Well. Lots of news to share, and updates to provide.
I have never done this. I'm a pattern-follower to the nth degree.
I'm a Capricorn, we follow the rules. To. The. Letter. But here I am, goin' rogue! It scares the crap out of me. And I had to order more of the "latte" colored yarn, because I don't think I'll have enough.
So of course, I added a few hanks extra, because you know. You never know when you'll need a random hank of Cascade 220 Superwash. I do plan to make a neckerchief/shawlette thingie, but it's nice to have a bit of extra just in case.
As you can see, the bottom is the turquoise and the top is the latte. So I'm on a search for turquoise buttons now. I had some brown/tan ones for the other version, but now they won't work. And do you think I can find ALL those baby buttons that I bought years ago and "stashed in a place where I can find them again"? Nope. Of course not. That would be too easy.
So I've got a month to finish this AND two baby hats. The baby hats will be out of the Softee, same as the afghan. It will all get done. I keep saying that to myself. I'm trying to knit faster, but it's garter stitch. It just seems to go on forever.
Winter Tries to Kill Us...
So awhile back, it was freezing. Like "sub-zero, your face freezes, eyeballs feel cold" frozen. Like "why do I live here?" frozen. And I don't have a garage (long story).
So the solution to that is, I open the passenger door, crawl over the seat, open the door from the inside, then crawl back down and walk around the car and get in the driver's side.
Imagine doing that with a cane, when you can't put a lot of weight on one of your legs.
Yep. That was fun.
But the best part was grabbing the door handle on the outside and the thing snapping back at me. I didn't even realize that I was bruised till I noticed it a few days later. My ring finger got whacked. You may notice the lovely color of that part of my finger. I was kind of surprised, but then, not - it's happened before. Hubby said it looked like I'd broken it. No, just the joys of being on a blood thinner and a door that was out to get me.
Today is sunny; it's 38 degrees outside. Beautiful day. But give it a moment. Winter is still out to kill us. We'll be whipsawing from the 50s to the teens over the next 10 days. Never cold enough, long enough, to kill off the crud, but enough to keep our immune systems guessing.
Latest Read...
Just finished Jennifer Chiaverini's book Switchboard Soldiers. You need to read this. It'shistorical fiction - meaning that the story is based mostly on facts. A couple of characters were created out of an amalgam of real people, but several are "real people" and their story is amazing.
Back just before WWI, in the era of switchboards which were staffed by women, and you had to talk to an actual operator to make a call, the idea that a young woman could have a promising career as an operator, or even a supervising or instructing operators. That was big stuff.
It's an enthralling, untold story. It's a beautiful read, and would make a great book club selection.
I'm on to A Murder of Crows, a mystery, and I'll report back when I've finished that one. But for now, go grab a copy of Switchboard Soldiers and learn something!
The State of the State of the Union...
Well. Talk about adults in the room. There was one. And the idiots walked right down the cookie-crumb trail he laid for them. "Dark Brandon" definitely came out, though I can tell you that the Republicans are still bound and determined to cut Social Security and Medicare. You know, those safety nets YOU AND I PAY INTO, and we've paid into them ever since we drew a paycheck.
I used to say that I'd be grateful enough for my grandma and my parents to get theirs. Well, my dad died before he could draw his first check. My mom is in her mid-80s. She's terrified. And I just hit my mid-60s. And I'm mad.
Morons in Washington who were and are insurgents and traitors are sitting in the House and Senate because enough voters are idiots (and enough districts are gerrymandered) and those voters don't know or care that these folks DO. NOT. CARE. They want raw power and the squirrel-brained Magats who voted for them will be out on their pasty-white keisters into the cruel, cold world. Without a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out of, as my dad would say (cleaned up, of course!). They think that their little red hats will protect them.
He led them by their twitchy little noses right into admitting that, "of course" they're standing up for seniors and "of course" they wouldn't DREAM of cutting the social safety nets that everyone has been paying into. Because, why would they do that?
(Though, to be sure, the subsequent appearances on Fox to state that "obviously" they want to protect seniors fools absolutely nobody. They don't even believe evidence when the smoking gun is set in front of them, so the day they want to vote these safety nets down? They'll swear on the souls of their respective grannies that they NEVER said that they weren't going to do that...that their souls are pure and they're doing this "for the good of the people." To which I say, HORSE-PUCKIES.)
In spite of the shenanigans (or malarkey, if you prefer) of the screeching gibbon MTG and the scowls of Lauren "Food Poisoning" Boebert, the president actually played them like phonograph records.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer set of sub-human criminals.
