Whooping Cough and other fun stuff

Are you aware that adults can get Whooping Cough? I sure wasn't. But apparently, that's what I have. So I guess that means that I'll either be staying home from work for the next few days or holing up in a closet somewhere at work where I can't infect the little kidos while the antibiotics go to work. Although I'm pretty good at coughing into my elbow, you may want to cover your mouth while you're here and wash with antibacterial soap when you leave.

In the meantime, Allison, my upstream SP12 pal, nominated me for a little blog award, a highlight of my day. But then again, anything that doesn't involve gasping for a breath, clutching for my overworked lungs, or making the windows rattle in their panes from the coughing, would make my day.
Here are the instructions:
1. Please put the award on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded you
3. You must nominate at least 4 fellow bloggers for this award.
4. Add links to the recipients.
5. Leave a comment so the recipients know they have received an award.
So let's see here. There are so many blogs that I enjoy. Hopefully I'll pick a few here that haven't received this award yet.

Deb's Going Green has great ideas for those who are looking for living a little greener. She's very creative and has lots of ideas to share.

Good-Natured Ribbing has some must see knits over there! That knitter really has some talent! I always enjoy seeing what she's working on over there.

Knits with Balls gives me hope in the other sex yet. He's creative, good with his hands, and sounds like an all around good catch... now if only I could find myself one like that.

We Do Not Have a Knitting Problem = 100 uses for sock yarn, what's more to love? You'll love her flawless stitches and vibrant taste in colorways.

Reckless Glue will not only give you inspiration for knitting and retro dynamic photography, but she'll also entertain the pants off of you.

Check out any or all of these fine bloggers. I'm sure they would love it if you stopped by. Just don't cough on them and spread this dreadful thing.

on the couch

cough... hack... cough... augh... hack... hack.... gurgle... hack... cough...cough...cough...hack...weeze...couh...hack...coug...gurgle....hack...hack...cough...hack...cough...hack...cough...hack..cough...cough...

cough... hack... cough... augh... hack... hack.... gurgle... hack... cough...cough...cough...hack...weeze...couh...hack...coug...gurgle....hack...hack...cough...hack...cough...hack...cough...hack..cough...cough...

AHEDE week #2 question

(Anne, I hope you don't mind me 'borrowing' the photos you're posting along with each week's question. I noticed that we don't have a button yet and I love this picture... well, really most pictures of fall.)

Here in Atlanta, it's finally cooling down, and beginning to truly seem like fall. I sit now with windows open, and the air is cooler than usual, and trees are beginning to change. For me, cool mornings, crisp evenings, and trees in red, gold and orange glory are the very best parts of Fall - What are your favorite parts of fall? How do you know it's truly arrived where you are?

What's not to love about fall!?!?!? It's only my fav-or-ite season of the year! I love the colors of fall. That getting crisper almost damp easier to breath smell of fall. (my allergies have more to do with losing my voice and this year ear troubles rather than breathing issues like most) It's time to bust out a pretty scarf to throw over a long sleeve t-shirt or a unpack those sweaters that were hibernating all summer long. Jeans become a standard in the wardrobe that's perfectly acceptable. Pumpkins can be found just about everywhere you look. Earth tones and rusts are a favorite of mine. Oh, and then there's that thing about my b-day being in October and all. :)

In other news, Dobarah has lured me into the claws of Plurk. If you'd like to check it out and join the growing crowd there, click on the update Plurk widget on the sidebar.

On the knitting front, there has been some secret knitting and some Christmas knitting decisions made and planned for. I'm hoping to get an early start on it all because already looking at my calendar for the rest of the year makes my head spin. There's nothing that I would want to leave out, but there's a lot in there. I want to make sure I have enough time to fit it all in and maybe knit a few little somethin-somethins for meself intermixed in there as well.

