49?

Yesterday was my birthday.  I turned 49.  Not 49 and holding.  Not the anniversary of my 49th birthday.  Just plain old 49 for the first time - but maybe not the last!

Ran and Bean took me to the best restaurant!

Sweet Potatoes in Winston-Salem.

Ran and I had the opportunity to get to know the owners of this place and they are fabulous people.  Their attention to detail is evident.

 

While we were downtown we couldn't just eat and run.  It's rare when we are there, so we had to walk around and take in the sites.

The side of Sweet Potatoes.
Looks like a sweet like oasis in the middle of town.

Roses growing next to Sweet Potatoes.

 



Art?  Graffiti?  How about both?



Fancy place to lock up your bike in front of a/perture



Cherry Pie Bar.  To Die For!
A special treat from the Camino Bakery.

Baby Knitting

It has been too long since there's been a baby in the family.

And that's a terrible thing because babies are fun to knit for!

The joys of baby knitting are endless.

You get to experiment with new techniques....

You can try a new yarn and not go broke....

When Randy's nephew and wife announced they were expecting I didn't think 

"boy or girl?"

"due date?"

No.  I thought,

 "what can I knit for this baby?"

Out came all the baby knitting patterns books.

Ravelry was my new best friend.

Then I saw a blanket my old best friend, Karen, had been working on.  She's been my best friend since junior high and has this great aunt thing totally under control.  She and I started talking about the "Sweet Pea Blanket."

 

 



Ran's nephew and wife are POSITIVE, without a shadow of a doubt, 100%, ain't no way it's not happening that this baby is a girl.  Now I know technology has come a long way since I had my babies, but sometimes ultrasounds can be wrong.  I just didn't want to spend a great deal of time on an 'heirloom quality' - my words, not theirs - gift that was going to be the wrong color.  I fondled a beautiful berry color, but settled on a creamy white.

 

I really love the way it ripples.  The baby will be here in August - perfect blanket weather for a Florida baby, right?  And whether it's a girl or a boy, the color will be just fine!

 

I'm still here!

Have you given up on me?

I'm still here.  Just having new stuff happening around me.

As many of you know, my Mom has Alzheimer's.  She has her good days and she has her bad days.  Dealing with her good days and bad days creates good days and bad days for my family.  And dealing with all of that creates a great deal of stress.  My Mom doesn't live with us and I don't know if she could.  Our house is small and we cannot build on.  Mom's house is small and we can't build on.  It was suggested by my Mom's sister that we break up our household and have two of us live with Mom and two of us live in our house.  A lot of people have good intentions, I'm sure, when discussing Alzheimer's and what YOU should do.  However, not many of them are willing to actually help do the day to day stuff in the trenches.  And, although I do not live with my Mom, I pick her up every day and bring her to my house for dinner, take her grocery shopping, keep up with her prescriptions, watch her take her pills daily, take care of her cats, take care of straightening up her house, arrange appointments, pay her bills, and deal with anything 'emergency' she has.  The emergency can be anything from finding a TV remote, finding a channel on her television, plunging a toilet, finding a pair of glasses..... notice 'finding' is something we do a lot.

All of this is stressful.  It would be nice to have an evening of just the four of us.  It would be nice to go out to dinner and not feel guilty that Mom is not eating a decent meal that night.  A vacation is totally out of the question.  Traveling would be a nightmare.  So, when there is traveling to be done, RL does it with one of the kids.  His Mom was widowed the month before my Mom, so he tends to things she needs from time to time.  She lives 600 miles away, so that involves more than a short drive or a visit for just an hour or so.

 

What can happen when you are stressed out and have no idea what to do next?  Well, it can manifest itself in other ways.  Thankfully, the memory clinic at our hospital has a wonderful support system and offers monthly support groups as well as counseling.  We take advantage of whatever they have to offer when we can.  However, that type of support can't take away ALL of the stress in our lives and stress can manifest itself in even more ways than mentally. 

