I’m not buying that.

I got a lot done in two incredibly busy hours yesterday morning, but first I went back to bed and slept until 10:30. And then I made a list; went to the first place and picked up a gift card; drove to Lane Bryant and looked over the houndstooth cape, which was lovely, but too loosely woven to last more than a season, and I don’t buy disposable clothing, so no, ditto the flats (cloth shoes are impractical for Ms. Ravelled, assuming they would fit) and the clutch (too easily soiled, but quite attractive in its pristine state); I will check out the fit of the houndstooth blouse later, when I have more time, and if it fits I will buy it when it goes on sale at the end of the season; then off to another store to get a different gift card; to the grocery store where I got the salad fixins, a gallon of milk, and the penultimate gift card; last to CVS to use my coupon for stockings, get more disinfecting wipes, and a stash of raspberry M&M’s. All in two hours, and without breaking any land speed records

My friend Kristen linked to Orson Scott Card’s recent article about Ann Romney’s speech. The rest of his article is good, as well.

You all know that I am more than somewhat politically conservative, but not entirely. The Birchers turn me off. Some of the Tea Party stuff turns me off. That idiot in Missouri, who has since apologized for his idiotic statement about a woman’s body being magically able to prevent pregnancy in a case of rape, makes me want to start by punching him in the nose and then continue on to hitting him where it might actually get his attention. The experiences of thousands upon thousands of women over the course of Earth’s history, who were raped by conquering armies, deliberately, to break down the civilization and cohesion of the vanquished country, would testify to the contrary.

And I happen to know a little something about rape. Had I become pregnant when it happened, I would probably have chosen abortion. Had it happened after my conversion to the Church, particularly in the twilight years of my fertility, I would almost certainly have chosen to bear the child and give him or her up for adoption. I would never insist that any other woman do the same. I am fervently, but not stupidly, Pro-Life. I loathe abortion in principle. My personal belief is that a human begins at the moment of conception, and certainly by the time one feels that quickening. (If I remember correctly, the latter is what Brigham Young taught.) I could be wrong. But I want there to be skilled professionals who know how to do the job right, in those cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is at stake. I am here on Earth because at one time my mother required a D&C, and it was done competently and professionally, and she healed properly, and when it was time for Heaven to surprise them with a second child? BINGO! Here I am.

My friend Alison has spoken well and passionately about the dangers of the personhood bill that is being contemplated, which would prevent women from having life-saving procedures such as a D&C when medically warranted. It’s a little jarring to find myself agreeing with the pro-abortionists that it’s my womb, dadgummit, and the government ought to stay out of it.

I should probably add that while I am not happy about Obamacare, I am nevertheless thankful that it has made it possible to add Beloved to my health insurance and is keeping one very good man alive. I don’t count that as hypocrisy, but as a well-honed sense of irony.

I will also add that unlike many people (including dear, staunchly Democrat relatives) my personal economy has steadily improved over the past three and a half years, as I followed my church’s teachings on stewardship, faithfully paid my tithes and offerings, and watched my 401K grow sufficiently that I could raid it last year after I turned 59.5 to pay off the last of the debt I incurred. I do not give Mr. Obama’s administration any credit for that; in fact I will gleefully turn his words upon him: “You, Mr. President, didn’t build my [marginal and fledgling] success.” Hard work, correct principles, and bushels of patience and blessings did. For which Heaven be thanked.

I loathe politics nearly as much as I loathe abortions. I was glad that we elected Mr. Obama to be our President, because I thought it finally meant an official end to racist stupidity. (I did not vote for him, but I know plenty of sensible people who did, for one reason or another.) I remember how nervous some people were when President Kennedy was a candidate, thinking that the Vatican was now going to rule American politics. They were wrong. I hope that we elect Romney and Ryan for the next four years, and I hope that they can bring our policies into alignment with the values I hold dear, and I hope that it might mean an official end to religious bigotry. (I was reluctantly impressed with Mike Huckabee’s speech the other night. He appears to be a jackass-in-remission.

Stepping down from my soapbox to go make cookies for a family BBQ and get my church clothes assembled for a funeral in our ward, later this afternoon.

Gahhhh! I just had to get a lot of stuff out of my system.

Oh dear. Houndstooth.

J’adore houndstooth. Always have. Most likely, always will. It’s just so crisp and tidy. And it’s all over the inside of the new Lane Bryant catalogue. Skirts. Tailored blouses. Flats. A clutch. A cape. And one really ugly printed-patternblocked-mixed-plaids dress. Am I forgetting something?

I am off work today, theoretically lounging about like the ladies who lunch, but in reality there is barely any time for knitting. I need to pick up gift cards for Fourthborn’s Fiancé’s birthday (yesterday, ahem; cash flow issues), Squishy and Beloved (Monday), and do a little grocery shopping. I think I will factor in a side trip to Lane Bryant to inspect fabric quality, the better to decide if one of those houndstooth goodies will follow me home next payday or the one after that.

 Knitting a 358-stitch round goes much more slowly than knitting a 70-stitch round for a sleeve hem, or the 130 stitches where the sleeves will eventually join the body. As applied to knitting, the laws of physics tend to be somewhat stretchy, but this one is holding as firm as a cabled cast-on.  I’m thinking that the sweater body will take a month or more to reach the armscyes, unless I decide to make the body shorter than the pattern as written.

I also have an almost overwhelming urge to move furniture around. Beloved is already off to the temple, and I’ve had a couple slices of bread and butter while trying to make up my mind about what I want for a real breakfast. Beloved’s kids have come over this week and taken almost everything they wanted from his mother’s stuff. LittleBit came over after class last night and took home several boxes of kitchen supplies. We will take more boxes up to Younger Twin’s house when we go for the family BBQ tomorrow. We are beginning to get our house back. The swathes of visible carpet are growing by the day.

I want to hang pictures in the guest bathroom. I want to tackle the area by my side of the bed, clear out that desk and make it mine. Maybe move the small bookcase in the hall out from there and atop the desk, the better to organize my own stuff. There is a desk lamp which is useless-to-me, but which would be handy over on Beloved’s side of the bed. We found a power strip in one of his mother’s boxes, and I would much rather have my CPAP plugged into that than into the extension cord which is currently serving the purpose. Time to grab one of the umpteen small notepads we inherited from his mother and make myself a honey-do list.

It’s almost 7:00. I’m burning daylight.

Updates

Beloved is feeling a lot better. We are beginning to think that that Ondamed machine is pure magic. He had a twinkle in his eye when I got home on Tuesday (not a glint, just a nice twinkle). Yesterday he impersonated his younger self and wrangled a Queen Mary boatload of boxes in the living room and dining room. I picked up Panda Express for dinner.

Another good day at work. I ended up not getting evaluated yesterday afternoon, but I got a lot done. I’m off tomorrow, and I’m working like crazy to make sure that my To-Do’s are all current. There should be two, two-hour evaluation periods today.

In knitting news, I finished the hem on the body of the sweater and this morning completed the first round above the hem turn. I’m looking forward to lots of happy knitting over the four (!) day weekend.

Beloved got a call from the doctor in Houston yesterday. There is not a lot they can do for him there, but they are coordinating with the local oncologist, and there may be those local studies, and Beloved is going on a list for studies in Houston. Whether he participates, if qualified, will depend upon what co-pay, if any, will be required from us.

Today is Big Chemo. I have my temple bag packed, and my knitting mostly packed up, so it is time to pack my lunch and figure out my breakfast and decide what I am going to wear. Beloved is making reluctant wake-up noises about a yard behind me. (They look so cute when they’re asleep, don’t they?)

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.

Gryffindor times three.

Because you guys are/were used to the constant battle between order and chaos at the former chez Ravelled, I’m not embarrassed to show you this; it’s the first Gryffindor scarf, made for BittyBubba in July of last year:



And a detail; yes, that is a green plastic Easter egg on the table. Don’t judge me!



Here is his little brother’s, in September.



I would show you a picture of BittyBit’s scarf, finishing off the trifecta, and the year, nicely but shortly after it was done I was up to my ears in wedding prep, and my computer is still in pieces in the middle bedroom, and I don’t remember if I even took a picture. Or where the cable is for my camera, or the software to connect my camera to Beloved’s computer. As we say, it’s in the house.

She was pleased. Firstborn would like her own Gryffindor scarf, but I am quite firmly out of the scarf business for the moment.

I expect to finish the second sweater sleeve tonight, all things being equal. Three weeks for the first sleeve, and one for the second. I have seventeen rounds left, as we speak. Maybe seventeen and a half. There is only so much Food Network dunh-dunh-dunh drama I can watch without being overcome by the urge to eat every scrap of leftovers in the fridge. So I came in here, caught up my Google Reader, will play a couple rounds of Mahjongg Dimensions/Dementia, and then go back out and be sociable.

Beloved had another rough night last night. I got several short chunks of sleep. I think he was up every half hour or so. I went to church this morning, taught my class, came home and inhaled a sandwich, then ran back out and did some of our home/visiting teaching. He did the sensible thing and stayed home from church to sleep. He has been dozing, either in our bed or in his chair, off and on all day, and he’s still tired. He will be calling or emailing his doctor tomorrow. Doctor here and doctor in Houston have been communicating with one another. This bodes well.

I am all typed-out. Inconceivable! We should probably alert the media.

Alarm or alarm not. There is no snooze.

With apologies to Yoda. Beloved is mighty fond of the snooze button. I am mighty fond of Beloved, even when he hits the snooze button. For me, the point of an alarm clock is to wake me up. To ensure that this happens, I used to keep mine across the room.

By the time I clawed my way up out of sleep, staggered out of bed, and lurched over to beat the alarm into mute submission, I was well and truly awake. At which time my bladder would realize that we were vertical and start yodeling.

