Today's Fortune

Lee told me about the Dante Inferno Hell Test, so I took it. And here's my result:

"You have escaped damnation and made it to Purgatory, a place where the dew of repentance washes off the stain of sin and girds the spirit with humility. Through contrition, confession, and satisfaction by works of righteousness, you must make your way up the mountain. As the sins are cleansed from your soul, you will be illuminated by the Sun of Divine Grace, and you will join other souls, smiling and happy, upon the summit of this mountain. Before long you will know the joys of Paradise as you ascend to the ethereal realm of Heaven."

The test also informed me that I'm moderately lustful and violent, although I score low on wrath. Hmmmm.

Well, They Can't All Be Winners

I finished the laptop sleeve. It's cute -- if you like things that look really, really handmade (Gary, diplomatically, said, "I like it; it's funky," to which I responded, "Yeah, it's the laptop-cover version of Jayne's Hat") -- but it doesn't work very well for its intended purpose, because it's a bit too slippery to hold. I'd be afraid of dropping the computer if I tried to travel with it.

Nertz. And it's such nice wool, too.

Oh well. At least the project gave me practice at decreasing and making buttonholes. That will teach me to strike out on my own as a beginner, instead of following a pattern!

Knitting Question

When you're nearing the end of a skein, is there a quick way to calculate if you have enough yarn length to knit another row?

Hey! Who filmed my life?

Gary found this video on YouTube, and it's a perfect metaphor for what my life feels like right now. Somebody at work yesterday told me that she feels like she's running on a giant gerbil wheel, and I told her about the video, and she cracked up.

You've heard of the Rat Race. This is the Cat Race.

Anyway, I've been very busy, which is why I haven't been posting much.

Prayer Request

My mother's developed some worrisome medical symptoms: as in, her primary-care physician called her back immediately -- instead of waiting until the evening like they usually do -- and said, "Something's definitely going on; call this specialist and get the first appointment you can." Mom's seeing a gastroenterologist on Monday to begin yet another round of tests.

Please hold up good thoughts for her, whatever your method is of doing that.

Thanks.

Grand Rounds

This week's edition is up. (Once again, I didn't manage to submit anything. I definitely need to get myself back in gear!)

Head on over for the weekly best of the medical blogosphere!

Cloud of Witnesses

Leaving for work this morning, I discovered this photo of Scott and his family on the floor of our coat closet. He'd evidently sent it to me in 2000, along with a large photo of my father as a young man: the envelope somehow wound up in the coat closet, and today, as Bali dashed inside while I reaching for my jacket, the small picture fell out. It was an eerie feeling to look down and see Scott looking up at me.

An acquaintance whose partner died last year told me that she found a poem he'd written; it was in a spot she'd gone over frequently since his death, and she'd never seen that piece of paper before. And the poem dealt with moving on after grief.

The appearance of the photograph is less mysterious, but it was still a bit of a shock.

Meanwhile, Sharon e-mailed me last week to say that she thought Gary was about the same size as her husband Bill, and would we like to come over and look through some sweaters and jackets?

So on Saturday, we did. Gary must have been exactly the same size as Bill, because Bill's sweaters and jackets fit him perfectly. Sharon was overjoyed: she said there are boxes of other clothing in the garage, and that Gary won't have to buy anything for years. She was very happy that Bill's things will be useful to someone she knows.

Bill had some fleece jackets and vests that Gary didn't want, but I love fleece, and I also like big, comfy clothing. So I snagged the fleece, although it's huge on me. I'm wearing Bill's bright red fleece pullover as I write this.

The dead are all around us, even when we can no longer see them. Every day is All Saints Day.

Cats! What could be cuter?

I was supposed to go to the hospital today, but my allergies have been acting up, and I didn't think sneezing through my shift would offer much spiritual comfort to patients. Also, I have tons of work to do, so I'm staying home.

Meanwhile, here's the latest batch of kitty pix. All three cats were in photogenic positions the other day, so I grabbed the camera and got nice shots of all of them.

These first two are of Harley the Hilarious, sleeping upside down on a chair in the family room. Because his white belly fur is longer than his top black fur, my mother always says that he looks like his stuffing's coming out. These photographs show how apt a metaphor that is!

And here we have Figaro the Flexible, the long, skinny cat in a long, skinny box. Gary calls him the grayhound of cats because he's so lean and lithe. We think there must have been a Siamese in the woodpile somewhere.

