Me, exercising?!

Yeah! I decided I was no longer comfortable in my own flesh, and as a result, wanted to lose some weight. My eating was getting pretty out of control, I mean, I was literally eating whatever the fuck I wanted. After reaching a max of 196 pounds, I decided to do something about it. I had been thinking about doing something for a while, but was catalyzed when I saw a pedometer on sale for $10 at some store in the Financial District. From that point on, kablammo! I've been really strict about food, and I've been keeping an exercise diary. Every day, I log total steps, distance, and calories burned. I've also been using MapMyRun to map out routes. I aim for a minimum of 4 miles a day, and since I started, I've been pretty good about doing it every day- except for when one of my cats went into heat (=sleep deprivation! and yes, she is getting spayed soon) and then my boyfriend got a mysterious case of bad food poisoning & I had to take care of him (=even more sleep deprivation!) And then, I came up here to my sister's place to dog sit while her and my brother in law enjoy Cancun for a week. Whatever weight I lost, I gained back, but I'm ok with that. As long as I don't gain more weight while I'm here (there's a fuck ton of god food to eat!) I'll count it as a victory. I've been good about mapping routes, and on top of walking the routes, I've been walking the dogs around the GIGANTIC school parking lot by my sister's place (no joke- this thing has to be a mile around). Mostly I'm just thrilled to be moving more. I'm tired of the aches and pains and stiffness and lack of energy that are no doubt the result of sitting on my ass and knitting for long hours. All those symptoms are disappearing though, slowly but surely! It's rare now that I get up from sitting or laying down and I have severe problems moving. I feel myself getting stronger. I've set goals for myself: I want to be down to 160 by my birthday in July, I want to have logged 100 miles by May 3rd, (I'm 13.23% complete, so I think I'll be ok!) and I want to maintain an average of 10k steps a day, which so far hasn't been difficult, although it's far more active than I was previously.

I also had to iron out some kinks with my pedometer- it's not entirely accurate, no matter where I put it on my body. My stride is set to the correct length, and my weight is correct, so I usually just measure the percentage of distance it's recorded and adjust all data accordingly to actual distance. It's been an invaluable tool though so far- and my scale at home being digital (though it unfortunately measures in kg!) I can track just how well I'm doing. I'll do much better though when I'm not around all this delicious food though.

As far as knitting goes, I'm on the tail end of a beautiful shawl for a swap, and I've got a ton of commissions- ranging from the bizarre (uh, a hot dog in bun? Breaking Bad ski masks?!) to the normal (baby stuff- two elephants and a pair of booties, not to mention an adult pair of fingerless gloves).

Ok, completely lost my train of thought while getting distracted by some loving from my furry, four legged niece and nephew. Boogey isn't moping this time, and Bisco is no longer scared of me. Everything is so lovey dovey now, it's ridiculous! I am SO GLAD my sister decided to have them instead of kids :-P

Time for a 5.62 mile walk now, away I go!

I can't think of a title, dammit! It's just my freakin' life, why do I need a title?

Ahem, anyhow. Fundraising for Guardians of Rescue is going well, crochet scrunchie making is going well, which is good because I make my street vending debut on Wednesday, and my sister is FINALLY fucking coming to visit this weekend! I'm going back to mental town with her on Saturday to get reacquainted with their second dog, since I'll be dog sitting for a week at the beginning of April. This past weekend, I got to finally meet an internet friend from PA, whom I've been friends with for a loooong time now, and she's every bit as awesome in person as she is online, which is rare, but so appreciated.

I'm really, really nervous about going out to sell my wares on the street this week, but I'm doing it with a friend who has been doing it for almost as long as I've been alive. I trust him on this though, so I hope I'm not wrong in doing so. If it works out, I have no problem with getting a street vending license and making a living out of that. The potential to make hundreds of dollars a day is really attractive. I'm willing to work for my money, since I love what I do, and I make really good stuff. I believe in myself, but I'm trying not to be too optimistic.

Ok, lovenuts is making us some knockworst now, so I better get back to scrunchie making. Fingers crossed though, I really really need this to work out. 

I am so tired right now, but it's so worth it.

Just finished making ten cat toys, from which half of the proceeds will go to Guardians of Rescue, a tireless local organization that fights for animals. So far, I've raised $50. Pretty pleased with myself. This weekend, I get to see a knitting friend from PA, and next week, I make my street vending debut with a long time vendor friend who assures me I can make literally hundreds of dollars...in a DAY. I am super stoked about this. I can't remember the last time I felt so hopeful and optimistic and proud of myself. The future looks really, really good right now. 

So far, success!

Opened my store on Monday, and made two sales so far, totaling $110. I can't tell you how incredible that feels! Not only that, I've got two commissions at $80 each to work on. It looks like phase one of my life, after 27.6 years, is finally coming together. The store looks really good and I'm getting a lot of positive feedback on both products and design. Now if there were just more than 24 hours in a day and I didn't have to sleep... I've got this goal, you see. I will be adding ten items to the store each week. Whether it's small items like cat toys or coffee cup cozies, or large ones like shawls, ten items will be added each week dammit! Until I reach my limit of 500, but hopefully with the networking I've been trying it will never be full.

