Weekend of extreme sinus drainage (and productivity)

Wednesday: Came down with the "something's been dripping down the back of my throat all day" sore throat, which usually signals the start of a week-long cold infestation.

Thursday: Sore throat continues, plus sinus headache and pain so bad I feel like throwing up. The pain laughs at the two kinds of cold medicine and pain relievers I throw at it. So, of course, I take Liza swimming at a friend's neighborhood pool. Thanks to me, the entire kid population of Camelot Farms will miss a good portion of next week's school. In my defense, at this point the symptoms were still indistinguishable from allergies.

Friday: Throat is better, but now I'm blowing my nose so often that the muscles in my neck and back hurt from the effort to get the approximately 14 gallons of stuff out of my body. Liza chooses today to turn into a whiny limpet. The only way I manage to bypass toddlercide is to make her watch Cinderella with me twice, and let her run around outside with the hose running full blast for an hour. Jason gets home from work, I retreat to bed and hide there until it's Liza's bedtime. After she goes to bed, I work on the stuffed dog that I've been knitting since we were in the hotel room. Because, you know, nothing takes your mind off of snot like working on a project you have grown to despise but are finishing because you've invested too much time in it to throw it out.

Saturday: My throat would be better, if I weren't hacking stuff up every five minutes. I talk to my mother on the phone, and she actually sounds worried. I tell her not to fret, at least now I can sing my daughter "Amazing Grace" in an additional lower octave, thanks to Sexy Cold Voice. Jason takes pity on me and goes out with Liza until lunchtime (thank you, saintly husband!), giving me time to finish the quilting on the first of two quilts for our guest bedroom. I'll have photos once I get the binding on. And I manage to make the valance for our kitchen window:

Afternoon is a blur of naps and looking through decorating books for ideas for our bedroom curtains. Jason went over to a friend's house Saturday night, and I knitted and crocheted until my fingers bled. Literally ... although I don't have a picture, unfortunately. I do, however, have pictures of The Dog From Hell, which seemed like such a good way to get rid of a lot of ugly brown yarn, and turned into the project that wouldn't die.

"What's so bad about that?" I hear you thinking. Well, that dog was made in about 30 different pieces, and despite the fact that I cut 60 rows of knitting out of the pattern when it was obvious things were getting out of hand, my boy is four feet long and weighs about five pounds. Here's Liza's first exposure to The Dog of Doom, just so you can get an idea of the scale:

Her actual comment while I was taking the picture? "Mama, help! Take it off! Take it off!" I think she was just ticked off because I put it in the way of her continuing to use the couch as a trampoline, but still.

Ahem. Anyway, Saturday night I also finished up two crochet projects from the bottom of my knitting bag, both made of yarn I had leftover from the zebra:

I've decided to call the penguin "Blotto," and the bear is "Claw." I can't tell you how perfect the beak is on the penguin - it turned out exactly the way I wanted it to.

Sunday I was on the mend, only expectorating twice an hour, although when I talked to my dad on the phone he thought I sounded awful. I had enough energy to work on a summer dress for Liza, which I completed in one naptime. A long naptime, and I still need to take in the waist some to make it fit right, but still. Damn, I'm good.

I'm not kidding when I say I have to take the waist in. Here it is, safety-pinned together in the back so I could judge how much I needed to take it in.

I have to cut off FIVE INCHES of the elastic that holds the waistband up in back, despite the fact that Liza's waist is only one inch smaller than the measurements on the package for this size. Stupid pattern designers.

And then Sunday night I started a new sweater for Liza, which should be big enough for her this winter. Given that the pattern is ridiculously complex and I've already messed it up twice in sixteen rows of the pattern, I'm going to need all the time between now and first frost just to get the thing done. I had to "watch" the episode of Heroes we had on DVR with my head buried in the pattern book, muttering under my breath "ONE perl perl TWO perl perl THREE perl ... damn, it was only supposed to be two. Okay, back on the left needle, guys. Hey, you! Don't you dare drop down one more row! I've got a crochet hook, and I'm not afraid to drag your sorry ass back up where you belong!" I firmly believe that the more I curse at a craft project, the faster it goes. If that's true, I predict I'll have this sonofabitch done next week.

And today I'm mostly healed, except for the hourly removal of great quantities of stuff from my nose. And I've managed to pull all the ugly trim off the basement wall before I even got out of my pajamas, and I got the first coat of paint on the walls during Liza's naptime. So if you'll excuse me, I have a second coat to apply. "Lupine," here I come!