Grumbleeze

Hello! Just wanted to make sure I blogged on this last day of 2004! Here's wishing everybody a safe and enjoyable holiday. It is once again time to thank our God for His blessings. The natural catastrophes occurring on the opposite side of this earth only remind me how fortunate I am. Pray for those caught up in the ocean waters. The survivors especially will need our support and prayers. God bless them.

I love Christmas! When I was a kid I was the first one to wake up Christmas morning; when I had my own kids at home, I was still the first one to wake up Christmas morning. Now I sleep in Christmas morning but get up early the day of our family Christmas party!

...and what a party! Most of us were here... and we talked with the Bug on the phone! Good snacks... good food... good people...what a formula for success! Yes Jan... and Susan..... mishaps happened!

• I discovered purchasers no longer get pieces of paper to show they own Series EE government bonds! The grandkids who get bonds for Christmas only got letters from grandma explaining they own them... I do not like this system!
• I started to print the traditional family calendar (on Christmas day to give away the next day at our party)... and discovered my brand new color inkjet cartridge had no yellow!!! Bummer... this means I'll have to mail them all out after I get a new cartridge, if the printer works, because...
• yes, on party day we tried to print something and the whole printer went crazy! Does this mean we need a new printer... not just an ink cartridge? We shall see.

Oh! ...and we are now a full digital camera family! Everybody was clicking away... I chose not to because we pool our pics anyway, but did get a couple of my own anyway.

Windy and Sharba both went digital this Christmas season. Stop by and see what they are doing! Sharba even has a separate site for her photos and Windy just started one... don't forget to leave a comment and bug them if they don't add pics often enough! Sharba, show us Petey!

...and now for a bit of Monday Madness
Sorry... I missed a couple of weeks!!! This will probably not happen again, at least for awhile. For some reason I was busier than usual. Who can figure?

1) Which holiday do you celebrate this time of year? Christmas... yes I still believe in Santa Claus!
2) Do you begin shopping for gifts earlier than Thanksgiving, looking for the perfect gift? If not, when do you begin? I try to get all my shopping done in one day. This year that day was determined by Meijer, our favorite all-purpose store. Meijer management determined Thursday (the week before Christmas) for 5% off all groceries and 15% off all general merchandise if you used their credit card. On top of that they provided a coupon for an additional 15% off the whole bill. Not enough? They also offered a $10 off coupon with new owners of their new credit card. Hubby & I shopped our butts off!!! ... and that was after a half hour physical therapy for yours truly! We were pretty much done all at once and for once in my life I enjoyed shopping!
3) Do you only purchase gifts that you know are perfect for the recipient and if you don't find that gift, do you just get anything? I try to purchase the perfect gift but it's not easy when you have people who buy what they want when they want it! Sometimes I have to 'settle' because some are even harder to shop for than others! This year I did a good job and still underestimated a couple of sizes. ;-(
4) Did you receive or give any "obligatory" gifts this year? Hey Bug! I just answered that one!
5) Do you decorate your tree as evenly as possible or do you skip the areas that are not visible? If I can't see it to decorate it, you can't see it's undecorated... right?
6) Do you like multi-colors on your tree or do you prefer monochrome? Multi- is very good!
7) Did you bake "traditional" cookies, frost them and decorate them? or did you cheat and buy the ready to bake kind? I no longer bake Christmas cookies. I already turned that tradition over to my kids!
8) Are you the host of a holiday gathering? which one? family, work, friends Family... once for Thanksgiving and again for Easter... then usually we try to have at least one biggy in the summertime.
9) With whom do you spend the holiday? We spend the actual Christmas Day together, just like we started... franknsherle! The family Christmas takes place on a weekend after... normally. This year it was actually the day after! I kind of like that the best. ;-)
10) How did the holiday turn out? Perfectly? funny mishaps? miss anyone? Now that's a trick question!!! Janice, you are always with us no matter where you are! The phone conversation between you and all of us kind of makes it easier too! Thanks for doing the calling this year. We love you! Now I'm going to do a blog about my Christmas mishaps!

Thanks Jan! Good questions! Feel free to help Otto anytime!

Furthermore, I'm still feeling a bit

I read about these two sites on Tourbus today:
States Web Games
Lissa Explains it All
Lissa Explains it All is for kids (and the young at heart) who want
to learn step by step how to make their own Web pages and publish them
on the web. It's a very nice tutorial that covers HTML, forums,
guestbooks, polls, e-mail forms, tagboards, blogs, counters and more.
Today I'm and

This one's for you, Bug!  
Yes, I still love the smell of a real tree, grown especially for this season, but well... been there, done that. Then we got our first artificial tree... a pretty fine one but... a three-day tree. It took one day to put together, one to get the lights strung and a third to finish it off... and sometimes longer as I got older. I LOVE this tree! It's fiber-optic! The tips of the limbs are silvery and when the wheel at the base goes around,the tips sparkle different colors.

Actually I finished my shopping this year all in one day! That was a new experience too... usually went on and on with it... and I really don't enjoy shopping, ever. Unfortunately I will need to retie the ribbons on gifts under the tree. You see, Daisy Mae enjoys chewing on ribbons and does so after we go to bed at night.

On a totally 'nuther issue, this is my last week of physical therapy. One more day and I'm finished for now. I will miss all of the folks there. They are really great people! Mark has been re-Mark-able in keeping me focused, even when I wanted to quit a bit too soon sometimes. I had my 'last' appointment at Dr. Mayne's office, with Jeff. I say 'last' because we now have a date for replacing my right knee.

It seems as the left leg muscles resume to normal and the knee operates superbly, I begin to notice more and more the right knee's shortcomings. The second knee surgery is scheduled for February 15, 2005. Then I'll be spending more time with Ajay's talented staff at Physical Therapy & Rehab Specialists in Midland.

