Yarn-A-Go-Go

You All

make me feel good. Thank you for reading, thank you for voting, thank you for encouraging.

But dude, I'm feeling weird about entering that contest now. I'm ready for it to be over, so I can have the manuscript back and start making changes. Edits. Big edits.

It feels like.....

[Here I spend time thinking about an appropriate analogy and this is what I come up with:]

It feels like I wrote a rough draft (a shitty first draft, SFD, as Anne Lamott calls it -- just gotta get it on paper) and MAILED IT OUT. And wow. That's not an analogy. That's what happened.

I WANT IT BACK.

But I can't have it.

[Edited to add: Yes, I still have the manuscript, stored in many different ways. But I think even though I want to edit it, and even though I'm freaking out that I sent it, I want at least a month to let it settle a bit.]

So I'm working on the next thing. It feels really, really good to be working. I have so much more energy now those tonsils are outta there! I was under-the-weather for what, four months? That really drags on you, and I feel SO much better. Me and Digit. We're feisty again.

But you want to see the kittens, right? Or at least one? And a chihuahua? Or the head of a chihuahua?

Someday we will be able to afford to purchase the rest of the dog.

You enjoy your Labor Day weekend, huh? I'm planning to. Drive safely.

Vote For Me! (Or Pedro)

So last Tuesday, Michele and Janice M. both pointed me in the direction of a First Romance Novel Competition. A site called Gather.com has teamed up with Simon & Schuster and Borders to hold a kind of American Idol competition for romance writers. (I know, I know.)

Only thing was, they wanted the first two chapters, and the competition closed the next day, Wednesday. I had one day to polish the first two chapters. Sure, I could do that.

Then I read the fine print. You also had to submit THE WHOLE NOVEL in email form. Which is why I spent last Wednesday writing and editing for nine hours. The ending was rushed, yes, but not as rushed as I thought it would be.

So the contest is now live. You can read the first chapter of this silly romance novel of mine (which has knitting! Lots of knitting! Spinning! Pretentious references to things that you, my dear readers, will understand -- sadly, not in the first chapter, though) and vote for it. (Working title - Love Spun. Heh.)

This is how it works: The first round is the first chapter. People vote, casting a number from 1-10, 10 being the best. The fifteen chapters with the most number of 10s will proceed to the second round Votes of numbers 1-9 don't even count, so if you DO like it at all, if you want me to proceed, 10 is the number to keep in mind. If you think I deserve it, that is. After that round, the five people with the most 10s cast for their second chapter will move on to the last round - The Gather.com, Borders, and Simon & Schuster people will decide on the winner, who will be published and featured prominently in all Borders stores.

Now, they're tracking votes by IP and username, so you can't vote more than once, or the chapter might be disqualified. Because I know you, dear reader, and you might pull something sweet like that.

You have to register for the site to vote, which is one of those "social" sites. They won't sell/share your email address, and you can opt out of receiving any emails from them.

You wanna read it? Really?

My chapter (with an egregious typo or two - "Now way" should be "no way" and it makes me want to cry when I think about it) is HERE.  And all the rest, if you'd like to vote on them as well, are here. Woot!

* And yes, this is the same book that I wrote for Nanowrimo last year, then facetiously titled Bleating Hearts -- you might already have read the excerpt here (turn the flash page at the bottom right to read it, but don't do that till you read the first chapter and vote! Hooray!).

** at noon, looks like their site is bogged down. Don't give up.... Try again later? Please? xox

A Lazy Sunday Morning

It's a day off -- finished my work week well and feeling strong, if tired. But because I get up at 4:30am on work days, it's hard for me to sleep past 9am on days off, and that's if I really, really try. So Lala's still sleeping the sleep of the justified rocker, and I've been tidying and puttering, backing up the computer, things like that. Don't you feel good when you back stuff up? You do if you're like me, and only do it every six months or so..... (Of course, everything I write is stored online in two or three different (secure) places.)

