My new shirt

I got this shirt for myself from Zazzle.com.   You can design your own there (and other places).

The picture is actually an MRI of my brain and tumor (the little white spot seen on the upper picture near the bottom of the brain)

I got this in the mail the other day.  What do you think? (no, that is not me wearing it- it is a model on their web site)

Counting down some more

I have been trying to write about places we have been  and our homes there.  Mainly focusing on kitchens.  And I have quite a few more to add.   One of these days I will put pictures of our actual kitchens, not just clips from online.

Tonight I am going to write about myself.  My present self and my current state of mind.  If that works. 

Of course I have been really stressed about having a tumor in my head.  And I know that my family and friends are worried too.  I have been missing some of my regular activities because I had too big a headache.

Today, my sister came over.  We mostly lay down on the sofas and watched TV.  I didn't really feel "sick" today.  Just drained.  Tired.  Worn out and faded out.   I am sure a constant headache must release some stress hormones into my system and make me feel sick in fact.

I am having surgery in ten days.  That's not very long now at all.   I am scared.  Of the things I have written about like having my head cut open with power tools.  But I am also afraid of what they will find.  Has the tumor grown?  Could it be cancerous?  Will it come out, be gone and never come back?

I worry about the potential deficits I may be left with.  I feel confident that I will come out of this alright.  But there is no 100% guarantee.

I am falling asleep in front of the keyboard.  I shouldn't do that!

So, good night!

A tiny bit more about Poland

In my last little ditty on Poznan, I wrote about the temporary apartment we lived in.  I didn't even start on the kitchen that we had for most of the two years we were there.

We had a flat/ apartment, in an German style house.  There was an entry way with steps going up and steps going down,  The "going up" steps led to our apartment.  There was an almost identical apartment apartment above us.  On the top floor was a garret/ attic apartment that was quite small, made smaller by the sloped ceilings and the dormers in some of the windows.

Each apartment took up the whole floor it was on, so, in that respect, it was not a typical apartment house.

Our kitchen was medium size I guess, but I am not sure exactly it was medium compared to.    It was big enough for the three of us .  There was one door into the kitchen- right at the end of the long, foyer inside the front door.

When you walked in the door, there was rustic Polish table and chair set.  On the wall to the right of where you walked in was the stove.  It was pretty big, and I think it might have had two ovens side by side    Further along- at the end of the stove wall, and perpendicular , was some counter space and the sink.

This is similar to what we had.  They open out to get fresh air and the interior parts opened in

On the back wall was a big window sill that was over the big hot water radiators.  There were 3 or 4, big, German style windows.  They were very high, I remember that.  The inside/ house side of the windows opened in, like a hinged door. Then there was a second set of windows in the same frames.  These windows opened out.  I am sure that the reason for the double glass is for weather proofing in the cold winters.
This is not the house we lived in, but the style is similar
.

 

We had so much fruit growing in the yard that I was able to make all sorts of pies and apple sauce and apple crisps.  But I digress.

We had 12 apple trees in the yard as well as a few, not very good, pears.  And there were a couple of walnut trees that dropped nuts that had to be cleaned off. 

The kitchen table was in use almost all of the time for one thing or another.  Most of the time we had a reddish Batik table cloth that Nick's parents bought whe we all went to Bali together.  

This is the type of kitchen chairs we had: 

Ok, back to the kitchen.  Walk in.  Stove to your right.   Counter space where coffee fixings were kept and where baking took place.   Then there was the wall with the sink.  A stainless steel sink.  There was some counter space on either side of the sink.  I think of this cupboards as being greet.   

After the sink and counter tops, there was a pantry. It held a lot of the foods that we brought back from our shopping exploitations to Berlin; the land of plenty .  This was a walk in pantry, I could say it is a good space, but not a whole lot more.  For some reason, that little pantry had a small window in it.  I don't think it was able to be opened.

Courtney's high chair fit perfectly at the end of the kitchen table, with the big windows at her back.

Since I am falling asleep in front of the computer, my poor, tired body  it telling me to pick this body up and get to bed.

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Ok, I went to bed.  It's a new day.   I just wanted to add my "freezer list" from when we lived in Poznan.  We had a deep freeze in the basement and kept a lot of stuff there.  This is how I knew what we had before going and looking for it:  It has what I bought, when I bought it, and where I bought it.  I crossed things off after using them.  You can make the picture bigger if you click on it.

Here's a copy of one of my meat orders:

The i-cord and my brain hat

There is a knitting technique called "I cord" As non knitters reading this, you might be wondering what the heck I am going on about.  So here:


The I-cord is a tube knitted in the round with two double-pointed needles.  Elizabeth Zimmermann named it the Idiot Cord in honor of her accidental discovery of the simple technique. The I-cord is a perfect example of her attitude toward knitting: let it be fun, free of needless complications, and full of discovery. In this picture from The Opinionated Knitter a wonderful collection of her newsletters, Elizabeth wears an I-cord attached to her glasses.  Once you learn to make one, you'll be searching around for anything that might be improved with an I-cord.

