Two Months In...

Last we heard from our intrepid adventurer, thanks to a series of bizarre-o blackouts, she had decided to wend her way down to Sister and San Diego for some R & R & R & S (Rest, Relaxation, Re-evaluation and Sun).

BFF Ken, bless his ever-lovin’ heart, chauffeured me, Crazy Ivan and the cats the 1,264 miles, and I think even he, with his devil-may-care plan to “point the car south and see what happens,” would agree that the drive was a little more than we bargained for: 26 hours of driving in two days; a mix-up with the hotel rooms; lost directions; a zig when we should’ve taken a zag, which almost landed us in Meh-hee-ko; my not being able to remember the address of the house (only to discover we were parked in front of it); and my not making it up the driveway before collapsing and having to be hauled into the house like a sack of potatoes. (Pretty look, that.) All that being said, we had a wonderful time—talked and laughed and played Yellow Car (using his family's highly suspect modified rules) all the way.

As for what the cats thought of the trip, this photo speaks for itself. There are actually two cats in the cage.

Sister has an old, slow, wonky-in-the-hips dog but, for all that, still a cat-eater so Benny, Joon and I are tucked safely away behind the door of the beautiful, cavernous master bedroom with bathroom en suite (as the realtors say) which Sister has kindly given over to me as our little “apartment” for our stay. Er, to be clear, I do have full range of the rest of the house; the cats, not so much—although this doesn't seem to stop them from pushing the boundaries:

(The cavernous bedroom also has an equally cavernous California king bed. I've discovered the naughty little secret to California kings. When the sheets get dirty, you can just move to the other side. Saves water and electricity. It's "eco." That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

Health-wise, things have improved greatly although I don’t trust the "I'm fine" vibe my body’s giving me because it felt fine-ish before the blackouts. However, I’ve gone from not being able to walk at all (see "sack of potatoes" above), to being able to stumble drunkenly for a block, to being able to walk a good mile with no drunken stumbling, to getting lost and having to/being able to walk three miles round-trip to get back to Point A. Muscle mass is coming back; I can see better; I’m perkier; and I’m eating again.

All told, by the time I head back to Seattle, I will have seen three neurologists, three psychiatrists, three GPs and attended a variety of quirky self-help groups. And yet—surprise, surprise!—nobody knows what’s going on. The neurologists say it’s psychological, the psychologists say it’s neurological, and none of them are being evasive or condescending (except the neurologist who apparently took his medical training in the 1500s and hinted I was being an hysterical female. No lie. He actually managed to insert both the words “hysterical” and “female” close together into his diagnosis. Very smooth how he did it, too.). Sigh. How can a girl make important life decisions with this kind of iffy information?

In the meantime, the cats are doing well—although this week Benny almost ripped out a claw when he got his head and one front leg stuck in the handle of a crackly plastic bag and broke land speed records trying in vain to get away from the bag—and I am being spoiled.

Wait. Didn't this use to be a knitting blog?

One Can But Shrug One's Shoulders

So, life…

It seems to be getting more sci-fi by the minute.

First, after eight months of gainful employment, I rejoined the world of the unemployed for the second time, thanks to a spectacular up-the-line bust-up at my job which had a trickle-down effect to, well…me. Out in about an hour, in a manner akin to “don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.”

Then, I woke up about a month ago, got out of bed, stood up, and immediately did a face-plant on the floor.

Hmmmmm, I sez to myself, I sez, that’s not normal. Let’s just get up, dust ourselves off and get on with things as they should be.

Face-plant #2.

Hmmmmm, I sez to myself, I sez, this continues to not be normal. Never mind with the standing up, then. Let’s sit up, just prop ourselves up against the side of the bed, wait until things right themselves, dust ourselves off and get on with things as they should be.

Face-plant #3. I just didn’t have as far to fall this time.

Hmmmmmmm, I sez to myself, I sez, there seems to be no standing up today. In fact, there seems to be no sitting up. In further fact, there seems to be no up at all. What a veritable pickle. My only option, from this point forward in life, seems to be lying on my back on the floor. (Bet you’re already thinking, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” Shame on you. Okay, yeah, I thought it, too.)

This was followed by about an hour of scooting myself across the floor on my back, trying to get to the phone and, when my t-shirt rucked itself up, discovering just how cold tile can be on warm flesh. In truth, because I knew I was safe on my back, the hour also included wiggling my way to the closet, opening it with my toes and spilling a pile of food on the floor for the cats (because I didn’t know how things were going to play out or indeed how long the cats would need to fend for themselves); wiggling my way to the front door to make sure it was unlocked for the EMTs (again, toes); and wiggling my way to the phone and calling my sister in San Diego first (so she could contact the cat sitter, which was important, and cancel a lunch I had with BFF Ken, which, in retrospect, may not have been as important but, hey, I had her on the phone) before I called 911. (It was a good thing I called Big Sister first because, once I called 911, the EMTs were there in a minute. Literally. I hung up, relaxed on the floor…and heard the sirens.)

(Incidentally, throughout all of this, I really, really, really had to pee. That was the true torture.)

Five more blackouts and six days later, I was released from the hospital with a diagnosis of cataplexy, suspected conversion disorder. Which, in layman’s terms, means the best the docs could figure out was that my subconscious had decided it had had enough of this life (regardless of how I felt), was determined to give up, and was going to make me lie down and stay down fer, like, ferever. (By the way, hospital? I coulda done without the 12 or so heparin shots in the stomach, thanks all the same.)

(For those interested in the gory details, the attacks were like being a marionette whose strings were all cut at the same time. Eyes slammed shut, head dropped, knees buckled, and, hello, floor. But I could hear and feel (do you know how many painful things EMTs do to you to try to wake you up? Holy Toledo!)—and, to a minimal extent, gurgle responses to questions but I had no control over my body and couldn't open my eyes. This seems to be the nature of cataplexy.)

