I mentioned last week that I’d be scarce for a bit. I hadn’t meant for that to continue. I’m mainly catching up from last week’s busyness. Still have housework to catch up on; sudden cold weather has me scrambling to get my winter clothes out of boxes, washed, and ready to wear; I just had Jesse get my fall decorations down from the attic this morning, so I hope to at least change the spring arrangement out front for a fall one.

On a side note, I wonder why I have more winter clothes than spring/summer ones, when I like the spring and summer ones better, and more dressy than casual ones when I wear casual more often?

On another side note, I learned the hard way NOT to use old fabric softener. I usually use the dryer sheets but keep liquid fabric softener on hand for those things that can’t go in the dryer, but don’t use it that often. Several of my wintery clothes fit that category, and when I went to pour the fabric softener in the washer, I noticed it was thick and gloppy but figured it would dissolve in water. It didn’t. It left snot-like globs all over the clothes even after several washings. I thought I’d never get rid of that stuff and ending up using most of my new bottle of detergent just rewashing that load. So there is your household tip for the day: if your liquid fabric softener has gotten excessively viscous, get rid of it.

I have a hankering to do some fall baking, but everyone in the family is trying to watch their weight (except Jesse and Mittu, because they don’t need to), so I have been refraining. But I did give in and make Choco-Peanut Butter Dreams last night. So good.

I finished one book that I am not inclined to review for various reasons and another audiobook that I think I will wait to discuss together with its sequels. Usually I am brimming over with blogging ideas and even have a running list where I have jotted some of them down, but for some reason I’ve been going blank when I try to think of what to blog, though I have been keeping up with the Reading Classics Together Challenge on Thursdays and Friday’s Fave Five on Saturdays. Maybe it’s more of a time for getting things done at home than blogging, but often as soon as I think I won’t have time or inspiration to blog, then ideas come flooding. 🙂

I have one more newspaper column, due in a couple of weeks, before this term is done, then I have to wait for a year to reapply for the “community guest columnist” position. I’ve enjoyed it, but I’m also a little glad to be out from under the pressure. It has been good experience to write for a secular audience and with a word limit (blogging was supposed to be good writing practice for me, and it has been, but I do tend to be wordy. Cutting excess and making sentences really count has been a great exercise). Deciding what to do for the last one will be hard, as I have three columns almost ready and some half a dozen other ideas. This has me thinking of maybe pursuing other avenues of publication: magazines, perhaps.

I mentioned in my last Friday’s Fave Five than an extended family member recently had a crisis. I’ve e-mailed a handful of you the specifics. Things are stable for now but still shaky, and I’d appreciate your prayers especially for the spiritual needs involved. Thanks.

• I love Monday holidays, but the whole rest of the week I keep having to ask myself, “What day is this?”

• I don’t get the fascination with washed-out photos from Instagram. I suppose there are other ways to edit photos there, but the ones I’ve seen are a washed-out look.

• I wonder why high schools don’t keep graduation caps and gowns on hand for students to use and return like colleges do. For each student we’ve had to buy them, and then store them in the closet or attic forever after.

• Am I the only one who wishes books had a rating system like movies? I hate to be “surprised” by what looks like a good book only to find out it has bad words or sensual scenes in it.

• Even though I no longer have children in elementary or high school, I find my schedule is still affected by schools. I go through three school zones to get to my mother-in-law’s place, and there are certain times of day it can take twice as long to get there due to school traffic. On the other hand, it is nicer to go shopping or to restaurants during the day now that schools are back in session.

• I’m beginning to think that a great deal of misunderstandings and hurt feelings come not from what other people said or did, but from how we interpreted the words or actions. I think sometimes they’d be surprised at what we thought they meant or why we thought they did what they did.

I don’t watch sports much on TV, but there is something about the Olympics that draws me! Here are a few thoughts from this year’s events so far.

• My favorite part of the opening ceremonies was the Chariots of Fire segment. 🙂 The queen jumping out of the plane was a close second. I thought the giant blow-up villains and giant baby were pretty weird. The forged rings were pretty neat. The opening segment seemed too busy to me — too much going on and too small, then too much time spent dragging the plant stuff off the floor.

• While the coverage has been on I’ve been using my iPhone, scrolling through Facebook or Google Reader, or one night clipping coupons and cleaning out my coupon file, so I’m doing something but I can stop and pay attention when I want to. I have a couple of stitching projects I want to get started on while watching.

• It’s been nice to Tivo the evening coverage and start watching it about an hour into it so I can fast-forward through the parts I’m not so interested in.

