Sorting, sorting.

On Saturday we went through a bunch of boxes and put a lot of books on the shelf in the hall. There are four boxes for Beloved’s kids to go through: two of church books and two of secular books. Last night we went through more boxes, this time in the dining room. We have enough small note pads to stock an office supply shop; they are neatly stacked atop one of those four boxes in the hall.

Beloved will be trekking up to use the Ondamed machine today, then coming home to sort more boxes while I am slaving over a hot keyboard at work. The twins are coming over tonight to mow the yard and pick up the rest of the horse apples in the back. Beloved filled the garbage bin yesterday, and between us we got it rolled out to the street. Horse apples are the fruit of the bois d’arc tree (pronounced BOHdark, for you non-Texans) and are roughly the size of a softball, electric green in color, and trying to take over our back yard. Beloved is just too pooped to do much yard work, and I have never mown a lawn in my life, so bless those boys!

I did finish the second sleeve yesterday, complete with stitching the hem at the wrist and weaving in the ends. I also cast on 358 stitches for the hem of the sweater body itself, placing a split-ring marker every 20 stitches. It took the better part of an hour. This morning I carefully laid the needle out on the breakfast table, made sure that there were no twists, joined it in a big circle, and worked the first round, placing different markers to note each side of the steek (where I will eventually divide it to turn this into a cardigan rather than a pullover) and the side seams (where the waist shaping will go, if I decide to do conventional waist shaping).

So, it’s 6:00am if the clock is to be believed. (Beloved habitually sets the clocks ahead. I forget if this is a fast clock or a regular one.) I have been up for an hour and a half. He had another rough night but did manage to catch some sleep. He is having quite a bit of pain, all of it since our trip to Houston, and is grateful for strong pain meds. Apparently it’s not enough pain that he thinks we should go to the ER; he shot an email off to the local oncologist yesterday but had yet to hear back when we went to bed last night, although he had had a response to an earlier email.

Right now he is feeling almost as bad as he did last summer, after the surgery and before the chemo started to work. We will get this figured out, but boy howdy! is it hard to watch him go through this. We are in good hands. Both earthly and Heavenly. It will all work out.

My turn for the shower. I need to leave early enough that I can pick up a lipstick on my way to work. I have some of my old MK stash in the house, presumably in the middle bedroom, but it might as well be on Mars. I’m one of two secretaries getting evaluated to see which is ready to take on an additional attorney (the new one started yesterday), and I need to have my game face on for the next two or three weeks. Game face, in a legal office, means lipstick.