Look what I MADE:

This.

I MADE this. I decided I wanted to make a hotpad, I consulted Twitter peeps who said wool or cotton yarn would be best and to use a tight weave (I love being able to consult Twitter peeps), and I MADE A HOTPAD. It took me two days of the amount of time I’m interested in spending knitting, which is not much so you know it’s a quick project. I used size 6 needles, and I used two strands of yarn at the same time (to make it dense): a strand of 100% wool in orange, and a strand of 100% cotton in a yellow/white.

My goal was a breakfast/sunshine kind of color, but you know what it looks EXACTLY LIKE? Candy corn, that’s what.

AMIRITE?

Never mind that I could buy a hotpad for $1.24 on clearance and it would also come with a dishtowel or two. Never mind that I don’t even know if this will work as a hotpad or if it will instead scorch the table and/or my hands. I MADE IT. I have CREATED. I know how God must have felt: LET THERE BE HOTPAD.

Lots of people are in the Winter Funks and I am too. There is NOTHING WRONG, and in fact lots of things are GOOD right now, including Paul getting a promotion and raise that involve no extra time/duties (he got the promotion because he had gradually worked up to doing all the parts of the job he was promoted to), and also that for Christmas my brother and sister-in-law gave me a gift certificate for air travel so I can plan to another trip to see Niestle this spring.

But still, I am befunkified, and I know a lot of you are too. I’m doing my usual remedies, such as using the expensive face lotion and drinking coffee and turning on extra lights, but I’ve had another idea. It seemed like a great idea to tell you about when I first thought of it, but now I am feeling shy because when I think of putting it down in actual words, it sounds like a really cheesy idea, the kind we ought to consider putting on an inspirational plaque in swirly gilt writing.

Oh, no—I know EXACTLY what it sounds like: it sounds like an idea Marmee would have come up with in the book Little Women. And while I love that book, and love Marmee too, she really was kind of an overflowing bowl of treacle, with her Big Shameful Confession being that she had a bit of a temper that her husband had to help her rope in, which he did so effectively that her children DIDN’T EVEN KNOW SHE HAD A TEMPER. Which, uh. I mean, that doesn’t seem like it could have been much of a temper problem then, does it? I don’t think Marmee would ever, EVER have snapped at her children or said, “Oh, god no, I can’t hear even ONE MORE joke today”—at, um, 6:30 in the morning.

Anyway, here is my idea. …No, I can’t, it’s TOO cringey. Here is MARMEE’S idea, which I am going to try: Marmee recommends doing something nice for someone else that is also fun for us. For me, I’m thinking along the lines of putting together a small care package of treats, but that’s because care packages and treats are my thing. It’s a good idea because it involves the happy work of making treats and packing them up, and also there will be extra treats for me.

I think any idea would work if it uses a skill that’s typically enjoyable for you and can be used to benefit others (knitting? embroidery? baking? shopping? drawing? writing? woodworking?), ideally something that will take a little time and effort and perhaps the fun of going to the store to get ingredients/materials. And then there’s the fun of choosing who the recipient will be.

This small thing isn’t going to CURE the winter funk, of course, but one of my winter funk symptoms is thinking there’s no point to doing anything unless it 100% solves the problem, so I’m counteracting that kind of thinking at the same time.

One of my Things To Deal With after my closet declutter was filling a 5-opening picture frame. I bought it because hey, I have five kids and this frame has five openings, IDEAL! But there were too many decisions to be made. Two of the openings are one way and three are the other way, and the frame can be put up either horizontally or vertically which affects which “way” two/three are.

Plus, which of my THOUSANDS of kid photos should I use? And we didn’t get a digital camera until the twins were 6 months old, so I’d have to go through ALBUMS and then SCAN PHOTOS IN. And I do want the kids’ pictures to be in order by age, so what if I want to hang the frame vertically, and I don’t find pictures in the right orientations that I like? OH ACK.

Well, so my plan was to put it in a closet for two years and not think about it, but THAT didn’t work EITHER. After finding it again, I made this decision: either I deal with filling this frame, or I get rid of the frame. I spent an evening on it and it was worth it.

The first decision that really helped was deciding to use all newborn pictures of the kids. We were still using film cameras for the first four kids, so we don’t have very many photos to choose from, and I was further limited by the orientation of the openings, but I just MADE DECISIONS choose-choose-choose and tried not to get all bogged down in what would be Perfect or how sad it was that a certain picture was the wrong orientation or WHATEVER. I just chose five newborn photos that fit in the five openings, and I scanned the four paper ones and uploaded them with the one digital one, and I got the prints and I bought them right away rather than giving in to the temptation of “I should wait until I have a larger order to place” which would have taken AGES.

