Thanks for all the love, support, emails, comments, and phone calls. They help.

I’ve just returned from visiting Dad again this evening. He is so tired. And sore. And puffy. And mopey. They have tubes feeding into his carotid artery, with a bunch of apparatus taped to his cheek, which is unbearably Borglike in appearance. He dozed off ten or so times during our short visit. We talked to the nurse, who says he is doing well. He’s mad about being kept up for an hour at a stretch several times a day. So he’s spunky, I guess. She says tomorrow they may take out the chest tubes: don’t ask about them, it’s too icky to discuss. Sometime I’ll write about Mom and how she’s handling all of this.

I’m so happy there is no strategy guide chapter sitting in my inbox because I honestly couldn’t face it now at 9:41 p.m., no matter how much the client jumps up and down or how loudly he begs. I am feeling licked for today.

Surgery was yesterday. It was complicated–more complicated than they had anticipated–but it went well. It took 6 hours; they ended up replacing one valve and also having to repair the other. There was an area of his heart beneath the aortic valve that was constricted, so they actually removed some tissue to open up the space. They decided while they were there to leave the aorta alone. Although it is big, it is not stretched thin. The surgeon didn’t have anything bad to report, but he wasn’t exactly reassuring. I guess that’s not his job.

The nurses in the CSICU, however, are very optimistic. Dad is not bleeding and he came out of the anesthesia pretty well. The first 12 hours after surgery can be dicey, but he did fine. They had to slowly warm up his body to normal temps: during surgery they made him cold. That really creeped me out.

We saw him about 45 minutes after surgery, with the ventilator and the tubes and everything. He looked like hell, but everyone said cardiac surgery patients always look like that. Mom and I went home after that, at about 4:30 yesterday afternoon.

We have just returned from visiting him this morning. They’ve removed the ventilator and he was awake and able to talk. His brain is working fine. I can tell he is hurting, and while we were there they gave him a pain pill. Does that mean he’s off the morphine drip? We are supposed to limit our visits to 10 to 15 minutes at a time. I’ll be going back again later today or this evening. I took photos of his grandsons for him to look at. They are moving him today out of the post-op ICU room and into a regular ICU room with a TV, so he’ll have that distraction.  My brother will be seeing him later today, too.

Dad will be in CSICU for another two whole days. Then they’ll move him to a PCU room, which is more like a regular private room.  They will be getting him out of bed and walking every four hours around the clock from about this point on. They are also monitoring his blood sugar levels very closely because there is a major correlation between reasonable blood sugar and good healing.

I am relieved, but still tense and anxious. I won’t be happy until I see him with all the tubes out of him.

Dad and the surgeon talked today. They’ve postponed it until early, crack-of-dawn Wednesday morning. So rev up those prayers/meditations/good vibes/and positive visualizations for Wednesday, OK? I’ll be forever grateful.

All will be well. All will be well. All things will be well.

I’m feeling a lot of feelings. I’m also sick. Today I feel better, but sort of like I’m on another planet and all my normal emotions and thoughts are are being altered by a too-thin atmosphere. When I think about my dad’s surgery tomorrow, I have to fight back the impulse to hyperventilate.

As soon as I finish writing this post, I have to edit like the wind. I hope my work will consume me today and keep my thoughts and feelings in lockdown.

I had a ton of fun on Saturday and during the party on Saturday night. It was so freeing to spend time with Ian and friends. I needed to be around my people. I needed to make new friends—I finally met Agent Sassy! I felt wild and good during those few hours.

File this one under DAD and DOMESTIC.

I’ve just arranged for my folks to receive two professionally prepared dinners per week for the next 4-5 weeks. My friend Cate has a personal chef business and she will be making them meals they like to their preferences and delivering them to my parents’ home. Cate says that each of these meals will most likely feed them for two days.

I suggested we hire Cate since Dad will be taking it easy and Mom will be working late on Tuesdays and Thursdays. By the time Mom comes home from work, she’s tired and hungry, and usually Dad has dinner ready for her. Now, they won’t have to worry about that. 

It’s a small help, but it’s all I can really do at this point. My parents will be going through a lot of stress during the next month or so. Mom sounds very relieved and grateful not to have to think about food, and she didn’t balk at the price tag. It also worked out perfectly for Cate, who is not interested in taking on another long-term client because she is presently juggling two children, a husband, a business, and nursing school. Doing this for the short-term is good, though.

