So here I sit it has been nearly two months since I heard the words “total bilateral knee replacement.” Okay reality tells me that this was to be expected: Since the 1992 auto-pedestrian accident I was involved in. I was lucky then as to not need any kind of knee surgeries. So now 16 plus years later I am stunned when I here the doctors diagnosis. So for the last two months I have been awaiting my appointment with the surgeon and I still have 23 more days.
With the falling snow I have given up most of my outside activities they are now consisting of grocery shopping using the motorized carts and going to the library to pick up more videos to watch. I have become adept at the use of my cane for all sorts of other things breaking my way into the closing elevator doors, I can hook things with the handle, and most favorite thing is my cane has become a toy for one of my little friends, Theo. He likes the strap that is supposed to go around your wrist so you never drop it. Unfortunately I have yet to learn to use the strap and I continually have to bend over to pick my cane up! So here I sit just another snowy day and once again I skipped the getting dresses thing! I rather be in my nightgown any way and no one sees me so what does it matter? And there is nothing you can’t do in your jammies that you can do in clothes…alright go outside…even then I will on occasion take my trash out to the garbage can in my robe and slippers. I don’t travel off the back porch so I have told myself that is acceptable!
Today I have been working on cleaning and organizing my house and today was the day I decided to change my bedding and that has been an all day project: Striping the bed and getting flannel sheets out and putting on a new feather bed cover and my flannel duvet on has taken most of the day. I have been clumping up and down the stairs to put things in the washer and then ironing them. I also ironed the decorative shower curtain for my bathroom. That got the cleaning yesterday. And also my demise almost occurred….it happened when using a spray on tub and shower cleaner and then I began scrubbing the shower wall and realized that my eyes were burning! I had not properly rinsed the sponge I was now using and I got a chemical reaction! I ripped open the bathroom window just in the nick of time! I took a serious time out after that and to catch my breath. But the tub and shower is really clean!
I have got my banana nut bread just out of the oven and I am hoping to make at least one batch of divinity tonight still but we’ll see. It seems that every time I make divinity I eat more than I can package up to give away as Christmas presents. So I am going to try to be good and not eat much as I have been loosing weight this last year 19 pounds and I hope to continue.

Merry Christmas to all!

The smell of Autumn

This is my most favorite time of year. I love everything about it! I am no longer a slave to a dying lawn and those pesky weeds. But now is the time to settle back and let things kind of slide. The looming winter is on its way and that constant thought is in my mind.

While walking through the neighborhood I can smell people have had their fireplaces going. This is the perfect time for the comfort of the fire to snuggle up with a quilt and a good book.

Yesterday morning I was up early to get ready for church and I felt something in the air that seemed that there was a big change occurring...snow. Yes that is right -- snow -- the first of the season. I felt compelled to take my camera with me as I made my trek to church and took a few shots of the autumnal snow fall. As I ventured out I was wary of this sudden change in the weather. I have always in the back of my mind -- how is this weather going to affect my asthma? As much as I enjoy this time of year it also heralds a time of my humanness and how I can be affected in quite dramatic ways by the weather.

I spent one serious winter where when I was outside I had my face covered with my scarf and the asthma inhaler in my pocket at the ready. My routine was use that inhaler then cover my face go outside wait for the special bus to take me to the building of my next class and when I got in I would again have to use the inhaler. This was repeated several times everyday and each time I exited every building. To top that off I also had virtually no voice -- only something that was a cross between a graveling squeaky thing. I was like that all winter and well in to the spring.

Today as I contemplate my humanness as well as my health I sit snuggled with a quilt and reading a book -- On the Aesthetic Education of Man by Friedrich Schiller...not your average good book...not even a good book a very difficult treatise on the Aesthetics, not an easy read but interesting work on how his mind is working.

Every year since that winter I had this secret dread for the changing of seasons. I fear that I will have another bad asthma winter. But for now I will try to enjoy this beautiful season called Autumn.

How cleaver is this?

Today is International Disturbed People's Day
Please send an encouraging message to a disturbed friend.... I don't care if you lick windows, take the special bus or occasionally pee on yourself... You hang in there sunshine, you're friggin' special!

Every sixty seconds you spend angry, upset or mad, is a full minute of happiness you'll never get back.

Today's Message of the Day is:

Life is short, Break the rules, Forgive quickly, Kiss slowly, Love truly, Laugh uncontrollably, And never regret anything that made you smile. Send a special message to all the people you love and don't want to lose in 2008. Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we should dance.

First week of Classes -- I'm already behind in my homework!

Yea, that's right I am behind already...but this being Labor Day weekend means no classes or work on Monday! So I will have the whole day to myself! That means I don't have to get dressed--it's a jammies only day--my version of "casual" whatever day at work! So I don't answer the phone and just kick back and turn the stereo up and read!

So far I need to hit the highlights of Aristotle's Poetics and Plato's Republic add in some Baudelaire's The Painter of Modern Life and what could be better? Just a tall cold diet coke and I'm happy!

But on a more serious side I have papers to plan and to start working on the outlines, thesis statements to construct, quotes to find, all sorts of academic busy work that needs to be accomplished prior to the sitting down and writing a thoughtful and articulate paper!

Genius at work.

Light bulbs

Have you ever noticed that light bulbs burn out in the most inconvenient times? I am usually trying to write or cook and the bulb will blow. Leaving me in the dark. I am an older person and I don't like crawling up on ladders or in my case a folding chair to change the bulbs. So I put it off as long as possible. That could leave me feeling my way down the halls and showering in the dark.

Recently I had both of the kitchen lights and both of the hall way lights go out on me. I kept putting off dragging out the fold chair and the climb up to replace the bulbs. Shall we just say cooking in the dark in not a good thing! Food always looks darker or more burned than you really want. So finally I broke down and changed the bulbs and of course when you get up there the shades over the lights are encrusted with little creatures that flew into the light and perished! That makes for another trip up and down the chair to wash the covers and replace those. If it wasn't for those pesky bulbs burning out I can't imagine just how bad those shades would really be! Because I would never, even in my most fastidious days, would think of cleaning the shades. Okay, once every semester I do remember to dust the furniture the rest of the time I just call that stuff "a protective coating" on my furniture that filters out all harmful UV rays and such.

Another added benefit to not immediately changing burned out light bulbs is that one does not see the dust on the furniture or how bad the carpets need to be vacuumed! As it turns out burned out light bulbs are a GOOD THING!

Ready...set...go

Classes begins next Monday(25th), so I made the trek up to the university bookstore to make my purchase of a great notebook in which I plan on recording many great and important things! These mostly will be coming from my professors but hopefully I will be able to contribute to the compilation.

Each and every new semester I make a plan to keep up on my readings and take copious notes during my reading as to record my thoughts during the reading of the texts. And each semester I fail miserably about the fifth week.

I will be posting a listing of my books and the class titles I will be taking this semester also noting interesting and important things I have learned from my readings.