So here are the five photos:

Newborn Rob

Newborn William

Newborn Elizabeth

Newborn Edward

Newborn Henry

And then I had to decide where to hang the thing, but again I just got a hammer and chose a place, and if I don’t like it I’ll change it later, but here’s how it looks right now. It’s in my kitchen and I like it.

Goal achieved.

I realize this is unusual content, but OMG THIS DROVE US CRAZY THIS MORNING.

If you have the Sonic Riders Zero Gravity game for the Nintendo Wii, and it is asking you to press the plus button but nothing is happening when you do, see if you have any controllers (such as Gamecube controllers) plugged in to the Wii. If you do, unplug them, restart the game, and then the + key will work.

OMG SO FRUSTRATING. It’s apparently that it defaults to any controller that isn’t plugged in, and then doesn’t recognize the Wii remote when you try to use it.

The timeline:

Roughly 2:30 in the afternoon: after digging around in the lint and crumbs for a paintbrush and finding also (among many, many, many other things) a video game cartridge, a DVD out of its case, two non-matching socks, and a sippee cup with very very old traces of milk in it, Swistle uses Twitter to complain:

8:45 p.m. Swistle checks Twitter and finds many empathetic replies to this complaint. It turns out Miss Zoot DOES HAVE a couch with no under. This does not surprise Swistle, who theorizes that Miss Zoot is probably magic and can also probably bend spoons with her mind and probably also has a computer keyboard that doesn’t collect brownie crumbs in the cracks. But then Arwen said SHE had a couch with no under TOO, and what are the odds of TWO people being magic right in a row like that?

8:50 p.m. Swistle tells this whole story to Paul. She says, “If I’d known such a thing as a couch with no under EXISTED, that would have been, like, the FIRST thing I would have looked for when we were couch-shopping.” Paul says, “You know, I wonder if the feet of our couch would just, like, come off.” Swistle is silent and dumbstruck.

8:55 p.m. Paul and Swistle go out to the living room. Paul tips the couch back, but has to HOLD it like that, at a tipped angle, because all the STUFF under it actually prevents it from tipping backwards all the way. This is when Paul realizes he is going to need tools, so Swistle has to go fetch them. Paul spends nearly a full minute explaining the appearance of a Special Crazy Tool he needs Swistle to find, until Swistle interrupts with “Do you mean an Allen wrench?” and Paul says “…Yes.” Marriage is neither a game nor a competition, but Swistle nevertheless makes an imaginary mark on her side.

Using the Allen wrench. Can this possibly work?

Yeah baby.

9:00 p.m. Paul says he can either put the foot back on and we can do this later, or we can clean out under the whole couch and then remove the other three feet right now.

9:01 p.m. Paul and Swistle are cleaning out under the whole couch, loading “Things that need to be put back in their homes” into one bin and trash in another, while Swistle uses the dustbuster for everything else and who cares if it wakes the children. When everything is cleaned, the couch can be put on its back.

Two feet off; two feet remaining.

The feet, on our coffee table.

9:20 p.m. A couch with no under, and the first day of the rest of our lives.

I am suddenly inspired to do some organizing/decluttering in the Gift Closet, which is not only a Gift Closet but a catch-all for a lot of things. It’s hard for me to tackle it because getting rid of stuff from there often means getting rid of NEW stuff, stuff I bought on GOOD DEALS! It’s disappointing to have something that seems like such A Find turn out NOT to be A Find after all.

I already did a few boxes-of-clutter giveaways, and I also donated spare toys (bought for birthday parties they never seemed right for) to a charity toy drive this past December. But now I feel ready to tackle the rest. The closet is in the same room as the computer, so I can document each thing as I toss it out, recycle it, or put it in the Freecycle pile.

1. five years backissues of Consumer Reports magazine, which I never reference because I look online, and the magazine holders that held them

2. two unopened packages of booklets that accompanied the handheld organizers we bought eight years ago, including two sealed-in-plastic booklets labeled “READ ME FIRST!”

