Sunday morning coffee pot post

This was one wild week.

It ended on a very positive note, so I’ll start with that. Elizabeth Lanier organized a new weavers’ guild, the Handweavers and Spinners Guild of Rockingham County, which is about 20-30 minutes north of here. (Rockingham is also the county seat of Richmond County – just to make it clear that it is not the town of Rockingham.) She held the first meeting in her lovely house near Reidsville, and five people were in attendance. She set up a loom in her back yard for us to weave on, and we roasted marshmallows over a fire pit. I talked too much as usual. I also left several boxes of old Handwoven and Weavers magazines and weaving and fiber art related books to give away, which will still be there for the next meeting, so let me know if you are an area weaver or spinner or other kind of fiber artist and I’ll put you in contact with the group. I think that it will be a good one with weavers at all different levels of expertise, so if you are just beginning or even thinking about learning it will be a good experience for you.

Once again, I misplaced my real camera, so I took this photo with my Kindle. Awkward, but at least I can send photos over the web from it.

It’s interesting when you have an Internet presence for a long time and you run into someone who has followed you quietly. I’ve done this to other artists who have much bigger followings – introduced myself and then started talking about their life as I have been privy to it on their blog or Facebook page. It is a fabulous surprise and adrenalin rush, and before yesterday it had not happened to me in a long time, since the time when this blog was mostly about Slow Food and food politics and gardening. According to my stats (yes, I do check them now and then) I tend to believe that I have a handful of regular readers and the rest come by to leave spam comments. I lost a lot of readers when I switched to writing about my art and life other than food and Facebook got popular. I actually like this. I feel more open to say what I want to say when I stopped worrying about what others would like to read, and I’ve always used this blog and a website before it as my personal portal. Anyway, it feels great when you find out that you’ve influenced someone in a good way, which is why we bloggers LOVE comments.

We’ve moved the “entertainment center” from the back building to my studio without hurting ourselves. That was a real achievement. Today I’m planning to fill it with all the stuff currently stacked on the floor and chairs, and maybe weave a little. It’s been beautiful weather but another cold front with rain turning to snow is expected to come in today.

I paid my money for a small community garden plot at UNCG that gets good sun and I hope that I will have time to actually use it. I’m going to wait for this weather to roll through before I plant anything. I only had one indigo seed germinate, so I’ve replanted my seedling tray with golden marguerite, Roma and Cherokee Purple tomatoes, Hopi Red amaranth, and woad. I’ll plant some lettuce and spinach with protection from critters this time.

At this point I figure that I’ve mostly lost everyone except a few stalwart readers so I’ll write briefly about the earlier part of my week. It most likely will bring a significant change to my life.

My sweet mama, after a couple of major GI tests and a CT scan last month that indicated that she probably had nothing worse than a hemorrhoid, decided to see another GI specialist on Tuesday. She assured us that she would not have a colonoscopy, which at age 90 can do more harm than good, but somehow, that’s what she ended up doing. Her boyfriend went with her because her children didn’t know that it was going to be any big deal. Mama has set up a pattern of going to doctors often to be told again that nothing has changed. I figure that if it gives her peace of mind and Medicare pays for it, okay.

So she comes out of anesthesia (which, by the way, can pop a 90 year old over the edge to dementia if they are close) and her boyfriend, who is mostly deaf is called in, she is groggy, and the nurse tells them that she has a large tumor and the biopsy results will probably be back next week.

I don’t get her on the phone Tuesday night but I figure everything is okay and her phone is often out of order. The next night I get a voice message from her (I didn’t make it to the phone fast enough) saying that she has my brother’s cell phone, and by the way, the procedure went well and she has a large tumor down there but she wasn’t worried about it so I shouldn’t worry either.

WOW. And that is all we know right now. I’ve talked to her a couple of times since and she honestly doesn’t seem to be very concerned. She isn’t in any more pain from this than she already is from sciatica and her terribly arthritic back. She’s looking forward to an art show in early April. And her phone line was eaten up by a nest of fire ants, and has been repaired.

But here is the back story. The short version. My father died of colon cancer at age 64, and it was a horror show. We all were traumatized by it, but only my sister and I have had the sense to get regular colonoscopies. This was nearly 30 years ago and I am still haunted by it, although not as fearful, thank God.

Mama doesn’t like for me to talk about her on Facebook, and I don’t think that anyone from home reads this blog, so I’m going to delete the post on Facebook (my blog posts automatically submit to the Slow Turn Studio FB page). If you do know Mama, I request that you not tell her that you read about this on the Internet, although it is no secret what she is going through in her circle of friends.