Just a Small Rant

Dear Home Health Care Professional,

Welcome to my home, yes I said it MY HOME. I know this is where your agency sent you to work today so you may think of it as a place of business; but it is really my home. I live here and don't get to leave at the end of my shifts.

The following might just make both our days go smoother.

1. At this work site I am the boss and what I say goes. This being said I prefer my home to be a tranquil envoirment. Follow my lead and we will not have problems. I have been doing the sick kid thing for over 2 decades and have a tinsey bit of experience with my son.

2. Don't tell me what to do or what I may or may not do in my own home. I do not need your permission to leave a room or to take a break from my sons care. In fact if you are here you are suppose to be giving me a break so I am not working 24/7.

3. Do not rearrange my furniture. My husband and I have placed it where it is good for us. If you feel the need to rearrange furniture become an interior designer or a furniture mover. Please do not move the chair away from my spinning wheel. You many not understand why it is there but I put it there for a reason. Also the yarn and knitting needles are off limits. I really hate when people sit on my knitting needles and break them.

4. I would like you to follow the rules of the house like everyone else does. Rule number 1: Mom is always right. Rule number 2 : If mom is wrong please see rule number 1. If you can't abide by rule number 1 or 2 at least try to be diplomatic about it.

5. If I give you things to do then ignore you it is because I need some time to unwind. You can always check my current to do list and see if there is anything on there that you can do. If all else fails pay attention to my son or dust. Feel free to vacuum or sweep to your hearts content. If there is laundry you can fold that too.

6. If I am overly cranky ask me what time I got my son to sleep last night or in the wee hours of the morning and what time I had to get up this morning. Just to be on the safe side if I have had 4 hours of sleep or less I really need time to be alone.

7. Yes my house does not look like the rooms in Town and Country. We have some clutter and I really try to keep up with it. If you have a problem with that call my mother I will give you the number. Also remember that the less sleep I have in any given week the messier the house will be. I find it easier to clean house when I am awake and my son is not sick.

8. This is a house and not a barn. We strongly prefer that the doors be kept closed. I prefer to do other things with my time besides chasing small desert dwellers out of the house.

9. All bets are off when my son is sick and I have been awake for more than 48 hours straight.

10. If this is to much to ask of you please let your agency know you cant work with us. We wont be offended.

Saturday Not in the Park

Eric has had constant night terrors since we got home from the hospital. If anyone has suggestions to try I would be willing to listen.

We have tried the following:

Using "Eric's" roomba to vacuum up the monsters and dust bunnies.

Had Scooba wash away the icky.

We have been reassuring him that he is home and everything is OK.

For those of you that have been following the appliance saga. The dryer has been condemned, the inside wiring is burnt to a crisp. Yes the service man thinks that there was a nice little fire in there. We must have a Guardian Angle looking out for us because the damage was limited to the inside motor area of the dryer. We will start a hunt for a new dryer tomorrow.

The washer is working well, I just do to many loads of laundry in it. Hey there are three of us in the house and one of us is Eric, so 20ish loads of laundry a week seems reasonable to me. So I am going to do all the wash and hang laundry at home. I will take John's shirts to the cleaners to get washed and pressed.  That leaves that leaves a dozen or so loads that I will take to the Laundromat to wash or see if the cleaners has a wash and fold service.

Well here is to a good nights sleep for all.

TGIF

It was a busy and wonderful day all at the same time. I got to spend a couple of hours with my knitting friends and even had time to go to lunch. A great big thank you goes out to John for this treat. He took care of Eric for a bit. Liz had made some very adorable hand knit critters, I personally think the bear was the cutest. I felt like a social butterfly at knitting, I got more talking done than knitting. Karen had knit a very large pile of wash cloths and was doing the finishing work. There were sweaters and scarfs in various stages. It is always so fun to hang out with a great group of knitters. I also like to see what every one is doing. Next week I expect to see a lot of the Uncle Harry Scarf Pattern going on. Everyone just had to know what the very complicated pattern I was working on. This is my favorite pattern for Operation Gratitude. So here is the pattern and please consider knitting one or two for Operation Gratitude.

Uncle Harry's Scarf Pattern

This pattern is named after my dear Uncle Harry. When he was in the Tucson VA hospital I would spend hours visiting him. I would usually bring my knitting and no matter what I was working on he would start chanting knit 1 purl 2, over and over to the point I had to rip out what ever I was working on. So I started making scarfs in this pattern. My only request was that he slow down to the speed I was knitting at.  It works with any weight yarn and any size needles. My personal preference is wool or cotton.

Cast on in multiples of 3. A typical scarf in Cascade 220 or Patton's wool is 30 cast on stitches. On US size 8 knitting needles.

the pattern is knit 1 purl 2* repeat this sequence all the way through.  Until you get to the last row and then cast off in the pattern sequence.

For Operation Gratitude they like the scarfs between 5 to 7 inches wide and 45 to 50 inches long. I usually use Patton's or Cascade wool in black, brown, dark or olive green and blue. One skein makes 1 scarf.

I also took advantage of John being home to run a weeks worth of errands this afternoon.  I did manage to get one commissioned scarf off the needles so now I just have to do the finishing work.

I manage to boil one batch of yarn and am just about finished with the spinning on another.

Well it is getting very late so it is time to say goodnight.


