Fiber Follies

I awoke yesterday with a very hot, angry looking red spot on my arm. With faint pink lines extending toward the crease of my elbow. I pondered this. Was it the dreaded red lines of a systemic infection?

Rang the doctor's office to see if it counted as an emergency. The answering system goes something like this:

Please listen carefully to the following options:

If this is a real emergency, disconnect and dial 911

If you wish to leave a non-urgent message press 1

If you need a referral, press 2

If you wish to speak with the secretary, press 3

I pressed 3, expecting a short wait like the previous day. After 32 minutes and 48 seconds of waiting for the secretary, I gave up. I didn't know if this was an emergency or not, I only wanted to ask if it were. So I wasn't dialling 911, after all, I figured, I was ambulatory and thinking rationally enough to dial the office. I rang again, pressing 1. I left a message fully expecting the secretary to ring me back around the lunch hour.

Meanwhile, my arm was sore, it looked awful, and I wasn't feeling so well. I fretted and fussed and fed the Schade kitty her tablespoon-full of gruel hourly. Noon arrived with no response.

No problem, I'll run to the post to drop off a package. I always leave the mobile number for return calls anyway. Then a trip to the coffee shop for a chat with Precious Child and a nice lunch. Still no call from the doctor's office. I drove to the nearby volunteer ambulance corps to see if I had an emergency situation.

The place was staffed with plenty of people, all willing to have a look, to ask a few questions, and to try and determine the emergency-ness of my arm.

No one admitted if it were an emergency or not. They did, however, offer me a ride to hospital, saying the arm was in an alarming condition, even though I was already on antibiotics. One informed me that the two hospitals to which my doctor is affiliated were "red", meaning a 6 to 8 hour wait for treatment. I politely declined the offer-I'd rather drive myself anyway. They were a jolly good group. I think I'll send them something to say thanks.

Back to the coffee shop, calling the doctor's office again on the way. I randomly pressed another option and got a live voice at the medical answering service! No help however, as far as whether this was a 911 sort of situation. The operator did give me a number to the medical practice next door, where a kindly secretary not only hopped right on the line but insisted on taking notes. She trotted the message directly to my doctor who called just after I'd settled in with a cuppa. Come on in, he told me, and I'll have a look.

I finished my fifty-eighth cup of coffee and headed out.

I was sent immediately in. A temp check revealed a low fever. He was impressed with the very hot red swelling.

He took out his pen, then drew a line round the very hot red swelling. If the redness and swelling extended beyond a certain point around that line, I was to go to hospital for an antibiotic IV.

This new treatment consisting of an inked line was too novel to keep to myself. I returned to the coffee shop to show it off. I proudly kept my sleeve pushed up so people could admire my line. By the seventy-third cup of coffee that day, Precious Child was off work and could run to the service station with me to pump fuel into the gasping empty tank. I was exhausted, my arm ached like crazy, and Doctor had firmly instructed me to rest, which means getting others to do things for me. And Precious Child is always up for the fun.

I don't know if it really was a pen or some new magic medical thing, but that line seems to be a force field round the injury. This morning, the fever is receding, the redness is fading-in fact, is retreating within the force field. It looks like a map-I want to add rivers and highways, the mountains are already there. Maybe they're volcanoes-these mountains have holes on top.

Since I'm still off work and gardening and knitting and housework for another day or so, I believe I must visit a yarn shop. Or go thrift-whoring. Or something. That's resting, isn't it?

Poor little Schade! She's been vomiting almost everything for several days.

I rang the Vet's on Friday morning, and followed the recommendation to feed bland diet. She's eating everything. She loves the meat baby food-it's just ground meat and water with a little starch. Bland and looks like it's been down once, but she'll eat it right off the spoon. And the soft kibble, mmmm. Eats cheerfully, like usual her meticulous nibbly eating one morsel at a time and carefully chewing it. Then walks away and horks it all up. Sunday night she unloaded what looked like a week's groceries-the mounds were bigger than she is! Vet's took her right in yesterday, shaving her neck for a CBC and thyroid test, and kept her for x-rays and intravenous fluids. Dr. mentioned possibility of a blockage or an infection.

Once I got to my office, I scared the bejabbers outta myself by Googling cat vomiting. Oh mercy. Horrible dreams followed, all involving the poor, vulnerable little Schade, undoubtably having her own nightmares about being abandoned in a place where she was poked with needles and IVs…

Dr rang me this morning to tell me my little kitty was doing okay. Poor little thing was terrified, although everyone there took great troubles making her as comfortable as possible. I had to take Catnip in for butt mats-he's just too fat to clean himself properly. Beautiful Dr C herself came in to shave the mats off, telling me she thought my Schade would recuperate better at home, being so spooked by the strange surroundings. Elation! Little Kitty-Girl can come home!

Um. I forgot that I was holding Catnip steady for his butt shave. This is a cat who goes into attack mode when at the vet's. It take two or even three people to control him for a simple ear check. Even a stethoscope is The Enemy.

