What Else Could Happen?!

It's been one heck of a week for me. But first I need to show the birthday people. My eldest grandchild and only granddaughter turned 31. My son turned 48. Yep, April is a big month for celebrations in this family. And oldest grandson is turning 27 next week. And since granddaughter is my height—5' 4"—you can see how tall Adam is—6' 3".

Granddaughter and her hubby and Caroline a few months ago.

Son and his wife celebrating 24th wedding anniversary next week also. You can see why I have such beautiful grandsons.

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Now on to what else is happening.

First, on monday I got braces on my bottom teeth. Yep, at my age! I cannot tell you how sore my mouth and tongue are. Why, you ask? Well, to save my bottom teeth from shifting any more than they have, which will strengthen them and not lose them as I grow older. I intend to keep every single one of them before I leave this earth, and my dentist and I share the same philosophy. Hence, I've been able to only eat milkshakes for the most part and Dreamsicles. Chewing hurts too badly.

Then this morning I had surgery on my right foot to remove bone from the heel because it was stressing my achilles tendon. I'm in a splint from behind my knee to the tips of my toes. I cannot walk or bear any weight on the right foot for a month. Can we say "ouch"?! Can I please have an "awwww, so sorry for ya"?! I just scoot around on this scooter for a while. I'm not thrilled in case you're wondering. I even have to have help going to the bathroom. Hubby and I will be very, very close for a few weeks.

And speaking of that, what did he decide to cook for dinner???? The fishiest smelling fish in the freezer. I cannot tell you what this house smells like now. I think you can get my drift.

I am heavily padded at the moment, but you cannot keep a blogger down, right? I cannot believe how big my foot and leg look in this photo. Sigh.... Plus it's 6:45 pm at the moment and I'm still paralyzed. It should wear off sometime during the night and the pain will kick in. Sigh...

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Folding a Fitted Sheet

Several requests on how to fold fitted sheets prompted me to show you how. I don't have a video feature on my camera but hubby does. If he lets me borrow it and helps me with it I'll post a video. He's on the treadmill at the moment so it'll be later today. In the meantime let me give the directions. Very, very simple.

This is for a sheet with elastic all the way around. I find the "shortest" side (top and bottom of sheet) and grab it from bottom to top. Take the corner from the bottom (or top, doesn't matter here) and tuck the inside seam from one end to the other end, matching each corner seam. So it will be seam against seam. It will be tucked under as shown in the next 2 photos.

Now smooth it out a bit and kind of "square" it. Or in other words, hold the folded end above and the midway point below and smooth it down. At this point your sheet will be in half length ways. Just smooth as much as you can with elastic all around the sheet.

Then fold over length ways again.

And then fold up from top/bottom in half and then in half again as seen in 2 photos below.

This is the same sheet above after folding it one more time, just turned 90° so you could see it better. Ready now for the linen closet.

Ooooh, and this sheet is Italian. I have French and Italian sheets, but truthfully, there are absolutely soft and gorgeous American sheets available. Personally, I love American products. Their quality is superior. I don't care where it's made as long as it's cotton, a high thread count and soft. I have one set of buttery yellow that has a weave in the sheet. I'm thinking of giving it to a friend as the weave bothers me. I didn't think it would when I bought them but it does. I am a very tactile woman, sort of like the princess and the pea. I feel it ALL! I want comfort no matter what. That's why I am so OCD about my floors being clean. I don't want to step on even a pebble from outside.
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Rainy Day and Sheets

It's a dreary, rainy day in our part of Idaho today, but I had to get a couple of photos of the trees budding out. I think this means spring is right around the corner!

This is our apple tree. I sure hope we don't get any blight or worms on it this year. Being a "fruit grower" can certainly be frustrating!

This is our quaking aspen tree and my favorite tree in the world. I love to see it quake in a very gentle breeze.

This tree is a Navajo willow in our neighbor's yard and is only 6 years old. It grows faster and looks like it'd be hard to kill also. Several grow in our neighborhood because they're fast growing and we need shade here badly in the summer time.

Now, what do sheets have to do with this post? Well, I'm gonna tell ya, chicks.

On my granddaughter's Facebook page she talked about how I cleaned her stove top on the last visit and how she didn't even know the knobs came off for cleaning. Her mother—my daughter—was amazed at what she didn't know. That got on the subject of folding fitted sheets. Daughter said she was the best fitted sheet folder in the world. I said, "Au contraire, I am the best." So here I am to prove it to people on her Facebook page and I'll be directing them here to prove it. And yes, I do buy French sheets for our bed! I love soft linens to sleep on.

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And speaking of the French, I read an article recently that a mayor in France had a bust of Marianne in a traditional Phrygian cap removed because her breasts were too large. I take exception to that. As a well-endowed woman I believe I speak for many women when I say: at least ours are real. How could he be so judgmental about something like that? We who are born that way rarely ever flaunt our chests. I certainly don't! Ridiculous man.
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Pink Saturday 4/2/2011

It's another Pink Saturday for all you great bloggers. Just click on the logo below and visit with Beverly to see pink things.

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Okay, let's visit Mexico, Puerto Vallarta to be exact. I love Mexico. I've been there many times but my favorite place is Los Tules Resort in PV. We would rent a condo and usually have the pool to ourselves. There are actually 7 pools on the property but the area we usually requested was near the largest of the pools.

