I'm such a test junkie

Did I mention that I didn't even get to take any final exams for Spring semester? Honestly, I had no finals. That's strange enough in and of itself, but I actually was disappointed about not having any finals. I could have taken one anyway that I didn't have to, but it was on Carol's birthday, and I couldn't justify it when I had an A in the class without it. Ok, that's old news. But I'm a test junkie. Now I'm playing with personality tests. It's fun! And there are so many of them available on the internet. It could keep a person busy for weeks! You're so lucky - I'm going to share some of my results with you. Like it or not. So there.

Conscious self	Overall self

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test

Enneagram Test Results Type 1 Perfectionism |||||||||||||||| 61% Type 2 Helpfulness |||||||||||||||||||| 84% Type 3 Image Focus |||||||||||||||| 68% Type 4 Hypersensitivity |||||||||||||||||| 74% Type 5 Detachment |||||||||||||||| 70% Type 6 Anxiety |||||||||||| 48% Type 7 Adventurousness |||||||||||| 49% Type 8 Aggressiveness |||| 17% Type 9 Calmness |||||||||||||||| 63% Your Conscious-Surface type is 2w3 Your Unconscious-Overall type is 3w2

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test

I did a "Big Five" Personality Profile also, which produced a lengthy report. Click if you want to see it. I came out all extremes. Some of these are slightly misleading, such as that conscientiousness refers more to the opposite of sponteneity, or in other words impulse control. I think I'm actually a pretty conscientious person, although I can be somewhat impulsive. Also, openness means openness to experience, which fits me (I'm 98th percentile on this trait) as opposed to being open and easy to get to know, which would be part of extroversion. To take this test yourself, click here.

Here's another one - a percentile test, which simply compares your answers against the answers of other people who took the test.

word	percentile
anorexic	99.5%
bulemic	98.5%
dependent	96.5%
bossy	6%
independent	2%
opinionated	1%

Take Free Percentile Word Test

Let me clarify here, I'm not anorexic or bulimic, even though those came out on top. I'm not underweight, although I think it would be great to lose 20 pounds, and if I did then I would be underweight, but I don't think I actually could lose 20 pounds. I also think about engaging in bulimic behaviors, but I don't do them. I guess that not very many people admit to identifying with either of those words. Oh, that's disappointing! Only the very top and very bottom of the list showed up, leaving out all the good stuff in the middle. Oh, well.

I guess that's enough test results for now, but if you would like to play with them, here are a bunch of the websites for fun and serious tests of personality, intelligence, etc. that I have collected:

Similar Minds
Barbarian's Online Tests Page
Queendom.com These first three have a little bit of everything imaginable.
E-IQ Test There is so much more to intelligence than the verbal and quantitative aspects that standard IQ tests measure. Find out about emotional intelligence!
Real Age This test validates my claim to being 29, even though I was born in 1969! There are health quizes on this site too, as well as a BMI calculator and other good stuff.

Have fun!

Sheep are Shorn



The yearling fleeces came out nice, but all the sheep older than that really had gone too long. There is some from them that might be salvageable, but salvage is going to be low priority. We sheared one white lamb who had grown out well and had such beautiful, soft, lustrous wool that I wanted to play with it now. He really is a pretty boy, and would make a nice herd-sire if anyone is in the market. The rest of the lambs will have fleeces at their prime this fall. I hope we manage fall shearing this year. We never seem to, and last year we managed to skip the whole year, which really was not good. Why did we do that? Two reasons - I dreaded shearing so much because I hate seeing my sheep get cut so much, and they do. We had a miserable experience the last time we sheared. There were two cousins who came, and they seemed insistent that fastest time was the goal. We kept telling them that we cared a lot more about the sheep not being hurt and about the quality of the fleeces, but they wouldn't listen. This year's shearer was one of the same guys, but his cousin had to work. He listened this year and did a great job! The other reason we skipped shearing last year was because between depressive episodes and being busy going back to school, I just couldn't find enough motivation and initiative to call a shearer.

I still need to get the two Angora goats and Dolly shorn for this spring. Sheep shearers don't want to try shearing goats or llamas. We always ask. That's okay - they are easier to shear than sheep, and I can take my time with them. The goats stand on the milk stand. Shearing sheep is back-breaking. I have tried it and it is well worth paying someone else for that job. Like the Churros, Angora goats need to be shorn twice a year (I did manage that last year). Dolly can get away with every other year, with brushing in between. She is going to be at least a two-person job, as she will cush but will not stay cushed on command. Doesn't she look smug now that the sheep are all funny-looking? She doesn't realize that her turn is coming up very soon.



