So, while I ma here, I intend to take full advantage of every opportunity to knit with friends.

So, last Wednesday I made it to the elephant house and managed to see a few people who are now away on holiday. For the rest of our stay -

Tomorrow, Sunday - Double Dutch from 2pm, not that I expect to get there by 2, of course, but Iĺl be there!
Tuesday - Borders at Kinnaird park, whwnever the bus gets me there, Bill is working all day, so it won´t be at 6, but hopefully soon after.
Wednesday: back to the elephant house, earlier than this week!
Saturday: at double dutch.

We leave next Sunday.

Amongst the joy of being home I got bad bad news about another Alison. We shared a consultant and were in hospital a week apart. She´s Gone. We would drink coffee and talk about the consultants, and the nurses. Our sons were in the same class, and she had a daughter of 11. I think she died around christmas, I haven´t asked for details.

She had asked me not to tell anyone at school, the story was that she had had surgery on her back, From what I understand everyone was terribly shocked when she died. I´m terribly shocked too, because i expected to see her in the playground yesterday, but not by what caused her death.

I never expected her to die though. In her surgery they had taken all the lymph nodes in her neck and only found what they had with me - lympho vascular invasion, if I remember right, although my memory is sketchy from that period of my life. I don´t think she was expecting to die either, at least not back in October. But she told people about it over the christmas holidays.

This is horrible. horrible.

My machine knitted cardi is finally moving along. I've now seamed up three of the 4 raglan seams. I'm weaving them, I couldn't work out how to mattress stitch the slanted seam - is it just me? Won't get it done before going away on holiday though. Have been swatching with the yarn for ribbing and button band. I'm not liking it much, so I think that I will end up crocheting it all. I'm pretty sure there's plenty of yarn so it shouldn't be a problem.
This yarn felts if you look at it wrong, so what's the betting on the cardigan surviving its first wash?
Ravelry link is here

Trying to decide what to take on holiday. The february sweater is coming along nicely, but it's kind of big. I want to take something other than socks, though.  maybe I should start a kid's sweater.

Would anyone like any araucania sock yarn?

Just back from seeing the oncologist and getting the results of the echo cardiogram and CT scan.

CT scan of all vital organs totally clear - no signs of cancer! And the echo showed an ejection fraction of 63% - which is way good!

I'll do a proper post some day, I never even wrote about the final herceptin, did I?

But for today, I'm going to relax and not think about it for a while.

You all realise of course that I'm so indoctrinated into the Chilean style of doing things, that I will be greeting all and sundry with a kiss on the left cheek upon my return to Edinburgh?

Just sayin'

We are arriving in Edinburgh on the evening of Tuesday 30th June, and are expected in Bath on the afternoon/evening of 13th July. We're not *quite* sure when we're heading south, we might do it over two days. But we will have at least 11 days in Edinburgh.

We need to book a B&B for 2-3 nights, then we'll be house-sitting in Viewforth/Bruntsfield.

After Bath, we're planning a day at Legoland, then we fly home to Santiago on the 21st of July, getting back here the monring of the 22nd.

The boys start Grade 3 and Grade 1 on Monday the 27th. Next Friday, Nico has a sleepver at school - this is a tradition in his particular K2 class. The excitement is almost unbearable. And then, he's turning 6! 6! a week tomorrow.

I don't know if I can stand the excitement...

I've got two dreamwidth invites - happy to share!

Nico sang to me this morning. A song he has been learning in music class and in choir after school. Not one I recognise.

He got a bit breathless a few times, but he sang about 2 & a half verses and the chorus a couple of times. His phrasing and expression were great! And he sang louder in some places, softer in others. Good teacher, I think. Good singer, I'm sure!

Half an hour ago there was a 5.4 earthquake about 100 miles away. It lasted about a minute. I didn't notice it.

This is normal. I have only noticed 1 tremor the whole time we've been here, and it was when we were staying in the flat. Either I'm totally un-sensitive, or this house is built like a rock.

But, I@m getting a little tired of being the only one who doesn't notice. meep.

I'm off to pack my sink plug and hand warmers. Tomorrow morning I have the final Herceptin appointment! Hurrah!

