I'm back ...

I've been a little bit scarce over here the past couple of weeks. On the 7th of September I had surgery ~ a  left lumbar sympathectomy.. This is ultimately supposed to take away a majority of the pain in my foot so that I can wear a regular shoe again, sleep in my bed again, and basically have my life back again. Since I injured it last October, I can't even let the weight of my blanket rest on that foot without having terrible pain. Well, I honestly didn't know if it was going to be a laparoscopic surgery or not {meaning there would only be a couple of little slits cut into my back} but I certainly didn't anticipate waking up with an incision that ran from my left side all the way over to my belly button! And in addition to the pain that I'm having from the incision and the work that he did, I'm dealing with a lot of hip and back pain on the left side, which is just as bad as the surgical pain itself! Yesterday the two pains were working against each other and I couldn't get comfortable at all because if I tried to move my leg one direction the hip pain was horrendous and if I moved it another way my left side {where he did the actual surgery} hurt too much. I was in a no-win situation. The doctor sent me home on my regular home meds, which would normally be fine. However, right at the moment I can't function on my home meds. I already have back pain and other chronic pain that I take a low-dose pain med for. When I got home, my "normal" pain said "Yeah!! We get our meds back!" and it had absolutely no intention of sharing them with any new pain. So when I needed something for the "new" pain, my "old" pain was hogging it all. By about 10:00 that night I was miserable! Luckily Mom had some Tylenol in her purse. The next morning Jon brought some Aleve over and Mom bought me some Tylenol and I've been using Tylenol to supplement my pain meds ever since. It's not the ideal situation, but it's better than nothing. We'll see what happens when I go in for my follow-up appointment on Monday. 


I did make it out of the house this morning for the 1st day of release time. Let's just say, I think it's going to be a very interesting year. By the time I got home, however, I was wiped out. It's been a long day! Monday is going to be a long day!

So if I'm a little bit scarce over here for a while, you now know the rest of the story .....  =)

Another new recipe to share ... "Pumpkin Ice Cream"

This recipe is another Gooseberry Patch recipe that was borrowed from the "GOODEness Gracious" blog. It looked so good and so simple that I had to share, especially with fall just around the corner. After all, who doesn't like ice cream? And you don't even need an ice cream maker to make this!


PUMPKIN ICE CREAM
1 qt vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt, softened
1 c canned pumpkin [from 15 oz can]
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
gingersnap cookies for garnishing


Directions:
1.  Combine pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice; stir in ice cream until well blended.
2.  Freeze until hardened. Serve with gingersnaps. 

RIP Gail

This morning I learned about the loss of a dear friend of mine. Gail was diagnosed with cancer much too young around Christmas last year. She's had kind of a rough road. She spent a lot of time in the hospital, had several surgeries, and like me, ended up staying with her parents here in Canby so they could help care for her. While she was here this past year, she and I became kind of close because we had so much in common ~ things that most people don't even think of. We were both disabled, we were both kind of "forced" to come back to our hometown in our middle adulthood so our parents could help take care of us, neither of us was able to work so we were both feeling a little bit bored and in need of something to do ... Gail is a turtle lover and about a month ago I brought my little turtle purse to church. Gail wasn't there that particular Sunday, as she was in the hospital, but her mom commented on how she would just love that purse. I had my wallet, cell phone, and sunglasses inside, and I took them out, gave her mom the purse, and told her to please give it to Gail. I told her that it would mean so much to me to know that the little turtle purse would bring some happiness to her. Her brother Mark told me later that she was just tickled by that little turtle purse. I now know that I did the right thing.


God bless you, Gail. You aren't in pain anymore.

I love my mom and my grandma ~ and you can too!!

Today the guy is here tiling my bathroom wall and we got into an interesting conversation about our mothers and grandmothers. It all began because we were talking about my upcoming garage sale in a couple of days and I was telling him how my mom is putting some really hideous old clothes on this sale that nobody in their right minds would touch with a 10' pole. He just happened to be over at the garage when she was unloading them from her van and into the garage and was trying to explain how one particular item was supposed to "function" and couldn't help but laugh.


