JenLa

Ponchos don’t kill people; people who knit ponchos kill people.

Waiting to Exhale

Filed under: Pets, personal dramas — La at 9:30 am on Saturday, June 30, 2007

Last week I made a routine appointment with the vet for today for Sassy to get her cortizone shot and stock up on her special diet. Now I’m terrified that purpose of today’s appointment will change. Sassy is refusing food. Over the past couple weeks I’ve noticed she’s been slowing down, and for the past 2 days she hasn’t touched her dry, and has barely eaten any of her canned, she is, however drinking lots of water, and passing it. I just tried to let her outside, one of her favorite things to do, but she turned me down, slowly making her way back upstairs to lay beneath the bed in the spare bedroom.

She IS 13+ and has had serious, chronic colitis for most of the time I’ve had her, which had gone pretty much unchecked until 2 years ago. None of this knowledge makes me any less scared or any less sad at the prospect that Sassy may not come home from the vet today.

I’m hoping for the best, but instinct tells me that this just might be a one-way trip. I suspect renal failure. My heart is breaking, and I can’t stop crying. Trixie knows I’m hurting and is trying to comfort me the best way she knows how…by bringing me her prized Lamby.

**Update**
After spending 2+ hours at the vet I’ve got some good news and some bad news and some news that won’t know if it’s good or bad yet.

Good news: Sassy’s home and still very much alive, and now resting comfortably (I hope) on my pjs.
Bad news: She’s been diagnosed with early stages of kidney problems.

The doctor gave her some subcutaneous fluids, a bottle of amoxicilin and strict orders to rebound, and sent her home. We go back Monday for more subcutes, and with any luck that’ll make her feel much better, so she can live the next few weeks/months with some degree of normalcy and quality of life.

On the way home, her complaints at being confined AND in a moving car became louder and more insistant, which I take as a sign she’s starting to feel a little better. The vet, who has been our vet for decades, is a very practical man and wouldn’t recommend unnecessary and costly treatment. I believe he has the animals’ best interests at heart. The fact that he recommended the subcutes, and would have been extremely reluctant to euthanize, due to her alertness and her good color, give me some hope that she can have a few more quality, pampered and pain-free months.

I just really hope I made the right decision. I would HATE to think that I’m prolonging her suffering.

It’s Not The Heat OR The Humidity

Filed under: Gardening, Knitting, UFO Resurrection — jenifleur at 12:02 pm on Friday, June 29, 2007

There’s knitting. But first, a word from our sponsors. OK, we don’t have sponsors. We barely have readers anymore. But, because Knitch has put the call out to local bloggers to Shout It Out and I LOVE KNITCH :

[directly copied/pasted from Claudia]

Stitch N’ Pitch [July 15th] with the Braves and the Pirates! Here are some more details - get your ticket if you don’t have one yet! Special tickets are marked down from $20 to $13 for great seats in a section in the shade for an afternoon of baseball, knitting and great company… oh and don’t forget, there will be fantastic goody bags. To order these wonderful tickets, call 404-577-9100 or see Diana Baber or Susan Big at the next Atlanta Knitting Guild meeting on July 5th. You can also purchase tickets at the following shops: All That Yarn - Snellville - 770-736-6400 Knitch - Atlanta - 404-745-9276 (Knitch has only 9 seats left on the luxury bus!) Nease’s Needlework - Decatur - 404-377-6875 Magical Threads - Dahlonega - 706-867-8918 Or you can buy them directly from the Braves. By the way - Pittsburgh sold over 1000 tickets and we in Atlanta are not even at 500 total!
[/rip off]

I know you’re pussing out because of the heat. Bunch of wimps. People complain and moan about the fact that Atlanta doesn’t have fiber festivals or much for knitting events but they won’t turn up for the ones we do have. Sack up, knitters, it’s in the shade. Hot dogs, peanuts and cracker jacks! And beer, knitting, schwag and friends! Me, I’ll be on the luxury bus with Claudia, Jane and ESC. If you are one of the people going, don’t forget to knit up a preemie hat [hint: they fit a baseball.] so you can add altruism to the list of reasons to go. And by the way, TNNA? You know, baseball season is really long. It takes place during much cooler times of the year as well as the middle of summer. When you think of Hot’Lanta next year-if it’s even worth the bother next year with such a low turn out this time-why not April or September? Or, even better, put it on ice next year, where we actually have a dog in the fight.

