Of caps & rotoviruses

The Munchkin is finally better. After looking at his symptoms we finally realized that he had come down with the rotovirus - which can be potentially quite nasty and hospital-stay requiring - - so on the grand scheme of things we actually got through with very little damage done. Things started to significantly clear up last Friday, and by Sunday he was back to his old self, and Monday happily saw him running into his daycare provider's house screeching out the names of his buddies at the top of his little thrilled lungs. Being at home with Mommy & Grandma for a full week is BORING compared to hanging and playing with like-aged friends all day, let me tell you!

I, on the other hand, simply sagged with relief at the QUIET once the door closed behindThe Munch and Peggers Monday morning - so much so that I ended up simply sitting with my borrowed laptop at the dining room table drinking coffee and catching up on library e-mail and work until roughly 2 PM, at which point I realized that no - I was not actually going in to work that day! I did get in some knitting while I caught up on e-mail and work (of course!) and was happy to report that Tuesday morning around 11 AM I slipped the very last stitch of my first Shedir off the needle. It is a beautiful beautiful pattern - and the end result is quite lovely, even if the colour wasn't necessarily one I would have chosen for myself. In my delight I - of course - cast on the second hat that same evening - but this time I took a nod from Brooklyntweed's post about starting his second Shedir and tried a tubular cast on for it. And while I love the tubular cast on's smoothness and...........unique tube-y look, I'm a bit worried that I'm not going to have enough yarn to finish (it was very very close last time around!) and that the tubular isn't a stretchy enough cast-on for a hat. However as I ripped out a good half of the first Shedir (not all at once - I'd knit about 15 rounds, rip back 3, knit 8 rounds, rip back 4, etc. ) before I really got the hang of it, I know that this particular type of Rowan is some Very Tough Yarn, and can take being cast-on, knitted, and ripped without any harm.

So while things were still a bit on edge (unhappily enough Peggers had picked up the Munch's viral unhappiness, so not everyone here at Chez Pointy Sticks is feeling well at the moment) things were at least peaceful.

Then the news came that a PET scan had just been ordered by the doctors, as they now suspect that the lymphoma is actually originating from an organ or bone - which would mean an automatic diagnosis at Stage IV and I was reeling again. So I went out and paced the streets around campus for an hour to get my brain to shut up, and then went back and was able to get some work done..........and came home hoping for a nice quiet night and a fire in the fireplace (as the forecast was for night-time temperatures of 18 degrees!) to calm me down and keep me just enough on the sane side of things to function........only to find a frigid domicile and a broken furnace.

These Are (Bad) Days. (To quote Natalie Murchant & her horde of Maniacs. )

I had chocolate and red wine for dinner after the Munch went to sleep.

So the emergency technician came after a frosty two hours of waiting (thank GOD for wood stoves!) and fixed it........and we woke up this morning to a thermostat registering 61 degrees but that was set to maintain a temperature of 67. So another call went in to the heating people & I ran to work, loaded up the laptop again with some new necessary software, grabbed my thrilling book on Copyright Law, and came back home to haul a ton of wood into the house to keep the stove stoked up on high all night if need be, cleaned out an entire half of the garage, moved an eighth of a cord of wood from outside storage to in-the-garage storage (despite being off the ground & covered by a tarp, our outside-stored wood was growing MUSHROOMS.............anyone want to guess why the wood was mostly smoking instead of burning? Hmmmmm???????????), emptied all the garbage cans in the house (7!) and did two loads of laundry. Then sat down at the dining room table again with my trusty laptop and created fairly boring web pages about Copyright Law and what that means for faculty and their classroom activities.

I let our lovely friendly technician in when he showed up, happily heard the heat kick on (by then I was FREEZING - for despite the wood stove's best efforts it was a chilly 57 degrees in the house!!!!) and somewhat-less happily heard him tell me that it was a stuck pressure valve...which they didn't have in stock, and would have to order, and which wouldn't be in until tomorrow. But 'sokay, as he showed me how to whack the faulty valve with the handle of a screwdriver if it decides to get shirty with me between now & then.

My kind of technician!!!!!

So now Peggers is home early and I have a whole 20 minutes to do another few rounds on my second Shedir before he and I toddle off together to get the Munchkin - and as it's his night to cook that means that I get to play play play with my little one while he figures out dinner (or takes us out on his dime - either one is fair play!) and then after dinner it'll be time for bath and then after bath it'll be time for bed and then after bed it'll be time for me to watch a movie (I checked out both Hedwig and the Angry Inch plus All About My Mother from work) while doing some more knitting.

So today is turning into a Much Better Day and much less of a Very Bad Day than it could have seemed this morning around 8 AM. For which I am very very grateful.

But I still have no pictures to show you - as I had my act together enough to load all of the software on the laptop, but not any knitted cap (or sock or vest) pictures!

Soon - I promise!