Since becoming in-valid…. I am really excited by every little thing that I can get done. No dishes yet, but I can stack the dishwasher!
…but doesn’t think gay couples should be allowed to marry, adopt, or have access to IVF.
And she sees no disconnect.
People shit me. Honestly.
PS. I still have the plague. Snot is never ending, the head throbs, the brain malfunctions, and now the throat is threatening to go on strike too. Wish me luck for the de-cluttering mission tomorrow.
PPS. Thanks everyone for the good anniversary vibes. I think I picked the best man ever, and I’m still thrilled that he picked me.
Ordinarily, Wednesday is hump day. The day that sits squarely in the middle of the week, dragging, and sitting obstinately between you and the weekend. Typically, the longest day of the week. After Monday of course.
This being a short week, Tuesday is now humpday. And I feel a cold coming on. I’ve been sniffling all day, and my brain is about two steps behind.
Today was my first appointment with the osteopath recommended by Mary-Helen, and she was great. I recounted my litany of complaints, and she confidently told me that she had seen worse train wrecks, and that she would be able to help.
Apparently, most people who feel pain get something done about it within 2 years. The fact that I have been suffering with pain for such a long time has done some damage, and it will take some doing to fix things, but I can be fixed, and I should be able to live without pain eventually. It was pretty emotional for me, and I felt that a good dinner was in order. I wandered up to Wagamama (in some pain, but that is to be expected), and had a lovely meal. Vegan too – unless you count the wine.
Catching the train there and back gave me some long missed knitting time, and I am within 10 repeats of finishing the main body of the Melon Shawl. Hopefully I’ll be able to pick up some more yarn on sat at R+L (any idea how much yarn I’ll need for the border compared to the body?), and the right needles for the border. With even more luck, I’ll be ready to start the border on sat, while there are plenty of gurus there to help out if I get stuck.
Speaking of gurus, Sally has just started a blog, Pom Poms. Do pop over and welcome her to the wild world of blogging.
And lastly, many of us find therapy in our knitting (even those of us that are in pain if we knit too much), so it’s wonderful to see someone take the therapeutic aspect of knitting seriously. Check out Stitch Links for more information.
Have a great (short) week, I may miss a day due to tomorrow being my third wedding anniversary. Plans are afoot!
Apparently, sleep is important. And apparently, over 800,000 Australians have some kind of sleep disorder. The majority of these have Sleep Disordered Breathing (SDB), most commonly sleep Apnoea (or apnea if you’re a septic). Apnoea comes in two flavours, Central Apnoea, or Obstructive Apnoea.
Still following? Well, central Apnoea is the scary (scarier?) type, with the brain not sending signals for breathing to occur. This appears to be a leading cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, but since I can’t sell a machine to help the problem, I didn’t learn a lot about it. Obstructive apnoea is caused by (der..) an obstruction of the airway. Most prevalent in overweight men, its incidence is not only massively under diagnosed, it is also on the rise.
So, my point is, if you apply a mask connected to a pressure device (like the opposite of a vacuum cleaner), the obstruction is forced open, and breathing can occur “normally”.
Doesn’t sound very exciting until you see someone stop breathing for more than 10 seconds at a time. The airway closes, but the chest continues to try to suck in air. The heart races, and the patient is “aroused” (and that isn’t a good thing when you talk about sleep).
Sleep comprises of Non-REM and REM sleep. All sleep is good for us, but REM sleep is really important. And arousals limit REM sleep – every time we are aroused (whether we wake or not), and put us back to the earlier stages – resetting the cycle. What this means is that patients never get enough REM sleep, and wake up feeling like they have been run over by a truck. Very often these people also snore, so their sleep partners often don’t sleep well either. The consequences range from low performance and irritability, to psychosis and death. Sleep deprivation due to SDB is thought to be responsible for about 5% of fatal motor vehicle accidents.
So if you or someone you love don’t sleep well, or score high on the Epworth Sleepiness Scale, talk to your GP about having a sleep study – it might change your life. Or save it.
Here endeth the lesson.
See – I did learn something today, despite REALLY wanting to fall asleep during the presentation. Oh, and one really interesting thing. Apparently, obesity is an indicator of SDB – the extra tissue around the airway complicates things. But, SDB can also contribute to obesity. A lack of sleep messes with your endocrine system, and disrupts secretion of leptin/grehlin. It also keeps you tired and without enough energy to maintain a good activity level. Two more days of cramming facts into my poor complaining brain, and then one day of normal work before I jet off to the land of the long white cloud. And I got to knit. I asked the presenter if he minded. Luckily he was an American, and he had read the study about keeping hands active during learning. I am now more more than half way through the main body, and well on my way to scary border town.
And the picture? Just a small thank you to the Chaser team, for bringing the budgie smugglers back into politics.
First, there is this, which reminded me of why it is that I love to take photographs, and also inspired me to take more. I wish I could believe in myself enough to do more about it. But I am getting there.
And then, I found this. Someone who blogs about freakin’ awesome street art around the world. You know that mural of the cat in the hat, that always makes you smile on a grey day? Or the portrait of Martin Luther King that lifts your spirits when you feel like giving up? Or best graffiti I ever saw – “unemployment is not working”.
