Tinged With Sadness

I'm having a rough time of it this cycle. My PMS is out of control and my mood keeps swinging all over the place. I go from being perfectly calm and content in one minute to feeling sad and like nobody cares about me in the next, and I'm in a state of constant irritation at my husband. Most of these feelings are completely irrational, but some aren't--I do have reasons to feel sad, and I think it's probably healthier to acknowledge them than to shrug them off and chalk it all up to wacky hormones.

It's frustrating because this is my favorite time of year. I love fall, I love the weather we're having right now, I love pumpkin season and I'm eating and drinking pumpkin-flavored everything and loving that, too. I also love Halloween, although it's definitely one of those holidays that are more fun with kids than without, especially when you're beyond the partying stage (although I don't think I ever really had much of a partying stage). Even so, it's always been my favorite holiday, even more than Christmas, because for me it's all about fun and nostalgia for the good things about my childhood.

I was thinking to myself the other day that I love Halloween so much because it's not tinged with sadness and loneliness the way Christmas often is. But then I remembered that Emma's due date fell around Halloween of last year, and I realized that if I'd had her we'd most likely be planning her (or his--again, it was way too early to tell; I just have this feeling it was a girl) first birthday party as well as her first trick-or-treat outing. So there's that.

We're also right around the corner from having to face the first full set of holidays without Matt's parents. I keep thinking about last Thanksgiving, how that was the last time we got to be with both of them outside of a hospital, how happy and thankful we all were that Rob got released from his hospital stay in time to come home for Thanksgiving, and how none of us had any idea that in just a few weeks, Mom would be gone, and so would Rob just a couple of months later.

So this season is bittersweet. I'm trying to focus on the sweetness, but my hormones keep dredging up the bitterness. I want to curl up with a blanket and watch sad movies and eat all the chocolate, but instead I'm making myself stay busy (I opened up a new Etsy shop for all of the knitting and crocheting I've been doing lately) and stick to my diet and workout plan, and that's helping. I'm also praying a lot, which also helps. And every now and then I let myself have a good cry, and a little chocolate, and I remind myself that I just need to hang in there, because this cycle is almost over and then my thought patterns and coping abilities will be back to normal, at least for a week or two, and then my husband can stop sleeping with one eye open.

This post pretty much takes on a life of its own about halfway through.

I'm having a really hard time getting going this week. I don't know whether this is an ADD thing or what, but if my Monday is off, then my whole week tends to be off, and yesterday's doggie drama disruption seems to have thrown me for a loop. I can't get focused or get my head in the game.

It doesn't help that, despite the fact that the high today is supposed to be 103, my brain has checked out of summer and decided that it's fall now, thank you very much, and no matter how many times I go outside and expose myself to the stifling heat, as soon as I come back inside all I can think about is sitting on a pleasant patio somewhere, working with yarn and sipping pumpkin spice lattes (or pumpkin ale -- something pumpkiny, at any rate) while I watch the leaves fall. And what's not helping that is that yesterday afternoon I went to Hobby Lobby to stock up on yarn for a baby blanket for my niece's upcoming baby shower. It's a super soft, heathery alpaca blend, and it's so pretty, and I just want to work with it all day long, never mind that my wrist starts hurting after about twenty minutes.

On the plus side, I think it's a really good sign that crocheting this blanket for someone else's baby is making me so happy. I put it off so long because I feared it would depress me, but so far I'm feeling totally okay with it, which is helping to lessen my dread about attending the baby shower. Really, these past few weeks I've been feeling a lot of peace about the whole baby thing. Still some pangs of grief here and there for my past losses, but mostly hopeful about the future, and full of conviction that, whatever happens, it will be okay. That things will happen according to God's plan and purpose, and if that doesn't happen to coincide with my plans, I'll be able to put my trust in Him and get through it with my faith and sanity intact. It's about trusting that Romans 8:28 is true, even when I can't see any evidence in my own life that any good is coming out of the stuff I go through.

Although, if I think about it, there is evidence. While I would happily suffer diabetes if it meant I could have my babies alive, the fact is that the miscarriages woke me up to where I was headed, health-wise, and forced me to start taking better care of myself. I also feel like my experience has equipped me for, and made me more open to, ministering to other hurting, grieving women. I think it's definitely made me more empathetic and compassionate in general.

Of course, none of this in any way makes me glad to have been through two MCs and an uphill battle against PCOS. But I can see evidence that God is using my experiences to help me grow, both as a person and in my faith.

Well, THAT went to a far more spiritual place than I expected. I thought this post was going to be about fall fever and yarn craft when I started. But maybe now all that's off my chest I'll be able to get some work done.

Scenes From A Sunny Autumn Day

Today was a fairly gloomy and chilly day, enough so to make our sun-worshipping chihuahua, Pete, who hates inside days, spend hours pouting and whining to himself as he stared forlornly out the patio door. It made me glad that I kept my promise to myself to stay off of the computer on Saturday and spend time outdoors enjoying the glorious weather. I'm sure we don't have too many more just-right sunny days left in the year, so we got out and made the most of it, starting with a visit to the nearest pumpkin patch.

The pumpkin patch was fun, but it was the sort of place that's only really fun if you either have kids or are a kid. So of course it was filled to the brim with small children, and watching them examine pumpkins and feed animals at the petting zoo was pretty bittersweet, albeit really cute. We found ourselves a couple of just-right pumpkins and managed to restrain ourselves from buying up every decorative gourd in sight, although we did grab a few. My favorite were "fairytale" pumpkins that looked like they were drawn by Disney artists. I would have loved to decorate my front porch with a couple of them, but this place overcharged for everything as it was, and these specialty pumpkins were way out of our budget.

Cinderella's former coach

After the pumpkin patch we hit up Home Depot to stock up on some grilling supplies. Matt's been reading How to Grill: The Complete Illustrated Book of Barbecue Techniques, and he's feeling ready to get his grill on. Which makes me ready to get my eat on, natch.


After we hauled everything home, I took a break and had myself a picnic in the back yard, with Matilda and Pete keeping me company. It turns out that I don't have any problems eating a sandwich and keeping a close eye on Matilda at the same time.

Actual Size

While I waited for Matt to put the grill together, I pulled out my Halloween decorations and added them to the knitted pumpkins I made earlier this month. Since then I've been growing my knitted Halloween collection to include ghosts, a bat and a pair of spiders (ghost pattern here and the spider pattern here. I can't find the bat pattern. Sorry.).

 

Once the house was thoroughly Halloweenified, we put on the movie Halloween while we ate our fill of grilled pork chops and au gratin potatoes. Full and satisfied, we all crawled into bed to cap off the night with some Netflix, where a sleepy Pete finally held still enough to have his picture taken.

As Saturdays go, this was definitely one of the better ones.

It's Pumpkin Season!

I had to put down my knitting needles early in the summer when my wrist tendonitis started acting up. But with the weather (finally!) cooling down and the distinctly autumn scents of dry leaves and sweet spice start to fill the air, I'm ready to get my knitty on.

The wrist still can't handle big, complicated projects, so I'm sticking to quick stash-buster projects to help get my mind--and my home--in the mood for fall, like these knitted autumn leaves from Craftstylish and these knit mini-pumpkins from Curly Purly. I'm so in love with the pumpkins that I'll be knitting them in various sizes until all of my orange yarn runs out. It's gonna be a knitted pumpkin-splosion in my house this year. I'll be turning some of them into knitted jack-o-lanterns when we get a little closer to Halloween, too. The only down side to these little guys is that you can't toast the seeds or turn them into pumpkin bread.

Mmm, pumpkin bread.