One mans trash is another mans treasure.

I've checked out Craig's List a few times before, but I found a new use, garage sales!! I can garage sale from the sofa! Since I shouldn't be on my leg for more than 10 min every 1hr this is perfect. It's better than going out and sifting through crap anyway. I can search for specific things like coffee table, snowboard or you can put in a generic search like "garage sales". Some of them have pictures of their crap for sale. The bad part is since it is Sunday, the garage sales started yesterday so most of the "cool" crap has already been sold. But I'm still having fun finding treasures, even though I don't have any intentions of buying.

Happy Hunting!

5 days post op

Today was my post op apointment, which wet well. My doc gave me the go ahead to go to work on Monday, so I'm free from the sofa!! I can go to work but I cannot walk around (except every hour I have to walk 5 to 10 min) so I will be asking a lot of my co-workers, but from the sounds of it they will be glad to have me back in the office.

I'll have to do 6 weeks of physical therapy 2 or 3 times a week. My doctor gave me a couple of exercises to do before I start therapy. Very painful! I can tell physical therapy is going to be hard, but I know it will help me recover quicker so I'm going to do what ever it takes to get back on the mountain this winter.

Tonight I'm going to attempt to sleep in our bed, which I'm really looking forward to. I haven't been sleeping well on the sofa, or at all for that matter, because I'm afraid of the cats jumping on my knee, even though they just want to cuddle, it would be very painful. I'm speaking from experience.

I want to thank my visitors for keeping me company, brining me junk food, and DVDs. Thanks for the flowers Gaines Family, your awesome. Love and miss you very much. I hope we can get together sometime soon. Especially with all the Birthdays coming up! I'm so thankful for all the prayers and support.

That's about it for now. Take Care!

A Good Friend and Good Food!

Day 3 after surgery:
My best friend Jen came to visit me, the cripple who doesn't leave the house. Jen lives in San Diego so I'm about an hour drive away. She is an RN nurse and works two jobs, so time with her is precious, since her free time is rare.


I GOT OUT OF THE HOUSE!

That's right, Jen, Jeff and I went to Baja Fresh for lunch. It was such a beautiful day and it felt so good to get out. We ate outside to soak up the summer sun. I think I may have over done it yesterday because my knee has been really swollen even though I've been icing as instructed.

Day 4 after surgery:
Today I plan on taking it easy and staying off my leg as much as possible. I am suppose to walk every hour for about 5-10 minutes. I have a doctors appointment tomorrow morning and I'm hoping that he will clear me to go back to work on Monday. But I have a feeling I'm hoping for a lot. We'll see, I'm keeping a positive outlook.

This morning Jeff is going to spoil me with some French Toast. Yummmyy!

Comfort foods...

My current choice of candy...
King size of Mike and Ikes,original fruits.

Junk food...
A cookie staple, Keebler's Fudge Shoppe- Grasshopper cookies. Yummy!







Sun Chips (Great Mulitgrains)








... And to wash it all down... Good Old IBC Root Beer.












Book I'm reading:















When Jeff isn't working, we like pass the time playing cards:













Jeff took Monday off, and he has been working from home Tuesday and Wednesday, but tomorrow he will go back to work and it will be up to me to keep myself occupied. Since he doesn't work far from home, only two miles, he will be able to come home and help me get something to eat around lunch time.

I get to take my bandages off so I'm going to try and take a bath this morning. The only problem is that our bath is on the third floor. I made it up one flight of stairs on Monday, so I'm on the second floor, but I think it helped that my knee was still kind of numb. I'm not as worried about getting up the stairs to the third floor as I am getting down, that will be tricky!

-I'm hanging in there.

A Sleepless Night...

Yesterday after my surgery I was feeling really good, I hardly had pain once we got home. I was able to put full weight on my left leg with minimal discomfort. Last night, didn't go so well, I couldn't get to sleep and I was in a lot of pain. At 3 am I had to call Jeff to come down and fill up my ice pump and then I had to call him down again at 7 am to help me to the bathroom, which I wasn't able to make it to on my own, now that the pain was so bad I could hardly put any weight on my leg.
Here is a picture of my ice wrap. It works great, however it needs to be filled with ice about every 4 to 5 hours, and our ice maker can't make ice fast enough, so Jeff has to run to the store to get bags of ice. Once I turn this machine on after ice has been loaded in it helps my knee SO MUCH!

