Knee!

I went to see the ortho doctor yesterday, and it was discouraging.  He moved my poor knee through all the various movements, and shook his head and said it is definitely a very loose kneecap.  He said, "I know you don't want to do surgery again."  So he fixed me up with a knee brace, called a J-brace, and said to come back in 4 weeks.  My knee now is *very* loose and I don't know if it is from the exam or a by-symptom of the new brace.  It has even "popped" while I was wearing the brace.  I am thoroughly discouraged.  And I am sure no one wants to hear any more about it.

When I cleared up all the papers and such from my parent's home, I just glanced through them all as I filled black trash bags to be sorted later.  When that time came, I was appalled at the minutiae in them.  There was a receipt for a 25 cent spring for a 42 Packard, as an example.  They also saved all of my report cards and those of my sister too.  I had never seen hers, so I was amazed when I looked through them and realized that she *never* passed a single subject.  They were all Fs.  All of them.  And yet she was promoted to the next grade.  I studied hard and was discouraged when I got a "B", so I guess my parents kept her cards confidential so she wouldn't be jealous of my good grades.  Anyway, by the time she moved here, she couldn't read or write, but boy she knew how to spend.  She begged money from our parents (who were not well off) every month, but she had nothing to show for it, not furniture, dishes, clothes, collectibles, what she spent all that money on I have no clue even now.  Drugs?  Booze?  Gambling?  It is 13 years since she passed away, and I still don't know.  My parents died two and five years before she died, in credit card debt as far as they could be.  Both were in a nursing home, Mom for 4 weeks and Dad for 3 years, and never got to be financially secure in all those or previous years.  She didn't visit them either, I think she moved on to her church for money, more fools they.  My folks even had triple mortgages on their home, which I only found out once I was their executrix.  There was no love lost between my sister and me;  and in fact I had no contact with her the last two years before she died (as the result of a fall on an icy sidewalk).  I know at her funeral we were treated as the pariah by the church members but not by the pastor, who knew her manipulative ways and told the others, in the nicest way, at her funeral, bless his heart.

Water and Bridges.

I think it is time for a wee nap, once I struggle into bed.  The kids just got back from the grocery store and brought home some white chocolate macadamia cookies, yum.  Maybe after dinner...