Midnight Knitter

Hannah and the CoalBear: All the Glimmers of the Week

Hi. I’m Mateo.

I’m the most handsome boy ever! I’ve been helping the Mother of Cats knit this week.

The Mother of Cats was really busy and happy this week, and she says that all the new things are called glimmers: little moments that bring joy and peace. I think that she needs to maybe take another nap, because I don’t know what she is talking about, but there have been a lot of new things going on. Let me show you the best, most important one first!!!!

We got this new toy!!!! The blue line is moving on the pulleys, and it makes a little mousie race around the room. It changes directions and speeds, and no matter how many times the Mother of Cats makes it run, I need MORE CHASE TIME!!!! I love to chase this!!!!! Even Hannah is playing with it!!!

The Mother of Cats has started knitting again, and look at she managed to do this week.

That’s right. The Mother of Cats got a pair of socks done this week, and she took out her sweater and started knitting on it again. She was SO HAPPY when she tried the sweater on this week and it is going to fit just fine. Well, with me helping her, how could it not? She says that her wrists aren’t hurting all that much lately, so it looks like we will be spending more time knitting. Yay. I love to chase the yarn while she works. Why is the Mother of Cats so mean about sharing her yarn?

Also, she went out and bought this new yarn!!! Can you believe it? She says that she is going to make a sweater, but I think that she may have gotten carried away a little. She should spend the money on tuna and cat toys, right?!

Then there was all of the sewing. Hannah took over and helped the Mother of Cats at the sewing machine because she likes it a lot. They made little zipper pouches and these crazy little things called port pillows that are used by cancer patients who have ports (duh!!) when they ride around in their cars. Why anyone would voluntarily get into a car is completely beyond me, but the Mother of Cats says that there is a big need for these little things, so Hannah and she made a whole bunch of them and delivered them this week to an infusion center. She asked if I wanted to go along for the ride, and I was like…NO!!! That is just CRAZY TALK!!!!

Yesterday the Mother of Cats went to her community knitting group, and while she was there a couple of ladies came in with huge bags of yarn to give away. When they were asked how they had learned about Frayed Knots, the group that the Mother of Cats belongs to, they said that they got the name from the paper insert that they picked up with their new port pillow at the infusion center. The Mother of Cats says that this was a huge glimmer!! The ladies were so happy to get the port pillows and the hats; they wanted to give to other patients too with their yarn. Luckily other people took all of that yarn because WE HAVE LOTS OF YARN HERE ALREADY!!!!! I think that it would have been better if they had brought some more toys for me to chase (or even some little bunnies that want to play chase…), but the Mother of Cats was happy, so I guess I am too.

So that was the week. It was warm and sunny, and the Mother of Cats managed to get the leaves off the lawn with her new leaf blower and vacuum/mulcher. She brought in all of the plants from outside, and now the knitting room is happy and full of flowers.

New clothes came, and you already know about the yarn. She went to her knitting group and had a wonderful time, especially since the lady who took those cats that stayed with us for a few weeks was there, and she said that the cats were happy in their new home, and even gave her a new toy for me.

That little ball with the tail on it races around the house and I chase it the whole time!!!

This is Mateo, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

This is the cat toy that Mateo can chase for hours: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FLV7JB5K?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1
The socks are the Scrunch Sock on Ravelry.
The sweater is Extra Lite Bright knit in just one color. I may make another that is a fade with the new yarn that just came in. That will be fun, right?
What do I want to make with the heavier weight yarn (DK) that just came? I’m thinking that I need an Alchemist Pullover in my life!
That jade plant that I brought in is at least 10 years old. Has it bloomed yet? No, no it has not!
I’ve been steadily losing weight for the last few months (It is a scleroderma thing) and I finally broke down and bought some new clothes. Yay! They fit great and I’m happy with the new colors.

Thoughts on the Night of the Harvest Supermoon

The supermoon has been slowly building over the last few evenings. Enormous and bright, I have been watching it slowly grow in fullness all week. I’ve been looking forward to watching this moon, the Harvest Supermoon of 2025, rise this evening, but of course it is raining and cold. I know, even though I can’t see it, that the moon is there, just out of my sight.

