a quilting evening

I finally spent an entire night quilting! I made this tablerunner for Leota since her birthday was last Sunday. I'm not so sure I didn't make her one with these Santas last Christmas. Oh well, if I did, she's got a matching pair now! lol We'll have her birthday lunch at work on Thursday, but I'll give it to her tomorrow.

Dad's doing really well. He's trying to walk without his walker but I'm still not ready for him to do that without one of us near him. He wants to be "normal" so badly!

This little runner wore me out tonight. I'm out of practice! lol I've got a couple of larger quilts to work on, so I hope I can spend more evenings doing that.

Home again, home again!

Only eight days in the hospital this time and now we are home, again! Actually, I brought Dad home Friday afternoon. I am so behind in posting, mostly 'cause I've been more tired than I can ever remember. But, after sleeping some yesterday and taking my time this morning, I am feeling much better. I think Dad is feeling even better than I am! LOL While with him this afternoon, I couldn't wait for him to say he was ready for a nap, and he never did! He walked and ate a late lunch then sat and played the guitar for me. I was crocheting and all I wanted to do was sleep! lol His blood work came back looking very, very good this afternoon. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.
In the meantime, I've been working on this green Simply Shell Afghan. I like the pink one so much that I just had to do it in this luscious green yarn. I'm afraid the picture doesn't do it justice. I don't know if I posted that the pink afghan won a blue ribbon at the county fair and was seriously considered for Best of Show. A cross stitch picture beat it out of that, though. That's ok. I'm just excited one of my projects was even considered!

This pink ribbon quilt top was made last year when Deborah and I went to Oklahoma for an all day retreat at a LQS. I made a mistake in placing the colors, so I have not wanted to do anything with it. But, now that I look at it, I really like how it looks. So, I'm going to finish it and give it to a gal that used to clean house for me. We found out this week that she is going to have a double mastectomy due to breast cancer. I want her to know I'm thinking of her.

I picked up my Bernina today but haven't had a chance to try it out. I'm going to situate it on my dining room table so I can do some "serious" quilting, I told my husband! LOL "Uh oh," he said. Yup, that means the dining room will be trashed for a while but that's ok. It's the only place I have right now with room for a big quilt to "flow" while I quilt it.

Time to get dinner on the table. Sorry for not checking in sooner. Please pray that Dad continues to do well.

Hopital notes

Still in Lubbock. Hopefully, we will be able to take Dad home sometime this weekend. They've gotten all the fluid off of him. So much so that his kidney numbers began to rise again. Before they would put him on dialysis again, though, the renal doc stopped the heavy duty diuretics and the numbers have begun to drop again. He was very tired today but they tell me that's because he's so dehydrated.

I've been working on the crocheted dishrag dresses and have completed 8 in the last 2 days. I'm so glad I picked up that cotton thread. I wish I'd gotten another skein of the soft green so I can finish my afghan, but that will have to wait 'til later.

I'm afraid this will be a short post. I'm so tired I can't even think.

Still in hospital

It's Monday morning and we're still in Lubbock. Dad had a rough day yesterday because he hadn't slept in 3 nights. It finally caught up with him and he was very tired all day. He seemed better late in the afternoon when Rob and April were here. Dad, Rob, April and Judy played a little game of ping pong and "push the water bottle across the table without letting it fall off" for about a hour or so. Really helped to work his arms a bit.

He's doing much better this morning since we both slept all night, with the usual interruptions. We're just waiting for the dotors to start coming by now. I told Judy (she went home last night) that when one person is here, we should lose weight waiting for the docs! I don't want to leave to go to the cafeteria in case they come by. It'd be my luck that they would start coming in as soon as I leave. So, I'll sit here and do this and work on my crochet until all the docs make their rounds. I could live off my fat for a few days, if the truth be known! lol

Back to the hospital :-(

Here we are in Lubbock, one more time. After our sudden trip to the ER in Clovis yesterday afternoon, we find ourselves back in Lubbock with Dad. He had begun to fill up with fluid again and was having trouble breathing, especially when he would lay down. We were given the option of having him treated in Clovis or take him back to Lubbock. Since they could not be sure that other, cardiac-related problems might arise (other than the fluid retention), we thought we'd better get him to Lubbock. Now they tell us that what they see on the x-ray may not be just fluid, but pneumonia as well. That always scares me. Pneumonia in an older, weaker patient is never good. But they have come a long way with medicines, so please pray.

