Adventures in Paradise

Flying Again...

I'm sure this is getting old, but I haven't knit a thing since I finished the baby blanket, mostly because I was kind of sick of the knit stitch by the time I was done.  The end of my week was relatively mellow and I've just picked up the swirl scarf again for metro knitting, so once there's something more to look at, I'll share. 

In the meantime, I'm making some small progress on the trapeze.  To start, I'm taking off one-handed these days.  I was in the middle of a lesson when one of the instructors said, quite casually, that I was pretty confident up there and I shouldn't need to do a two handed take-off anymore, so try it one-handed next time.  I've managed to get it mostly right, as you can see here.
 
If you'd asked me where I was when my left hand hit the bar, I'd have told you that I was well below the platform, not close to a foot above it.  Perception is strange, but now I know that I have a little more time than I'd thought before.  Cameras are a wonderful thing.  I'm also getting closer to making my split look pretty, but still need to keep my back straight.

Notice the catcher in the picture?  (In the orange tights, I don't think you could miss him, even in the twilight...)  I managed to catch my splits twice last week, my first "release trick" which means that unlike the knee hang, where you're transferred from the trapeze to the catcher directly, in this case, you completely let go and fly to the catcher.  It's such an amazing feeling!

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Continuing Promise 09

But if you cry easily, you might want a tissue or something nearby.

Better Late Than Never

Eight days after the kid made his appearance, I cast off the last bit of the baby blanket.  Here it is in all it's log cabin-y glory...

I did a four stitch applied i-cord to the edges to give it some stability and to make the edges look a bit more finished.

It's a good lap-blanket size and I think it will go over well with the Sharks fans next hockey season.  But I have lots of yarn left...guess there's no time like the present to start his big brother's Christmas sweater, huh?

Thoughts, In No Particular Order

I keep saying, it's been busy.  And it has, but busy and a bit on the draining side right now.  So, in sort of but not necessarily chronological, order, here's what's going on.

- As of last week, the baby blanket is not complete.  Seen here last week, it's as far as I am going with the log cabin.  I'm adding a black applied i-cord to finish it and am a little more than 25% complete.  I sort of feel like I should have more of the teal, but I just couldn't deal with that much more knitting.  (Would have required 2 more sections - black and teal and then the i-cord.  Hopefully the kid will still love me.)

- The kid, by the way, is done.  He arrived last Tuesday morning, as irritated by the process as his big brother was (although it took two days to get a picture of him flipping off the world, not pictured here though.)  Anyway, this is young Ian Conrad.

- I spent weekend before last in Michigan for Father's Day.  It was good. 

- Last week, I was invited to attend one of the Navy Band's concerts at the Navy Memorial.  Actually, the concert is open to the public; I was invited to the reception before the concert by my former boss.  It was great, except that I was the most junior invited guest - and the only female guest in uniform (there was one working the event.)  Also - my boss was there, and he didn't know I'd been invited.  Thankfully, he's a great guy and I ended up sitting next to him for the concert.  After the reception, we moved outside to the reserved seats, and listened to the band.  We had a great time, but nobody had a better time than these ladies - specifically the one in the green and white shirt right under the glare of the spotlight and the seatmate you can't actually see...

They arrived a bit late to the concert and when she saw a couple of open spots towards the front, she hopped in...right into the reserved section.  She realized what she'd done when she sat down and went to leave, but the folks around her called her back and had her sit back down.  It was pretty amusing to see her totally rocking out to the music while we military types in uniform (and the equally sedate spouses present) clapped on cue but were otherwise pretty still.  I think we all enjoyed them and they had a story to tell.  (BTW, I was one of two non-flag officers invited - so they were surrounded by a sea of guys with gold shoulder boards.)

- While last week was busy, it was not at the pace of the two weeks before, which was good.  I still only managed one workout though.  Saturday I did yoga and then trapeze.  The straddle just is not my trick and I'm going to try something else because my frustration level was starting to push me too far.  I know when to give up and will come back to it later when I've re-gained my confidence.