He mentioned that his mother is the type of person who throws EVERYTHING away. He'll go home and ask his mom what happened to such and such an item and her response will be "I shipped it to the Goodwill". My mom, on the other hand, is the queen of the packrats. She KEEPS everything because, after all, you just never know when you might need something later on. I will try to throw something away and she will stop me saying, "no keep that." When I ask her why or what she's going to use it for, she'll say, "Oh, I don't know right now, but it's going to be good for something later on." This, coming from the woman who took a stick, put a bleach bottle on the top of it and painted the pointed end red and called it "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer". We all called it a stick with a bleach bottle on its head. It definitely did NOT look like a reindeer, but at least she has imagination and "creativity". LOL A couple of weeks ago she found a piece of wire on the ground outside. Personally I would've thrown it away, especially since the garbage can was sitting right there. Mom, however, decided that I needed to keep this piece of rusted out wire because I might need to wire something on to somewhere later on. Therefore, she wrapped it around the bottom of my shepherd's hook so it wouldn't blow away [bless her heart]. 


I'm sure she wasn't born this way. My grandma is just as bad. When we went to the nursing home one day, Mom and my aunt Evelyn were thinning out Grandma's closet. Grandma was just positive that they were stealing. Of course I got shoved way into the back corner where I couldn't get out. Evelyn was putting some of her winter clothes away so she could replace them with some cooler ones and she was taking some of the ones with holes, etc. out so she could repair them. But Grandma was positive she was stealing them. Well, she took that suitcase with the clothes in it out of there and then she and Mom hightailed it out of there, leaving me in the corner. Grandma threatened to throw me and Evelyn in jail. I didn't even do anything but sit there and keep to myself, but she considered me an accessory!! LOL But besides clothes, she has a tendency to keep a lot of papers, etc. in her little table besides her bed. 


I know that I have picked up on some of these bad habits. When I was cleaning out my spare room [or as my mother likes to call it "my store room"] for my upcoming garage sale, I was going through some boxes that I haven't looked through for several years. Some of these boxes are boxes that were packed up when I moved out of my apartments in St. Cloud and Sauk Rapids so I have no clue what was even in them anymore. Well, I started going through them and there were a couple of things that I didn't even remember ever having and there were some things that I wondered why the heck I ever kept instead of throwing in the trash right away. That would be my "have to keep everything" instinct that I inherited from my mother. Needless to say, I threw out a few garbage bags full of nothing but CRAP!! 


It should be interesting to see how much of my other crap sells. I love garage sales, but I can guarantee you, if it doesn't sell, it's getting donated. I'm not keeping anything "just in case ..."  =)

A New Day ~ A New Recipe

So I just found this great recipe on one of the other blogs I subscribe to. It came from a "Gooseberry Patch" cookbook. I am a huge fan of "Gooseberry Patch" and this recipe looked great, though I might be tempted to add some chicken or shrimp to it. After all, I like my meat. I will never be a vegetarian. I guess if I didn't add meat to the actual recipe, I'd make it as a side dish.  =)


Here it is ~ the recipe for "White Lasagna"

Ingredients

• 8 oz Lasagna Noodles- uncooked
• 3 T Butter
• 1 t Lemon Juice
• 16 oz Sliced Mushrooms
• 1/4 Cup All Purpose Flour
• 1 t Salt
• 1/8 t Cayenne Pepper
• 2 1/2 Cup Milk
• 2 T Fresh Parsley
• Pepper to taste
• 16 oz Ricotta or Cottage Cheese
• 1/2 Cup Grated Parm

Instructions

1. Prepare lasagna noodles.
2. Melt butter in a sauce pan.
3. Add juice and mushrooms. Cook until golden.
4. Add flour, salt and cayenne pepper and gradually add in the milk.
5. Stir constantly until sauce thickens.
6. Pour half of the sauce in the bottom of the pan and layer noodles, then ricotta.
7. Repeat noodles and ricotta until the pan is filled. top with remaining sauce and sprinkle parm on top.
8. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.
9. Let set for 15 minutes, then serve.

* I'm also not a huge fan of ricotta, so I'd be using cottage cheese  =)

It's Starting ...

So crappers of things are supposed to happen in "3's" right? Well, they never really said how big of a crapper it had to be.  


