Fact vs. Selective Memory

I don't want to argue about proven facts any more.

Surely, it's a proven fact that washing dishes by hand is more wasteful and less hygenic than using a dishwasher. And there must be proof somewhere that eating lying down in bed is bad for you and that you shouldn't eat two or three large bags of snack food in a week, all by yourself. Also, isn't there a study somewhere that says the more you lie around, the less energy you'll have. And I know I read that having hobbies and having friends is good for your mental and physical health.

Our latest spousal quibble is about the dishwasher because he doesn't believe that it gets the dishes dry enough. When I empty it, the dishes are so hot I can hardly handle them and the only things wet have indentations on their tops which end up holding some water. Not good enough for him, so he has decided to wash all his own dishes by hand because that's what his mom did, so it must be best. My mom did too, but she loved her dishwasher when she got it and didn't balk at a little science to help her out in the kitchen. Actually so did Joe's mom love her dishwasher. But he has a selective memory which won't allow for that.

New!

New favorite food: Greek yogurt. It is so rich and thick and with the addition of fruit and a sweetener it only takes 1/2 cup to make a great snack or dessert for 60 calories not counting the fruit.

New favorite fruit to add: Blueberries! (A close second is pineapple chunks.)

New favorite toy: Caller ID on the shop phone. Joe is now annoyed that I can know it's him before I answer the phone. He's afraid I'll snub him and not pick up. Hmm. Nope, can't do that now that he's realized I can. I like it though as I can ignore some constant irritations such as telemarketers wanting to sell me insurance, security systems, etc.

New favorite pictures of Jack: Mom and Dad had professional pictures taken and every one is cute, but the ones where Jack fights with his hat are my favorite.

New favorite activity: Rehab. I am shocked to admit that if I could go to rehab every day, I would. Those days I feel much more energized and get more done at the shop. I definitely will find a physical activity for after rehab.

New favorite quilt pattern: Disappearing Nine-patch. We'll be demo-ing this at the Retreat for the new Mercantile on Main (New favorite Quilt Shop), formerly Vac Shack.

New favorite activity to watch at the house: Quinn received a silver scooter for Christmas, and she and Kai have been zooming around Gramma's house with its laminate wood floors ever since.

Arggh!

I checked our bank balance on line this morning, just because; I sometimes do that. And my heart plummeted as it said we were overdrawn almost 300 dollars including the overdraft charge. Immediately, I was sure I had screwed up and not written in a payment or check or had messed up simple arithmetic.

I added "Bank" to my list of errands and stopped there to transfer funds from another account to cover the overdraft. All taken care of but now I'm wondering what I messed up on. At the shop, I took time to double check from the account on line to my written ledger what had happened. Aha! One of our bills had been taken out twice! Wow! It wasn't my fault!

I had Joe (whose name is on the bill) call and complain and they are putting the money including the overdraft fee back into our account. Of course, it wasn't the bank's fault either, but at least, it wasn't mine, and the money is back!

Sports Fans

Yesterday, the Steelers won a football game that ensures them a place in the Super Bowl. I am very glad they won but I don't really love football. I do love when my family and friends are happy so I have always rooted for whatever team would make them pleased. I live among some diehard sports fans. It isn't just my husband (who has two shelf units full of t-shirts and sweatshirts, all with logos of some kind, and an entire top of the hall closet full of logo'd hats.) His favorite teams are the Pittsburgh Steelers and Notre Dame. I actually shopped in his shelves this morning to find a great Steelers sweatshirt to wear to rehab to impress my physical therapist.

Also there are the younger fans. Laura and Jason like Tampa since they lived there for three years but they also like the Steelers. Their college choice is Ohio State Buckeyes. You might think it's my son-in-law who's the biggest fan and he does play in a fantasy league and he loves his sports, but Laura is right with him. She has favorite announcers and referees. I never knew you could even know who the referees were. Kai at eleven knows more about the pro players and where they went to college than his PapPap does. So far Quinn is oblivious.

Lisa and Jeremy root for the Bengals since Jeremy grew up in Cincinnati but also have to support the Steelers as Joe has engrained it into his daughters that the Steelers rule. They too love Ohio State Buckeyes. Jack, at 10 months, has several outfits to keep him appropriately loyal but many are Ohio University.

