Broken ankles hurt

I'm glad that, when I saw the orthopedist, he said that the first 10-14 days were typically the hardest with this kind of ankle injury. I need a first end-of-the-tunnel date.

There was one day in there, maybe Thursday, when I took almost nothing for pain and was fine. That isn't happening now. I keep a card in my backpack to track my acetaminophen intake so I don't fry my liver as I try to stay ahead of the pain. For the last two nights, I've awakened in the early morning in pain and needed to take something and then wait for it to kick in before I could get back to sleep. I think it's time to start setting an alarm and taking something before I hit that point. This brings back memories of C-section recovery, and not the fond ones about the adorable new baby. It was the same story then: If I stayed ahead of the pain, it didn't take much to keep it within my tolerance. If I didn't, it took more medicine and/or stronger medicine to get back in the lead.

I managed to finish my kids' Halloween costume items last night. Fortunately I'd gotten most of the work done before the injury. We have a forest protector (brown clothes, green cloak I made for another year, and ack, we didn't find her new boots since she outgrew her old ones, so maybe snow boots...) and a skeleton ranger (skeleton jacket and pants, midnight blue cloak I finished last night).

Fast forward three days. I've finally gotten ahead of the pain, but it's taken going on mild narcotics around the clock. I checked in with an orthopedics nurse, and she says this is not unusual in the second week with a broken ankle, and that in 5-6 more days (this is day 8 since the injury) I can probably start weaning off them for at least parts of the day.

Halloween was refreshingly simple. The kids went around the block on one side of the street and didn't even bother with the second side. I guess they get enough access to sweets that getting as many as possible for Halloween doesn't feel too important. They are enjoying eating the leftover bags of Cheetos that we bought to distribute.

On another note, I love my choir. They're working on a pretty hard piece for me, and it's really coming together. I heard some very beautiful things at rehearsal tonight, which is good, since we're singing that pieces in services this coming Sunday. Our music director, who also works with a women's choir at CU, said that choir (about half music majors and half not) would have taken most of a semester to prepare a piece like this. We've taken 4 weeks. It helped a lot that he gave up most of the regular choir rehearsal tonight so the women's choir could work on this piece.

A diagnosis, prognosis, and course of treatment

I saw the orthopedist this morning. Tim dropped me at the bus stop, and I rode the bus and walked about a block to Kaiser. That was really hard on crutches, with already-sore shoulders and wrists and putting weight on only one leg. Tim picked me up afterward so I didn't have to do the reverse trip. The knee scooter, which came this afternoon, should make future bus trips more manageable.

They didn't re-x-ray my foot, as they could see what was wrong from Sunday's x-rays. A ligament attaching the lateral ankle bone to the bottom of my foot tore out its lower attachment point. The doctor thinks it will scar back together on its own if I protect it with the boot for four weeks, so that's the plan. We'll x-ray again in four weeks to see if it worked, and if so, I can switch to a lighter splint, worn with a sneaker, which may allow me to drive. He wants to avoid foot surgery if possible, since the risk of complications (mainly infection) is very high.

In the meantime:

• No driving (it's illegal with a boot on my right foot).
• No ibuprofen (NSAIDs interfere with the inflammatory response and thus with parts of healing).
• Tylenol and pain pills are okay, but not at the same time to avoid acetaminophen overdose (I'm allowed up to 3800 mg per day).
• I should bear some weight on the foot for parts of every day -- starting with just a little, and gauging my tolerance by whether I'm in significantly more pain the next day. The knee scooter is okay, but I shouldn't rely on it too much, especially if it keeps me from bearing weight regularly.
• I can ice periodically, especially for the first 7-10 days. After that, it doesn't affect things as much, but it might help with pain.
• I should keep the foot elevated as much as possible, to minimize swelling.
• I should stay out of hot water -- baths, hot tubs, etc. -- and shower with water just warm enough, not too hot.

I forgot to ask if I should be doing any rehab exercises yet, so I emailed that question and hope to hear back. I also asked if the doc could tell me the names of the ligament that tore the bone, and the bone that got torn. This feels important to know, for reasons that are hard to explain. I guess the more I know about the injury, the more information about it is available to me about it, and that may help somewhere along the way with rehab, or even future injuries or choices of things like footwear. But besides those practical considerations, I'm pretty fascinated with biomechanics and anatomy, and I'm a lifelong learner. This is the sort of curiosity and learning that frequently leads doctors to ask me, the first time they meet with me, if I work in health care myself. The same thing happens with other professionals, like the state geologist who helped me figure out if our new house was on top of a coal mine in danger of collapsing (yes, it's on top of a mine, but one that appears already to have collapsed fully). That geology conversation was very enjoyable for both of us! I took a two-semester class in geology in college, and coal mine subsidence/collapse was one of the instructor's pet issues, so we learned a lot about it.

A month of no driving is new for me. We got two rides today, to get us to a class for one of the kids and back. We can get there on a bus in future if we're up for it. At times like this I feel very grateful to live near four bus lines. They go most places I need to go regularly, except my church, but there are many people willing to help with rides to and from church, since we live so close to it. Being involved with groups there, like choirs and small group ministries, really rocks at times like this, because there are lots of people who know me pretty well, have compatible schedules, and are willing to help. But I've had help from more casual acquaintances, too, called in by the Neighborhood Connectors program, which hooks people who need help up with neighbors who can give it. I used to be a neighborhood connector myself, so I've been on both ends of this.

Time to get the kiddos to bed and get on with my first post-injury shower, now that I know how to do it safely and am properly equipped!

Broken ankle -- a new adventure, I guess!

This past Sunday the kids and I, as well as some extended family, went to play badminton with my husband Tim, who is a regular at a badminton club that includes everyone from novices up to the state-champion/Olympic-hopeful category. He's a competitive player, with a B ranking.

