Tuesday, September 30, 2008

PS...

Or maybe

"Addendum"

I whined about my desk job in real-time yesterday to an old friend and was reminded that I had a teaching job a while ago and didn't that involve hours of desk time...maybe to fall asleep over the paperwork I should have been doing at the end of the day...but I was actually one of those teachers my 7th graders (especially note passers) always hated, I taught from everywhere in the classroom. I was always standing and pacing and walking around and it is so not a mystery to me how I could eat ANYTHING and still keep my weight under control then, you know? Besides that whole not owning a car and biking/walking everywhere deal.

And yes, I made it through the day...but you could hear it in my voice at 4PM (as I was packing my bag and took one last phone call) that I was too tired to continue...

It was too late to nap...so I helped make dinner, and then I crashed, oh yeah, hard. When 3:30 AM rolled around today (oh yes, it happened again) I'd had about 6 hours of sleep...but hurray! I was able to convince myself to go back to sleep by 4AM! For at least another hour!

I hope this not-sleeping through the night thing goes away soon.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Monday Non-Sequetors.../Bullet-point Posting

- No, your eyes are not deceiving you, it is indeed 4 in the AM and I'm awake and blogging about not being asleep. This must be the opposite to that whole "can't wake up" problem I was having last month. The universe has a weird/nasty/evil way of averaging everything out, it would seem. But yeah, 3 AM rolled around and BAM! Wide awake. Oh what fun.

- Thanks to all the headache-well-wishers! I am so thankful it was a Friday and the office is not-so-busy then and maybe I scared off a whole lot of possible queries with the absolutely gruesome look on my face. I now understand that whole "Miss looks angry" whisper my students had about me...I caught a glimpse of it as I went into the bathroom. It was a total, "DUDE! Is that really what I look like!" Moment. The crescendo of the throbbing and aching was at about quitting time though. I want to blame the weather, but WE HAD SUN that afternoon and as miserable as I felt, I thought I could happily suffer if I could just feel a ray of afternoon sun on my arm one last time before the cloudiness of winter hit us...

- Yes, it's happened. I've started appreciating that great ball of gas that burns me within minutes of my going outside, that has given me too many freckles as well as early wrinkles (2 years on a sailboat/4 years in the tropics is so not good for your complexion, le'me tell ya'). It was a sunny, crisp day yesterday but the brightness and the colors...I was so happy! I'm told winter will be back by Friday.

- Mental note to self: Find out the UW football schedule. It will make for easier decisions as to which grocery store to go to. I felt like WWIII had hit and I was the last to know, standing in the bread section of the store, shelves almost completely empty, people scurrying everywhere, grocers rushing around trying to restock fruits and cheeses and the longest line in the world in front of the deli counter.

-It made for an easy-time going out to dinner in Fremont though! The streets were EMPTY. The restaurant wait was so minimal we'd hardly started sipping at our fru fru drinks in the "over 21" section. Yep, knowing when the home games are might make for easier weekends.

- Andy has started looking out for you all...I have this knack for giving away knitted things without photographic proof of their ever existing. Not that I need a picture to prove to myself it happened...not when I've marked up a pattern within an inch of it's life. But when it's baby socks I created from scratch? As my friends' baby modeled them for the first (and only...) time, Andy snapped a picture with his itoy. If it weren't 4:30 AM I'd be asking for a copy to post right now...

- No, LLB (L&L's Baby) is not allergic to wool...she just grew faster than I anticipated. The good thing is that it her feet are only a half an inch longer than they used to be and I'd made the socks bigger than I thought I had. Hence her ability to wear them, once :). The joy about baby socks though is that they are SO SMALL! I can whip another pair out in a couple of hours! (Okay, yeah, this is me we're talking about so more like days...the theory remains the same, smaller socks on US1 needles are WAY easier than say socks for her dad.) I'll post about them as soon as I can. I also have a hat and a couple adult pairs of socks to show off...yeah, maybe I've been a little busy lately. Which leads me to...

