We had him put down today. It was time. He’d been sick with kidney disease for a long time, and in this past week it became clear we weren’t doing him any favors by keeping him around.

The house is weirdly quiet. No nails tappity tapping across the floor.

I don’t have it in me to eulogize today. He was a sweet dog. We loved him. He’s gone.

Goodbye, sweet old man.

This year was our first attempt at year-round gardening. All in all, not a bad first effort, though there are things I’ll do differently next time. In the fall, it looked like this:

Now, it looks like this:

The garden fed us well through fall and into early winter. The summer pole beans cropped until mid-October. We had turnips until November, and all the mustard greens, chard, and kale we cared to eat (and then some). I’d planned for more variety than that, but the spinach bed was destroyed by a band of evil shitting, digging cats before it ever came up and I started the salad greens too late and they didn’t get big enough before the temps dropped, even though they were under a cloche.

Those are two things we’ll do differently going forward, right there. In addition to the bird netting draped over pvc arches to keep (all but the very most evil and determined, and they know who they are) cats out, we’re finally going to invest in one of those automated sprinkler scarecrows to soak the little fuckers as they come sneaking into the garden. It’s kind of sad what vegetable gardening has done to my feelings for cats. I used to love the beasts. I can’t imagine ever wanting to have one again. We do our best to grow nearly 100% of our vegetables. We rely on our garden to feed the family. Frankly, our budget is somewhat dependent on that. And the cats? They shit on our food. They SHIT on our FOOD. We hates ’em, we do. As for the neighbors who let their indoor/outdoor cats roam free? Well, we DO love them, so I guess that and our morals will ensure that nothing but water ever gets shot at the cats.

And those salad greens? I can’t blame my poor timing on the neighborhood felines. I’m determined to keep a closer watch on timetables at the end of this summer so all the winter-harvest crops get into the ground on time.

Oh yeah–and I had something like 2% germination on the beets. I think the seeds had gotten old. And those that germinated produced sad little lumps. That totally sucked because I’d planned for a huge bed of them and ended up with an empty chunk of dirt instead. No beets this winter, except what we bought. That kinda stung, but I’ve got a fresh pack of seeds for spring and I am undeterred. (I really, really love beets.)

So anyway, fall and early winter started off well, with lots of food from the garden. Then we had a week and a half of very unPortland-like deep freeze (an occasional day below freezing isn’t unheard of, but that many days in a row below freezing is certainly unusual) and the mustard greens, chard, and two of the three varieties of kale died off. The lacinto and dwarf Siberian kales couldn’t hack it, but the Winterbor kale came through the cold like a champ, and taste even better than before the freeze. The Brussels sprouts did just fine. They seemed to like the cold.

We ate the last of the Brussels sprouts two weeks ago, so now we’re down to just the one variety of kale and three winter squashes (two red kuri and one butternut) set aside from the summer harvest. Since the earliest spring vegetables won’t be ready for harvest until the end of April, this means we’ve started buying vegetables, and will have to continue to do so until spring.

I’d always sown kale in the spring and summer gardens, but now that I see for myself how much better it tastes in winter, I’m saving it as a winter crop, for the sake of variety. Next winter I’m thinking it’ll be only the Winterbor kale, salad greens started WAY earlier under cloche, and more of them, more Brussels sprouts, and more of the beets and turnips. Oh yeah–and carrots and parsnips next winter. I regretted only having the turnips for root veggies. I love root vegetables.

But that’s months away yet. Now it’s time to get the earliest spring seeds into the ground. Snow peas and snap peas going in this weekend! I’ve got big plans for the spring garden, which I’ll share in the next post.

And 36-year-old Cari is quite amused, too.

Look! Oh, the wonders of the Internet! Pull My Daisy! The whole short film! (Via Stupefaction)

I was completely obsessed with the Beats from age 15 to 18. Now, mostly I just retain the kind of fondness for them that one does for any long-ago teenage crushes. Some of the work holds up (Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs). Some of it really, really does not. (Kerouac, my love, I’m looking at you.)

Besides being great fun, this video proves what I have always believed: Gregory Corso was the overlooked heartthrob of the Beat Generation. Oh my.

Thumper’s going through a phase. It’s not a phase I expected at all. It’s not one I’ve read about, or heard about. In fact, I thought the window of opportunity for such a phase had long since passed us by.

