An Excerpt

Philip has recently applied for some bursaries to support him in his senior years of high school. One of them required a reference from his school. This is an excerpt from the letter written by his Deputy Principal:

“Philip’s teachers commend him highly because of his maturity, self-motivation, caring attitude, tolerance of others and dedication to hard work. He is a conscientious and capable student who works productively as a member of a team or independently.

Philip is a confident and mature young person who has a good academic record, consistently receiving high levels of academic achievement in his subjects.”

 It made me weep.

Yesterday…

These beautiful fabrics arrived in the mail.

This was a highlight in an otherwise crappy day.

Pip woke early with a headache, then spent the entire day vomiting. This boy does not like to do anything the easy way, so by 5pm he was at the doctor’s office with very low blood pressure having an injection to stop the nausea and allow him to rehydrate.

So while I may have been physically cleaning vomit off floors, towels, sheets, clothes and out of buckets, I was designing a new quilt in my mind.

It’s a shame I have to finish the two half done quilts before I can make it…

Even though Pip is still in bed asleep I have been in to check on him once (or twice, or more) and he is much better today. I’m sure he’ll have a monster headache when he wakes up, but it won’t be anything that plenty of fluids can’t fix.

Beautiful Paper

I received a parcel.

It came to me from Lesley in Western Australia. Some time ago we agreed to a blog swap. If I quilted a quilt for Lesley she was willing to make me a papercut like those of hers that I so admire. Who would refuse an offer like that?!

Today this treasure arrived.

Can you see how stunningly beautiful it is?

Lesley has patiently and skillfully cut around each shape with her supersharp scalpel.

 I especially love the flowers which have fallen to the ground.

Thank you, Lesley. I love it!

These are the times…

that I want to keep forever.

Pip: Hey, mum. Want me to play my guitar for you?

Me: Yep.

So we look on youtube for songs and then google the lyrics.

His hands move furiously across the strings as he  plays along and we both sing.

Today it was this song:

Who knows what he’ll learn next. Whatever it is I hope he plays it for me.

Time to sleep, little sheep.

I have been watching a documentary about sleep called Dead Tired.

I am finding it very interesting. I am a person who does not seem to need much sleep, it’s incredibly unusual for me to feel tired. I have been particularly interested in the experiments conducted and the science of the brain which is being discovered.

A perfectly fit and healthy young man participated in an experiment which saw him sleeping only three hours per night. The aim was for him to do this for one week and undergo lots of physical, mental and medical tests along the way to monitor his experience and give a window of insight into the purposes for sleep.

You can imagine that after the first night of limited sleep he felt exhausted. In a driving test three days into the experiment he had more than ten micro-sleeps, including one that lasted for over thirty seconds. He was totally unaware that he had slept during this time and had felt he that was completely alert. The brain needs sleep to synthesise thoughts, memories and experiences. If you don’t get adequate sleep then your brain is able to take a sleep without your permission. This is a micro-sleep. A few seconds where your brain just logs off. You think you’re awake, you think you’re under control, but your brain waves and eye movements indicate that you are asleep.

By day six, in his brain’s desperation to get an adequate level of deep sleep, he had begun dreaming while he was awake. Dreams allow your brain to make sense of the experiences of the day. Your brain catalogues your experiences, matches them up with other similar thoughts and helps you to create memories during your dreams. This man’s lack of dreaming had caused him to hallucinate. These hallucinations were terrifying to him. He thought he was losing his faculties and going insane. The results of medical tests indicated, amongst other serious problems, that he had the early stages of type two diabetes. Just six days earlier these symptoms did not exist. Physical symptoms had begun to manifest from the mental exhaustion.

As you can imagine the experiment was terminated immediately. Less than a week later, with adequate amounts of sleep all of these difficulties and symptoms had gone.

 This experiment had caused me a lot of reflection in the past few days. Are we so busy as a society that we are exhausting ourselves into mental and physical health problems? Could we be so silly?

