It be like that sometimes

I've had a rough morning that started with sleeping through my alarm and missing Phoebe's bus.

Fortunately, we have a functioning car and her hair was fine enough from being braided the night before that I didn't bother with fixing it today and she got to school in time for breakfast.

Then I had a fight with Iris about whether or not she had to go to school. This is a complex problem involving forms and school officials and stuff and sometimes results in lots of emotional words between us.

This was all before coffee.

Fortunately, both the nurse and the attendance office at THIS school are super awesome, understanding, patient, and helpful. They were not at the other school. Iris is home and sleeping, which is honestly the best thing for her right now.

It's fine. It's all fine.

And I don't mean that in an "everything around me is literally on fire" sort of way, it really is fine. It was rough, but everything got handled and ended up okay.

Ultimately, this is my mental health goal right here: To be able to handle it when things go awry and to not ugly cry in the car at what a terrible parent/wife/person/friend I am. I'm not. I'm fine at these things, I just am a fallible human person and heck things up sometimes. For someone with OCD, that's a big statement.

This week, I replaced the side mirrors on our old car because literally all the mirrors fell off the car. I found a tutorial video, found the parts, bought the parts, installed the mirrors, and was able to run the errand I'd meant to run earlier in the week and get some fleece on mega sale.

I did not angrily sell the car for scrap and cry at our savings account. I handled it.

If this ain't a metaphor...

Being able to handle stuff when it goes awry doesn't come to me naturally. I take an antidepressant and I've practice mindfulness for yyyyeeeeaaarrrrrsssss. It's work. It's constant work. I'm working at it right now in this very second because there's a very big rut in my neural pathways that wants to react in an unhelpful way. There's no one fix and even when you find the best possible combination of things that help, you still have to work at your mental health, but that work has a huge payoff. I'm not as productive today as I'd be if my morning had gone more smoothly, but I'm also a thousand percent more productive than I would be if I were gross crying in a blanket fort, so there you have it.

Today hasn't been great, but it be like that sometimes.

Take care of yourself today. Get good sleep, eat a vegetable, take your meds and vitamins, do a meditate, pet something soft, look at pictures of kittens, do whatever you have to do to prioritize your mental and physical health.

Here are some pictures of Toast and Rufus to get you started:

February is for Finishing: Love the one you're with

Bentocat is much displeased

My week has been decidedly off-kilter.

The eldest child hasn't been feeling well and had to see the doc today. It's nothing serious, but it was helpful and good to visit the doctor.

But that's neither here nor there, except to say that it was important to put love and attention toward helping her feel better because that's what moms do.

This doesn't look much different, but as of now, I'm at 25/81 blocks quilted, so 30.86% and I feel like I'm picking up speed now that I'm closer to the edge.

I've finished another one of these and started yet another one in the silver yarn. I'm at 3/12 stars, which is 25%.

This week has been about loving the one I'm with. When I'm with the quilt, I try to think about how cozy and warm it is and how Iris is going to feel snuggling under it. I love it because I love her and it's all bright, happy colors.

I'm loving the stars just for the love of knitting and yarn itself. They're fiddly and difficult in places, but they're just so darn cheerful and it's really satisfying to see one finished and stuffed, ready to hang on a tree come December.

I have loved the needled arts since I was small and I wouldn't continue if I didn't still love it. February is for Finishing is an excellent opportunity to help me remember why I love what I've already started, which further feeds a desire to work on those over the shiny new ideas and projects. It's a good opportunity to narrow my focus and love the one I'm with.

Wishing you lots of love this week.

March isn't far off, and we'll be looking at different forms of embroidery. I might even do some cross-stitch, you guys. Brace yerself.

Gratuitous flower picture. These just bloomed today.

If you start singing, I'll understand.

Now seeds, start growing!

My sleep schedule has been a little off-kilter lately and I'm going to bed early and tired, but it's all for the best reasons. I'm taking this excellent energy that comes with springtime and turning it into a cleaner house, more projects, a tidy lawn and garden, and a healthier me. I started Couch to 5k again with Bekah (contemporaneously, not colocationally, as she would say) and I've made it halfway through week two. I'm not to the place where I love running and want to do more just yet, but right now, it's about moving my body and trying to meet the challenge. I do love a good challenge and if I stick with it, I might even start enjoying running again.

I'm poking away at the TARDIS project bag and it's slow-going because the fabric doesn't want to sit still and there are a lot of parts to it. I've already got five hours in it and there are some kinks in the design that need to be worked out, but when I lay it out on the table, it looks like I imagined.

