This is so me!!!

I laughed right out loud when I read this Pickles last Sunday.

Yes... indeed, this is truly me!!!

I will go down kicking and screaming into old age. I hate being referred to as old. I don't feel old, I don't act old, I don't smell old, I don't dress old, I don't walk old, I don't sleep old, I don't move old, I don't talk old, I don't behave old, I don't... well you get the picture. HOWEVER, I'm with Earl on this senior discount thing. Hey...if I do indeed have to be over 55, well then I'm darned entitled to that discount.
After all, there have to some perks, right?

Just look at us!

Or is it?

It's so much fun to poke fun at ourselves. I couldn't resist altering this cartoon to fit our names. I don't know how many of you follow Pickles, but we love these two darling characters.

The reason why I posted this altered cartoon is because Stan and I have been making an effort to be more romantic. We've talked about going out to dinner many times. However, we always seem to do this with friends or family, instead of going alone. What does that say? I just really don't know. We do have dinners together alone every night that we eat at home, so you would think that would mean we shouldn't really need alone time when we go out to eat. BUT... there is something romantic about dining in a nice restaurant alone together. Perhaps we might enjoy someone else making the dinner and cleaning up. Our MO when we're at home is...I make it, he cleans up after it. I'm not doing it all, so I ask you, what's the motivation for going out and spending money at a fancy place just to be alone? Now that Stan's been retired for almost 8 years and our children have been gone from our house for longer than that, you'd think that we have had plenty of alone time.
So...I'm still searching for a reason why going to Costco and having a great hot dog together shouldn't constitute dinner out. Basically, it works for me. Maybe it's not a real date, maybe we're not really that alone, but we're together. We do lots of things together and as the poet said, "That's makes all the difference."

Free at last!

Before wire was removed
Before pin was removed.

After all removed and finger cleaned and iced for a bit.

Free at last, thank goodess...I'm free at last.

In fact, I'm typing this with the use of all ten of my fingers. Yipee!!! It's a bit stiff, but the Dr. says I need to start flexing the finger in order to get movement back.

The removal of the wire and pin was about as painful as I thought it would be. However, as my witness (Carol) can attest, I did very well. Only a pained look on my part, but no noise, crying, or screaming. Really...it wasn't all that bad. The wire was the worst, but she did it quickly and with one swift movement. The pin was almost nothing. It mostly hurt for a few minutes afterwards and then calmed right down.

But... now the real work starts. At first my thought was that I would never flex the end of my finger again. But after some work over the last couple of hours, I've been able to get about a 5% bend in it. My goal is to be quite flexible by the time I go back to the Dr. on the 16th. She said if I didn't get enough movement back into it that they had ways of making me move it. That was threat enough for me. I'll be good...I promise. So with the aid of a little ice, no pain killers and pretending to be grasping a small ball in the tips of all my fingers, I've been able to loosen it already. Unfortuately, they didn't give me any exercises and ideas on how to get the movement back, so I'm flying blind on this one. Hopefully, I'll be doing it right and will get back as much use of my finger as is possible.

Thank you to all of those that have wished me well. Many, many people have asked me regularly how I was doing. I appreciate all the well wishes more than you can know.