It's good to feel good again

I think I am on the road to recovery although I may be coming down with something even more serious. When I got up today and looked around the house I had the overpowering urge to clean and vacuum..the morphine must have caused some brain damage after all!

I felt fine on the weekend and we were able to travel east to the Ottawa area to my family's annual McDonald Christmas. Everyone of my side of the family was in attendance ... all 34, from my oldest brother Stuart to my youngest great nephew..William, the recipient of the stocking.
My Santa ornaments were well received and changed hands a few times during the game finally ending up with my niece Karen. My brothers and I had our annual Christmas photo taken..I think I was standing in a hole.

As you can tell my sister-in-law had their home beautifully decorated and it was all very festive.

This is William, who is a couple of weeks shy of being one year old in the arms of his doting aunt Andrea and you can just catch a glimpse of the stocking in there as well.

As I predicted Christopher asked me if I would finish the stocking for William's older brother Ethan, which Christopher started stitching at the same time as I stared William's...early this summer. "It's almost finished Ann....will you just do the rest???" What could I say? My family doesn't ask for much...

This what he dropped on the table in front of me.

Misadventures I could have done without

I really do try to keep this to a stitching blog but for reasons which will become apparent I have no stitching to share.
Without going into the gory details of my own carelessness and inattentiveness I will tell you that last Saturday I broke the ring finger of my left hand.
Off we went to Emergency at Trenton hospital were I was treated promptly and very well...I was X-rayed, IV'd and given a Tetanus shot. I was able to get my rings off without their having to resort to cutting them off which was a good thing.
Then back on the road to Belleville Hospital to see the surgeon. I did have to wait for him but I prefer to think he was busy for those two hours with a patient who needed more urgent care than I did.
Once with him I was dealt with efficiently...frozen, bone and nail restored to their proper places, sewn up, bandaged up and given prescriptions for infection and pain and sent home.
All in all I cannot complain about our Health Care system. It worked very well for me.

Unfortunately, I woke up in the night in incredible pain and my only thought was..that morphine isn't working! I had always heard it banished pain miraculously! Unfortunately, not being in my right mind I did not know and continued to take it ...turns out what I thought was my body responding to the assault of the injury and surgery was really my body reacting badly to the drug. I finally clued into that fact and saw my doctor here in Brighton who told me stop taking it...which I already had but the damage was done.
I was flat out in bed for two days, flat out on the couch for the next two ...Today I am taking it very easy but the dizziness, nausea, lack of appetite, and massive headache are gone.
I think I may survive but it is a sure thing that I will never take morphine again.
I had lots of love, support and help from Dan who cared for me faithfully, even staying home from work on Monday and from my good friends Judie, who visited, stayed with me and brought me some excellent soup, Sharon who also visited and changed our bed for me . I was still pretty fuzzy that day. And Harold who came and walked the dogs.

Today I will venture out and if the headache and wooziness don't return I should be OK to go to my family's Christmas party on Saturday.

Obviously with only one hand in commission and my head not working I have done no stitching but fortunately I did finish finish the 4 Santas into ornaments last Thursday so I will have them to take to the family gathering.

I hope the finger gets better fast, and it seems to be responding well soI will soon be stitching again.

Moral...don't break bones or take drugs especially one's that don't agree with you.

The Absent Blogger

I have been negligent in my blogging duties ...so here is a bit of a catch up...
Last weeked was the annual November retreat at TimberHouse Inn here in Brighton. We all had a wonderful time and pictures of the retreat can be viewed on Beatrice's and Dani's blogs.
I had a miserable head cold all weekend long and so did nothing but sit like a lump and stitch ornaments all day every day. The ornament pictures follow...
However I have to share this fantastic towel Bernie made for Dan. The Butthead part is the nickname Dan and his friend Bruce have. They are One and Two respectively but the title can change when one makes a particularly spectacular bonehead/butthead move. Dan holds the # One title at the moment. Bruce and Luci were here all weekend to give Dan a hand with the preparation, cooking and cleaning up of the feast we had on Saturday afternoon.
Here are my Santas...all finished and backstitched...I am planning to give them as a gift at my Family Christmas party next weekend ...so very soon I'll be getting out the glue and felt and backing fabric and prepare to burn the tips off my fingers with the glue gun.

Ornaments

I have been stitching and finishing ornaments on this round of my rotation.
We have been invited to a Tree decorating party early in December so I made this little ornie for the hosts. The name of their house is Cressyview because it is in Prince Edward County and appropriately enough has an impressive view of the Lake from Cressy.... Some ornaments also got finish finished and here are a few of them. I had done a couple of the JBW angels on a black background also but once they were made up I decided that they were not right to give my little great nieces. I have therefore stitched a couple more angels on white and will make them up with the lace sometime before our family Nov 27 get together.