Cat inna box

She doesn't seem to realize that she doesn't fit.

update

Man, yesterday was torturous. The internet at our house dropped out at about 2pm and didn't come back until 11pm, so I missed the entire election. On top of that, I had an exam this morning, so I had to study at home instead of going out somewhere. I can watch everything today I guess, but it won't be the same...

I'm starting to think I've found the point where I've taken on not quite too many activities. What with taking a class every day and trying to get to the necessary appointments in Seattle so I can continue my education, I've had very little time for anything else, including blogging. I hate to think that I'll have to take a hiatus until things settle down, but then it's not like I have time to think of things to write.

The desire for an easy life is almost overpowering sometimes.

Made with glue and a glove and some pliers

My last few posts have been rather grim, so here are some pictures of my new walking stick. It is entirely homemade, from a piece of wood salvaged from the forest floor on a hiking trail near here (which is not completely ecologically sound, I know, but hey, its a good cause). My brother helped me cut the ragged ends off it, then I stripped the bark off and sanded it, and my dad varnished it and scrounged around for a bit of rubber to stick to the bottom so it doesn't slide on smooth floors.

I'm really quite pleased with the result, which doesn't quite come through in these photos. I'm not very good at close-up shots, but the color here at least is accurate. And you can't see it, but there are neat looking insect burrow trails on the surface of the bottom half. So far I've gotten compliments on it from four or five random strangers, all at the VA, oddly enough. Or maybe its not so odd that vets would be walking stick connoisseurs; the US doesn't take such good care of vets that we're entitled to crazy things like houses, John McCain notwithstanding, but most vets here can at least get a cane!

To offset my bitterness about John McCain and his ridiculous wealth- and I really am trying not to rant about him so much, I feel like I have spent too much time being angry with his ignorant entitled attitude- here's a gratuitously beautiful picture. Its been raining loads, but my neighbor has these gorgeous lilies that seem to get brighter the darker the sky gets.

Fingerless Gloves with Easy Cable

Just to prove I'm a big dork, here's a pattern for fingerless gloves with a cable on the back that I wrote up yesterday. Its a pretty simple pattern, but its the first one I've written all by myself. The more I knit, the more I realize how valuable knitting has become to me as a coping mechanism. To be able to create something beautiful that I can hold in my hand and then give away to someone who actually wants to have it is a good thing for my soul.

Materials
Fingering or worsted weight yarn, I'm not sure how much exactly but not much. I made these from an unused remaining skein that my mother had left over in her closet, so I'm not sure even what kind of yarn it is, probably some kind of wool blend that was thin-ish.
size 9 US needles

Sizing
These fit me, and my hands are 7 1/4 in around the palm. Add stitches in multiples of four to make them bigger, I guess.

Right Hand
Cast on 32 sts
Knit in k2, p2 rib for two inches or preferred length of cuff.
Next row: p3, k2, p6, k2, p to end
Row 2: k3, p2, k6, p2, k to end
Row 3: p3, k2, p6, k2, p to end
Row 4: k3, p2, sl next three sts on cable needle and hold at back, k3, then k3 from cable needle, p2, k to end
Row 5 an 7: as rows 1 and 3
Rows 6 and 8: as row 2

Repeat rows 1-8 three times, binding off on last row 8
Sew seam, leaving space for thumb and sewing bridge between first and second fingers.

The left hand is just a mirror image of the right hand, so the cable ends up on the back of the hand.
Cast on 32 sts
Knit 2 inches of k2, p2 rib
Next row: p19, k2, p6, k2, p3
Row 2: k19, p2, k6, p2, k3
Row 3: p19, k2, p6, k2, p3
Row 4: k19, p2, sl next 3 sts on cable needle and hold at back, k3, then k3 from cable needle, p2, k3
Rows 5 and 7: as rows 1 and 3
Rows 6 and 8: as row 2

Repeat rows 1-8 three times, binding off on last row 8
Sew seam, leaving space for thumb and sewing bridge between first and second fingers.

I could learn to swim

This picture is kind of dark, but its the best one I have of my recently finished laptop sized over the shoulder bag. I've been doing a lot of knitting, finishing up some small projects and such, but this is my real accomplishment from the past couple weeks. I'm quite proud of this bag since it seems so useful. It even has a side pocket for a waterbottle, although it doesn't show well in this photo.

