My solution

I've been diagnosed with chronic pain for twenty odd years. It began small and then kept adding on through the years. 

First that crushed disc at C3 and a degenerated hip. Had those repaired. Then lumbar stenosis and L1 crushed in a stupid accident. Physical therapy and a brace for a long time.

Then the litany of minor things, like rheumatoid and osteoarthritis. No cure there. Left shoulder replacement. Then a tibia fracture, couple of years later my femur. Add to all this, acquired leg length discrepancy, now about an inch. Every step hurts my back.

I consumed a lot of ibuprophen and went to physical therapy. Eventually I cycled through rheumatology and on to pain management. Pain management began about ten years ago.

I started with Lyrica and then a "mild" opiod. I researched the bejammers out of the latter before I agreed. I was prescribed Belbuca, "the drug we prescribe for withdrawal from addictive opiods".

For the first time in a long time my back was manageable, my arms, legs and hands quit hurting. I took up weaving again because I could catch and throw a shuttle. Life was just fine.

I moved from my township in Summit County in 2022, to this senior complex in Portage County. I drove the twenty or so minutes back to my Summit County doctors until I decided the car was becoming too expensive. I traded out all my old doctors for doctors I could access from my new residence.

My first pain problem was that not one of the new doctors would prescribe Lyrica. Either they were not authorized or just would not. I was referred to at least four new pain practitioners, none of whom prescribed pain medications. I could explain their reasoning but don't care to. It basically came down to what I call "old people medicine."

And I no longer have Belbuca to keep me moving. I was still seeing my old pain management practice, but the price of Belbuca was rising exponentially. By 2023 my co-pay was $300 a month. Way out of my ballpark. The pain folks had no alternative. So, I quit.

It wasn't the worst thing I've ever been through, but it did remind me of all the reasons I always refused prescribed pain meds. If you take them you must withdraw if you stop. So, I spent a sleepless week. But that was a couple of years ago.

I went back to my ibuprophen habit. 400 mg in the morning, 400 at night. When doctors complained and had no alternative I said "Deal with it". The same thing I told my primary years ago, when she thought I should quit butter. "I eat butter. Deal with it."

Sadly, my self prescribed doseage no longer works. I seldom sleep the night. I have not seriously thrown a shuttle in more than six months. I've switched from my walker to my rollator so I can sit down on my way to anywhere.

When I was young I occasionally heard my father say "I've dug a hole and pulled it in behind me." I feel like I've done that myself, and I like it less and less. 

I've arranged to get a new shoe lift to ease walking a bit. I've had them in the past and hated how inefficient they are. But my daughter located a supplier who purports to make a more flexible lift, so I'll give it a try.

And, I've make an appointment to see a new rheumatologist. Maybe I'll find some help. That appointment isn't until July. In the meantime, I'm avoiding typing. I'm looking forward to being done with this confession. My hands hurt, my arms, my shoulders, my back. It's such bullshit.

Long story short, I'm mostly off posting. I'm still at the head of the activist rolls, letting my fellow senior anarchists know what boycott is in effect and what issues need letters. Would you believe my MAGA state government is trying to move libraries from independent funding to a line item in the state budget. Bastards. When the federal funds to Ohio are gone so is Peninsula's library.

All is not gloom, however. It is spring, snow nothwithstanding. The daffs are up, the birds are back. From a window I can see through at supper there are a lot of hawks riding the air currents. 

On my way to breakfast I generally stop and rest at the big windows overlooking a court yard. It's where I can see the white cat, Happy, if he's soaking up rays in his window. But this week a hawk landed on the retaining wall outside Happy's window.

A plethora of sparrows live in the row of arborvitae past the wall. I've seen several hundred shoot out of the row of arborvitae, like a curtain of birds. Suddenly the hawk dived into the greenery and came out with his breakfast. I think it's a Coopers Hawk. He's been here before and a hall mate took this picture.

 

PSA's

The location for recycling prescription bottles is here in Ohio, a little south of me, in Dover, Ohio. Dover is a bucolic little town, so typical of the Connecticut Western Reserve (though the Reserve may not have extended to what became Tuscarawas County).

For due diligence, I googled "recycle prescription bottles", in the event there are more around the country. Only the Tuscarawas service was returned. It is through the Matthew 25 Ministries. That is the pill bottle address. Here is the site of the ministry: https://m25m.org/

They accept over the counter plastic bottles, too. Aspirin, supplements, all those pesky bottles that I'm sure are not recycled. 

Moving right along, here are the roll brim hat instructions. I have not found out how to get pictures back into the instructions. The yarn is wool, worsted weight (4 ply), but any worsted weight will do.

