kmkat and her kneedles

New socks!

These have been my carry-along knitting for a couple weeks. They went fast.

Yarn: Schachenmayr Regia Sport
Pattern: Wendy's Toe-Up Sock and Jeny's surprisingly stretchy bind-off
Needles: US#1.5 (2.5mm) for the foot and first ~2" of the leg; US#2 (2.75mm) for the rest of the leg. Worked on 52 st.

Sport weight yarn = a quick pair of socks :)

* * * * *

Last Wednesday I attended an all-day workshop for newly elected and repeat county supervisors. The board chairman drove, a new supervisor called shotgun, and I claimed the back seat.

Why, oh why, do people schedule workshops to start at 8:15 a.m. when they know that participants may have a 2-hour drive to get there? Especially when the workshop is scheduled to end at 3:30? I brought a pillow and blankie so I could sack out in my back seat for the first part of the drive.

When I woke up I cast on for another pair of socks. This -- except for about 1/4" -- is what I got done on the drive there, during the day, and on the drive home.

 

You can get a good view of the surgery scar from the broken ankle, plus the discolored skin that seems to be another result of that mishap. And then there is the rash eczema (right above the stitch marker) that appeared after the cast came off. It seems that I was allergic to the titanium plate and screws that were used to secure the break while it healed. Because I waited too long to have them removed, the bone had grown around the long screw and it had to stay in. I will have this spot of itchiness... forever. I have had eczema since I was a child (although it abated when I hit adulthood) so I am used to the inconvenience.

Ahem. Back to the socks.

The toes and heels are some Lana Grossa Meillenweit Mega Boot Stretch I had left over from a pair of double-stranded socks, reinforced here with some Lang woolly nylon yarn/thread. The main yarn is KnitPicks Felici Sport. KnitPicks may label it sport, but it is so thin and loosely spun (and soft; 75% merino/25% nylon) that I am treating it like fingering weight. The foot is on a US#0/2.0mm needle, the leg will be on a US#1/2.25mm needle. Knitting the yarn tightly should compensate for the looseness and softness, I hope.

2009: That was the year that was.

January.

Well, there was this (bad).

And there was this (good) (from left, Wendy, me, Chris, and Susan).

On the knitting front:


 

February.

Good intentions.

 

Snow and cold.

Knitting:

March.

Winter melted away.

Knitting.

April.

Spring arrived in earnest.

Yarnover.

End of tax season.

Taste of St. Croix.
 

Knitting resumed after tax season.

 

May.

I scored big at Macy's sale racks, I helped Norm go away, I celebrated Mother's Day in an eco-friendly way, the bears and the ticks came out of hibernation, I picked up trash, I enjoyed the Memorial Day weekend, I bid farewell to our local librarian, and Hannibal discovered the joys of catnip.

Knitting was primarily of a stealth nature, but did include scientific swatching and the F'ing of a couple of O's that had been OTN for nearly, and over a year, respectively. (I am rather proud of that sentence -- and its punctuation -- awkward though it may be.)

 

June

June was for knitting and vacation and celebrating that brief magical time that is summer in the north woods.

 

 

Lots of knitting.

 

 

July.

July was for more vacation -- the rest of the one in Wyoming and another on the North Shore.

And summer.
 

And injuries.
 

And knitting.

 

August.

It was a very good month. I turned 60, had a contest, and laughed. We went to a concert.
 

I learned the difference between eagles and turkey vultures, and I had surgery to remove some extra/unneeded bits and pieces and repair that torn cartilage in my knee.
 

Knitknitknit.

 

September.

In September I had lots of cats on the blog, it was my turn to give the prayer at the beginning of the monthly county board meeting, the county budget process blew up, and the most gloriously gorgeous month of the year was here.

 

The knitting, she continued.

 

October.

I became a biker by proxy,

more new-to-me music found its way into my iTunes, and we celebrated 35 years together

by not-camping on Lake Superior.

The kneedles continued to fly.
 
 

November.

The van that took us on some wonderful vacations met up with an unfortunate bear on the road and was replaced by an older but bigger and more customized van.

Cold weather arrived, and once more I cooked and baked.

 

Mostly, though, I knitted.




Apparently I can crank out hats like other knitters crank out... sweaters

December.

I continued to be thankful (there is a lot to be thankful for).

With the help of Matthew and Maggie, I decorated for Christmas. This decorating thing is never a given.

I showed you my ornaments, y'all showed me yours.

 

We ate well.
 

A bit more knitting* for others.

I pretty much finished my Christmas knitting. (Shhh, the Calorimetry is a surprise.)


The medical mittens are still OTN -- stay tuned.

*For someone who doesn't like pink, I sure knit a lot of it lately...

News from the family

Younger Son (Matthew).

He forwarded this to me with the comment, "I was just thinking you could rally some of your fellow knit/blog moms to try and make it a little tastier/safer."

Dear Friend;
 
Did you know that Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is formulated differently for countries in Europe than for the U.S.?
 
Crazy, but true! The fact is, that in 2008, Kraft removed artificial colorings, like yellow #5, and chemical sweeteners, like aspartame, from the products that they distribute in Europe, Australia, and other developed countries due to consumer concern over scientific studies that link these synthetic ingredients to hyperactivity and asthma in children. But, they haven’t done the same thing here in the U.S., our voices are needed to make that change here too!
 
