Another Book Done

I’m making my way through those three books I have been reading and finished Life and Death by Stephanie Meyers the other day. This version of the Twilight tale was much more in line with the vampire novels I grew up reading. There was the gut wrenching reality of dying in order to be reborn. The loss of so much to gain this new life. The choice being made long before it happens. Bella definitely had an amazing adventure, but I really enjoyed Beau. And Edward is great, but Edythe was wonderful.

It’s a much shorter ride, but I absolutely loved the way this version played out. There was a sense of Meyers having had enough time to really flush out each character’s story and create a richer world with less words. Life and Death is such a satisfying twist. I’m so tickled by the nostalgia I felt as I finished it. I have read so many variations of vampire stories. Horror, romance, action-adventure, mystery, comedy, you name it, I’ve read it and this one definitely ranks with the best of them.

I do find it interesting that when there is a type of story that is predominantly loved by women, especially romance stories, there is a need to dissect and explain why it’s ridiculous and that any self respecting woman wouldn’t like these flat and unimaginative works of fiction. I love the Twilight novels. And so do many other intelligent, emotionally aware females of all ages. There is a lot more to this tale than a sparkling, ‘vegan’ vampire. And why can’t we have stories that are just for fun? Why does everything we do have to have some bigger agenda?

I have one more novel in this world sitting on my shelf. Midnight Sun, Edward’s version of things. As the weather and length of daylight shift quickly towards Autumn, I feel I may be in the mood to read it sooner rather than later. At the moment I am focused on finishing The Girl in Red, by Christina Henry. Still an eerie read for having been published in 2019. More on that to come.

Happy reading, everyone.

I Don’t Recommend Kidney Stones

I really thought I’d be feeling better after my kidney stone surgery, but I underestimated the ‘discomfort’ of the stent in my ureter. The doctors all told me it would be ‘really uncomfortable’ and is not pleasant to have, but they really undersold the pain factor. They warned me about the constipation too, but I must have been too loopy from the pain and all my medications to actually understand what it meant.

I’ve been back to work for a week now, and it has been the hardest week of massages in my career. I handled being 8 months pregnant and doing five massages five days a week better than I did the four days of three massages a day (one day was four appointments) I did this past week. I’m glad I’ve had years of practicing being ok even when I’m not because those acting skills really came in handy for work.

I’m also incredibly grateful for the therapists I work with. They are all such amazing people and so supportive. They know exactly the kind of pep talk a massage therapist in pain needs to get through their day. When I had a couples massage the other therapist flipped and cleaned the room for me. Their acknowledgment of my obvious improvement (I finally realized I really did need to keep taking certain medications to alleviate my suffering) worked like a spell and my final day was the easiest and most normal one so far.

Our front desk staff (there has been only one plus the owner until recently and now we have one more person on the front desk) has had to do a lot of rescheduling for me due to needing three weeks off last minute. Then I went and changed my permanent schedule after the cut-off because I really have to accept my limits. It wasn’t a huge change, but I know what it takes to do it and that’s why I work where somebody else does it for me and I am always so grateful for them. Our long time person, whose been with us since we reopened after the only close-down we’ve experienced, could recognize my struggle and did her best to help me out through this week.

And I just can’t sing the owner’s praises enough. The amount of thought, time, and energy she puts into the place to give us therapists the best environment possible is way more rare in this industry, and all work forces honestly, than it should be and is incredible. By taking care of almost everything for us and paying us commissions that actually have us seeing real worth, she allows us to be our best. Thus lots of people love what we do and her business has grown and been able to keep steady through this all.

So I’m adjusting to my new, but temporary, normal and am so grateful for everyone where I work making it as easy as possible for me. The rest of the time I’m focusing on rest, or restful activities. With any luck, I’ll only have this thing in for another three weeks. I don’t really see it coming out any sooner. If that becomes possible, I would be a very happy me. Drink your water, and get some citrus in regularly. Kidney stones are the worst.

The ‘Secret’ Husband Sweater is Done

Finishing a sweater always seems to be so anticlimactic. All the hours of knitting, reading and re-reading the pattern, making notes and tallies for rows and progress, the laddering to fix mistakes, the fittings, and months of sitting in a bag, it just all falls flat when I can sit back and look at it all done.

But he’s really happy with it and, honestly, so am I. My husband finally has a sweater from me. Yay! This pattern was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the plain knit sections too. I had thought about adding some cabling to the sleeves, but I’m glad I left them out. The center cable stands out better on its own.

Now, to focus on my cable sweater and all the other projects I’ve got going.

Friday the 13th

I can’t sleep.

I have my ‘sound’ surgery tomorrow morning and it seems to be making me restless.

