road trips

My Mom fell down a few weeks ago, she was getting out of the car to go set up for a ladies social and tripped over her own feet (her words, not mine). Crazy thing is, she was carrying a china plate at the time... it survived great, not even a chip. Too bad she did not fair equally well. She called my sister Julie right away and Julie wanted to take her in to the ER to get checked but Mom didn't want to miss her meeting. Julie planned to take her in the next day, but alas, with the daintiness and grace that seems to be the lot of all of us Valenzuela women, she fell that night and severely twisted her ankle. So there they were, Julie unable to drive due to crutches and an air cast, and mom unable to drive due to a very sore right arm, they were stuck.
Now my husband, being the soul of practicality that he is, wondered why they didn't just use teamwork and let my mom drive since she could work all the necessary pedals and steer with her left hand, and let Julie sit beside and work the gear shift....in any case, the days passed and by the time Julie got around to telling mom she had to go to the doctor, Mom said that her arm was actually much better, she had most of her movement back and was even knitting again.
Finally, mom had to go to the doctor for something else and happened to mention to him about her encounter with the sidewalk (a week and half prior!) and he insisted on x-rays. Good man, since he immediately saw that she had a broken arm! He called an ortho to get her in asap and she was able to see the ortho the next day (Friday, February 8). The ortho looked at the xrays and was simply amazed at mom's range of motion and strength --and especially her knitting. He said that people with this break simply can't move. She broke her radial head which is part of the lower arm bone that forms the elbow. He said that she had to have surgery, the sooner the better. Ugh.
They called and told me that she was going to have surgery on Monday, so I left right after Sunday morning service on Sunday. Well, I say right after but that isn't accurate. I took a nap and packed and finally got out around 4 pm. We had Terrible windstorms that day and the bridge tunnel was restricted to one lane and 15 mph. From our house to the far side of the bridge tunnel is supposed to be about 15-20 minutes. It took me an hour. The trip was down hill from there. We passed a brush fire whose smoke had the highway at a crawl, went through farm land area where the dust was blowing off in such clouds that visibility was extremely low, again, traffic at a crawl. About 4.5 hours into what is supposed to be a 5 hour trip, we had just passed into NC, I was on I85 and thought I was finally going to make good time. Not so. At 8:30 pm, I passed mile marker 212. At 9:30 pm, I passed mile marker 211. One hour to go one mile. Then in the most frustrating thing of all... there was nothing to show for what the delay was! No accident, no roadwork, nothing! Anyway, add the number of bathroom trips required by three small children and a pregnant woman to the mix and it was just a SUPER fun trip. We finally arrived at my moms after 11:30 pm.
Next day was supposed to be D-Day, got up, was getting everyone ready, and the doctor called. He was very apologetic, but felt like he had to inform us that since mom was on standby for the OR that day he had checked and the hospital had a number of emergent cases over the weekend. He said that our chance of coming in, sitting there all day, and never getting into the operating room was very high. Since we were already concerned about the fact that mom wasn't scheduled until late afternoon and she is diabetic (no food or drink before surgery), we decided that even with this throwing off all the plans we had made (me coming in from Virginia and Julie taking off work) it was better to wait. The doctor said that he had guaranteed OR time on Wednesday so we could come in on Wednesday morning.
Unfortunately, I had plans from Wednesday through the rest of the week and weekend and had to get the family back home, so we visited with mom for two days, then dropped her off at the hospital on Wednesday morning into Julie's capable hands and came on home. The trip home was, thankfully, uneventful.
Julie called me later with a report of the surgery. He opened her right arm up about 6-7 inches and removed all the broken bits, cut the jagged end of the bone off, and replaced it with a metal piece. The surgery took a little over 3 hours and then they kept her overnight at the hospital. My dear sister had too much fun torturing the nurses (no disrespect to the nurses out there, but Julie is a paramedic, they delight in making each other's lives miserable, I think it's an ingrained professional distaste for the way each other practices medicine).
We stayed home through the weekend, and then left again on Sunday after church to go back down. Again, an easy trip. I figure after that first trip, I'm owed another 4 easy trips! Monday was mom's birthday. She turned 68. That is awfully close to 70. Wow. She also went for her follow up appointment with the ortho doctor. He is so funny... he is quite amazed and keeps telling us (Julie and I) that our mom is a tough lady. He was pleased with the way it's healing and sent us up to make appointments for physical therapy.
One very happy event in all this was that my multiple visits coincided with the opening of a new Cuban restaurant in Salisbury. We did not go there every day of my visit. One day we went to a Japanese place.
Tuesday was Mom's first PT appointment, they really didn't do much, just a lot of massage to try and get the swelling out of her hand and arm. I think she was disappointed, she is really wanting to move fast and get busy. I think she was miffed at the therapist because he told her NO knitting for several weeks... so of course she had to go home and prove him wrong. She figures if knitting got her that much range of motion with a broken arm, now that it's fixed, it should be super good for her.
Mom was making great progess on her own, so the kids and I left on Thursday. They really needed to see Daddy, and honestly, so did I.

