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Ten years into widowhood, after one year of incredible happiness and nearly 14 years of single blessedness. Retired, and mostly enjoying it. Still knitting. [Zen]tangling.again after a brief hiatus.

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Christmas presents/presence of mind/maintenance issues



I've been meaning to share since early December. These are what we gave SemperFi for Christmas, because he so thoroughly loathes technology. If there is barn language (the male equivalent of childbirth words) coming from his office, it's because something has gone amiss with his laptop.

You can just see a green holiday M&M peeking out between the folds of tissue paper in the left cup. He got a good laugh out of our creativity, but he did attempt to re-gift the M&M's. Relentlessly healthy dude, is our SemperFi.

Speaking of health, a week ago yesterday, it was time for the annual girl-smashing. New facility, because the old one no longer takes my insurance. When I got ready for bed last Saturday night, I had pain in the crease underneath the right one. I lifted her up, and there was an angry red racing stripe running across almost the entire width of the crease. A smaller one under the left side. So I dug out the Desinex powder and dusted both of them. The left one was nearly healed when I woke up before church. The right one was slightly improved. I dosed them again and couldn't wait to take off my bra after church. I wore my sports bra over to Mel and Squishy's to watch the series finale of Downton Abbey.

I dosed the girls again before bedtime, and then morning and evening every day through yesterday morning. I hope it is not going to be like this every year until I am safely dead. One week later, they are finally, properly healed.

I had really weird dreams during my after church nap last week. A mishmash of horror and science fiction, involving possession, mangled bodies, and near drowning. I was very glad to wake up and find myself mostly intact.

On a happier note, the Sunday session of stake conference was marvelous. I haven't been in the stake long enough (at four years) to know many people outside the ward, except for those I know from working in the temple. I do know enough to have a testimony that the new stake president and his counselors are exactly the right people to lead us for the next several years, and that they were chosen by inspiration and revelation.

In knitting news, I completed the cuff of the baby sock I was working on during the Saturday evening session and got the heel turned while at church. This is the sock whose ends I wove in Wednesday night. I have since cast on its mate and am several rows along on the cuff.

Yesterday I attended a funeral in the same small country town as Fiber Circle, the wonderful yarn shop where I bought the yarn for my Knit Swirl. I took in the dibs and dabs remaining from making baby socks, in the hope of finding semisolid yarns that would coordinate, so that I could mix and match them to create socks with contrasting toes and heels, and thus use up every last scrap.

I was pleased to score a second skein of one of the yarns, a plausible match to another, and two full skeins of a third colorway, from which I should be able to get three full pairs. She also discounted the yarn at checkout, because she'd had them for so long, and because she is an incredibly generous person. (When I bought the yarn for my Knit Swirl, she tucked two extra balls of Silk Garden into my bag so I would have enough, and didn't tell me until after I'd counted when I was ready to cast on and had freaked out, thinking that I'd cheated her.)

The funeral was my first experience in an almost entirely African-American congregation. There was a lot more audience participation than I'm used to at church, and the music was loud and exuberant. My mother, who loved the old spirituals and passed that love and respect on to me, would have enjoyed the service. I have to say that what was missing in hushed reverence was more than made up for in joy and faith and enthusiasm. This was the funeral for the mother of a church friend who was an adult convert and is now a counselor in our bishopric.

The population of Farmersville is officially 3300. I think there were at least a tithe of them at the service yesterday.

Today is going to be interesting. I'm doing a medical fast preparatory to tomorrow morning's colonoscopy, which is three years overdue. I'm not worried about the procedure; this is not my first rodeo. I'll get a priesthood blessing after church. I do have three not-worries-but-concerns: how will the fasting interact with my blood sugar and cholesterol, since I'll still be taking my meds at bedtime tonight? Is my blood pressure going to alarm the anesthesiologist tomorrow, as it did before my biopsy/D&C year before last? Are there going to be any polyps for the surgeon to take out, because I'm three years overdue for this? So the priesthood blessing will hopefully address all three of these and give me strength to successfully complete the cleansing process, which has changed slightly since eight years ago, and is at least theoretically less difficult.

Tomorrow is Pi Day, which I only became aware of a year or so ago. After I took Fourthborn home last night, I stopped at the store and picked up a buttermilk pie to enjoy after the procedure.

I hope that my innards do not yodel loudly while I'm at church today. I already provide enough comic relief during class as it is.

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