Please join me in writing to the Kraft CEO, Irene Rosenfeld, a mother of two herself, requesting that Kraft remove these same ingredients from their products here in the U.S. 
 
http://momsrising.democracyinaction.org/o/1768/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27297
 
Kraft took these chemicals and additives out of their European products. If we want Kraft to do this for us in the U.S., then Kraft needs to hear from us!  Their products are in the vast majority of American households. Together, we can affect remarkable change and have these ingredients removed from the products that Kraft distributes here in the U.S

Thanks,

Along with this:

Dear Charlie Super [not her real name],

Thank you so much for sending a letter to Kraft.  As I'm sure you know, the more letters Kraft receives, the more impact we'll have, so take a moment to spread the word. Just forward the email below to your friends, family or co-workers.  Together, we can move mountains and have these terrible ingredients removed from the products that Kraft distributes here in the U.S.

Thanks for all that you do,

Kite [not her real name either]

So in answer to the question, Do I use my power for good or awesome? I choose good. Write to Irene Rosefeld @ Kraft if you are so moved. 

Smokey Bear.

When he picked me up from the hospital yesterday, this self-described lazy, good-for-nuttin' bear had just worked 4 out of the past 5 shifts. Hospital is a bit short-staffed this summer in the mental health units -- nurses on vacation, others taking their own mental health day(s), a slight surge in admits -- so the opportunity for picking  up double shifts is there, and he is taking advantage. I don't remember the exact figures, but when we counted up his shifts in August he is working something like 365 shifts in 31 days. Heh. That's good for the old bank balance...

Elder Son (Andrew).

I don't remember if I blogged about this, but Andrew failed anatomy last fall in his first semester in med school. There were multiple causes -- it was a pure memorization course with zero logical thinking required (not his kind of thing); the US and world were going through the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression, and my summa cum laude econ graduate couldn't resist following the news closely; there was a presidential campaign and election going on, and my intensely political son, ditto; and he didn't particularly like the professor. These are not excuses -- he knows now that he should have allocated his time differently. Live and learn, kid...

When he failed the mid-term exam he called home in utter shock and despair. This was the first thing he had EVER failed. Mom and Dad didn't give him a lot of sympathy. If I recall, my comment was, Remember all the times you have told us about not studying for a test and somehow pulling it out of your as and getting an A because you knew just enough and could bullshit your way through the rest? Eventually that tactic will bite you. And it did.

He studied his ass off the second half of the semester, conferred regularly with the professor, did everything he could to ensure that he passed the course. But it didn't quite work, he failed by 1 point.

The remedy was that he would have to take anatomy again and pass it; the first available opportunity was to take it in summer school with a bunch of undergrads at NYU, his old alma mater. He borrowed some more tuition and rent money from whatever source his med school funding is coming from and prepared for a less-than-exciting summer. 

In May he learned that there was another alternative: a nationally administered test given twice during the summer, that, if he passed it with at least a 70%, would satisfy the professor that he had learned anatomy well enough to proceed in med school. He signed up to take it the first time it would be given, late June, I think. As soon as second semester finals were over he began to study in earnest.

Taking the test in June meant that he had freed up the rest of his summer, so he arranged a trip to Senegal; he would replace another student who, due to family health problems, would not be able to go and perform a public health research project. Andrew has been particularly interested in the health situation in Senegal for several years; he and another med student have been trying for a year to create a (501(c)(3) (non-profit) group to work there and to raise funds for their efforts.

But once again, the best-laid plans, etc. He emailed in mid-June that he didn't feel he was ready for the test and so was rescheduling it for August and canceling his Senegal trip. He was being ultra-responsible but was extremely (and understandably) bummed at how things were going.

Well, to make a long story short -- oops, way too late for that! -- he passed the test and is now walking as though he had dislodged a 16-ton weight from his shoulders. Which he has. Congrats, kiddo!

* * * * *

My knee and ankle surgery went just fine. Very little post-op pain, probably due in large part to the constant cold packs on the affected areas and the steady level of Vicodin in my blood stream. I can walk fine if I need to but have orders to keep the leg elevated for 72 hours.

Here is the *foreign body* that the surgeon removed from my knee. It is a piece of cartilage that looks and feels like a baby tooth:

The hardware the other surgeon removed from my ankle:

I am sure those two longer screws at lower left are from somebody else's bone. There were only seven short screws in mine -- I counted them on the X-ray, plus there are exactly seven holes in the plate. The surgical nurse came into the post-recovery room once to take back something that had been originally put into my show-and-tell package; I think she screwed up, pun intended. (But I have complete faith in the surgeon, so I won't hold the nurse's little error against them.)

Thanks for all your good wishes here and on Facebook and Twitter -- y'all are great!

Sunday bullets.

I need to catch y'all up on stuff; hence, bullets.

* MRI last Thursday. Loud, but since they were looking at my knee rather than my head, not particularly claustrophobic.

* Will get results Monday.

* Earlier on Thursday felt the floating thing in knee occasionally wedge itself into the joint when walking, thus making it impossible to straighten leg.

* Thinking this means arthroscopic surgery to remove bone chip.

* No biggie.

* Tried to get new lens for glasses to replace one that cracked when face plant occurred. Called place where originally got glasses.

* LensCrafters is scam place.

* Told me I couldn't get just one lens, had to get both, new one would be made by different technician, might not match, visual irregularities, blah blah blah... $500.

* Two words for them: Quality.Control.

* Me, aghast: "Five hundred bucks? Sorry, I will go somewhere else and get new glasses."

* Them: [snippy snippy uppity uppity] "...[blah blah]..."

* Went to Sam's Club.

* Eye exam + new glasses =  $321.

* Take that, LensCrafters!

* Screws, plate, and long bolt securing ankle broken last year will come out, day surgery, August 28.

* Ortho surgeon still a cutie and bit of a hunk.

