It Ain’t The Gin

Because of our ongoing drought conditions, cotton production here in the flatlands is way down — like from an average of between 28,000-35,000 bales to between 3,000 to 5,000 bales (A bale is 480 lbs/218 kg of ginned raw cotton, and contains enough cotton to make 200 pairs of Jeans, 250 single bed sheets or 1200 T shirts). So, what’s ripping my sinuses a new one can’t be the cotton stripping and ginning (which throws all kinds of herbicide and defoliant laced organic matter and soil into the atmosphere).

Odds are it’s juniper. We have a lot of Ashe Juniper (Juniperus ashei) here and southeast of us, as well as some Oneseed juniper (Juniperus monosperma) and Pinchot’s juniper or red berry cedar (Juniperus pinchotii). Winter/spring is not a good time of year because of a thing called “cedar fever” — which is like “hay fever” except caused by cedar and juniper pollen. We’ve recently had some rain, and that’s evidently set off another round of it, and it has been reading my sinuses the Riot Act.

It also gives me what I call “sniper sneezes” — Like you’re innocently and unsuspectingly going about your daily life, unaware that a sneeze sniper has you in the crosshairs. Then BANG! you’re hit with this massive sneeze without warning. Usually, with a sneeze, you get that inhale bit at the start, which is like cocking the thing and dropping a round into the chamber, so you have something to sneeze with (which is the whole point of the exercise). Not with a sniper sneeze. Your sneezer goes off whether there’s a round in the chamber or not, you gasp reflexively and that immediately sets off a second sneeze. I have actually banged my head on stuff . . . .

So, Walkers Shortbread makes Christmas shapes! — which go down just as easily and deliciously as their regular ones, especially with a pot of Twinings’ Christmas Tea, which is a nice black tea with cinnamon and clove spices. No, I did not eat the whole box of cookies at one sitting. I only ate half the box. I am exercising self discipline. Sorta. But actually, I’m not really into cookies in general (except shortbread and soft sugar cookies with icing), or cake (unless it’s got buttercream icing and squirty icing shapes), or pies (except mincemeat, cherry or pumpkin). Cheese cake, though. And ice cream. Those are my Achilles heels. (One on each foot. Fair is fair.)

I have to confess I’m not all that into chocolate, either. (Yes, I am a heretic and have betrayed my sex. Deal with it.) Rolos and Ghirardelli’s dark chocolate raspberry squares are the only chocolate I eat consistently, but I can take it or leave it.

I ran across this the other day and it’s brilliant. This is what the autism spectrum actually looks like. We all have all the traits, just in different amounts. I have a lot of a couple traits but don’t have much of most of the other traits, which means I can “pass” for neurotypical.

Speaking of which, the Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year holiday season is an exhausting time of year for me. Parties, family get-togethers, dinners. I’m expected to mingle in crowds of people, do lots of group stuff and socialize. Crowds make me very claustrophobic; the babble noise of a bunch of people in a room is overwhelming; I don’t like to be touched, let alone get unsolicited hugs; and I am schmooze-impaired. For those of us on the spectrum, socializing is a “fake it till you make it situation,” except we can never make it. We’re the cat among the cows. All the cows instinctively understand how to be cows. We cats have to play it by ear. All the time. We never get to see the sheet music. Ever.

There’s going to be a party tomorrow from 4:oo-6:00 p.m. I’ll attend. There will be food involved. Since I’m not on chemo anymore, a glass of wine to make the spirit bright might be in order.

I saw a Twitter quote the other day that made me guffaw: “What do I want for Christmas? I want what every girl wants for Christmas: Death to the patriarchy and pockets in all my clothes.” Amen! Me, too.

I have a pair of fleece-lined snuggly house shoes but I can’t put them on without having to bend down and straighten out the back of the heel. I found myself opting to walk on cold floors in bare feet rather than take the time to do that. So I got me some house shoes I can just step into on those occasions when I can’t sleep through the night without a potty break. Eliminating life’s little annoyances one at a time.

