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.

dogiversary

Perhaps you are getting tired of dog news in lieu of actual knitting in my life? Move along, then, as we have another milestone in Chez Nuuanu Estate.

It's Cricket's first dogiversary. We've had him for one year today! In contrast to Ella, he was the biggest pup in his litter, and has always been a sort of a hulking, oafish fellow, though pretty smart.


The breeder was calling him The Buddha, but we thought it seemed kinda disrespectful to name him that, as we had so many Buddhist friends and co-workers here...and besides, he isn't very serene, and tends to complain incessantly about whatever is on his mind...not so Buddhist, if you ask me. So we changed his name to Cricket, because, well, he was sporty, and black and bouncy like a cricket, but mostly because we liked the sound of it.


It's been shortened to Crick, but sometimes he gets the long forms; Cricket Cricketovich, or the more middle eastern sounding Crickmanistan.


He's a dog with 'issues' as one puts it politely. A little aggressive with other dogs, not so focused and driven as Ella, even when she was that age. Not one to sit peacefully in the corner for long, either. He snores, drinks from the toilet and digs up roots in the yard. He brings lava rocks the size of softballs into the house through the dog door. Maybe the canine equivalent of pumping iron?

vignettes and a birthday

Happy Birthday to my lovely Ella, couch dog extraordinaire, fetcher of frisbees, queen of carrion-eaters, champion finder of treats tossed in the grass, sometimes agility dog, always a beloved companion. I remember, 9 years ago, when the breeder phoned me to tell me the litter had been born, and she remarked that the runt, half the size of the other pups, was really active, scrambling over the other 8 pups, with a powerful will to live. I didn't realize that the runt was going to eventually become my own, 2 months later.
At 9, she is still lively, a serious watch dog, and the boss. Time has flown so quickly, my love.


It wouldn't have been knit night without some silly shennanigans at Ward Center last week. Here is a bit of fun with Blogless Michelle's gift of fantastic purple possum yarn from New Zealand, in Goma Tei Ramen restaurant. I am being silly while the Blogless One eggs me on. I think we were good for business, what with the yarn modeling, and enthusiasm for their food. Not to mention their excellent Kirin draft beer which is cheap and delicious. Video courtesy of that clever Acornbud


Did I mention I'd completely let go of work? I have just 2 little vignettes for you, both taking place at my job...

Vignette #1: I cleaned up and recycled 33 empty water bottles drunk up by my co-teacher, who never cleans surrounding surfaces; they were lined up on our metal counter by the sink. When I asked her about them (thus dropping a HUGE hint that they were cluttering up the area) she said "Oh yeah, you'll have to get a trash bag from the custodians and haul them down to the recycling dumpster." Uh...never mind that I've been drinking from the same water bottle all year, and that this mess was NOT mine. I was so surprised by her response that I just did what she asked. Later she remarked to me "I"m so glad that you're a person who cleans, I feel badly that I'm not..." I shook my head in marvelling wonder, and continue to count the days til we do not have to share a classroom, negotiate curriculum, and do grades together.

Vignette #2: I'm eating fruit salad at my desk during recess. I put the bowl down on the desk, and go across the room to assist a student who's staying in to finish work. I'm gone for 5 minutes. When I return, there are 3 little cockroaches in my fruit salad!" Needless to say, this got tossed. Yick.

Ah, well, it's getting to be that summer time feeling, even here in the land of the endless summer.

slam!

Spring has slammed me with allergies, spring fever and a general unwillingness to work hard on anything except for, wonder of wonders, housecleaning. I dunno, there's been something satisfying about scrubbing and vacuuming and picking up and putting away, recently. It can't last. I'm not really that domestic. Nevertheless, it is nice to wake up to a clean house, these days. I've been getting up early, 5:00 am, and journaling, knitting, reading tarot and just puttering around the house. I don't get to work any earlier, but things seem to work better for me when I get out of bed at the crack of dawn. It does require some machination to get INTO the bed at a decent hour, though.

Lady Eleanor is growing, tier by tier. I am enjoying this knit, even though the repetitive zone of 8 stitches back and forth is wrecking my wrists and hands in a way that they haven't been wrecked since I first learned to knit. I'm almost willing to believe the aches are a product of my ongoing general malaise, rather than any repetitive stress injury triggered by the knitting. The malaise of sore throats and drag-ass and itenerant aches and pains is undiagnosed by my doctor, who prescribed exercise and decongestants. I'm thinking massage and a detox diet as soon as school's out. Til then, it's tons of sleep, which IS helping, and exercise, which at least feels great when I'm doing it.

