Spring and I have sprung.....

Hi all and thanks for all the email. All is status quo here although Spring has finally sprung.

Here's the big crabapple tree in full bloom, plus my smaller flowering crab ready to pop along with the lilacs.





When my knee gave out on the 23rd, the calvary rode into town. Here's Jean's sister Mary from TX who dropped everything and flew in immediately. She and Jean are watching the Loyalty Day parade downtown on a chilly afternoon, which happened to be Jean's 75th birthday.



My brother Tom also dropped everything and arrived a few days after Mary did. Here he is with Jean at the parade too.



The Shriners were in the parade.



And marching bands.





Tom did an amazing amount of work while he was here for almost 2 weeks (he returned home yesterday) and I now have electricity outside of my house and a new garage door opener, courtesy of the labor of Tom and my trusty neighbor Kevin. I've wanted a garage door opener for so many years (especially in the loooong snowy winters) and the same day the installation was completed, my Jeep died. It's been at the auto garage for days while I search junk yards for a used fuel pump. Ah, the irony. Tom also stripped and sanded all of the house trim in prep for a new paint job this summer when he returns. And they built new trellises from scratch to replace the decrepit pair edging my front porch. It was an abundance of all good things for me.

Tom also did a huge chunk of the cooking:



Mary and I used this rare extended visit with him to reform his eating ways and eliminate gluten from his diet. He was skeptical until he sampled the many delicious gluten free products available for him to substitute for his fave comfort food. We made pizzas with rice flour crusts and he pronounced them better tasting than the standard. And how about Jean's gluten free chocolate birthday cake:



Moist, delicious and no digestive system ills. Tom went gluten free and mostly diary free for the entire time he was here (he even sneaked out for a "dirty water dog" at Home Depot with Kevin and threw away the bun) and says he's never felt so good, full of energy and no digestive suffering. We are hoping it sticks.

Jean enjoyed her birthday gifts, a hummingbird feeder from neighbors Sue and Kevin. Tom found a quirky hat for Jean at the thrift store. (He also made some great thrift store killings and is a confirmed thrift shopper now.)



We picked up a set of two antiqued prints of Italy ("Venezia" and "Roma") for $1 at a rummage sale. They are perfect in my kitchen:



Tom went hiking one early AM (thanks to feeling so good courtesy of the elimination of gluten) and he snapped these pics in Proctor VT around Beaver Pond:





Finally, my knee is scheduled for an MRI this week as well as a surgical consultation. Seems I have a "pothole" in the bone courtesy of a nasty fall where my knee took the brunt. So my knee can catch on the edge of the "pothole" when I stand up and lock. Still hobbling but it feels much better.

Still knitting the STR club socks, Leafling.

Ouch

After I clicked the "publish post" button for my blog post last week, I stood up from my computer chair, or tried to stand up. My left knee had locked in a bent position. I hobbled to the freezer for an ice pack but could only find an old frozen bag of french fries (left over from Rachel's visit). I dragged the french fries with me as I hopped to the sofa. The pain was excruciating. I waited until 6AM and called my neighbors to ask for a ride to the emergency room. I hoped I'd be home before Jean needed her first dose of meds at 9AM. No such luck. More emergency calls to neighbors with details about which pills etc.

Here is my new appendage, which comes with a matching set of crutches:



I won't see an orthopedic MD for 2 more weeks but it's believed the culprit is a meniscus tear or sprain. I have to be off my feet wearing the leg brace for weeks. It's a low time because I had begun a walking regimine 8 weeks ago that I loved.

Jean's sister Mary flew in from TX the next day. That was the day Jean fell out of her chair while I had hobbled to the bathroom. She needed 8 stitches and that was my second consecutive day in the emergency room. So much for "off my feet".

Mary selected Socks That Rock yarn in the "Lucky" colorway and I started the matching "Leafling" club sock pattern for her.



I started Mary on her first lace project, a scarf called "Airy Scarf" from a book whose name I've forgotten. The yarn is Lorna's Laces sock yarn. She loves the Bryspun needles because they are lightweight, pointy and flexible.



Murphy is still keeping trim, amid snoozes. We head to the holistic vet on Friday for a needle accupuncture session. I have her off pharmaceuticals completely.

I tried to do ONE thing today....

