A Happy Fuzzy Blog

Don't pet the bees

Every time I see the bumblebees in my garden, I think they look so cute and fuzzy, I just want to pet them.  But that would be bad.  They wouldn't like that.

So I just admire them.  I have no idea how many of them I have in my garden.  Dozens, at least.  Probably well over a hundred in the middle of the day.

Look at them on this Joe Pye weed.  They're practically rolling around on it.

I can imagine them making that sound Homer Simpson makes after he's eaten something really delicious.

I've seen a lot of butterflies in my garden too, but they don't sit still for very long.  And I saw a hummingbird today, just as I was going inside to get my camera so I could take pictures of bees.  Yay!  My first hummingbird of this garden!

And look!  My verbascum is starting to bloom.  Does it not rock?

I think it's pretty cool. 

And my yarrow's buds are finally starting to open so I can tell what color the flowers are going to be!  They're yellow!  Can you say "yellow yarrow" ten times fast?

I didn't know what color they were going to be because when Erica gave them to me, she just said, "Here, have some yarrow.  I don't know what color it is."  Well, hey, ok.  I've never seen a yarrow I didn't like, and butterflies like them, so yes please.  But I've been talking to it ever since I planted it, saying, "Hmm, I wonder what color you're going to be."  Kind of like waiting for a baby to be born to find out if it's a boy or a girl, I guess, except yarrow comes in a lot more than two colors.

Last week I was whining about my tomatoes still all being green.  Ingrid took pity on me and brought me some ripe tomatoes from her garden!  Oh, they were so delicious!  Thank you so much, Ingrid!  And just as I ate the last one...

Yes!  They're finally getting the idea!

Alas, all is not well in my garden.  See my zucchini plant?

No, it's not some trick like the Emperor's Zucchini.  There was a zucchini plant there.  There were actually three plants.  I bought what I thought was one, then realized it was really three in one pot, and didn't have the heart to sacrifice two of them, nor the room to move them somewhere else.  That was probably a mistake.  Anyway, I left the three plants to grow together, and they got huge.  I had lots of zucchini.  I was eating zucchini every few days, I was giving it to neighbors, coworkers, I even gave one to my yoga instructor.  And then the leaves started wilting, even though I was giving it lots of water.  The bottom leaves were dead, the top leaves were wilting, and it wasn't producing as much zucchini anymore. 

I did a google search and from what I could tell, it sounded like the poor thing had squash vine borers.  I pulled off all the dead leaves so I could get at the base of the plants.  Yeah, I could see that something had eaten away a lot of the stalk, and it was still there (just like Goldilocks!).  The stalks were full of small brown insects and some crawly things, but they weren't the white pupae I was expecting to see.  They were brown, much more slender, and had legs.  But the damage looked the same.  

Unfortunately there were so many of the insects and crawly things and they were moving so fast, there was no way for me to remove them.  So, into a yard waste bag, leaves, stalks, roots, and all, for the city to compost.  Rest in peace, my dear zucchini plants.  It was nice knowing you while you were here.  Thank you for feeding me.  Namaste.

On a more positive note, I hauled my ass over to the thrift shop today.  It's such a hit or miss thing, you know.  Sometimes I have good luck, sometimes I don't.  Well, today was my day!  I got four dinner plates, a pair of jeans, and nine shirts for $20.14!  Score!

The thing I don't understand is who the hell decides how women's clothing sizes are determined and what the hell are they smoking?  I tried several shirts on, in both size Medium and Large, because I've found the sizes vary so much, they might as well be in one category called size Random, and either it will fit or it won't.  Within the Mediums, some fit perfectly and look great, some are a bit too snug and not so flattering, some are so small I can't get them on, some are too loose and not so flattering, and some are so loose they look like they're two sizes too large.  Within the Larges, it's the exact same thing as the Mediums.  Which is to say, there are Mediums which are two or three sizes larger than the Larges.  Huh?

It was the same thing with the jeans.  I found two pairs of black size 10 jeans to try on.  Actually I found the one pair and wasn't going to try on the second pair, figuring I already found a pair of black jeans to try on, and then I remembered how much sizes vary and thought, don't be stupid, try them both.  One fit perfectly; the other was two sizes too large.  Uh...right.   So if I want pants in that brand to fit me, am I supposed to be looking for a size 6?  Huh?  That's crazy talk.  Just label things right so I know where to look.  Duh.

Oh well.  At least I got a lot of good stuff cheap, even if I did have to leave behind a lot of stuff that was theoretically the same size as what I bought, but...not in your dreams, pal.

Where do you want to sit?

I've noticed a disturbing trend lately.  A young couple will board the bus, the young woman first, followed by her boyfriend.  She will start walking down the aisle, and then when she's about a quarter of the way down she'll stop, and turn to him and say, "Where do you want to sit?"  I say now to these young women:

This is rude to anyone who happened to get on after you.  They're just stuck standing until you move.  Just sit down already.

Even if nobody got on after the two of you, often the driver won't move until you're seated, so if you just stand there debating where to sit, you're holding up the driver and all the other passengers.

But while violations of bus etiquette do annoy me, this disturbs me for a deeper reason.  As one woman to another, I really hope you learn this soon for your own mental health: his opinion is not more important than yours.

Where do you want to sit?  You don't need to ask him where he wants to sit.  Just sit wherever there's an empty (whole) seat, wherever you feel like sitting.  He'll sit with you.  If he doesn't, there's something wrong with the relationship.  If there isn't an empty seat, just sit someplace where there are two empty spaces close together.  If he makes you feel like you need to ask his approval for where to sit on the bus or like you're not competent enough to pick out a place to sit by yourself, there's something really wrong with him.  Why are you in a relationship with him?

It's one thing to consult with your partner about things that affect both of you, like where to go for dinner, or is this a nice neighborhood to live in, but it's another thing to always ask your partner where do you want to eat, where do you want to live, and go along with whatever they say like you have no opinion of your own.

If this sounds like a relationship you're in, and you're thinking it will get better, it won't.  It will only get worse.  If he makes you feel incompetent over trivial things or like you need to ask for approval for small things now, eventually he'll be making you feel incompetent over everything and like you need to ask for permission before you do anything. You'll wonder how you ever got hooked up with such a maniacal control freak.  Get out now while it's still relatively easy.

Or maybe your relationship isn't like that.  Maybe he's wondering why you ask him every time where he wants to sit.  Maybe he's wondering why you can't make a simple decision like that on your own?

Either way, it's something to consider.  I wish you luck.

Planting myself

So I moved a few months ago.  Oh, didn't I tell you?  Oh, right, I have this kind of anxiety thing where I feel like if you all know where I live, some crazed lunatic might show up and kill me or something.  Not a knitter of course.  Some of you might be a bit loopy (heh heh, loopy!), but you're not dangerous. But of course all kinds of people besides knitters end up reading this (some pretty strange searches land people here).  It finally occurred to me though that a crazed lunatic could show up anywhere (not that I'm inviting any crazed lunatics to show up, no sirree Bob), and hell, I could get hit by a truck next week for that matter (I have to say, I'm not fond of Kroger delivery trucks or white pickups).