ROLL BRIM HAT

The pattern is for adult small, medium and large.  The top of the hat is decreased in six sections, or gores, which produces a very attractive swirl.  This kind of decreasing is a simple formula.  The number of gores must divide evenly into the original number of stitches.  When decreasing, knit together the last two stitches in the gore.  It can be helpful to place markers.  At the end of the pattern I have included number of stitches to cast on and the number of stitches in the gore sections to make the hat for infants and children.

 To fit sizes:  Small (20”), Medium (21 ¼”), Large (22 ½”).  These sizes are fairly nominal; if the hat is knit in wool, which is very forgiving, a small will also fit a medium.

 Materials:  1 skein, 110 yards, Ewe Tree DK to Worsted weight

16” circular #6, 1 set #6 DP needles

 Gauge:  4.5 sts = 1”

 Instructions:

With 16” circular needle, cast on 90 (96, 102)sts.  Join.  Place marker for beginning of round.

Work in stockinette stitch (knit every round) for 6”.

Decrease top as follows:  (if necessary, place a marker after every decrease to denote gore section)

 Round 1: K13(14, 15), K2tog.  Repeat to end.

Round 2: K

Round 3: K12(13,14), K2tog.  Repeat to end.

Round 4:  K

Round 5: K11(12,13), K2tog.  Repeat to end.

Round 6:  K

 Continue in this manner until 48 sts remain, then decrease every round until 6 sts remain.  Break yarn, draw through the 6 sts, pull to inside through the center top.  Work in ends.

 To make this hat in smaller sizes:

                                                Infant              3 to 6 years      7 to 10 years    11 to 15 years

 

Cast on                                    66                    72                    78                    84

 Knit 5 to 6 inches

 Stitches in gore                       9                     10                    11                    12       

 

And another thing...

I'm still on Facebook and Instagram. I tried to make a Bluesky account, but messed it up so completely I can no longer access it. Maybe I'll straighten that out some day. We all seem to hang out on Facebook and Instagram. So what the heck.

Except of course, all those ads, across several platforms, just because I looked up something. Or bought something. I bought a new bra recently and everywhere I go now, an ad for that bra that I already bought.

Recently a gratuitous clip from Jon Stewart popped up, featuring John Oliver on data mining and an address for his site about social media regulation. The website is How to change your Meta settings.

I do not find programs "intuitive". I have wasted near an hour trying to figure out screen shots, but that obviously needs to be done on my own time. I can make links, so there you go. It tells you how to stop Meta from feeding ads based on data collection, how to stop Meta from using data to help advertisers target you on other apps and how to unlink your account from your data that other companies give to Meta.

So, that's my public service announcement for today. The YouTubers call them PSA's and a popular one going around now is called "I was today years old when I learned!" and goes on to tell us something we learned fifty or sixty years ago. However, my daughter sent me one recently and it was new.

She collects old prescription bottles and sends them to a charity that provides them to hospitals in Africa, where prescription bottles are hard to come by. However, the labels must come off first. That's a job I hate, so I pass mine along to her, label intact. Here's what she learned:

Put the bottle in the freezer. I forget how long; let's say overnight. Next day, roll your finger or thumb over one corner to lift the edge, then pull off the label, easy peazy, as they say.

Since I will be putting some time into learning screen shots, I think I'll tackle another housekeeping job. Sort of like getting the genealogy in order for the children (I've done that.). When searching for the pictures I used to take of my knitting projects I found most of them are only printed on the instructions I used to write up. The original pictures are on thumb drives stashed in a basket. My kids can go through them if they want, like I went through all those census records.

The problem with the instruction sheets I made, they are in long defunct programs like WordStar or Publisher. I'd like to convert them to something accessible now. There are patterns for sweaters (mostly children's), mittens, gloves, hats, ponchos. Imagine a pair of gloves in two afternoons. If I do this, anyone interested? I'll put them in a post. 

Be the resistance

I've struggled these last months. Even lost my mojo. Seriously, I've woven less than a dishtowel over so many weeks they've become months.  

Some time ago I read Ellen's call to action. The national 24 hour Economic Blackout on February 28th:

I will participate.

The 24 hour Economic Blackout

As our first initial act, we turn it off.

For one day we show them who really holds the power.

WHEN:

Friday February 28th from

12:00 AM to 11:59 PM

WHAT NOT TO DO:

Do not make any purchases

Do not shop online, or in-store

No Amazon, No Walmart, No Best Buy

Nowhere!

Do not spend money on:

Fast Food

Gas

Major Retailers

Do not use Credit or Debit Cards for non essential spending

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Only buy essentials of absolutely necessary

(Food, Medicine, Emergency Supplies)

If you must spend, ONLY support small, local businesses.