For those of you following my run of doctor's appointments, we're almost complete with the latest transition into the newest combination of drugs and so far I think I like them. The migraines appear to be less and the side affects to be few. But the body still has some adjusting to do none the less. Now if I could just kick these allergies in the butt...

ch-ch-ch-changes

Being that several months ago my life turned completely upside down and it's been like trying to climb a mountain by your fingernails ever since, I decided that my life was in need of some changes. The look of this blog is just the tip of the iceberg. Sarah over at Blanche Knits in DC has taken on the adventure of moving in and being my new roommate (since the old bastard one left, sorry) and we're starting to get things going around the house. It's so wonderful to have life, energy and happiness in the house again. I've even spent the past few nights knitting! And Sarah started knitting again too. I can't even begin to tell you how good that feels! I also decided the other day to change my looks a little and went to my favorite Hair Cuttery and told her I didn't care what she did, just do something. Wow, what a something! She took off about 6 or 7 inches and I already feel lighter and less weighted down by my problems. I haven't taken any pictures yet but I'm sure one will be coming soon. Today I'm going to get my nails and tootsies done in preparation for my cousin's wedding this weekend. Speaking of the wedding, I'll be without my 'pooter from like Friday till Tuesday or Wednesday so don't be alarmed if you are trying to get a hold of me and I appear to be ignoring you. I promise to report back here when I return. Another change I'm hoping to make is loosing this weight again. I don't like that I've put on all the weight that I originally lost before having to go through all this crap. The meds are now all starting to come into alignment with each other and I'm beginning to feel myself again so it's time to start looking the way I want to look. I've lost 2 lbs this past week and I'm hoping to keep going. Only like 20 more to go. Well, that's all I can think of at the moment. Check back here on the progress of these changes and see what the next round of changes will be. Oh, and wish me luck!

You might have drug dealer potential if...

• you were carrying around large dosages of per*cocet and lor*tab just in case you were experiencing any pain.
• you've make scheduled appointments to the head doctor to inject nerve blockers directly into your neck.
• you're on a first name basis with your pharmacist that you've only known for three weeks.
• you've got several dosage amounts of both Lexa*pro and Verap*imil in your pocket.
• you've got a stash of several types of sleep enhancers at your disposal.
• you've got a life time licence to get as much neuro*tin as you please.
• you feel dirty walking onto a drug free school zone knowing what you are carrying in your purse.

OK so I promise that I'm not dealing to any of the little kiddos out there but all I can say is if I ever ran low on money, I know where I could make a quick penny or two.

I guess I should explain my absence (and my above comments). If you haven't guessed already, it's not because I've been on a knitting run and just couldn't stop to put down the needles to post. Actually the pleasure of knitting has slowed during this unhealthy time. Since Honey left I've been coming to terms with the word *depression*. It's an ugly but very real word. I now have insight to what so many American females are suffering from. It's a horrible spiraling condition to find yourself in. Once you realize that you're not yourself you start performing behaviors that aren't you even more which makes you feel guilty and bad about said self therefore falling deeper into the hands of the beast that started the whole thing in the first place. I am currently exploring the world of medicating that beast to keep him at bay. For now I've got him at a 10 foot pole. There is still work to do.

If that wasn't bad enough, the migraines are back. They caused a few fun trips to the emergency room where all sorts of happy drugs were administered, but somebody forgot to tell my body that it was supposed to enjoy the drugs or at least react a little to them in some why. From one of those visits they found a damaged nerve in my neck resulting in more so called happy drugs. These things just barely touch the pain let alone leave in me la-la land. What's up with that!?!?

My blood pressure is through the roof - still - so my body is officially falling into the generational line of my mother and grandmother. So why don't I have the big boobs to go with those genes???

On a good note, I am sleeping better. With all the drugs they've got me on they do seem to agree on one general side affect - sleepiness.