Now that I am married, my alarm clock is taking a sabbatical. It traveled to Houston with us earlier this week, and it got us out of bed on Wednesday morning. Bleat, squelch, mission accomplished, after which I unplugged it and put it back into my suitcase.

Beloved’s alarm clock lives on the corner of his desk, next to where his glasses spend the night. If I am not already up by the time the alarm goes off, I leap out of bed and aim myself toward the guest bathroom. He hits the snooze button. Seven minutes later, he hits it again. It is like the poem I learned from the children’s father (recited in a fake-Swedish accent):

My name is Yim Yonson,
I live in Visconsin
I vork in de lumbermill dere.
And ven people pass by
And say vere are you from,
Well, dis is vat I alvays say:
My name is Yim Yonson...

When I went to bed last night, knowing that we had no early morning appointments today, I whined pleaded with him, “Please tell me that we can go to bed without setting the alarm tonight.” No such luck. He had important gardening stuff that needed to get done as soon as it was light, i.e., well before it got too hot outside. Fair enough. I won’t deny that I like the goodies he brings in from our garden. That is worth a modicum of sleep-wrecking in this woman’s book.

So he set the alarm, and we went to bed somewhat earlier than usual, and I woke up around 3:00 feeling wonderfully refreshed. Out to the living room I went, where I spent the better part of three hours communing with my sweater sleeve. After enough time lapsed that my light breakfast had had a chance to settle, I went back to bed. The alarm went off. He did not get up. It was raining outside. I tried to catch a nap. No dice. Every seven minutes, just as I was drifting away, the infernal alarm clock did its job. Finally he shut it down, I caught a catnap, he dozed a little, and then we got up and emptied most of the contents of ten or twelve boxes of books into the hall bookcase. There are four boxes now ready for other family members to sort through: two of church books and manuals that are duplicates of what he or I already had, and two of secular books. His mother was highly intelligent, eminently sensible (two qualities which do not always pop up in the same individual, you must admit), and read voraciously. We are pulling out one treasure after another from these boxes. And we haven’t even gotten to the cookbooks yet.

So it’s been a mostly-productive day. We went to Mel’s dad’s birthday party at lunchtime but left early because Beloved’s nausea kicked in. I brought him home, grabbed my nail polish, and headed back out for my manicure (yay!) and to pick up a honey-and-ginger herbal tea that Squishy recommended.

Beloved got a nice long nap this afternoon. He is up and about, and I probably ought to go see if I can help with anything. In another hour I can go to sleep with a clear conscience (I’m 60; if I want to go to bed with the chickens, it’s my prerogative. I’ll be up before them, that’s for sure.)

Did I mention that the bloodwork done in Houston showed his cancer cell count down by 130 from its spike to 400 of the previous week? Parkland did send the old films on CD to MD Anderson, and the oncologist there is already speaking with our oncologist here. I’ll keep you posted when we know anything.

There’s anole place like home!

Good day at work yesterday. I chewed through two days’ worth of mail, sent out drafts on three cases we’ve settled, and significantly whittled down my inbox. My attorney is on vacation today, and Attorney B has only one report for me to type, so I’m looking forward to a quietly productive day.

Payday. Tithing check is written. Birthday card for Beloved’s brother is stamped and ready to go. Utility bill is in Beloved’s pocket; he’ll drop it off on his way home from the temple. Beloved needs a haircut. I need a manicure.

I also need a new (cheap) purse, because my $10 wonder has just about outlived its usefulness. I spent 15 minutes or so on eBay, looking at tan leather purses. What I really wish I could do, is wave my fairy wand at that picture of the Dooney & Burke purse I saw a few months ago, make it large enough to carry everything I lug around (I have no idea how big that purse is, except as big applies to its price tag), and make it a non-designer purse. I want simple styling and excellent workmanship and nothing which suggests that status is important to me. I work with woman who carry expensive designer bags. And I certainly have areas in my life in which I am willing to spend that kind of money (cough:dolls:cough). I don’t put them down for it.

It’s just not my bag, as we used to say.

I parked behind Beloved in our driveway last night, so I needed to move my car this morning in order for him to get to the temple. On my way back into the house, I spotted a tiny lizard, maybe two and a half inches long and a quarter of an inch wide, on the front step. He froze. I carefully stepped around him. Hence the title of this post.

Road music, his and hers.

His:
A zydeco CD with a Tabasco label.
Generic bagpipe music. (Lifescapes??)
More bagpipe music, this time by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.
The Ultimate Charlie Daniels Band.
Generic zydeco music. (More Lifescapes.)
Martina McBride (we likes!).
Johnny Horton’s 16 Biggest Hits.
Classical Thunder II. (really loud pieces, some of which I like, some of which are obnoxious Russian twelve-tone garbage)
Eagles - Greatest Hits.
Romantic Piano Masterworks, Disc B (which implies that somewhere there is a Disc A).
Romantic Piano Masterworks, Disc A (bingo!).

Hers:
J.J. Cale and Eric Clapton - The Road to Escondido.
Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris - All the Roadrunning (we didn’t get to this one).
Ray Charles - Genius Loves Company (duets - we didn’t get to this one, either).
The Cream of Clapton (or this one).
Emmylou Harris - Stumble into Grace.
Eagles - Long Road Out of Eden.
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Raising Sand.

I was really tickled to find Martina tucked in among all that testosterone. I can sing along with Martina. Kinda hard to sing along with bagpipes, although I adore them.

His music is designed to keep him awake, pedal to the metal, from Point A to Point B. Or in this case, from Disc A to Disc B (ducking, ducking). My music is chosen for its sing-along-ability. Road trips, for me, have typically been motivated by a need to get away, process the latest family crisis, and have a good cleansing weep.

As you might guess, we are back from Houston. The news is mixed. His cancer count went down 130 points from last week. His lungs are in good shape. There are lots of little spots of rebellion on his liver. Parkland was supposed to overnight a CD with images from his X-rays and CT scans to MD Anderson. When we had the second appointment with new doctor yesterday morning, those images were not yet in the system. They might have been sitting in-house, waiting to be uploaded, or they might have been in transit, or they might still be at Parkland, which like the mill of the gods, grindeth exceeding slow. The new doctor needs to see the older images, to see where Beloved is progressing and where the cancer is advancing. Once he knows, he will work with the local oncologist to tweak the chemo protocol if necessary.

More bad news is that the Kanzius procedure is not quite ready to test on humans, although it is doing quite well on primates. (We are reasonably certain that Beloved is a primate.) And it appears to hold more promise for lymphomas than for solid-tissue cancers like Beloved’s colon/liver/lungs. So that is out, as are a couple of clinical trials that use a drug similar to the one which has caused the neuropathy in his fingers and feet. There is another trial at UT Southwestern here in Dallas (but we don’t like them much; they are intertwined with Parkland) and one at a hospital in San Antonio. We will find out more about them.

We had no appointments on Tuesday, so we drove to Galveston, walked along the seawall and investigated the two fishing piers (one of which is a not-only-no-but), had lunch at Landry’s with my friend from the Arlington days, had one gold-plated scoop apiece at the Ben & Jerry’s ($3.50 for a single scoop? really?) then drove back to Houston.

After we finished up at MD Anderson yesterday, I headed the car northwest to Brenham. Beloved had never toured the Blue Bell factory, so we did that, scored a free scoop apiece, then turned the car up back roads toward the freeway, reconnecting a little north of Huntsville.

Rough night last night. We think his body is still expelling the last of the barium milkshake from Monday’s tests. He had abdominal pain, no fever, backache from all of the sitting (helped immeasurably by an application of Bio-Freeze to the saddle of his back; I’m glad to be at least intermittently good for something around here). Not a lot of sleep for either of us. He got his in half-hour increments. I got mine in maybe one- and two-hour increments.

He has chemo-lite this morning, so I will be dropping him off in a couple of hours and heading into work. I am excused from the temple tonight, praise be, as we did not know if we would be in Houston all week, or just a couple of days. The email they sent said to prepare to be there for five business days.

Lots and lots and lots of knitting done this week. You can do an amazing amount during a nine-hour stretch at the hospital if you are not the one getting poked and prodded. I just finished the 84th round, of the 143 that will declare sleeve number two finito.

Time to go put his CD travel pack back and stow my own CD’s with their musical buddies. You will be pleased to know that the freezer did not go berserk in our absence. Our frozen food is still frozen. However, the gallon of milk we bought on Saturday, with a freshness date of 8/27, went sour while we were gone; the one we took with us in the miraculous cooler, is still fresh as a daisy, at least what’s left of it. Somebody will need to buy more milk today. I’m thinking that somebody is me. And if I were to stir my stumps, I might be able to get to Wally World and back before we need to leave for the hospital and the office.

I am (wearily) happy and significantly more hopeful than a week ago, even with the uncertainty, but it’s gonna be a Cherry Coke day.

Enjoy our new ratmelt sandwiches!

No, that’s not quite what the sign said. But it’s what I saw as I drove past on my way to meet up with  Secondborn and crew last Saturday. Someone had pushed the F and the L rather closely together, and what I saw was an R.

I laughed most of the way there.

I am pleased to report that there has been much knitting progress in the past couple of days. I bound off the underarm stitches on the first sleeve after church on Sunday and immediately cast on for the second sleeve. When I went to bed last night, I was about a third of the way up the second sleeve. I will not be at Knit Night tonight, because Knit Night has moved to Monday night, as being easier for the majority of the members of our group. Beloved has no objections to my joining them, but y'all know how stubborn I can be.

Monday nights, in LDS families, are reserved for family home evening. Ergo, I shall spend Monday nights with Beloved and any other family members who show up, or once a month with the Empty Nesters. End of discussion.

