Happy New Year!

May you leave behind all the bad things of 2017, and take the good things with you into 2018.  May 2018 bring you  more good things than bad, and the bad things only irritations.

I wish you all peace, love, and understanding.

Words to live by - for 2018 and always

"Life goes on amidst chaos and everyone doing their best to stay well and sane." (thanks to JMcC)

Five Days of Christmas

Friday - Margaret picked me up about noon.  We stopped at Macalister's Deli for lunch, and then headed for Hillsboro.  It's always fun to reconnect with Margaret's menagerie.  Squeaky (the cat) and Ferg (Jesse's dog) are sweet critters, very loving.  The weather was cold and damp and grey.

Saturday - We started getting ready for our first Christmas dinner - with Matt & Claire (and their "babies" Barley and Hops) and Jesse & Darby. I finished one baby sweater I was working on, and started another. It wasn't a huge meal, but wonderful turkey and country ham, pinto beans, green beans, corn, and (for Margaret and me) dressing left-over from Thanksgiving.  After dinner, we had our present-opening.  There were some lovely choices and some funny choices - but the highlight was Claire's gift to Jesse - a box of "Beard-a-ments".  These are tiny ornament balls on clips to put in a beard.  Jesse did not think it was quite as funny as the rest of us did, but he was a good sport about it.

Sunday - Jesse had had to work overnight.  He and Matt met at the Waffle House for breakfast, and brought waffles back to the rest of us. Margaret went to church, and the rest of us talked and stayed out of serious trouble.  The cold nasty weather continued, but at least we weren't getting the horrendous snow and bitterly cold of the upper midWest.  Matt, Claire and their doodles left in early afternoon, and we just knitted/read/napped away the rest of the afternoon.  Margaret went to midnight mass and I headed off to bed.

Monday - We left Margaret's about 7, ate at Waffle House before getting on I-24 to drive to Nashville to pick up Jean and her friend, Kay.  We headed to Kate's in western Kentucky, getting there about 11.  Lots of good visiting.  It had been a while since I'd been to Kate's, so it was good for all of us. We had a nice dinner of lasagna, artichoke-heart casserole, home-made French bread, and even some mincemeat pie tarts for desert - an unusual, but delicious Christmas dinner. We got back to Margaret's about 7.  It never got warmer than about the mid30s, but we did at least get to see some good sunshine - first in about 5 days. It made for a nice Christmas present.

Tuesday - We had a surprise visit this morning from a farrier, looking for the folks who needed some horses shoed (shod?).  Jesse and Darby weren't there, but once found, got to the house to get the process started.  Obviously, as I told Margaret, my lack of knowledge about horses is vast.  Guess I'll be picking up more info if Jesse keeps up the horse ownership.  Margaret and I left about 11 to bring me back home.  Because of heavy traffic, we spent most of the trip on US 41, even driving into Chattanooga on surface roads - a very pleasant drive.  And the welcome sunshine made it even better.  We ate a nice Mexican lunch on the way home, Margaret got me back in the apartment, and returned home safely.

It was nice to see lots of family, and I hope to see the rest of them before too much longer.  It was a good holiday.  I hope everybody else had a good one, too.

Slothful!

Sorry to have not written much.  Not busy, just slothful.

An old friend, Missy, spent the night with me last night. She slept on the new sofa bed in the living room, which is open to the kitchen.  She lives near Knoxville now, and her mother-in-law lives here at the Terrace.  The MIL is dying, and with Hospice.  Missy's husband is out of town on business, so she is checking in for a couple of days.  I offered to have her stay here last night, and she was glad to have the chance to get away for a few hours. We went out to our favorite Mexican place for dinner, and she's staying again tonight.

Our swim group had it's Xmas after-class brunch yesterday - all sorts of good food, and a chance to see each other in "real" clothes and to chat.  It's always a fun time.  One of the gals super-decorates her lovely home and always has us come there.

