and now for something completely different

Maybe it has something to do with having lived paycheck to paycheck most of my life and just not being able to afford buying new stuff every time I want to change my surroundings, but I will argue to my dying day that one of the most satisfying ways to redecorate any space is to simply move shit around.

Move the furniture to a different place in a room or to a different room. Move the art on the walls. Move the random bits and bobs you have lying around. Open your eyes and intentionally see your world from a different perspective – literally. It’s extremely liberating.

And free.

What prompted my most recent metamorphosis at the house was realizing that one of my lil t-rex arms is constantly sore because my desk was too high and hence my arm was not in an ergonomically appropriate position. I talked to Lancelot and we agreed that a new standing desk would be a good solution – it goes down low enough when I need to be seated and it also goes up so that I can stand and hopefully that will have a few added health effects. It’s good.

But that prompted the question of what to do with the former, very heavy, desk. I had thought I would replace it; Lancelot came up with the brilliant idea of moving things around so I can have both desks.

And thus began the Great Spring Shit Shift of 2023, and lo, the people rejoiced.

Ok, so technically this wasn’t a completely free undertaking. All told I spent about $300 on the desk and a few new accessories. For that I got a newly renovated office, the guest room got a few new bits, the bedroom got changed up a bit, the living room saw major changes (two “new” chairs!), the entry way got redone, the sunroom lost a chair but gained a table and the big kitty condo, and Lancelot got another storage space for his man cave. It all looks fan-fucking-tastic.

Top Left: Eric enjoying a nap in the living room
Top Right: Last week I decided to wear something I knit every day
Middle Right: A very healthy dinner of salad, quinoa pilaf, and salmon cooked in the air fryer
Bottom Left: My work area in the sunroom
Bottom Center: Dahlia scarf (Ravelry link)
Bottom Right: Cable It Up scarf for my BFF Wendy (Ravelry link)

Goals update

Not a single bit of the $300 I spent was for craft supplies or clothes, so there’s a win. I’ve also been working on finding projects I can make with the supplies I have, like the scarves above. Last weekend I went through all of the shawls/scarves I’ve made and picked out the ones I really just don’t care for; I’m going to unravel them and try to reuse the yarn.

We’ve also really been trying to work on our eating habits. I’m still trying to fill us both with as many fresh fruits and veggies and whole grains as possible. Over the weekend I made Lancelot another batch of quinoa/oatmeal breakfast bars and I made myself a batch of breakfast grain stuff. Hard to describe, but super tasty. Overall I would say we’re doing well.

Another one of my goals has been to work on professional development certificates for work. I’m happy to say that I submitted my last assignment for one last week and I’m already making good progress on the next. I love learning, what can I say.

it’s not my time

I don’t have many “IRL” friends (people I know in real life) which is fine, but it means that my support network isn’t very big. It’s all about quality in my world, not quantity. I would rather have one amazing friend I can call in the middle of the night than a whole stadium full of people who kinda sorta know me but don’t want me to ever call them. I would guess I’m not the only person who has ever dealt with this.

In my friend network I am one of the oldest and I’ve been diagnosed and in treatment for my mental illness longest, all to say that I tend to be the most stable and the most able to provide a shoulder to lean on. I take my Mama Hen role seriously and the majority of the time I enjoy taking care of my chicks.

Right now I’m struggling. I’m not sure why, and it’s not awful, but struggle is struggle and this struggle is real. Lancelot is helping, making sure I’m taking care of myself and doing his best to give me what I ask for. But I can’t rely just on him, that’s not fair. I will admit I’m not the best at asking for help, it’s just not my nature.

Yesterday I sent a text to a few friends saying that I wasn’t doing well. Like in those words. And got no response.

I know that they’re both struggling with their own things, and evidently they don’t need any help or they aren’t asking for any, so I’m just leaving that situation alone.

Maybe some day it will be my time? Maybe?

I’ve been trying to knit amidst taking naps. I’m still working on the Cable it Up scarf and still entirely loving it. The yarn is really nice to work with and the pattern is delightfully straightforward. The pattern is free on Ravelry.

sometimes it’s just not worth trying to make sense of the nonsense in my brain

I’m generally a fairly organized person and I don’t have too much trouble staying on top of necessary tasks. It’s possible that the dental work plus the holiday last week has thrown me off. It’s possible that being on my feet too much and then having a cyst rupture has thrown me off. It’s possible that the 500lb bull I was trying to hold on to for 8 seconds has thrown me off. Wait…

Some days I just have more difficulty staying between the lines, so to speak. Today it appears that I have categorically denied the existence of the lines at all. And there you have it.