Oddly enough, we know that both Harley and Bali are half-Siamese, but they don't look it a bit! Figgy also has that whole Siamese climbing thing going on. None of the cats sounds Siamese, though, for which I'm grateful. I grew up with two Siamese and loved them dearly, but their voices do get grating.

And here's Bali the Beautiful, posing on our dining-room rug. He really is a gorgeous cat, and he has such soft fur! Actually, all of our cats have soft fur: we think it's the food we give them.

In knitting news, the pieces of the laptop sleeve are all done, but have to be sewn together. I'll post a photo of the finished project. My big triumph there was figuring out how to knit a buttonhole. It's not the world's most beautiful buttonhole, but it's functional.

Also, last night -- with Katharine's patient help -- I started working on Gary's balaclava, knitting in the round with five double-pointed #5 needles. This is tricky work: since everything else I've done has been on #10 needles, I feel like I'm knitting with toothpicks. The project's definitely going to take a while! But Katharine tells me that if I can make my way through this pattern, I'll be an experienced knitter.

After this, though, I think I'll do something easy, like afghan squares in chunky wool.

Coming Attractions

On Christmas Day, our bishop-elect, Dan Edwards, will be visiting our parish. He didn't want to preach, and I was on the schedule for that day -- it's usually a tiny service, although it's going to be larger this year, because people want to meet him -- so I'm still preaching.

He's assured me over e-mail that I shouldn't feel any pressure, but of course I do anyway, especially since saying anything new at Christmas is always something of a challenge. But I'm going to be preaching about knitting -- bwah hah hah! (and yes, there really are connections to Christmas) -- so I'll have fun writing it, if nothing else.

Also, a few months ago I was contacted by someone from the Church Health Center in Memphis. They're starting an online newsletter next year, and their website developer had read my blog and wondered if I'd like to be a regular columnist about health and faith.

I told him I'd be delighted, so I'm going to be writing a brief biweekly column called "Bodily Blessings." I've written the first two, although I haven't gotten feedback on the second yet. I'll post a link to each column when it goes up.

Post-Turkey Miscellany

Lee sent me this picture of herself in the shawl. I'm so glad she likes it!

And here's another. Lee doesn't like this as much as the first one, but thinks it gives a better view of the shawl, so she gave me permission to post it. I like both of them!

I want to wish everybody a belated Happy Thanksgiving. I meant to post yesterday, but -- obviously -- didn't, partly because when we got home from Katharine's house, I pretty much felt like I'd been hit by a truck. (And someone at dinner had told us that the chemicals in turkey don't make people sleepy: that's a myth. So I can't even blame it on the excellent food we ate!) I think it was a combination of no exercise, having taken my meds a few hours late, and having run around like a crazy person on Wednesday.

Also, I've been waking up insanely early, like 4:00, and then not being able to get back to sleep. I don't know if this is a depression symptom, or a symptom of using my light box too much, which I guess would make it an anti-depression symptom. In either case, it means that I spend a lot of time being groggy.

Wednesday was at least productive, though. I checked out some apartment complexes for Dad, and found some good possibilities, along with an absolute not-on-your-life. This was prompted by the resident who, when I asked if she enjoyed living there, said cheerfully, "Oh, sure, it's nice enough, except it's a little rough in the summer, you know, with the shootings in this neighborhood." Ack! I mean, one can have shootings in any neighborhood, but when it's the first thing somebody volunteers about the place, it's a definite red flag.

Then I stopped by a convenient mall and did birthday shopping for Katharine, whose birthday was yesterday, and Gary, whose birthday is Sunday. Then I shot down to Jimmy Bean's, since I needed more wool for the laptop sleeve, and that's where I'd gotten the first skein.

JB, at least around here, has a reputation for being both expensive and snotty. My first time in there, I asked innocently if they had any inexpensive practice yarn for beginners, and the clerk stuck her nose in the air and sniffed, "Not here!" So I bought a sale skein of good wool which became the beginning of the laptop sleeve.

Wednesday, there was another, much nicer clerk. I told her how I'd been knitting on the back of the stitch, and she said, "Oh, I did the same thing at first!" She'd done it in an actual knitting class, and it took forever for the instructor to figure out why her rows didn't look quite right, so that made me feel better. She also said that her grandmother knit that way her entire life. "Listen, if you're making loops that form fabric, it's knitting!" When I commented on the many other errors in my knitting, she said, "Well, hand-knitting will never be perfect. That's just how it is." So she was much nicer than the first person.

Also, my sale yarn had been marked down even further. Woo-hoo!

