Just a Hint of What's to Come

So...since a few days before my birthday and unto this AM, I've had the same eye-jarring, ear bugging, don't-bend-over-or-you-regret-it headache.

And yet I am crazy, because I finished these:

for sock madness #4. (There is absolutely no amount of picture tweeking that will make my ankles look any skinnier or less, um, stumpy, so I didn't even bother. Besides, see aforementioned headache description.)

I have thank-you cards sitting here waiting for me to write up, pictures of crazy nemo that need a bit of tweeking, a check to cash (!) -- I love getting checks for my bday! But not the big fat tax returny kind (which are awesome, don't get me wrong), I mean the ones written for like$10 or $20 from grandma (or in this case, xMIL), they make me feel like I'm still a little kid, um getting checks from grandma...or a godmother or seven seeing as I didn't actually ever get a check from grandma.

Can you tell I might still be on some decongestants/anti-inflammatories? If I didn't have to go in and reconcile other peoples' money for a living? This would be uber funny. Instead I am fighting tooth and nail to clear my head up before leaving the house/apt/whathaveyou. (Seattle, be grateful I walk to work, 'sall I'm sayin.)

More later, promise.

I am Awful

I promise another post and then I disappear for a week...

Work + sick + participating in Sock Madness + new sick = I'm not here, I'm in bed, knitting, and on some serious decongestants & anti-inflammatories.

So yeah, consider this one of them drive-by postings I see in the summer-time when people are out having fun. Only I'm not, cuz I'm either at work souped up on Sudafed and Advil, or in my cave at home, trying not to drop any stitches as knit blindly and try in vain to convince the migraine flashes that they do not want to stick around, that there are way more fun places to be than in my eyeballs...all night long...waking me from restless sleep...again.

Anyone else notice I'm posting at 6AM? Up since 4...I can already tell you it's not going to be a good day.

I shall return more when hearty and hale...or at least more hearty and hale...

Le't Consider This One Practice for the Real One

Soooooooo, technically, Andy had a birthday yesterday (Thursday), and maaaaaaaybeeee today, at around 2:42 PM, I might have officially started my 37th year on this planet. (That makes me 36 now, if you're as confused as I was the first time I heard that phrase.)

But I think we'll actually start celebrating and calling it official after the plague has left chez tactless and moved on to other pastures to spread it's cough and phlegm and massive headaches and exhaustion to them.

I am actually not the one trying to expel any of my innards at the moment, that would be Andy. A party was canceled and everything (he hit that 4-0 milestone, you see). Had he gone through with the party, I'm afraid everyone would end up with the coughing sickness and would no longer want to be friends...and Andy might have caught pneumonia from it all and really, not being too drama-queen about this, the man is ill. Technicolor ill if you catch my meaning.

If the symptoms I'm experiencing are going to become what he has? Yeah, let's just consider yesterday and today practice for the "real" celebrating.

Andy's "birthday" included lots of sudafed, advil, and watching of 2012 (the one with John Cusak that came and went from the theaters before I even realized it was out? Yeah that one.) Watching it made me realize that we need to get a bigger TV for 'splosion watching. That and a good dose of Nyquil before bed was the highlight of the evening. I know, we like to par-tee hard.

My birthday did have a cake, and presents (!) even, but I'll have to post about those tomorrow because the camera is far far away (possibly the living room) and my sinuses are trying to get my attention again. I will share a picture of the candle though (no, Andy would not let me put 36 candles on the cake as I am having enough problems breathing right now without trying to blow out the inferno associated with such a large number of burning sticks.
We found him in our neighborhood Bartells, or as I like to call it, meth-mart. When I was there the other night purchasing the aforementioned Nyquil I got to dodge the fellow who followed me in (by going into the feminine napkin section), try not to get run over by the red-faced guy who really needed a gatorade RIGHT NOW, man, and listen to yelling girl lose her shit with the cashier (I kid you not, I have been at this Bartells no more than 10 times, and 7 of those times yelling girl has been in their yelling at one of the cashiers).

None of these things ever happen when Andy comes with me on a meth-mart run, he is like the shiny little penny I've taken to keeping in my pocket when I go to work. I haven't shared this tidbit either, have I? Penny Man I mean?

There is this guy that stands in the doorway to an apartment building for older underprivileged men that's run by the Seattle Archdiocese (I did my research.) He is older than your average pan-handler, with shoulder-length scraggly white hair and just doesn't seem to be all there.

In this cracking LOUD voice he asks any and all passers by for a penny. As in, "'SCUSE ME, DO YOU HAVE A PENNY!??!" If I have learned anything living where I have? I don't carry an loose change whatsoever. It's just easier for me. But a penny? Really? So I found a penny and put it in my pocket and set out with the idea that I'd give him the penny that next afternoon. But he wasn't there.

