Words...uhhh...words...

You have to read that title in the voice of Beavis. Or is it Butthead? You get the drift.  I think it's been a year since I wrote in this thing. There is no real big reason. I just felt so meh about it all. Not just blogging. About pretty much everything. Sometimes it's cyclical. I think more likely I was just worn the fuck out from the past few years. The house. My mother sending me nastygram emails to remind me I was a piece of shit. The new house. The new house is still GREAT, do not let me imply otherwise. No, it's good, it's just a whole lot of work. Coming after several years of...a whole lot of work.

I just holed up worse than usual.

Also, I'm allergic to like...fucking ev.er.y.thing. it turns out. Like not actually...but just about. it seems to just be the same old same old myristicin, I just didn't realize how much it's in. Not just nutmeg. Also, coconut oil and palm oil. Those two oils are in at least 50% of stuff you can get at the grocery store. And I don't just mean shitty processed food. Oh no, anything where fat has been removed that would have naturally had Vitamin A in it? A synthetic version made from Palm replaces it. Vitamin A Palmitate. In all your less than full fat dairy. And in many cereals and every single non-dairy milk analog I could find, too.  Also, beef and butterfat are good sources of it. I don't actually eat much beef, but still, who doesn't love tacos?

And that's only things you eat. I also found out it was in my shampoo. My soap. My lotion. Body wash, toothpaste, deodorant, advil, vitamins, dish soap, laundry soap, nail polish remover, ......jesus h christ no wonder I felt like hammered ass at least 50% of the time!!I only made the connection when I realized that I was getting rebound migraines more often than not when I took advil, and then after several days of knowing for sure that everything I had eaten was all from scratch I started checking my vitamin labels. Coconut oil was in them.  So I googled it. And oh yeah...this is familiar. And explains why using pure coconut oil as a moisturizer made me want to puke and die.

So about 6 weeks ago I started eliminating all those things. My migraines have dropped to maybe 1 a week (still tinkering on some surprise sources....I'm looking at you nail polish remover).  I read labels obsessively and take full advantage of online shopping through Peapod because grocery shopping now takes HOURS, I've used them forever since grocery shopping also freaks me out, but now i have even more appreciation. I found resources to make soap at home. I'm not ready for a full on cold process with lye soap making experience yet, so I am making french milled soap by melting down shredded pure olive oil castille soap, then I can scent it to my liking (or not as the case may be...still working on this!). I am using some fucked up salty ass tooth powder to brush my teeth. I use only baking soda and vinegar to wash my hair and after three weeks it stopped being a greasenest that just about made me cry. I made body butter with cocoa butter and beeswax this week since it's dry skin season and something had to be done. It smells weird because I underestimated how much the cocoa butter would smell like chocolate, but if I use it at night the weird smell is gone by morning. I found hippie deodorant that almost works. I have made milk from almonds in my own blender. And you know what? It didn't suck at all. It kicks ass on cereal.

And somehow, I started to feel..more like me. I wasn't waking up every day feeling like I was on the verge of or getting over a migraine. I don't feel quite as much sheer terror at being in my own skin. I  now understand why I used to wake up feeling good and then shower, do my hair, put on makeup and finish with the best lip-gloss ever (Buxom Big and Healthy Lip Polish in Trixie, one of the very few things on this planet I bought full retail at $20 a pop) and then instead of feeling good I'd start to feel so..not good. So off. So unwell, so anxious, so off kilter and eventually just panicked to the point of being unable to even function for the rest of the day when I would scrub my face, pull my hair back and get into yoga pants and a ratty tee and go wallow in my wretchedness and try not to cry.  Well the lip-gloss alone had 7 different palm based ingredients in it. SEVEN. By trying to make myself feel better I was making it all worse.

I ha lost my writing mojo completely, my reading mojo was barely there and my knitting mojo was in fits and starts of hyperfocused freakouts of insomnia.

It's not all bad, I did get a lot of knitting done while I was doing all of that not sleeping! And as part of NaNoWriMo, which for me will be AnnieWriMo to just get in the practice of writing again there might actually be some knitting content in this here knitting blog again.

