Well, Fibromyalgia

I don’t yet have a recipe for you because, well fibromyalgia. I did quite a bit of cooking over the weekend, in between watering my raised beds and planting cucumber seeds, but nothing special nor original to post. There’s that copyright thing again. I do have one dish left to prepare, which I am aiming to finish sometime today before limping off to tai chi class.  I was going to try a riff on my Hot German Potato Salad recipe using Italian-type flavors, but I think I’m  going to stick with the original. That recipe I can post here, as it is a family heirloom.

Speaking of recipes, the sock I am currently working on is coming along fine, probably because I am using a 9 inch circular needle instead of the five 7-inch double-pointed needles I worked with on the previous and now finally finished number. If you are a sock knitter you can get this recipe (pattern) for Heart Vine Socks as a free download on Ravelry.

Last week I told you how I was trying to better organize my Knitting UFOs by giving all my attention to two major projects and sticking to them like white on rice. Without patting myself on the back (which I can do rather nicely thanks to Ehlers-Danlos syndrome) I have to admit that the sock progress has been gratifying.  We haven’t spoken of the second Big Project yet, and I feel that now is the time.

No, not shawls.  If you know me well, you know that I love to knit shawls. I own a bunch of them (wore one just this morning) and they are probably my favorite knit to gift.  I think of those shawls I’ve given to friends and family as portable hugs.  Shawls are always appreciated. People seem to understand hand-knit shawls, but don’t always understand hand-knit socks. 

I do have a good number of unfinished shawls, but I am steering clear of them, especially the one in Orlando Magic colors. If I pick up those needles, my socks will languish for another six or twelve years. No, my resolve must be as hard as that rock in that old rock-and-roll. Besides, determination is good for my self-esteem and Lord knows I can always use an extra dose of that.

So instead, I am determined to also finish a different major undertaking which I call “The 90 Square Project.” Terribly original. When it is completed, this afghan/blanket/bedspread will fit a queen-size bed. Right now there are 27 blocked knit squares tucked away in a very big box, and I’ve got the 28th square on the needles, ready to grow. If for no other reason than to give my hands some respite from size 1 sock needles, a size 7 needle project sounds practically dilly dilly.

There’s no set completion date, which takes off any lingering pressure to work fast, because let’s face it, my fast knitting days are over. But in the past I’ve managed to knock off quite a few of these squares for smaller projects. BABIES!

They are probably the most fun a knitter can have, and a great way to learn being much more interesting than say, a scarf.

So that’s where I am hobby-wise, at least until my new coloring markers arrive from Amazon. 

El Cielo Esta Nublado. Muy Nublado.*

Saw this article today, which got me thinking about stuff:
Confrontation in Virginia

When I was in sixth grade, around spring of 1966, along with all of my classmates I had to make a decision whether I wanted to study Spanish or French in junior high school. I thought about this as seriously as I could, taking into consideration my future goal of becoming a nurse. I chose to learn Spanish.

Now I lived in North Woodmere at the time, a part of the Five Towns which sit along the border with the New York City borough of Queens, coincidentally the birthplace of the current President of the United States. My reasoning was thus: I expected to work as a nurse, most likely in the City, at least to start. Many of my future patients would likely be speaking Spanish, so to be most effective as a nurse it would make sense for me to be able to speak Spanish.

I was 13 years old. I spoke English with a Brooklyn accent and I knew the barest smattering of Yiddish. It never occurred to me to resent the fact I would need to learn some Spanish to effectively communicate with some of my patients.

I figured this out when I was just a kid, so can anyone tell me what the f*ck is the matter with this woman? She’s not the first to stage a confrontation because perfect strangers were speaking Spanish in their shared air space.  In fact, it’s become a regular feature in the news, along with white folks calling 911 on black folks for some really stupid reasons.  Why has it become acceptable, in some people’s minds anyway, to openly and aggressively display racism, bigotry, anti-Semitism, and the most malignant form of nationalism?

Hint: It has something to do with that guy born in Queens, NY. That gonif, the self-proclaimed nationalist.

noun: nationalism

1. patriotic feeling, principles, or efforts.

   synonyms:

   patriotism, patriotic sentiment, flag-waving, xenophobia, chauvinism, jingoism "their extreme nationalism was frightening"

   • an extreme form of this, especially marked by a feeling of superiority over other countries.

     plural noun: nationalisms

As it happens, I never did become a nurse, but my fractured Spanish was useful after all. Practicing law in Osceola County, which ranks right behind Miami-Dade as having the greatest number of
Spanish-speaking residents, I was able to communicate sufficiently with my clients, at least to direct them to my office where I always employed a Spanish-speaking paralegal or clerk. Most of them spoke some English anyway, so we managed the case just fine.

My personal belief is that multi-lingualism is a blessing, not something to be scorned or scolded. I was never great at foreign languages, but I always tried.  Traveling in foreign countries I am always pleasantly surprised at the number of people who speak English.  To me that was a great kindness, and made me feel welcome. Let’s face it, I don’t speak Italian (although I can understand a little because of its similarity to Spanish), nor Greek, Creole, or Korean (okay, I can follow the taekwando commands and say good morning and thank you in Korean but that’s it.) I can count to 15 and tell you my dog’s name in French (assuming my dog’s name is Fifi), follow tai chi Chinese, pray in Hebrew, and insult you in Yiddish.

