It's Gotta Be This Or That

Back in the Good Old Days my  headline for today was a wonderful song recorded by Benny Goodman  ( I think)....I don't expect anyone else to remember it (or to remember Benny Goodman for that matter......you poor deprived souls)   but it doesn't really matter....it simply describes the waffling condition of my brain at the moment........To Replace the damned Knee or Not to Replace the Knee.........that is the question.

Actually I am almost 98% decided to do the deed......I am sure it will make the rest of my life much easier and more pleasant..........only 2 or 3 things deter me........one is that I cringe at the thought of the Physical Terrorists who get to own and torture me for weeks, nay months, afterward;  another is the the 5am Hospital Vampire Lady who wakes you every morning for the 3 weeks demanding your blooood; and I guess the other thing is the fact that I must consider the faint possibility that I will expire at some point before I have really gotten my full and complete money's worth out of the appliance and the experience.....ooooh, I would hate that!

Anyway, I will make my final decision probably tomorrow, but in the meantime I must thank all of you for your touching and dear encouragements and comments.  You really have helped me a lot, in particular the one sort of negative comment in which "imqtipi" warned me about her mother's unfortunate experience.  I am so sorry that her Mom had a bad time of it, but her email to me reminded me of a very important fact and reinforced my own conviction of how crucial the Physical Therapy is to one's recovery from any of these processes.  Her Mom apparently had little tolerance for pain and agony and consequently did not force herself to honor and perform the therapeutic maneuvers diligently.  Consequently, she never really recovered.

Because so many of you have mentioned your own knee and/or hip  problems and the possibility of needing a replacement at some point I feel it behooves me to stress how utterly important it is that you surrender yourself to that bit of suffering for a short time rather than be left with an unnecessary long term disability.

Anyone who has had any kind of surgery knows that, rather than letting you languish in your hospital  bed, (hmmm....those 2 terms are in total contradiction to each other.......languish....hospital bed.....ha) the sadists who run things make you get up and walk the day of the surgery or at least the very next day and show no mercy.  But it IS for your own good no matter how awful it feels and how much you think you are going to die and how much you enjoy thinking about what you will do to those people once you get your strength back.  I verbally resisted every effort the therapists made to rehab me after my broken hip in 2010, but fortunately, my single brain cell of good sense forced me to exert myself to the fullest despite the pain and discomfort and weakness etc.  and I know that is why I had such a great recovery.  I still hear stories of people much younger than I am who are still in wheel chairs for their lifetime because they could not or would not suck it up and do the damned exercises because they hurt. 

Forgive me for lecturing like somebody's Mother, but this is so important I decided I wanted to blog about it. And I do NOT mean to talk you out of any of these procedures   but rather to encourage you to be brave and go for it.  I just want you to hear my voice echoing in your ears while you are lurching down the halls groaning to NOT give up or give in.....it'll all be well worth it a few months down the line and, actually for the rest of your life.   I swear.  And you will be so grateful to the therapists and SO proud of yourselves.

Now let's see if can put my money where my mouth is........

My Blog Title Says It All

Hmmmm.......just when I had reconciled myself to the sad fate of gimping around in pain for the rest of my days due to my bum knee, the logical, organized bully who lives in one corner of me dragged me off to consult with a knee specialist.  While my hip surgeon had been somewhat dubious about my having a knee replacement at my age, this guy pooh poohed that and told me that knee replacements had originally been developed for people in their 80's and 90's who still had enough oomph to want to be mobile and they were so successful that younger and younger people have been taking advantage of them ever since.  That was heartening to hear and I left his office gung-ho to have the surgery in September.

Unfortunately, as soon as I got home and thought about the week in the hospital after surgery with the pain and the relentless physical terrorists and the two weeks in a rehab facility with same  plus the technician who comes each morning at 5 am and drones mournfully, " I have come to take your bloooood" like a paid vampire,  (before I left she had taken almost all of my blooood)..... the coward in me grabbed the reins back and is forcing me to reconsider.  I imagine I will probably still go ahead with it, but I realized I have to finish off a few items before I return to being an invalid for a while.

