Laughing, but not up my sleeve.

My favorite counselor in the bishopric, he who complicated my life by extending the calling to teach in Primary when I was perfectly content to be teaching Relief Society, called my cell phone last night on my drive home from work. Could he come by and talk with me about something?

I knew he was about to further complicate my life, and he has, with plenty of help from others. I will let you know what my new calling is, once I have been sustained. Which will be in approximately three weeks, because this weekend is General Conference (first weekends in April and October, every year, just like clockwork, and I am so stoked to hear what our leaders have been inspired to share with us), and next weekend is stake conference (also twice a year, but a moveable feast like unto Easter, as it were).

I am thankful for parents who taught me to be responsible, and were mostly successful. When I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen (you get the picture), I thought responsibility was the ugliest word in the English language. I just wanted to sit around the house and read all day. Or sew or knit or whatever. But pull my weight in the family? Pretty low on my priority list.

I have just finished reconciling our checkbooks, paying tithing on the paycheck that hit the bank a few hours ago, and paying one of our bills. I have recently taken to transferring the dibs and dabs that are leftover from the previous paycheck into savings, before paying bills out of the new paycheck. (This time it was $11.70.) I had hoped to be able to do a little shopping for the house, and for me, but that will have to wait another couple of weeks. And I will have to make the cards I was planning to buy for Bosses Day (one of the most ridiculous events in the Hallmark calendar; every day is Bosses Day, which is why they call them Bosses), but that will only enhance my reputation as the quirky, creative one in the office. (I am not the only quirky, creative one, but I am definitely the most flagrantly flamboyant one.)

So, this is shaping up to be a good day. I have worked one round on the sweater and the better part of another. Lunch is already in the fridge at work, because my attorney took several of us to lunch yesterday. Tonight is date night with my husband. We have Conference this weekend, and a birthday party for two of the granddaughters on Sunday, after which Beloved and I will head down to Houston for his appointment at MD Anderson on Monday. I have already printed a list of yarn stores in Houston, to hit on our way back home. I may not buy any souvenir yarn, but I would definitely like to see what is out there.

We had five secretaries out, yesterday, for one reason or another. I was a busy, busy girl. But it was a very good, very productive day, and the ones that I backed up will come back to a little less chaos on their desks.

Quick catch-breath

Watched the debates last night. I loathe politics and will be glad when the election is over and we can get on with life. That said, I think Mitt cleaned the President’s clock.

I got some knitting in while listening. Woke up a quarter to four this morning and knitted some more. 410 stitches on my needles.

Fired up the Vitamix and grr’d up the strawberries and bananas with a carton of key lime Greek yogurt and just enough milk to facilitate the grr’ing. Drank what I could; put most of it in a tall sippie cup in the fridge for when Beloved wakes up later this morning.

We are thinking of driving down to Houston after the birthday party for my two oldest granddaughters, rather than getting up at dark-thirty Monday morning.

I am still undecided whether to ask for a leave of absence from the temple. Maybe I will have a better feel for that after my shift tonight. In the meantime, my bags are packed, and I’m ready to go (just not leaving on a jet plane, and do know when I’ll be back again, but if I don’t stir my stumps I will need said jet plane to get to work on time).

Life is good. Beloved is awake, vertical, ventilating, and while he’s moving around more slowly than either of us would like, we are both hopeful about his getting into the targeted treatment at MD Anderson.

I have the hiccups.

I have hiccups like Gladys Knight can sing. I have hiccups like Einstein was smart. If having hiccups were an Olympic event, I would capture the gold, the silver, and the bronze, simultaneously, and then sprain something while trying to keep an appendage on each representative section of the stand.

Any of my gentle readers who are male, might find this a good time to go take out the garbage, or floss the cat’s teeth.

Once I had the hiccups while standing on the corner in downtown Boise, waiting for the light to change. This was decades before gravity had its way with my body. Guys have excellent peripheral vision. Know how I know this? Helen of Troy may have had the face that launched a thousand ships, but I had the hiccups that nearly launched a thousand fender-benders. And untold cases of neck strain.

OK, guys, you can come back now.

Beloved is way tired, and moving a lot like Grandpa McCoy if you’re old enough to remember that show. I’m not mocking, because he’s not the only one chez Ravelled to have that quintessential hitch in the gitalong. Stabilize, then mobilize, is the phrase I brought back from his family reunion. It’s a good motto to live by. Especially if you’re no longer 25.

He had a good day today and is feeling much better than yesterday, which means he is feeling light years better than he did most of Saturday.

