In the Right Place

I am so happy. I feel so lucky – fortunate – blessed – whatever the word you want to use – that we ended up here for this period in our lives.

So, whether my standing half-joke that my mother and brother were YELLING at me from the great beyond to MOVE YOUR FAMILY TO MINNESOTA is true; or whether we just got lucky enough to find a home a mere 81 miles from the pre-eminent research center for Multiple Myeloma, the Mayo Clinic, we’re in a good place.

Last night as we were driving home from my book signing at the Textile Center, we took a little detour so we could scoot past downtown and just enjoy the skyline. It was good for both of us.

I could tell that Gerry felt calmer & happier than he has in a long time (well, we had the dog with us) We enjoyed our busy, busy day yesterday!

BTW, I didn’t take this great photo, but it’s what we saw last night. Catch some other cool images of the Twin Cities from this photographer here!

THIRTEEN MILLION
Gerry was getting a bit of a swelled head with his monumental collections of stem cells, so on Thursday the stem cell gods had to take him down a peg.

Mayo was only able to collect enough cells to bring him up to 10.8 million, so we had to go in again on Friday.

It was a bummer to him that he had to get back in that bed and lay for 5 hours, but at least he got to see the end of Stranger Than Fiction and now we’re WAY over the hoped-for goal of 12 million cells.

We are the proud owners of 13,110,000 cells. Life is good. Now we have plenty for future stem cell transplants if/when that need arises.

MARATHON SPRINT
Yesterday was so busy – we were up a little after 5:00, to the hospital at 7:00 for cell collection, me off to mail a package & run some errands.

When Gerry was finished around 1:00 we hugged all the nurses, I passed out some books and signed them (so many of nurses knit!) and we hopped in the car and drove up to pick up Atticus

(WHAT a happy doggie he was – he was very happy and healthy and we feel more balanced to have him here!)

Then we continued up to St. Paul to drop the doggie off to be groomed, drop Gerry off at the house to check mail and look over some stuff, and I rushed over to get my hair cut (and I was only 5 minutes late!)

After the haircut – thank you Meghan! – I rushed back to pick up Gerry, then ran over to pick up Atticus (they were still working on him so I took 5 minutes to put on my makeup) and THEN I defeated the laws of physics by making it from Ford Parkway up to the Textile center in 18 minutes WITHOUT speeding. Touch me.

It was a blast to have Gerry AND Atticus with me for my book-signing talk. Gerry’d never heard me do my “thing” before – neither had Atticus – so it was a little nerve wracking (in a good way!)

Gerry got to see my private pre-teaching / lecturing ritual where I sit in a car with the air conditioner on FULL BLAST to lower my core body temp. No matter WHERE I am, when I’m up in front of people the room is hot, I’m hot and this somehow helps me not turn bright red within the first 5 minutes. Well, that and my green concealer…

It’s always a delight to meet knitters, even more special to meet folks in person with whom I’ve been corresponding. The icing on the cake is meeting folks who are now part of my physical community – what a joy – and how great to have Gerry there, too!

OFF THE CUFF
Perhaps because it’s been a few months since I’ve done a simple lecture, or perhaps because I was given very free rein last night (it was a fundraiser, so I was pretty much able to talk about whatever I wanted to!) I think I was a little ramblier than usual.

My talk was well received, folks laughed and I used the poor guy in the front row (husband of a knitter) as a foil for a lot of jokes. He took it very well, he was a mensch. He laughed a lot, which made me feel exceptionally happy because sometimes I’m afraid a lot of my humorous stuff may be too knitter-specific.

But, even though I scooted around my topic from 14 different directions, I came out at the right place. There’s a formula, famously riduculed in Crimes & Misdemeanors; Tragedy + Time = Comedy.

I realized last night that the point of my whole teaching – my whole knitting – career is this formula: Mistakes + Grace = Wisdom.

It’s nice when I get something from my lectures, too!

FIBER + WORK = TEXTILE
I cannot say enough nice things about the Textile Center.

First and foremost, when Jennie took me there on my tour of the Twin Cities last April, I realized, “I want to live in a place that has a center like this!” How great to have a location for the guilds to meet, for classes to happen, for exhibits and – best of all – for a LIBRARY of all those books you’d love to look at, but can never seem to find!

I love the Textile Center, and I was so proud to be able to do something for the library to help them raise funds!

But when we got back to Rochester we were TIRED. Just absolutely bushed! What a full day!

TODAY
Today we’re taking it easy. We actually have to make it back up to the Twin Cities at some point this weekend to pick up books that I neglected to pack in the car yesterday, and to drop off copies of THE LETTER from the city of St. Paul to the previous home owners (I really hope we can just work this out between ourselves – that would be the best, cheapest, easiest and least anxiety filled way to do so!)

They live sort of near us, so we’re hoping for an easy and intelligent resolution. It’s a real shocker, though, to get a letter stating that our house may be ‘red tagged’ in 30 days – which, incidentally, would correspond with Gerry’s homecoming!

I took Atticus out for a walk this morning, we finally went up into the park behind St. Mary’s (it’s as much of an oasis as I’d hoped it would be – and me without my camera!) He looks thin, but healthy. We’ll fatten him up a bit! Now all we’re missing is the kids…

MAYO
We got a funny email from the family that’s watching Max right now – here’s what it said;

After I put Max to bed last night with his head covered in mayonnaise, John pointed out that he and his Dad were both at the “Mayo” clinic!

Gerry and I laughed and laughed. I hope Max is laughing, too!

HERETIC