Mother's Day

It is Mother's Day.  Yipee.

Here is the next project in line to cross-stitch.  The tiny image above doesn't show how grand it looks.  The pattern is 18 pages long, and uses 47 colors of floss, mostly blue.  It will be the biggest project for me ever,  but I plan to work on it in rotation with other, simpler, patterns, so it doesn't feel so daunting.  I have already selected the called-for floss, all but 3 that I don't have.  The fabric, however, is another story.  I  want to use the 16 count fabric, pre-gridded, and I have had trouble finding it.  Finally I found a vendor who sells this very thing, HAED, but I have to buy about twice as much fabric as I need, at twice the price, of course.  I think I will wait for a while.

I have had breakfast, but everyone else is still in bed, and I think I will go back to bed myself, although it is 10 am.  There is laundry to be done, but a few hours one way or the other won't matter.  I don't mind any part of the task, except the putting away of the clean clothes, I don't know why.

I would like to go to the mall today, I haven't been there for months, just to browse.  I can't drive these days, and so I have to get R or C to drive me. I would like to think they would gladly take me if I ask, but I know they would not do it cheerfully, and I would feel like I am imposing.  So I am in the house unless I have an appointment, and I am cabin fevered.

Speaking of appointments, I am only 2 weeks and 3 days away from my ortho appt. to get cortisone in my knee again.  And to talk/ start to prepare for knee replacement surgery.  I need to know how mobile I will be, how soon can I climb stairs, when and for how long PT will take.  I put off doing it in the winter time, for fear of falling in snow/ice, but I need to get it done now, if at all feasible.  God my knee hurts, it wakes me up at night when I try to turn over.  I fell on the top stair just a little while ago.

Mother's day.  One of the last ones when Mom was alive, we had a nice dinner at her house, but guess who prepared it?  Me and Mom of course.  I pointed out that we were the only "moms" and everyone else sat in the LR watching TV while we did the heavy lifting.  (It is just that there isn't a good place to go out to dinner, the restaurants are full to overflowing, and many of them have buffets only.  One year our reservations were for 3 pm, that was such a hard time to have dinner, too early for dinner and too late for lunch.)  I still resent the way chores fall to the women-folk it when I think about it.  And of course Dad's dog (a poodle, can you believe it?) got fed first, right at the table.  When Mom passed Dad moved to an assisted-living place, no pets, and I found someone who miraculously needed a house poodle as the lady was bed-ridden and their dog had died, also a poodle.  And so Nipper smoothly transitioned to a new family in Ohio.  When the lady died, the man spoiled him rotten, and sent me photos of him in a santa hat, and so forth.  It was a amazing solution for Nipper.  Oh, they renamed him Chipper, because they thought Nipper sounded like he bites.  I explained that he was named after the RCA logo of a dog listening to his master's voice, but they looked at me like I was nuts.

  I won at Trivial Pursuits once because I knew the dog's name.  But I lost out once because I didn't know who was the star basketball player in the 70s, and of course that was Wilt Chamberlain, Wilt the stilt.  I don't think anyone plays Trivial Pursuits any more.

Have a good day!