First Day of Physical Therapy

I took Amy to Triangle Orthopedics for her first day of physical therapy and I took lots of pictures.  Her PT, David, took the brace off to see what she and the knee could do.  Amy was great!

I don't know how I got this picture of David looking so ferocious!  He was cute with a great dimple!

The original bandage.  (The white squares are where the electrodes are for the tens unit.)

New bandage and it is water tight!  Shower time!!!!!

 

 

Finished and getting iced down.

Amy got a list of exercises to do and the next appointment is in two weeks.   I am surprised that it is two weeks away, but it does need to heal.  Amy felt much better after talking to David - she is able to move around the house and is not the complete invalid.

I took her to Chipolte's after (of course) and then home. 

A bit of late news:  Sunday was Maren's birthday and we had the dinner here at the house.  Our first Sunday night dinner and it was successful!!!!!  I got up early and got ALL of the boxes out of the dining room, polished the silver, put the extra leaves in the table and vacummed.  Exhausting!  Luckily, Lori cooked Maren's favorite foods, I made a good salad and Jim made Brown Betty for dessert.  It was so nice!

This is after, please not the silver - the gleam, the shine!!!!

I had candles on the table - but failed to take more pictures.  Sorry. 

It is nap time.  I am exhausted and of course, have to shove the dogs over to get some room.

Love, Leslie

April is Back and Forth

It is 54 degrees right now.  I understand that it is colder where you are ~ I have watched baseball games where the players are in ski masks and I have seen the snow and sleet during games.  I guess I have to not consider spring being here until May, which is fast approaching.

This is so wrong in so many ways!!!!

I was out looking at my tomatoes, and they seem to be happy ~ but the best thing?  There is a bud on the rose bush!!!!!!

Amy is doing fine.  She stays in bed, but does get up and change and go to the bathroom ~ she does use her crutches.  AND, she has not taken a pain pill today.  I just made her cinnamon toast and she is going to nap. 

We are having the local family over tomorrow for Maren's birthday dinner.  Lori is bringing macaroni and cheese with tomato and broccoli and corn pudding.  I am making the salad.  Jim is making Maren's favorite dessert - Brown Betty.  Jim makes his own hot fudge sauce and pours it on toasted pound cake and serves it with vanilla ice cream.  Yummy.

So today, I have to box up that crazy glass topped drafting table that Amy and I could not put together.  Crazy.  Get the house straightened up and move some more pictures upstairs.

Regular Saturday kind of stuff to do.  For a change.

Hope you have a beautiful day!

Love, Leslie

Amy's Surgery A Success!

Amy had to be at the surgical center in Raleigh by 7:45am and Jim came and took her on his way to work.  I haven't been up and out at 5 am in a while.

Here is Amy and her surgeon right before the surgery started:

I was to be at the surgical center by 10:45 am and I waited for Amy.  The surgery was successful and they were able to use a piece of her own hamstring to fix the ACL - no cadaver pieces were needed.

This is Amy when the nursing staff let me into recovery.

Amy was slow to wake up and was freezing!  The nurse gave her excellent Diet Coke ~ which made Amy happy.

This is the broken ACL (the yellowy piece)

This is the new ACL ~ all ready to go.



Amy's surgeon expects Amy to rest and sleep a lot today, and to start her regular medication regime.  She is wearing a new brace that she has to wear when she is up and asleep.  She is using her crutches and starts physical therapy next week.

We did something new for the house.  In the Keeping Room (ie the den) the sun's glare was so extreme in the afternoon, that we had a film put onto the windows ~ it took the guy a couple of hours and is really great!

The tint is in the upper windows above the blinds and the triangle at the top.

I am off to the grocery (Amy wants some chocolate ice cream) and then I am going to the Duke basketball reception.  Lori says it is a lot of fun.  So, more later!

Love, Leslie

The House in Maryland is Ours No More!

Today, April 21st, we closed on the house in Davidsonville ~ it is officially not ours anymore.  A Navy couple from California bought it.  I don't know anything else about them.
I do know that there was a walk-thru with one of their fathers - and of course, there was a puddle of water in the basement!

OMG!  We haven't had water in the basement in years and we had it today!!!!! But, it didn't hold anything up and it is sold.

Just in case you don't remember.....



This is probably 25 years ago.

This is the most recent:

I hope the new family enjoys it as much as we did.