We were having a great time. I was playing better than I have before (I'm not much good, but this was better than past tries by a fair distance). Tim was dialing it back some so he and I could play doubles against people with not-quite-so-intense-as-his badminton skills and have a good time. We had come from behind to a small lead when I dove for a shot to my right... and rolled my ankle, hard. It made a series of ominous popping sounds. I was down, and we had to call the game. But hey, I made the shot! Tim didn't notice I was down until he went to return the return of my shot. The man keeps his eye on the birdie!

It hurt a lot in the first half hour. Folks helped me to the sidelines and brought ice, and Tim stuck with me. I cried for a little while from a mixture of pain, overwhelm at getting so much help, and fear about the way my foot was moving when I tried to hold it still -- like one of my usual control wires (ligament or tendon) was disconnected or something. Then the rec center lifeguards took a look, but they didn't have much to offer for first aid. After half hour the pain was getting worse, not better, so my wonderful sister-in-law Melissa took me to Kaiser urgent care to get it checked out, while Tim got the kids to their afternoon Navigators (coed inclusize scouting) meeting, which I was supposed to be helping lead. :(

Broken, they said. But there was so much swelling that they couldn't tell what the nature of the break was, exactly. They gave me a Cam boot to immobilize and protect the ankle, and a referral to orthopedics. They also gave me some painkillers in case ibuprofen wasn't enough, and instructions to stay on ibuprofen around the clock for now. By this time I had some in my system, and the pain was at a much lower level.

Melissa brought me home and set me up with water, food, a book... we couldn't find the crutches I knew were in the house somewhere, but I could crawl or butt-scoot if I needed to get around.

Just after Melissa left, Tim got home and found the crutches, increasing my mobility by a factor of 3 or so. I still couldn't carry, well, almost anything, so I was very dependent on people carrying stuff for me.

That night, I kept waking up with uninjured parts of my foot in a lot of pain. The boot was pressing on them in weird ways, and I couldn't find a way to fix it. I took a painkiller and fell asleep, only to wake up a couple of hours later to intense nausea, sweating, and weakness. Bad reaction, but it subsided fairly quickly, and I got back to sleep and slept in for hours past my usual wake-up time.

Monday I took things easy, mostly. I walked two blocks to the library to return some books and found it really rough going on crutches. The library is about the same distance away as the bus stop; bad news for my mobility with a broken right ankle. So I got signed up for paratransit and ordered a knee scooter (to arrive Wednesday), which should be a lot easier to use than crutches. I got an appointment for Wednesday morning at orthopedics -- I didn't like to wait so long, but I understand, since it will probably take 3 days for the swelling to go down enough to make a good diagnosis. I also figured out how to readjust the boot so it doesn't cause me pain, just annoying discomfort, a small price to pay for protecting my foot. I got a ride to the choir I direct and the one I sing in (back to back rehearsals in the same place). I almost didn't go, as I was pretty exhausted from my rough Sunday night, but I thought about how I usually end up more refreshed after choir than before it starts and decided to give it a go. I'm glad I did. It was good to see more friends and make some really beautiful music together, and I did feel refreshed and heartened.

Monday night was much better. Having talked to a doctor, I loosened the boot a bit with his blessing, so my foot was still protected but not quite as constricted. Mostly I slept pretty well, and I didn't take, or need, a painkiller beyond ibuprofen.

Today is Tuesday. The support network at my church has kicked in, and a friend delivered a walker with a detachable tray so I can carry things (Monday I ate my dinner right in front of the microwave because I couldn't carry it to the table!), and a shower stool. I'm still mostly taking it easy, just trying not to injure the foot worse. I'm working on logistics, planning bus trips or rides to the places we can't easily cancel or reschedule. We already have several rides lined up to classes and church/choir events.

I hope tomorrow's appointment brings some answers about what's going on and what we can do about it. Tim and I spent some time one night going over possible scenarios that might arise with the ortho visit. I'll probably be there by myself, and I wanted to have some mental immunization to possible outcomes so nothing could throw me for too much of a loop. Tim is a terrific imaginer of worst-case scenarios and had some doozies for me (bone density problems or cancer), but the more-likely scenarios he came up with were things I felt I could deal with. We shall see.

Sheep to Shawl, Longing to Weave, Getting Drippy

My last six days have gone by in a fog of spinning in most of my spare moments. I'm a member of a five-woman sheep-to-shawl team, and we're preparing for this Sunday's sheep-to-shawl (STS) competition at Estes Park's Wool Market. Some STSs require that the sheep be sheared at the beginning of the contest time (yikes!). I am relieved that we can show up for the competition with our fleece washed, our warp threads spun, and our loom dressed and ready to go. During the five-hour STS window, we'll card our weft fleece, spin the weft threads, weave and wash the shawl. After our five hours are up, the shawl will dry for an hour and then be judged against those of the other three teams. I'm told we're judged on the quality of the spinning and weaving, but also (and rather importantly) on how we interact with the public during the competition, as this is meant to be an educational event. I'll try to post pictures and write more after the competition. Anyway, I think I've spun something like 600 yards of fairly fine singles in the six days from last Tuesday night to last night, which was Monday night. The warp yarn, when 2-plied, is a light DK weight or so.

With our warp now spun (and other team members plying it), I'm taking a few days off spinning now to give my left elbow -- the only part that seems much bothered by all this spinning -- a rest before Friday's loom-dressing party and then Sunday's competition. Friday will be my first time helping warp (dress) a floor loom. I'm looking forward to the learning experience.

I did recently learn to warp and weave on a rigid-heddle loom. I had so much fun at the all-day workshop a few weeks ago, I bought a rigid-heddle (RH) loom for myself for my 40th birthday: a Schacht Flip, 25" wide. DH made me a beautiful oaken pickup stick to use with it, and says he'll make me other tools as I figure out what I want. I've promised DH not to warp the loom for a real project until I finish the curtains for our living room, the last room I haven't sewed for yet. When I made that promise, there were also two bedrooms uncurtained. This loom is providing some powerful motivation! I did warp the RH loom with some wool stash yarn, with DH's blessing to try out some weaving patterns, when we came to a technical roadblock on how to hang the living-room curtains, which meant I didn't really know what sizes to make them. Now we have that problem solved, so I'm back on the hook!

