Knitnut.net. Watch my life unravel...
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Posted by zoom! on August 26, 2009, at 2:16 pm |
Things are happening fast all of a sudden on the health care front!
Yesterday morning I got a call from the General Hospital lining up some radiation appointments. There was a CT-scan today, and a series of daily radiation treatments beginning on September 16th.
And then in the afternoon I got a call from the Civic Hospital, with a date for my back surgery: September 11th!
Someone got their wires crossed, because the back surgery was supposed to take place after the radiation treatments were completed. But you know what? I’m not telling them. I seized that September 11 date, and I’m not letting go.
From what I’ve read, a microdiscectomy is most likely to be successful if it’s performed within three to six months of the disk rupturing. It’s already a little over six months, and if I wait til after radiation, it’ll be eight months. The longer I wait, the greater the chance I’ll end up with permanent unfixable nerve damage, which would mean permanent pain, permanent painkillers and permanent disability.
I have my pre-op tomorrow.
This morning I went to the General Hospital and got five tattoos on my chest. They use these as markers for lining up the radiation beams. They’re permanent, but tiny – the size of freckles. The radiation therapist told me that heavily freckled women have to get much larger tattoos, so they stand out in the sea of real freckles.
Which reminds me – I used to have a room-mate who was a very heavily freckled flaming redhead. She had freckles everywhere, but they stopped abruptly at her wrists and ankles. When she was naked she looked like she was wearing polka-dotted pajamas! So cute. She had tea once with the Queen of England.
In other news, GC and I went to two parties last night. On a Tuesday! The first was a geocaching dinner party at Summerhayes Restaurant. They have them every month, but this was our first. There were about forty or fifty geocachers there. The second was a going-away party for the Sock Monkey Lady. She’s going away, back to the Sunshine Coast. Goodbye Sock Monkey Lady! We’ll miss you! Ottawa’s a better place because you were in it.
Posted by zoom! on August 25, 2009, at 12:33 pm |
“Why is it,” asks GC as we walk towards the car, “that when men get older they just get fat and bald, but when women get older they keep getting hotter?”
I glance at him to see if he’s joking.
“Not that you’re getting older or anything,” he adds quickly.
Posted by zoom! on August 24, 2009, at 11:57 am |
This extraordinary gift started with Rachael. She’s a California blogger, knitter and novelist, and a lovely person to boot. Rachael put the wheels in motion in May, shortly after I was diagnosed with cancer.
Grace – who doesn’t yet have a blog but who will be a phenomenal blogger when she does – offered to help Rachael coordinate things. Rachael and Grace contacted a number of other knitters who read my blog, and asked them if they’d like to help create a gift for me.
And then the knitters started knitting! The Canadian knitters mailed their completed pieces to Grace. The American knitters mailed their pieces to Rachael. I’m not sure where the African and Australian knitters mailed their pieces. Grace then mailed the box of Canadian squares to Rachael in California, and Rachael and her friends and sisters got together and transformed all those gorgeous squares into the exquisite Zoom Blanket!
 The Assembling Party in California And look at it! Isn’t it the most beautiful blanket you’ve ever seen? EVER? It’s not just wonderful and touching and heartwarming and generous and kind, it’s also absolutely stunning!
 The Zoom Blanket Rachael then mailed the blanket to Grace and Grace attached the last square, which had arrived late, and boxed it up and delivered it to me, along with a whole bunch of lovely cards and touching notes.
I woke up in the middle of the night on Thursday and I just lay there for the longest time thinking about this gift and what it means. I thought about all the work and cooperation that went into it. I thought about what it meant to the women who made it, and what it means to me. I thought about how friends I’ve never even met could care so much about me that they would somehow transcend geography to make something so wonderful, so full of love, just for me.
This year, as you know, has been crazy bad for me in some serious ways. Even so, it has been a much richer and more meaningful year than most. This blanket is – literally and symbolically – one of the treasured gifts to come out of this period of my life. It represents friendship and comfort and nurturing and warmth and community. It is a gift of tremendous beauty. It is a work of art. It is something I will cherish every day for the rest of my very long life.
Every time I look at this blanket – every time I think about this blanket – I am reminded that I am part of something much bigger and better than myself. I am part of a community, and this community, like this blanket, is even greater than the sum of its parts. Each of us is unique and special, but together we are an extraordinary force.
