Too Much Tired!!!

Crazy does not even begin to describe the last week and a half around here. First, there was my birthday, which was such a huge event that it deserves its own post. For now, I'll just say that my fiber whims were fully indulged, and there was cake (and some other goodies) too.  As soon as my birthday was over, I put my work schedule in high gear so I could earn a work-free trip to Florida.  And then I had to start planning the work-free trip to Florida. Air fare was prohibitive this year, so we are driving. Laundry, maps, hotel reservations, strategic food shopping and 40 hours worth of activities to keep us all from killing each other in the car . . . the to-do list was eternal.  And I was still working on it at 3:45 on Thursday, which is actually when we were supposed to be leaving.  An hour later, we got on the road and we didn't get off for 300 miles, by which time we were in Washington, PA.  A lovely place, I'm sure, but all we did was sleep and eat breakfast there.  The kids, however, loved the Hampton Inn and its delightful breakfast.  They are ready to plan a whole new trip just so we can go back to the hotel and eat breakfast again.

Today we chalked up another 600 miles and, after too many potty breaks and way too much road construction, we have made it to Walterboro, SC.  For some reason, I thought our hotel had one of those fancy indoor-outdoor pools, and I talked about it a lot on the drive.  This, as it transpired, was a bad idea because, in point of fact, the hotel has no pool. What it does have is a convenient 'sharing' agreement with the hotel across the highway, but the hotel across the highway seems to have a sharing agreement of its own with the local mosquito population and we found the atmosphere less than inviting.  My poor children got a two-minute swim and then we fled to the safety of our deluxe hotel room so we could order pizza (not enough of it), eat more road snacks (probably too much of that), and do a lot of this . . .


and this . . .



and this . . .



because,  really, we didn't sit on our butts enough today.

On the upside, when I was packing up my knitting for the drive I was seized with the irrational fear that I would run out of knitting in the middle of the trip (doesn't sound like much of an upside, does it?  Wait for it, though, we'll get there). Plus, I was feeling guilty about leaving my long neglected Must Have Cardi at home when I would have so much knitting time available. So, in addition to the February Lady sweater and the two sock projects (yes, two, because even though I haven't finished a single sock in the last three months, I'm suddenly going to tear through two pair in a week)  that were already packed, I tossed in a few balls of my pink yarn and my Cardi and I have worked on nothing but my neglected Cardi for the entire trip. I even whipped out a spiffy new book light when the sun went down last night, and earned several choice comments from El Husbando in the process. I now have about 10.5 inches of the body done and in another 2 inches (or so) I can divide for the sleeves. I plan to get there tomorrow, but I have no plans to start the sleeves while I'm on this trip.  I still believe I'm going to work on socks during the week, but even I'm not fool enough to believe that I'll be making 2 pair of socks during the 4 days that I'm spending in Florida. But, if I'm a good girl and I finish the body of the Cardi soon, I'll get to start my February Lady on the trip home, for which I'll use some very beautiful birthday yarn that my parents don't know they bought for me. Pictures soon, but not tonight because I left all the yarn in the car.  I hope there are no roving yarn thieves in Walterboro.

p.s. We're ready to go swimming now.

Note to Self:

You can stop buying toothpaste for a while.



Sent from my iPhone

In Which We Get all the Wrong Things Done

It was a wild and crazy weekend at my house.  There was almost nothing on the schedule.  No place to be, nothing that really had to get done.  Once again, the weather was outrageously beautiful and there's only one thing you can do with weather like that:  sit on your duff outside and knit.  So Saturday morning I took the knitting basket outside and plonked it down next to my favorite cheap red plastic Adirondack-style chair.  I headed back into the house to fortify myself with a few pieces of chocolate and my iPhone (because I really wanted the full relaxation experience) and that's when I saw It:  the giant pile of dust and dirt dragged into the garage during the winter.  "Oh," I said to myself,  "just a quick sweep and then I'll sit down and knit."

HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

7 hours later, El Husbando and I collapsed in exhaustion, having cleaned out the entire garage.  Not just a sweep.  Not just a quick shuffle of mis-shelved items.  We emptied out the entire thing, cleaned off shelves, washed everything that would sit still, then carefully replaced our authorized garage items in their designated places. Outside we had three giant piles:  donations, trash, and recycling.  The kids even helped, kind of.  At least, they stuck around for the first three hours so they could shift stuff around and spray everything (and everyone) with the hose. The garage itself is now almost clean enough to have a party in, not that we would think of doing such a thing.  One giant job crossed right off the checklist, and we didn't even mean to do it.  An accidental garage cleaning, if you can believe in such a thing.