So basically I decided I need to just start living my life.  I was tired of feeling like I couldn't tell you about all the cool stuff where I live now or show you pictures.  I really like it here, and there's cool stuff to show you, so time to get on with it.  Cool thing number one?  I have a garden now.  Look! Little eggplants!  Aren't they the cutest thing ever?

And monster tomato plants, full of a zillion tomatoes, all green, because I forgot about the difference between determinate and indeterminate when I bought the plants.  D'oh.

We'll call that a learning experience.  I'll get it right next year. This year?  Looks like I'll be drying some tomatoes.

And could a knitter/spinner have a garden without lambs ears?

No, one could not.

And I had to plant one of my very most favoritest plants of all time, lobelia siphilitica.

Another cool thing about living here?  There's a chipmunk who visits my back porch regularly.  It actually relaxes there.  How often do you get a chance to see a chipmunk relax, up close?  Pretty darn cool.

I have a basement now where I set up a fiber studio.  It's great, though I need to get an ipod or something at some point so I can listen to music and/or podcasts while I'm working.  I haven't been dyeing that much though because I've been spending so much time in the garden.  The dyeing might turn into a seasonal thing.  I've got some ideas though.

Another cool thing?  I finally got rid of that hideous $20 couch that looked like I only paid 20 bucks for it and bought a real couch.  It's red.  It's very attractive.  It's very comfortable.  I like it very much.*

Rudy likes it too because not only can he go behind it, he can go under it.  I knew he would like that about it.  He likes the fresh food from my garden I grow just for him too.  Ok, I don't grow the dandelion greens just for him, but if they're in my garden, they're his, and they make him happy.  I do grow parsley, dill, basil and mint for him (the mint is in a pot, not in the ground.  It's nowhere near the ground.  I'm no fool).  I was growing cilantro, but it went to seed really fast.  I've tried getting the seeds to germinate, but they don't want to.  Any hints from successful cilantro growers?

Also, rabbit people take note.  Want to make your bunny happy?  Buy a zabuton.  A zabuton is a meditation cushion.  I bought one for myself to sit on to meditate.  I put it on the floor in my living room.  Rudy decided it was his.  Immediately.  Obviously I had bought him a bunny mattress.  He likes it very much.

Usually he's very camera shy.  He won't let me anywhere near him with the camera.  But he didn't want to get off the zabuton, so he let me come close to him even though I had the weird shiny, clicky thing.  Of course I can't really use the zabuton myself now, unless I want to spend five minutes brushing rabbit hair off of it first every time I want to sit on it (I brush him all the time, but he grows new hair and sheds as fast as I can brush him.  Sometimes I wonder if brushing him just stimulates new hair growth.  But he won't let me brush his belly.  No way, no how). 

But I have a happy bunny!  And honestly, is there anything cuter than a bunny washing his face?

*And I know some of you looked at the photo of the couch and zoomed right in on the basket of knitting on the floor

and you're saying, "Hey!  Whatcha knittin"?!  Are you gonna tell us about it?  Are you gonna show us?  Are you?  Huh?  Huh?  Are you?"

Alright.  I will show you.  I'm making this.

Anne Hanson's Hypotenuse Scarf using some of my handspun blue faced leicester.  It's yummy.  I'm making it to go with my yellow parka, which needed a nicer scarf to go with it than the ratty old thing I was wearing with it, which made me feel like some kind of refugee.  This is so much nicer.  After I started it, of course, I realized that the coat is two sizes too big for me now because I've lost 30 pounds since last fall, and I'll probably lose even more weight by this winter, but I can pull the drawstring in at the waist and around the bottom so wind doesn't go up the back.  I don't want to buy another coat until my weight stabilizes (I've lost the last 5 lbs just in the last two months, so I guess I haven't stabilized yet).

Anyway, when I do buy another coat, I want another bright yellow one like the one I've got, or a bright green, the same color as my jacket.  Something that says to motorists as I'm crossing the street in the dark, "Hi!  See me!  Don't hit me!," not "SPLAT!  AAAAAGHHH!  CRUNCH!"  If you know what I mean.  I see so many coats in dark drab colors, and I'm thinking, uh, no, not so much.  I don't want to be squashed.  I like being alive.

It's Official

Well, it's official.  I'm old now.  (At this point half of you are saying, "Riin, you are not old," and the other half are saying, "Well, duh, we knew that, so what's your point?")  I'm getting my first pair of bifocals. I've realized for quite a while that I needed them, but I've been putting off going for an eye exam because glasses are fucking expensive, and bifocals even more so.  But I really couldn't put it off any longer.

I suppose maybe bifocals mean I'm officially middle-aged rather than old, though I knew a kid in my elementary school who wore very thick bifocals. That seems to be pretty unusual though.  It seems to be something people start with in their 40's, no?  So I'll be officially old when?  When I start menopause?  At my last physical my doctor asked me if I was still having periods.  Ok, that freaked me out a little.  I kind of felt like, "I'm only 43!  How old do you think I am?"  But I guess some women start menopause in their early 40's.

I'm mostly joking when I say I'm old.  I don't really feel old.  On the other hand, I'm not ashamed of being 43.  I am the age I am, and I feel better and look better than I did 20 years ago.  I'm in far better health now.  My eyes aren't as good, but the rest of me is in a lot better shape. I weigh 100 pounds less than I did 11 years ago.  I eat a much healthier diet, I get a lot more exercise, and my head is more together.  I've figured out more about life.  It took time and experience, some good and some bad, to become the person I am today.

So I've got a lot of gray hair, and I'm getting more all the time.  That's fine.  I have no intention of dyeing it.  I think it's pretty.  And I'll tell anyone how old I am.  I really don't understand women who lie about their age.  My mom tells people she's 39.  Um, so she gave birth to me four years before she was born?  Well, that's one for the tabloids.

Anyway, I wonder if there is some definition of what age is young, what's middle-aged, what's old, or if it's just relative, i.e., I'm old compared to the 22-year-old students who work for me, but young compared to my mom (even if she is "39" -- right, Mom), or if it just varies by individual? I mean, you know how sometimes you meet two different people and you find out they're the same age, but you'd swear one was 15 years older than the other?  I think I used to be older than I am now in some ways.

In any case, I'll have my new glasses in about a week.  I got violety/purple frames that really rock it with my gray hair, and I swear, that color looks good with all of my clothes.  I realized later it's actually the same color as my shoes!

I'll take a picture of myself wearing them once they arrive.  It'll be nice to be able to see.  Er...could you guys buy some of my stuff so I don't have to start naming colorways things like "I bought new glasses and now I'm broke"?  Unless someone actually wants a colorway with that name. I guess I could dye it for you.  (Hmm...now I'm thinking about what that would look like.  Well, maybe I'll have to dye it anyway...)