Which leads me to my next point. Today, one of the owners of the company Mark has been working for as a contractor, msg’d him to ask if he’d be interested in a full time job. Ummmmm, YES! (If the price is right, of course)
Off early this morning to pick up Mark’s birthday present, and swap my GPS. Except it seems to be working well, so I’ve decided to keep it rather than risk going through the teething problems with a new unit.
Late for Rubi+Lana’s, and we left early to go to Mah-Jong Playlunch with Celia and a lovely friend of hers. We had a very tasty vegetarian chinese lunch, and excellent instruction to improve our game.
Then it was back to Mark’s parents place for dinner. After dinner he set up the Wiiii, and the Nettles played virtual sport while I knitted. Shoulder still giving me grief, I didn’t play, but Mark seemed to have fun.
Home for more play.
Found a bunny picture that made me smile today.
Here is where I was at this morning. But looking at it while I waited to get my foot x-rayed, I decided that I wouldn’t be happy with the finished item unless I ripped it back and started again. So I did. Good thing I spent so long at the hospital today, I am back up to three pattern repeats.
And my foot is fixed. Well, fixed enough to give up the boot. No football for another 6 weeks, but I should be fine after that.
Bought a suit, for the increasingly likely NZ trip (Jussi, I don’t know what the itinerary is, but I’d love to catch up). Also picked up a really cheap GPS – advertised for $299, got it for $290. Which would be absolutely spiffing if the damn thing would talk to the satellites. Works perfectly, but doesn’t seem to want to do the “P” part of “GPS”. Pretty sure it isn’t a carbon unit error, Mark couldn’t make it behave either.
PS. Today I passed another milestone in my knitting career – I ripped something back for purely cosmetic reasons. A first for this goal oriented knitter.
PPS. Bloody shoulder hurts again. Asked the foot man “WTF”, he reckons disk injuries can wax and wane, but to be sure, best see the specialist again and get another MRI. That’s $600 at least – and the outcome would be the same as before. I can choose to have surgery, or wait for it to go away. If only it wasn’t affecting my knitting, I’d cope better.
When you believe in something passionately, it’s easy to get caught up in the principle of the thing, and forget the big picture. Conversely, it’s also easy to focus on the result and forget about the principles that get trampled in getting to the end.
Sometimes, the end justifies the means, and sometimes the means is the end. When you are arguing a position of principle in politics, the waters get even muddier.
Say I believe that global warming could be stopped in its tracks if we all wore pink underwear on thursdays. Say I also believe that wearing underwear with tassels helps me reduce my own “personal” greenhouse emissions.
What if the boss of underpants says, “I can help you with the pink underwear, but the tassels have got to go.”? In the big picture, the tassels aren’t important in the slightest, but if I cave on the tassels, then I place myself on the big slippery slope of being vulnerable to the boss of underpants forevermore. I open myself up to scrutiny that I am willing to do a deal with the boss, and I compromise my principles about tassels.
What I want, is pink underpants with tassels. What I can get without help, is khaki coloured y-fronts (which really don’t do anyone any favours). With help, I can get 90% of what I want, and I end up feeling like Lady Macbeth.
Today, I spent far too much time discussing different grades of toilet paper. Wanna know about embossing and perforations? Don’t ask – I’ll tell you.
Mark informed me that the small and furry people with long ears are out of hay. Which is a problem, considering that hay is their principle diet, and that the little rotters can eat their own volume several times over, each and every day, but I managed to get to Carlingford Produce after they officially closed, but before they went home.
The hay is gorgeous! Fresh smelling, and bright green in colour. I think it’s the most I’ve ever paid for a bale of hay ($27.50), but it is possibly the best hay I’ve ever seen – definitely the best since the drought got bad.
Tonight, after the creatures had their dinner, I plucked some more fur and mats out of Miss Blueberry. She was not amused, but she got craisins (bunny crack), and I now have a much larger sample of fuzz for our spinning day on saturday the 10th.
Sally – I may have to rescind my offer of a lift to SSK, unless you want to come to the spinning day too ? We’re meeting in a park to spin and bitch, all welcome – comment if you want me to send you the details.
Picture is of a Lorikeet that came to visit at Tony and Kates after the party last weekend. It’s a bit blurry, but it is true to the state of my mind that morning!
Happy Birthday to Bex, I hope your day was filled with good things.
Mark and I drove up the mountains last night for a housewarming party, and we’re starting to think more seriously about moving west – it’s very likely that when we buy a house, it will be somewhere in the mountains, but in the meantime it may make sense to rent up there for a while.
We had a great time at the party (I met a woman who is going to raise alpacas!), I fell into a deep sleep on the very comfy couch while the party raged around me (getting old, I think I did very well to keep the eyelids up until after 1am), and we had a leisurely breakfast overlooking the valley while the birds kept us entertained.
Not going to the pub today – Mark hasn’t had much sleep, and it’s wet, and we’ve done more than enough driving for one weekend.
And thanks to Celia, I finally have the stitch pattern I need for the sock of my dreams. I’ve been swatching for nearly a year now, and I am on the verge of a breakthrough. Just need to refine a detail or two, and then I can proceed to an actual prototype. Happy!
And if you want to read something a wee bit disturbing, click here.
This is Christophe after our visit to Rubi + Lana’s. Yay!
Disco Knitter 