cannabis

Giant Bubbles & Working Knees

~ MaryG ~ 21 Comments

Further proof for my knee-replacement-considering friends that my husband is truly bouncing back. He made giant bubbles with our granddaughter last Thursday—so ten weeks post op. It was a long damn ten weeks.

You can see that left knee is still a bit swollen and red, but hey…if he can do stuff like this, it’s WAAAY better.
The 6-month post-op right knee looks almost totally normal now except the scar, which isn’t too bad. The knee does “click” a bit when he walks, which is freaky but normal, according to the doctors.

He’s still not completely off the pain meds, but they’ve been put away in a drawer and I think he’ll be able to stop taking them soon. They substituted Tramadol for Oxy and he takes one only at night now. One of the tips he gives others for TKR recovery is to just take the opioids. It’s so damn painful post-op that you will not be able to do your physical therapy without them. And PT is KEY to ending up with a good working knee. And my further tip is to make friends with cannabis. That’s gonna help you need less of the hard stuff.

If you don’t live in a Recreational Weed State, then get your medical license. It’s pretty simple to do in most states. If you live in Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska or Wisconsin, then bummer for you. WTF with those states!

And yes, my granddaughter is completely adorable. She’s even cuter from the front but since my blog is public, I don’t post pics of her face.

GIANT bubbles are cool and honestly, so is my husband. Hate to admit it, but it’s true. (I always wanted to be the cool one.) There were many times when I wished I’d married more of a goody-two-shoes/nerd, but hey….we stuck it out and now we get to be grandparents together. 😊
He chooses to be called NONNO, like my late father-in-law. (That’s Italian for grandfather.) But I did not want to be called Nonna (that’s for old ladies in support hose), so I’m just a good old American GRANDMA 👵

Progress

~ MaryG ~ 24 Comments

Despite continued pain and swelling, my husband is attempting to get on with his life after two total knee replacements, the second of which took place on March 16.

Gardening is something he always liked and is good at. I’m very pro-gardening for him. I think it’s healthy and without the excessive strain and physical danger of his other hobby: powerlifting. (It’s like, you have two artificial knees dude…would you just not.) But as most people in longterm marriages know, you cannot control the other person. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do and you gotta decide if the good outweighs the bad. (You’re free to go, if you’re not into it.)

Therefore, I’m happy to report he planted a bunch of dahlia bulbs, trimmed some shrubs, planted my spur-of-the-moment purchase of a lovely lupine in bloom, bought some clones from the dispensary, and potted up two of them as gifts for our kids. This represents a small but significant return to gardening. Yay!

My new lupine, expertly planted by my husband who got his BS in Botany.
We bought 3 types of clones at our local dispensary’s big plant sale: The Hive (Honey Banana X Papaya), Terpgasm (Sin n Juice X Udder Madness), Tail Dragger (Alligator Wine X Pearl Cadillac)

Don’t you just love the names of weed strains 🤣

Q: Why are weed plants called clones?

A: Weed plants are called “clones” because they are literally exact genetic replicas of a parent plant (called a “mother plant”). Instead of using seeds, growers cut a branch off a thriving plant and encourage it to grow its own roots. 

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UPDATE: photos of my husband kneeling for my friends considering arthroplasty

Right knee was replaced November 24, 2025
Left knee was replaced March 16, 2026
He says it feels weird to kneel but doesn’t hurt.

Year of the Knee — update 2

~ MaryG ~ 23 Comments

My husband is just about 8 weeks post-op from his second total knee replacement (and it has been a real bitch of a recovery), BUT I am pleased to report he walked the first mile of my walk with me yesterday without too much pain. That was the first time he’s walked a mile since last summer. He had walked a half-mile with me on Wednesday and it was OK, but he went faster and it felt better yesterday.

He’s still got swelling and using ice a lot, but now he can take Advil or Aleve which was not allowed for the first 6+ weeks. He still needs Oxy some, but not as much. Weed gummies for pain relief and sleep have helped. Yay cannabis.

I can feel a battle brewing between us over footwear. I’m a walker—usually 2-4 miles per day. Even though I never ever break into a run, I wear running shoes. I’ve been purchasing a new pair of ASICS-Gel Cumulus sneakers ever year for the past ten years, ever since my doctor told me I needed to replace my shoes more often.

This is my latest pair.

They are comfortable and in my opinion, COOL. Right? Both of my kids said they liked them, unprompted. Well, my husband hates shoes like this. He thinks they are dorky. He always wears black VANS, which in my opinion are too flat and not cushiony enough for walking with his new knees. I want him to get shoes like mine, but he thinks he’s too cool to wear dorky running shoes. I’m hoping the physical therapist comes out on my side.

Here we are in Yellowstone National Park in 2024 (pre knee replacements) in our usual footwear—me in ASICS, him in VANS. He thinks he looks way cooler than me, based on the shoes.