After leaving JB, I did more birthday shopping for Gary. Then I shot home, grabbed the box of Homespun for Maggie -- who assures me that she really does like and want this yarn, and who's going to knit it up into blankets for children in crisis (yay, Maggie!) -- mailed it, got a haircut, and went to the gym.

This is a busier day than it sounds like, because there was a fair amount of driving involved. I was determined not to have to get near any retail establishment on Black Friday: today, I plan to go out only to go to the health club, which luckily isn't close to any stores.

If you're shopping today, I wish you patience, sanity, and luck!

It May Have Been Backward, But it Worked!

Lee has posted a lively account of opening my package yesterday. The contents appear to have been a success both with her and with her beasts!

I'll post a picture when I have one; I know she's working on that. And Lee, if you can get pix of the kitties with their new toys, that would be fun, too.

Meanwhile, I forgot to post a link to Grand Rounds yesterday. I'm not included this week, because I wasn't organized enough to get a post written. Better luck next time, I hope!

Knitting the Hard Way

Today I took the Knitting Disaster over to Katharine's house -- I didn't have time yesterday -- and she, miracle worker that she is, fixed it for me.

She also informed me that I've been knitting the wrong way this whole time. Turns out I've been knitting onto the back of every stitch, a technique that's used in some advanced projects, but one that makes the process slower and more difficult.

The good news is that I managed to complete two projects not only knitting the hard way, but using cruddy yarn. Also, Lee got her shawl today and sounds very happy with it. I'm hoping she'll send me a picture of herself wearing it!

The bad news is that I feel, well, kind of stupid. Katharine said, "But you taught yourself, just from pictures!" I went back and looked at the pictures, and sure enough, they showed the right way of doing it.

So I taught myself badly from pictures.

Sigh. Can't take me anywhere. Have I mentioned that I'm really bad at learning new physical skills?

In other news, I've been insanely busy at work, which is why my posting's been erratic. I'll try to be better from now on, honest. At all sorts of things!

When In Doubt, Start Another Project

I haven't been able to get help with the tangled mess yet, so I put it into my knitting bag and started making a laptop sleeve out of some shocking pink chunky wool I have. I was going to felt it, but the stuff's so pretty in garter stitch that I decided to keep it that way (which meant that I had to rip and resize, but no matter).

Now that I've resized, it may be a bit too small -- although garter stitch is very stretchy -- but there are probably ways to extend the edges with crocheted borders or something, right?

Anyway, this one isn't a tangled mess. Yet.

And now I'm off to keep ploughing through acres of grading. Wheeee!

Auughhhh!

My latest project was going along swimmingly, and then somewhere along the line I made a mistake. I thought I'd fixed it, realized that I'd only made it worse, tried to backtrack to start over, and made things worse yet. Now I'm afraid to touch it.

I've sent an emergency SOS to my friend Katharine, but she has family in town and is unlikely to be available. And the knitting store's closed tomorrow. Waaaaahhhh!

This is a holiday gift, so I'm under pretty tight time constraints (also yarn constraints, since I just bought the last in that dye lot and can't afford to waste any).

So of course this is when things would go spectacularly wrong! If you want God to laugh, tell Her your plans.

Dang. Just when I thought I'd really gotten the hang of this!

Bye-Bye, Lion Homespun

Last night I finished the body of Lee's shawl, although buying fringe yarn and making the fringe will take another day or two, given my schedule. I'd started a third shawl, one for myself, with another color of Lion Homespun. I'd been going back and forth about whether I liked it or not, and when I showed it to Gary, he didn't; but I couldn't bear to have bought the yarn and then not use it, even though Gary said, "It doesn't make sense to spend your valuable knitting time on yarn you don't like in a color you don't like."

My mother had said the same thing the second I had trouble with the Homespun. "If it's that hard, don't work with it!" And my crocheting friend at church told me she'd bought Homespun once, started working with it, and promptly discarded both project and yarn. But because I liked the colors of Sharon's and Lee's shawls so much, I'd kept with it, and I was halfway thinking I'd continue with the third one, too.

In the meantime, I'd gone to Deluxe and splurged on fancier yarn: Cyprus Mohair, a bright, silky blend of 85% acrylic and 15% mohair.

This morning, I started a new project with the Cyprus.

Ohmygodwhatadifference! Non-splitting yarn! Stitch definition! Much more gorgeous colors even than the Lion!

That's it: I'm never using Homespun again. Life's too short to use bad yarn.

But that means that I have a whole lot of the stuff left over, especially since I overbought for the first two projects. I couldn't in good conscience give it to anyone who hadn't worked with it before, but I really don't want it to go to waste. I know that there are people out there who actually like this yarn, which must mean that you're made of stronger stuff than I am.