Tonight’s moon pretty much matches my mood this evening. There is this beautiful shining thing, just out of sight, but just knowing it is there, I am buoyed up and happy. I’ve been thinking about recuerdos and glimmers all day as I cleaned out boxes of things connected to my sister and son: bits and pieces of things that they valued and were stored, or sent, to me over the years. Nestled among the junk and ancient clothing there are objects that instantly transport me to another place and time: recuerdos.

Those two big tubs are full of my sister’s fabric stash. And unfinished projects and quilts… things that she loved and had plans for.

My mom was raised in Argentina during her teens and early twenties, and she was bilingual and somewhat multi-cultural in her approach to life. Every important trip or event required a recuerdo to help capture and preserve the memory of the event; she would insist that we select and keep something. Recuerdos are like souvenirs, or memories, but richer and more transformative, returning you to an important experience. That’s what I’ve been finding as I go through the boxes: pictures, trophies, knitted items, old quilts, a college diploma, stuffed animals, and marching shoes. Every single item rich with memories, returning me to the time when I visited a national park with my sister, or watched my son from the bleachers in a fencing tournament at the US Air Force Academy. Like tonight’s supermoon, something great and shining is right there with me, out of sight, but real all the same, and I am happy.

I found three unfinished quilts in the tubs. All the fabrics bundled together, a lot of the cutting already done, everything organized to create the quilts that she dreamed of. I was instantly transported to her favorite fabric store in San Diego, picking out fabrics with her on a beautiful summer afternoon.

Grief is a difficult thing to deal with, but I’ve learned some lessons over the years as the universe kept shoveling bad news in my direction. It helps to write. It is important to acknowledge what has happened, and to allow your support groups to… well… support you! Honor the good in the people (or life) that has been lost. Focus on what you can do, not what is no longer possible. Make sure you are getting enough to eat; remember to rest. Reconnect with your friends, and get out of the house. Create purpose and beauty from the loss whenever possible.

What to do with all of this… stuff… in the crates?

My sister loved autumn colors. Orange, yellow, greens, and browns. I found almost 20 skeins of ORANGE yarn in the crates, and as luck would have it, Halloween and Thanksgiving are right around the corner. All of that yarn is going to be transformed into chemo hats. I’ve been making 2 a day and hope to get them all to an infusion center by the middle of the month. Can you feel the glimmer? I’m looking forward to driving them to a Kaiser infusion center up north next week through the fall foliage; maybe there will still be some sunflowers in the fields. Glimmer.

Then there is the fabric. Oh, boy. There is a lot of fabric there! I’ve been sorting through it and pulling out nice colors to make into zipper pouches (filled with hygiene products) for the DART program at Denver Health.

This week there was an article in the local news about an organization that provides comfort quilts to trauma survivors. They take in donated fabric and unfinished quilts: what a great place for my sister’s unfinished quilts to go!! I’ve been sorting my own fabric along with my sister’s to get the donation ready, and I plan to drive it up to the organization next week. Can’t you just feel the shine of the supermoon just out of sight? It’s like there is a glimmer hiding right behind my shoulder, raising my spirits and centering me again.

So, this is life. I’m pulling myself back together while surrounded by items that my sister gifted me through the years, sorting the fabrics, yarn, and projects that she once had big plans for, reliving our time together, and taking her dreams into the future with me while mindfully watching for the glimmers of peace and joy that are there for us.

Shine on, Harvest Supermoon. Shine on.

P.S.

These are my son’s cats: Jonesy, Gabriel and Liam.

I was able to successfully rehome my son’s three cats all together two weeks ago. This week, as I worried about how they were doing, I followed the story of Francine’s loss and the resulting successful rescue operation. Yesterday when I heard that Francine had been returned to her home, a Lowe’s store where she is the resident cat, I heard from the new owner of my son’s cats; they were out, sleeping on her bed, and chomping tuna. Glimmer time!!