I have suddenly lost all my enthusiasm and am considering hiding out somewhere under an assumed name.  Unfortunately, I know that my knee is only going to get worse and I am only going to get older so it does seem like it should be done as soon as possible.......shit, piss, fuck! 

What I need is someone who is able to put me in a trance for, say, 3 months and bring me out of said trance as the home visiting therapist departs for the last time........ If any of you have such skills, I will be very interested in talking to you and making tempting offers.  Meanwhile, I cannot vouch for the tone or quality of my blogs.......you will have to visit this site at your own risk. 


Of course, it will be a good time for afghans.........

Aw Shucks......All My Own Work

I have finally summoned up enough courage and energy to take some photos of my afghans and post them for your delight/approval/criticism.  I have been trying for years to shoot proper photos of these things.....for some reason, when you lay them flat they look accurate but bleh.  When you drape them tastefully on a chair they are more interesting, but you cannot really see the whole pattern.  Oh, hell and oh well.......here goes. 

Actually, if you will forgive my lack of humility.....as I took them out of the bags into which they were stuffed I could not help but exclaim to Florence,"Ohmigawd, they are beautiful'......some I did not remember til I saw them.  Definitely feel they were worth the time and effort.....now the question is, Do I buy a bigger house or just turn the whole thing into closets and move into a hotel?.  Don't forget to click on the ones you really like to see them enlarged.

 

OK folks........that's a fair sample of what I do when I am ensconced in Crochet Corner.
Now I am thinking of creating a site on  Ebay to see if I can unload any of them before I have to move.

I will definitely need your help doing THAT.                                                     

I KNOW I Will Probably Regret Publishing This

I have  been playing/struggling with my newest camera today trying desperately to read the instruction booklet online.  So far I can call up the first page of the topic I am interested in but cannot manage to make the pages turn.  Does that make the glass half empty or half full?  I dunno.

I have been experimenting with the features that should enable me to take closeup pix of things like flowers and hummingbirds.....I think I may be on to something because there is one setting which allows for self portraits, and being shameless I turned the camera around and without being able to see what was in the viewfinder snapped this from a distance of about 12 inches.It appears to be a picture of someone I used to know.  I cannot imagine what she is looking so tickled about but one should not question apparent happiness even when it is probably about something as silly as a non-blurry photo.

The only thing I can think of to say is.......I want you to know that those are all my own teeth.

So are the wrinkles and the age spots, but I am delighted that they came out so sharp......I may be on to something here.

Dare I Tell the Truth or Is It Blogger Suicide?

I may regret this till my last day on earth, but I cannot keep it in any longer.  If you love me perhaps you can attribute it to an attack of advanced senility.  And once I have unloaded the thought I am not going to hang around and be pelted by rotten  vegetables, so this will be short and not so sweet.

Like all the other bloggers whom I follow and admire hugely, I have always held Erma Bombeck in the highest of regard.  The epitome of the female humor writer.......the  guru of all of us who struggle through the mud while worshiping the pristine, glowing image on the mountaintop......hell, I think even the male bloggers may feel the same way unless they have replaced Erma with Dave Barry........but that is a different simile (or is it metaphor ) altogether.

What I am trying to say is, I recently ordered 3 or 4 of the Sainted Erma's books thinking I had not read her in years and perhaps a serious submerging of my muse into a bunch of Bombeck might make my blogging sparkle a bit.  The truth is......I am finding myself very disappointed!  There, I have uttered the words.  You may stone me now.

What I am going to say next is even more sacreligious.........I do believe that some of my favorite bloggers are better reads than dear Erma.    Now I must go and sit by the window to await the arrival of either the Mad bomber, the Death Squad or the Wagon from the Funny Farm.  Farewell all.....remember me as I was, not as I am now.