The sun is up, as are we. Looks like it’s my turn for the shower, and then time to rustle up some breakfast.

Crazy week!

Composed of a series of seemingly endless crazy days, but we got through it and have made it safely to the weekend.

First bit of good news: Beloved has been accepted into the clinical trial at MD Anderson. More good news: they’re in the HMO. Want more? We drive down for testing next week, with maybe a side order of Galveston, depending on how many days they want/need us there and how much time between appointments.

I have my absence cleared through work, and I have been scrambling for two days to get all of my To-Do’s checked off so I would leave nothing big for my backup.

We know for sure that one day will be shot to blazes. But until we get there and he meets with the doctor, we don’t know what-all is involved in the treatments, how many there will be, how closely spaced together, etc. The next month or so may be zanier than usual.

And not a moment too soon. His oncologist took him off chemo lite to give his body a rest. His cancer count started creeping upward, and last week it doubled. He had been running somewhere between 100 and 150 for several months, and now it is 400. Not Good. We don’t know if that means the chemo drugs have lost their effectiveness, or the mini-break from chemo lite gave the bad cells time to gather their courage and make another push.

What we do know is that he has been waking every half hour to forty-five minutes, every night, for a week to ten days, when what he really needs is a few nights of two to three hours at a whack. And when he doesn’t sleep well, I don’t sleep well.

They are going to test him six ways from Sunday when we get to Houston: bloodwork, X-rays, yet another CT scan with its delicious barium milkshake accompaniment. On the other hand, we might be able to see one of my old friends from the Arlington days, a widower with a large and lively posterity. He has yet to meet Beloved. And I bet he knows any number of good seafood restaurants. No, I am not going to do the shrimp challenge while in South Texas. But there are plenty of things that I know I can eat, that may go over the teeth, across the gums, lookout stomach here it comes.

Beloved has found us a place with a fridge and a microwave, so we plan to take down much of the food we will eat. He also has a serious cooler that will keep food cold for several days when it is 90F outside. I will spend a good chunk of this weekend preparing for the trip. Baking, packing, more baking, more packing, and the careful calculation of just how much yarn will be required.

Won’t tell you that we’re gone, until we’re back. Cricket the Attack Cat will be in charge; it worked well, last time, to have him out in the garage with outside access and a ginormous bowl of cat food and an equally large bowl of water. We will probably not be gone longer than three days at a stretch. He turns up his nose at using a litter box, not that I blame him, so he will just have to be at large and in charge while we are out and about.

I had a brief, preliminary chat with my HMO before leaving the office today. Looks like a lot of this, or maybe even all of it, will be covered by our insurance. Prayers and positive thoughts, if you please. I’m heading back out to the living room to half-listen to the food channel until Beloved is ready to call it a night.

Tuesday trivia.

Yesterday was a not-bad day at work. My attorney was out of the office, and we had very little mail to process, but Attorney B had two reports for me to type, and there was administrative stuff to handle, so I stayed busy all day, even though I was fighting sleep. I don’t know if it’s the new allergy medicines or just the craziness of daily life, but I could barely keep my eyes open from 3:00 until after I recharged at dinner. It was a serious struggle to stay awake on the drive home, but thankfully the radio stations kept playing lively tunes with lyrics I wasn’t embarrassed to sing along with, and that did the trick.

I came home to New Orleans style bread pudding (pineapple sauce rather than rum or whiskey) for dessert and a big pot of beef and beans for the main course. We also went out and bought me a new pair of sneakers. The tread was coming off the old ones, and I couldn’t jolly them along any longer. They were becoming a slip-and-fall hazard. The bad news about the new sneakers is that we had to put them on plastic. The good news is that they were on sale for $30, or about one-third of what I paid for the last pair (also on sale). I’ve never owned a pair of Fila sneakers before, but they’re the right price and the right colors (black and red) and a little bit shiny but not metallic. I’m looking forward to seeing how well they hold up.

Academy’s prices beat Foot Locker’s, even if the store is more crowded. I had very polite help when I needed it, getting the one pair in my size down from about eight feet up; Beloved was in another part of the store at the time.

We came home from shopping and had dessert. While Beloved whipped up the pineapple sauce, I emptied and moved a very small bookcase in the hall (the one that used to sit along the wall between our room and the middle bedroom. After dessert we joined forces to wrangle the big oak bookcase down the hall and set it up where the other had been. Today, while I am slaving over a hot keyboard at work, Beloved will start going through box after box of his mother’s books. The ones we are keeping will go into the bookcase. The others will go back into a box and out the door tonight or tomorrow. I think the small bookcase might get emptied out again and set up on the back of the desk on my side of the bed, to serve as a hutch. I am all about the vertical storage!

Just moving that big bookcase from where it was leaning gingerly against the china cabinet in the living room, and clearing off the wicker chair in the corner of the living room, and tidying the kitchen table last Saturday, has made the whole house seem more hopeful. I don’t know how many boxes of books there are, or how long it will take Beloved to sort through them, but we are making inroads. His niece and her family will be here in a few days, and they will have a horse trailer, and I hope a whole lot of stuff that is presently playing Occupy Belovedland will be going out the door when they head homeward.

I have four more increase rounds, and then I think about 30 rounds after that, and the first sleeve will be done. Maybe by the end of this week. I love it that the designer thinks like I do: get the sleeves out of the way, first, and then they will be ready when you reach the armscyes on the sweater body.

This is the part where I bat my eyes at my husband so he will make us breakfast. I will not be going to Knit Night tonight, because he has promised one of my favorite meals for dinner. I think it might be a bribe so that I will help him wrangle book boxes, but I will be happy to play along.

Maybe catching up on my sleep. Maybe.

I slept a lot this weekend. Not the desperate sleep which is the hallmark of depression. Just a wonderful series of catnaps. And reasonably decent sleep when it came time for that.

I love the feeling of being in-harness with Beloved. We are getting ready to revise our wills. We are talking about hard things. We are working towards solutions of long-term problems, together. I love this man. I love his goodness, his decency, his humor, his wit, and his willingness to negotiate. For starters.

And I love that for the first time in many years, there is another adult in the house to share in the decision making.

There is so much that I wish I could say, but this is not the time nor the place. I am not unused to writing so briefly, but for the moment my thoughts and energy are needed elsewhere. I may need to haul out one of my paper journals in the meantime, because I think best when I am writing things down.

In knitting news, I thought I was done with the sleeve increases, but I checked my gauge, which is easier and more accurate on a sleeve than on that gauge swatch I worked. I am one stitch tighter and one row shorter than the specified gauge, so I am going to have to knit the next larger size and shorten the sweater body to ensure that I do not run out of yarn. I think 150 rows will just about give me the sleeve length I am looking for.

There is one last brownie out in the kitchen, leftover from Saturday dinner. It has my name on it. And it is about to meet its doom.

Now *this* looks interesting!

Found this review on MovieMom’s blog.

Middlest, pictures of my new doll will have to wait until I get my computer set up, which will not happen until we reconfigure the middle bedroom into an office, which comes way farther down my list of priorities than getting myself a workable closet.

Yes, I have a camera on my phone, and yes, I could probably figure out how to email a picture to you, but I am going to have to acquire a new life skill sometime today, and I’m not sure there is room at the inn for two new life skills in one day. Especially when we are feeding the missionaries tonight and trying to figure out where to Tetris them into a living room that is still crammed with boxes from Beloved’s mother’s storage unit.

Before I forget: Alison, find Rose is Rose in the comics for today, Saturday the 11th. Squirrel antics. I thought of you.

Now about that new life skill. With some back-story, first. On Thursday I got to lead one of the newbies on a working tour of the temple, check-off list in hand, showing her where the fire extinguishers, fire pull boxes, telephones, first aid stations, emergency exits, etc., are. It takes about an hour to do it right. We did it right. And my other responsibilities had me on my feet all night, except for maybe ten minutes.

That is too long for me to be afoot. At the end of the evening both ankles were massively swollen into folds that resembled those wrinkly Chinese dogs. Not fun. And I had done something to my right knee, the one I messed up on that long, long drive when Dad died in 1990. I don’t know at this point if it’s another stress fracture, or if it’s ligaments or tendons or simply cranky musculature, but it’s still tender at noon on Saturday.

If it’s still hurting in a week, I will not wait another two and a half months to get it X-rayed, like last time. I limped all day yesterday, and most of my joints ached from the waist on down. I just fired off a letter to my supervisors at the temple, asking them to please not schedule me to stand for more than half an hour at a time, from here on out, and why.

As soon as Beloved wakes from his post-gardening nap, we are heading off to Costco. I will be conceding defeat and grabbing one of those carts to ride in. I get to learn how to play Costco Dodge-'Em. You can expect me as the starter on the relay team in the 2016 Games.

Still no word from M.D. Anderson. They have promised him, twice, that he would hear back “in 45 minutes,” but have failed to do so. This is getting really old. (So am I, but at least I try to be entertaining.)

Beloved’s cancer count is climbing, so we are back to chemo every week. He was getting up about once an hour during the night to hit the bathroom; it is now every half hour or 45 minutes. He will be discussing that with his oncologist next week, and there is a possibility they will be changing the drugs in his chemo cocktail. Thus far he has not needed the chemo caps, but his eyebrows are coming in all funny and surprised-looking. His hair is actually getting darker.

Something really funny happened at work yesterday. I got a voicemail from the company which handles some of our benefits, responding to a call “I” made on Thursday regarding retirement planning. I checked the company directory. Sure enough, there are two other women with names virtually identical to mine. I returned the gentleman’s call and told him I would email them and ask the right “me” to contact him.

