One day at a time

Sometimes in life, you just kind of figure out

that you gotta go with the flow.

I mean, who knows what tomorrow will bring? Nobody.

Sometimes life is swell. It's a veritable picnic.

Blue skies, sunshine, the scent of honeysuckle on the vine, a nice fruit salad.



Sometimes life isn't swell. Ants carried off the picnic.

Sometimes life sucks.

Sometimes you couldn't make yourself smile

because of how sucky life is at that particular moment.

Sometimes you have to make yourself smile

because you know.. you just KNOW..

that life COULD be worse,

and many times it certainly has been.

Today is one of those days when I am making myself smile.

Because I know it could be worse, and has been.

Today isn't one of those sunshiney picnic days.

Today is kind of sucky.

But still I want to smile, because I need to.

Today I am plagued by one of my Mystery Ailments.

Not the one that came upon me suddenly last December.

That Mystery Ailment is still with me, albeit in

a less sucky way than it was.

I will take my Hip-hoorays wherever I can.

But the last few days, a Mystery Ailment which I have had

about three or four times previously,

has again decided to mess with me, and it has

messed with me while we are visiting with Oliver and David.

And that AIN'T COOL.

I know I don't have to put up the picture which I'm going to put here.

It certainly isn't pretty, not that I ever was pretty,

but even for me.. "Wow!" this is nowhere near pretty.

But, it's me.

At least once every year or so, this Mystery Ailment decides to flare up.

In previous iterations it cleared up after a few days.

Fingers crossed.

I'm going to print out this picture and take it to

our doctor and say,

"What in the hell IS THIS?!?"

There's probably a 50/50 chance that he'll know.

Sometimes you have to make yourself smile.

You just have to.

:)

Ins and Outs, Ups and Downs

This being unwell business is getting me down. It is lingering. Far beyond the few days I thought I'd be in for when this started last December 20th. It's nearly two damned months now, and there have been so many new manifestations of this unwellness that have hit me in that time. It as been a long two months of ups and downs. Sometimes I'm in, as in invalid enough to not be able to go out. And then I have a few snatched moments of slightly less broken downness when I've been able to get out of the four walls.

This photo is of the day after Oliver's birthday, when I cajoled the men to go walking the half-mile loop of the flat and easy Kingfisher Trail next to the Maumelle River at Pinnacle Mountain State Park.

That was my last out and about day. Since then I've been in because of another mysterious manifestation of my body's joyride with this mysterious unwellness which the doctors still haven't figured out. Whatever this has been, I am mighty tired of it. "You look depressed," noted a young doctor who saw me for the first time at the after-hours clinic a few days ago. Uh.. ya think, Doc? I use Doc lightly.

I guess I've been living under a delusion for the past two months. The delusion that the doctors would figure this out, and this would pass quickly, and my life would get back to normal. No such luck seems to exist in reality. Maybe that reality got stuck in one of the alternate universes.

Sorry, am I, for a less than cheery blog. Maybe I'm not meant to be in this blog space. Maybe my life isn't going to be one of those lives that people enjoy blogging about. Because up until now, this hasn't been much fun at all. I don't really see me keeping this blog going. Not unless luck, and my delusion, catch up to this universe's reality.

Many thanks to those three men in the picture up there. They are, still, my heroes.

Cheers, old blog.

Resolution

I'm not one to make New Year resolutions, because I know they just don't work for me. They're too contrived, abstract, like a superlative-laden, idealistic pep talk to charge up your "Go get 'em!" battery. I guess my internal battery is too small for all that pep, and I poop out sooner rather than later.

I love to crochet! Like many others, it was my mother who taught me to crochet around the age of twelve, and my love of crochet has grown ever since. I love the huge range of creativity that crochet offers, the challenges of trying out a new pattern or design, or making one of my own. I love the way that, even if it takes me a while before I 'get' the concept of something new to me, I know I can rip it out and try again, and all the while I know that I'm learning. And in crochet there are always new things to learn!

When my health took a turn for the worse on Dec 20, one of the effects it left is that my right hand is mostly unusable, and that's my writing and hook-holding hand. I'm typing with the fingers of my left hand, but I don't think I can crochet with just my left hand! I thought this health thing would resolve in a short time, but it hasn't, and now I find that I don't have the wonderful calming comfort of sitting and crocheting to pass some of the time. And I miss it. The yarn and patterns and my unfinished works in progress sit there waiting.

I've been learning a new lesson in this new year - that even something as simple as a hobby I love can be taken for granted, and even as I hope for a resolution to this health problem, I'm making a personal resolution to never again take for granted this wonderful hobby of crochet which has given me so many years of immense pleasure.

Been there, done that. Repeat.

Ha! So here I am back to typing with only my left hand again. My right hand is totally useless. Begone, damned inflammation and pain! And I slept in my recliner instead of in bed last night.

I was feeling quite a bit better {I thought} on the weekend.

Wes took me to Hobby Lobby where I picked out several yarns in the purple colour family.

I had volunteered to make scarves for a charity, and each scarf has to be predominantly one of the purplish colours. I looked online for several different scarf patterns (to crochet or knit) that I thought were relatively easy for me, and I was really excited to get started.

So on Saturday night and Sunday I crocheted this scarf. It's about 5 by 66 inches.

 The ends still need to be woven in. But on Monday morning my right wrist was again swollen and painful, and by Tuesday it was even worse, so the ends will have to wait weaving in, and I guess all my crochet and knitting plans will have to be postponed.

On Monday night I used the Paint program and my uncoordinated left hand ~~ I am not ambidextrous ~~ to draw my Sad Face, so I could email it to my kids.

Yes, I think that says it all. And it looks just like me! :)

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