Milk Cow Blues

Yes, believe it or not, that is in fact a song title, and it's not as esoteric as you would think. It's been a while since I blogged, and I think the last update mentioned my issues with exhaustion, muscle and joint pain, and some other symptoms and issues. After some research, I decided to try eliminating dairy from my diet because I have tested positive for an allergy to the casein protein before (although previously it only seemed to bother my asthma if I had too much) and because I was exhibiting the other symptoms for the allergy, and guess what, the symptoms for lactose intolerance too. After a week, the exhaustion improved 95% and the muscle and joint pain went away, and digestive issues went away. Okay, I was glad that it appeared to be an easy fix, as I was tested for some really nasty other conditions, but I was still ticked off in a major way that this appeared to be the problem.

Me, being me, and really not wanting to totally eliminate dairy from my diet, decided to test it, and I accepted an ice cream sandwich that was being handed out at work as a treat for making it through busy season. I had an immediate reaction, which explained some of the mystery symptoms, and then a delayed reaction several hours later that wasn't pretty. So I've basically been forced to accept that dairy is the issue.

My friend Mary Kate pointed me to a couple of reference books, Dairy-Free Cookbook, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Dairy-Free Eating, and The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook. Linda D., Gina H., Ashley G., and Mary Kate also weighed in on milk replacement recommendations. I've purchased a couple of things to try, but just about the time I purchased them, I got wacked with a killer head cold and I can't taste any thing anyway. So I'm going to wait until I'm clearer before the taste tests. I'll post results when I'm done. Another site Mary Kate suggested is godairyfree.org where I was able to purchase a list of dairy free replacement foods and regular dairy free processed foods.

I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but the thing that ticks me off the most about this is coffee. I cannot drink coffee without half and half. And it has to be real half and half, I can't even do the fat free fake crap. So I've been drinking diet pepsi at 8:00 am since I went off dairy, because I have to ingest caffeine somehow. I did buy soy creamer, but I don't have high hopes for my reaction to testing it out. Sigh...

Anyway, to catch up on the last couple of weeks, here's what we've been up to. Shawn and I went to the Seacoast Science Center in Rye. They have a really neat museum display area, and gorgeous open spaces. There appear to be a lot of bike trails too. I'd love to take the bikes here. But since we went before I got my energy all the way back, we just walked around a bit.

The following weekend, I had a Misplaced Modifiers meeting (our writing group). Unfortunately, our writing group has been spectacularly unmotivated in general. At least it wasn't just me. So we decided to use the group meeting to do short timed writing exercises based on some writing prompt exercises I had complied on index cards from several sources including What If, which is a book of writing exercises. It was really amazing how much you can generate and make up in 15 minutes. Mary S. has a new challenge for haikus and I can't wait to see the results.

Last Friday night I went dancing with some of my knitting friends for a girl's night out. Alison M., Lora K., Jackie W., and Mary Kate R, and I went to the Derryfield to dance. They had a
band and we danced, a lot. For hours. I could barely walk the next day. Seriously, that was the first strenuous exercise I'd had for several months while the exhaustion thing was going on, and the next day was not pretty. But it was really fun. In a junior high dance kind of way :)

We also managed finally to get our cable box switched out for the HD one for the TV we got for Christmas from Brian and Joanne (Shawn's parents). I will spare you the diatribe I subjected Comcast to over that lovely experience. Suffice it to say, they are a bunch of moronic cretins.

Shawn did manage to get Netflicks set up with the Wii so we can watch instant downloads on the TV so that is cool, since we cut the cable package back.

In fiber news, the group secret project is not much further than it was on Sunday. Okay, it's not any further than it was on Sunday. I just haven't wanted to knit with the cold. Hopefully I feel better this weekend, because I have to get my act in gear.

I think that's all the news that's fit to print. Stay tuned for late breaking news.

Dog & Butterfly

Okay, there are really no dogs in this post, but its the only song that I could find that I could stomach with the word butterfly in it in the 5 minutes I bothered looking on Itunes. Why I need a song with the word butterfly for the title of this blog will become apparent shortly.

Since I hadn't seen my mother in a while, she decided to come down last weekend. When she comes, we have a bad habit of doing dumb things like going out to eat a restaurants that we've already been to because Mom has trouble getting really good Chinese in Maine. We also then end up going to Target, Walmart or Bestbuy and dubbing around, because going anywhere like that is a production where she is in Maine. It would take me 5 minutes to walk to the Walmart by my apartment and 10 to walk to Target. It's about 10 to 15 minutes by car to the mall that has the Bestbuy in it. However, this time I wanted to make sure that we did something different and interesting, as I'm trying to re-implement my plan to not be vegetative on weekends and see near by attractions that I've never bothered to go to, despite the fact that I have lived in NH since 1997.

