he does, I’ll be a pretty lucky girl!