Been faithfully adhering to controversial UK holistic nutritionist Gillian Mc Keith's food plan for quite awhile now but the desserts of fresh fruit or handful of sunflower seeds just have not been cutting it for me lately. I needed chocolate, something gaggingly sweet but with zero sugar and, of course, no chemicals or "unnatural" ingredients. I found this recipe for "carob fudge brownie" in her cookbook, You Are What You Eat:



Now that would fit the bill perfectly. It took me a few days to find the ingredients, or rather, to get to the stores that had the ingredients. So mission accomplished today, I broke out the new food processor:



After an hour setting it up, washing all the parts and trying to determine how it worked, I consulted the recipe again and realized that I had no idea what "100 grams" of anything equaled in US measurements. Thank you, Google:



A half hour later, I was finally ready to add the water, carob powder, dates, figs, nuts and raisins to the processor and hit "on". But nothing happened. Oh, a blade spun around but it was inches above my ingredients. I dug out a clean bowl and ladled my messy concoction into it in order to wash all the processor's parts again. I figured out that I had used the "bread dough blade" rather than the "all-purpose" blade.

I loaded the ingredients back into the processor with the correct blade. In the first pulse of round two, brown liquid sprayed out from under the lid and covered every surface in the kitchen for 3 feet around. Apparently, you need to ease into the processing with liquids. Another 10 minutes to clean the mess before I manually pulsed the ingredients and they combined.

Before I could continue adding ingredients, Jean decided that she had "a turkey in the oven" which needed to fit into "a special container". In reality, no turkey and no container. And no amount of rationalizing could convince her otherwise. Her dementia flare ups have lately added a new afternoon sequence, prompted by the heat of the last week. Yeah, we've gone from 30's to 80's virtually overnight. Today, like the day before and the day before, it was 89F by 2PM. Too early for the window a/c units so I wrapped Jean's neck with icy bandanas and topped her head with cold washcloths. But she was confused, no idea what house she was in and agitated by wondering how she would "get home".

It's going to be a long summer.

I distracted Jean with a bowl of ice cream so I could return to the fudge for a few minutes. I added the nuts and seeds and toyed with the idea of cheating with a few teaspoons of maple syrup. Yeah, I cheated. It's lovely organic Vermont maple syrup after all. It can't be that bad. I thought I might need a little insurance against that unsweetened carob.

Jean pushed away from the table announcing that she needed her socks. She said she had abruptly left a meeting and needed to get back to it. Change of icy bandana and quick email ("Help!") to her neurologist's office before cajoling her to a nap before dinner. If she cooperated, I'd broil her some salmon and she agreed.

Back at the food processor, I added the nuts and seeds and pulsed some more. You then fold the mixture onto a tray covered with plastic wrap:



Then you put in the freezer for an hour. 3 hours later, it was still a big loose in texture (actually it looks like something Kim Woodburn cleans off toilets with a toothbrush) but the taste?? Chocolate nirvana without the chocolate! And the maple syrup was totally unnecessary. This huge batch of faux-fudge will hang out in the freezer.

Someone is loving home cooked meals.....

So Murphy has lost 3 lbs/1.6kg in a little over a month eating soup for breakfast and one of the dinners you see her devouring in the above photos. She has occasional snacks of apple, banana, and rice cake smeared with hummus. She takes supplements such as magnesium and cinnamon to ease her arthritis. I am trying to keep her off pharmaceuticals. The holistic vet recommended 3 different options for feeding dogs healthfully, with the third and best one being 100% home cooking, which I opted to do. No matter how high the quality of the commercial dog food, it is laden with sodium and other items which are not required to be listed on the label. Plus it can generate allergies and is devoid of "living food" like fresh veggies and fruit.

I also apply a heating pad to her achey spot du jour for 15 minutes a day. She likes it. She had accupuncture on Friday to ease a twist in her back but didn't need chiropractic again because everything previously adjusted is still holding fine.

Lila asked for the food recs I was given. Lila, when I was there on Friday, I asked for a copy of the materials the holistic vet had mailed to me, was handed a stack of photocopies and now see that the page I wanted, with the food details, is not in the stack. So to be continued...

On the knitting front, I actually knit 2 rows today. I am teaching my lovely, elderly neighbor to knit socks on 2 circs and we did the heel flap and turn today out in her backyard while her sad but drunk lifelong neighbor tried to feed Murphy and (dog) Arthur biscuits through a chain link fence. (He's another story!) We also conferenced on the lace shawl she wants to knit a favorite granddaughter for a June birthday and I brought her pattern suggestions like Wisp and lent her my Folk Shawls book. I showed her samples of both fingering and laceweight yarn and, bless her brave heart, she's opted for the laceweight, probably Knitpicks' Gloss Lace.

Yes, it's New England Spring here finally. That means coat, hat and gloves for the early AM walk and shorts and sandals for the PM walk. I saw some daffodils today. Kevin, his wife, Jean and I sat on my front porch for hours one night in the light of the full moon. We hadn't been able to do that since last September. I sold a wrought iron patio set today that I had dragged out to my front lawn and placed a sign on. Kevin next door is going to deliver the set to the new owner tomorrow AM, continuing his reign as undefeated "Super Neighbor".