I’m pretty excited about it being on Friday the 13th. Always one of my favorite days. As a kid I remember hearing that 13 was such an unlucky number that buildings would just skip that number all together. So I decided it would be my lucky number.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned about the feminine power associated with the number and a link between the goddess Freya and the day Friday. So I look at it as a day of power and possibility.

The crickets are loud tonight. There was quite the rain and lightning storm earlier. There is something in the air. A change taking place.

Maybe I’ll go stand in the grass for a few moments and try sleep again.

Rabbits Review

That was one wild ride. My mom finished it before I did and so we haven’t really talked much about it yet to make sure I didn’t accidentally get any spoilers. The only thing she said was that she wasn’t sure how she felt about the ending. Now that I have finished it, I understand what she meant.

I really enjoyed the story building. If you’ve ever found yourself going down a rabbit hole of any conspiracy, like the Berenstain versus Berenstein and Mandela effect, then you might really enjoy this trip. I swung a lot between not being able to put it down, and needing to put it down to feel sane again and remember what reality is.

This is definitely worth the read and staying on my shelf. Even if the ending leaves you unsure of how to feel, the rest of the book is a page turning thrill ride full of twists and mind bending excitement. I highly recommend it.

His and My Cable Sweaters

I can feel my husband’s delight every time he sees me working on his sweater. I had been calling it my secret sweater and had, in fact, been working on it in secret for months before other things took over and it sat unattended for a while. Much like the sweater I had been working on for myself that I recently picked up again. With all our troubles, I decided to show it to him one day in the hopes of cheering him up. It worked for a short time, but as it continued to sit, the effect wore off.

Both have entered sleeve land and mine still has some rib edging to do yet. It has been very satisfying to work on something for both of us during this really tough time. I don’t even care about my mis-crossed cables on the back of my sweater. Or the too-short I-cord on his. They speak to the imperfection of our lives together and those imperfections make us who we are.

This is one of my favorite sweater edition magazines. I have many plan inside these pages. For my husband’s I have combined these two patterns to be able to knit in the round and use the fisherman’s rib. And since my husband knows about the sweater now, I’ve been able to have him try it on and know it fits. His smile is very motivating.

My sweater is this top down cardigan that I’ve added Viking cables to and will be making just a few tweaks to the ribbing set-up. It may be a bit larger than I intended, but I did want a big comfy sweater, so I’m happy. I’m hoping to inspire us to remember who we are and that this family can make it through anything. This is just another one of those trying times and things will be looking up soon. At least I hope they will be. I mean, I do have hope that they will be.

The Kidney Stone Sweater

I’ve been trying to listen to the big old ‘Stop’ sign I was given and really just rest while taking some time off of work. My mom and step dad came with their trailer to help take care of the girls while I was in the hospital. We have a spot for their ‘home away from home’ on the other side of our garage, which worked perfectly.

My sound surgery is scheduled and there is a bit of hope I can get back to normal soon. I had no idea how crazy kidney stones were. I’m not looking forward to the ‘night before surgery prep’, but I’m a big girl. If it helps break up these stones to rid me of this agony, I can handle it. Truthfully, I think I’d be going insane with anxiety right now if it wasn’t for my knitting.

It felt good to pick up my purple sweater again. To begin to make progress once more and imagining the finished piece has begun to help me heal a part of myself that I have been ignoring for a long time. Life has often been too busy for me to be creative. When I do find time, it’s often for someone else. I love giving. It does feed my spirit, but there is a magic in giving to yourself.

While working on my sweater, I kept staring at some yarn that I had been struggling with for almost a year to figure out what it wanted to be. Then it hit me. I began to picture a sweater coming together. To knit in the round from sleeve cuff to sleeve stuff and then the body in the round from some picked up stitches. I found a simple variation on stockinette stitch and set to work. My mom picked up some more yarn for me to be able to finish because it was working up quickly. She felt my need to complete my vision.

This sweater kept me stable when my pain medication made me sick and I had trouble focusing (I got more medication to help with that). I mapped out the shoulder, and chest and back construction while backed up from my medications (I’m taking something for that too). My hands found a spellbinding rhythm while I sat with my kids and pictured my stones shrinking and finding their way out. I clung to getting this done while I emailed my boss about taking another week off of work, while in my urology appointment discussing my options, while staring at our overgrown lawn fretting about all the things I suddenly couldn’t do.

I could hardly wait to share my creation with my friends and some knitting communities. The response has been amazing and I’m now spinning my wheels on writing a knitting pattern book. It will take a lot of time and some test knitters and editors and lots of work, but I’ve got ideas percolating. But for now, I present the original version of my first original design.

