Knitting in the Shadows

Passing it on: Subject for Debate: Are Women People?

There's a trend -- and I'm joining in.

Several of the blogs I read have shared this article (by sharing the first two paragraphs).  I'm doing the same.

"All my adult life, I’ve been pretty sure I’m a sentient, even semi-competent human being. I have a job and an apartment; I know how to read and vote; I make regular, mostly autonomous decisions about what to eat for lunch and which cat videos I will watch whilst eating my lunch. But in the past couple of months, certain powerful figures in media and politics have cracked open that certitude.

"You see, like most women, I was born with the chromosome abnormality known as “XX,” a deviation of the normative “XY” pattern. Symptoms of XX, which affects slightly more than half of the American population, include breasts, ovaries, a uterus, a menstrual cycle, and the potential to bear and nurse children. Now, many would argue even today that the lack of a Y chromosome should not affect my ability to make informed choices about what health care options and lunchtime cat videos are right for me. But others have posited, with increasing volume and intensity, that XX is a disability, even a roadblock on the evolutionary highway. This debate has reached critical mass, and leaves me uncertain of my legal and moral status. Am I a person? An object? A ward of the state? A “prostitute”? (And if I’m the last of these, where do I drop off my W-2?)."

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/03/07/subject-for-debate-are-women-people/#ixzz1qesCiQ4L

There are so many things going on in politics today --  And so very few of them seem good -- especially if you're a woman.

In various states, they're working on repealing the Equal Pay Act.   Even though women still earn only 77 cents for every dollar men earn.

In various states, they're setting things up so that a woman who wants an abortion -- regardless of why she wants it -- has to under go a transvaginal ultrasound first.  Even if the woman is seeking to abort a child she already knows has died.   Heck, Georgia had a go at requiring a woman whose fetus is more than 20 weeks to carry that fetus to term -- even if it has died.

But there's all this inconsistency -- if we have to have babies, whether we want to carry them to term or not, shouldn't we then be able to take care of them? Shouldn't we be able to provide the best food for them, even if we have to work to keep food on the table for the rest of the family?  Evidently not, since in Texas  women can be fired for bringing breast pumps to work. And the judges are upholding that nonsense.

It's blowing my mind. 

I wonder... can we all claim benefits under the ADA?  After all, they're clearly acting as though having that XX chromosome means we're functionally disabled?

100!

I have the coolest homework assignments.

Every week, I have to give at least two massages.

Every week, I have to use my skills, and the love in my hands, to give two (or more) people relief from pain, a sense of peace, ease from stress.

Darn.

I think that's so cool!  (and when I graduate, and get my license, I'll be able to do that every day).

I think it's so cool, that I almost always give more than two of these home-work massages each week.

Today, I gave my 100th homework massage since I started the massage program.

I have learned so many wonderful things -- in class, following up on lessons by watching videos on the same modality, and by paying very close attention every time I get a massage from someone new (especially a new professional).

Today, my "client" came to me with pain in her low back, and her feet, and her neck, and her chest muscles.  She left, with happy, happy feet, a soothed low back, and an open feeling in her chest muscles. And it was my hands that made that happen!  I still find that pretty amazing.

and yet -- find it as natural as rainwater.

 

In Which My House Feels Like A Day Spa

When I got up Sunday morning, my plan included studying for Monday's Pathology exam, possibly paying bills, reading, and giving one homework massage.

Instead, I took Bookworm to the store to get supplies to repair a hair disaster, and spent the next couple of hours carefully re-bleaching her hair, in preparation for re-coloring her hair. 

Bookworm is very grateful that my camera when on strike today.  Otherwise, you'd see photos of the hair disaster (in which her hair color ranged from the dark mahogany/burgundy brown she'd last died it, through various shades of fox, dark strawberry blond, butterscotch, platinum blonde, wheat, apricot, ....