- Sitting on my ass all day is not conducive to my happiness...unless knitting is involved. This accounting job is pretty much my first desk job, EVER. I mean, yeah, I've had jobs that required desk time and computer work, but you were also scouring bookshelves for patrons, pulling government documents to verify the data entry, filing patient charts and showing them to their rooms. I've never sat in front of a computer for four-hour stretches staring at spreadsheets and dealing with mystery invoices. What with my recent injuries, it seems that if I don't move every ten minutes my joints become fused. Yes, I AM that lady that took FOR-EV-ER to get up and move out of the table you were waiting for. Dinner with friends at a crowded restaurant is not the best place to keep getting up to stretch, afterall.

Hmmm, 5:09 and all is well...I think I'll go get ready for work. If I go in early enough I might be able to sneak out before I totally crash. Four hours of sleep is so not helpful to my or my coworkers' sanity.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Headache Mutterings

I need a vacation from my body. I feel like I'm in a very bad relationship, WITH MYSELF.

Okay, so you all know there must be something seriously wrong with me that I'm blogging during a headache of increasingly massive proportions...you know the kind that strikes behind your left eye and the only relief is either pressure on the eye (which will break off more cones and rods and cause more of those damned floaty things when you least need them to be there) or squinting a la Popeye and don't you feel so sexy and cool doing that? But yeah, I had to share.

So here's the thing, I am admitting defeat to the universe:

Fine, I am hurt far worse than I wanted to admit. So you can stop with the damp cold mornings that make my right side feel like I've been kicked all night! That make my shoulders feel like I've been carrying the world on them for far too long! That make my sinuses go screwy and make my teeth hurt!

I am not invincible.

(SIGH.)

What's super crazy is that I went out an bought myself a Costco-sized bottle of Naproxen Sodium and took one of those horse-pills this morning as my right side did not want to cooperate for neither love nor money (I tell ya' BAD relationship).

So as I arrive at work and am noticing, yeah, hey, I can get out of the car and the "rocks in the joints" feeling is almost gone...I notice the headache I've had all along. No really, I knew it was there, but I always have a headache, it is so much a part of me I rarely notice them until my eyes and sinuses come into play. But dude, my body hurt so much that I couldn't even TELL I had such a massive headache until the pains started to settle down...

Dude, my body hateses me.

Here is a picture Andy sent me from his iPhone back when there was still sun out...I miss the sun. For all you non-Seattleites, that space needle is just visible on the right-hand side. This would be the park I live 1 block away from. But no jealousy please, it's not like this is my view...I get to stare at the UW lab that is "touching" distance from my HUGE picture window. Seriously now, they do not need to see me as much as I don't need to see them. Someone in planning better have been fired.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

So Out of It

I have all these plans for posts and updates and such...and they just aren't happening.

I have the lamest of excuses for today, at least...the batteries in Andy's camera are dead.

We go to Costco once in a million years for such staples as sugar, coffee, and of course TP, but we just never remember such silly things as BATTERIES for all the power-hungry devices that seem to abound in the apartment.

"So what about your fancy new military-grade phone with the camera?" You say? Derher, (in my best WB B-Bunny embarrassed voice) I forgotted to charge it and it is dead this one morning when I am up early enough to play with picture-taking and a couple things I wanted to document before I lose the notes I used to make them...

I am so good like that.

Aside from all this techno-lameness...I can't seem to get my act together enough lately to reply to emails, much less post something that is not whining or ranting or excuses...I think it's that time of year...or maybe the sun sucked out my brain.

See, Friday? Winter arrived. Seriously we went from 80 degrees and sunny to 60 and overcast. It kinda threw me. Saturday it POURED. Sunday I got my "traveler's cold." You know, when you go visit home/abroad/someplace else and on the third day you feel not-so-well and maybe a little sniffly and it's because your body is like "CURSE YOU FOR MAKING ME LEAVE HOME!" or something?

