Family

Pre-Op For Cataract Surgery

DSCN2452 — Flags In Front Of The VA Medical Center In Birmingham

See those flags up there? they are blowing so hard in the wind they look like they are upside down! And it was cold!

We spent the whole day today at the VA Hospital in Birmingham getting pre-op stuff done for FabGrandpa’s cataract surgery. We have been working towards getting this surgery done since November 1 of last year. The appointment with the specialist was two Saturdays ago. They told us to call a week after the exam to find out when the surgery would be scheduled. When I called, they said they didn’t have any time to schedule until the end of April. I was not happy with that, because we have to leave here by April 12 to go back to work in Arizona.

The lady was nice enough but still told me she couldn’t do any better than April 30. I told her to put him on a waiting list in case someone cancelled. Luckily, she called me back in less than 10 minutes and said they had a slot to do the surgery on March 12. That means his post op 30 day check up will be on April 9, and we can get back to work on time!

Today, we had another consultation with the opthalomogist at the eye clinic, who took measurements for a new acrylic lens implant they are going to put in during the surgery. The doctor also answered all our questions about important things like how they handle pain management, how long the surgery will take, and how long FabGrandpa will have to abstain from playing “Left For Dead” after surgery.

Then, we went back over to the main VA Medical Center, where they drew blood and did an EKG. We also visited the anesthesiologist and the people in the Eligibility. The last stop was at the pharmacy to pick up three prescriptions eye drops. All this took about four hours, but it was well worth the time spent as we have no other health insurance. So, next Friday, March 12th, is the big day.

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Amelia’s Baby Quilt Is Finished.

Karen · 5 Comments

I enjoyed making this little quilt. I started out with a “turnover”, which is a stack of pre-cut 6″ triangles. It went together really quickly. It really didn’t take much time to make–it could probably be made in just a weekend.

I always enjoy taking pictures when I am finished with a quilt. I try to pretty places to hang them so the pictures look more interesting. These were taken today at Payne Lake Campground. The sun was shining, with a clear sky and a gentle breeze, quite a nice day after a winter of mostly freezing temps or rainy days.

The next time I have a picture of this quilt will be with its intended recipient, Miss Amelia Summer, who will be making her debut sometime in May. She’s due on May 23, I think, but will probably be a bit early. She will be my second granddaughter. I can hardly wait!

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A Sneak Peak At The New Baby Quilt

Karen · 8 Comments

These are the blocks, all laid out on my bed so I can see how they look together. I still need to sew the sashing and borders on. I am loving it! I tried to lay them out approximately as far apart as they will be with the sashing strips. I go in the bedroom and sew when I get frustrated working on the website. Yes, still working on it, tweaking things, and getting the FabGrandma Reviews side of it working. It is easier getting the review one done because of all the things I learned while doing this one, but it is still a pain in the part I sit on!

We had to go to Tuscaloosa again on Monday for yet another appointment for FabGrandpa. The VA is checking every part of him, one thing at a time. This is all good, but dang, it is soooo time consuming. He is scheduled for a colonoscopy next week, then another appointment at the end of February for the doctor to give the results all the tests.Then another appointment with an eye doctor for another test. I think Fabgrandpa gets a diploma when he has the last test, ha ha ha ha!

On Tuesday, we went to Greensboro to get new batteries for the truck. It has been taking several tries to get it to crank on cold mornings, and after thinking about it for a minute, we decided that we got the existing ones when we were working in Texas, so that would make them six years old. No wonder they are worn out. So, $207 later, she’s cranking up on the first try every time.

Also, while we were in Greensboro, I asked around to see if they had a food bank, and they do, at the local Habitat For Humanity office. I went in and talked to them about what I items I had to donate, and they referred me to a woman in town who is on a gluten free diet and would be glad to receive them. I’m going to meet her sometime next week.

I finally got a direct deposit I was waiting for this week. It was supposed to be here the first week of January, and I have called several times over the past few weeks trying to find out what the problem was. They finally figured out what the holdup was, and I saw the deposit in my account yesterday morning. So, I could finally call the airline and get a ticket for FabGranddaughter Sarah to come to visit us in March on her spring break. I can not wait! She’s flying to Atlanta, where we will pick her up and go to our hometown. Her dad, step-mother, brother (the FabGrandson Michael), and half-brother (the FabGrandson Owen), are all coming from Maryland. We’ll spend a week in a motel, doing fun things. It’s going to be great!