3. set of very pretty satin padded hangers I thought I would want for myself but it turns out padded hangers take up a lot of space, so then I thought I’d save them for a guest room, but we don’t have a guest room, nor will we have one for a very long time if ever, and if we DO ever have one I will buy more hangers if I still want them

4. a pretty Pfaltzgraff holiday serving dish, bought as a teacher gift before I decided to only give gift cards, then saved for a couple of years in case another use occurred to me

5. seven board games we never, ever play

6. paperwork/boxes for the cellphones we bought in 2000 and no longer have

7. ten reusable bags, bought for a planned Earth Day giveaway that has failed to happen two years in a row because I keep not noticing it’s Earth Day until other people blog about it

8. bag of holiday clearance items for planned holiday giveaway that didn’t happen

9. several broken picture frames from when photos got knocked off the wall and I thought I’d glue the frames back together and get new glass for them AHA HA HA HA HA

10. the packet of scrapbooking stickers and papers that came with my 2009 Victoriana calendar and thought I might find a use for

11. two partially-used classroom packs of jackolantern/pilgrim-making kits, the kind where you assemble a bunch of flat foam pieces; someone gave them to us as a gift, and although I do have a lot of children, I don’t have 32 of them, and no one made more than three or four of each thing

12. package of OVER THE HILL candles purchased for a family member’s milestone birthday I then forgot to use the candles for

13. pile of paper-pad mousepads that seemed like such an awesome idea but I only ever use mine to start my pen so now they seem less awesome for giving as gifts

14. some gifts set aside for the mother-in-law

Things I dealt with:

1. put a bunch of “I’ll put these in the box later” packets of studio pictures into the studio pictures box, which used to have too much stuff on top of it to get into

2. hung up a small pretty plate my mom gave me for a reason I no longer remember

3. released into the household a number of craft kits and activities I’d bought “for a rainy day” and then never thought to give out when it was “raining”

4. put up on the wall some jungle wall stickers I wasn’t sure if I wanted to save for myself or give as a gift

5. released into the household a huge inventory of stickers I used to send to Make a Child Smile or my parents’ World Vision child

6. filled a box with Valentine’s Day stuff for a giveaway

7. took a Mother-In-Law Dishes mug intended for a giveaway and put it with the rest of the Mother-In-Law Dishes, which should probably be renamed now that there is no mother-in-law

Things that still need to be dealt with:

1. a 5-opening picture frame: I need to choose a photo of each of the kids, get the photos printed, put them in the frame, and hang the frame up

2. a cute print of a lamb and a ladybug I forgot I bought for William in his lamb-obsessed toddler years: I need to decide if I’m going to keep it, and if so get a frame around it

While I was working on this project, Henry:

1. used a (fortunately washable) stamp on the wall

2. shook a paintbrush loaded with (fortunately washable) paint

3. unwound a significant percentage of a skein of yarn

4. got painty (still the fortunately-washable kind) hands all over the kitchen counter and dishes

5. shook salt and pepper all over the counter and the dishes and the sink and the floor

6. dumped out the container of jackolantern-making kits, spreading the flat foam pieces far and wide

Okay! Time to improve ourselves for the sole reason that it was time to buy a new calendar!

Let’s pause and notice that I spelled calendar correctly without the spell-checker correcting me. It seems like it would be a 50-50 thing, but it’s not just that I can’t remember how to spell it, it’s that I remember how to spell it WRONG.

Here are my resolutions:

1. I am going to use my reusable bags more often. I am already doing pretty well at this, in that Paul does the grocery shopping and he always remembers to use them, so I am using them by proxy. And I just bought (him) a set of 5 reusable produce bags after I saw them on StyleLush. Also, I carry a single reusable bag in my purse, and sometimes I remember to use it, and the number of “sometimes” has been increasing. I’d like to continue to increase.

2. I liked Miss Grace‘s friend Molly’s idea about resolving to pass along good things we hear. As Miss Grace puts it: “The logic is that you ALWAYS hear about it when someone says something nasty about you, so why not make a special effort to make sure people hear about it when someone says something nice about them.” So, for example, if someone mentions in an email how awesome they think Jonniker is, I would not just say, “Oh, dude, seriously, I KNOW!,” I would also tell Jonniker about it, even if privacy prevented me from telling her who said it. My resolution is to think about this idea and its implications, and maybe try it out.

3. I’m going to try to think longer before buying something. I enjoy bargain shopping, and although this results in happy things like $2 shirts to clothe my many, many children, it sometimes results in twice as many $2 shirts as we need. It’s not like this is tearing our finances apart, but it does seem like it might be nice to leave some $2 shirts for other people to find. I’m going to try to AT LEAST think it over before buying it, rather than thinking that “excellent price” plus “we have a use for it” equals “duh, buy it.”

4. I’m going to drink champagne more often. That stuff is delicious.

5. I will at least OPEN my Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Workbook for Dummies to the page where I left off. I don’t know why I stopped reading it when I was finding it so useful (“I can PREFER that X is the case, but I can’t DEMAND it”), but I can’t seem to get back to it and it’s been MONTHS.

