We’re a little late, but we’re here with Health Group. I exercised Mon, Tues, Wed, and Thurs of last week. Ate too much junk.

My pants are tight. I’m really annoyed.

How was your week?

My elbows/arms are killing me. I’m now willing to go to the doctor, but I don’t know when I’ll find the time. Clark and Abby have birthdays this week, and while Clark’s is going to be easy, Abby’s having a dinner party for 10 or so.

In the guitar department, I’m now looking at Taylors. They’re amazingly easy to play, and really well made. They feel good, just holding them. I’m thinking that even when I get my arms fixed, I might as well take it as easy on them as I can to avoid a repeat. A low action guitar should help? They make a cedar and mahogany, grand auditorium that I’m going to try to hunt down today. I like that wood combination, but haven’t tried it in a Taylor yet.

I have a few fun ones. First, here’s Clark in Abby’s old Hayden that he wore on our walk yesterday.

Next, we have my brother recording an acoustic track for “Blackbird” into my computer.

And lastly, one of the two electric guitars that he left for me to play with.

The guy that owns it was going to sell it to my brother for $200, but wants $300 from me. That’s totally lame.

I sang and recorded “April Comes She Will” yesterday. It was cool. I exported two vocal tracks with the guitar into iTunes, but I have 8 tracks of my voice in Garage Band, and when I play them all together, aside from the timing being a little sloppy, it sounds incredibly cool. Like a whole choir of me.

Clark is a little better, but still grumpy. Maybe it’s a reflection of the fact that he’s almost 2. It’s getting extremely old.

My mother-in-law is sick. She thought she’d be better for Easter dinner, but wasn’t, and called on Saturday afternoon to take me up on my offer to host for her. So, Easter wasn’t very relaxing, but it was extremely fun. There were a few times, when I’d pause from bustling about, that I thought I should really get a picture of things like the pretty table surrounded by family in casual conversation, Ray and 5 of his sons hiding 150 plastic eggs in our very small, basement family room for the 9 cousins to find, Nate and his brothers sing/screaming along to “You Give Love a Bad Name” by Bon Jovi, various living room scenes… but I admit, sadly now, that instead I just took a breath and enjoyed the moment.

So I’m taking it easy this morning. The sun is out, briefly I’m sure, and Clark is in a bad mood. He’s a little sick and it’s not the cute, cuddly kind of sick, it’s the grumpy, whining, everything-I-do-is-wrong kind of sick. So I’m feeling a bit self indulgent and wanting to make the day as pleasant for myself as possible. My elbows are s-l-o-w-l-y getting better. I haven’t knit a stitch in over a week. I haven’t practiced my guitar much at all and my lesson is tomorrow so I need to get on that.

On Saturday afternoon, we played around with the equipment that enables us to play and sing and record into Garage Band on the computer. We came up with some very fun, silly songs. I’m going to keep working with it so I can at some point post a song here. I’m not sure how to do that yet.

I really don’t like picture-less posts. I’ll try to do something photo worthy today.

Oh, wait, I found some. I did manage to get pictures of our very first ever egg dyeing session. I had 6 or so dye kits that I’ve bought over the years with the intent to dye eggs with the kids, but we never actually got around to it until this year.

My house is a mess. Mom, don’t look.

And here’s a shot of all the (old enough to hunt eggs anyway) cousins down in the basement with their oh-so-festive grocery bag easter baskets.

You do what you can do. Happy Easter!

Hi! It’s been a few days. My elbows still hurt, though they’re a little better, but I’m probably going to have to break down and see a doctor. My guitar teacher said that it isn’t normal. I’m out of excuses.

This week was up and down. I had a couple of great days, exercised three times, and the rest of the time….

I ate too much food.

But, I can tell that I’m getting stronger physically through my exercises. I’m getting better. I’m at peace with it.

How was your week?

Quite frankly, I’d love to just sit here and type/chat with you. I’m in kind of a relaxed, conversational mood, but I have an hour to get showered, dressed, and the house cleaned up before Nate and I go on our date, and I don’t really have the time.

So I’ll be quick.

I’ve been having fun with music. Nate bought an interface-something-or-other to allow me to plug into the computer and record, so maybe at some point, I’ll be able to post a song and you all can hear me sing!