In the knitting news, I have one bootie finished, one bootie that just needs the little green edging, and about 17 rows and sleeve edging left on the dress skirt. Gauge is 10 rows to the inch. Skirt is 9 inches long + 9 rows of seed stitch. Going to try to get it finished, blocked and in the mail by Monday. Good thing the relative humidity is 38% and it’s merino wool sock yarn.

C. S. Harris has a new Sebastian St. Cyr novel coming out in April, 2023. Oh, joy! Sharon Lee and Steve Miller have a new Liaden novel coming out in July, 2023.

Have you seen that Kraft mayo commercial that says there’s no such thing as too much mayo? I agree in principle, but not in brand. (Hellmann‘s mayo. Please.)

No such thing as too much tomato either. I make Christmas BLT’s — no L. (Think about it. It’ll come to you.) Just a slice of toast, mayo, tomato slices, four or five slices of bacon, tomato slices, mayo and a slice of toast. You will notice paper towel diapers on both sandwiches. Necessary. After one sandwich, the paper towel is too soggy to use again. Serious, if soggy, nums.

Woke up from a dream the other morning with the sad knowledge that Honduras is closed to me now. Sigh.

Is That Me Buzzing?

I brush my pearlies with one of those battery powered spin brushes, which buzzes as it spins. But then I noticed that when I was brushing my lower left back molars, they were buzzing, too. Curioser and curioser. That back molar and the one in front of it are both implants. Turns out the crown on that back one has a tiny bit of play in it. The dentist I went to for years and years had already done one implant back in 2017, and had gotten this implant all the way to the point that all that was left to do was put the crown on. Then he died of COVID in December of 2020. He had one of those setups where two dentist went together and bought the building, but then each practiced out of one side of it. The doctor who practiced out of the other side was the one who ended up finishing the implant. So, I left a message with his receptionist yesterday, she called me this morning, and they worked me in at 1 pm this afternoon. I was in and out in 10 minutes, no charge. He said there was only a little play in the crown and that it wasn’t in danger of falling off, but to come back if it got worse. Everybody had a good laugh at my buzzing tooth.

On my way back from the dentist, I drive right by what used to be my friendly neighborhood package store, so I stopped and picked up some Harvey’s Bristol Cream (sherry) so I could have my nog with appropriate holiday spirit.

Mom has to take a distribution from their IRAs before the first of the year or get penalized. It’s a nice little chunk of change and I’m not all that wild about having to schlep a check that size from her broker over to the bank. Her broker mailed a direct deposit form which came today, and I’ve got to fill it out and take it over for her to sign, and then mail it back with a voided bank check and all. Then they can just direct deposit the dough. I’m sure the bank won’t mind.

While I was at the dentist’s, the front desk called me and asked me if I was aware I had four packages down there waiting for me to pick up. Yep. Mom wanted a little Christmas tree with lights that she could plug and unplug. Most of the “ready made” ones were two feet tall (and battery powered), which is too big for what she needs, so I ordered the parts off Amazon and DIY’ed one. I’m still waiting on the star for the top. Should be here by the end of the week. “Assembly required” was actually a cheaper route to go than the “everything included” for a tree that was too big. She’s not getting it until after Thanksgiving, though. This business of starting to put up Christmas decorations before Halloween is for the birds.

I didn’t get to sleep until nearly 6:00 o’clock this morning. I was reading Cyteen by C. J. Cherryh, one of my all-time favorite authors. She got the Hugo for this one. I started it at 8:00 o’clock Sunday morning, but that sucker is 850+ pages.

Yesterday being Sunday, I shifted the bed into “recline,” got some nice music going on my Kindle Fire and dived right in. It’s a real page turner, though. My Alarm went off at 9:00 a.m. for my first set of meds. I’d taken my second set and had gotten back in bed to sleep some more when the dentist called. I set the “movable” alarm for 11:30 and went back to bed. When that alarm went off, I was dreaming about trying to get to my dental appointment, but the mechanics messed up my van. While I was trying to find their “loaner” vehicle so I could get to my appointment, I got tangled up in a party Emma Thompson was throwing in this house the loaner was parked behind. Sam Elliott was there and handed me a half eaten gallon tub of cherry vanilla ice cream, but I wouldn’t take it. “I can’t eat ice cream and drive a car at the same time!” was what I was protesting when I woke up. I’ll be going to bed early tonight.