Yeah, only I hadn't gone anywhere. I shared with Andy the feeling that we'd been magically transported from like Hawai'i (seriously, we were having AWESOME weather) to Mordor ("It's still dark, Sam. It's always dark here, sir.") and he agreed with my "We're not in Kansas anymore" feeling.

We'd been sucked into the twilight zone. I wish.

Whatever magical weather we'd been having is gone gone gone and it took my ability to cope and get well and be organized with it...cuz lord do my joints ache and remember that little bicycle accident I just had??? Right. Cold weather is not conducive to healing. Make a note.

Urgh...all I want to do is sleep...I think I was a bear (or a hamster) in a past life...hibernation is such the way to go.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Burying the Hate, One Post at a Time

At times like yesterday, I'm so glad my blog is not a popular one. An honest rant is hard when you know your boss might be reading.

And maybe your mom too... Well, actually, I dunno, if my mom was reading my blog it'd go one way or the other...either she'd stop worrying about me so much...or she'd never stop. We never did mesh well. Our personalities clash pretty hard core when we get right down to it. So she worries that I will end up in major trouble/accidents/situations for the simple reason that my thoughts and reasonings and decisions are so WAAAAAAYYYY not anything like hers.

Although she did agree that it might be a good thing to not have all her eggs in one basket with regards to banking. What with the recent fiscal implosion we're having, my willy-nilly collection of bank accounts doesn't seem so freaky now, eh?

No, not gloating. Actually kinda sad that my paranoia was not. (It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you!)

Anyway, what a glum topic I've chosen for today....let's think happier thoughts.

Like the fact I took a one and a half hour lunch yesterday with a co-worker I haven't seen for months :). So very decadent and I feel no guilt. Not after the last week where 10 hour days were the norm. (It goes to show that I am also correct in the assumption that I should never be sick or miss work. Damn you Calvinist work ethic instilled by my forefathers! Or something.)

We had yummy (yet maybe a bit spicy) messican food that put me in such a happy place. It also reminded me that I'll be down in LA in November and must get some more recipes from my mom. Or at least make something with her supervising so I can glean more from her knowledge.

And on the topic of food? Is it sad that I can't wait for my friend's child to be old enough so that if I babysit I can have "kid food" in my house? Cuz I will not lie to you blogiverse, I just ate a bowl of Lucky Charms for my uber healthy breakfast. (I did add a dying banana to it.) But I get this super guilty feeling at the grocery store whenever I indulge in my need for a "kid" cereal...like everyone is looking at me and saying, "That one? She doesn't HAVE kids, what is she buying THAT for!"

I know, I know, I have issues.

On that note, I have to run...and even though he said he never reads my blog:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALFRED!

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Petulant, Yet Flexible

If my immediate superior (whom I share an office with) were to write my yearly review, I think those would be the words he'd use to describe me.

I swore in front of him yesterday. Well, technically we sit "back to back" so maybe it was more like I swore at the wall while he was in the same room. Did I day "dam" or maybe the "s" word? Oh no. There was nothing but intense hatred and maybe a dash of malice (okay, maybe the need for hurting in there as well) as I dropped ye ol' F-bomb when I read the email that told me my work day? The one I'd already over-planned and had been counting on as I've been out (bike accident) and filling in for peeps on vacay? The LAST DAY I'd have to catch up before the month started all over again?

Gone.

I got to drop everything to fill in for a sick co-worker.

I was beyond mad. It took all my 34 years of training to control my god-awful-gonna-have-a-tantrum-RIGHT NOW-temper (sexy, I know) to keep it together. I have an eye twitch and a headache instead...fun times.