Dinner tonight was tortellini Alfredo and garlic bread. This makes twice this week that I have been in the kitchen as something other than comic relief or chief bottle washer. We probably ought to call the Guinness people.

It is late. Dinner has nearly settled to the point where it is safe for me to go to bed. (I got a manicure after work, so we didn’t eat until after 8:00, and I have no wish to go three rounds with the Reflux Fairy tonight.) I am shutting down the popsicle stand, turning out the light, and heading to the living room for one last round on my sweater.

Night, y’all. [We are down to 442 stitches on the sweater yoke, but who’s counting?]

Blessings (not in disguise)

While Saturday was rough, chez Ravelled, and I thought it might end with a trip to the emergency room, Beloved is feeling somewhat better. When we sat together and held hands for family prayer last night, his hand was warm. It had been distinctly cool for the past several days. He did pull a muscle in his rump while out picking vegetables this afternoon. I told him I would *not* be kissing it better. He snorted.

Dinner was a combined effort tonight. All I really wanted was a humongous bowl of mashed potatoes, liberally laced with horseradish. He wanted potatoes, but not spicy. And he wanted meat. I told him I am pretty inept when it comes to cooking meat. I have eaten more meat in the last eight months than I probably had in the previous decade. But he walked me through cooking two of the fat, sassy pork chops I scored at the discount meat bin on Saturday, and I ate half of my chop and saved the other half for tomorrow’s lunch, with almost enough leftover potatoes to call it a good meal. I was a complete and utter glutton with those potatoes tonight. Seconds. Not quite enough room at the inn for thirds, hence leftover taters in my lunch tomorrow, but not a whole whale of a lot.

Work went well. I got a lot of little piddly but thoroughly necessary things done today, and a good start on opening one of our new cases, and all of my To-Do’s to-done. Hoping for more of the same tomorrow.

It was cool enough this morning that I got to wear my new red corduroy jacket. And lunch was quiet enough that I got some serious knitting done, with more of that once I got home. My brain and my fingers want to go back out to the living room and crank out another round or two. My eyes and my metabolism want to grab the jammies and hit the sack.

Toothbrush, here I come!

Ok, maybe “capsules.”

I was getting the information second-hand and filtering it through Valkyrie mode. At any rate, a formula which differs from that on the original prescription, and the insurance will pay for it.

Beloved was too tired to go to church today. He is out there making posole for dinner. [Possibly the only respectable use for the poor, tortured creature which is hominy.] No extra spices today, just mild enchilada sauce as the basis, and the pork steaks I picked up at the store yesterday. I am thankful from the bottom of my heart (and vice versa, in a few hours).

He has slept a lot today. The Packers game is on. He is only marginally paying attention to it. Younger-twin’s wife just brought the Beloved grandchildren over for a drive-by hugging. Granddaughter asked, “What’s that smell?”

Beloved said, “Posole” just as I said, “Dead frogs.” Guess which they heard? I got to tell my “dead frogs” story. The kids seemed to enjoy it.

I am now halfway through the third repeat of the second part of the raglan decreases on the sweater. Specifically, I am working the round in which the alternate color comes in and must be positioned so as to lie on top as those stitches come off the needle and join the fabric below. I got most of the way around during sacrament meeting. Thankfully, each decrease round (I am now decreasing every other row, and will be doing so a total of 38 times before the neckline shaping begins) is eight stitches shorter than the row before. Eventually I will have fewer stitches on my needle than I did while working the body up to the armscyes.

Eventually hasn’t happened yet and may not for a week or two. But that happy thought keeps me going.

Beloved’s twins will come by after work (computer emergencies which demanded their attention/presence at their respective companies) and give him a blessing. And in the meantime, there is knitting. And, quite soon, posole.

Life is good.

Ms. Ravelled goes valkyrie.

My children learned to fear the phrase, “Do you want to see Ugly Mother?” I stole it from my friend Nita, who had the temerity to die last year. She and her husband reared five sons, all of whom have grown up to be fine young men, in part because when they were creating chaos en masse as teenagers, she would raise one eyebrow ~ but not her voice ~ and utter those words. And the boys would instantly take it down to a dull roar.

Beloved did not get chemo this week, as his white count is too low. He will not get it next week, either. His blood pressure is also low. His hands are cool. He is weary, but thankfully he has been able to sleep more than usual at night. He got a two-hour chunk and a three-hour chunk on Wednesday night and a four-hour nap on Thursday. His cancer count is about half what it was at its worst last year. His potassium is low. He lost eight pounds last week because food is going straight through without giving him so much as a belch or a kiss-my-grits.

[PrivateFormerly private joke; he loathes grits.]

