I Told You Not To Go Camping

It's raining again.  It rained last night, with thunder even.  Memorial Day weekend is not a weekend to go sleeping and cooking and sitting around outside.  You get wet.

Yesterday afternoon I did what I said I was going to do.  I went downstairs, threw the sheets in the wash, and then sorted through the sock yarn bin and made sure it was all photographed and correctly entered into my Ravelry Stash.  I was certain that I had most, if not all, of the sock yarn already listed but my smug satisfaction with myself was grossly misplaced.  It took all afternoon, but at least the sheets got washed and dried too.

On Friday night at knitting MW showed us pictures of the buckwheat pancakes he made and ate with cream cheese and strawberries tucked between them.  It looked wonderful.  Then one of the email recipes I opened yesterday (I have a tendency to let a few days' emails like that pile up) was one for Tender & Easy Buttermilk Waffles.  I took it as a sign.  I got the Belgian waffle iron out, whipped the stuff up while the iron was heating, served Durwood the first one, made four to put in the freezer (packaged in halves because they're quite large), and I ate the last one.  They lived up to their name.  I used regular 2% milk with a couple tablespoons of white vinegar to sour it and followed the recipe exactly.  Yum.  Durwood's a big fan of toaster waffles so I thought I'd make some "real" ones for him instead of the store brand ones that taste quite a bit like the box they come in... but then I'm prejudiced against most pre-made foods.  Ack, is the word that comes to mind.

After breakfast and reading the paper I potted the second pineapple top, the one that spent a week drying in the dark, and gave each of them a little drink of water.  I'm a firm believer in watering in things when you pot them.  The water washes soil into any air pockets around the roots.  Air pockets kill roots and can make plants die.

I also managed to put on a pair of my own shoes today, even on my left foot with my Fisher-Price air cast on it.  I realized that I'm putting my foot down flat in Durwood's big shoe so my Achilles tendon isn't flexing the way it should.  Most of my shoes have the rocker soles that were all the rage years ago so it encourages that natural heel-to-toe stride and one pair is Mary Jane-like which opens more so it allows for the extra bulk of the cast, sock, and slightly swollen foot.  I can tell it's working because after wearing the shoes for 2 hours I'm on the couch with an ice pack wrapped around my ankle.  This is good, that means I'm flexing it more.  Still using the walker to carry most of my weight when I step with my left foot, never fear, but I don't want that tendon to stiffen up any more than it already has after eight weeks (EIGHT!) of immobilizing casts and boots.

After my sock bin adventure I sat on the couch last night and knitted a third of the foot rounds on Frustration Anklet #2.  I'm determined to finish it by the end of the day on Tuesday so I'll have made a pair of (short) foot coverings in just under two weeks in Mason Dixon's #OneSockKAL.







May 29--Truckshots, RRT-15.

Ground fog
swallows the tracks
twin ribbons
of steel
spiced with creosote ties
Freight cars
plunge heedless
into obscurity
eager to disappear
~~~~~

I hope you're making the most of the first long weekend of the season, even if it is drizzling where you are, like it is where I am.  I plan to knit.  What're you going to do today?
--Barbara