Pumped up knee

I went to the orthopedist this morning. He was pissed that the PA at my doctor's office scheduled an MRI rather than an x-ray (his receptionist had tipped me off to this already). He is a really cool doctor, pretty cute and very straightforward. He sent me down the hall from his office for an x-ray right away--apparently there are a few orthopede's right there and they share the equipment and staff, so it can be done right away. Way cool. I walked the x-rays back to him and he looked at them with me. There are my bones! (no tumor) There's my patella! No bone rubbing on bone. He thinks there may be some worn out cartiledge, but nothing very serious. His suggestion was a shot of cortisone into the knee as a first step, wait 3 weeks to see if that does the trick, then maybe surgery but he thought surgery was not the next step (no pun intended). He carries vials of cortisone around in his pocket, which I thought was pretty funny. "Pretty common technique, huh." Oh yes, I do this a lot. So first he gave me a shot to numb the knee, which felt as if someone was trying to make my reflexes react, very strange. Then he took this really, really long but very thin needle and stuck it halfway into my knee, behind my kneecap. It really didn't hurt, which surprised me. I told him I'd always heard that cortisone shots were very painful. "Depends on where they are and how they're done," he said. " I always numb the joints first, and large joints are easier to do." So I like him and go back in 3 weeks for a follow-up. Meanwhile the place is crawling (again, no pun intended) with people with walkers, crutches, in wheelchairs--a really depressing place to go. And an incredibly busy place as well.

So that's the knee, pumped up on steroids.

Back from Rhode Island last night at 6. Got there on Saturday around 4, left home at 9. Stopped at the outlet stores in Lake George in search of a small, covered casserole for Liza's present. Guess what? They don't make them smaller than 1.5 qts. No, really, they don't. Except, as Mark discovered, at Williams Sonoma, for $58. So I got her one anyway, just to give her a covered casserole. I went to Pfalzgraf, Corning and the Gap (no casseroles there, just a good sale on camisoles). Stopped at Target in New London. NOTHING.

Sunday we spent hanging around, visiting with each other, a nice day. Mark and I went grocery shopping in the morning to get food for the dinner we were to cook. Lamb chops (I hate lamb but Liza likes it and never gets to have it), asparagus, baked potatoes, petite peas, ice cream with chocolate sauce. She picked it all. Mark's sister and her new boyfriend (the catalyst for leaving her husband) came so that Lance (who would ever be attracted to a man named Lance, but he seems pretty nice and is a contractor) could take measurements to fix the basement stairs and look at the two windows that need to be replaced. Marilyn was pretty hyper and talked a lot, even (or maybe especially) with 2 glasses of wine in her. They finally left and we cooked and ate dinner.

Monday I got up really early to take Mark's car to the garage, then came home and fell asleep on the couch for hours while Liza watched her old sitcoms. Companionable, but worth driving 350 miles for? Well, when I nap, I really nap. Molly called, which Liza really liked; Anna called, which Liza really liked. She had already talked to Jenica. I kept expecting to hear from Henry. Will we ever get used to this? It seemed very sad. Anyway, we had a bottle of champagne and Liza opened her presents. Then we got all gussied up and went to the Shelter Harbor Inn for a $200 dinner. It was great and we love that restaurant.

Yesterday I slept pretty late (geez, I must have been tired), spent the morning visiting with Liza. Had a good time with her. Left at noon, my usual time. Trip home was fine, not much traffic. Started snowing (of course) as I got near Silver Lake. Almost all of the snow had melted, and the ice had gone out of the AuSable River. Wowie jet! That's actually right on time, it's usually out by St. Patrick's Day, it just seems early. Anyway, the house was 52 in the living room and the fish were fine but wondered where I'd been. I built a fire, turned up the heat, turned on the pump and discovered there was water in my well (flush away!). My sump pump ran last night--the frost is going out of the ground, creating ground water. Not much, I think, but some. I will conserve but I have water.

Bare ground didn't last long: by this morning we had 4" of powder on the ground (as if it would be somewhere else). It might melt later this week, if the sun comes out, but it's not supposed to be very warm.

And I was supposed to go to AuSable Forks to weed this afternoon but I cancelled the trip because my knee feels very tender and when you weed you crawl all over the floor, squat, stand up, squat, etc., and I just didn't feel like doing that today. I felt like a real wimp, but I rescheduled for Monday. She was very understanding. She's recovering from surgery--had her lymph nodes removed as a preventive measure because she had a vulvar melanoma. Awful. The lymphnodes were clean so at least the cancer hadn't spread.

And I just ran off 6 plastic canvas patterns of Easter-themed projects for a bookmobile patron. I have the strangest feeling that I did this last year for this woman. If I were better organized I would keep a file of plastic canvas patterns for each major holiday, but they're always available, thanks to Google and places like Mary's Crafts Page. This patron lives in senior citizen housing, and if I ever got organized she'd probably die and I'd never need the patterns again. That's been my experience with vertical files in the past.

Our automated system is down due to server errors so I may actually have to work on the weeding policy I'm writing for our member libraries. Ack, ack.