I didn't make any promises about not buying wool combs at the Wool Market, though. I loved the process of combing the fleece for the warp, and even better, spinning the resulting, luscious hand-combed top. I want to try it with my Cormo ram fleece. I've been spinning that, woolen (lofty, fuzzy) style, into laceweight yarn for a shawl, processing it with hand cards, but the enjoyment from that two-year-old project is wearing thin, and I enjoy knitting with worsted (smooth) yarns more, anyway. Maybe I'll make a cowl or some other small thing from the woolen yarn I've already made and spin the rest worsted to weave. :)

DH helped me out by replacing the worn-out batteries in our baby monitors (this is a soldering job, something I could do if I had to, but that he's much faster at), so now I have the ability to range out in the yard for more than a few minutes while DS is napping. I can work with the kids outside with me, but DS tends to cover himself in soil when I do that, so I have to figure in time to bathe him and get the soil out of every item of clothing and orifice afterward! He may be quite the gardener once I can focus those digging energies a bit.

Today I used my freedom to finish hooking up our drip system for the vegetable/herb garden. I've tested it and found it leak-free and functioning -- hooray! Next time the garden gets thirsty (it's pouring rain now), I'll test it for adequate coverage. I might add a few emitters here and there to get everything enough water. I already seem to hear the potatoes sighing with relief at not being watered from overhead, and my back sighing with relief at not needing to bend over and carefully water underneath them!

I Can't Hear Myself Think!

Sometimes I hear myself saying things to my kids that I should listen better to myself:

• If cleaning your room at the end of the day is too overwhelming, you'll need to clean as you go.
  
• You don't need to be perfect; just try to do your best.
  
• Why are you so critical?
  
• STOP YELLING!

Sometimes I think that parenthood is little more than an ongoing lesson in recursion. After seeing a friend lose her temper with her son recently, and then getting an abject apology from her by email, I constructed a story in my mind: A little girl grows up, getting yelled at sometimes for doing things wrong and feeling pretty bad about it. By the time she's a mom, she knows she'd prefer to deal with her kids without yelling if possible. But there's still a voice in her head, yelling at her when she falls short of her best intentions. You know the one? Then, lo and behold, when one of her kids screws up, she finds herself yelling at the kid in front of other parents, leading to much embarrassment and self-flagellation.

So how do we break the cycle? For this kind of yelling/criticism loop, I suspect it has a lot to do with learning to be gentle with ourselves when we screw up. Otherwise, how can we manage to be gentle with our kids? Can we come up with a mantra for ourselves? Something like, "I will remember that I am a good parent, that I have always done the best I could, and that I have passed on to my children as few of the hurts that I endured as a child as I could possibly manage. And someday, I'll get some rest!" (That's a paraphrase of the Parents' Commitment in Co-Counseling.) Or how about a chant I heard in a women's singing circle: "I will be gentle with myself. I will love myself. I am a child of the universe, being born each moment." Is it possible to remember that life is an ongoing learning process, and that most learners, ourselves included, don't do well with constant criticism and put-downs?

Looking at the list above, it seems like my own chief demons are perfectionism and impatience – the inward- and outward-facing parts of the same stinkin' thinkin', as FlyLady might call it. FlyLady's lessons have been one of the most helpful things for me in learning to be more patient with myself, to the extent I manage to do that. My co-counseling experience was helpful, of course, but FlyLady has helped me take the lessons of self-acceptance and patience with myself and others into the less orderly context of my daily life, amid chores, kids, and household chaos.

I still have a ways to go. Perhaps alongside FlyLady's 15 minutes of decluttering per day, I could try a daily practice of forgiving someone -- myself, my kids, my husband, a stranger, but myself at least some of the time -- for something. Anything. It's time to declutter my mind of impatience, perfectionism, and eventually whatever other demons I might turn up after those clear out a bit. Then maybe, when I give one of my kids a piece of advice or correction, I'll be able to hear myself think!

Attack of the Exercise Imp

I remember my first bike ride for fun after I moved to the Bay Area 18 years ago. I’d had the same mountain bike all through college and pretty much only ridden it for short trips around campus and town. I didn’t have, or know how to use, a patch kit. I didn’t have a quick-release rear wheel; this was great for locking my bike on campus, but not conducive to repairs. See what’s gonna happen here? My girlfriend and I went for a 12-mile-or-so ride around Contra Costa County, on rural roads through grazing lands and rolling hills. Just about as far from BART as our route would take us, my rear tire tangled with a 6-inch piece of barbed wire on the shoulder. It was a mess. My girlfriend had a patch kit and the knowledge to use it, but not the 15-mm wrench to remove my wheel! We walked to the nearest farm, and fortunately found someone willing to lend an adjustable wrench. After something like an hour of dealing with this, we were back on our way, having used just about all the patches we had. And then I had another flat. No need to go on; suffice it to say that that day was what my dad used to call an existential experience. I did eventually proceed to ride long distances (six years later, from San Francisco to Los Angeles!), but it took a little while to get back in the saddle after that debacle.

Is there some spirit of mischief that plagues people trying to set out on the path to a healthier, more active lifestyle? I ask because I think today it bit me again. This past week, I got my bike back in riding condition for the first time since last summer, and I took my daughter to her dance class along with the little guy in the double bike trailer. It went pretty well, though the ride back home, uphill all the way, was a challenge. I figured I’d have all spring to get in better shape, now that my bike is ready to go, I’ve found all the appropriate locks, etc.

See it coming yet?

So this afternoon, when we all decided on the spur of the moment to go to the library, I suggested we take the bikes. Husband and kids were all game, and soon we were off. No sooner did we get to the library, though, than the little guy barfed up his lunch in the parking lot. Oops! Was he motion-sick? He’d never had that problem before. We decided to hang out outdoors for a bit and see. Nope. More barfing. He’s just sick. I hung out with him outside the nearby supermarket, while DH got some dinner stuff and a roll of paper towels for cleanup. More barfing. We rode home slowly, checking on him constantly. He’s convalescing slowly in front of a video now, to take his mind off things. Or maybe just to make us feel better – he only seems unhappy for about 30 seconds longer than it takes him to have a couple of heaves. Thank goodness for small favors!

