Category Archives: FM/CFS

Spring Arrives

In our house, we know that seasons don’t come according to the schedule carefully calculated and given to us by astronomers and scientists (in essence, the spring equinox occurs when the sun crosses the celestial equator that parallels the earth’s equator, and we have equal hours of day and night). HRH has been known to announce a season a month ahead of time, and then there are the seasons that dawdle. But there’s a feeling that sweeps through, a change in energy, and that’s what we mark as the beginning of whatever season is coming up. Sure, there are the exceptional days that promise the upcoming season, but one spring-like day does not make spring in a late Canadian winter.

Today, spring is sweeping through.

It’s pretty close to the vernal equinox, actually, and one of the few seasons I can remember coming just about in agreement with the scheduled time. There is sun with occasional cloud and brief showers; there is wind (warm wind, even); and the snow is falling in on itself with graceful submission, little diamond drops sparkling in geode-like caverns in the surface of snowbanks. It felt wrong to dress the boy in a snowsuit on a day that was 10 degrees C at eight in the morning, but I know how hard he plays in (what is left of) the snow, and it’s just not quite time for splash pants and a raincoat yet.

I can feel the change in my own energy, too. This winter has been hard on the fibro. The damp, the bitter cold, and the energy required to handle thick, quilted, down coats and heavy boots, and wrangle someone else into a full snowsuit and boots and accessories, plus battling brushing off and driving the car in all sorts of weather… it has been dreadful. I wonder if it might have been easier if I’d stayed on the medication, although I couldn’t for other health reasons. Blade suggested the other day that we install full-spectrum light in the attic office, which is a lovely idea, but it’s not seasonal affective disorder that runs me down (especially not since I increased my vitamin D at the suggestion of my doctor last fall, bless her); it’s the lack of energy to deal with physically draining stuff in a fibro-based body that undercuts me. Sunny days psychologically lift my mood and make me a more cheerful person, but don’t affect my energy level.

But it is spring, and I am feeling a bit more like myself, for which I am deeply thankful.

In other unrelated news, the boy marched up to me this morning at seven-thirty and said, “Mama, it is time to do cello.” Doing this practice in the morning thing is working very, very well indeed.

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This Before

I’m tired and swamped with work, and stressed by that raft of family health issues. I figure saying “I’m tired and I have a lot of work to do” is kind of boring to read and so rather than just write that, I don’t write anything at all. It’s only fair to check in at least once a week, though.

The weather has made a marked improvement in the last week. It’s been beautiful the past couple of days, and the snow is disappearing rapidly. We are watching for robins. The sun does wonders for my mood and the generally warmer temperatures do likewise for my general fibro malaise. The time change had a surprisingly positive effect as well, although I’d already been having trouble gauging when to make dinner because it had been staying lighter longer and now it’s worse.

Cello practice with the boy got difficult. He already had an after-school routine, so trying to introduce cello into it was a challenge once the novelty wore off. We’ve switched to mornings before school instead, which seems to be working so far. He’s resisting working with the bow, and I fully understand that it’s hard to get it to do what you want it to do; I worked pizzicato for a couple of months before starting with the bow myself, and I was twenty-three. My teacher keeps reminding me that it’s process not progress at this point, and I have to keep telling myself that it’s impressive that I get him to sit down for fifteen minutes every day at all. The other issue was getting him to want to do the exercises that had been set for him instead of making things up. Part of the point of music lessons was to cultivate focus and commitment to working on an extended project, so in that respect we’re doing just fine.

My teacher agreed to do our lessons back to back on Saturdays, so that solves my problem of losing most of a work day to my cello lesson on Tuesdays. I have so much work to do that I’ve been having to slip work in on the weekends to cover for cello and doctor’s appointments and hospital visits for tests lately. Right now I’m checking the proofs of the repurposing project I handled last fall, which means the bird book is on hold for a couple of days yet again; I had paused on it while waiting for feedback from the publisher’s review of the almost-half and then again for a copyediting project, which proved to be lucrative but time-consuming.

