Rice Krispy

We've now reached the point where I have to decide whether or not to go to the doctor.

My hand surgeon predicted this problem a couple of years ago. He and the physical therapist both noticed that weird things were happening with both of my hands.

Me: "Aren't tendons supposed to slip off the knuckles when you make a tight fist? To get out of the way if you...um...hit something?"

Hand Surgeon: "No, that's absolutely not what they're supposed to do."

Me: "Then mine are better than everyone else's, because they have a protective adaptation! Woohoo!"

Hand Surgeon: "It's going to be a problem at some point. It doesn't hurt now?"

Me: "Nope! My only problem is my mangled pinkie, so if we can focus on that, we'll be cool."

Hand Surgeon: "Eventually, though..."

Me: "LALALALA! I can't hear you! LALALAAAA!"

I don't want to hear that I have to have surgery, but I can't keep ignoring it. I woke up this morning and wiggled my fingers. Something in the middle of my hand snapped, and something else crackled, and another thing popped. Not good.

Adapt

My finger is still in its round-the-clock splint, three weeks having turned into six. Last week, the hand surgeon said that it was healing up well after what was probably a mallet injury, and that the ruptured tendon was getting stronger again and...wait, what? New injury, months after Suzuki-tastrophe 2010? Ruptured tendon!? I might have taken the whole thing more seriously if the word "rupture" had come up sooner. I probably would also have freaked right the f&*k out about it and irritated everyone close to me by waving my hand around and wailing in a play for sympathy and free beer. Mostly the latter. Maybe it's a good thing he didn't bring it up before last week.


When the splint is taken off, for five seconds so that he can put on a fresh one and retape it, my finger does look better. "Look, Dr. Schilling! It straightens out after I bend it. It looks almost as good as the right one."

"No, no-no-no-no. Leave it straight the whole time." He's a mild-mannered guy. That's as close to yelling as he gets.

"O.K., but I'm not bending it now. I'm just fluffing up the knuckle wrinkles so that they'll match the other pinkie..." I do not add "...because I am a weirdo," as I'm certain that he has already realized this. He redoubles his efforts to quickly lash a fresh piece of aluminum to my hand.


I couldn't stand being idle any longer, so I figured out how to knit with the splint covering half my pinkie. All I have do do is double-wrap the yarn around the base of it, and it doesn't seem to migrate up and get caught in the tape. Work resumes on Papeline!

Sunday Morning Talk Shows

Molly: ...sigh...

Winston: ...

Molly: SIGH!

Winston: Uh, Molly? I'm kinda, you know, trying to sleep, and...

Molly: I know, and it's REALLY hard, huh? How can any of us sleep when we're worrying about my luscious paella?

Winston: Your what? 'Cause I was only thinking about how much I like sleeping, but...

Molly: That's what I'm SAYING, though. It's really hard to sleep when you have a LUXURIANT PATINA!

Winston: It's really hard to sleep when you're sighing on my face. I don't have a levitating pancetta or whatever.

Accountant Boy: Luxating patella, guys. It's called a luxating patella. But you seem fine, Molly, since you spent last night kicking me in the back.

Molly: Yay for Molly! Physical therapy resistance training! YAAAAAYYY!

* * *

Meanwhile, my hand surgeon told me that my finger isn't straightening out as well as it did last year, and recommended that I keep it splinted for three weeks. It's not going to help it hurt less, or make it less stiff, but it might make it less gnarled, so I'm going to give it a shot. There goes my tensioning finger, so no knitting. If it works, at least it'll look more like the other one. I'll take my victories where I can get them.

Stay Hungry

Yeah, baby! That's what I'm talking about! Push it! PUSH IT!

Oh, hello, fellow knitters. You caught me mid-set there. Little Lefty Pinkerton has been working hard on the strength exercises in anticipation of our final visit to the hand surgeon on Monday. We're hoping to make him proud, show him the fruits of our perseverance. Might not get full function back? I know he said it in an attempt to set realistic expectations.

Of course, I took it as a challenge. When my official physical therapy course ended, I bought the equipment to continue it on my own. I looked up the normative data on grip strength for women my age, found that I'm average for my right hand, decided that I should be above average and started working on that hand, too, even though there's nothing physically wrong with it. I might not be in great shape otherwise, but I'm going to have freakishly strong hands. I wonder if it will help my knitting speed.

