I just finished listening to one of my favorite books ever. “My Life in France” by Julia Child. I bought the abridged version from Audible because I thought the narrator’s voice was charming, plus I read the whole book a few years ago and just wanted to relive it a bit. I am showing the pre-”Julie and Julia” cover because I thought the movie was pretty awful. Don’t get me wrong, Meryl Streep was absolutely brilliant! She did such a fantastic job, I forgot I was watching an actor and not the real Julia Child. I mean, she got Julia’s high, warble-ly, slightly ridiculous voice down pat. Which made me all the more sad that the movie wasn’t a bio pic. I know, I know, I am such a sucker. But I love me a good bio pic. I am so glad Joaquin Phoenix made “Walk the Line” before he went round the twist.
In other news…recent sweater progress has been fantastic. I am finishing up the body on this sweater today. I think my gauge is tighter than my swatch. The sweater is only 14″ across right now. But I haven’t cut the steek, blocked it or put in the button band yet, so I’m not too worried. I’ll just plan on wearing it with some negative ease. This will be the second or third “post fatness” sweater I have made. I think I mentioned before that I joined Weight Watchers at the end of last November. Since then all my knitting time has been devoted to making my “Goodbye to Fatness Trousseau.” Some of the ladies at my LYS have balked and made it pretty clear that they think it’s crazy to knit sweaters 4 sizes smaller than I am right now. But I think it’s the best thing I can do right now to keep myself motivated. Apart from spending hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours too, the visualization is really useful. I know it’s a cliche from therapy, but imaging myself thin and all dressed up in my new clothes is fun and really keeps me going. A month or so ago I said that I wanted to be 30 lbs down by my 30th on May 6th. I’m not quite going to make it, but I’ll be close enough to keep myself encouraged. I’ll definitely hit the 25 lb mark. Which considering I’ve been on the program for 5 months, I call that a pretty good pace.
Well, I went to my doctor’s appointment on Monday and everything checked out fine. The MIR and the EEG where normal. My doctor said that she thinks I had the seizures because I missed a few pills (for which I feel pretty stupid to tell you the truth). And when I was at her office I thought “well yeah, OK, that makes sense” and I felt really happy that I won’t need anyone to cart my ass around because I will be able to drive after all. But on the way home I started to have my doubts. I mean, over the last 2 seizure free years I haven’t been perfect about my meds. I’m not sure that anyone could be perfect for that long. So why all of a sudden did missed pills make such a big difference? And so now I’m feeling all worried again. I know I could call to ask her about this, but I see her in a few weeks and since lots of conversations are better in person, I’ll ask her then. In the meantime my husband, Terry, and my mom will humor me by playing chauffeur.
Last week I took everyone’s advice and did my best to relax. Which is surprisingly hard to do. But like I mentioned before, I adore knitting so it was easy for me fill my time. For days on end I clenched my teeth and struggled to breath easily while working my way through socks and hats, lace and sweaters. On Friday the leisure time finally started to kick in and I felt much better, just a little bit uneasy. Which was a huge improvement over a few days before when walking into an empty room made me feel like hyperventilating. And yesterday I was ready to spent a bit of time in my studio. I say “spend time” as apposed to “working” because I did as much Ravelry browsing as I did actual amigurumi related stuff. Buy hey, I showed up 
I did make some progress on the owl pattern by taking some of the insturctional photos and I think they turned out pretty well. So today I think I’ll insert them in the pattern and write the instructions that go with them. If I’m able to get a good amount of that done I’ll be happy.
Hi, Everyone. Thanks so much for your kind words and thoughts.
Tomorrow, I’m getting an MRI done and then on Monday I’ll get an EEG done in my neurologist’s office and have an appointment with her right after. I guess my doctor needs some more info before we decide what to do next.
What with the loss of consciousness that my seizures bring on, I’m off driving again. So my mom is taking me to the imaging place in the morning and we’re going to hang out for the rest of the day until my husband gets home from work. Which is good, because I’m pretty much terrified of being along right now. Even going into an empty room when other people are at home makes me nervous. What happens with my seizures is that my brain stops recording events during them, so immediately after the seizure is over I have amnesia and get very disoriented. No shaking or anything, just the very scary disorientation. Before when I had seizures, I was completely out of it and my mom or husband told me what happened after. But on Sunday I sort of knew what was happening and that was terrifying. I had three seizures through out the day and I pretty much had a panic attack during each one.
So I’ve been doing my best to relax, which is surprisingly hard to do. It’s challenging not to think “man, there are a million things I should be doing right now.” Mostly I’ve been knitting, but I need to back off a bit since my muscles and joints are getting sore. Yesterday I finished my first pair of socks (well the first pair since I decided to get really good at knitting socks). They turned out to be a test-run, though. They’re too big for me, but they are perfect on my mom. I’m really glad about that, too. I think she deserves a treat for being so great about taking me to appointments and stuff.
Tomorrow I am going to see the doctor. Which is good since I had a few seizures today. I’ll get back in my studio soon. But for now I think I’ll do the dishes and have a cup of tea.
Oh man, this morning I had the worst seizure in 2 years. I had a few mild ones recently. But this morning I got really bad amnesia and I think I was sort if imagining things or something while it was happening. I think I feel a med change coming on.
