1 day to moving day

CT scans feel like bad heatstroke. Nobody told me this, and I started feeling distressed and confused about 20 minutes after having my head in the giant microwave. Shoulder and knee joints froze up into stiff knobs of pain. 

But it was worth it, because my otolaryngologist had a look at the scans and said,"Erm, I have no idea. You should see a neurologist." So that's just great.

Oh, I dunno.

On the plus side, audiologist said I have perfectly normal hearing. The kids finally believe me when I indiscriminately yell, I HEARD THAT.

And that was yesterday. 

Today, talked with my boys on fb video chat before they ran off to play with machine guns(??). Finished illustrations - ALL OF THEM. Moved two carloads of crap. Packed all the silverware, and had to eat dinner with pink plastic elephant forks. 

Tomorrow: fun with Earblowers and heavy furniture.

physically improbable

Saturday morning, I sat on the bed folding laundry, stood up, brushed my hand against the leg of my jeans, and somehow tore off part of my thumbnail. I blame rivets. Which I don't appear to actually have on my jeans, but how in the hell else does one achieve this?

Within hours, the side of my thumbnail had swollen and blossomed like a lurid organ. I applied antibiotic ointment and disinfectants and tried to drain it, but it just throbbed and oozed and turned alternately green and red.

I complained about my gangrenous thumb on twitter, and Mr. HS sent me a picture of his broken foot. But unless he's been using his feet for coding instead of his hands, my whine still stands. Every little bump and chafe causes shooting, blinding, knee-watering pain. I have decided that this must be what it is like having testicles. Growing off your thumb. For this reason, I heartily do NOT recommend peeling an orange with your testicles.

So I was moaning on about my hand, powering through illustrations despite the disgusting pastel-smeared thumb gore, when suddenly a new house fell in my lap. And just like that, I'm moving in by the 1st.

Which is in 3 weeks.

Which is also my illustration deadline.

And all this without a thumb.

Well, crap.

Monday: fun with otolaryngology.

the jog, the moth, the noose

Got off work at 7:30pm. Still light out. Yanked on running pants and sneakers, stuffed ipod down jogging bra.  Ran down to the bay at twilight, dodging toads on the roadside.

Running back up, the sporadic cough I've been having expanded into an asthmatic gasp, and I walked in the headlights of cars, hoot-wheezing toward the house.

A moth flew straight down my throat.

I tried to spit it out, which is when I discovered that I do not know how to spit. A rope of saliva and bug parts fell out of my mouth, dangled somewhere down around my thighs, and swung back to splat across the length of my torso.

Started jogging toward the house, coughing and spitting and gagging. Made for the shortcut before my driveway, down a short hill of rocks between the mango trees. My ipod cord caught in the branches, I managed to get it wrapped around my neck, and fell down the hill. Legs went into violent muscle cramps from lack of use. Rode a cat back into the house, got into shower, and climbed under my quilting with a beer.

Well played, nature.

A quilt for Leif

Leif has been taken away by his father. Mike flew over, and we spent Saturday wandering the mall, watching the boy climb foam whales in the kiddie mosh pit area, drinking pints at the Mexican cantina, and awkwardly edging around difficult topics. Leif ate a sundae as large as his head. With two spoons. 

I've had the kids away for vacations before. I have been looking forward to the productivity time, since I have 3 weeks left to illustrate an entire book. So it was a bit unexpected for me to start crying suddenly in Costco, pretending I had something in my eye and hiding behind a sample of guacamole with my sunglasses on. I made it out and sobbed into the cilantro lime shrimp in the car. 

So I bought tickets to see the Avengers. It was awesome. Then I listened to shitty music and got shmoopy and cried some more on the drive home.

Today was my first day without children. The house was empty. I finished a two-page illustration, ate some sashimi, chatted with Mike about Leif's first night and then with my mom in Indiana, walked to the beach, found S. and his boys, caught a ride home, and knocked out the rest of Leif's quilt top. 

The visiting boys liked the quilt, so I promised to make them one next. It is always a surprise to me that I can make a nice dinner and kids will say, "eew, is that sauce? I wanted ketchup," but when I knit or sew things, they spread out on them and ask for more. I do not understand the difference.

Someone - and I really do not know who - weed whacks my front yard and clears out all the rotting mangoes while I'm at work. I do not have yard service. All the yard men I know have blamed each other. I am going to start leaving baked goods tied up in bows in the leaf pile - which they will then have to scrape up with a rake after the weed whacker finishes with them.

Next - sandwich, quilt, and bind. The binding will be black and color scraps*, the quilting will be by hand. I love the squooshy loft and bold detail of hand-quilted blankets.


* right at this point, the artichokes boiling on the stove blew up in a burst of electrical fire that left a hole in the stove coils. Fail. Get the ketchup.

What I wore

This is something I have seen a bit of lately on blogs. Not fashion blogs, just hipstery knitting-and-pictures-of-my-dinner blogs. I saw another this morning. That looks easy, thinks I.  I will throw my instagrams on the clothing pile. BLOGGING DONE.

  7:30am

Tank top by Old Navy, Summer 2008. Bra straps by Wonder Bra, via Ross. Sweatpants stolen from friend in 2007 while sleeping over on her air bed. Knitted porcelain coffee cup from Starbucks, Winter 2009. Hutch in background features knitting books, beer brewing magazines, computer debris, and cat pee enzyme spray.

Yesterday I also read two - two - blog entries narrating the holiday weekend from the perspective of their dogs.

Well, I think I can do that, too.

"THE FUCK IS THAT GREY CAT WITH THE FLUFFY BALLS DOING IN MY FOOD BOWL?! Also, I left you a dead rat in the candy bag from preschool graduation. Rats are candy for everyone!"

