Petunia rambles on and on….

Went to Sam’s Club this morning – I really lead a wild life, I know. While there, I saw and spoke to one of the women that I work with. She was downright shocked a tad bit surprised at the amount of goodies that I was buying, as it’s only Paul and me at home now. She had 4-6 items in her cart; I could barely push mine. I came home and put a corned beef into the crock pot because I had no more damn space in the freezer – remember that I tossed 20 pounds of chicken bosoms in there just last week. . I do well at Sam’s Club money-wise and also get my exercise. They don’t bag the items purchased. No problem to push the cart to the back of my SUV, open up the back door and load vast quantities in there.  What is difficult is carrying all the stuff from the vehicle down the sidewalk, up 4 steps, into the house to the kitchen. With bags from the regular grocery, I can load 6-8 bags onto my arm and reduce the amount of times I’ve got to go up and down. Without bags, and limited to 2 hands, I have to make many more trips. There’s been more than a few times where I’ve left detergents, cases of soda and such right there until husband came home!

But this time, I finally got smart – some 40 years late perhaps, but…..

Instead of backing straight in as I usually do, and then carrying stuff onto the grass, around the back end of the car and a flower bed, turn around again and up those steps, I backed in at a weird angle almost to the first step. Hey, by my age, a good idea was due! This had the vehichle at a weird angle in the driveway, but so what – it saved me a hell of a lot of steps. I was so proud of ME!!

Husband comes home from work and says, “Did you go out and tie one on?”  “Why?” I innocently asked, not sure what he was talking about.  “Did you have half a snootful when you parked the car?” he responds.

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Husband says, “Why did you buy shit paper?”  “So you can continue to wipe your ass???”  Uh, never sure how I’m supposed to answer these questions.  He may have been referring, though, to the fact that I already had 2 enormous multi-packages of the stuff already here.

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The yarn “cakes” from yesterday are sock toes today. I almost always do them toe-up and the first inch or so is such a pain in the ass – but I really do prefer this method. It’ll get easier when I get past this fiddly part!

Sport weight on US size 2 KnitPicks needle, magic looped. Gonna be a lot of little stitches!

Went rooting around in my personal private yarn store (used to be Kate’s bedroom) and found 2 skeins of Claudia Hand Painted Yarn, sport weight, in colorway Purple Earth. And my toes started to wiggle at the thought of new socks!

If I don’t take a picture, with the label, while it’s still skeined up, I’ll forget what it is in less than 20 minutes. Sport weight will work up so much quicker, and will be easier on my eyes, too. That’s important right now. Eyes are doing better, but I don’t want to push my luck. Very unusual blend of colors in this year, and will work it up in a plain vanilla pattern so they show. I’ll get out my original Wendy Johnson book for a stitch count. Her books are terrific. And by the way, a small plug for the Amazon site – when I just went there to get the link, at the top it said, “You bought this book on July 30, 2008.” Is that handy or what? For us fools well-read folks that can’t remember what we’ve already got or where we put it, that’s a great addition that I never noticed before.

When I “cake” yarn, I miss the twins. They would “help” me, causing the process to take 3 times longer than need be, and become 20 times more fun. It worked particularly well when I was doing socks from 2 skeins, so the “workload” could be divided evenly, to eliminate squabbling – well that was the idea, anyway. One skein per boy. They still both wanted to do all the cranking on the winder!

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And the blog isn’t complete without a link to a blog I heard/read about on Facebook.   http://bluemilk.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/how-to-do-discrete-breastfeeding/  While this subject matter hasn’t been a near-and-dear issue for me for some 30 years, I sure remember the day when it was part of my everyday life, I did nurse babies in public because the darn kids got hungry regardless of my location. I was perhaps more discreet than this, always having a receiving blanket handy to toss over baby and my shoulder. But today, it’s different and I’m tempted to make a batch of these and donate them to the Postpartum unit at the local hospital, just to encourage new mothers to breast-feed.

 

A very special fellow named Alex picked out a gift for me at a school function enabling young children at his school to make selections for family members. Pop was there that day, with Kate and the boys, helping and presumably then hiding his eyes when items were chosen for him.

It says “World’s Greatest Grandma“  That’s me, at least to Alex! Miss those boys, now 3 of them, every day.

And referring back to yesterday’s post, my eyes are better today, just one day off the pressure-lowering eyedrops and one day on the healing steroid drops. The eyes are no longer flaming red, the color of STOP signs. And I think vision is already improving. Yesterday, my vision tested at 20/50 and 20/70 in the bad eye. Way worse than it should be – my distance vision without glasses should be 20/20 in the good eye and a bit worse in the sicko eye.

I am so tired of eye doctors, wanting to stick needles into and/or near my eye and now recommending a vitrectomy – which is similar to getting an oil change. The fluid in my eye, that’s supposed to be crystal clear is thick with “debris” from all the inflammation and it’s healing. It’s now occluding about 60+% of the vision in that eye. Like we do with a car when the oil gets cruddy, this procedure drains the crud and replaces it with clean new fluid. While it’s a bit more complicated than my Ford which allows you to drain it all out and then refill, it would improve my vision considerably. (With the eye, it has to be drained, flushed and refilled all at the same time, to maintain adequate normal pressure inside so it doesn’t deflate.)

And damn, I wish I didn’t know all this shit!

And congratulations go out to Oldest Son, who I’ve been proud of for longer than anybody else.