And now, I know what you're saying.  You're saying, "Riin, you keep saying you're going to show us knitting pictures.  Well, where are they?  Are you just all talk and no action?  Where are they, girl?  Cough 'em up!"  I know, I know, I'm the world's worst blogger.  Well, here they are, finally.  First, the purple and blue sock I finished...uh...well, when it was still cold enough to wear socks.  So a few months ago.  Ahem.

Next, my Tigers on Estrogen socks, which I knit using Anne Hanson's Smokin' Socks pattern.

Now you might be thinking they look awfully skinny for my size 8.5 feet and sexy muscular legs, but ah, Anne was sneaky!  Look how stretchy they are!

I'd model them for you, but it's just too hot for me to wear socks right now.  You'll have to use your imagination.  Uh, unless you're some pervert with a foot fetish, then go away, ya weirdo! 

Finally, here's my sock in progress, and I do believe it's my favoritest sock ever.

I'm in love with it.  It's almost the same as the Crocus sport weight I still have one skein of in the shop; the greens just came out a little bit darker in this one (they were from the same dyepot).  Happy happy...

Sigh...I still need to show you my sweater, which is almost finished.  But that will have to wait till next time.  I need to go to bed.  (Have mercy!  I need sleep!)

Oh yeah, the other thing...

I remembered the other thing I was trying to say in my last post (see, I told you my brain wasn't working).  Once I realized that my depression was often part of a migraine, that was encouraging because it meant the depression would go away in a few days.  Yeah, it sucked while it was there, but it didn't mean I was starting to sink into a deep abyss where I'd be stuck for weeks or months or years, though it sure felt like it at the time.  I just had to wait it out, and it would go away all by itself, as soon as the storm in my head cleared.

That was a great relief.

But I'm glad you guys aren't just saying, "shut up, no one cares what you think!"  I guess there's always a little voice in the back of my head saying that.  Damned childhood.  To be logical though, if someone doesn't care what I think, you'd think they just wouldn't read my blog.  Not that everyone is logical.  Since I started a website way back in 2003, a lot of people have emailed me, most to say really positive things, but a few have sent messages along the lines of "no one cares what you think" (although usually quite hostile) which really made me wonder why they bothered to read it and why they went through the effort of writing to tell me they "didn't care."  Weirdos.

But I'm also glad I'm not just talking to myself.  Hi.

So I'll go ahead and continue to be open and honest, warts and all. Figuratively speaking.  I don't actually have any warts.  I saw a toad on my way home from the bus stop a few months ago though.  I was actually walking in the dark and I saw a movement in the grass and stopped and looked down closely and realized it was a toad.  Toads are cute.

And I'm easily distracted.  Where was I?

Oh yeah.  The migraines.  Well, to clear up some of the stuff brought up in the comments, yeah, I used to have them almost every day.  I've had headaches my entire life, for as long as I can remember, and tried pretty much every headache med there is.  Some did absolutely nothing.  Some made it much worse.  Some worked for a while, but then stopped working, so my doctor had me increase the dosage, then that worked, for a while, then it stopped working, then we increased the dose, then it worked for a while, then it stopped, etc., etc., until I was at the maximum dose I could take. Couldn't increase anymore.  So I couldn't take that drug anymore.  Next.

I've lost count of how many different drugs I went through, trying to find something.  If I take something to kill the pain, the nerve endings in my head quickly build up a tolerance, so the low level of the drug is like it's not even there.  I have to take more to have any effect.  Then if it's not there, it's like the nerve endings have been sanded raw.  That's what's called a rebound headache.  I kept a headache diary for several months when I was trying to find something to work, and in 6 months, I only had one day that I did not have a headache.  I was seriously beginning to wonder if I would ever have a day without a headache again.

Sometimes I tell someone I have a migraine and they say something like, "oh, when I have a headache, I just take an aspirin" or "have you tried taking some ibuprofen?" and it's all I can do to bite my tongue and not say, "you fucking moron, you don't know shit.  Just shut up."

Yeah, I could take some ibuprofen, and it might get rid of my headache. I'd have to take 4-5.  But if I took ibuprofen every time I had a headache, pretty soon I'd be having a headache every day, and ibuprofen wouldn't do a thing, even if I took 7.  Years ago I was actually taking 7 regularly, and it no longer worked, and then I read about liver damage from taking too much.  So much for that.

Natasha  mentioned migraines being like seizures, and she's absolutely right.  I started taking Topamax a few years ago, a drug originally used for epilepsy, but now also used for migraines.  It's potent stuff.  I had to start off with an extremely small dose and gradually ramp up to the dose I'm at now.  I had to take it for a couple of months before I could even tell if it would work.  And during the first few months, I had bizarre neurological side effects.  Like I said, it's potent stuff.

If the side effects were going to be an ongoing thing as long as I was taking it, there's no way I'd be able to take it, but they told me what to expect (otherwise it would have been scary as hell instead of just bizarre) and that it would only last for the first 2-3 months while my body got used to having the drug in my system.

So, that was weird.  But eventually my system adjusted, and most of the side effects went away (occasionally I still have this weird hallucination that my head is further away from my hands than it really is, but it only lasts for about a minute, and it only happens when I'm sitting at my computer.  I'm used to it happening, so I just wait for it to pass. Other people have it too; it's documented and referred to as "Alice in Wonderland" syndrome), and I stopped having so many migraines.  After a migraine every day, 2-3 per month isn't that many, and a one minute hallucination every six months or so isn't that bad, especially since I know it's only going to last that long.

It's just when I'm actually having one of the 2-3 per month that it's hard to look at the big picture, because a) when I'm in pain, life sucks, and b) when I'm having a migraine, my brain literally isn't working right, so of course I can't think clearly.  Duh.

So when I have a bad migraine I go to bed, if I can, and sleep for several hours and hope the railroad spike through my eyeball dissolves.  That helps a little bit, though I still feel like crap when I get up.

Sometimes I can't go to bed though.  Usually I can leave work if it's really bad, but if everyone else in my department is gone, somebody has to be there, and that ends up being me.  In that case I end up turning the lights off in my office and working in the dark, and doing the bare minimum, only what absolutely has to be done, and trying not to move very much.  I don't have a lot of spoons. 

Or I might be out some place else, like grocery shopping when a migraine hits.  If that happens, I wear my sunglasses.  The lights in the store are too bright.  All I can do though is finish my shopping.  I can't leave sooner because I can only leave when the bus leaves anyway.  I'm on bus time.  I might not remember everything I need to get though.  I always take a grocery list, but usually I remember additional things I need once I'm in the store.  If my head hurts, I won't remember anything.  It will strictly be what's on the list, and I won't be moving very fast.  Just fast enough to get through the checkout line and catch the bus.  Then once I'm home I can put the groceries away and go to bed.

