The First Blog of 2011

It's New Year's Day, and I've decided I want to catch up on my blog as part of a fresh start. One of my New Year's Resolutions is to blog at least once a week. I'm happier when I blog, but I got off course with all the craziness in 2009.

A lot has happened since my Election Day blog. I'm going to start with what's going on now and work backwards.



I'm house sitting as I write this.

We have good family friends who went to Disney World, and they asked me to house sit. The hardcore kind of house sitting where you actually live in the house. I can't believe I'm being paid to do this.

Every morning I wake up in their big beautiful house, look around and say "Yep, it's still here" and go back to sleep. Besides some basic things like getting the mail and covering up the plants when it's going to be cold, I've had a lot of quiet time to myself to knit, watch TV and think. I even balanced my checkbook, paid my bills and accomplished a few other things.

They left me a big tray of noodles to eat. I thought the picture above captured the mood pretty well. I was enjoying one of my Christmas sodas and some noodles at a nice dining room table with surprisingly realistic looking* apples. You can see their pretty Christmas tree in the back ground. It's a nice change from being crammed into such a small space.




I'm in pain. Lots of pain.

Remember when I talked about my constant headache? I would love to go back to complaining about a mild headache and a little neck pain. Something seriously shifted in November. I started having right side shoulder pain in addition to the left side headache. The shoulder pain escalated until the day before Thanksgiving, when I went to the ER because my entire back was spasming. I missed Thanksgiving (along with my parents) because I was in too much pain to visit our friends. By Thanksgiving Day, the good stuff they had given me in the ER had worn off.

While I've gotten gradually better, I'm not in good shape. That's another reason why I'm glad to be house sitting. Sitting around is one of the few things I can handle. As long as I have a supportive chair, a heating pad, the option to lie down, pillows to get myself into comfortable positions and the painkillers and muscle relaxers that I've been taking for more than a month now.

My back needs lots of support, especially my upper back. Sitting up feels like work, and if I do it for too long without something to lean back on, it hurts even more. I also have problems lifting "heavy" objects. I'm finally getting to the point where I can pour milk again. Anything that requires any real force hurts. I sliced some cheese for a sandwich a week or two ago, and I really regretted it afterward. Also, I have to get someone else to open the sliding door on Mom and Dad's van. I haven't driven since the day before Thanksgiving because I'm concerned about being able to turn the wheel and check my blind spot. (And because I've been doped up on painkillers most of the time.)

"Strenuous" activities have a cumulative effect. The more I sit up and use the upper body without rest, the more spasms I have. I have to push myself to do things without overdoing it.

Immediately after my ER trip, it hurt too much to knit or use the computer, which was awful. Fortunately, I've recovered enough to do both of those, although I have to take breaks and watch what position I sit in.

I don't have any real answers or any sense of what my prognosis is. Basically, vertebrae in my neck are rubbing together, and nerves are getting pinched. I managed to really pinch something right before Thanksgiving. I have an appointment Monday, and I'm hoping it will shed some light on the situation.

The picture above is of me showing off my Multnomah shawl in the recliner I basically live now. I'm so glad my parents have this chair. It supports my back, yet I can sit up enough to knit, use my laptop and talk to people.

(I'll have more on my shawl later.)



I finally finished cleaning my apartment. Then I moved out of it and moved in with my parents.

I mentioned before that I was cleaning my apartment. I finished in mid-November. This includes getting every bit of my stuff out of storage and either putting it into my apartment or getting rid of it.

In honor of the event, I held a party with my friends. About 15 minutes before the first guest arrived, I had every tiny detail in place everything relatively clean. I took some pictures. Then we all ate chili and played board games. Then we took more pictures.

Before I lost my job, we did an exercise during training where we all wrote goals that seemed impossible on boards. Then the teacher showed us how to break boards with our hands. After that we took turns breaking our boards to symbolize that we could achieve these goals. I wrote "Clean my apartment and maintain it. (With all the stuff in storage.)" on my board.

The picture above is of me and my broken board in my clean apartment.

After the party was over I took a break. Then I started packing up, because my lease was up on Nov. 30, and I didn't renew it.

I was doing fairly well financially on unemployment for a while. But the medical costs of trying to cure the headache took their tole, even with Mom and Dad's help, and I wasn't finding work. I was scheduled to be out of benefits in early December.

