Dreary

 

Another dreary day in a string of them.  Weather forecast says possibility of sunny on Tuesday, then right back to more of this.

Winter is not done with us yet.

Nor is covid.  Nor shingles.

Even though I've been through this sort of thing before, even though I was warned this was going to be a slow recovery, the reality is...depressing.

Each day crawls by with me feeling unable or unwilling to do much of anything.  So I don't, because I know that pushing too hard right now can actually set me back.  

I'm having flashbacks to by-pass surgery, which took place almost exactly six years ago.  I admit I didn't feel much better then.  But recovery went more quickly and six weeks didn't seem like forever as I could feel the energy returning.  Oh yes, there were the usual bumps and holes, but I'm also six years older and been through the mill a few more times.

And I know all of this, intellectually.  It's just the emotions I am going through right now that make this particularly hard.

I feel guilty I didn't recognize what was going on sooner.  Doctor warned me that I came in very 'late' for treatment and it was going to be hard to root the virus out of my eye.  And dammit, she's right.  It's going so dreadfully slowly and I still feel 'off' and every day seems like Groundhog Day.  I have to look - hard - for every tiny bit of progress.  And barely find any.

We are still dealing with covid here, too.  Experts are saying the current wave ought to peak in the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime I feel like I have to stay home, not leave the house (except for doctor appointments) and not have visitors.  At least during my other health recoveries, I could have some company.

Thank goodness for the internet!

Today's sliver of light was the fact that I was able to finish pressing the last of the scarves.  They are now hanging on the drying rack to finish drying.  They were nearly dry, but I don't want to set any wrinkles in them, so they will hang over night.

Tomorrow I will see if I feel 'safe' enough to trim the fringes.  If not they will get folded and stacked up and set aside until I do.

Casting around for something else 'light' I could do, I'm wondering if I feel up to hemming yet.  With my lack of depth perception, I'm thinking...no.  But neither do I feel up to beaming a warp.  So I don't know what will occupy my limited energy tomorrow.  

But I am becoming heartily sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.  Just saying...

Wrapping up January

 

It's been hard, having to accept that my usual rate of progress is so curtailed.  But progress has been made, and I need to remember that.

I managed to get some scarves wet finished and pressed but given my current lack of depth perception, decided that NOT trimming the tufts from the ends of the fringe might be a better approach.  At least until I can focus and have some depth perception.  So they got folded and piled up on the shelf.  Since then I have been working my way through the rest of the scarves I managed to weave in December and early January.  I've only been able to manage 3 or 4 at a time, but the last load of 5 scarves is currently in the washing machine and I've just now pressed three more scarves.

The rest are being neatly draped over the back beam of the loom.  A visual reminder that trying to beam another warp right now is most likely Not A Good Idea.

My priority right now has to be to heal from this regrettable episode in my life.  So I wander through my day, picking at this and that or just sitting in the recliner feeling sorry for myself.  So Very Sorry.

Healing seems to be incredibly slow, but everyone tells me it will be.  I know that one of my brushes with shingles took at least 6 weeks to resolve.  And this one?  Is far, far worse.

However, I find myself with a tiny bit of energy, so I keep picking away at what I can do and gently shove the rest aside as irrelevant until I am much better than I currently am.  Right now I'm thinking that it will be weeks yet before I can see properly given that intense focus (see what I did there?) my eye doctor is paying to me.  

On the other hand, the class via Sweet Georgia seems to be going well.  No questions to answer today - so far.  But the questions to date have been really good ones.  I just wish I felt better and could think more clearly.

I am still not processing things well but we have a schedule and alarms and a cheat sheet to make sure I take my medication on time (within a few minutes) and the correct ones at the correct time.

Doug has been very supportive, doing all the outside errands, driving me to appointments.  I don't feel I am 'safe' to drive yet.  Still feeling 'off' and lack of focus means I should not be driving for my own - and others - safety.

