Oh blog. I would apologize for being so long away, but frankly, you missed a HECK of a lot of angst and whining, and not much else.

So I’ll just say this: I’m back. And boy do I have news.

News Item #1:

Cory got a new job. Not another part time job, not another food service job; a real, full-time, in his field JOB. It’s third shift (from whence stems much of the angst I mentioned- it’s mostly gone now), but he’s adapting really well and seems to be enjoying it. He’s working as a technician at a local bakery, maintaining and repairing the baking machines. It pays well- almost as much as I get paid!- and there’s a chance that amount will increase after a 90 day probationary period. It’s really sort of a dream come true for us. Our income has doubled, and he’s kick-starting his career. Plus? it’s 9 blocks from our apartment.

News Item #2:

Our cat, Simon, started acting really lethargic and weird about a week ago. We didn’t notice much, since he was sort of acting mad at us, so we didn’t start worrying until I noticed on Tuesday that he was getting extremely, and very suddenly, skinny. He’s always been a big cat, so combined with the lethargy I was really worried.

It turns out he has fatty liver disease. Apparently, when we switched food a while back, he didn’t like it at all. We have two cats and they share a free-feeder dish, so we had no idea he wasn’t eating anything (ANYTHING) for two weeks (yes, I do feel horrible and guilty, why do you ask?). Because he’d been overweight, his body turned to his fat supply for energy, but cat livers aren’t built to process that much fat… so his liver cells started getting taken over by fat. The result? A very skinny, lethargic, jaundiced kitty who refuses to eat or drink. In other words, BAD NEWS.

We took him to the vet, of course, as soon as we could. He’s on a prescription diet (that we’re having to force feed him… it’s terrible, but you do what you have to do) and antibiotics, in case he has a secondary infection. We’re not sure there’s been much progress yet, if any, but he did at least spend part of the night on the windowsill (his favorite spot when he’s healthy) instead of spending all night on a placemat under the table, last night, so that’s something. We are optimistic about this, and hoping he’ll make a quick recovery.

So, the combination of those things made for a very, very angsty me- whether it was about the cat, about having my husband be sleeping most of the time that I’m home and awake, or about money (vets ain’t cheap, people). Today, however, I got up early when Cory got home and we did some yoga together. We fed Simon, who seemed slightly more energetic than previously. I got paid, and did some errands on lunch, and… well, I just feel more normal, stable, and happy than I have in months.

So there you have it. I’m back. At least for today.

I’ve been meaning to post since Sunday, when Janelle, Nicole, and I went down to Wisconsin to meet up with a friend of mine in La Crosse. It was a lovely time and we had lots of fun, but I keep forgetting my camera cord at home, and when I’m at home I just forget to upload them at all. It’s annoying, because every other camera I’ve owned just used a mini usb connector (and I keep an extra of those at work to charge my mp3 player), but this one does not. It’s a totally different sort of plug.

So, all I can give you is a promise to try to remember my cord tomorrow. And hopefully also some knitting, because I have also not had time in my mornings to get a project together to take to work at all this week. This is also completely my fault, as I have plenty of time to get something going in the evening, but of course I forget. Thus I have made utterly zero progress on my C*mas knitting recently, which is Bad and means I guess I won’t be doing NaKniSweMo this year. Oh well, I’ll have my own belated one in January or something.

On the plus side, my main is now level 80 in WoW. For those that don’t know, that’s currently the level cap. I’m not sure what I’m going to do now that I’m 80, to be honest… it’s been all about XP for the entire time I’ve played, so it’s bizarre to not have that goal anymore. I feel a bit like Inigo Montoya. There are lots of money-making things to do, though, and I still don’t have “fast flying” (it costs 5000 gold to train it, I have about 3000) so there’s that.

I’m sort of wishing I’d taken a day off this week. I was half-planning to take a half day this Friday and another one next week, but my boss (who does my job when I’m out) has this Friday off, so I can’t leave (well, I could, but that would leave T in charge of my job and she’s not very experienced so that wouldn’t be very nice… but I might anyway). Oh well, if I stay all day this Friday, I get next Friday off, so that will be nice when it comes.

Malabrigo has a reputation for being soft, warm, and beautifully vivid.

I would say these mittens live up to that standard.

They are done, and are they ever soft and warm. I adore them. This pattern (Breathe Deep) is excellent, by the way- highly recommended. Very fun to knit, interesting, and turns out just lovely. The cuff may well be my favorite ever.

So, what next? I’m probably going to work idly on those gloves whenever I have a minute of downtime in WoW, just to keep working on it without dying of boredom, but I’m thinking of also starting on that doll for my niece. I’m knitting Poppy, and I’m looking forward to it! Such a cute pattern, and Ysolda is a fabulous designer. I’m probably going to cast that on today, so with any luck I’ll have something to show you all in the next few days here.