Oh, if you want to win a gift pack from Maniszhewitz, go to FabGrandma Reviews and make a comment. I’m giving away three prizes. The products are kosher and gluten free, but they taste really good. Anyone would love them. Sorry, United States residents only.

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Let Me Tell You About My Week

Karen · 9 Comments

Monday turned out to be the only slow day we had. On Tuesday, we had to drive over to Marion, about twenty five miles away, to take those little sample cards the doctor always wants you to take home, and, um, fingerpaint. You know the ones. For the stool samples. They didn’t give me a mailer envelope to send them back and when I called and asked what to do with them, they told me I had to bring them over there. It was a nice enough drive:

OK, so it wasn’t. It rained on us there and back. But the scenery was like this all the way. This is the Correta Scott King Memorial Highway. Marion is the county seat of Perry County, where she was born.

On Wednesday, the UPS guy showed up with a big box of goodies from Mixes From The Heartland. Since I write reviews for my own FabGrandma Reviews and for MomGadget, I often get things in the mail to try and review. But this was a big box! I couldn’t believe that she sent me all this stuff! I’ll be writing reviews of some of these next week.

Back in November I had entered a gluten free recipe contest. That contest was sponsored by Glutino, and the grand prize was a years supply of their gluten free pretzels. I happen to LOVE those pretzels. I eat them for a snack in the afternoons when I am working. I also use them crushed up as a topping for casseroles. I entered my famous squash casserole recipe, and I won that grand prize. When they say you win a years supply, that means they give you 52 bags of them. They are shipping them to me 12 bags at a time, one every twelve weeks for a year. So, on Thursday night, my new boyfriend, the UPS guy, showed up again, with the first box of pretzels:

FabGrandpa was not as happy as I was. He was asking me where the heck I was going to put all those pretzels. I told him not to worry about it, because I would find a place. I could put them under the bed you know. I also plan to send a couple bags to my daughter, Becca and a couple to my friend’s granddaughter who was just diagnosed with celiac a couple of months ago. I am quite sure I can eat them all up by the time the next case arrives.

On Friday morning, we had to drive up to Tuscaloosa for FabGrandpa’s eye exam. He has a cataract and needs surgery for it. After they looked him over, they told him he has to go to a specialist in Birmingham, so we are waiting for them to call us with the appointment date. Look at those peepers!

Friday night my boyfriend showed up again. This time, he had three huge boxes for me. I had been talking to a company about doing some reviews of their products, and I thought they would send me a couple of things, you know, like maybe a box of cookies or a can of soup or something. Well, they sent me a whole CASE of every item they make that is gluten free. And now FabGrandpa is about to poop a brick, because there is nowhere to keep all that stuff in our little travel trailer.

See those three humongous boxes? they were all full. It is a very good thing that there is a maintenance shop behind our camp host spot here. Ha, ha, ha, I was laughing, and feeling very blessed that I received all that stuff, and he? Well, let’s just say he wasn’t. I think he’s jealous of the boyfriend, he he he. So, I will be doing some reviews of those products too, next week at both FabGrandma Reviews and at MomGadget, and I’ll be having some give aways to kick off my new website. I guess I finished that just in time!

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Moving Is Such Hard Work!

Karen · 12 Comments

When my children were growing up, we moved 17 times in 5 years. I was a divorced mother of three trying to make ends meet. A lot of the time, that meant moving to a cheaper place, or moving in with friends for a while. We learned to pack up quickly and how to load the car (No, I didn’t have a truck) so that we could make the least number of trips possible to get the job done. Sometimes I did all myself, and sometimes I had help. It was always easier with help.

Moving my blog from Blogspot to a hosted website has been a HUGE job. And don’t think I have done it all myself. I don’t know enough to do it all by myself. To start off, Gayla from MomGadget has given me great encouragement. We “met” through the internet a couple of years ago. She was one of six women who were blogging on a group site called “Seven Babes A Blogging”, which is now defunct. They had one guest blogger each month, hence the Seven in the name. I was the guest blogger over there for the month of December, 2007. Just the fact that they let me blog with them was a huge encouragement to me, as I felt like I was playing with the big girls by doing that.