I called the oncologist’s office on Thursday after getting the email from Beloved, giving me the above news. His appetite is fickle. Would it be a good idea to give him Ensure or something like unto it? Mom gave that to Dad when he was battling cancer. Yes, it might help, but the sugar in it tends to increase diarrhea, plus cancer loves sugar. The dietitian called Beloved and told him: white bread, white potatoes, white rice. Stuff that ordinarily is not good for people because it has less nutritional value, but in this case is good because it hangs around in the body longer, thus giving Beloved a chance of snagging some nourishment as it flies by.

He asked me to pick up his Rx’s on my way home from work. Two were ready; there was an issue with the third one, something about the insurance not being willing to pay for it. There was an indifferent connection at the drive-through speaker (they couldn’t hear me well, but I could hear them), so I parked Lorelai and went inside. Beloved has a prescription for an anti-diarrhea drug, which is OTC, and the insurance company wouldn’t pay for it. The pharmacist was apologetic and very kind. I was livid but under control by the grace of Heaven. The doctor wanted 480 pills which would have cost us $113 and change, but since the drug was OTC, I could get it for much less out in the main area of the store.

The Rx specified two pills every two hours, maximum 16 pills per day; the Rx was for a month’s worth. I came home with five boxes of generic at .88 per box and a promise from the pharmacist that she would contact the insurance company and see if they would work with us. I thanked her and wished her a good weekend and meant it.

We got a call later last night from the pharmacy. They had gotten in touch with the insurance company, and while pills were not covered by insurance, tablets were, so if the doctor writes a new Rx for tablets, we can get a month’s worth for $10, and in the meantime we have enough to get Beloved through the weekend until the oncologist’s office reopens on Monday.

When I am out running errands later today, I will take a handwritten thank-you note to the lovely, competent, helpful pharmacist. I am so thankful for the years and years of chronic frustration when I was married to the children’s father: they taught me patience, persistence, and the ability to fuse my anger with civility, like a laser scalpel, rather than blowing up like a defective grenade.

Valkyrie mode gets things done without grieving the Spirit, when Ugly Mother and going postal, do not.

In knitting news, because that’s what some of you come here for, the sleeves are now joined to the sweater body, and I have completed the first seven decrease rounds. There are now “only” 506 stitches on my needles, and the sixth round, where I drop one strand of the main color and substitute a strand of the handpainted yarn and micromanage the stitches so the fancy yarn will lie on top? That one took about an hour. Maybe a little more, because we were watching/listening to The Avengers last night. I am now at the part where I decrease every other round, and I noticed that my gauge on the sweater body is a smidgen more relaxed than on the sleeves. I don’t think a knitting muggle will notice. And, assuming the yoke fits properly, if they do I will just smile and tell them it is a design feature.

And then there was shopping.

My dental hygienist, who is a quiet, lovely, loving, devout Catholic, and I have good discussions on practical Christianity (i.e., how to walk the talk). We had another one while she was spiffing up my teeth on Wednesday. My dentist is LDS and a good example of a righteous priesthood holder, so she is more than usually conversant with our doctrine.

She makes the whole every-four-months procedure painless as well as inevitable, and we both come away from it lifted and strengthened.

Then I took my happy clean teeth straight to In N Out for a burger and fries and a vanilla milkshake. No rash, no rumblies in the tumblies (but then I didn’t supersize anything, either), and no major organs fell off, or out. Thence to the new outlet mall. I found brown footless leggings in a wonderful cocoa brown, at 30% off at the Lane Bryant outlet. Looked at purses at the Coach outlet (didn’t find anything I really liked, which is good because it wasn’t in the budget, while the leggings were, more or less; now to finish mending that skirt!). Noted the presence of an OshKosh outlet (incipient grandson will get more than one outfit from that establishment unless I miss my guess). And LeCreuset. And a generic kitchen shop with way too much Hamilton Beach. My mother was not a fan of Hamilton Beach. Their quality standards may have improved since my mother gave me her opinion 40+ years ago.

Did not check out the food court. See In N Out, above. Plus, Beloved’s cooking has spoiled me for a lot of my former haunts. I eat much better, healthier, and cheaper at home. ♥

The Harlot was here? Last night? And I missed her?

*aughhhhhhhhhh!*

In which Ms. Ravelled learns that not only did she miss the most recent lecture by the ever-amazing Yarn Harlot, but there is a new yarn store a few blocks from the duplex in which she used to live, until she married Beloved.

 *aughhhhhhhhhh!*

In less noisy news, it appears that I like shark. Rather a lot. Is it OK to put it on my bucket list just to have the pleasure of marking it done?

