A weekend to relax

Whew – big sigh – the weekend is here.  It’s been a stressful week and a half due to some eye issues popping up.  Since I’m legally blind in one eye (no central reading vision only peripheral) whenever something seems wrong with the “good” eye it’s a bit of a panic (okay that’s an understatement -it’s a major panic and my blood pressure was sky high from freaking out).  I spent two days trying to decide if I was just seeing floaters in the good eye (which there are plenty of) or if it was inflammation problems again, which I had 4 or 5 years ago, which can cause blind spots.  So by the third day decided something else was definitely going on.  Called the retina specialist who told me to come in right away.  I got there at 4 p.m.  and walked out at 6:15 p.m. and finally got home just before 8 pm. since I had to wait around for buses.  After angiogram and lots of waiting around (which I didn’t mind since they were squeezing me in at the end of their day) more inflammation.  So a steriod shot in the eye (insert shudder and the word ewwww here).  It sounds much worse than it is thank goodness.  But since they don’t know what has been causing the inflammation, they decided the next day to have me come in for a bunch of blood work to see if there was an underlying inflammatory disease that was only showing as the eye inflammation.  So after five or so pokes in one arm and not getting the vein (they always have a hard time ), they finally got the other arm after a couple pokes (and I had a huge bruise to prove it on both arms).  So then I had to wait for 4 days  till my next appt. to see if they found anything.  In the meantime I looked up on the internet what types of inflammatory diseases cause retina issues — never do that! The internet is a bad bad thing!! 🙂  So that had me freaked out all over again.  But blood work all good  WHEW!!! but they still don’t know what is causing it but by the time I went back on Tuesday I could tell it was better and had not moved toward my central vision (and my blood pressure was back to normal).  But they sent me back to the lab for one more blood draw for another test (this time the “poker” person was so good I never even felt the needle prick!)  So I’m tired of going back and forth and taking off work but big sigh of relief that they found nothing bad and the eye is improving and I don’t go back for a month since the shot continues to do it’s thing for 6-8 weeks.

So I can concentrate on more fun stuff now!  Went out for dinner tonight and then a friend and I stopped at the book store – picked up the latest 100 blocks quilt magazine since friend Judy has a block in there and a picture of her lovely quilt from it (and to check out all the others).  Also picked up another quilt magazine and a knitting themed mystery book so plenty of reading to keep me busy.  Then on to the grocery store so my errands are done and I can spend the weekend in my jammies sewing if I like.

There’s a couple small tops I recently finished that need quilting but don’t think I have the right kind of batting I want to use in them so I may just have to start on something new – in addition to finishing some blocks that are on the design wall that need to be stitched into rows and border added.  I really wanted to start on the quilt that is pictured in the last blog post but I need to do some work on it first.  The blocks need to be made a bit smaller because I don’t like the plain borders and the current size of the quilt doesn’t let me do much because the quilt would be huge.  So I need to spend some time redrawing it in EQ and check the stash to see if I have the right shades of fabric that I want to use. (Hmmm… could mean a shopping spree since I saw some lovely pastelly batiks (yes I know I generally don’t do light shades) but these I think would be so lovely in it — darn that Hancocks of Paducah for sending me their latest catalog). LOL

Then there’s the front of my sweater I’ve been working on to get more done on and I need to make more scones.  I forgot to write down a couple ingredient amounts I made them so will do so this time so I can post the recipe.  I remembered to buy everything at the grocery store EXCEPT the chocolate chips so I think I’ll be making orange craisin ones instead this time.  Then there’s always the Granny’s Hankie blocks that I’ve fallen behind on so many many things to keep me busy all weekend.  My original thoughts of cleaning out one of the closets has fallen by the wayside I think – maybe next weekend.

So there you have it – my busy weekend plans.  It’s going to be rainy and dreary anyway so might as well sew!  We’ll see how much I really accomplish by the end of the weekend. So now I think I’ll make a latte, go get comfy and peruse those quilt magazines.

And just for a little eye candy …. another swirly design I’ve been playing with.

Denise