I'm Not Afraid to Keep On Living

That week of ultimately unhelpful jobseeker course three weeks ago not only wrecked my energy for cleaning, any projects, and my daily stretching and exercise routines, it also left me with too little energy (focus? Even with methylphenidate!) to update my pet photos or interior design blogs on Tumblr. Or to shop for holiday presents for my parents and sister.

I have enough energy to spend that time on the computer, but just not to focus on what to post/buy. 😭 I am planning to try again today. Wish me luck.

I was just getting really annoyed thinking about how it is not hard at all to wind your own center-pull yarn cake, so why can't mass-produced yarn balls pull from the center? (They can - there are some brands that do - but most of them don't work very well.) I got annoyed enough to just try a websearch for my question and found this forum discussion:

This is a very basic question, but

"...do you prefer pulling yarn from the inside of a skein or the outside? And why? I usually pull from the inside, but the other day I decided to try the outside for a swatch. I have been used to “untwisting” yarn as I knit, but this time it was ridiculous. I ended up winding the skein into a ball from the inside before trying again. (I have a ball winder, but don’t usually use it for hand knitting projects.) [...]"

[Responder B]: "You're correct, it all has to do with the twist of your yarn. Most commercial yarns are meant to be pulled from the inside, but there are so many yarns out there, that is not a rule set in stone. You obviously added more twist when you tried using your yarn from the outside. A yarn butler would help that problem because it allow the skein to roll off the skein rather than it unrolling and slipping off the end which adds a twist. Some low twist yarns or singles yarn you have to be very careful with otherwise you will completely untwist it and it will pull apart while working. Yarn bowls can be helpful with controlling twist as well."

Oh, what. Oh, UGH, that's so annoying! That makes sense, I guess. It just annoys me.

• Pulling from the center seems more convenient in every respect to me, so why would you design it deliberately the other way? Obviously this isn't self-evident and there must be a lot of people who think it makes more sense or is more convenient to pull from the outside. I hate when my strong preferences are outliers like this because everything is working against me.



• what the hell is a 'yarn butler'? What an annoying term. I could google it but I didn't.



• I know about yarn bowls and I always found the concept a little annoying too, because I carry my knitting around in a bag and the bowl is hard, larger than my bag usually, and also frequently breakable. I typically put the skein in my knitting bag and that usually prevents it from rolling all over the place, although obviously it doesn't have the little loop to catch the working yarn and so isn't as effective as the yarn bowl concept.

It happens every year at this season that when the sun never comes up properly all day it feels like I have never woken up properly either, but it's always just as frustrating and I'm never prepared. Sigh. Time just comes unglued, because it's overcast all the time and it's only daylight (wan gray daylight) between 9 and 4 at best. A week could be a day long or a month long. It's like I'm dreaming, but not as pleasant, because my hands or feet are usually cold during the day.

Sunlamps have never been very noticeably useful for me, which is extremely depressing, but also not bad enough for me to completely give up on them. The worst part is that regular outdoor exercise probably would help but it's completely unattainable. You might as well tell me that a hundred pushups is the cure.

I intend to watch the three released episodes of Heated Rivalry so I can know what everyone (my wife) is talking about, but I haven't got to it yet. I am obviously spoiled by Tumblr posts but I haven't watched the bits between the gifsets.

I rewatched Derry Girls over the last two weeks while attempting to knit this nephew sweater (made it to first sleeve cuff again, finally!). That show is so good, and it's so frustrating, because there's nothing more that's like it! All the main adult actors are also so good, but none of them have a long back catalogue of other comedy to watch! And of course the writer, Lisa McGee, needs time to write more things.

I have a long list of things I've been intending to watch and rewatch, but it feels like I don't have enough emotional bandwidth, or attention, or something, for starting new long things that are going to be dramatic.

So I've been watching a ton of non fiction instead:

➡️very old Folding Ideas and Hbomberguy videos

➡️Mentour Pilot's back catalog of aviation disaster explainers (previously I was familiar from watching over waxjism's shoulder)

➡️Defunctland episodes that aren't too Disney-focused (a mention on Tumblr reminded me and I've only seen a few before)

➡️KyleHatesHiking videos about true crime, accidents, and missing persons cases related to hiking and outdoor sports (recommended by my sister last week)

➡️BobbyBroccoli science scandal documentaries (there's a new movie on Nebula, but otherwise I've watched them all before)

Meanwhile Wax is filling our bird feeders (seed and tallow ball) sometimes multiple times a day and the bird traffic is constant. Sipuli will sit by the window watching them like tv. Tristana is happy to sit in a chair facing the woodstove and watch the fire like it's a tv, sometimes for hours.

Medium Man is a large size. It has more fabric in it than Small Woman (the size of me). It doesn't have more fabric than a sweater for waxjism, but she is too warm-blooded to wear sweaters really, so the last time I knitted one for her was over 10 years ago.

It's a lot of knitting. It's going. There are setbacks.

There are gauge issues. And challenges of imagination.

( Knitting Talk )

Yesterday Wax had to quit work early and drive into Turku to see a doctor because it felt like something was poking her in her left eye but there was nothing there! And then she had to get up early and go to Turku today to see a specialist. She got some eyedrops prescribed, but there's nothing majorly wrong with her eye. It's just that her eyes are too dry. Apparently when your eyes are too dry one of the things that can happen is that they stick to your eyelids when you're asleep and if they're too stuck, when you open your eyes a few cells from the cornea can get torn off it and stay stuck to the eyelid, which creates a little micro hole in it and feels like you're being constantly stabbed in the eyeball. Isn't that great?

