How to Treat Your Wife When She is Sick

Illness strikes the best of us, and your spouse is no exception. Try this GUARANTEED 12 step plan for making your wife feel special when she is sick!

1. When she is lying semi-conscious in bed, joke about how when your toddler was sick with the same flu, he had lots of energy. Humor is important to healing.

2. During the sickness, do not load a dish in the dishwaster, pick up a toy, fold a scrap of laundry, or anything else that might help your wife around the house. It will make her feel needed.

3. That evening, plan your usual evening out, except take separate cars. Just because she will want to leave early doesn't mean you have to. She will miss you all the more while you are out having fun. Besides, she loves taking care of the kids, so let her have those few extra hours with them without your interference.

4. Wake her when you get home. No matter how soundly she appears to be sleeping, she was no doubt worrying about your safety.

5. The next morning, when she is starting to feel slightly better, agree (reluctantly don't want to make it too easy for her) to watch the children while she runs an quick errand. However, do as little as possible for the children. If you were to change any diapers, clothes or feed children, she would just feel like no one needs her at home. Your job is simply to ensure that they do not kill themselves or each other in her absence.

6. When she is trying to catch up on missed work by replying to emails or calling clients, interrupt her as much as possible. After all, you know she isn't quite feeling up to par, and probably needs the intermittant breaks from work. Ask who she is talking to on the phone, or if she is sending personal emails.

7. Schedule your day so that you are not available to watch the children when she has to go to work for a few hours. This has the added bonus of making your mother-in-law feel needed too. Plan your return home with your wife's anticipated return time.

8. If your wife is running late, and you actually have to provide care for the children, suggest to her that you should receive "brownie points" for having to change a dirty diaper. You know how much she loves doing that, and will probably be sad that she missed one.

9. Be coy about answering basic questions. When she asks if she should make dinner, just mentiuon that you had a snack without clarifying if that meant yes or no. A little mystery is good for a marraige.

10. If one of your children is having difficulty sleeping, be sure to grumble a little about it as you are rolling over to go back to sleep. Pretend not to notice your wife getting up for the fifth time that night, fumbling for a binky or tylenol, or walking, bouncing or singing with the child. You know how important the kids are to her, and wouldn't want to intrude on their special nocturnal time together.

11. The next day, she will be fully recovered and ready to resume her usual duties. You should make a big deal about doing one or two things to "help" her. Be sure to use the word "help" several times. It is important to let her know that you understanding that vaccuuming and dishes are primarily her responsibility, and you are doing her a huge favor this one time.

12. Take charge of the children for a bit, to give your wife needed personal and leisure time. Eleven minutes should be enough.

BONUS: Since you have fullfilled your "help" obligation for the day, feel free to enjoy the rest of your day in leisure. If you do too much to "help", she will start to worry about you taking over her domain. If possible, plan an outing with your friends starting at noon. That will allow her ample time with the children. Even better if it can last to the wee hours of the morn, as you will then have the excuse to spend the next day on the sofa dozing.

Next Months's Guide: How to make Your Wife Value a Perfectly Clean House as Much as You Do.

P.S. Believe it or not, the first version of this started out far more bitter.

Today, it is all about the sarcasm.

Happy Birthday to me

Last week was my birthday. (38 years old now, thank you.) I received one thing that I wanted more than anything: an afternoon off from life. I dropped the kids off at Grandma's, ignored emails voicemails and the pile of work that I brought home for the weekend, and cast a blind eye on the housework. My sweetie was working some overtime, so I had the house all to myself.

It sounds incomprehensible, but I didn't even knit. I worked on Monet. I have about 1,200 stitches completed so far. (out of 108,000, so barely a blip on the canvas.) It still looks like an indefinite blob of blue, with the ocassional speckle of lavender or gray. I know there are some waterlilies on the first page of directions, a good one to two thousand stitches away.

I can knit a row here and there while waiting for court, but I need a substantial amount of uninterrupted time to stitch. I am not certain if my mother gave me a blessing or a curse with those directions. 1% completed (almost) in two months. At that rate, it will take me. . . . . .17 years to complete. Wait, that can't be right. I should take into account that my stitching time will increase as the children grow older, right?