I’m gonna stop here before I get preachy. Anyway, early voting has started here in Florida, so please take the time to vote.

*Translation: The sky is cloudy.  Very cloudy.

A Perfect Day For Bananafish

Part of my morning routine, intermixed with a double dose of caffeine and lavish application of The Best Pain Cream In The World, involves an inquiry of the electronic imp known as Siri:

“Hey Siri, what’s the weather today?” This being Florida, her usual response is a depressing mixture of over 90 degree temperature and over 90 percent humidity. This morning, though, she blew me away with “It’s currently cloudy and 75 degrees in Kissimmee. Expect mostly clear skies starting in the afternoon. Today’s high will be 80 degrees and the low will be 68.” In other words, although late to the party, it is finally autumn here in Central Florida. Monsoon season yesterday, and today I might need a sweater by evening.

(The weather this time of year is a little something we keep secret from the tourists. Since Robert and I spent our honeymoon at a pre-EPCOT Disneyworld exactly 44 years ago, we sort of figured it out, and since even monsoon season in Florida is better than frostbittten toes on the Long Island Railroad we moved here, lock, stock and a barrel of kitties, 27 years ago.)

After hearing the weather report, my very first thought was that it was a perfect day for cucumbers. Yesterday, despite high humidity that left me sweating like an NBA player in the last 2 minutes of the fourth quarter, I managed to make some preparations to the beds for starting cucumbers from seed. This happens to be adjacent to the space that was overtaken by a couple of rogue cucumber plants this past spring. The original space has been filled in by slow-growing and annoyingly fruitless strawberry plants. I’m ready to see if I can recreate last season’s cucumber razzle-dazzle, starting on this perfect day.

You may know that from time-to-time my brain plays silly tricks on me (like interpreting the mechanical whine from a small desk fan as the sound of Joe Garagiola announcing a Yankee’s game) and today was no different. I thought “a perfect day for cucumbers” while my brain took an unlicensed time jump back to the late sixties and brought up “a perfect day for bananafish.”

J.D. Salinger - more than just The Catcher in the Rye.

I’ve been playing catch-up with my cooking this weekend and damn if I don’t hurt like hell. I am going to plant the damn cucumber seeds and I am going to finish my last bit of cooking, if it kills me.  Assuming everything goes right, I’ll have a recipe for you later today, and maybe cucumbers for lunch next month.

Forty-Four Years

It’s called marriage.

Happy Anniversary to my bashert, the love of my life.

Fibromyalgia Friday

It all catches up to me on Friday. This Friday is no different. It took an Act of God, two different prescription medications plus a caffeine tablet, deep breathing of one essential oil, careful application of The World’s Best Pain Cream, sitting-down tai chi, and the gentle ministrations of one deeply concerned cat to get me out of bed without crying.

After such a difficult morning, I now find myself stuck on how I should color the Daleks. That should be the worst of my problems, but it is exacerbated by the fact that I dislike Daleks, almost as much as I dislike Cybermen. Maybe I’ll just ignore the damn Daleks and move on to something else, like my almost-complete cat picture.

(I also dislike most stinky cheeses, beets, beer, tattoos, swordfish, Twitter, racists, Fair Isle knitting, and Rick Scott. I won’t bore you with the rest; we all have our lists.  I think that is part of being human.)

As a whole it was a good week. Last Friday we drove to St. Augustine for a family birthday party. Saturday I had a thoroughly enjoyable tai chi class, and later that evening I watched an episode from the new season of Doctor Who. And so on with the good stuff.  Monday I completed planting my raised beds with tomatoes, peppers, peas and green beans, kale, collard and mustard greens, parsley, and romaine lettuce plus one yellow squash plant (hope springs eternal.). Being able to do the work while standing is miraculous!  My new iPad (courtesy of my Apple insurance policy) arrived in the mail, as did the Otterbox to help protect it from my ever-fumbling hands.  My son arrived safely in Boston, the Orlando Magic won their first regular season game against the Miami Heat, and I spent another lovely Thursday on a Girl’s Day Out with my mother-in-law. I discovered that dill pickle potato chips are a satisfactory substitute for the fried green tomato potato chips, which have disappeared from grocery shelves everywhere.  So mostly very good, and then came a rough Thursday night and a wicked Friday morning.

But this is my attitude: see all that good stuff in the paragraph above?  Well worth a bad day and a couple of bad hours, I think. And compared to some people, I’ve got my health. (I’ve also got vermin problems with ants, a couple of palmetto bugs the size of a teacup Yorkie, and one rotten rodent under the kitchen sink, trying to gnaw his way into a large container of cat kibble. Climate change seriously scares me, even more than the petulant pretender to the throne occupying the Oval Office. I am positively gobsmacked by Kimberly Guilfoyle’s transformation into a Stepford Sycophant.  You know, just stuff. Annoying stuff, that’s all.)

I hope your week has been at least as good as mine.