Coffee can drums

Yesterday, when I was at the Art Guild, Dana said to me, "I've been thinking about the man who paid for your tires and said to pay it forward. You've been doing that for years."

I guess I have, mostly in small ways. Sometimes very small ways, like this morning. Yesterday, Lexi asked if I have any empty coffee cans. She needs to take one to school by Friday to use as a drum. Since Alyssa and Trevor don't drink coffee, they don't have any. I usually buy coffee in the vacuum, foil packs, but have bought enough in 'cans' so that I found two that I don't have other things stored in - one small and one large. I put the small one in the large one, put them in a plastic bag, and carried them out to the car with all the other stuff I took with me today. That way I won't forget them tomorrow when I go to meet Lexi's school bus. I figure she can choose which size she wants and give the other one to a classmate who wasn't able to find one. Is that paying forward about a penny? But to a child who was disappointed about not being able to participate for lack of a coffee can, it might be worth a lot more. Right?

Medical:

My numbers continue to be good, but my blood presssure was up today. No futher changes in treatment schedule at this point.

Knitting:

And since I got no call requesting that I go to the doctor's office later, I was able to meet with my knitting friends. They seemed pleased to see me after several weeks' absence, and I was certainly pleased to see them.

Since this was our last meeting in that location, Lisa H brought tea sandwiches, Jennifer brought fruit and dip and someone (perhaps Valerie?) brought a Dairy Queen ice cream cake. All that provided my lunch. Valerie will be moving the buisness over the weeknd, so next week we will meet at the new location, several blocks away. I won't have a doctor's appointment next week, but if the weather is nice, I may drive up there anyway. Since it's thirty miles each way, I try to combine things.

Little, minor things

Do other people get a thrill when random incidents indicate that their young children/grandchildren/great-grandchildren are paying attention in school and to the world around them?

 

The last time Lexi was here, I was working on this project. I told her it is a shawl for her Grammy (my daughter, Carmen), who wants it  to be six feet long. She looked at it a minute, and said,

"That looks like about twelve inches."

"Yes, I think you're right."

"And twelve inches is one foot, so you need to knit about five feet more.

"That's right!" 

Icicles and Ashes

I'm hoping this is the extent of the ice we get this year - icicles forming on the edge of the porch roof from snow melt. Some of it dripped onto the chain-link fence as well. A few weeks ago when Lexi spent the night, she knocked down some of the icicles and put them in the freezer to keep. A couple of days ago I threw out what was left of them. They had decreased in size a great deal - freezer burn?

And Ashes:

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. Since my appointment with Dr Winkler was at 1:15, which means they want me there at 12:45 to draw blood, I figured I could go to the noon service at church. When Libby (rector) mentioned that the ashes are usually made by burning palms left over from the previous year's Palm Sunday celebration, I thought back about ten years to St Martin's in Mayfield. Seamus had left and Candis had not yet come, so St Martins, Trinity in Fulton, St Paul's in Hickman (the oldest Episcopal church in the area), and St Peter's in Gilbertsville were without a priest for several months. The Diocesan office in Louisville did a great job of finding 'supply' priests for us, and I found it interesting hearing the different voices and observing slight differences in style of celebrating the Eucharist.

During our traditional pancake supper on Shrove Tuesday, we learned that the bishop was coming the next day to do the Ash Wednesday liturgy at the four churches. Since St Martin's would be the first one he visited, we needed to supply him with ashes. The altar guild ladies searched the sacristy and office, hoping to find ashes left over from the prior year, but to no avail. However, they did find palms that had been saved. None of us knew if there was any special procedure that needed to be followed, or prayers that needed to be said, when burning the palms. So I phoned Nick Jaeger who was rector at Grace Church at the time, and asked him those questions. He said there no to those questions and described the set-up he used. I took the palms home with me and spent an hour or so on my front porch burning them. My set-up involved a three-pound, metal coffee can and a sieve/strainer that I used for dyeing rather than food preperation. I half-way expected a cop to stop and ask what I was doing, but none did (they did tend to cruise my street, because of a known 'drug corner' two blocks down). Perhaps I should have mixed some chrism (consecrated oil used in baptisms and, I think, annointing of the sick) to hold the ashes together better, but I doubt there was any at St Martin's. Anyway, I had a small jar of ashes to give Bishop Gulick when he arrived the next day.

Medical:

When Dr Winkler walked into the exam room, the first thing he did was touch my forehead and ask, "What's this?" I told him I'd been to church. After he checked my lungs, etc, I mentioned that my family doctor said my triglycerides are very high, and that she wants to prescribe something to lower them as long as it is compatible with the stuff I'm already taking. He said that he got a note from her about it and had replied that it was OK, so I guess I need to call and see if she has faxed a prescription to Stone's Drug. He then showed me some of the software he uses. He has a list of the medications, vitamins and minerals I take, and by clicking on an icon can bring up information about possible interaction problems - neat!

Last week he took me off coumadin. He feels that the blood clot I had two and a half years ago was caused by the Thalidomide I was taking at the time. Since I haven't been taking it for over a year, and since the recent scan of my legs showed no signs of clots forming, he put me on one adult aspirin a day instead of the coumadin. The scan of my legs will be repeated in a few weeks.

The Dandelion Project

My daughter Carmen emailed me this link www.thedandelion.org. Several of these people are friends of my son and were frequent visitors to my house in New Jersey twenty years ago. In fact, Chuckles even lived there for a couple of years. It's interesting to see them now as early-forty-somethings.

Dominic complained that I hadn't posted for a while. Sometimes I don't have anything I want to write.

Knitting:

Although I have other things that have been on the needles longer, these are the three things I'm currently working on. This is a shawl for a friend. I decided that I wanted either a variegated yarn with long color sections or a brushed acrylic that resembles mohair, like the shawl I've been using for twenty-five years or so. After church last Sunday, Lexi and I went to Michael's to see what they had. This Red Heart Collage in the color Tundra was exactly what I had in mind. You can see at the top how long the color sections are. As the shawl gets longer and wider, the colors are only part of a row, but that blends quite well, I think. I've hung it in the closet, with slight weight (three small scissors hanging on the needle) to let it stretch a bit. That will help me decide how many more rows I want to add. This particular color was on clearance, so I bought all nine balls that were in the bin. I'm almost ready to start the fifth ball. Since I now have over 500 stitches in each row (I started with 20), each ball only does 16 or 18 rows.

The second project is a small hat. It has a rolled brim and I'm using a Fibonacci series of 1,1,2,3,5. The yarn is old - how long has it been since Sears sold yarn? It was in my friend Shirley's stash when she died last year. It's orlon. Do those of you who are over a certain age remember how much softer the orlon sweaters were than the regular acrylic ones? They were also more expensive. I coveted them, and finally was able to buy a purple one.

And the third project, which I started after hanging the shawl in the closet yesterday, is a girl's sweater in peach acrylic. The pattern is from a Liesure Arts leaflet of sweaters knit from the top down from 1974. I'll donate it, as well as the hat, to the Lighthouse in Mayfield. That is a shelter for women and their children. I figure that anything I donate there will fit someone, sometime.