My carafe came. I need to wash it and do a load of hot chai tea in it. With a dollop of vanilla almond milk creamer . . .

I’ve got a cardiologist appointment at 2 pm tomorrow, and I need to make a post office run and a Walmart run. I’m out of tandoori naan (which goes great with soup, BTW), for one thing, and I want another carton of almond milk egg nog. I also want to see if they have any ugly Christmas sweaters . . .

Shakespearean Sleep

You know. The “Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care.” That one. I’ve been doing a lot of it lately. Healing. Trying to get my body back onto an even keel from this roller coaster chemo ride I’ve been on since February.

I woke up today from a dream about a house. Such a beautiful house. I don’t know what the outside looked like, but the inside had sort of a Frank Lloyd Wright low/wide vibe going with those high, oblong clerestory windows with shelf-deep sills of his prairie style. The interior was all white, white-glazed terra cotta tile floors, white walls, white ceilings. I had this fabulous collection of hand thrown pottery bowls and vases and teapots and whatnot out on the shelves, a built in computer area with three big monitors, a 3-D printer and a large format color printer that could print the map sized full-color artwork I drew. It had mid-century modern style furniture. There were two complete bathrooms, one in front of the other. The back one could only be reached through the front one(?!). The back one had 1940’s style plumbing and a bathtub. The front one had modern fixtures and a fully-tiled walk-in shower. Both bathrooms were all in white. (There was this older black woman who rented the back bathroom and slept in the tub(?!).) The really wonderful, amazing thing thing about the house, though, was that there was this special fiber-optic coating on all the walls that you could download pictures or videos into — like moon jellyfish swimming in a cerulean ocean, or a coral reef with swimming fish, or a birch grove in a forest. It covered the walls like wallpaper and you could change the display on any wall whenever you wanted to whatever you wanted. That was a really nice dream, and I wanted to roll over and go back into it. Sigh.

And here it is half past October. Mom and I have been at Carillon for just over a year now, and I’ll have been in this apartment a year in January. (When mom went to Carillon House, I moved to a 1-bedroom apartment.)

Evil Mutant Orchid

Stoned Pine

Peace lily

The orchid that her niece brought mom is taking over the world. I watched a YouTube video that said you could water it this way. Looks kinda mutant evil with its roots doing that, but this species of orchid usually lives in a really humid climate (which this isn’t) and its roots absorb water from the air. This way, though, it can water itself at will and I don’t worry about over-or under-watering it. The peace lily is blooming two blooms, which means I must be doing something right. The Italian stone pine looks kinda stoned. I try to keep turning it so the branches will grow straight, but it gets ahead of me.

In the knitting news, WIPs are ongoing. I may have to amend the pattern for this cowl to add in even more than 12 stitches — like maybe 15? I have a bowl of knitting on the computer desk, a bowl of TV knitting by the TV chair, and a bowl on my bedside rolling table. Nothing like being spoiled for variety . . .

We haven’t had a freeze yet. We haven’t even been down into the 30’s yet. We’ve barely just dipped a toe down into the 40’s. (The way the weather’s acting, kids will be trick-or-treating in short sleeves. . . .) The leaves are kinda ho-hum turning just because the days are getting shorter. There’s a lot of houses that landscape with these (native) post oak (Quercus stellata) trees (that acorn all over the driveway and sidewalk), and in the older neighborhoods some of them are quite big now. They turn this lovely oxblood red.

