It's been a long, long time.

Yes, I know that it has been almost 2 years since I blogged last.

I hadn't posted in a while because I lost access to the blog.

I lost access to the blog because I could not remember which password I used when I created it.

I could not get the old password sent to me because I had changed ISPS and email addresses during the time I wasn't blogging and the old password was being sent to the old email address.

I could not change the email address because I could not get into the blog.

There are no live people at Google or Blogger who could help. There are a lot of people who are in the same boat, apparently. Several of them have posted at Blogger's help forum.

And how did i get back in? Very accidentally.

My friend, Lynn Magnusson has started a blog about appraising and arts and antiques (at http://artantiquesappraisal.blogspot.com/. Very nice blog.) I went to check it out and posted a comment. Before the comment could go up it asked me whether I belonged to Blogger or LiveJournal or a few other groups. I put in my old email address and took a wild-assed guess at an old password I used to use. I got in!

Then I decided to come here to see if I could post and I could. Mirabile dictu! Hosannas! Holy Crap!

With any luck I can get in again shortly and update all two of you who read this as to what I've been doing.

The Surgeon's Report

I met with a very nice surgeon, Dr. Semegran, about my hernia last week. He was recommended to me by my general physician, Dr. Chang, by a good friend who is a nurse case manager at the local hospital, and by the office of the gastroenterologist who did the colonoscopy last year.

So, for the fourth time within about 8 weeks, a doctor examined my abdomen and told me that I have a really large hernia. That makes five opinions (mine, Dr. Schwartz, Dr. Caputo, Dr. Chang, and now, Dr. Semegran). Experts agree.

Dr. Semegran asked me to undergo a CAT scan, which is the same CAT scan I am supposed to undergo as part of my one-year follow-up to the hysterectomy: A two-fer! That happens on the 29th. Based on the results from the scan, Dr. Semegran will decide whether the hernia repair can be done laparoscopically or not. Let us all pull for a laparoscopic repair, since recovery will be much shorter, and surprisingly, Dr. Semegran says that he can do a better job that way.

The repair will involve a large piece of mesh and plastic screws and cameras down tubes and I stopped listening after that because I was hysterically laughing at Dr. Semegran’s description of the screws.

I am getting ready for a trip to Arizona to visit my sister, Susan. I had intended to fly as cheaply as possible in as few flights as possible. I am still flying cheaply, but I will be hitting every airport in the United States both coming and going, it seems.

The airline (USAirways) tells me that I can carry a 55-inch carry on with me. This is a bag that has height, width, and length dimensions that add up to 55 inches. I want to go with a carry on because when you are stringing three flights going and three coming home together, the chances of your checked luggage keeping up with you start shrinking rapidly.

I intend to travel light, because I prefer it. Besides, Susan says she will let me wash my clothes at her house for a very modest fee.

She is also treating me to two concerts by the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. One is a concert of classic music by Russian composers. The other is a concert of classical music by the Liverpudlian composers known as the Beatles.

A Bit of Good News

Well, I got a bit of good news yesterday. I got a call from my endocrinologist telling me that the ultrasound scan of my thyroid showed nothing wrong. To recap. My endocrinologist had thought she felt a small lump in my thyroid during my last visit with her. Said lump does not appear to exist.

Finally, some good news to report here.

Stupid Banks

Many of you know that I knit. I knit a lot. I like to knit and I like to be around knitters. I even like to knit socks.

So, when word reached me about an injustice done to sock knitters and to one company that deals in sock yarn, I decided I must tell you of it.

Blue Moon Fiber Arts, a tiny place in Oregon, makes a yarn called Socks That Rock. It is a fine, hand-painted yarn and it is expensive. I have never bought it, nor have I bought anything from Blue Moon, so I have no affiliation.

Blue Moon had a great idea, to create a club for sock knitters. The Rockin’ Sock Club. Members would sign up for $210 a year and would received several kits for socks over the course of the year. (I said it was expensive sock yarn, didn't I?) So many people signed up for this that the company had to create a waiting list, because they can’t make the yarn and kits fast enough.

A success story, no? No. It seems that the bank that Blue Moon runs its credit card charges through decided that there could not be so many people in the world who want to knit socks. First, they called Blue to Moon to ask about the Sock Club and were told that it was a going enterprise. Then they held a meeting. At the meeting, it was decided that the Blue Moon sock club must be a scam and that all the money collected for the sock club must be refunded immediately. You read that right: The bank refused to take the money.

The bank did this without even thinking to run just a tad of internet research. They would have easily found that many, many people (and not just women) knit in the United States and Canada and that many of them like to knit socks. They would have also seen that the sock club was not some cover story for terrorists, drug dealers, or porn merchants, but was a real and very lucrative idea.