Retirement. It is to laugh. A genuine miracle if it happens in my lifetime, unless Beloved and I discover oil in our backyard. Meanwhile, I am ever so thankful that I love my job and my co-workers.

I woke up at 3-something, absolutely parched from the refreshments at the wedding reception last night. Went out to the living room and downed a bottle and a half of water and put four and a half rounds on the sweater sleeve. After two weeks, I am nearly up to the elbow. This is not going to be a fast project, any more than the pillow covers were, but I suspect I will enjoy the process every bit as much.

Time to go roust Beloved and head for the jousting fields at Costco. Wish me luck!

Falling-apart Friday

I’d like to trade in this 60 year old body for two 30’s. Yesterday was more grueling than usual, and various bits ache, and I would very much like to roll over and go back to bed. I have already made a fruitless run to Wally World, in search of under-bed storage boxes to match the ones I have had for 15 years (I do realize the likelihood of that happening) and an ironing board cover whose pattern and/or color doesn’t make me gag.

I will be stopping at Target after work, to pick up a gift card for the second wedding reception of the week and to see if my inner domestic engineer has any better luck there. We have a very nice, sturdy, non-rusty ironing board, courtesy of Beloved’s mother’s storage unit; all it needs is a new cover.

Work has gone very well this week, thus far. I got through the rest of my mail yesterday and tidied up some of my To-Do’s, and we got another lawsuit to enter. Attorney B has several reports which are due out today, so the new suits may have to wait until Monday. I closed another case yesterday, and we have several more dismissal orders sent off to the courts, so I may be able to close more cases in the next couple of days.

I think I got half a round done on the sleeve yesterday. My attorney took three of us out to lunch, so no knitting there. Just walk, sweat, eat, walk, sweat some more, and back to the grindstone. The lunch I took for yesterday is still in the fridge at work, so I won’t have to do more than grab some fresh fruit and git.

I have to laugh at myself, a little. On Wednesday after my shower, I put on three separate topical creams in various places, for various issues. I wonder if my skin gets confused? Good news is that I did not need to put any on yesterday, and I think I may not need them today. The chigger bites no longer bug me (pun intended), and my ankles are pink rather than fire engine red. We count all the small victories.

Breakfast is down the hatch. Raisin bran with cow’s milk on it (not much, but enough). Know what? After a year of not drinking cow’s milk, I find that I’m not crazy about the taste of it. Crazy, perhaps, but not about milk.

Hark! I think I hear a banana calling my name.

♥ Happy Thursday to me!

Work went really well yesterday. I walked into my cubicle, set my bags down on the other chair, and surveyed my desk. The managing attorney had not been idle in my absence. A new file to open. Don’t ask me when the answer is due, because I only got most of the way through Friday’s mail before scooting out the door at 5:00.

Today I have a report to type for Attorney B, and I hope to finish Friday’s mail and Monday’s and maybe get the new case opened. I think somebody opened one in our absence (but it may only be a monitoring-for-service file), as there are two new case names on our docket. One more case is a little nearer to closing, and I got through most of my email as well.

I came home to pot roast in the crockpot (with wonderfully spicy potatoes, yum!), and then we lit out for a wedding reception. I was delighted to discover that the brother of one of my good friends in this new ward, is somebody who is best friends with a non-LDS attorney in my office. They’ve been buddies for 25 years! Can’t wait to get to the office and tell Attorney C (yes, the other one I back up when his regular secretary is out) that I saw the big dude last night. I met him years and years ago, when I was still working switchboard in our office.

Not a lot of knitting yesterday, but I did get the hem sewn on the sleeve I’ve been working on. I hope to do more knitting today, although it is chemo-lite today, so I will spend more time than usual on the road before work, which severely curtails my knitting time. The actual knitting on this sweater is simple, but I spend a fair bit of time on the contrast row (every sixth row) making sure that the contrast yarn sits to the left of the base yarn, so that when I knit the following row the contrast yarn will be on top. (You may now check the physics-of-knitting item off your list for the day.)

Not sure if I mentioned it, but Beloved’s cancer count is rising, so we are back to chemo every week. We are still waiting to hear from M.D. Anderson.

I am going to shred a small sheaf of mail and then get ready for breakfast. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that the cat is back, safe and sound, and spent a good deal of last night winding possessively around my ankles. Sure wish he would earn his keep by catching the cricket which is mocking me, under Beloved’s desk.

We’re baaaaack!

Observations: The average driver in California, at least in my sampling over the past five days, does not understand the Texas concept of “drive friendly,” making our Lexus drivers look humble and our BMW drivers look polite.

Newport Beach is lovely. We walked out on Balboa Pier, and I saw jellyfish in the water, and we debated photographing somebody parasailing and trying to convince you it was Ms. Ravelled.

The Crab Cooker of Newport Beach claims to have the world’s best clam chowder. It is excellent, but in order to be the best it would have to be New England style, not Manhattan style. They do make excellent oyster crackers, however, and we ate a fresh boule and took another home to Beloved’s sister’s house.

We have been in California since dark-thirty last Friday morning and got back home this afternoon. The memorial service was lovely. I got to know my new siblings a bit better. I ate too much. I found a cream designed to help eczema outbreaks, which is steadily reducing the redness in my ankles. The chigger bites are nearly gone.

Beloved has washed and dried the majority of our vacation wardrobe. I have had a manicure and made a batch of mac and cheese. We very sadly emptied out the freezer in the garage; its door flew open in our absence, spoiling 450 tomatoes that were scheduled to become sauce later this week, 28 pounds of premium frozen berries from Bothell Farms in Oregon, roasts, steaks, salmon fillets, and all manner of frozen vegetables. Beloved estimates at least $400 of food now taking up space in the garbage can. He will see if he can get a special pickup from the city, because I don’t want to think what that is going to smell like if it sits outside until next Tuesday morning.

The freezer is wiped clean and appears to be working. Who knows what caused the great escape?

We also don’t know where the cat is; he bolted out of the house on Friday, so we left his food in the garage (thankfully undamaged by those lemmings in the freezer) and a huge bowl of water.

Perhaps he opened the freezer door in retaliation?

I am roughly halfway up the first sleeve.

And somewhere over Amarillo I came up with a scathingly brilliant title for this post, but it seems to be gone with the blackberries and the phyllo dough.

Back to the salt mines tomorrow. But for now, Olympics and knitting and an early bedtime.

Try to be a good wife, and what do you get?

Historically, the answer would be “pregnant,” but in this case the answer would be “chiggers.” Sunday night Beloved asked me to help him gather almost the last of the tomatoes. I love Beloved more than I love air conditioning, so I went out into the garden, amongst the basil which threatens to take over the backyard, and feathery weeds up to my knees. I came in and washed off my legs, but apparently I missed somebody, because yesterday afternoon I started itching in the usual-suspect places and sure enough, Ms. Ravelled has cooties. I read online that Cool Mint Listerine does a number on chiggers, so last night he swabbed me down with mouthwash. [Yeah, makes me giggle a little, too.] And this morning I had him dab the bits I can’t see/reach with hydrocortisone cream.

Says he, “Too bad you have to go to work.”

Says I, “Too bad you’re wearing that chemo pump.”

In other news, I got my mammo-Gram (teehee!) this afternoon, and civic duty won out over family fun and Knit Night. I did not go hang out at Secondborn’s until time to knit with my friends. Instead I came home and voted in the runoff election. In the process, I figured out where downtown Garland is (the runoff is being held at City Hall, rather than the elementary school where I voted in the primary and will vote in the general election this fall) relative to our house and relative to the Italian restaurant where we ate with the Empty Nesters (not the same place where we got that fantabulous pizza last Saturday night).

There really is a downtown Garland. They have a proper City Hall, a police station, an arts center (!) and something called Garland Women’s Activities, which apparently is a private club? Maybe it’s where Junior League members go when they age out of the organization? Or maybe it’s a place to go when the monthly comes, and gorgeous but mute men serve dark chocolate and peeled grapes and Midol with no expectation of reward. Or maybe it’s a hangout for the League of Women Voters? I asked Beloved, but he says they’ve never invited him. “That’s discrimination,” says he.

Everything is out of the storage unit. He and his sons are all properly sweaty and exhausted. We have a new file cabinet (which is going right back out tomorrow) and a new bookcase, and maybe a new door for the back of the house.

I have wiped out the last of the goat’s milk and the low sodium Frito’s and am heading out to the living room to watch the Olympics and nosh on leftovers and knit swatches for the next project, which is the KnitPicks Classic Lines sweater, two strands of Gloss Lace held as one, and a strand of handpainted Shadow tossed in every sixth round. The teeninetsy four-inch DPs I bought last year are really coming in handy for the circular gauge swatch. I will have to slice and “swim” my swatch(es), as silk and silk-blend yarns grow when washed, and I will need to allow for that when I cast on for the actual sweater. This will be my first steeked project.

Deja move.

Today’s blog post is brought to you by the letter D, for deja move, and also for disheartening. The good news is that very little remains to be taken out of Beloved’s mother’s storage unit. The bad news is that the vast majority of its former contents are boxed up in our living room and dining room. Most of those boxes have other people’s names on them; i.e., they have been sorted through and prepared for shipping to Fern Parts. Some still remain to be dealt with. But for the moment, our living room and dining room look as if there has been a time-warp back to late January.

I neglected to tell you that Beloved and his brother have fixed the commode in the guest bathroom, so we will not (yet) need to shell out $200 for one of those spiffy new dual-flush commodes. I am going to see if there is a peel-and-stick tile I like as much as the spendier flooring options that I’ve seen, and we will repaint the cabinet beneath the sink, and we will be done in there until it’s time to put in a new sink and faucet, et al. They fixed the problem for less than $20. I will start hanging pictures in there, forthwith. Or possibly fifthwith. (Thank you, Victor Borge.)

