HELL YEAH!

I’ve been rather preoccupied these last couple of months. My doctor discovered a lump in my right breast during my physical at the end of February. This led to a mammogram and an ultrasound which discovered another lump in the same breast. I’ve had various exams, a needle biopsy, consultations, surgical biopsy, and my first experience with general anesthesia. Been all over the internet learning all sorts of things about cancer and procedures and deciphering the terms on my pathology reports.

The end result being, however, that I do not have cancer.

I had one fibroadenoma (benign fibrous tumor) and one cyst that was causing a fair bit of trouble. The tissue around it was rather inflamed, and the needle biopsy found “atypical cells” in that sample, which had me worried.

Now I can breathe a sigh of relief and get on with my life. Though I’ve been fairly busy these past couple of months, I’ve spent all of my time at various doctors’ offices or thinking about doctors and stuff. It’s going to be great to get back to my regular life.

Thanks to everyone who has helped me through this. All the thoughts and prayers and cards and text messages and instant message chats and phone calls and visits and distractions have been more helpful than you may know. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The year of the [fill in the blank]

I hadn’t planned on making resolutions for the year. But I’ve recently had a few thoughts of things that I might want to focus on this year. Two thousand eight was a very busy year. Well, most of it was very busy. The last few months of the year were not very eventful, but that was most likely due to the insanity of the rest of the year. I have been in serious hibernation mode. Much of what I’d like to accomplish this year is based upon my desire to break out of my patterns, my circle of comfort, my self-imposed rut, whatever you want to call it.

Joining roller derby last year (coming up on my “derbyversary” in February) was pretty huge. I’ve never been a part of an organized sport before, and certainly never considered myself athletic by any stretch of the imagination. I definitely plan to continue with the sport, but it did overwhelm much of my life last year. This year, I want to make sure I also incorporate all the other things that make me happy: reading, knitting, taking photos, cooking, general craftiness,* making and listening to music, gathering with friends, etc.

I barely knit anything last year, I hardly took any photos, picked up the accordion only a couple of times, the house has been a disorganized mess (as opposed to its usual organized mess), I’ve barely touched any craft supplies, I can’t remember how many books I read (other than the Stephenie Meyer ones), and I ate the same things every week. When I wasn’t playing derby, I was sleeping or hiding trying to recover from the stress of the busy schedule and the physical stress of sore muscles and bruises. It’s worth all the stress, but I also think that tending to the other facets of my life would help dealing with the stress.

As a result of neglecting all those things, I didn’t end the year on a very good note. I became really homesick and sort of crawled into a cave, and have just been generally bummed out. I’ve started to re-emerge, though.

Today we flipped through a couple of cookbooks to figure out what we could make this weekend that would begin to break our food rut. I cast on for a blanket that I’ve been meaning to make for ages, using all that leftover and hand-me-down yarn in my acrylic stash. I went through the knitting basket to unearth hibernating projects. I’ve been keeping the accordion out so that I’ll be tempted to pick it up every few days. I have a whole list of books I’ve been meaning to read, but haven’t bothered to pick up, as well as a list of bands/albums that I’ve been wanting to download.

Change is in the air, and through it all I hope to hang on to the things that make me happy. I guess in 2008 I learned that all those eclectic things combined make me who I am, and when I neglect them, I become unrecognizable and unhappy. So, here’s looking forward to a year of renewal and growth!

* Every time I use the phrase “general ____” I have to add “reporting for duty” afterwards. General Craftiness reporting for duty, sir! Makes me laugh every time.

S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y NIGHT!

Happy Birthday to MK!

Going to a super-fun party tonight to celebrate her 30th time around the sun. I have a fabulous new dress, and fabulous shoes, and a fabulous new hair cut. All of which is appropriate to the theme, “Dress to Thrill.” (Especially my fabulous new hair accessory.)

In health related news, I still don’t know what’s up. So, let’s hope no news is good news, eh? Another appointment on Wednesday morning. And I’ll (finally) get my heart-test results back Monday. I figure if I exploding were immanent, they would have been required to tell me, yes? One hopes.

But no time for worrying, Dr. Jones, there’s a party to go to. (And cookies to eat.)

Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who’s posted a comment, phoned, or emailed me these last couple of days. Y’all’re sweeties! (How’s that for a contraction?)

I ended up not going to work today, just because I’m a little anxious and nervous and what not. I don’t think I’d get much work done, being this distracted, and I was nervous about making the trip. I really am feeling much better today, just a little anxious. Now watch me not have any “episodes” with the monitor on! Sheesh. Still, though, at least they’ll have a good idea of what my heart is up to. The docs are pretty sure it’s not heart-related, but want me to wear the thing as a precautionary measure.