So I’m thinking, how long will it be before we’re ready to get back in the saddle for a family bike trip? Maybe, now that we’re pretty sure it’s not motion sickness, not too long. I will be packing a change of clothes and carrying that roll of paper towels and a plastic bag or two in the trailer, though! Maybe we can avoid the spell of the exercise imp and get past the mental barriers this time. Wish us luck!

Putting On My Own Oxygen Mask

For 15 years after college, I lived in the same area in California. I built a good network of connections there that gave my life stability and depth. Now, three years into my life in Boulder, I'm still looking for that. As an at-home mom of two young children, I crave adult connection. It gets hard to be really present with my kids if I don't get that. So what works?

I've gone door-to-door in my new neighborhood, sort of like a Welcome Wagon in reverse, meeting people and compiling a neighborhood contact list. I probably know more people in my neighborhood by name than most longer-term residents -- but only a few any better than that. I have hopes that this will progress into regular neighborhood-based social activities or mutual aid like sharing tools or skills. But there's still work to do.

I joined a local church in my denomination (Unitarian Universalist) and have met some folks there. But between having two young kids and my husband not being a church guy, it's been hard to take full advantage of opportunities for connection there. Connections at church are starting to form, but they, too, need work.

So does school. I talk to some of the other parents at my daughter's school, but finding the ones I have much in common with is a slow business.

The one place I felt instantly at home, when I found it, was the monthly spinning/knitting gathering at my local yarn shop. The people there are all different ages and have pretty widely varying lives, but something about their being crafty with fiber seems to bring out common values:

• We crafters seem to value making things more than having them. Many knitters give away most of what they make; it's really the pleasure of creation that keeps us going. This tends to correlate with interests in things like simpler living and slow food, though that's not universal.
  
• We value teaching and learning. People often ask questions when they're having trouble, and there are always people ready to drop what they're doing and help out. Just listening to conversations there, I learn more about the crafts I know and get useful background on those I have yet to learn.
• We know it's important to take time to create. The setting selects for that, of course. Some of us have children or demanding jobs, but we make time for fiber, somewhere between once a month and every day. It feeds us and makes the rest of our lives more doable to take this time for something we love.
  

For me, as a mom, socializing with fiber folk is a form of putting on my own oxygen mask first: making sure I get some down time, some connection, so I have something to give to my kids when they need it. In some families, I think the same idea is expressed, "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." Amen.

I continue to work on connections at church, school, and in my neighborhood, but I've made the most progress with crafty gatherings. Since December I've been hosting a monthly craft circle at my house on a Saturday morning and serving lunch afterward. My husband, who can see the benefits of these connections for me, takes care of our kids and sometimes others who come with their moms (it's all women so far) while we sit and ply (or spin, or knit, or crochet!) our crafts. I've taught a couple of brand-new knitters at the gatherings.

Our circle is slowly growing, and it's knitting together (oh, but the puns are rich here!) friends from school, extended family, and folks I've met at the local yarn shop gatherings. (I got the owner's blessing to recruit there as long as I don't schedule in conflict with their spin/knit-ins.) I can feel my root system getting deeper and more complex with each monthly circle. The oxygen mask is on, and the air is sweet!

I'm So Excited...

I have the Pointer Sisters song running through my head. I've been making a second incarnation of the Menschkin Baby Blanket for a cousin's new baby, and this time I've been keeping good enough track to turn it into a pattern. I just found my notes from the last blanket about the border, and I'm ready to work the border on the new blanket. Rock and roll! Watch this space for that pattern and also a spiral hat design.

A Family Motto

My goodness, it's been a long time since last August! But that's when our house move began... The interior remodeling ran 4 weeks past due, so we camped in hotels and vacation rental houses for a month. Since then we've been in various stages of remodel purgatory. Meanwhile, DS is 9 months old, crawling and seriously considering walking, so there's babyproofing and general chasing after him to do. It's been a very busy time!

Since last summer we've read the entire Little House series of books to DD (4.5 years old), who loved them. (Among other things, they have provided opportunities for lots of discussion and learning about Native Americans and about how beliefs about disciplining children have changed!) DH and I went on to read some of Laura Ingalls Wilder's other works, including a collection of her newspaper pieces called Little House in the Ozarks. Wilder wrote from the standpoint of a successful farm wife in Missouri, ruminating on issues of importance to her and giving advice to those who might want it. A question she asked in one article was, why shouldn't a family have a motto, as many other purposeful organizations do? She gave "Always prepared" as one possible example.

I got to thinking about it. It was a good time to be considering this, since I was somewhat discontented with our intrafamily dynamics and looking for ways toward more harmony and less strife. It was clear we needed more kindness and cooperation, running in all directions. DD, as a new big sister and an almost-5-year-old, is getting a little obstreperous sometimes, but I don't have to engage in much introspection to see that much of her unkind or uncooperative behavior is learned from yours truly. Ouch. Okay, there's some room to grow there.

I let the idea sit for a couple of days and added learning as another important family value: We parents have a lot to teach our kids, yes, but our interactions with them can be greatly enriched by a measure of curiosity on our part about who they are as people, and what they need from us in a given moment, week, or month. Also, lifelong learning is something I enjoy, benefit from, and want to encourage in my kids.

So, "Kindness, Learning, Cooperation." I decided it needed a bit more of an alliterative ring to it, so it became, "Kindness, Curiosity, Cooperation." I shared it with DH, who liked it. I started talking with DD about it, and it's been fruitful.

