Two. More. Days.

And this awful month will be over!  Let's see, we started out on the first with a double root canal (same tooth, though) for me, then Larry and I both caught a bad cold with sore throats, stopped-up heads, hacking coughs, then Aunt Flo decided to pay me a visit after not showing her face around here since October and she just brought all her crap and moved in, leaving candy wrappers and cigarette butts all over my house.  Stayed for three weeks.  I finally got her to leave, got to feeling better and came down with another cold/sinus thing that I'm still fighting.  It might even be connected to the tooth infection, I don't know.  I woke up Thursday with a fever and a pus pocket on the left side of my throat.  Ugh.

Tuesday afternoon, we lost our sweet Uncle  J. C., after a prolonged multitude of illnesses.  He fought the good fight and was still joking and making us laugh through all of his pain and suffering.  Well, he got his crown Tuesday and I bet it's a beauty.  While the family gathered at the house, his grandson found a prayer journal that Uncle J. C. been keeping for years, prayers and conversations he'd had with our Lord.  Nobody knew a thing about it but Uncle J. C. and God.  What a blessing it was to find that journal and to know beyond any doubt that he is in Heaven with his beloved mama and our beloved Savior and all of his loved ones who have gone on before him.  They had one of his prayers, a very pertinent one for the day, framed and displayed at the funeral home.  I thought I'd share it here.

We'll see you again, Uncle J. C.  But until then, we're gonna miss your goofy laugh, your jokes, your handsome face.  We'll miss you.

Uncle J. C. is the third uncle I've lost in a year.  Uncle Jack, Uncle Jiggs and now Uncle J. C.  While I'm strong in my faith and my belief and I know I will see them again, it still hurts.  I told Larry yesterday that with each sad phone call I get, I feel a piece of me disappearing.  Poof!  Another little bit of me gone.  These three uncles were such a big part of my raising, my growing-up years, and it's heartbreaking to see them go.  It's heartbreaking to only have memories and photographs of days gone by when I used to have big, strong men who helped make me who I am today.  Each one had an unique part and role to play in my life and I would not be the woman I am today had I not had those sweet men teasing me, molding me, raising me.  I love them all and will miss them every single day until we are all together again.

Tuesday night, I slipped down in the kitchen and hyperextended my right knee.  It swelled up and bruised immediately but Larry put ice on it right away and today, it's still bruised, still sore, but I think I'll live.  Maybe.  Tabbie Hoffman likes to wash his feet in Banjo's water bowl after he poops and I was taking the water bowl to the sink to wash it for the eleventy-fifth time and some water sloshed out, my foot hit it and down I went, knee-first into that hard, unforgiving, evil ceramic tile.  It happened so fast, I just turned to the sink and in an instant, I was on my butt with the worst charley horse of my life in my right calf and a goose egg popping up on my knee.  Larry thought I was playing with Banjo like I always do in the kitchen (we dance and play and have a good old time in there) so it was a good 30 seconds before he even responded.  As soon as I started crying, though, he was up and at my side, helping me up and getting ice on my knee.  He threatened to carpet the kitchen but we did something better.  We bought an area rug yesterday and put it down. Tabbie immediately found a sunbeam.  :)

This month wasn't ALL bad, though.  We did celebrate our 17th anniversary and Larry's birthday was Wednesday.  I made him one of his favorite cakes that his mama used to make.  Angel food with fluffy pineapple frosting and it turned out sooooo good!

Wednesday night, for Larry's birthday, we went down to Perry to Red Lobster and had supper.  Larry wanted a lobster for his birthday and that's what he got!

I got the crab-stuffed mushrooms and the lobster mac and cheese and the lobster mac was so delicious and creamy and cheesy with some kind of little yummy bread crumby thing on top.  It went perfectly with their Cheddar Bay biscuits (which I could eat a plate of by myself with a pitcher of sweet tea, thank you very much).

Two more days.  Tomorrow is Sunday and I'm hoping to have a quiet, low-key day but Monday, we have to go to court to kick our tenant out of the condo.  NOT looking forward to that one.

But then Tuesday, February will be over!  And it'll be March!  March is good, right??  March is Peaches To The Beaches!  March is St. Patty's Day!  March is Easter!  I'm counting on you, March.  You better behave.

Seventeen

We celebrate wedding anniversary number seventeen today!  This weekend is actually identical to our wedding weekend, too, our anniversary (or wedding day) on Saturday, Valentine's Day on Sunday.  We haven't had many anniversaries like that.  I slept in this morning while Larry finished up on a job he was doing.  He had gotten us a beautiful anniversary cake yesterday from Wilson's Bakery and had it waiting for me on the counter when I got home.  He had them write Then, Still, Always Will on top.  That's what we say.  I loved you then, I love you still, I always will.  The Then part is a lot longer than seventeen years, though.  We've actually been together since 1988 -- 28 years come May.  We waited a very long time to have this sweet, blessed life.