So I think I might give in and spend the rest of tonight winding a hank of that lovely araucania yarn and swatching. Even though I should be knitting the current sweater instead. I'm cheating on my knitting. With knitting.

And this is posted in the new dreamwidth account. And should be crossposting to LJ.

...looks like this:



I got dragged away from a really nice get together this morning by a call from the school. I was needing to leave soon anyway to go home and catch the kittens to take them to the vet to get neutered, but still...

Nico had fallen from the monkey bars and hit his head. He seemed fine, hadn't lost consciousness, and was resting in the nurses station. So I head up to school to get him. He's happy to see me, and ready to go. He gets up, walks just fine, no dizzyness, his head only hurt if you touched the lump on the back of it. We went and got his rucksack, spoke to the teacher, and left the school.

He seemed fine to me, but since the school has an insurance policy with the local clinic, we might as well go and get him checked over, since it's free (hah, still not used to it *not* being free!). The last time he had a head injury was when a loift door sent him flying in the National Museum, and we went to the sick kids then, so I figured we might as well this time too.

We got to the car and he was cheerful and chatty, he called his dad and told him all about it. Given all that, I decided we could pop home, snare the kittens and take them to their appointment with the surgeon before taking N to the clinic.

So, cats caught, deposited at vets, some Spanish spoken at the vets, and then a lot of English when the Vet who speaks English came out, and N and I head for the clinic.

Where after not too long we are seen. He didn't want his blood pressure checked, in case they took all his blood, but after a little persuasion he relented. Then we waited to see a doctor. Pupils were checked for responsiveness, his reflexes checked with the little hammer, and we were sent off to have his head examined, I mean x-rayed.

Then we went back to the exam room, and waited, and waited. And watched some youtube videos on my ipod. Finally, the doctor came back, and told us his head looked fine, there was no fracture. But then he started telling me about all the dangers that can come from head trauma, and the signs i needed to look for, in case his brain started to swell, in 4 stages:

1: Headache and Dizziness
2. Nausea & Vomiting
3. Seizures
4. Unconsciousness

OK, I can do that. *THEN* he tells me to take him home and put him to bed for 24 hours with *no visual stimulation at all*, no TV, no computer, not even reading a book. Then in 24 hours, while he still needed to be in bed, he could have "his computer or his television in his bedroom" (what planet this doctor lives on I'm not sure). If he was ok, he could go back to school on Friday. And he's not to play any sports for a week. He then gave me a slip of paper with all this written down, and asked me eleventy billion times if I understood. I just looked at him and said "He's 5 years old!" to which the Dr replied, yes,and a very intelligent 5 years old, so don't let him read a book. Oh, and I could only give him bland food. In case his food made him sick and we didn't know if it was the head injury or the food. The quack was speaking spanglish all this time, by the way.

So... I smiled and nodded and we made good our escape.

Came home and I tried to make N a quesadilla while ranting to Bill on the phone about the quack, so I burned it. So I made him a cheese toastie. Then we raced to school to collect Thomas. And while we were waiting, I took scientific poll of all the other mothers on whether the Dr was totally full of shit, while N raced around, jumped off picnic tables, rolled around on the grass and generally behaved like a 5 year old who had had the afternoon off school.

Then Nico took me and Thomas to his playground to show us where it happened, and what he was doing at the time. Then we came home, and after Thomas did his homework, we watched TV. Spongebob. Which is probably the worst in terms of visual stimulation (for me at least).

So, did I do the right thing?

OK friends, please recommend me some music. What's your favourite right now? Trying out blip.fm, it's playing me Geraldine, Glasvegas. Don't know why I love it, but I do. "My name is Geraldine, I'm your social worker" http://blip.fm

But one song does not a playlist make. I need more. Plus, the ipod dock is fucked. So i needs me some internet music.

Bill made me a cutting and drafting table! Well, I bought the legs at Ikea before we left home, but Bill built it! It's 92cm high. No more backache and sore hips from cutting or drawing.

Lucky me!

