Woof, woof.

I am sick as a dog. Okay, I was sick as a dog yesterday - today I am just exhausted. I have been knocked down by the common cold, which is somewhat shocking.

This is, however, a good tome to blog. Not stressful, and I already have the pictures. I always wish I would blog more. I wish I was insightful and spunky and wildly creative. I wish I had the energy to make my blog look pretty, and to link to all the things I see that I love. But I don't. I can't. And that's okay, really. Because I know where all my energy goes. Well, not at this very moment, though I certainly know where my energy is going at this very moment.

Well, let me start off with something pretty, and then I will work my way into the deep thoughts that have been plaguing me.

Did I say pretty? I think I must have meant pretty grumpy. I'm sorry, but I adore this picture. She really does love this hat, but that picture!

I saw the Lyalya hoodie over on Ravelry, and though I adored it, I just couldn't bring myself to spend $10 on a pattern at the moment. Especially because it would mean using PayPal (and thus my credit card) and I am trying verrry hard to not use that thing. So what did I do? Do you see me beaming and gloating? I made it up! Yes I did. I can't tell you how good it feels, or how proud of myself I am. I didn't *actually* know who this hat was going to be for, mind you, as I was just winging it. I wanted it to be for Ivy, since she doesn't wear a scarf and her neck is always cold. But I honestly wouldn't have been upset if it had fit me. (Blush. yes, I am just an overgrown kid.) Besides... it does this!

I love that. Please excuse the poor presentation of our model today. Pajamas and rumpled hair are in style, though - aren't they?

And can you tell that I ran out of aqua yarn? It's Malabrigo bulky, and I bought it to make a hat for Blue last year. But I never did, because even though it matched her jacket, she wanted a pink hat. Which I promptly never made her. So later I used it to make a top-down bonnet for an adult friend who said she wished things like that came in grownup sizes. but it came out much too large, and then I never bothered to try again. Later, I ripped it out and knit a Journey Beret - inspired by Marie over at Permission to Unwind. Isn't that hat adorable on her? But, alas, I ran out of yarn. Incidentally, I did try again with different yarn, but my color choices made me look like a rastafarian, so I frogged it. Well then, when I knit this little number with it and ran out of yarn I wasn't about to frog it. Not only was I tired of the yarn, I really love aqua and red, so I used some leftover Malabrigo worsted held double to finish up. Then I picked out my cast on (tedious) and knit the neck down a little because I thought it was too short. Now, there's something this hat reminds me of. J said it makes her look like a cosmonaut, and I thought so too - but looking it up, I can't find a single picture of a cosmonaut wearing a teal and red hat. So I'm at a loss.

Anyway, I added the tassel and called it a day.

So now, writing this, I come to the issue of genuineness. Blogging and genuineness seem to be repellent substances to me. Partly because I am a very private person. Partly because I see so many pretty blogs out there, that I don't want mine to be shabby. And I don't mean shabby chic. Just plain shabby. I want to be honest, yet I want to keep the privacy of my family. My friends don't know I have a blog. Well, they know I have a family blog, but not this one. I'm not sure J has ever even seen this blog, though he knows of its existence.

But I want to make sure to be real, here,too. Real without being vulnerable. And that is the issue. If there were no bad people in this world, I could be as real as real could be. You could call me Pinocchio. When I went off to college 20 years ago - a very small school in the middle of nowhere - I remember having this same dilemma. Who to trust? Who to open up to? What information to give to whom? I tell ya, I made a lot of mistakes. But then, I made some good decisions, too. I did meet my husband there after all.

So I want to, in this vein, say a few things.

My name really is Cricket. This is what my parents called me from birth, and it has been legal for more than half my life. One of the considerations J and I had when naming our children was that we didn't want them to have nicknames. Many, many names were tossed out because it would have been too tempting for people to use shortened versions of them. But in an ironic twist, the names I call them by here are not their first names. They are, however, their middle names. But it feels like a falsehood each time I refer to them. That goes for my sweet niece as well, whose name is not Mia, but another lovely name. It all started on Ravelry, because I didn't want to post their pictures and names together. Then it continued here.

Another thing I want to mention is that Blue is no longer *ahem* autistic. As if that could be so. She has been downgraded (upgraded?) to Asperger's Syndrome. In time, they say, she may lose that diagnosis as well, which would be both a blessing and a curse. As is the bestowing of this new diagnosis. She will be losing services because of the change, and that makes things harder for our family. She has a 1:1 who works with her 16 hours per week right now. In April, this wonderful woman will be gone. I am hopeful, however, that we will manage to hold on to her pragmatic social skills group with her amazing speech-language pathologist. Because Blue just doesn't get it. She works hard to understand her peers, but it is like she lives on another plane altogether. Farther away than either Mars or Venus, sometimes. She still has major behavioral issues, which we are trying to improve without stimulants. She has been on anti-anxiety meds for a while now, and they seem to be helping - somewhat. But last week? She was incredibly embarrassed (which is a fantastic thing around here - embarrassment is a social skill!) when she brought my (gulp - take a deep breath) camera  to me. "Mommy, I had a fight with your camera. I wanted to see who was stronger." She has turned the camera on and held the lens in to see if she was stronger than the camera. She broke the camera. She is stronger than my camera. Thankfully, she did not play this game with my Nikon D40. If she had, it would be a very different story. It was the little refurbished Kodak. But still - I don't have $100 lying around to replace it. So you can see we still have a long way to go around here.

I don't know if that seemed like a lot of visceral blathering to you, but I feel a little better. And if I feel a little better - a little more honest, I hope I might blog a little more. When I started blogging, I was just writing for me. Now, I still write for me, but I know some of the people on the other end, and it feels deceptive to go on like this.

Now I know you won't mind as I fall back, exhausted, onto my pillow to zone out on Nexflix a while. Later, after a nap, I will try to come back and show you a couple other things I have been working on.

And out of curiosity - I know I am not the only one to have trouble hitting my blogging stride. Have you had difficulties? How did you overcome them? What is your privacy threshold? How did you fine tune your blog to be cohesive rather than rambling - assuming you have! :)

Later, friends.