Focusing on a value of cooperation has encouraged me to talk about our activities in terms of common goals. So we're not hurrying to get ready for preschool just because Mama is a chronically punctual tyrant; we're doing it because she and I both, for our own reasons, want her to get to preschool on time. Any time I think we have a shared goal, but she's dragging her feet about it, I'll take a couple of deep breaths and say something like, "My goal right now is for you to eat enough food that you won't be hungry during the night, and do it soon enough that you can go to bed soon and not be tired in the morning. And I'd like the food you eat to be healthy food so you can stay well and grow strong. That's what I'm trying to do. What's your goal right now? Do we have the same goals?" This has been much more effective at strife-reduction than just haranguing her some more!

Focusing on kindness has helped keep me honest about my behavior toward others, especially my family. Isn't it sometimes easier, perhaps especially for those of us raised in the middle class, to be kinder to strangers or acquaintances than to those we hold dearest? I mean, there's nothing wrong with kindness to strangers, but why do we so often show our worst faces to our families? Perhaps it's because we feel safe with them, and know on some level that they will not abandon us for having a bad day. But I have to remember -- kids are learning all the time. What am I teaching with my behavior right now?

Focusing on curiosity is totally for my own benefit right now. DD is naturally curious -- all I have to do is listen to her questions and try not to brush them off. But I need the discipline of asking myself, and asking her, about what's going on for her. She can't always tell me, especially if she's in the middle of an emotional upset. But I think it helps both of us to hear me ask.

We have family-motto checkups. Sometimes I'll ask on a ride somewhere in the car, "How do you think we're doing with kindness and cooperation lately?" She usually focuses on her own behavior first: "Well, I cooperated pretty well this morning. And last night I watched the baby for you while you cooked dinner." I love giving her a chance to notice what she's doing well. Then I'll ask, "How do you think I'm doing?" A recent answer: "Pretty good. I think you only yelled at me once today."

Ouch. Okay, still room to grow there.

Perfectionism, Pragmatism, and... Pentathlon

I've been watching the Olympics. A lot. At first I mostly watched gymnastics. But after a while, it got annoying how much the judges were essentially looking for sameness -- for perfection. It's a sport of deductions, and no one measures up to that perfect 10 anymore. Does this strike anyone else as an exercise in frustration?

So then I started watching more track and field events. There, no one cares much what your form is like, only how fast, how high, how far you go. And man, some of those folks can go fast! Usain Bolt is amazing. I liked how he didn't seem to care about the few more hundredths of a second he could have shaved off his time in the 100 meters -- he just wanted to celebrate! I love watching high jumpers, pole vaulters, you name it.

But a few days ago, my Olympics viewing took a whole new turn when I watched the equestrian portion of the men's modern pentathlon. There had been a torrential rain, and the arena was in terrible shape. This being modern pentathlon, the riders and horses only had about 20 minutes to get acquainted with each other before their attempts at the 12-jump course. (Modern pentathlon, I'm told, is based on 19th-century military experience, where an officer trapped behind enemy lines would not have had the luxury of riding a horse he'd trained with for years.) One rider after another racked up penalties for the horses refusing to jump the gates at all. Several were thrown from their horses. And what did they do? Cry? Jump up and down? Kick the judges? Nope. Mostly they sauntered over to wherever their alarmed horses had ended up, remounted, and went about their muddy business. Sure, a few seemed frustrated, but by and large they they took it pretty well. One rider, after giving up and taking the maximum penalty because his round was already so bad -- and, I suspect, because he wanted to conserve energy and unbroken bones for the run afterward -- grinned and patted the horse's neck repeatedly as he returned to the paddock.

I just have to love these guys. Can you imagine, being good enough to get to the Olympics in your sport and still having an event where getting thrown off your horse in front of millions of viewers is a realistic likelihood? Gymnasts and track athletes do risky things and sometimes have embarrassing falls or get hurt, but those horses seem like a far more potent wild card.

So I got to thinking about the parallels between Olympic sports and life skills like getting the house ready to have friends over for dinner. Can you picture these elite athletes as hosts?

There's Gillian Gymnast, cleaning her house with perfect form and grace, nary a hair out of place nor a splatter on her clothes, using exactly the right tool for each task and getting the house white-glove clean. She cleans precisely as her mother taught her, right down the type of cloth she uses for polishing the door knocker, and her roast chicken is exactly the same (and very good) every time.

In the next house is Tillie Track Star. Unconcerned with her own looks while cleaning or the exact design of her tools, she concentrates on efficiency, getting the house company-ready in minimum time so she can knit, get dressed, and try a new recipe for dinner. Sure, there are a few dust bunnies left hidden under the couch, only the high-traffic areas got vacuumed this time, and the spice rack isn't in alphabetical order, but who cares! Bottom line: The house looks great with minimum stress.

And around the corner, we find Petunia Pentathlete. She cleans by the seat of her pants, using whatever tool or cleaning product is available to do the job. As she wipes the bathroom sink, she is suddenly interrupted by sewage erupting from the bathtub drain. Petunia chuckles, takes a photo to show her friends later, checks an online reference to help decide whether to call the plumber, tackle the problem herself, or hang an "out of order" sign on the door, and then moves on with her afternoon. Maybe the whole house didn't get clean this week, but she did her best and didn't stress out, and still enjoyed the friends who came for dinner -- take-out this time, for goodness' sake!

May your days be as relaxed as Tillie's, but when the wheels come off, may you have the grace under fire of Petunia. Happy housekeeping!

A Celebration of Omnivory

This week DS turned four months old, which is when most kids get over the food sensitivities that contribute to colic. My DS was sensitive to dairy and soy in my diet, so I cut them out when he was a few weeks old. I also never reintroduced chocolate or citrus after starting my elimination diet.

But this week, I brought them all back, and he's doing great! Yippeee! I got back chocolate, orange juice, ruby grapefruit, Mexican food, Indian food, goat cheese, soy milk (I make my own at home -- soymilk maker, anyone? -- and use the bean pulp to make awesome, fluffy homemade bread)... so many things! I'm loving it. I get to be an omnivore again. (Okay, still not eating beef, hydrogenated oils, or most fish, but those were already off the menu for their own reasons.)