HRH has been working on the what-will-be-the-stairs-to-the-attic, tacking the stringers up, taking plasterboard down and measuring to see where beams and joists are. He bought all the stairs on sale a couple of weeks ago, so now we just need the risers so he can actually start putting them in one by one. He hung an unused door in the doorway too, which helps the general augh-there’s-a-hole-in-my-hallway issue I was having.

The boy has discovered Mo Willem’s Pigeon books, and thinks they’re hilarious. They’re also really easy for him to read. We read The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog aloud together, and he does the duckling in a hilarious high-pitched cute voice that makes its masterful manipulation of the pigeon with anger management issues side-splittingly funny. We have all four main books (thank you, Scholastic Book Club) plus a bonus board book called The Pigeon has Feelings Too, sent to us as a freebie to apologize for temporarily being out of stock of the four-book set.

I finished my first sweater ever, a child’s cardigan in garter stitch. I used KnitPicks Comfy cotton in a worsted weight, merrily adapting a pattern I’d never used before that called for doubled yarn to make a bigger size to use thinner yarn and make a smaller cardigan, and it turned out okay. I even found nice little wooden buttons for it. I haven’t sewn them on, so no pictures yet. I am rather chuffed, because I’ve never actually knitted an article of clothing other than a scarf before, so I am rather proud of it, twisted stitches and weird increases and all.

No spinning this week. I’m waiting for a shipment of Wensleydale to spin a special yarn. This was originally supposed to be done in the wool-bamboo blend, then I realised that I’d have to dye it twice to get a solid colour, one round of acid dye for the wool, one round of fibre reactive dye for the bamboo, so I’m going a different route for the special yarn instead. This means I will have a pound and a half of wool-bamboo blend all for myself. I am dizzy with the potential. Last night I pulled out some organic Merino to sample for a two-ply yarn to use as warp for a new baby blanket (the weft will be a lovely Manos Clasica thick-and-thin in a discontinued pale green colour, so pretty!). I tried the second-to-last fast ratio on the flyer pulley plus the faster bobbin pulley on the new wheel, and I made a thin, thin thread like magic. Wow. Also, the organic Merino is like a soft fluffy cloud that drafts like a dream. I just need to decide if I want a really thin warp yarn to create a weft-faced blanket, or something akin to the Manos weight for a balanced weave. I’m leaving the Merino in its natural off-white state. This may call for a sample of both a really thin yarn and a loftier yarn, and a tiny sample woven on a card or something to get a better sense of my options.

That’s enough for now.

In Which She Is Tired

Stuff has happened, but I’m tired, as usual, so all you get is:

– We (meaning the owlies and I and the blog) are nine years old as of a week ago. Happy birthday, little owlies and your Court!

– The hospital tests happened, and I’m not dead. The procedure was extremely uncomfortable, although I was told that it was out-of-the-ordinarily so due to specific circumstances, and it’s something I hope to never have to go through again. The doctor’s initial response was positive, but that was based on looks alone; we have to wait four weeks for the samples to be analysed for final and accurate feedback. I spent most of the rest of the day on the couch downstairs trying not to move and jar the painful test site. I was mostly okay by the next morning, though. I have prescriptions contingent on the outcome and follow-up appointments and all that sort of stuff.

– Chuffed by my success with my beautiful, beautiful wool-bamboo blend on the new Symphony wheel, I jumped into the second half of the Polworth so I could have it finished and done. I wish I was enjoying it more. While it’s easier and certainly faster on the new double-drive wheel, it’s still not the fabulous experience I’ve read Polworth is supposed to be. It doesn’t draft easily (in places it does, but generally it does not), and doesn’t have the light shine Polworth is apparently supposed to have to it, and looks dull. I am willing to believe that it’s due to how it was dyed or handled before it got to me, and that this is not representative of the more general experience, but it’s not encouraging me to try the fibre again, really. The best news is that it’s going miles faster on the Symphony than the Louet, so it will be done with and then I can ply it and that will be that.

– The boy completed his first ever self-directed school project with no teacher input. He planned, designed, and executed a three-dimensional model of a penguin. I’m very proud of him, because on last term’s report card the teacher indicated he needed to work on clearly thinking through all the steps of an activity, and he accomplished this very well indeed.

