Colorado Autumn

[liralen]

It snowed. It got down to 17° F (-8° C) at night on Saturday. It was 48° F this afternoon and should reach 60° by Thursday. This is slow for October in Colorado, it should have been 60 today. *laughs*

But part of a Colorado Autumn is Elk Season and having friends that know friends who go bow hunting for elk yields the pleasantry of a dozen one-pound packages marked "Elk Hamburger -- Do NOT Sell for Profit". So we've been having Silton elk hamburgers, elk Stovies (onions, potatoes, ground meat, and peas served with Brown Sauce), and today we had elk chili. It's quite tasty.



I was busy today. Wrote from 9-12, had lunch, made chili, and then went on errands with John to Michael's for an "as seen on TV!!" iSlice. It's an interesting version of the single-sheet cutter that Levenger has sold for decades, but Levenger sells them at 2 for $14, but these were only $5 a piece at Michael's. That is AFTER we took nearly half an hour trying to find them. They were back in the sewing section, which made no sense whatsoever, as they can't cut fabric. They should have been in scrapbooking.

We dropped by my favorite store, the Cheese Importers here in town to get some Parmigiano-Reggiano, aged cheddar, and mascarpone. I have this strange desire to put mascarpone (a sweet Italian double-cream cheese) in my oatmeal. We did grocery shopping after that, and then I just lost steam, and didn't get a damned thing else done. I've been fighting off a depression since the retreat, and it's won quite a few times. Writing this morning helped a great deal, and I was really happy for quite some time after that; but I just feel really awful and have been grumpy and snappy and snarling when I really don't want to be. And, yeah, being hormonal now isn't helping.

Doing things helps. Trying to stop thinking helps, and the easiest way is to play quick reaction games where I can't think. It's mildly zen when I can really get going, but it takes a terrible toll on my upper body. Better to write, I think, as that's a way to channel my brain into something else too.

Knitting is useful as well. incandescens gave me a beautiful book on modular knitting that Jet really loved, too, as it's all about building sweaters out of little bitty blocks from any kind of yarn. He could do all the knitting needed to make some of the blocks, so he's very excited. We measured him, did the math, together, to figure out the size of all the pieces.

I let him use any of my leftover bits from all the socks I've ever made, there's nearly a two-gallon bucket's worth of little tail-end balls I kept for no good reason. Handspun, hand-dyed, multicolor, most of them, there's also Kool-Aide dyed stuff, and commercial stuff, ragtag ends of KPPPM, and bits of silk as well. I asked him to direct me at the color for each block I knit, and he's been having fun telling me. I've been churning out the bits and pieces, and he's working steadily through his first triangle, and having a lot of fun marking his progress. He loves the idea that he'll be able to put it all together, like a puzzle, at the end. I'm less thrilled with all the sewing, but we're leaving long enough tails on all the pieces to do that.

He likes it that I knit pieces of his sweater while we play video games together. We got to play the Fire book of the video game, and it's been cool to see how the story goes. That's soothing.

I guess I'll keep taking each day as it comes and maybe I'll feel better tomorrow. There's been a flu with high fever going around, mowed down nearly all the kids but Jet from the retreat, and John even got it earlier this week. I'm still bemused that I haven't. Maybe my hyper immune system, besides giving me allergies, is actually doing a kick-ass job of keeping me well... I dunno, but I'll hope and take some Airborne besides.