If a Mom-and-a-Half Drinks a Coke-and-a-Half in a Day-and-a-Half…

Crazy-busy day, yesterday. I helped a co-worker plow through the [electronic] paperwork after the managing attorney assigned a bunch of new lawsuits to various attorneys. The mail was relatively light, but the fax machine harrumphed along all day. Something like unto the Chinese Paper Torture…

Had a wee bit of a headache all morning, as did several co-workers. I’ve heard power tools running in recent days, so I suspect remodeling, i.e., solvents of some sort. I fire-bombed my synapses with twelve ounces of Coca-Cola before lunch, in the hope that my brain would get so dazzled by caffeine that it would fail to notice incoming pain stimuli.

Am not sure how successful that was. The headache per se retreated a little, but it did nothing for the tension in my neck and traps. I put on my trusty red sweater, thinking maybe I was just colder than I should be, and that if I warmed up the muscles, maybe my neck would relax.

It didn’t. My sinuses joined in the chorus. When I was young and knew everything, I thought there was no difference between a regular headache and a sinus headache. Three days before I married my first husband, I got a headache that came and went until after I said “I do.” I wonder if it’s coincidence that three days before I am supposed to move, I had the demure great-grand-daughter of that headache.

Probably so, because I know how I feel when I’m in the new meetinghouse, sitting among the members of my new ward. Which is peaceful and serene and happy. So I don’t think that this move has suddenly turned into a bad idea. But there is something going on that my spirit is picking up on, and my body is trying to tell me, and I think my secret agent decoder ring is in an unlabeled box in the back of my closet at home.

Could simply be the fact that LittleBit and BestFriend are backpacking around a lake in Texas, away from both mommies. My head tells me that she’s safer backpacking with BestFriend than she would be camping with me. BestFriend has been backpacking since she was tiny; she knows her stuff. [They are probably safer than I was when I took my trip to Taos and Santa Fe ten years ago after getting my associates degree. I was the one driving around in a convertible at 7200 feet in June, battling hypothermia and bad poetry.]

My gut tells me that there are people who make it their business to “Keep Austin Weird”, and some of them have chainsaws.

My heart? My heart wants some dark chocolate and a little dancing and a nice long nap. Preferably not with my nose in my keyboard.

Time for a little comic relief. The headache was somewhat better after lunch, which was a small BBQ sandwich made with leftovers from Tuesday’s luncheon, and some beans, and some of the last of the peach cobbler. This is what we did for entertainment after lunch. [Tuesday, at the Founders Day celebration, not yesterday, eating leftovers.]



I hadn’t tried hula-hooping in the better part of 50 years. The world record is safe.



Discovered the following in the Toastmaster magazine which I borrowed from a friend, because it had an article on podcasting, webconferencing, and webcasting: Martha Barnette’s podcast and blog. Wow, that may be a personal record for links per sentence! She writes about word origins and writerly stuff like that; Grant Barrett is her partner-in-crime.

Note: LittleBit called me at 4:37 yesterday afternoon to tell me they had made it a good way around the lake and were setting up camp. I reminded her not to talk to any nice strangers with chainsaws.

I know you came here for the knitting. And I am pleased to announce that I am no longer a “Noro virgin”:



One of my friends took me to a private yarn sale last night. A generous woman had donated a huge assortment of yarn in varying amounts to a local group that does charity knitting and crocheting.

Unfortunately for their purposes, but fortunately for mine and a friend’s, these are mostly designer yarns that need to be hand-washed or dry-cleaned or otherwise babied. The group is asking for half of the retail price, so they may replenish their stash with the workhorse machine-washable worsted weight yarns they use.

I bought enough Noro to make a shawl or wrap or shrug, part of it in the form of a mostly-completed sweater that will need to be frogged. [I also bought a skein of yarn that is for a stealth project, so it will not be photographed until it is a finished object.] If you are local and interested, email me and I will give you the contact information. But here's a link to their website.