On Loss, and New Beginnings

T.S. Eliot got it wrong. This year, at least, March was the cruelest month. A really, really horrid month. On the 10th, we lost Sylvie, whom David had adopted as a pound kitty back in 1995. She had lost some ground from apparent inflammatory bowel issues, but we seemed to be making headway dealing with that. Within a 4 week period from February to March, though, she developed a liver tumor, most likely a biliary adenocarcinoma, and deteriorated quickly.

Sylvie was the Jan Brady of our little blended family, always complaining that her adopted siblings were stealing away her attention. In her younger years, she had been something of a teenage runaway, once escaping and getting trapped in a nearly inaccessible space between two apartment buildings in New Jersey.

Then exactly two weeks later came the cruelest blow of all. We had to say goodbye to our dear, sweet Tuck. As happens with his type of condition, his lungs had fibrosed to a point that they simply couldn't sustain him anymore. After a week of back-and-forth between home and the clinic to put him in oxygen, we finally had to face the reality of the situation and the fact that it just wasn't fair to him anymore. I always tell my clients that quality of life for a pet means they can eat, drink, pee, poop, and sleep reasonably comfortably. When all was said and done, Tuck could only sleep relatively comfortably, so he spent his last hour and a half lying on a bed between David and me, with his head resting in my hand and equal measures of tears and kisses.

And I'm realizing now why it's taken me two weeks to write this. As much as I know that it was the right thing for him, I miss my littledog so very, very much. The funny thing about grief, though, is that it's not linear.  Sometimes it sneaks up and grabs you by the short hairs when you least expect it. 

And although there will never, ever be another Tuck, his absence left a hole in our lives, so it didn't take long for us to start looking. I thought about a border collie, partly because it seemed like less of a cheat, I suppose. David, however, would have none of that. He wanted another frenchie, and really, I did, too. There's a lot of personality in a very compact, but decidedly non-froofy package - all the things I love in a dog.

So I started by looking at the rescue listings and none seemed appropriate for our household, so then I moved on to breeders. We agreed that a younger, healthy dog was what we wanted this time. Losing Tuck so soon was a heartbreak like no other, and we don't want to go through that again for a good long while. And after a bit of communication back and forth with a few breeders, David ended up driving to Springfield, MA, early this morning to meet a juvenile male, 9 months old today, whom the breeders had decided to cut from their show line. It was, apparently, love at first sight. Having such a young dog will be a change for us, but it sounds like the reason they decided to end his show career was that he was more about snuggles and lovin' than about prancing in the show ring. And that's just fine by us.

We don't even know yet what his registered name is - most likely Campcovo Bella Luna's {insert pop song title} - but we won't be keeping his kennel/call name. David informed me that it's his turn to name this one, though, so I guess we all get to wait to learn what he'll be called in this house. Hopefully he'll be coming to live in this house within the next week, so fingers crossed David hurries up.

Deathyoke

So I missed my 6th blogiversary a couple of weeks ago. A lot's been going on - much of it very stressful and for another day when I feel up to writing about it. School, so far, is going well, though I'm still not as into a groove as I probably should be. Again, a story for another day.

On the knitting front, I've been working on a top-down lopapeysa with Álafoss plötulopi I brought home last year. I decided I wanted to work a yoke with the Deathflake motif and fashioned a sword motif to go in between the repeats to keep the floats from being too long. I love the way it's turning out, though I'm going to have to snip out the neck and redo that - my shoulders are too wide for the pattern section, so the neck bunches up at present. Since I can't rip out from the neckline, I'll have to cut somewhere just above the pattern section & pick up stitches as I pick out a round. Then I should be able to do a quicker reduction in stitches and make a new, somewhat wider neck.



It's a look that suits me well, I think.

Ste. Brigid's Day

I'm not sure if anyone is still doing this out there, but I like the bloggy tradition of Ste. Brigid's Day poetry, even though I've not always been consistent about it. At any rate, I thought that this year I'd share one from a poet I actually know.

Dream: Intruder

by Mark Wunderlich

A storm boiled the ocean.
The room's heavy timbers shifted
as the wind pushed the town.

Beside you, I dreamed I saw a ghost.
Blond and ageless, he mocked me
with large teeth, slipped his arm

around your tan shoulder
and cradled your neck
with what once was his hand.

I cursed him
for stepping through the membrane
of his world into mine,

for pressing to you
his T-shirt and faded jeans
which he must have worn in life

and were now a bitter shroud.
Like a ship's hold, the room swayed
as I fixed him with narrowed eyes

and pointed with one finger,
forbidding him to ever come again.
You remained sleeping

unaware that he had found us
or that the draft that tarnished the room
blew from the other side.

Photo flagrantly lifted from here (and lightly photoshopped).

Startitis Lopapeysum

I decided that I needed some quick-ish gratification, so after a bit of swatching and some calculating over the past few nights, I cast on this evening for a new lopapeysu made með tvöfaldum plötulopa að ofan I'd been trying to decide what to do with for months. That it was going to become a sweater for me was never in question, but I hadn't decided on the form.