While it could have been VERY COOL, the color ranges weren't in interesting natural looking streaks.... they were more.... spotted.  Like someone took the fur colors of a red fox or red panda, and used the patterns of, say an ocelot.  In short... NOT good.

There would also be pictures of the process, with her hair mostly pinned up, and some foil wrapped, to show you just how small the sections were that I worked with, so that I'd bleach the brown parts, and lighten the darker foxy colors, without over bleaching the honey and platinum.....

Of course, there are also no pictures of the almost finished results -- the bleaching is done, and her hair looks pretty good -- sort of strawberry blond.  But we're going to even it out a little better with a round of blonde dye after it's had a chance to breathe from two days in a row of bleaching.

For the record -- I'm actually opposed to my high school aged daughter dyeing her hair.  I'm even more opposed to her doing it in ways that require bleaching.  But -- the whole thing started months and months ago when she slipped out to Walgreens and spent her own money on hair dye.  She surprised me with the new color - fait accompli.  And luckily, it actually looked quite good.  I decided that this was a battle I was not going to win.

However, after this weekend's mishap, she and I had a chat about intense color changed (especially ones invovling bleach. Next time, she's going to buy the product from the beauty supply shop, not Walgreen's, and she's going to have ME help her for things more complex than simple coloring.  Kitty meant well, but she's never had it done, much less watched it being done, and thus didn't quite know how to tackle the job.

By the time stage one of hair repair was done, it was time for me to give a massage.  (Day spa time... get your hair colored (or trimmed), and a massage.  I can even paint your tonails, though I'm no pro at the whole pedicure thing. (snicker).

I closed the day giving a massage to Golf Pro, who was long overdue.

I finally got to the pathology book at about 11:30 p.m.  Color me grateful that the exam wasn't until 2:00 p.m.

I'm hoping that the camera and I get back on good terms so I can show you the new BookWorm.  It looks great, even if I do keep having to do double takes.  (It's a pretty drastic change).

The Return of Lace

Once upon a time, I seemed to knit nothing but lace. Lace lace lace.

I loved lace so much, I talked my dear friend into helping me start a Giant Repeating Lace KAL. We called it Seasons of Lace.  And I knit lace and ran the KAL for several years, and it was good.

And there was lots of lace.

  And then there was life. And massage school.

And suddenly, I was buried in way too much to do! It got so bad that lace all but disappeared from my needles.

It's been socks, and the lovely shadow-knitting afghan that I was commissioned to design and knit.

And the current lace project languished, pining for my attention.

As you may recall (well, likely not, since it's been so long .... ) I've gone on a tear, and am adapting Susan Pandorf's Dwarrowdelf Stole pattern for use as curtains. This means I needed to make them a lot WIDER to fit my windows.

So, being the oh-so-professional planner and detail person that I am... I hauled off and knit a top edge, vastly increasing the number of repeats called for by the stole pattern.

And then I looked to see what the ratio of repeats on top edge piece would be to the repeats on the body, and my brain fried a little.

In many ways, it has been simple (ish) math that was getting between me and my lace knitting.

I knew that the repeats on the top edge were 14 rows "wide". I knew that the ends of the top edge included a five row edge. (I spaced for the longest time on the three rows of set up at one end and the four rows of ... well... set down at the other).

I knew that I was getting approximately 7 rows to the inch. I knew that the repeats on the body would be 24 stitches wide. I knew that the ends included a 9 stitch edge on one side and an 18 stitch edge on the other.And... I knew that I was getting approximately 6 stitches to the inch.

Clearly, forgetting those 7 extra rows bollixed me up for a while.

But suddenly, after my brief escape to Oak Park, I made the math work! And here, we see the winding up of the skinny top edge:

It's pushing 44 inches long here. This aftenoon, I knit that five row edge, and bound off.

I'm now in the throes of picking up three hundred and some odd stitches along the edge that runs along the left side in that picture. So much for something to work on where the rows are short and I can feel like real progress happens when I knit for a few minutes.

I'm Handy!

