Friday, February 14, 2025

A bit of a ramble

 Every day I tell myself that I need to write, and every day I don't write.  I sat down at my computer several hours ago planning to blog and instead I am looked at Facebook, knitting patterns and who knows what else.

     
I guess I should start by showing off the paper flower bouquet that Nick gave me for Valentines Day today.   I mailed some of these to the kids, but I don't know what shape the will be in when they are received.
 
I have been miserable for the last couple of months.  First there was the expected pain and recovery from knee replacement surgery.  But that was getting better before I fell and developed some sort of neuro/ muscular mess .  I have been n pain since mid December- waking up at night being jolted away by the pain.  Primarily in my knee and hip.
 
I have seen my orthopedic surgeon, my psychologist, a pain specialist and my internal medicine doctor.   I did some research and got myself a medical marijuana card, and Nick and I went to the legal "weed store" called Beyond Hello.  We spoke with the pharmacist who prescribed some gummies and a tincture to put under my tongue.   Both drugs made me drowsy.  Neither made the pain go away. I actually felt sort of silly going to a drug place.   The whole thing is weird  Show your "card", show our ID etc.  hen there's the being escorted through the locked door into the dispensary.   I felt like --I don't know.  I just kept thinking that you don't have to do all of that to go into a liquor store.   Oh well.
 
I have had a hard time explaining that I don't need something to make me sleep. I need something to make the pain go away.  The pain doctor prescribed oxycodone for the pain.  Like the other things, the pain stayed but I got dopey so I didn't care.  The pain doc wanted to do a procedure that involves sticking needles in my legs and running electricity through them to kill the nerve pain.  
 
So... last week I saw my internal medicine doctor, Dr Bhushan.  Dr. B was against that procedure Genicular Nerve Treatment.   Too risky and it might not work or it could do permanent damage.    Dr B prescribed Gabapentin which is a muscle relaxer.  It seemed to help .  Then I went to Dr Klein, orthopedic doctor who prescribed a "steroid pack".  The combination of the steroids and the Gabapentin seems to do the trick.  I am still stiff and sore, but I don't have jolting, searing pain going through me.  I am feeling optimistic!
 
It is so nice to be able to look forward.  To anything.  No, I am still not up to taking a long flight or drive.  Not sure I will ever be able to walk distances like I used to. But I can dream.
 
In that vain (vein?), I fantasize  about visiting the kids- not really that far fetched.  I have a fantasy about traveling.  Where to?  Oh my.  

I would like to go to the UK with Nick.  See my friend Sarah Hung who I know from Hong Kong. She lives in the UK now.  How about Paris to see Joniece.  Haven;t seen her since high school, but we have laughs on Facebook! Travel around being tourists.   I want to go to Oslo and Tromso then?  Maybe Poland and Germany.    Onward to Germany maybe?  See how Berlin has changed.   

Thailand- Bangkok to see Ampia and Chiang Mai to see Alex and Julie and whatever old LLL friends who still live there.
 
Of course I want to go to Perth.   I don't know how that would be.  We would not be able to stay in "our" house of course.   I'd love to visit Melbourne gt in touch with Tracy Bartrum (who I know from Perth) and Next will be New Zealand to visit my Claire- also someone I know from Perth, and then to see my cousin Molli Thompsen who lives in Wellington.     

I could go on and one.  yes I am a dreamer.  And I guess that this dreaming is an indication that I am feeling better!
 
As long as I am on a roll with my rambling, I will write about something else that's on my mind.  I know that I won't be alive forever.  I hope I will be around for quite a few more years- but there are no guarantees.   I would like to write a letter to each of the kids and tell them how much I love them and how special they are to me in their own unique ways.  They are all wonderful people.  They baffle me sometimes.  How did they get to be who they are?  And who are they?  I just love them so much I want them to have that gift of a letter.  I hope it will happen and I will do that writing.
 
Galileo's first two teeth!

