When the Bear and I got married 19 years ago, Uncle John gave us a novelty garter with a musical charm that played the wedding march. There is something about the electronic warbling of that thing that instantly irritates and/or intrigues cats. Every so often when I'm digging in my underwear drawer, I activate it and the cat goes bananas. Bear, I still miss you every single day and have only just made it to not crying every day. Pink's song "Who Knew?" makes me cry because it makes me think of his leaving me. No he didn't leave me on this plane of existence but he's just as gone and three years is rapidly approaching.

I'm reading a fascinating book, Foreign Babes in Beijing by Rachel Dewoskin. Aside from its witty observance of China and her fellow foreign babes, it is a startling view of a person who did something most of would never dream of doing. Admittedly Rachel came from an American family deeply involved in China from her childhood, but you or I would not just take off for Beijing on any job we could wangle just to go live there with our university level Chinese. It would be like me deciding to go to Nairobi because I speak what I know is a smattering of Swahili. To top the whole foreign immersion experience, she signs up to be an actress in a TV soap opera (whose title is the book's) to play a version of herself as seen through Chinese eyes, which is hardly flattering or even accurate. All Westerners smell of milk? I recommend this book highly as a view into China that would be hard to get otherwise. I am fascinated with modern China and Japan, especially how they are incorporating Western idioms into their culture. (My Ph.D. thesis was going to be on how modern technology had been expressed in Swahili) Culture clash is one of the things I find fascinating, even in science fiction. One of the best is the "Foreigner" series by C.J. Cherryh, latest volume just out.

Yes, I do speak a smattering of Swahili. In grad school I specialized in African linguistics and learned Swahili and Hausa, and took classes in Twi and a Bantu language. I actually taught Swahili for a year. It's a relatively simple language to learn, if you can call a language with 9 noun classes and whose verb tenses are expressed by adding a syllable in the middle of the verb. Of course, none of this gets you a job in the real world, hence I fell back on my original (i.e., from junior high) plan and became a librarian. I've been a librarian of sorts since 1976 and it's taken me many places and I've made lots of friends that have changed my life. After all I met X2 in a library, and met the Bear only because my work institution happened to have the creaky frame that was the Internet in 1990.

It is bucketing rain here and I have gotten over the novelty and am glad the reservoirs are filling up, but I'd really like to get in the garden to tidy it up. I know I'm going to have to hire a professional to do the ultimate clean up, but there are weeding and pruning I could do. I dug some potatoes to put in the pot of split pea soup I have on the stove and had to prune back a rose bush to get at them. I also retrieved another pumpkin, this time for use as veg not soup. In the supermarket yesterday I bought "buttermilk scones" hoping for American biscuits and, while the texture is about right, there's something off in the taste. Too sweet too. I was intrigued by frozen sweet potato fries until I read the label and found out they were imported from Canada! How on earth did sweet potatoes from Canada end up in my frozen food aisle? Canada is of course famous for its sweet potatoes.

Good news or bad news? How about good: here are my completed knitting projects pushed along by enforced house arrest. The shell is knit out of Cyrstal Palace Choo-choo yarn, in the colourway actually featured at Yarnmarket. I picked up balls here and there until I had enough for the shell. I have a weakness for ribbon and there's more in the stash. It took my a very long time to finish this which has nothing to do with the pattern or the yarn, just intertia. It fits, but will be worn under another layer for my aged modestry. The other is my second attempt at lace (that is, successful attempt) and is only feather and fan in Touch mohair. It is soft and scrunchable and I don't think I'll block it. It went in with the moth-balled winter stuff. I am next starting on a cabled zip front cardie, which will require me to sit down quitetly and establish the pattern. Out of medium grey handspun in sorta bulky weight. I am also going to start a vest an I'm leaning towards a Chris Bylsma design. Trying to use a gift from BFLB of merino and kid mohair in a toast brown. What can I say--I'm addicted to cables.

Healthwise, no good progress to report. I continue to cough and wheeze. I saw my GP on Friday morning and he said the hospital was not needed but put me back on steroids and more antibiotics and wants me off work and to see him on Tues. So I cough and wheeze and am generally tired because I can't sleep because I cough and wheeze. The steroids do make my RA better--my hands are much less inflamed but I still can't get my rings on, so I guess the joints are still stuffed. Without steroids, the RA in my sternum would be screaming by now and I'd have to be on steroids. I have a lung infection that is apparently going around and causes weeks of coughing. Coughing is my friend, because I am still coughing gunk up, but it's not fun. I am very tired and would love to nap, but find myself parked in from of the TV watching National Geographic and BBC dramas. I enjoy Torchwood, Innocent, Carrier, Eureka, and The Story of India. As you can see my tastes are eclectic and I trhow in the odd nature documentary or sci-tech explanation. No day time soaps for this viewer.

