Fifty – Nine Years

Today we celebrated my husbands fifty-ninth birthday. We had a nice day together that we also shared with our best friends Bill & Linda. 

The temperature outside was a balmy thirty some odd degrees but the love shared on this day made for a nice warm and cozy day together celebrating my husband. I had so many thoughts and feelings when I woke up this morning, mostly, thankfulness. We decided that we would stay home, I would make a nice dinner and we’d have some birthday cake and that’s exactly what we did and I thought I would share some photos of the day with you. 

Enjoy! 

This is my handsome birthday boy..

A kiss to start the day!

I forgot to take a photo of the dinner we had. I made a nice ham along with some green beans, a salad and some biscuits. I did however take a video of us singing Happy Birthday to my handsome man. Yeah, don’t turn your sound up too loud because we sound like a few suffering cows. What can I tell ya, singing is not our strong suit. 

from on Vimeo.

Then it was time to cut the cake ! 

After cake, we, meaning Me, Lou, Bill & Linda decided to take some photos but Bill, our resident comedian decided to goof around. He always makes us laugh.. 

This is myself and my bestie Linda 

And of course even though with time boys turn into men they are still always little boys at heart. They look like two little boys playing in the backyard. Bill is messing around and Lou has this intent look on his face while he’s watching Bill play with my salt and pepper shakers as if they are nine years old again and Lou can’t wait to see what Bill will do next.. LOL

Best Buds 

And then it was time to say G’night.

In An Instant

Well, my last post titled “Incredibly Grateful” (click the link to read if you missed it) was unfortunately a bit premature. In that post I was So grateful that the swelling in my husbands leg and foot were as we were told attributed to the massive doses of steroids they had him on for a nasty case of bronchitis for over a month. How I wish that was truly what it was..

On Saturday April 16th in the morning hours, my husband of eighteen years suffered a heart attack. Stunned? I was as well and so much more.. This post should be the one titled Incredibly Grateful. My husband had been complaining of heart burn and indigestion for a few days but we both thought it was his stomach. Due to the high level of pain medications he takes daily because of all his back surgeries his stomach has a tendency to cause him problems when he eats too much red sauce which he actually had three days in a row that week. 

But by Saturday morning he knew something was terribly wrong but still thought it was his stomach. After telling me he didn’t feel well and he wanted to go to the emergency room just in case I , of course panicked in my usual fashion and wanted to call an ambulance. He in his ‘man’ fashion refused to let me do so. God was with us that morning because I was able to weave through traffic doing about eighty miles an hour, we got the ER where they immediately took him into the back and hooked him up to all kind of vitals monitors, they were popping nitro in his mouth left and right along with aspirin and at first nothing was showing on his EKG’s or monitors. Finally the pain hit him horribly, began to go down his left arm and leg. He also complained about the inside of his ears hurting terribly and his head feeling like it was going to explode. I ran and got the nurse and the doctor was following behind. He had gotten back my husbands cardiac enzymes blood work and his words to me and my husband were “Mr. (left out for privacy) you are having a heart attack. We are going to be transporting you to the big hospital in Myrtle Beach to the heart center where they will quickly take you up to the cath lab and fix this. 

You can’t even imagine (unless you’ve been there) the fear in both our eyes and the immediate tears. I won’t go into any further detail because this post would be even longer but I will tell you that as I sit here today I am more grateful to God than I ever thought possible because my husband came home last Monday on April 18th, my birthday, best present I’ve ever gotten. He is doing well, eating well and we will see his heart doctor for the first follow up May 16th. Looking back over the course of the last few months it seems like so many things were happening to him that had no explanation. Almost like everything was coming together for the perfect storm. Have you ever just had that “gut” feeling that “something was coming” and it wasn’t going to be good? I have had that feeling as far as he was concerned since February and on April 16th all the pieces fell into place but, thankfully and incredibly mercifully God said “No it’s not your time yet but now you must both wake up to what is important in this life that I have given you and now regiven you”. I can tell you, our entire lives have changed and we are fully awake now. I will explain all that in my next post.. 

