Tomorrow is March and I've got to get at least 1 post in for February, so here it is....

I'm going to pretend like it hasn't been over a month since my last post. I'm going to pretend like I've been blogging this whole time, no one has missed me (which, let's face it, is probably the truth), and we will just all go on as usual. Ok? Thanks.

First, an update about my other blog that I told you about in my last post. If you're thinking that it is the reason I haven't been posting here, you're wrong. I've been totally neglecting that blog as well. In fact, I posted on it twice and then just sort of lost steam. See? It's a good thing I didn't tell anyone the address. Now I can just erase it and pretend it never happened. The blog, that is. The weight loss is going great! I'm down about 9 pounds last time I checked, and more importantly, I'm losing inches, so pants that haven't fit me in years are getting a second life! Yippee!!!!

Here is how my February went down.....

My Great Aunt Hazel celebrated her 87th birthday this month, and her children had a party for her up in Dallas. My mom, Betty Nuggs, came down for the festivities, as did several of her siblings. We had a great time eating, laughing, shopping and visiting. Here are some pics from the party.

Me and Nuggs at the party.

Me, mom, aunt, uncle, cousins and Great Aunt Hazel (center). Happy Birthday Aunt Hazel!

I bought some new fabulous cowboy boots while we were in Dallas. Actually, these are my first pair of cowboy boots. Shame on me, I've lived in Texas for nearly 4 years and have never owned a pair. I love these. They are cute and very comfortable.

The Cowboy bought me some beautiful flowers for Valentine's Day. My favorite - calla lilies.

Aggie took up residence in the laundry basket, after we had to throw away her dog bed because she chewed it up. Hopefully the laundry basket lasts a little longer.

My newest knitting creation. It's a scarf made out of a bunch of leftover pieces of yarn from various projects. Thank goodness I hung on to all of them! I tried to make the "theme" of the scarf green, and then threw in some complimenting colors.

Rather than knit this scarf length-wise, as with most scarves, I knit it width-wise. I cast on 180(ish) stitches on size 11 circs and changed yarn every single row. I absolutely love the way this turned out. I have enough odds and ends to make at least one more, possibly two. What will I do with them you ask? Drum roll, please................ I am opening an Etsy store!!! I having been knitting and sewing like crazy lately, (hence no blogging) in an attempt to get a stockpile of things ready to sell in my Etsy store. I am hoping to have everything up and running over spring break - which is 2 weeks away. I will be sure to let you all know when it's open, and post a link. In the meantime, here's a sneak preview. It's my store banner.

Speaking of new exciting things, Lexey Rhea was born this past week!!

Congratulations to proud parents Johnny & Tiff, and big sister Sydney! I can't wait to meet little Lexey.

It snowed in Austin this past week. Like, a lot. Serious accumulation. It's the most snow I've seen down here since I've been here, and I heard it was the most snow that they've seen here since 1985. Here are some pictures, taken from school, where I was stuck all day because they didn't cancel school. Boo.

The kids had a blast, though. We took them outside in the morning and let them run around and play in it. Many of them had never seen actual snow before, so it was fun to watch them. Someone tried to make a snow angel, but there wasn't quite enough snow for that, and it ended up being a dirt angel.

Today, it's sunny and 65. I love this state!!

That's my February in a nutshell. I would promise to try and write more, but we both know I don't mean it. So in case I don't blog again until the end of March, I hope you all have a great month!

Nuggs

If you know me IRL, then you know about Nuggs. You've probably even met her.

Nuggs is the name I call my mother. Sure, I call her mom too, sometimes. But mostly Nuggs. And everyone else calls her Nuggs too. Well, maybe not her co-workers. And come to think of it, probably not her friends or family. Ok, so really just my friends call her Nuggs. But she loves it.