Get this: He wants me to knit for him, and he wears what I make him. And not just that–he requests specific items. Last year he wouldn’t let any knitwear anywhere near him. He rejected everything I knit for him, and spent the winter in a red polar fleece cap and I just dealt with it. This year he’s asked for and received a blue hat and matching mittens, and a dark blue (very important distinction. DARK blue is his very favorite color) neckwarmer. ( “Neckwarmer” is what the males of this household call their cowls. But make no mistake: they’re wearing cowls.) He helps me choose just the right yarn–that is, just the right shade of blue Mission Falls 1824 Wool from the embarrassingly deep Mission Falls stash–and watches impatiently while the requested garment grows ever so slowly on my needles. When it’s done, he wants to wear it right away.

He saw Billy and I wearing our cowls (excuse me…neckwarmers) and wanted one for himself. I wish I’d thought of it myself. It’s the perfect winter layering piece for a preschooler, really. It keeps his neck warm (hence the name) and stays in place. I don’t have to worry about it falling off or getting tangled up in a play structure or tree branch or whathaveyou, like I would a scarf. In fact, I’d be afraid to put a scarf on a kid this age for safety concerns. If the neckwarmer gets hung up on something, it will stretch WITHOUT tightening around his neck, and will most likely just slip off over his head. And did I mention the not-falling-off bit? Worth repeating. He’s worn it to preschool for two weeks now, and it’s come back home with him effortlessly every time. Of course, it helps that he loves it and so keeps track of it.

Yeah. I’m kind of pleased with the neckwarmer. Can you tell? I think it took all of an hour to knit, too. Want to know how? Sure you do. I’m kind of slapping this up here. Please forgive the informality of the pattern. But really…it’s barely a pattern. It’s a tube, you know?

Thumper’s Neckwarmer
One size fits…oh, say 2 to 5 years?

Finished circumference: 18 in.

Gauge: 4 sts = 1″ (After blocking. Note that Mission Falls 1824 grows a good deal when it meets water. But don’t sweat the gauge too much. This is a very forgiving garment, fit-wise.)

Yarn: Mission Falls 1824 Wool, about a half a ball
Needles: 1 16″ US#6 circular needle
Notions: stitch marker, tapestry needle

CO 72 sts and join to knit in the round.
Work 4 rnds garter st, beginning with a knit rnd.
Work straight in st st for 4″.
Work 4 rnds garter st, beginning with a purl rnd.
BO loosely.

And behold! The ultimate preschooler neckwear! Thumper-approved.

This morning we went for the first post-Fifth-diagnosis monitoring ultrasound, and everything looks good! Normal! I’ll go back in on the 28th for a follow-up scan, and if that looks normal, too, they’ll most likely give us the all-clear. The doctor said that if the fetus had been affected by the virus, she would have expected to see some signs of it by now, three weeks out. So the fact that everything was normal is…well, fucking terrific.

As a bonus to that good news, and maybe as some kind of reward for having to go through the stress, there’s the fact that by 28 weeks the baby has enough facial fat that you can actually see their face on the ultrasound. Look! This is the baby’s face! Her actual face! Is this not magic? It’s magic. I can’t stop looking at her.

She looks so much like the kiddo did as an infant, but with my chin shape instead of Billy’s. (Which is good. He has a fine, fine chin, but it’s a rather masculine chin. The kiddo has Billy’s chin. Also a good thing.)

Thank you all so much for your good thoughts and wishes through all this stress. It’s been a real help to have your support.

Speaking of which… I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know when I point in the direction in which I’m about to point, and I’m rather late in getting to this, but just in case… Steph sent up the Knit Signal.

Okay…what’s with all the bugs and viruses around here this winter, I’d like to know. I feel like the kiddo and I haven’t been healthy for a combined five minutes in months. Last week and this past weekend, the little guy was sick. High fever, congestion, hacking cough. He’s never been one for fevers, and certainly never as high as this past weekend (104!), so it was a little freaky for us. Calling the on-call doctor at night several times. Worrying. Feeling as clueless as if he was a newborn. I guess we’re just lucky that he never really got fevers as a very little one. And now he’s got his first ear infection. Hurrah.

We kept him home from preschool on Friday and Monday. Today’s his first day back at school. (And I hope he isn’t getting the shakes too bad from the Netflix Streaming detox he must be going through after so many days on the couch.) As glad as I am to be a freelancer and so have the flexibility to stay home with the guy whenever he’s sick, I’ve got to admit the loss of two writing days hurt. A lot. The baby is due in three months, and after she’s born it’s going to be many, many months–probably close to a year–before I get any real, solid writing time again. (Yes, it’s worth it. No doubt. Please don’t misread me here.) I’m working on revising Draft Seven of Adverse Possession right now, and I SO SO SO want to finish this draft before the baby is born. Because the time when the guy is in preschool has to be divided between paying editorial work and work on the book, I don’t get a hell of a lot of writing time as it is. So to give up two days…

