So Close, But So Far...

 At Majestic Pines RV Park, Willis, Texas...

We have moved near Conroe, Texas, but still trying to stay as far away from the Houston madness (and Covid) as possible. It has been excruciating to be so close to our family for weeks and not be able to see them due to Mindy's constant exposure to Covid as a nurse. But we have a plan for Christmas, involving all sorts of safeguards; can't wait!

Meanwhile, we have been catching up on seemingly endless medical checkups and Sandy's foot surgery, which has her pretty much immobile and has resulted in my new job as a housewife/nurse. I do it gladly, though; she has seen me through two surgeries, and it's hard to imagine having to recover without a thoughtful spouse to help with those things we can't do for ourselves. 

Unfortunately, her foot surgery was brutal, as the surgeon nearly had to rebuild it. She hadn't been injured; part of her problems stemmed from bunion surgery 40 years ago that was done using primitive methods that are not practiced now. This allowed her toes and metatarsals to become deformed--in essence, lapping over each other--and, thusly, becoming very painful. On the same foot, she had a large bone spur that was also removed during the surgery. I have some photos of her foot when they changed the bandage after the first week, but the pictures are just too gruesome to show here. I'll just include this one, which is the position she will mainly occupy for several weeks:

This photo was taken in Phannie only a couple of days after the surgery, and, as you can see, Sandy has a notably unstylish protective boot that she must wear for several weeks. The bag around her neck is a pump that periodically injects pain medication into the affected area. That she could manage any kind of smile in this photo was amazing. The empty recliner is mine, and the nearby computer--a Dell all-in-one--is where I'm writing this post right now.

If you're wondering how Sandy climbed the six steps into the coach, it took a few tries, ending with the use of her climbing on all-fours. I wanted desperately to take a video of this spectacle but, unfortunately, she knows where we keep the firearms and threatened to use them if I dared do such a thing.  

As I write this, the election is over and the winner declared by the press. I have learned over the years to keep this blog as apolitical as possible, but I'm pretty sure I won't be watching much TV news for the next four years. Instead, I'm going to enjoy being with family (soon, I hope) and friends and figuring out how we are going to transition from fulltiming to part-timing. We have some ideas, but Sandy's recovery from surgery will be mostly on our minds for quite a while. I'll check some reliably honest Internet news sites to keep up with events.

In a previous post, I mentioned my bad knees, but I'm going to put off that surgery as long as possible. Every six months, I get knee injections that supplement the missing collagen, and that helps immensely. My day of reckoning is coming, I'm afraid, but it will be well after Sandy is back up to full speed. I hope any young folks reading this blog will try to appreciate more keenly the gifts of youth while they can. It will not always be so, unfortunately, in your sunset years. It's pretty cool to have attained a lot of wisdom as I have aged, but I wouldn't mind being stupid for a while if I could do some of the things I used to be able to do.

We spent three weeks in the Lake Conroe Thousand Trails, and we are now out for a week, which is one of the membership requirements at our level. Except in our case, we will not be able to return to TT until late December due to heavy bookings. It seems that RVs have been deemed the ultimate Covid escape, and RV parks haven't kept pace with the demand for parking for all the new units being bought by the public. We'll probably find a park in a different location not far away to hang out for a month until we can go back to Lake Conroe TT.

I think we're just going to try to forget 2020 and hope 2021 will better for all of us. We'll give you an update with any changes that take place. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; 

please forgive me if I fail to appreciate it each day as I should.

We don't stop playing because we get old; we get old because we stop playing. 

 ---George Bernard Shaw

"I get up every morning, and I just don't let the old man in." ---Clint Eastwood