Alone Again

We got Mom, her two plastic grocery bags full of medications (current and refills), and her lift chair over to Carillon House Monday. Once we got her settled, I brought a cart load over. I got her charge cords for her phone and tablet situated, got her lamp situated, and I brought over her personal effects (toiletries, etc.) two changes of clothes and her gown in the first cart load. In the second cart load, I brought over the bedside commode (which has arms) that goes over the toilet so it’s easier for her to get up and down, as well as her shower chair and her thick, “side sleeper” pillow that she needs because she is so kyphotic she can’t lie flat. I then left for Wal-Mart to buy the grocery stuff I can’t get at Market Street (like this cereal I like) as well as ten of those clothes hangers where you can hang pants and a top on the same hanger. I also stopped in at Market Street for a few groceries (I was out of my kind of bread and almond milk).

Last night was the first night I’ve spent alone in the apartment in two months. I’d like to say I slept in, but I had too much to do. I woke up out of a strange dream about my mom. I was holding her in my lap and she was about the size of a three-year-old. I knew she was weak and not doing well. We were waiting for the ambulance to come. It was one of those dreams that take you aback. It didn’t pack quite the same punch as the “you need to see about this” dreams I’ve had, but it got my attention. One of the “strong” impressions I carried out of the dream was the feel of her in my arms. What a way to start my day!

I got the address changed on her newspaper delivery, so she’ll get her paper there now. I got her room number written in laundry pen in all her clothes and got the “matching sets” of pants and tops hung on the double-decker hangers. That was my load today. Her new standing beauty saloon appointment is on Tuesdays at 3 pm. Since the lady that does hair, does hair at both Carillon House and our neck of the woods, just on different days, we worked out an arrangement where I can pay her by the month when she’s here. One less thing for Mom to stress over. I took her clothes over and got them all hung up, as well as about six boxes of tissues — enough to last her at least a week! LOL!

Tomorrow she has what will hopefully be her last visit to the wound care doctor. Thursday, I meet with the Carillon House lady to sign all the paperwork. Hopefully I’ll have gotten the white laundry marker pen by then and can mark her socks and this one black night gown.

I’ve been drinking Peach Tea flavor Crystal Light in my 32 oz stainless steel water bottle but with about half a cup of actual peach juice in it — tasty. Since I’ve made about five trips back and forth to Carillon House now, I’ve been knocking back quite a lot of it. I’ve still got at least one more load to take over — pictures to be hung, odds and ends, and the three poinsettias she’s gotten from her friends. They’ll Christmas up the place something fierce.

By the by — if you’re looking for a quick, relatively inexpensive way to make multiple gifts, here’s a craft idea: A pincushion jar. You need some cotton fabric, some kind of fine sand or finely ground buckwheat hulls or finely ground walnut shells, some lace edging, satin ribbon, needle and thread, small canning jars with rims and lids, and a glue gun. You cut a circle of cloth that is two inches larger in diameter than your jar lid. Sew a gathering stitch around the outer edge of the fabric and gather the edges of the circle into a bag. Fill the bag a little over 1/2 full with sand. Pull the gather tight and wrap thread around the gather to hold it closed. On the top of the jar lid, lay down a circle of hot glue around the edge of the jar lid and then squiggle the hot glue generously in the center. Put the gathered edge of the fabric in the center of the jar lid and press down on it until the fabric is glued to the jar lid. This is your pincushion. Glue the outer edge of the pincushion to the inside of the jar rim. Glue lace around the jar rim, tie satin ribbon around it. Screw the rim onto the jar. Using sand in the pincushion keeps the tips of the pins rust-free and sharp. I store buttons in my jar, but you could put anything in it — packets of needles, measuring tape, sewing notions, whatever.

Unsweetened Dreams

I suppose I may have had nightmares, but I was never aware of them. I don’t ever remember having a frightening dream. My dreams are typically neither happy, nor sad, nor scary. In terms of emotional overlay they’re all kind of ‘meh’ bland. The worst they would ever get is when I’m looking for something I can’t find (like where I parked my car or or a destination I’m trying to reach) and feel either low-grade frustration or low-grade anxiety from time pressure.

There was a time when I had a lot of dreams about walking in a straight line and when I came to a house, I would walk into it through the front door, through it, out the back door, through the back yard, the back gate and into the back yard of the next house, etc., in a long line of houses, one after the other. There was never any sense of destination, only walking in a straight line through a succession of different houses at night.

