Puzzled

I am scratching my metaphorical head when I see how many pageviews I have gotten this week.  Do I thank Google?  Is there some facet I have overloooked, like the titles of my posts that click with a google search topic?   Dunno.  If you are new to this blog, thank you for visiting.  If you have been one of my long time followers, I'm glad to see you again.

I have been using a lap stand as I cross stitch to hold the hoop of my project.  This frees up my left hand so it can hold a magnifying glass.  I think I have pretty good close vision since the cataract removal, but obviously not good enough.  And I stitch on 14 count fabric (there are 14 stitches per inch) which is baby steps.  I have some 16 count (probably OK) but also 18, 24, and 32, which is out of the question.  I bought them in a lot sale, just to have something to practice on.  The resulting image for the higher count fabric is terrifically detailed, but that won't help me see the stitches.

My physical therapist has signed off on my home health therapy and urged me to find an out-patient therapist to continue, explaining how they have equipment and techniques not do-able at home.  But getting anywhere is a  real chore, as I must use the walker, then (at the doctor or the clinic) transfer to a wheelchair.  Having to do that twice or three times a week would be a pain.  I have compromised by doing my exercises twice a day, to strengthen both legs.  I still have my weak leg buckle on me for no apparent reason, but I don't fall, which is a huge relief.  I am so sorry, as I have said before, that I had the knee replacement done.  I am nowhere near the usability of my knee before the surgery, much less an improvement in use.  I do have this lovely 12-inch scar on my knee to show for all of  my efforts, and the 6 surgeries,  as a memento.

Meanwhile I am trying to lose weight (not just the muscle mass I have lost) to ease the stress on my joints in general.  I am helped by not being able to get to the kitchen (4 months now) to snack, and having my meals brought down by my son.  I can't really tell if I am making progress since all the water retention / swelling skews the numbers on the scale.  It would be nice if some good would come out of this all.

Time to sign off, everybody hang in there and be grateful for all the ordinary things in your life.  I know I am.

Peace.

Spinning wheel of death

I write this mostly on my MacBook Air, 10 or so years old.  Lately as I do very little, like rolling down a Facebook page, I will get that damned colored wheel that is the equivalent of the blue screen of death that windows will give you.  I can only power off and restart, but even that won't always work.  I have downloaded a free version of MacKeeper, and if it proves to help, I will consider getting the full (costly!) version.  So far it looks good, but I haven't challenged it yet with multiple windows open at the same time, etc.  I shall have to wait.

I am missing a package of 4 small tubes of E6000 glue, that is my latest quest.  How I manage to lose something in this room I really can't fathom.  I spend an inordinate amount of time searching for things; sometimes I find whatever it is, and sometimes I have to give up.  The glue is a give up case.  I have a bottle of gorilla glue (it used to be called gorilla snot, years back) and as long I am gluing
non-porous things I'm OK with just that.  Until I lose it too...

I think I will go back to bed, maybe I can lull myself to sleep while I ponder where things are.

Is there a doctor in the house?

I got a phone call from my doctor's nurse to set up an appointment to talk about my lab work and my swollen feet.  It is set for May 18th I think  (I wrote it down in my organizer)leaving me weeks to fret over what gives.  I looked up my lab results  on line and there are some that are really high and some really low, but I have long since forgotten what they pertain to.  It seems to me creatine and BUN are markers for kidney problems, but I am not sure  (I am a licensed  med tech can you believe it?).  I am determined to not look up these things online, it would only fuel my anxiety. They told us that no news is good news, and that they would call us if there was bad news, otherwise they would mail the results.

Yesterday I bought an Ottlite floor lamp to do my stitching.  I borrowed a small table top one to see how it is to stitch with one, and it is wonderful.  Might even do away with my magnifier, I shall see (get it, see?)  It was on sale, from $299.99 to 99.99, this for their top of the line model.  Hope it works out OK.  It is still a lot of money for crafting.  I guess it would work for splinter removing, and maybe for eyebrow plucking too.