Today I sorted out my button box. I must tell Bill, I'm sure he'll be proud. First he got me to stop alphabetising my bookshelves, and now, my button box is all of a jumble.




It was full of little ziploc bags where I had all the buttons that were the same or realted all bundled up together, And my button box was FULL. Which made me sad, because impulse buying buttons seems to be wrong if they won't fit in the button box.

So I emptied all the little ziplocs, and put the little bags in a drawer for a *greater purpose* and in the process rediscovered lots of buttons!






The ones that were still on their cards could stay, but there were hardly any.




I'm trying to remember what I bought these for. Now I want to dig in the fabric stash in case I can find a match!




Look! A teddy dear toggle! A bingo! A Fire engine!



Look! Grandad cardigan buttons! I didn't buy these, I must have taken them off something.




Look! A boat! Smiley faces!

And the best bit of all? The button box is only half full after all!

I posted most of this to Ravelry already, but never mind...

I took some photos today - the colour in these is much more accurate than the one of the balls in the basket. Made some new stitch markers for it too.



The yarn over increases continue to please me, and the slip stitch edges look pretty wonderful too. I hadn't realised what a difference slipping the stitch wyif makes - I'd always just slipped wyib before, which is pretty pointless.







I'm loving this sweater!

It really is some level of absurdity when I have to take my own sink plug to the hospital to be able to soak my hand in sufficiently hot water to let a nurse put a cannula in, isn't it?

But I did that yesterday, and amazingly, my appointment went without a hitch. Evil/Useless nurse (who I now realise is the one who always treats me becasue she speaks English) got the needle in without any trouble at all. Very good wonderful nurse was back however and standing by in case it all went wrong.

I am claiming total credit for this however. I made sure I was prepared. Partly by being well hydrated and having a protein and carbohydrate laden breakfast. Scrambled eggs on toast, and usually I can't eat before about 9.00, so making myself eat at 7.30 is tough.

I had as hot a shower as I could cope with, drank as much water as I could starting the night before (how many trips to the loo in the night? I lost count!)

I took hand warmers and gloves, and a plug for the sink. We all know that if you run a tap the water runs hot, then cools down, then runs hot again. Well, for the last how many appointments, I've been running my hands under a hot tap. The last two appointments were lessons in how to torture people. So yesterday morning I had a bright idea, and took a spare sink plug that we had bought. And it fit the sink! So I was able to fill the sink with very.hot.water and soak my hands.

But it was a good thing that I had the hand warmers and gloves (and Noreen to apply them) becasue it was about 10 minutes after I had sufficiently heated myself in the sink that they got their arses in gear to stab me.

Anyway. I may have flinched, but it didn't even raise a gasp, never mind a yelp, squeal or tears.

But it's nothing to do with the skill of the nurse, it was all to do with my preparation. C'mon people! This is supposed to be Santiago's best private hospital. They are used to dealing with their chemo patients in an assembly line fashion - plug the line into a catheter that's been installed for ease of access. Never mind the patient's risk of infection, never mind the patient's state of mind. Oh, what's that on my chest. Oh yeah, it's that thing I need for my CANCER treatment. No chance of forgetting from one treatment to the next.

Do I sound bitter? I am, for all those people who have these things and don't need them. I know that some people *do* need them, and they make a hellish experience bearable (for instance if I had had to have evil nurse for all 17 treatments, maybe I would have reconsidered).

Anyway, I had been called the day before and asked to come in an hour early to see the Oncologist, at 8. I said I'd make it at 8.15. I asked if they would let the chemo nurses know that I would be early and they said yes. And they obviously did, becasue they were expecting me. But no one told the PHARMACY. Fuckwits. So I sat with a very slow running saline drip, and when the herceptin arrived I saw it had been made up at 9.45, which would be reasonable for a 9.30 appointment, but not for an 8.30 one. So I didn't really escape all that early.

Noreen was with me again, so we just sat and put the world to rights, and actually had as nice a time as you can with a needle in your vein.

Only one more to go! (Then a catscan which I don't want to think about in case it gives me unthinkaboutable bad news).

There will be a girls' night out with much champagne the weekend after I finish. (and before the catscan) My last treatment should be 6th May. Yay.

