I absolutely swear this is the last foot surgery.  The doctor went back in to remove the screw because it was causing pain.  He went into his, "while I'm here" mode and cut a bone under my big toe.  

The screw removal would have been a breeze if it hadn't been for the bone cutting.  I'm actually having more pain than I expected and now know why he gave me a funny look when I said, "I'm not using the crutches again!".

Oh yeah, I'm using the darn crutches everywhere I go.  The upside is, this will be a much quicker recovery period and no pun intended, put me back on my feet again.

I realize I'm a bit warped and now I'm wondering if I've rubbed off on my doctor.  I woke up after surgery to this stuck on my foot.  Talk about hilarious!!  It definitely got my attention.

Being experienced at this foot thing, I went into automatic mode and was able to collect everything I need in warp speed.  Ice....

Laptop computer.  Yes, my daughter gave me a project so I've been working on it.

Kindle and Harry Potter.

The things you have to be careful of are the things that drive you nuts.  Like....look at those cobwebs in the corner of the bedroom.  I can't do anything about them right now so I'm trying to pretend they're not there.

It helps to have a nice view.  Somehow it takes my mind off the cobwebs.  This was the beautiful view all day Saturday.  Sunday, was dark, gloomy and blew down one of the pine trees.  I have to say, I like this view much better.

CRAFTY GAL.....

My daughter in law brought to my attention I hadn't blogged in almost a year.  I've been posting on Facebook but it just isn't as satisfying as my blog so I'm going to get back to doing it again.  I don't know if anyone will read it but it makes me feel better so I'm going to do it.  I'll also put stuff on Facebook but it just feels too open a media.  If you know what I mean.  LOL!

We have a new President in our company.  I didn't want to pass judgement too soon, so I've held back and waited to see what he'd do.  So far he's pleasantly surprised me by being smart and a man with a very clear vision of the direction the company should go.

He's not showing he has a big ego but instead has gone out of his way to try and meet with every employee and get their impression of what they feel are good and bad points of the company.

He listened very carefully because the first All Employee meeting included many of our suggestions.

The thing I'm most impressed about is he's exactly like my boss.  Always stops and thanks me for the things I do for him.

They both come from the school of, "A thank you goes a long way".

He called upon me to do some things for him but the latest cracked me up.  He wanted large letters drawn on poster board that he would use for the first All Employee staff meeting.

Because I can't draw worth beans, I jumped into my digitizing program and found a font I liked and then enlarged it so it was huge.  Neither Dave or I liked the C so he did a little manual modification for me and it was perfect.

I bought the real thick poster board (with the foam center) in white and cut out the big letters in royal blue and attached them with two sided tape.  They turned out really great!

I'm very happy I have a large kitchen counter.  The downside is, it allows me to make a bigger mess to clean up.

No I'm not a dork.  Yes I used all three tapes on the project.  I'm a stickler of wanting to grab what I need pretty much with my eyes closed.  I have special colored tape dispensers for everything.  

The two above are from the sewing room.  The red always has regular tape while the green on always has two sided tape.  I use the green one the most with my embroidery machines.

In the office my dispenser is silver as is my stapler, phone, pen holders, etc. so I know it belongs on my desk.  Dave's items are black.  Color co-ordinating things seems to make clean up fast for me.

If my kids see this one, I'm in trouble.  The project needed all of these scissors.  They'll see my sewing scissors which they were never, ever allowed to use.  It was an automatic punishment for them if they touched them.

I needed something super duper fine and sharp for tiny spots.  The silver scissors are my best ones even though they're in dire need of sharpening.

Thank you Colleen for giving them to me so many decades ago.  Oh, just so you know she gave all of us sisters a pair when she was working for a fabric store.  Each pair had our names engraved on them.

Oh the project?  It's done.  (Yes, I forgot to take a picture) We used the letters I'd made last Thursday in the meeting and the employees who where holding them decided to keep them.  I came in to work on Friday and there was an email from the president asking if I'd do another set and send them to our Boise office so he could do the same meeting for them.  I guess that makes me a cross boarder crafter.  LOL!