The rest of the blue silk finally made its way onto an embroidery hoop to become a sampler, of sorts. I'd started to design something, but it ended up being overdone and too many elements in one design, so I tossed it. Sometimes the challenge of Project Make is not about planning something to the nth degree, as with the TARDIS bag, but about knowing when to let go and let the art just happen.

If you were to start singing "Let it Go" right now, I'd understand.

In other sewing news, I've been riffling through my fabric stash and came up with a stack of pinks and blues.

Some of these are in very small amounts and I don't yet know what they will be, some are in large enough amounts to become project bags, and a few of them are in sufficient quantity to make some little shirts for my littlest person.

I'm starting with the funky floral pink in the center of the second picture. I've already cut two little shirts and the outsides of two quickie project bags that I want to do up assembly-line style later.

Also in my stash was a nice bright purple ribbon and a matching purple ric-rac. I may pick up some eyelet lace, too.

Bekah pointed out earlier this week that two years old is a fine time to receive handsewn garments and I've been planning to both improve my skill with patterns and to start really learning how to make things without a purchased pattern. Making small things for small people or even doll clothes is an excellent way to learn without investing a whole lot of time and fabric into an adult garment.

In spite of all this sewing, I've been knitting, too. I'm at the point where there's enough progress that new pictures are necessary, but I haven't taken them yet. I've been working on:

• Leto in Knit Picks' Shadow and Misti Alpaca Lace 

• Easy Ribbed Legwarmers in Opal Polarlichter

• Brickless in Alisha Goes Around Tracks of Bison

• Genevieve's Tube Socks in Crystal Palace Maizy Print 

• EZ's Seamless Saddle Shoulder Pullover in Knit Picks' Wool of the Andes superwash

So it's been a little bit of everything. 

This week's technique is more philosophy, I'm afraid, but came to me as I was cutting Bu's shirts:

Do not stop for thrift. 

This is one of the Delphic Maxims, #122 to be exact. As religious texts go, it's more of a list of pretty good ideas rather than a set of hard and fast rules. Calling them commandments overstates it a bit and they're meant to make you think about your life choices instead of making those choices for you. Anyhoo, for years, I have been marking the pattern, removing the paper pattern, and cutting the fabric, just in case I wanted to use the pattern again in a different size. That's how I was taught to do it, so that's how I did it. 

It took me thirty years of sewing to figure out that I can replace a pattern for a dollar when they go on sale and my time is far more valuable than that. Yesterday, with this in mind, I let go and cut the paper pattern.

If you were to start singing "Let it Go" again, I would still understand.

Dear Bekah suggested this one means "If you see a Goodwill, keep driving," which I thought was pretty great, even though that's not how we roll here at the House. The TARDIS blue silk is actually a Goodwill find. Hers was not a serious suggestion, but it did give me a chuckle. I think I would rephrase this as "Evaluate your return on investment." If something like couponing is fun for you and you're saving a significant amount of scratch, great! If your duds come from Goodwill or if patching worn clothes makes you happy, that's perfectly okay. But if those things don't make you happy and aren't worth the time, thrift is not a good enough reason to continue. 

Recombobulation

Most of this week has continued to be covered in ice and snow, but at least the kids are back in school. We were all craving some normalcy after last week's icy shenanigans. It's snowing now, but snow isn't nearly as much of a problem as the ice. Snow is fine. Ice is treacherous. 

Bekah took some really great pictures of ice at her place. Her picture with the bell pretty much says it all. The one to the left was taken from my bedroom window and you can see that our street is clear, but our driveway was a solid sheet of ice. 

I've spent the greater majority of this week under blankets with hot beverages and my step count shows it. The past two weeks have not been good for my exercise and dietary habits, but I know I'll get back in the saddle pretty soon. I've got a treadmill and I know how to use it. 

On the bright side, I'm a stripe and a row away from being done with Mr. Rippley, my coffee friend. A little bit of weaving in ends after that and he'll be ready to adorn the couch in all his crocheted glory. I can be done by the end of the month. I'm hooking like I've never hooked before.

I also took a break from my current WIPs to do something a little bit goofy with some ancient novelty and acrylic stash. I rather like it and enjoyed knitting it, even though these days, I most likely wouldn't go out and buy yarn like this on purpose. It's cute, much like a really ugly, but very sweet dog. 

This is twenty some-odd stitches alternating in garter stitch and (RS) k1, sl1 (WS) P across, with a 4-stitch garter stitch border. Cast-on and cast-off ends are seamed together to make a little cowl that befits a toddler if she decides it's not too fuzzy or an adult who is a little bit bold about color choices.

I also have a sewing FO and some learning happened here.

