And time will tell!

I have a bunch more aprons to take photos of since my earlier post this week and I will get to it. I usually upload them to my flicker Apron set as soon as I get them but after Texas last spring I had so many photos to go through, I guess I just missed them. I have most of my photos uploaded there since I love Flicker. I can log in and look and look at beautiful eye candy from earthly items like rainbows and trees to my friends art they make to even people I do not know from the links of comments is a wonderful way to see even more new things. Flicker has anything you might desire to see in someone's photo from around the world.

As far as my posting and listing items in my Etsy, Bonanzle and eBay areas I have been slack there also. I have been so busy still trying to get organized plus keeping house, as I have said for the last couple of years, Yes I have, and I can only do so much with the space we have and I do have a lot of materials, probably more than I will ever need. Maybe when I find what niche I like to work in the most, I will sell the rest. The best thing I can do is just stay home. When I wander I tend to buy and the $ has run out so has my credit so I am a shopaholic like the movie. Those coupons that come to me are overwhelming to me. So, Stop and work with what I have. Before I have even opened my Cricket machine is almost outdated. It is terrible how long I have had it and never used it along with all the cartridges I got. I also have a lot of jewelry items to make, and sewing, I like sewing by hand as my first choice.

I have GOT to get out my sewing machine and see if it still will work. I had trouble with the tension the last time and got frustrated. I have so many things in my head it is about to swell and blow. LOL!

We have been going to many Doctor visits since my husband was so ill last October after his second back fusion surgery in August. The last week or so, I have let him go himself. He is driving ok now and even has gone back to work. He went back New Years' Day and worked eight full hours. By the time he got home, he was in bed and hurting very bad. He finally got to speak to the back doctor and they got his hours shortened to four and then work up to six and then back to eight. He really did go back full time way to fast. HIs Functional Capacity Examination( FCE) did not specify this and the Doctor did not either so now after seeing the Doctor they got it straightened out.

We also saw the infectious disease doctor this week and his blood tests were back with much better numbers. Now the plan is to see if the infection is gone by stopping the antibiotics he has taken since the
Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection invaded his system from the August surgery. We learned this is the worst blood stream infection you can get,and to watch for symptoms, we sure do NOT want them to re-appear! If they stay away, Fabulous! If not that would mean it is on the hardware and it would have to come out. That was NOT even an option for me for it to be removed and another surgery, he has been through enough. Well, that option may not be my decision after a call he got yesterday. Our regular doctor sent him to UAB for an osteoporosis clinic since he has it so bad and they also did many tests including an X-Ray. The call was that the film showed the screws are loose already again and Oh No,I can't believe this is happening. It also showed compression fractures higher in his back so now he is being scheduled for a cat scan. He had no idea he had osteoporosis
before the August 2009 surgery and the doctor found it during the fusion when the bone he was going to use was unusable and he had to remove some extra bone to use from another site, I think the hip as that is the second incision site. Anyway, now we have told our daughter to get a bone scan ASAP as she has severe back problems also and has been told nothing can be done. She has been on pain management therapy with not much help.
I have mild osteoporosis but my husband's number is as bad as it can get. He take a forteo shot every day at a cost of around $900 a month, thankfully we do have insurance. But still, what a fee? well, it is a new drug and he can only take it for two years, one year down now and on his second year. That is all anyone can take it.

After the cat scan who knows what will happen? I guess we will see down the road. He could break a bone just picking up something so he has learned and so have I, the correct way to bend down (with your knees) and get something. He uses his grabber to get the paper from the yard if I forget to get it and get busy around here. It has taken a lot of getting use to with his not able to do all the things around the house he used to be able to do. Amazing how bad before detection. So drink your milk, that is another thing he learned to do at the clinic at UAB. They said he was taking too many vitamin supplements and to get it naturally is better. He was taking a lot of calcium and vitamin D supplements. Dairy, Fish and Sunshine is good for you, also walking to jar your bones to absorb calcium better. I am going to have to find a way to walk better and faster to be able to go with him. Since I am only able to tolerate sandels with my ortopedic insole, it is hard to walk very fast. Most are slip in and out of since I do take them off when I am not walking. I do have a pair with an ankle strap so I will try them next time he goes. I sure to do miss wearing socks and sneakers like I always did before I got neuropathy in my feet. And I an not diabetic as I am always asked. I also have a spinal stimulator in my hip made by St.Judes Hospital for which I am very grateful. It helps with pain but not enough to get me back in shoes and socks like I had hoped
it would. And Yes, I do have cold feet in the winter like this time of year.

We just do what we have to do to get by day by day. Thanks for listening.
Smiles, Cyndi

Collecting Aprons!

I saw the post on the
Etsy Cottage Street Team
that I hope I am a new member of; I just applied :-).
Melody of Brown Gingham Creations, has posted a Letter for what your collect applying to that letter and she chose "Aprons". I follow that theme with my Apron Collection also. Here are Just a few!

