Where to even begin. Boring navel-gazing nerd alert!

I am in the midst of changing what has become a bad habit.  It is not a gut-wrenching addiction yet, but it could easily become one. Addictions run in my family.  Rather, they gallop. My former stepmonster had a wicked case of alcoholism. The adults in my family rarely skimped on the hooch. i have to watch what we eat because there is a tendency to run rampant through whatever goodies sit in front of me. I am grateful that bariatric surgery has helped enormously with that issue.  Even yarn and knitting patterns have become somewhat of an addiction to me, albeit fairly benign ones. 

Though the weight loss surgery has helped in a number of areas, I have found of late that I am much more affected by alcohol - my drink of choice being red wine and not much else - than I ever was in the past. Gastric bypass did not leave me with the "juices" and enzymes in the stomach I used to have. As a result, alcohol goes right to the bloodstream undiluted.  It packs quite a whallop. It puts me to sleep.  Then I sober up almost instantaneously, wondering why the heck I did that. Again.

The problem with the above is that it's not good to get inebriated on a regular basis.  It's not good for the brain, the liver or the soul - to say nothing of those important relationships in my life. It snuck up on me almost insidiously, wine being the "treat" at the end of a long workday - something that made even the most mundane meal very tasty. It got easier and easier to drink too much, since I rarely drank away from home and I never drank and drove or watched children or anything like that.  I do have my standards. At least at this point I do.  

However....

I came to the decision that it was taking up far too much of my precious time - and money. I also figured that this is the time to stop - not when I am in crisis.  I told a friend.  The friend's reaction was predictable, because this friend does not lie to me or say anything just to spare my feelings.  It was basically along the lines of "you have your reason for doing things and you have to puzzle this one out for yourself." Wise words, but then I wasn't surprised. I told my husband.  He (bless his heart) offered to help.  And he has - in the midst of dealing with his own physical recovery, pain and depression over the amount of time this is taking him.

Over the weekend, I mulled this predicament as I went from client visit to client visit - and I did a LOT of client visits to catch up on the two weeks I was out. It occurred to me that there are aspects to my personality that one could call "addictive."  I'm not so sure that's always a bad thing. For example, when I find something that stirs my passion, I go for it, wholeheartedly.  When I make a friend, they are important to me and they remain so.  I don't give up on people easily (despite what some of my colleagues may say - that's different!) Those aspects to me can be annoying to others, certainly, but to them I say, "tough - that's who I am." A friend of mine has told me that there are people I care about so much that I am blind to their faults. That actually is NOT true.  I am not blind so much as take those things as part and parcel of the human being I view as a friend.

And of course, there's knitting and crocheting and weaving and.... MUSIC:)

But knowing that this has been and will be possible, I will have to be more vigilant from now on. And if that's the worst that happens to me, I'll be fine:)

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The past few days have put quite a bit of mileage on my poor car. But I got to see my wonderful clients and how bad can that be?:)

Normally, not much occurs in my travels.  However, today's journey through the Fort McHenry Tunnel to the East side of Bawlmer resulted in some excitement a train derailment and explosion that resulted in a truck driver going to the hospital and so far no fatalities, thank goodness. Lots of smoke on the horizon and a small traffic backup.  My clients foster homes and my office shook with the crash and explosion. While we were stopped ever so briefly on the Beltway, a number of people snapped the above pictures. It's amazing there wasn't loss of life.

The bad thing is it took far too long to get home and poor John was left to fend for himself while he wasn't feeling well.  As I type this, he is sleeping or doing something approaching sleep.  He is doing a lot of that lately and I suspect it's part of the healing process. I sure hope it is.

On the knitting front - oh yes, there's a knitting front - I have made some progress on the Norwegian Rose Jacket by Meg Swansen. I'm getting into a rhythm in terms of knitting with yarns in both my left and right hands, but it is slowwww goinnnngggggg:) At least now you can see a flower starting to develop from what was previously incoherent color changes:

Please pardon the fingers.  Despite making valiant attempts at PWYC (purl when you can), the bottom edge is rolling a bit - and likely will continue to do so until the i-cord edge is knitted on and the whole thing has been blocked.  I may make some changes to the pattern - not major ones. I think I'd like to keep the edge pattern all in the purple and cream while the upper pattern changes to blue and cream. It means a sort of intarsia unless I want to carry a color all the way around - unlikely.I also think I will not do a line of one color around the waist line before the color change to blue and cream. This babbling will become more intelligible as I get to those sections.:).

Well, dear friend or friends, it's getting late in my little corner of the world, so I'm going to close up shop right now. Hopefully I'll have something far more interesting to say in future posts.  Until then, God be with you 'til we meet again.+