On The Up

I've had two pieces of good news since last I blogged. The first is that I have had two designs accepted by Knit Today. Yay! Go me! I'm just waiting for the editor to finalise my contract, and then I'll just be waiting for the yarn to turn up. No idea, yet, when they're going to be published, but watch this space.

The second piece of good news is related to that, in a way. The reason that it's taken so long for me to produce the item I'm working on at the moment for Simply Knitting is that I've felt like my O₂ levels have been off for several months, and that therefore I haven't been able to concentrate properly. I can't tell you how many times I've had to check and recheck the Hard Sums on the pattern, not to mention having to frog and reknit. I've also been unable to read anything with a narrative. Knitting magazines and books have been OK, because they are a collection of short pieces, but if you'd asked me to keep track of a story and its characters...

Richard and I tested the oxygen flow from my concentrating machine, following his initial suggestion that maybe I wasn't getting enough (mind you, that's been my problem for years...), and turned it up a notch. This helped a bit, but I still asked for a visit from one of the hospital's Respiratory Nurses. I was still expecting them to tell me that there was insufficient oxygen in my bloodstream, but I tested at 95%, which is pretty good for me.

We had a long chat about my fuzzy head (which is also part of the ME, of course) and my breathing difficulties, and eventually she suggested upping the dose of my fluid retention tablets, because extra fluid generally makes it harder for my lungs to expand, and big puffy legs don't help mobility, either.

"Um... I kind of stopped taking them."

She was baffled. "Why on earth would you do something like that!?"

If I'd been standing up, I would have shuffled my feet. "Well, I felt like they were irritating my kidneys. And they made me wee a lot."

"Yes, that's the point of them. If they're reducing the fluid, it has to go somewhere. Now, are you going to start taking them again?"

"...mm-hm..."

"And you won't stop taking them?"

"...noo..."

"And I'll phone you next week and see how you've improved."

"'nk oo."

She packed up her stuff and left, and I rooted about in the drawer to find my fluid retention tablets...

Well, suffice it to say that when she phoned the following Monday, I had read a novel-and-a-half and zoomed ahead on my knitting. So much for my self medication; I think I ought to leave it to the doctors in future!

(One of the novels was Ark Baby by Liz Jensen, which is incredibly funny and very cleverly written, all about the theory of evolution and the Missing Link. I recommend it unreservedly.)

So I'm now in the pleasant position of having work coming in and knowing that my brain is up to doing it. And I'm being much more diligent over my medication...

Tigger says, "Nurse? What nurse? Oh, you mean that nice lady that came to make a fuss of me?"

Ta-dah!

Well, the big news of the month is the launch of the Beamish Boy's official web design business. He's been designing websites for himself and other people as a hobby since he was about 15, and now he's doing it as a professional. He's working on a great retail site for me at the moment. If you would like to see his business website, you'll find it at http://www.catdogsinetheta.co.uk/. Feel free to tell your friends :)

The biggest trauma of the past couple of weeks has been taking Tigger to the V-E-T. He needed a little light pedicure as well as his booster shots. He took the needle in the neck like an absolute trouper, but he complained bitterly about the Vet touching his paws! He has a unique method of protest about car journeys, too. Rather than howling, weeing himself, or trying to get out of the box - which are the methods all my past cats have used - he sits in his box, quietly and regularly uttering a pitiful "mau" (to rhyme with "cow"); somewhat reminiscent of a metronome... if metronomes went "mau"...

Once he came home he behaved as any sensible cat would do, and lay about the place pretending to be at Death's door, while ignoring that heartless human who made him go through the ghastly process in the first place: me. Yes, folks, even though it was Richard who took him to the Vet, it was me he ignored for the next 24 hours...

Oh, and I've had a reply from Rowan, who say they don't have any vacancies for designers at the moment, but that they'll keep my details on file for when they do. In the mean time, I'm sending more submissions off to Vogue Knitting and the Interweave group.

Tigger says, "Vets? We don't need no steenkin' vets!"