I’m also charged with hiring a housekeeper to come and clean for them twice next month. I’m hoping Maria and Betty will accept the challenge. 

Devotees of two of the geekiest interests (Classics and stamp collecting) teamed up to make a geeky book: Greek Rural Postmen and their Cancellation Numbers. And then some more geeky folks judged its geekiness.

My father just left my house. He came over this morning to have a Talk. He came to tell me all the things he wants me to know in case he doesn’t "make it." I am so gratful to have this man as a father. I cannot imagine a better dad for me, and I can’t bear the thought of losing him.

He said he loves me, he’s proud of me. He said he thinks I am a wonderful person, daughter, woman, mother. He’s happy and proud that I have two wonderful children and a wonderful husband. He wants me to know he loves me and that I have become all he had hoped I would, and more. He cried. I cried. We held hands. My hands are still tiny when cradled in his.

He admitted to being scared now of the surgery that is to happen next Tuesday. I guess for some time they have to stop his heart and then restart it. That has him feeling frightened. The doctor said there is a 3 to 5% chance that something will go wrong and he "won’t make it," which I suppose is a more gentle way of saying he might die and that the foundation stone of my whole life might crumble away.

Sorry—it’s hard not to be melodramatic when the tears are streaming down my face.  

Dad said he hopes to always be there for me, and said—for the first time ever—that he thinks he always will be in some form. He didn’t define it. He didn’t say "afterlife" or "spirit" or "heaven," but he implied he will always be by my side.

I told Dad I was scared. That I’m not finished with him. That I still need him. I said thank you for everything, thank you for all the time we’ve been spending together lately. That it’s been wonderful and I love it and I love him. I told him he is the best father a girl could ever want or have. That I want him to be around for a long, long time.

Then we started talking about practical things: his work, how he’ll need time to recover. How I’m to hire a housekeeper to help them out next month. How I might find a personal chef to bring them meals a couple of times per week. Mom is in the season of grading papers and exams and is worried about getting it all done with Dad recovering. We moved away from painful heartfelt stuff and back to the everyday.

We hugged a long time when he left. We both started crying again. We said, "It will all be all right." Then he said, "Besides, I still have to take those beautiful boys of yours shooting."

Have to be brief, as I have a lot of stuff to do, and I’m feeling stressed. Mostly it’s good stress from having a big pile of work on my plate. Some of it is icky stuff though, too.

Dad’s surgery is a week from today. I am worried.

Lucas and I are having a hard time getting along. I actually asked Ian last night if he thought Lucas was bipolar. Ian said no, Lucas is 6.  Perhaps I should have asked him if he thinks I’m bipolar. No, nevermind.

We get to go out to a party on Saturday and I’m THRILLED about it. I have only one idea for a costume and I’m pretty sure I cannot afford an alligator-skin trench-coat. If anybody finds one between now and Saturday for less than $20, buy it for me, K? I’ll pay ya back.

Just finished a sample edit for a potential client I’m courting. It’s hard to focus on getting new work when my inbox is full of editing jobs and my time is often sucked up by children. Still, it would be a fat job and I want it. We’ll see…

I joined a group from UUSS that’s meeting on Tuesday nights in Citrus Heights. It’s about spiritual parenting. I enjoyed the first meeting last week and met some interesting people. I couldn’t believe the heavy stuff people shared during our discussion. I hope tonight is cool, too.

The government is giving us quite a lot of our money back. Yay! Thank you nice CPA lady!

Yesterday was the big, big, very long, exciting day at the Harvest Faire. We all had a great time. There were games for Lucas and Asher (more for Lucas), a puppet play, a funny father-son juggling act, desserts to nibble, arrows to shoot, and plenty of things to buy. I wanted to arrive early so I could check out all the items in the Country Store to get other ideas for future years. Our horse toys didn’t move as quickly as I had hoped, but they were among the more expensive items in the store. I think perhaps they were eyed during the day and then swooped up at the end, perhaps when prices were slashed. Ah well. I’m still glad we made them. The gnome and mushroom sold really early in the day; in fact I was there when a woman bought them for $15. It was thrilling, but I don’t quite know why.

