Adieu, 2012

"The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry."

~English idiom, paraphrased from a line in Robert Burns' poem "To a Mouse", and referenced in the title of a famous John Steinbeck novel.

This will perhaps be my last blog entry of the year.  It's going to have a little of everything: a little knitting, a little travel, a little storytelling, a little yarn porn, and a few surprises.  Life has been kind of heavy lately, so I'm going to do my best to stick with the good stuff.

I had every good intention when writing my last post.  I was going to set to work on completing everything I started.  The rest of my year, two and a half months, was dedicated.  I'd send 2012 out with a bang, clean up my slate, and have a few nice finished projects to show for it.

I started off pretty strong.  I finished the techno hat:

And then things started happening.

We lost our cat Buddy for two excruciatingly long days, just before I left on a trip to Florida for my cousin's wedding:

He came home at 11pm the night before my early morning flight.

I had a lovely stay in sunny Boca Grande, Florida ... 

...and came home to a considerable surprise:

So, do you know, in the Interwebs, they call this a BFP?  That stands for "Big Fat Positive." This one was hardly big and fat, but after I took this picture the results got significantly darker.

After five months of trying, and after getting a BFN before the FL trip, I had resigned myself to Mr. Pi and I taking some time off from the baby-making game and maybe trying again come Christmas-January.  After all, September birthdays are, in my opinion, the best kinds of birthdays.

I had exactly 2 weeks to enjoy my results.  I did a lot of daydreaming about baby knitting.  I ate the absolute best foods I could, loaded up my diet with spinach and eggs and sweet potatoes and yogurt and all sorts of super pregnancy foods.  I walked on the treadmill.  I researched daycares and doctors and did some Pinterest-perusing and blog-diving on nursery design.  I felt great, pregnancy suited me just fine, and I was going to be Super Mom!

I also snuck in a trip to the New England Fiber Festival with my Mom - it was a consolation prize for missing Rhinebeck this year.  They had it in one of the big buildings on the Big E fairgrounds (a.k.a. the Eastern States Exposition).  It was a good size, with a variety of wares.

I came home with some nice mittens for myself, some alpaca socks for Mr. Pi, a tummy full of delicious shepherd's pie, and this:

The most perfect project bag!

I just love the zipper pull!

Just the right size for my other new purchase (I'd stopped at Creative Fibers LLC on my way home from the airport the week before):

Madelinetosh Sock yarn, in the color Tart*

*I couldn't resist getting this color, because one of my most favorite knitter-friends goes by the alias tartdarling.  It's much more red in real life; my iPhone didn't do the color justice.

At Creative Fibers, I also splurged on some square, yes square double pointed needles:

Ok, not a great picture, but imagine longer, thicker, redder, toothpicks.

What a lovely, cozy pair of Christmas socks that yarn was going to turn out to be (after all my other projects were finished, of course).

Alas, it was not to be.  Maybe Christmas 2013.

About two weeks after my BFP, I started feeling carsick.  All the time.  It started off as a dull unsettled feeling in my stomach.  Eating helped keep it at bay, but it would return shortly after I was done.  And it quickly progressed to constant, overwhelming nausea.

Whoever coined the phrase "morning sickness" was either deliberately misleading all of us, or terribly and tragically misinformed.  Sure, it started in the morning, but it continued throughout the day, coloring the world in a sickly green hue for me.  Focusing on work was exhausting.  Coming home to home smells was unbearable.  Most of the time I'd get in, run upstairs, and put myself straight to bed.

I couldn't put anything I was going to eat in plastic bags, because it would make my stomach turn.  

I couldn't plan meals in advance, because I'd open my lunch, take one look, and decide nothing inside was edible.  

I developed a super-spidey sense of smell. I could smell things from across a room; the tiniest odors were rank, foul, oppressive.  

I could hardly stay in the house when Mr. Pi cooked peppers & onions for his breakfast sandwiches, or home fries.

There was one pair of (new) work pants that were made of a certain material that had a funny smell to it.  I couldn't wear them, or wash them along with anything I was going to wear, because I could smell that chemical or whatever it was all. bloody. day.

I only vomited once, the day I finished 12 weeks.  But I assure you, the rest of the time was nothing short of pure suffering.

I took to wearing these:

Sea bands.  Sexy, aren't they?

The sea bands actually worked to dull the intensity of the nausea.  Which was good, because since I wasn't vomiting, my doctor wouldn't prescribe me any nausea medication.

I lost nearly two full months.  I couldn't knit.  I couldn't do anything, except sleep and survive.  I'm sorry, I know it sounds melodramatic, and I'm spending a lot of time here telling you about it, but it was truly, for me, an ordeal.  A sort of Gauntlet to be beaten.  My sister had gone through the same thing, and I can remember scoffing (inside) at her complaints.  I can't tell you how many times in the past few weeks I apologized to her, and was grateful for someone who understood.

Around about Christmas, I started feeling better.  I'm officially into the second trimester, and I've really felt like myself again.  And good thing, too.  My house is a disaster.  Mr. Pi, God bless him, does many things wonderfully well, but housekeeping is sort of my arena.  I have a lot of catching up to do.

Speaking of catching up, something I wanted to do so badly but could never get up the motivation the past month was to make some ornaments for our tree.  Today, I finally started:

I found this Granny Square Stocking Ornament pattern on Ravelry, by designer Colleen Hoke

I worked on it while running load after load of laundry.  All the nap blankets from the couch ... the spare bathroom handtowels ... the duvet cover ... the kitchen towels ... all those items that, I'm convinced, men would never wash if they didn't have wives/girlfriends.

So tomorrow night I will be celebrating the end of a year that had its fair share of rough spots, and look with hopeful expectancy (pun intended) to 2013.

Happy New Year, dear readers.  May it be filled with joy and blissful contentment.

Mrs. Pi