I have good taste

As I work my way through my yarn/project stash, I realize I have very good taste in yarn. I am a bit of a budget expensive yarn shopper (i.e., I buy really nice yarn on sale and rarely at full price), thus just making my knitting habit expensive instead of exorbitant. I've been doing a better job of actually buying budget-expensive yarn for a project, not just some random yarn. For instance, I've been working on a winter hat for Turing using Classic Elite's Princess yarn. It is like knitting with a yarn that is 10% cashmere because it is a yarn with 10% cashmere. For my 2 year old.

Well, it won't hurt his delicate ears? (update: when he grows into it - I made it much, much too large)

I've also decided to take up a tea habit. I like to drink coffee out of the house, but tea was starting to sound nice for home. And it has been a long time since I had a proper tea habit (I've gone through one tea phase since China). In China, everyone always threw a few tea leaves in their water, since it had to be boiled anyway. And then strong teas at meals. I was spoiled by the Chinese tea and am perpetually disapointed with teas available off the grocery shelf, so I ordered some Chinese teas online. My primary determining factor was the place had to sell ba bao cha (eight treasures tea) which was quite popular in the region in which I was staying. The teas I got are amazing and have made me very happy. This is the first real caffiene I've had in nearly a year!

Of course, I've been having chocolate, which has some caffiene in it. Mostly, I've had wonderful homemade cookies and cakes (from other people) or icecreams with chocolate. The other day, Trouble was going to the corner store and asked if I wanted anything. On a whim, I asked for a milky way, since I used to occasionally get one while at work. It was awful - nothing like some time away from vending machine snacks to put things in perspective. The next day I went out and bought the good stuff to override that memory.

Since I'm doing a good job of spending money (hey, there were a lot of things we hadn't done while super busy, including research for buying things like dishwashers*), I bought myself my PhD completion prize. I was feeling really guilty about spending so much money on it, though I have used my other sewing machine a lot in the last five years and this one should do everything I want to do for the next thirty years. Then I got over it.

*In retrospect, that whole dissertation-with-a-deadline thing was really stressful. Right.

Trouble has been back at work, but the plan had been that he would take the full 12 weeks off. When Huxley first arrived, I kept having this conversation with people in which they'd ask how things were going, I'd say they were going really well especially since we had two adults at home, people would inquire, I'd inform them that employees at large enough companies are federally protected and can take 12 weeks of family leave without pay. Most of the people then asked if we can afford to have Trouble not work for 12 weeks. The question always surprised and depressed me. I know we're financially blessed (no college debt, thank you parents and granting agencies), but, really, we had (at least) nine months to plan for taking family leave. It makes me sad to think that most people - even the responsible adults I hang out with - couldn't get enough savings together to take time off to spend with their kids.