I sometimes wonder what I could do to have fewer migraines.  But I already eat a healthy diet with lots of fruits and vegetables, no meat, no dairy, no alcohol, I get lots of exercise.  I think it's just stress.  I know sleep deprivation is a trigger, but since I realized I get depressed the night before the headache starts, i.e., the depression is part of the prodrome phase, I'm wondering what's cause and what's effect?  Did I get a migraine because I stayed up too late, or was I unable to sleep because I was getting a migraine?  Certainly when I wake up at 3am and can't go back to sleep until 5:30, and then I wake up at 6:00 with a splitting head, that's not from staying up too late.  Was I unable to sleep because there was a storm brewing in my head?

I'm starting to think it's pointless to even ask these questions, especially since I read that it's possible to have a migraine without the headache phase!  So I think it's not that depression causes migraine or migraine causes depression, it's depression equals migraine.  They're the same thing.  They're just different words for the same thing.  There are subtle distinctions between the two, like the way blue faced leicester has different properties than merino, but they're both wool.

And this thing, this depressionmigraine (depregraine?  migression?), is certainly impacted by diet, exercise, etc., but even if you're doing everything right, there's still stress.  So how do you deal with stress?

I guess there's always going to be some stress.  I accept that.  But in the past I accepted too much.  I grew up unhappy and figured that's just what life was going to be like.

Eventually life was ok.  I spent a few years being more or less happy. Then I started sliding into the abyss again.  Scared the hell out of me. I didn't want to go there again, but it was pulling me in.  Eventually, I slowly crawled out.  I felt ok.  Life was alright.

Then Ken was killed and it was just like a door opened under me and I fell straight into the abyss.

It took a while before I could even think straight enough to try to get out.  Eventually I started climbing out, though I realized much later that my judgment at that time was still impaired from grief.  I saw things that weren't really there and ignored things that were right in front of me. I guess I was desperate to get out of the abyss.  Eventually I could see where I was and what was in front of me.  It wasn't where I wanted to be. And I felt like someone was trying to push me into the abyss.

Enough.  I've been there too many times.  It was one thing to grow up there.  I didn't know anything else.  When I slid in, I did my damnedest to get back out, and it took a long time.  Falling in was horrible.  But there's no way in hell I'll let someone push me in.

So when I say I accept that there's stress, there's a limit.  There's stress, and there's stress.  There's the stress of Meijer being out of spinach for the third week in a row, why can't they get their act together?, and there's the stress of someone trying to push me into the abyss.  Well, you know, I can eat broccoli instead.  It just isn't a big deal.

But someone trying to push me into the abyss does things to my head.  So even though I left the situation and did things I needed to do, my head is having a hard time getting over everything that happened.  That's some heavy duty stress.  I can't just eat broccoli instead.

My point was I finally learned that I don't have to accept everything. Some things are unacceptable.  So I refused to accept them.  Other things aren't worth getting upset about, and it's better just to accept them. Eat broccoli if there's no spinach.

The hard part for me has been where to draw the line between the two.  I grew up feeling like I had to accept everything because I had no choice. If I tried to voice an opinion, it held no weight.  As a result, I put up with a lot as an adult that I should not have tolerated.  I stayed in bad situations for far too long because I felt I had no alternative.  I always felt trapped.  I grumbled, but I didn't really protest loudly unless someone did something completely unacceptable.  I realize now though if I'm in a situation I don't want to be in, that makes me uncomfortable, that doesn't feel healthy, that's a good enough reason to leave it.  In fact, that's a very good reason to leave.  I wish I had figured that out decades ago, but I guess I had to be in a situation bad enough for it to be like a kick in the head.

I'm still not sure exactly where the line is, but the rule is: take care of myself.  Do what is healthy for me.  Accept what is healthy to accept. Do not accept what is harmful.

I'm hoping in time I won't be so haunted by bad memories.  Memories do tend to fade; it just takes time.  Some of them never really go away, of course.  They become scars.

I'm also trying not to get down on myself so much for not accomplishing as much as I'd like.  It's frustrating when I see what other people are doing, and I just can't get that much done, and I think, well, I have 24 hours in a day just like they do.  How come they can do so much more than I can?  Well, if they don't spend a lot of the time feeling like crap, they have more time.  I just have to accept the fact that I don't have a whole lot of energy.  I do everything I can to be healthy, but I have never been a super-energetic person, and it looks like I never will be. So I'm going to have to just do what I can do and not compare myself to other people.  Sometimes I wonder what I would have accomplished with my life if I hadn't had migraines and depression for as long as I can remember, but it's pointless to wonder.  I am who I am.  I have to just make the best of it.

On a happier note, it's Rudy's 10th birthday today!  Happy birthday, Rudy!

(I tried to get a picture of him, but the boy does not like the camera.  Every time I turned it on he ran away.  So here's a photo of him from 2006.)

10 things I've done

Dr. Steph had this meme on her blog today, and it looked like fun.  Ten things I've done that others likely haven't.  Well, this should be easy since I tend to be a freak unusual different.  Will I be able to stop at 10?

1.  I was salutatorian of my high school graduating class.

2.  I used to work as a jewelry designer in a bead store.  A customer received a compliment on a necklace I had made from the queen of Sweden.

3.  I used to sell some of my jewelry in art galleries.

4.  I have only ever gone on a diet once in my life.  (Of course I gained all the weight back and more.  That part isn't unusual.)

5.  I have lost 80 pounds through lifestyle changes, i.e., not dieting, and kept the weight off for over nine years.

6.  I quit eating mammals and fish about 20 years ago, then became vegetarian about 9 years ago, and have gradually cut out more and more animal products since then.  I'm now about 99.9% vegan.  The only animal products I consume are honey in my tea, and whatever is in a piece of birthday cake if someone hands me one.

7.  I quit drinking pop years ago.

8.  I quit driving a car for environmental reasons.  I have not driven since October 27, 2002, and I don't intend to drive again.

9.  My first knitting project was a sweater from Vogue Knitting.  (I didn't know any other knitters to tell me most people start with a scarf or hat or something like that.)

10.  I figured after I had knit a sweater I knew how to knit and didn't need patterns anymore, so I designed my second sweater myself.  (see #9)

I could actually keep going -- there are a lot of other not so usual things about me -- but I'm up to ten, so I'll stop.   

Hello Winter

So, we've been getting winter storm warnings periodically for the last few weeks but the big storms have kept passing us by.  A few flurries here and there, and last weekend we got about an inch or two of snow, but nothing big.  Until this weekend. 

This was the view out the front door this afternoon.  It didn't pass us by this time.

So I guess I need to buy some boots.  You'd think that living in Michigan for nearly 40 years, I'd have the sense to own a pair of winter boots, and don't think I haven't tried to buy a pair.  I used to have boots, but they ended up way too big when I lost weight, so they were very uncomfortable.  I don't know how many times I've tried to buy boots since then, and every time I've given up in disgust and frustration.  Most winter boots seem to be made by people who assume that women are only going to walk from the front door to the car, not a mile or two.  And when I've tried hiking boots, they take 15 minutes to get in and out of, weigh 5 pounds, and are so stiff they make me feel like I'm putting my feet into wooden boxes.  Not comfortable.

