Bits and Pieces

Mom is scheduled for a mastectomy on Friday. It looks promising that she may not need chemo, but we won't find out until they dissect the sentinel nodes during the surgery. The current plans are somewhat fluid, but most likely I'm going to be driving up to pick her up and bring her back here initially, and then either I'll drive her back home (she's having surgery three states over from her home, but only one from me), or Dad will come up and get her. She and Dad are sounding much more like themselves now that there's a plan of action. My father does not like having a medical crisis that he can't do anything about, and I think that was a lot of why he sounded so anxious when I first spoke to him - they got the biopsy results late on a Friday, cancer is out of his expertise, and he couldn't really do anything until the following Monday - cue an anxious, out-of-sorts guy.

Dad W's oncologist has decided she's unhappy with how fast he's rebounding from his anemia (I.e. very slowly), and has decided to add an additional treatment to the Procrit injections he currently gets once a week. The new treatment will mean going to the hospital twice a week. I hope I can talk them into making one of the visits concurrent with his Procrit, or that's going to be an awful lot of time eaten up - getting Dad W ready to go out, out the door, to the hospital, treated, and then back home and settled takes about two hours, even though the hospital is ten minutes away.

I learned the end of Urashi Bo tonight. I'm liking this one quite a lot, but it's going to cause problems for the April 10 tournament I mentioned last time. Urashi Bo is too new for me to do a really good job with it - but I went back and practiced Tokumine no Kun today, and Urashi has also done a good job of making me hesitant with Tokumine - they're so similar in spots that it's confusing my muscle memory. So now I have to decide (and quickly!) whether to work hard on bringing Urashi up to snuff, go back to drilling Tokumine, or try to work up Chatanyara no Sai, which has languished the last month and is nowhere near ready. Great - fried brain is in no condition to make decisions! Don't make me make decisions!

In kidlet news, Robbie continues to do well with his flute, having put his sights on third chair (he started at sixth and is currently at fourth). If he gets up to second chair he's going to have a dilemma, because first chair is the girl he's had a crush on for the last three years. To celebrate his increased flute facility, I got him a book of flute and piano songs, with the promise (reinforced by my organ teacher) that if he learns one well, we can play it together for the offertory at church sometime.

Aaron is still running straight A's for the year (and is adoring having better grades than his brother). We should get the results back on his ISTEP tests in about a month, but everyone including his teacher and him thinks that he likely did very well.

Unfortunately, Aaron is very grumpy with lots of semi-meltdowns today because his shoulder started hurting him over the weekend and it's still bothering him. We took him to his pediatrician just as a precaution (mainly because he didn't do anything obvious to injure it, so we're a little mystified), and she gave us the expected advice - ibuprofen, heat, rest. Aaron is quite put-out. He expected the doctor to be able to fix his shoulder, isn't that what doctors are for?

And I decided a bad week and no husband deserved a small treat. So I bought myself a shawl pattern - Heere be Dragones. The same seller makes several other equally stunning shawls, including patterns of a Chinese Dragon of Happiness, a Pegasus, a Celtic Dragon, and a bird in a bamboo forest. However, I'm not a huge shawl knitter, so I restrained myself.

And that's the news down in Wood territory.

Home Again, Home Again Jiggety-Jog

We're back home again, having driven down from the reunion (in Minnesota, about 2 1/2 hours north of Minneapolis) yesterday - yes, all in one day. We hit the road at 6:30am which was a rude shock for the boys, who had been getting up between 9 and 10 all week. It backfired on us a little, as Aaron had some motion-sickness due to the discombobulation. He used to be prone when he was tiny, but hadn't thrown up in a car in years - until yesterday. Fortunately once he dropped off back to sleep he was fine.

