Outta Here! Just a little more hand-wringing...

We're outta here on Thursday--bound for Costa Rica and the Panama Canal, with stops in Panama City, Puerto Limon (CR),  New Orleans, Key West, and Miami.  A land trip for the first week and then a cruise.


I'm packing, meaning  trying to talk myself out of taking so many clothes. Sometimes I've done primitive sketches in my travel notebooks (often involves Crayolas) of the clothes I've taken on a trip, and that's been  helpful.  What did I wear all the time?  What was dumb to take? (Lots.)

 Note the number of black tops.  It gets boring.

For me, there are three major categories to cope with pre-trip:

1. Paper.  This includes torn-out pages of guidebooks, maps, vouchers, receipts, etc.  That all goes into a big manila envelope. As we work our way through the stack during the trip, I toss as much paper as I can bear to (you never know!)

Then there is a minutely-detailed itinerary, which I carry in my handbag.  The one for this trip is 2-1/2 pages.  Hotel addresses, phone numbers, room rates, flight numbers,  reservation numbers, shore excursions, you name it.

 The envelopes for this trip

Envelope for a past trip:  they get pretty beat-up

2.  Electronics.  Batteries, chargers, cords.  I'm taking a minicomputer, Walkman, cell phone, and camera.  I keep chargers and cords in this thing, which is really meant for jewelry, of which I take almost none:

I used to throw them all in a Ziploc bag, where they got tangled up.

4. Clothes.  See above.  First step is to wash a bunch of stuff, then try it on and see if the waist fits.  If not, no-go.

I'm going to be posting about our trip on Travelpod.com    If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll probably get an e-mail reminder with a link to the latest post.   Or e-mail me, and I'll put you on the list.  Or go to www.travelpod.com and type in "LRandal."  Or don't bother (really, you have my permission to skip the whole thing!).

Au revoir!

Good-By, Deanna

 Deanna Davis died last night, a little over year after being diagnosed with cancer.  She was a remarkable person: empathic, kind, creative, and a force-to-be-reckoned with when it came to something she believed ought to be done. 

This is a post I wrote a year ago about her show-within-a-show at the East Bay Heritage Quilters show in March 2014.  At her  upcoming memorial/celebration of life, her house will be turned into a gallery of her quilts, so her friends can once again admire them and reflect on the hugeness of her heart.

* * * * *

 March 2014

 Deanna Davis, out-going president of the East Bay Heritage Quilters, had a show-within-a-show at last weekend's "Voices in Cloth."  She was recently diagnosed with a serious illness, and this look back at her work was a wonderful way for her to see old friends and old friends to celebrate her years of quilting.

Deanna, center

Deanna quilts with the most open heart I know.  There's a personal story behind most of her quilts, a response to experiences (the disastrous Oakland Hills fire of 1991, quitting smoking around the same time), and she doesn't shy away from experimenting with techniques and pushing the envelope in design, format, and media.

I'll stop commenting and let you take a look!  It was hard to get good photos because there was bright sun behind her quilts, but I did my best with my rebellious little Nikon.

Can We All Get Along

Global Warming



Release

Song of Friendship

Collections I, a response to the 1991 Oakland Hills fire, which came within two miles of Deanna's home.



Collections II, "which celebrates the strength and memories used to grow and rise beyond the loss of collections [in the fire]"

New Years 1991, when Deanna resolved to quit smoking after 30 years

Detail of New Years 1991:  The top lifts up to reveal messages about her struggle to quit



Detail of New Years 1991

Detail of New Years 1991



Another detail of New Years 1991

Secrets

Wild Africa Elephants

Woman Dreaming, a quilt I remember seeing at the Oakland Museum in the late '90's as part of a Smithsonian traveling exhibit, "Women of Taste: A Collaboration Celebrating Quilt Artists and Chefs."  Deanna partnered with chef Frances Wilson, whom she depicts here.

Figure Study #2

Scenic Byways #2

Michael's Hat

Figure Study #3

Adrenalin  (with Deanna's daughter Kathryn in the corner--sorry, Kathryn!)

Deanna's family was at the show on Saturday: 

Deanna with her son, John, and her daughter, Kathryn



...and with her other daughter, Donna

(I ran into Deanna's husband, Bob, a few times but never had the presence of mind to get out my camera, alas.)

For years, Deanna has run the guild's Children's Quilt Project, which supplies quilts to needy and sick children through various nonprofit agencies and hospitals.   Guild members donate fabric, piece quilts, sew on bindings--everything needed to produce 1200 quilts annually.  Deanna's designed a zillion quilt kits that guild members pick up and sew together, and she's coordinated every aspect of distribution.  Nobody has a bigger heart!

So I Fell on My Noggin...

What I look like two days post-ER.  I'll spare you the "before-stitches" photos. 

Yep, I fell on my head.   Or rather my left eyebrow.

One minute I was walking along the sidewalk near the El Cerrito Plaza BART station, on my way back from San Francisco, and the next minute my left temple was hitting the pavement hard.  No sense of tripping, no catching myself with my hands.  Ack!

I got out a mirror and saw a deep cut over my left eye where the lens of my glasses had sliced into my eyebrow (I know, the verb).   My first thought--truly--wasn't about scarring.  No, it was not.   It was, "Shit,  I'm going to have to go to the ER."

 View from my cubicle in the ER.   I wasn't wearing these shoes when I fell but some cute flats that don't fit right.  Vanity!

Jerry came home from work and drove me over to Alta Bates Hospital, and there we sat from 5:15-9:15, when I finally escaped with four stitches.

The wait:  long and boring.  After while, we swapped books--I read about endangered butterflies, and Jerry took on my  Barbara Pym novel:

Jerry reading Jane and Prudence

Me:  So what do you think of Barbara Pym's book?

Jerry:  Not much happens.

The actual thread

While the ER doc stitched me up, she told me that she was a Berkeley grad who went to Philadelphia for med school, then on to a residency at UCLA. She worries about her gray hairs and asked where I got my hair colored and how much it cost.  (I was aghast--dollar amounts in front of one's husband?!)  This to distract me from the distinct pattern of pricks I was feeling despite a local anesthetic.

Finally, with three pages of "Wound Instructions" and minus a steep $200 co-pay, we escaped into a very cool, breezy night.


Thanks to everyone who sent supportive messages on Facebook during this this mini-ordeal.  Very cheering!  Also, the follow-up e-mails.

I'm fine.  My knees are skinned ("abrasions," per doctor), and I have a black eye, but the cut ("laceration") doesn't hurt, and tomorrow I'll be allowed to get it wet so I can wash my hair.  My bangs will cover the scar.  Stitches out on Friday.

* * * * *

Today we went for a walk in Lucas Valley, in Marin County, and it felt good to be in one piece and able to walk a trail on a glorious spring day:

Miller Creek Watershed

My caregiver and ambulance driver

On the way home, we stopped at the corner where I fell, because I wanted to figure out what happened:

I think it must have been the raised seam in the middle of the photo that tripped me up, because I was walking up the street and suddenly landed in the smooth rectangle just beyond that seam.  The curb was recently modified to accommodate wheelchairs.