Yarrow, Lavender, and Sage

The last day that I watered my garden was the first week of August. The days were hot and dry, and most of the flowers in my gardens were gone, but the yarrow, lavender and sage were shining in the early morning sun. “I should write a blog about the garden,” I thought to myself. Sitting on the swinging chair on my catio, drinking my morning latte, I took a picture of Hannah and a lavender plant to send to my son David.

The picture failed to deliver. The phone told me that he was offline.

I wouldn’t know it for a couple of more days, but my wonderful son, one of the best parts of my life, had died of complications of his type 1 diabetes. His loss has left a gaping hole in all of our lives.

That evening of the day that I found him, I took a bad fall while taking out some bags of trash from his apartment. Yep. I ended up in the emergency room.

Luckily I didn’t break anything, but I certainly was bashed up and I’m still recovering from the injuries. While in the emergency room I also picked up another gift:

There it is, my very first positive test for covid. I can hardly believe it happened. I was pretty sick the first week, and then the virus lingered on for two more weeks before I finally tested negative in the beginning of the fourth week.

Through all of this I have been pretty dysfunctional. I haven’t been able to read, or knit, or work outside in the garden. The grass has died, and the flowers are now all gone. I found myself unable to blog because I didn’t have any idea how I could tell this sad story, but I also realized that I can’t return to blogging without acknowledging what has happened. Today I am doing that.

This week I began to return to life. I picked up the knitting again. I sewed some zipped pouches to donate to my community action group: they will be filled with hygiene products and given to people in need through a program at a local hospital. I started collecting pictures for my son’s online memorial, and eventually I will return to writing my blog again. I’ve been contacted by some people who were worried about me, and I am sorry about that. Hopefully, soon, I will be posting again.

Here she is, the emotional support chicken that I knit for my son out of homespun yarns and red purchased alpaca yarn. I found her in tatters on his living room floor, all of the red yarn eaten by insects. Kind of fitting: broken heart, broken chicken.

I considered calling this post Loss, Grief, and Sorrow.

Forever more, that is how I will remember yarrow, lavender, and sage.

The BioGeek Summer Reading List: Polio

Hannah hanging out with the summer books.

It’s been a kind of slow summer because… tendonitis… but I am getting a lot of reading done. I had moved some books into the craft room with the intention of reading them *someday soon*, and then just like that, this became the summer of nonfiction, disease book reading. Hey, I’m a BioGeek, and these books are actually pretty interesting. I had some idea of organizing the books into an order that made sense, but the topics kept overlapping so much I am just going to dive in and start talking about what I’ve been reading about and how it connects to me. Should I talk about the books from my days in the classroom? The book that made me start hoarding essentials in case of a pandemic? The book that made me aware of ebola? Hmmm… Let’s start out with the one that has a lot of personal connections to me and my family…

It’s August 14th, 1945. My mom had just arrived in New York City from Argentina, returning to the United States to visit her sister, a member of the Women’s Army Corps in Washington, D.C. I’m guessing that NYC was in an uproar that day, as it was the exact date of the end of World War Two here in the US, being Victory over Japan Day. For my mother, however, it was also the start of her involvement in another type of war.

Halfway across the nation, an epidemic of polio had broken out in the state of Illinois. There was a national call for nurses, and the American Red Cross contacted my mom, asking her if she could go. Here is the chart showing the dates of newly diagnosed cases in city of Rockford and Winnebago County, Illinois that year.

It was a big outbreak, and mom was one of many, many nurses and other health professionals who answered the call. Just like that, polio became part of the story of my family. My mother met my father when she was sent by the Red Cross to another potential polio outbreak in Albuquerque, New Mexico; he was a patient recovering from his service in North Africa when she met him there. The polio outbreak didn’t amount to much, but the romance did. 🙂 One of my first memories was getting a polio vaccine. I remember collecting dimes in a cardboard folder as a participant in the March of Dimes. I once was smuggled into the hospital by my mom, clutching an ornry yellow cat named Henry, to show him off to a woman in an iron lung; she had been in that iron lung for years and my mom had been sharing tales of Henry’s misadventures with her. Some of my classmates had had polio, and I knew people who wore leg braces. Much of my childhood was colored by polio. In my mind, polio was a terrifying, ever present disease that had gripped the USA.