We spent the day together starting with a delicious steak lunch at Longhorn, complete with a complimentary anniversary dessert, and then we went to Target and did a little shopping until our movie was about to start.  We saw "The Boy" and we really enjoyed it!  It has a wicked little twist at the end that I absolutely love in a movie.  And we adore Lauren Cohan anyway.  Our Maggie from "The Walking Dead".  Great movie!  Afterwards, we went to LifeWay and treated ourselves to some goodies there, too.  We got this beautiful plaque to hang on our bedroom wall and I thought it was so perfect to get for our anniversary.

Ever since our first anniversary, Larry has given me the traditional gift that coincides with that anniversary, for example the third anniversary gift is leather and he gave me a leather wallet that year.  Well, this year it's furniture.  I got a deep freezer last week.  Larry's favorite TV show is "The Big Bang Theory" and I got him the Big Bang Lego set, complete with plastic Lego replicas of the furniture in Leonard and Sheldon's living room.  Pretty clever, huh? 

We exchanged Valentines today, too.  Candy, cards, a balloon, some Pioneer Woman kitchen utensils.  Just LOOK at this enormous box of candy he got me!!

 
So, there's 17.  Can't wait to see what 18 brings us! 

A bad start to a new month

February has not been kind to us so far.  I know we're only a week in, but if she don't get her stuff together, I'm moving on to March without her.

The last weekend of January, I was having some pain in my upper gum.  It started that Friday afternoon and I just shrugged it off as maybe I flossed my teeth too hard after lunch, cut my gum and it was sore.  No biggie.  I've done that before.  Lots of times.  I took some Motrin and went on about my business.

Saturday, we had Ami's birthday party and the best part about that day was the surprise visit of my dear lifelong friend, Lisa, and her little girl, Bella.  I took this selfie of us sitting at Mama and Daddy's dining room table.  I didn't even know she was back from Texas and I was SO happy to see her.  Lisa and I have been best friends since she and her family moved to our neighborhood when we were teenagers, some 30+ years ago.  Sometimes years go by without us seeing each other but when we do, it's just like old times.  I love that girl.

I got to see my great-babies that day, too, and Baby David has grown so much since Christmas!  Ami took this picture of me getting all his sugars.  They were so sweet and I got every last one.

Beanie and Katie are both growing like little weeds in the way that small children do.  I am so blessed to be Aunt Ninner all over again.

Sunday, I went with Larry to help him finish up on a rental property he was working on and while he was repairing a cracked ceiling in the foyer closet, plaster particles got in his eye.  We flushed his eye and used drops and I dug around but never could get it to feeling better.  Sunday night, I was in so much pain with my gum that I texted my dentist around 7:00 and told her I thought a tooth was "blowing out" on me.  That's what I call 'em when they abscess.  :)  And since I've had four to blow out on me, I know how that feels.  She called me in an antibiotic and some pain medicine and I called her office the next morning and got in about 9:00.  Poor Larry, with a plaster shard still in his eye, got up and went to work and I called and made him an appointment to see an eye doctor.  He was having the shard removed the same time I was having a root canal and neither of us could be there for the other.  He was fine after his doctor's visit, I still had problems.  The infection in my tooth was so bad (and it only showed up FRIDAY!  This was MONDAY!), that all she could do Monday was drain it and pack it and send me home with a script for Lortab.  That was the worst pain of my life.  It was a front tooth and I felt pain all the way up in my eyeball.  No joke.  I went back Wednesday and she closed it but only after giving me a second antibiotic to take.  Today, it feels fine, with maybe a twinge here and there just to remind me that tooth infections are of the devil.  This was a bad one and I'm down to three antibiotic pills left.  One for tonight and then two tomorrow and I'm done.  So, yeah, Mama and Ami, I'm finishing them!  I've been known to like, you know, stop taking medicine when I get to feeling better.

Larry's eye got better and then he came down with a bad cold.  My tooth is getting better and I woke up yesterday with his cold.  Last night was a long, miserable night of not being able to breathe.  Yay.  I'm reading the Bible this year, following a 365-day plan on the YouVersion app on my phone.  This month, I've been reading the book of Job.  Now I don't think anything is accidental and I believe God has a plan for everything.  It's no coincidence that I'm reading Job's story during a week when I've struggled.  Thank you, Lord, for your grace and for your mercy and for telling me just what I need to hear just when I need to hear it!

So we're off to a bad start.  But!  Our 17th anniversary is next weekend and for the 17th, you're supposed to buy furniture.  Since we don't need any actual furniture, we got a new chest freezer, which is almost like furniture.  I have wanted one forever and just never got one.  Now we can stock up on things when we find them on sale.  And I'll have room for all them peaches come summer!

So that's February so far for us.  These first six days have been a doozy!