Full Disclosure

A few updates and then no more whining.

No, I do not have a plastic surgeon. That was sarcasm.

No, in spite of all experience indicating the contrary, I did NOT have the flu OR pneumonia. An invasive nasal swab and an assay of blood and urine tests confirmed against the flu, favoring instead “Pyrexia of unknown origin” and “Viral Infection NOS (not otherwise specified).” I am a conundrum. Doctor called it ‘ILI’ or Influenza-like Illness. Bastard virus.

Besides a persistent stuffy head and phlegmy cough, my cesarean scar feels like it has been ripped apart on the left side, sending shooting pains up under the mama-belly fat on the left side. No, it has not actually been ripped apart. The coughing has just yanked on the abdominal muscle incessantly and pulled at the tight bit of scarry tissue there. But heed this, oh ye who might consider ELECTIVE cesarean: It’s not a teeny little scar. It’s a big, honking, baby-sized scar. Mine is a big sweet smile that stretches almost from hip to hip across the top of my pubes. I wouldn’t give it up in a heartbeat, representing as it does the gateway into the world for those three awesome Sonars. And scars heal, but they don’t always heal in predictable ways, and I have to think that doing your best to push that kiddo out au naturale has less of a chance of leaving you feeling like your stomach is being split in two every time you catch a bad cough.

On the up-side… I wrote 63 pages on a script that was a lot of fun until it ground to a screeching halt with the onset of ILI. ScriptFrenzy ends tonight with the page count thus. I am really proud of what I wrote, and proud of my ability to crank out ideas and words when the universe conspires to grant me healthy working conditions. The story is one that I think I will work into novelly form rather than trying to finish the script on my own time. I really encourage any of you who started a script (ILEANA!), even if you only wrote one page, to head over to the ScriptFrenzy site before midnight local time and enter a page count. Do not discount the warm fuzzy power of the page-count widget, even if you only enter the number 1. Okay, full disclosure, the page-count widget for NaNoWriMo is more warm and fuzzy, but ScriptFrenzy is on a budget. Still!! Your page-count is awesome and it is yours! A year ago, could you have imagined that you’d even try a script? It’s so cool.

*sigh*

Ok, back to disclosures.

April (hereafter known as the Month of the Endless Demon Virus) was a bitch. I am having a seriously hard time feeling good right now. It would be easy to blame it on the bad bout of viruses, the long slog between getting myself and the rest of the family nominally healthy over the past few weeks. Spiced with the disappointment about falling short of the writing goal. But the truth is, I think I was struggling with enthusiasm and satisfaction even before The Month of Endless Demon Virus went awry.

I am trying to remain hopeful. My family is awesome. I have good people and good things in my life. (count yourselves among them) I know this. I am trying to remember to be patient. To let myself heal. To get through all of the sick drugs and start eating normally again. To not get frustrated when I can’t do all of the things that I normally do.

The patience is a struggle for me.

While I wait around trying to be patient, I’m trying to do a few things that might help things along. I’m taking all of my medicine (which is thankfully almost finished). I’m trying to eat good food and drink gallons of water, and a lot of chocolate. On the theory that my body might be missing something, but I can’t figure it out because I can’t smell or taste anything yet, I am planning to bring home a variety of flavorful foods from the grocery store tomorrow, including some spicy nori rolls with wasabe, the fixings for lasagna with Italian sausage, the fixings for a key lime pie, a jar of hot salsa and some good tortilla chips, and a bag of doritos. Yeah, ok, the doritos might be a bit redundant with the tortilla chips. I’ll get a coke instead. Right now, I am enjoying my first beer for three weeks. It is good. Heck, maybe I’ll even get the ingredients to take up the Yummy Mummy’s hot dog challenge. If I can manage to breathe, I might even run.

Sonar X5 has counseled (sweet child) that I should try doing something crazy. With a wrinkled-nose-smile and a giggle he shrugged off specific suggestions though, so I’ll have to get back to you on that one. Sonar X3 suggested that it would help if everyone tried to be nice. Hear hear. Sonar X7 suggested the lasagna. Partner suggested a strategic application of hot oil, though the language he whispered in my ear was much more colorful.

Bring it on. I’ll try it all. It would just be so nice to feel a little bit good for a change.

So spill it. What do you do when you feel a little blue? What strategies and rituals and tips do you employ for a little warm fuzzy, for a little bit of good when everything else gets you down? I’m only asking because I suspect the next step might involve velcroing the children to the wall and throwing plates, and nobody really wants me to be THAT person. Not even me.