I really couldn't have done this without my fella. I don't know what it is about him, but he inspires me to be a better person, and I love him all the more for it.

Here's my store link, in case anyone is interested: http://madcatknits.storenvy.com/

I figure I'll do a giveaway in the near future to bolster interest and awareness. Here's to the future! :-D

Coming Soon...!

...something I should have done a long, long time ago. I am finally, now that I have my ID situation straightened out and a bank account again (well, I am still waiting to deposit money. I am starting out with literally nothing but my materials and my skills), setting up an online business to sell my knit and crocheted goods. I am also setting up a Redbubble account to sell images of my paintings and drawings and such. In order to make the knit goods store cost effective, I will have to cut down on production time (but that's fine, it's not hard to speed up from "lollygagging" and "slow as shit"). Today was my first day roughly working on the schedule I'll be imposing on myself in order to be more productive.
Rule #1: Facebook only twice a day before 8pm, and for no longer than 10 minutes.
Rule #2: LOTS OF CAFFEINE. Duh.
Rule #3: Schedule digital entertainment that doesn't involve frequent interaction with the computer. No playlists involving songs I'll want to keep skipping, no movies or shows less than an hour long.
Rule #4: It's totally ok to be distracted by the cats. They ensure that I get up and walk around enough to avoid cramps and issues brought about by sitting on my ass all day long. (Although the rest of my day involves housekeeping and running errands.)
Rule #5: Be forgiving but firm with yourself. (I had to take a nap this afternoon, thanks to the girls being little terrorists this morning, which they made up for by snuggling with me). But then I didn't want to finish off the second glove I made today- being firm involves pushing myself to keep momentum going, to not stop in between stages of creation. (For some reason, I have these issues with knitting thumbs onto my gloves. All it involves is reattaching yarn and picking up a small amount of stitches and knitting for a few rounds, but the anticipation of doing it makes it feel like it's a whole extra glove worth of knitting by itself. I've never been a fan of patterns that involve fussy bits, but sometimes it can't be avoided.)
Rule#6: Items knitted for swaps, friends, etc, are worked on after 8pm or on the weekends, at least until I see how business is going.