I love this for so many reasons, including the wacky orange pipe-cleaner beak and the googly eyes. The paper-towel tube wings are held on with brass brads so they swing back and forth. It is, he would like you to know, an emperor penguin, and obviously a male, because it has an egg at its feet.

– We finally have the 1/8 size cello! It looks exactly like my 7/8, but miniaturized (it’s from the same manufacturer). It is adorable. The boy and I are sharing a lesson slot this coming Tuesday, as it is March break and I’d need to bring him with me anyway. I think it will be very good for him to watch another lesson in progress.

– The boy began his March break on Friday morning. Friday, being one of my work days, was very trying, because while he intellectually understands “Mum is working till lunchtime, do not bother Mum,” he is a very social boy and drops by frequently to see what I’m doing, to invite me to play, or to ask me to problem-solve. HRH has been marvellous this weekend, giving me an hour here and there to catch up on work time I missed due to doctors and hospitals and other regular engagements last week. He took the boy out to do groceries yesterday morning when I had a brutal headache, and they came back with a potted hyacinth:

and a potted daffodil:

Bless them.

– I have to work this week while the boy is home on March break. This is going to be a Very Valuable Learning Experience for everyone. We are doing our best to get through the boy’s head that Mum is working when she sits at her computer, not playing as he does when he sits at it, and she cannot be interrupted every five minutes. I have a deadline on Friday at noon, and while I’m at the halfway mark as of this afternoon’s work session, it could all go very badly if the manuscript takes a turn for the worse, or the boy is too clingy. The afternoons are being spent together. Trust me, if I could have taken this week off, I would have, but I miscalculated how much time I’d lose to hospitals and medical professionals and waiting rooms last week and accepted a freelance assignment, and so I have to finish the last half of the project this week while he’s home.

– It’s beginning to feel suspiciously like the end of winter (note: this does not exactly equate to “the beginning of spring”; that happens sometime later). The sun is reducing the huge snowbanks down somewhat, and there are steady drops of snowmelt off the roof. We are all very cranky every time Environment Canada issues weather warnings for the region that scaremonger with threats of 25 cm of snow, but so far we’ve just gotten 5 cm here and there. March may come in like a lamb after all.

In Which She Mostly Talks About The Yarn Made On Her New Spinning Wheel

This new spinning wheel. Gentle readers, I tell you: I am in heaven.

I love how this wheel handles. I disassembled the treadle assembly and thoroughly saturated all the wood/metal friction points with white lithium grease, and there has been nary another chirp from it, which had been the only drawback to the first week. The wheel is easy to treadle, and although it works well enough if I just used the right treadle, I prefer using the double treadle. (Astute readers whose brains stubbornly hold on to ludicrously unimportant trivia will remember that I was angsty about investing in a double treadle wheel in case I didn’t like it. Borrowing Bonnie’s exquisite 30″ Schacht-Reeves Saxony wheel throughout October pretty much cured me of that, but there was always that small frisson of what-if.) It spins beautifully both clockwise and counter-clockwise. Taking a bobbin off is a bit more complicated that on my bobbin-led upright Louet, as it entails loosening the mother-of-all unit, removing the drive band from both the bobbin and the flyer whorl, removing the whole flyer assembly, but then unscrewing the flyer whorl, switching bobbins, screwing the flyer whorl back on again, then doing the rest in reverse order. It’s a bit fussier, that’s all. Because I’m using it in double drive, replacing the drive band on the two whorls and tightening the mother-of-all has been the trickiest part, because I”m never sure if my tension is the same as it was or not.

I love the double drive, as well. Double drive is supposed to be great for spinning really thin yarn. I am, perhaps, undermining this by using the largest bobbin whorl and flyer whorl to get used to the wheel, but I am loving how double drive uses the difference in ratio between those two whorls to wind yarn onto the bobbin and adjust take-up tension moderately. I should test the Scotch tension at some point, too, which means a single drive moving the flyer and a tensioned string running over the bobbin whorl to slow it down, enabling winding on when yarn lock is broken (in other words, when you release your firmer hold on the yarn you’re spinning and let it wind on)… but the double drive is just working so well for me right now that I’m probably going hold off for a while.

