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Betty LaRue

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19 hours ago, Ed Rooney said:

 

I feel many of you have been struggling with an answer of what to get me for Christmas 2021. I believe this is the case, because I've not gotten anything so far. 🤨

 

I believe I've found the answer. Perhaps a bit pricey but so practical. You all might consider getting one for Gen Downunder too. She's been having trouble with repairs lately. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9XhLca9JSk

 

 

 

Great colour for the Australian red dust! 

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19 minutes ago, Allan Bell said:

Just to wish all my friends  on the forums and elsewhere a very Happy New Year.

New Year Nye GIF by INTO ACTION

 

Allan

 

 

A very Happy 2022 to you Allan. I will get there before you LOL!! 

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I had a meeting with my two daughters this evening. We were hammering out details about my surgery. Who will be caring for Echo while I’m in the hospital, and who will be with me when I get out. Making lists about what aid assistant devices I need to rent, such as a walker with a seat, a reacher, and other things.  Also moving items I use every day to cabinet heights.
It’s 10 days to launch on the 13th.

My feelings? Dread mixed with hope.

I know I’ll be on pain medication and I hate taking it. I don’t like feeling fuzzy headed and out of it. I had pain pills of about 20 prescribed when I had shoulder, then knee surgery. I took only 2 or 3 of them each time only to get past the fresh-cut pain, then went on Tylenol for a couple of days. I’m told I won’t be able to skimp on them with this surgery, which the whole lumbar spine will have rods and screws. There’s the dread.

The hope is that I’ll come through it fine, and eventually will get my life back.

I’ll check with Medicare to see if I can get Home Care several times a day for a while.

If stubbornness and perseverance counts for anything, I’ll do fine.

 

I was 40 years old when I learned to snow ski in the worst circumstances possible, in New Mexico. It was a trip made on the cheap so the Girl Scout troop could afford to go.  The slopes were icy with rocks sticking through here and there. My oldest daughter and I (she had never skied before, either) managed to slide about 10 feet before falling down. Then trying to get upright on ice, climbing our ski poles hand over hand, only to fall in 2-5 seconds again. All the way down the mountain.

I was so beat up, exhausted and sore I could barely walk at the end of the day. My knees were swollen. I had bruises. It was a 5 minute ordeal that evening to get out of a chair…inch by inch scooting my bottom to the edge of the seat before rising with a groan.
I was starving, but refused pizza dinner with the Girl Scout group I was there to help chaperone because I was unable to help prepare the homemade pizzas. If I couldn’t work, I wouldn’t eat. Unfair to the others.

I snowplowed in my sleep all night, skiers will know what I mean. The next morning, Debbie and I gritted our teeth and hit the slopes again for more of the same. Debbie was as stubborn as I.  My youngest daughter, a Girl Scout, was a ski bunny. I did go back and ski for years to come, but we picked resorts that actually had decent snow and powder in Colorado, and I got much better at skiing and learned to parallel instead of snow plowing.

 

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36 minutes ago, Betty LaRue said:

I had a meeting with my two daughters this evening. We were hammering out details about my surgery. Who will be caring for Echo while I’m in the hospital, and who will be with me when I get out. Making lists about what aid assistant devices I need to rent, such as a walker with a seat, a reacher, and other things.  Also moving items I use every day to cabinet heights.
It’s 10 days to launch on the 13th.

My feelings? Dread mixed with hope.

I know I’ll be on pain medication and I hate taking it. I don’t like feeling fuzzy headed and out of it. I had pain pills of about 20 prescribed when I had shoulder, then knee surgery. I took only 2 or 3 of them each time only to get past the fresh-cut pain, then went on Tylenol for a couple of days. I’m told I won’t be able to skimp on them with this surgery, which the whole lumbar spine will have rods and screws. There’s the dread.

The hope is that I’ll come through it fine, and eventually will get my life back.

I’ll check with Medicare to see if I can get Home Care several times a day for a while.

If stubbornness and perseverance counts for anything, I’ll do fine.

