KNEE UPDATE and hopeful a new beginning for 2026

Here I am 4 months out from knee replacement surgery!  I am very very pleased with this out come even if it isn’t a totally symptom free knee at this point.  And I accept the fact that leg exercises - and many other kinds of exercises will be necessary to recover and then maintain for the rest of whatever years are left to me.

Wow - that last statement sounded down.  It isn’t.  Seriously, I am so very grateful to have made it to 78 with all my faculties and now a renewed energy thanks to medical science.  So the statement whatever “years I have left” are just a nod to the reality that I made it to an older age and a desire to make those remaining years as positive and healthy as I possibly can.

Our Christmas was wonderful!!  My family celebrates on Christmas Eve.  That frees up Christmas Day for my daughter-in-law and my son to visit with her family.  And this year my daughter brought a date - a man she has been seeing for almost a year.  It was a full house and it was joyful.  And, of course, there was my grand daughter.  You can’t be too down when it is Christmas and she is around.  I can honestly say that my typical Christmas sadness (due to loosing both parents around the Christmas holiday) never entered my mind the whole evening.  It was wonderful to have such positive memories to replace the old sad ones that previously lingered through this season. 

Now on to 2026!  I am now focused on a few simple desires for this year.

1. I need to return to blogging.  I miss it when I don’t blog.  Blogging reminds me of all the things in my life I am grateful for.  I tend to ignore gratitude when I am not blogging.
2. I need to cluster our medical appointments better.  My husband and I have a lot of those.  I attend all his because he is blind so everything is double for me.  In the past I would limit appointments to one a day.  Doing that ate up our whole month.  Going forward I plan to group appointments into one week of the month.  We will see how that goes, but it is a goal. 
3. I need to focus on my health overall more - not just my legs.  That includes cooking better options and exercising more than just my legs.  Getting into some kind of walking routine will also be a focus.
4. I need to feed my knitting/crochet/weaving part of my life.  And if I make point #3 happen, point #4 will happen too. 

Notice - these are not resolutions or goals.  It is simply what I desire to do. And actually they are what I used to do before my knee became the focus of everything in my life.  Having harnessed the knee pain has made so many other things possible!  A perfect example?  This Christmas I made Christmas cookies!  It has been years since I did that.  Maybe a decade.

And I have so many fiber knitting plans.  That creative spark seemed to die out earlier in 2025 when so much of my life was centered around pain and how to live with it.  I will put together another post on just those plans.  

Other posts are perking in my brain again.  More to come. Promise.

Thanks to those who return time and time again.  I don’t deserve such faithful readers - but I am totally grateful for them