Since I broke my ankle, I haven't felt like doing anything - blogging, reading blogs,writing blogs, reading books, listening to music, writing letters, NOTHING!  Lately I really feel like I'm getting back to normal, even though my ankle still swells up everyday - make that STAYS swelled up all day - and still hurts when I walk on it.  But today I did something that I have been looking forward to and was worried (dreaded?) about also:  I got a PEDICURE!  I had to call my doctor to make sure I could get one because when I first got out of the boot, he wouldn't let me.  The nurse didn't call me back soon enough to go get a pedicure with my pedicure buddies, but she did call me while I was having lunch with them, so as soon as lunch was over I headed over to the nail spa to get one by myself.  When I walked in the sweet ladies (and guy manager) came over to ask me how I was feeling and they all told me that my friends had already been in that morning.  I assured them that I knew they had been in but I had been waiting for my doctor's office to call.

I thought I was going to have to tell her to skip the foot and leg massage, but at the last minute decided to just let her do it and see how it went.  I guess she was being extra careful too, because none of it bothered me at all!  Not even her working on my ingrown toenail!  Now I feel a bit more human!  Yay!  I'm currently wearing "Grand Central Carnation" -

 OPI.  :0)

IN ANOTHER WORLD...

When I had my surgery to fix my broken ankle I had a dream.  I didn't really know that you could dream while under anesthesia, but I guess you can.  :0)  During the surgery I dreamed I was at a lovely garden party.  There was nice slow jazzy music playing and we were in a beautiful garden with lots of tables where people could sit and chat.  The weather was cool and I was having a lovely time sitting at my table watching and listening to people enjoy themselves at this garden party. When I was moved to recovery and the nurses were trying to wake me up, I opened my eyes a bit and saw the nurses and the hospital and the thought came into my head, "Which world do I belong in?"  Having opened my eyes and seeing the hospital and nurses I thought, "I don't want to belong to that world, I want to belong to the world with the lovely garden party."  I closed my eyes to go back to the party and just as I was starting to hear the music again, I heard the nurse say, "I guess she's sleepy today, let her sleep."I thought, "Wait a minute!  This world is not the real world!  I need to go back to the other world even thought it won't be fun."   I tried harder to open my eyes all the way and then I woke up all the way.

As I contemplated this experience, I realized that my lovely garden party was really just the operating room.  I remembered that as they had wheeled me in there some really nice slow, jazzy music was playing.  I remember the nurse saying that the anesthesiologist had brought his own cds to put on.  I guess the people chatting were the doctors and nurses, and operating rooms really are quite cool in temperature.  I think maybe the beautiful part of the "garden" was the fact that I was in a brand, spanking new hospital and my husband and I had both commented as we came in what a beautiful facility they had.  I did have to laugh to myself to think that I had preferred the garden party to what was coming after the surgery however..

GIVING ME A BREAK....

My father passed away about a month ago.  I went to another state to be with my mom for about a week and a half before the funeral.  The day before the funeral we had a bad snow storm come through their area and as I was leaving her house to go to my hotel (since other siblings were staying at her house) I slipped on some icy snow and promptly broke my ankle in 3 places.  At the time I thought (hoped?) that it surely must just be sprained, although it was so painful when I first fell that I refused to let my 2 brothers help me up until I had sat there.  When I did get up, it wasn't because I wanted to, but because the seat of my pants was progressively getting wetter and wetter sitting there in the snow.  The had to literally pull me to my feet, but then I hobbled to my truck and even "made the jump" up to the running board and drove to the next town (15 miles) to my motel.  (All motels in my mom's town close in October for the winter.)

Sometime after midnight I began thinking that maybe it really was broken.  I made it through the night by sitting in the office chair in our motel room and my husband pushing me to the bathroom when needed.  He got up the next morning and went to the drug store and bought crutches.  We went to the funeral where I propped it up on a chair during the viewing and funeral.  I declined going to the cemetery.  After the funeral, the graveside service and the luncheon we went back to the town where our motel was and went to the emergency room.  At that time they had only found 2 breaks.  The doctors told me it would need surgery and I could go back to my state on Monday.  I got in Tuesday to an orthopedic surgeon who scheduled my surgery for Thursday.  By the time Thursday came, my foot was swollen twice the size and the top of my foot was completely black from bruising.  I thought for sure the dr wouldn't do the surgery and he hesitated but decided to go ahead because he felt he needed to "get in there and see what was going on".  After surgery he said they found a 3rd break.  I broke the small bone of my leg in a spiral fracture, splintered the end joint of the larger bone and dislocated the large bone (it had slid off of the ankle joint).  He put in a steel plate on the spiral fracture, pulled the large bone back into place on top of the ankle joint and put 2 long screws to hold that in place and put 10 screws into the plate.