Anyway, here's Eleanor:

Isn't she lovely?

I spent some $ at the annual Webs sale on some DK yarns: Jo Sharp Silkroad DK in the color "Cedar". I love this color, which is pretty true here in the shot. This is slated for Marilyn's Not-So-Shrunken Cardigan eventually.



Here's some Elsebeth Lavold Silky Tweed, in a remarkable rust color that closely matches my cherry wood dining room table! This yarn, with its small percentage of wool, and mostly cotton and silk, will be the Lotus Blossom Tank when it grows up.


The employment situation is still nebulous. That said, work is pretty enjoyable right now, given that I'm making lemons out of lemonade. I think it's proof positive that I've made the break from work obsession, that I'm not eating myself alive over not having a job for next year, yet. Perhaps another taste of the rainbow is in order.

soy silk struggle

Isn't this pretty? It's something whose name eludes me, but is doing well, in spite of my current policy of benign neglect.

Little peek in here. I have some soy silk, Southwest Trading Company's Karaoke, that I got in a yarn swap months ago, at Aloha Knitters. I was sitting on it, unsure of what to do with it. I thought it was so pretty, and soft, and the yummiest warmest French Vanilla color. I contemplated mixing it up with some Rowan Calmer, in Annie Modesitt's corset top, but after a swatch, realize they aren't quite the same gauge and look funky together, and not funky in a good way, either, but mismatched, like something I'd wear to walk the dogs on a Sunday morning. I thought about a washcloth, because, really, I just wanted to rub that soy silk all over myself. But the pattern I was trying to knit wasn't working for me, and I was mighty damn tired of ripping and re-knitting and getting the wrong number of stitches after that silly bobble row (oh accursed Mason-Dixon seductive washrags...)and suddenly I realized that I am done, finished, completely over that soy silk. It's going to Knittybird on Thursday, because it seems it's haunting her from a distance, too! She asked about it the other night at knit night, and I gave her an iffy answer, and then went home and tried to make something out of it, just to see if it would work for me. Since it's obviously not working for me, it's time for it to fly the coop. Adieu, soy silk! Blessings to you in the creative hands of Ms. Bird!

The weather has been all over the map here. Windy as all get-out, and rainy at nights, hard, warm rains, with huge drops that fall horizontally and end just at dawn, leaving a nice cool sunrise. The wind has provoked my usual case of spring-driven brainfog, and I'm fighting it with Claritin and giving myself extra time and caffeine to accomplish just about anything.

Little knitting (see the aforementioned soy silk struggle) has been done that hasn't been ripped. I'm taking a knitting break this week, as I concentrate on other things, namely, my backlog of ungraded student work, dog grooming and cooking. I made dolmas, oatmeal cookies and lentil soup the past couple of days, in a domestic frenzy. Somehow that's a balanced diet, I guess. The cookies had chocolate chips in them, too, making them more complete.

turn of the moon

Such a sad week. The shootings at Virginia Tech were so shocking and horrific. I consider myself a Virginian, despite not having been born there, and despite the fact that I live thousands of miles away, now. My father's family is from there, long rooted in the Shennandoah Valley, and it's the seasonal change, the trees, flowers and animals of the Blueridge that inspire me most in this world. I did not go to VA Tech, but have a very dear friend whose husband is a professor there, and have spent my share of days in Blacksburg, and surrounding Montgomery County.

It has taken awhile to digest the news of the shootings, and the shooter's sad history, and all these events coming so close to the anniversary of the Columbine event, which of course, changed school security and our (misguided?) perception of school as a safe place. The news, later this week, that a parent of a kindergartener walked into her child's classroom, brandished a toy gun and started saying "bang-bang" to the students, in a copycat event, was the apalling icing on the cake. What is it about our culture that breeds such a disconnectedness and lack of empathy?

That's a rhetorical question, and does not require an answer, by the way. I've just been pondering all week.

Mercifully, the moon has changed, which always gives me the strength to crawl out of my funk and count my blessings, to try new things and to put on the witch hat again. Funny thing, after Leah departed, at the end of March, I was seized with a profound loneliness for the company of other pagans. It was so nice to casually talk about ritual, energy, tarot, and our spirituality, without having to consider putting anything into context, or edit myself in any way. I live and work in a very tolerant community, right now, but for the first time in 17 years, am not a member of a working pagan circle that meets in realtime. The one group I visited here on Oahu meets too far away, and were philosophically different enough from my own orientation to have me driving off to meet with them on a regular basis. I've been enjoying the solitary practice since I moved here, for the most part, but Leah's visit made me realize anew, how much I missed those folk and all the facetime we used to enjoy.