And the next major project will be a closet of my own. I am hoping to start on that next month. We will need a little (OK, a lot) more room in the dining room before that can happen, so that all the stuff currently stacked in the dining room closet can come out while we seal up that entrance and turn two small crowded closets into a single, spacious one. I think we would both be happier if there were no boxes of his mom’s stuff to get tangled up in ours.

Beloved got his sleep last night in 45 minute increments and was still wiped out when the alarm clock went off this morning. I suggested that he might want to just stay home and sleep, if he could. Which he did. I was a good little Do-Bee and went on to church. The talks were good (I took notes); my students and I all survived Primary (loved that Sharing Time was 100% music time today); came home with a large baggie full of ghost pepper cheese from one of his friends at church. I lost too many brain cells in Primary to be able to tell Beloved from whom.

And now we are heading out to bat cleanup on our home teaching and visiting teaching for July, after which I most devoutly hope there will be an obscenely long nap for Ms. Ravelled.

And the truth shall make you broke.

Yesterday did not go as planned. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

Beloved and I were bickering gently and lovingly about the word “late” as in “You’re going to be late for your appointment.” His sister and brother were already at the house, preparing for a long day of packing and sorting. I had an 8:15 appointment with my allergist (love her!) and needed to be there fifteen minutes early. I was not leaving as soon as Beloved thought I should. His siblings are delightful, and I was enjoying the visit. Beloved’s idea of on time is half an hour early. My idea of on time is (usually) skidding in at the last possible second, breathless but still technically on time.

I made it to the doctor’s office with a minute to spare. I made sure to tell Beloved about that as we were drifting off to sleep.

My allergist is a good ‘splainer, Lucy. She told me what the testing could and could not establish or confirm. The most important being that it is easy to find and treat allergies for which there is an IGE presence or reaction. I am guessing that IGE is ImmunoGlobulin[E-something]. That list is shorter than I’d thought, with a few surprises: no allergy to shrimp, nor to penicillin. ‘Tis a puzzlement. To be cautious, we did a penicillin challenge and a blood test for shrimp. I aced the first, and we will get the results on the second in about a week. We will be getting one of those allergen barriers for the mattress and pillows (dust mites; who knew?). I also learned that the casein in cow’s milk is identical to that in goat’s milk, sheep’s milk, and everything but mares milk. There is a distinct dearth of lactating mares, chez nous.

Now all this does not mean that I do not have sensitivities to all the things that the alternative practitioner tested me for, last September. It does mean that I now have a prescription for a nasal steroid spray that I am to start taking about a month before my seasonal allergies (cough: ragweed) and am to get an industrial size bottle of Zyrtec next time we are at Costco. And about $500 more in debt for my half of the testing yesterday, which I will start paying off, next payday.

I did not make it to my mammogram yesterday afternoon. We got stuck in traffic in Dallas, so through the wonders of cell phone technology, I rescheduled en route. This left us with five hours until the Rangers game, and Beloved was looking pretty weary, and the idea of sitting in the sun was not particularly appealing to me, so we blew off the game and dropped our tickets at the office for one of my co-workers to use. Then we came home and went out for pizza with Beloved’s brother and sister. No reaction to the salad, the salad dressing, or the slab and a half of pizza I inhaled. We came home, worked some more on their mother’s stuff, and called it a night around 10:00. I woke up several times, but nothing like it has been in recent weeks, and I got somewhere around six or seven hours of sleep. My ankles are suspiciously quiet this morning, not that I am complaining.

The sibs will be back for breakfast shortly. Beloved is making biscuits and gravy. With cow’s milk. I will wash mine down with a slug of goat milk and a tall glass of juice, and then it’s off to Secondborn’s for BittyBubba’s fifth birthday party while Beloved and sibs tackle more paperwork and memories and stuff.

I regret the necessity for their visit (I had already fallen in love with their mother, easy peasy), but I so enjoy having them here in our home and doing what small things I can do to help.

In knitting news, the pillow back has just a couple of repeats left, and the garter stitch border, and then the sewing-up. I most devoutly hope I will finish that today.

And in dolly news, Hope is here; she is every bit as enchantingly lovely as the picture on the website. I found Temperance’s black turtleneck and wrangled that on over Hope’s fancier hands (which are not held on with magnets like Chutzpah’s) and the black bloomers I got earlier this year cover her nether bits, so she is modest with a side order of Goth. Freud would probably have a field day with that. Her hair is a dark blonde, and very very long, as in longer than Crystal Gayle long. Her wig is an inch or so longer than she is tall, but it’s wavy, so she just manages not to step on it. Right now she is in a basket with Faith, Charity, Temperance, and Chutzpah. Once we get all the boxes from the storage unit emptied out (it looks crazier than when I moved in with all my stuff), then I can think about having my doll-inclined kids over for a play date.

This is the part where I put on what I’m wearing to the party and go out and flirt with the cook.

It’s my Friday (and I’ll cry if I want to).

Thankfully, I don’t want to. Decent night’s sleep last night, and another repeat finished on the pillow back since I woke up this morning. A condolence card written. A modicum of pondering. A little bookkeeping. Beloved is snoozing on the bed behind me, and it seems a shame to wake him up for breakfast.

This is my long day, but no chemo for Beloved, so no drive-by drop-off. It’s just work, and service in the temple tonight, and then home. I’m off tomorrow, but I’m scheduled out the wazoo: allergy testing in the morning, the annual girl-mashing in the afternoon [a/k/a mammogram], and baseball in the evening. With a side order of relatives: three-fourths of his siblings arrive tonight to begin inventorying their mom’s stuff in the storage unit and various of our homes. Our dining room will be Command Central for that. Boxes out of the storage unit, over here, inventoried, repacked into keep/sell/whatever, and back into storage. The family’s goal is to empty the storage unit before the end of this month.

I am finally getting useful information on the track/ship website for my doll. She should be here tomorrow!

The bathroom is looking amazing. We are nearly done with the painting. We have had an interesting discussion on crown molding. We want to find some that is simple, modest, and does not make the baseboards look boring or tacky. (Ours is a tract home from a quintessentially quirky home builder. I find it charming. Over the course of the next several years, as we repaint and do minor upgrades, I want to keep it simple, tasteful, and aesthetically consistent. This, I most devoutly hope, is our age-in-place home.) We are still having discussions and not arguments.

I like this.

♫ Mutual Admiration Society ♪

Old song from the 50s. I grew up on Teresa Brewer. Let’s see if I can make this link work.



In other happy news, my doll ships out from Denver today. Doll + wig + eyes + faceup, and while I thought I had ordered an outfit for her, I did not, so she will have to borrow from her siblings until I can get something made. Shipping from Denver Doll Emporium is quick like a bunny, so she should be here by the end of the week. I was afraid I would have to write DDE and ask them to ship her to the office. I didn’t want her to get here on a day when neither of us is likely to be home much, and have her damaged by the Texas heat.

In other, other happy news, I am two-thirds done with the second back piece for the pillow. And now I am on a mission to finish it before Hope arrives.

Beloved caught most of the spots I missed when I was touching up the paint in the bathroom. And I got most of the blue painter’s tape down off the walls and ceiling. Along with a bit of wallboard in one corner. He and I had discussed getting some of that featherweight plastic crown molding in a very simple style and putting it up in the bathroom. Looks as if I have officially made it a necessity.

If all goes well, tonight we can put up the shower rod and the curtain(s). I know where the soft yellow plastic liner is (on top of something in the dining room; where would it be in your house?) but not the gorgeous cloth one we got at Pottery Barn that got this whole redecorating ball rolling. The yellow one will do for now and will be the perfect liner when we find the other one.

As Beloved says, it’s in the house.

And I am [ ] this far from being able to start hanging artwork in the bathroom. Jazzed? That would be me. Happy Wednesday, everybody. I’m heading out to the kitchen for some of Beloved’s delicious banana bread, one loaf of which will might be going to work with me.

Good weekend.

Enough naps, enough food, enough quiet time for thinking, and enough time with friends and family. Truly does not get much better than this. Found the last pieces of paper I need in order to do my name change at PayPal. I will fax that all off tomorrow. Nice stack of thank you notes going out, and letters to a couple of would-be creditors as well. In knitting news, I finally reached the halfway point on the second back piece for the second pillow cover. The Genealogy Fairy, bless his heart, has left me alone this weekend, although I can feel his influence lurking just around the corner. I want to finish this pillow cover. I want to shorten the first one. And then I want to knit something not-grey-alpaca-blend-tweed for the next month or so. The house is still tidy after the cleanup we did yesterday before our dinner guests arrived. I am going to enjoy it for however long it lasts, knowing that Beloved and I have both mastered the art of the pile, although we both desire to be messies-in-remission. I chuckle at the stuff that gets not quite thrown away when one or the other of us is working on a project. Bread twistie ties (we both loathe them), yarn labels that leap aside as they flutter down, down, down toward the wastebasket. I love how I feel when later arrives and I pick up a small handful of whatever and dispose of it properly. No further sightings of wolf spiders, jumping or otherwise. Lentil soup for dinner tonight. Always better when reheated; tonight was no exception. When we had the first of it a couple of nights ago, I told Beloved that while it was excellent I would not sell my birthright for it. At which point he snorted, I suggested something else, and we both succumbed to silent, helpless laughter. I love being married to this man.

Noodling with numbers

I’ve spent a good part of the morning working on the spreadsheet. There were two credit card statements that I thought I had shredded in error. I found them in the stack of to-be-shredded stuff and have entered those numbers on the spreadsheet. Procrastination, every once in awhile, turns out to be a good thing.

