Hello? Is anyone out there?

I've been lazy. That's nothing new, but the longer it gets since my last blog, the harder it is to get started again. And there's so much to blog about.

I'm still unemployed and loving it. I got my last "real" paycheck today; it's going to be painful when that's not available next month. But it's not enough to make me get out and pound the pavements begging for a job. I like this sleeping till noon and staying up till 3 a.m. I'm reading lots and lots of books, knitting baby things hoping to sell them (and thus eliminate the need for a "real" job), playing in the pool a couple of times a day, running the vacuum occasionally (and picking up furballs of cat hair far too frequently; we now have my daughter's two cats, Rex and Little Marie, in addition to Chester and Beghera), thinking about getting a dog (Chihuahua; mix is okay, no puppies, please), meeting the neighbors (tonight I met the lady who walks her two Min Pins on leash while her scarlet macaw rides on her arm; I played with the dogs, stayed away from the macaw's beak).

In other words, life is fun, sort of like vacationing in a ratty cottage with a sort-of kitchen but a super cool pool. Wait--that's exactly what it IS. We're vacationing in a ratty cottage with a sort-of kitchen and a super-cool pool and a really great mattress set.

No tv, but occasionally we watch something online. It would be nice if we had something larger than a 12.1" monitor, but I bought a set of $20 speakers so the sound is good.

Maybe now I'll actually start blogging again. I have tons of photos to show, and I can tell about how we participated in a promo video for Tim Dorsey's new book, Electric Barracuda, and how I knit on camera and had my own line and everything.

If anyone is still out there......

The pool is open!

We don't have a finished room in the house, but man, we've got ourselves one hell of a nice pool.

Did I show you what it looked like last summer? Probably. Here's one from last week:



Mosquito Control actually put fish (gambusia) in there a couple of years ago. So as bad as it looked, mosquitoes didn't do much breeding there.

We found this guy in there the day before the renewal started:



By the time the pool was drained, there was a second one in there too. They finally had to be lifted out of there, because they weren't going on their own. Actually, they tried but they couldn't make it up the sides of the pool on their own.

This guy was far braver (or more stupid) than anyone I've met.



I asked him if he'd had his shots; he just looked at me funny.



It took most of the day to pump all of that nasty water and sludge out; he ended up shoveling I don't know how many buckets of really smelly stuff and hauling it out.





One guy stuck his hand down the *urk* drain to try to dislodge the 3 years' (at least) worth of crap while the smarter guy owner of the pool company power washed the rest of the pool.



By that evening, the pool was clean and dry.



And this guy decided to come back to see if it was safe to sun himself on the ledge again.



He isn't the brightest bulb. He repeatedly ran head-first into the fence attempting to leave the yard. He finally realized that *climbing* the fence was his best option.







I'm glad he didn't challenge me; he is one strong booger.



The next morning another crew came and did some stuff. I can't remember exactly what went on. The mosquitoes were so bad that I wasn't going to hang around taking photos, so I mostly took them out the upstairs window, which some idiot badly covered with tinted vinyl to reduce heat from the sun, a pretty much ill-fated attempt.

They spread this thick icky brown muck on the surfaces of the pool and left it to dry overnight.



The next day was Aggregate Day, but it rained all the night before (too bad we weren't filling the pool then, as there were about 6" of water in the pool the next morning) and until 2 p.m. As soon as the sun came out, the crew was back mixing and spreading and sculpting aggregate. They were professionals; they could have decorated a wedding cake, they are so good.




That guy, and the next one, spent the entire time on the steps. Two other guys did the rest of the pool.



They spent hours just smoothing the aggregate. I'm very impressed by the job they did. And it was 94 degrees that day, and the mosquitoes were biting. They finished after dark and returned Thursday morning to acid wash the pool and start filling it.

And by Thursday afternoon, my birthday, there was enough water that we could test our pool.

It's seven feet deep at the deep end; I don't swim and I don't put my head under water, so I use a float when I head in that direction.

The water straight from the hose is about 85 degrees, so it was very comfortable right away. When we take showers, we barely use any hot water at all.

Then *dum dum dum dummmm* the salt marsh mosquitoes descended the next day as we got into the pool. Within 5 minutes they'd driven us out. That happened again the next two days. Today we were able to stay in for about half an hour before they got too bad. Those are the little f^ckers that carry dengue fever, which is making itself known in the Keys and Miami. Lucky us. Regular mosquitoes aren't enough for us.

Mosquito Control said that they're working their way up the Keys and would try to hit us over the weekend, but it doesn't appear that has happened yet. We'll keep calling, because dammit, we have a POOL and we want to use it!