We had an amazing Thanksgiving with our friends. Good food and even better company is just a perfect combination. We all had so much fun that Lancelot and I decided that we’re hosting Christmas.

We actually got to have two Thanksgivings because the plans my mom and R had basically fell through, so I hosted the four of us here last night for a mostly traditional dinner. Again, good food and excellent company. The critters even mostly behaved.

We are not Black Friday shoppers, at least not the type that go out in public. I’m so against crowds anymore that we decided to have our groceries delivered. The only other shopping I did was also online and to support a friend of ours who does silversmithing. Her jewelry is amazing.

Even though Black Friday isn’t a thing for us, Small Business Saturday definitely is. We went to a local shop that sells local honey and my favorite local yarn shop. As a bonus, the yarn shop shares space with an art gallery so I managed to pick up a brass dragonfly in addition to yarn for a project I had picked out ahead of time.

We’ve also decided that we aren’t exchanging gifts this year, but we’ll give the money we would have spent to our local food bank. We certainly aren’t wealthy, but we’ve got more than many people do and I feel it’s vital to help since we’re able to.

Dog Blossom is not keen on having her picture taken, especially when L’s beard smells of turkey

enjoying it while i can

So stinkin’ cute

We had our “village” over for dinner Saturday night. These people are the friends we can call on at any time, for anything. And they can do the same with us. We all have our struggles and our emotional baggage from the past and we don’t hold that against each other. There’s a whole lot of unconditional acceptance and love in our village.

Lancelot’s birthday is later this week and I wanted to do something for him, but he’s not super excited about celebrating it or making a fuss about it. So I invited our friends over for dinner and didn’t say anything to any of them about it, or to him, until K noticed on the menu board in the kitchen that next Saturday we’re going out for L’s birthday with my folks. I wanted to keep things very low-key so that everyone was comfortable. It was amazing.

And the scarf has finally told me that it wants to be K’s. I had made them a beanie / fingerless mitt set and the colors coordinate nicely. At any rate, the scarf will have a good home with a great friend.

I try to stay optimistic about damn near everything, but I also try to be realistic. I watch the news at least once a day and I’ve been paying attention to what’s happening with the COVID-19 Delta variant. I know that even though we’ve been vaccinated we could still carry it and spread it. And I know that the governor in our state is a complete jackass when it comes to certain things, issues of public safety and health being what come to mind right now.

So we’ll be back to wearing masks in public, minimizing our exposure to and from other people. And for me this means I’ll be wearing a mask when I’m working on campus. Better safe than dead.

Next week is our vacation and our anniversary. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a year since we got married. It’s been one hell of a ride, especially considering that we’ve been living in a pandemic for the duration of our wedded life thus far. But I honestly can’t imagine going through this with anyone else by my side.

Yup, so stinkin’ cute

things to celebrate

For all that she is a raging pain in the ass sometimes, Dog Blossom is a good pup and pretty damn adorable

Let’s see, where to begin…

• I’ve had four days in a row of 5000+ steps
• I’ve tried some new recipes that were mostly successful
• we’re having a small group of friends over tomorrow night to celebrate a late St. Patrick’s, early birthday, and the start of our vacation
• I have now lost 24lbs

Spaghetti squash cooked in the instant pot and then mixed with a little butter, olive oil, garlic, grated Parmesan, and low fat ricotta

I’m quite excited about how things are going with the weight loss. I have been trying to make sure that I not only get my steps in but I also pay attention to my calories and eat a good variety of food, including healthy fats, and that I’m getting plenty of water. It’s a process, to be sure, but there are definitely pieces of this that are just second nature now. And that, probably more than anything else, makes me ridiculously happy.

Well, also, my pants are starting to be way too baggy. That makes me pretty fucking happy too.

Tomorrow morning I’m going with Mom to get a manicure, something I haven’t done since right before Lancelot and I got married last August. I certainly don’t feel like having the one shot is going to magically make me bullet-proof, but it gives me hope. I do feel like there are a few more things I can do, still carefully, and that I don’t need to worry quite constantly or quite as much. It will still be many months, if not until next year, before I feel safe to travel anywhere other than by driving our car. I’m just not ready for planes yet.