When we were talking about this last night I said, "You know, for a bunch of years, like maybe five to ten years ago, I felt like my eyes were too dry all the time and I was putting saline drops in them frequently, but a few years ago instead it started being like they overcompensate and make a lot of tears and now my eyes are more likely to be running when I've been asleep or lying down..." and with her new knowledge she was able to devastatingly inform me that this is just a sign of my eyes being dry, and even though it makes them hurt less, the tears are the wrong kind of moisture or something and not actually helping the eye themselves. So apparently in addition to the drops Wax needs for the inflammation and pain, we both have to start moisturizing our eyes now.

The other quixotic thing that happened this week was that my sister forgot about Brexit. Again.

To be specific: last year my sister ordered me a holiday present from a UK etsy shop that cost more than the minimum you can import without paying import taxes now (which I think is like under 20€ - it might even be 10?). As a result I got a text informing me that a package I didn't know about previously was at Customs, and in order to free it I had to fill out an online form indicating exactly what it was (which is a hassle in itself because they're in a taxonomic tree list) and provide a receipt or proof of purchase, in this case, the email receipt from the webshop that my sister had to forward, which obviously sort of spoiled the surprise. With a small present the amount you have to pay to release it from jail is only a few euros typically, but it is a hassle and it spoils the surprise.

And then this week she FORGOT THAT THAT HAD HAPPENED and ordered me a present from another UK shop.

(My parents & sister and I have pretty much given up on mailing back and forth anything larger than a padded envelope due to the delays and the fact that postage for the regular-sized boxes we typically used to send has gone up to generally over 100€.)

An order for tea was understood by this person to include a plate piled with bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, and chips, three or four kinds of jam, scones, a heavy fruit cake, a loaf of bread, a dish of stewed fruit, and one of radishes.

— Georgette Heyer, Detection Unlimited (1953)

There is some context to this scene that I understand from other reading about the period - rationing, for example. And I've often come upon fictional hotels and pubs in the country serving much more generously than more urban and sophisticated visitors are used to.

But I don't really have a sense of how unusual this is - what a normal pub or hotel would serve for tea. I would have guessed a combination of something like beans, meat, or fish with bread and then scones or cakes, perhaps, but the beginning of this sounds more to me like an English breakfast than my understanding of a tea.

Also: is a dish of radishes just washed radishes for snacking? Or is it more slices with some kind of dressing? My parents were both fond of radishes and grew them in our garden, but I've never encountered the idea of a whole dish of them (and nothing else) on the table at a meal. (Recipes that include them, yes, but would you refer even to roasted radishes as "a dish of radishes"?)

1. Wax's fatigue and stress

Wax had a breakdown about a year ago after Snookums died and we lost Anubis, the same as I did. But she hasn't really rebounded, just been scraping along as if she had the flu since then. She recently told me she thought it wasn't burnout, or anxiety, but maybe something physical related to menopause or thyroid perhaps, and she finally went to a doctor and had a bunch of bloodwork done. But it looked like it wasn't anything like that, and the doctor who gave her the results said she needs to probably see a gynecologist to check if it's related to hormones next. That was a couple of weeks ago, and she hasn't done it yet - she seems to have been alarmed by some vagueness about how the referral process is gonna work. This is her work health insurance, so completely differently from how it works for me.

2. Me seeing a doctor

I got up early yesterday to call between 8:00 and 8:01 am and actually got a record-fast callback in less than 40 minutes, and this time they ACTUALLY GAVE ME AN APPOINTMENT!!! The appointment is in a week and a half, shortly after my birthday. I have a whole list of questions unrelated to this medication to ask the GP while I am there.

3. Cat training & cat divorce

The other day Tristana and Sipuli were briefly sitting calmly on opposite sites of the gate looking at each other! It only lasted for about one minute. While I was still talking to Wax about it, as we watched, Sipuli jumped down, turned in a circle, then jumped back up and tried to grab Tristana through the gate, and Tristana jumped away of course. But it's still a milestone. (I think I've seen this twice before maybe.)

Sipuli is focused enough on training now that she will keep her attention on me even if Tristana is right there staring through the gate! She only ignored me to jump on the gate once, and I ended the session immediately. Since then she has kept her attention on me in spite of gross provocation from Tristana several times.

I think I will try training them to turn in a circle next, and I've started doing this with Tristana by moving the target around to the side next to her hip so she has to twist after it a bit. (Tristana has not even realized she can touch the target with her foot instead of her nose yet. Sipuli seems to switch sort of randomly.)

4. Attempting to become less sedentary

I was doing pretty well with stretches and exercises in the last few months up until I got my driver's licence, but the week before last which I spent at that job-hunting course caused me to drop all the balls I had been juggling (balls of daily routines I mean), and I have not managed to get back to the exercise yet. Which is extra annoying because at the same time I started knitting a sweater for an 18-year-old nephew, so doing shoulder- and arm-focused stretching routines would be more useful now than it was a month ago. I spent all last week feeling exhausted and didn't get past cleaning and knitting. But at the same time, it's now pitch black by four in the afternoon and doesn't lighten until after eight. I need to dig out my sunlamp and get it set up in a good position, probably. In twenty years I've never managed to establish a lasting routine with it, but maybe I just need more practice.