Truth be told, I'm not entirely certain even now about all the fine details, but I have design inspiration and a motif I've been wanting to use for a while. And, I hope, enough wool to pull it off.

Monumental

I got the call this morning that my maternal grandfather had passed away in his sleep overnight, two days after his 97th birthday. I had been hoping to get to South Carolina to visit him sometime this winter, as I knew that his body was beginning to fail. My mother hadn't expected him to survive through another year and had just gone down there for an extended stay. It sounds as though he passed shortly before she found him this morning, pretty much as she had put him to bed last night.

I've always felt exceptionally fortunate that all of my grandparents survived well into my adulthood. None of them was famous or particularly known outside of their respective families and communities, but within their realm and within my life, they've been nothing short of monumental. Their presence in my life has always been something I've treasured deeply.

My Granddaddy, Ervin Merchant, was born in 1915 to George and Lessie Baird Merchant. He was 14 when the Great Depression hit and ended his formal schooling, as he and his brothers had to work to help keep the family afloat. He worked for quite a long time as a buyer for the large timber companies, and I remember riding with him as a small child as he paid his work crew, using an old pull lever adding machine to  calculate their wages. As a second career he worked as a driver for the state home for the mentally handicapped, and throughout both those careers, he and my grandmother maintained a farm to feed the family.

Along the way, he and my grandmother raised four kids, became fairly comfortably middle class, traveled the country, built themselves a vacation cabin in the North Carolina mountains, and generally lived the American Dream. Although he spent his entire 97 years living within just a few miles' radius of where he was born, he was most definitely a larger than life person. He could be stubborn as a mule and twice as tough, but he was a fundamentally kind and fair-minded person, and I never heard anyone speak ill of him.

Although we're all feeling a sense of loss, his mind had decompensated badly after my grandmother's death a year and a half ago. I think that escaping in the lost corners of his mind was the only way he could get some temporary respite from his grief, though I don't think it gave him much comfort in the end. Her loss was devastating, and he wasn't able to recover from it. As difficult as it was for the rest of the family to deal with, for him it seemed like pure anguish trying to hold the mental demons at bay while he waited for his body to give out. And for as sad as it is to lose him, there's a definite relief that he can finally have some peace.

Making Progress

I'm a little past the first repeat of the first color chart on my Luke's Diced Vest. I only do one or two rounds while we watch TV at night, but I think that keeps it from feeling like a slog. The red is einband Icelandic from Frelsi Farm here in Maine, and it's haloing ever so slightly, which is pretty much perfect.

Sopapillas not SOPA/PIPA!*

Fortunately, it appears that my Congressional delegation is united in opposition to SOPA (the House bill), and its companion Senate bill PIPA, which is scheduled for a vote next week. Because of that upcoming vote, though, and because I don't always trust Snowe and Collins to follow through based on their expressed concerns, I just sent them both the following:

I am writing you to express my opposition to the Protect IP Act. I understand that your office has expressed concern about this measure, and I do hope that you will vote against this bill when it comes up next week. While I certainly understand and support the need to protect intellectual property, applying a ham-handed, scorched earth policy such as this is not an appropriate way to address the problem. It is akin to destroying the Interstate Highway system because somewhere, at some time, it might be used by criminals. As much as it would stifle the free exchange of ideas, it would also stifle innovation and commerce.

As a nation, these are not losses we can afford, especially given the current economic and geopolitical situation. While this bill may be well-intentioned, it is not well thought out, and I appreciate your help in defeating it.

My Representative, Chellie Pingree, has come out more forcefully, indicating her intent to vote against SOPA, but I still sent her a version of the above thanking her for her opposition. If you're a US citizen and you haven't taken a few minutes to contact the people who represent you in Congress, why not? If you don't know what to write, just copy, paste, and adapt what I wrote. Go ahead, I give you permission.

*I don't know that Congress should mandate sopapillas either, actually, but I probably wouldn't get too upset if they did.

Luke's Diced, in Progress

Hopefully, this should work.

Back in a Flash?

So, there really was going to be more of a report from Rhinebeck, but it seems that over several months, life has kind of continually sidetracked me from the blog. Anyway, it was a nice time. Busy, as usual, and we didn't see nearly everyone I would have liked, but such is life. We also had a nice day after hanging with my folks and seeing some of the sights in Hyde Park, so on the whole, it was another good Rhinebeck experience.

Yarn was also purchased, and there was supposed to be a photo here of my Luke's Diced Vest that's in progress, and in which I'm using some Rhinebeck yarns, among others. As it happens, though, Blogger and my phone seem to have communication issues, and it's already past my bedtime, so no pic tonight, I'm afraid.

I think part of the dearth of entries here is due to the Facebook effect. In fact, I'm sure of it. But I think that the shift in my work schedule also plays a role, since I don't have as much time for expository writing, which is what I've more typically done. The omphaloskepsis continues; it's just not making it to this medium. I could schedule time to blog, but I'm not sure I want it to feel too much like work.

