Our Christmas Newsletter
Here’s wishing you a Merry Christmas for 2008 and a Blessed New Year for 2009 from the scenic shores of Lake Ontario, America’s North Shore.
This year has been a little bit less eventful than 2007 was, thank God!
Linda continues to please her cardiologist. She has recovered about 80% of her cardiac function and her blood pressure and diabetes remain well controlled. She even got to stop taking one of the many, many pills she takes every day. Sadly, though, it was the smallest one. The horse pills continue.
We are still fighting with the Social Security Administration over disability benefits for her. In this region, hearings for claims mean a two year wait. I guess that means we should be close. She gets around the house but continues to have balance problems due to the strokes. She is crocheting when she can, and doing a little baking. She will be making some of her famous homemade Christmas candy.
Chuck is semi-retired, if you will. He is looking but the opportunities in non-profit accounting are few and far between here. He has sold a number of written articles, at about 1 cent per word so no great riches achieved.
He had shoulder surgery at the beginning of September, to repair a partially torn rotator cuff and grind down a large bone spur. He’s made a comeback but the Yankees won’t be calling him for pitching help anymore.
Chuck retired from the ambulance corps in April. It was a good time for a fresh start and he had done it for 12 years. He devotes his time to his website and has interviewed many military and governmental officials in the United States and by phone from Iraq and Afghanistan.
There’s a lot of science fiction things going on in military medicine. They’ve actually regrown fingers. Wound and burn management will be unrecognizable in a decade thanks to the work Chuck has been told about. Work on “virtual” people has made progress, too. Think Max Headroom or Terminator. Even the artificial arm or leg may be permanently attached, with your nerves running the prosthetics’s electronics.
Our cats are doing well. Merlin and Arthur, Pebbles and Sarah are all happy and well. Merlin did have a bout with a chronic condition that required Chuck to give him steroid injections but he’s recovered for now. Sarah, our multi-toed kitty, is our fat, white chick. We are tending to some of her hygiene needs since she is too fat to reach the necessary spots. It’s her childhood that prompts her to overeat, for fear she will go hungry. She won’t, not here, but such an early lesson is not easy to grow out of.
Our neighbors across the street, Gene and Allie, have been a great help to us. Things that take more than one pair of hands go easier. And Linda is greatly comforted by knowing that they are around if she is alone and needs help.
We were forced to put in a new furnace but, thankfully, it may pay for itself in a few years by being more efficient.
God bless all of you this Christmas and for the New Year.
Chuck, Linda, Arthur and Merlin, Pebbles and Sarah
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