The funny thing is, I wasn't missing this stuff that much for its own sake. It's actually possible for me to live happily without cheese! Who knew?! The hard part was that anytime I went out to eat or ate food provided by someone else (potlucks, parties, etc.), I had to grill them about the ingredients. Do you know how hard it is to get restaurant food without dairy or soy? Oy vay! So, socially speaking, my life just got a lot easier. And less expensive, since I can stop buying packaged rice milk and bread.

Also, I can go back to having more vegetarian meals, now that dairy and soy protein sources are both available to me. Legumes would normally have been a fallback for me, but unfortunately, the food components that make most people gassy also get into breast milk, so DS suffered when my bean intake became significant.

Now that I've made my first post-colic batch of soy milk, maybe I'll continue the celebration by learning to make my own cheese.

Knitting? Spinning? Mostly casualties of the Olympics, which I'm watching in bits and pieces online. Though now that my giant-size DS has outgrown his infant car seat (You know, the one that's supposed to be good until they're 6 months old? And he's 4 months?), which we could bring into the house if he fell asleep in the car, I'm carrying my sock knitting in the car for those times when he falls asleep and I have time to just park in the shade and knit. Unfortunately, when I finished my first sock, I tried to graft off K2, P2 rib from memory instead of looking it up. Now I'll have to take it out and do it over, 'cause that sock is not stretchy enough to make it over my heel. Feh. But you know, making my own cheese would totally make up for it. :)

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Selling My House

My house has now been officially on the market for almost two weeks. No offers yet, though a few people seem pretty seriously interested. The process of getting it ready for showing was truly arduous, especially for someone with my history. There was one room in the house that had never been fully unpacked and set up for use. It was half-full of boxes, files, disassembled furniture, and spinning and knitting supplies. D'you think it's telling that that room is the only room in the house where I have some personal space all my own?? Oy, I loathe the last stages of unpacking. All those decisions -- Do I keep this? Where does it go? And the self-recriminations -- Aargh, I already bought a replacement for this because I couldn't find it! How could I leave this in a box for a whole year? Why do I hang onto so much junk? And so on. Totally paralyzing.

I had to decide, over and over again, not to pay attention to those awful voices in my head. With a lot of help and moral support from my cousin, who is working this summer as my babysitter/organizational assistant, I slogged through the hardest stuff, pitching the junk, filing the files, packing up the craft supplies I won't be able to use before we move. Then in a couple of days on my own, I got through the rest. The room -- a den with my desk in a little nook -- is beautiful, peaceful, CLEAN. And so is the rest of the house.

Getting ready for showing was sort of like a Manhattan project. A Herculean effort to get the house ready to be that special fiction that house-hunters want to see: spacious, clean, uncluttered, and depersonalized, to allow maximum imagination of what their stuff would look like here, and how gracious their life could be in such a beautiful, sparsely furnished home. When I get moved to the new house in a month or two, I think I want to put the same level of energy into getting the house set up for the life we want there. No more of this not finishing unpacking until it's time to pack for the next move stuff. I'm hoping this next house will be a long-time landing place for us. I want every room to be usable. Know what I mean? My cousin says she LOVES unpacking. I hope she has some time on her hands!

Meanwhile, back at the current house, we get calls for showings every few days, often on short notice. That means we pretty much have to keep the place immaculate all the time, which is an extremely foreign way for me to live. Relatively uncluttered, functional, comfortable -- yes, I strive for that and often achieve it. Immaculate and ultra-pared-down? Sorry, that girl doesn't live here.

But then this voice pipes up. She's been getting louder over the two weeks or so of living in a semi-staged house. "Wouldn't it be easier to just clean up the lunch dishes now, while they're fresh, instead of checking email or paying the bills first? Wouldn't it be nice to just relax tonight and not worry about doing cleanup chores after the kids are in bed? C'mon, darlin', just do it now. You won't be sorry." And this voice? It comes from inside my head. I can't blame my Mom, who's hundreds of miles away, or even DH, who's on a business trip again. Sure, I could have internalized my Mom's urgings, but it doesn't sound like her. This is me, folks. Or maybe I'm being haunted by FlyLady.

Do I always listen? Nope. I stopped writing in the middle of that last paragraph to do the last of dinner cleanup, at 9:30 p.m. That gentle urging proved irresistible, albeit belatedly. But you know, in the old days, I'd put off the dinner cleanup and the litter boxes until after 10:30, when I should really be getting to bed -- or hours later on a bad night. I guess the triple pressures of DH being gone, the house being for sale, and the housekeepers we tried to hire for the for-sale period not returning our calls, are doing some good. I can't claim I'm doing all this great cleaning-as-I-go alone: DH and my cousin have also put in a lot of work. But the good news, my friends, is that I am doing it at all.

Creative Block

I'm in one of those periods where I can't think of anything interesting to write about, and I'm not even in the mood for knitting or spinning much. I'm doing okay with my house and my kids. Maybe it's that I've been rereading the fifth Harry Potter book. Rereading novels doesn't do much for my creative side. But I'm done with the book now, so it's time to jump-start the writing thing again.

So here's a meme. It came to me from sockpr0n, who I noticed on Ravelry because of her GORGEOUS handspun socks. I wanna do that someday.

1. What was I doing 10 years ago? In 1998, I was single, but had begun searching in earnest for a mate. (I found him in 1999.) I spent the first half of 1998 working as a science writer and editor at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and the second half at grad school, in the Master's and Credential in Science and Math Education program at UC Berkeley. I ended up finishing the credential but never finishing my master's project.
2. What are 5 things on my to-do list for today? Get my house listed for sale (already closed on the new one, but tenants are there through July); do bedtime for both my kids (DH was out playing competitive badminton this evening); get a neighbor to move the camper parked in front of my house before any potential buyers come looking; do the grocery shopping with my 2.5-month-old son in the front baby carrier; look through kitchen magazines and books for inspiration for remodeling the kitchen in the new house.
3. Snacks I enjoy? Date/roasted almond/coconut bonbons my postpartum doula taught me how to make; chips and salsa (SOO glad DS isn't sensitive to corn in my diet, as DD was in her colicky days); hummus and pita/veggies/chips; baked sweet potato "fries," popcorn popped with oil and sugar to make a light, sweet coating...
   