Speaking of knitting, I am happy to hear that I'm not the only one with sewing issues, or the only one still knitting. It's just that I spent September looking at the knottygnome and stitchywitch blogs, insides twisting with jealous admiration. Go check out their work. It's quite humbling. Actively squashing the desire to be a seamstress.

Finally, today, you might be wondering what's up with all of the blog posts. Four days in a row is a record for me. It's part of my new outlook on life, my new creed, if you will. There are several parts to this creed, which I shall explain at nauseating length in a later post. You will, beloved readers, probably want to be at least partially intoxicated for it. The tenets of my new creed include "I'm Done with All That", "I'm Forty Years Old, Dammit", "Embrace the Cliche", and "Because F$%k It, That's Why". Those sound pretty negative, I know, but believe me when I say that they're actually affirming. And there are more positive-sounding tenets, but they don't have catchy names yet. For now, just know that the relevant piece here is "Go Big or Go Home".

(What's the Story) Morning Glory?

My backyard here at the new house, which will continue to be the new house for another five years, at which point it will have been our house longer than the old house and will lose the modifier, is a wild and unstructured place. Accountant Boy rebuilt one-fourth of the deck's total surface a couple of months ago, but the rest of it is still unstable, one heavy foot away from catastrophe. We haven't taken the time to figure out the irrigation back there, so some things are overwatered and some are dying from a lack of it. We bought some Japanese maples at Costco early last spring. They're still in nursery pots. We like to say that we're pacing ourselves.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I looked out there at the vine that I couldn't remember planting and saw that thing. I remember throwing some morning glory seeds in the ground, but it's been a while, at least a couple of years. When a leafy vine cropped up around a withering rudebeckia, I assumed it was a stowaway from the nursery. It didn't bloom for eighteen months, but it didn't die over the winter, even with the snow. Tough plant. And now it's blooming, which is amazing given that we don't water it and it's living in the notoriously crappy Pleasant Hill soil.


Everything in the ground went wild this summer. This is the cosmos that we grew from seed. See what looks like a sapling trunk in the picture, near the plastic Holstein's ass? It's actually a cosmos stem. Yes, these are the same cosmos that you buy in 6-packs at Home Depot. Mine grew six feet tall.

It may not be formal, or purposeful. It's not the garden I had at the old house, that's for sure. Back then, we designed everything, planted that yard from flat dirt, knew the botanical and common name of everything in the ground. I planned very little of what's growing in either the back or the front yards here. We simply threw stuff into the earth and hoped for the best. If it perseveres, we're happy. If it thrives, we're surprised. It has been a surprising few weeks. It's wild. I love it.


Work continues on Juliet. I'm finally down to the lace portion. What I neglected to mention last time was that I'm knitting it at the wrong gauge. Yes, I did do a gauge swatch, but I did it not long after I got the O.K. to lightly use my pinkie, and while my thumb was still in a brace for twenty-three hours a day. I thought that, as it was just knitting, no purling for the first third of the project, it wouldn't be a problem. My tension couldn't be that much more loose, right? Heh. I like it at this gauge, but I'm knitting it as a large so that I can get a small/medium, so it's taking a little while. The Theraputty is in the picture for color adjustment. My phone camera couldn't get the color right without it.

Why the phone camera? Wasn't I just whining about how I don't take out my "real" cameras anymore? For some reason, the lighting in my office and the processor in my Sony don't get along. None of the white balance settings work, even with helpful color contrast object thrown into the mix. My phone, on the other hand, takes wonderful pictures at my desk, with clean, accurate white balance and brightness. My phone won out in the morning glory pictures as well. I took shots with both, but the one above was the most true to life. The big Nikon would more than likely best both of them, but that defeats the purpose of the kind of spur-of-the-moment photography I like to do. For now, the phone wins.

Tenacity

"At this point, we probably should...but, you know, let's try one more time." He bent my finger farther, beyond the point where we'd been able to move in in therapy, well beyond the point of excruciating pain, and tried for another grab. "Shoot," he said under his breath. "They never do this. We ought to schedule a time in the O.R. to...maybe one more shot at it?"

I admired his tenacity. As a tenacious sort myself, I willingly went along with his attempts. Well, you can see how well that worked out.