Friday (today) Julie called and told me mom had taken another fall, in the house. She had just gotten off the phone with Julie and so she had the phone with her, thank God, and was able to call Julie right back and tell her. Julie was on the way there anyway so she arrived soon after. When she fell, she tried to catch herself with her left hand which resulted in an injured left wrist and then spun around and landed on her right side. At first Julie was very worried about the extent of damage to her left wrist as it swelled up immediately, however she took her right in to the ortho and he exrayed both arms and said that the left wrist was severely sprained and the right arm was fine, no damage at all to the previous injury. Oh yes, I got this report in the midst of writing this post and mom is VERY pleased to announce that she has official clearance from the Doctor that she is allowed to knit as soon as she can hold both needles again. I teased her that she was going to be eager to rub this news in to Brad (the therapist) and she said that yes, that would be satisfying but she was also looking forward to the look on his face when he sees her on Monday with BOTH arms in splints.
Anyway, This has been a long two weeks, for all of us. It has been very gratifying to see how many offers of help have come in for my mom. My mom was always a second mother for many of our friends and peers and now even years later, the fruit of that is coming out. Her circle of friends in the 40 and under crowd is pretty amazing.
Julie tells me that I do not need to pack up and come right back, at least not right now. We will look into someone coming in on Julie's work days to check on Mom and perhaps even make her wear one of those medical call buttons, I know she'll be not too pleased about it, but I just shudder to think that she could have fallen last night while Julie was at work and no one would have known.

Happy Valentine's Day

Sorry it's a few days late, but I've been busy, more on that later.

Gifts--in response to Tara's blog

So Tara started this great discussion on her blog concerning spiritual gifts and it has been running through my mind for days now. Please take a look at her original post and all the very thoughtful discussion that followed it. http://tara-bleperson.blogspot.com/

My questions have to do with the actual identification and application of spiritual gifts today.
Various books and gift inventories come up with a different count of spiritual gifts. Some branch out into areas like finance and administration, some stick with basics like healing, teaching, prophesy, etc. Interesting side note, some sources call it prophesy, some call it wisdom... go figure.

So anyway, what ARE spiritual gifts? Even an unsaved person can be referred to as a "gifted teacher" or similar. Now, I realize that all humans are created in the image of God and as such can portray aspects of their creator, such as love, sacrifice, mercy, etc, even if they are not indwelt of the Holy Spirit. This is where I'm going with this... I KNOW that I'm a teacher, I have to teach, it's part of me... however, is that a "spiritual gift"?... I would be a teacher even if I weren't a Christian. Some people are naturally good speakers anyway, or passionate about what they believe in (I've seen plenty of evangelists that weren't evangelizing about God!), or naturally hospitable, or merciful.

Are these things that are our natural bent ALSO our "gifts"? It almost seems like the idea of a spiritual gift would be more like a special empowering in a specific area (which I may not be naturally good at) in order to do a specific job, it may be for a limited time or it may be ongoing. We seem to apply this reasoning especially to the gift of tongues and interpretation of tongues, that it is God's specific empowerment, only for very specific times, such as the preaching to the mixed crowd in Acts. I agree with this by the way... just wondering why this stipulation is not often applied to the other gifts.