So it's been a troubled few weeks, in large ways and small.
But time moseys on, and the kolea - golden plovers, are getting ready to migrate for their summer in Alaska. These birds are pretty nondescript in the fall and winter months, but in the spring, they put on their jaunty black bibs and turn a nice golden color for breeding plumage, and then disappear for 3-4 months. A nice life, splitting your time between Alaska and Hawai'i, if you can get it. I took this picture at school, but we have a resident kolea in our back yard, too, who eats well, picking bugs and slugs out of dog poop. I think he also makes the occasional snack out of the lizard, as well. He is Ella and Cricket's would-be prey, they always launch off the deck steps in hot pursuit of him when they go outside.


I had occasion to join the ladies of the NRN at Pauoa Chop Suey, the other night. This was a delightful, unknown-to-me Chinese restaurant that isn't too far from home. I continue to be thrilled by the hidden, hole-in-the-wall local restaurants in Honolulu. We totally tasted the rainbow, in both company and food.

Of course no taste of the rainbow can compare with this one:


2 chocolate and 2 vanilla cream puffs from the Beard Papa, that crazy Japanese purveyor of ecstasy. I love the yellow carrying case they come in.



Ella is hoping that one will fall off the counter and into her waiting mouth.



Funny thing...Ella is the most energetic beggar that ever lived. She firmly believes that effort, in the form of soulful looks, sotto voce moans, and repeated sitting, downing, and offering up all of her scanty repetoire of tricks, will get her a handout. She would never dream of taking anything off the counter or stealing food - that's much more Cricket's game. He's a do it yourself kind of guy, and as such, rarely puts much energy into a beg. I don't know which dog is more annoying in the presence of food, really.

Knitting. No new pix to show. Eleanor slugs along, beautiful, soft and easy to knit. The Child's First Sock creeps along on its tiny #1 needles, too. Both are satisfying, but I'm kind of itching for a short project that will crank out fast. I have a couple of things in mind, and may dedicate some Battlestar Galactica time to the quick fix...

...will they ever stop barking?

My neighbor has 2 mean little chihuahuas, one of whom actually CHASED MY CAR down the driveway last week. And they are barking, incessantly; have been for the past half hour. They are barking so incessantly that I put my own dogs in their crates to stop their ongoing commentary on the up-the-hill bowwowwow...perhaps not entirely fair, except that I paid them off with kong toys stuffed with salmon jerky and biscuits to enjoy in their crates, so I don't feel too guilty. Still, I wonder why they're barking so urgently and constantly. They usually don't bark unless someone's walking past their enclosure.

In lieu of any actual updated content, I offer images from a Friday evening.
Cricket, looking regal on our back steps, surveying the backyard.


My dinner of roast veggies and red wine.


The lastest object of my fascination; the halting beginnings of the Lady Eleanor Entrelac Stole, from"Scarf Style". The yarn is Noro Silk Garden, in color #226, a mix of greys, blues, and browns. I love this yarn, color and texture. I read complaints out there in Blogland about the amount of vegetable matter, sticks and straw in Silk Garden, but I don't find it excessive or offensive. Knitting so recently with Noro's Kureyon, though, and now Silk Garden, I find myself wishing for a single-color project, and contemplate what's next in the pipeline for me. Not to be shared just yet, mostly because I'm trying to wrap up some WIPs before committing to something else new. Eleanor was just something I couldn't put off anymore. It is an easy, amusing project.

In other news, as of this June, both my co-teacher and I are out of our jobs. The district has transferred 2 teachers from another school that's downsizing into our positions, because we didn't have tenure. So we are back on the "to-be-hired" list, and while chances are good that we'll be employed, come August, it's not a sure thing. Fuckety-fuck. I am a bit over crying and angsting about my employment situation here in Hawaii. In my 13 years of teaching prior to my move here, I had excellent evaluations, and had no problem finding and keeping work. This system, with its combination of rigid, bureaucratic structure, and old-boy cronyism is not one I support, nor one that I want to give one whit of emotional energy to. I am determined to breathe deeply, ride the winds of chance and see where they drop me. If the work situation is impossible, come the new school year, I will sub, paint faces and walk dogs again for a living. Sigh. I like my paycheck. I like my benefits. I like my students and their families. But this system is corrupt and ineffective, and I am giving it no more than is absolutely necessary of my emotional investment.

Detaching is tiresome, though, and it seems like I am having my share of motivational problems.I think a personal day is in order.