Most importantly, I couldn't have done either project as fast without Dave's help.  He's kept me focused, modified stuff for me, was my gopher and made sure the lettering was perfectly centered on each poster board.

Thank you sweet cheeks for the help!

Mama's got a new shoe!

The foot is coming along just swell.  I took this picture at 5 weeks (it's now six weeks).  I hate all the crusty stuff but that can't be helped.  It looks pretty much the same today except a little dryer and I think the scab might start coming off in the next week or so.  I have to resist picking at it.  

I was having a hard time sleeping.  I couldn't keep the boot on but I'd hit my foot or turn the wrong way with it off and would wake up in pain.  One morning I asked D to bring in a large piece of paper and a pen.  He traced my foot and then went out and bought a thick piece of plexiglass.  He cut out the shape of my foot which put a big smile on my little wrinkled face.

That evening I took the plexiglass, put it on the bottom of my foot and held it on with an ace bandage.  It was large enough to protect the sides and ends of my foot and flat so my foot stayed nice a move free all night long.  It was the first time I slept through the night without waking up because I moved the wrong way.  It's so lightweight, sometimes I forget it's on.  It hasn't given an inkling of cracking or stress.

I went to see the surgeon two weeks ago and he traded my generic grey boot in for a heavy steel boot that is fitted to the size of the shoes I normally wear.  So this is between a 6 and 6.5 but gives me a skosh more room at the end so I don't bang my toes.

It's very heavy but I'm allowed to put weight on my heal although I'm still to use the 2 crutches.  I think in another two or 3 weeks, I'll be starting PT and hopefully be able to dump the crutches in exchange for a cane.  Which by the way, I have a beautiful cane that's almost 20 years old.  

Holy crap!!!  It'll be 20 years since D fell off the ladder in a few short weeks.  Yikes...where has the time flown?

Well, that's it for today.  Time to go limp out and dust the family room then throw the minestrone soup in the pot to heat up.  I sent D my recipe from work yesterday and he made it from scratch all by his lil' lonesome.  Now if only he knew how to clean.  Hahahahahaha!

First I was sad and then I was happy.

I've been reading like a mad woman because I've been sitting on my bum so much.  For the past 5 days I haven't been able to load books on my Kindle. ;-(  Last night I tried again and thought it was strange I could load a sample but not the book.

This morning a light went on over my head so I came in opened my Amazon account and sure enough my ATM card on file had expired.  I put in the new expiration date and within minutes I'd loaded the book I'd just finished reading a sample of.  Now I'm {;-).

Oh and Tony while I'm thinking of it.  When you're done with the series you're reading right now, check and see if you can get Testimony of Two men by Taylor Caldwell on Kindle.  It's one of my all time favorite novels.

I've got the Lopi wood burning insert on CL and a bunch of 914 parts.  I have a guy coming out in a couple hours to buy these seat backs and wants to look at the other stuff I have listed.  I need to get my butt out to the entry hall and dust these babies off.

A couple came out the other day to look at the Lopi.  Talk about ummm...hmm...how can I be nice about this...STUPID.    I told them it's about 600 pounds and to bring help and a pick-up truck.  We're asking $500.  They show up in a SUV (uh duh!) pick up one of the mirrored sidelights put it down wrong and it falls and the mirror breaks.  Guess what they did next....this is really good...are you sitting down....are you ready?  They offered us $150 because of the broken mirror.

D said he had to hold his temper and just about bodily threw them off the property.  The downside to CL over eBay is the jerks you have to deal with in person.  Oh well, if they have the money, I might be able to tolerate and idiot for a short time.  

I've been known to hang up on idiots who haven't seen what I'm selling (especially a car) and rip it apart on the phone.  My comment is usually something like, "Well if you think the price is too high and it's not worth it, then why'd you call?  I don't want to talk to you anymore." and then I hang up.

Years ago when I was selling my mom's 57 Ford some guy ragged on the phone about it and offered me $6,000.  I told him he was wasting my time and I wasn't going to talk to him anymore and hung up. He called me back and said, "I didn't mean to make you mad, let's talk.  I think I can offer a little more".  I told him, "You're so offensive, I wouldn't sell the car to you if you offered me full price.  Go ahead and find a 57 Ford for $6K." and then hung up on him again.  I sold the car for $15000 a few weeks later.