Oh, right, by the way… that picture up there? Taken with my new camera! Yep, I finally got a replacement for ol’ Dory the Dead. My new camera is a Nikon Coolpix S570 in black, and his name is Havelock. His macro isn’t quite as good as Dory’s, but he has 12 megapixels and a better screen. Plus? much less likely to break. Just sayin’.

1. No, I do not intend to drop the blog. I have in fact been putting off posting in the hopes that, tomorrow, no, well surely the next day I will be able to start posting daily again.

2. I’m at level 71 now in WoW. I’m hoping to hit 75 by Saturday.

3. No, I haven’t been knitting. This is mostly because I have only barely enough yarn to knit mitten #2 and the two balls I have are different dye lots. On mitten #1 I used the paler ball to do the cuff, and the darker for the main part, but there’s not enough of either ball to do the entire hand part this time and I’m trying to decide what to do about it.

4. No, I haven’t given up my social life for WoW. In fact we went to a party last night, and we are going to another one on Friday and hosting one on Sunday (if you haven’t been invited do not feel bad, it is a small party related to an online group I am in and is a bit of an inside joke anyway).

5. Yes, Cory started playing WoW again too.

6. Yes, I did just get an email today saying there another mandatory hours reduction coming up. Yes, I’m extremely upset about it and sort of surreptitiously thinking about looking for a new job. I’m actually more upset about my coworker taking time off, and therefore leaving her job up to me, than I am about the money I’ll lose taking time off myself.

7. Yes, I’ll try to post more. No, I can’t promise it’ll be daily until I’m knitting more, unless at least three people tell me they really, no seriously, really want to hear about my WoW playing.

I’m in the middle of another marathon headache, it seems. This one started Saturday morning with the weather change, and while it’s faded into the background for a few hours here and there, it’s been one heck of a ride. Yesterday I went home from work early to try to beat it into submission with extra drugs and a nap, but to no avail. It’s back to full strength now and I don’t have any more leeway for sick time.

On the plus side, I’ve gotten about half of my first mitten done. I don’t have my camera here today (no, I didn’t replace the broken one yet, it still sort of works), but I’ll post a photo when I can. The colors are still spiraling just as I hoped they would and I am SO excited about how they’re turning out! They’re very me, and manage to look really fancy while still casual and simple. I love them.

[WoW talk ahead- skip if you like]
My night elf hunter is level 57 now! I’m excited, but it means I have to get the expansions so I can continue to level after I hit 60. Mostly I want to hit 60 so I can tame “exotic” creatures, like devilsaurs (um, basically t-rexs) and silithids (giant insects). I like my ghost cat that I tamed back at level 20, but you know how it is. I want something cooler looking!

We’re running Mauradon tonight, hopefully, so I’ll just be gathering quests for it this evening before the run. I’m hoping to still get a good chunk of XP from the quests, even though they’re 15ish levels too low for me right now.

[End WoW Talk]

Anyway, not much planned for this weekend. I’ve been sort of worn out lately (gee, could you tell?) so quiet weekends in front of the computer have been really, really nice. I might make a bit of an effort to do something “out” just so I feel like I tried, but mostly I’d just like to stay home. I don’t think this is permanent (though it is a pity it is happening at the end of summer when it’s nice out), I just needed a month or so to get my bearings and catch myself before I fell too far. I’ve actually been feeling really good, emotionally, the last few days, so thanks to all of you for your sweet comments and support. I really do appreciate it.

No, really.

Yeah, I actually finished something for once. Unfamiliar feeling, I know, but there they are! I love them, and I’m really glad they fit my mom and she loves them. It worked out quite well. For those who’ve forgotten (probably all of you) I made the medium size, with two colors of Koigu Superwash Merino. Lovely stuff, very sproingy and tightly twisted. Probably won’t see a lot of pilling on these!

Am I going to work on one of my other WIPs now? Don’t be silly. I started something new, of course!

This will be the Breathe Deep mittens. Some of you might recognize this yarn- it’s leftover from a cowl I made myself last year. Malabrigo worsted, of course! I love it, but it does tend to pool strangely in this colorway. I’m happy that it appears to be just spiralling this time.

• I got to level 52 in WoW, and ran two instances. I never knew how fun instances could be, but my guildmates made it a really good time. I have a couple more scheduled in the next two weeks, so I’m excited about that.
• At one point last night, when I was an hour into an instance, Cory turned and saw my screen and said “Oh! That’s (name of instance)! Are you gonna do that one now?” …heh.
• I got to the thumb gusset of the second endpaper mitt, using only the time when my character was in flight in the game. Once you hit higher levels there’s a lot of flight time involved. I’m hoping to finish said gusset today during work and podcast recording, and have the mitts totally done by Weds or so.
• I have discovered within myself a deep and abiding love of nature valley granola bars, and got two boxes of them when we went grocery shopping. This is odd, because until recently I only liked the chewy type of granola bar. However, they don’t have any high fructose corn syrup in them, and that makes me very happy.
• It was ridiculously hot. Janelle was over yesterday and we had three fans on us and we were still hot. Sadly, I ran the oven twice yesterday- once to make baked oatmeal, in the morning, and once to make brownies in the evening.

