@MusicCandy @SadMe70 New place to communicate

@SadMe70 Its easy to pray everyday and helpful. 

Hello my friend, I've been praying for your fiance and hope that he has had surgery by now and that it has gone well.  I'm so glad they did the cath study and realized how serious his condition is! I'm sure that is going to involve a lot of rehab and be a long healing process, but hopefully he will feel a lot better and have more energy with the blockage removed.  Are you managing to get any rest with all of this on top of everything else??

Is Rachael still with her dad? Did she start the day program this week?  How is that going? Does she like it? I'm praying that works out because I know what a help that will be!

As for me, I'm still coughing away and feeling tired, not exercising much, BUT I just went on HRT Thursday.  I had my gyn checkup and requested it.  I feel like the benefits outweigh the risks for me right now (though my mom was a real downer about it and I'm kind of annoyed about her reaction because I am pretty excited to try it).  Mine is a combination estrogen/progesterone patch, plus I will keep up with the vaginal estrogen cream that I've been using for over a year now. Hoping this will help my thyroid numbers, sleep, energy, and possibly even the allergies. I recently read that a drop in estrogen makes your body more sensitive to histamines so you react worse - mine are certainly worse than usual so maybe that is what's going on.  

Also, I leave for Korea on Wednesday!! It's finally almost here.  My husband STILL has stuff in the living room which is driving me crazy, but he is slowly working away at it.  Yesterday I cleaned out the chicken coop and made sure I have enough feed out there. Today is bathroom cleaning day and take my car which has the baby car seats in it to my son (so he can use it pick us up at the airport). 

I hope to do a trial run of my packing tomorrow to see if there is any way to actually fit all the stuff I want to take into one carry-on! The HRT patches turn out to need refrigeration (nothing is easy!), so I got a small cold pack case designed for traveling with insulin and supposedly TSA approved.  It is the smallest I could find but still 8 inches long and the patches are about 1.5" so it's taking up a ton of extra space in my little suitcase! 

Monday I have a mammogram and a dental cleaning.  Tuesday is one last dry needling session at the PT.  Last week I got my jaw done, and on Tuesday I'll do my lower back, hoping that will help with sitting on the plane so long.

I will try to write while I am away, though it might not be next weekend.

I'll anxiously await your note to hear how your fiance is doing, and hoping that it's good news.  Hoping also that you are holding up, my friend. You've had a lot to deal with lately.

Hello my friend, what a summer this has been! Getting to know my grandchildren was such an incredible blessing. Having them get to know my side of the family, including my mother, was also so very wonderful.

During my first visit to Korea in June, when I stayed for a week, I got to have a whole lovely day to spend in Seoul with my son, just the two of us.We went to a historical palace grounds, and then to an open air market. I ate lots of good food and bought myself a wind chime and a small lacquer box. My son and I also got to spend about half a day with just the two of us and my grandchildren. We went to a park where they played for a couple of hours and we all had a wonderful time. That evening my son and I got to go out to dinner to a buffet place so I tried lots more good food.

During the week, while my son was working, my daughter-in-law and I went to places called kids’ cafés, once in their city and once up in Seoul. These places are just full of all kinds of activities for children, ball pits, trampolines, slides, things to climb on, things with balls to throw, arcade type games. I looked for something similar here and couldn’t find anything anywhere nearby. We also went out to dinner once with her parents and then once at her parents apartment. I ate a lot of good food.

Our first two weeks back in the states we spent at a rental house in colonial Beach about 15 minutes from my house. My mom and both sisters spent most of those two weeks with us. That’s when the babies really started to get comfortable with all of us and we had a wonderful time. Most days we would spend an hour or two at the river in the morning before it got hot. Then we really spent the rest of the time indoors because of the heat and humidity, but I had lots of toys and books for us to use. I like watching my grandchildren, play with toys and reading books that I saved from when my sons were little. I found a toddler art class in colonial Beach, which we did twice, and that was a lot of fun. An hour spent using paint, glue, sand, stickers, all kinds of things.One of my teacher friends came to visit, and a couple that is a friend of my son’s came to visit that week also.

