its been a bit up and down here, and i havent felt much like blogging. in the scheme of things of course everything is fine – its just little things. i guess it cant be all sunshine and light all the time can it?
i didnt mention in my last post but after the quilt and knitted things were gifted at the baby shower, we got into my car and i reversed out of alisons driveway – directly into a low lying brick wall. i forgot that i had moved my car across when i came up the driveway so forgot to reverse at an angle. i was busy talking and waving goodbye to people. the wall was low and out of the line of sight in the rear vision mirror of the high-riding forrester. thankfully i was only just rolling backwards, and the bumper bar took the main blow
i thought for a minute i might get away with just replacing the bumper bar, but see that little gap between the rear light and the white panel? thats crooked, and means that whole panel needs to come off and get bent back into shape. which means i have to claim it on insurance and pay a $700 excess. seeing as how i live on cash and not credit, i dont have $700 lying around. its not going in for another week yet and will take a week to fix, and i get a hire care, and its way cheaper to pay the excess than the full cost of repairs, but you know that thing where you just start to get ahead, and then not? and the rego is due at the same time. these are the moments when a single income really bites.
so that made me pretty cranky for a while, but you know, its just a car, and im insured and those are not bad problems to have. ive cut back on my other expenses, not doing much else except going to work and coming home to be with the dogs and thats ok really. i finally managed to get in the pool and swim some laps
i did 700 metres in about half an hour which is not exactly olympic record time (its exactly 25% the speed of grant hackett for example) but its not the speed that counts. im a water baby by nature, and i feel at home with my face in the water, the splash of one hand over the other the only thing i can hear. i count my strokes up and down and its a bit like knitting really.
speaking of which, i’m less than inspired. in truth, i feel like the worlds dumbest knitter right now. a work colleague has been diagnosed with breast cancer (ugh) and has started chemotherapy, so i’m knitting her a hat.
its like i cant read a chart anymore, and i’ve frogged this more times than i’ve knitted it! meanwhile, i finished the body of the hoody
and didnt quite understand how the sleeve construction worked but then i figured it out and decided to knit the sleeves in the round carrying the coloured yarn up the inside. looks ok right?
wrong.
ive never done proper colour work in the round before, only flat stripes where you swap every couple of rows. this is messy and awkward and annoys me. it looks ok, not great, on the outside, because at least i can do jogless stripes, but i’ve ripped this once and tempted to rip it again. i really dont know how to do this properly, and if i had gone to guild yesterday probably an actual knitter could have showed me. instead, i have too much work to do and stayed home, spending most of the day here:
its too hot in my west facing office, and i like the view over the backyard from this window, so i set up out here. i did take a break for a long walk on the beach with the dogs – i feel like summer is never ending this year, just all this blue sky all the time
i dont know why people envy this. it can get pretty relentless and the light and heat are piercing, and i feel like everytime i step outside i’m taking another step towards certain death by melanoma. the water is lovely and warm though and the girls are becoming real surfie chicks
and it only takes an hour or so down here with them for me to feel like everything else is manageable.
what else? oh, i got new glasses:
they are progressive lenses, to deal with the difference in perspective from working up close (knitting) to looking into the distance (watching tv). important. they’re helping with the headaches at least, so thats good. i think i broke my eyes from so much reading over summer. i’ve slowed down now, its taken me three weeks of only before bed reading to finish this
which i loved (although ‘life after life’ was a million times better) and now cant decide what to read next?
probably the gaiman first – something shorter and easier. too much brain fry. work is already crazy, lots of different things i need to get done before teaching starts, and lots of things to have done before i fly to canada in may and dont come back until july. i’m a bit nervous about it – thats the longest i’ve ever been out of the country and i will be in philadelphia most of the time, where i only know a couple of people, but at least i will be working and will be busy, and then i will get to see W and her family in brooklyn, or maybe take a little trip up to Massachusetts for july 4 if im lucky, and ive also got plans for a little side trip back to baltimore to meet up with the dean of nursing at johns hopkins, professor patricia davidson. i want to interview her as part of my oral history and leadership project and she’s an aussie, a UOW alumni even, so its very exciting. just, wow. 8 weeks away from home. and the dogs. ouch.
but i cant let fear get the better of me, or stop me from taking risks in my life. i was reminded of that, oddly, by the terrible death of phillip seymour hoffman this week. when i heard i felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach, and i walked around the house saying oh no oh no and crying. it sounds stupid, and excessive, and i cant really explain why without it sounding crazy, or like im making it about me, when its not. but this article in slate explains some of how i felt: how at 19 years clean i still have that ‘alien in this world’ feeling, that ‘that could be me’ feeling. but it also reinforced to me how how far ive come, how much ive achieved, how much i have to live for.
so i will keep trying hard to not let fear dictate my life. i will be fearless and brave and step out into the world and embrace my life, embrace the opportunity to spend two months overseas, because how lucky am i? and you never know whats around the corner right?
k xx
