Every morning between about 11:30 and 12:30, if I open my shades, a small sunbeam falls directly below my desk. Upon hearing the shades being drawn, Kimble magically appears at the sunbeam spot, where he rolls around in feline delight, jockeys for position with my feet, and tries very hard to be run over by my chair.

Speaking of my feet, as you can see from the picture, they are still swelling. For the last month and a half, they have swollen up (along with my hands and face) about once a day, on average, for about 4-6 hours at a time. They have swollen so much, so often, for so long, that they are actually a little bit bruised in the worst areas, from the capillaries having burst. (I have found that moisturizing them every night helps with some of the stretchy-skin discomfort.)

This is actually why I went to the doctor in the first place. She said it was happening because I’m overweight. Which is funny, because I’ve been overweight my entire life, and yet this STUPID FOOT THING just started happening about six weeks ago.

I haven’t yet been able to figure out what’s causing it. It’s happening right now, at about 4PM, and all I have consumed today is:

- Claritin
- Coffee (black)
- Diet Coke
- Roasted new potatoes with olive oil, garlic, and basil (no salt)
- Cherries (fresh, plain)
- About half a gallon of water

So far, using observation and a series of incredibly tedious dietary restrictions, I have systematically been able to rule out:

- Salt
- Sugar
- Dairy
- Wheat
- Corn
- Soy
- Nuts
- Meat
- Hot weather (it’s only 75 today, and a pleasant 72 degrees in the office)
- Inactivity (happens even if I’m in the middle of taking a walk at the time; walking around doesn’t alleviate the swelling, and only makes me crabbier)
- Blood pressure (all my life it’s been 130/90, but at the last visit I clocked in at 128/87, yay me!)

It is not accompanied by shortness of breath, dizziness, chest pain, pain in the arms (or anywhere else), numbness or tingling (except what you’d expect), or fever.. It is not, in fact, accompanied by any other symptom, except crabbiness, but I think that’s more of a side effect of the problem itself, y’know? It happens at any time of day – morning, afternoon, or evening. It exists completely independent of any other factor, and seems to happen totally at random. Elevating them doesn’t help.

I’m pretty much at sea with this one. I got nothin’. I know theoretically I should doctor-shop and find someone else, but our health care only covers 80% of an office visit, and I’m still waiting to get the bill from the last one.

Any and all suggestions are welcome, at this point! (Because what good is a blog if you can’t use it to solicit free medical advice from anonymous strangers on the internet?)

Comments (0)

I should have a separate category for “Pictures I took to sell something online, which the cats ruined by blundering into frame.”

Comments (0)

Haven’t had much knitting time this week, but work on the Girlfriend’s Swing Coat Sweater is proceeding apace. (What pace? Just apace, okay?)

Unfinished Girlfriend enjoys a moment outside on a sunny afternoon, looking out over Lake Union.

I’m nearly to the part where you set the sleeves aside on waste yarn, so I figure I’m about 1/4th of the way through. Hoping to dig in and get a lot of work done on it this weekend.

In other news, you must buy Lisa Souza’s merino sock yarn! (But not until my own order is filled. I got there first!)

It’s not an optical illusion; those numbers are correct. 560 yards of super-soft merino sock yarn for only $16. (I know! She’s crazy! Buy some quick, before she bumps the price up to something more reasonable!)

I am chagrined by how funny Scott Adams’ (the creator of Dilbert) blog is. I comfort myself with the thought that, much in the same way that I could be thin like an actress if that’s what I (like an actress) was paid to do, I could be as funny as Scott Adams if that’s what I did for a living.

“Eradicating ants in the kitchen is exactly like being attacked by zombies, except the zombies are very small, and the worst thing they can do is walk on your crackers. As you know, when zombies attack, you can kill several hundred of them with your automatic weapons and flame throwers and stabby things, but additional zombies keep on coming as if they hadn’t noticed. Ants are just like that. They really aren’t good at pattern recognition. You can vacuum six hundred ants in a straight line and yet ant 601 won’t see it coming. He’ll be all “Hey, why am I suddenly in this bag full of dust? Carl, is that you?”

The great thing about blogging is that if you don’t have something to say, you can just pass along what someone else said. I had never heard of Mr. Pickles (be sure to mouseover, so you can hear them play) until Piddleloop mentioned him. I do not know what Mr. Pickles is, exactly, but I think I love him, and all of his friends.

Comments (0)

It’s been getting really hot here, almost in the 90s. I know this doesn’t seem hot to you, since you live in a city where the temperatures hit the hundreds starting in February, but you have air conditioning.

In Seattle, air conditioning as seen as some kind of moral failure like wearing fur, buying conflict diamonds, or investing in tobacco companies. Offices are air conditioned, but homes are not. Instead, we all just sit around and suffer all summer.

Kimble made it halfway across the floor before he had to drop and take a quick nap to recover from the exertion.

(Not from heat exhaustion; just because heat makes us sleepy. It was only 78.3 degrees in the room when this picture was taken [thank you, digital thermostat].)

When it’s this hot, there’s not much to do but lie on the floor with your butt facing the fan, and look pissy.

“I am holding you personally responsible for my mild discomfort.”

The Girlfriend’s Swing Coat is coming along well. I wanted to put in some lace, to lighten it up a little, but I didn’t want anything froofy. Somewhere in blogland, someone a while back was knitting a baby blanket that had a motif of YO eyelets, 4×4 little checkerboard squares. I can’t find the site now, but I decided to steal the idea anyway.

I made them zigzag by working them as:

Row 1: (K2tog, YO) x 4
Row 3: (K2tog, YO) x 4
Row 5: (YO, k2tog) x 4
Row 7: (YO, k2tog) x4

The coat is worked in stockinette, so the even-numbered rows are just purled across.

I am still loving the raglan increases. I don’t know why these please me so greatly. I love the way the stitches naturally arrange themselves into a 45 degree angle, and the little bars like dashes to each side of the increase.

The increase stitches are worked kfb. I will definitely be using this technique again on other projects.

Comments (5)

I’ve started a new blog category, “Things I Would Like to Knit Some Day,” because I always see these patterns online and think, “Ehm, not right now, I’m really behind on my projects.” And then I fear that I will forget them. Aren’t blogs handy?

Most recently, I would some day like to knit:

Piddleloop’s Sweet Mary Janes. (I bet I could wear those in the office! And it would be like wearing socks! But I would get credit for wearing shoes! Sweet!)

The Keyboard Biologist’s Dragon Socks. (Seriously, aren’t those the coolest?)

SavannahChik’s Natalya Gauntlets. (They are so pretty, even though they are totally not the sort of thing I’d wear – but surely I could find someone to knit them for. They look like they’d be fun to knit!)

The Girl From Auntie’s Rogue Hoodie. (So pretty… and yet it would never fit me… and I would never be able to work all those cables correctly… but perhaps some day?)

Sivia Harding’s Gothic Leaf Stole. (I am not a “stole” kind of person, but I really really want to knit this.)

Comments (0)