Susie Cupcakes

Ah, the weekend is over, with its Harry Potter and yoga and yarn stores and knitting and blueberry picking and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-attending. I did only the merest smidge of work, not visible to the naked eye, even, and having such a nice weekend was fantastic.

But I was excited for Monday because Monday was the day that our new coffee maker was put to the true test: would the auto-start button work? If so, everything would change.

Brief note: this new coffee/espresso maker cost $4.95, marked down from $275.00.

It was on super-discount at the Southern Season inventory clearance, as it had mysterious, perhaps unsolvable electric problems. But with Dr. Hectic/Mr. Cupcakes in the house, nothing is unsolvable. Nothing!

So we plugged it in and the coffee maker worked fine. It hadn't even been used before, as evidenced by the plastic in the filter holder. The espresso maker did not work, but the steamer did. Sweet! And, the auto start button worked! It worked!

So now we are able to program the coffee maker to brew coffee at a certain time. It means that I don't have to get up and turn on the coffee maker, the coffee maker (let's call him Stewart) turns on the coffee maker! Stewart will wake me up each morning with a fresh and delicious cup of coffee (or as he calls it, "Caffe.") Mon cheri, he will murmur, eet eez time to awake. I haf brewed le caffe pour vous. Oh Stewart! You are the greatest invention since the Swiffer!

I was a Swiffer nay-sayer for many a moon, as it requires a disposable cloth thingy to be applied with each use, then disposed of in the trash, probably never to decompose and eventually to smother my great-great-grandchildren who are forced to live in the garbage heap the earth has become. But you guys? It really picks up cat fur! The sure-fire combination of broom, vacuum, Swiffer (dry), and Swiffer (wet) actually picks up 95% of grossness off the floor.

If I could somehow harness the cats, or modify the Swiffer cloths to fit on their feet, that would truly be revolutionary.

But this is the general reaction from the cats. It's not even a no. It's just a blank. A cute blank, though.

I have squeezed in a bit of knitting between marvelling over new inventions. The x-back tank is getting close to being done.


It just needs the back straps, and it'll be ready for the hot hot heat that is smothering North Carolina these days.


When I first tried to take these pictures, the cats swarmed as though the tank top was a beacon, calling to them to plop their big old selves down and start chewing on some yarn.

Bad, bad, bad. This is why all my knitting projects are stuffed on top of books in the bookshelves in the living room.

Well, better go get some reading done. Alex is outpacing me on Harry Potter (his is the wide white bookmark, mine is the red one). I'm such a muggle.