Ideally I want something easy to get in and out of, waterproof, warm, comfortable, with a good arch support, vegan, cute, that doesn't cost a fortune.  But today I decided hell, I just needed a pair of boots (see photo above), so when I was at Meijer buying groceries, I figured I might as well look at their boots.

I wear a size 8 1/2.  Their boots didn't seem to be in any particular order.  None of them were actually cute, but I started with the less ugly ones and looked at sizes.  They had lots of 10's.  Lots of 11's.  Some 6's.  A few 9W's.  Sigh.  Well, it looked like 9W was the closest I was going to get.  I figured I might as well try it on (I figured I would probably need to put an orthotic in it to get a decent arch support anyway, so maybe a larger size wouldn't be a bad idea).  Um...except it had one of those weird cardboard thingies they put in new shoes to make it keep its shape, and I couldn't get it out.  Ok, they apparently don't want anyone to buy that pair.

I found another pair of 9's, went to pull the zipper down to try them on, and the zipper was stuck.  Alrighty.  Found another pair of 9's with a stuck zipper, and said screw it. 

See, this is why I don't have any boots.  I think I'm going to have to find something online since any store I go to will have long sold out of 8 1/2 in anything at all useful since apparently I was supposed to buy boots in July.  Feh.

But on a happier note, look, I added one of those flickr things over there in the sidebar.  Is it just me, or is that thing totally hypnotic?  It's like looking at a lava lamp.  I find myself just staring at it...  Wow, man...  I'm going to be loading some of my older photos into flickr as I have time, so stay tuned.

Also, I had a lightbulb over my head.  For years I always used to drink orange juice all the time.  When I cook broccoli, I put the broccoli in a saucepan with just a little bit of water in the bottom of the pan, maybe about half an inch, then put a lid on the pan, and cook it for 5 minutes to steam the broccoli.  I used to pour the water down the drain, but my friend Ken said no, you should drink it, it's full of nutrients, and I realized he was right, so I started pouring it into a cup and refrigerating it and when it was cold I would add it to my orange juice.  Now, that was very healthy, but it kind of confused my brain.  It looked like orange juice.  It tasted mostly like orange juice, but it also tasted like broccoli.  Weird.

Then I stopped drinking orange juice because of my reflux, so I had to think about what to do with the broccoli water.  Aha!  Today as I was cooking the broccoli, I also boiled some water.  I put a teabag in a mug, and when the 5 minutes was up, I poured the broccoli water into the mug, then filled it up the rest of the way with the boiling water.  Broccoli tea!  The tea was strong enough that it completely covered up the taste of the broccoli.  It's just extra healthy!  Yay!

Blog Action Day

Happy Blog Action Day!  Well, I don't know if I'm supposed to say Happy Blog Action Day, but that's the day it is, so I'm supposed to write about it.  Or more specifically, I'm supposed to write about the environment. So I thought I would take this opportunity to write about all the things I do in my life to help the environment, and the long winding path I've taken to get where I am today.

Most of these are things I've been doing for so long, they're just part of my normal daily routine, and I don't give them much thought.  Some of them I initially started doing specifically to benefit the environment, some to save money, some for health reasons, but Ernest Callenbach described a relationship he called the green triangle, with environment, health, and money at the three points of the triangle, and said "The principle that relates these three points is: Anytime you do something beneficial for one of them, you will almost inevitably also do something beneficial for the other two - whether you're hoping to or not."  I have found this to be true over and over again.

Carfreedom

I wasn't one of those teenagers who couldn't wait to get their driver's license.  I was kind of ambivalent about the whole thing.  When I took driver's ed I was the only student in the class who didn't know how to drive already.  But I learned how to drive, even though I didn't really enjoy it.  This is Michigan.  There's practically a law that says you must drive a car.

So I drove a car for years, spent untold hours behind the wheel, frequently wishing I could be doing something more productive, often feeling like people were trying to kill me.  In fact I tried to be more productive by teaching myself Japanese while I drove, but I was constantly distracted by the other drivers who seemed like they wanted to kill me, so I never progressed beyond the first tape.  Over the years I spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on cars, licensing, registration, insurance, gas, oil changes and other maintenance, repairs (oh, the repairs...the repairs were killing me!), parking, parking tickets...have I forgotten anything?  But I kept driving, because I had to drive, right? That's what you did.

Then one day I was driving to work as usual and something clicked.  I didn't have to drive.  In fact, not everyone drove.  I looked around and I saw that a lot of people were riding bikes.  I made the connection that more people driving meant more pollution, more sprawl, more loss of wildlife habitat, more people and animals killed by cars.  More pollution meant increasing rates of asthma and other health problems.

For some reason it just wasn't abstract anymore.  If I was driving, I was part of the problem.  If I was driving, I was partially responsible for causing someone's asthma.  Me.  I couldn't just blame other people.  I had to take responsibility.  I didn't want to be part of the problem.  I finally saw what was right in front of me, that there were people who weren't driving, and I realized that they were part of the solution, so I wanted to be like them.

So I bought a bike.  Since I hadn't ridden a bike in about 20 years, I gave myself time to kind of ease into the full time bike commuting thing. I had a bit of a setback at first, since, sweet irony of ironies, it turned out I had asthma.  After a long bout of bronchitis I delayed cycling till the following spring, but then managed to ride every day with little difficulty.  I wasn't fast, but I got there (turtles persevere, I always say).

I eventually got to the point that I was riding my bike nearly everywhere, only using my car about once a month.  At that point it wasn't cost effective to even own a car.  I sold it and just borrowed my then-husband's car on the rare occasions I needed to drive.  I found those occasions were rarer and rarer.  I was driving every three months when on one of those trips the timing belt broke 20 miles from home.  I didn't know then it was the timing belt, of course.  I just knew the car had died and I didn't have a cell phone, and I was out in the middle of nowhere, and I was going to have to go knock on total strangers' doors until I found someone who was home and who would let me use their phone and hope they didn't duct tape me to a chair.  Several hours later, after dealing with weird strangers and annoying tow truck people, and parting with a lot of money, all to get a car that wasn't even mine to the gas station for the mechanic to work on it the next day, I decided screw it.  I just didn't need the aggravation of driving anymore.  I would find a way to live my life without a car.

And so I have.  I'm much happier without the blasted contraption.  I'm not carless, I'm carfree.

Eventually cycling lost its appeal for me.  To make a very long story very short, I found myself in an emotionally abusive relationship with another cyclist, and the whole situation sucked every last bit of joy out of cycling.  Maybe some day I'll return to it, maybe I won't.  It's too soon to even think about it right now.  But I have no desire to ever drive a car again.

Now I take the bus or walk everywhere I go.  I love the bus -- it gives me time to knit.  I couldn't knit while I was riding my bike.  I couldn't knit while I was driving a car.  When I was a cyclist I just rode the bus on a backup basis, when I was too sick to ride my bike, or the weather was too bad, and it had to be pretty bad.  But you know what? If you're a knitter, the bus totally rocks!  Someone to drive you everywhere you go and give you the gift of time to knit?  Golden.

