Misery loves company

I’m the misery.

You’re the company.

I’m particularly fond of the dark circles. Let it be known that I feel like C*R*A*P.

It was another couch day.

The only good thing is that at times my brain was not completely dead. It put “two and two together”, so to speak, in regards to the battle of the stash vs. what the hell do I do now.

For, oh…maybe 3 years?…I’ve had some Schaefer Laurel in Frida Kahlo, 100% cotton, sitting in my stash. (I took a bus tour with a LYS to the Schaefer farm near here, and bought it then. That’s a great little field trip; go if you get the chance. She actually dyes the yarn in her kitchen. Or at least she did then. And dries it in the barn.) Now it’s 1/8 of the way into becoming a summer weight Clap.

I finished the i-cord for the Noro Booga Bag, but have yet to felt it. The energy for such activities was sorely lacking today.

The boyfriend, dear man that he is, brought over enough cold and flu medicine to start a clinic with, and a dish of macaroni and cheese from a Caribbean restaurant he likes. (I know. I know. Mac and cheese on the islands?) It’s one of my favorite comfort foods, though, and I ate every bit of it. (So maybe I’m not dying, after all.)

Anyway, he stayed long enough to see a movie on HBO in it’s entirety, during which time I fell asleep. Yep. I’m a hot date.

I made a crapload of stitch markers yesterday.

(Resume whine here)

(Sort of) middle aged and right now I want someone to tuck me in and hand spoon me my cough medicine. Turning on the humidifier and throwing some Vick’s around for effect would be nice, too.

Barring that, I want my fluffy gray nursemaid to help me to bed. But he’s so busy racing from window to window, keeping an eye on heaven knows what, that I can’t catch him still enough to catch a good picture, let alone coerce him to snuggle with me in bed.

Whine, whine, whine.

I don’t do illness well at all.

Stitch marker lust

I’ve always admired beaded stitch markers in LYS’s, but never spent the money, figuring I could make them myself. And then never did.

A little browsing through AC Moore yesterday with the daughter, plus an unveiling of the beads left over from my Fort Lauderdale days, resulted in this pleasant diversion today.

And we have stitch markers! The wire wraps came back to me pretty quickly, and as usual, some are of far better quality than others.

My time on the couch yesterday yielded a nearly finished Booga bag. I have four more feet of i-cord to whip out, then I think I’m going to add a flap to this one, and somehow incorporate blue/green turquoise beading into the design.

More later.

Yes. I feel better today.

Officially sick

No more “officially” sick than I was yesterday, but as of yesterday, I thought maybe I was just being a whiny chucklehead, and was not sick at all.

Mais non, my little ones. I am officially sick with fever and cough and muscle aches, oh my.

SO…

As a way to amuse myself, I made a list of what I’d do if I won the lottery. And I don’t mean what I’d do if a scratch-off paid $400, but what I’d do if I hit the big one.

1. Pay off all bills. This would take a chunk of the winnings, but if we’re talking millions here, then that’s really chump change.
2. Give my kids each a huge nest egg to start post-college life with. 5 million enough?
3. Each of my parents get a chunk. A mil?
4. Ditto my brother.
5. Boyfriend’s family gets their chunks, too. (BF is pretty much family at this point, so we’d be sharing this windfall.)
6. QUIT MY JOB. Experience life without the constant reminder of mortality. Mine or anyone else’s.
7. Buy a house. Hell. Buy two houses. One here and one somewhere warm.
8. Charity. I’d give mega bucks to animal shelters, both kill and no-kill. Maybe I’d start a no-kill shelter?
9. Charity again. Funds to cancer research.
10. Charity again. Funds to HIV research.
11. Charity again. Big funds to the hospice I work for. A certain percentage to the medical and social work staff (ahem…the ones that keep the place on it’s feet…hello?? Remember them??) to be used for more frequent time off to rest and take care of themselves, and perks like facials and massages and routine oil changes and gas, a paid conference out of state every year for each, and stipends every two years for a new vehicle.
12. Charity again. Big funds to the hospice I work for. This time a fund for patients/families who don’t know where the money for a decent burial is going to come from. Funds for airfare for family to come and say goodbye, if that’s what they’d like. Funds to build a resource center directed at healing — not so much physically as in it’s a miracle; you’re cured! — but healing of the soul, both for the dying and those left behind later on. A list of programs for kids. Programs for parents who’ve lost children. I could go on and on. I suppose a bit of research needs to be done to see that services aren’t duplicated anywhere else in the community (Gilda’s Club, etc.), but now I’m getting w-a-a-a-a-y ahead of myself.
13. Invest and save the rest.
14. Cannot stop at 13. That’s bad luck. Open a yarn/bead/fiber shop. Raise sheep and alpaca and those furry little bunnies in the back (acres). Hire someone to do the care of said animals, as I’m afraid my skills in animal husbandry don’t go much beyond keeping a cat alive. (And if you ask the cat, sometimes not even that.)