So in the new year, I'm trying to decide how best to continue this. In a couple of weeks, I'm going to be starting an online Master of Public Health program through the University of Massachusetts, which is going to add about 50% to my level of busy. I may shift to shorter entries - longer than tweets but shorter than essays - and I may look into porting everything over to Tumblr or another platform. Blogger's got issues, aside from the aforementioned communication ones, and I'm not sure if I should stay in this neighborhood or find somewhere that suits me better.

Anyway, I'm still around, still living life, and looking forward to the new year.

Rhinebeck '11 - Part the First

That's not actually a sentiment I'm expressing, particularly as regards Rhinebeck. Caro was doing some photography work at the show, though, and David and I got recruited (without any resistance, truly) to be knitwear models. I suppose that if I took the time to poke around, I could figure out how secretive we're supposed to be. It's late, though, and I'm tired, so I'll just not say any more about that, except that the above is my pose for the official model release form. Maybe I should start sending it out to modeling agencies as my headshot.

I'll write a bit more later, once I've had time to sleep, but it was a good weekend. As always, the show is ever so much more about the people you get to see than the fiber you get to pet, take home, and do lascivious things with - not necessarily, of course, in that order. There were people I missed and people I got to spend far too little time with, which is the part I always hate, but in the main, it was a fun time.

Tomorrow, however, I have massages scheduled for both David and myself, and the appointment time cannot get here too quickly.

It's That Time Again, Already?!

Holy crap! When did it become October? A few of my favorite people are currently off visiting another one of my favorite people in one of my favorite places. And while it just makes me ache with the desire to be there again, tomorrow we're packing everything up and heading to another of my favorite places, where I expect to see lots and lots and lots of my favorite people over the weekend.

Once again, we're going to be the headquarters for Rhinebeck Bingo, too, so if you've signed up, be sure to come by. We'll have coupons for participants, but more importantly, I love just getting to say, "O hai!" And since my brain sometimes has a hard time remembering people, it's often as exciting for me as the last 4 times I met you. So even if you're not doing the bingo thing, come by anyway. It'll be fun!

2AM Miracle

So it's been another really long stretch between posts. A lot has happened, but I have a hard time lately finding the time to blog about it. So, some other time, but before I head off to bed I thought I'd share a little story.

On Sunday night, I had my first migraine. That's not the story, but it happened in the lead-up to the story I wanted to share and it seemed noteworthy. I've had bad headaches before, but this one came with a seriously heavy dose of nausea. So severe that I basically had to hold my breath when I took the quiche I was baking out of the oven and immediately afterward go to bed, because the smell of even really, really delicious food was going to make me hurl, which is something I almost never do. When you consider that the last time I had actually vomited was exactly 6½ years earlier (my birthday in 2005, when my friends took me to a martini bar 2 weeks after S had dumped me), to be that close to needing to make a mad dash to the Temple of the Porcelain God was more than a little significant.

Anyway, the actual story, as the title suggests, happened at 2AM. The pain and nausea had abated, littledog was getting a bit restless - which usually means he has to go pee - and I was realizing that I probably ought to, as well. So we both got up, and after I made my pit stop, we headed downstairs so Tuck could do the same.

It bears mentioning here, though I think I have also on prior occasions, that rather than a standard backyard, we have a sideyard off the kitchen ell, which was originally a cobbler's shop that was moved down the hillside and attached to the rest of the house - we think - sometime circa 1950. The yard access is through a kitchen mudroom, so the door is tucked in a corner of the building with the grass a few feet away.

So I opened the mudroom door and just as Tuck hopped down to go to the lawn and do his business, I realized there was a skunk - a small one, but a skunk, nonetheless - near the outside corner of the kitchen, not more than 8 feet from the door. Naturally, I immediately tried to reverse littledog's course, yelling, "Tuck! TUCK! TUCK!"

When it comes to his potty duties, though, littledog is very businesslike and singular of mind, particularly late at night, and he trotted right out into the grass to relieve himself, easily within 6 feet of le jeune M. LePew. I wouldn't be surprised if littledog never even noticed the creature, as it was dark and his vision isn't terribly good, but I'm equally fortunate that he is nearly completely incurious about other animals.

The other week there were two juvenile turkeys in the yard one evening when I let him out. He gave them a glance, but then turned around and headed right back to the house when he was done peeing. If they're not going to pick him up and give him lovin's, then they're not worth wasting time on, and that was pretty much how it went down with the skunk.

I think the poor little critter may have just been confused out of his mind. After all, here was this strange-looking, and maybe-or-maybe-not disinterested, dog off to one side, and a frantic, yelling human to the other side. With limited ammunition in his arsenal, the skunk made the wise decision and, thankfully, beat a hasty retreat without spraying anyone.

The even bigger miracle is how I ever managed to fall back asleep after that bit of excitement.