PS to Court TV Kim: so Cynthia Sommer is out of jail! Completely exonerated of poisoning her hubby with arsenic. I would have voted not quilty because, while she was a skunk and a skank, the arsenic evidence was just too thin. I'm sure she'll be celebrating with botox.

So where's she been?

Been occupied with house maintenance & repairs, spurred on by a sudden burst of Spring-generated energy from my neighbor Kevin. He and his wife feel sorry for poor ol' manless-me. (Yes, I have no one to open jars and reach top shelves but I find having no man underfoot is a total pleasure, but that's between us.) So he tarred the garage's leaking chimney flashing, installed a wooden hand rail going up to the second floor (whoopee!), repaired the huge hole in the garage trim which served as the squirrels' doorway entrance to my (comparatively) warm garage over the winter. He's also building a railing for the second floor and has been stripping the paint off the garage trim with a power sander. He's eyeing the trim on the house too, for painting this summer and is bugging me to "pick a color". (Nothing gives me more anguish than color decisions.) He just finished a major (for me) electrical job that had been abandoned midway by the guy who built my deck 2 years ago: I now have electricity in my garage and hook ups for a garage door opener, which of course, Kevin says he's installing.

So what does this have to do with my time? Well, I hand Kevin tools, hold the ladder and make the gazzillion trips to Home Depot with him to select and pay for the supplies. Because he will not take any money, I prepare dinner for him & his wife.

The old Jeep broke down (again) last week about 1/4 mile from home and I had to call a tow truck. Then I phoned Kevin for a ride. (I had Murphy with me and she was limping badly--we were on the way to the vet's--so walking home was not an option.) Kevin was furious I had called a tow truck; seems he had a chain in his truck and wanted to just pull me behind him the mile or two to the repair shop. (I could just envision me crashing into the back of his new truck, proving the addage that 'no good deed goes unpunished'.)

Another neighbor Celia has also jumped in to help. Murphy couldn't walk after playing with a tennis ball (I subsequently threw every ball away, almost 40 of them) and none of the usual meds worked. The morning after the aborted vet trip, Celia drove Murphy & me to the vet for emergency accupuncture and chiropractic. It was an amazing thing to see, as Murphy walked almost perfectly later that same day. Look at the report the vet mails to me after every visit:




Isn't it mind-boggling? I would have Rogan with me today if I had found this vet a year ago.

Murphy is down 3 lbs since I took her off commercial dog food three weeks ago. She now eats soup for breakfast (while she's dieting) and a second meal of 1/3 each protein, veggies (2 different colors) and carbs, plus 10% oil. Her proteins are chicken or tofu (she loves it!) or turkey. Veggies include beets, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, leeks etc. Her carbs are quinoa, sweet potato, millet, brown rice, etc. Oils can be fish oil, sunflower, olive. For a bedtime snack (it's a long stretch between her dinner and breakfast), she gets a plain rice cake with a smear of tahini.

Yes, Murphy and I now officially eat the exact same foods. I add salt.

No knitting at all. I wrestled unsuccessfully with the 2 socks on 2 circs method, so put all the knitting aside for awhile to give my brain and fingers a rest. (Thankfully Kevin and wife went away for the weekend so I can give the rest of me a rest too.)

What I have been working on diligently is what I call "Oprah School". The topic is an amazing book of self-reflection and introspection called "A New Earth". Every Monday night, Oprah hosts a world-wide online discussion about the next chapter in the book, with the book's author, Eckhart Tolle. I download the one-hour discussion from iTunes after the class and either watch or listen on my iPod. It's free. I found the first chapter of the book almost too esoteric for my earth-bound brain and nearly gave up but once chapter 2 hit, I was in heaven. Change your mind, your life: read the book; download the classes.

Jean is fine. The usual drama does not need repeating.

I will be blogging sporadically so check out the Bloglines link in my sidebar and they will email you when I update the blog. Thanks for all the comments and emails of concern!

New England Blues

So, it's "in like a lion" and "out like a lion" this year. Happy Spring everyone!



Snow Dog was so happy to wake up this morning and find the fluffy white stuff everywhere and still falling (a few more inches expected).



My little reading boy (or as Jean describes the statue, "that old woman is still standing in the yard, does she EVER go home!?") is reading Robert Frost.



Breakfast is ready at the squirrel boxes but no customers have ventured out yet. They don't like falling snow, I've observed.



