Confession

Okay, they say confession is good for the soul, right?

The day before Hubby had his surgery, we accomplished two things. We filed our Income Tax, Hubby’s job, and we sent off our passports for renewal, my job. Guess who screwed this one up?
I was rectifying our check book last night and I noticed there was no entry for a check paying for our passports. Luckily, I use duplicate checks (I am notorious for not recording checks), and I went back and looked for the check in question. You guessed correctly if you guessed that I sent off all of our documentation, old passports and applications for new ones, WITH NO CHECK!
I felt like such a fool. This is really basic stuff here. How could I have been so stupid?
I waited until this morning and called the Passport Center. Yes, they’d received the passports and the application, but then sent them to a holding spot at a regional office. It was easy to rectify the problem, but, I to get Hubby to give permission for this woman to release his information to me. Shoot! I was hoping upon hope not to have to admit to Hubby that I’d done this. Now, I had to tell him, I HAD TO CONFESS!
I’m not sure I will live this one down. I’m already staying out of his path. He gives me that look, that, “How can you really be a BLOND in a brunette’s skin?”, look.
Granted, this is not one of my finer moments.
So there you have it. I confess. Let’s just hope I can get through the rest of today without messing up too much more. I’m not sure I could handle that!

Backs

The Stone Masons finished their interior work on the fire place yesterday. So, what does this mean to me? It meant I spent all afternoon, dusting, vacuuming, and washing every available surface in that room. I had to move furniture, remove the curtains and then start the arduous task of returning the braided rug to the room after the floors were washed, as well as the coffee table, chairs, etc.
What I discovered this morning is that this 47 year old back is just not as young as it once was! Oh, the aches I felt upon waking! I finally got up and made coffee because just lying in bed felt so much worse, and usually I am a real bed potato, so you know I felt bad!
In my misspent youth, I loved to rearrange furniture. No sofa was too big! One never knew where the sofa, bed, table and chairs would be from one day to the next. Now, however, I almost never move stuff. That could explain the dust “elephants” that I found under the sofa!
My plans for today are pretty simple. Do laundry. It’s fairly straight forward and easy, and since I have my curtains to do, as well as the dust covers, there is a ton of it.
Hubby is about the same. I got in to his room this morning and got those sheets changed and served him up a big breakfast. He seems to do really well early in the day, but by noon it is all down hill, and by dinner he has very little appetite and just wants to rest.
Time for one more cup of java before I start my day.

Just One Of Those Days

I was running about town doing errands on Monday. Usually I see one or two people that I know, but mostly I go around incognito.
As I got to the Post Office I saw our mechanic, Pete. I told him about Hubby and he asked about the real celebrity in the family, Shubi.
You see, Shubi was well know in these parts for being the dog that survived the odds. So each month, and year she defied the odds, there were a lot of people in the village that rejoiced.
I told Pete about Shubi’s passing. He was sad, as he thought she was a sweet girl.
Then I went in and ran into another woman I know from town, from my doctor’s office. She asked about Hubby and then asked about Shubi. I recounted Shubi’s last days and thanked her for her kind words.
Then I stopped at a shop in town looking for something and a woman who sold me my table at Christmas stopped me and asked after Shubi. No kidding. I started to feel a bit overwhelmed.
When I got done speaking with her I needed to ask a question of the shops owner and she asked how all my babies were doing. She, too, is a big dog lover. I told her about Shubi and the next thing I knew I was crying. I’ve known this woman for 5 years now, so I didn’t feel too bad about crying in her presence, and fortunately the shop was nearly empty. It was just so hard to be talking about it over and over again. She was so kind and put her arms around me.
I drove home with hot, red, swollen eyes, still moist with tears, but I didn’t allow myself to dwell in the depths for too long. I patted Fritz and Greta and continued my day.
I’ll never forget her, but I know Shubi would want me to go on with life, the same way she never gave up, even during her most challenging days.

The Healing Properties of a Pup

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It’s amazing the healing properties of a little dog. Greta spent most of the weekend snuggled up with her Daddy. She kept him calm and warm and laughing. So today I wasn’t a bit surprised that Hubby seems to be a bit better. His temperature is almost normal, his blood sugar is lower and the knee’s swelling is down. I just know that it is because he has Greta for his nurse. Can’t you just feel the love?

The Agony Of Defeat

I am not graceful. In fact, I am probably related, somehow, to the athlete on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, who for the last 30 years has been “The Agony of Defeat“! I can be walking down the street, and simply trip over nothing, and land on my face. Therefore, today should not have surprised me nearly as much as it did.
I’d gone back into the guest room to retrieve a cable for my laptop, when Hubby asked me to get him a fresh cup of coffee. I picked up his cup, half filled with cold coffee and started towards the door. I paused to climb over the doggy gate, and yes, that is when it happened.
(Slow motion)
I caught my foot and began to fall. The cup went up, as I started going down. The cold coffee spurted out of the cup, onto the wall, the floor and on me! The gate crashed! Dogs ran in different directions and when all was said and done, a new bruise appeared, the walls got a coffee wash and I didn’t have to worry about emptying the cup of coffee in the sink before I filled it with fresh, hot coffee. After, I did not put the doggy gate back up. Hubby will just have to figure out how to keep the beasts off of him. It’s simply too dangerous for me.