I read Polio: An American Story a few weeks ago, thinking that it would enrich my understandings of the polio time that I had lived through. Boy, did it ever! There was so much that I didn’t understand about polio. It was an illness that emerged as outbreaks in communities with modern plumbing and higher levels of sanitation. The common understanding came to be that polio was a virus that was common in poor sanitary conditions, and most people exposed early developed immunity without significant illness. I did not see that coming! It was also not the most dangerous or significant disease in the US at that time, but it was one that felt terrifying. The president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was a polio survivor. The fundraising campaign to find a cure for polio, a vaccine to prevent illness, was boosted by this president and the national spotlight that he brought to these efforts. A private organization, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, provided for the care and rehab of polios and funded the development of the polio vaccines. The organization later became known as the March of Dimes: the very entity that I once collected dimes for. The vaccine trials used children, 2 million of them, as guinea pigs (!), and there was significant conflict between the two major researchers who used different approaches: Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, and the battle became political. As vaccine production ramped up, lessons were learned about product control. In many ways, the national drive that existed during WWII was continued in the drive to conquer polio. The first vaccine, developed by Salk, was announced in March of 1953 to national celebration.

This book was really engaging, and I leaned so much. Imagine a private organization that takes over to provide for your care when you are diagnosed with a disabling disease! Who knew that the battle of the vaccines was so intense, and the process to verify efficacy so convoluted. Some of this applies to our situation today as people here in the US are questioning the efficacy of vaccines and the validity of the development process. Some of that is grounded in the long, checked history of polio vaccines. That first vaccine I remember was the Salk vaccine developed from inactivated viruses. Years later a live virus version of the vaccine, the Sabin vaccine, became more widely used, but today the Salk vaccine is once again used. Here in the USA, it is easy to think that polio is a disease of the past, but it lives on in other areas in the world.

So, what was next on my BioGeek reading list? Tuberculosis!!! Stay tuned…

Notes:

It was hugely ironic that my mom arrived back in the US on the very day the war with Japan ended. Years before, while her parents were attempting to enroll her in nursing school, her sister, waiting in the car, heard the first report of the bombing of Pearl Harbor on the radio; America’s entry into WWII was immediately afterwards.
The fundraising and research drives of many organizations connected to disease prevention, treatments, and cures are modeled on the success of the polio campaign. I hear the echos over the decades now with every email from the National Scleroderma Foundation.
Oh, how is my scleroderma doing these days? Tendonitis continues, but my latest visit with my cardiologist went well: my pulmonary arterial hypertension is stable, and my heart is doing okay. The EKG isn’t completely normal, but I’ll take it, right?!! He wants to add another drug or two, but we are delaying for now as I’m already taking a LOT of medications.
Last week was the anniversary of day my doctor ordered the blood tests that led to my diagnosis of Sjogren’s Disease and Limited Systemic Sclerosis.

That was 22 tests in 14 vials of blood. Today I take 22 pills a day. Kind of ironic, right? Do I consider yarn to be part of my essential treatment? Why yes, yes I do!

Hannah and the CoalBear: Updates from the Catio

Hi. I’m Mateo.

Don’t I look handsome? I’m keeping a close eye on a dragonfly…

I actually had my jaws and chompers on that bug, but the Mother of Cats chased me around the catio until it got away. Then she sat outside with us to make sure it stayed safe until it was time to come in for our nightly tuna treat. WHY does the Mother of Cats do this? She has gone to huge lengths to keep me from having any fun.

Look at what she did to the downstairs window that was my secret escape route to the great outdoors. Now there is a new cat-proof screen and a safety gate across the window. Sometimes I get a little frustrated with the Mother of Cats.

We have been spending lots of time out on the catio because the Mother of Cats like to drink her morning coffee out there while she reads her books. She keeps the birdfeeder stocked and there is lots of fun wildlife in the yard. Do I get to play with the animals? No, I do not.