I also found the photocopy of my driver’s license, created for when I ordered my new passport, or maybe my new Social Security card. I need it, and a copy of the marriage license, to change my name on PayPal so I can retrieve my balance. So that will get faxed on Monday.

I am feeling better and better about our finances. I haven’t run the numbers for the end of the month, as payday is next Friday, and I don’t want to see what next month’s statement is like after charging two plane tickets, our lodging, and a rental car for the upcoming memorial service, but overall we are moving in the right direction.

The shredding is now done, and the last shredder lubricant sheet used up. Breakfast has come and gone, and we are about ready to go grocery shopping. Friends are coming to dinner (they’re bringing the steaks!), and when I come back I will be wielding the Swiffer and the vacuum. You should probably alert the media, but at least you may rest assured that while my hands are cleaning, my brain will be knitting.

Beloved gets the chemo pump off in a couple of hours. No chills or fever last night, even though he got zero sleep the night before. We are so thankful.

Name of that truck that hit me?

Last night I got to serve as a temple patron on my shift. I was proxy for a woman who died the same year as my mysterious great-grandmother, and whose surname matched that in one of Beloved’s lines. So when I got home, I looked her up on NewFamilySearch. They share common ancestors, seven generations back on her side and seven or eight on his. And one of the girls in my Primary class has that same surname. Beloved will talk with her dad one of these days and see if they can find a connection.

I had a little excitement here at the desk last night while I was typing. A wolf spider, about three inches long from front talons to back, popped up. I am not ordinarily a scream-for-the-spouse type, having lived alone for many years. But I hollered last night, mostly because I was startled. You have never seen a man with a chemo pump move so fast. He hit it with the bug spray first, then whacked it with the newspaper, and then there was a brief and unceremonious burial at sea.

I know that wolf spiders are good guys. I also know that they jump. This one had been dancing a little polka on the corner of the desk, but no more.

Not a whole lot of knitting this week. I keep getting distracted by dead people. I have spent more time working on family history (mine and his) this week than I have in years. I suspect a few of my ancestors are turning cartwheels, over on the other side. As a dear friend from my Hill Country days used to say, dead people are so much easier to get along with.

Did I mention that Beloved is a lineal descendant of Pocahontas? Eleven generations back.

Beloved’s chemo went well yesterday. He spent the afternoon dozing in his chair and communing with John Wayne. He slept not a wink last night.  This happened in June, the weekend of the family reunion, also the weekend of the trip to ER because he developed chills and fever. We are hoping for no repeat of that tonight. We discussed (not a euphemism for had an argument about) what to do next time, and we think that maybe if he just comes home and goes right to bed and sleeps however long is necessary, rather than dozing with the TV on, that might solve the problem. Or it might be backlash from all the Benadryl they give him to forestall other side effects. He was mighty sniffly this morning. Might be rebound. But he is off to serve in the temple, because that’s the kind of guy he is.

I didn’t sleep well, either, and I do not have the luxury of taking the day off. I don’t know if I am now sufficiently married at six months that we truly are becoming one-flesh, so that if he doesn’t sleep I don’t either, or if it is something else, but I woke up fifty bajillion times, CPAP notwithstanding, and I feel as if I had been dragged through a knothole sideways. Good news is that I have finally finished all of my antibiotics so in that sense am starting to feel like me again.

It’s been a busy, productive week at work. I am so glad that the other secretary is coming back from vacation on Tuesday because I was about this far from childbirth words while putting out the day’s mail and her attorney emailed me that we needed to get an answer out on a case before quitting time. Thankfully, she had already prepped it, and I went through their email interchange before tweaking it, so all I really had to do was create the transmittal letter and get him to sign off. Sheesh!

I only have one case left to open, and it’s his, and then whatever new stuff he throws at me. My attorney has been wonderfully understanding all week, and we’ll send out the answer on our third case that’s due Monday (making four in total that I will have opened this week), because I prepared that on Wednesday because we work seamlessly together, and ahead of our calendar.

If I leave in ten minutes, I can stop at CVS for another bag of those mythological raspberry dark chocolate M&M’s. You can just about bet the rent that this is going to be a Cherry Coke day.

1302

Really. I was noodling around on newfamilysearch.org last night, adding some of Beloved’s people into my tree (connecting the dots as it were), when on a whim I clicked on one of my own names. And went back. And back. And back, through English names and anglifications of Germanic names, into Austria before I stopped paying attention to where and started paying attention to when.

A few years ago I found the connection between the earliest paternal-name ancestor whose name we had, and his father, and I was pretty excited to find myself back in the 1700’s. But holy cow! Twenty generations, and I’m a lot more German than I thought, with one ancestor who was born in Holland, although his father was born in Austria to German parents, and his son was born in Bavaria. Wonder what took my family to Holland in the mid 1500’s?

The one I cannot seem to find is a great-grandfather who was born in 1810. [You read that right. I am the caboose of a caboose of a caboose.] His wife was born in 1820. Family lore says in Bavaria. Family lore also says that her family was so poor that they couldn’t afford soap, so they beat their clothing clean in the waters of the Rhine. One problem with that: I can’t find any place where the Rhine flows through Bavaria, unless either the river or the principality(?) was a whole lot larger at some point.

I did find a man with his given name and no surname, married to a woman with her given name and no surname, in Germany, but no dates, no parents, no children. It was entered into Family Search through name extraction, and I will have to go to the stake family history center to make heads or tails of that information. I am pretty sure, from the spelling of that line, that it was anglicized when they came to America, because I know just enough German to be dangerous, and to recognize that surname as not-German.

This evening I went back on another line to 1278, but I don’t feel like changing the title of this post. I come from a long line of long-lived, exceedingly fertile people. That great-grandmother had her first child at 35 and her last, my grandmother, at 43. I wonder what her love story was with my great-grandfather. He died fighting a prairie fire at the age of 58. My great-grandmother lived until Dad was a little over a year old. I wonder if she ever got to hold him?

I found a couple of ministers tonight. And a doctor. And an earl, unless that ancestor’s parents thought it would be a really cool given name. The children’s father’s father’s middle name was Lord; when we sent out the wedding announcements for the marriage-that-was, a social climbing partner at the accounting firm where I worked thought I was marrying into the British peerage.

I am not my stuff.

As we speak, the rocking chair I watched my father build, back when I was sixteen, after he traced it off one belonging to Mom’s best friend, is out on the curb. It has gradually come apart, growing a little more jumbled with each successive move, but I have saved (most of) the bits, all but the part I gave to a friend to create a new [don’t know the technical name for it, but it connects the legs]. I keep thinking I will get it fixed. Other things intervene. And I am finally ready to let it go.

Dad has been gone twenty years now. I cannot type that without tearing up. We have done his temple work. Throwing out a chair made by my quiet, dutiful father is not the same thing as throwing out the memories. He was a good, good man; like me, an interesting mixture of reserve and warmth.

Mom’s best friend was married to Dad’s best friend, a wonderfully convenient truth. We would get together once a year or so. For most of my youth, they lived on or near the Oregon coast. Dad and Bus were Army buddies, their friendship forged in the horse cavalry in Wyoming in the 1930’s, or possibly earlier. And when they got together, the whiskey and the stories would flow.

One visit, Dad took a squint at Dot’s rocker and decided to make a copy. He laid it gently on its side, on top of a sheet of newspaper, and traced around it. Sides, back, seat, rockers. It was a Victorian folding rocker that had crossed the plains with one of Dot’s ancestors.

Mine was the first one he made. He used a fruitwood stain that was a little redder than Mom preferred, so he made her another, one for Dot, one for Mom’s sister, one for mine, one for Gram, each upholstered in a fabric to suit the taste of the recipient. Mine, naturally, had burgundy velveteen.

I have lugged this chair around for forty years. I have long since passed the point where I could sit in it. The people who pick it up from the curb tomorrow will have no idea what it symbolizes, the love that went into its making, my appreciation for Dad’s craftsmanship, my frustration with the children’s father for his lack of a fix-it gene, all the laughter and tears it has witnessed in four decades.

When I come home tomorrow, the chair will be gone, and I will be a little sad until the next good thing happens. Which it will. It always does.

Because this happened at our house.

Movie Mom shared this link. Those parents handled it much better than I did.

My husband is so cool. ♥ I taught the Captain Moroni and the Title of Liberty lesson today. Beloved reached into a drawer and pulled out a Title of Liberty on an old pillowcase, ready to attach to his walking stick. The text on the flag reads: In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children.

I only had one student for most of the class. I shared with him how the Nephites likened the Old Testament and the record of the Jaredites to their own situation, just as modern prophets have counseled us to liken the scriptures to ourselves. I told him how the Nephites at that time were not fighting for power, but to protect their homes and families, and how Heaven blessed them to know when to fight and when to flee. Near the end of the lesson, another student who had overslept came into class. We caught her up. I sent the extra handouts home with her, as it is her turn to present the lesson in Family Home Evening tomorrow, and there were just enough handouts that everyone still living at home could get one.

And then I came home, ate a PBJ, and died for about four hours. Seriously. Beloved came in about 5:00 to make sure I was still among the living. I had leftover spaghetti for dinner. He had some of his nuclear leftover Spanish rice. The TV was on to some show about how pastrami, bologna, etc., is made. I nuked my dinner about the time they started talking about head cheese, and I ate in my studio with the door closed. I told him to let me know when they stopped talking about gross stuff.