Sometimes my dreams will have characters and a coherent (and actually a rather good) plot, but most of the time they’re rather random and amorphous. Sometimes I’m “first person” — the point-of-view character to which the dream is happening — and sometimes I’m “third person” watching myself within the dream. But I only very, very rarely had a dream I was glad to wake up from.

However, in the last couple of years, my dreams have taken a “nonpleasant” turn. The subject matter has become darker. Thank goodness the emotional intensity – or lack of same – has remained the same. But the dream content tends to leave a bad taste in the mouth.

Night before last, I was having a dream about being in a big box store like Home Depot and people outside started shooting. I knew they had automatic weapons and that we had better get on the floor because they were going to rake the building with weapons fire. I wasn’t frightened, but was in that hypercalm, focused frame of mind that is fortunately my reaction to a crisis situation. I managed to get out of the building, but it was night and foggy, and I was trying to find police officers to tell them what the situation was, that there were active shooters in the area and people in danger in the store. Couldn’t find any police, although I felt certain somebody must have called them. Then the real-life phone rang and woke me up.

It was my mom. She’s always so chipper on the phone, like Stevenson’s birdie with the yellow bill, wanting to know if I was eating lunch. (I wasn’t. I’d been sound asleep.) The reason she called was she was still feeling aftershocks from the email crisis that erupted when AT&T gave Mozilla Thunderbird the cut direct and she’d had to revert to the Yahoo website to deal with her email. With emotions still running high over that, she had gone a whole half a day without having gotten any emails (it was just after noon). She was convinced something was wonky with the Yahoo website and she wanted me to go send her an email to test if Yahoo was working. I told her I would have to go boot up my computer.

Now, you have to understand that my mom and I have a major philosophical difference. We march to two very different drummers. She gets up at the crack of dawn, boots up her computer on her way to the front door to get the morning paper and have breakfast, and checks her email about 10 times during the day. The idea that anybody would want to sleep in the daytime is inconceivable to her. Why, something might happen, and they would miss it! I, on the other hand, am allergic to mornings, spent nearly 30 years working nights, loved the peace and quiet of it, and would continue to be a night owl if I had my druthers.

I had gone to bed after midnight, couldn’t get warm (the low was 38 F 3.3 C and the place I live in has no insulation to speak of). I finally got up at 3:30 in the morning and took a hot shower, and finally warmed up enough to go to sleep. Come noon and I wasn’t done sleeping yet. What I was done with was that dream.

But here’s the take-away from all this. There are prescription drugs which have the side-effect of causing nightmares, and I’m on two of them: Cetirizine (antihistamine) and metoprolol (blood pressure and heart rhythm disturbances). I’m pretty sure because of the chronicity that it’s the metoprolol, either by itself or in addition to the cetirizine, that is the culprit. So far, these nonpleasant dreams I’ve been having are not unsettling enough to ask my cardiologist if I might be able to switch from metoprolol to atenolol, which does essentially the same thing but with a lower incidence of that particular side-effect. I guess if I can put up with the constant ringing in my ears from the aspirin, I can put up with these dreams . . .

To end this post on a more pleasant note, I thought I’d leave you with my current earworm:

The lyrics to this one are haunting. . .

Hotober

Here it is October and it was 90 F (932.2 C) yesterday.  I just wish it would get cool already.  Yet another 90+ day is predicted for the 7th, and the 10 day forecast contains only a couple of days with predicted highs below 80 F (26.6C), with lows in the 50’s F (10+ C).

If the weather will just get cool, I can pull the folding banquet table out from under my bed and block some shawls, which will involve using a steam iron since the shawls are made from acrylic yarn.  There’s no point in using a steam iron unless it’s going to help heat the house.