I lost an almost new compact of face powder, Lancome brand.  I took it to the various skilled nursing places, along with the big short face brush to put it on.  My conclusion is that it got lifted while I was in one or the other places.  My aide at the last place said to hide my cash (all $5 dollars) as things were disappearing while patients were at therapy.  Lancome compacts run $35 or $40 apiece, so it would tempt someone who buys cosmetics at the grocery or drug store.  If it hadn't been new I wouldn't have minded so much, but we tore the room apart and it isn't here, and I don't remember seeing it or using it myself.   I think my eye liner is missing too, but that isn't a big loss.  I bought another compact from Sephora for $33 so it doesn't hurt too much.  Using makeup already used by someone else, yuck.  At one time you could buy used cosmetics on eBay, but they forbid it now, except for perfume, I think.  I remember being in one psychiatric hospital and having one of the patients ask to use my makeup, and I said no, but not very nicely I am afraid.  No boundaries.

Lancome is supposed to have a little diacritical over the e  but I don't remember how to do it.

There has been quite an uproar at the "Flosstube" group, a YoutubeI group for stitchers.  One of the members posted a risqué stitch project, leaning on the obscene side, and boy did things get hot.  Finally the admin people weighed in and said we're all adults, if you don't like it, pass on by.  That is the opposite of what I expected to happen, but good for them.  You'd think some members have never seen nudity, etc. before.

It is 3:30 am and I am back to bed.  Hope all is well with everyone, and that anyone who feels like stabbing something 10,000 times takes up cross stitching.

echo cardiogram

The home health nurse came yesterday and concurred with the doctors that I need blood work and an echo done to rule out causes of water retention before giving me a stronger diuretic.  I need to check out the functioning of the kidneys which have to cope with an extra amount of water.  I don't know if it is significant that the echo took nearly an hour, the one I had in the past was zip zip you're done.  I won't learn anything until later today (it is just past 1 am as I write this).  When I had an abnormal echo a few years ago it was followed by a cardiocath, and that doctor did not concur with the heart diagnosis the radiologist gave.  I will try to ignore everything until the doctors have a consensus.

I went a little crazy and ordered four beautiful cross stitch patterns on eBay.  They are all of cats, but not the cutie cartoon ones.  I will attempt to post photos here:

I figure it will take me about a zillion years to stitch these...

No more "Saving"

I am no longer going to save the "best" things for a special occasion.  Things like the good china, the nice jewelry, the linens, the designer clothes (not a lot there), the designer handbags (too much of those), the silver flatware (I have 4 sets, none bought by me I am glad to say).  What kind of special occasion was I planning to have?  Royalty?  Rich old uncle?  Who?  And it will give me great delight to have these things out of storage and put to use.

Of course I will have to wait until I can get upstairs to put this into practice.

I saw the ortho doctor yesterday and he said I may eventually get the nerves to regrow and thus be able to lift my toes when I walk.  Until that happens I will limp; but right now I am less worried about limping and more about falling.  I saw the xrays taken and man that is one walloping big knee in there.  I guess when you're going for six surgeries, put the knee in, take the knee out, put the spacer in take the spacer out, put this knee in, sounds like the hokey-pokey, and whoa I am getting dizzy.  Anyway, when all that happens in 6 months, they must go for the big-time replacement.

Special date

For everyone else, today is tax day; but for me this is the birthday of my husband.  He would have been 74.  Put like that, 74 sounds really old.  But even at 72 he was active, chair of the Literacy Volunteers, hauling stuff in the pickup, cutting down trees, renting a grinder to clear out the stumps to make it easier to mow, and lots of chores.  He enjoyed all of them.  Then out of the blue, Blam! he was gone.  From the time he heard he had lung cancer until he died was 6 weeks.  He had not smoked in 40 years, but I guess that was the cause of the cancer.  I miss him so much, I never thought he would go first, given all the health issues I have had.  Added to this is a financial crunch.  I am trying my best to cover all the bases and not fret over things I have missed.

I have been using Alexa to play music, it sounds fine to me although I have read that others find the sound quality to be lacking.  Right now I have an ear worm, no not physical, I have one tune playing over and over in my head.  The only cure I know of is to listen to more music in hopes of smothering the repeating tune.  Right now I am waiting for the therapist so that will have to be done later.

