New photos and some new work as well

Wingspan in green fingerling weight, 100 grams, wish I had more

Wingspan in a bargain yarn from Big Lots, 100 grams worsted weight, smaller pattern repeat

red glass, 18 gauge aluminum and 22 gauge base metal wires

black glass, base metal silver-colored wire

red lucite flowers, dark grey faceted beads, antiqued brass Vintage components, and there's black bead caps  which aren't visible here, but are in the next photo

20 gauge wires in ice blue and hunter green, hammered flat

glass pearls, gold-colored 20 gauge wire hammered flat

clear lucite beads with purple swirls, pink wire (20 gauge)

The last post was "Winter Days." THIS one is Wishing.

I would like this for my birthday. It is on sale right now, and normally costs $75. It would make slicing raw sweet potatoes for that yummy sweet potatoes au gratin SO much easier.

Wishing

Dotty in the hall

Exchanging looks with Grace

This is kinda boring.

See how boring this is?

Do you really find this interesting?

Outside our bedroom doors on Valentine's Day

All up and down the hall

Forbidden yarn play is the best

creating when i can't sleep

I've been working again, mostly jewelry and a little knitting, but I actually wrote something this morning. Not worth anything yet, but it's a step.

So here are some things I've been making.

 This was a mock-up in 16-gauge aluminum wire with recycled beads--polished stone, in two sizes. I liked it a lot, but the aluminum bends easily, even after being hammered. I used deerskin thong as a necklace.

Once again, 16 gauge aluminum wire, this time in silver color, though I used vintage glass beads that were meant to look like turquoise. They have enough weight in and of themselves that the aluminum wire is almost necessary! These came from a different recycling project. The loop on this pair is short, so the spirals are small and the hanging loop shortish.

This pair is made on the same principle as the pair above, same materials, though the wire is an inch longer. That gives the earring a little more sophistication.  The ear wires are from Blue Moon, and looked sort of Native American to me, and I thought they went nicely with the beads.

 A pair of Vintaj owls, very light-weight metal, black glass beads, simplest of all construction.

 I found these braided leather circles with their hanging findings on the clearance rack, and have had the red glass flowers forever. Silver decorative headpins make the center of the flowers and provide the hanging loop.

 Another Vintaj component, I fell in love with these Art Deco-looking aged copper links. Simply linked green glass daggers to one end, copper ear wires on the other, and voila.

 I made these with very large glass pearls, and used 20-gauge wire, which is not heavy enough in my opinion. However, these have some kind of charm.  I used end caps to cover flaws in the finish of the pearls, which add nice detail to the project.

 These acrylic beads are a pinky-purple with purple veining on the surface. Their shape is sort of like a triangular pyramid, but there's no base. I paired them with 4 mm pink glass pearls, and made the head pins out of pink 20-gauge wire and used gold-colored ear wires.

 Another hammered project which shows me just how much I need to practice hammering, and not leaving tool marks.  Three graduated lengths of wire, hammered flat (20-gauge again, it's what I have on hand) and hung on a jump ring so that the smallest and largest arcs point one way, and the middle one points the other. These are dark green wire and the middles are light blue.

Wendy Wooley

Yesterday morning, January 30th, 2013, my mother went home.

I had just been to visit her the evening before, for our usual visit on Tuesday night. She was groggy most of the time, but woke up a little, said a few things to me, and wanted me to take her out into the hall so we could talk without the distraction of the television.  We sat in the lobby, holding hands, and I sang Amazing Grace and a chorus of 10,000 Reasons. She was very alert during the hymn, and we had a nice visit after that, but then she got sleepy again.  I had forgotten to bring the book I've been reading to her, and promised to bring it next time. She ate a Hershey's Drop.

The next morning, I had just come downstairs when the phone rang. We screen the landline, especially on school days, but I could hear that it was Teri, the day nurse. She asked that I call back as soon as possible, and said she'd try my cell phone. I tend to answer my cell, so I picked it up right away. She said that Eleanor passed away at breakfast this morning.  I squawked the most inane "What?!?!" just like Mom would have. Teri said that Mom had seemed all right when they woke her, so they dressed her and brought her into the dining room. She looked around the room, and then she just died.

I called Gary, Joan, and Tim, got dressed, and by the time Gary got home was ready to go over to the home. Joan called Chris. Erwin had been called by the chaplain there, and the social worker had called North, so Sandy had already announced on the Extraordinary Believers prayer chain. That made me kind of mad, because by the time I got home again there were numerous messages on the machine.

Hans happened to be home because he was sick. He didn't think he should go, being sick. Grace didn't want to go see a body. I sent a text to Libby because she wasn't answering her phone, and when she got it she called and Gary went to go get her. He brought her back to the nursing home because that's what she wanted. Joan came, and then Joe also came in. The nursing staff who cared for her came in and we had a time of prayer. Then after the staff went out, and Joe left, and it was just me and Gary and Libby and Joan and Erwin, we told stories about Mom. Erwin asked questions, which helped us know what to tell, and Joan has told me several times how much that helped her.

