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 👵
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, 2025Left knee was replaced March 16, 2026He says it feels weird to kneel but doesn’t hurt.
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.
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.
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.
I detected a British accent, but she said she was from Miami. Polite smiles. Back to our menus.
Later, while we were discussing the meaning of “agender” vs “non-binary” with some delightfully open GenZs, she jumped back in.
Here’s what we learned:
She’s building a solar farm business in western Massachusetts for which she had to undertake complex government permitting and state house lobbying.
She owns a home in Miami, but had been raised in the UK where she went to “college.” (Oxford was mentioned.)
She lived in western Massachusetts for many years, had two daughters, but then moved to Belgium with her German engineer husband (no longer in the picture) who was a high-level executive with General Electric.
She had a home in Newport, Rhode Island for many years.
She was a realtor and avid home renovator.
She just returned from a trip to Northern Italy where she met George Clooney’s driver.
One of the daughters left marketing and opened a successful antique store in northeastern Massachusetts. The other daughter lives in Austin, Texas, where she’s considering moving to from Miami.
She is a fan/follower of a certain self-help guru which led her to her passion for neuroencoding.
She is a grandmother.
She is a professional life coach.
At this point, I needed to vape a little weed…I mean, it was a lot.
Now, slightly high, I listened to more things being relayed.
She’s a BIG sports fan, especially basketball and football, and her Miami condo overlooks the Miami Heat home arena.
At one point, she purchased and successfully overhauled some sort of professional American football club.
In the past, she worked at the Miami port herding passengers onto various cruise ships, including swinger cruises for which “codes of conduct” contracts were required from passengers.
And this is the one that finally put me over the edge into doubting everything:
She founded and runs of charity dedicated to improving the lives of pediatric cancer patients.
I mean, very admirable, but how on earth does she find time! Does this woman ever just watch TV?
I made a joke about her having a multiple personality disorder. She did not seem offended. We said goodnight, after getting her name so we could connect online.
#1) ME! I pay attention to my instincts and tend to value my own wisdom. I’ve got 58 years worth of life experience. Sometimes great revelations hit me late at night, frequently after smoking marijuana. Weed and writing both help me gain clarity.
I was recently honored to be nominated for my church’s Standing Committee. It’s the 6-member executive team that is responsible for all of the organization’s business affairs, including the annual budget and managing the staff. It’s validating, because it shows that other people respect my wisdom and judgment too.
#2) MY HUSBAND. He’s smart and he doesn’t panic. He’s very good at giving advice on medical concerns (i.e. it’s fine; you’ll be fine; I’ve had that; it’s nothing, etc) and occasionally gives good input on fashion (i.e. I like the red one better). It took him awhile to learn this, but he usually knows when the best advice is just to listen and not give any advice. IF I wanted advice on how to get physically stronger, I would ask him, because he knows a lot about it, but I’m way too lazy for lifting weights. He’s also a reader. In my opinion, people who read books tend to give good advice.
Some years ago, I would’ve put my parents on this list, but I don’t typically seek their advice these days.
My kids are getting better at advice-giving as they get older, especially my daughter who is basically a professional advice-giver through her astrology business.
My son is good for one-off tech tips like “try turning it off and on.”
The Standing Committee is also responsible for managing our beautiful, historic church building, erected in 1841.
Inside is an absolutely stunning, classic New England sanctuary in the Greek Revival architectural style. Services are online every Sunday at 10am (EST) here. Check us out, especially if you’re not “religious” and think traditional church is not for you. Atheists welcomed. We are a member congregation of the UUA. 🌈 ☮️ 💓 🌎 🎶
GenX are not digital natives and I don’t think we use emojis correctly a lot of the time, but personally, I like them. So could we please have a dictionary of their intended meanings? (Nevermind the hidden meanings)
My son played lacrosse for years, so it was exciting when they finally came out with 🥍 (no dictionary required)
But like what the heck is this supposed to be 🧫 ?
And what does this mean 🫡 ?
And why is there still no real marijuana emoji?? (Broccoli 🥦 is stupid.)
Also, our aging eyes are getting bad so it’s hard to actually make them out without very strong readers.
But my main complaint is the lack of a dictionary that goes with them. I want to be able to hold my finger on one and have words or a voice tell me what I’m looking at and what it’s supposed to mean.
We had a good eclipse! We headed out to the back yard about 2:15pm with some wine, weed, and snacks. We put Alexa in the window and asked her to play “eclipse songs” which she did.
We could clearly see the eclipse with our special glasses on, but we discovered that it was very difficult to get a picture of it, even with the glasses covering the camera lens, but we tried.
Failed attempt, but weirdly you can kind of see the reflection of the eclipse in that tiny green dot to the left of the sun
The temperature dropped noticeably as the sky darkened more and more. It was strange.
We could still clearly see our shadows, but the light was eerie. A sunset from above.
We decided to shut off Alexa at the point of maximum coverage (about 94%, I think). The last song she played was “Walking on the Moon” by The Police, which was perfect (a GenX classic). The animals got really quiet too. But then suddenly, a Barred Owl hooted really loudly. It startled us. And then another owl answered. It was pretty wild. I pointed my video camera towards the woods and I caughtthe sound when it happened again. Listen:
The owls really added to our eclipse experience, making it quite magical and mystical. I thought about how this is a time of transition for us.
All in all, a fun afternoon. Something different. It was also fun getting pics from the rest of the family in various locations and seeing all the posts online.
My daughter and her boyfriend managed to get this nice pic about an hour southwest of us:
About an hour after the eclipse, our woodchuck appeared for the first time this season. He’s been living under our shed for several years now. Hello friend.
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