January Already With Roses In December

One of my favorite photos is this one, taken in Mid-December next to a garage that provided some shelter from the cold.  Wish I could remember the year, but it was late in the last century.  Imagine being able to say that!  I never thought I would live this long, but the idea of living until another century absolutely never crossed my mind.

I sometimes wish we were still in the twentieth century, especially with all of the problems we are now living through.  Who would ever have thought of something like COVID back then?  Sure, we were just getting some therapies for treating AIDS, but that one was spread by bodily fluids.  Much more easily avoided than air-borne diseases.  After all, we all breathe the air.

I’m kinda in a depressed mood lately.  I fell the Monday before Thanksgiving and broke my left ankle on both sides.  It’s not healing as well as I had hoped but it is healing.  I think I use a bottle of lotion each day because of the itching caused by the boot I’m wearing, but it just seems to get worse each time.  At least I haven’t gone in with a knitting needle this time.  Learned the danger involved with that method when I broke a foot about 25 years ago.  

I am using a knee walker around the apartment most of the time.  The left knee on the walker and pushing off with the right leg.  It works out okay, but sure does get tiring at times.  It makes me remember the old scooters we had when I was a kid.  One foot on the scooter while pushing it around with the other one.  I don’t think any of us ever got tired back then, but that was a year or two ago.  I was younger then.  But like everything else, it could be a lot worse.  Makes me wonder what the next 21 years will be like.  I intend to live to be 100 so that gives me another 21 years.  I just hope the next 21 will not be as bad as the last two have been.

I’m fortunate that most of my hobbies, while making messes of some type, don’t require me to be on my feet much.  MS can be thanked for that.  But again the power chair takes up a lot of space and can be rather destructive at times.  I drive into rooms and back it out of them, hoping I don’t do anything really bad during each maneuver.  BUT, oh yeah, but – – a few days ago I felt the wheels going over something that was behind me.  Had to go over it all before I could see my four bananas squashed all over the carpet!  Let me tell you, it’s not easy to sweep fresh bananas up and even worse trying to get them into the dust pan.  I think I’ll have a wide white streak down the middle of the room for quite some time before I can use the shampooer to clean it all up.  And then there are the remnants of my chicken dinner that I dropped just before reaching the table.  Mashed potatoes and gravy are almost as bad as bananas.  I haven’t had the nerve to try to move soup across the room even though my son brought me some wonderfully smelling home made vegetable beef soup and some potato soup.  I ate those at the kitchen counter while propped against the refrigerator and praying hard that I wouldn’t fall again.  So many things I’ll never take for granted again.

I have been making doll clothes.  Some by hand and some by mach ine now that Mike pulled the machine out for me.  Maybe I can find some of those photos to post here, but no promises.

Well, that is my last two months of 2021 in review.  Here’s hoping 2022 will be kinder to us all.

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

Just a few of the doll clothes I’ve made these past couple of years. I’ll try to get some of the Barbie photos moved over to the computer later.

I ZIGGED WHEN I SHOULD HAVE ZAGGED

Lessons learned in the past eight days! Take my time when standing up. Call 911 as soon as you fall because it only hurts worse the longer you wait. When the EMT’s and Fire personnel arrive feast your eyes when they all turn out to be very good looking.

Monday morning of last week I stood up and turned around a bit too fast and down I went. If only I could always take my son’s advice and hit my head I might have been okay, but naturally my feet slid into a pile of stuff I had been sorting through and I knew immediately something was not right. My nurse was coming so I knew the door had to be unlocked for her but walking wasn’t an option, so I scooted to the door, a very long way to scoot! Ya know what they focused on at the ER? My butt! Sure, it was kinda red from scooting on it, but for heaven’s sake, my ankle was the size of my waist, and I have a very sizable waist now.

Hooray! I made it through the night with all parts intact. PT just left a few minutes ago and advised me the next time I got bored I should just call and talk to them instead of falling. What a concept! Come to think of it, my Aunt told me the same thing earlier. I do have a hard head, but that does sound like a much less painful idea than trying to pirouette on my two left feet. I’ve tried to convince people that I’m actually very graceful with no success at all. But! I got to show the PT how well (?) I could maneuver the knee walker. He must have seen something funny out the window because he just kept laughing at me. It could have been my 28 point turns or possibly the parallel parking routine. Now who uses parallel parking any more when it’s so easy to just drive into a spot. I’ve circled parking lots for hours waiting for a spot, not lately of course, but when I still drove a car. Now I just weave my way around people looking for a place within a mile of the store and drive right into the front door.

He insisted that I sit back in my lift chair so he could witness the dismount. I made it okay — at least in my opinion. Left foot never touched the floor, right hand on the arm of the chair while left one was moving my sewing stuff off the cushion, a kind of flop to the seat. Like I have said, I’m not a graceful swan, but I made it intact without ever touching the floor with the left foot. Now I’m trying to convince my bony left knee to give it up and stop trying to complain. Guess I’ll have to make a cushion for it but that seems so much like spoiling a crying baby who didn’t get the toy he kept pulling off the shelf in the toy store. I wouldn’t do that for the baby so why spoil the knee? Oh, of course! The knee is attached to ME! The baby was not by that time. And really the baby always had a lap full of other things it had pulled off the shelf so one more was just one too many!

Now it just occurred to me that I had enough sense back then to leave my own kids with their dad when I went to the store. It was the grandkids I took with me. And there are different rules for the grands. You can spoil them rotten and send them home with the parents! Since my youngest one is 18 now — I think, I had forgotten that part. Just remembered the fussing and crying if they had to put something back.

Wow, a good samaritan just brought me a burger and fries so I think I’ll be occupied with putting those to some good use for a little while. Talk to ya later cause right now I’m going to show the cow that burger came from just how cows should be treated. I can say that because I used to chase the beasts all over the country when they broke through the fence on the farm.

A.