And I'm able to use my staff ID as a bus pass, so it costs me nothing to ride.  My transportation costs are zero!  How can I beat that?  The bus drivers are friendly, and buses are way safer than cars, much cleaner (public transportation produces 95% less carbon monoxide than private vehicles!), and just so much more relaxing than having to drive myself or ride my bike.  I don't have to pay attention to the other vehicles on the road.  The bus driver does that for me.  I can sit there and relax and knit.  I am truly grateful for that.

Of course one doesn't get much exercise just sitting there, so that's why I started walking more.  I walk to do errands after work, or walk part way home, about two miles, and take the bus the rest of the way.  I really enjoy walking.  It's moving meditation, good for the mind, body, and soul.

When people first find out I'm carfree, they often ask how I deal with grocery shopping.  It's really not that hard, though I may shop differently than they do, and I'm just used to the way I shop.  Also, I don't have a family to shop for, just me and my rabbit.  It would be different if I had to buy 3-4 times as much food.  But I can tell you about how I shop.

First of all, I always carry my backpack everywhere.  That's just the most comfortable way to carry things when I'm walking any distance.  And in my backpack, in addition to my lunch, knitting, jacket (unless I'm wearing it), wallet, sunglasses, asthma inhaler, bus schedule, etc., I always carry two canvas shopping bags, because I never know when I'll find myself at a grocery store.  There are several grocery stores I go to.  Arbor Farms has several items I can't get anywhere else, but I have to make a special trip there, so when I go, I stock up on those items, and get anything else that I happen to need while I'm there.  Meijer has a few things that I can't get anywhere else, is close to home, and is a transfer point for three buses.  I often find myself there on the way home from somewhere else, and rather than continuing home, stop there and stock up on the items I can't get anywhere else, and get whatever else I happen to need while I'm there.  If I take another bus, I walk right by a Kroger on the way home, so if I really need anything I'll stop there, but every time I go there I swear I'll never go there again since they usually only have one checkout lane open, and I really resent having to stand in line for 15 minutes to spend $2.00.  Kroger's customer service sucks.  Are you listening, Kroger?

Anyway, that's the way I shop.  It might make some people crazy, but it works for me.  I should also note that I only drink water, and I mean tap water, so I'm not lugging home heavy containers of assorted liquids.  As far as the rest of my diet...

Food and the V word

What I eat has changed a great deal throughout my life.  I grew up eating a lot of meat, vegetables covered in cheese sauce, and drinking milk, pop and Kool-Aid.  Now my diet is 99.9% vegan, I just drink water, and if you gave me a packet of Kool-Aid I'd use it to dye wool.  How did I get here?

Gradually.

I always liked animals, and while I realized way back then that a piece of meat was a piece of a dead animal, the ethical implications of this didn't really hit me until two things occurred, close to the same time.  I'm not sure exactly when they occurred, but they may have happened on the same day.  First, I bought the Smiths' album "Meat is Murder" and listened to the title track.  Second, my copy of Ms. magazine arrived in the mail and I read Alice Walker's essay "Am I blue?" (later published in her book Living the Word: Selected Writings, 1973-1987). The song and the essay both haunted me.

My parents called me to dinner that night and there was a big slab of dead cow on my plate, cooked but blood still oozing from it.  I took one look at it and said, "I can't eat this."  My explanation that I couldn't eat it because it was a dead animal just seemed to convince them that I was some kind of weirdo, but they seemed used to thinking I was some kind of weirdo, so that was a familiar experience for all of us.  I just found something else to eat.

I felt that I could simply no longer eat mammals.  They were too closely related to me.  I was a mammal.  Eating a mammal would be akin to cannibalism.  I never had been a seafood fan, and the only fish I had liked was tuna.  It was easy to give that up.  I continued to eat chicken and turkey though, I think because I wasn't sure what else to eat.  I did not consider myself a vegetarian, as I did not delude myself that poultry wasn't meat.  I never did understand people who said they were vegetarians but they ate chicken or they ate fish.  Chicken and fish are animals, not plants.  They're using some definition of meat I don't understand. Whatever.

Anyway.  I also stopped drinking milk about this same time because it always tasted like there was something wrong with it.  There probably was something wrong with it, though I don't want to think about that too deeply.  I starting drinking more pop to compensate; I wasn't really very health conscious when I was young.  When I moved out of my parents' house, I ended up living on a lot of prepackaged food and fast food.  I tried to buy the healthiest options available, but I still ended up gaining a lot of weight.  I also ended up spending a lot of money.

That was actually what prompted me to change the way I was eating. Remember the green triangle?  Money, health, environment, what benefits one usually benefits all?  Yep.  My then-husband and I looked at our finances and realized we had to cut our spending by a lot, and one of the areas we could cut was on our food spending.  We stopped eating out, and we stopped buying prepackaged food.  Obviously that saved us money, but it also meant a lot less packaging.  And a lot less fat.  Without even trying, I lost a lot of weight.

I started searching for easy to make recipes and reading about nutrition. Once I started thinking about food, I realized the pop I was drinking was total garbage.  It was just empty calories.  What did it even taste like? There was some cartoon that described it as carbonated battery acid.  Why was I drinking that crap?  So I switched to water and juice.  I lost more weight without even trying.

I had continued to eat poultry for about 10 years after I stopped eating other meat.  I had continued to feel some guilt for eating the birds, and tried to suppress it.  I felt I was doing some good by not eating other animals.  I had read about factory farms.  And I was constantly hearing news stories about E. coli.  I was glad to not be supporting the beef industry.  When I did my searching for recipes, often recipes with beef came up, so I searched for chicken recipes.  I found recipes, but I also occasionally stumbled into articles about how chickens' beaks were cut off in factory farms, or how contaminated and resource inefficient chicken is.

I realized then that my guilt wasn't something to suppress.  If I felt guilty about doing something that meant I shouldn't be doing it.  I knew I couldn't eat birds anymore.  I figured I would just eat the remaining chicken I had in the freezer so at least the poor bird wouldn't have died in vain, but when I took the first bite I had to spit it out.  I couldn't do it.  I was eating death.  I have never wanted to eat any meat again.

People become vegetarian for various reasons, some ethical, some environmental, some for health.  To me these overlap to some degree.  It seems unethical to me to force an animal to suffer horribly and to kill it all so that people may consume it.  It seems unethical to me to continue this industry when it causes massive groundwater pollution, and when it would be much more efficient (i.e., it would feed more people) to use the same amount of land to grow plants to feed to people than to grow plants to feed to animals to feed to people.  It seems unethical to me for the industry, the government, and even some doctors to try to convince people that they need to eat meat to be healthy when that meat is actually harmful to their health.  It's all connected.  If something affects the environment, it affects our health.  The environment isn't some abstract thing "out there."  It's the water you're drinking, the air you're inhaling into your lungs.  I don't think it's enough to oppose a factory farm down the street but continue to give them your business.  If they're still in business but not located there, they'll just locate somewhere else and pollute someone else's groundwater.

