I told you it's poison

Bell Pepper.  Especially green bell pepper.  I have an aversion that is hard to imagine if you haven't seen it in action.  Mom thought at first that I was just fussy, that I should get over it and that if she minced it up small enough I wouldn't notice.  I had a mighty nose for it.  I could walk in to the house and take one sniff,  And I knew. "You are cooking with bell pepper I would say, and she would exclaim, "how did you know?"  From my end, The smell was so awful, so nauseating and penetrating that I couldn't get it past my nose or near my nose to put it into my mouth.
Over the years I have avoided and refused to eat any restaurant dish, altered recipes and questioned waitresses to be able to have my food bell pepper free.  It is amazing to me how many menus say mixed vegetables and they mean bell pepper.
And then I encountered a restaurant that made a spaghetti dish with roasted Red Bell Peppers. I not only could tolerate the smell, it actually tasted good!  I actually slurped them down and looked for more.  Astounding. 
Well I did prove something to myself.  Bell Pepper causes a full fledged fibromyalgia inflammation that hits every joint and tendon in my body and lingers for days.
See? I told you that stuff was poison.

More cards

Finding True North

Inside ourselves we have a way of orienting towards certain things.  We line ourselves up with our sense of purpose, our life beliefs, and our vocations.  This is our true north.  In our lives we have a part of what we are lined up there.  It informs our priorities, our intents and how we move towards or away from our lives.  One of the most devastating experiences to have is to lose your sense of true north.  At that point, how do you find your way through?  A big part of healing is letting go of a north point that aimed us into dysfunction and finding a truer focus for our energies and intent in healthier ways.

The process can seem like crawling for a long time through a very dark tunnel as the old parts crumble away and as yet, no new North shows up.  It will show up.  It takes time, patience and the willingness to endure the waiting.

Fragmentation

When Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall he came to pieces.  No one could ever imagine him being whole again.  Sometimes we reach a point when we fragment. It usually happens as the final step in a series of boundary crosses and mishaps that try our souls and break down our sense of self.

   When we are fragmented we can’t imagine being whole. When we are whole we know better.  The important thing is learning to remember wholeness in the middle of picking up the pieces.

The Good Little Girl

When a child grows up in dysfunction, they can’t survive with any kind of wholeness.  The first original child, the magical child, splits and recedes and becomes hidden.  There are two survival oriented children that show up in the magical child’s place.  One is the Good little girl/boy.  This is the compliant child who is old beyond their years.  This is the child who parents the younger siblings, shops for food and solves problems and keeps things running as best they can.  They do what they are told, and they pay a price in self worth and self esteem that is too high by any standards.

The good child is a form of scapegoat, someone who can never be seen as doing well in the family because the family needs to see them as nothing.  In the adult form they become Caretakers, and some of the morally ascendant shadow of the White Knight. 

In Life they are often very accomplished, very talented, hard working, good people who just do not understand why they aren’t appreciated.  They also believe that whatever they do will never let them be admitted to a normal human life.  They do everything including turning themselves inside out and upside down to prove that maybe they might have a grudgingly given right to exist.

The Princess

Awwww.   Isn’t she adorable?  Doesn’t she deserve the very best in care, loving and protection?  Of course she does!  She is the princess and she deserves everything good.

That is what princesses do.  They deserve.  We need to pay attention to our little princes and princesses.  Because if they ever get the idea that they deserve bad things and not good things they become entitled addicts and enraged abusers because that is what they deserve.  That makes for a nasty way of life. 

A healthy Princess treats herself well.  An angry shamed and deprived Princess is a fast track to a maxed out credit card, and type2 diabetes as uncontrolled Entitlement rages.   Princesses can be wonderful guidance for some parts of your life; they are not good to have in charge of major important parts of it.  They don’t do money well.  They aren’t a good one to put in charge of the grocery list. Princesses don’t pay bills or schedule appointments and shouldn’t go to your job.  However they are absolutely wonderful to put in charge of color, design and your wardrobe.  Their sense of what is good for your self esteem can be spot on.