Every now and then, I remind myself that I'm competent at more than knitting and massage.

Last week, I proved myself on plumbing!

I got cranky with my shower head.  It was dripping in ways that it's not supposed to be dripping.  Ordinarily, I would probably ignore a little dripping from my shower head that only drips when the shower is on.  I mean, really, I'm a little lazy.  But...as it got worse, it was having a negative impact on the water pressure in my shower.

Here's what I found when I took the shower head down:

Yes, cracks...  It gets uglier...

Well, no WONDER it leaked!  Sheesh!

I took my handy wrench, and took that puppy right off the pipe in my shower.  Then, I cleaned the pipe, applied pipe thread tape, and attached my fancy new shower head:

W00t!

I'm feelin' so womanly!

I ran away from home --

Monday, I boarded a train, and ran away from home....

sort of. 

It's not like everyone at home didn't know I was going, and where I was going. ...

And what was I doing?  HOMEWORK!

No, seriously.  I went up to Oak Park to complete a homework assignment.

Among the homework assignments we have each semester is to get a massage from a massage therapist who did not graduate from our program.  AND... this semester, we have to get a massage from a person of the opposite gender of the person we got a massage from last semester.  So, having cast my eye around town, and having discovered that all the female massage therapists I'd heard good things about actually did graduate from our program, I conceived a plan -- to go back to Oak Park (from whence we came ten years ago), and get a massage from the woman who was my initial inspiration to go into massage school in the first place.

It was such a good idea! 

I rode the train up, relaxing.  And then I walked from Union Station to the Ogilvie Transportation Center (a whopping two blocks), and found that my timing was perfect -- I boarded the METRA train about two minutes before it left the station.  When I arrived, it was a bit misty (having rained while I was riding the METRA), but I walked through the old area, enjoying recognizing old places -- and loving seeing this:

and this:

Honest -- I wasn't in Britain... I was in Oak Park, but there it was, none-the-less.

Okay, fine... you want proof?

 

Unity Temple (yes, it's Frank Lloyd Wright -- and yes, he built it to be a church in the first place).

I just love his style --

(And why exactly did I just NOT SEE this all the time I lived there -- I'd have joined in a heart beat).

I went out to dinner with wonderful friends, at a delightful little restaurant in Evanston called Trattoria D.O.C.  I'm a little appalled by how much I ate, but DAMN that steak was good!

I stayed in the Write Inn -- a nifty old place, that houses the oldest elevator in town.  And pet friendly even.  See --

Just outside the kitchen door.

Alas, old also means old HVAC systems.  Even though I arrived on the night in which the Equinox happened, it was HOT!  And the hotel system, which they claim is a water system, takes three days to switch over from heating to cooling.  Thus, they had no means to effectively cool the building.  They gave me a fan, which was both loud and ineffectual.    I slept poorly.

But breakfast at Hemmingway's was lovely.

And after breakfast, I walked down Oak Park Avenue to get my massage.

It was SO worth it!  It was wonderful to see her again.  And... her massage (though different) was every bit as wonderful as it used to be.  I learned a yummy new stroke from her.  And.... tee hee ... she learned one from me (because we traded!). 

Not only that, but I found the wonderful place where folks like me should retire.  My wonderful therapist works in the Oak Park Arms (a retirement center).  I was actually compelled to take a picture in the hall that leads to the Massage Therapy center:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen -- this is a WEAVING ROOM!  there is also a Needlework room.  Who knows what else is in there!

On the way home, I noticed these decorations on St. Edmund's church -

I've never seen those before -- here's a closer look...

If anyone knows what these are, and what they signify, I'd love to know.

I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out in the gorgeous weather, sitting in the shade on a bench in Scoville Park, reading Hunger Games.

My day ended with the arrival of my family, who picked me up, and took me to dinner at my favorite Oak Park restaurant -- The Marion Street Grille.  The frog legs are as wonderful as ever.