I just hope the crabs and the iguana don't jump in while I'm in there.

My rounds

Friday started The Week of Doctor Visits for me. I put off making doctor appointments as long as I possible can, because I hate making phone calls. The appointments themselves don't bother me that much. But the phone calls.....

So a couple of weeks ago I made a bunch of calls one right after another and set up a mammogram (I swear I had one a few years ago, but their records go back 10 years....), a physical (so I can get my drugs), an appointment with my retinologist, and one with a head surgeon to remove a cyst on my head. Right on the very top of my head. I bet it'll leave a bald spot.

The new digital mammogram is so much more comfortable than the old film one, even though it squeezes every bit as hard. So that's one down.

Tuesday I saw the head doctor about the cyst. Seems they run in families, and we're one of the lucky ones. That'll be removed on Tuesday morning. Yesterday was Retinologist Day, and, as it turned out, Long Needle Stuck in My Eye Day. That pesky ol' Wet Macular Degeneration is acting up again so I got another Lucentis injection. See, the good thing about that blind spot in the center of my left eye is that I can't see the needle coming at it.....

Joan met me at the office and drove us to lunch at Olive Garden afterward. We had a nice, leisurely lunch, until I could see again, then we went our separate ways home. How about that; a needle in the eye at 1:45, drive home at 4:45. Without an accident, at that.

Already my vision is better than it was yesterday. When I made the appointment my vision felt the same as it has since the last checkup 15 months ago (because I'm so bad at making appointments after I cancel one), but Friday I felt like something wasn't quite right, and it's a good thing the appointment was so soon afterward. I'll have another injection on June 17, then on the 18th Betty, Joan, and I will leave for Florida, where we'll spend a few days at the beach before Betty and Joan fly home and I spend a few days with Jennifer and kids in Orlando, then on to my new life in the Keys.

This afternoon my eye is achy, but the scratchiness that is usually pretty painful after an injection just lasted a couple of hours, not until I went to sleep last night, as it usually does. Maybe my eyeball is getting tougher. I didn't take as much percocet as I usually do, either, and no xanax before the procedure. Most of the time I spend the night with Mom and Dad after the injection so I don't have to drive home that evening, or Tom drives me, but they're all in Florida now so Joan and I just hung around for a while. And it was nice.

In an hour I have to be at the doctor's office to wait for my physical. There must be 50 doctors in that practice and they're all running late all the time. The waiting room is always filled with sick people spewing germs all over everyone else. I've had to wait as long as 3 hours for my doctor (ONLY because I was out of cough syrup and I have to appear in person to beg for another month's supply); the shortest time was maybe half an hour. Once. I hate that place. I'm hoping that this will be my last visit there ever. Maybe this time I can share my allergies/cold/bronchitis/whatever the hell I've had this week with my peers in that waiting room.

I think that's my first illness this year. I had some bug a while back, but since Christmas I've avoided colds. I hate colds. I get very angry when I have one. I don't know why. The flu doesn't make me angry, maybe because it's acceptable to stay home when you have it. But a damn cold can hang on forever and I just don't have that much sick leave.

Because I'm saving it to take off early for the beach. And my new life. In the Keys.



P.S. Cross your fingers, legs, and eyes; we're negotiating with a man who really, really wants to buy our WV property; he just doesn't want to pay enough for it. We might just persuade him to see things our way, then we'll be FREEEEEEEE! of a mortgage. Not much left over to work on our place in the Keys, but enough to save each month to get things done.

My mom and dad are at *my place in the Keys* and I'm not

Sucks to be me right now, huh?

Mom and Dad are spending a week at The Cat House with Tom. Dad's a Renaissance Man and can do anything. At 80 he's more active and productive than I am. And he looks younger than I do.

Dad and Tom are building walls, from what I gather from the daily (sometimes hourly) phone calls. They're building a wall between (I think) the master bedroom and its closet. It already had a wall, but I want a pocket door in it to save space, so they've worked on that. They've made soffits for the air conditioning ductwork. They're going to make a closet in the upstairs bedroom. There are no closets upstairs; lots of space under the eaves of the house, but the ceiling is so low in those that only "short" things can be hung. Where did the people who used to live there put all their stuff?

(Actually, Tom found a big stack of shirts left in one of them. And a lot of junk was just tossed into the backyard and under the house.)

Mom has been cleaning windows and sweeping. Those floors catch and hold onto dirt and dust; they're down to the subflooring and it's not in good shape. The cats shed enough to create entire new cats.