The catch: one beautiful 86 degree day down the tubes and at the end of it I was too tired to knit. Figures.  A few hours later, a cold front rolled in, bringing the kind of wild wind that comes when the temperature suddenly drops 40 degrees.  We scrambled outside to collect all the donations, trash, and recycling that were being blown all over the yard.  Our perfectly clean garage is now filled (again) with three giant--but well organized-- piles:  donations, trash, and recycling.

Today, I did have an agenda.  In October, the gas meter reader backed into our basketball hoop.  He must have been driving with his eyes closed, because those things are pretty hard to overlook.  But he was very responsible about his irresponsibility (perhaps not his first infraction?) and knocked on the door to tell me that it was his bad and he called it in to his company and they were all over it before the end of the day.  They told us to buy a new hoop and they would reimburse us.  So we did, and they did, and that giant unassembled bugger has been sitting in my garage since November.  One of the reasons I was so keen to sweep my side of the garage yesterday (HAHAHAHAHA) was that I wanted to finally put the hoop together and I wanted a reasonably clean workspace where I would not be rained on or get sun stroke or have all my instructions blown away.  I celebrated my clean (if re-cluttered) garage by opening up the hoop box, counting all the parts, and beginning the assembly.  I got about four pages into the 30 page instruction booklet and found that I am missing the single most important tool for finishing the job.  One tiny little drill part which will allow me to install the self-tapping screws through the solid metal pole that supports the hoop and keeps the whole affair from toppling onto some unsuspecting ball player.  There is no hand tool substitute that I can find, and after trying to put the screw in by hand for 45 minutes (please feel free to laugh at me here, I deserve it), I was forced to admit defeat.  So now, in addition to my three giant piles, my garage contains this:




One long overdue job, still un-done.

We still managed to end the day in grand style.  El Husbando,  known the word over as the Rock Whisperer, was up to his old tricks again.  He got out the tractor, the pull cart, and his two trusty helpers and they captured and relocated two more rocks.  They are intended to be the base of a bench, but the slab of salt and pepper granite that we plan to top the bench with is still in service as our front step.  It is poorly suited for this job, as the slab is a mere 8 inches tall, but the front door is over 20 inches off the ground.  But it's all we have, and it needs to stay put until the nice Patio People come later this month (or early next month, not really sure which) and put in a patio and walkways and proper steps.  It is too big to move anyway,  even for the Rock Whisperer, and we'll need the help of the nice Patio People and their earth moving equipment.

After he put the two new rocks in place, he made the inaugural fire in the Fire Pit.  The timing coincided perfectly--although unintentionally-- with dinner, and here we are dining al fresco by the fire. This is unheard of behavior for early April, when we are more likely to see freak snow storms and heaps of mud, but I suppose we'll have to call this the unexpected upside of  global warming.





You can see in this picture how badly we need some patio stuff at the back of our house as well.  It has looked like that for 5 years, and I'm a little tired of it.



Also, although only bits and pieces of the dog are showing up in these pictures, I assure you that we do own one complete, but camera shy, canine.

Continuing with the theme of jobs that were supposed to get done, but did not (cough progress on must have cardi cough) and things that I wasn't really supposed to do, but did anyway with shameless disregard for the consequences, here is the completed Tweed Beret.  It was a very quick and easy knit, and considering its origin as a throw-away kind of project (not in the sense that I'm going to throw the hat away, just that I was really only looking for a way to use up some left over yarn), I'm very pleased with the outcome.  I have used a stunt-double for the first picture because (1) she has much more style than I do, (2) she is very cute, (3) the hat looks good on her, and (4) she keeps asking if she can keep it.  Also included for your viewing pleasure are artistically arranged shots of the hat, from varying angles, in an appealing natural setting.  This should provide ample explanation for why I went into law instead of art as a profession.





Here is another hat. I finished it a few weeks ago.  It is very cute and was a lot of fun to knit, but it doesn't fit the person I knitted it for.  I hope I learned something while knitting it, because otherwise I can't account for its existence.



