Good sport!

I knitted some eensy teensy baby booties for Ed's first granddaughter.  My price? I also knitted a rainbow trout hat and requested at least five photos of him wearing it in public.  His wit and good humor continue to delight me!

We have all the weather you could possibly want this May.  Blizzards in Maine, tornadoes in the midwest, a heat wave sliding up the east coast, and - surprise - rain in the Pacific northwest.  But there's no such thing as climate change, right?  I think the tornadoes are the scariest.  Floods; you know where they'll be and you can get to higher ground.  Hurricanes; pretty much the same (though where you can find higher ground in Florida is a mystery to me)  With a blizzard, you keep the pantry stocked and stay home till it thaws.  Earthquakes just happen and there's not a damn thing you can do.  But tornadoes - the sky gets dark, the wind picks up, that funnel cloud starts dropping down, and you have any amount of time to be terrified while it hits this house, skips that one, and flings entire cows through the air.  Even if the tornado doesn't hit your house, the tanker truck it picked up just might.  Can the folks in Oklahoma build their houses underground?

The hands are never still

MJ and I started this quilt before the cruise.  I just lost the love for it - you know how that happens sometimes?  We were using blocks that had been beautifully and meticulously made by a friend of ours.  Those cock-eyed pinwheels, there.  But we decided to make a few mor to boost the size of the quilt, and it was harder than it should have been.  Then we had to decide how to put them together, and figure something to make it wide enough.  I carried it around in the back of my car for way too long (MJ has such a great place set up for sewing, with lots of light and space and a big table, until finally I took the bit in my teeth, slammed the front and back together, and finished the damned thing.  Arrrgh!  Do you ever get like that?  There's something you want to get done, but you no longer want to do it?  How do you deal with it?  I know a grown-up would have just put on her big girl panties and done it, but sometimes, my big girl panties are in the wash.

Getting it done released a lot more creativity, though.  I've turned out another couple of hats for Medical Teams International.  This one is acrylic, cotton and woo, knitted into the one size fits most stocking cap style.

This one is  handspun wool that I have had for decades that was too stiff and heavy for any project that came along.  I need the space it was taking up, so I grabbed my size J crochet hook and started top down.  The cloche shape just sort of grew as I found how stiff the work was.  The earthy tones don't show up well in this photo, but it looks like lady-like forest camouflage.

And then I turned out my box of earthy brown fabrics, put on an audio book, and cleared some more space.



One side

The other side.



I am just jonesing to clear the cupboards.  I am knitting some new puppets, more hats are in line, and a  bunch of pink flannel needs to be turned into baby blankets once I figure a pattern for it..  I want to find the floor of my work room.  I've been edging around piles of stuff like those poor people you see on the TV show, "Hoarders," and I'm sick of it!

We're going to see IronMan 3 this weekend.  I should be able to knock out most of a hat during that.  I feel just Full of productivity now!

I have been so wrong

It's surprising how some of the decision one makes in youth turn out to be so wrong-headed.  For example, I used to believe the wearing socks to bed was one of the least attractive things a woman could do. It was right up there with the cigarette seccotined onto the lower lip.  Frumpy, dowdy, ugly were the words the applied to women who wore socks to bed.  I would never, never do such a dismal thing.

Unless, of course, I was sick and couldn't get my feet warm, but you know, when you're young, you'll never be sick and cold-footed.  Or old.  Or wrong.

Now I realized that bed-socks are winsome, charming, fetching accessories, and I have been a fool to deny myself the pleasure of them all these years.  I have silky bed-socks, fuzzy bed socks, bed-socks to match my nighties. (I used to sleep nude, too, but found it was cheaper to turn down the heat and put on a nightgown.) Wearing socks to bed has a certain kinky allure, and best of all, it makes me feel good.  What an idiot I have been!

Holland America babes

One of the many things I enjoy about Holland America cruises is that they attract cruisers "of a certain age,"  We're the ones who know who we are and how we got here.  We no longer feel the need to impress or outshine one another.  Life is short, and we're not inclined to waste it on hours of primping.  The men we're with already know how we look and they like us just fine.  Their eyesight isn't any better than ours,  and none of them are underwear models themselves, so we can forego the       "compression capris" and the "slenderizing swimsuits." We  put on our muumuus, and enjoy the chocolate buffet.     How many women on the Titanic passed up dessert that final night?  You have to enjoy it when you can.

Every cruise has two or three trophy wives, who learned early that,"pretty pays," and have not developed any other marketable currency.  They are nipped, tucked, suctioned, siliconized, and lacqured to a high gloss.  They have abused their hair till it gave up and fell out, then they glued extensions to the few strands left.  But as the inevitable aging happens, the eyes fade and the hands become less steady, the beauties can no longer apply the makeup with the meticulous accuracy required.  False eyelashes come unstuck at the ends, twitching like crippled moths with every blink.  The foundation often reaches a low-tide mark at the jawline and that rose-petal smoothness on the cheek changes to lizard skin on the throat.  Blush might be applied on just one side (oops, did I forget my left cheek again?) or might be drawn on in defiant stripes.  The wavering black eyeliner starts to mimic raccoon eyes, and God help us, sometimes it goes on so thickly that it starts to flake off onto the cheeks.