And now, I'm going to go watch a movie and work on finishing the heel of my Latte Lace socks:

it's glitter season!

I will probably update this later but for now I am beginning the decorating and just uttered the following to my cat:
"Elvis, so help me god, if you shit under this Christmas tree, I will stuff all the lights up your ass and plug you in"

Color by Numbers

392 days ago we bought this house.
We have painted 9 rooms (8 rooms, really, but one was done twice....in three days....)
We I have removed carpet or groaty linoleum from 7 rooms
We put a new floor down in 1 so far (hardwoods in the rest..rough hardwoods...but we can suck it up as long as it takes)
I spackled in and sanded smooth about 100 paneling grooves in the dining room to try and make the walls look like they were not paneling. It sort of worked.
The trim in the entry way took me 6 goddamn coats of white paint. Srsly.
My first heating season with oil heat cost about $2500 and that's WITH being a total miser with the thermostat.
20 is the number of cabinet doors and drawers I primed, painted and glazed.
20 is also the number of new cup pulls and knobs that I installed in those cabinets.
Jeff managed to spill 1 half gallon of paint in a box sitting on carpet that we had luckily planned to remove anway.
14 is the number of leaky, drafty, and amazing original wood 7 pane windows I need to put shrinky plastic on this winter to save myself some dough!
New gutters were the first major home project we had done here. being obsessed with running water away from the house we added 2 extra downspouts at the front where the house has sunk about 3 inches.
I lost count of my trips the the paint store, so I have no number for that, but Elliot at the Sherwin Williams around Capitol and 63rd is a delightful young man who is very patient, very knowledgeable and knows when it's just a good idea to give the lady one of the big ass paint decks to keep forever. We bought so much paint we now get their mailers for professionals.
There are still 4 rooms in the house that have not been touched by cuteness.
One of them has carpet that is old. I mean really old, like 1950s or 60s. When it gets to be over 100 up there in the summer it smells bad. Real bad. It's going to come out pretty soon. I have that room in my sights for the next project.
I have 2 boxes with light fixtures in them sitting in the junk room waiting for me to decide precisely which room to have them installed in.
There were more than a few nights when worry and insomnia were my companions and I watched every single episode of McLeod's Daughters on Netflix. Seriously. Every one. Do you know Australian series have like 32 episodes a year? That shit ran for like 9 years.
I have probably 5 gallons of paint in the basement for rooms yet to be painted. What? There was a 40% off sale. The good paint is nearly $60 a gallon.

Here are 6 pictures that show a little bit of what I have been up to:







And tomorrow is the first day of NaNoWriMo and last year I was too overwhelmed with projects and moving and still freaking out about the flood and everything and this year....I don't know. Maybe this is my year. Maybe I can both find a plot AND write 50,000 words. Who knows? I think I'm going to try.

Oh, and the number of water heaters I bought in in 392 days? Washers and dryers? Dehumidifiers? Furnaces? Shop vacs? Dirty water emergency pumps? None. And that might be my most favorite number of all.

you get what you get and you don't get upset!

you get another bullet point blog.

• I put my leg up on a dining room chair to fiddle with the rolled up leg of my jeans and The Man looked up from his computer and said "got a little captain in ya?" and was so pleased with himself the rest of the night.
  
• Marge launched himself off the back of the sofa and from my perspective, I saw a large brown blur and all of a sudden there was manscreaming and clutching of...areas. And he ended up sort of upside down on the sofa. A 20 lb cat landing squarely on your junk and launching to his next location is apparently a really bad thing. I was nice enough to go get him an ice pack.
  
• a goddamn spider descended from the ceiling inches from my face at 1 in the morning. I HATE THAT. What the hell spiders?
• I actually completed my huge deadline knitting project with plenty of time to spare!
• my kitchen is never going to be done. Really. Never. Ugh.
  

