Hey, Hit the Highway!

Every April, quilters of Nebraska herald the coming of Spring by loading coolers with ice teas, sodas, juices, sandwiches, and other nibbly bits into our vehicles and heading out to see just how many quilt shops we can visit in a ten day period.

Mischief and mayhem reign as we covertly slip items into one another's shopping baskets, encourage our friends to built their fabric stash beyond several life expectancies, and add new favorite shops to our list. Welcome to the 11th Annual Nebraska Shop-Hop.

My darling mother and I have made this a mother-daughter tradition. We usually only travel on weekends and this year, one weekend was plenty of fun. I usually do the driving and she's my navigator. Um, yes, there are still places in Nebraska in which your onboard nav system will simply say, "Abandon hope, all ye who dare to enter here." This year, we reversed rolls. I did not get as many photos as I would have liked because a certain wee seventy year old was on my case to get back in the car! "Time's awastin', ya know!"

Our first day, a Saturday, we explored the Southeast corner of Nebraska. We visited two shops in Omaha, one in Plattsmouth, two in Auburn, and one in Falls City, the hometown of Larry the Cable Guy.

Here are some shots of the amazingly well stocked "Heavenly Treasures" of Falls City. The nice lady who owns this shop could not stand the idea of this vintage church being torn down so she rescued it and no doubt hides her stash from her husband here.

More to come!

Lupron Neutron

I'm thinking I should legally change my name to Lupron Neutron. If only I could harvest the radiant heat which seems to have engulfed me! I'm sure I could supply power to a small town.

I found a wonderful doctor. I did plenty of homework before my appointment with her and had studied all the options currently available. I'm happy to say that she discussed them fully without any prodding from me. So many physicians want to do the easiest procedure instead of the best and most appropriate.

We agreed on a course of treatment which will give me the best chance of the outcome I want. I am undergoing a series of Lupron injections to shrink the tumor. It should shrink between 35% to 50% making it far easier to remove surgically without nicking surrounding organs or having to take other stuff with it.

The side effects of the drug are, um, interesting to say the least. The most noticeable being hot flashes, which I will refer to as power surges from this sentence forward. They're weird. I had never had one before and now I have one or two per hour. I am a person who has always gotten cold easily. You would think that I would just be warm now but, not so. Instead it's a bit like having a fever with chills all the time.

I would like to thank everyone for all the concern and good wishes. I'm going to be fine. I'm just very uncomfortable at the moment but it won't last and I'll be back to my old, annoying self!

THE DOUBTFUL GUEST:

"When they answered the bell on that wild winter night,
there was no one expected - and no one in sight.
Then they saw something standing on top of an urn,
Whose peculiar appearance gave them quite a turn."
--Edward Gorey

For many months I have felt not quite myself but not horrible. Unable to put my finger on what was wrong. Last month, I bought new jeans and had to buy a size 6 instead of the usual 4. Berating myself and wondering how this could happen, I ramped up my workouts. Then I started feeling pain in my lower right quadrant. My appendix got the big snip in 1983 so that couldn't be the problem. I assumed I had strained my abs and eased off the resistance training a bit. It got worse instead of better.

Tuesday I had an ultrasound and found that I have a benign tumor in my abdomen, the size of a regulation softball. It's pressing on my spine, the nerves to my right leg, and various organs.

So. Good news, actually Great News: not cancer and not embedded in any organ. Mediocre news: It will have to come out.

And I want it out. It's an univited guest making the rest of me uncomfortable and anemic. It's very weird to think there is something inside that size and I only just became aware of it!

Don't know the schedule for this yet but posts may continue to be scant for a little while.

Get out of town!

I like to take mini-vacations. There are so many interesting sites not far away. I think this is probably true of most cities. I can usually find something worth exploring within an hour's driving distance.

I have been watching my friends' home, and animals, about twenty-five miles south of Omaha. Ten miles south of her home is the frontier town of Plattsmouth. There is so much history there. I visit there regularly and still have not see all of it. An important site on the Lewis and Clark Trail, Plattsmouth boasts a wonderful Main Street. It's original buildings house an old fashioned hardware store, an amazing quilt shop, a wine shop which stocks local vintners' wares, a restaurant called "Mom's" which serves up comfort food and a quaint atmosphere, and much more.

Just two blocks east of Mom's, near the Burlington Rail Lines, I found the Cook Cabin. Del Hervey, a member of the Cass County historical society, was just locking the cabin and a restored caboose, for the winter, when I arrived. I didn't want to bother him and thought I'd just snap a few pics before heading toward the toll bridge to get some pictures of the river. But Del, in spite of the chilly weather, was enthusiastic about showing me around.

The cabin was built by German settlers, Joseph and Mary Cook (originally Koch) in 1868. It was their second home. The first was even smaller. The main floor is roughly the size of my guest bedroom but the Cooks raised eleven children to adulthood under this roof. Diaries and letters from family members indicate children slept downstairs until they were walking and "trained" and then moved upstairs, to the sleeping loft, with their older brothers and sisters.

The Cook family was on friendly terms with the Native Americans who also lived in the area. They did find it a little odd when their neighbors entered without knocking and helped themselves to whatever food was on the table.

The cabin was moved from its' original site, five miles away, to the edge of the city. Later generations had added on and eventually engulfed the cabin in a bigger farmhouse. That farmhouse was painstakingly peeled away until the cabin was once again freestanding. Historical Society members are not quite finished restoring it, but have done a wonderful job.