It has been a while since we were together here at my blog.  Sorry about that!  Have been so busy and have had other issues, and just no time to write.  But we are going to fix that now.  Hope this doesn’t go too long or get too boring!

I’ve had some health issues of late, first,  hypertension.  I’ve always been a bit hypertensive, but in the last 3-4 years it has become increasingly worse. Some of my meds caused kidney problems, so one med had to be stopped.  Then the BP rose to really bad levels.  So – off to the specialist!!!  She worked with meds, changing them to finally get a combo that seemed to work.  The main problem was that the side effects of one of them made my ankles swell so badly that I could barely walk!  I was affected for nearly 8 weeks!  Finally, the swelling abated, and I am back to ankle-normal now.

During the ankle-swelling time, we took a trip to California to see Michael and Emily.  We  had a great time!  They both were working a lot, so we mostly had days to ourselves, and dinners with them.  On the Sunday before we came home, Michael joined us on a ferry ride from Alameda to San Francisco and a visit to the Exploratorium (Emily had a rehearsal for a performance at a local show and could not join us).  What a wonderful place!  Check it out here. Hours of interesting things to see and experience.  Due to my swollen and painful ankles I had to stop and rest a lot, which I am sure frustrated Michael and Ray, but they handled it well.  When we got back to the house, we had a Crab Fest!  Emily drew a table covering, and we dug in to crabs and more.  What fun!

Our Custom Table Cover!

Ready to Eat!

In March, I was named “Volunteer of the Month” at The Nashville Food Project (TNFP) !  Quite a surprise and honor!  I surely do love my work there.  We will be moving to a new, to- be-built, location within the next 9 months or so, so lots of changes going on there.  We will work for a while from the kitchen of our partner, St. Luke’s Community House for about 6 months while the new facilities are being built. Its a a small place, so it will be interesting to see how it all works.  The staff and volunteers are all amazing, so we will work together to make it all come together!

April was Volunteer Appreciation Week, and TNFP participated by having a theme for each day.  Monday was “Wear your pajamas to work day”, Tuesday was “dress as your favorite vegetable day”, etc.  So, on that Monday, I dressed in my pajamas.  I had thought I would go to Goodwill and pick up the most “granny”, old-fashioned nightgown that they had to just have fun with the theme, but I never got around to it.  So I just wore sleep pants and a t-shirt.  Good thing, as it turned out!  I was going to the car and just as I got to the driveway, I heard and felt a “pop” in my right knee!  I could not put ANY weight on it, so I just stood there (in the rain, in my p.j.’s) trying to figure out what to do!  Ray had gone with three friends to play golf at a state park about two hours away (Henry Horton, for those of you who live in this area), so I was on my own!  Here’s your (funny) visual for the day – a 71 year-old woman, in p.j.’s, crawling on hands and knees, in the rain, with a bag of funny slippers that I intended to wear, along the 40 foot sidewalk, slinging the bag forward every two “crawls” or so, and up the 7 steps into the house!  Would have loved to have been watching!  Had to be quite a sight!  I got inside, managed to get my desk chair out to serve as a wheelchair, got dried off, and settled in on the couch.  When Ray got home, he took me to the Vanderbilt Walk-In Clinic, where the doc said that nothing was broken, and she referred me to Sports Medicine at Vanderbilt.  The doc I saw there took x-rays and pronounced “arthritis”! He said all the cartilage in my knee is gone.  Trying some pills to help, things are getting better, but we will see.  This is not, I’m sure, the end of my arthritis voyage.  It is only the beginning!

Amidst all of this, a tree along our fence line broke and fell onto the house!  Gratefully, it did not break the roof, just laid across it.  It damaged the gutter, which will have to be replaced, but all in all, not nearly as bad as it could have been.  We were sitting in the living room when it happened, and thought what we heard was thunder even though the sky was clear and bright.  Only realized it was a tree later that day!

Tree coming down!

We have a garden again this year. Planted lots of tomatoes since last year’s crop was not good.  Now we will probably have too many!  No problem, I’ll be happy to process and make tomato sauce for next winter!  We have planted herbs, and there are lots of things coming up that must be from our compost!  Apparently some of the seeds did not compost, so they are growing!  Looks like cucumbers, melons, squash or the like.  Check out the pics!

Tomatoes! Lots of tomatoes!

Herbs!

Volunteer plants from compost.

One thing I forgot to tell all of you reading this is about a dear friend of mine.  Many years ago when Michael and Brian were young and we were new to Nashville, we lived in an apartment complex near where we live now. We were friends with Sally and Manny Martinez, and had many good times together.  Sadly, over time,we lost touch!  One evening last January, I was looking at Facebook, and ran up on a post from Sally! I couldn’t believe it!  So, I contacted here via Messenger, and we talked at length on the phone that evening.  One of the most amazing things happened.  I mentioned that I volunteered at St. Luke’s Community House on Fridays. She almost gasped – SHE volunteers at St. Luke’s on Fridays! We had been volunteering in the same place on the same day for over a year, and never ran into each other! I work in the kitchen, she works in the Food Bank!  At any rate we resumed our friendship, and it is like no time at all has passed, though it was 37 years!  Ah, Life! Gotta Love it!  Welcome back into my life, Sally!

Well, I have bored you enough for now.  I’ll leave you with a sunset picture I took from outside our house.  Pretty, I think!  Talk to you too (sooner than this last break, I hope)!

Sunset