I know it has been rather quite around here.

Last week (the last week of April) I was away on a trip, which turned out to be much, much harder than I had ever imagined. (Well, not the trip itself I suppose, but stuff I had to deal with there.) Fortunately the trip was to a place where I have a dear friend who held my hand and let me vent, rant and rage, and cry. Mind you, ranting and raging isn't really something I do often, but i certainly did a lot of it last week. Unfortunately I now foresee that there might be more in the future at some point; at least this time I guess it won't come up on me as such a surprise. (Funny thing is that it didn't surprise Hubband so much, or a few other people.) As it happened I also had some, but very limited access to the Internets while on my trip, mostly just email and all of it was on a computer that didn't belong to me, thus making it very difficult, if not impossible, to do any posting here while I was away.
Any hows, now I have a very busy rest of the month ahead of me/us, between getting ready for a very important college graduation (well, important to DTE and the rest of our family at least), having both D's home (one for a bit over a week before she goes to her summer internship and the other for the summer before she starts her "year-long, post-graduate thing while I decide on graduate school/what do I do next"), getting ready for a real-live vacation with Hubband at the end of the month, and of course, all the regular stuff that I do. Oh, and due to some fall-out from my trip last week I have extra stuff I need to make arrangements for. Le sigh. Never fear, I/we will manage to get through; all in all we have made it through much worse in life.
In other exciting news around the Coffee Yarn Household, we have an other new appliance. Sunday afternoon I went to the basement to get something from the freezer and noticed a medium sized puddle under and around the water heater, so by 2 PM Monday afternoon we had a new one installed and heating water for me. (Me, since by 2:15 PM I was delivering Hubband to the airport.)
I have finished knitting from April to report (well, that is if you all aren't horrible bored with knitting content) and of course there are lots of green things growing about here as well as some bulbs have bloomed and a few other flowers are all decked out in their spring finery. Sadie had her annual spring "find something really, really gross/wonderful and disgustingly smelly/lovely to roll in" last week while I was gone (hopefully that means she has gotten it out of her system for the year) so that was a plus for me, and Oribel is doing her "I really, really need to go outside into the sun! Wait! What is this wind crap? I need in! Oh look! It is sunny I need out! Wind? I need in!" thing that results in her having to stay inside after about two or three in and outs. Of course that results in the "I am not happy in so I shall try to dig through every door in the house to find a way outside."
OK, so for right now I need to go do "stuff" but I will do my best to get back to you soon with some pictures of the yard, flowers, animals, and knitting if you all want to see it. I might even mention my vacation again.

Last weekend

I was able to stand on the deck and get some pictures of Oribel surveying her domain to the west.

 

 

I was even able to get her to look at me by calling her name,

 

but that didn't last long as soon as she realized I didn't have anything interesting for her.

 

It rained the other day.

Someone was not impressed.

A while back,

I made a knitted bowl, which was pretty big when it was done. Which was OK, since the whole plan was to make it smaller with a trip through the washing machine.

 

It didn't wind up shrinking as much as I would have liked, and it wasn't as dense either, so then the plan turned into, "Add some fabric and turn it into a bag." That part of the plan hasn't happened yet because even though Oribel doesn't have much use for store-bought cat beds,

 

she seems to be willing to turn all sorts of other stuff into them.

Guess what?

Digging a hole to transplant chives into is a lot easier if Someone isn't sticking their head in the hole to see what you are doing in their yard. Also, if you don't want the fut of your back leg getting stuck to your stomach, you shouldn't go about in the cockleburs.

Kiwi Ice Cream

4 (or 5) ripe kiwi, peeled
2/3 cup orange juice
2 eggs (unless you are all out of eggs like I was and just skip those completely)
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 cups whipping cream or half-and-half (I prefer the 1/2 & 1/2)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
6 to 8 drops green food coloring

Blend kiwis and orange juice until almost smooth and set aside. In a large bowl beat eggs and sugar until smooth and thick. Stir in the kiwi/OJ mixture and remaining ingredients until evenly distributed. Pour into ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer's directions. Makes about 2 quarts.

I remembered to eat breakfast today.

It rained recently,

so of course Someone had to go out to investigate all the changes in her yard,
and then come tell me all about them.

 

 

It seems that Hubband is

my favorite hand wrapper; sadly he isn't the most recent one to wrap my hand. The doctor was very impressed with how well my hand is healing and said we seem to be doing everything the right way for it. (We, since I have had lots of help with the wrapping up part.) It has no signs of infection, no signs of binding up, lots of bright pink, new skin growing in, all that sort of stuff. I am supposed to keep doing what we've been doing until it doesn't have the couple of tiny open spots left and doesn't hurt when exposed to the air. Then the nurse wrapped it up so I could drive home. She did a fine job of course, but I guess she didn't want to get tit too tight, so it feels all loose and weird. Well, loose and weird compared to the way Hubband wraps it up so perfectly. Unfortunately he is gone for a few days and can't redo it for me. Either I am going to have to figure out how to do it myself, take someone up on their offer to skip out on their housework to drive 40+ miles to do it for me, or draft someone else to do it before he gets back home. I wouldn't want all this wonderful healing to be for naught.

My hand seems to be healing

fairly well. At least hat is our guess at this point since it starting to itch and the blisters are gone (plus no signs of infection). I have an appointment next Monday for it to be looked at by a doctor. It doesn't feel like any of the joints/bendy parts are binding up, but I suppose there is still time for that to happen. Some of the skin feels funny, kind of dry and leathery, and it looks icky and red, but it really is doing well. I am sure it will look red and obvious for some time to come. (I am guessing there will be some visual evidence for at least a year.)
I can still do most stuff with it all wrapped up, knitting doesn't seem to be a problem and for the most part cooking works out OK, if I am careful about chopping stuff up. I'm still not washing dishes for now and am beginning to think it would be easier to just pin a sign to myself for whenever I go out in public.
The biggest drawback to this? There are a couple of important stages of bread making that just can't be done with my hand in this condition. I am starting to go into bread-making withdrawal here (especially since there are certain things I always make this time of year). It is a good thing we had some back-up bread in the freezer, but those are going to run out really soon!