Rachael

It’s an odd light outside – that warm late afternoon brightness hitting the leaves, a sullen cold darkness underneath. Do you know what I mean? It’s spring, but the light has that early autumn look to it. I have the window all the way open, and Digit is sitting at the screen, licking his chops, satisfied that he woke me from my nap in time for dinner.

Yes, nap. No, I wasn’t at work. I did go in yesterday for ten hours and left more tired than can be imagined. On my doorstep at home was a gift of SLIPPERS from one of my favorite people, so I was very cheered. Today I got up, feeling like hell, like a cow had slept right ON my chest and I couldn’t move the beast. I went in to work. At hour eight, I went home four hours early. Luckily, the people who had to cover for me did so cheerfully, and almost voluntarily. I think my cough is fierce and alarming to those not used to it. And I realized that eight hours, while it’s a short shift for me, is long damn enough (I think I meant “damn long enough” but I like it better this way).

I think I’ve been a little naive in thinking that it goes like this: You get sick. You get better. ‘Tisn’t like that. It goes more like this: You get sick. You get a little sicker. You get a little better but still feel sick. Maybe a little better after that, but don’t PUSH it. Then you feel pretty sick again. I push things. Why, yes, I do. Surprised? Why not?

I was supposed to go to dinner tonight with friends, after my shift (I know, I know. I push). I was so sad that I would miss them (and the steak they were cookin’ for me), but when I called to cancel, my lovely friend said she’d drive my dinner over later. That’s what you get when you listen to your body. (OMG, speaking of listening to bodies, did you read Greta’s post today (March 27th, Stars on Ice)? Holy cow. She is dialed IN, people, and I’ve seen it in action.)

I get almost three more days to rest up, don’t have to be back at work until 5pm on Tuesday to start back to midnights. I’ll be good and strong by then. And now, I’m off to enjoy watching the light change in this dusk…..

See, the secret to Typepad is to compose your blog posts whenever you want and then just time them to launch whenever you like. If I write this post right now, this Thursday afternoon, and have it show up tomorrow morning, I’ll be golden till Sunday. I can’t post from work, because I can’t download PICTURES at work. But I want to write right now while the skies are recovering from a massive downpour (what are the odds of that? In a week of sun, pneumonia-girl goes out in the rain?), with the heater on, both kitties washing themselves, the promise of Zachary’s pizza in my future. Much better writing now than in the morning between phone calls.

Without further ado, may I present:

(red-eye reduction by reader Steph – thanks!)

This is Leslie, of Nake-id Knits (and of the p.12 piece in the new Vogue Knitting! Whoo hoo!). Just how cute is she? We got the chance to get together today. (I mean yesterday, must remember posting time….) We had chai, and knitted together (her Must-Have really is a must have, in Arucania burgundy), and did a little yarn shopping at my LYS, Article Pract. Always a great store, it was made even more fun when checking out and the counter-person said, “Are you Rachael?” Well, she had heard the owner, Christina, say hello to me when we walked in. Okay. There’s that. But she HAD put me together with my blog, and she also reads Leslie’s, so it was a fabulously fun moment. Hi, Amy!

And Leslie gave me this which I LOVE:

(Digit likes it, too.) It’s Interlacements Little Toes, color 216, and she got it for me because of that gorgeous orange in there. She knows I’m into orange lately.

I don’t know if she knows HOW into orange I’ve been lately:

She’s just like you’d imagine, sweet and funny and smart as a whip, and it just goes to promote the Not Weirdness that occurs when like-minded bloggers meet. For some reason, Oakland seems to be a knitting hub of an odd sort, and I’ve been lucky enough to quite a few of you. But I want to meet all of you! Can’t we have some big knit-blog party somewhere? (Say, Fiji?) Where we all sit and drink and knit and laugh. That would be a party, all right. What I liked was that a bunch of her family members were with her when I picked her up, and I shook everyone’s hand, and then when it got to Leslie, we hugged and said “Nice to meet you” at the same time. I’ve never met a knit-blog friend and NOT hugged immediately. Nice, that.

Physically, I’m feeling better. The outing with Leslie was just about at my limit, and I came home feeling pretty worn out. But happy. As I hope you are. Happy Friday.

Man, mornings are the hardest right now. I swear when I went to bed last night, I was feeling pretty good. But this morning, I’m wiped out again. Completely. Terribly. To the point where I don’t even want to get up to download the (kitty) photos that are on my camera.

Sigh. That’s my grumble for the day. Overall, I’m much better, and I think I’ll be up for a day at work tomorrow. We change shifts this week, so I’ll only work Friday and Saturday, then have two days off and start back on midnight shift (9pm-7am) on Tuesday night. Six months of midnights! I’m happy about that because it means I’ll have Sat Sun Mon off for the summer, and I have LOTS of things to do on the weekends in summer. Three music festivals, Pride, my BIRTHDAY (the day after July 4th)….

But I have a new plan. We’ll see how well I implement it, but I’ve discovered something this last sick week. This may be a “duh” moment, but I’ve found that it’s very nice to do nothing. (I never do nothing.) And towards the end of my recovery here, it’s been difficult to keep myself down, but when I succeeded, I found it was very nice to move from the bed to the couch and back to the bed again. My new plan is to give myself a day or two like that a month. For people with families and great big houses to maintain, I understand this would be an impossibility, but for me and my two kitties, it’s do-able. I don’t even look to these days as knitting days, because that’s Doing Something. If knitting happens, so be it, but if just reading happens, so be that, too. It’s been a wonderful quiet time here at casa del’Rachele and I want more of that in my life.

