I was poisoned on Thanksgiving. I’ve been utterly sick and completely useless for at least six days because of this. I was given something contaminated with gluten, and I went through a pretty decent Hell because of it.

Thursday, day 1: Within 5 minutes of eating the contaminated food I was nauseated, cramping, and having brainfog and overall numbness. My fine motor skills were entirely shot and I was shaking so hard you could hear it in my voice. I couldn’t think to save my life; I spent the rest of the day on the couch under a blanket, playing easy DS games and watching mindless DVDs.

Friday, day 2 of severe glutenation: Nausea, migraine, shaking, stomach pain, fatigue and muscle weakness. Also, some paranoia. I was on my feet a total of eight times that day — once from the bed to the couch, three restroom trips, and once back to the bed from the couch.. It’s a short walk that took me about 5 minutes each way; my legs were so weak I can barely stand.

I could not drive, or walk, or stand up for an extended period. Early in the day I could not even hold a crochet hook because my wrists and arms hurt so badly.

Saturday, day 3: Still nauseated, weak and tired. I remember that this was the first day I was even strong enough to sit up unaided or without being propped up by pillows. That stunning achievement was reached midday, for several minutes at a time.

I was not able to walk or drive for any length of time. Thank gods a good friend of ours was able to come by and take the husband out to get groceries and other needful things for us.

Sunday, day 4: Still flu-like symptoms, short temper, still very weak. I did however have the strength (by the end of the day) to stand up long enough to take my first shower since the glutening. If you do the math, it’s not pretty.

Monday, day 5: My immune system and digestive tract are fired. Woke up sore all over; weak and in pain. I went to my doctor who made soothing noises (she is a joy and a comfort) and gave me steroids to stop the over-reactive immune response. My herbalist (also a joy and a comfort) gave me oregano to prevent a fungal infection — steroids have that effect sometimes — and peppermint oil for my ongoing nausea. All the driving nearly did me in, however. Went to bed early and happy about it.

Tuesday, day 6: Stuffed full of steroids. About 60% back to “normal”. Head hurt, thoughts racing, and crying jags like whoa. Fun! I think I made the right decision to stay home, no matter how worried about money I am. When a scene from “Death to Smoochy” makes me tear up, I’m in no condition to deal with the outside world.

Wednesday, day 7: Went to work, like the brave little toaster I am. Still pretty sore. Pretty nauseated (but the peppermint oil does certainly help). My head does weird things if I move it too quickly. I’m tired and I have no appetite — probably for the good.

All this peppermint is making me want Mint Chocolate ice cream, though.

It sounds so incredibly simple and trite when I write it all out like this. Nothing can describe a full week of feeling like I’m in a tumble-dryer full of rocks for hours on end.

And I can’t do this anymore. Luckily I will get paid for the holiday, but missing 3 days of work is a substantial amount and I can’t afford repeats of this happy little adventure. I’ve got to keep my food safely under my control. If that means not eating with family or not eating out at restaurants or not eating at work functions or parties with friends… then so be it. Any amount of transient personal embarrassment or even a little hardship between me and other people not as supportive of my condition is worth it rather than face a week of hell and another 4-7 days of discomfort.

I’m amazed that some people think that celiacs are doing this “just for attention”. I would like to give such ignorant savages some attention in return.

With a baseball bat. For a few hours.

Tags: crochet, gluten, illness, life, sleep

Sorry for the no posty for a bit; I was extremely poisoned at Thanksgiving. More on that tomorrow, but in the mean time I’d like to go ahead and include two cute links:

Well, you know how I love cats…15 Fascinating Facts about Cats. I especially like this one: “Both humans and cats have identical regions in the brain responsible for emotion.” I am glad to have it validated (by Random Internet Website with no References, however much that is worth) that my cats feel emotions in the same way I do. Much of the time with my cats I feel like I’m not a human having a relationship with an animal, but a thinking creature having a body-language interaction with another thinking creature who does not understand (for the most part) my spoken language.

Also, this link: Baby Rabbits in the Back Yard. This is a video whose title should be self explanatory. There’s no way I can describe in words how adorable this is. It’s head-explodingly cute.

Actual real content tomorrow and some updates of *GASP* the crochet I’ve been doing lately.

