Must Needs: Stockinette

I've had A Week, one of those weeks where small thing after small thing requires dealing with, until by the end of it you feel a little gaspy from the weight of all those small things. Since my husband was away this week, I dealt with all the small things single-handedly, which, to be honest, he's traveled so much in the past ten years since we had kids that I've gotten used to it. He gets on a plane, and weird or difficult things happen, and the kids and I handle it all because we have no other choice.

This week, among other things, the cat, who likes to sleep on the TV when it's on because it's warm, woke up and vomited where he lay, so it trickled down the ventilation cracks, into the TV, and shorted it out. And then everything smelled like baked cat vomit. I unplugged the TV, cleaned it up best I could, and went to bed. The next afternoon when I got home after school with the boys, the heat had come up in the house and I could smell the TV. So, with my 10yo's help, I got it off the stand and to the top of the stairs, and then, slowly and carefully, I walked that extremely heavy TV down the stairs and into the garage, because I wasn't living with that smell the rest of the week, waiting for my husband to get home. I wasn't even living with that smell for another hour. I don't even care about the TV that much, except for watching football, and luckily my sister has a spare so we don't have to buy a new TV before 4:15 tomorrow afternoon.

That's only the most unusual thing that happened this week. The dishwasher broke--again, something I don't use that often or care that much if we have, but it had soap and drippings in it so I supposed I should at least be able to turn it on one more time. (The control lock key wouldn't shut off, so I couldn't turn it on.) There is head-stressy stuff I can't blog about, and head-stressy stuff I won't blog about, and I finally went to the doctor because of the joint pain I've been having and the Lyme test came back positive. This is far better than, say, lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, which were also possibilities, given I already have an auto-immune condition, so my first instinct is to be grateful, but then there is a little part of my head saying, Really? Really??? I started 30 days of doxycycline yesterday, which is the regimen for Lyme-induced arthritis, and I'm hoping the side effects don't wreak absolute havoc in the meantime. (I also needed to write a cheat sheet to help me figure out what I could and couldn't eat between what hours if I took it at a certain time.) I hope it helps. Some days I can't even pick up my three-year-old, and my knees are unreliable, and we won't even talk about my hips. Or toes. Toes!

So, clearly, I needed some stupid knitting, the kind you can do while your brain is elsewhere, the kind that hopefully brings your brain back with just enough numbing repetition that it shuts up already and calms down. I cast on for the Adult Channel Island Guernsey. I knit one for my middle child a few years ago and my daughter recently wore it. When I saw it again, I remembered how it had been a quick, soothing knit and thought I could use another throw-over-anything sweater. Here it is in my lap this morning, as I was sitting up in bed after taking my medicine at 6:15, because I'm not supposed to lie down after taking it.

I have miles of stockinette in the round to go, and I think that's a Very Good Thing.