I wanted to copy a pattern of a hat I saw that looked like a brain.  So, I made the hat, in pink, like the picture I was copying.  But I couldn't make myself do the brain part in pink.  It was too weird.  Too gross.  Too close to home.  Too much the color of bubble gum or Pepto Bismol.

I had this really colorful yarn lying around, and I decided to start making a long i-cord, thinking that I would make the brain multicolored, and fun.   One small problem.  With yards of i-cord, and a floppy hat, how would I ever be able to attach it all?  I tried placing the hat on a baby doll's head, but that didn't work too well.   I searched Styrofoam heads, and found a place that sells them.  Perfect solution!

I have pinned on most of the i-cord I have knitted so far.  I need to make some more so I can complete the hat.

Here is what I have so far:  Don't I  have a cool brain!

Very quick, late night, tired Nancy post

This evening I was putting the clean towels away in the linen closet.  They reminded me of going shopping with my mom before we went to Australia.

I had told my mom that our house in Perth had five bathrooms, so we needed a lot of towels.  I have two sets of green/ yellow/ blue striped towels that my mom bought.  There are also some floral towels.  We still have them after all these years.  And I still remember the joy in my mom's face as she proudly told anyone that would listen "my daughter is moving to Australia.  They will have five bathrooms in their house."

I wonder if anyone was impressed by what my mother said?  Her gestures, like furnishing your five bathroom house with towels.

Ok, off to bed.  Maybe I'll dream about towels!

Speaking of kitchens

Look who decided to visit us in our kitchen here in Reston!

He has moved on.  We won't miss him!

Cooking in Poznan, Poland

We lived in Poznan, Poland from 1979-1981.  We arrived at post with 17 month old Courtney, five cats and a dog.

When we first got to Poland, we arrived in Warsaw to check in at the embassy.   I know we stayed in a small apartment there, but really don't remember much of anything about it.  It had a kitchen I am sure, but it left no impression on me at all.

When we got to Poznan- west of Warsaw, we were put into a "transient apartment" on the third floor of the US Consulate building.  There were offices in the basement, and the main floor.  There was another foreign service family living in the apartment on the second floor (the first floor by European standards). The apartment we lived in for six weeks was on the third floor.  And it was a walk up.

I had to walk the dog at least three times a day going up and down all of those stairs.  I had a backpack that Courtney rode in.   Needless to say, I was very thin!

It was a small apartment with two bedrooms I think (we only used one), one bathroom, a kitchen, living room/ dining room combination.  I am pretty sure we did not have a TV.

The apartment that was designated as our permanent home was having work done and so it was not ready for us yet.

Since I have been writing about kitchens, I will try to conjure up images to convey.  I kind of picture a small table in the kitchen.   The dishes and kitchen appliances were supplied, and stayed with the place when we moved on.   There was a strange, (to me) new kind of Italian coffee pot.  I figured out how to put the ingredients in, cook it on the stove, and pour out coffee.   Not too bad as I recall.

When we lived in Poland, it was still a Soviet dominated communist country.  There were shortages of just about everything- including meat.   The US Consulate had an arrangement where we bought our meat from a hospital supplier.   I had a list of types of meat, like shinke which is pork, or polendvetsa, which is a long roll of beef that can be cut into different types of meals.    I have the meat lists still and when I look for them, I will be able to write the information down correctly.

At any rate, I would check off on a list (in Polish) the meat I wanted and the amount.  Sometimes you actually got what you ordered.  You never knew until you took the parcel into the kitchen and unwrapped it.

One time we got a big, white sausage.  I decided to boil it in water as the main course of our meal.  I remember poking it with a sharp knife to see if it seemed done.  What I had not realized was that the casing held in all of the juices, and the boiling made it swell up.  So, when I poked it, a huge geyser of hot,sausage water shot up into the air and made an arc across the kitchen.  It is amazing nobody got hurt- especially little toddler Courtney.     It was a pretty ugly piece of meat no matter how it was cooked, but we all tried it.  On another occasion I had received a large piece of beef in my weekly meat order.  Since we had our cats and dog running around the apartment, I couldn't leave meat out on the kitchen counters.   I put this big roast inside one of the cupboards, and forgot about it for a little while.  When I went into the kitchen later, there was a puddle of bright red blood on the kitchen floor.  I thought something terrible has happened to one of the cats.  No, the roast had "leaked" blood out through the closed cupboard door, onto the counter top and onto the floor.  It really looked like a a murder scene!

I think that's enough for tonight.  I will write about the kitchen in our permanent apartment next time I write about kitchens.

Maybe after I finish all of the kitchens, I will start writing about bathrooms.  All of the places we have lived have had interesting and unique bathrooms!