For the third week, we went to my mom‘s house in Pennsylvania. I got to introduce the babies to my aunt uncle cousin and two of my friends. My mom also had two of her friends over. Mom had toys from when my sisters and I were little, and we all enjoyed watching the babies play with those as well. We went to an amusement park that is geared to little kids. We spent about two hours on the rides, and another two hours in the waterpark, which was just splash pads so just right for toddlers. That was a lot of fun, and they especially liked the water part. On the Fourth of July we went to my sister’s house and had a lot of fun in her pool there. Unfortunately, I stumbled at one point and hurt my bad knee, which still hurts. I’m afraid I may have further torn the medial meniscus, which I tore initially many years ago and have had two surgeries on so far.

The last two weeks we spent here at our house. We did get back to the river a couple of times and spent a couple of days at a nearby playground which we had all to ourselves. We tried taking a walk one day, but it was just too hot and humid and that was a disaster. One day we went out to a restaurant and who should be there, but the lady who babysat my son when he was a toddler up until he went to kindergarten. My son was a very challenging toddler, and this woman was an angel. I hadn’t seen her for years and it was so exciting to be able to introduce her to her former pupil’s children. One downside to the stay at my house is that my house in the woods frequently has bugs and spiders in it, and my daughter-in-law is afraid of bugs. She was grossed out by a big bug in the bedroom, stepping on a cricket in the bathroom, and other bugs elsewhere.Three days before they left, she picked up her towel to dry her hair after a shower and a humongous spider fell out onto her leg. That was all she could take and she moved to a hotel for the last three days. I’m worried that will affect future visits.

this past Sunday, we flew back to Korea, arriving on Monday. I spent Tuesday there and flew back home Wednesday. The flights were all very long, but they were definitely manageable, and now I know I could do it again.

I have two troubling things to get off my chest as well, but I will save them for it later message, so I can keep this message a happy one. These involve my daughter-in-law and my husband, so no surprises!

I’m glad to hear that your fiancé’s rehab is doing well, but very sorry to hear about the virus you both caught! I hope you are feeling better now. I hope the new computer system at work continues to be manageable.Sorry to hear about the deaths at your church. Were you close with any of them?Were you involved in the services for all three people?

Thank you for reading my very long description of my visit with my grandchildren. I doubt they will remember it, but we have lots of pictures and videos so they will know that they spent this summer here with the American side of their family. This may be the only time that I get to spend six whole weeks with them, and I will treasure it always. I hope your week is going well, that you’re feeling better, and I look forward to getting an update on what you have been up to!

Hello my friend,

This was an uneventful week for me.  I got all the toys, books, baby furniture, car seats, etc. put away. My house is back to its normal state. I did a little cooking this week, and got one meal put into the freezer.  I did not have time for my usual summer cooking/freezing to get ready for the school year. I do have some meals in there though. 

We spent yesterday with my son and DIL. She works for a company that installs exhibits in museums.  She's been working on a project since she started there a couple of years ago, and the first big one opened yesterday, so we went to see it.  Then we went back to their house to have dinner with them.  It was a nice day. So good to see the positive, supportive interactions between them.  So unlike my other poor son.

That is my first sad thing from the summer.  My other DIL was perfectly lovely to me the whole summer, while being controlling and eventually very nasty to my son.  She would tell him to do some chore (vacuum etc.) then look on her phone at the feed from the camera in their living room to see if he did it.  She insists that he tell her any time he goes out, where he goes, who he is with, and tracks him on her phone.  She wanted him to take pictures of who he is with to prove it, but that is where he finally balked. 

On my second trip back, he and I spent the day together because she stayed on bed all day, and he told me a lot more awful things too. Add to that, his company had to fire 4 of the 12 people at his site because of the government cutbacks. After successfully weathering the stress of whether he was getting fired, he kept his job but is now losing 4 of his friends, who will now have to move out of Korea and he won't ever see them again.  His only friends are at work, so he has few left now, and he's very down about that.  Unfortunately one of the other people who did not get fired is someone who is nasty to him all the time. My heart breaks for him every day, living under constant emotional abuse with so little joy.  My DIL even taught the babies, as a joke earlier, to say "Daddy, go away!" which they now say all the time, especially my granddaughter, and that makes him so sad too.