That’s relatively terrifying to me, but I’m actively trying to overcome this ridiculous fear I have of performing in front of people. I can sing. I know I can. I’m tired of choking when I know others are listening.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to this week. I haven’t tried the interface-something-or-other yet. Probably Monday, once the girls go to school.

I have some cute pictures, though. Veronica loves to cook. I wish I was a better mom and gave her more opportunity. But on Wednesday last week, the older two went off to softball practice, and I thought I’d let Veronica make biscuits.

She’s such a little shrimp. She’s almost 7 and weighs 38 pounds. She uses the stepladder a lot. It permanently resides in the kitchen, to the right of the stove and she pulls it out frequently.

While she was making biscuits, my brother Sam was playing music for us.

Anytime Sam is over, it’s like having a mini concert in the house. He just walks around with it and plays while we’re doing stuff, while we’re talking. It’s fun.

I’m still not knitting. It feels strange, like things aren’t quite right when I can’t knit. My guitar lesson is this afternoon, so I’ll talk to my instructor and see what he thinks. Am I building strength or damaging myself? Is it related to or aggravated by the guitar playing? Is it normal?

KT Tunstall, who is my musical idol, is coming to the Moore Theater in early May. My brother told me about it and we got tickets. I’m so very excited!!! I’m prepared to spend the day in line for good seats so I can get as close as possible and watch her hands. She’s such a great guitar player. She also does the coolest stuff with loop stations.

I want to be her. (Or at least be able to play like that).

Most specifically, Sam’s scarf knitting that’s hurting my arm. I finished it up, (there were only a few inches left and he was anxious) and I hurt a lot more while I was knitting it.

It was a lot of cabling with a yarn that wasn’t very soft and didn’t have a lot of give. I’m hoping that it was the specific knitting of his scarf that did me in. I tried knitting on the big shawl a little yesterday, and it wasn’t comfortable. I guess I need to stop for awhile and keep up the ibuprofen. Guitar seems to be ok, weights are absolutely out.

So the fact that Carol’s latest sock club package arrived a few days ago is just…. not cool.

I mean it’s cool, but it’s not cool. Because I can’t do anything with it in the foreseeable future and it taunts me. Look at that color! Is sooooo pretty.

I ordered over 200 pictures online Friday to scrapbook this year so far, beginning with New Year’s Eve. I’m really excited about it. They should arrive in the next couple of days. I also did an online book through iPhoto about our trip to the cabin. It’s very cool. I don’t know how to balance the two- digital and/or traditional photo albums, but I’m going to mess around with both of them.

Well, it wasn’t a great week, but not a complete bust, either. I exercised Monday and Tuesday, and ate appropriately. Wed, Th, Fri… I slipped. But I’m ok. I was busy and I didn’t have a lot of good food choices in the house. So I snacked a lot, which makes it harder to track in Calorie King, so I didn’t do that, either.

And I’m REALLY sick of chicken. I don’t want to eat any more chicken for a couple weeks.

I’ve gained 4 pounds from where I’ve been sitting for awhile, and I don’t know what’s up with that. I didn’t mess up that bad. It must be fluids or something. My body is doing something weird. Four pounds?

I’m going to have to drop my weight regimen until my elbow heals, but I’ll continue my physical therapy. Maybe I’ll add a little bit of treadmill or neighborhood walks? I don’t know.

How was your week?

I don’t know what is causing it, but my right elbow has hurt for days, and this morning, it was rather extreme and physically limiting. I don’t know if it’s the guitar playing, if it’s the lace knitting… I know that something (I can’t remember what) was aching while I was knitting recently, and I ignored it.

So, in looking online, it seems that it might be Tennis elbow or Lateral epicondyle. Though, it hurts more when I make a fist than when I open my fingers up, which sounds more like Golfer’s Elbow, or Medial epicondyle. Either way, it sucks. And what sucks the most is that aside from possibly having to go to the doctor, I have to stop the activity that caused it. Not knowing if it’s guitar or knitting, I should probably quit both, which I REALLY don’t want to do. I’m supposed to quit for weeks.

