July 4-6, 2008

I went to dialysis at 10:30 Friday morning, as instructed, but my treatment didn't start until 11am. Yes, we have dialysis on Independence Day! The only two days the clinic is closed are Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Unfortunately, there are many dialysis patients who can't go more than two days without a treatment so the clinic is open 363 days a year.

My tech put the lower needle near the bottom of my graft so I couldn't bend my arm during my treatment. Therefore, I didn't get any stitching done. Instead, I read one of my library books to keep myself busy. With only about 20 minutes of my treatment left, my arm started to ache terribly. We tried ice, but the pain kept increasing. Ultimately, I had Greg and Gloria take me off the machine early. I've never had pain like that, but we suspect it was because the needle was almost on the incision from last month's second surgery.

My arm stopped hurting about thirty minutes after the needles came out and Kasey and I headed to Baltimore to spend the day at my friend Tom's parents' house. His mom, Miss Debbie, has been asking when I was bringing Kasey back up since we were there for the fireworks last Independence Day.

This year's show at Fullerton was very weird. Three different times we thought it was the grand finale. The lights even came on at one point and I went back inside, only to hear them start back up a minute later. We had a good vantage point from the back deck and Tom and his friends were shooting fireworks, as were many of the neighbors, even after the official show was over. Kasey and the other dogs stayed inside because the noise was just too much for their sensitive ears. And when she finally got over the fear that I was going to leave her there, she sprawled out flat on her side under the dining room table where she was out of the way.

For once, I was asleep before 1am and I slept until 1 the following afternoon. I couldn't believe I was tired so early, but I guess I needed the rest after staying up for over 24 hours Wednesday/Thursday. It was a relief to see that my attempt at resetting my internal clock worked, though. Miss Debbie and I had a late breakfast and chatted awhile before Kasey and I headed home.

I tore the living room, my truck, my stitching bag, and my dialysis bag apart when I got home. The night before when I was showing Miss Debbie my Dinky Dyes charts, I went to get the bag of silks so she could see what colors I was using. They weren't there! There are only three places any of my stitching/stash should be: in my stitching bag that goes everywhere with me, in my stash cabinets, or beside my stitching chair.

My Saltbush and Yallingup silk skeins were all in a Bent Creek Zipper bag and the bag was nowhere to be found. I was so upset it felt like I was going to be sick. There was no way I could afford to buy them at full price! I even went out a second time to look in the truck and unfolded the blankets in my dialysis bag to double-check that it hadn't gotten caught in the folds. Just before midnight, I was in the dining room to get my Dinky Dyes Christmas ornament UFO to work on. Lo and behold! My silks sitting on the corner of the table!

It was at that moment I remembered taking pictures of my finishes in there on Wednesday and needing the floss to sign them before photographing them. I felt like such a moron (no comments necessary, already kicked myself in the posterior several dozen times) because I even called my dialysis clinic Saturday evening so my tech could check in the sides of the chairs of my section. When he told me he didn't find them, all I could think was that they'd fallen off the tray on the side of my chair into the trash can.

I called Debi at midnight (only 9pm her time) screaming and saying "Ohmigosh!" over and over. Uncle Wes came out of his room all bleary-eyed (he'd been asleep since 9) because he thought Chet and Kasey were chasing another mouse.

So a happy ending and crisis averted!

I also spent part of Saturday doing some reading on the Civil War (The War of Northern Aggression) to satisfy my curiosity. Someone sent me a link for a CW re-enactment of the Battle of Brimfield. Brimfield is in Massachussetts. There were no CW battles in Massachussetts. I know this because the northern-most battle was Gettysburg, where Southern troops retreated back across the Potomac. It just didn't make sense to me, this Battle of Brimfield.

So I spent a few hours looking at CW timelines and reading about the town of Brimfield to figure out what was going on. Ultimately I realized it was just a gimmick to attract people to a big town festival they're having in October.

I've been wanting to start Common Ground by Just Nan since the day I bought it. I kept telling myself "after so-and-so is completed." Well, I decided to make it one of my July Goals in SNS2 in order to force myself to start it. So I did on Sunday! I only got one part of one section of the "backbone" of the border stitched before I was fed up with the DMC knotting (and I use Thread Heaven!) before I packed it back into its ziplock bag. I've been very excited to get this project started, but I know it'll be a long time coming before it's complete. I plan on stitching it between finishing smaller projects, probably only a week or two at a time.

Now that I see the DMC and had the frustration of it knotting up on me, I'm almost positive I'm going to buy the silks two to four skeins at a time and re-start it after taking out what I've done. I'll begin with the silks for the border and buy a couple at a time until I have all I need. I guess it's true what they say: Once you stitch with silks, you don't want to stitch with anything else. So I'll be trolling ONS's for sales on Soie de'Alger silks whenever I have some extra money.