However, like spring, I feel a stirring.  A desire.  A yearning to return.  But it's only the end of January.  Spring - for us - is still a long way away.  And the snow coming down and in the forecast for the coming days reminds me.  We are not done with winter yet.  Neither are we done with covid.  And nor am I done with shingles.

Sigh.

Living in Another Country

 

Not sure why, but I started thinking about - oh lots of things - today.

I was in my 40s when I learned about the 'curse' May You Live in Interesting Times.  It took me a while to figure out how negative it might be to have 'interesting' things going on around you all of the damn time.

And here we are in 2022.  Interesting...

As part of my musing I thought about why I might be sympathetic to immigrants.  It's true I read voraciously when I was a child.  As I read I didn't discriminate and look only for books about people like me but read everything I could get my hands on.  

My parents came from European roots and so did all of our neighbours.  My mother, of French Canadian stock.  Her ancestors arrived in Gaspe in the 1700s sometime.  My father was German by language, although their immigration papers said Belarus as their port of departure.  I have no way of knowing how they wound up in Belarus - or when.  But they spoke German as their first language, arrived in California to stay with my grandfather's brother, eventually making their way into Canada by way of North Dakota.  Two of dad's sisters were born on the prairies and dad was born here in mid-BC in 1919.  

Neighbours came from England, German background, Polish, Ukrainian.  There were a few Scots, too.

So I was familiar with a variety of different cultures - all European based.  I heard lots of different languages being spoken around me.

At the age of 12 I acquired a Swedish pen friend.  We exchanged blue flimsies every few weeks.  And we kept writing, even after grade 7 ended until eventually I suggested to my parents that I take a gap year and go to Sweden to meet her and see something of the world.  My year after grade 12 was spent working every hour I could and saving every penny.  As the year progressed my pen friend and I made arrangements for me to arrive.

In those days flying was dreadfully expensive, especially to go to a country like Sweden which wasn't really a tourist destination, so I looked around for other options, finally settling on a freighter company that took passengers.  They had a regular route from Montreal to Norway and given that all my meals were included in the 10-12 day journey, it wasn't horrible in terms of cost.  And I could take the passenger train from my town to Montreal and stay with my aunt until it was time to board the ship.

In the end departure was delayed several days due to a longshoreman's strike, but they let the 4 passengers board and fed them.  It made the actual stay on board longer but I had sent a telegram to my friend letting her know my updated arrival date.  In the end I actually arrived two days earlier than expected as we had a bit of 'weather' that pushed us across the Atlantic faster than expected.

All of which is leading up to the fact that I lived in Örebrö, Sweden for the better part of four  months.

I never did learn how to speak Swedish.  I could learn nouns, but the grammar defeated me.  And besides, I was living on the university campus and the students staying there over the summer were happy to practice their English.  And chuckle at my attempts to actually speak Swedish.  It became easier to just learn a few key phrases and employ a whole lot of facial expressions and body language.

It was somewhat surprising to me that I had a very European look about me.  As long as I kept my mouth shut, no one knew I wasn't Swedish.  Or French. I also looked older than my 19 years, which may have had something to do with it.  I don't know.

Anyway, having the experience of living in a different culture with different expectations, norms, standards AND language, I gained an enormous amount of respect for all those people I had known in my life who spoke with a heavy (or light) accent, moving to Canada (or from Quebec to an English first province) and managed to survive.  Even thrive.

So when people talk about 'those' people who are a different culture, different language, different skin tone, different whatever?  I simply cannot understand how or why people don't think they are worthy of the utmost respect.  Because I have had the experience of living somewhere other than Canada, in a different language, and I KNOW how difficult it is.  I had the protection of looking like I belonged, while so many have some kind of obvious 'difference' about them.  And I still struggled to get around, go shopping, feed myself, entertain myself.  I had an incredible opportunity to observe without being observed.  To take time to think about what I was seeing and how it was different - or  not - to what I was used to experiencing.  I felt very much like a round peg in a square hole.  *I* was the different one.  And it was hard.