Thank you all for reading and remember to smile even when you don’t feel like it, and love those in your life each day until it hurts.. 

Incredibly Grateful

Hello Friends, 

In my post titled Life Happens I asked for prayers for my husband. I asked for them because he is having some swelling of his ankles and feet. I have to be honest and tell you, I was kind of scared and worried because I know that this can be a symptom of many things and one of those very serious issues is heart disease, usually indicating an artery blockage or many arteries. My radar was also on high alert because the Mans father passed away from heart disease as did my own so knowing this, you can imagine I would be very concerned. I tried my best not to freak out and go from 0 -60 with the worst case scenarios playing out in my head and I did okay for the most part but I also did A LOT of talking with God..I put it in the Lords hands and was ready (not sure how ready) to accept whatever the  Father decided it would be. 

Well I can only say at this moment I am so incredibly grateful to God for not allowing the above to be the issue. We saw our doctor on Friday morning and he said it’s minimal fluid retention and he’s positive it’s from the steroids that the Man has been on due to a severe case of bronchitis. He was on pretty high doses for twenty days. He also gained quite a few pounds from it as well. The doctor said a diuretic was not needed. For those who don’t know what that is, it’s a pill to make you pee a lot.. LOL.. It helps the body to remove the excess fluid build up.

Here’s my handsome man as we were leaving the doctors office. 

The Man was told to do some walking and watch his salt intake which he doesn’t really eat much salt anyway and the body should absorb the fluid. I honestly can not tell you how relieved I am. Me and the Man can bicker at each other like a couple of 90 year olds but I wouldn’t want to bicker with anyone else. Thank you to all of you who read my post (and I know there were many of you) and thank you even more for any prayers you may have prayed for us. 

Life Interrupted.

Wow! It’s been a REALLY long time since I’ve put up a blog post.. Which, leads me to the subject I wanted to write about in this post..

I guess it was about a year ago I felt the need to make my life easier, much simpler. More peaceful.. I thought, it would be an easy task.. I mean c’mon.. How hard could that be right? It’s not like I’m trying to move a mountain or anything or… is it? I began the usual way most people do which is purging items we own.. in a word.. stuff!.. Just a side note, I am still doing that believe it or not and I’ve gotten rid of a lot of stuff already.. I digress..

In the last months or so I realized that I don’t do the things I used to like to do such as , reading, needle work, watching old movies, playing a game of cards with my husband, “put posts up on my blog”. Things like this.. Simple things.. I asked myself why that was.. Did I suddenly dislike these things? No.. Did I now find them boring? No..So just what was it that was preventing me from doing the things I’ve so enjoyed in the past. After some long thought , no I’m not a fast thinker most times, I came to the conclusion.

I need to “unplug”.. For those who don’t know what I mean by “unplug”. it means I need to step back and far away from all things social media. Facebook which is supposed to be “social” but really when you think about it is “anti-social”. I will explain more why I say that if you’d like. I need to back away from Twitter, and a newly acquired online addiction, YouTube. Now don’t misunderstand me, I am in no way “anti-social media” but for myself and I am sure for a lot of other people, social media has taken over my life..Where I used to take time to de-stress by knitting, reading, watching a movie, praying, etc. I have now taken all the time I spent on those things which helped me in more ways than one and replaced it all by staring at screens of some sort or another most of the night..

Because of this pattern I’ve gotten myself into, I can also say I’ve lost my inner peace. My mind is constantly running amok from one thought to another. I can’t seem to concentrate on anything for more than 5 minutes at a time. Im always checking “statuses” “Tweets” “Selfies” Videos”. And… it’s got to stop.  I have in the past been trying to pry myself away but it almost seems like an addiction. It works for maybe an hour at which time I am usually watching one of my favorite TV series on my DVR but once the show is over, I go right back to my laptop or phone.

So my questions to you are, Do you have this problem? How are you breaking the chain?