Oh yeah, and it’s Flower Friday or Friday of Flowers or something, so I am pleased to present to you the only flowers surviving our drought:

echinacea
“Kim’s Knee High” Dwarf Echinacea. The most faithful and reliable flower ever. I keep promising her buddies, I’d like to start a bed of every color of echinacea, but I’m too poor.

some other flowers
And here are some other flowers. Jared told me the blue ones are corn flowers. The pink, who knows? These came from a “sunny mix” can of annuals last year and volunteered to come back. Mostly I just love the way my camera is wigging out today on the neon pinks.

So I’ve been in this really crappy mood all week. It’s not even PMS. [Or, as Grace and Elizabeth's friend Ginny would say, "FTS"--Fixin' Ta Start] I can’t really say what it is but I’ve been a royal bitch all week. To the people who’ve listened to me and put up with it-La, Melissa, Sandy and Pacalaga-thanks! And also, why? It sort of came to a head this morning when, after a night of insomnia kicked off by the dog panting frantically under the bed for hours due to thunder, I was wakened by the constant and rhythmic click of his toenails as he rubbed his face with his front paw. With every swipe he touched the floorboards and I hissed at him to knock off whatever he was doing. I gave up, went downstairs and tried to read email and drink coffee, only to notice the same fucking click in the same room with me. He was at it again. I shouted at him with every ounce of evil and authority I could find and he walked up to me all unhappy. Turns out he had a gooey eye and he was wiping his face because of that. I felt like the bitch I was being and fixed him up. It helped my mood a little. Then I finished this:

knitted llama

Which helped a lot. My UFOR for this month allegedly is the Farm Play Mat, which I would like to finish and take to Boston to give to its recipient in August. Not content to knit it according to Debbie Bliss’s master plan, I wanted it to contain animals I have on my farm. So I made up a llama pattern.

knitted llama, bendy neck

This is the part where I got really full of myself. I put a bendy straw in his neck so he could bend down and eat. [imagined applause] I only wish the length of grass in my pastures was to scale. Someone asked me, and I can’t remember who-it was a long time ago-about the size of the toys.

scale

My camera is on acid, I desperately need a new one. Anyway, toddler sized, I guess you’d say. Actual llama included because he wouldn’t get out of the shot. So now I’m in a [potentially temporary] better mood. You would be too, if you had a knitted llama. I get a freakish joy from knitting these little toys. I’m motivated to finish this project, though I will not be able to do so by month’s end. I even had my idea for joining the mis-matched squares of the mat [by having a meandering stream fill in the gaps] validated and improved upon when I stumbled on this book while trying to fetch another link. Verily I did bid and buy this book, it’s shipping from the UK right now.

Jared is coming home late tomorrow night and I get to keep him for almost 3 whole days. I’ll spend the first night not being able to sleep because there’s something heavy and snoring on the other half of my bed, then one day of joy at his being home, the next day I’ll be all upset because I only have one more day left, the last day I’ll be teary about not seeing him until August, then I’ll be depressed for half a week once he leaves. That’s if I see him. He tends to be out in the pastures doing man stuff like chopping up trees and digging pits when he’s home. I’m going to try and get him to build me a skirting table so I can clean fleeces. [That would be the cue for all the people who think it's too hot to go knit at a ballgame to volunteer to come skirt fleeces in the sun.] At any rate, I’ll see you after July 4th if I survive my own moods.

Hail Grace, Full Of Meme…

Filed under: Memes, Misc, blogger hookup — La at 4:48 pm on Thursday, June 28, 2007

Good news: It’s short. Bad news: It’s not fiber-related. You all can thank Grace for this one!