Which is sadder - those of us who have surrendered to comfortable tolerance, or those who refuse to?  Those of us with the wash and wear gray hair, or those with the platinum polyester tresses?  The droopy and chubby gals lounging in the shade, or the lifted and sculpted ones who spend two angry hours in the gym every day?

Well, yeah, I'm an olympic class sloth, and I'm bringing self-indulgence to peaks of seldom-realized perfection,  but on the Holland America cruises, I discover that I am not alone!  As long as you can be clean and neat (or, if not neat, then at least you can be "artistic") and you are shiny on the inside, then why worry about the outside?  Wear those mommy jeans if you like them.  Wrap a sarong around your Grateful Dead t-shirt and to heck with the critics!  Be comfortable, and leave yourself room to laugh.

Recovery

I am up.  I am mobile!  I am craving dill pickles!

The last, I think, is because I spent most of the past week going from fever to chills via copious sweating and I may be salt depleted.  Anyhow, a crunchy, juicy, tart pickle is just what I want right now.  We have a big jar of what we call, "Green Lurkers" because the brine is sort of cloudy and you're never sure how many pickles are left.  They sort of lurk in the gloom at the back of the fridge.  They are damn fine pickles, though, with enough garlic to fry any bacterium or virus.  YUM!  I may even have two.

The weather in this part of Oregon has been halcyon - sunshine, light breezes, shirtsleeves temps.  It aids the recuperation quite a lot when the invalid can sit outside in the fresh air and hear the small birds making melody.  (Spell check won't let me spell like Chaucer.  I just might disable spell check.  What's this world coming to if you can't spell like Chaucer when you want to?)

Kyle has mown the front and back yards, and deserves praise and cold beers. I am caught up on the laundry and deserve another bottle of Gatorade (I'm so dehydrated that I'm dizzy half the time.)  We took a walk around the block yesterday.  He is SO kind and patient with me.  I have to get back in shape for all those Volkswalks coming up this summer.  I was up to 10 K.  My left foot is still a bit gimpy from my fall on the stairs, but getting better all the time.











I cancelled knitting this month because I just don't have enough starch to pull it together. Besides, I didn't want to share the kennel cough with anyone else.  But next month . . . Oh, I have ideas!

Cheryl of Acorn to Oak had a contest which I won, and the prize was a pair of wonderful hand-knit cotton washcloths.  Who doesn't love these?













But before I could use them, Bucky claimed them as his.  He says they are his "sheeping bag." Groan - even my puppet makes puns.

Home

I can't taste chocolate!  I can't taste anything.  I can't smell anything either.  Kyle was a hero and took such good care of me on the train trip down.  When I got the chills and couldn't warm up, he took an empty soda bottle, filled it with hot water, and gave it to me to cling to,  It really, really helped!

He has been in bed for 12 solid hours.  I had to get up to pay bills, but neither of us is in good shape at the moment.  It's so GOOD to be home!!  There is sunshine and warm temperatures and green trees and flowers blooming all over!  The grass is knee-high in the yard.  Know anyone with a scythe?  We could dry it and bale it at this point.

This trip may have been too long.  I was so hungry for the sight of leaves!  There's no place like home! There's no place like home!!

May 3rd-ish?

Yesterday, another day at sea, another day in the room, fighting the good fight against the cold, and counting myself very lucky that a cold is the worst I have to deal with.  One of the passengers experienced a medical emergency, and the American Coast Guard flew a big four prop airplane  two thousand miles out to drop supplies for him (or her.)  The ship came to a halt and lowered its little rescue boat, the airplane made a pass, dropped the package and it landed right next to the boat,  practically in the officer’s lap, and everyone lining the sides of the ship cheered!  Then they waved as the plane flew away.

Not that I saw any of this.  I was in our cabin, snarfing and wheezing.  But Kyle took his camera up on the top deck and got some lovely pictures and movies.  He’s such a prince!

The ship runs a series of movies on a loop every day, two to each of four tv channels.

Yesterday, they were “Salt” a violent action adventure spy thriller; “Jack Reacher,” a violent action adventure mystery: Something with Al Pacino and other vintage guys playing criminals who were supposed to kill each other, “Dolores Claibourne,” a really depressing film about domestic abuse and murder, and “The Muppet Movie.”

Kyle has trouble falling asleep, so he was channel surfing through this selection.  Gotta tell you – it was weird! 

As we head north, the days grow longer but colder.  6 hours daylight and 80 degrees at the equator.  8 hours daylight and 65 degrees yesterday.  In the Carribean, the Coast Guard planes take several slow circles around  the ship every chance they get because the dancers are usually sunbathing topless on the top deck.  There was no  body sunbathing at all yesterday. Too bad for the Coast Guard.

Today is another formal night.  I’m going to try to make it.  For one reason or another, we have missed three formal nights so far, and only made it to two.  I’d like to hit 50% if I can.  I do LOVE formal nights!

No photos.  The satellite reception is so uncertain.  Talk about your first world problems!