The nail lady brought a light to see my nails better.  She wanted to leave it here, and I am really pleased.  It is an Ott light, the one all the hand crafters rave over, and now I can give it a trial run over the next two weeks to see if I like it for doing cross stitch.  It has a very blue tint to it, I think.  Several days ago I got my Lacis stand, that fastens to the embroidery hoop and can be adjusted up down and sideways I think.  I haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet, but I think it will be OK.  I find that holding the hoop in my left hand to stitch leaves my hand incredibly sore after only a short time.

The therapist is due shortly.  Wishing all those reading this to have a wonderful day, and hoping that everyone will have a stress-free time with their taxes.

Miscellaneous

Time is zipping past now, I can hardly believe I have been home from the hospital for a month.  I am in the process of catching up with all the appointments that I had to reschedule when the knee replacement surgeries went on and on, starting back in June.  The two I haven't gotten caught up are the financial adviser and the dentist.  They both have one or more steps to get in the building (and out) and when I tried to do a step up on just one here at home, my knee buckled.  So I have been working here at home on the exercising and trying to be cautious but not panicky.  Considering how long it has been to just get home, I think cautious is the name of the current game.  I am using the gait belt too.

New gutters will go up soon, depending on their schedule and the weather.  It snowed Friday night, and right now it is the the 20s, so spring may be turning into summer without spring weather at all.  I hate it, I have been turning the heat in this room to a higher setting, then cooking in here and turning it down again.  I am wearing sweaters and sweatshirts-- It is April!  And sleeping under a blanket!  The horse has been in a stall for several weeks as the ground is so slippery, she would fall and hurt herself; the last thing we need is another vet bill.  She still shows the effect of her 'stroke' several weeks ago, her eye, tongue, righthand legs, droopy ear, it makes me sad to think of how peppy she was last spring.  I still can't get to the barn with the path so rough, thank god for C, my son, able to shoulder so much of the duties I can't get to.  I give him $ and pay his health insurance, but still...

And thinking of money outflow, I finished our income taxes yesterday and it was worse than I expected.  The big difference is going from married filing jointly to going to Single, now that N passed in 2016.  I will pay estimated taxes so that this doesn't happen next year.  And itemizing is a joke, I dredge up all the items paid and then be better off taking the standard deduction.  I blame Trump and the Rep. in congress for doing this.  If they mess up Medicare and SSN I don't think any of them will win another term.  Especially Trump.

I have been working on my cross-stitch again.  I couldn't do it in the rehab places at all, holding it above me while I am flat in bed.  And the bad lighting and interruptions too.  Anyway, it's not like I have a deadline to meet.  I am finding shopping at Amazon is still fun, only if it is very cheap of course like $20 max.  And the items are very eclectic, plant fertilizer and a garfield eraser for example.  I see things I would like to get, but nah, I have enough do-dads that I can't even remember what I did get.

The next thing after the gutters will be getting someone to take down a dead tree that would fall onto the power lines in a strong wind.  It is an ash tree (I think) that was killed by borers; then followed by woodpeckers stripping off the bark to get to the insects.  And it was a beautiful tree too.

And the cats are enjoying all the boxes my little odds and ends come in too.

No fooling around here

It is April first, but I am not fond of practical jokes, or any joke that makes the listener the butt of the joke.  The student paper, which is quite nasty at times, doesn't come out on Sunday, so we are clear of that; unless they bring the paper out tomorrow.  One year it was entirely printed with bathroom jokes, this is for college age writers, not junior high school.  Some of the issues have been very clever, where you read the headline and think, What?! and then realize it is the first of April.  Now the jokes have given over completely  to the nasty, I am afraid.

I am currently wearing my latest craft project, a shark's tooth pendant on a black steel chain.  Many years ago I found a pretty large tooth in Murrell's Inlet, South Carolina at the water's edge which had been dredged and then the sand thrown up high on the beach.  We looked for quite a while and found many small teeth.  The only way to get big ones is with scuba gear.  Anyway the biggest one was found with hole already through the tooth, perfect for hanging as a pendant.  I wore it off and on for many years, and one of the tips finally broke off.  So I bought one (on Amazon, of course) and yesterday a glue (with Gorilla glue) was used to attach a finding (?) onto the back side.  It has been 24 hours so I am wearing here in the house so that if it comes off I can find it.  I will insert a photo here

And now you know how big the tooth is.  I would guess it is not as old as the solid black teeth, but I'm not picky.

