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I think I need a vacation after all of that activity during the long Thanksgiving weekend. jebra must be equally worn out as he did all of the driving. We spent Thanksgiving with Jean & Marshall & Ian. Jean's home from Tijuana and CHIPSA and looks amazing. Which really shouldn't be a surprise as even when the cancer was growing the parts of her that were visible were as beautiful as ever. She showed us photos of her tumor before and after treatment and holy cats, a 97% reduction without surgery. Her liver enzymes are off, which is why she needs to take a break from whatever they were giving her. Right now the plan is for her to return to CHIPSA around Valentine's Day. Watching all of this unfold has been interesting as I had no idea how many people hold non-mainstream views about Western medicine. We have one friend who used to juice and who told us about all of her friends and acquaintances who would try to educate her about how unhealthy juicing is while at the same time telling her she looked great and asking how they could obtain her level of energy. Someone told us about a sister-in-law with some rare form of cancer with a two year survival rate -- who is going on five years with relatively good health after deciding on homeopathic treatment. Before I believed Homeopathy is a pseudoscience, now I'm not so sure. In Jean's case, the treatment is not homeopathic in nature but there are a lot of unusual elements such as coffee enemas and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. All I can do is hope that the treatment she's selected continues to work and that it destroys the remaining cancer cells.

On Friday we got up at the usual time and drove to Ionia to spend the day with my mom. I think she's doing fairly well but I have great sympathy for her unhappiness at having lost her freedom to jump in the car and go, well, anywhere. One of my brothers either took her car keys or hid them somewhere in the house to prevent her driving. She's not supposed to drive for at least another six months, six months being the common restriction after having a seizure. Conversations with her take some mental gymnastics as she's still mixing up her words. For example she told us that it was my nephew Travis, not my my brother Eriks, that is in danger of losing his new house. Seeing as this would be the fourth or fifth house Eriks has lost to bankruptcy, foreclosure, or in one case theft from the seller (bought on land contract; the seller wasn't passing my brother's payments on to the bank and the bank repossessed) was far less concerning to me than hearing that my nephew, his wife, and their baby were having that kind of trouble.

Even with communication difficulties we had a very nice visit and the only disappointment was that my other brothers (Rob & Brad) did not stop in and that we didn't get to go to dinner with Brad and his son Brian. On Thanksgiving they said we would, then the next day decided they had better offers elsewhere. Grumble.

We were back at our house before the wee morning hours, slept for a while, had some breakfast, then realized we were late for leaving for the Redford. We missed the entire theater organ concert that precedes every movie but we were in our seats before the first cartoon began. Not that I can remember what it was; I remember we saw a few animated commercials (one for cigars, one for the movie The Milkman), a Felix the Cat, a Pepe Le Pew, and a few I'd never seen or even heard of before. I should ask jebra if he still has the program notes as I never looked at them because I wanted to be surprised.

After the cartoon festival we drove over to Jean & Marshall's house and watched Galaxy Quest with them because during Thanksgiving we discovered Ian had never seen it and jebra couldn't stand that gap in his fannish education. We own the movie and I like it, but personally I'd have preferred watching Real Genius which Ian still hasn't seen.

On Sunday we stuck to the neighborhood, restocking my supply of Trader Joe's Sparkling Water (to which I have serious addiction) and going to the annual Christmas Cookie bake held by Wes & Maurita. We didn't do any baking but went over just to socialize.

Monday was back to work followed by Band Practice for jebra and laundry and exercise and knitting for me. I'm working on a scarf for redlback32's son and it's a heap of a lot of knitting. Sport yarn, size 2 knitting needles, and a minimum length of 70 inches. I'm not even at the half-way point yet. It takes an hour and a half to knit two and half inches of the plain pattern, so how long will 70 inches take?
I have no idea and not even algebra will help as the intarsia portion of the pattern takes at least twice as long. My goal is to have the scarf finished by December 12th, when I can show it off at Guild, then ship it the very next day.

Yesterday was pretty much of repeat of Monday and now here I am, back at work.

Scrapbook papers & elements from the kit Bohemian Breeze
For more information about the designers and their work, see
http://mrs-sweetpeach.dreamwidth.org/903338.html.



This entry was originally posted at https://mrs-sweetpeach.dreamwidth.org/952763.html.