At 7AM, this man in the truck knocked on the front door (luckily I was sleeping on the sofa downstairs to keep Murphy off the steps to the second floor) and demanded $738, which I handed over, stomach sinking to my toes. Early morning stick-up? Well, sort of. He was delivering me 200 gallons of home heating oil @$3.69 a gallon. It won't last the month of April, I'll need another delivery about the 3rd week of April. New Englanders, how are you coping?? The oil company owner blames it on Wall Street and decries the absence of government intervention. She said it will be $4 a gallon within a few days.

Kevin and Sue next door keep the thermometer set at 60 degrees. Yeah, it's like a meat locker in there. Sue wears a coat and hat at night while watching TV. (I can't do that because of Jean but believe me I would too.) So I knit Sue a pair of Fetching mitts yesterday (in blue Paton's SWS) to keep her warm in the house. She loved them. (I cursed the 2 knots in the Paton's skein that ruined the color flow.)

Last night, I spent FOUR HOURS unraveling the knotted hot mess that was 2 sks of Araucania Nature Cotton. It very nearly all ended up in the trash but I decided to practice the "knitting is meditation" exercise. After 4 hours, all I got was this, to be a pair of socks:



Have a great weekend, everyone!

Irony

Am I the only one with days filled with irony?

Finally the day had arrived for Murphy's long-awaited appointment with the holistic vet who does both canine chiropractic and accupuncture. The timing was in a sense perfect because she had gone limp on Saturday after a romp in the park. (Bad, bad owner.) I began the protocol Dr. VetDreamy always prescribes: 3 days of full dose Metacam. By Monday, I realized she hadn't had a drink or peed since the prior afternoon. Hmmm. Metacam "can" affect the kidneys and it wreaked havoc on Rogan. In an abundance of caution we visited Dr. VetDreamy who was looking very handsome but who sadly did a double take on my hair. For a second; he recovered. Murphy looked perfect so he suggested bl$$dwork. While the blood tests cooked, I walked Murphy outside where she promptly peed. I loaded her into the Jeep, where she promptly emptied her water dish. I handed over $200 and we left with a copy of her absolutely perfect blood test results. Gold star, on the fridge.

So Tuesday was the big day with the canine specialist who would help my girl cope with her arthritis and wean her off prescribed meds. I had made the appointment weeks ago for a mid-afternoon on a day I knew Jean's aide would be working. And as things go, she called in sick. The back-up aide was working her fulltime job. What to do. Jean could be wildly active at 1:30 or out cold in a crash. She was the latter so I was able to sneak out for an hour. My neighbor agreed to go inside & check on Jean if I were delayed at all.

The holistic vet is an obvious practitioner of all he preaches. Thin, healthy, agile. He had me walk Murphy outside for 5 minutes in various configurations so he could observe her gait and how she leaned in one directon and the other. A thorough exam showed that her L3 had popped out (ouch) and that her middle back and right front paw are arthritic. He adjusted her (popped that L3 back into place) and talked with me for quite awhile about diet and supplements. You see, he had taken all of her blood work for the last 5 years and graphed them out in each category in order to observe any trends. (Who the heck does that?!?) Super high sodium (evil dry dog food, and the Wellness brand to boot!). She needs to lose her winter weight so he advised a cup of a thick soup for breakfast and a regular dinner. Veggies (think color: one green always and then another color) and high quality carbs (millet). He filled my head with so many interesting ideas and said he'd be mailing me detailed notes in a few days.

I pulled out of the parking lot and cried for miles, despite my optimism. I am positive this man could have saved Rogan had I taken her to see him. But those tears stopped suddenly when I stepped on the gas at a traffic light halfway home and heard the sound of a jet plane taking off---under my car. The muffler had fallen off in front of the shopping mall in the thick of traffic. After a few moments of denial (surely the noise came from that 18-wheeler behind me?), I dragged my hanging muffler onto a side road (all the surrounding drivers were staring at me, nothing like a dragging muffler in traffic to evoke the feeling of basura blanca) to experience the precise reason why I bought myself a prepaid cell phone a few months ago. I phoned my neighbor Kevin and he pulled up behind me within 5 minutes. I was about to phone for a tow truck but Kevin stopped me. He ransacked through his truck and came out with a long length of belting and disappeared under the Jeep. In a minute, the muffler was no longer hanging and I was able to drive the 1/4 mile to the muffler shop. I was happy to get out of there for $100.

My neighbor had checked on Jean and reported that she was snoring peacefully. And she was still snoring when Murphy and I got back. But have you met my occasional friend Ron Zacapa? He's from Guatemala. We had a rendezvous later that evening.




Knitting content! Guess who finally cast on a clapotis? Good thing I extended the deadline on the KAL.

