Our View of Summer

This is long overdue, but sometimes life gets in the way of agendas. Aside from the normal everyday stuff there were doctor and dental appointments, chiropractor appointments, working with dog Riley and cat Pepper (teaching is going very slow). I've done a few genealogical research jobs for the lawyer's office as well as working on my own genealogy's final stages.

Since my last post I have enjoyed working with the residents of Currituck House nursing facility with my friend Laurie. We go every other Tuesday and sing a variety of songs with them. We've gotten to know they much better now and our group has doubled in size. Laurie and I also meet with Hollie for her devotions night once a month with the residents. It's really nice. We sing and their deacon husbands will often do the devotions too.

In May both of my girls and their significant othes came home for Mother's Day. Usually I don't see both at the same time until Christmas so it was a very special week.

Also in May a pebble cracked our windshield and took us down an insurance rabbit hole. It ended up being replaced twice, the moldings were broken and had to be replaced, and it was just more crap than was necessary in the long run. We ended up changing our insurance location to Chesapeake from the local one I've used since the 70s. And I'll probably never be able to recommend Safelite to anyone for any thing. It took weeks to get this completed.

In June I let Laurie talk me into going to a Karaoke Night. Hollie was able to go too and it was great fun to spend time with them as well as sing together again. I probably won't go again even though I liked it; the music is just too loud and my ears are still ringing from it.

Later in June Danny got his feet tangled in a boat trailer he was working causing him to fall and hit a significant piece of metal with his ribs. Luckily nothing was broken but it's taking forever to fully heal and still hurts to this day. He had to sleep sitting in a lounge chair for a month but has been in bed for a couple of weeks now.

I got to enjoy lunch out with my two favorite people in July when we really had time to talk without a lot of noise. Catching up was wonderful. Because of Riley being so separation anxiety Danny and I don't go out to restaurants much anymore. Riley can go with us if it's cool enough to leave him in the car, but summer has been so hot this year. For the same reason we don't get to go to church anymore. The last time we tried we put Riley in a crate and he had chewed through the wire and was in danger of poking his eye out in his frantic efforts to free himself. No, we do church at home on Sundays and we both do Bible reading every day. We're probably getting more church now than we did before we left Blackwater (another story). We're still working on increasing the time we can leave Riley alone at home, uncaged, but will a perscription pill that makes him sleepy. We hate doing that to him though.

This month the tree removal in our front yard finally finished. The trees were planted in the 70s and once I started having surgeries I could no longer do my annual pruning of the wisteria. The vines took over and killed all but the very ends of the branches. It was horrible. I can't thank R & S Outdoors enough for their work. They were outstanding and yes, I can recommend them highly to anyone needing a reference for landscaping and tree removal. It took longer than anticipated due to heat and rain, but the mission was accomplished! They had to fires along the ditch line to run the bees out. It sometimes looked like Armageddon!

This month Danny finally went to an ENT to see why he still had the cough from Hell. He's doing the recommended processes to help and will follow up later.

Since January I've had steroid shots in both shoulders three times. I had delayed this last set because we just had so much going on with Danny being hurt. Now I'm scheduled for a CT scan in Sept. and will finally have my right shoulder replaced in Nov. even though the left one is bone-on-bone. I figure the right will be more difficult because the right one had rotator cuff surgery in 2007. I figure a lot of scar tissue to complicate things. So if I can make it through that I can do ok with the worse shoulder later.

Because Danny got injured he wasn't able to go check on our sailboat. The drenching rains we've experienced resulting in a sunken boat. He was devestated. The marina owner said he's gotten it floated once before but had never brought it to our attention that this wasn't the first time. Danny, being a marine mechanic would have taken steps to secure it, which he's done now. Apparently a hose under a sink was leaking into the bilge and no one could see it, that plus the rains impeded the release of onboard water. There's nothing left to do now but start cleaning the soggy thing. I just hope Danny doesn't over-do and make those ribs angry! We've been working towards selling the 21' Columbia. This delays things but it'll happen soon enough. The accompanying trailer he was what he was working on when he hurt himself. I for one am done with boats and trailers!

I changed shampoos a few months ago, going from Shea Moisture Jamaican Black Castor Oil shampoo to try the highly touted Rosemary Mint Strengthening shampoo which was supposed to be fixed now after having lawsuits against it for falling hair. Little did I know it wasn't fixed for me and was causing my hair to fall out. It's so thin now you can read a book through it. I still wasn' sure if the fallout was indeed the shampoo or due to so much stress in my life. So I went back to my former shampoo. I hate waste and Danny said he'd finish using the Mielle. After he used it just two times I noticed he was now covered with lost hair on his shirt, most unusal because he has great hair. That was all the proof I needed. It was totally the shampoo. We threw it away and I'll never try that again! Just a cautionary tale for those who need it.

Because things have been so overwhelmingly rough lately, my wonderful daughters surprised us yesterday with a Harry and David delivery of a Moose Munch Premium Popcorn Tin. How thoughtful of them to do that! Life is always better with chocolate and last night we opened the caramel popcorn with nuts and dark chocolate. It was our supper! Thank you ladies for your support and love!! Life is already looking up!

I recently discovered that my ex-husband died last November. It's a weird feeling to have known someone so deeply, who hurt you so badly that you never saw or spoke to him again since 1975, but yet he loved and kept in contact with my parents, even visiting from Ohio (and never saw me next door).  Just weird, ya know? I'm still processing that.

Hopefully things will start settling down until I get closer to surgery time. I look forward to working in our best garden yet (gotta love Celebrity and Early Girl tomatoes), to crocheting more hats and fingerless gloves for the homeless, and reading while on my stationary bike. I recently hit 11,000+ steps, a huge milestone for me with false hips and knees. I just want to sit on my deck and watch the leaves flow across the yard with no mosquitoes to run me indoors, a good book and small drinkypoo to take away my anxiety of an upcoming crazy holiday season with me in a sling.  God has a plan somewhere in all this, so it's gotta be good eventually, right?!