The rain has begun. The chihuahuas have stopped barking. Silence is golden.

run ragged but happy

I've been silent, but frenzied, the past days, as my spring break wound down. My friend Leah came to visit, and while it was great to see her, she ran me a bit ragged. Leah's an ardent tourist, who travels a lot, and doesn't take easily to sitting around doing little while I knit and do housework. So we ran around Oahu, tasting the rainbow in great big bites, with helicopter rides and hikes and drives to the far reaches of the rock, and funny umbrella drinks and lots of shopping, and the sighting of sea turtles up close and personal. Nice, but I was so pleased with my weeks of silence and solitude prior to her visit that it was a bit of a shock to me to have all that followed with nonstop action. It's feast or famine around here at the Knitted Brow, and who's to say what's what? We also devoted inordinate amounts of time watching season 1 of Battlestar Galactica, thanks to my recent Netflix join. I got Leah hooked, and her parting shot to me at the airport was "I'm updating my queue..." to feed her own need for the cylon vs human struggle. Yum.

Such geeks we are. After Leah departed, I devoted some time to making a container herb garden. I planted basils, sage and cherry tomatoes in pots to live along our rock walls. Our actual soil is very thin and rocky here, and we have so many plant-eating creepy crawlies around that I am trying a container approach to growing things I actually want to eat. I'm trying not to get carried away with visions of my summery pesto just yet, but so far, everything's doing fine. I repotted the euphorbia, too, as it had nearly died away in its sad little rootbound pot. I'm feeling very much the gardener these days, though with spring break's end, my time is not my own again.

Spring break did result in the completed blue socks; not entirely matching, due to Trekking's rambling rippling colorways. I was calling them fraternal twins, but now decided that sock #2, the left one, is the Brother from Another Mother to sock #1. Thanks to Blogless Michelle (Ms Frogstreet? hint?) for that phrase, which I've taken every opportunity to use since I heard it a week ago.

Thanks to Cricket, for being the tolerant model for the perfect sock contrast. The colors are pretty true, and I'm happy with my work. I'll be making more socks from Sensational Knitted Socks, after a digression into Knitting Vintage Socks for a KAL of the Child's First Sock.


In other news, on Saturday, I went out thrifting at the Salvation Army. I don't particularly care for the thrift stores in Hawaii, but I tend to only shop at Salvation Army and Goodwill, so there may be better, smaller ones out there that I don't know about? Still, I had a good day, and $7.69 got me quite a haul of groovy booty. (I shudder to think of how the use of the phrase 'groovy booty' is going to repercuss on google and site hits)


The Haul:


A swanky green sarong for the beach and my hippie moods:



An incredible buy of some of my favorite soaps, including the much-loved olive oil and chamomile flavor that is so hard to find:


Not shown very well was a stunning white t-shirt, suitable for work and showing off my tan, should I ever acquire one.

Now, I'm back at work again, feeling tired and put-upon already. I need a spring tonic, I think.

frog street and other miracles

* Just a note about my last post...if you click on the photo of the circus tent, you'll see that there's a tightrope walker at the neighborhood circus. I didn't really realize it when I posted the shot, but found it by accident, playing around in iPhoto the other day. It's convincing me that life is full of strange and wonderful surprises, that we might just pass by.

Happy Ostara to one and all! I am off to celebrate in a solitary ritual in a wee bit, though I've already planted the 3 baby rosemary plants outside in the sun. It's funny how very SPRING it feels here in the land of balmy breezes and overgrown green. Rains feel softer. The sun is warming up nicely.

Stephanie asked in my last entry comments "what the heck is frogging?" and to answer that question, I provide here the remnants of poor mohair Kiri, mid-frog. I think the term "frog" came from the phrase "rip it".


So a half-knitted shawl becomes this messy pile of re-usable yarn:



I fell in love with that Jo Sharp mohair all over again, ripping out the Kiri shawl. Gotta find a good use for it. The colors enchant me.

Last week I was driving in the Liliha area, and I crossed a street entitled Frog Street. I wanted to turn up it, but was late for a school function. I've gotta go back and snap a pic of the sign. What a great name for a knit blog; Frog Street. Any takers? Michelle?

And now, in the category of Thrilling Me To No End, we have this award winner:


Each night, a tiny square, a wee glass of cabernet, and I'm in heaven. It takes so little, I'm telling you. That, and the new Netflix account, promising me "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Art School Confidential" within the week. That and my friend Leah's visit, coming up tomorrow, which should ignite a firestorm of tarot reading, hiking and general tasting of the rainbow anew. Yum.

