Knitting Day!

I do need to work for a few hours. And put some laundry through the system. And probably vaccuum. And, taking a shower and brushing my teeth would be a good move. But after all that... I'm going to KNIT dammit. I need just a few hours of NOTHING-BUT-KNIT time. Just for me. And maybe some champagne and cheese. And chocolate. Yeah. I'll call it a Brighid day. Blogging, cheese, knitting, housework. All that is missing is the forge and anvil.

I'll post my progress on the B4 bag tomorrow.

Stupid, Stupid People

So, Keith was in a bike-on-bike head-on accident on his way home from work. Some IDIOT decided to just swerve over and hit him head on on the bike path while he was barreling along at 20 MPH. The bike is bent. very bent. Keith has been investing a lot of his time and $$ into this bike, and unlike a car accident, there is pretty much no recourse, even when they hit and run. So far, miraculously, his bodily injuries seem pretty minor. Though his knuckle/hand is badly sprained, and possibly fractured and he's pretty banged up. I think he's more angry about his mint condition classic bike being totalled than anything else. And that it happened because somebody else was just being stupid and then took off without any attempt at making some effort to make it right. Personally, I'm relieved he wasn't hit by a truck or something, but upset about the bike too. He went through a lot of effort to bring it back here from St. Louis, fixed it up, and was really enjoying commuting to work that way. Lame Ass people. And hello? Can we please PLEASE catch a break?

Full of Bugs

So, my computer crapped out on me last night. I was just standing there, talking to Keith when I turned just in time to see Outlook feed me that line about how sorry it is for the inconvenience but it has to shut down. Which seemed odd. I wasn't doing anything at the time. But it wouldn't let me start Outlook anymore. I started to panic, what would I do? Somebody might NEED to reach me!! Then I tried to open my work program, which works with Word, and it wouldn't open either. So, I went to the option of reinstalling/repairing Microsoft Office, since that seemed to be the glitch. Well, it wouldn't let me. I tried a system restore, no dice. I tried many different angles of things, and finally something sort of worked. I say sort of, because I never did really figure out what was wrong, or how to fix it, I just found a way to sort of work around it. I eventually got everything working EXCEPT Outlook, and then I just fannagled that into working in spite of itself.


So, it works, but it *feels* funny, if that makes any sense. Like it could collapse again at any moment. Chelle is making backups now. Lots of backups.


Our Kitchen has even MORE bugs than my computer. We have our usual scout ants, wandering about looking for something to report back about. Nothing major. BUT, our neighbor gave us some pears from her tree that happened to be the location of a major fruit fly village. They apparently do not have an urban growth boundary, because they just expanded to our whole kitchen. Even after eliminating the fruit, they gather in the kitchen sink, in the garbage can, whereever suits their fancy.
As flies go though, the fruit fly is sort of cute. Sort of. Kind of like a flying fat hamster. Except it's a fly, and it lays it's eggs in my food. Which is gross. So, all fruit has been confined to quarantine until this crisis passes.

No Knitting

So very distracted... but not by my knitting, so that's a problem. If I'm going to be suffering financially for not getting any work done, I should at least get a pair of socks or a new felt bag out of the deal, right?
I only have a few weeks to start practicing a "new" schedule so that I don't absolutely die when school starts. I need to practice being organized and on a schedule. I have to try to remember how to make lunches.. I'm sure I can find a helpful web site to help with that...

ah, another distraction...

I just gradually through the week slip back into the working until 2 AM, sleep until 9:30 schedule, and that just is NOT going to work when school starts. I won't make it sleeping from 3 to 7. Unless I sleep while they are at school, but I think that's just counterproductive. I need to be pro-productive during daylight hours, and force my natural rhythms to comply with the sleeping at night, working in the day. No matter how much it hurts, they are probably not going to be supplying a Kindergarten night class anytime soon.
In Knitting news, I'm in line for Ravelry - only 14854 people in front of me in line. Hopefully they get their real big-people servers up soon so they can get us all in. I'm working on my B4 bag and the stole. Haven't started the next socks yet. Really want to do that sweater/duster thing...think I have time for a knitting class?

