Assorted rambling...

Some weeks I'm bursting with blog ideas, and others I feel sapped of all my creative energy. This is one of those weeks. I'm not sure why; certainly, it's been busy, both at work and at home. But I don't think that's what it is. Maybe it's my allergies. I have them every year at this time, disrupting my otherwise favorite time of year. This year they have been particularly vile. Perhaps they're slowly killing off my brain cells. I'm going to go with that theory.

At any rate, I believe Henry has also inherited them; he's been sneezy and runny for weeks. Cute anecedote: while I was warming dinner last night and chatting with Mike in the kitchen, Hank runs in. He opens the refrigerator, carefully takes out his open Spider Man cup of milk (I usually still force sippy cups on him because he's SO bad with spilling) and promptly sneezes right into the open refrigerator. All over every item inside. He slams the refrigerator shut, races off, and I hear...

*Cute sneeze* "Uh ohhhh... Sowy, Mommy. It's just a little milk. Rewy, just a little."

At any rate, tonight will be the first evening all week that Mike, Henry and I will all be home together from dinner to bedtime. Mike teaches Monday and Tuesday evenings this semester, and yesterday I went out for a glass of wine with my best girlfriends. We do that once per month and feel very cute and sophisticated while we do it. So tonight I'm back at home, armed with my crochet needle and my current volume of Amish fiction. Oh, the wild times at the home of the Catholic Librarian.

I'm nearly a full skein into my baby blanket and very pleased with the way it's turning out. The yarn is really pretty. It's a Red Heart baby yarn; the color is a variegated one called "Giggle Print." It's a lovely combination of blue, yellow, green, pink, purple, and white. Alyssa, my neighbor, is having a girl (awww...) but you know how it is when baby's gender is known before birth. Pretty soon, her house will look like a gallon of Pepto Bismol exploded in it. I didn't know Henry's gender before birth, and we were inundated with yellow/green, which was fine with me. But it was nice to eventually get some blue to even everything out. I had my hot little crafty hands on a variegated pink/green baby yarn, but I figured, she's going to acquire a heck of a lot of pink. Why not be the balancer in the mix?

While I crochet on most nights, after Henry is sleeping, Mike and I have been watching the AMC series Mad Men. Anybody else watch that? We're loving it. It's centered around a group of men working at an ad agency in 1960. I *love* the subplots with their wives and the secretaries; basically, all the female characters :) That's where the real drama comes in... We're on the last 4 episodes of Season 1, and we'll be watching 2 of those tonight. We're nerdily excited.

In what could turn into real drama in the Catholic Librarian household, I'm plotting to make applesauce next month. I know, this doesn't sound all that dramatic (read: exciting, or even remotely interesting) but I've never made applesauce before, and while I'm a decent cook, when things do go wrong for me in the kitchen, they go REALLY wrong. Think chopped carrots flying through the air from an open food processor or soupy consistency where there should be puff.

In two weeks we're going apple picking, a new family tradition we started last year. As you know, I love autumn, and nothing says autumn like picking apples right off the tree. Of, if you're Henry, nothing says autumn like playing in hay and riding on a choo choo train into an orchard. We bought a 1/4 peck bag last year, which was the smallest size, and still had to give a ton of apples away, lest they go bad. We like apples, but you can only eat so many fresh, kwim? But if I make some applesauce, or OOHHH! apple pie! We could be good to go. Apple cake? Anybody have any good recipes to share? :)