60 Is The New 80

Still staying alive and all that, but also staying away from the computer the last 3 weeks because all I would have written would have been a whinefest of boredom and lack of sleep and weird pain and steeling myself to look in the mirror in the morning when I take my shower.

Fun, right?

I also went through a weird phase where I stopped knitting and took up crochet, but I think that's all behind me now. I blame the anesthesia.

I cannot lie, I did this

Also? This. I know, it's alarming

Luckily, a friend thought to give me a very lovely and presentable set of pajamas right before this surgery, so I could lounge around and recuperate without feeling like total trash. People, this was the SMARTEST GIFT EVER, considering I really have to work to get myself showered by noon, and I feel way better than if I were sitting around in a ratty old shirt and some yoga pants. Seriously, GIVE PEOPLE NICE PAJAMAS.

Happily, now I'm at the point where - for a few hours at a time, anyway - I feel almost normal (or will, once the doctor finally okays taking the last two drainage tubes out of my body, ew, yuck), and I have put away the crochet hooks and gone back to knitting socks and baby blankets, as the good Lord intended. I even walked all the way to the store this morning (for more Tylenol, but still...), and I might attempt to cook dinner tonight, so Larry and I don't have to dip into the strategic lasagna reserve we now have in the freezer.

So many lasagnas, and we were grateful for ALL of them

My birthday (60!) came and went, and I'll admit it didn't feel as though I was at my finest, even while wearing my fancy PJs. Still, people dropped off cards and presents, and they also dropped off get well cards and presents, until it got to the point where I felt a tad miffed if there was a day when no one stopped by with a wee little giftie or some alluring baked good. Spoiled, I am, by this point...

Larry found the perfect birthday card, considering the circumstances

My knitter friends brought yarn, of course

And handmade knitting totes

And David came to visit for a week and assist with meals and help move Rachel into her new apartment, since Larry was still on the injured list. He seemed a bit disconcerted by how decrepit we both were but managed not to talk about assisted living homes or senior communities while he was here. No idea what he texted on the sibling chat, though...

Luckily, we got the container garden on our back deck up and running the weekend before Larry threw himself off his bike, so we've got basil and tomatoes and parsley and one very overachieving mint plant. We were a little puzzled as to why the basil plants at the top of our tower garden seemed a tad stunted, until one morning we caught a squirrel sitting happily in the watering trough up top and nibbling away at the leaves. 

Squirrel breakfast buffet, apparently

I planted the tomatoes a new way this year that has made them look like other people's tomato plants and not like the spindly specimens I usually end up with. They are producing like crazy, and I go out on the deck every day in my fancy pajamas and harvest some more. Because I'm an old lady now and can be as eccentric a gardener as I like, I suppose...

These are quite yum

Last Saturday, Larry and I, determined to try to have some fun this summer, staggered out to the movies to see Indiana Jones. Now, I haven't been to the movie theater since March of 2020, and back then I just went to our local one that I could walk to, which was nothing fancy. So Larry and I were taken aback to see that there were...waiters?...who would come take food orders and such at our seats. And there were cards you could stick in the rail of the table in front of you if you wanted something or just wanted to rat out the loud talker in the row behind you (which, come on, maybe just tell him to shut up yourself? What's wrong with people?).

It was a bit disorienting, is what I'm saying. And then the actors we actually knew in the film looked SO OLD. Which sort of corroborated how old we've been feeling lately, so it was not reassuring.

Good movie, though, and then Larry and I had dinner outside at Big Buns, where he always orders a regular size burger and a beer and I get the kids' meal and we split my fries, and who's getting old, NOT US

Free drink with the kids' meal!

That's pretty much the most exciting day we've had lately. And then we went home and napped.

And, yay, the insurance company is paying to repair the car Rachel wrecked (there was a good chance they were just going to declare it totaled), and then Rachel had the temerity to suggest that - since now it's been in an accident - maybe we should lower our formerly agreed-upon price for selling it to her.

Kids say the darnedest things, you know?