In Doula News, I'm sending in my application to Operation Special Delivery today. The whole military culture is very alien to me. But, that doesn't mean I don't respect the value of the military and the sacrifices those families make. I feel like tihs is a way I can help too, even in a small way. Basically, you volunteer as a Doula to be with women and support them in their pregnancy and birth, while their partner is deployed or otherwise unable to be there. There is apparently no state coordinator for Oregon, so in case I don't feel like I have enough to do or my commitment list is growing too short, I can volunteer to do that too.

In midwifery news, I'm still working on completing the steps so I can send for my Pre-Pak from AAMI. I'm also trying to put together the $$ so I can register for the Gentle Birth Conference thing at the end of September. If I can, I'd like to go to the Trust Birth conference in March, but that might be too much of a stretch.

I really need some meditation time, but I think I'm going to need to meditate in order to find where the time is to meditate. So, that loop is kind of closed.
My sister is on her honeymoon now, apparently she's become quite ill along the way. Hopefully, she feels better soon so she can enjoy the rest of her trip. Aren't they cute?

This week's meditation

How have I respected my life's purpose today?

from Celtic Devotional by C. Matthews

It's kind of like asking... "How am I not myself?"

Post-coffee apology

Note to readers: I apologize for all my whining. It's no less true, but it can stay all bottled up and squashed down inside where it belongs, not spewed all over you.

Note to self: Don't begin blogging before coffee, after night of insomnia.

(aka get a grip before planting fingers on the keyboard)

FORMAL COMPLAINT!

Okay, it's more of an Informal Complaint. Do you ever look around at your life, and go WTF am I doing? Am I living my life, or is my life an entity of its own, swirling about randomly making messes and my job is just to try to clean them up and maybe keep it from hurting anybody else? I just seem to have such a list of clean up on aisle 10 that I feel like my life, at least the fun part, is pretty much over. I'm on the downhill side of life at 37, heading towards the finish line. It might be more fun to go barrelling down the mountain at breakneck speed, but am I really in this big hurry to get there? but if I just keep grabbing at branches that scratch my face, trying to slow myself down, don't I just end up all bruised and tired, and bloody, and do I really want to spend as much time as I can doing that?

There just are people out there, people in my own family who would look at that scenario and go cool! You're on a mountain! Why don't you try flying??! Why do you figure you have to run or fall and roll? And I just never would have thought of it that way. Not anymore. Things that used to be thrilling and exciting just make me feel full of fear and anxiety now. Is it the same thing? I've just forgotten how to interpret it as joy so it's learned to be terror and angst?

Once I was young and actually FUN. Now I find that when I spend any significant amount of time around any number of people that might resemble a crowd, or even a small gang, I become physically sick. Either with a headache, or just sick to my stomach. It's like I just don't know how to be around people anymore. All that extra energy barrage, and I WANT to be social, I WANT to just hang out, be with people, know people...

And then the insomnia hits, and I can't sleep and I just lay there thinking, what am I doing? Paying bills? Just keeping my head above water? Never really making much progress, not exactly running in circles, because that would be sort of focused. I start one circle, then see another one and go over there, start running that circle. At least if I stayed in one place I might accomplish a rut.

It's like, the most important job I have in life right now, is to be the person who takes this little girl downstairs to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, so she doesn't have to do down in the dark by herself. Which feels pretty important. At least to her. Typically at the time, I've been up half the night with anxiety and insomnia, and every time I almost fall asleep my brain convinces me I'm having a stroke, or a heart attack... so when I finally do get to sleep, that's usually when Charlotte's little alarm goes off and she has to go potty.

It's the craziest thing really... when all is calm and quiet and right, that's when I am most likely to have a panic attack. Put me on a freeway bridge that's falling in, an earthquake, a woman having a baby, and people are panicking, and I am your voice of reason, your take charge person, your calm eye of the storm, your rock in a crisis. That's me. Maybe I just need to be in crisis?

Horks alive, that's just ***ked up.