4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire? Go big into microlending as a way to address poverty in developing countries and elsewhere; endow school music, art, and experiential science programs; let DH quit his programming job and do photography, electronic music, open-source software and woodworking in between helping me with the above; start a center where people could learn pre-industrial crafts and survival skills like sewing, knitting, spinning, weaving, gardening, food preservation, woodworking with hand tools, metalsmithing, etc.
   
5. Places I have lived? In order: Dallas, TX; Colorado Springs, CO; Walnut Creek, Oakland, Alameda, and Pleasant Hill, CA; Boulder, CO.
   
6. Jobs I have had? High school physics and math teacher, science writer/editor at a national laboratory, middle school life science and pre-algebra teacher, full-time mom.
   
7. People I want to know more about? Some of my fellow spinners -- do we really have the values and interests in common that I project? My sister -- she's built quite a life, and sometimes I think I don't know her all that well.

Alpaca Madness

Two weeks ago I spent part of a day at the Estes Park Wool Market (Estes Park, CO). DH came along to take care of the kids and bring me DS for nursing as needed. We had arranged this months before DS was born so that I could experience this regional fiber extravaganza. I really appreciated DH's work to make it possible. And next year, I'll leave bottles -- it was challenging for both of us to be there, away from the comforts of home, with two kids who weren't particularly interested in being there.

But oh, those couple of hours I got to myself were fun! The Wool Market features a sheep wool tent; tents or barns devoted to sheep, goats, paco-vicunas, llamas, and possibly other species I'm forgetting; animal judging shows and fun events like the Llama Limbo and sheepdog demonstrations; and a giant tent with market stalls for yarn, fiber, spinning and knitting equipment, and other fiber-related treats. I didn't want to bring home a lot of bulk this year, since we're moving soon and my time for hobbies is pretty limited with an infant in my life, but I found a couple of beauties to bring home:



These are alpaca rovings from fiberinspirations.com, in beautiful natural colors, 4 oz. each. I hope to turn them into some kind of scarf or shawl, and perhaps a hat to match if there's enough. They're so snuggly soft!



I also brought home this 0.5-ounce spindle from woollydesigns.com. I had seen their stuff on the web, but one time trying this spindle in person was enough to sell me. It spins like a beautiful dream. The bent hook on top helps a lot -- why didn't I think of that? The cop of honey-alpaca singles has grown to about four times this much since this photo.



Hooray for small projects! It's much easier to spindle for 5-10 minutes between child-care and house-care duties than it is to get going on my spinning wheel (or write a blog entry...), mostly because the spindle is portable. DS even likes watching it for short periods. Think he'll be a Fiber Boy?

Hats Off to Single Moms

The last three days have been DH's first business trip since DS was born 10 weeks ago -- he returns tonight. I have to say, I don't know how the single moms, especially those with more than one child, do it. Just handling bedtime for both kids the last two nights has worn me out. I've had a helper two afternoons, and DD's been at preschool two mornings, and I'm pooped. And I'm not even bringing in an income! If I were, I guess I'd have some kid-free time with the kids at day care, but then there wouldn't be any nap opportunities. Oy.

On the other hand, this has been an excellent exercise in time management. It reminds me of 1996, when I started training for triathlons. I needed to fit in six training sessions per week, two in each sport, and my life already felt chock-full. (I was single and living alone with my two cats then -- I had NO IDEA what a full life was like, my friends.) But I found that having that high-priority, time-intensive commitment forced the rest of my life to fall into place as it never had before. Suddenly I was keeping my house cleaner, eating more healthy meals, getting to bed on time -- things that had been really hard to do before.

There is immense power, for me, in realizing that I have little or no slack in my schedule. I look at what I want or need to do, all of it high-priority, and how tightly it fits into my 24 hours per day. And then I realize that I can either get my s*** together, or I can watch the wheels fall off my life. Business-trip SAHM-hood with two kids triggers the getting-the-s***-together response. I'm eating well, getting the chores done, taking care of the kids (albeit with less quality time for each than I'd like because there's no DH to trade off with, and thank goodness no one's sick...), and getting almost enough sleep. And these things often don't happen as well when DH is around. Of course, when he's around I get more slack, and that slack can feel sanity-saving.

I guess it's time to take another look at what sanity means to me. Time for hobbies and lazy time with the kids, or healthy meals and an orderly house? Of course it's a balance of both. But noticing how good it feels to have the kitchen clean every evening is an eye-opener about how much the orderly house part figures in. It's as if the clean kitchen and cleared floors are a symbol to me, each night alone, that I can do this after all. It's hard, but it's not impossible, and my own character flaws, daunting though they may seem, aren't enough to put it out of reach.

My hat is off to those who pull it off, day after day.

Mars and Venus?

I've been thinking about editing yesterday's blog entry to eliminate the somewhat-negative description of my husband's behavior in the second paragraph. But instead, I want to ruminate a bit about it.

DH watched me write most of that blog entry. He explained, in his defense, that the way he was brought up, surprises for things like birthdays were supposed to be magical -- completely mysterious, produced invisibly, and so on. Even to let on that a surprise might be in the offing would be to spoil it.

This correlates with comments he makes about housekeeping sometimes -- comments that really burn my grits. I'll spend all day cleaning the main level, and he'll walk in and say, "Wow, the mess magically disappeared!" He insists that to him, this would be a compliment. I'd much rather hear, "Wow, you really worked hard on this! Thank you -- it looks so much better!" And if he threw in, "I'll be sure to pick up after myself every day to help keep it nice!" well, that would be amazing. And actual follow-through? The stuff of erotic stories, I'm telling you.

