Catching up...

Well, it seems that I have been away from blogging for a little bit.  I've been on and off sick for the last 2 weeks and writing kind of slipped to the back of my mind - mostly I was preoccupied sleeping and trying to feel better :).  Now that I'm feeling better, I'm going to play catch up!

The house buying thing is still up in the air.  We've looked at a number of places and put offers on 2 at this point (one of them today) and the first is dealing with a very uncooperative bank that thinks the property is worth more than it is and won't back down from a pretty large price tag.  The place that we are offering on today (Laurie just left to go buy paper to print the contract to fax it to our agent!) is a nice single family home a little far away from where we are now but it's really nice and needs fairly minimal work.  It's a great floor plan for wheelchair accessibility.  It's a short sale so it sounds like we might be waiting to hear for a little bit.  The plan would be for me to use dial a ride to get to and from yoga.  But it is close to a Walgreens!

Anyways, knitting is going well, too.  I have one sock done for Debbie and the other nearly to the heel flap.  Being sick put me behind a little because I was way to tired to knit.  I did, however, get new sock yarn that is wonderful.  Receiving it was part of a bribe that Laurie used to get me to go back to the Mayo clinic for a follow up appt which was really useless.  It's a lovely blend of 80% Merino wool 10% cashmere and 10% nylon.  The colorway is Lavender Fields.  It's amazing and I can't wait to knit with it!

Twisted flower socks

Lavender Fields

On the endocrine front, we had a follow up with Mayo which was pointless.  He told us nothing we didn't already know an I felt again that I knew way more about MEN 1 than he did and he wouldn't actually listen to a thing we said.  So we had are new endocrine appt with the doc at county and it was a little better.  She was nice and listened, agreed that genetic testing was something we needed to pursue and wants to actually look at my symptom progression and listen to what I have to say.  I only hope that when she gets the records from Mayo that she doesn't totally turn off and think whatever Mayo says is the word of God.  Mayo didn't believe the MRI that showed the pituitary tumor, but I guess we can always redo the MRI and see what the new one says.  Now, we get to scramble around and decide what vaccinations to pursue as far as our trip to Chile goes and other than that all's been rather calm on the health front - although I do have a bunch of specialty appts coming up - life's never boring.

The only thing that I haven't talked much about is Rachel and Andy's wedding in Nebraska.  It was absolutely lovely and I had a wonderful weekend with all of the assorted family members.  I had hoped to have pictures from the wedding or something but I think I'll detail how much fun it was later...  

Well, I think I'm caught up!

Post of pictures

This morning, Laurie and I were treated to trip to the Desert Botanical Gardens with our friend and neighbor, Eileen.  Along with the beautiful blooming desert flowers, there is a Chihuly exhibit going on there now.  We didn't get to see everything - but what we did see was amazing!  Here are some of the spectacular sights we saw this morning!

Chihuly's sun

Pink duster flower and more Chihuly

Desert primrose and flowering cactus

Green Chihuly, chandelier, and Chihuly moon

Blue chandelier and another Chihuly installation

Humming bird and even more Chihuly!

Knitting tidbits (new toys)

Laurie and I travelled out of town this weekend to attend Rachel and Andy's wedding in Nebraska (I promise to write tons and tons about how much fun we had in a little bit!), when we arrived home, some lovely new knitting tools were in the mailbox.  First is my pattern tamers.  Up until now, I've been using sticky notes to keep track of where I am in knitting charts and patterns, the downside to them is that they aren't sticky for long when you move them around so much and that they fall off easily and totally lose your place (which is especially horrifying when you are in the middle of a complicated lace/cable chart).  The pattern tamers are magnetic strips that stay clamped on the page very firmly and I've been enjoying using them.  They came in three sizes and three colors...  Here they are:

Also in the mail, was something that I've been very patiently waiting for and dying to have.  Called Knitzi, it is a hand carved wooden double pointed needle sock in progress holder.  I have two of a similar make in cardboard, but this far surpasses those.  The design is called "flow" and it is carved in walnut wood and buffed to shine.  It's so beautiful and lovely.  Thank you so much mom :) I absolutely LOVE it!  Here are the pics... (as you can see the birthday socks are coming along nicely, more on that later...)

