Hangover day

... which says most.

A friend, whom I haven't seen for quite a time, had some business in this town and it ended earlier than expected so instead of a quick coffee downtown, she came to my place and there was some reasonable amount of revelry. Watching videos on Failblog, gossiping, the usual stuff that's more fun when not done alone. And moderate drinking.
I blame the young wine. I don't drink it since that incident with reserve Beaujolais, and, after all, it's a known fact that it gives headaches.

Friend stayed overnight, I saw her off, I dealt with the gas pipes maintenance guy, got the kettle boiling - the idea of coffee made me even sicker - to start the rehydration process and then I decided that I'm useless and sleepy.

I slept half of the day. It's one of the glories of working from home. The downside is that I need to do my daily allotment of stuff anyway.

I'm catching up with my writing and the remaining bottle of that headache-inducing stuff goes to some deserving enemy. Or undeserving friend.

Random observations

Today I ventured out after four days. I'm doing things from home, which is wonderful because I don't need to go anywhere. Just with trash, from time to time, because it might stink. Which I did. I checked from inside that the weather looked very unpleasant... and indeed it was. Along with a lack of visual appeal, it was windy and rather cold.

I lost appetite. Next time when I'll go out, I'll buy some chocolate to see what that does. Midnight chocolate in bed is one of my most persevering vices. I don't miss it but maybe the brain decided that there's no point in craving for chocolate when there's none at home.

Spinning rocks.

I was rather grumpy all day long. Not that this would be any news. For some reason - either I was being narcissistic or I was looking for something - I was reading through my old blog posts and I found out that a year or so ago, I was the same grumpy pessimist planning a better future. Better future hasn't appeared yet.... upon which I thought to myself: And why should I expect that my life should be happy? In fact, how could I dare? Or, from another viewpoint, why should I bother to expect something above the very lousy baseline? Maybe life sucks as per definition.

More grump to follow, stay tuned.

Lousy day, but colourful

I took various bland yarns and redyed them because, well, I have no use for pale ochre, pale baby blue, pale apricot and such.
The huge mainly blue thing is my pencil roving. I would love to spin a reasonable skein for an upcoming sweater because I need something in this colour and I have none such in my stash but I spin too slowly.
I dyed pieces of the same roving in different colours, one greyish handful and one bright green, and today I spun this:
13,5 metres, Navajo-plied because a colour gradation appeared and I wanted to preserve it. It took me two hours. Spinning for other use than having pretty little skeins doesn't work for me yet, apparently.

How I didn't get another cat

I went to my GP for some damn paper. One of the glories of being ill with something unidentifiable is that one does lots of walking.
On my way back, I was crossing a road and I saw two policemen standing above what looked like a dead cat. They were on my way and I was all oh, poor kitty, so I went to have a look. Dead cat was still breathing and one of the police idjits was standing on its tail so that it wouldn't run away. I knelt down because, well, a scared and hurt kitty can always do with a bit of calm talk and stroking. The police had already called a veterinary ambulance, which arrived shortly, and meantime, they asked me what would I have done if I found said cat. "Sir, I'd stop this passing taxi and go to the closest vet," I answered and police idjits gave me a disbelieving and puzzled look. The vet arrived, asked whether I'm the owner, Nope, I said, asked the police who is the owner, Dunno, said they, and the vet remarked that if the cat isn't microchipped, he might need to put him down because nobody would pay for all that hassle.

