Alien Spouse

The Pink Sweater - A Story of Patience and Knitting

Many moons ago I saw a hot pink roll neck sweater being worn on TV by the presenter of a gardening show (the only time I ever really remember watching a gardening show!) and was afterwards always vaguely for looking for one to buy.  Then, several moons ago, I was given "Hollywood Knits" but at the time I didn't knit, so I gave it to someone who did.

Years afer these events I learnt to knit, and bought up the last six skeins of hot pink Karabella Aurora 8 in a lovely yarn shop in Philadelphia. I had no pattern,so the yarn was stashed for 5 or 6 years.

I regretted giving away "Hollywood Knits" but couldn't remember the title or author. Fortunately a google image search for the most memorable pattern (Jane Wyman's cigarette motif knitted tee) tracked those details Dow, and I found a second hand copy on Amazon for a few bucks.
Leafing through I found several patterns I loved (Marilyn Monroe, Greta Garbo and Jennifer Jones are particularly wearable), then I saw Peggy Cummins and realised that was the hot pink sweater I wanted!

I am making a few adjustments, for one thing no shoulder pads and for another I think this yarn will block to be looser once I'd finished so I *think* this will be looser fitting but I'm not sure by how much...  I also don't have quite enough of the pink yarn, so I'm adding in stripes of dark chocolate brown to the back and arms; which sounds weird, but again I *think* will work.

Basically this whole thing is an experiment, and the yarn is a cozy soft merino so, if the worst comes to the worst and I'll only wear it at home when I'm absolutely freezing, at least it will feel amazing.

Edith Update - Sad News

So.

We took her in to the vet's again because she was vomitting a lot, so they thought maybe she had irratable bowel syndrome and suggested doing an ultrasound.

Edith has cancer.  She has tumors on her liver and her lower intestines.

It was a huge shock because she's only 9 (give or take a year or two, she's a rescure cat so we don't definitely know) and she's always so full of life and energy.  The good news is we have some time left with her, hopefully a good few months; she's responding well to steroids and seems pretty comfortable right now.

We were really not sure what to do about the cats whilst we were away on our trip to England (have I mentioned?  We are visiting for 2 weeks!  Yay!), until I discovered our vets have cat boarding facility.  So she'll have 24 hour monitoring, everyone is proficient at giving medication and. if anything bad ahppens, she's already at the vets.  It helps.  We may be able to relax whilst we're on holiday now.

Edith Update : Much Improved!

Edith is clearly feeling a lot better, which is such a huge relief.  The notes from the vet mentioned that they had released 150cc of air from the right side of her chest and 30cc from the left.  That works out to over half a cup of air in the poor cat's ribcage, which would be a lot for a fully grown human but to an eleven pound cat it must have been extraordinarily uncomfortable.

I can't help thinking that Edith must have essentially been slowly suffocating for at least a week, and it was only when it was starting to get really difficult to breathe that she gave us any indication at all that something was wrong.  Stupid creature!  Tell us!  We want to help you!

Now she is home we have been told to keep her exercise levels low (which we have absolutely no control over, but I like the vet's optimism!), we have to monitor her breathing levels regularly through out the day and we also have to give her antibiotics every 12 hours.  Oh good.  It's always so much fun giving a cat a pill, isn't it?  They are so co-operative and not at all likely to spit the damn thing out given half an opportunity.

Still, Edith is getting much more resistant to her twice daily doses of medicine, so I'm choosing to view this as evidence she's feeling better.

Nancy in the meantime is clearly not impressed at all with how much attention Edith's getting right now.  She is always the more needy and insinuatung of the two cats, but right now she is getting really obnoxious about it!  I am being as patient as possible, because I know she just wants her share of the love!

Edith - Good Cat or Best Cat?

My parents had a white cat when I was born, who apparently didn't like me at all and would lay in wait on the stairs and swipe at me as I toddled past.  Fortunatly I don't remember this at all, so I am unabashedly a cat person; I like dogs, & I'm sure if/when (if Eva has anything to do with it it'll most certainly be "when") we get a dog I will be smitten, but my heart belongs to cats.

Edith has been the complete opposite of that white cat (Sorcha?), and has been an absolute swwetheart with Eva.  She quite literally watched over my shoulder in the first few weeks after Eva was born, and often tried to wash her.  Edith has become a little more wary since Eva became more mobile and more interested in pulling tails, but she is still remarkably good with Eva and often spends the day hanging out with us in Eva's room.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed she was limping, and as we hadn't taken her for a check-up recently that seemed like as good a time as any to find a vet in Asheville.  Well, we didn't really look that far, there is an animal hospital not 5 minutes drive from our house and we pass it every morning, so we took Edith there.

