Back at it

I had the booster Covid vaccine yesterday, and exactly as anticipated, it laid me low. This shot was easier than the first two; I got there and back and ate lunch before it swept me off my feet. I woke up long enough to consider supper, then fell back asleep until today.

Speaking of supper, I've located a number of sources of ready made meals. I'm currently using one just down the road, in Cuyahoga Falls. The modus operandi of all of them is to have local cooks, and the food is either delivered or picked up. I'm using CleanEatz currently, about five miles down the road. They are pick up only of preordered meals. Here is one of their meals I've enjoyed.

Pot roast. I added a slice of bread, for extra volume, and put the slice back in the bread bag. I stuffed myself on this meal, and when I had the second pot roast meal I'd ordered, I could not finish the last couple of potato chunks.

Another company I'm considering, for their large selection of meals, is CookUnity. I have no good sense of how they operate, and have not tried them yet. They are based out of New York. I believe they use local cooks, then ship. The link is to their service area map. It's quite big.

Anyway, I've solved the meal problem.

I have not resolved the back pain problem, but it is marginally under control, and I'm closing in on small hints at the problem. After all these years, I believe my office chair is letting me down. My leg can be pain free when I sit, and when I attempt to rise, wham, pain stabs.

I've ordered a new chair that supposedly is squishy soft, which is tolerable. 

In the event it's not soft enough, I added a three inch cushion.

Good news, I guess. When I got up from this afternoon's nap, I went straight to weaving, and arrived at the last bobbin before half done. Maybe I'll have this set done by the weekend, and that would be a good thing, as I'm down to three colors again.

Some history

My sister and I began weaving about the same time, in the early eighties. In a short time we had more than we could give away, and began exhibiting a local shows. At the time we lived in two different houses, in two counties, a good forty five minutes apart. One day she said if we really were to do this (weave and sell), we needed to be working from the same house.

The two houses were put up for sale and we began looking. One afternoon Jan called me and said she found a contender, and we should look at it together.

We bought the house in 1988, and wove and sold at shows until 2003. Jan was tired of weaving and had already begun quilting. That wing to the left was our studio. It held ten looms, and later on Jan's long arm quilting machine and all her sewing machines.

In 2016, more or less, the house was becoming a little more than we could physically maintain. It was sold, and I moved just a block away. L was beginning high school and I still worked for the township, and needed to stay in the township.

There were two offers on the house, identical in every way except the woman also would pay for the inspection, and the man said I must. I accepted the woman's offer. The man tried to start a bidding war, I turned him down. The house belonged to the woman and her mother, rather like Jan and I began all those years ago.

K, the new owner, was easy to befriend. She and Laura hit it off at once. I once posted a picture of the two of them on the fall MetroPark hiking spree. K has been L's go to person pretty much since they met.

Back to the house up there, K lived here with her mother and her two sons. But in the last five years, K's mother has passed, her sons have graduated high school and are in college, and worst by far, before the vaccine, K contracted Covid, and now is a long hauler. There is nothing pretty about that!

K invited me to come live in the house some time ago, and I turned her down. But thinking of the winter to come, this past summer I called and asked if the offer still stood. So now I rent the two rooms on the right, on the east end.

You can see two windows of the front room, which is my studio. The little window in the middle is the bathroom, the back room is my (old) bedroom. I also have the laundry room, which is under the front porch, and my old bay in the garage (no more snow on the car!).

I hope that catches up everyone, and you will know to whom I refer when I drop new names. At least when I mention K.

Ready for tomorrow

It's Friday, and what a week. I believe every day included a nap, thank goodness! I finished the emerald towels and they are cut and stacked to sew tomorrow.

I went for a much overdue haircut, and decided to go back to my no muss, no fuss, minimal hair. What a relief; the wind can whistle past my ears.

A woman was seated next to me. She left her little dog tethered to a chair leg, out of sight beyond the counter. The old fellow let out the smallest, saddest little yip, and with permission the owner went back and gathered him up.

It's a ten year old rescue who does not trust his person to return. How sad.

In other news, I've scheduled a booster Covid shot. At the beginning of the year, when vaccinations were somewhat of a mystery, I was all over scheduling shots and helped my sister arrange her shot and her husband's. This booster is a mystery to me, but when she announced she and Tom were done, I went to her site and scheduled mine for next Wednesday.

