I have no idea where the time went, but clearly I lost all track of it.  I’ll blame it on the heat having rattled my brain this summer.

The most important item this summer was Dave’s surgery to remove a growth above his left eye.  If you look closely you can see part of it above the rim on his glasses.  It had over grown onto the actual eye lid.

After getting clearances from his cardiologist (including an EKG) and his internist (including lab work), he had the surgery at an outpatient clinic on a Monday morning.    Luckily they didn’t have to transfer any tissue to complete the reconstruction of the eyelid after removal of the growth and so about 1 1/2 hours after it began I was getting him into the car for the trip home.

  

Now, if you have known us for a while you know that his right eye only has peripheral vision, so having to have his left eye covered for 2 days was a bit of a problem for him.   He lasted a day and 1/2 before he threatened to pull it all off himself, so I figured since no bleeding and I had plenty of antiseptic gel to put on it that we were ok, so off it came.

 

Megan’s comment was “What does the other guy look like”.   I must agree I didn’t realize how much bruising would be present.  You can just see the loosely placed bandage over the actual suture line.

About 10 days later he was looking a LOT better.   And most importantly, he was actually seeing a little better out of that eye because the eyelid could go farther up and let in more light.  

3 weeks later and while you can barely see the incision line, it was all healed and looking very good.

Since it was so hot in August, I started sewing in earnest and began by making some place mats, first using some left over material I have from headboard/table cloths for the RV and then finding Southwest/Arizona themed material.   I made several sets, giving them to friends as they returned to the valley.   You can see examples of them at this link: Place Mats

 

And since I was in the swing of sewing again, I made Megan a  flannel house coat for Christmas - - with a little help from one of my girlfriends who does machine embroidery for the intial on the pocket.    I had never used the button hole process on this sewing machine, which I got in 2007, so  SEVERAL scraps of material gave their all in practicing making button holes.  Of course it had to have eight (8) button holes!   

I still have material for some new sets of place mats, and other ideas to do this summer when it is very hot outside.

We also had tickets to several concerts in November and December.   The first was before Thanksgiving and it was Brian Culbertson one of our favorite Smooth Jazz artists.   While he is very good, as you can see the strobe lighting was actually going straight into the balacony seating at the Mesa Arts Center, right into my eyes - hence I spent a lot of time covering them and ended up with a migraine after we came home.     

The we had friends from dinner for Thanksgiving and a couple of days later Dave had a cold.  Which turned out to be what is called the Valley Crud, a rhinovirus that starts as a cold and then often results in upper respiratory or sinus secondary infections.   And of course I caught it from him and we spent the first 3 weeks of December coughing until we got antibiotics.  Not only did I have the horrible cough, but also the sinus infection from hell.   I was wishing one of the swabs would be gently pushed up into my sinuses so they could drain because they hurt so bad.   My internist looked me over and said “You're SICK”!   Luckily the antibiotics worked so that by Christmas Eve we felt good so weren’t continually hacking and could have people for dinner.    

2023 is shaping up to be slightly better.  It can’t help but be when we now have FRESH grapefruit and oranges on our trees!   Plus, we got RAIN this fall, which the valley desperately needs.

Hope the New Year is looking good for everyone and I promise to update more frequently than once every 6 months!