Glottal incompetence

G'day all!

I have had a fun week of medical appointments.  I managed to knit quite a bit of sock whilst on the bus going to a different appointment each day - the sock got a foot, a heel and part of the cuff!

The sun is racing back down the peninsula.

My three year breast cancer checkup came back clear.  This is extra good news as my type of cancer is more likely to come back quickly, within the first three years, as it is particularly fast growing and aggressive.

Huge, fancy, modern building where I get
my checkups, but that is a rant for another time!

The otolaryngologist said he had good news for me.  That good news is that there is no obvious reason for my paralysed vocal cord.  The bad news is that apart from knocking me out and injecting it with collagen (to fatten it up so that it covers more of my trachea), there is little they can do about it.  I learned that I have achieved incompetence, hooray for me!, or at least glottal incompetence.  I am very glad I do not have to speak German or any other language that uses many glottal stops because I plain can't do them.  Even Talk Like a Pirate Day was a bit of a disaster cos I could only say Ahhhh!  not ARRRRR!!!!!   I sounded like a nancy-boy to be frank.  Also my breathlessness is a result of glottal incompetence - because my right vocal cord is sitting wide open, it can't close off my trachea, which means that I can breathe in and I can breathe out but I can't hold air in my lungs when I stop breathing in.  Air just leaks out.

Magnificent dahlia

I am feeling a whole lot better and a lot less stressed now, though I am still fairly limited in what I can do, but I did manage two flights of stairs yesterday without feeling like I'd die.  I can talk the hind leg off a donkey as long as I'm not walking uphill.

So what have I been up to this week apart from medical things?  Hmm, not that much really!  A bit of work.  A bit of whining about the weather, though that cleared up again for two or three days so I stopped whining (I was not the only one - all of the locals were unhappy with several days of grey).  The first strong cold front of the season is forecast for tomorrow and given autumn only starts tomorrow I think that is pretty impressive!

Autumnal roses have been
excellent this year

We made relish on Sunday - I would like to say it is eggplant relish but it was really "I bought a heap of solanaceae (tomatoes, eggplants, capsicums/peppers) at the market and we need to use them up" relish.  Hopefully it is good.

I started cataloguing my stash on Ravelry.  I thought I had a bit of stash on it already but it turns out most of the stuff I have here in the States is not on Ravelry at all.  So then I hooked out the old point and shoot and started taking pics of my stash to upload.  It is easier to deal with a point and shoot when taking pics of wriggly handfuls of yarn.

This is only part of the madness...

 OMG I have a LOT of stash.  I foresee a yarn diet in my future.  Actually I see it happening right now, along with a bit of a destash.  I have so much yarn - 88km or over 50 miles of yarn lurking, wanting to be knitted.  If a pair of socks takes 300m of yarn (and all my yarn was sock weight), I have enough yarn for almost 300 pairs of socks!  And I haven't gotten all my stash onto Ravelry yet, not by a long shot.

Definitely autumnal

Ah the madness.

I have to stop stashing yarn and start knitting what I have.  Same with quilt fabric.

Don't you just want to pick up this tiny little
tug boat and give it a hug?
Or is that just me?

Topping it off nicely, money that is currently going into play money is going to have to be diverted to getting me a new phone.  That'll stop my nasty little stashing habit!  My poor old Galaxy S is struggling with the gingerbread version of the OS and there is no way it would cope with key lime pie (the current version).  Plus the back case is cracked, there are chunks out of its plastic top and bottom and just to top it off nicely, yesterday as I hurried to the bus (I can hurry without dying now!), my bag decided to spit out a whole lot of stuff, including the phone.  Of course the phone found a stone to land face down on and now it has a couple of nice cracks in the screen, including one that runs about 2/3 of the way down it.

The Center for Wooden Boats, Lake Union

Sigh.  So now I have to cough up for a new phone - this poor old one won't survive another fall.  I think the screen protector is holding half the screen together at the moment....  It still works but I'm not hopeful for its future.  It might be a plastic phone but jeez it has taken a real hammering and still works.  I'm actually quite fond of my phone - it can be an absolute pain in the butt but I've had it for three years now and it's been my constant companion - and I'll be sorry to say goodbye to it.

Lovely old boat and MOHAI at Lake Union

Which leads to a problem.  I'm not buying an iPhone.  I'm going to stick to Android but which one?  Galaxy S three or four?  HTC one?  Whatever I buy, it has to have a good camera on board and after reading several reviews, I still don't know what to get.  I don't want a windows phone, so no nokia lumias for me.  I want an unlocked phone too because it will go home to Oz with me, plus being locked into one carrier here in the States is very peeving.  But that makes it expensive up front.

Which phone?

Signs of the season

The weather is getting cooler, though Thursday was a bottler!  25C was lovely, though a bit warmer than I expected so I thought I was having hot flushes for half the day, except everyone else was having them too....  The trees are starting to colour up.  Some are red all over now - amazing!  Tomorrow brings the first storm of the season and given the season starts tomorrow, that is pretty early!  Nothing like getting a flying start to autumn by having a strong cold front push through.

Reddening up nicely.  NOOOOOO!

I am having difficulty with the idea that winter is well and truly on its way.  Ok, we technically have three months of autumn to get through but in another month most of the trees will be bald, a few will still be hanging on to colour and it will be getting dark so early!  I'm not ready for winter yet, I want my long days back!

anon!