Kninja Knitter

I can’t believe it’s been over a month since I last posted. And I made two attempts to record a podcast episode in early November but never had a chance to edit it to publish. It’s been so chaotic here… my plans are being derailed time and again, and it’s very frustrating. But I’m dealing with it for my grandson’s sake.

Grandson Glimpses

The crux of the chaos is my grandson’s mother-she has struggled severely with the move to South Carolina. And this has resulted in her driving back to Ohio many times, sometimes twice in one week. With about 80% of the trips, I was given the opportunity to spend time with Zayne, usually including an overnight stay which gave mama some peace and quiet. For me? Chaos. I made numerous plans to go to the movies or work out, but I would then cancel those plans for Zayne.

Last week, the drama skyrocketed. It made this photo possible at least…

I’m a planner. That’s an important part of who I am, at least in my mind. Hopefully that’s helping Mama to feel less stressed about the chaos in her situation; but she still leans towards chaos, based on what I’ve observed. I have some concrete plans and commitments, and so far they haven’t been impacted. And at the end of the month I’m going to drive down to SC to celebrate Zayne’s second birthday and (hopefully) enjoy some time visiting with them. We’ll see how that goes – my plan is to work the second week I’m there, but I’ll have evenings to spend with the family.

I’m also continuing to get the pieces in place for my big South America cruise adventure coming up in March. I’ve booked my flights, and I used airline miles so it was quite inexpensive to secure the schedule. Now I will consider upgrading at least a couple legs of the trip. The last piece of the plan to book is a hotel stay at the start of the trip.

I’ll be sharing my current knitting updates tomorrow, but I wanted to share a life update before I just jump into my updates. So here’s a few more fun photos to share from the past six weeks.

GalaxyCon has been a highlight for me every year since they started coming to Columbus. This was the third year for the event. You saw one of my photo ops – sadly Hayden was only in town the one day and only to do photo ops. But there were a lot of other celebrities to meet, and I attended several great Q&A events. I stopped by the booths for William Katt (Greatest American Hero) and Zach Galligan (Gremlins) as they had no one in line to meet them, and I just said hello and welcomed them to Columbus. I watched awesome Q&A interviews with George Takei (Star Trek TOS), Kiefer Sutherland and Weird Al. The largest bulk of my time spent on an individual celebrity was James Marsters (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville, Marvel’s Runaways) – he gave an intimate acoustic concert on Saturday night, and I had already purchased a photo op, but I also got cash and stood in line to get table selfies, who also gave me the opportunity to talk with him for a few minutes. And I rounded out the weekend with his Q&A.

I finished out that weekend with Zayne staying overnight. I take vacation days on the Mondays after Thanksgiving, so I won’t work on a Monday until January. And December 2nd turned out to be a mild weather day, so Zayne and I went up to the Columbus Zoo. There weren’t many people there, so I was able to let the kiddo “run wild” for a bit. We got to see more animals than usual without a wall of people in front of us. We had a great time! We stopped at Arby’s for a late lunch before connecting with mama.

Zayne visited two more times this week. A big highlight for him was the bubble toy I found on Amazon. This kid is kinda manic about bubbles…can you tell?

And with that, Zayne is coming to stay with me again tonight as he’s not sleeping well at the cousins’ with whom they’re staying. Mama has a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, so he’ll be with me for a while. Before he gets here I need to get a couple things done. Hopefully I can get my Year of Projects update done tomorrow, and I hope to record and edit the next podcast episode!

Knit on. 🧶