Misery wants company

I've taken a dose of benadryl, and had a nice shower. I'm actually not in a near-frenzy of itchiness at the moment, though I was right before my shower. My eyelids are swollen and I have red splotches all over my body. I woke up like this two hours ago.

My only hint was yesterday morning, when my hands got slightly itchy and red, and then swelled up enough that I quickly worked to get my wedding ring off and then took a dose of benadryl. It subsided, but today the itchies were at my hands when I woke up and spread pretty much everywhere, and my feet and legs started getting red splotches, probably hives. It's really hard to think clearly when you're itching everywhere! This has never happened to me before.

But I think it's sort of better now. Feels like it's calming down -- at least the itch. The red splotches are still around. I'll keep up with the benadryl because one thing I do remember (from a couple of years ago when Son1 got the hives twice) is that getting your body settled down quickly with an antihistamine lowers the likelihood that it will happen again or often. I sure hope so.

I wonder if it's a bug bite. I am not allergic to anything that I know of, other than a mild seasonal allergy thing that's developed over the last few years.

I just wanted to share; misery wants and loves company!

UPDATE:
I called my doc's office to talk to the nurse about this, and they sent me to the urgent care clinic. The doc I saw thinks it's food related because my reaction is all over my body. I headed home with a plan to take Claritin (which we have, rather than filling a prescription for similar Allegra), benadryl at bedtime, and if this persists for a couple more days, I can fill a prescription for a tapering dose of a steroid. Dear husband thinks, and I agree, that the culprit may very well be the local honey I had yesterday morning. So, no more of that particular batch as far as I'm concerned. All in all, I'm still feeling puffy and red, but I Am So Glad not to be itchy. I can tolerate a lot of itching, but that was driving me bonkers awfully quickly.

Time for some liturgical embroidery

My mind is running a mile a minute with thoughts of silk threads of various weights and twisted or multiple strands, metallic threads, blending filaments, tiny silk ribbon, satin stitch, split stitch, other types of filling stitches, applique approaches, ground fabric types and weights, and so on.

I'm working with a designer on a priest's stole for the statewide level of the Daughters of the King, an organization of women in the Episcopal church dedicated to prayer, service, and evangelism, with the emphasis on prayer. The stole will be used by our chaplain at statewide DoK assemblies, Quiet Days and other retreats, and our annual All Saints Day Eucharist service. It will also be available for admission services (into the order) and for our funerals.

The designer will create the stole in a "crazy quilt" style, using a wide variety of gorgeous fabrics -- silks, silk velvets, linen, perhaps a bit of very old cloth of silver, and some others. The ends of the stole will be a very deep, rich blue and the colors will lighten going up the stole through medium blues to pale blues and finally creams and whites.

My part is to embroider a 3 1/2 inch version of our order's cross (a modified Greek fleury cross; see the DoK Web site) in grays and silvers, and applique it to the lower part of one side of the stole, and then to embroider a small version of the cross on the stole where it passes in back of the priest's neck.

I'm excited! and nervous! and excited! The first task is to explore and then decide how to attach the large cross to the stole. Invisible applique? Normal applique, with the edges covered by satin stitch or by something simpler? That will dictate the weight of the ground fabric. That in turn will help me decide what to use to fill this rather substantial, plain cross area. We won't include the wording, but I do want to represent the bars across the ends of the arms before they separate into three parts.

I'm certainly doing some small test pieces first, probably of the end of the cross's arm, the center of the cross, and a trial or two of attaching it to something similar to the stole.

This is quite a switch from the small counted cross stitch pieces I've been working on, especially the rustic sorts of things. Yet I've always wanted to do liturgical embroidery, especially altar linens. I never thought I'd have the opportunity to contribute to a stole, but here I am. Everything I've ever learned, enjoyed doing, and read about is dancing around in my brain, overjoyed to have their drawers and cupboards opened and rifled through. Time to pull out my old favorite resources.

One of the first books I pulled out was my copy of the recent reissue by DMC of Therese de Dillmont's Encyclopedia of Needlework. Go back a hundred years to see some great diagrams of serious needlework!

Hmmm! Hmmm! Oh boy!

The City of Ember

Son1 borrowed The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau, from his school library last week. I finished it today, and it was great! A tale about two 12-year-old kids in a city beyond which all is dark, lit by many lights powered by a generator. The city is running out of supplies, the lights go out for a few minutes more and more often during the "day," and the readers are told early on that the city was meant to last for about 200 years. Great adventure tale, and the back flyleaf says the author is working on a sequel. Good! But the story stands very well on its own. I recommend it! (2003, Random House)

Heirloom tomatoes

Heirloom varieties of fruits, vegetables, and flowers have been around for many years without genetic fiddling to "improve" them somehow. Thanks to my recent food co-op order that included some heirloom tomatoes, yesterday I ate a wonderful big fat ripe picked-that-morning red Sioux tomato, and on my windowsill are: a big Cherokee Purple, a small red Sioux, and two pinkish-red Arkansas Travelers. Yet another reason I'm glad I made bread earlier this week: I can have big hearty tomato sandwiches and the bread can stand up to it!

I also ordered a "sweet orange essential oil stain stick" with lye and stuff in it, for my tough laundry stains. It's about the same cost as the storebought stuff, so -- like my herbal bug spray purchase in June -- why not try the non-petrochemical stuff. Of course lye is pretty strong stuff, so this isn't exactly a kinder/gentler alternative. As I was rubbing it on my dampened-as-directed test clothes, I thought briefly that this is essentially what the women before me used, before petrochemicals changed our laundry system. I'll let you know how it works!

