Head Wound Harriet

We finally got around to building the climbing wall in the backyard. It's kind of amazing.

That's 8x8 feet of roof, and 8x12 feet of 67.5 degrees of overhang. It's built of pure sexiness.

Unfortunately, a few days ago, I took a pretty solid fall while climbing in the roof section of the kind of amazing huge home climbing wall. I am horrible at falling, which is so so unfortunate since I'm also horrible at climbing and fall a lot while I do it. I'm so bad at falling, in fact, that this fall brought on Concussion Number SIX. Six.
My poor little brain. You know who sustains head injuries at a similar rate to me? Professional wrestlers. Like, WWE wrestlers. Guys who consider regularly taking chairs to the head as a normal day at the office. It's not exactly a problem that the average stay at home mother deals with.
For those of you who have never experienced a concussion, please let me detail the effects and progression for you.

A few minutes after the fall, my vision started narrowing. I didn't black out, but man it was close for a few minutes. I remember trying to tell Tim that I didn't feel well, but I couldn't talk, just shake my head when he asked if I was okay. After a while I was able to ask Tim to take me inside,  I needed to lie down. He helped me walk in and got me into bed, I assume, though I don't remember more than the first few steps of the walk.
I woke up the next morning with an absolutely miserable headache. I was so dizzy that I basically bounced off of everything I came near, and it doesn't happen often that I can be that nauseous without throwing up.
Loud noises make my brain stop. Literally. Havoc yells, and I can't move. I can't see. It's just for a split second, but it's terrifying and I hate it. He yells a lot, and often right in my ear.
I'm utterly exhausted, all the time. I'm needing several naps a day, and if I try to tough it out the headache and dizziness comes back with a vengeance.

The scariest part was, and still is, the impaired cognition. I remember staring at the remote that first morning, and crying, because I couldn't remember how to use it. I could see the buttons, and I knew somehow that those made the tv work, but I didn't know what to do. Sometimes, I'll try to read something, a text message, an email, and it's just a jumble of letters that my brain can't make behave and organize into words. I know there are words there, but they just refuse to make sense. Thankfully that is improving a bit, and it's by no means constant, but I'm still having a very hard time with it. It is much worse if I'm upset, or stressed, which is unfortunate because I have a two year old and that is basically the definition of stress.

I have no real sense of smell right now, which is awesome, because again the two year old, but sucks because I can't really taste much. So, I've almost completely lost my appetite, which is probably having something to do with the exhaustion, but it's hard to make yourself eat when everything tastes like cardboard.

I can't remember most of the day that I fell. As time passes, I find that I'm forgetting more and more parts of the days immediately following the fall, although honestly I'm not certain if it's because of the trauma or just because very little of that day was worth remembering... So I'm trying very hard to make sure I recall at least a few details of every day, like what I wore, or what I made for dinner. So far, I'm not making much progress, but I have high hopes of it getting better soon.

I've been doing a lot of reading about post-concussion syndrome, and traumatic brain injury, and what little research there is on the long term effects of multiple concussions... there isn't a lot on the latter, simply because most people have enough sense to, you know, NOT GET A WHOLE BUNCH OF CONCUSSIONS. 
Basically, I should keep improving slowly but surely... but some of the effects may be permanent, and I have no idea of which and to what extent. I can tell you that the cognition problem has been getting progressively worse with each knock, and while it does get better, it by no means has ever completely gone away. That is likely skewed, though, by the fact that there's never been more than a year and a half between injuries, so it's hard to know.

Brain injuries are hard. Other times, I don't know what's going on, and that is a hard thing for the people around me, I think. Right now, I am okay and am able to type this out (and wow do I hope it makes as much sense as I think it does), but in twenty minutes I may be struggling to remember my middle name, or my kids birthday. Outwardly, I look fine, I look perfectly like myself, and some of the time I feel like myself, but my brain is hurt and there's not a damned thing I can do to hurry up the healing. I just have to be patient with myself, and hope that the people around me can be patient with me, and hope that it won't be much longer.

Basically, what I'm saying is that I don't climb anymore. Anyone want some slightly used 6.5 climbing shoes?