Now, calling the DOJ... Would you PLEASE start arresting the people higher up the food chain? Particularly the Mango Maggot? It's time. It's well past time. You're sending absolutely the wrong signal - that they can get away with saying - and DOING - anything and y'all aren't going to do a blessed thing.
That would be a tragic lesson for us to learn. And would be another nail in the coffin of decent, respectful discourse and civil behavior.
Toilet Water...
A long, long time ago, "toilet water" was a lightly scented perfume used after bathing or shaving. "Eau de toilette" was an elegant way of saying "light scent."
People used base scents, like lavender, geranium, and the like. And it's pretty concentrated, though "light" - about 8% perfume oil, where cologne is more like 3-5%.
Well. Then there's the OTHER toilet water.
I heard slurping and thought that Raisa had been drinking out of the bowl, which is normally in the kitchen.
As you may remember, we have a "gated community," because the girls don't get along. I mean, seriously don't get along, and while we thought it would get better as they got older, it really hasn't. So for our own sanity and safety, we keep them separated.
Wasn't Raisa. It was Quinn, drinking out of the "Porcelain Water Bowl." See, in the one bathroom, Hubby leaves the lid up. I am a "keep it closed" kind of person, because first, that's how we did it growing up, and second, I've always had dogs. Never a potty-drinker, but why take chances? And of course, in the days when you used toilet cleaners that were the in-the-tank kinds of things (which I no longer use), the potty-drinkers would've been poisoned!
We have never had a potty-drinker. Till now.
Gives a new name to "toilet water," and the toilet is now closed. There's a second bowl in the bathroom, and the one time Hubby forgot to shut the lid, Quinn went back to the Porcelain Water Bowl because apparently, that's the vintage of water she prefers. Um. No. Lesson learned.
The Saga of the Hip...
Well. I totally blew January, as I figured I would. It was a rough month. I was supposed to have the 3rd shot, but I didn't.
I have now acquired a sore shoulder because I think I've been using the cane wrong, and my muscle tone in the left leg is shot. And of course, the right shoulder being the side I use the cane on -- shoulders aren't meant to take our body weight over a period of time.
And, hey -- let's throw in me being on the spectrum with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, because my muscle tone has been shot to smithereens, my joints are killing me. There's nothing to "cure" with EDS. All you can do is strengthen the muscles around the joints. Which is what my regular yoga practice was doing. I am literally not practicing...and I mean that in the grammatical sense of "literally." I am not practicing at all. Which has really wreaked havoc on my body. A lot of it was and is the pain.
And a lot of it was January. The month I lost my sister, a year ago. That was a clumsy sentence, but that's what has been whirring in my mind. It's depression and grief expressing themselves physically.
It also doesn't help that (a) I've had a lot of work which involves sitting my butt in front of a computer up to 6 hours a day; and (b) knitting is safer when I'm sitting! I'm on a baby deadline.
I have been exercising as much as I can. But it's not enough.
I have a plan... I'm going to get the 3rd shot in the series. Then I'm going to ask my doctor to send me to physical therapy. And then we're going to talk about a scope to see if they can blast those bone spurs off the ball of my hip and the socket of my hip. I don't necessarily think they'll do anything with the labrum. For those of us who are flexy-bendy beings, our joints are inherently unstable in the first place -- so trimming or removing any of that labrum is just going to destabilize it further. But -- I'm thinking that if they can remove the bone spurs, that might alleviate a lot of the pain.
You should hear my hip. It snaps, crackles, and pops. It's not cool. It's kinda freaky.
So I'm waiting for the doctor's office to call me back to schedule things and we'll move forward.
Random Picture...
And all of the bridges are old. Like "we have to hand-make parts" old. We run cycles of which bridge is closed. There used to be individual bridge tenders in their little towers next to the bridges, but now they're trying to centralize and computerize the raising and lowering of the bridges. So one by one, the bridges are now cycling through the process of being upgraded with computers and software.
A few months ago, I got caught. If you're a "lifer" in this town, you can usually anticipate the bridges, and you know the side roads, and alternate routes, and a way to get around without being caught.
Well. Occasionally, you lose at "bridge roulette." There's even a high-rise bridge which is known to back up for a mile or two if you don't time it right...
This was one of the bridges which lies south of the high rise bridge. And it was a beautiful morning. So I sat and listened to the radio while I was waiting.
Because sometimes that's all you can do. Waiting. An art that all of us who live here have cultivated. Because like time, you can't stop a bridge from going up or coming down.
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