Oh what a week it's been!

I enjoyed my time with my sister so much!  I liked when we both lived in Texas just hours from each other.  We got to see each other at least once a month then.  That was nice.  Living two days from one another is tough after ten years of being close.  I know it's been a lot of years since then but I'm still not used to it.  Not at all.  I miss people who belong in my life when they aren't around.  And my sister isn't the only one.  There are a few.  :-)

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I think I'm going to have to give in and call the shoulder/knee doctor.  First I need to get the xrays of the other knee and other shoulder done.  I'm actually having trouble with them all now.  I just don't want to do the surgery until after I lose the weight again.  I don't feel safe going under the knife when I'm this fat.  And with all the breathing stuff that's been going on lately I want to for sure wait until I'm a bit slimmer.  Every pound off reduces my risk.

I'm also having trouble lately with the dry eyes.  I have the eye drops to replenish the moisture.  I just wish it wasn't necessary.  I never knew what it would feel like to have them go dry.  It actually hurts!  Pain.  Strange. 

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I love still having things we bought in Amish country in the freezer.  (And thankfully I used them before the catastrophe.  Info to come later in the blog.)  I had gotten a bag of ends and pieces of lunch meat.  I took them and put them through the grinder on my Kitchen Aide, added cheese ends from home slicing and some pickles I wanted to use up, then added light Hellmans mayo and scraped the last of the jar of Kraft mayo and stirred it all up together.  I ended up with two huge containers of "ham" salad. A lady I knew when I was in high school worked at a local Lawson's store and she used to make it for them with their ends and pieces.  Glad I watched a time or two.  Homemade beats the heck out of store bought.

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I got a letter back from our granddaughter Brandi. Brandi is our oldest son's middle daughter. She seems to be doing good in bootcamp and is actually sort of enjoying it.  She's always been one to love a sports challenge and I guess a lot of bootcamp is like a physical challenge.  We are so proud of her and what she's doing. She would really appreciate mail from people.  She has a couple more weeks. 

Let's flood her with a ton!  Feel free to pass on her address to those you know. 
Thanks everyone!

Goostree, Brandi
1st PLT "Renegades"
E Co, 1-34 IN BN, 165th IN BDE
12000 Dixie Rd.
Ft. Jackson, SC 29207-6019

Please put a "1" on the back of the envelope.

When she's done in South Carolina she will be headed to Virginia for further training.  I'll be sure to pass on that address too. 

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I'll tell you what.  It seems every plane trip I go pick people up at the airport for has a little drama.  Judy's plane got in early.  That's pretty normal.  Usually about 10 minutes.  But, her luggage wasn't on the turnstile.  Hmmm.  After some investigating, they discovered hers wasn't late, it had actually come on an earlier plane.  It took just a little time, but they found it and off we went.

To Eat and Park!  She had been on the plane or in airports all day and was hungry.  Eat and park is good for breakfast or a regular meal any time of day or night.  She'd never been so it was perfect. 

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Well Miss Emmi got her first stitches.  She somehow slipped and cracked her noggen on her other grampa's sailboat and had to have a staple.  She called it her "sparkly princess bandage staple" so we just went along with it and told her how beautiful it was.  What a trooper.  She acted as if it was nothing.

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I had a really bad stressful night while Judy was here.  The day had gone good.  I'd gotten the chicken cooking for the pulled chicken sandwiches.  The planning was all good.  I had gotten the message sent out for when we'd be having it so the kids could come see her while she was here.  Adam was in town for the weekend for the Browns opener too and we worked according to both schedules.  All that was good.  Then my mind took over.  I started thinking about situations happening.  I got so stressed I actually started having chest pain and got out the nitro tablets just in case.  I was fighting it and trying to calm myself for a long while.  Almost went and woke her up to take me to the ER.  Then it eased.  But it was horrible!  Stress just about did me in.

I'm working hard to tell myself prayer is the best I can give.  And I know it is.  But there are just times when you feel like it might not be enough.  It's been a week now and I'm doing a bit better.  Still breaking down often, but trying to remember God is in charge.  Period.  Not any of the people who think they are.  God. 

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We had a nice afternoon meal with the kids here to see Judy.  Rusty, Cait and Em along with Adam came by on Saturday.  We had the chicken sandwiches and a cucumber and tomato salad. 