For some reason today I am happy. I've got that slightly excited feeling that means that something nice is going to happen. Well, we got a new veg box today, with two litres of organic milk [1] and a dozen organic eggs. But that's not it. I think the anxiety has maybe transformed itself into nervous energy... Which isn't a bad thing except at bedtime.

So anyway, I did some more sewing this morning. But first I had to do rather a lot of unsewing. last night I got to the point on the new pair of jeans where I could baste a few seams and try them on. It's a real shame that I had sewn the back pockets on before this stage. The fact that I had sewn them on with two rows of topstitching on the marks supplied by the pattern cutter is either bad luck or stupidity....

I'm trying a pattern for a low rise pair of jeans. I've got this flat tummy, or well, I have this tummy that no longer has the pregnancy induced lower tummy fatness. Admittedly I still have just-being-fat upper tummy fatness. But I digress, lots of trousers fit funnily now becasue there's not so much to hold them up, so I thought it would be clever to try a pair of low rise jeans. This pattern is from the "Burda young fashion" range number 7988. [2] So I should have realised that with "fashion" in the title I might be in trouble. Yes, along with the low rise waist, goes low slung back pockets. You know, the ones that start where your bum actually ends, and end somewhere unflattering, down on the back of your thighs? Ahem.

I unsewed the pockets this morning. And *lifted* them to a hopefully more flattering position.



Erm, it's the unsewing you're supposed to be looking at and commiserating with, not just going "aw, cute kitteh". Try this one instead:



WTF? How'd he get in that one too? Persistent wee shite.

I also need to tell you that topstitching down an outside leg seam on pinstriped fabric is quite the psychedelic experience. Have I mentioned that I've been having dizzy spells? I had to stop and regroup a few times...


[1]Milk here is almost always UHT. We have found one that is just ultra-pastuerised, which is slightly better, but it comes in plastic bags and still, sometimes you get a bag that tastes like reconstituted powdered milk. If this organic stuff is good, it will be worth every peso of the $1600 per litre (yes, that's £1.88 for a litre of milk). It came in jars. With screw on lids, just liek their yogurt does. A verdict will be forthcoming tomorrow.

[2] don't know how long that link will last

I'm not really sure why, but I'm really struggling with anxiety right now. It takes very little to set me off, in fact, it can take nothing. We were getting ready to go out at the weekend to the park, and had to wait until I'd stopped panicking. Nothing major, just a few minutes of anxiety, but when it starts to happen every few days it worries me. I haven't had full blown panic attacks in years - almost 10 years. I have had times like this though, when I just feel shaky. I know that when I get depressed it shows up as anxiety. Or is it the other way round? I also know that the honeymoon period with Santiago might be ending, and the reality is sinking in, and hey ho, who woulnd't be anxious. But I don't like it.

Never mind - enough about that, Bill has built the boys a swingset, so we are having a party to celebrate it this weekend. That's a perfectly normal reaction to having a new swingset, isn't it? Having a party? Yes, I thought so.



Tell me you could have that in your garden and *not* have a party?

We had been looking and looking for swingsets, and had almost, but not quite convinced ourselves that we would just cough the $700.000 to buy a good one. But didn't. And then there was an email on the international assoc. list. A family who were leaving were selling off stuff, including a swingset kit that their landlords wouldn't let them put up (we haven't bothered asking!). They were asking $100US for it. We went to see, and in speaking to the woman learned that they had only been here 5 months, and her husband's job contract got cancelled. Back home they were going, they had expected to be here for three years. We didn't even try to haggle over the price, I just felt so awful for them.

And went home to be grateful again for fully funded telescopes and 3 year extendable contracts with international organisations.

Damn, I've depressed myself again. I need something cheerful...



There. That's better.

I took this one myself with the camphone, the last one anyone else took of me was Thomas catching me in my bathrobe, so I think I won't bother posting *that one*.

My hair has been growing back for over a year now, slowly at first, but now I think it might be getting back to normal speed. If only my fingernails would follow the example!

Sorry, you can't see the ringlet affect in this one....