randomness

I've been in the kitchen recently, which has been great.  I spent about 3 hours on Sunday cooking up a bunch of stuff so I'd have lunch and dinners throughout the week, and now I have a nice full fridge.  However, although I diligently packed my lunch and took it to work yesterday, I worked through lunch and then went straight into meetings and didn't have time to eat it.  Granola bars do not make a good lunch substitute, I can attest.

On the way home last night I finally used a gift card for Sur La Table that a good friend gave me for Christmas.  I got myself a pizza stone and a pizza peel.  I've been coveting a pizza stone for a good long time, and that's exactly what this gift card was intended for, since said friend thoroughly understands my love of pizza and desire to replicate Tuscan pizza at home.

Let me just say I have a long way to go to rival any Tuscan pizzas.  My first pizza is a runaway lead for "ugliest pizza ever."  This is an extremely flattering photo of it. It stuck to both the peel and the stone and basically came apart coming out of the oven. It tasted far better than it looked, though, and the crust was nice and crispy from the stone!  Another friend tells me first pizzas are like first pancakes (crepes, waffles...) - they are always ugly.  The next one will be better.

Between buying the pizza stone and cooking the pizza, I stopped in at urgent care to beg for more antibiotics, because the sinus infection I had a couple of weeks ago is back. I think I felt well for all of 24 hours before I went downhill again.  This is so not amusing any more. The doctor called the new antibiotics the "bigger cousin" of the amoxicillin she gave me last time and warned me to take them with lots of water because they taste bad.  Whoo boy, she wasn't kidding.  Also they are chalky, start dissolving immediately, and get stuck in one's throat.  And did I mention that I have a hard time swallowing pills anyway?  One down, 19 to go.  I haven't taken my morning pill yet because I'm scared of it.  I'm considering imbedding it in peanut butter like my mom used to do with the dog's pills when I was a kid.  If you have any suggestions...

Last night and this morning I did a bunch of reading about my birth control and other birth control options, because I am starting to suspect that the NuvaRing I've been on has killed my sex drive.  TMI?  Probably. But I realized that the waking-up-in-the-wee-hours-of-the-morning insomnia I had badly a few months back and intermittently since may also be related.  As well as my deeper-than-usual depression the last few months and the general spacey-ness that is making me a little batty. I've just been feeling like I'm not all here.  I was off hormonal birth control for 7 years, so you'd think I'd have noticed these changes sooner, but I didn't.  I don't remember having adverse side effects back when I was on the pill, but I wasn't terribly self aware in those days either.  I do remember having a fairly low sex drive, but I thought I just had a low sex drive.  Maybe that was always the pill.  How annoying is that?  I am firmly single still, so neither birth control nor sex drive are of much use to me at the moment (I was working on the idea of "if you build it, they will come..." - so to speak), but doesn't it seem counter productive that hormonal birth control kills sex drive?  I'm pissed off on principal.  Other than barriers (which I use (well, would use), but I'm paranoid and a two-method user), there aren't many options for non-hormonal birth control on the market.  Basically there's the copper IUD.  And remembering how black my finger used to turn from my wedding ring, I'm concerned about putting any metals that close to such sensitive skin.  So, well, I don't know what to do.  But I think I'm going to try a month off the NuvaRing and see how I feel.

Some of you are going, "Hey, wait.  I thought she was a lesbian." No, my wife was a lesbian.  I walk the middle line.  So now I've outed myself and also discussed my sex drive and birth control on the internet. 

Back to safer topics.  Knitting.  I'm going for a record on how many projects I have going at once.  Or I would be, but I've totally lost count.  I have socks (at least two pairs), wraps (at least four, in various gauges and pattern complexity), two sweaters (one for me, and yes, a yellow sweater for my middle sister that has become a family joke I've been working on it for so long), a queue of baby hats (one down, one in progress, and I think three to go), and probably a couple other things I've tucked away and forgotten about.  The upside of all this scatteredness is that I always have something to work on no matter my mood, attention span, or need for portability.  And I'm not even counting the projects that are neatly packed up with yarn wound and pattern ready but not yet cast on.  A friend asked me this weekend if I had more yarn than the two baskets that are in the shelf in my studio, I think because she was feeling badly that her stash so out sized mine, being the very simple gal that she is.  Oh no.  My yarn is just divided up into all these projects, which I then have stashed all over the house.  Careful where you sit in my house, there may be knitting needles there.  And then what did I do while I was in San Diego and up north, both?  Bought more yarn.  Only small, single skeins, I swear!