 
 
And the last thing I am thinking about.   Cheeks.  Specifically baby cheeks.   I look at photos of my grandson, Galileo and imagine rubbing my cheek against his smooth wonderful, baby soft cheeks.   It is so basic and primal.  I did it with all of my babies.   It's love and connection and sensual and soft.   

Yes, my kids get tired of me saying how I remember them as babies.  Okay, be annoyed.  But you are a part of me.  You have my and your dad's DNA.  You grew inside of me and I nurtured and nourished you with my body.    So be nice to me!
 
 
 

 

 

 

Friday, February 7, 2025

Coffee

 We have been using a Keuric coffee for years.  In fact we are on our second full size coffee maker and we have a one cup size on that we bought in Maine to use at Austin;s house.  The one from Maine is red.  It lives in our basement now.

 Nick and I were talking about how nice it would be to have a fresh brewed cup of coffee from a percolator.   Well, it turns out that we do (or did) have a percolator.  It must be close to 50 years old.  Maybe even older.

Since our son Chance works at Starbucks, he gets a pound of coffee every month I think.  There are a couple of bags of ground coffee sitting around.  I decided that I would make a pot of "real" coffee with the percolator instead of with pods.   Let me tell you- it was terrible!  Probably the worse coffee I ave ever tasted.   There could be any number of factors:  dirty pot, too old to work well, or maybe we forgot what percolated coffee tastes like.  Needless to say, we no longer have a percolator!


 NOT good to the last drop!

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

And...it's February!

 Just about every evening I tell myself to sit down and blog.  The I get distracted by Facebook, email and anything to do with yarn and knitting.  And then I am just too tied to write anything.

On January 29th, just last week,  there was a tragic midair collision between a commercial jet preparing to land at National Airport and a helicopter that crashed into the plane.  All 67 people were killed.   The last of the bodies were recovered today.  The wreckage is still being brought out of the river.


 

 



Sunday, January 26, 2025

A memory from th 1980s


 

 This is the first La Leche League Group that I led in 1983. I am still in touch with many of these moms- all of whom are now grandmothers! Chiang Mai, Thailand.

  My husband is a retired US Foreign Service Officer. Our first tour was Bangkok, where my daughter was born in 1978. I was fortunate enough to study Thai with my husband (we did not have kids yet). We were in Bangkok from 1976-78. Then home to VA for a year, then off to Poznan, Poland from 1979-81. My son, Morgan was born during that tour but I returned to Virginia for his birth. In 1981, when Morgan and Courtney were 6 months old and 3 years old, we went to Chiang Mai for two years. There's more but I don't want to take up too much space. Suffice it to say I have 5 children born in 4 countries.

Friday, January 24, 2025

It's been so cold out!

 It really has been cold.  Too cold.  I love snow. It is so beautiful and clean and pure.  But right now while I am having such problems and pain in my knees I am afraid to walk in the outdoors right now.  And also, much of it has melted and re-frozen so it's ice.   

 


 
 

I've been wearing compression socks most of the time because my legs hurt.  I sit with heating pads and with the fireplace running to keep me warm.
 
I feel like technology is making me crazy!   I did something to my computer- I deleted a bookmark for my pictures because I did not think I needed to book mark them.  And ever since then I am being challenged on anything I try to log into.  Rescuing my passwords.   Spending house on the phone with customer support to figure out why I cannot see my bills or bank accounts or why my debit card has stopped working.
 
Right now I cannot get the margins in this blog page to go where I want them.

 
So I have pain any time I try to get up and walk.  Getting into and out of the car is difficult because my right legs hurts when I try to get it to do what it should.  And on top of all that, I am deeply disturbed by how Donald Trump is trying to destroy any of the kindness and empathy that  I have always believed were the undying qualities that made America great.  Not "great again".  We were already great.  He is tearing it down as fast as he can.

 
 

 

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome.

