Just a short blog tonight.  It seems I'll be in a hurry from today until Saturday.    I'm making some edgings for a towel set for a friend of mom that will marry SATURDAY!!!  I totally forgot the wedding was this Saturday and I have to finish the edging of the face and hand towels.  Ugh!  So I have to turn on the turbo tonight.  I manage to almost finish the edging of the body towel at the psycho-doc.  lol   But I need to finish tonight the tatting so tomorrow I can be relax to meet Aileen Chia!!!

Aileen is a young tatter from Singapore.  We met in Facebook and later this year she was my partner on an exchange.  Now she came to visit her Puerto Rican BoyFriend and tomorrow we're going to meet in person.  Isn't is so cool when you can meet face to face with a dear online friend?  And not only a friend but a Tatter and Lacer.  Yay!!!!  So much to show her and share.  I'll be taking photos tomorrow and post them.

Okay, now that I took some rest I need to go back to my tatting.  See ya tomorrow!

Well, half of the dance 'cause it's still hurting my bones.  But I'm happy because the labs I made last week came most of them great!!!  My hemoglobin, sugar and all the chemistry is normal.  My coagulation times are in the range for a person that is taking blood thinners and above all, the Lupus tests reveal that it's well controled without medicines!  Yay!!!  Still I have to deal with the pains and keep taking all the medicines I'm taking now, but at least I won't need more medicines, just an evaluation of the pain medicines.  As soon as the pain medicines start working I'll come back to do my little bit of weekly cardio (just 10 minutes once a week) and start with the Tai Chi.

The other thing that is bugging me is the cholesterol.  It has drop just a few points but it's still way high.  *sigh* diet and the medicine I was taking is not helping.  The doctor recomended some natural supplements.  So next time I have money I'll buy them.  Flax seed oil and "nopalina" (a Mexican cactus).  She cut me off from the other medicine because is not working and anyway I can't take others because of my liver.  I hope these natural supplements plus the diet and exercise help better.

Meanwhile I'll keep crocheting and tatting.  I finished a few projects and need to take photos of them.

Hey,  I haven't gone nowhere, just that I have been with some pain plus the down from missing my husband.  I have been tatting and last night finished 2 collars.  I'll scan them and take a photo as soon as Naida's BF finish repairing mom's pc that is the one with the scanner.  Too many cables to put and take out from my laptop to install another thing.    Ahem...  Yes I'm lazy.  lol

In general I'm doing ok.  Today mom took me to make some labs and Saturday will give me the results.  Also I started today to make some exercise.  I found the "game" for PS2 "Eye Kinetics" that Naida had it in the box without using and I started a slow routine today.  Just the 10 minutes of warm up and stretching kill me and I barely can finish the 10 minutes.  Then I rest a couple of minutes to start the routine.  I'm doing a little of cardio and Tai Chi.  Let see how I'll do...

Now back to tattting.  Naida asked for a cellphone cover tatted in black.  Got the thread this morning and I'm off to get some patterns.

After 20 something hours I arrived home this morning and I'm fine.  I think I will be sleeping all day gettting acquaintance with the new time zone...  I took tons of photos on the plane.  Thanks for the prayers and duas.  Was a very pleasant trip.  

Yesterday I started to pack the things for the trip.  Hubby was going to the pharmacy to buy some medicines for me and when he opened the door this strange but very friendly cat who came to visit.  She enter when hubby opened the door and start meowing.  It was a very nice surprise!  I was half asleep and hubby yells, "Wally, you have a visitor"  I asked "Who" and he said "A cat".  I was thinking he was joking but then I heard the meow.

Hubby says that is from the streets but I think she was lost.  She enter the house and rub her head in some corners, like cats usually do.  I put my hand out for her to smell and she rub against it.  Really friendly cat.  Having cats before I knew that the meowing was because she was hungry.  I noticed she's pregnant.  I told hubby to open a can of tuna and placed outside near the door.  She purred like saying thanks and went off to the tuna can.  She let me pet her while eating and after eating half then I watch her lick her face clean.  I love to see the cats clean themselves. 


