Nutcase 101

Friday, I was doing normal stuff and then broke my foot. You know because it’s there.

Of course, it wasn’t on purpose. And I won’t go into boring detail but I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary when the event occurred. Alright, got the boring stuff out of the way.

But the one thing that I’ve learned about having a broken foot, is that bathroom stuff SUCKS! Especially on crutches. Yes, I know that you’re shocked that being handicapped isn’t a breeze. The worse is taking a shower. Stepping requires a full strategic plan from what foot goes where and how to use a crutch to support your body weight. Then the important events of shaving your legs are out the window because you can’t put your weight on the foot with the broken bone. Stupid broken bone, getting in the way of smooth calves. I guess I’ll start the ‘be like Mo’Nique, hairy leg freak’. (And if for some reason Mo’Nique reads this – covering all bases – I love you girlfriend and your new husband Oscar!)

Because my foot was the target, I decided that I was going to try to balance as much as possible on the good foot while trying to shampoo, condition, scrub, exfoliate, and rinse. Guess what I found out? I don’t have much of sense of balance at all. But I think you all figured that out when I told you that I broke my foot. Thankfully, B was nearby in case I needed because after getting out of the shower, which required hurdle/tub jumping (I’m so ready for the 2012 games!), he helped me put on my pants. I’d go with skirts because they don’t require leg shimmying but please see last line of previous paragraph. I’m not that bold yet to show my new leg beards off.

So, now we’re all up-to-date. Tomorrow, I find out how bad the damage truly is to the metatarsal and determine if surgery is needed. We’re going with ‘please no surgery, I’ll be good and where the boot’ begging stance when I see the doctor. Until next time.

Saturday I did something that I don’t normally do, I was social with strangers. Not in the “Get out of my way” in the grocery store manner but a nice “How do you do?”

The week before I had decided to be adventurous and check out a new local knitting store that is right down the road from our apartment. (B, sorry, that means a lot more yarn is going to be adopted and making it’s home with us.) The owner had converted an old craftsman style house into a yarn store but kept all the warmth of walking into someones abode when you crossed the threshold.

You walk into a livingroom that happens to house yarn on the shelves instead of family photos and books. The dining area is ready for you to sit down to supper but the china hutch bursts forth with color of cashmere, not Grandma’s fine china. This repeats from room to room, except for the kitchen where tea, coffee, cookies and cupcakes await to be eaten.

Basically wants to make a knitter/crocheter fat and happy.

Anyone who walks in the door is encouraged to bring in their knitting, sit on the couch and just chat. So, this past Saturday I did. I was bold enough come in (and spend a pretty penny on some Cascade Ultra Pima), then work on the hat that I’m making for B. I met some wonderful ladies, learned about the various classes and had people complement me on my knits.

And the good news, I survived. I put myself out there to interact with strangers and it wasn’t too bad. I’ll definitely be back.

As B and I were leaving a building this evening, we had the pleasure of riding with a group of eight or so coworkers who were departing for home, bars, where ever.

The first on the elevator was a female from the coworker group and she put her arm on the elevator door to be courteous and make sure that all of us got into the car. As we entered, the elevator was emitting a high pitch alarm and the door holder stated, “I hate that the elevator always makes that sound when we’re getting on!” Others from the coworker group nodded their head or commented in the affirmative that indeed the elevator alarm was annoying.

Me, crowded in the back piped up, “You know, if you press the “Door Open” button to let everyone on the elevator instead of putting your arm in front of the elevator door, you wouldn’t cause the door alarm to go off.”

They turned, and I swear it was in unison, and looked at me in dumb belief. And finally, one of them said, “You know, I thought that there was something wrong with these elevators. I didn’t realize it was us.” Come to find out that they were consultants*. That explained so much.

*And if you’re a consultant, I love ya – I once was one, a long time ago.