Slow Motion Mind

I feel as if I have been neglecting my own blog since the holidays. There has been little meaningful content here. I’m finding myself in a place in my life where I’m at another set of crossroads in which I need to decide in which direction I would like to travel. I tend to be an internal thinker/contemplator and don’t really do well with expressing my thoughts and teeter-tottering over things into words to express to others - hence my initial hesitation over blogging/journaling. This started out as a place to report on knitting progress, to be able to join in on the swap fun, and to share the craft with others like me. It has, in a small part, morphed into a little more than that, which is why I feel the need to be saying this now. I know that I don’t need to air my laundry out to dry here. And maybe I need to focus a little more on that and continue to move the blog along by sticking to it being a blog about knitting and nothing more. But I’ve met some dear people along the way that I feel a connection with and now have a desire to share more of my life with them than just what I’m knitting at the moment. So I’m torn a little.

Lately I’ve been consuming a lot of time feeding my addiction of visiting, reading, and collecting other blogs as it seems to be the start of an obsession. I’ve taken the knit blog world on as a retreat/avoidance from real life. And as Stacey said in a recent post, I need to get back to the root of what started it all – the enjoyment of the knitting. It’s not about how fast you finish or how many you finish. It’s about enjoying the process and participating in an enjoyable relaxing activity. Back to the roots of knitting.

In good news, January 4th had marked my 13th tumor anniversary (and sadly Buddy’s would have been 13th birthday). The end of December through January tends to be an emotionally charged time for me and what may be called depression reaches into all aspects of my life. This year slipped by better than the past. There was no crying at unexpected times. I didn’t feel such a need to set focus on what might (should) have happened that day. I haven’t gotten so completely lost in a conversation or movie because my mind has started to drift to other things or just go off into a blissful blankness. Maybe it’s showing itself in other ways these days, but I’m happy that there were no tears this year. In a few weeks I’m hoping to be back to my old chipper self and move on for yet another year.

Happy Birthday to me!

Sorry for the delay in posting about the big day... but really it wasn't all as big as it was cracked up to be.

If you've been subjecting yourself to reading this blog, you will know that lately I've become victim to migraines. I'm still getting used to them and trying to identify them before they actually come on. The neat thing about the whole total pain in the ass (oops head) headache is that they give you this weird kind of warning thing. I can't really explain it yet, and I'm not 100% at identifying it yet, but let's just say there's been about a 24 hour period of just feeling funky and strange without being about to put my finger on what it is just before the migraine comes on.

Wanna take a guess on how I woke up on my 31st birthday??? You guessed it.... in a funk. The whole day was sort of a blurry mess of just not feeling right but not really having any excuse as to why. Work was slow and boring. I spent most of the day wishing I could be at home or the local coffee shop knitting. The good news is that I got to come home right after my technical day is over (no after school meetings, yahoo!!!) and I took my Angel Neighbor shopping to help me pick out fabric for the fall casual bag. (I won't go into the experience of waiting for an hour for the guy behind the measurement table.) Now I need to block it so that she can work her magic on the lining.

When I finally got home, Honey was there waiting for me. And so were two packages. This is what I did with the first one:

That would be my fabulous Pumpkin Cascade 220 getting ready to take shape as Mr. Greenjeans wound on my brand new yarn winder. How beautiful is that cake I tell you! I'm ready to cake up everything I have. I'm trying to restrain myself. Honey sure how to win over a yarn lovers heart!

The other package was from dear old mom:

That would be 21 soft skeins of Encore yarn in three colors waiting to be turned into a blanket. I guess this will be one of my winter projects! Now to decide on a pattern. Mom sent one but I'm not completely sold on it just yet. I'm game for any ideas if anyone has any.

If this wasn't enough to finally make my day a happy one, Honey took me out for a wonderful dinner at Clyde's. I had a delicious butternut squash filled periogie dish with an onion chive cream sauce with bits of dried cranberries and toasted walnuts. What a perfect autumnal dish for an autumn baby! Every calorie was worth it 100 times over!!!

Sadly though, we were home by 8:00 and I went to bed shortly after that with a headache starting. And for the past two days there's been the looming headache casting a shadow over everything.