Love,
Leslie

We celebrated the closing with champagne and pizza with Lori, Jim and Maren.  Amy and Maren decided to try and open the champagne with a Navy sword.  This had every opportunity to go bad.  We sent them outside with an empty wine bottle ~ luckily, it didn't work and no blood was shed.

The "mini me's" are heading out to see if they can, in fact, open the bottle with a sword.

Jim opened the bottle "the old fashioned way", the cork shot up and hit the fan and champagne spewed.....on Maren and the wall.

It was hysterical!  A typical evening at the Thomas House.

A damp Maren.

Planting Tomatoes and Other Garden Jobs

Amy and I went to Home Depot today ~ our mission was to get dirt, stakes, and other items in order to plant the tomatoes.

We got a flat cart and a nice guy named Mike helped us gather all our supplies.  Dirt, stakes, string, pretty fencing (to keep the dogs out of the tomatoes) ~ a flat of geraniums to plant in the front, a package of carrot seeds (Amy wants to see if we can grow them) , a Pinata climbing rose and one scarlet Mandevilla plant later, we came home to plant.

Our yard is solid red clay.  Rick, our landscaper's Dad, tilled up along the back fence for us, but may I say that digging the holes in the red clay is a giant mess.  And it was wet.  But we made it.

Here is the tomato bed.

 

The one in the middle is the rose bush.

 

A tomato plant combined with the mandevilla.

 

The very sad orange and lemon trees ~ you can just barely see the tiny leaves coming out.

 

That red clay may be permanent.

 

My footprints on the deck.

We need more fencing.  We forgot the mulch.  There is always tomorrow.  And I need a shower.  And a beer.

Has It Been 10 Years?

My best friend from college, Mary Lamb Discher, called and said that she was in the area visiting her niece, could she come and visit?

YES!!!!!!

I drove to Cary, NC to pick her up - and it was as if time (10 years???????) had never passed. 

I visited with her niece, Lauren ~ who is due with her 3rd baby May 3rd ~ and her two sons, Chase and Corbin.  Chase is 5 and Corbin is going to be 3 and they were adorable.  The soon-to-be new baby is unknown ~ they want to be surprised, but are hoping for a girl.  And Lauren says she has "lots" of girl  clothes, just in case.

Carter's is definitely the place to shop for kids!  Why don't they make clothes like that for adults? 

Thursday was busy ~ and raining.  I told Nana that I would pick up her girl friends from Raleigh-Durham airport.  It is their 60th reunion from Duke ~ and Nana really shouldn't be driving.....anywhere. 

So, iphone charged up and I was ready.  I took a balloon and a sign ~ I had no idea what these ladies looked like and I did not want to miss them!

I get to the baggage claim area early and according to the signs, both planes had arrived!!!! 20 minutes early!!!!!  No one was in baggage claim and I did get concerned.  I spoke to a guy at the information booth and he said the planes had landed, but no one had gotten to baggage claim yet.  THANK GOODNESS!!!!!!

Both ladies found me ~ and we were off.  I used my British guy on iphone for directions, and neither lady could understand him at all ~ but we made it to Nana's.

Then I turned around and drove back past the airport to get Mary!  Lots of driving, and realized that with all the driving, I needed the car charger ~ luckily Amy gave me one.

Mom took us to dinner and Lori and Jim met us ~ and ate Italian and laughed, alot.  When we left, we noticed that no one was sitting close to us, evidently we made alot of noise.  But we had the most fun.

This is my first attempt at video and putting it on the blog. It is a short video of my lovebird taking a bath.  There is no nudity in this video.

Love,
Leslie

Oops!

We had some television issues last week.  Mom "deprogrammed" hers and I could not get it to work, so she was forced to watch television in the keeping room (den) or living room.  She really didn't like that, so she pulled a television that I had put in her closet out and was trying to hook it up, to no avail.

Never mind the fall risks - dragging the cord, tripping, dropping the television....the list goes on. 

So, when Amy gets here, she brings a television with her and I unpack a televison.  And then mom tells us that the television she has has a built in dvd player and her dvd is stuck in it. 

We plug it in, and no power.  So we move the tv to another outlet and it does not turn on.  So Amy and I figure that the television is broken and notice that the dvd eject button is pushed in - all the way.  Amy's eyes light up.