Here are the guidelines:

Go to Wikipedia and type in your birthday month and day only. Then post three events, two births and one holiday that occurred on your birthday, then tag 5 friends.

December 28
3 Events:
~ 1612 - Galileo Galilei becomes the first astronomer to observe the planet Neptune, although he mistakenly catalogued it as a fixed star.
~ 1836 - South Australia and Adelaide are founded.
~ 1973 - The Endangered Species Act is passed in the United States.

2 Births:
1522 - Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands (d. 1583)
1954 - Denzel Washington, American actor
(and just keep things in perspective)
1974 - Jason Ridge, American porn actor

1 Holiday:
Proclamation Day in South Australia

~~~~~~~

Yesterday I asked Jen if she could remind me to post an announcement about ASKnitters in today’s blog post, and she brought up a good point: “If y’all are such anti-socials, how come you’re inviting people to join you?” Like I said, good point. Observe how an expert does it:

1) Our expert volunteers to host the June meet up.
2) She sends out an evite with a day of the week, a date and a time.
3) A couple days later, she sends out an announcement that she has to move the meet-up from Saturday, the 23rd to Sunday the 24th because of some sort of lame work obligation.
4) In the meantime, her co-founder aka accomplice, who loves lists, enters the meet-up into the yahoo group’s calendar section as occurring on Saturday, the 23rd, to begin at 12:00 am and go all day, scheduling group-wide reminders to go out 14 days and 7 days prior to.
5) Then, a few days later sends out yet another evite message changing the date to the following Sunday due to some sort of family obligation. Whatever… (btw, there’s a wink that goes with that, just so you know), and makes a quick cryptic post on the group sight saying the same.
6) The very next day the 14-day reminder for the 24th goes out.
7) A week later, the 7-day reminder for the 24th goes out. Each time the co-founder sends out a Notice of Disreguard (yes, she spelled it that way, what a dumbass!)
8) All this time she’s only done 2 blog posts, and finally mentioned all the changes and everything as an afterthought in the most recent blogpost, which was yesterday, as if to say “I’ll put the info here, but I’m hoping it’ll be so hidden within the rest of the ginormous post that people will just skim over it in order to get to the end.”

So, in summary, volunteer to host the June meet-up, change the dates several times until the June meet-up occurs in July, allow your dumbass co-founder apprentice to further confuse people by calendaring the event on the original date for the wrong time, and then don’t encourage her to go back and fix it even after the first reminder goes out to the entire group.

Wow! Wen, I bow to your mad obsfucation skillz.

But now you shall be thwart! I am in such dire need of the company of the low-testosterone, fiber friendly, I will set temporarily aside my own agoraphobia and anthropophobia for an afternoon with them.

ASK meet-up this Sunday, July 1, 1:00 at Wen’s

Please join us for fiber, fun, food…and a yarn swap! It’s a potluck, so bring a dish. It’s a yarn swap, so bring some yarn you want to trade. It’s going to be fun, so bring your fiber and your friends and come on down!

Email me or Wen if you need the address and phone number. Also, I have room in my car if anyone wants to carpool from the OC.

~~~~~~~
misdirection

And now I will distract you with something fibery…

Click to Mix and Solve

Calling All Knitters

Filed under: Knitting, WTF Weds, knit blogs — jenifleur at 11:27 am on Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Today’s WTF Wednesday is more in the vein of “WTF, why is this happening? And WTF can we do about it?”

