The Gilbert Cars!

This week has been pretty normal - well with the "new normal" of taking Tim back and forth to work, keeping up with the weekly clinic appointments and working myself on CBF contract work and job searching. All seems to be going pretty good! I'm even managing to get the clothes washed, groceries bought and even some meals cooked!

The last few weeks my new challenge has been the cars! so here's the story-

A couple of weeks ago, I had to get what I thought was a new registration sticker for Mary Beth's car. So I went to the courthouse, waited in line, gave my form to the person and she looked it up and said that the registration had already been paid and was not due. After telling her that I had just been in two weeks ago for my car, she said to me, "honey, I bet you have the wrong sticker on your car"! She went out with me to look and sure enough, I had the sticker that should have been on Mary Beth's car on my car and her's was expiring in a few days in Richmond, VA. Easy fix to that one - just pay the money to buy two replacement stickers - one for my car with my license # and one for Mary Beth's car with her license #. Seemed easy enough to do and now we both have the correct sticker for our cars.

Two weeks ago, I was going to get Tim's little red car inspected so it could be a back up car for a friend. The inspection ran out in Jan and I had just waited to get it inspected. I took Tim to work and returned home to take his car for inspection, sat in the car and turned the key and nothing! It was dead! I thought I had kept it started so that wouldn't happen. I do know how to jump a car but just choose not to do it except for times like this. So I got the jumper cables from the garage, pulled my car up as close as I could to Tim's for the jump (which meant I had to get into his car from the passenger side and crawl over to the driver's side to start it), put the jumper cables on and then get in Tim's car to turn the key. It started and all was good.

I crawled back across the front seat so I could undo the jumper cables and put them back and move my car. Got it all done. Put that little red car in reverse (standard car, don't you know) and off I went for the inspection.

I got to the station and told them what I wanted and that the car had been sitting for 6 months. They asked if I had had to jump it and I said yes and they said it couldn't be inspected that day. It would have to be driven 60-80 miles and let the computer reset before being inspected. Do What! I didn't have time for this - I needed the car inspected that day so all the other pieces would fit into place. So, me and that little red car headed south on I-35! I drove it 61 miles and came back to the station for the inspection. It passed and all is good. The car was ready for use if needed.

I learned that I could jump a car without mixing the positives and negatives and having sparks fly everywhere! I also learned that my new hip was good because I could climb back and forth across the front seat of Tim's car with the gear shift in the middle and do what needed to be done! Mission accomplished!

Well, last week was my car! I took it in for inspection and it passed without any hitches. I got the inspection, an oil change and new transmission fluid (since it was brown and is suppose to be changed around 50,000 miles and it has 90,000). Whew - this car thing has certainly been an experience. They are all ready now for somthing else to happen!

Long Time No Write!

I've looked at this blog for a while now thinking a fairy would just write and give an update on all that's been happening the past month. But no writing fairy has appeared and so much has happened that I'm going to attempt an update. So here goes ---

Tim is back teaching full time and loving it! That's good news! He's got 5 classes - teaching MWF and Sat. morning (teaching in the weekend college) which leaves TTH open for wound care clinic, infusion clinic and whatever else needs to be done. He's got office hours on those days but it does give him the flexibility to do what needs to be done. He's teaching intro to philosophy and world religions and working hard to stay ahead of the class. He's teaching with powerpoints these days which means he doesn't have to move around the classroom a whole lot and he can post the powerpoints on the web for students to have. So, picture this - I drop him off at the curb and off he goes on his rolley walker, book bag over his shoulder, brown bag lunch and red lunch sack with his 2pm infusion in hand - off for the day of teaching and encouraging students! quite a site I must admit.

I think you can gather from this that he's still not walking or driving, going to the wound clinic in HEB once a week and the infusion clinic once a week for dressing change and meds. The foot is making progress each week, the measurements are getting smaller each week, but still not healed completely. Just last week the wound clinic has changed his visits from weekly to every two weeks with me doing the in-between wound care. Now that's a little scary - but I'm doing it. I've learned lots about wound care in the last 7 months!

The new normal for us right now is me driving Tim to and from work daily and him teaching. He continues to visit Dr. Sotman at the wound clinic, Trish and Jane at the infusion clinic and keep his blood sugar levels steady. I think we've got that part under control for now!


As if all that wasn't enough for us to handle - my position with CBF has been eliminated as of Jan. 31, 2011. I'm now trying to figure out my own "new normal" with all this. CBF did offer me a contract which I have accepted. The contract is to continue to work on some of the projects I was working with as a full-time employee but for a less money and no benefits. I'm working to update my resume and look for other possibilities. I'm open to most anything right now! I'm really trying not to panic but that's a whole lot easier to say than to do. I found this quote by Seneca that I think sums it up for me, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." I'm working to make some new beginnings!