SIDE NOTE: The feed for the blog has changed, you will need to update your feed readers – the feed is here: http://nutcase101.com/feed

If you, my lovely five readers, haven’t noticed that for the most part these last few posts have been phoned in. The only one that I can state that I’ve really taken pride in and wanted to write was the one about B and I’s five year anniversary. When I wrote that post the words flew off of my finger tips and I couldn’t wait to click the publish butt on and share with you all my love for my wonderful man.

My lack of creativity isn’t contained to just writing, it’s also affecting my sewing and knitting life. Projects that I’ve been jonsing to do are sitting on the side waiting for my motivation to come back from the vacation that it took without my permission.

And I know what chased part of it away and I don’t really want to talk about it because I’ve bored you enough with my inability to deal with my Grandmother’s passing. Sometimes it feels better to do nothing that to do anything, especially when she was such a huge part in fostering my drive to be creative in the area of crafts. There are also other pressures that are compounding it that I won’t bring into the blogging world.

All I can ask is that you forgive me for not having fabulous posts, or pseudo-fabulous posts of late. Writing isn’t my forte but it is part of the outlets that I have to get things out of my head and it’s much cheaper than therapy.

(This was supposed to have been published February 11th but I forgot – Ooops.)

Two million, six hundred twenty-eight thousand minutes.

That’s how long B and I have been walking this earth declaring our love for one another. And honestly, I had no clue that much time I had passed since we first decided that I’ll be his and he’ll be mine.

Ours wasn’t a traditional meeeting: Girl meets boy on couch of loud party. Boy talks to girl to not be bored at party he didn’t really want to attend. Girl responds to boy because she’s at a party that she didn’t really want to attend. Boy looks for common thread to make the time more enjoyable and Girl talks about computers, servers and connection speed. Boy gets really excited because Girl speaks fluent geek.

From that fun filled night of discussing processors and IT follies, we exchanged numbers and Instant Messaging accounts. Yes, we’re that dorky. And from that party until today, we’ve spoken every day.

We also knew that he was just visiting my locale when we left each other that night but decided it would be great to have friends in different locations. The friendly chats turned flirty and we decided we needed to see each other just one last time. Because what we had couldn’t be ‘real’, it was just harmless fun and a mere fascination.

But, two states, over 5000 miles flown and 600 plus miles driven and hundreds of thousands of cell phone minutes, we sit here married and very much in-love.

To you B, love of my life. I’m so glad you sat on that couch bored out of your mind five years ago. May we speak geek with fervor for many, many more years.

This weekend I was away in Phoenix with the lovely B, off to visit the Father-in-law and his second wife. We had a delightful time and I have no proof because I forgot the camera. Yup. I left it sitting on the couch all by itself.

The cats on the other hand did not get to stay home either. Since it was Valentine’s Day Weekend with the added bonus of President’s Day added to the end, our friends all made plans that involved them being out of town. So the infamous Lola Rocket and Sassy La Rue went to the vet, ahem, Spa.

So, now we’re home with no photos and two pissed cats.

And to put a cherry on top, B is sick again. He’s off to the doc-in-a-box to prove to them that they were wrong and that he does need an antibiotic. Poor thing was miserable on the plane.

That’s all folks. I know, excitement in a few short sentences. I hope I can give you just as much in my next blog post.

From Tuesday until about 3 p.m. on Friday afternoon there was nothing coming out of my mouth that didn’t consist of squeaks and honks. Finally, people’s prayers had been answered and I had lost my voice.

Now, if I had lost my voice ten years ago, I would’ve been able to email people my plights and scribbled on notepads my communications. Or performed various kinds of charades, dancing out ways to get my point across.

Okay, I did do some various monkey moves to try to let people know what I needed to communicate in person – I think my boss would’ve loved to have had a video camera when I got mad over a situation and there was no way to yell the FUCK I was feeling. Though, I will say that no computers, electronics, or coworkers were harmed in my hissy fit.

Thankfully, I had ways to tell the outside world about my situation – Twitter and Facebook. I could still voice my opinion even if nothing was coming out of my mouth. Let’s face it, nothing vital was really coming out of my fingertips either.

