This morning I woke up feeling crummy. Sinus junk. Shoulder pain. Consequently, I’ve spent the day trying to take care of myself. Eating right, beefing up on vitamins, using muscle rub creams. Currently I’m sipping bone broth and have a heating pad around my neck. It’s super sexy. Thankfully, things aren’t AWFUL (except in my mind), and I’m hoping I can head whatever this is off at the pass. I went to the gym to rehab my knee this afternoon instead of tonight, which is when I normally would have gone. Now I’m blogging earlier than normal so that I can go back to bed, get some rest.

When I went to the gym earlier, my dad and my aunt went with me. Dad’s been my gym buddy for a while now, and my aunt signed up while I was out-of-town this last weekend. We’re taking over. Afterwards we went to McDonald’s (don’t judge us just yet) for (wait for it) salads. When we walked in, a teenage boy held the door for us, and my dad told him what he tells every stranger (that’s a man) who holds the door for him–“You, sir, are a scholar and a gentleman. (Pause.) And there aren’t many of us left.” Ba-dum. I’ve heard this more times than I can count. It’s classic Dad. Right up there with what he says every time someone says something about a hormone. “Do you know how to make a hormone? (Pause.) Don’t pay her.”

Groan.

This evening while watching The Voice with my parents, I finished my first official knitting project–a pot holder that says HI. (It might as well say THIS HOMOSEXUAL IS SINGLE AND LIVES WITH HIS PARENTS.) When I sat down to complete the project, I only had six rows to go–six rows of thirty-six stitches each. There are a fifty-nine rows altogether. (Technically, there are sixty. The last row requires “binding off,” which I haven’t learned yet.) Anyway, whenever I finish a row, I count the stitches to make sure I didn’t screw up, and tonight after my first row (row fifty-four), I realized I did. There were thirty-five stitches instead of thirty-six. Crap, I thought, I don’t know how to fix this. But then I decided to carefully “undo” my last row and fix the “dropped” stitch, which I did.

Well, sort of.

For over an hour, I did my best to work in reverse. When it was all said and done–yippee–I ended up with the correct thirty-six stitches. However, there was still “a mistake.” This, I’m sure, was because I didn’t fix the dropped stitch correctly. Oh well, better luck next time. I added up the total number of stitches in the project, and it was 2,124. Of those, I think I screwed up three. That means, if I were getting a grade, it would be 99.85 percent. And whereas I hate that I actually took time to mentally give myself a grade, that’s a pretty damn good one.

I really am trying to get away from this, mentally giving myself a grade in every area of my life. Granted, I don’t normally give myself a percentage, but I do tend to feel like I “haven’t passed” whenever something goes wrong. For example, when I wake up not feeling well, I tend to feel responsible and self-flagellate. I think, I shouldn’t have had pancakes on Saturday. Never mind the fact that I’ve been eating like a health nut for the last month and it was only one exception.

One delicious exception.

Well, two, since I had pizza for lunch that same day.

Two delicious exceptions.

Really, I’m a better knitter now. Thanks to my mistake(s), I learned something about the way my project is put together that I didn’t know before. Likewise, I’m learning things about my body because it’s presenting me with certain challenges. Granted, I hate those challenges because they hurt, but I’m grateful for the lessons they bring with them. But back to my dad and his corny jokes. The secret to telling a good joke is largely in the delivery, the timing, THE PAUSE. That’s what I’m reminding myself, that it’s important to slow down in life, whether that’s to evaluate something that didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to, to rest and let your body heal, or to give yourself a damn break for not getting a perfect grade.