Home Sweet Home

We got home from Dallas last Saturday evening and let me tell you, the best thing about that whole day was getting to sleep in my own bed. I swear, every time I get on an airplane I am convinced that the seats are smaller, with less room in the front and to the side than ever. The last time I flew it was to Dallas, and the way I feel now, I don't think I'll ever fly there again. (Sorry Nancy).

I have been inundated with phone calls and every one asks, "Did you have a good time?" My answer......."No." Of course they want to know why so I start out telling them that the first three and a half days were great, even though we didn't get to visit with my niece, Nancy, very much. She was so busy. The phone rang off the hook. It was either about her estate or the wedding. She is finally getting everything sorted out as far as her estate is concerned, but it's never really over, I think. I have told Dick that I am going to be very mad at him if he dies before me, even though our "estate" is very small.

I will have to say that the wedding was wonderful. David, the groom, had never been married and he was 41 years old and Nancy's "baby". His wife, Karyn, is such a lovely girl and we feel he really has a wonderful life ahead of him. The wedding was held in the Dallas Art Museum which is in downtown Dallas and it is a beautiful, very large place. We had to walk from one end of the building to the other, and I was beginning to feel sorry that I hadn't brought my wheelchair, but thankfully, they had one to loan me, so Dick got his exercise that night pushing me around, first to the wedding itself, which was beautiful. Then the reception was at the other end and was held in a super large place with a big stage for the band. The ceiling was very high and our nephew, Fred, got some pretty neat shots by going half way up the stairway to take some pictures. Of course, every time he turned around, he was taking photos with his really nice professional camera. The catered dinner was amazing and the wedding cake consisted of multiple small, super delicious cupcakes shaped like a large wedding cake. Terrific idea, I thought. We moved our chairs over a bit so we could watch the dancing and from that point everything went downhill for me. The band played a nice slow dance so Dick and I danced it and when he brought me back to sit in my wheelchair, I started to sit down (or so I thought) and for some reason, instead of sitting down, I must have lost my balance and I started to go forwards. I threw my left arm out as I was falling in that direction, and I landed on that hard floor on my left side. A few of the men wanted to try and help me up, but I told them I just wanted to lie there for a minute until I could take stock of my physical condition. I hoped nothing was broken. Finally, I let them help me up into my wheelchair and fortunately I didn't have to wait a super long time until it was time to leave. Of course we were one of the last ones to go and had to go through the ceremony of them throwing rose petals as the newlyweds as they exited the building. It was much prettier than rice. They brought the car around to me but not before my discovering that I had lost the center diamond in my wedding ring. I was doubly sick but Nancy assured me that David would fix it for me after he got back from the honeymoon. In fact, he did get to look at it, because I discovered it before we left the dining room. We did go right home and I went straight to bed. I was really hurting but I was so exhausted that I did sleep. The next morning I could hardly get out of bed and my ribs hurt so badly and my upper thigh had a huge bruise . I told Dick that I thought I had better go the the ER because I was having trouble breathing. I wanted to make sure that nothing was broken or that my lung hadn't been pierced. We got straight into the ER (not like here, where sometimes you have to wait for hours unless they feel you need to get in immediately) The doctor who took care of me was so nice. I told him that I had a grandson about his age who was in medical school and he seemed very interested and asked, "Which medical school ?" and I told him it was UC Irvine and he said, "Oh he must be very smart!" I bragged a bit and had to tell him that Todd was a straight A student. But I also told him that Todd was older and was 29. He said, "Oh that is how old I am." He looked me over and said he wanted to take Xrays and when he came in after getting the results he told me that I was very lucky that I hadn't broken anything. He was quite amazed that I didn't at my age. He also said I must have pretty strong bones. I have a huge hematoma that will not be healing any time soon, and he told me that I was going to be sore for a long time as sometimes when ribs are as badly bruised as mine are, it can hurt as bad as when the ribs are broken. He sent me home with instuctions to ice everything and wanted to give me pain medication. Of course I had to tell him I was allergic to all that stuff, so I have been having to tough it out. I can tell you that plain Tylenol doesn't even begin to make a difference.

Well, that is quite enough about my drama. Needless to say, I am extremely grateful that nothing was broken and I know that it will just take time. (I am still applying frozen gel packs daily and having Dick rub me nightly with Biofreeze. Thanks to those of you who recommended it). My gosh this had gotten way too long. Please forgive my not editing this. I am afraid that I type too fast and am prone to make mistakes, even though I am really a very good speller. I'm just too tired to sit here one more minute! Later..............................

LETTER FROM DALLAS

Here I am in Dallas and it has been pretty hectic every minute until now. I have a couple of hours before I have to start getting ready for the wedding. The rehearsal dinner was last night and it was really nice. The only thing is that I have been freezing ever since I got here. Actually the day and night temperatures were pretty close to what they are in Palm Desert so I thought I would have no problem and I took the kind of clothes I would wear at home. It isn't the outside temperature that is the problem, it is the air conditioning. People here have it freezing. They set their temperatures at 74 degrees, which to me is cold cold cold! In the desert most people have learned to set their temp. at 80 because it is so expensive and the summer season is very long. When the outside temp is 110 and you walk into a house set at 80, it feels really cool. At any rate, I only brought one sweater. Thank goodness it is my warmest one, but I end up having to wear it over everything. I know I will have to wear it at the wedding too. Oh well, enough complaining.

