Day 85 - a perfectly ordinary little gem

Somehow without being anything special today managed to be an absolute gem of a day. We started the day by having Ellie and Tommie open birthday presents. I was able to surprise Tommie which I cannot do often and Ellie liked her presents so a good time was had by all. Tommie liked her pillow. I also gave her a wooden recorder which she had mentioned in passing once that she would like if only one could find one. It required a fair bit of internet sleuthing; hee hee. Here is a picture of one side of the pillow, taken by Tommie. The other side is different. It is all woven in one piece, stuffed on the loom while in progress. There are hand-sewn seams at both ends, but the sides have woven seams. I'm pleased with it and happy she likes it.

After Tommie left, Ellie and I were errand central, including the grocery store for birthday cake supplies. I worked a little on warping my loom and, hurray! my VAD site is healing well enough that I can warp the loom without pain. I was afraid that it was going to be permanent, but, no, catastrophizing wizard, it is not permanent and you can weave again. I paid Matt, my favorite farmer, two visits today. The first visit was for, I thought, everything I needed from him and the second visit was for strawberries (which Ellie requested I buy so she could dip them in the left over birthday cake frosting) and to give Matt the $2 which he let me owe him when I didn't have enough money on the first trip. It was as I was driving home, eating a few of the strawberries, that I realized today was actually a really nice day. I completely missed out on strawberries this year (berries are totally off the neutropenic diet because there is really no way to clean their lumpy little surfaces very well) and then Matt had these beautiful, absolutely perfect tasting strawberries that I got to eat some of today at the end of the summer when strawberries are not usually so good. Perhaps because the strawberries were so unexpectedly perfect, I was jolted out of myself for a second into, "Wow, what a perfect day this is." I decided to stay there.

Ellie and I made her cake and she spent a lot of time playing with these keepsake figurines that she has decided she wants to start collecting. They are not intended to be toys, but she had a lot of fun making them sing and dance and act out stories. She had Terry bring home the tripod and did a stop action film of them. She spent about thirty minutes re-arranging the knick-knacks on a shelf so that there was space for the new figurines, all the while singing a song about the knick-knacks she was organizing, "we're the chickens and my legs are broken, broken, bro-o-o-o-ken," etc. while I was in the next room discovering that I could still weave. Soon after I took the dog for a 2.5 mile walk in PEA where she was the fabulously good dog she always is, hurling her furry self into the river over and over with such joy, greeting other dogs briefly and politely and coming when I call her. It is a real pleasure to have a well behaved dog (thank you, Emily). On top of that, it's always the best day of Maggie's life and that makes her so much fun to be around.

One of the (ok, The only) good thing about the neutropenic diet is that I have had to learn to cook a bit more. I really like salmon which when well cooked is ok for people without immune systems and discovered (after Emily suggested it), that you can cook salmon on the grill wrapped in foil. This solves two problems: cooking fish in the house makes the house smell and there is really no way to make the grill sanitary enough for a neutropenic person. I noticed that there is a lot of salmon juice and fat left over in the foil and wondered what would happen if you stuck potatoes under the fish, wrapped it up and cooked it. The answer: magic. It was so delicious. The only problem was that the crunchy part of the potatoes stuck to the foil, but I bet if I make it a lot and experiment, I can solve this problem. I am resolved to try!

My VAD is getting better. Picture below the jump which I note sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. If you don't want to see it (warning: no blood, but a surgical wound and bruising) and it doesn't hide the picture behind a jump for you, I am sorry. Let me know if it bothers you and I'll find a different solution that is more reliable.

I had a perfect day made out of lots of little sweet pieces. I hope for a sweet piece or two for each of us tomorrow.

All that yellow stuff is not leftover cleanser, but bruise. Also, several people have suggested I add the rest of the face in. Perhaps that will be my second tattoo.