Anyway, all of the pins in my finger have been out for a couple of months now, and it's starting to move a little more freely. I can bend it in so that it doesn't stick out when I make a fist, and I can stretch it almost all the way straight. If I keep it warmed up and limber, it almost feels like a normal finger. I've put a lot of time, attention and effort into it these last few months.


All of that work has taken its toll, and has made me think of things that haven't been getting my time, attention and effort.

The pictures in this post were taken with my phone, not a proper camera. I haven't been making the time to get out the good camera and get the right lighting and composition in my shots. It hasn't mattered much, as I've only been looking at them on my phone, not posting them or sharing them. I've also been relying on my phone too much for email, which means I'm not keeping up there, either. I haven't been writing.

For the first couple of months, my finger was so swollen and sensitive to any kind of jostling that I couldn't do much exercising. While the pin was sticking out of it, I couldn't get it wet. It goes without saying that I couldn't hold a leash and walk Molly and Winston. It's been better than that for a few weeks now, but I haven't gotten back into exercising.

I also haven't been knitting, lately because of my hand, but it's been longer than that since I've made anything that I really loved. I started Pas de Valse back in December, and all that's left are the arms. Just pick up the stitches and knit them down to the wrist, but it's been untouched in my knitting box for at least four months.


It's funny. When I could have been doing all of those things but wasn't, I kept coming up with reasons why they weren't possible. Not enough time, have to clean house, have to keep an eye on the dogs, have to sort through the mail, too tired, too hungry, too much to do to get anything done.

Once I really COULDN'T do all of those things, I found that I really missed them. I thought about why I wasn't doing them back before the accident, and realized that it was just laziness. Oh, I have a lot of handy excuses, like "I don't like where my computer sits", and "I'm too out of shape for anything I knit to look good anyway", but they all come down to that. It's frustrated me all summer, realizing that I'd let so many things slide.

Now that my hand's almost better, I'm trying to refocus on creative things. I've countered "my computer's in a bad position, and the chi's all wrong" by getting a newer, smaller, much more portable laptop. I can sit with it on my lap and type for hours instead of fifteen minutes. I don't believe in poison darts and bad chi, but I know I haven't been good at writing at home since we moved, and I think it has to do with every spot where I can put that big, old laptop. Now I don't have that excuse.

I joined my old gym again and started back with The Amazon last week. My physical therapy sessions have become less about my finger and more about my upper body anyway, so it's like working out three or four times a week again. It feels good.

I still haven't picked the grey sweater out of the box and finished it, but I plan to do so within a few weeks. In an attempt to get back into the swing of knitting, I picked what should have been a quick, gratifying project. That's it up in the first picture, Juliet in Jo Sharp Desert Garden. Of course, I would pick a project and a yarn that would tire out my already compromised hand after one or two rows. I wanted to be it done with it in a week, but it's been more than a month to get that far. Seven more rows until I can bind off the sleeves, but they're taking forever. I keep thinking I should start something else, or just finish the grey sweater, but then I think, "...maybe one more shot at it?"

Damned tenacity.

Le Pacte Des Loupes

Until I can knit again - still some weeks off, if my friends, coworkers and well-meaning strangers are to be believed - I might as well pass the time by catching up on some earlier finished work. This lovely short scarf is...

Domina?

Yes, Bernini's David?

Domina, there are things afoot in the villa about which I, as your steadfast champion, need to be informed.

For example?

For example, what has happened to your lovely hands? What has damaged them so badly that you can no longer craft beautiful adornments for The David? Where you attacked by the pack of wolves?

Wolves? What are you talking about? David, there aren't any wolves here.

Aren't any wolves..oh, fairest lady! How I have failed you! Not only has that scoundrel of a husband allowed wolves to overrun the grounds while I remained anchored on this hateful pedestal, but the trauma has wiped the horror from your mind. Would that I could have stood between you and their slavering jaws. I turn from you in defeat and shame.


Have you gone insane, my stationary friend? I broke my finger in a motorcycle accident. You know that. I mean, yeah, I was on some powerful pain medicine after the surgery, but I'm pretty sure there weren't wolves roaming about the place.

But they were everywhere! Did you not...oh, accursed sound! I hear their diabolical howls. Hide! I beg you! Take shelter behind my muscular frame. I shall hold them off while you flee.

David, that's just Molly, whining and throwing her food bowl around because she's up in her kennel. Molly. You've met, remember? She drinks at the water di...majestic pool at your feet fifteen times a day.