To all the women who contributed to this gift, thank you. You have given me a wonderful gift – something that knits all of us together forever. (You have even given me something that makes me look forward to winter, and you have no idea how extraordinary a gift that is for a wheelchair-bound Canadian girl with poor circulation!) Thank you so much. I love you all!
I’m going to put together another post about this blanket next week, with photos of each of the squares. I want you to see how gorgeous they are! (I’m planning to identify the knitters too, so if you don’t want to be identified, or if you’d rather I used a pseudonym for you, please let me know at soozoom@yahoo.com. Thanks.)
Posted by zoom! on August 23, 2009, at 9:35 am |
Apart from spending a few minutes geocaching at the corner of Bronson and Slater, and a few minutes curled up in the Trailhead hammock with GC, I’ve been at the Folk Festival all weekend.
The weather has been surprisingly good, especially considering the forecast. The Folk Festival is the perfect size for running into people and I’ve run into lots of people. They don’t all read the blog, so some of them were shocked to see me in a wheelchair.
Speaking of the wheelchair, there are advantages and disadvantages to doing a festival in a wheelchair. One advantage is that GC, as my ‘aide’, got a free ticket. Another is that people tend to go out of their way to make things a little easier for us. For example, last night we were looking for a spot from which to watch the Good Lovelies and Bruce Cockburn. GC pushed me up an aisle, where a woman told us we couldn’t remain because they were keeping the aisles clear.
“Okay,” said GC, and prepared to turn the wheelchair around and look elsewhere. The sound booth was right beside us, and one of the sound men beckoned us over. He opened the gate and told us to come in and make ourselves comfortable. We ended up with a great, uncrowded view of the stage. It was so comfortable we both fell asleep during Bruce Cockburn’s concert. Thank you, nice man in the sound booth!
Every time I go to a Festival I like to come away with at least one new musical ‘find.’ Someone I’ve never heard of before, but whose music I discover I love. I found my 2009 Folk Festival find. It’s Terra Hazelton.
I saw her at the Blues & Beyond workshop yesterday with Ray Bonneville, Idy Oulo and Rich Warren. She’s a jazz singer. She’s got a terrific sense of humour, an instant rapport with her fellow musicians, and she knows how to bring the best out in an audience. The whole place got energized as soon as she arrived, which was ten minutes before the end of the workshop because her train was delayed.
She’ll be back today though, and so will I. I’m going to catch her on the Moon Stage at 1:00, with the Sing It, Sister workshop, featuring her, Penny Lang, the Good Lovelies and Radoslav Lorkovic. And she’ll also be at the dance tent at 4:30 for the Sunday Swingtacular: Terra Hazelton & Her Easy Answers.
Anyway, this year’s Folk Festival is working out so much better for us than last year’s Folk Festival.
Anybody else out there doing the Folk Festival this weekend? Are you having fun? What have you seen so far?
Posted by zoom! on August 21, 2009, at 4:08 pm |
I was given the most wonderful and heartwarming gift last night! I’m going to blog about it in a few days, after I’ve given all the feelings a chance to bubble up to the surface.
In the meantime, I’ll tell you about something else that happened yesterday.
 The Billy Bookcases Duncan and I were sitting on the couch, playing Farkle on the laptop, when All of a Sudden the bookcase beside me collapsed. It’s one of those tall Billy bookcases. The top shelf with all the antique photography books collapsed first, and it took out the shelf beneath it. That shelf was just a wee one, with antique photos and cameras on it. But all these books and shelves and cameras and pictures were collapsing and they were smashing into the glass-topped table down below and things were breaking and Duncan was flying across the room, seeking safer ground.
But me? I lifted my eyes from the computer screen, briefly watched the chaos descending upon the room, and then went back to my Farkle game because there was nothing I could do to stop the bookcase from collapsing, and besides, the Farkle game was timed.
 The Chandler Swain Crow/Cat Teapot After the game was over (I won, by the way), I took stock of the damage. There was some damage to the shelves themselves, and some of the books had their corners banged, and the glass of one antique photo broke, and a Christmas ornament broke. Worst of all, the lid from my Chandler Swain Cat/Crow teapot broke.
But it could have been so much worse. The lid can be glued, and the teapot itself escaped unscathed. The glass table top didn’t break, nor did the glass in most of the picture frames, nor did the fragile dolls on the shelf below. So, all in all, things turned out much better than they could have.
