The theory of dung heaps

Depression is not exactly like having fallen in a septic tank, floating in shit and trying to get outta there. It's rather like...

Imagine life as a landscape littered with dung. It may be a bird dropping here and there, or dung heaps and pools od fœtid diarrhœa, scattered here and there between swaths of solid land, reliable parhs or even large areas of pleasant countryside.

You weave your way through and it may be okay, you see the shit in advance and you safely avoid it. Or someone marked a piece of nice trail. Or you may have a friend who knows the area and will help you out. Sometimes you find yourself surrounded with dung heaps in all directions but you have a shovel and with a bit of manual labour which is actually relaxing at the end, you can clear your path. Then a pleasant summer rain comes and cleans everything.

Or the pleasant greenery changes into nettles and brambles which are, after all, nitrophilic. You step on what seems like a decent lawn but it was a but of grass on the top of a shit-mire and you're waist-deep or nose-deep in excrements, having hard time to keep afloat. Then you get out of there and your friends want nothing to have to do with you because you look less than presentable and stink awful and from their solid ground, they tell you that you should have choosen a better path, only losers and weaklings need a shovel to dig their way through and you should try harder. The pleasant summer rain comes and it doesn't bring ablution but a shit-slide. And you are spitting shit out and you have no better path to take, no shovel, there's just cold, hunger and the politburo.

The landscape is ever-changing, what worked the other day might not work tomorrow. It's complicated and not always predictable. 

So, yes, i tried not to be depressed but it's like trying not to smell foul when knee deep in guano. Doesn't work, sorry not sorry, and if you haven't helped me out of the crap, you have no right to complain.

The nicest kitty

Alvar is a dear. 99 percent of the time. A friendly cuddly furball.

And, he's pretty choleric. He's able to switch from purring plushie to a ball of fury and sharp bits in no time - and when he is not happy with something, he doesn't bother with hissing or growling, he goes for blood.

The time of the year has come - Alvar's vaccination. He hates the carrier and he hates the vet. Cat bites are nästi. I bled all over the place because the damn fucker hit a vein but I had a vet appointment so I just bandaged it and off I went. Ines didn't cooperate at all, she's cuddly only on her own terms  so she added a few minor scratches.

At the vet, there was the usual scene involving screaming, thick gloves and a blanket and when I took the gloves off thinking it was over, the sucker jumped and bit my left hand.

Obviously, the wounds started to fester overnight. I got antibiotics and more band aids and off I went to a three-day botanical event with quite some hand shaking.

Well, some people get tattoos, I get cat-inflicted wounds

Fermenting

Im sitting at a railway station, knitting. 

And I'm slightly bored. So I pondered about my knitting notes backlog on Ravelry and it occurred to me that, well, I'm using Noro Maiko, introduced in around 2008 and long discontinued, and Ganpi Tape, which may or may not be in production and certainly not available outside Japan since a long time ago.

And then I tried to remember the last te when I used yarn that was actually in production.

I get most of my yarns on sale, on fleabay  and otherwise second hand so it may be discontinued when it reaches me.

But, most importantly, I design stuff based on yarn which I actually have. Which may lead to frantic search for one more ball of something that has already disappeared which would be somewhat easier if my preferred colour was orange, not the blue-green-black-white area.

I got the cyan Maiko at Webs or at Little Knits about a decade ago. The Ganpi Tape has been living in my stash for years as well until it clicked in my head. 

The other stuff in the making is in Taiyo Sock (hunt for more of that colourway included) and King, another in Tennen, discontinued but still available here and there, Ginga, discontinued about two years ago and not seen often, and Tabi (sold as Hakama in Japan in smaller balls for some reason) in col. 6, which got discontinued and I had hard time getting more - this could be counted as current yarn because it was when I started it.

Apparently, I need yarn that has been sitting around gathering dust and cat hair and maturing to its proper state to be used.

Good morning, world

 I shaked off the cats, picked the assorted mess they caused during their night runs and now I'm sitting with my coffee and sorta watching the world go by. The usual business, so much to do, where to start. 

Which lead me to the thought of how this blog started. I got a scholarship to Florence, something sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and it was just in time because about half a year before, I was hanging out with this guy who raped me and stalked me and accidentally, two blocks from my place, a stalker beat her colleague with a stick after he waited in some shrubbery in front of her house. So, moving across half of Europe, changing addresses and phone numbers and everything was pretty good thing. Still, I sometimes looked over my shoulder whether someone wasn't following me. Unpleasant times.

Many years after, we had one of those heated debates with my mother, she asserted that stalkers don't really deserve to be kicked in their shins and fed to lions because what's the harm. I explained how exactly I felt harmed. My mother said Oh, poor boy, he must have been so much in love to be this persistent and you were mean to him, and poor guys these days, everything is stalking and harassment and we'll soon be like those poor people in 'Murica where holding the door for the lady will mean immediate arrest or something.
It went to and fro for a while and at the end, I just gave up reasonable debate and yelled You are my goddamn mother, you should be on my side!!!!1!!!1!
Which won me the argument. I, a person who doesn't understand her own emotions, won an argument by appeal on emotions. I wish I had actual manipulating skills, it would make life easier.