I have been collecting aprons and I have a few of them shown in my Etsy Header for my Vintage Shop, Dragonfly Dreams. I got quite a few more in Texas Last Spring at Roundtop, TX. and here and there last year, even a couple this year already. I keep them in a wicker basker that is outgrowing it's purpose.

I shall post a few photos and add more to my vintage shop as I can. My husband has been ill, another visit to Doctor for infectious disease yesterday but good reports with his blood tests although he may never get that pesky old disease out of his bones and system forever. We will stop antibotics and see how it goes.

As for my new etsy Cottage Street Friends I welcome you to my blog and hope to see more of you in the future.



Smiles, Cyndi

Count my Blessings

Counting My Blessings
I am a collector. I will keep everything I can but I am learning to let go slowly. I will pick up stones or rocks on the ground that shine and sparkle or speak to me. I love stones. Polished ones also, I even have a stone tumbler to see what I have collected will look like cleaned up. The roughness removed for a smooth feel. I am excited even though I have had it for a few months and it still sits in the box unopened. I will fill it and start it tumbling today. Maybe I can use some of the stones for my fairy wands I am making. I have stones from everywhere I go. I learned about the tumblers with the agates on the beach in Washington State.

I had "arrowheads" in my mind to use for an art project but found some nice clean polished stones at an antique store this weekend. I guess they were meant for me to find as they were deep in a corner of the kitchen area. I loved the cabin, it was a true log cabin and just awesome to look around. It was kind of dark and full of antiques but beautiful to my eyes and soul.

I am lucky to have what I have and I cherish it but I have to let some go. Look at what the children and families in Haiti have lost makes me think and reflect. We lost a lot of material things in 2001 after 911 and we had to auction everything we owned because of my husband's job layoff and having nowhere to really go. We took our two Golden Retrievers and moved into an RV where we could go anywhere.

After losing so much, it was a freedom that I loved, living on wheels! It was strange having everything we owned in the basement of the RV, should we ever have a wreck on the snowy passes in Colorado or blow over in the Washington Olympic Peninsula winds. We managed an RV park in Joyce, a small city near Port Angeles, WA right on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It was a tree farm with a campground and very primitive. I loved it right from the start. After we arrived on New Year's Day in 2002 after going back to Alabama for the holidays and to drop off some collectibles I just could not part with(my Mother's hand painted china, quilts, photo albums, Christmas items precious to us) At least we were able to save some very important items to my heart. That is a lot more than these families in Haiti could do. They even lost family members. The children whose parents did not survive. What a loss they have to live with!

With the earthquakes last week in California and Haiti, so different! The Eureka, California reminds me that we had a similar earthquake when we moved to Seattle in 2001. I was still unpacking our belongings in our Lindal Cedar Home, it is so beautiful in the forest with the oh' so tall fir trees surrounding us. We had moved to Sumner, WA. Lake Tapps was within walking distance and Mt. Rainier was seen in the distance. I looked at it in awe every time I saw it! Just beautiful! The mountains , forests, Puget Sound, Ocean water and mountain streams, everything I yearned for was there. I even met my dragonfly there on my own
porch. I now have it has a rememberance tatoo on my arm. So many good things happened there.

But, we did have the Nisqually earthquake one day. It rocked the house like a train coming thru. It rolled like a big surf rolling through the house. I looked outside and the truck was rocking in the driveway. Oh my! I got on my computer on AOL at the time and my friend Ellen instant messaged me from Portland, did I feel it? She also told me to go make sure the park brake was on the truck. I went outside and the post office lady drove up, she asked me did I feel it?, then the UPS driver stopped also, what happened? They had been on the road by themselves when the road rocked. I told them my friend told me we had an earthquake. I had nothing to compare it too. It had sounded like the dogs running on the cedar deck around the outside of the house. But they had been in the room inside the house with me.

Well, I turned on the TV and followed it all day. My husband had been in a glass building in downtown Seattle and the glass had all caved in around them. He followed as everyone around him took for the street with panic on their faces,and when he finally got a cell phone signal as they were jammed he called to check on me. It did no damage at our home built in the 1970's. We were sturdy!

But, many brick chimneys collapsed around Seattle and glass breakage in buildings like the one my husband was in, an old brewery that was now Seattle's Best Coffee Co.
He worked in information technology and they were a client where he worked.

It was on the news, in Port Townsend, WA., a store had a pendulum that had sand in the bottom and the hanging point had made a pattern of a rose. It became the "Earthquake Rose", February 28, 2001, 11:00AM a 6.8 magnitude earthquake, 30miles beneath the earth surface at Olympia, Washington on the Nisqually Fault. I called the store and got the pendulum for my husband's birthday.( grins)

I don't know how I went from collecting stones to the earthquake but it was an event that helped change my life and I learn from it what is important, what we cherish and love, and that is nothing material. It is life itself, but we have bumps along the way. We have to make decisions right or wrong that control our being. I know know that losing my books and music was one thing I miss the most and maybe why I also collect them and it is so hard to let them go.

Some things cannot so easily be replaced but we have our memories and that is why I now say," Make Memories because no one can take them away"!

Smiles, Cyndi