The fat *beep* sunk his teeth, right to the hilt, into my forearm! Then, for good measure, he raked my wrist with his hind claw.

Dr C strongly urged me-STRONGLY URGED ME-to call my doctor right off. She directed me to wash the punctures thoroughly, which I did while ringing the doctor on my mobile. I was instructed to immediately get there for treatment. Immediately! I had under 45 minutes to get there-a drive normally taking an hour. I was pretty scared by the time I got there. It just wasn't fun driving far too fast this time!

I was sent off with a Px for an antibiotic called Augmentin, which sounds like a breast enhancement drug. I'm supposed to soak my arm in warm water and elevate it. Haven't figured out how to soak an elevated arm yet.

I stopped at the druggist, got my breast enhancement antibiotics, cleaned the carrier, and shot off to fetch Schade. By the time the day's fun was over, I'd been away from the office for several hours, was cranky and upset and just wanted to crawl into the closet away from everything but a cat or two.

I'm sitting quietly, watching the punctures swell. sigh. Hopefully I'll be back to working and knitting and gardening soon.

May is now established, in true Northeast fashion. It began nice and warm. Like summer, without the excess heat and humidity. Sunshine brought out the first May blooms.

Today we have returned to March. Rain I can handle. But rain and cold?

It’s too cold to go out and take pictures of the newest blooms, so I’ll do that another day.

Precious Child and her husband stopped by a few nights ago, with an early Mother’s Day gift of two trees! (I love these kids.) One is Syringa patula, a lovely little lilac whose blooms extend beyond normal lilac season. It’s a more compact lilac too. I’ve put it directly in front of the door, where the azaleas turned brown and dry. I just cannot do azaleas, goshdarnit. No matter my effort, the ungrateful little plants sneered their way into death. All I have to show for my troubles are a few feeble leaves off to one side of one plant. Out they came. Now they can spend eternity in the woody compost pile. Heck with them. The birds can get better use of the things. Birds like nesting in the woody pile. Probably so they have more immediate access to the cold pile’s worms.

I dug a vast hole, and filled it with layers of compost, rotted horse manure, and plain dirt. I don’t bother with mixing the amendments in-it’s a deal of hard work and all plants (except ungrateful azaleas) get busy thriving in their layered mess. The plant looks so teeny on its mound!

The other gift plant is a superb magnolia-the Leonard Messel. I haven’t planted it yet, simply because I couldn’t decide an appropriate place for it. The Husband and I strolled the front yard yesterday looking for a place that would provide it the best conditions, and provide us the best view when it blooms. Maybe we’ll be digging its hole in the cold and damp tonight. Maybe we’ll be smart and wait til tomorrow, when the rain should clear up and it will only be cold.
Here are some of the April through early May blooms.

A small turnout but a happy one!

It was Stash Swap Night. Deb, our newest member, arrived with quite a sack full of yarns. I'd only carried in a measly three skeins, Christa came with a bunch, Nina had a few skeins. I'll send Deb the remaining skeins of a certain cheap inexpensive, yet nice fingering I'd offered. I'd got myself a half dozen skeins but haven't got round to using them yet. I had two with me, and will give her the other four. And will likely buy myself more sometime. It's nice yarn. Her instructions were to take what we want and donate the rest to Crafts, Bits & Pieces, a volunteer-operated and donations-stocked crafts supply shop across Main Street from the Coffee Shop. It will be hard to decide which to part with. But what a nice way to share the fun. Unfortunately Deb could only stay a short while. She's working on a sock. I wish I'd gotten a picture of her gorgeous sock but Precious Child's drop spinning demonstration was so fun I forgot half the pics I wanted to get. You can see that Precious Child's hair is growing back! It's still cute and fuzzy.

She gave us a fine demonstration. Deb and Nina were keenly interested in it. I, however, having already proven myself a miserable failure in drop spinning, stood back to let the others have a good look and a try at it. It is fun. I'd tried repeatedly and managed about two inches of what resembled yarn out of several feet of roving. I did have it neatly wound on the spindle, just not yarned. Hopefully some day I'll resume lessons on the wheel, which seems easier to me.

Precious Child also brought in stitch markers she'd made. She gave out several. Lookee what she gave me:

I like these-a lot. The spirals remind me of Knowth, and the word beads will keep me smiling as I slaughter future WIPs. That's a WIP underneath the markers. I wish I'd had them when I cast on. I resorted to paper clips when casting on for this baby. Whew.

Nina came to the meeting! This is one of the world's most wonderful ladies. Beautiful, petite, smart, fun, and hilarious. She's got it all, folks. A remarkable joie de vivre, just the sort to make all life's irritants seem nonexistent. I'm not sure how I got by before meeting Nina. Sanity saver. She's got two great kids and a husband who's as full of life as her. Grown kids, yet. Just a few months ago the entire family descended on Disney World. I don't think the place has recovered yet.