And on the child

 Here's a photo of Grace wearing the dress and the hair tie, holding her octopus (the one Kent made her), and the doll with her tiny octopus. I love that Grace has a pair of slippers that so closely resemble her doll's slippers.

Scope creep

Or how a sewing project grows and becomes more complicated.

This project all started with a reminder from a woman who was my niece by marriage years ago (I never know if a divorce ends that relationship but saying ex-niece or former niece seems so weird). She asked me on Facebook if I’d made a doll for her when she was a little girl. That stirred a long-ago memory—in fact I had made her a doll. She’s still got it which blew me away because that doll has to be close to 35 years old.

Well, our youngest granddaughter turns 1 tomorrow so after that reminder from my niece, I thought oh hey, I’ll make Grace a doll! That would be pretty cool. I found a pattern online (no time to have one shipped and I’m not shopping at brick & mortar stores these days) and ordered some fabric and notions for curb side pick-up. I was ready to get started two weeks ago except I had that violent flare of Meniere’s and lost the entire weekend.

No worries, I started back in last weekend. Here’s where the scope creep came in: Kent made Grace a really cute octopus for Christmas, so I asked him to make a smaller version for her doll to have as a toy. 

Then I thought it would be really cool if I made Grace a dress to match the dress I’d be making for her doll. 

And then I thought, well the pattern has a tiny little shoe pattern so wouldn’t that be really cute? 

Oh and the doll has little hair ties and I think I can squeeze out a bow headband for Grace too!

I wish I'd gotten a better photo of the tiny little shoes, they are really cute. And the octopus is just wonderful.

Here's the dress for Grace, with the doll in the background. I don't know if the hair bow/band will work but hey, we gave it a go.

And that is how you scope creep a sewing project, one (baby) step at a time.

I made a thing

This is a stress relief kit for my sister. She’s an RN in Denver and worked in the ICU for years. But a year ago, she got a different job within her organization but outside direct patient care and has been so happy with her new position.

But with COVID, she got recalled to the ICU and even worse, was scheduled to work nights. So I made this for her.

The mask is made of a quilted fabric on the outside and silk on the inside—as I told her, if she uses it and needs to wash it, she’ll need to wash it in a mesh bag and line dry. I shaped this mask a bit so there's more padding around her eyes, and stitched the batting to the quilted side (you can see that in the first photo). I also put in a box of my favorite stress-reducing tea which tastes amazing, plus melatonin to help her sleep, a box of lavender-lemon tea lights (lavender is supposed to be great for relaxing), and then a small bag of Trader Joe’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups.

As it stands, she’s worked a couple of night shifts and then got moved to giving COVID vaccines, and has gotten her first dose herself. With any luck, she won’t need any of this kit but if she does, then she’s prepared.

It's still not a banana

But it probably is Meniere’s disease. Which isn’t really a disease, any more than the reactive airway disease I have is a disease. (I don't have asthma, pinky promise.)

Way back in 2014, I got my ears thoroughly checked out by both an ENT and an audiologist. I had some mild low frequency hearing loss, also fullness in the ears but I hadn’t yet had any vertigo or much tinnitus. I mean, let’s face it—as I’ve said elsewhere, I was a military musician for years and you cannot perform the 1812 Overture with real howitzers and not have some tinnitus. But it wasn’t bad, not yet anyway.

About a year later, I was back with the same issues: very full ears that actually aren’t full but sure feel that way, very mild tinnitus and increased lower frequency hearing loss. At that same visit, my ENT uncovered some pretty severe sinus infection issues I’d had for years; I ended up having sinus surgery which helped so much. And I also ended up with a hearing aid—I posted then that I gasped when I heard in stereo again, it had been so long.

But less than a year later my hearing resolved, which I did not expect. That’s when Meniere’s was first suggested and I pushed back hard. I felt like that was a BS diagnosis, and that people who are diagnosed with that tend to get slotted into the crazy, crackpot, difficult patient. No thanks.

I don’t remember exactly when I had the episodes of vertigo (probably because I don’t want to remember) but they were brutal. The world tilted and rotated; I couldn’t walk but had to crawl to the bathroom to puke my guts out for a couple of hours. That happened oh maybe three or four times and then vanished. (Yes, another Meniere’s symptom which I didn’t want to acknowledge.)

In the last six months, my hearing in my left ear has deteriorated a lot, the pressure in both ears is immense and the tinnitus in my left ear is more like standing right next to a Boing 767 engine roaring along on an international flight. It’s loud and it hurts. 