I hope things are going ok with the new computer system now that the extra help is gone. It's so frustrating to not only have to learn a new system, but one that makes everything harder to do.  I don't understand why things get designed that way, but it seems to happen a lot.

I totally understand how you feel about your fiance and his lack of effort.  A few months ago my husband started his latest diet plan, some shots that lower your appetite by making you feel sick all the time.  So he spends even more time in bed, yet when he does eat, it's often SPAM or similar crap.  The only diet plan he hasn't tried is eating well-balanced, healthy meals with a reasonable calorie intake.  The other less happy part of my summer is that I spent the first month of it barely seeing him, and it was wonderful.  No arguing, yelling, fetching things for him that he left in the room he just left, or when I am tired and just want to lie down and watch TV.  And by contrast, I spent much of that time with normal, positive people (my mom and two sisters) and was so much happier. I could feel how much less tight my jaw muscles were.  I am just plain tired of living with a negative, unhappy, unhealthy, angry, disabled person.  

So, I can't at all fault you for being irritable with your fiance! I know how much you always do, and when you have to do even more, it can be wearing on your patience. 

I'm glad you are close to getting an interim priest.  Everything seems to move so slowly! Will the search for a permanent priest continue, or is it likely that the interim will end up staying?

I go back to work on Tuesday, so I'm hoping to get a bit more cooking done today or tomorrow and get one or two more meals into the freezer.  I hope you and your family are still doing well, and that your fiance has worked harder on his rehab this week!  Until next week my friend!

Hello my friend, the first week of school is in the books (well three days anyway!).  This week I just did general support for K-2.  Next week in K and 1 we will start short one-on-one lessons for kids struggling with letter names and sounds to get them more ready for small groups.

On Tuesday I went to an all-day training (it was really good) to learn about a reading curriculum that I will be using this year. I won't have my final schedule for a while yet, but I think that curriculum will be for grades 2-5. I hope that I will continue to work with K-1 also.  I am not much looking forward to working with the older grades, so at least I don't want to lose my little ones as well!  I've never done small groups with 4th and 5th grade, and only did 3rd grade twice.

On Tuesday I finally walked with my two friends for the first time since May.  Since my knee has been hurting, we walked on the rail trail so it would be flat, and only for half an hour.  On Wed and Thurs, it hurt more than it has since I injured it July 4, so I finally wrote to my doctor, who has not had time to answer me yet. I had taken two doses of ibuprofen on Wed, and one dose on Thurs, plus doing my yoga class (and I have been stretching my leg muscles every morning anyway).  By Friday it hardly hurt at all.  I thought for sure I had torn the medial meniscus again, but now I am perplexed (but happy!) as to what exactly was causing the pain, and which thing I did made it go from really bad to almost gone in one day! So I will keep working on strengthening the muscles around the knee and keep my fingers crossed!

Regarding my DIL, I don't know if the controlling thing is cultural, just her with her issues, or a combination of both.  I just know that my son doesn't deserve to be treated that way!  I wondered too about what she would do if he just refused to be tracked like that.  I guess he is picking his battles, sigh. If she was always acting the way she presents herself to me, all our lives would be so much better.  If there were no children, I think he would not have trouble getting a divorce (though probably would have to pay alimony), and then maybe would move back here.  Having the children just makes it all impossible to solve. It's true about the pain never leaving.  It's different than the grief over my dad dying - that's always still with me but dulls over time.  This pain is ongoing because the situation is ongoing and unstable.  Like your friend said, it's part of me now.

Being back to work helps me cope with being home since I'm here less.  I don't mean to imply that things are terrible here every minute.  He's a good person, and some things are good sometimes. I'm just tired of so many aspects of our life together.  It's so draining, and so often I just don't want to deal with any of it anymore.  I want peace.  How are things at home for you?  

I'm glad that you have Rachael, and that she is so joyful! It does make a difference to be around a happy person! It can definitely rub off on you and make that part of your day brighter.  That is part of the problem here - we are both unhappy and it just combines and grows to make us both less happy. I need more joy!!