So I'll mail -- or give, if you're in Reno -- my Homespun to the first person who asks. Free Homespun to good home! Special-needs yarn needs patient, loving knitter! Help these disadvantaged skeins for the holidays!

What the hay?

So what's up with TTLB? A few days ago, I was happily bopping along as a Crawly Amphibian. Then, overnight, I discovered that I'd been bumped down all the way to Multicellular Microorganism, although my traffic had stayed about the same and although people still seem to be linking to me.

And now I'm an Insignificant Microbe? What gives here?

Hmmmph! I'll insignificant microbe you!

Ah, well. This is when Christianity's a great comfort. The last shall be first. Microbes for world domination!

Actually, microbes already sort of dominate the world, don't they?

Buffy-Pup in Her New Home

Buffy's new mom, Nancy E (as opposed to her foster mom, Nancy J), sent me these pictures, taken within hours after she arrived at her new home.

Evidently she's doing very well: she already sits, stays, and fetches, and puppy kindergarten hasn't even started yet! I have a hunch she's going to be a great therapy dog.

I love this shot: "Aren't I adorable when I'm acting shy? C'mon, don't you just want to give me treats and scratch my ears? You know you do! All right, all right: so where are the treats, already?"

This one's pretty priceless, too. "Hello, green creature! My name's Buffy! What's yours?"

And here's the, "I'm all alert now and ready for a walk!" pose.

One last snapshot for your delectation. Doesn't she make your day? She sure makes mine!

Grand Rounds, and Other Stuff

This week's Grand Rounds is up. Thanks for including me, Dr. A!

Yesterday at the gym, I ran into a friend from the medical school who's a therapist. We got to talking about depression, including mine, and she asked if I'd be willing to talk to one of her medical-school classes about depression in January. I said that of course I would. It was a very heartening conversation; part of me always feels as if I'm being whiny and boring when I talk about this stuff -- although I do it anyway, obviously! -- but if whining allows me to help future doctors better understand the subjective experience of the illness, something good will have come out of it.

Fittingly enough, we also talked about the spiritual and medical importance of turning brokenness into gift. My friend's Jewish, so for her the image of that is the breaking of challah bread at sabbat services, while for me it's the breaking of the bread in the eucharist. The bread can't feed people until it's broken, and the great challenge for all of us, whatever is happening in our lives, is to discern ways to transform the broken pieces of our lives into blessings for others.

And now for the sad news: this morning I got e-mail from Sharon that her husband Bill died on Sunday. She and her family must be feeling broken right now, and I pray that they will be able to find blessing and comfort.

Slow Knitting

Yesterday wasn't a great day for me; I woke up at 5:00, which was convenient for getting to church at 8:00 to preach, but then I was so exhausted when I got home at noon that I slept for two hours instead of going to the gym. We went to see a movie -- Across the Universe, which was really excellent -- but when we got home, I more or less crashed again. I think maybe I was fighting something off. I feel a bit better today, although I definitely have to make getting to the pool a priority.

My general slowness yesterday was reflected in my knitting. I'm not a fast knitter anyway, but when I was working on Lee's shawl between services at church, a good friend sitting next to me (someone who's been crocheting since she was in the womb), gave me a pitying look and said, "Oh, my, you are a novice, aren't you? Look at how slow you are!"

When did needlework become a race?

Last week I went to one of my new favorite places, Deluxe Yarns, an independently owned yarn store in Reno. The owner -- who used to be a nurse at my hospital, as it turns out -- seems like a kind, gentle person. When I complained about being a slow knitter, she said, "That's all right; there's no hurry. Take your time. You'll get there."

That's what I needed to hear. I've always been exceptionally slow at picking up physical skills, and I have to remember to focus on the fact that I'm getting things done, not on the fact that I'm not getting them done more quickly.

I now have projects planned well into the next millenium. After Lee's shawl, I'll do one for myself, and then one for my cousin's sister, and then one for my cousin's wife, and then one for some friends with two special-needs children. At that point I should be thoroughly sick of shawls! I also want to make myself a felted laptop cover and a tunic or two. I want to knit a throw for work and another for home. Gary wants a cardigan. I still, at some point, want to learn to knit toys for kids at the hospital.