Another thing... Julie mentioned in one of the comments on Tara's blog about how their church has had to restructure some things after training on spiritual gifts and making sure that people are working the the area where they fit best. I agree with this... I have gone through much angst myself because of church nursery scheduling... the attitude is, if you are a parent of that age group, you need to take a turn working the nursery. One problem. I don't do little kids. Of course I do my OWN kids, and even very limited numbers of friend's kids... but to take a two month rotation watching a room full of three year olds? This is not ministry, it is torture. I don't enjoy it and I'm not good at it. I will take a turn cleaning the bathroom to free up someone else to watch the nursery. But I digress, my point is, I agree with putting people where they are useful and "gifted", not simply where you need a warm body to fill a spot. However, we also often hear so much about "moving out of your comfort zone", "working where there is a need", "allowing God to stretch you" and so on... So which is it? do we work in the areas we are good at (gifted in) or do we move out of our comfort zone?

As you can see, I have lots of questions and no answers, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

belated birthdays and a teaser.

January is our busiest birthday month here at the Luck home. I do have to say that we get it all over with in an efficient manner. Sure we have three birthdays, but we get them all out of the way in less than a week. I go first, January 3, this year I turned 28. I can't even write that with a straight face, LOL. I turned 35. Joyana is next, on the 5th she turned 2, and finally Joey on the 8th (which was also Elvis Presley's birthday), he turned 6. Honestly, my baby boy turning 6 makes me feel far older than myself turning 35.

I will talk about both of the birthday kiddos. Joey is a huge child, well over 4 feet tall, and tipping that scales at around 65 lbs. He also has 5 permanant teeth already. Crazy. He is a gentle giant. Well, he means to be gentle. Unfortunately, he is a bit heedless at times and will bowl you over without even seeing that you were standing there. For his birthday he got a BIG BOY BIKE. Poor kid was still attempting to tool around the yard on the tiny bike we got when he was around 3. Let me tell you... nothing will hamper the bike riding learning process like literally not being able to fit your knees around the handle bars... I was a bit afraid that the bigger bike would be too big, but he did SO well. Joey is the funniest little man, he loves to tell jokes, although often they simply dont' make enough sense to be funny. For Christmas, I looked up a number of kid-friendly jokes and wrote them down for him to learn. He memorized 10 or so new jokes (which were actually amusing) much to the delight of various grandparents at various holiday family functions. He adores all things Thomas (the Tank Engine, for those of you without little boys) and anything having to do with animals. The kid can play a full-on version of Zoo Tycoon 2, often with more success than I have. Happy Birthday Bubby, I love you so much!

Joyana... It seriously seems like yesterday that she was born. Now she is two, talking, playing, singing, dancing. The big eyes that still vacilate between green and blue/gray (I'm pulling for green!) and the red curls that simply delight me everytime I look at her. She is the doll of the family, with both Joey and Jessi doting on her, and it goes without saying that Daddy is hopelessly wrapped in her little fingers. Even Dean is under her spell. She learns new things every day and amuses us endlessly with her mimicry... "No Doey, NO , GO ROOM!" " Sessi, stop cry, STOP STOP cry!" her discoveries which she shares with such enthusiasm.. "p-butter jubby in BELLY!" Jeff and I often remark that she stayed a baby longer than the other two (she didn't walk until 13 months, the other two were 9 months), and it was so sweet to have a "real" baby, but boy is she making up for lost time now! I hear "Mommy, Mommy" and go answer, only to find that she is talking to Jessi and they are playing house. She carries babies around and gently rocks them, she begs Bubby for "read book, read 'tory, read me bubby" . Baby Girly, I love you, I'm so thrilled that God gave you to us.

