What I'm Reading Today

I'm reading a book "Healing the Shame that Binds You" by John Bradshaw. I'm about half done with it. It's quite depressing, so I put it down after surgery because my life was a comedy for the first few weeks, so I couldn't take the book seriously, then, up until a couple days ago, my life was a tragedy so I couldn't add anymore drama. All drugs have worn off finally and my life is a reality tv show again. I picked up the book this morning.


It's now talking about compulsions and addictions (neither of which do I think I have), and it gets to the Fat/Thin Disorder, and this is what Mr. Bradshaw has to say on the subject:

"I've personally groped with this disorder for years. I go through cycles of exercise, good nutritional non-sugar diets and then (usually after months of control) I eat a donut or a piece of carrot cake....Once I eat the sweets then the release phase starts. I start obsessing on what I've done. I've blown it now. I might as well eat some more. I'll binge for just a day and start my control tomorrow. Ah! But tomorrow never comes! The sugar craves sugar. The mental obsessing keeps me thinking about sweets, and I'm off and running into the release cycle...."

At this point, my jaw is hanging open and I'm thinking, "Yeah! This describes me perfectly!!!! This is ME!!!!" then I continue reading:

"This cycle usually lasts until I start developing breasts! Then I know it's time to start exercising and give up sugar"

bwahahahaha! Oh man! If that were my criteria I'd have to starve myself to death. I laughed so hard I nearly fell off the couch and dropped my Reese's PB cups all over the floor.

Dolls

(Not a "regular" post, but will be linked to my "Knitting" page for user-friendliness)




Meet Harriet. She was my first doll. She got off to a rough start. I decapitated her (onceortwice) but she's thriving now. My cousin has claimed her for her granddaughter, so Harriet is off to a new home!





Meet Clara. She was my second doll. She now sits in my boss' home office looking pretty and stuff.




Meet Louise. One of my first tries at color work.




Clara and Louise are best friends. They still visit each other from time to time.




Meet Petrushka, my Slavic knitted friend AKA the biggest disappointment of my knitting life. She had a lot of potential which she did not live up to. Her dress has the most impressive color work I have ever done, but there's something about her that is just so ugly. Thinking of making her again at a tighter gauge with brighter colors. And making her head differently. Carol Anderson, the designer of the pattern, makes all of her dolls with rather large heads/faces, which I don't like.



Meet Liesl, an Alpine knitted friend. I made her for my niece, Persephone. She's also a Carol Anderson design. I was very pleased with her. Made at a tighter gauge, and the face is pretty :-)




Meet Arnold Schwar- whoops - Solveig, a Scandinavian knitted friend. I don't know what happened to Solveig's chest and arms. I think it had something to do with the ambitious colorwork across the yoke of her sweater, but I don't want to think about it. I made her hair extra long in the hope that it would cover her massive pecs and misplaced arms. Meh. My niece, Evie, loved it anyway (So says my sister-in-law)

Knitter in the Twilight Zone!

For those of you who don't knit, I'll just explain what "gauge" is, really quick. Every knitter's "tension" (The tightness or looseness of their hold on the yarn and needles) is different. So a knitting pattern will give the pattern's "gauge" which usually goes something like this: "20 stitches =4 inches" meaning that a swatch should measure 4 inches for every 20 stitches. If you have too many stitches, you need to do it all over again in a bigger size needle so you have less stitches to the inch and vise versa. You keep doing it till you get the right gauge, then you know what size needle to use. This is important for things like sweaters, when you're going to spend ages working on it and you want it to fit. not so important with shawls or hats or mittens.

So I'm going to make my first big-people sweater, and I whip out my size 8s and knit up a swatch. I need 22 stitches over 4 inches. I get 18.5 stitches over 4 inches. I need to go down to 7 and see what happens. It is a fact that size 7s will give me smaller stitches, thus giving me MORE stitches to the inch.

I got 17.5 stitches over 4 inches. I feel like I just broke the law of mathematics or soemthing. The world as I've always known it has crumbled around me.

I texted my friend, Kelli, who is a temperamental knitter and she was most unhelpful in her response:


Kelli: "That sounds like something that would happen to me

(Note her use of the phrase "happen to me" rather than "I would do". This makes me feel better. Like I am a victim, rather than a criminal)

Me: That's not helpful! What should I do?!