We watched the entire Shaun the Sheep video that I won from Movie Mom. Sweet, funny, and in this woman’s opinion, entirely suitable for the Sabbath. He wanted to save Mask of Zorro for tomorrow night and is watching something else on the History Channel. I thought meh and came in here. And now I will play a few rounds of Mahjongg Dimensions (or as I call it, Dementia) before heading back to the studio for another round of puttering. I may get the last of the touch-up painting done in the bathroom while he is asleep, because a four hour nap will make sleep well-nigh impossible for quite awhile.

Antibiotics seem to have kicked in with no side effects. Nothing hurts for the moment. And I have less than a dozen rows to go before the first back panel is done. Easy peasy.

Plan R

Happy birthday, Middlest!

In other news, I am reasonably close to finishing the first section of the pillow back tonight. If not tonight, then tomorrow after church. More stuff on the wall in my studio, less stuff on the table. I am this far from being able to set up my sewing machine and do a little mending.

Had a two-hour nap over the lunch hour. Beloved is out in the kitchen, turning our incredible bounty into tomato paste.

I watched the last little dab of Tomb Raider on TV. Nice touch that her father played her father, but it was weird hearing him with an English accent. Part of another movie about assassins, at which point I asked Beloved,“Do you think this movie was rated R when it was released?” Probably. “Do you think we should be watching it?” Probably not. *Click.*

Wives. Spoiling fun for our husbands since the Garden of Eden.

I have my referral to the allergist. I will call her on Monday. We also have the date confirmed for the memorial service for Beloved’s mother. I will call our corporate travel department and have them find us an inexpensive (or relatively so) flight. Beloved was wrangling with multiple website when I remembered, “Hey, one of the perks of my job is access to free personal trip planning.”

We are editing our vacation plans for this fall. The trip to see my sister, his brother, old friends from his ward in Oregon, et al, is being pushed back to next year. We cannot afford two trips in rapid succession, and so we have decided upon a shorter staycation, with a side trip to Galveston if/when he gets accepted into the program at MD Anderson. Still have not heard back, but I am telling myself  “no news is good news.”

In the dolly irony department, when I was online last night to get a gift card for Middlest, I noticed that they had the doll sculpt I ordered in stock, but in a different skin tone. Patience, Ms. Ravelled, patience. [That should probably be the next virtue I acquire in doll form, but I am still leaning toward Joy.]

The knitting is calling my name. I’m outta here!

May cause ~~ what???

Another trip to the doctor yesterday, and another prescription. [So this is what old age feels like!] Thankfully, we had the money for both. And today is payday. All the bills but one are checked off the list, and that last will bite the dust next week.

Yesterday was chiefly an exercise in frustration: 15 minutes late to work, PT to cover that; email from the office manager because my email telling her I was there, arrived later than she would have liked; more PT because my doctor could get me in to check the latest symptoms; Rx for that plus specific instructions on what and what not to do for the next week; potential side effects that are potentially worse than the problem for which I am taking the Rx; and a general wish to curl up in a corner somewhere and snivel.

On the other hand, while at the pharmacy I scored a bag of the elusive, mythological Raspberry Dark Chocolate M&Ms, most of which are awaiting my return to my cubicle at work. And I had a sublime experience while serving in the temple last night, one of those confirmations that I was exactly where I needed to be, doing exactly what I needed to be doing in the service of Heaven. By the time Thursday night rolls around, even in a perfectly ordinary week, I am second-guessing whether I should request a sabbatical. And time at the doctor and pharmacy equals more time for knitting.

Beloved is off for his own stint of service at the temple. Time for me to put away the checkbooks, inhale some breakfast, and get ready for work. No obligations this evening. My vote is for turning off the ringers and chilling with Beloved.

No news.

Other than that Denver Doll is currently receiving the stock they ordered two weeks ahead of mine, which suggests to me that I will be entirely finished with the pillow project by the time Hope gets here.

I updated our medical expenses into the hydra of a spreadsheet last night. My HMO has shelled out over $225K on our behalf this year. A minuscule amount of that is for me. If you are at an age where you might want to consider getting a colonoscopy, consider this a thumb on the scale pushing down heavily on the side of “yes”.

I got my nails done last night. I continue to like that salon.

The first back section on this second pillow is nearly two-thirds done. That is probably enough math for one blog post, don’t you think?

I took a loaf of the zucchini bread to work yesterday. It was gone well before noon.

My co-workers gave us a lovely card and a huge plant that is taking up nearly half (oh dear, more math! sorry, math-phobes!) of our dining room table. Sometimes people are just so good, and so kind, that it makes you want to cry.

Lunch is packed and by the door. Ditto my temple bag and purse. This is the part where I do my impression of a (mute) Taz and start/finish getting ready for work then scoot on out the door. Second day in a row when I would rather just sit here and eat banana bread all day. Temple tonight. Life is good.

Not sure when I woke up.

Beloved was up before the chickens, getting dressed to go fishing. I have been paying bills and working on our finances for about an hour and a half. His organizational skills and mine have begun to mesh; therein lies peace and happiness and (eventually) improved cash flow.

We had yummy banana bread for dessert last night. He made zucchini bread, too, and I am about to head out to the kitchen for a slice. I am taking leftover fajita stuff for lunch.

We should hear today if the tentative date for the memorial service is a go. And if I remember correctly, this is also the date we will hear from MD Anderson about the clinical trial.

Not much happening, chez Ravelled, which is a merciful change from the past three weeks. I came home last night, ate dinner, loaded the dishwasher, did one quick errand, and came back to my knitting and Beloved. Not necessarily in that order. Tonight I will get a manicure and then come home. I am fixin’ to pop a nail, so this has been put off long enough.

I managed to stay reasonably productive yesterday and have one small self-appointed task to finish this morning, and then a project for a friend that, if I am lucky, will fill up the rest of the day. I sent out a “will type for food” message to the other legal secretaries on Monday, and thus far they have had little to pass on to me. Either their desks are uncharacteristically calm, or they are so busy they can’t perform triage.

I am now going to putter in my studio for five or ten minutes and then eat breakfast. The only sounds I can hear are the ticking of the clock in front of me, the whir of the air conditioner, bits of birdsong outside the window, and the rumblies in my tumblies.

Life is blessedly calm at the moment, and I am ever so thankful.

Update (progress?)

The meds are working, on my foot.

Dinner tonight with the Empty Nesters was fun, and tasty. We went out for barbecue, and I had chopped beef and butter and chives on a baked potato that deserved its own zip code. I fully intended to save half of it for lunch tomorrow, but between the laughing and the listening and the talking and the bending of the elbow, it mysteriously disappeared. I will know in a couple of hours how much salt was hidden in all that deliciousness.

I saw my PCP this afternoon. She agreed that an allergist is the next step in my line of defense and has submitted the referral. She confirmed, as much as she could within her own expertise, that some of my symptoms are probably related to Beloved’s chemo, and that I should talk with his oncologist as soon as possible. Which I will do.

My attorney is on vacation. I caught up my desk from Friday afternoon, closed two cases and prepared to close a third, handled the mail that came in this morning (at least the portion which had been scanned by the time I needed to leave for my appointment), handled two small items for a co-worker who just returned from her own vacation, and still had 20 minutes in which to look busy.

Le sigh. Methinks it’s going to be a long, long week.

I put away 20 items on my worktable in my studio this morning before breakfast. I plan to do the same tomorrow morning, or whatever number seems reasonable. It’s nearly bedtime, and I have no desire to go putter in my studio before bedtime. But I did get a nap when I got home from the doctor’s office, and who knows what that will do to my ability to get to sleep tonight?

Famous last words: it seemed like a good idea at the time ;)

I may find myself in there before midnight, puttering away. But for now I need to fold a little laundry, and I’d like to be asleep within the hour. Wish me luck!

Who can? Diflucan!

I couldn't get in to see my doctor yesterday, but I have an appointment on Monday, and I saw Beloved’s doctor yesterday, coming home with two prescriptions for the athlete’s foot (one oral, one topical) plus the business card of an allergist who is in my system. I will ask my doctor to get me a referral when I see her. Meanwhile, the most urgent symptoms are getting taken care of, and the pain in my neck has faded away.

The yarn I ordered last Friday was here when I got home, and it is the perfect shade of yellow. It has been duly entered on Ravelry, as well as the pattern book (Knit, Swirl). I finished the front of the second pillow yesterday. I made it two repeats shorter and am already more than 10% done with the first back.

I woke up around 5:00 this morning after a decent night’s sleep, threw on the nearest clothing to hand, and tiptoed past my sleeping brother-in-law (out in the living room) and into my studio, where I alternated sessions of tidying with bouts of knitting. Four hours later, I came back in here. Beloved was awake and on the computer. Brother was still sawing logs. I was glowing with accomplishment. And a little dusty, and a lot sweaty, and ravenous. Mel and Squishy came by and picked up Brother. Beloved and I had hotcakes and eggs over easy and cherries and juice and a modicum of flirting. Then I went back into my studio until it was time to take him to get the chemo pump off.

I’ve hung five pictures in my studio. It never quite feels like home until I’ve banged a few holes in the wall, and this is the first artwork I’ve hung since I moved in. When I am done it will look like Victorian museum overkill, which I wouldn’t necessarily want for the public areas of the house, but which is pritnear perfect for in there. I found stuff (tools) that I didn’t remember I had, and instructions for using some that I did, and the box with the half-built jacket from the seriously cool Burda pattern that I started when we lived in the penultimate apartment. I still like the jacket design. And there is a better than average chance I may be wearing it before the end of the year, but for now the last will be first, and the first is gonna hafta be last.

I am only mildly disappointed that I couldn’t justify spending the money for that limited edition doll whose ordering window expired on Wednesday. When you see her, you might understand why she took my breath away: SOOM really *can* make a doll with a happy face. Lookie here!

I’m tired. I’m happy, and I’m not in pain, and I’m really happy about that, and I’m tired. So I am going to log off and take a nap. Happy Saturday, y’all!