Objects of the Divine Love - the Intolerable Compliment

"If God is Love, He is, by defintion, something more than mere kindness. And it appears from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense....
When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God loves man, not that He has some 'disinterested', because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect', is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. How this should be, I do not know....We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine Love may rest 'well pleased.'"
     - C. S. Lewis

Update

I haven't posted in awhile, but here are the newest updates. I have now returned to work. I will be returning to the classroom and will be a tenured professor of philosophy at the Northwest Campus of TCC. I'm very excited about the return to teaching and the classroom and am looking forward to being a part of the campus where I began my TCC teaching career. It appaers that you can go home again...:-).

As for my foot, we're still in the healing process. Things are progressing but slowly. I've still got the picc line and the antibiotic infusions and probably will have them as long as the foot has an open wound. However, as we measure the wound each week it grows smaller, so my time on the walker grows shorter with each passing week. Teaching on a walker will be a new adventure for both me and my students. Karen will be glad when I am able to walk and drive again so she won't have to be my taxi.

Missed everyone at church on Sunday because Karen didn't want us out in the bad weather, that didn't turn out to be so bad...lol
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Thanks for your continued prayers!

Christmas in Birmingham

Tim and I drove to Birmingham on Christmas Eve Eve to spend a few days with our kids. It was a long drive but we made it and had such fun for three days with our family. We spent Christmas Eve cooking (yes, we made German Chocolate cake and Grandma's potatoe salad!), talking and attended the Christmas Eve service at First Methodist. That was an adventure just getting Tim at the right door and finding the elevator to go to the sanctuary on the second floor but the service was so meaningful and worth all the work to be there.

We gathered at Katie and Matt's home for Christmas morning. Upon arrival, we had new stockings "hung by the chimney with care" for all of us. Thank you, Katie.

The tradition of matching PJs was still alive and well at least for one more year!

We exchanged gifts and laughed and cried and laughed until we cried with some. What a wonderful morning for all of us! Thanks for all the surprises!

The grand dogs were having a wonderful time with all their new toys. Of course, Maggie Mae couldn't quite figure out why all these people were at her house. They were happy to snuggle with Tim and me for our Christmas afternoon naps while the kids went to their respective in-laws for visits.

We made some new family photos that I hope you enjoy. We did have a white Christmas with snow in Birmingham on Christmas Day. It was wonderful - just enough to be pretty but not stick to the roads. Katie and Matt with Maggie Mae in front of their house with the snow falling -

Mary Beth and Caleb -

Katie and Mary Beth with Tim sitting on his walker -

Matt, Katie, Tim, Karen, Caleb and Mary Beth -

We had a great time just enjoying family. We are looking forward to 2011 and all it holds for each of us!

The Shadowlands

"Then Aslan turned to them and said: '...you are - as you used to call it in the Shadowlands - dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning....'
     And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was truly the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better then the one before."
                              - The Last Battle, by C. S. Lewis


For all of you who have ever wondered about the origin of the movie title, here it is. Lewis was a Platonist. These ARE the Shadowlands...in the words of Lewis "the anesthetic fog we call Nature." Some day we shall go "higher up and higher in" forever in Aslan's Country...:-) (Go see "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" if you haven't. While not exactly true to the book it's a good movie none the less.)

More Good News

I did my weekly visit to the Wound Care Clinic this morning. The foot wounds are doing remarkably well healing with the Biostep-Ag. It's good stuff! In addition, the Wound Care Clinic will dress the wound once a week (with Karen serving as backup at home if needed...more stuff she didn't bargain for when she married me...:-) so no more Home Health Care visits! That means Monday, Wednesday, and Friday belong to us again...:-). Also, as of the one I did this morning at 6:00 a.m., no more antibiotic infusions...woohoo! Maybe I'll really be able to taste food again! I go to the Infusion Clinic tomorrow morning to have my picc line dressing changed, but it looks like that will be coming out with my visit to the Wound Care Clinic next week. I've had it for six months, but believe me I won't miss it. Can walking be far away? Not too much longer, I think. We also get to go see the girls and their hubbies on Thursday! What a great set of Christmas gifts! I am very thankful!

Now, for those of you who wonder what I read for fun, here's my list:

Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates: Using Philosophy (And Jokes) To Explore Life, Death, the Afterlife, and Everyting in Between, by Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein

If You Can Read This; The Philosophy of Bumper Stickers, by Jack Bowen

The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics; A Math-Free Exploration of the Science That Made Our World, by James Kakalios

The Greatest Show on Earth; The Evidence for Evolution, by Richard Dawkins (A favorite author of mine, and yes, I realize that he is an atheist...lol!)

Have yourselves a merry little Christmas...or a big one, whatever the case may be!