Notice to the family

The holiday season is coming, and I have begun my usual process of making your gifts.  I just want you to know that there will be no surprises this year.  Its going to be socks.

Up date on Michael

He's fine.  His scabs have fallen off, the fur is starting to grow back, and while he moves a little slow. Hes going to be OK.

New information

I have been reading a knitting forum and I found the following information.
Wearing socks with sandals classes you as a fashion dweeb.
With my fashion dork torch held high I now will march into the fall wearing my capri's with my hand knit socks plus my Birkenstocks. So there.

Well if you want to know

I have a tattoo.  It showcases among other things my passion for knitting.  Then you get something like this and all bets are off.
I wonder what they were showcasing besides too much of something mind altering.
on the other hand, its pretty cool.

Update on Michael

He's home.  He has a big shaved spot on his flank.  He is drunker than a skunk.  but he is going to be OK.

Michaels terrible afternoon

I feel horrible about this.  So does The Footless Man and so does my friend.

  Poor Michael is in the hospital overnight and I feel sick with responsibility.
I have a good friend who adores dogs.  She has a rescue dog that she has been rehabbing over the last year.  The dog is beautiful, but nervous and very active.
Yesterday my friend came over to return  something she left at my house and brought her dog.
Now we both know that the dog is unpredictable, so if Sacha comes over she is leashed and under control.  I have never had Sacha in my house for more than a few minutes because of Michael the cat. 
The short story is that Sacha escaped control and attacked Michael, grabbing him by the belly.  Everyone was in the scrum to unclamp the dog's jaws and retrieve the cat who was desperately trying to get away.....
My friend was heroically prying the dogs jaws apart while the cat bit her along the arms.  Michael was shocky and shaken and then had the horrible experience of a bath. (He had soiled himself in his fear and pain)  A quick call to the emergency vets and Michael fresh from the indignity of a bath wrapped in a towel now has a car ride to the dreaded vets.  X-rays showed that he has muscle tears along his abdominal wall where he got grabbed and they wanted to push IV fluids and pain meds over night to be sure that he didn't have kidney damage.
The Swordsman and I sat with Michael and left him with a shirt that smelled like home.  He was muzzy with pain meds and inclined to sleep by the time they were done with him.  I will be calling the vet after I post this,  I hope that he is ready to come home.
I am a gentle soul and I have very few rules about what is OK in my house.  It breaks down to this.  No smoking of any kind.  No alcohol unless it is for cooking.  No recreational drugs.  and now, no dogs.  not again never.

functioning in 3/4 time

Sometimes I hate my body.  It looks good, it has strength, stamina, and the skin, hair and teeth are good with very little maintenance.  my hands are nimble and skilled with all kinds of tools and with all kinds of crafts.  At the same time there are some downsides to living in here.  The one that gets me on a regular basis is the Chronic Fatigue/ fibromyalgia piece.
  This one has been with me one way or another for thirty years.  It seems to work like this:  Three days out of four, I am a fully functional human being with a normal amount of energy and a normal work schedule. The fourth day I feel like I have been hit by a truck.   All my joints ache, there is bone deep fatigue, with a burn in the connective tissue.  Standing hurts, sitting hurts, laying down hurts.   In Hot weather I run on 2/4 time, heat makes things much harder.  Nothing seems to help except for quiet,coolness, and not doing much. Over the years I have managed to come to some kind of terms with this, including choosing work that allows me to have slow days and days to not do much in the "middle " of the work week.  If I am faced with a push through time where I must be functional without downtime I can do it, and then I pay a price after with the painful days.
Today is a Saturday, and there are a lot of things that I wanted to get done including helping cider a tree, putting up the gate posts that we started last week, Errands, Farmer's market, Library.
I woke up and knew that today is a downtime day.  I revised the list.
Delegate the Farmers Market.  Limit the time at the cidering.  Put off some of the errands, move the gateposts to late this afternoon, Hit the library and sit down with a book.    Not much better, but some.
So I will take my time tomorrow, go slow today and that should leave me ready for work on Monday, right?
Maybe.

Let's play stupid

This week has been the week where I did stupid things to my phone.  I have  a cell that is my business phone.  I try to keep it with me both for business purposes  and in case The Footless Man has an emergency and someone needs me to give them information and instructions.
Due to some strange brain fluff I managed to leave it at home on Tuesday.  That night I took it with me to what I thought was  A historical archeology class except that I was a week off, it starts next Tuesday.  Well didn't I feel like a muggins? and what did I do? I left the phone at the class meeting place.  In Loveland.!!!!!! 
The next morning someone tried to call the Footless Man on my phone and that didn't work too well due to battery problems.  I had things to do  and so went phoneless until that afternoon when I drove down to Loveland and picked it up.  The battery was dead.  When I think about the alarm set for 6:30 that must have kept going off I suspect that someone in that office must hate me.  Got Phone home.
Plugged it in and picked up all the voice messages and returned the business ones.  Settled it for a nice long charge, And Thursday morning what did I do?  I left it home again. (!)
Today I made sure that I had it, that it was charged up, and good thing.
about 11 I got a call from the swordsman.  "I looked in on the Footless Man and he isn't answering.  he looks glassy eyed and he's twitching.  Should i call 911?"  yup.  He did and they did their thing and the footless man is ok. 

minor truths

The Footless Man and I were working on getting the gateposts and gate that he gave me many years ago up.  Now I love  the Footless Man, and I have more than twenty years of dealing with him and helping with projects.  I can state with some authority that helping him is the most frustrating thing I do.
I have my way of going about a construction project, and He has his.  They don't combine well.
Let us just say that we ended the session out of charity with each other and the gate posts as yet unhung.
I did end up picking up a lot of the apples that the tree has carelessly dropped. 
In another week or so  it should be ready to cider out, and I want to get the falls out of the area to keep things clean.
Maybe tomorrow we can get the gate posts up.

Where oh where has my little brain gone?

I think it broiled away in the sun and heat of summer.

So has about seven pounds of insulation while using the bicycle instead of the car.
I put twenty dollars worth of gas into Edith.  I want to see if I can make it last until mid October.
that means that I will be using the bike for most of the errands plus riding to work at the office.  That also means that The footless Man is a bit grumpy because I am not taking the cardboard to the recycle when he thinks it should be going.  Oh well.

Meanwhile I have been rootling around in the ol' trauma bin to get past some old outdated attitudes.
I am looking forward to the breaking heat and the return of my ability to think, which comes in after a couple nights cool enough for me to get solid sleep.  Soon, I hope.