 

I was 40 years old when I learned to snow ski in the worst circumstances possible, in New Mexico. It was a trip made on the cheap so the Girl Scout troop could afford to go.  The slopes were icy with rocks sticking through here and there. My oldest daughter and I (she had never skied before, either) managed to slide about 10 feet before falling down. Then trying to get upright on ice, climbing our ski poles hand over hand, only to fall in 2-5 seconds again. All the way down the mountain.

I was so beat up, exhausted and sore I could barely walk at the end of the day. My knees were swollen. I had bruises. It was a 5 minute ordeal that evening to get out of a chair…inch by inch scooting my bottom to the edge of the seat before rising with a groan.
I was starving, but refused pizza dinner with the Girl Scout group I was there to help chaperone because I was unable to help prepare the homemade pizzas. If I couldn’t work, I wouldn’t eat. Unfair to the others.

I snowplowed in my sleep all night, skiers will know what I mean. The next morning, Debbie and I gritted our teeth and hit the slopes again for more of the same. Debbie was as stubborn as I.  My youngest daughter, a Girl Scout, was a ski bunny. I did go back and ski for years to come, but we picked resorts that actually had decent snow and powder in Colorado, and I got much better at skiing and learned to parallel instead of snow plowing.

 


Betty, it is so good that you preparing yourself and family well ahead of time. Dread and hope is a healthy mix of feelings.  It is easy for me to say you’ll do well but I think with your fortitude and tough spirit, you will make your recovery just another challenge unlike the many you have faced, and beaten, in your well lived life!  You will have your Forum friends all rooting for you to have a great outcome! I hope you can keep us posted, as best you can, après surgery.  Til then stay strong!

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1 hour ago, Michael Ventura said:


Betty, it is so good that you preparing yourself and family well ahead of time. Dread and hope is a healthy mix of feelings.  It is easy for me to say you’ll do well but I think with your fortitude and tough spirit, you will make your recovery just another challenge unlike the many you have faced, and beaten, in your well lived life!  You will have your Forum friends all rooting for you to have a great outcome! I hope you can keep us posted, as best you can, après surgery.  Til then stay strong!

Thank you, Michael. I needed to hear that. My daughters are full of “you won’t be able to do this, you won’t be able to do that.” I think they are afraid I have my head in the clouds and want me to be prepared for how bad it will be for awhile.

The thing is, I’m a realist, and understand this surgical recovery absolutely won’t be a walk in the park. I get it. But at the same time, I’m an optimist and I choose to look at it like a mountain I’m determined to conquer, rather than lay around saying “poor me, nobody’s felt pain like this.” That is so not who I am.

I think the girls are afraid I’ll come home from the hospital and want to brush up on the disco dancing I once loved to see how my new back works! 😆 And who knows, I might just do that. (Not)

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Spent the entire week skiing in New Hampshire, USA.  New bindings and not a problem.

Got a bit of "Frost Bite" doing video of my daughter, but it was good.  Just signed up

for a "parent's race" Slalom and GS.  Have not raced in 30 years.  

 

Not thinking about stock images much right now?

 

Chuck

 

 

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With the family members safely back home after their seasonal visits, I was able to use the last of the warm spell to fix the wind damaged fence on the allotment. Swinging a sledge hammer to smash the previously installed concrete bases was hard physical work, I had to stop and rest while my heart rate subsided. I was able to use reclaimed timber, cut from rotted posts, to make wooden spurs for the repairs and coach screws to attach the 4 by 4 spurs to the posts. Rammed gravel held the spurs in place, future repairers won't have to excavate concrete blocks. Hopefully the repairs will outlast me. Got home tired but happy. No photography involved.

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5 hours ago, Bryan said:

With the family members safely back home after their seasonal visits, I was able to use the last of the warm spell to fix the wind damaged fence on the allotment. Swinging a sledge hammer to smash the previously installed concrete bases was hard physical work, I had to stop and rest while my heart rate subsided. I was able to use reclaimed timber, cut from rotted posts, to make wooden spurs for the repairs and coach screws to attach the 4 by 4 spurs to the posts. Rammed gravel held the spurs in place, future repairers won't have to excavate concrete blocks. Hopefully the repairs will outlast me. Got home tired but happy. No photography involved.