Tags: gluten, illness, links

Hey there. Just your friendly neighborhood web designer testing out some code I changed. Don’t mind me. Nothing to see here. Move along. =)

For starters, nothing is louder than two cats with an empty food bowl. They’ll amuse themselves for ages waiting for someone to bring the food. Doing things like using chainsaws, running into furniture at top speed (repeatedly; I guess it’s fun for them), knocking things over, finding the one cat toy with a bell in it that you’ve forgotten to confiscate and carrying it through the apartment at a trot, turning into small elephants and chasing each other around the room, etc.

Even after you feed them, however, they now KNOW that you’re awake. So now it’s time for them to start caterwauling at the door (what? You’re an INSIDE CAT. You go outside on a HARNESS. And you’ve never been outside in any way at 5 FREAKING AM. What play date are YOU missing?), eating at high volume (CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH), cat-fighting for fun and profit, or scratching at any one of a thousand exciting objects including:

They’ve gone suspiciously silent now. I can’t see them in the darkness beyond my laptop screen. They may currently be plotting my doom.

Secondly, there’s nothing ON at 5 AM. Not even HBO has anything good. Every single channel is either infomercials or cartoons… which says a lot about what television thinks of the intelligence of the average insomniac. We must be easily amused or easily persuaded into buying overpriced crap we don’t actually need from people who smile too much. Also note that most children’s cartoons now are simultaneously better drawn and worse drawn than the ones around when I was a kid.

Ahhh, I remember that halcyon time. Before the days of the internet, it was! If you wanted fanfiction, you had to write it yourself! And if you wanted to buy anything you had to leave the house and walk ten miles! Up a hill! Both ways!

And we were *proud* to have it!

And usually I think I have too many webpages I habitually read each morning. At 5 AM you discover there never is enough webpages. Some of them even go missing. Maybe they’re still in bed, where yours truly should be.

I’ve no idea when my body decided that six hours or less is an appropriate length of sleep.

Thirdly, a Crochet Lite H hook makes a very passable magic wand in a dark room.

Well, it’s 7 AM and the husband’s awake finally. Time to start the day. Wish me luck…

Tags: bless me yarn art, cats, courage, dusk, insomnia, midnight, sleep

Holidays tend to be problematic for me; I always find myself overstressed and hyper-vigilant. I’ve had bad things happen around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sometimes other people are so concerned with having the perfect time and presenting the perfect image that one’s best just isn’t enough, not even near enough.

In this holiday season I have to find the reason. I have to find the joy in it again, and define these days for myself in new healthy ways.

I’ve decided that finally for once I need to sit down at Thanksgiving and figure out at last what I’m freaking thankful for.

I’m thankful I have a roof over my head. Things have been up and down all this year and a few times I wasn’t sure if we’d make it but in the end I have a roof over my head, the husband, and the cats.

I’m thankful I have my wonderful patrons. Their love, interest, and support has often times been the difference between Rent and No Rent, or Food and No Food. They have had faith in my abilities, delight in my talents, and trust that I will follow through and repay their hard-earned money with my best efforts. I try every day to deserve the honor they give me.

I’m thankful that I have the cats. Rarely anything helps more than coming home and getting a loving headbutt kiss from Midnight, or having Dusky climb in my lap, up my chest and refuse to move until he’s been cuddled tightly, fitting his head under my chin. Thank the gods for good smart loving black cats.

I’m thankful that I have yarn. I have soooo much yarn. My stash is sizable. Any time of the day or night, when inspiration hits I can go to it and nine times out of ten find exactly what I need to make what’s on my mind. It overflows my cabinets and breaks the hanging wardrobe we bought for its prodigious size, but I love it, and it’s all mine.

I’m thankful that I have a vision that drives me. I live to have a hook in my hand; I live to be making new things that the world has never seen before (or old things in completely new ways). I live to fill my house with color and texture and vibrancy. I live to someday fulfill the dream of having a yarn shop all my own.

I’m thankful most of all for my wonderful husband, the family that the gods have given me. He’s been with me for years and I love him more every single day. He’s shown me what it means to have a real partner. He’s shown me what it’s like to be really loved. There was a lot of sturm und drang when we first got together; it’s passed over us like a wave over the ocean. Once you get below the surface, all is calm. We’ve sacrificed a lot to be together; in the end I measure all that I’ve given and I count it cheap. He is the reason for my season, all my seasons.

Happy Thanksgiving, mo anamchara. Most of all I’m thankful I’m loved so deeply by you.

