Home on the Main Range

 Buttonholes and zippers. Two of the things I can "do" but hardly the stuff of the Great British Sewing Bee unless I'm the one going home in week 1. I watched a few videos, consulted the Bernina website  and grabbed my test fabric. Ultimate goal - 6 perfectly corded buttonholes on my new (ish) long shirt. The shirt has been finished for a year of two, just needed buttons and button holes.  Found the silk cord in one of the packing boxes and a few other things I didn't know I needed in the sewing room office. The mission was to practise until it became my practice.  Feeling very confident and comfortable with it all now. Another "new to me moment". Full of wild enthusiasm and only slightly less confidence, another few videos and two darts now in the back of the shirt to enhance the fit (it's a Big Shirt pattern, it's meant to look big). 

Managed to go to the city twice this week and tried the public transport option - first time in 17 years and the trains and busses have certainly been updated in my absence. I'm committing to leaving the car at home, at least while that virus isn't the risk it will be in the coming months. The journey takes longer in minutes, but it's more productive hands free. There's an awful lot that can be accomplished between Springfield Central Station and Roma Street. The bus is at our door so why not use it? Visited level 27 this week and was reminded of the wonderful display of pineapple culture. Quite the homage and a worthy exhibition in its own right.  This week was a visit to Valley Skin and Beauty - I was full of feminist don't try to sell me the turn back the clock nonsense -- just help me be the best version of me that I can be. And they did. An hour or more in a deep meditative state and I left there feeling restored both on the inside and out. Mastered the coffee...

  Another week at home, recovering and resting. A week of firsts in every sense. Deep and meaningful's about the meaning of life, being grateful for what we have, having what we want, and forgiveness of self and others. Chatting with gyno during annual colcoscopy about being female, ageing and being invisible, the pale, male world of decision-making and our despair from under our cloaks of invisibility. Little Brother with a confirmed diagnosis of Stage 4 Oesophageal cancer. He lit the PET scan up like a well-decorated festive tree.  Except it wasn't Christmas, nothing "ho ho ho" to celebrate, more like "no no no". No.  Palliative treatment the only option. Maybe 6 months to make memories and we are all in, all of us are going there because that's what we do.  It was the week of learning to build. Building better relationships with ourselves, each other, children, siblings, family and friends. Like we needed to be reminded of the preciousness of time? Si...

Midnight came and went. Seven more hours of suffering before we  go to hospital and that was probably the best birthday decision of all. Turning 60 in the ER. Another 4 days before I am home and the positive takeaway is there WAS a stone blocking the duct to the liver, and it WAS the cause of me turning yellow. It WAS NOT  copious, continuous comsumption of champagne. They had landed that one on me 8 weeks previously, and I obediently and conscientiously avoided said champagne for almost 7 weeks until the weekend immediately prior to TYOM.  So there WAS a bottle of Dom Perignon 2010 consumed between four of us - deliciously sipped down to the last drop. It WAS true the pain started sometime in the next 24 hours and truer that I thought this was the end my relationship with champagne. How blessed to be wrong. They had managed to rule out all forms of known hepatitis, some novel considerations including HIV, drug use in my younger years, clots in one or more vital organs, a...