Yeah, that was me focusing so hard on doing her data entry I did not turn to look at you, acknowledge your presence, or smile. Yep, that smacking sound was me tossing/dropping entered paperwork on the floor just to hear it smack. Yey for determination that had me finish the mountain of her work in an hour and a half so I might start in on my own. (And yeah, it is extra childish but that competitive nature side of me went "HA!" when I saw I entered twice as much as she did in half the time...)

AAAaaauuummm.

When I went to Italy last year, one of the tour guides said the best way to handle Rome was to visualize yourself as a Willow and bend with the wind, cuz all the planning and phone calls and reservations could not save you from the whims of the Italian government or mentality. (i.e. always have plans b, c, and even d)

It's a philosophy I've actually adopted to my life. That and the "It's just not worth it" mentality are all that keep me going at times like this.

And now I have to run, as I have an hour and a half+ extra of my work to try to cram into this morning.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Officially Overworked & Underpaid...

I don't know if I will make my closing deadline, and at this point I just don't care anymore. I am going to take my brother's way of looking at work, "It'll still be there tomorrow." Which in the world of accounting? Isn't the best way, but did I mention just now? Just. Don't. Care.

So I will post a meme-response to Bezzie's Feme meme. Is that how you say it? Or is it best to say, "me too!" I was a lit. major and read enough dead white men to fill several veteran's memorial cemeteries, or so it felt like. So this list was both eye opening to me and gives me fodder for picking up more non-dead-white-guy lit. Or non-white guy lit, period. (Have you any idea how saddened I was when I realized Memoirs of a Geisha was not just NOT a memoir, but not written by a geisha either?)

I don't read nearly as much as I did in school...but I have developed a "gift" for being able to read at least 4 different books at the same time. I'm here to tell you, like knitting on several projects at the same time? You don't finish the 4 books as fast as when you only read one at a time. And many times you will have to back up a few paragraphs/pages/chapters to figure out where you are in the story. And yet, like an addiction, I can't stop starting new books ALL THE TIME.

So yeah, the premise is the same as most of these lists go: Bold those you've read. (*) Mark those whose authors you read. Both means you've read the book AND (I'm guessing) at least another by the same author. Bezzie used three ***s so I followed suit. I don't think this means I've read three other books by the same person. If it does I'll edit it later.

