I went home from work early yesterday, with another migraine.  The drugs beat it back, and I was up again by two-ish, and puttering about.  No sequelae from the migraine; I swear by the combination of zomig and phenergan for migraines.  YMMV.  Better living through chemicals.

I went out yesterday evening and picked up a wrist brace to see if it helps.  I shall report back.  I'm still going to give the hands another few days before I attempt anything again.  I also went by Lowe's and picked up tool dip to cover the ends of the spring steel for the corset I'm making, and bought some of the heavy-duty plastic wire-bundler-handcuff-thingies to try out in the corset before I sew up the top of it for good.  We'll see they'll hold a fat woman as well as they hold a skinny woman.

I got out a sock last night and tried a few stitches, but the right hand went numb after six rows.  Alas.  At least now I can do stuff, but I'm going to have to lay off a while longer to make sure I recover completely.  Hedge trimmers are evil!  I'm going to have to hire a college student to run this one next time, so I don't have to. 

I've been feeling a bit run down lately, so I've been hitting the vitamin pills to see if maybe the diet just isn't what it should be, and the B vitamin I took yesterday actually perked me up a bit.  I'm going to take an iron pill this morning, to see if that's more of what I need.  If that doesn't work, I have a physical coming up and I'll talk to the doc about it.  According to my mom, it's too much starch in my diet.  We'll see.

I haven't been back to my orthopedist since the MRI; I was supposed to go back yesterday but I couldn't break away.  I've rescheduled it to next Friday.  The arm hasn't fallen off yet, although it is still sore.  Especially when I go through one of my exercise DVDs and wave it all around.  I need the exercise, though.

After I knitted a bit last night, I fell asleep fully clothed on my bed (I'll just close my eyes for a minute, honest) and woke up about midnight with the dog looking at me with concern.  Maybe I should start getting to bed earlier so I don't crash so hard every few weeks.  Could be the cause of the run down feeling, eh?

I had a good weekend after all the foo-rah last week, the highlight of which was when Mom refused to answer the phone when Chuck called on Saturday night.  She's agreed to go talk to an attorney about setting up some form of trust to put the house in.  We'll see if we can make that come to fruition.  If she wants to be in a home, that's okay.  She shouldn't be forced into one against her will, not while she can still express her will and take care of herself.

On a lighter note, the new truck performed very well on the trip home (I loves me some cruise control) and I'd forgotten how good air conditioning feels in a car.  Simon is getting used to it too; he wouldn't jump into the back on the trip to OR, but hopped right into the back on the way back to Nashville.  If the dog's okay with it, I'm okay with it.  And Mom loves it, so there.  The whole family's happy with the new truck.

I really messed up my hands while I was home; Mom wanted the bushes in front ot the house trimmed, so I walked out with the little electric hedge trimmer she has, and trimmed all four bushes.  It took about two hours.  I walked into the house, put the trimmer down, and I couldn't lift my hands.  In years past, it took me a couple of minutes for my hands to stop vibrating from the trimmer.  But now - I couldn't use my hands for anything requiring fine control all weekend.  No knitting, no wire weaving, no bobbin lace, no fingerloop braiding.  I finally got out a dress I'd cut out last year and tried my hand at guiding it through the sewing machine, and I could do that.  So I've got a new dress, but didn't get anything done that I actually wanted to do. 

I'm an idiot.  Tonight I'll try my hands at finishing up the sock I've been working on.

I'm home, and I've had a chance to talk to the old girl. Apparently Chuck didn't say anything to her about selling her house and putting her in a home, and all she did was laugh at the idea.



She's still got all her marbles, and I'm pretty sure Chuck doesn't have all of his. She has no intention of allowing him to move her anywhere, or selling the house to or for anyone until she's ready to.



The problem is, how do we keep Chuck from doing something stupid if he does show back up and complicating everyone's lives? None of us, even Mom, wants to deal with him. My sister has stopped answering her phone when he calls. I haven't spoken to him in, oh, four or five years, because I learned my lesson long ago. I'm trying to get everyone together to discuss the Chuck problem.



Anybody out there have any experience dealing with some idiot relative moving on an elderly parent?



No easy fix for this one.

I met friends for dinner last night, at the Royal Thai restaurant in Hermitage, and OMG, it was good.  The sauce had obviously been cooked from scratch.  The service was excellent and the dishes were all good.  I'll definitely go back.  Otherwise, I got nothing done last night.  Fidelio got home safely from Kansas last night, bearing gifts and stories. 

I'll be going home tonight, to my mother's in Oak Ridge, to repair the damage done by my older brother while he was visiting.  According to my sister, he's told Mom that because she's given up her car and has to use a cane to get around, she needs to be in a home.  My mother's worst fear is the loss of her independence.

There are no words bad enough to describe just how low this guy is.  He hasn't lived at home since 1965, he comes to visit once every six or seven years, and he leaves a wake of emotional carnage every time. 

I'm going to have to dig out my thimbles to see if I can work the wire with them.  For some reason I'm chewing up my hands with this batch of wire, and I haven't even started into the 28 gauge yet.  I got about four inches of undrawn weaving done last night before I noticed that I'd worn my left thumbnail down almost to the nailbed.  Eek!

Anyway, I had the MRI on my left shoulder last night, the shoulder the truck landed on in the accident, and those things are noisy.  I wasn't bothered by the closeness of it at all, which surprised me, and in spite of the noise, I fell asleep.  Man, what banging and whirring and whistling.  And boring to lie there all propped up and festooned with bits of equipment for thirty minutes.  My left arm fell asleep because the tech weighted it down with something to keep my breathing from jerking it around. 