Normally I enjoy all the independent vendors and their wares. Certainly there were many, many useful and beautiful things for sale that I would enjoy having or giving as gifts. But I found myself wandering around and wondering, could I make that? Sometimes the answer I felt was yes, and that was unusual. It changed the way I looked at items and their prices. It did not diminish my appreciation for artistry, only my willingness to spend more money that day. I guess in part I was feeling tapped by our investment in materials for the things and time we donated.

My mother arrived and bought some used books and a late birthday present for me, a freshwater pearl necklace I was coveting but unwilling to purchase for myself. We wandered through the farm together and visited the animals. We saw lots of friends there, but were so busy chasing kids around that it was kind of hard to catch up with people and talk.

Lucas drove Ian bananas with all his demands: "Dad! Dada! Dad! I want … I want … Go here. Do this," etc. He kind of feels like he owns the campus already, which is funny. I’m glad he is so comfortable there. Asher enjoyed wandering around, going anywhere he liked. We took turns trailing after him.  He picked up a new word, "Peep!" (What the baby chicks say.)

At the end of the day, I had to work in the Children’s Store. It was pretty well picked clean by the time I arrived, but was practically barren by the end of my shift at closing time. I think it was a success. The kids seemed to like it. The room, however nicely decorated and magical, was stiflingly hot and claustrophobic. But, at least I was working alongside some of my friends. Lots of bodies in that small, dark, hot space—I ended the day with a headache, a need for a drink and some carbs.

So, all in all, it was a success, I think. I look forward to hearing how much money the school received because of the event.

And, well, today is dedicated to editing strategy guides and trying to land a new client. It looks like I have a busy work week ahead of me. Which is good. I’m glad to have it.

I made these!

I mentioned before we’ve been very busy making things for the school Harvest Faire. Up until very recently, I didn’t consider myself a "maker" of anything besides meals and people. But I now feel differently.

I needle-felted these ten mice for the Children’s Store, where the children can shop with pocket money and buy things for themselves of family members. The store is meant to be a wonderland of simple treasures, magical items, and whimsical delights. I hope that these mice, which fit neatly in one’s hand or pocket and feel soft and cuddly, might become friends to some kids.

I like the brown and beige ones, but I have a feeling the white mice might be most popular.

I bullied Ian into embarking on a woodworking project for the Country Store, to which we are supposed to donate ten items that will be sold to benefit the school. We had seen a wooden pull-toy of three galloping horses at our UUSS day care that we fell in love with. I wanted one for Asher, who is really into horses right now. I challenged Ian to make it. I promised to help. With the help of the Internet and Microsoft Paint, we developed a template. Ian cut the horse shape out using a tool called a Roto-Zip, something my mother saw advertised on TV a few years back and had to have. We all pitched in to help.

 
Ian is working with the wood balanced on the sawcows he fashioned for Lucas’s sixth birthday party.

Lucas helped sand horses, too. Asher moved pieces of wood around the yard in a very purposeful and serious way. He also play-tested our proof of concept.


Here’s a newly cut horse.

I love these hands.

Ian had to make all the wheels himself. He used a hole cutter attached to the drill press. It was a little dicey and not the perfect solution. Although we looked around thinking we could buy ready-made wheels, we could not find any of sufficient diameter to support our horse’s axels. 

A key element to this toy was making the horses gallop, which Ian did by drilling the axel hole slightly off-center for the front of the front horse and the rear of the rear two horses. This caused a delightful up-and-down motion that made the horses appear to be running.

 We sanded and then "stained" the horses using artist watercolor paints. A nice sheer coat of burnt sienna, raw sienna, charcoal, or Indian red did the trick. The wood grain shows through beautifully. Then we waxed them using a beeswax wood polish that smells like lavender.

Here they are, all glued together and ready to ride. I braided wool/soy yarn to pull the lead horse along.

Asher play-tested them before we took them to the school to be sold. We are totally making one of these for him next because he loved them.


We also made a couple of single-horse toys.

Some Stats:
3 to 4 days for the horses
8 horses
28 wheels
2 braids
4 wooden toys
10 mice
1 gnome
1 mushroom

And we’re donating 4 jars of plum jam, too.

Phew! It was a lot of work, but very fun. And if you’re still reading by this point, I thank you for your indulgence. 😉