 This is a DPN roll, which has since been washed and pressed, so it's nice and classy looking and without its markings showing. The fabrics are a combination of a vintage 1970's? cotton print and some scraps from garments long past. A bit of red 3/4" grosgrain ribbon ties it all together in a neat little roll that's tall enough for 8" long needles.
All in all, it was a great project and I love these fabrics together, but I could have done a better job on the pocket. When I can get to my fabrics again, I'm going to try this again, but with a little refinement in my technique. As a prototype, it's not bad. I think I have enough of these fabrics to do a matching project bag, but some definite fudging is going to happen to make that work.

I also finished spinning first half of the SoUP batts, but pictures will have to wait.

This week's technique:

• Ripping a seam. No video today, but here's a picture.
  I don't ever remember being taught how to rip a seam. It seems self-evident. Pick up the stitch with the pokey bit, cut it with the curvy cutty part, repeat ad infinitum. Mom might know whether anyone actually taught me how to rip a seam or if it seemed obvious enough that actual teaching wasn't necessary. I was very young when I started sewing. (Mom, if you're reading, let me know in the comments, willya?)
  Upon reading The Dressmaker's Technique Bible, rather than skimming through the little bit on seam rippers, I actually read it. The author suggests cutting every third stitch on one side of the fabric and zoop! pulling out the thread on the other side.
  This is far more efficient than cutting every single stitch and the zoop! is very satisfying. You can even do this pretty quickly with a good pair of embroidery scissors.
  Learning this was a lot more about letting go of certainty than acquiring skill. Project Make is teaching me not to be so prideful about what I think I know so that growth and progress can take place. Also zoop! is fun to say.

I haven't been working on anything else, aside from a checklist of things to do when I'm feeling off-kilter. It's got crazy things on it like "Drink Water" and "Exercise." Other shenanigans include "Spend Time Outside" and "Fluff the Stash." The list is intended to help me put my own little red wagon back on track by doing things that are healthy and good for me. I'll let you know how that goes. One of the things on the list is "Practice good sleep hygiene," so I'd better hop on off to bed before it gets too late. 

Including the Kitchen Sink

The New Year's cast-on a-thon went very well and I'm even a little ways into the socks now. The baby sweater had to be ripped and re-knit after having overlooked some of the increases and the sweater is going to make good tv/morning coffee knitting if I get bored with the crochet blanket I'm working on now. My dear Bekah has finished her blanket already, so I feel the urge to catch up. Of course, I'm ahead of her on the BFF cowl, so...

I had a rough day this week. Little Miss Bu is no more than two and, as two year olds go, she's about the chillest that you will find anywhere.

But she's still two. The confluence of a difficult potty day for her and a case of the crankies for me meant that there weren't nobody happy (to put it in the manner of my people).

While I was still having the crankies, I did manage to retreat to the bedroom where the drum carder is and did up one of the Sheep of Unknown Provenance (SoUP) batts. They are now all carded and ready for the next stage of their woolly adventure. Husband kept Miss Bu out of my hair and I worked on not being quite so grouchy. The scritch-scritch of the carder is kind of soothing, actually. The moral of this story is that Husband is awesome and fiber arts are necessary for mental health. Miss Bu has been pretty excellent the rest of the week and even went with me to see my former professor, whom we shall name "Mr. Andy." She loved the science building and was fascinated by his library of science books.

Unrelatedly, there was plumbing this week. It wasn't strictly necessary plumbing, but two parts of my kitchen sink have been annoying me since we moved in, so I replaced them. It's not the most attractive of design choices, but I'll take improved functionality over aesthetics when it comes to plumbing. Not that aesthetics don't matter, but this fix was under $20 and I hate my sink much less now. There's a certain sense of accomplishment when you successfully do plumbing things on your own. As you can see, I've also started painting spots with a sample of the color I want the kitchen to be. I think I'm in love.

The reclaimed silk also got washed and ironed. It has a lovely sheen to it and I can't wait to start on it. The first thing up for the blue silk will be practicing hand-rolled hems.

But before I do that, I'm getting my eyes checked. No lie, mere hours before I listened to the Knitmore Girls' Episode 314: Dessert First, I had decided to make an eye appointment. They both strongly urged us to get our eyes checked in the Mother Knows Best segment and I could not help but think, "How timely!" We go on Sunday.

