Enough is enough

There's an old Jewish folktale that goes like this:

A poor man goes to the town rabbi, and says, "Rabbi, oy, enough is enough.  I have a tiny hovel we live in, and when I'm inside I am tripping over my wife, my in-laws, and my small children.  Please help us!"

The rabbi says, "Bring the plow into the house."

A week later the poor man returns and says, "Rabbi, oy, enough is enough, now I'm tripping over the people and the plow in my tiny hovel.  I need more room!"

The rabbi says, "Bring your chickens into the house."

Five days later the poor man returns and says, "Rabbi, enough is enough, now I'm tripping over the people, the plow, the chickens and the eggs!"

The rabbi says, "Bring your goats into the house."

Three days later the poor man returns and says, "Rabbi, nu, I'm not joking, I can't take any more, enough is enough!"

The rabbi says, "Put the plow, the chickens, and the goats back out in the yard."

A few days later the rabbi visits the hovel and asks the poor man how he feels.  The poor man answers, "Rabbi, now that I don't have to trip over the plow, the chickens, the eggs, the goats, and the animal feed, it's great in here!"

The message is that it can always be worse and you might as well count your blessings.  The problem is that when the bar just keeps being raised on the trouble level, you are just forced to adapt, and adapt, and adapt again, but there comes a point where you really can't adapt any more…and sometimes the trouble level just keeps rising.

So what's going on here? The child who had been hospitalized is still in day hospitalization and seems sicker again, so no real end in sight.  The snow means public school hasn't been in session for Feivel since last Wednesday (yes, a full week ago).  No progress on any other fronts either.  I've had a couple of doctor's appointments with a couple of different areas of practice, and a few little changes but the doctors basically agree that yes, stress is killing me and no, they don't have any real ideas for how to improve things realistically.

There's about 6-8" of snow on the ground and now at 11 AM it's warmed up to a toasty 4F.

At least I've been productive.  The Yarn Spot, where I work, has begun bringing in needlepoint goods so I worked up one kit sample quickly:

I've spun some:

Merino and cashmere blended, spun to a 2 ply lace weight yarn

Wool with mix-ins spun as a DK weight singles

Wool dyed in cochineal, madder, and avocado hulls, spun to a lace weight singles yarn

Oh, and I baked biscotti.  I'm running low on sugar though so I don't want to do too much snow baking.