Obviously the animals miss me because you won’t believe what happened this week… When the Mother of Cats let me out in the morning there WAS A BUNNY IN THE CATIO!!!! I got to chase him all around, the Mother of Cats was making some crazy noises while she chased me, and the bunny ran like you wouldn’t believe. Did I get to catch the bunny? No. I did not. I ran back into the safety of the house (the Mother of Cats was really making some concerning sounds) and the bunny was released back into the yard.

The Mother of Cats is calling this bunny “Death Wish Bunny”.

Anyway, that’s all that is going on around here. The Mother of Cats has been working on some little projects (mending the catio net and sealing the gap was one of them…) and I’ve been chasing Hannah around the house when not out on the catio.

Guess that is all for now. Would you like to see my scar?

Bye for now.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats:

My tendonitis is back in full swing and I’m in braces again. It is really cramping my knitting style.

I have been cranking out fingerless mitts using my little Addi knitting machine, so I’m still getting some knitting done. I’ve also been reading books, and I’m slowly getting a series of posts put together.

Am I a little frustrated to have wildlife appear inside the catio after going to heroic lengths to keep all cats and wildlife safe. Yes, yes I am. I am sure that swinging a hammer and replacing window screen is contributing to my tendonitis.

Did I just buy pet insurance for both of my cats? Why yes, I most certainly did!!!

Have you missed seeing Hannah?

Hannah and the CoalBear: Mystery Solved

Hi. I’m Mateo.

I’ve been waiting and waiting for the day to come when I finally get out of the DOG CRATE!!!! This is horrible. Hannah is hogging all of the cookies, and the tuna, and she gets to go out on the catio, and I am either behind bars or locked up in the craft room with the Mother of Cats. She has all the good jumping places blocked off, and I don’t get to have any fun at all!!!!

She has been doing lots of stuff to make sure I never, ever get sick like this again. She bought treats for furball prevention. She bought some new grooming gloves and combs and stuff like that. She bought new food. She got some CAT CLIPPERS to trim down some of my fur. She got rid of most of her plants that stay in the house, and someday, soon, I will get to run free again.

One of the Mother of Cats neighbors sent her this picture of the plant she gave away in its new home.

The Mother of Cats has done all of these things, but she still worried about what might have been the cause of my bowel obstruction, especially since the vet said there was fur, hard things, and some green plant matter. She has gone crazy trying to figure it out…

Then she saw Hannah sitting on the wrong side of the catio gate. As in, Hannah is on the deck that is in the back yard, and not in the catio at all.

The Mother of Cats brought Hannah back into the house, and Hannah immediately showed the Mother of Cats how she escaped… (Hannah… you are a betraying rat!!! The escape route was MY SECRET!!!!!)

We carefully popped the corner of the window screen loose without ripping it!

As you can see, the window is right at the level of the rose garden, and by lifting the screen loose without putting a hole in it the Mother of Cats didn’t understand that it was a SECRET DOOR!! From inside the house it looks normal. She has been opening and closing that window a few inches every day to let a little fresh air into the house, and she never ever figured out what was going on until HANNAH gave the game away. Oh, boy, was the Mother of Cats upset! She had just given away a bunch of her plants…

Ha! I spent a couple of nights running around, snacking on the backyard wildlife and eating lots of grass without the Mother of Cats even having a clue of what was up. I came back into the house to grab treats and to take naps, and if she called me (tuna time!) I was always right on time. She was shocked to discover all the cushions knocked off the downstair loveseat the morning before I got sick (I was playing with my dinner…), and she wondered what killed a rabbit in the back yard, but still… clueless, right? It was the perfect gig right up until the moment that Hannah (THAT RAT!!!!!!) gave the game away.

Now the secret door is slammed shut. Hannah is the one that should be in the dog crate for being so unloyal, but no… I am still living there most of the day. The Mother of Cats is simultaneously relieved and furious about the little door to the great world outside.

Hopefully, she will be over it by Friday, which is when I get released from incarceration.

The Mother of Cats has ideas on how to kitty proof the window, but for now it is staying shut. Hannah is really disappointed that the good times are over. The Mother of Cats is threatening to make me sleep in the DOG CRATE at night for another week, and I’m not so sure that the surgical recovery suit is coming off yet.

This is Mateo, signing off.

