My baby sister has finally been diagnosed with cancer, a form of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma called mycosis fungoides.
Like happens with so many of us, her wildly obvious symptoms got blown off by the American medical community for years and years. This is a thankfully a slow growing cancer. It’s still fatal if left untreated long enough. I believe she’s had symptoms for at least 8-9 years, maybe more.
We’ll know more after her oncology visit. Needless to say, the survival rate is largely dependent on how far the disease has progressed. Based on what we know for sure, she’s at least stage III, and I suspect stage IV.
I love my kids. Their concepts of reality are skewed, though.
My youngest is in the Midwest and has a place. She’s now living the reality of having a place with literally nothing in it. No furniture, no dishes, pans, no linens… nothing. I’m tapped out. I cannot help her any more. Her income doesn’t have any padding whatsoever. She does have a storage room full of stuff in Arizona, without the thousands of dollars it’ll take to ship it there.
I urged her to sell what she could here and buy what she needs there. The cost of the storage room plus the cost of shipping would pay for a lot of new or gently-used household goodies bought in northern Iowa. But she gave thumbs down to my suggestion and is now living the consequences.
Welcome to Real World 101. You’ve lived here your whole life but still missing all its key concepts.
My oldest is searching for employment Nirvana. She wants to do WFH data entry and make enough to live and pay her own way, with one job, in this economy. I told her what my company pays and she complained it’s not a living wage. The type of job she’s looking for, if she can find it at all, will pay substantially less than my company’s starting wage and most likely offer zero benefits.
Real World 101, first door on the left.
Again.
The sewing project stopped with a blouse after all. Not because I didn’t like the dress concept, but because I committed a stupid and had to recut a piece. While there’s still a good chunk of fabric left, there isn’t enough to turn it into a dress.
In theory, this is the perfect top. I love the colors and the style looks nice on the hanger. The neck and collar are perfect. Unfortunately, the tulip sleeves are a hot mess. When worn, they curl up and are annoying as heck. I may rip them out and replace them with regular sleeves. since the dress/skirt aspect is now officially kaput anyway
It’s also too short. Oh, not a crop top, nothing like that. But I prefer my shirts long enough to skim the top of my thighs. This one hits about mid-hip. It was originally meant to be the top of a dress, which is why I stuck with the pattern length instead of automatically adding length to it.
Maybe I’ll add a strip of black to the bottom of the top instead, to bring it to the length I prefer.
Yesterday our daughter in the Midwest discovered somebody hacked her bank card. They depleted a huge chunk of her account balance before she could get things straightened out with the bank. She managed to stop the theft with enough left to pay her rent and will eventually get most of the stolen funds back, but the bank said it can take up to 30 days.
She’s on disability, so that means up to 30 days with NO money. A long, long way from ideal.
This is the new project whilst I mull over whether to rip apart the other blouse. Unlike my previous sewing project, I opted to do a mockup with this dress. I decided to go with a simple peasant/cottage-core dress, making the muslin tester from an old sheet we bought at a yard sale for a couple of bucks.
I improvised the heck out of the pattern I had, which was my original raglan sleeve blouse – and am mostly happy with the outcome. The stitching isn’t great. For my mockup, I don’t care. All I want is a proof of concept, as it were. Because I won’t be able to wear the mockup – it’s microfiber, aka polyester.
Le sigh.
It’s too bad, because it’s turning out genuinely cute. It has the perfect amount of fullness to it and should be a comfy fit, if it weren’t made of plastic. (Yes, y’all. Polyester is indeed plastic. Feel free to look it up for yourself.)
The grandson is still sleeping on our sofa. He comes with his own set of challenges. I love him to pieces. I wish I could help him more. For now, just giving him food and a safe place to stay has to be enough. His mom was planning to fly him out there by now. Then yesterday somebody hacked her bank account.
It’s been a roller coaster for sure. Here’s hoping things even out a bit over the next few months.
Oh honey, I am sending all the happy thoughts that I can.
But, sewing *is* on the upswing!!
And can confirm, polyester is unwearable.
Deep breaths.
Thank you. I’ll take every drop of positivity I can get right now because I am OVER all this crap.
I’m so sorry about your baby sister’s diagnosis. My husband was stage 4 with his pancreatic cancer by the time he was diagnosed. Fast moving and he just couldn’t fight it for long.
Good luck with the sewing projects. I think adding the black hem would be a great idea.
And our kids….yes….I sometimes wonder where their priorities are. Having a job, with benefits is key, even if you don’t like the job or the wages….it’s a start. Seems like once you have a job, it’s easier to find another.
My sister went to the oncologist today, who said what I said – she’s at least stage III. They’ll be doing more tests over the next couple of weeks to pin it down and map out treatment.
I’m sorry Dean had to deal with pancreatic cancer. No cancer is good, but the pancreatic varieties are usually so fast-moving there’s little doctors can do at all.