News flash!

It's cold here in the northern hemisphere. The morning temperature at 6:30-ish was -8°. I've never experienced anything like this since moving to West Virginia nearly 17 years ago.

Then again, it is winter, after all. We expect it to be cold sometimes between Christmas and Easter.

But this is some serious cold.

The good news is the water pipes didn't freeze and the electricity stayed on. More good news: We have wool socks and sweaters. That's a little fringe benefit of having a knitter in the house.

There really is no bad news, as long as we have heat and water and warm clothing. Too many people  don't.

I haven't seen a deer in a couple of days. I'm assuming they're all hunkered down in the woods, sheltering in place. My bird feeder is full, but the birds aren't pecking at it this morning. I'm sure they know what they're doing, opting for warmth over food.

I'm making great progress on the knitting magazine project. I've decided to donate them to the library. I've only kept a dozen potential patterns from the scores of Vogue Knitting issues I've gone through. I will soon move on to Interweave Knits (which is my favorite). I went through Knitter's several years ago and sold the issues I had no interest in on eBay. I just don't want to deal with the hassle of selling and shipping what's left on my shelves.

The patterns I've saved are for single-color, very simple designs. A couple hats, but mostly sweaters. It's been interesting to see how I'm initially drawn to lace or color work, but when I ask myself if I'd wear it, the answer is no. I have quite a stash of sport weight wool in a variety of colors, and will use it for small Fair-Isle projects – mittens and caps, maybe a bag.

Santa brought my younger granddaughter an American Girl doll, so in addition to the little poncho I made while watching football last night (oh, how I wanted Auburn to pull it out!), I see a fun little knitted wardrobe in her future.

My daughter-in-law's clogs are finished (again! Third try's a charm!), and now it's on to a pair of socks, recently requested by a male friend who wears a size 12 shoe. I'm thinking boot socks out of worsted wool to speed up production.

I'm switching my official weigh-in day from Mondays to Wednesdays. January 1 was on a Wednesday, and I want to record it once a week from the beginning of the year (even though I weigh myself daily). I've been sticking with the paleo/primal plan, but have definitely been feeding my cold and I'm up a couple of pounds. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

The good thing is I'm not worried about it and I'm not throwing in the towel. I'm so grateful to have found a way to eat that produces weight loss and good health. I've never felt better.

Except for this cold. And the cold outside. Both of which will be gone SOON!

You know that line …

in The Devil Wears Prada? This line?

Emily: Andrea, my God! You look so chic.

Andy Sachs: Oh, thanks. You look so thin.

Emily: Really? It's for Paris, I'm on this new diet. Well, I don't eat anything and when I feel like I'm about to faint I eat a cube of cheese. I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.

Yeah, that line. That's kind of how I felt yesterday, which is why there were NO WORDS in this space.

I woke up early, as I usually do, but felt pretty wonky. The elders in my family often spoke of having a "sour stomach," and I knew exactly what they meant. My husband insisted on taking my temperature, and it was slightly elevated – normal for me is 97.4, it was 99.4.

I suppose if I'd had a job to go to I could have made it, but since I don't I just went back to bed.

At some point in the early afternoon I started feeling like Emily. I'd had nothing to eat since dinner on Tuesday, and only a couple sips of coffee when I first woke up yesterday. And seriously? There's not a darned thing "comforting" about paleo when you're sick.

First, meat and vegetables, unless they're baked together in a big ol' flaky pie crust, aren't all that soothing for a sick stomach. And second, YOU HAVE TO COOK THEM.

I most definitely did not feel like puttering about in the kitchen.

Instead I dumped about a dozen wheat saltines onto a plate, put a thin pat of butter on each one and went back to bed. Oh, and I also had some grapes.

At about 7 last night my legs began itching. Lower legs, calves and ankles, I nearly broke the skin scratching them. It was driving me CRAZY. My husband, feeling helpless, drove to town to get some Cortizone. Applying that and knocking myself out with a Benadryl stopped the itching. Or at least I was able to sleep through it.

All I can think is that A (saltines) = B (itching).

While I have eaten wheat a couple of times since April with no ill effects, it's always been a tiny bit and combined with other ingredients. Saltines certainly have other ingredients, but not many, and I figure I might as well have just spooned the flour right into my mouth.

Or onto my lower extremities.

I could be very wrong. The likely scenario for a contact allergic reaction is almost always a new laundry detergent, but I've been using the same stuff for years.

And I certainly wasn't doing any laundry yesterday.

I'm sticking with my theory and will stay away from saltines from now on. I've no desire to test my hypothesis by trying the experiment a second time. 

