Return of the gimp

So it was around this time last year that I pulled my ACL (MCL? I can't remember) and was gimping about with a cane for a few weeks. This year I went for an upgrade - full crutches! See, Tuesday evening I was heading out to teach my knitting class, and had loaded all my gear in the car and had just locked the front door. I turned, put my right foot down - through the porch floor. Up to mid-thigh. And fell on my face (well, belly actually, no damage to the face!)

Then - I hollered. I may have hollered on the way down, but I know I definitely screamed HELP HELP HELP MEEEE! HELP ME I NEED HELP AT # XX! For about 10 minutes. No one came. So I pulled myself out of the hole in the porch (wrenching and scraping as I went), dragged myself down to the car (where my cellphone and everything was already, and the door open), and drove to the hospital, calling (1) the store, (2) my husband, (3) my Yumi, and (4) my parents as I came to stoplights.

Hospital emergency parking - park the car. By this point I can hardly move the leg, but nothing went SNAP! so I'm pretty sure it's not broken. Got out of the car. Nearly fell down, held on to the car and the adjacent car and started dragging towards the door. Nice policeman sitting in his car directly across asks me if I need help. (um, duh?) He gets me a guy with a wheelchair, guy (who's name is Gordon, and who I have to find out who he works for, he's a freaking angel) gets me into the wheelchair, into emergency, into the triage station, gets me a box of Kleenex and tells me - repeatedly - that I did the right thing, I'm in the right place, and I'm not an idiot. This helped much, because I was pretty much hysterical by this point.

Nice triage nurse checks the leg out (I was wearing a long skirt, so easy to look), takes my BP/temp and asks me to rate my pain out of 10. 10 is the worst pain imaginable. I'm feeling eight-ish. She gets me Percoset and something else, which I take, and then I get wheeled down to Urgent Care. And I sit. And I wheel over to the payphone (fifty cents for a freakin' pay phone call now!), and call my mommy, who is enroute, and call back my Yumi, who does not now need to be enroute because Mommy and Daddy are coming (see, someone was going to have to take my car back home for me - smart, yes?)

And I talk to the nice lady waiting at Urgent Care, and I try to read my book because I'm too stoned off the Percoset to knit. (DAMMIT!) And I feel sleepy, and I read, and then Mom and Dad are there, then I go get checked (nice nurse D'arcy looks after me), and then I go for x-rays (nice x-ray lady Diana), and then I come back and Doctor (what's her name? dunno) says nothing's broken but no weight for 72 hours and go see my family doctor on Thursday. And by then Peter is there but by the time we get home we've missed House. Damn.

Yesterday I did basically nothing. Go pee, ice the knee, take the pills and sit and try to knit. It takes 10 minutes to get from the recliner in the living room to the bathroom and back. Today (it's Thursday now) Peter drops me at the folks' for the day and Mom takes me to the doctor. Congratulations! It's not the knee, the knee is (surprisingly) ok. But Surprise! I have a torn hamstring. TORN. Yeah, that would explain the searing pain every time I sit down. No going in to work until after Thanksgiving. No driving. Start physio tomorrow.

So tomorrow (and next week), Peter will drop me at mom & dad's on the way to work, I will somehow get into the corporate network from their place (tomorrow morning I talk to the IT guys) to get work done, I will go for physio in the afternoons and in the evening I will sleep. And I will get better, and it could have been much much worse.

So, how's your week going?

Mmmmonday!

I just ate a really sticky cinnamon roll with a lovely cup of ginger tea, I feel fabulous. :) And so, a happy post! (but no pictures, my camera has gone into hiding, dammit!)

Things are going to start getting busy(busier) around here for me as I kick off my five-week learn to knit class with the school board on Wednesday night. Store classes are still going strong, with next month being SOCKTOBERFEST! (Yeah, it's cheesy. Tough!) I even got a compliment from our district manager recently on how well the knitting classes / yarn sales have been lately. Yay me! Seriously thinking about launching a class schedule / student help site for my class people, but I want to make sure I've got the time to update it before I get it out in the world. In the meantime they can email me, or phone when I'm home, it's all good!

I have been knitting, and even finished some stuff. The Rosewood socks are done, but I can't post a picture because one of the pair is hanging in my Socktoberfest display at the store. The 2nd of the Wedgewood socks is nearly done also, just need to do the toe decreases and Kitchener it off.

Got the back and front of my "silk" sweater done and shoulders joined, and I picked up for the first sleeve but it's supposed to have 79 picked up stitches and I only had 51. Oops. Knit bravely on until I could actually see if the thing would go around my upper arm - no dice. Rrrip! Thinking about picking up the 51 and then doing a whack of increases on the first row to get the number right... either it will work brilliantly or look like crap and I'll rip it out again. Either way I'm going to try it because I really don't fancy redoing the back and front to make the armholes deeper... they're deep enough when there are no sleeves attached so stands to reason they should be correct with sleeves - we shall see. It's in timeout until next weekend.

What else? Ah yes, started knitting up the lovely handspun that Kraftie sent me for SP10 - it's deliciously sproingy and the colours are striping up in nice muted tones. I'm making it into a simple triangle shawl on 6mm needles, which is a loose but not floppy gauge with this yarn. Going more for warmth than size - a shawl'ette, I guess. May be gifted, may be kept, I haven't decided yet. Still lots of UFOs in the bin, working slowly through the pile. I'm trying to reduce stress (who isn't right?) so I'm not pressuring myself about WIPs and finishing anymore. They won't go bad.