Kat D. suggested that we go to The Butterfly Place in Westford, MA. I ran a couple of suggestions by Mom, including this one, and she picked this place. It's just outside of Tyngsborough, so it was only about 30 minutes from Manchvegas. There is an enclosure where there's a garden, a koi pond, little birds and all kinds of butterflies flying about. It was fairly early in the season, so it looked like the garden was not as lush as it will be later in the season, but it was still beautiful to see all the butterflies. I'll post a few pictures here, but if you're one of my friends on Facebook, the whole set is there.

Believe it or not but the blue butterly and the brown butterfly that looks like an owl, are the same butterfly species, but open and closed they look completely different.

Mom bought some praying mantis egg cases for Wren and Noah to hatch. They apparenly hatch out 200 or so baby praying mantises but only 2-3 make it to adulthood. I was so jealous. If I didn't live in an apartment and had a good place to put them once they hatched, I would have loved to get some. How cool would that be to watch?? They also had butterfly hatching kits as well.

We ended up going to Taipei Tokyo for dinner as usual, and then we hit Ocean State Job Lots which just opened in Hooksett. I got a bunch of random stuff, including $4 pajama bottoms, a $5 purple umbrella and $10 plastic mats for office chairs on the carpet that I'm going to use under Kiwi's play palace in the living room. They had a lot of really cheap gardening stuff too, which is good because I'm going to attempt another balcony garden this year. Tomato Topsy Turvey, here I come!

On Sunday we hit Walgreens to attempt to get last minute Easter stuff for the boys that Mom could deliver on her way home. I got trapped in the "as seen on TV" aisle. Those of you who know me are aware that I have a problem with this stuff. I don't expect it to work, but I just want to see if it does. I am the proud new owner of a Titan Peeler, and the 8 foot tomato trees. I haven't tested the peeler out, but I will let you know. I'm planning to start the tomatoes today. In a related topic, I saw a new commercial for a robo stir, which is a battery operated thing to automatically stir your food. I'm convinced that this is a portent of doom for the end of Western civilization.

Still working on the fatigue thing. Mindy C. came up with an idea that it may be a food allergy or intolerance, and researching about it, the symptoms seem to fit. I'm going to stay away from a few things and see if it helps, and then if I notice a difference, I'm going to contact my doctor about a food elimination diet. One of the articles noted that as you head toward midlife (read menopause) women can experience new allergies, food intolerances and exacerbations of current allergies. We'll see how it goes, at least it would be something I could fix.

Still working on secret projects. We're nearing the deadline for the group project, and I've got quite a few back from the participants. On the Secret Project for Sally, I'm nearing completion of the first thing. Have to say though, I'm disappointed in the yarn company authoring the pattern for severely overestimating how much yarn it took to do the project. I'm going to have several full skeins left over. This does not help with my stash issues.

I still haven't written anything more on the novel. I'm considering whether I skip this month for writing group, or I need to produce something ASAP to have it posted on our group's website. Shawn and I are planning to try visiting the Seacoast Science Center on Odiorne Point, but I'm not sure if we'll get there today.

Stay tuned for breaking news...

Getting Better

I have not blogged for sometime. Between battling an as yet unidentified health issue which is causing me some joint pain, massive fatigue, and night sweats, and dealing with the current round of baby knitting because my friends must procreate in swarms, I've been blowing off the blog.


Don't worry about the health thing, they've tested me for everything that could be potentially nasty, and I'm clear. My doc thinks it may be a virus. I think he's possibly out of his mind, but we'll give it another month or two and see how it goes. (Not that I didn't give it a month and a half before I trooped into his office, but whatever.) In the meantime, I've decided that I'm sick to death of being tired, and if there's one thing I'm good at, it's forcing myself to do stuff even if it kills me. Therefore, I will be refusing to let the fatigue affect my life at all, even if it means jabbing myself in the leg with a knitting needle to keep myself awake, which I was actually forced to resort to doing on Friday night, so that I could continue knitting. (Picture me shaking my fist at the sky, because that's pretty much what I'm doing at this point.)


By way of catch up, and because the pics are so cute, I finished the Thistle and Hat Mitten set and got Alison to pose. I've already sold 5 of the patterns, which I think is solely due to the model.