I also made five cat toys, one for each kitten, but I didn't take pictures of them before and now I can't because the kittens have all been given to new homes. Its heartbreaking. I honestly believe that the past month or so would have been hard for me to get through without these kittens cheering up my life. Even when every other aspect of life sucks, kittens make everything better.

While I knit, I like to watch TV, but since I hate commercials and I'm picky about the shows I like I usually get shows from the library, or occasionally I watch illegal copies online. However, since I've been living with my parents, its a bit awkward to watch TV shows that make them uncomfortable with sex and violence and such- and they're such nice people that most TV shows do. The solution is to watch documentaries. In the past couple weeks, I've watched documentaries on deep sea volcanoes, autism, the atom bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and two BBC videos from the Walking With Dinosaurs series, Walking with Monsters, which is a kind of prequel, and Allosaurus.

Documentaries are interesting, but since they're produced for a general audience, you don't usually get the kind of details that are really fascinating. Allosaurus was neat, because it got into the forensic work behind the knowledge scientists have about dinosaurs, but I would love to get a similar DVD collection that really aimed to teach methods and detailed facts. I've ordered a lecture series from the library on biology, The Science of Life, from the Teaching Company, and I have high hopes.

My father pointed out to me the other day that since I was previously enrolled at the University of Washington, I could re-enroll with minimal effort and start taking classes again, one at a time maybe. The idea of going back to school intrigues me. I'm still resisting settling down in my parents' house for any long period of time, but if I did, I could go to school. Its an attractive idea.

pull the tricks out of our sleeves

For various boring personal reasons, I'm looking into creative ways to live under a roof with an income of about $750/month. So far I've come up with:

• Working as a nanny for a family with one or two quiet school age kids in exchange for room and board. This plan hinges on the kids being extremely easy to take care of and no one needing me to clean or cook anything on a regular basis, but I think if there was a family out there who understood chronic pain... so basically its a very long shot.
• Living in the projects. Specifically these projects. The major drawback to this plan is the huge waiting list for spaces. That, and the fact that making my way through government paperwork gives me a blinding headache just thinking about it.
• Buy some cheap rural land and live in my car while slowly building a tiny house like this one from the Tumbleweed Tiny House Co. Making this affordable might be impossible, and living in my car would be uncomfortable, but this is the solution I like best in the long term. My dad has done a lot of renovations on his house, and I know he and my brothers would help me were I to try to build a house like this, so building it might not actually be that hard. Just the money would be the issue, really, and the VA does cheap-ish home loans... but this one is a bit far-fetched.
• Living with my parents while I fight the VA for the full benefits to which I am entitled. This is what my parents want me to do, but I have to say, I'm not enthusiastic.
  

My other real option is to forget about the roof over my head, take off in my car and live in a Walmart parking lot somewhere. It would be an interesting life experience, I'm sure, but I think it would freak out my parents a little bit, and I'm actually afraid that if I do the homeless thing I'll get too separated from normalcy and I might have some trouble getting back to normal if the situation ever improved. Also, being homeless is quite dangerous for women, or so I hear.

If anyone has any ideas to add to the list, feel free to share.

A Gorilla on the Road

There was this post for BADD, by Mary at This Is My Blog, comparing having a disability with having a gorilla living in your house with you. I find it a very apt description of the process of "taming" your illnesses and injuries until you're able to cope with them in a practical way. Anyone interested in a vivid illustration of what it means to cope with a disability should read that post.

I think in the past year I've come along way in managing my life. It's helped that I haven't been putting pressure on myself to go out and get a regular job and fit into a regular life; in some ways getting the Voc Rehab people to admit that I'm not rehabable has improved the quality of my day-to-day life. I've been able to allow myself to slow down and take all the time I need to get places and do things, but more importantly, I've changed the things I try to do.

And now it's summertime, the time I feel the best, and I'm contemplating taking my new openness to life onto the next level. I've written here before about my desire to travel, and about my poverty due to the VA's denial of the reality of my condition, and now these two things have come together fortuitously. My husband and I will soon be out a place to live due to various factors, and my tentative plan is to start a grand journey, camping out of my car and exploring the world a little bit at a time. My gorilla and I are going on the road.

