I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving! Our dinner with our neighbors was very nice. They are a lovely family and have always made us feel very welcome.

Today we are getting ready for our bus tour of Christmas markets in Europe. We leave tomorrow for 10 days of travel. DH’s sister will be joining us on this trip, though we are flying separately since she is in Colorado. I’m really struggling with figuring out what to take as I hate to be cold, but don’t want to overpack with things I won’t use or need. I’m leaning toward trying to pack clothes I can layer and not worry too much about trying to coordinate every outfit. I may or may not be able to check in while we are away, so if you don’t hear from me for awhile, don’t be concerned.

We set up a cat show booth this weekend. We waited AN HOUR for them to get out tables for this. You'd think the set up folks weren't getting paid to do it.

Maryanne, I thought about you last night because due to many issues we ended up missing our connecting flight from Munich back to Dallas. United sent us to a crummy Best a western hotel on Princess Garden Parkway, in Lanham, MD. I think that’s somewhere close to Baltimore? Now I’m sitting in the Dulles airport waiting for our rebooked flight to Dallas, hoping to be reunited with our luggage someday!

We got home about 5 PM today. We were rebooked once by United on a flight leaving Dulles at 8:30 this morning, but due to getting to our unimpressive hotel so late last night, I called and politely requested to be rebooked to a later flight. My initial request was denied, at which time I became a bit more forceful in my request, reminding the agent who was “assisting” me that through no fault of our own, we were stuck in a subpar hotel an hour and a half from the airport and that we would be unable to sleep for more than about 4 hours before having to head back to the airport. I asked him to escalate my request to a supervisor and when he came back on the line he agreed to put us on a flight that was scheduled to leave at 12:30 instead. Due to the high winds and rain in the Northeast today, our flight was delayed about an hour, but we did finally get home.

Until yesterday it was a great trip. We enjoyed each of the cities and the Christmas Markets were interesting. We visited Munich, Nuremberg, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and Salzburg. I especially enjoyed the markets in Nuremberg, Vienna, and Salzburg. We also saw the highlights in each of the towns we visited, so it wasn’t all shopping! We had a scary incident in Budapest where DH got disoriented and ended up lost and unable to find our meeting point during some free time at one of the Christmas Markets. I had left him alone to go to the restroom and he was supposed to meet me at the meeting point, but when I arrived there he was nowhere to be found. Several of the other passengers helped look for him, but eventually it was decided to have the rest of the group go back to the bus with the local tour guide for the day while the tour director stayed with me and SIL to continue looking for him. We finally found him by calling his cell phone and having him go into a restaurant and giving the phone to an employee who was able to tell our tour director where he was. She asked them to keep him there until we could get there and they agreed to do so. He was several blocks away and had no idea how he’d gotten so far away from where he was supposed to be. After we collected him we got in a cab and were able to rejoin the tour at the beginning of the next activity. Needless to say, after that there were numerous people keeping an eye on him.

PamS53 wrote: »

Maryanne, I thought about you last night because due to many issues we ended up missing our connecting flight from Munich back to Dallas. United sent us to a crummy Best a western hotel on Princess Garden Parkway, in Lanham, MD. I think that’s somewhere close to Baltimore? Now I’m sitting in the Dulles airport waiting for our rebooked flight to Dallas, hoping to be reunited with our luggage someday!

Sorry about the crummy motel! Most of the trip sounds great except for that scary instance!

There's a Ramada near us that is just in terrible shape. I think they are housing homeless people. I often wonder what a business traveler who accidentally wanders in there would think. What's sad is I see a school bus stop there to pick up kids in the morning.

I just had a conference call and got to hear all about their "too busy at year end woes". It was all I could do not to just say "join the club, sisters". LOL!

I think I'm 98% through my personal and CROM Christmas lists, thank goodness. DH's presents are bought and wrapped. Stockings are hung. I'm not doing much else. We've already agreed no turkey dinner, thank goodness.

I’m all set to do hand PT in FL. My PA wrote to referral and staff faxed it to the therapy center on Sanibel. I’ve used them before for shoulder and knee therapy. The old building was destroyed by Hurricane Ian in 2022 but they just moved to a new location last spring. I have appointments booked for January and February.

PamS53 wrote: »

This year hasn’t been too bad for me, for a change. The adults in the family agreed to stop exchanging gifts, so I only had to do gifts for 3 kiddos and they were pretty easy. We are staying home, so I’ll plan to cook a nice dinner and that will be our Christmas celebration. I am doing some baking for some of my friends, but I’ll enjoy that and I can plan the timing to make it fairly easy on me.

Today DH had his pre-op physical with our PCP and tomorrow I have an appointment with my retina specialist. On Thursday he has to go back to the sleep clinic for another overnight sleep study to figure out what pressure setting he needs, then next Monday he will see the sleep doctor. At that point, if a CPAP machine isn’t prescribed, I’m throwing in the towel!