I did NOT sleep well last night. My back was killing me. I was having esophageal spasms, and remember those weeds that I promised would cause my allergies to go haywire? They did! I was up using my Biofreeze and my nebulizer half the night. To make matters even more fun though, the nebulizer decided to breathe its last breath so to speak. It got really really hot to the point where it would've been unsafe for me to use it anymore. This is not a good thing when you have severe asthma and rely on the machine for your meds. So, I called the clinic first thing this morning and told them that I really needed them to push an order through sooner than later for a new one. Then I had an appointment around noonish for my cataracts. Now, this isn't your normal cataract ~ it's one that has only been around for about a year and has grown to a point where I now need to have it removed. I asked the doctor if it is common for someone my age to have a cataract like this. He looked at me, shook his head, and said "no". He asked if I used steroids and I told him that with my asthma, I used to be on chronic nebulized steroids for several years until we found out that I was resistant to them. Since then, I've been on Medrol on a regular basis, which is a pill form of a steroid medication. He said that's more than likely what caused the cataract. He said that I'll still have to wear glasses after the surgery, but my vision will improve. I don't think it's going to improve as much as he says it will. First he said reading glasses with a bifocal. Then he said that he might be able to improve it to the point where I should be able to read my watch in the morning without putting my glasses on. I told him that I'm blind without my glasses. My vision has been between 20/30 and 20/40 for several years and the cataract didn't show up until last year. I just can't see it improving that much just by putting a new lens in place when my vision was so terrible before the cataract. I could be wrong.


Then this afternoon I got an overdraft from the bank. According to my records I still had almost $60 in the account! So I called the bank and not only was that there, but the COC put their bill through [which I never got the card for even though it gets taken out automatically] and that put me over another $65 so as of tomorrow I'm getting assessed a $20 overdraft fee! That kind of ticks me off because their bill is usually $54 + so I should've had enough in there to pay that one, despite the fact that the cell phone bill wasn't paid for yet, and I should still have close to $5 left in the account. But evidently they decided to assess yet another charge that's close to $10 per month on the account. About a year ago I was paying about $35 for my water bill. Now I'm paying about $65!! It's just me here and I do one load of laundry a week, one load of dishes a week, and I typically sponge bathe. Please enlighten me and tell me where the HELL I am spending just as much for my water as a family of 6 who does 10-20 loads of laundry a week [on average] takes 35 showers a week [on average] and runs the dishwasher 7 days a week [on average]?? Because really, I'd like to know. This is insane! And it's in addition to the mound of extra money that I'm paying every month for property taxes because of the road work that has taken over a year and still isn't finished. Maybe I should go on strike and refuse to pay anymore until the street is finished and I don't have to drive over a rickety board that they keep driving over and breaking, making it impossible for me to leave my house. So, does that count as two or three crappers? 


Tomorrow morning I go in for an endoscopy. It's been a while since I've had one, so I'm due. Hopefully it will help with the esophageal spasms that I've been having. I used to have to have my esophagus dilated every once in a while because of difficulty swallowing and I haven't done that for a long time. 


So now we have cataract surgery #1, an endoscopy, I'm having back surgery [for my foot ~ RSD] in between the two, and eventually cataract surgery #2. Let's hope this is it for 2011.

No Rest For The Weary

Well, if I've been lazy the rest of the week I sure made up for it today! We have been saying all summer that we were going to put my two younger nephews ~ ages 7 and 8 ~ and my niece ~ age 3, almost 4 ~ to work staining my ramps this summer. They seemed to have a ball when Mom put them to work painting her deck, so we figured why not have them paint my ramps for me? After all, they are all on their level so they wouldn't have to worry about climbing on anything and the stain is supposed to be washable with soap and water, so what would the harm be? My biggest worry, of course, is that I'm slightly anal and I had/have this fear, especially with the ramp in the front that we are letting a 3-y/o, a 7-y/o, and an 8-y/o go nuts with a paintbrush and a can of stain that is going to be visible from the outside of my house. I love these children dearly, but I am the kind of person who will go into a doctor's office and if I see a picture on a wall that is crooked, it will drive me insane until I straighten it out, and if I can't reach it to straighten it out, I ask someone else to do it. 