That is my Weeping Angels scarf and I luuuuurv it. It took about 2.5 months to knit and was worth it. A rarity that I don't loathe it by the end, but I don't. Go figure. It's a bout 7 feet long and also has sparkles...

I am working on some socks now, the first socks I have done in just about forever and I am using Tempted Glam Grrl which has sparkles. I am in love with this yarn! Not just for the glitter, but the texture is just eprfect and it's a thicker sock weight, so it seems to knit up fast. And it is just lovely. I may get one sock done by the end of the weekend , who knows?

random stuff

The bullet point post!

• How the fuck did I get mashed potatoes splattered all over my left shoulder while making dinner? Gross, man, gross.
• If you want to see a handyman's eyes light up, mention in passing that the house he just installed a new faucet in is nearly 90 years old. I got a fancy welcome packet from the van. He ran to get it.
• Oh yeah, I have a new kitchen faucet. Woooooooot. The reno continues. There has been some tiling action, too. And countertoppery.
  
• I have finished the scarf of epic nerdery, finished it today. I knit for over 8 hours in the past 2 days to get the bugger done.
  
• I don't think there is any dinner that is quite as satisfying to the soul as a simple herb roasted chicken. With the epicly messy taters. And some salad. Ultimate comfort food for dinner.
  
• I have a new email address, if you think you are someone that should have it, make your case to me.
• And thus concludes the half assed blogging for August 17, 2011
  

It's not me, it's you. I'm sorry.

I don't finish knitting projects so much as I.....break up with them.
I seriously hate almost everything by the time I finish it! It's not that I don't love the knitting, I do. And after we spend some time apart, I generally love the thing I have knit. It's just spending so much time on the same thing...och, it wears on me.

I drool over patterns and yarn porn until I find the perfect combination, then cast on with so much hope and excitement. I knit happily along and then it happens. Somewhere after the halfway mark, something changes. My eye wanders. I long for the touch of another yarn. I start surreptitiously checking out other knitting, sometimes even crochet! Mmm, look at the cables on that one! I could knit that like a screen door in a hurricane...well, that's a bit of a mixed simile there. I might reach into my stash to cop a feel of the pima cotton/silk blend I have there in a lush dusty purple under the guise of rearranging things. Sometimes I stray far and begin something new, something thrilling and fraught with new possibilities. It rarely works out.

I get sick of the sight of whatever large project is getting on my nerves. I see it sitting on the chair and think, "Oh, you again." and sigh with the tragedy of it all. The last few inches of every sweater or lace shawl I have completed are riddled with foul language. Screw this pattern. The designer can go right to hell. This wool is for shit. This sheep was an asshole, in fact this sheep can go to hell with the designer. No, fuck this sheep. No, make that ALL SHEEP. EVERYWHERE. AND THE ALPACAS, TOO!

And then I am done. And I weave in the ends. And I block it and we spend some time apart and then when I come back to it I think "oh my word, how did I make such a thing?" and start all over again. Because I love it.

100 emmer effing degrees

Is it hot enough for you?
Hot? WHAT? Nope! I wish it was 25 degrees hotter!

Actual conversation between me and my neighbor's sister on Monday night. Har har har.
Well shit, I think it got 25 degrees hotter.
I don't know exactly what it was, but I am pretty sure "HOT AS A CROTCH" is a meteorological term. Mmmhmmm.

My house has many many windows and no central air. Also, she is old. We bought a new 10k btu AC unit a couple weeks ago and oh, bliss. No more toilet sweating like a whore in church. That really grosses me out for some reason. It's a tetch warm in the living room tonight, but the humidity is down and that is the main goal. I don't need it to be meat lockeresque.

I got a lot of crafting done this morning, too. Upstairs where it gets waaaay too hot. The window unit up there is in my craft cave and thanks to old wiring, I won't run it unless I'm in there with it. So getting up there early is crucial. And forget sewing until it cools off a bit. No way am I standing over the ironing board when it is 105 degrees or more up there! But beading is good. With cheesy movies, even better. :D

Today I was inspired by Sixteen Candles....will be posting some new sparklies tonight before bed!