This week, I've finished:

• Endpaper Mitts in Knit Picks Stroll
• Turkey Day Socks in an unknown sock yarn

I've been working on: 

• Fork in the Road socks in Andey Originals sock yarn
• Baby Sophisticate in Plymouth Fantasy Naturale multi
• EZ's Seamless Saddle Shoulder pullover in Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Superwash
• Neat Ripple Pattern in Knit Picks Brava

Clear sight and green rage monsters

So, it turns out I have gestational diabetes. This comes as no surprise at all, given not only my family history, but that offspring #1 was whatchacall a big baby. It's been a very frustrating several weeks because my relationship to food has had to change drastically and far more quickly than I'm really comfortable with. I don't have enough time to slowly develop good habits over months, not that I don't already have good habits, but rather that I don't have optimal habits for a diabetic. Even so, I'm making a concerted effort for good health and that means wrestling with dieticians and counting carbs and testing when I should.

I love food so much. There's so much sensory information in a meal and, if you're doing it right, the experience can be one of the most pleasurable things in life. But counting carbs is frustrating and leaves me feeling deprived. Giving up my morning marshmallow cereal wasn't that big of a deal and we're already getting past ice cream season, but my big hangups are fruit and pasta. That's my kryptonite.

Gratuitous shot of a butterfly from our garden
that has nothing to do with this post. It's just pretty.

My two best friends had a conversation with each other about which of us would be what Avenger and they both decided in my absence that I'd be Dr. Bruce Banner. Of course there's the science thing, but really it's because I have the tendency to turn into a giant green rage monster (figuratively speaking) and even though I really try as hard as I can not to, I don't always have a handle on it. They didn't put it that way or even think about it in quite that way, but the correlation is not inaccurate.

Getting your spiritual act together is all about awareness and that's one of the biggest lessons I had to learn as I became a priestess. But it's not the kind of lesson you can learn just the once and get on with your new, enlightened life. It's work to keep developing the skill of self-awareness and applying the knowledge you've gained from it. One of the blessings of Apollo is that of clear sight: the ability to see things as they actually are without your preconceived ideas and emotions clouding everything. The emotions and ideas are still there, you can just see them for what they are and how, exactly, they obscure what's actually going on.

I made the mistake of letting my frustration get in the way of working toward better health. I hulked out without realizing what I was doing until after it was over and good, calm, logical, mild-mannered Bruce came back, feeling a little ashamed at letting the other guy get the better of him. It wasn't like I leveled a city block or literally smashed anything; I just got a little frustrated and let it get in the way of seeing what was really going on. All you can do at that point, even if you have leveled a city block or something, is take a deep, cleansing breath, try to figure out what happened, learn from it, and move on. So that's what I've decided to do: learn and move on, do better next time. I hope for the blessings of Apollo, not only for good health, but also so that I can see clearly what I can do to get there. 

At this point, I've got things more or less under control and it was my reasoned self that was able to do that rather than my emotional, reactive self. Reactivity is hardly ever helpful or useful and I have something to say about that in regards to how one responds to something that's offensive to one's religious beliefs, but perhaps for another post, eh?

What are you going to do about it?

::sigh::

Awesome in Aviation!
Never married.

I had written most of a post about revising your idea of success, but it got eaten by the internet. I thought about throwing up my hands and giving up on posting something today, but I think I'm too stubborn for that.

This is still a post about success and what that means. Olympic athletes and great inventors have one kind of success, but that's not the kind of success I'm able to aim for. That's not my arete. I can't give up parts of my life to focus intensely on success at one thing. My kind of arete is to continually try to improve my skill at being a human being, to be the best kind of mom I can be, to be the best priestess I can be, and to do my best work when I'm doing science. My attention is divided, but I'm not sorry about it.

I wouldn't give this up for the world.

I've always wanted to be a scientist and a mom. Well done, me! Being a priestess was an unexpected surprise, but I'm not sorry about that, either. It helps me be a better mom, a better scientist, and a better human being.

In order to improve my skill at all of these things, it's important for me to remember that when I am feeling ennui or having some difficulty or another that sitting and bitching about it does nothing. Doing something, even if that something is "just" prayer, is the only way to get through that. Michael Phelps didn't get to be an Olympian athlete by crying in his beer when things were hard, he got up and swam and then he swam some more. Orville and Wilbur went, literally, back to the drawing board when things didn't work out.

Gratuitous picture of flowers in my garden
for no reason other than they're pretty.

I was having ennui and was worried about not having worked enough on all of the things, but remembered that I'm an Action!priestess. If I feel bad, I need to do something about it. Am I eating right, resting enough, have I had enough water, would a cuppa coffee or a couple Tylenol help, is there something I can do to fix the problem? And this is how I minister to others on the rare occasions I'm asked to put my priestess hat on. I'm not great at listening to other people talk about their feelings. I admit that it makes me a little uncomfortable because I don't know what to do with emotions. So, I'll ask the other person, "What can you do about it?" and "What have you done about it?"