Plying was great. I ended up with a nicely balanced yarn (more on that below). I love the separate lazy kate; I love that can put it a few feet away to enable the twist o even out between the kate and the wheel; I love that it’s tensioned so my bobbins don’t spin madly when I get a good clip going.

I also love the wool/bamboo blend I chose to spin first on the wheel. I have no idea what the proportions are, but let’s just say I love it enough to be looking at buying a pound of 50% Merino/50% bamboo to dye on my own. It is soft, it is silky, it drafts incredibly well. It is everything spinning straight bamboo is not. And my, but it looked pretty on the new wheel. There are, alas, no pictures of that part, because I was so busy enjoying the spinning part that I forgot. Just trust me; the lovely soft green variegated fibre against the warm walnut of the wheel? Pretty.

Despite weighing the fibre and attempting to split it evenly for a two-ply yarn, I failed miserably and ended up with a bunch of extra single on one bobbin. In the past I have ruined lots of singles by trying to ply from a centre-pull ball, the basic way to divide the remaining single into a form from which you can pull both ends and ply them together. I have failed so utterly, in fact, that I avoid centre-pull balls and that’s why I taught myself to chain ply, and that became my default for everything. I was determined to get the last single into a two-ply yarn, though. So I wound it off onto the ball winder, and slipped it into a paper roll. I couldn’t figure out a way to get it on the arched lazy kate that wouldn’t tangle the two singles coming from either end of the ball, so I held it in my lap and plied from there.

Here is the key: My first wheel has a non-tensioned onboard lazy kate, angling up toward the flyer, onto which I’d slip my roll and the centre-pull ball on it, which didn’t have anywhere near enough weight to stay where they needed to be, and tangled and made huge messes. Holding the tube in my lap meant I could (a) hold it in place, and (b)manage the crossing that the two ends did as they unwound.

Readers, I plied from a centre-pull ball on a tube, and made real two-ply yarn. I wet-finished it for this photo:

The resulting two-ply yarn is so balanced that it doesn’t really twist back onto itself. As in, when I hang the freshly wound-off yarn from a finger or a hook, pre-finishing, it’s essentially straight. I am flabbergasted at this particular accomplishment. I have yet to wet-finish the two final skeins, as the week started and it’s been non-stop gogogo ever since. In the end, I have about 175 yards of two-ply yarn, of approximately light fingering weight.

Nixie took possession of a small test skein of half Falkland, half unknown blue wool I spun the first day. She’s been sleeping with it.

In non-fibrey news, the school bus strike is over as of last night (yay!). The boy hit 100 days of school last Friday, which was a big thing for all the kindergarteners. There are penguin projects happening at school which are student-led, so we went hunting over the weekend for purchased art supplies that the boy decided he needed in order to build a three-dimensional model of a penguin (in addition to a home-sourced granola bar box, two paper towel tubes, and some egg-shaped plastic balls); we got white feathers, foam balls, multicoloured pipe cleaners, but we could not find black feathers, so guess who dyed half a packet of white ones with her fibre dyes? (The boy helped, and it was actually a very interesting experiment to share.) Third-term report cards come home on Thursday.

I accepted a new copyediting gig this weekend and didn’t realise until afterward that this week’s workdays are cut in half by hospitals and clinics and a ped day on Friday, and all next week the boy is home for March break. Working at home when other people are here is rarely productive, but the boy and I are going to have to work something out. Perhaps mornings will be a PBS-fest for him while I get a half-day of work in, and the afternoons will be spent together.

Last night I had to cancel yet another regular thing that was soul-nourishing but consumed energy I needed to put elsewhere. Or rather, it’s been put on hold for the next six weeks at least; we’ll re-examine how things are at the beginning of April when winter is pretty much over and the cold and boots and coats no longer sap so much of my energy. Various family health issues continue to be stressful, and ramp up this week to a whole new level of eek. Some are out of our direct control and we can only be as supportive as we can be for those involved and stress on our own time, but on the personal front, I’m going into the hospital for tests on Wednesday morning and am on at least twenty-four hours of bed rest afterward. (Do not panic; I am mostly fine, and that is what the tests ought to confirm. We do have the rather unpleasant experience of waiting three to four weeks before we get those results, though, and this after waiting six weeks for the tests themselves.) I have the two new February-release Elizabeth Bear books to entertain me, my mother sent down her copy of A Red Herring Without Mustard so I could enjoy it right away, and if I get tired of reading I have three (yes, three!) spinning DVDs I have been hoarding that I can put on the TV or a laptop. I may sneak some work in there too, on the laptop. Maybe.