I managed a little knitting last night. I need something mindless but pretty to carry me through, so yet another a Booga Bag is a good project. At least it’s better than another scarf.

That’s Noro Kureyon, colorway #213.

I have some beads that I might sew onto it after it’s felted. I have to think about that a little bit further, but here’s what I have in mind, plus turquoise chips.

I have some jump rings and pins that are coppery/natural toned, and some turquoise, hematite, those ceramic beads, and some green glass ones, that I have earmarked for stitch markers. Did I ever mention that I loved green? Or turquoise?

Anyway. Stitch markers. That’s my plan. Will let you know how they turn out.

Vacation vs. Sick

It would appear that –

• I picked up a nice case of airplane crud.
• Work/study efforts of last week have not gone unnoticed by the immune system.
• It’s just my turn to get sick.

I am supposed to be on vacation. Vacation means doing fun stuff. Correct me if I’m wrong here.

• Monday I took my certification exam and went to the office to turn in consents and care plans.
• Tuesday was fun. I spent it with my daughter, buying her birthday presents. (She picked out new, really cool, glasses, and a spring coat that makes her look really incredible.
• Today I had a doctor’s appointment. At which time I bought myself –

• Twice daily BG’s.
• An A1C result higher than before.
• The pleasure of gulping down yet more Metformin.
• An appointment for a Holter monitor.

Yessirree, Bob. I am getting old. Couple that with a low grade fever and a cough, and there you have it.

Vacation gone sick.

Things to be happy reasonably grateful for –

• I bought jeans yesterday a size smaller than usual. If one were to believe this picture, you might think I was really quite trim.

We know this is a trick of the eye.

• I got to waste scads of valuable time taking pictures of crap so that I could make an artsy-fartsy sort of banner for my blog.

• I am slamming some Noro Kureyon into a Booga Bag, since the cabled bag I tried to start was a disaster.

Things to be sort of pissed off about –

• ANTS. Enough said. I bought traps. I know I am full of crap, okay? I know it. Sentient creatures want to live as much as I do. I know. However, these scuzzy little black ants need to find another home. Pronto. Or risk destruction via the spray bottle of eco-friendly lavender cleaner.

Just to keep you on your toes…

I moved over here from Typepad. Moving is a work in progress, as you may guess. I have a lot of links to update.

Switching bloghosts was quickly becoming a no-brainer.  Typepad wants money every month.  Typepad is (to my way of doing things) a bit restrictive.

WordPress is, to quote a fellow Raveler, “the bomb”.

Fortunately, I’m on vacation and have all the time in the world to goof around with this sort of thing.

Right after my doctor’s appointment, roughly scheduled for every 3 months, the purpose of which (as far as I can tell) is to discuss my compliance, or lack thereof.

Nurses are very bad patients.

RN, CHPN

I PASSED!

Not only did I pass, I did pretty well. Of course the obsessive in me wants to know the right answers to the 10/150 questions that I missed, so I never miss them again.

Off to knit a bit, then take a nap.

Phew!

Scared

My exam is in less than an hour.

In perspective, I have not tested at this level since my state boards 17 years ago.

I used to get into “the zone” when testing and my brain would relax and just spew out answers.

I hope my brain still works. I know this stuff. I do.

I’m pretty sure.

So anyway…

So back to Scottsdale.

We head out to the Ocean Club for dinner, since the concierge at the Westin assured us it was the PLACE TO BE, and Paula Abdul dines there.

We dress like this, as this is how Upstate/Western New York professionals dress when on a business/vacation trip with limited space in the suitcase.

Khakis, Clark shoes, what more do you want? Yeah, I could have sprung for a pedicure, but there wasn’t time, because I spend my days taking care of sick people, and forget to take care of myself sometimes. So shoot me.

Anyway, Ocean Club attire is more like this. Evidently there’s a lot of hunting for rich men going on.

She with the sluttiest outfit wins. As my traveling partner and I had neither (A) the bodies required for this activity, nor (2) boob jobs, we sat this game out.