I am ready for restaurants, and that’s pretty exciting. We’ve done a lot of take out in the last year, generally just once a week but still. There’s just something about actually going in somewhere and enjoying a good meal. I’m even going to get spiffed up. For my outing on Sunday with my folks I have a black dress that I’ve never worn that actually fits very nicely now.

He’s fucking adorable when he’s sleeping. When he’s awake he bites leaves off my plants and then go racing off with them in his mouth. Captain Naughty Pants indeed.

a bit of an update

I got my first shot. Lancelot is still a goober, albeit my very favorite goober.

The shot was fine, no issues at all. I actually woke up Saturday morning feeling better than I have in a while. So yay. The shot didn’t hurt or cause me any more trouble than any other vaccine I’ve ever had. It was less painful than the MMR, if anyone has an adult memory of getting that one. My only side effect was a slightly sore arm.

Eric has been particularly photogenic lately

I’m doing pretty well with life in general right now. I did a lot of food prep stuff this weekend that I think will be helpful and I have a plan of attack for getting the house in shape for next weekend. For the first time since Lancelot and I have lived here together we are having friends over, in the house, for a meal and a concert.

I am damn near beside myself with excitement.

Everyone in attendance will either be fully vaccinated or have their first shot, with the exception of L. These are also friends of ours that are just as careful about COVID safety precautions as we are. And that will start the week of celebrations. There will be dinner with my mom and stepdad, dinner out with L at our favorite restaurant, museums, I’m assuming Thai food, and my birthday is in there. I need this vacation so damn bad.

Dog Blossom is pooped too

The healthy eating/exercise/Noom stuff is going well. I’ve lost a total of 22.5lbs and now that I’m starting to feel better it’s time to get back to exercising. My goal (once again) is to hit 5000+ steps every day and to drink at least nine 8oz glasses of water every day. It’s just now coming up on 2pm and I already have almost 2200 steps so I consider that good. Thirty minutes on the treadmill will help quite a bit.

The food prep I did was mostly getting together more of the smoothie packs, partly because I had fresh spinach to use and partly because that was a big time saver. This time I used nonfat plain Greek yogurt and only 2.75oz. I also prepped four snack bowls with a hard boiled egg and two clementines and five “salad starters.”

I have these divided container things so I put fresh spinach in the biggest part and then chopped up a cucumber and divided that among the containers and used the smallest spot for shredded carrots. At lunch I dumped all of that into a big bowl and added a hard boiled egg, 1/4C roasted pumpkin seeds (also pre-measured), and my salad dressing (if you guess pre-measured you’d be right).

Having all of that measured ahead of time made my lunch preparation time today almost negligible. It was nice to have a little extra time during my break to do other things. Like laundry.

Mama, laundry is evil

so there I was, damn certain I’d come up with a witty and brilliant idea for a blog title and it was all just gone…

Am I the only one that happens to? I would swear that sometime earlier this morning I’d come up with something absolutely wonderful to call this post, and now I’ve got a fist full of nada. Well shit.

I have been making some progress with the holiday knitting. The first gift is essentially finished and I’ve started on the second one. All of the necessary yarn is wound. I may, or may not, need to find one pattern yet. But I feel good about how that’s been going, in spite of the help I’ve been getting.

His favorite thing is to “make biscuits” on my leg. Painful at the best of times, annoying AF when I’m trying to knit.

But things in general are good at Casa del Crazypants. We’ve made our plans for Thanksgiving, such as they are, and we’ve started talking about what we want to do for Christmas together. Part of what makes every holiday a little trickier is that Lancelot doesn’t get any extra time off. Christmas and New Year’s are a little better this year since they fall during his normal weekend, but Thanksgiving doesn’t. So I’ll cook on either Friday or Saturday, not sure which yet, and one of our friends is going to join us. He’s every bit as careful about plague protocols as we are.

In other exciting news, I thought I would share my Eggnog Chai Coffee concoction with y’all.

So you start with the cold coffee. I brew a 12 cup pot with 3/4C regular coffee (Folgers right now I think) and add 1tsp ground cinnamon, 1/2tsp ground cardamon, 1/4tsp ground nutmeg, and 1/8tsp ground ginger. All of that goes into the basket together and I brew it like normal. I dump that pot into the clear pitcher you see in the back and add 1/2C Splenda, then pop it in the fridge. That lasts about a week.

In a large insulated cup (that one is 32oz) I put ice, about half way, and then add coffee to cover the ice. Next is the eggnog, a nice glug of it (so precise) and then I top it all off with milk. That’s it. It’s nothing too complicated, it’s not at all expensive, and I think it tastes fabulous. When eggnog isn’t in season (why is it ever not???) I just replace that part with half and half.