Year of the Knee – update

~ MaryG ~ 20 Comments

End of Week One of knee replacement #2 (my husband’s not mine) and I’m pleased to report I have achieved “angel of mercy” status. Oh the power of being in charge of the pain meds!

I did slip into “Annie Wilkes mode” once, when I told my husband I had unexpectedly closed the Activity Ring on my AppleWatch “waiting on his ass.” That was mean, admittedly, but at least I was putting my service in a positive light. Turns out that running up and down the stairs to get things, lugging bags of ice, filling and lugging the “polar cube,” and doing all the daily chores myself (loading/unloading dishwasher, cooking, trash and recycling, etc) burns up a decent amount of calories. I can’t be sedentary for too long.

He’s been trying his best to be a good patient, which I appreciate, but knee replacement is really pretty gruesome. The extreme pain, the swelling, the bruising, the leg full of staples…fortunately not too much bleeding from the incision (and the in-home physical therapist deals with bandage changes—phew)

I think things will start feeling better when the staples come out next week.

In the meantime, we are bingeing The Traitors with Alan Cumming on Peacock, which our daughter got us into. It’s pretty entertaining, for a reality competition show. Who doesn’t love a Scottish castle? And Alan’s outfits are over-the-top in the best way.

A lovely bouquet from our very thoughtful daughter and her husband
It’s lasted all week—and now the tulips are opening.
I might try to paint this one very beautiful rose.

Oh and with this knee, we’ve added cannabis to the pain regime. He’s finding that a strategically timed gummy can enhance and lengthen the effect of the prescribed pharmaceuticals.

Aaah, I finally turned my husband into a stoner like me. It only took 33 years.

EPIC sports fail

~ MaryG ~ 22 Comments

I have a confession to make. We didn’t have a lot going on yesterday. We met with our financial advisor in the morning. (He annoyed me by referring to Kamala Harris as Ka-MA-la—mispronouncing her name in that dismissive, racist, sexist way that Republican men do.) Once we got rid of his bald ass, I decided to settle in and watch TV for hours. I really wanted to enjoy my favorite Winter Olympics event—figure skating. Live.

The men’s finals long program was starting at 12:30 and I was psyched. My husband, who is still strapped to a chair with a polar ice machine on his knee a lot of the day, watched with me. We really got into it. Yes, there were a lot of falls, but there was a lot of gorgeous artistry and crazy athleticism too. I cried when Max Naumov, the skater from Massachusetts who lost both his parents in the DC plane crash last year, went out and skated poorly, but made it through. For him, just being there at all was Gold. It was so, so poignant.

The entire afternoon was leading up to the “Quad God” Ilia Malinin who was definitely, positively going to win the Gold Medal. There was no way he wouldn’t, especially since the other skaters had fallen so many times and he is a once-in-a-generation talent. Even my childhood idol Dorothy Hamill was there to watch.

It was approaching 5pm, so I went ahead and had a gummy, just to enhance the experience of watching this young man WOW us—LIVE. I even texted my son at work to let him know that Quad God was about to skate. Ilia looked great—so relaxed—as he skated out to win his gold.

Oh my GOD.

I have never seen such an epic sports FAIL on a bigger stage in my life. (Granted, I’m not much of a sports fan, but still.)

Just Google it.

The Olympics can break your heart, if you let them.

Hillary PTSD

~ MaryG ~ 13 Comments

My get-out-the-vote calls went pretty well today. It was actually kind of fun. I talked to left-leaning voters from Pennsylvania. Many had already voted for Kamala and were willing to reach out to friends and family to do the same. One young man from Erie County, PA told me he wasn’t just excited, he was ECSTATIC to make Kamala Harris the next President of the United States.

So why don’t I feel better? Where’s my joy? Why am I SO anxious?

Because I remember 8 years ago…

Here I am in my cute little pantsuit (which no longer fits) on November 8, 2016, heading out to help elect Hillary Clinton as our first woman president. I was so excited and happy. Joyful!

And then….

Utter despair, bitter disappointment, disbelief, and a huge amount of anger at every single person who saw fit to pull the lever for Mr. Grab-em-by-the-Pussy Donald Trump.

Tomorrow (US Election Day) is going to be rough. I’m going to wear my new KA-MA-LA t-shirt and buy some celebratory champagne, but I also have to prepare myself for the worst. I have Hillary PTSD. Of course I’m hoping against hope that it’ll be a Kamala landslide and red states will start dropping early on. (My fantasy is that Florida miraculously goes blue by 9pm.) But that’s probably not going to happen. It’s probably going to be some sort of a protracted nail biter like Biden/Trump in 2020. (It took four days from Election Day for CNN to declare Biden the winner.)

The one and only good thing about the November 8, 2016 election was that Massachusetts legalized recreational cannabis the very same night. And that is the only reason I’ve made it through the past eight years.

May the Trump Era in the United States of America end tomorrow.

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