Knitterish

As I am typing, Mom is being packed up and transported a couple of miles away from UCSF Medical Center to St. Mary's rehabilitation hospital. Surprise! She is making excellent progress, and they will be dealing with whichever medical issues she still has going and getting her ready to go HOME. Well, HERE, for a week or two, and then HOME. Huzzah! I still need a kitty home for her cat Maggie Mae. Please help.

There was an essay out there in the 80's entitled All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten. Watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Eschew obfuscation, my dear internets. Things aren't always as complicated as we think.

I am finding that not everything, but a great deal of what I need to know, I can learn from knitting. I've been using a daily calendar from the writings of Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, Never Not Knitting. A year in review of the pages I kept because they spoke to me at some level, or just amused me excessively, is showing me that I've picked the right hobby. What I do with my days, I want to do well, and take joy in it. Things aren't as complicated as I think. After all, in knitting there's just one stitch - it's what you do with it that makes all the difference.

Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or doing it better. -John Updike

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about. -Charles Kingsley

There is a fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness." -Dave Barry

A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money but even practices it without any hope of doing it well. -G. K. Chesterton

Habits are first cobwebs, then cables. -Spanish Proverb

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night." -Charles M. Schultz

It is a long road from conception to completion. -Moliere

Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit, either. - Elizabeth Zimmerman

When you follow your bliss...doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else. -Joseph Campbell

Knitting is a human activity. It's okay if it looks like a human did it. -Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

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Hello, my dear Internets. All the news that's fit to post is that Mom is days away from the rehab hospital and so very ready to be sprung. There are just a few medical issues to button up. Rehab will be for gaining physical strength and adjusting to the limitations that have been placed on her body, both during the healing process and afterward. I'm looking forward to having her here for a couple of weeks. She already feels different, better, with just a different level of discomfort and pain than she had pre-surgery.

The rest of this post is a phone-in - sorry, I just need to go to bed. Here is something entertaining for you all. Good night.

Free to Good Home

Today was a full day! We went to first service, then hit the road directly to go visit Mom. She is allowed to sit up for 40 minutes at a time with her brace on, and can go for short walks whenever she wants. Her energy is still low, though, and she poops out quickly. We entertained her while she sat and had lunch, then walked with her down to the solarium on her floor (12th, on a hill) to enjoy the corner windows looking out over north San Francisco. Most importantly, we delivered the chocolate chip nurse bribery cookies she requested.

Mom has decided that she can't keep her cat. Maggie Mae is a sweetie but a little persnickety, likes to play speed bump in the hall while Mom is walking and sometimes wakes Mom up at night by doing things like walking on her face. I'm searching for a home for her, with the no-kill shelter as a last resort. I feel bad about this. It doesn't mean that Mom can't have a cat in the future; it's just too hard to take care of her properly during her recovery, and the threat of being tripped is too high. Anyone want a kitty?

After our visit, we zoomed back to Sacramento for the remainder of play practice, and got home from music practice about 20 minutes ago. I found a dress - in my closet. It's a pink and ivory floral, and with a pair of nude footless tights will work very well. I put it on and gave the director one of my lines, and she liked my "expressive feet" so much I was asked to play the role barefoot. I think I curled my toes and stood a bit pigeon-toed or something. I curled my toes because I really need a pedicure, or at least to paint my toenails!

When we got home, Rick decided he needed a good fire in the fireplace, and has been fiddling with it for over 20 minutes. Between raking leaves yesterday and just over four hours of driving today, I need a hot bath!

'Tis the Season

Fa la la la la.
This was taken with a zoom lens, so the true depth and height of this pile of leaves in the center of which I was standing over knee high can not be fully appreciated. There were a lot of leaves, and the tree is only beginning its annual dump on our lawn. Soon, it will start shoving wads of the suckers into our back gutters and carpeting our roof. We got a late start this morning, and only the back lawn and some of the beds were attended to today. It had been a while over two weeks since we last mowed, so Rick had to do a few passes.

Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming...

I had a chance to talk to Mom for a while this afternoon. She was moved into her own room this morning (the woman in the other room was "really bizarre") and she worked with Physical Therapy for a long time today. She was surprised at how much progress she made. Her central line and arterial line have been removed, and an IV change put the thing exactly where she wanted it, in a comfy spot that still allows full arm and hand motion. One of the elders from her church now works at UCSF Medical Center as a pediatric neurologist, commuting on the weekends back home to Fresno, and both he and his wife have visited multiple times. Mom's cousin Geneva and our friends Rusty and Nikki have also dropped by. To add to her social whirl, she had a few dozen text messages to sort through. Overall, it was a good day!

It was a productive day on this end, too. I've started another batch of No Knead Bread, cleaned the kitchen, and all but recovered the four inches I had to frog from the sweater I'm knitting. Tomorrow is a work day, with most of the work being outside - both lawns, and the ridiculous overgrowth of shrubbery all around the house. The bushes in front, the jasmine on the side, and the honeysuckle in back all need serious pruning. We expect to fill the green waste container to overflowing, and hopefully reclaim our reputation in the neighborhood. I'd hate to become "that" house, the one that looks like it's already in foreclosure and pulls everyone's values down even further due to general disrepair.

There are so many little tasks to do around the house, not to mention the refurbishment and remodeling projects we would like to accomplish. We would really like to replace the cracked cement patio with pavers, and put up a cover that would allow something pretty to grow up and around, providing shade and visual appeal back there. The bushes in front of our bedroom window will be replaced this winter with roses. The gutters need replacing, both front and back. The whole front yard needs sprinkler work. We have a lot to do, and right now we have zero budget, so I make lists and dream a little, and keep in mind that time and money are inversely proportional in any home improvement job. You can spend a lot of personal time on a project like installing a new sprinkler system, or you can bury fistfuls of cash, in a matter of speaking, with virtually the same result. It's odd how often that trade-off crops up in life!

Internet Shopping-palooza FAIL

Mom Report: Mom is out of ICU and in a normal room. She will be in the hospital through the weekend, at very least, and at a rehabilitation hospital after that for one to two weeks. She feels lousy, but she is able to sit in a chair and shuffle around a little. Physical therapy is starting already, but at press time she hasn't been on an official "walk" yet. Her body is reacting normally to having had three surgeries in six days, and the effects will resolve themselves within a couple of weeks.

I am seriously out of practice writing for this blog. I seem to have lost my will to write well. Daily blogging will get me back in shape soon, I promise.

Rick and I have parts (multiple) in our Christmas play this year. We started late, but the play is low-maintenance and has modern costuming. Unlike last year, there will be no standing on the stage until three in the morning as a target at which to aim large lights! For my part as Eve, with Rick as Adam in a pink Oxford shirt and khakis, I need to find a simple, pretty, floating dress in pink. Only recently have I discovered how much I like wearing pink. A pretty pink dress would be nice. I would prefer it be fairly modest and shockingly inexpensive. Thus far, the interwebs have failed me...this is the only contender -

- but it's $2,570.00. A smidge out of my price range! And this one, and many more like it -

- are right out. Searching for "modest dresses" often lands me on LDS pages and other similar sites, with swimwear that suitably covers the ankles and tips on how to dress appropriately for a church dance. Oy vey. I agree with a lot of it, mind you, and I think modesty is highly underrated. They just don't have what I am looking for. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Movie Night

Mom sat in a chair for a while this morning in the ICU. Her nurse said she was doing fine medically; how she's feeling is another matter, and can be officially labeled "yucky."

We're watching GI Joe with friends, and understand a major plot device is a sinking iceberg. I asked what in the world would cause an iceberg to sink, and Rick replied, "Bad writing." Not one to easily stomach action movies, I've been frogging four inches of the sweater I've been knitting due to some serious errors made last week. I was awfully distracted, I guess! Picking up 212 stitches is keeping my attention diverted from the mayhem on the screen.

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