The social worker, Joani, called for an ambulance service to take her to the College of Mortuary Science, which was where her body was going.  They needed payment up front, and I didn't have the checkbook, so I went to the credit union to get cash.  By the time Libby and I got back, the transport was arriving, and so we waited while they took her out, and then we sorted through her belongings. I look all the pictures, a few pieces of clothing, but I left most of the stuffed animals and the bulk of her clothes for other residents to use who have need.

Right now I don't know quite what to do. I guess I need to contact Medicaid, the pension annuity, close out the bank account. I don't have energy to even explore what I'm supposed to do next. I keep getting phone calls: "How are you doing? Let me know if there's anything I can do."

Is it wrong to be relieved? Because I'm unspeakably relieved. The pressure of making sure her bank account stayed below $1500, not knowing what to do with the overages, and the fear. Long ago, Mom had gall bladder surgery, and made the horrible discovery that she was allergic to morphine. I was very afraid of what was going to happen when she got to be in a lot of pain. Becky was in such great pain that the nurse was afraid that the morphine doses were what was going to kill her. I could hardly bear the thought of Mom having to face pain so enormous without adequate medication. I'm so relieved she doesn't have to do that.

Now the pressure seems to be, when are you going to plan a memorial service?  Chris said he would do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted to do it.  If I aimed at St. Patrick's Day, he thought both Myles and Ross could come.  That might be a good idea. I guess I'll try to get with Joan tomorrow and talk to her about it.  Maybe. It's snowing, and it's dumped about 3 inches so far. I haven't talked to Tim since I called him yesterday morning, I guess I need to call him again and see how he is.

Relieved, and yet I miss her. Every time I've driven past Llanfair Avenue in the last 24 hours, I have thought, I should stop and see Mom after supper--oh. I probably won't ever go in there again. I miss her, even though the person I knew as my mother has been gone for a long time. These last two months, I have had glimpses of her, mischievous looks in response to something I said that she clearly thought was ridiculous, grins, giggles, and singing. On Christmas Day, she sang O Holy Night with us. When she stopped smoking, she became a soprano again, and really loved soaring up high.

Eleanor Virginia Winburn Wooley, called Wendy, the last of her siblings, almost the last of her peers. June 28, 1927, to January 30, 2013. There were none like her.

I miss her.

I'm thankful

I am.

On Thanksgiving morning I signed the papers for hospice care for my mother.  So far she doesn't seem like she needs it, which is good.  She is reserved, emotionally, rather than happy to see people and outgoing, but she is breathing well and is not in pain.  She is going about her routine, for the most part, but seems to be in her room more often than she was in the past.  They are still doing wound care on the IV line sites.  I noticed when I was there the other day that they catheterized her. No one told me they were going to do that.

Keenan moved out this evening.  He doesn't appear to have taken anything that wasn't his, and conversely he left his metal briefcase, a number of court papers, his test results for his placement at Cincinnati State. Gary's not thrilled he's gone, which surprised me a little.  Hans suggested that Keenan represents failure to Gary.  I'm surprised that G seems so surprised by that.  When it came to K, G went off to work everyday.  Last night when K came in after being gone for a week, he announced that he'd be moving out. So Gary asked where he was moving, and K said "Winton Woods." I can't remember how G asked, but he wanted to know who the kid was moving in with, and K said "a couple of friends of mine." No names, no details. So K drifts off, and G says to me, "Did that feel 'avoidance-y' to you?" I said, "It felt like every conversation I've had with Keenan for the last five months."  Apparently K's lack of information really ticked G off, because he was still angry about it this morning.

My brother Chris is coming in this weekend to see Mom, indeed should have arrived by now.  Haven't heard, but that doesn't mean anything.  Not really looking forward to the conversations we're going to have to have tomorrow.

Has it only been 10 days?

I don't know where to begin.

Keenan is not working. Don't know what went wrong, and at this point I am all out of caring about it. So he's pursuing some girl, again, and come Friday I'm going to ask how his plans for finding another place to live are coming along.

Libby is still dating Alex. As far as I can tell, she doesn't actually see him very much, but her language is a lot fouler, she's fairly secretive, and she's staying out late on work nights.

I finally got to talk to the surgeon about Mom, and he said not all the tests were back, that there might be an indication of treatment depending on the results of the last one.  But then on Thursday the nurse at Llanfair called, said Wendy had slumped over to one side in her chair, that they had put her to bed, but she was more or less non-responsive. I asked them to do some labs, see what was happening.  On Saturday, I got a call saying her sodium levels were dangerously high, because she was not drinking on her own. Did I want to have hospice care? I asked if high sodium was due to the cancer, and Lonnie said she wasn't aware of any relationship between the two. I said to send her to the hospital and deal with the sodium.