In October RL started having some pain in his shoulder.  We didn't think too much of it.  Thought maybe he had strained it or even slept funny.  The pain didn't go away.  It actually spread a little.  Over his Thanksgiving vacation, we had a wonderful and relaxing week.  Christmas was coming and we couldn't wait for the three week vacation he was going to take.  He still had the aches and pains though.  A trip to the doctor ruled out Rheumatoid Arthritis.  Whew!  Dodged a bullet there.  Christmas vacation came and we had a decent two weeks.  Then the day after Christmas, his pains got worse.  His joints were sore.  We noticed he had an increase in dandruff and it even looked to be in and behind his ear.  Strange.  His wrists got red and swollen.  His right index finger swelled, not twice it's size, but got close.  Then his knuckles on that hand started swelling.  A trip to the doctor was in order again.  More tests, a referral to a rheumatologist and some meds.  In January we saw the rheumatologist and walked away with a diagnosis:  Psoriatic Arthritis.  X-rays have shown he already has damage to his joints.  We had never heard of it.  Sure, we had seen the commercials with Phil Mickelson, but never really paid attention because it wasn't something that affected us.  RL hadn't even had symptoms of Psoriasis until maybe October.    Guess what causes a flare up?  Stress.  Guess what we have in abundance?  Stress.

 

So, we are dealing with it the best way we know how.  He has started taking meds, has monthly blood work to make sure the meds are not messing with his liver, sees his Rheumatologist every few months, and has to rest quite a bit due to the side effects of the medication. 

 

The reason I am putting this out there is because we really don't know anything about Psoriatic Arthritis besides what we've been told or can find on the internet.  Apparently it's not extremely common.  When we mention he has Arthritis, we hear, "Well, who doesn't?  We all get it as we age."  But this isn't that type of Arthritis. 

So, if you know anything about it, please let us know.  And if you don't know anything about it, we could sure use your prayers.

Thanks. 

The Great Chicken Run 2013

Our day started off very slow.  We got out of bed late and were complaining about all chances of any fun or excitement were shot.  As we were sitting around bemoaning our situation, Harper started barking.  No cars out in the driveway.  No kids playing in the street.  No trucks going down the road.  Upon closer examination, R found what he was barking at:  Chickens!  We live on a dead end road.  In our cul de sac there is a seven acre lot which has never been built on.  The family decided to put a garden, bees and chickens there though.  Unfortunately, the family doesn't live in the immediate area.  Due to 'No Tresspassing' signs we haven't ventured too far down that way.  But that didn't stop the chickens from venturing up our way!  First we thought we saw one, then three, then realized more roaming a neighbor's yard.  She had pulled into her drive just as I was approaching and seemed more perturbed than helpful.  So I became a chicken wrangler!  How do you wrangle chickens?  I've never had any experience with them.  So I just started saying, "Here chicky, chicky."  What do you know!  They followed me - just like I was the Pied Piper!  Seven chickens followed me down the lane to their chicken coop.  R brought some bread with her to help lead them into their coop.  Three were easily persuaded.  One was touch and go - she would go in and then come back out.  Three were not having anything to do with it!  They were free range baby!  I finally noticed a name on the no trespassing sign and looked them up on the computer.  A phone call and they were on their way!  We got four fresh eggs for our effort.  It pays to be neighborly!

 

Not yet, I'm still enjoying the great outdoors!

The three renegades who didn't want to return home.

Finally!  All seven of them safely home.

Chow time.

Our reward for the afternoon adventure.

Winter Mix

A winter mix sounds somewhat nice.  It could be a mix of Christmas music.  Maybe it could be a mix of something good to eat like Chex mix.  But no, it is the stuff of winter horror stories.  Being a native Floridian I am fascinated by snow.  I like to build snowmen and sled.  I don't even mind driving in it.  A winter mix scares me to death!  Sleet and freezing rain aren't for me.  However, Harper still has to go outside and tend to business.  And he actually loves snow and ice.  You can be freezing your buns off and watching your finger tips fall off and he'll be laying down eating the snow and ice!  Dumb dog.