D was laughing at me this morning because he came in the office and saw how I keep my foot elevated.  I open the bottom drawer of the desk and the bottom drawer of the file cabinet, throw a small pillow down and stretch out.  I usually have a minimum of 1 wiener dog in my lap.  Right now it's only the Nut because Nissie is outside in the sun.

I went back to work last week.  I have to say I really needed this weekend to rest up.  I just love Photoshop.  I went armed with the above poster.  Mark is constantly doing mean things to me.  He liked to push the tray for the mail onto the front desk making the mail fly all around.  Before I left, I taped it down so he started picking up the bundles of envelopes and tossing them to the ground.  He's tried to lock me in my bosses office, in mail room and so on.  He's a little boy in a big boy's body.  Hahahahaha!

I put these posters up Monday when I got to work.  He pulled one down with a smirk, put it in his pocked and walked away.  I said, "Don't worry, there are more where that came from!!!"  He was a great sport and actually said that was one of my best jokes.  He even took a poster home for his wife to see.  LOL!

All week people were coming up to me and asking if Mark really did crush my foot.  Hahahahaha!  It was great!

Well, D is at work and I was going to make minestrone soup for dinner but I just don't feel like standing and cutting up all those veggies.  I'm thinking a scrambled egg and toast will fit the bill just fine.  So I'm going to end my saga of the past week and go out and rustle up some simple grub.

Bunions Surgery Part II

So while I was healing from the bunion surgery D took over the cooking.  He tried some new recipes which for the most part were very good and creative.  Yes, he actually pulled out a cookbook!

The other day I thought about D trying to make smaller portions because we throw so much food away after the 3rd day of eating the same thing.  I believe I finally came up with a solution.

Yesterday, I had him take me to the HomeGoods store and picked up two small individual pots that could go in the oven or the microwave.  Then I picked up two cute mid size plates to put them on.  I think these were a total of $8 for the four pieces.

Last night I made individual portions of scalloped potatoes.  They turned out great and we actually have only two days of the same meal.  We ate smaller portions and didn't feel bloated and full when we were done.  I'll toss these babies in the microwave tonight and eat what we each left over from last night.

The nice thing about surgery is who comes to visit.  As you can tell, it was low key and quiet.

Check out that Snoopy animal.  That is the father playing with his daughter with the toy he had when he was a baby.  He was teaching her snaps, buttons, ties and velcro, not to mention the different colors Snoopy's vest is made of.

I've had plenty of help from the canine portion of the family.  Only those with an animal will sympathize with trying to read, prop a book up and eat breakfast without help from the dog.  No she's not licking because he caught me off guard.  She's just anticipating a bite of my toast.

There's always the entertainment from the man of the household.  Yep, he brought his project in the bedroom so I could enjoy watching him work.

Now this is just unfair.  I wasn't supposed to be taking a bath with my foot just worked on but I couldn't understand the logic of that.  It's just my foot messed up.  The rest of me still needed to bathe.  D went in search of me and caught me red washclothed in the empty tub filling it while I was laying there.

This is the latest X-ray taken a week ago before I got my stitches out the day before yesterday.  I've finally caught up with Metal Man aka D and now sport two screws of my own.  Of course he has me beat by a long run but I don't mind being behind in this race.

If you're weak in the tummy don't go further.  They're pictures of my stitches getting taken out.

That's my hottie doll of a surgeon removing my stitches.  He's about 6'3" and really nice and gentle.  When I'd put the camera up, he'd move away from my foot because he's camera shy.  I caught this one when he obviously wasn't looking.

Look at those toes.  They're still twice as fat as they normally are but with time, they'll be back to normal.  Personally, I think the 4 little ones look like Lil' Smokies and the big toe reminds me of a Vienna sausage.

So....stitches gone, as of today I have approval to bathe as long as I don't soak the foot.  Now I just wait for the steri-strips to fall off on their own and watch my foot shrink like it's on weight watchers.  LOL!

