I just wrote a comment to a subscriber about Christmas things you can repurpose. Now is the time to go to your local thrift stores to find poinsettias and other Christmas goodies that you can save to work into projects next year. The thrift stores are trying to get rid of this merchandise as they don’t want to hold it for a year, so they sell them at very low prices.  Remember, there are tons of great things in these thrift stores just waiting to be repurposed and the monies go to great causes.

In our area, every Wednesday, Salvation Army sells their clothes and shoes half off.  The reason I’m mentioning this is that they also bag baby bibs together so you get several when you purchase them (for usually fifty cents.)  I just left this tip on a video that I’m not sure has aired, but if the bib has a Velcro closure you can put it around the arm of your craft room chair and have a rag to wipe your hands on without having to look for one.  The tie ones work as well but not as good as the ones with Velcro. I’m also not crazy about the ones that have plastic backing on them.  But hey, if you get five or six of them for fifty cents, you can find a couple that will make you happy.

Another idea is when you put your Christmas decorations away for the year, separate the ones that don’t make you happy and put them in your repurpose pile.  Maybe by next fall you will figure out something to do to make it new again and if not, it will be the perfect time to either donate it or sell it at a garage sale.

 

 

I’m not really certain how long I’ll be able to maintain this lying in one spot plan.  In theory, it sounds great.  But, when combined with my need to constantly be doing something, ANYTHING, it’s a little tiresome.  Don’t get me wrong.  The moment I stand up, I want to scream for my mommy, but am trying to maintain some sort of dignity.  Seriously, I’m not trying for any sort of dignity, this just burns.  Not like past surgeries, where those hurt, this one burns.  A big sort of ouchy, if you know what I mean.  The ice works great on it while I’m not standing on my feet.  Once my feet touch the floor, all deals are off.

I had some visitors today and it gave Rich some free time to run errands.  I’m blessed to have wonderful, supportive friends.  I’d like to write more, but I’ve read the last couple of days blogs and am not certain my mind is completely clear.  So for now I’ll leave you with this. If you get your hip replaced, make sure they do it with the new style that is a four inch incision and then buy yourself a truckload of ice, you’re gonna need it.

As it sometimes happens after surgery, I have no ambition and since I’m not allowed to do anything but lay for the next three weeks, I’m not certain how quickly my ambition will return.  I’m hoping that the amount of medications I need will decrease, and that will in turn, increase my level of interest in things around me.  So for now I can honestly say that there is a spot in the corner of the wall that needs painted, and my stress and anxiety is directly impacting the health of my almost 15 year old golden retriever.  I’m trying to fake like everything is ok and she’s trying not to vomit..it’s a win win.  Or is it?   The wheelchair freaks her out and so do the crutches. Kind of hard to hide those or disguise them as a tent or something..I’m still thinking that one through.

The pain isn’t bad at all when I’m laying down, but when I stand up, it really burns.  I’m loving ice right now and having it permanently attached to my upper thigh is pure heaven.   Walking isn’t really all that important in the grand scheme of things, is it?   So if this makes absolutely no sense, you can chalk it up to the amount of big medicines I’m consuming.  Life will get better, it’s just a matter of time..  Time and medicine..  Or is it just medicine?  Maybe just time.  I’m in a quandary.

 

My hip is revised and I am home. Who would have believed that it was possible to accomplish so much in 36 hours.  Ok, so now to the highlights.  They gave me a drug that is supposed to make you have amnesia..it didn’t. I remembered everything about the spinal block including them telling me that people with arthritis are “difficult” to do this procedure on…I would never have guessed.

After surgery, they put me in a room with an 80 year old woman whose daughter (luckily) was staying the night.  I couldn’t sleep from some of the medicines they gave me that make you more jittery than anything.  Apparently they also made, we’ll call her grandma, confused.  Really confused.  At about 2:30AM, she walked around the side of her bed, past her sleeping daughter, opened the curtain,  looked at me and called her daughter’s name. She had the same surgery as I had so she did have an IV before her little walk, but did not have it by the time I had my finger on the nurses’ button and was calling to her daughter to wake up.  She didn’t have a walker so she could and really should have fallen in all of the blood that was flowing freely out of her wrist, but luckily, did not.  The nurses were calm but couldn’t get a new IV started because her veins kept “rolling.”  I’m not sure what that means, other than we all lost 2 1/2 hours of sleep from grandma’s little jaunt.

