Three vs Four

With three Advil, I can actually get out of bed and not cry too much.

With four Advil, I am knocked flat on my @$$ and am not good for a bloody thing.

Obviously, I don't do drugs.

Ultrasound yesterday was "inconclusive." Why not just say "we don't know whatthehell is wrong with you"?

Have I mentioned I do not like visiting the doctor?

Are you sick of the whining yet?

To quote Ron Weasley: "Bloody hell."

Glitter Snow

I don't much like snow and ice, but if I *must* have snow, then I want glitter snow. That's the fine, tiny stuff that just floats down, it has very low moisture, and it looks like superfine glitter just sprinkling out over the world. If it happens at night, it's even more magical.

So I went to the doctor Friday. It was horrible. All kinds of tests for all kinds of things, and the fake icing on the sawdust cake is I had to have blood drawn. I hate having blood drawn, it is very traumatic for me (as if a full pelvic exam isn't?) I was shaking and crying and hyper-ventilating and sqeezing the hand of a poor CNA who was brought in for that purpose. (I heard later I'd left marks. I felt bad, but they went away.) During the wait between the doctor asking me for blood, and the vampire - I mean phlebotomist - coming in, I talked to MCM. I told him he had to come be with me and help me get through it. Since he's basically the one who got mad at me and told me I had to go in the first place, I reckoned it was his duty to at least show up during. I was probably calmer than if I hadn't talked to him. And guess what? I get to go back tomorrow for an invasive ultra-sound. I wish I could find my second-favourite sarong. It's blue with big hibiscus flowers and I am missing it!

After the ordeal (channelling Arlo Guthrie here, well I would be if he were dead, but he isn't, so . . .) I walked out to my car. The last few days we have had a lovely weather inversion casting gloom, doom and asthma attacks all over the state. Clear blue skies, but very hazy. I looked up into the blue sky, and all around me was glitter snow. It was falling out of a clear sky. It wasn't blowing in from off the fields, there was no wind, and it wasn't going sideways. It was definitely falling, from a high altitude. Think what you want to think. I am going to think MCM sent it to me, because he knows how much I love it.

Tonight I went to my first rehearsal for the annual production of Handel's Messiah. I did it last year, so while I haven't sung it all year, the music is coming back quickly. It had better, as the performances are in 2 months! If you are in northern Utah and you'd like to come see an incredible and amazing performance, comment or email me and I'll give the details. It is sung mostly in English, with one selection done in Spanish. And every piece is translated/ interpreted for the deaf in American Sign Language. Even if you dont understand sign language, it is still beautiful to watch. The final piece is "Worthy Is The Lamb", and the director of the group doing the signing does this one. He signs the whole entire life of Christ during this piece and he is so very expressive. You don't have to be deaf to appreciate it at all. I do hope somebody who reads this will come and see it.

I have some FO's to show off, but Blogger is being persnickety and refusing to upload. I don't really want to resort to PhotoBucket, so if anyone has any suggestions, let me know. I haven't updated to the new Blogger, is this my punishment?

Cold and Snow

I think the average high temperature here the past two weeks have been about 20*. I could be wrong, but I don't think so this time. We *have* had a couple of sunny days, which has facilitated melting of ice and snow, but as soon as the sun goes down everything freezes up again. I have had a terrible time keeping my house warm, too. I rent this beautiful townhouse and the heat is included with the rent. Since I like my house warm, this was a big selling point for me. It uses steam heat, with baseboard radiators that don't get too hot to touch, but they do send wonderful heat all throughout the house. I have two thermostats, one on each level of the house. Of course, heat rises so the upstairs is usually quite a bit warmer than the downstairs. However, it is been so cold recently that even though both thermostats are at 85 or 90 degrees, the air temperature sits at 65*. It is cold!! So I have been trying to seal all the cracks in the sliding windows with rags, and I've been praying for warmer weather.

I've been knitting more socks, long ones this time, because my ankles and legs are cold too. It's slow going, because I realized that I am making too many counting errors while knitting at work. So I am switching my work knitting to plain cotton dishcloths. I've got about a dozen done, and I want to do a lovely photo shoot to show them off. However, I'd also like to show off my finished socks and I've still got halfway to go on my second sock so I may wait, or you may get a photo of a half-finished sock! I know other blogs show off half-finished work, but I don't really like to do that. Just a Weird Thing about me!

I've been teaching a friend LB how to knit, and she has graduated from dishcloths to a hat for her son, to the Booga Bag! She does lovely work, and her son absolutely LOVES his hat. She told me he slept in it! I love sharing my knitty-love with other people and watching them grow to enjoy it as much as I do.