I am also still on my quest for perfect bread. I bought one sourdough starter through the mail and have 2 more on order. I am reading Classic Sourbough
which seems like a very sensible and down to earth approach. I watched a show on The Food Lover's guide to the Planet (Nat Geo Adventure) about bread and they showed 4 different breadmakers all using live starter and not bread yeast. May not all be classic sourdough but live starter seems a good start. Tuscan bread is a favourite and that's what they do. Ed Wood also goes someway to demystify flours. There seems to be a blokes network for sourdough on line where women seldom are heard, but I made sourdough for years in in North Carolina without serious analysis and I am sure I can do it again. Good bread is the staff of life. When I'm not miserly eating low-fat yoghurt for lunch, I eat bread, cheese and fruit. I don't find that excessive.

I am reading Mappa Mundi by Justina Robson, and while the plot is racy, this is one where the Bear would say the science doesn't hold up. I cannot believe that they would have cracked the link between physics of neurochemical reaction in the brain and control of personality/will in our life time. Yes, it is a horrendous idea but the science doesn't convince me, all though the conspiracy theories and good vs evil is intriguing if implausible.

This fibromyalgia thing is quite unpredictable. When I feel good it is only an invitation to do more than I should which causes me to fall in a heap. I thought I was managing it well and felt good on Weds. Thurs morning I could barely move. I haven't slept well in ages due to the pain waking me up many times in the night, and then I search for a position which hurts less (and fight with the cat for the rights to that position). Even after staying in bed all day, I hurt so much that in the evening I took one of my breakthrough pills (Endone) and even it didn't knock it all out. Retracing Weds, I realize I was on my feet nearly all day (the only sitting time was eating my lunch and filing my taxes) and my right leg simply won't take that. I sincerely hope that the knee replacement solves that problem. I now can feel my left leg is relaxed and pain free, while my right is tense even while sitting. I was going to see my GP this morning but still am too sore to motivate me so I'll make an appointment to see him Tues arvo.

Because my hands hurt as well I haven't been knitting as much as I should. I am on the home stretch on the ribbon shell and am motoring down the foot of the first of D's socks. I want to start the fair isle vest but need some quiet time to establish it first. Maybe I should have a few hours watching cooking shows on Foxtel and get it going. This cooking bug (a common side effect of watching Masterchef (and Julie was the right winner)) has inspired me to make stir-fries and other more complicated dishes with my chicken breasts instead of simply grilling them. I had chicken and mushrooms in slight cream sauce last night. I am essentially a lazy chef and hate washing pots and pans (both because it's hard on my hands and I can't see where they are dirty) so I tend to cook simple things. But I am also a good cook who has been holding back because of those disabilities. So now I've added bok choy to my shopping, have finished off a bottle of oyster sauce, and have another batch of cauliflower soup for lunches. The Bear did the washing up and I miss it.

The loom is scheduled to be picked up on Sunday. I hate to say good bye to it but had I known how much kneeling it needed I never would have bought it. A Schacht Mighty Wolf is more what I need. I have spun another lot of Robin's wool and need to ply it. On the Roberta at the moment is sock yarn (superwash wool & nylon) in shades of blue.

I have finished Orson Scott Card's The Worthing Saga and have moved on to Scott Westerfeld's The Risen Empire. This is the first of a multipart, and is one of those novels told from multiple view points and from different time periods. It's not hard to follow but the jumping around sometimes is distracting and you have to keep track of where this character was the last time he/she appeared. I don't sit down and read in long periods, more likely 30 minutes here and there, so this sort of novel is more difficult and, since you don't get a chance to get swept up in narrative, there's less impetus to just keep reading. You know you'll get switched off target in a page or two anyway. My BBBB is Green Thoughts, and while it was written a while ago (1980's) the passion for gardening and organic gardening at that makes for anything but boring reading. It does arouse nostalgia for my garden in Ohio with its peonies and daylilies. Pointless to try those here, although the daylillies might make it if watered. while listening to one of my favourite podcasts To the Best of Our Knowlege earlier in the week, I hit their podcast on slavery. There was an interview with the author of A Crime So Monstrous, E. Benjamin Skinner, and with a woman who discovered that her family were slave traders in Colonial America. I sincerely hope I don't discover that in my own searches. I have found my great-great-great-great granfather in the Dutchess County NY Militia during the Revolutionary War.

