THRESHOLD

I had an uncomfortable night with pain but I still got up at 6:30 AM.I took my normal pills and I wondered if I would actually go swimming.  After I had done my banking and e-mails I was still feeling very sore took some more morphine.  This means that I took double the usual amount.

By the time I got to the pool I was feeling okay.  The real surprise came when I got into the pool.  As soon as I started to swim I felt no pain or strain at all.  Only at the end of my 50 min swim did I feel as though I had been doing something though I was still not sore, just a little discomfort in my left thigh and hip.

It seems to me that what I have considered normal, the pain and strain I normally experience when I start to swim which I get used to the longer I swim, is perhaps not normal after all.  I am thinking this because the double dose stopped it.

I do not intend making a habit of taking a double dose.  I can cope quite well with one dose but at least I now know that on really difficult days all I have to do is take double.

John, my friends, and my doctor, all think I have a high pain tolerance.  I do not know if I do or don’t.  I certainly know that it took me an awful long time to take paracetamol and tramadol as a matter of course to stop the pain building up.  I found it very difficult to do because it felt wrong to take painkillers when I wasn’t in serious pain. I learned the logic of it though.  By taking a regular amount of drugs it stops the pain building up. As a result one needs less medication to do the job.  I also found out that constant pain causes nerve damage and makes it much more difficult to treat.

With the morphine I am never sure whether I am just mentally feeling better for taking it or am I mentally feeling better because I am physically feeling better?  As I write this I now remember that on our holiday when we were in Nuremberg I felt really sore and ill late afternoon on the Saturday.I took my morphine and although within half an hour the pain had subsided I actually still felt ill so other than dialling down the pain it did not make me feel any better and we went back to the hotel.  This is one of the benefits of writing – one can often answer one’s own question!

I did some dyeing last night and I have done some this morning.  When they are dry I will photograph them and post them.

I have found a gardener with very reasonable rates.  I cannot do the garden myself and John works all week and is tired at the weekend so he can well do without having to do something like the gardening. The man I asked to come and give me a quote for clearing up the garden also told me that he will come every two weeks to keep it in order and his fee is one we can afford.I was surprised at how low it was.  With the strange weather we have had, whereas normally the weeds and grass will not be growing now, both have overtaken the garden and it is now just too much work and because it is so wet there is little point in spraying poison on the weeds because it has to be dry for a least 12 hours after spraying.  We use a non-toxic to animals and humans spray.

I am thinking of closing my Yahoo group which was set up with the intention of teaching people my sock construction method.  It has 700 members but very little traffic.  It is not being used for the reason it was set up.  It would seem that I am not a good teacher and people do not understand either the method or my responses when I answer questions.  Matters are made worse by people answering questions when they do not know my method themselves which of course just adds confusion and frustration and I am the one who gets blamed for it.  I am very disappointed that it has turned out like this. My method is really very simple (even saying this has led to accusations that I think other people are stupid for not understanding when my intention was to help them stop thinking that they are too stupid to understand! It seems one cannot win no matter what one does or says!) and it produces a very well fitting sock and I really thought others would appreciate this and would jump at the chance of being set free from patterns.

However, it seems that people do not want that because I am constantly asked what the formula is or where is the pattern no matter how many times I explain that this is a method and there is no formula or pattern.

I will think upon this but this is how I feel today. When people ask for toe up patterns on other sock lists they are rarely, if ever, directed toward my method.  I am quite certain that if any of the Knitting Queens had developed this method people would be falling over themselves for it.  I could of course be quite wrong. My experience on knitting lists over the years has been that often my answers to questions have been ignored or contradicted yet when a well-known female knitter has responded with the exact same answer the response is entirely different. A standout example of this is when people ask how to deal with cashmere.  Often my response is completely dismissed with one questioner being very blunt: is there someone else with a more sensible answer?  My 30 years of knitting dismissed in a sentence. (I once had the temerity to point this attitude toward me out on a list which resulted in a very unpleasant response and an accusation of misogyny! The accusation made no sense whatsoever but the response rather showed that I was hardly mistaken in my interpretation!)

Oh dear!  Is this Grumpy Old Man syndrome?