I mentioned I quit drinking milk years ago; I've been using soy milk in cooking (invariably someone asks what I put on my cereal.  I've always found the practice of putting milk on cereal absolutely disgusting.  I don't want my cereal to be soggy.  Blech!  Not that I even eat cereal very often.  Occasionally I eat raisin bran, but usually as a snack, and I like it to be crunchy, like granola).  Whenever a recipe called for eggs I substituted flaxseeds and water.  I continued to eat cheese though, and occasionally other dairy products.  After about nine years of this I found that what I thought was a chronic allergy problem was actually acid reflux.  In reading about what dietary changes might help, I discovered eliminating dairy was one recommendation.

I thought about it.  I realized that while I liked them, I was hardly ever eating ice cream or sour cream.  Giving those up would be no big deal.  It was cheese.  I wasn't eating as much cheese as I used to, but I did like my cheese.  But I also realized I was partly eating it mainly because I didn't know what else to eat.  But that was why I had continued eating chicken for so long.  I just needed to find something else to eat in its place.  I realized my conscience would be happier as a vegan so I set off to find some replacements.

I had a bit of a challenge, as I also needed to eliminate tomatoes from my diet because of the reflux.  The only way I could see to continue eating pizza without tomato sauce was to use pesto, and of course all the pesto I'd ever bought had cheese in it, and I was far too lazy to make my own (I'm a fairly good cook, but if something has more than just a few ingredients, I find I just don't have the energy to make it.  So to me, pesto is one ingredient).  I finally did find vegan pesto  at the fifth store I tried, and they had vegan soy cheese  too, so I'm happy (what's up with all the soy cheeses that aren't vegan?  I don't get that).

The other recommendation was not to drink fruit juice, but just to drink water and to eat lots of fruit, so that's what I've been doing.  The other recommendations didn't apply to me.

As far as what I eat, well, lots of fruits and vegetables, pasta, bread, peanut butter, falafel, hummus, stir fry, I could go on and on. I like food.  I'm a food snob, really.  I like good food.  And I eat good food.

The food I eat now is so much better than the crap I used to eat.  Night and day.

I'm still a bit reluctant to describe myself as a vegan.  My diet is vegan as far as what I prepare for myself or what I choose for myself.  But I realized that when a coworker offered me a piece of her birthday cake, well, I wasn't going to say no.  It was birthday cake.  I realized I was perfectly capable of making a vegan cake.  But someone else's cake?  Well, maybe it was vegan, maybe it wasn't.  I guess I have a don't ask, don't tell policy toward birthday cake.  Other than that, my diet is vegan.

Aside from food, the only thing leather I have is the shoes I bought before I decided to go vegan.  I don't think I'll buy any more leather shoes.  I'll wear the shoes I have until they wear out and then buy non-leather ones.  (I've been using a hemp wallet and nylon belt for years.)

But there is the wool.  Quite a lot of it.  I know a lot of vegans are very anti-wool.  I like wool very much.  I understand their reasoning, but I also realize that they are generally describing the wool industry in Australia.  Not all wool is from Australia.  Most merino is from Australia, but there are many other breeds of sheep as well, at least 200, maybe over 1000 (no one agrees on the actual number).  Most blue faced leicester, for instance, is from the UK (I actually like blue faced leicester better than merino.  It has a bit more luster to it).  I don't know the conditions of individual farms in the UK, but the farms are much smaller than the sheep stations in Australia.

A lot of the world's fiber comes from animals in the UK, the US, New Zealand, South America, Southern Africa, and elsewhere.  I've known people with sheep here in my own county, and they don't abuse their animals. Shepherds with small flocks can identify each individual animal by sight, by personality, by name.  They care about the individual animals.  It's nothing like a factory farm with tens of thousands of sheep.  To claim that all fiber animals are abused is simply not true.

Some vegans also recommend knitting with cotton instead of wool.  You can knit with cotton if you like, but the two fibers are really nothing alike. Wool holds up to 30% of its weight in water before it even starts to feel wet.  This means if you're wearing wool and you get wet, you'll still be warm.  Cotton gets wet and feels wet.  It stays wet.  And you feel cold and wet.  If you're wearing cotton socks and your feet get wet, your socks are going to just stay wet, and your feet will be cold.  If you wear wool socks, your socks will have to get really really wet before they feel wet, and even if they do, they'll still insulate your feet.  Wool is also a lot more elastic than cotton.  And I'd rather spin wool than cotton any day.  Spinning wool is the easiest thing in the world, totally relaxing, totally meditative, one of the few things I can do when I have a migraine.  Spinning cotton is a bitch.

The dyeing process with wool is much less wasteful.  Usually all the dye molecules bond to the fiber.  Nothing washes down the drain.  A completely different class of dye is needed to dye cotton, and much of the dye washes away.  Usually a lot of pesticides are used to grow cotton as well. Organically grown cotton is available, but not widely available.

So all in all, I guess I'm vegan except for the birthday cake and the wool, which makes me a veganish vegetarian?  Perhaps labels aren't important, except I sometimes feel like I don't know what to call myself now.  I feel like it isn't accurate to call myself a vegan, and that if I do, the vegan police will be pissed off at me (which I can understand.  I get annoyed when people say they're "vegetarian but they eat chicken"  That's not vegetarian, dude), and yet if I call myself a vegetarian, people will expect that I will be willing to eat a lot of things that I am not.  So what the hell am I?  I don't know.  I am what I am.  Or I yam what I yam.  Pass the spinach.

Frugality

In general I just buy a lot less stuff than I used to!  I don't deprive myself; I just looked at my life several years ago and realized there were some areas where I was just wasting money.

I realized that using a paper napkin for every meal meant I kept buying paper napkins over and over and over and throwing out a lot of paper napkins.  So I stopped buying paper napkins, bought a few inexpensive cloth napkins, and several years later I'm still using them.

I realized that buying every book I wanted to read was expensive!  I only read most of them once.  I didn't have room to keep every book I read forever, so every few years I had to get rid of some of them.  So now I only buy books that I know I'll want to read or refer to more than once, usually knitting books.  I get other books from the library.

I used to subscribe to a lot of magazines, all full of fascinating articles.  I didn't have time to read them.  They'd end up piled six issues deep each in my pending reading pile, making me feel guilty. What's the point in that?  So I canceled all my subscriptions.  I wasn't reading them anyway.  No point spending the money or wasting the paper.

I'm able to buy some clothing in thrift stores.  I could probably buy a larger percentage of my wardrobe there, but to be successful at it you need to shop there often since the turnover is so fast, and frankly, I just don't enjoy shopping.  So I just don't have a lot of clothes, but I have enough -- my wardrobe is fairly simple, and that's fine with me.

I thought about what was important to me and what wasn't and acted accordingly.  For instance, I realized as far as jewelry, I really only wore the same necklace every day and the same few pairs of earrings all the time, so I sold the rest of my jewelry and haven't bought anymore. This gave other people the opportunity to enjoy the jewelry I had but wasn't wearing, and I was no longer spending money on things I didn't need.