I’ve had a box of Barilla Rotini and the big covered pyrex bowl sittting out on my counter for about 10 days now nagging me to make pasta salad, which I finally did early yesterday morning before it got hot.  I cooked the whole box, but I only put about 1/3 of it in the pasta salad.  (I’ll eat the rest of it straight tossed with olive oil and zapped in the microwave.)  I chopped half a white onion, about five green onions, put in half a little can of chopped olives, a small can of Delmonte mixed vegetables (peas, corn, green beans, lima beans, diced carrots) and diced Carving Board turkey, with mayo to moisten.   Very tasty.  Some quartered cherry tomatoes or chopped celery would have been nice, if I had had any. . . .

After that, I’ll be having chili cheese dogs.   (Why do hot dogs STILL come in packages of 8 and buns come in packages of 6!?)  I’ve got half a pack of hot dogs (4) and a package of buns (6) in the on-deck circle of my fridge and a can of Wolf Brand chili in the pantry.  I’ll chop up the other half of the onion I used in the pasta salad, and I’ve got a package of sprinkle cheese.   They’re “artisanal” buns, so I guess I could have two hoagies with the extras.

There’s a series on YouTube called Cocktails with a Curator, where one of the curators of the Frick Art Collection discusses a painting or an objet d’art, while having an appropriate cocktail — recipes are given in the program notes on the website — evidently you’re supposed to mix yourself one of whatever they’re having so you can sip along with them.  The videos are pretty interesting, but I’m telling you, some of the cocktails they come up with, I don’t think I could even finish half of one before I’d be hooter than a drunk owl.  When you’ve already combined absinthe and vodka and the mixer is champagne, that’s a little hard core, guys!

I keep having these stupid dreams where I can’t find my car, or I can’t find my luggage or my purse, or I can’t find a place I’m supposed to go to.  Like, every night.   Then I wake up mildly anxious and unsettled.   Of course, some of the medication I’m on (metoprolol and cetirizine (Zyrtec) list “nightmares” as a potential side effect.  I wouldn’t class these dreams as “nightmares” per se.  Nightmares are frightening.  These dreams are just disquieting and annoying.

I did have one the other day where I attacked this woman — I’m talking hitting and punching and strangling.  She was not somebody I knew.  I only knew she needed to be stopped.  I was shocked by the violence of my actions in that dream.  Very out of charracter.  I don’t remember ever having such a violent dream.  If I have any more like that, I may have to change to another allergy medication or cut back on my metoprolol a bit.   When I take a whole tablet, all I want to do is sit and stare at the wall.  I cut back to half a tablet, which was an improvement, but my cardiologist kept wanting me to take the full dosage, so I’ve been taking half in the morning and half in the evening, and that was OK.  I may have to see about cutting back again.

I got my mom a sound bar for her TV for her birthday and I got it installed the other day.  I thought at one point I was going to have to go get my Act of Congress to get the thing to work.  The sound bar comes with both a m/f plug in cable and a fiber optic cable.  There was only one place for the plug in cable to go, and it wouldn’t work.  Of course, my mom’s TV is 11 years old, so forget there being a product manual that might have told me where the fiber optic cable jack was located.  I finally found it, and got the thing connected, and voilá.  Worked like a champ.  I hope it helps her.  Age related hearing loss runs in her family and her hearing loss is pretty bad in the speech frequencies so about all she watches are game shows and sports — things you don’t have to understand dialog to follow.   Of course, if you have a sufficient drop-out in a particular frequency or frequency range, no amount of volume will help.

Unfortunately, she’s not interested in reading books.   All she wants to do is sit in the chair and watch TV.   I suspect she has a significant amount of situational depression.  She is a very social person and her inability to socialize due to COVID has hit her hard — that on top of the fact that she keeps outliving all her friends.

 

Dreamscapes and Other Weird Places

Yesterday morning, I awoke out of an intense dream that had what I felt was fascinating imagery.  Anxious not to lose it, I flipped on the light, grabbed the message pad by the phone and scribbled, then flipped the light back off, rolled over and went back to sleep.