Also sounds incomprehensible, but I ran out of laundry that day. Oh, there were a few stray items in the hampers, but not enough to run a load. Towels, rugs and bedding were all caught up. I am not sure how long it has been since that happened, but I know not since Doodlebug was born 13 months ago. Caught up on laundry. A second little birthday treat.

Today, it is all about the stolen moments.

My next husband

When I was single and dating. I considered many things about the men that I was dating. I considered intelligence, sense of humor, physical attractiveness, and more. One attribute that I never thought about was physical size in case I wanted to knit for them some day.

I didn't know about the Curse of the Love Sweater yet, but I didn't knit for boyfriends. At least not after the scarf incident of 1999. (I knit one unworthy past boyfriend a manly blue scarf for his birthday, and he declined the gift. I had a "real gift" as well, as he so insultingly put it. A friend gleefully claimed the scarf for her husband, and I knit a matching scarf in purple for her. So the scarf wasn't punished in the end.)

So knitwear sizing just wasn't a consideration in my dating life. Now that I am knitting for a large husband, I realize the error of my ways. The Secret Wedding Socks were a large Size 11. The hoodie is a 2x. (He is really more of a large tall to extra large tall, but my sweetie likes a lot of ease in his clothes.) Even the hunting mittens are huge. If they were for me, I would be halfway finished with the second one.

Excuse me, I need to go work on an STILL unfinished thumb.

Today, it is all about the oversized.

Snow day

Yesterday was a snow day for everyone. Snow Tuesday afternoon. Sleet all night. Another foot of snow on Wednesday. At least that is what the sneaky lying weathermen were predicting. The courthouse was closed both days. (I went in to the office for the morning, then came home after lunch, when the sleet was starting.) My husband's factory was closed on Wednesday. So everyone was home Wednesday. Mommy, Daddy, two kids. It was like a weekend in the middle of the week.

We got the sleet all night, so Daddy had to break up the snow before he could shovel it. (Well, he uses a snow blower, but it doesn't sound right to say he "blows" the snow.) It snowed a little in the morning, but the foot of snow never came. Made it seem like much ado about nothing, but that is from the person that never left the house.

My sweetie left to clean his mother's driveway, and took Bugaboo with him. The litle one left with me fussed for a while, then took a long nap. I was treated to a couple free quiet hours to myself. I cross-stitched Monet. It was a nice treat. Another 100 stitches complete. 107,100 to go.


I also worked on my sweeties hunting mitttens. I am almost finished with one mitten. Only a thumb and flap to go. Obviously, it is a little big on my hand, but I couldn't convince Bugaboo to model the mitten.

Last week, children slept in, but I was up early an energetic. In addition to laundry and dishes, I did something for me. I blocked.

First lace. Finished over a year ago, but stuffed somewhere and forgotten. I unearthed it when I was un-hiding Christmas gifts.

This was really my first time blocking. (Well, other than socks, which doesn't count. )

I soaked my lace.




Then pinned it out on a quilt.

And I learned a few lessons:

1. Blocking wires exist for a reason. It was harder than I thought it would be to pin a straight line.

2. Pins matter. I used regular sewing pins. And found that the knitting popped over the tops of the pins. OK, so now I know why blocking pins have wide T tops.

All in all, blocking was a positive experience. And I am looking forward to wear my pretty lace scarf. Not today, though. It is 4 degrees outside, (Why couldn't the weathermen have been wrong about THAT) and I want to wear my wooly moebius, so I can cover my head and ears too.

Today, it is all about being a blockhead.

The brick wall

I have been happily plugging away on the hunting mittens. I have made fingerless mittens before, so I didn't anticipate any problems until the flap part. No new territory here, right? Famous last words.

Ribbing on the wrist: Check. Stockinette on the start of the palm: check. Increases leading into the thumb, at the beginning of the round: Check. Then, just when I was ready to separate the thumb from the rest of the work, what the . . . .?

"Cast on 4 stitches at the beginning of the round, TURN work, slip 16 stitches onto a thread, and leave for thumb. Knit to the end of the round." OK, I understand the concept of casting on a few more stitches. I think it would make a large gaping hole at the join, and have never actually done it, but I understand the concept.