 I don't think I have actually ever had a "syndrome" before.  I know that the main issue I am having is with my knees.  They hurt.  They feel swollen.  When I stand up from sitting I go slow because my knees hurt.

Yesterday morning when i got up, everything seemed to hurt.  My hip, my shoulders, my neck and oh yeah, my knees.   I sat with a heating pad for a while- shifting it to the areas that needed it most at any given moment.     Once I took medicine (Ibuprofen or Aleve)  I feel a lot better.

I am doing my physical therapy exercises.  I don't know if they make me feel better, but they don't make it worse.   And I am afraid that if I don't move enough it will get worse.  

I am confident that I will get better.  It will just take time.    I have been tempted to ask the doctor for some stronger pain medications like Tramidol or Oxycontin, but, while they do help, I think I am managing alright at the moment.

I wear my compression socks as much as I can stand to- which is a lot.   Otherwise my legs get swollen.

As soon as all of the ice and snow are gone and I feel safe, I will start going for short walks with Nick by my side.

 

compression socks

   

Saturday, January 18, 2025

Lifted from Facebook

 I am currently reading a book about slavery in America and this came up on Facebook.  I had to share it here:  

 

President George W. Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, has a message for people who are excusing President Trump's racism:
"I had fully intended to ignore President Trump’s latest round of racially charged taunts against an African American elected official, and an African American activist, and an African American journalist and a whole city with a lot of African Americans in it. I had every intention of walking past Trump’s latest outrages and writing about the self-destructive squabbling of the Democratic presidential field, which has chosen to shame former vice president Joe Biden for the sin of being an electable, moderate liberal.
But I made the mistake of pulling James Cone’s 'The Cross and the Lynching Tree' off my shelf — a book designed to shatter convenient complacency. Cone recounts the case of a white mob in Valdosta, Ga., in 1918 that lynched an innocent man named Haynes Turner. Turner’s enraged wife, Mary, promised justice for the killers. The sheriff responded by arresting her and then turning her over to the mob, which included women and children. According to one source, Mary was 'stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, and roasted to death. In the midst of this torment, a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant fell to the ground and was stomped to death.'
God help us. It is hard to write the words. This evil — the evil of white supremacy, resulting in dehumanization, inhumanity and murder — is the worst stain, the greatest crime, of U.S. history. It is the thing that nearly broke the nation. It is the thing that proved generations of Christians to be vicious hypocrites. It is the thing that turned normal people into moral monsters, capable of burning a grieving widow to death and killing her child.
When the president of the United States plays with that fire or takes that beast out for a walk, it is not just another political event, not just a normal day in campaign 2020. It is a cause for shame. It is the violation of martyrs’ graves. It is obscene graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial. It is, in the eyes of history, the betrayal — the re-betrayal — of Haynes and Mary Turner and their child. And all of this is being done by an ignorant and arrogant narcissist reviving racist tropes for political gain, indifferent to the wreckage he is leaving, the wounds he is ripping open.
Like, I suspect, many others, I am finding it hard to look at resurgent racism as just one in a series of presidential offenses or another in a series of Republican errors. Racism is not just another wrong. The Antietam battlefield is not just another plot of ground. The Edmund Pettus Bridge is not just another bridge. The balcony outside Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel is not just another balcony. As U.S. history hallows some causes, it magnifies some crimes.
What does all this mean politically? It means that Trump’s divisiveness is getting worse, not better. He makes racist comments, appeals to racist sentiments and inflames racist passions. The rationalization that he is not, deep down in his heart, really a racist is meaningless. Trump’s continued offenses mean that a large portion of his political base is energized by racist tropes and the language of white grievance. And it means — whatever their intent — that those who play down, or excuse, or try to walk past these offenses are enablers.
Some political choices are not just stupid or crude. They represent the return of our country’s cruelest, most dangerous passion. Such racism indicts Trump. Treating racism as a typical or minor matter indicts us."
— Michael Gerson