So, I’m home. I’ve been home for a while but I'm still weak, dizzy, loopy in the head, sometimes I have trouble walking, and my eyes feel achy the way they do when they've been dilated, which all adds up to my not being well enough to look for work but not being sick enough to go on disability. And the diagnosis? Well, I just don’t know. I’m not entirely convinced it’s psychological (there were other physical symptoms that were just weird like how much my muscle tone withered in 24 hours) but the hospital docs did an intense work up—I was shoved into and onto and over every machine imaginable, and anything left over was attached to my body in some fashion or another, saw a GP, a psychiatrist and physical therapists—and, since leaving the hospital, I’ve seen a therapist multiple times, another psychiatrist, another GP, and am seeing a neurologist next week since the epilepsy which I’ve had for years does muddy the diagnosis waters a bit. True, there is some shrugging of the shoulders going on on the part of the professionals, but they don’t know what else to do—except tinker with my medications, which has been more of a nightmare than the cataplexy. Have not been enjoying that. I have made them untinker most everything they did.

In the meantime, the one unavoidable fact is that I cannot live alone—this go-round, I was lucky that the only thing I hurt was a toenail (which has turned a lovely shade of puce)—and there's no way to know if the attacks are under control, so I’m most likely shutting up the little cottage, packing up the cats and heading down to San Diego for a few months. The consensus, professional, amateur and otherwise, seems to be that a little sunshine and a lot of family certainly can’t hurt.

While I’m still here in Seattle, however, my coterie of Guardian Angels—friends and family in-state and out—have been peforming their ever-selfless magic and keeping me safe, sane-ish and fed. You know who you are, Guardian Angels, and I won’t even try to say thank you because it just doesn’t even come close.

The biggest change? Guess who has a cell phone.

How Could I Not?

I'm posting this for two reasons, the primary one being to force the round photo of the salad off my screen. The image of the salad itself is fine but the excruciatingly simplistic, anally clenched, uber-exact roundness of the photo makes my teeth hurt. I'm more an artsy-fartsy, blur-the-edges, toss-some-sepia-at-it kind of gal. So, in my world, where lazy is all relative and posting something new is easier than editing and reposting an existing photo, you get my second entry in two days.

The second reason speaks for itself:

What Heat Wave? No, Seriously.

The obligatory summer salad shot, fancied up with a newly discovered circular cropping tool.

Everything in this salad—lettuce, carrot, cherry tomatoes, lemon cucumber and celery (minus the cheese and inadvertently slightly undercooked egg)—came from my garden.

The catch? This is it. This is The Salad of the Year. The Only Salad of the Year. Why? Well, let’s see if I can explain with another photograph (perhaps not cropped with the circular tool which has revealed itself to be supremely tacky). See the tree with the white blooms?

Today is, what, August 11? That tree usually blooms in April. By way of further illustration, I had the heat on three weeks ago.

I am consoled by the fact that the salad was delicious. And that, with enough lettuce, you can pad any food to make it look big.

Joon Discovers Purrpetual Motion

I must be out of my mind.

Remember the pink ball Joon loves with an almost fetishist love? It being light pink, made of foam, and subjected daily to dampening kitty saliva combined with whatever horrors lurk underneath the furniture, it had become downright putrid, even as cat toys go. So I stopped at the toy store and bought another packet of four balls which were, to my mind, exactly the same as the pink one, only they were each a different color and gussied up with black pentagons to look like miniature soccer balls.

(The truth be told, my real motivation in buying the new balls was that the pink ball was, once again, under the chest of drawers and I didn’t feel like getting the flashlight, getting the tongs, and crawling around on my creaky knees to fish it out for the gajillionth time. Oh, now, don’t judge. It’s the same thing as buying new underwear instead of doing laundry….Oh, you don’t do that either? No, you do; I really think you do.)

The plan was to trot the new balls out over time. As each one got gross and dirty, it would be replaced with a new, fresh one from the foam-ball stash. But I have no willpower when it comes to cat toys, especially ones gussied up with black pentagons to look like miniature soccer balls. Within five minutes of arriving home, I had removed all four balls from the packaging, waggled them with great Mommy excitement and baby-talk gushings in front of Joon, and lobbed them about the house.

She ignored them. Stone cold ignored them. By some kitty standard of measurement that I'm not privy to, they were not The Hallowed Pink Ball. So, despite my attempts at avoidance, there I was, flashlight in one hand, tongs in the other, grubbing about under the chest of drawers. Because that's what mothers do.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand, tonight she “discovered” the other four balls. This means she has spent the entire night bringing me one after the other after the other after the other after the other after the other after the other after the other after the other after the other after... Oy. At least with the one ball, I could put it away when I was d...I mean, when play time was done. Now I don’t even know where half of the damn balls are. And she does. And she likes it that way.

(Ooooo, fun. I just threw two at the same time. Her eyes almost popped out of their sockets trying to track both balls simultaneously.)

No knitting news you say? Um, yeah. I’m officially on some stupid doctor-prescribed knitting hiatus which will involve some stupid cast thing that will immobilize my stupid thumb and stupid wrist for some stupid four weeks. The good news? The injury was caused by Too Much Knitting (in fact, Four Straight Hours of High-Quality Knitting and Conversatin’ with LindaK and Devorah at the Donut Shop) so I can’t really complain. If you gotta go, that's the way to do it. However, I have the pleasure of teaching BFF Ken’s wife Beth how to knit this weekend so I will conveniently not get fitted for the cast thingy until next week. In the meantime, if you’re looking for me, I’ll be crouched down near the chest of drawers, flashlight in one hand, tongs in the other.