Also, Murphy Law sooooo applied during my period of muteness, EVERYONE called me. Honestly, I use my phone more for texting and email than I do for talking but my work, home and landline were all ringing because everyone but my mother wanted to talk to me. (Mom had contacted me via IM and knew I had lost my voice.)

And the kicker, my husband, who obviously was reveling in the silence contributed to the vocal frustration when he told the dentist office to call me about setting up dental appointments. That poor dental receptionists hearing will never be the same since my hearing my squawks which were supposed to sound like the English language. HA!

You might recall that I mentioned back in September, that right after my grandmother passed, one of my closest work friends lost her husband suddenly, he was only 44.

They had been trying for a baby for so long and were about to start another round of IVF and if that didn’t work they were going to adopt.

I got together a group of women (men were invited but politely declined) to teach them how to crochet, so that they could make squares to create a blanket of love for M. Originally, I was going to teach the group how to make hats for Chemo patients but the project was switched after they heard about the Schuyler Blanket Project.

Well, I’m happy and sad to say that the blanket was presented to M today. I’m sad because we had to rush the blanket to completion due to M taking another job, so that she could start ‘anew’ – she has a lot of great and sad memories associated with our workplace.

But, she loved the blanket so much and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room when it was presented. She had no clue that we had been meeting almost every Tuesday for the last three months making squares. I’m glad that she gets to take our love with her.

And, just for the record, 25+ women made 42 squares (there was supposed to be 48 but I had to give them a cut off to get the blanket sewn together) and out of the 25+ women, 19 of them did not how to crochet at the starting point.

Here is the wonderful blanket that everyone worked so hard on:

Yes, I used the f-word in the title of my post. Pull your jaw up off of the floor and make sure you don’t bite your tongue as you roll it back up into your head.

Life is hunky doory.

Oh wait it’s not always happy. Sometimes it is.

But right now, we’re trying to figure out which way is up because we’ve been through a lot of good and bad change in our lives in just the last couple of months. A lot of it is really affecting B, because people in this world aren’t always who you thought that they would be and sometimes they change on a dime.

But there have been a lot of freaking awesome. People that take time out of their lives to tell you that you’re appreciated and they think you’re worth keeping around. This has been a continuing thread in both B and I’s lives and that gives us the warm fuzzy feeling inside.

I wasn’t going to write this post. Hell, I put up a fluff piece about the cats. THE CATS. I love the cats but they haven’t cured cancer or done anything YouTube worthy for them to become internet stars.

So, life is life. It’s fun, scary and damn interesting moment-by-moment. Honestly, I’d like it to slow down a bit to the pace it was before but if this is what it takes for B and I to make a life for ourselves, then so be it.

Life is crazy. But really, when is it not??

Thankfully, to keep me sane (or make me insane) and providing free entertainment there is Lola Rocket and Sassy La Rue.

On the outside they look like ordinary house cats but on the inside, they each have distinctive personalities and tolerate each other. Okay, really, it’s Sassy that tolerates Lola and Lola has this insane need to be loved by Sassy. I’m really glad that there isn’t state mandated cat therapy or the bills for these two would bankrupt us.

Lola looks innocent and will be lounging around the couch, then, fast a rocket (haha) she’s running around the apartment, randomly attacking things and Sassy, pretending she’s a big scary cat. Except when anyone goes near her then skittishness sets in and then the heroic folding chair will protect her.

Sassy on the other hand, she doesn’t want you to know that she needs you. She’s a true cats cat. Independent, demanding and aloof. But when you’re not looking all of a sudden a 13lb pile of fur has jumped into your lap and is now stating you can pet her. And that she does need to be loved.

And together, two different cats have finally learned to tolerate each other. Sassy won’t allow a cuddle but she will permit Lola to lay at the same end of the bed with her and there are kitty cat games of tag and hiss that can commence at ANY hour.

Honestly, this post is just me rambling on about my affection for two kitties but really, what can you do when they are your kids? You put up a senseless post bragging about your kids.