A New Knee Under the Christmas Tree

My Loving Spouse got another new knee for Christmas.  The title of this post is sort of a lie, because we still do not have a Christmas tree.  However, Team Offspring has plans to rectify this situation today (12-16-2016).  They have a tree permit and are going to cut one down, which is very cool.  No, wait, it might be very cold, the weather today is calling for single digits.  Single digit weather for Christmas tree foraging for two Southern California born kids.  Team Offspring has acclimated!

The great news is that My Loving Spouse did get another new knee. He now has very few original parts left, luckily his sense of humor remains intact.  After the quantity of Bad British words uttered (by me), when he got the right knee replaced, I insisted that he find a different surgeon for this left knee.

I had one day to get the new Christmas lights we ordered for the house up before we left for THE OTHER New Knee.  The lights were going to be great.  LED, one long string, clear wiring….one long string, no really, one really long string.  Note to self:  put up lights in the Spring, do a great job and leave them up forever.  No sane Washingtonian puts up Christmas lights after it has snowed.  Check my birth certificate, it does say…Pasadena, California.  I could have skipped the lights, but darn it, I wanted them up.  I wanted something to signify that we were not Grinches, we were just behind!

Number Two Son offered to help me, I think because he likes Christmas lights, or he likes me or because he didn’t want to drive me to the hospital, if I fell of the roof.  We opted to leave out the highest roof line and safely started to string the lights on the hooks we’d put in place a few years before.  Shoes on roofs with snow are slippery, socks, however, stick pretty well, yes, my feet were cold!  Number Two improvised a light installing tool with a broom handle and a cup hook.  Before we knew it, we had the scary part up, next we just needed to run the lights along the first story.  The weather on this day was about 23 (cold degrees).  We did take a few short cuts putting in the cup hooks, because the darn things did not want to screw into the cold house, so the first story lighting is not as straight and taunt as I’d like, but they are up, they are on and no one got hurt.  We will redo the whole thing properly this spring or at least this summer, for sure by fall, but never again in winter.  I love that we are lit up, even if we do have a glowing ball of light in the right corner of the porch where the other multiple hundreds of feet of lights remain waiting to be strung.As far as the other New Knee, it went extremely well.  The surgeon was spectacular, My Loving Spouse, had a spinal block and will happily tell you how he could hear the procedure being done, if you have a strong stomach.  My Cousins were a blessing as they came and took me to lunch and sat with me during the procedure.  The hospital was stellar, relieving my early doubts when I saw that it was surrounded by cemeteries.

We are home, he is well, the house is lit up and Team Offspring is back with a tree, and I am blessed.