As far as preparation for having an online brand goes, I've got my graphics prepared. I've got a store name, I've got preview images and I've got my price points figured out. I should be prepared with enough stock to feel confident about opening some time soon after Valentine's day. I am excited! (The cat silhouette is taken from my most recent tattoo, and has much to do with the shop name.)

~~~~~~~~~~~

Update on the spider situation: Shortly after I completed my last entry, I had a real, honest to goodness genuine meltdown. I can't remember the last time I flipped out that hard, if ever. I was wailing in anguish, sobbing uncontrollably with blood coming out of my nose, I had a raging headache, I was incredibly tense... and I couldn't sleep it off. I literally had to be sedated. It just all fully sank in, the magnitude of what happened to me. I COULD HAVE DIED. THREE TIMES. Fortunately I seem to have moved past my paranoia and panic, and I am able to sleep now without assistance. The bites are itchy as hell though, and I'm impatient for them to heal. Noli me tangere, motherfucker! 

When your WORST NIGHTMARE comes true, THREE TIMES IN ONE WEEK.

...ok, it's not my absolute worst. BUT IT'S SO UP THERE.

I've always been afraid of spiders, you see. As I've gotten older, I've gotten less frightened of really little ones, but daddy long legs etc freak me out. You can imagine then, that something like a BROWN RECLUSE spider would easily terrify me just by existing, even though I (mistakenly) assumed they don't live here in NYC.

Nope, not here in NYC, I thought. Just thinking about being in a room with one, and seeing where it was, was a nightmare in itself for me. (In case you're unfamiliar with them, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_recluse_spider)  My naive, frightened little brain couldn't even fathom anything beyond that. Couldn't even imagine having one near me, on me... BITING me... Nope. Didn't think I needed to go there to construct imaginary defense scenarios. Because it would never happen to me, because we don't have THOSE things HERE.

So about a week ago, I wake up with some kind of small bug bite on my left forearm. It's itchy as shit, so I scratch the hell out of it and don't give it a second thought. Within three days, not only did it not get better, but it was about the size of a dime, was dry, crusty, and looked like ringworm but with a darker dot in the center. About this time, I noticed a second similar thing on the other side of my left forearm, a few inches away. I also had a burning feeling in my left kidney which came and went in waves. For two days I had this going on, and didn't connect the two, as I still wasn't sure the first two things were bites. I looked up skin lesions (I don't recommend doing this unless you have to. BARF.) and it seemed like I might have contact eczema, which meant I was allergic to something I had come into contact with. That was somewhat relieving, to know it wasn't anything serious.

That night I went to sleep early, and slept through a fever apparently. I woke up drenched in sweat, despite my lack of sleeves and blankets. I went back to sleep, and when I woke up I was fine, no kidney pain and no fever. La di da, I went about my business.. until yesterday. I woke up with a third bite. (I can still see the puncture marks the fangs left.) Only this was different from the first two. Located on my right upper arm near my shoulder, it's not itchy and the redness is tightly contained around the two puncture marks. Now at this point, I still don't know for sure what the first two are, or if the third is the same as the first two... I was entertaining aliens as the culprit, only half jokingly.

Fast forward to last night: Around 9 pm, I'm doing the dishes before Law & Order: SVU comes on, my boyfriend isn't home yet and I keep looking at the TV to make sure I'm not gonna miss the beginning. Suddenly I see my  two cats (now forever synonymous with guardian angels!) cornering some leggy looking thing which I assume is the millipede I saw before bed the night before (which I'm now unconvinced was a millipede and might in fact be a larger, second spider. I can't articulately convey my sheer terror over this thought). I wander over AND HOLY THOR'S THUMBS SWEET MOTHER OF GOD IT'S A GODDAMN BROWN RECLUSE AND MY FUR BABIES ARE IN DANGER. Uttering a savage war cry (ok, that may or may not be true) I ran into the bedroom, took one of my boyfriend's gigantic shoes, and SAVAGELY SMASHED IT TO DEATH.

Now, I am largely unconcerned about the physical aspects of this whole affair, as my flesh is neither necrotizing nor infected, and my organs seem to be intact, and judging by the third bite, my body has developed some kind of antibody to the venom. I am deeply concerned about the psychological effects, however. Since it happened, I've hallucinated frequently that there are dark spots scurrying around on the wooden floor, I'm HYPERSENSITIVE and every little thing that touches me is a potential spider, I'm scared as hell to put clothes on without inspecting them and then trampling them just to be sure, and I spent a large part of this afternoon WAILING and sobbing in completely uncontrollable anguish. My paranoia was quelled briefly by chugging rum straight from the bottle, but I can't keep doing that. I will have to move on or become a raging alcoholic.

The one thing I do know is that once these bites are healed, I am getting a commemorative tattoo over the site of the first bite. After all, not everyone gets to survive one of their worst nightmares three times in one week...

On Kittens and Paintings and... Stuff.

So last friday (not this past friday, the one before) I got off the train a stop early while headed back to my fella's place, because I had to get cat food. Well, wouldn't you know it, there was a little kitten, about 4 months old, a half block away from the train. She was enthusiastically pouncing around a tree, and some guy was taking a picture of her with his cell phone. My first thought was, "Why is he letting his kitten play in the dirt?" And then I thought, "Oh, maybe she's a store cat..." So I look up, and it's a money sending place. Also, hold on... she's four months old! So after watching him unsuccessfully try to pet her, I bend down and whistle and make kissy noises, and she comes right over. Soft as feathers, a little gray and black striped tabby with white front paws, a white belly, and mostly white hind legs. And the most endearing trait... a little white stripe down her nose! Well, I started getting all ragey inside. I mean, it could have been an accident (although now I'm sure it's not, I see no lost cat signs in the neighborhood or ads on CL either) but I immediately thought then, as I do now, that since it was two days after Christmas that she was someone's unwanted Christmas present. Some low life piece of shit must have dumped her on the street. People who do things like that need to be educated, and if the educating doesn't work, they need to be dumped somewhere, to see how they like it.

So I headed to the store, got some food, and came back. I panicked when I saw her practically playing in traffic- this was no feral kitten. She had no street smarts whatsoever. I dumped a can out on a napkin, and she ran over and demolished it with gusto. I finally texted my fella- "I found a kitten :-(" We decided I should take her home, and after some effort, I recaptured her, scooped her up, and held her against my chest while hauling a Target bag and another bag of cat food. No easy feat, but I did it. As you can imagine, Lulu, our 3 year old cat, was confused. We were both shook up, me and my fella. Poor Lulu, she tried to be friendly to the kitten, and the kitten hissed at her. (We eventually named the kitten Groucho.) The tables have turned though, and now Groucho is trying desperately to make friends with Lulu, and Lulu is just tolerating her. But barely... there's a lot of swiping and hissing going on. I've offered Groucho to a friend of mine, as I don't see the two cats being overly friendly any time soon, but now my fella is attached and says we should keep her. ARGH! As much as I adore the little purr monster, and I love the way she snuggles against my chest and falls asleep, I really really think it's ultimately up to Lulu. I don't want her to be uncomfortable in her own home.

I haven't painted in a long time now, although I've completed three since August. I don't think I've mentioned that here. (I really want to make an effort to write here at least once a week now, because I think it will help me articulate my thoughts better. Isn't that what it's for?) It seems that once the cold weather kicks in, I just want to knit my fingers off. All desire to paint goes out the window until it gets hot. I'm looking forward to getting them photographed though, so I can sell them as prints online. People are interested in buying the originals as well, which is totally awesome. Ideally, what I want for my future is to make a decent amount of money selling things online, including knit things, so that I can put myself through nail school. Yeah, that's right- I want to be a nail art technician :-)

Ok, I've got to go do something about my rent money, or lack thereof now. Hopefully something will turn up today. Fingers crossed!