hbd sid

I met this boy when I was 15 and he was 16. He was tall and kinda chubby and had the reddest hair I'd ever seen on a person that didn't come from a box. My hair was red from a box and wasn't anywhere near as red as his. I would go to his house after school. We would listen to music and talk a little and I would inevitably fall asleep on his bed while he sat on the floor writing. I don't know why I always fell asleep, maybe it was something about how comfortable I was around him, maybe it was something about the delicious way his room always smelled, maybe it was just being a teenager and being tired a lot. He gave the best hugs. He would just wrap you up in his long arms and you could just stay there forever. It wasn't just me, either, everyone loved his hugs. My dad once teased me about hugging this boy too long, and my mom said something like, "Hug him next time he's here, you'll see". Dad hugged him. Dad never teased me about hugging the boy again. We tried dating. It didn't take. It didn't matter. We didn't need to be boyfriend and girlfriend. I think he was my first adult relationship, because we didn't force anything that wasn't there. He lost a lot of weight. He got skinny. Like for really skinny. It always looked weird to me, this skinny guy wasn't the chubby boy I had met when I was 15 and he was 16. He fell in love with one of my best friends. They were awesome together. They were better together than they ever were apart. They made my life better than it ever could have been without them. She was so short he would almost have to pick her up to kiss her, and he did sometimes just because he could. When I was 18 I had surgery. I remember waking up the day after I came home. He was sitting quietly in the corner, with his girl, and they were singing together. They had come to keep an eye on me, make sure I took my painkillers, help me if I needed anything. I felt better, lying there listening to her strum her guitar and their voices singing softly together. He wasn't the greatest singer, though. We got older. We thought we got wiser. We would stay up all night drinking and smoking cigarettes and talking about what we thought were really deep subjects. We fought. We went weeks, sometimes months without speaking to one another. We always fell back into our friendship easily, no matter what mean things had been said. He died when he was 21 and I was 20. Car accident. His girl died too. The world lost something beautiful and special and just amazing that day. For a long time, I was angry that they'd been taken away. It wasn't fair to have known such great people if I was just going to have to lose them. I think a lot of us, the people who loved them, felt that way. But as the years have come and gone, a lot of years, I've realized what a gift it was to have had the chance to know them, and love them. I'm grateful for the time I had, that we all had, with such people, and I know my life is better for having had loved them. Today would have been that boys birthday. I wish he was here to celebrate with us, but I will celebrate regardless. I will celebrate the life of the first boy I ever loved, and I will do my damnedest to not be sad.

Happy birthday, Cody. I love you.

Hi, there.

Being home is absolutely wonderful. I'm never leaving again. Ever. Except to go to Joann's and HEB and maybe Maudie's because momma needs queso and margaritas from time to time. Mmmmm, margaritas... Did you know that queso, as I know and fiercely love it, doesn't really exist outside of Texas?! I tried to order some in Flagstaff and the guy looked at me like I was an idiot. "The burrito comes with cheese on it, but I can put some on the side if you want?" How has that not spread? Delicious, melty, creamy, spicy cheese in a bowl? Scooped up with warm tortilla chips with tons of salt? I feel terrible for anyone who has never had it. That must be what people are talking about when they say that they feel like something important is missing from life, but they don't know what it is. It's queso. They need queso. Shit. I need queso now. Havoc is still beating me. Last night he headbutted me in the mouth. My bottom lip has a very attractive cut along the top, and the top lip is cut all to hell on the inside. I love my kid, very very much, but good christ he's a dick sometimes. Unfortunately, my delirious joy to be home has been tempered by hurting my back again. It's been creeping up for a few weeks now, but I ignored it, kept on keepin' on, and now I'm back on the couch with my heating pad. Hopefully this time isn't as bad as it was last time, and I can avoid the whole physical therapy thing, because I don't like having to pay someone to fix me when I am too goddamn young to be this broken in the first place. The massages are pretty nice, though. The good news is, since I can't stand for longer than ten minutes without my back going into spasms I can't really cook, which means that the guys are going to be doing the cooking for a few days. That means we'll be eating out or ordering in, because I don't think they even know where the pans are or where I keep the bacon, which means I will probably get me some queso soon. It's all about the little things. Little things like queso.

If you don't have anything nice to say....

This summer's trip has been pretty brutal, at least for me... I've tried to update a couple times but all I do is bitch, so... I'll write again when I have positive updates.

T minus 15

Man, let me tell you, there is nothing like packing and unpacking everything you own a couple of times a year to make you seriously reconsider the value of all the stuff you have. Tim and I both are very tidy people, but we also have a tendency to put things in drawers, or in the attic, and once it's out of sight, it's completely out of mind. Our attic is a disaster. We'll get around to cleaning that out this winter, it's something like 5,000 degrees in an attic in central Texas in the spring/summer/fall, and well, fuck that. We are 15 days from the tenants move in date (counting today, because it's still morning-ish). It sank in a bit, last night, that soon I won't be going to bed here, which is sad... but it also sank in that soon I'll be going to bed in my trailer in the woods, which is fantastic. I'm trying to just focus on what needs to be done here, but I'm starting to get really excited! Havoc's birthday was on Friday the 13th this year. I made him pancakes for breakfast, extra syrup courtesy of Daddy and Tio. His buddy Miles came over for a play date. After nap time, we went and got sno-cones, and went to Gus Fruh on the green belt where Havoc threw lots of rocks into the creek and did some wading, while we caught up with an old friend of the guys' who just happened to be in town. Chili dogs for dinner! All in all, I think we worked out a basically perfect birthday for a 2 year old.