In my town we still have a lot of immigrants, new ones, some of them fleeing very terrible conditions, trying to deal with the stress of the terrible conditions they managed to escape, the desperate flight, hopefully to safety, then winding up in a country that has cold winters, different religions, different language(s), different foods, just...different.

I respect them all.  I think they are brave beyond most Canadians understanding.

I wish I wasn't seeing the growth of the alt-right here, too.  My father, with his German affiliation, still served in the Canadian Army during WWII to fight fascism/Nazis.  He didn't talk much about the war.  He dealt with PTSD (as it is now called) and was sickened by what he saw in Europe.  I am pretty sure he wasn't part of the liberation of any concentration camps, but he was part of D-Day and the army that went on to help liberate Holland.  

In the core of my being, I know that all humans are part of the same family.  Right now I'm having a hard time dealing with the growth of fascism around the world.  I have no idea how to stop it or understanding of the people who think they are better than someone else for whatever reason they have come up with.

I guess I just got lost in my thoughts about all of these things and chose to write it out as I usually do when I'm trying to figure something out.

I'm sad to say I have come to no conclusions.   Except that I would really like some boring times.  No pain.  No stress.  No wondering what will happen.  Just...peace and love for all and some 'boring'.

Please and thank you.

Regular programing will resume...maybe tomorrow...

Rocky Road

 

While I am no stranger to recovering from health issues, neither do I much enjoy it.  

One always hopes that the road will be a nice lovely straight line towards the goal (good health) but in actuality, it's rather more 'interesting'.

So I continue to struggle with the shingles, feeling pretty much like crap, still doing eye drops 8 times a day, pills and two other drops three times a day.  My left eye continues to be dilated all day long which makes focusing on anything a challenge.  

I thought today I could do without the patch, but realized just now my eye is watering and shutting and I need to keep using the patch.  Probably until they stop dilating my eye.  

(stops to apply patch to left eye...)

The last time I remember being so sick for this long was when I was 12 and had my tonsils out.  I was so sick I barely got out of bed for a month.  Well, it's been two weeks now since the diagnosis, and while I am feeling slightly better, between not being able to see properly, no depth perception, and needing to take medication every two hours, with apparently months more treatment to face, on TOP of the other health issues I was already having...

Let's just say I play a very tiny violin with the saddest song you ever heard.

Yes.  I AM feeling sorry for myself.  I will be blunt.  I am feeling VERY sorry for myself.  It isn't fair that I have shingles and even less fair that it is in my eye.

So the rational, adult part of me keeps reminding the rest of me that Life Isn't Fair and I need to just keep on keeping on.  Just like I have in the past.

Part of the reason I am feeling so disgruntled is the simple fact that while I begin to feel better I also feel more resentment that I am feeling so unwell.  That just getting up in the morning to face another day of dealing with the pain and the awkwardness of no depth perception, and the worry over whether or not I can keep the vision in that eye becomes a huge burden.  And I don't like it.

But just like covid doesn't care what someone thinks about it, shingles (another damn virus) doesn't give a damn what I think about it returning again.

So I call on the strength I have as a Very Stubborn Person, and I get dressed.  I make extremely modest plans for the day.  Plans that I don't always manage to complete.  But an inch is better than a centimeter when it comes to progress.  So I inch along, part of me raging at the unfairness of what is happening to my body.

And I thank all the gods that be that I am old enough that I'm not required to show up at work somewhere and be pleasant.  Because I am not in a pleasant frame of mind right now.

Stubborn is as stubborn does.  And right now whatever energy I have is going towards not turning into a lump of misery.  I may be a lump of raging misery, but the stubbornness that my mother railed against is what is going to get me through this time.  

So I put three more scarves into the washing machine - red scarves, with a red that is guaranteed to bleed - along with some other red items, and I will press the two scarves from yesterday.  And who knows, maybe press the scarves from today.  We will see.