Note from the Mother of Cats:

This Mateo’s Gotcha Day: I found him at a cat rescue shelter exactly 4 years ago. Doesn’t he look like a little CoalBear in his first photo?

The Scleroderma Chronicles: This is World Scleroderma Day!

A couple of weeks ago I went in for a routine blood draw at my local Kaiser clinic. I gave the phlebotomist my ID card and told her my name and birthdate: for some reason they like to verify these things, right? Anyway, what happened this time was… she exclaimed that didn’t look my age. (Well, yeah. That may be one of the bigger red flags for scleroderma… no wrinkles.) “It’s just my disease doing that,” I assured her. “I really am that old.”

This lady wanted to know what I had done to get rid of the wrinkles. She wanted this magic wrinkle remover too! I carefully told her about scleroderma. “I never heard of that!” she said. Still thinking that I was a lucky person, she drew my blood and I got out of there. I would be happy to have every single wrinkle that I have earned over the years, but no… I have scleroderma. The systemic form with limited skin involvement. Lucky me.

I do have wrinkles around my chin and mouth, but I was wearing a mask during the interaction with the lady at Kaiser. I had to go on oxygen this day (I have lung and heart involvement) and you can see the swollen tendons in my hand and the tight skin over my knuckles.

That’s why there is this thing called World Scleroderma Day. This is a complex autoimmune disease with illusive symptoms (brain fog… trouble swallowing…GERD…swollen fingers…trouble breathing sometimes…fingers that suddenly lose circulation and turn white or blue…) that make the disease difficult to diagnose without specialized testing and evaluation by a scleroderma specialist.

Systemic sclerosis (the form of scleroderma that I have) is thought to start with some event (still unclear) that triggers the formation of antibodies that target specific molecules the nucleus of cells. These antibodies lead to damage in blood vessels and their linings; the damaged blood vessels release chemical signals that trigger a cascade of events that impact other cells of the body. Some cells are related to inflammation. Other cells are tipped over into forming uncontrolled scar tissue (fibrosis). Here is the problem: the tissue engaged in fibrosis is all of the connective tissue. What is connective tissue, you ask? Think of all the ways a person is held together. Tissue that makes your skin stretchy. Tissue that holds your muscle fibers together. Tissue that makes up your tendons, ligaments, and the structure in your joints. Tissue that holds your intestines, heart, kidney, and lungs together. The cartilage in your ribs. All inflamed, under attack, and forming thicker and thicker layers of scar tissue. Some of this damage causes calcium deposition. Unobservable from the outside, the patient is slowly hardening inside. The most obvious symptoms is the skin thickening and then pulling tight over time.

Scleroderma, and especially systemic sclerosis, has the highest fatality rate of all rheumatic diseases. Did I mention that there is no cure? There are treatments for complications that develop like pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and interstitial lung disease (ILD), but they, like the immunosuppressant drugs that many of us take, mostly stabilize and slow progression. (Dear Kaiser lady… that’s why I was getting a blood draw. The drugs that I take are risky, and my doctors need to make sure my kidneys and liver are tolerating the meds okay.)

So, what is the purpose of World Scleroderma Day? It’s to highlight this condition that impacts more people than it should even though it is rare. It’s to raise awareness of the symptoms and hopefully aid in other people getting an appropriate diagnosis. Maybe shining a spotlight on scleroderma will help in getting funding for research, treatments, and even a cure.

Sunflowers are the international symbol for scleroderma.

Here is where you can learn more about scleroderma, it’s symptoms, and treatment.

PS How was my blood work? Yay, doing okay!! Kidney function is up into normal ranges again!!! How old am I? I was born in 1951. 🙂

The Emotional Support Chicken Story, Continued…

Last year, right about at this time, I blogged about my nephew, my sister, and the Emotional Support chickens that I had knitted for them. You can read that blog post here, if you wish. Here is the very short version of that post: my sister asked for support chickens when she learned that her son was suffering from terminal liver failure. After his death the chicken that I sent her became a lifeline as she slept with it, took it to her son’s memorial services, and then to his interment of ashes. That knitted chicken, a small thing, became an important symbol of love and support in a time of grief.

