Still Summer...

I know I said it was "Time For Socks" but the weather thinks otherwise - it's actually rather lovely still.  There's a chill in the mornings, though, so I know the socks will be in use soon...

They did get finished:

 And I have some other knitting to show you, too, but first... we have two new family members.

This is Lucas, he's a red eared slider, and he's just living with us for a year while his Momma is in a dorm room.  Next year, when she's out of dorms, Lucas will go home.  It took him almost a week to get brave enough to come out of the water onto his basking shelf, but he's confident now, and doesn't even leap off when he sees us approaching!

 See that little ceramic turtle at the back of the ramp?  Today Lucas learned how to throw it into the water!  :-)  How charming he is!

And this is Victoria, although she seems to mostly be 'Tory' these days - she is a beautiful little pale gray-brown gerbil, almost the exact color of MadelineTosh 'Whiskers' (my yarn friends will know what this means) and she is a peach - so friendly and fun!

I have some new knitting designs to share, but it's late, and I'm sleepy, so they'll have to wait...

Goodnight Moon!

Time for Socks

It's here, folks, already - it is time for socks!   The warmth of summer may come back for one last hurrah, but the last couple of days have been chilly and rainy, and when I walked in the door of Tolt Yarn and Wool yesterday and saw their beautiful display of Hyak hiking socks, I knew I had to have a pair or two...

So I bought two skeins of yarn and the pattern, and yesterday evening I did this...

Two skeins of Cestari two-ply aran weight wool on a US 5 - going to be a pretty hard-wearing sock! I'm excited! 

The US Open is on tv, Andy Murray will be playing in a bit, and it's Labor Day, so I have the day off work.... these socks are just asking to be knitted, right?

There are a couple of practical things that need to be taken care of - a quick trip to get haircuts, Kohls to get some new jeans for the eldest, essential oils to be blended and sprayed around the outside of the house to keep the monster wolf spiders at bay (hey, does anyone have a really good natural way to keep those little beasties on the OUTside of the house?  Let me know if you do, all ideas gratefully received.) - but for the most part, there's just tennis and knitting... should at least finish the first sock today.

Beer Goggles.

So we went to Whidbey Island this weekend, and stayed here,

Caity spent most of the weekend wearing her best friend's jacket, because it just made her feel a tiny bit better than the 'completely awful' that has pervaded much of the last 6 days.  It still feels a lot like the whole accident happened to someone else.  

if you can't tell - this was my chair!  I sat here quite a lot, by which I mean 'I lay here half-comatose from when I got out of bed until it was time to go back to bed'!  

The beach house was close to the ferry boat terminal, which was wonderful, because I wasn't well enough to do very much except sit in that chair by the window, so having the boats to watch was very cheering!

We got there Friday night, and I managed to sit up and play cards for a while before we all crashed out for the night, and then on Saturday morning Cathy went off to Langley and gathered up clues for the annual murder mystery weekend that was taking place there.  I did this...

quite a bit, whilst looking out the window at this...

this is the front deck of our little beach cottage. 

oh look, there's the ferry boat - I saw quite a lot of ferryboats, or rather, the same two ferryboats quite a lot of times, this weekend!  

It was a pretty short walk to the water really, but was too far for me to go on Saturday - I made it on Sunday morning, with a cup of tea, and sat right under that flag, watching the orcas play in the water.  The ferryboats divert their crossing route to give the orcas enough room, which is lovely! 

Poppy, being a very good dog, took it upon herself to make sure that I rested plenty, and so she spent most of the weekend pinning me to the chair... 

she's very good at it!  

I have taken more Advil in the last 3 days than I usually take in 3 years, I am exhausted, bruised, exhausted, beaten up, and exhausted.  I have worn sweats all weekend, I have slept in the sweats I wore during the day, and in the morning just changed into different, clean, sweats, I have been well fed, filled with gallons of tea, I have slept, watched ferryboats, petted the dog, eaten something someone else prepared, and slept again, steadily, for 48 hours.  I have barely knitted anything which, for those who don't know me well already, I should point out is astonishing, because I'm always knitting something or other!  

This afternoon I did manage a shower, and then fell asleep with my hair still wrapped in a towel, so you can imagine how it looked when I woke up - yeah, THAT good!  Let's just say, it was a good match for the sweat pants!  