When I read Janice’s post this morning, I realized just how bad I’ve been at keeping up with blogs lately. I didn’t even know about what Gerry, Annie and the family were going through. Having only too recently battled through a terminal illness with my mother, my heart just breaks for them. Anita’s post is very articulate and she’s right. We come together for so many people out there and this time it’s for one of our own. There are a few different ways to help. Go buy Annie’s books or knitting patterns, for one. [bypass Amazon this time and go right to her site.] Or, you can visit the We Love Annie blog to buy contest raffle tickets. There is also a donation button on both her and the We Love Annie blogs for more direct assistance. The funds will go to help defray the costs resulting from the illness and treatment. On that page you will also find an address if you’d like to send a letter of support or a care package. Put the button on your blog. Post about it and spread the word. You might not think a little bit will help, but I promise you, it does. Just knowing that people are out there pulling for you helps so much. If you only have a small budget to devote to your knitting, why not invest it by helping out a fellow knitter and a dynamic designer? In addition to thanking Janice and Anita for bringing it to my attention, I’m very happy to find that one of my local yarn stores, Main Street Yarns is heading up the effort to do something. I have not been lucky enough to take a class with Annie yet, but her book, Confessions of a Knitting Heretic made a huge impact on my knitting a few years ago and I remember emailing her to thank her for writing it. She not only validated what I thought was my unusual style of knitting, she showed me how to fix it, when to do it differently and she was the first person I ever heard that screamed “THERE IS NO WRONG WAY TO KNIT!!!” I just wish the opportunity to repay her wasn’t taking this form.

Outta Focus

Filed under: Filter Purge, Misc — La at 6:09 pm on Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Have you ever had those days when your blog posts practically write themselves? Well, today’s not one of those days. Quite the opposite. When that happens I make lists which, according to some, I’m probably not supposed to do, because not all of what I’ll be listing is fluffy bunny and sparkling kitties. Hell, I may even say something not NICE, gawd forbid. Not to mention that the making of lists requires original thought. Wanna know what I say to that? Oh, wait! It’s not Thursday…

La’s Random Thoughts for Today

    - Jen’s craving a snow cone, which is funny cuz I’m craving a Bomb pop.
    -She settled for a Cutie, I settled for a yogurt. Kreist, being a grown-up totally sucks!!
    - Summer Knitty. hhhhhhh What can I say? So with the exception of this (which I would make for any one of my curvy SILs, but would never try to stuff my conspicuously marshmallow-shaped torso into, and I’d substitute the yarn cuz La don’t get the Noro love…), this (guess I’ve got a thing for Cheryl’s this season) and this (how cute is that?), I was otherwise either merely whelmed or completely underwhelmed. Surprised? And don’t even get me started on the editing and formatting! Man, what a trainwreck!
    - Ms. B of Knitters Uncensored fame brought up the subject of Toilet Drops in their most recent podcast. Well, ok, so unless you’ve taken to spending your “idle” throne time with needles and string, these have nothing to do with knitting. But yeah, I’m gonna get them anyway (*cough*for the DH, of couse*cough*) FANfuckingTASTIC!…if they work. I’ll keep you posted.
    - I liked it better when PC only stood for Personal Computer.
    -Big Alice sent me a link to the Garbage Disposal Cat story. Thought I’d share the love.
    - Tonight we’re having sloppy joes, Betty Crocker scalloped potatoes (cuz I hate mac & cheese) and corn from a can. Only the best double-wide food for my family!
    - I hate the fact that if I spend too much time out in direct sunlight my lip blisters up, which it has done, and now has me sporting a poorly executed masochistic version of Queen Amidala. Apparently 20 accumulated minutes of direct exposure in 3 hours counts as too much time. FANfuckingTASTIC.
    - Is it wrong that when I went here and when I started reading, my first thought upon viewing the first 3 pictures were:
    1st picture - “mmmmmmm, yarn”
    2nd picture - “MAN, I’ve got not one but two skanks that look like that!
    3rd picture - “yeesh, gotta go ruin a decent yarn picture with that novelty ribbony crap.”
    - This made me laugh so hard I fell out of my chair. I think I broke my ass.
    - I like what Cookie has to say today. Trust me. Cookie is good…Cookie is wise…

Yes, there is no continuity of today’s list so I hang my head in shame, a disgrace to all that is OCD and the list-makers of the world. In my defense, I’m seriously trying to make my “10% Stash Knitted” goal in time. I’m kinda in tunnel vision mode, and just letting random thoughts float around me, snatching at the ones who ventured too close.

Think I’ll make it?

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