Here's how the name came about. When my brother and I were little, we were playing at the lake we used to go to every summer (shout out, Hillman, Michigan!), and my brother was calling her Mommy Knockers. Anyone else a Stephen King fan? Tommy Knockers? My brother just substituted Tommy for Mommy. See what he did there? Because they rhyme.

So anyway, I started calling her Mommy Knockers too. Because I did everything my brother told (forced) me to do. Including climb into a suitcase head first and allow him to throw me down a flight of stairs. But that is a story for another time.

So here we are, playing on the beach, and we're pretty young, I'm going to guess maybe 6 (me) and 9 (bro), and Nuggs is sitting there reading, or sunbathing or whatever, and we're calling out to her every other minute "Mommy Knockers! Look what we made!" or "Mommy Knockers come help!" or "Mommy Knockers! Dale hit me!" (a frequently heard refrain)

Now imagine if you will, that you are at the beach and there are some kids calling their mom Mommy Knockers. Or, imagine that your own children call YOU that. Are you imagining it? I don't have kids, see, and I still think it's funny so I can't really understand the full situation. But I guess my mom didn't really appreciate being called anything with the word "Knockers" in it. And she came over and told her we had to stop calling her that.

"Why, Mommy Knockers, why?" (and here I like to pretend that we are wee little English urchin children with cockney accents....it makes the story more fun)

"Because, children, "knockers" is another word for women's breasts. Boobies. And mommy doesn't think it's funny when you call me that."

"But we LIKE calling you that, Mommy Knockers. We like it a whole, whole lot."

"Mommy is sorry, but you cannot call me that any longer. You can call me Mom, or you can find another silly nick name for me, but no more Mommy Knockers."

"Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease Mommy Knockers, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease."

"No."

I could carry on this dialogue for awhile, but you get the picture. She put an end to our innocent fun. So we had to come up with a new nickname for her. Here are some of the ones we tossed around:

Mommy Funbags
Mommy Melons
Mommy Hooters
Mommy Milkjugs

But in the end, we settled on Mommy Nuggs. I don't know where it came from, but I'm sure it was from my brother, since anything I would have suggested would have been vetoed. And eventually, we dropped the Mommy part and just started calling her Nuggs.

It caught on, and has transformed over time to bigger and better nicknames such as:

Nugget
Nuggle
Nugger
Nugglet
Nuggsalot
Nuggsamillion

And so on, and so forth.

Anyway, the point to all this rambling is to wish Nuggs (and all other mothers out there) a

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!













Nuggs is a frequent visitor to my blog, so if you'd like to leave a comment for her and wish her a Happy Mother's Day, I know she'd enjoy reading all of them.

Happy Mother's Day.

Mom? I need you...

I am sick. Dog ass sick. Coughing, sneezing, stuffy-head and all the rest of the adjectives used in the Nyquil commercials sick. I need my mom.

The Cowboy has been sick too, but is starting to feel better and has been taking decent care of me.

But let's face it. There's no substitute for your mom. I'm not too old to admit it.

Happy Birthday Nuggs!!

Today is my mother's birthday.

Happy Birthday Nuggsamillion!
Sorry about those carrots.

Getting to know you, Part 1

People of America, I am alive. I have been sick. Under the weather. Ill. Ailing. I am on the mend. Send kleenex. This is a blog I had prepared last week, and it sort of took a different turn in my mind, but I couldn't bring it to fruition because our scanner quit working, and we can't figure out why. I am disheartened by this, because that blog had fabulosity written all over it, but I have not given up finding a way to bring it to you, so in the meanwhile, I give you this. Sorry.

This is me.

I'm an idiot.

Real Name: Catherine

Nicknames: Caps, The Chip, Cappydoodles

Age: 30 (biologically anyway)

Hobbies: knitting, blogging, blogging about knitting, listening to Neil Diamond, cooking things in my crock pot, laundry (this isn’t really an interest of mine, but I do it so darn much it sure seems like a hobby), taking naps, making lists, drinking red wine, wearing socks. I guess wearing socks isn't really a hobby, is it? Knitting socks is a hobby. But wearing them? Not so much. So technically I should move the wearing socks bit to the 'likes' catergory below. But I'm not going to. Nobody's the boss of me.

