You probably thought you were home free regarding extraneous Jen information when I posted the results of my most recent pap smear, but I feel compelled to tell you my mammogram results were good, too.
As I mentioned last year, I go to Waukesha for mammograms because they give you while-you-wait results. In the two years I've been going there, I've never seen another woman in her 40's or even her 50's in the waiting room. Where are you 40- somethings getting yours done? Are you blithely going to whatever imaging center's the closest and then waiting patiently for that little card in the mail? Do you worry while you wait, or are you pleasantly surprised when you get the postcard? Oh, that's right. I had a mammogram last week. I had that kind of mammogram exactly once. It took two weeks to get my results, and I lost 8 pounds. Not coincidentally, it's when I first became acquainted with Dr. Bowtie.
I've been working on an idea I have for people who are afraid to fly, and who are also afraid of diagnostic procedures (I'm certain the cross-over between these two groups is huge). It works like this: you board a very large plane and are immediately anesthetized. In an airborne exam room, a team of doctors, radiologists and lab technicians go right to work, giving you a mammogram, a colonoscopy, a pap smear, a CBC and, if applicable, a liver function test and sed. rate analysis. When you land, you are given the results of everything. As an added bonus, you're in Hawaii! It'll be called Global Imaging.
Going to Waukesha also means going to Milwaukee and visiting the folks, and unfortunately, being stoned on valium anxious about my impending mammogram, I forgot to pack my camera for the trip. I wish I'd brought it, because after the mammogram LB took me to a yarn store in Elm Grove called The Yarn House. It was the tiniest yarn store I'd ever seen, and the sign on the door had a list of presidents who'd served terms in office during the years the store existed. I think JFK was the first on the list.
The elderly proprietress immediately asked LB and me if we were brother and sister. Surprisingly, we've been asked this before. In the past it's always amused me but now I'm starting to wonder. It could explain a lot: missing arms, autism...you think? Naaaahhhh.
She also told us that she'd known Elizabeth Zimmermann personally. The first time EZ came to the shop with her husband, she warned the owner: Brace yourself: he's charming. The proprietress showed every sign of being a flirt, and when her younger assistant went to get a ladder to access the Rowan Kid Mohair for me, she said, Why are you bothering with that? We have a tall man, here, gesturing gracefully at my brother LB. Later, when she was ringing up the sale and LB tried to interject that surely I didn't need another 24" circular needle in size 4mm, she said to him, You mind your manners!
I bought the Rowan Kid Mohair in a rather breasty shade of pink, and unvented a stitch pattern for it.
I call it the bossa nova, because it's physically impossible to do it without humming The Girl from Ipanema. Knit three rows. On the fourth row, it's knit one, then knit the next stitch together with the loop directly below it from the previous garter stitch ridge.
My left thumb nail suffered a terrible blow in 1999 and hasn't been the same since.
These are working hands, and they date me. The rest of me looks much younger.
Besides, Elizabeth Zimmermann? Total man-hands, you know.
Repeat these four rows. If I dug up my Harmony stitch guide I'd probably find this listed as garter stitch variation #3, but I like Bossa Nova better.
Enough with the breasts and the pink already; let's move onto sausage. It's been a long time since I've held a contest, so here we go:
On I-94, driving from Milwaukee to Chicago, 'round about Kenosha you will pass a sign that says, " ___ Recreation Area." If you are as immature as LB and I, then you will giggle at this sign every time you drive past it. What is the name of this recreation area?
You may Google; one guess per person, please. The prize is a Usinger's gift assortment called the Snacker's Delight and it looks like this:
If there is more than one correct guess, I'll do a drawing. USA participants only this time around, given Usinger's shipping parameters. The drawing will be on Friday, October 16th.