Here Commences the Whine:
I hate going to the doctor. And not just the OB-GYN. I hate going to the GP, to the DC, to the DDS, to any doctor. I totally relate to Warren Zevon on this regard, not like MCM or RP. I have more to do with my time than call eight thousand doctors about each little ache and pain and weird growth. I have a high pain threshold (well maybe "theshold" isn't the right word, maybe "tolerance" is a better word) so I have a high pain tolerance simply because I HATE going to the doctor. But if you will remember a couple/three posts ago I mentioned I was having some funky ovarial pain . . . . . well it hasn't gone away. It hasn't gotten worse, but it hasn't lessened, either. I spoke with my friend who is a midwife, and she said it sounded like ovarian cysts. The treatment for that is kick-@$$ anti-inflammatories, and birth-control hormones. Oh yay, I cannot contain my excitement. Whatever.
So . . . . . at the insistence of RP a few months ago, I signed up for insurance through work. Not the most expensive plan, but actually more than I can really afford. I didn't receive any info in the mail about it, but finally a couple of weeks ago at work my boss handed me an envelope that had been supposedly mailed to me, but returned for insufficient address. I promise, HR has my apartment number! Anyway, inside were my insurance cards and info on finding a doctor who will take my insurance. There was a phone number to call if you have questions. Well, I have tons of questions, so I called it. Can I tell you the guy was Extremely Unhelpful?! All he would do is refer me to the website. I have been on the website, it is un-navigable. You get absolutely nowhere. So I hung up on him, crying because I was so upset. I am fairly certain all I have is ovarian cysts and not something more serious. But now that I've made the decision to actually be seen by a doctor, I just want to get it over with. I hate waiting for bureaucracy.
Here Ends the Whine (got some cheese and crackers?)

~~Later that same day~~
So after work (and a seventy-minute call) I went to an OB-GYN office, to see if they would take my insurance. They do not. They referred me to another office. I went there, the girl at the desk was very efficient at doing her job, but I asked her to please slow down and just give me some compassion because I don't want to be there in the first place and I am thisclose to just running out the door and PLEASE will you find out if your office takes my insurance before I make an appointment? Yes, they do take it, but as for how much we do not yet know. My appointment is at 9:45 am tomorrow. And then since I'll already be up, I guess I'll go to work for a few hours. It's Knitters/Spinners Night at the LYS and I need to go.

The DD will be going to Nana's for part of the weekend. I will go down Saturday after work to fetch her and to take part in a birthday party for a couple of Nana's grrls.

(I am freaked out about this whole doctor visit thing. And I really miss MCM right now. A lot.)

The Rest of the Meme

Yeah, it's been awhile. It has been hella cold here the past week and I don't want to do anything but wrap up in wool blankets and warm socks and sleep. Well, there's another reason all I want to do is sleep, but I don't want to go there. Not yet, anyway.

So the rest of the meme:
Weird Thing #4
I sleep in the exact middle of my bed, in between two pillows. I started doing this when I was pregnant with the DD. I had just come home from the island and even though it was summer, I was cold. The pillows there help seal out the cold air that wafts in under the sheets, and back then when I had a baby in the belly, it was so difficult to find a comfortable position to sleep in. Now there's no baby, but I have constant pain in my arm and the pillows help alleviate that. So I am a bed hog! And I *have to* make the bed the instant I get up in the morning, even if I am planning on a nap later. I hate the way an unmade bed looks.
Weird Thing #5
I learned to drive by watching The Dukes of Hazzard. Okay that's not entirely true, but it's mostly true. When I was about 12 or so, I hung around a lot with a family friend CS. She is an amazing lady, funny and kind and so incredibly smart! We delivered newspapers at 3am, ran errands, went garage-saling, all sorts of things. She always drove a VW Rabbit with a standard transmission. She taught me to listen to the engine for when it was time to shift to the next gear. I would listen, and then I would tell her when to shift. After a few weeks of this, she let me do the actual shifting while she did the clutch. Quite interesting to learn how to shift with the wrong hand! CS is the Queen of Multi-tasking. She has always got so much going on that she does as much as possible all the time. It got to the point where I was actually steering and shifting (from the passenger side). The next summer my uncle let me drive his big ol' Ford F-150 pickup out in a sagebrush field. The rest I learned from watching Bo and Luke!
Weird Thing #6
I currently can't think of another weird thing. I know I have hundreds of them, and I'll probably think of something later. When I get home tonight I am going to post some photos so if I've thought of it then I'll ETA.
*ETA*
Okay I thought of a sixth Weird Thing
Weird Thing #6
I shove stuff down my brassiere. Cash, credit card, keys, cell phone . . . . . all have spent time in the Booby Trap. Sometimes a girl just doesn't have pockets handy!

