I am so cold today. I am starting to hate summer because you have to have two wardrobes to wear - one for the freezing cold office and one for the sweltering oven that your car has become while you've been shivering in the office.

Would my Wallace in The Wrong Trousers suction cup action figure look out of place stuck to the windshield of a Buick?

I got really frustrated yesterday trying to figure out what I spend all my money on. I am trying to come up with a budget but I can't figure out how much money I need to allocate to certain things, like food and necessary household stuff (toothpaste, clorox wipes, toilet paper, cat food, etc.). I could categorize a lot of my spending just by looking at my bank statement. $22 at Kwik Trip = a tank of gas. $50 at Kohl's = new walking shoes. $4.15 at Caribou Coffee = well... you know. But I buy almost everything else at Target. $32.67 at Target could be almost anything. milk. minutes for my cell phone. clothes. Captain Jack action figures. my prescription copay. season 2 of The Office. cat food. cat treats. coffee filters. eyeglasses. peanut butter. a pair of cute cat mugs. oil for my car. crackers to stash in my desk at work so I don't starve. a copy of In Style magazine. a box fan. giant plastic tubs to organize yarn in. heck, I've even gotten yarn at Target. It's really hard 3 months later to look at one number and figure out how much of that charge was for cheese and grapefruit and English muffins and how much of it went towards the electronic sudoku game (love it!). I may have to resort to keeping all my receipts and sorting through them at the end of the month to see just how much money I spent on groceries this month. And the chances that I could actually do that for a whole month is pretty slim. I'm starting to think I'm never going to figure this out.

When I get stressed out or really frustrated I tend to get obsessed about things. other things, like not the stuff I'm really worried about or the things I should be thinking about. And this time I'm obsessed with this - the Print o' the Wave Stole. While mine won't be quite as delicate as hers (I'm using tiny lace weight yarn instead of the so-small-it's-almost-invisible cobweb weight yarn she used), it will be a long, extremely involved project. And since I chose to do it in some almost-black yarn I know I will be really glad I have one of those lovely OTT lights. I rolled one of the hanks of yarn into a ball last night. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about (which is probably all of you) rolling yarn into a ball is kind of like winding up an extension cord. Except we're talking about 440 yards of yarn that tangles and knots easily and is really hard to unknot if you pull the knot tight by mistake. Plus it's alpaca yarn so it kind of sticks to itself. and I wind it into a ball on my thumb, which means I cannot set the half-completed ball down so I can use both hands to untangle knots. And of course Spike had to be right in the middle of the action. He kept walking back and forth over my lap - and on/in/through my loose hank of yarn - and butting his head against my hands trying to get me to pet him. Knitting this is going to be an adventure for me. and for Spike because I am rarely able to do anything without him (literally) sticking his nose in.


Maybe I can have the stole done before next summer so I can use it to keep warm while I sit here at work.