This is not really a post about knitting

I recently knitted a scarf out of a beautiful cotton yarn.  I knew that stockinette-stitch scarves roll inward, but I hoped that a garter-stitch border would control it.  No such luck.  I kept knitting, figuring I could block the scarf once it was done, and force it flat.  That didn't work either.  It is truly in the nature of stockinette to roll.  And if I, as the creator of the scarf, wanted a non-rolling scarf, I should have chosen a different stitch. I can't hold the scarf, or the yarn, or the stitch responsible for something that I chose to do.  At this point I can decide to accept the scarf as it is, or unravel it and redeem the yarn by making something new.  I could always burn it, but why punish the yarn for something the knitter chose to do?  

On Journaling, Crying, and Being Pathetic :)

My mom and I went to a class last night on the power of journaling.  The instructor led us through a series of five-minute exercises meant to demonstrate journaling as a method of "gaining new perspectives on problems and blocks, setting goals and monitoring progress, solving problems, and reducing stress."

The exercises were not designed to make us cry.  Of course, being the pathetic basket case that I am, I started sobbing during the very first assignment.  Yes, right there in class in front of the instructor, my mother, and the other journalers.  I wasn't even talking.  Just writing.

The specific assignment was to write about "Where I am Right Now."  Here, for your reading and sobbing pleasure, is what I wrote:

My children are leaving me.  My son is going away to college next year; my daughter has her emotional foot out the door and traveling the world with a backpack.  My little one isn't so little, and doesn't physically need me as much, although she's emotionally clingy.

It depresses me that a stage in my life is passing so quickly. When I stopped homeschooling full time, one of the hardest parts was losing my identity as a "homeschool mom."  I got over it. "Public school mom" was just as good.  Not having all my kids living at home, though, nearly makes me want to cry.  OK, it does make me cry, and I still have months with all of them and years with at least one.

And those years are passing in a blur of migraines and meds and missed events.  This is not the childhood I envisioned for my kids.

Who Am I?

Who am I?  I'm a wife and mom, daughter and granddaughter, sister and aunt.  I'm a writer and a reader, and a knitter.  I'm also a migraineur - a chronic migraine sufferer.  And it's my migraineurship (I guess I made that word up) which, for ill or good, is defining my life these days.  But I don't want my identity to be solely, "Migraine Sufferer."

I started knitting as a way of making myself be productive instead of just laying around feeling sorry for myself.  I could (can) no longer work as a computer scientist.  I often can't think straight at all, between the pain and the meds.  But I don't have to think straight to knit.  I just have to knit.  Purl.  Knit.  Purl.  And I have to say I've made some beautiful things in this year of pain.

Same with the writing.  I can't drive myself to work, spend eight hours at a job which requires logic and attention, and then drive myself home -  but I can spend a few hours here and a few hours there writing.  At home, on my laptop, when I have a few blessed lucid hours straight.  It's taking a long time (over a year already) but my YA alternate-reality time-travel novel, Spinning Coins, is almost done.  I can go weeks or even months at a time without adding a chapter, but it's always there waiting for me.  Unlike my computer science job, where, oddly, they needed me there regularly.

I do have hopes of ending this seemingly-endless migraine abyss.  I already have an ONSTIM (Occipital Nerve Stimulation for the Treatment of Intractable Migraines) which gives me what lucid hours I have.  The ONSTIM is basically electrodes in my head which interrupt the pain signals between my occipital nerve and my brain.   (The rechargeable battery pack is in my left buttock; my nine-year-old is amused when I "can't get a signal out of my butt" to recharge it.)

And soon I'll be having surgery to fix my PFO (Patent Foramen Ovale), a tiny hole between the top two chambers of my heart.  PFOs have recently been linked to chronic migraines, since unfiltered blood can pass to the brain.   

In the meantime, I continue to try every migraine med known to man, and may go for Botox injections for other nerves soon, too.  

Journaling as a Legacy

This morning I've been sitting at my mom's dining room table with my Grandma Hess.  She's been watching the birds, and I've been knitting.  Grandpa is reading in his recliner.  It's been a peaceful morning.

Grandma is 94, and has kept diaries since she was a teenager.  I asked her if she's still doing it, and she said, "No, but I should."

I should, too.  Grandma has provided a legacy to us in her words.  We can look back and find out snippets of her life (nothing profound in Grandma's diaries), glimpses of who she was and who she is and where we come from.   I'd love to know more about the other women (and men) who came before me, and I'd love to leave a legacy for those who come after me, even though to me my days seem routine and relatively uninteresting.