* :-)

* Technicolor knee & leg fading to more or less normal colors. Boring.

* Even normal-colored knee & leg still painful. Annoying.

* Other leg, both arms, back, head all intact and relatively normal. Reassuring.

* Trying to find comfort in above.

* Glass half full, etc.

* Worked at county library/Friends of Libraries booth at county fair Saturday.

* First time in seven years working there that temperature and humidity below 90 (32℃).

* :-)

* Knitting sock in public attracted another knitter.

* Pleasant knitterly chat ensued.

* Was told I should enter my socks at the fair.

* Subsequently checked out knitting and crochet entries.

* Very sad.

* Couple sweaters† knit from nice yarn, one pair of socks in Tofutsie, a lot of items knit or crocheted in acrylic.

* Anything I have knit in the past five years, including dishcloths, is at least as good as what I saw (except for the sweaters -- see † below).

* Already planning what to enter next year.

* Not that I am competitive or anything.

* Chatted with UW-Extension guy who is 4H coordinator for county.

* (On his governing committee; that's how I know him.)

* Remote possibility that I may be judging 4H knitting sometime in future.

* Went out for dinner last night with three other couples from lake.

* Most excellent new-ish Vietnamese restaurant in Grantsburg, small town 37.5 miles north of here.

* Long way to drive for a meal.

* Meal worth it.

* Group chatted with owner after dinner.

* She and boyfriend worked in restaurants in Twin Cities for years, wanted their own.

* Thought this location in Grantsburg would be good because there were no other Asian restaurants nearby.

* Nearby = 40+ miles.

* Perhaps that should have been indication of local interest in Asian food?

* Business very slow at first, picking up now.

* As previously mentioned, food = excellent (aspargus basil shiitake mushrooms with grilled shrimp).

* Must re-visit restaurant; many other items of interest on menu.

 

That's enough for today. Go now and enjoy the rest of your weekend!

† The winning item was a sweater knit by a woman whom I know slightly through the local fiber guild. I didn't read the entry card beyond her name, but I expect that she spun the yarn (wool/llama blend, I think, and from her own animals). It was an Icelandic-style, fair isle circular yoked pullover, thick and warm enough to substitute for a winter coat. The other sweater -- knit by the woman with whom I chatted -- was a deep red lacy pullover  with a shawl collar in wool/mohair/alpaca blend. Both sweaters were lovely and definitely worthy of the winning ribbons. It was the rest of the entries that failed to impress me.

Manic Monday, wherein manic = horrific.

Sometimes the universe likes to deliver a wee lesson re: overconfidence. Such was the case yesterday, or, as I shall forever remember it, The Day From Hell That I Should Have Seen Coming.

All weekend I had been planning my Monday, knowing that there were a number of things I needed to accomplish by the end of that day:

1. A doctor's appointment @ 9:20 am at a location roughly 20 miles west and south of me. (A routine check on a well-controlled chronic condition; no biggie.)
   
2. Deliver the doctor's prescription to a pharmacy another 25 miles farther west and south.
   
3. Refill several other prescriptions at that pharmacy.
4. Continue driving west and south on that road for another 25 or so miles, all the way to our house in south Minneapolis to pick up some stuff.
5. Continue on to Edina (a first-ring suburb on the southern edge of Minneapolis, for those of you Not Of Our Area) in order to return a new cell phone and cancel its tragically expensive contract.
6. Mail our holiday letters. Yes, I am fully aware that it was January 12. What's your point?
   
7. Return to Polk County by 4 pm to attend the monthly meeting of Friends of the Polk County Libraries.
8. Go to my book group at 6:30 pm.
9. Finish reading Reservation Blues during any downtime; it was my choice for my reading group's January book so it would be my responsibility to lead the discussion. I had read the book several years ago but needed to finish re-reading it in order that I might not make a complete hash of the discussion and an ass of myself.
   

If it were any time in the year between, say, April and October, this list would not present any great problems. It is, however, mid-winter, and that season can screw up the best-laid plans of any man or Kat™ without breaking a sweat.

Had I had the foresight -- and common sense -- to check the radar map and weather forecast before I left, none of the following would have happened.

I accomplished numbers one through three, above, no problem, and even managed to sneak in a tasty breakfast (a Western omelet with a side of whole wheat toast and lots of coffee, thanks for asking) in Lindström. My journey continued on down the highway in a southern and westerly direction toward the Twin Cities.

At some point it began snowing. Heavily. There had been a few random flakes floating down from the heavens when I left home, but I thought they were being dislodged from the trees by a gentle breeze. Duh. They were in fact the first harbingers of a short but nasty winter storm. The visibility dropped, although not dangerously so, and snow began to accumulate between the lanes and at the edge of the road. Traffic slowed a bit, but not a great deal. The speed limit on I-35 and I-35W is 70 mph, and traffic, including me, was moving at 55 to 60. The pavement appeared dry, with skiffs of snow blowing across it. It did NOT appear slippery.

So I was driving merrily along with traffic, passing no one and other cars occasionally passing me, when my car started to fishtail slightly. I missed my tiny window of opportunity to regain control, and the fishtailing accelerated -- although of course I did not -- until I found myself skidding broadside down I-35W at nearly 60 mph and realizing that my car had totally lost it and I wasn't coming out of this easily.

The front wheels caught the edge of the road, the car spun, and for several seconds all I could see outside my windows was dense flying snow. I held my breath and waited to be struck by another car. When my car came to rest, here is where I found myself:

Another view:

 

Imagine with me, if you will, the consequences if I had spun out in front of, oh,  I don't know, say, THAT SEMI! The least of which would be that you would not be able to read this blog post because I WOULD BE DEAD!

