WORKING ON A SPEEDY RECOVERY

Lately this is what our grocery shopping days look like,

with Jim speeding thru the isles on a scooter the store provides.

Know that he can actually walk and doesn't need this device anymore,

but he loves it.

A man toy for him I guess.

This last month has brought more changes.

He had cataract surgery done for both eyes and no longer needs his glasses to see,

except of course the dollar store ones for super close up reading.

This is a whole new look for him and he's been told he even looks younger.

And I think even more handsome  :)

How about that!

He'll take it.

NOT IN MY LIFETIME

Not sure who shot these pictures but my knitting friend Aileen sent them to me.

I'm pretty sure they were taken from either 

Long Beach, San Pedro or Santa Monica Harbors.

You can see Los Angeles in the left hand distance

 and the San Gabriel Mountains in the far distance. 

I have never in my life seen so much snow on our mountains,

ever!

In this shot above you can barely see the Hollywood sign,

and below,

 an even closer shot of it along with the crazy amount of snowfall we got. 

Sadly we haven't even been able to reach our cabin at 5000 ft.

The roads were closed for several days and our only grocery store's roof

 was caved in along with several other stores in our tiny little city of Crestline.

And more rain and snow is predicted this Wednesday.

Many of the full time residents there are without food and their medicines.

It's been a nightmare for them.

EXPERIMENTING...

with two different needle sizes.

The one in front is with size 3 double pointed needles,

and the one in back is size 4.

Size 3 won out for this particular basic sock pattern.

The strips and rust colored yarn were put in to make them look more sporty.

The multi colored yarn was a gift to myself from Buku Yarns in LaVerne, Ca.

I also bought another colorway and gifted it to Aileen for our Fiber class.

It was time for her to learn to knit socks.

She's almost done and they are gorgeous.

They will be featured in another post.

I washed these gently in the sink so they wouldn't shrink or pill,

even though they are a super wash merino yarn base.

Supposedly I can throw them in the washing machine

but I'm too much of a chicken to do that after spending hours knitting them.

But instead,

 they grew enormously by a good inch in each direction,

as well as becoming incredibly soft and limp from the gentle sink washing.

I freaked out because they were now way too large 

so I did something I'd never recommend,

 and tossed them in the dryer for a few mins.

Zilch...nada...still ginormous!!

No...

Next I laid them out to finish drying and the next day,

 miraculously,

 they were back to the perfect size I needed

(the ones on size 4 needles a bit larger).

I honestly don't understand what happened.

Just chalking it up to experience and a lesson learned.

AN AMAZING SUCCESS STORY

Whitney High School Alumni and one of my former art students,

Julie Su,

was recently sworn in as our United States Deputy Secretary of Labor.

I was trying to remember which class of graduates she was a part of 

so I did a bit of math.

  I'm guessing it was the Class of 1987.

I,

 and the rest of the Whitney High Community are bursting with pride!

She has always been the companion of the underdog 

and fights hard to bring in better working conditions here in America.

 Su was born in Wisconsin as a second generation immigrant. Her mother came to the United States on a cargo ship from China; her father is from Taiwan.^[8][9] She graduated from Gretchen Whitney High School in Cerritos, CA. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.^[10]

Su started her legal career at the Asian-Pacific American Legal Center. She was a Litigation Director for Advancing Justice L.A., a non-profit civil rights organization.

Su was the lead attorney for the El Monte Thai Garment Slavery Case.^[11] As the lead for civil case brought by the El Monte garment workers, Su successfully pursued a legal theory that held manufacturers responsible for the wage theft, as well as the operators who actually kept the garment workers captive. She and other activists also petitioned for the workers to be able to stay in the United States under a visa program for those who cooperate with the government in criminal trials. This led to the creation of the T-Visa for victims of human trafficking.^[12]

During Jerry Brown's tenure as governor, Su headed California's Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE).^[5] Under Governor Gavin Newsom, Su served as Secretary of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency.^[4]

As my husband says "She knows some big players".

Pretty darn cool I say.

Here are Julie and her daughter's,

 AnLing and LiMei, 

getting their selfie taken with Joe and Kamala.

How about those apples??

LiMei was also a very talented art student of mine a few years back.

One of the perks of teaching at the same school for 39 years,

you get to teach the parent and their children.

Love that!!!!

You can read more about Julie here on Wikipedia.