Boy, that's boring talk. Let's have fun talk! Digit talk! (If you're new, saga begins here.)

Th cat of my heart, continues to do well. VERY well. He's still gaining weight -- when I pet him I can still feel his backbone, but every day the padding gets a little thicker. He bitches and moans, all the time, which is just what he loves to do.

The front sun-porch, a spot that we use for some storage but where I also set up a nice writing spot, is now his space when he needs to be alone. He eats out there, he has a litter box, and the nicest thing is that we can leave the inner door open and just keep the iron security door closed, so he can sit by it and feel like he's outside. The room is all windows, and he has many high perches from which he can view not only the street, but look into the living room to see how the kittens are behaving.

More and more, though, after he eats, he howls to be let into the house, even though the kittens plague him to death. They simply don't understand that passing tails, especially THAT twitching, angry tail, are not to be played with. So Digit WHAPS them, and they skitter (skitten?) off, but they have memories shorter than mine, and minutes later they're all like TAIL! MUST GET THAT TAIL! However, he tolerates them. He'll sit next to them. He'll ignore them. I never expected them to do this well. He won't ever, ever speak to them unless it's a growl, but he can share a lap with them. If they're not near his tail.

Speaking of that tail, I really think he has much less feeling in it now (which would make sense, seeing as how much of his back end was seriously damaged...). That would explain his balance, how he appears a little off balance all the time, and how Waylon managed to hold it down that one time without him noticing and how, the other night while I was having a bath, HE DRAPED IT IN THE TUB and didn't seem to care.

A little in.

and even more tail in the drink. (Why, yes, I WAS worried about dropping my cell phone in the tub, thank you.)

That tail, however, is still a good indicator of geological happenings. Last week I woke up to Digit growling furiously and whipping his tail back and forth across my face. Lala, still not in bed, could hear him from another room. Ten seconds later, a small earthquake, centered in Oakland, rippled through the room. It was a 3.2, and for those of you not familiar, a low 3 like that just feels like a big dog jumped up on your bed. A low 4 feels like more like an earthquake, but a 3-point-something just makes you go, huh? And Digit apparently HATES the sound of them coming.

And just look at that tail's magnificence:

And when all is said and done, my sweet chickens, it looks like we will have about a THOUSAND DOLLARS to donate to Milo Foundation and Best Friends. I'm not sending it quite yet -- I'm taking your excellent advice to wait until he's all better, well and truly, but is that amazing or what? I'm still not over it, and I never will be. I love you all every day, and I pet his head and tell Digit so.

Sunday mornings make me sappy.

So I will close on this note. See that box up there? Behind Digit? I've been meaning to tell you about that. (This is the point, dear reader, when you should click away if you don't have a cat and are offended by litter talk. We cat lovers LURVE our litter box talk.)

I read about this idea here, Ikea hacks for cat boxes. And it was seriously SO easy. See, we have a small (read: big) problem with Clara and cat poop. She sees nothing wrong with diving for the good stuff. I want to die every time she does it. We have to keep the big litter box in the kitchen -- no room in the bathroom, and I hated seeing it there, and Clara LOVED having it there. So I had to do something.

This is a box from Ikea called Hol -- there are two, this is the bigger one. You put it together and then you saw a small hole, just big enough for your cats to jump through. I used a tile-cutting saw just big enough to fit through the small holes (it was easy, I swear -- I'm not a saw kind of gal). It's big enough to place a large litter box into and still have room for litter/scooper/bag storage. And while Clara's head fits in the hole, her shoulders don't, and she can't reach! Hahahaha!

Yes, that's a gigantor Rubbermaid, not a litter box. Digit has issues and pees standing up. No litter box on the market is high enough for him -- I use this, and when I started using this ikea box, I just cut a little away on the side so they can jump in. And yes, that's Trader Joe's pine litter. Wouldn't use anything else.