Ahem. Enough with the dramatics already. Suffice to say, the worst did not happen and I (and my car) were intact.

I pulled out my archaic-but-trusty cell phone (with just enough charge for one call because I had forgotten to recharge it) and found that I was in an Emergency Service Only location. Blessed 911 called a tow truck for me.

Behold, my savior:

 

 

(Why, yes, I did stand in the deep snow and take photos of the whole damned thing. I do it for The Blog.)

The tow truck driver had me sit in the driver's seat and keep the wheels pointing more-or-less straight ahead during the pull-out until he signaled me to turn them.

 

That is an approximately 20-minute buildup of snow on the passenger's window. It was snowing really, really hard.

My car popped out of the ditch, and, $133 later, I was safely on my way again. Driving, need I say it, very, very carefully.

As to my overly-ambitious list of Things To Do On Monday, I made it through number four by 2 pm, at which point I realized there was no way I could make it back to Polk County for numbers seven and eight. I made some phone calls to cancel my presence at Friends and the book group and managed to finish the rest of my Twin Cities errands by 3:30, at which time I decided to brave the beginning of a winter storm rush hour and to attempt to get back to my cozy home next to the frozen lake in Wisconsin.

A note for the easily apprehensive-d among you: no further sliding nor crashing were experienced. Relax and ride along.

Traffic was not too bad until I got past downtown Minneapolis and onto That [New] Bridge. Suddenly everybody was moving so slowly that my speed didn't even register on the speedometer. It continued that way until well past I-694, the loop of I-94 that transcribes the northern edges of the Twin Cities, which I reached... 45 minutes later. That distance would normally be less than a 10 minute drive.

Now, being stuck in traffic is not typically something that would bother me as long as I had my iPod with an audio book for entertainment. Which I did (Across the Nightingale Floor; once again, thanks for asking). But my Aveo has a standard transmission, which meant my still-tender left foot and ankle were dealing with the clutch for 45 minutes straight. That became painful after about 45 seconds and did not get any better during the remaining 44 minutes and 15 seconds. Even after the traffic unwound itself to move at 35 mph and I no longer needed to keep my sore foot on the clutch, waves of achy pain continued to roll over it.

I got home about 8:30, took a pain pill -- my first since mid-October -- and went to bed to sleep for 12.5 hours. Today is ever so much better.

Resolved: to always check the weather BEFORE setting off, no matter how benign it looks before I leave. Amen.

2008: the year in pictures.

January. Apparently this month was all about Maggie and Matthew.

 

 

February. Hazel from the Shetland Islands, winner of the World's Fastest Knitter contest at Mall of America's Knit- and Crochet-Out:

Deb and I at Amy's knitblogger party; Matthew after blowing snow:

  

Romaine, bleu cheese, pecans, and pears.

March. Franklin at Yellow Dog Knitting in Eau Claire:

 

April. The best photo of Andrew I have ever taken, the one that caused Knitters Of A Certain Age to go all hot and bothered and offer to adopt him:

May. This one was an easy choice. My great-nephew (but I didn't take the photo):

 

although there were a couple others that made me smile:

 

 

June. More Matthew and Maggie.

and a colorful visitor to the feeder:

July.

 

August.

 

 and:

 

September. The good:

the bad:

 

and the "so ugly it's cute".

October. Once again, the good (x2):

 

the humorous bad:

 

and the ugly.

 

November. lots of knitting, not so much with the great photos.

 

December.

 

 

 

 

I rock. Or, I am teh awesome. Your choice.

I was one very busy Kat™ yesterday. I did three loads of laundry, emptied all the wastebaskets, and vacuumed the entire main floor of the house.

So what? you say. I do all that before breakfast. What makes you so special?

I did it all from the throne of... my wheelchair.

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

One week from today I will officially be allowed to put full weight on the ankle, but I am getting impatient. As long as I can walk -- carefully, for only a few steps -- without significant pain, I figure it is okay. What's a week between friends? Yesterday I actually walked from my car into the library and back. It is a distance of perhaps thirty feet, and I walked very gingerly and slowly... but triumphantly. Thus, in preparation for Not Being An Invalid, yesterday I vowed to be productive. Smokey has been working in Minneapolis for a week, and I think I was also getting a little bored. The house had not been vacuumed since sometime before September 16, so you can imagine how much it needed it. Bear has been blowing her coat, too, so there is an ample amount of dog hair floating about. Not as much tonight as there was this morning, though :-)

I am attempting to be faithful in doing the physical therapy exercises, too. In fact, that was one stimulus to vacuum -- it was too revolting to get down onto the floor. Some of them are sooooooo boring. If I could find my iPod earbuds I could at least do them to music. Excuses, excuses.

I'm a [morphine] nerd.

Hey, guess what? I found my morphine pump pics. I took them with my phone, that's why they were not there in iPhoto when I looked for them and why the quality is so poor. Here is the pump with my finger on the trigger:

and here is a close-up of the screen:

IIRC, when I felt the need for pain medication I could press the button for a 1 mg dose, then the pump was locked out for ten minutes. Research has shown that patients demand less pain medication AND report feeling more comfortable, i.e., feel less pain, when they have one of these pumps. A win-win proposition.

Except when the staff do not know how to set them up. The nursing staff at this hospital knew how to do that, probably because they have been using these pumps for well over a decade, but when I had a C-section for #2 son in 1989 they were still pretty new. My night nurse at the time didn't know how to make it work, and she spent AN HOUR -- after  I had already asked for pain meds -- trying to get it to work. Argh.

