A Few Good Things To Think About

Feels good to go to the surgeon for my six-week follow-up and hear her say everything looks great.  Go do whatever your body feels like doing.

Feels good to have the air quality decent enough (I check it several times a day) to go for our morning walk.  The treadmill is a luxury I hope to never take for granted.  But there's nothing like a morning walk outside in the sunrise for starting a day off right.  

Good to hear from our older daughter.  I need to be in touch more often.  I get so busy / overwhelmed these days that I neglect the things that ought not to be neglected.

Good that our younger daughter and our grandson made it to the InstaCare the other day.  I hope their recovery goes well and is completed sooner rather than later.  And please:  no bronchitis / pneumonia or any other such complication. 😘

Good that I have confidence that our kids are mostly ok. Everyone cycles through the good/bad/ugly and then back through again.  I'm grateful for good health, for jobs for them all and for hope that they're doing their best.

Good to have the baby blanket for my nephew and his wife finished.  Just have to package it up and get it off in the mail.  My skills are less than my ambitions, but it turned out so soft and pliable. And the little mistakes aren't too obvious.  It might be too old-fashioned for them to use, but I did put my best effort into it so perhaps it'll be ok.

Good to have a few bills taken care of, so very good to have a bit of money coming in.  Not so good to feel inferior to those around us who have so very much more than we do.  But good to be more inclined to contentment than competition. Good to have the vacuuming done and only a little bit of ironing to do.

Not so good that I worry so much about all the people I care about.  I worry about their health, their stability, their hope - you name it, I worry about it.  Worry is one of the few things I am really good at.  Too bad it's not a laudable attribute.

Good to have plans for lunch today.  We had lunch out yesterday on our way home from the U / dr. visit.  Lunch out today and we actually had a burger out earlier in the week.  I keep saying we need to eat healthier and eating out is often not the best option.  But I'll keep at it.

I'm grateful today for a bit of sunshine.  For hope that things will improve, it feels like we've had a bit of bad spell recently with my surgery, The Husband's pneumonia, sick kids, really bad air, no snow (for our water needs this summer) and a host of other things.  I want to feel more chipper about life.

Writing

So, I read a number of articles talking about how good it is for one's brain to write. To actually physically write with a writing instrument (pen / pencil / quill / whatever) in sentences.  Not a list.  But actual sentences.  Apparently it fires up more parts of the brain and connects the different parts better.  So we're trying an experiment.  15-20 minutes per day.  Easy to do once you start.  Hard to set a specific time for it so it doesn't get lost in the day.  Want to see if it will help either of us.

That means that I get a lot of my thoughts down on paper.  (And it's super fun because it isn't for anyone to read, totally private which makes it better.)  And then I feel like I have no need to write here for my "journaling" because I've already taken note of the important stuff.  But here we are.  And I apparently still have things to record because it's important to me to record some things.

broken, sigh...

Saturday morning:  folding laundry by the counter in the laundry room.  Quiet in the house.  A super loud sudden crack jolted me.  Right near me.  Looked around and discovered one of our windows there in the laundry room has a crack.  Arcs from one top corner down to the bottom (same side) corner of the window.  The inside pane only.  No birds hit the window, nothing happened.  Just a sudden failure of the window.  Alarming for sure. And a bit overwhelming.  Last spring when I needed to just have a handle fixed it took weeks and multiple phone calls and oversight.  Not sure I have that in me just now. 

Chatted with our friend the electrician at church the other day - yes, bad of me, so selfish and intrusive.  The lights in the pantry are still flickering.  Took one down to look at it because I figured it was a fluorescent bulb that needed replacing.  Nope, at some point in the past the fluorescent bulbs were replaced with LED bulbs.  Didn't think LED's ever quit working / burned out / flickered.  But yes, they are still flickering.  Driving me nuts every time I enter the pantry.  That kind of flickering makes me feel weird. Our electrician friend suggested replacing the LED bulbs.  If that doesn't work the ballast might have to be by-passed. Sheesh. 

Yesterday we spent celebrating our friend's birthday with a late lunch at Cheesecake Factory.  I love that place.  We rarely go because it is so expensive.  But our friend also likes to go there and every Christmas, Mother's Day, Father's Day and birthdays their kids (a blended family of 7 kids) give them gift cards to restaurants.  Their stack is a deck of card stack thickness.  We were lucky yesterday that I had saved my very generous gift card to Cheesecake from my birthday.  Even so, the total for the dinner (they always want to get a piece of cheesecake and those are between $8 - $14) including tip was $75.  My stomach just churns at the cost.  I could have had a couple new sweaters for that.  True, it's like a once a year thing for us.  But seriously.  The Husband wanted his own piece of cheesecake so I got what I thought was the simplest and cheapest.  Could have and maybe should have just done without.  We so rarely get to go out for festivities like that it felt important to just enjoy.  Which I did.  Until I saw the cost, then I didn't so much.