one stitch short

The vest plods on.  After ripping and counting more times than I want to think, I located the problem.  I was off in my calculations by eight stitches, over and over.  Guess why?  It wasn't because I was counting during talking to someone else, or that I kept getting interrupted. I was off because my pattern repeat is 34 stitches and not 35.
This week my dear mum had surgery.  She is doing well, and due home tomorrow. I was more than a bit distracted and boggled up my stitch count on one vest repeat.  Oh well.
I am knitting along on a sock, something basic and brainless, " a comforting story for one in a tight place"  and managed to boggle turning a heel.  I worry with my hands and I seem to be more concerned than I realize, and I thought I was very worried.   I have tried to figure how many socks have come off my needles since last March.  Ok here it goes.
1 pastel easter egg horror
3 for me
3for  friends
1 for rachel
1 for step daughter
3 for son's sweety
2 for dad
2 for mom
1 for bro
1 for SIL
I think that's 18
Plus the one on the needles. 19
Then I look in my sock yarn box.  It looks just as full or even fuller than it did before I began working on knitting up the yarn in it.
somewhere something doesn't add up.  I may be a sock yarnaholic. Just one more skein, sock yarn doesn't count does it? 

Rippen and knitt'n and.....

How many times must a knitter set up
before she hits the next row?
yes, and how many times should she count all the stitches
before she says she's good to go?
How many times does she pull it all out,
before giving it up and letting it all go?
the answer my friend is wailing in the wind:
Shiiiiiiit shiiiiit shiiiiiiiiiiiit

the rest of the yarn I ordered back when I thought that this sweater might be for the footless man has come.
it is just what I need to reconsider throwing the entire project yarn, needles and all in the fireplace and lighting it off.

sweater update

Two inches into the sweater and I am on a set up row, which I have knitted and ripped six times.  I took it out and counted every stitch.  I need to find the center back stitch so that I can set the pattern properly.  Ok.
270/2=135+1= center stitch right? and 270/35=7.7  That means that 7X35 = 245.  270-245=25.  25/2=12.5
So if I am not entirely messed up I will have 12 stitches on one side and 13 stitches on the other side of the front for a border before I begin the pattern for the body.  That means that I can find a nice 12 stitch border pattern to go up the front sides and everybody is happy and the back is centered right?  Right?

Shut up.  I'm counting
I need a 12 stitch spider.

Open Letter to my internal critical voice

Dear Judge,
I am on to you, I know who you are.  You are the voices of the people I tried desperately to please so that I could survive.  Over the years I have worked my ass off to please you,  forcing myself to achieve things I didn't even find important to get you to dammit shut up your yammering and whining.
I am done.  The people that spawned you are dead, or so far gone out of my life that the last time I heard of them was years ago.  I can safely do what I choose and decide that it is good enough.  I can be who I am and trust that I am enough as well.  How I make my life is mine. Who I love and how we make a marriage is ours, and I can choose to be satisfied or not without your input. 
I am as of this point firing you.  You are no longer the boss of me and I have put your desk and appurtenances out on the curb and changed all the locks.  You better pick them up before the garbage truck hits tomorrow, or they will be in the landfill.  If I so much as hear a peep out of you I will hit you with a restraining order from the hounds of hell.
get off my front step and out of my life.
sincerely,
Cathy

Possible sweater vest

The Footless Man has been doing the laundry the last couple years as I have been getting busier with work, school and the affairs of daily living.  He does a good job with it mostly, but this last month he has been slipping.  He washed and dried my hand knit malbrigo yarn cardigan and shrank it into a postage stamp.
Then he did the same thing with my hoodlet.
I haven't let him forget either one. 
I wanted to knit him another vest. I made him one about three years go, and I took him into a bunch of yarn stores to try to find a yarn, color and texture that he would like.

Of course what happened was an essay in frustration for both of us, and we were no further forward.  I could spend a huge amount of time whining about how difficult this is and how he is uncooperative, or I can take the information that he has grudgingly given me and interpolate it into a sweater.

Like this.
only in grays and greens and browns and yellows.
I showed him the pattern and he humphed and grumphed
"Couldn't you make a spiral instead of the circle on the hand?
I don't want an all over pattern, can't you do solid color and a hand at the back?"
I get it, I truly do. 
I am asking him to do something that he is incapable of doing.  Major revision.
Knit vest to replace my sweater.  Make sure that it is scrumptious.
Find the washable wool that looks good to me, knit a simple vest and tell him that this is what he needs and to shut up and stop whining.