All in all, I say that my Equinox was glorious.  A perfect balance. 

Whining...

I've been pretty good about posting positive things lately.  Heck, I've had posts that are nothing but telling the world I'm grateful for things.  But today... I'm cranky.

Sure, I'm still very grateful for lovely moments with Bookworm (she woke me with coffee!  And then, later in the day, she bought me more coffee.)

And yes, I'm also grateful for a generally good life. 

But, I'm really cranky about the amount of time I've spent today working on medical bills.  While I'm not happy with the size of the bills (who is?), that's not what's making me cranky.

We are a family of four mostly healthy people.  All of our doctors (including some, but not all of the dental professionals) work at the same organization.  That ought to make things pretty simple, right? 

Wrong.

Some of the complexity comes to use courtesy of  HIPAA, which requires the clinic to create a separate billing account for any mental health care charges one might have, so that no one seeing a regular medical bill can tell that you've ever seen a mental health care professional.  But that ought to mean we have two accounts to deal with.

Nope.  We've got ten, or is it fourteen?  I can't even TELL how many separate accounts we four have with our health care providers.  I get upwards of six bills at a time.  All of them from the same folks -- but with different account numbers. 

I'm not kidding.  I get two separate bills from the C**** Physician Group.  Golf Pro gets three separate bills from teh C**** Physician Group.  Bookworm has one of her own from the C**** Physician Group.  And, even though one has labs done right there at the same clinic where the doctors' offices are, they get billed through the C**** Foundation Hospital -- so I have one account with them; and for some reason Golf Pro has somewhere between one and three, but they show up on one bill.  Of course if you are actually in the hospital and see a doctor, the Hospital doesn't bill you -- C**** Physician SERVICES bills you.  But wait... if you see one of the dental surgeons, they have their own separate account numbers (still under the C**** Physician Group name... ).  I'm lost before I even look at the bills.

But you know, one can slow down, and take one step at a time, right?  Look at each bill as just another bill.  How bad can that be? I mean, I can (and do) put all the little payment slips for the same billing entity in one envelope and mail them together (yes, I've put five different slips in one envelope going to C**** Physician Group, each with a separate payment via a credit card).  So why does it take hours?

Here's why:

When they bill you, they don't tell you which doctor you saw.  And, they don't necessarily allocate your co-pay to the charge you thought it applied to.  And though they swear that they allocate any payment not designated as a co-pay to the oldest outstanding charge, they don't actually do that.  Heck, sometimes they split payments between accounts! (If they can do that, why can't they just send one freakin' bill???)

And they usually divide up any given payment between several charges.

And.... if you've actually paid a charge off with a payment, that whole thing disappears from your next statement, so you can't SEE that the payment was allocated to a given charge.  We were actually all caught up for several months -- our co-pays kept us fully paid.  So, we didn't get statements at all.  That meant that I never got confirmation from them that they'd received and allocated the whole payment for any payment we made.

This has meant that I have to call the patient accounts office monthly to request detailed statements that actually reveal most of the information you might need.  Those statements take weeks for them to produce.  And today, I found one in which they'd allocated part of one of my payments to a charge that had been fully paid for by insurance.

Of course one of today's bills included two co-payments, but didn't actually include the charges for which those co-payments were made!

This complex slight of hand with the payments sometimes means that they don't, in fact, allocate the whole payment -- which leaves a few dollars here and a few more there just... hanging out there.  Of course, if a payment hasn't been allocated to a charge -- they don't count it as having actually been made when they tell you the total amount you should send in.  It'll count on the next statement (maybe),once they 've allocated it.  And sometimes... they change the allocations -- so that something you were sure was paid off, isn't anymore, and something else has some or all of that payment as a credit.

It's so confusing that I've taken to making up my own spread sheets.  They show the charges, the insurance allocations, and my payment allocations on one worksheet -- and the payment I've made and their allocations on a second worksheet (just to verify that they line up, which they don't always do).  So, in paying their bill, I seem to have two worksheets for each of those nine, er, ten, um, fourteen?? accounts.  It's a pain in the *ss.  But it saved me over $500.00 one year (they'd actually failed to fully allocate that much).