I wish she came a year before or even some months before.  I would have keep her.    After she finished, she just say good bye and went.  I had a similar experience here in Egypt 2 yeas ago when I was living in Hurghada (Red Sea).  That time was a real Egyptian Meow (an Egyptian breed) and was gorgeous!  Also came to my door a few days before I moved to Cairo.  Ate some chicken leftovers I had and then meow one last time before going it's way.  Does cats know when someone is going to travel and they come like to say "Have a good trip"? 








I'm not superstitious but I think this is a good sign.  Subhanallah (Praise God) for His blessings!

Yesterday hubby got me the air ticket to travel.  I'll be leaving Egypt on March 11th and will travel directly to NY.  Still I need to buy the ticket from NY to PR.  I hope to do that tonight or at least the week.  I'll arrive to NY around 4 pm and the next available and affordable trip to PR is at 9 pm.  I don't want to stay in NY one night because the flight is booked so I have to do it fast.  Not that I don't like NY but been alone in NY is boring.  None of my friends live near the JFK airport.  Or is there someone that lives near the airport?  In that case I can spent a couple of days.  

So now that it's official the trip my insomnia and nerves will go from bad to worst. *sigh*  It's something that always happens.  The packing, the things to buy for others, the cleaning of the house...  Really makes me sick all this.  One or two days before the trip I totally stop sleeping.  I have been up to 72 hours awake.  And no, I barely sleep on the plane.  I snore and I'm ashame of it.  May be I can snooze like 10 minutes or so, but that's not really sleeping.

I'm trying to keep myself calm and I'm crocheting.  Today I finished another crochet doily.  This one is oval with 2 pineapples at the end.  It took me like 12-15 hours to finish, taking a lot of rest between rounds.  I don't want the carpal tunnel flare up again.

The pattern is from a Decorative Crochet magazine #59.  The thread is Melanie #10, color #161; a variegated thread with pink, lavender, blue, mint green and white.  Here is the magazine photo so you can see well the design.


I have some thread left and I'm making a small crochet Bruge doily.  I hope the thread is enough.  I haven't make crochet Bruge in years!!!  Let see if I can get it again.

Yep, that's what I have.  Hubby called the ambulance and they took me to the university hospital.  I had very low blood preassure so they give me something for it and also a Mega nebulizer theraphy.  A mini bomb is what I call it.  Also they gave me antibiotics and a medecine for the pain because my ribs are swallow because of the effort I do for breathing.  Now, I'm all shaken,very hungry (the teraphies always make me hungry) but my troat is raw because of the coughing.  I'll drink some hot cocoa and will try to sleep.  Will try to post and read later if I can't sleep.

Poor hubby was so tire that he falll asleep in 5 minutes.


The photo is Flaming June by Leighton.  It's my favorite one.  I wish I could sleep peacefully like her!

  Gosh!  Everything hurts!  Hubby got sick with the cold the day of my BD and now we're both sick.  The problem is that he's a big baby when he's sick and I get double the sick when I get the flu because of the Lupus.  So now all you hear at home is sniff, cough and whine.  lol  Sound like the bad cousin of the cereal Snap, Crackle, Pop (Rice Krispies). 

But even if hubby is sick, he went to work.  That's kinda good.  Now I can sleep, or at leat try to, all day.    I'm taking the flu medicine, plus my regular medicines and have plenty of water beside my bed.  Will see ya later if I can't sleep because of the lucid dreams (caused by the fevers). 

TTFN!!!  

Happy BD to me!  Today I turned 38!  I'm so proud of it!  lol  Yes! I'm very happy of my age.  Why?  Because I think BDs are blessings from God and you should thanks Him for another year that He gives you the opportunity to be alive.

You see...  When your health is always in the borderline with death you learn to appreciate every single day that you're alive.  When doctors have low expectations about you (like they always told my mom that I was never be over 12 years old) you learn to love each of those extra days!

Hubby took me to the Cairo International Book Fair and we walk like 6 hours so we're both exhausted!  We bought a few books and will return next week to buy some more.  But for now my body is asking for a hot shower and a cool bed!