And that is enough of that.

We have a stray cat trying to move in. Specifically, into the food dishes. Maura (black cat) was sleeping on the lanai and didn't notice Mr. Flufferballs stroll by and into the kitchen, Leif leaped in yelling, "HI NICE KITTY I PET YOU!" so the cat bolted out the screen door, Maura jerked awake, flailed all her legs, and fell sideways off the balcony. I died.

In other news, am going to the otolaryngologist because my ear has been hurting for 8 months, which has baffled my doctor because it looks like a normal ear when she shines a light in it. I also told her that I have been having electrical pulsing sensations in my brain which feel like they could lead to seizures or blackouts, and she said, "Huh, I've never heard anyone say that." Will ask Dr. Footlong-Tweezers when I go in for my ear. Avoiding google, as it will tell me I am incubating some horrible creature inside my skull.

Summer break!

I do not have a summer break. But the boys do, so I mailed the large one to his grandmother for a month-long trip to the mainland. As a kid, my mother and I spent the summers living in the truck, camping at KOAs and preserving our innards with giant sheets of truck stop beef jerky. It makes me really happy for Gavin to be tromping the US with my favorite road captain. She knows all the rules, like "thou shalt stop at every Dairy Queen in the Southwest" and "thou shalt sample all the foods for which the region is famous" and "if you see a 50 foot fiberglass cow, you MUST PULL OVER". 

Once the smaller child goes to stay with his dad next week, it will be an illustration intensive as my deadline fast approaches, but until then, I have been rolling in yarns.

 My Mother's Day box arrived. I have sock blockers now, fancy.

All my socks will be foot-shaped! Or else!

I got a sweater's worth of pink heathered cotton, for my storytime librarian disguise.

And sock yarn! Doctor Who stripes, and a tonal skein in the "wine tasting" colorway, for a particular librarian who needs to be smacked with boozy socks.

Heather! ALA conferences are great sock-smacking forums! We should plan this.

I will knit all the things. If anyone can coax me off of my beach towel and pry the drink from my hand.

FO - Java socks

DONE. I am no longer sock provider to the one-legged only!

The Java socks have been hogging my needles since last September. I cast on in Washingtonville, NY, while visiting for a friend's wedding. In the winter, I focused on the stitches to bring myself through the black rows that swept up my shmoopy shcarf. I cannibalized needles from them when I went into a spring sock frenzy. And last night I broke my kitchen chair when I finally finished them, jumped up to try them on, and put my foot through the wicker seat. Lesson: it is not always necessary to stand on chairs to wear socks.


The instep creates a sexy little arch over the top of the foot.

Here I almost snapped my spine arching up from the patio to get my legs over the rail into the sunlight.

I am smudged from elbow to knee with pastel, scribbling appointments and meetings and flight schedules and illustration deadlines on the end-of-school-year calendar, so actually finishing something is kind of exhilarating. I can do ANYTHING NOW!

3KCBWDAY7 - crafting balance

Crafting balance. I do not have it. I binge on whatever project blows my kilt up; months of knitting, months of quilting, months of thematic cocktails. But what this theme is asking is whether I mix it up with knit and crochet, and the answer is: no.

I do not know how to crochet. And it makes me go rage-face when I get to the end of a perfectly reasonable pattern and it ends with "finish with crochet chain". Without telling me what that is. Instead of looking it up, I always improvise, and manage to painstakingly re-invent the entire craft from base zero. Time and vocal chords would be saved if I could just admit that I needed to learn to be a hooker.

 But there is bias against crochet. It probably has something to do with toilet paper covers.

And then I see something that shakes my knitterly world.

Tiny amigurumi.

via

Japanese micro crochet. 

And this blanket.

Made by Myrtle & Eunice.

And so crochet is on my to-do list. Next to making a fondant-covered cake, running in an organized running-type event, outrigger paddling, archery, paintball, and classic car rebuilding. 

Any day now.

3KBCWDAY5 - Something a bit different

I'm going to knit you something. TIME WARP POWERS ACTIVATE.




Video tutorial 
Step 1: try to get Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist to play on crappy old DVD player.
Step 2: knit.
Step 3: gin.

Ta daaaa, I made you a mushroom!

3KCBWDAY4 — A Knitter For All Seasons?

Yes, here it comes. I have posted a picture of my latest knitting project. I am pleased with it. I even show a bit of boob, to interest the non-knitters in my feed. And then someone says it.

"Haha, why do you knit in Hawaii?!"

I have had people - cold, complaining mainland people - pull on a hat I've made for them and say, "Wow, thanks! Haha, why do you knit in Hawaii?!" And then I snatch the hat back and beat them around the head with it.

Some folks really want to know, though. So for them, I may explain:

1) Library air conditioning is cold. Librarians wear cardigans.
2) People ask me to make them things.
3) Hawaii actually does have weather.
4) I DO WHAT I WANTS.

In the winter, cold rain sweeps in off the ocean, turning to snow up on the mountain. We have no heating in our homes, with window louvres that rattle in the wind and leak cold air in while we sleep under piles of heavy comforters. Hobos are not going to freeze to death, but everyone starts wearing hoodies and huddling under blankets and enjoying the excuse to covertly slip cold hands under each other's clothes. At high noon on most winter days, you can peel off your socks and sweatshirt and try to make a dash for the beach between cloud bursts, until the evening chill drives you back under the couch blanket. And while we huddle together watching a movie before bed, I knit. In the summers while the kids play outside, I sit in the shade with a cold beer and knit.
 
In Hawaii.