Friday Night

I had an incredibly wonderful week with my family!  In spite of a recurrence of leg pains brought on, I think, by rigorous PT, we managed to spend most of these five days together, enjoy some special meals (not one of which was cooked by me), play a few impossibly difficult games of Jeopardy designed by Marcus and Nathan, and play like San Antonio tourists.  

The Learys stayed in a Riverwalk hotel with a rooftop pool, so the kids got to do some swimming and we didn't have to do the usual bed and bath juggling--a brilliant idea of mine, I must say.

They left tonight to stay with Will and Day's dad in Helotes, and I miss them!

This was the final of many last day photos, Marcus holding Charlie and Tucker in the casita. 

Tuesday Night

 

The kids had a morning swim at the hotel while I did PT, then we met here and went to Panaderia for lunch.  These four kids are amazing in my eyes, each with a great big loving heart!

It's been such a happy day!

A wonderful reunion!

The Leary flight was slightly delayed but we waited at the bottom of the escalator to welcome them to Texas!

We went to Down on Grayson for a delicious late dinner and it was wonderful to be all together again since pre-Covid--including the three dogs, Tucker, Luci, and Charlie.  I'm a happy mama and grandmama tonight! 

Monday

Luci is a very social puppy.  Before my surgery, she wouldn't walk with anyone but me; now she has her own walking friends!  She's walked with Freda several mornings, giving me a little space to make up beds and take a bath without Luci's assistance.

Freda walks faster and further than I do, so Luci is in heaven.  All I have to say is "Freda's coming!" and she wags her whole self.

Tonight, we pick up the Leary family at the airport--all five of them including Tucker.  I just had a very strenuous PT session so I'm going to take a nap so I can stay up for the party.  This time the Learys are staying in a Riverwalk hotel so that the kids can have access to a pool and we'll all have more space to spread out. 

I took Luci to a dog groomer because she had beggar lice in her furry ears.  Because she grooms herself like a cat, she never needs shampooing but the trim neatened her up for meeting Tucker.  

The groomer has run her own shop for forty years, but arthritis in her hands and knees makes it impossible for her to groom more than four dogs a day.  She only does enough to pay the rent on the building and pays her house rent a month at a time.  

She's in a great deal of pain and waiting until her Medicare kicks in to get her knees done.  "I can't afford health insurance," she said.  She has no family--none!--and her only family, her own dog, is dying.  

Most of us have no idea how hard it must be to live alone, have no health care, and be in excruciating pain every day, counting the days until our 65th birthday.  

"I have to work and be with these dogs," she said.  "Because if I didn't, somebody like me would pass away." 

From Gibran's "The Prophet"

In today's "Brainpickings" ----

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/09/09/on-children-kahlil-gibran/

Quick update

Yesterday I returned to physical therapy, much more painful and ultimately more effective than home PT.  Due to administrative red tape, there had been a two week break between the two and my leg was getting stiffer.  After a challenging hour-long session, I began to feel hopeful again and my new knee is moving with more ease today.

So now I'm in for the next long haul: three times a week for six weeks, plus three daily at-home exercise routines.

I'm not all sunshine yet; I'm moody, prickly, and cry easily.  Betty did some research and told me that post surgery depression is common.  Three hours under anesthesia together with pharmaceuticals--it takes a while to get all that out of the system. 

I can drive, clean my house, get in and out of the bathtub, and even walk Luci around the block, but I'm doing everything in slow gear. 

I love stories of unlikely friendships.  

"The Best of Enemies" on Netflix is that kind of story, based on actual events in North Carolina, 1971.  

After the burning of the elementary school for black kids, a man named Bill Riddick was invited to Durham to help the citizens decide the question of school integration.  

The leader of the local Klan and a spunky activist who fought for equal rights were asked to lead the group under Riddick's leadership,  employing his rules--both sides would listen to each other, what anyone said would be recorded on the blackboard, and the person sitting beside you at lunch "could not be the same color as you."  

We've all read about this type of group--among Israelis and Palestinians, liberals and conservatives,  and others resolutely opposed to each other.  A grassroots opening of dialogue.  Curiosity about the window through which the other looked at the world.  Leaving the echo chamber of soap boxes and megaphones and learning to listen.

No one could have predicted that two people who started out hating the other would make even a baby step towards friendship, but these two started a friendship that lasted for the rest of their lives. 

Surgery Update

Today the surgeon who gave me a new knee gave me a good report on my range of motion--so Yay!

Six weeks of PT and I'm hoping I'll be hopping around like a bunny rabbit. The best news of the day is that the left knee is going to last a bit longer--so I don't see another surgery on the horizon this year.   It's "almost bone on bone," but let's leave it alone unless it starts hurting, he said. 

Upcoming Visit with the Virginians

 

My grandsons in Virginia are both well over six feet tall and Tucker weighs in at about ten pounds.  These "gentle giants" as their mama calls them are in love with their tiny puppy dog.  Because of Marcus' dog allergies, this is their first dog--a hypoallergenic Havenese. 

I will see them in 13 days--finally!--not having seen them since Christmas 2019.  Instead of crowding us all into this little space with floor-to-floor mattresses, they will be staying in a hotel on the Riverwalk with a pool.

At the beginning of her best seller memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, Liz Gilbert said, "I have lost my appetite for life."  

Liz divorced her husband and traveled to Italy, India, and Indonesia--the kind of extended trip that would appeal to any woman at a crossroads who's lost her appetite for many things. When the appetite is gone, try something exotic and distant.  

Because I've watched so many movies this month--good ones, marginal ones, and cheesy ones--I decided to watch the movie version of Eat, Pray Love.  I'd read the book when it first came out, back when I was doing my own more modest solo traveling by car.  

As I watched  pretty woman Julia Roberts visiting  pretty places, I was not inspired by it as I had been the book.  For one thing, I've reached the expiration date for traveling solo to other countries.  Gilbert's quest is for young, hip, fit, and wealthy women.

I did go pick up an order of spaghetti after watching Julia Roberts' enjoying some genuine Italian spaghetti.  Maybe that would do it for me!  But what I got from Julian's was a flavorless pale pink spaghetti with no thick sauce or meatballs.  

More and more often as I flip through magazines and watch movies I think "Not Applicable." Recycled make-up advice, weight loss tips, recipes and fashions seem irrelevant to where I am at the time.  

But I related to the "loss of appetite" phrase.  Since my surgery, I have had hardly any appetite--for food, for making things, for reading.  I feel I'm in a sort of limbo waiting to fully recover enough to go or do anything.

Others feel a similar limbo, I think. The pandemic tamped down adventure and  travel.  Add to that surgery and other life changes and the fact that almost half of us have not been vaccinated-- it just feels safer to stay put.

But how to re-awaken appetites?  That is the question rumbling around in my mind on this rainy Tuesday afternoon.