Allison, Dorothy. Bastard Out of Carolina, 1992
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1969
Atwood, Margaret. Cat's Eye, 1988 ***
Bainbridge, Beryl. The Bottle Factory Outing, 1974
Bambara, Toni Cade. Gorilla, My Love, 1992
Barnes, Djuna. Nightwood, 1937
Barker, Pat. Regeneration, 1992
Brookner, Anita. Hotel du Lac, 1984
Brown, Rita Mae. Rubyfruit Jungle, 1973
Buck, Pearl S. The Good Earth, 1931
Byatt, A.S. Possession: A Romance, 1990***
Carter, Angela. Nights at the Circus, 1984
Castillo, Ana. So Far From God, 1993***
Cather, Willa. My Antonia, 1918***
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening, 1900
Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street, 1984 ***
Compton-Burnett, Ivy. Elders and Betters, 1944
Desai, Anita. Clear Light of Day, 1980
Dinesen, Isak. Out of Africa, 1938 ***
Doerr, Harriet. Stones for Ibarra, 1984
Drabble, Margaret. The Radiant Way, 1987
DuMaurier, Daphne. Rebecca, 1938
Emecheta, Buchi. Second Class Citizen, 1974
Erdrich, Louise. Tracks: A Novel, 1988
Fitzgerald, Penelope. At Freddie's, 1985
Flagg, Fannie. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, 1987 ***
Frame, Janet. Yellow Flowers in the Antipodean Room, 1969
French, Marilyn. The Women's Room, 1977
Goldstein, Rebecca. The Mind-Body Problem: A Novel, 1983
Gordimer, Nadine. July's People, 1981
Gordon, Mary. The Rest of Life, 1993
Hall, Radclyffe. The Well of Loneliness, 1928
Head, Bessie. When Rain Clouds Gather, 1968
Highsmith, Patricia. The Talented Mr. Ripley, 1955
Hobhouse, Janet. The Furies, 1993
Hulme, Keri. The Bone People, 1983
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937
Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House, 1959 ***
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. Heat and Dust, 1975
Jong, Erica. Fear of Flying, 1973
Kincaid, Jamaica. Lucy, 1990 ***
Kingsolver, Barbara. The Bean Trees, 1988 ***
Kingston, Maxine Hong. Tripmaster Monkey, 1989 ***
Kogawa, Joy. Obasan, 1981
Laurence, Margaret. The Fire-Dwellers, 1969
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960
Lessing, Doris. The Golden Notebook, 1962
Lively, Penelope. Moon Tiger, 1987
Loos, Anita. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1925
McCarthy, Mary. The Group, 1963
McCullers, Carson. Ballad of the Sad Cafe, 1951
McMillan, Terry. Mama, 1987 ***
Manning, Olivia. The Balkan Trilogy, 1981
Miller, Isabel. Patience and Sarah, 1969
Mitchell, Margaret. Gone with the Wind, 1936 ***
Moore, Lorrie. Anagrams: A Novel, 1986
Morrison, Toni. Beloved: A Novel, 1987 ***
Mukherjee, Bharati. Wife, 1975
Munro, Alice. Lives of Girls and Women, 1971
Murdoch, Iris. A Severed Head, 1961
Oates, Joyce Carol. You Must Remember This, 1987 ***
O'Brien, Edna. House of Splendid Isolation, 1994
O'Connor, Flannery. A Good Man is Hard to Find, 1955
Olsen, Tillie. Tell Me a Riddle, 1979
Paley, Grace. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, 1974
Parker, Dorothy. The Collected Dorothy Parker, 1973
Phillips, Jayne Anne. Black Tickets, 1979
Piercy, Marge. Braided Lives, 1982 ***
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar, 1963
Porter, Katharine Anne. Ship of Fools, 1962
Powell, Dawn. The Golden Spur, 1962
Proulx, E. Annie. The Shipping News, 1993 ***
Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead, 1943 (I tried, I really did...didn't happen.)
Renault, Mary. The King Must Die, 1958
Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea, 1966 (This sounds really familiar...)
Robinson, Marilynne. Housekeeping, 1980
Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things, 1997
Sarton, May. Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing, 1965
Shields, Carol. The Stone Diaries, 1994
Shreve, Anita. The Weight of Water, 1997 ***
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Almanac of the Dead, 1991 ***
Simpson, Mona. Anywhere But Here, 1986
Smart, Elizabeth. By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, 1966
Smiley, Jane. The Age of Grief, 1987
Sontag, Susan. The Volcano Lover, 1992
Spark, Muriel. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1961
Stead, Christina. The Man Who Loved Children, 1965
Stein, Gertrude. Three Lives, 1909
Taylor, Elizabeth. Angel, 1957 ***
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club, 1989 ***
Tyler, Anne. If Morning Ever Comes, 1964
Urquhart, Jane. Away, 1993
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple, 1982
Weldon, Fay. The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, 1983
Welty, Eudora. Selected Stories, 1943
West, Rebecca. The Return of the Soldier, 1918
Wharton, Edith. Ethan Frome, 1911
White, Antonia. Frost in May, 1933
Winterson, Jeannette. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, 1985
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway, 1925 ***

I got spirit, yes I do, I got spirit, how 'bout you? (Did I really just write that? I need to go home.)

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Green Beanie, A Pattern!

Brought to you by the letter V, and the number 2...an Emergency Room Inspiration
What do you do when you are stuck in an emergency room high on vicodine for 6 hours? That's right, write up the pattern to a hat, among other doodles that I discovered as I flipped through my agenda this morning.