So today was the day. I was going to get to work all day. Pretty exciting. I had a lot of plans. And then yesterday I got sick too. Like, really sick. Body aches, fever, a cough so bad I’ve pulled a few abdominal muscles that were taxed just a wee bit too hard by the combined force of the coughing fits and keeping the baby in my body. I dropped the kid off at preschool this morning, came home, and crawled into bed for a three-hour nap. I don’t nap. I can’t nap. Napping makes me feel like shit. Except today. It felt great. I wish I was still asleep. Which is how I know I’m sick as hell. But that book is nagging at me. So as soon as I’m finished here, I’m going to bring the laptop and the manuscript and my great piles of index cards into bed with me and see if my brain is worth half a damn today.

(Today was actually going to be a post about the knitting I’ve done for the baby, but that would require photos and much more time than I’ve got, since I just slept three writing hours away. Tomorrow, okay? Okay.)

Somehow, knowing already what the news would be didn’t make it all that much easier to hear.

Yep. It was Fifth Disease, for sure. I got the results of the bloodwork today, and it came back positive. So now begins the monitoring of the baby, and the hoping she wasn’t infected. And if she was infected, hoping she doesn’t become anemic. And if she does become anemic, hoping that transfusions work and she doesn’t…you know…die. Which is way more than I’m prepared to contemplate right now, so I’m working on Step One, which is go get the first ultrasound next Friday.

They’re going to use the ultrasounds to measure the blood flow through a certain artery whose name I learned today and promptly forgot. Apparently this measurement will indicate anemia, if she’s got it. I’ll be getting these ultrasounds regularly for a while. For the remaining three months of the pregnancy, I think, though I’m not sure yet. The perinatologist will talk to us about the monitoring protocol when we see him next week. Same guy who did the amnio, and we feel quite confident about him, so there’s that, at least.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

The doctor again assured me that the chances of the baby having been infected are slim, and the chances of complications as a result even slimmer at this point in the pregnancy. But still, there’s the worry. And the monitoring. It was probably unrealistic of me to think that I’d earned a stress-free pregnancy with all the drama and loss I’d had leading up to it. And of course, it could be worse. (pooh pooh pooh)

Still. I’m in a shake-my-fist-at-the-universe kind of mood tonight.

Pass the ice cream.

The baby I miscarried in May would have been due this past Sunday. I’m feeling surprisingly…okay about it. Much better than I expected to feel. Much, much better than I felt when the due date of the first and second miscarried babies came and went. It helps to have a certain current fetus reminding me of her presence with regular kicks and rolls and hiccups, of course. But it’s not just that being pregnant now dulls the ache of the lost babies. It’s the thought that if I hadn’t had those miscarriages, I wouldn’t now be pregnant with this particular baby. And having already carried her so much longer than I carried those I lost, I’ve bonded with her. I want THIS baby. Fiercely.

It’s good to have reached this place with the miscarriages, but they’ve left their marks. I’m 26 weeks pregnant and I still haven’t totally relaxed, still can’t truly trust that everything will be fine this time. And just to close out a really hard year with one last swift kick in the ass, now I have actual reason for that unease, beyond my history.

Fifth Disease. Fucking Fifth Disease. It was going around the kiddo’s preschool, so my OB ordered some bloodwork to see if I’d already had it in the past (which would mean I am now immune). It’s extremely common in childhood, and she assured me I would most likely be immune. Nope. And then the kiddo came down with symptoms, though it wasn’t totally clear if he had it because he’s a naturally apple-cheeked guy. And then he and I both had a cold that dragged on for two weeks. And then I developed a rash, which our Nurse Practitioner neighbor was fairly certain was Fifth, especially combined with my fatigue and dragging-on cold symptoms.

Yay. It takes 10-14 days for the antibodies to show up in the blood, so we’re in limbo now, waiting until 1/4, when I’ll repeat the bloodwork. And if the bloodwork shows I’ve been exposed to Fifth, there will be weekly ultrasounds to look for signs of anemia in the baby. And if she does become anemic, there will be an in utero blood transfusion.

Even if I did have Fifth, the chances that the baby will become infected are slim, and then the chances that she will get sick are even slimmer, especially since I would have been infected after I passed the 20-week mark. But the chance is still there. I’ve been on the losing side of slim odds before. You know what the odds are that a woman who’s previously carried a normal pregnancy to term will go on to have three unexplained miscarriages in a row? Yeah. Slim. I’m special.