All out of topics, bye for now, peace.

Rambling

The nails go 'round and 'round...

Ever since I began this long knee story, my nails have become awful.  They split, break, chip off and combinations of all those.  I don't know if this is an effect of the antibiotics or what, but they are often covered in band aids to keep them from splitting even further into the quick.  Next week the nail lady is coming here to do them, as I cannot get into her place with my walker.  I can hardly wait, I have had them done every 2 weeks for around 20 years and now my naked natural nails look weird to me.  I also need to get my toenails painted, but R can do them for me, save a few $$.  I have a list of phone calls I need to deal with, like the gutter installer, and I hope his estimate is not too dear.  I need them done this year before there are torrential rains mid-summer.  I also have 5 doctor appointments to catch up with, podiatrist, psych doctor, etc.  A fun time.

I am currently burning an apple cider candle from Yankee Candle, and it smells nice without that going-to-be-hungry vibe.  I like the vanilla scents as long as they are not too bakery scented, I have plenty of trouble staving off snack attacks as it is.  I have mandarin cranberry lined up next.

I want to get to work on my cross stitch projects, but the problem is the chair I have next to the fireplace.  It is very comfortable, but also very deep, and I fear I will be unable to get out of  it once I settle in.  There is a special light there too.  I am typing this on the fold-out for the sewing machine, but it kills my back pretty quick.  Maybe I can put pillows under the chair cushions?  I will think it over.

I bought a nice pair of CZ earrings as my birthday gift to myself, and they are very shiny (Sparkly!)  and have a screw-on back for extra security.  I had to get R to put them on me, she has tiny fingers and can see what she is doing.  I fiddled with them for 20 minutes trying to get the clasp to screw on, but she did it in 20 seconds.  I usually wear them without removing them, and I don't see any reason to remove them (like if they pinch for example).

The home therapist just left and he is pleased at the progress I am making, although to me it is very slow.  Still, I am able to walk at a  slow walk with my walker, this is better than being bed-fast.  At the rehab hospital I used the walker to transfer to the wheel chair, and now there is no wheelchair, so there is some improvement.  I am careful now, no risky moves that might cause me to fall.

I got an honest to goodness get well card last week, With a hand written note no less.  There is something to having a note that can be re-read and held that email doesn't cover.  My BFF and I wrote back and forth over our many years as friends, she is gone now and I miss her notes as well as herself.  I have kept most of our letters,  they fill most of a dresser drawer.  I wish she was still alive, big hole in my heart now.

This is a fragmented post, I am usually more organized than this demonstrates, where each topic isn't more than 3 sentences long.  Maybe the next post will be more cohesive.  Meanwhile, carry on and be grateful for your abilities walking, talking, hearing and more.  You would miss them if they were gone.

Home Sweet Home

Well, not quite germane to my situation, but close enough.

I AM HOME AT LAST!!!!

I have not been home for 4 months, while I have been in assorted hospitals, rehab, more hospitals, etc. you get the idea.  I now have a new knee, and am able to walk somewhat with a walker.  I also have "drop foot"  as a result of all the cutting and such, and it is slowly coming back to normal.  So good to sleep in my bed, use my bathroom, eat meals with my son.  I still cannot do stairs, so LR, DR, Kitchen are all unreachable.  I have the bedroom, bath, laundry, computer office (!) and I am quite content.

I have had two close calls with surgery, one where my blood pressure plummeted during the operation, and one where I had an emergency intubation when I stopped breathing in the recovery room.  I will think mighty hard about any general anesthesia in the future.  Although the blame for who is responsible for the panic time is still up in the air.

I will try to keep this blog up to date from here on out, I have missed doing it, although I only have a handful of followers right now.  That's OK with me anyway.  I  will have to re-read my past posts and see what I have already discussed.  I have plenty of time for doing this...

Bye for now...