So there you go!

Me

Cracking open the Sofia Coppola Blanc de Blancs sparkling wine (let's just call it champagne, shall we? Flout the Treaty of Versailles). It comes with its own straw! Champers in a can! Just the thing to celebrate, don't you think?

The End.

I just typed The End.

For the first time, I typed The End.

It's not really the end, it's the beginning of revisions. But I did it.

I am so happy. I have a completed novel. My tongue is tingling. I might have breathe into a paper bag or something. I did it.

Rachella

 

So my friend Emily, designer of many beautiful patterns, including Coachella, left me a comment saying she wasn't THAT interested in Ravelry, since she knit her own designs. I hear that, oh, yes.

But out of the spirit of fun, I went to Ravelry, and looked up Coachella, and told her just how many of them were in progress among the 8000+ users, and how many times it had been queued, all that fun stuff.

I looked through the user photos.

And suddenly, a pattern that I'd had NO interest in making, because it looks so great on small-framed marathoner Emily and therefore probably not so much on me, suddenly jumped not only into my queue, but out of my stash onto my needles because boy HOWDY did it look good on the girls of a bigger size. Honey, we can carry this off, and you should make one, too!

Took only 5 TV nights to make, seriously great pattern. I went with Cotton Fleece, 2.1 skeins used, in alpine lilac. I went with the 29" bust even though I wear a 38" bra -- the pattern says the 29 would fit up to a 36, and I wanted negative ease and I didn't want it to fit too loosely. My racerback jogbra fits just right underneath, and I LOVE THIS.

Wearing it right now, in front of the fan.

 

PS - I made the skirt up there, too, I just realized. Pockets! Yay!

A Stunning Realization

Confession: I have recently started a writing blog. It's HERE, and it's based on the Treadmill Journal idea I stole from PoMo Golightly (through the writing group in Ravelry! Yay!). It's boring, mostly, and only documents my own writing angst, but the writers among you might like to read it, or try something similar. It's certainly kick-started my writing again, in a big way. And I just wrote this, and I'm stealing it from myself, so you don't even have to go over there, but this made me feel good:

I realized something yesterday, something huge. This novel I've been working on, it's a genre romance. There. I said it. I'm writing it for a target audience, and I have writer's guidelines in mind. I will say, right now, that having read romances for years and years as a teenager and into my early twenties, I knew there were a lot of bad ones out there. But I kept reading them because some of them were good. Well written. Engaging. Romantic. That's what I've been going for. I can write literary fiction and Be Serious; I can and have pulled that off. But it's been a much more fun ride, this silly romance. Really, really fun.

And perhaps that's how I got this far, and reached this realization: I'M ALMOST DONE. No, really. Yesterday, I realized that I only had one more big scene in mind, and that it was the denouement. But that couldn't be! I was only up to 66,000 words!

Then I checked the guidelines, and ahem, that's above the upper limit for the slim-sided imprint I chose to target.

In eloquent literary terms: Dude. That means I get to write a few more scenes, and I'll be DONE. Which means I will type the words The End. That, of course, won't mean the end of work, lots of editing, and apparently, paring down to meet to word count, but that's a good thing -- there are several scenes in the book that strike me as background rather than essential.

But it's there! The end is coming! It's reachable! I could hardly sleep last night. Look at me, wasting all this time here. Need to be moving into writing.

A Very Surprisingly Great Day

Ha! I didn't mean to post that sweater picture today -- I had preblogged it while I was recovering, and I must have put it on the wrong day. What I'm going to post today is this:

**Hours before:

Now this is something I've never done. I'm lying on my stomach on Pompono Beach, just south of Half Moon Bay. This is just what I needed.

I spent the early morning driving Lala around, as she was leaving on her tour. And then, unreasonably irritated at having to fight traffic after going back for forgotten and necessary glasses, I decided to just keep driving. Counterintuitive, yes. But I got on 880 and headed south, intending to head for Half Moon Bay but not really remembering which bridge to cross the bay to get there.