This doesn't stop them from threatening collection.  There was a $12.78 charge for something to do with the lab (I think it was the charge for the phlebotomist doing the stick (the tests get billed by someone else).  I'd paid it, by sending in the statement with a credit card number etc.  Then I got another bill, and paid that.  But they'd hauled off and allocated both payments to a different account anyway.  So then, I got a call warning me that the account in question was about to go to collection. 

And forget about making things work out if you're using Quicken to keep track of things.  "Reconciling" a statement is just plain impossible.

This makes me very cranky.

I don't mind paying my bills (much).  I have even almost gotten over the gross injustice that is our mental health care coverage.  But I really resent having to put in a full days work each month just trying to figure out the bill.  If I thought for an instant that I could trust them to really allocate the whole payment every time, I might just write the checks -- but I've learned over and over again that I can't trust them to do that. 

I wish I could bill them for my time.

If continuity of care weren't so darned important to me, I swear I'd drop them and go in search of medical professionals whose business office has any respect for their patients at all.

It makes me wonder -- is this standard for the medical industry? or just the special behavior of our local medical professionals' business office?

 

 

Woman to Woman

Among the many things I do instead of sleeping is serve on the board of our local rape crisis center.  It's a good thing to do.  Sometimes, it means I know things about our community that I'd rather not know (after all, one likes to believe that the evil things in the world don't happen near one); sometimes it makes me immensely proud of the folks in our community who do the right thing.

Last year, our Executive Director got married.  She  and her partner were part of the first wave of folks who got married when our state legalized marriage between people of the same gender.  The board commissioned me (sort of) to knit something for them.  Eventually, we agreed on an afghan -- which I designed for the purpose.

It's a tricksy afghan (if I do say so).  When you look at it from one angle, it looks like this:

She said blues and black.... and that's what we've got.  But it's not quite that simple.  Because if you shift it just a little, suddenly it looks like this:

I'm calling it Woman to Woman.  I'm guessing I'll work one up for a Man to Man afghan once this is done.

It's taking far longer than I expected it to -- kind of like getting that law passed in the first place.  I'm pretty sure I'll have it done for their anniversary.

Gratitudes

Periodically, there are surges of "post three thankful things each day" that go around.  I always try to join in, because I do believe that if we focus on the good in our lives two things will happen:  1) we'll be happier with our lives as they are, and 2) we'll attract more good to our lives.

As far as I know, there's no "x days of Gratitude" going around, but I was thinking of that premise this morning, and so I'm going to share some thankful thoughts, just because:

I woke this morning to the sounds of mourning doves cooing outside my window.

Bookworm had already made coffee.

Despite some rocky moments during the day yesterday, the event I had planned worked beautifully (thanks to those who were here!)

We have girl scout cookies in the house

My migraine has retreated, and the rest of us are healthy.

The washer and dryer both work (we expect them to, of course, but I'm still glad that they do)

I've already finished my reading for next week, so tonight needs only studying for the test.

Zara has all but stopped snarling at the other cats.

and.... as I prepare to give someone a ride... I'm confident my car will start.

Getting Ready (or Duct Tape Bondage)

I'm about half-way through a project that I'm hoping will really help me in my sweater knitting.  It will also help me hem things, the next time I whip out that sewing machine to make myself something.

What can do both?  Why a duct tape "dress manequin" of course!

My dear friends, the Divine though Blogless Elizabeth, Elizabeth's daughter, and Colleen of Cgirlslife, arrived Sunday morning with many rolls of duct tape, several over-sized T-shirts, and a very positive attitude.  Over the course of the next four hours or so, we mastered the fine art of duct taping the human torso:

In doing so, we discovered that there are very few straight lines on the female torso that are more than a few inches long.  I knew that, sort of,if I'd thought about it,  but I hadn't really looked realized it... The curvier the area, the shorter the strips of duct tape we needed. Here's a whole new way to understand where short row shaping can work to make a sweater fit better...