Maybe I'll even get my knitting mojo back...

barbecue dreams and a lost mojo

In attempt to hunt down my knitting mojo, I took advantage of my 4:30am awakening to grind away on my second blue sock. No inspiration, but it was cozy in the bed, the coffee was cheering and I got a bit done. I am about 1/2 an inch from starting on the heel flap. I'm thinking my Friday night dose of tivo'd tv, and Boston's pizza (aren't I an exciting woman?) should render this puppy well on its way to being a pair of socks. The mojo's been MIA for a couple of weeks now, as I fret and pout and want to start new projects, but have so much stuff on the needles that I won't allow it til some things get finished. I am going to frog Kiri. I want that Jo Sharp mohair for something else and Kiri was never meant to be done in such a fat sheddy yarn. Mostly I just want the feeling of obligation to finish it off my back.

I was slated to join P in Portland, Oregon this weekend, for four fun-filled days, a kickoff to my 2 week spring break. But an airfare which raised itself $300 over its already splurgy price nixxed that conjugal visit. Sigh...I am alone for another week, but having no school frees me up to follow my bliss, so I am looking forward to THAT. Still, time off the island, bonding with the man, plus the general joys of Portland, and the promise of brewpubs, multiple swanky yarn stores, plus Target and Trader Joe's was something I was excited about. Last night I had a dream of being in a restaurant with my West Virginia cousins, and I was trying to decide what to order. It was a barbecue place and I was struggling to decide between sauces and styles. Texas style? Memphis style? Carolina style? Of course it was only a dream, because in Real Life I would always go for Carolina barbecue, with its vinegary mustardy bite betraying my southern roots. Funny thing about the West Virginians...we ran all over the Ohio/Kentucky border a few years back, trying to track down this very famous barbecue pit, as part of my family's rare and wonderful mother-daughter road trip.

Someone in my neighborhood is tenting their house for termites! It looks like the circus has come to town.

2 little rants

Bad menstrual migraine this morning, requiring excedrin, total darkness, ice pack and ginger and complete stillness to treat. Plus reiki, as best as I could give it, and the comfort of dogs. Hours later, and I am somewhat better. My health is giving me fits these days, with one damn thing after another, seems to point to an imbalance of sorts. I think I need to go see an acupuncturist, for some sort of major chi unblocking or something. Yick. Always headachy, I didn't used to get these headaches tied to my period in the past. Is this a part of growing older? Is it a perimenopause thing? I am normally philosophical about my changing body but this predictable monthly migraine thing is a pain in the ass, not to mention the head. Arrrgh. What's more, it's a time waster. I had a long hike planned this morning, and now it's off. Happily, I am feeling more like myself, my 2 days of complete silence are doing me worlds of good, and the house is clean, more or less, allowing me to enjoy today's diet of grading papers, dog bathing and knitting, not to mention the Sunday night cable fare of "Rome" and "The L Word".

And now for something comletely different...a "Pride and Prejudice" rant. Does anyone out there besides me think that the part in the story where Lydia runs off with Wickham is just a big useless distraction? Yeah, we know Wickham's a cad, and Lydia is a shameless flirt, but really, Lizzie and Darcy have already more or less made up, and this silly elopement on Lydia's part is bothersome. We don't need it as a plot device, Wickham's misuse of Darcy's sister has already convinced us that he's no good, and Darcy has redeemed himself by getting all wet in the pond and such...okay, it's clear that Jane Austen's efforts are pearls before swine, in my case, but I'm just saying...

So we all know what I did yesterday. Knitted, ripped (I made a big mistake on the intarsia of Rosedale and had to correct it)and watched the BBC's version of "Pride and Prejudice" in its entirety. I also made some most excellent split pea with ham soup, and brushed the dogs. In complete silence.

Now, I'm going quietly about my business.

voiceless

Still sick. No voice now. Doctor was encouraging, saying that I needed to live through it, but that she could prescribe me things to help me do that. So now I have a powerful arsenal of decongestants, codeine and painkillers to ease my way. I'm okay with antibiotics not being prescribed for something viral. I'm also fine with just laying around the house in a morphine-induced fog, though it does hamper my knitting somewhat. My co-teacher is fretting at my absence, though. I have to keep reminding her of her own various absences and spells of the vapors when she gets riled up. Gah! Besides, since I continue to do most of the actual teaching, while she does most of the recordkeeping/grading/admin stuff, my voice is crucial. I know it's the burden of teaching on top of that that bums her out, as my sub is not a great teacher. But she's gotta suck it up til I can speak again without sounding like an unhappy frog.

It's a nice sunny day for once here in Nuuanu. Makes me wish I felt like getting out in it for some more active pursuit beyond sitting on the deck drinking orange juice.