At work we had a giant cupcake birthday cake for Kat, which I threatened to put a picture of on my blog, and look, I did :)

A couple of weeks ago at writing group, there was some discussion about my novel, and in order to explicate a character's motivations in my book, I need to possibly create and kill off a younger sibling for my main character. The younger sibling would be about 4 or 5 and I'm trying to brainstorm on accidental deaths in rural Maine on a farm. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. This is the other part of the fatigue thing that I have to bull my way through. We had a really great writing group, and I've been so tired, and focused on baby-palooza knitting, that I haven't touched any of the ideas we came up with. (Shaking my fist at the sky again...)

In other news, I finally found a third party backup service that I liked. Now I can access all my computer files on any computer through the web and I can do it on my blackberry too. And it syncs anytime I make a change that minute. Yay!! I'm continuing daily backups on my external hard drive, but you all know how much that ended up working last time. Here's the link to the service I got, if you want to check it out Sugar Sync.

There's not much fiber related news that I can post right now, given that some of my friends read my blog. The group Secret Project is progressing, the solo Secret Project for Sally is moving at a good clip, and the Secret Project for Chris and Kristie is at a standstill except when I need it as a decoy at guild meetings. I'm prioritizing knitting by due dates at this point. Once my friend Sarah A. has a gender, I can put her into the queue as well.

We did get out bikes out of Brian and Joanne's basement (Shawn's parents) and took them over to Goodale's to get them tuned up for the season, so they are all ready to go now. But between the cold and the fatigue, I haven't managed a ride yet. And this weekend my mother was here, so it hasn't happened either. Soon though, I'm going to make myself go no matter how tired I am.

Now we are returning to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress.

Dancing Queen

While at the Elegant Ewe for Gina's show, I also picked up some more sock yarn. Because I need it, right? And especially in the color I chose. Because you know, I couldn't possibly have any purple sock yarn in the stash right? Ha.

On Friday Alison had invited us to go see her Aunt Sue's belly dancing recital. We went to Alison's to pick her up so that Shawn could meet Edgar. They seemed to get along okay, even though Edgar is a mommy's dog. You should see him trail Alison through the whole apartment, it's hilarious.


We drove down to the Crown Plaza in Nashua for the belly dancing recital. Apparently it was a whole day workshop. There were lots of vendors selling costumes, so Alison and I had to investigate this prior to the show. I don't think the purple hip scarf with the the jingling sequins really went with my fleece coat. Doesn't seem to have quite the right effect.

There were various performances by groups and individuals attending the workshop, but my camera batteries were on their last legs, so I focused on making sure I had pictures of Aunt Sue's performance. They all came out really dark, so they've been photoshopped to death to get these. Aunt Sue's class is a beginner to intermediate class and I think they said they were doing a veil dance. Aunt Sue is in green/teal.
















It was fascinating really. After the performance, since it was around the corner, we went to Five Guys and Fries.

Yesterday and today I spent several hours working on the novel. I now have 26, 171 words and 88 pages. I've almost sorted out the time line, but I still think it's going to take a couple of hours to deal with that and have it make sense. I'm hoping to resolve it tonight, but we'll see. I am now at 26% of my goal of 100,000 words.

In fiber news, I've been making some progress on the knitting, but I've really been focusing on the writing this week. I'm about to start the decreases on the hand on the mittens, but it's been slow going. I think I'm bored because I've knit these before, even though it was twelve years ago.

I'm off to write. I have twelve hours of time in the novel to span to get me to where I should be, in the timeline. Stay tuned.

Long As I Can See the Light

Okay it's been a busy two weeks. I might have to split this up into two posts. Last weekend, Lisa E and I went to El Mexicano Jr on Wilson Street in Manchester. This excursion is part of Lisa's plan to seek out new and different places, as some times off the beaten track is a hidden jewel. There isn't much ambiance to the place and there are only three tables, but the food was wonderful. Lisa tried a selection of tacos and I got the chile relleno plate and we each got guacamole. Lisa was disappointed as she really wanted to try the tongue taco, but they didn't have it available that night. It was also nicely inexpensive. If you don't mind the hole in the wall atmosphere (which I don't), this is a must try.