The little red bird on the mailbox is encased in ice.

My car window.  I'm not going anywhere anytime soon!

Doesn't look bad, but all those little pellets really add up to one slippery mess!

 

This is Harper's new sleeping spot.  He thinks he's a cat.

This is what he does when he's tired.  Dumb dog!

He kinda looks like a bat, doesn't he?

Happy New Year!

 

I know, I know.  I'm a little late wishing everyone a Happy New Year.  This has been a long butt year and it's only the 21st!  Since I last posted, we've had a lot of excitement, good and bad.

 

Late October, Ls girlfriend came to see us for a week.  I would share pictures of that, but my computer crashed and took all those pictures with it!  I'm working on getting our pictures off of the hard drive and when I do, I will share them.  We had a wonderful time with her.  While we were showing her all the neat things in the area, we got to see some sights we'd never seen before.  She's a very sweet girl and we look forward to the day she is a part of our family officially.

 

Things calmed down just a wee bit so we could get geared up for the holidays.  I stress the 'wee bit' part because it didn't really calm down much at all.  Somewhere in December, L started having pain in his right jaw.  The same jaw he had a wisdom tooth removed from in November of 2010.  The same jaw he had the remainder of his wisdom tooth removed from in December of 2011.  Or so we thought......  L had a flight planned to spend a week with his girlfriend's family in mid December, so we were eager to find out what was going on with that jaw.  Off to our new dentist we went only to find out that the old dentist had left the roots of that wisdom tooth in his mouth!  We were furious!  A week of antibiotics and a consultation with the oral surgeon were scheduled.  His flight was delayed until after everything was taken care of.  The morning of his surgery we were all a little nervous, but we were prepared.  Five minutes after they took him back for the procedure they brought him back to us!  He had some sort of an infection in his tonsils and they refused to do the surgery until it was cleared up.  On the way home we went to our family doctor to find he had mono!  So.....surgery was cancelled.  Bed rest was ordered.  We got creative with our Christmas activities since he wasn't able to do much but sleep.  While he was sick, R got a flu that wasn't covered by her flu shot.  A week later, she was doing better.  Thank goodness she had Christmas spirit for our entire family!  If it hadn't been for her, I don't know if our house would have been decorated.  She got the tree decorated almost single handedly.  She also kept us focused on getting all the other Christmas activities finished.  It was a low key day.  Mom spent the night with us and we shared our Christmas gifts and relaxed as well as we could.  Christmas is very interesting since Mom has Alzheimer's.  She used to really get into it, but it's just another day to her anymore.

R, or Bean as we call her, got this travel Scrabble game for her and me so we wouldn't have to worry about Harper messing up our tiles.  This was spelled out for me when I opened it.

 

Christmas day was also a tough day for RL.  He started having some shoulder aches and pains in October which slowly started taking over other joints in his body.  A trip to the doctor and some blood work told us it wasn't rheumatoid arthritis.  However, the pain just got worse and turned into swelling in the wrists and fingers.  Christmas day was the first day he was experiencing pain at it's worst.  Another trip to the doctor and more blood work and still same conclusion.  The doctor is leaning toward psoriatic arthritis now.  We will know more after seeing a rheumatologist on the 14th.

RL and his canine heating blanket during his arthritis flare up.

 

R got a new camera for Christmas as well as some great little bunny slippers!  A lot of experimental photography has been going on!

 

R had her birthday last week.  At least one party animal showed up!

Harper after a little too much excitement over the holidays.

 

Everybody started feeling better, wisdom teeth have been removed, Christmas decorations have been put away and we are trying to move forward with this new year. 

How Cold Is It?

It is SOOO cold, Harper is wearing a hoodie!