We had a wonderful Christmas holiday. Both my girls were home for a week, along with their significant others. We ate here and away, we laughed, we enjoyed time together. I truly believe the days of dysfunctional family events is over. Everyone has a great time. This year we were able to get back to our former family tradition of having ribs for lunch. After our favorite rib place closed we spent several years having to make do with other usual meals, including doing brunch a few times (which was not a favorite), as well as the traditional turkey dinner with taters and stuffing. Luckily we discovered a close neighbor has a BBQ business and we got 12 racks of ribs from him on Christmas Eve... heat and eat the next day! It was fabulous!
My 2nd knee replacement recovery is going extremely well even while the therapy is a bit more difficult this time. I've been using the Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS) unit for well over a month now with at least another month to go. Nothing like letting people electrocute you so your muscles will jump, right?! It would be ok if I could just sit there while it worked, but no, I have to stand up, sit down, kick out during the ordeal. But I must say I'm getting better results now than I had with my first knee. Getting better test scores, pushing more weight on the leg press, etc. I have a new TENS unit at home now so I can keep doing these lovely events on my own. What a thing to look forward to!
Since the home church of all my life seemed to have developed an 'out of sight - out of mind' policy and dropped caring about me after my surgeries, we have been going to another church now. I heard from that preacher multiple times to see how I was doing, unlike my former church. The people are friendly and seem to really care if I'm there or not. Maybe God had a plan for us to leave that included a new direction for me and Danny. I don't know, but so far it seems to be the case.
I'm hoping to be able to do some gardening this Spring. Gosh, it seems like it's been forever since I was able to walk around and do much of anything. Last year was such a bust with those crazy knee operations. I'm making planting plans, but it really remains to be seen whether I'll be doing much or if Danny will be my volunteer helper.
I've worked on several cases for the lawyer now. I love doing these searches to find ancient information needed for legal cases. My last one was simply to find a date of death for a husband that was presumed to have died before his wife. It turned out to be an easy find. I've been told it was easy for me. I don't know... it's a natural thing for me anymore. I've been doing genealogy research since I was 16.
Since it's January I've been going through my computer and email programs deleting all the old crapola. I try to do this every year. This year I'm deleting some of my email addresses and the store domain names that go with them. I'll just use the default names from now on. I've probably put a fortune out paying for all this stuff and for a good number of years it paid off. These days, with Google changing how they operate it's been more difficult to get into search results. So why pay for all this stuff if it's not making a difference anyway? I also changed my investment people over the holidays. Looking forward to seeing what Vanguard can do for me this year!
Speaking of money, Danny dad's apartment finally sold and Danny has finally got paid for that. But once again there are problems attached as usual with anything involving his dad. They made the check out to the "Estate of" instead of the "Trust of" so now Danny has to get with the banks and the lawyer to see what can be done. There is now bank account for the estate. Murphy's law strikes again! So we have a nice bit of change sitting here waiting for the outcome! Maybe I'll get a vacation once this is cleared up!!
We're still cleaning out, throwing out, donating out a ton of stuff. What with the last of Mom's things distributed and all Danny's dad's stuff still housed in our garage things are bordering on cluster. I've inherited some more quilts made by my great-great grandmother and possibly even her mother. I certainly don't want to get rid of them! But goodness, what to do with them! I've got tables that were made by people in the family and I want to keep them, but I'm starting to think I need a bigger house for everything! So we've been swapping out thrift store tables and other items for the family pieces. Thus far, I've been squeezing things pretty good, but I'm running out of ideas.
Yes, a vacation is looking like a very good idea now!