More Bad News

This will be my last post for a while.  Turns out my replacement knee is infected, and tomorrow it comes out.  Then for the next 6 weeks I have daily IV antibiotic.  Then two weeks to see if the infection is gone; THEN another surgery to put a new knee in.  All that 6 week/two week I won't be able to walk/ put weight on the knee which will have a cement spacer during all this.  I cannot use crutches, I have tried in the past, and a walker won't work with no weight bearing.  I think I will be inpatient for this time.  I'll try to catch up if the facility has a router.

I am incredibly mad-sad-pissed-worried-etc.

Not very spooky

In keeping with Halloween, here is my strange-not-spooky tale.  I was working late in the lab when I went down the hall to the vending machines for a Diet Coke.  I put in my change, pressed Diet Coke, and - nothing.  I muttered, and that was my last bit of change, when there was a kerlunk! from the Pepsi machine next to the Coke one, and out dropped a Diet Pepsi.  I looked around for the candid camera, or whatever, but there was no one there anywhere on that floor.  I took the Pepsi, said, "thank you" and went back to the lab.

So Far to go

The knee specialist told me last week that my knee needs surgery to stabilize my knee cap; but once they see what is going on in there, they may remove the prosthesis entirely and put in another one, of a different type that will be secured to the two parts and be stable.  I won't know what the decision will be until I wake up.  If they have replaced the knee, I will be back at ground zero in terms of therapy, rehab, and exercises.  I am so so sorry I had this done, even though the doctor said after the replacement that the ends of my tibia (?) were becoming green and black as they deteriorated.  The specialist and my original doctor will do the surgery together.  They blame my fall at home for the poor progress.  Who would have thought a simple fall onto 3 inches of carpet and padding would be so dire?

Do you recognize this?

When I was married (at the ripe old age of 19) we didn't have enough money to "make a bean sandwich for a piss ant" as my mother-in-law once said.  So for a cheap evening, we went to a drive-in theater that was showing a marathon of spaghetti westerns by Clint Eastwood.  They were, "A Fistful of dollars", "A few dollars more" and "the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly".  They were called 'spaghetti'  because they were filmed in Spain (and not Italy as often said), and I crashed after the second one.   It wasn't until many years later that I saw the ending of the one I missed.  I think Clint made a princely sum of $15,000 for the first one, his first as the starring actor.

Once we had kids, movies were off the table, between admission prices, babysitters, snacks, dinner at a diner.  Of course now when I could go to any movie at all, there isn't much to watch.  The last movie I saw in the theater was "Avatar" and the 3-D effect left me with an excruciating headache.  And all the scenes where the perspective is a fall down for a long distance triggered my fear of heights.  All in all, not a 5 plus experience.

This an oldie but one of my favorites from Bloom  County.  No more Hare Krishnas in airports now, and no Bloom County either.

Poco

Here is my beautiful Poco palomino from a long long long time ago.

Stamina

I got all showered and made up, and then my stupid knee started failing every stride, so I didn't get to go to my appt. with the financial guy.  Bummer!  As we used to say.  I spoke to the doctor - an actual doctor on the phone! and he is setting up an appointment with a knee specialist "this week".  His final admonishment was "don't fall" so I guess I had better be extra careful at least until I see the specialist.  I just hope there is a solution outside of more surgery.

The horse continues to show signs of a stroke, but she doesn't seem to be in pain or distress.  She still nickers at us, but no whiney with her tongue poking out of her mouth.  She can't  crib either, and has substituted flapping her tongue up and down.  Weird horse.  At least she can't scream at what she thinks is another horse when all she is hearing is kids with high voices yelling.

I am afraid we have a skunk visiting in the garage, this after trapping and releasing 3 possums.  You know what a skunk will do after the door slams shut.  And as soon as you pick up the crate again.  Please don't be a skunk, even a coon is OK.