I hope it doesn’t rain today, because I really want to skate. 1) It’ll make me feel more normal, 2) the monitor will track my heart during it’s normal range during exertion, and 3) it’ll take my mind off worrying about stuff and get me out of the house.

The doc said the monitor was supposed to be discreet. Um, not so much. The wires and stuff under my shirt don’t show so much, but the recording device is a 3″ x 5″ x 1″ box clipped to my pocket. It has a foot and a half long cable sticking out of it that the individual wires connect to. And the face of the recorder is a big clock. It’s like I’m the medical Flava Flav or something, but you know, digital.

I’m really not worried about it being a heart thing, though having to have all the heart tests is a little disconcerting. What I’m worried about is that it’s something else that’ll elude the doctors for a while and I’ll just have to deal with spontaneous hyperventilation and dizziness. I’m trying to keep my imagination under control, and just wait patiently for the blood tests to come back. I don’t even know how long to wait for those. I suppose if I don’t hear back after several days, I’ll phone them up to ask, but for now, I just have to sit tight.

Dude. I wanted a vacation, but not like this. I think I’ll spin some wool for a bit. That’ll take my mind off things. Anyway, thanks again, everyone, for your support and good thoughts and all that! I’ll update here as soon as I know anything else. Good thing I’m not going near an airport for a couple of weeks yet They might be suspicious of all these wires dangling from my person.

I always knew I was a bit dizzy

I’ve been out of work for a couple of days. What I thought was a stomach bug (causing nausea) has turned out to be something else. Not sure what. But the nausea went away pretty quickly, but the dizziness, (minor) hyperventilation (not the TV kind), palpitations, etc, have lingered. I had an EKG today, which looked normal, but just in case, I’ll be wearing a heart monitor. I pick it up tomorrow, wear it for 24 hours, then when I get it taken off, I have to get an  Echo Cardiogram done, just to make extra sure.

I also had some blood drawn to test for thyroid, electrolyte, and whatever else they can think of.

So, deep breaths. I’m supposed to go about my day as I normally would, so I’m going to work tomorrow, after getting the monitor put on, and I’m going to practice in the evening. I won’t do contact, as I’m sure the monitor is pretty expensive, and I don’t think I’m covered for derby-related breakage. But if my heart is doing wonky things, then I need to know if I can skate. The “attacks” or “episodes” or whatever you want to call them, don’t happen when I’m working out or skating, but they’ve come when I’m doing other normal things, like sitting watching TV, or driving a car (that one was scary), or riding the T, or sitting at my desk.

We’ll figure it out. I just hope it’s something simple like “you need more iron, veggie head” or “have a banana, your potassium’s low” and not “never skate again because if you do you will fall over and explode.”

Fingers crossed, please.

This and that

I’ll start with the not-so-good so we can end on a positive note, yes?