On Saturday, I foolishly made my car inspection appointment for 8:00 am, so I trooped up to Grappone, and then visited the Corner View Restaurant for blueberry pancakes while I reread and made notes on my writing group's submissions for the meeting that afternoon. Writing group was hosted by Mary Kate and her 19 and 22 pound cats. Writing group was very helpful, despite the fact that I had not submitted what I wanted to. Mary Kate hosted and served some wonderful homemade bread and some chocolate with chili in it that was just amazing. I arrived home that day to find that Shawn had bought me a box of chocolates and some champagne, but no sculpture. Champagne is good though. And I think it'll probably take me at least 5 years to get Shawn to do a sculpture....at least.

We had decided to really do Valentine's Day on Monday, as we both had it off. What we ended up doing is a cooking marathon. We grocery shopped for the first time since god knows when, so on Monday we got the crock pots running, and made Potato Cheese soup, Green Chile Stew, and Caribbean Black bean soup. We package these up in individual gladware containers and freeze them for lunches. For our romantic dinner, we got two filet mignon, got out the rotisserie and roasted garlic, made a roasted garlic sauce with red wine vinegar, shallots and chicken broth reduced and then blended with 2 bulbs of the roasted garlic. Then we crushed peppercorns and cooked the filet in the rotisserie. The sauce was wonderful.

On Wednesday I made an appearance at the Manchvegas knitting group so I could snag my Thin Mint girl scout cookies from Sarah C. It was nice to see everyone and I needed the laughs. On Thursday, I had made an appointment to get my hair cut at a real salon, 26th on Hanover in Manchester. Brittany talked me into a cut with layers, this is my best attempt at taking a picture of myself. It actually looks better than that. After the haircut, I headed on over to Alison's to meet Edgar. Edgar is Alison's new child, a shih tzu - chihuahua mix. He's only six months old and only six pounds.

During this week, I also worked on the novel a lot. Unfortunately, I did not use the Wii Fit very much. After writing group and seeing Lisa, I've been hellbent on getting the rewrites done so that I can send it out to certain people who want the next installment, but it's been taking longer than I thought it would.

On Saturday, I went to see Gina H's trunk show at the Elegant Ewe, at which she had her new book and lots of the items from the book on display. If you're interested in Gina's book, go here. She's done a really nice job of putting it together and printing it. It's very professionally done and there's some neat patterns in it.

Stay tuned for part II...

Wasted Words

Just a warning to start. I'm cranky due the flu/stomach bug I developed on Sunday evening. I spent most of Monday in bed or comatose or playing games on the wii which did not require any physical movement. Shockingly, they do exist. Because I had left revising my submission for writing group until the last minute on Sunday, it didn't get done as the result of the flu. And while I feel a bit better today, in that I went to work, and there have been no mad dashes for the facilities, I don't feel coherent enough to work on the novel. Spew a bunch of crap on my blog, yeah, but not the novel. So I have posted garbage on my writing group's site for the critique this month and I'm ticked off at myself about it, hence the Allman Brothers' Wasted Words song title for the blog title today. (What is with me and the Allman Brothers lately??)

I also turned 38 years old this Saturday. And while I don't really care about the age thing so much, although I am noticing more white hairs, it's just that I had meant to accomplish more than I have by now. And that sounds arrogant and obnoxious, but it's sort of true. I do hope I'm a late bloomer.

In other birthday news, Kat at work made these lovely cupcakes for me. Notice the skittles and the sour gummy nightcrawlers. The cupcakes were lemon with lemon frosting and were awesome. Given that since Shawn was diagnosed with diabetes I have all but given up skittles and sour gummy candy of any kind, they were such a treat! (Yes, I do have extremely juvenile taste in candy, thank you. I am aware of that.)

On Saturday Shawn gave me a Nintendo Wii points card, a gift card to the Elegant Ewe, and a skein of purple Swans Island Certified Organic Merino Worsted yarn. It's not yarn I would have bought for myself due the cost, but it is lovely and very smooshy and soft. I also got one of Shawn's really lovely cards, but unfortunately, I ended up choking on the cupcake in the pictures in the middle of reading it. So it really didn't have the effect Shawn was going for. Usually I end up in tears because he's so sweet, but this time I was in tears trying to get green coconut out of my throat. Poor Shawn.

Besides the choking, I was also emotionally traumatized on Saturday due to the arrival of my new driver's license. I don't think I've ever had a picture this bad. Mary Kate said I look like I'm Asian. I'm tempted to lose it and get a replacement, but I think they just print them out again from the computer now. Sigh...