 

You is one handy dude, Bryan.

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11 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

I had a meeting with my two daughters this evening. We were hammering out details about my surgery. Who will be caring for Echo while I’m in the hospital, and who will be with me when I get out. Making lists about what aid assistant devices I need to rent, such as a walker with a seat, a reacher, and other things.  Also moving items I use every day to cabinet heights.
It’s 10 days to launch on the 13th.

My feelings? Dread mixed with hope.

I know I’ll be on pain medication and I hate taking it. I don’t like feeling fuzzy headed and out of it. I had pain pills of about 20 prescribed when I had shoulder, then knee surgery. I took only 2 or 3 of them each time only to get past the fresh-cut pain, then went on Tylenol for a couple of days. I’m told I won’t be able to skimp on them with this surgery, which the whole lumbar spine will have rods and screws. There’s the dread.

The hope is that I’ll come through it fine, and eventually will get my life back.

I’ll check with Medicare to see if I can get Home Care several times a day for a while.

If stubbornness and perseverance counts for anything, I’ll do fine.

 

I was 40 years old when I learned to snow ski in the worst circumstances possible, in New Mexico. It was a trip made on the cheap so the Girl Scout troop could afford to go.  The slopes were icy with rocks sticking through here and there. My oldest daughter and I (she had never skied before, either) managed to slide about 10 feet before falling down. Then trying to get upright on ice, climbing our ski poles hand over hand, only to fall in 2-5 seconds again. All the way down the mountain.

I was so beat up, exhausted and sore I could barely walk at the end of the day. My knees were swollen. I had bruises. It was a 5 minute ordeal that evening to get out of a chair…inch by inch scooting my bottom to the edge of the seat before rising with a groan.
I was starving, but refused pizza dinner with the Girl Scout group I was there to help chaperone because I was unable to help prepare the homemade pizzas. If I couldn’t work, I wouldn’t eat. Unfair to the others.

I snowplowed in my sleep all night, skiers will know what I mean. The next morning, Debbie and I gritted our teeth and hit the slopes again for more of the same. Debbie was as stubborn as I.  My youngest daughter, a Girl Scout, was a ski bunny. I did go back and ski for years to come, but we picked resorts that actually had decent snow and powder in Colorado, and I got much better at skiing and learned to parallel instead of snow plowing.

 

 

I sounds like you will be well-prepared and with lots of reinforcements when needed. Just remind them that caregivers are not supposed to encourage helplessness. They are going to want to do the things you can do for yourself and they mustn't. Not that I think you will just lie there and let them do it. I was reading up on what they do in surgery to a destroyed talo-navigular joint and convinced myself that I must keep doing all my BORING exercises so I never have to get the surgery. l know you will fight your way to a complete recovery and be a new and stronger person without all the wretched problems you have been having. Go Betty!

 

Paulette

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8 hours ago, Bryan said:

With the family members safely back home after their seasonal visits, I was able to use the last of the warm spell to fix the wind damaged fence on the allotment. Swinging a sledge hammer to smash the previously installed concrete bases was hard physical work, I had to stop and rest while my heart rate subsided. I was able to use reclaimed timber, cut from rotted posts, to make wooden spurs for the repairs and coach screws to attach the 4 by 4 spurs to the posts. Rammed gravel held the spurs in place, future repairers won't have to excavate concrete blocks. Hopefully the repairs will outlast me. Got home tired but happy. No photography involved.

Bryan, you never cease to amaze me. But I did cringe about your swinging the sledge hammer. My husband bought a used ski boat around 2004. Our plans were to fish from it. With permission from the acreage landowner behind our property, we brought the boat in from behind after my husband built a wide gate so we could park the boat in our back yard.

