Today, I smell like vinegar...

So, here I am, one eye nearly useless from the tearing and blinking, throat beginning to ache, and nose stopped up on one side only. (Thanks, Hubs, for the tongue action you insisted on earlier this week between your hacking coughs and uncontrollable sneezes. That was a real act of love.) And I have before me a giant pile of literally hundreds of dollars worth of yarn. Yes, yarn. Bland, plain vanilla yarn, in all sorts of lovely wool varieties, for me to make pretty for one of my favourite mama's Hyena Cart Congo.

My kitchen smells like vinegar, my head hurts, and my microwave is full of yarn that I am not sure is going to turn out the way I had planned. The intended goal was greens and purples with a little brown, and the colourway was supposed to be called African Violet. Instead, it is looking like the colourway might instead be named Jim Morrison's Vomit. Here is to hoping I am wrong, and the wonky eye is screwing up my vision.

The entire time I am dying my little fluffy piles of wool, Hubs keeps saying, as if repeating it will change reality, "Crazy, that stuff is spendy". Not just a couple of times, repeatedly, like a chanting monk, but with inflection. That is, until I sent him to put Things 4 and 5 to bed.

You would think from his reaction that he has never attended to the needs of a small human before. He insists, adamantly, that the needs help. He seems to conveniently forget that I, the woman who loses her keys on a daily basis, who forgets garbage day every single time, and who once forgot to put on a bra before leaving for the grocery store, do this daily by myself with no assistance whatsoever, and accomplish it quickly, with a minimum of whining, and manage to walk away without looking like I have been attacked by a very weak brain damaged orangutan.

Two hours after I asked him to do it, nobody is asleep, only one kid is even in pajamas (if you can call mismatched babylegs, a top gun t-shirt, and a diaper "pajamas"). So I sit here, reveling in my obvious superiority, while he curses under his breath. I think I shall make an "emergency" run to the grocery store for vinegar. I mean, he does not know that I have three unopened gallons in the garage ;-).

In honour of my vinegar-y kitchen, and not so pretty yarn experiment, and my obvious victory over Hubs in the child rearing department, I think we need something to dull the irritation and enhance the celebratory vibes. I give you:

The Best Damned Sangria on Earth

1 bottle good Rioja
1 1/2 cups Grand Marnier
1 1/2 cups pineapple juice
1 liter club soda
Juice of 2 oranges
Cut up citrus, pineapple, and cherries

Mix everything but the club soda together, sit in fridge overnight. Add club soda and serve. This stuff is deceptively strong, and very, very delicious :-)