Head Above the Waves

Promise me you will not spend so much time treading water and trying to keep your head above the waves that you forget, truly forget, how much you have always loved to swim.
- Tyler-Nnott Gregson 

Yet another week flashed past in a blink of an eye, and yet again, I find myself only getting to my projects on a Saturday. Gosh, I'm frustrated with that. I'm so hoping that life slows down a bit so I can make more time for it. I feel sad looking at all my neglected skeins of yarn, all waiting to become something beautiful.

I'm glad to finally have the other two ladybug dolls finished. I had one almost finished this time last week, and the other one lay around in pieces all week until I finally got to it today. It really didn't take me all that much time, but it's a job that requires a decent amount of concentration, and was therefore something I didn't want to undertake with a work-weary brain. Still, they're cute... and they're done!

I can finally go back to my selfish knitting... and back to this stole that I started working on at the beginning of the month. I took it with me on a trip to a rocky beach back then... 

And it has since grown...

The yarn is some superwash merino dyed by an indie dyer who isn't in business anymore (sadly). It's a cool colourway called "Drain Ewe" - sort of a nod to a vampire theme. I love how striking the red is next to the black. I'm looking forward to blocking it to show off the simple lace. I'm using a pattern from Knitty called Wisp, a simple pattern that is perfect for some mindless knitting...

Except it's not quite so mindless, because it's full of a bunch of knit-two-togethers of one regular stitch and one yarn over. This means that I'm constantly tugging at the stitches to get my needle through it evenly. If I was really smart, I would have changed it to ssk stitches, which I find much quicker, but hindsight is always 20/20, and there ain't no way I'm ripping this out now!

Meanwhile, life moves wearily on. The hubby and I are very, very tired dealing with our little Rascal. He has been diagnosed with an inoperable tumour which is pressing against his sciatic nerve. It is wrapped around a portion of his bowel, which causes it to inflame every so often, rendering him weak and unable to walk some days. It's a strange thing: sometimes, he is perfectly normal, wagging his tail and running around with a toy in his mouth. Other days, I find myself holding his limp body in the middle of the night, his eyes glassy, his face unresponsive to anything I do. Some nights, he sleeps almost throughout the night. Others, he is up and wandering, uncomfortable and unsettled, and one of us usually is awake as well, unsure of what to do, unsure of what he is thinking and feeling, only knowing that this is not normal. I reach Friday exhausted and sleep-deprived, but grateful that we've made it through another week with him.

He has started a course of chemotherapy, which for dogs is a course of pills that can only be handled with gloves, along with a course of oral steroids to help with the inflammation. For the last 3 or 4 days, his appetite has been normal... and I encourage this by mixing his kibble with warm rice and a tablespoon of the finest filet mignon available in a package:

His medications and his food appear to be working, because he's back to begging to go outside to sun himself on the deck, even if it is only for five minutes at a time:

It's a good thing he's cute. And I think that, now that he gets warm meals and is currently sleeping on the spare bed, this might be the normal way of life from now on. Geez. Ah well, he's worth it. I just want him to be free of pain, whatever it takes.

And while life seems very tiring these days, I still insist on keeping faith that I will eventually stop having to live my life just barely keeping up. It will all fall into place somehow, and it will be for the best in the end.

I mean, really... I have way too much yarn for it to turn out otherwise...