I did have one joyful thing, just last night! My son video called, only the second time since their trip.  I grabbed a book I've kept at hand, a story that they really liked.  He put them in their high chairs to get ready for breakfast, and I took the opportunity of having them stuck in one spot to read the book.  They actually watched and remembered some of the repetitive parts.  It did my heart so much good to experience that!

Just like with Abi and Mark, I haven't talked to my other son and DIL since the museum trip, but that is ok because I know they are out there doing their thing, and that they are ok.  They have more normal problems in their lives than my other son (like leaking house, just replaced their roof), and they cope with them together. So, I don't worry about them.

I'm glad things are better at work with the new computer system! I was worried for you because sometimes people building those sorts of things have not had to actually use them in practice and don't always make things easier for the people who are using them.

Ugh, so sorry about the busybody.  I used to do more group type things and could not take dealing with people so I pulled out of everything years ago. Also with my kids being gone, I'm not dealing with other parents at kid activities either.  Such a relief.  I don't blame you at all for wanting to stop the organizing assignment and leave her to it.

I hope you are well my friend. Until next week!

Hello my friend, nothing much to report this week! My best thing is another video call with my son and the babies last night.  That's two weeks in a row! I ran and grabbed a short book that they liked while they were here (do you know Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?).  They were up moving around and playing, but my grandson watched me read about half of the book while my son was changing my granddaughter's diaper, then she watched me read the whole thing.  She would jump up sometimes to go find things in the room that were the color of whatever animal was on the page we were reading.  It was cute.

School was fine, just more general support and one-on-one ABC lessons with a handful of K and 1st graders.  On Monday my team starts a new schedule for the next two weeks, and we will all be going to K-5. For 2-5 we will be helping with math. I'm not great at explaining math, but I think for the older grades we will just be in the full classroom with the teacher instead of pulling groups, so I'll have backup!

My doctor ordered an MRI for my knee, pending insurance approval. Literally the same day, it started improving and hardly hurts at all now, after six weeks of constant pain.  When I bend it all the way, especially with any pressure (like doing yoga child's pose), it still hurts inside the joint, so I'm going to go ahead with the MRI anyway to see if they can tell if I've further torn anything.  I did remember that the last time I got one, the screw in my knee caused distortion right where they were trying to see the meniscus so they couldn't really tell, but suspected it was torn further.  I hope they can see something on this one!

How did your dental work go?  Two crowns at once is a lot!  I would definitely have to pee, since dental work makes me so stressed out.  When I go just for a cleaning, I pee before I leave the house, and again when I get to their office 15 minutes away! I hope the soreness in your mouth is going away, and your temps stay put until the permanent crowns come.

The weather has been so beautiful this week, but I have not had much chance to be outside.  I wish we had some weather like this over the summer! I took one very short walk by myself this week to test out my knee, about 15 minutes, and it did ok.  

I am headed to make some chai, with some of the rich Jersey cow milk I get at the store near mom's. We freeze it in amounts just right for our chai recipe, and one day each weekend we use the "good stuff," and one day we use grocery store milk.  Since I remembered to take a bag out of the freezer last night, we're getting the good stuff today!

I hope your week went well, you got out in the lovely weather, and your teeth are behaving! Until next week!

Hello my friend,  nothing much to report this week!  School was ok.  One thing really bugging me is that they have assigned my team to help with the car rider dismissal, and telling us we have to stay until they are all gone.  This is making us stay past our contracted number of hours, without mention of comp time. But the worst thing is, our old vice principal let us slip out at 3:35 for the last two years (our end time should be 3:45) and now we are leaving at 4.  One of my Tuesday walking friends gets off at 3, and was already waiting an hour in her car for us. Now she would have to wait 90 minutes for me.  The other of the two ladies retired, so they could both meet and walk earlier.  I will either lose my walking buddies, or greatly inconvenience them.  It's my one social thing that I do regularly and actually like, and I'm pretty bitter that my bosses are wrecking it.  It makes my whole attitude bad at work.

My other frustrating news is that my knee has flared up again, and also because of school.  My schedule this week (and next) has me on my feet a lot, and apparently my knee is not ok with that.  My insurance company has denied the MRI, but my doctor re-ordered it yesterday with different wording.  Fingers crossed.  I had hoped to start trying some light hiking this weekend in this gorgeous weather, but now I can't.