Because I wouldn't want anyone to think that I'm only about the knitting, here are some things that I was supposed to finish a few years ago.  They were my quilting works in progress at the very time that the knitting upgraded itself from a pleasant hobby to something bordering on obsession.

First is a Halloween quilt.  I bought the fabric when my local quilt shop was closing and was never entirely satisfied with the way the different fabrics went together.  That didn't stop me from making the quilt though.  I dug it out a few weeks ago and machine quilted it with a spider web design.  Here is the whole quilt with the binding on, but not yet tacked down on the back side. 



Here is a close-up of one of the blocks:



And here is the goofy little spider that I added to the last web I made on the quilt.  It's right at the point of the blue triangle.



Here is the backing.  I like the way you can see the quilting best from the back, but I will admit that I used this quilt as practice so that my freehand machine quilting will be improved by the time I get around to working on some of the nicer unfinished tops still in my collection.



Here is a picture of a table runner I made out of the same fabric that I used for my brother's wedding quilt.  I used the same pattern to make a runner for my mother, also using the left over fabric from the wedding quilt.  I am about half way through tacking the binding down, which explains both the hair clips on the right side of the picture and the difference in the size of the maroon edging. I plan to finish both quilts soon, but I haven't actually worked on them recently, so "soon" should be understood to mean sometime in the next 10 years or so.



Moving on from my Xtreme Crafting habits, tomorrow is my birthday.  By my children's reckoning, I will be turning thirty-twelve.  El Husbando has spent weeks working us all into a frenzy over this day, which I think might be the single biggest gift giving occasion in our year.  Last year he asked me for a list of "suggestions" for what I might like and I was fool enough to give him one.  I thought that he would pick a few items off the list, but instead he bought everything on the list. I felt pretty greedy when he kept bringing me present after present, and I have spent the year working very hard to use everything he got me.   This year I asked for just one thing, but I suspect-- mostly because El Husbando keeps calling me to tell me every time he either buys something or even thinks of another gift--that there might be a few more things coming.  I can't complain too much; it certainly makes getting older more fun, but it forces me to accept the idea that this is one area where I cannot possibly compete with him.  He is just too good. 

47 minutes left until the big day.  Better get my beauty rest.  Good night!

Too Much Fun!

We've been having some fun here, which is why there have been no blog posts for the last three weeks.

For starters, we've had a slight improvement in the weather.  We do not, for example, look like this:




We do not even look like this:



(certainly we do not look like the marauding  deer who were trying to munch on my lawn when this picture was taken)

No, indeed.  We look like this:



(a note to those of you inclined to be painfully literal:  I do not claim that we look like chickens and you should check right now to make sure that you are keeping your snarky comments to yourselves. Please pay attention instead to the blue skies, the emerald green grass, and the total absence of snow.  The very fact that the chickens were out of the coop proves that the day was so beautiful that we knew we would be outside all afternoon and would not have to worry as much about the fox making off with the birds)

And we looked like this:


spiraling clockwise from bottom left:  happy kids on swing set [note the total absence of leaves on trees, it was late March]; happy kid on swing; happy kids near swing; free range bath tub, complete with interior flora; gratuitous chicken butts; shoes that have been abandoned to allow happy kids to play barefoot; happy kid on slide; free range bath tub hiding from predators; free range chickens not hiding from predators; free range chickens hunting bugs; the "Climbing Tree," which was willing to pose for this one spectacular photo.

See how much fun we are having?  The kids played outside, I sat on my duff and did some knitting while surrounded by chickens, and El Husbando cut down many innocent sticker bushes, which is his default activity when the weather picks up.

But wait, that's not all!!  I joined a really fun yarn swap.  It's a lot like a secret Santa thing, only with yarn and without the trees and tinsel.  Everyone answered a few important questions and off we went.  My Swapee said that she liked deep rich colors, a variety of candies, bath stuff, and fabric.  The original thought behind the swap was that people could paw through their stashes, find some suitable yarn, and mail it off to someone else.  This did not work well for me.  I have a bunch of yarn, but it turns out that I am emotionally attached to the good stuff, and the not so good stuff isn't really good enough to dump on someone else.  So (and please do NOT tell El Husbando about this) I bought some really nice brand new yarn.  For a woman I have never met and probably couldn't pick out of a crowd.