Here’s the chicken, looking sassy, on the morning that I sent her off to my sister.

The chicken moved on with her when she moved to Cody, Wyoming. It was with her, in her bedroom on Monday, June 16th when she took a bad fall getting out of bed that resulted in a broken leg and a serious cut. The chicken was left behind as she was rushed to the nearest hospital.

Thus began a sad, long list of problems and complications as my sister was stabilized, taken to surgery, moved to the cardiac unit, and then scheduled for more surgery. My cat went down a few days into this downward spiral of medical disasters, and by the time I got him home from the Vet Saturday night it was clear that my sister was in trouble. Sunday, we learned that she was being transported to another medical facility in Montana that was better equipped to treat her. Her daughter in California grabbed the first available flight to join her mother and her sister at the new hospital. Somewhere within this time frame the emotional support chicken caught up with her.

Here she is, ready to go to work, in the waiting room of that Montana hospital.

And that was it, the beginning of the end. My sister was moved to hospice care, and her last days and hours were as peaceful as the staff could make them. To the end, the chicken was with her, hard at work, a surrogate for me at her side.

Do you see the chicken tail sticking up out of the covers? That quilt is one that I sewed her years ago to be a cheerful addition to her hospital bed when she got a hip replacement.

Tuesday morning my sister slipped away, with her daughters by her side: it was exactly one year and one month after the death of her son.

Emotional support chickens are just… cute little knitted chicken shaped pillows to hug. They are also symbols of love and support when you need those things desperately. They are something to cling to in bad times. Sometimes they are all a knitter can do for another person in need, and sometimes they are just what that person needed.

It’s just a little chicken. It can be everything.

Knit on, my friends, knit on!

My snarky, supersmart, indominable sister Selma. Gone too soon, part of me forever.

Hannah and the CoalBear: Bad Days

Hi. I’m Mateo.

It has been the worst two weeks ever! I started throwing up early last week, and then the Mother of Cats shoved me into a cat carrier and rushed me to the emergency vet last Thursday. There were lots of tests and x-rays. I was treated badly. I got lot of drugs that were THE WORST and I was in a cage without the Mother of Cats anywhere in sight. I had needles with stuff coming out of them in both arms!!! The vet did more testing during the night, and early in the next morning he called the Mother of Cats to let her know I needed emergency surgery. So last Friday morning, as soon as the morning crew arrived, I was rushed into the operating room for abdominal exploratory surgery to remove a bowel obstruction.

Then I didn’t get better, and I had to have more drugs. I refused to eat and I hated my cone around my head. I WAS SO UPSET!!!! The Mother of Cats came to stay with me for an hour and brought all of my favorite treats and tuna, but I still wouldn’t eat…. so I got a feeding tube.

Last Saturday the Mother of Cats took me home to see if I would eat there. She took off that horrible cone and put me into a surgical recovery suit that she found on Amazon. I look pretty silly, but I was happy to be home: I found the food bowel and started chomping within 10 minutes of getting home.

So now I am stuck in this big DOG crate for ANOTHER WEEK while my stitches heal. Hannah is getting all of the attention, and she even gets to go out on the catio without me! I miss my bunnies…

I do get some breaks from the cage, and the Mother of Cats just wanted me to let you know that we haven’t disappeared completely, but things have been busy for the last two weeks.

This is Mateo, signing off.

>^..^<

Note from the Mother of Cats: it was the most dang expensive hair ball in history. It looks like he ate some hard pieces too that I think must have been the noise maker of one of his toys. He vomited during surgery, but he didn’t develop pneumonia, so that trainwreck was dodged. Since he had abdominal surgery he can’t jump for another week, so that’s why he spends most of his time in the dog kennel. I can’t say enough about how much better the little surgical recovery suit is compared to wearing a cone around his little face.

While all of this happened, we had a major emergency in the family, a crazy hailstorm, my illness flared after repeated nights of interrupted sleep, and my roses bloomed like crazy out in the yard. My favorite is this one:

The name of this rose is “Easy Does It“.

Good to remember. One day at a time, my friends.