I have something less than ten rounds to go, before I start adding sleeves to the sweater body in progress. I will be heading back out to the living room in a few minutes.

I will watch the odd football game with Beloved. I am starting to ask thoughtful questions about football, if thoughtful and football are not entirely and utterly oxymoronic. I draw the line at Survivor. If I want terror and drama, I will examine the balance in my check register the day before payday, or contemplate a world without cashmere. Or dark chocolate.

I voted with my feet. My feet brought my hands to the computer, which took me to Google Reader, which led me to the realization that very few people at the tribal feast last night would have understood, had I stood them up to go listen to the Yarn Harlot.

*aughhhhhhhhhh!*

Time to go knit, in hopes of taking the edge off.

*aughhhhhhhhhh!*

Rusty. And at least one other dwarf you never heard of.

There is a reason women my age don’t get pregnant. Beloved and his youngest grandson are fishing this morning. The plan was for M the Marauder to spend the night camped out on our living room floor so the boys could get up way earlier than dark-thirty and head to a friend’s and thence to the lake.

Family prayer? check.
Last drink of water? check.
Last trip to the loo? check.

First there was the drumming on the Captain America shield. I went out and explained, politely and firmly, that if it continued, I would be taking up the shield until morning, because I have to go to work, and I needed to get to sleep, and if I don’t get enough sleep I get cranky.

Then there was the crying, which I just managed to hear over the hissing of my CPAP. So I went out to investigate, talked a little, listened a lot, sang a few songs, and he still missed his brothers and sister and mom and dad and wanted to go home. I went back and rousted Beloved and told him it was his turn.

Upshot was that M’s mom drove back down here and retrieved him, and one or the other parental unit brought him back this morning, and the boys are off fishing, and instead of falling asleep around 9:30 as planned, I was awake until nearly midnight (for the third night in a row, but at least the other two nights were fun).

And I want to pay a couple of bills this morning, but I have no idea where the check blanks might be, and I got maybe four hours of sleep (because the alarm went off earlier than usual) and I am well and truly cranky. I took a melatonin last night, my first, and I don’t know if it was that or the pork and beans at dinner, but my ankles started itching suspiciously, so I slathered them with eczema cream, nuked a mug of milk, and came back to bed.

I feel as if I had been stuffed in a bag and beaten with a baseball bat. My eyes ache, my joints are stiff. Beloved did not sleep well; ergo I did not sleep well, and I finally understand why the husbands and wives in 1960s sitcoms slept in separate beds but that is not an option.

And I realized, halfway in, that I had begun the final round of increases on the waist shaping, one round too soon. I just said to heck with it (more or less) and forged on ahead.

It’s gonna be a Cherry Coke day.

So I wasn’t hallucinating?

As I was driving home the other day, I passed (or maybe was passed by) a car whose rear looked like this. Crossed flags like a Corvette. Shape like a Corvette. But across the back it said Callaway in bright chrome letters that looked like a professional installation. Here in North Texas, Callaway’s is a nursery. That black jobbie was the fastest, sleekest tree I’ve ever seen!

Oops, CallOway’s.

The next mystery to solve is a window decal I saw another morning on the back of a black SUV. It had something that might have been a scarab, might have been a samovar, might have been a Rubenesque ballerina sitting in a chair with her arms gracefully reaching for the ceiling in an approximation of fifth position.

It’s been a pretty amazing weekend. Beloved is on his way home from a deep sea fishing trip with his sons, their thoughtful, collective birthday gift to him this year. They left yesterday afternoon around 3:00. He expects to roll in around 2:30a.m. I expect to be asleep.

He says they caught eleven sharks and two kingfish. I guess the queenfish were all hanging out at Club Med? Shark has never exactly been on my bucket list, but if he fixes it, I will eat it, and it will probably be delicious. But I bet it won’t taste like chicken.

I baked a little over three dozen two-bite brownies to take to Secondborn’s last night for girls night out. Although technically I supposed it would have been more accurate to call it girls night in. Some of us put together a Lego version of Gringotts Bank from Harry Potter. We watched a brief music video, which led to a discussion of Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. Fourthborn sent me the link. I watched it after clothes-shopping but before grocery shopping. I had no idea that Neal Patrick Harris could sing! The harmonies are just delicious.

Mel and I got back to Garland (in separate cars) around midnight, and I was in bed before 1:00. I know. But what I did not know is that Beloved had accidentally set the alarm to go off at 7:00 this morning. I came mighty close to taking his name in vain while flailing about in an effort to silence the beast. Turnabout is fair play. I have no idea if he will be up for sacrament meeting tomorrow, but I will be there, same bat time, same bat station. And that alarm will go off right on schedule...