I ended up going over the wrong bridge, but turned myself around, and found Half Moon Bay. I spent a few hours wandering, writing at a cafe, fondling yarn at Fengari (got away with only sock yarn and the new Vogue), and book browsing,. Then I headed south on Highway 1, enroute to Pescadero and that ollalieberry pie at Duarte's I always rave about. 

On the way, I pulled over at Pompono Beach, grabbed my bag and the sheet out of the back of that station wagon, and here I am.

It's gorgeous. I'm propped up on my elbows, facing the water. I'm typing lying on my belly, just like Carrie always did in Sex and the City, and really, it's not as comfortable as she made it look. But it's working.

Just a little cloudy, but with enough sun that I was too warm in my light sweater and I took it off to use it for a pillow later. Cool breeze on my arms, but my legs are warm from sun. The waves breaking at the shoreline are the exact color of the most common green of sea glass, with a deeper azure out toward the horizon. It's bright enough that I can't see the screen at all -- I'm typing blindly and will fix typos later. The ocean is roaring.

There are a few families on the beach, some of them looking like they planned to be here, beach chairs, coolers. Some of the kids are in swim suits, which in northern California is just plain nuts. But they're far away -- it's as if they got out of their cars, got on to the sand, and plopped down, not able or willing to walk for two more minutes to be away from the voices of others. The only thing that reaches me from the groups is the slight whiff of cigarette smoke, and it smells so good. I love that smell.

The surfers here aren't that great, but they're funny. They're trying to ride, but the break is so close to the shore that few are getting up, and when they do they have to pump their boards hard with their feet just to stay on top for a few seconds.

OHMYGOD, a huge flock of seagulls is getting closer. Hate seagulls.

I can't remember the last time I was on my stomach on the beach, playing idly with sand in front of my face, napping a little, waking and thinking a little. Pie soon. Yes.

**I wrote the above, then I took a little nap, and then I watched the clouds overhead. More like a very light, broken fog. It looked like, and I can't help it, white cashmere fiber. Clouds of cashmere, all short fibers, poofing out above me. 

I can't tell you how relaxing, how unexpected the day was.

I had a crab sandwich and a pint of beer and my pie, and I read my new Vogue Knitting at the counter at Duarte's. The waitress liked me. I went a little farther south and explored the Pigeon Point Lighthouse (which is also a hostel and has a hot tub on the cliff edge -- hello, private room!). (My cell phone was dead, so no photos, I'm so sorry. I would have loved to have shown you my day.)

I stopped and bought apricots and beets from a roadside vendor. I drove home singing.

And a bonus! Picture of a baby kitty! Smallest, wee-est, seven-week old baby too young to really be separated from his mother, but she was feral, and took off, leaving him behind:
Guess who?

My Digit! 11 years ago.  He's doing so well.... his balance is still strangely off, but we're watching him closely. He's all healed, and he is NOT going out of the house. Nope. And that is all. Me, I'm recovering well but I'm tired from my long day. Still can't talk for that long without throat pain, but the rest of me feels great! Hooray! 

Closure

Got tired of hairclip, and I like this way of closing it. What do you think?

(I think this is my last preblog. Hopefully I'll be back among you real-time-bloggers soon.)

Get Lucky with The Whoreshoes in So Cal

You would think I would have blogged this before, but I kept forgetting.

But if you're in the southern California area, you HAVE to go see the girls this week -- they're fantastically fun, and great musicians, and they smell pretty good, too. They've got quite a knitterly following here, and if you go up to them and tell them The Knitter sent you, I will get even MORE street cred. Help me out here.

Thursday night (tomorrow night): The Silverlake Lounge, Los Angeles
Friday night: The Whiste Stop, San Diego
Saturday night: Muddy Waters, Santa Barbara

More details (and mp3s) on their site (with links to venues).
Go! Tell 'em I sentcha!