I got to play duplicate last night - I didn't think we did too poorly, but we came in last again.  Oh, well - it's always good to get out.

Happy Holidays to all - whatever holiday you may celebrate!

Chilly Wednesday

Pretty cold here - in the 20s this morning when I headed out to swimming.  I took my car in for the annual inspection.  I've learned to go midweek in the middle of the month, and rarely have to wait.  Today I was the only one there when I drove up, and it took all of 5 minutes.  I came home, filled out the online application, and should get my renewal stickers in the mail tomorrow.  They're good!  That was pretty much all for today - and about the same for tomorrow.  I'll just stay in and stay warm (basking in the glow from Doug Jones' victory in Alabama).

Brrrr!

Nothing going on around here, and that's a good thing.  We had snow showers here yesterday afternoon, but up to 10" in the higher elevations in our TV viewing area.  The high today was only in the low 40s, with 20s predicted for overnight.  This is about 10* colder than our usual temps for this time of year.  At least we don't have any precipitation in the forecast.

It's a good time for knitting and binge-watching.

Visit to the Spine Clinic

The good news is that there is no imminent surgery on my back, and no MRI scheduled yet.

The bad news is that I have really bad scoliosis and no discs at all in the disc spaces.  Basically, there is probably some major back surgery in my future, if I live long enough, and the timing will be at my discretion.  But as long as I'm not having symptoms in my legs and pain no more than it usually is, I can wait.  I'm to go back in three months.  And, they will schedule an MRI and potential surgery anytime I think I'm ready.

As long as I don't have pain like I did last Sunday/Monday, I'm willing to wait.  But it wouldn't take many days like that to have me ready to schedule surgery.

Update

It's 41* here now, and supposed to get near freezing tonight. I hope I don't have to scrape the windshield in the morning. My appointment with the spine clinic is at 9 tomorrow morning.  I haven't been to this location before, so will be leaving the house between 8 and 8:15, to be sure to get there on time.  I'm feeling better than a couple of days ago - more like the usual level of pain.  I don't know what happened to cause the severe pain (up to an 8 or 9 on the scale) of Sunday and Monday, but it wasn't there when I got up on Tuesday.  For this, I'm very grateful! I had an optometry checkup last week, and have new glasses ordered.  I'll pick them up on Friday.

The monthly residents' meeting was this afternoon.  I guess there's always drama in any senior living facility, and this place is no exception.  Our Executive Director is leaving as of this week.  At least he wasn't fired, it was a personal decision (he's moving back to Texas where his wife is in a long-time job).  In any case, he's been quite good, and everybody pretty  much likes him.  So now corporate has to find somebody new, and we have to "break him/her in".  In the two years I've lived here, this will be the 4th ED, along with the second corporate owner.  Oh, well...

In the technology department, Comcast/Xfinity sent me a new piece of equipment, saying that it's is "easy to install", and I should be able to do it myself.  Yeah, right!  With great trepidation, I set out to do this chore - along with mental plans for what to do when I couldn't make it work.  To my great amazement, all I had to do was unplug three plugs from the old one, and plug them into the new one, then get on my devices and re-log in to my network.  The whole process took about 30 minutes.  And, what I'm proudest of, I remembered to get the serial number of the equipment and put it in the listing where I keep all my passwords, etc.

Friday Five

I've been AWOL - sorry.

1. This week has been buffeted by family health issues.  No specifics to share at this time.
2. I got to play bridge twice this week.  No master points, but at least today we got some good hands that we played well.
3. The hot water was off in the dressing room I use at the YMCA all week.  I didn't go to the pool Wednesday (bad me!), but did go today.  I just used another dressing room. 
4. I figured out how to borrow an e-book from my library (thanks, Kate!), and checked out Unbelievable, by Katy Tur.  She was the NBC/MSNBC reporter who covered Trump from the day he announced in 2015.  It's a good read.
5. I've gotten a couple of hats knitted out of left-over yarn.  Now to get to work on the socks I've been delaying working on.