Southern Fried Yankee

The heat wave and dry spell continue, here in Arkansas.  All sorts of records are being broken as temps stay above 100 with heat index up to 115 most days.  In fact the days have turned to weeks and we have had no rain.  Everything is dry and crunchy...especially our lawn.  I have thrown away 1/2 of my plants because even after being watered twice daily, they are still dying.  It's really sad.  And everyday I light a candle and send up a prayer of thanks to the person that invented A/C!  LOL

Yesterday was a very fun day, in spite of the heat.  My dear friend, Victoria and I went to a nearby town to check out what was reputed to be an awesome quilt and yarn shop.  We left there, not only empty handed but very disappointed, as well.  It is unheard of for me to go to a fabric store and leave empty handed, but nothing inspired me.  I was mostly focused on checking out their yarn because nice yarn shops are far and few between in these parts, but I have more yarn just in my sewing room than they had in their entire shop!

The town we went to, Siloam Springs, is right on the Oklahoma border and about a 38 mile drive from Rogers.  It has some great older homes and fun little shops, so we did drive around and check them out.  Sure wish I had taken one of my cameras, but with yarn on the brain, I wasn't thinking about taking pictures.  It was very interesting to both of us {having both been raised hard core Catholics} to see that a couple of churches were being turned into homes!  We weren't even 'allowed' to enter a non-Catholic church, so the idea of living in a church, at first, made us both gasp!  But then, of course, we laughed at our silliness.  Times have sure changed!

All of our traipsing around the various Antique shops and such, did us both in, though.  V had knee surgery a few months before I had my back surgery and it bothers her to over-do it, as well.  I fared better with my shopping trips with Riley than I did yesterday, for some reason.  It was great fun, but we were wiped out and actually cut the day a bit shorter than originally planned.  The heat didn't help any!

As for my progress, my physical therapy ended about 3 weeks ago, and I must admit that I have not been doing my exercises as diligently as I should be and I need to work on that.  It's been almost 5 months and I'm pretty discouraged about the potential 'quality of life' that I will be left with.  BUT, he said that it would take a year, so I try to be patient.  I finally have my 6 month check up scheduled, for Sept 29th and I am SO anxious to go and see if I am healing properly and how things look on the inside, as well as to get the surgeons input on my progress.  Most days I try to make myself do more than I really feel up to doing, just because I feel that I NEED to.  Sometimes it works out okay and other times I am sorry.  I'm beginning to feel that that will always be the way it is.  I sure hope not, but I really don't know.  I can safely say that I am glad I had the surgery.  In spite of the ordeal, I am much better off the way I am now, as opposed to pre-surgery.  There is no question about that!  I do know that alot of what I am experiencing now, is due to nerve damage that took place during the surgery.  Not necessarily "damage", but simply the moving and repositioning of the nerves to accommodate the changes that took place in there.  That still affects my legs a great deal.  Bah.  Enough of that.

Chuck is outside building my rose garden bed.  Time to go supervise the planting :).  Pictures tomorrow and a Dixie update.  Stay tuned!!