Tags: bless me yarn art, cats, dusk, holidays, midnight, patrons, RealJob(TM), stress, the husband, the stash

I’ve decided that every Tuesday I’m going to go back and reread an issue of Transmetropolitan. It seems appropriate, what with my stream of brain medications and my endless frustration with the planet. If you’ve not read Transmet you need to, even if you’re not perhaps fans of comic books. It rocks the world. Think Hunter S. Thompson in a crazy future with more exciting drugs and more interesting weapons, bringing the light (and the chairleg) of TRUTH into the City.

Issue 05 – What Spider Watches On TV

I love it that the cat tried to s3x him up.

The Wh0re-hopper! Dun dun dun!

I REQUIRE CARIBOU EYES NOW.

Tags: Spider Jerusalem, transmet

So recently I’ve been rereading some of my favorite author’s work — Terry Pratchett. I’ve had a twelve year long love affair with all of his Discworld series and other works besides. Everything he writes has a lot of humor, a bit of snark, and a world of heart.

Frankly I’m a bit glad he phased out Rincewind. We’d followed old Rincey on many an adventure but he was truthfully a one joke character. I did like that in the last book of his (so far; he may be brought back later) he seemed to develop as a character and finally grow up from his perennial — and successful — cowardice.

I do like Pratchett’s later books more than his first books. You can see how the writing has gradually improved, making the characters more colorful, vivid, and three dimensional. Take for instance Lord Vetinari; originally a completely cold and humorless cardboard cutout of a character (yet incredibly cool for all of that). Now I find the Patrician of Anhk-Morpork to be a varied and slick individual with his own special brand of dry humor. He seems real, and it seems a shame that he doesn’t live in a real world that I could visit.

Likewise, Granny Weatherwax. I want to be her when I get physically older. I don’t say “when I grow up” because I don’t think she did and I don’t think I’d care to. A wise witchy woman who can take on a whole clan of vampires without it feeling totally cliched. A woman with her vanity, foibles, blind spots, and all too prey to her insecurity and depression. A woman always in combat with the powerful dark side of her nature. That is a woman I can understand and with whom I can identify.

Currently I’m rereading the two Moist von Lipwig books: “Going Postal” and “Making Money”. Moist (yes, unfortunately, it’s his real name and he’s heard ALL the jokes) is a man who was hanged just long enough under an assumed name and he awoke to see an angel… or at least, Lord Vetinari with an incredible offer. Either Moist would take over the ailing Post Office and make it an institution able to serve the bustling Anhk-Morpork, or he could walk out that nearby door and Vetinari would never trouble him again. Of course, the door in question opened onto a deep pit lined with spikes…

In the second book, “Making Money”, Moist has mostly broken the bucking bronco of the Postal Service and mostly won the heart of the dry-humored Miss Adora Belle Dearheart, who looks good in plain dresses, fights for the golem rights, and smokes one hundred packs a day. Now Vetinari has a new deal for him: put life back into the public banks while facing constant death and danger threatening from the family of the bank’s previous chairman. No more pits with spikes; Moist faces a wonderful placid life ahead with no challenge and a nearly goldish chain from the Merchant’s Guild.

I look forward to every new book with great anticipation, but I fear there may not be many more. The gigantic wit and brave heart housed in the body known as Terry Pratchett face the a grave threat. Some malicious god (and he knows who he is) has cursed Pratchett with Alzheimer’s. There are some treatments available, of course, but there is the growing potential that at any time his family and his millions of worldwide fans will lose him to the ages.

But he’ll go into the future with the love of hundreds of millions, and I think Death would certainly find that balance weighed in his favor.

Who’s your favorite author? Has their work changed for the better or worse over the years?

Tags: book review, illness, terry pratchett

Bolded books are read, italicized books are not completed. I was honest; if I can’t remember whether or not I actually finished, I counted as not completed instead.

The BBC apparently believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here:

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
The Bible
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare
Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
Bleak House – Charles Dickens
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
Emma – Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy.
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Atonement – Ian McEwan
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
Dune – Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth.
The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
On The Road – Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
Dracula – Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
Germinal – Emile Zola
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession – AS Byatt.
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web – EB White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Watership Down – Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet – William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

FINISHED: 27
Incomplete: 8
Total: 35

Obviously I need to get to reading!

Tags: books, reading

I wish I had a flashlight.

If I had a flashlight, I could find my USB game controller and that way I could play Actraiser on my laptop. I wouldn’t have to turn on the light and risk waking the husband, who has a test tomorrow. I’ve got the actual Actraiser cartridge for SNES (around here in one of probably 20 boxes), but I would want to play it on emulation so I can cheat bawls off.