My handwriting is not especially legible at the best of times, but even less so when I’ve just awakened from a deep sleep and am writing on a little scratch pad while lying in bed.  It says:  “Dream about a man who carefully unpicks embroidery and brushes weaving smooth.  When embroidery totally unpicked, he turns into an old woman who embroiders something different on the cloth using the unpicked thread.”   Of course, he brushes the cloth to even the threads of the weave out to close up the holes where the embroidery needle pierced it.

One finds such interesting things washed up on the shores of sleep.

I’m Back In My Burrow Again

And it’s been so great.  I came home Thursday, so this is the third day I’ve been home.  I’ve been able to get some sleep and that, more than anything, has helped ‘knit up the raveled sleeves of care’ — to go all Shakespearean and English major-y on you.   The hardest part of my day so far, wounded knee not withstanding, has been positioning the pedestal fan to blow on me while I’m at the computer.

The physical therapy guy  came on Friday.  He helped me double check the house for “booby traps.”  He did end up switching my couch and my armchair in the living room so that my TV- watching seat is now the armchair rather than the couch.  (The couch was so hard for me to get up out of.)  One big point that he made was that my new knee is mine.  I can put my full weight on it and walk around on it right now without worrying about screwing up the implant.  I’m good to go.

What pain I’m having is 80% from the incision — which is over 12 inches long and has whacking great sutures in it, so duh!  — and 20% from postoperative swelling. The reason I’m having to use the walker is because of the swelling, which limits my flexibility and that messes with my balance; once the swelling goes down, I won’t need it.  I’m not pain free by any means, but what pain I do have is controlled by a couple of Tylenol (ibuprofen).  He says it’s very likely I won’t need the walker after about 10 days, and that it is entirely possible that I will be driving myself to outpatient physical therapy, which will start after I see my orthopedist on the 10th.  The risky bit is not the driving itself — my car has an automatic transmission — but getting in and out of the car! (In the US, the driver’s side is on the left, so the left leg is the major weight-bearing leg.)

We’re having a thunderboomer at the moment.  Line of thunderstorms moving across the city.   Rumbly, bumbly, rain.

When I sat down at the computer, I noticed this — it’s a collection of note cards that feature the art of Rima Staines.  I love the art so much that I put a loop of tape on the back of them and stuck them to some black posterboard and put them in an el cheapo poster frame.  It’s hanging on the wall behind my computer table so I can look at them whenever I wanted to.  It’s going to drive me crazy until I am able to get to where I can lift the frame down and fix it.  Sigh.

Last night I had one of those dreams that leaves you thinking, “Wow! Where did that come from?”  Part of it was about the Handel aria “Lascia Ch’io Pianga,”  A lot of Handel’s music, and 17th and 18th century music in general, that is now only sung by women (sopranos and contraltos) was originally written for the male castrati, and the only men who can sing it now are countertenors.  In my dream, though, there were two women singing it together in harmony — but Handel never wrote it as a duet!    One of my favorite versions is sung by Sarah Brightman, and I love music sung in harmony, so I guess my weird brain just dreamed up a harmony part and stuck it on.  It’s a shame I couldn’t remember the harmony part when I woke up, but I couldn’t have written it down if I had as I don’t write music, only sing it.  I’ve had the original version stuck in my head all day, though.   As earworms go, I’ve had far worse.

 

Tricks, Treats, and Tributes

According to ancient Celtic traditions, Samhain, which we had yesterday, marks the time when the veil between this world and the next becomes thinnest and it is easiest to communicate with those who have gone on before us.  I think my dream about the white cat was his spirit telling me that he is OK with how it went down and that I need to stop beating myself up about it.

Sometimes wearing earbuds while knitting with circular needles can be tricky.  Oh, what a tangled web I wove — but just until the end of the row! I was doing a proof of concept piece for this shawl pattern I’m trying to work out for the Mandala “Spirit” yarn I got, but it’s fighting me.   That tells me I need to put it aside and finish some of the (many!) things ahead of it in the queue.