I'm waiting for Judy to get back to the hospital. We got here at 1:30 a.m. Texas time and none of us slept until about 5 a.m. Judy left to get back to Clovis around 7 a.m. I sure hope she doesn't get too sleepy on the road back. I tried to take a nap several times today and everytime I did, someone would walk in to check on Dad. That's all right. Maybe we can all sleep a little better tonight. Dad seems to be feeling a bit better since he's gotten rid of a lot of fluid.

This is making me sleepy. More tomorrow...

Couldn't resist...

We've heard of "You Tube". My brother sent me this clip from "God Tube". Cute, cute. Thanks, Henry. Nice way to start the day.

Day trip with Dad

The following is from a mass email I sent out after our trip to the Lubbock cardiologist. If you read that email, there's nothing new here :-) Hopefully, tomorrow's post will have news of how my projects did at the county fair. I hope to run out there sometime today to see.

I thank you all for your prayers and good thoughts! We made it home safely from Lubbock yesterday after a fairly uneventful day. Dad and I were on our own since the homemaker couldn't go with us. We had a bit of trouble obtaining a wheelchair when we first got there and I got my day's workout going from one end of the hospital to the other looking for one. They were discharging patients and all the wheelchairs were in use! Can you imagine? Glad for all those folks going home, but you'd think they would let us have a chair after someone was loaded into their car! NO! I kept hearing, "this is MY wheechair and I have to get it back to MY department to wheel OUR patients!" Ok, I understand that, but they could've been a little bit nicer with the attitude. Can you tell I was a little bit irritated :-)? Anyway, I ran up to the cardiologist's office to let them know we were there, still waiting for a wheelchair, and they had one for me to use.

After getting Dad upstairs, I calmed down a bit. lol Of course, he had to go to the bathroom and since I have to help him, I wheeled him into the ladies' room (oh, and no toilet paper, sheesh!). We got that done and they called us in to see the doc.

After listening to his lungs and heart, the doc decided that yes, he does have some fluid at the base of both lungs. So, before he can prescribe more of the diuretic, he needed blood work to determine that his kidneys are not being compromised any further. And, he needed to check something called a BNP to see how bad the congestive heart failure is. I hope to find out all that today.

The neatest thing about the whole trip was when they sat Dad down and proceeded to obtain information in the memory of his pacemaker/defibrillator! It was all printed out, deleted from the pacemaker memory to start collecting information all over again, and then the technician did some "upgrading". He tweaked some numbers on the computer screen and pronounced the devices to be working even better than when they were installed! Amazing! Thank You, Lord! So, now we are just waiting on what to do to get the lungs fluid-free again.

Thanks for listening and for praying! I could "feel" the cloak of prayer all around us almost as soon as we started out from the house.

UFO busting

These blocks are from the End of Winter Swap last year, I think. It may have been the year before...I forget. I've been wanting to get them together in a quilt and so the reversible quilt method was the easiest to do. The red, white and blue blocks make up the back of the EOW quilt. I will still add about 6" borders to make it a functional quilt.
The closeups show a little of the quilting I did in some of the blocks. I let the blocks dictate what kind of quilting I would do. Lots of practice with free motion quilting.
Dad's doing ok these days. Not wonderful. He seems to be retaining a lot of fluid even though the cardiologist has increased his diuretic. The med increase has helped, but I think he needs a little more. We see the Lubbock cardiologist this coming Monday. He seems to be in good spirits, but I know he's tired of this whole mess. He does talk about getting better in order to take a weekend trip to a casino. lol As long as he continues to fight..

Quick note

Even though I'm not in Houston with Jim and Rob, I thought I'd post a picture of Rob and his sister, Brenda. Jim and Rob are in Houston to attend services for Jim's daughter, Beverly. This is the first time Rob and Brenda have seen each other in person. I am so glad these two finally had a chance to meet! I hate that it is under such sad circumstances, but, sometimes that's what it takes to get us all to do something. I know that they would've met eventually, but I'm glad they got a chance to be together at this time.

Mary, I'm sorry I hadn't posted! LOL I just have been lazy about it. I've not done anything "quilty" to speak of except to bind the Valentine quilt I gave my granddaughter for her birthday. Speaking of, I need to leave here in a few to pick her up from the sitter's. I need to relieve the homemaker at Dad's so I'll get to watch Brit this afternoon. Dad's doing much better! It's so wonderful to hear him answer the phone in his own, quirky, animated way! Thanks to all, again, for your prayers.