So what did I do today? Finished two separate pages on my financial spreadsheet, made a list of the October birthday cards to get (and bought them), had a nice chat on the phone with one of my new sisters out in California, and a great visit with BestFriend, who had an errand that brought her over to my side of the world, and I prevailed upon her to swing by before she headed back for home and housework and hubby. She got a tour of the kitchen, living room, dining room, and guest bathroom (of which she approves highly). And she has forgiven me for accidentally boob-dialing her number last night, not once but twice. This is what happens when I tuck my phone in my bra, and Fourthborn gets me to laughing uncontrollably. She [Fourthborn] had had an interesting day, nowhere near as fun as mine had been, and we went through the drive-in at Arby’s. The bag declared its contents to be Good Mood Food. Struck us funny. And if we hadn’t laughed, would have struck us again.

I have been wanting another lightweight jacket. So I did a whale of a lot of window shopping, and I tried on about a dozen things at CJ Banks and looked for but did not find anything at Lane Bryant and Kohl’s. Came home with a berry red corduroy jacket at 40% off. I think it will be stunning with my brown net skirt, once I finish repairing it, and if I can find a pair of lace-hemmed brown leggings to wear under the skirt.

I also drove up to Sprouts and came home with chick food. Healthy chick food, mind you, but chick food nonetheless. Baby croissants and salad mix and grape tomatoes and baby carrots and red seedless grapes and clementines and (shh, don’t tell Beloved!) pomegranate ice cream with dark chocolate chips. At great personal sacrifice, I am saving that for dessert tomorrow night. I also bought a pint of the mango Noosa yogurt I love so much, and I am going to enjoy some now. I’ve already had a nice salad, and my innards are smiling so hard that I feel as if I had gone dancing.

Speaking of which, sortof, I slept very well last night (although I did miss my husband, and I’m not just saying that because he reads the blog). No sheet wars. No restless leg syndrome. Thursday night it was like being in bed with “Moses Supposes”. He has yet to kick me, but it certainly makes for a lively night. ♥

The Family: A Proclamation to the World

There is, among some LDS bloggers, an ongoing celebration of this revelation given in 1995 (hence the button to the left of this page). Here are mes deux centimes for a cool and possibly rainy Tuesday morning.

“We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.” Hence our defense of traditional families. Don’t blame us. Take it up with the Almighty.

“All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.” This is where it gets personal. I gave birth to five lovely daughters, one of whom is in the process of turning herself into a handsome son. It is a tender subject. I have been granted a measure of peace over it. That will have to do, for now.

“In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshipped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine destiny as heirs of eternal life. The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally.” I bear you my witness that the sacred work which we do in the temples, is very real. I have not been privileged to see any of my ancestors whom I have served in the House of the Lord, but I have felt their presence and their gratitude.

“The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force. We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.” It was a lovely, sacred experience to witness Beloved’s firstborn and his bride make covenants which will bind them to God and to one another for the eternities. Their son, who will arrive next February, will be born in the covenant of eternal marriage. I look forward with great hope to the day, not far ahead, when I will be sealed to Beloved.

“We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God’s eternal plan.” In other words, sex is (or is intended to be) holy and sacred, as well as pleasurable and fun. Some of the sweetest and most awe-some experiences of my life, were when we were inviting little ones to come join our family.

“Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. “Children are an heritage of the Lord” (Psalm 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, and to teach them to love and serve one another, observe the commandments of God, and be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.” And for too long I used this paragraph to justify my anger toward the children’s father. He has once more regained temple worthiness and is hoping to be able to serve as a temple worker. If that happens, it will be Heavenly Father’s will, which is infinitely and eternally more important than my own. And if it does, our children and their children will be blessed (whether they like it or not) by having two of us serving in the House of the Lord.

“The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.” It is funny how time and circumstances can change one’s attitude. Mine in particular. Had I been the primary breadwinner when I was married to the children’s father, I would have been cranky. Seriously cranky. But now, when I bring home two paychecks a month, and Beloved has a monthly disability check that roughly equals my take-home pay (because of insurance premiums, savings accounts, and debt retirement), and he is the one who primarily keeps our home running smoothly, I can only hum along with a verse of one of my favorite hymns: “Time doth softly, sweetly glide, when theres love ... at ... home.”

“We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.” I have seen those calamities in my own family, following my divorce from the children’s father.