How to multi-task while knitting (and walking the dog, and cleaning the kitchen)? Podcasts! I'm addicted. More on my faves to come, plus Oprah School.

Can you see it?

Here's as much of the chopped salt 'n pepper 'do as I'll show you now. (It seriously needs some growing out.)



That's me and Murphy wrapped in a warm Lady Eleanor on a frigid VT Spring day. You know, just a "typical white person" and her dog. (Tee-hee, that's for Minniebama.)

extemporanea

My hair is now officially rid of all vestiges of processed color. And I scare the crap out of myself when I pass a mirror. It's about 50/50 salt/pepper and 1" long. I impulsively had my ears re-pierced at the beauty salon while I was there. (Holes had closed.) I was thankful for some leftover (and expired) vicodin in the medicine cabinet.

I've been reinvestigating my "winter" colors, a theory I practiced diligently in it's heyday of the late '80's. I think it's the same company today, Color Me Beautiful. I remember driving Jean to a woman's house after work one day and holding up individual color swatches to our faces, at which point the other women there either applauded or groaned. (Deep purple: wild applause! Baby blue: disgust!) Hokey it was but I was the best-dressed lawyer in the courthouse in my power suit colors of red and purple and emerald green. In a sea of black and navy.

Isn't there a wee judgment problem in someone who exposes his young daughters to the weekly rantings of a bigoted, anti-American, delusional so-called "preacher"? I must not get out much because I was SHOCKED that people actually think like that today (I was around in the '60's) and much less, have captive audiences of educated people listening and buying videos of such vileness to replay at home. Racial divide will never disappear because as an industry it generates too much money and supports too many lifestyles.

Southern Boy popped by the other day (locked himself out of his house again) and said he is hating his new job, which was created by his company's regrouping, not by his efforts. I'm wondering if he'll stay in VT now. He's almost totally white-haired himself now and chain smoking like crazy. We have literally nothing in common, unless the topic is Jerry Garcia.

I had a dream the other night about a mojito and now must have one this weekend. The Bed Bath & Beyond website shows it has a mojito mixing set so I wasted a trip down there today. Margarita's--yes. Mojito's--nada. I did buy limes and a fresh mint plant tho'.

As I've been lying on the couch this past week, I've been watching a show on BBCA called "How Clean Is Your House?". Two eccentric British ladies invade the hovels of Brit citizens and clean their houses. One wears bejeweled rubber gloves and is adverse to cleaning NOTHING. The other gathers biological samples of gross stuff for a lab and shares the disgusting clinical results at the end of the show. A hovel-dweller on today's show confessed to having not cleaned her house since 1988. That's the year my teenage niece was born. I fast-forward through stuff about bugs, but they offer interesting organic cleaning tips, which do have to be translated into American-speak but are so darn clever.

In the "they can't make this stuff up" segment, the latest Court TV trial is mind-boggling. (Agree, Kim?) In a nutshell, a cop's wife named Shawna in CO has a years' long affair with another cop and gets pregnant by him. (Her DH had a vasectomy so there's no fudging the baby is his.) Everyone files for divorce. The cheater cop/lover is unmoved by the prospect of the new baby and ultimately reconciles with his wife. Pregnant Shawna's DH agrees to raise the illegitimate baby as his own and cancels the divorce filings. Fast-forward a year. Shawna, now a mother of three, still (inexplicably) has the hots for the other cop. But then....dum de dum dum... she receives a terse letter from his lawyer telling her to cease all contact with lover and his wife.

Three days later, Shawna fills a bathtub, tells the kids (7, 5 & 2) that she's taking a bath so do not disturb her, dresses in a grim reaper costume, sneaks out of the house, drives to the work place parking lot of her lover's wife and shoots 2 bullets into the poor woman while yelling, "you've ruined my life!" before "waddling" away (as per a witness), killing her on the spot. And almost as bad as that, the 9-11 call replayed in court revealed that not one of the victim's coworkers standing around her would agree to try CPR on her, despite the pleadings of the 9-11 operator.

Not knitting just now, just badgering the gals in the clapotis KAL to the end on 3/31. Instead, have been culling paperwork and setting up my 2008 household binder where all the bills & receipts go. In the process (insert happy dance), I found Jean's long-lost original POA! What a relief. I've been faking it for a year.

Lila, Mud Season is in full throttle here, coupled with snow up in the mountains (I can see it from my house). Murphy needs a bath after every walk, or at least a hosing from the belly down. But (insert another happy dance), the first chipmonk of the season appeared from beneath my neighbors' porch. Spring is here. Kind of.

Brief Interlude....

I'm a bit under the weather. Be back in a few...