A Lovely Day

I was sitting in my recliner this evening--looking out the westerly window at the antics of my critters at their feeders and thought something felt....different.  I glanced at the clock and it was after 5:00 and still daylight!!!!!  I had noticed the sun is coming up at a different time now and the angle isn't hitting my computer monitor as much, but I hadn't noticed the lengthening days.  How lovely it is.

Today was a sunny, warm 48 degrees.  After lunch, I pulled on my fleece jacket and went for a walk up the street.  Usually, I can count on my back to start hurting at a particular spot--the same spot every time I walk, but today, it felt good.  As I came back home, I stopped in to visit with Merle and Pearl.  My, oh my.  She is going downhill so quickly.  She hasn't been out of the house since Thanksgiving.  It is just too hard for her to walk.  I don't think she has ever used the ramp the volunteers built for her.  She can't remember anything and realizes it and just laughs about it, which I guess is the best way.  Merle has grown a beard and looks very thin and scruffy.  They had just purchased a new, huge--too big for their living room--sofa bed, in a rather garish bright red.  They got it from one of those ultra-cheap furniture stores.  The sofa bed is for when they get too ill to care for themselves and one of their daughters (they expect) will come in to care for them and sleep on the bed.  It is so large, that if they pulled it out to make a bed, they would have to move their TV stand and Merle's recliner out of the room, which of course neither one of them realizes.

After I left there, I decided to walk across the street and visit Dar.  I haven't seen her since her shoulder surgery on the 9th.  She's a real mess.  She just purchased 3 new recliners and gave her sofa and love seat (2 years old) to the Salvation Army.  Now she is having the recliners returned.  They are supposed to rock, but I noticed the one I was in, and all of them, when you rock forward a tiny bit, they stop dead on the floor and about throw you out of the chair.  

She hasn't even started physical therapy, but she's angry because she is still in pain.  She expected to be healed up and using her arm by this weekend.  She was even more frustrated when she found out our other neighbor Jackie, who had the same surgery a year ago, still can't lift anything over 5 pounds with pain in her shoulder.

I told Dar that the orthopeadic surgeon's like to talk in terms of 6 weeks--3 months, where in reality, it takes at least 9 months and sometimes up to a year to feel like the joint really works like it's supposed to.  In fact, 6 years later, if I lay on my side a certain way, the area where I had my incision on my hip still hurts from the pressure of my body.

Dar plans on returning to work as a cashier at the super store, by May.  She just keeps setting herself up for disappointment and.........how can she take of her Dad if she is gone all day?

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I have finished my genealogy and going to get it bound on Monday, ready to send.  I have never had a genealogy that was a "pure breed" like this one.  Every ancestor came from the same area in the same country.  When they immigrated to America, they settled in an area where people of their nationality lived and their children married neighbors, on and on, down through the years.  It is only with the present generation that they have married outside their nationality.

Plus, I think I told you that ancestor's had written bios of themselves, which really has added to the facts and figures I came up with.  I can visualize in my minds eye, 50+ years from now, a great, grandchild reading the book and learning about his DNA.  With the bios added, it is going to be a wonderful family treasure for years to come.

That makes me the happiest.  I want these "history" books I do to be around and read for many generations.