Waiting

Thank you, everyone, for your patience with me. The doctors have said that my brother needs surgery and needs it soon, so he is meeting with another neurosurgeon this Thursday and hopefully the procedure will be scheduled at that time. This is not a cure. It is, as I understand it, the best hope of giving him a few more months with a good quality of life before...well, before. I can say it out loud to my husband and to my sister, but otherwise, I can't even type it. Suffice to say, this may be a very hard year.

I want to take a moment to thank you all now for your support and prayers and love. In you I have found not just an audience but a community, and I continue to be humbled and so very grateful for the friendships that have come to me through this blog. I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it: I love you all.

IN QUILTING NEWS:

So, yeah. I went to this Market thing in Kansas City. My youngest child decided that would be a perfect time to get sick and not just sick but Oh-Holy-Crap-Is-A-104.8-Temperature-Grounds-For-Calling-911-? kind of sick. David was much more worried than I was, having been thoroughly traumatized by a trip to the hospital with Harper when she was a baby for dehydration from a rotovirus. (I made him go with her when they took her out of the room to put in her IV, because I couldn't do it. I don't think he has ever forgiven me.) I didn't actually think she was going to die, but I just couldn't bear to leave her, so I called Jake in tears and told her I needed to cancel my trip. Fortunately, Jake just rescheduled the flight instead of canceling altogether, and so, when her fever started to come down, David felt more secure and I felt marginally better about leaving her. I ended up on the plane only about 24 hours after I was originally scheduled to go.

I don't fly very much, for several reasons. It's too expensive. I don't usually have places I need to go that can only be reached via a flying tin can. And I hate flying. Hate. It. Taking off is, despite everything I know about physics, clearly against the laws of nature and I spend the entire time until we reach altitude white-knuckling whatever I can get my hands on and trying desperately not to look as terrified as I feel, because I am sure that if a flight attendant or another passenger spies my ohmygodwe'regonnadie! terror, they will have a big U.S. Air Marshall sit on me and hold a taser to my neck, yelling, "YOU NEED TO CALM DOWN, MA'AM" while the pilot turns the plane around. Then, once we are above the clouds and flying more or less horizontally, I spend the remainder of the flight desperately needing to pee but unwilling to announce this to total strangers by forcing them to move so I can claw my way out of my seat and find the tiny lavatory that is likely already occupied by people trying to have sex.

And now the TSA makes me nervous. Probably because I read way to many TSA horror stories on BoingBoing.net, and so I start to wonder if I look suspicious and then I wonder if my wondering makes me look more suspicious and by the time I make it through the scanner thing and get my shoes back on I am still trying to shake not just the fear but the certainty that a gloved hand is going to grab my arm and pull me off to the side so they can poke around in my butt for contraband.

This time, when I made it through security un-anally-violated, I naturally headed straight for the ladies' room, because every nerve-wracking experience makes me need to pee. And you know how public bathrooms have those big-ass toilet paper rolls mounted to the side of the stall? And how they are held in place in this big plastic contraption? Well, when I went to tear off the paper that I needed, the plastic housing popped off and both the roll I was tearing from and the spare fell off the now dangling holder and rolled right past me and into the stalls next to me. I have no idea how far they went, but I heard a "What the–?" from pretty far down the row.

I suppose a normal person would have piped up and said, "Hey, this fool thing just fell apart! Sorry!" But I was still recovering from my imaginary cavity search and elected to just sit there like an idiot instead until everyone had left.

The awesome little wine bar where I got toasted the last time I had to fly wasn't there anymore, so I ended up eating a sandwich and drinking a margarita at some little diner just outside security where I could read my book and watch other people being held down and beaten for forgetting to put the gun-shaped vibrator in the checked baggage. Number one rule of flying in a post-9/11 world: Always Put The Gun-Shaped Vibrator in the Checked Baggage.

The rest of the flight was uneventful, except of course for the silent screaming during takeoff, and I was picked up at the airport by Melissa's sisters, Steph and Beth, and her friend Bev, all of whom were helping to work the booth at the show. We went straight to the hotel, and there I got to meet Melissa for the very first time. I've known and worked with Melissa for what, three years now? And so to finally be able to hug her was a wonderful thing. And even Jake I've only met once, so suddenly I'm in the presence of the two women who changed my life when they decided to publish me back in 2009. As if that wasn't overwhelming enough, then I finally got to hold my baby:

A magazine. Our magazine. A real, honest-to-god, goddamn magazine. I cried. My hands were shaking. It didn't just look okay. It didn't just look passable. It looked good. And I designed it. I had no idea what I was doing, but I figured it out, and I did good. I am so proud of this, I can't even tell you. I still get choked up thinking about it.

I will tell you more about Market itself in another post. I am still working on putting together a fabric sale, and I have a lot of fat quarter bundles ready to go. Much of this is older stuff, so if you are into more "traditional" fabrics there will be a lot here for you. I'm thinking that I will, once I am ready to start, post one or two items here per day with a Paypal button for each. I also plan to have some fun with the descriptions, so even if you hate the fabric you might want to check out the sale for that. And I know some people were willing to donate fabric to the cause, so if you are still interested in doing that, I would be very interested and very grateful. Please email me at dontdrinkandquilt (at) gmail (dot) com and we'll work out arrangements for shipping.