January 13, 2014

Praising God for a Good Day! 

Rejoicing:   Over 20,000 Page Views!

January 13, 2014

This has been a good day!  Ron had told me I could come in late and go to the grocery store this morning.  Maybe he is hungry.  Instead, I made a huge bowl of chicken salad.  I had cooked the chicken breasts last night and de-boned them.  This morning I chopped up the almost 7 pounds of chicken, plus all the other ingredients for my chicken salad.

The first thing to cut up was grapes.  I cut them in half.  Since I broke my elbow last June, this has been impossible or painful to do.  About the time I cut the third grape in half, it dawned on me, "This doesn't hurt!"  Next came the celery and that went well.  At Christmas that was still very painful.  I could do it, but each slice sent a pain up my lower arm from the wrist to the elbow.

The onion would be a bigger challenge.  Because the onion is larger and firmer, it is very hard to hold securely and it would just plain hurt.  My husband has been chopping onions since June for me.  This was a little uncomfortable, but not really painful.  I couldn't believe I could do it.

For my recipe, I use pineapple chunks, but I cut each one into quarters because I don't want a big bite of the pineapple.  A couple of months ago when I did this I was about in tears by the time I did just the pineapple.  No problem today!  Most of the other ingredients didn't have to be chopped so it was smooth sailing from there on out.

Mixing all the ingredients together took strength, but didn't give me any trouble.  The only thing left to do was add the dressing and then stir all of it together.  By this point, I think it was well over 12 pounds.

Yummy!  I was so glad to be able to do it without help and delighted to have it to eat and to share.  I dropped off some at a friend's house just before lunch and she wrote a Facebook note later, to say that her family loved it.  I am so glad.  I love it, too! 

It was hard to believe that just suddenly today, it wasn't a problem.  I know it has been improving little by little and there are still positions that cause discomfort.  Peeling apples and potatoes take effort.  But days like today remind me that things are getting better.

The grocery store will have to wait.  At the office, I worked on paying bills and waited on a variety of customers.  Some were easy to help and others weren't.  But in most cases, hearing was not the limiting factor.  One customer had two similar keys.  He wanted me to copy one onto the other.  We get this request off and on.  Some think if you do that, the key will work on both locks.  No.  This one liked the shape of one key better than the other.  No.

One customer came in with four keys she had found in a drawer and wondered what they might fit.  I told her what they might open and in the 20 - 30 minutes she was there, even though we labeled each key the first time through them, she asked me 6 or 7 times to tell her again.  A couple of times she looked surprised to see the labels on them when she would again pull them from the Ziploc bag.  She is only in her early 80s.  Ten years younger than my mom's chronological age, but 10 years older in her mental age than my mom's almost 91 years of age.  She kept telling me that she felt that she was still "sharp" but that she thought sometimes that maybe she is "losing it" and isn't aware of it.  Maybe that is the best way to be - unaware that you are losing your edge.  She is not really losing her mind, but her short term memory was in bad shape.  I mentioned that my mom is almost 91 and she knows my mom.  In the next 5 minutes she asked at least 5 times how old I had said my mom is.  But I did have a nice visit with the lady and she was so thankful for my help, asking at least 8 times if she could pay me for my help.  No.

Later, Ron left on a job and I had an assortment of customers in and out.  I worked on organizing some receipts and did some filing.  Vickey had sent me some emails and she got me to laughing so hard, tears were running down my cheeks.  I got a deposit ready to take to the bank and left about 20 minutes before closing to go to the post office and the bank.  I always forget (maybe I am like my customer) how bad the traffic is at 5:00.

This evening, I talked to Bob and Vickey and spent 45 minutes or so on line chatting with David.  He and I hadn't talked in too long.  We had a good visit and caught up on things.   

Oh, one of the things I told David is another thing I am excited about.  Just before midnight last night, I passed 20,000 page views on this blog!  At 11:30 last night, it was 20,001.  Tonight at almost the same time, the count stood at 20,109.  I thank each one of you who have taken time to read these postings.  You are such a blessing to me.  You encourage me even if you don't leave a note, just knowing that people are reading the blog and hopefully they are finding something they enjoy about it.  Thank you!!