Rescuing Limoges

Adam has been so sick (more about that in a second), and sometimes I need a break to cope. Yesterday I went down to the thrift store just before they closed. Granny Marigold, this is for you! I rescued some Limoges china! Yes, I did!

 It was so lovely and delicate, I could not leave it there, sad in its cardboard box on the shelf among the ugly mugs. 

I'm making these photos nice and big, Granny Marigold!

There were 3 plates (salad plates, I think?), 4 saucers, and a single cup. All for $4. That tea cup is lighter than air, the bone china is so thin.

Now, on to Adam. Yesterday afternoon he said quietly to me, "Now, I don't want to scare you or anything, but I think it's time to go to the E.R."

So we went. They do triage in a tent in the parking lot because of coronavirus. This is as far as I got. That's Adam's knee in the orange shorts. Why do men wear their ugliest clothing to the hospital?

He was in very bad shape. With a CT scan, they discovered he has a peritonsillar abscess in his throat. This can result from Mononucleosis (so says Google), which he's had since late March. They will do an endoscopy today of his throat and then an ENT surgeon will address the abscess. They're also treating his very swollen mouth/tongue/lips with steroids and are doing a biopsy because of the appalling, large sores in his mouth and on his tongue. The poor man has suffered like Job with this for many weeks. He's been sick since at least March 24, when I noticed he had started bandaging his eye. 

I wish I could get him back home today. A home is a very lonely place when one's beloved spouse is gone. The dogs are moping. I woke at 4:26. We've already been texting back and forth before 6:00 a.m. He says he is remarkably comfortable. He has 2 IV's with steroids, antibiotics, and antifungals, plus fluids. He was dehydrated. 

Just as a reminder to me in future, and as a cautionary tale for you readers -- Adam went to an ENT doctor in New Bern on May 18, two and a half weeks ago. Adam was referred by his P.T., who requested an endoscopy of his throat. This would have shown the abscess, but Dr. Grant did not do that. He felt Adam's throat, wondered why the P.T. had even sent Adam to him, told Adam he did not have cancer, and sent him on his way with a blister pack of steriods that lasted 5 days, and a prescription for "Duke's Magic Mouthwash" that cost us $25. 

Today, Dr. Grant is the ENT the hospital has called in to do an endoscopy to determine the size of the abscess, before another ENT surgeon comes in to address it. I bet it's bigger than it was on May 18, when he should have done this procedure at much less expense to us, in his office. 

We finally got an appointment with a different ENT in Greenville that would have happened next Tuesday, over 3 weeks after the previous visit to Dr. Grant. Because he did not do his job, my husband ended up in the hospital coughing up blood and tissue. 

It is time to get to the bottom of this, and when you have to admit yourself to the E.R. to get any answers at all from the medical community, it is a sorry state. That's expensive healthcare, in a country where healthcare is more expensive than just about anywhere else, and not as high quality. We pay a lot for ineptitude. 

Okay, enough griping! I've had my first cup of fabulous coffee and a bit of toast. Time to take the dogs out, tend to chickens, and decide how to occupy myself while pretending not to worry about my husband. Blessings to you all!

Feeling Loved from Afar

When life gets hard and your soul is just weary, how refreshing it is to receive friends from far away! Tom and Judy are dear friends from Ridgehaven in the N.C. mountains. They visited us Sunday evening and the next morning. They spent years in Christian ministry, and I felt so encouraged just being with them.

And they came bearing gifts! Another very dear friend at Ridgehaven was clearing out some of her lovely tea party things and wanted to send a some items to me, so Tom and Judy carried the box on their vacation and put it into my arms :) Squeeeeal! Look what is now in my home!

I adore this exquisite English chintz teapot. (((SIGH))) Can it really belong to me now? I'm on a cloud!

I've kept some of these tea things on the table for a couple of days just so I can look at them. I think there's great value in looking at beauty. The older I get, the more I think this is true.

Little purple flowers are the best.

I've needed a large Brown Betty teapot for a long time. This will be so useful, over and over.

A chintz cup and saucer too :) I had some Darjeeling in this today.

This lovely blue pattern is just a joy -- there's a teapot, cups/saucers, plates. I may use this for a few years and one of the girls in the family might enjoy having it too ....

Alright, that was so uplifting, and made me feel so very loved (at just the right time). Then, I came home Monday afternoon to find a box from the post office for me!!, in the living room! Yippeeeeee!

First I must tell you that this bag, a Nantucket Diddy Bag, was inside. I'd never heard of such an animal before. It looked interesting.

This amazing package came from a very dear friend and kindred spirit who lives in Massachusetts. She sent me ... wait for it ... YARN. :) :) :)

Wool, acrylic, blends, ribbon yarn, sock yarn. Oh joy!! My knitting needles are giggling with glee as I type.

And this cool needle organizer was included too. I'm looking forward to loading it up with all my various knitting needles, which are currently living in a dresser drawer, poor things. Isn't this cool? It attaches with velcro to a clothes hanger and goes in your closet.

This neat yarn is a wool blend, and there's lots of it. I can't wait to ruminate on what I want it to become. It's very soft and has a crinkly texture. Beautiful!

If you're not tired of my happy presents yet, I want to show you the innards of this marvelous diddy bag -- it's ingenious! The inventor lives on Nantucket and sells the bags only there. You can see about it on a video here, and see the fellow himself.

The bag unzips all the way 'round and can be turned inside out and rezipped. It converts to a backpack, or can be a shoulder bag.

It's made of sturdy canvas fabric. One side has many pockets in all sizes -- it's designed for small tools, but is great for sewers or knitters/crocheters.  It holds a lots of stuff. And do you see the bottom down there? Well ...

