Sylvia's Scenario

It took me many months to finally accept the fact that my arthritis was bad enough to have a joint replacement surgery.   I am currently POD #3, total left hip replacement and it has been quite the journey.  My joint specialist, who is a young woman - young enough that I could be her mother - (this is happening more and more these days) told me that my x-rays qualify me for total joint replacement for both knees and my left hip.  Apparently, my right hip isn't all that great, either.  She gave me two big 3-ring binders of information, one for hip replacement and one for knee replacement.  It was so shocking to me on that day that I went home in disbelief and the binders just sat there unopened for two weeks.   She said she could tell that I was overwhelmed and that I ought to go home and think about it, talk it over with my family and come back for another appointment.  This was in November.  Before that day, I didn't even know I had arthritis in my hip.  My hips are just &

Our Valentine's Day continues.  Who says you only need celebrate once? When you have so much love to spread, sometimes it takes a couple days to spread it. So, we continued our celebration last night at my sister's house. My brother-in-law hosted a fabulous dinner for friends and all us ladies were pampered by letting the men do the work.   However, my sister did do the beautifully set table.  Jim did a similar dinner for us last year that I wrote about  here .  After last year's fun, I was really looking forward to another evening of pampering. Like Barbara's table setting skills, I contributed a small bit by bringing my leftover  Valentine cookies .  I wrapped up five little bags of cookies to give everyone coming to the dinner. I had some leftover cookie dough so I made a few more cookies with a new cookie cutter I got but haven't ever used. It's a cookie cutter where you can change out the letters to make your own custom message on

This year, Valentine's Day was extra special to us because we had Bruce's twin sister from Great Falls, Montana visiting for the first time since we moved back to Seattle. I made a special Valentine's Day dinner and Lauren also came over.  We had everyone's favorite Teriyaki Flank Steak , rice, red and golden beets and Show the Love Salad . For dessert, I made the gluten-free chocolate cake that I made for Lauren's birthday  here only I made them in little heart-shape cake tins.  These are always fun to make and decorate for Valentine's Day.   I used some of Nick and Lauren's childhood handmade Valentine's for table decorations. And, of course, I made our traditional Valentine cookies . Our dinner table looked quite festive with party favors at each place setting with colorful confetti inside. Lauren enjoyed popping her's open and dotting the table with more colorful glitter.   Our Valentine's dinner was the h