Rachael

You would think I would have blogged this before, but I kept forgetting.

But if you’re in the southern California area, you HAVE to go see the girls this week — they’re fantastically fun, and great musicians, and they smell pretty good, too. They’ve got quite a knitterly following here, and if you go up to them and tell them The Knitter sent you, I will get even MORE street cred. Help me out here.

Thursday night (tomorrow night): The Silverlake Lounge, Los Angeles
Friday night: The Whiste Stop, San Diego
Saturday night: Muddy Waters, Santa Barbara

More details (and mp3s) on their site (with links to venues).
Go! Tell ’em I sentcha!

I have a new coffee-shop! That is just so exciting to me. I’m well enough now to ride my bike there, which is thrilling to me. Maybe you’re a bike rider, so you won’t understand, but ohmygod, riding a bike is SO COOL. I’m still kinda terrified of it, so that adds to the thrill, but I heard through a friend of La’s that there was a good coffee-shop in San Leandro, called Zocalo. I looked it up, and it was only 2.5 miles from our house! Totally do-able, even in my still-recovering state. And it’s a flat ride, with a BIKE LANE all the way there. I am in love with bike lanes. I don’t think I’ll ever ride on a street without them, really. They’re so polite! They give the impression of safety! (Although I trust nothing and no one, don’t worry.)

So it’s a sweet ride there (kind of through the hood for a while, and then suddenly, you cross the border from Oakland to San Leandro, and there are trees! Gardens! The line of demarcation is so sudden and obvious it’s mind-boggling, really), and then the cafe is just so nice: It’s big, open, lots of tables that seem constantly full, free wifi, really good coffee, nice people, music quiet enough that iTunes on my computer drowns it out, couches, a kid’s play area, the roaster actually roasting beans in the same room with you, putting up that heavenly smell…..

And I’m writing. Still not well enough to go back to work, can’t talk for 12 hours straight although a couple of hours is okay, so I’m using this vacation-like time to write. And I’ve got a new method — called the Treadmill Journal, I stole the idea from here. Basically, you write your plan of action and how much time you’re going to spend on it, then you do it, then you write about how it went, and then you plan the next day’s writing. Granted, I’ve only done it for four days. But it’s been successful in that I have to plan when exactly I’m going to write the next day. I never do that, never plan in advance, and every day I expect to find time to write, and then I don’t, because days fill up and go by, don’t they? But if you have a plan, it’s easier to write. I’m lovin’ it, and I’m loving getting actual writing done. I’ve plotted to the end of the novel I’m working on, and OH LORD LET ME FINISH A BOOK. With three novels more than half-way done, one 500 pages long and ALMOST done, it’s frustrating never to be able to finish. It’s just a mental block — always more fun to start something new rather than finish the old — and I know if I just finish one, that will be the kick I need to finish the others. I don’t even care if they’re good endings. Just as long as they END.

But I’m not in a great hurry. Heading toward an ending is good enough right now.

And I’d also like to jump on the clutter-purge bandwagon and clean out my writing/yarn room, but every time I get gung-ho about it, I feel tired. This throat of mine lets me do only some of the things I want. By the end of the day, I’m pretty much guaranteed to feel like ass. Riding my bike five miles just took it out of me for a couple of hours. So I think I’ll retire to the couch and continue reading the book I’m LOVING, Dishwasher, by Pete Jordan. Ah, the best kind of confessional-memoir. He’s a guy who spent years attempting to wash dishes in all 50 states. He wrote a zine about it, and this is his book about those years, and something about it is so comforting. And he’s just so damn funny. You might enjoy it.

Off to the couch.

I succumbed. I have NO idea what was holding me back. But I’ve fallen into the Ravelry hole, and god help me, I can’t get out.

For those of you knitters not using Ravelry yet, let me tell you a thing or two about it. I had thought it was something like a knitting Friendster, where you could also log how many/what type of needles you had. Yes, people TOLD me it was so much more than that, but I didn’t believe them. Didn’t want to. Didn’t have time.

But I’m so glad I did! Imagine, if you will, having ten balls of Rowan Kid Classic in your stash, and not knowing what the hell to do with it. You go to Ravelry, punch in Rowan Kid Classic, and come with 124 projects that current members have used to make things. Pictures. Patterns LINKED right there. Notes. Needle sizes. Complaints, praises for the yarn.

Or you’re not sure if you like a pattern or not, just by looking at the two pictures shot in half-shadow (hello Debbie Bliss) in the book. Punch in the pattern name and look at the completed versions worn on members’ real bodies.

I think that may be my favorite part, actually. Seeing real patterns worn on bodies that are a little more zaftig (like mine) than the models in the patterns.