This is so unfair.

And it hurts so much that I can’t just do something else, like clean out the garage, which I’ve wanted to get done. And I’d imagine that I shouldn’t do it anyway.

So what do I DO for 3 weeks? Assuming that I’m going to rest it like I’m probably supposed to.

I absolutely loathe being unproductive. I hate feeling like I’m wasting time. That’s why I knit. I learn. I create. I make things.

Ooooooh. Wait a minute.

I’ve been wanting to do some serious catch-up in the family scrapbook/photo albums. (Yeah, I’m YEARS behind). I suppose I could do that for a few weeks. I could possibly spin, too. Fortunately, I’m ahead of the game with my deadline knits. The only problem is that I’m in guitar lessons, and I can’t exactly go to lessons if I’m not playing. And I REALLY don’t want to stop playing! I enjoy it so much, and I’m making such good progress…

Dangit, dangit, dangit.

So, my brother has lent me his new guitar to play around with.

It’s an auditorium, or concert bodied guitar, meaning it’s smaller than the standard dreadnaught I’ve been playing which is my mom’s guitar, also on loan. I think a concert body will help my elbow, if my injury is guitar related, because having as much in front as I do, and with my freaky small shoulders and such, sometimes it’s difficult to get around the guitar to play it.

Ooh, ooh, and check out this incredibly cool guitar strap I found.

It’s a velvety corduroy pink/brown paisley and I love it.

So, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll take a couple days off of knitting and guitar (pout), ice it, Advil, rub eucalyptus oil into it to increase blood circulation, do some stretches I found online, and we’ll see what happens.

This is SO lame.

Continuing thoughts that were added later-

Maybe it’s my weight lifting? It really hurt the last couple times I did my biceps. I could go 3 weeks without weight lifting.

1. Sam’s Scarf

I’m finally to a color change. This scarf is extremely long, at his request, and it’s all been black Donegal Tweed until last night, when I finally reached a stripe.

Sam asked for 4 red stripes on one end. The stripes will be 3 1/2 inches of red, flanked by 3 inches of black. I’m 2 1/2 inches into the first stripe, so that leaves….. 23 inches of scarf left to knit. Sigh. I’ll be done with this sucker eventually.

2. Talent Show

Liv sang with a friend in the school talent show on Friday night. She was stiff as a board, but sounded great. She was really cute with her little hand balled into a fist at her side the whole. time.

3. Guitar

I was really excited this past week. I was playing around in my Simon and Garfunkel book (Roger, my teacher is amazing. I love him. I’ve learned so much, and he’s really warmed up. I love my lessons) and Abby asked about “Hazy Shade of Winter”.

A side note- she has only just recently discovered the song. The Bangles version, of course, because it completely rocks. As I was playing it for her, I noticed that a lot of the the chords are chords that Abby knows on her Ukulele, so I copied the music for her and she’s going to play around with it. I’m excited for her. She was disappointed to have missed the cut off for talent show entries, because she wanted to get up there and play her Uke. I never would have guessed. She’s a little shy, like me. I’m hoping she’ll still want to do it next year.

Anyway, to speed up the story, I was playing around and Abby asked about “Hazy Shade of Winter”, and I looked it up and played the chords. Then, as I was looking at the notes for the beginning guitar bit, I realized that I’d been reading and playing most of those notes in the music Roger has written out for me in my workbook. (Ode to Joy, Dueling Banjos, and a little “guitar boogie”, or so he calls it). So I figured it out! I can play the opening bit to “Hazy Shade of Winter”, and I did it by myself! And I’ve told practically everyone I’ve seen since, I’m so excited, and I’ve played it 500 times!!!

I’m giddy.

4. Miscellaneous silliness

I have many playlists on iTunes. The biggest is called “La Likes”, and it has 494 songs on it. According to the computer, it’d take 1.3 days to get through the whole list. So there are songs I don’t hear very often on La Likes. Well, at 9:30 this morning, Guns N Roses came on. Hee hee. I don’t have a lot of GNR, and I don’t hear it very often, but when it pops up, it makes me smile. We’re rockin’ out to GNR and I’m not even out of my pajamas yet.

It’s going to be a good day.