Two Cats Worth of Lo

I am feeling so lazy today I decided to just plop a few photos on the page for your entertainment. Yeah, yeh.
Anytime I get inspired to blog pictorially it generally ends up with my head bloody and bowed.  Today is no exception.....but I do believe I have managed to upload a photo taken of the Stearns family last month.  It shows us in the wonderful recliner that I practically live in when I am not sitting in front of the computer.

And speaking of the computer......,mine is having the incredible effrontery to tell me that I have misspelled my name....humph......how the hell does this machine know that my father changed the spelling from
Stern to Stearns????  I will never understand these infernal appliances.......

Well, as I was saying, from left to right you should be able to make out Lo in her favorite position (horizontal).  Perched on my boobs is Winnie the tortie and sprawled on my abdomen and thighs is Gussie, the eternal conversaationalist.  This is one of the very few times they both have claimed territory on me at the same time and have positioned themselves so that I can manage to pet both of them without getting a hernia.  This is also the part of my vast estate that I call crochet corner, and if I am not mistaken, I believe there is an afghan or two behind my head, stuffed into the kibble basket.  One of these days I will take some photos of the afghans which do them justice and will publish the pics so I can prove that something productive is being accomplished as I loll about watching the telly and performing abominable acts like forcing cats to purr.

Another photo I want to show you is of the amazing red trumpet vine which grows outside of my kitchen window....can you blame me for enjoying washing dishes with this magnificent thing to observe while I watch the hummingbird floorshow?

 I planted this vine 2 or 3 years ago and it has thrilled me with its display every year since.  It now stretches
along the fence and has migrated as far as the garden shed in the back yard.  Oddly enough, this is supposed to be a hummingbird favorite, but since I installed the 6 feeders outside the kitchen the birds seem to prefer my homemade nectar.......I make it really sweet.......no flower can really compete.






The final photo is one I tried to take close up and I fear I did not use the zoom properly......it shouldn't be that blurry.....Oh well.....I had better go back and read the instruction booklet yet another time. 

Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy my feeble efforts.  I WILL try to do better.

Brain Dead But Scavenging Madly

 Everyone else is doing it so why should I not blame everything on the heat?  (Even though in my case it is a lie.....my beloved house has A/C and, if a bead of sweat should ever have the nerve to develop on my brow, I can rip off my sleep shirt.....which has become my live-in shirt......and plop myself into the pool.  However, I feel the need to blame something for the fact that my blabbity bloggyness has diminished to a paltry trickle. 

I just checked my notes and found a few items which, at the time, I felt were worthy of noting........today they hardly elicited a twitch of the lip, but, hell, what do I know?  Maybe someone out there will be amused or enraged or inspired to rant.  I feel I should show that I have good intentions if nothing else.

At least I have graduated from writing ideas on tiny scraps of paper and tucking them in various corners of the table or under the laptop or in my shoe........no use following Sarah Palin's brilliant ploy of writing things on my hand.......unfortunately, unless used at once, such notes wash off.  Consequently I have created a Blog Draft file where I can store fragments of ideas.  Now, I have something new to worry about......the day my fumble-fingers accidentally hit the Publish button instead of the Save and I post a mess of garbage that only I can interpret or translate.  Anyway, my darlings, consider this the Tapas of Blogdom........a menu with no real nourishment but with lots of teasing appetizers.

When I am really desperate I can always toss out a few favorite quotes.

This is a gem by one of my favorite bloggers......Pearl at
Pearl why you little......

"You see, while not as old as I hope to become, I am no longer as young as I was."     Oh,my...... Yeah!

Then there is one that stuck in my mind after I forgot who thought it up.  Sorry I cannot give credit but I acknowledge their brilliance.

"There is no one in the world who needs a mink coat other than a Mink.

And one of my favorites from a Murphy's Law Calendar some years back......this seems to be particularly poignant and  true the older one gets.

"Nothing matters very much and hardly anything matters at all."

