Setback

Aunt was having trouble breathing yesterday, so they've put her back on the respirator. Word from dad this morning was that they were able to turn it down (meaning her own breathing was getting stronger), so that's a little bit of good.

It's times like this that I wish we lived a 2-hour drive away instead of a 5-hour plane ride away.

Edited 5/25: Thanks to everyone for all the good thoughts being sent to me and my aunt.

Another Knitfest!

Lots of fun at today's semi-monthly knitfest gathering at the ranch! It was "Monkey day," the day when most of us cast on for a Monkey knitalong. We have 3 of us doing two-at-a-time toe-up on Magic Loop, 5 doing cuff-down on Magic Loop, and 1 doing cuff-down on 2 circs. There were monkey tablecloths, monkey sproingy-hangy things from the light fixture, monkey water bottles, and monkey lollipops... and lots of yummy food (as always - we're a talented bunch in the kitchen, too!).

I got all my toe increases done with the gang today, and am now about a half-inch into a one-inch buffer between toe and starting the pattern. I'm using Pagewood Farm Denali yarn in a gorgeous turqoise color. Mmmm... It's not only beautiful, it's a lovely yarn to knit with, very squooshy. I'm a wee bit afraid it's too squooshy to be sturdy on the sole, so I decided to make the instep on US#1.5 needles (2.5 mm) and the sole on US#1 needles (2.25 mm) - tighten the sole stitches up a little bit. If I really want to make it tough, I should use US#0 neeldes, but... ugh... I've done that with a couple of pair before and they're just toooo small for me. Seem to take forever to knit.

In Aunt I status, she's still in recovery/ICU, but dad and Joan got to see her today. She's still being somewhat sedated, and will probably hurt a lot more before she starts to hurt a lot less. Her back problem won't help matters, either. She told dad that she thought she had pneumonia. Let's see - they cracked her ribs and took out two chunks of her lungs, and she's self-diagnosing pneumonia. Um, as dad told her, let's see what the doctor says. They're waiting for the final pathology, but the surgeon was fairly sure they got all the bad bits, and the oncologist doesn't think she'll need chemo or radiation after all. Hooray for little victories. If that's the case, she'll want to get better quickly so she can start her MMM chemo again (it was on hold while she did the surgery thang).

Finally, Sock Summit registration opens at 10:00 on Tuesday, 5/26. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

Another Bit of Good Newts

The company DH is contracting with as their CIO just gave him a raise. In effect, they doubled his contract time for each month. A little financial breathing room... Nice...

Aunt out of surgery. 2nd spot malignant too; she came through surgery fine. She'll be under sedation all day. Talk to you soon, Auntie I. We love you.

Enumeration

- The IRS audited our 2006 tax return. They want $2600 more.
- We were going to try to refinance the house next month. Rates are great. A house 2 blocks over (same floorplan as ours) recently sold at the toilet-bottom price of $300,000 less than what we paid for our house (admittedly at the peak). Thanks to this sale, our house won't appraise high enough to get us an acceptable LTV given our current mortgage and HELOC. In order to get below the acceptable percentages, we will have to buy down the mortgage by about $12,000, plus pay around $6,000 in closing costs. Sure. We have lots of extra money laying around. See item 1.
- My ear infection is apparently gone, but my hearing still hasn't returned. Ear doc says it could take as long as 3 or 4 weeks. Or longer.
- DH has part-time CIO gig (thank god) but we still need more income. There are 4 or 5 pending contracts, but none signed yet.
- I actually got bored today and decided to pull some weeds. I know. I tried to sit down until the feeling went away, but there were too many weeds that were higher than the bushes we like. Next place - condo.

Normally, these would send me over the edge. I hate the uncertainty of consultant life, hate that we pay DH's ex a stupid amount of money for her to sit on her fat ass, hate that this house has lost almost a third of its value, and really really hate gardening.

None of this matters a whit. I'm spending all my emotional energy on worrying about my aunt in Florida. She got diagnosed with multiple myeloma of the bone marrow last year, and during tests for that, they found spots on her lungs. She's having surgery tomorrow to remove them. One big one that's known to be malignant in one lobe and one small one that's still a mystery in the other lobe.

Nothing else matters. Heal well, Auntie I.

Fetching!

Here they are, from Ashlee, as promised!

In Which I Confront the Errant Waitress

Ashlee was her name. I knew this from the restaurant receipt. 

On one of our last drives down to visit the in-laws, I knit a pair of Fetchings - fingerless gloves - from some Drops Silke-Alpaca that I got on our honeymoon cruise in the Baltic. The yarn was luscious, one skein was cream, one was cranberry, and they were actually cheaper than what I would have paid for them in the States - even given the exchange rate and Visa's FX charge. (Never mind that there was the $3,000 price of the cruise; that doesn't count.)

I finished the Fetchings Sunday afternoon, and wore them that night to dinner at Outback. Ashlee, our waitress, gushed over them. She was a local college student, she loved gloves and fingerless gloves, her gramma knit, she recently moved to the area because things went bad somewhere else... we had a lovely chat. At the end of our dinner, I gave her the Fetchings. She was happy, she was surprised, she was tickled pink. I told her there was one huge caveat - she had to send me a picture of them so I could post the picture on my Ravelry projects page. I gave her my business card with my email on it, and she promised she would take the picture and send it.

Next day, we got home. No email. Tuesday, no email. Wednesday, no email. Thursday, Friday, Saturday... nothing. My knitting posse was even getting on my case. Weeks... months... nothing.

So, here we are again. Dinner at Outback. Ashlee is still waitressing there. We ask for a table in her section. She comes over to ask our drink order, and does what looks like a short double-take. I asked, "Do we look familiar to you?" She opens her mouth wide and points at me. "YES! Thank god you came back! I lost your business card! I've been driving my boyfriend and friends crazy because I felt so bad that I couldn't send you the picture!"

We chatted, she took the picture 'way back when, still has it, still loves her gloves, and promised that she would send the photo this week... because we told her that 10 knitters would descend on her the next time if she didn't!

I hope she does; she seems really sweet and sounded very sincere and contrite. Or, I'm just a sucker for a pretty face...