Being Edith she purred so much they had a hard time listening to her breathing and heart.  Then they took some blood which she wasn't as happy about, but they found nothing wrong so they sent her home.  We got the bloodwork back on Friday and it mentioned that her triglycerides were high, so we arranged to take her back in on Tuesday.  On Saturday I noticed she was having trouble breathing, so we kept an eye on her and soon realised she wasn't her usual self - She wasn't drinking, she wasn't grooming herself and there was only limited racing around the apartment.

Of course I did a little light internet veterinary research, which I fretted over until I woke up at 5 o'clock this morning having convinced myself that her kidneys were shutting down, and we were about to lose her.  So I insisted we take her to the vet first thing this morning, and by 9 she had been x-rayed and given something to help her breath.  I hated having to leave her at the hospital (which was really quite nice!), bcause there's simply no way to explain to a cat, however intelligent, what's going.  I just had to take a deep breath and let the vet get on with it.

The vet called me with updates throughout the day, and what she found was that there was air in the chest cavity which was preventing Edith's lungs from fully inflating (It usually means there has been some sort of trauma, but I have no idea what could have happened, so I'm suspecting the clumsy toddler who doesn't know her own strength or weight yet).  The vet used a hypodermic needle to let the air out of the chest, and Edith is apparently breathing much more easily now.  She might also have pneumonia, so we'll have to give her anti-biotics and keep an eye on her for a while.  I'm just glad Doc C can pick her up on his way back from work, so she'll be home this evening.

Our nick-names for Edith are many and varied, but "The Panzer tank of love" really sums up how determined she is to be affectionate to us.  You see this stocky grey shape moving towards you with a pluming tail high in the air and you know you'd better be ready to pay her some attention.  That cat is going to love you, damn it, and I'm going to make sure she knows we love her too (not that she ever doubted that - Edith's also rather vain...)

Wuv. Twue Wuv.

Eva is soaking up words like a sponge, and it seems entirely random which words she becomes enamored of.  Recent obsessions include "shower", "broom" and "black".  Broom is because she has a DVD of "Room on the Broom" which she loves, whilst black is because we've been talking about colours a lot with her; but shower?  That's kind of random, especially as she's never actually had a shower.

Rather more sweetly she has also added "hug", "soft" and "love" to her vocabulary, and she is using them more or less appropriately.

Whilst I was changing her nappy yesterday she gazed up at me with her beautiful big blue eyes and said "love... I love...".  Somewhat sappily I thought we were having a bit of a moment, so I said "You love Mummy? Oh, I love you too sweetheart!" at which point Eva yelled "I LOVE BUM-BUM!" and grabbed her naked bottom.

It's true she does love her own bottom, and it is a lovely little thing when it's clean, but I can't help feeling a little bit put out.  I suspect a certain young lady thinks she's a comedian.  Already.  

I am not looking forward to the teenage years...

Red/Blonde

We were out and about the other day, and Eva went toddling over to meet a dog she spotted.  The owners were pleasant and the dog well behaved, so that was all fine.  As part of our small talk the lady whose dog it was asked where Eva got her blonde hair from, which I always think is such a funny question.

For starters Doc has a shaved head so he could easily be a platinum blonde, but the really funny part is that several people have asked me in the past whether Eva's hair will go red like mine.  I'm stil not used to colouring my hair, so it always takes me a moment to realise why people are asking that!  

For one thing, I wasn't sure how natural the colour looked, but I suppose it must be fairly convincing (Not bad for a bar of Lush's red henna which costs $26, and is supposed to yield one or two colouring treatments, but that I can stretch out to 4 with usually 6 to 8 weeks between colouring.  So that's about $6 a go!)

I also find the question odd, because it is invariably asked by someone who quite clearly colours their own hair, so it seems peculiar that the idea that I'd have different colour hair than my daughter because I dye it doesn't occur to them.  Admittedly if my hair were still the very pale blonde hers is, then I probably wouldn't be colouring it, but it's dulled down to a rather boring beige blonde.  Red is so much more fun for me...

Eva's New Wake Up Time.