Sometimes the grind of living with fibro and RA is just too boring and frustrating to find anything to write about. I take handfuls of pills (or forget to do so as I did last night) but I still live with pain. My right knee has been swollen and painful for a couple of weeks due to nothing I can think of. It has suddenly turned into winter with highs in the single digits and the right knee hates that. But even when I'm bundled up in woolen jumpers and my ultra warm ugg boots, I still hurt. It's a struggle to get up and go to work and I mean that literally: it's the routine of getting dressed, getting a lunch put together, driving through traffic, etc. that I find tiresome. Add on to that all the miscellaneous bits and pieces like going to the chemist or the post office or pushing unwilling trolley through the supermarket. On top of forgetting to take my meds last night, I fell on my beautiful new front porch and landed hard on my left side. I was holding an armful of stuff besides my purse and my camera, and it was cold, and I was trying to get my keys out, and make sure The Imp didn't zoom out, and I just twisted my foot in my shoe (not my ankle, thank g) and splat. Without a knee to help get me up i scrabbled around a while, until I decided a knee was necessary and used my new one. It may not have been good for it but the right one hurts far too much to try that. Now I am sore all down my left side and both hands seem to have gotten involved. I stayed home due to the lack of meds, but I couldn't sleep much because of the pain. This is just one day, one typical day, which is why I have so little to blog about. I don't mean to whine or play poor me, because it's just plain boring and I never know how to answer when someone really wants to know how my health has been. Pain, insomnia, fatigue. It was so much easier when I had the Bear, because he picked up a lot of the slack and did a lot of the more difficult things like hanging laundry and grocery shopping for me.

The only fun part of life at the moment is watching Masterchef Australia. I now know I would never ever try to run a restaurant, which at one point was a fantasy for me. I never could figure out how a chef could guess how many meals of which sort a dinner crowd would eat. But the show has revived my flagging cooking interest which had descended into a very boring (there's that word again) routine of fish and vegetables. I did make a pot of Brunswick stew which I became addicted to while being part of a Virginia family for 15 years. I didn't add game (hard to find a squirrel around here and even rabbits are hard to come by) and my made up recipe tends to be on the spicey side, with liberal amounts of pepper and hot sauce, and the corn must be white corn. I have had to resort to growing my own butter beans since they don't exist otherwise here and I bring back shoe peg corn in tins from the US. I practiced on buttermilk biscuits last night but they didn't rise enough. Too much handling, I suspect.

I am reading Augusten Burrough's Running with Scissors, and while his childhood was way wackier than mine, I recognized the undercurrent or "this is not how childhood is supposed to be". I was miserable listening to my parents fight all the time and being told "No." to every request, while simultaneously being ordered to do things I didn't want to do. Why do I have to take modern dance lessons when I want to go horseback riding? Why do we have to drive to Florida at spring break when I'd rather have braces? My college years were some of the happiest in my life because I was out of that environment. I never knew a truly loving family until I married DH2.

My left cheek is starting to hurt so I must have hit my head too. If I'd fallen on the old front porch, it probably would have fallen apart under me.

I've been not posting (as you may have noticed) but the stats are through the roof. A mystery. I've been depressed. I've been in pain. I've been sleeping. I've been missing somebody. I've been angry with somebody. I've been terrified of the the surgery. I've been lonely. I've been thinking about the future. I've been grieving. I've been living inside my head too much. I don't like being alone so much. I guess being in hospital for 10 days will cure that.

I was waiting to see my GP this morning and listening to one of my favourite podcasts, All in the Mind, and the two episodes about dreams in particular. I have always had extremely complicated, vivid dreams that are like surreal motion pictures (sometimes there are even credits). According to some theorists, if you believe dreams don't mean anything, then your dreams are random. Mine certainly have no themes that I can fathom, but frequently I can see the origin of a concept in a dream from something that happened recently in my awake life. The dreams became even more bizarre when I went on heavy duty medication for fibro and my shrink said the drugs could be causing that. There was a famous one involving a pregnant water buffalo, and I'm pretty sure that has no cross over into real life. One thing I have noticed is that I rarely dream about my current husband. I have been married three times. I never dreamed about the Bear until he had passed away, but I dreamt about H2 all the time. Now that H2 is more present in my life, last night I had a dream about H1 and I can't remember the last time that happened. In typical fashion, it was surreal, beginning at a ski resort (I don't ski and I can't inagine H1 skiiing), and then proceeded to a restaurant where we shared a table with a couple we had met at the resort. The restaurant seemed very nice, in decor, menu, etc., but the service was abysmal. H1 became so incensed at this state of events that he jumped up and stripped down to his underwear to gain the attention of the staff. I cannot see where any of that would come from my conscious mind.

