Sunday, December 21, 2008

Dec. 21: Hard surfaces meet soft skin

This week has been busy. The company I worked for in Alice called and wanted me again for one more week. So I had to get out of bed again and drive almost a hour each way for 4 more days of work. We think we're done over there but we'll see.

Larry spent the week trying to find a card shuffler, getting a hair cut, swimming and playing cards in the club house. Our friends here in the park are really good about hauling him around with them to keep him entertained.

On the down side, Wednesday as I was coming down our stairs from the bedroom to the kitchen, I fell. I have a really bad sprain of my left ankle and my left shoulder has something wrong with it but not sure what. I pretty much landed on that shoulder and right now I can't lift my whole arm forward. I can more it backwards and up about half way to my side. After working with my arm last night, I can now raise it up in front of me without too much grimacing.

Then Thursday, Larry fell over a parking block and skinned up his knee really bad and tore up the palm of his right hand. It also has a really bad bruise - going down his wrist. But we applied polysporin and dressings so it's dried up really well. Needless to say, everyone in the park is picking on Larry (everyone else is showing me the respect that I obviously deserve by not mentioning my injuries or klutziness too much). They want to help him walk. They yell at him to walk slowly. They ask if he should have his glasses on. They offer to help him up and down curbs or pot holes. In general, they are really having a good time with him.

We both are moving more carefully and slowly, because as you know, after a fall you find more sore places. Fortunately, I don't think falling down screwed up either of our backs further.

We went to the hockey game Friday night and I got a picture of Elise and me with the Sting Ray's mascot, Rascal. However, the one Larry took has us frowning at him because he was having a hard time working my camera. The picture here is the one Tom took of us finally laughing at Larry. Tom also took a picture of me taking a picture of all of them.





Here's one of me taking a picture of all of us who came to the game from the park; and my picture of the group.






When ever the Sting Rays make a goal, a small group of fans throw baby sting rays out onto the ice. Still haven't decided if that's really cool or really gross. We did win so we saw the little boogers twice and once again at the end of the game.




This poinsettia tree is right next door to us - you can see our camper in the background. It is the largest poinsettia I have ever seen. It's a little spindly this year but still impressive.






We have 3 different ants around our camper that Larry goes out and tries to keep contained with chemicals. One of them is this leaf cutter. They are the larger of the three and I probably don't have to worry about them getting in the camper. They will, however, kill a tree if given the opportunity. Of the other two smaller ants, one is a fire ant so we try to stay on top of them and keep the crumbs and sugar cleaned off the counters.


The cats "seem" to be getting along better. Today they chased each other back and forth never coming very close. When they got too close, Gypsy would hiss and swat at Buster. He held his ground this time and chased her. They went back and forth for quite a while until I think they pooped each other out. Maybe there is hope yet that they'll start liking each other.

Tonight we went on a tour of the city to see the lights. An area of the city is know as Candy Cane Lane. It's a whole block of these large candy canes as shown in the picture with lots of neighboring block homes being decorated. I couldn't get the lane of canes because there were too many cars coming at me.






However, I took these three along Ocean Drive. This street has lots of big beautiful homes. I wanted to get some palm trees decorated since being from Kansas I can associate palm trees with the Christmas season. I also got some Mesquite trees in the circle drive way and a large Live Oak with red lights--all trees of Texas.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I vote "gross" on the baby stingrays. According to the boss we are still coming. I guess I'd better double-check our reservations.

darth