Death by Ice Cream

I came home from work with a mental checklist of what needed to be completed tonight.

Dishes - check
Feed myself - check
Make lunch for tomorrow - check
Knit - not checked yet

I got sidetracked. Really sidetracked. You could say that I planned my deviation from my checklist. I was the one, after all, who put the ice cream maker bucket in the freezer this weekend. I was the one who bought the heavy cream.

I really wanted ice cream. I was in my gnome leggings, glasses on, hair in a bun. There was not a chance I was getting back in my car for ice cream. Homemade ice cream isn't ready in a day so why bother?

And then I pulled out the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Recipe book my sister got me with my first ice cream maker. And a light shone down right on the French Vanilla recipe (technically, it was the sun through my skylight but I'll believe otherwise for now). I had all the ingredients and I still had my bottle of Mexican vanilla from....wait for it, my trip to Mexico.  Serendipity!

The only thing that worries me with the B&J's recipes is their penchant for using raw eggs.  I mean, I drink egg nog with the best of them but it's pasteurized so I usually don't worry. My family made homemade egg nog one year, with about a dozen raw eggs and lots of bourbon. But ALL of us were too scared to drink it so we gave it to one of dad's friends. He didn't die.

I went ahead and whipped 2 eggs into a "light and fluffy" state of mind all the while getting an arm cramp. I'm in IT, I don't really do this type of physical work. Next up was sugar...beautiful sugar. A couple teaspoons of the gorgeous Mexican vanilla came next. Vanilla has fooled me in the past, with that unbelievable aroma and horrific taste. Yes, I tasted vanilla as a child (and as an adult. Don't judge me). I added in my cream and almond milk and completed the mix.

Into the ice cream maker we go. I stared at it swirling around for a bit then went to read the paper until the timer dinged. That was a terribly long 20 minutes. Now, homemade ice cream does not immediately set up. It's kind of a loose soft serve. But if you are lucky, the mixture that is still clinging to the sides of the frozen bucket form a layer of real, frozen ice cream.

And this is the best ice cream I've tasted in a long time.

Will the raw eggs kill me? I hope not, but if it does, I shall die happy.

The oldest yarn

So back in 2008, my mom and I took some knitting lessons from Susan at the Trading Post in Pendleton. She did a great job at teaching me the basics and instilling a love of creating in me. We had to stop because my dad was in the end stages of Parkinson's Disease but I learned enough to keep going.

Before we left, I said I wanted to learn how to make socks, so I bought a skein of sock yarn from her. That skein has been in my stash since then. Socks were intimidating so I didn't even try them until much later. This first skein of sock yarn was brash, bold, and what-was-I-thinking? I finally got it out.

And then got stuck with my back problems that kept me from finishing sock #2. Dammit.

What my staycation this week gave me was the motivation to finish this pair of socks. Action breeds motivation, at least, so once I picked it up to start again, I just kept going.

It's a million degrees in the shade here but, hey, I have a new pair of crazy color wool socks for winter.

Click to embiggen

The pattern is Vanilla Latte. Hindsight, an afterthought heel would have been better to avoid the striping but I still like them.

I have to go on a short trip for work and was pondering what I could take to knit on the plane and in the hotel room in the evening. I decided to cast on a new pair of socks from yarn that was already wound. I remember I started a baby cardigan with it but decided not to use it. No label but I remember it was from the Golden Skein yarn club. 

It feels kinda good to be back(ish). :)

Depression Sucks

Little did I know when I wrote my last post in February 2017 that I only had about 4 months of not being in horrible pain left. In May 2017, what I thought was a random bout of sciatica turned out to very much not to be.

The last 14 months have greatly sucked and every piece of motivation I could muster up went to just getting up and going to work. There's been no crafting, barely any reading, barely anything that looks like a life, actually. The pain in my back and leg has been unrelenting, making sitting just torture. I probably could have knit while laying down, but I honestly just didn't care.

My spine is covered ( just "impressive" says the neurosurgeon) in Tarlov Cysts. It took 3 lumbar epidurals that didn't work to get me to a neurosurgeon who, thankfully, had heard of Tarlov cysts. He ordered an SI joint injection (which pretty much made me come off the table - yowch) to determine that, basically, the cysts that cover my sacrum have eroded the SI joint, which is supposed to be immovable - the shock absorber of your body - and mine is moving. Walking is painful, sitting is painful, and at my worst, laying down was painful. Since my commute to work is about 45 minutes each way, work was all I could do. Which I had to do because I need the insurance to handle all of this shit.

Now I'm with a chiropractor/PT for 20 sessions (per insurance) to jump through hoops to get SI joint fusion surgery. I've had Ulcerative Colitis so bad I had to have a permanent Ileostomy. Hypothyroidism. Asthma. Basal Cell Carcinoma. Dislocated hip. And this, my friends, has been my worst period of health problems ever. Chronic pain, day in, day out. The depression that I had under control is completely out of control. Because I can't do the things I used to love to do anymore.

Work has dumped an amazing amount of new responsibilities on me and life has gotten so overwhelming that, well, I just need to write.

I know this is supposed to be a knitting, fun, blog. It will get back to that, I swear. But I have to dump my demons out somewhere. It might as well be into the void.

On a side note, I'm on staycation from work and I have gotten back to knitting a bit. Pumped full of Tylenol and with new Flector patches and ice packs, I can sit for longer than 20 minutes! :)