Did you ever see the movie or show "Office Space"?  I have not, but I imagine, based on Amy, that the office staff have trashed office equipment.  I have wanted to drop kick a computer a time or two, but never did it.

Amy is ready....So we go into the garage with a screw driver and try to pry the dvd player apart and get the dvd.  There is no dvd in there.  Why do we listen to mom, anyway?

So, it gets smashed.  And while we were at it, we broke up another tv that wasn't working.  Amy tried to video the mayhem, but she was laughing so hard all she recorded was her feet.

Yesterday, we go out and buy a new televison for the space over the fire place.  The one there is too small, so we find the Super Target and get a 40 inch Samsung.  Amy hooks it up and puts the one we took out into her room and hooks it ups.  She wants to have everything ready for when she is recovering from her knee surgery - she loves HGTV and The Walking Dead.  (Thank you, Carole, for sending me the typo.  The Walking Dean makes no sense.)  Go figure.

Here is the point of this story.  We go to Lori's house for dinner.  Amy is telling Maren about the new television and Maren says "Where is my tv?"  And, I had a flash bulb go off in my head and started to laugh.  Amy caught on and started to laugh.

When we first got to the new house, Maren had brought her tv and hooked it up over the fire place while they waited for us to arrive and left it.  Oops.

Yep.  We trashed Maren's televison. 

I am not sure how we got so confused about the televisions - but we promised Maren a brand new smart televison.  And laughed all the way home.  Ooops.

Spring in Durham

 

This is the view of Spring off our deck.  They are wild dogwoods and redbud.  Might have to plant a couple of real redbuds in the back.  The tomatoes have arrived and we are going to have a bed dug out and plant the tomatoes along the back fence.  Mom does say she wants ONE tomato on the deck.

 

Mom had a lovely birthday ~ family, food and flowers with some other presents and ice cream. 

 

The orchids that I had tenderly nurtured and had to leave with Amy did beautifully!

 

We took Mom to The Bleu Olive for lunch - Lori met us and it was superb!  Fresh, delicious - Mediterranian cooking - definitely a place to go back to!

 

Then we had Jim, Lori, Maren and Jesse over for dinner - chicken parm with rottini, fresh made garlic bread, salad and ice cream cake. 

 

News:  Zoe made it into the summer program at Carnegie Mellon (very exciting) and Amy is having her knee done next week.  She likes her orthopedic surgeon who says "I do these all day long!"

 

Amy has also been trying to get a carpender in to put in the dog doors to no avail.  We are replacing the screen door on the porch because it is installed badly, so we found one that has a dog door already in it.  Genus.

 

So last night, we were talking about where we would put the dog door in the house and who would install it and Lori says "this is just a thought, but why don't you just put another new door in - with the dog door built in?"  GENIUS!!!!

 

Why didn't Amy or I think of that?  Anyway, it is probably cheaper and easier and we found both doors at Home Depot, and they will install.

 

Anything for the dogs.

 

Back to the boxes.

 

Oh, last night - big thunder storm with lots of hail! 

 

Enjoy (really) the Spring!

 

Love, Leslie





Amy's Room

Amy got her room set up, the cable guy came and installed the work cable, so she is all set up to work and recover when she has her surgery.

The work station

I got the boxes off the screened porch, so tomorrow after my 4th trip to the dump, I am going to purge some of the wicker and put it someplace else and start setting it up.

I have watched 3 baseball games and we are planning to watch the Duke - Wisconsin game tonight.  Why it has to be at 9:00 pm is beyond me.  I will watch the San Francisco Giants during the commercials.

 

 

Celebrate Sunday

 

Happy Easter !

 

 

Please know that no dog ate any chocolate or Cadbury Easter eggs!!!  He would if he could, but we don't share.

 

 

Also, congratulations to the Duke Blue Devils ~ we watched the game on big screen splendor in our new living room ~ very comfortable!!!!!  I stayed up to watch Wisconsin, hoping that they would beat Kentucky and YES YES YES!!!!! They beat them, and then some of the Kentucky players showed their true poor sportsmanship, which looks bad for all of them. 

 

 

And for me, today is the most sacred of days, Opening Night for Baseball!  I will be watching and am ready to watch the Boys of Summer.  I have on my Madison Bumgarner shirt and my counted cross stitch for Carole that I will finish before the 2015 World Series.

 

 

So, enjoy your Easter Sunday!