We also discovered that a well taped torso almost looks like it's wearing a fancy cocktail dress.

Of course, once you're all taped up, you have to be released from the armor (and yes, we did feel rather like super-heroes in our shiny duct tape armor, why do you ask?)

The marks let us know where the center line on our bodies really are, and where we bend (revealing the actual waist line. 

Then, we have to carefully close up the back again --

As you might imagine, by the second or third duct tape suit of armor, we started getting pretty silly.  I have no idea what I was orating about here, but by this point, the giggles were all but incessant, so it's likely it wasn't terribly serious:

Our next step will be to seal the things up, and stuff them.  The look sad and slouchy without bodies inside them.

Sadly, however, they still manage to show off just where one most needs to lose weight.  BUT... with these participating in the fitting process, it will  be much harder to delude ourselves about how big (or small) we really are.  I know It will look better stuffed, but it's also clear to me that no matter what shape I am in my head, I'm not the same shape in the outside world.

It's an eye opener -- seeing my body shape in 3-D this way makes me aware of my body's actual shape in a way that mirrors just can't do.  It made me wonder if making these would be useful for people struggling with their body images.  So many of us have inaccurate impressions of our own bodies.  And they're fueled by unreasonable representations in the media.

 

So much music!

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending my daughters' band concert.  As always, I'm a little bit amazed at how well their high school band performs - how good they sound, and how challanging the music they play is. 

This year, Kitty is First chair clarinet -- which means that I get to really see her! (First chair players are right there on the front edge of the band. One of the pieces they played included lots of really quick notes in the clarinet section - watching her fingers flying was kind of amazing.  (BookWorm, alas, is a tiny thing, who sits in the center of the back row.  Only by careful and luckyseating can I ever see her on stage).

Having enjoyed Tuesday's performance, I then had the honor of driving Kitty to a small town 45 minutes away for the IMEA Solo & Ensemble contest, where she played something wholly unrelated to the band concert music.  Her solo was beautiful and challenging -- starting slow and gentle and lyical, then speeding up, until at one point the sixteenth notes were just flying, and then slowing back down again, all the while maintaining tone, and using sometimes subtle and sometimes overt dynamics (getting louder and softer for those of you not enmeshed in musical performance).  Her performance was really good.  The judge thought so too, awarding her what turned out to be one of his few I's of the day.  (We've since learned that he handed out a lot of II's). 

This performance was particularly amazing to me, since there was a bit of a mess about getting there.  I had planned on rousting us at 7:10 or so, and leaving by 7:30 at the latest, sneaking a quick detour to buy her "real" (or as I call it "foofy") coffee, and arriving no later than 8:30 for her 8:50 performance. This would have given her an easy 20 minutes to warm up and prepare herself. 

ahem.

My alarm clock declined to participate in that program.  I woke at 7:57.  We flew out of the house at about 8:10.  I bent the speed limit laws into unrecognizable pretzles, careening down back country roads at speeds that were likely unwise, and thanked the universe that there was no traffic on them.  We arrived at 8:45.  She had time to find her room, and breathe for about 2 minutes outside the door before she had to go it.  She had time to warm up with one scale while the judge finished writing notes about the previous performer ... and then she was on.

And wow.

and then....

Monday, we were gifted with tickets to see Gaelic Storm.  They performed last night.  Very different music again... but so much fun.  (And listening to Patrick Murphy 's yummy Irish accent as he introduced the songs did not detract from my evening <grin>). 

I'm rather fond of this song -- which they sang last night.

And Thursday -- I'll be going for more music.

Pardon me while I wallow in my own good fortune.