"Nothing" is not a great answer. I rarely accept it from myself or others. If the problem is "I haven't been knitting," the answer is "Well, knit then, if you're able." If the problem is "I'm tired," the answer is "rest." There is always something you can do, even if you can't see it right away. To quote the David Wilcox song "Down Inside Myself"

Hey the cure is very simple
And it works in half an hour
Get some sleep, eat some broccoli
Run a mile, take a shower

For me, I tend to ask myself, "Would a nap, a couple Tylenol, a bite to eat, and/or a cup of coffee help?" Often, the answer is "yes." So, have you been down about something? Dismayed? Dejected? Other words that start with D? What are you going to do about it? Do you have a checklist of easy things to do that might help?

This is my body

One of the hot topics around the Pagan blogosphere right now is health in the Pagan community, obesity in particular. The Wild Hunt links these and a few more in last Saturday's link roundup, so feel free to sift through these if you like. I've read through some of these... okay, so I skimmed them and I've decided that I'm not going to talk about obesity at all. Well, maybe a little, but in neither an "OBESITY IS EPIDEMIC, AHMAHGAARRD!!" nor a "NOOOOO, STOP DA FAT SHAMING!" way. This is much more than a binary thing.

I'm a small person. I've always been a small person. When I was in utero, the doc thought I was going to be a late September baby, but no. I was and still am just smallish. Even with the expanding tummy and the chest jugs that have upgraded to more than their usual half-gallon size, I'm still pretty small. I've been slender my whole life and, for the most part, it's not from diet or exercise. I don't even try. I'm just that way.

Me at my 30th birthday. I always wanted a Logan's Run party.

But there is a thing that happens to some of the women in our family. As the decades pass, we get chunky and heart and blood pressure problems start making themselves more obviously known. I'm not saying there's any causality there, just that those things happen concurrently. My mom is very similar in body type to me and these days she's wearing larger pants and taking blood pressure medication. This is partly genetic. Having native blood ain't always pow-wows and great cheekbones. It's also extra wisdom teeth and a tendency toward diabetes and heart problems. (I didn't have the extra teeth, but my brother did.)

As my mother would say, I want to live long enough to be a burden on my children. A heart attack or other major health problems are not whatchacall gonna help me get to that goal. Additionally, I'm a priestess of Apollo. His descendants include Asklepios, Hygeia, Panacea and the entire medical profession. The Hippocratic Oath mentions each one of these deities in its original form and taking this oath has marked the beginning of a physicians career since the late 5th century BCE. The modern version doesn't include these gods and is not required by most medical schools, but I don't think they could remove the spirit of Apollo from it.

Here's a little bit of a tangent, but we'll come back around, I promise.
Hippocrates of Kos was probably trained at the asklepeion there, the asklepeion being a healing house and temple to Asklepios, son of Apollo and Koronis. He is credited with the idea that illness and disease are naturally caused rather than caused by the gods. I'd wager that the theory is a little more layered and nuanced than that, given that Hippocrates seems to have been a believing man. Prayers to the gods are prescribed in certain particular cases in the Hippocratic Corpus and even though it's an exception to a rule, it's a notable exception. I can't tell you much about what Hippocrates himself believed, but as a woman of science, I think I kind of understand this mode of thinking. Everything does have a natural cause, including disease. We understand that natural cause to be everything from bacteria and viruses to environmental factors, to genetics, and so on. So, when someone is sick or injured we can either trace the illness or injury to its source or assume that there is a physical source of some kind, even if we don't know what that is. That said, I also believe that the gods are connected to the natural world, often in ways we don't understand. If a flu epidemic comes through, I know that the source is a virus that came from somewhere, but I'm also not going to say that Apollo isn't involved.

Hakuna Fritatta... actually, I suppose that's a quiche, isn't it?

So, coming back around, this post is about excellence. Devotion to my god means getting the most out of this life that I can and doing my best to be skilled at having this body. I've seen members of my local and regional community make poor health choices and I've made poor health choices myself. As a priestess, I feel that it's my responsibility to help others make better choices either by example or by direct teaching. This idea is an integral part of our Midsummer celebration when we have backyard games to honor Apollo. Being a worthy vessel for my god is why I try to eat really really healthy and exercise as appropriate. We try to serve healthy foods at our gatherings and hootenannies. My skinny ass needs that as much as anybody.

It's not really enough to say "How very sad so many of us are fat" and to give statistics on obesity and health problems. In fact, don't. It's not helpful. We who are leaders in our communities need to both examine our own health choices, make positive changes where we can in our own lives, and make positive changes where we can in things like feast preparation and by offering classes on healthy choices. Not because some of our fellows are fat, but to help all those who want to be healthier whatever their size and medical history may be.