When we lived in San Francisco, I boarded my palomino horse in Golden Gate Park, and my stall was one under the bleachers that faced the polo field.  From inside his stall I could see a triangular space way up high, and there was a family of coons that lived up there.  There were two ways to get out, one was to go down to the last stall and down the wall, and other was to plummet onto my horse as he stood there peacefully dosing. He did not appreciate them at all.  Finally I camped out and waited until the family exited for the night, and then I stuffed the opening and nesting site with chicken wire.  Nasty job.  I thought coons were cleanly animals, they even wash their food, but take it from me, their nests are filthy.  I wore a surgical mask and long gloves and a tyvex overall, gross.  And while I was at it, I stuffed chicken wire above the wall between my stall and the next to stop the pigeons from perching there and crapping all over the horses.  My horse wore a blanket to keep him clean, but it didn't cover his neck, so, ick.  A Palomino, if you don't know, is golden with white mane and tail, so dirt shows up really well.  I used to shampoo his mane and blow-dry it afterwards, I was in a bunch of photos I guess, with all the tourists strolling through.  Gosh I miss that horse,  had him shipped from SF to WV when we moved, and he lived until he was 22.  I wonder if the polo field and the stable are still there, it has been 38 years.

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...

Days Gone

We had KFC for dinner the other night, and it has changed.  I don't know if the whole franchise has changed recipes or if our local Kentucky Fried Chicken has gotten poor.  But the chicken was greasy (nothing new there) soggy (yuck) and tasted completely different.  We don't get fast food very often, but I think that will be our last purchase from there for the foreseeable future.  Fried chicken is not rocket science.

I am getting an error code from blogger, I think the internet here is down.  I am not about to write a long post and then have it lost, so I will wait a bit and see if it comes up.

When I was a kid, eating out anywhere was a real rare treat.  We went to BarBQue barn, or Pizza Hut, or really rarely to the local steak place.  My dad was agreeable for any food, except for steak.  We never fixed it at home, and I would be horribly embarrassed when he ordered steak.  He wanted his steak Well Done, no pink whatsoever, and would send it back multiple times before he got his shoe-leather steak done  the way he liked it.  The other thing was, his criteria for a good restaurant was how much butter they gave you for the bread.  If it was a big lump, and no steak, he was content.  At least in Miami back in the 50s there was not much of a possibility you would see someone you knew while you were eating, or even if you were shopping at one of the big box stores.  The exception for my family was Sears.  Mom and I and my sister went to Sears one night and she ordered chain link fence to be installed in the back yard, and it was on her Sears credit card.  When the sales lady called for approval, it was declined.  I'm not sure why, but at any rate, the lady called a supervisor to see if he would approve the sale.  Much to Mom's dismay, the supervisor was Mr Marks, who lived across the street from us, with two daughters my age that I played with.  She was nearly in tears (and my mom NEVER cried) but he didn't say anything, just signed the approval and disappeared.  I don't think we ever charged anything anywhere after that.  At least until my married sister cried for money, month after month, and they tapped out their credit cards, but that is another story.

Damn!

I was walking with my cane in the kitchen, and Blam! my knee gave out and away I went.  The only reason I didn't hit the floor is that I grabbed the freezer.  I hate this; what if it gave out as I came up the stairs?  I want my walker at hand, so I can have at least a chance of catching myself.  We are going to try a neoprene brace (the kind they sell at the drug store) and see if it stabilizes my knee.  I am so sick of all this; I thought I was improving with my cane, getting close to walking free of pain and weakness.  Damn.  Surgeon next week.

I have been getting a box every month from Birchbox, cosmetics, a mix of skin care and makeup.  I just love to get my box, play around with everything.  I also get a box from Cosmetique, not as nice as the Birchbox.  I may cancel it, I'll give it another month to see if it improves.  Many years ago I was getting things from them (we're talking 15 or more years) and can you believe it, the palette of  eye shadow was exactly the same?  I know because I went through all my drawers a few weeks ago, and there it was, untouched.  I hope it was a one-off thing.

I  called a lawn management co.  that has been treating our lawn for years.  The thing is, the lawn springs out of the ground from all the treatment, and C can't keep up with the mowing.  So I asked them to drop the treatment and come mow/trim the lawn.  C says he can do it, but he already has so much to do, between cooking, cleaning, taking care of the horse and cats/boxes, laundry, driving me to my appointments, collecting my scripts, if you can think of anything else he does it.  So I will see how the lawn mowing goes, and how much it costs, to decide.

It is nearing 5 am so I will end this pity party and go back to bed.  And here is hoping Irma didn't hurt anyone, and that the damage to home and work can be quickly repaired.

It's smee!

Well OK, just this time I will post a very recent photo, taken Sept. 5th.  And an amusing cartoon, too.

Bye for now...