In honor of all this sunshine, I bring you my long-neglected, now recently picked-up Rosedale. Progress is slow, but enjoyable. Blogless Michelle likened this colorway to tropical fruits, and I can see that. Note the mango-colored intarsia block. I'm a little tired of the intarsia, and to be quite honest, am not sure it really adds anything to the sweater. I am happy to have tried the technique, but it isn't anything I feel strongly about. Maybe it's just the codeine that's making me feel like anything beyond straight stockinette is too much trouble. pleh....gonna go drink some more tea now.

still life with breakfast

morningtea.JPG, originally uploaded by ellapoodle.

I usually drink coffee in the mornings, but the past couple of days, I've switched over to tea. This happens every 6 months or so, lasts for a few weeks, and then devolves to coffee again. The teapot is a gift from my old neighbor, Tina, in Arlington. It began its life in the toney Washington DC restaurant, Obelisk, but when they switched to white teapots, she passed it on to me. I have a fair number of teapots; one from my grandmother's house, a cheery orange Fiestaware one, and a beautifully hand-painted one from Delft - an expensive gift to myself when P and I went to Holland a few Christmases ago. But the yellow teapot warms my heart. I don't use it without remembering sitting in Tina's kitchen, with her cat, dog and baby daughter all milling around the floor together.

The tea itself is Lob Nor, a combination of black and green teas, scented with bergamot, like an Earl Grey. It is the perfect morning cuppa, and compliments my current craze of wheat toast with raspberry jam. I bought the tea sheerly because of its name, which was subtitled "The Phantom Lake". How can you resist that name?

whingeing mostly

Ugh. I am getting sick. Raging sore throat, and a stomachy thing. I ignored it upon waking this morning, and went to dog training with Crick, who did splendidly. I think I had a breakthrough this morning, a way to handle his anxiety-prey drive-hyperfocus issue; on our walk to class (I go to Mililani early and walk him a mile or so before class to get him in a working zone) I gave him a toy to distract himself, a squishy green ball. He carried it for a mile, mouthing it gently. Voila! No barking, no crying and jumping through the entire walk and through the class. For this, I have Cesar Millan to thank. Not because Cesar has used this trick, to my knowledge, but because I've been watching him try novel ways of moving dogs through their fears and obsessions, and I think it's increasing my repetoire a little.

After class, I tried the Jamba Juice (Coldbuster with a protein boost) cure, to no avail. I came back home and slept. Up to the ringing of my cel phone; a delicious conversation with Hawkheart, and various homemade concoctions involving ginger, lemons, honey and cayenne. She listened to my lamenting, prescribed the use of a neti pot to avoid such infections altogether, and we caught up on each others' lives. Now it's dark, rainy, Saturday has trickled away in the dusk, and I'm still ill, and filled with the crazy need to clean my house, because, well, who wants to be home in all this filth? I think I'll settle for the kitchen and the bathroom.

I am such a baby, particularly when there's no other human around to ply me with chicken soup and gingerale. I wish the Oscars were on tonight...but I do have some tivo'd episodes of "House", "Lost" and "Survivor" that I haven't watched, so I may live. There's always that Firefly complete season dvd for the real self-medication.

Non-sequitur; it is raining REALLY hard right now. Yikes. Part of the dirt in the house is mud, tracked in by my canine friends.

In honor of Project Spectrum (too lazy to link, here) I am trying to see this month's featured colors, blue, gray in a new way. It ocurred to me that those mudtrackers are perfect Project Spectrum dogs. Ella is a color known as "silver", born black and graying at a very early age. She is the darkest of her siblings, others are a very pale, platinum gray. Cricket, who looks quite black, is actually "blue", a brownish black that will gray out over time. His undercoat is a dusty gray, and his face and paws are turning brown.




Going to wash dishes now. G'night everyone.

aloha friday

Our lava rock wall is all that keeps the mountain out of the living room, or so it sometimes seems, these windy days.

Lest I forget it's still winter, Nuuanu reminds me with a daily dose of hard gray rain, each morning as I leave for work, and again, with a rainbow-washed sunshower, each afternoon, as I think I'm ready to walk the dogs. Neither one is unpleasant; I'm just tired of getting rained on. And so I go horizontal...just because it's Friday and I can.