So I’m trying to stay optimistic. Trying to take it one step at a time. Step one is the bloodwork on the 4th. When we have those results, we’ll deal with whatever that brings. Damn, I’m hoping it comes up negative. A thousand different things could have caused a rash, right? And there could have just been unfortunately coincidental timing with the rash and a dragged out cold, yeah? And I’ve been so tired because I’m closing in on third trimester.

Shit.

In the meantime, I’m knitting for the baby as fast as I can. I was afraid to knit for her at all for the longest time, but now I feel like I need to do it to prove that I believe in her, and that I believe I’ll get to hold her, alive and well, come April.

Those of you who’ve been hanging around here since back when I actually knitted with some regularity will remember I have a (mild) obsession with sock knitting. You may also remember my deep and abiding love for Cat Bordhi’s brain. You will then not be surprised to know that I bought New Pathways for Sock Knitters as soon as it came out. Since it came out right as we were selling our house in Brooklyn and planning a cross-country move, I didn’t get to leap into it right away, as I’d planned. And then we arrived here in Portland and I had a very active 15-month-old on my hands in a whole new city, and all my (already limited) knitting time disappeared.

Initially, my plan had been to use this genius book as a workbook of sorts. The book is comprised of eight revolutionary sock architectures. (Nonknitters, just take your Target tube socks and go get some coffee or something. Yes, socks have architecture. Good ones do, anyway.) You learn each architecture by working through a scaled-down practice sock before moving on to the full adult pattern. If you make two practice socks, you’re rewarded with a pair of baby socks. I was going to work through each architecture one by one, making first a pair of baby socks, and then the adult patterns for each. I was pretty excited about it. And then I half forgot about it for two years in the rush of How Life Gets.

Inspired by the fact that come April we’ll have baby feet to fill the baby socks, I’ve finally gotten underway with this book. Those sweet little socks in the photo are the practice socks for the Sky Sock architecture. (Mission Falls 1824 Wool. I’ve lost the ball band, but I think it was color #026.) They were fast and easy. Now I’m moving on to Bartholomew’s Tantalizing Socks (rav link), using STR lightweight in Firebird. When I’ve completed the book, I’ll have eight pairs of socks for the baby and eight pairs of socks for me. I won’t have even made a dent in the sock yarn or Mission Falls stash, but at least I won’t have to buy any yarn. (And when I’m done with this book, I get to buy and work through the next one! Woot!)

Progress pics of the sock-in-progress soon. I think I’ll be casting on later today.

1. My dear friend Lawrence is now selling some of his fantastic subway drawings on Etsy.

2. Today I schlepped the kid and a bag of outgrown maternity clothes to a maternity resale shop, hoping to sell the too-small pants and buy a maternity coat. My belly is sticking WAY out of my regular coat and I am cold. I am also too cheap (thrifty? wise?) to shell out for a brand new coat that will be worn until March and then never again by me. Actually, first the kid and I checked out Goodwill, but that doesn’t count as schlepping because it’s his favorite store. (No coats for Mama there, but I did score a brand new waterbath canning pot for $8, so now I can return the one I borrowed from my neighbor an embarrassing number of months ago. And the kid scored some shin guards, which he’s been wanting because he’s a Soccer Player. Yes, the caps are intentional. I wish you could hear him say it. “I’m a Soccer Player!!!”)

So, anyway the resale shop. No coats there, either. Well, there was one, but it was $300. $1050 when new. What a bargain! What asshole spends $1050 on a maternity coat? And the thing was unremarkable, too. Old Navy would have looked just as nice. In New York this wouldn’t have surprised me, but I give Portlanders more credit for good sense, etc. I guess not. SOMEONE in Portland bought a maternity coat for over a thousand bucks and now wants $300 for it. Yeah. Not for me, thanks. So no coats there, and get this. They rejected ALL six pairs of pants I brought in because they were “outdated.” Granted, I bought them all for my first pregnancy in 2005-06, but I wore them for this pregnancy too, and they still look good to me. Which means this. I am old. I am now old enough that I no longer know when my clothes are out of style. Not that I ever gave a damn about that, but I used to at least be AWARE that I was choosing something that wasn’t in style. Nope.

3. Because I always do what Norma tells me to (and she hasn’t steered me wrong yet), I’ve started making our yogurt at home. I won’t say it’s better than the Nancy’s we were buying before, because oh my god is Nancy’s good yogurt, but this stuff is delicious, too. And super cheap. A gallon of hormone-free, local milk is $1.99 at New Seasons (the wonderful, new New Seasons store brand), and that gallon of milk makes–yep–a gallon of yogurt. We go through a lot of yogurt around here, so this is big news.