Nope, do not recall doing this. Yep, simply typing what I scribbled. I'd scan the page but um, yeah, no one needs to see what my chicken scratch devolves into near the end. (Could this be the ritual apology iffin' there are blaring errors and such? Ya sure, you betcha!)


STUFF YOU NEED:
Yarn: I used brown sheep superwash chunky in um, pine something for the main color, and a few yards of doubled up superwash worsted in lichen (or something) for the contrasting color.

Needles: US 10.5 (circular would be nice...I only have DPNs), US 10 ( Circ if you have it. Again, I don't.)

Using the bigger needles, Cast On.
Join carefully (insert "do not twist" caution here. I hate that caution. But you know that as soon as it is not included, I will twist before joining, I am good like that.)

Using smaller needles, knit in in the round using plain stitch/stockinette/the first stitch you ever learned FOR DAYS. I wanted the band to be big enough to cover the entire ear of a young child, so I made it as long as the length of my ear. (Couple/3-inches maybe?)

Purl one row.

Switch to 10.5s and knit for a few inches more.

Switch to CC color for 1 round.
2nd round, (Slip 1 (CC) knit 1 with main color) repeating the stuff inside the ()s to end of the round, cutting CC yarn, you won't need it anymore unless you want to get fancy with your own designs.
Third round, Knit using main color again.

WEAVE IN ENDS of CC YARN RIGHT NOW. You won't see them again after the next bit.

Next row or two, or when you can fold the ring and the two edges match up, leave the soon-to-become-hem of the hat folded and knit into your live stitch as well as the cast-on row behind it.

See ma? No ends! All that CC stuff/ends are now hidden in the fold/hem.

Keep knitting until you have 5, 5.5, 6, whatever depth you prefer from purl row/edge to needles.

Begin decreases: (repeat the stuff between **'s to end of round)
*K8, k2 tog*
Knit next round
*K7, k2 tog*
knit next round (If you were using circular needles, switch to the DPNs about now, maybe sooner.)
*K6, K2 tog*
*K5, K2 tog*
*K4, K2 tog* (you get the decreasing pattern?) Keep going knitting 1 less until only a few stitches remain, or you can't juggle the too few stitches on the big DPNs, measure out about a yard of yarn and go ahead and cut it from the ball; stick the end in a darning needle and run through your stitches a couple of times to close out the hole at the top.

Weave anything remaining.

Block and send off to your favorite cold-headed child.

Monday, September 01, 2008

One Day at a Time

The best description of me on Thursday? STIR CRAZY.

I'd convinced myself I no longer hurt (as long as there was 800mg of Ibuprophen at hand) by Wednesday night.

All day Thursday I was surly and depressed and just really pissed about the accident and the bruises and being 34 and healing so slowly and grrr, life in general.

So yeah, I defied all that was sacred (approved sick leave) and went in to work. I have a desk job! It's not like I have to carry 50 lb boxes around all day! I was slow but I got work done. I'd only planned on spending half a day there...but umm, yeah, what would have taken me a couple hours to do on say, BEFORE Monday night? Took me all day. A lot of my time was spent figuring out how to get out of my chair without hurting myself.

Yes, I know I am stubborn and hard-headed. I blame my father...and maybe my mom too.

I woke up kinda sore on Saturday morning but shook it off...then after coming back from lunch? Yeah, I WALKED to Fremont and back...I know, I should have "dumb ass" tattooed to my forehead...so right, after getting back to the apartment? I collapsed and slept for the rest of the day. I barely remember Sunday...there was a lot of sleeping and watching Season 1 of Buffy the Vampyre Slayer on Hulu.

And today? All I can say is thank the gods of Cobal today is a holiday.

I admit defeat. I am not invincible. If work has okay'd the time off, I am a fool not to take advantage of it--ALL of it. Sleep = healing, and if I notice that my body is craving more than the 6 hours I usually need? I should not ignore it.

Kick me if I do.