Whew

I have a new coffee-shop! That is just so exciting to me. I'm well enough now to ride my bike there, which is thrilling to me. Maybe you're a bike rider, so you won't understand, but ohmygod, riding a bike is SO COOL. I'm still kinda terrified of it, so that adds to the thrill, but I heard through a friend of La's that there was a good coffee-shop in San Leandro, called Zocalo. I looked it up, and it was only 2.5 miles from our house! Totally do-able, even in my still-recovering state. And it's a flat ride, with a BIKE LANE all the way there. I am in love with bike lanes. I don't think I'll ever ride on a street without them, really. They're so polite! They give the impression of safety! (Although I trust nothing and no one, don't worry.)

So it's a sweet ride there (kind of through the hood for a while, and then suddenly, you cross the border from Oakland to San Leandro, and there are trees! Gardens! The line of demarcation is so sudden and obvious it's mind-boggling, really), and then the cafe is just so nice: It's big, open, lots of tables that seem constantly full, free wifi, really good coffee, nice people, music quiet enough that iTunes on my computer drowns it out, couches, a kid's play area, the roaster actually roasting beans in the same room with you, putting up that heavenly smell.....

And I'm writing. Still not well enough to go back to work, can't talk for 12 hours straight although a couple of hours is okay, so I'm using this vacation-like time to write. And I've got a new method -- called the Treadmill Journal, I stole the idea from here. Basically, you write your plan of action and how much time you're going to spend on it, then you do it, then you write about how it went, and then you plan the next day's writing. Granted, I've only done it for four days. But it's been successful in that I have to plan when exactly I'm going to write the next day. I never do that, never plan in advance, and every day I expect to find time to write, and then I don't, because days fill up and go by, don't they? But if you have a plan, it's easier to write. I'm lovin' it, and I'm loving getting actual writing done. I've plotted to the end of the novel I'm working on, and OH LORD LET ME FINISH A BOOK. With three novels more than half-way done, one 500 pages long and ALMOST done, it's frustrating never to be able to finish. It's just a mental block -- always more fun to start something new rather than finish the old -- and I know if I just finish one, that will be the kick I need to finish the others. I don't even care if they're good endings. Just as long as they END.

But I'm not in a great hurry. Heading toward an ending is good enough right now.

And I'd also like to jump on the clutter-purge bandwagon and clean out my writing/yarn room, but every time I get gung-ho about it, I feel tired. This throat of mine lets me do only some of the things I want. By the end of the day, I'm pretty much guaranteed to feel like ass. Riding my bike five miles just took it out of me for a couple of hours. So I think I'll retire to the couch and continue reading the book I'm LOVING, Dishwasher, by Pete Jordan. Ah, the best kind of confessional-memoir. He's a guy who spent years attempting to wash dishes in all 50 states. He wrote a zine about it, and this is his book about those years, and something about it is so comforting. And he's just so damn funny. You might enjoy it.

Off to the couch.

Ravelry

I succumbed. I have NO idea what was holding me back. But I've fallen into the Ravelry hole, and god help me, I can't get out.

For those of you knitters not using Ravelry yet, let me tell you a thing or two about it. I had thought it was something like a knitting Friendster, where you could also log how many/what type of needles you had. Yes, people TOLD me it was so much more than that, but I didn't believe them. Didn't want to. Didn't have time.

But I'm so glad I did! Imagine, if you will, having ten balls of Rowan Kid Classic in your stash, and not knowing what the hell to do with it. You go to Ravelry, punch in Rowan Kid Classic, and come with 124 projects that current members have used to make things. Pictures. Patterns LINKED right there. Notes. Needle sizes. Complaints, praises for the yarn.

Or you're not sure if you like a pattern or not, just by looking at the two pictures shot in half-shadow (hello Debbie Bliss) in the book. Punch in the pattern name and look at the completed versions worn on members' real bodies.