First stop will be my parents' house outside of Seattle, possibly for several weeks, and then I hope to head south. The trip from here to Washington will take me several days; its my trial run to make sure that I can actually handle sleeping in the back of my VW and driving around strange places without getting too stressed out. Maybe the trial run will fail and I'll be stuck living in my parents' attic or something, but I have high hopes, and faith in my hard-won coping skills.

I also hope that this may help my husband. Quite frankly, while I have made friends with the gorilla in our house, he hasn't. It would have never occurred to me, before, that the person with a seriously life-altering physical event could adapt to the changes in their life better than someone who just has to sit and watch the person affected. But a gorilla in the house fixated on your housemate is still a gorilla in your house, I guess, and he's had a hard time. I hope that giving him some time where I'm not sitting around being sick at him may help him out.

I realize that all my high hopes may be a little foolish, brought on by sunny days and a desire to choose to be optimistic, but even if things go horribly wrong, I'll still have a nice visit with my family and some neat photos to share when I get onto a computer again. My sister's cat had kittens like two days ago, so when I get there they'll be a week and a half-ish old. Honestly, I'm about as excited to see those kittens as I am to see the rest of my family, how sad is that?

dumbstruck with the sweetness of being

My sleep is all messed up again, so this morning at about 5:45, as the sun was just starting to shine through the haze on the horizon, I took a walk around the block with my trusty camera. I took fewer pictures than I would have liked, since apparently civilized people get up and go to work as the sun rises, and I thought I might get caught examining someone's garden as they came outside, and I chickened out.

Here's a few of my favorites though. I really am fortunate to live in a place where people have space to grow gardens; well, I suppose I'm fortunate to live anywhere at all.

Count every beautiful thing we can see

Elizabeth asked her readers- her friends- to go out this weekend and do something living. I scrounged up some batteries for my camera and went to the park. I got some really crappy pictures, and this one.


These plants are dry and brittle and brown. Dead.

When I uploaded this photo and saw it full size, I was reminded of this piece of art, a sculpture by Richard Johnson titled "Parasite (The Thing Within My Spine)." Wheelchair Dancer pointed me to this exhibit of artwork on pain, and I've been meaning to write about it in terms of the success of the representation of physical pain in art, but I've been putting it off because although most of the art in this exhibit is very good, only a couple pieces even come close to actually evoking physical pain. This sculpture is good- seriously, go look at it, read the artist's description- and I love that this photo resembles it, because in this photo Pain is Beauty.

I need that today. I guess this doesn't really fit the directive to go out and do something fun; this post is fundamentally depressing. But, my head feels like I've been run over by something larger than a golf cart but smaller than a semi-truck, my throat is on fire with heartburn and the antacids are doing nothing, my hands are bruised and aching, my neck is radiating pain down to my lower back, my hips are out because I walked around the park this morning, and like a goddamn idiot I went and got a massive sunburn on top of everything else. I am the incarnation of pain, I am panting with it, and in this picture pain is elegance, delicate and architectural.

I wish it was the sixties

Its one of those days where everything seems wrong, and since I can't do a thing about the real problems I have, I try to concentrate on the small, ordinary tasks in front of me. I find that the best therapy for helplessness is to reach out and touch something real: plants in the garden or dirty dishes or yarn on a needle. Physical objects are both more solid and more malleable than fears about the future, more solid than pain or fatigue or worries about money.

Whenever a doctor reads my medical records and sees that I've been diagnosed with depression, they try to refer me to counseling, and I have a hard time explaining why I have no desire to go. Talking about things does make you feel better, but it can only help so much when your problems are genuinely unchangeable. No one can take away the pain I feel, and no one can make the VA give me the benefits to which I'm entitled; talking about things won't change that a bit, but talking is all the help that doctors ever offer.

Completing tasks that decrease the amount of entropy in my immediate environment is my primary method of coping. What I mean is, I plant seeds and knit sweaters because changing some small thing so that its different than it was before is a way of affirming my connection to the world, to life, to happiness. I put my world in order to prove that some things are improvable. I hate to assume that anyone is reading this, but if you see this and have a particular coping mechanism that you've more or less invented on your own, it would be neat to hear about it.

I completed the finishing on two sweaters in the past couple of days, and filled the tires of my bicycle this morning. I'm going to teach myself a new knitting pattern here in a bit, and things are growing in my garden. For now, the sun is shining, and I took some pictures.