Also, it’s a community — they have groups for EVERYTHING, trust me. I originally only joined because I wanted to read what the group going to Rhinebeck had up their sleeves (yes, I’m going! So excited! Been to Maryland twice, but never, ever Rhinebeck….), and so I used my invite which had been sitting unused in my inbox forever. And then I was stuck. So very stuck.

But it’s better than when you discovered blogs and got REALLY stuck. Know why? Because once you put in your finished projects (or as many as you care to, like I have), and once you figure out the navigation, you don’t HAVE to spend much time on it. I’m not a big group/forum reader, but I’ll use them to gain info when needed.

But it’s inspiring. You see something you want to make, you throw it in your queue. Forever easily found later.

It made me finally cast on for Lala’s next sweater, Durrow.

She’s been due for a sweater for a while, and I already had the yarn, and knew I wanted to make her some  kind of cabled thing. I was going to design it myself, but every time I swatched and thought about all the math involved, I got discouraged. I have to be in a very particular mood to design a whole aran, and I haven’t been in that mood. But I think Durrow is perfect, and that was backed up by a slew of really great looking Durrows already completed on Ravelry. I think I’m the only one I saw modifying it to be knit in the round, though, so I’m keeping notes, and will post my progress so the next person wanting to make it won’t have to accidentally stumble across my blog, but can just cross-reference it in Ravelry.

I’m doing it in Lamb’s Pride kiwi, though, a rather emeraldy green. I love that the sleeves are so interesting, but at the same time you can be working on the body if you’re in the mood for something COMPLETELY mindless.

    In real life MUCH more green

Ravelry’s in beta still, though, so they have a waiting list to get invites. It’s a LONG list, but I hear it moves pretty quickly, so don’t give up hope, and if you’re not on the list, or maybe you hadn’t thought it was for you, get on the list. Trust me, it IS for you, even if you only ever use it to look up patterns.

Still on the mend! This is being blogged from my writing/yarn room, from my chair, which feels like a big step from being in bed.

I have learned some things.

I am a bad patient. Or, really, I’m not that bad, I try to be as nice as possible about it, but once I am feeling better, I am hard to keep down.

This is because I have such a — I don’t really know what to call it. It’s not really a guilt complex, I don’t feel GUILTY that I haven’t done laundry or cleaned the house, it’s just that I have such a hard time NOT doing those things.

And it’s not an exuberant work ethic — I feel it is okay for me to relax. I know it is. I know it is perfectly acceptable, especially while recovering from surgery, to be lazy. It’s not that I feel I have to be doing something, all the time.

I just don’t know HOW to be lazy. As soon as I start, just lying on the couch with the TV on, nothing in my hands, my brain fills up with things I should/could do instead.

So my new thing, while I’m on the mend, is to pretend I’m on vacation. Therefore, no guilt. Don’t have to work. Don’t have to clean the house (but I did clean the litterboxes. Time, tide, and kitty litter, you know).

Of course, this morning I wrote a list of all the things I’d like to do on this little "vacation," and it filled a whole page. I think there’s something wrong with that.

But today, I think I’d just really like to make one of these great shopping bags based on a plastic bag’s template. Ain’t it cute?

Even has its own carrying pocket so you can put it in your purse.

All right. Off to try not Do Things. I’m going to try to Enjoy Things. Yes.

1. I went out! I actually left the house! First time in eight days. Yesterday, to the coffee shop, with Lala and all three dogs, which just about kilt me, but I did it. The pain has reached a manageable level finally, but now the fever has kicked in, which it likes to do around day 8-10. (Post-op talk, skip if you’re bored: Talked to the doc — he said the reason this is such a big surgery with such a long recovery time is that they took SO MUCH — got the tonsillar structure right down to the nodes, but with that comes a bunch of close-by muscle (and possibly nerve, the right side of the tongue is still numb).) So I enjoyed half a cup of green tea before I felt like crap and we had to move along, but it was a nice outing.

2. I went out again, today! Yesterday was really a rehearsal to see how I’d do today, and it went swimmingly! Maia had a spin-in (email her to get on the the list) and it was DELIGHTFUL. I had just enough voice for an hour and a half to talk to lovely people, some of whom I knew, some I didn’t. There was quiche! Lots of it! And I tell ya, recovering from your second tonsillectomy, for your first meal out of the house, make it brunch. Quiche is the perfect look-I’m-eating-real-food food. And Janine was there! Everyone knows I admire Janine SO much, and then she goes and drops something like, "back when I teaching Hebrew…." With my horrible memory I possibly knew this a long time ago, but I think I would remember such a cool thing. Wow, she is so cool.