Wherever you go, there you are

Been thinking lately. Often I get all interested in and excited about some pursuit and yet it's difficult to pull together the materials or the money or the... whatever. I see that I can't do it the way I wanted to, so the impulse sits for a while. Very, very, very often it occurs to me that I can accomplish the goal with what I have on hand.

Impulse: buy stamps and cardmaking supplies to make homemade cards.
Goal: enjoy making a small card-as-gift, save money, expose the kids to a new craft.
Be here now: get out what I have -- it is enough -- and make simple cards.

Impulse: create a grand chore scheme for the kids.
Goal: gain their help with the household upkeep, and teach the kids to handle responsibility.
Be here now: give the kids appropriate help-me-now tasks, and today I might do up an after-school list of what I tell each boy every day (!).

Impulse: afterschool the kids in a relaxed yet Classical/tridium way, including history, Latin, and plenty more.
Goal: give them a foundation to better understand and think about the world and their own lives
(Hahahaha! The oldest is in school all day! The youngest is in school for the first time! They come home ready to decompress!)
Be here now: decompress with them; enjoy a snack, play some games. Send them outside to play. Offer plenty of fun, good books to the oldest. Be intentional about exploring what interests us. Maybe once a week read a chapter of The Story of the World (we're still on the ancient world). At some point, maybe buy Lingua Angelica and play the CD in the car.

Impulse: find some great faith instruction resources for the kids.
Goal: help them know and understand our faith and develop their relationship(s) with God.
Be here now: use the catechism in our church's Book of Common Prayer. Go ahead and set up a prayer/faith shelf, and practice my Godly Play presentations with the kids.

I'm off to make that after-school To Do list.

She's in the kitchen

I'm waiting for the oven to heat up so I can bake the three loaves of white-but-now-part-whole-wheat bread, using my yummy, local, stone-ground whole-wheat flour from the food co-op. I want good bread, so I'm making some!

Once the counters are clear, I'll put together a Mexican casserole, layering my homemade southwestern rice from the freezer, black beans and their broth that I made yesterday (maybe I'll puree some to take the place of refried beans, hmmm), and plenty of tortilla chip pieces (we have a lot, after our homemade guacamole and salsa fest a couple of weeks ago!). I'll top it with chip pieces and a sprinkling of Cheddar, and stash it in the fridge until it goes in the oven later.

Since the kiddos often, yet unpredictably, turn up their noses at these mixed-up foods, I will make cornbread too -- using my local, stone-ground cornmeal from the co-op!

I'm really glad I decided to make black beans yesterday. We had them over rice cooked with some diced kielbasa, and now I have a great stash of delicious meal bases in the fridge. Hehehe.

My husband is probably in shock; I've barely wanted to cook all summer...

UPDATE: 'Cause I hate cheese and cream sauces (my deprived husband doctors up his portions) and am happy to skip their fat content as well, my casseroles depend on broth or tomato sauce to be moist, flavorful, and stick together as they should. The casserole wasn't moist enough 'cause I grabbed the ultra-spicy little can of "salsa fresca" sauce rather than the sort-of-spicy; my mistake. I used a bit, diluted with black bean broth, but... "eh." The grownups liked the casserole well enough, but, as predicted, the kids weren't thrilled. The cornbread was an all-around winner, though. My guideline is: if you're going to serve an experiment or a non-family favorite for dinner, serve something they love along with it. Homemade bread (even biscuits or cornbread) always works.

In the moment, even when I'd rather not

Yesterday we went to a big picnic/grill-fest at a large local lake. The kids had a great time, ate goodies and drank soda, played at the water's edge with other kids, and ended up spending a couple of hours with several other kids building a two-level dam/pond thing from the lakeside mud/sand stuff.

We kept a relaxed eye on what they were doing and eating. They ate some grapes, a few chips, and a skewer each of the chicken sate or whatever that they really liked. Other than that, we think they mostly ate chocolate chip cookies and other cookies with chocolate, but they also spent a lot of time at the beach building project. All seemed a little decadent but not too bad. At the time.

About 11 pm we discovered that Son1, age 8 1/2, surely ate more cookies than we realized. He abruptly threw up all over himself and the bed, and it smelled of vomit and chocolate. Sighhhhh. Dear husband and I cleaned it all up, bedded him down on the floor in a sleeping bag, and set the washing machine to work rinsing and then washing the bed linens, light comforter, and stuffed animal "pals." This morning I set everything to soak again 'cause the pals were somewhat chocolate colored still.

Upon checking after church, I was pleased to find the pals no longer looking awful, but actually pretty good. Later, after a full wash cycle, I moved everything to the dryer. It quickly became apparent that, as usual in these cases, I needed to shake (twice washed) food pieces off each item. I did, into the washer, and the bed stuff and pals are drying in the dryer even now.

Once I got that going it was necessary that I spend some time leaned over the washing machine picking up each and every piece of twice-washed food off the bottom, sides, and agitator to throw away. I hate everything to do with vomit, even the thought of it (though I soldier through when necessary). My main thought, all I could think during this odious task?

I'm so thankful these bits are washed and don't smell. I'm sooooo thankful.

Gives new meaning to the directive to pray continuously. Or to be in the moment. Or "hands to work, hearts to God." Sighhhh.

Oh, Son1 is completely fine today, and Son2 had no tummy trouble. Whether to police the cookie consumption or simply let him learn from this is a choice that's hard to make. We waver.