Right now I have some pretty heavy duty ace bandages on around my knee cap, where the sutures are, so the cold doesn't really get through to my knee cap, which is where the pain is. Tomorrow I get to take the bandages off, and I can't wait. For right now it mostly cools above and below my knee cap, which still provides major comfort.

I've been able to get much needed sleep this afternoon. I have been taking 1 of my pain pills every two hours instead of waiting four hours. I didn't realize I was allowed to take two pills with in the four hour period. This extra dose of pain killers has really helped me get comfortable enough to sleep about 30 min to an hour at a time.

I'm still hanging in there. I'm getting pretty restless just sitting on the sofa watching TV, reading, and surfing the net.

It's only day 1 1/2 what am i going to do for the next 12 1/2 days!!!

I know I will have two cuddly companions. Sasha in the foreground and Sabian in the background.

I'm home!

I made it through the surgery, so the easy part is over. Recovering is going to be painful and it is up to me to make sure I follow the docs orders. I will say I have never been so awake after having anesthesia before. I'm usually pretty drowsy all day, but not this time. I was awake the whole car ride home which was a little over an hour.
The pain was pretty bad in recovering but the nurse gave me something to take the edge off, and now that I'm home I started taking my pain meds (Hydrocodon). I'm feeling pretty good, right now.

Just a little update for now. I'll post later to keep you all updated.

-GLO

Facing Reality.

I have been putting this post of for a couple of weeks. I'm having knee surgery on Monday and I'm dreading every passing day.

But, here I am facing reality.

About a month ago, I went to an orthopedic surgeon, who diagnosed me with a substantial meniscus tear in my left knee, which he recommended surgery.

I had NO idea where or what a meniscus was. I know I had heard the term before but I had never really paid much attention to what it was.

The meniscus is the horizontal tissue (shown in blue) that helps cushion the femur and the tibia bone.
The Medial meniscus is where my tear is, and it is almost the whole length of Medial side. I have what is called a flip tear, which means the tear at times can flip up when jolted out of place. This is when the tear causes me much discomfort and pain.
My surgeon will go in arthroscopicly and clip off the torn meniscus, much like clipping a hang nail. I will have three small incisions, two on the front of my knee and one on the back of my knee.


After my surgeon went over all this information I was still in much shock over his findings, and having to make the decision of weather to have surgery or to put up with the knee pain. The meniscus had a poor blood supply so it doesn't heal on its own very well.

My biggest fear is that after surgery my knee will never be the same, but even if I don't have the surgery my knee will never be the same. So it is a loose, loose situation. Almost a month has past since I decided to go through with the surgery, and I am still not ready. I had my pre-op appointing three days ago and my surgeon tells me that I must take two weeks off from work to recover. At first I thought he was joking, me take two weeks off from work? I hardly get that much vacation time in a year and seeing that it is July halfway through the year I have already used up all my vacation days. I had planned on going back to work a day or two after my surgery, but I guess that is out of the question.

I think I have it worked out to take a week off from work, but I'm not sure what to do about the second week. I'm going to play it by ear and see how I feel after a week of being laid and see how crazy I have become. I'm sure I'll be ready to get out of the house.

What am I going to do for 1 weeks on the couch??

The decision was made...

... we finally purchased our new "mountain vehicle". After many test drives and many discussions on what we really wanted out of our "mountain vehicle" we finally made our move and purchased a Subaru Tribeca and I couldn't be happier.

I love the color, Newport Blue Pearl.

I love the interior and all the amazing features.


I love the third row seat and ...

all the cargo room. We will definitely have room for our snowboarding gear.


