This Year is Our Year for Success!
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It's a sunny day here in Baltimore and getting pretty warm!
I just emailed Jean. I hope she's doing okay.
I've been haunting ebay looking for NS chili and chicken noodle soup. I hate when they discontinue the rapidly diminishing number of NS foods I like. It's even worse when I find out just a little too late. I also stocked up on beef stew from NS itself. I figure as the last meal in the little cup, it's days have to be numbered.0 -
Maryanne, have you tried any of the Progresso Light soups? They have several flavors that are really good, and the calories are low as well. Take a look and see if any of them appeal to you. It might give you more readily available options than the disappearing NS flavors you like.0
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Maryanne, thanks for the cute Easter card!0
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Maryanne, have you tried any of the Progresso Light soups? They have several flavors that are really good, and the calories are low as well. Take a look and see if any of them appeal to you. It might give you more readily available options than the disappearing NS flavors you like.
Good idea - I'd forgotten about those. Probably because the canned goods aisles were so bare for so long.0 -
Maryanne, did Jean ever respond to your email? I hope all is well with her. I hope someday she will come back to this board to post a little bit to let us know how she’s doing.0
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Just got an email from accountant. She’s finished our taxes and will email a draft for our review today before she e-files. Today is Patriot’s Day in MA so our deadline is tomorrow. We just finished watching the marathon on ESPN. Saturday was the 10th anniversary of the Marathon bombing. Today was a great day in Boston despite rainy conditions during the race.0
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Here’s the staircase we’ve been working on for a few months. DH had help with the stairs and deck but he’s installing the railing solo. He’s got about half the railing up and hopefully gets the rest installed before we have to leave in early May. It’s labor intensive cutting and attaching the rails and then adding the balusters. It looks really nice though. The original stairs and deck were severely damaged by the hurricane. A friend had to use a ladder to get into the house back in November. It’s nice to have a safe set of stairs. The stairs have temporary wood railings but we’ll replace them with white railings when we come back next season.0
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That’s our friend Tom and his dog Maggie on the stairs. He was a big help replacing the stairs. That’s DH standing on the deck in front of the railing.0
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Helene, your DH and his friend did a great job! It looks really nice and I’m sure it was a lot of hard work.
My DH left Monday for a missions work trip, so I’m enjoying some me time while he’s away. I haven’t done a lot, but I’ve been busy every day, lol! On Monday I baked 2 different batches of cookies that I am going to deliver today to my occupational therapists as a thank you for their hard work and kindness while helping me with my hand. One loves peanut butter cookies and the other loves chocolate, so I made peanut butter cutout cookies in the shape of a hand, then arranged the fingers into various positions to represent some of the hand exercises they had me doing. The other batch for the chocolate lover are chocolate cherry crinkle cookies. That is my absolute favorite cookie, so I hope she enjoys them.
Yesterday I had to go to my MIL’s assisted living facility to meet with her and her PA to go over some test results from his visit last week. She has a UTI which may be contributing to her mental decline, so he ordered an antibiotic and we will monitor and reassess next week. I need to pick up a few items for her and drop those off today or tomorrow.
Tomorrow I am going to happy hour with some of my friends, and I have a few other errands to get out of the way while I’m out of the house. Then Friday morning I’m driving to my sister’s home in Paris, TX to help her bake and prep for her church’s ladies tea party on Saturday. That should be a fun party. I’ve ordered a fascinator hat from Amazon that should arrive today to wear. I have a smaller than average head, so most hats cover my ears and all of my forehead, so a fascinator style will work better, I hope.0 -
I’ll bet they love the cookies. I would have loved to see a pic of the hand cookies. That’s a thank you gift your therapist will always remember. Sounds like you have a fun week planned. Where is the mission trip to?0
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The mission trip is to work on a church in a small town about 70 miles from here.
I took a picture of the cookies in the bag, so it may be hard to see the detail, but maybe it will give you a general idea of them.
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Very clever.. What did your therapist say when you gave them to her? It must have been her most memorable gifts.0
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They were both very pleased and excited. Both gave me big hugs and thanks. One had a client waiting, so she couldn’t spend too much time with me, but they both said I had made their day. It was something I had wanted to do for awhile, but with all the busyness of MIL’s recent health issues, I just hadn’t had the time. The one who got the hands was especially excited. He wanted to send pictures to their hand therapists. I didn’t realize they had hand specialists there and I’m not sure why I wasn’t referred to them, but I think I got excellent care with these two.0
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Just got an email from accountant. She’s finished our taxes and will email a draft for our review today before she e-files. Today is Patriot’s Day in MA so our deadline is tomorrow. We just finished watching the marathon on ESPN. Saturday was the 10th anniversary of the Marathon bombing. Today was a great day in Boston despite rainy conditions during the race.