Next Monday I go back to the orthopedist and get the verdict.  The additional xrays he did last week showed some damage to the acromioclavicular joint, which is why the MRI was scheduled.  I don't want any surgery, but I also don't want to go to lift something and have my shoulder fall apart for lack of a simple fix.

I've been trying to remember to throw the corset pattern I want to make into my backpack so I can lay it out on the table in one of the conference rooms here and trim it up, and finally!  This morning I remembered to throw it in!  And there was much rejoicing!  I'll pull it out at lunch and trim it.  I've already got the linen to make it out of, but I need to decide what to use for stays.  The recommended boning isn't strong enough to accomplish what I need (don't ask) but I'm not sure I want to go with the steel unless I can design the corset in such a way as to be able to remove the steel boning to wash it.  And steel is, well, rigid.  As in rigid.

I think I'm going with Fidelio's suggestion to put the lacing in back, and use a hook-and-eye Victorian style closure in the front to make it easy to get in and out of by myself. 

They're working me to death at work, and I love it. 4:30 has never come so quickly. All I do all day is summarize records. Hurt me.

Out to geodesimagining and beau_nidle 's place last night, to sit and do Monday evening stuff.  We watched Robot Chicken Star Wars, and I must get my own copy.  geodesimagining has picked up her wire weaving again; this is good.  The world needs more wire weavers.  They went off with rhysfaber  and Liria to do dinner whilst I went home to crash, not having slept well last night.  Jemmy kept wandering into the room and jumping around.

I think Minerva's going to 'splode, she's eaten so much cat food.  And this in spite of being pushed away from the dish by Jemmy.  I have not filled each dish to the top every time.  I have not.  But fidelioscabinet will still tell me I've overfed them when she gets back.

Can you tell I've figured out how to make Livejournal user's names turn blue?  I only hope I've linked to the right users.  Heh. Um. 

So I'm sitting at the computer this morning, tucked up in my bed with the dog at my feet, when Black-toed Jemmy comes flying over my left shoulder and lands on the keyboard of the computer, yelling about how neglected he was and why wouldn't the substitute monkey put more food in his dish and pet him. There ensued a short pause while I ascertained that no damage had been done to the computer and enlarged Jemmy's vocabulary of swear words. He jumped down on the floor and stood looking innocently up at me for a moment, whereupon I grabbed the pool noodle I keep for such purposes and just tried to beat him to death. He took it for a minute and then flounced out.

I need a thicker pool noodle.

On a 'getting older gracelessly' note, I think my days of going to non-air conditioned events are pretty much over. I just couldn't hack the heat this weekend at Border Raids. I stayed inside the rented room for most of the weekend except to troll in and do a little shopping. I didn't buy anything, but I did talk H into ten yard of trim for a Byzantine tunic.

I had sewn up a Byzantine on Friday, just slapped it together really quick (and it looks it) but I was surprised when I walked around in it that I wasn't terribly hot in it unless I went out in the sun. As long as I remained relatively still, and in the trees, I wasn't stifling hot. It was linen, and covered me from head to toe and wrist bone to wrist bone. I'm still not stepping out of the air conditioning, though, unless I have to.

I've been working on some wire weaving for next Coronation, and I've got quite a bit done for the length around the bottom of Boru's tunic done. Except, of course, that I don't know exactly how far around it's going to be. I've got about five feet done. I expect I'll need a bit more.

I'm going to try a smaller gauge wire for the swirly bits for Dee's apron, something slightly more delicate and less likely to be too stiff to curl around properly. I've picked up a spool of the 28 guage wire, and marked up a slighlty smaller dowle for the attempt, the next smaller size down from the 3/16ths I use for the 24 guage. We'll see how well it works.

But my truck is toast.  While I was driving home Monday night someone came out of a side street and hit me in the passenger side rear wheel, and knocked me over.  I had to be pulled out of the car while it was upside down by the fire department, and I was hauled off to Baptist Hospital to be xrayed and CT'd and pronounced okay by the ER docs.  They released me about midnight.  The Nashville Fire Department rules, by the way.

Whoever hit me was driving one of those great big SUVs, a Navigator or an Escalade or something; I wasn't looking closely, I just noted that it was coming up to the stop sign and I kept going; I thought they were going to stop.  I wasn't in a hurry or anything, I was thinking of what I was going to bring for dinner at G's and what everyone else was bringing.   After the impact, I was pretty much unable to see anything while I was trapped in the cab, and I have no memory of being pulled out of the cab by the fire department.  I came to myself having an apparently rational conversation with the EMT in the back of the ambulance on the way to Baptist.  Freaky. 
 



That's my poor baby, the white one in the center with the new low top.




Looking in the passenger side toward the driver's seat.  The roof was resting on the steering wheel and the headrest.   

I'm sore, and thanking my lucky stars.  I love me some GM safety engineers, too, for making a roof that didn't cave my skull in.  And I love safety glass, and padded seats, and locking seatbelts, and, well, everyone gets the idea.

I went home last night, pulled out the kumihimo plate, braided for a minute, and fell asleep.  I woke up at 2 AM, TV blaring.  Must've needed the sleep, but now I have to untangle my kumihimo plate.

Anyway, the night before last we all trooped over to the ballet to give them a hand with last minute costume stuff.  I wound up sewing the abbot's habit, and we had other folks doing various tasks to help out with other costumes.  I may go back tonight.

It looks like we've got some major changes coming at work, at least for the small group I'm part of.  The powers that be are moving us all together to see if that makes us more efficient.  Meh.  I don't see the advantage; I've already got competent help where I'm at, and there are other considerations they're not looking at.  They don't seem to remember the reason they couldn't put us together three years ago, for one. 

I don't understand why they have to fix us if we're not broken.