It's a gloomy winter day, I'd love to go to Italy in spring to do a bit of research for my thesis and to hang around. I don't mind sitting at home, not meeting people and doing my stuff, actually, I love it, but due to plague, libraries are closed and I feel that I'm losing the teensy bits of social skills I had so getting outta here is getting scarier. At least I've saved a bundle in dry cleaning.

Anyway, back to virology lectures and knitting.

Chaos. Someone bring me a shovel.

 I went to see my parents for a few days and life happened. I ended up in hospital, then hung around parents' because they were basically panicking that I'm oh-so-sick. All I needed were three days of sleep. Meantime, plague struck and said parents got paranoiac about me catching it. Of all people. Not my dad who has chronic bronchitis, smokes three packs a day and is a social.

It took me some time and cunning to implant the idea in their brains that I'll be fine at home so on Thursday, dad drove me there. Mom insisted that I take the whole fridge and half of the larder so that I don't starve, I had a few things that I had moved to parents' from Thomas' which belong to my place so I appreciated the lift.

But, remember, I have three cats. A friend graciously came to feed them and to water the plants but the place... well. And I had been pretty unwell for several weeks before I left so the usual storage method was first available surface. In other words, the place was a godawful mess.

I sighed and vacuumed a path through cat hair, dust and grains of litter and an occasional dried-on puddle of cat puke to open the windows.

It's Sunday. After about 16 rounds of vacuuming, there are no fluffs of cat hair floating from nowhere. I mopped the hallway - the stain cleaner rocks, it makes the puke peel off in one piece - and adjacent stains, took out the recyclables, did a bit of laundry and dusting and now, my place is not an exhibit of small carnivores but... let's be frank, my place is to neat what People of Walmart is to high fashion but at least it's livable. Three inquisitive pairs of eyes were watching me why I'm disturbing their circles and not unfrequently, one of the felines got in the way. Obviously.

Now, something got done, I'm making a bit of lunch, three puddles of cat fur landed in quiet places to have the 17th nap of the day and I can get back to work.

Lunch, meet book.

The box was supposed to be waterproof but it stealthily leaked to a bag which held, among others, library books.

I did not need those so I noticed an issue only after I wanted to return them. I decided to play it cool and pretend nothing had ever happened, hoping that the librarian will miss the faint stain and that giveaway waviness of the volume. The third volume, which developed a characteristic odour and some fungal growth, was exposed to some sunshine in expectation that lycopene would be bleached and the book would stop stinking.

Nope.

I was fined for light stain on the dictionary of law and the slightly moist volume was passed to the head librarian to evaluate.

Obviously, it was a study on swamp forests or forest swamps which was published as a part of some grant and it was not meant for sale.

The head librarian mailed me on Monday announcing that the library historians need to evaluate the book so that they could charge me for the loss.

Meantime, I made a few phone calls to the university, the publishing office informed me that these books are kept by the author, I mailed the author and in the subsequent exchange, he told me to drop by at the beginning of the winter semester and I promised him my history textbook; he wanted to be an archaeologist, he said.

The moldy book was published by my uni so I went to the bookstore. The shop assistant advised me to lend it from the library - it's been sold out for years. 

Well, internetz to the rescue, at Google page 23, I found an advert.

The head librarian knows me by name, I'm a notorious offender, not in damaged books but in late returns, I study elsewhere, and she thinks I'm cool. Gotta bring her a box of chocolates.

News on the cat front

The other day, Alvar had a bit sore eyes so I checked, flushed his eyes with artificial tears, yes, the cat let me use eye drops, and noticed that his breath smells of July dumpster. I checked his gums, yes, the cat let me stick fingers in his mouth, although he was not particularly happy, and the gums and teeth did not look exactly stellar. Swelling, some calculi... so I called the vet. After all, no idea whether he is chipped or vaccinated or anything.

Poor creature, half of his teeth is rotten. He got antibiotics, antibiotic ointment and on Saturday, the bad teeth are going to be removed. I bought soft food, too, because it somehow did not occur to me that he was not eating because of achy teeth. And I was angry at the shelter, I got him five days ago with a clear bill of health, or, to be exact, No visible traces of health issues. Apparently, nobody bothered to open his mouth. Or sniff around.

Alvar must've been hungry, he inhaled almost a whole can and trotted around, visibly happier. Later on, I found out that he neatly threw it all up, almost untouched, on the bathroom mat. Well, I needed to do the laundry anyway. Alas, he doesn't consider the medication a treat so I need to feed it to him, which includes holding his mouth open and it apparently hurts, today morning, he screamed to high heaven. Eye ointment is fine.

Zoe wanders around and when she sees me, she runs away. Half of the time, I have no idea that she's there so if she sat still and pretended to be a stone, I wouldn't notice at all.