Last night I watched an episode of one of my favourite food shows, Cheese Slices, and Will was in Campagna and eating mozzarella. I remember when I was in elementary school, my good friend Susan introduced me to grilled cheese sandwiches made with mozzarella and I've been addicted to this cheese ever since. I had no idea how mozzarella was made until I saw it being made here in Australia from the milk of imported buffalo. I watched one Italian chef TV show where he stated that he never heard of the fascination with buffalo milk mozzarella until he got to New York. All I can think is he must have grown up in Tuscany or somewhere else in Northern Italy, because there were lots of buffalo in this episode. I think I would have to go out to a deli stocking imported cheese to find anything like the real stuff here (a very dangerous adventure to my wallet and my waist) but I might get some of the wet soft mozzarella for my pizza since I am dissatisfied with the garden variety in my supermarket. It melts and slides off the pizza! Will had some wood fired pizza (which would be on my menu for my last meal) and the pizza cooked in 5 minutes because the oven was so hot. I aim for that with my pizza stone and have gotten it down to 7 minutes.

I have been spinning a lot in the evenings since I use my left leg to control my Roberta and that may become difficult after the surgery. I finished spinning the 500 gm of purple roving from Bendigo (it's actually darker than in the photo) and have another kg of it to spin. I intend on making the Celtic Icon hoodie from Inspired Cable Knits by Fiona Ellis. As the one in KnitPicks has, I intend on putting a zipper up the front. I've also been spinning alpaca, and carding more as I run out. I'd like to have two full bobbins before surgery and I am 3/4 of the way to that goal. This is the white alpaca which is the only thing I have much washed. It's also what I had 3 garbage bags of, so there's lots more to come.

Soon it will be time to get out the woolen stuff. I managed to get my furnace lit for another year. Hurray! I dread the autumn when the service man tells me it's a lost cause.

We have a three day weekend (4 for me) and I hate to say it but I slept most of it away. Yes, I had a cold which I think is 95% gone. I was in deep chesty cough mode yesterday but better today. I polished off the last of the plums and blackberries by coming up with a plum & blackberry conserve. It's got an interesting flavour since it's mostly the intense sweetness of the plums with the odd tart explosion of a blackberry. All the canned goods are labelled and in the boot of the car to take to work tomorrow for the annual charity sale.

I wish I knew why I have been so crushingly tired that I have slept so much. I worry that I won't be able to pry myself out of bed tomorrow but it may just be my normal mode of curing a cold. It's just that sleep produces no concrete results as in clothes ironed, dishes washed. A bit of vacuuming hardly stems the rising tide of clutter. I keep reading uplifting words about decluttering your life, but I seem to fail to find the nerve. I have come to the extremely painful decision that I am selling the big loom. It is a countermarche which requires a lot of on the floor tying-up and fiddling and my knees will never be good enough for that. The surgeon says kneeling isn't on the cards even after surgery. It's beautiful and I love it, but I have to get realistic about space requirements and the probability that I will use it regularly.

When it comes down to it, I have too many things in my life already that I really want to give time to but only do so at the sacrifice of something else. I love to cook, for example, but end up microwaving a frozen dinner because I wasn't thinking about cooking when I should have in order to have something to eat at mealtime. I'm trying to stick to a diet to lose as much weight as I can by surgery day which, for me, takes a lot of the fun out of life, because I love food, cooking, wine, and all its associated rituals, flavours, smells, equipment, ad nauseum. Telling me to eat fish and vegetables every day, which is certainly healthy and I like eating fish, but it gets boring real quick. I love good bread and bread is a no-no. I cheat occasionally and get a loaf of sourdough from the supermarket but I would rather make it, Some how that seems like a bigger "sin" that buying a storemade loaf and nibbling on the thinnest slices I can cut. Eating well should not make you feel guilty all the time. I have my mother's genes and there's only so much I can do to fight that.

Enough ranting. As you might gather I am not all that happy with where I am in my life, physically or emotionally. A lot of inner turnoil that I don't care to expose here and feeling too old for the ideas I have in my head. Why didn't I do these things when I was younger? You younger people! Go out and do something you've always wanted to do but have been putting off, even if it's just going to a place you've never been before in your own town. You might discover new platforms to take off on new ideas.

What does one do on a day when the top temperature is destined to be 35C? You make phone calls, read, and, apparently, blog. There is no "news" as such unless you count hanging one panel (out of four) of new lace drapes in the dining room. The old ones were in the house when we moved in 16 years ago and the sun has begun to take its toll. I wanted lace curtains that weren't violently floral but the combination of that desire and the fact that I need a long drop (floor to ceiling) narrowed my choice. The ones I got are one step away from sheers, but with the block-out drapes behind them, they will do. However, getting up on a stool and balancing to hang them almost crippled me with both knees and ankles complaining to the extent that I could barely walk yesterday. I'll wait a few days before doing another panel.