Then in November of 2009, I ran into her again, (online, of course) when she was looking for writers at MomGadget. I signed up and, and that sort of opened the door for me to ask her some questions, and before you know it, we were getting FabGrandma.com built. Gayla gave me advice on how to go about purchasing a domain name and how to get it hosted (I had no idea where to start). She installed my blog and Studio Press Lifestyle Theme you see here (the theme is the how the blog looks to you, purty, huh?). And she did it all in about two days. I was soooo impressed with her service. Thank you so much, Gayla.

After Gayla got through with the initial software installation and configuration for me, FabGrandma.com was all ready for me to move in. So, I got here, and I couldn’t believe how much room I have over here! At the old site, I only had one “room”, much like living in my travel trailer. There was only so much I could do over there. Not that I need a mansion, you know, I just wanted more room to move around, more places to store my ideas. And boy do I have that here! Just look at all those pages and linky things! But, it still had some “decorating” and remodeling to do. And I had no clue what to do or where to start!

It’s not that I didn’t know what I wanted. Oh, no! I have been thinking about and planning my new website for a couple of years. I knew EXACTLY what I wanted it to look like and what I wanted it to do. I just didn’t know how to do it. So, the next step was to just start. I worked on it for almost a week, many hours a day (good thing I am unemployed right now.) And I got it looking more and more like I wanted it to. All that work involved teaching myself some basic html, from HTML Basic. It’s like trying to learn German a phrase at a time.

At the end of the week, I was at a place where I had gone as far as I could go, but it still didn’t look like I wanted it to look. As I was sitting here wondering what the heck I was going to do about it, I remember a young man I had “met” online a couple of years ago. Brandon lives with his lovely wife in North Carolina. He has been reading my blog for a while, and has corresponded with me on several occasions because he is interested in the fulltime RV’er lifestyle. I emailed him and offered to pay him to do some work for me on here, with a list of what I needed done, and asked him how much he would charge me to do the work. I knew from reading his blog that he was looking for a way to earn some extra money, and I wanted to help.

Imagine my surprise when he emailed me back, and said that someone had done him a kind deed recently, and he would do this thing for me as a “pay it forward” kind of thing. What a nice guy! And thank you, Brandon, because the work you did was exactly what I needed done. You should go into the web design business.

So, here it is, brand spanking new! I think the majority of the work is done. I am just giddy with excitement. Take the grand tour and let me know what you think!

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Hurray! I Got Some Sewing Done Today

Karen · 15 Comments

I have so many projects to get done that sometimes I don’t know where to begin. I made a rule for myself a couple of years ago that I have to finish one thing before I can start another, because I had gotten into the habit of not finishing things. I would make the quilt top, but not follow through with putting the layers together and quilting the project. Since I made that rule for myself, I have finished lots of things.

I DO still buy fabric, and cut things out before I finish the project at hand, but this just gives me something to pick up and sew. Today, I finished sewing the star pieces together for the Star of Bethlehem quilt I am making for Seth and Sarah.

If that looks familiar, it may be because I am making one very similar to it for Becca and Ken. There is only one fabric that is different in the two quilts. These are king size, and I am sending them out to a long arm quilter to be quilted. My sewing machine won’t handle that big of a job. Here is a photo of Becca’s quilt ready to go:

Yes, I was working on it in the maintenance shop. I had to clean of the work bench and tape some plastic on it to have a space big enough to work on. Sometimes I go to a quilt shop and use the tables in their back room. I have never been turned down for doing that, as long as they don’t have lessons going on at the time.

I had bought some yellow and purple fabric for the new baby’s quilt when a month or so ago:

But then this cute cute girlie girl fabric came in the mail last week:

So now our new little missy will be getting this purty fabric called “OH, Cherry, Oh” for her first quilt from her FabGrandma. I haven’t decided on a pattern yet, but I think I am going to let the fabric tell me what to do. I got what is called a “turnover”, which is a pack of 40 pre-cut triangles, and three 1 yard pieces. I love those pre-cuts–they make it so easy to get started doing something.

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Survivor!

Karen · 8 Comments

On January 10, 2001, my sweet husband, FabGrandpa, was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue. It was the worst day of our lives. We were stunned! We cried, we spent hours just looking at each other, holding on to each other, crying, trying to talk about the unspeakable. That is a day neither one of will ever forget. It was just the beginning. Today, I am so proud to say, “My husband is a 9 year survivor of cancer!” Let us all rejoice!