Originally Jeff and I had narrowed our new car purchase down to either the Lexus RX350 (Jeff's choice) or the Mazda CX-7 (my choice). The same day we were introduced to the Tribeca we were very close to signing the papers on a pre-owned Mazda CX-7, but we decided to ponder our proposed deal, and I'm so glad we did. After leaving the Mazda dealership we went by the Lexus dealer to "just take a look". Of course there wasn't an RX-350 with AWD, which has been hard to come by. Vince, our sales guy pointed out the Subaru Tribeca and I didn't even want to walk over to check it out, but we did. As soon as, he opened the back hatch and I looked inside and saw all the room I was sold. I love the function of the hideaway third row seat. We ended up taking it for a test drive, which Jeff and I both agreed it drove better than the Mazda CX-7. We didn't make a deal with Vince because I had to go home and do more research on the Tribeca.

So we went home and I looked up all sorts of forums on the Tribeca. I like to read what current owners or past owners have to say about their experience with the car. There are always negatives to EVERY car, but you have to weight the negatives and see if they are something you could put up with. Honestly I didn't find too many negatives on the Tribeca. Nothing that I can think of off the top of my head.

The next day, Sunday, Jeff and I went to check out the local Subaru dealer to see if they had a color I liked. Now that we found the vehicle it was a matter of getting the right color. At first we skipped right over the Blue because it was a rental. After seeing their inventory and talking numbers, we went home once again to weigh our thoughts.

Monday, we went back and looked at one of the cars they cleaned up for us which was a Gold color, but once I thought about it over night I didn't really like the Gold color. I went strait back to the Blue one, which skipped over the day before because it was a rental. We test drove it, talked numbers, and in the end we got a sweet deal.

I'm so happy with our purchase!

Happy 4th of July!

Yesterday was the Apple Pie Baking contest, so I started with a lot of green apples...


and I am now an expert apple peeler.


I decided on three pie recipes. I wanted a verity of different types of Apple Pies to give the judges something different that would stick out among the other pies. The three recipes I decided on were a Sour Cream Apple Pie (pictured below on the left), Apple Pie with a Twist, this one had some lemon juice in it and turned out the best (pictured below in the center), and last but not least a Carmel Apple Pie (pictured below on the right).



Unfortunately I didn't win the Pie Baking Contest, but I still had fun and I'm going to enter the contest again next year. It was so hot yesterday on the 4th that the caramel apple pie turned to mush and the sour cream apple pie didn't do well in the heat.

Besides not winning the contest, Jeff and I enjoyed watching the fireworks show in our hometown. I couldn't believe how many people showed up. It was craziness, but we had a great parking spot and we made an easy exit after the show.

We have been doing a lot of laying around all weekend...


I love long relaxing weekends. I hope everyone else had a great 4th of July!!

Its always good to see family!

I love my family and I wish I weren't so far away from them. Here are a few pictures from my cousin Ryan's wedding.

This is a picture of my Dad's brother's son, Ryan (the one who got married) on the right, and my Dad's sister's son, Jared on the left, with me in the middle. We are all about the same age and when we were younger I would visit Iowa, from Cali, and our cousin Jared would visit from Nebraska. I have so many fawn memories of going to the family fun center in Iowa and the Science Museum in down town Ceder Rapids. We had such a great time on Grandma and Grampa's farm. I loved mowing the lawn on the riding lawn mower. That was usually the highlight of my trip. My cousin's and I would have races. Oh those were the good times. It is so hard to all get together now. Jared is going to med school, so his time is spent studying and Ryan and I work full time so getting the time off is hard to come by. We have all said that we need to get together more often, and we tentatively said they would come visit me in California but we'll see if that happens. I won't hold my breath.

Ryan on the far left with my Grandma, Viola, in the middle and me on the right, of course. My Grandma will be celebrating her 80th birthday next year and she is in great health! She was up on the dance floor more times than I can count. She likes to line dance and she really gets into the grove! Go Grandma, Go!


Starting on the bottom left we have Ryan, my Grandma, my dad Larry, and top row left to right we have Jared, next to him Linda, Jerad's mom (my dad's sister) and me.

I didn't take too many pictures at the wedding because our family was spread out all over the place so it was hard to get everyone together at the reception. I really had a great time visiting with everyone. I miss all of you, dearly.

Take care!