illin' and chillin'

I had a great meme-y post all written, a week ago, and Blogger lied to me and didn't save it automatically, so it was lost, as was my meme mojo. Nevertheless, I may try again.

My week has been consumed by, in this order: strep throat and missing 3 days of work, a day of face painting, including some work on adults and some of the best artistry I've ever done on the human face (it helps to have extremely good-looking co-workers), and a vicious migraine that landed me in urgent care this morning for 3 hours, culminating in an iv bag full of fluids and a shot of Dilaudid.

Wow. That Dilaudid is something else. I felt like Matt Dillon in Drugstore Cowboy.

Despite the scary illin' tone of the week, it hasn't really been too bad. The strep is being taken care of with amoxycillin, and after one feverish day, then a visit to my trusty doctor, I'm in no pain any more from that. The 3 days off work were only mildly sickly, but consisted mostly of me puttering around the house entertaining my dogs and reading Dodie Smith's most wonderful novel, "I Capture the Castle". Cooking and cleaning and listening to a lot of music. Doing surprisingly little knitting.

The face painting gig was one I'd had lined up to do for my school's field day. I have not painted faces since my move to full-time employment last August. It took me about 10 faces to find my groove, but once in, I had fun. After the field day, some co-workers came around asking if I'd paint their faces. It was lovely and fun to work on adult faces (I almost always do children) in a quiet air-conditioned room, with no long line waiting for me to hurry up. Hence the nice work. Alas, I've no pictures, but trust me, it was good work!

Now I'm here, P is on a pizza run (because I can always eat spinach and garlic pizza from Boston's North End Pizza) and I'm just a bit shaky, but pain-free. The migraine was a nightmare of sobbing, puking and inability to stomach the very thing that would put it to rest. I went in to urgent care for the iv, some anti-nausea drug and the Drugstore Cowboy cocktail. I've never had an iv in my life, and was a little scared. P was assuring me that I wouldn't have an embolism when the iv ran out, which was something I hadn't considered, til he mentioned it. He's helpful like that, my husband. I am much better now, and am just taking it easy. I went on a walk with Ella this evening, mostly to move my body around. Ella is the ultimate pleasure walking dog. She is calm, a bit slow, methodically reading and responding to the pee mail along the way. Sort of the anti-Cricket, whom P walked, as I was not up to it.

I have done a bit of knitting, unispired though it may be. I present to you the titillating shot of Eleanor's backside:

It's kinda ruffly where you pick up stitches as you knit along the tiers and altogether cute in its rustic way. Eleanor grows, though slowly; clearly a sign that I'm not watching enough tv. She's my "Battlestar Galactica" knitting. I've been metering out my episodes and am now midway through Season 2.5.

Lest you think I've given up sock knitting entirely, I present a rather poor shot (my camera isn't what it was back in 1998) of my first Child's First Sock. Knitting on these #1 needles is too slow for me. I like this pattern. It's intuitive, and cute and even forgiving, as this here sock is full of mistakes. It's a very snug fitting sock, and I hope I get it right to fit me, otherwise it'll have to go to someone with itty-bitty feet.


I hear the car in the driveway, so the meme'll have to wait.