Over the past few weeks Eva has been trying out a new routine.  It is unheard of luxury that I don't want to jinx, but she goes to bed at 8pm and usually wakes up at 7.  The pay off is she only wants one nap during the day, and that is now at around 2 or 3.

Which is totally fine with us.

Today I had my alarm set for 6:30 so I could get up and do some yoga before she woke up.  It was almost perfect, I was in my final position (corpse pose, which Nancy loves to help me with by curling up on my tummy and making sure my hips and back are weighted to the floor) when I heard her waking up.  Doc got her up, whilst I put my mat away and started getting ready for work.

Perfect.  That's my new morning routine, thank you very much.  It's my mid-February resolution.

Cafetiere Transplant.

Oh Oh! I just remembered another silly thing I found myself ridiculously proud of!

We had a Bodum french press (or cafetiere, which I'm pretty sure every American I say that to thinks I've made up to be pretentious) which came in this sort of rubber sleeve with a handle, which wasn't very pretty but seemed to keep the coffee a bit warmer and was easy to take care of.  The carafe of the french press just slid out and could then be washed in the dish washer along with the plunger - All very simple and easy to use until the carafe broke.

It turned out our model was a bit fancier than we had thought, and I really can't imagine how we ended up buying that one in the first place, because the cost of a replacement was more than Doc C would consider. So we ended up buying a cheaper Bodum with a hard plastic handle.  It was the same size, but the carafe wasn't removable from the handle and it worked just as well.  I kept the rubber sleeve handle thingy anyway, because there was nothing wrong with it and it didn't take up much room anyway.

The new french press made coffee perfectly well, but any time it was put in the dishwasher tiny bits of food would get between the carafe and the plastic handle.  It was infuriating. Sometimes I could blast them out with the hose attachment on the sink, or poke them out with a tooth pick, but more often than not I couldn't get to them and it was like those tiny bits of spinach or cauliflower would hang out there taunting me.  Disgusting.

Finally after weeks of this, I snapped.  Well, more precisely I cut.  I got out a stanley knife and I sliced into the plastic handle which enabled me to free the carafe.  Now this was the gamble - Would it fit into the rubber sleeve of the old french press?  Because if it didn't I'd have just ruined a perfectly good one for nothing.

Would it fit?!?!

Yes.  It is ridiculous how much that one tiny triumph over a minuscule problem has really made me very happy over the last week or so.

Sticky Velcro Strips. Yes.

In Eva's room we have a daybed from Ikea and it has drawers in the base,  which are really useful for storage and really easy to pull out because they are on nice smooth runners.  Unfortunately that meant Eva soon worked out how to open them for herself, and she would use them to climb up onto the bed or just sit in them.  

She also seems to have been stashing stuff in them; things like crackers, crusts of bread or half-drunk bottles of milk.  I only found the bottle yesterday, and I don't know how long it had been there.  Errrgh.

We did buy some child locks for drawers, but those would still allow her to open the drawer far enough to get her fingers in and, knowing her, she'd probably then shut her fingers in the drawer.

It occured to me that the velcro strips that you can use to hang up framed pictures might be useful, so we got a pack for about $4.  One strip went on the drawer with it's corresponding strip went on the frame, and it works very nicely - Doc and I can open the drawer (with a bit of effort), but Eva is completely thwarted.  She was FURIOUS at first, but she seems to be getting over it.

The really nice part is that once Eva can be trusted with the drawers again, which will be when she's around 19 or 20, we can just peel off the velcro strips.

I hate to risk jinxing this, but I am proud of coming up with a rather elegant solution to the problem.

February Snow Days

Two snow days in a row!  Squeee!

Yesterday I still could work from home as most of my job requires internet access so I can send e-mails and access DropBox.  Today we also lost internet for several hours - So we experimented with low-carb waffles (coconut flour and egg whites do not a tasty waffle make.  Trust me.) and then invited one of our downstairs neighbours to jon us for tea and (freshly baked) scones.

Eva was simply delighted to see someone other than Doc C or myself, and was very sociable and pleasant; right up until she was a solid hour past her nap time and then she started to have a tantrum.  I took her to her room and sang her a couple of show tunes, she soon curled up on me & went to sleep.  I took her back with me to the dining room and enjoyed a cup of tea with a gently snoring toddler on my lap.

Now, evidently, our internet is back and a good thing too.  I'm sure there is a backlog of tumblr posts and NY fashion week reviews catch up on.