I did, however, go over to the beach for two hours yesterday afternoon.  I hadn't been for a couple of weeks, and it was really nice.  I only left because some biting flies came out.  I hope to go again at least once more this weekend, and will take bug spray! At the beach, I finished the third book of a trilogy I've been reading (Killing Eve), after starting to watch the Netflix show based on the books.  I liked both at the beginning, but honestly both got a little tedious as they went on!

The other movie I watched this week was the original Ocean's 11 from 1960 and really enjoyed it.  I like the Rat Pack actors.  Last night we started the Thursday Murder Club movie on Netflix and I'm liking that so far.  I loved the book that is based on!

I'm thinking you probably have another week or so before you get your permanent crowns.  Hoping your temporaries are not giving you any trouble!

I am SO impressed that you did karaoke!! I have never been anywhere to even watch that, but I know I would not have the nerve to do it.  I'm a terrible singer anyway. I didn't know your song but I just watched it on youtube - so pretty! How wonderful also that Abi recorded it! I'm so happy for you that you got such a lovely complement from the manager too.  Some nice positive memories and feelings for you!

My older son and his wife are driving to NC for the long weekend.  He called up and asked about the route we used to take down there when they were kids.  We purposely took a longer route away from 95 so we could ride 3 ferries, the one at Jamestown and two in NC.  I'm so happy that my son enjoyed that enough to want to do it himself!  I'm hoping they have a really nice time!

I looked at the Michael Rosen bear hunt book on amazon and it looks really cute!  Next time I buy some books I might get that one!  I bought several this summer while the babies were here.  I've recorded myself reading most of the toddler level ones that I already had.  I've mostly stopped doing more recordings since I've done the little kid ones and they aren't watching them anyway.  If they start watching them when they are older, I might record some of the slightly bigger books.  (OR maybe they will want to watch me read to them more on the video calls when they get older - fingers crossed!) 

How is your fiance doing? I'm glad for you that you got some stuff out of your basement!  I cleaned out one of my own boxes of old stuff, but that's barely a drop in the bucket down there.

I hope you get to enjoy some time outside in this lovely weather, and hoping I get back to the beach one or two more times!

Hello my friend, what beautiful weather this week!  I took two short walks, about 20 minutes. My knee hurts but I really wanted to be out in the air!  Last weekend I went to the beach three times for two hours each, and that was very nice, but I wanted exercise and air both!  Still waiting on word from my insurance company after my doctor submitted a new MRI order with a more specific diagnosis.

The week went fine at work.  Still staying late, but I am emailing with human resources to clarify the district policy.  My walking friends are willing to work around me, but for the one that gets off at 3, it's going to be a huge inconvenience to her, so if I can shave off even 15 minutes, that would be good!  They will already have to work around my current inability to walk far or on hills!  Given what a pain I am, I am really touched at their willingness to work around my problems so I can still walk with them!

Next week starts lots of testing at school.  I'll be giving math assessments to kindergarteners on Mon-Wed, extending the rest of the week as needed.  Part of my team will be covering classrooms in various grades for literacy testing. Not an exciting week, but not hard either. 

My kitchen floor is still having problems, and is going to have to be redone AGAIN.  The better flooring guy and his old mentor came and looked in the basement and found that the braces (I don't know the real term) for just the kitchen floor were done some weird way that is allowing the subfloor to flex.  This was not a problem with the linoleum since it was one big sheet, but is making the vinyl planks flex and buckle at the intersections.  The problem is also being made worse by my 350ish pound husband rolling his stool around the floor.  So, they put in better bracing down there, and this week are going to tear up the vinyl and linoleum, put something over the subfloor, and put in new vinyl planks.  So today, I have to empty my floor to ceiling shelf unit for the third time so they can remove it since there is flooring under there.  That took me about 3 hours last time.  I am super tired of my kitchen floor, which initially I loved!!

I really need to look through our basement and find some stuff that I think my husband won't remember, and sneak it out like you did.  There is a lot of bigger stuff that I know he would remember, but maybe I could find something!  