Every day for three days I kept that penny in my pocket and no Penny Man. The very next day I use a different jacket and forget to switch over the penny and sure enough, he's there, asking for a penny! And I didn't have one! And sure enough, when I put the penny in my pocket the next day? No Penny Man.

My theory is that if I keep a penny on my person, I will not see him. No really. Today? One the meth-mart run looking for candles? No penny, and what did I spy as we turned the corner and walked the opposite direction of the men's hotel? Yep, white scraggly hair in the doorway. He was a street away so I couldn't hear him and we didn't pass him at all, but still, urgh, you know?!?

Wow, that all kinda got away from me...but YEAH, candle! And it's Nemo with his gimpy little right fin which I totally get with my not-working-right right arm. But those eyes. If the pictures look anything like what I could see from the LCD screen on the camera? Oh just you wait.

Eighteen Years...How Did that Happen?

Is this a hint of what it'd feel like if I had a child of my own reach adulthood?

I've never felt this way about any of the babies I 'sat. Because I just wrote and then deleted the line: "I used to change his diapers!" Before I realized I've changed a lot of kids' diapers who years ago reached adulthood and I just never felt this way.

I fall back to the fact that my baby brother is the very physical marker of the passage of time.

I pretty much fell out of being a regular tenant at the homestead just months after he was born. I think he was crawling when my dad and brother drove me up to school.

He called me "ann ann" and looked for me...or so my mom said, after one of my short stints at home.

He almost broke my face that one summer I took care of him when my mom had her knee replaced (children's toys with handles and heft are a big no-no in my book).

I may have mentally scarred him with my "your hands ain't broken" way of correcting his actions. We have a wee bit of the same bad temper mentality...This is what happens when the two "babies" of the family argue. (I was the baby for 17.99999 years after all.)

And yet? Is that why we get along? (I think a big chunk of that is because I am only a visitor when I do go home...much easier to get along with everyone that way, really.)

Whatever the case, my baby brother is 18 today...and days away from 36 myself? I am feeling so aged and worn and has it been 18 years? Really? In a few months time I will have officially reached that point where I will have lived away from home as long as I lived at home...and then? From that point onward? The balance tips ever further away (unless, of course I go and "renest" as so many have lately begun doing...oh let's please not go there).

Oh I'm getting all wordy and weird...but that's the head-space I'm in right now.

Dude, 18. I promise to be better about this next year. But dude, 18!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANTHONY!

Hats & the P Setting

So I totally forgot that I started a post yesterday and now, hello, it's today, and I know I was messing with you all, posting every day for like three whole days in a row...but obviously that didn't last and we're now back to my haphazard schedule.

So back when I was last in LA, for the xmas visit of dooooom, I knit and knit and knit on a hat for my older brother because, hello! His head was RIGHT THERE and I was RIGHT THERE and by gods I would make him one that he could wear and not look like he stole his son's hat.

Or something.

Every evening/into the night, I'd sit and watch my baby brother's DVDs of Bones and Supernatural and knit some more. And finally, when he realized what I was knitting might not look as silly as a hand-knit might (cuz I don't think he's ever really looked at my mom's socks...or maybe he has and pink and light blue and other non-baby brother colors possibly look like poopie to him and any other teen of his age/phase of adolescence...I know, I went through it myself; I'm much better now thank you), he asked if there was any chance I could replicate a machine-knit hat that he'd permanently borrowed from a friend of his.

What? Me knit a beanie on size 2 or smaller needles? Really? And you want me to do it? Not a forced gift?

Dude, I was so there.

As soon as I cast off my brother's gargantua-hat (which I don't have a picture of, unfortunately, but I can tell you all this, it is not too small for him in any way, shape or form...nope, not too small at all) I cast on for my baby brother.

I knit and knit and knit on size 2 needles using a Dale of Norway fingering-weight yarn whose name escapes me in black and dark grey which you can't even see unless you have a much spiffy monitor than me...and once finished I bathed it in COLD water as I usually do...and it barely fit my head, which I have stated before, is MUCH smaller than the heads of all the males in my family. I think it shrank...which makes me wonder what my older brother's hat must look like now...maybe it just fits now, I don't know, whatever the case I am not really sad that I forgot the name of the yarn because I don't think I will ever use it for such things as hats for family members because I was and possibly am still a wee bit peeved.

I put the remaining yarn in a time out and went out into the world to look for more black yarn to make a hat that fit.

That was back when I posted asking about the disappearance of all black yarn in the world...or at least all of the LYS's I frequent, until finally I found some ultra-Alpaca in size cobweb (okay, maybe I exaggerate...but it really is thin) that I actually cast on for and got several inches through the had before I realized I'd be 500 years old before I finished because even I couldn't justify a beanie on size 0 needles. Not in black yarn. During the middle of winter.

So I dug deep into my unfinished sock pile and found some nice black Louet Gems that might do the trick, cast on 150-some odd stitches and perfected my knit-while-I-walk-to-work habit until I finally had a hat in my hands:

Yes, what look like two very similar very black hats. I stretched the bejebus out of the black and grey one until it almost, but not quite the same size as it's all-black brother. If it doesn't fit him, maybe he can give it to his girlfriend and they can be all em0-matchy-matchy. Do kids still do that?