* * * * *

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Science/Math Nerd   (Absolute Insane Laughter as you pour toxic chemicals into a foaming tub of death!) Well, maybe you aren't this extreme, but you're in league with the crazy scientists/mathematicians of today. Very few people have the talent for math and science, and it is something takes a lot of brains as well. Thank whosever God you worship, or don't worship, so thank no deity whatsoever in your case, for you people! Most of us would have died off without your help.
Literature Nerd
Drama Nerd
Social Nerd
Musician
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Anime Nerd
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Well. How about that? Thanks to Heather for the link.

One more highlight.

One of the disadvantages of a walker or crutches or a wheelchair is that it is difficult to carry anything along -- a book, an iPod, my pain meds, a bottle of water, my knitting, all of the above. Mostly I relied on a large tote bag that contained everything and which I kept by my side constantly. The single thing that was the most difficult, though, was how to carry a beverage without spilling it. The morning coffee, which I always drink while checking my email and reading blogs, went into a travel tumbler, no problem.

But what about a glass of wine? Tippy cup to the rescue.

Highlights of my convalescence.

I have been saving this post just in case there were more *highlights* that needed to be included. Nah, I think this is enough.

* * * * *

My beloved morphine pump in the hospital.

(I know I took a photo of it, but apparently at some point I deleted it. Dang.)

After the surgery, I had to give myself an injection of blood thinner to prevent deep vein thrombosis. Daily. For ten days.

Luckily, I have never been prone to needle phobia, so this was not particularly traumatic. The needle was so very thin I almost couldn't feel it going in, although injecting the blood thinner burned a little. But every injection site -- they were all across my midriff -- developed a sweet little bruise. I shall spare you to that view.

OTOH, I got my very own sharps disposal container.

Are you jealous yet?

#2 son got rid of something I had wanted to eliminate for a long time.

That's the passage from the original house (behind him) into the addition (the plywood floor). The opening was a large window in the original house; during construction we cut out a piece of the wall below where the window had been so we could easily walk back and forth. But that opening was not wide enough for the wheel chair ::grumble::

Now it is ::happy face::

Next, he removed a barrier that was never a problem before but which now kept the wheelchair out of my office.

After that 2x4 was gone I could roll right in there, eliminating the problematic transfer through the door from wheel chair (which has brakes to keep it immobile) to office chair (which doesn't) ::more grin::

Once he was done, I could roll over almost all of the second floor, which is the main floor of the house. Yippee!

A few days later I discovered that if I go backwards in the wheelchair by pushing with my foot and cast, I can zip around the house really fast.The next day I discovered that if I do that, I get a stiff neck from watching where I am going. :-( So I zip around but don't bother to look behind myself much. Watch out, dogs! Wheelchair, coming through!

I can do laundry and even move the basket of clean laundry back to the bedroom. Here is my foot, aka trailer hitch, towing the basket.

Most of the doors that I wheel through are wide enough for the wheel chair, but sometimes it is a tight fit. The victim(s) in this case are my knuckles, which I have mashed into door frames -- hard! -- on both the right and left sides.

The purplish area around the second knuckle from the bottom is the residual bruising from my latest mashing. Both times I have done this -- right and left -- I broke a blood vessel in the affected hand like I did last year. But that experience had taught me to be alert to such things, so both recent times I quickly put pressure on the affected area to keep down the internal blood leakage. I may be slow, but I am teachable.

Although I attempted to telecommute after the ankle break, it was just too difficult. So I went back on leave of absence until February. But my buds at the office didn't forget me.

Someone else didn't forget me, damn...

That's just for the operating room and the overnight hospital stay. It does not include the surgeon's bill, the several many outpatient visits, nor the physical therapy yet to come. Right now our medical insurance is duking it out with our auto coverage, saying that since the accident happened as I was exiting the car, the auto insurance should cover some or all of it. From what I have learned so far, State Farm (auto) will cover a smallish piece of the total; the rest (fingers and toes crossed) should be 100% covered by our medical insurance.

On the rare occasions when I have had to venture out into the world on my own, without Smokey to wrestle the wheelchair and to chauffeur me around, I have had to use the walker. The main floor of our house is the second floor, and I get down the stairs to the first floor and back up the graceful way -- on my butt. Taking the walker down was not too difficult, but bringing it back up was. Here was my solution:

Two dog leashes, one attached to each side of the walker, and the two clipped together behind my neck. I dragged it up the stairs behind myself and still had both hands free to hoist myself up a step at a time. Sometimes I amaze myself.

* * * * *

Today was my first physical therapy session. The PT was impressed with the range of motion I had already regained, but warned me about *cheating* on the weight-bearing. Maybe it was just the power of suggestion, but my ankle hurt for the rest of the day after I started to worry that I might be doing harm to it by putting a bit a weight on it. That would really suck. So I am being careful again, no weight, just hop along on one foot behind the walker. My goal is to be walking unaided by mid-December, and I don't want to jeopardize that.

The next stage.

On Thursday the cast* came off. Ya wanna see? Never having been involved with a cast or broken bone before, I have found the whole medical process highly educational. If you find it less so, feel free to click away. You won't be missing anything important.

This is the piece of equipment that will cut off the cast.

The saw is electric-powered. The upright part in front of the the left side of the push handle has the circular blade right at the top. The blade is about three inches in diameter and cuts by vibrating instead of spinning.

The nurse practitioner warned me that the vibrations would tickle. And they did.

After she cut through the hard fiberglass shell of the cast lengthwise on each side, she used a tool that was kind of like a reverse pliers to pop it open. She inserted the "jaws" into the slits she had cut with the saw. When she squeezed the handles, the jaws, which in a normal pair of pliers would have gripped, instead spread apart and popped the cast open. She finished the job by using some hefty bandage scissors to cut through the layers of soft cotton padding that were the inner layers of the cast.

