Silver Linings

This was my big event for the month.  Ruptured appendix, emergency surgery. All day I thought I had indigestion—by late afternoon I was in more pain than I had ever experienced. Jim said, “Let me take you to the hospital.” No. I settled on going to urgent care and they told me I needed to go to the hospital. They would call ahead for me. When I walked through the ER doors at around 7 PM, they were waiting for me with a chair. The details are fuzzy, but I had surgery at 9 and was in my room by midnight. Pretty amazing.  Now I am home and recuperating, but it is slow going. The doctors and nurses at Mission Hospital are fantastic, every last one of ‘em. Here’s an interesting gadget: It’s an infrared vein finder. The only downside is they can’t tell how deep the vein is, only that it’s there. So some probing (i.e. digging) has to happen when your veins go into hiding, as mine did.  I’m fine now, feeling good but eager to get some energy and get moving!  Well, that’s all...

While most of the country has been sweltering we have had mild coastal weather. Which bummed me out because I prefer cool weather, especially on golf days, but I could not play because of my injured big toe. My big accomplishment was going to the supermarket—which completely wore me out, I must admit. My toe doesn’t hurt so much now, but I am unsteady on my feet because of it. I am finding out that the big toe is a very important digit.  So, in July I pretty much sat around and watched the scale inch northward.  I celebrated my birthday with lunch at the local winery.  Which was made even sweeter by the presence of these lovelies; Michelle and Savannah.  And there was dinner at a steakhouse with a luscious wine from Jim’s cellar.  My next door neighbor brought me these. What a lovely surprise!    I played some of my favorite adventure games. I admit it, I love these. They’re interactive mystery stories with beautiful graphics and lots of challenging pu...

Although not as high as I once did. I’ll be 73 in less than a week. When I started blogging ififteen-plus years ago the topic was all about quilting and techniques. It was never to be a treatise on aging, although it seems that is what it is morphing into. My quilting studio has become an exercise studio. The exercises I do are for strengthening my shoulder and neck muscles. I had/have an impingement that makes golf painful and, as anyone who knows me will tell you, golf is an essential part of my life. So I went to physical therapy, and when I got tired of getting up at 7am I started doing it myself at home, adding a few things I learned from the internet. I’d say I’m 99% better. What are the golf clubs for? Weights.  With my new and improved strength I was really looking forward to getting out there and crushing the ball again, like I used to back in the day. But then… It was July 4 and we had our next door neighbors over for wine & apps—it has become our annual tradition sin...

The weather—what can I say? Last week it was 88° and too hot to sit outside. One week later it was 62° and too cold to sit outside. But today it is beautiful, 72° and sunny.  We had our landscaping redone last winter and it’s looking great now. We love this cheery little corner.  Over in the other corner, the bougainvillea is going gangbusters. It was almost a goner a couple of years ago, some bugs ate it, but we nursed it back to health. I see it from my bedroom window every morning and the color makes me happy.  We had our neighbors, Cliff & Barbara, over for happy hour. Here’s Cliff and Jim looking at something in the atlas. An atlas!—How quaintly old-fashioned. I have no idea what they’re looking at, but aren’t they cute? Jim had been having chest pains, which alarmed him (understatement), so I suggested we go to the ER. We didn’t feel like we needed to call 911 as he’d had these pains for a week, so I drove him. Because of Covid, you can’t go in the ER waiting ro...

As usual, there’s not a whole lot going on with us old folk here in Geezerville. How’s that for a captivating lead-in? Really makes you eager to read on, right? That’s my life lately.  But—things are about to change. I have begun PT and the prognosis—and the progress—are excellent. I do not have a torn rotator cuff (yay) but the tendons in my shoulder are getting pinched between the bones (“impingement”) so I need to strengthen them. It is improving already. I’m playing golf again, and there just might be quilting in my future—if I can find the muse, that is. I’m going to be better about keeping up the exercises this time. They are painful to do but they do make everything better. Today was a perfect day for golf, I had trepidations but it went well. Until it didn’t. I took a couple of shots out of the bunker, which is hard on you to begin with. So, I took myself out of the game at hole nine. I didn’t want to push it. Incidentally, below is where I got a hole-in-one recently—hole 5...

I have had so many people tell me they miss my blog. This warms my heart. I tried in January to set up a new one but a lot of the functions I wanted have gone bye-bye so I said Eh, Fuggetaboutit. And the font in the edit window is so small, which is a major bugaboo for these old eyes. I tried Instagram, but I hate Instagram, Facebook, all those, not to mention the principle of social media. I quit Facebook ages ago and I only look at Instagram when I can’t sleep; I never post anything. Blogging is more my style. It’s cathartic. I started blogging around 2005, so it was part of me for many years. I think it helps me to be more creative. Because, who knows why, I haven’t been.  I have not had much to blog about anyway as I’m sidelined from golf (rotator cuff) and quilting (neck) until I get some PT, which I’m starting next week. I swear it’s harder to get PT appointments than it is to schedule surgery. Seriously. All these silver-haired boomer-warriors. Good for us! I did sew somethi...

Happy 2022 and—ta🎺da—Welcome to my new blog. I took my blog down after a picture I posted exposed a relationship that I didn’t know was a secret, causing a family rift, and I felt awful about it (understatement). So I disappeared myself off the internet. But I missed blogging. So I’m back and this new blog is private. You are here by invitation. Unfortunately, in the meantime, Blogger removed some key elements; subscription/notification is no longer supported. So you’ll need to bookmark the page, sorry. I left the widget up (on the right), you’ll see it goes nowhere helpful. Or maybe it does. More disclaimers: I didn’t do a whole lot of quilting last year because of my neck. I have arthritis and degenerative disc disease so doing anything where I’m looking down for a long period, even working a crossword puzzle, causes intense, lasting pain. But I can work for about an hour or two—and so I have learned to respect my limitations.  2021 was crap. I didn’t have much quilting to blog ...