I completely understand having a hard time being kind and patient with someone who is also driving you nuts in other ways, even though they can't help it! (like helping ruin a brand new floor by rolling on a stool since you can't walk well or stand for long!!) Hopefully by venting to each other, it lets off at least some of the frustration.

How did Rachael's party go??  I hope she had a wonderful time!

I've had my chai, so now out to feed the animals.  Have a good week!

Hello my friend, the weeks are just passing by with nothing much going on.  I spent the week at work administering state-required math tests to kindergarteners.  Because this year it was scheduled at the same time as the state literacy testing, there were no small groups going on, so we did the math tests all day and I far preferred that to one hour at a time.  It felt like it went much faster.

I walked on Tuesday with my friends, 2 miles, by far the longest I've tried on this knee.  The next day it was swollen and even more sore.  I walked again on Thursday anyway!  I need some fresh air and exercise.  Still waiting to hear from the insurance company about the MRI.  Yesterday I went to the beach after work for two hours with a book and a sandwich.  That was lovely!  

Then my son called, and we had another wonderful interaction with my granddaughter.  I quickly grabbed the Brown Bear book, and she went and got their copy.  I would hold up a page, and she would hold up hers, and my son would get her to make the animal noise.  Later we watched both of them on a little swing that they have hanging from a door frame in the apartment and they had such a good time.  I was able to screen capture most of it, but it has no audio.  I really needed that call.  I feel sad and angry so much of the time, sometimes for a reason, and sometimes that just seems to be my default state.  This made me actually smile and feel good.  

The kitchen floor was finished last night.  Fingers, toes, and everything else crossed that this is it.  I am sick of it and don't want to do anything else with it!  Today I will be unpacking everything and putting the kitchen back together.  We could not cook during the work, but I made a tuna salad and ate it for a couple of days which was fine by me.

I'm so glad to hear that Rachael had such a good time at the party!  It sounds like they really did a nice job of it. I'm really happy that you found that program!

I'm glad you were able to enjoy the welcome dinner!  I certainly understand not being comfortable at a social event, and I'm glad you found someone to sit with.  I'm not sure I could have joined someone I didn't know, but then I would have a hard time joining someone I did know!  How did the first service go with the new interim rector?

I'm so thankful for you as well!  Being able to share my ups and downs with someone who understands me is so important to me.  

I'm glad the floor is done and the stove is back in place, because I didn't want to miss my weekend chai!  I'm headed to make it now.  Have a wonderful week, my friend!

Hello my friend, yet another uneventful week here.  Still more testing at school, and more to come next week. It's just ridiculous.  I did not get to walk this week since it was raining on my walk day, but I did most of my regular exercise.  I did go to the beach last night, and consumed a ton of calories while sitting on my butt.  Very enjoyable, though not the most healthy choices!  

Today we are going to the flying circus with my son and DIL.  I did not sleep well, and don't feel any energy to get moving, but I do look forward to seeing them.  I haven't seen them since we went to the air and space museum.

My kitchen floor is done, and now I want it to fade from my mind and just be part of the house, instead of something that makes me angry and annoyed!

I'm glad your screening went so well! I have never had that done.  I should ask about that sometime, since I am on HRT now and stroke has always been one risk of that.  I am still having a LOT of breakthrough bleeding, and really really getting tired of it.  I slept pretty well for four of the nights this week, despite having cut my sleeping meds in half.  But the last two nights were not good, and last night I didn't even drink any alcohol.  

I'm glad your new rector is off to a good start, and hopefully his speaking skills will improve.  My mom's priest, who has only been there a couple of years, does not use a mike, and walks back and forth at the front of the church so he is not projecting into the congregation either.  My mom can hear almost none of the sermon.

Are Rachael and Abi on vacation?  I hope they are having a great and relaxing time!

I'm really wanting chai but feeling too tired to make it, and have to get my animals fed etc. and be ready to leave in a couple of hours.  It's plenty of time, but I'm so tired it seems like not enough time! If I don't have any today, then tomorrow for sure!

I hope you've had a good week, and found some non-rainy time for a walk!