I do stop at the coffee shop sometimes but their drinks are smaller and they’re expensive. Plus, there’s usually a line. Making coffee in my own kitchen doesn’t require pants, and I enjoy that.

the amazing tale of what I did for my weekend

So last week was kinda odd. On Thursday I had more blood tests and a visit with the hematologist. That was fine except my blood pressure appears to legit be high. The nurse who checked me in about flipped. Yay, I get to start taking a new med.

Friday was Lancelot’s 50 year fun. The prep for that stuff is just utterly horrible, at least judging by the faces he was making and how miserable he appeared to be. But the procedure itself took almost no time and in spite of the kind of restrictions I’ve gotten used to with the pandemic, I was able to go back to the room where they got him ready and then I got to stay in that room until he was ready to go home. So that was nice. And he was back to normal by the time we were back to the house.

The weekend was fairly quiet, which was wonderful. We had a few friends over to watch a concert in the living room, we had sushi delivered, and then yesterday I tore part of the kitchen apart. Good times. We also finally put up the Celtic tree of life decal we bought.

It’s about 24″ in diameter and the color is actually black. I was trying to take a picture for my mom this morning and the light here today is just awful. Anyway, in spite of it being rather a bitch to get up it turned out great and I think it’s going to be a great foundation for that wall.

I am still knitting, trying to make progress, but progress is hard with Pippy being so damn needy lately. If I’m sitting down she wants to be in my lap. The snuggles are nice but it makes it hard to do anything.

because I have so much free time on my hands I think I’ll knit a few holiday gifts… that should be fun, right?

Lancelot and I on Halloween, waiting for our friends to arrive

So it’s pretty well impossible to tell from this picture, or any picture we took, that I had on these very lovely monarch wings that looked great with my headband. I picked them up at Target for $10. They were perfect. And the “party” was wonderful. We had three friends come over and we spent most of the evening in the garage. We ate good food and had wonderful conversation. It was precisely what I needed. And we did it in a way that legitimately seemed pretty safe.

We managed to get some stuff done around the house this weekend, which was very good, though it always feels like there’s more to do. I still need to attack the file cabinet in my office and finish the laundry. I would have been finished with the Off Kilter shawl but my yarn cake (what little of it is left) decided to explode and I had to rewind it by hand from the wrong end this morning. With feline help. I’m anxious to have it done in part because I did not end up having enough yarn for all of the repeats of the body; I think I got something like 18 out of 25 done. It should be fine I’m just not 100% sure what the edging is going to look like, but again, not super concerned.

And so now I think I have AMPLE free time to make some holiday gifts. Keep in mind that the holidays are next month. Towards the end, but still. Oh yeah, totally enough time.

In my defense, three of the patterns are ones I’ve made before, quite successfully. All of the gifts go to friends who live here in the metro and can be delivered by me. And I have the yarn already in my possession for all of them.

Also, Lancelot turned 50 this year which means he gets to have super exciting medical screenings (you know the one) and I’ll be taking him in for that on Friday. Nothing as wonderful as enforced quiet time in a hospital waiting room to help make progress on a knitting project.

I do have to ask – has anyone actually spent time waiting for someone like this since the Rona started? I know how I would have done this in the Before Times when I’d take my Mom, and I think I’ll plan what I take on part on what I used to do, but what tips do y’all have?

i’m weak

This will become a shawl.

I think this will, too.

I got two balls of this so I’m thinking this becomes a shrug with beads around the ends of the sleeves, because I maybe went to the tiny local bead shop and got some Japanese seed beads to match this. Maybe.

Garth was not overly impressed. He scares the hell out of me every time he does this, especially when he starts playing with his own tail.

One of my friends is sewing masks and selling them on Etsy, very reasonably priced. If you like Disney you should check out her shop, she’s got a really nice variety of prints. I really like this purple flower one.

We had our first guest since the plague started. On Saturday night my friend K came over and we did a practice run of makeup for the wedding. Not bad. It was amazing to see her.

Meet Blanche, my new African violet. Mom gave me this antique tea pot and it just seemed like the perfect vessel for a violet. She has taken up residence in the office.

I’m still trying to knit every day and get things done. Today is almost wall to wall meetings, which sucks. Zoom fatigue is a very real thing, and when you combine that with a mental health issue it’s a pretty unpleasant thing.