After a major setback with the disc/sciatica pain sending me to the ER yesterday, my Maine trip is canceled and there is no sewing or knitting going on around here. I’m back on a bunch of meds and waiting for the referral for an MRI and Neurologist … and of course, it had to happen over a holiday weekend.
I can’t sit or lie in bed … I’m alternating between two positions on the living room floor and pacing when the pain becomes unbearable in either of those.
I’m hoping the new batch of meds prescribed in ER will kick in soon because the pain is pretty bad and I want to get back to work!
As I head home today I’m thinking about what I want to accomplish this month. Without looking at the calendar I thought I’d have about the same “working” time as I did in August.
Considering I was gone for a full week, I was happy with my results – 6 small donation tops pieced and 5 quilted.
I’m only traveling 1 week this month too but then I looked at the calendar.
Most of the last week of the month will be taken up by appointments and packing for a month away so I really only have 2 full working weeks.
I have prep work to do before my trip to the HeartStrings sew-in. I’ve got 5 waiting for binding that I want to take with me to hand stitch and none of them have been machine stitched yet.
I want to piece at least one fat quarter top for our precut of the month.
I need to get Maureen’s king size top quilted and get the binding machine stitched on so Mom can hand stitch it down.
Since I’ll be gone all of October, I need to get my family exchange gift that is due at the end of October pieced and quilted this month. It’s a small project but it will take some time.
So I won’t get nearly as much done this month as I hoped and the end of the year seems to be coming at me faster than I’d like. I guess if I’m going to be traveling again I’ll have to adjust my expectations.
Thanks to my friend Susan, today’s walk was around Lake Harriet. Keith and I used to bike out to the chain of lakes all the time so it was fun to walk around Lake Harriet and have lunch outside. Susan came and picked me up at the hotel and brought me back to downtown afterwards.
I always loved the view of downtown from the lakes. We had a nice 3 mile walk around the lake while we got caught up with each other.
The restaurant on Lake Calhoun that we used to eat at closed a while back and I didn’t realize there was one on Lake Harriet. What a nice view for our meal.
Today’s walk was probably a little ambitious but I wanted to give it a shot. I first walked from downtown to Minnehaha Falls Park in June 2006 … and on that trip I even walked past the park to Ft Snelling. It was my first trip to Minneapolis and we were trying to decide if Keith would make the move with his company from Marietta, GA or if he would take a severance package. in the end, we decided we’d make the move because we only had to commit to one year and I knew I could do anything for 1 year! We stayed almost 8 years in Minneapolis and it turned out to be one of our favorite places we’ve lived.
Today, I walked from our downtown hotel to the park – 7 miles … and then another 2 miles wandering along the falls trails and walking to the light rail station for the ride back downtown. Luckily the station I got off at was just a short 0.3 mile walk back to the hotel for a total of 9.3 miles!! I’m tired and sore but it was a great afternoon.
Today’s walk was 4 miles heading away from the river and through downtown to Loring Park and the Basilica of St Mary’s. This is the area we lived in when we first moved to Minneapolis in 2006.
I don’t attend Mass anymore but I do find a lot of peace and comfort in quiet prayer in churches and the Basilica has always been a favorite spot for me. Today, I lit candles and said prayers for the loved ones we’ve lost.
And speaking of lost loved ones, I cannot be here in Minneapolis without being surrounded by memories of Chesty. I miss my sweet boy so much. We had parks by the apartment and the townhouse here and he loved nothing better than walking to the park. However, he was not particularly fond of the snow!
On my way back to the hotel, I stopped in at the library for a while. I was really disappointed to see that the genealogy area had been eliminated. One of the librarians told me they’d taken the computers away and stopped having the volunteers there to help library patrons with their research. I spent many wonderful hours volunteering and am sad to see it is no longer there.
I was looking up something on the blog from my last visit to Minneapolis in 2019 and came across this quilt. I’ve been wanting to bust out my 6 inch HST die and I think this one would be a nice one to make again.
My inspiration was a pattern from a Craftsy kit I’d bought a while back. They used 10 inch squares but I cut mine using my 6 inch finished HST GO die from Accuquilt.
We left the North Shore this morning and arrived in Minneapolis this afternoon. I wanted to head right for the river for a walk. It still feels like home even after all these years (8 years since we moved).
Keith will be working this week but I’ll still be in vacay mode and enjoy wandering around the city to all my favorite places.
You know I’m not a morning person so I don’t see a lot of sunrises but someone set the alarm clock in the hotel room for 6am … there was a crack in the curtains and Keith just happened to see the sky so I had to get up and take a look. It was gorgeous!
After a little more sleep, we headed to Gooseberry Falls State park and had a great time hiking the different trails.
So many great memories of our time here in Minnesota. We first came to the North Shore in 2007 and stayed at the same hotel 15 years ago – The Inn on Lake Superior. We have the same great view of the lake from the balcony on this visit.
Lots of walking along the lake today after arriving this afternoon and tomorrow we’ll go to Gooseberry State Park and hike.