Have a great day and thanks so much for the BD wishes!

Okay, it's not me and my kitty.  But it's a cute BD photo.  In 5 hours will be my BD.  Yay!!!

Anyway.  I didn't spent time today online because there was not phone service today.  Why?  Someone STOLE the cables from the box outside and all the area was without service!  Can you believe it?    Thank God, they replace them fast!

Ah...  Before I go to sleep...  Thanks so much for the names suggestions!!!  I got over 200 of them.  In the next days I'll be posting some polls to choose one for the motifs that got a lot of suggestions and later in Feb 29th will announce the winner.  So from now on weekly polls are going to run.  All the names are so good it's going to be difficult to choose one!

Now I'll go to sleep!  Night nite!

My friend Toni is very clever!  She's using the Reviews area to write Testimonials of her friends like we used to do on Y360.  She wrote one about me a few minutes ago.  You can find it here.  I'll try to do something like this.  It's so cool!  Visit Toni's site it you can and leave some love in her Guestbook. 

Today have been an hectic one, as always when we go to buy groceries.  I can't stand the walking and standing for 3-4 hours.  Even when I sit for awhile at the Food Court and in Customer Service.  lol  Anyway...  Today apart of the groceries hubby got me an external hard drive for the laptop.  500 Gb of pure bliss!!!  I feel so happy now.  I'm moving almost everything to the new HD and leave my laptop HDs with just the essential.  All the graphic making stuff with go there and games like The Sims 2, Myst and FF XI will go to the 2nd HD of the laptop.  I hope this makes the lap a little faster.  Next month will have to buy the CD/DVD Rom because I busted the one on the laptop too.  Too many DVD and CD recordings I guess.  Also we got a cover for the laptop because it's already scratched outside.  My poor baby is seeing too much action and I need to take care of it.  It cost me a lot of effort and money so I have to take good care of it.

It's only 11 pm and I'm so tire that I can't do nothing.  Had to get a nebulizer therapy when I arrived and now I'm having the jitters.    So I'll join hubby in his snores.  See ya tomorrow everyone!

Yesterday I went to the pharmacy to check the burn.  It's 1st degree on the joint of the middle finger and the other 2 are only minor burns.  But all of them hurt as hell!!!  The doctor gave me an antibiotic with lidocaine to apply twice daily.  It works pretty well until I have to wash my hands.  Argh!!!  At least I'm not having my OCD active or I'll be washing my hands every hour.

I'll try to tat slowly to see if I can...  Meanwhile I'll be watching some online movies.  I need to buy books.  I run out of books to read here, really!

Well, last night wasn't a good one.  I "snap and bite" hubby several times for nothings.  But then around 3 we went to sleep and we didn't hear the alarm for him to go to work.  So he lost the day, but....

He make a couple of calls this morning and "discover" where I can get medical treatment by good doctors.  Alhamdulillah (Praise God)!  Well, it's better late than never.  So we took the bus to the 6th October University Hospital.  Asked here and there until we find the correct place to take a turn to see the Internal Medicine doctor and after an hour or so the doctor saw me.    A female doctor that at least didn't look at me like I was from another planet when I was talking about Lupus and my other problems.  Because it's the 1st visit I have to make analysis first and then she can determine if I need changes in the treatment.  I had with me a list of all the medicines I was taking (13 in total!) and she got surprise for the amount of medicines for the heart and asthma and no for Lupus.  Well, thanks God I have been out of Lupus treatment for about 3 years but because of the hellish summer spent here I started to have the symptoms again.  So next week, God's willing, I'll have analysis for cholesterol, complete blood profile (CBC + diff) and a couple of test for the Lupus.  According to the results then she'll prescribe the medicines.  I know my cholesterol is WAY high.  But I have been diminishing it slowly with diet (low or fat free food) as much as I can.  Here in Egypt is difficult to make a proper diet because the food doesn't have the "Nutritional Facts" label.  On thing she checked and was bad...  My blood pressure was 170/130!!!  I have never have had it that high!  So may be that's why I'm having so much headaches.    Duh!  I forgot to mention her about a Liver Enzymes profile.  But when I go to make the test I'll tell the technician to add it.  The Lupus has been affecting the liver and heart...