6. I’m going to memorize and think about a quote I just read at Kate‘s place: “Don’t be afraid of failing; be afraid of succeeding at the wrong thing.” There are things I sometimes feel pressured to succeed at, but this reminds me that success in and of itself is nothing to strive for or be praised for: it has to be something that was GOOD TO DO.

7. I’m going to throw out the lotion I don’t like and replace it with the kind I do like. We are talking about one of those huge bottles that cost $5, so the investment is not worth holding onto year after year.

8. I am going to copy The New Girl‘s decision to avoid avoidable jackassery.

What did you resolve? I might steal one of yours and add it to my list.

So! *clap clap!* What have we learned from the events of the last few days? We’ve learned that if you’re thinking of triumphing over your anxieties about how others view your body and letting people know what you look like, DON’T! May I suggest you instead talk about baking or children or knitting or really ANYTHING ELSE AT ALL?

Today is New Year’s Eve, and I GREATLY ENJOY New Year’s resolutions. It is a great sadness to me that good ones are so hard to think of. I mention this every year, I think, but one of my favorite resolutions ever was when my friend Firegirl and her husband resolved to choose a scent for their household (they chose vanilla). My favorite of my own resolutions was when I resolved to spend the year mock-playing the stock market to see if at the end of the year I wanted to invest real money.

Last year I resolved to learn how to spell calender calendar and lavendar lavender, and as you can see there was a bit of unsuccess on that front. (Wiseass fifth grader: “Well, maybe you should have TRIED to learn them.”)

I also resolved not to press down so hard with my pen, and I DID try, but I think the way I hold my pen thwarts me.

I resolved to USE (rather than HOARD) the pretty, Swistle-colored, CRANE stationary my brother and sister-in-law gave me for Christmas, and I did! I didn’t use it for every single care package, but I used it for most of them.

I resolved to consider buying myself the Bath & Body Works lavendar lavender-vanilla condition that no one was buying me as a gift despite MANY HINTS, and that now was available only via eBay, which is such a pain to deal with. I went one step farther: I not only considered it, I bought it.

What did you resolve last year, and how did it turn out? If you post on the topic, leave a link!

Tomorrow: 2010 resolutions, assuming I can think of any.

We are probably not in the mood anymore to talk about Christmas card scoring, but I wanted to show you this card I got from one of my friends:

I think it’s the best Mary/baby card I have EVER SEEN. I find it so TOUCHING, and it seems so REAL. It makes me think of Mary as an ACTUAL PERSON who had an ACTUAL BABY and SNIFFED HIS NECK FOLDS.

I think I accidentally gave the impression on my Christmas card scoring posts that I was opposed to RELIGIOUS cards, but HEAVENS NO. It’s PREACHY cards that get huge deductions, and preachy letters, and an overuse of the word “blessings,” but RELIGIOUSNESS? No. Many people celebrate one of the holidays PRIMARILY AS a religious holiday, so receiving religious cards seems absolutely appropriate. (Preachy, though, there’s no excuse.)

I have a lot of fun card-shopping with my mom each year. She’s Christian, so she’s always on the lookout for good religious cards of the Christian variety, and she’s much pickier than I am about it. Very occasionally, I’ll weed out one she likes (this year there was one I thought was too pointed in its wish that the recipient have an “open heart”), but generally it’s more likely that she’s rejecting the ones I find as being too preachy or lofty or trite or theologically shaky. It’s a fun quest. There is laughing, and there is reading aloud.

ANYWAY, we’ve seen and rejected MANY a Mary-and-child card. This year we rejected one on which the poor baby Jesus was buck naked and chilly-looking, with nary a swaddling cloth in sight. Others make the scene look as if it took place within the shining golden gates instead of in a small grubby barn. Others show what my friend calls a “Mary with attitude,” where she appears to be SO OVER this whole thing.

This one looks as if it were pre-electrical lighting, and the baby is snuggled up in sufficient swaddling clothes. It’s great. It’s by Christian Inspirations, and I was going to link to their site (file under “Links You Did Not Expect to See on Swistle’s Blog), but their url leads to one of those “placeholder” sites that tries to sell you things it guesses are related to the site you were trying to find, when the site you were trying to find no longer exists. So, sorry, you’re stuck with Attitude Mary or Nakers Jesus.

The Hershey sweepstakes [blog deleted, so link deleted] ends on New Year’s Eve and I’ll be picking a winner for the $100 Visa giftcard. Cookies = yummy. Money in time for holiday bills = nice.