My new behavior - whenever standing in the kitchen, open a drawer or a cabinet and weed through it. I pitched a lot of true junk from the "junk drawer" last night while talking to the Girlchild. I'm thinking if I do this for two weeks, by the time I'm ready to start packing up unused items I will have less to sort and haul to Goodwill. Tonight is trash night and there will be a lot of bags at the curb.

I'm feeling very relieved and grateful to God today. It's not in my nature to pre-emptively worry about stuff. I come from a family of world-class worriers who can suck the joy out of anything with their attitudes, and I have consciously worked to train myself not to wallow in worry that way. In my experience, the really bad shit blindsides you no matter how much of a worrier you are, and wallowing in self-pity worrying about what might be sucks the joy out of life. I don't believe in anticipating every worst-case scenario and fretting over it. I wait until I know whether there is something to fall apart over before falling apart, and advise others to do the same. (This attitude cost me a friendship once, when I innocently tried to be supportive and suggest alternatives to the Most Dire Outcome, apparently I didn't "validate someone's emotional need" to wallow in every worst case scenario before the facts were in. This person unloaded on me with an obviously long-nursed and really vicious tirade about what sort of horrible person I am. I didn't realize I'm such a selfish, arrogant monster. Okay. It certainly was a lesson learned, I'm a lot more careful about choosing my words and my friends now.) But I digress....

I hadn't talked about it publicly, but Girlchild had been having pain in her right knee - no injury to account for it, just nagging joint pain that lingered. Then she felt a lump in her kneecap. Her father's renal cancer had manifested itself with a tumor in the same area of the same leg, and though of course this would have been a wildly bizarre coincidence, the stray thought kept creeping into all our minds that hers might be something serious. She had no injury, nothing else to account for it. So yes, we were all very concerned about it and waiting to find out what was wrong.

So yesterday she went to the doctor - a big orthopedic group in the area - and by coincidence, saw the same orthopedic surgeon who had operated on her father when the pathologic tumor broke his femur and saw him for follow-ups for two years afterward. I know this doctor and really like him.

I suspect Dr. K was a little freaked out to see his former patient's daughter in there with knee pain and a lump in her knee that echoed her father's. Girl reported that he did a thorough exam and took lots of x-rays, and announced with obvious relief that she has a bone spur in her knee, caused by having slightly malformed, off-center kneecaps. (This isn't visible to the naked eye and nobody'd had a reason to x-ray her knees before.) He kept repeating, "Don't worry, it's nothing bad!" - obviously the "bad" thought had been in his mind as well. But it's nothing bad. You know you've been through a lot of bad news when the news that your daughter's knees are malformed and she is probably going to have knee problems all her adult life is received with a huge sigh of relief - "Oh, that's all!?" He's treating conservatively with anti-inflammatory drugs and a knee brace and exercise, hoping that if she builds up her knee muscles to compensate for her screwed-up bone structure she can avoid surgery. He'll take another look at it after her summer term is over, and decide then whether surgery on the bone spur might be needed. So it was very good news indeed.

I crocheted a bit on the latest critter blankie before bed. I feel better after seeing the enormous numbers of incoming blankets on the Critter Knitters page. I'm not the only one obsessively making piles of blankies, other people are contributing five, seven, and in one case, eleven at a time. I'll probably end up with about eight before I run out of this yarn, and as I said, I'm making them bigger now, big enough for a mid-sized dog to scrunch into a bed. Maybe tonight I'll sit down and start that purple Cotton Fleece Trinity Stitch Shawl. I received an email from the nice folks at Cotton Clouds that my cone of Softball is a special order item and I should have it the end of next week. No problem - it's not like I'm in any danger of running out of yarn for, uh, the rest of my life.

Time to get moving on my day.