As we sipped (chugged?) our cocktails at the bar before dinner, we reassured ourselves that while we are middle aged, we are not old (yet), and we have good men at home who love us, so thank goodness we don’t need to be playing this trolling for high rollers game. Still. It was hard not to feel very old, and very un-hip.

At a restaurant where a teeny-tiny steak presented bare naked on a large white plate will cost you $36 and sides of vegetables and maybe a potato will run you $18 more, we opted for sides to share and two orders of vanilla battered shrimp appetizers.

Believe me when I tell you, not even McDonald’s delivers food this fast.

Seriously, five minutes after ordering, shrimp, potatoes, and snap peas were thrown in front of us, and we felt a bit like, “get the hell out of our restaurant, you’re ruining it” or something like that. Again. Old. Un-hip.

So we ate and left, but not before over-tipping the cute man-child waiter who we thought might be flirting with us until we realized we had sons his age. I think we tipped him so well to make ourselves feel a little better.

Not quite finished in the humiliation department, however, we ended the trip with over-priced “spa” treatments. I had an aloe wrap to soothe my sunburned shoulders. This consisted of laying on a table on top of a huge sheet of mylar, and allowing some girl to spray ice cold lavender water all over me. Then she slathered me with warm aloe, which was nice, and wrapped me like a giant taco. While I was heating up, she gave me a pretty decent scalp massage, and sort of darted around my feet (again, pedicure lacking). Then she unwrapped me, thereby causing my sunburn to pucker up in painful goose bumps, while she slathered me with freezing cold cream and sent me on my way. Cost? $150. Did I enjoy this ice cold experience? No. Did I tip her for her trouble? No, I did not. I suspect we would not be welcome back there again.

However, in an attempt to further our humiliation (because we just couldn’t get enough), we decided to do the hot tub. We were told that “clients” went in the tub nude. So we wrapped ourselves carefully in towels to hide the girly bits from each other, sank into the bubbly water, and discovered, to our dismay, that boobs float and the site of bobbing nipples among co-workers is probably not cool.

As we were sitting there, bobbing nipples and all, we read the “rules” of the hot tub.

#5) Proper attire is required.

Hmmmm??

*************

We took the red eye home Saturday night, flew through post-tornado
Atlanta, and arrived home mid-morning last Sunday. I’m just now
feeling back to normal.

I am spending the day studying for my certification exam in hospice and palliative care nursing scheduled for 9 AM tomorrow. 17 years after nursing school, and I am still obsessed with not just passing, but acing every question. I need to relax.

I worked late every night this week, too. Like 6-7PM late. Craziness.

So. In an effort to relax and unwind, I have procured myself the following.

Blue Faced Leicester roving to spin, as my skills do not match the merino and silk I have purchased and am in danger of ruining.

BFL has long fibers, and a crimp, or something like that, which makes it easier to spin. It spins up and plies like this.

I also got some Corriedale/Finn/Rambouillet roving, also rumored to be easier to spin. I couldn’t decide between two colorways, so got both. Roving is cheap.

And last week, this little spindle from ButterflyGirl arrived. It’s Murano glass and wood, and 1.0 oz. With it I got some of her Merino and silk roving, but again, my eyes don’t match my skills. (And my camera doesn’t capture the true beauty of this stuff.)

And that is all.

Now you know about as much about my life as I do.

Out of sync

Yes. I went to Arizona for a conference. That was a week ago.

Nice place. We stayed in Scottsdale (Snobsdale might be more like it) at the Westin Kierland. Here’s the golf course, which I’m sure costs hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to maintain in the hot Arizona desert.

We actually did attend the conference, which was a Palliative Care conference put on by the Cleveland Clinic. Either they dumbed the presentations down for the docs so they’d feel like they were on vacation, or my traveling partner and I are smarter than we thought.

We had dinner at Mastro’s Ocean Club.

Yessirree, we did. We dressed like this, because that’s what two broads from Rochester do when they go out to eat.

(Oh, crap. My battery died. Update later.)

Tune in tomorrow to see what I learned in Arizona.

1) Clark shoes are NOT considered fashionable in all parts of the country. Especially at nightclubs.

2) Ditto for khakis.

3) Boobs float.

4) Just because it’s expensive, doesn’t mean it’s good.

5) The red eye flight is really not such a good idea, after all.

6) Marrying for money looks really sad.

7) There’s no place like home.

Clap est finis. It’s early AM and there’s no light

so crappy pictures, but LOOK! It’s done…

Just in time for my flight tomorrow.