P is in Washington, DC for nearly 2 weeks, and I am free to eat whatever Thai foods I want, without having to negotiate with him what we have for takeout.. I am free to watch "Firefly" re-reruns without shame, and I don't have to jockey for the computer to play Snood. I am free to burn Nag Champa incense in the house without fear of triggering an athsma attack, and I can make the Pomegranate Mudpot cocktail with twice as much lime juice as I'd make it for him. Marriage is so many compromises, and it comes down to all those little things that one doesn't REALLY mind, but suddenly, oh damn, it's ten days of total self-indulgence! Of course I also have to recycle often enough to be able to carry the recycling boxes up the 31 steps, I have to remember to get the mail and prime the coffee pot each night, too. And my Snood victories aren't really that sweet, if I can't hoot and crow over them with my biggest Snood rival. So it's a mixed bag, this living alone thingy. But I generally enjoy my solitary time, once I get my rhythm going, and it keeps my marriage sane, I think.

Minor knitting progress on Rosedale yesterday, as I attached her sleeves, and am now working on the yoke. My hope is to use my solo evenings (when I'm not drinking pink drinks, thrilling over Firefly and playing silly computer games) to finish this sweater, along with the ever-languishing Kiri shawl. I am only able to knit lace when I'm completely alone, in a silent room, so even though I have a complete fascination for lace knitting, I don't get much done.

Things are so crazy at my school, these days, due to recent scandal and outlandishness that my job satisfaction/outsider feeling has really taken a back seat. Funny how disaster causes people to pull together sometimes. I am enjoying the students and even my quirky co-teacher doesn't affect my moods much, anymore. I am still just hoping to survive the year, and am not particularly proud of my work, this go-round, but it's not making me wretched at the moment, and for that, I am grateful.

The sun is out. The rain has stopped.

gung hey fat choy

I'm barbecuing pork chops to celebrate the Chinese New Year, year of the boar. Yum.

Ms Acornbud and I went to Chinatown today to browse around and see the sights. We found assorted bits and bobs, and ate roast duck with noodles and creamy mapo tofu with veggies. We tried to go to Aloha Yarns in Kaneohe, but they were closed for the long weekend, and so we ended up visiting Hoomaluhia Botanical Gardens; a place I've never been before. We saw wild pigs, a mother and some good-sized babies, surely a good omen for the new year!

I finished a sock yesterday, in the blue-grey-white Trekking colorway. Being a good pretend sock knitter, I immediately cast on for sock #2.
Pix below. Pay no attention to my scaly hairy legs, and merely admire the beauty of the one sock. I used a recipe from "Sensational Knitted Socks" and employed the Purl Lattice stitch pattern, which was easily memorizable, and forgiving of mistakes, as well. I really like this book, it is merely a bunch of generic formulae for knitting well-fitted socks in any gauge.






In other news, Spring is coming to Oahu! Our once barren plumeria is enjoying the strengthening sun, and buds and leaves are starting to peek out!

farewell old friend

Our 16-year old cockatiel Rainbo passed peacefully, this afternoon. He'd been increasingly geriatric, and we'd seen the end coming about a month ago, as he visited the vet, and the vet diagnosed good health but inevitable aging, and advised us to "keep him warm" and "make him comfortable; he's just an old man." We'd had him all the years of his life, well from the time he was about 10 weeks old, anyway. Acquired as a companion for our other bird Gemini, he went on to become my husband's beloved buddy, to father 3 clutches of babies with Gem, and to cross the country twice and the Pacific once. In the words of a friend, he was a bird with a profound lust for life. He outlived 2 other cockatiels, Gemini and the above-pictured whitefaced Buffy, and had no caution or fear of dogs. Cricket's arrival into the household last year meant a curtailment of his freedom, which considerably affected the quality of his life, I think.

I buried him in our garden, under the Surinam Cherry tree, by our outside altar. Sad, I am, but at peace, too, as he lived a long, rich, full life.