And this evening we drove the whole entire mile to the ferryboat, sat in the line for a while, got on the ferry, got off the ferry 15 minutes later, and went to Ivar's Fish and Chips to get supper.  

As we walked back to the car with our supper, some people spilled out of a bar, haphazard and giggly, and a girl said to us 'you should go in there, it's really fun in there' and a guy said 'yeah, and I just put $20 in the jukebox and picked songs they won't let me listen to' - and we laughed and agreed that it must be a very fun place, because they were obviously very drunk and had already had WAY too much fun - it was, after all, only 8 o clock at night!  And we herded our two teenagers by, and the guy looked at my girls and stated loudly 'Your Mother Is Gorgeous!' - and we all laughed our heads off because, really, I'm in sweats, I have 'slept in a towel' hair, I'm on too many Advil and I look like, well, like I was in a car wreck 6 days ago!  

But hey, you gotta take your compliments where you can get them, right?  

Cravalanche!

In the last 2 weeks, three people have asked me 'do you still blog?', and I wondered whether maybe the Universe is trying to tell me something...

I can't really tell you why I stopped, suffice it to say it's been a challenging couple of years, and I'm not planning to revisit any of it here, so let's move forward and see where we go...

Let's begin with the addition to our family dictionary:

Cravalanche (Noun):
    1.  (literal) An avalanche of crap.
    2.  A continuum of challenging events that has no known cause or any discernible date of cessation.  These events have not been earned nor are they deserved in any way.

    How to use it in a sentence: the last 4 weeks of my life have been an absolute cravalanche!

    Picture examples of events that may contribute towards a cravalanche:  when you do this for a living,

and then this happens while you are minding your own business walking down the street...

or when you need to use this every day,

and then this happens while you are stopped outside of school letting kids cross the street...

It's not good!  Those who love me have gently informed me that I have a black eye, bruising on my back that I cannot see, as well as the things that I am aware of, of course.  And my own body informed me unceremoniously today that I have to go to bed and I don't have any other options!

The upside is that my wrist is barely noticeable now, under the cravalanche of other things that hurt.  It's 3.30 in the afternoon, and I'm going for a nap!

Unstuck!

I'm sitting here procrastinating about working my way through a free printable coaching course on 'getting unstuck'.  Today has been a banner day, I have filled in paperwork that has been hanging over me like the Sword of Damacles, and now it is DONE, and I can let it go.

I have signed up for a course that I am not looking forward to, I fear it will be practical and unfeeling and not at all the way I like to do things, but it is a legal requirement that I attend, so go I must.

I have battled fear today, and won, for now.

And now I am trying to become 'unstuck'.

My calendar challenge for January was this...

and there was a lot to learn in that short inspiration.  I did let my voice out, I did raise it a little, and it felt good to have a little power.  I did say 'no' and I did say 'enough', I did speak up.  

February, however, is going to be tougher... 

I know the answers to these questions, but I am afraid to step forward, uncertain of where the path goes, or how much there will be to learn, juggle, find money for - 8 months have passed, and I'm still 'doing it scared' in a lot of ways.

What makes your heart sing?

What is it that most arouses your passion... and what are you willing to risk?

This is the difficult part, what AM  I willing to risk?  Where will I stop?  What is 'too much'?  Where is 'too far?'.

"She discovers what she was born to do" - it's going to be quite a month!

Say Something.

it hurts to let go, but sometimes it is just what needs to be done.  This week has been a turning point for me, conversations, experiences, thoughts, and inspirations, all dropped into my consciousness in a very short space of time, and something inside me began shifting.  And then, finally, this song.

Say something, I'm giving up on you.
I'm sorry that I couldn't get to you.
Anywhere I would have followed you.
Say something, I'm giving up on you.

This song haunts my heart, I hear it in my sleep, it speaks to me.

It is time to let go of my old life, of the hurt and the fear and the disappointment.  It is time to give up on some things that just aren't going to work out in a good way.  The song says so.  I AM sorry that I couldn't get to you, but that's not my fault, and it's okay to stop trying.

And so, inspired by the work and words of writer Lissa Rankin, by the power of my NIA dance teacher Pauline, and by the beauty of this song, I am letting go, and letting be.  I am resting, waiting, not grasping for what I think I want or need, but giving it up to the Universe, and letting new things come to me.

