All About Kim

Well, this month started off busy, busy, busy! I am working almost non-stop on bridesmaid's dresses, and I am getting crazy seeing yellow! My daughter and I attended a "Tea Party" themed wedding shower, for the bride-to-be, Miss Teniya Fairey. It was real fun, and a real tea party!

I also started doing a side job of assembling manufactured items with 2 friends of mine, Julie and Jill. They are also making some of the dresses for this wedding. We are doing a lot of comparing (sewing) notes to make sure the dresses all look the same. There are 7 girls in the wedding, plus one flower girl. The assembly work is mind-numbing, but pays well, and as long as we have friends to chat with, the time passes quickly.

Dad is doing okay, this chemo affects him more than the other one did. He is losing ALL his body hair and also his appetite. Poor guy has little energy but keeps plodding along. About the time he begins to feel a little better, it's time for another chemo treatment.

This month, besides all the above mention things, I have been to: 5 dentist appointments, 3 appointments for Meg's school, 2 chemo appointments, 2 chemo follow-up appointments, 3 other doctor appointments, a tea party, a 2-day convention, and 2 times to the airport to drop-off and pick-up my niece, nephew, great nephew, and daughter from their trip to Seattle for a wedding! Whew! Am I tired!

Well, we celebrated the beginning of October by attending the fireworks show at the Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk, that is held annually the first Saturday of October. The show was great, and although it was a little foggy, it made everything seem a little more dreamy.

I continued to work, and sew for the wedding. The wedding day was the 21st of this month. Everything was done in time and looked great! The day of the wedding, I got a frantic phone call from the bride's auntie! It seems one of the bridesmaids' invisible zipper had broken! PANIC! I grabbed my sewing gear and my machine, (just in case) and took off out to the wedding site to lend a hand. By the time I got there, the photographer was taking some of the posed shots for the wedding party with someone holding edges of the broken dress together behind the girl's back! It never showed in the photos! After looking at the dress, I decided the best way to handle it would be to just sew her into the dress by hand, and worry about getting it off later! Then, someone noticed another of the girls' zippers was coming apart! So, another friend threaded a needle and began sewing her up too! A couple of the groomsmen had to have loose buttons sewed back on so I recruited my daughter Meg to take care of that detail! Crazy!

I was glad that only one of the dresses had been one I had made, the other was made by my friend Jill. Although they were the same brand zipper, we decided that it had to be defective zippers since we had bought them at different Joann's stores. The wedding went off fine, no one knew the possible disaster, and the wedding party will always remember the craziness! I was also in charge of videotaping and that was a treat! It was probably one of the most beautiful weddings I have ever been to, and Teniya and her Sammy made a gorgeous couple!

My mother had a minor accident involving a wine cork and a dog and ended up breaking her foot! She attended the wedding in a cast to her knee! It seems she was going across the patio carrying a bag of garbage and the dog came up to her and was kind of trying to play. She side-stepped him and stepped on an unseen wine cork he had been playing with. Her foot slipped sideways out of the flip-flop she had on, and she fell down. She knew something bad had happened because she heard a "Crack". she lay there for a few minutes with the dog licking her face, and then called for my dad, who was in bed, taking a nap on the other side of the house. Besides all the other side-effects from the chemo, he also seems to be losing his hearing. She finally was able to get up and come inside on her own. So we have been over at their house a lot this month helping out with some things they can't do too well.

Things this month were a little less hectic. The assembling work is over for a while, and the weddings are behind us. Chemo continues, but that is getting to be routine. I took a much needed break from sewing this month, and tried to take it easy. My son Jake turned 20 this month, making me feel old!

Well, dad had the last of his chemo treatments this month, and they are getting ready to set up a radiation schedule. He had to have a couple of really strenuous tests to see how the progress of the chemo is, but they seem to think he will do okay with the radiation.

My daughter got her driver's license this month! She also turned 17! I can't take it! I am aging rapidly! She is trying to finish both her Junior and Senior year in high school in this one year, and she is also taking an accounting class at the local junior college, and working full-time. I don't know where she gets her energy! What am I crazy??? She's 17, that's where!

The year ended with a whimper, and as far as I'm concerned, that was fine with me.