We speed up so fast, don’t we? It’s hard to slow down. I want to practice.

But on the flip side, today is the day I get up. No, really, I know I’m ready. First, I’m going to do laundry (which is easy, just walk it down the corridor outside to our machines). Then I’m going to have coffee with a friend (more on that tomorrow, hopefully). And maybe a spot of grocery shopping. We’ll see about that one. That’s it. But for a gal who has done NOTHING for a week now, that feels like a hell of a lot.

Well, I’ll confess. I did one thing Monday night. I realized it was a bad idea about ten minutes into it. But by then I’d made the commitment and had got out all the tools, and I didn’t quit till I was done. I hung my white twinkle lights (thanks to Gina’s generosity)! It might seem silly, but I always need my white lights (I turn the twinkle off) wherever I live. They make me happy and they let me know I’m home. I was covered in sweat and shaking by the time I was done, but I just took a bath and then relaxed on the sofa, under the happy lights. Damn, now I HAVE to get my camera. Hang on.

Okay, see?

And because every day that I stay inside turns into a photo op with the cats, here’s a sun shot of Adah. She’s a rolly little tub, but somehow she manages to stay on the sill:

Sigh. Do as little as is possible today, okay?

Oh, Livio, I love you. This gallery just made me soooo happy. A Venetian artist, who drives his CAR through the canals, oh happy sigh. I’m going to go visit him next time I go, to thank him for this kind of joy, shown in my favorite photo of him just passing the Rialto, here. Thanks, Yvette…

Feeling better, but feeling tired and not much like posting (or doing anything else, for that matter). So ciao, all.

Nope, I didn’t even notice that Mary-In-My-Wine below until I came home from Italy and printed out my pictures. And I have to admit that I didn’t even notice her. Bethany, who has a scary-good eye for the Strange, pointed it out to me. Love her. Hello, Madonna.

Feeling: Tired. Cough-ey. More tired. Feeling not much like writing, so I’ll give you some photos.

These little cats have been my saving grace this week. Did you read the new Atwood, Oryx and Crake? Where, in the future, the cat’s purr is found to be healing? She had something there. Today was the day, in my plans, that Digit and perhaps Adah went outside for the first time. Two factors are holding me back. One, I’m just too tired to deal with worrying about their first foray and when/whether they’ll come back. Two, Digit really hasn’t seemed to mind it much yet. I’m considering keeping him inside! I don’t think it’ll last – he’s the kind of cat that usually gets desperately depressed when not allowed to go outside, but he hasn’t started his frantic behavior yet. He howls, but only for a moment and it seems to be more for show than anything else. I’m enjoying so much the camaraderie that they’ve found being stuck together in a foreign place. Used to be that Digit couldn’t be closer than three feet to Adah or he’d hiss and whine. Now look:

Those are the flowers Christy gave me, aren’t they lovely? I’m passionate about anything orange right now, and I love tulips.

In fact, let’s frame those gorgeous kits against them:

And this one below kills me. I got up from the couch last night to make yet another cup of tea. When I walked past this composition I had to slap my hand over my mouth from laughing out loud in delight. Oh, I WISH I could have seen it happen. Digit would never have got up on the chair if Adah were there, so he must have been there first. And I can just imagine his long-suffering look when Adah jumped up. But he stayed!

All right, for not feeling like typing, I’ve typed enough. On the mend, truly. I promise. And I’m not overdoing it. Too tired to overdo it…..

Off to rest again. Mwah (I’m not contagious anymore….).

I can say unequivocally that today I’m feeling a little better. Yesterday I felt so badly that I just couldn’t tell if I was getting any better. Today I am. I still feel green and weak and jelly-limbed, but I’m coughing SO much less this morning, and the fever has finally broken, I think. I’ve spent the last three days constantly bathed in sweat and freezing at the same time. I have mountains of laundry to do, mostly sweated-through tee-shirts. Ew. But today I’ve got the same tee on that I slept in, and my Must-Have over it, worn with my favorite sweatpants. I swore, when I wasn’t happy with the miniscule size of my Must-Have, that I would wear it as comfort clothing, knockin’ around the house being a slob clothing. That’s today, for sure.

And god help me, I keep looking into the garden, making plans. I really want to get out there into the dirt. I won’t, I SWEAR I won’t. I’m not strong enough, and I know the danger of a relapse. But I’m getting mightily bored of reading and watching TV. Haven’t knit a stitch. Maybe today, although my arms feel too heavy to hold anything. Oh! I did buy some flash yarn when dear Greta was here, some Crystal Palace Splash in orange, meaning to make a scarf. I never buy novelty yarns, but this stuff is too much fun to resist. I may make that scarf now. Never been a better time to do row after row of garter stitch, right?

I swear I WON’T run right out and get the new Vogue Knitting, even though I believe I’m quoted in it. Hee. Giggle. Too exciting, non? Go, Leslie! But I believe it’s a true illustration of how tired I am that I know I won’t go buy it. Damn it.

And Lisa in Oregon is right, again. Y’all make me feel loved and so blessed and thought of and watched over. (Hum it with me, There’s a somebody I’m longing to see…..) I won’t work in the garden anytime soon, because I know you would be almost as mad as my little mama would be at me. Here’s to another coupla days, at least, of lying around being pale and uninteresting. Lotsa juice and tea, I promise. Yup.

Because you deserve it, here’s a snap from last year. I’m sitting on the Grand Canal with my glass of prosecco, watching the traffic. But look at the Madonna who came to visit me in my glass! I love this one.