Sigh...when it rains, it pours....

When I came home the other day the laundry room looked very dark.  I couldn't figure out why until I went in there looked into the bathroom and saw this.  What a lovely view.  Leave my husband home for awhile and he's building things again.

 Okay, I'll cut him some slack because he'd created a makeshift painting booth to protect the yard and be a windbreak so he could paint the furniture.

It takes quite a while because of the wind but so far he's painted the top, bottom, 3 back panels, two interior panels and the two side panels.  He has the doors to do.  He's a bit miffed with me because he wants to make new doors and I said no.  He thinks I can carefully remove the beautiful design elements and he'll glue them on the new doors.  I told him it was just too darn old and the designs would break no matter how gentile I was.  So, the doors are waiting patiently to be painted after he does some repair work on them.

 I know it doesn't look like much but I swear someday I'll be able to put my clothes back in it.

See the wall?  I've been desperately trying to find some wallpaper to replace that.  I thought if I could find something it would be a great idea to lay on the bed while healing and direct D while he did the work.  So far I haven't found a darn thing so I guess this will be another project for next summer.

Okay, this is a complete and total random picture.  Thursday, I was sitting at the front desk at work and this guy was waaaaay up on the window.  It's on the outside of the window but I thought it was the coolest looking creature I'd seen in a long time.  It was a good inch or so big too.  How neat is that?  LOL!

 I am so looking forward to the surgery Friday.  I come home each night and put a heating pad on my poor foot to soothe the pain.  It feels wonderful even if it is temporary.

 I've been working at getting things done because I know they'll drive me nuts while sitting and mending.  Yesterday I decided to clean and wax the kitchen floor.  For some reason where the dog's dish is the baseboard was loose.  I pulled it away and there were a bazillion tiny bugs walking around, along with a huge funny looking mushroom thing and the floor and sheetrock were soaked.

I scraped the mold away, dried the spot and then sprayed Raid to kill the pests as best I could.  Then I noticed the floor was starting to warp at the doorway.

When D got home he pulled out the refrigerator and the filter to the ice maker has been leaking for months.  So the floor behind the refrigerator is wet, along with the sheetrock.  Which means, the subfloor under the freezer in the laundry room is probably also bad and explains why the laundry room closet door has started to rub on the floor.  So that's messed up to.

This is one of the 'bite your tongue' moments in marriage.  The well has continued to turn itself off and on refilling the water tank when we aren't running water.  A few months back I found a faucet open in the yard.  D also replaced two important pieces to the well.  The pump continued to turn off and on so I said on at least 3 occasions, "If we don't have a leak outside, then it has to be in the house.  Go under the house and check for any leaks".  It fell on deaf ears.

Today, I don't have water because the handle to the faucet behind the refrigerator snapped off.  Luckily it's a split shift for D at HD so he'll get home at 12:30 and can replace the faucet so I can have water to the house.  After that he'll repair the leaking line to the refrigerator.

In the meantime, I'm just going to have him try and dry everything out and concentrate on this repair next summer since it's going to be a major project consisting of ripping up the floor and sub floor in two rooms (if we're lucky).

Pondering and Bunions....ewwwwww.....

I have two posts today.  This one and the one below it.  This morning I was painting pieces to the armoire (see post below) and came up with a few insights I'd like to share.

First is, no matter what happens to you in life, you can adjust.  Last month my big sis went on vacation for 3 months and I kept her three wiener dogs.  Yep, I had 5 of those little cuties for 3 weeks.  Hers were excellent but my little Nissie needed a few attitude adjustments from me on occasion. 

Anyway, this is little Rosie.  The newest pup to my sisters menagerie.  She's an absolute love.  She slipped a disk in her back and was up for adoption.  Of course in most people's eyes, she is considered damaged goods but not to my sister E.  She convinced the foster family she can handle a 'special needs' pup and was honored to take little Rosie home.

This picture just makes me laugh.  E's dogs aren't allowed on the furniture so this is the back half of Rosie still in her cart along with Vinnie's hind end.  I had a huge stash of blankets on the floor for them to rest on.  Apparently these two can't figure out how to put their entire bodies under the blankets.  What a hoot!