And as for the Devil Wears Prada line? The scale was waaaaaay down this morning. The unfortunate truth, however, is that such gifts don't last. A day of normal eating will erase the stomach-flu benefit and I'll be back to inching my way down to goal.

Which is better than the alternative.

Ick. And fennel. Not necessarily related.

I ended up not running yesterday either. It just seemed prudent to remain near the facilities, and I apologize if that's TMI.

Got a LOTTA rest yesterday and slept very well last night and am hoping this is the end of it. Being sick at the end of four days away from home means there's a lot of catching up to do. The laundry – including bed and bath linens – is all done, thank goodness, and that's a big deal. It was pretty yesterday so I dried the sheets outdoors and they smell so delicious.

Am having a sensible and small breakfast of a banana with plain yogurt sprinkled with cinnamon. We're attending a pig roast for lunch, but I doubt if I indulge.

I dreamed about fennel last night.

Somehow or another, one fennel bulb has grown to maturity in the herb bed. There's an open packet of fennel seed in the seed box, but I don't remember planting any and if I did I would have planted it in the big garden, not with the herbs. Perhaps a bird dropped it, or the wind carried it from somewhere else.

At any rate, it's mature and I've picked it. Now to figure out what to do with it. I've never eaten fresh fennel before, and only occasionally added fennel seed to various recipes. Roasting appears to be a popular method of preparation, but I'm also thinking of making this salad.

My dreams were one cooking session after another, as if I were watching a fennel marathon on the Food Channel. Very weird. Pinterest has quite a variety of ideas, and I have several vegetable and/or vegetarian cookbooks on the shelf for inspiration. If any of you have a favorite fennel recipe, please leave a link in the comments!

It appears that fennel seed is good for digestion. Here's hoping the vegetable has similar properties and I can be done, done, done with feeling icky.

The party's over

Five p.m. today is the deadline for comments if you'd like to win the fourth and final Summer of Yarn Giveaway. I haven't reduced the size of my stash by much, but every little bit helps, and I'm moving toward a mind-place where I don't really need a lifetime supply of yarn. Not quite there yet, but close.

I was sick yesterday, sick enough to spend the day in bed. Sick enough to sleep most of the day and all night, too. Well, most of the night. At 4 a.m. I was wide awake and hungry. As I write, I'm having a bowl of yogurt with cinnamon, a banana and a little brown sugar. And coffee. I must be feeling better because I never drink coffee when I'm sick.

Done and ready to fill with goodies.

While I don't feel ill this morning, I also don't feel terribly energetic or motivated to do any of the bazillion things that need to get done around here. I'm kind of sorry the bag-knitting is finished. I still have a sweater on the needles, but I'm not terribly motivated to finish it at the moment. Still, though, knitting is knitting and after a fairly long stretch where I didn't knit a stitch, it felt good to be working on a project again.

I might just tuck myself into the den with a movie and the sweater and hope my getting-things-done mojo returns tomorrow.

We're supposed to have a lot of rain today, so that gets me off the hook for any kind of outdoor work. The next several days look good as far as temperatures go. I always think of August as the hottest month of the year, but July definitely was this year. It's been in the 80s all month so far, and the humidity has come down considerably. That's always a good thing.

You know you're getting old when you're excited about getting your dentures tomorrow! Or maybe Tuesday. You'll be the second to know. Heh. Aren't you glad the denture adventure is almost over? (I'm probably jinxing myself by writing that … I hear it can take up to six months to get used to them.)

When life gives you lemons …

you take 'em!

When I told my husband I was bringing home a lemon tree he said we could start making 7-Up, since we already have a lime tree. Good thing we have sliding glass doors instead of walls in our living room, because citrus needs lots o' light.

Aren't they pretty?

These fruits are all that remain, as I left some in Tennessee. But there will be more, I'm sure of it. Everything I've read about Meyer lemons (and this may be a Meyer after all) indicate they can take some abuse, which it surely has had the last few days. A little fertilizer, a little water, a lotta sun and I expect it to be full of fruit in another six months or so.

The lime tree has more limes than I can count, but they're very tiny. I don't know what variety of lime I have, though, so maybe they're supposed to be tiny. And I just found out today that limes are orange when they're mature; limes are picked before they're fully ripe.

My miserable cold moved to my head overnight and I'm not nearly as sick as I was when I was supposed to be useful. I can be merely decorative now that I'm home, so of course I'm feeling better. Heh.

Today is not the day to start walking again, although my heel pain is miraculously gone. (Not miraculous at all – rest, stretching and ice will heal plantar fasciitis.) We're having company this weekend and I'd rather be completely free of this cold when they arrive. So I will rest and knit today (the newsboy cap I started, oh, a couple weeks ago?), and make something warm and comforting to eat, and drink tea with honey.

And lemon.