I started a fan stitch, half circle shawl from Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls. I’m using my handspun camel/silk yarn. It’s looking real pretty, so I’m not sure if we’ll end up dyeing it when it’s done like I’d originally planned.

It’s very, very soft.

So, I’m having a crazy busy week. So much to do at home. So much work. I’m going and going non-stop, and my brain is tired. I want to stare at the wall for awhile to decompress, but don’t really have that option.

I’m still not feeling particularly talkative, but we’re back to sleeping well. Yay!

I’m really excited because I put in 30 minutes on the elliptical five days last week. I only did my strengthening and stretching exercises once though. I keep forgetting that part.

And I exercised again this morning already. For some reason, the goal of fitting better into my current jeans size is more exciting and seemingly obtainable of a goal than losing 80 pounds.

I hope it works.

I still have three knitting projects lined up that I really want to start. And I still haven’t started them. With the current busy-ness of baby, preschooler, girls in school, exercising, and being really good about budgeting our groceries and planning/cooking dinner every night…. it’s easier to grab the guitar real quick for a bit of recreation than it is to commit to a stitch count and start a knitting project that might not work or fit, so I’m procrastinating.

But I miss it.

We’re all seemingly healthy. Max is slowly working towards his pre-sick sleeping habits. We’re still struggling to get Clark to eat, but he’s doing ok right now. It’s helpful knowing he’s not allergic to cheese. The kids are on Mid Winter Break this week, so I’m making them help with the Monday-morning-reclaim-the-house-from-being-trashed-over-the-weekend chores.

I’m torn trying to decide how to spend my free time, what little I have of it. I’m on a roll with the songwriting, but I also really want to card some batts and knit a Pi shawl, not to mention the other little shawls I wanted to get done this spring.

And I think I’m going to start exercising regularly again. (Oh please, oh please). I’ve done pretty good at cutting down bad snacking and sweets over the last few weeks and I feel a lot better about myself for it. I really want to fit into my clothes better.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to post this week with the kids being home and all. I haven’t felt very talkative the past couple of weeks, but if I have anything interesting to say, I’ll be here.

So, I found out on Saturday night that a friend of mine just got a job as the new Editorial Director of Interweave Press, books division.

How cool is that?

I’m totally geeking out, and very excited for her! If anyone has an idea for books they’d like to see, tell me, and I’ll tell her.

I know I’ve been scarce around the blog recently. Max is mostly better, I think, but he’s still not sleeping. I can’t decide if I’m actually sick myself, or if I’m just so sleep deprived that I might as well be. When Max was sick, he couldn’t sleep longer than 2 hours at a time without waking up choking.

Now that he’s better, he thinks he’s starving to death and can’t sleep for more than 40 minutes to an hour without eating.

I’m going to die.

To add to our family fun, Clark has a fever and threw up last night.

Seriously, does mothering get any better than this?

I have one final complaint before sinking back down into my reclusive hole. Yesterday, Clark broke from his tradition of being careful around my musical equipment and knocked my Gibson (my gorgeous, gorgeous guitar) off the stand and flat onto its face on the hardwood floor. I keep this particular guitar cased. All the time. Just to be safe. And Clark has never knocked a guitar onto the floor before. But I had set the Gibson on a stand for 30 seconds while listening to a recording, and I was standing right next to it. But I couldn’t save it, and now it has a small dent in the front (which is really ok) and an ugly gash in the side of the headstock. (Not ok).

Dangit.

I think it’s fixable. At some point, I’ll take it in to my luthier to see what it’ll cost me.

Last night, I dreamt that chunks of wood kept falling off the front of the guitar, and every time I looked at it, I saw more damage. Which means that the little bit of interrupted sleep I actually got last night, was stressful.

How’s that for a “Happy Tuesday” post? Sorry. I’m going to slink back into oblivion now.

Well, almost. My songwriting is really coming along. I’ve got a lot of positive feedback and my sister thinks I should get my songs registered and find someone to promote them for me, trying to get an artist to record them.

