Is It Time To Turn The Page?

Things have changed so much during my 21 years with arthritis. I was 24 when my symptoms began. My mother, her parents, and even my childhood dog were all alive. My world of 2001 is hardly recognizable now. Having arthritis will probably be one of the most important things about me and the life that I live, but these days adaptability matters just as much as whatever the universe has pointed at me.

Don’t get it twisted

I'm not criticizing people for having a hard time. Anybody can find themselves in bad situations that aren't their fault. For me, the important part is making the best of lessons learned.

Do daffodils come up by your house in the spring?

Most folks in North America look for daffodils to mark the end of winter. Sometimes, they defy Old Man Winter by pushing up from under the snow!

Nature is up to something

It took years to occur to me that they’re from someplace else. They’re naturalized. Naturalized plants are capable of reproducing and sustaining themselves without our help, outside of their home range. These little beauties hail from the Mediterranean like all members of the genus Narcissus.

Narcissus bulbs multiply at a slow but relentless pace, taking up more and more room. The lilies, tomatoes, chives, rose of sharon, and tulips in my yard are on their way to naturalization alongside the daffodils. Things are getting crowded!

Life has the same potential for overcrowding as my garden, but it’s gratuitous nonsense in the form of intentionally didactic hot takes, trolling, and clickbaity trash instead of  delicious tomatoes and beautiful flowers. This feels normal because it’s everywhere, but that doesn’t make it okay. Every gardener must devote some time to digging in her soil, disrupting the lifecycle of whatever doesn’t belong and planting good things in their place.

Learning to knit

After 15 years of crochet I decided to go over to the dark side. Ooops! I mean try knitting. Racist incidents and the portrayal of knitting as too hard or fancy for someone like me kept me off until a dear friend encouraged me to try. Her tip was to try the Continental style, which involves holding the yarn  in the left hand, just like crochet, taking the strain off my right hand that has the most arthritis damage.

New hobbies keep us humble!

I dropped the needles lots of times. And one got lost in my recliner. Sigh. And the yarn kept splitting on me. And there were times that I considered just using 2 crochet hooks at once. BTW, there is a YouTube video of an ambitious woman doing just that! I began to actually knit about 4 days into the knitting odyssey and now I knit a few rows each day to keep developing my skills. So yeah, I’m a crocheter who knits now.

Be honest with yourself to uncover your knitting.

• Are you happy with how things are going?
• Is your life crowded by someone or something?
• Is there something you’ve been waiting to try?