Blue Moon had to zoom around quickly and arrange for a different bank to process the orders. They then sent out an email to all their subscribers about what happened to them. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee got wind of it. Stephanie blogs as the Yarn Harlot (http://www.yarnharlot.ca/). She is also the author of three books about knitting with another on the way and she goes around North America talking to groups of hundreds of knitters. She put the word out on her blog, but declined to name the bank. All hell is breaking loose in the knitting world even as I type this.

Many. many knitters are wondering if a business owned by men would have been hit with this injustice. Others point out that porn sites and illegal weapons merchants seem to have no problem with their banks. But selling sock yarn has to be a scam, right? Many of these knitters are demanding the name of the bank, which Blue Moon has not made public.

You think pissing off knitters is a good thing? Think twice. Stephanie started the Knitting Olympics last winter, which ended up getting mentioned in Time, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated. You had to pick a knitting project that was a bit hard for you, start knitting when they lit the flame at the Winter Olympics and finish it before they put the flame out. Thousands, and I do mean thousands, too part.

More importantly, she founded Knitters Without Borders (Tricoteuses Sans Frontiere), which raises money for Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontiere). Since the tsunami of 2004, she raised about $120,000. In December, she asked knitters to start donating again and set the goal at raising another $120,000. Knitters hit that target in 73 hours and 36 minutes.

I repeat, you do not give knitters a reason to get on your case. This story is going to hit the national airways by Monday. I am sure of it. And you heard it here almost first.

(Note: Check out Stephanie’s blog, even if you hate knitting. The woman writes severely funny.)

Hello Again

Okay, so I have been remiss.

It is now more than 6 months since I last updated this blog. All of you. . . Some of you. . . OK, two of you complained about this.

My problem was that I was pretty sure that I didn’t have anything to say. I had come through the surgery well and didn’t have anything else I wanted to comment on. And unlike some people on the internet, if I didn’t have anything to say, I was damned well not going to say it.

Ah, but since this is a blog about my health and my health—or lack of it—has again reared its ugly head, it is time to blog about it. And please, someone tell me if I am whining.

The good news is that I only have a hernia. The bad news is that it is a very big hernia, which is actually good news because small hernias are the ones that cause problems.

When we last left our heroine, she was cheerfully recovering from an abdominal hysterectomy and her scar had healed quite nicely. For those of you who need an anatomy lesson, or at least one on my anatomy, the external scar is what is called a bikini line incision and is horizontally across my abdomen at the level of the top of a bikini bottom, if I wore a bikini, which I don’t.

However, the internal incision, where they cut through the muscles and into my abdomen (and repaired a moderately sized umbilical hernia while they were at it) is vertical. This incision has apparently given way. After the surgery, I was pleased as punch that I had a flat abdomen for the first time since I was around 32. I had no potbelly to speak of, or to run your hand over, not that anyone has tried lately.

But a potbelly developed. First, it was just a little pooching out above the exterior incision. But within a month or so, it got bigger and bigger. I saw Dr. Schwartz. He said it was a hernia. I saw Dr. Caputo. He said same.

Sigh.

So, I am now in the process of checking out good hernia repair people in the Putnam area because this time I want to stay closer to home.

In other news:

* My house is for sale. It has been for sale since early summer. It went on the market about a week before news reports appeared that the real estate market was tanking. (Sigh) It has been seen about 15 times or so. I was thinking it would not sell before spring, since no one usually shops for houses in winter, but this has been a very warm winter and it has been shown twice in January. I would like to stay in this area, but that depends on where I get a better paying job. (I had sworn to myself that I would not sell the house for at least a year after Bernie died. This was a wise idea that bit me on the ass. I knew by the fall of 2005 that I should sell the house but waited anyway. I could have sold it easier then. Sigh.)

* I am looking for a better paying job. What with the surgery, my freelance writing career took it on the chin and I have realized that I need a nice paying full time job. (Note: Please, someone hire me. Just don’t ask me to carry heavy objects, cf. hernia.)

* Is there anything in the universe as dismal as the dating situation for women my age? I had my profile on a couple of dating sites and have gotten nowhere. In a year, I have gone out on two blind dates. I did get turned down by one guy who found out that I had a blog and said that he did not want to be blogged about. As if I would. The worst experience was with eHarmony. Soulmate, my ass. About twice a month, I would be told that I was a good match for some guy. I would be instructed to contact him through the site. By the time I got to the site, he had already said “No, thanks.” I could understand this happening once or twice. But seven times in a row? Even I am not that revolting and these are men who are supposed to be looking for someone just like me. I complained to the management of eHarmony and asked why I was being matched with men who did not want to be matched with me. They wrote back and told me to put up nicer pictures of myself and punch up my profile (which I thought was fine). So, instead of that much-vaunted personality profile matching they say they use, it still came down to how well I photograph. (Big sigh)

* Wait, here is something more dismal! Another health problem! My thyroid has been acting up a bit. I am hypothyroid and take a thyroid supplement. About twice a year, I get my blood tested and they adjust the dose. During this check up, my endocrinologist said she thought she was feeling a node on my thyroid. This got checked by ultrasound last week, but I have not idea what is what yet. She also raised my thyroid dose, which left me feeling jittery and having trouble sleeping over the holidays. Instead of merry, I was cranky.