So I went to see her in the ER at Christ, and it was shocking. She looked like a cadaver, and her eyes were gummy with yellow pus and her lips were crusted and horrible-looking.  She was glassy-eyed, though she did recognize me and Libby for a few moments.  They were having trouble finding a vein that didn't collapse, and I gave them permission to put in a central line.

The next day, she was looking amazingly better.  She was also more alert, and I explained how she had come to be at the hospital. She spent almost three hours talking to me, though I couldn't understand much of what she said.  She still had a distended lip, but it was no longer oozing salt, and it was going down.  The attending doctor said she seemed to have pneumonia, which was probably why she stopped feeding herself.  She asked me to think about having a feeding tube put in, which brought up a discussion of the cancer diagnosis, and she ordered a PET scan. She later said that her chest x-ray showed nodules in her lungs, and a PET scan would give them a better idea what those were.

Monday she was even better, and I brought Tim in to see her.  She was good with it, seemed pleased to see him, and made me the butt of a joke with him.  She was supposed to have a PET scan, but while she was mid scan, it broke down.

Tuesday she was better still, though she seemed a little wheezy. They finished the scan, and were waiting for results.  I stayed all evening with her, reading her Death Comes to Pemberly by PD James, knitting when she fell asleep.  Her electrolytes were back to normal, but she was still receiving infusions of potassium.

Today, I got a call from Dr. Reddy again, and she explained that the PET scan showed that the cancer had spread to her lungs, her right scapula, and her liver.  I think she also said something about the skin on her back. Not sure.  In any case, the recommendation was for hospice care.  There just isn't any treatment that she could survive.

So I had to call my siblings, though Chris said he'd tell Joan, Jimmy Guy, the Warfords. There isn't really anyone else.  Tim said he'd tell his kids. Gary went with me to meet with the social worker at Llanfair, Joni Kaser. Hospice of Cincinnati called to schedule a meeting, and joy of joys it's at 11:30 on Thanksgiving.

So my mom is dying.

Squashing down your emotions all day is exhausting.

So. Woke up feeling kind of nasty; plumbing problems as I edge toward menopause mean that about 3 weeks out of 4 I feel crumby and the fourth week I have no libido.  This does not make harmonious relations with the hubby.  Stressed about Keenan having to take his SS card to his prospective employer, and then he tells me his grandfather says he doesn't have the card.  So he called KFC and found he could bring in his birth certificate instead, which is fine, but I'm pretty sure Grandpa didn't have the card because he already gave it to Keenan when the latter was getting a state i.d.  K swears he used his birth certificate for the state i.d. but I'm pretty sure they require an actual SS card, because I remember that from when I took my kids to get theirs. So either Keenan lied about not having it, or he lost it and is blaming his grandpa, or whatever, I'm just pretty sure I don't have a straight story from him.

Then Libby told me she was going to have breakfast with Alex and see a movie with him.  We usually tutor at the elementary school on Monday afternoons, so I expected her home before then.  When I let her know that it's a holiday and there's no school, I didn't hear back.  So I sent her a message that she had obviously changed plans, and what was it now? Hanging out with Alex and his brother Max and Max's girlfriend.  So then about five o'clock I sent her a text saying she needed to come home, she'd been gone all day, and she was putting me in a very bad position with her father. She came home. I had not said anything to Gary about where she was or had been, but he asked her as soon as she came in. "I was hanging out with Alex." "Are you dating him?" asked Gary. "Yeah."  After a few moments, "I thought being a Christian was non-negotiable." No answer. "I'm very disappointed." No answer.

In between all this, driving Keenan around and trying to figure out where my daughter was, I got a call from the social worker at the nursing home where my mother lives, Joanie, wanting to know what the family was planning to do after hearing the diagnosis. "What diagnosis?"  The doctor hadn't called, which probably isn't surprising because I don't think I gave them a phone number.  But the nurse didn't call, either.  So I called Lonnie, who told me the diagnosis is Stage 2 metastatized (too drained to look up the correct spelling) breast cancer. Lymph nodes are clear, so far. Also, Wendy seems to be declining, sleeping much of the time, less responsive, less physical movement. So I called the surgeon to find out what his recommendation for treatment is, but he was in surgery today and wouldn't have office hours until tomorrow afternoon.  So I won't be able to speak to him until then, but his assistant assured me she would give him the message and took my phone number.  So then I had to call Chris, and I had to call Joan, and I'll have to call them again tomorrow. And I have to call Tim.

I have a session meeting in an hour.  I'm exhausted from "being strong." Right now I just want to curl up and cry, or eat three pounds of chocolate and watch nine hours of LOTR. Or both.