Also, while waiting on the room I was able to tat a little and of course I was the center of attraction!  lol  After I go out of the office a lady came to me and started talking really fast in Arabic and I scream for help to hubby.   To make the story short...  She loved what I was doing and want to learn.  She speaks English and will teach me Arabic in exchange for Tatting Lessons!  Isn't it great!?  I got to see a doctor today, managed to tat a little and made a friend. 

Thanks God for s nice day!!!

I'm not a very "affectionate" with my family.  I mean, we're not a family were we kiss when greeting each other, our jokes can sound offensive to people that doesn't know us well, we discuss a lot...  You can say we're pretty similar to The Simpsons...  But even we all that I miss them.

I have been a year and 2 weeks here in Egypt and though I love my husband and he loves me and please me in everything he can, I feel lonely.  I miss my goofy sisters and my controlling mother...  My "strange" father and even some friends.  I miss Rioki (Naida's cat) and even if Tuqui is no more in the house I miss him. 

I miss having my things.  Even if they're not a lot because 2 years ago I lost everything I had.  But I managed last year to buy some things and got my shuttles back.  I have with me here some of them (the cheap, common ones) here and I pass the time tatting with them.  I got some threads and beads here but other materials that are common and easy to buy like chenille (pipe cleaners), good embroidery threads, ribbons, bangles ( I use them for suncatchers)...  In general I miss a shop like Michael's, JoAnn or Hancock Fabrics.  Even if I don't go and buy, I loved to spend time on the shop looking at all the novelties crafts and new materials and getting ideas for new projects.

I miss the weekend trips and family dinners.  Sundays, after church usually mom, sisters an BIL went to a restaurant to eat or spent time at Letty's house cooking and eating.  Or spending the weekend at dad's home. 

I miss the easy life.  The fact that I don't have a  language barrier.  That if I want to go to a shop I tell mom and we go; not having to depend of public transportation.  I even miss my walker.  Egypt definitively is not for a person with mobility impairment!  There are almost no ramps.  Streets have high steps and buildings usually don't have elevators.   Even if this sounds strange...  I miss the postal service!!!  Right now I'm very angry because 2 envelopes containing some of my tatting and I sent at the beginning of October never arrived and mom sent me another envelope like a month ago and hasn't arrived and it contained information about my health plan!  And everything is so expensive to send.  I made a little box to send to my father and is still here; one because there's no money and second because my husband still can't grasp the importance for me to do this.  He even don't know how to write a letter, where for me writing a letter is an art! 

I miss so many things...  Call me materialistic, but I grew up in a family that, even if we didn't have a lot of money, we keep up with technology, had an excellent education and we were encourage to search for the best.  Egypt is still a primitive country.  It's beautiful and people are friendly.  It's a great place for vacation, but no for me.  I can't live here permanently.  For all these reasons and some more, like my health.  Not having treatments here is taking its toll; but I don't want to talk about it anymore. 

I guess I'm just having early Winter Blues.

This little cutie pie is my nephew.  His name is Mohammed Osama and is 7 months old.  His mom came to visit and they stay all day long!

Sundays are a little difficult for me because I'm busy preparing the Online Tatting Class in Spanish.  But I just had to keep an eye on him and play with him.  Mona (his mom) cooked for us today.  She made "mashi" (small cabbage rolls filled with species and rice), fried chicken, "murugheia" (a herb made into soup with garlic) and we drink also chicken stock.  Everything was delicious!!!

As usually we gave her some stuff to take home and I gave her the shawl that I made a few weeks ago.  She loves it!  Now I have an excuse to make another.  lol

Well, I finished the pattern of the Butterfly that will be discuss in the Tatting class in English and I still have 1 1/2 hrs before the Spanish class.  Long day!!!!  I think I'll eat some more "mashi".  So yummy!!!