Talent Show

Carol, who chose to go back to public school for fourth grade rather than home schooling with her brother and sister, because she wanted to make friends, has really taken advantage of her social opportunities. Her test scores and academic performance are not as good now as they were at the beginning of the year, and the teacher always has to tell her to stop being social and do her work, but she has really enjoyed being with the other kids.

Today was the school talent show, and Carol was in it twice. She danced the Highland Fling:


Yes, she is dancing in mis-matched socks. We haven't gotten her gillies yet, as she ought to have, along with white knee socks (or tartan knee socks), and her dance teacher encouraged mis-matched socks for practice. I'm not sure if it has to do with luck or some similar concept, or simply making it easier to tell your feet apart, but my kids always wear mis-matched socks, even when they are not dancing, and they quote Libby when asked about it. (All three are taking dance, and all three do the mis-matched socks thing).

And she played recorder with the group of students who learned it well enough to pass off their music:


She did quite well. Her dance looked good, and the recorder ensemble sounded nice too. Some of the other performers also showed a lot of talent, especially some of the singers. The audience (mostly peers) was polite and clapped for everyone, even those who made mistakes or didn't quite perform as well as some. I was impressed.

I'm happy for these kids. But I was also fighting my own feelings of, let's call it jealousy, that they have opportunities like this, and I didn't at that age. Fourth grade was one of my worst years. We had just moved, leaving a best friend behind, and I was hurt about that. I didn't trust other kids either, because I had been a victim of bullying before we moved, and I had a tendency to be overly sensitive. My fourth grade teacher, Mr. Melavik, was abusive too. I was often distracted and off-task, and he walked up and down the rows of desks, stopping suddenly at mine to yell at me and rip the page out of my notebook to show the class how little I had gotten done. He explained to my parents that he was irritable and short-tempered because he was a Vietnam War veteran, and was left with tinnatus. I was told that I should be patient with him because the ringing in his ears made it hard for him to be patient with kids. So, why was he teaching fourth grade, then?

Mr. Melavik was the only male teacher I had until I reached eighth grade. Carol's fourth grade teacher, Mr. Matthews, reminds me of my fourth grade experiences but only for superficial reasons. Mr. Matthews is a good teacher, and is patient, and smiles most of the time. She has had a good year.

Broccoli Slaw

I really like Broccoli Slaw. It's way better than coleslaw. You can find lots of recipes for it if you do a search, but I have figured out how I like it. Don't use coleslaw dressing! I like a lite Three-Cheese Ranch dressing, and I add Parmesan cheese, black olives, and a liberal sprinkling of lemon pepper and black pepper. It's good with tomatoes, cottage cheese, ... pita bread would go along with it nicely too. Maybe I'll have to make some. I'm wishing that I had kept more dairy goats. With Jitterbug feeding a lamb, there is not enough goat milk to make cheese, and I wish I had some Feta. I could buy some, but it's just not the same.

Finished



Finally! It was so close, but I just didn't get the knitting time Monday that I expected to. Usually, I knit while the kids are at dance, but they didn't go. All weekend and all day I was telling them they had to clean their room in order to maintain privileges (such as dance class). They did nothing. Time to leave for dance, and they said, "just let us go to dance and we'll clean our room afterwards." Ha! I've heard that story before, and it never works out that way. Anyone have any solutions to getting kids not to throw all of their clothes all over the floor and refuse to pick them up?

Anyway, I finished the apron this morning. All that was left was the end of one of the waist ties. Knitting in seed stitch used to be one of my least favorite stitches, but it works out really well with the knitting back and forth without turning the work technique. I think it actually goes faster backwards, when the right hand gets to move the yarn back and forth. Besides that, for long narrow bands like this, it is so nice not to have to stop and turn the piece around, and nothing gets tangled or twisted. Okay, enough about ambidextrous knitting, until the next time! Here's the picture from Saturday of the skirt.

Suzie



Cats find the silliest places to relax! Suzie climbs up into the mattress of the upper bunk all by herself and just has a blast in there.

Gratulerer med dagen!


I'd love to be in Norway today. Actually, I was planning to be, but didn't plan enough and it seemed rushed and last minute, so decided to try for July instead. Today is Norway's National Day. Last year, Norway's Prime Minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik, wrote a short article explaining the significance of syttende mai. I'll refer you to that, since I can't do a better job.