Cutting Myself Some Slack

I was reading blogs (no, seriously, I actually found time this mornng to read a few blogs!) and found this over at The Seated View:  she had recently written that

"Believing you’re indispensable is the first sign of an impending nervous breakdown."  

In this particular blog post, she wrote:

"I have discovered it has a corollary. Believing everything on your list is absolutely crucial is the first sign of an impending physical breakdown."

Two little sentences that have given me a meals worth (or three or four) of food for thought.  I'm going to let the first statement simmer for a while longer.  Mostly, that's because I want to talk about the second one.  It ties into something I've been thinking about and working on lately.

But first, a touch of background:  I have long struggled with two things.  1)  I am a perfectionist; and 2) I am a procrastinator.

They are related.

Because I am a perfectionist, I don't want to start a project unless I'm sure I can get it done perfectly ... so I wait to start things.

Because I'm a perfectionist, I have a hard time admitting that anything is truly finished unless it meets my insanely high standards.

Because I'm a perfectionist with insanely high standards, I fall into traps where I take on far more than my share of things to do, because I want to be sure they're done to my standards (sometimes, even I can't meet those standards, but often the reason others can't is because I don't articulate them).

I like to think that another reason I take on too much is that I am only intermittently conversant with the words "no" and "I'm sorry, but I can't" or even "I'm already scheduled for something then".

And... despite my awesome ability to procrastinate (and please note that while typing this, I'm procrastinating -- delaying doing something for school that I ought to get done), I'm impatient!  When someone else is "supposed to" do something, I want them to do it right now.  This soon translates to me feeling as though it's important that it be done right now.... and that gets me in to doing it (or taking on the obligation to do it) so that it gets done on my schedule.

What does this have to do with that list?  Well, what with the needing to do it all myself to be sure it's done right, and the inability to say no, and my needing things to be done right now, I seem to accumulate a list of things to do that is impossibly long.

I also put things on it that not only could be done by others, but should be (for example, vacuuming when my shoulder problem is flaring up).

So... believing that everything on my list of things to do is absolutely crucial is not healthy for me. 

That belief leads to mental and physical breakdowns.

Physical, because I do things like vacuum when I should be resting (or even icing) my shoulder, and/or stay up well past my bed time to get things done.  The result -- I'm not well rested and I'm in pain. Duh.

Mental, becasue if everything on the list is crucial, there's no way to prioritize it!  I don't know about you, but I find it difficult to do even a half-decent job at anything when I try to do three things at once (enter the challenge of being a perfectionist).  And if everything on the list is priority one (because, well, it's crucial), then I have to do them all first.  Can you smell the circuits frying?

This concept ties in with some very simple things I've been trying to keep in mind lately:

Each of us can only do the best we can do on any given day. 

Not only that, but

Each of us can only do as much as we can do on any given day.

And while I try to hold those things in my mind, I also try to remind myself that the best I can do on day one is not going to be the same as the best I can do on day two.  I can't do as much when I'm tired, or sick, or hungry as I can when I'm alert, happy, healthy and well (but not over-) fed.  (Furthermore, this applies to everyone around me).

Of course, that goes along with the concept that if I do the best I can do every day, and with everything I do, then I need never look back with regret.  Those tenets are not ways to let myself slack off; they're ways to remind myself that ... well...

... not everything is priority one, and that it's okay if things aren't done perfectly (after all, a shoddily vacuumed carpet still has less cat hair in it than an unvacuumed carpet), and it's okay if it's not all finished today.  After all,

"Believing everything on your list is absolutely crucial is the first sign of an impending physical breakdown."

Farewell My Friend

Yesterday, was a busy day, full of joyous interactions with several groups of people.

I had a lovely visit with my Physical Therapist.  Even if I don't actually enjoy some of those exercises, I'm always glad to have been there. 

After working on my body, I joined my classmates at the Senior Resources Center, where we gave chair massages to the folks who work there.  There's nothing quite as delighftul as seeing stressed out people relax.  We gave massages to people who had never gotten a massage before, and saw faces go from tight and drawn to open and relaxed.  Chair massages are more tiring for me than table massages, but they have the advantage of letting me see four or even six different people experience a positive change in their day because of something I did in the same amount of time.