I think that may be my favorite part, actually. Seeing real patterns worn on bodies that are a little more zaftig (like mine) than the models in the patterns.

Also, it's a community -- they have groups for EVERYTHING, trust me. I originally only joined because I wanted to read what the group going to Rhinebeck had up their sleeves (yes, I'm going! So excited! Been to Maryland twice, but never, ever Rhinebeck....), and so I used my invite which had been sitting unused in my inbox forever. And then I was stuck. So very stuck.

But it's better than when you discovered blogs and got REALLY stuck. Know why? Because once you put in your finished projects (or as many as you care to, like I have), and once you figure out the navigation, you don't HAVE to spend much time on it. I'm not a big group/forum reader, but I'll use them to gain info when needed.

But it's inspiring. You see something you want to make, you throw it in your queue. Forever easily found later.

It made me finally cast on for Lala's next sweater, Durrow.

She's been due for a sweater for a while, and I already had the yarn, and knew I wanted to make her some  kind of cabled thing. I was going to design it myself, but every time I swatched and thought about all the math involved, I got discouraged. I have to be in a very particular mood to design a whole aran, and I haven't been in that mood. But I think Durrow is perfect, and that was backed up by a slew of really great looking Durrows already completed on Ravelry. I think I'm the only one I saw modifying it to be knit in the round, though, so I'm keeping notes, and will post my progress so the next person wanting to make it won't have to accidentally stumble across my blog, but can just cross-reference it in Ravelry.

I'm doing it in Lamb's Pride kiwi, though, a rather emeraldy green. I love that the sleeves are so interesting, but at the same time you can be working on the body if you're in the mood for something COMPLETELY mindless.

    In real life MUCH more green

Ravelry's in beta still, though, so they have a waiting list to get invites. It's a LONG list, but I hear it moves pretty quickly, so don't give up hope, and if you're not on the list, or maybe you hadn't thought it was for you, get on the list. Trust me, it IS for you, even if you only ever use it to look up patterns.

Being Lazy is Hard Work

Still on the mend! This is being blogged from my writing/yarn room, from my chair, which feels like a big step from being in bed.

I have learned some things.

I am a bad patient. Or, really, I'm not that bad, I try to be as nice as possible about it, but once I am feeling better, I am hard to keep down.

This is because I have such a -- I don't really know what to call it. It's not really a guilt complex, I don't feel GUILTY that I haven't done laundry or cleaned the house, it's just that I have such a hard time NOT doing those things.

And it's not an exuberant work ethic -- I feel it is okay for me to relax. I know it is. I know it is perfectly acceptable, especially while recovering from surgery, to be lazy. It's not that I feel I have to be doing something, all the time.

I just don't know HOW to be lazy. As soon as I start, just lying on the couch with the TV on, nothing in my hands, my brain fills up with things I should/could do instead.

So my new thing, while I'm on the mend, is to pretend I'm on vacation. Therefore, no guilt. Don't have to work. Don't have to clean the house (but I did clean the litterboxes. Time, tide, and kitty litter, you know).

Of course, this morning I wrote a list of all the things I'd like to do on this little "vacation," and it filled a whole page. I think there's something wrong with that.

But today, I think I'd just really like to make one of these great shopping bags based on a plastic bag's template. Ain't it cute?

Even has its own carrying pocket so you can put it in your purse.

All right. Off to try not Do Things. I'm going to try to Enjoy Things. Yes.

Big News!

1. I went out! I actually left the house! First time in eight days. Yesterday, to the coffee shop, with Lala and all three dogs, which just about kilt me, but I did it. The pain has reached a manageable level finally, but now the fever has kicked in, which it likes to do around day 8-10. (Post-op talk, skip if you're bored: Talked to the doc -- he said the reason this is such a big surgery with such a long recovery time is that they took SO MUCH -- got the tonsillar structure right down to the nodes, but with that comes a bunch of close-by muscle (and possibly nerve, the right side of the tongue is still numb).) So I enjoyed half a cup of green tea before I felt like crap and we had to move along, but it was a nice outing.