On Monday they'll head up to their favorite vacation spot near Daytona and spend two weeks there with some of their friends. It used to be a little 40s or 50s Mom and Pop-style motel right between A1A and the ocean. Maybe 10 rooms. It's been sold several times in the last few years for increasingly insane amounts of money and will eventually be razed and turned into luxury condos. I hate to see the remaining pieces of Old Florida sold off and gone forever.

We first went to Florida in 1955 or '56, after Dad's parents, sister, and brother-in-law moved to Miami. I vaguely remember that first trip. I was convinced that the ocean was in Muck and Poppa's back yard and I was terribly disappointed when it wasn't. That trip is when my life-long love affair with Florida started.

We visited them every summer for two weeks. At that time we didn't have any friends whose families took vacations anywhere, much less 1000 miles south. We spent most of the time inside--they had air conditioning. We'd play in the yard, go to the beach a couple of times (Dad absolutley hates getting sand in the car), go shopping some (I mean, wow, they had a K-Mart back when there were none up here!), eat at the very old McDonald's nearby, take walks in the evening, play with the colorful snails that crawled up the shady side of the house.

At least once each trip, we'd all pile into the car and take a ride through the Everglades (mosquitos are BAD in the summer; I can't wait to go in the winter) or out to the (then) new Miami airport, or, once, to Key West. I was five that year, I think. I was not at all interested in the gorgeous water, palm trees, and other sights; all I remember is that I was really really thirsty, and I remember bumping across countless bridges. When we got to Key West, it stunk of fish. There'd been a recent fish-kill; we didn't want to stay long. I remember nothing else of the island.

And now I'm going to live 30 miles from it. I still don't quite believe it.

Finally!

Vindication.


As an adult, I've realized that I feel better when I have a tan. For most of my life, however, science has pounded into our heads (okay, so I'm a little sensitive about the subject) that sun = cancer. I've been very careful not to burn and use sunblock when I'm on the beach, but without skin color, I feel exhausted, depressed, out of sorts, you name an unpleasant emotion, I've got it during the cold months.


The article linked above explains why this happens. I have a vitamin D deficiency.

I didn't realize that vitamin D is so closely tied to the problems I have in cold weather. I don't drink milk, occasionally eat yogurt, a little bit of cheese, so I don't get much vitamin D unless I spend time outside. When it's cold, I'm not going outside, and now tanning beds have such a nasty reputation that I don't want to use them.

I feel so good when the weather's warm and I can go outside every day. No wonder trips to Florida in the winter are so enticing. I feel like I genuinely need to spend time in the sunshine.

Too bad that living in a cold climate isn't considered a disability by employers. It is a disability when one dreads the end of summer and outright hates winter. I deal with intense depression and anxiety eight months of the year, but somehow I don't think I'd be approved for disability retirement.

I am so looking forward to living in the Keys!

Slow down!

Good grief. The summer is going by far too quickly.

I don't seem to be able to post with the Crack. I've totally forgotten how to type on an actual keyboard. Today is the first time I've driven in a month.

Let me tell you, living in the Keys is tough, dude.

We're looking at houses and have actually seen a few that we could move right in to. Many are disgusting dumps. Not a whole lot of choice in our price range, but more open every day. We saw a brand new townhouse in Key West, but it's really small and we have a lot of stuff.

I'm going through emails from realtors, looking at the properties they've emailed me. It takes forever, and we only have internet access at the library. The Crack is useless for something like that, but I'm having a blast keeping up on email and Facebook (Rita Knits is my name--join me!) and I'll miss that when we go back to the mountains and don't have cell phone coverage. It works well here for that.

Gotta run. We love it here. We can see ourselves living here. When I have time/opportunity, I'll post some photos. The Key deer are very friendly, very cute, and I've gotten to rub the velvety antlers of several males. Males are friendlier than females. We've seen tiny fawns, about Zippy's size.

Zippy is happy being a Key dog. He knows he has to go to the elevator to go O-U-T. There are huge iguanas all over the place, some as big as he is. He doesn't chase them. I think they could take him in an instant.

Later! I hope you're enjoying the summer. I really miss reading all of your blogs and hearing from you. I'll catch up when I can.

OH--Eric Brace has a new song and video, "Tranquility Base", an homage to the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. Beautiful song, available on iTunes, and the video is on YouTube.

Fun at work

Since school ended, my job has been a piece of cake. So to speak. We have actually had cake for the retirees.

Until today, for the last week I've had very little to do. I just ran copies of our algebra and geometry packets all day long. After 4 days, there are enough to take care of summer school and start into next year.

Until today.