Here is my problem. The thumb gussets are at the beginning of the round, so if I cast on some stitches, TURN, then set aside 16 stiches for the thumb, I am not setting aside the right 16 stiches. I am setting aside the 4 cast on stitches and twelve stitches from the back of the hand. Maybe it is just me, but shouldn't the stitches that I am setting aside from the thumb primarily be composed of the thumb gussets?

So this afternoon, I got the bright idea of casting on the four stitches. slipping the correct thumb stitches, then proceeding with the rest of the mitten. Sounds logical, right? I fumbled through the backward loop casting on method (oh, sure, easy in theory, but I find it unnecessarily fumbly, and producing stitches that are not very stable), slipped a dozen stitches.

Then I stared at my working yarn, sitting coyly between my cast on stitches and slipped stitches, far away from the stitches I wanted to start working.

Ok, new plan.

I figure I have two options.

One, proceed with the thumb now, ahead of schedule, then just start the rest of the mitten later, tying in a new piece of working yarn.

Two, I can forget about the casting on and the turning, set aside the thumb stitches, and proceed like I have on every other fingerless mitt I have knit.

On a completely side note, the camo yarn is turning out far more stripey than I anticipated.

Today, it is all about the stupid line in the instructions.

Fast Gratification

I have been working here and there on my Twisted Tween Socks and Unnamed Red Socks, not enough for progress to be noticeable to anyone but me.

Plus, I have been stitching Monet. Around 750 stitches completed so far. 107,250 to go. I can't figure out how Monet painted the original without going blurry-eyed. All those tiny bits of blues, lavender and gray.

I took a trip to the yarn store yesterday, gift certificate clutched in my hand, ready to indulge my fiber cravings. Except that, while my knitting time has increased lately, it is far less than it was five years ago in my single days. I didn't expect it to affect my yarn buying mind, but it did. Everything I saw, I found myself comparing to the yarns in my stash. I have so many wonderful yarns in my stash, waiting to be knit, I found myself only wanting to buy what was nicer than what was in my stash. I only found one thing. Well, three skeins of the same thing. I left with one gift certificate still unspent. I figure I will bring it to Knit Night, and use it on something that catches my fancy after two hours of child-free knitting time.

So I started something new. Something in worsted weight. Something with speedy knit gratification. I started this yesterday, and already have noticeable progress. I have progress since the picture was taken earlier this afternoon. I am making some convertible hunting mittens for my sweetie. He is showing admirable patience as I measure his hands, and ask questions about how high he wants the cuffs to go up his forearms.

Today, it is all about the speed.

Blues

My sweetie had minor surgery right before Christmas. We planned it that way, to maximize the holiday pay and shutdowns for as much of his required time off. Which meant that I spend two weeks at home with him. He was supposed to be taking it easy, so the first two days were spent taking care of him, and the remaining 12 days were spent contemplating chaining him to the chair so he would take it easy.

The kids went to Grandmas' houses as usual, to limit noise and blood pressure. I worked from home, and went in to the office for half days here and there, but mostly, I was at home doing home things. Laundry, cleaning, and relaxing. A sort of mental health recovery for me during my sweetie's physical recovery.

I did a little knitting, but not enough to photograph. Same two pairs of socks I have been working on for a long time. Twisted Tweed and Un-named red socks.

I also started something new. There are these cross-stitch patterns that I have been drooling over for years. Reproductions of Monet paintings. My mother got me four of them for Christmas. Considering how large and intricate the patterns are, I think this may be enough for a lifetime.

I started the first one. "Red Waterlilies" The directions are a little different. They recommend working a 10 by 10 stitch square at a time. Sometimes I am only doing a few squares of a color. Start, stitch three squares, end. Sounds crazy, but you would never be able to keep track of what you have stitched otherwise.

There are too many slightly different colors. Right now, all I have done is blues. Sky blues, periwinkle blue, cornflower blue, blue violet, delft blue, antique blue, wedgewood blue. . . .Blues, blues, blues. (The unstitched squares you see is the medium light blue violet that I missed on the list to buy.)

Mind-numbing, but in a good way. I have finished five squares on the first page. There are about 40 squares on each page. There are 30 pages. That makes. . . . roughly 1200 squares. Someone please tell me that my math is incorrect. That is a lot of blues. Sure, there is some greens for the lilipads, and pinks/reds for the flowers. Some lavenders and grays for accent, but still a lot of blue.

Today, it is all about the blues.