The other big news is discovering ready made meals, for pick up or delivery. There are so many options I believe I'll go a week at a time, checking them out. I've ordered six meals from a national company, CleanEatz, located in Cuyahoga Falls. The week's menus are posted every Thursday, for pickup Sunday. They will bring the package to my car.

The car turned out not to need a new battery.  I knew I'd replaced the battery recently; the clerk came out from the garage and showed me it was this past January. My battery merely needed an hour charge, to return it to normal. I do like the towing company that came to jump the car two days in a row, but I'd never buy a battery from them. It's just not their business.

While I waited for the mechanic last time, I took a look around at the old place. K has been so sidelined by her bout with Covid, maintenance has been furthest from her mind.

Blake offered to come help me with any jobs I wanted and I told him save his courage for spring. That garden desperately needs his and Hamilton's ministrations. 

Needs must

Been away a long time, it feels. Back now, and working up to a hundred percent. Had that long needled shot Monday afternoon; slept a lot since. Too much Novocain and dye. But I've been weaving, too, between naps. I'm about four bobbins from done.

I like to pick out the next color and put it to the end of the row of spools. Soon, I hope to use the color I picked!

I'd picked kiwi to be next, you may remember, and then the last of the "real" greens left the shelf, so I picked emerald instead. That soft melon color toward the center presented itself as a good color to go next, until the last of the blue towels left. So, it will be a blue next, probably the next to the last on the left.

Physical therapy is ahead, too. There was very minimal walking these last six weeks, and I will not be back to my cane without serious exercise. That begins a week from Friday.

Today I did put the walker in the car and headed to the post office with an order. It was not as cumbersome as I expected, and the clerks were happy to see me again, though they assured me my deputies had done well.

The car has not been started since the end of August! The door did not unlock by a push of the button. In the driver's seat, the engine had no intention of turning over. So, I sat in the warm sunshine and waited for AAA to come start it. The fellow told me I had about 45% of my three year old battery left.

There is a problem I still must solve. Food! Meals on Wheels will not cut it, at least not the food prepared for Summit County, Ohio. Portage County seems to produce better meals, but Summit is an abysmal disappointment.

Last night I had Salisbury mush steak with a layer of salt gravy, mixed veggies and cubed potatoes coated in salt and paprika. Even limiting myself to the potatoes and veggies, I had a raging headache.

Tonight I had ziti and two tray portions of veggies. Even scraping most of the meat sauce off the ziti, the salt content was overwhelming. My esophagus and stomach burn.

Last night I spent a lot of time investigating the delivery capability of local restaurants, and finally coming to the conclusion I could not afford that. I thought about it on and off today, and a phrase jumped into my mind: Ready made meals near me. Bonanza.

I found a dozen sites on the internet, and the meals look healthy. Something to investigate tomorrow, between weaving, having a car repair made and visiting with my sister.

Idle hands, etc.

These last six weeks have been long! I am a type A personality, I guess. It may be something you come with, but I also know I was raised to not be idle. I learned to pass my radio, and later TV, time with handwork. I didn't teach myself, my mother put something into my hands.

And now, this stultifying pain doesn't give a damn what I am. I defeat it in large blocks of time by sleeping. That generally follows a night of not sleeping, and then, no matter what my plan, I fall on the bed and sleep away two, three, four hours. 

I did that this morning. It put a serious crimp in my plans for the day, which were to pack an order, finish hemming the cerise towels and do the laundry, including changing the bed. In spite of three or four extra hours this morning, I got all of that done except bring the laundry back upstairs.

Dozing over my news feed this afternoon, who came in but L. After hugs and news, guess who lugged up the dry clothes and even made my bed. L, of course.

I did accomplish much of the rest, including this sort of victory lap picture:

This photo taken October 3rd, after the run of lavender was finished.

And this photo taken this afternoon, when I finished hemming the cerise and threw a few shots before leaving the studio. Two weeks. There is hope of accumulating some towels for the township's little show in early December.

I think this new color is emerald. I've had it for two or three years and can't match it well to the color chart. 

A day of happy surprises and nice memories

Yesterday a new commenter said a picture by Carl Larsson reminded her of me, but, darn, she could not figure out how to post the picture in the comment section. I googled Carl Larsson.  He is a Swedish painter in the Arts & Crafts movement. His painting, especially water color, is prolific, and in a general search for young weaver and her work, I went through hundreds of paintings, well worth the look, but not what I wanted. I asked Ann to send a link, and here it is:

The young weaver, hemming towels. Her costume is very working class. I wore such a skirt, blouse and jacket as costume to a costume show, and was rather miffed that the judges did not recognize the real deal when they saw it. The loom behind her probably is a counter marche; it already has the next run of towels on it. 