This is that pool. Once our condo was in that building to the right, but we'd get different rooms around that same pool. I absolutely loved it there. I prefer the west coast of Mexico of course since we're in the West. The end of May was the season we always went. It was almost deserted then so for us that was perfect.

This is one of the restaurants in the hotel Fiesta Americana, which is next door to Los Tules. It's outdoors so it's very casual if you wanted to eat there with your swimming suit on. That could be the exact table where I fainted into my plate of food. I'm very familiar with that outdoor restaurant and it's small. Since we've eaten there many times I know it well so, yep, that is the exact spot.

This is the Fiesta Americana next to Los Tules. You can just see the top of the condos in the middle part of the picture just above the palm trees. It's absolutely gorgeous!

BTW, my photos of the place are not digital and horrendous so I'm using the pictures from the website.
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I went shoe shopping last week and was in Dillards looking for some proper shoes. Since I'm having surgery on my heel next week. (Nuuuu, don't cry; it ain't serious, chicks. Just separating my achilles tendon from my heel, scraping away some bone, be in a "non-load bearing" position for a week and a month in a boot. Piece of cake!)

Anyway, a month ago I bought a pair of SAS shoes. Those aren't cheap but supposed to be good walking shoes. One hundred and forty-eight dollars worth of "good walking shoe." It didn't solve my problem with pain.

So then to the Boise Mall and Dillards. The salesclerk measured me for a completely different size from the SAS store lady and showed me these shoes. They are among the ugliest shoes I've ever seen. BUT they are the shoe that the salespeople were wearing because it "rocks" your foot forward and does NOT bend. It's not padded in there, but that really didn't matter. They just feel good to walk in. I'm still getting used to them. One hundred and forty dollars worth of "getting used to"! And to tell you the truth, while I was out running errands yesterday people kept looking at my feet and 2 women said they were cute and asked me where I got them and what they cost. The shoe does NOT flex. I can't remember the concept the salesman described but I really like them. I feel steadier on my feet and am about 2" higher, which is great when you're only 5'4" tall. And they make your feet look small. AND they're a size 9, not a 10 like the SAS lady told me. I wondered why my right foot kept slipping in the other shoes. One foot is 1/2 size smaller but it was enough to make it not feel right. These aren't a problem because your foot is supposed to slip in there. Just weird but it works.

They're called Dansko and truly darling on the feet.

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And Some Random Thoughts:

When reading a story the other day, one of the characters said something was "just across the way." It started me wondering just what is "the way." No practical explanation I think.
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I got a "heads up" from a friend on the website Spokeo. If you haven't heard of it, go there and put in your name. It can be frightening what they know about you. I immediately requested my name be unsubscribed. People already know too much about us. I try to be as anonymous as possible but it's becoming less and less possible in this age of computers. Please take care of your identities. We belong to LifeLock and already they've alerted us to things going on.

Which brings me to Great Britain. Did you know they have cameras on every corner of London to help with security? They can track you no matter where you are. Even your car license plates. It hasn't deterred crime a bit, but I'm truly shocked the British, who are our forefathers, would give up their privacy in that manner. I don't want people knowing my every move! I want my rights to privacy. I'm a rider who likes to keep tight reins on my own life, not have someone else do it for me.
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I sometimes listen to radio if I'm working around the house. I love talk radio. But it's truly seldom that I listen to very much otherwise. Anyway, I kept hearing one announcer say this about one host: He's Idaho's #1 Taco. I kept wondering what that meant until one day after several months I caught it. He was saying Idaho's #1 talk host. But it sure sounded like taco! We need to slow down and enunciate our speech more clearly. And don't even get me started on the teen talk of today!
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Okay, you've had enough of me for one day. More in a few days. Opinions, that is. ;-)
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Putting Things Into Perspective

Just checking in today, but I'll have more for Pink Saturday tomorrow. Is it spring yet?????? Trying to think positive about it.

I've been busy reevaluating things in my life recently: what's important, what's not and the in-between things. It just feels like something is missing. I think most of you will understand this since most of us experience this at one time or another. We sometimes don't even recognize it when there is something amiss. But I've figured out one thing I need: more challenges. I say this with my heart in my throat because I'm not sure what God will throw my way now. Sigh. But I've gotten a missionary call to help with genealogy. I won't have to travel to far away countries, which I don't want to do anymore, especially with the travel regulations such as they are now. I can do it right from my home computer with a headset (which I have), Skype (which I've been using for many years) and a telephone. Qualified!

I think this comes because I'm feeling useless in the scheme of things right now. But anyway, I'm going to do it.

The other thing is I got food poisoning Sunday night. After fasting for 24 hours, which we do once a month and then give the money we would have spent on 2 nice meals at a restaurant to our bishop to use for needy families in our ward. I broke the fast with a frozen cashew chicken (Sundays are easy meals for us since we try to keep "work" to a minimum) and within a couple of hours I started feeling very, very nauseous. At 9:30 pm I told hubs we need to go to bed. I lay there for over 4 hours trying to squelch the nausea but to no avail. At almost 2 am I awoke and rushed to the bathroom. So I spent the night on the toilet with a plastic lined trash can in my lap. Not fun! I didn't get out of the house until last night when hubs took me to Jack in the Box for a salad. I'm feeling 95% better but still tired.

But I went to the doctor today for a visit I've had for a month and I'm in fine shape. Blood pressure is 118/65. Not bad for an old lady. My doctor was impressed and so was I.

So I'll stop rambling now and have a better post for y'all tomorrow! :-)
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