Statistics

With apologies to the Harper’s “Index”:

• $748.72; our monthly health insurance premium.
• $15; copayment anytime one of us wishes to see a physician in a clinical setting for any reason.
• $100; copayment anytime one of us wishes to see a physician in an emergent setting for any reason.
• $95; cost for the ineffectual flu shots we got back in October.
• 6; number of days this flu took to infect all five of us, as measured by first onset of symptoms.
• 6; minimum number of pounds I’ve lost since first onset of flu symptoms on Thursday.
• 4; minimum number of pounds lost by Sonar X7 since first onset of flu symptoms last Monday (I stopped checking, this freaked me out too much).
• $150; average monthly drug costs for our family, including allergy and asthma meds.
• $217.96; cost of one week of additional drugs for treatment of the flu (still accumulating).
• $60; cost of doctor visits during this epic flu battle (still accumulating).
• $29.95; cost of the “Cough Your Way to Rock Hard Abs” DVD, hosted by Archie Fleming.
• 2; rank of “Coughin’ to the Oldies” among most popular fitness DVDs for “mature Americans.”
• 1; rank of Feeling Like Your Tongue’s Been Ripped out by the Root in underreported injuries among subscribers to Archie Fleming’s Cough Your Way to Fitness series.
• $29.95; cost of a cool hat, snazzy stainless steel water bottle, and some sunscreen to take with you outside, where you breathe fresh, clean air and move your body in a way that doesn’t make you feel like you want to die.
• 500 (est.); loads of laundry we did yesterday.
• 1 (min.); large loads of laundry washed with the Load Size set to Small.

Figures cited to the best of my frenzied recollection as of as of five minutes ago. All figures have been adjusted for hyperbolic effect, except for the weight loss and actual health costs, which are really that horrifying. No seriously. Go ahead and multiply 748.72 by 12. I’ll wait. Now know that we consider ourselves lucky to have such good (though pricey) health insurance. My sister has to work nine months before she earns that much money, and she does that without receiving any health benefits whatsoever. Yeah, I know it’s wrong too. And yeah, I think “mature American” might be an oxymoron. Go drink some orange juice.

Pink and Fluffy

I saw this sweater pattern in Vogue Knitting Fall 2006, and fell in love with the luscious gigantic cabled collar (it’s called Cable Trim Pullover). Doesn’t it just look like you could sink yourself into its yummy squishiness? There was also a curiosity factor, in that I’ve done some small cables, but never a gigantic Cable 20. So I started to hunt up yarn and came up with AlpacaWare Superfine Alpaca in light pink, cheap on eBay.

I knit the pieces of the sweater many months ago. I’ve lost track how long. Probably more than a year ago, truth be told. I was very very careful in my preparation. I swatched (i.e. made a test square), in the totally proper way with the recommended number of stitches, plus a non-rolling border. Then washed and shaped and dried the swatch before measuring and adjusting needles sizes at least three or four times. I was good, and for me, incredibly patient in the preparation. I ended up going up several needle sizes to get the correct gauge (essential when one wants to produce a sweater that approximates the desired size), but I *did* get the correct gauge.

Then I knit the thing.

It took me a few weeks, as I recall, and then the pieces sat around the house, moved from surface to surface, stuffed into a bag, then into a closet. The knitting was done. Completed. Finito. I just had to seam together these pieces into the yummy sweater. But the sweater I had such a fatuous crush on had lost it’s allure. I was already worried then that it had come out a bit too small. The yarn is really rather fussy and delicate, not wanting to be tugged or pulled or pushed too much this way or that. And I really dreaded trying to set in those sleeves without doing some wacky stretchy damage to the whole thing.

A couple of weeks ago, in a fit of “Let’s finish some damn knitting already!” I pulled out the pieces and seamed them all together. To be sure, my sleeve joins are really shoddy. But I thought maybe some of that would relax out in the steaming and blocking.

All seamed, I put it on. Hm. WAY too short. Which was weird, because I measured carefully and, as I recall, added a few extra rows in the middle to make it a bit longer than the pattern called for.

Deep breath. I decided I could fix that by—those of you who might be slightly squeamish about knitting might want to look the other way—cutting off the bottom band, picking up the stitches left raw, and knitting some more bottom onto that thing. I have to say that the idea of cutting the yarn, with the inherent risk of the whole thing, all that work, being reduced back into a wad of string, really did make me feel queasy. But I braced myself and convinced myself that it would be a good adventure.

The bravest knitters would cut first and ask questions and pick up stitches later, but this being my first foray into knittacide, I decided to place a lifeline—two actually—before I cut. That’s the bluey/yellowy/greeny stripe. I put two so that I could save the ribbing and reattach it when the sweater was long enough. As it turned out, I decided to make a bottom hem rather than a ribbed hem and tossed the ribbing into the stash bucket.

Knit knit knit knit.

I could have just folded over and SEWN down the knitting to make the bottom hem, but the yarn fumes went to my head and I decided I’d kitchener the hem in place, which was stupid. It took FOREVER and required me to pick up stitches along the place where the them would join so that I didn’t twist it and make it weird. Ahem. I still twisted it and made it weird. But you can’t tell now unless you turn it inside out and look really closely and are generally picky and rude. Shame on you.

Finished (finally), I tried it on again. Gr. Still TOO SHORT.

Then I put on my knitting thinking cap. This was really weird, because I measured the sweater, measured myself, measured the length from armpit to hem on a top with a flattering length, and these numbers all matched up. When the sweater was on the table. When the sweater went on me….. no more matchy.