“We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.” Ergo, the Defense of Marriage Act, Prop 8, and other laws and ordinances as (unfortunately) necessary.

I should have left the house 15 minutes ago. There will be serious bending of the 12th Article of Faith on my commute to work this morning. I am such a work in progress...

Yesterday.

Truly sublime. Beloved’s eldest and his wife were sealed in the temple for eternity. What this means, in practical terms, is that if they honor their covenants to one another and to God, their marriage will last beyond “as long as you both shall live” or “until death do you part”. Yes, there is that kind of authority here on the Earth, in these days. This hearkens back to the Savior’s instruction to Peter that whatsoever he sealed on Earth would be sealed in Heaven (i.e., God would ratify that sealing) and whatsoever he loosed on Earth would be loosed in Heaven (i.e., my upcoming sealing cancellation to the chldren’s father so that I may be sealed to Beloved).

We went out for lunch afterward, to a chain restaurant near the temple. Beloved had a cup of chili which he says was the best restaurant chili he’s had and nearly as good as his own. I got the Southwest egg rolls, handed him one section, inhaled two more, and threw the remaining ones into a to-go box and dumped the rest of the sauce over them, as we had to be at the hospital in 20 minutes to get his chemo pump taken off.

Br. Sushi and another dear friend came to dinner tonight before heading on to the singles’ dance at our stake center. Beloved and I are heartily glad to be out of the singles’ program (especially glad that he was finally released as a stake singles’ representative), although I miss the dances, and he misses socializing with our friends in the program. I also miss my friends, don’t get me wrong, but I truly love to dance, and I miss feeling the music flow up from the floor through my feet and into my heart.

Beloved baked a German chocolate cake on Friday. He made the frosting yesterday, and I frosted it while he napped. He had thrown a pork roast into the crockpot. We had mashed sweet potatoes with butter, nutmeg, and real maple syrup. We also had sourdough bread and the vegetable jollop we both like. And lots and lots of visiting. I got almost all of the dishes into the dishwasher and run, and a couple of pots are still soaking in the sink. I’ll take care of that after breakfast.

I am really excited about teaching my Primary lesson today. We are still mining some of my favorite parts in the Book of Mormon, and so I can teach with conviction, personal experience, and testimony. Plus, there is a bit of food involved, which is nearly as much fun as the lessons which involve coloring, etc. (I hope I am not going to the warm place because my favorite part of teaching is making the handouts. I love it when the lesson has something for the kids to take home, or to work on during class. Although my heart was warmed in a good way when we were talking during last week’s lesson, and most of the kids said they loved to read ~ me too ~ but one of the girls said what she liked best was making things ~ me too.)

Speaking of making things, I passed halfway on the sweater body last night. In a couple of rounds I will start the increases which will restore the number of stitches on my needle to what I cast on at the hem. When we get home from church, I will juggle knitting with napping. I most devoutly hope that I get a longer nap today than I did yesterday.

UT Southwestern stoutly maintains that even if my HMO is willing to grant an out of network exception, they are not willing to play ball. Which ticks Beloved off, but which is just fine with me although I cannot explain why, other than I just don’t like them or feel good about them. And in far more exciting news, Beloved has another appointment at MD Anderson in a few weeks for a 20 minute consultation that we have been told is likely to last closer to three hours, and if that goes well he will go back for 10 to 14 days of treatment for the uprising of the metastasis to his liver. They call it a targeted therapy.

So we will do another lightning run down to Houston, leaving crazy-early in the day, having the appointment, and driving back the same day. My knee is up to that if I am sharing the driving, although I make no promises as to how effective I will be at work the next day. If he gets accepted, we will have to work out how much, if any, time I will spend down there with him. I’m definitely not up for driving down and back again, separately, and I don’t know if he would be up to picking me up at the airport if I were to fly down on an off day. But that’s all next month, and we will just take it a day at a time until then.

The evaluations are over at work, as near as I can determine, so I should be hearing later this week if I get part or all of the new attorney’s docket. With the things I learned while the others were observing my work, I have streamlined my workflow (and one of them is already quite impressed with it as it stood). I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.

Beloved is out of the shower, which means that breakfast is forthcoming, and it’s time for me to empty the dishwasher while he dresses so that he will have a clear field and I can shower while he cooks. We are getting this down to an art form.

We are also taking both cars to work, as we did last week, in case sacrament meeting is all he is up for. He is crazy-tired, but oh so kind and thoughtful and funny and a delight to be with. ♥

Oh barium me not on the lone prairie...