For those of you who like to dye, or choose colours for weaving, or just the have fun, I direct you to Adobe's free site Kuler. You can create a panel of 5 colours from a colour wheel, from letting the computer select colours to go with one you choose, or upload a picture and choose colors from that. I think it's really nifty especially to someone as colour-challenged as I am. I may like a colour but choosing others that go well with it is beyond me. One thing I found very interesting is that the "favorite" colour panels all seem to be muted tones. Even when one searches "bright", the panels retrieved (by tags assigned by the creator) all are greyed and pale. Is this a trend among designers? Are people no longer interested in saturated colours? I am, although I do prefer my surroundings to be on the soothing side. These colour panels can be downloaded to Adobe software but I find them helpful, just to see what would be complementary colours, or whatever.

Book report: I have been reading mysteries which are the equivalent of bonbons (and I don't even know what they are) and I won't review them. Michael Connelly is at the crease at the moment. A book I picked out for BBBB turned out not to be boring (let alone big) was Heat by Bill Buford. I've always wondered what went on in the kitchen of fancy restaurants and I don't want to know from Gordon Ramsay. Since Bill is an established writer but starts out as "kitchen slave" mincing vegetables and watching what goes on, you learn from the bottom up. I almost wish it weren't an Italian restaurant he was apprenticed in, because I love Italian food and some of the menu items made me swoon. I have never had any desire to eat polenta before but now I'd like to try it. Not needing restaurant sized proportions I went looking for a recipe. Not in Marcella Hazan? Not in the New York Times Cookbook? Joy of Cooking says it's the same as corn meal mush? I know they sell here 2 grades of cornmeal, one labelled polenta. I finally found what I needed in a book I was sucked into by a podcast, namely Lynne Rossetto Kasper (The Splendid Table) and The Italian Country Table. I may have to seek out the best cornmeal, because I import cornmeal for cornbread, etc. which is a finer grind. And, needless to say, I am not making it when the temperature is 35 and I can't stand up for long. Her recipes for Polenta with cheese and balsamic vinegar sounds heavenly. Just what I need, another high carb "staple" to add to the brown rice, yellow rice, couscous, potatoes, pasta, bulgur. cornbread... I think it might be easy to give up meat which those to choose from.

I think genetics is very unfair and practically impossible to argue with. My dear MIL has discovered that her family carries one of the breast cancer genes and therefore she has an 80% of getting breast cancer. You can understand why women remove them rather than living a life with that kind of shadow over it. My genetics, at least what I am railing about tonight, is body shape. One look at the female line of my family and one sees the heavy hips, thighs and belly that probably made us highly desirable in Paleolithic times, but are not the fashion in the 21st century. I need to stay on a 1500 calorie diet all the time if I want to approach my "ideal" weight. I can't. I love to cook, I love to eat. I enjoy a glass of wine now and then. I like to bake, make bread, have a nice piece of cheese. All of these make me gain weight. I have eaten a diet of fish and vegetables for so long, and lost 35 kgs, but I am sooooo tired of it. A piece of red meat? a potato? Everything is forbidden and when I do indulge (I am not that strong-willed) I feel guilty. It is so unfair that some people seem to eat anything and stay slim and other of us always tip the scale over that "ideal" weight. Sometimes you can't fight genetics. And I refuse to be on a diet for the rest of my life. Bring on the cinnamon rolls, the aged Jarlsberg, the chardonnay, and all the fruit I can eat. Check out this site.

My main exercise (since walking per se is not permitted with my knees) is my garden work. I love getting my hands dirty and making things grow. I do not believe there is such a thing as a "no work" garden, unless one can start with an completely blank slate and no weeds drift in on the wind. I find new weeds every year that I have never seen before and they must come from somewhere. I also have a yard planted in every noxious viney plant known to live in this climate. The entire back yard is ringed in vinca and ivy and they are both extremely hard to get rid of, especially when they creep under the fence from neighbors' yards. I was filling up the trash pack with debris today and fell, tipped over a hose, and landed hard on my right side on paving. I think I will be very sore and bruised tomorrow, but I just got up (not quickly) and got on with it. Nobody here to kiss it and make it better. Did I mention how lonely I am and how much I miss him?

Swans news: They lost to Geelong last week and are in the process of losing to Collingwood as I write. If St Kilda wins this week I think we drop out of the 8 and no finals for us. Not that we would have lasted long in the finals. Keep repeating: rebuilding year.