Had bought tickets to a movie (for discount Tuesday) and learned that this one is a sequel.  So last night we streamed the first one. Wasn't sure I still wanted to see the one today.  But decided since we already had the tickets we'd just go.  And rarely for us, we bought a bucket of popcorn.  Doesn't ever sit very well on my stomach.  The first one was super intense and quite disturbing in how people can go completely nuts when their lives are at stake and there's a slight possibility of survival if they can only beat down the people in their way.  The second one (today's movie) was slightly less disturbing but still sad and heartrending.  I'm so conflicted about it.  Think I'll watch something else tonight that will be more uplifting.

Finding gratitude today for food gift cards.  We had one for The Husband's favorite bbq place on Saturday, then one for Cheesecake yesterday.  Members of our family are very generous with us.  I am grateful for my treadmill.  We are in the middle of our typical January inversion so our air quality is ugly.  Not going out and breathing it. Lovely to spend time reading for an hour while I'm getting some exercise and not inhaling all those nasty particulates.  Grateful for a can of something I can open for dinner and grateful for a comfortable home where we can feel safe, protected and warm.

Odd Sunday

After a really rough couple days, I think I can (hopefully safely) say The Husband is responding well to the antibiotic.  He seems better.  In almost every way.  My heart is happy.

But...since I really didn't want him around other people in his health-depleted state, that meant no church for us today.  Frankly, he wasn't really up to it anyway.  I wasn't comfortable leaving him.  So we stayed home.  We'll fast next week to make up for not fasting (he needs to be well hydrated to recover) today.  It has felt odd all day long.  

Church is often quite challenging for me.  People are people, who they are and who they aren't isn't always pleasant or fun.  But we're all flawed, right?  I expected to feel fine about staying home.  Instead I felt sort of - I guess - bereft.  Missing those few people who acknowledge us.  Missing the sacrament.  Missing the hymns.  I'll be so happy to get back there next week.  Especially for the sacrament. I think we all need it.

Spent the afternoon reading a book that I wasn't even sure I really wanted to read.  Ended up enjoying it immensely. 

I am trying very hard to integrate positivity in my life.  Being critical is not how I want to be. I want to attract good, light-bringing qualities / experiences.  I'm working toward that end.

Came across this quote that I like.  No idea who to attribute this to, I would if I could.

In English, we say: Happy New Year. 🥂
But in poetry, we say: May this year treat your heart gently, return your strength in quiet ways, heal what last year couldn’t hold, and remind you that surviving was already a victory.

And I love this from Jeffrey Holland.  Conference will never be the same without his wisdom and ability to articulate love, righteousness and lofty ideals we should all strive for.  

I'm grateful today for The Husband's improvement.  It will take some while longer, I know, for him to return to full health.  Pneumonia is no small matter, especially when you're no longer young.  And I'm grateful to know that next Sunday will feel better, more like it should.

No Pics Today

 We did have a nice Christmas.  Breakfast and a couple games over in Herriman.  Thanks, son, for the invitation.  It was nice to be included.  Two years in a row for this which is somewhat astonishing for me.  Their holidays haven't traditionally included us.  The breakfast was lovely and she was up very early making a wonderful casserole and cinnamon rolls.  So kind of them.  The rest of the day was spent quietly here at home.  I was just two weeks post-surgery and feeling well though unwilling to do anything to hinder my recovery.

Yesterday morning The Husband  slept from about 9 until noon-thirty when I woke him for lunch.  Very unusual for him to sleep so much.  He woke and said he was in a bad way.  Hhmmm.  Took him right off to an urgent care.  (Went to one that was recommended to me because I'm always complaining that I want to see a dr. instead of a nurse practitioner and this one was supposed to pretty much always only staff physicians.  Not so for us yesterday,  nary a dr. in sight.  Though to be fair it was a holiday.)  

Tested for flu, Covid, Uti, blood sugar.  All negative.  Strongly urged us to go to the E.R.  The Husband was loathe to do that.  But over the afternoon he kind of worsened a little bit.  Had some strange vision things as well as the body trembling.  Little bit of fever (which rose a couple degrees in a bit over an hour).  Finally my concern reached him and he consented to the E.R.  They were great.  We left a couple hours later (thank heavens for my book) with a diagnosis.  Pneumonia.  In the lower left lobe.  Antibiotics prescribed, though they gave  him a dose before sending him home.  All of the bodily functions they tested were great, he's in good health (yay!) just pretty sick.  

Never seen him like that.  I was privately quite alarmed. Or maybe only sort of privately.  

So my worry:  that this is just a taste of what the new year has in store for us.  I already had decided that we weren't going to have December in 2026.  We've had such large (and feeling overwhelming) things going on the last three Decembers.  All the major appliances that needed replacing/repairing and then my surgery.  

The Husband seemed to have a decent night last night, we're off for haircuts this morning and hopefully picking up the prescription on the way home.  He needs to get better.  It's hard when he's so sick.

Grateful this morning for doctors and kind staff at the E.R. who helped me feel like I was doing the right thing getting him in for some help.  Also grateful for some insurance.  Haven't any idea (and it's a scary thought) how much yesterday's medical visits will cost us.  But at least insurance will cover some of it.  Still don't know how much my surgery is going to be.  We might have to mortgage the house. 😏 But hopefully our insurance will cover at least some of everything.  Grateful for hope of improvement in his health.  Grateful for the rain (snow in the mountains) and just plain grateful.