Finally, the teaser. Brandy... this is for you. The soaker is nearly finished but I'm having too much fun making you wait to see it knit up.

politics

yes, I know I'm late on the bandwagon, but honestly, I just can't get into the fray too early on... why get your hopes up on the next guy who can save America when they aren't actually going to make it onto the ballot anyway?
I am, as usual, a bit conflicted on how to vote in the upcoming election. I have to admit, I can get confused about who the less evil option is just in our local elections, so for the national picture, the mire only gets deeper.
Only this time, I'm less confused about who to vote for (here's a shocking admission, I'm not even sure who the current frontrunners for nomination are) than I am about which issues I will make my decision based on.
-the war
-the economy
-"family values" (not really sure what all that entails, but I assume sanctity of marriage and prolife stance)
-immigration reform
-healthcare
-education
-the environment.

I have taken some of those little quizzes that tell you who your most likely candidate is based on the issues that are important to you, and I find that I pretty much need to vote both for and against, ALL of them.

First and foremost, I'm a Christian. Therefore my values need to line up with God's values. Ok, not a problem, I know how I feel on all the issues and I trust that those views are based in God's values. The problem arises when I realize that voting will not be that simple. I am going to have to prioritize. Which issues are most important to me? What if one candidate supports my top two issues but is totally against all my views on all the other ones?

I have strong feelings on the war. and not typical republican conservative feelings either.
I have IMMENSELY strong feelings on immigration issues....and not your typical republican conservative feelings either (if you doubt this... you should check out my posts on MyHoliness...it would curl your hair)
I have moderate feelings on the economy and education and the environment. I assume that those would probably line up with most other conservative views.

Lest you think that I don't care about family values, that is not it, it's just that that term gets bandied about so much that I don't even know what it stands for anymore.

What truly frightens me is when I realize that I will almost certainly end up having to choose between something like immigration and abortion. Before you throw your hands up and ask how that could EVEN be a question... let me explain.
There are atrocities going on every day IN THIS COUNTRY that are a direct result of our broken immigration system. Kidnapping, murder, white slavery... the immigration system is so very broken. simplistic answers like "well if they'd just follow the laws..." just don't hold water. Even Immigration Law specialist get caught up in the quagmire. There is no simple answer and the inhuman acts that are happening every day will not stop until there is true reform. I truly feel that when our country knows about the wholesale white slavery trade of 12 year old children and does little about it, then we WILL stand in judgment for our (mis)treatment and (non)protection of people made in God's own image.
Abortion. I don't even know how to approach this. Do not dare for one moment to think that I am making light of this plague. I am a mother, I am a mother who has lost a baby in my womb. I know how precious life is. However... abortion has been legal for nearly 35 years. We have had 5 republican presidents during that time and only 2 democrats. We are finishing up 8 years of Bush. Abortion is still legal. I do not know how I can in good conscience ignore other pressing issues that might actually make progress (like immigration and the war) by voting based soley on the abortion issue when I KNOW it's not going to change anyway.

And that is all of part one. Let the comments role.

Did you know?

that a computer hard drive can break? not what we frequently refer to as "crash" where you got a virus or some software issue, but BREAK.
I didn't know this.

We returned home from our Christmas travels and of course I headed right for the computer, needed to download pictures, check emails, etc. Instead,I got the blue screen of death.

Long story (it's been over month since I've posted so yes, it's long) short, the little man who sits in there and writes everything down, died.

After exhuasting all our options here at home, Jeff took the computer in to the shop. THey assured us that no matter how crashed it was, they can nearly always bypass the issues, save the data, then wipe it clean.
The day wore on with no report. Finally in the evening, the phone rang. Jeff made ominous noises like, "oh really? oh my! Oh dear. I see. Uh huh, Uh huh. Oh. Well. " It did not sound encouraging.

Apparently, there is not a little man in there writing everything down, there are however little record player thingies (I'm not making this up, I looked it up and saw pictures) in there where all the data is recorded. Something broke. the little magnetic records can no longer spin. the little reader/writers can no longer read and write.

I am a bad person. My husband supplied me with a second hard drive so I can back things up. I used it for storing my volumnous digi-scrapping files. I haven't backed up pictures or files in over a year.

They told us that they can't get our data off, someone can, but they have to take the hard drive apart, take out the little magnetic disks, and put them onto something else to read them. This does of course cost $$$. At this point we have the broken hard drive and will save money and hopefully someday be able to recover all the data.