We normally go to dinner for each other's birthdays. I really wanted to go to the Hanover Street Chophouse because we had such an unbelievable meal there about a year and half ago. However, because it's so expensive, I had to offer to pay half to get to go. It was worth it. Shawn had the soup of the day which was a white bean soup with pork belly and some roasted vegetables, the truffled filet with fingerling potatoes and roasted vegetables, and a side of brussel sprouts cut in half and grilled with bacon (which I ate half of). I had the calamari with a garlic/spicy aioli and some marinara, the surf and turf which came with a filet, a lobster tail poached in butter, sour cream mashed potatoes and asparagus with Hollandaise sauce. They had a panna cotta served with blood orange sorbet, but I couldn't eat all that so they let me just have some blood orange sorbet. They wrote happy birthday in chocolate syrup on the plate which was very ornate. I love it there, wish I could afford to go more than once every two years or so. The waiter tried to guess my age as 28 or 29, angling for the tip I guess :)

On Sunday I did the Wii for about an hour trying to work off some of the dinner, but I'm thinking it'll be days and days before that happens. I then went to the Sprint Store to get a new phone. Look at the color. I could just cry. But they had to order it, so I won't get it until Thursday probably.

Afterwards I went to guild and had a lovely time. People think that knitters are nice and sedate, but not so much. To protect the guilty, I'll not discuss the warped comments about poultry that occurred.

After guild I went to Joanne and Brian's (Shawn's parents) to visit. I helped Joanne set up their wii for wireless and showed her how to get other mii characters and register her friend's wii's. I got a very sweet card, a gift card to Target and Spore Hero for the wii. Woo hoo!! I did play it for about two hours while sick on Monday, as it does not have much physical activity.

Tonight on my way home from work, I stopped in at the Ewe. I bought a skein of Half Crepe from Mountain Colors. I love this yarn, but I've never bought it because I couldn't bring myself to spend the money. So I used Shawn's gift card.

While I was there, I also picked up the Trekking Hand Art sock yarn I had been eyeing last week. The colors don't really translate well in the picture but I really like it.

And that pretty much brings us up to date. Stay tuned for further transmissions.

A Day in the Life

This week was about more cleaning. Again, I really, really hate cleaning. But the house had to be presentable for Laura V's visit, or she'd tidy around me. Seriously. It's happened.

Poor Shawn got home from Minneapolis on Friday night, earlier than expected, to find me on the kitchen floor in my cruddiest clothes cleaning the hermit crab cage. And then he got impressed into service. I'm sure he was thrilled that he managed to get an earlier flight home, so that he could help clean for the next three hours or so.

Laura arrived on Saturday morning, and we played with the Wii Fit Plus so she could check it out. After several hours of silliness, we decided to grab Vietnamese for lunch at the Golden Bowl on Queen City Ave in Manchester, because Vietnamese is always good. Then Laura decided that she needed a Wii, a Wii Fit Plus, some assorted accessories, and a TV. Apparently the Wii and the Wii Fit Plus are in short supply in the Manchester/Concord area. It took us going to five stores to get everything she needed and we snagged the last Wii Fit Plus and the last Wii at two different stores by calling ahead and telling them to hold it. The saleswoman at the BestBuy in Concord told us to take the Wii Fit Plus out to the car immediately so we did not get mugged for it.

Once we got everything we came back to the house, and goofed off for a while before heading to Fratellos on Canal in Manchester for dinner. We had a bottle of prosecco, which I had not had before. It was lovely, but I'm a sparkling wine fan. We had the carpaccio, Laura had the Chicken Capri and I had Lobster Ravioli. And then for some reason we had dessert. Laura had a puff pastry sundae thing, and I had the toll house pie. It was wonderful.

On Sunday, I conned Laura into going to guild with me. Laura does not knit. The only time that Laura tried to knit when we lived together, she knit so tightly that her hands swelled up about twice their normal size. It was quite possibly once of the weirdest knitting related thing I've ever seen. She appeared to have a good time chatting with everyone, and I got to work on my hat. I've finished with the color work and I just need to knit the crown and the decreases and I can start on the mittens.

The other good thing about knitting on Sunday was that Sarah came with pictures of Gabriel in the Dale Liederhosen outfit I knit for her shower last year. He's so adorable, and I'm happy that it fit him, as I was slightly worried about the waist size of the liederhosen when I knit it.

After guild, I drove Laura back to Boston since it would be hard for her to take the bus back with all her new electronics purchases. After I got home my husband picked up dinner for at Hot Stone Pizzeria, and I crashed.

Stay tuned for further updates, stay warm New Englanders.