Mom and I started talking about me moving back home in August. I kept lowering my pay requirements, but nothing came. So I finally gave my apartment my notice of intent to move out.

I know I'm really lucky to have parents that will help me financially and let me move in with them. I'm thankful that I have a soft place to fall. I love my parents, and without them I would have had to move under the bridge a long time ago. But this isn't a good situation. There isn't enough room for all of us, both literally and figuratively.

And moving back in with my parents is humiliating enough, but now I can't drive or do much of anything for myself. It's stressful for all of us.

So my stuff is all back in storage, except for a couple of bins on the floor of my room, some clothes in the closet, my bed, my dresser, my TV and my nightstand. I share my childhood room with two bookshelves full of Mom and Dad's stuff and stuff in the closet that Katie left behind when she moved out.

The good news is that the move was easier because I had cleaned up, especially since Mom and Dad had to do a lot of the packing because I couldn't lift anything. And since I need so much help physically, it's good that I'm at home with people to help me.

And it makes me appreciate house sitting even more.

I did have a job for a short time. I had to quit because of the pain.

It was call center job as a customer service rep. As I did with my last job, I won't talk about the details of my job on my blog. Things were going pretty well while I was there, although it didn't pay very much.

But I started the Monday before Thanksgiving, right about the time when the pain started getting really bad. I made it through the three days before Thanksgiving. I didn't go to the ER until Wednesday night.

I had the Thanksgiving weekend to recover, then I went back Monday. I thought I'd be OK, but after a full day of sitting up without much back support, I was in really bad shape.

I couldn't come in the next day. Or the day after. I finally resigned so I could leave in good standing and be eligible for rehire.


So that's the last two months. The move, the job and the pain all converged in a perfect storm of suckiness around Thanksgiving. Now I'm hoping for a better 2011. Or at least more blogging.


* - No, I did not try to eat a fake apple. But I did pick one up and knocked on it to see if it was real.

Tuesday Tens: Ten Things My Readers Should Know About the Last Ten Months (more or less)

It's been a while, and I'm not quite sure what to say. So I decided to say it in a list. A Tuesday Tens list.

1. I haven't gone anywhere, I just haven't been myself for a while. Last summer was tough. I was starting to get back in the blogging habit in October, then I got the the Swine Flu and everything came to a grinding halt. (Yes, this right before the vaccines became available to the general public.) Between that and all the other things I'm about to talk about, I just fell out of circulation. It's not just the blogging. It's the knitting, crochet, spinning, yarn sales, knitting groups, local yarn shops, Ravelry and everything else that goes with it. Some of my knitting friends probably think I fell off the face of the earth. I feel so embarrassed. I didn't know that Bluebonnet Yarn Shoppe closed, and I'm only vaguely aware that The Knitting Nest moved. I'm not sure what happened. Maybe I just needed a break. Maybe I'll be back even bigger and better than before.

So if you've messaged me on Ravelry, left a comment, e-mailed me, etc and I haven't responded, I'm sorry. But now I'm back. Feel free to contact me again. You'll probably get an answer.

2. Jules and I are no longer together. We haven't been since last October. I'm not going in to details except to say we didn't get along while we were living together. He moved into his own place in October, and then back to California in January. We still talk on the phone every now and then.

3. I'm unemployed again. Not many people can say they've been laid off by the same employer twice. But this time there was no rehire. It happened February 12, and it was the exact opposite of the other lay off. I didn't see it coming, and I was the only one (on that particular morning) that was let go.

I was having a good Friday morning when it happened. Mid-morning my pen ran out of ink and I needed a new notepad. I was finishing up entering stuff into the computer, and I was going to find the office manager to get more supplies when they called me in. They cleaned out my desk for me, and I tried to get to my car as quickly as possible before I saw anyone I know.

But don't feel sorry for me. Between collecting unemployment and a little help from The Bank of Mom and Dad, I'm doing fine and looking forward to a fresh start.


4. I'm cleaning my apartment. Seriously. After lots of false starts over the past few years, I'm really, honestly, truly making progress. The picture above is my "Wall O' Yarn." (It's all cataloged on Ravelry, except for a couple of specific categories.) You can see more pictures of my apartment on Flickr. Maybe someday I'll be brave enough to post the "before" pictures.