Well, Devic painted for about 5 minutes and then he decided that he was done and needed to take a long break. I don't think he ever went back to painting. Maybe he did, but I don't recall that Mom was able to talk him into it. Sophia was painting and then she had to take a break, and then she went back to painting and then she had to take a break. She was pretty much on and off all day. Mitri was being a little pain right from the beginning. He evidently had a scratch on his foot and was playing the "lame" card. He was limping really badly because of this tiny scratch and said that he couldn't work because of it . Well, his mom has a broken foot and I'm assuming that she really milks it for all it's worth at home because Devic finally told him to quit acting like his mom and start helping. I think I'm pretty close about his mom. [She's not even using crutches ~ she's using my manual wheelchair!] Well, it was about 11:55 a.m. before they even got there and Mitri asked what time it was. We told him it was almost noon. He said he was hungry. Mom told him he had just literally eaten breakfast and that we were going to work a little bit and then I'd make dinner. He and Devic both said, "At our house we eat dinner at noon". I KNOW that's not true because half of the time they're with Mom and she doesn't feed them at noon. Anyway, he finally came outside to help and he worked harder than the other two put together. 


So they painted and I chopped weeds. I swear some of those weeds were taller than the trees were! And they were so tall that they were starting to actually grow trunks instead of stems! I managed to get all of the weeds out of the rocks. My allergies are going to be thanking me tomorrow. I'll probably doing nebs half the night. But I can now see the corner of my house again!  =) Then I went over by the fence line. There were a couple of weeds over there that were so tall they were literally growing into the tree. They were growing a trunk that was so thick I couldn't pull it through the fence. It had intertwined itself into almost every single link in the fence and I had to have Jon go through to the other side of the fence and pull it through in pieces when he showed up before going to work. So I got those weeds out of there. It needs to be raked really badly 


Once that was done we fed the kids. Mom had to go for a haircut so she took the kids home when she went there. I continued to paint when she left. I was doing the outside rails. Funny, but the rails kept sloping up, but the ground didn't move. I wonder why??? ;)  So my arms were getting really sore. I ended up having to move to the bottom. Well, by the time we quit for the night, I got the bottom on the outside pretty well done. I just have the board right smack dab in the front left to do, and I was going to do that tonight but we needed to move the plant table out of the way in order to do it. Tomorrow we just need to finish the inside top rail, which I can do, and the very bottom on both the inside and out, and the floor needs to be done, but we can't do the floor until I'm not going to have to use the ramp. They could do that while I'm gone on the 7th of Sept. We'll have to see.


So now I'm sunburned, my back is killing me, my arms are achy, my shoulders hurt, my wrists and hands hurt ... and I'm ready to finish tomorrow. I have an eye appointment at 11:45 a.m. and then I'm going to finish. I think we'll be leaving the other one until next year.  =)

One of "Those Days"

We've all had them ~ you know what I'm talking about ... "those days". I have so many things that I could be ~ SHOULD be ~ doing. I need to go to the grocery store. I need to finish getting ready for a garage sale that I'm having at the end of the month. I really need to hang up my clean laundry and go through my closet so I can figure out what I can get rid of [you know, put on the garage sale at the end of the month?]. I need to clean out my back porch so that the kids can start painting my ramps and we can access the back door when they start to paint the front and we can't get in or out the front door. But for some reason I just don't feel like doing anything today. My muscles are achy, it looks like it's going to rain, and I really don't feel like doing anything. In my defense, I can tell you that literally every time it LOOKS like it's going to rain, the second I lock my door to go anywhere, it begins to sprinkle. So I can promise you that the minute I would leave the house to go to the grocery store, I would get wet. That's just a proven fact. If I don't go, it won't rain, but if I choose to leave the house, I can guarantee you it WILL rain. =S 


Maybe it's a good day for a nap. Naps are good ...  =)

My First Post

How exciting! My very first post over on my new blog site! I'm looking forward to a new beginning. 


So far it's been a very lazy day in the Richter house. I've managed to prepare a bowl of cereal ~ that's about it! LOL I need to make it to the grocery store sometime today and I'd like to put some of my recipes online as well. I'm assuming the tile guy won't be here today so maybe I can call and see if the kids want to come and start painting the ramps ... or in the spirit of procrastination, I can wait on that as well.  =) 


Don't you just love lazy days???