Tonight I've sent Honey out to play poker with the boys while I relax and recoup at home. Tomorrow morning I'm heading out bright (well, actually the sun probably won't be up yet) and early for the Alexandria Cancer Walk. Wonder what impact I'll have during this next year of my life....

Gesundheit!

Being sick sucks!

I've taught in the classroom for 8 years and very rarely was I ever sick. Usually just bothered by my own personal allergies (ya know from the bad ventilation systems in the schools) and sinus infections. But this year I'm not even in the classroom and I've had one head cold after another ever since school started! I wake up every morning not being able to breathe, a bucket and a half of snot coming out of every hole in my head, my eyes watering to the point of dehydration and I'm lucky if I catch all of this before sneezing it all over the bed and floor. (Watch where you sit and step just in case.)

Now Honey is also sick and between the two of us we've gone through two whole economy sized Kleenex boxes already this weekend. I'm all into reusing things so the empty boxes are now making great little havens for all the used germy snotty Kleenexs so they can all live happily together instead of all over the floor and coffee table. I've taken stock in Lysol for how much I keep spraying around the house to try to kill any germs hanging around. I've washed my hands so much that the soap is drying up my hands and making my fingers raw as I knit. Everything I touch needs to be disinfected. It's a good thing that I'm knitting felting projects and will be washed shortly. It's also a good thing that the weather is beautiful this weekend so I can open the doors and windows to try to air out the house a little.

For those of you from WW reading this, I'm totally off plan again this weekend. My body needs additional carbs at the moment to help soak up the snot in my belly.

On a good note, I did get out of the house for a little while yesterday to do a little shopping. I promise that I tried not to breathe on anyone. Picked up some nice felting yarn to begin working on my House Along project this week. (I missed last week because Honey had family visiting from New Zealand.) And Borders was having their teacher week so I picked up a few books for Christmas gifts as well as a few freebes they were giving to teachers and three great reads for myself.

No pics for today. The house looks like an Army-Navy store exploded in it. Honey is planning on taking a four day bike trip down the C & O Canal or something or other. I'm up to my ears in all his camping and biking gear everywhere. At least the snot rags are not living amongst the gear anymore.

Take a look at that ticker!!!

Did ya notice? Did ya notice? Go ahead, take another look at it. Do you see what happened there tonight? I went down 3.6 lbs this week!!! Can you believe it?! I am so beside myself right now. I had them triple check it because I didn't believe them.

Actually I'm really surprised because it's been quite a stressful week at work and I feel like I've eaten like crap all week. In fact yesterday's dinner consisted of an entire box (16 cookies) of Sugar Free Oreos and a large glass of Skim Milk, oh and a bowl of steamed veggies. I still haven't completely kicked the shadow of the headache that had me begging for mercy over the weekend. My body doesn't feel like it lost 3.6 pounds. In fact I dragged myself to the meeting tonight intending to assess the damage I've done because I feel like such crap.

Some things I did do right this week was my water to Diet Coke ratio. So I'm celebrating tonight with a Diet Barq's with dinner. And even though I haven't done my walking after work (the knee is no longer swollen, but still slightly sore and stiff but definitely working itself out), I've been walking like crazy all over the schools during the day. They sure have kept me busy this week!

So I have officially broke the 150 barrier I've been stuck at since Thanksgiving. It feels so good to be in the 140's even if it's just barely there. Only 4.8 to go! Maybe by Christmas?

There's still room in my Pay It Forward if anyone is interested. It's just a few posts down if you want to check it out.

H, FT, and FO - What a weekend!

Thank goodness this weekend was a three day weekend! Otherwise, we would have had to deal with student's first day back way too soon! Actually, I'm still not completely sure that I'm ready for them to come back even after today's first full day with students. I'm not ready to talk about all the fun stuff that goes along with school starting, so let's just focus on the happenings from the weekend..........

