Musings upon homecoming

Apologies for the radio silence these last weeks.  We took our annual Midwest pilgrimage to visit my parents and sisters in Missouri, and then tacked on a short visit to see old friends in Iowa as well.  The week prior to our trip I was rather short on babysitting time, so I was squeezed to get everything done before we left.  Our trip was mostly good, except for the longish road trip portions, which were not.  (Would you believe the only photos I took were on the very last day, in the hotel and at a playground in Iowa?  My mother said she would send me copies of whatever she took during the Missouri leg) I'm grateful we had the chance to catch up with our friends--the fellowship will see me through the hungry months of sickness ahead.

The day and half back have been a flurry of unpacking, grocery-getting, school supply-ordering, school uniform-logo-ing (is that a word?), doctor's appointments, mail retrieval, phone call returns, and general madness.  I find myself in a somewhat contemplative state of mind as we begin the slow shift away from summer and toward the school year.

I went on a kind of internet-fast while we were away.  My husband checked out an ipad from his work to take along so that he could continue work on his ongoing Supreme Court cases, and I checked my e-mail about once a day, just to make sure nothing came up that needed attention.  I almost thought not to, but there were a few things that needed responding to before we returned home.

After the enforced technology fast, I find myself in a bit of an internet binge, mostly because I'm at loose ends at the moment (no excuses, but there it is).  I've been doing laundry almost non-stop since we got home (none of it folded or put away yet!) and trying to drive away the urge to purge everything in the house.  Summer always means a lot of extra clutter--pool towels constantly on the drying rack, along with swim suits, craft projects started and abandoned (but heaven help me if I try to throw it away!), glitter and books constantly on the floor, and children's drawings badly taped all over the walls (part of some elaborate fire station play about a month ago).

Yesterday I went around and tore down all the red paper fire buzzers and random assorted papers that had been tacked up all over the place.  It felt great (and none of the kids has noticed).  What with being away for our parish's feast day, and then leaving the following Saturday, we have about three weeks' worth of recycling and trash that need to go out next Monday; I can't wait.  The basement is just overflowing.  It feels like a maze.  Thankfully, I did get a thrift shop pick up shortly before we left, so at least the donation piles aren't too much at the moment.

I find August to be a weird time of breath-holding, waiting for the next thing to happen.  Birdie is scheduled to have a procedure at the hospital in two weeks that will involve an overnight stay.  I'm hoping it will give us some better information to more effectively treat her symptoms, because it has been a bad summer for her, health-wise.  We usually get a break in the middle of the summer, but this year we didn't.  (To be fair, May was uneventful, so perhaps I should think of it as our break).  We had to travel with a nebulizer and oral steroids, just in case; we've never done that in the summer time.

I'm scheduled to see my throat doctor later this afternoon; I'm hopeful that he will have some ideas of where to go from here, because I'm fresh out.  My insides feel like raw meat, and swallowing has been going particularly badly.

I find myself somewhat mentally fatigued.  I keep trying to get back to Crawford, and the article, but every time I do, my brain just shuts down and says, No.  I read a book on the trip (I'll blog about it on the next Yarn Along) that was very affecting, and I think I'm still trying to process it.  I'm worried about what might happen in this country after the election, whatever the outcome, given the charged atmosphere.  We've had a lot of protests here over the last few years, and while they have so far been peaceful, it is unnerving to have choppers overhead for days at a time.

But on to more cheerful things.  How's about fall sewing, hmm?  I don't have that much planned, actually.  Three dresses, and perhaps a skirt, depending.

I bought this dark teal fabric at Joann's in a clearance bin on our trip.  I've looked at it online several times, but never bought it because I wasn't sure about the colorway.  After being able to pet it in person, and put it up to my skin, I think it will work fine as a fall dress.

This is destined to be the Liberty #2 dress, and is a cotton lawn from the same Robert Kaufman London Calling fabric line as my other lawn dresses.  It is the same print, but different colorway of the Liberty #3 dress.

Finally, an Alexander Henry cotton that I bought on sale from Joann.com sometime in the spring, intending it for fall.  It is a little different from my usual florals, but I think it will make a fine fall dress.

I did some mindless accessory knitting on our trip, but am looking ahead to more substantial knitting soon.

The ruby Balance O-Wool is finally wound into balls and ready for swatching.

I picked up my L'Enveloppe as soon as I returned home, and am happy to be working on it again--it is a quite soothing knit, despite the seed stitch.

As ever, I continue to consider getting older, and how that is affecting me sartorially and otherwise.  I do wish things would just settle into something, but it seems like a shifty foggy cloud, never quite getting clear.  I suppose a nearly decade of babies and toddlers and chronic illness will do that to a person.

Well, there's August to be getting on with.  And Mount Washmore to scale.

Tally-ho!