So, now that I'm awake

April has been a rough month. Whether my discomfort can be placed on the weather or not...is anybody 's guess. My pain has increased. My sleep pattern is sleep until the pain wakes you up and then sleep some more.

I finally got re-enrolled at the Wellness Center last week. My enrollment is for the pool only. The Wellness Pool is kept at 92 - 94 degrees.
I'm quite sure this will be the temperature of Heaven. As you enter, you can just feel the pain melt away. Their exercise programs are mostly geared for senior citizens and I fit right in.
I tried out a few classes and have settled on Arthritis I - pretty much the easiest one there is. I have a long way to go.
Really shows how hard this last setback has been. A decade ago I was teaching water aerobics - at all levels - including high intensity. Now I'm trying to keep up with severely arthritic senior citizens.

Miss Lilly is doing Camp Grandma while Mommy gets through finals. We went to the Wellness pool together Sunday.
Yesterday, I went first thing to the clinic. I have what I though was a boil on my left collarbone area. It was showing signs of infection, I have been running low-grade fevers, and it was really hurting! I decided this thing needed lanced!
I just did a walk-in to see my favorite PA. I built Lilly a fort with hospital gowns - she was happy. They numbed me up a bit - I was happy. My PA cut into the cyst and nothing happened - no drainage. Now she wasn't happy.
Whatever this cyst is it is deeply embedded into my tissue, is infecting the tissue around it and the PA could not go any deeper. She hooked me up with some strong antibiotics and said to stay out of the pool. Now I'm not happy.
This intrusion now has my shoulder red and angry. Lilly and I came home and played Pajama and Movie Day. We were both happier!
I also have an appointment in two weeks to get this thing really removed. Time to go change the band aid - joy.

Camper and the box

Our cat Camper wanted outside on a very nice day not too long ago.
I snapped her outside rope to her halter and connected the outside rope to a wooden box we use as a side table outside.

I had just stepped inside when all hell broke loose!
Almost instantly, Camper spotted a squirrel on the ground only a few feet away. She took off in a hard run in the direction of the squirrel, which knocked the wooden box over.
This made a loud BANG! which scared Camper and she ran even harder from the loud noise, squirrel was instantly forgotten.
Camper was now running so hard she was dragging the box. This made a vary loud racket as well. When Camper turned to check out that noise she saw the box following her.
She panicked and took off across the grass with everything she had, and the box continued to follow!
Rand was also in pursuit at this time and he was just adding to Camper's panic!
Camper finally rounded a corner and stopped. To her delight nobody followed. Rand gently eased around the corner and was able to capture her. He unhooked from her pursuer and brought her back inside.
The only noise left was the bark of a very angry squirrel who continued to bark for several minutes following all this.

One very embarrassed cat
who won't go outside now.

April 3, 2008

Today is our 28th Anniversary.
Yeah, it was bad weather on our wedding day too.

It is really starting to flood now.
We were surrounded by tornados on our 1st anniversary.

I think this rain is starting to look "thick".

Taken around 2:ooPM

April 3, 2008

The rain has turned to snow.

Look at the size of these flakes!

Taken at 3:30PM

Even my muscles are crying!

It all started when I got grossed out by the kitchen floor this morning.
So I swept it.
Than I dug out my Shark steam cleaner and floor attachments and "mopped" it.
Super clean floor and no chemicals!

My original model doesn't seem to be available anymore, if something happened and I had to replace it I would get this one. I have all the attachments and can clean any surface. It has a larger than most tank so you can clean longer! I steamed cleaned the kitchen sink and garbage disposal after I was done with the floor. I have owned this steamer for years and love it!

Then I moved several pieces of furniture and rearranged the living room, Lilly's room, and dining area.

Rand helped me rehang pictures when he got home. By then grasping a hammer or walking anywhere with it - wasn't an option.

I do use leverage and for the largest piece "Moving Men" sliders. On smaller things I work a rag rug underneath and then pull on the rug. Most things will slide pretty easy on the rug.
Rand and most of his relatives, don't understand why I move things at all.
"Put it where you want it and leave it alone." Their sofas still sit where they put them 20-30 years ago.
Rand used to really hate it when I rearranged when we were first married. Me moving a piece of furniture was always a guarantee that he would protest. Rand trying to point out that his mother doesn't rearrange furniture is what made it a guaranteed fight.
I finally gave him an option. I pointed out that I NEED change. It is in my genetic make up. I can't help it. I told him that I can change the furniture around from time to time or I could change men from time to time. He has never complained about me moving furniture around again and has even become quite helpful!

I come from a clan of folk who welcome change and question why things are the way they are. We are always looking for a new way.
Our family tree can be traced back to the chipping out of the original round wheel. The others, dragging their stuff around on their rocks, just made fun of us. "Waste of good hunting time!" they said.



You can do something good the first time.
You can only do something better the second time.


Dad was back at the doctors. After a short scare - he didn't have a blood clot in his lung - he is home recuperating again. He does still have pneumonia. He has had a few more small cardiac scares which his nitro tablet has helped.
Rob and Amanda are having much fun throwing the word fiancee around.
Lilly and her mommy will be paying this Gramma a visit this coming weekend.
Willie is soon starting at a local Landscapers.

Easter 2008

All dolled up!

Check out that ballerina toe!

Easter 2008

Lilly was finding eggs, but hadn't found her basket!

Lilly in Pippi Longstocking mode
Dressed as Pippi while watching Pippi.

Lilly hanging with Gramma

Caitlyn Veronica Gookin

visiting Gramma Pam

Mommy goes shopping

Lilly the acrobat

Lilly has a keen sense of balance

It's her dismounts we need to work on!

waiting

The fairy princess waits for news

And she waits

All is well

Supper is ready!

Back and White and Simple

I got this in an email (Thanks Jack!) and had to share it.
It was especially poignant to me, having just had a birthday week and all!

Those were the days my friends
We thought they never end
We'd sing and dance
forever and a day......

Black and White

(Under the age of 40? You won't understand.)

You could hardly see for all the snow,

Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go.

Pull a chair up to the TV set,

'Good Night, David.

Good Night, Chet.'

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs, and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in was paper in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember getting e. coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

The term cell phone would have
conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA

We all took gym, not PE...and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in the gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries, but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option...even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play station, Nintendo, X-box, or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah...and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a treat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run a muck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?

We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't eve notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

Love to all of us who shared this era, and to all who didn't...sorry for what you missed...sorry for what you missed. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Pass this to someone and remember that life's most simple pleasures are very often the best.