I'm giving up on you, I'm cutting you loose, letting go of needing to know where or how you are, I'm giving up on you, but I'm not giving up on ME.

Inspired by NIA, I am RAW, Relaxed, Alert, and Waiting.

I have no idea what might be in store for me, but I know that chasing it won't make it happen if it's not meant to happen.  So say nothing if that's what you want, or fight for my attention if you think that's what you need - either way is fine with me, I'm letting go now, and there's nothing you can do about that.

I am untouchable because I have let go.

Doing It Scared.

I feel like I am standing on the edge of a precipice this morning..

Last week was tough, really tough, 6 months of living so very differently, and I was doing okay until my dance friend announced that she's going through the same struggle, and younger daughter moved on from denial into anger, while daughter the elder buried herself in studying for her Freshman finals (4.0 in 'English as narrative', one point shy of a 4.0 in Statistics, last final for Law class is this morning and she is holding her breath!).

It's been fun!  I felt terrified, overwhelmed, disoriented, we've been trying to remortgage the house and there've been some weird things with that, it seemed like it wasn't going to work out and I was going to have to continue trying to afford the extortionate rates while others have a nice new low rate mortgage, it was all very difficult and it didn't feel like there was much solid ground for me to stand on. 

I was thinking about potential work, what could I be?

- occupational therapist?  I already have teaching qualifications and experience, working in schools as an OT would be my sort of thing... yeah, but basically need medical school to qualify, unless I am an 'assistant', which wouldn't earn enough money to keep me, let alone the kids.

- Physical therapist?  Still helping people, which would be great, but still needs a lot of medical learning, don't have the time or the money for that much training.

- NIA teacher?  Oh yes please, but it would be a couple of hours a week and would not pay the bills, would be fun though!

- Life coach - my dance teacher says 'life coach', and some of you have said similar things, get paid to advise, support, encourage, help make plans, to basically do all the things I already do with people...  so I looked that up online, too, and found that there is training and support for starting one's own business, and that it's new, but it could be a big thing in the next few years.

All of this was madly swirling in my head, none of it looking like a solution to the economic issues in my near future, all of it feeling like too much, too difficult, too impossible. 

I kept hearing my friend Sharon's advice - do what's necessary, and then what's possible, and pretty soon you'll be doing the IMpossible.  I've done what's necessary for the last 6 months, I'm feeling like it's time to go for 'what's possible' but that's scary and overwhelming, and the way forward is unclear.

And then at the weekend my friend posted on Facebook that she's looking for someone who can write in HTML code, to help her with an excess of work, and I thought 'well, I used to be able to program, how hard can it be?', so I went and found a free tutorial to get started, and by the end of yesterday I had a working webpage that I could change font size, colour, background on, I could write a bulleted or numbered list, I could bold or italicize things, I could insert a picture, or a link to a webpage - it was fun, and DD2 was very impressed that I could make an internet page - I was pretty impressed myself! 

I messaged my friend, to say 'hey, how complicated do these clients of yours need things to be?  Do you think I could learn this stuff in time to be able to maybe help you out?' and I got back...

"Here's another tutorial so you can learn some more about it, I think you can do it, oh, and by the way, I know a couple of life coaches, want me to pass on your contact information?". 

And there it is - the precipice.

A turning point?  The opportunity that I've been believing would present itself at some point?  Maybe, maybe not, maybe TWO. 

I found this at the weekend, whilst searching for the author of a quote that had come to my attention... it's an excerpt from a blog post, and the author is quoting a story from The Reader's Digest. 

The blog author writes - "I read the story in Reader’s Digest, and I haven’t read the Digest in decades. But the story has stuck with me through the years. 

The multistory office building was burning, and its occupants streamed down the stairwells, parting to get around the woman standing frozen at the top of a flight of stairs. Finally a man stopped beside her and said quietly, 
"You have to go down." 
She replied, "I can't." 
He said again, "We have to go. Now." 
"No!" she repeated, "I can't do it." 
"I'll do it with you," the man said, taking her arm. 
"But I'm scared," she cried. 
To which he said, "Then do it scared."."

I have spent the last week crying "But I'm scared", but this morning I said yes to my friend, yes, go ahead and connect me to your friends, and now I'm off to take the second step down the staircase, and investigate that tutorial she sent me. 

This is me, doing it scared.