It reminded me of something that happened when my son was about three years old. He and his cousin, Lindsay, who was two, were playing in his room. Suddenly we heard a huge bang and the children started crying. Deb and I raced into the bedroom to find the dresser overturned. Lindsay had tried to climb it.
On top of the dresser had been a little wooden shelving unit where James kept his fragile treasures. Most of them were now broken. He was sobbing as he surveyed the damage. But suddenly he spotted something that wasn’t broken: it was a hollowed-out egg that had been hand-painted with a bunny scene and given to him by someone at Irene’s Pub.
“At least my egg didn’t break!” he cried with relief as he rushed across the room and picked it up from the floor. But in the intensity of the moment, he squeezed too hard and the egg broke in his hand.
He’d found the one thing that had been spared devastation, and then he’d inadvertently destroyed it himself with the sheer intensity of his love for it.
I felt so sad for him, but I loved that he was the kind of person who would do that.
Posted by zoom! on August 20, 2009, at 9:15 am |
Last night we went to Irene’s Pub to see Hella Stella perform, because how often do you get an opportunity to see one of your favourite people performing at one of your favourite pubs? Fellow bloggers Milan and La Canadienne were there too. Hella Stella was excellent, as always, and we even stayed for a bit of The Gruff, a mostly-female roots-country band. We liked them but it was getting late and we were getting sleepy.
Remember that post I wrote about cancer etiquette? Well. It seems I neglected to put something on the “Do Not Do” list. Something that actually happened on the way out of Irene’s last night.
We stopped by the cash to pay our bill, and the bartender, Kim, asked me how things were going with the cancer.
“Good,” I said, “Everything’s been good lately.”
Then she reached over, cupped both my breasts in her hands and squeezed gently. “Are they both still yours?” she asked.
I kid you not. She did that. There are witnesses.
This is an absolutely classic example of something you ought not do, under any circumstances, to anybody you know with breast cancer. Kim, however, is probably the only person in the entire universe who could get away with it. She’s outrageous and audacious and I’ve known her for 25 years. So while I couldn’t believe she actually did that, it mostly just struck me as funny. And weird. Definitely weird.
Posted by zoom! on August 19, 2009, at 9:18 am |
There’s nothing I like more than an addictive hobby. I love the intensity of obsession. I love that all-encompassing, can’t-quite-get-enough feeling. I love waking up and falling asleep thinking about it. I love knowing exactly what I want to be doing, and even when I’m not doing it, I can’t wait to get back to it. It gives me energy and clarity and certainty. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle piece snapping into place. It’s like falling in love.
I don’t just love doing the hobby, but also researching it and learning everything I can about it. I love the gear that goes along with each new hobby – the tools and supplies and books and websites and wish lists. I love the sense of connection to others who share the obsession.
I’ve been that way about all kinds of hobbies over the years: knitting and other crafts, and various kinds of art-making and online role-playing games and fish-keeping and day-trading and bird-watching and bush-bashing and balcony gardening and hiking and camping and running and antiques-scrounging and flea markets and collections of various sorts (antique photography, vintage clothing, mannequins, old playing cards, artist trading cards, old cameras, ephemera, silver, old purses, hats….).
I know I’m forgetting some.
Eventually I either burn out on the hobby altogether (like Japanese rice-paper lamp-making – I used to make these gorgeous lamps with real marijuana leaves in the panels), or it becomes a smaller, saner part of my life (like knitting).
For awhile after a hobby loses its grip on me, my life becomes more balanced and I get more sleep and I get more accomplished, but I can’t help feeling that something’s missing.
As much as I might want to, I can’t just rush out and replace a fading hobby with a new one – there’s a kind of alchemy to addiction, and I have to wait for it. Ironically, sometimes the new addiction is something that would have struck me as utterly boring at any other time in my life (fish-keeping is a good example).
What are your past and current hobbies? Do you stick with the same hobbies, or do you sometimes let some go and adopt new ones? Do you tend to get obsessive about them? Have you ever called in sick so you get your necromancer up to level 60?
Posted by zoom! on August 18, 2009, at 11:20 am |
 The Woman Who Dances at Hartman's! We were at the Greek Festival the other evening, eating souvlaki and listening to Greek music and watching people dance, when it suddenly occurred to me that my people have no culture. Other groups of Canadians celebrate their culture and heritage with ceremonies and song and dance and costumes and food. But my people don’t seem to have any of that.