See? Spinning! And I got to see Celia for a moment, and Brooke, and lots of other nice people, and I got to have FUN again, not lying in bed or on a couch. Oh, yeah.

And I spun up some nice baby camel/tussah silk that is inSANEly soft. I haven’t spun in so long, and it was immensely satisfying.

Know what else is satisfying?

3. Digit got his cone off! This happened about an hour ago, and he hasn’t stopped washing once. (Well, he had the cone on for almost 5 weeks. As Lala just said, that’s a dirty, dirty butt.)  I’m keeping a close eye on him, he could still rip open some of the softer areas where the stitches and staples were if he’s too rough, and the cone will be popped right back on if that happens, but I’m hoping for the best.

And he’s GROWLING at himself. It’s quite funny. It’s as if he’s so PISSED that he just found out that whole back region has been shaved and HE WASN’T TOLD.

He also growls maniacally if I try to touch him while he’s washing. Watch (the noise that’s kind of low is him growling his little growl-box off):

Goddamnit, someone shaved my ass!

So all is well! I’m tired now, and Dr. Lala thinks I should rest for the remainder of the day. I act tough, but I think she’s right. It’s dark and overcast and almost threatening rain today, and I’m sad for Lala that she has to play a huge barbeque/party right down on the Oakland marina today, very sad for her, but I’m happy for me that I’m going to stay right here in bed and watch netflix movies and knit socks. I might move to the couch later and do a little more spinning. Who knows? It will be nice, though. Yesterday and the day before were rough. I HATE it when I’m well enough to feel like I should be active but not well enough to actually BE so. Truly unpleasant. So much nicer to be able to do a little something and then rest the rest of the justified.

Or the un-coned. Digit is my MAN! 

Dramamine made me feel normal again, like I wasn’t hungover AND drunk on a boat in a squall. And we had it in the cabinet at home, didn’t even have to get someone to get any for me.

I can tell I’m getting better because I’m getting antsy again. I tend to get antsy about five minutes after believing I’m starting to feel better. It is infinitely frustrating for those around me, because I do tend to want to build a better house around the one I’m in right when what I should be doing is resting, not digging out hammers and building supplies.

(A simple solution to this, I’ve found, is to read or watch decluttering pr0n — Lala’s letting me read her new book, It’s All Too Much, An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff. Do you know how much this stuff excites me? And then it falls out of my head as I drop into a nap, better than dropping off the ladder as I try to clean ceilings — do any of you have a fave declutter show that I can TiVo? There’s was a British one I used to love, but I can’t remember its name, and I’m not sure what’s on nowadays.)

Yesterday, I didn’t do too well. Because of the nausea I hadn’t eaten anything all day, so about noon-time, I knew I should be hungry, but wasn’t. I looked in the freezer and found some frozen ravioli that I thought didn’t sound too revolting, so I put on water to boil. While the water was boiling, I thought I would do some dishes. That was my first mistake. Not quite strong enough for dishes yet, because they exhausted me half-way through and left me in a full-body sweat. But no worries, I’d eat and feel better.

Got out the pasta sauce from the fridge, not sure if it’s still good, let’s open and have a sniff, and the WHOLE JAR flies out of my wet hands and lands on the tiles, exploding into a gazillion-trillion tiny little shards of red glass. It sprays from one end of the kitchen to the other, from the sink to the back wall. Even hit the ceiling.

I, of course, because of the state I’m already in, burst into tears and start cleaning. The dogs think lapping at shards of tomato glass is their new favorite hobby, and I’m SCREAMING at them, which doesn’t go well for anyone, because I’m not very loud, tonsil-less this way, and it’s mighty painful, but my body language must have been devastating, because they dropped to the ground under the kitchen table and stayed there, tails between legs. Normally not so good at the Stay, them. Even the kittens listened to me, and I’m not sure they’ve EVER heard me before.

I was in big trouble with Lala about this, doing too much. So I’m determinedly Not Doing Too Much. I’m going to read and watch more TV and nap a bunch more today. She has people coming over tonight but I am NOT CLEANING THE HOUSE. Even though it’s all I want to do. But I won’t. It’s her gathering, not mine, and I will merely take a shower (this is a big deal) and wear something befitting an invalid, and flit through the living room at times, looking gaunt and possibly wan, if I can pull either of those off (I don’t think I can, but forgive a girl for trying, right?).

HaHA! I am coming BACK!

Digit is doing great, but very sadly, still has the cone. They took the stitches out yesterday, but the skin is still raw around the two spots they did, so they want him to wear it a while longer, poor bub.

Whew. And that’s all I got.