(no subject)

I'm not quite sure what to do with the prayer quilt that Scott's sister gave me. It's still too warm for me to want to sleep with it or to sit with it draped over me, but I feel like I should do something with it besides leaving it folded on the couch. I probably ought, also, to look at the card that came with it. The card was signed by everyone who said a prayer and tied a knot in the quilt (and probably by people who just said a prayer. There are a lot more signatures on the card than there are knots on the quilt as the knots are limited by the size of the quilt). The quilt is a dark red, shading toward maroon, and isn't quite big enough for a single bed.

Scott bought me a bag of dates yesterday. Sadly, they're very dry. I prefer my dates soft and sticky, but one can't tell from the outside of bag which kind are inside. Brand doesn't predict that. These are Sun Maid, and I've had some very nice dates from them in the past. Even dry dates taste good; they're just harder for me to eat.

Cordelia wants me to catch up to where she is in Once Upon a Time so that we can watch it together. I don't object, in principle, but I don't know when I'll do it. My tendency with such things is to intend to get to it and then discover that all of my time for it has gone.

Our sister-in-law who's a surgeon called last night. I had been surprised not to hear from her sooner, closer to the surgery, but she's had a bad cold and has been busy with her own practice. She has a very different perspective on surgery than I do since it's something she does several times a week. We did discuss how, with current techniques, very difficult procedures seem simpler to people who didn't perform them than simpler things do because the more difficult procedures are now done laproscopically. She talked about doing an aortal repair with two tiny incisions in the groin area. Basically, people seem to think the size of the outer wound equates with the difficulty of the surgery in terms of bigger being harder when it actually goes the other way.

She did get in the usual sad head-shaking digs about my weight. At this point, I just assume those are going to happen because she's apparently incapable of not doing it. I really don't think I needed to be told that being fat means that the surgeon had to dig deeper to get those lymph nodes out or that being heavier increases the risk of a recurrence of the cancer. I think that she just has a lot of trouble with the idea of being heavier not being something that a person has to work at because, all of her life, she's struggled with being underweight even while eating sensibly.

Her biggest post-op concern for me is that some sort of bacteria will get in through the biopsy wound which still has not really closed up and which has continued very minor leaking. She says, though, that what we've been doing in terms of covering that with clean gauze pads should work well.

I showered last night. I was going to put it off until today, but I wanted to do it before getting dressed today, and what with Scott working, I'd have had to ask for help from Cordelia. I'm sure she would have, but she wouldn't have been pleased to be asked. Of course, once Cordelia's back in school, asking her for help won't really be an option at the times when I usually shower. I guess it'll be evening showers all the way until I've healed up.

We have evalerie's electric car again. She and her family went on a short, just before school starts, trip and needed the larger car and the easier refueling. Knowing that she'd need the gas car was one of Scott's reasons for wanting to get to the car dealership yesterday. I think he needs to start setting an alarm to get up on his days off when he has things that have to be done by a certain time. When he gets up on his own, he dinks around for two or three hours and suddenly discovers that it's too late to do whatever it was he needed to do. I think that, if he set an alarm, he would actually get through his routine a little more efficiently (an hour to shower and an hour to make and eat breakfast are excessive).

Scott's apparently having a fairly bad day at work. Not that any day there is ever a good one... He will stop at the grocery store on the way home as the loaf of bread he was counting on for this week turned out to be moldy. It's just as well. I keep thinking of things I left off of yesterday's list because I was too out of it to focus properly. I'm not convinced Scott should leave anything in my hands that requires thought.

I was afraid that I was getting rash on my face. The skin on my cheeks, going up almost to my eyes, feels rough to the touch but isn't itchy or painful or anything like that. I couldn't decide if it was dry skin or rash, so I tried putting lotion on it (and finding that was a challenge. We used to have lots of lotion, but apparently not any more). That seems to have helped a bit, so I think it is dry skin. The possibility of rash was worrying given that I'm taking hydrocodone, but it wasn't hives or anything, so I didn't think it was likely to be a serious allergic reaction. I've had those before, to antibiotics, and they're quite different. But I was second guessing myself quite a bit, especially going into a long weekend.

Cordelia has been watching Once Upon a Time and now wants me to catch up to where she is as fast as I possibly can so that she and I can watch it together. I like that idea, but I'm having trouble getting myself to start up an episode. I have it up and ready to go. All I have to do is push the stupid button, and I can't. I suppose I should find out how far along she is. That will give me an idea of how far I have to go. Because that will let me feel like I'm making progress toward a concrete goal, that may help. It's easier for me to read a book, for example, if I know how many pages I have left, and I really like knowing exactly how long a movie is before I start it.