SPREAD THE MESSAGE

Talk about it, post about it, and document your actions that day!

WHY THIS MATTERS!

~ Corporations and banks only care about their bottom line.

~ If we disrupt the economy for just ONE day, it sends a powerful message.

~ If they don't listen (they wont) we make the next blackout longer (We will)

This is our first action.

This is how we make history.

February 28th

The 24 Hour Economic Black Out Begins.

A day of rage will be cathartic, and I'm looking forward. And then, thinking backward, I thought of the boycotts I've been part of in my lifetime, and many I've not. I wasn't there for the Montgomery bus boycott, but I have participated in many consumer boycotts.

Remember supporting the United Farm Workers by boycotting produce? Grapes and lettuce. Other movements we helped as we could. The ending of apartheid. Greenpeace. Heinz. More I can no longer remember. The National School Walkout. (Another damn cold day!)

Here's a list purportedly posted by Heather Cox Richardson, but actually by the Heather Cox Richardson Community. You can find it on Facebook, if you still have an account.

It's a list of Project 2025 adherents. It doesn't include the big guys, like Amazon and Tesla; it's the minor players, who equally do not deserve our support. Use Ctrl+ to enlarge the print, if necessary.

This list is published by democratsabroad.org, a good place to look for resistance efforts. Sadly, about half our country could be on this list, which seemingly halves our available world. Or not.

Most of us are no longer raising children, managing households. We still control our purse strings and can make informed purchasing decisions. Research products before you purchase. Purchase locally. Use renewables and reuseables. I gave up most paper products years ago. Buy handkerchiefs. Buy kitchen towels. Be thoughtful about cleaning products.

Be vocal. Don't buy a Tesla, but also don't boo the Canadian national anthem. And don't begrudge them the opportunity to vocalize their displeasure with our government. That's all.

Anamneses

I can scarcely pronounce that title. It refers to a memory, probably of another lifetime. This is about such a memory; I am now so far removed from most of my past, it seems like another life time.

For many years I was a prolific knitter; the art I learned from my mother. I started in college, age 18, and truly stopped only a couple years ago, when I bequeathed the last of my yarn, all my patterns and needle stash to Caroline, the last grandchild.

Even before Jan and I left our "civilian" jobs to form a weaving studio, I was waist deep in yarn. Basically I had come to dislike most synthetic yarns available in the seventies and not able to afford the beautiful wools out there.

What to do? Make it yourself, I concluded. I bought a wheel and figured it out. Actually, I bought several wheels before I settled on my favorite, a wheel made by a weaving friend's son-in-law. Beside being a practical tool, it was a woodworking bit of art. This is the only picture I can find of me and that wheel, spinning at a show in Boston.

After we ended our weaving careers in 2003 Jan and I took separate artistic directions. She became an accomplished and acclaimed quilter and I became a dabbler, a dilettante. There were pounds and pounds of carded wool in the studio that needed spun, a neat task while watching TV. So, I spun and spun.

What to do with the yarn, except knit it. So, I knit it and sold the garments in a local gallery. 

But I could spin faster than knit, so why not sell it! I explained what an electric wheel would look like to my brother Walt, and he made one. Here's a picture of it.

You can see the bobbin with some yarn in the middle and the unit around it is called the flyer. It distributes the spun yarn onto the bobbin. A typical flyer uses hooks to distribute the yarn along; you must stop the wheel and move the yarn to the next hook. 

This flyer had something I discovered shortly after I began spinning, a travelling screw. A continuous screw in that black tube carried the yarn constantly. I'm notorious for cutting to the chase and it took me no time to find a fellow who made travelling flyers.

My wholesale yarn business was off to a great start with the addition of Walt's electric wheel, comprised of parts from my old mechanical wheels and a sewing machine motor. I sold to knitting shops all over Ohio and Wisconsin.

That is the whole lead-in to my anamneses moment today. Beth had asked to come visit and at once sat us down and opened her tablet (the electronic one). Pretty soon we were on a face time (I think that's the name) with Caroline, who had a mystery box from her mother to open.

Out came two great bundles of yarn.

"OMG, that's my old label!"

Beth is a great fan of Facebook Marketplace and one day, unsolicited, this yarn for sale came up. Probably because she occasionally searched for yarn. I suspect it came from a yarn shop in Columbus. The owner was so delightful I even shared my Aran Aran pattern with her. If I can find a picture, I'll post it.

So Caroline has enough yarn to make a lovely sweater. It's in good hands.

I made and sold yarn for about a year. Then we took in three grandchildren. They take up a lot of room, and the wheels had to find a new home. I sold them all, in one fell swoop.