                          ***************************************************

And now I am going to follow my beloved cousin Ken's advice and confess to an escapade of a few years back which always makes me laugh and beam with pride even now as one of the weirdest stunts I ever pulled off.  I have a funny feeling that I already blogged about this, but I have no intention of reading back through hundreds of these things to find it.......even though I must confess that sometimes I do enjoy reading some of my old blogs........I wonder if any of you other bloggers have the same strange experience.....sometimes when I read an old blog I do not recognize it as MINE!  I swear with all humility that I find myself giggling over the words and wishing I could write like that.  OY.....I am afraid to pursue that thought so I will just leave it at that. 

This subject, by the way, is sort of timely since I just recently babbled of my experiences at getting my Driver's License renewed and this tells of the first time I had to come up with a brilliant solution to fooling the public.

Anyway, a number of years back when I first began to have real problems with my left eye, my Drivers' License was about to expire and I doubted if I could read the eye chart with the bad eye so extreme measures were called for.  (at that time I did not know that they would give you a license,albeit grudgingly, with just one good eye.  I made several tours of the premises of the DMV casually pretending to be there for some worthy purpose while having dastardly intentions.  When I discovered that all of the eye charts which were on display at many locations contained the same series of letters I had one of my flashes of genius.  If I could somehow capture the details of one set of the charts and could memorize them it didn't matter to which window they sent me.....there was hope after all.   (Incidentally this was way before the era of digital cameras and especially cameras in telephones so I did not feel as if I could march in and just shoot 3 or 4 photos with my old flash camera.  Instead I did a bit of research and slunk off with a plan.  

I  returned on a Sunday morning when the office was closed and the parking lot nearly empty with my best pair of binoculars and a notebook.  I marched up to the door that had a huge mail slot about 18 inches of the ground, got down on my knees. shoved the binoculars thru the slot and zeroed in on the closest set of eye charts whereupon I proceeded to copy them into my notebook.  When I finished I did a little dance of triumph, totally confounding a young couple and their offspring who had parked near me in the lot in order to go to a restaurant across the street......I think they were already confounded by the binoculars in the mail slot maneuver......the dance was just icing on the cake.  They put their arms  protectively around the kids as I passed by and watched me with grave suspicion till I got I my car and drove away.  I should care ???!!!   I had the secret of driving life in my notebook.

Once home I got out some poster board and made several sets of the charts and hung them tastefully around the house including places like the bathrooms.  Then I realized I was only part way to heaven.........there were 3 charts in the set.....each chart had 5 lines.....they used mostly the same letters, but in different sequences.  Consequently, it was my task to memorize 25 letters in at least 3 different combinations and be able to know which of the 3 charts had which sequences.  OY. This was no assignment for nerds or sissies.

What could I do with   
                                     CPEZD         
                                     ZBTDF
                                     TPEOL
                                     FTPEO
                                     DZFTP

so I could remember them in 3 different combinations?    Obviously mnemonics was the answer.....the sillier, the better.  So the first set of charts above became :

                                    Can People Eat Zero Donuts
                                    Zero Boys Tell Da' Facts
                                    Tall People Eat Out Lots
                                    Few Tent People Eat Out
                                    Does Ziggy Fail To Pee


And it was also necessary to know which of 3 charts I was going to be looking at since they were labelled "A". "B" and "C" and the examiner would ask you to read the third line on chart "B".  So I made a mnemonic of the first letters of each chart.
                                     Chart A:                Count on Ziggy To F*** Diane.

Within a month I could recite all the lines in all the charts perfectly.  When the time came I performed flawlessly and passed the eye test and did NOT have to take the driving test to get a 4 year renewal.  Oh frabjous day.  The kicker was that I discovered that my bad eye was still able to actually read the chart, perhaps with the help of my exercise, so I was not really endangering any lives or committing some sort of fraud. In  my most recent encounter with the DMV this was no longer possible and I really did not want to commit fraud, hence my noble struggle with passing the driving test while more than half blind.

Actually, I feel this recent accomplishment outshines the earlier one, but I still have a fondness for the memory of that Sunday with the binoculars and the mail slot.  Am I a problem solver or what????