lichama

Posted on 16 May 2012 at 23:39 in

I’ve been thinking about the fitness of words, as one does, incessantly, right? but about some in particular: Reason’s recent and ongoing outburst (today’s unprompted events include a request for “bupi” = blueberries, pointing identification of a picture of “alla” = alligator, and a brandished “baila” = umbrella), plus ravens and crows. (It took me a few tries to decipher bupi, of which none are here at the moment. Successful guesses are rewarded by visible toddler relief, excitement, nodding.) My lichama—my corpus, the home for my physicality which is also home to my mind—has been ill but is finally mending. Reason had the same cold virus, starting four days before me; her cough lingers. We’ve been free of baby/toddler projectile vomit to date, for which I am very grateful, though having been asked four times a night for water, eight nights running, has its woes; kicking a cold out of one’s home is thus the harder. “The harder”—funny in modern English, perfectly fine instrumental dative in the period that goes with lic and lichama. We have it now only for comparatives.

And tomorrow, we’ll make an offer on a home in the more conventional sense, our second during the current bout of looking and considering. Lots of paperwork goes into an offer, so it’s pleasant to find things slightly easier the second time. Our first go was binned—too low—but then, the asking price is too high; no one else has wanted that other house at list price or anything near it, either.

And the day after, I will return to the office instead of working from home.

It feels a bit as though my figurative joints are tobrast. Not the real ones that hold me together indifferently at best, anyway, but the ones that keep interior thoughts inside and permit full sentences out.

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eighteen months and change

Posted on 9 May 2012 at 16:12 in

And nickels and dimes, I was thinking, but during the past 3-5 weeks we began having a different little person, one who tells me to sit, and goes down the little slide at the park after climbing all the steps herself (though we still need occasionally to catch her at slide’s end so that she doesn’t land on her face), and asks me for water (or picks up and puts down the cup herself) when she’s thirsty, and points out/names a variety of animals, colors, and shapes while we’re reading her books together.

She’s gained only one pound in six months. Her food goes towards height: still at ninety-somethingth percentile for height, currently 33.5 in (85 cm). Somehow, the nurse has measured her head at 1 cm circumference smaller than last time.

One quirk: she hasn’t quite figured out the shape sorter yet (our version is a box with removable lid; the lid has six holes, one for each shape of plastic block). OTOH, she knows to nudge blocks into a tighter column if her first placement of a block is too far from the invisible vertical line of the column’s center; she builds columns five or six high without anyone’s participation or request; she’s been putting her blocks away (into the box, a bag, or her plastic storage drawer), sometimes unbidden, for weeks. If she hasn’t figured out the shape sorter by a year hence, then I’ll worry.

And she’s had a nasty cold since Saturday night, whose ensuing naps have contributed to my ability to work on my stuff and whose coughing has knocked my neck out (too little me-sleep). Poor kid will probably have to accompany me to the chiropractor tomorrow, an hour-plus in the car each way, instead of chilling at home—and she still dislikes sleeping in the car. The alternative would be for me to miss precious office time while darkforge stays home with her on Friday, and to have an extra day of pain….

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go go gadget momentum

Posted on 9 May 2012 at 11:13 in

I am noting it here for accountability for the month’s remaining three weeks: I’ve not only blog-published a few sharable parts of my dissertation but (beyond that) spent time on my own work on three separate days during the past ten. The sharable bits are things no one would publish formally on their own yet useful for laying claim in a web-search-visible way; my diss focus involved some obscure stuff, and blog release is one straightforward way to attach my legal name to it. Though the bits of work have been somewhat administrative—slicing up descriptions of textual relationships so that I can refine and add to them more easily, frex, as a way of reacquainting myself with what I used to think—it is useful to believe that they count. So does beginning to read and think my way through a recent edition of a text that’s a cousin to mine.

There is beneficial distance from a major, formerly hag-riding project, and then there is the distance that makes it seem as though one is no longer smart enough to argue with one’s former self. Well, get smarter, current self, because it’s on.

I have stacked the deck a bit. A query has been sent to discover whether a particular archive has, or can be encouraged to have, scans/photos/film of a few manuscripts of interest. The answer may well be no, but I’ve read there before and have offered to help fund the imaging if necessary. (Full funding of it would be cheaper than traveling to the repository and engaging a place to sleep nearby for the length of time I’d need, and I can’t travel there in the near future anyway.) A second e-mail has gone to one of my teachers, someone who wasn’t on my diss committee but knows my work somewhat; that one has had a generous reply already, offering to “help expedite” my return to this sort of work.

*tunes accountability* *plucks string gently* *retunes*

I have to say, I picked up that cousin-edition (printed) on a day when my phone could not be convinced to display my legally purchased .epub of Sherwood Smith’s Banner of the Damned, following a two-week hiatus. The file opens on my laptop, but something about the combination of Adobe DRM, my phone’s reader app, and the epub file no longer succeeds—and I pretty much never read at novel length on my laptop. I’m on page 41 (of nearly 800)! Something must be done! But technological failure has had its use, this once.

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mitten update of mild triumph

Posted on 4 May 2012 at 08:40 in

My hat’s off to everyone who knits “western” style and holds the yarn in the left hand to “pick” stitches as their usual mode. I’ve now trained my left hand into doing it, clumsily, while leaving the right hand in “throw” mode, in order to carry one strand of yarn in each hand and make my cousin’s mittens in the manner recommended by knitting designers. Picking feels rather like crocheting, in which case why isn’t there a hook on the end of the right-hand needle, eh? (One can get them thus, but it isn’t conventional for most of the European usages that go with that manner of holding the yarn.) Good thing I’m not in a hurry, because two-handed/stranded knitting is perhaps thrice as slow as my default mode, and it whets mild joint-ache in half the time. *rests* But it’s nice to conquer a mode I thought I’d never be able to do: achievement unlocked despite invisible disability.

Good thing (?) too that I have a mad passion for learning things All the Time, or I’d never have felt determined enough to figure this out, even in its clumsy, reduced form: though I’ve pretty good dexterity and hand strength, cocking a finger and moving it such that yarn moves with it is impossible for me. Instead, the finger that would be cocked lies cozily against its fellows to help hold one needle in place, and the other needle scoops yarn off it. :P Knitting, more so than crochet (which I also hold funny), is one way for me to whisper at entropy, “Fairest and Fallen, greetings and defiance!”

Things I’ve learned from the prior mitten attempt: though double-pointed needles are better (for me) for single-stranded socks, and though socks and mittens are basically the same thing, I’m using two circs because it means fewer places where I’m tempted to pull the yarn too tightly. Thanks to oyceter for warning me about that, and to seryn for reminding me about wrapping floats. The knitting tension seems okay (not that I could change it much!), such that there may even be room for the knitted lining suggested by the pattern. I’ll have a chance in a few weeks to try mitten #1 on my cousin.

Two pictures of the mitten in progress are on my Ravelry account; as of last night, mitten #1 is at 60%, more than twice the height pictured there. Speak up if you’d prefer to see pics here.

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