• The swimming races begin to look alike after a while. I fast-forwarded through one relay race that didn’t have anyone in it I was interested in, and it was kinda fun to watch it that way. 😀

• I’m so glad Michael Phelps did make history by winning 19 medals total so far. It’d be nice to have at least one more and make it an even 20. 🙂

• I don’t like the way reporters and commentators overly laud winners or have an almost scolding tone when athletes make mistakes, like you’re great and wonderful and worthy of adulation when you win and lower than dirt if you lose. I read one headline saying someone had received a “stunning loss” by winning a silver medal. That’s not what I would call a stunning loss even if one was expecting gold!

• I can’t imagine having to do anything publicly with all those cameras and people. I think it’s perfectly understandable when people “mess up” under that kind of pressure and all the more amazing when they overcome all of that and excel.

• I feel almost worse for the moms in the stands watching. The ones I’ve seen are visible bundles of nerves while their athlete offspring seem calm and cool at least outwardly.

• I was watching one male gymnast an almost hoping he would mess up so our guys could advance, and then thought, no, I don’t want to think like that. I want them all to do well — I just want ours to do better. 🙂

• I’m glad it was cool enough over there that the beach volleyball players had to cover up their bikinis with long sleeved shirts and pants while playing this year.

• Seriously, what is up with bikinis being uniforms for beach volleyball or women divers’ uniforms having half their bottoms hanging out? That is so not necessary.

• It’s hard to avoid spoilers about the events throughout the day until they can be seen on prime time here. It’d be nice if online news sources could avoid putting specific results in the headlines. But here’s something valuable one woman learned after a major spoiler.

I’ve finished a couple of books I want to talk about and have some “deep thoughts” swirling about a topic or two, but will have to wait to get to them as I only have time for a quick post today. I might get to one of the books later today if the tasks for the day go well, but it will more likely be next week before I get to them.

Are you watching the Olympics? What’s your favorite event? Mine is gymnastics, followed by swimming.

• Twice this week I have rinsed my hair in the shower and then couldn’t remember if I had just washed it or was wetting it to wash it. 🙄

• I know the conventional wisdom in blogging and web design is not to extend the text much below what the reader can see at first, the idea being they’ll just read what’s on top and not scroll down. But am I the only one who would rather scroll down than click through to another page???

• When I am Googling something and click on a link that turns out to be a slide show, I almost never click on it any further. I’d much rather see a list I can skim through. Rarely do the links for the next slide come through quickly, but even if they did, it’s much more efficient to just look down a list than keep clicking for the next thing

• Why:

Do arrogant people not recognize the quality in themselves?
Do people stop in doorways to talk?
Do black beans gross me out?
Does the tip of the pizza slice taste the best?

It seems like there was something else I was ruminating about…I guess I’ll have to save that for another time… if I remember it. 🙂

• I had a thoroughly lovely Mother’s Day. I’ll probably wait to say more about it on the Friday’s Fave Five post so as not to repeat myself. I’m so thankful for all my family does to honor me on that day.

• With all the busyness of the last few weeks and the weekend to come, and feeling a little tired and brain dead Saturday and Monday, I indulged myself by watching North and South on Netflix. I was dismayed at first that it was a four-hour series broken up into 1-hour segments: I had thought it was a 2 hour or so movie. But it would’ve left out a lot to condense it down to 2 hours, and the format did help to watch it in pieces. I had listened to the audiobook version of the book earlier this year and really enjoyed it. There were some changes in the film, some very unnecessary (there was no scene in the book with a worker smoking in the mill and Mr. Thornton beating him — they didn’t really need to toss that in to provide more differences of opinion and feeling between him and Margaret. I don’t think Mr. Thornton was described as handsome in the book. Their end meeting wasn’t happenstance at a train station, etc.), but overall I enjoyed it quite a bit. I really liked the actor who played Higgins — he had a kind face and a twinkle in his eyes (except when he was angry over the strike situation).

• I had also checked out the DVD of Ivanhoe from the library a few weeks ago, which I had wanted to see after listening to it on audiobook. It was condensed to less than two hours, and needed condensation, but of course much was changed in it as well. It was okay. While looking for this old film version (with Elizabeth Taylor as Rebecca), I saw this one with Anthony Andrews. I had caught just a part of this one on TV once, and I loved Andrews as The Scarlet Pimpernel, so I’m going to have to see if Netflix or the library has this one.

• This is Jesse’s last week of high school. In thinking about all the “lasts” of this year — not only a son graduating, but the last of my kids to do so — one that hadn’t occurred to me was making the last school lunch. That’ll be Thursday. Sniff….

• I have my yearly physical coming up in a few weeks and had the lab work for it done last week. I got the results last Friday. My thyroid stuff is low, my “good” cholesterol is low, but my triglycerides, overall cholesterol, and”bad” cholesterol are all high as well as my fasting blood sugar, the first time that’s been the case since I had gestational diabetes with my second pregnancy (but something I’ve been fearing since my mom developed Type II diabetes.) None of them are real high, and the sugar is not in diabetic range (116 when it’s supposed to be around 100), but I’m sure I’ll be getting a good talking-to at my next visit and will have to make some changes.