1. Friday was hell: I was running late for work. They don’t plow the road into the train station very well, and I slid down the hill and crashed into the curb on the turn into the parking lot. I did manage to pull into a space and still make my train, because there was no way I was going to deal with that mess while it was still snowing. We borrowed JeT’s mom’s car on Saturday and went back to get our car towed to the shop. Not good news: $1500 worth of damage. Pretty much everything but the axle was busted. We’re waiting on the insurance appraisal, because there’s no way we can pay for that out of pocket. Not after this summer’s transmission debacle (which was also my fault, by the way). Feeling pretty lame. Oh, and during the adventures (see point #2 below) I slipped on the ice and fell on my giant bruise again. Double lame.
2. Friday continued: On the train ride home, JeT realizes that we have to go back into Boston because he has the only set of keys to the med room in his pocket. Luckily, we hadn’t passed Quincy yet, and were able to make the U-turn without incident. I was starving, so we decided to pretend to be tourists in the snow and go get food at Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market. We got Indian food. It was delicious. So, full bellied, we headed home in better spirits. Of course, we didn’t yet know the full damage of the car at this point. Alas.
3. I think I stayed in my jammies all day on Saturday. I can’t really remember.
4. Skipping to Monday, because I want to keep all the crappy stuff together: I did not have a very good practice last night. My knee took forever to warm up, so I only did half of the falling drills (which are actually quite fun). Then, during this one drill where we were practicing being jammers and blockers (alternating, of course) I was having a really hard time keeping up. Turns out it wasn’t just because my legs were aching. Apparently I stopped being able to breathe properly. I pulled over and skated around the outside of the track for a while trying to catch my breath. I could breathe out just fine, but it felt really constricted breathing in. Like in a bad panic attack when it feels like there’s a cave troll sitting on your chest. Well this was as if it was gripping my breathy tubes every time I tried to inhale. It was really freaky, and started to scare me a bit, but I was too angry to really be that scared. I mean, how dare my lungs freak out when I’m trying to learn something new and keep up with the rest of the girls. I hate feeling weak and I hate having to sit out a drill because of weakness. Oh, and while the other girls were learning jammer starts (you know, where you run on your toes for a bit to get up speed) I was still trying to recover my ability to breathe. They got to learn something cool while I had to gimp around the track like a big ball of weakness on wheels. /rant.
5. And I don’t feel at all well today, so I’m home sick.
6. Sunday was pretty awesome though: PRD had a scrimmage against Pioneer Valley Roller Derby. It was the Riveters against their travel team. We won by something like 158 to 21 or something crazy. It was still a really competitive bout, and was tons of fun to watch. Afterwards we went out to a local bar in Naragansett (or something). I rode with Hysterica and her boyfriend Jeff, aka, the Reverend Al Mighty. They were super nice and gave me a ride down to the scrimmage. I shall have to bake them cookies. At the bar, I felt pretty awkward at first. I never do well in crowded situations. Especially at bars. By nature I’m geeky and awkward. Like all of a sudden I’ve grown two extra feet, have eight arms, nine legs, and can’t seem to stand anywhere without being in someone’s way. But after a couple of beers I felt normal again and was able to talk to people like I wasn’t some sort of space alien. In the end, it was quite fun, and I’m glad I went. We didn’t get home until 1:30 in the morning though, so I was a bit of a zombie at work yesterday.
7. We got some great news on Monday: JeT got the job he interviewed for last week! Yay! It’s a step up the ladder at the place where he currently works. He’s very excited to start in two weeks. It’ll be more paperwork and less work with the clients, but it pays more. So, hooray for that. And hooray for JeT! I think we’re going to the Garden Grille before the Battle of the Bands, so if anyone wants to come help us celebrate, you’re more than welcome.
8. Saturday is the Battle of the Bands (see post below) and we need to bring a ton of people. This is a fundraiser for PRD, and you know you want to support your local derby girls, right? It starts early enough that if you wanted to come for a bit but leave before the wee hours of the morning, that would be cool, too!

I can has short rows?

O HAI!

Thanks to all who came to the Winter Super Fun Times gathering on Saturday! Click through to see our poor sampling of photos from the event. Click here for way better pictures from SEA, though I think you have to be one of her contacts to see them. Which is fine by me, since I got one of my, shall we say, “party whims,” and decided it would be great fun to knit a merkin. Many modeled the blue, fuzzy thing and SEA captured the action. (All merkin photos are clean, don’t worry.)

I had wanted everyone’s Decemberween presents to be done by Saturday, but that did not happen. I can’t knit on the train anymore, because I take a later train, which is way crowded, and I get all cramped trying to avoid elbowing the person next to me. So, evenings are my only knitting time these days. I kept getting terrible headaches in the evenings the week before the party, so I ran out of knitting time. Finishing the larger items (which shall remain slightly secret, since there is at least one who may read this that still does not know what they are) was impossible, so I decided to just work on the smaller items. But I needed at least 15 of those, and only managed 7. Therefore, only a few party guests got their party favor nose warmer. Alas.

I have decided that one of my knitterly resolutions for this year is to knit things that teach me new skills. For too long have my knitting skills been stagnant. I decided that the first things I would learn would be short rows. I know, I know, I’ve been knitting since I was 13 and I still need to learn short rows? Yes. Well, not really anymore, since I had to learn to do them for the nose warmers. They are essentially the toe of a toe-up sock, with crochet chain ties to secure behind the head. The instructions I used (for sock toes) were pretty good, except they left out certain important elements, such as which side of the work the yarn needs to be on for certain actions. Or rather, it kept leaving out the instruction to put the yarn back after having moved it. I find it very hard to learn new skills from written instructions because there are too many gaps. Without a real person sitting next to me filling in the gaps in instructions, I’m at a loss.

Anyway, after much trial and error, and tears, and ripping the darn things out again, it was midnight on Friday, the night before the day they were supposed to be gifts, and I still hadn’t got it right. I went to bed annoyed, but in the wee hours I had a knitterly epiphany, and as soon as I picked up the stupid thing the next morning, it started to click. I finally had the thrill of learning something new, and stopped swearing at the instructions (and the yarn, and the needles, and myself), and was able to whip them out at a pretty good pace (25 minutes each, including weaving in ends). Now I just have to finish the rest of them, and pop them in the post. Who wouldn’t love to get a nose warmer in their mailbox, right? I do need to figure out who got one and who didn’t, though.