Kelli: Well my solution for everything is to throw it in the trash. I wouldn't recommend that.

No, not such a great idea. My solution is to usually stuff it in between the couch cushions or throw it behind the recliner for a few days.

I can't check my gauge again, as I've "lost" the ball of yarn (It's probably in a couch somewhere) and all I have are two retarded swatches and a size 6 needle staring at me in....the twilight zone.

God Punished me This Morning

So "S" keeps a bottle of Milk Thistle extract on the counter. I have a bottle of liquid stevia which I sometimes forget to put away. One day last week I saw her taking the milk thistle and I commented that it sure would be funny if she grabbed the stevia bottle and took half a dropper full, instead of the milk thistle. Hahahaha. (Stevia is very bitter tasting if taken in excess).

This morning I was making myself some iced Jasmine Green Tea and I "sweetened" it with milk thistle.



Touche'.

The Weekend!

(A rambley post about the boringness that is my life today because I'm avoiding taking a shower and leaving the house....)


I'm going on the Hudson Valley Yarn Crawl tomorrow with a very good knitting friend. I've spent a good amount of this week looking at sweater patterns for that coveted Spud and Chloe sweater yarn. I've yet to knit myself a sweater because I'm terrified of gauge and I've heard too many horror stories of people who actually know how to check their gauge accurately and they STILL end up with a garment that's too big or too small. But I can still spend a couple hundred dollars on Spud and Chloe Yarn, plus the $6 or so for the pattern. Right?!

As for today, I've consumed an unholy amount of gluten last night and this morning and I have made myself good and sick. Nothing a gallon of water and milk thistle won't fix.
It's 1:30 pm and I am still in my night clothes, listening to Jimmy Buffett rather loudly because no one else is home. My plans for the day are to drive to a nearby farm that has cows and is NOT licensed to sell raw milk, and beg them to sell me some raw milk, cuz I hate driving 40 minutes to the middle of nowhere for it, which I try to do without murmering or complaining because the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31 "...is like the merchants' ships; she bringeth her food from afar." (I'm pretty sure the first part of that verse is NOT a fat joke) I may be far from virtuous (Which is evident from my intent to bully some poor farmer into doing something illegal), but I do travel far for food. If I have to. But I hate driving.

Last night I had a dream that my brother died. My Sister in law called to tell me and I promptly forgot about it until later when she posted about it on Facebook and I was all like "OHNOIFORGOT!!!!!" I texted her as soon as I woke up to see if he was still with us and she informed me that, unfortunately, he was.
I also dreamed that Stephen King was my Knee Surgeon. I never got to see him before or after the surgery, but then I needed a follow up surgery for complications, and he was my surgeon again and...once again, I didn't get to see him.
I wanted to text him this morning too, but I've misplaced his number...



Okay, it's time for me to stop rambling and get going. Please feel free to share the boring details of your weekend in the comment section :-)

What a Wonderful World (Blogging under the Influence)

I did too much walking yesterday, so I had to take a percocet tonight...I will check in tomorrow and do any necessary editing :-)


"The world is full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings" (Robert Louis Stevenson)

Just sitting here thinking of all those wonderful things and I thought I would share them with ALL (heh!) my readers.


1.) Michael Buble'. I <3 Michael Buble' and I think everyone else should too. He has a new album coming out in April, but he's released one song from said album. Here it is:


2.) Green Jasmine Tea This is about as wonderful as chocolate, as far as I'm concerned.



Add ice and a little stevia..yummmm.


3.) Chocolate





4.) Tulips


After killing the tulips Jaime brought me, I bought myself some planted tulips (I only killed one out of four of them, the remaining three are thriving!) and put them in a nice pot next to Avery the avocado tree. I think he likes the pretty company :-)

5.) Spud and Chloe Sweater Yarn



(okay, I haven't actually worked with it yet. I don't even own any. But I squish it everytime I see it and I am GOING to buy some soon.

6.) This video:





If I have any readers, please share with me the little things that make your world wonderful :-)

Good night, and Sweet Dreams...