I shall not show a picture of my naked leg and foot. They had been encased in one kind of cast or another for exactly seven weeks and were covered in flaky, scaly dead skin. Yech! The first thing I did was scratch it all over. Ahhhh! The NP brought soap and a washcloth and a towel and lotion, and Smokey put his [long-neglected but well-learned] medical nursing skills to work to clean it up. More ahhhhhhhhh! So much better!

X-rays revealed that the bones were healing nicely, as I had suspected.

Here's what I will be wearing for the next six weeks:

It's called a cam boot and it is, in essence, a removable cast. I am still non-weight bearing, but since this is removable it allows me to begin range-of-motion exercises in physical therapy next week. Two weeks of those, then two weeks of strengthening exercises, then two weeks of balance practice; and I will be able to walk again! Yay!

This strap-on cast also allows me finally to take a real bath! Double yay! (echoes of family members and members of the public hurrahing, as well).

Life is good. And getting better.

* The cast didn't smell at all. :-) I am planning to keep it long enough to show it to #1 son when he comes home for Christmas. After that I will coat it with polyurethane, stick it out in the yard come spring, and plant flowers around it. Not.

Memorial to a cast.

You have seen my Dolores-adorned cast. Well, that was just the beginning. Never having had a cast in my youth and hoping never to have one again, I wanted to make the most of this one.

It all started with The Sheep.

and went on from there. I carry my Sharpies everywhere I go, including the October county board meeting.

A tour of The Cast™.

Top:

"PMS!" are a friend's initials, not a comment on anyone's state of mind. Smokey's inscription is in the center, signed "The Bear." "Buena suerte!" is from a board member who is also a Spanish teacher. Colleen's reads, "Leg up! Libraries forever[UP arrow]! I [heart] libraries and I vote." Yes, she is a librarian.

That's Matthew's at the top, done after he broke his wrist.

...and back to Dolores.

I have been told by one who knows (Brian, who signed The Cast™, "I know how it goes" and who has broken many bones in his lifetime) that a discarded cast stinks and that I probably don't want to save this one.

So I have memorialized it here instead.

This is my dream.

Not.

But I admire this* kid.

Here's a video of him landing his first backflip in a wheelchair.

Aaron humbles me. I was so proud of myself for learning how to maneuver my wheelchair in tight places and figuring out the trick to getting over threshholds up to 2" tall (using my uninjured foot to lift the front, i.e., small wheels, of the wheelchair). The stuff he does is amazing. I especially loved that he was teaching a younger wheelchair-bound (or should it be -enabled?) kid.

Go, Aaron!

* The video accompanying the Las Vegas Sun article about Aaron has his mother, too. What a good and brave mom!

Enough with the politics. I'm voting for...

DOLORES!   

Actually, Dolores has been accompanying me on my limited excursions into the public eye for several weeks. It started like this:

That is the angle at which I had to draw her. Not easy, but I persisted. (Actually, I traced her from the pdfs that Franklin made available for download. Cheating, I know, but it was the only way to ensure that she was remotely recognizable as a sheep.)

Then the image progressed. Remember these?

I put 'em to good use.

Ta-da! Behold the Fibertarian candidate!

Don't worry, Franklin. My drawing canvas, aka The Cast, hits the trashcan on November 6, assuming the rest of the healing goes as planned. My most excellent mad art skillz are no competition for you.

All in the family.

That is the leading edge of a bike helmet that has encountered the pavement. What does the head that was contained in it look like after that encounter?

At first it looked like this (warning: do not click if you are the least bit squeamish).

After self-administered first aid, the head -- which belongs to #2 son -- looked like this:

(He emailed me those last two photos the night this happened. The others I took today when he came to the lake for the weekend.)

Those are just scrapes, though. Check this out:



He must wear the wrist brace until Tuesday or so, when he will get a cast. Yep, he broke his wrist -- specifically, he has a radial fracture.

The story is this: he was biking to his car after work and was a block or so south of Franklin on Lyndale, for those of you familiar with Minneapolis. He had just checked his helmet-mounted rearview mirror for traffic behind him and while his eyes were averted from the road immediately ahead, his right handlebar clipped a parked car. Bam! and down he went, skidding across the pavement. He said his first thought upon raising his head from the ground was, Damn, my bike in in the street! Did it get run over? Then he stood up, leaned over the bike, and wondered why there was blood dripping onto the street.



I am so grateful that there was no moving automobile involved in this incident. It could have been so much more serious. He could easily be dead had there been a car coming at the wrong moment. The other thing we are all grateful for is that he has health insurance (which only went into effect in June or July) through his job that covers these medical bills.

This, that, and the other.

I am bored. I haven't been bored in so long that I almost didn't recognize the feeling. What I am bored with is the limited number of activities available to me in a wheel chair or on crutches/a walker: read, knit, surf the net, take a nap. I have managed to do a few loads of laundry, and I have gone to some meetings. But overall, my time is pretty much spent reading/knitting/surfing. Given that I am a relatively quiet, sedentary person, I find it remarkable that I have reached the boredom plateau. The idea of nothing to do but read, knit, and surf the net has long been my idea of heaven. (All together now: Be careful what you wish for.)

It really hit me Saturday, when I realized that I had a actual, literal visceral desire to get up and walk around. Of course, I could not indulge that desire, so instead I slept until 12:30 pm, took a 2-hour nap in the afternoon, and went to bed at 10:30. Perhaps boredom is not the right term. Maybe what I am is depressed. How does one get the endorphins to flow -- without drugs, that is -- if one cannot move?