I don’t really know where to start, and from what I’ve read, it’s nearly impossible to get anyone to listen to your stuff unless you “know somebody.”

My throat hurts. I’m not sure if it’s perpetual lack of sleep, or if I’m getting sick. I hope I’m not getting sick, but if I do, I hope I don’t get sick ’til tomorrow, because I’m planning to go to the Songwriter’s Guild mtg tonight. I’ve only been one other time, and it was a year ago, which also happened to be the first night I felt pregnant-sick with Max. It was a rough night and they probably all thought I was mental, if they even noticed, squirming around in my chair the whole time. It was a bunch of men I didn’t know, though, so I couldn’t really say anything without it getting awkward.

I’m so tired. We slept ok last night, outside of the hour between 2 and 3 am, when Max threw up three times. Poor thing. We went to the doctor today, for what was supposed to be his 4 month well-check. He’s dealing with the illness fine, doesn’t have an infection and his lungs are clear.

Thank goodness for that! ‘Cause he sounds awful!

Here he is, watching me make dinner last night

We had margherita pizza, our first attempt, and it was fabulous!

My youngest brother-in-law spent 2 years on a mission in Italy, and we had him over to teach us how to make pizza a few weeks ago. His method is “throw it all in a bowl ’til it looks right” so we did our best to extract measurements of ingredients. This is what I got-

3 cups flour
1 egg
1T or so olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp yeast
about 1 cup warm water

You throw it all in a bowl and poke at it with a rubber spatula ’til it’s more or less mixed. Then you punch it around ’til it’s a dough. (I cheated last night and did some light kneading instead of the punching). Cool thing is, if it’s too wet, you can add a lot more flour and it still comes out. Ask me how I know :-).

Then I washed out the bowl, sprayed it with cooking spray put the ball of dough back in and covered it with a damp towel.

There’s no sugar in the dough, how weird is that? I thought yeast needed sugar, but apparently not.

So that’s it. It rises for an hour or so. I pinch off a handful and shape/stretch it into a circle (if you need help with that, email me or comment), I even tried my hand at tossing it in the air with moderate success. It got paper thin. We put thin slices of roma tomatoes on the dough, and a medium amount of mozzarella cheese. Baked it on a hot pizza stone for 7 minutes (500 degrees), pulled it out, put fresh basil on the top, some coarse salt (french gray this time) and drizzled it with olive oil. It made two large pizzas, plus the one small one in the picture.

Mmmmmm.

They’re not remotely filling, unfortunately. It’s a very light pizza. But the same crust works great with sauce and sausages and such, that’s what we did last week and it’s quite filling that way.

He has a great sauce recipe, too if you’re interested.

1 can tomato sauce (Safeway’s organic is my favorite. It’s sweet and less acidic tasting than the S&W)
1T dry basil
1/4 cup olive oil (you could probably get by with 3 T)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp + minced garlic (or 1 clove)

let it sit for awhile for the flavors to blend. It’s really good on pasta, too.

So there you go, easy pizza recipe. I like the fact that it only uses a mixing bowl, so cleanup is really easy and I don’t have to haul out my mixer and wash attachments.

I’m so tired. I had three hours of sleep last night, and 4 or so interrupted hours the night before. My throat hurts and I can’t walk in a straight line. I hope I can nap this morning.

Max is sick and I’ve been up with him. He had a very croup-y cough on Saturday, so we started boiling a stockpot of water on the stove for 12 hours a day, putting several gallons of water into the air and now he just has a phlegm-y cough. And a fever. Poor guy. He’s been throwing up, too. Fortunately, he can still breath out of his nose, so he can still eat. And while it’s obvious at times that he doesn’t feel good, he’s still trying to smile.

I have a lot going on this week. Not much that is critical, but some running of the girls here and there, a dr appt, parent luncheon, etc. Oh, and I’m hosting preschool tomorrow. It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out.