Ms. Ravelled is a tough ol’ bird.

But one which is feeling increasingly plucked, these days.

In the past two weeks I have had two separate incidents of the Sneezing Olympics (can I say that without bringing the USOC down on my head?), hives, the usual swelling/redness/itching from eating something I shouldn’t, a pinched nerve which has mostly resolved, and a couple of other symptoms that I really do not want to discuss here on the blog. Nothing life-threatening, plenty that goes way beyond annoying. Yesterday afternoon, about the time I was getting my mail out, my left foot started itching in a familiar way. It would appear that the Athlete’s Foot Fairy swung by sometime after lunch and smacked me with her prickly little wand.

I took my itchy, swollen self to the temple last night, and what to my wondering eyes should appear, right there in the lobby, but the children’s father sitting with his back to me. And the Spirit did not let me off the hook. I walked around into his field of vision, greeted him, and sat down on the couch near his chair. He asked how Beloved was doing. I told him we had just lost my mother-in-love, and he offered condolences. I was glad to be able to tell him about the clinical trial we hope to get Beloved into, and that we should hear shortly.

And then his ride walked out into the lobby, was introduced to me, and asked in a gently humorous way, how I could ever have divorced such a nice guy. And I was totally speechless for the second time in less than a year (the first time being when Beloved surprised me with the engagement ring at the dance at my last-ever singles’ conference, Heaven willing).

Brigham Young said that he who takes offense where none is intended, is a fool. (And that he who takes offense when it is intended, is a greater fool, but it was quite obvious to me that none was intended. The good brother’s wife probably chastened him once they got into their car, or after they dropped the children’s father off at the nursing home.)

The children’s father was never not a nice guy, at least not to me.

So I was a little bit of a basket case as I walked back to change out of my street clothes, but dinner took care of most of that, and my responsibilities kept me productively occupied. My symptoms backed off enough that I could focus on what I needed to do, but remained just sufficiently there that I had no difficulty staying awake.Rather like the fleas that Corrie Ten Boom’s sister was thankful for.

Beloved’s younger brother is here for a couple of days. We likes him. I will be dropping him off at the VA Hospital for a checkup, before heading into work. And then I will be calling my doctor’s office, to see if she is in today and if they can fit me in. If not, I will Gold Bond my way through the weekend, and I will see her as early as possible next week.

I want a nutritional workup. I want a referral to an allergist. And I want to discuss with her, and with Beloved’s oncologist, whether some of my symptoms might be connected Beloved’s chemotherapy. I also want to get checked for lupus, fibromyalgia, and whatever else might be taking punches at my immune system.

We are, most likely, having dinner up at OlderTwin’s house tonight. While there I will have my guys give me a blessing. I am tired (but not sleepy), and I just want to sit in a corner and weep into my knitting. (I hasten to add that I am not depressed. I am just sick. And tired. And determined to be well again, whether I need food supplements, physical therapy, a personal trainer, my own private pharmacologist, or whatever. Let me just say that Biofreeze on a trigger point is an amazingly lovely experience.)

Life is still very good, very sweet. Just hand me that box of Puffs, and don’t even think of getting between me and my knitting. I have eaten a nice, sensible breakfast: raisin bran and whole-wheat toast. Time for a banana, and to figure out what I want for lunch, brush my teeth, grab the bro, and go.

And...she’s gone.

Just about sunrise, on Independence Day, not a bad time to leave a broken body behind and step into eternity.

Beloved is handling this very well. He got some practice at letting-go, three years ago when his wife of 35 years graduated from earth life. It is harder for his siblings, none of whom are currently active in the church and thus are without that loving safety net which he and I share.

As it stands now, cremation in a few days, up in Wisconsin, and then a memorial service in her old ward in California in a few weeks. Possibly the rental of a huge van, large enough for eight adults and four children, and two twenty-hour drives with each of us taking a shift behind the wheel. We’ll figure it out. In the meantime, please keep this tribe in your prayers.

As Beloved says, she died with her boots on, doing what she wanted to do with people she loved. (And she didn’t have to go into assisted living, which was planned for October or thereabouts.) Three families are negotiating over who gets to keep her dog; I think the great-grands will win.

I wish I had had more time to get to know her better, but I am thankful for what time I’ve had. She was a remarkable woman: smart, funny, feisty, and kind. We will miss her.

We [yes, we] just picked 103 tomatoes (100 of them off of four plants); better than 450 Romas since we started picking, and some Early Girls for grilling. Two three-pound zucchini. Three dozen jalapenos, two dozen serranos, a couple dozen cayennes, five bell peppers. Sundry crookneck squash.

Looking into my crystal ball mixing bowl, I foresee zucchini bread in the very near future. Grilled tomatoes with our steaks later today. A batch of tomato sauce simmered up and bottled.

Our produce runneth over.

Oye.

Life, as they say, is what happens when you are busy making other plans. Thank you, John Lennon.

I see that Blogger is no longer speaking to Firefox. And they want me to try Google Chrome. Since this is not my computer, we shall have to see about that.

But blogging is the least of my concerns. My neck/shoulder issues are resolving, thank you. I came home and took two acetaminophen, ate a delicious dinner not-cooked-by-me, enjoyed a couple hours of quiet chatting in the living room with Beloved, and just about the time we were ready to call it a night, our phones blew up.

His mother has been visiting a granddaughter in Wisconsin and spoiling the great-grands silly. They have an above-ground pool. She decided she was going to join the kidlets in the pool. She had a stroke while climbing the ladder. The paramedics were there in a jiffy and took excellent care of her. The last word we got was that she would be helicoptered to the larger hospital in Madison. Beloved’s sisters are flying to Wisconsin this morning. One of his sisters has been watching over their father (not Beloved’s father, but his cherished stepfather) and stepmother for several months, so her plate already runneth over.

Our wonderful bishop has emailed me names and phone numbers of several bishops in Madison. I have forwarded that to Beloved. I will call the temple in an hour or so (it is closed on Mondays, and especially on Monday nights, which are for Family Home Believ’ning, as one of my kids used to call it) and put her name on the prayer roll. We called all our kids last night and have them praying, and I emailed my sister, who is adding her own prayers and positive thoughts. Beloved will make the phone calls that will get the missionaries to the hospital to give his mom a blessing.

All of which puts the wistfulness I was feeling on my drive home from work last night, about the SOOM limited edition doll I discovered when I had run out of work and was killing the last few minutes before leaving the office, whose last day for ordering is tomorrow and which I cannot afford, squarely into perspective. She’s lovely, but she’s not family, and it is family that matters most, after God.

I hope you have a blessed and peaceful day. Thank you for your love and friendship, hope and prayers.

Squirrel grenade.

One of my friends posted the link on Facebook. Not to be read with a full mouth, or bladder. Squirrel Grenade.

I tried to make it a pop-out link, but Blogger apparently has the hiccups this morning, and I kept having to undo it. So please go read it, and then come back.

I awoke at 4:00-ish, with my neck and shoulder seriously unhappy with me. I don’t know if I slept wrong, if there’s an issue with my pillow, or if it’s just some of my natural cussedness trying to express itself. It is not unlike the pain I felt about 15 years ago, when I was livid with the children’s father and unwilling to say anything about it, so my neck went into spasm and I had to borrow Firstborn’s cervical collar for a week. I can’t think of anything that I’m angry about, or should be angry about. It may simply be that I did not drink enough water after Squishy worked on my neck last night, and this is lactic acid having its way with me. I’ve been up for two and a half hours now, and it’s eased somewhat. Three rows of knitting and half an hour of puttering in the studio gave me some sense of accomplishment, at least. When I first got up (which was a major undertaking in itself) I was wondering if I needed to call in dead and drive over to Fort Worth to see my massage therapist to see what my body was willing to tell her. I’m not having any difficulty typing this, so I will probably be fine at work. But I will definitely go talk this over with Beloved at breakfast.

Which he just announced will be ready in four minutes, so I am going to figure out what I want to wear to work and then start ambulating in the general direction of the breakfast table.

I do love being married to this man, and not simply because he feeds me so well.

Rangers 7, Knitting 2

So maybe I don’t hate all sports?

I don’t know if our mugs made it onto your TV’s. I do know that I didn’t get a lot of knitting done. Also that when Beltre hit that first home run for the Rangers, a primal redneck WHOOOOOOO! sailed out over the ballpark with about 46,000 others.

Yeah, I know. Somebody hand me a bottle of Pace to pour over this generous helping of crow, wouldja?

I asked Beloved, “Would it freak you out if I said I wanted a Rangers hat to wear to the game next month?”

“No, we’ll go to Academy.”

“Or Albertsons.”

“Or Albertsons.” Nod, nod.

Yu Darvish didn’t pitch last night. I think the boy is seriously cute, but not in an “I’d better repent before I go teach Primary” way. I wonder if Beloved would freak out if I told him I kinda sorta want a Darvish shirt to go with my [hypothetical] Rangers hat. We’ll see how next month’s game goes.

I had better have other knitting to take. That alpaca pillow cover was a wee bit warm, up there in the stands.

In other news, Beloved found my fishing license. In the case with my travel fishing pole. I think we glossed right over it. I was expecting a long white strip of paper, not a small red carrying case that said Wal-Mart, with the license all folded neatly inside it. Utilizing the female logic which he acquired from 35 years with Wife1.0 and the additional six months with me, he grinned and quipped,“Female logic says that since I found your license, and we don’t have to pay $10 at Wal-Mart to get a replacement license, I can add that $10 to my Father’s Day gift card and spend it at Bass Pro, right?”

I cannot argue with that logic. Especially if I want a Darvish shirt next month.