I got all your extra Christmas chores. It seemed to be never ending this year! Lucky recipients of your baking. I hope all your doctor appointments go well!

Happy Holidays to you all! It’s a cloudy, cool day here, but I have nowhere I need to go so I don’t mind.

Here’s a pic of the cake I made for my friend. It was 2 layers of sour cream vanilla cake and 1 layer of chocolate, with chocolate mousse filling and vanilla buttercream icing. It was a lot of work, but my friend was very pleased with it.

Helene610 wrote: »

That cake is gorgeous. Anybody would be thrilled to receive it.

I had an echocardiogram the week before we headed south. I had a missed call from my doctor’s office Christmas Eve. I considered this might be bad news since my previous test last year. I called the office today and found it was an update to say the new test was similar to last year and doctor wants to repeat it in 1-2 years. I’m in S.C. so bad news might have meant going back home. The nurse apologized for causing concern. The message was vague for privacy reasons.

After her callback, I can enjoy my winter season in warmer climes.

I'm SO glad it wasn't bad news!

Helene, I’m so glad the news was good and you are on your way to a warmer climate.

Thanks for the compliments on the cake. I made a miniature version for us, and it was pretty tasty! I am just enjoying the holiday foods for now, but will need to get back on the diet track once they are gone. My weight is slowly creeping up and I am not happy about it.

Happy New Year! I’m not making resolutions but I have hopes that this year I will be able to improve my stamina by getting more active and spending less time in a chair. I need to do this because as DH becomes less able physically I need to be able to do more.

I am saddened this morning to learn that one of my dear friends from grad school lost her mom early this morning. Two nights ago she suffered an aortic dissection and due to her age and general health was unable to undergo the surgery necessary to repair it. The four of us friends had just been together last Friday and the main topic of conversation was how difficult it was for the other 3 as they were caring for their elderly mothers.

PamS53 wrote: »

Happy New Year! I’m not making resolutions but I have hopes that this year I will be able to improve my stamina by getting more active and spending less time in a chair. I need to do this because as DH becomes less able physically I need to be able to do more.

I am saddened this morning to learn that one of my dear friends from grad school lost her mom early this morning. Two nights ago she suffered an aortic dissection and due to her age and general health was unable to undergo the surgery necessary to repair it. The four of us friends had just been together last Friday and the main topic of conversation was how difficult it was for the other 3 as they were caring for their elderly mothers.

Happy New Year!

Aortic dissection is what took both my mom and my sister. I'm so sorry!

Hard to believe my mom's been gone 25 years and my sister almost 5. One of our cousins had the surgery. I continue to beat on my brothers to see a cardiologist as we obviously have a family history (and it's obviously on our mother's side).

PamS53 wrote: »

I’m tired today and planning to take it easy and rest. Yesterday I cooked 2 big soup pots full of shrimp and corn chowder and 3 loaves of beer bread, which I then delivered to my friend who lost her mother this week. They had a lot of family who had flown in staying at their house. Another friend made salads and pies for dessert. I kept a little of the soup and one of the loaves of bread for our dinner, but delivered the rest to them. My friend’s husband is the primary cook in the family and he was extremely appreciative of my efforts, since last night they had 11 people for dinner. Reports were that they all really enjoyed the meal and appreciated that we had provided it for them. I was happy to do it, but it was very tiring. This particular soup recipe is delicious, but requires a lot of time to chop all of the ingredients, plus I had to cook and peel 2 pounds of shrimp first. The beer bread is very easy, so that helped!

What a great thing to do - and how VERY delicious that sounds!

Pam, how kind of you to prepare a meal for your friend’s family. The loss of her mother was quite a blow. We were traveling from SC to FL last weekend and catching up on medical appointments since we got home here. I was at my brother’s house from Christmas through January 3rd. On New Year’s Day, my sister, brother and I went to see Wicked. We loved it. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant before returning to his house. His garage is lower than the house so there are three steps up to his kitchen door. I was standing on the top step which is a banding. I don’t know what happened but next thing I knew, I had fallen and ended up on my back on the concrete floor. It was a chore to even get up so I could go in the house. I’ve had varying amounts of back pain for the last week. A friend suggested calling my chiropractor and I was able to see him today. My hip was way out of alignment. He adjusted me and put an ice pack on my lower back. I could feel a reduction in pain right after he finished. I go back Friday for a second treatment.

In addition to that, I had a tooth extracted Monday. I knew it was coming because I had decay under an old crown which was discovered in my November cleaning. I tried to make an appointment with a specialist on the Cape I used a couple years ago. The practice had closed and a Google search told me he was arrested for Medicare fraud last spring. A number of years ago, I used a FL dental practice so I made an appointment there. I’ll have an implant down the road when my gum heals up. The dentist did a wonderful job with the extraction. She was very gentle and I had zero pain. I couldn’t have asked for better treatment.