But I'm leaving now (one machine broke down, so some copies not needed until August didn't get finished. Say it with me: "Awwwwwwwww."

Summer is finally here!

The moment

Finally, it's here. The moment we've been waiting for since Aug. 18 of last year.

The bell just rang. The kids are leaving school for the summer. They're not the only ones who're jumping up and down.

Today I was given a copy of my *oh crap, what's it called* oh yeah, evaluation. I received the highest marks for everything, the best evaluation I've ever had. I've never had a bad one, but this one is really complimentary.

I love my job (especially now that vacation is in sight) and hope to keep on copying for two or three years. It's nice to know that I am appreciated.

Black and Red

So. Yeah. I finished my Twilight-cover-art-inspired socks last evening. What do I do now? It's kind of like after I finished reading the Twilight Saga, nothing else appealed. Others I've talked to in rl are the same way (not all of them, but enough women I consider to be sane are saying the same thing). What knitting project is next?

I really want it to be Shipwreck, but that's a pattern that's not suitable for knitting during odd down moments. It's going to be a committment. Tom suggested that I save that for condo knitting this summer. I'll probably work on it in the car on the way down and back. I went ahead and rolled one hank into a ball. I've got a couple thousand (I hope) 6/0 glass beads in red, black, and silver-lined clear. I really have no idea how to determine what color I want where on the shawl; I'll have to figure it out as I go, I guess, since I'm not going to use the 5000 beads that the pattern calls for. I don't want a stripe of all red, or all white, or all black, or red and white, or red and black, or whatever when I get done with it. I'm really going to have to think when I knit this one. No mindless tv knitting.

I went to Ravelry and printed off page after page of discussion of this shawl and its challenges. Fortunately, the designer has been an active participant and clears up a lot of the issues.

I can't get the entire chart to print, but she has each section written out, so with luck I won't need a chart. I really mess up when I used even a simple chart, so I'm glad that she spelled them out.

So, I've got three hanks of Bloodlust All That Glitters yarn dyed by yarnlust, dozens of vials of beads in three colors, the two needles necessary to start the project, and alllllll of those pages packed away in a plastic shoe box to take to Florida in June. I may have to start the center long before then; it depends on how stupid I'm feeling. If a simple chart kicks my ass, I cannot imagine what this heirloom-quality lace will do to me.

I've never before felt like I just have to knit something. There are lots of patterns that appeal to me, but never has one jumped into my brain and taken up residence there. The very first time I saw Shipwreck, I knew that I had to knit it. I also know that it will probably take years to finish (hello? 5000 beads), and that's okay. I'll probably end up using it as a decorative table cloth most of the time. By the time it's done, we should be living in South Florida permanently, so I might be able to wear it during a cold snap.

But that leaves me without a current project. I cannot rest until I find something that I want to do and get it organized. I have two hanks of Twilight-cover-art-inspired worsted that I want to use to make a neck warmer and a hat, but I just can't get too enthusiastic about that now. I haven't seen a hat pattern that I really, really want to do with it, so I'll wait.

I dug through my stash of Claudia fingering and came up with some gorgeous red and gray sportweight. There are four separate hanks of it; I'm just hoping that I have enough to finish a pair of socks. I started knitting last night using a pair of size 1 dpns; it's heavier yarn, but I didn't want to go any higher in size because they look like they'll be nice and squooshy on the feet. I think it's Claudia's Buckeyes colorway, which, oddly, is very similar to christinamariepotter's colorway for the cover of Eclipse. This got my mojo rising and I cast on. This isn't to say that I won't be ordering more yarn from christinamariepotter (on Ravelry and etsy) for each of her colorways from books 2-4. Must. Have. Them.

I finished books 2 and 3 of P. C. Cast and Kristen Cast's House of Night series. I'm now reading the fourth book. They're light and cute and a quick read. But they are not Twilight.

I am so doomed.

I'll try to add photos to this post after lunch. Tom is substituting in and English class today and he's going to bring me a big Pepsi. I might want to check my weight tomorrow morning; I've been drinking more Pepsi than sugarless tea lately.

Two of my sisters, Betty and Joan, are planning to fly to Ft. Lauderdale at the end of June and we'll have a Sisters' Week in the Keys. We've long dreamed of doing this, but scraping together the money for the four (or three, as Nancy will be with friends that week) of us to fly, get a motel on the beach, and eat for a week has eluded us. With a free place to stay and our own gourmet chef (Tom), we're going to make out like bandits. (No, Google search, we sisters will not make out.)

We've got the condo in the Keys for the summer!

I may not make it through the next two months.

Or maybe it'll make it easier, living up here in the cold, cruel north.