Last night was the annual craw fish boil, which was awesome as usual! The highlight of the evening, for me, though, wasn't the delicious mud bugs, or visiting with all our awesome friends (though y'all are pretty awesome!)... I had left my very most favorite cheap ass Target sunglasses at the green belt the other day, and Erik found them and rescued them for me! Hooray for friends who understand that cheap doesn't mean unloved! There is a hefty, uh, gentleman, walking up and down my street this morning carrying what appears to be a child's sized golf club. Good morning, East Austin!

T minus 25 days

We've been lucky enough to secure tenants again this summer, so in 25 days, we will hitch up the trailer and make our way back to the mountains! I'm currently in that uncomfortable limbo, where everywhere I look I see things that need to be done (as in, packing, mostly), but I can't do them for another few weeks, and it's making me restless and cranky. So, you know, basically perfectly normal.

Hopefully, this summer won't have as many bumps in the road trip as we had last year. I feel like we learned a lot from our mistakes... hopefully. Unfortunately I still have not learned to guide the truck and trailer very well, so we may come home unable to look at or speak to each other again. We'll see.

I'm running my very first 5k this month, the Diva Dash, with Erin. I'm really looking forward to it. All but the running part, that is. I am an awful, awful runner, despite my best (and by best I mean incredibly half assed) attempts, and it's going to suck because Erin runs like 6 miles every day, and she has a friend also doing it and is determined to beat the friends time. I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up running alone. It's probably for the best.
I'm really looking forward to having my menfolk meet me at the finish line, though, because I know they will tell me a lot of times that I'm awesome and how proud of me they are. They will do this because I keep reminding them that they have to. And then they will take me to get cheeseburgers and beers, and let me sleep for the rest of the day. It's going to be great.




I've climbed once since my last post. Let's just say that it wasn't as humiliating as expected. The first few weeks in Flagstaff are going to be rough... I'm going to get so much knitting done, though!

Gnome baby hat

CO 65 on size 4 circulars

Knit rows 1-8 flat

R1-3 seed stitch to end
R4: K1, P1, K1, YO, K2T, Finish row in seed stitch
R5-7 Seed stitch to end
R8: BO 7 stitches, seed stitch to end

Join to knit in the round, knit stockinette till body measures 4.5 inches from CO row.

Decrease rows:

D1 *k10, k2tog; rep from * to end.
Decrease row 2 and all even rnds k to end.
D3 *k9, k2tog; rep from * to end.
D5*k8, k2tog; rep from * to end.
D7 *k7, k2tog; rep from * to end.
D9 *k6, k2tog; rep from * to end.
D11 *k5, k2tog; rep from * to end.
D13 *k4, k2tog; rep from * to end.
D15 *k3, k2tog; rep from * to end.
D17 *k2, k2tog; rep from * to end.
D19 *k1, k2tog; rep from * to end.
D21 *k2tog; rep from * to end.

Cut ends, sew through remaining stitches, weave in ends.

Bad blogger, bad blogger!

Obviously, I suck at keeping a blog. I keep meaning to write, but then things (basically, life) keep happening, and I get busy, and I just... don't.

Here's a recap of the last several months.

Havoc keeps growing. He's about to turn 2 years old, and in keeping with form, has entered into the terrible twos several months early, and I no longer want to be a mommy. Toddlers are awful. Sick toddlers are even worse, and he and I both have head/chest colds that we can't shake.

I started knitting. I mean, I was knitting over the summer, but now I really knit. I'm currently obsessed with making hats, in particular baby hats. I intend to make lots of preemie hats for the tough little bitties in NICU at St. Davids Austin, among other hospitals. Almost two years ago, dear friends had a sweet little boy terrifyingly early, (though he's a walking, talking terror now!) and NICU has since become a very near and dear cause, and I just want to do something, anything, to help make the struggle of those little boys and girls a little easier, and make their moms and dads feel a little more normal. If anyone wants to join me in this, by the way, come one over, I'll supply yarn and booze and we'll have a good ol' time making super sweet super tiny little head warmers.

I got into my first car accident, totally not my fault... It was actually pretty anticlimactic, we both drove away with minimal damage to our cars, and in theory I'm getting a check from the insurance company next week to fix my poor busted fender.
Oh, and we named my car Gertrude. Ol' Dirty Gertie.

I haven't been climbing any, because first, I hurt a finger the day we left Flagstaff.. then I pulled an ab muscle right after we got home... then I threw out my back (which was epic and painful and I wanted to die for about eight weeks)... but now I've been mostly healed up for several weeks and I have high hopes of starting again in the next week or so.

Other than that, it's really just lots of knit hats. Lots and lots of knit hats.