Weekly Update

I see it’s been a week since I updated.

This past Saturday was Tarasmas. For those who know what that is, yes, it’s a bit out of season, but it was scheduled thusly on purpose. This year’s theme for the interconnected radio plays was history; the evening began with the creation of the earth and went from there. There were some truly inspired casting choices, some great moments where people stepped up to fill in for missing cast members, and great hilarity and deep literary and historical appreciation were enjoyed by all. We stepped out into a Siberian winter storm, one of which had gone on for several hours while we were indoors and yet hadn’t been responded to by city snow crews, so the drive home (for us and pretty much everyone) was interesting, to say the least. When we got home at midnight we discovered the next-door neighbours shovelling our driveway and steps, so I came inside to make coffee and HRH helped them do their own side. At that point there was about fifteen centimetres on the ground, and another five to seven fell overnight. The boy slept over at his local grandparents’ house, so HRH and I got to sleep in. I even brought HRH coffee in bed as an apology for having to wake him up at quarter past nine in order to shovel again. The boy was delighted with all the snow; he had his grandma out at nine AM to build a fort in the backyard, and we picked up a snow saucer on the way home that afternoon with him, so he and HRH could build more of his snow slide in our own backyard, as well as a fort built under the play structure.

The fibro is making things pretty miserable, as I outlined here. I’ve been making ruthless choices about what I can and cannot do, and most of the time it’s working, except for the appended guilt and frustration. I just kind of keep gritting my teeth and trudging forward, losing ground. Yesterday was one of the worst days I’ve had since that bad day two weeks ago. The boy was home on Monday thanks to a ped day (not-so-helpfully announced a single week before the day itself, the late notice of which completely bolluxed my planned work schedule for the week) so we drove out to the western tip of the island to see the doctor and get his vaccination booster shots (to which he said, “What? That doesn’t even hurt!” when the doctor injected him), then spent a couple of hours with Ceri and Ada. That was okay, although moderately tiring. Driving takes a lot out of me, and since my minimum commute to my bare-bones regular activities is forty-five minutes each way, it’s not inconsequential. But yesterday I had a cello lesson, so I gave myself an hour to brush off the car and have a leisurely drive. Good plan, and it would have worked if I hadn’t discovered half an inch of knobbly ice under the three inches of snow. It took me half an hour total to get the car clear, and I was so tired when I got in that I considered calling my teacher to cancel, except I’d done that two weeks ago when I had too much work to do and we’re missing a lesson next week because she’s out of town. So I got out there, exhausted, told her that I wasn’t in a good place, and she tried to give me something different and — she thought — intuitive to do, and it just stressed me out more. I don’t think I’ve adequately communicated to her what the fibro actually does to me in terms of focus, energy, and exhaustion-wise, because when I said I might not make it to orchestra the next night because I was so bad she just smiled and said, “I’ll see you there.” Or maybe she just knows me really well, and knows I’ll fight to get through it and sure, I’ll get there because I’ve made a commitment, but I’ll blow what energy I have for the next two days.

I’m fighting this weird zoning out thing while I do the 45-min drive out to my lesson, the boy’s lesson, and orchestra. Orchestra is the worst, because it’s at the end of the day. I don’t know whether it’s physical weariness, or fibro fog, or both. The drive takes so much out of me, and then I have to buck up and focus on the music for two and a half hours at orchestra (for example) and then I have to drive back home. I don’t know what to do about it. I keep telling myself it will get better as winter fades. I hate that it takes so much energy just to deal with the weather.

The book writing is going along. Because I’ve been so foggy and the typing of bird facts has been going so slowly, I haven’t been getting as much word count down as I’d like. I managed 3,000 words today though, which is more than respectable when I’ve been doing 1,000 a day for the past bit, so I’m happy with that. I have a 50% of book check-in date of February 15 next week, so I’m trying to get as close to 50% as possible. I’ll probably come in just under it, but I’ll have done all I can do to date. I need to choose six to ten actual bird entries and make them as complete as possible for the hand-in, too. That’s going to be time-consuming, and not yield much wordage.