I bought her a few other things, too:



I actually bought two bags of these new-fangles Skittles Crazy Cores.  My kids are total Skittles hounds and I thought they might like to try them too.  They didn't last 24 hours in my house.  I totally recommend them to you, unless you are my dentist, in which case we didn't really eat that many of them and we made sure to brush really well as soon as we were done.

The fabric was easier to collect than the yarn; I still have a pretty good collection of totally random bits of quilting fabric and I no longer remember what I was thinking when I bought them, so it was a little easier to send them on their way.  Two of them stuck around long enough to become this  bag



which I filled with the goodies and mailed out to Seattle.

It was HUGE fun putting together my swap package, so much fun that I almost forgot about part two:  the incredibly fun package for me!!!

No sooner had I finished packing my Swapee's stuff into its box, which I super-sealed with plenty of tape, than the local postal employee brought me a shoebox FULL of stuff.  Heaps of yarn.  So much stuff that I dug through my stash to find some more stuff to jam into the swap package for my Swapee so I wouldn't feel like the cheapest swapper that ever lived.  The top prize in my shoebox was some yummy pink malabrigo.  I have heard people making a big fat fuss over this stuff and I really wanted to try some, but I'm too damn cheap to buy it for myself.  And now here it is. 




In addition to my fabulous new yarn, there were heaps of goodies and a sheep card.





Sophie was very suspicious.  She supervised the unpacking of the boxes and can be seen in this picture keeping an eye on the ceramic sheep.

There was one last surprise in the box:  chocolate for me to eat! bubble wrap for Matty to shred all over my office!



I was so inspired by the new yarn that I immediately knit it up into these nifty fingerless mitts (fascinating point of trivia:  these are the very mitts that I was knitting while sitting on my duff on the aforementioned beautiful sunny day).  As a bonus, they used less than half the skein, so I can knit another pair any time I feel like it. It turns out that the yarn is every bit as soft as people say and I love it. 



As if sunny days and yarny gifts were not enough, there is still more fun to be had here.  In other knitting news (and really  it all ends up being knitting related news, doesn't it?), I finished the Alhambra scarf.  The only problem is that I haven't bothered to block it yet, so it is still very crumpled looking, instead of all airy and beautiful. 





That leaves me with the three actual current knitting projects.  It was supposed to be two (sweater and socks), but I am a little fickle and was suddenly struck by the overwhelming desire to cast on for a beret.  This is a truly laughable project for me.  Like a lace shawl, which I will almost certainly knit  and almost as certainly never have the courage to wear, a beret is a hat for someone with fashion.  I have no fashion and therefore no need for a beret.  But I had exactly the right yarn for the Tweed Beret and so I am knitting it.  Here it is in its infancy: 



I promise it will get better looking.

For socks, I recently ordered this yarn from the kind folks and Dizzy Sheep:



It is an Opal hand painted sock yarn.  The colorway is called (and I apologize in advance for this) Blatterwald.  The manufacturer claims that the color was inspired by an autumn forest, but when I wound the yarn into a spiffy little yarn cake, it became clear that the yarn painter got hungry on her trip through the autumn forest and had begun to think instead of a big bag of frozen mixed vegetables.



The resemblance wears off only slightly in the knitting.  Also, there seems to be a curse on the socks and I had to take them apart--after 4 inches of knitting-- upon discovering that the sock would not fit over my heel. Bad sock!  I'm beginning to have reservations about this whole project, which might explain why I was so keen to start knitting fingerless mitts and unnecessary berets.



And finally, as if there has not been enough knitting talk, here is the first picture of my Must Have Cardigan.  Now that we are getting to spring, this is not a cardigan that I Must Have soon, which is is just as well because it is S-L-O-W going.  Instead of knitting the fronts and back separately, I have linked them together and am knitting them all at once.  So far I have knit about 5 inches.  This is in addition to the 4 inches that I knit on the back but had to unravel because I put the project down for so long that I forgot what I was doing and the other four inches that I knit on the back the first time I started the project which I also had to unravel because it was so far off gauge that I could have given the sweater to El Husbando, except for its undeniable pink-ness.  I think things are going better this time.  If not, I'll be forced to conclude that this is not a cardi that I must have after all.


Just so you don't think that it is all fun and games around here, I'll close with a picture of this week's monster laundry pile.  I have run out of socks and can no longer put this off.



