I've been tagged by Squib-Stitcher (who has a lovely photograph of herself on her blog, by the way), so here goes:

What was I doing 10 years ago?
I was still in college, hating life and wishing that I was out of school. I quit soon thereafter, and here I am today. Back in school. Wishing I was out of school, but I'm not hating life. Baby steps, y'all.

What are 5 things on my to-do list for today?
1. Grocery store, because we have no food.
2. Fold a load of laundry when I get home so that we're not living like a bunch of hobos with clean laundry piled up all around us. Well, I guess hobos don't have clean laundry around, but you get what I mean.
3. Read a chapter of my accounting textbook. Try to stay awake.
4. Bathe the kids. See hobo comment above.
5. Knit on the cardigan that I started a few days ago.

Snacks I enjoy:
You would be hard pressed to find snacks that I don't enjoy. Salty and sweet, breads, ice creams, crackers...you get the idea. And you also see why my ass is expanding.

Things I would do if I were a billionare:
Quit work. Go to school full time and get it over with. Buy a big, new house, and then set out to do good things with the money. Feed the needy. Wipe out all of the people who hurt children. And somehow, convince Cold Play and Keen to quit making music. IT IS FOR THE GOOD OF THE WORLD, PEOPLE.

Places I have lived:
Texas, Texas and Texas. Did I mention Texas? Because yeah...Texas. I'm not what you would call a "world traveler". Or even a country traveler. I've been out of Texas a few times in my life. I KNOW. I am working on it!

I suck at tagging folks, so if you're reading this, you're officially tagged.

We've got a rather special occasion coming up soon, and, well, I...I hate to spoil it by just yelling it up front and all, but let's just say that a little someone in my house is about to have a lot of people over, and we have to do some things to get ready for these people.

That's right, folks: my carpet has a date. With the steam cleaner. It will get hot and heavy, I can guarantee it.

I really, really hate having my carpets cleaned. It seems like it takes hours for them to dry; we have to put the furniture up on blocks for a day or two because apparently, my couch needs an oil change, and while you're under there, can you rotate the tires too, please? Thanks. But the carpets, they need it badly; between the two cats that have no other purpose in life than to shed and hork up hairballs on my carpet and the three year old that doesn't understand why mommy needs the juice to stay in the kitchen, the carpets are a mess. The steam cleaner guys come out, work their magic, and ta-da! I have beige carpets again instead of, uh, grey? Whatever color they are now.

Sarah turns a year old at the first of June, and we're going to throw a party, but that also means that we've got to get some things done around the house. Like getting new patio furniture (and by new, I mean ANY patio furniture). And one of those tent/gazeebo things to shade us from the volcano we call The Sun here in Texas. And artwork to match the recently changed up living room. All of this adds up to Mike having to do things, and while he's generally happy to hang, assemble, and clean, I have a feeling that I'm getting on his nerves when I'm looking at YET ANOTHER lawn furniture set. He would like me to MAKE UP MY MIND already and also, just freakin' get stuff done instead of talking about it OVER and OVER and OVER. What can I say? I like the planning just as much as the actual doing. I'm weird like that. But he's getting geeky things out of it, like speakers mounted to the outside of the house and speaker plates inside. And it's forcing me to de-packrat a bit, so he can't complain TOO much.

Speaking of, I need to order a cake. Gak!

I'm lucky. Seriously. In real life, I complain a lot about blah blah blah everything, but when I stop to think about it, I realize that I've got it pretty damn easy.  So for Mother's Day, the only thing I wanted was to get a few trees planted in the back yard. What I got was a day of shopping all by myself while my husband watched the rugrats, which I think is a much better idea than some stupid old trees. Although I still want those trees planted.

It was fantastic. I had three entire hours where I wasn't changing diapers, or getting someone juice, or responding to demands for a movie. I didn't have to hold, or bounce, or feed, or drag anything out of anyone's mouth. No one pooped and required a wipe. No one sneezed and needed snot cleaned off of their face. I walked from store to store in our outdoor outlet mall, looking at things that had nothing to do with anyone but me. Shoes, purses, clothes, jewelry...whatever I wanted. I even stopped by Starbucks and got an Iced Tea Lemonade, which I didn't have to share.

But then, I realized how late it was getting, so I got in the car and drove home, where the shiny faces of my kids were waiting for me. They missed me. They aren't used to having their father watch them alone, and when I sat down in the floor to say hi to them, they both dog piled me. And I realized that while I sometimes really need some time to myself, I always look forward to coming home and seeing them. They love me, and they only drive me crazy because they love me. Folks tell me that before too long, Bryan will think I'm NOT COOL and Sarah will be asking me to drop her off a block from the school so that her friends don't see her mom actually driving her. They are only small for so long (Sarah's first birthday is in THREE WEEKS), and I'm trying to soak it up while I can.

My only request - STOP PRYING MY EYELIDS OPEN when you want me to wake up, Mr. It's Time To Get Up Because I Damn Well Say So.

I tend to buy yarn in spurts. I'll go for months without purchasing or swapping anything, and then one day, I get that random itch (you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about), and three days later the house is buried under a mound of fiber. I also tend to obsess over the same colors or combination of colors, so one block of purchases will all be red, the next different shades of purple, so on and so forth. The latest color combinations have been pink and green together; I've gotten three skeins of sock yarn in the past two weeks with the same colors.

Not that I needed them, of course. The drawer that I stash all of my sock yarn in is getting a bit crowded, meaning that I better stop stashing and start KNITTING. 

This is the aforementioned Woodland Shawl in Fearless Fibers Superwash Sock, color Sublime; the skein looked brown at first glance, but the more I knit through it, the more I see the balance of gold and green, red and brown. I added two pattern repeats so that it was a bit wider than the original pattern. It has been the perfect travel project lately; I've memorized the pattern, the yarn is pretty sturdy and well behaved, and I can chunk the entire thing into my purse and not worry about how delicate it is. I'm hoping to finish it up soon and block it, but knowing me, it'll still be sitting around six months from now, probably only a few repeats short of being complete. I have knitting ADD lately, and I can't focus on one single thing at a time. Actually, that might be more of a symptom of my life, and not so much just limited to knitting.

I got sucked in.

We've debated about getting one of these bad boys for a while now; Mike has his beloved XBox 360 and Halo 3 that really takes up the majority of the gaming time, and we've also got a Playstation 3 just for the Blu-Ray player, so I figured we were pretty well set as far as gaming systems go. Plus, there was the added benefit of not being able to find the suckers for so long; running across one was like unearthing oil in your backyard. So when I was in Best Buy the other night and I saw one sitting out on the table, I snatched it up without another thought.

It's AWESOME. Everything everyone told me it would be. We also bought MarioKart with it, along with a spare controller and an additional spare wheel, and we played against each other for a few hours the first night we had it up and running. Hell, even Bryan thought it was neat - it's a game that doesn't really require him to do much more than push one button and steer; as far as a three year old is concerned, that's the best possible scenario. It also came with Wii Sports, which I plugged in last night and had a blast playing tennis and bowling. I've even gone as far as to order the Wii Fit, because I'm a giant dork and it looks really cool.

I suddenly see a little less knitting in my future.