Saturday was her class 70th birthday.  I drove her over to join her classmates and on the way we drove by my gramma's old house and the house we lived in as kids.  I wanted her to see things and tried to make use of the miles each trip we headed out. 

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Sunday Kris and Darlene, then Corry and Angel and CJ came by to see Judy.  I'm glad they did.  She missed seeing Dusty, Leon and Casey and Missy and Melanie, but she did get to see most of the family. 

When everyone left, we took her out to the Racino at Thistledown.  That lucky duck sat down, played $2.05 and won $56!  Wow!  And yes, she went home with every dime of it.  We played our free vouchers and ate on the food vouchers so the evening was cheap fun. 

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We also did a little sneakin around.  Heeheehee.  My sister follows a certain Christian singing group and someone in it lives very close.  She couldn't find out the info but wanted to try and see the house.  Well this ol' gal can find her some people!  lol  I took the info she had and very quickly went to my "find 'em" websites and found him!  So we went out and drove past his home and his father-in-law's home what was also a big gospel singer in his day.

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Another meal I made my sister was plain ol' meatloaf.  Yep.  Nothin fancy.  Just my meatloaf with cheese.  Also made a hashbrown casserole that was suppose to be like Cracker Barrel.  Next time I make it I'll tone back the cheese.  WAY too cheesy for me.  I think the best part of Cracker Barrel's is that the cheese isn't overbearing and you can actually taste the sour cream a bit. 

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Whoa boy what a catastrophe!  I put too much cinnamon butter topping in the bottom of the pan (along with pecans and raisins) of cinnamon biscuits.  It ran over and wow what a mess I had.  Oh it smelled awful in here.  Not much worse than the overpowering smell of burnt sugar. 

Lunch was a ham and swiss quesadilla in our quesadilla maker.  Then we took off for one more time past the star's home to make sure we were thinking the right one in our heads. 

And to finish one more thing on my list of "do with my sister" we went to Stoddards.  Her suggestion actually.  I got cherry frozen yogurt.  She got traditional chocolate custard. 

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Somewhere here I missed the fact we went to the hotdog shop.  Retro Dog.  It's got a Stow address but is actually right inside the Cuyahoga Falls line on Steels Corners Road.  Great place if you haven't tried it.  I wasn't in the mood for a dog so I got chili cheese fries.  Awesome!  I might just have to get them again!

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You know I really like puzzles.  But a dresser is not supposed to turn into a puzzle!  I had taken all the drawers out of a dresser when we made room for Missy and Melanie and must have put them back in the wrong order.  What a job to untangle my mess!  Now that she is no longer here with us, I'm trying to put the house back in order.  It's taking a lot longer to put it back!  I still can't move even a couple steps into the attic.  It'll happen.  I have to.  I want to start purging and selling or giving away things.  It'll happen. I have to keep positive. 

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Oh boy have I been SICK!  We went out the other night and I had onion rings/petals that had been fried in oil that had fried fish.  My fish allergy has progressed so much that I had terrible stomach problems.  So bad I probably should have headed to the hospital but I've been holding off.  Instead, I had a day of a soft diet and slowly put a few more things into my diet.  So far so good.  My belly, lower belly, still hurts a little but not like it was. 

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And, when it rains, it pours.  As if we aren't under enough stress in this house, we had a horrible discovery.  Kris went downstairs and discovered the source of our stinky smell.  The freezer had been open.  My fault.  The night before I had gone down and messed with things.  I moved some things.  I did shut it but was too lazy to lock it.  Never again!  I will ALWAYS lock it!  We lost hundreds of pounds of stuff.  Thankfully not all of it like we thought.  As we dug through, some was actually still icy cold or frosty.  One of the turkeys was cold enough I finished thawing it and cooked it today.  The ham was cold enough I'm cooking it tomorrow.  And some things were able to be refrozen.  I'm just so thankful Kris found it or we definitely would have lost everything!

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On particularly rough days when I'm sure I can't possibly endure, I like to remind myself that my track record for getting through bad days so far is 100% and that's pretty good.
~~Unknown

~~~~~~ I think we're about caught up for now.  I plan to keep blogging.  But, when life happens there might me a few days between them. 

Thanks for being my readers.  You guys are great.  I enjoy your comments here, on facebook and in emails.  Hugs to you all....

~~Mama Sage