Life: It Goes On - January 24

Life: It Goes On - this seems to apply more than usual this week.

My mom had a knee replacement on Monday. She's got a long road of recovery ahead of her but she reports that she's already walking better than she was before the surgery. The fact that can happen always makes me think of the opening sequence of that old t.v. show, The Bionic Man, when they talked about making him "better, faster, stronger." I never ceased to be amazed by her strength.

The Big Guy had a scan recently and a scope procedure this week which both confirmed that he remains cancer free after over four years. Anyone who's come through cancer knows that there will always be things to deal with in the aftermath, but, as we like to say when we start to feel sorry for ourselves, it beats the hell out of the alternative!

Lastly, my parents lost a dear friend last week. She had her husband have been friends of my parents for over 55 years. He was my dad's first principal; she was one of the nurses in the delivery room when I was born. Can you even fathom having people in your life that you've been friends with for so long? Betty's family will have to figure out how to go on without their mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, beloved wife. My parents will have to adjust to life without another of their friends.

This Week I'm:

Listening To: More radio time this week but still catching up on my podcasts. "Catching up" may not be entirely accurate. "Keeping up" might be a better phrase. I did wish I'd had an audiobook Tuesday when, thanks to a rush hour snowfall, my 30 minute commute took almost two hours.

Watching: Movies: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Inside Out. We liked them both. In fact, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was one of the best adaptations of a 1960's television show I've seen; they played it very much like the tone of the television show.

Reading: Why didn't any of you warn me about the sadness that is the ending of A Man Called Ove??? I seriously cried in a hospital waiting room! I started books, switched books, and reorganized my reading plan this week. Because of the archive dates on books from Netgalley, I decided to wait on reading My Name Is Lucy Barton until later and started Nelly Dean (she of Withering Heights). I also started Why We Write About Ourselves and decided that it's a perfect nightstand book. I'm moving The Flying Troutmans off the nightstand and I'll read it when BG decides he need the iPad.

Making: Pork roast, tator tot casserole, cheeseburger pie, runzas, fettucine alfredo. I've decided cooking is fun again! This week I'm planning to try a couple of new recipes including a crockpot chicken marsala. What's been cooking in your kitchen?

Planning: The past couple of weeks have been busier than usual with more on the calendar, longer work hours, a week of being down with a cold. My plan for this week is to get my house back in order.

Good thing my mom's room was big!

Grateful for: Family. In the University of Nebraska fight song, there is a line that says "we all stick together in all kinds of weather." That's my family. I'm sure hospitals never know what to make of us but we travel in packs when it's time to support one another.

Enjoying: Watching my daughter stretch out on the floor in my mom's hospital room the other day with a book. There are four readers in my immediate family. Miss H was not one of them. Now that she's really discovered how relaxing reading at bedtime can be and how great it is to have a book to pass time, I think we may just have a fifth reader!

Feeling: It's been a week of feeling all of the things.

Looking forward to: Thanks to last week's winter weather, book club had to be postponed. So this week I'm once again looking forward to spending an evening with my ladies, talking about A Man Called Ove. I wonder if anyone else cried?