Random thoughts

I have been noticing Gary’s arms lately, probably because of our 35^th anniversary, and it’s brought to mind memories of the stuff he has done through the years we have been together.  I’ve seen him put up sheetrock in various houses that we’ve lived in so we could make bedrooms for our kids out of unfinished basement space.  (I remember when the muscles in his right arm were a lot bigger than the ones in his left and he was all worried about that until he realized it was because he’d been working so hard on the basement, and since he’s right handed all that hammering build up his right arm muscles.) He’s held babies till they fell asleep and then kept holding them.  He’s given priesthood blessings.  He’s cooked dinners (some not terribly successful, think “apple-ham-spaghetti-curry.  But others have been fairly tasty, and the efforts were appreciated.)  He’s always offering to help out on various service projects for scouting, church, etc.  I wonder if anyone else knows how hard those arms have worked, and how little he complains?

I have had a very rapid decline in the health of my knees and hips.  It ticks me off.  Here I am, minding my own business, getting some exercise like I’ve been told to do and WHAM.  I can barely walk.  And I wake up in the middle of the night almost screaming because of the pain.  What’s up with THAT?  That’s only supposed to happen when you get old, right?  So I go in to the doctor to see what’s going on and they do x-rays.  Turns out I have severe arthritis in three places in each knee (can’t remember the technical terms but something like the ends of both bones and the backside of the kneecap or something like that) and also the hip.  (Makes me wonder about the hip they didn’t x-ray, but oh well.)  So today I went in to Kaiser before my insurance runs out (on Friday) to get shots in the knees (yes, it’s a horrible thing to imagine… BIG needle) so hopefully that’ll relieve some of the pain.  (The shots were uncomfortable, the first one not so bad but she scraped the bone a bit pushing the second one in so I flinched.) The doctor didn’t want to do the hip as well.  She is in family practice and the hip needed to be injected deeply enough that she felt an orthopedic doctor needed to do it.  Well, since I lose Kaiser on Friday that’s not enough time to get an orthopedist (?) appointment so that’s not going to happen any time soon.  If the pain can’t be managed this way (and hopefully I can do some light strength training to build some muscle around the affected joints for extra support, some swimming, stretches, etc.) I will have to have knee replacements and perhaps the hip replaced too.  I am kind of wondering what in the world happened to make this happen since I kind of feel too young for this to have occurred, maybe it’s one of those “it’ll come back to bite you” things from the poor nutrition as a little kid?  Whatever.  All I can really do is try to get it taken care of now so it won’t kill my quality of life.  I have grandchildren (and at some point, great-grandchildren) to squire around at WDW.  (Makes me glad there are no stairs at the condo…)

Even though I still feel a little bit bad about not having a job, with this new health development I am more at peace with the decision to leave the University.  I wasn’t taking as good care of myself as I needed to, and certainly I wouldn’t have been able to do the extra things that I’ll need to do now to build up my strength and endurance.  Shoot, when I got home from work I was pretty much done for the day and I need to be able to swim and do some light weight training several times a week.  There are a few other things that staying home is going to give me time to do, also.  I was wanting to try making lefse, and also that “rice cream” dessert from Norway.  Also, I will be making some of the gifts this coming year for birthday/Christmas, which I am enjoying. 

I am very excited about the upcoming wedding, even though I have no idea when it will be.  J  Planning weddings is fun, and Audrey has some wonderful ideas and likes beautiful things.  Of course, we have to keep it reasonable since there’s always the money issue, but we’ll do what we can.  And Sam will make a great addition to the family.  (We’ve already thought of him as family for a long time.)

I’m also excited about the classes that Bridget’s signed up for, because SHE’S excited about them, and it’s been a while since she was excited about school.  I think she did the right thing, taking time off and having a little bit of a break.

Okay, I think that's about all I can think of.