It all began on Friday, which should have been a 1/2 day for teachers and staff, but we all know that whether they are being paid or not, teachers will stay at school until the wee hours of the night the Friday before students arrive to get their rooms prepared and everything perfect for the first day. And so it goes without saying that I was requested for meetings Friday afternoon after the official end of the day. The whole day was going by in a sort of fog and I had that feeling like I really should just go home and go to bed before something drastic happens. Lesson learned - ALWAYS listen to that feeling!!! Read on. By the time I got home, a raging migraine had begun to invade my body and tear all of it's senses to ripping shreds. Poor Honey was looking forward to a sweet little date night out and instead he got a pre-PMSing (started that on Sunday), crying, partially dieing, miserable migraine to somehow share his dinner with (hopefully without it returning to the table unexpectedly) and share the couch with while watching rented movies over the snoring and moaning. Needless to say, neither of us really enjoyed our Friday night date night. Throughout the night was rough as well, with me only getting 1 to 2 hours of sleep at a time before waking up to the monster clawing his way out of my skull and pulling with him the gremlin living within my stomach. This experience was proving to me that the fabulous meds that my loving doctor prescribed were obviously NOT working. Much stronger drugs were going to be needed if I was ever going to survive this one. So at 7:30 Saturday morning, I drug myself from bed to beg Honey to take me to the Hospital for the "real stuff." The kind nurses (a total of 4) all tried their hand at inserting an IV with no such luck as I laid there helpless and with my brain cells exploding by the minute. Finally someone came by with the magical pills - or so they called them magical, even though after two magical pills, finally an IV of the even better stuff, and several hours of in and out of consciousness, the headache was still there. However, I decided I was in a much better situation now being that I was sooooooo beyond cloud 9 at that point that I really didn't care that I had a headache and all I wanted to do was to go home and sleep it off. So goes my Saturday.

On Sunday, my dear friend Ruth had arranged for us to take a little field trip to a LYS (actually located on the other end of DC) that her friend has opened. With still a slight ringing in my head, off we went. We enjoyed a wonderfully delicious lunch at Franklin's and then spent a little time browsing the adjacent shop for fun tidbits to add to our Knit1Tea2 swap partners. What a great store! Since Honey had taken off that morning to go help build the house, I couldn't help but by him some gummy bacon to reward him for a good hard day's work (and to thank him for getting up so early and being so patient with me while I screamed in pain at the nice needle ladies poking and prodding my arms, hands, and wrists the day before). We then spent many an hour browsing the lovely shelves of The Tangled Skein. Have I mentioned my compulsion to touch fabrics and yarns? But then again who wouldn't with all that fabulouso color happening all around you? So what won my heart over this time?

Ruth and I both decided on making this great little casual bag on the cover of my Knit book. So we picked out some great Noro Silk Garden, mine in colorway #239. I'm thinking the colors are a nice relaxed fall colorway. It's got it's browns, autumn reds, and muted blues. I can't wait to see how it comes out.

Some more Tofutsies! The one on the left is mine and I'm already thinking of the pattern they will be perfect for. The one of the right is for Sarah, a gal from WW who also knits. It's going to be her reward for making a short term WW goal. I'm going to woo her through her first pair of socks.... scary thought, I know.

And last, but not least, this ultra adorable pattern for some fabulous felted bags that I'm thinking I'll felt up as some Christmas gifts. Dontcha just love the flowers and how they vine up the strap?! Sunday was a good day even if the shadow of the beast was still hanging around.

On to FO Monday. Oh no, not Freaking Out because it's Monday, no work remember? No, I'm talking FINISHED OBJECT MONDAY!!! How much fun were these socks?! And how great do they look on me?!

Maybe it's just me, but my feet rock! Have you ever seen such great looking feet?! I'll await the calls from my agent for those foot model calls. Thanks again Stacey for sharing your love of purple. The Virtuous Vixens of Violetville will have to pry these babies from these tootsies!

Over all the weekend started off as a real bust, but success was able to be pulled off in the end. (We just won't mention that I was planning on working on the seaming for Isabella and never got around to it. Don't spoil my moment will ya.)