Uncle Harry's Scarf Pattern by Sheri Karobonik is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Hump Day Plus One

Eric actually slept last night, and between John and Eric's aide I got to sleep in until 8:00 am this morning. There was a little cleaning that went on this morning. Only scooba was on duty today. Today Eric and I were in the post hospital funk of being very tired. I don't think either of us got out of first gear. I might have made it out of first gear if I had consumed more caffeine, but I quickly vetoed that idea and went for a lower caffeine tea.  down time is sometimes necessary.

I also broke another pedometer today. I finally figured it out when after running around this morning it was only counting at best every 2 or 3rd step.

I did manage to make it to the spinning wheel today. I carded up some wool and mohair before Eric got sick. The fluff was full of VM and I ran it through the carder 3 times.  It has the constancy of Cotton Candy and spins up very nicely, although I am still pulling VM out of the yarn as I spin. I am hoping that the rest of the VM will come out when I boil the yarn.

If you have any suggestions for getting VM out of fluff please let me know. I am always looking for ways to improve the way I do things.

I am almost finished spinning the super wash merino on the spindle. The last little bit will be done tomorrow and that will be a hat or scarf.  I hope to boil some yarn tomorrow as I have a bunch that needs to be done and the clothes line will be empty tomorrow.

John is giving me a break tomorrow so that I can go to knitting. He and Eric will hang out tomorrow. I want to know if the Syfy channel or PBS will prevail. Well its getting late so I am going to call it a night.

Hump Day

Eric is still out of sync and having trouble remembering that he is home from the hospital. Last night he dozed off and would wake up in terror or be in the middle of a night terror when I got to him. I finally had him settled down at 3:30 this morning. I took the cowardly approach to this morning and let John and his aide handle him. I decided to sleep in until 7:30.

Since Eric has day and night confused I am trying to sleep when he does. Which has lead to a pretty strange schedule today. We had naps scattered through out the day.

I did manage to get to the grocery store today. I was trying to be a little on the practicle side by picking up some heat and serve dinners. I am not one to pick up ready made dinners from the freezer section on a regular basis. John and I prefer homemade from scratch or semi home made when ever possible. We had a Bertolli chicken minestrone soup tonight. It was easy to cook and had a pretty good taste and texture, but not quite home made. But just the right amount of soup for 2 people.

I have to admit that with Eric being in the hospital twice this month for a total of 12 days I am pretty much worn out. So far this month he has been in the hospital more than out. I am hoping to change that track. I am finding a very little time to knit and have not done any spinning since we have been home. I am still finding cleaning very therapeutic. Roomba and Scooba have been working out daily. The recycle bin is 1/3 of the way full. I am very behind on laundry, but wont be able to do any until the machines get fixed or if we start to run out of things by going to the laundromat.

I have not had any time to prepare for the Tucson Wool Festival on March 10, so even if I do not have a booth I will stop by to say goodbye to Kathy.

I am deffently tired and need some sleep so I will take the time to say good night all.

We are Home

This is our first full day home from the hospital - Round 2 this month. This time we were in for 8 days. I finished 2 hats and 2 scarfs. I also broke with my trying to finish UFOs by starting another hat and scarf. But in my defense it was stash yarn and I did not go out and buy any new yarn. I also worked on spinning some super wash Merino on my Kundert spindle and some silk on my new Bosworth Koa spindle. Both spinning projects will require more work to get the spinning finished. .

I came home to a washer and dryer in desperate need of service so no laundry will get done until they are repaired or I find someone to watch Eric long enough during the day to go to the laundromat. It has been so long since I have been in one, I don't even know how much a load cost now a days. My guess is that it has gone up quite a bit since the early 1980's.

Yesterday afternoon and today have been devoted to getting the house back in order. With the exception of the laundry visible progress is being made. The only thing I would have wished for today was a longer life on the scooba battery charge. I wanted to finish the whole house in one day, scooba had other ideas.

The house is pretty well stocked with the exception of fresh eggs, bread, Tide Free and Rasian Bran cereal for John. I hope to be able to sneak out when one of our more long term aides are here. But then again there is always delivery.

Eric will be home until he finishes his medicine, which is another 9 days. Please feel free to call and stop by. I will need some adult conversation. I have had too many days of PBS kids and the Disney Channel this month. Did you know that on avargae PBS replays its shows 4 times a day. Disney has a slightly diffrent cycle of once a day with the movies being played a diffrent times over several days. Now if I could only convince Eric to watch some chick lit type stuff it would not be so bad.

My hope is for the hospital nightmares to be over with so that Eric sleeps tonight. I would so love a good nights sleep after such a busy month. I would really like a full nights sleep in a real bed. Not that I did not figure out how to sleep in that darn guest chair at the hospital, but it did a number on my knee.

We May Be on the Right Path

There might be an end insight. We are trying some new meds for Eric. We are still waiting for Eric to hold food down. I am beginning to get tired and flary. Dry mouth and eyes are the rule of the day. I am thinking about redoing my spring sechdule. It will all be dependent on Eric's recovery and my stamina.

I am getting a lot of knitting and spinning done in the down time. I knit when Eric is awake and spin when he sleeps. I would like a more comfortable chair to sleep in.

I personally think the hospital food was designed to increase their patient load in the near future. Where is Mrs. Obama when we need her?

Well Eric is asleep and it is time for some shut eye.