Asparagus Hunting

Have you ever gone asparagus hunting? Asparagus grows wild where I live, but somehow I never quite "got" how to spot it before. I needed to see it growing to know what it looked like. It's a little late in the season, mostly because other people have already harvested most of it, but it is also starting to go to seed now. Anyway, it grows along fences and ditch banks, right along the roads. When you see people driving along slowly and they stop and someone jumps out of the car with a plastic grocery bag and a knife, you can bet that they are hunting asparagus. What you do is drive along and look for last year's growth, which doesn't look like much but gets 3 or 4 feet tall. It looks like this:


Go take a look at it, and you will see the new asparagus stalks growing around it:


Only the male stalks are eaten - the female stalks produce the seeds for next year. What I found is just the few stalks that someone else left when they harvested, so that it can keep growing for future years, so I didn't pick it. There was some directly across the street from my house. This picture was taken just around the corner. Yesterday I found some more that was shooting up tall and starting to go to seed, also just up the street.

When I actually get time to go out walking, not only do I discover neat stuff like this, but I also get well over 10,000 steps on my pedometer those days. I decided that jumping rope is not cheating. It is much harder work, and really doesn't put steps on that much faster. The pedometer gives no credit at all for yoga or sit-ups.

Apron

I finished with the skirt on Saturday, took a picture, but still haven't gotten it uploaded. Now I am working on the back ties, which is all that is left. I already did the bib, neck ties, buttonhole, sewed the button on, and worked in loose ends (not many since I work them in as I go). Tomorrow or later tonight I'll finish, take another picture, and post the pictures. I'm happy with how this is turning out, although if you want to do this pattern, be advised that there are some errors (omissions actually). If you have a little bit of common sense and look at the picture, you won't have any trouble figuring it out. The biggest one was that the pattern did not say anything about working in seed stitch at the top of the bib before making the neck ties.

In honor of Mother's Day, I thought this was cute enough to share (thanks Tomi!):

Enjoy the answers given by elementary school age children to the following questions:

Why did God make mothers?
1. She's the only one who knows where the scotch tape is.
2. Mostly to clean the house.
3. To help us out of there when we were getting born.

How did God make mothers?
1. He used dirt, just like for the rest of us.
2. Magic plus super powers and a lot of stirring.
3. God made my mom just the same like he made me. He just used bigger parts.

What ingredients are mothers made of?
1. God makes mothers out of clouds and angel hair and everything nice in the world, and one dab of mean.
2. They had to get their start from men's bones. Then they mostly use string. I think.

Why did God give you your mother and not some other mom?
1. We're related.
2. God knew she likes me a lot more than other people's moms like me.

What kind of little girl was your mom?
1. My mom has always been my mom and none of that other stuff.
2. I don't know because I wasn't there, but my guess would be pretty bossy.
3. They say she used to be nice.

What did mom need to know about dad before she married him?
1. His last name.
2. She had to know his background. Like is he a crook? Does he get drunk on beer? Does he make at least $800 a year? Did he say NO to drugs and YES to chores.

Why did your mom marry your dad?
1. My dad makes the best spaghetti in the world. And my mom eats a lot.
2. She got too old to do anything else with him.
3. My grandma says that mom didn't have her thinking cap on.

Who's the boss at your house?
1. Mom doesn't want to be boss, but she has to because dad's such a goofball.
2. Mom. You can tell by room inspection. She sees the stuff under the bed.
3. I guess Mom is, but only because she has a lot more to do than dad.

What's the difference between moms and dads?
1. Moms work at work and work at home, and dads just got to work at work.
2. Moms know how to talk to teachers without scaring them.
3. Dads are taller and stronger, but moms have all the real power 'cause that's who you got to ask if you want to sleep over at your friend's.

What does your mom do in her spare time?
1. Mothers don't do spare time.
2. To hear her tell it, she pays bills all day long.

What would it take to make your mom perfect?
1. On the inside she's already perfect. Outside, I think some kind of plastic surgery.
2. Diet. You know, her hair. I'd diet, maybe blue.

If you could change one thing about your mom, what would it be?
1. She has this weird thing about me keeping my room clean. I'd get rid of that.
2. I'd make my mom smarter. Then she would know it was my sister who did it and not me

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY TO ALL!!!

And thanks to Mark, Ashley, Carol, and Jonathan for this:



The name that stuck is Cuzco



Isn't he cute? He fluffed out the second day and is really soft. Stop by and you can pet him and see your yourself. He doesn't really appreciate being caught and held, but is curious and will come up to me and sniff my hand or my face. Some people have been asking how big he is (or was at birth - he hasn't grown noticeably yet). He is taller than the goats and sheep, so he stands and looks right over them, but he's really smaller since he is all legs and neck with not much to his body yet. Click here to see him next to Star, a mature ewe. The day after Cuzco was born was the first time Dolly let him next to the goats and sheep, and that was fun to watch. He looked them over, all wide-eyed. "Mom, what are these things?" "Just don't get too close to them - they are an inferior species." And he plopped himself down to relax and let the sheep and goats investigate him and step over him on their way to eat hay.

Apron Progress