Go to bed early tonight everyone. Let your brain drift off into sleep. Let it dream to its heart’s content. (if a brain can have a heart…)

I know I will be.

Oh Dear!

Santa looks like a jolly old fellow when I see him stitched to my quilt…

but when I drew up the applique shapes to make the pattern..

he looked like the vicitim of a most unfortunate accident!

This is all I can show you of my newest quilt. It is bound and finished. Tomorrow it will be posted to the editor of the Quilters Companion magazine for publication later this year. You’ll have to wait until the edition is available in newsagents before I show you the whole thing.

(Insert wicked laugh here.)

Helping the Elderly

My Pete and Pip have been working on a weekend project.

It required clamping…

and sawing…

and drilling.

All under careful supervision.

Poor old Thomas. He turned 13 last year and is really starting to show his age. His arthritic hips make it difficult for him to get in and out of his bed and we have begun to notice that he is sleeping on the concrete instead.

SO… the boys custom made him a fully carpeted ramp that makes the journey into bed a little easier.

Turns out that the ramp makes a pretty comfortable bed.

Crabby… not so much.

Did you know I am cancerian? Sometimes we crabs like to retreat into our shells. This is where I have been for the past little while, safely tucked up inside my shell.

Life has gone on, even though I have not acknowledged it so I give you the dot point version:

• Pip left hospital and recuperated in our Sydney motel rooms for a few days.
• Miss Ashy and I caught the train into Sydney city, got lost and called my Pete who used google maps to give us directions.
• I had yum cha in Sydney with Megan. She was fabulous company and we talked about all manner of things while eating all manner of food.
• We left Sydney and drove for four days straight, roughly 700 kilometres per day, all the way home.
• I suffered dreadfully from motion sickness two days into our journey, but we pushed on regardless.
• I spent two full days with a spinning head upon our arrival in Townsville.
• We took Pip for a wound check. The doctor was impressed with his healing and sent us on our way never to return again!
• It was hot and humid and we were sweaty and whingy.
• My Pete returned to work.
• I bought new diaries for the year and wrote neatly in them with sharpened lead pencils.
• I bought school supplies for Pip and he organised himself in preparation for a new year.
• I made a Christmas quilt. A little out of season, but it is a magazine commission for a Christmas in July edition.
• I went back to work.
• Someone at my work spilled their coffee on my brand new neatly marked diary making a stain in November and December.
• We watched a cyclone come down the coast.
• It rained and rained and rained and rained.
• Pip went back to school.
• It rained and rained and rained and rained.
• Ashy got her licence and drove herself to and from work.
• I sat on the couch while Ashy drove herself to and from work feeling delighted.

AND NOW… I think it’s time to come out of my shell and face the world again.

All is Well

The surgery is over and went as planned. Pip has his hardware to keep.

He spent last night in hospital, but wasn’t allowed out of bed at all due to an oozing wound. (good visual?)

The doctor agreed with my Pete that he should stay one more night, so he’ll be home tomorrow.

There is no medication, the drip had been removed, he was bright and chatty.

Couldn’t have hoped for more…

Nil by Mouth

From 6am tomorrow Pip needs to fast.

By 11am we need to be at the hospital.

By early afternoon he will have surgery.

Today we visited the surgeon and were once again reassured by his bedside manner. He tells us that in the past two years Pip’s body has recognised the metal bar in his chest as a foreign object and built a coccoon around it. Tomorrow he will open Pip on each side of his chest, cut through the coccoon, straighten the bar on each side and slide it straight out of his chest.

Pip will stay overnight in hospital, but his recovery should be quick and easy. He will just have an incision each side that needs to heal.

Pip’s only request?

Could he please have the bar afterwards. The doctor has promised to “clean it up a bit” before he brings it to him.

It has played a very big part in his life and he wants to keep it.

Perhaps we should have it mounted…