I decided to measure the sweater the other way. Turns out it’s a teensy bit smaller than me. Like more than four inches around less than me. Some sweaters can support that degree of negative ease. Not this one and not on me. When the sweater stretched out to cover my circumference, the yarn had to come from somewhere: the length. Mystery solved.

There’s really no way I can make this pretty little sweater fit me, so, in honor of Sweater Day, I am offering it up, to anyone who would love it or who knows someone who would love it. Price negotiable.

Here are the specs: Chest 31” Waist 27” Hip 32” Neck-to-hem 21.5” Armpit-to-cuff 18”

I will mail the sweater, complete with a handful of spare yarn (in case of catastrophe or the desire to reconnect the sleeves in a less shoddy manner).

I don’t even like pink. ;)

Lest You Think I Only Obsess About Running

I obsess about many things. Case in point, this musing, crafted a couple of weeks ago.

***

Partner has these two old polo shirts. Once upon a time, we tie-dyed them with pale blue circles and lines to freshen them up a bit. Very pretty. But now they’re stained up, mostly because he used them as gardening shirts. Have you ever tried to wash banana sap out of clothes? Seriously.

The integrity of the fabric is still good, and since they’re extra-large shirts, they offer up large swathes to work with. I wondered what I could do with them.

Then I read an article about Whole Foods Markets. Apparently they’re not going to use plastic grocery bags anymore, instead offering customers the choice between recycled paper bags and 99-cent canvas bags.

Idea.

I took apart a plastic grocery bag at its heat sealed seams and examined its architecture. It has a folded pleat down each side, from handle to bottom that allows the bag to be folded flat and then expand volume-wise to hold stuff.

I cut out the sleeves and the collar of one of the shirts. (I know from previous experience that I can make rather cute underwear for myself from a pair of his sleeves. And the kids love to play with the collars, so until I come up with some clever redeployment of them, into the dress-up bin they go). This left me with the front and back of the shirt. The front already bore a general resemblance to the dismantled grocery bag, so I trimmed things up, folded things just so, seamed the bottom and handle tops, and sort of hemmed the remaining exposed top edge. Voila. Free reusable grocery bag. Slightly larger than the plastic ones from our grocer and prestained.

Shirt A (still a shirt) and Shirt B (now a grocery bag) hanging in the grapefruit tree.

Running Week 3

So injury issues persist. Last Monday, I skipped the run, but did an extra long stretch, hoping to ease ankle and knee tenderness. Same for Tuesday. Wednesday, I woke up and the pain had subsided considerably, so I decided to go ahead and run, and to move up to the new interval (three mins run/three mins walk; 30 mins total). Energy-wise, the run was great. It felt really good to move and the change from running 1/3 of the time to running 1/2 of the time was easy.

But boy oh boy did I pay for it in my ankles and knees. I iced, especially on the left, immediately after the run and before bed that night, and walking was uncomfortable and stiff for several days. So no more running last week.

I did some careful examination of all the sore joints, trying to diagnose the issue, applied ice and rest and stretching. And got frustrated, of course.

But. I may have made a discovery about shoes.

Yesterday, I ventured out on foot for the first time since last week. Wearing some old sneakers (I’ve only been wearing my Running shoes during “official” exercise. ha.), I walked to the park with my two little guys on their bike/trike.

It was a short walk, just about ten minutes or so each way. I had no pain or discomfort, either during or after the walk. These old sneakers are running shoes, the kind with a sort of wide footprint, and a slightly wedge-shaped sole. They are rather old, and the inside of the back of both shoes has enough fabric worn away that a funky piece of plastic rubs at the back of both of my heels now. Not good for running, and probably not really good for anything but mud now.

I woke up today still pain free, so when a friend called to see if we wanted to come play, I was ready. This friend lives about 3/4 of a mile away, along my running route, so I thought it would be a good test of my knee and ankle fitness. The boys strapped on helmets and hopped on bike/trike, and I donned my Running shoes.

These shoes have a slim footprint, underlying only the outline of my foot, and the sole is flat from front to back. The arch support is medium. I had noticed in my first couple of weeks of running, that I have a tendency to roll to the outside of these shoes, which is easy to do because of their narrow profile. I think this may indicate that I’m an Underpronator, which sounds vaguely suggestive, but has to do with how I roll my foot in my regular gait. It also means that I should be running in shoes that are more like my crappy old sneakers, with a thick cushion and a wide footprint.

Walking this morning, I felt a difference within a few minutes. The knee pain, though mild, was there again during the walk. When I returned home, and rested for a little bit after a wee stretch, the ankle pain, again mild, settled in.

So, maybe part of the problem is the shoes? (Glad I got them half-off) And maybe I need to concentrate some additional stretching and rehab on my knees and ankles to build up joint strength.

I think I’m going to let this morning’s play walk count for today’s workout, rest and stretch tomorrow, and try to do a light run with a lower interval on Friday. See how it goes. I am determined not to quit, so I really have to listen to my body.

But oh, it’s so hard to be patient.