There goes my food budget for a month, I decided, and I said that I'm taking over the responsibility, the bills and be it needed, the cat. I drove to the clinic with the vet, kitty needed to be sedated anyway so I was hanging around the waiting room. Meantime, I alarmed a friend who alarmed the internetz, and pondered how this might turn out. The cat was a castrated tom, blue, although too thin to be a British Shorthair, and not that furry as well, but anyway, it should be someone's cat and whoever that someone may be, they might miss their kitty, but if he's not chipped, someone else who is at hand needs to deal with matters. Also, the cat didn't look really badly injured, there was something obviously wrong with his front paw and he was bleeding from his mouth, but no bits and pieces were missing nor visibly damaged beyond repair, so I was going through my list of friends, relatives and random strangers who could be persuaded to care for a cat.
The owners appeared, though. The police idjits were loitering around the area and stopped for a smoke just in front of their house when the cat owners were coming home from somewhere. Cat owners asked what's up, police mentioned the cat, they went Oh shit, that's our cat, and were promptly dispatched to said clinic. I learned that the cat was indeed British Shorthair, who had been lost for a few weeks and had returned stick thin only a few days ago.

I happily accepted a drive home from them and left them my phone number to keep me informed, all the vet told us that the kitty's tongue was partly torn off, stitched back and hopefully, it would heal.

Alas, later in the afternoon, the lady called me that the kitty didn't make it.

I was devastated. Which felt odd, I fostered cats and had a few die and those were cats I had around for quite a time, whom I fed medicines and whose diarrhoea I cleaned, and their deaths touched me less than the of a cat I've stroked a few times when he was lounging on the garden fence and, well, when lying hurt in the curb. I spent the evening in solitary drinking.

I wonder, is it too insensitive to point the people at my friend who has four sweet British Shorthair kittens?

News

(1) Internship rocks.
I went to the library yesterday and it felt good. I did my hair, put on a bit of jewellery and felt all proud. Well, for a while. When I arrived to the office where I supposed I'd be working the next six weeks, I was exhausted so I had hard time understanding and sorting out what Z., the sort-of-a-boss is telling me.
But, mainly, entering the stuff to the database can be done from home. No need to do my hair or to exert any physical effort. What a relief.
(2) Doc called. Mycoplasma confirmed, chlamydias confirmed. He consulted an antibiotics specialists because these two bastards are regularly treated with tetracyclins, whom I met last in around 1997 and I remember it very clearly because I spent five days with my head in the toilet bowl. Well, mostly my head, I had a diarrhoea as well. Or it can be macrolids that give me itchy hives. Antibiotics expert recommended something from the quinolone group and I did the studip thing to consult Wikipedia and learned that the side effects may include my tendons melting. The advantage is that I'll only need to take that stuff for ten days while both tetracyclins and macrolids need to be used for four to six weeks. Uh, that ciprofloxacin or what I'm getting must be a tough shit.
Yeah, and I still might be having toxo but the nurse forgot to write it down on the lab sheet so I'll have to go and get some blood drawn some other day.
(3) I dyed a heap of pencil roving and some random yarns, too. Looks good.

Today has been one of those days. I woke up and wished I could spend some time in that half asleep state forever. Or at least until matters improve.
When I got up and regained my equilibrium, I wanted to be preferably dead although I would probably be okay if I could dig a burrow and stay there until matters improve.
Yesterday I got a decent dose of You're fat, ugly and lazy yesterday so I hoped that today, parents might shut up at least for a while. Obviously they didn't. Also, twice in two days I got a lecture on how I should dress more professional than I dress, which gets an extra dose of absurdity when I'm cleaning, wearing worn and not exactly clean stuff and when parents could have noticed ten years ago that the farthest I go in this garb is the trash bin.
I've never gone as far as cutting myself but I do something similar mentally. I've brought the art of self-abashing to professional levels. Sure I could get better clothes and something more professional than baggy jeans and baggy sweatshirts but I don't deserve anything better than slightly dirty, somewhat crumpled, misfitting and anything but flattering stuff. After all, I'm fat, ugly and lazy. And can't afford it anyway.

I need a shrink. That fever, fatigue and sore eyes might be toxo or mycoplasma. But the other sort of fatigue, being tired with life itself, that's depression indeed.