And I'd like to knit myself a depression doll, something like those popular Ugly Dolls, but less adorable: a drab, sadsack creature with drooping eyes. This will be a way of externalizing my chronic illness and reminding myself to love it, even though it's not cute or clever or quick. It's part of me, and it needs patience and kindness. I'm sure the cats will enjoy snuggling with it, and I'll put it in the window -- or take it for rides -- so it can see the beautiful place where it lives. When it's feeling especially glum, I'll sing to it, and when it's feeling very slow, I'll say, "That's all right; there's no hurry. Take your time. You'll get there."

Real Live Violence

My husband loves violent movies. As I've gotten older, though, I've become more and more bored and uncomfortable with them. As far as I'm concerned, there's too much violence in the world: I don't need to pay to watch it for entertainment, and I'm troubled by narratives that portray it as fun or cool.

Lest this make me sound like a prude, let me note that the blood, profanity, and occasional physical danger in the ED where I volunteer doesn't bother me. Partly this is because I feel safe there, between the presence of security guards and plenty of burly techs. But part of it is that in the ED, violence is a symptom, an unfortunate side-effect of various medical conditions or mental states. It's neither glorified nor encouraged: it's treated.

During a recent shift, we had a patient who did not want to be in the hospital and who proclaimed, loudly and often, his intention to leave. As is so often true in these cases, alcohol was involved, but when he wasn't raving, this patient was quite articulate. He also had a sense of humor. He was wearing a loud plaid shirt, and when he first threatened to leave, a tech called security and the ED doc, who marched up to him and said, "Okay, look, nobody here is going to hurt themselves chasing you. If you want to leave, leave. This is what will happen: we'll call the cops and tell them to look for a guy in a plaid shirt, and they'll find you and bring you back here, and then we'll tie you up. Okay? I promise you, those are your options."

The patient looked her in the eye, raised an eyebrow, and started unbuttoning his shirt. She said, "If you take your shirt off, we'll tell the cops to look for a guy without a shirt." He started laughing -- everyone else did, too -- relaxed, and let the security guards lead him to a gurney.

He swung back and forth between calm and tense for the next few minutes. I went over to talk to him, staying a few feet away. He had a lot to talk about, and real, heart-wrenching reasons for being as upset as he was. But something I said set him off: he became very loud very quickly, and lunged suddenly off the gurney (not towards me, necessarily, just to anyplace where he could work off his agitation).

I stepped back. Three security guards closed in on him. At one point, he was scrabbling at a wall and they were trying to pull him away from it; at another point, he was bent face-down over the gurney, with the three of them piled on top of him, trying to capture his flailing limbs. They must have been able to grab at least one limb, because he kept yelling, "You're breaking my f***ing wrist!" They kept saying soothing things, trying to calm him down: finally they succeeded in getting him in restraints. They did all this as politely as possible, and the nurse who came to give him a shot of Haldol explained patiently what the drug was, and asked the patient please to lift the sleeve of his gown to bare his shoulder. The patient complied.

I felt genuinely sorry for him. I think the medical staff did, too. As for the security guards -- especially the three who were there -- I've known for a long time that they're angels of God, superhumanly even-tempered and kind even with people who are behaving very badly.

All the commotion freaked out some of the other patients. One, around the corner, came up to me later and said, "Are you okay? Is everybody there okay?" Another, in a room very near the restrained patient, asked me if it was safe to walk in that part of the hallway.

Through all this, I paid detached attention to my own reactions. I'd been careful not to get too close to the patient at any point, and had security not been there, I might not have risked talking to him. But I was glad I'd talked to him, and when he became violent, I wasn't scared or startled or even particularly excited. I was just sad.

His fracas with the security guards wasn't fun. It wasn't cool. It wasn't a beautifully choreographed Kung Fu action sequence, or a thrilling military adventure with sexy weapons, or a tense stand-off between Good Guys and Bad Guys. It was an ugly, awkward, blessedly brief altercation between a very sad, angry person and a group of professionals who were doing their jobs as well and kindly as they knew how. There was no stirring soundtrack, no clever wrestling moves, no heart-stopping suspense. There was only a mass of moving limbs, the patient's hoarse yells, and the guards' sometimes clumsy efforts to keep him from hurting them, himself, or anyone else.

Whenever one of my writing students hands in a story with long combat or fight scenes -- all of it carefully choreographed and described in endless detail -- I say, "I'm not your target audience. Fight scenes bore me; they're just descriptions of physical mechanics. What I care about is the characters, what drove them into this and how they'll recover from it later."

Some of my students understand this. Many don't. I wish they could spend some lively evening in the ED (as protected bystanders, like I am), to see what real violence looks like, and how ultimately uninteresting it really is.