Real estate rollercoaster

Well, we found out that the people who we want to buy our house from rejected our offer and have decided not to sell right now for financial reasons.  So, what should we do now?  Last night, when Laurie came home, we drove around the neighborhood to look at what's on the market near us.  It would really be hard to move away from this area because East West Exchange is on our corner and thus I am able to go to the knitting group there and yoga without needed someone to drive me.  We'll see what happens...

Knitting tidbits

On the knitting front, I've still been very busy.  My wedding sweater is blocking now and almost dry!  It still needs to be finished (sewing up the sleeves and weaving in all the ends).  Even with all those things needed it's gorgeous.  We went shopping on Sunday to figure out what we were going to wear to the wedding, I needed something to wear under the sweater and Laurie needed an ensemble to wear with her velvet coat.  Both were procured and modeled for my mom that night and given approval.  Miracle of miracles, those 15 lbs I've lost allowed me to fit into a J.Crew size XL!  The silk linen top looks wonderful with the beautiful sweater - and Laurie will be looking pretty spiffy too!

As soon as the sweater was off my needles, I started in on the Twisted Flower socks.  They are for a friend to give as a birthday present.  They are anything but boring to work on and I'm enjoying a bit of a challenge after the simple sweater pattern.  Here is the work I've done on them so far:

I have just begun the "stem" parts of the pattern, but you can clearly see the "flower" parts.  The stems are a bit tricky because there are up to 3 or 4 different cabled parts.  At least that chart is only repeated 3 times per sock!  I am becoming quite the chart reader, especially after Laurie's shawl!  I think I'd better go back to them...

Real estate excitement!

I haven't mentioned some good news that's been bubbling up around our house buying adventure, mostly because it's not the sort of information to post on a public blog, but I'm happy tonight to say that our agent is meeting with the sellers in about a half hour.  We'll see how they react to our offer...  Although we found out today that another property selling in our neighborhood just dropped it's selling price $10,000.  I can't believe that buying our house is a serious likelihood :)!  It seems like so much money and so much responsibility!  We also when to see an estate planning lawyer so that we might figure out how to set things up so that I can be a beneficiary of assets in the event of Laurie's passing away without upsetting my current health insurance benefits and SSI.  We (Laurie mostly) found a great lawyer who specializes in Catholic estate planning and was very very helpful in steering us into the right plans that fit our current (and future) needs.  Especially in Catholic teachings on end of life care.  Well that's the good news, we'll see what happens as far as the house goes... lots of hoops to jump through - keep us in your prayers!

Fun with med students!

I had my appt with Dr. Skinner (my pcp) yesterday, which was most fun.  Because Maricopa Medical Center and the clinics associated with it are the county hospital, they are also a teaching facility.  Because I am lucky enough to be considered clinically interesting, on occasion we see a new med student or new resident so they can learn some stuff.  The last time this happened, we spent quite a lot of time talking about POTS and MEN 1 and all that fun stuff, mind you I had made the appt because I had a UTI.  Anyways, Dr. Skinner had a med student following her yesterday and we chatted with him a little, giving the run down of why we have to see her every 4 weeks otherwise everything would fall apart.  He was a nice guy and seemed very entertained by our relationship with Dr. Skinner, the teasing back and forth and Laurie discussing the fact that I torture her when I get things caught in my throat and breathe funny.  (She is sure that I'm going to aspirate something at some point, which I'm not entirely convinced of.)  The appt with a newbie couldn't be complete without listening to my heart and playing "guess that defect".  (He didn't guess.)  Anyway, we walked out of the appt with about a hundred referrals to different docs to cover the whole esophagus thing, the thyroid nodule biopsy, and of course the referral to go see the county endocrinologist because we are definitely not going back to Mayo.  We'll see how things go... In a perfect world I would go see someone who actually knows stuff about MEN 1 but alas we'll take it step by step.  Also, Dr. Skinner's going to write me the medical clearance I need to go to Chile in May for the wedding - yay!