Then around 5, an alarm kept going off on a machine I was attached to that monitored my heart beats per minute and oxygen levels.  The sound this thing made would wake the dead.  It was consistent though, I’ll give it that.  It went off every five minutes until we were awakened at 6 to get our stats, changing our bandages, and I can’t remember what else, before the surgeon got there.  The nurse was a little scared abut my heart beats per minute that averaged between 42-46 every time it beeped.  The surgeon really didn’t know if that was a big deal or not so he referred me to the hospitalist who would be in shortly.  The hospitalist didn’t care at all, and just told them to turn it off that the slow heart rate was due to the narcotics they had been using.

Ok, great, I was ready to go home.  Three hours later and four discussions about what I can and can’t do when I got home and I was out of there.  Here’s what I can do.  Lay around with a device that stops blood clots.  Get up  for 10 minutes and walk maybe 30 feet, then lay back down always elevating the hip.  Can’t ride in a car for three weeks and that’s only to the doctor’s office.  Can sit in a chair but only to eat three meals.  I’m planning ways to eat while lying down and doing crafting while sitting up, otherwise I clearly might go insane.  I’m thrilled it’s over with and will be glad when my hip doesn’t stop me from doing things I want to do.  Everything really did go well and I’m happy to be home.

 

 

 

I had such a craft fail yesterday, I had to laugh at myself.  I’m not sure if you can be any more dense than I was, and believe me, you would have to work at it.
I decided to make enamel dots out of hot glue and have done it before and it was relatively easy.  The difference this time is that I was tired and couldn’t make my dots really round.  So I leaned the tip of the glue gun on the silicone mat and just moved it from one spot to the next to put down a dot.  What I forgot to do was pick up the gun in between, thus creating a string that was really pretty sturdy. When I tried to pick up the first dot, the whole string came off and were not going to be separated without brute force.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of a good way to separate them so tried scissors which left a divot in the side of the dot.  At one point they were in a ball and I had the brilliant idea to try the heat gun to melt the string.  It didn’t melt the string but it did make the glue dots hot and misshapen.  In the end out of about one hundred dots, I ended up with maybe twenty five that were acceptable.  I learned a valuable lesson as well, don’t try to make enamel dots out of hot glue after 11 pm.  Words to live by.

I got an email from the Sweet Petunia people saying that they are coming out with a new Mini Misti in March.  I decided, what the heck, and emailed them.  I told them how much I love my Misti and that I’m going to order one of the minis and feature it on my You Tube channel and then explained what the You Tube channel is all about.  I told them that they should be marketing their product more to the disabled crafter as they  really benefit from it.  I attached the video I did on the Misti and told them how hard it is for me to separate the magnets when they attach to each other and wondered if they could somehow solve that problem.  At the end I decided to go for it and asked if they would be willing to offer a discount to the people who watch my videos who may normally not be able to afford the big Misti, but might be able to afford the mini with the discount.  I am crossing my fingers that they will do so as the people that watch my You Tube channel definitely deserve a discount.  I explained to her that sometimes when you are disabled, the Misti is a very big investment and that I was hoping she would consider her audience.  I am really hoping she does and that she sees value in helping the disabled crafting community.  She is a very religious woman and built the first Misti from being in charge of the Card Ministry for the Women’s Ministry and seeing the need for more consistent stamping.  Let’s hope she sees value in our goal to help other crafters like us be able to afford her great tool. My hopes are high.

I found some great tips today for things I hadn’t been able to do on You Tube so far.  I always see where others link you to their other videos and leave comments within their videos and for some reason, I just couldn’t figure out how they did it.  Well I’m not in the dark any longer.  I spent most of the day putting in comments where they needed to have explanations, and linking from one video to another.  It was a lot of work, but I think it will be worth it in the end.  I’m starting to feel like I’m actually getting a handle on this project.  Yesterday, I even bought myself a timer so I’ll know exactly how long a video is taping before it shuts itself off.  That should eliminate some of my many malfunctions.  I also am trying to get enough video content stored so that if I can’t do any videos for a few days or a week or so after my surgery, the channel will still have new videos.  My surgery is this Wednesday by the way, and if I haven’t explained it, they are going to only make a 4″ incision on the front of the top of my leg and replace the rotator for my hip but hopefully leave the ball in place. They said the surgery should only take 45 minutes if all goes well.  So I’m planning on “all going well” and being out in 45 minutes.  The hospital stay is only one night and that makes me happy as well.  The latest physician I talked with said the pain should be very minimal because they don’t cut muscle with this technique–even better!  So all in all, I’m hoping for a new pain free hip with no complications.  Cross your fingers for me, I’d appreciate it.