I am able to read a little bit so I have gone back to reading Victoria Finlay's book Fabric.  And I am finding that enjoyable and distracting when I can read.  I fiddle with jigsaw puzzles.  I move from chair to chair because even that little bit of activity helps my back.  Because just because you get sick with one thing doesn't make the other illnesses you are dealing with go away.  They just keep burbling along.

On a brighter note (literally) the sun has made an appearance and it is not yet snowing.  So I am going to appreciate the sunshine outside and continue to isolate due to several virii in my town plus my own personal hell.  And just keep going.  Like Churchill supposedly said - when you are going through hell...keep going.  And I agree.  Who the hell wants to stop in this place, in this time?  Doug kindly reminds me when the next two hour med time arrives.  He even set up an old cell phone that chimes every two hours for when he isn't home and to make sure I don't forget.

If you were looking for something inspiring today, I'm afraid I'm all out.  Must be supply chain issues.

Little by Little

 

We are having a bit of 'false' spring today.  The sun has peeped out a bit and it's quite balmy - for us, for January.  The air felt positively spring-like, but it's only January and we all know it is temporary.

I am beginning to feel a wee bit 'better' (for certain values of) but the dr says my eye is not healing very well.  I get to go back again next week.  So for one more week (at least) my left eye will remain dilated all day long.  I'm wearing a patch to keep it closed because trying to focus on anything to do anything means I'm having to battle an eye that is dilated and not wanting to focus in the same way.

Since one eye is patched, I have zero depth perception, so I have to be careful about going to pick up or put things down.  On the other hand my balance is improving, and I am starting to be more active.  Which is good because I was losing physical fitness and just walking up and down the stairs was a bit of a challenge, in part due to the depth perception.  Where *were* my feet in relationship to the stairs, anyway?

I set up the puzzle board and have been picking away at that and in the evening I have managed to do a bit of knitting.

But today I actually feel I have made more than an inch worth of progress, physically.  I feel like I could actually do something, if I weren't isolating at home, and not quite ready to attempt to do much of anything.

However, I did decide yesterday that wet finishing another half dozen scarves might be a possibility because I can sit and do the pressing.

So I am going to go down to the laundry room and run a batch of scarves through the washer and dryer and by the end of the afternoon I hope to be able to get the pressing done.  If nothing else at least I can do some and whatever I don't get to can wait in the plastic bin to wait until tomorrow.

Every inch of progress is...an inch of progress.  And right now?  I will take it.

Jan. 21, 2022

 

tonight's sunset

So, 2022 was supposed to be a new start.  A more hopeful year.  A better year.  I last posted on Jan. 12 about the launch of the SOS class, anticipating that I was going to have a great time, interact with students, and things were just going to keep on being 'fabulous'.

If you are wondering about radio silence, it's because Jan. 12 was also the day I was told that my sinus headache wasn't a sinus headache and I didn't have pink eye, I had a *severe* case of shingles that had gone into my left eye.  

The next few days disappeared in a haze of pain and fistfuls of pills and multiple eyedrops.

I did manage to monitor the Q&A for the class, but it wasn't the joy I had been expecting.  

It's a really long story no one needs to hear - except that I have been too sick to even think about weaving.  I have managed to stumble along and yesterday was told that I am healing well, but this will be a long road to full recovery.

Here is a Public Service Announcement:

If you have ever had chicken pox, hie thee hence to a pharmacy and get the two shot shingles vaccine.  I had gotten the one dose, then assumed I was protected from another bout of shingles (I'd had two, years ago) and frankly missed the signs of it happening.  Until it was nearly 'too late'.

If you have never had shingles, please take it from me, you don't want to.  Ever.  Even a mild case, never mind a 'severe' one.