The weaver is hemming her current run of towels by hand, of course. Treadle sewing machines were available then, but no doubt completely unaffordable.  The furnishings of this room are a large table, a dry sink, a cupboard, probably a bed, plenty of common house plants and a bottle of garden jonquils.

This picture took me straight to 1988. Jan and I set up our studio and wove some towels. Our mother asked how we intended to hem them and of course we said "On the sewing machine of course." "You just give them to me," was her immediate response. And for the next several years our work that required hemming had hand felled hems. 

Some people recognized what they were holding; most said "Twelve dollars!  Who would pay that for a towel?!" This is a towel Jan wove. It's an overshot pattern called Dogwood, with Mom's rolled, hand sewn hem. You cannot see the hem. You can see all my sewing machine hems!

Today's mail included a little gift from a recent towel customer. It's name is Flat Rat, and it is a bookmark.

I turned Flat Rat over a few times, admiring all the knitting and crocheting involved in its construction. Its tail is I-cord. I didn't come on I-cord until late in life. So versatile, and far easier than spool knitting.

One interesting result of a brain injury and the memory hole it can leave behind, is the search for the memory. Looking at Flat Rat I remembered I knew a Flat Somebody once. Who? I thought I'd call my sister. My Sister! That's it. It was her Flat Somebody. But who? Sue? Kathy? No, Flat Carol! If that's not right, she'll tell us.

Jan and a guild of quilting friends were going to a mid-western quilting show, one of the largest in the nation. And then Jan's best friend in the guild, Carol, with whom she was rooming, broke her leg, and very reluctantly decided not to go. Jan and the rest of the gang decided they needed a Flat Carol, to go in her place, and show Carol all she missed. 

It indeed was Carol, Flat, red hair and all. She had a blue jean outfit for travelling, a practical denim dress to wear to classes and work on projects, and a lovely outfit for the final banquet, with black pumps peeping from the hem. Flat Carol came back with a stuffed satchel of hand outs and freebies, hotel soap and lotion, more pictures than anyone, and definitely less exhausted than anyone.

Good days, bad days, another week of waiting days

Yesterday I was so mizerble I was hard pressed to be civil. Today I stayed ahead of the pain and had a decent day. I wove off several bobbins, took a nap, visited with L, watched her make some pies.

And three little tarts. The pie is Jack Skellington, for those who know Jack. What do you think?

Tomorrow could be fun. A follow up appointment with my new primary care on the status of my hip. Between that visit to her and now, I visited my endocrine doctor.  He read my PC's notes and said he would like to be a fly on the wall at my next visit to her.

For years he has encouraged me to take bone density treatments. Once he got as far as scheduling me for an infusion and I backed out at the last minute. He says the PC's visit notes say she will encourage me to take treatments at the next visit. And considering my attitude all these years, he'd just like to see her convince me.

But I've changed my mind, and decided to do it.

The best news of all is, a week from tomorrow I have an appointment to have a cortisone injection in my hip. Hooray. It's been a long six weeks.

Interesting blunders

I've lived here six weeks, incapacitated the last four, and for a couple of weeks into the future. I've located appropriate doctors completely on my own, though I do not fault my primary for that. She is practically a chick from the egg, a new doctor into the system. She knew what department to send me to, but not what doctor. 

Or perhaps it was a geriatric test. Anyway...

I persevered, and the last month has been amusing, though extremely painful. All my doctors in various departments, with whom I had appointments anyway would not recommend an orthopedic doctor to look at my hip. I had three separated diagnoses from doctors who should know: need a new hip, have a burse, have a broken bone.

The only one I believe, for sound reason, is the burse, and in two weeks I will have it aspirated and loaded with cortisone. Here on the home front, the people who have helped me are falling away, for good reason.

Beth, my oldest daughter, and her family are flying to Parents' Day, with Francis at the U of Colorado. I never know what L will be up to until the last minute, and it takes a little more that that minute to make a plan. K reminds me I have six grandchildren, surely one of them can help me.

Let's see. France is in school in Colorado. That leaves Blake, who has one day a week off, Monday. I wonder when else he can shop and do laundry. Hamilton manages a restaurant and goes to school. He has no days a week off. Caroline lives a hour away, and seems gone every weekend. Rebekah lives an hour away. That leaves L, who seems to turn up every weekend and says "Gramma, let me help you!"

