KelInCal hit the nail on her head with her comment regarding my previous post. Yes, I love The King. But, yes, I was also trying to distract you all from my utter lack of productivity.

Here's what's been going on (unfortunately, it's not knitting) ...

Resident Sibling is still with us. She has been unemployed for most of the summer. It's gotten really old, really fast. Her story? She's trying to join the Army, but needed to lose weight so they would take her. So she goes to the gym twice a day with her recruiter. And doesn't do anything else except eat my food and watch The Beloved's TV set and play Sudoku. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? And, in fact, like something I would enjoy doing--only someone needs to pay the bills to keep us in this lap of luxury. So I've been working extra hours at my church library job, plugging away at the cataloging, unprocessing, and reprocessing the collection. It's slow going, but I'm beginning to see progress.

Unfortunately, all this work is beginning to take its toll in more than one way. First, I have a lot of negative feelings regarding this job. When the organization originally hired me in 2004, I was a full-time, salaried employee with things like health care and a retirement account. Last summer (2006), the organization lost half of its funding and I lost my job. Granted, it was my choice to leave when I did instead of hanging out waiting for the funds to literally dry up, but it still would not have been my first choice.

I agreed to go back and finish cataloging the collection so that it was accessible via the world wide web. After all, my replacement job at the college is only half-time. So, last year, I worked 20 hours/week at the college and 12 hours/week at the church library. It was OK, aside from my bitterness and resentfulness. This summer I did not have the college job as I'm only employed during the school year. So I upped my hours at the church to 20 hours/week. The volunteers who are supposed to have been helping appear to have vanished during the summer. So, while I've gotten a lot done, I could have done more had others followed through. More bitterness. More resentfulness. Then, two weeks ago, give or take--crisis sets in:

Tendinitis.

I've had bouts of mild to severe tendinitis in my right wrist since college. Then, it would manifest during finals week when my life consisted of writing 20 hours a day on computer or in blue book. By the time I was finished with exams, I was unable to hold a pencil. It's not that bad right now, but it bothers me enough to make knitting a questionable activity. At first, the pain wasn't so bad--but I noticed goofiness in my tension. Which resulted in frogging half of the second Angel's Rest sock. There was some cursing involved, but not too much. After that, I thought I'd take a little break to see if extra rest would help. Nope. Between cataloging and removing labels and packing tape from books, my right wrist didn't get any better and I began to notice pain in my left wrist. Oh, joy. So knitting and spinning have been out of the question due to pain and/or lack of control.

This does not make for a happy Saisquoi. Neither, truth be told, does my unemployed Resident Sibling. So I've been an absolute joy to be around, as you might imagine.

In the midst of all this misery, though, I've discovered something that desperately needed doing ...

Housework.

Doing a little bit every day, my house is almost presentable. Which is good, because in a moment of absolute fucking insanity I decided to host the Labor Day Weekend Family Sunday dinner. It's the Sunday before The Beloved's 40th birthday, and I thought it would be the easiest way to ensure a family birthday party. I did the final count yesterday and if everyone shows up, there will be 25 people in my house. Jesus Christ.

And because one party isn't enough, I'm planning a surprise party for the following day. That will be for our friends. Dude--it seemed practical at the time because there was no way I could fit all of our family and friends into our tiny little house. Actually, though, I'm planning a very low-key get-together for Monday. Particularly since I'm not telling The Beloved about it at all. My plan is just to have people show up. Surprise! I'm a little concerned that he'll want to kill me, but hell--you only turn 40 once. And he bet me I wouldn't throw him a party. Hah. See--he wanted one. Otherwise he never would have baited me like that. Of course, since I am a Virgo, I may be up till three in the morning the night before with an impromptu ice sculpture....

On a happier note: I'm back at the college as of last week. So, I may cut my hours back at the church. I was also very cautious last week regarding the amount of time spent at the computer or doing things that may cause stress to my wrists, with the happy result of being able to finally turn the heel on the Angel's Rest sock last night. Today I'll hopefully be able to pick up the gusset stitches after dinner and get some work done on the foot. Particularly since this month's Yarn Pirate Booty Club shipment arrived yesterday. Pictures in a couple of days--if I finish the current sock, that is...