I decided to buy large flagstones and install them so the boat wouldn’t rut the yard.  I dug the stones into the ground, but some tree roots got in the way. I swung a wood-splitting maul because it was the only tool we had with enough heft to do the job. To this day I regret it because it really hurt my neck, I think with permanent damage. It wasn’t the swinging of it so much, but when it landed on the root. The shock traced right through my arms to my neck.
Please be careful, Mr. Superman.

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3 hours ago, John Morrison said:

 

Sounds like a good opportunity to photograph the inside of a hospital.  😎

John, I actually thought of it. Then, this little movie played out in my head. I’m lying there drugged out of my mind when the floor cleaner comes in and helps him/herself to my camera.

I shouldn’t be so suspicious, but I have heard of hospital thefts.

 

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2 hours ago, NYCat said:

 

I sounds like you will be well-prepared and with lots of reinforcements when needed. Just remind them that caregivers are not supposed to encourage helplessness. They are going to want to do the things you can do for yourself and they mustn't. Not that I think you will just lie there and let them do it. I was reading up on what they do in surgery to a destroyed talo-navigular joint and convinced myself that I must keep doing all my BORING exercises so I never have to get the surgery. l know you will fight your way to a complete recovery and be a new and stronger person without all the wretched problems you have been having. Go Betty!

 

Paulette

Yours is the voice of reason, Paulette. I understand about your foot. I did everything I could, physical therapy and home exercises for my back, until at last they didn’t work anymore. Maybe you and I should shop a junk yard for parts. ☺️

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12 hours ago, Chuck Nacke said:

Spent the entire week skiing in New Hampshire, USA.  New bindings and not a problem.

Got a bit of "Frost Bite" doing video of my daughter, but it was good.  Just signed up

for a "parent's race" Slalom and GS.  Have not raced in 30 years.  

 

Not thinking about stock images much right now?

 

Chuck

 

 

Sounds like fun, Chuck. So, as a skier, I'm sure you can remember the first day you put on skis and the first thing you learned in able to stop is how to snowplow.  And if you are like everyone else I talked to about it, that first night you also might have done it in your sleep. Really hard on the legs, and it woke me up with cramps. Ahhh, those days.

The frostbite from taking your gloves off to video?  There’s been some brutal cold recently.

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Growing up in Florida, I learned how to waterski early, but I was in my thirties before I ever tried downhill skiing. The first time on a real mountain, I snowplowed the whole way down the three mile run, and words flew out of my mouth I didn’t even realize were a part of my vocabulary. 

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5 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

Sounds like fun, Chuck. So, as a skier, I'm sure you can remember the first day you put on skis and the first thing you learned in able to stop is how to snowplow.  And if you are like everyone else I talked to about it, that first night you also might have done it in your sleep. Really hard on the legs, and it woke me up with cramps. Ahhh, those days.

The frostbite from taking your gloves off to video?  There’s been some brutal cold recently.

 

My first time snow skiing was in high school with a bunch of friends. Funny enough, I never learned to snowplow.  Hockey was popular in my family so I took to doing the "hockey stop" but with skis.  I was okay but not great on skis.  On that first outing at the ski slope in Pennsylvania, I somehow got on a chairlift that takes you to the top of the most difficult run.  I stood there paralyzed with fear but I finally worked up the nerve to head down the slope as there was no other real option.  People were zipping by me and cursing me along the way, I was a hazard for sure.  It seemed like forever to get to the bottom alive but once I did, I was done for the day and winter season.  It was not fun for me.   I have skied since but not a lot.  I think the last time was when kids were in middle school and I went as a chaperone on a school ski trip.  I did have a pretty good time but I kept to the moderate slopes...but no plans to go back, I'm done, too many knee issues.

