Life lives on

 

My grandmother - the one who is 104 years old - had a stroke in her upper-90's and moved out of her apartment into an assisted living suite in her community. That meant her furniture and other belongings needed to be distributed amongst the family and one of the things I got was her "Christmas cactus" plant. I am usually pretty good at taking care of plants but this one didn't like living in our house no matter what I tried to do to it (or stop doing to it.) It lost leaf after leaf and eventually branch after branch. I read that I could root cuttings so before it completely died on me, I took a few cuttings and put them in water. It worked! I planted the babies in a set of small pots in a matching tray and let them go, hoping that at least one would survive.

That was at least 5 years ago and lookie what we have here. My first ever blooms! Yeehah!

Creative Play

When Kevin asked to play with some of my kitchen utensils while I made dinner one night, I assumed he'd pretend to make dinner himself.

 
Nope. The whisk became Wonder Woman's jail and a lock on the cabinet in which all of the other bad guys were staying (I don't know why WW was a bad guy.)

 
The potato masher served as an elevator.

Look who came to dinner

 
 

This guy/gal stopped by our yard shortly before sundown, sitting on the shepherd's hook that holds our finch feeders. The finches were mighty perturbed at having their dinner time stock up thwarted by the big beast and they were all around the area making a ruckus. Within 5 seconds after the hawk flew away, the finch feeders were covered with finches again.

Life

I'm reading a novel ("Killer Material" by Dan Barton) about a stand-up comic and it's written by a stand-up comedian so I trust that most of the stuff that happens at the shows is close to real. His main character says:

The connection you could feel with a crowd that was engaged in your performance could be... better than anything. Reality paled in comparison. It made addicts out of people. Life was on the stage. The rest was waiting.

Emphasis mine.

That begs the question - What is "life" to you? What is better than anything else? What do you wait the rest of your life for?

There is no wrong answer.

Lone red leaf

At the edge of our property there is a line of Bradford Pear trees. They're the last leaves to change color and fall off in autumn. This leaf decided to be bold and change early.
 

It's the only leaf in a row of trees that isn't green.
 

Microsoft Security at its finest

From the Microsoft Developers Network website:

To view all the hidden objects, right-click the Navigation Pane (but do not right-click an object), select Navigation Options, and then select the Show Hidden Objects check box. The hidden objects appear but they are partially transparent. Casual and intermediate users generally will not stumble on this, so your objects are protected.

Emphasis mine.
 

Kevin is still sleeping

Shhh... I know it's already 7:15 but Kevin is still sleeping! He hasn't slept this late in months.

Yesterday was the 2nd Annual Turkey Trot at his school. It was actually on the track at the high school. The main event was a 30-minute period in which we walked, ran, skipped, whatever, around the track. Each lap was marked on a card and if you finished at least 4 laps in a 1/2 hour, you received a "charm" for your school charm necklace. I finished 5 laps wearing my boot.

Kevin ran more this year than last and completed 2 miles! I also forced the family (both guys grumbled) to walk to and from the event, so that was maybe another half mile of walking.

Then we had a couple of Kevin's friends over to play for a couple of hours in the afternoon.

After dinner, when it was still only 6:30, Kevin laid down in his sleeping bag on the dining room floor and listened to a book on CD. For an hour! Just laying there! With only a stuffed animal to keep him company!

After that rest, he went to bed. And he's still sleeping.

Kevin would never run or walk that much on his own or at just my behest - so can we have a Turkey Trot every few days? Or at least every weekend? This sleeping in thing is kinda nice.

I'm back in the boot

I have new information regarding my ankle pain. When I researched it online after going to an orthopedic surgeon who gave me two different diagnoses, I determined that I might have os trigonum syndrome. Turns out I was right.

I have this extra/accessory bone (os trigonum) in my ankle that is in the way of my joint and causes pinching which causes inflammation which causes pain. Most people don't have that bone but some people do, so it's not as if I'm an anatomical anomaly (at least, not because of just this.)

The only way to get rid of the problem for good is to surgically remove the os trigonum. We are first going to try other methods. I had a cortisone injection where the troublesome bone is and I'm to wear the walking boot for 3 weeks. Then I'm to resume walking on it for 3 weeks and then, slowly, add athletic activities back into the mix. If at any point the pain gets worse or if after all the rest it isn't better, I then have the choice of living with the pain or having the bone surgically removed (and going through that recovery.) The recovery from the surgery would be 100% barring any complications, but it is still surgery and is not trivial.

I'm back in the boot for now and am not to play any sports. At least there are lots of leaves in our yard to rake, even if it's not as many as we had before the tree fell down this summer when I had the boot on last time.