Dispatch from the waiting room

After pondering a bit, I decided that although my fatigue might be aggravated depression, it is very unlikely that it would also cause swollen eyes or fever. So, at last, I went to my doc friend, who got a bucket of blood drawn to test for any random bug that may cause not very specific symptoms.

The tests got back and I was sorta positive for a few bugs. Today, I finally read through part of the mail backlog and found an invitation to experiment on humans - a bunch of researchers at the university is testing students for toxoplasmosis and doing various psychologic tests to find out how toxo correlates with cognitive function. And, I possibly have toxo. If it gets confirmed, I'm going to be put on antiprotozoans (or whatever the anti-toxo meds are) because my doc decided just to bomb the bugs and see what happens because tests or not, I'm miserable enough. I mailed the researcher back with this, maybe I'll enter the literature as a nice case study of cognitive whatever while being treated.

Meantime, I feel crappy.

New hobby

I learned to spin, folks.
It was a lengthy process. Years ago, three or four it might be, I got a spindle and some fibre, tried it, it was no big deal, so I traded some of that fibre and kept the nice batts from Beau North Star Alpacas which Alpaca Granny graciously gave me.... and nothing happened for a few years.
Last weekend, I was rummaging around for some reason and found that bag of spindle and fibre. It wasn't actually lost, I knew perfectly well about it.. but this time it attracted my attention and I just gave it a try.



And I made yarn.

Apparently, things have their time. On Friday, I dropped at friend's town, we went for a walk and in the old town, when a car was passing us in a narrow street, we stopped by an art supply shop. I peeked in the window just because it was there and there were a few handfuls of coloured fibre with a tag saying something like Fibre for felting. I went in and found out that they had coloured fibre but also bags of natural grey, chocolate and cream. I got a bag of each.





And made more yarn.

Red emergency!

The most noble goal of finishing some of my knitting is being fulfilled. Sort of. The other day, I finished and mailed off a pink leftover scarf for Sadako. When taking it from storage, I did notice a small hole, fixed it as best as I could and thought something about those mysterious bugs that get a gnaw or two of fibre without leaving excrements and that was it.

Three days ago, I decided that the time was very ripe for the mostly blue sweater. I got the yarn in around April, after a heat wave when it started to be cold, because I wanted something warm and cuddly. First problem was that I made the body way too narrow, some fifteen centimetres narrower than my chest. I decided that I'll rather lose ten kilos to make it neatly fitted, not disgustingly overstretched, which says more about my historical optimism than an actual statement of historical optimism. Second and major problem... well, I used the afterthought heel approach to the neck hole, I picked out the closing thread, got the live stitches on the needle and seriously cussed about a dropped stitch five rows after the cast-on. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that it wasn't a dropped stitch but that someone took a gnaw of my yarn... again. I cussed wildly, put the sweater on my mannequin and went to do something else.

Yesterday, I was spinning and found several gnawed-out holes in the centre of my alpaca batt. Bug is not relying solely on sheeps' wool, apparently. I grabbed the spray insecticide and used it liberally on whatever woolen I could find and then I continued to freak out. I might have a thousand skeins of yarn, in various odd places, for goddness' sake, and fabrics, good part of it is silk, and the collection of kimonos, generously soaked in moth balls, but who knows whether the crap it works. The only way how to get rid of bugs, apart from some highly poisonous and possibly illegal methods is to freeze the yarn, thaw it and to repeat the process a few times week after week because moth eggs are not killed by frost. In theory, I could wait a few months and spread my precious yarns in the garden but there are flaws. A few months. Also, my mother would kill me if she knew that i own much more yarn than she thinks. (x)
Tomorrow I need to plunder the drugstore for as potent pesticides as I can get. And cedarwood oil, which only repels them but it smells nice.


(1) I must've mentioned it somewhere. She thinks hobbies are a mental illness. Possibly with the exception of weeding, mowing the lawn and cussing weeds and lawn and whining about the lack of will on the part of other family members to mow or weed.