Good job on the taxes! It's always a relief to have those done.0 -
Here’s the staircase we’ve been working on for a few months. DH had help with the stairs and deck but he’s installing the railing solo. He’s got about half the railing up and hopefully gets the rest installed before we have to leave in early May. It’s labor intensive cutting and attaching the rails and then adding the balusters. It looks really nice though. The original stairs and deck were severely damaged by the hurricane. A friend had to use a ladder to get into the house back in November. It’s nice to have a safe set of stairs. The stairs have temporary wood railings but we’ll replace them with white railings when we come back next season.
They are doing a great job (and look at the dog checking it out!)0 -
They were both very pleased and excited. Both gave me big hugs and thanks. One had a client waiting, so she couldn’t spend too much time with me, but they both said I had made their day. It was something I had wanted to do for awhile, but with all the busyness of MIL’s recent health issues, I just hadn’t had the time. The one who got the hands was especially excited. He wanted to send pictures to their hand therapists. I didn’t realize they had hand specialists there and I’m not sure why I wasn’t referred to them, but I think I got excellent care with these two.
Those both look scrumptious but the ones with the fingers are just too much! Love them!
I saw a hand therapist after I broke my wrist. There aren't a lot of them. The first thing I asked my friend Lil when she started therapy was whether she got a hand specialist and luckily she did!0 -
Monday I tripped over part of the cart return corral at the supermarket and scraped my under nose/chin area and left knee really good! It's always something. I tell myself I've GOT to slow down but the to do list is scary long.
I've finally gotten myself back into eating better. Took longer than it should have! I'll see the results when I weigh next.0 -
DH is having fund outside - getting the garden ready, planting flowers, spreading the umpteen bags of mulch he bought from the SPCA, mowing the yard and going fishing. He enjoys this time of year and he's much more active than usual so the aches and pains are getting him.
I'm working on trying to get my work files ready to be scanned in between CROM and work. I also organized a lunch for next month when one of our own who moved to North Carolina will be back for a couple days. Should be fun! We tried at Christmas but several of our spouses were worried about COVID.
I see we can get another booster. I think DH and I may wait until fall and combine with the flu shot again. That wasn't too bad.
Smokie is recovering nicely from her SUB surgery and her first appointment to flush out her new "plumbing". Quite the miracle of modern science. Apparently one of the reasons there are fewer cat kidney transplants is the improved treatments available. She had a bilateral procedure; meaning they bypassed both ureters.
SUB stands for Subcutaneous Ureteral Bypass Device. It is a catheter inserted into the kidney to collect urine and transport it through a shunting device surgically placed under the skin to a catheter that empties into the urinary bladder.
I took Lola in for her nails and grooming. They found a nasty UTI so she's stayed to get meds. She screams when I try to pick her up and give her meds but if she ends up needing them several more weeks I'll definitely bring her home and give it a try.
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Maryanne, your fall sounds painful. Definitely slow dow. Better to have undone tasks on your list than you break a hip. That’s an amazing surgery they did ob Smokie. I wonder if they do that type of surgery on people. I can appreciate how difficult it is to give Lola medication. MIL could give the cats pils but DH and I were hopeless even when we worked as a team.0
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I’m back from my weekend trip to visit my sister and help her put on a tea party for the ladies of her church. We prepped food for 60 or more, but in the end there were only about half that number who attended. She had sold 60 tickets, so there were a lot of no-shows. It was exhausting prepping that much food, so it was disappointing to have so much left over food. However, those who attended had a good time and we received many compliments on the food and decor, which my niece was in charge of. One of the members had loaned part of her collection of vintage hats and gloves, which were used as decoration. I was so tired afterward that I abandoned my plan to drive home that night. My sister and I pretty much collapsed on the couch when we got back home and stayed there, lol.
While I was packing Thursday and preparing for my trip I got a message that MIL was complaining of chest pain and was being transported to the hospital. Since DH was still out of town on his missions trip, I rushed up to the ER to see what was going on with her. After a few hours she was discharged as they could find nothing wrong other than dehydration, which is a chronic issue with her because she forgets to drink fluids. I had called DH to keep him informed, so he came back early and was able to meet us back at her assisted living facility upon her discharge. He had driven his own vehicle to the missions location for just this reason, so it all worked out in the end. He was due to come back on Friday anyway, so he only missed 1 night and 1 morning of work with the rest of the group who went.0 -
Pam - I'm sorry you had so many no-shows but that's great that everyone who came had a great time. I'm not surprised you were so tired. I'm glad your MIL turned out to be okay.
It's really something that we missed caretaking for any of our 4 parents.