I need about six months off work to knit and read and rest and generally just be.  That would be so nice.

Comments

[Kirsten Liske]

i like the 'back to safer subjects' and
YES It is a pisser - of only more women were in medicine and medical research - they would have found more options by now. I too thought I was fat and bitchy due to my pills.. that was only half the culprit but half it was!

[Kirsten Liske]

p.s. all your food looks great! tonight I rallied up a chicken soup spring like and stock full of goodies and roasted some asparagus in prep for a poached egg, grilled potatoe cheese and lemon aoli sauce breakfast tomorrow (assuming my roomie comes home)

[jo marks]

i missed you! what a great post - homely, crafty, controversial ... you go girl!
1. what's a pizza peel?
2. has anyone suggested you try snorting salt water for your sinus infection? supposed to be very good.
3. i used to care for a lady that couldn't swallow tablets, I hid them in marshmallows and she'd swallow it whole.
4. i'm so out of touch with birth control, i hadn't even HEARD of a NuvaRing (which probably explains why i have 3 kids!) I've heard bad reports about the IUD, but a few people I know have had the hormonal implant (under the skin of their arm??!! isn't that the wrong place!) which lasts for 3 months & have said it's very good.
5. When you get your 6 months off, pack up your knitting and books & come and holiday at chateau jo, i'll take care of you xx

[meriko]

i'll join you, doll. and we should cook and can, too.

[kimberly]

do you know how much i love this post? you made me spit (the...some of you thought i was a lesbian part. omg. you fucking rock. i love you! you probably think i'm some sort of freak. i feel like we are a lot alike...that if given time and opportunity we could become very good friends. there is just something about you. am i freaking you out?! eeks. hope not! lol...

the boys and i are in oregon (traveling up the coast). i'm just getting my internet fix (i cannot be without it). thought i'd check and see how you are doing.

get well.

[Mic]

Maybe that's why that NuvaRing thing works. No sex drive equals no sex equals no babies. Of course, that is a very unmedical opinion. I don't know how I feel about having copper floating around my cupcake. But then again, I drink Coke and Red Bull like it's going out of style, so what do I know. This hasn't helped you much has it?!

[jo marks]

kimberly - get in line baby! xx :-)
mic - lol, you are such a dag :-)

[Mary Beth]

What a fun post. I love you sweetie, you are just too cute with your disclosures....tee, hee. And I wanna eat at your house, YUM.
For what it's worth I hated that Nuvo ring too, yuck. And yes, I also have way too many knitting projects going on at the same time, that is why I have to keep buying more knitting needles :-)

[Kari]

"I'm pissed off on principle." Ha. I am so going to start using that line--frequently, I expect.

Miss you, love.

[Nikki Gamon]

Ohmigod! The hormonal birth control-low sex drive link could explain some things about my marriage! I thought I was me. Then I thought it was him. Now I think it was a combination of him and stupid birth control pills!

[Yorkshiremom]

I'm glad to see you are back to writing in your blog again, but I should probably have stopped at "peanut butter on the dog's pills."

I'm not so not sure you actually wanted your mother reading this stuff, but I was laughing all the way through it.

Which is not to belittle your issues - I truly hear you. The only solution I know is to stop using anything at all. But then you might get six months off sooner than you planned, and I'm not sure you would catch up with your knitting even then!

[Hashi]

Jo Marks, you must be an Aussie or Kiwi, right? You're such a dag :-)

[April]

Come cook me something you domestic goddess you!

[yolanda]

Are you not on facebook anymore. You can come up on my friends list?

[Hashi]

Six months off to knit and read and rest and be? I'm so there!

[Kirsten Liske]

Hey girl - you DO need 6 months off, to catch up on posts and photos from the PAST 6 months.

Thanks for playing hard with me
;-)
Looking forward to more fun this week!
Kirse