So anyway, it's been a long month of no computer, replacing the drive, reloading all the systems, etc. I am now nearly all back on track.

Lesson learned. back up your stuff. back it up. the little man in the computer will not live forever.

knitting socks, a pair at a time

So, If you are not a knitter, you may just want to admire my pretty colors and move on. Unless you are an engineer like my husband, who was intrigued by the whole process, or just acted like he was, seeing as how he's my husband.

This is a combination of the knitting small diameter projects on two circular needles technique published by Cat Bordhi, and the knit two socks at once technique by Barb. I'm sure that other people also do these things, but I'm crediting the people who I directly looked up.

First of all, the benefit of using two circs. For me, the benefit over using DPNs is obvious, as Cat points out in her book Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles , using her method will save about 300 intersections vs. using DPNs. I was a little skeptical, having been taught by my mother how to do small diameter circular knitting on one circular needle and never having any trouble with it (this method is commonly called "magic loop"), why I should need two circs. I have found that there is the benefit of not having to ever rearrange your stitches, you put half on each needle, and that is where they stay. Of course there is a time for magic looping, but I do think that for projects like socks where you are going to stay in a small diameter the entire time, the two circ method is more efficient.

The benefit of knitting both socks at once... well, I have to admit, that I am often a "one hit wonder" when it comes to projects. I made it, great, now I'm done, I move on to something else. This presents a difficulty in items such as pant legs, socks, mittens,... you get the idea. Doing both at once is not necessarily faster, but when you are finished, you have your pair of socks. I know myself and myself would be highly likely to only ever make one sock.

I'm not going to attempt to fully explain these techniques, there are other websites that go into great detail and/or, you can buy the book. Mom wanted to see my projects and so did a few other people so here it is.
Cast on your stitches, then put half on each needle, join, work a round. I started my two socks separately then put them on my needles with about three rows each. THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART! Ok, there are going to be several important parts, but this is the first one. Your working yarn must be coming off the same side for both socks! Pointing the same direction. In the following picture, my live yarn is coming off the top needle/top facing side of the socks, and as you can see, they are both pointing "north". I lost count of how many times I put the stupid socks on and off the needles before I figured out this rule. Apparently it's either so obvious the instructions didn't say so, or I skipped that page. If your yarn is not going the right way, you will knit one side and then be stuck. You will have no needle and live yarn adjacent to each other. You will be caught on one of those mobius strips and have no where to run. You will take the project off the needles, turn it, put it back on, anxiously counting stitches to make sure you aren't dropping any, knit one side and be back in mobius hell again.

Here is a view from the "top", the socks are not connected, they are just slid together. So, straight position looks like this: you have working needle (green) which you will slide the stitches up to the point and knit them in a second, and you have resting needle (red) which just dangles there. Your working yarn is going to come off the resting needle and knit into the live side.You must use the front and back of the SAME needle, don't get sidetracked and knit off onto the resting needle. If you do so and attempt to just slide the stitches back onto the correct needle, I bet $5 that you will put them on the wrong direction and, you guessed it, be back in mobius hell.
Personally I am going to look for two different colors of the same gauge needle, or try using one metal and one wood, I really think that having two colors would free up a lot of brain space, and since knitting is supposed to be relaxing, not having to think too hard is a good thing.

So, you have the projects on the needles correctly and you knit with the correct needle, and now you are faced with this: It looks nothing like my neat "straight position" illustrated above.
Don't worry, you are looking for an end that has a needle point on one side, and a working yarn coming off the other side. If you did everything right, it's there. Again, take your working needle, bring your yarn off of your resting needle, and knit.

That's it. Each round you do will both sides of one sock, then the other sock will have mysteriously made it to first position and be waiting there for you to knit it as well.

I am also working on a pair of mittens like this... not only will I end up with two mittens at once (a handy little side effect...) I won't have to remember how many round and increases and decreases I did so that I can make the other one identical. It will already be the same. WHOO HOO.

Ok, I'll post pictures of the socks and the mittens when they are finished. Of course that assumes that I will conquer heels, toes, and thumbs.