*ETA*
A shout-out to my new friend Mimi!! Girlfriend, I am SO glad I met you!

Another Meme

But not the whole thing. There's a new-ish meme going around the knitting blogs (maybe other blogs too, but I usually only read knitting or crafting blogs) and it's called "6 Weird Things About Me". Well, I sure-as-heck am not going to tell you the *really* weird things, and I'm not going to tell you all six of them at once. I think I have three people who read this thing anyway so who is going to know the difference?
Weird Thing #1
I have a decent-sized collection (okay about 12) of beautiful batiked sarongs from Indonesia. I bought my first one when I lived in Hawaii, and whenever I see them for sale in a town I am visiting, I buy one. They are all folded up nicely on a shelf in my closet, except the one currently in use. That one is in my bed. I sleep with it. It's an extra layer on my legs when they are cold, or it is all balled up and shaped like a little hill to block out the light that my electric-blanket controller throws out, or I wrap it around my head to keep it warm when I'm trying to go to sleep. And I wrap it around me when I get out of bed in the morning. Oftentimes I will stash one in my handbag when going out on a date in the late spring or the early fall. In a pinch I can tie the corners together and have a light jacket that is quite dressy. When taking a road trip in the summer, I lay it across my lap to have a layer of fabric so that sweaty skin isn't sticking to itself. It's a great cover-up for water activities, and if I'm having a *really* bad hair day, I can go around looking like Erykah Badu. Except it looks way better on her than it ever will on me.
Weird Thing #2
I'm obsessive about being able to breathe, and consequently there are tissue boxes stashed all throughout my house, car, workstation, parents' house, pockets, handbags, etc. Whenever I visit a more humid climate, I don't have quite the same problem. Maybe I should move to the east or the south.
Weird Thing #3
I am always cold. It is very rare for me to be comfortable, or too warm. I have always kept my house thermostat at 80* in the winter, and I still walk around in wool sweaters, wool snocks, and even felted wool slippers. I have also been known to wear a knit or fleece hat indoors. When I went to college in Hawaii, I thought I would finally be warm. But I was there a month and I called my mother and asked her to send me my electric blanket. She did, and I used it for the next 3 1/2 years until I graduated. On my bed winter and summer is the electric blanket, 2 patchwork fleece blankets, and a comforter. And right now on top of the comforter is a patchwork wool blanket. But if you thought that I wore several layers of clothing to sleep in, you'd be wrong. Tank-top and matching panties is it. Sometimes socks. I hate to be constricted when I am sleeping.

Okay that's enough. I need awhile to think of three more weird things. Back to hella overtime tomorrow. I just hope I don't get too many stupid people. "Yes sir, you do need to have the receiver plugged in and turned on to watch DirecTV." Sometime I'll tell you my very favourite stupid customer story. Have a great week!

First FO's of the new year!

Made via the Magic Loop method, took me one week. I am so impressed with this method, I cannot believe people still use DPNs! And before you say anything, yes they do match! I saved all the leftovers from all the snocks I've made for family and friends this year and used them up on snocks for me. I love them and that's that! And I have enough yarn to make at least 2 more snocks like this too.


The top two are mine. On the left we have some Opal Dreamcatcher. On the right we have some Lana Grossa MegaBoots that my Faery Swap Sister sent me in October. On the bottom we have Christmas gift snocks for the DD, and for Baby Brother (age 26). Those are both Lion Brand Magic Stripes.

And then we have the knitted pears for my dad, and the felted slippers I made for RP, his DD, my DD, my mom, and me. Mine is shown in the pre-felted stage for comparison. The pears were done in Lion Brand Wool, except the little apple in the middle which was Plymouth Boku. The slippers were Mauch Chunky, Lamb's Pride Bulky, and LP Worsted, double-stranded.

Tonight I learned how to post photos through Blogger instead of through PhotoBucket. I've updated a couple of archived posts this way, and I'll be slowly changing over all the photos. I like how you can "clickety biggety" to quote the KnittyOtter (But don't read her today, she is seriously pissed-off.)

What's my New Year's Resolution? Don't know yet. Part of it is to knit from stash, like Wendy, and I'm already learning new stuff, like MagicLoop. I'm a lilbit superstitious in that if I tell you what my resolution is, then I won't actually do it. I know others say they have to tell, so they'll be held accountable. But I've never been known to do things the conventional way.

One last plea and then I'm going: Please keep RP in your prayers, as he is in mine. And maybe if you've got time, say one for me too. I've got a lovely shooting pain in my ovarial area and life is getting interesting just trying to deal with it.
XOXO