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1 hour ago, Michael Ventura said:

 

My first time snow skiing was in high school with a bunch of friends. Funny enough, I never learned to snowplow.  Hockey was popular in my family so I took to doing the "hockey stop" but with skis.  I was okay but not great on skis.  On that first outing at the ski slope in Pennsylvania, I somehow got on a chairlift that takes you to the top of the most difficult run.  I stood there paralyzed with fear but I finally worked up the nerve to head down the slope as there was no other real option.  People were zipping by me and cursing me along the way, I was a hazard for sure.  It seemed like forever to get to the bottom alive but once I did, I was done for the day and winter season.  It was not fun for me.   I have skied since but not a lot.  I think the last time was when kids were in middle school and I went as a chaperone on a school ski trip.  I did have a pretty good time but I kept to the moderate slopes...but no plans to go back, I'm done, too many knee issues.

Well, Michael, if I could trade my body for a new model, I would still love to ski. The last time I was in the Rockies in the summer, though, I had heart issues from the altitude, and realized I was either a heart attack or stroke risk. No more mountains for me, winter or summer. I always had issues there, but they got worse. I understand about the knees. I caught a rut on the slopes at Vail, and tore cartilage in my knee. I got by for a few years then twisted and tore it further. Surgery.

Watching the news and weather just now, it appears you are or will be having some heavy snow. Maybe ice? What’s going on in Virginia is bad.

Be careful.

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4 hours ago, Cecile Marion said:

Growing up in Florida, I learned how to waterski early, but I was in my thirties before I ever tried downhill skiing. The first time on a real mountain, I snowplowed the whole way down the three mile run, and words flew out of my mouth I didn’t even realize were a part of my vocabulary. 

That’s hilarious! That’s the way I felt the few times I skied blue, but caught some moguls on the way. I pretty much stuck to the easy green slopes or I would have had some of those words myself. I had a few spectacular falls that felt like I left body parts scattered about. What I do know, is it took two guys who saw me fall to pick up my hat, my skis, my poles, and my goggles, because I lost them all in the fall over about 30 yards. Why I didn’t break something is a miracle.  After that, I quit skiing fast and took the easier runs. There’s something to be said about stopping to smell the…..pine trees.😄

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1 hour ago, Betty LaRue said:

Well, Michael, if I could trade my body for a new model, I would still love to ski. The last time I was in the Rockies in the summer, though, I had heart issues from the altitude, and realized I was either a heart attack or stroke risk. No more mountains for me, winter or summer. I always had issues there, but they got worse. I understand about the knees. I caught a rut on the slopes at Vail, and tore cartilage in my knee. I got by for a few years then twisted and tore it further. Surgery.

Watching the news and weather just now, it appears you are or will be having some heavy snow. Maybe ice? What’s going on in Virginia is bad.

Be careful.


Yes, we got about 7 inches of heavy icy snow yesterday and that area in Virginia, not that far from me, got a foot.  Not sure if the news made to Europe, but a 50 mile stretch of the most heavily travel roadway on the east coast of the U.S. (route 95), came to a complete standstill for over 24 hours, after a bunch of trucks (lorries) got stuck on the icy road.  Many many cars were also stuck all day and night in about 20 degree F temps(roughly -7C).  What a nightmare for those poor people…but the good news is there were no deaths or serious injuries reported.  Just heard that they are only now reopening the highway after 36 hours of being shutdown 

 

Regarding knees, I have torn menisci and osteoarthritis in both knees.  So not a very sporting guy anymore. One more reason I need to have an assistant on my shoots that require lugging lighting.

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32 minutes ago, Michael Ventura said:

but a 50 mile stretch of the most heavily travel roadway on the east coast of the U.S. (route 95), came to a complete standstill for over 24 hours, after a bunch of trucks (lorries) got stuck on the icy road.  Many many cars were also stuck all day and night in about 20 degree F temps(roughly -7C).  What a nightmare for those poor people…but the good news is there were no deaths or serious injuries reported.  Just heard that they are only now reopening the highway after 36 hours of being shutdown 

That’s what I was seeing on National news. Several semis jackknifed and caused a traffic snarl that went miles and miles. They reported there was about 4 inches of ice under the snow. I’m wondering about power outages to residents.

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