2. I went out again, today! Yesterday was really a rehearsal to see how I'd do today, and it went swimmingly! Maia had a spin-in (email her to get on the the list) and it was DELIGHTFUL. I had just enough voice for an hour and a half to talk to lovely people, some of whom I knew, some I didn't. There was quiche! Lots of it! And I tell ya, recovering from your second tonsillectomy, for your first meal out of the house, make it brunch. Quiche is the perfect look-I'm-eating-real-food food. And Janine was there! Everyone knows I admire Janine SO much, and then she goes and drops something like, "back when I teaching Hebrew...." With my horrible memory I possibly knew this a long time ago, but I think I would remember such a cool thing. Wow, she is so cool.

See? Spinning! And I got to see Celia for a moment, and Brooke, and lots of other nice people, and I got to have FUN again, not lying in bed or on a couch. Oh, yeah.

And I spun up some nice baby camel/tussah silk that is inSANEly soft. I haven't spun in so long, and it was immensely satisfying.

Know what else is satisfying?

3. Digit got his cone off! This happened about an hour ago, and he hasn't stopped washing once. (Well, he had the cone on for almost 5 weeks. As Lala just said, that's a dirty, dirty butt.)  I'm keeping a close eye on him, he could still rip open some of the softer areas where the stitches and staples were if he's too rough, and the cone will be popped right back on if that happens, but I'm hoping for the best.

And he's GROWLING at himself. It's quite funny. It's as if he's so PISSED that he just found out that whole back region has been shaved and HE WASN'T TOLD.

He also growls maniacally if I try to touch him while he's washing. Watch (the noise that's kind of low is him growling his little growl-box off):

Goddamnit, someone shaved my ass!

So all is well! I'm tired now, and Dr. Lala thinks I should rest for the remainder of the day. I act tough, but I think she's right. It's dark and overcast and almost threatening rain today, and I'm sad for Lala that she has to play a huge barbeque/party right down on the Oakland marina today, very sad for her, but I'm happy for me that I'm going to stay right here in bed and watch netflix movies and knit socks. I might move to the couch later and do a little more spinning. Who knows? It will be nice, though. Yesterday and the day before were rough. I HATE it when I'm well enough to feel like I should be active but not well enough to actually BE so. Truly unpleasant. So much nicer to be able to do a little something and then rest the rest of the justified.

Or the un-coned. Digit is my MAN! 

Dramamine Rules

Dramamine made me feel normal again, like I wasn't hungover AND drunk on a boat in a squall. And we had it in the cabinet at home, didn't even have to get someone to get any for me.

I can tell I'm getting better because I'm getting antsy again. I tend to get antsy about five minutes after believing I'm starting to feel better. It is infinitely frustrating for those around me, because I do tend to want to build a better house around the one I'm in right when what I should be doing is resting, not digging out hammers and building supplies.

(A simple solution to this, I've found, is to read or watch decluttering pr0n -- Lala's letting me read her new book, It's All Too Much, An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff. Do you know how much this stuff excites me? And then it falls out of my head as I drop into a nap, better than dropping off the ladder as I try to clean ceilings -- do any of you have a fave declutter show that I can TiVo? There's was a British one I used to love, but I can't remember its name, and I'm not sure what's on nowadays.)

Yesterday, I didn't do too well. Because of the nausea I hadn't eaten anything all day, so about noon-time, I knew I should be hungry, but wasn't. I looked in the freezer and found some frozen ravioli that I thought didn't sound too revolting, so I put on water to boil. While the water was boiling, I thought I would do some dishes. That was my first mistake. Not quite strong enough for dishes yet, because they exhausted me half-way through and left me in a full-body sweat. But no worries, I'd eat and feel better.