Knitting in the Hospital

One perk of being stuck in the hospital is time to knit. I wanted my most soothing projects with me and my purple sweater is definitely that. The poor garment has been sitting on the back burner for so long that it took me halfway through a row to realize I had forgotten to mark a row. So I ticked back and fell right into the rhythm of it. It felt good to just sit with my knitting.

I have definitely been enjoying the view and am so glad I got the window side of the room. Much less claustrophobic. It’s been really refreshing to just sit here, or shuffle back and forth, simply staring out at this beauty. I’m realizing how active I’ve been, and yet so unproductive. I’m disappointed it took a massive kidney stone to wake me up, but I swear I’m listening now. It won’t be fast changes, but I’ve laid a lot of groundwork in my past, so I should be able to implement some solid improvements soon.

This shawl is another soothing knit. St. John’s Wort stitch applied to a simple crescent shawl pattern. It’s repetitive enough to be easy on the mind, but interesting enough to not get boring. Watching the cows graze and the clouds float by while feeling my yarn and needles in my hands is so soothing. I may be in the hospital, but I’m trying to soak up this forced rest to the best of my ability. Especially now that I’m in a room alone and am not being checked on quite as much.

Well, That Was an Adventure

I swear I sat down every night ready to write a post, but it all just felt jumbled and forced. Life just kept coming at me faster and faster and I had no time to sort anything out. I did my workouts, I went to work, I cooked meals, I cleaned, I drove everyone to their appointments, the girls had their first sleepover (one kid could not stay because of a mild head injury received at our house while goofing around), and all while managing that awful back pain.

My birthday arrived and it was a pretty good day. Got my workout in, left for work on time, had a nice day massaging people, things got a little stressful at home, and a friend of mine was able to come over and hang out. Then I woke up the next morning. The pain was pretty bad. I tried moving to the couch. It got worse and I didn’t want the kids to see me cry. My husband tried helping me with massage, but he was barely awake and every time he stopped the pain was worse. Then we thought about driving me into the doctor’s office and then it was call the ambulance now.

My poor kids watched as I crawled and scooted down the stairs, threw up, and then got strapped onto a stretcher. The ambulance had to stop to pick up the EMT with the pain medication. We were all beginning to assume it was kidney stones. The rest is a bit of a blur, but CT scan confirmed the kidney stone. The x-ray verified where it was. A 7mm kidney stone just below my kidney and some smaller ones inside it. And yes, it hurts worse than childbirth. Childbirth was a 7 or an 8 on my pain scale. This was an 11.

I’ve been here for three days now and have a stent in my ureter. They’re waiting for my culture results to see what kind of infection I have with this. I can’t leave until they know what kind of antibiotics to give me. But between the back pain and now these stones, things need to change. I cannot keep up with chasing everything. Right now, I’m enjoying the rest (between the rounds of pain) and taking the vacation I had denied myself. Hopefully it will be the start of something better when I get out of here.

Bringing my Goddess Back

I’m going to do it. I’m going to get back on track and start doing the things I need to do to take care of myself so I can be here, fully, for my crazy family. My body has been begging for so long it has entered into an aggressive strike against my ‘hibernate until it’s over’ method of choice. I’ve lost touch with my personal power and have not felt goddess-like in quite some time now.

The strike began when I decided to have a big bowl of ice cream and suffer the consequences. The next day was spent lying around in agony which caused some back muscles to seize up, and now I can’t seem to shake this back pain at all. I know why it hurts. My hips are twisted and bent, my shoulders hunched and tight, my neck is shriveling into my collarbone, and my abs are being devoured by my pelvis. I have been clinging to my struggles so hard, that I have forgotten (once again) how to even breathe. Then I had ice cream and everything that has been holding me together threw their hands up and said “fuck it. Fine. Be a miserable wench!”

So after helping others feel better through massage, and working through my own pain while taking Advil, then running around to take care of our daughter’s probation stuff, and her therapy appointments, and errands, and… I think you get the idea, I have decided to start my routine again. It’s the only way I feel good regularly and the only way I can manage my life.

OCD to the rescue! I bought a bunch of these accordion folders before returning to work in order to organize my workouts and recipes to make my life easier when I would be busier. One of my better ideas, if I do say so. Everything is sorted into its own section, easily found. I’m pairing some yoga and exercises in the morning with a yoga routine in the evening. And I am determined to stop being in pain.

I’m going to try to keep up with posting my efforts here. I know a lot of us have fallen out of good habits and into bad ones in order to cope with the craziness of these Covid times. Our lives had to adjust in drastic ways. Even if we were able to keep it together through the first several months (that was me. First several months were a breeze. Comparatively speaking), we are all growing weary under the weight of it. So, here we go! My millionth time starting healthy habits again. I’m excited.