keeping it between the lines

Proof that I am still alive and I haven’t forgotten how to knit

It feels like an awful lot has happened since last I could be bothered to blog, and that’s probably because an awful lot has happened. Much of it has been good but there have been a few less than amazing things as well. That’s how life is though, right? Balance.

I am now the proud owner of two Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine shots. Unfortunately I had a fairly common reaction to the second one which was not so swell. I had chills, a headache, very little coordination, brain fog, zero appetite (though I could still smell and taste), and it felt like I had been hit in the arm with a sledgehammer. That lasted two days and then I was fine. If I had it to do all over again you can bet your ass that I would, in a heartbeat.

My handsome and hilarious husband is three weeks behind me, but he says he likes the view back there

I have been knitting, and cooking, and still managing to lose weight. I am now down 26lbs, and as such as the smallest I have been since I was 18 years old. This pleases me to no end. I don’t even mind that I’m running out of clothes that fit.

With the knitting I’m working on what started life thinking it would be a simple shrug and has now decided it wants to be a kimono style vest, maybe with small sleeves. We shall see. But that’s the very rainbow piece up at the top of this post. I am loving the yarn.

Last night’s dinner helps with two of my goals for the year since it’s both an Indian dish and a vegetarian dish. For my first shot at making Mattar Paneer it really wasn’t half bad.

sharing the love, or maybe these are sand fleas, who knows

One of my all time favorite ways to “curse” someone is to say

may your crotch be infested by the fleas of a thousand camels and your arms be too short to scratch

but this year that just doesn’t seem like enough, ya know?

Lancelot did get to have Christmas Eve off, but then went in to work on Christmas Day (because of overtime) and then Saturday was his day off, but he had slept a good portion of the day and was awake most of last night, and so then today was like a regular Sunday. And if you’re kind of exhausted trying to keep up with that just imagine how I feel.

At any rate, we were able to spend a little time together and it wasn’t too bad. Any time I get to spend with my guy isn’t bad. But ya know what is bad? The new Wonder Woman movie. Seriously, not worth it.

So I’ve been doing some cooking, I’ve cleaned out some cupboards, straightened the pantry, made a run to Target (it’s going to snow this week and I didn’t plan for that, or get enough milk when we went last weekend), blocked two shawls and a scarf and wove in the ends on those, setup another shawl to block, and have done what feels like a metric ton of laundry.

I have also spent a LOT of time being a puppy’s pillow

L and I have been really quite careful about our plague protocols. I wear a mask any time I’m going to come in contact with anyone who is not L, including my mother. I firmly believe that wearing a mask is good for me and it’s good for anyone I’m around. It’s a respect thing if absolutely nothing else. I have been cleared by the doc to get the COVID vaccine as soon as they’re available to the general public and I have every intention of getting it, but that won’t happen for awhile and the mask and keeping my hands washed should stack the deck in my favor for living long enough to get that precious vaccine.

My grandmother is in her late 80s and lives in a nursing home because she’s got issues with dementia.

She was scheduled to get her vaccine next week.

She tested positive. On Christmas Eve.

So please, don’t do it for me, but do it for your grandma. Or someone’s grandma. Anyone’s grandma.

Whoever you do it for, will you please just wear a fucking mask?

so very tired

If I tell you I’m exhausted those words don’t even convey the full weight of just how ridiculously tired I am these days. We’re all suffering from the effects of the plague, whether we’re actually sick with it or just sick of it. We are all ready to a return of what we were used to in our lives. I’m not saying that there won’t be some good things to come out of all of this, I have got to believe that there will. But we need a little touch of normalcy again.

It doesn’t help that the effects of the plague are impacting my job. We’re being called on to help more people in less time and with fewer resources. Not that we are the only ones in this kind of situation, not by a long shot. And I know just how lucky I am to be able to work from my home where I have a nice office setup and I have my pets and all the snacks I want and I can do my work while wearing damn near anything I want.

But I miss people and I miss my work wardrobe and probably a billionty-zillion other things that are silly and trivial. But it is what it is. And it doesn’t help that Lancelot is working overtime the next few weeks so my regular person isn’t available as much.

So anyway, I miss reading your blogs and it’s not that I’ve forgotten about you, I just barely have enough energy to shower every day right now. And between you and me, I think I probably should keep trying to shower or the dog might stop wanting to play with me.

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?

progress

I’m still here, still kicking. I come here and think about writing way more often than I manage to actually write. Some days I can’t decide what my topic should be, but more often it’s a case of running out of energy before I find the time to try. Work is still busy and, like most people I talk to, I just don’t have the energy I once did.

Part of my difficulty is that we’re changing seasons. I have Seasonal Affective Disorder so I’m starting to feel the effects of not as much sunlight. I’ve got my little magic sun lamp thing setup on my desk now, the trick is to be here and turn it on every morning. Some days that’s easier said than done.

And part of my difficulty is the continued Rona; dealing with the plague is taking a toll on all of us.

I’m behind with the normal tasks I take care of around the house, I’m not eating great, and I just flat out don’t feel like I have any ambition. I am managing to knit, but I don’t seem to get decent pictures of it. Of course that’s due in part to having a whole tote bag full of “finished” projects that need to be blocked and have the ends woven in. That includes Waves of Happiness, so yay. But I ran out of yarn very near the end, so boo. But I had a very nicely complimentary lighter purple that I finished it with and it looks great, aside from looking like a gigantic mess because it desperately needs to be blocked.

The current project is a very simple shrug, pattern of my own devising, that will have beads on the sleeves. It’s my “stupid simple” project that I don’t have to think about. I need to figure out what my new “I need to get lost in something” project is going to be. Not like I don’t have choices.

At any rate, since I can’t show you any knitting the least I can do is delight you with a picture of the boys. This was right after Garth had started grooming Eric and right before he started chomping on his neck.