Anyhow, thus ends my tale, and the hats themselves are currently enroute to my baby brother and should (touch wood) be there in time for his birthday...when, sniff, I'll have to stop calling him baby and think of something new...cuz he'll be all of 18 then...dude, I feel so old!

And what about the"P" setting? That's just a reminder to me more than anything. I took my hat pictures using that setting. I must remember NEVER EVER to do that again. This is why you see two black hats as the "P" setting is not my friend. I don't know what it does, but I know it does not differentiate colors that are super close to one another (i.e. black and grey) and when they are set against a super light color? It's all blended together in a weird monochrome I'd rather not have. Okay, that's all.

Creature of Habit

If Google Reader can import my bloglines list, I may have to motivate enough to try something new.

But I am a terrible creature of habit. It's folks like me that have kept certain cereal makers in business nigh on 30-too many years. And/or juice producers. And maybe even the folks at certain pen manufacturing companies, hair tie makers, blank book producers...you name it, if I'm using it, it's probably because I've been using that brand/make/model most of my life. It takes a whole lot to move me to try something new. Beginning with stopping the production of the item.

Dude, that whole "get them while they're young" advertising game? Too damned true.

Anywho...semi-filler for Bloglines. Because I feel like reaching out to the invisible masses right now. I'm at that stage of not feeling quite right that has me feeling like I should crawl into a dark cave and not let anyone see me...and feeling all needy and wimpy and can someone please take care of me?!?

Being an adult sucks hard at times like this.

I am over the worst of it, I'm guessing. It's an infection of the "tract" variety that requires way too much water and cranberry juice/pills and visits to the WC to keep things, um flowing. You can kill me later for not going to the doctor and getting antibiotics, but the fact is that it just never got to the OHMYGODMYKIDNEY phase. And seeing as I love doctors soooooo very much? And spent over $300 for them to tell me that I've never had the chicken pox? That if I can get over this on my own? I'm gonna.

Yes, internet moms, at the first sign of that thudding/throbbibg/unmistakable pain I will go see someone, I promise. I know this can go either way (i.e. go away on its own or kill me), but as I keep saying, with the fever gone and the utter exhaustion now at the "I'm just tired" level, I'm either headed toward wellness, or faking it pretty awesomely.

Except maybe I still want my mommy every few hours. (Which really is much funnier if you'd ever experienced being sick around my mom when I was a kid...I think I got my bedside manner from her...which says it all if you've ever been sick around me.)

Something Purple

I do still knit. A lot more than I let on, lately, but I do. It's getting my act together enough to snap a picture before I give it away? That I'm having problems with lately.

I'm seeing the attraction of the 3-ish Mega Pixel cameras on the fancy smart-phones wherein you can snap the shot, send it to your social networking site of choice, and bobs-yer-uncle, you have a finished object/brag page/something to account for the squint you're developing.

But I did like making these:

Through the Loops' Socktoberfest Mystery Socks:

I wasn't sure how to link them, so I kinda just liked the first clue. I'm sure you if you're really burning to knit these you're on Ravelry and have the page/project bookmarked (or whatever you do to save patterns...I need more schooling in these matters, obviously.)

I followed the instructions as written, but finished far too late to enter into the "finished socks" contest, which is okay with me, really. With everything else going on? I'm surprised I got as far as I did and even finished! Hurray for me!

So back in the junior high/later elementary age, I really took a shine to purple things. Not so much the unicorn light-colored lavender, but in a pinch, I'll still saunter over in that direction. But purple? A real blue-hued purple? Prince-and-the-Revolution-Purple-Rain-Purple? I like. And I really liked the shades of this yarn. It's Pagewood Farms in the um, Yukon, um, style? Design? Model? In a very nice (to me, maybe purple isn't your thing) variegated purple.

I made these socks for my best friend from elementary school's birthday this year. I had been aiming for her birthday um, maybe two years ago...but time did that running away thing it does, so I failed. Better late than never? I guess?

She lives where they actually do have snow on a seasonal basis and though these are holey, they are woolly, and I hope she got them and that they fit. It's my first time trying out making socks via long distance for someone other than my mom. And I'm totally willing to try again if I failed, 'kay? No pressure! And if you hate them that's okay too, really! (They don't call me tactless for nothin'.)

For my next trick, I finished a couple hats for my baby brother, who in a few days time won't be so baby anymore...but I am exhausted...which is another update I should talk about, but maybe when I feel 100%, cuz writing about how poopie I feel when the sick factor is high? Just makes me feel worse.

More later.

Testing?

Well, bloglines still thinks I don't exist.

That's fine. Really. Last time it posted once I hit three posts. So this is a filler one before I post the socks I finished a million years ago.