It snowed Monday, and Radcliffe was closed, so I got to finish several things and pop a few in the post, which was rad. Unfortunately, I got sick that day, and then stayed home most of the week. It was a killer cold with a stupid fever and stuff. I had a really long, one day work week. And Monday is a holiday, too. I feel like a bum. But a well rested bum.

We’re going to see Cloverfield tonight. JeT has been following the marketing/hype/propaganda for this film for months, so we’re wicked excited to actually see the darned thing. I’m just excited to get out to see a movie. We don’t get out very often. And tomorrow, I’m going on a shopping spree with other people’s money. I’ve been amassing a fairly large collection of gift cards these last few months, and I’m going to spend them all in one day. A movie and shopping? Super fun consumer times, woot! There will also be a trip to Kam Man market tomorrow for some bento supplies. Hooray!

Happy New Year!

Right, so I tried to post on January first, but our network did not feel like speaking to the outside world that day. We had a very boring New Year’s, indeed. JeT had to work on the Eve and the Day, so we hadn’t planned on partying too wildly anyway. When he got home from work on the Eve and found me still in my jammies, it was rather obvious that I didn’t particularly want to go out. I hadn’t felt well all day, and so we fell asleep around 11:30 pm. Woke up around 1-ish, said “happy new yrrrrrzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.” The next day I still didn’t feel well. Kind of like when you’re about to get a cold and your head weighs too much and all you need is a dozen or so more hours of sleep. Most of my family had been ill over the last few weeks, and I was exposed to all their germiness while visiting, so I was prepared to be sick. But when I woke up Wednesday, all was well. Thank goodness I’m not starting out the year ill.

Or starting my new job ill. That would be doubly worse. So, I’m now an assistant at Radcliffe and MIT. Woot! I’m now properly poised to conduct a proper job search, while still being able to pay some bills. I’m feeling optimistic at the start, though I haven’t done much leg work yet. I’m enjoying both of my part-time jobs thus far. I’ve been at Radcliffe since October, and only just started at MIT this week. Regarding the latter, I’d like to say that nuclear physicists have an interesting sense of humor. I also find it amusing that Oppenheimer’s friends called him “Oppie.”

I haven’t been knitting as much as I’d wanted to these last couple of weeks. I’ve mostly been sleeping, watching movies, and generally staring into space. I have much to knit before the belated Christmas gifts are going to be done, so I should get cracking. Especially since they’re supposed to be handed over in one week exactly. Right, maybe I should get off the computer.

Ill

It seems a bit early in the semester for me to be ill, but that’s the current situation. Nasty head cold. Ick. I haven’t slept well for two nights. I talk like a honking goose. My head weighs 80 pounds. And I have a job interview today.

Great timing, eh?

I’ll be sure to perk up with plenty of herbal tea before I go in this afternoon. I did a menthol/eucalyptus steam thing earlier, and that helped tremendously. Maybe I’ll do that again before I head out. Though, then I run the risk of having steam face – you know, where you get all red and sweaty looking? Yeah, that’ll be really impressive: Hi, I’m full of mucus and I’m sweaty! I’ll take that job now.

Once I perk up and put on my interview clothes, I’ll feel much better. I’ll make sure to take my nice handkerchiefs, so even if I’m all gross, I can at least have pretty accessories.

Falafel!

Bento #11

No lunchbox today, as I’m working (read: blah, blah, blahgging) from home today. I’ll take the later train in, yes, just so I can go to SNB this evening. Ok, ok, so I have to go to the library to do work, too, but that’s not as fun.

I’m just really in the mood to be around knitters today. I listened to the recent podcast from It’s a Purl, Man regarding the Yarn Harlot‘s appearance in NYC this past Thursday, and I’m all about Representing today. I have more to say on that subject, but later for that.

This is yesterday’s lunch. Contents: leftover falafel, tomatoes, lettuce, hummus, pickle, tabouleh, potatoes faux gratin, mixed nuts, grapes, blueberries, and a little container of soy yogurt dill dip for the falafel. Not pictured are the pieces of pita bread that I nestled in the box on top of these containers.

The falafel reheated rather well, though it wasn’t crispy, obviously. I ate the fruit and nuts as a morning snack (in addition to the fruit smoothie that I brought in my “food jar”), and still I had a headache by 1 pm. I was completely out of commission last night. I went to bed as soon as we got home, around 6 pm. I thought I had this thing figured out, but apparently, I still need to tweak my habits. I even took it easy on the computer yesterday, and had plenty of water. Oh, well. I’ll figure it out. I’m getting really tired of answering the “how are you” question with “fine, but I’ve got a killer headache.” Grr.

At least my lunch was yummy!