5. I have contacts now, but the headaches are back. Last summer I talked about my new glasses hurting. It was awful. The pain around my nose traveled to the back of my head and down my neck. It went on for months, until I finally gave in and got contacts for my birthday in December. For a while, all the pain went away. But then in March I developed a headache in the left side of my forehead (the same side as the pain from the glasses.) The pain also started traveling down my neck, so I know they must be related to the pain I had with the glasses. It's been a problem since March. I'll probably blog more about it later, but there are medications, doctors and a chiropractor involved now.

(The good news is that my contacts are awesome!)

6. I may blog about non-yarn things more often. I've had the urge to write more about other topics than what will fit in a Facebook status update. So you'll probably see more non-knitting stuff here.

7. I have all sorts of unfinished business to blog about. There's an FO that's never been seen on this blog, a follow up to the Potholder Swap and all kinds of pictures to post.


8. This is my most recent WIP. I'm calling it the "Back in the Saddle Scarf," for obvious reasons. It's the Easy Drop Stitch Scarf, only wider. I'm planning to add some fringe as well. I'm using Noro Lily from Bluebonnet Yarn Shoppe.

9. I feel incredibly guilty about crapping out on the Gauge Scarf Circle. I really owe a big apology to Gauge and all it's customers, especially those in my scarf circle. I never finished the scarves, and a couple have been lingering in my house. I was late, then I was ashamed, so I avoided going, and that made me later and more ashamed and guilty, and then I really avoided dropping them off, and it went on and on like that for months. I'm probably the reason the scarves in my circle weren't finished. And now that I've blogged it, I'm think I'm brave enough to return the scarves in my possession.

10. Guilt has been a huge factor in my absence. It's irrational, but every time something knitting, blogging or fiber related came up in the past few months, I couldn't enjoy it because I felt guilty. Guilty for not keeping up, for being out of the loop, for having big plans and not following up and, in a few areas, guilty for not following through on my promises. So I avoided it. I know this doesn't make sense, so I'm going to push myself back into it until it feels right again.

The journey of cleaning up all my crap begins in my pantry

I'm "remote blogging" from Mom and Dad's house right now. Tomorrow is the Hill Country Yarn Crawl, and by spending the night here so I'll be that much closer to my destination tomorrow morning.

But first...

Last week I was perusing the DVD collection at my local library when I came across a copy of Organizing from the Inside Out with Julie Morgenstern. I'd heard of the book, but I didn't know there was a DVD.

There was some very good stuff in the DVD. One of the biggest things that I took away was the importance of the proper storage tools. Morgenstern says she uses the model of a kindergarten classroom when she organizes. Everything has a good, accessible, fun storage place. The room can be cleaned up quickly, and there is a "visual menu" of what you can do in the room.

She also said that you should start somewhere small, so I decided start with my pantry so I can finally accomplish something.

Here is my pantry before:


You can see that it's not all that bad, but it there was some stuff from Sam's that wouldn't fit. It made putting away groceries harder.


When Jules was here in December, he started putting plastic bags in the bottom of the pantry so they wouldn't end up all over the place. I kept putting them there after he left. I also put some food down there that didn't fit on the shelves very well.

Here is everything during the process:


I found some oatmeal packets that had bugs in them, so it was probably a good thing I went through everything.


I found this in a box of Microwave popcorn. I have no idea where it came from. Is it glass or plastic? Was this some sort of prize in the box? Did this come with me from Florida?

Here's the after pictures:


I went to Walmart for organizing tools, but couldn't find stuff that was quite right. Target wasn't much better, but I bought the orange and green bins and kept the receipt. They turned out to be just right. I may buy one or two more. It'd be nice to have something like this. I may or may not spend the money for one.


I got the plastic bags off the floor. I have a bag holder for them. Somewhere. (I took all the old ones to recycling. I'm sure I'll have more for garbage soon enough.) Now all that's left on the floor is my stash of free sodas from HEB combo locos and meal deals. I don't drink these, but I keep them around so I can offer to bring soda to parties.

This morning I went to get my mandarin oranges to put in my lunch. I opened the pantry and I smiled.

Now I just need to get the rest of the apartment under control. Or maybe I'll just keep perfecting the pantry.