Joe, Laura, Lisa, Jeremy, and I are Bobcats and always want them to win. We admit that Jason attended Ohio State but he lived in Athens for a year and I think a little green and white might have migrated into his psyche.

I never really care who wins a sporting event -- I only want the people I love to be happy -- So I root for whoever they do! I am totally fickle and capable of rooting for both sides if necessary.

No Thank You!

What is so hard about saying, "Thank you," for men, particularly the one I married? Although, yes, I grumbled about it, I transferred some money from my savings to our checking account to cover his pharmacy bill, and no thank you. Now he's also picking up a prescription for me, and when I get it from him, I will have to bite my tongue not to say, "Thank you."

In the past three months at various times, I have thanked him for doing my laundry, making dinner for the two of us, helping me in and out of the car, driving me places, going to the grocery store, and other mundane chores that normally I do with no thanks whatsoever. I will admit that each year I do get a mushy birthday card, Christmas card, and Mother's Day card with lots of thank you's. So three times a year, he manages to say, "Thank you," without opening his mouth.

He's also incapable of saying "I'm sorry," which is a whole other thing. I think it's a male-female deal but still very irritating.

Counting Down to Surgery

It's on. The decision is made. My second total knee replacement will take place on February 23. It's a bit sooner than I thought I wanted to do it, but I think the longer I put it off, the more nervous I will become about it. I will be able to do rehab right up to the day of surgery which will enable an easier recovery and rehab of the left knee. Also since it's the left, I should be able to drive sooner.

I decided that it really didn't matter what the weather was like as I have to stay in for the first three or four weeks anyway. Also Joe is fairly well trained right now so I'd better take advantage of it and not have to totally re-educate him as to what help I need.

So five weeks and counting!

A Bit of This and That

At the end of every rehab session, Dave puts ice on my knee for 10 minutes and then heat for the same. It's great and really makes my knee feel capable of walking out the door without my cringing at each step. But most people enjoy lying flat on a table in a dark room while doing this. Not me, I prefer to sit in a chair and out in the common room. I am a daylight person.

And I'm nibby; I want to know what's going on and maybe even comment on it. Today I had a conversation with a woman who's four weeks behind me in rehab and is planning on having her second knee done in February. It was interesting to compare notes about different doctors and procedures although both our doctors are from the same large practice in Columbus.

Monday I have my last follow up appointment for my right knee and more or less my first decision-making appointment for my left. I would like to wait until April 6th for this surgery, but I don't know what the doctor will propose and I don't want to do major damage beyond what's already done by waiting too long Actually I would be willing to have it as early as February 23rd if I could actually have it on that exact date. That would give me a month to recuperate before Jack's first birthday. I would miss some Guild events in March but that would be ok as long as I could be ready for Jack's birthday. I can't believe my baby grandson will be a year old. He gets cuter every day!

New Recipes

Having been back on Weight Watchers for a little over a year and having lost a significant amount of weight, I am finding myself bored with the same old food and having cravings for sweet stuff, always my downfall. I've been trying to come up with some new recipes to keep me satisfied and yet healthy. Since Weight Watchers now gives no points for most fruits and veggies, I have been trying to add more and more of those.

The first recipe I tried was my own twist on rice pudding. I took 1 cup of brown rice, added one 60 calorie container of sugar free vanilla pudding, topped with 1 cup of blueberries or drained pineapple. I mix it all together and yum! It makes a great snack or lunch.

Then I watched Aartie's Paarty on the Food Network and she made some great things. Breakfast this morning was Pumpkin Oatmeal, basically a can of pumpkin, 2 cups oatmeal, 4 cups water, and pumpkin pie spice. I added some Splenda brown sugar and fat free milk when I ate it and it was a nice change.

Last night's vegetables were also Aartie's -- a combination of tomatoes, onions, artichoke hearts, and chick peas. I couldn't season it as she did as I don't have any Indian spices in my pantry. I am not even sure I would like them, but I used the ones she recommended that I did have -- cumin and paprika, and my tomatoes were already seasoned with oregano and basil. I have to say it made a party in my mouth compared to the usual green beans!