Where have I been? Nursing a cold, burying myself in Martin Cruz Smith's latest Arkady Renko novel, working ferociously, dog training, providing bird hospice, knitting a blue sock for Project Spectrum,seeing movies and generally living pretty well. With the new year, and the new moon, and Imbolc, I experienced a little shift in how I feel about being here. It's hard to explain, but I'll try. For months, really since last winter, I had been operating with this feeling just below the surface (and often not disguised at all) of just marking time here, until we moved back to the mainland. Now I moved here 18 months ago, knowing (as I knew about my Virginia life) that this would probably not be a permanent residence for me, but rather, a place we'd live for 5-6 years. In VA, I hurled myself into that place and life, and became rooted, absorbed, enthralled. Many factors contributed to that situation, and how it worked for me there. Hawaii has been a difficult adjustment for me, and part of me has fought it, stubbornly seeing it as my temporary way station til I got back to someplace with 4 distinct seasons, better yarn stores, a friendlier dog culture, yadayadayada. But with my sister's departure in early January, I started to see things a little differently. I made a resolution to more consciously live "in my life" here, rather than to be always wishing and pining for somewhere else. It IS where I live, now, after all, and while I may miss and love other places, Oahu has to be home for me now. No sooner than I had made this decision to commit to my life here, than it was tested a few weeks ago. At Mocha Java, as I sat with the Aloha Knitters, a drunken, irate touristy-kine guy came in, looking for a club called Rumors. When informed that it wasn't at Ward Center, he griped loudly that he'd just wasted a $15 taxi fare, and called Hawaii a "fuckin' third-world country." Immediately, I felt a rush of defensiveness, how dare he call OUR island a third-world country?! HA! How many times have I uttered that same phrase? Now truth be told, I have lived and traveled in the third world, and I don't like to loosely use that phrase, really, it's usually used in a pejorative, sweepingly dismissive and generalistic way, but I'm afraid that sometimes, in dealing with certain arcanely bureaucratic and colonial holdover institutions here, the slipper fits a little too well to be called much else.

It was the momentary sense of protectiveness, the offended pride, that made me feel weirdly as if, for a moment, I belonged.

So I've tried to taste the rainbow a little more deliberately. To go to the beach more often. To enjoy our low-sixties nights and call them "cold". To admire the stars I never saw in too-urban Arlington and count myself lucky to live here. Paradise? Absolutely not. But a nice place to be, nevertheless.

poetry

In honor of St. Brigid, a poem!


Valentine for Ernest Mann

You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he reinvented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of the skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we reinvent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

spinning out

I am in deep denial that my winter vacation's almost petered out. One thing about having 10 days of guest, is that you don't get much done, and it was a vacation that I was supposed to use to get my life back in order. Is that a fondly harbored fantasy or what? Hehhhh....

But this morning I did deep clean my bathroom, and re-organize my altar/shrine in the bedroom. I did a tarot reading for myself, and without going into too much detail, the cards look good, optimistic, in the clarity-creativity-fun realm. Always good news. I seldom do full-on readings for myself, as I think too much of a good thing can lead to analysis paralysis. I try to draw a card a day, though, if only to keep me reading the cards.

I am reading an outstanding book, Stephen King's latest novel, "Lisey's Story", which is kind of a departure for him; the story of a widow, a marriage, the way one spouse carries another in their consciousness. Of course it's a little scary, supernatural, of course there's King's inventiveness with language and funky way of weaving a story in and around and through itself until you have to put the book down and do some digesting, some recapping to understand what's going on there. But he breaks the novel down into little vignettes within chapters, within books, so it lends itself to re-reading and that digestive process. I'm thoroughly enjoying it, it's delicious in the way that "The Dead Zone" and "Salem's Lot" were, rather than the toil of "The Stand" and that whole "Dark Tower" series. Which I liked, by the way, it just was more work, whereas the two former books just grabbed me by the hand and dragged me down their totally weird paths. I go for years without reading King, but then occasionally I feel the need to re-visit Castle Rock. P boastfully claims to never have read even one page of one book of his. I find that hard to believe, and wonder how one gets through high school, college, the Peace Corps, field work in the jungle and dozens of overseas youth hostels, bush taxi rides, and gritty backpacker hotels without succumbing to his creepy charms?

I have been doing a wee bit of spinning, thanks to Opal's assistance and tutelage. Here is a shot of my first spun and plied yarn, about 35 yards of Corriedale (the white) and gorgeous blue roving, spun up into this thick and thin yarn. No plans for it, but it pleases me, nevertheless.

Buddha and the beast

Taking a wee break from my catch up work of cleaning house, doing laundry, banking and getting myself back on keel, after my sister's riotous 10 days here. I had fully intended to document the hanging out, running around and general frolic, but it fell by the wayside. So here are a few pix to hold you over...

We have been finding giant centipedes in our house off and on, this winter. Ugh. I'm told their bite is quite painful, but have not experienced it personally. It's made me much more cautious about emptying my shoes out, and where I throw the dirty laundry. This one is nearly dead, and was found in the koa room, (note the beautiful, though rather scratched floor) and I pitched it outside. They are not aggressive, I just don't want them in the house.



The sibling rival and I went to the Valley of the Temples, which is this cemetary and monument on the windward side of the island. It is beautiful, with a huge replica of the Byodo-in temple in Kyoto. The day we went, it was cloudy and quiet, very peaceful and beautiful.






We went here on New Year's Day, and it inspired me to get out and visit more sacred sites, in the coming year.