I went to back to the doctor on Tuesday.  He took another x-ray of my foot and found a bone fragment.
Looking at the xray he couldn't tell exactly where the bone fragment was so I have to have a CT scan.  If the bone fragment is on the front of the large bone then I have to have more surgery to have it removed.  If it's on the side then it can stay there for 8 months until I have the screws removed.  He also added 2 more weeks to me not putting any weight on my foot at all, for a total of 8 weeks - 8 1/2 if you add the days from the accident until the surgery.  :0+  Here are the xrays of my ankle.  When I saw it at the drs' office, I asked the nurse if she'd print me a copy of it because I thought it was kinda cool . :0)

                                                       

RANTS & RAVES

RANTS:
- I've been going to the laundromat for the past - what? -2 or 3 months I believe.  Our septic tank is acting up (again) and I think my husband is finally believing what I have been saying - that it does this every single winter and I do my laundry in the laundromat until it gets warm again.  We went to a neighborhood meeting where another neighbor talked about living with the same thing last winter (we did it also last winter) and he finally extended his leech (leach??) field and has never had problems since.  So hopefully when we do that this spring, we will never have problems again either.  Just saying - I hate the laundromat - it creeps me out to wash my clothes in a washer that a bazillion other people have washed theirs.  I do all my laundry in multiple washers and then come home and dry clothes all day long.

- We recently had a company come to our house to give us an estimate on refacing our kitchen cabinets and putting in new counter tops.  I have a large kitchen with a 6' island bar in the middle (cabinets underneath the island also).  I won't even tell you how much their estimate was, it was so ridiculous.Think of what you would normally think it would cost and multiply it by at least 4. $$$$  We decided not to go with this company but that was not until after several hours and extremely hard-pressure sale tactics (another reason we decided against them).  I don't like being pushed that hard for a product I don't want and would never pay for.  Oh, and by the way - their cabinets weren't even real wood.  But after we said we didn't want them, they said they'd put in wood for the same amount - which after the estimate was $4,000 more.  Really???

- I'm having foot problems.  This started after Christmas and was probably due to the incredibly hard October, November and December days at the Storehouse.  Problem is I can't figure out what is wrong with it.  It is only my right foot and it hurts on the pad of the foot under the toes.  By the end of the day, it is really painful.  I've tried switching shoes, but it doesn't seem to help.  If I flex my foot, I feel something hard right in the middle.  ???

- I'm full up of politics right now.  "Sell crazy someplace else, we're all full up here..."  Just saying.....

RAVES:
- We decided to keep our old cabinets and now have a work order with another company to put in new counter tops and a new kitchen sink.  Probably won't happen until March because I have a weird sink (triple bowl) and it will take till then for the order to come in.

-  I'm really enjoying reading Phillipa Carr's Daughters of England books.  It's funny that Inklings and I are reading them at the same time. Since I usually read several books at the same time, I hadn't put them on my blog sidebar as what I was reading because I couldn't find a picture of the books since they are so old.  I decided to look on Goodreads and have found some of them, but not all the books.  My favorite thing to do is go to second-hand stores and look for books.  Yes, I do have a Kindle but you just can't beat a book.  Especially a hard-back one that you find at a second-hand store.  There's one second-hand store I go to that all the books -paper and hardback - are all a quarter!  Woo-hoo!

- I got to spend almost the whole day out shopping with my husband today.  This is a rare treat for me since he usually doesn't like to shop.  We shopped for counter-tops today and went to 2 stores.  Oh, and did I mention that when we got all the way to the first store I realized I had left the cabinet door that he had taken off for me (so we could see how it looked with counter-tops) at home?  So we got back in the car, drove all the way back home (15 minutes) got the door and drove all the way back.  We ate lunch at Teriyaki Bowl and went to the second store - getting home at 4pm.  It was a fun day for me.  :0)

- We had a fantastic Superbowl party last weekend.  My four kids that live here all came with their spouses and kids (minus one that was at her other grandma's house).  I just love it that my kids live close to us!  We love to spend time with them and we love all their spouses and feel so blessed that they made such good choices in mates!  It's so fun to be with all of them!  We're looking forward to keeping Gilbert Girl's kids soon while she and her hubby have some "get-away-time".

