Mossy Cottage Knits

Déjà Vu All Over Again

(Afternoon Update: : I'm hearing rumors that when anyone tries to post a comment on the blog, they just get an error message. Problem has been fixed. It was me, all me, so let's just not talk about it, hokay?)

I thought we had had a bad weekend until I read Janine’s post. Jeez—we certainly never imagined that the Californians would send her back to us in pieces. Nathania, Rachael, what did you do to her? Please, Dear Readers, go leave some well wishes for Janine’s ankle! (Although I know there’s at least one of you out there thinking, could be worse, could be her hand, could be she couldn’t knit. You know who you are.)

Still, there’s no denying our weekend was iffy. Long time readers may remember this entry from March 2004:

“Two years ago December (December 8th to be exact; how can we forget?), TMK ruptured two discs in her spine. Was she skydiving? Was she riding a raging bull in the rodeo ring? Was she bungee jumping from a towering cliff? Was she performing a death-defying trapeze maneuver? Was she dancing a pas de deux or executing a grand jeté? Not even close—she bent over to pick up a Christmas ribbon from the floor. What a plebeian way to have your life change so instantly and completely for a year.

The pain TMK was in was the kind that makes you break out in drenching sweat and feel waves of nausea and despair at the most infinitesimal movement. It was heart-wrenching to watch what she went through, but there was nothing we could do but take care of the day-to-day basics of life as best we could.”

Guess what happened this weekend? To use one of my favorite phrases, “Déjà vu all over again.”

The way she injured herself this time was just as inane as the way she did it last time. Last time she picked up a Christmas ribbon; this time she stepped off her bike. Just stepped off. Didn’t fall off, didn’t somersault over the handlebars (which she's done before, to the extreme detriment of her elbow. Think Janine’s ankle.), didn’t go racing down a suicidally dangerous mountain biking trail, didn’t pull a Jackass. Just stepped off. You know: On. Then off. On. Off. On (back is fine). Off (discs have packed their bags and relocated to a new neighborhood).

Saturday morning, sure she was facing another year of excruciating pain and slow-as-molasses recovery, she was understandably a Very Miserable Mysterious K. She bawled, muttered a few heartfelt and angry “NORmas," retreated to her bed, and refused to eat.

I kept offering her food (because, let’s not forget that, just for grins, she also has diabetes) but nuthin' doin'. So I sat on her bed and did the only thing I'm really good at—I talked. We discussed why she never has any damn Kleenex in the house, we expressed our frustration at having spent so much $%^!@#! money on the $%^!@#! mutinous bikes, we relived the worst parts of her original injury, we planned how to deal with the new injury, we discussed how she had dealt with the problem before (one word: swimming)—and we kept talking. And talking. And talking.

Eventually, there was a pause in our conversatin’—and then I heard a little voice say:

“I’m hungry.”

The battle was won.

Things are looking very much uphill now—in fact, Sunday we went to a local park to watch the Blue Angels (note to Stephanie, this is what closed down the highway while you were here and, yes, they really are blue), we went shopping at the mall, we tried a new sub sandwich shop, and by Sunday afternoon, the twinkle was back in TMK's eye—but it still amuses me to no end to know I can pinpoint the exact moment when she turned the corner. And the spiteful part of me is making her relive it over and over again.

In between bouts of screwing with my partner’s mental well-being, I bought this pattern to knit a sweater for the newly adopted baby of our Tech Support Manager. The baby had her debut at the office last week so I know first-hand that she has the most remarkable coloring: fair, almost translucent skin; blue eyes; and bright, glowing, terra-cotta-red curls, so I’m knitting the sweater in a dark, forest green Plymouth Encore.

Which reminds me of the yarn-buying coup I enjoyed while on the hunt for the yarn. I must've spent a good half-hour staring at the Wall o' Encore at my LYS only to realize that what I wanted was the Plymouth Encore worsted weight yarn in a Plymouth Encore chunky weight color, this yarn in that color. (We've all been there...) So, frustrated, I started to leave the store, only to stumble across a 50%-off box and, peeking out at me from the bottom of the box, underneath a camouflage of 15 skeins of nauseating seafoam green, were the exact number of skeins of the Encore worsted in the Encore chunky color I needed. And just because it needs to be said again, at 50% off. Score, dude! (You know you are a true knitting freak if you actually found that story interesting...)

Which officially gives me four projects on the needles simultaneously, a record for me. Okay, six, if you count the Janine pillow and the Baby Norgi, neither one of which I ever sewed up, but let's not and say we did.

Posted by Ryan at August 8, 2005 11:41 AM