Childfree

Probably the most important thing I've done to benefit the environment, even more beneficial than quit driving, has been to not reproduce.

Every living thing on the Earth has an impact on the environment.  That can't be helped.  The question is how much of an impact do you have? Human beings are spreading over the place like weeds. Our population was 3 billion in 1960; now it's 6.6 billion.  That just isn't sustainable. People need to think about the resources they're using (the water they're drinking, the building materials for the house they're living in and the fuel to heat it and/or cool it, the materials to make everything they ever buy), and the resources any children they have will need, and the resources their grandchildren will need, and the resources their great-grandchildren will need, and so on and so on...  I get the feeling people just really don't think about the environmental ramifications of having children.

I'm not saying nobody should have children.  That isn't very likely, and I don't think the human race is in any danger of going extinct.  But I think if people started to change their mindset so being childfree was viewed as a legitimate and respectable and environmentally responsible choice, it would help.  When a couple is married people shouldn't start asking them, "So when are you going to start having kids?"  Why should anyone assume a couple is going to have kids?  It should be an option, not a given.  They might not have any.  They might have one.  Assuming kids, plural, is just downright presumptuous.

It would also help if Hollywood stopped making movies and tv shows romanticizing large families.

Our population needs to decrease.  The only peaceful, healthy way for this to happen is for people to voluntarily decide to have only one child or not have children at all, or to adopt children who already exist instead of procreating.  This will be a lot easier for them without constant pressure from others to have larger families (which is just incredibly rude, by the way.  If you know someone who doesn't want children, don't tell them you think they should have children.  It's incredibly offensive.  Ask me how I know).

Small Space

I have lived in small spaces my entire adult life.  This wasn't always necessarily by choice; I have just never earned a lot of money.  But as I have become more aware of the resource consumption involved in housing, I've realized that I would never want to live in a really large house.  It doesn't seem right to use so much more than my fair share of resources.  I see McMansions, and I know each one only has a few people living inside, and I wonder how the occupants can live there without feeling morally obligated to invite 14 homeless people to move in with them.

I live in a 650 square foot apartment.  It's a bit cramped because I'm trying to run a dyeing business here as well as live here, so my dining room is set up as a dye studio.  If I was just living here and using my dining room as a dining room, I would have plenty of room.

Not having a lot of room means I can't hang onto things unless I'm actually going to use them or I think they're so beautiful I simply can't live without them.  It forces me to be selective.  I don't have a lot of knickknacks.  I have art on the walls.  I don't have a stereo -- I listen to music on my computer.  Likewise I don't have a tv -- I get dvds from Netflix and watch those on my computer.  I have an iMac, which has the processor built right into the monitor, so it uses space very efficiently.

What I do have a lot of is fiber and yarn and dye and fiber processing equipment, and it takes up a lot of space.  But that's what makes me happy, so I'm glad to give it the space.

Trying to find your path?

Don't feel like I'm saying you have to be like me or you must do all these things.  This has just been an inventory of things I've done in my life, and I'll assume if you've read this far, you're probably interested in ways you might adapt some of them to your life to benefit the environment. Some of them may not be applicable to you or even possible for you (I remember reading articles about ways to save money, and they included things like buying reusable coffee filters, which didn't help me at all since I don't drink coffee, so I already had them beat), but if that's the case, just skip those and consider the others if they interest you.

If you're not doing any of these things now and try to start doing them all at once, it will probably be overwhelming for you.  Remember, I didn't start doing all these things all at once.  I made these changes gradually over years.  Try making a few changes and wait until you've adapted to those before making more; otherwise you may get frustrated and decide change is too hard.  Take it at a pace you can handle, and your life will be richer for it, and the planet will thank you.

Starting over

Starting over -- that's a cryptic title.  I could be referring to the hat I just finished, after knitting most of a sock with the yarn, realizing I wasn't going to have enough yarn, starting another sock with a contrasting yarn for the heels and toes and realizing it was a different weight, starting a hat, realizing I wasn't going to have enough yarn, starting over with the hat a bit smaller and finally succeeding.  Or I could be referring to the sock I was working on (a Jaywalker), which was way too tight, so I frogged it and started over in the next larger size, but it was still too small.  I frogged it and I'll knit a plain stockinette stitch sock out of that yarn.  After I knit something else.

I could be referring to the sweater I'm knitting.  I'm up to version 5 or so of a cardigan design.  Maybe version 6.  To tell you the truth I've completely lost count.  But I think I've got a winner this time.  I'm making good progress.

But actually I'm referring to this blog.  I had another blog.  Many months ago I started to feel like the name wasn't really appropriate anymore though.  It was too negative.  I had carried it over from a website I had created in 2003, a long time ago, when much of what I had to write was the result of years of pent up frustration toward everything that was wrong with the world.  I still think there are some serious problems with the world, but I sort of feel like I'm written out about them.  I said my piece.  Now I just live my life in such a way as to try to make the world a better place, not that I'm a saint or anything.

I also needed to upgrade my blogging software, and I decided to combine the upgrade with the name change by just starting over.  I had planned to install the most recent version of WordPress, but it seemed to be kind of impossible with the way my store is set up (don't ask.  I've spent a week trying).  I finally said screw it and went with TypePad.  I'm still learning all the details, but it does what I need it to do, and I've been able to set everything up in a short time.

Sometimes I feel like my life always comes back to my totem animal, Turtle.  Turtles persevere.  Try something, it doesn't work, keep trying it for a while, it doesn't work, ok, find  another way.  Does that way work?  No?  Ok, find some other way.  Keep trying.  Eventually there's got to be a way that works.  Need to get to the beach to lay your eggs in the sand?  There's a rock in your way?  Try going to the left of the rock.  Uh oh, that way is blocked.  Try going to the right of the rock.  That way is blocked too.  Damn it, go over the rock.  Get to the beach!  Turtles have been on Earth since before the dinosaurs.  Do you think they're going to let a rock stand in their way?

In other words, life is too short to keep doing something that just isn't working or is making you really unhappy.  I don't want to spend my whole life trying to make something work that just isn't going to work and is just going to make my stomach hurt.  Life isn't supposed to be like that.  Find another way.

Well, this isn't much of a blog without pictures, so here's the sock I've been working on (aka, my bus knitting).  I gave you a tease of it at the top of the page, but here's a full view:

I was also going to show you the hat I finished, but I just put it on for the first time (I blocked it last weekend so it's been sitting on a towel all week).  You know how I said I had to make it smaller than before because I didn't have enough yarn?  Um...yeah.  It's big enough around, but it doesn't come down far enough to really cover my ears.  It partly covers my ears, but not all the way, not unless I really pull it down, and then it doesn't look so much like the beret that it's supposed to.  You know, I think I'll just stitch a bit of elastic thread around the opening so someone with a smaller head than mine can wear it (that would be most people since my head is pretty big) and then donate it somewhere.  Then I'll make a scarf to wrap around my head.  I'm really more of a scarf person than a hat person.  Know what works and go with it.