I’m sorry, I just couldn’t resist. We have some answers on Beloved’s recent symptoms: all of them side effects of the chemo. The fatigue, the shortness of breath, and as we learned from his eye exam yesterday, cataracts which are forming and will need to be dealt with. The retina scan shows healthy tissue, huzzah!

The swelling in his right leg has yet to go down. He has a new outbreak of slits on the soles of his feet from last week’s chemo. He made an interesting assortment of noises in his sleep last night, none of them of the ooh, baby, baby variety.

And in half an hour we hop in Lorelai and I take him for this week’s chemo.

In happier news, we tried a new restaurant last night. I spotted it when I was running errands on Saturday. O’live; they feature Lebanese fusion, whatever that is. It was better than average food, and we spent about twice what I would have liked. The felafels were small discs about the size of a BabyBel cheese, and browned to the point of almost being burnt. But their innards were delicious. The dolmas were meh; I like a lot more rice in mine, and these were skinny little things, about the size of my forefinger. I like the ones from Central Market a lot better, and you get more bite for your buck. I tried something new: manakish, a small flatbread pizza that is basically thyme and olive oil on a pita, with sesame seeds. It was really interesting, in a more-good-than-bad way. Beloved had the lamb shish kebab. I ate a bite of his lamb. It was not as gross as the lamb-burger we ate when the children’s father was at BYU and we couldn’t afford hamburger at $1.00 a pound, so we bought ground lamb at $.50 a pound, and I was pregnant with Firstborn. Beloved thought that some of his lamb tasted suspiciously like beef. There was some gristle. I got some in my bite, and he got more in his.

The service was excellent. We were the only ones there. The decor is lovely, and the background music is restful, and we will go back, but next time we’ll go for appetizers. Or dessert. Or a meal with no appetizers. Meanwhile, I have two slices of manakish that will go to work with me as part of lunch.

In other health news, Beloved has an appointment next Wednesday at UT Southwestern with the doctor for that clinical trial. I looked the doctor up on my HMO. He’s not a part of it. So I will be making phone calls this morning, assuming my workload permits.

My sweater is perking right along. Pure joy. Six more rounds until I do the last decrease for the waist shaping, and then after a pause there will be corresponding increases so that I return to the original number of stitches.

Beloved is almost ready for me to slather aloe on the booboo’s on his feet, so I had better proof and go. My bags are packed, all except for my lunch, and I have no idea what I want to wear today.

Progress notes.

There has been bread-baking this weekend; more is underway. We scored some excellent bread at the birthday bash last Monday, and Squishy sent Beloved the link. He is in the process of making a double batch of sourdough, to be followed shortly thereafter by a double batch of the other recipe. Crisp crust, nice browning, and wonderfully tender crumb. Not to mention the flavor, oh gracious the flavor!

I have done my own noodling-about in the kitchen. When in the mood, I like to make salads. I spent half an hour yesterday, carefully peeling half a dozen clementines to throw into our salad for dinner. Beloved browned a couple of chicken breasts in butter, and we killed the pasta leftover from Friday night. And now I am in the mood for coconut macaroons. One of those random temptations that entered my brain on the drive home, to be thwarted by a brief power outage.

Our AC gave went comatose on us yesterday. The lines froze up. Thankfully, our home teacher is an AC dude. They came over this afternoon for the previously-scheduled mutual HT and VT lessons, dragging a canister of coolant behind them. Turns out that the vacuuming-of-the-filter which Beloved did, just before they got here, took care of the major part of the problem. We are once more cooler than cool.

I have an explanation for this rash of symptoms Beloved is experiencing. The shortness of breath, weakness, sores in his mouth, lack of energy, et al, are all side effects of one or another of his chemo drugs. He was told that they might happen, fifteen months ago when he began chemo. But they are just now starting to catch up with him. The only amusing and non-annoying side effect is that his hair is getting darker, beginning at the back of his head. And his eyebrows are growing lush and curly.

I have completed the first hip/waist decreases on the sweater body, and on the next round I will do the next batch. I have done 18 rounds since I blogged on Friday morning. And hung two pictures in the guest bathroom. I am trying to decide where to hang a third. I would really love to know where in the middle bedroom that new Pottery Barn shower curtain might be.

Beloved is calling the oncologist tomorrow and making arrangements to have his swollen (but less-so) right leg Doppler'ed to make sure there is no blood clot causing the swelling. With as much Lovenox as he is taking, the chance of a blood clot is really quite small. But I’d love for them to figure out what’s up, and fix it if fixing is possible. I’m wondering if maybe he has a stress fracture like the one I had several years ago.

And I will be calling the eye doctor to make an appointment for him. I ought to make one for myself while I am at it. It’s been almost a year now: October 29.