[/whine]

* * * * *

In spite of my boredom, I have done some enjoyable things. I made myself another toe sock:

That is one strand of Online Highland Color #841 held together with one strand of Lane Cervina Calzetteria fingering in a very dark gray solid, knitted in 2x2 rib on a US#1 needle and using Cathy-Cate's decrease method. Yes, that makes a very, very dense fabric -- I live in Wisconsin and it's getting cold.

There is a second toe sock OTN:

That one is a strand of the same dark gray yarn held together with a strand of Schoeller + Stahl Fortissima Colori Socka Color #4006 (the link will take you to a photo of what the yarn looks like knitted up by itself as intended), once again knitted on a US#1 and yielding a very, very dense fabric. Hey, our floors are cold!

* * * * *

I have been remiss in not telling the world about the goodies I have won/acquired in the past few months.

First, this emergency knitting kit bag from 1870 Pearl, which I won for leaving the 400th(?) comment on her blog.

Thanks, Abigail! I put that puppy to good use during the Wisconsin Counties Association conference I went to last week. Let's see what I was working on, hmmmm?

Yes, another Noro striped scarf. This is my fourth, I think, and it is just barely possible that this one might actually be for me.

This next one was not a contest prize; it was a gift from a very sweet and generous knitter. It is a stitch saver, to be used in those knitting-out-and-about moments when you drop a stitch and do not have your usual crochet hook handy:

Thanks, Ruth! She enclosed this when she sent me her copy of Greeley's Cove, a scary thriller that she had blogged about. Please notice that this stitch saver is personalized Just.For.Me. Ruth sells these in her Etsy shop. Go. Buy one. Or six. I love mine.

Did you wonder what that objet d'knit was in the emergency knitting kit photos, the thing that the kit is resting on? Let me tell you right now, it is gonna blow your [hand-knit] socks right off. You are all gonna be soooooooo jealous of The Kat™.

Does anyone recognize this?

How about if I show you a larger photo:

That, my friends, is the grand prize from Claudia's MS Ride fundraiser back in June, knit by Angela. If I were to wait until I knitted a lace shawl for myself I would have been waiting -- and shivering -- for a long, long, long time. I have been wearing this beauty proudly and happily and gratefully ever since the weather turned chilly a few weeks ago. Thank you, Angela, and thank you, Claudia! The shawl is lovely and soft and warm (and has not been used as a cat bed; it is way too wonderful for that, much to my kitties' dismay).

* * * * *

Well, guess what? I am not bored now. The key is just to Do Something. Doing Something motivates me to Do Something Else, and so on, and so on.

More blog posts need to be written. More knitting needs to be done. There is laundry I can tackle. I need to get myself over to the county clerk's office to do some research on previous board resolutions.

Time to go. Thanks for reading!

 

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to the Dells I go.

Recovery from the ankle break continues apace. On Thursday (yesterday) I had a follow-up appointment with the ortho doc. He took off the soft cast, inspected the surgical incision, and pronounced it good. Yay! Smokey happened to be sitting in a position where he got a good look at it and he concurred; back in his days as a public health nurse he got to see a lot of incisions and wounds and to change their dressings and administer various kinds of therapy, so his opinion counts.

I have a new cast now, a *real* cast, the kind with fiberglass, and, most importantly, the kind that people can sign. Our first stop (after the bathroom) after the clinic appointment yesterday was at Office Max to buy a pack of multi-colored Sharpies for that very purpose.

Did you know that casts now come in a variety of colors? I didn't know that, either. We spotted, on the cast cart, red, fluorescent pink, yellow, lime green, kelly green, blue, and perhaps a few others. What did I choose? Boring off-white, but only because (wait for it)

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

 

it glows in the dark! My inner 8-yo is apparently alive and well :-) Sorry, no photo, it's still daylight here.

Anyone who has been reading this blog for 2 years (you poor things!) may remember that I happen to have some glow-in-the-dark yarn. I do believe that that yarn, in combination with some superwash something-or-other from the stash, will make a dandy, Halloween-appropriate toe cozy.

In the meantime, though, my toes have been saved from the chilly temps by the generous and sweeter-than-springtime Cathy-Cate.

Before:                                                               After:
(please note the painted-on Betadine tan)

               

* * * * *

So, what's all this about The Dells, Kat™?

For those of you who are not familiar with the Upper Midwest, Wisconsin Dells is the convention and conference center of Wisconsin. Tourism has been a mainstay there for 150 years, according to their website, primarily because of the scenic beauty of that part of the Wisconsin River. Here's the Wikipedia photo of the Dells of the Wisconsin River:

In the last 25(?) or so years, though, it has become known more for man-made attractions, in particular, indoor waterparks. It's a bit like Las Vegas without the gambling or shows, Las Vegas as designed by small-town Midwesterners.

The city proper has a truly amazing assortment of cheesy attractions. There is a life-size replica of the White House sitting haphardardly upside-down, supposedly after some catastrophe; for a admission fee you can go inside. There is a 50-foot tall replica of the Trojan Horse; I suppose you can go up into it after paying the admission fee, although I have a hard time seeing the attraction. I also seem to remember a huge rocket ship that promised some kind of thrill and other attractions promising a various and sundry assortment of doubtful excitements.

Because of the indoor waterparks attached to hotels, The Dells has become a family weekend getaway place for many Midwesterners. It also hosts lots of conferences, with the attraction of You can bring the family! There's fun for everyone! And thus, the Wisconsin Counties Association is holding their annual conference there this year, and I and 10 other members of the county board, along with assorted family members, are going.