Both of her recipes are four servings so I got out the plastic ware and divvied it up for my personal stash. Lord knows, Joe won't eat any of it. As far as he is concerned, this house is totally empty of food in spite of the fact I stop at Krogers almost every night on my way home.

Brrr!

I can't seem to get warm any more. It may be that the temperature is 4 degrees above zero when I hop out of bed at 7 am. Or it may be that I'm just getting more sensitive to the cold with my metal knee. Or some of it is I'm an idiot.

I have been especially cold at the shop in spite of having the heater turned as high as it can be. There is no heat in the bathroom so I've been keeping that door closed except when I leave when I open it so that the pipes won't freeze.

Today I skipped the heat part of my rehab as it was almost 11 am and I try to open the shop by then. So 12 minutees of ice at physical therapy in Newark, and then I was on my way to the shop in Hebron, about a ten minute drive. At the quilting studio, I just couldn't seem to warm up and got to thinking that I didn't remember having this problem last year. Hmm. Of course! I had a small space heater here at the shop last winter. Wonder what I did with it. Hmmm. On the bottom shelf in the bathroom of the shop, there it is, with the cord neatly wrapped around it.

It's much warmer in the shop now and I can take it into the bathroom when needed and not freeze my buns as I have been. Idiot!

Impulse

Sometimes I talk before I really think. I can get myself into trouble but sometimes it turns rather great. A while ago in a committee meeting I had a brain fart and came up with an idea for a raffle quilt for my guild's show. Since Heart of Ohio is celebrating 20 years, I suggested we make a sampler quilt using all the block of the month patterns that had been done over the past 20 years of the guild. Of course, once I suggested it, I was in charge of it. That's the trouble part. Fortunately, one of the members had all the patterns in a notebook, but I spent hours scanning the designs and choosing a single pattern from the 12 months of each year. Then two members of the committee and I spent an afternoon choosing fabrics for each block and making kits. Each kit was handed out to a member for completion.

The great part is that it is going to be gorgeous. After discussion, the committee decided to freshen up the designs by using bright batiks. Now that the blocks are coming back in, they are wonderful. I've decided to use the remaining fabrics to frame each block with a complementary color and perhaps use black as a final border. Originally I made it clear I would piece the top but that I didn't want to quilt it. I am holding firm to that decision because I still have another knee surgery to get through but it would be fun.

A Few Updates

A few updates:

Joe found his teeth. He waited until the snow melted some and walked the driveway and yard next to it. He found them in the grass right next to my car so he had had them in his pocket and dropped them when he pulled out his keys. I doubt that he learned his lesson about shoving his teeth in his pocket. But I am very glad he found the partial.

I finished my first quilt since the surgery! TaDah! It's a quilt of my own, a town square design with a border fabric of blue houses which inspired the whole quilt when a friend and I found it in Craft Cupboard in Berlin, Ohio. It's almost colonial looking and I love it. Now I need to get it bound and then it's going to my nephew and his wife -- they've only been married 3 years so not too bad.

Rehab continues and I can tell that the muscles in both legs are improving. We're working on functional stuff, like going down the steps without worrying about which leg goes first. Right now if the unoperated leg goes first, I'm possibly in trouble as the right leg still has pain in whatever muscle that is and then if I'm not holding on, I could fall. So new exercise to develop that muscle and, of course, new pain.

Back to Almost Normal

Although I am still going to Rehab and working hard on getting my knee back into shape, life is closer to normal because I am also going back to work at the shop, aka Heavy Metal Quilting.
My right knee is officially straighter than the left now so the surgery worked in that the right knee is getting stronger and will eventually be better than the left in all ways.

Therefore, I am also back to work. Today I quilted half of a queen size quilt and worked on paper work. I discovered that I haven't been paying an electric bill for the past two months. Since I haven't been in consistently for the last two months, I hadn't balanced the check ledger for the business since the end of October. I knew I had enough money in the account for the basic bills and didn't really worry about it. When I called AEP, they said there was a glitch somewhere but right now I had a credit. I have a feeling I will get billed soon, but it was nice to know I hadn't done anything wrong myself.

My goal is to work 4 days a week for a while and then probably up it to 5 unless I really like only working 4 days. Before this, I usually worked 6 days a week even though I only posted 5. My knees are making me more aware that what I want to do is just as important as what I think I should do.