• I’ve been wanting to read It Is Not Death to Die: A New Biography of Hudson Taylor by Jim Cromarty ever since seeing it mentioned on a friend’s blog. I had missed the fact that it was almost 500 pages long. This might put a kink in my spring reading plans, but oh well — I’ll get to them eventually.

• I’ve been reading over at Do Not Depart for the last few months since my blog friend Lisa writes there some times and refers to it often. They’ve been sharing Ebenezer stories the last few weeks and are inviting readers to share theirs as well tomorrow. I’ve just been working on a post for that — what a blessing to recall God’s hand at work in my life! I invite you to see what’s it’s all about and consider sharing yours as well.

I mentioned Monday that I had developed cellulitis on one foot and asked for prayer. Thanks so much for praying. It’s finally getting better.

I had bought some new “every-day” shoes and had worn them for a few days to make sure they were okay before throwing the old coming-apart ones away. I was out of the house most of Friday, and I can’t remember whether the little worn spot on my foot was there before that or came up afterward. I applied my trusty Bactine and Neosporin. But Saturday morning I noticed about a 3″ red patch around the sore. I’d had cellultis a couple of times before, so I was concerned, but wasn’t sure if this was cellulitis or just a minor infection. I battled off and on with myself about going to Urgent Care (our doctors offices being closed on the weekends), but it didn’t seem to be getting worse. So I figured it was ok.

Jim and Jesse were away for a function that evening, and I was at my desk with my foot elevated on a little footstool under the desk. Some time during the evening when I pulled away from the desk, I was alarmed to see that the redness had grown in area and intensity and the top of my foot was puffy. “This isn’t good,” I thought. If you’ve ever heard the term “angry red,” that was the redness on my foot. When Jim got home I was still uncertain about going in — we’d have to go to the ER now since urgent care was closed — but it had spread so quickly I was afraid to wait any longer.

I don’t have full feeling in my foot since having transverse myelitis. In fact, for many years I didn’t feel pain or cold at all on my right lower leg — it’s only been in the last couple of years that I’ve begun to feel any discomfort there. That’s nice in many ways, but pain is an indicator that something’s wrong and a help to doctors in making a diagnosis, so lack of pain can be a problem. This felt uncomfortable but didn’t really hurt except for when I first got up after lying down.

But the doctor diagnosed cellultis and prescribed antibiotics. I’m allergic to both penicillin and sulfa, so that complicates things a little, but they did have an antibiotic that would work for me. I was told to rest for a few days, keep my foot elevated, and come back if it got worse or if I developed fever or nausea.

So Sunday I stayed home from church and basically took it very easy, and most of the week I’ve stayed home and kept my foot up as much as possible. Sunday Jason and Mittu came over and made dinner, and Monday I coached Jesse through his first meal. He had said he wanted to learn how to cook, so I figured this was a good time to start. 🙂

I think he did a good job!

Our pastor’s wife offered to bring a meal Tuesday, but she lives 45 minutes away. I just hated for her to make that drive here and back. Plus we have several in church with greater need. So I’ve been handling simple meals and dishes since then, but little else around the house, and I’ve been keeping my foot up throughout the day.

The first day or two it didn’t seem better: in fact, it actually looked worse the second day. Then for a day or two it seemed to look better some times but the same other times. Yesterday was the first day it clearly looked much better and I could tell it wasn’t my imagination. I’m not sure how long I am supposed to keep my foot elevated, but I figure as long as there is more than a little redness, I’d better.

It’s funny that many times we’d love for someone to tell us to rest and stay off our feet, but then when we have to, we want to get up and bustle around. 🙂 I see things I need to do every time I get up and walk around. I’ve taken a little swipe at some things when I’ve been up, but I’m pretty sure by this weekend I’ll be able to get back at it. Maybe even tomorrow.

I’ve enjoyed not having to go anywhere. I could all too easily become a hermit. I sent Jesse to the store for the first time with just a short list of essentials, but I’m hoping to make a trip to the store in the next day or two.

Other than concern over my foot, it’s been a pretty pleasant week. I’ve napped a bit, read a bit, spent a good bit of time at the computer, worked on my Cooking For Two recipe book I mentioned last week. I had set up the notebook and separated out the recipes then, and this week I’ve been gluing them on pages and placing them in page protectors. I’m not getting real decorative or else it would take that much longer, but I did print out major page headings  (“Chicken,” “Beef,” “Cookies,” “Cakes,” etc.) with a bit of clip art while listening to my audiobook (and keeping my foot on the footstool!) But I think my little respite is just about over.

So…that’s probably much more than you ever wanted to know. But thanks so much for your prayers! I sincerely appreciate them.