Friday. Whew!

My friend Alison posted this link to a fence knitted in Shetland lace. Go on, click on it, you know you want to. Stunning. Almost it persuadeth me to go outside and brave the chiggers...

I can’t believe it’s Friday already. This is my third or fourth short week in a row, and I am ready for some regular boring weeks in which to rest up. Work is going well. I’m getting good, useful feedback from the two secretaries who have been assigned to assess my workflow to see if I’m ready to take on (part or all of) the caseload of our new attorney. I’ve made some minor changes to how I do things, and those changes probably saved me 15-20 minutes when opening a new case yesterday. It will take awhile before the changes feel like the new normal (whatever that is), but in the meantime there is that happy glow of accomplishment.

Payday. I’ve written one check and paid a bill and discussed our cash flow with Beloved, who was momentarily awake. I love being on the same page as the man I love. As Billy Joel sings, that hasn’t happened for the longest time. [Love that song.]

Slow but steady progress on my knitting. I am partway through the 24th round on the sweater body. I am so glad that I stopped and stitched up the hem. There’s a whole lot less flopping and twitching of the stitches on the needles, and way fewer dangling ends. I am not quite to the point where the knitted fabric no longer tries to form ruffles and twist around the needle cable; that will probably require another two to four inches before the mass of the stitches ensures that a tube is the only possible configuration. I do love that crisp, clean edge at the hem.

Beloved is not serving at the temple this morning. He has had a swollen leg for the past couple of days, and his oncologist told him to stay off it until it returns to normal. He had grand plans, last night, of mopping the kitchen floor and vacuuming the carpet while I am at work (he mopped our bathroom floor yesterday). I told him to choose one, or the other, and reminded him that he has a perfectly good wife who is quite capable of picking up the mop or wrangling the vacuum. He can sort through as many boxes as he would like from a seated position, with the bad leg elevated. Bless him, he is not quite as fond of it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission as the children’s father. He also has new, stronger meds to help him manage some of the side effects of the chemo. He’s tired, and he’s not sleeping well, and he doesn’t have much of an appetite, and he is losing weight (but not at the scary rate he was last year); as ever, his attitude is gallant and stellar.

He bought a cantaloupe the other day that is not quite up to the others we have enjoyed. I have a banana that is starting to look as high-mileage as Willie Nelson, courtesy of one of my coworkers, and if I scurry, there will be time to stop at the grocery store on my way to work and pick up some strawberries for a huge fruit salad. The cantaloupe chunks that I took for lunch yesterday are still in the fridge, because they were just meh. If I throw enough other ripe or overripe fruit in with them, I think I can sneak them past my taste buds.

I ate a bowl of cereal about 4:00a.m. Woke a little before 3:00 and couldn’t get back to sleep. When in doubt, eat, right? While I ate, I read a few pages in a book by Chieko Okazaki, who was a counselor in the Relief Society General Presidency in the 1990’s and has since passed away. Wonderful woman. She was, I think, the first non-white-bread sister in that position, and we all loved her for her cheerful, encouraging stories. We have inherited one of her books from Beloved’s mother, and it is like sitting down with an old friend. I loved her because she was not your typical RS sister in the uniform of the 1980’s: floral dress with white lace collar and perfect pumps. She was different, a little exotic, not afraid to wear bright colors, and refreshingly real.

I stuffed a lot of myself into boxes when I joined the church, and seeing Sr. Okazaki I began to realize that I could still be me and be righteous and it really didn’t matter what somebody else thought. (I was on the receiving end of a whole lot of judging in the 80’s and 90’s.)

Now I know that the only opinions that truly matter are my Heavenly Father’s and, possibly, my husband’s. Sorry, kids, you had your day ;)