Size and Scope

I'm feeling much better now. A huge relatively pain free hug to all my well wishers. Thank you.

Having spent two weeks with only one functional arm, that being my left and me being right handed, and then another week and a half with fairly limited use of said right arm, I learned a few things. Some of the things I learned were akin to the lessons I learned when I was busy having babies and taking care of toddlers; prioritization, lowering expectations, dealing with what is and not what I want it to be. And some things I learned were new; prioritization, lowering expectations, dealing with what is and not what I want it to be, and it's not as bad as I think it is, really.

I call it the Shrinky Dink theory. As a child I would take that magical polystyrene sheet and color and cut and bake and watch it shrink about 35%. I would stare through the oven window and watch it go through bizarre contortions as it writhed on the cookie sheet. There was always this fear that it would fold over on itself and be ruined forever. And sometimes it would require a second baking with a metal spatula pressing down on it to remove the last of the wrinkles. Oh, the anticipation, the awe, the agony! Finally the contortions would stop. Our shrunken piece of plastic could be attached to the key ring, neclace or zipper pull for which is was destined.

And so, it's not as bad as I think it is, really. It only took me a few days to get the kitchen back to normal and the laundry caught up. A few minutes of straightening up and a good sweeping and everything was back to it's relatively neat normal.

During my convalesence I spent time going through my stash (yarn weighs next to nothing,) organizing my patterns (binder and page protectors, and some .pdf files on the computer,) and putting my queue of holiday gifts together on Ravelry. I was able to do some knitting provided I only moved my wrist. A good thing too because I needed those endorphins!

I also read some books that I had aquired and wanted to look at. One of them was a cookbook on canning and preserving food. This is a skill that I wanted to learn one day. I decided that this was the figurtive day. The local fruit stands are selling peaches, cherries, plums, apricots, blueberries, strawberries and every other summer fruit at very reasonable prices. June Cleaver I am not, but I made a yummy mango raspberry jam and a cherry orange marmalade, both of which went into jars and into a water bath yesterday. Tomorrow I am going to make apple pie filling and peach butter. I would publish pictures but my oldest took my camera to document the last week of summer camp and her horrible five year old male charges. Also on my list is cherry berry jam, the berries being blue and straw, and apple butter. Yum.

Well at least I'll have a default Channuka gift if I don't get my knitting done.

Yay me.