Likes: avocado, swiss cake rolls, cold beer, pineapple, old French music, rocks, yarn, the smell of old books, Vera Bradley bags, show tunes, Bill Murray, flip flops, John Denver songs, goat cheese, rain, views that take your breath away, the smell of lake water and gasoline, the song "Roll me Away" from Bob Seger (it's on my mp3 player right now, ok? but I still love it), playing board games, ice cold Coca-Cola from a can, popsicles, dancing like the white girl I am.

Dislikes: mustard, washing dishes, being sweaty, painting my toe nails, Brendan Fraser, hairy backs, having my feet touched, people who say 'supposably', people who misuse your/you're or there/they're/their, having to blow dry my hair, changing batteries.

What my friends are saying:
I sent an email to friends and family asking for "One Word" to describe me. Here are some of the responses:

gifted, funny, smartass, supercalifragilisticexpealidocious, eclectic, witty, nutty, catawampus, clever

My overachiever friend H-Dizzle gave me the entire following list all by herself. No one will ever accuse me of being an overachiever, and apparently H-Diz can't follow directions. I asked for ONE word.

Wiity (haha that was supposed to be witty, but I kinda like wiity, like the wii, or like Whitey) Poet

Sassitude (that is an HS original right there)

Imaginative

Crackerjack

Kneat (get it, like knit and neat combined)

Gnice (gnomism)
Snappy (in a good way)

Jokey

quick

Thank you H-Dizzle. And thank you to everyone else who participated: Wonder, Mixie, Reenie, Bev, Aunt Marlie, The J, Dawn, Marlene, Marce, Charlene and Tiff.

And if you happen to be a certain person who replied back with the word "Moist", just to get me, because you know how I hate that word, then I am not thanking you. You know who you are. But I won't name names, I will just say that this person is maybe the most pregnant person I know currently. But see how I didn't give a name.

Also, a late addition comes from my own mother, the Nuggler, who couldn't choose just one word, and so she chose three and combined them into a New! Super! word:

Bicratty.
Bitchy, crafty and witty.

Er. Thanks, mom.

I think.

30 ain't so bad afterall

Not that I was dreading my 30th birthday to begin with, but I certainly wasn't looking as forward to it as I have in years past. People who've known me for awhile know how seriously I take my birthdays. This year I was just like, "eh".

But, it turns out, my birthday this year was fabulous. Blain was totally sneaky and cahooting with various people to pull off a (near) surprise party for me! But the biggest surprise of all was:














Yep. That's m'lady there, that is. She drove in from Alabama to surprise me and boy did she surprise me!!

There was a party, with many drinks and vomit free cupcakes and a big Strawberry Shortcake pinata, filled with liquors and candies.














Friends old and new co-mingled.














And I got to wear a crown. What could be better than that?

A visit from my lady was just what the doctor had ordered, and definitely eased my pain about turning 30 (mostly because my lady is already 30, so at least I'm not as old as she is).














My actual birthday was spent in the ridiculous heat and humidity of San Antonio, but it was all good and totally worth it, as I got to hang out with my awesome cousin Sean and his equally if not slightly more awesome girlfriend, Katie.















Yeah. It's hot as balls in Texas.















But I did receive a serenade for my birthday. Mind you, a serenade that I paid for myself. But whatever. When that little Mexican man said "Happy Birthday Susie" it made it all worthwhile.














And a Happy Birthday indeed it was.

Let us not forget about the Nuggle. She made an appearance also.














And last but most certainly not least.....I passed along my one true love of yarn and needles and taught Wonder how to knit. Oh joyous day! Someone else who can share my obsession.














Oh, and in case you're wondering? Those socks on Wonder's feet? Yeah, I totally made those. Hollerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.