Good lord! You have NAMED the beast?




Details
Pattern
Wisp from Knitty Summer 2007

Yarn
Artyarns Pearl Rhapsody (kind of like Silk Rhapsody, but better) in color 2268...I think. Molly ate the skein wrapper. I think it was 260 yards, and I have about a yard left.

Daisy bought this yarn on her cross-country trek home to Maine and sent it out to me. It languished in a basket for several months, and was at risk of being a Too Special to Ever Become Anything yarn. Readers, you know how I feel about TSEBA yarns. Something had to be done before it got any closer to the dreaded garage bin Vortex of Indecision. Yarns go in, and they never make it back out again. I went into my queue, picked the closest thing I could find, yardage-wise, and just started knitting.

Needles
Brittany Birch, size 8. In retrospect, this project would have been a lot easier with lace needles, or even the pointier tips of the Boye interchangeables, but the BBs weren't too bad. The yarn felt better on wooden needles, so I stuck with it.

Time
It was my lunchtime knitting, so I didn't really keep track. I finished it about two months ago, and I started it right after finishing the crochet throw.

Modifications
Only because I screwed up at the beginning and didn't do the setup rows right. The ends don't match, because one end has the support for the buttons and the other doesn't.

Conclusions
I liked this pattern. I think I'd like it a lot more if I were to knit it again with pointier needles. The finished scarflette/wrap/whatever is shorter than I usually like regular scarves to be, but then again, it's not supposed to be a full-length scarf.

I can see wearing it as a cowl once I find the right buttons for it. It'll look stylish and sophisticated while I'm driving down the road in the follow car, trailing behind all of my motorcycling loved ones. But that is a story for another day, when I can stand to type for a bit longer. My left hand is about to give out, and I can feel the pins moving around under the dressing on my pinkie. It's creepy, actually. I'm going to wrap this up and stop moving for a while.


Yes, Domina! Be still, in the name of all that is holy! There is danger in the wind. Can you not detect its menacing miasma?

David, for God's sake, there aren't wolves in the house. That's the smell of the pan from last night's dinner. It's garlic. We're perfectly safe.

Hush, noble lady. They are watching...

The Shepherd's Hook

On Trying New Things

Text message to Doc: I am riding a motorcycle! :-)

Many people I know ride motorcycles. Big Guy and his lady friend, several of our neighbors on the cul-de-sac, many people at work, and Doc and The Chemist are all avid riders. Most importantly, Accountant Boy used to ride, and wants to start again.

I, on the other hand, haven't ever had a desire to ride a motorcycle. The whole idea of being exposed and vulnerable out on the road, and all of the work involved in even the most basic maneuvers put me off of them before I'd even sat on one. Let me reiterate. I had never sat on a motorcycle and gripped the handlebars in my life. I rode on the back of Big Guy's bike once, when I was in high school.

To be honest, I haven't even enjoyed riding a bicycle in the last twenty-four years. Once I learned to drive a car, there was not turning back. I tried to pick it up again at UCSB, because biking to school was so much more convenient than walking, and I lived too close - embarrassingly close - to drive. It didn't stick, though. Once we graduated, I got rid of my Roadmaster. We bought mountain bikes a few years later, but we've only ridden them twice in the last dozen years. For me, four wheels make more sense than two.

Everyone told me that I should at least try riding a motorcycle. "Take the beginning rider course, and just see if you like it. If you don't, no big deal. How will you know if you don't try?" After months of hearing this from every rider I know, it started to make sense. Was I resistant to riding simply because I'd never done it? Was it the same resistance that held me, paralyzed with fear, at the top of the high dive when I was ten years old? Would it be fun, the fear an amusing memory, once I'd done it? Was it that Santa Claus situation, wanting to do something so badly but being terrified of it at the same time?

Whatever the case, I kept telling people that I just didn't want to ride. Although I appreciated their confidence in me and my ability to be a rider, I did not have this confidence in myself. I was even willing to entertain the idea of being a passenger. However, I spent so much time thinking about it, and had so many conversations with riders about it, that I convinced myself that I was in the wrong.