We each have one sib who's not doing well at all. And we've each lost at least one sib. I guess that's life.0 -
I woke up today to DH telling me he'd put Lola in a carrier because she was staggering and he was afraid she'd fall down the stairs. I went out to feed, considering my options as I drove. I got home and decided to block off all the stairs and let her out of the carrier. She ran around just fine. Whew! So I guess it was short lived if it was anything.
So I fed her and then settled down to work. Took the opportunity of having Tuffy sprawled out in front of me to shave some of his tangles. He tries to eat the hair though so it's a battle as to who can dispose of the shaved off hair first!
I had my bone density test yesterday. The results are a little cryptic but I think it says no further bone loss which would mean the Boniva is doing its job. I see the endocrinologist in a couple weeks and she can tell me for sure.
I have been searching for a new internist and of course it has to be someone who has appointments. I think I found someone worth trying. A young woman, Board certified, great reviews, very close to my house, associated with the hospital which is where we always go when we need the ER and I got a late June appointment. So I postponed my appointment with my nurse practitioner and hope I'll be able to cancel it for good. I've tried everything I can think of to deal with their new(ish) way of dealing with patients over a certain age, regardless of the individual, and I've just had it. Fall back plan? You can order your own labs now so that would just leave me with one prescription to worry about. For that I've sort of been eyeing the new Amazon medical deal as a last resort. I also made an appointment with a Hopkins internist as another backup but that isn't until next April!!!!0 -
Wow, that’s something that specialist doesn’t have any appointments for a year. If it’s someone you think you’d go to, see if they have a cancellation list. That’s worked for us in the past. One time, I got a cancellation the next day instead of waiting months.0
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Pam, can the staff at the facility remind MIL to drink fluids more often? I have to remind DH to drink more especially when he’s working outside in the heat. He buys flavored drops that he sometimes puts in the water. Maybe that would help her drink more water.0
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Helene, the staff do encourage her to drink water and she will do it if they hand her a glass of it, but they aren’t with her often enough to get her to drink the amount she needs to be drinking. She typically only goes to breakfast and dinner for her meals, and for the rest of the day she sleeps a lot, so she just isn’t aware of needing to drink more. I don’t think she would like the flavored water drops. She doesn’t seem to like anything but iced tea and coffee, or plain water. She loves alcohol, but that isn’t an option!
My 10 pound bear is officially out of the closet. I have my monthly check in at the weight loss clinic this morning, so we will see what my official weigh in shows, but my unofficial weigh in on my home scale shows me at a little over 10 pounds in 2 months. Now to work on the next 20!0 -
Would she eat things like popsicles? You could have a pack in her freezer. You could tell if she’s eating them by how many are left in the package when you visit.0
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Wow, that’s something that specialist doesn’t have any appointments for a year. If it’s someone you think you’d go to, see if they have a cancellation list. That’s worked for us in the past. One time, I got a cancellation the next day instead of waiting months.
They send me an email when there's an earlier appointment but it's going out to so many people that by the time I click on it the appointment's gone. I'm going to keep the appointment I have in June and if I like that doctor I'll be good!0 -
Helene, the staff do encourage her to drink water and she will do it if they hand her a glass of it, but they aren’t with her often enough to get her to drink the amount she needs to be drinking. She typically only goes to breakfast and dinner for her meals, and for the rest of the day she sleeps a lot, so she just isn’t aware of needing to drink more. I don’t think she would like the flavored water drops. She doesn’t seem to like anything but iced tea and coffee, or plain water. She loves alcohol, but that isn’t an option!
My 10 pound bear is officially out of the closet. I have my monthly check in at the weight loss clinic this morning, so we will see what my official weigh in shows, but my unofficial weigh in on my home scale shows me at a little over 10 pounds in 2 months. Now to work on the next 20!
Congratulations on the 10-pounds!!! That's fantastic!
I've been haunting ebay looking for the items NS discontinued recently, especially the chili. My absolute favorite NS dinner is the chili and mac n cheese, mixed together, and divided in 1/2 for 2 meals. I've also been stocking up on the discontinued ham and bean soup. I've tried to buy chicken noodle soup but there doesn't seem to be much of that around. Finally, I ordered a bunch of the beef stew. It's the only meal left in the little cans so I figure it's days have to be numbered. Sometimes order a 4-day supply and just make myself eat just out of that box for 4 days. I realized the other day there aren't 4 days left I'll eat.
I see Jenny Craig is in big trouble. Other than what's available on amazon there hasn't been any JC food on ebay worth mentioning for over a year. That shelf stable food used to be SO good! I wonder if NS shelf stable is headed for obsolescence.
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We had to say goodbye to Lola yesterday. She was staggering badly and, unlike earlier in the week, didn't rebound. It was hard but it was time. I really lucked out at the Pet ER. Got a wonderful tech who stayed with me the whole time and a vet who, while she wasn't in the room that long, was kind as well.0