I tried again on the Najidama Bay  shawl pattern and I’m still not 100% happy with it.  It’s on the back burner for now, too.   Grumble.  Grumble.  One bright light in this tunnel is the fact that I did finish the semicircular shawl

I was working on that was going to be a September gift, and now is going to be a Thanksgiving gift . . .  It’s a lovely shawl, but it just doesn’t shawl the way I like to be shawled.  I have modified the pattern to have five “rays” instead of four, but it’s a WIP* that’s on the back burner with a bunch of others right now.

What I need to do ASAP is finish the three hats and four cowls that go with the above shawl and several other pieces.

I’ve been watching some knitting vlogs, and I have come to several conclusions.  One is that my yarn stash which I think is so huge is nothing compared to the walls of yarn I see in these vlogs.  They do a show and tell, and whip out these especially made fabric project bags that people make and sell and buy, and it’s OK.  Whatever floats their boat.  I prefer zip-seal freezer baggies (the kind without the little slider thing, please).  They’re dust proof, waterproof, and you can see what’s in them without having to open them up.  They natter on about yarn made from this breed of wool and that breed of wool, and all these little independent yarn company yarns that feature this alpaca blend and that cashmere blend.  And it’s fine.  I’m allergic to wool, so that cuts out about 99% of what I call “snob yarn” (i.e., anything that costs more than $10 a skein!)   Compared to some of these ladies (and gentlemen) I’m just a dabbler.  But that’s all right.  Like the man says, “different strokes for different folks.”

My Halloween treat was this sunshiny little salad made with cottage cheese and mandarin orange sections.   Snarf city!  Mandarin oranges are the same thing as Satsuma oranges, BTW.  I’m having chai tea with vanilla cream in.

Absent Friends

Gobi Gobatiputtitatti
11 July, 1999 to 17 April, 2015

He had a variety of nicknames, but the one that stuck was “Pu” (short for Emperor Pu An Yu).  His father was a Godknows out for a night on the town.  His mother was a long haired lilac-point Siamese belonging to the then daughter-in-law of my then landlord and his wife.  They owned the apartment building where I lived for over 21 years, longer than I have lived anywhere else.  That building is no more, pulled down to make way for the building of the Marsha Sharp Freeway.  Where it was is now the deli section of a Market Street supermarket.

When I had Stormy put down in March of 2015, it was because she was dying of kidney failure.  That left me with two cats, Jaks and Pu, who was 15 going on 16, but was still healthy and active.  The reality of that situation was it cost $20 a day per cat to board cats at Petsmart’s pet hotel and my then 91-year-old mom wanted me to drive her places, to visit relatives and friends.  She would pay to board one cat, but not two.  I had Pu, my wingman, put down a month after I had to say goodby to my baby girl, Stormy.  That left me with Jaks, the black one I lost in January of 2018.  He was 11 when I had him put down also, right at the start of this horrible year.  He was badly overweight, had been getting clingy and very stressed by having to be boarded, and it was as if I somehow knew I was going to have a heart attack less than a month later, and be hospitalized four times over the next five months and be one sick puppy for most of the first half of the year. It was time for him to go and it was the first time in 21 years that I had been without a cat.  Yeah, I miss all of them, including my first two, Shadow whom I lost to osteosarcoma in 2004 and Jett whom I lost to diabetes in 2009, but Pu is the one I regret.  I could have kept Pu.

What brought all this on was I dreamed about him last night, ol’ Pu.  My wingman.  The one that followed me from room to room, content to be where ever I was, gruff, crotchety, opinionated ol’ curmudgeon that he was.   I dreamed he was living with my former landlord and his wife, and that I got to visit him there.  I was so glad to see him again.  I picked him up and held him in my lap and petted him and loved on him.  It was a dream of sensory memories, of having him to hold again.  The feel of his fur, the weight of his body, that one whisker (his wild hair) that grew in a quirky direction.  I started crying about the second sentence of this post, looking through my pictures of him, remembering his taste for paper, his thing about boxes, his puffy-fluffy, eloquent plume of a tail, the tufts of fur between his pink paw pads and his splendidly long whiskers. Remembering that time it rained on his house.   He was a part of my life for almost 16 years.  I had him longer than I had any of the other ones.   He’s the one I regret.  I could have kept him.