My Day

It’s been a full day. I decided to get all my heavy work done this morning, and then watch some video’s this afternoon.
After breakfast, I cleaned the house, gathering all the trash, newspapers, bottles and boxes to bring over to the recycling center. I loaded up the Jeep and off I went.
I was a bit nervous about going, as last time, if you recall I was faced with Mr. Meanman, who yelled at me for leaving the inside insert in the cardboard wine box.
Once again I was the only woman at the recycling center. I pulled up and tossed my burnable trash, disposed of my glass bottles, and then went to the next building where just about everything else is left. I brought in the plastic bottles, the tin cans and the newspapers. Then as I was bringing in the cardboard, I saw him. Mr. Meanman! I tossed my cardboard onto the pile and went back to get another load. That’s when I saw him going over and checking the wine boxes! Ha! This week I had remembered to remove the insides, and he had nothing to yell at me for!
I came home with a spring in my step and a smile on my face!
I chopped vegetables for Jack’s favorite comfort food. It’s called “Scrambled meat” (see recipe below).
After lunch I put on a CD of:

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My cousin Janet gave me the entire series for my birthday last year! It is such a funny BBC show with Dawn French, and a cast of characters that’ll make you smile. What a great way to spend an afternoon! Thanks J!

Scrambled Meat

2 lbs lean hamburger
6 cups cold water
4 diced carrots
4 medium diced onions
1 green pepper diced
2 tbs minced garlic
1 tsp. salt
2 tbs parsley
1 tsp. basil
3-4 tbs flour
In a large soup pot, measure cold water. Add ground beef and break up into small pieces with your fingers. Add in the vegetables and seasoning. Simmer slowly for several hours. About 15 minutes before you are ready to eat, thicken with 3-4 tbs. of flour dissolved in 1/2 cup water. (Note: You may need a little more flour for a thicker gravy)
Serve over hot mashed potatoes!

My View On Life Today

I got up at 5:30 this morning, and here is my view on life:

The most important things in life are the people you love. They are not perfect, they are human, with all the good and the bad rolled into that little package that you love. Their happiness and health and well being should be at the top of your list.

Never vacuum and dust in the middle of a remodeling project. You will only have to do it again.

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Apple should be ashamed of themselves for only allowing downloads in “their format”. Some of us do not own IPOD’s, (I know, I am still living in in the ice age) and find having to download the files onto a disc just so you can covert them to a playable format for your CD player too much. I have recently gone to Yahoo Music for my down loads. Same price, larger music selection and correct format for me.

The love of your dogs makes up for almost any bad day you will have. So, remember your furry friends each day and spend a little time loving them.

Laundry never ends.

Weather happens

The only things you can truly count on are: God’s love, the sun rising and setting, and yourself. So remember to be good to yourself, you are worth it! ;~)

My Brave Guy!

We got back from the doctor’s about 4:30. What a grueling time it was. The doctor decided to take another sample of fluid from the knee to check for infection. A quick lab result would indicate if he needed IV antibiotics. The longer term test will show us any big or small infection. What the short term test showed was an increase of white cells, but not over the top. So Hubby is home where he can continue treatment here. They aspirated 30 cc’s of this thick fluid from the knee. It didn’t really look like blood, more like Welches Grape Juice, but very thick. When I saw them draining fluid from the knee I realized what he has going on in there, and it isn’t good, but at least they drained some of the fluid and we will know on Monday if there is any further infection going on. The doctor said there was a lot more in there, but due to the thickness he didn’t attempt to get any more out. As it was, my guy was very brave. All this was done with very long needles and no Novocaine! He also changed Hubby’s pain medication because the other stuff had not given him any relief.
We were there for 2 1/2 hours and by the time we started home he was in a lot of pain, so I stopped at the closest pharmacy and filled his prescription. He popped a pill and got relief fairly quickly.
The doctor once again reminded us that Hubby’s operation was not a simple knee replacement, but very complicated. Hubby also needs to rest and DO NOTHING for a few days to allow the swelling in the knee to go down. They put him in a knee immobilizer.
So once again we are both wiped out, but at least we feel a little more reassured about what’s going on. I think I’ll keep Hubby very, very quiet over the weekend. So I’ll have to call the dancing girls and tell them not to come! 😉

55 Miles To Go….

It looks like a nice day for a 55 mile ride to Dartmouth/Hitchcock Medical Center. It’ll take us just over an hour and fifteen minutes. The roads are bad right now with frost heaves, but I’ll go a bit slower and hopefully that will be slightly less jarring. We all slept better last night, so perhaps if we can get the hematoma on Hubby’s knee drained and the pain under control, things will start to look up.