January brought a blizzard, then February added to the fun with a bit of sleet and ice yesterday. And the silly groundhog saw its shadow, so supposedly 6 more weeks of Winter.
I suspect Spring will show up eventually, but for now I’m kind of enjoying the long pants, turtlenecks, sweatshirts, and sweaters. My old winter coat is still sufficient, but I do need to find a warm pair of gloves. I have 3 or 4 pair, but none of them keep my hands warm! Maybe I’ll just have to double up.
In the meantime, we decided we weren’t ready to say goodbye to the cheerfulness some of the Christmas decorations brought to our surroundings. Paul brought his ladder over and hung the white lights around the frame of the windows. We exchanged the colored lights for white lights around the fireplace and changed the tree from Christmas to Valentines Day.
Dave’s pretty much all recuperated and happy to be walking again. I think that time went by rather quickly, but there seems to be some disagreement on that. Now Dave just has about a months worth of PT to get through and he should be all set! Woohoo!!
Some people give things up for Lent – me, I give things up because I read something and say, “Hey, maybe I’ll give that a try.” And that’s exactly what happened about a week before Christmas – I gave up alcoholic beverages just because I read something (absolutely no idea now what it was, but probably health related) that made me decide it might be something to try for a while – figured I had a doctors appointment mid-March and that would be 88 days of no drinking. Now that I’m more than halfway through those 88 days and not missing the alcohol at all (Dave’s wine even smelled not very good when he set it down nearby the other night), I figure I’ll probably just keep on keeping on… at least for a while.
It was just about a year ago that I was diagnosed with early stage COPD. Recently, I was reading something online about COPD and there was mention of sleeping on an incline to help with breathing. So I said, “Hey, maybe I’ll give that a try!”… And ordered a foam 12” high wedge pillow! Dave says it looks like I’m sleeping on a ski slope, but it’s resulted in the best sleep I’ve had in years!
And the last item under “Hey, maybe I’ll give that a try!” ….
I bought a rebounder (aka mini trampoline) and have been enjoying exercising on it. I am amazed – jumping jacks are a cinch!! Walking/running in place, bouncing and dancing are pretty fun too. There are lots of good workout videos for rebounding on YouTube to follow along with. The best part is that it is SO much easier on the joints to exercise on the rebounder than on solid ground. (I tried jumping jacks on the solid floor the other day – N O P E!! But I can do at between 50-100 of them on the rebounder!)
Our main form of entertainment so far this year has been reading. Dave has been enjoying books by John Grisham and David Baldacci. I reread “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande, and then read “Winter Garden” by Kristin Hannah, “Block Island Mystery” and “Argentine Mist” by Christopher Dacey (a local writer), “Watership Down” by Richard Adams, and a few others. We watched the “Watership Down” movie after I read the book. (I still can’t imagine 6 year old and 8 year old girls enjoying this, but apparently the author told these stories to his daughters at those ages.)
We don’t really watch much on TV any more. Dave likes to watch “The Price is Right” some mornings and we watch the news, “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy” most evenings. Friday is Dave’s night for “Diners, DriveIns and Dives” marathon, and he does like to watch some football and baseball during those seasons. That’s about it these days. But we are recording the Olympics (nice to record only the events we are interested in watching!) This evening we watch some Luge runs.
We also started watching the Reacher series on Amazon Prime today. And I watched “Under The Tuscan Sun” yesterday and enjoyed it. And as I type this, we are watching “The Martian.” Probably the most we have watched on Amazon Prime in ages!
Of course, all this reading, tv and movie watching means we’ve taken a break from playing Mexican Train – and just when Dave started winning again! 😉
Well folks, enjoy life and be well!
Kathi & Dave
Our Life in Reflection 
😊
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