Thank goodness for my friend Cathy; I haven't burned her out yet. She even volunteered to do my laundry tomorrow.

My sister has made a few meals for me, and they are good. But meals on wheels has been suggested and today I rolled over and started their service. First delivery, a week from Monday, when I also get that shot. We'll see how that will work out.

K told me today she has researched local MoW, and my assessment seems correct; they rank way low on the healthy meal ladder. They come once a week and deliver five or six frozen meals. I'm sure I can cancel as quickly as I began them, about ten minutes max.

Today K told me her son will be here this weekend, in and out. On one of his trips he will bring L from the U, and the two of them will bring over the kitchen table from the barn, where it has been given the anti-mold spore treatment for the last month. And the chairs. It will be so good to have a place to eat.

Between naps I have been sewing and weaving. The cerise is close to half done. Look at this lovely lop sided shelf of inventory!

I've decided the next color will be kiwi; I need a green. I'll do a grass green, or some good green after that.

My friend kiwi is down on the right end. I liked grass green, too. It's tucked between the light orange and the grey. So many colors! Get busy, Joanne.

Moving on

 I feel a small sense of accomplishment today! The lavender towels are fulled and cut, and half a dozen are hemmed. They are listed on the web page. How pathetic my towel wheel looks!

Only six lavender towels are hemmed so far, and that weaving session yielded seventeen towels. I tied on the warp, wound the bobbins and threw a few shots. The next set of towels will be cerise.

There is not a red towel left on my stock shelf. As far as that goes, there are not many towels left on my stock shelf.

Tomorrow I have my semi-annual appointment with my cardiac doctor. Then first star on the right and straight ahead. I'll finish the red this week. I have that little township show the first week of December, and a lot more inventory will look better!

Beth came down this past weekend, and brought Ruth! I have not seen her since early last summer. We went grocery shopping. I told Ruth she would like Kreigers, where I shop, as much as she likes Heinens. She was doubtful.

Kreigers had on their best face. We've shopped at Giant Eagle the last several weekends, and I've used a mobility cart. Enough of that, I decided, and slathered up in CBD sauce, I asked Beth to bring me a cart. I wandered the aisles myself, occasionally crossing paths with Ruth, checking out a myriad of items. As we left, she said it was far more than she expected.

And there I am, looking like a regular person, not one who could not move without some serious prop holding me up. How I paid for that half an hour behind a shopping cart! When this bursitis is resolved, I must go back to physical therapy. My right leg needs more than my cane to keep it moving.

Stupid and whiney

The pain doctor's office was to call me Monday about the fracture the doctor diagnosed. Someone did call Tuesday to tell me I have a spinal deformity. Well, yes, for the last twenty years, and for which they treat me with pain meds. The doctor wanted me in for an MRI; we compromised on him sending the film to my orthopedic doctor, the one who will give me a steroid injection whenever a treatment room is available. That appointment is down to two weeks and two days now.

In the meantime, I have bad days and worse days. At the beginning of the week I tried to get on a waiting list for a cancellation to have the injection sooner. There is no waiting list and also no cancellations. No one but me is bothered that I am in pain 24/7 and nothing alleviates it a bit.

I did buy CBD ointment and applied it several times. It works quite well, until it doesn't. I did come to a reason why it failed one day this week. I got up in the middle of the night for one too many bathroom calls and on the way back said FINE, I'll put on more of this stuff and go back to bed. Not only did my back feel uncomfortable for the rest of the night, it really hurt on getting up. So I read the directions, which said "Do not put under a bandage."  And there it was, under my nightgown, then the sheet, then a blanket, then the quilt. Quite the bandage!

Last night I knew I was cold, but resolved to do nothing about it. The temperature went down to about 45F last night. But I need the stool to reach my goose down, and wasn't about to do that. 

K reached it down for me this morning, and after breakfast I crawled under it. Four hours later I got up and felt mighty good for an old lady with a hip full of bursitis! That goose and I will be inseparable for the next several months.

Here's some good news. The lavender run of towels is off and will be fulled tomorrow. So I will have something to do next week beside complain. I can cut and hem more towels. The next set of towels will be cerise; there are absolutely no red towels on the shelf.

But then, there are few of any of these colors! I cannot wait to be back to weaving.