How crazy was the hailstorm? This crazy…

The Scleroderma Chronicles: Thoughts on the Night of the Strawberry Moon

There it is, the Strawberry Moon. I snapped this shot around midnight last night while the kitties chased moths on the catio.

It’s June. I can hardly believe it. June is Scleroderma Awareness Month. June is the month of thunderstorms and tornado watches. June is the month of the miller moth migration (Mateo’s favorite time of year!) June is the month that Hannah came home to live with me. June is the month, year after year, that my scleroderma begins to improve after a long, cold winter. This year June has been just great! After a very rainy May hot, sunny weather finally arrived this week and the yard began to burst into bloom. First, let me show you the weather…

Crazy weather May!! That is hail on the catio, all of that rain appeared in my pot on the deck (you can see it in the first picture… the pot was partially covered by the table above it…) in just 48 hours, and then there was an exciting outbreak of tornados just east of me. Whew! In the breaks between the storms I managed to give the lawns their first mowing of the year, and I made great progress pulling weeds out of all of my gardens. I kept thinking of a saying someone said to me recently as I worked in the yard and gardens: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you clear a weedy wilderness? One clump of grass at a time.

Look at how great the yard is starting to look! The grass is growing like crazy after the deep soaks, and there is lots of wildlife. I managed to get the catio all finished, and the cats and I are outside every day now enjoying the show and soaking up some sun.

Mateo is enjoying the emergence of a new, tiny baby bunny!

So, here is the crazy thing. I have been struggling big time with my symptoms. I have been unable to knit (or type for that matter) for several months now. I rely on the knitting to help me keep my hands functional, and also for mental health reasons; the loss of knitting has been hard. Even cranking the knitting machine has been too much for my healing ribs and sternum. My other joints are so bad I have spent most of my time moving a heating pad from joint to joint trying to manage the symptoms. My heart has been misbehaving again, and my lungs have been unhappy. It has been a hard winter, and I have to admit, I’ve been concerned that I may be through the tipping point and on the downward slide of my scleroderma journey.

Then June arrived.

Like magic, after every morning in the sunshine drinking my latte, after every afternoon clearing out a small section of the gardens, I have been getting slowly better. My joints are recovering. My heart has stopped having tachycardia events. My oxygen levels have improved. My hands and wrists are much better. I am writing this post. I am better. I am knitting again. I’ve started a simple summer tee in a happy pink yarn, and my wrists are letting me knit for an hour a night. I usually bristle up when people suggest that I can just get better with some sunshine and exercise, but in this case it did help.

Other fun that I’ve been enjoying on the internet is the journey of Sunny and Gizmo, two Bald Eaglets that fledged early in June from their nest by Big Bear lake in the San Bernardino mountains in California. Sisters, the two have remained with each other in various trees and have returned to the nest several times. The other fun was the adventures of Ed as he ran free in Tennessee for a week. Yay Ed!! You know that I had to cheer the zebra running wild!!

I do hope that you saw the strawberry moon. It was a happy, bright object in the sky, lighting up the back yard and the bunnies chasing each other over the lawn. The moths entertained the cats, and I sat in the dark with them on my swinging patio chair last night feeling pretty upbeat. This full moon was the last of the spring; what is coming now is the heat of summer. Usually, I kind of dread the summer heat, but last night I felt absolutely sure that I was up for the days to come. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you knit a sweater? One hour at a time. How do you face down the scleroderma monster? One beautiful day in the yard/catio at a time.

This is scleroderma awareness month. I went to a scleroderma conference in Denver last month, and this Saturday I will go on a fundraising walk with all of my sclero-friends. I plan to rock the teal! Bring it sclero-monster! I am ready for you!!

Friday is Hannah’s gotcha day. She is now 5 years old.

Last night I started reading the latest edition of Scientific American Magazine. The cover article is about new research that shows… wait for it… sunshine can suppress the immune system and make autoimmune diseases improve. Look at that! I’m kind of thinking that happened to me over the last few weeks. Evidently, it is a balancing act: sunshine can also make things worse. Yay! Once again, I get to use myself as an experimental animal as I figure out how much I can tolerate. 🙂

Zebra running wild!!