I’ve been getting hardly any sleep lately, and what little I get has been restless. That’s the biggest reason I haven’t been posting- it’s not that I have nothing to say, just that I have no brain power to say it with. I’m generally pretty on in the morning, but that’s when I do the bulk of my work at my job, and whatever’s left has been pumped into my Examiner articles. By the time lunch rolls around, I’m already totally exhausted and non-functional, and just eke my way by until 5pm when I can go home and do mindless things.

I have, however, been knitting.

I haven’t been working on the gloves lately as they bore me to tears but are also somehow sort of complicated, so I’ve been doing the second endpaper mitt. When my mom had her gallbladder out two weeks back, she tried on the finished one and it fit perfectly, so I decided to give them to her. Something kind of odd is happening, though, with this second one. On the first, the colors were distribuuted very evenly, but on the second… well, see for yourself.

See? Most of the colors are evenly distributed, but one side got all the blue and the other all the yellow. I have no idea why it’s happening, but it looks ok anyway so I’m just leaving it. Hopefully the finished mitts don’t look too different.

Other goings-on:

• My sister, her husband, my husband, and I went to a free Storyhill concert at the State Fair. It was amazing. I only wish I could’ve gone to Storyhill Fest last weekend.
• I have officially leveled higher with my new WoW character than I ever did with any character on my old account. I hit level 40 in only 9 days of play- a milestone that took me nearly two years last try.
• Job still sucks, still getting forced by my old team lead (who seems to think I have no work of my own) to do other people’s work, using spreadsheets that give me migraines. Yes, I have one right now. No, I can’t do anything to make her stop with the spreadsheets already. ::sob::
• Remember that fleece I bought? Yeah, I ended up selling most of it. A very nice lady explained to me that the lock length was too long for carding and the wool would have to be combed, so she offered to clean and comb the whole fleece and send me back a part of it, in exchange for the rest of it. Since otherwise I probably wouldn’t have been able to spin any of it, I consider that a darn good deal.
• My mom’s gallbladder surgery went very well and it turns out her gallbladder was far more damaged than they expected, so it’s very very good that they took it out. It’s also making me wonder if I have gallbladder problems since the things I can’t eat are all high-fat (fatty meats, fried foods, etc).
• I still haven’t taken in my camera to be quote-unquote repaired. It still works as long as I don’t try to use the macro or take distance shots, so I’ll wait it out until it’s convenient.

On Wednesday, I came to a rather horrible realization. In planning our Colorado trip, I had tried (and thought I succeeded) to plan the timing around my pay schedule, so that the money I was losing by missing work would hit a paycheck that would come mid-month, not at the end/beginning when I need to pay rent. Well, I had miscalculated, and the paycheck I got today (the rent paying paycheck) is the small one. When I realised this, on Wednesday, I panicked. I called myself names, I nearly cried, and just generally fell apart for a few minutes. Then, I went and posted on Ravelry… and had a bit of a destash sale.

Within two hours, I had sold enough patterns and yarn to cover the discrepancy. My friends are completely amazing, and I owe them more than I can properly express. My check came today, and while it’s $100 under what I need for rent, I know that as soon as the paypal payments transfer to my bank account I’ll have more than enough. I can afford to buy groceries, and cat food, and maybe even a pizza to celebrate the long weekend.

All of this made me think. I had, on Wednesday, called myself all sorts of nasty things. “Stupid idiot” was not the worst of it by any means. After everything that happened, though, I came to understand two things. First of all, I have more support and love from both people I know in person and that I have never met that I never even imagined it. Second, I’m not stupid. Sure, I messed up. Humans mess up. But stupid people mess up and don’t do anything about it, don’t even care. I messed up, I figured out what to do, made a few sacrifices, got help, and learned from the experience.

Now if I do this again… we’ll have to revisit the “stupid” idea.

Here are the yarn photos I managed to get with my gimp camera (by the way, I have a gimp foot to match now- broke the end bone in my 2nd toe yesterday tripping over a hole in the sidewalk). Unfortunately the Geek Squad rep I talked to yesterday says they can’t just replace the camera, even though it broke the same way before and wasn’t repairable… So, I’ll have to wait another two weeks for them to tell me, again, that they can’t repair it and then I’ll get a new camera.

A different new camera. As in, not a Canon Powershot A480.

Grumble.

Anyway here is yarn.

This is the yarn for Poppy, for my cousin’s daughter Lily for Christmas. I have three skeins of the peach color, but I’ll probably only use 1.5. The purple is for her dress and the black for her shoes and hair.

This is Arucania Ranco, which I hadn’t ever seen before. I like Arucania yarns, so I was excited to see that they make a relatively inexpensive ($14) sock yarn in pretty semisolids! The blue/grey/purple is for me, for Rivendell socks, and the green/brown is for Cory.