Dallas is a very interesting busy city. We have enjoyed riding around with my niece, Nancy, who has been a wonderful host, just having lost her husband a few weeks ago. She is still recovering from all the trauma with that. (getting her financial situation in place, having to deal almost daily with attorneys, insurance, probate judges etc.) Her husband was the senior partner in a very successful insurance business and the other two partners are having to buy her out. I do feel sorry for her and am amazed that she has managed so well all alone. She hates living alone in this big (almost 6,000 square feet mansion) and I don't blame her. It is a beautiful place, but just too large for one person.

We will be here for one more week, so I will likely be posting once more before we leave. I haven't been on Nancy's computer before. It is a Mac and so different than ours. I don't know how to navigate it at all so I am just not very comfortable using it, but we can't use our lap top because we don't have the pass word to her wifi.

This certainly isn't much of a post. It is more like a letter and I guess that is okay-----just a personal letter to my blogging friends.

Love to all

Home Sweet Home

Today we had a very nice Relief Society Birthday Luncheon for all of the people who were born in October. We have these once a month on the on the first Tuesday of the month. It is pot luck and of course I always eat too much at these luncheons, but they are so much fun. Dick always gets to go too because he is one of the two Priesthood holders that have to be in the building whenever we have anything going on with the women. After the luncheon we had to do a bit of shopping so I naturally wore myself out this afternoon. I have such a time walking and it is such a lot of trouble to get the wheel chair out each time we go to a store. We went to only two looking for 7 inch long thin spatulas so that I can have them to give as presents along with a crepe pan and my recipe for Swedish Pancakes. That is what I give all the members of my family for wedding presents. Since we will be attending the wedding of our grand nepheu while we are in Dallas, I wanted to be sure I had the spatula to go with the pan I have, to give to them. I don't know why these particular spatulas are so very hard to find anymore. You used to be able to find them in all of the grocery stores. Now you have to go to specialty stores like Kitchen Kitchen or Williams Sonoma. Dick had already checked out Kitchen Kitchen so today we went to the Alley and to Williams Sonoma. No real luck at either so we are going to have to keep looking.

We leave a week from today and I am already getting nervous about what to take because I like to pack light whenever we go away and we will be gone for ten days so I just know I will wish I had packed a certain something when I get there and it will be at home. It always happens to me whenever I go away. I can never seem to get my packing right.

Here are the pictures I promised of my house. I haven't found one of the outside yet, but will post the interior ones:

This is what you see of the living room from the entry way. The celings are very high and unfortunately do not show up too well in this pic.

Yoou will see my favorite chair where I spend most of my time. It is the reddish one in the corner. The sliding windows go out to the pool so I have a nice view when I twirl my chair.

This shows a tiny bit of the fireplace with the entertainment center on the right. The bit of blue you see in the foreground is the end of the love seat.

This is our dining room area. The sliding doors go out toe the patio, which is where Dick has his built in barbecue and our outside eating area. Will take a picture of that for a later post.

Dick's office, but I do share it. You can see his chair behind the desk and the television set is directly across from it and on the side is a sliding door closet where he keeps all of his office supplies. We converted this fourth bedroom into an office and it is light and cheery with a big window to the left when you are sitting in the chair.

Here you will see our kitchen which is really quite workable, even though it is small. We have what I call the "kitchen annex" in our garage that has lots of built in cabinets which house my pots and pans that I use only occaisionally.

This is how the den looked before we took out the couch and put in the day bed with the trundle underneath. I actually like the look of day bed and trundle better than the couch. I pictured the new look for this room somewhere earlier. The mirrors reflect the large china cabinet that Dick put together from an Ikea kit. The walls in all the bedrooms are irregular, so it makes it interesting. We converted this bedroom into a den and it also has a huge closet with sliding glass mirrors.

This is one view of the guest room. It is small, but adequate and it has a huge closet with sliding glass mirrored doors all across the wall directly in front of the bed. It had a very interesting wall decor over the bed that my sister and brother in law made before they died. Unfortunately it fell on Stacy who came to visit us before she married our son in Lake Tahoe. She wasn't hurt, but was quite surprised. I have taken the broken part off and have restored the center section and have since hung it above the bed, but now I need to get something to put on either side.







This is a shot of part of our bedroom. It is seriously old fashioned and I like it that way, except for the totally outdated artificial flowers above the bed. I hate them and have been trying to find something different, but have been unsuccessful so far. I don't want pictures. I just look for something to cry out to me when I'm shopping, that will say "this is perfect", but so far haven't been successful. Any ideas anyone?


I hope this hasn't been too many pictures, but I really wanted for you to get an idea of all of our rooms, except for the bathroom (three of them) and our wide wide hallway in which I have my photo wall, with pictures of the family all over them. I really wish I had more wall space. I will save the hallway for another post. It really is quite interesting. Will write more next Tuesday, which will be the day we leave to stay overnight with our oldest daughter, Nancy, in Huntington Beach and the next morning she will take us to John Wayne airport where we will leave for Dallas.