I have been holding off cancelling/postponing some Zoom meetings, but even though my healing is going well according to the doctor, I'm still feeling very ill.  I've cancelled all local appointments, hunkering at home trying to stay out of the cross hairs of covid, a cold, whatever is happening out in the big cold world.  Fortunately everyone has been very understanding and at this point I have two Zooms scheduled, the last Sunday of this month and the first of the next.  I'm going to cancel the one and re-book the other for another date, further down the Recovery Road.   Because it seems to have a lot (and I mean a LOT)  of valleys and mountain peaks.

I am beginning to feel well enough that I can read a bit, and I have some jigsaw puzzles so the next job I plan to tackle is clearing off the dining room table so I have something else to distract me, and a different place in the house to sit, which I'm hoping will help my back.  Even getting to the specialist in Vancouver has had to be postponed because of the shingles, so my back still hurts and I'm not much nearer getting it 'fixed' - if it can be.  But at least I'm on their patient roster and they will contact me in March.  Hopefully to the news that the doctor thinks she can help me.  And then maybe in April be able to travel down for an in person assessment.

But it's been a really rough couple of weeks.  

Currently reading The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny.  It's riveting and asks some pointed questions about societal values.  

Launch Day

 

So today is launch day for the SOS class, The Intentional Weaver.

It was meant to be a happy day for me, and instead I'm still dealing with a body that seems bent on making me miserable.  I have an appointment - in person - with my family doctor, this afternoon, and I really hope he has something to help me.  Because I've been looking forward to this day and it's being 'ruined' by feeling ill.

Ok - whine over.

Felicia Lo was my on screen student and she has done a You Tube video talking about experiencing being a student.  She talked about how when I do the various tasks involved in weaving I make it look so 'easy' and how we talked about students might feel intimidated when the same techniques don't come easily to them.  And she agreed to be the student to show that when you learn something new it is going to feel awkward.  And the solution for that awkwardness is, in fact, to do them with intention.  With mindfulness.  Paying attention to the motions.

She asked her viewers to share some of the awkward things they have experienced, in part as a way to acknowledge that feeling awkward is a normal part of learning something new.  That you only gain proficiency by steadfast mindful practice.  

Sometimes I will answer a question on line and people will be amazed that I am able to put my finger on exactly what the problem is, and suggest a solution.  The thing is, the reason I know about these solutions, and the situations, is that every single one of them has happened to me.

Weaving is not difficult, but it is complex.  There are a multitude of steps tht must be taken, in order, so that you wind up with good results.

There are principles to be learned so that you can more easily diagnose a problem, then knowing the principle, make an appropriate fix.

The one I share about my own journey was the time I neglected to go over the back beam of the loom while dressing the warp.  The warp travelled directly from the beam up to the heddles.  When I treadled, I could not get a shed.

Doing this once was bad enough.  But I did it twice in a row.  So now when someone says they have their loom all dressed but can't get a shed, I look for signs that they, too, have neglected to go over the back beam.

I have even neglected to go over the knee roller on the AVL which meant I wasn't getting good sheds as the springs were being impeded from working properly because the apron was in the way.

Mistakes happen.  They are part of life, part of weaving.  My hope with writing the book and doing these classes is that people will learn the principles and fixes to problems.  And not be upset if they make a mistake.  Because we are only human.  

Sometimes we aren't feeling well and we aren't thinking clearly.  Sometimes we are stressed or distracted, and not paying full attention to what we are doing.  Sometimes it has been too long since dressing the loom last time and we forget things like knee rollers and back beams.

Embrace the journey of learning.  Accept your human-ness.  Take pleasure and satisfaction when things go right, but don't beat yourself up when they go wrong.

And PS - while setting up the loom for the taping, I showed how to check for a clear shed and discovered that oops - I'd crossed threads between the heddles and the reed.  This was not a 'planted' error (although I'm not beyond doing such a thing), but a mistake I actually made.  In the end I was glad because it showed that I just dealt with it and carried on.  That yes, I do still make mistakes.  Being a 'master' weaver doesn't mean you don't make mistakes, just that you don't panic, you just fix them.