And I want to play Actraiser because I’ve got some of the music stuck in my head. I can’t remember if the song is from the Fillmore battle area or the Bloodpool battle area or even the very last battle area. But it’s driving and pretty, in only the way a Japanese 16 bit midi can be.

There’s just simply no way to play Actraiser without the controller, and the controller is in a tangled box of electronics and I have no flashlight. We used to have a small one that we kept beside the bed, but I don’t know where it went. And we used to have a big one that we kept under the bed, but it’s like 10,000 watts and I could flag down passing jets with it, so I would almost be less obnoxious by turning on the lights.

I *could* turn my laptop screen in the direction of the Box O’ Cords and try to navigate by its sterile yet comforting LED light. It’s a thought to be reserved.

There aren’t too many dolls to be made out of the Actraiser characters. There’s really only the Hero itself to
create. Hmm. Call this research?

*immediately goes to download screen captures of the hero*

Bad Vox. Add to the list of things you are Not Allowed to Make.

Hmm. Well, I could begin work on a personal project, due to the fact that I have an LED light-up crochet hook (NOW THAT’S GONZO!)… in fact, I might be able to use it as a flashlight.

Now there’s an interesting balance to find: should I play video games that I can’t use for design fodder, or should I crochet something that may take hours and bore me to tears (that being the voluminous petticoats of the Light Queen)?

Until I decide, I may just play solitaire and read a fan shrine to Actraiser.

Wow, Actraiser had some messed up monsters.

Now, let’s research medieval tapestries, being that I’ve wanted to do my own spin on them. Either make characters from tapestries into dolls, or make a crocheted tapestry (more on this later). Five minutes later, Google has given me more tapestries than I could ever work with in one lifetime — along with the dubious delights of Tapestry Masterpieces and Geoff. Chaucer as a private eye.

Your guess is as good as mine or probably better at this time of morning.

***

Another ten minutes pass; my solitaire game is sadly neglected. In the deep dark reaches of the night StumbleUpon is my best friend. The close dear friend that keeps me entertained and simultaneously lets me blame them for my lack of productivity.

Spent ten more minutes picking the perfect theme for my iGoogle page. We can go ahead and chalk that up to “rearranging workspace for greater ergonomic ease in use.” The Audubon Birds of Prey theme was beginning to bore me; I never saw them swoop on anything.

It’s 2:40 AM and I think my brain is melting.

*************

Here’s where the manuscript tapers off, with blurred references to eye-laser beams and “ladyfingers”. It’s best not to speculate on the final sanity of the subject.

Tags: actraiser, crochet, illness, insomnia, sleep

Birds gotta fly. Fish gotta swim. Dogs gotta hunt.

Vox gotta crochet.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in this position, but if you have you’ll know what I mean. Ever done something and known immediately that this is what you were *created* on this earth to do? Ever felt that heady rush of knowing that you are a unique shaped peg in a unique shape hole — right where you need to be, at the right time, saying the right words, making the right motions? As if the universe itself could find no better thing for you to be than exactly what you are?

Serendipity. It all suddenly gels.

Sometimes I get that feeling. I know yarn. I love yarn. I can make yarn jump through hoops, sit up and beg. And while I can intellectually contemplate being bored with yarn and/or running out of ideas in about a few hundred years, I can’t actually imagine it.

If you haven’t had this marvelous feeling, I pity you a little… but I envy you too. Sometimes it’s the most frustrating emotion in the world because it drives you. It whips you like a merciless charioteer until you drop in your traces, covered in sweat and fatigue.

Today I finished a design that’s been bothering me for at least two years now: sturdy, realistic butterfly wings. Today it was like the angels singing — everything came together, and I fastened them to the doll, and they were PERFECT. And with that rush of absolute glee came three or four more ideas fast on its heels. A door has opened in this magnificent labyrinth of my own design, and there is MORE behind it.

You gotta do what you’re born to do. Anything else is a crime against your nature.

But sometimes it’s a necessary crime.

Exhilaration doesn’t always put money in the bank account. Serendipity doesn’t always pay the rent. It’s an unfortunate side effect of society that an action performed only *very well* sometimes pays much more than one performed in *absolute genius*.

Buddha does come back from Nirvana, to do what must be done. I’m glad that I can provide for my family. I’m glad that I have a RealJob(TM) and I can get rent and food and clothing and fuel and insurance and pay off old debts.

I’m also glad that my passion pays for itself, and more besides.

Ever got that feeling, that you were made for *something*, and that you’d finally found out what it was?

Tags: bless me yarn art, crochet, gonzo, life, RealJob(TM)