Here's what, among other things, we will be doing:

I'm riding down in the county Impala with two other board members -- plenty of room for my wheelchair -- and my roommate, the only other female board member attending from Polk County, offered to wheel me anywhere I needed to go. So I am going.

You may or may not remember this vital mathematical equation:
           4 hour car ride + 2.5 days of lectures/speakers/seminars = LOTS OF KNITTING TIME!

Update.

Thank you so much for all the good wishes that you have sent my way. It seems to be working -- the surgery went off without a hitch on Friday. I stayed overnight in the hospital for pain management -- is it wrong that I fell totally in love with my very own personal patient-controlled morphine pump? -- and came home Saturday. There were some bad moments Saturday as we got home; the morphine had worn off and the pain pills had not yet kicked in, and my ankle hurt as much as it had the night I broke it. Tears and hugs ensued, and eventually the pain was back under control. And I slept pretty much straight through to Sunday morning.

I have a delightful x-ray of the ankle showing all the screws and the plate that the doc put into my ankle, but I can't show it to you -- camera is in my tote bag next to me but cable is in my office. That seems to  be often the case; the thing I want/need is not within reach and thus could just as well be a million miles away.  Smokey's rheumatoid arthritis keeps him from being as mobile as he would like, so we both are trying to exercise as much patience as possible. This can be a challenge, but a good lesson to learn, nevertheless.

Oh! My Bear just brought me what needed to show you the x-rays. All together now: Thank you, Smokey!

Thus endeth for anatomy lesson for tonight.

 

Random thoughts on the economy and the election.

If you didn't happen to read Cursing Mama's blog entry on Sunday, please do so here. It would be good if you read the articles she links to, as well; it is good to be as well-informed as possible. Go ahead, I'll wait.

One of my favorite bits from the linked articles is this:

(from an MSNBC article discussing the problems encountered by Long Term Capital Management in 1998 when Russian credit, in which the hedge fund was heavily invested, collapsed; emphasis added by me)

Michael Greenberger served as the [Commodities Futures Trading Commission's] director of trading and markets at the time. A proponent of tougher oversight, he recalls the Greenspan-Rubin resistance as being fierce and across-the-board. "If we had prevailed, the [subprime-securitization] party would never have gotten started; the wildness wouldn't have happened," he says. "There would have been auditing requirements, capital requirements, transparency. No more operating in the shadows. Bear Stearns, Lehman, Enron, and AIG would be thriving, and spending every waking hour complaining about regulatory restraints imposed upon them."

Remember Ronald Reagan, he who was the champion of deregulation? He who is so eulogized by the rightward half of the electorate? His ideas regarding regulation are not quite so, um, unassailable now.

The problem with deregulation and self-regulation is that -- duh! -- people cheat. If enlightened self-interest is enough to ensure a well-oiled economy, why are exams proctored? Because people cheat. If self-regulation is so damned wonderful, why do we need police, huh? Because people cheat. People can be blinded by their own short-sighted self-interest, i.e., greed -- greed for what others have, greed for the profits-based bonus, greed for moremoremore.

* * * * *

The other half of the equation, though, is election fraud. It is not enough that a majority of American voters cast their ballots for Obama. Their votes must be counted. If an election can be stolen (see: 2000; 2004) it will be. The early steps are already in the works -- flawed voting software with no paper or audit trail that could potentially alleviate problems; mandatory matching of a voter's every id point to existing databases, a process that has already been shown to eliminate massive numbers of legitimate voters; etc., etc., etc.

Be wary. Be aware. Vote, drive others to the polls if they need a ride, be informed.

* * * * *

Enough of that. Here is a child's sweater I started a couple weeks ago with the plan that it would be done by the October 1 deadline Afghan for Afghans' latest project, sweaters for school kids aged 7 to 12.

I knit the body in about 30 seconds, then it languished in the knitting bag for a couple weeks because sleeves require So. Much. Concentration. [/whine] Maybe finishing this can be the silver lining in the broken ankle cloud.

The stripe pattern is the Fibonacci sequence, something I have wanted to work into a knit garment since I first discovered it a couple years ago. Yeah, I'm a little behind the curve on that one.

As you can deduce, the upper part of the sweater will be predominantly the pinkish-red color, although my row gauge calculations indicate that a little more blue will sneak in up near the neck. The pattern is a combination of the saddle-shoulder sweater from Ann Budd's A Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns for the sizing and EZ's knit-all-in-one-piece-in-the-round, saddle-shoulder pullover from An Opinionated Knitter for everything else. The yarn is Knit Picks Wool of the Andes worsted from stash in Blue Bonnet and Cherry Red. The needles are KP US#7.

* * * * *

I'd like another glass of wine, please. This one seems to have spilled...

And, what every well-dressed cast needs, to go along with the wine stains:

Leon Redbone.

For those of you who are not Leon Redbone aficionados, here is a YouTube video of him. It happens to have been shot at pretty much the same distance and angle from which we viewed him last night. He moved slower last night, though.

Dinner was delicious -- for me, beef stroganoff from scratch, no cream of mushroom soup or bechamel sauce, this was the real thing: chunks of sautéed tenderloin, slices of fresh mushroom, sauce of reduced heavy cream. I could feel my arteries closing as I swallowed and I didn't care.

The concert was great, albeit too short -- only a little over an hour. Our seats were to die for; my leg was propped up on a chair and my toes were touching the stage.

Smokey brought along this album he bought about 30 years ago:

and Danette, the theater manager, graciously took it backstage to be autographed.

Smokey is way pleased.