Meanwhile I'm beginning to feel

...a little park in Carson City provided me the perfect opportunity for shooting photos in the dark without a tripod. Well okay, deserve it or not, I have a new camera. It has 'lens stabilization' so I don't have to carry a tripod around all the time, cuz I never did anyway and my night pictures were almost always fuzzy! I like my new camera even more than I like my old one... which is still a darned good camera! You should click this photo for the bigger one because I used my 12x optical zoom for this photo and you really should look at the bigger picture.

It's beginning to look like Christmas around here. We have a new tree... a little six foot fiber optic one! It was a breeze to set up. No more... one day to set up tree, one day to put lights on... and the rest of the week for finishing up! The dad got it out and we unfolded it and plugged it in! Looks perfect 'as is' but I used as many handmade and gift decorations as it would hold... it can't tolerate anything really heavy.

We bought a 'throw' for dad's new chair. Here is Daisy, our formerly feral cat on dad's new chair. What is strange about this? Even though Daisy has lived with us for several years now, we have been unable to get her to lie on any furniture! Saturday I put this new throw on the chair. A little later, we were ready to leave for Muskegon and Sharba's high school play and Daisy looked at dad, saw he was leaving, and jumped up on his chair and lay down!We arrived home Sunday afternoon... she was still there (or there again) and there she stayed all evening long! Has she become domestic or not?

About the play... the school version of Ebenezer Scrooge was a delight, as are all plays put on by Sharba's kids!!! It was excellent! Photos will follow. Meanwhile Sharba has put some pics up on her blog. She and Kaybee have a new digital camera and I showed Sharba how to use Hello to upload photos to her website. I notice her SharbasBlog is temporarily in need of repair, but she also has a brand new blog... sharbaspix. Go there. You will love what you see. Meanwhile... Sharba if you are reading this, don't worry, it's fixable! 

Here it is kids... the monster leg press!!! See that smile? I'm loving it! Behind me... the man I like to call 'my personal trainer' - a fantastic physical therapist. Just had to show y'all that I really DO pump iron... with the legs! Last time I did it... 30 pounds! Now you know why I'm doing so well... great direction, determination, and loads of gratitude to the doctor, thereapists and Frank for all their positive reinforcement!

This is a 'foto by frank' - and I just want to point out how cleverly he did this. See part of a foot down in the right hand corner? That's mine! The photo is actually the mirror image of me on the leg press.

Looking, if not feeling...

...part of the living Christmas card at Foggy's church. Such a beautiful thing! This is what church is all about..... community!

Do you want to see more photos? Visit the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church website for photos taken by my talented daughter, Patti, who is also webmaster for Trinity. Great job Patti!

Today I am feeling even though it's raining like crazy!

...you just have to know where to look! TRVoice is a must! Somebody says something dumb I just must respond! I've also been pulling recipes out of my old BartonPlace website where I was keeping heartsmart recipes. A couple of people joined the group and added their recipes so I included them as well in my new website at Sherle's HeartSmart Recipes. I'm pretty proud of it. Even though I started with a blogger template I changed it completely with my own designs, created with PhotoShop Elements 2. A nice little feature of this new site: you can email a recipe to a friend if you wish!

Yesterday we went with Foggy and family to view their church's living Christmas card. It was beautiful. A perfect evening if you were dressed warmly, we walked around the complete area. It was a good workout for my new knee. It gets kinked up when I sit for too long... something I'm inclined to do at the computer, don't ya know. Most of my photos didn't turn out very well. I was using the night feature, but it was just too slow! Tomorrow I'll post one of the better pics anyway. They're on my other computer.

Tonight I'm feeling I guess it must be about my bedtime!

Whoa! I sure missed a lot of good blogging lately... and photos? I didn't even use my camera on Thanksgiving Day! Bummer! Well here's a big ol' update.
Today I am feeling

I sure didn't waste any time sharing pix of my leg with you, did I? Well the darned thing kept me busy running back and forth to Physical Therapy sessions in Midland... three times a week. On the other days I tried to follow doctor's orders by doing exercises at home twice a day. Hardly ever took a day off either... honest! Perhaps that's why I'm healing so well.

Thanksgiving Day... I cannot thank you, Kevin, enough for the generosity of sharing your culinary skills... and your lovely wifey Sharba too! Mashing all those potatoes, carving the turkey... the gravy... mmmmm! Yes, actually you were all lots of help... kicking me out of my own kitchen for heaven's sake! Oh yes... all those great pies(from Lisa, Windy, and Foggy), the spinach dip (thanks to Sharba) and the fluffy Ambrosia (thanks to OttO)... we would have been dessertless and appetizerless without those delicious donations! Y'all just gave me even more to be thankful for.


A few days later Otto began her big move... and I brought along my camera to get a few shots of that day. Yes I got a few people shots but that humungous U-Haul truck tells the story best. To my knowledge it made at least two trips... then there was Frank's big ol' cargo van stuffed to the hilt, and several trips made by Emilio's big-a** pickup truck! Above all that OttO insisted on carrying her precious computer cargo in her own car. I do not envy you unpacking those boxes, girl!

Remember my great squirrel stopper tip? Well, guess what! It ain't happenin' folks. The clothesline is on the deck and the darned varmint merely has to jump over to the feeder and hangon for dear life! Here he is. How could a critter with such a teeny tiny brain outsmart the brilliant me!??? I ask you!!!

Oh yes... back to the bionic knee... Friday was my last day for phase one therapy, 3 days per week.... the month of December is only twice a week and then hopefully I'm all ready for the next phase... a bionic right knee!