But getting back to the main idea here, is this a gender difference? I can't think of a reason men would tend to want to be seen as magicians, at least more than women. Is it a software-engineer thing? DH's work is to design and program the tools other programmers use to make great casual video games. Perhaps the highest compliment you could pay his work is to say that it's totally invisible -- that is, that it makes the game programmer's work effortless because they don't have to think about the tools.

I think the reason it feels like a gender difference to me is that so much of my work, "women's work" (raising the kids, cleaning the house, cooking dinner, etc.) is most noticed when it's not done, or done poorly. Plus, a lot of people who haven't done it look at the life of a stay-at-home mom and wonder what she does all day. So to me, it's a compliment when someone who's not a SAHM notices how much work I've managed to get done in a day with one or more kids to take care of as well. It's really challenging to do the housework and still pay decent attention to the kids, especially with an infant in the mix. I aspire to do both better, and it may be a little easier when the kids are older and can help more.

But a word to the wise: When it happens that the kids are happy and the housework is done, it ain't magic. It's 70% perspiration (skipping the nap is the hard part), 20% careful planning (transitions, anyone?) and 10% dumb luck (no major crises today, thank goodness!).

Birthday Blues, and the Cure

So I had a birthday. Ever try having a non-decade birthday (I'm in my late 30s) a month after giving birth to a baby, and only a week or so before the other child's birthday? Oh, and while you're on a really stripped-down diet to try to determine what's making the baby colicky? (No dairy, eggs, spicy stuff, onions, garlic, citrus, soy, wheat... the list goes on. For a while.)

Add to this mixture a husband who sometimes appears to forget birthdays and anniversaries. He seldom actually forgets, but sometimes his preparations are obscure enough to make me wonder. The night before my birthday, he actually let me get to tears about feeling neglected before he told me that of course he was doing something for my birthday. Could he just tell me, "Don't worry, I have something planned." Noooo! Well, eventually he did, I guess figuring that blowing the secret that a surprise existed was worth it to avoid further angst and get to sleep.

So on my birthday, he comes home with a pair of earrings (this hint obtained long enough ago that I'd mostly forgotten), and that evening he makes a birthday cake.

Now, did you read that first paragraph?

I'm not going to go into the details of the cake, because you can find them on DH's blog, here. Suffice it to say that it was yummy, had candles, and shouldn't set off DS's colic. And that DH went WAY out on a limb inventing it. Ever try making a cake with substitutions for practically every ingredient? Okay, he used sugar and baking powder. Still, stone soup this ain't. This is baking -- supposedly an exact science.

If that isn't enough to cure the birthday blues, well, I don't know what is. (Okay, okay, I know what is, but it's only been one month postpartum!!)

In keeping with the main theme of this blog, I should also note that two days ago, DH took care of DS and DD both (well, I ended up nursing DS a fair amount, but still...) so that I could host an evening gathering of spinners and knitters at our community house. It was a nice substitute for the monthly knit/spin-in at the yarn store, which will have to wait until DS is either not nursing so often, or can travel better.

Cared for? Yes. Still sleep-deprived? Yes. But that's a different post.

Who Needs Cashmere?

Have I touched knitting needles since I went into labor?
No.

But I've thought about it. Here's one of my conclusions: When people lust after super-soft cashmeres, alpacas, etc., part of the reason is that they haven't had enough chances to handle a baby's feet recently. Or stroke their cheek against a baby's downy hair for minutes on end while he falls asleep on their shoulder. I haven't felt any fiber that touched that level of softness, and folks, I've handled qiviut within recent memory.

I'll give the fine fibers this: They are a lot lower-maintenance and, even at a king's ransom per ounce for qiviut, less costly than a baby. (This is especially true when the baby in question spends his first week in the NICU -- thank goodness for health insurance! This hospital stay is the sort of thing that could have made life very hard if we had been in a different stage of our financial lives.) Don't get me wrong; I'll take what I have, sleep deprivation and all, thanks! But the fibers may help ease the transition when my babies aren't babies anymore. And they don't need 3 a.m. feedings.

They don't, right?

Baby Accomplished

Hey there. Not much time for blogging, what with a newborn and all, but here he is:



Nice, eh? The birth was great -- totally unmedicated and fabulous. I would do it again if I wanted another child. Unfortunately, DS had neonatal pneumonia and a small host of other related issues, so we spent a week in the hospital. Fortunately, our local hospital has about the best NICU setup you could ask for. Anyway, now we're home and have the wireless version of our baby. Life is good. Except the sleep part.

FO: Mittens for Afghans; Charity Knitting

It started to feel a little pointless to work on one more pair of wool socks for myself, with summer coming soon. I mean, it's good TV knitting and all, but who has time for much TV with a baby on the way?

I looked up charity knitting on Ravelry and found that handmade items often don't make it to their intended recipients. Afghans for Afghans, however, kept coming up as an organization that handles this well.

Because it gets quite cold in Afghanistan, and because washing machines are rare, Afghans for Afghans asks for wool items rather than cotton, acrylic, etc. So I mined my stash for wool and found some ball ends of Noro Kureyon. I used a kid-size mitten pattern from Ann Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns. It was fun to try to make non-identical but still matching mittens. Here's the result:



Mittens knit up delightfully quickly. Good stuff. These were done in perhaps 4 hours total.

This has me thinking about other charity knitting or craft projects. More locally, there's Project Linus, which collects handmade blankets for kids staying in hospitals for extended periods. They take crocheted, knitted, tie-quilted, and other blankets. Different requirements to learn (more emphasis on softness and washability than warmth), but this is a project that could be fun with a group of crafty friends, knitting squares to join, or tying a quilt together.

On the parenting side, my 3-year-old DD has lots of questions about who is getting these mittens. It's a good chance to provide some information about poverty and war, and to try to do it in an age-appropriate manner that educates without overly alarming. This is part of what makes me think about Project Linus -- it would be a chance to see more directly, or even participate in, giving to others we don't know who are in need.