July 1, 2022

My Dear Ones,

    Well, it seems that summer has actually arrived, with temperature salready in the 90s and 100s. I hope this doesn't lead to drought and forest fires later on. 

    True loves working outside, and has our place looking so nice, both outside and inside, where she has several beautiful orchids. Whenever True leaves for any length of time, she makes sure Linda knows about watering and taking care of everything here. When True was gone for 10 days in June, she was delighted to see everything still healthy and doing well upon her return, including me!

    I'm getting to be rather an old hand at taking care of myself while True is gone, especially since she always provides beforehand things for a main meal each day that just have to be heated in the microwave. She is so conscientious about being a good caretaker, even when she's away. I'm so glad she knows that she can be gone for a few days now and then, knowing that I will mange just fine. I wear a Guardian Alert button during these tines, just in case I need help.

    In fact, I rather liked being alone and able to do what I wanted for a little while. So I got out the Brillo pad, and with a great deal of elbow grease, was able to make all the drip pans under the stove elements and the oven racks shine like new. I knew Tue would appreciate that, and she did. Just a little side note: In driving to the San Diego area on her last trip, with the price of gas in California, it cost her $476.05 just for fuel. Can you imagine that? The lady who asked True to come and stay with her two dogs was generous enough to pay her for that expense. True said she was able to feel rested there and really liked it.

    We had a pot-luck at our clubhouse on the very day that True was planning to return, but she couldn't arrive in time, so I decided to go by myself. I brought a dozen muffins that True had made before she left, put my own table service in a bag, managed to get myself into the motorized scooter on the porch, and took off with a lap full of things. I got there just fine, and with the help of others I was able to enjoy a fine meal and have a nice visit with some of my friends. I got myself back home just as True was pulling into the carport. She was glad I'd taken the initiative to go all by myself. I was grateful she was able to get me into my wheelchair and back into the house, because it was a chore!

    June is also the month we have a big yard sale here at the Riviera. We didn't participate this year, but we did go to the clubhouse to look around. I had one of their donuts while True examined the merchandise, but nothing seemed to catch her eye.

    Speaking of eye, I have a left eye that I consider to be rather strange. It does fine in the daytime, but sometimes at night when I'm sleeping, if I sleep on my left side all night, in the morning it is throbbing with pain and I can hardly get it open. The doctor saw nothing, but suggested I use hot compresses and some expensive eye drops. The compresses didn't work, and I wasn't impressed with the eye drops. It happened again, but with the drops it was only slightly better. So, my solution to the problem? Just always sleep on the right side, and never the left. Easy enough, right?

    Now, as far as my prosthetic leg is concerned, I am doing fairly well with getting that new flexible knee to behave for me. It still wants to swing out high when I lift my leg to walk, but my current physical therapist (he's number six BTW) is helping me to use my thigh muscle and brain to get it to obey. It seems each therapist has their own different concepts and ideas to work on, as well as the basic ones. And of course they all keep saying, "Marie, stand up straight and tall, look forward and not at your feet". But that is always the hardest part for me to do, even though they keep telling me this over and over, because I've been bent over for so long. All of them have been very encouraging, and they'll tell me, "you're doing great, much better than someone half your age". So I keep plugging along - I know it will take lots of good honest effort on my part to succeed at this. 

    One thing I like about my "Buddy" with the swinging leg is that the whole lower leg is covered with a flesh tone piece of foam rubber that makes it look more like a real leg than the other one did. It also covers up the metal apparatus of the knee joint, which makes it nicer to wear out in public. In addition to working with my Buddy and strengthening exercises at the clinic, I try to replicate as much of the techniques I'm learning there at home. True will sometimes help me, but I'm pretty much on my own when it comes to staying motivated to keep at it.

    I've become enthusiastic about creating more of my own word-search puzzles, using various occasions or events as a theme to celebrate, so that now I have one for every possible occasion, I think. There's an Independence Day puzzle on my blog this month. The word search type of puzzle seems the easiest for me to work with, but is a difficult brain teaser for me trying to make  it come out perfectly each time, as I'm finding out. Starting with a group of words associated with the theme, then fitting them into puzzle form, especially when it involves diagonal words, is bad enough. But I like to put a hidden message into the unused spaces that will give you something more meaningful than simply XYZ. This aspect becomes very challenging for me, because you have to dream up an appropriate thought or message that fits exactly into the number of spaces available. I love doing this, and I've accepted the challenge to do this type of thing.  But sometimes I'm greatly frustrated when I have been painstakingly careful to get everything the way it has to be worked correctly to produce the proper message, only to find out later that I'd made some sort of silly mistake, which meant I needed to either change or mark over certain letters, which isn't aesthetically pleasing, or start all over again. So. I'm sorry to say that a couple of my puzzles may not be pretty because they do have mark-overs, but they are still readable.

    Because I love sharing my puzzles with others, especially large groups, on Mothers Day I shared one with all the Relief Society sisters in the ward. So on Fathers Day Sunday, I made plenty of copies and had them inserted along with the church bulletin, which meant not only the fathers, but everyone who came to church that day received one. I'd like to do that again this month with a special puzzle I made about church history for Pioneer Day, which is July 24th, also a Sunday. It isn't one of my word-search puzzles, but a match-up type with two long lists, one with the numbers 1, 2, 3 etc. on the left to be matched up with the other one with words on the right. I may have to rework that one a bit so that the lines are short enough to fit into the bulletin. Doing one for the 4th of July isn't appropriate for church I don't think, but as I mentioned earlier, it will be posted on my blog, and in this email. I'm warning you in advance, you may not be able to get the hidden message completely, depending on which of the two "of" words you choose out of the three possibilities that eventually showed up in the grid. But you'll see it isn't too drastic, so I went ahead and left it that way. Enjoy!

    I hope things are going well with you. As always, I'd love to hear from you --- Marie