I agreed to take the beginning course, and went with my very eager friends and an equally eager Accountant Boy to CycleGear, where I bought gloves, boots and riding jeans. I'm not going to pretend that shopping for gear wasn't fun, and that I didn't get too caught up in it to listen to my inner voice, which was still trying to tell me to not ride. That's exactly what happened. I quelled my inner voice by shouting over it. "But look at this beautiful Dainese jacket!".

We bought our helmets at another store, really nice, full-face helmets. Big Guy told me that I should get a skid lid, but I told him that I loved my chin too much for that. "All your gear, all the time. That's how I'm going to roll, Big Guy." He chuckled.


Text message to Doc: I am in the emergency room. :-(

Four and a half hours into the first day of the riding course, I went down while turning a corner. I think, based on the scuffs in my new boots and the gouges in my helmet, that I hit a patch of gravel as I was turning. My head bounced off the tarmac, followed in close succession by my shoulder, my knee, and, apparently, my hand. It happened so quickly that I was back up and cursing before anyone noticed that I'd hit the ground. "Stupid! I can't believe I did that. God, I am so pissed off right now."

The instructor picked up my bike and told me to get my gear back on and keep riding. I held up my helmet, which was now not entirely intact. He played around with it for a few seconds, then handed it back to me. "Mount up!" He walked away before I could tell him that my knee hurt, and my hand felt like I'd slapped it pretty hard on the ground. Therefore, I felt like a sissy for complaining about it. What should I, as a rider, do after falling like that? Clearly, dust myself off and get back on the bike. That's what I was expected to do.

My helmet had other, more prudent ideas, and fell apart once more as I tried to pull it back on. I couldn't get the instructor's attention again, and A.B. was concentrating on his turn in the emergency braking exercise, so I killed the engine on my bike and stepped away to figure it out on my own. A man from the sidelines, there to watch his young daughter get her license, trotted over to help me. "I don't think I can fix this," he said. "You shouldn't wear it." He paused for a second and looked at me. "Hey, are you O.K.?"

"Well, my hand does kind of hurt." I pulled my gloves off, right one first and then the left. "It's redder than normal, but I did slam it pretty hard when I fell." Having only been told to check on my helmet, not knowing that I'd dropped the bike, A.B. rode up just as I exclaimed, "Oh! I don't think I'm supposed to be able to press on it that way and make it move!"

"O.K. We're going to go to the emergency room and get that looked at," A.B. said in the most measured tone he could muster, given that I was injured and that he was not a little grossed out by my dislocated and rapidly bruising finger.

"I'm just not going to look at it, because it didn't hurt until I looked at it."

"Let's just get to the car."

"Wait! My helmet! Get all of the pieces. And could you carry it for me? Because I don't want to take my right hand away from my pinkie..."

"Yeah, I've got it. C'mon, honey. Let's GET GOING."


Now, it might be hard to tell, if you don't spend much time looking at my fingers - and why would you, because that might be considered weird and intrusive - that there's much wrong with my pinkie. I, however, spend a lot of time looking at my fingers, because I love my hands. I think they're beautiful, as hands go. I spend a lot of time looking at them when I'm not busy typing. Is that vain? Maybe. The takeaway here is that I love my hands, both for their form and their function, and I know exactly how each finger should look.

This one? Wrong. The last joint isn't bending the right way, and it's missing its characteristic lateral wrinkles. Also, the knuckle is all screwed up. I've broken off half of the piece that would hold the first and second phalanges together, and now the joint isn't stable. They tried to pull it back into place in the ER, but it wouldn't stay, because there's nothing to anchor it. The little piece is now floating around where my knuckle should be.


And now, two hours prior to the surgery, I'm rushing to get in one last blog post before beginning what will probably be eight weeks with my hand in a cast. Eight weeks of showering with my arm wrapped in a grocery bag. Eight weeks of having to plan where I park my car, because it's not easy to back out of a parking space with your right hand on the wheel, especially after a quarter of a century of doing it the other way. Eight weeks without knitting, without (easily) typing, without being able to walk my dogs...yes, there are two dogs now, and I haven't even had a chance to tell anyone about the second one. Weeks, and then more weeks of physical therapy to try to make it work right again.

I'm able to write this now because my finger is only in a splint. This is the first day since the accident that it's felt good enough to use it. I've suddenly rediscovered the muse and feel like writing again. Of course there's a second half to even this lengthy story.

And I have so much to say about riding and knitting and work and summertime and dogs and...I'm out of time. We're heading off to the surgery center.