Radio Dramas

I don't like watching TV. Not primarily for moral or intellectual reasons - though I do believe most TV is trashy and insults my intelligence, I also acknowledge that you can find some good stuff on there too - but I was born with a 40% hearing loss. Growing up in a loud family that loved having the TV loud, this wasn't always a problem. But after years of living with a hearing impairment, I've come to know that what sounds normal to me is loud to others, so out of respect for other people, I don't watch TV.

Though I don't do it often, I have become somewhat of an expert at watching TV with the sound off. I used to wander into my friend's bedroom while she was watching TV with the sound off and wait for a commercial so I could talk to her....one day I discovered the sound was not actually off. Once, I wandered in on another friend who put the tv on mute to talk to me and after a while we just quietly watched the tv and I started telling him what was going on and he said, "You've seen this before?!" ummm......nope.
And very recently, after watching Les Miserables at the movie theater, I realized that 90% of the time I have no clue what is going on. But for some really weird reason I enjoy movies anyway! I think I use the visuals in movies for day dreaming/fantasy fuel. I am very grateful for the International Movie Database, because I can go and read all the discussions about the movie afterwards and then I know what's going on...basically, movies and TV are a guessing game for me. Sometimes guessing games are fun :-)

Anyway, now that you know all that about me, you are probably going to find what I'm about to say to be very strange. I am addicted to Radio Dramas.
I should first start by paying homage to...Focus on the Family's Adventures in Odyssey. For several reasons, there will always be a special place in my heart for Whit and the gang. My mother bought me a few albums when I was about 7 or 8, and I think they had a huge influence on my spiritual life. Possibly one of the only good influences I had. Also, since I was hard of hearing, I listened with head phones. I think it was a form of "hearing therapy" for me. Now, I can sit in the audiologist's sound booth and listen to words spoken out of context and get 98-100% of them right (This is not to be confused with having excellent hearing, as I'm not actually hearing the words, but merely "figuring them out") Unfortunately, this doesn't work so well in crowded and uncontrolled environments.

I think Radio Drama works for me because the sound quality has to be excellent, since there's no visuals to pick up the slack, and there are also no visuals to distract from the sound. It also
gives me the opportunity to exercise what hearing I do posses, in a non-threatening environment. I think it's helped me cope with my hearing loss in many ways, including how to listen more efficiently and I am trying to encourage my sister-in-law to do this for my niece who has speech problems due to hearing loss.


About two years ago I became the knitting addict that you all know and love today. I won't go in to how bad my addiction is, but you can only listen to music for so long while knitting before you want to rip your ears off. So I went and found adventures in Odyssey and downloaded their latest album. After that, I was addicted. Focus on the family also has "grown up" audio dramas with dramatized classics like the Hiding Place, Oliver Twist, etc. They also had a radio drama called the Father Gilbert Mysteries, about a detective-turned-Anglican priest who is always solving mysteries of the spiritual nature. These are occassionally played on their website for free, or available to purchase on CD or download...I've dowloaded about 6 of the Father Gilbert mysteries, and sadly there are only a few others left, only available on CD. I don't think they're making them anymore, which is sad because I have a crush on Father Gilbert.


Further research has led me to some pretty good radio drama podcasts, which I will link to below:

Adventures in Odyssey

Focus on the Family's Radio Theater

The above radio dramas are all available to purchase at CBD

Chatterbox Theater (Most of these are horror, but excellent acting)



Icebox Radio (bad acting, but totally lovable characters and stories)

19 Nocturne Blvd. (I haven't listened to them in a while, their sound quality is lacking a bit much for me, and at some point they started playing piano music in the background which made it impossible for me to understand what was going on. But the stories are great, and others might enjoy them)



The Mask of Inanna (a very bizarre series, about one hour each. It was very addicting, but I stopped listening after the 4th one because I had to wait for the next one to come out, and I waited too long and forgot what was going on....I would like to start the series all over again.


And if you're really into radio theater, there's a great site, run by a guy in Portland Maine, Fred Greenhalgh at Radio Drama Revival a great resource for finding all kinds of radio dramas...it's been a semi-serious dream of mine to submit a script to them for a radio drama...but it's been sitting, half done, in my computer for, ummm....two years. I'll keep you all posted on that ;-)