We can have the condo for 6 weeks or so this summer. Woohoo; Sisters' Week in the Keys!!!

In other news, Tom will be teaching Anatomy tomorrow.

*waits for comments*

Autumn blues

I'm going to write about this and then try to forget it. Like that'll happen. But I don't want to go on and on all fall/winter/chilly spring about how much I hate cold weather, so I'll do it now and maybe get it out of my system.

I hate cold weather. I hate wearing coats. I hate wearing hats. I hate running to the car, shivering and swearing, before the sun comes up. I hate not seeing the sun before I go to work and only seeing it for an hour and a half after I leave work. I hate having to turn on the heat in the house and pay the ridiculous amounts the gas company will charge this winter (even though we keep the temperature around 66 degrees). I hate having to wear sweatshirt, t-shirt, sweatpants and heavy socks in the house, sometimes having to wrap up in a blanket to keep from freezing.

Poor Tom is already wearing a hat (that I knit) while we're home, and it's not that cold yet. He really feels the cold, while I'm always (almost) too warm. One would think that a post-menopausal woman would be happy with cooler temperatures. Not so in my case.

As the days get shorter, I can feel that ol' melancholia stealing over me, stealing my energy (what energy that I have), my motivation, my life. By December or January I'm ready to hibernate. I don't want to get out of bed. I hate wishing my life away, waiting for warm weather again. I feel like I'm just enduring six or more months of the year, waiting to feel alive again.

Thank goodness for trips to Florida to see my daughter and her family. Not only do I get a good dose of being MomMom (or Nanamarana, as last January), I get a dose of sunshine and warmth. Green grass, flowers blooming, trees with actual green leaves on them. Life. Sun. It keeps me from wasting away inside while waiting for warm weather at home. Even if it gets down into the low 30s at night while I'm there, I know that it won't last long, and even if I miss the nice, warm days, I know that they'll come back quickly, unlike in the mid-Atlantic states where it's winter for six months.

Thank God I have an understanding husband. It bothers him that I sleep so much, even in the warm weather, but that's my natural rhythm. Always has been, since I was born. I'm not finding that I need less sleep as I get older; for me, it's the opposite.

I've been diagnosed with Chronic Depression and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Depression is so much worse in the cold times of the year, but increasing my antidepressant turns me into a zombie, so I just have to endure. I don't want to risk changing antidepressants; I don't have six months to live in bed while waiting for one to get out of my system and another to get in, then finding that it doesn't work well, and having to go through it again.

I will not miss the seasons. There are only two seasons I want to have: summer and almost-summer. If it never got colder than 60 degrees, I'd be a happy camper. I have to force myself to see the color changes in the leaves; I can acknowledge their beauty only after I've forced myself to notice that they're no longer green. Snow is beautiful when it's falling, but it soon gets grubby, and living on the side of a mountain isn't the best place to be in an ice or snow storm. Working on the other side of a mountain, where the roads are maintained by two states, one of which (and it changes) is always more on-the-ball than the other, is a royal pain when the roads are slippery. Tom's site never closes, no matter how bad the weather, and being the maintenance manager, he has to go in even if there's a foot of ice on the road (a slight exhaggeration). I work for the city schools, in a city where school is rarely closed due to inclement weather and only once in a while opens late. Doesn't matter. We leave home at 6 each morning, and if we hear that school has been cancelled or will open late, no matter. I'm on the way at the regular time anyway. The weather at home or on the mountain may be treacherous, but we chose to live where we do, so we have to deal with it.

I'll just have to endure. I'll have happy times; I won't mope around for the next six months. But I will complain about the cold weather, the short days, no warm sun. It's my nature. Again, thank God that Tom feels the same way about cold weather and wants to move south when we retire.

South, as in South Florida, where there's no (or maybe a tiny bit, once in 25 years) frost, where there's almost always sun (HOT sun), where most places are air conditioned so there's somewhere cool to go when it's too hot in the sun. Where we can grow tropical plants outside, not in pots that have to be dragged out in the spring and back inside in the winter where the poor things just endure until spring. Where we can see my grandkids and Tom's daughter (who was smart and moved to Ft. Lauderdale when she was 18). Where there's a beach within an hour's drive east or west.

Where maybe I can defeat this cold-weather melancholy and feel alive year-round.

Lazy days

Wow, I have been lazy, huh? Summer--what can I say? I'm enjoying my no-working days to the hilt, staying up late, sleeping late, enjoying the gorgeous weather.

There's so much I want to talk about before I actually go on vacation; maybe this weekend?

Love you guys!