- On Thursday my co-worker went with her husband to the doctor because he had been sluggish and was bruising easily.  He walked out with direction to stop at home, pack a bag and the people at the emergency room would be waiting to admit him.  He started chemo Saturday morning with a diagnosis of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, which it turns out has a moderate survival rate.  His future will be essentially a month of hard core attack with up to three years of further  treatment, including the single-shot possibility of a bone marrow transplant (hopefully from one of his brothers.)  I'm the designated person in the office to collect funds and provide something that conveys our best wishes.  I've got well over $200 from my co-workers and pledges of more (mostly un-solicited, when something happens, we just assume someone will collect money.  And someone does.) 

I went out today and spent about $90 of that on a stuffed monkey to hold a small basket that I have filled with some chocolates, lavender hand sanitizer and soap (for her); Kindle gift certificate and ginger chews (hopefully useful for him) and dog treats for their three dogs who will be missing their owners a great deal in the coming days.  The Amazon certificate was more than half of the total - he's going to be stuck in the hospital for at least a month and for a guy who was riding a Harley and running road races two months ago, this is a huge culture shock.   I'm going to save the rest for stuff through the next month of intensive treatment.

We had a long talk this afternoon - neither of them has ever had any experience with someone going through chemo, so I talked a little bit about what I remember.  I'm thinking that I'd like to put together a small notebook with some further thoughts or advice from people who have gone through this, because she is really grasping for information right now.  So far I've told her:

• Keep a notebook and write down everything the doctors say and who says what, so that you can check back when you need to. 
• Ditto with lists of things to do because trauma affects your short term memory.
• Food tastes different during chemo, some things he loved he won't like now and you'll need to be prepared to experiment with food in order to keep him eating.
• He's going to feel miserable. Let him vent when he needs to, but know that it's coming - especially since the nasty drug comes tomorrow. 
• Make sure that when he's given pain killers (or other drugs to counteract the side effects,) that he takes them instead of trying to gut out the pain. There's no point in him being more miserable than he has to be.
• Deal with the physical effects, but don't neglect the emotional - remember the family, friends and co-workers who will be there to support but also consider a therapist to help deal with the huge change in lifestyle they're experiencing.
• They have standing offers from our office mates for food, house care, pet care and transportation for the brothers who will be in and out - and we've already discussed setting up daily shifts to help so that she needn't think she would be dominating anyone's time.

 I was never a caregiver, just a visitor during the process for both my Dad and for my uncle.  What else should I tell her?

Flying, Part II

This has been the longest week of the year, thanks to the congressional process.  I have some desire to kick the very next member who demands a roll call vote over something he/she knows perfectly well will be decided on party lines, just because it will cause a delay.  Because that's the reason that I started listening to a discussion of a bill at 10am on Tuesday morning and left the building at 2:30am on Wednesday.  Silliness.

Then I spent Thursday and Friday at a conference downtown, which was actually pretty cool, 600 female Sailors, Marines and Coasties in one room to talk to each other.  It was surreal in one way, as I am apparently unique enough that a PhD Candidate wants to interview me for a separate section in her dissertation.  I guess if you look, you'll find only one or two minority female SWOs who've had command.  (My thought was that you kind of had to dig deep to find that, but I guess that's what dissertations are for.)  I got some good advice and hopefully gave some good advice, and then I went across the street and took my second trapeze class. 

My muscles were a bit sore, and my hamstrings in particular reminded me of their presence when I went up for my warm-up swing, which consisted of a knee hang and a backflip dismount.

Then they taught me a new trick.  Or at least they tried to.  I didn't do so well with that one.  The idea is to take the leg movement swinging up to go into a kneehang and instead putting both feet onto the bar.

The idea being to then strighten your legs parallel to the ground.

This is where I failed.  You can see me falling out of the position here, which was recoverable...but then I fell all the way out and tangled up in the safety line, which was also recoverable, but not easily.

I'm going to keep working on this one next week because even making a fool of myself, I had a blast.  I did manage to catch two more knee hangs at the end of the evening, so I at least ended successfully.