It has a velcro-closing pocket that you could put a freezer pack in. So you could store a sandwich or cold drink in the bag's bottom. I may take this to the beach on Thursday; I want to tote along a tuna fish sandwich for lunch.

To my two precious friends who sent me such generous gifts from afar, all I can say is THANK YOU, and GOD KNEW THAT I NEEDED TO FEEL THE LOVE FROM AFAR. Rough waters right now. And there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- better than knowing that you have friends who love you.

Speaking of loving friends, last night I enjoyed an evening of Mexican Train Dominoes with my buddies here in Oriental. We had a little celebration of my birthday (earlier this month) and wrapped our welcoming lips around Kip's espresso cheesecake.

I tell you the truth: This is the best cheesecake on the planet. There is none better. It's baked perfectly, delectably creamy throughout the inside with deep coffee flavor that makes you shiver. Wonderful.

I fee so richly blessed in my friends - thank you, ALL!!

Gifts from Friends

I have such sweet friends. Yesterday at church, a friend gave me these because she knows I love egg cups. Lookie!!

Aren't they darling? For dinner last night, I had two soft-boiled eggs so I wouldn't have to choose.
They were delicious :)

Another very good friend (and cousin!) who lives in Texas has given me some of the most amazing yarn. This particular skein looks like the sea to me -- pale greens, blues, grays.

Very special yarns like these I am cautious with. They're not like yarn from Michael's, which I whip up into scarves without thinking, and sell them. Yarn like this should be made into something special, something it was made for. So I wait until the right idea comes to me. I felt this yarn should be a single strand infinity scarf. I made it over the weekend so I can wear it this week ... for what occasion, I'll tell you later.
It's a very bulky yarn. I did a yarn-over pattern in repeated rows, a stitch effect that I think works well and makes the scarf look like interwoven waves of ocean water.

This is the kind of yarn it is:

Here are two more skeins my friend gave me. This yarn is breathtakingly gorgeous. I don't want to touch it until I know exactly what it wants to be! It's actually lots of yarn -- 164 yards per skein.

What I really want it to be is a vest of some kind. I've been wanting a vest or two -- simple, long, drapey, with no placket or buttons or anything fancy. The yarn, in this case, would carry all the fancy that a vest could manage! When I find the right pattern, I'll let you know.
Speaking of friends ~

These are the Fearsome Fivesome. This photo was taken last June at my birthday party. We are a zany, wild bunch of women, but we enjoy each other's company and take care of each other. This week ... we're going to the beach together! (And I'm wearing my sea scarf, of course.) One of the ladies has a friend with a beach house, and we'll stay there and R  E  L  A  X. Not all ladies can go to the beach together for three days without coming close to murder, but I think we'll do fine. We're used to each other's quirks and love each other anyway. We let each other have private space if we want it. I plan to spend countless hours on the beach, and hopefully a bit of time painting. We're taking along board games and card games. We won't go out much; this will be more of a pajama party kind of thing :) Sounds good to me! I'll try to blog while I'm there, but if I don't have wifi, you'll know where I've disappeared to. Have a lovely week!

O My Darlin', Clementine!

This has to do with egg cups, I promise.
I was reading this book for the third time.

 It's a good book, very enjoyable. It lost some of its appeal this last time though, when I learned that Susan Loomis and her husband (the book is a bit of a romance, after all) later divorced, and she's now living in the cool medieval house by herself. Took the glow right off the story, if you know what I mean! Anyway ... we all know that some books are simply better than others. So midway through On Rue Tatin, I launched into this book, also for the third time:

 Ah, precious Clementine! Or, more accurately, I should say, "Ah! Delicious writer's voice of Samuel Chamberlain!" Because that's what I love about books -- the writer's voice with all its nuance and personality and smack and snark and vulnerability. Chamberlain is a delight to read, a natural on the ol' alphabetical keys.
I have two copies of Clementine, the newer one (above) I bought years ago, and the older copy (below) I found at a thrift store for pocket change. Couldn't resist. And somehow the older hardback seems more closely connected to the author and the time of the story (pre-WWII France). So I keep the older book on my bedside table. I keep the other copy among my cookbooks.

 Mr. Chamberlain, also an artist, did the drypoint pictures in the book, which are incredibly detailed and poignant, capturing the antique beauty of pre-war France.

 But many other "line illustrations" in the book, scattered here and there, were done by Henry Stahlhut. They are lively and funny. This is always how I think of the darling Clementine: chubby, utterly competent, cheerful, and in the Chamberlain family's eyes, "practically perfect in every way." She reigned in their kitchen and kept them all in gastronomic ecstasy for years. Note her halo and wings :)

 Thus (I'm winding my way around to the egg cup, you know), when I saw this egg cup in the antique mall the other day, I recognized her immediately. It's Clementine!

 Don't you think? With the floating apron and the grapes and squash around her skirt, and the laced-up bodice? Clementine will serve my soft-boiled eggs to me :)
Tada!

 Here's the first cup we located at the store. It has birds singing in a window with musical notes ascending into the air.

 Both those cups are cute and kitschy. (Wow! I spelled that right on the first, hesitating try! Miracles still occur!)
Then I found this pair. I cannot resist little lavender-colored flowers on china. I first knew I had this weakness when I fell in love with some lilac-adorned dishes in Iowa belonging to an elderly friend. Sigh.

 These two are stamped as Bavarian, while the other two bear no stamp at all.

So Clementine has come to live in my kitchen, and I'm having regular, perfect soft-boiled eggs. Such little joys are important in life, even when life is hard or troublesome. Perhaps when life is especially hard or troublesome. Our world is in a state of chaos, violence, upheaval, just as Samuel Chamberlain's world was in 1940 Paris. However, he chose joy. We should too.