Then this last Saturday, I had an absolutely brutal episode of vertigo, complete with throwing up for several hours. I still feel the vertigo lingering at the edges but God willing, I’m not at the fall down and need to puke stage.

But that got me off my butt and I called my audiologist again, who said oh hey you have to see the ENT first. But he’s just going to send me to you! Yes, but you have to go to him first. And in a nice piece of luck, he had a cancelation the very next morning, which was yesterday. 

And yes, my hearing has deteriorated again. My audiologist reprogrammed my hearing aid for me on the spot, so now I’m hearing in stereo again. The ENT was great, did a really thorough review of my records with him and discussed everything in detail. Since I’m now presenting with all four symptoms, it’s pretty much a certainty that this is Meniere’s. He suggested considering a brain MRI since it’s been a few years (how sad is that that I’ve had more than one?) but doesn’t expect that will show anything. I don’t either but I agreed to get one because I also said I didn’t have melanoma, argued with my orthopedist that my pelvis was not fractured and didn’t really believe my oncologist that I had breast cancer.

So. Clearly I had better rely on my medical partners rather than my own opinion.

Here's my results from 2015 (dots show from 2014, the lines were from that day's test):

And from yesterday (dots are from 2018, the lines are from yesterday):

The right ear (which is weirdly on the left) now shows some typical high frequency hearing loss which generally happens to us all. It's the reverse slope hearing loss in the left ear that's the stumper.

The MRI is scheduled for January 28 so more to come. 

OK 2021 let's see what you've got

For the last couple of years, Kent and I have had an informal state of the family session in early January. It’s a good time to reflect on the previous year, think about any changes we want to make and just generally figure out if we’re living our lives the way we want to. I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in getting at the end of my life and realizing oh hey there were things I always meant to do but I sort of forgot them. I’d rather be intentional and where possible, make deliberate choices about how I live.

Normally when we talk through things, we talk about our intentions for the next year. But someone I went to high school posted that this year, he used a more of this/less of that exercise and I thought that would work with our more normal stop/start/continue approach.

We both agreed that next year, pandemic willing, we want more travel. We didn’t have a corresponding less of item although I guess it would naturally be less stay at home?

Kent said he wanted to do more vegan cooking, that he’s found it very satisfying and fun and I agree. For both of us, it’s allowed us to be creative in the kitchen and expand our cooking repertoire. (I will admit I was a little surprised this one was on his more of list but hey I will take it.)

Anyway, here’s my stab at organizing what was really just an organic, lovely conversation. 

A virtual wine tasting

Tuesday night, Kent and I attended a virtual wine tasting hosted by a local restaurant. We’d gone to an in-person wine tasting there the day after the election and enjoyed it a lot so jumped at the chance to do this. We also decided this would be lieu of any New Year's Eve celebration, both because of COVID and (more honestly) we never stay up until midnight anyway. Oh who am I kidding, we rarely stay up until 9PM.

One of the perks of the in-person event were the appetizers they served with each of the wines. I decided I would make some of our own (vegan) appetizers, and hopefully they would pair OK with the wine. 

So here are the photos of all the goodies.

This is the box from the restaurant. Inside were five small bottles plus a biscotti and of course the list of wines. 

Here's the box unpacked. You can see each bottle has a number on it. 

We got out several types of glasses but ended up putting the flutes away.

These are spicy nuts, the recipe is from Bon Appetit and they are dangerously addictive. Unfortunately they didn't pair all that well with anything, mostly because they're spicy hot. If I were to make these again for a wine tasting, I would omit the red pepper flakes. But only for that situation, truly these are quite good.

The red shoe box over by the toaster is what I put my laptop on once the video conference started.

I had to include this. See the red topped plastic dome thing? That's for our microwave only we also use it every night to keep Wally's food safe from the rest of the cats until he either decides to come out and eat or we dump it out as we head to bed. You can also see the potato latkes on the plate just above that dome. Those were OK, we did them in the air fryer but the texture turned out a little odd.

These are mini tofu quiches and I liked them a lot. I think they are best served quite warm. They cooled off really fast so I ended up microwaving mine. And they worked with the first wine, a Pinot Grigio.

This was the unexpected hit and hero of our event: smoked Gouda "cheese" which I made that same morning. It was super easy to make and it's quite good. The recipe says this is also meltable so we're going to give that a try this weekend.

We uh did some damage.

And of course we had to have dessert and boy these were amazing. They're pecan bars and may be even better than the sticky toffee pudding.

You can see our Zoom screen through my wine glass.