As a matter of fact, I’m not even sure who my people are. We’re just white, English-speaking, not-very-religious Canadians of undistinguished, mixed, or wishy-washy ancestry. I guess you could say we’re unhyphenated Canadians…we’ve lost our hyphens over time.
We don’t have a festival, but if we did I suspect it might be a little lame. I can’t even imagine how we’d go about planning it. What would we call it? What kind of food would we eat? What would we do?
Posted by zoom! on August 16, 2009, at 9:54 pm |
After the garden party we spent the afternoon geocaching and found SEVEN caches! One of them was even within walking/wheeling distance of GC’s house.
GC set up some software to download hundreds of geocaches from his computer to his GPS unit. Now, as we drive around town, the GPS beeps whenever we’re within 200 metres of a geocache. That thing beeps all the time!
I’m telling you, there’s a whole other layer of reality happening in this town. There are over 2,000 geocaches hidden in the area. Right under our noses, there’s an elaborate, perpetual game of hide-and-seek taking place all around us, 24 hours a day. People are skulking about, hiding stuff, and other people are scurrying around searching for it. They speak their own shared language and are obsessed with longitudes, latitudes, creating and solving puzzles, and high tech gadgetry. They are geeks.
But, perhaps paradoxically, they’re also obsessed with hiking, exploring and adventuring. They are outdoor geeks! (This is a whole new breed of geekery…geocaching was only invented this millennium.)
There’s more than one way to geocache. You can stick to the urban landscape or head for the hills. You can do it in your own neighbourhood, or while you’re traveling around the world. You can go alone or in pairs or in mobs. You can bike or drive; if you work downtown, you can even spend your lunch breaks geocaching on foot.
GC and I are just doing the easiest geocaches now, because I can’t walk far. Once I’ve had the back surgery, and recovered from it, we’re going to start hunting the caches that require some serious hiking and climbing.
Right now we’re planning to celebrate surviving 2009 with a geocaching trip to Newfoundland next summer! I really really really hope we can make this happen. We’ve started saving our pennies.
Posted by zoom! on August 16, 2009, at 10:48 am |
 Shepherds of Good Hope Garden The Shepherds of Good Hope has a community garden plot, just like ours only much bigger and much much better organized It’s out at the Kilborn Allotment Garden. They grow food there for the soup kitchen.
When I volunteered at Shepherds, there was usually enough food to go around but a chronic shortage of fresh fruits and vegetables. We had clients whose whole faces would light up when they saw we had salad.
Some health conditions, like diabetes, affect the homeless and housed populations in roughly equal proportions, but homeless people get it younger and it’s often more severe and harder to manage on the streets.
Actually, I can’t imagine too many things more difficult than trying to eat a healthy diet on the streets. You’ve got no refrigerator or stove, hardly any money, and you have to carry all your possessions – including your food – around with you.
And yet, there are people on the streets who are trying to eat well. Whenever they have a choice, they’ll make the healthier choice. They’ll have their sandwiches on brown bread. They’ll opt for peanut butter rather than mystery meat. They’ll avoid the pastries. They’ll arrive early on the off chance there might be a little salad that day. I don’t think I’d have the self discipline – I’d probably take the path of least resistance and live off day-old TimBits.
But I was thinking of three of those clients in particular yesterday when we were at the Shepherd’s Hope Garden Party. If a little salad can light up their faces, imagine what a whole garden in its full August glory could do! I liked knowing that all the produce from this gorgeous garden was destined for them.
The Shepherds invited the whole community out to their garden for the garden party, where they had a jazz band, door prizes, garden tours and an opportunity to learn more about the food programs.
They had a garden quiz too, in which contestants identified plants in the garden. We also had to define four different phobias: alliumphobia, rupophobia, entomophobia and lachanophobia.*
GC and I tied with another woman for second prize, with a score of 18 out of 20! (Unfortunately the tie was broken by a coin toss, which we lost…otherwise we would have won a gift certificate for the yummy Green Door.)
But actually we did win a prize because nobody else got the bonus question right: How do you know Santa Claus is a good gardener?** Our prize? A free rototilling session for a 25 x 50 garden plot!
*Fear of garlic, fear of dirt, fear of insects and fear of vegetables
**Because he ho ho hoes!
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