Got out the pasta sauce from the fridge, not sure if it's still good, let's open and have a sniff, and the WHOLE JAR flies out of my wet hands and lands on the tiles, exploding into a gazillion-trillion tiny little shards of red glass. It sprays from one end of the kitchen to the other, from the sink to the back wall. Even hit the ceiling.

I, of course, because of the state I'm already in, burst into tears and start cleaning. The dogs think lapping at shards of tomato glass is their new favorite hobby, and I'm SCREAMING at them, which doesn't go well for anyone, because I'm not very loud, tonsil-less this way, and it's mighty painful, but my body language must have been devastating, because they dropped to the ground under the kitchen table and stayed there, tails between legs. Normally not so good at the Stay, them. Even the kittens listened to me, and I'm not sure they've EVER heard me before.

I was in big trouble with Lala about this, doing too much. So I'm determinedly Not Doing Too Much. I'm going to read and watch more TV and nap a bunch more today. She has people coming over tonight but I am NOT CLEANING THE HOUSE. Even though it's all I want to do. But I won't. It's her gathering, not mine, and I will merely take a shower (this is a big deal) and wear something befitting an invalid, and flit through the living room at times, looking gaunt and possibly wan, if I can pull either of those off (I don't think I can, but forgive a girl for trying, right?).

HaHA! I am coming BACK!

Digit is doing great, but very sadly, still has the cone. They took the stitches out yesterday, but the skin is still raw around the two spots they did, so they want him to wear it a while longer, poor bub.

Whew. And that's all I got.

The Well of Smarties

It's always like having this long, deep, SMART well in my backyard -- I can toss a question in, and you all answer me in so many wonderful ways. You know everything! Thank you, all of you.

The nausea is not quite settled yet -- living on ginger tea right now, but I just called my pharmacist and she said I could take benadryl with the Lortab (you clever ones, you, who suggested this) -- it's gonna make me SLEEPY but I could do with a little sleep right now. The doc upped my dosage schedule to every two hours instead of every four, with hopes that would help. I think it has, a bit, but right now I feel like I'm on a boat, and I'm not that fond of being on boats.

This CAN'T be interesting to anyone but me and Lala, and really, she has to say that, doesn't she? So instead, what I saw on my bed yesterday (Digit was there, too, of course, but we have visitors often):

Willie, with a Harriet backdrop.

And look away if you mindless assless chaps on a cat, but how cute is this sleeping pose?

The Spins

I am miserable. But instead of whinging, I'm looking for a little help this time. I'm on this codeine/acetominphen syrup called Lortab. I called yesterday to see if I could take something else instead, but this is the only thing the doc wants me on, and indeed, when I missed the dose by an hour yesterday, the increase in pain level was intense. So even if I'm not noticing that it's doing a good job of pain management, I guess it is doing something.

But the other thing it's doing is making me QUEASY. I am nauseated most of the time now, and I feel like I've got the spins, combined with a constant mild heartburn.

Any easy holistic ideas to help me? Emphasis on the easy -- if it requires brewing something in a something-else, I won't do it. I am eating religiously when I take the dose (every four to five hours), trying to get some protein in, scrambled eggs or chicken broth or tofu. I'm drinking enough, I think. I want crackers, but unless they're soaked in soup, they're too pointy. Any good ideas on what could help with the nausea?

The saddest thing is that I started Harry Potter yesterday, got about half-way in, and I'm too sick to go on reading it. When I doze off and have those feverish nausea dreams, the last thing you want is Harry Potter anxiety, flashes of spells and potions, and Hermione and Ron going the wrong way and I can't catch them, and OH NO! Ick. Going to find a light romance instead. Very sad. (And now I have Black Magic, "oh what a spin I'm in" running through my head.)

And still? This continues to be the best medicine:

    Tomorrow the cone comes off! Hooray!