Whew.

My morning was interrupted by a frantic call from my mother - she was inside a drugstore and the phone kept cutting out, but she was able to communicate that my father may have an infection at the site of his feeding tube,they were on their way to the doctor, and he might have to go into the hospital.

I called back this evening. No infection, and they were both quite cheerful with relief. It turns out that the instruction on bandaging the tube site they received from home care was totally wrong. The doctor showed them the right way to do it, gave him antibiotics as a precaution for the skin irritation that was caused by doing it wrong, and said it would be fine.

But I spent the afternoon waiting to hear from them. And of course, once the drama was over, my mother didn't think to call me.

I had planned to go over there this weekend anyway, but I'm glad I'm not going to have to sit around a hospital.

I really wish I could have gone to Maryland. Especially after reading Bess. Sigh...next year, I hope.

Remember the "so easy a monkey could do it" Seychelles Shawl? I've screwed it up and ripped it twice. Fortunately, Morehouse Merino, soft as it is, can take a good ripping. It's one of those patterns that is so easy to knit but so hard to fix if you screw up AT ALL - you knit into the stitch two stitches below on the "busy" row, and honey, you can't tink that sucker, and if you drop a stitch on that row or any other, kiss that puppy goodbye. In the time it would take to figure out how to rescue it you could re-knit the whole damn thing. Those Easy patterns can be a bitch that way. So the first time, I got off the pattern and it had a visible jog in it. Rip. So the SECOND time I got about 8 inches into it and spotted A Dropped Stitch. There was no going back for it. It's really weird because I am not normally a stitch-dropper (a yarn-over forgetter or a lose-counter, yes, but not a stitch-dropper). Let's hope the 3rd time is the charm here.