Happy Feet and Birthdays and Christmas

 First, feet!!

I have been having problems with my left foot for about a month now. I had quite a bit of pain on the top. My nurse practicioner suggested that I see a podiatrist, and I did last Thursday. They did some x-rays to rule out any obvious skeletal problems and then did a test to make sure I didn't have neuropathy.  And I passed that with flying colors. No signs of neuropathy!

I have been diabetic for 20 years so I am very thankful for that. I assure you that it did not just happen. I have been eating carefully for decades now. It is nice that saying no to excessive carbs has actually resulted in something good.

The podiatrist messed with my left foot and then gave me a pad thing to put in a certain place on my foot (it fits around my foot) and basically the pain has gone away. I am grateful!

We have started Birthday Season for kids. We have three within a week of Christmas. We are mostly ready with presents. Mostly.

This morning, Kevin and I led singing at church. We did four Christmas songs. Kevin had to learn them all in less than two days so yeah Kevin!

I have five chapters to go on my current book. I will probably have it done by the New Year. We have a lot going on with celebrations so I likely won't make as much progress as usual with writing this week and next.

We will be having a wet and warm Christmas. It is supposed to rain and be in the 50's. We have already had a lot of snow for Ohio in December so I am not too sad about a warmer Christmas. It will make driving easier.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Mid December

 

We had quite a snow on Saturday, and then the temps dropped. Right now it is Monday morning and seven degrees, up from close to 0 last night. BRRRRR!

We had two kids working on Saturday and both had to drive home through a snowstorm. One was Angela, who is a very new driver. She made it just fine, and I am so thankful!

Big news! Isaac has accepted an offer for an engineering job!  We are very excited and happy for him. The job is about an hour away from us, so he will need to find an apartment. The start date is late January so he has about a month to get organized and moved.

Joseph is also apartment hunting but his job is close to us so he needs an apartment nearby. The boys were considering living together but with Isaac's new job, that won't be happening, which is totally fine. Both boys will be making enough that they can comfortably live alone.

Neither big boy has any debts. We were able to pay for Isaac's college without needing debt either for him or us. I have opinions about college loan debt. First, yes, it is necessary sometimes. Second, universities have been jacking up tuition prices crazily for decades and I think the ready influx of money through student loans is part of the problem. Universities haven't had any reason to be careful with money when loans are so readily available. And then the poor students, who were young and financially stupid in their late teens and early twenties, find themselves having to pay back huge loans, which is really hard on them.

There has been this big fuss about nursing degrees being shifted away from "professional" to something else... nurses have been screaming about how the Trump admin is evil for saying nursing isn't a profession.

Of course nursing is a profession. Everyone knows that. Everyone I know admires nursing as a profession. Very hard job! The question is weather a nurse should be able to borrow over 100K to get a nursing degree. Nurses often make good money but wow, 150K is so much!

Social work is also admirable and doesn't pay well, and young people with social work degrees should REALLY think about loans and how they will affect them in the future.

It will be very odd having the big boys out of our house, but it is also a good step in their journey toward full adulthood. There are so many things we are taking care of that they don't have to think about -- soon they will have to determine what to cook and when to grocery shop and all that stuff.

A few comments on health problems of my own: my plantar fasciitis has popped up again and I am wearing my boot at night. My foot is better than it was a week ago, so that is good. Still hurts some.

Mostly I am in fine shape for a 56 year old, but there is a little of this and a little of that bugging me. I am grateful for padded boots and doctors.

Cold and Snowy Winter so far

 

This was from a few days ago. Not a LOT of snow, but nonetheless snow. It is actually quite rare for us to get snow in December here. We have had a couple of storms with 4 or 5 inches, and supposedly we will get another few inches tomorrow.

We have young drivers out on the roads a lot so I need to keep praying for their safety. Angela is supposed to work tomorrow and she is our youngest driver so I hope and pray she will be Ok. We will see if it actually snows like they say it will. Sometimes the weather winkies are wrong.

There is a lot going on in the house with Christmas coming, plus three kid birthdays. Kevin kindly purchases most of the gifts for the kids which is a HUGE blessing.

I am 45,000 words into another book. It will not be super long -- I am guessing like 60,000 when all is said and done.

Did you see how I used a dash in the previous sentence (-)? Apparently, people have decided that dashes are signs of Artificial Intelligence (AI) use in writing, so now I  am avoiding dashes. It is stupid because normal writers do use dashes, but I also don't want people writing reviews claiming I am using AI in my writing.

Our big boys have been looking around at apartments and considering what they want to do. At the moment, they are seriously contemplating living together in an apartment because it will be much cheaper. They initially wanted to live in their own places, but not surprisingly, it is way more expensive.

Kevin and I have been purchasing and organizing stuff for the boys so they will have dishes and pots and pans when they move out. We have a storage room in the basement and I am happily looking for stuff to give away.

Sometimes I am truly overwhelmed by how much stuff we have in the house. Given that we have nine people living here, I don't suppose it is really that bad but I don't like clutter.

This is our sons' bedroom. It is a big room (like 14 by 17) and fits three beds and three dressers nicely, but still it is crowded. When the big boys leave, there will be so much more space for stuff. I don't know what we will do with it, but we will figure out something. Maybe some of the toys that Daniel really likes?

Speaking of Daniel, he will miss them. He has shared a room with his brothers for as long as he can remember.

Our older boys, who both have to work early, will probably relish having their own room so they can hit the sack without being distracted by siblings. Joseph has a particularly brutal shift -- it starts at 6:30 a.m.!

So yeah, lots going on! It is good for young people to grow up and move out. It will be hard having them gone, but also kind of nice with a little less busyness and stuff in our house.

December!

 

We are past Thanksgiving. On Thursday (Thanksgiving) we didn't have our normal banquet because Angela was working.

So instead we had it on Saturday evening. ALSO, we had a party for Kevin's mother in the early afternoon on Saturday. She turned 80.

She lives in Texas with Kevin's sister and family, but they kindly brought her up so there could be a party for her. It was fun. 

Kevin's sister gave us hats so that evening, some of us wore hats.

It was nice being all together.

We didn't get snow, unlike Michigan, where they got a bunch. We are supposed to get snow tonight. We will see!

When the big girls visited for Thanksgiving dinner, we had six cars in our driveway. Fortunately, we have a big driveway. We look like a used car lot :-).

A new book launched on Friday. Amazon continues to behave in a wonky fashion which is annoying. It is, however, entirely beyond our control so Kevin and I are working on being patient.

The big thing that is annoying is that Amazon isn't, apparently, sending out messages to our Amazon "followers." These are people who have said they WANT to know when a book launches, but we don't think Amazon is doing it.

There was some big computer glitch more than a month ago and maybe it is still getting sorted out? Maybe.

Anyway. It is beyond our control. I am being calm.

My left foot has been bothering me quite a bit. I think I strained some tendons on the top of the foot or something.

I am so grateful for strong kids who can carry things up and down stairs for me as needed.

Kevin was on a decluttering spree last week which was nice. He threw away a bunch of stuff. Our big boys are moving out in the next couple of months and will take away more stuff.

I like having open space. Clutter stresses me out. Also, I live in a house with 8 other people and need to be patient with other people's clutter.

December is upon us and Christmas is coming. In the midst of all the holiday hustle and bustle, I am going to try to keep my thoughts fixed on the Lord Jesus, who came as a baby, grew to an adult, preached, taught, and then died for my sins, and rose again from the grave.

Thank you, Lord Jesus.