Idle Hands

I'm not good at having nothing to do. Add to that, it hasn't exactly been an fun filled hiatus from work. Sick for 10 days, then injured back for two weeks. Once some sadistic public servant crammed some jury duty in the middle of it all, I started to worry that if someone suggested driving to Bakersfield, I might mistake it for a tropical vacation. (Don't worry, I'm not trolling for sympathy there is a point to this.)

And now, my Uncle seems to be in the early stages of Alzheimers, which culminated recently in his insisting that he does not live in his house, and his wandering the neighborhood at night looking for his "real" house.

So when I got called to go over there and hang out all night until they could find a 24 hour caregiver, making sure he didn't wander off, I knew I had already slid past "stir crazy" and would need something to do with myself in order to stay awake all night.

Which is why Crazy Aunt Purl had just the right blog post to solve my problem. She'd mentioned getting audio books from the library. Just the thing! But what to do with my hands... hmm.

When I was young, everyone around me knitted, and beautifully too. My one attempt ended in a potholder that looked like it had been mauled by dingos. But I'm not nine anymore, and I'd started to believe that maybe even I could make Crazy Aunt Purl's "Magic Scarf".

Not exactly. It looks surprisingly average in the picture, but in real life it has got to be the lumpiest scarf in recorded history. Which is why I'm glad I started with the cheapest, homeliest yarn I could find. But what I also found is that I couldn't stop. It's been eleven days, and I seem to have developed a fuzzy new compulsion.


By yesterday, I had three things that could be mistaken for scarves, if one defined that word very loosely (the beige one is a vast improvement, so at least I'm getting better at the scarf thing), and had inadvertently invented what is possibly the first knitted pork pie hat.

By this evening, I'd finished hat #2. Which is luckily an improvement over hat #1.

But I've already got three skeins of Patons Rumor yarn in Hibiscus Heather just begging to jump on my new bamboo needles.

Help.

Oh, This Old Thing?

While I was skulking around my house, cranky from the pain and boredom, we received an invitation to a party at our neighbors' house. While the party-time is a biweekly occurrence over there, the details made Laughing Boy's ears perk up. The neighbors had discovered that May 6th was National Cocktail Day. I found that more than a bit amusing, since May 6th follows the Southern California drink-a-thon more commonly known as Cinco de Mayo, so it seems like National Hangover Day would be more fitting.

However, the neighbors decided it would be more fun to celebrate National Cocktail Day, so the invite referenced what is pretty much agreed to be the Penultimate Cocktail Era, the 1950's, and hats.

Most of the guests donned baseball caps, fedoras, cowboy hats, whatever they had lying around. And LB and I ended up at the neighbors looking like this.


LB went on quite the shopping spree to assemble his Shriner tribute. It pretty much explains the state of my brain - and closet - when I am forced to admit that all I had to buy was my hat.

ow.

So I finally made it to my first real training session at the gym, and even though he made me do upper body exercises until my arms wouldn't move, it wasn't so bad. Except. Except, the Arctic Winds blowing through the gym from the freakin' air conditioner exacerbated an old dance injury that hasn't bothered me for a decade, and my lower back went into spasms.

Yeah. Fun.

The good news, I was down three pounds after only one week on Le Diet of Disrepute. The bad news, I've put it back on over the last three days of lying on my right side (ow, need to shift, nononononono! whimper), back (carry on like someone has run me through with a two by four, pleeease don't make me move), and left side (is this pain killer doing NOTHING??? Where are the real drugs!).

LB lured me off to his genius acupuncturist yesterday afternoon and by the end of a very pointy hour of Fun With Needles, my spasms had turned into a very sore but not spasming back ache. Yay. Sort of.

Can't wait to do some lower body work next Monday.

yup.