Here, just for the sake of artistry, is a larger picture of the Climbing Tree.  I love this picture, so I had to put it in twice.

 

And now (this is really the end of the post, I promise) is a little reminder of why small children cannot be trusted with cameras.  They inevitably try to take pictures up their noses.

Kind of looks like some bizarre cross between a human and a owl, doesn't it?

Memo
To:  All active members of the Society for Preschool Idiosyncrasies  (SPI)
From: the Governing Board (2010) of the SPI
Re: Guide to Mystifying Food-Related Behaviors, update 3.10.10.

Please be advised that  March is National Repetitive Food Request Month.  This year's celebration will be spearheaded by the Upstate New York chapter of the SPI, although all national chapters are strongly encouraged to take part.  Several competition events have been arranged and prizes (1st place, Temporary Bath Immunity; 2d place, Tantrum Escalation Kit; 3d place, Supplemental Television Viewing) will be awarded for the members who sustain their Repetitive Food Campaign for the entire month.  Creativity is also encouraged; special prizes will be issued for members who successfully combine their RFRs with Esoteric Preparation Instructions and/or Sudden Refusals to Consume the Prepared Items.

Members are advised to develop their own original requests, but 2d Vice President Matty offers his own current activities as an example of a sustained RFR/EPI/Surprise-Now-I-Won't-Eat-It campaign which has his parents, "Mom" and "Dad"  (not their real names), completely baffled.

The chosen food item is known as "bread and butter."  It is eaten for all meals and, on bonus days, for snack as well.  Preparation requirements are photo-documented below and include:

(1) precise matching of bread pieces (brand loyalty is also required here; an attempt by "Mom" to substitute a different bread resulted in a "Surprise, Now I won't eat it" penalty)

(2) complete and consistent butter coverage




(3) thorough trimming of all breadcrusts (again, a failure to excise all traces of crust is subject to penalty, typically profuse gagging noises and ejection of partially chewed offending pieces)

(4) precision carving of the food item into certain designated shapes (penalty for failure to accurately anticipate the desired shape usually involves prolonged screaming and, occasionally, jettisoning of the food item onto the floor)



(5) bonus points are awarded for presentation of food as a smiley face; all food must be issued in the same %^^$ bowl at each meal/snack.



Participants are reminded that-- particularly where crusts have been removed in a painstaking fashion or other special accommodations to whim have been made--it is inadvisable to eat the entire food item.  Rather, an extra margin of food should be left in the bowl at each meal; variations include eating one bite from the tip of each piece and eating only half of the food served.  Remaining pieces should be smushed, licked, dunked, dropped, or otherwise mishandled in order to prevent storage of the food item for later consumption.  Be aware that overuse of this tactic may result in a sudden and unjustified refusal by the parent to serve the requested food and will result in a corresponding reduction of the participant's overall score, or, in the event of a prolonged food preparation strike, elimination from the competition.




Second VP Matty reports that his campaign has been wildly successful.  His parents, particularly "Mom," are baffled as to his food choice and unable to predict when triangles or squares will be required, but are almost fully trained to meet Matty's whims and have not yet flatly refused to serve the "bread and butter."  He noticed while shopping this week that "Mom" laid in an extra supply of the approved bread and butter, and he is now considering the implementation of a response tactic, possibly a Short Term Diversionary Food Switch with Accompanying Rejection of all "Bread and Butter" Foods.

SPI members are reminded that all communiques to and from the Governing Board are top secret and confidential.  The success of our group depends entirely on our collective ability to keep parents in a state of constant confusion, and all behavioral guidelines are, therefore, subject to change without notice. Members are referred to prior Memos outlining the most common Secrecy Preservation Tactics, including #5.09.00 "Looking Bewildered,"  #3.21.96 "Maintaining an Expression of Wide-Eyed Innocence," #4.26.38 "Proper Use of Diversion Tactics, Including Unprovoked Tantrums, Sudden Crying Pretenses, and Unexpected Vomiting and/or Illness (Emergency Use Only),"  and #2.16.21 "Effective Denial Tactics, Including Employment of Catchphrases 1 & 2 ("I dunno" and "Wasn't me"), Blame Shifting, and Engaging the Services of Invisible Friends."

Participants may report their efforts to the Upstate New York SPI "March is RFR Month" committee.   This Memo should be committed to memory and then destroyed.