♬♪ I Know That My Savior Loves Me - Mormon Tabernacle Choir ♫♭

This song has been in my head all day so I thought I'd post it here.  This is a beautiful video and a beautiful song - one of my favorites!

LES MISERABLES

I went to see Les Miserables a couple of weeks ago and absolutely loved it!  Les Miserables is my all-time favorite musical and I have watched two different movies - yes, the one with Liam Neeson and another one from a long time ago.  I've also watched the 25th anniversary video (I used to own it on VHS) where the cast just stands and sings all the songs.  I've read the book at least twice and got to see the London production about 3 years ago.  About 20 years ago I was a co-producer/director for a Les Miserables production that our church ladies group did as a sort of book review with music.  We had a narrator to tell the story and then we had the "actors" sing several of the songs (couldn't do them all due to time and really couldn't do "Master of the House" in a church group!).

I've read and watched several reviews and also have heard some of my friends give their opinions of Les Miserables.  Everyone has the same opinion - that the singing wasn't that great.  Here's my opinion:  If you want to see Les Miserables for the music, then don't go see the movie - save your money and wait till the Broadway production comes to your town or a city close to you.  If you want to see Les Miserables for the acting, then you can go see the movie.  The music in this movie was filmed live.  In most musicals, the music is done in a sound studio, where the actors sing and they dub it in to the movie.  When it is done that way, you don't get the quality of acting that is done in the "moment".  How can Jean Valjean sing a perfectly sounding song when he's just realized what the bishop has done for him?  That the bishop has bought his soul for God?  That was quite an emotional moment and Hugh Jackman's acting was superb.  During Anne Hathaway's "I Dreamed a Dream" I dare anyone to not cry - I know I did, and I'm talking "ugly crying".   After the movie I went to the bathroom at the theater and almost every woman in there had red eyes and noses and tear streaked faces, and I'm not lying!  I'd like to go see Les Miserables again and will for sure buy the dvd when it comes out.


It will be interesting to see if Les Miserables wins any Oscars this year or if Hollywood snubs them because of so many discouraging critics.

CHRISTMAS GIFTS

I was more excited about Christmas this year than I have been in a long time.  The main reason was because of a couple of gifts I was giving to my kids and my husband's family.  I thought I would write about them here.

When my kids were little I decided to keep "baby journals" for each one of them.  I bought blank books and would write down funny things they said, or important times in their lives, when they broke their arm or leg, etc.  With some of my kids I was more diligent than others and I regret that, but what can you do?  As time went by and my kids grew up and these books got older, I realized that I should type them up so that they would be better preserved and also in case they couldn't read my handwriting.  My mother had made me and my brothers and sisters a journal from letters she had written to her mother which had been saved, so I also used that journal to add more things to their books.

Several years ago I began typing these books up, in order to give them to my kids some Christmas.  I have five children, so this was sort of a big job.  I got all 3 girls books done and half of my first son's book and then I went to Ireland for a year and a half.  I took the floppy disks with me to finish them there, not realizing that my laptop didn't have a floppy drive.  So after being home from Ireland for 2 years, I finally decided to get back to typing.  I took the floppy disk to Kinkos and had them transfer it to a cd.  Then about August or September I started typing them again.  I finished them about the first of November.  As I typed, I decided that instead of just giving each one their own book, that they each needed each other's books.  As I had typed, I realized that even though the story was in one person's book, the story was about their other brother's and sister's too.  So I put all their books together and made 6 copies -one for each of them and one for me.

Last March my husband's mother died.  She was one of the best cooks I have ever known.  While we were going through her things, my sisters-in-law and I decided that we needed to take her recipes and type up a cookbook of all her recipes for all of us and for all of her grandkids.  I volunteered to type it up, so in November after I finished typing the baby books, I started typing the cookbooks in earnest.  (I had typed up a few recipes earlier, before I realized that I really needed to be typing the baby books first.)  I typed almost every single night until my hands got tired.  I made 13 copies of that cookbook - one for each of my husband's sisters, one for me, one for each of my mother-in-law's 8 grandchildren and one for her best friend.

With both books, I put the pages in plastic sleeves and put them in 3-ring notebooks.  On my kid's baby book journals, I printed pictures of them and on the cookbook I put a picture of my mother-in-law (probably one of the last pictures taken of her) holding her coconut cream pie that had just come out of the oven.

Both of these projects were very satisfying to do - labors of love, so to speak.  I really enjoyed putting them together, but I enjoyed more the reactions of those receiving them.  It made it a great Christmas....