So, in general, all the parts of my life are up in the air. And I am so lousy at juggling.

Oh, and on a side note, early in the fall, my suscom.net, my ISP, was taken over by Comcast. There was supposed to be a period where mail sent to my old suscom.net address was to be sent to comcast.net. This did not happen. Several people thought I dropped off the face of the earth or some such thing. If you want to reach me, email me at valdeben@comcast.net.

Back to Grim Reality

The Outer Banks of North Carolina are simply fabulous. A clean white sand beach that stretched north and south as far as the eye could see and a gentle surf, not too calm and not too rough. It was heaven on earth.

Actually, the whole vacation was pretty damned good. It was even an extra day long. I was originally supposed to drive to my brother’s house in New Jersey, stay overnight there on Thursday 6/15. He, his wife Jane, and I would then drive most of the way down to North Carolina Friday and stop off in a motel for the night. This would mean that we could hit the beach for a few hours on Saturday before we were allowed into the rental house at 4 p.m.

Instead, we got the word that we could have the house a day early, on Friday. So, we hit the road at 8:30 a.m. Friday with an incredibly packed car and drove straight through. Most of the car was full of food and supplies for the week. I brought coffee, boxed milk, sugar, and the makings for a large amount of baked ziti. Mike and Jane brought enormous amounts of paper products, several bottles of wine and liquor, and the makings of a really neat sausage and pasta dinner.

On the way, we touched base by phone with my brother Gerald (the official patriarch of the family) and his wife Helen, who were driving down together, and my nephew Paul (Gerald’s younger son), who was driving down with his kids, Matthew, Patrick, and Meaghan.

We got to the house around 4:30. I had never been to the Outer Banks before and was expecting the houses to be farther apart. Instead, these large, nice looking houses were about 10 feet apart. Our house was the third in from the beach, which meant an enormous walk of 100 yards to the beach.

The house was huge, at least 3000 square feet. Four bedrooms that slept two, one that slept four in bunk beds, and a daybed on the ground floor, where the ping-pong table was. I got the daybed because I was the only singleton in the group and because I signed onto this jaunt late. The fully stocked kitchen was on the top floor, with most of the bedrooms on the second floor. This made for a lot of stair climbing each day. There was a pool out back and a hot tub on the front deck, and three levels of deck.

The rest of the contingent arrived at midnight. My sister Sue and her husband Rob had flown out from Arizona to my nephew Mark’s house in Durham. From there, they drove to the Outer Banks with Mark and his wife Kim and their two daughters, Zoë and Talia.

Ten adults, five children under age 10, with one just under a year old. We had a blast. We annoyed each other occasionally, but had no arguments. This is hardly believable to most people. Then again, I don’t believe it either.

Each night, someone was in charge of putting together a dinner. We ate like royalty and the last night, we ate leftovers. Wednesday, Mark arranged a tasting of red wines, which was interesting. Paul made Bloody Marys most afternoons, and much beer was imbibed all week long. I made Margaritas a couple of times. Most nights at dinner, my brother Mike threw out a topic of conversation, such as having everyone name his or her favorite movies or books.

Most days, we all played it loose and did what we wanted to. I usually hit the beach around 11 and stayed until 3 or 4. Mark had set up a screen tent on the beach to keep the sun off his incredibly pale children. It was a very civilized beach. We had cold beers in a cooler.

On Tuesday, I had a personal red letter day. For the first time since the surgery, I did not have a single bandage on any part of my body.

Every day except one, I walked for an hour on the beach. Either I listened to a book on my MP3 player, or I walked with Jane and we talked.

Saturday afternoon, I saw a pod of dolphins. Like I said, it was a perfect vacation.

Vacation, Here I Come!

I have been back to work at the bookstore since Sunday and have worked all of three days. This means it is time to go on a vacation. I am heading to North Carolina for fun and family reunion. Fourteen of my closest relatives and me. It should be a hoot.

Returning to work has not been too bad, except on my feet. Working in a bookstore is horrendously hard on your dogs. I have walked as much as 4.5 miles in an eight-hour shift, usually while carrying large piles of books.

I was touched and pleased that several customers came up to me to say that they had missed me and to ask how I was doing. The other staffers also said they missed me.

But I am going on vacation anyway.

I saw Dr. Schwartz again on Monday. He says my incision is healed and that the belly button is doing well.

I think I should stay out of his office for a while. I was sitting in the exam room waiting for him and I started doing that thing where you put your hands along the side of your face and pull back to see if you need a face lift. I am starting to get some vanity and I am not sure I like it.