We have (mostly, he has) watched a whale of a lot of football this weekend. Three college games yesterday. My hearing played tricks on me again. The announcer referred to the Florida Gators. What I heard was fornicators. Definitely put a hiccup in the next few stitches on my needles, as I was laughing so hard.

And on that note, I think I will print off the macaroon recipe and go feed the dishwasher.

Friday. Whew!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A-hem!

No, I am not clearing my throat. Yesterday I spent virtually all of my knitting time in stitching up the hem on this new sweater. Three hundred fifty-eight stitches. Finish work like this is something I generally dread, and now I have this bit of it out of the way. I just finished a pattern row and am anticipating the next five rounds of essentially mindless knitting.

Work went well yesterday. I finished one small project, dealt with Friday’s mail, transcribed a report for my attorney, and basically kept my shoulder to the wheel and my nose to the grindstone. It’s a little hard to type in that position, but I’m used to it, right?

Beloved is fishing with his best buddy. It has been too long since he went; I think this day will do wonders to improve his already way-better-than-average morale. As they say, a bad day fishing is better than a good day [something; I forget what]. He didn’t sleep all that well, and he’s a little short of breath. We think it’s just fall allergies, but I asked him to run that by his doctor on Thursday. I think we should check him for asthma, and maybe a sleep study, although the vision of him wrangling a CPAP mask and the chemo pump and the multiple trips to the loo during the night, is a darkly humorous one.

Y’all? if you are not already old, you will get there soon enough. Take care of the body you have. You won’t be getting another, at least not until the resurrection. A little wisdom and forethought (wisdom being one of those things we acquire through lack of forethought) may not guarantee you a problem-free middle age, but it just might minimize some of the indignities that come with aging. And if not, at least you will have the comfort of knowing you did the best you could with the information, and body, that you had.

I have a sudden craving for broccoli. That’s a little scary.

I spent a little time this morning preparing to pay bills on Friday. I think (I hope) that this month will have fewer spendy surprises than last. I have already picked up all but one of the gift cards we need, and I’ll take care of that one this weekend. All the birthday cards but one are signed and addressed and awaiting either a stamp or a personal visit. So this is what being a grownup feels like?

I realized with some amusement that one of the tote bags that Beloved’s mother left us is the right size and color to serve as my fall/winter purse. Last night I transferred her skincare products out of it (and the samples into my bathroom) and tossed my daily junk into it and put the old purse into the trash. That purse was $10 well spent. Now I just need to save up to buy a nice, sensible leather purse, the kind I used to be able to buy for $5 when I was a kid, but which now cost $150.

Gilda was right: it’s always something.

But hark! what brat through yonder window breaks?

Birthday lunch over at Mel’s folks’ this afternoon. Half a dozen different kinds of bratwurst, all grilled to perfection. Ate mine on a bolillo roll the size of a toddler’s football, a generous half cup of potato salad, and two bottles of water, at which point there was no more room at the inn, Mary.

We delegated the tie-dyeing of two of Beloved’s short-sleeved dress shirts to Squishy, came home, and took a nap. Mel and Squishy have gnomed our flower bed, right by the front door. But the best gift Beloved got [at least in this woman’s opinion] was the card they gave him: Grim Reaper is out cold on the floor, a small red dog standing over him, holding a baseball bat, and looking triumphant; inside it says “don’t let the b@st@rd win!” At which I let out a most undignified yelp of glee.

We have been busy bees all weekend. Baking and eating and visiting and churching and napping and visiting and eating and baking and visiting and ... you get the idea. This morning I emptied that small bookcase out in the hall, transferred its contents to other bookcases, and set it atop the desk on my side of the bed. After we got home from Mel’s folks’ house, I spent 15 or 20 minutes finding new homes for all the stuff I had removed from the floor, desk, entrance to the closet, etc., in order to get at the top of the desk, so we could take the aforementioned nap.

Dinner was one large root beer float apiece, and half a slice of French silk pie. Dessert, methinks, will be the first Indiana Jones movie. Beloved shares his birthday with Squishy, and on the day that P went into labor, Beloved took the twins to go see Indy.

Firstborn, don’t faint. The Scentsy burner that you gave me, now has a proper place.

I have a small dishpan of papers to sort and alphabetize for filing, and then I’m going to knit through the rest of the movie. In about five more rounds, I will have enough length in the body of the sweater that I can go ahead and stitch up the hem without interfering with live stitches. Beloved says there is one last small thing to do in the guest bathroom, and then we can start clearing the decks to create my walk-in closet. Life is good.

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.