This is little Ringo.  He's the father to my dog Nuttie's puppies.  The cart Rosie is now using used to belong to him.  E successfully brought him back from being in the cart due a slipped disk in his back so now Rosie can use it.  Ringo is cart free today.

Ringo is a very sweet and gentle dog...but funny.  He's lost all his teeth and can't keep his tongue in his mouth.  My sister E rescued him from some horrible neighbors of my mothers. He was abused mostly by neglect and his left eye suffered and can no longer create tears.  You have to clean this green goop out of his eye several times a day and put a gel in to keep it moist.  Can you tell my sister is a softy for a hard luck story?

Ahhh, next on my list is Brussel Sprouts.  I love these little things.  D and I cook them and put them in the refrigerator so they're nice and cold.  Then when we want a quick snack, we reach in grab a few and start munching.

The downside to them is, they should only be cooked outside because they really honestly and truly stink to high heaven.  They're probably the reason we now have cooking elements attached to BBQ's.  LOL!

Next on my list is....the kitchen.  Don't clean the kitchen and then before you leave open the refrigerator and decide it needs cleaning too.  Very bad move.  My refrigerator is beautiful because I gutted it and washed all the shelves and drawers but the kitchen needs attention a.g.a.i.n.

I also learned, putting the little rubber mat you kneel on when you garden works great in front of the kitchen sink while washing the shelving for the refer.

Now comes, why does she need to stand on a rubber mat?  Ahhhhhh BUNIONS!!!!!

I've been babying this little beast for years and have finally decided it was time to take care of it before I cripple myself.  Of course after visiting the surgeon and him messing with it, the pain has doubled and it's becoming harder and harder to try and walk normally at work so I don't look like a gimp.

Look at my foot above.  It doesn't look that bad.  I've definitely seen worse.  But once the surgeon showed me my x-ray, all the pain made sense.

This is what I've learned.  Yeah, yeah...I'm sure you all already knew this but I'm going to share for those who don't.  Bunions are not a growth on your foot/toe.  Also, they are not caused by your shoes.  Yeah high heals and tight shoes contribute but basically bunions are hereditary.  Which explains why my mom, sisters and Aunt Phyllis had them.

Also, I didn't know there are two little round bones that are supposed to be directly under your big toe.  Well, my little round bones are where they are supposed to be but my big toe decided to slide out to the side pushing my second toe into my middle toe.  This causes pain on the bottom of my foot which I thought was a bone spur.  It's not.  It's caused by the movement of one toe pushing into the other.  Ummmm...ouch.

This is a side view.  Ouch again.  Now the fix.

My bunion surgery will be pretty much rated a medium surgery.  It's not the easiest but not the hardest.  I'm not going to have to retrain my feet to fit my high heels (the surgeon promised me that) if I do all my PT correctly.

Apparently he can move my toe back about 10 degrees or so which should put it back over the little round bones where it supposed to be.  He'll have to shave the outer bone which we all believe is a growth and it isn't.  Then he'll saw my toe in two just above the big joint and screw it back together.  He doesn't believe he'll have to put screws in my second toe.  It should move back to the correct position (we hope).  He'll know better once he's in there.  I'm lucky that the upper part of my foot is in alignment so he doesn't have to cut that and put a steel plate in my arch.  That's the really hard surgery I'm dodging.

I told him I'm holding him to the promise I can wear my nice shoes again.  Once this surgery is done and I get the okay, I'm going to have him do the other one.  I'm tired of the pain and worst of all, D hasn't been able to give me great foot rubs in ages.  I really miss them and he says he misses doing them.  Now that's love!

I'll be off work 2 weeks and recuperating about 6 - 8 weeks.  I'd love to do the right foot immediately but he won't touch it for most likely 6 months.  Sigh....no matter how hard I whined he wouldn't agree to doing both feet at one time even though I told him I could use a wheelchair for awhile and tough out the PT.  He stuck to his guns.  Yeah, yeah...I know, doctor knows best.

Okay, I'm pooped.  Two big posts in one day and I still have to go clean my kitchen again.  Oye vey.