The spinning wheel got its second coat of stain this weekend. I chose a warm gold to put over the cool dark walnut, and it’s perfect; it came out exactly that shade I wanted it to. I’d give you a picture, but I can’t seem to take one that looks any different from the first one, although they look very different in real life. I was going to wax it last night, but I opened the tin of furniture paste wax HRH had brought home from work and slammed it shut again immediately. It stank. There was no way I was going to breathe that while I waxed all the fiddly stuff, nor did I want any hint of that chemical smell clinging to the wheel. So I’m currently searching for a non-petroleum-based wax. My mother tells me she uses Brimax, so I’m looking for that. There’s a distributor in Pointe-Claire, but I don’t know if they sell direct to retail customers; I’ll have to call and ask later this week. Etsy lists a few handmade organic beeswax- and carnuba-based polishes with either lemon, orange, or lavender oil in them, so I may order one of those. I could always concoct one myself, too; there are enough recipes out there. I’d have to find the ingredients first, of course.

The boy and I encountered our first challenging cello practice this past Monday. He whined and complained so much that he didn’t even ask for a sticker when, five minutes in after the ten-minute struggle to get him set up, I said that maybe we should do it another day. He decided that maybe it would be better to practice as soon as he got home from school, then have his snack and play on the computer a bit, because then he wouldn’t have to be told repeatedly to get off the computer and set up for the practice session that actually enjoys when he isn’t wanting to be doing something else.

Right. Boy-fetching time.

Remembering To Breathe

Today, I have:

    – Finished my copyediting project and handed it in, right on time

    – Called the luthier to ascertain that the 1/4 size cello is finally ready for the boy to try (more on that later, it deserves its own post)

    – Unpacked the spinning wheel that arrived this morning (more on that later, too)

    – Finally gone to the post office to mail out two packages and a letter that have been sitting here since Monday

    – Bought various pharmacy things like vitamins, etc.

    – Gone to the library to pick up the books on hold for me (and also scored the new Alexander McCall Smith book in the Isabel Dalhousie series from the New Releases shelf)

    – Finally gone to the bank to deposit the three (!) freelance paycheques that I’d been carrying in my wallet for over a week

    – Paid bills; we are now totally up to date on utilities (in fact, I overpaid one, I think)

I’m catching up on what didn’t get done because I knocked myself out last weekend and Monday. Still taking it ve-e-e-e-ry carefully, and turning down new commitments and outings or evaluating already-scheduled ones as they come, though. I have the rest of the winter to get through, after all. I have been reminding myself to breathe all week, and it seems to have worked.

Hindsight

I did something not-very-bright yesterday. I made bad decisions, and I’m paying for them today.

The fibro is bad. The cold snap makes it worse. Struggling with heavy winter clothing is exhausting. Driving in the winter is draining, draining, draining. As an added bonus, I have a head cold, which on its own would be enough to put me on the chesterfield at this time of year with the fibro.

I don’t look sick. However, I am sick, with a chronic illness that is kicking my butt right now, like it does every winter; I just somehow forget how bad it gets.

I cancelled cello today. I am declaring a moratorium on all social events for the next two or three weeks except Tarasmas (unless I am literally unable to get out of bed that night). Regularly or already scheduled stuff will have to be evaluated as it comes. Work (sigh) and the basics like staying upright and remembering to eat have to come first.

In completely unrelated news, I have a new-to-me iPhone 3G. It is heavier than my first-gen Touch, and the on/off button is on the top right instead of the top left. These two things alone are throwing me off. There is a camera to play with (Cricket had the honour of being the first thing I photographed), and an interesting-sounding voice memo function that I can’t figure out yet. I have to go to the library to find a book on how to use an iPhone. Yes, I am that lame. I have the basics down — it’s essentially a more complex Touch, after all — but I’m going to need to know the why and how of things. At some point I will need to upgrade the iOS to the current version, and eventually initialise the actual phone part, too.