JIM'S MASSIVE RECOVERY - PART 2

What I haven't shared just yet is that as Jim's leg wound was almost healed, 

a couple of days before Thanksgiving,

he started losing his balance and  wasn't able to walk in a straight line.

He was getting more and more agitated and also not able to sleep.

Plus his anxiety that he's always had at nighttime was getting worst.

Also he was losing his words with blurred speech.

So after a fall off his bed and also from standing on his feet,

as well as a fall into our patio slider door,

all within 24 hours,

I took him to our local E.R.

Big mistake!

They released him that afternoon to his daughter 

because I was at another hospital with my children.

 That was the day my Ex had his heart arrest.

Unbelievably,

 the local E.R. didn't find anything wrong with him

 other then his back arthritis bothering him.

Did they even examine him or run any tests???

Anyways,

Jim's daughter saw he wasn't doing well that night at their house 

so they rushed him to their local hospital where an MRI of his brain was done,

and it turned out he had two serious brain bleeds.

They think one was a slow building one from his Jeep accident 

when he hit his head,

and the other a fast one from his fall into the slider door or the floor.

Who knew??

Not that first hospital.

No wonder it has such a bad reputation.  

 

So Jim was hospitalized for another 2 weeks.

Meanwhile I was driving back and forth everyday to 2 different hospitals,

which were miles apart,

trying to keep an eye on both my charges.

Ha!

Both men ended up being hospitalized for 2 weeks.

 Two brain operations were done on Jim

to pull out the excess fluids surrounding and moving his brain around.

It was so scary,

maybe even more so then his original Jeep accident.

I was really scared I was going to lose him.

Drilling into his skull,

crazy!!

His neurosurgeon also told me that he would never be quite the same afterwards.

What does that mean I asked?

He said you will know it when you see it.

WTF!!!!

Here is Jim at the end of that 2 weeks.

You can sort of see where they shaved both sides of his forehead to drill.

At this point from the time of the Jeep accident to this pix 

he had lost over 30 pounds of weight,

mostly muscle mass.  

You can especially see it in his face here.

From that hospital there, 

he was transferred to a skilled nursing faculty to learn how to walk again

and get physical therapy twice a day.

In 5 days time he was more then ready to come home

although I felt he should have stayed a bit longer. 

But he was itching to come home.

It was all about the nasty food there,

he was starving!

LOL

So are you wondering if I'm noticing any differences now?

Yes, a bit.

When he first got home he was meeker,

a bit disoriented,

 a tiny tad weepy and very unsure of himself,

but super cooperative which I loved.

Ha!

He's had to depend on me for everything which has been hard for him.

And a bit hard for me too.

But that's ok as I'm a real nurturer and love mothering him.

It's been a little over two and a half months since he came home now.

Things are changing that's for sure.

He is very slowly getting better.

He hasn't been able to drive until just recently on small errands for practice.

But no freeways yet,

 and always with me as his co-pilot.

His reflex skills are not quite where they need to be.

Some days are not good and he's really tired and I don't let him drive at all.

But of course he thinks he's just fine.

That has been a bit of a battle at times.

Basically he's just not as sharp as he used to be

and he's still having trouble with his speech and words.

Maybe that's what the doctor was talking about.

His neurosurgeon says things will continue to get better

 up to about a year and a half.  

And after that is where he will stay.

I have high hopes for him.

His grandsons are counting on him and so am I.

HALF WAY DONE

At almost 400 tiny stitches across each row

(about 20 minutes per row),

and ripping out so many rows that I made errors on,

I finally reached the half way point.

Woo Hoo!!!

Days 9, 11 & 12 brought in some wonderful forestry greens...

and then Day 13 thru me for a real loop with a very pale grey,

 but a pleasant surprise of a new tapestry needle.

Because I haven't blocked this half below, 

I had a really hard time laying it flat enough for it's photo.

But at least you can see how those greens worked in between the white and black which I loved.

And here you can also see the pale grey next to the white.

It's easier to see the difference in the photo then it is in person.

The very bottom is so sweet 

but in this pix it's hard to see the detail 

of the black bobbles along the edge. 

There was a real surprise for me at the bottom edge.

Amanda of Buku Yarns only had us bind off 1/2 of the 400 stitches.

The rest remain live on a cord to be knit together at the very end

 of the second half of the shawl.

Sounds pretty darn cool to me!