 

Love, Leslie

 

 



Amy Moves In

I just finished a fast vacuum and took the dogs for a walk.  Amy, Nancy and Drew should be here any minute to move Amy into the house.

This is the entry and I am going to lower the picture.

The living room.

The living room with the big television (to watch Duke tonight)

The Keeping Room ~ off the kitchen.

Mother's 12 tomato plants that I HAVE to plant.

Maren and Drew on our deck.

Well, they arrived ~ and it took them 4.5 hours!  A new land record!  We unloaded Amy's stuff and it is in her room and the garage.  That is for another day.

Drew and Nancy loved the house and sitting on the deck was great.  I need to get the umbrella up out there.  Maren said her black pants "were on fire!"

Our beloved Maren with her freakazoid Aunt Amy behind her.  Oh the trials and tribulations.

 

It is good to have us all together again.

 

Love, Leslie

 

 

"Oo De Lally"

I love this! (make sure your volume is up to hear the song)  :)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnVuqfXohxc&feature=player_detailpage


It just makes me smile.  As does Easter...

I divided the jelly beans ~ I don't like the licorice ones, so they didn't go in the eggs ~ but someone here does like them.

 



The neighborhood is having an Easter egg hunt tomorrow.  Everyone with kids were asked to bring 15 eggs per kid.  Since we have no little kids, we are still taking the 15 eggs, but not attending.

Nancy, Drew and Amy are arriving tomorrow!!!!! Nancy and Drew are bringing a truck and Amy's car, dropping her, Buffy and her stuff off and then flying back home.  That is a real drive by drop off.

Nancy says that if Zoe goes to the Carnigie Mellon summer computer program this summer, she will come down and visit.  Drew can't stay because he is allergic to all the dogs. 

More later.

April Surprise!

What a surprise!  The doorbell rings this morning and it was Torii and her daughters out looking at colleges!  They had just come from Elon and dropped by!  They brought Dad's vanity license plates from the silver Honda CRV that they bought.  It was a great drive by ~
they couldn't stay, got a brief tour of the house, lots of hugs and left.

I was on my way to the dump.  Again the recycling people wouldn't/didn't pick up my boxes so I loaded my car and off I went.  It was spectacularly easy - with some minor glitches - but I made two trips and will go again on Saturday - they are not open on Good Friday, but are open on Saturday.

So, my crankiness is gone and I am off to JJ's for my two hours of work.
Enjoy the day and friends!!

Love,
Leslie

Last Minute Aggrevations

Why do people do this?  Amy received the inspection list yesterday, that the buyers have had for a WEEK!!!

And they knew Amy was leaving this Friday.  So wrong.  Anyway, most of the stuff was being taken care of ~ except the master bath ~ which was being sold "as is", hence the price cut.

Now the POTENTIAL buyers want it fixed.  Hmmmmm.  Amy was upset, mom was upset ~ but we talked it out and if the buyers want to back out, so be it.  We will have a crew in, fix the bathroom and sell the house for more money.  And Amy will be here getting ready to have her knee surgery and Nancy will ride herd on the redo.  And all will be ok.

Now for my personal success:  I put together Amy's new bed!!!!!! Amy feels that as soon as she lies down on it, it will collapse.  Ha - not going to happen.

Here are the directions and the Allen wrench they provided:


 

This is like those crazy word problems in math.

Please note my supervisor and my props (dog door box and two reams of paper) ~ it worked!

 

TA DA!!!!  And here it is ~ finished.  It is low so it is easy to get in and out. 

 

May April 1 be successful for everyone!

 

Love,

Leslie

PS ~ I wonder if this is too much:  tomorrow is our recycling day (every other week) and since the city of Durham blew me off on my SCHEDULED pick up, I wonder if they will freak out when they see this:

You can't even see the giant blue recycling bin!

And here is what is left in the garage:

 

All the bags are paper that I have to take out and roll up and tape shut - I have 30+ in the giant pile at the end of the driveway.  I will get these ready for the next time.  I don't want to have the recycling people to have a coronary.

Oh, I forgot to mention my other success ~ I successfully deposited my first paycheck into NFCU via my iphone!!!!!!! I know, I fought the iphone and look what it can do! 
My paycheck?  I am working my sister Lori's afternoon job at her father-in-law's office while she is vacationing.  He will be a good reference!