Winter Blues, Chased Away

It is all my fault.  For months, I have been begging and pleading and wishing for it.  More Snow.  I firmly believe that if we are going to be stuck with cold temperatures and gray skies, we should at least have some snow to play in.  Last week I got my wish.  Not only did it snow, but we got a snow day out of it.  And then, just when I thought I was going to spend the day on some over due work and just nag my kids to go out and play, some friends drove out to keep us company, play in the snow with us, and get stuck in our driveway.  It was the perfect snow day.

The great thing about late winter snow storms is that the temperature usually isn't quite so frigid, which makes playing outside that much more enjoyable.  On Saturday morning, we let the kids fend for themselves and El Husbando and I took the dog snow-shoeing.  The dog took a pass on the actual snow shoes and for a little while, we weren't even sure we could get him to leave the property because he is so firmly trained to his Invisible Fence boundaries. In the end, we tricked him by crossing the IF line in an unusual spot and when we came home, don't you think he insisted in taking the long way back to the house so that he could cross at that same spot again?  Dogs.

On the way down to the walking trail, we passed these little beauties:  cats(tails) in hats.






El Husbando with the fraidy-dog:




Fraidy-dog getting all low on the trail:




He loves the snow and, invisible fence issues aside, he thought this was just about the best day ever.  He spent the rest of it sleeping, which made it a pretty good one in my book too.  There's really not a lot of good stuff that happens when a large dog gets cabin fever.

One way we have passed the winter days is tossing different foods into the coop and seeing what the chickens will eat.  So far, the answer has been everything.  Spinach, wilty salad, and cracked corn were not surprising; we expected them to gobble it all up and they obliged.  But, I threw (literally: it has to clear a 6 foot fence) a bunch (head? stalk group?) of celery in the other day and now there is no sign of it.  We have also learned that you can hang a head of cabbage and they will peck at it with a viciousness that is terrifying.  The first cabbage that I put in was  steadfastly ignored for a few days until they decided that it had come in peace. (In this sense, the are much bolder than my children, who still believe that cabbage is deadly). Then they hacked away at it until nothing but the core was left.  The second cabbage didn't even last 24 hours.  The only disappointment is that the birds can peck at the cabbage and tear off the leaves without making the head sway too much, even though it is suspended from a wire loop on a rope.  I was really hoping to watch some chicken volleyball.

The other surprise favorite was spaghetti.  My advice on this issue is never to let a seven year old toss spaghetti into your chicken run.  Regardless of my thorough and clear instructions as to spaghetti placement (between the nets, please), an awful lot of it ended up stranded (hahaha) on top of the netting instead of in the coop. The girls didn't seem to care.  They gobbled up the noodles that fell to the ground, and the stuff that didn't fall immediately has since vanished.  All problems relating to leftover spaghetti have now been solved, but I can't help wondering if they were disappointed that we hadn't thrown them real worms.







As if snow days and spaghetti eating chickens were not enough to take the edge off of winter, we celebrated Purim last week.  The highlight for the boys was the annual Purim Carnival. The girls and I gave it a miss this year, but we couldn't keep Matty away.  As soon as he saw the bouncy house, the throngs of small, screaming children, and the mountains of worthless plastic prizes, he became a man on a mission.  He dragged El Husbando in and was rewarded with fabulous gifts, including a yellow lei and an unidentifiable purple plastic animal with rubber spikes. Nate was the proud winner of the funny glasses, but he was very happy to share them. Certain elder children, however, were much too cool to be photographed wearing them.




And last, I really and truly did finish my knitting olympics project, the Slanting Gretel Tee. I even finished it during the real Olympics, which entitled me to cyber-medals and pdf certificates of knitting excellence. Unfortunately, my knitting skills far outstrip my compter skills, and I have not yet been able to copy my gold medal image to post on my blog.  Bummer.  But, really the prize is that I get to wear this:



The goofy bit of extra fabric in the front has settled down a little bit, and it turns out that this whole short sleeve layered sweater thing is very comfy.  I have worn the sweater twice in the week since I finished it (a thrilling tale in itself; I was weaving in ends between games in a 6th grade basketball tournament) and since the bugger is machine washable, it won't just languish on the handwash pile waiting for me to clean it up again.  Hurray for me!