Well, I must go prep my student packages for Wednesday and get samples and things together... so excited for this class, I get these nice folks for five whole weeks!

Have a lovely rest of the week!

Meme-time Friday!

Picked this one up from Yumi...

1. Do you have a tattoo? Five of them.
2. How old are you? 36.
3. Are you single or taken? Taken happily (and often, heh he he...)
4. Eat with your hands or utensils? Depends on the food...
5. Do you dream at night? Vividly and weirdly.
6. Ever seen a corpse? Yup.
7. George Strait or Jay Z? George Strait.
8. How did we meet? Either at the GLBTC or a party... I don't actually remember *blush*
9. What's your philosophy on life and death? Life - I'm for it. Death - not so much.
10. If you could do anything with me, and have no one know, what would it be? If I told here, they would know! Nothing illegal. Probably a trip somewhere.
11. Do you trust the police? Yes.
12. Do you like Country music? Yes!
13. What is your fondest memory of me? Probably in the early days of you and Mr. B., when you stayed over at the house for the first time and were in our living room in PJs on a Saturday morning.
14. If you could change anything about yourself what would it be? Give up my automatic guilt reflex.
15. Would you cheat? On hubby - never. On taxes - maybe. On tests - used to, not anymore.
16. What do you wear to sleep? PJ pants and t-shirt, fleece PJs in winter.
17. Have you ever peed in a pool? As a child, probably.
18. Would you hide evidence for me if I asked you to? Yes, but not in my bodily cavities.
19. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together? Breakfast of homemade everything, and no dishes to wash. Early morning walk through the Market. Lunch somewhere expensive, dressed to the nines. Afternoon drive to the Hershey's factory. Pizza dinner on the couch with a classic movie. Crowd show, drinks and dancing until wee small hours. After-bar breakfast at Elgin Street Diner. No tears.
20. Which do you prefer - short or long hair? On me? Short. On you? Hell, anything works on you, you've got good hair.
21. Do you sing in the shower? At home, not at the gym.
22. What's your favorite color? Blue, especially watery-oceany blues.
23. If you could bring back anyone that has passed, who would it be? Grampie Thurber. I think I missed out on knowing him, I'd have a lot more to talk about with him now.
24. Tell me one interesting/odd fact about you? I am obsessively organized at work and the exact opposite at home. And I'm occasionally afraid of the dark.
25. What was your first impression of me? Damn. I wish I could wear my hair in braids like that - it's beyond cute.
26. Have you ever done drugs? Yes.
27. Will you post this so I can fill it out for you? Yup!

And now, back to my Excel Intermediate course. Yay.

And we carry on...

So it's Thursday night, and life has continued / is continuing to be ... life. After that incredibly harsh start, the week has actually shaped up to be not too overwhelmingly evil. I did (a bit) of knitting. I read one really terrific book (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - I know I'm late to the bandwagon, but DAMN that's a great book!), and started another (The Great Gatsby - yup, I'm 36 and never read it. It's a boring plot but incredibly well-written so I don't care it's a boring plot). I've cooked some meals, done lots of work, watched some hockey, played some WoW, and even paid (most of) the bills. Of course, I got kicked by an IBS attack this evening but nothing I can't handle. Tea and a bagel is a perfectly acceptable dinner.

Tomorrow will be a Good Day! I'm going in to the office ungodly early to get my day's work cleared off in an hour and a half before I traipse off to Excel-2000-Intermediate training for the day. Woot! School day! And me with a half-knit sock, woohoo! And then, and then - BLISS - I'm spending the evening with Yumi. Yumi is like the original Coca-Cola of friends - life is better with Yumi (also mildly addictive... ok, that needs a side note).

Side Note: Coca-Cola is made in part from coca leaves. Nowadays they extract the cocaine part and just keep the flavouring. For more information on this and other neat ethno-botanical stuff, read "One River" by Wade Davis. It's cool.

And then it will be the weekend, with all that entails. And we carry on.

Last words...

"That was some good steak," she said, and went into her room. 15 minutes later her heart stopped. The paramedics came and then neighbours drifted over to gather on the lawn, to offer support to the family and each other. We needed sweaters; we wore sandals. Tomorrow I will walk the dog while her brother and sister-in-law go do the things that have to be done. I'll make a casserole; that's what we do. That was some good steak, she said.

Damn. When did I get competent at dealing with death? We lost a neighbour - more, a friend. Nine months ago we were the bereaved, now we are the support system, but still bereaved. I keep thinking, at 36, I'm too young to be at this stage of life, where people die. But the truth is that they die all the time. They're just dying closer, it seems.

I will, in all likelihood, knit a shawl, as much for my own comfort as for theirs. But it's what we do.

I'm still here...

Vacation was swift and now I'm back to work and work and work... ah well, it was fun while it lasted! I did finish two pair of socks and got the back and front of my sweater done, but the sleeves require picking up stitches at the armholes so that will have to wait for the weekend. Loads of teaching coming up, I have a class at Michaels the next three weeks for sure and then I'm starting the Wednesday night evening class through the school board on the 26 - eeks, that's two weeks from tomorrow! I need to plan and prepare. I also need to eat dinner.

Bye for now!