The reunion was lovely. The reunion was at a lake. We had a protected swimming area (about 4' deep), with two water trampolines and a slide, a playground area, and a ping-pong table. There were boats and golfing available, but we never availed ourselves of them. We spent late afternoons swimming pretty much every day. Robbie is turning into a proper fish - I got lots of practice with throws by tossing him for a dunking every time he would splash me. Aaron is only just getting comfortable with deeper water, but made lots of progress. I think by next summer he'll have it down. We didn't get to spend as much time with my eldest brother and his family as we would have liked. Their eldest has autism and reacts badly to having his schedule mangled, so they only came up for one night (and the surrounding days). He's a sweetheart, though, much more affectionate and willing to have bodily contact than I'm used to with autistic kids. We gave him a Neopets dragon (talking, interactive toy) for his birthday, and it drew a smile out of him. We also got to meet his PCA, who is delightful herself. Apparently he took to her immediately when my SIL interviwed her, after hiding from all the other candidates.

Mom was also not much seen, as she came down with a nasty cold the day after we arrived. Mostly she stayed in and slept, showing up in late afternoon and then taking off again after dinner. She was still coughing and sniffling on the last day, but plainly feeling somewhat better. Fortunately we get another shot on Tuesday when she and Dad drive by here on their way back home.

We did get to see a good deal of my brother Bill and his wife and daughter, as well as my Dad. Bill and Kathryn (my niece), and I undertook to teach Robbie ping-pong. He did pretty well, moving from a 19 handicap to a 17 handicap over the course of about three days. By his last day, he was ready for me to drop his handicap against me to a 15. By contrast, when I was taught by my brothers, albeit at 6 not 10, I spent a couple of years playing with a 20 handicap. Bill is a ferocious player, and Kathryn is no slouch. Dad isn't as vigorous, but he's got plenty of experience and as a lefty with a deft touch with spin, he's dangerous himself. I play with a 10 handicap against Bill and 5 against both Kathryn and Dad - which I don't think is too shabby when the last time I played ping-pong was 11 years ago.

Rob got lots of lounging time, which he desperately needed. He actually spent the first three days reading and sleeping, which is almost unheard of for him. Usually he's itching to go do something after about one day of lounging.

I brought my tonfas and sais and managed to get in several sessions of kata practice. Apparently the people in the cabin next door found this very amusing. They spent mornings sunning out on the dock, and generally by the time I had gotten through one or two katas, they would have all turned around and started providing commentary on what I was doing. The more I use the tonfas Rob made me, the better I'm liking them - it's just such a treat to have something that's made to my exact measure.

My main project for this trip has been penguin socks - visible in the book cover in the photo at the top of the page. The first sock is almost done and it's coming out really cute. The directions aren't terribly good though. They're close enough to figure it out if you're an experienced sock knitter, but I woudn't recommend them otherwise. They've named the main color "M", and then don't differentiate it in the directions from the "M" of "make 1", their charts aren't well proofed (at least two errors in the penguin chart), and they just generally aren't as clear as they should be. There are several cute patterns in the book though, and I'm already planning on making their ladybug socks for my youngest niece.

So - home again, home again. Sensei has already called to say we're a go at the Jazzercise place, so starting Tuesday we're back on a regular schedule at a regular location. Go us!

A Little Knitting

I'm just about ready to restart normal life. I went to two karate classes this week and was able to make it through both, even if I was staggering by the end (my stamina still sucks). Tuesday I think I'll go back to yoga to start easing back into my full exercise routine - I don't think I'm quite ready for Turbokick yet. Probably next week.

In the meanwhile, I got started on a new sweater - the one you see pictured at right over here. It's the Arietta pattern from the current edition of Knitty . I've chosen some different colors to do it in, as the warmish browns really don't excite me any. Instead my five colors are hyacinth (a light blue-purple), violet, sky blue, aquamarine (a pale color) and turquoise (which is quite dark). I'm about 1 1/2 color repeats up the back thus far. It's slow going, since this is a fine guage (25 st./4") plus it's mosaic knitting, so two rows knitted for every one row up. Fortunately for me I like fine-guage knitting (I did an adult sweater in fine sock yarn once). Plus I've never done mosaic knitting before and I'm finding it pretty neat. Two colors in every row without ever having to knit with two colors at once. Cool!

The rest of what I'm doing this week is getting the house ready for guests on Saturday (See you soon, Bill, Kelly & Kathryn!), filling out annoying forms for a week's summer camp for the kids, and working on a major edit on Ghost Dancer, which is worth a post all its own - probably my next one. Gee, maybe the slow going on the sweater isn't just the fine guage.