Stress Reaction

Boredom gets me in trouble a lot. My ADD, hypomanic personality requires that I be doing something all the time. I want to climb walls and pick imaginary bugs off my skin if my hands aren’t occupied. So, as you can imagine, this forced hiatus from knitting or anything fiber related (spinning being out of the question as well) has been pretty hard to take.

My best friend has kicked me to the curb in favor of married life (and I can't honestly say I blame her, because what is there more intoxicating than new love?), so what’s a girl to do?

I’ve taken to bug photography.

These little suckers have decimated the leaves of my cannas. With my luck they will be calling their little buddies and gunning for my wool stash next.

I adopted a couple of puppies. The one on the left is Bébé. She came home with me from the shelter about a month after my mother died. She was in a cage in the cat room, starving, shivering and crying. They said she tested positive for Parvo and the previous owners didn’t want to mess with her. The timing being what it was, I couldn’t just leave her there to die, since all they had the ability to do was offer her food and water. The antibiotics and IV fluids required to keep her alive cost more than any pure bred, but as you can see, she is healthy and much loved.

The one on the right has no name. He came home with me because his previous owner just had a baby and didn’t have time for both. We haven’t named him yet because his personality is still developing, but I am leaning towards Darcy. He has green eyes (seriously; I’ve never seen a dog with green eyes before), and I've always imagined Mr. Darcy with green eyes.

So my dog total now stands at four, which puts me at serious risk of a husband total of zero. Serious trouble.

My peeps!

I know you all are still out there, because I’ve been following your various antics on this here internets! Great thing, internets, isn’t it? You can do the whole lurking thing and keep up with you friends while maintaining a low profile yourself! Gotta love it.

But really, the low profile on my end was not by choice. I’ve had my nose to the proverbial grindstone in the form of studying for my recertification exam. Funny thing about medicine; once every six years they want me to take this six-hour test and prove that I know enough to “do no harm”. Whaa?

Anyway, I had to bring my head above the sand (or the pages) long enough to publicly thank Kat for a superb Special Swap package.

The theme was Movie Night, and Kat can put together one of the best Friday Night Knit packages ever! A fabulous chick flick (ashamed to admit it, but one of my absolute favorite genres)! A treasure of a book: A Treasury of Knitting Patterns (Squeeeeeee)! Aromatherapy candles to set the mood, and finally some super soft Touch 4 ply Pure New Zealand Fine Wool for (I’m thinking) a fabulously lacy scarf!

Kat, you rock my friend! Thank you so much for the much needed study break!

PS. There was popcorn, too, but you all can guess how quickly that went!

Hey Y'all!

Welcome to New Bra Monday! And don’t go trying to tell me that wearing a new bra on a Monday is never a good idea, because I had that whole conversation with myself this morning and apparently I JUST DON’T LISTEN!!! All I’m thinking is its Monday, and who doesn’t need a little bit of extra support on a Monday? It’s got to make your Monday go better, right?

Now I’m not one of those get ‘em measured, find the perfect fit, specialty bra kind of women. I’m pretty standard size and just about any Target or Wally World will carry a Playtex that will fit me. Thing is, I haven’t bought a new bra in awhile, and I forgot what un-relaxed elastic and new under wire can do to a person. We may only be talking a few inches here, but that lift is enough to make me feel like I my 5 foot 5 1/2 inch person is looking down at my desk over a 4-½ foot cement retaining wall! These puppies are indeed lifted and separated!

I’ve had shoe sales persons tell me to walk around on carpeted floors and take an older, comfortable pair of shoes with you the first few times you wear your new shoes to work to change into in case they get uncomfortable. Never knew that applied to new bras. It would never have occurred to me to test-drive my new bra and take a back up bra to work with me. See what you get when you bargain shop for support garments? We live and learn!

And for all of you offering support and prayers for my recertification exam, a big hug and a huge cheer! I received notification this morning that I passed! Yay!!!

So Amanda (still missing you by the way) over on Flickr is all about the futab, and once I ascertained the more benign definition of the acronym, I thought it would be a great way to introduce you to my final pair of Soctoberfest 2007 socks. (They were indeed finished in October. Getting them up on the blog just took a little longer).

I love, love, love this pair of socks, which leaves me at a loss to explain why it took me almost two years to get them off the needles. They just kept getting side lined by other projects, swap socks and life in general. Now we are complete! Sigh….

So I have had this whole Goldilocks thing going on with my knitting. I’ve cast on about five socks and it was always something. This one was too big, and this one was too small, and this one was too scratchy, and I began to think that something was amiss. And not just with my knitting.

I’ve been noticing a general dissatisfaction with life as a whole. Maybe it’s the holidays, with the whole mustshop, mustshop, mustshop mantra pounding at my head, or the concern I have that my father told me recently that he just doesn’t "have the spirit” this year. (Ummm, at the risk of making someone jump off a building because I am saying it again: Mom died this year, Dad)!

But I know, deep down, that it’s more than that.

I need a purpose. Not in the physical sense (raising a family and healing the sick meet that need just fine). But in the spiritual sense. My greatest joy in my job is when I connect with someone on an emotional level. When they get that I get where they are coming from. That I have been there and understand in a way that has nothing to do with a textbook.

I'm exploring options on that front, but in the mean time, I’m thinking this sock looks just right!

Collinette Jitterbug in Parrot

This little clip was made to show my Dad (who I don't think quite believed me) how our little dog walks. The vet says that there is something wrong with the way his tail attaches to his spine. At any rate, it doesn't seem to give him any discomfort, and we get endless amusement out of it.

The choice of music was my daughters. Obviously we are very bad people!

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Via Katie. Here's what to do if you want to play along:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name. (kid version: favorite animal?)

Sick people scare me.

Today was one of those days when reality reared back and slapped me upside the head and asked me “What in the hell do you think you are doing?" This guy came in with this funky heart condition which has required getting it "shocked back into rhythm” in the past, and oh, by the way, “my heart feels kind of funny”, and all of a sudden my heart is feeling kind of funny and I’m desperately longing for a run-of-the-mill sinus infection or allergy sufferer.

It’s always a bit of a shock to be reminded of how little you know verses how much there is to know. It’s a good thing, but humbling non-the-less.

On top of that, I’ve lost the knitting bug. My sister, a severe allergy sufferer, used to sit on the couch and snuffle and snort and there would be these piles of tissues strewn around her like snowdrifts.

I feel like that. I woke up a week ago with a clear head and drifts of yarn around me and absolutely no desire to knit.

Luckily, previous stitching bugs have infected me in the past, and they have cute patterns too.

My hubby and the youngest are at the movies seeing Wall-E, and the daughter is at work, so the dogs and I are spending a lazy Sunday afternoon chillin'. With this abundance of quiet time, I found myself motivated to break out the macro lens and take some photos.

I’m still in the groove with the cross-stitch, though having finished one project, I was reminded of a drawback to this noble art. It’s expensive to frame these babies!! Ouch!

Still, I love the stitching.

And the macro.

Work on 32-count linen with silk requires (for me) strong light and granny glasses. But the macro lens gives the illusion that I am stitching on a feed sack.

Not so, my friends. This is delicate work indeed.