Oral cancer is something I had never heard of until that day. But look at this:

“More than 34,000 Americans will be diagnosed with oral or pharyngeal cancer this year. It will cause over 8,000 deaths, killing roughly 1 person per hour, 24 hours per day. Of those 34,000 newly diagnosed individuals, only half will be alive in 5 years. This is a number which has not significantly improved in decades. The death rate for oral cancer is higher than that of cancers which we hear about routinely such as cervical cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, laryngeal cancer, cancer of the testes, endocrine system cancers such as thyroid, or skin cancer (malignant melanoma). If you expand the definition of oral cancers to include cancer of the larynx, for which the risk factors are the same, the numbers of diagnosed cases grow to 41,000 individuals, and 12,500 deaths per year in the US alone. Worldwide the problem is much greater, with over 400,000 new cases being found each year.

The death rate associated with this cancer is particularly high not because it is hard to discover or diagnose, but due to the cancer being routinely discovered late in its development. Often it is only discovered when the cancer has metastasized to another location, most likely the lymph nodes of the neck. Prognosis at this stage of discovery is significantly worse than when it is caught in a localized intra oral area. Besides the metastasis, at these later stages, the primary tumor has had time to invade deep into local structures. Oral cancer is particularly dangerous because in its early stages it may not be noticed by the patient, as it can frequently prosper without producing pain or symptoms they might readily recognize, and because it has a high risk of producing second, primary tumors. This means that patients who survive a first encounter with the disease, have up to a 20 times higher risk of developing a second cancer. This heightened risk factor can last for 5 to 10 years after the first occurrence. There are several types of oral cancers, but around 90% are squamous cell carcinomas.” (from the website of the Oral Cancer Foundation)

FabGrandpa’s cancer was found early, because it was on his tongue and visible. He had gone to the dentist for a checkup. His dentist told him he needed to go to an oral surgeon without delay. The next day, he was in the oral surgeon’s office having a biopsy done. A week later we got the devasting news. He was lucky that they found it so early, one factor that I am sure has contributed to his 9 year survival.

The exam for oral cancer is simple and painless. It can be done by a dentist, oral surgeon, ear-nose-throat doctor, or a general practitioner. All you have to do is ask your doctor to do it next time you go.

“Besides a visual examination of all the tissues in your mouth, your doctor will feel the floor of your mouth and portions of the back of your throat with his fingers, in the search for abnormalities. A thorough oral screening also includes indirect examination of the nasopharynx and larynx, and involves manually feeling the neck for swollen lymph nodes, and other abnormalities such as hardened masses. Your doctor will also check the mouth for white patches, red patches, ulcerations, lumps, loose teeth, and review your dental x-rays for abnormalities. Be sure to tell the doctor if you have been a tobacco user in any form. Tobacco use is implicated in more than 75% of all oral cancers. After the physical examination of your mouth, if your doctor finds any areas that are suspicious, he may recommend a biopsy. This is simply taking a small portion of the suspicious tissue for examination under a microscope.

You should always contact your doctor or dentist immediately if you notice the following symptoms in yourself or a loved one:

A sore or lesion in the mouth that does not heal within two weeks.
A lump or thickening in the cheek.
A white or red patch on the gums, tongue, tonsil, or lining of the mouth.
A sore throat or a feeling that something is caught in the throat.
Difficulty chewing or swallowing.
Difficulty moving the jaw or tongue.
Numbness of the tongue or other area of the mouth.
Swelling of the jaw that causes dentures to fit poorly or become uncomfortable.”

Want to help us celebrate FabGrandpa’s 9 years of survival? Make a $9 donation to the Oral Cancer Foundation today! But even if you don’t make a donation, make yourself a reminder to get an oral cancer screening the next time you see your doctor or dentist. It could save your life.

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It’s A Girl!

Karen · 7 Comments

Remember back in the dark ages when we old grandma’s were having our babies,and we had to actually wait until we woke up after the delivery to find out if we had a boy or a girl? Sigh…

We found out yesterday that our newest FabGrandchild is going to be a girl. We are all so excited and can hardly wait until May for her to get here. The proud parents, my son and his wife, are still debating names for her. I’m just calling her Baby Girl until she’s named.

I was so happy to know there is going to be another FabGranddaughter, that I drove 35 miles to Tuscaloosa yesterday to go shopping. OK, we also had to go get FabGrandpa some new pants, but seriously, I couldn’t wait another minute to look at girlie girl baby clothes.

Isn’t that just the most adorable outfit?

And ooooooooo

ahhhhhhhhh! cutie cute cute! You know Fabgrandma is going to be sewing for this girlie soon!

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