When I bid my fellow massage therapists in training adieu, I headed over to a friend's house to join my fellow "Crafty Ladies" for a late lunch (truly delicious home made soup)and some birthday cake (one of them celebrated her birthday this week, and another of them has mad cake decorating skills).  It was there that my loss occurred.

After amazing food, we took up our various needles and hooks, and I resumed knitting these socks.

Well, to be honest, I was working on the toe of the other sock, but whose counting.  That picture isn't nearly as fun.

Anyway, I was using my much beloved Darn Pretty Needles ... the Purple Passion ones... (swoon).  I picked up this needle:

And then, I knit about half way across one needle (note, at the toe, we're not yet into any exciting stuff, like cables -- I was just working stockinette toes!) and suddenly, there was a snap! and one needle tip went flying.  Now I have this:

I'm sad on several levels.  I fear that Tom might no longer be making these particular needles. 

The socks are in mourning. 

Me too.

I went home, and went to bed.  (Oddly, though I am rarely able to fall asleep during the day, I fell asleep in mere seconds).

My evening ended surrounded by knitting friends. working on an afghan that must wait until daylight to have it's picture taken.

I'll miss my lovely DP DPN (Darn Pretty Double Pointed Needle). I'm hoping its cousin will come stay with us.  Other needles aren't quite the same.

Opportunities to Choose

In January, among the chaos that was ShadowLand, I started a program of introspection.  Through this program (which is guided in part by books full of "meditations", books full of questions, meetings with other folks who are also going through similar programs, and one person who is guiding me), I'm learning a lot about myself, and a lot about ways in which I used to do things (or still do things) and/or think about things actually made my life harder than it needed to be.

I'm starting to listen for little life lessons in things people say, or things I read.

Yesterday, for example, I came away from a conversation realizing that every time you encounter a situation where your initial reaction is to become upset, and thus leap energetically into an argument, you have an opportunity to CHOOSE what you actually do next.  You can choose to leap, you can choose to stay quiet, you can choose to walk away. 

Not that this is easy, mind you.  When a teenaged child pushes one of your buttons, it's really hard to stop and say to yourself:  "AHA! An opportunity to behave in a calm, rational, compassionate, SANE manner!" (or even "aha, an opportunity to go ballistic").  BUT, I figure if I can start to register that I'm being presented with an opportunity to go ballistic, then I can start to choose not to take that opportunity.  After all, just because I have the opportunity to do something, doesn't mean I'm obligated to do it.

No, seriously.  I mean, think about it. 

Just because the store is providing you with an opportunity to buy 10 loaves of day old bread for $6.00 doesn't mean you're obligated to buy them.  And if you're as confident as I am that were you to buy ten loaves of bread all at once, at least eight of them would be moldy before you could eat them, you'd more than likely decline that opportunity.

Just because the car dealership is offering you an opportunity to buy a brand new gas guzzling BMW X5 SUV (12/15 mpg) for a mere $50,000.00 instead of the usual $85,000 doesn't mean you're obligated to buy it.  Your gasoline bill would match anyone else's car payment -- and we don't even want to discuss the insurance premium.

Just becasue you are given an opportunity to try meth, or partake of any other recreational pharmaceutical doesn't mean that you have to do it.

Just because you are given an "opportunity" doesn't mean it's something you want to do.  And that means the you can take that opportunity to say no.  And that means I have the opportunity to be kind, or calm, or.... even when my initial reaction is defensive, angry or hostile.  Not that this opportunity currently provides a large window of time in which to make the choice.  Sometimes, old habits and freshly awakened emotions run roughshod over delicate new opportunities.  And that means that I may not be able to make that choice every time.  But for today, I'm going to try to be aware that the opportunity to choose exists.