Parenting and a Poodle...

...the things that have prevented knit blogging (and even knitting) around here for weeks now. 

The Parenting was about helping Number One Son deal with the effects of a just now resolved concussion he suffered October 1st.

The Poodle part...there's the walking and grooming but also stuff like having a creamy white, now 60 pound "pup" jumping on Number One Son carrying a full chocolate shake, the shake becoming airborne, landing on the thick creamy coat on the back of the bounding dog before depositing a significant amount of the thick dark chocolaty stuff into his fiercely wagging tail. Picture spraying shake, scrambling people and a dog having great fun playing "tag".

It was all so "exciting" it took me a while to notice the Christmas lights he'd been chomping just prior to exhuberantly "greeting" us.  'Seems I set the bags of lights too close to his crate and he managed to grab a string or three through the bars while we were out of the house.

Don't worry, he didn't ingest any...I know, I forensically reassembled the shattered and mangled bits and pieces with the missing sections of the strings. (Right after cleaning the shake off the carpet, furniture and of course the dog)

I hope to get to the splattered walls and woodwork later today.

I've added the choclately rags and towels to the laundry - its piled in baskets to take to my mom"s for washing. The new last year washing machine broke down 10 days ago and we're still waiting for parts...

I've already schlepped one week's worth of laundry over and back to Grandma's place - it only took two days to do what would have taken half a day here but it was handy I had My Beloved's vehicle to use (he was in Europe on business) since my two back tires were utterly flat when I went to leave the house that morning. 

I shouldn't complain though, the furnace (the one that had extensive repairs last January and was fully serviced and checked in April) is back working after the fresh air intake pipe was replaced early last week!

I've added  "get more lights for the tree we don't yet have", to my "Way too many things to do before Christmas" list. I could do that tomorrow except we'll the spend the entire day driving to and from My Beloved's home town to get winter tires put on the the cars.  We're a month late on this but on the weekend we usually get this done My Beloved was in India.

I could still go on and on but if you've read this far you probably get the idea by now...a lot of things have been getting in my way of late.

Nonetheless I hoped to post an FO today...a long overdue pair of mittens for Darling Daughter - a third run at this project with as many different patterns starting about a year ago. It turns out though I opted to make two left handed mittens and since our daughter fortunately has both a left and right hand I'm having to scramble to correct that little problem...

...'Can't imagine what was distracting me while I was working on those...Parenting or a Poodle? Probably both with a bit of domestic mayhem thrown in for good measure!